The Chapters

Finding myself once more upon my legs, by the help of Mr. Franklin’s two hands pulling at my two coat-collars, the first thing I did was to brush the sand off my trousers, and the second was to look our young gentleman well over from top to toe.

A man who has lived to my time of life without getting a thorough understanding of the difference between an English gentleman and a foreign-varnished gentleman, has lived to very little purpose. Mr. Franklin was English to the backbone by birth, being my lady’s own nephew; but his father had sent him to be educated in foreign parts, with the result that he was a sort of three-legged stool of an Englishman—having one leg in France, one leg in Germany, and one leg in Italy. When he was in his French humor, he was all agility and compliments, shrugging his shoulders and dancing about the room like a parched pea in a frying-pan. When he was in his German humor, he would sit with his hands in his pockets, staring into a puddle or a tobacco-pipe, and talking about “the Objective” and “the Subjective” till he fairly made my head spin round. When he was in his Italian humor, he was soft and musical and lazy, ready to lie on a sofa and play the guitar from morning to night. Today, the French leg was uppermost. He was full of life, full of smiles, and dressed in a light fawn-coloured suit that made him look younger than his five-and-twenty years.

“Now, Betteredge,” says he, holding me by both arms and laughing into my face, “have you forgotten that seven-and-sixpence, after twelve years?”

“Not I, Mr. Franklin,” I answered, laughing too. “I never forget a debt of honour, especially when it is owing to myself. You borrowed that seven-and-sixpence of me at the Frizinghall Martinmas Fair, when you were a lad of ten, to buy a wonderful pocket-knife with eight blades and a corkscrew. You promised to pay me back out of your next pocket-money, and you were packed off to school in Switzerland the very next Monday morning, without having refunded a single brass farthing.”

“Here it is, then, with twelve years’ compound interest!” cries he, pulling out a handful of bright gold and silver, and thrusting a half-sovereign into my waistcoat pocket before I could stop him. “Keep the change, Gabriel, to buy yourself a pound of the best tobacco in Yorkshire!”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” I said. “I’ll smoke your health in it this very night. But, if you please, Mr. Franklin, how did you come here at this hour? We didn’t look for you till five o’clock in the afternoon. The carriage was ordered to go to the station to meet the four-forty train, and here you are on our beach before the clock has struck one! Did you drop from the clouds, sir, or have you walked all the way from London?”

At that question, the smiles vanished from Mr. Franklin’s face as clean as if you had wiped them off with a sponge. His brows knit together, his eyes grew dark and anxious, and he looked round him over the lonely sandhills and the dreary sea, as if he suspected that the very sea-gulls were listening to what we were going to say.

“I came by the night mail as far as the junction, Betteredge,” he said, in a low voice; “and I posted on from there with a pair of horses. I had no choice but to come four hours earlier than I intended.”

“No choice, Mr. Franklin?” I repeated. “Why, what has happened to hurry you?”

“A circumstance has happened in London,” says he, “which has driven me out of the town in a hurry. Walk back with me towards the house, Betteredge, and I will tell you. Is the coast clear here?”

“Clear as a whistle, sir,” I answered. “There is nobody on this beach but the quicksand, and the quicksand has got no ears, though it has got an uncommonly large appetite for anything that falls into its jaws.”

We turned our backs on the Shivering Sand, and began to mount the footpath leading through the fir plantation. When we had got under the shadow of the trees, where the melancholy wind was sighing among the boughs overhead, Mr. Franklin stopped short, put his hand into his breast-pocket, and drew out a letter.

“Look at that, Betteredge,” says he, putting the paper into my hand. “Read it, and you will see why I couldn't wait for the afternoon train.”

I took my horn spectacles out of their shagreen case, wiped the glasses on the skirt of my coat, and held the letter up to the light that filtered down through the fir needles. It was written in a neat, stiff, lawyer-like hand, on a sheet of thin blue paper, and it ran as follows:

*“Private and Confidential.*

*Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London,* *Wednesday Evening, May 24th, 1848.*

*“MY DEAR FRANKLIN,—Since you left my chambers this afternoon, a circumstance of so strange and threatening a nature has come to my knowledge, that I feel it my absolute duty to warn you without the loss of a single hour. A confidential clerk in my employ, whom I had sent on an errand to the neighbourhood of your hotel in Covent Garden, observed two dark-complexioned men, wearing the dress of foreign sailors, loitering near the entrance and making cautious inquiries of one of the street-porters concerning your plans for tomorrow. They asked specifically whether you intended to travel to the North by the morning express or the late afternoon mail.*

*“This may mean nothing, or it may mean everything. Knowing what you have in your custody, and remembering the dreadful history attached to it, I cannot permit you to run the slightest avoidable risk. Do not wait for the five o'clock train tomorrow, as you had arranged. Leave your hotel at daybreak; take the earliest morning train from the London terminus; and hire a post-chaise at the junction to carry you straight to your aunt’s house. When you are once safe under Lady Verinder’s roof, place your charge immediately in the most secure place of deposit the house affords, and keep the key in your own pocket. Do not mention this warning to your aunt until you have consulted with me, but act upon it instantly.*

*“Yours faithfully,* *“MATTHEW BRUFF.”*

I took off my spectacles, folded the letter, and handed it back to Mr. Franklin. My breath was fairly taken away.

If you have ever been knocked on the head by a sudden piece of news, you will know what my state of mind was on reading that letter. Only an hour or two before, sitting in my beehive chair in the sunny back yard, I had listened to my daughter Penelope telling me about the three Indian jugglers with their hand-drums, and the little English boy seeing visions in the ink in the palm of his hand, and crying out that the English gentleman had got *It* about him, and was coming to this very house today. I had laughed at Penelope; I had called it a piece of hocus-pocus and a gipsy trick; and here was Mr. Bruff—a shrewd, hard-headed London lawyer, who believed in nothing that couldn't be proved on parchment—writing down the very same warning, and sending Mr. Franklin flying across England for his life!

“Well, Betteredge?” says Mr. Franklin, watching my face with his keen eyes. “What do you think of that?”

“I think, sir,” I said, feeling a cold shiver go down my back that had nothing to do with the sea-breeze, “that London and Yorkshire have put their heads together today to frighten an old man out of his wits. Penelope has been telling me a story of some Indian jugglers on our terrace—”

“Indian jugglers!” cried Mr. Franklin, stopping as if he had been shot. “Here? In this neighborhood?”

“They were here on our terrace this very morning, sir,” I answered; “and Penelope followed them to the top of the hill, and saw them pouring black ink into a little boy’s hand.”

Mr. Franklin whistled to himself—a long, low whistle. He put his hands behind his back, and took two or three hasty turns among the fir trees.

“It is as I feared,” he said, speaking more to himself than to me. “They are on the track. They have followed it from the other side of the world, and they will follow it to the end.” He turned on me suddenly, and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Betteredge, have you got a strong-room in the house? A place where something of priceless value—something on which the peace and honour of this whole family may depend—can be locked up safe from fire, water, and thieves?”

“We have got the plate-room, Mr. Franklin,” I replied, standing up as stiff as a poker for the credit of the house. “It was built under the late Sir John’s own eye, down in the old cellars, with stone walls two feet thick, and an iron door with a patent lock that came from the best locksmith in London. I have kept the key of that room on my own ring for forty years, and neither man nor devil has ever set foot in it without my leave.”

“That is the very place,” said Mr. Franklin.

He unbuttoned his fawn-coloured coat, plunged his hand into an inner pocket made in the breast of it, and brought out a small, flat packet, about six inches square. It was wrapped in thick, coarse brown paper, tied criss-cross with stout twine, and sealed over every knot and fold with great blobs of red sealing-wax, stamped with a device that I couldn't make out. It was heavy in the hand—surprisingly heavy for so small a thing—as I felt when he passed it over to me.

“Take it, Betteredge,” says he, in a whisper. “Take it straight to your plate-room, without letting a living creature see it or know that you have got it. Lock it in the strongest chest you have got, and keep the key on your person until I ask you for it. Don’t ask me what is inside the paper—for your own sake, the less you know about it for the present, the better.”

“I have no curiosity, Mr. Franklin,” I said, with the dignity that belongs to my office. “A steward who pries into his master’s business is a steward who isn't worth his salt. You give me this packet sealed, and sealed you shall have it back, whenever you choose to call for it.”

We walked on out of the fir plantation, crossed the shrubbery by the side path, and entered the house quietly by the garden door, without meeting any of the women. Mr. Franklin went straight up to his old bedchamber to wash the dust of the road off him, while I made my way down the stone stairs into the cellars, with the heavy little packet tucked snugly under my arm.

The plate-room is a dark, cold, silent place, smelling of stone and iron and old silver-polish. I lit my candle, unlocked the great iron-plated door, and went in. In the corner of the room stands the great iron-bound oak chest where the family silver sleeps when my lady is not entertaining company. I lifted the heavy lid, pushed aside a green baize bag containing a dozen silver soup-ladles, laid Mr. Franklin’s sealed packet down in the bottom-most corner of the chest, and covered it up safe and snug under the baize. Then I let the lid down with a bang that echoed all through the vaults, turned the double lock, walked out, and locked the iron door of the plate-room behind me.

When I put the key back into my waistcoat pocket, along with Mr. Franklin’s half-sovereign, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Whatever was in that brown paper—whether it was gold, or jewels, or state secrets, or family papers—there it lay, safe under two iron locks and two feet of Yorkshire freestone!

Coming up the cellar stairs into the back corridor, who should I meet, coming out of the still-room with a pile of clean napkins in her hands, but my daughter Penelope.

“Father,” says she, stopping and looking at me, “have you seen Rosanna Spearman?”

“I saw her at the Shivering Sand an hour ago,” I answered. “I told her to go in to her dinner, and she promised to follow me.”

“Well, she hasn't followed you,” says Penelope, shaking her head. “She hasn't come into the servants’ hall, and her dinner is gone cold on the dresser. Young Dan, the fisherman’s boy from Cobb’s Hole, was up at the scullery door five minutes ago with some whiting for my lady’s dinner, and he says he saw Rosanna walking as fast as her legs could carry her along the cliff path towards his mother’s cottage.”

“Towards Cobb’s Hole?” I said, staring at her. “What is she doing at Cobb’s Hole, when she ought to be eating her roast mutton at home?”

“Heaven only knows!” says Penelope. “She goes off to Mrs. Yolland’s whenever the fit takes her. Old Mrs. Yolland has got a crippled daughter, whom they call Limping Lucy, and Rosanna has taken a strange fancy to the girl, because Lucy is deformed, I suppose, like herself. But it’s very hard on the rest of us, father, to have the housemaid’s work left on our hands while Rosanna goes wandering about the coast like a ghost!”

“Don’t you be hard on the poor girl, Penelope,” I said. “She has had a troubled mind today. Let her have her walk, and she’ll come home in time for tea, I’ll warrant.”

Penelope tossed her head, as young women will when their elders preach patience to them, and marched off with her napkins towards the pantry.

I went back to my sitting-room to finish the nap that had been so unmercifully interrupted; but I hadn't been in my beehive chair ten minutes before the crunching of carriage-wheels on the gravel drive announced that my lady and Miss Rachel had returned from their luncheon-party.

A moment later, there was a running to and fro in the hall, and the sound of sweet voices on the stairs. Miss Rachel—who had been out in the sun all the morning, and was tired with the long drive in the open carriage—went straight up to her own room with Penelope to take off her bonnet and rest before dinner. My lady, hearing from the footman that Mr. Franklin had arrived four hours before his time, went directly into the library, and sent word for her nephew to come to her.

Being head of the servants, it was my duty to attend my lady with her glass of Madeira and her biscuit after her drive. I tapped at the library door, carried in the tray, and was just in time to see the meeting between the aunt and the nephew.

My lady was looking wonderfully well, with that sweet, gracious, handsome face of hers which made everyone in the parish, high and low, love the very ground she walked on. When Mr. Franklin came in, she held out both her hands to him, and he took them and kissed them with that pretty, respectful French manner of his which always pleased my lady so much.

“My dear Franklin!” she cried, looking at him with tears of joy in her eyes. “How delightful to have you here at last! But what in the world has brought you so early? We didn't expect you until the evening, and we have left all our preparations for your welcome half-finished!”

“I was so impatient to see my dear aunt, and to be under your roof again,” says Mr. Franklin, with a ready smile and a bow, “that I could not endure to wait for the late train.”

My lady smiled, and shook her head at him. “Ah, Franklin, you have brought back your foreign flatteries along with your foreign clothes! But come—sit down by me, and let me look at you.”

She made him sit beside her on the sofa, and took a sip of her Madeira. Then, looking at him very earnestly, the smile faded from her lips, and her face became as grave and solemn as I had ever seen it.

“Franklin,” she said, in a quiet, firm voice that sounded through the still library like the toll of a bell, “there is one thing that must be understood between us before we begin our happy visit. You have come here on a mission which I know to be connected with the past. I do not ask you what you have done, or what you intend to do; but I lay one strict command upon you while you are in this house.”

Mr. Franklin looked down at the carpet, and said nothing.

“Under this roof,” my lady continued, raising her hand with a dignity that became her admirably, “the name of my late brother, Colonel John Herncastle, must never be spoken. His memory is a disgrace to our family; his life was an outrage on every law of God and man; and the wicked legacy he has left behind him has brought nothing but bitterness and misery to everyone who has touched it. If you have any regard for my peace of mind, Franklin, or for the happiness of my daughter Rachel, you will promise me, here and now, that the subject of John Herncastle and his affairs shall be a forbidden subject between us for ever.”

There was a silence in the room. I stood by the sideboard with the salver in my hand, holding my breath, and wondering what Mr. Franklin would say.

He looked up at his aunt, took her hand gently in his own, and pressed it to his lips.

“My dear aunt,” he said, in a tone of deep feeling, “I give you my sacred word of honour as a gentleman. The name of Colonel Herncastle shall never pass my lips in this house, and no word of mine shall ever recall the past to your mind.”

My lady’s face brightened instantly, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Thank you, Franklin,” she said softly. “Now we understand each other, and you are welcome—doubly welcome—to your home.”

She rose and went to the window to look out at the flower-beds, and I took up my tray and slipped quietly out of the room.

What with the dinner, and the waiting at table, and the general bustle of an arrival, the rest of the evening slipped away faster than you would think. Miss Rachel kept to her own room, feeling a slight headache from the heat, and had a light repast carried up to her by Penelope; so that the family dinner in the great dining-room was a quiet affair between my lady and Mr. Franklin alone.

By ten o'clock, the household had retired. The lights were put out in the drawing-room; the great front door was barred and bolted for the night; and the servants went off to their beds, leaving the house as still as a churchyard.

I went back to my own little sitting-room in the back court. The night was mild and clear, and I opened the casement window to let in the cool air from the garden. Then I lit my pipe, took down my beloved *Robinson Crusoe* from the shelf over the chimney-piece, and settled myself down in my beehive chair for an hour of quiet comfort before going to bed.

Now, I ask any candid reader—was there ever such a book in the world as *Robinson Crusoe*? When you are in trouble, it comforts you; when you are in doubt, it directs you; when you are tired, it rests you. You have only to open it at random, and there you find the very words that fit your case, as neatly as a glove fits your hand!

I opened the book with my thumb at page one hundred and eighteen, where Robinson is describing the precautions he took to secure his cave against the savages; and these were the words that met my eye:

*“I was not easy in my mind, but went about looking into every corner, to see that all was safe; for I knew not what enemies might be lurking in the dark, nor what dangers might be drawing near to my habitation while I slept.”*

I took the pipe out of my mouth, and stared at the print. If that wasn't a warning sent straight to Gabriel Betteredge on the night of Thursday, the twenty-fifth of May, eighteen hundred and forty-eight, I should like to know what it was!

I thought of the three dark Indians with their little drums, watching the house from the brow of the hill. I thought of Mr. Bruff’s letter, and the mysterious watchers loitering in the London streets. I thought of the heavy, sealed packet lying two floors below me, locked away in the darkness of the iron plate-chest, behind the stone walls and the patent lock.

And, last of all, I thought of Rosanna Spearman.

The kitchen clock outside struck eleven with a heavy, brassy stroke. Eleven o'clock at night—and our second housemaid had not come back to the house!

I got up from my chair and went to the window. The moon had risen over the plantation, throwing long, black shadows from the fir trees across the grass. Far away in the distance, I could hear the dull, heavy murmur of the sea, breaking on the sandbank out at the mouth of the bay, and rolling in silence over the Shivering Sand. What was the girl doing out on that lonely coast at this hour of the night? Was she sitting in old Mrs. Yolland’s cottage, talking to Limping Lucy? Or was she standing all alone on the beach, looking at the place where she fancied her grave was waiting for her?

I shut the window, knocked the ashes out of my pipe, and went back to my beehive chair, with a heavy heart and an unquiet mind. There was trouble coming to our quiet house—I felt it in my old bones as plain as could be—and the first shadow of that trouble was falling upon us already, out of the dark night and the lonely sea.

*Letter, Hon. Arthur Holmwood to Miss Lucy Westenra.*

“*Albemarle Hotel, London*,

“*27 May*.

“My own dearest Lucy,--

“I am writing this early in the morning, while the town is barely awake, because my heart is so full of you that I cannot rest until I have told you of last night. When I left you yesterday afternoon I felt as though I were walking upon air; and even now, after a night spent in the company of two of the finest fellows that ever drew breath, the wonder of my happiness seems only to grow.

“I went to Quincey’s rooms last evening, as he had bidden me. You know how dearly I love old Quincey, and Jack Seward too; but I confess that as I mounted the stair to his quarters I felt almost ashamed of my own good fortune. There was I, the happiest man in England, going to sit beside two brave gentlemen whose hopes had been dashed only two days before, and that through no fault of their own, but simply because the one prize in all the world worth having had fallen to me. I feared there might be some awkwardness, some shadow of restraint which even our long friendship could not wholly dispel.

“I need not have feared, my darling. Quincey Morris is made of gold straight through to the core. When I entered his sitting-room, he caught me by both hands and nearly wrung them off. The table was laid out in royal fashion—a real bachelor’s feast, with prairie delicacies that Quincey had somehow procured from his American agents, and champagne cooling in ice. Jack Seward was already there, standing by the mantelpiece. He looked a little worn and pale, poor fellow, and there was a grave, quiet look in his eyes; but the moment he saw me, he stepped forward with that firm, manly grip of his and looked me straight in the face.

“‘Art,’ he said, ‘we’ve been brothers through thick and thin, and if I had to lose to any man living, I am glad it was to you. God bless you both.’

“There was not a trace of bitterness in his tone, Lucy; only that quiet, steadfast nobility which belongs to him. Quincey then uncorked the wine and filled our glasses to the brim. He stood up tall and straight, with that merry light in his eyes that always comes when he is deeply moved, and called out:--

“‘Here’s to the bravest, sweetest girl that ever walked God’s earth, and to the lucky partner who has won her to drive in double harness for life! May their trail be smooth, their camp-fire bright, and their happiness never see a sunset!’

“We drank it down, all three of us, with our glasses drained dry. After that, all sadness seemed to melt away into the smoke of our cigars. We sat around the hearth until long past midnight, talking of our old days together. We recalled the camp-fires on the prairies, the stormy landing in the Marquesas when Quincey pulled Jack out of the surf by the collar of his coat, and that strange fever-camp by Lake Titicaca where Jack nursed us both when the native guides had fled. Quincey told some of his inimitable yarns with that dry Western drawl of his, until Jack fairly shook with laughter. It did my heart good to hear Jack laugh again.

“Before we parted, Quincey laid his hands upon our shoulders and said that no matter where our roads might lead in the years to come, we three must never drift apart. He made me promise that when you and I have our own home, there will always be an armchair by the hearth and a pipe on the mantel ready for Uncle Quincey and Dr. Jack whenever they choose to ride in.

“I gave the promise with all my heart, my darling, knowing that your sweet nature would welcome them as warmly as my own. I shall be at Chatham Street at four o’clock this afternoon to see your dear face and to thank you once again for all your goodness to me. Until then, my Lucy, think of me as

“Ever your devoted and loving

“ARTHUR.”

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*27 May.*--Morning. Returned to Purfleet by the early train. The dinner last night at Quincey’s was a true medicine for my soul. To see Arthur so unfeignedly happy, and yet so humble in his triumph, made it impossible to harbor any petty feeling of envy. A man would be less than human if he did not feel the ache of a shattered dream; but a man would be a scoundrel if he allowed that ache to turn to malice against a friend so loyal and true. Quincey’s great heart seemed to warm the whole room. In the presence of such loyalty, one’s own private sorrow shrinks to its proper proportions. Work is the only master for an aching brain. Back to my asylum and my books. I have spent the morning inspecting the south gallery. Renfield has been quiet since yesterday, but the attendant reports he has been busy catching flies. I shall visit him after luncheon.

*28 May.*--A most extraordinary and disturbing incident occurred this afternoon in Renfield’s room. I am recording this immediately upon my return to my study, while every word and look is fresh in my memory, for it has shaken me in a manner I cannot readily explain.

I went down to Renfield’s cell at three o’clock. He was seated upon his stool near the window, with his small notebook upon his knee and a piece of sugar in his hand. He was completely absorbed in catching blowflies, of which he had accumulated several dozen in a small, ingeniously constructed cage made of twisted wire and paper.

His demeanor was remarkably calm, almost lucid. The morbid excitability of two days ago had given place to a quiet, mathematical precision. When I addressed him, he looked up with a polite, deferential bow, though his eyes retained that peculiar, glittering brightness which I have come to associate with his periods of fixed ideation.

I questioned him concerning his notebook. He explained, with an appearance of absolute rationality, that he was studying the economy of vital forces. He argued that life was a quantifiable property that could be collected, concentrated, and transferred from lower forms to higher. When I pointed out the absurdity of his premise, he did not fly into a rage as he usually does when contradicted; he merely smiled with an air of superior indulgence, as though pitying my blindness.

I was preparing to leave the room, having completed my clinical notes, when he suddenly rose to his feet. He took two steps toward me, laid his hand upon his chest in a sort of grotesque parody of courtly deference, and looked straight into my eyes.

“Doctor,” he said, speaking in a low, distinct voice, “will you pardon a question from an old scholar who lives out of the world?”

“What is it, Renfield?” I asked, keeping my tone indifferent.

“Pray, Doctor, how does Miss Westenra do to-day? Is the fair Miss Lucy Westenra quite well and happy in London?”

The question struck me like a physical blow. For several seconds I could not draw breath. The blood seemed to rush from my head to my heart, and my hands turned cold.

How in Heaven’s name could this man know of Lucy Westenra?

Renfield has been an inmate of this asylum for nearly seven months. He was brought here from a private retreat in Yorkshire; he has no relatives who visit him; he has never received a single letter or parcel from the outer world. I have never uttered Miss Westenra’s name aloud in this house, nor have I ever written it in any journal or ledger accessible to the staff. Arthur Holmwood has never set foot in Purfleet, nor has Quincey Morris. To the best of my knowledge, no person in this entire establishment has ever had the slightest connection with 17, Chatham Street.

I stepped close to him and seized him by the arm. “What did you say?” I demanded, unable to conceal my agitation. “Where did you hear that name? Who told you of Miss Westenra?”

Renfield did not shrink from my grasp. He only looked at me with a cunning, triumphant gleam in his dark eyes, and a slow smile spread across his features—a smile that made my flesh creep.

“Ah, Doctor,” he whispered softly, “the birds of the air carry many things to those who have ears to hear. A lovely lady, is she not? Full of sweet youth and life—rich, warm life! Does she walk in the sunshine to-day, Doctor? Does she smile upon the fortunate?”

“Answer me plainly, Renfield!” I said, shaking him. “Who has been speaking to you? Has an attendant brought you news from town?”

He drew himself up with sudden dignity and gently disengaged his arm from my grip.

“A gentleman does not betray his informants, Dr. Seward,” he replied with chilling composure. “I merely inquired after a lady’s health. Is that an offense against the asylum regulations? If so, you may enter it in your book.”

With that, he turned his back upon me, sat down upon his stool, and began methodically counting his flies once more, humming a low, monotonous air. Not another word could I extract from him.

I immediately summoned the head attendant, Patrick, and examined him with the utmost rigor. Patrick has been with me for four years and is thoroughly trustworthy. He assured me upon his oath that no visitor has been admitted to the south ward, that no newspapers are ever given to Renfield, and that none of the keepers have ever mentioned any London acquaintances of mine. I inspected the window grating, the corridor door, and the ventilating shaft; all are secure.

How did this madman obtain that name? Is it possible that in my distress of two days ago, when I paced the corridors after returning from London, I may have muttered her name aloud in the hearing of one of the patients? It seems the only rational explanation, yet my memory revolts against the idea that I could have been so careless. And even had he caught the surname, how did he know her Christian name, or that she lives in London?

The incident leaves an extraordinarily unpleasant impression upon my mind. It is as though an unseen eye were watching our most private affairs from the dark corners of this house. I must keep Renfield under the strictest watch.

*Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.*

“*The Crescent, Exeter*,

“*1 June*.

“My dearest Lucy,--

“Your delightful letter, and the glowing account which dear Arthur sent of his evening with Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward, brought the first real sunshine into my heart that I have felt for a week. How noble those two gentlemen are! To hear of their brave, unselfish loyalty to Arthur and to you makes one feel proud of human nature. You are indeed blessed, my sweet Lucy, in having the love of such a husband and the devotion of such friends; and I know you will treasure them as they deserve.

“I wish with all my heart that I could write to you in the same joyous strain; but I am feeling very anxious and troubled about Jonathan. You know that when he wrote to me in the middle of May, he expected to finish his business in Transylvania and set out on his homeward journey before the month was out. I have watched every post with a beating heart, hoping for news of his arrival in Vienna or Paris; but day after day has passed in complete silence.

“Yesterday morning a letter arrived with foreign postmarks, and for one joyful moment I thought it was from Jonathan himself. But when I opened it, my dear, it was written in a stiff, formal hand by a stranger. I copy it for you in full, exactly as it was written, on heavy foreign paper with an Austrian stamp:--

“‘*Klausenburg*,

“‘*24 May*.

“‘Honoured Madam,--

“‘At the special instance and request of Mr. Jonathan Harker, English solicitor, communicated to me during his stay in this city when traveling toward the district of Bistritz, I have the honour to address to you these lines.

“‘Mr. Harker desired me to undertake that, in the event of his legal commissions in the interior detaining him beyond the period originally contemplated, I should transmit to his friends in England an assurance of his safety and welfare. A special messenger arriving yesterday from the mountain district brings word that the legal business of his client has proved of an exceptionally intricate nature, requiring the examination of numerous ancient documents and title-deeds.

“‘Owing to the mountainous character of the country and the absence of any regular postal service across the passes until the summer caravans begin to move, Mr. Harker is unable to forward letters in his own handwriting. He charges me, however, to assure you that he is in the best of health and spirits, lodged in all comfort, and that you must feel no anxiety whatever on his account. He hopes to conclude his affairs and begin his journey homeward before the end of July.

“‘With sentiments of the highest consideration, I remain, Madam,

“‘Your most obedient servant,

“‘ALOIS KESSLER, Notary Public.’

“There, Lucy! What am I to think of such a communication? Mr. Hawkins, who is kindness itself, tells me that I ought to be greatly comforted by it. He says that Austrian notaries are men of the highest character, that conveyancing in foreign principalities is notoriously slow and tedious, and that it was very thoughtful of Jonathan to arrange for a formal notification in case the post failed.

“All this sounds very reasonable; and yet, my dear, I cannot shake off a strange, heavy foreboding. Why could Jonathan not have written even one line to me with his own pen? Even if the mountain post is irregular, the messenger who brought Herr Kessler’s letter could surely have carried a single sheet of paper from Jonathan’s hand! I read and re-read the words, and they seem so cold, so distant, so unlike my Jonathan.

“I know you will tell me that I am foolish and nervous, and that an assistant schoolmistress with too much imagination ought not to invent troubles before they come. I try to busy myself with my shorthand and my typing, and I help Mr. Hawkins with the office correspondence from morning till night; but whenever the house is quiet, that awful silence from the East seems to hang over me like a cloud.

“Write to me soon, dearest Lucy, and tell me of all your happy doings. Your letters are my greatest comfort.

“Ever your loving

“MINA.”

*Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.*

“*17, Chatham Street*,

“*4 June*.

“My dearest Mina,--

“You poor, sweet darling! I could almost scold you for letting your tender heart torment itself with such gloomy fancies. Men of business are the most incomprehensible creatures in the world. When Arthur has any legal affairs to settle with his lawyers, he talks of them as if they were a matter of life and death, and yet he forgets the most ordinary little things that any woman would remember. Depend upon it, Jonathan was so absorbed in his musty parchments, and so confident that the notary’s letter would set your mind at rest, that he never dreamed how his poor little fiancée would worry.

“Arthur was here when your letter arrived, and when I read him Herr Kessler’s note, he laughed and said: ‘Tell Miss Mina that mountain notaries in eastern Europe are as slow as tortoises and ten times as punctilious. If Harker’s client has large estates to convey, the lawyers will keep him busy with seals and signatures for weeks, but he will come back with a feather in his cap and a handsome fee in his pocket.’ Arthur says that if you feel the least uneasiness next month, he will write directly to a friend of his at the British Embassy in Vienna to make inquiries; so you see, dear, you have a whole army of protectors looking after Jonathan.

“Dr. Seward came to call on mamma yesterday afternoon. He looked rather pale and tired, poor man, and I am afraid he is working far too hard in that gloomy asylum of his. He was so gentle and kind, and spoke so nicely of Arthur, that I could have hugged him. Quincey Morris also sent me the loveliest basket of roses this morning, with a card wishing Arthur and me every happiness. How fortunate I am to have such friends!

“Now, Mina dear, you must promise me not to brood over Jonathan’s delay. The summer will soon pass, and then he will be back in England, and we shall both be happy married women together.

“Your ever affectionate

“LUCY.”

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*5 June.*--The mystery of Renfield remains impenetrable. I have visited him twice daily since the 28th, but he has maintained an absolute silence regarding the name he uttered.

He has now passed to a new phase of his mania. Having accumulated hundreds of blowflies in his cage, he has begun to capture spiders from the garden and the courtyard, placing them in a large glass jar. He feeds the flies to the spiders with an intense, gloating satisfaction, watching the larger creatures devour the smaller with an expression of almost scientific ecstasy.

To-day, while he was absorbed in watching a large garden spider consume a fly, I made a sudden, deliberate reference to London society and to Chatham Street. He did not flinch; his pulse, which I held under pretense of examining his wrist, did not accelerate by a single beat. He looked up at me with dull, vacant eyes and merely said: ‘The small lives feed the greater, Doctor; that is the law of the universe.’

Whether his utterance on the 28th was an inexplicable coincidence, or whether he caught some stray word dropped by myself in the corridor, I cannot determine. In any case, it is a psychological phenomenon of the utmost interest, and I shall record every development with scientific accuracy.

*Telegram, Peter Hawkins to Miss Mina Murray.*

“*6 June.*

“Jonathan arrived safe at Munich. Telegraphs he takes Orient Express tonight. Will be in London Friday.

“HAWKINS.”

The rain, having performed its appointed task of dampening London and providing Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe’s awning with an excuse for existing, had ceased with the abruptness peculiar to the English summer. A pale, polite sunshine was beginning to dry the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue as Eve Halliday stepped out from the offices of the Ada Clarkson Employment Bureau.

She was not, as a rule, a girl given to lingering in two minds, but at the moment she stood upon the threshold in an attitude of profound hesitation. In her right hand she grasped an umbrella. It was, beyond all question, an umbrella of the highest class. It was slender, it was tightly rolled, it was banded with gold, and its handle was carved from some rare, aristocratic wood that seemed to sneer faintly at the surrounding traffic. To walk through the West End of London with such an umbrella was an experience that might have flattered the vanity of an empress; but Eve, whose moral code had been strictly supervised by her late father—a gentleman who had maintained the highest standards of integrity in everything except the payment of his tailor—felt that its possession weighed upon her conscience.

She turned and began to retrace her steps towards Dover Street.

The building opposite Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe, which she had correctly diagnosed as a club, presented to the outer world that blank, unwelcoming stare with which the strongholds of British manhood protect themselves against the curious pedestrian. Eve pushed open the heavy mahogany swing-door and found herself in a spacious hall, presided over by a hall-porter who sat in a glass box like a venerable cardinal waiting for a train.

He was a man of vast bulk and immense dignity, with the heavy, pouchy eyes of one who has seen generations of young gentlemen come in at three in the morning and has ceased to believe in human virtue.

“Excuse me,” said Eve pleasantly.

The porter directed a slow, majestic gaze upon her. It was not often that a vision in a black crêpe frock and a Paradise feather invaded the vestibule of the Drones, but he showed no vulgar surprise.

“Madam?” he said, in a voice like oil flowing from a cruet.

“I want to return this umbrella,” said Eve. “A gentleman lent it to me about half an hour ago.”

The porter received the umbrella upon his outstretched palms as though it were a sacred relic.

“The gentleman was looking out of the smoking-room window,” Eve explained. “He was very tall and very thin, and he wore an eyeglass.”

“Ah,” said the porter. He did not commit himself further, but his tone suggested that the Drones Club housed at least sixty gentlemen answering that description, and that none of them could be considered wholly accountable for their actions.

“I have written a little note to thank him,” continued Eve, producing from her bag a small folded sheet of paper upon which she had scribbled a message. “Would you be so very kind as to give it to him when you see him?”

“I will place the communication in the gentleman’s box, madam.”

“Thank you so much,” said Eve. She smiled upon him with a brilliance that caused even that hardened functionary to blink once or twice, and, turning, walked swiftly out into the sunshine to prepare for her afternoon ordeal.

* * * * *

Inside the Drones Club, the peace of the morning was shattered some twenty minutes later by the tumultuous entrance into the smoking-room of the Honourable Hugo Walderwick.

The Honourable Hugo was a young man who looked like an agitated rabbit. He was short, pink, and possessed of that peculiar roundness of eye which indicates that the brain within is grappling with a problem altogether too large for its accommodation. In his hand he bore the very umbrella which Eve had so punctiliously restored to the establishment.

Psmith, who was reclining in a deep armchair near the window with the air of a Roman emperor who has decided to let the empire run itself for the afternoon, looked up languidly through his monocle as the newcomer approached.

“I say!” said the Honourable Hugo, halting before the chair and waving the umbrella with some violence. “I say, Psmith!”

“Good morning, comrade Walderwick,” said Psmith with smooth benevolence. “You seem heated. Has anything occurred to ruffle the serene surface of your spirit?”

“I should jolly well say something has occurred!” cried Mr. Walderwick. “I went down to the cloak-room just now to get my umbrella, and the man told me you’d walked off with it!”

“A very observant fellow, that cloak-room attendant,” said Psmith approvingly. “One of the right sort. Kept his eye on the ball.”

“And then,” pursued Mr. Walderwick, his voice rising to an indignant squeak, “when I came up to the hall, the porter handed it to me and said a dashed pretty girl in a black hat had just brought it back! What I want to know is, what the deuce were you doing with my umbrella?”

Psmith adjusted his monocle and surveyed his friend with a look of pained reproach.

“Is this the tone, comrade Walderwick, in which one drone addresses another? Is this the spirit of the hive? You speak of your umbrella as though it were some sordid piece of private property, whereas it has just played a noble and historic part in the relief of suffering humanity. If you had looked out of this window half an hour ago, you would have seen Beauty marooned under a coal-merchant’s awning, exposed to the fury of the elements. Could I stand idly by? Could I permit the rain to fall upon that exquisite creation of satin and Paradise feathers? No, comrade Walderwick. The old crusading spirit of the Psmiths flared up within me. I flew to the cloak-room, I selected the most magnificent weapon in the rack—which happened to be your own—and I placed it at her disposal.”

“Yes, but dash it all—”

“Do not thank me,” said Psmith, raising a slender hand. “The consciousness of an action well performed is its own reward. Let us say no more about it.”

“I’m not thanking you!” shouted Mr. Walderwick. “I’m dashed annoyed! That umbrella was given to me by my uncle, and I wouldn’t lose it for worlds. You had no right to go giving it to strange girls in the street!”

Psmith sighed gently and rose from his chair. He stood for a moment, an elegant, towering figure, looking down at the umbrella with an expression of critical admiration.

“You raise a delicate point, comrade Walderwick,” he said. “It is true that in the heat of the moment I may have omitted certain legal formalities. But the situation is easily remedied. How much do you want for it?”

The Honourable Hugo stared at him blankly.

“Want for it? It’s not for sale.”

“Everything,” said Psmith sententiously, “is for sale, if the purse of the purchaser be sufficiently deep. Name your figure, comrade.”

“I tell you I don’t want to sell it! It’s a ripping umbrella.”

“It is,” agreed Psmith. “A peach of an umbrella. A super-umbrella. That is why I propose to acquire it. Shall we say five pounds?”

“Certainly not!”

“Ten pounds?”

“Look here, Psmith—”

“Fifteen pounds?” said Psmith smoothly, extracting from his breast pocket a thick and comforting roll of currency. “Twenty pounds? Come, comrade Walderwick, let us not haggle. A crisp twenty-pound note for a simple contrivance of silk and whalebone. Think of the dinners at the Savoy that twenty pounds will buy. Think of the cheerful evenings at the theatre. Consider the horses at Newmarket that are positively clamouring for your support.”

Mr. Walderwick looked from the crisp, crackling note to the umbrella, and then back again to the note. The struggle between sentiment and finance was brief and decisive. Like most members of the Drones Club, he was chronically in need of ready money.

“Well,” he muttered, his fingers closing automatically around the note, “if you’re such an absolute ass as to give twenty quid for an umbrella, I suppose I can’t stop you. But you must be raving mad.”

“A very sound and businesslike arrangement,” said Psmith, taking the umbrella and smoothing its silk with an affectionate touch. “You have your gold, and I have the sceptre of chivalry. Go, comrade, and squander your ill-gotten gains in riotous living.”

And, tucking the newly purchased treasure beneath his arm, Psmith resumed his seat and his contemplation of Dover Street.

* * * * *

The Senior Conservative Club in Northumberland Avenue is an edifice designed by architects who evidently believed that life was a sombre and melancholy business, to be conducted in a twilight of brown leather and heavy mahogany. It was in one of the smaller waiting-rooms of this mausoleum that Eve Halliday, at half-past two that afternoon, sat waiting for her prospective employer.

Her heart, usually a stout and reliable organ, was beating with an unaccustomed rapidity. To catalogue the library at Blandings Castle was the one piece of paid employment between herself and immediate penury. If she failed to secure the post, the outlook would be bleak indeed; for, as she had confessed to Miss Clarkson, her bank account was in that delicate condition where the purchase of a railway ticket might reduce it to absolute extinction.

The door opened, and a tall, elderly gentleman wandered into the room.

He was an amiable-looking peer who gave the impression of having been put together in a hurry by someone who had mislaid the instructions. His tweed suit hung loosely upon his spare frame; a pair of pince-nez dangled from a cord around his neck; and his mild, pale eyes peered about the room with an expression of profound, almost pathetic bewilderment.

This was the Right Honourable the Earl of Emsworth, ninth holder of the title and owner of Blandings Castle.

“Er—Miss Halliday?” said his lordship, pausing and looking at her as though she were a curious specimen of garden pest.

“Yes, Lord Emsworth,” said Eve, rising with her brightest smile.

“Dear me,” said Lord Emsworth vaguely. “Yes. Quite so. Miss Halliday. My son Freddie—er—mentioned you. Or was it Baxter? No, Freddie. He said you were looking for something to do. Or was it my sister Constance? Constance is always arranging these things. Most exhausting.”

He sank into a leather armchair, sighed deeply, and began to search his pockets with an air of mild desperation.

“Have you lost your glasses, Lord Emsworth?” asked Eve.

“Eh? My glasses? Yes, my dear young lady, I fear I have. Baxter had them this morning, or perhaps they fell down the back of my coat. A most extraordinary thing, they are always disappearing.”

“They are hanging on your lapel,” said Eve gently.

Lord Emsworth started, felt his chest, and retrieved the glasses with a beam of childlike delight.

“Bless my soul! So they are! How very clever of you. Now, what was it we were to discuss? Ah, yes. The library. You wish to catalogue the library?”

“I should like to very much,” said Eve. “I have had a great deal of experience with books. My father was an author, and I used to help him arrange his papers and look up references.”

Lord Emsworth looked mildly alarmed.

“An author? Really? I hope he did not write poetry. We have a poet coming to Blandings tomorrow. A Canadian fellow named McTodd. Constance insisted on inviting him. Baxter says he is very celebrated, but it is all a terrible nuisance. He will probably want to talk at dinner. I cannot bear people who talk at dinner. It distracts the mind.”

“I promise you,” said Eve with a laugh, “that I shall never talk at dinner unless I am spoken to.”

“A very proper spirit,” said his lordship approvingly. “A very sensible attitude. The fact is, Miss Halliday, Baxter—my secretary, you know, a most efficient fellow, but terribly energetic—Baxter feels the library ought to be put in order. Personally, I never go near it, except to look for *The Cult of the Pig* or something of that sort. But Constance says it is a disgrace to the family.”

He paused, and a look of sudden, intense anxiety crossed his features.

“Tell me, Miss Halliday—you do not happen to know anything about green-fly, do you?”

“Green-fly?” said Eve, somewhat taken aback by this abrupt transition.

“Green-fly,” repeated his lordship solemnly. “The roses in the west garden at Blandings are in a terrible state. Angus McAllister—my head gardener, a most obstinate Scotsman—insists on spraying them with some abominable mixture of his own invention, and it is killing the leaves. A terrible business! If I could only find a reliable wash . . .”

Eve, whose childhood had been spent in a small country cottage with a garden that her father had enthusiastically neglected, searched her memory.

“My father always used soft soap and quassia chips,” she said. “He boiled them together with a little water, and it worked wonders on the moss-roses.”

Lord Emsworth leaned forward, his eyes shining with a sudden, fanatical enthusiasm. The library, the cataloguing, Baxter, and the formidable Lady Constance were swept from his mind as though they had never existed.

“Soft soap?” he whispered eagerly. “And quassia chips? In what proportions, my dear young lady? In what proportions?”

“I think it was about half a pound of soap to a gallon of water, and a handful of the chips,” said Eve.

“Splendid! Magnificent!” cried Lord Emsworth, slapping his knee. “I shall telegraph to McAllister this very afternoon! Soft soap and quassia! The very thing!”

He rose from his chair, beaming with satisfaction.

“Well, Miss Halliday, I am delighted to have had this talk with you. Most helpful. Most instructive. You will come down to Blandings on Tuesday, then?”

Eve blinked. The interview, from a professional standpoint, had been the most extraordinary performance she had ever witnessed; but the essential fact remained that she had the job.

“On Tuesday? Then you—you wish me to take the post?”

“Certainly, certainly!” said his lordship, who was already scribbling the words *quassia chips* on the back of an envelope. “Baxter will show you where the books are. There are thousands of them, I believe. All covered with dust. You can do whatever you like with them, so long as you don't let Baxter move the agricultural reports. Tuesday morning, then. You will catch the eleven-fifteen from Paddington. Good afternoon, Miss Halliday, good afternoon!”

And, thrusting the envelope into his pocket, the ninth Earl of Emsworth trotted happily out of the room to find a telegraph office, leaving his new librarian in a state of mingled amusement and triumph.

* * * * *

The relief of having secured the Blandings appointment, combined with the pleasant warmth of the afternoon sun, filled Eve with an exuberant desire for fresh air. Leaving the gloomy portals of the Senior Conservative Club behind her, she turned into the Mall and made her way leisurely through the park towards Piccadilly.

The world seemed a vastly improved place. Phyllis’s troubles remained, of course, a dark cloud upon the horizon, but her own immediate future was secure; and as she walked beneath the leafy trees of Green Park, her step was light and her eye was bright.

She was just approaching the path that leads towards Devonshire House when her gaze was arrested by the figure of a young man who was strolling towards her from the opposite direction.

He was a remarkably tall, thin young man, dressed in a grey suit of faultless cut. In his right eye was a monocle, through which he was surveying the surrounding landscape with an air of majestic patronage; and beneath his arm he carried, with the easy grace of a field-marshal holding his baton, a gold-banded, silk umbrella.

Eve stopped short. The young man, observing her, also paused, and raised his hat with a sweeping and courtly gesture.

“Excuse me,” said Eve, looking at him with dancing eyes, “but are you not the gentleman who gave me an umbrella this morning in Dover Street?”

Psmith adjusted his monocle and gazed down at her with an expression of polite and impenetrable gravity.

“An umbrella, madam?” he murmured. “You speak of an umbrella?”

“I do,” said Eve. “That very umbrella you have under your arm.”

Psmith looked down at the article in question as though he had only just become aware of its existence. He tapped it lightly with a gloved finger.

“This modest implement?” he said. “This faithful old family heirloom? Believe me, madam, you are labouring under a delusion. This umbrella has never left my side since it was bequeathed to me by my uncle, a gentleman of unimpeachable character who resided in the north of England.”

“It is the exact umbrella you thrust into my hands under the Thorpe and Briscoe awning!”

“A coincidence,” said Psmith firmly. “A mere freak of chance. London, as you are doubtless aware, is full of umbrellas. They jostle one another in the streets; they crowd the racks of our public conveyances. That you should have encountered another umbrella bearing a superficial resemblance to this ancient relic is remarkable, but by no means impossible.”

Eve laughed. The young man’s face was as solemn as that of an undertaker, but there was a faint, humorous twitch at the corner of his mouth that betrayed him.

“And I suppose,” she said, “that London is also full of tall gentlemen with eyeglasses who dash across roads without their hats?”

“The metropolis,” said Psmith, “is notoriously rich in eccentric characters. The air of London seems to breed them. Only this morning I observed an elderly gentleman attempting to post a kipper in a pillar-box near Charing Cross. But as for myself, madam, I assure you that my habits are singularly sedentary. I rarely dash. Dashing is an exercise entirely foreign to my nature.”

“Well,” said Eve, “whoever he was, he was very kind, and I am extremely grateful to him. I returned it to the club, you know.”

“A very noble action,” said Psmith approvingly. “Honesty in the young is a quality that cannot be too highly commended. I have no doubt the original owner was deeply touched.”

“He didn’t seem to be there,” said Eve. “At least, I only saw the hall-porter. A very large man who looked like an archbishop.”

“That would be Robinson,” said Psmith. “A man of sterling worth. He has the custody of our souls and our headgear.”

Eve looked at him curiously. There was something delightfully absurd about his lofty manner and his unshakeable calm.

“You haven't told me your name,” she said.

“Names,” said Psmith with a gentle wave of his hand, “are mere labels, comrade. Arbitrary collections of syllables invented by a bureaucratic society to distinguish one wandering soul from another. Let us not descend to such prosaic details on an afternoon so full of poetry and sunshine.”

“You are very mysterious.”

“It is my nature,” said Psmith. “The Psmiths—p-s-m-i-t-h, the 'p' being silent as in pshrimp—have always been shrouded in mystery. We are here today and gone tomorrow, like the dew upon the petal of the rose.”

“Well, Mr. Psmith,” said Eve, who had caught the spelling, “I must be going. I have a train to catch later, and letters to write.”

“Must you leave us?” said Psmith with a mournful inclination of his head. “The park will be desolate indeed. But if duty calls, it is not for a humble citizen to interpose obstacles. Farewell, comrade. May your path be strewed with roses.”

He raised his hat once more with an air of medieval chivalry, and Eve, still laughing to herself, turned and walked away down the path towards the gates.

Psmith stood watching her until the black feather had vanished in the distance. Then, with a gentle sigh, he turned and resumed his languid stroll.

* * * * *

The shadows of evening had fallen upon Dover Street, and the smoking-room of the Drones Club was bathed in a warm, amber glow from the shaded lamps. It was that peaceful hour before dinner when the club was usually deserted, its members having departed either to dress for the evening or to seek sustenance in the cocktail bars of the West End.

Psmith sat alone in his favourite armchair by the window. Across his knees lay the twenty-pound umbrella, its gold band gleaming softly in the lamplight. He was in a pensive mood. He had severed his connection with the fish trade; he had embarked upon the perilous seas of independent enterprise; and he had spent a substantial portion of his remaining capital upon an article for which, in the present state of the weather, he had no practical use whatever. Yet he felt singularly contented with life.

The door opened, and the vast form of Robinson, the hall-porter, moved with ponderous dignity across the carpet. He carried a small silver salver, upon which rested a folded sheet of paper.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Robinson in his deep, churchyard voice.

Psmith looked up.

“Enter, comrade Robinson,” he said. “You bring tidings?”

“A communication, sir,” said the porter, presenting the salver. “It was left at the front desk this morning by the young lady who returned Mr. Walderwick’s umbrella. As the young lady particularly requested that it should be delivered to the tall gentleman with the eyeglass who was looking out of the smoking-room window, and as Mr. Walderwick informs me that you have since acquired the article, I ventured to think that you might wish to receive it.”

“You displayed a very sound judgment, Robinson,” said Psmith, taking the paper and placing a half-crown upon the salver. “A man of your intelligence is wasted in a club hall. You should be in the diplomatic service.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Robinson, and melted silently from the room.

Psmith unfolded the paper. Written in a neat, clear, decisive hand were the words:

*With the warmest thanks of the girl under the awning to the chivalrous gentleman with the monocle who came to her rescue in the rain.* *Eve Halliday.*

Psmith adjusted his monocle and stared at the signature for a long time.

“Eve Halliday,” he murmured softly to the empty room. “A charming name. A most delightful and musical name.”

He looked down at the umbrella, tapped the gold band thoughtfully with his fingernail, and a slow, gentle smile spread across his solemn face.

It was on the night following our walk that the first of the falling stars was seen. I had stayed up late in my study, occupied with the concluding pages of a paper upon the probable development of moral ideas in the twentieth century, and the house had grown entirely quiet. My wife had long since gone to bed. The night was sultry and breathless, with that heavy, expectant stillness that so often precedes a change in the weather, and I had left the French window open to the garden to admit whatever faint stir of air might wander through the pines. The clock on the mantelpiece had just chimed a quarter past two when a sudden glare of extraordinary brilliance flooded the room, turning the green-shaded lamp upon my desk into a feeble yellow smear, and throwing the crisp, sharp shadow of the window-frame across the floor and against the opposite wall.

I started to my feet and ran out upon the veranda. High in the south-western heavens, cutting across the faint stars of the constellation of Pegasus, a blinding streak of greenish-white fire was descending at a tremendous speed. It seemed to expand as it flew, leaving behind it a glowing trail of luminous vapor that lingered in the darkness like a luminous scar. It flew over towards Chertsey, dropping lower and lower with an incredible, terrifying rush, and for an instant the whole landscape—the dark silhouettes of the pine trees, the white front of the house opposite, the distant railway embankment—stood out in startling, ghostly relief, bathed in a weird, unearthly radiance. Then it vanished behind the ridge of the common, and after an interval of perhaps ten or twelve seconds there came a deep, muffled thud that seemed to shake the very foundations of the ground beneath my feet, followed immediately by a low, rushing sigh like the sound of escaping steam, which presently died away into silence.

The suddenness and magnitude of the phenomenon held me motionless for a space. My wife, awakened by the flash and the dull shock of the impact, called down to me from the bedroom window to ask if there had been an explosion at the powder-mills, but I called back to reassure her, telling her that it was merely a shooting star of unusual size—a meteorite that must have fallen somewhere in the woods near Ottershaw. She seemed satisfied with my explanation and returned to her rest; but I remained upon the veranda for some time longer, peering into the obscurity where the thing had fallen, half expecting to see the red glow of a forest fire. But no flame appeared, and after a while, fancying that the missile had buried itself deep in the earth without setting light to the trees, I closed my papers, extinguished the lamp, and went to bed, little dreaming of the nature of the visitant that had come to our quiet countryside.

The next morning broke clear and hot. During breakfast we spoke of the light that had disturbed our sleep, and my wife, whose curiosity was now fairly awakened, expressed a wish to walk across the common with me after the meal to see whether any trace of the aerolite could be found. I was glad enough of her company, for the bright sunlight and the morning air had invested the event with a pleasant, holiday air of adventure. A lad delivering milk had already brought a vague and exaggerated story to our kitchen of a colossal hole torn in the ground on the edge of the Ottershaw parish, and of a great mass of iron that was boiling the water in the old pits.

We set out together shortly after nine o'clock, taking the sandy footpath that leads through the pine woods towards the common. The morning was exceptionally warm, the resinous scent of the pines heavy in the air, and the bees were humming busily over the flowering gorse. As we emerged from the shadow of the trees onto the open expanse of the heath, we perceived at once that the milkman’s tale had not been wholly without foundation. A mile or so away, in the direction of the old sand and gravel quarries that lie between Ottershaw and the Chertsey road, a thick, white column of vapor was rising straight into the blue, untroubled sky, drifting slowly at its summit before the faint north-easterly breeze.

We quickened our pace, and in another twenty minutes reached the crest of the sandy knoll that overlooks the hollow. A remarkable spectacle presented itself. The missile had fallen directly into the low-lying, flooded basin of the disused gravel pit—a wide, muddy depression which, during the wet spring, had filled to the depth of several feet with stagnant water and was overgrown at its margins with reeds and stunted birches. The violence of the descent had been terrific. The impact had ploughed a vast, ragged furrow through the lip of the pit, tearing up the heather and the yellow gravel and hurling huge masses of sand and clay hundreds of yards in all directions. Half a dozen Scotch firs had been snapped clean off like matches, their splintered trunks lying half-submerged in the mud, while the remaining trees along the rim were scorched and black, stripped of their needles on the side facing the hollow as though by a colossal blast of heat.

In the middle of the flooded crater, half-buried in the churned mud and silt and surrounded by the turbid, greyish-yellow water of the pool, lay the thing itself. It was an enormous mass, vastly larger than any meteorite known to science, resting tilted upon its side so that perhaps a third of its bulk was elevated above the surface of the pond. It was almost completely obscured by the clouds of white steam that rose incessantly from its heated surface, hissing and sputtering furiously wherever the boiling water lapped against its sides. The entire pool was in a state of violent agitation, bubbling and heaving like a great caldron, and emitting a pungent, sulphurous reek mingled with the smell of scalded earth and burnt pine-wood.

As we stood upon the edge of the excavation, looking down with astonishment at this extraordinary scene, I caught sight of a figure clambering about the heaps of fresh sand on the opposite side of the pit. It was Ogilvy. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his jacket cast aside upon a clump of heather, his hat gone, and his trousers and boots heavily plastered with wet, yellow mud. In his hand he carried a surveyor’s measuring tape and a small pocket-notebook, into which he was jotting down figures with the most feverish haste.

Leaving my wife standing safely upon the grassy bank above the furrow, I scrambled down the rough slope of sand and gravel to greet him. The heat radiating from the pit was intense, catching one's breath like the open door of a furnace, and the air was thick with the suffocating vapour.

"Hullo, Ogilvy!" I shouted above the roar and hiss of the steam.

He started, turned round, and pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead, his face flushed and glistening with perspiration.

"Ah! It is you!" he cried, seizing my hand with an almost hysterical grip. "Did you see it? Did you see it come down last night? It is the most marvellous thing! The most astounding fall of meteoric iron the world has ever witnessed!"

"It is gigantic," I said, gazing through a rift in the steam at the dark, curving mass in the pool. "It must be twenty yards across."

"More! More than that!" he exclaimed excitedly. "I have paced the rim of the crater so far as the heat will permit. It cannot have a diameter of less than thirty feet. And look at the angle of descent—look at the displacement of the stratum! It must weigh hundreds of tons! It is an event without parallel in the whole history of astronomy!"

I looked attentively at the exposed flank of the object as a momentary puff of wind cleared the vapour from its summit. The thing was remarkably symmetrical. Unlike the irregular, jagged, pitted blocks of meteoric iron I had seen in the British Museum, this object presented a curved, smooth surface of a dark, greenish-grey hue, marked by curious, parallel streaks and encrustations that looked almost like scale. It had the appearance of a colossal cylinder, rounded at the visible end, though the greater part of its length was buried deep in the mud and water of the pit.

"Ogilvy," I said, catching him by the arm, "look at the shape of it. It is not an aerolite."

He looked at me in astonishment. "Not an aerolite? What on earth do you mean?"

"Remember the flames we saw," I urged. "Remember the jets of gas from Mars—the ten shots fired at twenty-four hour intervals! Look at that outline! It is as regular as a steam-boiler. It is a cylinder—an artificial cylinder!"

For a moment he stared at me as though he doubted my sanity, and then he burst into a shrill, nervous laugh.

"My dear fellow!" he cried, wiping the steam from his spectacles. "Are you still dreaming of your Martians? An artificial cylinder! Why, consider the absurdity of what you are saying! The chances against intelligent life having evolved upon Mars to the point of constructing interplanetary projectiles are, as I told you last night, a million to one. And to suppose that such a projectile could be guided across forty millions of miles of empty space to strike this particular parish in Surrey is beyond the wildest realms of fiction."

"Then how do you account for its shape?" I asked. "Look at the regularity of that curve!"

"Purely dynamic, my good sir!" he retorted with all the dogmatism of the professional man of science. "When a mass of mineral matter enters our atmosphere at a speed of forty or fifty miles a second, the resistance of the air generates a temperature of thousands of degrees. The exterior becomes incandescent, molten, and is stripped and moulded by the tremendous pressure of the air through which it drives. Under such conditions, a revolving bolide naturally assumes a smoothed, cylindrical, or paraboloid form. We see the same thing in miniature in certain volcanic bombs and fulgurites. It is simply the aerodynamic result of fusion and atmospheric friction."

"And the scale-like crust?" I persisted. "The apparent seams?"

"Thermal fracture!" he answered impatiently, waving his measuring tape. "The violent contraction of the outer skin upon plunging into this cold water. Really, my dear man, you must not let your imagination run away with you. It is a stony-iron meteorite of unprecedented magnitude, probably composed of nickel-iron with an outer silicate slag, and it is our business to study it soberly as men of science, not to invent fairy-tales about artillery from the planets."

I did not argue the point further with him, for his conviction was absolute, and in the bright light of a Surrey morning, with the birds singing in the unburnt trees close by, the idea of an invasion from another world did indeed seem fantastic and impossible. Yet, as I turned back to look at the huge thing lying half-submerged in the hissing water, a strange sense of unease took possession of my mind. There was something uncannily purposeful in its massive contour, something monstrous and alien that defied the easy explanations of the astronomer.

I climbed back up the gravelly bank to the place where my wife was waiting. By this time the noise of the impact and the column of steam had attracted others to the scene. A small crowd was beginning to gather along the ridge of the common. There were two or three agricultural labourers from a neighbouring farm, leaning upon their spades and staring down into the pit with open mouths; a couple of boys from Ottershaw with their bicycles propped against a gorse bush; a groom in gaiters; and a gentleman in a Norfolk jacket who had ridden up on a pony. They were all talking in low, curious tones, wondering at the size of the hole and speculating whether the government would compensate the owner of the land for the destruction of the timber.

My wife took my arm as I reached her side. "What does Mr. Ogilvy say it is?" she asked.

"He says it is a meteorite," I replied, "a falling star of immense size."

"It looks like a great drowned creature," she murmured, watching the steam curl up from the water. "It is horrible. Listen to it boiling."

The water in the pit continued to bubble with unabated fury, and the steam drifted across the common in heavy, white banks, carrying with it that strange, acrid stench. More spectators were arriving every minute now. The news of the "thunderbolt" had evidently reached Chertsey and Woking, for we could see little groups of people coming across the open heath by the various paths—artisans in their Sunday clothes, shop-assistants who had borrowed an hour from their counters, and a wagonette full of women and children that had halted on the distant road. The scene was rapidly losing its solitary aspect and taking on the character of a local holiday, a sort of impromptu village fair. Some boys began to throw pebbles down into the pool to hear them hiss against the hot mud, until Ogilvy, shouting from the bottom of the pit, angrily ordered them to desist.

It was while the crowd was thus amusing itself that the only accident of the morning occurred. Among the newcomers was a young fellow, a gardener’s assistant from one of the large houses near Chertsey—a bold, red-faced lad who seemed determined to distinguish himself in the eyes of the onlookers. Ignoring the warnings of his companions, he clambered down the steep, crumbling bank of gravel and made his way along a narrow spit of dry clay that projected into the shallow water, close to the exposed flank of the cylinder.

"Don't go near that, you fool!" shouted Ogilvy, who was measuring the lip of the crater some fifty yards away. "The ground is giving way, and the water is scalding hot!"

The lad merely laughed, turned round to wave his cap to the spectators on the bank, and took another step forward onto a half-submerged fir branch. The object lay scarcely two feet from him, its dark, grey-green surface glistening with moisture and shimmering in the heat haze.

"I’m going to see what it's made of!" he called out boastfully.

Before anyone could stop him, he reached forward with his right hand and slapped his open palm firmly down upon the exposed upper surface of the cylinder.

The effect was instantaneous and shocking. There was a sharp, loud hiss, like a rasher of bacon dropped into a white-hot pan, followed by an agonizing shriek of pain that rang across the common and silenced every voice on the ridge. The young man recoiled violently, lost his balance upon the slippery log, and fell backwards into the shallow, steaming mud. He scrambled out on all fours, screaming frantically, and came blundering up the gravel bank, clutching his right wrist with his left hand.

A couple of men ran forward to catch him as he reached the top. His hand was a dreadful sight. The entire palm and the undersides of the fingers were charred white and crinkled like burnt parchment, and huge, watery blisters were already swelling under the dead skin. The heat of the metallic body, insulated by its great bulk and still glowing with the fierce temperature of its plunge through forty miles of air, had seared the flesh to the bone in a fraction of a second.

"Get him to the doctor!" someone shouted. "Take him to Dr. Little at Ottershaw!"

A buzz of horrified excitement ran through the crowd. The groom brought up his cart, and the injured lad, now moaning piteously and trembling from head to foot with shock, was helped into it and driven rapidly away along the road.

This sudden catastrophe produced a profound change in the temper of the spectators. The light-hearted, holiday curiosity vanished in an instant, replaced by a sullen, uneasy respect for the vast engine of heat that lay smouldering in the hollow. The people drew back from the edge of the pit, forming a wide, silent circle upon the heather, and even the boys ceased their stone-throwing and stood quietly beside their bicycles. The thing seemed no longer a mere mineral curiosity, an interesting lump of rock from the heavens; it had asserted its dangerous, destructive nature, lying there in its bath of boiling mud like some sleeping monster that could strike without warning.

The sun had now climbed to the zenith, beating down upon the common with an intense, pitiless heat that mingled with the suffocating vapour from the pit. The air was heavy and stagnant. On the far side of the excavation, Ogilvy had resumed his measurements, assisted now by a couple of men whom he had hired to fetch spades and timber from a neighbouring farm; but he looked tired and haggard, his shirt sticking to his shoulders and his face smeared with soot and grime.

I looked down at my wife. She had turned very pale at the sight of the young man’s injuries, and the oppressive heat and the noisome smell of the pit were clearly telling upon her strength.

"You must go home, my dear," I said, putting my arm about her waist. "There is nothing more to be seen here, and the heat is becoming intolerable. This crowd will only grow larger as the day goes on, and it is no place for you."

She looked at the steaming hollow with a shudder. "Will you not come with me?" she asked anxiously. "I do not like that thing. There is something dreadful about it. Why should you stay?"

"I must see what Ogilvy finds," I answered, reassuring her as best I could. "He is going to clear away the earth from the side when the water cools. I will stay only an hour or two longer, and then I will follow you home. You will be far better in the cool of the house."

She hesitated for a moment, looking at me with a lingering apprehension that I could not wholly dispel, for in truth my own mind was full of a dark and nameless disquiet. But she was too sensible to make a scene, and seeing that my resolution was taken, she yielded to my persuasion. I kissed her, and stood upon the ridge watching her as she took the footpath back across the common towards Maybury. Her light summer dress made a solitary patch of white against the dark heather and the brown carpet of pine-needles, until presently the path dipped into the hollow by the sand-pits and she was lost to view.

When she was gone, I turned back once more to the lip of the crater. The crowd had grown considerably even during the few minutes of our parting; a score of fresh spectators had arrived from the direction of Chertsey, and the hum of voices was rising again over the heath. Below in the pit, the white steam continued to boil up into the midday glare, half veiling the great cylinder that lay motionless in its muddy bed, keeping its silent secret under the burning sky.

Mr Shepherd was prompt in attendance. On the morning following these uncomfortable disclosures, the agent was admitted to the library at Kellynch Hall, where Lady Russell had already arrived to assist in the family consultation. Sir Walter received them with that unruffled courtesy which he considered due to his rank, though his countenance betrayed the disturbance which such a conference must inflict upon a gentleman of refined sensibility. Elizabeth sat near him, cold and upright, prepared to defend every privilege of her station; while Anne, whose presence was merely tolerated, occupied a small table at a distance, unnoticed and unconsulted, but listening with an anxious heart to all that concerned the honour of her family.

To state the case was Mr Shepherd’s first duty. He was a cautious, smooth-spoken man, who had managed the Kellynch affairs for many years, and possessed that dexterity of manner which enabled him to hint at unpleasant truths without appearing to forget the distance between a baronet and his attorney. He knew his patron well; he knew the strength of Sir Walter’s vanity, and the difficulty of inducing him to part with any article of consequence; but the accounts were in such a state that something must be attempted. He opened his portfolio, spread his papers upon the table, and laid his plan of retrenchment before Sir Walter.

It was a scheme of moderate ambition. Mr Shepherd proposed to part with three carriage horses, to reduce the out-door servants, to lay down the pack of harriers long maintained for state rather than sport, to discharge two expensive footmen, and to decline all formal dinner-parties during the ensuing winter, by which means some few hundred pounds might annually be saved.

Sir Walter listened with an air in which pity and indignation contended for mastery.

“Mr Shepherd,” said he, leaning back in his chair, “you entirely mistake the case. Dismiss two footmen! Reduce my horses to a miserable pair, such as might draw the gig of an apothecary! What figure should the representative of the Elliot family make in the county, driving to church behind two wretched beasts, and attended by a single domestic? The Musgroves have four horses in their stable, and am I, Sir Walter Elliot, to be outshone by a country squire whose family was scarcely heard of in the reign of King William? No, sir; I value the respectability of my name too much to consent to such disgraceful parsimony. Not a horse shall be sold; not a livery laid aside.”

Elizabeth warmly supported her father. “It is out of the question,” said she. “The idea of our living in Somersetshire upon such a footing is inadmissible. If we cannot appear as the Elliots of Kellynch ought to appear, we had better not appear at all.”

Mr Shepherd bowed submissively, murmuring that he had only suggested what the accounts dictated, and gathered up his papers with mild resignation.

Lady Russell now took up the discussion. She had listened to Sir Walter with concern, and to Mr Shepherd with dissatisfaction, for her ideas of retrenchment were of a higher and more moral character. She loved the Elliot family; she loved their respectability; but she loved honesty and justice still more, and could not endure the thought of Sir Walter continuing in a course of blind extravagance.

“My dear Sir Walter,” said she, “we must look this evil in the face. The debts are large, and cannot be discharged by trifles. If you are to regain your peace of mind and preserve Kellynch for those who come after you, there must be a real sacrifice. My plan is severe, but honourable. I propose that you should immediately give up your annual journey to London; that you should suspend all purchases of plate and pictures; that table expenses should be reduced by half; that no new works be undertaken in the park; and that your personal expenditure be limited to a fixed sum. By adhering strictly to these rules for six or seven years, the greater part of the encumbrances may be cleared, and you will stand once more upright in the world, without having compromised your real dignity.”

Sir Walter’s brow darkened. To be told by an attorney to part with a footman had been bad; but to be told by Lady Russell that he must surrender London, and submit to an allowance like a schoolboy, was an outrage which even long friendship could scarcely excuse.

“Give up London!” he exclaimed, starting upright in his chair. “Abandon our residence in town at the very moment when Elizabeth is in the full zenith of her elegance, and when my own presence is continually required among my equals! Lady Russell, you cannot be serious. What! Are we to shut ourselves up at Kellynch like monks, eating cold mutton, and denying ourselves the decencies of our rank, while all the world is amusing itself in Mayfair? And for what? To pay a parcel of tradesmen who ought to be proud of having Sir Walter Elliot’s name in their ledgers! It is not retrenchment that you propose; it is annihilation. I would sooner quit Kellynch altogether than live in it upon such humiliating terms.”

Lady Russell looked deeply grieved, finding him as impenetrable to reason as he was alive to vanity.

“If you reject both these methods, Sir Walter,” said she, with a sigh, “I know not what is to become of you; for money must be had, and the creditors will not wait.”

A heavy silence fell upon the room. Mr Shepherd looked down, tapping his snuff-box; Sir Walter sat fuming; and Lady Russell leaned her head upon her hand in disappointment.

It was at this moment that Anne, who had hitherto remained silent in her corner, felt an irresistible impulse to speak. She saw the precipice upon which her family stood, and felt that if neither pride nor friendship could point the way to safety, truth at least ought to be uttered. She rose from her seat, her colour heightened, but her voice steady.

“If we are to retrench at all, papa,” said she, addressing her father with respectful firmness, “ought we not to do it thoroughly and at once? Half measures can only prolong our distress. If Lady Russell’s plan requires six or seven years, might we not, by a still more rigorous economy, accomplish the same end in three? We might close the state apartments, and live entirely in the smaller rooms; we might retain only three or four of the older servants, who are attached to the family; we might lay down the carriage entirely, and decline all company, living in absolute retirement here at Kellynch. Our seclusion would be respected as a voluntary choice. By devoting nearly the whole income to the payment of the debts, every claim might be satisfied in a very few years, and we should have the satisfaction of knowing that we had acted with perfect justice to everyone, without having made any disgraceful compromises.”

Lady Russell looked at Anne with astonishment and admiration; while Mr Shepherd lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise. But the greatest wonder of all was Elizabeth’s reception of the proposal. Instead of treating Anne’s words with her customary disdain, Elizabeth turned round and gave them her immediate support.

“Anne is right,” said Elizabeth, with cold decision. “If sacrifices are to be made, let them be made within our own walls, where the world cannot pry into them. I would ten times rather shut up Kellynch Hall to all the neighbourhood, and live in the quietest manner possible, than go about the county in a curtailed and shabby equipage, exposing ourselves to the impertinent pity of our acquaintance. In complete retirement there is at least dignity. We should see nobody; we should be accountable to nobody; and we should not be obliged to submit to the degrading economies which Mr Shepherd would impose upon our public appearance. Let the drawing-rooms be covered up, and let us live entirely to ourselves until our affairs are righted.”

This unexpected alliance between his daughters produced a singular effect upon Sir Walter. For a moment he appeared completely confounded; but his indignation quickly returned.

“Shut up the house!” he cried. “Cover up the furniture! Live in two parlours like pensioners in an almshouse! Elizabeth, you must have lost your senses. Is it not enough that I am harassed by the impertinence of duns, but my own children must combine to turn Kellynch into a dungeon? Anne’s romantic notions I have long known; she has no feeling for the dignity of an ancient name; but that you, Elizabeth, should advise your father to become a hermit in his own mansion, is beyond any thing I could have conceived. It is totally impossible. I will hear no more of such absurdities.”

Mr Shepherd, perceiving that all domestic retrenchment was rejected, now ventured upon an expedient which he had long entertained in secret. Seeing that the moment was critical, he cleared his throat and assumed his most persuasive smile.

“There is, to be sure, Sir Walter,” said he, speaking with great deliberation, “another course which has sometimes been adopted by gentlemen of the first consequence, when placed in circumstances of temporary embarrassment. It is a measure which avoids all the unpleasantness of a reduced establishment in one’s own neighbourhood, while it provides an immediate and handsome addition to the income. If Kellynch Hall were to be quitted for a few years—only for a few years—and a suitable, highly respectable tenant were to be found—”

The word was scarcely uttered when Sir Walter started to his feet, his eyes flashing with anger.

“A tenant!” he exclaimed. “A tenant in Kellynch Hall! Mr Shepherd, do I hear you correctly? Have you dared to suggest that I should let my family seat—the residence of the Elliots for two hundred years—to some low-born stranger, some upstart who has made a fortune in trade, and who would come here to pollute my park with his vulgar presence, and sit in the chair of my ancestors? A tenant! Good heavens! Is it come to this, that the master of Kellynch is to be turned out of doors, and his house converted into a lodging-house for hirelings?”

Mr Shepherd shrank back, holding up both hands in deprecation. “My dear Sir Walter—I only meant to hint—”

“Hold your tongue, sir!” cried Sir Walter, pacing the room in great agitation. “I will not hear another syllable upon the subject. I forbid you ever to mention that word in my presence again. Let the house, indeed! I would see it burned to the ground before any tenant should set foot across the threshold. While I live, Kellynch Hall shall belong to Sir Walter Elliot, and to no other human being. Never let that disgraceful proposition be repeated in this house!”

Mr Shepherd could only stammer out humble apologies, but Sir Walter refused even to look at him. Lady Russell, seeing that further discussion in Sir Walter’s present temper was useless, rose to take her leave.

“We have agitated you too much, Sir Walter,” said she, with calm dignity. “We will say no more to-day. Reflection may perhaps suggest some means of reconciling what is due to your family with what is necessary for your affairs.”

Sir Walter bowed with stiff politeness; Mr Shepherd, glad to escape, gathered his papers and followed her out of the room; and the conference dissolved, leaving the family in the uncomfortable silence of mutual dissatisfaction.

The remainder of the morning passed in sullen gloom. Sir Walter retired to his dressing-room to recover his composure in the contemplation of his mirrors and the Baronetage; Elizabeth shut herself up in her own apartment; while Anne wandered into the gardens, oppressed by the heavy certainty of approaching ruin, and mourning over that infatuated pride which could prefer the hazard of total destruction to the smallest sacrifice of personal consequence.

At dinner they met again, but with little conversation and no cordiality. Sir Walter was still cold and offended; Elizabeth was haughty and silent; and Anne was glad when the meal was concluded, and the evening post was brought in to create a diversion.

Among the letters was one for Sir Walter from Uppercross, in the well-known, sprawling hand of Mrs Charles Musgrove. Sir Walter broke the seal with languid indifference, glanced down the lines with a slight curl of his lip, and then tossed the sheet across the table to Anne.

“There,” said he, with a shrug; “it is from Mary. She writes in her usual strain of lamentation. She is dying, as usual, of some imaginary complaint, and cannot exist another day without you. You had better read it, Anne, for it concerns nobody else.”

Anne took the letter, and read:

“Dear Papa, “I write to you in great misery, having been extremely ill all this week, and nobody here pays me the least attention. Charles has been out shooting all day, and left me quite alone; and the children are so noisy and troublesome that my poor nerves are almost shattered. Mrs Musgrove has never called, though she knows how subject I am to these attacks, and Henrietta and Louisa think of nothing but their own amusements. I am sure I shall not live out the month if I am left in this neglected state, and I have no appetite for any thing, though the cook has sent up some very good broth. If Anne could be spared to come to me for a few weeks, it would be the greatest charity in the world; for she has nothing to do at home, and I am in such low spirits that I can hardly hold my pen. Charles will send the carriage for her any day. Pray let her come immediately, if you have any regard for your poor neglected daughter, “MARY MUSGROVE.”

“A very silly, selfish letter,” observed Elizabeth, with cool disdain. “Mary is never contented unless she is making herself out to be worse than anybody else. But if she wants Anne, there can be no objection to her going. We can very well do without her here.”

“Certainly,” said Sir Walter, whose good humour was slightly restored by the prospect of saving even a trifle in domestic arrangements. “Anne can always be spared. She is of no use to us at present, and Mary’s carriage will save the expense of sending our own. If she chooses to go to Uppercross to-morrow, I have no objection in the world.”

Anne made no reply, but her resolution was instantly taken. To be of real use to any one, even to Mary, was a relief to her affectionate heart; and to escape for a little while from the oppressive atmosphere of Kellynch, where pride and obstinacy seemed determined to work their own destruction, was an advantage not to be despised.

When she retired to her own room for the night, the house was silent, but her mind was full of anxious thoughts. She looked out of her window upon the dark woods of Kellynch, which had stood for generations in the possession of her ancestors, but which now seemed to tremble on the verge of catastrophe. Nothing had been decided; no step had been taken; the debts remained as heavy and threatening as before; and her father was as firmly resolved as ever to yield nothing to prudence or honour. Elizabeth’s momentary flash of good sense had vanished, leaving only her usual coldness; and on the morrow Anne herself would be gone, leaving Kellynch to its fate. With a heavy sigh, she turned from the window, feeling that whatever trials might await her at Uppercross, they could hardly be more painful than the helpless sorrow of viewing the blindness and folly of those she loved.

The volume I had taken down from the shelf was a heavy, leather-bound compendium of medical jurisprudence. Turning the thin, yellowed pages with trembling fingers, I found the chapter devoted to the alkaloids, and read with a sickening sense of conviction the detailed analysis of strychnine. The symptoms were described with terrible precision: the suddenness of the seizure, usually within an hour or two of administration; the agonizing rigidity of the muscles; the frightful tetanic convulsions racking the frame; the characteristic locking of the jaws and that hideous, involuntary arching of the spine—known technically, I observed, as *opisthotonos*—which lifts the sufferer so that the body rests only upon the head and the heels. Most terrible of all was the note that consciousness remains unclouded until the very end, the victim being acutely sensible of every pang of suffocation.

Every line I read seemed to stamp itself upon my brain as an exact transcript of the horrors we had just witnessed in Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedchamber. There could no longer be any shadow of doubt in my mind. The unfortunate lady had not died of heart failure, as poor, fussy Dr. Wilkins had so readily assumed; she had been foully and deliberately murdered.

I replaced the book upon its shelf and glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the library. It was a few minutes past six o’clock. The morning was breaking clear and pale after the heavy thunderstorm of the night, though the air was still laden with a damp, oppressive warmth. Determined that not a moment should be wasted, I unlatched the side door leading onto the terrace and stepped out into the grounds.

The gravel path was dark and wet, strewn here and there with small twigs and torn leaves brought down by the gale. The great cedar on the lawn cast a long, sombre shadow across the dewy turf. As I hastened down the long drive toward the lodge gates, my mind was in a whirl of conflicting conjectures. What part had Alfred Inglethorp played in this ghastly business? His absence during his wife’s dying agony, his mysterious disappearance into the night, the violent quarrel which Dorcas had overheard between husband and wife only yesterday afternoon—all pointed with damning certainty in one direction. And yet, what of Dr. Bauerstein? How had the London specialist happened to be loitering near the park gates at five o’clock in the morning, ready to spring forward the moment the car was dispatched for medical aid? It seemed an almost incredible coincidence.

I passed through the iron gates and took the lane that led into the village of Styles St. Mary. It was a walk of nearly two miles, but in my agitated state of mind the distance seemed as nothing. The village was scarcely awake as I strode down the quiet street, though the chimneys of one or two cottages were already sending up thin spirals of blue smoke into the morning air.

Presently I reached Leastways Cottage, the modest dwelling where Hercule Poirot and his fellow Belgian refugees had been accommodated through the generous charity of Mrs. Inglethorp. I hurried up the narrow brick path and rapped sharply upon the door.

To my astonishment, the door opened almost immediately, and there stood Poirot himself.

He was fully dressed, and presented an appearance of the most scrupulous neatness. His dark suit was brushed without a speck of dust, his stiff linen collar was immaculate, and his extraordinary, egg-shaped head was tilted slightly to one side, his magnificent moustaches bristling with their customary military precision. Yet the look upon his face was entirely unexpected. The bright, twinkling humour that usually animated his eyes was replaced by an expression of profound and reverent gravity.

“Ah, Hastings, my friend!” he exclaimed, stepping back to bid me enter. “You come from the great house.”

I stared at him, taken completely aback.

“Poirot!” I cried. “You know already?”

He bowed his head with a sorrowful gesture.

“Alas, yes. Baily, the chauffeur from Styles Court, pulled up his motor at my gate on his return from fetching Dr. Wilkins from the village. The poor lad was white as a sheet, trembling in every limb, and he told me the dreadful news. Our dear lady—our kind, generous benefactress—is no more.”

He paused, a look of genuine grief crossing his mobile features. Then he laid a hand gently upon my arm.

“She was so good to us, Hastings. When we were wretched exiles, driven from our ruined homes, without friends and without hope, it was Madame Inglethorp who opened her heart and her purse to shelter us. I tell you, mon ami, if there has been foul play beneath that roof, Hercule Poirot will know no rest until the truth is laid bare, and the crime avenged!”

“Foul play there has certainly been,” I said earnestly. “Dr. Bauerstein refuses to grant a death certificate, and there is to be a post-mortem examination. I have spoken to John Cavendish, and he has consented to place the investigation entirely in your hands.”

Poirot’s green eyes flashed with sudden brilliance—that peculiar, cat-like light which I had seen in them once or twice before in the old days in Belgium.

“Ah! That is good. The young Cavendish has the good sense. But tell me, Hastings—tell me everything that happened, from the very beginning. Every word, every movement, every look!”

As briefly and clearly as I could, I recounted the events of the night: Lawrence’s sudden awakening of me, the locked doors, the desperate forcing of the entrance, the terrifying convulsions of the dying woman, her last, strangled utterance of her husband’s name, and the sinister absence of Alfred Inglethorp himself.

Poirot listened with the most profound attention, not interrupting by so much as a syllable, though his eyebrows rose slightly when I described the peculiar arching of Mrs. Inglethorp’s body.

When I had finished, he drew a deep breath and drew out his large turnip watch.

“Six-and-twenty minutes past six,” he murmured. “We must act with order and method, Hastings—always order and method! One cannot rush into a matter of this gravity like a mad dog. I must make a small toilette, brush my hat, and put my little notebook and magnifying glass in my pocket. Return at once to Styles Court, mon ami. Keep your eyes open, watch everyone, but do not let it appear that you are watching. And above all, ensure that no one enters the bedchamber of Madame until I arrive. I shall follow you on foot within twenty minutes.”

Leaving Leastways Cottage, I retraced my steps with all possible speed. The sun had now risen above the line of the elm trees, and its rays were beginning to disperse the lingering mists of the morning. A fresh breeze had sprung up, rustling through the leaves and drying the gravel underfoot.

When I reached Styles Court and pushed open the heavy oak door that gave onto the great hall, I was conscious at once of a sudden, tense silence falling upon the room.

A remarkable group was gathered before the empty hearth. John Cavendish stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his jaw set in a hard, uncompromising line. Lawrence sat huddled in a large leather armchair near the window, looking terribly ill and staring fixedly at the floor. Mary Cavendish, who had discarded her white land-smock for a dark morning frock, stood near the sideboard, her face pale, impassive, and beautiful, her dark eyes glittering with an intensity I found impossible to fathom.

And in the centre of the room, holding a dripping felt hat in his hand, stood Alfred Inglethorp.

He had evidently only just arrived. His clothes were damp, his boots were splashed with wet clay from the park, and his heavy, jet-black beard seemed more incongruous than ever against the pasty pallor of his cheeks. He wore his customary gold-rimmed pince-nez, and his voice, when he spoke, had that deep, oily, sanctimonious cadence which had always grated so unpleasantly upon my ears.

“It is a blow—a terrible, crushing blow!” he was saying, dabbing at his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “My poor, dear Emily! To think that while I was wandering in the woods, wrestling with a cruel affliction of the head, my beloved wife was breathing her last! If only I had been at her side to receive her parting blessing!”

John Cavendish’s face was dark as a thundercloud.

“Where have you been, Inglethorp?” he asked, in a tone of suppressed fury. “You took the latch-key when you walked down to the village with Bauerstein last night. You told the servants not to wait up for you. Where did you spend the night?”

Inglethorp raised his hands in a gesture of meek appeal.

“My dear John, pray do not address me in such a hostile manner. I will explain everything. When Dr. Bauerstein and I parted at the village crossroads, a most distressing migraine seized me—the close, electric atmosphere of the coming storm, no doubt. I felt that if I returned to the house, the confinement of my room would be unendurable. I walked across the lower meadows toward the woods, hoping the night air would give me relief. Hours passed without my realizing their flight. When the thunderstorm broke in the early hours, I hastened back to the house, intending to enter quietly and retire to bed. But when I reached the front door, to my utter dismay, I found that in my hurry after supper I had carelessly left the latch-key lying upon the hall table.”

He paused, looking round upon us with an air of innocent candidness.

“What could I do? The hour was late—between three and four in the morning. I knew how easily dear Emily was disturbed, and I could not bear the thought of rousing the servants and creating an uproar in the house. I therefore went round to the old summer-house at the edge of the shrubbery, and there, sitting in a rustic chair, I waited until daybreak before venturing to present myself.”

For a moment there was complete silence in the hall. John stared at him, his fists clenched in his pockets, clearly doubting every syllable of the tale yet unable on the spur of the moment to refute it.

Then, from the shadows near the green baize door that led to the servants’ quarters, a quiet voice spoke.

It was Dorcas, the parlourmaid. She had stepped into the hall carrying a tray of morning tea, and now stood perfectly still, her respectable, elderly face set in lines of firm determination.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, addressing Alfred Inglethorp directly.

Inglethorp turned sharply, his pince-nez quivering upon his nose.

“What is it, Dorcas?”

“You did not leave the latch-key on the hall table, sir,” said the woman, in her clear, respectful voice.

A dead stillness gripped the hall.

“What do you mean?” demanded Inglethorp, a sudden harsh note creeping into his smooth voice.

“I was in the hall, sir, when you and Dr. Bauerstein were putting on your hats after supper,” Dorcas continued steadily. “I saw you take the latch-key from the silver salver with your own fingers, sir, and put it straight into the right-hand pocket of your waistcoat. I noticed it particularly, because I had only just placed it there myself after bolting the garden doors for the night.”

A dull flush crept slowly over Alfred Inglethorp’s face, rising from beneath his dark beard. For a second he seemed utterly at a loss. Then, with a nervous, agitated laugh, he thrust his hand into his waistcoat pocket, drew out a pocket-knife and some loose silver, and shook his head.

“Ah—yes—how foolish of me!” he stammered, avoiding John’s piercing gaze. “My memory must have played me false in my distress. I must have felt in the wrong pocket in the dark, or perhaps dropped the key on the path through the shrubbery. But my story remains the same—I could not find it, and so took refuge in the summer-house.”

No one answered him. The atmosphere in the hall was thick with suspicion. John turned his back upon his step-father with a gesture of open disgust, while Mary Cavendish remained motionless by the sideboard, her eyes fixed upon the floor.

At that precise moment, the front door bell rang with a clear, decisive pull.

I stepped forward and opened the door. Hercule Poirot stood upon the threshold. He wore an overcoat neatly buttoned across his chest, carried a silver-topped cane in his gloved hand, and held his hat against his breast as he bowed with dignified solemnity to the assembled company.

John Cavendish went forward to meet him.

“You are Monsieur Poirot?” he said, extending his hand. “Hastings has told me of you. We are in a terrible situation here, and under the circumstances I am thankful to accept your assistance.”

“I am entirely at your service, Mr. Cavendish,” Poirot replied gravely. “Madame Inglethorp was my benefactress, and I shall spare neither time nor effort to serve her family.”

He bowed with equal courtesy to Mary and to Lawrence, and cast a swift, impenetrable glance in the direction of Alfred Inglethorp, who stood awkwardly by the hearth, eyeing the little Belgian with ill-concealed distrust.

John drew the two keys from his coat pocket and handed them to Poirot.

“These are the keys of the two bedchambers—my mother’s and Inglethorp’s. Dr. Bauerstein locked them before he left and advised that no one should enter until the police or the coroner’s officer arrived.”

“Dr. Bauerstein was very wise,” said Poirot, slipping the keys into his pocket. “We shall inspect the rooms in a few moments.”

Before moving toward the staircase, however, Poirot paused. His sharp, green eyes had travelled across the hall to the doorway of the morning-room, which stood slightly ajar. Through the opening, one could see Cynthia Murdoch sitting alone at a small table by the window. The poor girl presented a pathetic picture; her auburn hair was slightly disordered, her face was white and drawn, and she sat with her hands clasped in her lap, staring out at the garden with an expression of dazed, childlike misery.

Poirot stepped quietly across the hall and into the morning-room. I followed close behind him.

Hearing our footsteps, Cynthia looked up with a start.

“Mademoiselle Cynthia,” said Poirot, bowing with gentle, almost fatherly deference. “I ask your pardon for disturbing you at such a moment, but I should be profoundly grateful if you would answer me one single question.”

The girl swallowed nervously, her large eyes fixed upon his face.

“Yes, Monsieur Poirot? What is it?”

“Tell me, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot softly, “when you went to your bed last night, did you sleep so deeply that the sound of the knocking upon the door, and the noise when Mr. Cavendish and Captain Hastings burst the woodwork, failed entirely to awaken you until Mrs. Cavendish came to shake your arm?”

Cynthia’s lips trembled, and a faint flush rose in her pale cheeks.

“Yes, Monsieur Poirot,” she answered in a low, unsteady voice. “It was the most extraordinary thing. Usually I am such a light sleeper—the least sound in the passage or a bird at the window will wake me in an instant. But last night, after I went to bed, a terrible, heavy stupor seemed to fall upon me. I slept like a log, without dreaming, and when Mary came and shook me, my head was throbbing dreadfully and my limbs felt as heavy as lead. For several moments I could not even understand where I was or what she was saying to me.”

Poirot listened with intense, unblinking concentration. When she had finished, a strange, satisfied gleam shone for a fraction of a second in his eyes.

“Je vous remercie, Mademoiselle,” he said gently. “You have answered with great precision. Do not distress yourself further.”

He turned and walked back into the hall, beckoning to me to follow him.

“Come, Hastings,” he said in a low voice. “Now we will mount to the scene of the tragedy.”

We went up the broad staircase together. The house was now wrapped in an oppressive, unnatural stillness. The bright morning sun was climbing toward the zenith, pouring through the stained-glass windows of the upper landing and bathing the corridor in a warm, amber glow. It was already late morning, and the house felt heavy with the approaching heat of noon.

We reached the door of Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedchamber. Poirot drew one of the keys from his pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned it. The bolt shot back with a heavy click. He opened the door, motioned me to enter, followed me in, and immediately turned the key in the lock from the inside, so that we were entirely alone in the room.

Everything remained precisely as it had been left in the grey light of dawn. The curtains were drawn back, and the brilliant summer sunshine streamed across the floor, illuminating the silent witness of the catastrophe.

The bedclothes were tossed in wild disorder, bearing testimony to the agonizing struggles of the unfortunate lady. Upon the Persian rug beside the bed lay the small table which had been overturned during her convulsions, surrounded by the shattered porcelain fragments of a coffee cup, the dark stain of the spilt liquid having dried into a stiff crust upon the pile of the carpet. The gas bracket upon the wall was extinguished, but the smell of scorched metal still lingered faintly in the air.

Poirot did not begin by examining the bed or the broken cup, as I had expected. Instead, he stood in the exact centre of the room, his hands behind his back, his head on one side, allowing his eyes to travel with minute, methodical precision over every square foot of the chamber.

“Order and method, mon cher Hastings,” he murmured under his breath. “Everything has its reason; everything tells its story.”

He walked first to the door communicating with Alfred Inglethorp’s room, examining the splintered woodwork where John and I had forced the latch. Then he crossed to the opposite wall, where the door led into Cynthia Murdoch’s room. He tried the handle; it was firmly secured. He examined the heavy brass bolt on our side of the door, running his finger along the metal.

“Bolted on the inside,” he remarked softly. “As they said.”

Next, he walked slowly toward the fireplace. The hearth was cold, but upon the iron grate and scattered over the fender lay a quantity of grey, charred ashes—the remnants of papers which had been consumed by fire before the tragedy took place.

Poirot knelt down upon the hearthrug. With infinite care, taking a small pair of silver tweezers and a clean cambric handkerchief from his pocket, he began to sift through the delicate flakes of burnt paper. His movements were as delicate and precise as those of a surgeon performing a critical operation.

Suddenly, his hand stopped.

With the utmost gentleness, he picked up a minute object that had been lying half-concealed beneath a piece of charred cinder near the edge of the fender.

He rose to his feet and walked over to the window, where the late morning light fell full upon his hand.

I hurried to his side, my heart beating with intense excitement.

“What is it, Poirot?” I exclaimed eagerly. “Have you found something?”

Poirot spread his handkerchief upon the broad window-sill. Between us, resting upon the white linen, lay the small object he had extracted from the ashes.

It was a tiny, scorched scrap of stiff, heavy paper, no larger than a postage stamp, with three of its edges blackened by fire, while across the unburnt corner ran a faint, curious trace in violet ink—a single, inexplicable mark that resembled a broken capital letter or the tail of a numeral.

I stared at it in utter perplexity.

“What in the world does it mean?” I asked, looking up into his face. “Is it a fragment of a letter? Or some message left by the murderer?”

Poirot shook his head. He refused to give me any explanation. His face had set into lines of the most impenetrable gravity, and his green eyes shone with a peculiar, mocking light that I had never seen in them before.

“It means, my friend,” said Hercule Poirot, in a quiet, mysterious tone that sent a strange chill through my veins, “that we must look for the person who was not there in order to discover what has never been done.”

I stared at him in hopeless bewilderment, unable to extract the faintest glimmer of sense from his extraordinary words.

She leaned against me and I put my arm around her shoulder. The cab rattled over the cobbles, turning south. Through the window the street lamps flickered past, yellow and far apart, and the city smelled of dust and wet asphalt where the water-carts had gone by earlier in the evening. Brett sat with her head down, her hands tucked into the pockets of her tweed skirt.

“Don’t let’s go out to Montsouris, Jake,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to drive.”

“Not out there. It’s too far and it’s too damned dark. Tell him to go to the Select.”

“The Select?”

“Yes. I want some light. I want to see people.”

I leaned forward and slid the glass pane open. “Au Select,” I told the driver. “Boulevard du Montparnasse.”

The driver grunted and swung the horse around at the intersection of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, the iron tires grating against the curb, and we headed back toward the lights of the quarter. Brett pulled a silver cigarette case from her bag and opened it. I struck a match on the rough seat cushion and held the flame for her. In the yellow flare her face looked very white and very tired, the hair brushed flat back from her forehead and her dark eyes looking straight into the fire before she blew it out with a thin stream of smoke.

“I’ve had a rotten week, Jake,” she said.

“What happened?”

“Everything. Nothing. Just the usual mess.” She turned her head to look out at the shops along the boulevard. “I met an extraordinary bird last Tuesday. A man named Count Mippipopolous.”

“Never heard of him,” I said.

“Nobody’s heard of him. He’s got sweet-oil in Greece and ships in the Levant. Millions of them. Offered to take me to Biarritz for a month. Offered me ten thousand francs in cash just to pack a trunk.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“Told him I was in love with you. Then I told him I was going to marry Mike. He didn’t mind a bit. He said love was very fine, but Biarritz was better in the spring.”

“He sounds like an intelligent man.”

“He’s not intelligent at all,” Brett said. “He’s quite simple. He’s got an enormous belly and he wears an elk’s tooth on a gold chain. But he has immense pots of money.”

“You should have taken the ten thousand.”

“Don’t talk like an ass, Jake.”

“Ten thousand francs is a lot of money.”

“I don’t care about his money.” She threw the cigarette out the window and watched the red spark bounce on the dark street. “I don’t care about any of it.”

We rode in silence for a while, the cab swaying with the slow rhythm of the horse. The air coming through the open window was cool and smelled of horse manure and the river.

“Couldn’t we go away somewhere, Jake?” Brett asked suddenly.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. Just out of Paris. The country. We could find a little cottage somewhere near the Pyrenees and just live quietly.”

“It wouldn’t work,” I said.

“No,” she said. “We’d only get terribly bored.”

“We’d get bored to death,” I said.

“And then we’d have rows.”

“We’d have rows every day.”

“It’s much better like this,” she said.

“Much better,” I said.

I felt completely empty and sick inside.

Brett reached over and touched my knee. Her fingers were very cold through my trousers. “You’re a good chap, Jake.”

“Sure,” I said. “A very good chap.”

“Don’t be nasty.”

“I’m not being nasty.”

The cab pulled up in front of the Select. The terrace was bright under the red-and-white awning, and three or four tables were occupied by painters and American girls in berets drinking vermouth. The waiter came out to the edge of the pavement, wiping his hands on his apron.

I paid the driver and gave him a three-franc tip. He took the money without looking at it, touched his cap with his whip, and pulled the horse out into the line of traffic.

We took a table on the terrace near the glass wind-screen. The night had turned slightly cooler, but it was pleasant sitting under the awning with the electric lights glowing above us.

“What will you have, Brett?”

“Brandy and soda,” she said. “A double.”

“A fine à l’eau for me,” I told the waiter.

The waiter went inside and came back with the siphon, the bottle of Hennessy, and the saucer. He poured Brett’s brandy into a tall glass, squirted the soda from the siphon until the foam rose to the rim, and poured my cognac into a small thick glass. I gave him a ten-franc note and he made change from his leather pocket.

Brett drank half her glass at once. She set it down and let her breath out slowly.

“That’s better,” she said. “That’s much better.”

“You’re drinking fast.”

“I have to drink fast, darling. It keeps me from thinking.”

“Thinking isn’t good for you.”

“Nothing is good for me,” she said. “Look at that girl over there.”

She nodded toward a table three rows back where an American girl with bobbed hair was arguing in high-pitched English with a French boy in a corduroy jacket. The boy was drawing lines on the marble table-top with the end of a match and shaking his head.

“They’ve been at it for hours,” Brett said. “I can tell by the look of his shoulders.”

“She’s probably telling him about her art,” I said.

“Art,” Brett said. “God deliver us from art.”

She took another sip of the brandy and looked across the Boulevard du Montparnasse. The street was wide and grey under the lamps. Across the way, the Dôme was lighted up and crowded, the sidewalk packed with people standing and talking outside the railing. A newsboy came by carrying a bundle of the *New York Herald* under his arm, calling out the late edition.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“No. I couldn’t eat a bite.”

“You ought to eat something.”

“Don’t mother me, Jake. I’m quite all right.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight.

“I left fifty francs in an envelope for Georgette back at the Bal,” I said.

Brett laughed. Her short hair shook against the collar of her jersey. “You’ll never see that again, my dear.”

“The patronne said she’d keep it for me if Georgette went off with your friends.”

“Georgette is probably having supper with them at Zelli’s right now,” Brett said. “Lett was determined to show her the sights.”

“I’m going back to get it,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jake. It’s across the river.”

“It’s fifty francs,” I said. “That’s three days’ lunches at the restaurant in the Rue des Saints Pères.”

“You’re terribly practical all of a sudden.”

“I have to earn my fifty francs,” I said. “The cables don’t pay themselves.”

“Go on then,” Brett said, smiling at me over the rim of her glass. “Go and retrieve your fortune. But don’t take all night.”

“Will you stay here?”

“I’ll stay right here. If I get bored I’ll walk over to the Dôme and sit with the crowd. Ask the head barman if you don’t see me.”

“All right,” I said. “Don’t drink all the brandy in Paris.”

“I’ll leave a drop for you,” she said.

I walked down to the corner of the Boulevard Raspail and hailed an open taxi. The night air was sharp against my face as we drove down the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The Sorbonne was dark and massive on the right, and the street lamps cast long yellow ribbons across the black asphalt. We turned off into the Rue des Écoles, passed the quiet squares of the Latin Quarter, and started up the steep cobblestone incline of the Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

The street was narrow and silent, the tall old houses leaning inward against the night sky. In front of the bal musette the lights were still burning behind the frosted glass windows, but the accordion music had stopped. Two neighborhood cats were sitting by the curb near a pile of vegetable refuse from the market.

I paid the taxi and stepped inside the door.

The place had changed completely. The dancing-floor at the back was dark, and the chairs had been stacked upside down on the wooden tables. The proprietor was nowhere to be seen, but his wife was behind the zinc bar, washing glasses in a tin bucket of soapy water and drying them on a grey towel. A few working men in blue smocks were standing at the near end of the counter, drinking sour red wine and talking in low, rough voices. The policeman who had been by the door had gone.

The patronne looked up as the bell on the door jingled.

“Tiens,” she said, wiping her wet hands on her apron. “Monsieur returns.”

“Good evening, Madame,” I said. “I came to ask about the envelope.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. She reached under the counter near the cash drawer and brought out the plain white envelope I had given her. It was slightly damp at the edge from the counter, but the seal was unbroken. “The young lady did not leave with the gentlemen.”

“She didn’t?”

“No,” the patronne said, shaking her head. “The gentlemen went away in two taxis. They made a great noise in the street. The young lady stayed.”

She nodded with her chin toward the dark corner by the foot of the wooden staircase.

Georgette was sitting on the bench against the wall. Her hat was on the table in front of her, crown down, and she was staring at an empty tumbler. She had her elbows propped on the dark wood and her chin rested in her palms. When she heard my footsteps she turned her head.

“Look who has arrived,” she said in French. “The American fiancé.”

“Hello, Georgette,” I said. I pulled out a wooden chair and sat down across from her.

“You have a strange way of going to a party,” she said. She spoke slowly and her voice was hoarse. “You bring a girl to a dance and then you run off with a lady in a cab.”

“I had business,” I said.

“Business. That’s what they all say. Your English lady had very short hair.”

“Yes.”

“She looked like a boy,” Georgette said. “I don’t like women who look like boys. It isn’t natural.”

“Where are the dancers?” I asked.

“Gone,” she said, waving one hand dismissively. “They drank two rounds of fine and they talked about their clothes. The blond one wanted to dance with me again, but he had no money to pay the bar. When the patron asked for the addition, they all ran out into the street and jumped into a taxi. They wanted me to come with them to Montmartre.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“They had no money,” she said simply. “Why should I go to Montmartre with five boys who have no money? To walk home down the hill at four in the morning? I’ve done that too many times.”

She looked down at her empty glass and picked at the edge of the cardboard saucer with her fingernail. In the dim light of the back room she looked older than she had at the Napolitain. Her powder had worn off around the nose and her bad teeth showed when she tightened her mouth.

“Madame,” I called to the bar. “A fine for Mademoiselle. And a coffee for me.”

The patronne brought over the cognac and a cup of black coffee that smelled of chicory. I paid for the drinks and took the envelope from my coat pocket. I opened it, took out the fifty-franc note, and folded it twice.

“Here,” I said, sliding it across the table into her lap. “For the dinner you missed.”

Georgette picked up the note, looked at the engraving in the dim light, and folded it into a small square before slipping it into her beaded handbag.

“You’re a good type, Jacob,” she said, softening a little. “You’re sick in the head, but you’re not mean.”

“I’m not sick in the head,” I said.

“Everybody who comes from America is sick in the head,” she said. “They have too much money and they don’t know what they want. They walk around Paris looking like they lost something in the street.”

“Maybe we did.”

“No,” she said, drinking the cognac in one gulp. “You never had it to lose.”

She picked up her hat, adjusted the brim in the little glass mirror from her bag, and stood up. She smoothed her skirt over her hips.

“Are you going?” I asked.

“The patronne wants to close,” she said. “And I’m going to the Rue Jacob. There’s a café that stays open until three.”

“Take care of yourself, Georgette.”

“You too, American,” she said. She gave me that wide, terrible smile with her mouth closed, and walked toward the door, her heels clicking loudly on the bare wooden floorboards. The bell tinkled as she went out into the dark street.

I drank the bitter coffee, thanked the patronne, and walked out into the Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. The cool night air felt clean after the sour smell of the bal. I walked down the hill to the Boulevard Saint-Germain and picked up a cruising cab near the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet.

“Boulevard du Montparnasse,” I told him. “Café Select.”

When I got back to the Select, the terrace was almost empty. The waiters had taken in the outer rows of tables and were sweeping the pavement with long birch brooms. Brett was still sitting by the glass wind-screen. She had an empty glass in front of her and was looking at the fresh pack of cigarettes she had opened on the table.

I sat down in the wicker chair opposite her.

“You were gone a long time, Jake,” she said.

“I had a drink with Georgette.”

Brett looked at me, her dark eyes amused. “Did you really? And how was the fiancée?”

“She went home to the Rue Jacob,” I said. “She thinks all Americans are crazy.”

“She’s quite right,” Brett said. “We are crazy. Look at us sitting here in the cold while the waiters sweep the floor under our feet.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“There isn’t anywhere else to go, darling. Everywhere is just like this, only with different waiters.”

She reached across the table and took a cigarette. I lit it for her. Her hand was steady now, but her face was drawn in the grey light of the terrace.

“Did you get your fifty francs?” she asked.

“I gave it to her,” I said.

“I knew you would,” Brett said softly. “You couldn’t help it.”

“It’s late,” I said. “You ought to get some sleep.”

“Sleep,” she said. “I hate going to sleep. When you sleep you have to wake up, and waking up is the worst part of it.”

“You’re tired.”

“I’m dead,” she said. “Simply dead.”

We sat without talking for a few minutes. A waiter came up and stood by the table, his broom resting against his leg, waiting for us to leave. I paid for Brett’s drinks and left a five-franc saucer on the table. We stood up and walked out from under the awning onto the wide, grey sidewalk.

The Boulevard du Montparnasse was completely deserted now. The electric signs on the Dôme had been turned off, and the street lamps were pale against the widening grey sky to the east. A cool, damp wind was blowing up from the river, carrying the smell of wet trees and morning air.

We walked slowly along the boulevard toward the carrefour of the Boulevard Raspail. Brett walked with her hands in the pockets of her tweed coat, her head down against the wind. Her shoulder brushed against mine as we walked, and I could smell the faint scent of lavender soap and stale cigarette smoke on her wool sweater.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“About four,” I said. “Maybe half past four.”

“The birds are starting.”

In the trees along the boulevard a few sparrows were chirping in the grey twilight. A heavy market truck loaded with cabbages rumbled past on its way to the Halles, the driver hunched over the steering wheel under a canvas cap.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

“At the hotel in the Rue Delambre,” she said. “It’s quite close.”

“I’ll get you a cab anyway.”

“Don’t bother, Jake. I can walk.”

“No,” I said. “You’re too tired to walk.”

We waited at the corner of the Boulevard Raspail. After a few minutes a taxi came down the avenue, its yellow headlamps cutting through the morning mist. I stepped to the curb and raised my hand. The driver saw us and pulled up along the sidewalk, the motor idling with a low, steady thrum.

I opened the door for Brett. She stepped in and sat back on the leather seat. She did not lean forward or look out the window; she just sat with her head resting against the back of the seat, her eyes looking at me through the open door.

“Good night, Jake,” she said. Her voice was very quiet.

“Good night, Brett.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“At five,” I said. “At the Crillon.”

“At five,” she repeated. “Don’t be late, darling.”

“I won’t be late.”

I gave the driver ten francs and told him the address in the Rue Delambre. I shut the taxi door. The glass rattled in its frame, and the cab pulled away from the curb, turning down the boulevard, its red tail-light glowing small and round in the grey mist until it turned the corner and was gone.

I stood on the corner for a moment, listening to the taxi fade into the distance. When the sound of the motor was gone, Paris was completely quiet.

I turned down the Boulevard Raspail and walked toward the river. The air was cold and fresh, the dawn coming up fast now behind the rooftops. The sky was changing from dark slate to a pale, clear pearl-grey, with streaks of faint pink spreading low over the chimney pots to the east.

I walked past the dark front of the Montparnasse station and down through the quiet streets of the Seventh Arrondissement. The iron shutters of the shops were all pulled down and locked, and the bakers were already at work in the basements, the warm, sweet smell of baking bread rising through the iron sidewalk gratings into the cool morning air. A municipal water-cart came slowly down the street, two men in high rubber boots directing a thick jet of water along the gutter to wash away the night’s dust and cigarette ends.

I came out onto the Quai Voltaire.

The Seine lay wide and grey below the stone parapet, flowing smoothly between its banks. The river was dark green near the walls and silver in the middle where it caught the morning light. On the other side, the long facade of the Louvre stretched out grey and quiet against the sky, every window dark. Down along the bank, the heavy barges were moored two abreast, their tarpaulins tied tight, thin curls of woodsmoke rising from the small tin chimneys of their living cabins.

I walked along the quai, following the bend of the river. The green wooden boxes of the bouquinistes were padlocked along the top of the stone wall, looking like long rows of coffins waiting for the sun to come up. Out in the middle of the current a tugboat went chugging upstream, its low funnel blowing grey smoke that drifted across the surface of the water, its red and green lanterns still burning pale in the dawn.

The air smelled of river mud, wet stone, and early morning. The light was coming up stronger now, touching the grey stones of the Pont du Carrousel and the twin towers of Notre-Dame far down the river. My feet made a sharp, regular sound on the wet pavement. I kept my hands in my pockets and walked on along the quai, watching the river turn silver in the morning light.

The First National Bank stood on the corner of Broadway and Mineral Street, a big gray granite box with barred windows and brass grilles that looked sturdy enough to hold off an army of miners with picks. Inside, the air was cool and smelled of damp slate and oiled mahogany.

I went past the line of teller wickets to a gate marked *Assistant Cashier*. A thin, dry man of fifty sat behind a low rail, wearing a stiff wing collar, steel-rimmed spectacles anchored to his lapel with a black cord, and sleeve-garters over gray-striped cuffs. A bronze desk plate named him Albury.

He looked up from a stack of green deposit slips, took in my gray suit and my broad shoulders, and didn't seem overjoyed.

"Yes, sir?" he said. His voice sounded like two dry shingles being rubbed together.

I showed him my credentials from the Continental Detective Agency. He held the leather case close to his spectacles, studied the engraved card, turned it over as if he expected to find a counterfeit stamp on the back, and handed it back without a smile.

"I am aware of your agency, of course," he said, keeping his fingers flat on his blotter. "What can the First National do for you?"

"I'm looking into the Donald Willsson homicide," I told him. "He had a personal checking account with you."

Albury winced slightly at the word *homicide*. In Personville people were dying all over the sidewalks, but the banks liked to pretend everyone passed away peacefully in four-poster beds.

"Mr. Willsson was a valued depositor," he said stiffly. "However, bank policy regarding the private accounts of deceased clients is quite rigid. Unless you have authorization from the probate court or from Mr. Elihu Willsson—"

"Elihu Willsson threw me out of his bedroom an hour ago," I said. "If you want to call him up and ask him if he loves me, go ahead. But Donald Willsson was my client before somebody put four .32 slugs into him on Hurricane Street last night, and I want some facts before the local police lose them."

Albury stared at me through his thick lenses, his throat working above the stiff collar. He didn't pick up the telephone to call Elihu. In Personville, nobody called old Elihu unless they were prepared to be sworn at.

"What facts do you require?" he asked grudgingly.

"Yesterday afternoon, a little before three o'clock, Donald Willsson wrote a check against his personal account. The stub was filled out for five thousand dollars. No name on the stub, no memo. He left his office at the *Herald* for twenty minutes, long enough to walk over here and back. Did that check come through?"

Albury hesitated, pressed his thin lips together, and stood up. "Wait here."

He went through a frosted glass door into the bookkeeping department. I leaned against the polished wooden railing and watched two fat men in Stetson hats deposit bundles of currency at the commercial window. Outside, a heavy ore truck rattled down Broadway, shaking the granite floor beneath my shoes.

Ten minutes later Albury came back carrying a black leather ledger binder and a metal tray of canceled vouchers. He set them on his desk, adjusted his spectacles, and ran a dry forefinger down a column of neat purple figures.

"Donald Willsson's personal balance stands at fourteen thousand, two hundred and ten dollars," he said. "There have been no withdrawals against that account since Tuesday, when he gave a check for two hundred and forty dollars to the Mountain Boulevard Garage."

"Nothing yesterday?"

"Nothing yesterday. Nothing today."

"Did he come in himself yesterday afternoon?" I asked.

Albury shook his head. "I consulted the tellers. Neither Mr. Peak at the first cage nor Mr. Henderson at the second saw Mr. Willsson yesterday afternoon. No check for five thousand dollars was cashed over the counter. No cash withdrawal of that amount was made."

"Could the check have been certified?"

"I checked the certification register myself," Albury said firmly. "No check drawn by Donald Willsson has been certified within the past three months."

"Has any draft or collection item for five thousand dollars arrived from another bank—say, from San Francisco, Butte, or Salt Lake?"

"None." He closed the ledger with a soft thud of heavy paper and looked up at me. "If Mr. Willsson drew a check for five thousand dollars yesterday afternoon, the holder has not presented it for payment, nor has it entered the clearing system through any other institution. As far as our records are concerned, that five thousand dollars is still in Mr. Willsson's account."

"Thanks," I said. "If somebody comes in with it, what happens?"

"The account is frozen by law upon notice of the depositor's death," Albury said with a faint trace of satisfaction. "We received formal notice of Mr. Willsson's decease from the county coroner's office at nine o'clock this morning. Anyone presenting a draft on that account will be referred immediately to the legal department and the executors."

"If somebody walks in with that five grand check," I told him, "call Chief Noonan. Then call me at the Great Western Hotel. I'm registered under the name of Henry F. Neill."

Albury nodded once, dry and precise. "Very well, sir."

I left him smoothing his deposit slips and went out into the street.

The air in Personville hadn't gotten any cleaner while I was in the bank. A low gray haze of coal smoke and copper dust hung between the brick buildings, stinging the eyes and leaving a bitter taste of sulfur on the tongue. Broadway was crowded with miners in heavy shoes and mackinaws, poolroom loafers with caps pulled down over their ears, and business men who walked fast with their eyes straight ahead, looking like men who wanted to get from one doorway to another before the shooting started.

I walked five blocks north along Broadway to the Great Western Hotel. The hotel was an eight-story pile of dirty yellow brick that had seen its best days back when the mines first opened in the nineties. The lobby had a lot of dark walnut wainscoting, high-backed leather chairs that were cracked across the seats, brass cuspidors every six feet, and a few rubber plants with dusty leaves wilting in copper tubs.

I stopped at the desk to get my room key. The clerk behind the counter was a bald, pasty-faced man with a green celluloid eyeshade and a blue serge vest.

When I reached for key 314, he slid a square white envelope across the marble top toward me.

"This came for you fifteen minutes ago, Mr. Neill," he said, keeping his eyes on my chin.

"Who left it?"

"A messenger boy."

"City messenger, or just a boy?"

"Just a kid with a bicycle," the clerk said, turning away to sort mail into the pigeonholes. "Said to make sure you got it the minute you came in."

I looked at the envelope. It was cheap, unwatermarked bond, the kind you buy in packs of twenty-five at any five-and-dime. My alias—*Henry F. Neill, Room 314*—was typed across the front in purple ribbon on a machine whose capital *N* was out of alignment, printing high and light.

I didn't open it in the lobby. I walked over to the elevator cage, rode up to the third floor with a silent operator who smelled of gin and peppermint, and walked down the dim carpeted corridor to 314.

Inside my room, I locked the door, dropped my hat on the dresser, and slit the envelope with my pocketknife.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, torn from a plain scratch pad. Two lines were typed across the middle on the same out-of-line machine:

*You looked at Mountain Boulevard this morning. Keep your fat nose out of Hurricane Street and take the 8:15 back to Frisco if you like the shape of your head. — M. T.*

I read it twice. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't already figured out, except that Max Thaler knew I was in town, knew what name I was using at the Great Western, and didn't like people watching him visit dead men's widows.

Whisper Thaler had a reputation for not talking much. In Personville they said he was dynamite with a short fuse. If he took the trouble to borrow a typewriter and send a note to a strange Continental op, he was either nervous about Donald Willsson's killing or he wanted me to think he was the only wolf in the woods.

I folded the paper, slipped it into my inside coat pocket alongside my credentials, and washed my hands and face at the corner basin. The water came out of the brass faucet lukewarm and yellowish, with a faint iron tang.

I took off my coat, hung it over the back of the single rocking chair, and sat down on the edge of the iron bed to smoke a cigarette and think things over.

The pieces made a pretty pattern, but none of the edges fit together tight.

Donald Willsson gets a letter from San Francisco, sends a retainer check to the Continental Agency, and asks for an operative to help him clean up Personville. He gets home from Paris with a French wife. Old Elihu gives him the *Herald* to play with, then regrets it when Donald starts shooting editorial arrows into Pete the Finn, Lew Yard, and Whisper Thaler. Donald makes an appointment with me for ten o'clock at his house on Mountain Boulevard. At three o'clock he gets a telephone call from a woman, writes a check for five thousand dollars, goes out for twenty minutes, and comes back without cashing it. At five o'clock he meets Stanley Lewis for dinner. At ten-twenty his wife gets a telephone call, drives away in her Buick, and Donald gets pumped full of lead on Hurricane Street at ten-forty. His wife comes home at eleven-five with blood on her green slipper. Next morning, Whisper Thaler slips into Donald's house through the front door, old Elihu curses his daughter-in-law from his bed, and Whisper sends me a note telling me to catch the night train to California.

And somewhere in between the *Herald* office and Hurricane Street, five thousand dollars of dead man's money had vanished into thin air.

I was halfway through my second cigarette when knuckles tapped against the wood of my door.

It wasn't the heavy, double-thump of a house detective or the casual rattle of a bellboy. It was three light, quick taps, paused, and then two more.

I stood up without making the bedsprings squeak, reached over to the rocking chair, and slid my right hand under the lapel of my coat where my Colt automatic hung in its holster. I walked over to the door and stood to the left of the jamb, out of the line of fire.

"Who is it?" I asked through the panel.

"Please," a woman's voice whispered. The voice was low, tight, with the slight Parisian tilt I had heard the night before in the living room on Mountain Boulevard. "Open the door. Please. Quickly."

I turned the key, slipped the brass latch back, and opened the door four inches.

Young Mrs. Donald Willsson stood in the dim hall.

She was dressed in a dark beaver coat with a high fur collar that came up to her ears, and a small black cloche hat pulled low over her blonde hair. Under the rim of the hat her face was chalk-white, the skin stretched tight over high, sharp cheekbones. Her blue-gray eyes were wide and shiny with fright, jumping from my face to the empty corridor behind her.

"Let me in," she said, her breath coming in quick, shallow catches. "Please, do not leave me in the hall."

I pulled the door open, stepped back, and let her in.

She came past me in a rustle of heavy silk and fur, smelling of expensive French carnation perfume and cold air. I shut the door, threw the bolt, and turned around.

She was standing in the middle of the small room, her gloved hands clutching a small black leather purse against her ribs, staring around at the iron bed, the scarred oak dresser, and the dingy net curtains as if she had never seen a cheap hotel room before.

"Sit down," I said, pointing to the rocking chair.

She shook her head. "I cannot stay. I should not have come here. But I had to see you."

"How did you find me?"

"At the *Herald* office," she said rapidly. "I telephoned Miss Lewis. She told me a detective from San Francisco had been asking questions—that you were staying here under the name of Neill."

"Miss Lewis talks too much," I grunted. "Your father-in-law thinks you ought to be behind bars, and Whisper Thaler was visiting you on Mountain Boulevard two hours ago. You're not picking very healthy company to travel with, Mrs. Willsson."

When I mentioned Thaler, the color went out of what little blood was left in her lips. She took a backward step until her coat brushed against the foot of the bed.

"You saw him?" she breathed.

"I saw him walk in your front door. A smallish lad in three shades of brown with a pretty profile. What did he want?"

"He wanted—" She stopped, bit her lower lip with small white teeth, and looked at the carpet. "He came to ask about Donald."

"Donald was dead," I said. "Max Thaler isn't the sort of boy who brings sympathy cards to widows. What did he really want?"

"He thought Donald had something of his," she said in a flat, dead voice. "Some papers. Some receipts. He thought Donald had them at the house."

"Did he find them?"

"There was nothing at the house. Donald kept everything at the newspaper office or in his safety deposit box."

"What about the five thousand dollars?" I asked.

Her head snapped up. Her eyes went round and sharp. "What five thousand dollars?"

"The check Donald drew yesterday afternoon. Five grand on the First National Bank. No payee name on the stub. Just the figures."

She stared at me, her chest rising and falling under the beaver coat. For three or four seconds she didn't breathe. Then she made a little dismissive gesture with one gloved hand.

"I know nothing of five thousand dollars. Donald had his own money. He did not discuss his banking with me."

"He discussed something with you," I said. "Or somebody did. Let's go back to last night, Mrs. Willsson. You were waiting with me in your drawing room. At ten-twenty the telephone rang. You answered it, got into your Buick, and drove away. At ten-forty Donald was shot four times in the eleven-hundred block of Hurricane Street. The neighbors heard the shots, looked out their windows, and saw a man and a woman bending over his body. At eleven-five you walked back into your house, white as a sheet, with blood on your left green slipper. You want to tell me who the man was?"

She let out a sharp, ragged gasp and dropped onto the edge of the rocking chair, burying her face in her gloved hands. Her shoulders shook, but she didn't cry. It was dry, shuddering terror.

I stood by the dresser, lit another cigarette, and waited. In my line of work you see a lot of people shake. Some of them shake because they're innocent and scared to death, and some shake because they're guilty and their stories are falling apart. Most of the time it looks exactly the same.

After a minute she took her hands down from her face. Her eyes were dry, but dark and hollow.

"It was not what you think," she whispered.

"Tell me what it was."

"The telephone call—at twenty past ten—it was a woman. She spoke with a rough, coarse voice. She said: 'If you want to see your husband alive, come to the eleven-hundred block of Hurricane Street. He has been trapped by Whisper's people.' Then she hung up."

"Did you recognize the voice?"

"No. Never in my life had I heard it. I was terrified. Donald had been receiving threats for two weeks because of the editorials in the *Herald*. I took the car and drove as fast as I could."

"Go on," I said.

"When I turned into Hurricane Street, it was dark—very dark, with only one street lamp at the corner. My headlights shone upon something lying on the sidewalk near an alley. It was Donald. He was lying on his back." She swallowed hard, her throat trembling. "There was a man kneeling over him. When my car lights hit him, the man sprang up, turned his back, and ran into the alleyway."

"What did the man look like?"

"He wore a dark overcoat and a gray cap pulled down. That is all I saw. He was fast, like an animal. I stopped the car and ran to Donald. I knelt in the dirt. I took his head in my hands. His shirt was—there was so much blood. He did not speak. He gave one little sigh and died in my arms."

"And you got blood on your shoe," I said.

"Yes. On my shoe, on my gloves. I heard windows opening above. People were shouting. I knew—I knew what this city was. Elihu hated me from the day Donald married me in Paris. The police are all in the pay of the gamblers. If I was found there alone beside my murdered husband, they would say I killed him. They would hang me or put me in a cage. I panicked. I ran to my car and drove home."

"Why didn't you tell me when you got back to the house?"

"I was afraid of you," she said, looking straight into my eyes. "Donald had told me he sent for an operative from San Francisco, but I did not know you. I did not know if you were working for Donald or for his father. In this city everyone is bought. Everyone!"

She leaned forward, her gloved fingers gripping the carved wooden arms of the rocker.

"You must believe me," she said passionately. "I did not kill Donald. I loved him. He was the only good man in this dreadful place. Elihu is telling Chief Noonan that I shot him. He wants the police to arrest me so the Willsson name will not be disgraced by Donald's crusades."

"Chief Noonan hasn't arrested you yet," I remarked.

"Because he is waiting to see who will pay him more—Elihu or Whisper Thaler! Noonan does not care who killed Donald. Nobody in Personville cares!"

She opened her black leather purse and pulled out a thick roll of green bills bound with a rubber band. She held it out toward me.

"Donald brought you here to do a job," she said, her voice shaking with urgency. "He paid you a retainer. I will double it. Here is one thousand dollars. Take it. Find the man who shot Donald in Hurricane Street. Clear my name before Elihu and his gangsters destroy me."

I looked at the roll of bills. It was real money, but I didn't reach for it.

"Put it back in your bag, Mrs. Willsson," I told her.

"You refuse?"

"The Continental Detective Agency doesn't work that way," I said. "We don't take side money from clients' widows while the original contract is floating around in the morgue. Donald Willsson hired the Agency. If the Agency tells me to investigate his murder, I investigate it on the Agency's regular per diem and expenses. If the Agency tells me to drop it, I pack my grip and go back to San Francisco."

"And what will you do now?"

"Right now I'm waiting for instructions from my branch manager. In the meantime, I'm looking around."

"And what will you tell the police?"

"Nothing," I said. "Chief Noonan hasn't asked me anything, and I don't volunteer information to police chiefs who let bootleggers run their town."

She looked at me for a long moment, trying to see what was behind my face. She didn't find much. I've got a round, thick face that doesn't advertise my thoughts unless I want them advertised.

Slowly, she put the roll of bills back into her purse and snapped the clasp shut.

"You are a very hard man, Mr. Neill," she said softly.

"I'm a fat man who likes to earn his salary," I said. "If you take my advice, Mrs. Willsson, you'll go straight back to Mountain Boulevard, lock your doors, and stay there. If Whisper Thaler comes back, don't let him in. If Chief Noonan sends for you, demand a lawyer from outside Personville. And if you remember anything about that five thousand dollar check, call me."

She stood up, pulled her coat around her, and drew her veil down over her pale face.

"I know nothing of any check," she said coldly.

I opened the door, looked out into the hall to make sure it was clear, and let her out. She walked swiftly down the carpet without looking back, turned the corner toward the elevator, and was gone.

I closed the door, walked over to the desk, and checked my watch. It was twenty minutes past four.

I sat down at the small writing table, took a telegraph blank from the leather folder, and drafted a wire to the Old Man in San Francisco. The Old Man was the branch manager of the Continental—a tall, polite, white-haired gentleman who had the gentle manners of a bishop and the calculating soul of an adding machine. He didn't like long explanations and he hated wasted expenses.

I boiled the whole mess down to sixty words, read it over, and copied it onto a fresh blank in block letters:

*CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY* *SAN FRANCISCO CALIF*

*CLIENT DONALD WILLSSON SHOT DEAD IN HURRICANE STREET TEN-FORTY LAST NIGHT BEFORE FIRST INTERVIEW. LOCAL POLICE CHIEF NOONAN INACTIVE AND CONTROLLED BY LOCAL GAMBLERS. FATHER ELIHU WILLSSON REFUSES COOPERATION ACCUSES WIDOW. WIDOW ADMITS BEING AT SCENE IMMEDIATELY AFTER SHOOTING DENIES GUILT. MAX THALER ALIAS WHISPER ACTIVE AND HAS ISSUED THREAT TO OPERATIVE. WILLSSON DREW FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS ON FIRST NATIONAL BANK YESTERDAY AFTERNOON WHICH HAS NOT BEEN PRESENTED CASHED OR CERTIFIED. PROBABLE GANG WAR DEVELOPING. WIRE INSTRUCTIONS WHETHER TO CLOSE FILE OR CONTINUE INVESTIGATION ON UNPAID ESTATE RETAINER.*

*NEILL*

I put on my coat and hat, took the elevator down to the lobby, and walked out into the cold dusk.

Three doors down from the hotel entrance was a Western Union office. The office was small, bright, and smelled of stale tobacco and ozone. A sleepy young clerk in an unbuttoned vest sat behind the counter reading a detective magazine.

I handed him the yellow form. He counted the words with the eraser end of a yellow pencil, looked up at my face, looked back at the paper, and tapped the key on his desk.

"That'll be four dollars and sixty cents, mister," he said.

I paid him in silver, got my receipt, and watched the key clatter as he sent the dots and dashes singing out over the copper wires toward California.

"How long for a reply?" I asked.

"If the Frisco office is open, you ought to have an answer by nine tonight," he said. "We'll send it up to the Great Western."

I went back to the hotel, stopped in the dining room long enough to eat a tough steak and fried potatoes that tasted of old lard, and went up to my room.

By six o'clock, full night had settled over Personville.

I didn't turn on the electric light. I pulled the wooden rocking chair over to the window, propped my feet on the low sill, and looked out over the city.

From the third floor of the Great Western, Personville at night looked like an open furnace. Down in the valley, the tall smokestacks of the smelters thrust up into the black sky, vomiting plumes of yellow-red fire and thick greasy soot that drifted across the rooftops. Every few minutes a blast furnace would dump its slag, lighting up the low-hanging clouds with an angry orange glare that made the brick buildings look like they were smeared with fresh blood.

Below my window, Broadway was noisy with the night shift coming off and the town's nightlife waking up. Streetcars clanged and screeched on the curved rails. Drunks shouted outside the saloons. Somewhere two blocks away an automobile backfired with three sharp cracks that sounded uncomfortably like a .32 automatic.

I sat there in the dark, smoking one Fatima after another, letting the ash drop into a metal tray on the sill.

The wire was on the Old Man's desk in San Francisco by now. If he knew anything about Personville, he'd probably wire me to catch the first train west and let the local wolves tear each other to pieces. If he felt like collecting the rest of Donald Willsson's fee from the estate, he'd tell me to stay and dig.

Either way, the biggest piece on the board was still missing.

Donald Willsson hadn't been a fool. He had lived in Paris, worked on newspapers, and known enough about his father's empire to know that Poisonville was a slaughterhouse. Yet yesterday at three o'clock he had drawn a check for five thousand dollars—a fortune in a town where you could hire a gunman for fifty bucks—and had walked out with it in his pocket.

The bank hadn't seen it. Albury hadn't certified it. Whisper Thaler was breaking into houses trying to find papers, and Donald's French widow was driving through the dark with blood on her shoes, swearing she knew nothing about five grand.

I blew a ring of gray smoke at the dirty windowpane and watched it dissolve against the glare of the smelters.

Five thousand dollars of dead man's money was floating around Personville in somebody's pocket. And in a town like this, five thousand dollars was enough to buy a lot of bullets before the night was over.

When Mary Lennox opened her eyes, the railway carriage had ceased its rattling and was slowing down with a loud grinding of iron against iron. Outside the rain had not stopped, but it was no longer gray; it was black, and the yellow lights of a little country station flared through the wet window panes like smeary torches.

Mrs. Medlock was already bustling about, shaking the creases out of her purple dress and settling her bonnet so that the velvet flowers trembled with importance.

"Wake up, child," she said briskly, gathering her bags and umbrella. "Here we are at last. Thwaite Station. And a dreary enough night to arrive in Yorkshire, goodness knows."

Mary stood up stiffly. Her limbs felt cramped and cold, and her little black-gloved hands were numb. She smoothed her black frocks in her sour, silent way, not answering Mrs. Medlock by so much as a nod. She did not want to talk, and she did not want Mrs. Medlock to think she was glad to have arrived. She followed the stout housekeeper down the carriage steps onto the wet wooden planks of the platform, where the damp mist hung heavy in the air and smelled of smoke and wet earth.

A solitary porter with a lantern was bustling by with their small luggage, but near the station exit, standing under the dark overhang of the wooden roof, stood a tall figure waiting for them.

Mrs. Medlock stopped so abruptly that Mary nearly ran into her black silk mantle.

"Mercy on us!" Mrs. Medlock gasped under her breath, her red cheeks going slightly mottled. "Whatever is he doing here?"

The man standing under the lamp was wrapped in a long, dark traveling cloak with a high collar turned up against the damp, but even in the dim light Mary could see that his shoulders were uneven and that his back had a strange, heavy crook to it. He was not old, but his dark hair was streaked with gray, and his face was pale, thin, and harsh, with deep lines carved about his mouth. He looked gloomy and miserable, as if he had never smiled in his whole life and never intended to smile again.

Mary stared at him with her sharp, obstinate little eyes. She knew at once that this was Mr. Archibald Craven. He was the hunchback her cousin Basil had told her about, and the husband of the pretty lady who had died.

He did not come forward to meet them with any pleasant words, nor did he offer his hand. He merely stood where he was, looking down at them with dark, brooding eyes that seemed to look right through them without seeing them at all.

"You have brought her, Mrs. Medlock," he said. His voice was low and harsh, with a cold, tired sound in it.

"Yes, sir," Mrs. Medlock answered, dropping a quick, flustered curtsy. "We had a long journey, sir, but we've arrived safe and sound. This is the child—Mary."

Mr. Craven cast a single, indifferent glance down at Mary. His eyes rested on her thin, sallow little face, her limp hair, and her sullen expression for only a fraction of a second, and a slight spasm of pain or distaste seemed to pass across his forehead, as if looking at her reminded him of something he wished to forget.

"She is very small," he murmured, speaking more to himself than to them. "And very plain. Put her in the brougham, Mrs. Medlock. I am riding ahead across the moor. Pitcher has his orders."

He did not touch her, nor did he say good evening, nor ask her a single question about her voyage from India. He turned on his heel without another syllable and strode away into the shadows toward the back of the station where a groom stood holding a tall black horse. In another moment he was gone into the rainy night.

"Well!" breathed Mrs. Medlock, recovering herself and taking Mary firmly by the arm to steer her toward the waiting carriage. "I never knew him to come to the station in all the years I've had the place. He must have had business with the stationmaster. But you see what he's like. He won't have any bother with young ones, and the less you're seen by him, the better for everyone."

"I do not care to see him," said Mary, holding her head high and pulling her arm away. "He is very ugly and rude."

"Hold your tongue, Miss Mary," said Mrs. Medlock, though she looked rather as if she agreed with her. "Little girls shouldn't pass remarks on their elders and betters."

They climbed into the brougham, which was a comfortable, dark carriage lined with cushioned cloth. A thick rug was thrown over their knees, and the door was shut with a heavy click. Outside, the coachman clicked his tongue, the whip cracked faintly in the wet air, and the horses started off into the dark.

At first they drove through what seemed to be a quiet village street with a few low, stone cottages where lights shone in the windows, but very soon the cottages were left behind, and the road began to climb steadily upward. The darkness outside became so thick that it looked like a great wall of black velvet pressed against the glass, and the wind began to rise.

It was not a wind like any Mary had ever heard in India. In India, storms were hot and violent, bringing sheets of red dust or torrential floods of warm, suffocating rain. This wind was cold and wild; it roared and shrieked as if it were a live thing sweeping across an endless space, beating against the sides of the carriage and making the window panes rattle in their frames.

"What is that noise?" Mary asked, staring into the blackness. "Is it the sea?"

"No, it's not the sea," answered Mrs. Medlock, pulling her mantle closer about her shoulders. "It's the moor. We're on it now. It's miles and miles of wild land, with nothing on it but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing living but wild ponies and sheep. When the wind gets up out here, it blows fit to knock you down. You can see nothing tonight, but tomorrow you'll see what a lonesome, barren wilderness it is."

Mary leaned her forehead against the glass. She could see nothing at all except the yellow glimmer of the carriage lamps falling on the wet, rutted road and the rough patches of dark heath on either side. It felt as if they were driving across the very edge of the world, into a great, empty ocean of darkness.

Suddenly, the carriage gave a violent lurch. The horses snorted and backed into the harness, the iron brakes ground against the wheels with a loud squeal, and the brougham came to an abrupt standstill, tilting slightly into the ditch.

"Gracious goodness!" exclaimed Mrs. Medlock, clutching at the window strap to save herself. "What's happened now? Have we lost a wheel?"

The coachman shouted to the horses from his box, his voice nearly carried away by the blast of the gale. He climbed down from his seat, and they could see his lantern swinging wildly in the blackness as he walked to the horses' heads.

Mrs. Medlock lowered the window an inch or two and stuck her bonnet out into the gale. "John! John! What is the matter with you? Why have you stopped?"

"There's a great heap o' stones and a broken sheep-hurdle right athwart t' road, ma'am!" the coachman's voice came back, thick and muffled by the roaring wind. "Must ha' washed down off t' bank in t' cloudburst. T' horses won't set foot past it till I clear it aside!"

"Well, make haste then!" Mrs. Medlock scolded, pulling her head in and shaking the rain droplets from her velvet flowers. "The child will catch her death o' cold sitting here, and so shall I!"

While Mrs. Medlock was grumbling and settling her skirts, Mary looked at the brass latch on the carriage door. A sudden, obstinate curiosity took hold of her. She had never been outside in a place where there were no houses, no streets, and no people. In India she had always been kept inside the bungalow or carried in a palanquin, surrounded by servants with fans and umbrellas.

Before Mrs. Medlock could see what she was about, Mary reached out her thin black-gloved hand, turned the heavy handle, and pushed the carriage door open.

The wind rushed into the carriage like a great, icy wave, nearly blowing Mrs. Medlock's bonnet off her head. But before the housekeeper could utter a word, Mary had slipped down the iron step and set her feet firmly on the wet, rough ground of the moor.

The moment she touched the earth, the gale caught her cloak and whipped it around her knees. The air was bitterly cold, but when she drew a breath it felt so sharp and fresh that it seemed to go straight down into her lungs and wake up every part of her body. It smelled entirely different from anything she had ever smelled before—it did not smell of flowers or dust or stale curry; it smelled of soaked turf, wet stone, and wild, bitter plants that grew in the rain.

She stood in the pitch dark by the carriage wheel for a full minute, looking out into the vast, howling blackness. She could see the coachman in the yellow circle of his lantern, heaving heavy stones and splintered wood to the side of the road, his breath steaming in the light. Beyond the lantern's glow there was nothing—only an immense, endless expanse of roaring darkness stretching away into the sky. It was strange and wild, and though she was only a little sour-faced girl standing in the cold rain, she felt a queer, prickling sensation in her chest that was not fear at all, but a sort of angry, wondering excitement.

"Mary Lennox!" a shrill voice screamed from the inside of the carriage. A plump, strong hand reached out through the open door, caught Mary by the collar of her cloak, and yanked her bodily back into the vehicle.

Mrs. Medlock slammed the door shut with a bang that shook the glass.

"You wicked, contrary little monkey!" cried Mrs. Medlock, panting with fright and anger as she shook the water from Mary's shoulders. "Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? Stepping out onto the black moor in the dead o' night! You might have fallen straight into a bog-hole and been swallowed up whole, or been trampled under the horses' feet! What did you think you were doing?"

"I wanted to see what the moor was like," Mary answered stubbornly, sitting back against the cushions and smoothing her wet frock with cold fingers. "And I was not swallowed up. It is only wind and blackness, and the air is much nicer than it is in here."

"Well, of all the unnatural children!" Mrs. Medlock muttered, staring at her in genuine disbelief. "You haven't got the sense you were born with, that's what I say. A nice time I'm going to have with you, I can see that."

Outside, the coachman climbed back onto the box, shouted to his team, and the carriage gave a heave and rolled forward over the cleared road.

They drove on for what seemed a very long time, climbing up and down dark hills, with the wind howling in the gorse bushes, until at last the carriage turned sharply through a pair of high iron gates and entered a long, winding avenue of great trees. The branches met overhead, groaning and creaking in the gale as if they were angry giants, and the horses' hooves sounded softer on the gravel drive.

Presently they drew up before an enormous, rambling building of gray stone. It looked vast and dark and mysterious in the rainy night. There were high gables and rows of stone-mullioned windows, but almost all of them were black and unlit. Only in two or three windows on the ground floor did a dull, yellow light gleam through the thick panes.

The coachman opened the door, and Mrs. Medlock hurried Mary out of the carriage and up a wide flight of stone steps into the house. A heavy oak door, studded with iron nails, was opened by an old man in black livery with white hair and a bent back, who held a tall brass candlestick in his hand. This was Pitcher, the old servant Mrs. Medlock had spoken of on the train.

"The master has ridden in and gone straight to his study in the West Wing," Pitcher said in a dry, rustling whisper, scarcely glancing at Mary. "He left word that she was to be taken to her rooms at once and kept quiet. He will not see her tonight, nor tomorrow either."

"I didn't suppose he would," answered Mrs. Medlock. "Come along, child."

She led Mary across a vast, echoing hall. It was a cavernous place with high stone arches that vanished into the shadows above. The walls were covered with dark oak paneling, old banners, and rows of suits of armor that glinted coldly in the candlelight, looking like silent iron soldiers standing guard in the gloom. Staring down from between the arches were the painted faces of men and women who had lived hundreds of years ago—men with stiff white ruffs and swords, and ladies with pale, severe faces and high velvet caps.

Mary walked silently behind Mrs. Medlock, her boots clicking sharply on the stone flags. They went up a wide, sweeping staircase of dark oak, so wide that six people could have walked abreast upon it, and down a long, narrow gallery lined with shut doors. The house smelled of centuries of cold stone, beeswax, and damp air, and it seemed so silent and empty that Mary felt as if she had been brought to live in a tomb.

At the very end of a second long corridor, Mrs. Medlock opened a heavy door and ushered Mary into a large room.

It was a spacious room, but it was gloomy, like everything else in the house. A coal fire was burning brightly in the iron grate, casting dancing red shadows across the dark furniture and the heavy, faded tapestries that covered the walls. Through a wide archway at one side, Mary could see an adjoining bedchamber with a great four-poster bed hung with dark green curtains.

"There," said Mrs. Medlock, taking off her own bonnet with a sigh of relief. "This is your nursery, and that's your bedroom through there. You are to live here. You'll have your meals brought to you, and you can play about in these rooms, but you must not go wandering down the passages, for Mr. Craven won't have it. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Mary, taking off her black crêpe hat and dropping it on a chair. "I do not wish to wander."

"Well, that's a good thing," said Mrs. Medlock. "I'll go down and see about your supper. It ought to be ready by now."

She bustled out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Mary stood by the hearth, holding her cold, thin hands toward the blaze. The warmth of the fire felt good, but the room was so big and strange that it made her feel smaller and yellower than ever. On the walls, the figures in the tapestries—huntsmen with horns and dogs chasing a white deer through a forest—seemed to move slightly in the draft from the door.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and it opened. It was not Mrs. Medlock who entered, nor was it a maidservant with a white cap, but a manservant carrying a heavy wooden tray covered with a white napkin.

He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a ruddy, good-natured face, rough brown hair, and large hands that looked as if they were more accustomed to digging ditches or shoeing horses than carrying tea trays. He wore a dark woolen coat and thick leather shoes that squeaked as he crossed the floor.

He set the heavy tray down upon the round table near the fire and took off the metal dish covers with a flourish. A savory steam rose into the air: there was a plate of hot roasted mutton swimming in rich brown gravy, a bowl of steaming potatoes, a loaf of crusty bread with yellow butter, and a jug of warm milk.

The manservant turned around, wiped his hands on his dark apron, and looked down at Mary with twinkling gray eyes.

"There now, little miss," he said in a loud, hearty voice that seemed to bounce off the high ceiling. "Here’s thy supper, piping hot from t' kitchen. Tha looks fair clemmed, an' as skinny as a dry twig. Tha’d best fall to an' fill thy belly whilst it’s reet warm, for t' wind on t' moor takes t' meat off a body's ribs if they don't eat hearty."

Mary stared at him in utter astonishment and distaste. In India, native servants did not look children in the face, nor did they speak in a loud, boisterous voice, and they certainly never spoke unless they were commanded to do so. Moreover, the words he used sounded so strange and thick that they were like a foreign language.

"I cannot understand what you are saying," Mary said in her crossest, haughtiest voice, drawing herself up to her full height. "Why do you talk so queerly? Why don't you speak properly?"

The manservant burst into a great, roaring laugh that made the dishes on the tray rattle.

"Eh, bless thy little heart!" he exclaimed, slapping his thigh. "Tha canna understand plain Yorkshire? Well, I reckon tha’ll larn it fast enough if tha stays at Misselthwaite long enough! It’s honest folk's talk, miss, and there’s nowt queer about it except to them as is used to London gibberish. Eat thy mutton, lass, and get some color into them yellow cheeks o' thine."

"You are very rude," said Mary, with her chin in the air. "In India, servants were not allowed to laugh at me."

"Happen they weren't," said the manservant cheerfully, not in the least abashed by her sour looks. "But tha’rt on t' Yorkshire moor now, little miss, and we're a plain-spoken lot. Eat thy meat afore it goes cold, or Mrs. Medlock’ll have summat to say."

He gave her another good-humored grin, turned on his squeaking boots, and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Mary stood alone in the firelight, her face burning with indignation. She hated him, and she hated Yorkshire, and she thought everyone in England was rude and disagreeable. But the smell of the hot mutton and potatoes was so delicious that, after glaring at the door for a minute, she walked over to the table, climbed into a high-backed chair, and began to eat. She had not eaten since the early afternoon, and though she was determined to be miserable, she ate every scrap of the meat, three potatoes, and two thick slices of bread and butter, and drank the whole jug of milk.

When she had finished, Mrs. Medlock came back into the room to take away the tray.

"Well," said the housekeeper, looking at the empty plates with some satisfaction. "You've found your appetite, at any rate. That's one good thing. John said you told him he spoke queerly. You'd better get used to it, for everyone here talks broad Yorkshire, except Mr. Craven and me."

"I do not wish to talk to anyone," said Mary stiffly.

"You won't have much chance," Mrs. Medlock replied. "Now then, it's past ten o'clock. Get into your nightgown and get into bed. There's no one going to come and wait on you tonight, so you'll have to manage for yourself."

Mary looked at her with a sullen frown. She had never undressed herself in her life. In India, Saidie had always unbuttoned her frocks, pulled off her stockings, and brushed her hair while Mary sat idle and slapped her when she was clumsy. But she was too proud to ask Mrs. Medlock for help, so she turned her back and began to fumble clumsily with the buttons at the back of her bodice.

Mrs. Medlock watched her for a moment, shook her head with a click of her tongue, and walked into the adjoining bedroom to turn down the bedclothes.

After a great deal of struggling, Mary managed to pull off her black frock and petticoats. She found a heavy flannel nightgown laid out on the foot of the bed, slipped it over her head, and pulled off her shoes and stockings. Her fingers were clumsy and stiff, and she felt crosser than ever, but she walked into the bedchamber and climbed up into the massive four-poster bed.

The linen was cool and clean, smelling faintly of dried lavender, and the feather mattress was so soft that she sank deep down into it.

Mrs. Medlock came over, pulled the heavy quilts up to Mary's chin, and banked the coals in the grate with an iron shovel so they would not blaze too fast.

"There," said Mrs. Medlock, blowing out the candles on the dressing table, so that the room was plunged into darkness except for the dull crimson glow of the hearth. "Go to sleep now. You'll be told your rules in the morning."

She walked to the door, opened it, and was just stepping out into the long corridor when a sudden sound broke through the house.

Outside, the storm was still raging, roaring across the unseen moor and beating against the heavy stone walls with a hollow boom. But beneath the howling of the gale, coming from somewhere far away down the dark, locked corridors of the huge mansion, there was another sound altogether.

It was a strange, muffled noise—a low, rhythmic thumping and scraping, followed by the dull rattle of a heavy iron bolt and a long, smothered murmur that rose and fell like a person groaning in restless misery behind a stone wall.

Mary sat bolt upright in the great bed, clutching the counterpane to her chest with both hands, her eyes wide in the dark.

"Listen!" she cried out sharply to Mrs. Medlock. "What is that? What is that sound in the house?"

Mrs. Medlock stopped dead in the doorway. For a single second, her stout figure went rigid against the dim light from the corridor, and she looked back over her shoulder with a sharp, uneasy twitch of her head. Then her voice came back, hard, impatient, and unnecessarily loud.

"It's nothing, I tell you!" she snapped, though her hand tightened on the door latch. "It's only the wind! When the wind blows across the moor, it gets into the chimneys and whistles through the empty rooms and rattles the locks in the West Wing. It makes all manner of queer sounds in a great barn of a house like this. Lie down and go to sleep, and don't go fancying you hear things that aren't there!"

She stepped out quickly and pulled the heavy oak door shut behind her. The iron latch fell into its socket with a loud, final click, and the sound of her brisk footsteps echoed away down the stone passage until there was complete silence in the corridor outside.

Mary did not lie down. She remained sitting upright in the dark, staring at the closed door and the faint red gleam of the dying fire on the polished floorboards.

The wind was still shrieking outside the window, howling around the stone gables and shaking the leaded panes. But Mary was not a foolish child, and she was not easily deceived. She had listened to the wind all through the long drive across the moor; she knew the sound of the gale screaming across the open heather and the sound of the trees thrashing against the roof. The wind was outside, wild and cold in the open night.

The sound she had heard was not the wind. It was inside the house—somewhere down the long, locked passages where the suits of armor stood and the doors were shut. It was a living, moving sound, and Mrs. Medlock had lied to her.

Mary drew her knees up to her chest under the heavy quilts and stared into the blackness of the strange, enormous room, her small, thin face set in a hard, stubborn mask.

She was Mistress Mary Quite Contrary, and she had never in her life allowed anyone to keep a secret from her if she could help it. She did not care for Mrs. Medlock, and she did not care for Mr. Archibald Craven, and she did not intend to obey their foolish rules. As she lay there in the dark, listening to the wild storm raging over Misselthwaite Manor, she made up her mind that she would not rest until she had found out for herself what that sound was, and where it came from.

Madame Ratignolle and Robert walked slowly along the sandy path leading from the beach. Adèle clung to the young man’s arm with unreserved reliance, resting a good share of her weight upon his shoulder as she paused now and then to adjust her gauze veil. The yellow camomile sent up a pungent fragrance under the midday sun, and the glistening orange trees stood motionless in the heat.

Robert accommodated his stride to hers, carrying her diminutive roll of needlework in his free hand.

"You should not have walked so far, Madame Adèle," he said, looking down with good-humored solicitude. "The sun is merciless today."

"Ah, but it was delightful sitting by the water," she sighed, fanning herself. "Edna is so charming a companion. She is quiet, yet when she speaks, it is like a little window opening into a room locked for a hundred years."

Robert looked back toward the beach, where the white tent was visible as a small patch against the sand. His handsome face assumed an expression of unusual gravity.

"She is unlike any woman I have ever known," he said, his voice dropping into a thoughtful key. "There is something in the way she looks upon the sea, as if she were listening for a sound none of the rest of us can hear. One feels that she is waking from a long sleep, and has not yet decided whether she wishes to open her eyes upon our world."

Madame Ratignolle smiled indulgently, acknowledging his poetic fancy without taking it seriously.

"You are always a poet, Robert," she said, tapping his sleeve lightly. "Come, help me up these steps; my poor ankles feel as though they were made of lead."

By the time Edna returned to the cottage with the children and the nursemaids, the heat had reached its height. The two boys were cross with fatigue; the quadroon took them away into the shaded back room for their bath and afternoon nap.

Edna entered her room and unbuttoned her muslin gown, letting it fall upon the floor. She poured water from the earthenware pitcher and bathed her face and throat, the cool moisture evaporating instantly in the close air. The green shutters, turned to exclude the glare, plunged the room into a restful twilight.

A light knock sounded at the gallery door. The mulatto boy who ran errands for the main house stood there with a small yellow envelope on a tin tray.

"A dispatch for madame," he said.

Edna tipped the boy a coin and tore open the envelope. It was a telegram from Léonce, sent from his office on Carondelet Street:

"Detained by important cotton transactions. Cannot come out Saturday. Wire if you require additional funds. Léonce."

She read the lines twice, then folded the slip and laid it beside her silver hairbrushes.

A few weeks earlier, such a message would have caused her disappointment, or vexation at the disruption of established routine. But looking at her reflection in the dim mirror, she was conscious of neither grief nor anger. Instead, a wave of relief washed over her—a sensation so light and expansive that it seemed to lift a weight from her breast. The thought of Saturday coming and going without the restless, exacting presence of her husband gave her a sudden feeling of spaciousness. She was mistress of her own hours.

Later, when the fiercest heat had begun to abate, Edna walked across to the Ratignolle cottage. She found Adèle reclining on a wicker lounge upon the gallery, clad in a loose white peignoir, her golden hair gathered in a net. A pitcher of lemonade stood beside her.

"Ah, Edna, come sit down, *chère amie*!" cried Adèle. "The breeze is beginning to stir from the south. You look as cool and fresh as a water-lily."

Edna sat down, accepted a glass of the chilled drink, and mentioned the telegram from Léonce.

"Poor Monsieur Pontellier!" sighed Adèle, with genuine marital sympathy. "To be chained to a desk in the hot city! But men must attend to affairs. My Alphonse wrote that he is overwhelmed at the pharmacy, but he would not miss a Sunday for all the medicine in New Orleans." She touched Edna’s arm. "You will be lonely without him, *ma pauvre*."

"I shall manage," Edna replied simply.

Adèle looked at her with an affectionate smile. "Do you know, Robert was talking of you as we walked back from the beach this morning?"

Edna felt a faint warmth rise into her cheeks, but her voice remained even. "What had Robert to say of me?"

"He said the most extraordinary thing," laughed Adèle, adjusting the lace upon her bodice. "He said you were unlike any woman he had ever known—that you had the look of someone waking from a long sleep, and had not yet decided whether you wished to open your eyes upon our world. Was there ever such a boy for dramatic notions? I told him he was a poet, but he looked quite solemn."

Edna looked away toward the horizon where the sky met the Gulf. The words sank deeply into her, striking a chord that vibrated with an intense, secret resonance. She did not answer, but a quiet smile touched her lips.

Toward five o'clock, when the sun cast long, oblique shadows across the island, Edna left the cottage alone. She had told no one where she was going. The children were playing under the chênière with their nurse, and the other guests were gathered on the main gallery, drinking coffee and talking in desultory voices.

She walked down the path to the beach. The air had freshened; the choppy breeze of the morning had smoothed into a steady wind that rolled gentle swells upon the shore. The Gulf was bathed in a luminous, golden light, its surface glistening like beaten brass.

Unlocking her bath-house, Edna changed into her bathing suit. All that summer, Robert and the others had tried to teach her to swim. She had waded into the water day after day, filled with a childish terror of the vast element that seemed always ready to swallow her. She had splashed in the shallows, never daring to lift her feet from the sand, clinging to Robert’s hand whenever a swell lifted her from the bottom.

Now, stepping out upon the deserted beach, she felt no fear. A reckless, impulsive desire possessed her. The water beckoned with a soft, murmuring whisper, seductive and solitary.

She walked straight into the Gulf, feeling the cool water rise along her thighs, her waist, her bosom. When it reached her shoulders, she did not hesitate. Leaning forward, she surrendered her body to the swell.

She thrust out her arms and struck the water, kicking her feet behind her. To her astonishment, the water bore her up. She was floating, moving, sustaining herself. She took one stroke, then another, and another, cleaving the smooth surface with clean, natural motions. For the first time in her life, she was swimming.

A feeling of exultation—an intoxication of power and freedom—swept over her soul. She felt as though she had cast off some invisible shackle that had bound her since childhood. She swam a dozen yards out into the open water, laughing softly to herself in the solitude of the sea. She was master of herself and of the element that held her.

The dread of the deep had vanished. After a few moments, realizing the distance she had put between herself and the shore, she turned and swam back with easy, measured strokes until her feet touched the firm sand once more.

She walked up out of the foam, her heart beating rapidly with triumph. She would tell no one of this. It was a secret between herself and the sea, too precious to be shared with the chattering crowd on the gallery.

As she ascended the wooden steps leading to the bath-house gallery, drying her face with a towel, a dark figure seated in the shadow of the adjoining compartment caused her to pause.

It was the lady in black. She sat in her accustomed place, a black shawl drawn over her head, her ebony rosary resting upon her lap. For weeks Edna had seen her thus, a silent shadow gliding along the edges of the summer gaiety, never speaking, never looking up from her devotions.

Now, as Edna reached the top step, the lady in black raised her head. Her dark, sunken eyes fixed themselves upon Edna with singular intensity.

"You have been far out, madame," the woman said. Her voice was low and dry, like the rustle of dead leaves, yet clear and steady. "The water is deep, and the sea does not remember those who drown."

Edna stopped, startled by the voice she had never heard before. For an instant a strange chill passed over her, despite the warmth of the evening.

"I was not afraid," Edna replied, her voice ringing with a calm that surprised herself.

The lady in black made no answer. She merely lowered her gaze once more, and her pale fingers resumed their silent, mechanical counting of the beads.

Night fell swiftly over Grand Isle, bringing a purple sky studded with brilliant stars. A cool wind blew from the water, rustling the palmettos and carrying the endless murmur of the surf.

In the cottage, the two little boys lay sleeping under their white mosquito netting. Etienne’s cheek was pressed against his pillow, and Raoul had one small arm flung out across the sheet. Edna had looked in on them, smoothing their coverlets with a tender, absent hand, before walking out onto the dark gallery.

The Lebrun pension was quiet. The dining-room lamps were extinguished, and only a single lantern burned at the wharf, casting a wavering trail of yellow light across the black water.

Edna sat alone in the wicker rocker, her hands resting on the arms of the chair. She wore a loose white dressing-gown, and her hair, damp and smelling of salt, hung over her shoulders.

Léonce’s telegram lay on the table inside, forgotten. He would not come on Saturday. The days stretched before her, open and unburdened, like the wide green fields of her Kentucky childhood.

She rocked slowly, gazing out into the dark expanse of the Gulf, where the crests of the breakers gleamed faintly under the stars. In the stillness of the night, Robert’s words—as Adèle had repeated them that afternoon—came back to her mind, repeating themselves over and over with the persistent rhythm of the waves: *She has the look of someone waking from a long sleep, and has not yet decided whether she wishes to open her eyes upon our world.*

She closed her eyes and let the words echo in her soul, feeling the deep, mysterious stirring of a life she had only just begun to claim.