The Chapters

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*27 May.*--I am back in my study after a night that has left me with mixed feelings, yet on the whole more tranquil than I should have thought possible forty-eight hours ago. Quincey’s dinner was, as everything he touches is, frank, generous, and hearty. He had taken a private room at the Berkeley, and when I arrived he was already waiting by the hearth, with that keen, steady light in his brown eyes and that easy warmth of grip which always makes one feel that one is standing on solid bedrock. He said nothing of his own disappointment—not a single syllable, nor did he allow his face to betray a shadow; but the grasp of his hand told me everything. We understand one another without speech, Quincey and I.

Arthur arrived ten minutes later, looking radiant. He was flushed with happiness, his eyes shining, the very picture of youthful manhood in the full pride of fortune and love. When he entered, Quincey stepped forward and took him by both shoulders with a shout of genuine joy that would have done credit to a Texan prairie. For a moment I felt a sharp, bitter pang—a sudden tightening of the throat—as I saw the man who possessed that which I had lost; but it vanished almost instantly in the presence of Arthur’s unfeigned goodness and Quincey’s magnificent composure. If a man cannot be happy himself, the next best thing is to see his dearest friend exalted to the skies.

We sat down to a capital dinner. Quincey had ordered everything with exquisite care, yet without any ostentatious display. At first, as was natural, there was a certain restraint among us—a momentary hesitation, as if each of us feared to touch upon the one chord that vibrated in every heart. But Arthur, with that absolute simplicity of nature which is his greatest charm, broke through the ice at once. He took our hands across the white linen, and told us that he knew he was the most fortunate man alive, and that he valued our friendship only second to the treasure he had won. He spoke of Lucy with such tender reverence, such pure devotion, that neither Quincey nor I could have harboured a selfish thought.

Then Quincey rose, with his glass held high, and called for a toast.

“Boys,” he said, in that soft, drawling voice that conceals so much iron resolution, “we’ve stood by each other through thick and thin, and we’re going to stand together till the last round is fought. Here’s to the lady who has chosen the best fellow among us, and here’s to Art, who has won the sweetest prize on God’s earth. May their road be smooth, their sky clear, and their hearth-fire bright forever!”

We drank it standing, draining our glasses to the very drop. Arthur was deeply moved; his lip quivered, and for a moment he could not speak. He gripped Quincey’s hand, and then mine, in silence. Later in the evening we talked of old times—of our travels in the Andes and our adventures in the Pacific—until the small hours came on. When we parted on the pavement outside, under the quiet stars, I felt that a burden had been lifted from my soul. The wound is there still, and must ache in secret; but there is no poison in it. Work remains to me, and the duties of my station. To-morrow I return with redoubled energy to my studies in the asylum.

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*29 May.*--A strange, inexplicable occurrence has disturbed the scientific serenity of my morning. I spent several hours in the wards, and paid a prolonged visit to my pet patient, Renfield. He has been unusually quiet for the past two days, having abandoned his frantic pursuit of common house-flies in favour of an elaborate system of classification. He has captured a vast number of spiders, which he keeps in small pill-boxes and card cases, feeding them upon his hoard of insects with the most methodical precision. When I entered his room he was sitting upon the edge of his bed, with his little notebook upon his knee, making rapid numerical calculations in pencil.

I attempted to engage him upon the philosophy of his hobby, hoping to trace the exact origin of his belief that life can be accumulated or absorbed through successive organisms. He answered me rationally enough, displaying a surprising degree of formal logic, though shot through with that unmistakable eccentricity which marks the monomaniac.

“You see, doctor,” he said, holding up a large cross-spider suspended from a thread of silk, “it is all a question of distillation. The cruder forms pass into the higher. Nothing is lost; everything is conserved and refined. A ledger must be balanced, doctor. Debit and credit, life for life.”

“And what is the final balance to be, Renfield?” I asked, watching his countenance closely.

He chuckled—a low, dry sound—and closed his notebook with a sharp snap. Then he turned his eyes upon me. They were extraordinarily clear and luminous, possessing none of the dull opacity usual in patients of his class. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked straight into my face with an expression of the most penetrating gravity.

“Doctor,” said he, speaking in a quiet, conversational tone, “tell me something. How is Miss Lucy Westenra?”

The suddenness of the question, and the utter impossibility of his possessing such knowledge, struck me like a physical blow. I felt the blood rush to my temples, and for several seconds I could only stare at him in profound amazement. My private life is a sealed book here; not a single attendant or official in the asylum has ever heard me utter her name, nor have I received any correspondence addressed in her handwriting at this establishment.

“What do you know of Miss Westenra?” I demanded, perhaps with more sharpness than was professionally discreet. “Where have you heard that name?”

He did not flinch, but smiled a curious, inward smile, full of self-satisfied cunning. He leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and gazed up at the ceiling.

“Names, doctor, names,” he murmured softly. “Names fly about like thistle-down on the summer breeze. Some fall on stony ground, and some take root in quiet corners. Is she well? Is she happy? Does her heart beat peacefully in her bosom?”

“Answer me, Renfield,” I insisted, placing my hand upon his shoulder. “Who spoke to you of that lady?”

He instantly assumed an air of sullen obstinacy, shutting his lips firmly and refusing to utter another syllable. When I pressed him further, he merely shook his head and began to whisper rapidly to himself, counting the boxes of spiders upon his shelf. I was forced to leave him without extracting the slightest explanation. The circumstance has left a most disagreeable impression upon my mind. It is possible, of course, that in some moment of abstraction or fatigue I may have muttered her name aloud while pacing the corridors; the human mind under emotional stress plays strange tricks upon the tongue. Yet the man’s manner was so deliberate, so pointed, that it continues to haunt me. I must keep a strict watch upon his visitors, if indeed he has any, though the register shows none since his admission.

*Letter, Herr Gustav Weiss, Chief Clerk to the Imperial and Royal Postal Administration, Klausenburgh, to Miss Mina Murray.*

“*31 May.*

“Honoured Madam,--

“At the particular instance and request of Mr. Jonathan Harker, Solicitor, of Exeter, England, who has been residing for some weeks within our district upon important matters of legal administration, I take the liberty of addressing to you these present lines. Mr. Harker, being called away with great suddenness into the high mountainous tracts of the interior, where postal communication is irregular and at times wholly suspended, was unable to post his customary English correspondence with his own hand before taking carriage.

“He therefore instructed our bureau, under formal deposit, to forward to you the assurance of his continued health and safety. He desires me to inform you that the legal affairs of his noble client have proved unexpectedly intricate and protracted, requiring his personal attendance at several outlying properties and manorial archives. In consequence of these unforeseen professional duties, his departure from this country has been unavoidably postponed for a period of some weeks beyond his original calculation.

“Mr. Harker particularly requested that you should feel no anxiety on his behalf, as he is travelling in comfortable circumstances and under the hospitable guidance of local proprietors. He hopes to complete his business satisfactorily before the close of the summer and to resume his journey westward without further interruption.

“I have the honour to remain, Madam,

“Your obedient and humble servant,

“GUSTAV WEISS,

“*Chief Clerk*.”

*Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.*

“*2 June.*

“My dearest Lucy,--

“Your delightful, happy letter was like a burst of sunshine in my quiet schoolroom. I cannot tell you how my heart rejoiced for you when I read of Arthur’s proposal and of your great happiness. You deserve every blessing, my darling Lucy, and I know that in Arthur you have found a man worthy of your sweet and generous nature. How noble and splendid Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward have been, too! It is so rare to find men who can bear a bitter disappointment with such manly grace and unselfish loyalty. You must cherish their friendship always, as I know Arthur will.

“I have had news of Jonathan at last, though not directly under his own hand. Yesterday morning I received a formal, courteous letter from an official of the Postal Administration at Klausenburgh, written at Jonathan’s request. It appears that his legal business has extended far into the interior, among the mountain districts, where the estates of his client lie scattered, and where there are neither post-offices nor regular conveyances. He has been delayed, poor fellow, and will not be home quite so soon as we had hoped; but the clerk assures me that he is in excellent health and travelling in great comfort.

“I confess that when I first saw the foreign handwriting and the official seal upon the envelope my heart gave a terrible flutter; I am such a little coward when it comes to Jonathan. But I scolded myself roundly for my foolish fears. A solicitor’s clerk must go where his principal’s business calls him, and Mr. Hawkins has always told me that Jonathan possesses a prudence and resourcefulness far beyond his years. Still, I shall be thankful when his work abroad is finished and I can see his dear face again. I am working harder than ever at my shorthand and typewriting, so that everything may be in readiness for him on his return. I have already filled two notebooks with stenographic exercises, and can take down ordinary conversation with scarcely any omissions.

“Write to me soon, dearest Lucy, and tell me all your plans. Are you to remain in town, or are you and your mother going to the country? Wherever you go, my thoughts and prayers are ever with you.

“Your loving

“MINA.”

*Letter, the Hon. Arthur Holmwood to Dr. John Seward.*

“*Ring, Yorkshire*,

“*4 June.*

“My dear Jack,--

“I cannot leave England, even for a few days among the moors, without sending you a line to thank you once more from the very bottom of my heart for your goodness to me on the night of Quincey’s dinner. You and Quincey are the truest friends a man ever had. When I look upon my own great happiness, and think of what it cost you two brave fellows, I feel almost ashamed of my good fortune; but I know your noble hearts too well to doubt your love.

“I have run down to Ring to see after my father. The dear old governor is far from well, Jack; he seems to have lost his old vigour and appetite, and spends most of his days by the library fire, though the weather is mild and bright. He complains of a persistent lassitude and a failing of the pulse which our local practitioner seems unable to remedy. I wish with all my heart you could run down and take a look at him, but I know how tied you are by your duties at Purfleet. If you have a moment, drop me a prescription or a word of advice as to what tonic might best support his strength.

“Lucy writes to me every day—letters so sweet and full of innocent joy that they make me feel ten feet high. She and Mrs. Westenra are talking of going to the coast later in the season, but for the present they remain in Chatham Street. God bless you, old friend, and believe me,

“Ever your affectionate brother,

“ART.”

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*5 June.*--I have written to Arthur, giving him the best advice I can regarding Lord Godalming. From what he describes, it is a case of cardiac debility accompanied by senile anaemia; quiet, nourishing diet, and a mild course of digitalis and iron should afford relief, though at his lordship’s advanced age one must always be prepared for gradual deterioration.

As to my own household, the atmosphere remains curiously unsettled. Renfield’s conduct continues to present problems of the deepest psychological interest. Since his sudden inquiry regarding Miss Westenra, he has not repeated her name, but his general demeanour has undergone a remarkable transformation. His morbid craving for living creatures has entirely subsided; yesterday he threw all his spiders out of the window into the garden below, remarking with an air of immense dignity that their petty lives were no longer of any account to him.

“I have higher matters to occupy my mind, Dr. Seward,” he said, when I questioned him as to this sudden change of purpose. “The preparation is everything. When the master of a feast approaches, one does not waste one’s time counting crumbs upon the floor.”

When I asked him who this expected master might be, he merely laughed—a strange, triumphant laugh—and tapped his forehead. He then requested a Bible, which I gave him, and he has spent the entire afternoon reading the Old Testament with absorbed attention. His pulse is normal, his temperature cool, and his physical health remarkably robust. Yet there is a suppressed excitement in his eye which warns me to be vigilant.

*Telegram from Peter Hawkins, Exeter, to Miss Mina Murray, London.*

“*6 June.*

“Jonathan arrived here safe this morning. Business fully concluded. Joining you in London by five o’clock train.”

The taxi turned into the boulevard and we rode in the dark with the street-lamps flashing by against the glass. I put my arm along the back of the seat, not touching her, and Brett sat leaning into the leather with her eyes shut. She looked very tired. Under the lights that came into the cab her face looked white and hard, the skin drawn smooth over her cheekbones, her short hair brushed back flat.

“Don’t let’s go to the Parc Montsouris,” she said without opening her eyes.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Take me to the Select.”

I tapped on the glass and told the driver to go to the Boulevard du Montparnasse, to the Café Select. The driver nodded without turning his head and swung the cab around at the corner. The tires skidded a little on the wet asphalt where the street-cleaners had been hosing down the gutters.

“You looked very lovely tonight,” I said.

“Did I? I felt like death.”

“You didn’t look it.”

“One never does until the next morning. Then one looks like old iron.”

She opened her bag and took out a cigarette. I struck a match and held the flame in the cup of my hand. The light showed her fingers, long and square-tipped, and the hollows under her eyes. She drew the smoke in deep and let it out through her nose.

“You shouldn’t have brought that girl,” she said.

“I know.”

“She’s quite awful, you know.”

“She’s not so bad. She has bad teeth, but she’s all right.”

“She’s terrible, Jake. Why do you pick up people like that?”

“I don’t know. I was lonely.”

“You’re always lonely when you shouldn’t be.”

“I’m not lonely now,” I said.

“No. We’re together. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a great deal.”

The cab came up past the Luxembourg gardens. The iron railings were dark and sharp in the night, and behind them the trees stood heavy and black against the sky. A cool smell of leaves and wet gravel came through the window. It had been very hot in the dancing-club and the air in the cab felt clean.

“I met a man last Thursday,” Brett said. She tapped the ash of her cigarette into the palm of her glove and blew it away. “A man named Julian Sterling.”

“Never heard of him.”

“No. You wouldn’t have. He’s not in your line.”

“What is his line?”

“He has pots of money. Rolling in it. Ships or mines or something quite dreadful in Liverpool.”

“Is he English?”

“Frightfully. Wears a stiff collar and carries an umbrella even when it isn’t raining. He told me he owned three houses and an island in Scotland.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Told him to go to hell, of course.” She laughed, a short dry little laugh. “Then he sent three dozen white roses to the hotel. Huge things with stems like walking-sticks. The chambermaid thought someone had died.”

“Did you keep them?”

“Gave them to the hall porter’s daughter. She was getting married to a plumber.”

“That was very generous.”

“Wasn’t it? I’m extraordinarily noble when I’m tight.”

The taxi pulled up in front of the Select. The terrace was bright under the big awning and there were people sitting at the tables, but inside it was almost empty. The white aprons of the waiters showed clean under the electric lights. I paid the driver and gave him a tip, and we went inside and took a table against the leather wall-bench near the back.

The waiter came over. It was Henri.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Barnes. Bonsoir, Madame.”

“Good evening, Henri,” I said. “Bring us two brandies with soda.”

“Right away, Monsieur.”

Brett took off her hat and put it on the bench beside her. She shook her head and her short dark hair fell into place. She rested her elbows on the marble top of the table and looked at me across the glasses Henri set down. We squirted the siphon into the brandy. The ice clinked against the glass.

“Well,” Brett said, raising her glass. “Here’s to the lot of them.”

“Here’s to you.”

We drank. The brandy was good and sharp and warmed the back of my throat.

“You’re very quiet tonight, Jake,” she said.

“I was thinking.”

“Don’t do that. It’s bad for the coat of the stomach.”

“It’s bad for everything.”

“Julian Sterling wanted to take me to Biarritz,” she said. “He has a motor car the size of an omnibus.”

“Why don’t you go?”

“I can’t stand him. He talks about his investments through his nose.”

“You could make him buy you things.”

“I don’t want his things.”

“You could buy some new frocks.”

“I don’t care about frocks,” Brett said. She looked down at her glass and turned it round in the wet ring on the marble. “I only care about you, Jake. You know that.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Don’t say ‘sure’ like that.”

“How should I say it?”

“Say it as if you meant it.”

“I mean it all right,” I said.

“We have such a splendid time together, don’t we, darling?” she asked, looking up at me with her clear, cool eyes.

“We have the best time of anybody,” I said.

“Nobody understands things the way we do.”

“It’s very simple,” I said. “We just don’t think about them.”

“That’s it. We’re very good at not thinking.”

“We’re wonderful at it,” I said.

I felt completely hollow and dead inside, like an empty cellar with the wind blowing through the grate.

Brett took another sip of her drink. “It’s a funny life, isn’t it?”

“Very funny.”

“I think I should like to go to Spain with you,” she said. “When are you going?”

“Late in June. For the fiesta at Pamplona.”

“I’d like that. I’ve never seen the bulls.”

“You’d like the bulls. They’re very fine.”

“Are they cruel?”

“It depends on how you look at it. It’s a tragedy, not a sport.”

“I like tragedies,” Brett said. “As long as they happen to other people.”

We sat for a while and finished the brandies. Brett looked at her wrist-watch. It was half past two.

“I left my compact at that dancing-place,” she said suddenly.

“Did you?”

“Left it on the table by the wall when those boys came in. The gold one with the small crest.”

“I left fifty francs with the patronne,” I said. “In an envelope for Georgette.”

“You won’t see that again,” Brett said.

“I might. The patronne knows me.”

“Let’s go back and see,” Brett said. “We can take a cab and have a look.”

“You don’t want to go all the way back there.”

“Why not? It’s early yet. Nothing happens here until four.”

I called Henri and paid for the drinks and the saucers. We went out to the boulevard. The air was turning colder and the wind had picked up from the west, bringing a smell of rain that had not fallen yet. A lone taxi came cruising down from the corner of the Raspail, and I whistled and held up my arm.

We got in and I told the driver to go back to the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève.

“Do you think your poule is still there?” Brett asked.

“Probably not. She probably went off with one of those lads.”

“They don’t have any money,” Brett said. “They’re frightfully decorative, but they haven’t got a sou between the lot of them.”

“They have enough for a cab.”

“They borrow it from one another. It goes round in a circle.”

The cab climbed the hill up behind the Pantheon. The narrow streets were empty and dark, with the tall old houses leaning in close overhead and the street-lamps few and far apart. The taxi stopped on the cobbles outside the bal musette. The lights were still burning behind the frosted glass of the entrance, but the accordion had stopped.

“Wait here,” I told Brett.

“Don’t be long, darling.”

I got down from the cab and pushed open the door of the bal.

The place smelled of stale sweat, sour wine, and cigarette stubs. The floor had been sprinkled with sawdust, and a boy in an apron was sweeping it into piles with a long broom. The tables were pushed back against the walls, and the chairs were stacked upside down on top of them, all except one table in the far corner under a dead gas fixture.

Georgette was sitting at that table.

She sat alone, with her coat buttoned up to her chin and her hands shoved deep into her pockets. A single thick glass with the dregs of a white wine stood before her on the bare wood. She looked very pale and angry in the flat light.

The patronne was behind the bar, counting small copper and nickel coins into neat stacks on the zinc. When the door opened, she looked up and pushed her spectacles back onto her forehead.

“Ah, Monsieur Barnes,” she said. “You return.”

“Good evening, Madame,” I said. “I came to see about my envelope.”

“It is here,” the patronne said. She reached under the counter and produced the white envelope, perfectly clean and sealed. “The young lady remained here. She did not leave with the young gentlemen.”

“Thank you,” I said. I took the envelope and put it in my inside pocket.

Georgette had turned her head and was watching me. Her small, dark eyes were hard.

“So,” she said in French. “The grand gentleman returns.”

I walked over to her table. “Hello, Georgette.”

“You have a fine way with people,” she said. “You bring a girl to a dance, you go off with your friends, and you leave her in a barn with a lot of sissies.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to go.”

“You had to go with that Englishwoman with the hair.”

“She’s an old friend.”

“She has no manners. None of you have any manners. The boys tried to buy me drinks on credit. The patronne refused them. Then they went away in a motor.”

“Did they?”

“Yes. They said they were going to Montmartre. They asked me to come along and pay the fares.” She made a spitting sound between her teeth. “A pack of hypocrites.”

“Did you have any supper?”

“I had what you bought me. It was not enough to keep a dog alive.”

I took the envelope from my pocket, broke the seal, and pulled out the fifty-franc note. I laid it on the table in front of her.

“Here,” I said. “Take this and get yourself some breakfast at the Halles.”

She looked at the note lying on the wood between her glass and her dirty fingernails. She did not touch it right away.

“What is this for?” she asked.

“For the evening. For the trouble.”

“You think you can pay for everything with paper,” she said. But she picked up the note, folded it twice, and slipped it into her stocking. “You are not a bad boy, Jacob. But you are very stupid.”

“I know it,” I said.

“And your Englishwoman is not for you. She is for nobody. A woman like that eats men like radishes.”

“Good night, Georgette,” I said.

“Good night. If you see that painter from Liège, tell him I am at the Dôme every afternoon.”

“I’ll tell him.”

I went back to the bar. “Did anyone find a lady’s compact?” I asked the patronne. “Gold, with a small crest?”

“No, Monsieur,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing was left. We swept everywhere.”

“Thank you, Madame. Good night.”

“Good night, Monsieur.”

I went out into the street. The cool air hit me in the face and felt good after the smell of the room. The taxi engine was idling with a steady, hollow thrumming on the stones. I got in and pulled the door shut.

“Did you find it?” Brett asked.

“No compact. But Georgette was still there.”

“Poor devil,” Brett said. “Did you give her the money?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an awful fool about money, Jake.”

“It’s only fifty francs.”

“It’s fifty francs you won’t have tomorrow.”

“I’ll have plenty tomorrow. My cable money comes in on Friday.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Wherever you like.”

“Tell him to drive down to the river,” she said. “I want to see the water.”

I gave the driver the direction, to the Quai de la Tournelle, and leaned back. Brett took my hand and held it. Her fingers were very cold. She did not say anything more for a long time as the cab rolled down the slope of the hill toward the Seine. The streets were completely empty now, washed clean by the municipal carts, the grey shop fronts shuttered behind heavy iron grilles. A stray cat darted across the headlamps and vanished under a wooden gate.

We reached the quay and the driver slowed down, following the curve of the river wall. Across the dark water the great buttresses of Notre-Dame rose up black and sharp against the faint grey that was beginning to show in the eastern sky over the Charenton. The river looked oily and sluggish, with the reflections of the street-lamps stretching out across it in long, shimmering yellow tracks.

“It’s very quiet,” Brett whispered.

“It’s always quiet at this hour.”

“I wish it were like this all the time.”

“It wouldn’t do,” I said. “We’d go crazy.”

“I’m crazy already, darling. Haven’t you noticed?”

“You’re all right,” I said.

“No, I’m not. I’m quite thoroughly shot to pieces.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and held her against me. We sat that way without moving while the taxi moved slowly along the quay, past the locked bookstalls covered in their dark tarpaulins, past the Pont Saint-Michel, past the dark bulk of the Prefecture of Police.

“I have to go back to the hotel,” Brett said at last.

“All right.”

“Julian Sterling is coming round at ten to take me to lunch.”

“I thought you told him to go to hell.”

“I did. But he’s coming anyway. He wants to show me his motor car.”

“You’ll probably like the car,” I said.

“I probably shall. It has red leather seats.”

She laughed, but her voice was tired and thin.

At the corner of the bridge I told the driver to pull over to the curb. Brett sat up and smoothed her hair with both hands. She took out her lipstick in the faint morning light and touched her mouth without looking in a mirror, doing it by habit, her face calm and distant.

“You’re not coming up?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I have cables to write at ten.”

“Come and find me at the Select this afternoon.”

“About five?”

“Five would be lovely. Don’t be late, Jake.”

“I won’t be late.”

She leaned forward and pressed my hand with both of hers, tight, her fingers hard and urgent for a second.

“You’re a good chap, Jake. The best there is.”

“Good night, Brett.”

“Cheerio, darling.”

I got out of the cab and shut the door. The driver engaged the gear with a rasp and the taxi pulled away, its red tail-light bobbing over the cobblestones until it turned onto the bridge and disappeared across the river toward the Right Bank.

I stood on the pavement and watched the space where it had gone.

The dawn was coming up rapidly now, cold and grey and clean. A light mist hung over the surface of the Seine, drifting slowly between the stone piers of the bridge. Down below on the lower quay an old man with a long bamboo pole was setting up his lines, sitting on an upturned wicker basket with his coat collar turned up against the chill.

I turned up my own coat collar and started walking along the quai toward the Pont Neuf. My shoes made a hollow, clicking sound on the damp stones. The city was just beginning to wake; a two-horse dray loaded with crates of cabbages lumbered past on its way to the markets, the horses’ breath steaming in the cool morning air, the driver hunched asleep over the reins. Across the river the sky behind the towers of the cathedral had turned from pale grey to a cold, clear yellow. I walked alone by the water in the fresh morning, smelling the river and the wet dust of the stone parapet, watching the light spread out flat and pale across the roofs of Paris.

The fir plantation was a dreary place at the best of times, with the wind always moaning in the branches overhead like a creature in pain; but walking back through it with Mr. Franklin Blake by my side was as good as walking in a flower-garden.

To see a boy whom you have dandled on your knee come back to you as a grown man, with the bloom of youth on his cheeks and the polish of five foreign capitals on his manners, is a spectacle that warms an old servant’s heart. I looked at his boots, which were of some wonderful foreign leather as soft as a glove; I looked at his waistcoat, which had little gold buttons down the front like the buttons on a French marquis; and I looked at his handsome face, which was changing every half-minute from grave to gay, and from gay to grave, in a manner that fairly took my breath away.

That foreign varnish, to which I have already made reference, was thick upon him. A man who has lived among the Germans is apt to think too much; a man who has lived among the Italians is apt to feel too much; and a man who has lived among the French is apt to talk too much. Mr. Franklin had lived among all three, and the consequence was that you never quite knew where to have him. One moment he was as deep as a well in Germany; the next he was as hot as a volcano in Italy; and the next he was as light as a feather in France. But underneath it all, mind you, he was an English gentleman to the backbone—and my lady’s own nephew into the bargain.

“Betteredge,” says he, taking me by the elbow as we came out from under the dark trees on to the gravel drive, “you haven’t answered my question. Do you forgive me the seven-and-sixpence?”

“Sir,” I said, “the seven-and-sixpence was lent to you when you were twelve years old, to buy a brass cannon at the fair, which burst the first time you fired it off and singed your eyebrows. If you pay me back the principal at this distance of time, you will owe me twenty-four years of compound interest, which I am too good a Christian to demand of my lady’s sister’s son.”

He burst out laughing, and slapped me on the shoulder in a way that made my old joints rattle.

“You are the same incomparable Gabriel as ever!” says he. “The only unchanging thing in a world of turmoil and revolution. But come, Betteredge! You are wondering in your own mind why I have descended upon you at two o’clock in the afternoon, when your respectable Yorkshire clock didn’t expect me till six. Confess now! You have been turning it over under that grey thatch of yours, haven’t you?”

“Mr. Franklin,” I replied, “I never pry into the movements of my betters. But if you were to ask me whether the kitchen-maid was thrown into a flutter about the chickens, and whether the cook was on the brink of apoplexy when the gig drove up to the stables four hours before its time, I should say yes, sir—most decidedly, yes.”

At that he turned serious all in a moment—dropping his foreign lightness as if he had thrown off a cloak, and showing the troubled, anxious man underneath.

“It is no laughing matter, Gabriel,” he said, stopping short on the drive, with the great stone front of the house looking down on us. “I came by the express mail, instead of waiting for the afternoon coach, because I had no choice in the matter. Read that—and tell me what you think of it.”

He dipped his fingers into his breast-pocket, pulled out a letter written on thin foreign post-paper, and handed it to me.

Now, before I show you the letter, I must make a small confession. There are some people who can read a piece of writing with the sun in their eyes, standing up on two legs on a gravel walk. I am not one of them. At seventy years of age, a man’s eyes require a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles, and a man’s legs require a comfortable seat. Seeing my embarrassment, Mr. Franklin pointed to a stone bench under the cedar-tree near the library window; and there we sat down together, with the birds chirping in the shrubbery, and the smell of the roses blowing across the lawn, while I unfolded the paper and read the following words:

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

*DEAR MR. FRANKLIN BLAKE,*

*Since our interview of yesterday morning, circumstances have occurred which make it my imperative duty to urge you to quit London without a single hour’s delay. Do not wait for the evening coach, as you proposed, but take the early morning mail train into the North.*

*Two persons—one of them an elderly foreigner of dark complexion, and the other a clerk in the employ of a notorious money-lender in the City—have been making cautious inquiries concerning your address, both at my chambers and at your hotel. My head clerk, who is a sharp lad, observed that you were watched when you left my office yesterday afternoon; and although I do not apprehend any immediate breach of the peace, I am convinced that the business which brings you to Yorkshire is already suspected in certain dangerous quarters.*

*The responsibility of executing the late Colonel Herncastle’s trust is one which I would gladly have seen placed in other hands than yours; but as matters stand, your only safety lies in speed and secrecy. Place the property committed to your care in the hands of Lady Verinder at the earliest possible moment, or deposit it in some place of absolute security until the appointed day arrives. Above all, do not remain in London, and do not travel by any public conveyance which can be easily traced.*

*Believe me, dear Mr. Franklin, faithfully yours,*

*MATTHEW BRUFF.*

I folded the letter up, and gave it back into Mr. Franklin’s hand. The mention of the late Colonel Herncastle gave me a cold turn down the small of my back, like a drop of pump-water. I had heard enough of that terrible old soldier in years gone by to know that nothing good ever came of him, living or dead; and here was his name cropping up again, after he had been in his grave for months, to disturb the peace of an innocent family!

“Well, Betteredge?” says Mr. Franklin, watching my face with his bright, restless eyes. “What does Robinson Crusoe say to that?”

“Sir,” I answered, “I haven’t got my *Robinson Crusoe* in my pocket, and I am not going to consult him on a gravel walk. But if you ask my opinion as an honest man and a house-steward, I say Mr. Bruff is a lawyer of forty years’ standing, and when a lawyer tells you to run for your life, the sooner you pick up your heels the better.”

“I took his advice,” said Mr. Franklin. “I packed my portmanteau, slipped out of the hotel by the backway at five o'clock this morning, and caught the North train before the spies were awake to look for me. But the difficulty is only half overcome, Betteredge. The trust is still on my hands; and until Miss Rachel’s birthday comes round on the twenty-first of next month, I have no right to part with it.”

“And where is the trust now, sir?” I asked.

Mr. Franklin looked round him at the lawn, the shrubbery, and the windows of the house, as if he suspected the very sparrows of listening to us. Then he put his hand into his inner coat-pocket, and drew out a small packet, about the size of a tea-saucer, wrapped in thick brown paper, and tied across and across with stout hempen cord. It was sealed at every knot with five large seals of black wax, bearing the impression of a coat of arms. He held it in his palm for a single second—it seemed to me to be heavy for its size, like a lump of lead or an iron weight—and then he thrust it straight into my hands.

“Take it, Betteredge,” he whispered, in a voice that was barely louder than the rustle of the cedar-leaves above us. “Take it, and lock it up in your plate-room until tomorrow morning. Don’t ask me what is inside it; don’t speak of it to a living soul in this house; and, as you value your lady’s peace of mind, don’t let it out of your keeping for an instant!”

The packet felt cold and hard against my fingers. If you had told me at that moment that it was filled with gunpowder, and that a lighted match was sputtering inside the paper, I don’t think I could have felt more uncomfortable than I did with that parcel in my grasp. But a servant’s duty is a servant’s duty. I put it into my side-pocket, where it bumped against my ribs at every breath I drew, and I rose up from the stone bench.

“Follow me, Mr. Franklin,” I said. “The plate-room has an oak door three inches thick, lined with sheet-iron, and a Chubb’s patent lock that would puzzle the Old Gentleman himself. If the packet isn't safe there, it isn’t safe in the Kingdom of Great Britain.”

We went into the house by the side entrance, meeting nobody on the stairs, and made our way straight down to my pantry. There I took my master-keys out of the iron safe in the wall, unlocked the heavy inner door, and led the way into the plate-room. It was a dark, windowless closet, smelling of silver-polish and old leather, with the family plate all ranged on shelves in green baize bags, shining like a church altar in the candle-light. In the corner stood the great iron-bound chest which had belonged to the late Sir John. I unlocked the chest, laid the sealed packet at the bottom of it, under two heavy silver soup-tureens that hadn’t been used since my lady’s wedding-day, turned the double key in the lock, and put the key back in my waistcoat pocket.

When we came out into the pantry again, Mr. Franklin drew a long breath, like a diver coming up out of thirty fathoms of salt water.

“There!” says he. “That’s off my mind for tonight, at any rate. And now, Betteredge, where are my aunt and my cousin Rachel?”

“My lady and Miss Rachel,” I answered, “are gone over to lunch with the family of our new curate, three miles off, and are not expected back until four o’clock. But if you will step into the dining-room, sir, the cold fowl and the tongue are ready on the sideboard, and I can fetch you a bottle of the old Madeira which your good father used to admire.”

He agreed to the cold fowl readily enough, being half-starved after his journey; and I went out into the passage to give the necessary orders to the servants.

I had barely set foot in the hall when I ran straight against my daughter Penelope. She had a tray of clean glasses in her hands, and she looked so white and flustered that I stopped her then and there. If there is one thing I cannot abide in a woman, it is seeing her look as if she had just seen a ghost, when she ought to be attending to her domestic business.

“What’s the matter now?” I asked. “Is the world coming to an end, Penelope, because Mr. Franklin has arrived four hours before his dinner?”

“It isn’t Mr. Franklin, father,” says Penelope, setting down her tray on the hall table with a clatter. “It’s Rosanna Spearman.”

The name brought me back to the sands, and to the strange way in which that poor, unhappy girl had started and blushed when Mr. Franklin shouted to me among the hills.

“What about Rosanna?” I said. “Hasn't she come in to her dinner yet?”

“No,” says Penelope, looking ready to cry. “She hasn’t come in, and what is more, father, she isn’t coming. Little Bob, the carter’s lad, was coming up from the beach with a load of seaweed just now, and he saw her taking the lower path along the cliffs towards Cobb’s Hole, walking as fast as her legs could carry her, with her head down, and her cloak wrapped tight around her. She never turned her face towards the house at all.”

Here was a pretty state of things! A housemaid belonging to a respectable family wandering off to a fishing-village three miles away, without leave, without her dinner, and with one of her fainting-fits barely an hour old!

“She is gone to Mrs. Yolland’s, of course,” I said, trying to make the best of it. “Mrs. Yolland was kind to her when she had the fever in the spring, and the girl has got a fancy for the woman. Let her be, Penelope. When she has walked her legs off, she’ll walk them back again, and be glad of a crust of bread and a cup of tea in the kitchen.”

“I don’t like it, father,” says Penelope, shaking her head. “There is something wrong with Rosanna today. When I went into the housemaids’ room before dinner, to fetch the clean towels, I found her sitting on the edge of her bed, with her hands clasped tight in her lap, staring at nothing. When I spoke to her, she didn’t answer me; and when I touched her, she shivered all over as if she had the ague. If you ask me, father, it’s my belief that girl will make away with herself one of these days in that dreadful quicksand!”

“Hold your tongue, Penelope!” I said, speaking with all the authority of a father and a house-steward combined. “Don’t go putting such wicked notions into other people’s heads, or your own either. Go down to the kitchen, and tell the cook to keep the mutton hot for Rosanna against she comes back; and do you take a glass of wine to Mr. Franklin in the dining-room without another moment’s delay.”

Penelope went off, looking unconvinced, as women always do when you answer them with common sense; and I returned to my pantry, feeling more unsettled in my mind than I cared to own.

Between the strange packet locked up in the plate-chest, the lawyer’s warning letter, and Rosanna Spearman’s extraordinary conduct, my head was in a complete whirl. I took down my *Robinson Crusoe* from the shelf over the fireplace, opened it at hazard, and put my finger on the page. The passage that met my eye was this: *“It was in vain to sit still and consider what to do; for the terror was upon me, and I had no power to stir.”*

A more uncomfortable prophecy than that I never met with in all my life! I shut the book up in a hurry, put it back on the shelf, and resolved to think no more about it until my lady returned.

At half-past four the carriage wheels were heard on the gravel, and my lady and Miss Rachel arrived at the house.

Miss Rachel—who was in the highest spirits, looking as handsome as an angel in her white summer bonnet—ran straight upstairs to her own sitting-room to take off her things, without waiting to hear the news of her cousin’s arrival. My lady, coming more slowly into the hall, was met by Mr. Franklin, who had heard the carriage from the dining-room and came out to meet her.

The meeting between the aunt and nephew was as affectionate as could be. My lady had always loved Mr. Franklin like her own son, and she kissed him on both cheeks with tears of pleasure in her eyes. But before they had exchanged three sentences, I saw a cloud pass over my lady’s face. She looked at Mr. Franklin with a sudden, searching look that had something painful in it, and laid her hand gently on his arm.

“Franklin,” she said, in her low, sweet voice, which was always so clear and distinct that you might have heard it across a church, “you have grown into a man since I last saw you; but you have your poor mother’s eyes still. Tell me one thing before we say another word. You have come straight from London—have you brought any message or any paper from your uncle Herncastle?”

Mr. Franklin’s face fell, and he dropped his eyes to the floor.

“I have brought nothing, aunt, that need give you pain,” he answered, in a low voice.

My lady drew herself up to her full height. She was an elderly woman, but she had a grand, noble presence of her own, and when she stood upon her dignity, there wasn’t a duke in the land who could have looked her down.

“Franklin,” she said, very gravely and solemnly, “you know the miserable history of my brother John. You know that for twenty years he lived the life of a wicked, heartless outcast; that he insulted his family, disgraced his name, and died without a single Christian friend to close his eyes. While he lived, his name was never mentioned in this house. Now that he is dead, I forbid that name to be uttered under my roof again. If he has left legacies, if he has left trusts, if he has left memories behind him, let them perish with his body in the grave. I will have no part in them, and I will suffer no mention of him in the presence of my daughter Rachel. Promise me, on your honour as a gentleman, that the subject of John Herncastle shall be a sealed book between us while you remain in my house.”

Mr. Franklin looked deeply moved. He took my lady’s hand, raised it to his lips with that foreign grace of his, and bowed his head over it.

“I promise you, Aunt Julia,” he said, with the greatest earnestness. “The name of Colonel Herncastle shall never pass my lips under your roof.”

“Thank you, my dear,” says my lady, her face softening into its own kind smile again. “Now come into the library, and tell me all about your travels in Italy and France.”

They walked away together down the corridor, arm in arm; and I was left alone in the hall, with my hand resting on the pocket where the key of the plate-chest lay.

Here was a nice dilemma for a family steward! Mr. Bruff’s letter had bidden Mr. Franklin to place the property in Lady Verinder’s hands without delay; and here was Lady Verinder refusing to hear so much as the name of the man who had left it! What was to become of the sealed packet in the iron chest? What was to become of Miss Rachel’s birthday gift? It was not my business to ask, and it was certainly not my business to tell; so I held my tongue, and went about the house seeing that everything was in order for the evening.

Dinner was served at seven o’clock. Miss Rachel came down looking like a picture, in a pale silk gown with lace round the neck; and a merrier dinner than they had in the great dining-room you wouldn’t wish to see. Mr. Franklin was full of his foreign stories, making my lady smile and Miss Rachel laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks. To look at him sitting there, with his glass of wine in his hand, you would have thought he hadn’t a care in the world, nor a secret locked up in a dark closet fifty yards away. But I noticed, when the servants were out of the room, that his eyes wandered more than once to the great window that looked out on the terrace, and that he started whenever a branch tapped against the glass in the evening breeze.

By ten o’clock the household was preparing for bed. The ladies retired to their rooms; the young gentleman went to the billiard-room to smoke a foreign cigar; and the servants gathered in the hall for the nightly locking-up.

I went down to the kitchen myself to see that all the bolts were shot and the bars put across the shutters.

“Is Rosanna Spearman come in?” I asked of the cook.

“No, Mr. Betteredge,” says the cook, who was raking out the kitchen fire. “She isn’t come in, and the back-door is locked for the night. If she comes knocking at this hour, she may knock till she’s tired, for all I shall do to let her in!”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” I said. “You will leave the side-door on the latch, and I will sit up in the back court and let the girl in myself.”

I took my bandanna handkerchief, my tobacco-jar, my pipe, and my beloved copy of *Robinson Crusoe*, and went out into the little court behind my pantry. The night was mild and still, with a young moon hanging over the fir plantation, and the distant sound of the sea breaking on the rocks near Cobb’s Hole coming and going like the breathing of a sleeping giant.

I settled myself in my old beehive chair, struck a match, and lit my pipe.

The house was dark and silent all around me. Fifty paces away, behind the double-locked iron door, lay the mysterious packet, with its black seals unbroken, resting under the silver tureens. Three miles off along the dark cliffs, for all I knew, that unhappy girl was wandering alone in the night, or crying her eyes out in some fisherman’s cottage, with the memory of her past sins gnawing at her heart. And here sat I, Gabriel Betteredge, an old man of seventy, smoking my tobacco in the moonlight, and turning over the pages of the only book that never fails a man in his perplexities.

I opened the volume at the fifty-fourth page, where Robinson finds himself alone upon the island, and I read these words by the light of my candle:

*“I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner, I should end my life; the tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections.”*

I shut the book, laid it on my knee, and looked up at the dark sky above the trees.

The clock over the stables struck eleven, then half-past eleven, then twelve. The candle guttered in its socket; the pipe went out between my teeth; and the night air began to strike chill upon my old bones.

The sealed packet was safe in the dark. But the clock had struck midnight; the house was fast asleep; and Rosanna Spearman had not come home.

She slept for a very long time, and when she awakened it was quite dark outside the carriage windows, and the steady rumbling of the train had begun to slacken. Mrs. Medlock was shaking her shoulder with no particular gentleness, her bonnet strings trembling with the vibration of the braking wheels.

"Wake up, child," she said in her sharp, bustling way. "Here we are at last, though what sort of a night it is to arrive in, goodness only knows. Pull your coat straight and don't go tumbling over your own feet."

Mary rubbed her eyes and sat up, feeling stiff and cold and more cross than ever. When the train finally ground to a halt against a low, wet wooden platform, the only illumination came from a pair of smoking oil-lamps that swung in the wind, casting dim yellow patches on the slick, shining boards. The rain was not falling in straight sheets now, but was driving across the station in a fine, icy mist that stung Mary's face the instant Mrs. Medlock pushed her out through the carriage door.

Mrs. Medlock stepped down onto the platform and reached back to haul Mary's small black trunk from the guard, but as she turned round she stopped dead in her tracks, nearly dropping the bundle of shawls she carried under her arm.

"Lord preserve us!" she gasped under her breath.

Standing just beneath the halo of the nearest swinging lamp was a man. He was wrapped in a great heavy dark traveling cloak with the collar turned up high against the damp, but even under the thick cloth it was easy to see that his shoulders were high and crooked, and that he held himself with a strange, defensive stiffness. His hair was streaked with gray, and his face was thin, dark, and shadowed by a look of such deep and bitter gloom that he scarcely seemed like a living gentleman at all, but rather like some brooding figure stepped out of an old frame.

Mary knew at once that this was Mr. Archibald Craven. He did not look in the least like her father, who had been a gay, handsome officer in a bright uniform, nor did he look like any of the officers who had ridden their horses to the bungalow in India. He stood motionless upon the wet boards, looking down at her with eyes that were black and sunken and extraordinarily cold.

Mrs. Medlock bobbed a hurried, flustered curtsey, her red cheeks turning a deeper, mottled crimson.

"Mr. Craven, sir!" she stammered, clutching her skirts. "We did not expect—we never dreamed you'd come down to the station yourself on such a bitter night as this, sir."

Mr. Craven did not answer her directly. He did not look at Mrs. Medlock at all, but kept his dark eyes fixed entirely upon Mary's small, yellow face, her limp hair, and her ugly black mourning frock. His lips barely moved when he spoke, and his voice was low, harsh, and flat, as though he had not used it for days.

"Is this Captain Lennox's girl?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock quickly. "This is little Miss Mary."

Mr. Craven looked at Mary for two seconds longer, without the slightest change in his bleak countenance. He did not smile, he did not hold out a hand, and he did not bid her welcome.

"Get into the carriage," he said.

That was all he said to her. He turned upon his heel without waiting to see whether she followed, his great cloak swirling against the wet wind, and strode toward the dark yard outside the station where a heavy, four-wheeled brougham stood waiting with two steaming horses. A groom was holding the door open, his hat dripping with rain. Mr. Craven climbed into a light two-wheeled gig that was drawn up behind it, gathered the reins into his gloved hands without another word to anyone, and drove off at a rapid, reckless pace into the swallowing blackness of the night.

"Well, of all the extraordinary things!" Mrs. Medlock muttered, bustling Mary across the gravel and bundling her unceremoniously into the brougham. "In all my fifteen years at the Manor, I never knew him to come to the station to meet a living soul. Not a living soul! Sit yourself down, child, and keep your feet off the clean cushions."

She slammed the door shut and the brougham lurched forward into the dark. Inside, it was upholstered in thick, musty green cloth that smelled faintly of old damp and camphor, but it was warm compared to the biting air outside. Two small lamps on either side of the carriage threw faint disks of light against the hedge-rows and stone walls that lined the narrow lane, but very soon even the walls disappeared, and there seemed to be nothing outside the windows at all except a vast, impenetrable void.

"What is that out there?" Mary asked presently, staring through the glass. "There are no trees and no houses. Is it the sea?"

"The sea!" Mrs. Medlock exclaimed, giving a short, scornful snort. "No, it isn't the sea. It's the moor. It's Missel Moor, and you'll see plenty of it before you're done. It's miles and miles of wild land with nothing growing on it but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing living on it but wild ponies and sheep."

"It sounds like a great big empty place," said Mary. "And it looks completely black."

"It is black on a night like this," Mrs. Medlock replied, settling her stout person into the cushions. "It's miles of black nothingness, with the wind blowing across it fit to take the skin off your face. When the sun shines in summer it's purple and gold with bells and blossom, and the air smells like honey. But tonight it's just wild and wet and dismal, same as everything else."

They drove on and on for what seemed like hours. The horses trotted steadily, their hooves making a squelching sound in the thick mud of the road, and the carriage swayed from side to side as it climbed long, rising hills. The wind began to make a strange, hollow sound as it swept over the open expanse—a rising and falling wail that sounded sometimes like a great beast roaring far away, and sometimes like a person crying out in distress. Mary sat with her hands folded in her lap, listening to it. It was not like the hot, heavy wind that blew across the plains in India before the rains; it was cold and fierce, and it seemed to have come from the very edge of the earth.

Suddenly, without any warning, the coachman pulled back on the reins with a sharp shout, and the horses reared slightly, bringing the heavy brougham to an abrupt, jarring halt that threw Mrs. Medlock forward against the front seat.

"Mercy on us!" she shrieked, clutching at her trembling velvet bonnet. "What in heaven's name has happened now? Thomas! Thomas, what is it?"

The groom jumped down from the box and came to the carriage window, his wet coat glistening in the lamp-light.

"There's a heavy cart-timber and a heap o' sheep hurdles fallen right across the track, ma'am," he shouted above the gusting wind. "Must ha' dropped off farmer Giles's wain when the axle cracked this afternoon. We can't get the wheels past till we haul 'em into the ditch."

"Well, be quick about it, then!" Mrs. Medlock scolded, leaning back with a flustered sigh. "We shall all catch our deaths out here in the middle of nowhere."

The groom went around to the front to help the coachman. Mary, who had never seen anything like this on the smooth roads of the cantonment in India, felt a sudden, sharp prick of curiosity. She did not like to sit still while other people were doing things she could not see. Before Mrs. Medlock could guess what she was doing, Mary reached out her thin, black-gloved hand, turned the brass handle, and pushed the carriage door wide open.

"Come back here, you naughty child!" Mrs. Medlock cried, making a grab at her skirt, but Mary had already slipped down the iron step and set her feet upon the ground.

She stood alone upon the open moor in the pitch darkness. The ground under her boots was not smooth road at all, but thick, wet turf and tangled heather that felt springy and strange beneath her weight. The wind caught her black cape and blew it straight out behind her, nearly knocking her off her balance. It was an astonishing, terrible feeling. There were no lights anywhere in the world—no stars, no moon, no distant lamps of bungalows or native bazaars—only an immense, rushing sea of cold air and darkness that stretched away into infinity. The wind smelled of wet earth and wild, crushed plants, so cold and sharp that when she drew it into her lungs it made her gasp and her heart beat faster. For a single minute she stood there, small and black and solitary against the great wild waste, feeling smaller and more alone than she had ever felt in her whole life.

"Catch her, Thomas!" Mrs. Medlock shrieked from inside the carriage, leaning half out of the door. "Grab hold of the little imp before the bog swallows her up!"

The groom turned round from hauling the heavy wooden hurdle, looked startled, and took Mary firmly by the elbow.

"Nay, little miss," he said, not unkindly, though his voice was rough. "You munnot go wandering off the road out here. A single step into the ling and you'd be up to your knees in black peat-water."

He lifted her straight back onto the iron carriage step, and Mrs. Medlock seized her by the shoulder and hauled her into the seat, banging the door shut with a furious rattle.

"You are the most contrary, tiresome piece of goods that ever lived!" Mrs. Medlock panted, shaking her umbrella at her. "To jump out into the dark like that! You might have broken your neck or drowned in a peat-hole, and what would Mr. Craven have said to me then? You sit still and don't you dare touch that brass handle again!"

Mary did not say a single word. She smoothed her black frock down over her knees and looked straight ahead into the darkness. Her cheeks were burning with the cold wind and her shoes were wet, but a queer, sharp sensation remained in her chest. The great dark emptiness of the moor had frightened her, yet it had made her feel more awake than she had felt since the morning the strange servants had appeared in the bungalow in India.

After a long time, during which neither of them spoke, the horses turned between two massive stone pillars surmounted by carved stone beasts with broken wings. The road became smoother, though it wound upward beneath towering, thick trees that met overhead, shutting out even the gray light of the sky. The carriage wheels crunched on gravel, turned a wide curve, and came to a stop before an enormous, long stone house.

It was a huge, rambling place that seemed to have no end. It looked low and dark and forbidding against the night sky, with only two or three windows showing any light at all, high up under the heavy stone gables.

"Here we are," said Mrs. Medlock, gathering up her parcels. "And thank goodness for it."

They got out into the cold drizzle and went up a flight of broad, worn stone steps. A massive oak door studded with iron nails opened slowly before they even reached it, revealing a tall, cavernous entrance hall with a stone-flagged floor and walls covered with dark wood paneling and portraits of ladies and gentlemen in antique dress who stared down with severe, unblinking eyes.

A sour-faced old man in black stood holding a branch of candles. He had tufted white eyebrows and a mouth that turned down at the corners as if he had spent fifty years tasting vinegar.

"This is Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock said to Mary.

Pitcher looked at Mary with no more warmth than Mr. Craven had shown.

"Mr. Craven has gone to his study," the old man said in a dry, creaking voice. "He gave orders that he is not to be disturbed on any account. He said the child is to be taken to her rooms in the West Wing and kept out of the way."

"Very well, Pitcher," said Mrs. Medlock. "Come along, child. Pick your feet up."

They walked down a long stone corridor that was so wide and high that their footsteps echoed against the flags, and then they went up a broad staircase of black oak with carved banisters, and down another corridor that turned so many corners that Mary completely lost all sense of where they were. Everything was dark and quiet, and the air smelled of centuries of wood smoke, damp stone, and old polished leather.

At last Mrs. Medlock opened a heavy oak door and led Mary into a room where a bright coal fire was blazing cheerfully in an enormous iron grate. It was a comfortable room, with a dark carpet on the floor, a table set near the hearth, and heavy crimson curtains drawn across the windows. Next to it was an adjoining bedchamber with a large four-post bed draped in thick tapestry curtains.

"These are your rooms," said Mrs. Medlock, unpinning her bonnet and tossing it onto a chair with a sigh of relief. "You'll sleep here and you'll eat your meals here, and you're not to go roaming about the rest of the house. There's a hundred rooms in Misselthwaite, but they are locked up and belong to Mr. Craven, and you've no business in them."

Before Mary could answer, a knock came at the door and a manservant entered carrying a heavy pewter tray covered with a white napkin. He was a broad-shouldered man with rough red hands, wearing a coarse woolen waistcoat and thick leather shoes that clattered on the threshold. He had a round, red face and honest, wide-set gray eyes.

He set the tray down upon the round table before the fire with a great clatter of plates.

"Here's thi supper, lass," he said in a loud, hearty Yorkshire voice that rolled out like a cart on cobblestones. "Hot mutton collops, and roasted taters, and a bowl o' thick baked custard. Tha mun tuck in while it's reet hot, for it's a bitter night out on t' moor and tha looks fair pined to death."

Mary stared at him in utter astonishment and distaste. In India the native servants had bowed low with their hands pressed to their foreheads, speaking in soft, trembling whispers, and never addressing her directly unless they were spoken to. This man was talking to her as though she were an ordinary village child, and the strange, thick words he used sounded completely foreign to her ears.

"What did you say?" she asked in her stiffest, most disagreeable voice. "I do not understand a word you are saying. You speak like a strange person."

The manservant paused, wiping his hands on his coarse apron, and looked at her with a broad, good-humored grin that showed two missing side teeth.

"Eh, bless thee!" he chuckled, not in the least offended by her cross tone. "Tha doesn't understand Yorkshire talk, does tha? I forgot tha's come all t' way fro' the heathen Indies. Tha'll learn soon enough, I warrant. When Mrs. Medlock rang t' bell in t' kitchen, cook said, 'Take that up to t' little foreign miss, John, and see she eats it all.' So tha just eat thi meat, my lass, and tha'll feel a deal better."

"You are very rude," said Mary haughtily. "And you do not know how to speak English properly."

John gave another great, good-natured laugh that made the dishes on the tray rattle.

"Aye, maybe so," he said cheerfully, turning toward the door. "We speak broad enough in these parts, but it fills the belly well enough all the same. Good night to thee, little miss."

He went out, pulling the door shut behind him with a heavy thud.

Mrs. Medlock, who was unbuttoning her tight black silk mantle by the fire, shook her head.

"You'd better learn to keep a civiler tongue in your head, Miss Mary," she said. "The servants here aren't black natives to be ordered about and scolded. John's a good lad from the village, and he's brought you a better supper than you deserve after the trouble you've given me today. Eat your food and get into bed."

Mary sat down at the table because she was hungry, though she would have liked to refuse the food just to be contrary. The mutton was hot and savory and the baked custard was sweet, and as she ate she felt the warmth of the roaring fire creeping through her chilled bones. Mrs. Medlock sat in an armchair by the hearth, watching her with half-closed eyes until Mary put down her spoon.

"Now then," Mrs. Medlock said, rising heavily. "Take off that black frock and get into bed. You can undress yourself, I suppose? You haven't got three or four ayahs to pull your stockings off here, remember."

"I can undress myself," Mary answered sourly, though she had never done it in her life until she had stayed with the Crawfords.

She went into the adjoining bedroom, struggled out of her stiff black clothes, and pulled a long white nightgown over her head. The four-post bed was enormous and high, with heavy curtains that smelled faintly of lavender and old tapestry. When she climbed up onto the thick feather mattress, she seemed to sink down into a soft, deep nest that almost swallowed her up.

Mrs. Medlock came into the bedroom carrying a brass candlestick, tucked the heavy wool blankets around her without any unnecessary tenderness, and blew out the candle, leaving only the dim, flickering red glow of the dying fire from the sitting-room shining through the doorway.

"Go to sleep now," she said from the dark. "And don't you be getting up and wandering about in the morning. Someone will bring your breakfast when it's time."

She walked out and closed the heavy oak door firmly behind her. The click of the iron latch sounded loud and final in the vast, silent house.

Mary lay quite still in the center of the huge bed. The room was very dark, except for the faint square of grayness that showed where the window was, and the low, muffled moan of the wind outside. It was a strange, lonely feeling to lie in that great bed in an ancient house with a hundred locked rooms, knowing that no one in the world cared whether she were alive or dead, and that her uncle, with his crooked back and cold, brooding face, had shut himself away in the West Wing and wished never to see her.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the feather bed was too soft and the silence of the great stone house was too deep.

Then, as she lay staring up into the dark canopy of the bed, she heard something.

It was not the sound of the wind rushing across the moor, and it was not the rattling of the heavy window-panes in their stone frames. It was a sound inside the house itself—far off down one of the long, endless corridors with the locked doors. It was a faint, curious, rhythmic sound, like something heavy and metallic being dragged slowly across the cold stone flags, accompanied by a low, hollow tapping that paused, started again, and came a little nearer, and then stopped altogether.

Mary sat bolt upright in bed, her heart giving a sudden thump against her ribs. She held her breath and strained her ears to listen.

Presently the heavy oak door of her sitting-room creaked open, and Mrs. Medlock looked in, holding a small oil-lamp in her hand. She had taken off her cap and had a thick woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

"Are you still awake, child?" she asked, seeing Mary's pale, rigid figure sitting up in the dimness. "What are you staring at?"

"Listen," said Mary in a sharp whisper. "What is that sound? There is a strange noise in the house—like someone dragging something down the passage."

Mrs. Medlock's red face went strangely stiff, and her black eyes darted toward the corridor behind her before she gave a short, impatient toss of her head.

"Nonsense!" she said briskly, her voice sounding harder than usual. "It's nothing but the wind. The wind gets into the eaves and whistles down the chimneys and through the long galleries, and it makes all manner of queer rattles and knocks inside these old walls. It's just the wind on the moor, and nothing else. Lie down and go to sleep at once."

She drew the door shut again and her heavy footsteps moved away down the outer passage until they died out completely.

Mary did not lie down. She remained sitting up in the vast bed in the dark, her hands clutching the heavy blankets, her chin thrust out stubbornly. She was quite sure that Mrs. Medlock had not told her the truth. The wind on the moor wailed and roared, but it did not make a rhythmic, dragging sound upon stone floors, nor did it tap with a slow, deliberate beat that stopped and started again.

She stared into the blackness of the bedchamber, her small, thin face set in its old contrary frown, and made up her mind that, whatever Mrs. Medlock said and whatever Mr. Craven wanted, she would find out for herself what that sound was.

The rain, having performed its appointed task of disrupting the traffic, ruining several dozen freshly ironed straw hats, and providing Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe with an unprecedented amount of free publicity, had ceased as abruptly as it had begun. A timid and watery sun was beginning to break through the leaden canopy of the London sky, painting pale yellow patches upon the wet pavements of Shaftesbury Avenue, as Eve Halliday descended the narrow flight of stairs from the offices of the Ada Clarkson Employment Bureau.

She was not in the habit of carrying encumbrances, and the sleek, tightly rolled umbrella which she held in her hand felt curiously heavy and unfamiliar. It was an umbrella that fairly shrieked of opulence. The handle was carved from some dark, polished wood and capped with a severe silver band that looked as though it belonged exclusively in the best family vaults. To walk about the West End of London in possession of an article of such aristocratic lineage, acquired under circumstances that bordered on the surreal, struck Eve as being not only absurd but vaguely perilous. The police in London, she knew, were broad-minded men, but they were apt to ask awkward questions if they found young women of slender means wandering about with umbrellas that clearly belonged to the House of Lords.

Her first duty, therefore, was plainly restitution.

It did not take her long to retrace her steps through the bustling mid-morning crowds. Arriving once more in Dover Street, she surveyed the sombre portals of the club into which her benefactor had vanished. The building possessed that grim, forbidding exterior with which London clubs protect their inmates from the vulgar curiosity of the outside world, resembling nothing so much as a mausoleum whose proprietors had decided to branch out into the catering business.

Eve walked briskly up the shallow stone steps and pushed open the swing doors.

Inside, in a small glass-fronted cubby-hole that looked like the box-office of a very exclusive and deeply depressed theatre, sat the hall porter. He was a man of vast bulk and majestic solemnity, wearing a uniform adorned with gold braid and a countenance that suggested he had spent the last forty years brooding upon the downfall of the Roman Empire.

"Good morning," said Eve pleasantly.

The hall porter inclined his head a fraction of an inch, acknowledging the greeting with the cautious neutrality of one who is not prepared to commit himself without further evidence.

"I have brought back an umbrella," said Eve, laying the article in question upon the counter.

The hall porter looked at the umbrella, and then at Eve. His expression implied that while the return of stolen property was always commendable, it was an occurrence so irregular in that particular establishment as to warrant the gravest suspicion.

"An umbrella, miss?" he murmured.

"A gentleman lent it to me about twenty minutes ago," explained Eve. "He dashed across the street from here, thrust it into my hand, and disappeared. I didn't catch his name, but I should be so very much obliged if you would see that he gets it back. Could I leave a note with it?"

The hall porter, after a prolonged pause during which he appeared to be communing with the spirits of departed clubmen, produced a sheet of plain club notepaper and an envelope from beneath his counter. He dipped a wooden pen into an inkwell and presented it to her with an air of profound ceremony.

Eve took the pen and scribbled rapidly:

"With the undying gratitude of the damsel in distress under Thorpe & Briscoe’s awning. The hat is saved, and so is the umbrella. Thank you a thousand times.—Eve Halliday."

She folded the sheet, placed it inside the envelope, and wrote upon the front: *For the gentleman with the monocle who dislikes the rain.*

"There," she said, passing it across. "If you would just keep it with the umbrella and give it to the gentleman when you see him, I’ll be ever so grateful."

"Very good, miss," said the porter, in a voice like gravel trickling into an open grave. "I will place the communication in the rack."

Feeling that a great weight had been lifted from her conscience, Eve gave him a brilliant smile, which the official received without the twitch of an eyelid, and departed into the sunshine to prepare for her impending interview with Lord Emsworth.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the inner recesses of the Drones Club, a storm was brewing. It was not a meteorological disturbance, for the clouds outside were rapidly dispersing, but an emotional upheaval of the first water.

The Honourable Mr. Walderwick, known to an extensive circle of frivolous acquaintances as "Barmy," was a young man of simple tastes and limited intellect. He was not one of those profound thinkers who wrestle with the problems of the universe; he asked little of life beyond three square meals a day, a sufficiency of cigarettes, and the undisputed possession of his personal belongings. When, therefore, having descended to the cloak-room with the intention of going out for a stroll, he discovered that his favourite umbrella—a present from an aunt, and the only umbrella in London that really suited his style of architecture—had vanished into thin air, his distress was poignant and loudly expressed.

"It’s a bit thick!" declared Mr. Walderwick, bursting into the smoking-room, where Psmith sat in a deep armchair, the picture of elegant repose, contemplating the ceiling with half-closed eyes. "I call it an absolute outrage. A man leaves an umbrella in the stand for ten minutes, and when he comes back, somebody’s pinched it! The place is full of bally kleptomaniacs. I’m going to see the committee."

Psmith lowered his gaze and adjusted his monocle with infinite care.

"Comrade Walderwick," he said in a soothing voice, "let us not give way to unbridled panic. In this vale of tears, things are constantly disappearing. Empires fall, dynasties crumble, and umbrellas, as you justly observe, change hands. It is the law of the jungle."

"It isn't the law of the Drones Club," barked Mr. Walderwick, who was pink with indignation. "The attendant says he saw you taking it out of the rack not half an hour ago!"

"The attendant," replied Psmith gravely, "is an observant fellow. He has a keen eye for the finer nuances of life. I congratulate the club on possessing such a treasure."

"Did you take my umbrella?" demanded Walderwick, advancing menacingly.

"I did," said Psmith without hesitation.

"Well, where the deuce is it?"

"At the present moment," said Psmith, "it is performing a sacred mission. It is shielding from the inclement elements the most exquisite hat in the metropolis. A confection of soft satin, Comrade Walderwick, crowned by a bird of Paradise feather that would wring tears of envy from an empress. Could your umbrella, in its wildest dreams, have aspired to a nobler destiny?"

"I don't care a dashed rap about hats!" shouted the aggrieved owner. "I want my umbrella! You had no right to go giving it away to strange females in the street."

Psmith held up a slender hand in gentle reproof.

"Do not let us introduce a note of sordid rancour into what should be a purely spiritual discussion," he murmured. "I perceived Beauty in distress. I acted. Had you been in my position, Comrade Walderwick, with your well-known chivalry and your instinctive grasp of the great realities of life, you would have done the same. You would have snatched the nearest umbrella—even, had circumstance demanded it, your own—and laid it at her feet."

"I wouldn't have done anything of the sort," snapped Walderwick. "I'd have told her to take a cab."

Psmith shook his head sadly.

"A coarse, commercial point of view, deeply unworthy of you. However, since the practical aspect of the matter appears to weigh heavily upon your mind, let us adjust it on a purely financial basis. What, in your opinion, would represent a fair assessment of the property in question?"

"Eh?" said Mr. Walderwick, taken aback.

"Name your figure," said Psmith grandly. "Set a price upon this trusty weapon of yours. I am prepared to purchase it outright."

"You can't purchase it outright," said Walderwick, though with noticeably less heat. "It was a present from my Aunt Julia. It’s got a silver band."

"Five pounds?" suggested Psmith.

Mr. Walderwick blinked. The umbrella had cost thirty shillings brand new, and had seen considerable service during the preceding winter.

"Ten pounds?" continued Psmith smoothly, noting his hesitation. "Fifteen? Let us not haggle like merchants in a bazaar. Let us say twenty pounds for the umbrella, lock, stock, and barrel, together with all rights, titles, and sentimental associations connected with your Aunt Julia. What do you say, Comrade Walderwick?"

Mr. Walderwick’s jaw dropped. He stared at Psmith as though the latter had suddenly sprouted horns. Twenty pounds was a sum of money which, in Walderwick’s current financial condition, assumed the proportions of a national debt. It meant the liquidation of his bridge debts, a new set of golf clubs, and several dinners at the Savoy.

"Twenty quid?" he stammered.

"Twenty of the best," said Psmith, extracting a crisp sheaf of banknotes from his pocket and peeling off four five-pound notes with an effortless flick of the thumb. "Take them, Comrade Walderwick. Put them in your purse, and let peace reign between us. The umbrella is now mine, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse."

Walderwick pocketed the notes with the sheepish grin of a man who suspects he has either robbed an asylum or taken part in a miracle.

"Well, of course, if you put it like that, old man," he mumbled, "it’s a deal. Only I must say you’re an extraordinary chap."

"We Psmiths," said Psmith solemnly, "are not as other men. We move in a mysterious way our wonders to perform. And now, Comrade Walderwick, if you will excuse me, I must compose my mind. The afternoon lies before us, full of infinite possibilities."

* * * * *

The Senior Conservative Club, situated at the corner of Northumberland Avenue, is an institution that makes the Drones seem, by comparison, like a carnival of unrestrained Bohemia. It is a vast, stone fortress populated entirely by elderly gentlemen with white whiskers and port-wine complexions, who spend their declining years asleep behind copies of *The Times*.

It was into this sanctuary of British statecraft that Eve Halliday was ushered at two o'clock precisely.

Lord Emsworth was seated at a writing-table in the corner of the morning-room. He was looking at a small slip of paper through his pince-nez, which were perched precariously upon the tip of his nose, and he had the anxious, hunted expression of a sheep that has been unexpectedly asked to solve an algebraic equation.

"Ah," he said, looking up with a start as the waiter announced Miss Halliday. "Yes. To be sure. Come in, my dear, come in. Sit down. Er—Miss Halliday, isn't it?"

"Yes, Lord Emsworth," said Eve, taking a chair opposite him.

Lord Emsworth gazed at her with a mild, vague benevolence. He was a tall, stringy man who looked as though he had been put together carelessly by an amateur carpenter and dressed in clothes that had belonged to someone else.

"Quite so, quite so," said his lordship. "My secretary, Baxter—very efficient fellow, Baxter, excellent man—tells me you have come about the—er—the thing."

"The library," prompted Eve helpfully.

"The library?" Lord Emsworth looked mildly surprised. "Ah, yes. The books. Exactly. Thousands of them. All over the place. My sister Constance is very keen on having them put in order. Personally, I never read them. Can't see the use of reading books when you can be out in the garden. Do you know anything about the Canadian drop-wart, Miss Halliday?"

"I'm afraid not," admitted Eve.

"A pest," said Lord Emsworth with sudden passion. "A vile, destructive pest! Eats the roots right out of the soil. Baxter had to write three letters to the Ministry of Agriculture about it only last Tuesday. But they know nothing—absolute ignoramuses, every man jack of them!" He paused, blew his nose vigorously with a large silk handkerchief, and peered at her again. "Now, what was it we were discussing? Ah, yes. The poultry."

Eve stared at him in bewilderment.

"The poultry, Lord Emsworth?"

"Aren't you the young lady from the incubator company?" inquired his lordship, blinking behind his lenses. "Baxter said someone was coming to explain the hot-water apparatus for the coops. Most important. My head gardener, Angus McAllister, says we can't get the proper temperature without a new boiler, but I told him—"

"I think there must be a mistake," said Eve, struggling to suppress a laugh. "I have come about cataloguing the library at Blandings Castle. Mr. Freddie Threepwood told me you were looking for someone to make a new catalogue."

"Freddie?" Lord Emsworth’s face darkened slightly. "Did Freddie tell you that? Upon my word, I wish Freddie would occupy his mind with something useful instead of running about London making appointments. If Freddie had his way, Blandings Castle would be overrun with dancers and banjo players. But you don't play the banjo, I take it?"

"No," said Eve. "I assure you, Lord Emsworth, I only catalogue books."

"A very sensible occupation," said his lordship approvingly. "Much better than the banjo. Well, Miss Halliday, if Baxter says it's all right, then it is all right. Baxter manages all these matters. You had better come down to Blandings on Friday. Or is it Saturday? No, Friday. Catch the three-fifteen from Paddington. And if you should happen to meet McAllister in the grounds, don't mention the incubator. He is very touchy about it."

"Thank you very much, Lord Emsworth," said Eve, rising. "I shall be there on Friday."

"Capital, capital," murmured the Earl, his attention already wandering back to the Canadian drop-wart. "And remember to bring some stout boots. The grass in Shropshire can be uncommonly damp in the early morning."

Eve left the Senior Conservative Club with a feeling of profound relief, mingled with amusement. The interview had certainly not followed orthodox business lines—she had not been asked for a single reference, nor had her knowledge of literature been subjected to the slightest scrutiny—but the great fact remained: she was engaged. She was going to Blandings Castle, she would earn enough money to keep the wolf from the door until September, and, best of all, she would be in a position to plead Phyllis Jackson’s cause with the elusive Mr. Keeble.

* * * * *

It was a little after three when Eve, walking along the edge of the Green Park with her head full of plans for Phyllis and Mike, observed a figure approaching her along the broad gravel path.

Even at a distance, there was no mistaking the gentleman. His height, his remarkable thinness, the faultless perfection of his morning coat, and the monocle gleaming in his right eye combined to form a picture that stood out boldly against the background of London's everyday citizenry. He was walking with a long, slow, dignified stride, gazing at the trees with an air of benevolent proprietorship.

As he drew near, Eve stepped directly into his path and stopped, her eyes dancing with amusement.

"Good afternoon," she said.

The young man came to a halt. He adjusted his monocle, bent a look of courteous inquiry upon her, and raised his hat with a sweeping flourish that seemed to belong to the court of Louis the Fourteenth.

"A very good afternoon to you," he said in a rich, slow baritone. "The weather, I observe, has made a remarkable recovery. The sun has resumed its duties, and nature once more wears a smiling face."

"It does indeed," said Eve. "Though it wasn't smiling quite so brightly in Dover Street this morning, was it?"

Psmith surveyed her with an expression of gentle, unfathomable blankness.

"Dover Street?" he murmured thoughtfully. "A charming thoroughfare, no doubt, but one with which my acquaintance is of the slightest. Have you been visiting Dover Street today?"

Eve looked at him, astonished.

"You really mean to stand there and pretend you didn't see me under the awning?"

"Under an awning?" Psmith shook his head mournfully. "Alas, no. Had I been so fortunate as to behold you under an awning, or indeed under any other architectural feature, the vision would have remained indelibly photographed upon my mind. I am not a man to forget such things."

"You lent me an umbrella!" cried Eve.

Psmith sighed gently.

"I fear," he said, "that you are labouring under a misconception. It is a well-known fact among my friends that I am unalterably opposed to the umbrella as an institution. The umbrella is the badge of the bourgeoisie. It encourages a cowardly and unmanly attitude towards the elements. A true son of the morning faces the raindrops with a bare brow and an undaunted heart. I would not dream of carrying such an object, let alone thrusting it upon an innocent stranger."

Eve bit her lip, trying hard not to laugh. The man's face was as solemn as an owl's, but behind his monocle she detected the faintest gleam of suppressed mischief.

"Then I suppose," she said, "it was your double who rushed out of the club opposite Thorpe & Briscoe's, shoved an umbrella with a silver band into my hand, and bolted back inside without a word?"

"The world," observed Psmith philosophically, "is full of coincidences. London swarms with tall, distinguished-looking men of aristocratic bearing who spend their mornings distributing umbrellas to beautiful young ladies. It is a hobby with them. The metropolis is full of these selfless philanthropists. I envy the gentleman his good fortune, but I must disclaim the honour."

"You are the most ridiculous person I have ever met," said Eve frankly.

"You flatter me," said Psmith with a bow. "To have made any impression at all upon your consciousness is a privilege of which I am deeply sensible."

"Well, whoever he was," said Eve, "I left his umbrella with the hall porter at the club an hour ago, with a note to thank him. So if you happen to run across your double, you can tell him it's safely back in his rack."

"I shall make a point of conveying the intelligence to him," said Psmith. "He will undoubtedly be overjoyed to learn that his simple act of courtesy was appreciated. And now, if I may ask, are you pursuing any particular path across this park, or are you merely drifting like a fragrant blossom upon the breeze?"

"I am on my way to catch an omnibus," said Eve, checking her watch. "I have had a very busy day, and I must go home and pack my boxes."

"Packing?" said Psmith, raising his eyebrows. "You are leaving London?"

"I am going to Shropshire on Friday," said Eve. "To a place called Blandings Castle."

For the fraction of a second, something like genuine interest flickered behind Psmith’s monocle, but his voice remained entirely smooth and unruffled.

"A delightful county, Shropshire," he remarked. "Full of cows, pastures, and rural simplicity. I trust your stay there will be agreeable."

"I hope so," said Eve. "Good-bye—whoever you are."

"Good-bye," said Psmith, raising his hat once more. "And may the sunshine attend your footsteps."

He stood watching her as she walked away across the grass, her bird of Paradise feather nodding rhythmically with every step, until she disappeared through the gates into Piccadilly.

* * * * *

It was late in the afternoon when Psmith returned to the Drones Club. The twilight was beginning to settle over Dover Street, softening the grim facade of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe and casting long shadows across the smoking-room.

As he entered the hall, the massive porter emerged from his cubby-hole with the slow, ponderous momentum of a traction-engine.

"Excuse me, sir," said the porter.

"Speak on, my faithful fellow," said Psmith graciously. "What tidings do you bring from the great world without?"

"A young lady left an umbrella for you this morning, sir. And a note."

The porter reached into his glass box and produced the silver-banded umbrella, around the handle of which was tied the small white envelope. He presented them to Psmith with the dignity appropriate to the transfer of the Crown Jewels.

Psmith took the umbrella and tucked it under his arm. He looked at the envelope. On the front, written in a clear, energetic, feminine hand, were the words: *For the gentleman with the monocle who dislikes the rain.*

"A lady of remarkable discernment," murmured Psmith.

He opened the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper, and read the message:

*With the undying gratitude of the damsel in distress under Thorpe & Briscoe’s awning. The hat is saved, and so is the umbrella. Thank you a thousand times.—Eve Halliday.*

Psmith smiled a slow, faint, triumphant smile.

He walked into the deserted smoking-room, where the lamps had just been lit, and took his favourite chair by the window. Outside, the street was growing dark, but within, all was warmth and peace.

He laid the umbrella carefully across his knees, leaned back against the leather cushions, and repeated the name softly to himself:

"Eve Halliday."

It seemed to Psmith that it was an uncommonly attractive name. He took the note, folded it neatly, and placed it in his breast pocket next to his heart; then, gazing down at the twenty-pound umbrella with the air of a connoisseur who has just acquired a priceless masterpiece for a mere song, he closed his eyes and abandoned himself to peaceful contemplation.

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning rushing over Winchester towards the east, a line of flame high in the atmosphere, and for a fleeting instant the silent woods and sleeping roofs of the countryside were bathed in a pale, spectral greenish glare. Hundreds must have seen it and taken it for an ordinary shooting star, though it seemed extraordinarily bright to those few who chanced to be awake and watching. To my own eyes it presented a spectacle far more arresting than any falling meteor I had ever hitherto beheld.

I had been sitting late in my study working upon my philosophical papers—I remember that I was engaged in demonstrating how the gradual refinement of mechanical invention would inevitably bring about an era of universal peace—when a sudden illumination startled me from my writing. The lamp upon my table seemed to dim in the sudden wash of vivid greenish light that poured through the uncurtained window. I rose instantly, drawn by that instinctive curiosity which any abnormal manifestation of nature excites in a thinking man, and stepped to the casement.

Away across the darkened expanse of the heath and the sleeping vale towards Ottershaw and Chertsey, a brilliant streak was descending in a long, shallow slant. It did not burst with the customary sudden shower of sparks, but plunged steadily through the upper air with an incandescent brilliance that was almost painful to the gaze. For a fraction of a second, against that vivid green radiance, the distant pine-crowned knolls and the black silhouettes of the trees stood out with the sharp, photographic distinctness of broad day. There followed no immediate explosion, but after a distinct and measurable interval of silence, a dull, muffled thud shook the ground beneath my feet—a deep, heavy concussive shudder that rattled the glass in the window-frame and died away in the quiet of the night. Then the darkness closed in again, thicker and more impenetrable than before, leaving only the purple after-images floating before my dazzled eyes.

I stood for some minutes peering out into the blackness, listening intently. A dog barked furiously somewhere down towards the railway station, and presently ceased. No other sound came to disturb the heavy stillness. I consulted my watch; it was twenty minutes past two. I thought immediately of the flashes we had observed from Mars, but the human mind is strangely reluctant to accept the fantastic when a commonplace explanation lies readily to hand. I persuaded myself that what I had witnessed was merely a fallen meteorite of unusual dimensions, such as occasionally enters our atmosphere from the depths of space to bury itself harmlessly in some remote field or woodland. With that comfortable reflection I returned to my manuscripts, put away my papers, and presently went to bed, little dreaming of the colossal significance of that distant impact.

In the morning the sun rose clear and hot in a cloudless June sky. At the breakfast table I recounted the incident to my wife, describing the vividness of the light and the curious vibration of the earth. She listened with that gentle, attentive interest with which she was accustomed to hear of my scientific observations, though she was somewhat inclined to smile at my earnestness. The morning paper, when the boy brought it across from the station, contained not a single word of the occurrence; the world of print was wholly preoccupied with the political debates in Parliament and the prospects of the coming harvest.

Yet my curiosity was too thoroughly aroused to permit me to settle to my desk. After some little discussion, my wife proposed that we should walk together across the common towards Ottershaw to discover where the aerolite had fallen. It was a glorious morning, radiant with early summer sunshine; the gorse and heather upon the common were dry and fragrant, and the larks were singing high above our heads. Everything spoke of security, of peaceful provincial life, of the enduring calm of our English countryside. We walked side by side, chatting lightly of trivial domestic matters, taking the sandy path that led up past the pine woods towards the old gravel excavations near the Ottershaw road.

These excavations, I should explain, consisted of an extensive and irregular tract of hollows and pits, from which gravel and sand had been dug for the repair of the district roads. In the lower parts of this depression, where the clay strata underlay the gravel, rainwater was accustomed to accumulate, forming a broad, shallow pool or marshy mere, surrounded by steep banks of yellow sand and fringed with reeds and stunted birch trees.

As we ascended the sandy ridge that overlooked this hollow, a curious phenomenon attracted our attention. Above the crest of the pines and birches a tall, dense column of white steam was rising into the still morning air, curling and expanding lazily against the pale blue of the zenith. At first I fancied that some of the dry gorse had caught fire from the heat of the falling mass, but as we drew nearer the steady, rhythmic hissing that reached our ears was unmistakably the sound of water boiling violently upon a tremendous scale.

We quickened our pace, and in another minute stood upon the lip of the sandy descent.

Down in the basin of the hollow, half-buried in the yellow gravel and half-submerged in the broad pool of muddy water, lay an extraordinary and monstrous mass. It was almost entirely shrouded in a dense, swirling cloud of vapour that rose incessantly from its surface with a loud, sibilant roaring, like the blow-off of a great locomotive engine. The water of the pool was bubbling furiously all about it, churning into a thick, discoloured froth of mud and yellow foam, while waves of scalding spray splashed continuously against the steep, crumbling banks.

The impact had evidently been terrific. The turf and sand around the pool had been torn and ploughed up as though by the passage of a colossal ploughshare; great heaps of gravel had been flung outward against the sides of the excavation, and several small birch trees near the margin lay snapped and splintered, their green leaves already shrivelled and blackened by the intense heat that radiated from the basin. The air in the hollow was heavy with a strange, suffocating odour—a pungent smell compounded of hot metal, burnt sand, and the bitter, sulphurous reek of scorched marsh-silt.

Through the drifting veils of steam the object itself was only partially visible, but its colossal proportions were at once apparent. It was of an immense bulk, lying tilted at an angle in the bed of the pool, with perhaps some fifteen or twenty feet of its length projecting above the boiling water. What struck me immediately, with a sharp shock of surprise, was the singular regularity of its contour. So far as it could be made out through the shimmering heat and steam, it possessed none of the jagged, irregular surfaces typical of meteoric iron or stone. It appeared rather to be a huge, rounded cylinder, smoothly curved and symmetrical, though its outer skin was heavily encrusted with a thick, blackened scale of fused mineral matter, which flaked and cracked away under the action of the boiling water, revealing here and there a dull, metallic grey beneath.

"Good heavens!" whispered my wife, clinging involuntarily to my arm. "What can it be? Is it... is it truly a falling star?"

"It is an aerolite," I said, though my own words sounded strangely hesitant and unconvincing in my ears. "A meteorite of incredible size."

As we stood there, half-bewildered by the spectacle, I perceived a figure standing on the opposite bank of the excavation, near the edge of the displaced gravel. It was Ogilvy, the astronomer. He was without his hat and coat, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his grey hair disordered, and his spectacles gleaming in the sunshine. He held a small measuring tape and a pocket notebook in his hand, and was pacing excitedly to and fro along the brink, peering down through the steam with the utmost eagerness.

I called out to him, and he looked up quickly, waving his arm with an animated gesture. Leaving the path, my wife and I made our way carefully down the sandy slope and skirted the eastern margin of the pit until we came to where he stood.

"Ah! My dear fellow!" he cried out as soon as we were within earshot, his voice trembling with an agitation he made no effort to conceal. "You have seen it! Did you ever in all your life behold such a marvel? It fell just after two o'clock. I was at the telescope until past midnight, as you know, and was just falling asleep when the flash came. It shook my house like an earthquake! I was out here by five o'clock—the very first on the ground!"

"It is immense," I said, gazing down into the steaming pit. "Immense! But look at it, Ogilvy—look at the shape of it! Have you ever seen a meteorite of that form?"

"Form?" he echoed, adjusting his spectacles and staring at me with a quick, nervous laugh. "What would you have? It has been fused and smoothed by its furious flight through our atmosphere. When a mass of that magnitude enters the air at thirty miles a second, the frictional heat melts the outer surface like wax. It has simply been moulded by the air-resistance into a rough cylindrical shape. It is a mass of meteoric iron—undoubtedly iron and nickel—with a silicate crust. The mass must weigh hundreds of tons!"

"But the symmetry of it," I persisted, pointing with my stick to where the curve of the metallic flank emerged from the water. "It is as regular as the hull of a submerged vessel or a giant boiler. And consider the timing of its arrival, Ogilvy! After those ten flashes upon the disk of Mars—after what we ourselves watched through your telescope!"

Ogilvy shook his head emphatically, a look of indulgent scientific skepticism crossing his features. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "Do not let your imagination run away with your reason, my dear sir. The Martians again! I tell you, as I told you last night, the idea is preposterous. The coincidence of the fall with the Martian disturbances is purely accidental. What we saw upon the planet was a series of volcanic eruptions or heavy meteoric bombardments upon their own surface. How could an intelligent race construct a projectile of such magnitude, or fire it through forty millions of miles of empty space with an accuracy that would strike this particular parish in Surrey? It is mathematically and mechanically impossible! The thing down there is a celestial body—a mineral aerolite—and nothing more."

"Yet its appearance is unlike any aerolite in the British Museum," I remarked.

"Because no museum in the world possesses an aerolite of such gigantic volume!" he retorted with growing heat. "Wait until the water cools and the steam subsides. Wait until we can get down to it and chip off a specimen for analysis. You will find it composed of the ordinary meteoric minerals—troilite, kamacite, olivine, perhaps a trace of carbonaceous matter. To talk of machinery or artificial design is mere sensationalism."

My wife stood beside me, listening to our debate in silence. She was looking at the huge, dark mass half-drowned in the pool with a troubled expression. "Whatever it is," she said softly, "there is something dreadful about it. The heat of it, and that dreadful, incessant hissing... it feels as though it brought a terrible violence with it from the sky."

"Naturally, madam," Ogilvy replied politely, though with a trace of impatience. "A body falling from interplanetary space carries an enormous amount of kinetic energy, which is transformed into heat upon impact. It will probably remain at a boiling temperature for days. It is deeply embedded in the clay at the bottom of the mere, and the whole pond is acting as a cooling bath."

While we were talking, the isolation of the scene was gradually coming to an end. The sound of the fall and the towering pillar of steam had begun to draw people from the surrounding district. A couple of boys on bicycles came clattering along the sandy lane from Ottershaw, propping their machines against a birch tree and running down to the edge of the pit with shouts of excitement. Shortly afterwards a gardener in his shirtsleeves, with a spade across his shoulder, appeared upon the ridge, followed by a couple of labourers who had been working in the nearby hayfields. Then an elderly gentleman with a gold-rimmed eyeglass, whom I recognised as a retired merchant living near Chertsey, came strolling down the bank, puffing from the exertion and asking questions of everyone he met.

By eleven o'clock a small crowd of some thirty or forty persons had gathered around the margin of the hollow. There were several women among them in print dresses, some idlers and shop-assistants from Woking, a local butcher's boy with his basket, and a swarm of village children who threw pebbles into the water to see them splash, until Ogilvy shouted at them angrily to desist.

The general attitude of the crowd was one of simple, bovine curiosity. To them the phenomenon was merely an entertaining local spectacle, an unexpected holiday diversion. They laughed and joked, made trivial witticisms about "the big cinder," and speculated as to whether the landowner would charge admission to view it. None of them had any conception of the profound and terrible problem that lay half-submerged before their eyes; to them it was simply a very large stone that had tumbled out of the clouds.

The object itself lay stubbornly silent and motionless beneath its veil of vapour. The water around it was no longer boiling with its initial fury, but a steady volume of white steam continued to pour from its exposed flank, and the mud and water in the pit remained turbid and foul. The strange, dull metallic grey beneath the cracked crust seemed to glint with a curious greenish iridescence in the strong morning light.

Presently an incident occurred which produced a momentary panic among the spectators.

Among the crowd was a young fellow, an artisan or mechanic from one of the Chertsey boat-building yards, wearing a rough tweed suit and a bowler hat. He was an active, swaggering sort of young man, who had been loudly boasting to his companions that he was not afraid of any fallen stone, and that he intended to secure a piece of it as a souvenir before anyone else could lay a hand upon it. Despite the shouted warnings of Ogilvy, this man began to scramble recklessly down the steep, crumbling bank towards the narrow margin of gravel where the object lay tilted in the water.

"Come back, you fool!" Ogilvy shouted, waving his notebook furiously. "The metal is red-hot beneath that scale! You will be badly scalded!"

The young man laughed derisively, leaped over the remaining few feet of sand, and landed upon a heap of dry gravel within an arm's reach of the exposed end of the cylinder. The ground was evidently steaming and soft, but he balanced himself upon a half-buried boulder, bent forward, and with an exclamation of triumph laid his bare palm flat against the dark, grey metallic skin of the mass.

In an instant he uttered a piercing, agonised scream that echoed sharply across the hollow.

He recoiled violently, slipping on the wet gravel and falling backwards into the shallow margin of the pond. His scream was followed by a frantic thrashing as he scrambled desperately out of the hot water and dragged himself up the sandy bank on all fours, sobbing with pain and clutching his right hand against his breast.

A couple of labourers ran down to assist him, and when they helped him to the top of the bank, a circle of horrified spectators gathered round to look at his injury. The skin of his palm and fingers had been instantly and dreadfully seared; the flesh was turned white and blistered, and the blackened dust of the crust was burnt deep into the raw tissue. He was trembling from head to foot, weeping like a child with the intolerable agony of the burn.

"I told you so!" Ogilvy cried, his face pale and agitated as he pushed his way through the crowd. "The thermal capacity of such a mass is immense! It will retain a scorching heat for days! Let that be a lesson to the rest of you—keep back from the edge of the pit!"

The elderly gentleman from Chertsey produced a linen handkerchief and bound it carefully about the injured man's hand, while someone hurried off towards Ottershaw to fetch the local doctor.

The sight of this sudden, violent accident produced a marked change in the temper of the gathering. The frivolous chatter and joking died away; the children shrank back from the edge of the hollow, and a hush fell upon the spectators. People stood in little subdued groups, looking down into the pit with an uneasy, suspicious awe. The mass no longer seemed a mere curiosity; it possessed a sinister, dormant malice, lying there in its shroud of steam, burning and unapproachable.

The noon sun was now beating down fiercely upon the common, baking the dry sand and drawing a strong, resinous scent from the surrounding pine trees. The heat was oppressive, and the dense, warm vapour from the boiling pit, mingled with that strange, sulphurous reek, made the air in the basin heavy and sickening to breathe.

I looked at my wife, and saw that her face had grown exceedingly pale. The sudden scream of the injured workman and the sight of his raw, blistered hand had visibly shaken her nerves, and she was leaning heavily upon my arm.

"My dear," I said to her gently, "you must not remain here in this heat. The sun is growing very hot, and this crowd will only increase as the day goes on. There is nothing more to be seen until the thing cools, which may not be for many hours. Let me take you home to the house."

She looked up at me, her eyes full of a strange, lingering apprehension. "Will you not come with me?" she asked.

"I will stay a little longer," I told her, trying to speak with a lightness I did not altogether feel. "I wish to remain with Ogilvy to see what happens when the surveyor arrives from London. But I will return before the afternoon is out, I promise you."

She hesitated for a moment, looking once more down into that dismal hollow where the great cylinder lay smoking in the mud, and then nodded assent. I walked with her to the edge of the common, where the road led straight and shady between the hedgerows towards Maybury, and watched her as she went. At the corner of the lane she paused and turned to look back at me, waving her hand with a faint, reassuring smile; and I waved in return before turning back towards the excavations.

When I reached the rim of the hollow again, the scene was busier than ever. It was now past twelve o'clock, and the crowd had swelled to nearly a hundred people. A number of fresh arrivals from Woking—clerks and shopmen on their lunch-hour, several women with parasols, and half a dozen boys carrying jars of ginger-beer—were making their way down the sandy slopes. A dull murmur of voices rose from the pit, punctuated only by the steady, sullen hissing of the steam that still poured from the half-submerged cylinder, while high above in the blinding blue of the noon sky, the sun beat mercilessly down upon that quiet corner of Surrey.

The twenty minutes I had spent over that heavy medical tome had done nothing to quiet my nerves. The symptoms of strychnine poisoning, as set forth in the cold, dry print of the text, corresponded with a dreadful and minute accuracy to the agonizing spectacle we had just witnessed in Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedchamber: the sudden onset, the tetanic convulsions, the frightful arching of the spine—that hideous *opisthotonos*—and the final, merciful cessation of life. My brain was in a whirl.

I closed the book, restored it to its shelf between two volumes of standard history, and let myself out of the side door into the early morning air.

It was barely half-past six. The storm that had threatened the previous evening had broken during the night and passed away, leaving the park bathed in a pale, crystalline sunlight. The air was fresh and sharp, but the beauty of the morning only served to heighten the dark horror that hung over Styles Court. I hurried down the long carriage drive, my footsteps crunching upon the damp gravel. My mind was full of the terrible drama in which I found myself playing a part. That Alfred Inglethorp was at the bottom of it, I had not the shadow of a doubt. His smooth, hypocritical exterior, his sinister black beard, his unaccountable absence at the very hour of his wife’s death—all pointed to one inescapable conclusion. Yet I knew John’s scrupulous horror of scandal and Lawrence’s strange, morbid skepticism. If justice were to be done, it must be guided by a master hand.

I crossed the high road and struck into the village of Styles St. Mary. The village was only just waking; a carter nodded to me as he led his team past the church, and a boy was sweeping the steps of the post office. At the far end of the street, nestled behind a high hedge of clipped yew, stood the neat little cottage where the Belgian refugees were housed.

I opened the gate and walked up the narrow flagged path. Before I could raise my hand to the polished brass knocker, the door opened silently, and Hercule Poirot himself stood on the threshold.

He was dressed with his usual fastidious neatness. Not a speck of dust marred his garments; his stiff collar was immaculate, and his luxuriant moustaches were waxed to two fine, symmetrical points. In his eyes, however, there was none of his customary twinkling complacency; their green pupils were clouded with a deep and solemn gravity.

“Ah, mon ami!” he exclaimed in a low voice. “I have been expecting you.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“You were expecting me? Then you know?”

“Alas, yes,” he said, stepping back and gesturing for me to enter his tiny parlour. “I know that tragedy has visited the great house.”

“Good heavens!” I cried, sinking into a wicker chair. “How could you possibly have heard? It is barely two hours since she died!”

Poirot regarded me with a sad inclination of his head.

“In a village such as this, Hastings, news travels not upon feet, but upon the wings of the air. It was Dr. Wilkins who told me. The poor doctor was driving homeward in his dogcart after leaving Styles Court, and he chanced to pass my window. Seeing me already stirring in my garden, he pulled up his horse to deliver the melancholy intelligence. He was much shaken, the good Wilkins. ‘An unexpected collapse of the heart,’ he said to me—though he added, with many solemn shakings of his head, that there were features of the case that necessitated a consultation with the authorities.”

“Heart!” I exclaimed bitterly. “Wilkins is an old fool. It was not her heart, Poirot! It was poison—strychnine!”

Poirot raised a warning forefinger, his eyes fixing me with sudden, sharp intensity.

“Hush, my friend. It is not wise to pronounce such words aloud until science has spoken. But tell me—tell me everything, from the beginning. Omit no detail, however slight. In the investigation of crime, it is the little things—the trifles of no apparent consequence—that lead the intellect to the truth.”

I needed no second invitation. As concisely and vividly as I could, I related the events of the night: our sudden awakening by Lawrence, the locked doors, the desperate breaking in through Alfred Inglethorp’s room, the terrible convulsions, the dying woman’s last gasped words, the arrival of Dr. Bauerstein, and the utter disappearance of Alfred Inglethorp.

Poirot listened with the most profound attention. He did not interrupt me once, though his mobile eyebrows rose slightly when I described Lawrence’s petrified stare at the fireplace, and his eyes narrowed when I recounted Mrs. Inglethorp’s dying cry of “Alfred—Alfred!”

When I had finished, he sat in silence for a few moments, gently smoothing his moustaches with his small, delicate hands.

“An extraordinary affair,” he murmured at length. “Most extraordinary. That poor Madame Inglethorp! She was so good, so generous to us when we arrived here as destitute exiles. I owe her a debt of immense gratitude, Hastings. If she has been foully done to death, I swear to you that I shall not rest until the truth is brought to light.”

“Then you will come back with me at once?” I asked eagerly.

“Certainly. But you must permit me five minutes—no more—to arrange my affairs and fetch my little case of instruments. In the meantime, Hastings, return to the house. It is better that we do not appear to arrive together as conspirators. Tell your friend Mr. John Cavendish that I place my humble talents entirely at his disposal, and that I shall wait upon him within the half-hour.”

“Very well,” I agreed. “I will go ahead and prepare them.”

I rose and took my leave, heartened beyond measure by the quiet confidence of the little Belgian. Whatever dark schemes had been laid at Styles Court, I felt certain that they would not long withstand the penetrating intellect of Hercule Poirot.

I walked back up the hill at a brisk pace. As I turned into the main gates of the park, the clock in the village church tower tolled the hour of eight.

I had barely reached the sweeping bend of the drive that brought the house into view when I stopped dead. Walking toward the front portico, with the slow, measured tread of a man returning from a morning constitutional, was none other than Alfred Inglethorp himself.

He was wearing his customary black frock coat, his gold-rimmed pince-nez perched upon his nose, and his thick, parted black beard giving him that strangely alien and sanctimonious air that had always filled me with profound distaste. He carried a heavy walking stick, and his boots were thickly caked with yellow clay.

Before I could decide whether to address him, John Cavendish stepped out through the front door onto the gravel. His face was set in lines of grim, controlled anger.

“Where have you been, Alfred?” John demanded, his voice ringing out sharp and clear in the morning air.

Inglethorp paused, leaning upon his stick, and looked up at his stepson with an expression of mild, reproachful surprise.

“My dear John,” he said, in that deep, oily voice of his. “What a tone to adopt! I have had a most distressing night. I walked into the village with Dr. Bauerstein, as you know, and afterward I called upon poor Farmer Rolston regarding the boundary hedges on the lower pasture. We sat up talking far later than I intended. When I left his house, the tempest had broken with such violence that it was impossible to cross the meadows. The rain was torrential. Rolston pressed me to remain, and I spent the night upon the horsehair sofa in his parlour. I fell into a heavy sleep, and only awakened an hour ago. I walked straight back across the lower fields.”

“Then you know nothing of what has happened here?” asked John, his eyes boring into the other man.

“Happened? What should have happened?” A look of alarm, whether real or feigned I could not tell, crossed Inglethorp’s pale features. “Is Emily unwell? Tell me, I beg of you!”

“My mother died at five o’clock this morning,” John said sternly.

Inglethorp staggered back as though struck, dropping his walking stick upon the gravel.

“Emily—dead? No, no! It cannot be! My poor, dear wife! It is impossible!” He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving with what appeared to be uncontrollable grief. “Why was I not sent for? Why did nobody come to Rolston’s?”

“Because we did not know where you were,” John replied coldly. “You told nobody of your intention to visit Rolston, nor that you would remain away from home.”

At that moment the hall door opened wider, and Dorcas, the elderly parlourmaid, appeared upon the threshold. Her eyes were red with weeping, and her apron was crumpled. She looked from John to Inglethorp, and a flush of indignation rose in her withered cheeks.

“If you please, Mr. John,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

“What is it, Dorcas?”

“I could not help overhearing what Mr. Inglethorp just said, sir,” Dorcas continued, looking resolutely at the ground. “And it is my duty to speak. Mr. Inglethorp says he stayed the night at Farmer Rolston’s because of the rain, and did not leave until an hour ago.”

“Well?” said John sharply.

“It is not true, sir,” Dorcas said firmly. “Farmer Rolston’s boy, young Tommy, came up to the kitchen door with the fresh butter not twenty minutes ago. Cook asked him how his father’s rheumatism was after the wet night, and Tommy said his father had gone to bed at nine o’clock sharp, and that nobody had set foot in their house all evening!”

A dead silence fell upon the group.

Inglethorp slowly lowered his hands from his face. His countenance was ashen, but his voice remained smooth and unruffled.

“The girl is mistaken, or the boy was confused,” he said quietly. “It was the bailiff’s cottage I intended to say—I frequently confuse the two names when my mind is troubled. But this is not the time for petty domestic disputes. My place is by the side of my beloved wife. Where is she, John? Take me to her.”

“The room is locked,” John said in a tone of iron. “By the doctor’s orders. Nothing is to be touched until the post-mortem has taken place.”

“A post-mortem?” Inglethorp gasped, genuine horror breaking through his composure. “You are subjecting her poor remains to that? It is an outrage—a desecration!”

“It is a necessity,” John answered.

Before Inglethorp could reply, the sound of light, rapid footsteps caused us all to turn. Hercule Poirot was walking briskly up the drive. He carried a small black leather bag and looked as spruce and unruffled as if he were attending a garden party.

I stepped forward to meet him, and rapidly introduced him to John.

“This is my friend, Monsieur Hercule Poirot,” I said. “He has kindly consented to help us in our trouble.”

John bowed courteously. “I am very glad to meet you, Monsieur Poirot. Hastings has told me much of your great reputation. If there has indeed been foul play under my roof, I desire that no stone should be left unturned to discover the truth.”

“You may rely upon me, Mr. Cavendish,” Poirot said gravely. “My heart is desolated by this terrible event. With your permission, I will commence my inquiries without delay.”

“The keys of the bedchambers are here,” said John, drawing them from his waistcoat pocket. “Dr. Bauerstein insisted that both my mother’s room and Alfred’s should remain locked.”

“A very wise precaution,” Poirot nodded. “We will ascend at once. But first, if you will permit, I should like a word with the young lady—Miss Cynthia, is it not?”

John looked slightly surprised. “Cynthia? She is in the morning-room, I believe. The poor child has been terribly upset.”

Poirot followed John into the house, while Inglethorp, muttering darkly to himself, turned aside into the library and shut the door behind him.

We found Cynthia Murdoch sitting by the window in the morning-room. The morning sun fell across her bright auburn hair, but her face was unusually pale, and there were dark violet shadows beneath her eyes. She looked up listlessly as we entered.

Poirot bowed to her with exaggerated foreign politeness, his hand upon his heart.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he said gently. “I regret infinitely to intrude upon your grief. But I have only one little question to ask of you, if you will be so amiable as to answer it.”

Cynthia looked at him with wide, anxious eyes. “What is it?” she murmured.

Poirot leaned forward, his green eyes searching her face with singular intensity.

“Tell me, mademoiselle—did you sleep very heavily last night, far more heavily than is your custom?”

Cynthia started, a faint colour rising in her cheeks.

“Why, yes,” she replied in wonder. “It was the strangest thing. Usually I wake at the slightest sound—even a bird on the sill. But last night I felt an overwhelming, unnatural drowsiness the moment my head touched the pillow. When Mrs. Cavendish came to my room and shook me, I felt as though I were struggling up from the bottom of a deep well. My head was throbbing, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. How did you know that, Monsieur Poirot?”

Poirot did not answer her question. He merely bowed again, low and reverently.

“Thank you, mademoiselle. That is all I wished to know. You have been most kind.”

He turned to John and myself. “And now, Messieurs, let us mount to the chamber of Madame.”

John led the way up the broad staircase, along the corridor, and unlocked the heavy door of Alfred Inglethorp’s room. We passed through it to the communicating door, which had been burst open during the night. The shattered woodwork hung loosely upon its hinges, bearing silent witness to our desperate efforts.

“Ah,” murmured Poirot, inspecting the splintered frame with professional interest. “A very solid door. You had great difficulty in forcing it, did you not?”

“Enormous,” I said. “The bolt was entirely shot into the socket.”

“C’est ça,” said Poirot softly.

We stepped into Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom. The atmosphere of the room was heavy, cold, and oppressive. The blinds were still drawn, though the bright morning light filtered through their edges, illuminating the silent, shrouded figure that lay upon the four-poster bed.

John turned his head away, his face tightening with suppressed grief.

“I cannot bear to look,” he muttered hoarsely. “If you do not need me, Monsieur Poirot, I will wait in the gallery outside.”

“By all means, Mr. Cavendish,” Poirot replied with delicate sympathy. “My friend Hastings and I will conduct the examination. Do not distress yourself.”

John withdrew, closing the outer door behind him, and the key clicked in the lock as Poirot secured it from within.

We were left alone in the death chamber.

Poirot stood perfectly still in the centre of the room for several minutes, his eyes darting rapidly from one object to another with the keenness of a hawk. Nothing escaped him: the large wardrobe with its mirrored door, the small table overturned upon the floor with the shattered fragments of a water carafe, the writing desk in the corner, the gas bracket jutting from the wall, and the cold fireplace where a heap of grey ashes lay undisturbed.

“Now, Hastings,” he said in a low, brisk tone. “Order and method—always order and method! Let us begin from the beginning.”

He went straight to the mantelpiece. He examined the candlesticks, the small china shepherdesses, and the clock. Then he dropped upon his knees before the grate.

“You observed, Hastings, that Mr. Lawrence Cavendish stared with great terror at this fireplace when you entered the room?”

“Yes,” I answered. “His eyes were absolutely petrified. I looked myself, but I could see nothing whatever out of the ordinary.”

“The eyes of the poet see many things that escape the ordinary observer,” Poirot remarked cryptically. He took a magnifying glass and a pair of tiny silver forceps from his pocket. With exquisite care, he raked among the ashes of the hearth.

“Someone has burned papers here,” he observed. “Quite recently, too. See—these black flakes are still crisp. But they are consumed entirely—alas, there is not a single syllable preserved.”

He rose, dusted his knees with meticulous precision, and turned his attention to the bedside table. He knelt beside the overturned furniture, examining the stained carpet and the shards of glass.

“Here fell the water bottle,” he murmured. “And here—what have we here?”

He pointed to a small, dark stain upon the edge of the Indian rug near the foot of the bed. It was no larger than a sixpence, slightly greasy to the touch. Poirot bent over it, sniffing it delicately.

“Coffee,” he declared. “A splash of black coffee. You told me that Madame carried her cup up to bed with her?”

“Yes,” I said. “Alfred brought it to her in the boudoir after dinner, but she did not drink it then. She carried it upstairs when she retired.”

“And where is that cup now?”

We searched the room thoroughly, but there was no sign of a coffee cup or saucer anywhere on the tables, the floor, or the washstand.

“Curious,” Poirot muttered. “Most curious. A cup does not vanish into thin air. But let us proceed.”

He crossed over to the window, pulled back the heavy velvet curtains, and examined the fastenings. The window was closed, but the catch was not bolted. He opened it and looked out onto the flat leads of the porch below, then closed it again thoughtfully.

He moved toward the washstand, then to the large Victorian chest of drawers, his eyes missing nothing. Suddenly, as he passed near the heavy base of the four-poster bed, his gaze arrested itself upon the brass valance rail near the floor.

He went down on his knees again with astonishing agility. With his silver forceps, he reached far underneath the low fringe of the valance, close to the heavy carved footpost.

When he withdrew his arm, the forceps held a small, peculiar object.

I leaned forward with the greatest curiosity, peering over his shoulder.

It was a tiny, crumpled piece of stiff parchment, barely an inch long, charred slightly at one corner, and bearing upon its surface a minute, bright speck of purple wax.

Poirot rose slowly to his feet. He held the forceps at eye level, gazing at the tiny scrap as though it were the most precious jewel in the world. His eyes shone with that strange, emerald light that I had seen in them only during his most celebrated triumphs in Brussels.

“Look, Hastings,” he whispered. “Regard it well!”

“What on earth is it?” I asked, staring at the insignificant scrap. “Is it a piece of a letter? Or a document?”

“It is a fragment, my friend. A very little fragment of the truth.”

“But what does the purple wax mean?” I demanded, thoroughly mystified. “Whose wax is it? And how did it come to be hidden under the bed?”

Poirot carefully produced a small pillbox lined with cotton wool from his waistcoat pocket. Using the forceps, he deposited the tiny charred fragment into the box, closed the lid, and restored it safely to his pocket.

He looked at me, his head tilted to one side, and his face wore an expression of the most inscrutable gravity.

“Ask me no questions now, Hastings,” he said quietly. “There are things that the intellect must arrange in their proper categories before the tongue is permitted to speak.”

“Can you at least tell me what it proves?” I urged.

Poirot turned and looked once more toward the silent, tragic figure upon the bed.

“It proves, my dear Hastings, that the good God has given us our eyes not merely to look with, but to see. And it tells me that in this house of sorrow, the clock has struck the hour, but the pendulum has not yet ceased to swing.”

Mr Shepherd, who was a man of business and had all the polite caution of his profession, was the first to lay the result of his deliberations before the baronet. He had come over from the market town expressly for the purpose, armed with papers, estimates, and an inexhaustible supply of respectful phrases; and being admitted to the morning-room, where Sir Walter sat with his eldest daughter, and where Anne also had a quiet place, he unfolded his plan with many deferential bows and a great deal of preliminary apology.

His scheme was formed upon what he termed a system of prudent moderation. It was impossible, Mr Shepherd observed, that Sir Walter Elliot should be expected to live like an ordinary gentleman; the name, the dignity, the hereditary claims of Kellynch Hall must be supported; yet there were certain external appendages, certain superfluities of expenditure, which might be pruned away without any sensible diminution of splendour. He had calculated that by dismissing four of the under-servants whose duties were purely ornamental, by laying down two of the carriage horses and contenting themselves with four, by putting off the projected improvements in the shrubbery, and by reducing the table charges within the limits of ordinary hospitality, a saving of some six or seven hundred pounds a year might be accomplished. This, though it would not immediately remove the load of debt, would at least keep the creditors quiet, and prevent any unseemly exposure for the present.

Sir Walter listened to the end with an expression of countenance in which astonishment and disgust strove for the mastery. When Mr Shepherd had finished, and looked up with an air of hopeful deference, the baronet pushed the paper from him with extreme disdain.

“Mr Shepherd,” said he, with that cold, measured dignity which he knew so well how to assume, “if I am to understand that this is the best relief your ingenuity can devise, I must confess myself entirely disappointed. Dismiss my servants? Put down my horses? Appear in the county with four horses instead of six, as if I were a newly created Irish lord, or some retired merchant from Bristol? Good God, sir! Do you consider who I am? Do you imagine that Sir Walter Elliot can submit to have it whispered across Somersetshire that he is unable to maintain the establishment of his ancestors? No, sir; I should despise myself if I could stoop to such contemptible shifts. Better to be ruined at once, with the dignity of a gentleman, than to crawl about the neighbourhood under the stigma of a degraded magnificence. What would the world say? What would be thought at Uppercross, or by the families who have known Kellynch in its days of glory? Every comfort, every distinction belonging to my rank, must be preserved, or the whole is nothing.”

Mr Shepherd was all submission in an instant. He smiled, he bowed, he admitted the force of Sir Walter’s observations; he declared that nothing had been further from his intention than to recommend any step derogatory to the honours of the family, and that he had merely submitted the calculation as a basis for further reflection.

Elizabeth fully joined in her father’s indignation. “It is perfectly impossible,” she said, looking with great displeasure at the lawyer. “To be seen in the park with four horses! I wonder, Mr Shepherd, you could ever think of such a thing. It would be a confession of poverty at once; and as to parting with the servants, it would create such talk in the village as could never be silenced. I am sure my father and I have already shown every disposition to retrench. We have given up all idea of the new drawing-room curtains, and we have curtailed several charities which were quite unnecessary; but to make ourselves the town-talk by such wretched contrivances as these, is what neither my father nor I can ever endure.”

Mr Shepherd’s plan being thus disposed of without a single dissentient voice, the appeal was turned towards Lady Russell, who entered the room soon afterwards, having walked over from her own house to assist at this momentous council.

Lady Russell was a woman of strict integrity and high notions of honour. She loved the Elliot family with an ardour second only to her love of virtue; she valued their rank and consequence, but she valued their real respectability far more; and her sense of rectitude was shocked by the idea of an ancient baronet living in open insolvency, and defrauding the tradespeople who trusted him. She had prepared her advice with great deliberation, and with an earnest desire to reconcile the claims of justice with the feelings of those she loved.

“My dear Sir Walter,” said she, seating herself beside him, and speaking with all the gentle earnestness of long-established friendship, “the evil is great, and the remedy must be proportionate to it. It is not by small, superficial reductions that a heavy debt can be discharged; it is only by a steady, systematic course of self-denial. If you will consent to retire from the world for a few years, to live in complete quiet here at Kellynch, with an establishment reduced to the strictest bounds of real comfort, you may, by devoting three-fourths of your income to the liquidation of your debts, be a free and unencumbered man in seven or eight years. It will require sacrifices, no doubt; there must be no journey to London in the spring; the table must be simple; no unnecessary company must be entertained; and all expensive pleasures must be laid aside. But consider the reward! At the end of that period, you will have preserved your estate intact, you will have satisfied every just claim, and you will stand before the county with unblemished honour and restored independence.”

Sir Walter’s brow grew darker and darker as she proceeded. The picture of seven or eight years of monastic seclusion in Somersetshire, without London, without society, without the customary tribute of admiration from the great world, was more than his philosophy could bear.

“My dear Lady Russell,” he exclaimed, with visible irritation, “you speak of seven or eight years as if they were so many weeks! You ask me to bury myself alive; to surrender every pleasure that makes life tolerable to a man of my station; to banish Elizabeth from the society she was born to adorn; and for what? To please a set of rapacious tradesmen, who have already made fortunes out of my patronage! If I am to live like a hermit in my own house, I may as well be dead at once. London in the spring is not a luxury; it is a necessity of my existence, and essential to Elizabeth’s prospects. What would become of her youth, of her consequence, if she were immured here year after year, with no other view than the trees of the park, and no other society than the curate and the apothecary? No, no; your plan is well meant, I have no doubt, but it is utterly impracticable. It is asking too much of human nature; it is asking Sir Walter Elliot to become a nonentity.”

Lady Russell looked deeply concerned, and attempted to urge the absolute necessity of doing something effectual; but Sir Walter would not listen. He waved his hand with an air of decisive rejection, and turned away his face, as if the bare contemplation of her scheme were an injury to his feelings.

A heavy silence fell upon the room. Mr Shepherd looked down at his boots, convinced that nothing reasonable was to be done; Lady Russell sighed with mingled sorrow and vexation; and Sir Walter took up his gold snuff-box with a countenance of injured dignity.

It was at this moment that Anne, who had hitherto remained unnoticed in the background, ventured to speak. She had listened to both proposals with an aching heart. To her, the evasion of just debts was a source of unceasing shame; but she saw that Lady Russell’s plan, by attempting to compromise between appearance and economy, would only prolong the misery of the family without satisfying the pride of her father. She had thought deeply upon the subject, and the purity of her own mind suggested a course bolder and more decisive than any that had yet been named.

“If retrenchment is necessary, papa,” said Anne, in a clear, though gentle voice, “would it not be better to make it complete and immediate? If we were to shut up all the superfluous apartments of the Hall, to dismiss at once every servant whose presence is not required for our actual maintenance, to put away the carriage entirely for a time, and to live in the most absolute and avowed simplicity, we might discharge the whole of our debts in four or five years instead of seven or eight. There would be no humiliation in such a course, for it would be an act of justice and principle. It would be far easier to endure a total change of life, undertaken openly for an honourable purpose, than to drag on for years in a state of perpetual struggle and concealment.”

Lady Russell started, and looked at Anne with surprise and admiration; but before Sir Walter could express the indignation which was visibly rising in his breast at being thus instructed by his second daughter, Elizabeth spoke.

“I am entirely of Anne’s opinion,” said Elizabeth, with a haughty toss of her head.

The whole party looked at her in amazement. Sir Walter stared as if he doubted the evidence of his senses, and Mr Shepherd opened his eyes wide with professional astonishment. That Elizabeth Elliot should advocate an economy more severe than any that had been proposed, was an event for which no one was prepared.

“Yes,” continued Elizabeth, with an air of lofty resolution, “if we are to reduce our expenses, let it be done in a manner that shows we are superior to the petty opinions of the world. I would ten times rather close half the rooms, draw the blinds, and live in the strictest retirement as an act of our own choice, than submit to Lady Russell’s miserable middle course of creeping about the country with diminished consequence. If we stay at Kellynch in seclusion, our absence from society will be attributed to our own will, to our own dignity, which disdains to mix with the neighbourhood on unequal terms; but to go on living here in a shabby, curtailed fashion, receiving company without the power of entertaining them properly, and going to town only to be eclipsed by people of yesterday, is what I will never consent to. Let us shut up the house, if it must be so, and let the world know that the Elliots of Kellynch do not choose to be seen when they cannot appear as becomes them.”

This unexpected alliance between his two daughters, though springing from motives as opposite as light and darkness, produced no other effect upon Sir Walter than an accession of displeasure.

“Upon my word!” he cried, looking from one to the other with bitter disdain. “This is extraordinary doctrine indeed! Anne’s romantic notions of justice I was prepared for—she has always had very peculiar ideas, totally unlike the rest of her family; but that you, Elizabeth, should join in such an absurd scheme, passes my comprehension. Shut up Kellynch Hall? Put away my carriage? Live in three rooms, like a decayed gentlewoman in an almshouse? Are you both out of your senses? Do you suppose that my creditors would be satisfied by seeing my blinds drawn, or that my health could support the gloom and damp of a half-deserted house? I wonder you have not proposed that we should sell the family plate at once, and dine upon pewter! No; I will hear no more of such nonsense. If Kellynch cannot be maintained as it has always been maintained, it shall not be turned into a spectacle of mock humility to gratify the malice of our neighbours.”

Elizabeth looked sullen and offended at this rebuff; Anne relapsed into silence, conscious that she had done her duty, but grieving for the blindness which rejected every rational means of safety.

Mr Shepherd, who had been watching the baronet’s countenance with acute attention, now saw an opening for a suggestion which had long been maturing in his own mind, but which he had hitherto lacked the courage to introduce. He cleared his throat, smoothed his cravat, and leaned forward with a look of profound sagacity.

“Sir Walter,” said he, in his softest, most insinuating tone, “since your feelings—feelings which do you the greatest honour, and which I admire from the bottom of my soul—render it impossible for you to submit to any reduction of your establishment while residing at Kellynch, does it not occur to you that there might be another method of surmounting the difficulty? A method which would relieve you at once from all pecuniary embarrassment, without requiring you to make the slightest sacrifice of personal comfort or consequence?”

Sir Walter looked at him with an eye of eager enquiry. “Well, sir, what is it? If you have any expedient that does not involve the surrender of my dignity, let us hear it.”

“Why,” said Mr Shepherd, hesitating slightly, and choosing his words with the utmost delicacy, “if you were to quit Kellynch for a few years, and reside in some other place—some fashionable, agreeable place, where a smaller establishment would be quite as respectable, and where your expenses would naturally be very much less—you might, in that case, turn the Hall itself to great advantage. There are many persons of large fortune, persons of the highest respectability, who would be proud and happy to become the... to occupy Kellynch Hall during your absence; in short, Sir Walter, by letting the estate to a suitable tenant—”

The word was scarcely uttered before Sir Walter sprang from his chair, his face flushed with an emotion of the most violent indignation.

“A tenant!” he shouted, in a voice that made Mr Shepherd involuntarily recoil. “A tenant at Kellynch Hall! A stranger to sit in my seat, to walk through my woods, to inhabit the apartments of my ancestors! Are you mad, Mr Shepherd? Or have you forgotten to whom you are speaking? A tenant! Sir Walter Elliot to let his family mansion to some low-born adventurer, some upstart who has made money by trade or plunder, and who would presume to lord it over my tenantry and degrade the honours of my house! I wonder you dare to utter such an insult in my presence!”

“My dear Sir Walter,” stammered the terrified agent, rising also, and backing towards the door, “I assure you... I protest... nothing was further from my thoughts... I only meant...”

“Do not speak the word again, sir!” interrupted Sir Walter, with a commanding gesture of his arm. “I forbid you ever to name it in this house! Let me never hear the word ‘tenant’ from your lips while you have the honour of serving me. It is a degradation to which no gentleman, no baronet of Charles the Second’s creation, could ever submit. Kellynch Hall has never been contaminated by the presence of a hired occupant, and while I live, it never shall be! If I am to be ruined, I will be ruined in my own house, but I will never barter the roof of my fathers for the gold of an intruder!”

Mr Shepherd was completely silenced. He made a hundred apologies, disclaimed all intention of offending, and protested that his only object had been to serve the family; but Sir Walter was too deeply ruffled to be easily appeased, and it required all Lady Russell’s influence and composure to restore anything like tranquility to the apartment.

The discussion, having reached this impassable barrier, was effectively at an end. Nothing was decided; no plan was adopted; the debts remained as formidable as ever, and the means of paying them as distant. Sir Walter walked to the window to compose his features, Elizabeth sat in haughty silence, and Lady Russell looked from one to the other with deep anxiety and disappointment.

While they were still in this uncomfortable state, the door opened, and a servant entered, bearing the postbag. The arrival of the letters created an immediate diversion. Sir Walter took the key from his pocket with an air of solemn importance, unlocked the bag, and turned out its contents upon the table.

There were several letters for himself, consisting chiefly of tradesmen’s bills and formal business communications, which he pushed aside with a look of distaste; but among them was one directed to Miss Elliot, in the well-known, hurried hand of her youngest sister.

“A letter from Mary,” said Elizabeth, breaking the seal with an indifferent air. “What can she have to write about so soon? It is not three days since we heard from her.”

She glanced over the first page, and her lip curled with a slight expression of contempt.

“Just as I expected,” she remarked, handing the letter across to Anne. “Mary is as full of complaints as ever. She has got one of her usual colds, or her nervous headaches, and fancies herself dying because Charles is gone out shooting, and she has nobody to sit with her. You had better read it, Anne; it concerns you more than anyone else.”

Anne took the letter, and read it with that mixture of pity and patience which her sister Mary’s correspondence was accustomed to excite. It was written in a strain of fretful dissatisfaction from beginning to end:—

“Dear Elizabeth,

“I am so extremely unwell that I can hardly hold my pen, and I think it very hard that none of you should have come over to see me. I have had a dreadful pain in my side ever since yesterday morning, and my throat is so sore that I can scarcely swallow; but nobody at Uppercross pays the least attention to me. Charles is gone out with his gun, as usual, and does not care in the least how much I suffer; and old Mrs Musgrove has not been near me all day, though she knows how subject I am to these attacks. The children have been so cross and noisy that my poor head is distracted, and the nursery-maid is of no use whatever. I am persuaded that if I am left alone in this way, I shall not live out the week. I am quite sure that Kellynch can spare Anne very well, for she is never of any consequence at home, and if she has any feeling for a sister in my deplorable condition, she will come over to Uppercross immediately. I must have her directly; she may bring her things in the gig, and stay as long as I am ill, which I dare say will be a very great while. Pray tell papa that I am too ill to write to him, but that he must send Anne without delay.

“Your affectionate sister, “Mary Musgrove.”

“A very unreasonable letter,” observed Sir Walter, who had listened to Elizabeth’s summary with an air of languid indifference. “Mary is always fancying herself ill, and making a great fuss about nothing. However, if she wishes for Anne, there can be no objection. Kellynch can certainly spare her; indeed, under our present circumstances, the fewer people we have about us, the better. She may go to Uppercross tomorrow, if she likes.”

“Certainly,” added Elizabeth, with cold composure. “Anne can be of no use here; she never enters into any of our plans, and her presence will not be missed in the least. She may go to Mary for as long as she pleases.”

Anne made no reply to these ungracious permissions. She was too well accustomed to being treated as an incumbrance to feel any new surprise at their words; but in her heart she was truly glad of the summons. To escape from the painful scenes of Kellynch, where pride and folly were hurrying her family to ruin, and where her voice was utterly powerless to do good, was an unspeakable relief. At Uppercross, troublesome and unreasonable as Mary might be, she would at least be of some real use; she would nurse her sister, manage the children, and find in active duties a refuge from her own melancholy thoughts.

Shortly after this, the party broke up. Mr Shepherd, having made his peace as well as he could, took his leave with many profound bows, inwardly resolving never again to mention the word ‘tenant’ to Sir Walter Elliot, whatever might become of the Kellynch estate. Lady Russell also departed, walking slowly back to her cottage, full of grief and apprehension for the future of those she loved, and lamenting the incurable vanity which preferred the prospect of ruin to the practice of honesty.

Evening came on, bringing no relief to the perplexities of Kellynch Hall. Sir Walter, having bathed his temples with lavender water and consulted his looking-glass, found comfort in the reflection that his personal appearance was as yet unimpaired by his misfortunes, and sat down to his evening tea with the Baronetage open at his elbow, seeking in the contemplation of his past consequence a balm for his present humiliations. Elizabeth, gloomy and unbending, sat opposite to him, nursing her resentment against the world, and brooding over the impossibility of maintaining her station without the means of doing so.

Anne remained alone in her own room, looking out upon the fading light as it died away over the quiet woods of the park. The great question of the family debts was still entirely unsettled; not a single step had been taken towards their liquidation; not an expense had been curtailed; and ruin was advancing upon them with steady, unhindered steps. Yet, in the midst of the heavy sorrow which this conviction brought to her mind, she felt a calm satisfaction in having resolved to go to Uppercross on the following morning. There, at least, she would have duties to perform, and might forget, for a little while, the impending downfall of the house of Elliot.

Edna remained for some time under the awning, watching the children dig their brown fingers into the dry, yielding sand. Raoul had found a bleached conch shell, and the little Ratignolle girl was attempting to fill it with white pebbles, chattering in the soft, broken patois of the coast. The glare upon the water was blinding now, beating back from the white expanse of froth and shell with a fierce, persistent heat that seemed to dry the very breath upon the lips. After a little while the nurse-maids came forward with cross, sunburnt faces to gather their charges for the midday meal, and Edna walked slowly back along the sandy trail alone.

The scent of the camomile fields rose heavy and rank under the vertical sun. The small green plantation of oranges lay motionless, without a rustle in its glossy leaves, as though the whole island were sinking under a stupendous weight of noon. When Edna reached the cottage, she found that Madame Ratignolle had not yet retired to her room, but was resting upon a low wicker lounge in the shaded vestibule of the main house, drinking eau sucrée from a tall glass and fanning herself with languid, rhythmic strokes.

“Ah, Edna, you should have come with us,” Adèle murmured, opening her blue eyes and smiling with sweet, indolent warmth as Edna sat down upon the steps near her feet. “The sun along that path was like a furnace. Robert had to support me almost every step of the way. I told him my poor ankles would give under me before we reached the gate.”

“He is a good escort,” Edna said, unpinning her heavy straw hat and laying it across her knees. Her hair, damp from the heat, clung in soft rings about her temples. “He is always at the service of any one who needs him.”

“Do you know what he said of you as we came along?” Madame Ratignolle asked, a little ripple of amusement stirring the corners of her mouth. She reached out and touched Edna’s arm with the edge of her palm-leaf fan. “We looked back once, before the turn at the lemon grove, and saw you standing there beside the children’s tent against the white glare of the water. Robert stopped short in the path and looked at you for a long time. He said you were like a woman who had wandered out of some ancient picture, and that you had the look in your eyes of one who is listening for a voice that has not yet spoken. He said it was impossible to tell whether you belonged to the earth or to the sea, but that any man who tried to hold you would find only water slipping through his fingers.”

Adèle laughed—her musical, contented Creole laugh that seemed always to spring from a heart untroubled by any shadow of doubt or longing. “Was there ever such a boy for foolish, extravagant phrases? I told him he had been reading too many of those yellow-backed romances from New Orleans. But he was quite solemn about it for nearly five minutes, until we met old Monsieur Farival coming from the wharf.”

Edna did not answer. A warm color crept up into her neck and burned in her cheeks, but she kept her eyes fixed upon the distant line where the dusty road met the green orchard. She felt a curious, vibrating pulse beat in her throat. Robert’s words, repeated in Adèle’s careless, affectionate voice, seemed to take shape in the heavy air around her, hanging there like something palpable and bright.

Before she could speak, a barefoot negro boy came up the gallery steps, carrying a yellow envelope between his fingers. It was a telegram addressed to Madame Léonce Pontellier. Edna took it with a slight start of surprise, tearing the thin paper open with fingers that were not quite steady.

The message was from her husband in the city. A sudden turn in the cotton market, combined with an unexpected meeting of directors on Carondelet Street, would detain him through the coming days; he would not be able to come out to Grand Isle for Saturday or Sunday, but sent his affectionate regards and promised to send out a basket of fruit and iced game by the Saturday boat.

Edna folded the paper carefully into its original creases and smoothed it against her knee. A singular sensation, subtle and unbidden, stole over her. It was not disappointment; it was not resentment. It was rather a sudden, spacious sense of freedom, an unexpected expansion of the hours before her, as if a quiet room had been opened wide to the air. She realized, with a faint throb of self-reproach which died away almost before she felt it, that the thought of Léonce’s absence brought with it a profound, restful relief.

“Is it bad news, *chérie*?” asked Madame Ratignolle, observing her silence with ready sympathy.

“No,” said Edna, rising and putting the slip into her pocket. “Léonce cannot come down this week. He is kept by business in town.”

“Ah, what a pity!” sighed the other, with an instant, matronly commiseration for the separated spouses. “Those dreadful affairs in the city! Alphonse would never leave me alone for a whole fortnight, not for all the cotton on the levee.”

Edna left her companion to her fan and her sweet water, and went over to her own cottage. The children were already asleep in the back room under the white dome of the mosquito bar, their small limbs flung out in the easy, graceful abandon of childhood. The quadroon sat near the window, dozing over a piece of mending.

The afternoon wore away in a breathless, shimmering stillness. The guests at the pension had all retired behind their green shutters to escape the heat; the very waves, breaking softly upon the distant beach, sounded muffled and far away, like the murmur of a dream.

About four o’clock, when the shadows of the water-oaks began to lengthen across the grass, Edna changed into her bathing suit and threw a light cotton mantle over her shoulders. She did not look for Robert, nor did she go near the main house. A powerful, unreasoned desire had taken hold of her—a desire to be alone, to feel the cool shock of the sea without the sound of human voices, without the banter and the laughter that always attended their morning excursions.

She walked swiftly down the path between the camomile bushes. The beach was utterly deserted. The little bath-houses stood in a line like sentinels guarding the solitude of the Gulf. The water lay before her in long, undulating sheets of pale green and silver, stretching out into the vast, luminous horizon where the sky seemed to melt into the sea.

Edna threw her mantle upon the bench of the gallery and walked down to the water’s edge. The wet sand was cool and firm beneath her bare feet. All her life she had been afraid of the water; a childish terror had always seized her whenever she ventured beyond her depth, holding her back, making her awkward and helpless while others swam and floated about her with effortless grace. Robert and the others had tried all summer to teach her, but she had remained timid, clutching desperately at their hands or retreating to the shallows whenever the waves rose toward her breast.

Now, stepping into the surf, she felt no fear. The water touched her skin with a delicious, cold embrace, wrapping itself about her ankles, her knees, her thighs. A swell rolled in, lifting her slightly, and instead of shrinking back with her habitual nervousness, she yielded to it.

She took a step forward into the deeper water, where the bottom fell away beneath her. She reached out with her arms, striking the water in a broad, steady sweep, just as she had beaten the tall Kentucky grass in that long-ago summer of her childhood. To her sudden amazement, her feet left the sand; the water bore her up. She was floating; she was moving forward. She made one stroke, then another, and another, with a smooth, rhythmic motion that seemed to come to her not from instruction, but from some dormant instinct that had just awakened within her limbs.

She swam only a few yards, but it seemed to her that she had crossed an enormous, uncharted space. A cry of exultation rose in her throat, though she stifled it instantly. The sensation of power and independence that swept through her was intoxicating. She was no longer a helpless creature clinging to the shore; she was a part of the vast, living element that surrounded her.

She turned and swam back toward the shallows, her feet finding the sand once more. Her heart was beating fast, not with fright, but with a wild, triumphant joy. She stood in the knee-deep water, the spray dripping from her arms and shoulders, looking out across the sea that had suddenly become her own. She resolved that she would tell no one—not Robert, not Adèle, not Léonce. It was a secret between herself and the water, a solitary conquest that belonged to her alone.

As she came out upon the dry sand and moved toward her bath-house, she was startled to see a figure seated in the shadow of the adjacent porch.

It was the lady in black. She was sitting with her hands clasped about her knees, her black garments gathered closely around her frail, slight frame. Her rosary beads, which usually slipped through her fingers with an incessant, muted clicking, lay motionless in her lap. Her dark, hollow eyes were fixed upon Edna with an intensity that made the younger woman pause involuntarily upon the lower step.

For weeks Edna had seen this silent, mournful woman gliding like a shadow along the paths or sitting in the corners of the verandas, never exchanging a word with any of the summer guests.

The lady in black tilted her head slightly, her gaze resting upon Edna’s wet hair and the bright, flushed animation of her face.

“You have been alone in the deep water, madame,” the lady said.

Her voice was low and surprisingly clear, carrying a dry, hollow cadence like the sound of dry reeds whispering in the wind. It was the first time Edna had ever heard her speak.

“Yes,” Edna answered, finding her voice with a little difficulty. “I was swimming.”

“Take care,” the woman said softly, her dark eyes never wavering from Edna’s face. “The sea is very deep, and it has no memory.”

She said nothing more, but picked up her beads and began once again the mechanical, silent counting of her prayers. Edna stood for a moment, an unaccountable chill touching the surface of her skin, before she turned and entered the bath-house to dress.

Night fell upon Grand Isle with a soft, velvet darkness, pierced by the brilliant, throbbing stars of the southern sky. Dinner at the large table in the dining-room had been noisy and long. Robert had sat across from Edna, talking animatedly of the hunting prospects on the mainland and teasing Mademoiselle Reisz about her music; but whenever his eyes met Edna’s, there was an earnest, questioning gravity in them that made her look away with a strange fluttering at her heart.

Now the house was quiet. The other guests had dispersed to their rooms or walked out toward the wharf to watch the moonlight on the bay.

Edna sat alone upon the gallery of her cottage. The night air was warm, laden with the heavy, sweet perfume of the night-blooming jessamine that climbed the railing. Inside, through the open door, she could hear the soft, regular breathing of her children asleep in their beds. A candle burned low upon the table within, casting a faint, steady beam across the floorboards at her feet.

She rested her chin in her hand, looking out into the darkness where the invisible Gulf sighed and murmured against the distant shore. The memory of the water holding her up, of that first buoyant stroke into the deep, came back to her with a thrill of secret joy. And drifting through her thoughts, recurring again and again with the steady rhythm of the tide, were the words Robert had spoken on the dusty road under the midday sun, which Adèle had laughed over and given back to her: that she had the look of one listening for an unspoken voice, and that any man who tried to hold her would find only water slipping through his fingers.

The First National Bank was four blocks down Broadway, a heavy gray stone building with barred windows and brass grilles that looked solid enough to hold off an army. It looked like the sort of bank Elihu Willsson would own in a town he had run with an iron fist for forty years.

Inside, the air smelled of floor wax, copper coins, and damp ink. I walked past the row of cages to the rear, where a frosted glass door had *Assistant Cashier* painted across it in faded gilt.

I walked in. A man of fifty with thin sandy hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a collar so stiff it pushed up the loose skin of his throat was sitting behind a mahogany desk, checking columns of figures on a yellow ledger sheet.

He looked up over his spectacles and asked:

“Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

“My name is Neill,” I said, showing him the Continental credentials that carried my real name, and then putting them away before he had time to get confused by the two identities. “I’m looking into Donald Willsson’s affairs. Agency business.”

His pale eyes widened behind the thick lenses. He stood up, reached across the desk to give my hand a quick, dry shake, and offered me a chair.

“I am Albury,” he said in a hushed, reverent voice that people usually keep for church or funerals. “A terrible thing, Mr. Neill. A shocking tragedy for Personville. The whole community is stunned. Mr. Elihu is prostrated, of course.”

“I just came from Mr. Elihu’s,” I lied cheerfully. “He’s sitting up and taking an interest. I want to check a draft young Willsson wrote yesterday afternoon.”

Albury cleared his throat, sat down again, and adjusted his glasses. “Certainly. Anything we can do to assist the family. Mr. Donald had his personal account here, as well as the active publishing accounts for the Herald. What was the item?”

“A check on his personal account for five thousand dollars. Drawn yesterday a little before three o’clock. Number on the stub was blank, but the figure was five thousand even.”

Albury blinked, reached for a desk telephone, spoke quietly into it, and told me to wait a moment. While we waited he looked at his fingernails and said:

“Five thousand is a substantial sum to draw in cash. Mr. Donald did not ordinarily carry large balances on his personal ledger, though of course his credit with us was unlimited.”

A boy in a gray jacket brought in a stack of narrow ledger cards and debit slips, laid them on the desk, and went out without making a sound.

Albury spread the cards, ran a dried-up forefinger down the columns, checked the debit entries for the previous day, and then went through the morning clearances from the clearing house. He did it twice, very methodically, turning each slip over with a soft snap of his dry thumb.

Then he looked up and shook his head.

“The check has not been presented, Mr. Neill.”

“Not cashed over the counter yesterday afternoon?”

“No. A cash withdrawal of five thousand dollars would require my initial or the cashier’s. No such item came through yesterday.”

“Could it have been certified?”

He went through the certification register, running his finger down the fresh page.

“No certification. It has not been presented for certification, nor has it been cleared through any other local bank or out-of-town correspondent. If Mr. Donald drew such a check yesterday afternoon, whoever holds it has not brought it to us.”

“Could it have been deposited to another account in this bank before closing yesterday?”

Albury shook his head firmly. “I have examined all the deposit credits for yesterday’s third-hour transactions. Nothing corresponds to a five-thousand-dollar transfer between accounts. The check simply hasn’t touched the bank.”

“Thanks,” I said. “If it shows up, don’t pay it without getting word to the family or Chief Noonan.”

“Naturally,” Albury said, rising and walking me to the door. “We shall place a temporary stop on all outstanding drafts against the personal account pending probate instructions. A very distressing day, Mr. Neill.”

“They come that way,” I said, and left him.

Outside, the wind coming off the copper hills had a sharp, gritty bite to it. Personville at midday wasn’t any prettier than it had been at breakfast. The smoke from the smelters hung low over the rooftops, turning the sky the color of dirty dishwater. Shift workers in mackinaws and corduroy trousers moved along the sidewalks with their heads down, their faces gray under the soot. A couple of big city policemen in blue coats stood on the corner of Broadway and Wyoming, swinging their clubs and watching the crowd with the flat, dead eyes of men who knew who paid their wages and didn't give a damn who knew it.

I walked the six blocks back to the Great Western Hotel.

The lobby was big, dark, and gloomy, full of imitation leather armchairs, brass spittoons, and traveling salesmen sitting around looking as if they wished they were in Spokane or Denver.

The clerk behind the desk looked at me as I came in, reached into my pigeonhole, and handed me my key and a small, square envelope of cheap gray paper.

“Delivered by boy about twenty minutes ago,” the clerk said. “No answer.”

The envelope had no stamp and was addressed to *H. F. Neill, Room 314* in purple ink, written with a fine pen in a neat, slanted, foreign-looking hand.

I took the elevator up to the third floor, unlocked 314, and went inside.

I dropped my hat on the bed, tore open the envelope, and pulled out a single sheet of paper with the top torn off. There was one sentence written on it in the same purple ink:

*The climate in San Francisco is healthier for men who don’t know when to go home.*

There was no signature. Below the sentence, drawn with the same pen, was a rough sketch of a pair of dice showing snake eyes.

I stood there by the window, looking at the little piece of paper and turning it over in my fingers. The paper was cheap linen finish, the kind you buy in five-cent packets at any corner cigar store. Max Thaler didn’t like visitors asking questions around Mountain Boulevard, and he didn’t mind spending two minutes with a bottle of purple ink to say so.

I tossed the paper on the dresser, went into the bathroom, washed the coal dust off my face and hands, and came back into the room to light a Fatima.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, blowing smoke rings at the brown wallpaper, when somebody knocked on the hall door.

It wasn’t a loud knock—just three quick, nervous taps of knuckles against the wood.

I reached back under my left arm to loosen the gun in its harness, walked over to the door, turned the key, and pulled the door open about six inches.

Donald Willsson’s widow was standing in the dim corridor.

She had on a dark blue tailored suit with a gray squirrel collar pulled up around her throat, and a small dark hat that came down low over her forehead, hiding most of her yellow hair. Her face was very pale, almost chalky, making her blue eyes look enormous and feverish. In the dim yellow light of the hotel hallway she looked younger and fragile, but her mouth was set in a tight, stubborn line.

She looked past my shoulder into the room, then up at my face.

“May I come in, please?” Her voice was low, with the same crisp French accent she had used the night before in Mountain Boulevard.

I opened the door wide and stood aside.

“Come right in, Mrs. Willsson.”

She stepped into the room with a quick, rustling movement, stopped in the center of the carpet, and turned around to face me. Her hands, in gray suede gloves, were clasped tightly over the handle of a small leather bag.

I closed the door, locked it, and motioned toward the room’s single armchair.

“Sit down,” I said.

She didn’t sit down. She stood there stiffly, staring at me.

“You went to see my father-in-law this morning,” she said. It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation.

“I had a chat with him,” I said, leaning my back against the bathroom door frame. “He was very loud and very busy. We didn’t get along very well.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I worked for a detective agency, that his son had sent for me, and that I was trying to find out who killed his son.”

Her chin came up a fraction of an inch. “Did you tell him about—about my being away from the house last night?”

“I told him you had a phone call, went out in your coupé, and came back after eleven.”

Her pale face flushed red, a sudden bright streak across her cheekbones. Her knuckles went white through the suede gloves.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded. “What right had you to carry tales to that old beast? He hates me! He has always hated me since Donald brought me from France. He would say anything, believe anything, to destroy me!”

“I didn’t carry tales,” I said mildly. “I gave him the facts. When a man gets shot four times in the gut and chest, the people who were near him around ten-forty usually have to answer a few questions. The old man asked me what I knew, and I told him.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said you killed him.”

She let out a short, ragged breath that was half a gasp and half a laugh.

“Of course. He would say that. He told Donald I was a fortune hunter when we were married in Paris. He told him I was vulgar. When Donald would not listen to him, he tried to separate us. When Donald took the newspapers, the old man cursed him and said I had put him up to it. And now he tells you I am a murderer.”

“He didn't give me any proof,” I said. “He just yelled a lot.”

She moved two steps toward me, her eyes fixed on mine. “Why are you here in Personville, Mr. Neill—if that is your name?”

“My name is whatever Donald Willsson paid for. He paid for an operative from the Continental in San Francisco. He wanted some work done. He didn’t live long enough to tell me what the work was, but since somebody put four slugs into him while I was waiting in his front room, I’m staying around to see who bought the cartridges.”

She looked down at her gloved hands, biting her lip.

“You think I had something to do with it?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” I told her. “I know you had blood on your left shoe last night. I know Donald was shot in Hurricane Street at ten-forty. I know you left Mountain Boulevard at ten-twenty and got back at five past eleven. If you drove down to Hurricane Street, you had time enough to get there, see him lying on the sidewalk, get some blood on your slipper, and drive home.”

She didn’t deny it. She didn’t jump or scream. She just looked at me with those big, feverish eyes and said:

“I did not kill Donald.”

“Who was the man with you?”

Her eyes shifted quickly to the window, then back to me. “What man?”

“The witnesses in Hurricane Street saw a man and a woman bending over Donald after the shooting. If the woman was you, who was the man?”

“I was alone,” she whispered.

“You’re telling me you were there?”

She caught herself, her lips parting, and then pressed them together until they disappeared. She walked over to the armchair and sat down on the edge of it, her back straight as an iron poker.

“I had a telephone call at ten-twenty,” she said, speaking slowly, as if picking every word out of a box. “A woman’s voice. She told me Donald was in trouble on Hurricane Street—that he had been hurt. She told me to come at once if I wanted to see him alive. I took the car and drove there. When I found him, he was already dead on the pavement. I knelt down by him. I took his hand. It was cold. There were people coming out of the houses, shouting. I became terrified. I—I knew what Elihu Willsson would say if I were found there. I got into my car and drove away.”

“Who was the woman on the phone?”

“I do not know. She did not give a name.”

“And the five thousand dollars?”

She looked up sharply. “What five thousand dollars?”

“Donald drew a check for five thousand yesterday afternoon,” I said. “Just before three. He took it with him. He had an appointment for ten o’clock with a woman. Was that you?”

“No!” She leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair. “Donald gave me money whenever I asked, but he gave me no five thousand dollars yesterday. I knew nothing of any check.”

“Who was the woman he went to see at ten?”

“I don't know,” she said, but her voice was unsteady.

“Max Thaler know?”

That hit her. She went rigid, her mouth open, the color draining completely out of her face until she looked like a wax dummy.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a voice that was hardly more than a rasp.

“Whisper Thaler went into your house this morning around nine-thirty,” I said. “He came in through the front door while I was half a block away. You two seem to be pretty good friends.”

She stood up suddenly, her small hands shaking so hard she dropped her handbag on the floor. It fell with a soft thud. I picked it up and handed it to her. She took it without looking at me.

“Max Thaler came to offer his condolences,” she said coldly. “He was an acquaintance of Donald’s.”

“Donald’s paper called him a crook and a gambler.”

“Donald had to deal with many people in his work,” she said. Her voice had gone ice-cold, all the tremor gone out of it. “If you are working for the Continental Agency, Mr. Neill, you are working for Donald’s estate. I am Donald’s widow and his sole heir. I have the right to direct your services.”

“Not until the estate is settled,” I told her. “Right now I’m working on the retainer Donald sent to San Francisco. That gives me plenty of rope to look around.”

“I want you to stop,” she said distinctly. “I want you to leave Personville. Whatever Donald paid your agency, I will double it if you go back to San Francisco tonight.”

“The agency doesn’t do business that way,” I said. “When a client gets murdered while we’re on his payroll, we usually finish the job before we send in the bill.”

She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes narrow and dark with anger.

“You are making a very great mistake,” she said quietly. “Personville is not a good place for obstinate men.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said. “Whisper Thaler sent me a note to the same effect twenty minutes ago. You two ought to compare notes so you don’t duplicate the stationery.”

She didn’t answer that. She turned around, walked to the door, waited for me to unlock it, and walked out into the corridor without looking back. Her heels made a sharp, rhythmic clicking against the worn carpet until the elevator doors clanged shut.

I locked the door again, went over to the window, and looked down into Broadway. Two minutes later the blue Buick coupé pulled out from the curb below the hotel, turned the corner into Wyoming, and disappeared into the smoke.

I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past one.

I walked over to the desk, pulled a Western Union pad and a yellow pencil out of the drawer, and sat down to write out a report for the Old Man in San Francisco. The Continental had strict rules about reporting on homicides involving clients, and the Old Man was a fiend for details.

I drafted it twice to keep it tight, counted the words, and copied the final draft onto a clean telegraph blank:

``` CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO CALIF

DONALD WILLSSON SHOT DEAD TEN-FORTY LAST NIGHT HURRICANE STREET FOUR THIRTY-TWO CALIBRE BULLETS. CLIENT HAD APPOINTMENT WITH ME FOR TEN SAME NIGHT. PRIOR TO DEATH CLIENT DREW FIVE-THOUSAND-DOLLAR PERSONAL CHECK STILL UNACCOUNTED FOR AND UNPRESENTED AT FIRST NATIONAL. FATHER ELIHU WILLSSON BLAMES WIDOW. WIDOW ADMITS PRESENCE AT SCENE BUT DENIES KILLING OR KNOWLEDGE OF CHECK. LOCAL GAMBLER MAX THALER ALIAS WHISPER IN CONTACT WITH WIDOW THIS MORNING AND HAS WARNED ME OUT OF TOWN. SITUATION INVOLVES COMPLICATED LOCAL POLITICAL FACTIONALISM BETWEEN ELIHU WILLSSON AND FORMER HIRED STRIKEBREAKERS YARD FINN THALER NOONAN. AM REMAINING ON GROUND TO LOCATE MISSING CHECK AND IDENTIFY MURDERER UNDER ORIGINAL RETAINER UNLESS OTHERWISE INSTRUCTED.

NEILL ```

I folded the yellow sheet, put on my hat, and went down to the lobby.

The Western Union desk was in the corner near the cigar stand. A sleepy-looking girl with spectacles took the message, counted the words, figured the toll, and took my money.

“Send it straight wire,” I told her.

“Yes, sir. It will go out in ten minutes.”

I bought a fresh pack of Fatimas at the cigar stand, went into the hotel dining room, and ate a plate of greasy beef stew and boiled potatoes that tasted mostly of coal smoke.

By the time I finished lunch and came back through the lobby, the afternoon was already turning gray. The street lamps outside were flickering on through the yellow smog, casting long, greasy reflections across the wet asphalt of Broadway.

I went back up to Room 314.

The room was cold. I turned the brass valve on the radiator under the window, and after a while it began to knock and hiss, spitting out a thin stream of rusty steam that didn't do much against the chill.

I pulled the armchair around so it faced the window, took off my coat, hung my gun and shoulder holster over the back of the chair, and sat down with my feet propped up on the sill.

Through the dirty windowpane, the roofs of Personville looked like jagged piles of scrap iron under the darkening sky. A mile to the north, the big stacks of the smelters were throwing red sparks and thick, greasy clouds of black smoke up into the night, painting the low clouds with an ugly copper glare.

Down in the street, an electric streetcar clanged its bell, its wheels screeching on the curved tracks as it turned into Broadway.

I struck a match, held it to a Fatima, and blew the smoke against the glass.

The pieces were on the table, but none of them fit together right.

Donald Willsson had five thousand dollars in a check when he left his office yesterday afternoon. He had a ten o’clock date with a woman he had to hurry away from. At ten-twenty his wife got a call and drove down to Hurricane Street. At ten-forty Donald was lying on the pavement with four pieces of lead in him, and a man and a woman were standing over the body.

The old man said the wife shot him. The wife said she found him dead, and offered to pay me double to get out of Poisonville. Whisper Thaler was slipping through the wife’s front door before breakfast and sending me sketches of snake eyes before lunch.

And somewhere in this dirty, copper-choked city, five thousand dollars of Donald Willsson’s money was floating around, uncashed, uncertified, and unaccounted for.

I blew out the match, watched the red glow fade into charcoal, and waited for the night to get on with its business.