The Chapters

She slept heavily and for a long time. The train was slowing down; its wheels ground with a screeching groan against the iron rails, and cold air came whistling through the window-frame, waking her with a start.

"Here we are at last," said Mrs. Medlock, shaking her. "Stir yourself, child. Straighten your hat and pick up your bag."

Mary rubbed her eyes with thin, black-gloved knuckles. She felt stiff and cross. Outside, oil lamps flickered through a raw drizzle on the small station platform.

When the train halted with a hiss of steam, Mrs. Medlock hauled Mary onto the wet platform. Under the flare of a lamp near the station-master's door stood a tall figure. Mrs. Medlock stopped so abruptly that Mary nearly ran into her.

"Lord preserve us!" the housekeeper gasped, her velvet flowers quivering. "Mr. Craven, sir!"

The man turned his head. He was wrapped in a long, dark travelling cloak with the collar turned high. Just as Basil had said, his shoulders were crooked—one higher than the other. His face was thin and dark, with sombre, brooding eyes and a brow deeply scored with bitter grief.

Mrs. Medlock dropped a flustered curtsy. "We didn't look to see you here, sir. Pitcher told me you were detained in London, and that Barnaby was to meet us."

Mr. Craven did not explain why he had come. His dark eyes rested upon them in cold silence.

"I came by the afternoon express," he said in a low, dry voice. "The brougham is outside."

Then his gaze shifted downward to Mary.

Mary did not curtsy; she had never curtsied to anyone in India. She stood stiffly in her black boots, her sour face set in sullen defiance.

Mr. Craven looked down at her. A faint, painful twitch crossed his brow, but his features hardened. He offered no hand and spoke no word of comfort.

"She is small," he said curtly to Mrs. Medlock.

Then he looked at Mary, his eyes cold and impenetrable.

"Come along," he said.

That was all he said to her. Without another glance, he turned and strode with an uneven gait through the booking-office.

Mrs. Medlock seized Mary's wrist and hurried after him. Outside in the yard, a closed brougham and a light gig waited under dripping trees. Mr. Craven walked straight to the gig.

"Put them inside, Barnaby. Drive straight to the Manor. I ride on ahead."

He took the reins and drove away into the blackness before Mrs. Medlock could even mount the carriage steps.

"Well!" Mrs. Medlock puffed, scrambling inside. "Coming to the station himself, and then driving off like a phantom! Get in, child, and shut the door."

Mary climbed inside and sat opposite. Barnaby banged the door shut, and the brougham lurched forward over the wet stones.

They drove through a tiny village, but soon its lights fell behind as the carriage began to climb a steep road into complete blackness. The rain had ceased, but the wind had risen, sweeping down with a wild roaring that shook the heavy brougham on its springs. Mary pressed her face against the glass. She could see no houses, no hedges, no lamp-posts—only a vast black expanse rolling away like a dark sea.

"What is that out there?" Mary asked.

"That's the moor," said Mrs. Medlock, pulling her shawl closer. "Missel Moor, it's called. Miles and miles of it, with nothing growing on it but heather and gorse, and nothing living on it but wild ponies and sheep. When the gale gets up across the open spaces, it's enough to blow a horse and cart off the road."

In India the nights had been hot and still; here the roaring blackness made her feel smaller and more solitary than ever before.

They had driven for half an hour when the horses snorted and reared back, iron shoes clattering upon the rough track.

"Whoa there! Steady, lads! Ey up!" the coachman shouted.

The brougham rocked violently, tilted into a deep rut, and came to an abrupt halt.

"Goodness gracious me!" cried Mrs. Medlock, letting down the window with a rattle and thrusting her head into the gale. "Barnaby! What's stopped us?"

The coachman held his lamp low to the ground. "There's an old peat-cart broke down right athwart t' road, ma'am," he called back against the wind. "Axle's smashed clean in two. I mun drag it out o' t' ruts, or we'll overturn."

"Well, make haste!" Mrs. Medlock shouted. "We shall be frozen to death!"

While Mrs. Medlock leaned out shouting, a sudden impulse seized Mary. She had always done exactly what she pleased, and she wanted to know what the moor felt like. Quietly, she turned the brass handle of the door on her side and pushed. The door swung open with a rush of icy air, and before Mrs. Medlock could turn, Mary slipped down onto the open moor.

The wild wind pounced upon her like an immense creature, tearing at her hat and whipping her skirts about her knees. She took three unsteady steps out into the absolute dark. Under her shoes the ground was rough and springy with wet heather and peat.

She stood still in the blackness for a full minute. The air was colder than anything she had ever felt, but so clean and sharp that it felt like drinking something fierce and cold, smelling of wet earth and heather. All around her the invisible moor rolled away into the night. She felt tiny, frightened, and strangely awake.

Suddenly a piercing shriek cut through the gale.

"Help! Barnaby! The child's gone!"

Mrs. Medlock had turned, seen the open door, and caught sight of Mary standing on the dark verge. Reaching out with frantic hands, she seized Mary's collar and dragged her backward off the heather.

"Are you stark mad?" Mrs. Medlock cried, hauling her through the door and dumping her onto the cushions. "Getting down on the open moor in the dead of night! You might have been swallowed up in a peat-bog!"

She slammed the carriage door shut and turned the catch with a vicious snap.

"Don't you dare touch that handle again!" Mrs. Medlock panted, sinking back, red-faced with fright. "What were you thinking of, hopping out onto the wild moor like that?"

Mary said nothing. Her cheeks burned from the wind and her heart beat fast, but she did not care that Mrs. Medlock was angry. She thought of the wild smell of the peat, and for the first time that day forgot to feel sour.

Outside, the broken timber of the cart crashed into the ditch. The coachman climbed back to his box, and the brougham lurched forward once more into the night.

Presently the carriage passed between two massive stone pillars, driving down a long avenue of giant trees into a dark courtyard before an immense porch. Misselthwaite Manor was built of weather-beaten stone, with gables jutting against the stormy sky. Only two or three windows showed any light; the rest were black and lifeless.

A heavy oak door swung open, and they were met by an elderly manservant with a sour face and thin grey hair, dressed in black. This was Pitcher.

"Mr. Craven arrived half an hour ago," Pitcher whispered dryly. "He has shut himself in his study and gave orders not to be disturbed. The child is to be taken straight to her rooms in the West corridor."

"I know my duty, Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock answered. "Come along, child."

They entered an enormous stone hall hung with portraits that stared down with cold eyes, and suits of armour standing like hollow sentinels. Mrs. Medlock led Mary up a grand staircase, down echoing corridors, and through a baize door into a narrower passage, where at last she opened a door.

"Here you are," she said. "This is your nursery sitting-room, and the bedroom is through that door. There's a good coal fire, and your supper will be brought up directly. You are to stay in these rooms, mind, and not go poking about the house."

Before Mary could take off her gloves, there came a knock at the door.

"Come in," called Mrs. Medlock.

A manservant entered carrying a heavy tin tray covered with a cloth. He was a sturdy young man with a ruddy face, sandy hair, and an apron. He set the tray upon the table with a clatter: a smoking tureen of mutton broth, roasted potatoes, cold beef, and crusty bread.

The manservant wiped his hands on his apron and nodded to Mary with an open smile.

"Theer tha art, little miss," he said, in a broad, rolling voice. "Hot broth an' collops to warm thy bones. Ee, but tha looks fair starved wi' t' cold! Tha'lt want to get that inside thee whiles it's pipin' hot, for t' wind's whistlin' down t' chimbley fit to freeze a body stiff."

Mary stared, frowning. In India servants had bowed to the floor, whispering "Missee Sahib." This man stood straight and spoke in sounds so thick she could make neither head nor tail of them.

"I cannot understand what you are saying," Mary said haughtily. "You speak so queerly. It does not sound like English at all."

The manservant did not look abashed; his ruddy face broadened into a grin.

"Eh! Hearken to that, now!" he chuckled. "'Tis proper Yorkshire, that's what it is, missy! 'Tis t' way folk talk in these parts. Tha'lt larn it fast enow if tha bides long on t' moor. Down south they talk as mincin' as sparrows, but up here we speak out plain. Eat thy supper, lass, an' don't let it go cold."

"That will do, Thomas," Mrs. Medlock said sharply. "The child doesn't want your country chatter. See that the outer doors are barred."

"Aye, Mrs. Medlock," said Thomas cheerfully, and with an amused glance at Mary he went out.

Mary sat down. She had intended to refuse, but the savory smell reminded her how hungry the wind had made her. She ate the broth and bread while Mrs. Medlock unpacked her portmanteau.

"Now then," said Mrs. Medlock, coming back into the sitting-room, "it's past ten o'clock and high time you were in bed. Come along into the bedchamber."

The bedroom was large and gloomy, with a high four-poster bed hung with dark red curtains. A small fire burned low in the grate, throwing flickers across the polished wardrobe.

Mary stood waiting for Mrs. Medlock to undress her. When the housekeeper merely folded her arms, Mary frowned.

"Aren't you going to take off my frock?" she demanded. "My Ayah always undressed me."

"Your Ayah isn't here," Mrs. Medlock answered, "and in Yorkshire young ones dress and undress themselves. I'll unfasten the hooks tonight because it's late, but tomorrow you must manage on your own."

She unhooked the dress with rough fingers. Mary slipped into her nightgown and climbed into the high bed. The sheets were cold and crisp, smelling of lavender.

Mrs. Medlock banked the fire with small coal and turned down the lamp.

"I'm going to my own room now," she said. "Lie still and go to sleep. Good night."

She took the lamp and walked toward the door.

Just as her hand touched the handle, a sudden lull fell upon the storm. In the dead silence that followed, a sound broke through the house. It was not outside in the gale, but inside the thick stone walls—a curious, muffled tapping, followed by a slow, hollow scraping that dragged across distant floorboards, and a low vibration that shuddered through the wainscot.

Mary sat bolt upright in the bed, clutching the coverlet.

"What is that?" she whispered sharply. "Listen! What is that sound?"

Mrs. Medlock paused, her back stiffening. An uneasy expression crossed her face, but she smoothed it away with an impatient frown.

"It's just the wind," she said, her voice a little too loud and hurried. "I told you before—the wind blows round this house like a great beast. It gets into empty chimneys and down long galleries and makes queer noises. There's nothing else."

"It does not sound like the wind," Mary said obstinately. "That was inside. It was down the passage."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mrs. Medlock. "You don't know what the wind sounds like in a house six hundred years old. Lie down and go to sleep, and don't let me catch you listening to foolish fancies."

She stepped into the corridor and closed the door firmly. The key turned in the lock with a dry, grating snap, and her footsteps hurried away until they died out completely.

Mary was left alone in the darkness. The room was black, save for the dull red glow of dying coals. Outside, the gale threw itself against the stone walls, rattling the casements. Mary lay down and pulled the coverlet to her chin, wide awake in the dark.

She knew Mrs. Medlock had not told the truth. Mary had spent all her life among people who hid things from her, and she knew quite well when grown-up people were telling lies. Her mother had spoken in that same quick, angry tone whenever she wished to conceal something unpleasant, and the servants in India had looked just as uneasy on the morning the cholera broke out.

Presently, in another lull of the gale, the sound came again. It was faint and distant, but unmistakable—a slow, rhythmic tapping, followed by that same hollow, dragging scrape along hidden floorboards.

It was not the wind. It could never be the wind.

Mary Lennox turned her head upon the hard pillow, her thin lips set in a tight, obstinate line. Nobody was going to tell her anything; they never did. But she was not going to be treated like a fool. She would not ask Mrs. Medlock again, but she would find out for herself what was making that sound.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May.--Back in my own room at the asylum; two o’clock in the morning. I am dog-tired in body, but my mind is too active for sleep, so I turn to the phonograph. It is a strange comfort to pour one’s heart into this unfeeling brass cylinder, which records all and judges nothing.

Last night was the dinner at Quincey Morris’s rooms. I had half a mind not to go; when a man’s wound is fresh, he shrinks from the light and the sight of comrades. But Quincey’s summons was not to be denied, and I am glad, heartily glad, that I went.

Quincey had made his rooms in Jermyn Street look as much like a camp on the plains as London upholstery would permit. A great fire blazed on the hearth; rugs of bear and buffalo were strewn across the carpet, and on the sideboard stood flasks of American rye beside bottles of Burgundy. He met me at the door with that firm, quiet grip of his which puts heart into a man without a word spoken. He looked pale under his bronze, and there was a shadow about his eyes that had not been there a week ago; but his voice was steady and his smile as warm and generous as ever. We did not speak of yesterday--there was no need. Men who have stood together in the face of death do not need to explain why their hands are unsteady when they pour a glass.

Presently Arthur came in, and with his coming the whole room seemed to catch fire. He was radiant--handsome, tall, his head thrown back, with that noble, boyish flush upon his face which makes everyone love him. He could scarcely speak at first; he just grasped Quincey’s hand and then mine, holding them as if he would never let go. It was impossible to feel bitter or envious in the face of such honest, unselfish joy. If I had to lose her--and God knows the emptiness in my own heart tonight--there is no man under the sun I would rather see win her than Arthur Holmwood.

“Jack, old fellow,” he said to me, his voice trembling a little, “and you, Quincey--she sent you both a message. She made me promise to deliver it before we touched a drop or broke bread. She said: ‘Tell them that if I have chosen Arthur, it is not because my heart does not know their worth. Tell them they are my dear brothers, now and always, and that while Lucy lives, they will never lack a sister’s prayers and a sister’s devotion.’”

Quincey never flinched. He stood up straight, filled our glasses to the brim, and held his high toward the ceiling.

“To Miss Lucy Westenra!” he called out, his voice clear and ringing. “And to the man she has honoured with her love! May the trail be smooth before them, and may God bless them both to the end of the journey!”

We drank it down together. I felt a lump in my throat that nearly choked me, but I drank with all my soul. We sat late into the night, smoking Quincey’s cigars and talking of old times--of our camp at Korea, and of adventures when danger was something a rifle-bullet could settle. Arthur was full of his plans--the alterations at Ring, the travels they will take together when they are married. Every word he spoke was of her, and though it drove the steel deeper into my own breast, I could not help rejoicing for him. When we parted on the pavement in the cool night air, Quincey wrung my hand and whispered: “Take heart, Jack. We’re hit hard, but we carry our wounds standing up.”

He is a brave fellow, a noble fellow. If work is the only cure for this ache, I shall have plenty of it tomorrow. The asylum is full, and my mind must be with my patients, not wandering through the drawing-rooms of Chatham Street.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

28 May.--Another day of hard work, thank God; it is the only opiate that brings forgetfulness. I spent the greater part of the afternoon with my interesting patient, Renfield. His case presents features of such curious psychological interest that I find myself drawn to him whenever the routine of the asylum leaves me an hour of leisure.

When I entered his room he was in one of his quiet, cheerful moods, seated by the window where the afternoon sun fell across the floor. He has developed an extraordinary passion for catching flies. He has accumulated scores of them, confined in small paper boxes fashioned with remarkable neatness from old newspapers. He watches them with the intense concentration of a naturalist, occasionally releasing one only to recapture it with a swift, darting movement of his hand that is almost reptilian in its speed.

I sat down on the edge of his table and began to question him.

“Why do you hoard them, Renfield?” I asked. “What is the object of catching so many?”

He looked up at me with a sly, knowing glance.

“They are life, Doctor,” he said in a low whisper. “Small lives, to be sure, but life all the same. Concentrated life. It is very interesting to see how much life one can gather into a single corner.”

“And what will you do with them when your boxes are full?”

He chuckled softly, rubbing his large, powerful hands together. “Wait and see, Doctor. One step leads to another. The sparrow eats the fly, does it not? And the cat eats the sparrow. It is all an ascending scale.”

I made a mental note of this: sanguine temperament with an evolving delusion of cumulative vitality. I was about to question him further, when he suddenly stopped.

He turned his face full upon me. All the erratic excitement of madness seemed to vanish from his features in an instant, leaving behind an expression of grave, searching lucidity that startled me beyond measure.

He leaned forward, fixed his dark eyes directly on mine, and asked in a calm, clear, perfectly natural voice:--

“Tell me, Doctor, will Miss Westenra come to live here with you at Purfleet, or does she prefer town?”

I felt as though an icy hand had gripped my heart. My tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth. If the floor beneath my feet had opened into an abyss, I could not have been more completely confounded.

Miss Westenra! Lucy’s name--uttered here, in the private cell of an Essex lunatic asylum, by a man who has been locked within stone walls for six months!

I have never breathed her name to a living soul within twenty miles of this place. My proposal was made only four days ago in Chatham Street; my sorrow has been confided only to this phonograph. Not an attendant, not a colleague knows anything of my attachment.

I sprang up from the table, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“What do you know of Miss Westenra?” I demanded, seizing him by the shoulder. “Where did you hear that name? Who spoke of her to you?”

Renfield did not flinch, nor did he display the least resentment at my violence. He merely looked at me with a faint, mocking smile playing about the corners of his mouth. The sudden lucidity faded from his eyes, replaced once more by that vacant, cunning film of insanity.

“The air is full of whispers, Doctor,” he murmured, turning his head aside. “The wind carries many things through the bars when the sun goes down. Big souls and little souls, and names that drift across the world like thistledown.”

I pressed him with questions, but it was useless; he had retreated into his fortress of obstinate madness. He would say no more, but began humming a monotonous tune under his breath, carefully feeding a dead fly to a small garden spider which he had imprisoned in a match-box.

I left the room shaking with agitation. How can this be explained? As a man of science, I reject telepathy and occult rubbish. There must be a rational explanation. Did I talk in my sleep while resting in my study? Did an envelope bearing her handwriting fall from my pocket during my rounds? I have searched everywhere; nothing is missing. Yet the fact remains: this lunatic knows her name, and knows, or guesses, the secret hope that brought me to despair. The thought fills me with an unaccountable horror. I must watch Renfield day and night.

Letter, Herr Anton Varga to Miss Mina Murray.

“Klausenburg, 12 June.

“Dear and Honoured Madam,--

“Although I have not the honour of your personal acquaintance, I take the liberty of addressing you at the express and urgent desire of your esteemed friend and countryman, Mr. Jonathan Harker, who passed through our town some weeks ago upon his journey into the eastern mountains.

“Mr. Harker was good enough to deposit in my care certain letters and instructions, requesting that, in the event of his stay in the Carpathian district being prolonged beyond his original intention, I should communicate directly with you and with his respected employer, Mr. Peter Hawkins of Exeter. A messenger from the interior arrived at my counting-house yesterday evening, having been dispatched by Mr. Harker from his client’s estate with a communication for my hands.

“He desires me to inform you that his return to England must unfortunately be delayed for some little time. The legal affairs of his client have proved to be of an uncommonly complex and arduous character, involving an examination of ancient titles, local feudal tenures, and manorial rights extending over several centuries. As these documents are drawn in archaic dialects and require the most painstaking translation and transcription, Mr. Harker finds that he cannot in honour quit his post until the whole of the business is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

“He charges me, Madam, to convey to you his most earnest assurance that he is in excellent health and spirits, and that he is treated with every consideration and hospitality in the house of his client. He begs that you will not suffer the least uneasiness on account of his prolonged absence or the infrequency of his letters. The postal service in these mountainous districts is exceedingly primitive and uncertain; letters must be carried on horseback over difficult mountain passes to reach the nearest post-office, and communication is often suspended for days together.

“Mr. Harker sends you the assurance of his constant and devoted affection, and desires me to say that every hour spent in these remote mountains only increases his longing for his English home and for the happy day of his return.

“Trusting that this intelligence may relieve you of any anxiety, I have the honour to remain, Madam, your most obedient humble servant,

“ANTON VARGA, “Merchant and Forwarding Agent.”

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

“28 June.

“My dearest Lucy,--

“Forgive me for not writing sooner in answer to your wonderful letter of the twenty-fourth of May; but the end of the school term brings such an avalanche of work that I have scarcely had a moment to breathe.

“Oh, Lucy, my darling, three proposals in a single day! What a bewildering experience! I laughed and cried over your letter until the other teachers wondered at me. You know how heartily and truly I rejoice in your happiness. Arthur Holmwood is everything that a woman could desire in a husband--noble, handsome, upright, and loving you with a devotion that shines in every word you write of him. You two were made for each other, and I know that God will pour His richest blessings upon your marriage.

“And how noble those other two poor fellows were! My heart aches for Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris. A man who can bear such disappointment with manly gentleness and offer lifelong friendship is a true gentleman. It made me weep to read of Mr. Morris taking your hand and wishing you well ‘between this and Kingdom Come.’ But you were right, Lucy; a woman can give her heart but once, and it would be cruel to give false hopes where one cannot give love.

“And now, my dear, I must tell you my own great news, for a tremendous burden has been rolled away from my mind. For weeks past I have been suffering agonies of suspense on Jonathan’s account. He had written on the ninth of May saying he would be home in about a week, and then silence fell like a black curtain. As the days of May slipped away, and June came in without a single line, I grew so wretched that I could scarcely sleep. Mr. Hawkins was as anxious as I was, though the dear old man tried to make light of it for my sake, pretending that his gout was the only thing that made him irritable. I had all sorts of foolish, terrifying fancies--imagining that Jonathan had fallen from some mountain precipice, or that he had been struck down by a foreign fever in a lonely village where no one could understand his speech.

“You can imagine my joy and gratitude when, two days ago, a letter arrived bearing foreign stamps and post-marks! It was not from Jonathan himself, but from a gentleman in Klausenburg, a merchant named Herr Anton Varga. Jonathan had asked him to write to me and explain that his return is delayed by his client’s affairs. It seems the legal business is immensely complicated--ancient deeds, manorial customs, and foreign title-papers which require weeks of patient work to decipher and put into proper English form. Herr Varga assures me that Jonathan is in excellent health and treated with the greatest hospitality, and that I must not fret because of the lack of letters, as the mountain posts are so wretched and irregular.

“Oh, Lucy, I feel like a prisoner who has been brought out of a dark dungeon into the glorious sunlight! All my fears were mere idle imagination. My brave Jonathan is safe, doing his duty manfully, and winning the respect of his clients. I have gone back to my shorthand and my typewriter with ten times my former zest. I want to have every exercise completed and all of Mr. Hawkins’s drafts transcribed, so that when Jonathan returns he will find his little wife-to-be ready to help him in his practice.

“Mr. Hawkins tells me that I look pale after the long term and that I must take my holiday early in July. I am longing to be with you, dear Lucy, where we can sit together by the open window, talk of all that has happened, and make plans for the great days ahead. Give my warmest sisterly regards to Arthur.

“Ever your loving

“MINA.”

Telegram from Sister Agatha, Buda-Pesth, to Miss Mina Murray, Exeter.

“2 July.

“Jonathan Harker admitted St. Joseph’s Hospital Buda-Pesth. Violent brain fever. Constantly calling your name. Pray come immediately.”

Emerging from the portals of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau into Shaftesbury Avenue, Eve Halliday paused upon the threshold and surveyed the London scene. The rain had ceased with that abrupt, capricious suddenness which is one of the more pleasing features of the English summer, leaving the pavements shining like wet seals and the air smelling faintly of petrol and washed asphalt. High above the chimney-pots of the Palace Theatre, a patch of blue sky, timid at first, was expanding with the confident swagger of an invading conqueror.

Eve looked down at the umbrella which she held in her hand. It was a noble implement, the sort of umbrella that might have accompanied an ambassador to an international conference or sheltered an archbishop during the tea-interval of a church congress. Its silk was glossy and tight, its ribs taut, its handle a triumph of smoothly polished tortoiseshell encircled by a neat gold band. It had performed its chivalrous duty with flawless fidelity, preserving her bird of Paradise feather from the slightest droplet of ruin; but its presence now weighed somewhat upon her conscience. To have accepted it from an unknown young man who had sprung from nowhere like a pantomime demon was one thing; to retain it permanently would be to invite that confusion between *meum* and *tuum* which her late father, an erratic journalist of high principles and low liquidity, had always warned her to avoid.

Besides, she knew where it lived. It had emerged from that sombre, dignified building opposite Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe, into which its donor had retreated with the agility of a startled fawn.

Eve was a girl of prompt action. Having ascertained from a public clock that she had still an hour and a half before her appointment with Lord Emsworth, she turned her steps resolutely in the direction of Dover Street.

The Drones Club, as seen from the pavement, presented an exterior of severe respectability designed to deceive the casual passer-by into believing that within its walls grave statesmen sat brooding upon the fate of empires. Eve pushed open the heavy swing-doors and found herself in a hall of austere marble tiles. In a glass compartment to the left sat the hall porter, a man of immense girth and monumental dignity, who looked as though he had spent forty years declining to answer impertinent questions from the lower orders.

Eve approached the aperture.

“Good morning,” said Eve brightly.

The hall porter bowed, an inclination of the head that was both majestic and slightly suspicious.

“Good morning, miss.”

“I have brought back an umbrella,” said Eve, placing the article upon the counter. “It was lent to me half an hour ago by a member of your club. A very tall, thin gentleman with an eyeglass.”

The hall porter regarded the umbrella with a trained professional eye. “A tall gentleman, miss? With an eyeglass?”

“Very tall. Incredibly thin. And remarkably polite.” Eve opened her handbag, took out a small pencil and a slip of paper from her pocket-book, and scribbled rapidly upon it:

*With the profoundest gratitude of the damsel under the awning, who hopes that chivalry has not resulted in a severe cold in the head.*

She folded the note and tucked it neatly beneath the silk band of the umbrella.

“Will you be so kind as to give it to him?” she asked.

“Very good, miss,” said the porter, his stern features relaxing under the impact of Eve’s smile and the bird of Paradise feather. “I will see that it is restored to the gentleman.”

Eve thanked him with that warm, dazzling friendliness that had once melted the heart of a bailiff on her father’s doorstep, and stepped out once more into the sunshine, her conscience clear and her thoughts turning to the impending ordeal of the Blandings Castle library.

Inside the club, in the smoking-room, a storm of an entirely different nature had been gathering.

Psmith was seated in a deep leather arm-chair near the window, gazing out in tranquil meditation. He had breakfasted well; he had formally severed his connection with his uncle’s fish business; he had delivered a maiden from distress; and the world, in spite of its obvious structural defects, seemed to him on the whole a well-meaning place.

This philosophical calm was shattered by the violent entrance of a young man with ruffled reddish hair, a flushed countenance, and eyes that bulged with the righteous indignation of the despoiled Briton.

The Honourable Hugo Walderwick was not, as a rule, a thinker. Thought, with Hugo, was an occasional and painful exercise, like visiting the dentist. But on the present occasion his brain was working with the feverish activity of a steam-engine. In his right hand he brandished an umbrella. In his left he clutched a small folded piece of paper.

He bore down upon Psmith like a destroyer sighting a hostile submarine.

“Smith!” barked Hugo Walderwick.

Psmith turned his head slowly, adjusted his monocle, and surveyed the newcomer with benevolent interest.

“Comrade Walderwick,” he murmured. “You burst upon my meditations like a tornado. Is anything amiss? Have you had bad news from the turf? Has an aunt ceased to function?”

“Never mind my aunts!” shouted Hugo, waving the umbrella within an inch of Psmith’s nose. “What I want to know is, what the devil do you mean by it?”

Psmith inspected the umbrella with the dispassionate curiosity of an art connoisseur.

“A remarkably handsome piece of goods,” he observed. “The tortoiseshell handle is particularly chaste. But why brandish it? Calmer spirits, Comrade Walderwick, are what the nation needs. Sit down, take a deep breath, and let us converse in reasoned periods.”

“Reasoned periods be blowed!” cried Hugo, vibrating with fury. “You stole my umbrella!”

Psmith raised a reproving hand. “Stole, Comrade Walderwick? You pain me. The word is crude, offensive, and totally unsuited to the ears of gentlemen. Let us say that I borrowed it. Let us say that I mobilised it in the service of a higher cause.”

“Thomas told me!” Hugo sputtered. “I went to the cloak-room twenty minutes ago to get my brolly, because it was raining cats and dogs and I had to go to Eaton Square to lunch with my aunt, and Thomas said you’d walked off with it! Walked off with my best Swaine & Adeney without so much as a by-your-leave! And then, when I was waiting in the hall to catch you, the hall porter comes up and hands it to me with this!”

He thrust the folded slip of paper at Psmith.

Psmith took it with grave courtesy, unfolded it, and read the pencilled lines. A faint, gentle smile touched his lips. It was evident that the damsel under the awning was not only ornamental but possessed of a proper sense of style.

“A charming document,” said Psmith, folding it reverently and placing it in his waistcoat pocket. “It does equal credit to the writer’s heart and her prose composition.”

“Give that back!” yelped Hugo. “It belongs to my umbrella!”

“Pardon me, Comrade Walderwick. The note refers explicitly to ‘the gentleman who lent it.’ You, if I understand the situation, were lurking in the cloak-room whining about your aunt in Eaton Square. I was the person who faced the elements and performed the deed of mercy. The communication is strictly my private property.”

“I don’t care about the note!” raged Hugo. “What I want an explanation of is the whole dashed business! Who was the girl? Why did you give her my brolly? And what the deuce do you mean by making free with my property?”

Psmith shook his head mournfully.

“Comrade Walderwick, to demand explanations in such circumstances is to show a lamentable lack of poetry. You are seeking to reduce the delicate gossamer of romance to the level of a police-court inquiry. Let us draw a veil. Let us preserve the mystery.”

“I don’t want to preserve any dashed mystery! I want satisfaction!”

“Satisfaction,” said Psmith thoughtfully, “is a commodity that can always be arranged. It is merely a question of currency. Am I to understand that you set a high value on this umbrella?”

“Of course I do! Cost me three guineas in the Burlington Arcade last month!”

“Then let us remove all cause of friction,” said Psmith smoothly, producing from his inside pocket a thick and reassuring leather note-case. “I propose to purchase this umbrella from you here and now.”

Hugo stared at him, his mouth opening in sheer bewilderment. “Purchase it? Rot! It isn’t for sale.”

“Everything is for sale, Comrade Walderwick, if the bid is sufficiently attractive. I offer you ten pounds.”

“Ten... ten quid?” Hugo gasped.

“I perceive you hesitate,” said Psmith calmly. “Your commercial instincts do you credit. Let us say fifteen pounds.”

“Look here, Smith—”

“Twenty pounds,” said Psmith, extracting four crisp five-pound notes and laying them with solemn deliberation upon the small table between their chairs. “Twenty pounds of the best and purest paper money ever issued by the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It is my final offer. Take it, Comrade Walderwick, and purchase half a dozen umbrellas. Purchase a sunshade for your aunt. Purchase an oilskin suit and a sou’wester. But leave this historic implement in my custody.”

Hugo Walderwick looked at the four five-pound notes. He looked at the umbrella. He looked at Psmith’s calm, aristocratic countenance. Twenty pounds was twenty pounds. It was the price of a weekend in Paris, or a tailor’s settlement, or endless cocktails. For an umbrella that had cost three guineas, it was highway robbery in reverse.

“Well,” said Hugo, his indignation melting into a dazed cupidity, “if you’re such an absolute raving loony as to give twenty quid for a secondhand brolly...”

“The bargain is struck,” said Psmith, deftly taking the umbrella from Hugo’s slackened grasp and placing the banknotes in his hand. “Go, Comrade Walderwick. Speed to Eaton Square. Reassure your aunt. And leave me to my newfound possession.”

Hugo stuffed the notes into his pocket, shook his head as one who has looked upon madness and found it lucrative, and hurried from the room. Psmith leaned back, stroked the tortoiseshell handle with an affectionate forefinger, and allowed his eye to wander once more toward the Dover Street window.

The Senior Conservative Club, situated in Northumberland Avenue, is an institution where silence is not merely requested, but enforced by the terrifying aspect of the members themselves. Ancient gentlemen with whiskers like heather sleep in vast leather arm-chairs, and the drop of a pin would sound like a detonation.

It was into this sepulchral atmosphere that Eve Halliday was ushered at three o’clock that afternoon.

The Earl of Emsworth was seated in a small committee-room on the ground floor. When Eve was announced, he was engaged in an agitated search through his pockets, muttering to himself and brushing specks of dust from his trousers.

Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, was a man who lived in a chronic state of mild panic, caused partly by his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, and partly by his efficient secretary, Rupert Baxter. To Lord Emsworth, the world was a dangerous place full of people who wanted him to do things he didn’t want to do, such as opening flower-shows, presiding over magistrates’ benches, and coming to London to interview librarians.

He looked up as Eve entered, and his jaw dropped.

“God bless my soul!” muttered his lordship.

He fumbled wildly at his waistcoat for his pince-nez, failed to find them, and peered at Eve with the blinking helplessness of an owl dragged suddenly into the limelight.

“Are you... er... bless my soul, you can’t be Miss Halliday?”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth,” said Eve with her cheerful smile. “I am Eve Halliday.”

“Dear me! But... but you’re so... Baxter never said... I mean to say, you’re not at all what Baxter led me to expect!”

Lord Emsworth looked around frantically, as though hoping Baxter might pop out of the wainscoting to take command.

“Baxter told me,” continued his lordship, his voice rising in plaintive confusion, “that you were an experienced cataloguer. I naturally supposed... one expects a person who catalogues libraries to be... well, elderly. With spectacles. And possibly a beard—no, not a beard, of course, being a lady—but certainly wearing something sombre. And you have a feather!”

He pointed a trembling finger at the bird of Paradise feather, which arched gracefully over Eve’s shoulder.

“It’s a very nice feather, Lord Emsworth,” said Eve pleasantly. “And I assure you it doesn’t interfere in the least with my ability to sort books. Besides, your glasses are hanging down your back.”

“Eh? What? Down my back?”

Eve stepped forward, deftly fished the pince-nez from the rear of his lordship’s collar, and handed them to him.

Lord Emsworth’s face illuminated with the ecstasy of a marooned mariner sighting a sail.

“My pince-nez! God bless my soul, so they are! Baxter found them there yesterday, but I couldn’t believe they would do it twice. You are a remarkably observant young lady, Miss... Miss... quite so.”

He clamped the glasses firmly onto his nose and squinted at a typed document lying on the table before him.

“Now, let me see. Baxter drew up a paper. Baxter is most particular. A wonderful fellow, Baxter, but... er... exhausting. He has put down several questions which I am to ask you. Number one: ‘What is your familiarity with the Shropshire Archaeological Society’s transactions for eighteen-eighty-four?’”

Lord Emsworth looked up over his glasses, hoping against hope.

“None whatever,” said Eve candidly. “I have never heard of them.”

Lord Emsworth looked perturbed. “Dear me! Most unfortunate. Baxter will be disappointed. He sets great store by Shropshire transactions. And number two: ‘State your view on the classification of sixteenth-century folios.’”

“I think they ought to be kept on the lowest shelves, Lord Emsworth, because they are much too heavy to lift without dropping them on one’s toes.”

His lordship blinked. “Very sensible,” he murmured, “very sensible indeed. I dropped a folio on my toe once. The pain was excruciating. But Baxter... I am afraid Baxter would consider that an unscientific approach.”

He sighed heavily and turned the page. And then his eye caught the handwritten postscript at the bottom of Baxter’s memorandum. He began to read it, and as he read, the colour drained from his noble countenance.

“Good heavens!” he ejaculated.

“Is something wrong?” asked Eve.

“Freddie!” gasped his lordship. “Freddie Threepwood! My younger son! Baxter writes here: ‘Ascertain whether the candidate is identical with the young person mentioned by the Honourable Frederick Threepwood.’ Did Freddie recommend you to apply for this post?”

“Why, yes,” said Eve. “Mr. Threepwood told me you wanted someone to catalogue the castle library.”

Lord Emsworth rose from his chair in absolute terror. He clutched his hair.

“My sister Constance!” he moaned. “Constance told me only yesterday—she was most emphatic—she said that Freddie was an irresponsible young scoundrel who was always trying to introduce unsuitable people to the castle! She said if I dared to engage anyone on Freddie’s recommendation without her personal approval, she would... she would... well, she was extremely unpleasant about it! And Baxter agrees with her! If I engage you now, Constance will never let me hear the last of it! She will bring me up to London for the autumn! She will make me attend the House of Lords!”

He paced the room in a fever of apprehension, gesturing wildly with his arms. In doing so, his cuff caught the edge of a massive pewter inkstand on the table.

With a sodden crash, the inkstand overturned. A tidal wave of thick, purple club ink surged across the table, engulfing Baxter’s questionnaire, blotting out the Shropshire archaeological transactions, and dripping in a steady cascade onto the Persian carpet.

“Oh, bless my soul!” cried Lord Emsworth, hopping backward. “Look at that! Baxter’s notes! Ruined! Entirely obliterated!”

“Don’t worry,” said Eve soothingly, dabbing at the deluge with a blotting-pad. “It was mostly about folios anyway.”

Lord Emsworth looked at the black ruin of his secretary’s masterpiece, then at Eve, whose calmness in the face of domestic catastrophe seemed to him almost divine. He liked her. She was a charming girl; she had found his glasses; she did not screech when ink was spilled. To send her away would be a grief; yet to engage her outright, with Constance and Baxter thirsting for blood, was an act of suicide.

“Miss Halliday,” stammered his lordship, “I... I am in a position of the gravest difficulty. I cannot possibly engage you today. I daren’t! Not until I have spoken to Baxter. Not until I have smoothed things over with Constance. If I gave you a definite answer now, the consequences would be frightful.”

“I understand,” said Eve quietly, her heart sinking.

“No, no, you mustn’t look like that!” Lord Emsworth cried, alarmed by the disappointment in her face. “You are not rejected! On no account consider yourself rejected! I am merely... what is the word?... temporising! Yes, temporising! I shall write to Baxter tonight. I shall put it to him tactfully. You are still the candidate—the premier candidate! But we must wait. We must see. Call upon me... no, do not call upon me, Baxter would see you. I shall communicate with you, Miss Halliday! Don't despair! But for heaven's sake don't tell Constance!”

And with this unsatisfactory, muddled, yet distinctly un-final pronouncement, his lordship ushered her to the door with profuse apologies, leaving her on the steps of the Senior Conservative Club with her prospects hanging precariously in the Shropshire breeze.

Eve walked down into Northumberland Avenue, her feelings a mixture of exasperation and amusement. The Blandings library post, which was to have saved her from penury and provided the funds to assist poor Phyllis, had not vanished, but it had receded into a fog of eccentric peerage.

Deciding that what she needed above all things was fresh air to clear the cobwebs from her brain, she turned westward and strolled towards St. James’s Park.

The park in the afternoon sunshine was looking its best. The grass was green and fragrant, ducks were performing aquatic evolutions upon the lake, and the flower-beds were blazing with summer colour. Eve found a vacant bench near the water and sat down, watching the nursemaids with their perambulators and pondering the inscrutable ways of Earls.

She had been sitting there for perhaps ten minutes when along the gravel path there approached a figure that made her sit bolt upright.

It was a figure impossible to mistake. Tall, slender, impeccably clad in a suit of dark flannel that had clearly been constructed by a master of Savile Row, the young man walked with a smooth and majestic stride. In his right eye gleamed a monocle; and tucked beneath his left arm, with the calm possessiveness of an old friend, was the umbrella with the tortoiseshell handle.

Eve gasped.

As he drew level with her bench, the young man glanced in her direction. His eye met hers. There was not a flicker of recognition in his solemn countenance, though his step slowed by an almost imperceptible fraction.

Eve sprang to her feet.

“Excuse me!” she said.

The young man stopped, removed his hat with a sweeping gesture of courtly grace, and bowed.

“You addressed me, madam?” he inquired smoothly.

“I certainly did,” said Eve, confronting him with sparkling eyes. “You’re the man!”

Psmith replaced his hat, adjusted his monocle, and surveyed her with polite perplexity.

“The man?” he echoed gently. “A flattering designation, no doubt, but somewhat broad. In what capacity do I enjoy the title?”

“The man who gave me that umbrella!” Eve cried, pointing an accusing finger at the article beneath his arm. “Under Thorpe & Briscoe’s awning in Dover Street this morning! You thrust it into my hands and ran away like a madman!”

Psmith shook his head slowly, a look of sorrowful sympathy coming into his face.

“My dear young lady, you are labouring under a most singular hallucination. It is an established fact that the human brain, subjected to the strain of London life, is frequently the victim of optical delusions. I assure you that you see before you a person of the most sedentary habits. To thrust umbrellas upon charming strangers and then run like a madman is an athletic performance wholly foreign to my nature. My doctor has strictly forbidden running since nineteen-fourteen.”

Eve laughed, though she tried hard to remain severe. “It is no use pretending! That is the very umbrella! Look at it! Tortoiseshell handle, gold band—I’d know it anywhere! I returned it to your club myself not three hours ago!”

Psmith cast an affectionate glance down at the umbrella.

“This umbrella?” he said, raising it slightly. “A family heirloom, my dear young lady. It has been in our family for generations. My grandfather carried it through the Crimean War; my uncle preserved it at the siege of Mafeking. It never leaves my possession. If some unprincipled impostor went about Dover Street dispensing duplicates of this sacred relic, I can only express my horror and disassociate myself from his proceedings.”

“You are the most outrageous fibber I have ever met in my life!” said Eve, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Do you mean to stand there in the broad daylight and tell me you didn’t run across the road into that club?”

“I have not run,” said Psmith with dignity, “since the sports day of nineteen-twelve at Eton, when I was entered by mistake for the obstacle race. A distressing episode, which I prefer to forget.”

Eve sat back on the bench, shaking her head in helpless admiration of his effrontery.

“Well, you are certainly consistent. If you won’t admit it, I suppose I can’t make you. But whoever the gentleman was, he saved my hat, and I’m very grateful to him.”

“I shall convey your gratitude,” said Psmith courteously, “to the astral plane, where no doubt the spirit of this benevolent sprinter resides.”

He lingered by the bench, leaning gracefully upon the contested umbrella.

“You appear, if I may say so, somewhat burdened by the cares of this mundane sphere. Has the world been using you harshly?”

“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” said Eve with a sigh. “I’ve just spent an hour being interviewed by an Earl who lost his glasses, knocked an inkpot over his secretary’s questions, and was frightened nearly out of his wits because his son had recommended me.”

Psmith’s monocle gave a slight, appreciative twitch.

“A typical representative of our hereditary legislature,” he observed. “They are like that. Melancholy spectacles, most of them. One should treat them with the forbearance one extends to children and the lower animals.”

“He didn’t give me the job,” said Eve, “and he didn’t refuse me either. He simply temporised and dripped ink.”

“A masterly display of British diplomacy,” said Psmith. “Never abandon hope, my dear young lady. Things have a way of adjusting themselves. In the great tapestry of existence, even Earls have their appointed place, though it is not always easy to see why.”

Eve looked up at him, her chin tilted. “And who are you, if one may ask? A fairy godfather? An eccentric millionaire who buys up umbrellas to give away to strangers?”

“I am,” said Psmith with a grave bow, “merely a spectator of life. A humble student of humanity, wandering through the bazaar of the world and taking note of its curiosities. A name is a trivial thing, an arbitrary collection of consonants and vowels which adds nothing to the personality of the bearer. Let us dispense with labels.”

“You are certainly a curiosity,” Eve said, laughing. “Well, Mr. Anonymous, I must go. I have to go to West Kensington to tell my friend Phyllis all about my adventures.”

“May your journey be prosperous,” said Psmith, raising his hat once more. “And should the heavens open again, may some chivalrous phantom be at hand with an umbrella.”

He bowed again, turned on his heel, and resumed his stately progress along the gravel path, leaving Eve to gaze after his retreating back with a smile of unfeigned amusement.

Evening had fallen upon London when Psmith returned to the Drones Club. The twilight, creeping down Dover Street, bathed the facade of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe in a soft and purple gloom, and inside the club smoking-room the electric lamps had been turned on, casting a mellow glow over the deep armchairs and the mahogany tables.

The room was deserted. The members had drifted away to dress for dinner or to keep appointments in the theatre district, leaving Psmith in sole possession of the vast apartment.

He sat by the window in his favourite chair, his long legs stretched comfortably out before him. Beside his chair, resting against the small table, was the umbrella. He had dined lightly and well, and he was contemplating its polished tortoiseshell handle with the satisfaction of a man whose day has not been spent in vain, when the door opened and a page-boy entered.

“Telephone for you, Mr. Smith,” piped the youth. “Mr. Jackson on the wire, sir.”

“Ah,” said Psmith, rising with unhurried dignity. “The faithful Mike. Lead on, my lad.”

He strolled out to the telephone booth in the hall, closed the glass door behind him, and lifted the receiver.

“Comrade Jackson,” said Psmith, “your familiar voice is balm to my spirit. How are things in West Kensington? Does the domestic hearth burn brightly?”

“Hullo, Rupert!” came the excited voice of Mike Jackson over the wire. “I say, Rupert, you there? Look here, the most extraordinary thing has happened.”

“Extraordinary happenings, Comrade Jackson, are the very fabric of our modern existence. Expound.”

“Phyllis and I have just been having tea,” said Mike, “and a friend of hers—a girl who was at school with her at Wayland House—came in. She told us the most amazing yarn. She was caught in a shower in Dover Street this morning, right outside some coal shop, and a tall, thin chap with an eyeglass dashed out of a club, shoved an umbrella into her hand, and vanished like a smoke-ring! And then, if you please, she bumped into him again this afternoon in St. James’s Park, and the lunatic looked her straight in the eye and swore he’d never seen an umbrella in his life and had spent the day meditating! I told Phyl it couldn’t possibly be anyone in London except you. Nobody else would be such an absolute ass. Was it you, Rupert?”

Psmith smiled gently into the mouthpiece.

“Comrade Jackson,” he murmured, “a gentleman does not discuss his chivalrous exploits over the public telephone wires. Let us preserve a discreet silence. But this friend of Mrs. Jackson’s—an entertaining narrator, no doubt?”

“Oh, she’s a splendid girl,” said Mike. “Her name is Eve Halliday. She was telling us all about her interview this afternoon with old Lord Emsworth for the library job at Blandings Castle. Lord Emsworth knocked an inkpot all over the table and couldn’t make up his mind because Freddie Threepwood had recommended her. Phyl’s awfully keen for her to get the job, because she’s hard up, and besides, Joe Keeble is at Blandings, and Phyl wants Eve to talk to him about our farm scheme. But look here, Rupert, did you really give her Walderwick’s brolly?”

“The matter, Comrade Jackson,” said Psmith, “is the subject of a departmental enquiry. My warmest compliments to Mrs. Jackson, and tell her to keep her courage high. I shall communicate with you in due course.”

“Wait a minute, Rupert—!”

Psmith gently replaced the receiver upon the hook.

He walked slowly back through the quiet hall, past the glass compartment of the majestic porter, and entered the smoking-room.

He was alone once more. The room was very still, save for the faint hum of London traffic floating in from the street outside.

Psmith resumed his seat in the leather arm-chair. He picked up the umbrella, turned it slowly in his hands, and inspected the tortoiseshell handle through his monocle.

“Eve Halliday,” murmured Psmith.

It was, he considered, a charming name. A lyrical name. A name with music in it.

He leaned the umbrella carefully against the table, settled back into the cushions, and smiled a smile of profound and tranquil satisfaction.

I replaced the heavy medical tome upon its shelf, my fingers trembling slightly as I did so. The cold, dispassionate words of the authority on toxicology were burnt into my brain. Tetanic convulsions—the body arched until it rested only upon the head and heels, in that frightful posture which science terms opisthotonos—the paroxysms provoked by the slightest touch or sound—and, most ghastly of all, the mind remaining horribly clear, conscious of every agony until suffocation brought release. It had described with dreadful accuracy every detail of the tragic spectacle we had just witnessed in the room upstairs. There could no longer be any shadow of doubt in my mind: Emily Inglethorp had died of strychnine poisoning.

A shudder ran through me. In the quiet, scholarly atmosphere of the Styles library, surrounded by the leather-bound volumes that had stood there for generations, the idea of murder seemed bizarre, almost incredible. Yet the stark horror of it was unmistakable. Dr. Bauerstein had seen it at a glance; his trained eye had recognized the tetanic character of those spasms immediately. And Lawrence—what had Lawrence seen when his candle shook in his hand and his eyes stared petrified at the wall? Was it mere shock, or had he too recognized the terrible symptoms of the drug?

I glanced at my watch. It was twenty minutes past six. Not a moment was to be lost if Poirot was to be brought upon the scene before the traces of the crime—if crime it were—could be obliterated.

I slipped out through the side door onto the terrace. The air was wonderfully cool and fresh. During the early hours of the morning, while we had been keeping our grim vigil beside the dying woman, the long-threatened thunderstorm had broken over the house. The rain had ceased now, but heavy drops still fell with soft thuds from the eaves and the dripping boughs of the great cedar tree on the lawn. The gravel of the carriage drive was washed clean, and the borders of summer flowers, beaten down by the torrential deluge, were already lifting their sodden heads to meet the pale morning sun. How strange it seemed that nature could be so calm, so indifferent to the tragedy that had shattered the peace of Styles Court!

I set off down the drive at a brisk stride. Passing through the heavy iron lodge gates, which stood open to the road, I turned in the direction of Styles St. Mary. The village was situated about three-quarters of a mile away, and under ordinary circumstances it was a pleasant walk along a high-banked Essex lane bordered with blackberry bushes and wild dog-roses. This morning, however, I had no eyes for the rural beauty of the countryside. My mind was in a whirl of dark surmises. Who could have administered the poison? And how? Alfred Inglethorp was absent—strangely, unaccountably absent. Yet only last evening he had carried a cup of coffee to his wife in her boudoir. Had that coffee contained the fatal dose? If so, why had the effects been delayed until the early hours of the dawn? Strychnine, as I had just read, usually acted within an hour, or two hours at the most.

Musing on these perplexing questions, I found myself entering the village street sooner than I had anticipated. Styles St. Mary was just beginning to awake. Smoke curled thinly from one or two cottage chimneys, and an elderly labourer, with a sack thrown across his shoulders against the damp, touched his cap to me as I hurried past.

Leastways Cottage stood near the far end of the village, a modest, whitewashed building with a neat strip of garden in front, separated from the road by a low wooden paling. It was here that Mrs. Inglethorp, with that autocratic generosity that characterized all her actions, had installed the little colony of Belgian refugees who had fled before the German invasion.

I hastened up the gravel path and knocked sharply upon the green front door. To my surprise, I had barely lowered the brass knocker when the door was opened, and Hercule Poirot himself stood upon the threshold.

He was already fully dressed, and presented that extraordinary appearance of neatness and precision which I had come to associate with him. His suit was brushed to perfection, his patent leather shoes shone with immaculate lustre, and his magnificent moustaches were waxed with the most fastidious care. His egg-shaped head was cocked slightly to one side, and his green eyes, usually so bright and bird-like, rested upon me with an expression of profound gravity.

“Ah, mon cher Hastings!” he exclaimed, holding up a hand before I could speak. “You come early. But do not distress yourself to tell me what has brought you. Alas, I know it already.”

I stared at him in utter stupefaction.

“You know?” I gasped. “How on earth could you know? It only happened an hour ago! The news cannot possibly have reached the village yet!”

Poirot shook his head mournfully, stepping back into the narrow passage and beckoning me to follow him into his neat little parlour.

“In a quiet English village, my friend, bad news does not walk; it flies upon wings of lightning. It was Baily, your chauffeur. When he drove the motor-car into the village at five o’clock to summon Dr. Wilkins, he pulled up outside the doctor’s house, which, as you know, is situated barely a stone’s throw from my window. His shouts and his hammering upon the knocker aroused the entire street. Madame Cole, my good landlady, ran to her casement, and Baily cried out to her that Mrs. Inglethorp had been seized with terrible fits and was no more. The poor lady! What a tragedy! She who was so kind to us, our patroness, our benefactress! It is an overwhelming blow.”

He sighed deeply, reverently crossing himself.

“Poirot,” I said, lowering my voice and leaning across the small table, “it is far more terrible than you think. It was no ordinary illness. Dr. Bauerstein was there—he happened to be passing the gates—and both he and Wilkins have refused to sign the death certificate. There is to be a post-mortem to-night.”

Poirot’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and a strange, green light flickered in their depths.

“So?” he murmured softly. “Dr. Bauerstein refuses the certificate? That is very grave. Very grave indeed.”

“They suspect poison,” I continued eagerly. “And what is more, I know what the poison was! I watched her die, Poirot—it was strychnine! The tetanic convulsions, the body arched upon the head and heels, the dreadful rigidity—I have just been reading the description in a medical work in the library, and every single symptom corresponds!”

“Ah!” said Poirot, nodding his head with slow, methodical precision. “The opisthotonos. Yes, yes. It is the classic symptom of that terrible drug. And Monsieur John—what does he say to all this?”

“John was reluctant at first,” I explained. “You know his dread of publicity and scandal. But I spoke to him, Poirot. I told him of your wonderful reputation, of your former triumphs in the Belgian police, and he has agreed to give you a free hand. He has given me permission to call you in!”

A look of quiet pride and deep emotion passed over the little detective’s face. He laid his hand gently upon my sleeve.

“I thank you, Hastings. You are a true friend. And Monsieur John—he shall not regret his confidence. Madame Inglethorp took us in when we were destitute, homeless exiles in a strange land. She gave us shelter, comfort, peace. To discover the truth of her death—that is a sacred duty which I accept with all my heart.”

He paused, his eyes fixed thoughtfully upon the window.

“And the husband? Monsieur Alfred Inglethorp? What of him?”

“That is the most extraordinary part of the whole affair,” I said. “He was not in the house! When we broke into Mrs. Inglethorp’s room, his own bedroom was empty—his bed had not even been slept in! No one knows where he went or where he is at this moment.”

Poirot’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise.

“Tiens! That is indeed curious. He leaves his wife, and during his absence she dies of a violent poison. It is almost too convenient, is it not?” He checked himself, waving a warning finger at me. “But we must not jump to conclusions. No, no, that is the great mistake—to form a theory before one has the facts. One twists the facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. We must see; we must observe; we must arrange our little grey cells.”

He turned briskly toward the door.

“Go back now, Hastings. Walk quickly ahead of me and inform Monsieur John that I am coming. I must put on my boots, change my slippers, brush my coat, and collect my little leather case with my measuring tape and magnifying glass. In ten minutes I shall follow you to Styles. Go, my friend, and keep your eyes open!”

I needed no second bidding. Feeling that matters were now in capable hands, I retraced my steps toward Styles Court with a lighter heart, though my mind was still oppressed by the dreadful certainty of foul play.

When I reached the Hall, the front door was open, and I walked into the large, panelled lounge hall. A hush seemed to have settled over the entire house—that heavy, unnatural stillness which always follows in the wake of death. John Cavendish was standing by the great oak fireplace, staring moodily into the cold hearth. Mary was seated at the far table, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, looking pale and remote. Lawrence sat somewhat apart, near the dining-room door, his head buried in his hands, presenting a picture of absolute dejection.

As the latch clicked behind me, John looked up quickly.

“Well, Hastings?” he asked in a low voice.

“Poirot is coming,” I told him. “He was deeply moved by the news. He will be here in a few minutes.”

John sighed heavily.

“Thank you, Hastings. I hope we are doing the right thing. If Wilkins and Bauerstein are right, the scandal will be appalling. God knows I don’t want to evade the truth, but the thought of the police—the newspapers—the whole countryside gossiping about us—it makes my blood run cold.”

“M. Poirot is discretion itself,” I assured him. “You need have no fear on that score.”

Before John could reply, the crunch of footsteps upon the gravel outside arrested our attention. We all turned instinctively toward the door. A moment later, a dark figure stepped into the hall.

It was Alfred Inglethorp.

He looked completely exhausted. His extraordinary black beard seemed even more incongruous against the sallow pallor of his skin, and his gold-rimmed pince-nez sat crookedly upon his nose. He was wearing the same peculiar frock coat and patent leather boots that he had worn on the previous evening, but his clothes were damp and spattered with mud around the hems. He paused upon the threshold, his mouth slightly open, blinking into the dimness of the hall.

“John,” he said, in his flat, unctuous voice. “Mary. What is this frightful thing that Annie has just told me in the yard? She says—she says that Emily is dead!”

John regarded his stepmother’s husband with cold, unblinking eyes. Never had I seen his handsome, English face set in such hard, uncompromising lines.

“It is quite true, Alfred,” he said curtly. “Mother died shortly before five o’clock this morning.”

Alfred Inglethorp gave a low, theatrical groan and sank heavily into an armchair, covering his face with his hands.

“My poor Emily!” he murmured, his shoulders heaving. “My dearest, noble wife! Taken from me so suddenly! Oh, it is cruel—cruel! If only I had been here! If only I had not left her!”

“That,” said John, and his voice was like the cutting edge of a razor, “is precisely what we should like you to explain. Where were you, Alfred?”

Inglethorp dropped his hands and looked up, blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses.

“Where was I?” he repeated, as though struggling to collect his senses. “Why, as you know, I walked with Dr. Bauerstein into the village last night. When we parted near the church, I felt an intolerable heaviness in my head—a splitting headache brought on by the thunderous heat. I felt that if I returned to the house immediately, I should never sleep. I decided to take a long walk across the fields toward the woods to clear my brain.”

He paused, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his forehead.

“The time slipped by,” he continued. “The storm was longer in breaking than I expected. When the first heavy drops began to fall—it must have been near two o’clock in the morning—I hurried back toward Styles. I came to the front door, meaning to let myself in and go quietly to bed without disturbing anyone. But to my utter dismay, I found the door bolted fast against me. I had my latch-key in my pocket, of course, but the heavy bolts inside had been shot, and the key would not turn.”

John’s eyebrows drew together. “You found the door bolted?”

“Bolted fast,” asserted Inglethorp with an air of injured innocence. “I tried the handle several times, but it was completely immovable. I hesitated what to do. I knew how easily Emily was alarmed, how light her sleep was, and I shrank from knocking or ringing the bell to arouse the servants at such an hour. I decided that the only considerate course was to spend the remainder of the night elsewhere. I went down through the shrubbery to the summer-house at the bottom of the lawn. There was an old travelling rug in the garden basket, and I wrapped myself in that and lay down upon the wooden bench until morning. I must have fallen into a heavy sleep, for when I awoke, the sun was well up. I walked straight up to the house, only to be met by Annie with this dreadful news.”

He looked round upon us, as though inviting our sympathy for his unfortunate plight.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The interruption came from the back of the hall. We all started. Dorcas had just emerged from the corridor leading to the pantry, carrying a silver salver with a jug of iced water and several glasses. She set the tray down upon the side table, and stood facing us, her hands folded primly over her white apron. Her elderly, respectable face was flushed with suppressed indignation.

“What is it, Dorcas?” asked John.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. John,” said the parlourmaid firmly, “but what Mr. Inglethorp says is not correct. The front door was not bolted last night.”

Alfred Inglethorp turned upon the woman, his dark eyes flashing with sudden fury behind his glasses.

“How dare you contradict me!” he snapped. “What do you know about it?”

“I know what I did with my own hands, sir,” replied Dorcas with quiet dignity, addressing herself pointedly to John. “Before the household retired last night, sir, you asked me yourself whether Mr. Inglethorp had taken the latch-key, and I told you that he had put it into his pocket before he went out with the doctor. I locked the side doors, the garden gates, and the scullery, but I left the front door on the spring-latch only, exactly as I always do when anyone is out with the key. The two great bolts were never shot at all, sir. I drew them back myself at ten o’clock, and they were never touched again until you came down the stairs this morning.”

A dead silence fell upon the hall.

Alfred Inglethorp’s sallow face turned a dull, mottled grey. His fingers twitched convulsively at his black beard.

“You—you are mistaken, woman,” he stammered, his voice losing its confident ring. “I tell you the door was locked. I shook the handle—it would not yield.”

“I could not be mistaken about a thing like that, Mr. Inglethorp,” Dorcas replied respectfully, but with unwavering firmness. “I have had the care of the doors at Styles Court for more than thirty years, and I have never yet bolted the house against any member of the family who had the latch-key.”

With a stiff little bob to John, she turned and walked steadily back toward the pantry.

Before anyone could break the painful tension that followed her departure, the sharp crunch of gravel outside announced another arrival. A moment later, the front door was pushed open, and Hercule Poirot stepped into the hall.

He paused just inside the entrance, his glossy silk hat in one hand, his silver-topped cane and a neat little black leather case in the other. He bowed low to the assembled company with exquisite continental politeness.

“Monsieur Cavendish,” he said softly, addressing John. “Permit me to offer you and your family the homage of my most profound, my most respectful sympathy. A great and noble lady has been taken from us. To those of us who found an asylum here beneath her generous protection, the loss is irreparable.”

John stepped forward and shook the detective warmly by the hand.

“Thank you, Monsieur Poirot. It is very good of you to come. Hastings has explained to you how matters stand. The doctors are dissatisfied, and an inquest is inevitable. Under these painful circumstances, we feel that every enquiry must be made, and we shall be most grateful for your advice.”

Alfred Inglethorp rose from his chair, his tall, awkward figure trembling with what seemed to be a mixture of indignation and nervous apprehension.

“Enquiry?” he exclaimed in a shaking voice. “What enquiry? Who has authorized this gentleman to interfere in our private grief? Surely, John, the sudden death of my beloved wife is a matter between her family and our own medical attendants! I must protest—most emphatically protest—against the intrusion of a stranger!”

John looked at him with cold disdain.

“Monsieur Poirot is an old friend of Hastings,” he said quietly, “and he comes at my invitation. When Dr. Bauerstein and Dr. Wilkins decline to issue a death certificate, Alfred, the matter ceases to be purely private.”

Poirot raised a soothing, gloved hand.

“Do not agitate yourself, Monsieur Inglethorp,” he said gently. “I intrude upon no one. I make no accusations. I come simply as a friend of the family, to place my poor abilities at their disposal. The truth can harm no innocent person; it can only bring peace to the dead.”

At that moment, the door of the small morning-room opened, and Cynthia Murdoch came slowly into the hall. The poor girl looked utterly wretched. Her face was as white as paper, and dark violet rings of exhaustion encircled her large grey eyes. She had thrown a dark woollen shawl over her simple morning frock, and she seemed to be shivering slightly, despite the increasing warmth of the day.

Mary Cavendish went across to her immediately and put an arm around her shoulders.

“My dear child,” Mary murmured with unusual tenderness, “you ought not to have come down. You should have stayed in bed.”

“I couldn’t rest, Mary,” Cynthia whispered, her voice trembling. “It was too terrible... I keep hearing those dreadful cries...”

Poirot stepped forward, bowing to the girl with a paternal gentleness that was very touching.

“Mademoiselle Cynthia,” he said softly.

The girl looked up at him, startled. “Yes, Monsieur Poirot?”

Poirot regarded her intently. His head was tilted slightly to the left, and his keen green eyes seemed to read the very depths of her soul, yet his voice was wonderfully reassuring.

“You will pardon an old man who asks you a question—a very simple question, Mademoiselle?”

“Of course,” she replied, faintly.

“Tell me, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, speaking with slow, deliberate emphasis, “did you take any draught, or powder, or medicine of any kind last night before you went to sleep?”

Cynthia stared at him in evident astonishment, then shook her head with unmistakable sincerity.

“No, Monsieur Poirot, nothing at all. I never take sleeping draughts—I have never needed them in my life. I was simply very tired after a long, exhausting day in the dispensary at Tadminster. I fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow, though when Mrs. Cavendish shook me awake in the night, my head felt so heavy and stupid that I could hardly stand.”

Poirot inclined his head in a grave, polite bow.

“Je vous remercie, Mademoiselle. That is all that I wished to know.”

He turned back to John Cavendish.

“And now, Monsieur John, if you will be so good as to permit it, I should like to visit the room of Madame Inglethorp before anything is moved or disturbed.”

John drew a key from his waistcoat pocket.

“Dr. Bauerstein locked the room after he and Wilkins had finished their examination, and gave me the key. Here it is. The other key in my pocket belongs to Alfred’s room, but as we broke the connecting door down, that is of less importance.”

“One key will suffice,” said Poirot, taking it with a little bow. “Come, Hastings, you will accompany me.”

We mounted the stairs together, leaving the unhappy household below. The clock on the landing chimed the quarter past eleven as we reached the first floor. The storm had completely cleared away now, and the late morning sun was streaming through the high arched window, illuminating the broad corridor that led to the right wing of the house.

Poirot inserted the key into the lock of Mrs. Inglethorp’s door, turned it smoothly, and pushed the door open. We stepped inside, and to my surprise, he immediately turned the key in the lock behind us, shooting the bolt into its socket.

“It is better that we are undisturbed, Hastings,” he whispered, his finger to his lips. “The little grey cells work best in silence and solitude.”

I looked round the tragic room with a sinking heart. The bright morning light poured through the casements, revealing with pitiless clarity the disorder left behind by the tragedy of the dawn. The heavy four-poster bed stood in the centre of the room, its counterpane and linen tossed and rumpled from the violent convulsions of the dying woman. The bedside table lay overturned upon the carpet, where Mrs. Inglethorp had struck it down in her agony, and beside it lay the fragments of a shattered coffee cup, surrounded by a dark, dried stain that had soaked deep into the pile of the carpet. On the wall above the mantelpiece, the gas bracket that John had lit still hissed faintly, its pale flame invisible against the brilliant sunshine until Poirot stepped across and turned the tap.

With quick, bird-like movements, the little detective began his examination. He did not rush about the room or drop upon his knees to peer through a magnifying glass, as I had half-expected him to do. Instead, he stood in the middle of the carpet for several minutes, his eyes darting methodically from object to object, taking in every detail of the room’s geography.

“Order and method, Hastings,” he murmured under his breath. “Always order and method. The mind must classify, it must arrange.”

He walked softly to the window, inspected the catch, and satisfied himself that it had not been tampered with from the outside. Then he crossed to the connecting door that led into Alfred Inglethorp’s room. The door hung slightly crooked upon its hinges, the woodwork around the lock splintered and broken where John and I had forced it open with our shoulders. Poirot examined the bolt on the inner side, noting that it had been shot home.

Next, he turned his attention to the second connecting door—the one that led into Cynthia Murdoch’s room. It was an older, heavier door, painted white like the wainscoting.

“You remember, Hastings,” he remarked in a low voice, “Monsieur John told you that this door was always bolted?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Dorcas said it had never been undone.”

Poirot stepped up to the door and examined the heavy brass bolt at the top. It was firmly shot into its staple. He reached up, grasped the knurled knob, and gently drew it back. It moved stiffly, with a faint rasping sound of metal against metal.

He was about to turn away, when his eye was caught by something near the bottom of the door. He bent down, his face barely an inch from the woodwork. A sudden, sharp exclamation escaped his lips.

“Regardez, Hastings!” he whispered. “Look here!”

I hastened to his side and bent down beside him. At the bottom of the door, close to the floor, was a second, smaller bolt—a flat bolt of blackened iron, half-concealed in the shadow of the skirting board.

Poirot took his small leather case from his pocket, unfastened the silver clasp, and drew out a pair of delicate, slender forceps. With extraordinary precision and a hand as steady as a rock, he inserted the tips of the instrument into the narrow crevice between the bolt and the iron staple.

When he drew the forceps out, I saw that they held a tiny object.

He rose to his feet, turned toward the window where the light was strongest, and held the instrument out toward me.

“What do you make of that, my friend?” he asked softly.

I peered at it intently. Resting between the silver jaws of the tweezers was a tiny fragment of thread—a mere scrap of dark green wool, not more than a quarter of an inch in length.

“A thread!” I exclaimed in disappointment. “Why, Poirot, it’s nothing but a bit of green wool! It must have come from someone’s dress or coat.”

“Précisément,” murmured Poirot. “A piece of dark green wool.”

“Whose could it be?” I asked, my imagination instantly catching fire. “Mrs. Inglethorp was wearing her purple dressing-gown. Cynthia had on a blue kimono. Mary was in her white land-smock. And Alfred Inglethorp wears black! Who in the house wears dark green?”

Poirot looked at me, and a faint, enigmatic smile played about his lips. He carefully placed the tiny green thread upon the polished mahogany surface of the dressing-table that stood between us, where it lay like a tiny emerald caterpillar against the dark wood.

“That, Hastings, is a question which we shall not ask just yet.”

“But what does it mean?” I cried, exasperated by his secrecy. “Why won't you tell me? If it is a clue, surely I have a right to know what you deduce from it!”

Poirot shook his head gently.

“A clue, yes. But a clue that is not understood is like a loaded revolver in the hands of a child—it is dangerous, Hastings, very dangerous. For the moment, we observe, we collect, but we do not explain.”

“You mean you don’t know what it means yourself!” I retorted, somewhat nettled by his superior manner.

Poirot’s eyes twinkled with that strange green light, and he tapped the side of his egg-shaped head with his forefinger.

“I know this much, mon cher Hastings: it proves to me that when the architect designed this tragedy, he made only one fatal mistake.”

“And what was that?” I asked eagerly.

“He remembered to lock the door against the world,” said Poirot softly, “but he forgot that the key was on the outside.”

I stared at him in utter bewilderment; his words conveyed nothing whatever to my mind.

From the Herald building I walked over to Broadway and turned north toward the First National Bank.

Personville in the afternoon was no prettier than it had been in the morning. An ugly city of red brick and blackened stone set in a groove between naked hills, under a yellow smear of smelter smoke that kept the sun out. The air tasted of copper, grease, and burning coal. The men on the sidewalks were mostly miners with pale, sullen faces and their hands jammed in their pockets, walking like they hated the cold wind.

The First National Bank was a gray sandstone pile on the corner of Broadway and Mineral Street, built heavy enough to stand a siege. Inside, the floor was gray marble and the air had the cold, respectable stink of old paper, brass polish, and other people's money.

Behind the bronze wickets three tellers were counting greenbacks. Back against the wall, behind a low walnut railing, three desks sat on a red carpet. Two were vacant. At the middle one sat a man in a gray alpaca coat with black satin sleeve-protectors pinned to his cuffs. A brass plate on the desk said: E. H. Albright, Assistant Cashier.

I pushed through the swinging gate.

He looked up. He was about fifty, with a narrow chin, thin gray hair plastered across a yellow scalp, and gold-rimmed spectacles cocked on a sharp nose.

"Mr. Albright?"

"Yes, sir," he said in a voice like dry husks. "What can I do for you?"

I laid my Continental buzzer on his blotter. He picked it up by the edge, examined it close to his glasses, and set it down. He blinked twice.

"San Francisco," he murmured, lowering his tone. "Is this regarding Mr. Donald Willsson?"

"He had an account here," I said.

"A very substantial account. A terrible occurrence, truly terrible. But our regulations—"

"Donald Willsson hired me," I cut in. "Yesterday afternoon at quarter to three he wrote out a stub in his check book for five thousand dollars, took his hat, and went out for twenty minutes. Did he come in here?"

Albright took off his glasses, wiped them on a handkerchief, and perched them back on his nose.

"He did. Just before three. He stood near the writing counter for a few minutes, looked at his watch, and walked out. He spoke to no one."

"Let's look at his ledger."

Albright hesitated, pursed his lips, then went over to the bookkeeping cage and returned with a heavy loose-leaf binder. He opened it on the desk at Donald Willsson's sheet.

The balance was a little over eighty-two hundred dollars. The last debit was forty-six dollars and fifty cents for coal, two days back.

"No check for five thousand dollars has been charged against him," Albright said.

"Could it have been cashed at a wicket without reaching the ledger?"

"Never. Any disbursement of that size requires my authorization. None was presented."

"Has it been certified?"

"No. I handle all certifications myself."

"Could it have gone into the Miners' National across the square?"

"Our clearings are at eleven and two. If they had it, it would have reached my hands an hour ago. It has not."

"So it hasn't been cashed, certified, or cleared."

"Precisely," Albright said, shutting the book. "If drawn, it remains unpresented."

"Did he have a safe deposit box here?"

"No. Only his father."

I pocketed my card, thanked him, and went out.

Five thousand dollars was a lot of money in Personville. According to Bill Quint, you could buy a city official for two hundred and get a strike-breaker slugged for fifty. Five thousand would buy an arsenal or rent a dozen guns for a season. If Donald Willsson had drawn it for a blackmailer, a briber, or a woman, nobody had rushed to turn it into cash. And if it had been in his pockets when he stopped four bullets on Hurricane Street, somebody had stripped him clean before the police wagon arrived. The papers had listed forty-two dollars in currency, a gold watch, and some letters, but not a nickel more.

I walked back to the Great Western Hotel.

The lobby smelled of wet carpet, coal gas, and tobacco juice. Half a dozen drummers were slumped in leather armchairs around the radiators. Behind the desk, the clerk—a slick youngster with greased hair and a checked tie—slid key three-fourteen across the counter with a greasy grin.

"Party waiting for you on the parlor floor, Mr. Neill," he whispered. "Asked for your room. A lady."

I left him to his grinning, took the cage elevator to the third floor, and went down the hall.

She was sitting on a straight chair under an engraving of Custer's Last Stand: Donald Willsson's widow. She wore a dark coat with a narrow fur collar pulled to her chin, and a black cloche hat that concealed her blonde hair. Her hands in gray suede gloves were clamped tight on her purse. Her face was dead white, her eyes wide and feverish under thin brows.

When my shoes creaked she stood up.

"You are Mr. Neill?" she asked, her voice low with that light French clip.

"That's the name on my laundry," I said. "Come inside."

I unlocked three-fourteen, let her in, and closed the door. It was an ordinary hotel room—an iron bed, a walnut dresser, a rocking chair, and a window over an alley.

She didn't sit down. She stood by the dresser, leaning against it, watching me with dark, hunted eyes.

"Why did my husband bring you from San Francisco?" she asked.

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He told me nothing. He said a specialist was coming to assist him. That was all."

"He didn't get around to telling me either," I said, leaning against the door with my hands in my pockets. "I was supposed to see him at your house at ten last night. He didn't keep the date because somebody emptied a thirty-two into him on Hurricane Street at ten-forty."

She flinched as if struck.

"I'm remembering last night," I went on. "We sat in your parlor until ten-twenty. The phone rang, you took the call, jumped in your Buick, and tore off. At five past eleven you came back, shaking like a leaf, and told me Donald wouldn't be home. You had blood on your left shoe."

Her breath hissed between her teeth.

"The papers say a man and a woman were bending over Donald's body right after the shots," I said. "Before anyone reached the street, they ran. Was that you on the sidewalk, Mrs. Willsson?"

She gripped the edge of the dresser until the suede stretched white over her knuckles.

"Yes," she said in a dry whisper. "I was there."

"Who was the man?"

"There was no man! A telephone call came—a voice disguised—telling me Donald was shot on Hurricane Street. I drove there like a madwoman. He was lying on the stones, dead. I knelt beside him. I touched his coat. My shoe touched the blood. I was terrified. Donald's father hates me—he has always hated me. If I was found there, he would say I killed him. The police would do whatever Elihu ordered. I lost my head and fled."

"A pretty tale," I said. "It would hold together better if Max Thaler hadn't gone into your house at ten this morning."

That took the blood out of her lips. Her mouth twitched.

"You—you saw him?"

"I saw his brown legs going through your door. What was Whisper doing in your parlor the morning after your husband was murdered?"

"He came to offer condolences," she stammered. "He had business with Donald."

"Whisper runs the town's rackets," I said. "He doesn't pay social calls on corpses' widows unless there's an angle. Did Donald give you five thousand dollars yesterday afternoon?"

She stared at me, bewildered or doing a first-rate job of faking it.

"Five thousand dollars? No. Why should he?"

"He drew a check for that amount at quarter to three, right after a woman phoned him. The check never reached the bank. Was it you on the phone?"

"No! I swear it!" She took two steps toward me, her eyes blazing. "Listen to me. You do not understand Personville. Donald thought he could fight these animals with words. Look what they did to him. Now his father screams for blood, and you go digging into things that will get you killed. Take your things and leave. Go back to California."

"Donald gave my Agency a retainer," I said. "We don't run out on a job because the man who paid us got shot."

"I will pay you," she said, her voice shaking. "A thousand dollars. Two thousand. Only leave."

"Save your money, Mrs. Willsson. I'm staying until I find out who killed Donald, and what happened to that five thousand."

She looked at me for a long, silent moment. Her eyes were hard and cold as glass.

"Then you are a dead man," she said softly.

She walked past me, turned the latch, and went out into the corridor. Her heels tapped rapidly down the runner toward the stairs.

I locked the door after her and stood there listening to the house settle.

She was in it up to her neck, but whether as a killer, a decoy, or just a scared woman trying to dodge old Elihu's club was still an open question. And Max Thaler was hovering over her like a hawk over a chicken coop.

I walked over to the bed, sat down, and reached for my cigarettes. Before the match flared, a knuckle rapped against the panel of the door.

Two light, hurried taps.

I dropped the match, stepped to the hinge side of the frame with my right hand on the butt of the gun in my pocket, and said:

"Come in."

The knob turned and the door opened a couple of inches. A hotel bellhop in a faded maroon uniform poked a freckled face into the room.

"Mr. Neill?"

"Yeah."

He thrust a plain white envelope through the crack. "Guy downstairs told me to run this up to you right away."

"What guy?"

"Didn't give no name. Wore a gray fedora and an overcoat with the collar up. Gave me two bits and told me to hustle."

I took the envelope with my left hand and tossed the kid a quarter. He caught it, grinned, and pulled the door shut.

The envelope was cheap dime-store paper. Across the face my alias was printed in heavy, blunt pencil: HENRY F. NEILL.

I slit the top with my thumbnail and pulled out a slip of gray ruled paper torn from a pocket notebook.

The message was printed in the same thick pencil:

YOU WERE SEEN ON MOUNTAIN BOULEVARD AND YOU WERE SEEN WITH QUINT. DONALD WILLSSON BOUGHT FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF TROUBLE AND GOT IT DELIVERED ON HURRICANE STREET. NOBODY IN FRISCO WILL MISS A FAT DETECTIVE. THE NIGHT TRAIN CARRIES A SLEEPER FOR THE COAST AT TEN-FIFTEEN. BE ON IT OR YOU WILL LEAVE IN A BOX.

There was no signature. In the lower right-hand corner was a crude pencil sketch of an ear with a heavy cross through it.

Max Thaler's calling card. The whisperer didn't like to raise his voice, but he made his meaning plain enough. He knew about the five-thousand-dollar check, he knew Donald Willsson had bought trouble with it, and he wanted me on the night train out of Personville.

I folded the paper, slipped it into my vest pocket, and checked my watch. It was twenty-five minutes past five.

I washed the Personville grime off my face and hands in the cold water of the corner basin, dried them on a rough towel, put on my hat and coat, and took the back stairway down to the alley.

If Whisper had pickets watching the front entrance, I didn't see any reason to make their job easy. The alley was dark, smelling of wet ashes and rotting cabbage. I turned down toward Broadway and walked two blocks through the raw wind to the Western Union office across from the City Hall.

The office was empty except for a bald operator with a green celluloid eye-shade who was chewing gum behind the counter.

I took a yellow telegraph pad from the writing shelf, picked up a steel pen, and drafted my wire to the Old Man in San Francisco:

CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO CALIF

CLIENT DONALD WILLSSON SHOT DEAD HURRICANE STREET TEN-FORTY LAST NIGHT FOUR THIRTY-TWO BULLETS PRIOR TO APPOINTMENT STOP FATHER ELIHU CITY OWNER SUSPECTS WIFE REFUSES COOPERATION STOP WIDOW ADMITS BEING ON SCENE AFTER MURDER CLAIMS ANONYMOUS PHONE SUMMONS BUT MET GAMBLER MAX THALER THIS MORNING STOP FIRST NATIONAL BANK CONFIRMS FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK DRAWN BY CLIENT YESTERDAY NEVER PRESENTED CERTIFIED OR CLEARED STOP THALER SENDS WRITTEN DEATH THREAT ORDERING OPERATIVE LEAVE TONIGHT STOP POLICE AND GANGS ALLIED STOP CONTINUING UNDER CLIENTS RETAINER TO IDENTIFY KILLER AND TRACE MISSING CHECK STOP

NEILL

I pushed the sheet across the counter.

The operator counted the words with his pencil point, his gum clicking rhythmically between his jaws.

"Eighty-four words," he said. "Four dollars and twenty cents."

I gave him a five-dollar bill, told him to keep the change, and waited by the brass rail until the key under his fingers began its dry, metallic chatter, sending the dots and dashes west over the mountains.

Night had settled over Personville by the time I came back out into the wind.

Up in the hills the copper smelters were running wide open, throwing a dirty yellow glare against the belly of the low clouds. Down in the gulch the town lay under a thick fog of coal gas and sulfur. The arc lamps along Broadway hissed in the cold, throwing sickly blue circles on the greasy asphalt. From the side streets came the sour smell of mash and the tinny clatter of an electric piano in a speak-easy.

It was an ugly town, rotten to the core. Donald Willsson had tried to clean it up with printer's ink, and they had laid him out on Hurricane Street with four holes in his body.

I walked back to the Great Western, took the elevator up to the third floor, and let myself into three-fourteen.

I locked the door, dragged the heavy walnut dresser across the floor until it was braced firm against the knob, and pulled the window shade all the way down.

The room was damp and cold. The radiator in the corner knocked and wheezed without putting any warmth into the air. I took off my coat, tossed my hat on the dresser, kicked off my shoes, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

I lit a Fatima and watched the smoke drift toward the yellow bulb hanging from the ceiling cord.

The wire was in San Francisco by now. The Old Man would take it off the machine, smooth it flat with his white, gentle fingers, and smile that calm, benign smile of his that looked like an affectionate father's and meant absolutely nothing. He wouldn't order me home. The Continental Agency didn't drop a client's business because the client had stopped breathing, not while the client's money was in our safe.

I lay back on the pillow with my hands behind my head and listened to Personville rumbling through the night.

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

Donald Willsson had written out that check for five thousand dollars at quarter to three yesterday afternoon, right after a woman telephoned him. He had agreed to meet her at ten. He had walked out of the Herald building with the check, walked over to the bank, stood in the lobby three minutes, and walked back.

Albright's ledgers proved the check had never been cashed, never been certified, never passed through clearings.

Mrs. Willsson had sworn she knew nothing about it, but she had been kneeling over Donald's body forty minutes after the murder, and she had spent this morning closeted with Whisper Thaler.

Thaler had sent me a warning that proved he knew Donald had bought five thousand dollars' worth of trouble with it.

Where was the check?

Had Donald handed it over in Hurricane Street before the thirty-two slugs cut him down? Had somebody gone through his pockets while he lay on the pavement and lifted it? Or was it still folded up in somebody's purse or pocketbook, waiting for the coroner's inquest to blow over before whoever had it tried to turn it into cash?

I blew a ring of smoke up at the ceiling and watched it tear apart in the draft. Five thousand dollars was a lot of money to leave lying around loose in Poisonville. It was enough to buy a dozen killings, or pay for the one that had already happened.

I finished the cigarette, crushed the stub out on the iron bed-rail, and lay there in the dark, listening to the ore trains banging down in the gulch and wondering who was holding Donald Willsson's paper.

It was about two o'clock on the following morning that the first of the falling stars was seen. I had sat up late in my study, occupied with the concluding pages of my paper upon the probable development of moral ideas, while the quiet impressions of my evening walk with my wife still lingered in my mind. The house was profoundly still. Through the open window drifted the cool night air, laden with the sweet scent of honeysuckle and the sharp tang of the pines.

Suddenly, without warning, the dark room was flooded by a blinding glare of greenish-white light. So intense was the flash that the garden and the distant ridge of the common leaped out of the midnight gloom with the harsh distinctness of noon. Before I could move, there came a long, shrieking hiss—a sound like the rush of a colossal rocket torn through the upper atmosphere, rising swiftly in pitch until the air seemed to shudder with a high, metallic shriek.

I ran to the window. Across the starlit sky towards the north-east, plunging down over the woods between Ottershaw and the Thames, a dazzling incandescent line was descending at an acute angle, leaving a luminous track of sparks in the blackness. Behind the dark silhouette of the trees, it struck.

A moment later came the concussion. It was not a crack of thunder, but a dull, subterranean thud—a profound vibration that shook the house and set every pane of glass in my study rattling. In the hush that followed, I heard the barking of dogs from farms across the valley towards Chertsey.

My wife, startled from sleep by the tremor, came hurrying downstairs in her dressing-gown, pale and trembling.

"What was it?" she cried, clinging to my arm. "An earthquake?"

"A falling star," I told her. "A meteorite of uncommon size. It must have fallen into the woods beyond the common."

We watched together by the window, but no second flash followed, nor was there any glare of fire. Presently the barking ceased, and the tranquil night resumed its reign. Yet as I looked up into the starry sky, a cold dread crept into my heart. My mind went back to the reddish flashes we had watched through Ogilvy's telescope—the fiery jets spurted from the edge of Mars. Could this missile be connected with those convulsions? The notion seemed wild, fantastic; yet it would not leave me. I persuaded my wife to return to bed, but sleep was impossible, and I tossed restlessly until dawn.

With the earliest grey light of morning, when mist still lay in cold wreaths along the hollows, I rose from my bed. My wife insisted upon accompanying me; she was full of that eager curiosity which any unusual occurrence awakens in our quiet country lives, and after a hasty breakfast, we set out together across the dew-wet heather.

The morning gave promise of intense heat. The sky was a pale grey, through which the sun presently mounted like a dull copper disc. We walked northward towards the low ground between Ottershaw and the railway line. The countryside was only beginning to stir; we met a carter with a load of hay who had heard nothing of the disturbance, and a labourer trudging to his work, who fancied that a powder-mill had exploded down at Hounslow.

We had traversed about a mile of the pine woods when we perceived, rising above the trees ahead of us, a thick, sluggish column of white vapour. It ascended in heavy coils, spreading out beneath the cloudless sky into a broad canopy. At the same time a sharp odour of heated sulphur, scorched peat, and boiling clay reached our nostrils.

Pushing through a belt of shattered firs, we came upon the path of the descent. A wide, ragged furrow had been torn across the heath. Gorse bushes were scorched to grey ash, and great clods of sandy turf had been hurled yards away into the undergrowth.

The track of ruin led down directly into a wide, flooded gravel pit—an old excavation, long disused and half-filled with stagnant rainwater, where the village boys were wont to fish for sticklebacks. Nearly half of the water had been violently splashed out by the impact, flooding the banks with thick, steaming mud. What remained of the pool was boiling furiously. White clouds of hissing steam rolled in dense billows from the churned, yellow water, filling the hollow with a deafening, bubbling roar.

And there, in the midst of this scalded pool, half-submerged in the drowned mud, rested the celestial intruder.

It was an enormous cylinder, roughly thirty yards across, lying at a sharp angle with its blunt, rounded end projecting six or eight feet above the boiling water. Its surface was not the rough slag of an ordinary meteorite, but a dull bronze, coated in many places with a thick, pale incrustation that was even now cracking and peeling off under the action of the boiling water, falling into the foam in brittle flakes. The water about it leaped and hissed against the heated metal like water thrown upon a glowing shovel.

We were not alone at the pit. On the opposite bank, his bicycle leaning against a birch tree, stood Ogilvy. He had stripped off his coat and waistcoat, and was busily scribbling in a notebook, his spectacles fogged with the drifting steam.

Seeing us, he waved his pencil with violent excitement. "Come round, my dear fellow!" he shouted across the tumult of the water. "Come round to the north bank! Upon my soul, it is the most magnificent aerolite that ever fell to earth!"

I assisted my wife across the mounds of slippery clay until we reached his side. She shrank back from the edge, clutching my arm, her eyes fixed upon the submerged mass with instinctive terror. The unnatural symmetry of the object, lying there amidst the roaring steam, had about it an air of sullen, brooding menace.

"Good heavens, Ogilvy!" I exclaimed. "Look at the shape of it! It is no ordinary rock. It is a cylinder—a manufactured casing!"

Ogilvy turned upon me with an indulgent, pitying smile. His face was streaked with soot, but his eyes shone with scientific triumph.

"A cylinder? Pure imagination, my dear chap!" he cried cheerfully. "The natural cleavage of dense cosmic iron under atmospheric friction frequently results in astonishing geometric approximations. Look at the scoriaceous crust! It is a meteorite of unprecedented magnitude—an iron-nickel bolide. It must weigh hundreds of tons!"

"But the timing, Ogilvy!" I argued, pointing into the boiling pit. "The ten flashes of flame we saw at the telescope—the jets of gas leaping from the edge of Mars! This thing fell along the very trajectory those discharges must have followed. Look at the colour of the metal beneath the scales. It is bronze, I tell you! It has been cast!"

The astronomer chuckled, shaking his head with the stubborn dogmatism of his training.

"My dear fellow, you are building a colossal romance upon a simple coincidence. The chances against organic evolution producing upon Mars creatures capable of constructing such a projectile, let alone discharging it across forty millions of miles to hit our planet, are a million to one! Those flashes were volcanic—a colossal eruptive epoch in the Martian crust. This object is merely a stray fragment of planetary dust, drawn in by our gravitation. To suppose it a vessel or a weapon—why, it is the wildest sensationalism!"

"Yet listen to it," I urged. "When the water strikes that exposed flange, it rings like a hollow plate!"

"Thermal contraction," he replied with supreme confidence. "The interior is undoubtedly cavernous with gas vesicles, or cracked by the sudden plunge into this cold pond. When it has cooled, we shall chip off specimens of the crust and find the standard Widmanstätten figures beneath the lens. In a few hours it will be cold, and we can examine it at our ease."

My wife pulled gently at my sleeve, her voice trembling. "Come away," she whispered. "It does not look like a stone from God's sky. It looks evil, like an engine of war."

Ogilvy overheard her and smiled with gentle condescension. "Do not be alarmed, madam," he said soothingly. "It is as harmless as a church spire. It is only very hot."

By nine o'clock, the news of the fall had spread through the neighbourhood, and people began to assemble at the pit. First came a party of schoolboys on their way to Chertsey, their satchels slung over their shoulders, who stood upon the ridge tossing pebbles at the exposed dome and shouting with delight whenever a stone produced a sharp, ringing clatter. Then followed several labourers from the adjoining fields, a couple of carters who hitched their horses to the pine trees by the roadside, and a nurseryman in his cart.

The morning grew steadily hotter. The sun beat down through the gathering haze with a sultry, oppressive glare that drew a rank steam from the boiling pit. The smell of heated metal, sulfurous mud, and scorched peat hung heavily in the motionless air. As the morning advanced, the crowd steadily increased. Clerks on their way to the railway station paused to see the wonder; boys on bicycles arrived from Woking; a local doctor came by in his gig, and two village constables arrived from Ottershaw, looking hot and perplexed, attempting with little success to keep the people back from the crumbling edge of the pit.

There was as yet no sense of danger among the spectators. The gathering had the air of a bank holiday crowd. Men were smoking pipes, chatting, and speculating upon the value of the iron; a lad was selling ginger-beer from a basket by the pines; and the prevailing opinion, voiced by a butcher's assistant from Chertsey, was that the government would buy the mass and exhibit it in London.

It was shortly before eleven that the heedless folly of the crowd met with its first punishment.

A young fellow—a mechanic's apprentice from Chertsey, a burly, swaggering youth—had been boasting to his fellows that he dared to touch the fallen star. A wager of five shillings was struck, and despite the shouted warnings of Ogilvy and myself, the foolish lad scrambled down the slippery clay bank.

"Keep back, you idiot!" Ogilvy shouted, waving his arms. "The metal is scorching hot! You will be flayed alive!"

"I've handled hot iron before, mister!" the lad shouted back with a defiant laugh.

At the water's edge lay the half-submerged trunk of an uprooted birch tree, extending into the shallows toward the cylinder. Treading cautiously upon this greasy timber, he balanced himself above the murky water. The cylinder's rounded flank rose just within his reach, veiled by drifting wisps of vapor, its bronze casing looking deceptively cold beneath its crust of greyish scale.

He paused for an instant, his companions cheering from the bank above. Then, with reckless bravado, he reached out his bare right hand and slapped his open palm firmly against the exposed surface of the metal.

A scream tore from his throat—a high, piercing screech of agony that silenced every voice upon the heath. There was a sharp, sickening hiss, like that of meat dropped onto a white-hot griddle, and a tiny puff of white smoke curled upward from between his fingers, accompanied by the horrible stench of scorched flesh.

The wretched youth snatched his arm back with a violent spasm, slipped from the slimy trunk, and fell with a heavy splash into the scalded, muddy water.

A dozen hands reached down to save him. Two labourers and a carter waded into the shallows, seized him by his clothing, and dragged him up the bank onto the trampled heather. He lay there writhing in the dust, clutching his right wrist and weeping aloud in intolerable pain. His hand was a sickening spectacle: the skin of his palm and fingers had been burned away in charred, blackened strips where it had stuck fast to the hot metal, while great, raw blisters were already rising upon the scorched flesh beneath.

A profound silence fell upon the crowd. The jesting and laughter died away completely. People drew back from the edge of the pit with pale faces, staring at the motionless cylinder with a new and shuddering apprehension. It lay there in its boiling pool, as inert and silent as a sunken rock; but the illusion of its harmlessness was shattered forever. We felt, with a sudden chill of the spirit, that this visitant from the sky was something formidable, ruthless, and terribly alien to our world.

The sight of the burned youth and the reek of singed flesh completely overcame my wife. She turned ashen pale, trembling violently, and leaned against me with such weakness that she seemed on the point of swooning upon the heather.

"Take me away," she whispered in an agony of distress. "Pray take me home. There is something horrible in that pit. It will bring ruin upon us all."

I led her gently away from the excavation, supporting her trembling steps through the scorched pines to the sandy highroad. Here the crowd was still swelling. A wagonette full of sightseers had just arrived from the station at Chertsey; carts, pony-chaises, and scores of cyclists were arriving every minute, kicking up clouds of yellow dust in the close, sweltering air.

At the cross-roads leading toward our house at Ottershaw, I halted. My wife looked at me with imploring eyes, clinging tightly to my arm.

"You will come home with me?" she begged. "Do not go back to that dreadful place."

"You must go on alone, my dear," I said, striving to speak in a reassuring tone, though my own heart was filled with a persistent dread. "The heat and the crush here are too much for you. Go home, rest in the cool of the parlour, and have Martha make you some tea. I shall return in an hour or two. I cannot leave Ogilvy alone; there should be someone with some scientific training to assist him when the authorities arrive."

She looked at me earnestly, with that sorrowful intuition which women so often feel when danger is near.

"I feel," she said quietly, "that if you stay, you will run into some great peril."

I kissed her forehead, smiling away her apprehensions with a confidence I was far from feeling. After a moment's hesitation, she yielded to my persuasion. She turned and walked slowly away along the shaded lane towards our cottage, her white dress showing brightly between the green hedgerows. Once she paused and looked back, and I waved my hand to her cheerfully; then she turned the corner by the elm trees and was gone.

I stood watching the empty road for a moment, glad that she was returning to the shelter of our home. As I turned back toward the common, the church clock at Chertsey began to strike the hour of twelve, its deep strokes sounding through the heavy midday heat like a funeral toll. The crowd around the pit had grown into a dense, jostling ring of hundreds of people, all craning their necks over the sandy rim; while down below, half-submerged in the bubbling, muddy water, the great bronze cylinder lay silent, solitary, and terrible beneath the vertical glare of the noon sun.

“Oh, darling, I’ve been so miserable,” Brett said.

She was leaning back in the corner of the taxi with her eyes shut. I put my arm around her and she leaned against me, her head resting on my shoulder. She smelled of the cologne she used and of clean hair and cigarette smoke. The taxi bounced over the cobbles of the Rue Saint-Jacques, turning down off the hill, its headlamps throwing yellow circles against the wet asphalt where the municipal sweepers had already opened the street taps.

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

“Where do you want to go?”

“Take me over to the Right Bank. Tell him to go to the Café de la Paix.”

“It’s a long drive,” I said.

“What difference does that make? We have the whole night. Tell him the Café de la Paix, Jake. I want to see lights and people who don’t know us.”

I leaned forward, slid back the small glass panel behind the driver’s head, and told him to turn down toward the river and take us to the Place de l’Opéra. The driver grunted, hauled on the wheel, and the taxi swung in a wide skid around the corner. Brett’s weight pressed against my ribs.

“Who was that chap you were talking to back at the bar?” I asked.

“Which one? There were dozens of them.”

“The one you mentioned before we came out. The one with the money.”

“Oh,” she said. “Count Mippipopolous.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a Greek. I met him last week at the Crillon with some people from the Embassy. He has a tremendous lot of money. He’s in sweetmeats or dried fruit or something out in the Levant. Immensely rich. He has three large cars and a chauffeur in livery and a little secretary who wears gaiters.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” I said.

“Nobody’s heard of him. He’s quite new. But he has all the money in the world. He offered me ten thousand dollars to go down to Biarritz with him for a month.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I told him I knew too many people in Biarritz. It wouldn’t do.”

“You could have gone to San Sebastián.”

“Don’t be an ass, Jake.”

The taxi came down off the hill, past the dark mass of the Sorbonne, and out onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The street was wide and empty, the street-lamps stretching away in straight rows like pearls strung on a wire.

“Are you going to marry Mike?” I asked.

“I suppose so. When his business is settled. If the family ever coughs up the settlement.”

“Do you love him?”

“Don’t talk like an idiot, Jake. Of course I do. He’s so splendidly bankrupt, poor dear.”

She opened her bag, felt around inside, and brought out a crumpled pack of Abdulla cigarettes. She put one between her lips and waited. I struck a match against the side of the box and held the flame for her in the cup of my palms. The flare showed her high cheekbones, the short boyish crop of her dark hair, and the clear, hard grey of her eyes. She blew the smoke out in two thin streams.

“We have such a wonderfully good time together,” she said.

“Priceless,” I said.

“It doesn’t really matter about anything else, does it?”

“No,” I said. “Not a damn thing.”

“We’re quite all right, Jake.”

“We’re fine,” I said.

I felt a sick, empty weight settle into my stomach like lead.

The taxi crossed the Seine over the Pont du Carrousel. The river looked oily and black in the shadows under the bridge, with long streaks of trembling yellow light where the lamps on the quays hit the current. We passed through the dark arches of the Louvre, came out onto the Rue de Rivoli, and turned up the Avenue de l’Opéra. The street was broad and deserted, the pavement gleaming from a recent sprinkling of water. Up at the head of the avenue the great stone facade of the Opéra stood lit by the street lights, looking heavy and pompous in the night.

The driver pulled up at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines in front of the Café de la Paix. A few people were sitting out on the terrace under the awning, bundled in their overcoats against the late breeze, but inside behind the big plate-glass windows the lights were bright and yellow.

I paid the driver and gave him a tip.

“Shall we sit outside?” I asked.

“No, inside,” Brett said. “I’m chilled to the bone.”

We went in through the revolving door. The café was nearly half-empty, the red plush banquettes showing long stretches of velvet, and the waiters in their black waistcoats and long white aprons were leaning against the service pillars. A smell of coffee, stale beer, polished brass, and damp wool hung in the warm air. We took a small table against the wall under a large gilded mirror.

“What will you have, Brett?”

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

“A double fine à l’eau for madame,” I told the waiter. “And a whiskey and Perrier for me.”

“Bien, m’sieu.”

Brett took off her gloves, rolled them into a tight ball, and dropped them into her lap. She took off her small felt hat and shook her hair loose. She looked very fresh and clean despite the heat of the bal and the ride, but there were tiny lines of strain around the corners of her mouth.

“This is better,” she said. “That place on the hill was like a furnace.”

“It’s always hot when the dancing gets going.”

“The crowd was revolting,” she said. “Those boys. Did you see them with that poor tart?”

“I saw them.”

“You looked as though you wanted to kill someone, Jake.”

“I did.”

“You shouldn’t let them get under your skin. They’re only children, really. Silly, screaming children.”

“They make me sick,” I said.

The waiter brought the drinks on a round tin tray, set down the saucers with the prices stamped on them in purple ink, and poured the soda from a siphon into Brett’s glass. The bubbles rose furiously to the surface, and she took a long drink immediately, without setting the glass down.

“That’s good,” she said, letting out her breath. “That does something.”

“You drink too fast,” I said.

“I have to drink fast. If I don’t drink fast I start to think, and when I start to think everything goes straight to hell.”

“What do you think about?”

“Everything. Nothing. You. Me. The whole damned mess.” She traced the wet ring on the marble table with the tip of her finger. “What did you do with that girl?”

“Georgette?”

“Yes. The fiancée.”

“I left her at the bal. I put fifty francs in an envelope and gave it to the patronne.”

Brett threw back her head and laughed, a low, husky laugh that made a French gentleman at the next table look up over his newspaper.

“You gave fifty francs to the patronne? Oh, Jake, you really are priceless. You think that woman is going to hand over fifty francs to a common poule?”

“I told her to give it to her if she asked for it.”

“She won’t ask for it. She won’t even know it’s there. And those pretty boys who were dancing with her haven’t got fifty centimes to buy her an egg. They’ll have vanished into thin air the moment the music stopped.”

“She can look after herself,” I said. “She’s from Brussels.”

“Nobody can look after themselves,” Brett said quietly. “Not really.”

She finished her brandy and turned the glass upside down on the saucer. She looked at her reflection in the mirror opposite, tilted her chin up, and smoothed her eyebrows with a fingertip.

“I can’t stay here, Jake,” she said suddenly.

“Why not? You just got here.”

“The mirrors make me nervous. All those lights. I can see my face in four different places at once and every one of them looks like hell.”

“You look fine.”

“Don’t lie to me. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go back up the hill. I want to see if your fifty francs are still there. I’ll bet you a bottle of Mumms that the patronne has bought herself a new bonnet and the girl is out on the pavement.”

“It’s past three in the morning,” I said.

“What of it? We can take a cab.”

I paid for the saucers, left a tip for the waiter, and we walked out onto the boulevard. The air was cool and smelled of damp stone and night. A lone taxi was idling by the curb near the corner of the Rue Scribe. The driver was sitting sideways in the front seat, half-asleep with his cap pulled down over his nose.

“Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève,” I told him, opening the rear door for Brett.

The driver started his engine with a rasping cough, and we rolled down the boulevard, turned south across the Place Vendôme, dark and silent under the tall column, and slipped through the Tuileries gates. We crossed the river again at the Pont Royal. The water below looked wider and heavier in the small hours, sliding along between the high stone quays without a sound.

We went up through the narrow, twisting streets behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés, climbing the flank of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. The houses here were old and crooked, their shutters fastened tight, with dark carriage gateways and water trickling down the center gutters.

The cab stopped in front of the bal musette. The street was completely quiet now, except for a cat that slipped across the cobbles and vanished into a dark passageway. The light over the entrance of the bal was switched off, but through the ground-glass window in the door a faint yellow glow showed that somebody was still inside.

“Are you coming in?” I asked Brett.

“No,” she said, pulling her coat around her shoulders and curling into the corner of the seat. “I’ll wait in the cab. You go in and get your money. Don’t let them rob you twice.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I pushed open the door of the bal musette. The bell above the lintel gave a short, tinny clang.

Inside, the air was thick and sour with the smell of spilled beer, stale tobacco, and cooling sweat. The chairs were turned upside down with their legs in the air on top of the long wooden tables. The proprietor was sitting on a stool beside the dancing-floor, his accordion resting in a black wooden case on the floor between his feet, drinking a glass of red wine. The policeman who had been stationed by the door was gone. The big table near the window where Braddocks, Frances, and the others had sat was cleared and stripped bare; the crowd had moved on long ago.

Behind the zinc bar, the patronne was wiping down the counter with a greasy grey cloth.

And sitting alone at the far end of the long bench, under the unshaded electric light bulb, was Georgette.

She was sitting with her arms crossed on the bare table, her head resting on her forearms. Her hat had slipped off and lay beside her on the bench. When the door slammed shut, she lifted her head slowly and blinked at me. Her hair was messy, her powder had caked in the creases of her forehead, and her lipstick was smeared at the corners of her mouth.

“Tiens,” she said in a flat, hoarse voice. “The fiancé.”

I walked over to the bar.

“Good evening, Madame,” I said to the patronne.

“Good evening, Monsieur Barnes,” she said, resting her red forearms on the zinc. “You have returned late.”

“Did the lady ask for the envelope?”

“Not at all. She has not moved from that bench since the musicians stopped. The young gentlemen with the curls who were dancing with her departed together in two cabs more than an hour ago. They did not even leave a pourboire for the service.”

“May I have the envelope back?”

“Certainly, Monsieur.”

She reached under the zinc counter, brought out the small white envelope I had sealed earlier, and set it down on the damp metal. It was still sealed, with the patronne’s greasy thumbprint on the corner.

“Merci, Madame,” I said, picking it up. I slid the envelope into my breast pocket.

I turned around and walked over to the bench where Georgette was sitting. She watched me come, her eyes dull and indifferent, like a cat watching a sparrow through a window.

“You took your time,” she said.

“I thought you’d have gone home hours ago.”

“Home to what? It costs money to take a carriage to the Place Clichy at this hour. The metro stops at one. You know that as well as I do.”

“Where are the boys you were dancing with?”

“The little dancers?” She gave a short, harsh spit of a laugh that showed all her bad teeth. “They said they were going to a party in Montmartre. They asked me to come, and when we got outside to the street they discovered they only had enough money for their own taxi. They pushed each other into the cab and drove off laughing. They thought it was very chic.”

“And the crowd at the big table?”

“The woman with the long neck paid the score and dragged the big painter away by his arm. They were arguing on the pavement about some girl in London. Everyone argued and everyone went away.”

“Why didn’t you ask the patronne for the envelope?” I asked.

“What envelope?”

“I left an envelope for you with fifty francs in it.”

She stared at me for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders.

“She didn’t say anything to me about an envelope. Those people never give up money unless you put a knife to their throats. Besides, why should you leave me fifty francs? You didn’t even sleep with me.”

“I took you away from the boulevard,” I said. “And I brought you here.”

“That’s true,” she said, leaning her chin on her hand again. “You brought me to this hole of a place. I was better off at the Napolitain. At least the terrace was airy.”

I took the envelope out of my pocket, ran my thumb under the flap, and tore it open. I took out the blue fifty-franc note and laid it flat on the wooden table in front of her.

“Here,” I said. “Take this and get yourself home.”

She looked down at the note without touching it. Her fingers were short and red, with chipped pink polish on the nails.

“Is this real?” she asked.

“It’s real enough.”

“What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t any catch. Take a cab and go to sleep.”

She picked up the note, folded it into four, and tucked it into the top of her stocking under her skirt. Then she picked up her hat from the bench and set it carefully on her head, adjusting it without a mirror.

“You’re a strange boy, Jacob,” she said. “Not like the others.”

“I’m just like the others,” I said.

“No,” she said, standing up and smoothing her skirt over her hips. “The others are either vicious or stupid. You’re just sad. It’s a great pity about your sickness.”

“Good night, Georgette.”

“Good night, my friend. Give my regards to the English lady.”

I walked out through the door into the street. The cool air hit my face like cold water, washing away the smell of the bal. The taxi was still standing by the curb, its motor idling with a regular, heavy throb. I got in and pulled the door shut behind me.

Brett was sitting with her legs curled up under her on the seat, her head leaned back against the leather.

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

“I gave them to her.”

“I told you you would. Was she still there?”

“She was sitting at the table.”

“Poor thing,” Brett murmured. “Those boys are absolute beasts when they’re tight.”

“They’re beasts all the time,” I said.

“Where to now, Governor?” the driver called back through the partition.

“Drive down to the river,” I said. “Go down by the quays and over toward the Île de la Cité.”

The taxi started down the slope of the hill. The city had reached that dead hour between three and four in the morning when even the night traffic has died away and the daytime traffic has not yet begun. We turned along the Rue des Écoles, past the darkened facade of the Collège de France, and came down to the Place Maubert.

The market carts were already coming in from the countryside. Big, heavy, two-wheeled wagons with massive wooden spokes, piled ten feet high with white cabbages, crates of leeks, carrots with the fresh damp earth still clinging to their roots, and baskets of watercress. The horses were huge Norman Percherons with iron shoes that sparked against the cobbles, their breath rising in pale plumes in the chilly morning air. The drivers sat high up on the front boards under rough horse-blankets, their caps pulled down, their chins tucked into heavy woollen mufflers, nodding to the slow, heavy rhythm of the horses’ stride.

“Look at the horses,” Brett said softly, pointing through the window. “Aren’t they splendid? Such great, powerful brutes.”

“They come all the way from the farms outside the fortifications,” I said. “They go down to Les Halles.”

“I’d like to go to Les Halles,” she said. “We could have onion soup at the Chien Qui Fume.”

“It’s too early for soup. The butchers haven’t even opened the carcasses yet.”

“Everything’s always too early or too late,” she said.

She reached out and took my hand. Her fingers were cool and long, and she gripped my fingers tight. We did not speak. The cab rolled across the Petit Pont onto the Île de la Cité. Ahead of us, the great dark bulk of Notre-Dame rose up against the sky, huge and black and ancient, its twin square towers cutting a sharp silhouette against the stars that were beginning to fade.

We passed the cathedral and turned along the Quai aux Fleurs. The river was on our right, running dark and wide between the stone embankments. The smell of the Seine came up through the open window—a smell of river mud, green moss, coal dust from the barges, and wet stone.

“Tell him to stop here,” Brett said.

“Here?”

“Yes. Let’s get out. I can’t breathe in this cab.”

I tapped on the glass and told the driver to pull over against the parapet near the Pont Neuf. We got out into the empty street. The air was cold, with that sharp, clean chill that comes just before the dawn in Paris.

I paid the driver the fare and his tip, and he backed his taxi around in the empty road, turned toward the Right Bank, and disappeared across the bridge, the sound of his motor fading until there was only the quiet lap of the river against the bridge piers below.

We walked over to the stone parapet and looked down into the water. A heavy cargo barge was moored to the quay below, tied to the stone bollards with thick hemp hawsers. A lantern with a red glass chimney was hung on a stanchion at the stern, casting a long, bloody streak across the black surface of the current. A mongrel dog was curled asleep on a pile of tarpaulins on the deck, and thin grey smoke was beginning to rise from the small tin chimney of the cabin.

Brett leaned her elbows on the cold stone of the wall, resting her chin in her palms.

“It’s wonderfully quiet,” she said.

“It won’t be quiet for long. The day starts early on the river.”

“I wish it wouldn’t start at all,” she said. “I wish it would just stay like this. Dark and cool and nobody awake to bother us.”

“You’re tired, Brett.”

“I’m deadly tired, Jake. Tired right through to my bones.”

She turned her head to look at me. In the dim, pre-dawn light her face looked very pale and small, without any of that careless, laughing arrogance she carried in the bars. Her eyes were dark and wide.

“I’m no good for anybody, Jake,” she said.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true. You know it’s true. I make a mess of everything I touch. Look at poor Mike. Look at that crowd back there at the bal, looking at me as if I were something in a shop window. And look at you.”

“Leave me out of it,” I said.

“I can’t leave you out of it. You’re the only one that matters, and you’re the one I can’t do anything about.”

She looked away, back out over the water. A tugboat came chugging slowly up the river, against the current, dragging a string of four empty barges behind it. Its red and green running lights cut clean reflections in the dark water, and the rhythmic chug-chug of its steam engine echoed off the arches of the stone bridges.

“There’s the dawn coming,” she said.

Away to the east, behind the buttresses of Notre-Dame, the sky was turning from deep slate-blue to a pale, pearly grey. The sharp cold of the dawn breeze came rippling over the surface of the Seine, shivering the reflections of the street lamps. A street-sweeper with a broom made of birch twigs came trudging along the quay on the other side of the street, swinging his broom with steady, rustling strokes, pushing the wet rubbish into the gutter where the water was running clear and fast.

“I must go, Jake,” Brett said, straightening up from the wall. “If I stay out in this light any longer I’ll shatter into little pieces.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the hotel. I told the maid to have my bath ready at six.”

“Can you sleep?”

“If I take some veronal. I have three tablets left in my bag.”

Down at the corner of the bridge, near the statue of Henri IV, a taxi came rattling over the cobbles from the Right Bank. Its yellow headlamps were pale and useless in the growing morning light.

I stepped out into the street and held up my hand. The driver saw me, swung the wheel, and pulled up along the curb beside us.

“Hotel Mont-Thabor,” I told him, opening the door.

Brett stepped into the cab and sat down on the leather seat. She pulled her coat tightly across her chest. She looked up at me through the open window, her hand resting on the sill.

“Good night, Jake,” she said.

“Good night, Brett.”

“You’ll come round tomorrow? For lunch?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come round.”

I gave the driver a ten-franc note and told him to keep the change. He put the car into gear, the gears grinding with a sharp metallic clatter, and the taxi pulled away from the curb, crossed the bridge, and turned down the quay toward the Place de la Concorde. I watched the red tail-light until it rounded the corner and disappeared behind the trees.

The sun had not come up yet, but the light was spreading fast across the sky, turning from pearl-grey to a pale, cold rose above the roofs of the city. The gas lamps along the river went out all at once, popping faintly, leaving only the white iron posts standing like sentries along the stone parapet.

I turned and began to walk home alone along the river. The air was fresh and sharp, and it smelled of the river and wet wood and the green leaves of the plane trees. Down on the lower quay, below the wall, two old men in berets were already setting up their long bamboo fishing poles, sticking the iron rests into the cracks between the paving stones and baiting their hooks with maggots from small tin boxes. They did not look up as I passed overhead.

Across the river, the tall shuttered windows of the houses along the Quai des Grands-Augustins were catching the first pink reflection of the sun. The bouquinistes’ long green wooden boxes, padlocked and bolted to the stone parapets, were still closed and grey with dust. A baker’s boy in a white apron, carrying a long wooden tray of fresh baguettes balanced on his shoulder, came whistling out of a side street, the warm, sweet smell of baking bread following him into the morning chill.

I kept my hands in my pockets and walked on along the stone wall, watching the grey water flow smoothly under the bridges toward the sea.

The first thing to be done, after the girl had vanished among the sandhills, was to get myself onto my legs again—a business which, as I have already made bold to hint, is far more easily talked about than performed by a man in his seventy-first year. My joints were much like the hinges of our old coach-house door after a week of wet weather: they required a deal of oiling before they would work.

Mr. Franklin, seeing the state of the case, took me under the arms, and with one hearty jerk—foreign-fashioned, like everything else about him—hoisted me upright on the shingle. Up I came, puffing and blowing like a grampus, with my hat knocked over my left ear, and as much sand in the creases of my trousers as would have set up a grocer in the scouring-powder line.

“There you are, Gabriel!” says he, laughing. “Safe on your timbers again, as your friend Robinson Crusoe would say!”

“I am obliged to you, Mr. Franklin,” I answered, brushing the sand off my knees. “You’re welcome home, sir, with all my heart. But if I may make so bold, how in the name of wonder do you come to be here at two o’clock in the afternoon, when your letter to my lady promised we shouldn’t set eyes on you till six?”

The laugh died away on his face in an instant. A sudden shadow fell over his bright eyes, and he looked around him at the dismal bay, the grey waves breaking on the bank, and the shivering sand quivering in the midst of it all, with a shudder that went through him from head to foot.

“What a dreary place!” he says in a low voice. “Does the sea always moan like that, Betteredge, and does the sand always tremble?”

“It does, sir, when the tide turns,” I said. “It’s the Shivering Sand, and an uglier spot you won’t find on all the shores of Yorkshire. But you didn’t outrun the mail-coach merely to look at our quicksand.”

“No, Gabriel,” he answered, turning sharp upon me. “I came early because London had grown too dangerous to hold me—and because I have been followed.”

“Followed!” I cried. “By whom, sir?”

“By men who walk like shadows,” says he. “Last night, as I was sitting in my room at the hotel in London, having packed my luggage to take the afternoon train today, the waiter brought me up a letter. It had been left by a seafaring stranger, who went away without waiting for an answer. When I read it, I saw that my movements were watched; I saw that if I waited for the afternoon train, I might never reach this house alive. I paid my bill on the spot, slipped out of the hotel before daybreak with only a small bag, caught the morning express for York, and posted on from the station as fast as horses could bring me. Read the letter for yourself, Gabriel, and you will understand why I am here four hours before my time.”

He drew an envelope from his coat, and handed it to me.

I sat down on an old baulk of timber on the beach, hunted out my tortoiseshell spectacles, wiped the glasses on the tail of my coat, and settled myself to the task. Mr. Franklin stood over me, tapping his boot impatiently with his cane, while I spelled the words out.

The paper was coarse and cheap, such as you buy in any little dockside shop, and the ink thick and muddy. The writing was in a stiff, cramped hand, looking as if the pen had been handled by someone disguising his natural letters. Here is the letter, word for word, exactly as I read it on the sands:

“MR. FRANKLIN BLAKE,—If you value your life, do not linger in London until the afternoon, nor travel by the public coach to Yorkshire. There are watchers set upon your path. Three dark-complexioned men, dressed like foreign seamen, have been loitering about your hotel since yesterday at noon, and inquiry has been made of the porters concerning your destination and your luggage. If you carry that which the late Colonel Herncastle left to his niece, you are walking in the shadow of death. Leave your hotel before the sun rises; take the first morning train to the North; hire your own carriage from the railway; trust no living soul upon the road; and when you reach your aunt’s house, put what you carry into the safest keeping before nightfall.—From a true Friend, who owes his life to your family.”

When I came to the end of that extraordinary paper, the spectacles fairly dropped off my nose on to my waistcoat. I sat staring up at Mr. Franklin with my mouth open.

“Lord bless us and save us!” I gasped out. “Three dark-complexioned men!”

“Yes,” says he, picking up my spectacles. “What do you say to that, Gabriel?”

“Say to it, sir?” I cried. “I say the devils are here already!”

His face went white in a moment, and he caught me by the collar of my coat. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Are there dark men in this neighbourhood?”

“There were three of them on our terrace this very morning!” I answered. “Three Indians, dressed like jugglers, with little drums in their hands! I sent them off, as head of the servants, before they had been there five minutes. But my daughter Penelope slipped out after them, and watched them down by the plantation. The chief man poured black ink into the palm of an English boy they had with them, and made him look into it like a looking-glass!”

“The ink-trick!” cried Mr. Franklin. “What did the boy say?”

“He fell into a kind of trance,” I said, “and when the Indian questioned him, he answered that an English gentleman was travelling to this house today, and that he had got It about him!”

“Did he say *It*?” cried Mr. Franklin, with his eyes starting out of his head.

“Those were the boy’s very words, as Penelope reported them to me. I took it for a pack of gipsy nonsense at the time, and scolded the girl for frightening herself with it. But after reading that letter—well, there! I feel as if somebody had poured cold water down the small of my back!”

Mr. Franklin let go of my coat, and walked two or three paces away with his head down.

“It is all true, then,” he muttered. “They know I have it; they know where I am taking it; they are waiting for me at the gates!” He turned back to me with sudden resolution. “Come, Betteredge; we have no time to lose. Let us get up to the house.”

I got on my legs, and we set off across the beach. We entered the plantation of firs, where the trees grew thick and gloomy. Before we had gone fifty yards under the branches, Mr. Franklin stopped short.

“Betteredge,” he said, laying his hand upon my sleeve, “you have known me since I was a boy. You were my poor uncle’s friend; you have served my aunt for more than fifty years. Can I trust you with a secret that may involve the peace, and perhaps the lives, of everyone in this house?”

“Sir,” I answered, feeling a little hurt, “Sir John trusted me with his plate and his money, and my lady has never had a secret from me. If you can’t trust Gabriel Betteredge, you had better go back to London.”

“Forgive me,” says he, warmly pressing my hand. “I do trust you—implicitly. And to prove it, I am going to ask you to take charge of a trust which I dare not keep upon my own person another hour.”

He unbuttoned his coat, reached into an inner pocket in the lining, and drew out a small, square parcel.

Now, gentle reader, you will naturally expect me to tell you what was in that parcel. If you do, you are very much mistaken; for, as I hope to be saved, I didn’t know myself! It was wrapped in thick brown paper, tied criss-cross with stout waxed twine, and sealed at every joining with red wax. It was about four inches square, and perhaps two inches deep—no bigger than a pocket-Bible—but when Mr. Franklin laid it in my hand, the weight of it astonished me. It was as heavy as a lump of solid lead.

“There!” says Mr. Franklin, drawing a long breath. “Take it, Gabriel, and let no living soul see it. You have a plate-room in the house, I know?”

“We have, sir,” I said. “Granite walls two feet thick, and an iron door with two Bramah locks that would defy all the housebreakers in England.”

“Lock that packet away in your strongest iron chest,” says Mr. Franklin, in an eager whisper. “Keep the key about you day and night. Tell nobody—not a living creature—that you have it in your keeping. Above all, don’t breathe a word of it to my aunt, or to Rachel. Her birthday is not until tomorrow, the twenty-sixth. Until tomorrow comes, the parcel must remain in the dark, and the secret between you and me. Do you promise, Betteredge?”

“I promise, Mr. Franklin,” I answered, slipping the packet into my deep coat-pocket, where it dragged down the cloth like a cannon-ball. “It shall go into the iron safe the moment we reach the house, and the key shall never leave my pocket until you ask me for it again.”

We came out from the plantation into the shrubbery, and so round to the terrace. There was not an Indian to be seen; the back-court was as peaceful as a churchyard. I led Mr. Franklin in through the garden door. His first inquiry was for Miss Rachel.

“Miss Rachel is not at home, sir,” I said. “She took her pony-chaise directly after breakfast, to spend the day sketching at the vicarage with the Miss Hitchens, and she won’t be back till dusk. But my lady is in the morning-room.”

I showed him in without ceremony. My lady was sitting at her work-table by the window. At the sight of him she dropped her embroidery and started up with a cry of joy.

“Franklin! My dear boy!”

In another moment he was across the room, embracing her and laughing. My lady held him at arm’s length, looking at his foreign beard and hair with tears of delight in her eyes. But in the very middle of her welcome, a sudden shadow fell across her face. The smile died away; her brow darkened; and she stepped back from him with that look of severe family pride which I knew only too well.

“Sit down, Franklin,” she said, in a tone that checked him in an instant. “I am rejoiced to see you. But before you take your place under my roof, there is a condition to be laid down between us. Betteredge, you need not leave the room; you know our family history. Franklin, you come to us from London, where you have had dealings with the lawyers concerning the affairs of my late brother, John Herncastle. You know the disgrace he brought upon us, and the misery he caused to everyone of his blood. When he lived, I shut my door against him; now that he is dead, I will not have his shadow fall upon my house, nor his name uttered in the hearing of my daughter Rachel. If you are to remain here as our guest, one subject must be buried forever between us. I forbid you, while you are under my roof, ever to speak the name of Colonel Herncastle, or to mention any legacy or business connected with him. Do you promise me that?”

It was an awkward demand, with the warning letter in Mr. Franklin’s pocket and the heavy parcel lying in mine! But he had sense enough to see that my lady was not to be trifled with.

He bowed his head with great seriousness. “I promise you, Aunt Julia,” he answered. “His name shall never be spoken by me under your roof.”

My lady’s face cleared in a moment, and she gave him her hand to kiss, completely satisfied.

I left them together, and went straight down the stone stairs into the basement, with the great iron key in my hand.

The plate-room was as cold as a vault, smelling of silver-polish and damp stone. I unlocked the great iron-bound oak chest, where the family plate had been kept since Sir John’s time, lifted the heavy lid, and laid Mr. Franklin’s parcel right at the bottom, in a dark corner behind the great silver venison-dish. Then I shut down the lid, turned the key twice, locked the massive iron door behind me, and tested the bolts with my shoulder. They were as solid as the rock itself.

Coming back along the stone passage, who should I meet, carrying a basket of linen from the still-room, but my daughter Penelope.

“Penelope,” I said, “has Rosanna Spearman come in to her dinner yet?”

“Rosanna Spearman!” says Penelope, setting down her basket with a bounce. “No, father—nor she doesn’t mean to come in, neither! A pretty sort of housemaid she is, to go gadding about the country when Miss Rachel’s birthday party is tomorrow, and there’s all the work to do!”

“Not come in?” I repeated, quite taken aback. “Why, where on earth has the girl gone to?”

“She hasn’t come near the house,” says Penelope. “Bob, the under-groom, met her on the high cliff path, walking as fast as her legs could carry her, with her bonnet half off her head and her grey cloak flying in the wind. Bob called out to ask if she was going to the house, and she never so much as looked at him, but went straight on towards Cobb’s Hole!”

“Towards Cobb’s Hole!” I cried. “Three miles off, on an empty stomach, and after having one of her fainting-fits this morning! What can take her there?”

“To see Lucy Yolland, of course,” says Penelope sharply. “Limping Lucy, the fisherman’s lame daughter. That’s the only friend she has in the parish. But what right she has to run off without leave is more than I can tell. If she goes on giving herself these airs, father, my lady will have to hear of it.”

“Gently, Penelope, gently!” I said. “The poor girl has had a hard life, and we must make allowances. Don’t say a word to my lady. She will be back before night, I’ll warrant.”

The rest of the day passed off quietly enough. Miss Rachel did not return to dinner; the rector’s wife having sent over a note begging that she might stay for tea and music, and promising that the rector would drive her home in his carriage before ten o’clock. So my lady and Mr. Franklin dined together, with only me and the footman to wait on them.

A very pleasant dinner it was, to all appearance. Mr. Franklin was full of his foreign travels, and my lady was delighted to listen. But I noticed that his eyes wandered continually to the door, and once, when the wind rattled the casement, he started and looked across at me with an anxious glance. I gave him a little nod back, to assure him that all was safe below; and after that he seemed more at ease.

At ten o’clock, the rector’s carriage brought Miss Rachel home. She was tired with her day in the open air, and went straight up to her room without joining us; so Mr. Franklin had to wait until the morrow to see his cousin and wish her joy of her birthday.

By eleven o’clock, the household had retired, and the house was as silent as a church.

I went my rounds, according to custom. I barred the doors, fastened the shutters, and went down to the basement to assure myself that the plate-room door was fast. The Bramah locks held the iron bolts tight in their sockets; the key was in my waistcoat-pocket; and the heavy parcel lay buried beneath the silver dish-covers, as safe from human hands as if it had been at the bottom of the sea.

Having done my duty, I went into my own little sitting-room, shut the door, and sat down in my beehive chair.

It is a famous wicker chair, lined with chintz, shaped like an old-fashioned beehive, and soft enough to comfort the oldest bones in England. I filled my pipe with shag, struck a light, and reached out my hand for my constant friend and companion—my Robinson Crusoe.

I opened the book at hazard, closed my eyes, and put my finger on the page. When I looked, this was the passage that met my sight:

“How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into it, is the most dreadful to us, is the very means or door of our deliverance!”

I took the pipe from my lips, and stared at the words. What did they mean? Was the evil the coming of the three Indians, or the legacy of the wicked Colonel Herncastle? I could make nothing of it. But the words had a strange, solemn sound in the quiet of the night, and they left me with an unquiet mind.

Tick, tack—tick, tack! went the old clock in the passage outside.

A heavy feeling of foreboding settled upon me as I sat there alone. Everything was secured; the parcel was locked away; Mr. Franklin was sleeping peacefully upstairs. And yet, I could not rest.

I rose from my chair, opened my door, and listened. Not a sound was to be heard. I looked at the hall clock: it was five minutes to midnight.

There was one bed in our house that was still empty. Rosanna Spearman had not returned from Cobb’s Hole.

With a heavy heart, and with a dreadful doubt of what the morrow might bring forth, I went back to my chair, leaving the house to the darkness and the night.

Robert accommodated his stride to the dragging, languid step of Madame Ratignolle. The sun was mounting toward its noon glare upon the white sand of the path, where the camomile gave off a warm, dry odor. Adèle fluttered her handkerchief incessantly, sighing over the heat and the delicate state of her health.

Robert listened with his customary good-humor, holding his straw hat to shield her flushed face.

"Ah, but Edna was so charming this morning!" Madame Ratignolle said, leaning upon his arm. "You cannot imagine, Robert. She was in an extraordinary humor. She spoke of her childhood in Kentucky—of walking through a meadow as wide as the ocean, running from her father's prayers. She leaned her head upon my shoulder like a child."

Robert glanced back along the bleached track to where the white tent shimmered against the blue horizon. Edna was still there with the children, a slender silhouette against the glare.

"She is not like the women here," he said softly.

"How do you mean, *mon cher*?"

"There is something about Mrs. Pontellier," Robert said, his bantering tone giving way to gravity. "She does not know her own power. She is like someone who has lived her whole life in a quiet, shuttered room, and has only just stepped out into the wind. When she awakens to herself, she will astonish us all."

Madame Ratignolle laughed, a rich, maternal ripple. "You are an incorrigible romantic, Robert. You see princesses in every woman whose hair blows loose. Edna is simply a sensible, reserved creature who has lived too long among cold-blooded Americans."

He offered no dispute, but guided her up the steps of her cottage, where her maid waited with water and a fan.

Edna lingered at the tent until the midday heat drove the children from the shore. The little Pontelliers scampered ahead of the nurse, while Edna followed slowly, her mind full of the morning’s strange confidences.

When she reached her cottage, a barefoot boy from the hotel was waiting by the railing with a yellow envelope.

"For Madame Pontellier," he said. "From the telegraph office."

She opened it with a faint flutter of anxiety, expecting some summons from Léonce demanding her return to the city. The message was brief, dispatched that morning from Carondelet Street:

*Detained by large transaction until next week. Cannot come out for Saturday. Send word if children need anything. Have ordered basket of fruit for you by Friday boat. Léonce.*

Edna stood holding the yellow slip. She waited for the pang of disappointment, the natural regret of a wife deprived of her husband’s company; but none came. Instead, an unaccountable lightness stole through her. The weekend stretched before her untethered, without Léonce’s critical eye disturbing the languid peace of her days. She gave the boy a coin, folded the paper, and thrust it into her pocket.

In the afternoon the great hush of the siesta fell upon Grand Isle. The blinds of the cottages were tightly drawn against the white fury of the sun. In the nursery, the two boys lay asleep beneath the mosquito netting, watched by the nodding nurse.

Edna did not sleep. A strange, sweet restlessness stirred within her. Going into her dressing-room, she exchanged her muslin for her dark bathing suit. Taking her hat and a towel, she slipped down the steps and went toward the beach.

The path was deserted; the camomile drooped in the scorched grass. At the shore, the sky met the Gulf in a blinding line of sapphire. The water rolled inward in gentle swells, murmuring with that seductive whisper which invites the soul to lose itself in an embrace of oblivion.

All summer, Léonce and Robert had tried to teach her to swim. They had supported her, coaxed her, and laughed at her terror; yet the moment their hands left her, panic had seized her, and she had sunk helplessly in two feet of water.

Now there was no one to watch. She dropped her towel upon the gallery of the bath-house and walked out into the surf.

The water reached her waist, then her breast, rocking her with a heavy, maternal rhythm. The memory of the Kentucky meadow returned to her—the ocean of tall grass, and the little girl beating it with her arms as one strikes out in the water.

With a sudden impulse, Edna leaned forward into the swell and lifted her feet from the sand.

For a second, terror caught her throat. Then the sea took her weight, bearing her up.

She struck out with her arms, kicking her feet in a steady, instinctive cadence. She was swimming! She moved across the water, five yards, then ten, sustained by her own strength, propelled by her own will. A fierce exultation surged through her; she felt like an imperious creature that had broken the bonds of earth.

Turning back toward the shallow bar, she touched the firm bottom and stood upright, breathless, water streaming from her hair and garments. Her heart beat wildly.

She had done it alone. She would tell no one. It belonged to her, and to the sea.

She waded from the water and mounted the bath-house steps to dry herself. As she turned toward her door, a movement in the shadow of the adjoining gallery startled her.

The lady in black was sitting there upon a wooden bench.

She was shrouded in her somber draperies, her dark veil pinned beneath her chin. But for the first time that summer, her ebony rosary lay still in her lap, and her dark, sunken eyes were fixed upon Edna.

For a moment neither woman moved.

"You should not go into the water alone, Madame Pontellier," the lady in black said.

Her voice was clear, though dry and hollow, like the rustle of dead leaves. The unexpected sound of it in that solitary glare made Edna shiver.

"I was not afraid," Edna said, lifting her chin. "The water is quiet today."

"The Gulf is always quiet before it takes what it wants," the woman murmured, her fingers resting motionless upon her black skirt. "It is a treacherous thing to trust oneself to the deep. One thinks oneself strong, and then the tide turns, and there is no bottom for the feet."

"I have learned to swim," Edna said, unable to repress a faint note of pride.

The lady in black shook her head with mournful conviction. "Many have learned to swim, my child. The sea takes them all the same."

She took up her beads once more. Her thin fingers resumed their rhythmic slipping over the black wood, and her eyes dropped to the prayer-book upon her knee, as though Edna were no longer there.

A chill touched Edna’s wet skin. She unlocked her compartment, went inside, and bolted the door behind her.

By five o'clock the fierce heat had softened, and Grand Isle stirred to life again. Edna, dressed in fresh white dimity, walked over to Madame Ratignolle’s cottage. She found Adèle reclining on her gallery in a trailing peignoir of blue silk, a glass of iced orgeat beside her.

"Sit down, *chérie*!" Adèle exclaimed. "You look as fresh as a rose! But where were you? Robert was looking for you an hour ago. He had found some curious shell on the reef to show you."

"I was resting," Edna replied, taking a low chair in the shade of the jasmine. "I received a telegram from Léonce. He is detained in the city by a large transaction and cannot come out for Saturday."

"Oh, the poor man!" cried Adèle with sincere Creole sympathy. "And poor you, *ma pauvre Edna*! To be left alone for the weekend! If Alphonse were kept from me by his pharmacy, I should be inconsolable."

Edna smiled faintly, letting her eyes wander. She felt no need to explain the secret relief that lay nestled in her heart.

"Speaking of devotion," Madame Ratignolle said with an amused smile, "Robert was so absurd on our walk back this morning."

"Robert?" Edna’s hands stilled upon her lap. "How was he absurd?"

"He walked like a tortoise to spare my poor limbs, but his eyes were constantly wandering back to the sand. When I teased him, he grew quite solemn. He said: 'There is something about Mrs. Pontellier—she does not know her own power. She is like someone who has lived her whole life in a quiet, shuttered room, and has only just stepped out into the wind. When she awakens to herself, she will astonish us all.'"

Adèle laughed her clear, musical laugh. "Did you ever hear such extravagance? He speaks of you as if you were a heroine in a romance, instead of our quiet, sensible Edna! I told him he was an incorrigible dreamer."

A sudden, hot flush mounted to Edna’s cheeks and temples. She turned her face slightly toward the jasmine vine, pretending to admire the blossoms, lest Adèle should notice the light that had leaped into her eyes.

"Robert always talks a great deal of nonsense," Edna managed to say.

"Of course! He is a Lebrun," Adèle agreed placidly, taking another sip of her drink.

Night fell swiftly, wrapping Grand Isle in fragrant darkness. In Edna's cottage, the children had succumbed to slumber. Etienne and Raoul lay motionless beneath the mosquito netting, their breathing soft and regular. The nurse had retired, and the house was wrapped in silence.

Edna walked out onto the gallery and seated herself in the wicker rocking chair.

The island had grown quiet; one by one the lights in the neighboring cottages went out, leaving only the stars and the slow beam from the lighthouse on the reef. Across the water, the Gulf kept up its perpetual murmur, breaking upon the beach like a voice in the darkness. She remembered the water lifting her—the secret triumph of her body striking out alone into the sea.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The night breeze stirred the loose hair at her temples. The cottage was dark and still, the children asleep within; and through the silence of her mind echoed Robert's remark as Adèle had repeated it:

"She does not know her own power. She is like someone who has lived her whole life in a quiet, shuttered room, and has only just stepped out into the wind. When she awakens to herself, she will astonish us all."

The party assembled in the library of Kellynch Hall on the following morning, with all the solemnity becoming so delicate an investigation. Here sat Sir Walter, presiding with an air of dignified sufferance; Elizabeth, looking the very picture of injured consequence; and Anne, retired into the background near a small table, listening with an aching heart to every sound that portended the opening of their business.

Mr Shepherd was the first to speak. He was an attorney of cautious manners, whose study had been to preserve his client’s favour without compromising his own credit for sagacity. He laid a folded paper upon the table with many bows and apologies.

“The statement, Sir Walter,” said he, smoothing out the folio, “is drawn up with an eye to your consequence. By parting with two carriage horses and discharging an under-groom, nearly two hundred pounds a year might be saved. In the gardens, two lads might be dismissed; the pine-stoves might rest; and by letting the meadow beyond the home-farm, fifty pounds might be secured. These items, with discontinuing the daily post from London, and reducing the kitchen ale, would produce a saving of four hundred and fifty pounds per annum.”

Sir Walter threw the paper from him with sovereign contempt.

“A pair of horses!” he exclaimed, with indignation. “A pair of horses for Sir Walter Elliot! And pray, Mr Shepherd, how am I to look Lord St Ives in the face on the road? Am I to be taken for a curate or an apothecary? Neglect my grounds, let my park to a grazier, and drink pump-water—to save four hundred pounds! While I live, I will never consent to what would make me the laughing-stock of the county. Say no more, Mr Shepherd; your paper is rejected.”

Mr Shepherd gathered up his discarded manuscript in silence.

Lady Russell now felt called upon to intervene. To her sound understanding, such nibbling at the edges of a vast encumbrance was futile. She loved Sir Walter for his late wife’s sake; but she loved justice still more, and could not endure that the dignity of an ancient house should be preserved by defrauding honest creditors.

“My dear Sir Walter,” said she, placing her paper before him, “four hundred pounds can do nothing against twelve years’ debt. If the estate is to be retrieved, it must be by an annual reserve of fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds. I propose that the journey to London be laid aside for four or five years; that the indoor servants be reduced by half; that large entertainments be given up; and that you and Elizabeth keep no carriage horses beyond what are necessary for church and an occasional call. By living upon a third of your income, you will in seven years be emancipated, and Kellynch free.”

Sir Walter’s eyes widened in horror.

“Give up London!” he cried. “Give up London for five years! Dismiss my servants, and vegetate here like a bankrupt! Remain in this house, stripped of every comfort belonging to my birth, pitied by every country squire and pointed at by the common people! If I live at Kellynch, I must live as Sir Walter Elliot. To walk through my park without a carriage, and see my table like a day-labourer’s—it would kill me. I had rather part with life than submit to such humiliation.”

Elizabeth warmly seconded her father. “Indeed, Lady Russell, such a life could never be endured. To be buried alive in Somersetshire without the decencies of our station is impossible. If Kellynch is to be kept, it must be kept with propriety; and to live here upon such terms would be worse than any alternative.”

Lady Russell folded her hands and was silent, convinced that reason was powerless against an infatuation so complete.

A profound stillness fell upon the room, while Sir Walter and Elizabeth sat opposite each other, looking like victims of unheard-of injustice.

It was in this moment that Anne found courage to speak. Her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes shone with a resolute light.

“If I may speak,” said Anne, her voice gaining firmness, “neither plan goes far enough. If we are to satisfy just claims, our retrenchment must be far more severe, and far more immediate. We ought to lay down every horse; sell the carriages and surplus plate; shut up the state apartments, and live only in the smaller rooms; retain but two maids and one man; and, reserving only what is necessary for food and fuel, devote three thousand pounds a year to our debts. In three years every creditor would be paid, and Kellynch would be free with honor.”

She paused, breathless. Sir Walter stared at her in utter astonishment; but before he could speak, Elizabeth interposed.

“Anne is right,” said Elizabeth, with a calm, cutting decision that electrified the room.

Mr Shepherd started, and Lady Russell looked up in amazement.

“Anne is right,” repeated Elizabeth, her voice ringing with pride. “I despise half-measures. To adopt Mr Shepherd’s pitiful savings makes us ridiculous; to live here with a pair of horses invites every busybody to spy upon our necessities. But if we shut the gates of Kellynch entirely, declaring that our own choice leads us to absolute retirement, there can be no room for pity. Let the house be closed; let the world know we decline to associate with a neighbourhood that has ceased to interest us. If we must suffer, let it be in seclusion, where no eye can watch us, and let it be ended in three years, instead of dragging on through seven years of humiliation.”

Sir Walter, however, was not to be persuaded even by his favourite daughter.

“You are both out of your senses,” he cried. “Shut up the house! Sell my carriages! Live in a corner like an old pair of owls! How am I to exist without my carriage? Am I to walk through the village on foot, like a common farmer? The thing is monstrous! If this is all that can be devised, we had better let matters take their course.”

Mr Shepherd now perceived that the moment was come for bringing forward a measure which he had long meditated. He saw that Sir Walter would never consent to economise at Kellynch, and that the daughters’ proposals had only increased his irritation.

The attorney leaned forward, clearing his throat with a low cough.

“Sir Walter,” said he, in his softest tone, “since any reduction of your establishment while residing at Kellynch Hall would be incompatible with your feelings, does it not occur to you that there might be another method? A method which would relieve you at once from constraint, preserve the estate intact, and provide an ample income?”

Sir Walter looked at him with languid curiosity. “Well, sir, and what may that be?”

“Why, Sir Walter,” resumed Mr Shepherd, choosing his words with precaution, “many gentlemen, when their affairs have become embarrassed, have found it convenient to quit their family seats for a short period, and to place another family in possession. A gentleman of wealth who is looking for a dignified country residence would be found without difficulty; one who would pay a very handsome rent for the privilege. In short, Sir Walter, if you were to let the house to a substantial—a desirable tenant—”

At the sound of that fatal word, Sir Walter started from his chair. His face flushed crimson, and his eyes flashed with sudden fury.

“A tenant!” he thundered, striking the table with such violence that the inkstand rattled. “A tenant in Kellynch Hall! The seat of Sir Walter Elliot occupied by a tenant! Some low-born upstart—some nameless adventurer who has enriched himself by trade—to sit in my chair, sleep in my bed, and walk through the rooms of the Elliots! Is this what you dare to propose to me?”

Mr Shepherd shrank back, pale with terror. “My dear Sir Walter—I only ventured—”

“Hold your tongue, sir!” cried the baronet. “Do you think I am so fallen as to turn my ancestral home into a lodging-house? Shall it be said that Sir Walter Elliot let his estate to hire, like an innkeeper? Never, while I have breath in my body! And mark me, Mr Shepherd—never let that odious word be spoken again in my presence! If ever you presume to utter the word ‘tenant’ before me again, you quit this house for ever, and your connection with my family is at an end!”

Mr Shepherd was completely prostrated; he stammered out the humblest apologies, declaring that he had been misunderstood, and that he should never recur to the subject again. Lady Russell looked on in silent sorrow, seeing that reason was powerless against a pride so obstinate.

Before the agitation had subsided, the door was opened by a servant bearing letters, which had just arrived by the cross-post from Crewkerne.

Sir Walter took the packet with a haughty hand. Most of the covers enclosed tradesmen’s accounts, which he tossed aside without breaking the seals; but among them was one addressed to Miss Elliot in the small, hurried hand of their youngest sister.

“A letter from Mary,” said Sir Walter, handing it to Elizabeth. “Some foolish complaint, no doubt.”

Elizabeth broke the seal, glanced over the page with a curl of her lip, and tossed it across to Anne.

“It is for you, Anne,” said she, with cold indifference. “Mary has taken it into her head that she is dying, and that nobody cares for her.”

Anne took the sheet with eagerness, and read the characteristic lines:—

“My dear Anne, “I am so dreadfully ill that I can scarcely hold my pen, having been in bed these two days with the most agonizing nervous headache and sore throat. Nobody can conceive what I suffer. Charles is gone out shooting, and cares no more for my being ill than if I were a stone; indeed, he told me this morning there was nothing the matter with me but low spirits, which was cruel to the last degree. Mrs Musgrove and the girls were here yesterday, but their loud voices nearly drove me distracted; they are so robust that they have no compassion for anyone who is delicate. Little Charles has been screaming all morning, Walter has a cough, and the maid is so cross that I am afraid to ring the bell. If you do not come to me immediately, I am sure I shall not live out the week. Pray come over to Uppercross directly; do not fail me, for I am the most miserable creature in the world, and have not a soul to speak to. “Your affectionate sister, “MARY MUSGROVE.”

A faint smile passed over Anne’s countenance. She knew Mary too well to be alarmed; but she knew also that Mary was never happy without an auditor for her complaints.

“She is very unwell, papa,” said Anne, “or at least considers herself so, and is anxious that I should go to Uppercross to nurse her.”

“If she wants Anne, Anne had better go,” observed Elizabeth. “She can be of no use here; and after the extraordinary sentiments she has expressed this morning, her company cannot be agreeable to any of us.”

Sir Walter readily concurred. Anne’s words had touched his conscience uncomfortably, and he was glad to remove her.

“Yes,” said he, “Anne may certainly go. Kellynch can spare her very well. You have my permission to go, Anne, as soon as you please.”

Lady Russell, seeing that the atmosphere of the Hall was poisoned by wounded pride, encouraged the plan, feeling that even the exactions of Mary would be preferable to the cold slights of home.

“I think you are right to go, my dear Anne,” said she, kindly. “Mary needs you; and by the time you return, perhaps some more reasonable counsels may prevail here.”

The consultation was broken up. Mr Shepherd, anxious only to escape, took his departure with precipitation, resolving never again to mention the word ‘tenant’ to Sir Walter Elliot. Lady Russell remained an hour longer, in the vain hope of bringing Sir Walter to some sense; but finding him immoveable, she took leave with a heavy heart, leaving father and daughter to their mutual discontent.

The remainder of the day passed in cheerless gloom. Dinner was eaten in silence; Sir Walter was stately and morose; Elizabeth was cold and sullen; and Anne felt herself an alien in her father’s house. No further mention was made of their financial distress; the letters lay unopened; and the subject was banished, as if silence could avert the ruin that hung over them.

As soon as the evening closed in, Sir Walter retired to his dressing-room, seeking in his mirror and his Baronetage that consolation which the realities of life refused to afford. Elizabeth withdrew to her own apartment, to nurse her resentment against Lady Russell.

Anne was left alone in the drawing-room.

The candles burned with a quiet light, illuminating mirrors that reflected nothing but emptiness. Through the windows the twilight was fading into night; the woods of the park stood dark against the pale sky; and the deep stillness of the country reigned over Kellynch Hall.

Anne sat by the window, full of sorrowful reflections. She had resolved to go to Uppercross on the following morning. In that direction, at least, her duty was clear. To be useful to someone—to be wanted, even as a nurse to imaginary grievances—was something to a heart that found so little affection at home.

Yet her thoughts could not long be diverted from the morning. Her father and sister, blinded by vanity, were rushing toward destruction, refusing the only hands stretched out to save them. Every offer of assistance had been spurned. Mr Shepherd’s cautious economies had been despised as vulgar; Lady Russell’s honorable counsels treated as an insult; her own appeal to justice caught at by Elizabeth only as a weapon of defiance, and cast aside by her father with horror; while the mere whisper of letting the house had provoked a tempest of fury.

Nothing was done; nothing was resolved. The debts remained in all their terrifying magnitude; the tradesmen were unpaid; the mortgages accumulating; and the Kellynch estate was left to drift towards bankruptcy without an effort to arrest its fall. Sir Walter would not retrench; he would not leave Kellynch; he would not permit another to inhabit it; he would only wrap himself in his baronetcy and shut his eyes against the storm.

With a heavy heart, Anne rose from her seat, took up her candle, and prepared to seek that repose which the anxieties of the day made so necessary, and the uncertainties of the future so unlikely to bestow.