The Chapters

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May.--The morning has broken cool and grey, but my spirit is quieter than it was. Last night was good for me. When a man has had a blow that takes the heart out of him, there is no medicine on earth like the grip of a friend’s hand—or, better still, two friends who know how to keep silence as well as how to speak. Quincey’s rooms in Albemarle Street were just the haven we needed.

Quincey had prepared everything with that quiet, lavish simplicity of his: the table set for three, a fire burning gently against the evening damp, a box of his choice cigars, and bottles of old Burgundy that had travelled less than their owner.

Arthur came in a few minutes after myself. The moment he crossed the threshold, one could see the change in him. The boyish restlessness had melted into something deeper, graver, and yet radiant. He looked ten years younger and twenty years more a man. He took Quincey’s hand and then mine, and for a moment none of us spoke a word. There was no need. His eyes told the whole story—a story of such reverence and pure, unclouded joy that whatever petty pang remained in my own selfish breast was burned clean away. God forgive me for having ever felt one envious thought! She could not have chosen better in all the world.

We sat down to dinner, and Quincey played the host as only he can. He has that rare gift of making a man feel that the room, the food, the wine, and the very air belong to his guests. At first we talked of old times—of that rough voyage along the coast of Spain, of our nights under the stars in the Pampas, and of that mad scramble in the Marquesas when Art pulled Quincey out of the surf with a crushed shoulder. We laughed until the glasses rang, but beneath the laughter there was a solemn undercurrent. We all knew why we were there.

When the cloth was drawn and the port went round, Quincey rose to his feet. He stood very tall and straight, his glass held high, his face pale and steady in the candlelight.

“Brothers,” he said—and his voice had that deep, quiet ring in it that always makes me think of wide prairies at sundown—“we three have seen some rough trails together, and we have shared our water-flasks when the well ran dry. To-night we drink to the finest prize that ever fell to mortal man. Here is to the lady who has chosen the best of us: to Miss Lucy Westenra, the dearest, sweetest, noblest girl in England. And here is to Art—may he guard her as his own soul, and may God bless them both to the end of the road.”

We drained our glasses in silence. Art tried to reply, but his voice broke. The great fellow sat down and covered his face with his hands for half a minute. When he looked up, tears were standing fairly on his cheeks, but he smiled through them with such a light upon his features that Quincey and I could only grasp his hands across the table.

“Jack,” he whispered to me, “Quincey—if I do not make her happy, may heaven strike me down. I feel as if I had received a crown I am not worthy to wear.”

“You are worthy, Art,” Quincey said gently, clapping him on the shoulder. “If you weren’t, neither Jack nor I would have let you walk off with her so easily. Now pass the bottle, old man, and let us talk of horses.”

We sat late into the night, smoking and planning. Arthur told us of his father’s failing health—Lord Godalming is very feeble just now, and that is the one shadow over Art’s happiness—and of his hopes that the wedding may take place before the autumn. It was past two o’clock when we parted. As I drove home through the quiet streets towards Purfleet, I felt a great peace. My own hope is gone, buried past resurrection; but Lucy is safe in the keeping of a man of honour, and Quincey and I shall stand by them through whatever comes. Work must be my bride now. I shall plunge into the asylum to-day and forget myself in the mysteries of the human brain.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

30 May.--A most curious, perplexing circumstance has occurred to-day—one that has set all my theories of mental pathology at defiance and left me with a sense of uneasiness I cannot shake off.

I spent the greater part of the morning in the wards, devoting myself especially to Renfield. His case becomes daily more absorbing. His mania for collecting life appears to have entered a new phase. Hitherto he has been content with catching blue-bottle flies and breeding them, but lately he has turned his attention to spiders. He has several large specimens in small cardboard pill-boxes which he has coaxed out of the warders, and he feeds his captive flies to them with a methodical, almost scientific cruelty that fascinates me.

To-day, when I entered his room, he was sitting on the edge of his bed with his notebook on his knee, recording the number of flies consumed since breakfast. He did not look up immediately, but continued making his neat, cramped figures.

“Well, Renfield,” I said, leaning against the window-frame, “how does the census progress?”

“The census is completed for the hour, Doctor,” he replied without raising his eyes. “The small things must make way for the greater. That is the law of nature, is it not? Accumulation, absorption, concentration.”

“And what is to absorb the spiders?” I asked, curious to see where his logic tended.

He looked up then. His eyes, usually so restless and shifty, were fixed upon mine with a strange, penetrating steadiness that reminded me unpleasantly of the look one sees in the portrait of a judge passing sentence. There was no madness in his expression at that moment; it was rather an acute, unnerving lucidity.

“Doctor,” he said, speaking in a low, perfectly composed voice, “how does Miss Westenra do to-day?”

The question came upon me like a pistol-shot in an empty room. I was so completely taken aback that for several seconds I could not utter a syllable. My heart seemed to stop.

“What did you say?” I managed to ask, striving to keep my tone indifferent.

“I asked after Miss Westenra,” he repeated calmly, turning a leaf of his notebook. “Miss Lucy Westenra of Chatham Street. Is her health good? Does she walk out in the sunshine, or does she stay within doors? I hope she is well, Doctor. It would be a pity—a great pity—if so fair a flower should wither before the summer is through.”

I felt a cold sweat break out upon my forehead. The man was speaking with the casual familiarity of an old acquaintance, yet he has been confined within these walls for months, and never in my life have I uttered Lucy’s name within his hearing.

“Renfield,” I said sternly, stepping closer to him, “who told you that name? Where have you heard of Miss Westenra?”

He smiled—a slow, cunning smile that wrinkled the corners of his mouth—and closed his notebook with a soft snap.

“Who tells the swallow when to fly south, Doctor? Who tells the grass to grow? We who live in quiet rooms hear many things that the bustling world ignores. The wind carries whispers, does it not? Or perhaps the birds brought it.”

“Do not talk nonsense to me,” I retorted, seized by an anger that was half fear. “Some attendant has been gossiping with you, or you have been prying into papers that do not concern you. Tell me the truth at once.”

At my tone his mood changed instantly. The calm vanished, and the old, sullen, obstinate gloom settled over his features. He drew himself into a corner of the bed, clasped his knees with his great muscular hands, and began to rock himself to and fro, refusing to answer another question or even to meet my gaze. When I pressed him, he merely began to hum a dreary hymn-tune under his breath.

I left the cell thoroughly shaken. I went straight to my study and cross-examined the head attendant, who swore positively that no newspaper containing social intelligence had been given to the patient, and that none of the servants knew anything of my private acquaintances in London. How, then, did that name reach him?

I have tried to reason it out dispassionately. The explanation must, of course, be purely mundane. The human mind in its disordered state possesses an uncanny power of piecing together fragments that escape normal observation. I must have dropped an envelope in his room on one of my previous visits—perhaps the note Arthur sent me, or an invitation from Mrs. Westenra—or else, in some moment of abstraction while sitting beside him, I may have murmured her name aloud. The brain under emotional stress is prone to such unconscious betrayals. Yet the precision of his words—“Miss Lucy Westenra of Chatham Street”—chills me. It is an unpleasant coincidence, nothing more; yet I wish with all my soul he had spoken any other name.

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

The Crescent, Exeter,

4 June.

“My dearest Lucy,--

“Your letter of 24 May reached me just as the school was closing for the midday recess, and oh, my dear, how I cried over it! Happy tears, Lucy, for you and Arthur, but some very sad ones for the two noble gentlemen whose hearts you had to break. It read like a chapter in a romance—only it is real life, and you are the heroine of it all. Three proposals in one day! I think there is no other girl in England who could bear such an honour with so sweet and humble a spirit. You must not call yourself a flirt, dear; a woman cannot help being loved when she is lovable, and no one who knows your true, honest heart could ever doubt you for an instant. As for Mr. Morris, what a splendid, generous soul he must be! I declare I loved him myself when I read what he said to you. And poor Dr. Seward—my heart aches for him. But Arthur is the king of them all, and I know you will be as happy as the day is long.

“I have been working very hard here. My pupils are making good progress, but my thoughts are continually running away to the future. I practise on the typewriter every evening until my fingers are quite stiff, and I have copied out several pages of legal exercises in shorthand from Mr. Hawkins’s old law-books, so that when Jonathan returns I shall be of real assistance to him in his work. A solicitor’s wife ought to understand something of deeds and conveyancing, and Jonathan is so clever and ambitious that I must not let myself lag behind.

“And now, Lucy dear, I must tell you of something that has brought me both comfort and a strange, lingering disappointment. You know I had expected Jonathan to return before the end of May. When the days slipped by and no letter came from him, I began to grow terribly anxious, though I tried to hide it from Mr. Hawkins. But yesterday morning the postman brought me a foreign letter, bearing Austrian stamps and postmarks from Klausenburg and Bistritz. It was not in Jonathan’s handwriting, which gave me a dreadful fright at first; but when I opened it, I found it was from a foreign gentleman writing on his behalf. I copy every word of it for you here, exactly as it is written:--

“Bistritz, 25 May.

“To Miss Mina Murray,

“The Crescent, Exeter, England.

“Madam,--

“At the urgent request of your esteemed betrothed, Mr. Jonathan Harker, who is at present detained in the highland districts upon the business of his firm, I take the honour of addressing to you this present communication.

“Mr. Harker desires me to assure you, in the most positive manner, that he is in the enjoyment of excellent health and spirits, but that the legal affairs connected with the purchase of estates in this province have proved far more tedious and complicated than was foreseen. The verification of feudal charters, local covenants, and boundary rights under the customary law of the mountains has necessitated his remaining some weeks longer in the interior.

“As the postal communications from the upper regions are exceedingly precarious and infrequent, Mr. Harker availed himself of my return through the passes to entrust me with this message, desiring me to post it from Bistritz at the earliest opportunity, together with the expression of his constant and devoted remembrance. He begs that you will not feel the least disquietude on his account, and hopes to conclude his business and set forth upon his homeward journey before midsummer.

“I have the honour to remain, Madam, your most obedient, humble servant,

“ANTON MORITZ,

“Agent for Mountain Properties.

“There, Lucy! It was very kind of this Mr. Moritz to write, was it not? And it is a great relief to know that Jonathan is well and that his delay is caused only by the intricacies of foreign law. When I showed the letter to Mr. Hawkins, he quite laughed at my fears. He told me that land tenures in eastern Europe are the most troublesome in the world, full of feudal survivals and overlapping jurisdictions, and that the foreign gentleman who is purchasing the property near London is doubtless a very particular client who wishes every boundary defined with scrupulous accuracy. Mr. Hawkins says Jonathan is showing great patience and legal acumen, and that this commission will make his reputation in the profession.

“All that is very sensible and comforting; yet I cannot tell you why, Lucy, but my heart is not quite at ease. It seems so hard that Jonathan could not find time to write even three lines in his own dear hand. He must have been very hurried, or perhaps paper was scarce where he was staying; but I keep looking at that strange foreign writing, with its stiff, formal flourishes, and wishing with all my might that I could see one word in Jonathan’s neat clerkly script. I suppose I am a foolish, nervous creature, but when one loves, every day of absence seems like a year.

“Write to me soon, darling, and tell me everything Arthur says and does. Give my kindest regards to your dear mamma.

“Ever your loving

“MINA.”

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

17, Chatham Street,

10 June.

“My dearest Mina,--

“Your sweet letter was like a ray of sunshine to me. How good you are, and how wise! Arthur came in while I was reading it, and I made him read all the nice things you said about him, and he blushed as red as a rose and said you must be an angel.

“Dearest, you must not worry your head about Jonathan. Arthur says that lawyers are the slowest people on earth, and that when an English solicitor gets among foreign deeds he is like a child in a maze, and cannot get out until every scrap of parchment has been sealed and stamped ten times over. He says Mr. Harker is doing splendidly, and that you will have him back before you know where you are, with his pockets full of fees and his head full of travels. So you must put away all gloomy thoughts, Mina dear, and think only of the happy days ahead.

“We are having a very quiet time just now. Arthur’s dear father has been somewhat worse, so Arthur has to run down to Ring every few days, but he returns to me the moment he can be spared. Quincey Morris has gone down to Yorkshire to look at some horses, but he sent me such a beautiful basket of roses yesterday, with a note so full of fun that it made mamma laugh heartily. Dr. Seward called on Tuesday; he looked pale and overworked, poor fellow, and when I asked him after his patients he spoke quite despairingly of the strain of his asylum, but he was as gentle and kind as ever. Mamma sends her warmest love. Finish your school work quickly, Mina, and come to me.

“Your loving

“LUCY.”

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

1 July.

“Jonathan Harker lying here dangerously ill with brain fever. Come at once. Sister Agatha.”

The rain, which had fallen with such hearty goodwill upon the Dover Street pavement, had now ceased as abruptly as it had begun, in that capricious, light-hearted fashion peculiar to the English summer. A pale, lemon-coloured sunlight broke through the dissolving clouds, transforming the wet asphalt into a dark mirror and setting the varnish of passing taxicabs gleaming with sudden splendour. Miss Eve Halliday, descending the narrow stairway from Miss Clarkson’s agency into Shaftesbury Avenue, paused upon the threshold and took counsel with herself.

The umbrella which had so miraculously descended into her keeping was a noble weapon, but its work was done. It was not the sort of article that could be retained with an easy conscience. It exhaled an unmistakable aura of clubland and expensive gentility. It belonged to an order of architecture that demanded a hat-stand in an ancestral hall or the care of a liveried menial, and to carry it back to her modest quarters would be to invite the darker promptings of kleptomania. Moreover, Eve had a conscience which, though occasionally pliable in the matter of buying hats she could not afford, was rigid where umbrellas were concerned.

She looked at the small watch pinned to her dress. Her appointment to be interviewed by her prospective employer was not until half-past two, which left her ample time to perform an act of restitution. She walked briskly southwards, making her way towards Dover Street, where the gloomy portal opposite Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe still loomed with aristocratic reserve.

Arriving at the entrance of the building, which she now observed bore the discreet brass plate of the Drones Club, Eve felt a momentary flutter of hesitation. The steps were guarded by a hall porter of immense girth and dignified aspect, whose medals clinked softly against his chest as he surveyed London with the detached melancholy of a Roman emperor watching the decline of his empire.

Eve opened her bag, produced a small pencil and a slip of paper, and wrote:

"With the sincere and grateful thanks of the girl under the coal merchant's awning, who hopes the owner didn't get terribly wet."

Folding this neatly, she approached the majestic presence.

"Good morning," said Eve pleasantly.

The porter lowered his gaze and permitted an eyelid to flicker in acknowledgement of her presence.

"Good morning, miss."

"I have brought back this umbrella," Eve explained, holding out the weapon of whangee and silk. "A gentleman who was in the club ran out and lent it to me during the shower. He was very tall, very thin, and wore a monocle."

The porter inspected the umbrella with the practised eye of one accustomed to the eccentricities of Drone membership. A faint gleam of comprehension traversed his wooden features.

"Mr. Smith, miss?" he ventured tentatively.

"I don't know his name. He ran back inside immediately without telling me. Would you be so kind as to see that he gets it, and this note?"

"Certainly, miss. I will place it in the cloak-room forthwith."

"Thank you so much," said Eve, and with a bright nod she turned and tripped lightly away in the direction of Piccadilly.

Inside the club, meanwhile, the atmosphere in the front hall was far from serene. The Honourable Mr. Walderwick, who had recently descended the staircase with the intention of going out to lunch, had just discovered that his favourite umbrella was missing from the rack.

Mr. Walderwick was a young gentleman whose normal outlook on life was sunshiny and placid, but the unauthorized abstraction of his personal property was a thing that touched him to the quick. He was at this moment confronting the cloak-room attendant with eyes that bulged with indignation.

"What do you mean, you gave it to Mr. Smith?" demanded Mr. Walderwick, his voice cracking with emotion. "You've got no business giving my brolly to anyone! It's a dashed outrage! Where is he?"

"Mr. Smith took it himself, sir. He examined several and took yours. He was in the smoking-room only a moment ago, sir."

Mr. Walderwick wheeled about and strode towards the smoking-room like an avenging fury. He found Psmith reclining in an armchair by the window, gazing out with an air of benevolent meditation.

"Look here, Psmith!" vociferated Mr. Walderwick, coming to a halt before the chair and thrusting his hands into his pockets. "The fellow in the cloak-room tells me you walked off with my umbrella!"

Psmith adjusted his monocle and inspected his visitor with mild interest.

"Ah, Comrade Walderwick," he said gently. "You break in upon my reveries like a trumpet-call. What is this about an umbrella? Speak on, Comrade Walderwick. Unburden your soul."

"You took my brolly!"

"A harsh phrase," said Psmith, shaking his head sorrowfully. "A crude, unsympathetic description of a delicate and altruistic manoeuvre. Say rather that your umbrella has been consecrated to the service of chivalry. It has been performing holy work in the vineyard."

"I don't care a hang about vineyards," barked Mr. Walderwick. "I want my umbrella! It cost me two guineas only last month at Briggs's, and it's got a whangee handle. Where is it?"

At this point, fortune intervened in the shape of the hall porter, who entered the smoking-room carrying the disputed article and a small folded piece of paper.

"Excuse me, Mr. Walderwick, sir," said the porter impassively. "A young person has just left this at the door, sir, for the gentleman who lent it to her."

Mr. Walderwick made a grab at his property.

"Ha!" he exclaimed. "Here it is! Now what the deuce does this mean? Who is this young person, and why have you been lending my property to strange females?"

Psmith rose with smooth dignity and took the folded slip of paper from the porter's salver. He unfolded it and read the message inscribed thereon. A faint, poetical smile touched the corners of his lips. The girl with the bird-of-paradise feather possessed not only beauty and style, but a pretty turn of phrase.

"The plot," murmured Psmith, "thickens. The romance deepens."

"What does it say?" demanded Mr. Walderwick suspiciously, craning his neck.

Psmith deftly transferred the note to his waistcoat pocket.

"A private communication, Comrade Walderwick, meant only for the eyes of the knight errant. But this brings us to the crux of the matter. That umbrella, having passed through hands of supreme grace, has become an historical relic. It can never again be permitted to hang neglected among the commonplace rain-shedders of Dover Street. It must remain in my custody."

"Don't talk utter rot," said Mr. Walderwick warmly. "Give it here. It's mine."

"It was yours," corrected Psmith mildly. "At this moment it is hovering between two worlds. Let us terminate its suspense. Comrade Walderwick, I wish to purchase this umbrella."

Mr. Walderwick stared at him.

"Purchase it? What on earth do you want to buy my old brolly for? You've got half a dozen of your own."

"None of them," said Psmith, "has received the accolade. None of them has sheltered perfection from the storm. What do you ask for it? Name your figure."

"I don't want to sell it," said Mr. Walderwick stubbornly. "I like the handle."

"I will give you five pounds for it."

"No."

"Ten pounds."

Mr. Walderwick blinked. A momentary gleam of cupidity fought with his natural obstinacy. Ten pounds was a lot of money for an article that had cost two guineas. But he had a stubborn streak.

"No," he said, though with less conviction. "I like that whangee handle."

Psmith reached into his breast pocket, produced a leather case, and drew out four five-pound notes. He spread them upon the small table beside Mr. Walderwick with the calm authority of a magician producing rabbits from a hat.

"Twenty pounds, Comrade Walderwick," said Psmith softly. "Four crisp, rustling promises to pay from the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. Think of what twenty pounds will buy in this enlightened city. Think of the dinners, the theatre stalls, the bets on slow horses which it will defray. Take the cash and let the whangee go."

Mr. Walderwick gazed at the notes with bulging eyes. His jaw dropped. The thought crossed his mind that Psmith had undoubtedly gone off his head, but in this imperfect world one does not quarrel with the financial eccentricities of lunatics. With a convulsive movement he seized the notes, pocketed them, and pushed the umbrella towards Psmith.

"You're completely barmy, Psmith," he said breathlessly. "Mad as a hatter. But if you're keen on making a present of twenty quid, I'm not the man to stop you."

"A pleasure, Comrade Walderwick," said Psmith, bowing courteously. "The transaction is complete. The relic is mine."

Leaving Mr. Walderwick to hurry towards the bar to recover his equilibrium, Psmith took up the umbrella, inspected the silk with affectionate care, and placed it reverently beside his chair.

While these commercial negotiations were being concluded in Dover Street, Eve Halliday was making her way down Northumberland Avenue towards the Senior Conservative Club. The hour had arrived for her interview with the Earl of Emsworth regarding the cataloguing of the Blandings Castle library.

Eve felt reasonably confident. Her father, the late Mr. Halliday, had possessed an extensive collection of books, many of which had from time to time been pledged to provide tobacco and mutton chops, and in the intervals of financial crisis Eve had spent many happy hours arranging, dusting, and reading them. She anticipated a dignified discussion concerning folios, quartos, and the Dewey system, punctuated by courteous nods of approval from an elderly nobleman of literary tastes.

The reality was somewhat different.

The Senior Conservative Club was a vast, sepulchral institution whose members appeared to have been embalmed some forty years previously and laid out in leather armchairs to await the Last Trump. Eve was conducted by a solemn page through gloomy corridors into a small waiting-room, where Lord Emsworth sat alone at a mahogany table.

His lordship presented a singular spectacle. He was a tall, stringy old gentleman with a mild, vacant face, surrounded by a faint halo of disordered grey hair. At the moment of Eve's entrance, he was engaged in an agitated search through his garments, muttering to himself and slapping his waistcoat pockets with the distracted air of a man attacked by wasps.

"Bless my soul!" murmured Lord Emsworth, peering at the door with watery, short-sighted eyes. "Where can it have got to? Baxter was most particular... most particular... Ah, good afternoon, my dear young lady. Come in, come in. Have you seen my glasses anywhere?"

"No, Lord Emsworth," said Eve with a sympathetic smile.

"Extraordinary thing," said his lordship, gazing helplessly at the carpet. "They were here a moment ago. Or was it yesterday? No, Baxter found them down my back yesterday. Perhaps they are down my back now?" He wriggled uncomfortably, but without result. "Never mind, never mind. You are... let me see... who are you, my dear?"

"I am Miss Halliday. I have come about the library."

Lord Emsworth started violently. A look of acute terror passed over his mild countenance.

"The library!" he whispered, glancing apprehensively at the door as if he expected a warder to burst in. "Good heavens! Baxter's library! Yes, yes, of course. Baxter told me I must interview you. He wrote down a list of questions. He said I must be extremely thorough. He said the Blandings library was full of valuable incunabula, whatever they are, and that I must test your qualifications."

His lordship plunged both hands into his coat pockets and brought out a tangled mass of string, three gardener's labels, a small box of lozenges, and a crumpled sheet of paper.

"Here it is!" he cried with faint triumph, smoothing the paper out upon the table. He leaned over it, squinting terribly through his unassisted vision. "Now, Miss Halliday, let us see. Baxter wrote it down very plainly. First question: What is your opinion of the... er... of the nitrate of soda as applied to the cabbage patch? Eh? What's that?"

Lord Emsworth broke off and peered at the paper again.

"No, no, that's not it," he muttered. "That's the gardener's note. Dear me, dear me. Ah, here we are: 'Question One: Is the applicant proficient in fourteenth-century Norman-French and the early ecclesiastical charters?' Well, Miss Halliday? Are you?"

"I'm afraid not, Lord Emsworth," said Eve candidly. "I can read modern French, and I know how to catalogue books, but my Norman-French is almost non-existent."

Lord Emsworth's face fell. He looked at her with an expression of profound despair.

"Dear, dear," he sighed. "Baxter will be furious. Baxter was most emphatic about the fourteenth century. He said the third Earl had collected hundreds of them, and they were all getting mouldy in the west gallery. If you can't read Norman-French, Baxter will say I have failed in my duty. He will look at me through his spectacles. You don't know what it is like, Miss Halliday, to have Baxter look at you through his spectacles. It freezes the blood."

"I'm very sorry," said Eve, struggling to suppress a laugh. "Perhaps I had better not take the post."

"No, no, no!" exclaimed his lordship in high alarm. "Don't say that! If you don't take it, Baxter will make me interview a dozen more people, and they will probably all be terrible, grim women with pincers and notebooks. I couldn't bear it. Tell me, Miss Halliday—you look like an intelligent, sympathetic young lady—do you know anything about the yew alleys at Blandings?"

"I'm afraid I have never seen them."

"A great tragedy," said Lord Emsworth mournfully. "Slugs. Everywhere, my dear. Slugs eating the heart out of the phloxes. And Baxter insists on talking about the third Earl's manuscripts! If you come down to Blandings, do you think you could manage to keep Baxter occupied in the library? Keep him busy sorting things, so that he won't come out into the garden and bother me about the county council and the tenantry?"

Eve's brown eyes danced with amusement.

"I think I could promise to keep Mr. Baxter thoroughly occupied, Lord Emsworth."

"Could you?" his lordship asked eagerly, his face brightening with child-like hope. "Could you really? Splendid! Capital! Then the matter is settled. You are engaged. Come down on Monday. Baxter will write to you with the train times. Only... er... Miss Halliday..."

"Yes, Lord Emsworth?"

"You won't tell Baxter I didn't examine you in the Norman-French, will you?" pleaded his lordship piteously. "Just tell him you answered all the questions admirably. If he thought I had neglected the charters, he would make my life a burden."

"Not a word," promised Eve solemnly.

"Capital girl!" cried Lord Emsworth, beaming upon her with unclouded joy. "Capital! A most satisfactory interview. I shall tell Baxter you are a prodigy of learning. Good-bye, Miss Halliday, good-bye!"

And his lordship, having shaken her warmly by the hand, drifted happily towards the smoking-room, entirely oblivious of the fact that his glasses were resting safely in the pocket of his overcoat in the cloak-room.

Eve walked out of the Senior Conservative Club into the bright afternoon sunshine with a light heart and an irrepressible desire to laugh. The world, which had looked so grey and discouraging that morning beneath the rain, had suddenly blossomed into comedy and good fortune. She had a post; she would be earning a living until September; she was going to Blandings Castle, where she might even find an opportunity to plead the cause of poor Phyllis Jackson with Mr. Keeble; and her employer was the most delightfully absurd old gentleman she had ever encountered.

Deciding that such a triumph deserved a celebration, Eve turned her steps towards St. James’s Park. The afternoon was warm, and the park was filled with people enjoying the revived sun. White clouds drifted lazily across a sky of porcelain blue, and the lake was dotted with ducks executing graceful dives in search of underwater delicacies.

Eve strolled along the path bordering the water, her bird-of-paradise feather bobbing gently in the breeze. As she approached the small suspension bridge, her attention was caught by a tall, slender figure leaning against the wooden railing, contemplating the aquatic fowl with profound absorption.

There was no mistaking that long, elegant back, the immaculate grey flannel suit, or the glittering monocle that reflected the sunlight.

Eve stopped. A smile broke over her face. She walked up to the railing a few paces from him and looked at him inquiringly.

The young man did not immediately notice her. He appeared to be addressing some mental monologue to a large mallard which was standing on its head in the water. Then, sensing a presence, he turned his head, adjusted his monocle, and looked down at her. Not a muscle of his face moved, but into his eye there crept a faint, respectful admiration.

"Excuse me," said Eve, "aren't you the gentleman who gave me an umbrella this morning in Dover Street?"

Psmith surveyed her through his glass with an expression of mild and benevolent astonishment.

"An umbrella, my dear young lady?" he said in a rich, soothing baritone. "You see before you one who has been accused of many strange deeds in his pilgrimage through this vale of tears, but never until this moment has he been suspected of wandering about the West End distributing umbrellas to the populace."

"It was you," insisted Eve, laughing. "You rushed out of that club opposite Thorpe & Briscoe's without a hat, thrust the umbrella into my hand, and ran back into the building before I could say a single word."

Psmith shook his head with grave compassion.

"A common optical illusion, no doubt induced by the humidity of our English climate. Science tells us that moisture in the atmosphere frequently causes the vision to play strange pranks. What you describe sounds like the work of an eccentric philanthropist—some wealthy hermit, perhaps, who roams the streets seeking to shield beauty from the tempest. But I assure you, on the word of an honest citizen, that I am entirely innocent of the crime. I am a receiver of umbrellas, a student of umbrellas, but never an umbrella dispenser."

Eve looked at him with dancing eyes.

"You are very brazen," she said. "I would recognize your monocle anywhere. Besides, there couldn't possibly be two people in London who look like you."

"Nature," agreed Psmith solemnly, "broke the mould. The relief was universal. Yet I must respectfully adhere to my plea of Not Guilty. If I had possessed the singular good fortune to assist you during the downpour, the memory would be graven upon the tablets of my soul. I should not have forgotten it for a single instant."

"Well," said Eve, amused by his unabashed defiance of the truth, "whoever he was, he was very kind, and I took the trouble to return it to the hall porter of the club with a note of thanks."

"A beautiful action," said Psmith warmly. "It restores one's faith in humanity. The average citizen, presented with an expensive umbrella in a rainstorm, would have pawned it immediately to buy gin or tickets to the cinematograph. You, on the contrary, displayed a high moral integrity which does you infinite credit. I trust the rightful owner received it with proper gratitude?"

"I don't know," Eve confessed. "I didn't wait to see."

"A pity. The reunion between a man and his umbrella is one of the most sacred spectacles in life. It touches the chords." Psmith leaned against the railing and regarded her with solemn friendliness. "And how, if the question is not an impertinence, has the rest of your day progressed? Has fortune continued to shower its blessings upon you?"

"Remarkably well, thank you," said Eve. "I have just been interviewed for a post, and I was accepted."

"Capital," said Psmith. "The nation is to be congratulated. May one inquire into the nature of the enterprise? Are you to guide the destinies of an empire, or merely to instruct the young in the rudiments of algebra?"

"Neither," smiled Eve. "I am going down to Shropshire to catalogue a library in an enormous castle for an elderly earl who seems to be frightened out of his wits by his secretary."

A faint gleam flickered in Psmith's eye, but his composure remained unruffled.

"The feudal aristocracy," he observed, "is notorious for its secret sorrows. Even the proudest peers cower before their secretaries. It is the penalty of possessing an ancient name and large quantities of musty books. But you will bring sunshine into that darkened home. You will lighten the gloom of the castle corridors."

"I shall probably only raise a great deal of dust," said Eve. "And now I really must be going. I have a train to catch, and letters to write."

She turned to go, then paused and looked back at him with an amused smile.

"Are you never going to tell me your name?" she asked.

Psmith placed a hand over his heart and bowed with magnificent dignity.

"Names, my dear young lady, are clumsy, utilitarian things—mere tags tied to our coat-collars by unsympathetic parents. Let us remain ships that pass in the afternoon. Let me be remembered simply as a well-wisher who admired your hat and envied the ducks."

Eve laughed.

"You really are the most extraordinary person," she said. "Good-bye!"

"Farewell," murmured Psmith, raising his hat with a flourish as she turned and walked away towards the Mall.

He stood by the railing, watching the black bird-of-paradise feather until it was lost in the distant crowd.

Evening had settled over London when Psmith returned to the Drones Club. The street lamps were being lit along Dover Street, their yellow flames glowing softly in the twilight. Within the club, a tranquil hush prevailed, for the majority of the members had departed to dress for dinner or were already disporting themselves in the restaurants of the West End.

Psmith entered the smoking-room. It was entirely empty. The fire in the great hearth had burned down to a comfortable heap of red embers, casting long shadows across the leather armchairs and the quiet bookshelves. Psmith sank into a deep chair near the hearth, stretched his long legs before him, and reached down to touch the whangee handle of the twenty-pound umbrella which rested securely against the arm of the chair.

He took from his waistcoat pocket the small folded slip of paper which had accompanied the umbrella, opened it, and smoothed it with a gentle thumb.

"A girl of spirit," he murmured to the ceiling. "A girl of enterprise and resource. And she is going to Shropshire to catalogue a castle library."

The door of the smoking-room opened, and the hall porter stepped in with measured tread.

"You are wanted on the telephone, Mr. Smith," said the porter. "A Mr. Jackson is on the wire, sir."

"Ah, Comrade Jackson," said Psmith, rising. "The voice of friendship calls."

He walked out to the telephone booth in the hall and lifted the receiver.

"Hullo, Mike, my lad," said Psmith into the instrument.

"Hullo, Psmith," came the familiar, honest voice of Mike Jackson from the other end. "I just rang up to see how you were getting on. Did you settle things with your uncle?"

"I did," replied Psmith. "The finny tribe and I have parted company for ever. Corfe and Psmith no longer functions as a harmonious entity. I have shaken the fish-scales from my feet and am now a gentleman of leisure."

"Good," said Mike. "And did you go to Miss Clarkson's agency?"

"I contemplated doing so, Comrade Jackson, but my steps were diverted by the hand of Fate. Strange and romantic events have been taking place in the metropolis."

"You always talk rot," said Mike candidly. "Look here, Phyllis and I were talking about you this afternoon. Phyllis had an old school friend of hers round to tea yesterday, and she was telling me about her. She's in a frightful hole for money, poor girl, but she's just got a job cataloguing some peer's library in Shropshire—Blandings Castle, I think Phyllis said, belonging to Lord Emsworth."

Psmith straightened up slightly, his fingers tightening on the receiver.

"Indeed?" he said softly.

"Yes. Young Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's son, put her up for it. Phyllis says she's an absolute brick. They were at school together. She's got no money at all, but she's game for anything. Phyllis was laughing about a hat she bought—spent her last penny on some tremendous Paris hat with a black bird of paradise feather sticking out of it."

Psmith gazed into the mouthpiece with an expression of profound and reverent satisfaction.

"A bird of paradise feather," he repeated in a low voice. "And what, Comrade Jackson, did you say was the name of this admirable young lady?"

"Eve Halliday," said Mike. "Phyllis thinks the world of her. But I must ring off now, Psmith—dinner's ready. Let me know when you've found a job."

"I will, Comrade Jackson. My warmest regards to Mrs. Jackson."

Psmith hung up the receiver and stood for a moment in the quiet hall. Then, with slow and dignified steps, he returned to the empty smoking-room.

He walked over to the armchair by the dying fire and sat down. Outside, the dusk deepened into night, wrapping Dover Street in quiet shadows. Psmith leaned back in the stillness of the room, alone with the twenty-pound umbrella, his eyes fixed thoughtfully upon the glowing coals, softly repeating to himself the name Eve Halliday.

The volume I had taken down was an old treatise upon medical jurisprudence, bound in dark calf, its pages yellowed and smelling of damp mould. I carried it to the window of the library, where the early morning sun was already striking the panes with a dry, blinding glare. Flipping feverishly through the index until I found the heading I sought, I began to read.

What I read made my blood run cold. The symptoms of strychnine poisoning, as set forth in those dry, unemotional paragraphs, tallied with hideous accuracy with the terrible spectacle we had just witnessed in the bedroom upstairs: the sudden, unexpected onset of the attack; the fearful convulsions of the limbs; the agonizing rigidity of the muscles, throwing the body into that strange, arched posture where it rested solely upon the head and the heels; and, above all, the awful fact that the victim’s consciousness remained clear and acute almost to the very moment of dissolution. It was a dreadful picture. The memory of Mrs. Inglethorp’s staring eyes, and that last choked cry of “Alfred—Alfred——”, rose before me with unbearable vividness.

I shut the book with a shudder and replaced it upon the shelf. There was no longer any room for doubt in my mind. A foul and monstrous crime had been committed in this quiet English country house. And who could the author of it be? My suspicions flew instantly to Alfred Inglethorp—the smooth, black-bearded stranger whose presence had cast so dark a shadow over Styles ever since his marriage to the unfortunate lady. I recalled Evelyn Howard’s parting words to me, uttered with such fierce conviction before she left the house: “Watch him, Hastings! Keep your eyes open. He means murder!”

Good heavens, she had been right! And now the blow had fallen, precisely as she had foretold.

I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past six. Not a moment was to be lost. John had given me his consent, and I determined to take full advantage of it before his natural indecision, or Lawrence’s strange hostility, could intervene to stop me.

I slipped quietly out of the side door into the gardens. The air was already heavy and breathless, bearing none of that invigorating freshness that usually attends an English summer dawn. The storm that had threatened on the previous evening had passed away in a few distant rumbles of thunder, leaving the heat unimpaired. The lawn was grey with dew, and my boots left dark tracks behind me as I strode rapidly across the grass towards the carriage drive.

My mind was in a whirl of conflicting thoughts as I hurried past the silent lodge gates and turned into the high road. Why had Lawrence looked so petrified as he stared at the wall above the grate? What had he seen there that had frozen the blood in his veins? And what of Mary Cavendish, with her sudden, wild outburst upon the stairs: “No, no—not that—not that!” Had she, too, guessed the truth, or was there some darker secret that I could not fathom?

A brisk walk of three-quarters of a mile brought me to the village of Styles St. Mary. It was a picturesque, sleepy hamlet, with thatched cottages lining the winding street, and the square tower of the Norman church rising above the elms. At the far end of the village stood Leigh House, a square, neat building of weathered red brick, where Mrs. Inglethorp’s generous charity had established a little colony of Belgian refugees who had fled their ravaged homeland after the fall of Antwerp.

I opened the iron wicket gate and walked up the gravel path between the neatly trimmed box borders. Before I had reached the door, it was opened, and a familiar figure stood framed upon the threshold.

It was Hercule Poirot.

Never, I think, did any man present a more remarkable contrast to his surroundings. He was hardly more than five feet four inches in height, but he carried himself with an immense and quaint dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he invariably tipped it slightly to one side. His moustache was very stiff and military, swept upward in two magnificent, waxed curves, and the neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more excruciating pain than a bullet wound. At this early hour, when most men would have been in dishabille, he was fully dressed in a spotless black coat and striped trousers, his patent leather shoes shining like mirrors.

I sprang towards him, breathless and agitated.

“Poirot!” I cried. “Thank heaven you are up! The most frightful thing has happened at the Court—Mrs. Inglethorp is dead!”

He raised his hand with a quiet, arresting gesture. There was no surprise in his green eyes, only a profound and sombre gravity.

“Calm yourself, my dear Hastings,” he said in his curious, accented voice. “Come inside. Sit down, I pray you. Do not agitate yourself so terribly.”

I stared at him in utter bewilderment, following him into his small, scrupulously tidy parlour.

“You don’t understand,” I stammered, sinking into an armchair. “She died only an hour ago. We fear—we believe—she was poisoned!”

“I understand only too well, mon ami,” said Poirot quietly. “I already know that Madame Inglethorp is dead.”

“You know?” I gasped, completely taken aback. “How on earth could you know? Did someone come from the house?”

“It was Baily, the chauffeur from Styles,” replied Poirot, nodding his head. “He passed through the village in the motor-car to fetch Dr. Wilkins from his house. At the turn of the lane, opposite the blacksmith’s forge, he slowed down his machine to shout the terrible intelligence to old Jacques, who was tying up the runner beans in our front garden. Jacques came running to me at once with the tidings.”

Poirot paced slowly across the room, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent in sorrowful reflection.

“She was our benefactress,” he murmured softly. “When we were cast out, homeless and destitute, wandering in a strange land, it was her hand that was stretched forth to succour us. She gave us this roof over our heads; she gave us bread; she gave us back our dignity. And now she is struck down—suddenly, terribly, in the night. Ah, no, it is too cruel!”

He turned upon me with sudden, unexpected energy, his eyes flashing with a green fire.

“Tell me, Hastings—you spoke of poison? Why do you say that?”

I recounted to him, as clearly and concisely as my agitation permitted, the horrifying events of the night: the locked doors, our breaking through the connecting room from Alfred Inglethorp’s chamber, the violent convulsions, the terrible arching of the spine, and Dr. Bauerstein’s ominous pronouncement that the seizures were tetanic in character. Nor did I omit to mention Alfred Inglethorp’s absence from his bed, or John’s consent to a post-mortem examination.

Poirot listened with the closest attention, not interrupting me by a single word, though his eyebrows rose slightly when I spoke of the locked doors and the empty bed.

When I had finished, he stood silent for a moment, stroking his magnificent moustache.

“It is grave,” he said at last. “Very grave. And Monsieur John—he has given his permission for me to investigate?”

“He has left it entirely in my hands,” I assured him eagerly. “He was reluctant at first, fearing publicity and scandal, but I persuaded him. You will come at once, won’t you?”

“Certainly I will come,” said Poirot with simple dignity. “I owe it to the memory of that good lady. If an evil hand has struck her down, Hercule Poirot will not rest until the truth is established. But we must proceed with order and method, my friend. Always the order and the method! I have a few small arrangements to complete here—my toilet to finish, my little case of instruments to fetch from my chamber, and two words of instruction to leave with Monsieur le Curé. Go back to the house, Hastings. Walk on ahead. Do not speak of what you suspect to anyone; keep your eyes wide open, your ears alert, and wait for me near the entrance. In twenty minutes I shall be at your side.”

Seeing that he was not to be hurried, I complied with his wishes. I took my leave of him and hastened back along the road to Styles Court. The sun was now climbing steadily into a brassy sky, and a shimmering haze hung over the meadows. My heart was beating high with excitement. The adventure had begun, and with Poirot at my back, I felt confident that the mystery would soon be unmasked.

When I re-entered the house through the side door, a strange, unnatural silence seemed to pervade the place. I crossed the hall towards the morning-room, but before I reached the door, the sound of raised voices from within arrested my footsteps.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Standing before the empty fireplace, with his back to the mantelpiece, was Alfred Inglethorp.

He looked precisely as he always did, and yet to my eyes there was something unspeakably sinister about his appearance. His long, thick black beard gave him a strange, foreign aspect; his gold-rimmed pince-nez glittered cold and impenetrable upon his high nose; and he wore the same absurdly heavy frock-coat and patent leather boots that seemed so ridiculously out of place in the country. He held a black-bordered handkerchief in his hand, and his head was bowed in an attitude of profound, pious grief.

John Cavendish was standing near the window, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his face pale and set in lines of rigid disgust. Lawrence sat at the writing-table, nervously tapping a paper-knife against his knuckles, while Mary stood near the bookcase, motionless and watchful as a statue.

“I tell you, John,” Alfred Inglethorp was saying in his deep, unctuous voice, “the shock has completely unnerved me. When I reached the house just now and heard the terrible news from the servants, the ground seemed to open beneath my feet. My poor, dear Emily! To think that she should be snatched away thus, in the very prime of her useful life, while I was absent from her side!”

John did not shift his gaze from the floor. His voice, when he spoke, was icy and cutting.

“It was certainly unfortunate that you were absent, Alfred. We required your presence rather urgently during the night. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell us where you were?”

Alfred Inglethorp sighed deeply and dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief.

“Alas, that I should have to speak of my own petty ailments at such a solemn hour!” he murmured sanctimoniously. “You know that I walked down to the village yesterday evening with Dr. Bauerstein. We parted at the gate of his lodgings at a quarter to ten. By that time, the heat of the evening and the strain of the day had brought on one of my most excruciating neuralgic headaches. My temples were throbbing like sledgehammers. I felt that if I went to bed, I should simply toss in agony and disturb dear Emily’s rest. I decided that a brisk walk across the common in the night air was the only remedy.”

“A walk that lasted all night?” inquired John with biting sarcasm.

“By no means,” replied Inglethorp smoothly. “The walk refreshed me, and the pain began to subside. I turned my steps homeward, and it was, I suppose, somewhere about half-past one when I reached the porch of this house. I put my hand into my pocket to draw out the latch-key, and to my utter dismay, I found that it was missing! I had dropped it somewhere in the grass along the footpath across the common.”

He paused, looking round the room with an air of injured innocence.

“What was I to do? The house was plunged in darkness. Knowing how fragile Emily’s nervous system was, and how easily she was startled from her sleep, I could not bring myself to ring the night-bell and arouse the household. I would have suffered any discomfort rather than risk alarming her. I therefore walked round to the garden, entered the rustic summer-house at the edge of the bowling green, and lay down upon the wicker settee, drawing an old carriage rug over myself. I must have fallen into a heavy, exhausted sleep, for I heard nothing until seven o’clock this morning, when I was awakened by the sounds of the garden-boy raking the gravel. I came round to the back door, found it unlocked, and learned the dreadful truth from the cook.”

A heavy silence fell upon the room. John made no answer, but the contempt in his eyes was unmistakable. Lawrence continued to stare down at the blotting-pad, while Mary looked steadily out of the window.

At that moment the door opened, and Dorcas, the elderly parlourmaid, entered the room carrying a salver with a cup of hot tea, which she carried towards Mary. But as her eyes fell upon Alfred Inglethorp, she stopped dead in the middle of the carpet. A look of honest indignation spread over her respectable features.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, addressing John, “but I could not help overhearing what Mr. Inglethorp was saying as I came down the passage.”

John looked up quickly.

“What is it, Dorcas?”

The maid turned her eyes upon Alfred Inglethorp. There was a trembling firmness in her voice.

“You say, sir, that you lost your latch-key upon the common last night, and could not enter the house?”

“I did, Dorcas,” said Inglethorp with smooth condescension. “It was a most unfortunate accident.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but that cannot be,” said Dorcas plainly. “When I came down at six o’clock this morning to unbolt the front door and draw the blinds in the hall, the latch-key was lying right there in the brass card-tray on the hall table. I picked it up with my own hands, and put it on the hook behind the front door, wondering why you had left it lying about.”

Alfred Inglethorp’s face underwent an extraordinary change. The unctuous calm vanished; his sallow cheeks turned a mottled, dirty grey, and for a second his eyes behind the pince-nez flickered with something like terror.

“You—you must be mistaken, Dorcas,” he stammered, his voice losing its oily resonance. “It must have been the spare key you saw.”

“No, sir,” retorted the maid with quiet defiance. “The spare key is kept in the pantry, hanging on its own brass hook, and there it hangs at this very moment. It was your key, sir, with the little notched ring attached to it. It was lying in the tray at six o'clock, as sure as I stand here.”

Before Inglethorp could invent a reply, John took a step towards him. His face was dark with suppressed fury.

“I think, Alfred,” said John in a low, dangerous voice, “that we have heard enough of your explanations for the present.”

Inglethorp opened his mouth as though to protest, but under John’s stern gaze he thought better of it. He turned away and sank into an armchair by the corner, pressing his handkerchief to his forehead with a trembling hand.

At that moment, the sound of a firm, light step upon the gravel outside reached my ears, followed by the ringing of the front door bell.

“Excuse me,” I said, and slipped quickly out of the room into the hall.

It was Poirot. He stood upon the mat, holding his little malacca cane in one hand and a small black leather case in the other. He had walked swiftly, but not a hair of his head was out of place, and his boots were as impeccably polished as when I had left him.

“Well, mon cher Hastings,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with suppressed inquiry. “What has happened since you returned?”

In a few hurried whispers, I told him of Alfred Inglethorp’s arrival, his story of having slept in the summer-house after losing his latch-key, and Dorcas’s startling contradiction.

Poirot listened with keen relish, his head cocked on one side like a robin’s.

“Aha!” he murmured. “The latch-key that was lost upon the common, and yet was resting quietly in the brass tray in the hall! That is very neat, very interesting. The good Dorcas—she has the eyes that see, and the memory that serves. C’est magnifique!”

John Cavendish came out into the hall at that moment, closing the morning-room door behind him. He looked haggard and worn, but he greeted Poirot with courteous cordiality.

“I am very glad to meet you, Monsieur Poirot,” he said, extending his hand. “Hastings has told me of your great reputation. It is a dreadful business—a terrible calamity. The doctors have agreed upon a post-mortem, which will take place tonight. Meanwhile, Dr. Bauerstein locked the room upstairs and gave me the keys. Here they are.”

He drew two heavy brass keys from his waistcoat pocket and handed them to the detective.

“I place them in your hands, Monsieur Poirot,” John continued. “I only ask that you will exercise the utmost discretion. We wish to avoid all unnecessary publicity.”

“You may rely upon me implicitly, Monsieur Cavendish,” said Poirot, bowing with great ceremony. “Hercule Poirot does not shout from the housetops; he works in the silence. We seek only the truth.”

Just then, a light step sounded on the stairs, and we all turned. Cynthia Murdoch was coming slowly down the broad staircase.

The poor girl looked utterly crushed and unlike her usual bright, vivacious self. Her face was as white as paper, her eyes were heavy and dull with dark purple shadows beneath them, and she moved with an unnatural, lagging languor, as though she were still struggling against the effects of an overwhelming stupor.

Poirot’s eyes fastened upon her instantly. He stepped forward with a profound, sympathetic bow.

“Mademoiselle Cynthia,” he said, in a voice of the gentlest compassion. “Permit an old man to express his profound sorrow. You have suffered a terrible shock.”

Cynthia paused on the bottom step, supporting herself against the carved newel post. She looked at him with dazed, uncomprehending eyes.

“It is so horrible,” she whispered, her lips trembling. “I cannot believe it. Only yesterday she was so full of life... and now...”

Poirot regarded her with an earnest, searching gaze. Then, stepping a fraction closer, he said:

“Mademoiselle, I will not fatigue you with many questions. But tell me this one thing: had you taken any medicine or sleeping draught last night before you retired to rest?”

Cynthia shook her head slowly, a look of faint surprise crossing her pale face.

“No, Monsieur Poirot,” she answered clearly. “Nothing of the sort. I never take sleeping draughts of any kind. I was very tired after a long day’s work at the hospital dispensary, and Mary kindly brought me a cup of hot cocoa about ten o'clock, but I took no medicine whatever. Yet I slept so heavily—so unnaturally heavily—that even when Mary shook my shoulder in the night, I felt as though I could not drag myself out of the stupor.”

“Merci, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot softly, with another low bow. “That is all I wished to ask. Go and rest yourself, I beg of you.”

He watched her as she walked slowly across the hall towards the morning-room. As soon as the door had closed behind her, he turned to me, his eyes shining with a strange, green luminescence.

“Come, Hastings,” he said briskly. “Now to the scene of the tragedy!”

We mounted the stairs together, our footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. At the end of the corridor in the right wing, Poirot halted before the door of Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom. He inserted the key into the lock, turned it smoothly, and pushed the door open. We stepped inside, and Poirot immediately turned the key in the lock behind us, shutting out the rest of the world.

The atmosphere in the room was close, heavy, and oppressive. The blinds were still drawn, but the brilliant morning sun filtered through the yellow holland fabric, casting a sickly, jaundiced light over the scene. The faint, sweetish odour of chloroform, which Dr. Bauerstein had evidently used in his vain efforts at resuscitation, mingled unpleasantly with the stale air and the faint scent of dried lavender.

Upon the four-poster bed lay the motionless form of Mrs. Inglethorp, covered entirely by a white linen sheet. The sight filled me with an involuntary shudder of awe.

Poirot did not approach the bed immediately. He stood by the door, his sharp, bird-like eyes darting in every direction, absorbing every detail of the room with astonishing rapidity.

Near the bed, the small night-table lay overturned upon its side, precisely as it had fallen during the poor lady’s dying convulsions. Beside it, upon the carpet, lay the shattered fragments of a coffee-cup and saucer, surrounded by a dark, dried stain.

“Look, Poirot!” I whispered, pointing to the broken china. “The coffee! Alfred Inglethorp brought her that coffee last night after dinner. She carried it up to bed with her.”

Poirot shook his head with a faint smile, but made no reply.

He walked methodically round the perimeter of the room. He examined the door leading into Alfred Inglethorp’s chamber—the heavy oak door which John and I had burst open. The woodwork of the lock was splintered and broken, the bolt still protruding from the edge of the door. Next, he turned his attention to the second connecting door, that which led into Cynthia Murdoch’s room. He stepped up to it, inspected the heavy iron bolt at the top, and then the one at the bottom. Both bolts were firmly shot into their sockets.

“You see?” I said. “Both doors were bolted on the inside, and the corridor door was locked. The poor lady was completely cut off from help.”

Poirot murmured something inaudible in French. He turned towards the fireplace.

Suddenly, I remembered Lawrence’s extraordinary behaviour during the night.

“Poirot!” I exclaimed eagerly. “There is one thing I must tell you. When we broke into the room, and John ran to light the gas, I turned to look at Lawrence. He was standing near the door, holding his candle. He was as white as a corpse, his hands were trembling, and his eyes were glued with a look of absolute horror upon the mantelpiece or the wall above it! He looked like a man who had seen a ghost. I looked in the same direction, but I could see nothing unusual whatever.”

Poirot spun round, his eyes fixed on me with intense interest.

“You are sure of that, Hastings? He stared at the mantelpiece?”

“I am positive of it.”

Poirot strode swiftly across to the fireplace. The hearth was cold, containing only the grey, feathery ashes of a small fire that had burned itself out on the previous night. Upon the mantelpiece stood a row of ordinary ornaments: two brass candlesticks, a couple of china shepherdesses, a small travelling clock in a leather case, and an empty medicine bottle.

Poirot examined each of these objects in turn, picking them up with delicate fingers, scrutinizing them through a small magnifying-glass which he drew from his pocket, and replacing them with exquisite precision in the exact spots from which he had taken them. Finding nothing to arrest his attention, he dropped upon his knees before the grate.

He peered into the ashes, sifting them lightly with a small pair of nickel-plated tweezers from his case. Then he turned his attention to the fender and the carpet immediately surrounding it.

All at once, he uttered a sharp, guttural cry of satisfaction.

“Aha! Mon Dieu! What have we here?”

He leaned forward, his nose almost touching the carpet near the corner of the heavy brass fender. With the utmost care, using his tweezers, he extracted something that was wedged tightly between the edge of the fender and the floorboards.

He rose to his feet and stood before me, his eyes glittering like two emeralds.

“Look, Hastings!” he said in a whisper of suppressed excitement.

He held out his palm. Resting upon the pink skin of his hand was a small, charred fragment of stiff cardboard, no larger than a postage stamp. It was blackened and curled by the action of heat, and one edge had been entirely consumed by fire, but upon its surface I could distinguish a minute smear of dark, purple grease, and a single, tiny corner of printed lettering that looked like the figures “19”.

I stared at it in profound perplexity.

“What on earth is it?” I asked, looking up into his face. “Is it a clue? Does it prove who did it?”

Poirot closed his fingers slowly over the little charred fragment, a strange, enigmatic smile playing about his thin lips.

“It is a very small thing, my friend,” he murmured softly, gazing at me with his head tilted to one side. “A thing of nothing at all, n'est-ce pas? And yet, it tells me that when a man sets out to build a wall of stone, he should take care that he does not leave the key of the gate hanging upon the outside.”

I stared at him, utterly bewildered. I had not the faintest idea what he meant.

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere, and hundreds of observers in the southern counties testified to the beauty and splendour of its flight. I myself did not see it at the moment of its passage across the heavens, for I was sitting in my study at work upon that very paper on moral evolution of which I have spoken, with the blinds drawn against the night air. But towards two o’clock, being troubled by a singular restlessness and the warmth of the room, I rose and opened the window that looked out towards the pine woods of Ottershaw.

The air outside was sweet and extraordinarily still. Not a leaf stirred in the garden below, and above the dark, serrated crests of the trees the sky was a deep, velvet obscurity dusted with familiar stars. Then, without the slightest warning or rumble of atmospheric concussion, the entire landscape was illuminated by a blinding greenish glare. Every chimney, every gable, every tiny twig of the hedgerow across the lane stood out with an uncanny, instantaneous sharpness, etched in a ghastly brilliance that seemed neither daylight nor fire. It lasted perhaps two seconds. Looking instinctively upward, I caught sight of a dazzling streak of fire—not yellow like ordinary flame, but of an intense, luminescent emerald—darting downwards at a steep angle towards the low-lying common between Ottershaw and the Thames. It passed with a faint, low whistling sound, a thin hiss like the passing of an enormous rocket, and vanished behind the dark ridge of the woods. Almost immediately there followed a dull, muffled thud, a vibration rather felt through the floorboards than heard with the ears, like the distant fall of a heavy piece of artillery, followed by an utter and profound silence.

I leaned upon the windowsill, peering into the blackness, expecting every moment to see the flicker of a conflagration among the pines. But no flames broke out; only a faint pallor of mist or smoke seemed to gather slowly above the trees where the thing had descended, and after waiting twenty minutes in vain for any further sign, I closed the sash and went to bed, full of that mild, detached wonder with which an educated man in those peaceful days regarded any unusual celestial display. A shooting star, I thought, of extraordinary magnitude—an aerolite of exceptional mass that had buried itself deep in the Surrey sand. It never for an instant occurred to me that this incandescent wanderer had any connection with those strange puffs of fire we had watched upon the disc of Mars.

In the morning, when the maid brought down the tea, she was full of the news. The milkman, it appeared, had heard the great shock on his rounds from Chertsey, and had met a drayman who declared that a thunderbolt had fallen upon the common land and set the gorse afire. At breakfast I spoke of what I had seen to my wife. She was inclined at first to treat the matter with the gentle scepticism with which women of quiet domestic habits often receive the violent accidents of nature, but the freshness of the summer morning was inviting, and after some little persuasion she agreed that we should take an early stroll together and see whatever there was to be seen before the heat of the day became oppressive.

We set out shortly after eight o’clock. The morning was clear and bright, with a soft breeze blowing out of the west, and the larks were singing high over the heather. As we walked along the lane leading out towards the road between Chertsey and Ottershaw, we found the countryside in its usual placid state: a cart laden with vegetables rattled past us towards the railway station, the carter touching his cap with phlegmatic indifference; an old man was trimming a hawthorn hedge with methodical strokes; and in the distance the bells of a church were chiming. Yet, as we approached the edge of the common, where the land falls away into a shallow, boggy basin that had once been dug for gravel and brick-earth, we observed a thin column of white vapor ascending steadily into the blue sky.

It was not the dark, pungent smoke of burning peat or pine needles, but clean, dense steam. It rose in lazy curls, drifting off and dissolving against the sunlit greenery of the opposite bank.

“It must have fallen into the water,” my wife remarked, taking my arm. “Look how it boils.”

We quickened our pace, picking our way through the damp heather and round the clumps of furze, until we reached the crest of the old pit. Below us lay an extraordinary scene of miniature desolation. The hollow, which was normally a quiet, weed-grown depression filled with winter drainage and surrounded by alder bushes, had been violent and abruptly transformed. A great sheet of muddy water, perhaps sixty or seventy yards across, occupied the centre of the excavation, but the southern bank had been ploughed through as if by the stroke of a titan’s spade. Great clods of gravel and yellow clay had been hurled outward twenty paces into the ferns, splintering two young birch trees to matchwood and scalping the turf from the sandy soil.

And there, in the very middle of this flooded pit, half-submerged in the churned and discoloured water, lay the Thing itself.

At first glance it was difficult to determine its shape or nature. The greater portion of it was buried in the mud and the turbid pool, but a huge, rounded mass protruded several feet above the surface, glistening wetly through the vapour that wrapped it round. An enormous cloud of steam was blowing incessantly from its dark grey flanks, rising with a constant, subdued hissing, like the noise of a locomotive discharging waste steam under pressure. The water all around it was in a state of violent, bubbling agitation, frothing with dirty foam and throwing up little spurts of scalding spray, so that the reek of hot mud and boiled pond-weed was almost suffocating.

Standing on the firmer gravel at the lip of the bank, with his spectacles pushed up onto his forehead and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his tweed jacket, was a solitary figure. I recognised him at once. It was Ogilvy, the astronomer. He had evidently walked over from his house at Ottershaw at the first report, and was staring at the half-drowned mass with an expression of the most intense, abstracted concentration.

“Hullo, Ogilvy!” I shouted as we descended the sandy path. “Is that your midnight visitor?”

He turned round sharply at the sound of my voice, blinking in the bright sunlight. His face was flushed with exertion, and his boots were thickly plastered with yellow clay.

“Ah! It is you,” he exclaimed, with that quick, nervous energy that always characterised him. “Look at it! Did you ever see such a thing in your life? A celestial windfall—a veritable windfall! It must have fallen between one and two this morning. Henderson telegraphed to me from Weybridge, but I was out on the common before six. Look at the size of it! It must weigh thousands of tons!”

“An aerolite?” I asked, guiding my wife across a slippery patch of loam to where he stood.

“An aerolite, of course!” he replied, gesturing impatiently towards the water. “What else could it be? The most magnificent, the most colossal meteorite that has ever struck the soil of Europe—perhaps the world! It has smashed right into the old clay-hole. But the water is our salvation, my dear sir. Had it fallen upon dry peat or among the cottages, we should have had half the countryside in ashes before sunrise. As it is, the pond is cooling it down. Listen to the hiss of it!”

We stood side by side, watching the billowing steam. My wife drew her skirts away from the wet grass and gazed at the thing with wide, uneasy eyes. As the breeze parted the white clouds for a moment, the dark contour of the object was revealed more distinctly. It was not jagged, nor irregular, as I had always supposed meteorites to be. The part that projected above the boiling water showed a smooth, curiously curved surface, almost like the side of an enormous sunken boiler or the hull of a stranded ship. Its surface was encrusted with a thick, blackened scoria, a rough greyish-brown skin that seemed to be cracking and flaking away in little patches as the cold water lapped against it, revealing beneath it a dull, leaden-coloured sheen that had an almost metallic uniformity.

“It is extraordinarily regular,” I said, pointing this out to him. “Look at that curve, Ogilvy. It looks almost... fabricated. It has the outline of a cylinder rather than a boulder.”

Ogilvy laughed, a short, sharp bark of scientific derision. “Fabricated! My dear fellow, your imagination is running away with you. The friction of the air! When a cosmic mass enters our upper atmosphere at forty miles a second, the compression of the air before it generates a heat that melts the surface like wax. The molten material flows backward, smoothing off every angle, rounding every corner, until the whole mass assumes an aerodynamic contour. You might as well call a hailstone fabricated because it is spherical! No, no—it is a metallic aerolite, probably an alloy of iron and nickel, such as we know exists in immense quantities throughout the solar system.”

“And the timing?” I ventured, feeling a strange, persistent prickle of apprehension which I could not entirely justify. “You remember what we saw through your glass three nights ago? The jet of incandescent gas from the Martian disc? And the second one that very midnight? Could not this be—could it not be some missile from them?”

Ogilvy turned to me with an expression of tolerant amusement, adjusting his glasses upon his nose. “Still harping upon the Martians! My dear philosopher, let us keep our heads. Consider the mathematics of the thing! To project a body across forty millions of miles of empty space and hit a target so minute as this earth—why, the variation of a hair’s breadth in the initial velocity would carry it a million miles wide of the mark! And to imagine that living beings, conscious intelligences, could survive the concussion of being discharged from a gun, to say nothing of the frozen vacuum of space and the incandescent friction of our atmosphere—it is childish! It is impossible. Every law of biology, every deduction of physics is against it. No, this is an ordinary fragment of cosmic dust—extraordinary only in its bulk—that has been swimming in orbit about the sun for millions of years, until our planet chanced to intercept its path. It is a dead stone from the void.”

I did not answer him immediately. I looked again at the massive curve rising from the troubled water. A heavy flake of the outer crust fell away with a sharp *plop*, and a fresh burst of steam hissed forth as the water touched the newly exposed surface. The metallic sheen beneath seemed to me curiously un-mineral; it had the dead, pewter-like texture of turned steel. But Ogilvy spoke with all the weight of recognised authority, and in those days we had an unbounded faith in the finality of physical science. I told myself that he was undoubtedly right, and that my uneasy fancies were merely the legacy of our late-night vigils in the Ottershaw observatory.

By nine o’clock the news of the fall had spread into the village, and people began to arrive in twos and threes across the common. First came a couple of boys from the national school, who stood upon the edge of the pit throwing gravel at the steaming monster until Ogilvy shouted at them angrily and drove them back. Then a ditcher with a spade over his shoulder stopped to stare, open-mouthed, leaning upon the shaft of his tool as though mesmerised by the sight. A young fellow who was delivering bread for a firm in Chertsey left his horse and cart standing in the lane and came running over the heather, his white apron fluttering in the wind.

Presently there were thirty or forty people gathered upon the slopes of the hollow, talking in low, curious voices. The atmosphere was singularly like that of a bank-holiday excursion. A few men had brought their pipes, and a couple of dogs barked excitedly at the edge of the water, frightened by the bubbling scum and the intermittent hiss of the steam. Everyone seemed to regard the occurrence as a piece of extraordinary good luck—a free spectacle provided by Providence to enliven the dull routine of a Surrey summer.

Among the newcomers was a young farm labourer from near Woodham, a thick-set, red-faced lad named Henderson—no relation to the journalist—who seemed determined to display his courage before the growing crowd.

“It’s only an old lump of lead,” he declared loudly, laughing at the timid distance kept by the schoolboys. “I’ll wager a pint there’s nothing in it to hurt a man.”

“Stand back from the water, you fool!” cried Ogilvy, who was busy taking measurements of the crater with a tape-line. “The ground is soft, and the pool is nearly at boiling point!”

The lad only grinned, encouraged by the chuckles of several companions who were lounging upon the grass. Slipping down the clay bank with a clumsy agility, he jumped from one tussock of rushes to another, balancing himself over the treacherous mud until he was within arm’s reach of the protruding cylinder.

“Don’t touch it, John!” shouted an older man from the bank. “You don’t know what devilment is in it!”

“Devilment be hanged,” retorted the boy. He stretched out a broad, calloused hand, leaning forward over the steaming water, and laid his bare palm flat against the exposed flank of the mass, where the dark scoria had scaled away.

What followed happened with an appalling rapidity.

There was a sharp, sibilant sizzle, like a beefsteak dropped upon a white-hot griddle, and a tiny wisp of pale smoke curled up between the lad’s fingers. In the same fraction of a second, he uttered an ear-piercing scream of agony—a high, shrill, animal shriek that froze the laughter on the lips of the bystanders. He snatched his hand back with a violent wrench, lost his footing upon the greasy sod, and fell sideways into the warm mud at the margin of the pool.

A dozen men scrambled down the bank to his assistance. When they dragged him out onto the dry heather, he was rolling upon the ground, sobbing and writhing, clutching his right wrist with his left hand. I pressed forward through the crowd to look at him, my wife turning her face away in horror. The palm of the boy’s hand was dreadful to see: the skin had turned a dead, opaque white, puckered and charred, and great, watery blisters were already swelling up beneath the flesh. The intense heat of the metal, retained beneath that deceptive layer of grey ash, had seared him to the bone in an instant.

“I told you! I told you!” Ogilvy kept repeating, his voice trembling with agitation as he knelt beside the lad and bound up the injured hand with his own linen handkerchief. “The interior of the mass must still be at a furnace temperature! It has come through thirty miles of atmosphere at white heat—the exterior has cooled in the water, but the core is incandescent! Get him to a doctor at once. Take him into Chertsey in the baker’s cart.”

The incident cast an immediate chill over the assembly. The careless holiday humour vanished in a moment, replaced by a sullen, uneasy awe. The crowd retreated several paces from the edge of the pit, leaving a wide, clear space around the smoking crater. We stood in little hushed groups, watching the sullen grey mass as it hissed and bubbled in its bath of mud. It seemed no longer a mere stone, but an active, threatening presence, nursing an inextinguishable heat within its monstrous ribs.

By eleven o'clock the sun had mounted high into the heavens, beating down fiercely upon the open heath and drawing a hot, resinous scent from the pines. The crowd, however, instead of dispersing, continued to grow with every passing quarter of an hour. The news of the young carter’s injury had run through Chertsey and Ottershaw like wildfire, acquiring on its way the most extravagant exaggerations; it was whispered that the fallen star was a volcano of burning sulphur, that it was sinking through to the centre of the earth, that it was glowing red in the dark depths of the water. Gig-drivers, bicyclists in straw hats, ladies with sunshades, and workmen from the brickfields were streaming along the road, until the lane was choked with vehicles and the slopes of the sandpit were black with people.

My wife was pale and evidently exhausted by the heat and the distressing scene we had witnessed. She clung to my sleeve, casting nervous, apprehensive glances down at the boiling water.

“Let us go home,” she whispered. “There is something unnatural about it. It frightens me.”

“There is nothing to fear, my dear,” I said, though my own mind was far from easy. “It is merely an aerolite, as Ogilvy says. But the sun is very hot, and this crowd is becoming rough. You must go back to the house, out of the dust.”

At first she hesitated, unwilling to leave me behind, for she saw that I had no intention of quitting the spot; but I was firm. I walked with her as far as the high road, where the shade of the tall elms offered some relief from the glaring light, and saw her safely past the press of arriving carts.

“You will come home soon?” she asked, looking back at me from the gate of the lane.

“In an hour or two,” I promised. “I must stay and see what Ogilvy makes of it when the water cools. Go and rest, and do not worry.”

She waved her hand to me and turned down the path towards Maybury, her light summer dress showing bright against the green hedges until the bend of the road hid her from my sight.

I stood for a moment watching the dust settle where she had walked, listening to the remote, mellow strokes of the church clock at Chertsey chiming the hour of noon. Then I turned about and walked back towards the crowded common, where the white steam was still mounting relentlessly into the midday heat, to take my place once more beside the boiling pit.

The sandy path offered an insecure footing, and Madame Ratignolle leaned with genuine heaviness upon the young man’s arm. Her physical condition, of which she was continually mindful, rendered any exertion an occasion for languor and small, plaintive murmurs. Robert adapted his step to hers with the easy good nature that made him a favorite among the women at the resort. He carried her diminutive roll of needlework in his free hand, twirling it occasionally between his brown fingers as he chatted of trivial matters—the temperature of the water, the arrival of the next lugger from the city, and the indolence of the Mexican boatmen he had heard about from a sailor in New Orleans.

“She is an exquisite creature, your friend,” Robert observed suddenly, turning his head to look back toward the distant bath-houses, where Edna’s pale dress fluttered like a white moth against the gray timbers of the porch. “There is something about Mrs. Pontellier that makes a man want to keep silent and watch her. She walks among us as though she were listening to music—some strange, beautiful music that none of the rest of us have ears to hear.”

Madame Ratignolle laughed her soft, rich laugh, which had in it nothing mocking, only the ripe amusement of a woman who understood men’s poetic exaggerations.

“Edna has a charming face,” she admitted, shifting her parasol to shield her delicate cheek from the glare that beat up from the white sand. “Though she has not the softness of our Creole women. Her reserve is formidable, Robert. At times I fancy she does not even know herself what she is thinking.”

“Perhaps that is why one watches her,” he answered lightly. “One waits to see what she will discover.”

They reached the cottage where Madame Ratignolle lodged, and Robert left her at the foot of the gallery with a bow that was half chivalric and half comical.

It was during the siesta hours of the afternoon, when the heat hung like a stifling vapor over the island and the stillness was broken only by the persistent hum of the mosquitoes and the distant, sonorous roar of the Gulf, that a boy in a faded blue shirt came up the steps of the Pontellier cottage. He carried a yellow envelope, which he delivered into Edna’s hands with an indifferent, sleepy nod.

It was a telegram from Léonce in New Orleans. Edna tore open the paper with slender, sun-browned fingers that did not tremble. The message was brief and business-like, bearing the exact flavor of Monsieur Pontellier’s brisk correspondence: an unexpected turn in the stock market demanded his presence in the city over Sunday; he would not come out to Grand Isle until the following week; he trusted she and the boys were well and instructed her to see that Raoul was not permitted to eat green guavas.

Edna folded the paper along its creases and smoothed it out upon the small mahogany table in her room. A strange, unexpected sensation stole over her—a lightness that resembled relief, though she shrank from naming it so. Léonce’s absence presented itself not as a deprivation, but as an open space, a sudden widening of the horizon. The cottage seemed larger, the air within it less constrained. The children were asleep upon their cots under the white mosquito netting, their small limbs outflung in the total abandon of childhood, watched over by the faithful, silent quadroon nurse who sat by the window mending a torn pinafore.

Edna walked out onto the gallery. Across the stretch of burnt grass and low chamomile bushes, Madame Ratignolle sat on her own porch in a snowy peignoir, her golden hair unbound and hanging about her shoulders like a shining fleece. Seeing Edna, she beckoned languidly with her palm-leaf fan.

Edna crossed the small yard between their cottages. The glare had softened somewhat, though the heat remained oppressive and heavy with the scent of wild bay and salt water.

“You have had news from Monsieur Pontellier?” Adèle asked, her maternal instincts always alert to the domestic affairs of her friends.

“He is not coming this weekend,” Edna replied, seating herself upon the edge of the railing and looking away toward the line of water visible between the trees. “He is detained by affairs.”

“Ah, how you will miss him, *ma pauvre Edna*! A whole week without one’s husband—to me it would seem like an eternity. Alphonse never leaves me, never for a day, unless it is impossible to avoid it.” She sighed with comfortable complacency, smoothing the ruffles at her bosom. Then, as if recollecting something pleasant, her lips curved into an indulgent smile. “Robert spoke of you as we walked back from the beach this morning.”

Edna turned her head quickly, her dark eyes arresting and questioning. “Robert? What did he say?”

“Oh, some foolish, poetic notion such as young men like to indulge in. He said you walked among us as though you were listening to music—some strange music that none of the rest of us could hear.” Adèle laughed, delighted by the phrase even while dismissing it. “He is a boy, of course, full of extravagant sentiments. But it is true, Edna; you have a distant air at times. Even this morning, when you looked out upon the sea, I felt you were thousands of miles away from me.”

Edna did not answer. The words stayed with her, echoing in her ears with a curious vibration. She felt an inward tremor, a sudden, inexplicable thrill that brought a faint rush of color into her cheeks. To be seen in such a way—to have the hidden, wordless turbulence of her soul recognized, even carelessly, by another human being—was a revelation that both frightened and intoxicated her.

She excused herself presently, pleading a desire to walk while the afternoon was still young. She did not return to her cottage, nor did she seek the shade of the big live-oaks where Madame Lebrun was gossiping with an old French gentleman from the parish of St. James.

Instead, she went down toward the water alone.

The path through the chamomile was deserted. The sun was declining in the west, casting long, coppery rays across the water that turned the Gulf into a shimmering sheet of brass and gold. The stiff breeze of the morning had died away, and the waves broke upon the sand in slow, lazy swells, whispering against the shore with a soft, entreating murmur that seemed to invite the soul to lose itself in the vast solitude of the sea.

Edna unlocked the compartment of her bath-house. She took off her clothes quickly, letting them fall in a heap upon the bench, and put on her bathing suit—a dark, sleeveless garment of rough serge. She looked at her arms and shoulders in the dim light of the rough room; they were white and firm, marked by the sun where her collar had been left open.

All that summer she had suffered from a foolish, childish terror of the water. While the others laughed and shouted in the surf, swimming out with bold strokes or floating like gulls upon the swells, Edna had lingered timidly in the shallows, never venturing beyond the reach of some reassuring hand. Robert had tried repeatedly to teach her, urging her with gentle banter, but the cold clutch of dread had always seized her throat whenever the bottom slipped away beneath her feet.

Now, with no one watching, the dread did not come.

She walked out onto the hard, wet sand and into the water. It rose about her ankles, her knees, her waist, warm and enveloping like an immense caress. The touch of the sea seemed to reach into her very flesh, sensuous and murmuring. She did not pause or look back. She walked out until the water lifted her gently, effortlessly, from the sand.

Instead of the customary panic, a sudden, blinding ecstasy took possession of her. She leaned forward upon the water, threw out her arms, and struck out.

She was swimming.

It was only a few strokes—awkward, uneven, and breathless—but her body answered to her will; she moved through the water, supported by it, floating upon its treacherous bosom without fear. A feeling of exultation, of freedom and power, rushed through her veins like a torrent. She felt as if she had cast off some heavy garment that had bound her limbs for twenty-eight years. She wanted to shout, to laugh aloud at the simplicity of it, at the foolishness of all her past fears.

She turned and swam a few strokes toward the shore, her feet soon striking the firm ridge of sand beneath. She stood up, dripping, the water running from her hair and down her cheeks like salt tears. She stood alone between the vast expanse of the Gulf and the empty shore, her breast heaving with a deep, passionate satisfaction.

She would tell no one. The secret belonged to her alone, like the memory of the cavalry officer or the ocean of tall grass in Kentucky. To speak of it would be to diminish it, to offer it up to the trivial comments of Léonce or the good-natured raillery of Robert.

She went into the bath-house, dried herself, and put on her muslin gown and her wide straw hat. When she emerged onto the small gallery of the building, her heart was still beating with a quick, joyous rhythm.

The lady in black was sitting upon the porch of the adjoining compartment. Her dark garments fell in sombre, heavy folds about her gaunt frame, and her silver-mounted rosary beads clicked softly between her withered fingers as she murmured her afternoon prayers. Hitherto she had seemed as impersonal as a shadow, passing the guests on the paths with downcast eyes, a living memento of grief or devotion that no one ever approached.

Edna paused, adjusting her hat-pin, preparing to step down into the sand.

The lady in black ceased the movement of her beads. She raised her head and looked directly into Edna’s face with eyes that were hollow, dark, and singularly piercing.

“The water is deeper than you think, madame,” the woman said.

Her voice was harsh and cracked, like the sound of dry reeds scraping together in the marsh grass. There was neither anger nor kindness in the tone, only a flat, austere certainty that seemed to cut through the warm air like an icy breath.

Edna started, arrested by the unexpected sound. For a moment the two women looked at each other—the one young, flushed with the secret pride of her awakening body, the other old, withered, and enveloped in the perpetual weeds of mourning.

“I am not afraid,” Edna answered, the words escaping her before she had time to consider them.

The lady in black made no reply. Her eyes dropped back to the ivory crucifix in her lap, and her yellowed fingers resumed their slow, mechanical counting of the beads.

The evening that followed passed as other evenings passed at Grand Isle, yet for Edna every sound and sight seemed touched with a new significance. At dinner in the main dining-room, Madame Lebrun dispensed roast fowl and gumbo with her usual shrill hospitality, while Robert sat opposite Edna, teasing the children and recounting an absurd story about a runaway mule in the parish of St. Martin. He was full of life and high spirits, but he made no mention of leaving the island, nor did any shadow of departure trouble the easy pleasantry of his talk. When his glance met Edna’s across the table, she looked down at her plate, feeling the blood mount warmly to her temples as Robert’s words, repeated by Adèle, rang softly in her memory.

Later there was music in the parlor—a waltz played by one of the young women, followed by a chorus of voices singing old Creole ballads. Edna slipped away from the company while the singing was still at its height.

Now, night had fallen upon the island. A profound silence enveloped the cottage. In the inner room, the two little boys lay soundly sleeping under the white folds of the netting, their soft breathing rhythmic and untroubled.

Edna sat alone in the wicker rocker on the gallery. The night was dark and filled with the warm, heavy scent of the Gulf. Far out on the black water, the red eye of the lighthouse blinked with steady, patient regularity against the sky. The sea itself was unseen, but its great, murmuring voice rose through the darkness—whispering, inviting, never silent.

She rocked slowly to and fro, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. The memory of the water enfolding her body was still vivid and warm within her senses, but deeper still, vibrating in the quiet recesses of her mind, were the words Robert had spoken on the sunlit path: *She walks among us as though she were listening to music—some strange, beautiful music that none of the rest of us have ears to hear.*

She was sitting up straight now against the leather seat, looking out the window as the taxi rattled across the carrefour. The street lamps threw quick yellow bars across her face and across the collar of her jersey, and then the car went into the shadow of the trees along the boulevard and her face was dark again.

“Don’t let’s go to Montsouris,” she said. “Take me to the Select, Jake. I want to go to the Select.”

I tapped on the glass in front and the driver slid back the small window.

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

He grunted and swung the wheel hard, turning around in the wide sweep of the avenue. The tires squealed a little on the wet pavement where the water-carts had been spraying down the dust.

“It’s no good going out to a park in the dark,” Brett said. “What would we do in a park?”

“Walk around,” I said.

“No. Parks make me nervous. All those wet leaves and iron railings.”

She took out a cigarette from her gold case and held it between her fingers without lighting it. I struck a wax match and held it cupped in my hands against the draft from the window. The small flame flared yellow, smelling of phosphorus, and she leaned forward to take the light. Her eyes looked very clear and tired in the flare. She blew a long thin stream of smoke toward the roof of the cab.

“You’re a good chap, Jake,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

She leaned her shoulder against mine, but she did not look at me. Her shoulder was hard and firm through the wool jersey, and we swayed together as the cab took the corner by the Lion de Belfort.

“I met the most extraordinary man last week,” she said. “A man named Count Mippipopolous.”

“Never heard of him,” I said.

“Neither had I. Mike knows about him, I think, or somebody did. Zizi brought him around to the flat. He’s Greek, I think, or something of the sort. He has heaps of money. Simply rolling in it, darling.”

“What does he do with it?”

“Buys champagne. Gives people large sums to buy whatever they fancy. Offered to give me ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz with him.”

“Did you take it?”

“Don’t be an ass. Of course I didn’t take it. I told him I knew too many people in Biarritz.”

“You could have gone somewhere else.”

“He didn’t want to go somewhere else. He wanted Biarritz. He’s quite charming, really. Very polite and completely absurd. He has an enormous car with two men in uniform on the box.”

“It sounds very grand,” I said.

“It isn’t grand at all. It’s funny. He told me love was very simple for him because he had been everywhere and seen everything and now he only liked things that were quite straightforward.”

“Is that why he offered you ten thousand dollars?”

“Probably. He said values were the only things that mattered in life. He’s going to come and look me up one of these days.”

“You ought to let him,” I said. “You could buy a lot of hats.”

“I don’t want any hats,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of hats. Besides, he’s fat.”

The cab swung down the Boulevard Raspail and turned into Montparnasse. The café terraces were bright and crowded with people sitting under the awnings. At the corner of the Boulevard Raspail and the Boulevard du Montparnasse the street was choked with open taxis and horse-cabs and people walking in groups across the street. The lights from the Dôme and the Rotonde were bright and white on the sidewalks. The driver pulled into the curb opposite the Select and I paid him and gave him a tip. He looked at the tip, put it in his leather pouch without speaking, and drove off into the line of traffic.

We crossed the street and walked along the edge of the terrace. The Select was full. Inside, through the open front, men and women were crowded three deep along the zinc bar. Outside on the terrace every round table had people around it, and the waiters in their long white aprons were carrying round trays with saucers stacked high with drinks.

“Let’s sit outside,” Brett said. “It’s too damned hot inside.”

A waiter found us a table near the hedge at the far edge of the sidewalk. We sat down and I ordered a brandy and soda for Brett and a fines à l’eau for myself. Brett sat back in the wicker chair and looked out at the street. Her face had that tight, smooth look it always got when she had been drinking and had gone past it into being cold and clear-headed.

“It’s rather peaceful here,” she said.

“It’s noisy enough,” I said.

“No, it’s peaceful. Nobody knows what they want, so nobody bothers anybody else.”

The waiter brought the drinks. He set the saucers down first, clicking them on the marble top of the table, and then poured the soda into Brett’s glass from a heavy siphon. The bubbles came up fast and cold against the side of the glass. I drank some of the brandy and water. It was thin and tasted of burnt sugar, but it was cold.

“You looked very handsome dancing with that Belgian girl,” Brett said.

“She wasn’t Belgian. She was from Brussels.”

“Brussels is Belgian, darling.”

“It’s not the same thing to her,” I said.

“She looked as though she had a terrible toothache.”

“She has bad teeth,” I said. “She’s sensitive about them.”

“Poor thing. Why do you pick up such strange people, Jake?”

“I don’t know. I felt like having dinner with someone.”

“You could have had dinner with me.”

“You were having dinner with someone else.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Brett said. “You know that doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“Of course not,” I said.

I knew that it meant everything, and that she was lying to make it easier for both of us, and I hated the sound of my own voice agreeing with her.

She took a long drink from her glass and looked past me at the people walking along the sidewalk. A couple of girls in loose trench coats went by with two painters who were talking very loud in German. One of the painters wore sandals and had a large yellow beard.

“I left fifty francs with the patronne at the bal,” I said.

Brett looked at me over the rim of her glass. “What did you do that for?”

“In an envelope. For Georgette. In case she needed to pay for a cab or wanted to eat something.”

“You are an idiot,” Brett said softly. “You think you’re so hard-boiled, Jake, and you’re an absolute child about things like that.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“You’ll never see those fifty francs again. The patronne has probably bought herself a new apron with them already.”

“The patronne was very respectable,” I said. “She had a daughter.”

“Everyone has a daughter in France,” Brett said. “It’s part of the trade. Why don’t you go back and get it if you’re so worried about it?”

“I’m not worried about it.”

“Go on,” she said. “Go back and get your fifty francs. I’ll sit right here and watch the animals. I like watching them. I won’t move an inch.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Of course I’ll be all right. Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

“I can take a taxi down and be back in twenty minutes.”

“Take thirty. Take your time, darling. I’m quite happy with my drink.”

I stood up and left money on the table for the drinks and another saucer. “Don’t go off with any Greeks,” I said.

“Not unless they bring the two footmen,” she said, and smiled.

I walked down to the taxi rank by the metro station. There were three cabs waiting. The first driver was asleep across his front seat with his cap over his eyes. I woke the second one, an older man with a grey mustache and a dusty coat, and told him to go to the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève, near the Pantheon.

We drove down through the quiet streets behind the Luxembourg Gardens. It was much cooler now, and the smell of the chestnut trees in the garden came over the high stone wall as we passed along the Rue Auguste Comte. The leaves were thick and heavy with dust from the day, but the air moving through them had a damp, earthy smell. The city was shutting down for the night in these quarters; the iron shutters were pulled down tight over the shopfronts and the concierge doors were closed.

The cab climbed the hill slowly, gears grinding on the steep cobbles, and stopped at the foot of the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. I told the driver to wait.

The lights of the bal musette were still burning, but the music had stopped. The door stood open to let out the heat. I stepped inside.

The long room was nearly empty now. The smell of cheap wine and tobacco smoke and stale sweat hung thick in the warm air. Two workingmen in blue cotton overalls were standing at the zinc bar, drinking red wine from small thick glasses. The proprietor was sweeping the sawdust off the wooden dancing-floor with a long broom, pushing the scraps of paper and cigarette stubs into a pile in the corner. His accordion lay on its side on a wooden chair, the bellows folded shut.

Georgette was sitting alone at one of the long wooden tables near the wall. Her hat was off and lay on the bench beside her. She had a glass of beer in front of her, mostly flat, and she was tracing small circles on the greasy oilcloth of the table with the end of a matchstick.

The patronne was behind the bar, wiping down the zinc counter with a wet rag. When she saw me she stopped and reached into the pocket of her apron.

“Ah, Monsieur,” she said. “I have your envelope.”

She pulled it out and laid it on the zinc. It was clean and still sealed.

“Thank you,” I said. I took the envelope and put it into my jacket. “Did she not ask for it?”

“She asked nothing,” the patronne said, lowering her voice slightly. “Those young gentlemen all went away together in two taxis about a quarter of an hour ago. They were very noisy. One of them paid for her drinks, and then they left. She stayed.”

I took a five-franc note from my pocket and put it on the bar for the patronne. She took it and nodded.

“Merci, Monsieur. You are very polite.”

I walked over to the table where Georgette was sitting. She heard my footsteps on the floor and looked up. When she saw who it was her face did not change.

“Well,” she said in French. “The fiancé returns.”

“Hello, Georgette,” I said. I sat down on the wooden bench across from her. “How was the dancing?”

“Too hot,” she said. “Those boys are exhausting. They dance like waterbugs. One never knows where their feet are going.”

“They seemed to like you.”

“They liked each other,” she said flatly. “I was just a convenience. A sort of tablecloth for them to show their manners on.”

“I’m sorry I left,” I said.

“Why be sorry? You went off with your lady friend. She is very chic. English, no?”

“Yes. English.”

“They have good skin, the English women, but they are cold as codfish. All that rain, I suppose.” She looked down at her glass of beer. “What did you come back for? Did you leave your umbrella?”

“I came back to see how you were getting on.”

She made a small noise through her nose and pushed the glass away. “I am getting on very well. I am sitting in a cellar in the fifth arrondissement drinking warm beer. It is a splendid life.”

I reached into my pocket and took out the envelope with the fifty-franc note inside. I pushed it across the table toward her hands.

“Take this,” I said.

She looked down at the white envelope on the oilcloth. She did not touch it.

“What is that?”

“Money for a cab. And for your trouble.”

“I don’t want your charity,” she said. But she did not push it away.

“It’s not charity. It’s what I owe you for the dinner and the evening.”

“You paid for the dinner.”

“Take it anyway, Georgette. Don’t be silly.”

She looked at me for a moment with her small, sharp eyes. She saw that I meant it and that it did not matter to me one way or the other. She picked up the envelope, opened the flap with a dirty thumbnail, looked inside at the blue bank note, and then stuffed it into her small black leather handbag. She clicked the clasp shut.

“You’re a funny type, Jacob,” she said.

“I’m an ordinary type.”

“No. The ordinary ones are much meaner. Or they want something.” She picked up her hat from the bench and pinned it back on her head without looking in a mirror, pushing the long steel pin straight through the straw and her dark hair. “Are you going to buy me another drink?”

“I have to go,” I said. “I have a cab waiting outside.”

“Go on then,” she said, and her face went sullen again. “Go back to your English lady.”

“Good night, Georgette.”

“Good night,” she said, and turned her head toward the empty dance floor where the proprietor was still pushing his broom.

I walked out into the cool street. The air felt clean after the sour heat of the bal. My taxi was waiting with its meter ticking. I got in and told the driver to take me back to the Select.

When we reached the Boulevard du Montparnasse, Brett was still sitting at the corner table. She had ordered another drink and was talking to an American painter named Harvey Stone whom I knew slightly. Harvey was sitting slumped in his chair with his hands deep in his coat pockets, looking miserable and drinking black coffee. When I came up to the table he nodded without speaking and Brett smiled.

“Did you find your envelope?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I gave it to Georgette.”

“I knew you would,” Brett said. “You’re hopelessly sentimental, Jake.”

Harvey Stone looked up from his cup. “Everybody is sentimental about something,” he said in his thin, tired voice. “The trick is to find something that doesn’t cost too damn much.”

“Everything costs too much,” Brett said.

Harvey grunted, pushed himself up from the wicker chair, and walked off into the crowd on the sidewalk without saying good night. He walked with a slight hitch in his left leg, his coat collar turned up.

“He’s having a bad time,” I said, sitting down in his empty chair.

“He’s always having a bad time,” Brett said. “People who talk about money all the time make me dreadfully weary.”

“He doesn’t have any,” I said.

“Neither do I, darling, but I don’t sit around looking like an undertaker’s assistant.”

She looked at me and reached across the table and touched my sleeve. Her fingers were cold against my wrist.

“Let’s walk a bit,” she said. “I’m sick of sitting still.”

I paid the waiter for the drinks and we walked along the Boulevard du Montparnasse toward the Observatoire. The street was quiet here, away from the cafés. The big trees stood dark against the sky, and under our feet the pavement was dry and grey. The air had that thin, sharp feeling that comes before daylight in Paris, when the mist begins to rise from the river and the stone walls lose their warmth.

We turned into the Avenue de l’Observatoire. It was very wide and empty. The street lamps made long lines of yellow light down through the double row of trees, and far at the end the high façade of the Luxembourg was dark.

“It’s getting late,” I said.

“It’s early,” Brett said. “It’s tomorrow already.”

“How do you feel?”

“Rotten,” she said cheerfuly. “Simply rotten. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

She slipped her arm through mine and we walked in step. She walked like a boy, taking long, loose strides, her head held back.

“I’m going to leave Paris in a day or two,” she said after we had walked a block without speaking.

“Where are you going?”

“San Sebastian, perhaps. Or somewhere quiet. Anywhere where people don’t make such a row.”

“Are you going alone?”

She did not answer right away. We came to the stone balustrade above the fountain and stopped. The fountain was dry, and the stone horses looked pale and enormous in the dim light.

“Probably not,” she said.

“Who with?”

“Oh, don’t pry, Jake. It’s so tiresome when you pry.”

“All right,” I said.

We stood looking down into the dark basin of the fountain. A night-bus rumbled by on the boulevard behind us, its big yellow headlights cutting through the trees and then disappearing.

“I wish things were different,” she said.

“They aren’t different,” I said.

“No. I suppose not.”

She took her arm from mine and pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. A cool breath of wind came down from the gardens, rustling the dry leaves overhead.

“Get me a taxi, will you, Jake?” she said softly. “I think I want to go to sleep now.”

We walked out to the boulevard and waited by the curb. After a minute or two an old red taxi came rattling along from the direction of Port-Royal. I put up my hand and the driver pulled in to the curb with a hiss of his brakes.

I opened the door for her. She stepped in and sat back on the cracked leather seat, pulling her tweed skirt down over her knees. She looked out at me through the open window, her face pale in the light from the street lamp.

“You’ve been an angel, Jake,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Don’t look so grim.”

“I’m not grim. I’m just sleepy.”

“Go to bed,” she said. “Get some sleep. I’ll send you a petit bleu in the afternoon.”

“All right.”

She reached out her hand and I took it. Her fingers were very slender and cool. She pressed my fingers once, firmly, and then let go.

“Rue Delambre,” she told the driver.

The driver slammed his gear into place and the taxi pulled away from the curb, its red taillight bobbing as it went down the empty boulevard. I watched it until it turned the corner by the café, and then the sound of the motor died away into the distance.

The street was completely deserted now. It was that gray hour just before the sun comes up, when the sky turns pale like milk and the street lamps look dim and sickly against the stone buildings. The air was very cold on my face.

I walked down the Boulevard Saint-Michel toward the river. The concierge cats were slipping along close to the walls, darting into cellar gratings as I passed. In the square in front of the fountain of Saint-Michel two men were hosing down the cobbles, the water running in wide, shining sheets into the open gutters. The morning was breaking clear and gray over the rooftops.

I crossed the bridge onto the Île de la Cité. The Seine was dark and smooth below the parapet, moving silently between the stone quays. Out on the water a long line of barges was tied up against the wall, their low black hulls riding motionless in the current, with a faint curl of white smoke rising from the iron stovepipe on the cabin of the foremost boat. A lone fisherman was already sitting on the lower quay with his long bamboo pole resting on a wooden fork, watching his red-and-white quill float in the eddy by the bridge pier.

I stopped by the stone wall of the Quai des Grands-Augustins and leaned my elbows on the parapet to look down at the water. The river smelled cold and damp of silt and old stone. Across the river the towers of Notre-Dame were turning pink at their tops where the first light caught the stone, while the lower parts remained in blue shadow. A cart loaded high with green cabbages came rumbling across the bridge behind me, the horse’s iron shoes striking sharp sparks from the wet granite pavers. The carter was asleep on top of the load, his blue blouse pulled tight around his neck.

I watched the cart go past until it turned into the Rue de Rivoli on the other bank, and then I turned and walked slowly along the quai toward home.

She did not know how long she slept, but when she opened her eyes the rhythm of the train had changed. The steady, hypnotic rumble that had beaten in her ears had slackened to a slow, grating clatter, and the yellow light of an oil lamp overhead was flickering against the damp woodwork of the carriage ceiling. Outside, the gray sheets of rain had deepened into the blackness of evening, though water still ran down the glass in shivering ribbons.

"Wake up, child," Mrs. Medlock was saying, shaking her by the sleeve of her black mantle with no great gentleness. "We're here at last, and a more tiresome, drenching journey I never had the misfortune to take. Pull your hat straight. Your ribbons are all crushed into a cocked hat, and your hair looks like a mop."

Mary sat up stiffly and pushed her limp, yellowish hair from her forehead. Her limbs were cramped from the wooden seat, and she felt cold to the very marrow of her bones. She did not say she was sorry about her hair, because she was not in the least sorry, and she would have liked nothing better than to tell Mrs. Medlock that her own purple bonnet had tilted sideways during her nap, giving her stout, red face a singularly ridiculous appearance. But she only picked up her small black bag and followed the housekeeper out onto the narrow wooden platform as the train wheezed to a halt.

It was a tiny, dripping country station, with only two smoking oil lanterns hung under the eaves of a wooden shed to illuminate the gloom. Mary had expected to see a groom or a coachman waiting with an umbrella, as Mrs. Medlock had talked incessantly of the brougham that was to meet them. But the platform was almost deserted, save for a porter wheeling an empty barrow and a single tall figure standing motionless beneath the furthest lantern.

As they stepped forward through the puddle-strewn dark, Mrs. Medlock stopped dead in her tracks, so abruptly that Mary nearly collided with the jet fringe of her mantle. A sharp gasp escaped the woman's lips, and the purple flowers upon her head shook violently.

"Mercy on us!" she muttered under her breath, in a tone of sheer bewilderment. "It cannot be. It never is."

The figure under the lamp turned slowly toward them. He was wrapped in a long, heavy traveling cloak with a high collar turned up against the damp, but even under the folds of the thick cloth Mary saw at once what Basil had meant. One of his shoulders sat noticeably higher than the other, giving his body a crooked, uneven cast. He had dark, brooding eyes set deep beneath heavy brows, and a pale, drawn face that looked neither young nor old, but merely tired and bitter. There was something haughty and remote in the way he held his head, as if he were entirely unconscious of the rain beating against the brim of his hat.

It was Mr. Archibald Craven.

Mary stood very still, her small, thin hands clutched inside her black gloves, staring at him with her cross, sour face. She had never imagined that a hunchback would look like this; she had pictured something out of a fairy tale, grotesque and dwarf-like, like the creatures in old picture books. But this was a gentleman, tall and dark and gloomy, who looked as though he had not smiled for ten years.

Mrs. Medlock dropped a hasty, flustered curtsy, clutching her wet skirts.

"Sir! Mr. Craven!" she stammered, her brisk authority completely deserting her. "We—we did not look to find you here. Pitcher sent word you were not expected back from London until the morrow, and that the brougham—"

Mr. Craven did not let her finish. He scarcely seemed to look at her, though his dark eyes traveled slowly downward until they rested upon Mary.

His gaze was cold and heavy. For an instant, Mary felt an odd prickle of discomfort, as if he were looking not at her, but through her, searching for something that was not there and turning away disappointed when he failed to find it. He did not ask her if she was tired, nor did he offer his hand or speak any word of greeting. His features remained as hard and set as if carved from gray stone.

"Get in," he said.

His voice was low, harsh, and flat, with a dry, commanding ring that brooked no reply. He turned his back upon them before Mrs. Medlock could utter another syllable, walking with a long, uneven stride toward the rear of the station where the horses stamped in the darkness.

"Well, upon my word," Mrs. Medlock whispered, puffing with nervous agitation as she hurried Mary through the wicket gate. "In all my years at the Manor, I never knew him to meet a soul at the station—not a living soul! He must have come down on the afternoon express and waited in the village. Not a word to say for himself, either. Come along, child, don't stand dawdling in the downpour."

A closed carriage with two powerful horses stood waiting in the station yard. A silent coachman held the door open, and Mrs. Medlock hoisted Mary inside before climbing in after her, filling the small space with the strong smell of damp wool and wet jet trimmings. A moment later the door clicked shut, the carriage swung upon its heavy leather springs, and they rattled out into the road. Mr. Craven was nowhere to be seen; Mary supposed he was riding ahead on horseback or had taken some other conveyance, for he certainly had not entered the carriage with them.

For a time they drove between high hedgerows where the branches whipped against the window-panes like ghostly fingers. Then the hedges ceased, and the road began to climb steadily upward. The air inside the carriage grew colder, and the wind began to rise, whistling through the cracks of the glass with a mournful, piping sound.

Mary pressed her face against the pane, but she could see nothing at all. There were no houses, no street lamps, no trees, no fences. There was only a vast, pitching blackness that seemed to stretch out into eternity.

"What is that out there?" she asked suddenly. "There is nothing to see."

"It's the moor," answered Mrs. Medlock, settling herself into her corner with a heavy sigh. "Miles and miles of it, rolling on for leagues. There's nothing on it but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on it but the wild ponies and the sheep. When the wind gets up across it, as it's doing tonight, it sounds just like the sea howling."

"I hate the sea," said Mary crossly. "It makes people sick."

"Then you'd best not listen to it," Mrs. Medlock retorted. "For you'll hear plenty of it before you're done."

The carriage jolted violently over the rough, stony track. The horses labored against the steep incline, their hooves striking flint with sharp, ringing clicks. The wind screamed louder and louder, hurling gusts of rain against the carriage sides until the stout leather panels creaked and shuddered.

All at once, the carriage gave a tremendous lurch and came to a dead stop. The driver shouted something into the teeth of the gale, and the horses backed into the traces, snorting and tossing their heads in alarm.

"Now what's amiss?" Mrs. Medlock exclaimed, letting down the leather sash of the window and thrusting her head out into the storm. "Thomas! What's the matter with you?"

A gruff voice answered from the front through the roaring of the wind:

"A great sheep-fold wall's tumbled across t' road, missus! Loose stones an' a couple o' stray ewes jammed in t' ditch. I mun clear a gap or t' wheels'll take no purchase."

The coachman scrambled down from the box, his lanterns casting wild, swinging beams of yellow light across the wet turf. Mrs. Medlock leaned out further, calling instructions and complaining bitterly of the delay and the ruin of her bonnet.

Mary sat in the dark interior for a moment, her curiosity overcoming her stiffness. She had never been stopped on a wild road in the dark in all her life. In India, there had always been half a dozen servants running beside the palanquin or the carriage, carrying torches and clearing the path with loud cries. Here, there was nobody but a solitary man moving stones in the blackness.

Before Mrs. Medlock realized what she was about, Mary turned the brass handle of the opposite door. She pushed it open against the force of the wind and stepped down onto the carriage iron, and then directly onto the moor itself.

The moment her thin leather boots touched the earth, the moor wind struck her full in the chest. It was not like the hot, dry winds of India that brought fever and dust and made one feel limp and suffocated. It was cold, sharp, and fierce, and it smelled of wet earth, wild moss, and soaking grass. It caught her black cape and ballooned it behind her like wings, almost blowing her off her feet, but instead of frightening her, it sent a sudden, strange tingling through her veins.

She stood in the pitch dark for a minute, holding on to the carriage wheel with one small hand. All around her, as far as her eyes could strain to see, the darkness was absolute. There were no boundaries, no walls, no ceilings. The great sky above seemed to have tumbled down to meet the rolling wilderness beneath it, and the wind blew over it with a wild, triumphant roar, as if the earth belonged to nobody at all. For the first time in her nine years, Mary felt infinitesimally small, but she did not feel cross. She felt wide awake.

"Child!" shrieked Mrs. Medlock, pulling herself back inside and catching sight of the open door. "Lord save us, are you out of your senses? Get back in here this instant! Standing out in the black night on the open moor! You'll be blown into a bog and drowned before you know where you are!"

A stout, gloved hand reached out, seized Mary by the collar of her frock, and dragged her unceremoniously back onto the horsehair cushions. The door was slammed shut and bolted fast.

"Of all the contrary, perverse young ones!" Mrs. Medlock panted, shaking her umbrella at her in exasperation. "I never heard tell of such a thing. Jumping out into the rain like a wild cat! If you catch your death o' cold before Mr. Craven's even had time to see you in the daylight, I shall get the blame for it."

Mary said nothing. She wiped a streak of cold rain from her cheek with the back of her glove and sat back into her corner, staring stubbornly ahead. Her feet were damp, but her heart was beating faster than usual, and she found she did not mind Mrs. Medlock's scolding in the least.

Presently the carriage started forward again. The stones had been cleared, and after another half-hour of climbing and descending along the windswept road, they turned sharply through a pair of high stone pillars topped by carved stone animals whose outlines were lost in the night. The road smoothed out under the wheels, though the sound of great trees groaning and thrashing in the wind told Mary that they had entered an avenue of woods.

At last they drew up before a vast, sprawling mass of stone that seemed to have neither beginning nor end. It rose up against the dark sky with irregular gables, heavy stone mullions, and high chimneys, with only a solitary, dull yellow light burning in one ground-floor window.

"Here we are," said Mrs. Medlock, gathering her bags. "And glad I am of it."

They were hurried up a flight of broad stone steps and through a massive, arched doorway into a hall so immense and shadowy that Mary felt as if she had stepped into a cavern. The ceiling was lost in darkness, supported by carved timber arches, and the paneled walls were hung with suits of armor and old, dim portraits of men and women in stiff ruffs and velvet coats who seemed to stare down at her with severe, unblinking eyes. A vast stone fireplace stood at one side, but the embers in it were dying gray ash, and the hall felt almost as chilly as the moor.

"Don't look about you," Mrs. Medlock commanded. "You're not to loiter down here. Your rooms are in the West wing, and you're to go straight up."

They climbed a wide, slippery oak staircase that wound upward past high, narrow windows, and then traversed a long, dark corridor where the floorboards creaked beneath their tread. Every door they passed was shut and had a heavy iron lock upon it. At the very end of the passage Mrs. Medlock opened a heavy door and ushered Mary into a room.

It was a large, low-ceilinged apartment with a fire burning in a broad grate. A round table in the center was laid with a white cloth, and there was an old-fashioned horsehair sofa and several stiff chairs. Beyond it, through an open doorway, Mary could see a smaller bedroom with a four-poster bed hung with dark red curtains.

"This is your sitting-room," said Mrs. Medlock, untying her bonnet with a sigh of relief. "And that's your bedroom through there. You are to stay in these two rooms and not go wandering about the house. Mr. Craven won't have it, and neither will I."

Just then, a heavy tread sounded outside the door, and a manservant entered carrying a covered tray. He was a broad-shouldered country fellow with a round, red face, dressed in a plain, coarse woolen livery that looked somewhat too tight across his back. He set the tray down upon the table with a loud clatter and removed the pewter cover, revealing a plate of thick slices of roasted beef, a bowl of steaming potatoes, bread, butter, and a jug of hot milk.

"Theer," he said, wiping his broad brow with the cuff of his sleeve and glancing down at Mary with an easy, curious grin. "Missus Medlock said as tha'd be famished, coomin' all t' way ower t' wet moor. It's a reet foul neet out, an' tha looks as pinin' as a plucked sparrow. Eat thi meat whiles it's hot, lass, an' get some red blood into them cheeks o' thine."

Mary drew herself up to her full height and glared at him with the haughtiest disdain she could muster.

"I cannot understand a word you are saying," she said in her stiffest, coldest manner. "You speak like a native, only worse. Why didn't a maid bring my supper?"

The manservant's grin broadened, showing a row of strong, white teeth, and he looked across at Mrs. Medlock with an expression of great amusement.

"Eh, listen to t' little miss!" he exclaimed cheerfully, entirely unimpressed by her grand manners. "Speaks like a foreigner, she does! There's nowt wrong wi' Yorkshire tongue, my lady, an' as for maids, they've their hands full down i' t' scullery. Tha mun take what's browt thee, or go to bed wi' an empty belly."

"That will do, John," Mrs. Medlock said sharply, though she did not sound particularly angry. "Leave the tray and go down. Tell Mrs. Simpson we're arrived safe."

When the man had gone, Mary sat down at the edge of a chair. She had intended to refuse to eat, out of pure contrariness, but the savory steam of the meat rose to her nostrils, and she found that she was dreadfully hungry. She took up her fork and ate in silence, while Mrs. Medlock poked the fire and laid out her nightclothes on the bed in the adjoining room. The food was hot and good, though Mary would not have admitted it for the world.

"Now then," Mrs. Medlock said, coming back into the sitting-room as Mary laid down her knife. "You've had your supper, and it's time you were between the sheets. I've enough to do tonight without dancing attendance on you. Can you undress yourself, or must I fetch someone to help you?"

"I have always had an Ayah to dress and undress me," Mary said, looking cross. "In India, servants do everything."

"Well, you're not in India now," retorted Mrs. Medlock bluntly. "You're in Yorkshire, and girls here learn to use their own fingers. You can take off your own boots and buttons, I warrant. When you're ready, get into bed and blow out the candle on the wash-stand. I'm going down to my supper."

She took up her mantle and her bag, and walked to the door. Just as she laid her hand upon the brass latch, she paused.

Mary, who had begun to unbutton her stiff black cuffs, paused also.

Through the heavy stone walls of the house, above the crackle of the hearth fire, a sound came floating down the gallery.

It was not the wind outside, which was still howling across the eaves with a steady, hollow roar. This sound was inside the house—distant, muffled, and strange. It rose and fell like a long, thin, metallic vibration, followed by a low, rhythmic tapping, like something dragging slowly across bare floorboards, accompanied by a faint, plaintive hum that seemed to travel along the very stones of the corridor. It had an eerie, mournful cadence to it, unlike any noise Mary had ever heard in the bungalows of India.

Mary turned her pale face toward the door, her eyes wide.

"What is that?" she asked in a low voice. "Listen. What is making that sound?"

Mrs. Medlock's hand stiffened on the latch, and for a second an odd, guarded expression passed over her round, red face. Then her features hardened into an impatient scowl.

"It's nothing," she snapped, speaking faster than usual. "It's the wind, I tell you. I told you before what this place is like when a gale gets up across the moor. It blows through every keyhole and crevice in the old walls, and whistles down the chimneys until you'd think the place was bewitched. Don't be foolish and start imagining things."

"It doesn't come from the chimney," Mary said stubbornly. "It comes from down the passage. Behind one of those locked doors."

"Hold your tongue!" said Mrs. Medlock angrily. "I won't have such talk. It's the wind and nothing else, and if you know what's good for you, you won't go listening for sounds that aren't there. Get into bed and go to sleep, as you're bidden."

She pulled the door open, stepped out into the dark corridor, and shut it firmly behind her. A moment later, Mary heard the key turn in the lock from the outside with a heavy, final click.

Mary stood in the center of the room for several minutes without moving. The house was quiet again, save for the dull, distant thudding of the storm against the high gables. But she knew Mrs. Medlock had not told the truth. Mary had lived among people who concealed things from her all her life—her mother had never told her when cholera came, and the servants had whispered behind screens—and she knew quite well when grown-up people were trying to put her off.

She went slowly into the bedroom, unbuttoned her black frock, and dropped it in a heap upon the floor. She did not fold it up, because she had never folded a garment in her life. She blew out the candle on the wash-stand as she had been told, and climbed up into the high four-poster bed.

The linen sheets were rough and cold, and the heavy woolen blankets smelled faintly of cedar and lavender. From where she lay, she could see the dying glow of the sitting-room fire casting long, flickering shadows across the carpet through the open doorway. Outside, the great wind of the moor went on howling and tearing at the world, sweeping over miles of empty heather in the dark.

Mary did not close her eyes. She lay flat on her back, her thin hands clasped stiffly over the counterpane, staring up into the black canopy above her head. She was wide awake, and every nerve in her small, disagreeable body was strained to listen.

Mrs. Medlock had said it was the wind, but Mary knew it was not the wind. It was something else—something hidden away in this desolate house with its hundred shut-up rooms and its crooked master who would not look at people. And as she lay there alone in the darkness of Misselthwaite Manor, she made up her mind that she would not be kept locked in like a parcel. She would find out for herself what the sound was, and where it came from, if she had to walk through every closed door in the house to do it.

Having seen the last of Rosanna Spearman’s cloak vanish into the hollow of the sandhills, Mr. Franklin Blake took me by both hands, and hoisted me up on to my legs with an agility that did infinite credit to his foreign gymnastics, but gave a most un-English twinge to my poor old small of the back.

“There, Gabriel!” says he, clapping me on the shoulder. “You stand on your native soil as sound as a roach, though you look for all the world as if you had dropped from the clouds!”

“It is not I who have dropped from the clouds, Mr. Franklin,” I answered, brushing the sand off my trousers with my handkerchief. “It’s your own self. You were not looked for until seven o’clock by the evening coach, after the family had sat down to their dinner; and here you are at three in the afternoon, frightening a nervous girl out of her wits, and catching an old servant sitting idly by the seaside, when he ought to be minding his business in the house.”

“The evening coach be hanged!” cried Mr. Franklin, laughing his clear, ringing laugh, which sounded as pleasant in my ears as the church-bells on a Sunday morning. “I came by the morning express as far as the railway would carry me, took a post-chaise and four at the station, broke down two miles off, left my man and my portmanteaus to follow at a foot-pace with the post-boys, and walked the rest of the way across the fields by the old landmarks that I haven't forgotten since I was a boy. If I hadn’t made that haste, Gabriel, I should have had no peace of mind. I have been hurried out of London like a man flying from the plague.”

“Lord bless us!” said I. “Has anything happened to your good father, sir?”

“My father is as hale and hearty as ever,” says he. “No, no—it was nothing of that sort. It was a piece of advice, Gabriel, which reached me in the nick of time, and which I could only follow by taking my heels and running for Yorkshire without an hour’s delay.”

He thrust his hand into the breast of his fine fawn-coloured coat, drew out a pocket-book of foreign leather, and pulled from it a letter which had already been opened.

“Read that,” says he, handing it to me with a sudden gravity coming over his bright, handsome face, “and tell me whether an older and wiser head than mine wouldn't have taken the first train out of town.”

Now, before I put down the words of that letter for your perusal, I must beg leave to remind you—as I have, no doubt, reminded you already—that I am an old-fashioned Englishman, born and bred in the country, with an honest distrust of everything that comes out of foreign parts, and a rooted dislike of mystery in any shape whatever. When an English gentleman gets a letter, he expects to find a Christian name at the bottom of it, and a plain date at the top. The paper which Mr. Franklin put into my hand had neither the one nor the other. It was written in a cramped, formal clerk’s hand on a half-sheet of stiff blue-lined paper, folded small, and addressed to Franklin Blake, Esq., at his London hotel.

I took out my spectacles, wiped the sea-damp off the glasses with my coat-tail, and read these lines:

“Sir,—A person who wishes you well, and who has means of knowing what passes among certain foreign visitors now in London, takes leave to address you this solemn warning. You are watched. Your movements have been traced from the moment of your arrival from abroad, and inquiries have been set on foot concerning your destination in the north. If you have in your custody that which was bequeathed to your trust under the will of the late Colonel Herncastle, you are in imminent peril so long as you remain in the metropolis, or follow your declared intention of travelling by the ordinary public conveyances. Those who seek what you possess are patient, resolute, and completely indifferent to human life when their purpose is at stake. They know that you have lodged a certain deposit at your banker’s; they know also that you have given notice to withdraw it this very morning. Do not wait for the evening coach. Take the earliest conveyance you can command, vary your road, and lodge your charge in the safest keeping you can find in the country, before those who are dogging your steps can intercept you. As you value your own life and the honour of your family, heed this before it is too late.”

There was no signature—nothing but three small crosses traced in red ink in the bottom corner of the sheet.

I read it twice over, up and down, and then I handed it back to Mr. Franklin.

“Well?” says he, looking at me very keenly. “What do you think of it, Betteredge?”

“I think, sir,” I answered, “that somebody has been playing a very impudent hoax on you, with an eye to making a fool of a gentleman who has lived too long among Frenchmen and Germans to know the value of London gossip.”

Mr. Franklin shook his head, and put the letter back in his pocket-book with a sigh.

“I might have thought so too, Gabriel,” said he, “if I hadn’t found out, within twenty minutes of receiving that note, that I was actually followed. When I walked round to my banker’s in the Strand, two men—foreigners of some dark-skinned race, dressed like common seamen—were loitering under the archway opposite. When I came out, they were still there. When I hailed a cab, one of them hailed another. If I hadn't doubled like a hare through the side streets, and slipped out at the back entrance of the railway hotel while they were watching the front, I should never have reached Yorkshire with a whole skin—or with that which is of infinitely more consequence to me than my skin.”

He spoke with such earnestness, and his eyes had such a troubled, feverish look in them, that I felt a cold chill run through me, warm as the afternoon sun was on the beach. My thoughts flew straight back to the terrace at our house, and to the three Indian jugglers with their little boy, pouring the black liquid into the child’s palm, and telling Penelope that the English gentleman was coming today, and had “It” about him. The whole thing seemed to fit together like the pieces of a carpenter’s puzzle. But having lived seventy years in this world without seeing any good come of frightening oneself before the time, I held my tongue about the Indians for the present, and made up my mind to get Mr. Franklin safe under our own roof before another word was said.

“Well, sir,” I said, “the best thing we can do is to walk home to the house. Whatever the danger may be, there is nobody watching you on our sandhills, unless it’s the gulls and the curlews. Give me your arm, Mr. Franklin, for my old bones are stiffer than they were when you used to ride on my shoulders thirty years ago.”

He gave me his arm directly, with that sweet, affectionate manner which made everybody love him, gentle and simple alike; and we turned our backs on the Shivering Sand, and set out through the fir-plantation.

As we walked along under the trees, the gentleman’s mind seemed to shift from grave to gay, as easily as the wind shifts on an April day. That was his foreign education all over! One minute he was brooding over the dark-skinned foreigners in London, and the next he was inquiring after my daughter Penelope, and asking whether the home-brewed ale was as good as ever, and whether his cousin Rachel had grown up as handsome as her childhood promised.

“She was a charming little monkey when I went away,” says he; “always having her own way, and always making other people like her the better for taking it. Has she kept her dark hair and her pretty dark eyes, Gabriel? And does she remember her old playfellow, do you think?”

“Miss Rachel, sir,” I answered, “is the handsomest young lady in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the best-hearted, though I say it that shouldn’t. As for her memory, she has been talking of nothing but your coming for this fortnight past; and if you had only arrived at the proper hour, instead of dropping down like a bomb-shell on the quicksands, you would have found her and my lady at home to give you a proper welcome.”

“Where are they, then?” he asked, stopping short in the path.

“Gone out to lunch with our neighbours, the Murthwaites,” said I. “And they won’t be back until five o’clock at the earliest. So you will have plenty of time, Mr. Franklin, to wash the dust off your face and make yourself look like a Christian gentleman, before Miss Rachel sees you.”

That seemed to satisfy him; but as we came out of the plantation and got into the park within sight of the house, his serious mood came back on him with a vengeance. He stopped me again by the sundial on the lawn, looked all round him at the quiet trees and the peaceful old stone walls, as if he doubted whether they were real, and then put his hand into his inner coat-pocket.

“Betteredge,” says he, in a whisper, “have you still got the key of the plate-room, as you used to have in my uncle’s time?”

“I have had the care of the family plate, Mr. Franklin,” I replied, feeling a little hurt at the question, “for forty years and more; and neither silver spoon nor gold salver has ever gone missing out of that room under my charge.”

“I know it, my dear old friend,” he said hastily. “Don't be offended with me. I have something here which I must give into your keeping until tomorrow—something which I dare not carry about my person an hour longer, and which I will not leave in my bedroom for all the wealth of the Indies.”

With that, he drew out of his pocket a small, oblong packet, about the size of a tea-caddy, or perhaps a trifle smaller. It was sewn up tight in a piece of thick, oiled silk, such as sailors use to keep their papers dry at sea, and over that was wrapped a stout sheet of brown paper, tied criss-cross with strong twine, and sealed at every knot with five separate seals of red wax, bearing the impression of an antique ring. It was surprisingly heavy for its size—I could feel the dead, solid weight of it the moment he put it into my hands—but what was inside the wrappings, whether gold, or lead, or precious stones, or family papers, he did not tell me, and I did not ask. It is an established rule with me, in my capacity of house-steward, never to pry into the private affairs of my betters; a man who knows how to hold his tongue and mind his own keys will live respected and die lamented, while your inquisitive busybody is kicked out of doors before he has time to make his fortune.

“Take it, Gabriel,” says Mr. Franklin, pressing it into my hands with both his own, and looking at me as if his very life depended on my answer. “Lock it up in the iron chest inside your plate-room. Lock the door with your own key, and keep that key in your own pocket day and night until I ask you for it again. Don’t speak of it to a living soul—not even to my aunt, not even to your daughter. Will you do this for me?”

“I will do it, Mr. Franklin,” I said, “and welcome. The packet shall go into the iron safe, alongside the late Sir John’s presentation plate from the Agricultural Society, and the old tea-service that belonged to my lady’s grandmother. A regiment of soldiers couldn't get at it there without waking me up, for I sleep with the key under my pillow.”

He drew a long breath of relief, took off his hat, and wiped his forehead.

“Thank God!” says he, under his breath. “That load is off my shoulders for tonight, at any rate!”

We went into the house together by the servants’ entrance, so as to avoid any fuss in the hall before my lady’s return. I took Mr. Franklin straight down the stone passage to my own pantry, opened the heavy oak door that leads into the plate-room, unlocked the great iron chest in the wall with my master-key, and laid the sealed packet inside on the velvet shelf, right between two silver soup-tureens. Having turned the key twice in the lock, and seen the bolts shoot home with an honest, English clink that did my heart good, I ushered Mr. Franklin upstairs to the guest-chamber that had been prepared for him, where his portmanteaus had by this time safely arrived, and left him to make his toilet at his leisure.

When I came downstairs again, who should I find waiting for me at the door of my sitting-room but my daughter Penelope, looking as red as a turkey-cock, and with that sharp, inquisitive twitch about her nostrils which always means that a woman has got hold of some news that doesn’t concern her.

“Father,” says Penelope, before I could so much as set my stick in the corner, “have you seen Rosanna Spearman?”

“I have seen her,” I answered, “down at the sands half an hour ago, crying her eyes out over her dinner, as young women will do when their stomachs are empty and their heads are light. Has she come in?”

“No,” says Penelope, tossing her head. “She has not come in. And what is more, she isn't coming in for dinner, nor for tea neither, by the look of it.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, sitting down in my armchair.

“I mean,” says my daughter, “that Nancy saw her from the laundry window, five minutes after Mr. Franklin walked up to the house. Instead of turning back to her work, she went tearing across the shrubbery towards the high-road as if the foul fiend was behind her, with her bonnet half untied and her shawl flying in the wind. Nancy shouted to her, but she never turned her head. And John the coachman met her on the lane not ten minutes ago, walking as fast as her legs could carry her, straight in the direction of Cobb’s Hole!”

“Cobb’s Hole!” says I, fairly taken aback. “What on earth can take the girl to Cobb’s Hole at this time of day?”

“She has gone to see that horrid Mrs. Yolland, of course,” says Penelope, who, I am sorry to say, had an uncharitable prejudice against the fisherman’s wife on the beach, because Mrs. Yolland’s daughter had a crooked back, and made a living by knitting lace instead of going into domestic service. “You know very well, father, that Mrs. Yolland is the only friend she has picked up in the village. But why she should go running off to Cobb’s Hole without asking leave of you or Mrs. Michaelmas the housekeeper, and leaving all the bedrooms on the second floor untidy on the very day of Mr. Franklin’s arrival, is more than I can tell you—unless the sight of a strange gentleman has turned what little sense she had completely upside down!”

I remembered the poor thing’s extraordinary behaviour when Mr. Franklin hailed us among the sandhills—her sudden blushing, her speechless look, and the hurried way in which she had scampered off without dropping a curtsey—and I felt in my own mind that Penelope was nearer the truth than she knew. But it would never do for the head of the servants to encourage his own daughter in gossiping about an afflicted girl who had been taken into the house out of pure Christian charity; so I put on my sternest countenance, and cut Penelope short without ceremony.

“That will do, my dear,” I said. “Rosanna has had one of her faint turns this morning, as you know, and a walk by the sea-cliffs will do her more good than all the doctor’s stuff in Yorkshire. Let her bide till she comes back, and do you go and see that Miss Rachel’s dressing-room is in proper order against my lady’s return.”

Penelope gave me a look which said, as plain as words could speak, that fathers were the most obstinate, blind old creatures in creation; but she obeyed me, as she always does when she sees I am in earnest, and marched out of the room with a rustle of her petticoats that rattled like dried peas in a bladder.

A little before five o’clock, the sound of carriage-wheels on the gravel announced the return of my lady and Miss Rachel.

I hurried out to the hall to receive them. Miss Rachel—who had a headache, poor dear, brought on, no doubt, by the heat of the sun and the clatter of the Murthwaite children—went straight up the grand staircase to her own room, without so much as stopping to take off her bonnet in the hall, calling out to me over the banisters that she would have a cup of tea in her own dressing-room, and that nobody was to disturb her until dinner-time. So, you see, she was safely out of the way, and I was spared the trouble of having to explain Mr. Franklin’s early appearance to her until he could do it for himself.

My lady turned into the morning-room, and beckoned me to follow her.

She was looking remarkably well, though a trifle fatigued; a grand, stately, sweet-faced Christian lady, who had the true gentlewoman’s way of treating her servants—never familiar, but always kind, and with an eye that saw through a rogue in five seconds, though she was as merciful to a repentant sinner as an angel from heaven.

“Betteredge,” says she, sitting down and loosening her pelisse, “has anything happened while we have been away?”

“Yes, my lady,” I answered. “Mr. Franklin has arrived.”

My lady started up from her chair, with a look of the greatest delight.

“Franklin!” she cried. “Franklin here already? Where is he? Why wasn't I told?”

“He is upstairs in his room, my lady,” said I, “changing his clothes after a very dusty journey. He came four hours before his time, owing to some business in London that hurried him away.”

Before my lady could ask another question, the door opened, and in walked Mr. Franklin himself. He had changed his fawn-coloured travelling suit for a quiet frock-coat, brushed his hair, and washed his hands; and he looked as handsome, high-bred an English gentleman as you could wish to see in a day’s march.

“My dear aunt!” cries he, running forward with both hands out.

“Franklin, my dear boy!” says my lady, catching him in her arms and kissing him on both cheeks, just as she used to do when he was a schoolboy coming home for the holidays.

For the first five minutes, it was all joy, and welcome, and asking after old friends, and admiring how tall and broad he had grown, and laughing over his broken English phrases that slipped out every now and then in spite of him. I stood by the door, with my hand on the handle, waiting to take my lady’s orders, and feeling as pleased as if he had been a son of my own.

Then, on a sudden, a change came over my lady’s face. She drew back a step, looked at him very seriously, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.

“Franklin,” she said, and her voice, which was always low and musical, had a solemn, warning ring in it that made us both start, “before we sit down together, before you enter into this household as my guest and my nephew, there is one thing which must be understood between us, plainly and finally.”

Mr. Franklin looked surprised, and bowed his head in silence.

“You have come to us,” my lady went on, “fresh from London, where you have been fulfilling the duties laid upon you by the executors of your late uncle. I know what he has done. I know the wicked, unchristian disposition he has made of that miserable property which was the ruin of his own life, and which he has sent into my family as a legacy of vengeance and hatred against his own sister!”

She spoke with a bitter trembling of the lip that showed how deeply the old family feud had cut into her heart. Sir John himself, in his lifetime, had never dared to mention Colonel Herncastle’s name in her presence; for the Colonel had insulted his sister, slandered his relatives, and lived the life of a heathen outcast in his lodgings in London, until the grave closed over his sins.

“Now listen to me, Franklin,” my lady said, holding up her finger to prevent him from speaking. “I open my doors to you with all my heart, for your own sake and for the sake of your dear mother, my sister. But on one condition. The name of Colonel John Herncastle must never be spoken under this roof! Not a word of his life, not a word of his death, not a word of the shameful legacy he has left behind him, must ever pass your lips in my presence, or in Rachel’s presence, or before the servants in this house. If you have brought his wicked bequest with you, do your duty by it according to the law, but let it remain as dead and buried to our conversation as the wretched man who sent it. Do you promise me this, on your word as a gentleman?”

She looked him full in the face, with that calm, commanding look which nobody ever had the courage to dispute.

Mr. Franklin went very pale, but he didn't hesitate for a single instant. He took my lady’s hand, bowed his head over it, and pressed it to his lips.

“You have my word of honour, Aunt Julia,” he said, in a low, steady voice. “Colonel Herncastle’s name shall never be mentioned by me under your roof. What is past is past; and I pray to Heaven that the shadow of his memory may never darken the threshold of this house.”

“Amen to that, my dear,” says my lady, softly, kissing his forehead. “Now let us talk of happier things. Ring the bell, Betteredge, and let us have some tea.”

I rang the bell, gave the necessary orders to the footman, and left the aunt and nephew together, feeling in my own mind that a great danger had been happily steered past, though how long a family secret can be kept under lock and key, when there are women and young people in the house, is a question which I leave you to answer for yourself.

The rest of the evening passed off as quietly as could be.

At seven o’clock, dinner was served. Miss Rachel was still too poorly to come down to table, so my lady and Mr. Franklin dined alone together in the great dining-room, while I carved the chickens and served the wine with my own hands. To see Mr. Franklin eating his roast fowl and drinking his claret, you would have thought he hadn't a care on his mind in the wide world; he talked of Italy, and music, and painting, and kept my lady laughing till the tears ran down her cheeks. But I noticed, for all his fine spirits, that every time a servant opened the door, his eyes darted to the threshold with a sharp, anxious look, as if he expected some unwelcome visitor to walk in; and once, when the wind blew a branch of the ivy against the window-pane, he dropped his fork with a clatter, and turned as white as a table-napkin.

By ten o’clock, the family had retired for the night. The lights were put out in the drawing-room; the hall was bolted and barred; and the house settled down into that dead, solemn silence which is only to be found in an old country mansion on the coast, with the sea moaning half a mile off in the dark.

My regular habits—contracted during forty years of service—are to make a final round of the lower premises before I compose myself for my night’s rest.

I took my lantern, went down the stone passage to the plate-room, examined the massive oak door, tried the padlock, and looked at the great iron chest inside through the grating. There it stood, solid and grim in the dark corner, holding the family plate that had belonged to three generations of the Verinders, and holding, too, the strange, heavy, sealed packet which Mr. Franklin had brought from London. What was in it? I had not seen, and I did not know; but the red seals stood out in the lantern-light like drops of dried blood, and as I turned the heavy key in the lock, the words of that anonymous warning kept ringing in my ears: *“As you value your own life and the honour of your family, heed this before it is too late.”*

I pocketed the key, went back along the passage, and looked into the servants’ hall.

The fire was raked out, and the servants had all gone upstairs to bed—all except one. Nancy was standing by the back-door with a candle in her hand, looking out into the pitch-black night.

“What are you waiting for, girl?” I asked.

“For Rosanna Spearman, Mr. Betteredge,” says Nancy, looking half frightened and half sulky. “She isn't come back yet. Penelope went up to her room half an hour ago to see, and the bed hasn't been touched. She must be down at Cobb’s Hole still, or else she has lost her way on the cliff-path in the dark.”

“Go to your bed, Nancy,” I said, taking the candle from her. “I will leave the back-door on the latch, and sit up for the girl myself. She knows the latch-string, and she can slip in without disturbing the house.”

Nancy was glad enough to get off to her sleep, and left me alone.

I went into my own sitting-room, stirred the embers of the hearth, for the night air blew chill off the water, and sat myself down in my old beehive chair.

It was now past eleven o’clock. A strange, uncanny sort of day it had been, from first to last: the Indian jugglers on the terrace; the ink in the boy’s hand; the Shivering Sand heaving under the turn of the tide; Rosanna crying on the beach; Mr. Franklin dropping down out of the clouds four hours before his time; the mysterious letter with the three red crosses; the sealed packet locked away in the dead darkness of the plate-room; and now, our second housemaid wandering out by herself in the night, nobody knew where, and nobody knew why!

When a man’s mind is troubled by the events of this mortal life, there is only one book that can set him straight again. Some people take to the Bible; some people take to the bottle; I take to *Robinson Crusoe*.

I reached down my old, well-worn copy—the illustrated edition of 1812, bound in brown calf, which has been my friend, philosopher, and guide through all the joys and sorrows of seventy years—opened it at hazard, as my custom is, and laid my spectacles on the page.

The passage that met my eye was the famous place where Robinson discovers the print of the naked foot on the shore:

*“It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition...”*

I took off my spectacles, closed the book, and leaned back in my chair.

The print of a foot in the sand! It seemed to me as if the shadow of some dark, foreign mystery had set its foot upon our quiet Yorkshire shore that day, and that neither locks, nor bolts, nor iron safes could keep the trouble out, when once the time was ripe for it to enter.

The tall clock in the corner struck midnight with a heavy, hollow stroke that seemed to shake the room. I sat listening in the silence that followed. There was no sound outside but the distant, sullen roar of the sea breaking on the bank off the bay, and the wind sighing through the fir-trees.

The packet was locked safe in the iron chest; my lady and Mr. Franklin were asleep in their beds; but the latch of the back-door never stirred, and Rosanna Spearman was still out in the night.

From the Herald office I walked three blocks down Broadway to the First National Bank. The sun was trying to poke through the yellow-gray smelter smudge that hung over Personville, but it wasn't making much of a job of it. The street was full of heavy trucks rattling over uneven granite blocks, trolley cars with screeching flat wheels, and men in grease-stiffened overalls who walked with the stiff, rolling gait of hard-rock miners. The air tasted like brass filings and coal smoke.

The First National was housed in a Grecian temple of gray granite that had turned the color of greasy zinc under twenty years of Personville soot. Inside, it had the chilly gloom of a family vault, high-ceilinged and smelling of wet umbrellas, floor oil, and old ledgers. Half a dozen caged tellers were doing business behind dull brass grilles, their fingers flicking through stacks of paper with the bored speed of card dealers in a second-rate gambling joint.

I passed up the cages and headed for the low mahogany railing at the left. Behind it sat two men at flat desks. The one nearest the gate was a small, dried-up man of fifty-five or sixty with a bald dome fringed with iron-gray hair, steel-rimmed spectacles, and the pinched mouth of a man whose stomach has been giving him trouble since the McKinley administration. A black nameplate on his desk said Mr. Albury, Cashier.

I unlatched the little gate, stepped inside, and dropped my hat on the corner of his desk. He looked up from a column of figures with eyes like frozen marbles.

"Yes?" he said. His voice was thin and dry, like paper tearing.

"My name is Neill," I told him, using the handle from the card I'd flashed to Quint. "I'm looking into the estate of Donald Willsson."

Albury took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully with a white silk handkerchief, hooked them back over his ears, and looked me up and down. He wasn't impressed by my clothes, my weight, or my face.

"Are you representing the family or the executors?" he asked.

"I'm representing the interests that want to know where his money went."

"The First National Bank does not discuss the accounts of its depositors with strangers, Mr. Neill. You should know that. If Elihu Willsson wishes us to provide information to an investigator, he will communicate with us directly."

"Elihu Willsson is in bed calling people names," I said. "And the coroner is getting ready to carve up his son. A five-thousand-dollar check went out of Donald Willsson's pocket yesterday afternoon. It came out of a First National check book. If you want to sit on your dignity until Chief Noonan comes down here with a subpoena and a squad of patrolmen to tear up your filing cabinets, that's your business. But you can save yourself a lot of noise by answering one or two plain questions."

The mention of Noonan didn't make him smile, but it made his left eyelid flutter. In Personville, nobody seemed anxious to have the police chief turn his boys loose on their premises. He laid his pencil down with precise care, exactly parallel to the edge of his green blotter.

"Mr. Donald Willsson maintained an active commercial account here," Albury said stiffly. "It was separate from the publishing company's accounts and separate from his father's personal holdings. What is the number of the check you refer to?"

"There wasn't any number on the stub," I told him. "Just five thousand dollars in ink, written yesterday between two and three in the afternoon. Nothing else. No name, no memo."

Albury stared at me for a couple of seconds, then got up from his swivel chair without another word. He walked back toward the vaults with small, jerky steps, his black alpaca coat hanging loosely from his thin shoulders. He was gone five or six minutes. When he came back he had a long narrow ledger sheet in his hand.

He sat down, aligned the sheet on his blotter, and ran a dry forefinger down the debit column.

"No check for five thousand dollars has been charged to Mr. Willsson's account," he said.

"Could it have been cashed yesterday afternoon?"

"If it had been presented at the counter yesterday afternoon before closing, it would appear on this sheet. It does not."

"Could it have been certified?"

"A certified check is debited to the drawer's account immediately upon certification," he said with an edge of irritation. "No check of that amount has been certified against this account during the current month. In fact, Mr. Willsson has never requested a certification since opening the account last spring."

"Has anybody called up to ask if the funds were there to cover it?"

"Not through this desk. Nor did the teller on duty yesterday afternoon report any such inquiry. In a transaction involving five thousand dollars in currency, the teller would ordinarily refer the party to me."

"Has anybody tried to present it this morning?"

"No."

"What's the balance?"

Albury's eyes chilled again. "That is entirely confidential."

"Is it over five thousand?"

"Substantially," he admitted grudgingly. "The account is in excellent condition. If a properly drawn check for that amount had been presented at any time yesterday or today, it would have been honored without hesitation."

"Donald Willsson come in here himself yesterday afternoon?"

"He did not."

"Any messenger?"

"No."

"Did he take out any large amounts of cash recently? In hundreds or thousands?"

Albury looked down at his sheet again, his lips moving faintly as he read the figures. "A check for three hundred dollars was cashed by Mr. Willsson personally on the twelfth. Another for one hundred and fifty on the nineteenth. The remaining disbursements have been routine vouchers payable to local merchants and clubs, all of modest sums. Nothing approaching five thousand dollars."

"All right," I said. "If that five-thousand-dollar check shows up at a window, what happens?"

"In the event of the drawer's death," Albury said, speaking like a law book, "the bank's authority to pay checks drawn by him is revoked the moment formal notice is received. We received official notification of Mr. Willsson's demise from the coroner's office at nine-fifteen this morning. The account is frozen. No checks signed by Donald Willsson will be honored under any circumstances."

"So whoever is holding that slip of paper," I said, "is holding five thousand dollars' worth of scrap iron."

"Unless it should be presented as a claim against the estate in due course of probate," said Albury. "And even then, without a payee or proper endorsement, its validity would be open to the gravest question."

"Thanks," I said. I picked up my hat. "You've been a lot of help, Mr. Albury."

He didn't say I was welcome. He picked up his pencil and went back to his figures before I had even closed the little mahogany gate behind me.

I walked back out into Broadway. The wind had picked up from the north, blowing the smell of slag and sulfur down from the hills where the smelter chimneys poked into the dirty clouds. I bought an afternoon paper from a ragged kid on the corner of Victoria Street. The Evening Herald had Donald Willsson's murder spread across the top four columns, but there wasn't anything new in it. The police were following clues. Chief Noonan was quoted as saying he expected an arrest within twenty-four hours. He didn't say who he was going to arrest or what he was going to arrest them for.

I walked four blocks down to the Great Western Hotel. It was an old four-story brick pile with ornate iron fire escapes running down the front and a lobby that smelled of stale cigar butts and disinfectant. A couple of traveling salesmen in derby hats were sitting in the leather chairs by the front window, spitting into brass cuspidors and arguing about the pennant race.

I went to the desk to ask for my key. The clerk was a bald, pasty-faced youth with greasy black hair combed back slick and a celluloid collar that didn't fit his neck. He reached for the key in pigeonhole 214, took it down, and laid it on the counter along with a folded square of paper.

"Gentleman left that for you twenty minutes ago," the clerk said, dropping his voice to a confidential murmur.

"What kind of gentleman?"

"Small guy. Dressed up like an Easter egg. Brown suit, brown hat, silk handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. Didn't say who he was. Just asked if the fellow from San Francisco was registered in 214, handed me this, and walked out."

"He talk loud?"

"Whispered," the clerk said. "Sounded like he had a mouthful of sawdust."

I unfolded the paper. It was a sheet of cheap hotel stationery, torn across the top where the Great Western letterhead had been. On it were three lines written in a neat, cramped backhand with an indelible pencil:

"Frisco is a nice town. The trains leave three times a day. If you miss the afternoon train, there's one at ten-forty tonight. Ten-forty is an unlucky hour in this burg."

I folded the paper, slipped it into my vest pocket, and said to the clerk:

"Did he have anybody with him?"

"No. Came in alone. Drove off in a big black touring car with wire wheels."

A Stutz touring car. Max Thaler wasn't wasting any time letting me know where he stood, but he was being careful not to put his profile in front of me again.

"Thanks," I told the clerk, picked up my key, and went over to the cage elevator.

The elevator crept up to the second floor with a lot of groaning and shaking. I got out, walked down the dim, carpeted corridor to room 214, stuck the key into the lock, and turned the knob.

The door swung in.

A woman was sitting in the room's single upholstered armchair, over by the window that looked out on the alley.

It was young Mrs. Donald Willsson.

She was wearing a dark gray tailored suit with a black fur piece draped over one shoulder, and a small black hat pulled low over her blonde hair. Her hands were tucked into a pair of black suede gloves resting in her lap. Her face was pale, the skin stretched tight over her cheekbones, and her gray eyes were wide and hard as agates. Under the chair, on the worn Brussels carpet, were black kid shoes. No green slippers today.

I closed the door behind me, turned the key in the lock, and dropped the key into my pocket.

"Afternoon, Mrs. Willsson," I said. "How did you get in?"

"The chambermaid," she said. Her voice had the faint, melodic French huskiness I'd heard the night before, but there was no softness in it now. "I told her I was your sister and that I had arrived on the noon train. A two-dollar bill made her quite agreeable."

"You take a lot of chances," I said. I tossed my hat on the brass bed, pulled the straight-backed desk chair out, turned it around, and sat down with my arms folded across the back. "What's on your mind?"

"You," she said. "You were at my father-in-law's house this morning."

"I was."

"And you were at the Herald office. You spoke with Miss Lewis."

"She's a nice girl," I said. "Very helpful."

Mrs. Willsson's lips thinned until they were a white line across her face. "You have been asking questions about my husband's private papers. About money."

"About five thousand dollars," I corrected her. "A check Donald wrote yesterday afternoon just before he went out."

She stared at me without blinking. "Donald did not tell you about any check."

"He didn't have the chance. Somebody put four .32 slugs into him before we could have our chat. But he left the stub in his drawer. Five thousand dollars. No name on it."

She leaned forward slightly. The fur piece slipped from her shoulder, but she didn't bother to catch it. "Did you find it? The check?"

"I asked the bank. The First National. Mr. Albury says nobody's cashed it, nobody's certified it, and the account is tied up tight by the coroner."

Her hands tightened in her lap. The suede gloves made a faint creaking sound.

"Then where is it?" she whispered.

"That's the question I was going to ask you," I said. "You went out in your coupé at ten-twenty last night. Donald was killed at ten-forty in Hurricane Street. You were back home at eleven-five with blood on your left shoe. You told me he wouldn't be home. How did you know he wouldn't be home unless you were there on Hurricane Street?"

"I was not there!" she flared up, her accent thickening. "I have told you—I received a telephone message!"

"From who?"

"A woman. A woman who said she had news of Donald—that he was in danger. She told me to go to an address on Cedar Street. I went there. It was an empty house. Nobody was there. I drove back. On the way, near Mountain Boulevard, a dog had been struck by a machine in the road. I stepped out to see if it was alive. That was the blood on my shoe! It was an animal's blood!"

"That's a pretty story," I said. "You ought to tell it to Chief Noonan. He'd put it in the Sunday paper with pictures of the dog."

"You do not believe me."

"I'm an operative for the Continental Detective Agency," I told her. "I don't believe anything except what I can pick up and weigh on a scale. What was Whisper Thaler doing at your house this morning?"

Her eyes went wide, and for the first time a flicker of real terror showed in them. She caught her breath, her fingers clutching the arms of the chair.

"He—he did not come to see me," she stammered.

"He went through your front door. I watched his rear leg go in."

"He came—he came to see if Donald had left any papers," she said, the words tumbling over one another. "He said Donald had taken something that belonged to him. He threatened me. He said if I did not give it to him, the house would be burned over my head."

"Did he mention five thousand dollars?"

"No! He spoke only of letters—documents concerning the city administration. He was furious. He searched Donald's study, turned out the drawers, and found nothing. Then he left."

"He's a busy boy," I said. "He just left a note for me downstairs. Telling me to take the train back to San Francisco."

She stood up, tall and slender and tense in the dim room. She reached into her handbag, a small beaded thing of black and silver, and pulled out a roll of bills held together by a rubber band.

"Take it," she said, holding the money out to me. "There is six hundred dollars there. All I have in the house. Take it and go back to San Francisco. Donald is dead. You can do nothing for him now. My father-in-law is a monster who cares for nothing but his mine and his power. The men who killed Donald will kill you without a second thought. There is no law here. There is only murder."

I looked at the roll of bills, then up at her face.

"Put your money away, Mrs. Willsson," I said. "The Continental doesn't take fees from two sides of the same family, and we don't drop a client's job just because the client got killed before he could sign the contract. Donald Willsson paid us a retainer. Until my boss in San Francisco tells me to pull out, I'm staying in Personville."

She looked at me as if I were a crazy man. Then, with a quick, vicious jerk of her wrist, she jammed the money back into her bag, snapped the clasp shut, and pulled her fur piece up around her neck.

"You are a fool," she said coldly. "A stubborn, fat fool. When they find you in an alley like Donald, do not say you were not warned."

"I won't," I promised. "I'll be too dead to talk."

She walked past me to the door. I unlocked it for her and held it open. She went out into the hall without looking at me again, her heels clicking sharp and fast on the carpet until she reached the stairs.

I shut the door, locked it, and walked over to the small oak writing desk in the corner of the room. I sat down, pulled a telegraph blank from the leather portfolio on the blotter, took my fountain pen from my pocket, and wrote out a message to the Old Man in San Francisco.

I didn't waste any adjectives on it. Words cost money, and the Old Man was thrifty with the Agency's cash:

O. D. ACTON, CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

DONALD WILLSSON SHOT DEAD HURRICANE STREET TEN-FORTY LAST NIGHT FOUR THIRTY-TWO CALIBRE SLUGS STOP FIRED FROM ALLEY OPPOSITE STOP CLIENT NEVER REACHED APPOINTMENT WITH ME STOP LOCAL SITUATION COMPLICATED BY POLITICAL FACTIONS INVOLVING ELIHU WILLSSON, POLICE CHIEF NOONAN, AND LOCAL GAMBLERS STOP CLIENT DREW CHECK FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS ON FIRST NATIONAL BANK SHORTLY BEFORE MURDER STOP CHECK HAS NOT BEEN CASHED OR CERTIFIED AND LOCATION UNKNOWN STOP WIDOW AND LOCAL GAMBLER MAX THALER BOTH ATTEMPTING TO DISCOURAGE INQUIRY STOP ADVISE IF RETAINER APPLIES TOWARD INVESTIGATING MURDER OR IF CASE TERMINATED.

NEILL

I read it over once, blotted it, and folded it into my pocket.

I picked up my hat, went out of the room, locked the door, and walked down the back stairs to avoid the clerk at the desk. Two blocks away, on the corner of Market and Union, was a Western Union branch in the side of a tobacconist's shop. A skinny boy with pimples and a green eye-shade was reading a detective magazine behind the counter.

I slapped the message down on the glass. He counted the words with the blunt end of an unsharpened pencil, charged me two dollars and fifteen cents, and shoved the yellow copy into a wire basket.

"When does this go out?" I asked.

"Right now, mister. Wire's open to Salt Lake."

I paid him, walked out, and stopped at a lunch counter on the corner to put down a ham sandwich and two cups of bitter, lukewarm coffee. It wasn't food to brag about, but it filled up the corners of my hundred and ninety pounds.

By the time I walked back to the Great Western Hotel, the street lamps were coming on through the murky evening fog. They didn't give much light, just fuzzy orange circles in the yellow dampness. The town had grown quiet with the sullen, ugly quiet of a place where people stay indoors after dark because the sidewalks aren't safe for walking.

I got my key from the pasty-faced clerk without exchanging any talk, took the stairs up to the second floor, and let myself back into 214.

The room was cold. I turned on the radiator, but the pipes only gave a couple of dry metallic clanks and quit. I switched on the green-shaded bulb that hung by a cord over the center of the room, pulled the window shade down tight against the dark alley, and sat down on the edge of the brass bed.

I took my shoes off, wiggled my toes inside my woolen socks, and fired up a Fatima.

The room smelled of stale tobacco, cold dust, and the faint, expensive perfume Mrs. Donald Willsson had left behind in the armchair.

I sat there on the bed, watching the cigarette smoke drift up toward the cracked plaster ceiling, and turned the pieces over in my mind.

Donald Willsson had written a check for five thousand dollars at half past two yesterday afternoon. He had gone out with it, stayed away twenty minutes, and come back without it. He hadn't cashed it at the First National. He hadn't certified it. Nobody had presented it at the windows. At ten o'clock he had an appointment with me at his house. At ten-twenty his wife had taken a phone call and driven away in her coupé. At ten-forty he had been shot dead in the eleven-hundred block of Hurricane Street, four miles from his home and six blocks from the Herald office. At eleven-five his wife had come home with blood on her shoe. This morning Whisper Thaler had visited the widow, and this afternoon he had sent me a ticket back to Frisco.

It was a neat little layout, but there was one piece that didn't fit the puzzle.

Where was the five-thousand-dollar check?

If the killer had shot Donald to rob him, the check was no good to him—it was just paper, and now that Donald was dead, the bank wouldn't pay a nickel on it. If Donald had given it to somebody as a payoff or a bribe, the person holding it couldn't turn it into cash without explaining where they got it from a corpse. And if Donald had destroyed it himself, why hadn't he crossed out the stub in the drawer?

I blew a ring of gray smoke at the light bulb and listened to the wind whistle in the fire escape outside the window. Nobody came up the stairs. Nobody knocked.

Somewhere in Personville somebody was holding that piece of paper, or somebody had burned it, or somebody had tucked it into a dead man's pocket and watched the undertaker carry it away. But wherever it was, it was the key to the door, and until I found it, I was just another stranger sitting in a two-dollar hotel room waiting for a bullet to find him in the dark.

Mr Shepherd was the first to offer the assistance of his practical wisdom. He was a civil, cautious lawyer, who never forgot the deference due to a baronet, and who possessed the happy art of suggesting disagreeable necessities in language so supple, that the pride of his patron might take no immediate alarm. He had ridden over from the neighbouring town on purpose to consult with Sir Walter; and, on being admitted to the library, where Elizabeth was already seated in gloomy consultation with her father, and where Anne sat unnoticed near a distant window with her work, he laid his first calculations before them with many respectful bows and many softening circumlocutions.

His scheme was conceived in a spirit of tender regard for the dignity of Kellynch Hall. It was impossible, Mr Shepherd observed, that Sir Walter should ever be expected to alter the style of his table, or dismiss any of those personal attendants whose services had become a matter of hereditary necessity; but there were certain minor branches of expenditure, quiet outgoings in the stable and the park, which might be reduced without the world being a bit the wiser. He suggested, therefore, with great diffidence, that two of the under-grooms might be discharged; that the breed of carriage-horses might be suffered to diminish by natural decay, rather than be replenished at the usual extravagant prices; that three of the farm-tenants, whose leases were falling in, might be required to undertake their own repairs; and that certain subscriptions to county charities, and to the London clubs which Sir Walter rarely frequented, might be quietly suffered to drop.

Sir Walter listened with an air of dignified astonishment, which gradually deepened into cold displeasure. He took the paper from Mr Shepherd’s hand between his finger and thumb, as if it had been soiled by some vulgar contact, and dropped it upon the table.

“Mr Shepherd,” said he, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking down upon the attorney with all the majesty of his baronetcy, “you have mistaken the person for whom you were drawing up these extraordinarily minute regulations. You are prescribing for some needy country gentleman, some half-pay captain or ruined grazier, who is driven to count the oats in his horses’ mangers, and turn his coat when the cuffs are threadbare. Discharge my servants? Suffer my stables to fall into decay? Appear in the county behind a pair of wretched, drooping beasts, such as might draw the gig of a village apothecary? It is impossible. You forget what is due to my situation in life. An Elliot of Kellynch Hall cannot skulk through the world under the cover of such miserable, sneaking evasions. If the neighbourhood were once to observe a horse fewer in my equipage, or a lackey missing from the hall-steps, the report of my ruin would be carried through Somersetshire before the week was out. No, sir; I requested your advice as a man of business, to relieve me from the impertinence of tradesmen, not to instruct me in the art of degrading myself.”

Elizabeth looked her entire concurrence. “To be sure,” said she, with a haughty toss of her head; “it would be vastly agreeable to have the Musgroves, or the folks at Uppercross, whispering that Sir Walter Elliot could no longer afford to feed his cattle, or that Elizabeth Elliot was seen driving with only a pair! We should never hear the end of Mrs Charles Musgrove’s condolences. Mary would be writing to pity us every Tuesday. I wonder, Mr Shepherd, that you could imagine such an arrangement possible for an instant.”

Mr Shepherd bowed, apologised, and shifted his ground with the ready humility of a man who knows that his client’s folly is the foundation of his own livelihood. He had only wished, he murmured, to submit a few preliminary ideas; he was entirely guided by Sir Walter’s superior judgement; he had perhaps erred in looking at the matter too much with the dry, narrow eye of a man of law; and he would gladly yield to any suggestions which Lady Russell might be good enough to bring forward.

Lady Russell arrived at Kellynch Hall shortly before noon. She came with an anxious heart, and with a sheet of paper covered in her own firm, upright handwriting, the result of many hours of painful deliberation at the Lodge. Lady Russell was a woman of sound understanding and strict principle; she saw the full extent of Sir Walter’s danger, and was determined, if possible, to save the family from ruin and disgrace. But she had also a high sense of ancestral consequence, and a very strong attachment to Kellynch; and her object was to clear the estate within a moderate compass of years, without driving her friends from their natural sphere of usefulness and credit.

Her plan was far more comprehensive, and demanded sacrifices of a very different character from those proposed by the agent. She took her seat beside Sir Walter, and, with an earnest gentleness that proved her sincerity, laid her system of retrenchment before him.

“My dear Sir Walter,” said she, “we must look our difficulties in the face. The Kellynch estate is noble, but its revenues have been anticipated to an alarming degree. If you are to be restored to that independence which is essential to the dignity of an ancient name, there must be a serious and resolute reformation. I have calculated that by laying down your carriage for three years, by giving up your annual journey to London entirely, by shutting up two-thirds of the house, and by confining your establishment to such servants only as are requisite for absolute comfort, you may set aside at least two thousand pounds a year towards the liquidation of your debts. In seven years, or eight at the furthest, Kellynch will be free, your mind will be at ease, and you will have preserved your estate intact for those who come after you.”

If Sir Walter had been offended by Mr Shepherd’s petty economies, he was positively petrified by Lady Russell’s heroic ones. His handsome countenance exhibited a mixture of incredulity and horror. He turned to his daughter, as if to satisfy himself that he was not dreaming.

“Lay down my carriage!” he exclaimed, as soon as his indignation permitted him to find his voice. “Shut up my house! Live immured in Kellynch like a monk in a cell, or a prisoner in a fortress, for seven or eight years! And for what? To please a pack of insolent tradesmen in London, who ought to think themselves sufficiently honoured by having Sir Walter Elliot’s name upon their ledgers! My dear Lady Russell, you must be entirely beside yourself. What would society say? What would our acquaintance think? Sir Walter Elliot walking on foot, or creeping about the lanes in a hired post-chaise! Elizabeth buried alive in Somersetshire during the whole of the spring, at the very moment when her claims ought to be most conspicuously supported in the world! It would be an absolute surrender of our existence. It would be proclaiming ourselves beggars to every creature of our acquaintance. I would rather endure any extremity than submit to such public, such unmerited humiliation.”

Elizabeth was quite as vehement. “Give up London, indeed!” she cried, with colour mounting to her cheeks. “And stay here all the spring to be stared at by Lady Staveley, and pitied by the Miss Musgroves! To have it said that we cannot afford to go to town, while every upstart attorney and country squire can take his family there for a month! It is out of the question. I would rather never see another ball or assembly as long as I live, than go about the world branded as a person who is pinching and starving to pay her father’s butcher and milliner. If this is all that your wisdom can devise, Lady Russell, we might as well have spared ourselves the pain of the discussion.”

Lady Russell looked deeply hurt, but she was too well accustomed to the infirmities of her friends to be altogether surprised. She cast an appealing, sorrowful glance towards Anne, who had hitherto remained entirely silent in her corner, her fingers trembling a little over her embroidery, her heart aching with mortification at the obstinate blindness of her family.

Anne could bear it no longer. She saw that both plans had failed because both had attempted to reconcile what was utterly irreconcilable: the preservation of vanity with the discharge of duty. She rose from her chair, and, coming forward to the table, spoke with a clear, though agitated voice.

“If Kellynch is to be preserved,” said she, looking earnestly at her father, “it cannot be by half-measures, or by any pitiful attempts to save appearances. We must be honest. We must do what is right, and not what will merely look well in the eyes of the world. What does it signify what the neighbourhood says, or what the Musgroves think, compared with the misery of living under the burden of unpaid debts, and the degradation of being dunned by tradespeople whom we have injured? If I might advise, we should adopt a plan far stricter than any that has yet been named. We ought to retrench everything that belongs to luxury and ostentation. Let us sell the carriage and the horses at once; let us part with all the men-servants except one who may be absolutely necessary; let us live upon one-third of our income, and devote every remaining guinea to the payment of our creditors. We might live here in perfect privacy, seeing no company, giving no dinners, refusing every invitation, and seeking our happiness only in our duty and in each other. Such a life would have real dignity, because it would be founded on integrity; and in three or four years, instead of seven or eight, the work would be done, and my father would be an independent man.”

She stopped, almost frightened by her own temerity, and expecting nothing less than a burst of angry contempt from both her father and her sister.

Sir Walter stared at her with cold displeasure. “Upon my word, Anne,” said he, “your notions are singularly romantic, and singularly coarse. To imagine that an Elliot of Kellynch can live upon one-third of his income, like a curate on forty pounds a year, is worthy of your usual want of feeling for your family’s consequence. You have always had an extraordinary taste for low society and wretched expedients.”

He paused, expecting Elizabeth to join in the condemnation. But Elizabeth, to the profound astonishment of every person present, did not join in it. A new and unexpected light seemed to have broken upon her mind. Her pride was of a different texture from her father’s; it was more sullen, more resolute, and infinitely more disdainful of the opinion of their country neighbours.

“For my part,” said Elizabeth, with a haughty composure that took Lady Russell entirely by surprise, “I do not think Anne’s proposal so very contemptible. If we are to be driven to retrenchment at all, I would infinitely rather adopt a course that removes us at once and entirely from the observation of the neighbourhood. I hate all petty compromises. I despise the idea of creeping about with four horses instead of six, or entertaining three times in a season instead of ten, merely to let the country see that we are growing poor. If we shut our doors against the whole world, if we declare that Kellynch Hall receives no visitors whatever, nobody can presume to pity us. We should not be slighted, because we should not be seen. We should simply be inaccessible. To refuse the Musgroves, to shut out the Hayters and the pool-playing squires of the neighbourhood, to tell Lady Staveley that we receive no morning calls—there would be some satisfaction in that! It would keep them at their proper distance. If we are to retrench, let it be in a manner that shall punish those who have the impertinence to watch us, rather than afford them an amusement.”

Mr Shepherd and Lady Russell looked at the sisters in speechless wonder. That Elizabeth Elliot should advocate an economy more severe than that of her godmother, from motives of absolute arrogance and spite, was a phenomenon which neither of them had been prepared to witness.

Sir Walter, however, was not to be moved even by his favourite daughter. The idea of living in his own house without the power of displaying it, of walking in his own grounds without a succession of guests to admire his person and his improvements, was insupportable to him.

“You talk like women, both of you,” said he, waving his hand with an air of peevish disdain. “Shut my doors against the county! Make Kellynch Hall a tomb! I should be reported dead in a fortnight. No, Elizabeth; you do not know what you are saying. I could not exist under such a system for a single month. The air of the house would stifle me.”

Mr Shepherd, who had been watching his patron with the keen, anxious eye of a pilot navigating a dangerous channel, now saw his opportunity. Both the plans for remaining at Kellynch in reduced circumstances had been rejected; the ladies had pushed the argument to an extremity which Sir Walter’s nerves could not endure; and the time was ripe for introducing a bolder and more effectual expedient. He cleared his throat, smoothed his waistcoat, and leaned forward with a look of the most profound and confidential mystery.

“There is, indeed,” said he, in a soft, persuasive tone, “another measure which has not yet been touched upon. It is a measure which would relieve Sir Walter from every embarrassment at a single stroke; which would maintain the estate in the highest order, without requiring the sacrifice of a single personal indulgence, or the reduction of a single servant in his private employ. If Sir Walter were disposed to quit Kellynch for a few years—to seek that change of air and scene which I am convinced would be so highly beneficial to his health and spirits—the Hall might be disposed of to the greatest advantage. There are persons of the highest respectability, gentlemen of large, unencumbered fortunes, who would be proud and happy to become tenants of such a mansion.”

The word was scarcely out of his mouth before Sir Walter started from his seat, his eyes flashing with an indignation that made the little attorney shrink back into the depths of his armchair.

“Tenants!” cried Sir Walter, in a voice that shook the china vases on the mantelpiece. “Tenants for Kellynch Hall! Mr Shepherd, are you mad? Have you lost your senses, or have you forgotten who I am? A tenant in my house! A stranger sleeping in my bed, sitting in my library, looking at the portraits of my ancestors, and walking upon my terraces! Good God! that I should live to hear such an outrage proposed to my face! Is an ancient baronetcy to be degraded to the level of a common lodging-house? Am I to turn innkeeper, and let out Kellynch Hall for hire? Let me never hear that word again, sir! Never dare to pronounce the word ‘tenant’ in my presence, or in this house, as long as you live! If Kellynch cannot maintain its master as an Elliot ought to be maintained, it shall stand empty; but it shall never be polluted by the presence of an hireling occupant!”

Mr Shepherd was thoroughly cowed. He stammered out a multitude of apologies, protesting that he had merely intended to state what was sometimes done by the first nobility in the kingdom; that he had never meant to offend; that he should consider the word as for ever erased from his vocabulary; and that Sir Walter’s feelings did him the highest honour.

Lady Russell sighed, and folded up her papers in silence. She saw that pride was as impervious to reason as it was to necessity; and she knew not what to dread from the obstinacy of a man who would neither spend less nor part with the house he could no longer afford to inhabit.

The consultation was at an end. Nothing had been decided; nothing was agreed upon, except that Sir Walter would submit to no retrenchment that could be felt, and would listen to no proposal that could save him. A heavy, uncomfortable gloom settled upon the room, which neither the civil platitudes of Mr Shepherd nor the anxious inquiries of Lady Russell could dispel.

They were interrupted by the entrance of a servant, bearing a letter upon a silver salver. It had been brought over by a mounted messenger from Uppercross, and was addressed to Miss Anne Elliot, in the well-known, hasty, sprawling hand of her youngest sister.

Anne took the letter with an instinctive anticipation of complaint. Mary never wrote unless she was either very much offended, or fancied herself very ill; and on opening the sheet, her expectations were amply confirmed. The epistle ran thus:

“My dear Anne,

“I make no apology for troubling you, though I dare say you are very busy doing nothing at Kellynch, while I am left here in the most miserable condition imaginable. I have been so ill since yesterday morning that I have not been able to stir from my sofa, and nobody seems to care whether I live or die. Charles is gone out shooting with his father and the boys, though I told him I was convinced I had a fever coming on; but men are so shockingly selfish, they think of nothing but their own amusements, and leave their poor wives to languish in solitude. Mrs Musgrove has not been near me all day, though she knows how wretchedly nervous I am; and the children are so noisy that my head is ready to split. If you have any natural affection for your own sister, you will come over to Uppercross directly. Charles says you can have the small chaise to fetch you, if you send word by the boy; but at all events you must come, for I am not fit to be left alone, and if I am neglected any longer I will not answer for the consequences. Elizabeth, of course, will not think of sparing herself, but as you can be of no possible use at home, I insist upon your coming to nurse me immediately.

“Your affectionate sister, “MARY MUSGROVE.”

Anne read the letter through with a calm, practiced eye. She was too well acquainted with Mary’s ailments to be seriously alarmed; but she knew that her sister was never so difficult to manage as when she believed herself neglected, and that her presence at the Great House or the Cottage might restore some degree of harmony to the family.

“What is the matter?” inquired Elizabeth, with careless indifference. “Is Mary dying again? She is always on the point of death whenever Charles wishes to go out with his gun.”

“She complains very much of her health,” replied Anne, quietly, “and begs that I will go over to Uppercross to be with her.”

“Then, pray go, by all means,” said Sir Walter, without looking up from his paper. “You can do no good here; and if Mary is unwell, it is very proper that she should have someone to attend to her. Only take care that you do not bring back any infectious complaint to Kellynch. Your sister’s nerves are always very tiresome, but I dare say she will be satisfied when she has you to listen to her grievances.”

“Indeed,” added Elizabeth, “it is the best thing you can do. We have enough to think of here, without having Mary’s whims to attend to; and as you seem to have such a remarkable genius for low, gloomy notions of economy, you will be vastly better suited to Uppercross than to Kellynch. The boy may carry back word that you will go to-morrow.”

Anne made no objection. She felt, on the contrary, an unacknowledged relief at the idea of leaving home, even for the querulous exactions of Mary. At Kellynch there was nothing before her but the spectacle of blind vanity and approaching ruin, rendered doubly painful by the consciousness that her advice was despised, and her presence unvalued.

Mr Shepherd soon afterwards took his leave, mounting his horse with an expression of settled dejection on his round face; and Lady Russell, after a few more earnest but fruitless efforts to bring Sir Walter to reason, was obliged to order her carriage and return to the Lodge, mourning over the fatal obstinacy of the family, and revolving many melancholy thoughts upon the future destiny of her beloved Anne.

The remainder of the day passed heavily away. Sir Walter retired to his dressing-room to recover from the agitation of Mr Shepherd’s proposal, and Elizabeth shut herself into her own apartment, to brood over her wrongs and the insolence of the world.

When the evening came, Anne found herself alone. The great drawing-room, with its lofty ceilings and handsome furnishings, seemed to mock the impending ruin of its possessors by its very splendour. The silence of the house was broken only by the sighing of the autumn wind among the old trees of the park. She walked to the window, and looked out into the gathering twilight. Kellynch Hall, the home of her childhood, the scene of all her early happiness and all her silent sorrows, was dear to her heart; but she looked upon it now with a trembling apprehension. The debts remained entirely unsettled; not a single measure had been adopted; not a single shilling had been saved. Her father’s pride was as unyielding as ever, and Elizabeth’s haughtiness had only found a new channel in sullen defiance. They would neither retrench their expenditure, nor quit the scene of their extravagance; and ruin, though delayed for a season by the blindness of vanity, must inevitably overtake them.

Yet, in the midst of these heavy reflections, Anne’s mind turned with something like satisfaction to her impending journey. She had resolved to go to Uppercross on the morrow. At Uppercross she would be useful; she would be wanted, if only to soothe Mary’s ruffled spirits, and relieve the good-natured Charles from some portion of his domestic trials. It was a humble field of exertion, but it was better than remaining a helpless spectator of the destruction of Kellynch. With this resolution firmly taken, and leaving the dark problem of her family’s fortunes to the uncertain issue of the future, Anne closed the shutters against the night, and prepared to leave the room.