The Chapters

Lady Russell came to Kellynch with her plan already formed, and with the less agreeable part of her office rendered as easy to herself as a sincere desire of doing good could make it. She had examined the accounts, considered the claims, and allowed every thing which affection for the family, or respect for its station, could fairly require. If she had erred, it was on the side of indulgence. Sir Walter's rank had a value in her eyes which did not depend entirely upon Sir Walter's manner of supporting it; and she would have been sorry to see any diminution of his consequence which prudence did not demand.

Mr Shepherd, who arrived soon after her, brought a paper folded with considerable care, and an air of satisfaction which Elizabeth thought promising. She had expected that a man accustomed to the management of property must know of resources which did not occur to other people; and a paper, provided it were not a bill, had now some claim on her attention.

They met in the breakfast-room. Anne was there, but had neither been summoned nor consulted. She had been writing for her father, and remained at the little table where his letters had been dispatched, willing to hear what was proposed, and almost equally unwilling to be observed hearing it.

Lady Russell began. Her calculations required a reduction in the establishment, the discontinuance of the annual visit to London, and a restraint upon the expenses of the table. Two horses might be spared; certain servants, whose duties appeared capable of being united, might be dismissed; and the entertainments at Kellynch, without ceasing altogether, must become less frequent. The sum thus saved, regularly applied, would, she believed, discharge the debts in seven years.

"Seven years!" said Sir Walter. "And during seven years I am to have no carriage fit to be seen, and no dinner fit to be eaten?"

Lady Russell explained that neither conclusion belonged to her proposal. The carriage would remain; the dinners would be such as a family of their fortune might properly give.

"A family of their fortune! You forget, my dear Lady Russell, that there are families with twice my fortune whom I could not visit. A man's expenditure cannot be regulated by his income alone. His situation must be considered."

"Your situation has been considered very carefully."

"But two horses! You propose taking away two horses. I should like to know what appearance my carriage would make on a hill. And as to London, Elizabeth's going to London is indispensable. A young woman in her situation cannot be shut up in the country."

Elizabeth, who had been examining the paper over Lady Russell's shoulder, said nothing.

Sir Walter was encouraged to proceed.

"I cannot adopt it. There is not an article in the whole scheme which I can approve. We should be talked of in every house within twenty miles. I am much obliged to you, but it is entirely out of the question."

Lady Russell coloured a little. She had not expected gratitude to carry the day, but she had hoped that the necessity, once plainly stated, would be acknowledged. She attempted to distinguish between inconveniences which must be felt and humiliations which existed only in apprehension; but Sir Walter would hear no more of her plan. Its rejection was complete.

Mr Shepherd now unfolded his own paper. He had been careful, he said, to preserve the establishment in all its essential particulars. He proposed no diminution of the carriage horses, and would not presume to determine what attendance Sir Walter's habits might require. There were, however, parts of the expenditure in which a different arrangement might produce a considerable saving. The home farm had not yielded what might reasonably be expected from it; the garden cost more than its produce was worth; and the purchases for the house, made through several hands, might be brought under one responsible person. The London visit might be shortened to a fortnight, and the larger dinner-parties confined to four in the year. With these alterations, and an annual sum secured to the creditors, he thought he could obtain an accommodation which would prevent their pressing their claims.

Sir Walter listened till the dinner-parties were mentioned.

"Four! I gave six last winter, and was reproached for doing so little. There were people whom we could not ask at all. You would have me refuse my neighbours the commonest civility, and employ somebody to question my housekeeper about a pound of candles."

Mr Shepherd ventured to observe that the annual saving would be substantial.

"And what is to become of my garden? Am I to purchase fruit? Is Kellynch Hall to send to market for a peach?"

The garden, Mr Shepherd assured him, might still supply the family very handsomely.

"I understand you perfectly. It is to supply the family, and nobody else. I am to have nothing which I can offer a friend. No, Shepherd; I will not have it. Your plan is worse than Lady Russell's. She would at least leave me a garden."

His paper was returned to him. He folded it again, with less satisfaction than before, and there was a silence which Sir Walter considered sufficient proof of his having disposed of both proposals.

Anne had heard with increasing pain. The very moderation of the advice seemed to her unfortunate. Each adviser had reserved so much for her father's feelings, that the necessity of giving up any thing could scarcely appear stronger than the reasons for retaining every thing. She had looked at the accounts when Lady Russell first received them, and had made calculations of her own; but the little prospect of their being attended to had hitherto kept her silent.

She now spoke.

"If we are to remain here, might not the whole expense of the house be fixed at a sum which we could not exceed? I mean a sum fixed before any other claims are considered, except the interest and the money to be paid towards the debts."

Sir Walter looked at her, as if the circumstance of her speaking required explanation.

"Anne has been considering the accounts with me," said Lady Russell. "I should like to hear what she proposes."

Anne's courage needed all the assistance of this invitation.

"I think we ought to give up the London journey altogether, and all dinner-parties for the present. We might keep only the servants whom the daily work of the house requires, and use fewer rooms. The carriage need not be kept ready every day. If we were to make these reductions at once, and purchase nothing which could be deferred, there would be a much larger sum to pay every year. It would be difficult at first; but I believe we might be free of the debts in four years."

"Four years without a dinner-party!" cried Sir Walter. "You have a very singular notion of living, Anne."

"It would be better than living always in fear of the next account."

She had not intended to say so much; but the words were spoken, and she could only wish that they might be useful.

"The next account need give nobody any concern but myself. I do not know why you should be afraid of it."

"Anne is right," said Elizabeth.

Lady Russell turned towards her; Mr Shepherd lifted his eyes from his paper; and Anne, who had expected only displeasure from that quarter, could scarcely believe she had heard correctly.

"If we must retrench," Elizabeth continued, "we had better do it so that there may be an end of it. I should dislike seven years of being obliged to consider every invitation. We could say that we were receiving nobody. It would be understood, and there would be no occasion for distinctions."

Lady Russell's pleasure was checked by the nature of the argument, but not destroyed. Elizabeth's motives might be imperfect; her assistance was too valuable to be despised.

"And London?" said Sir Walter.

"I could give up London."

It cost her something to say it. She had begun the morning with no such intention, and the recollection of all that a spring in town might yet do for her was not easily dismissed. But Mr Shepherd's fortnight had offended her almost as much as her father's dignity. A fortnight would scarcely allow them to be known to have arrived before they must be known to have departed; and she had a horror of appearing to seek invitations which she could not return. To withdraw altogether, with a reason which need not be explained, seemed preferable.

"I could give it up for four years," she repeated, "if the accounts were really settled by it. And I see no objection to shutting the west rooms. We seldom use them."

Sir Walter had never been more dissatisfied with the likeness between himself and his eldest daughter. He had relied on it for a different result.

"My dear Elizabeth, you are speaking without reflection. To shut up rooms in a house of this description is to confess that one cannot afford to inhabit it. There is nothing I dislike more. I have seen it done, and it always gives me a very poor opinion of the proprietor."

Elizabeth persisted. The rooms were not seen by visitors; nobody need know; and the saving in attendance and fires might be considerable. She even supported Anne in proposing that no new gowns should be ordered except as they became necessary.

This was a sacrifice of sufficient magnitude to silence Lady Russell for a moment. Mr Shepherd looked as if the business might yet be accomplished.

Sir Walter prevented his expressing the hope.

"I shall consent to nothing of the kind. You may choose to live as you please, but I will not have Kellynch Hall made uncomfortable. Four years! At my time of life, four years are not to be thrown away. You talk as if I had nothing to do but wait to be old."

There was no answer which could be offered with advantage. Lady Russell drew Anne's calculation towards her, and Elizabeth sat back in her chair, vexed both by the refusal and by the recollection of what she had volunteered to relinquish.

Mr Shepherd, after a pause, observed that there was perhaps one other method of deriving a considerable advantage from the property without parting with any portion of it. He introduced it cautiously. Houses of consequence were sometimes much sought after by persons whose circumstances enabled them to pay liberally for a furnished residence; and Kellynch, if offered for a limited term, might command a rent which, joined to the savings of a smaller establishment elsewhere, would place Sir Walter's affairs on a very different footing.

"Offered?" said Sir Walter. "What do you mean by offered?"

"I mean, Sir Walter, that a suitable tenant might be found."

"A tenant at Kellynch Hall!"

"The greatest care would of course be taken in the selection."

"I desire that the word 'tenant' may never again be spoken in my presence. I will not hear it. My house is not an inn, and I shall not put a price upon the use of my own drawing-room."

Mr Shepherd bowed. He had advanced the proposal for the first time, and could not mistake the terms upon which it must be withdrawn.

Lady Russell, who saw no prospect of further usefulness that morning, suggested that the papers should remain for consideration. Sir Walter would allow them to remain, provided nobody supposed that he had approved them. He then rang for the newspaper, and the consultation was at an end.

Before Lady Russell went away, a letter was brought in for Anne. It was from Uppercross, and Mary had written with all the earnestness which her own sufferings never failed to produce.

"My dear Anne,

"I have been very unwell all the morning, and scarcely know how I am to get through the day. Charles says he thinks there is nothing the matter with me, which is very easy for him to say, as he is going out, and will hear nothing of my complaints. The children have been excessively troublesome, and I cannot persuade any body that I ought to be kept quiet. Mrs Musgrove called yesterday, but she only told me how well I looked, and I do not expect to see her again to-day. I wish you would come as soon as you can. You know how little I am attended to when you are not here. There is no occasion to bring much, for you may have whatever you want sent afterwards; but pray do not disappoint me. I am sure Papa and Elizabeth can spare you.

"Your affectionate sister,

"Mary Musgrove."

Anne read the letter twice. Lady Russell, to whom she shewed it, thought that Mary probably wanted company more than medicine, but was very willing that Anne should go.

"She always thinks herself ill when Charles is out," said Elizabeth. "However, you had better go. There is nothing to keep you here."

Anne could not dispute the latter assertion. Her opinion had obtained an importance that morning which it seldom possessed, but there was nothing in the result to encourage her attendance upon a second consultation. Mary might be unreasonable; she could at least be useful to Mary.

The afternoon passed without another attempt at settlement. Mr Shepherd went away with no instructions. Lady Russell returned home with the calculations, having first obtained leave to compare them once more. At dinner Sir Walter complained of the manner in which a joint had been dressed, and observed that any reduction in the kitchen must begin by producing somebody who understood his business. Elizabeth made no reply. Her zeal for economy had survived, but she did not choose to expose it again.

When Anne was alone that evening, she wrote to Mary that she would come on the following morning. The letter completed a resolution which had been forming throughout the day. There were her few preparations to make, and a book to put aside which she had hoped to finish; these were soon done. She remained by her window after the light had ceased to be sufficient for employment. She was sorry to leave Lady Russell, sorry to leave the house, and sorry that leaving it should require so little from any body else. Her father's debts were as far from a settlement as ever. She could neither lessen their amount nor persuade him to bear the inconvenience of paying them; but at Uppercross there would be somebody who wished for her arrival, and something which she might do.

"What have you been doing?"

"Oh, going about."

"That will do it."

"Yes," she said. "It does it very well."

The cab went up the hill. Brett opened her eyes and looked out of the window. There was a light in a third-floor room and a woman leaned out to pull the shutters together. Below her the front of the house was dark.

"Don't let's go to the park," Brett said. "Take me to the Closerie des Lilas."

"You want a drink?"

"I want to sit somewhere. I can't stand being driven about."

I leaned forward and spoke to the driver through the glass. He turned at the next corner. Brett took off her hat and held it in her lap.

"That's better," she said.

"We haven't got there yet."

"I know. But we're going somewhere."

She put her hand on mine. Her hand was cool now. We rode along without talking and the tires made a sound on the dry pavement. At a crossing the driver stopped for a tram. It went by empty except for two men on the rear platform. One of them was smoking and looking down into the cab. Brett moved her hand.

"Do you come here much?" she asked.

"Sometimes."

"Will they know you?"

"The waiter may."

"How nice to be known by a waiter."

"It's very useful."

At the Closerie the driver pulled up beside the terrace. I paid him and we went in. There were a few people at the outside tables. A man with a beard had spread a newspaper beside his glass and was holding down a corner of it with his tobacco pouch. We took a table near the edge of the terrace. The waiter wiped it and put down two saucers.

"Brandy and soda?" I asked.

"Please."

I ordered a whiskey and soda for myself. Brett laid her hat on the chair beside her and looked across the boulevard.

"There," she said. "This is good."

It was cooler out there. Through the open door you could hear somebody moving chairs inside. A taxi stood across the street and its driver was asleep with his head against the side of the seat. The waiter brought the drinks.

"Did you really have a date at Montmartre?"

"No."

"You told them you had."

"One has to get away somehow."

"You got away."

"Yes."

She drank and put the glass down carefully in the middle of the saucer.

"Are you busy to-morrow?"

"I go to the office."

"Of course. I'd forgotten."

"There's nothing remarkable about it."

"No. I suppose not."

"You could telephone."

"I wouldn't want to interrupt."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, I might. You never know."

I wanted her to ask to see me again.

The waiter came out and stood in the doorway. Brett watched him until he went back inside.

"I met a man last week," she said. "George Vane. Do you know him?"

"No."

"He's got quantities of money."

"What's he do?"

"He has mines. Or his family has mines. I wasn't very clear about it."

"Where did you meet him?"

"At a dinner. He took everybody on afterward. He kept paying for things before anybody could see the bill."

"That sounds useful, too."

"You're being nasty."

"No. I like a man who pays."

"He was rather decent. He asked what I wanted to do and then we did it. Usually people ask and then tell you why you can't."

"What did you want to do?"

"Go home."

"Did he take you?"

"He found me a taxi."

"He's all right."

"I thought so."

She turned her glass round on the table. There was very little left in it.

"He asked me to lunch on Thursday."

"Are you going?"

"I may."

"Have a good lunch."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Talk that way."

The man with the newspaper folded it and put his tobacco pouch in his pocket. He called the waiter, paid, and went off along the boulevard. Brett watched him go.

"I don't know why I told you," she said.

"You thought I might know him."

"Yes. That must have been it."

We had another drink. The waiter brought a little plate of salted almonds. Brett ate two and pushed the plate toward me.

"I'd like to walk," she said.

"You wouldn't walk up to the Pantheon."

"I wasn't here then."

We sat a little longer. When I called for the bill Brett put her hand into her bag.

"I've got money."

"So have I."

"Mine's quite good money."

"Keep it."

She shut the bag and watched me pay. We went out past the sleeping taxi-driver and walked along the boulevard. Some of the cafés were still lighted, but the chairs had been stacked at the closed ones. A man was washing the pavement in front of a restaurant. We stepped into the street to get round the water.

"What are you thinking about?" Brett asked.

"Fifty francs."

"How frightfully practical."

"I ought to go back for it."

"Your young woman may be gone."

"Then I'll get it."

"And if she isn't?"

"I'll see."

"Let's go and see. I should like to know how she got on."

We turned up toward the Pantheon. Brett walked well when she wanted to. At the top of the hill we stopped and looked down the street. The windows of the bal were still lighted and we could hear the accordion. Somebody came out and stood in the doorway buttoning his coat.

"They're still at it," Brett said.

"You can hear."

"Don't be literal, darling."

She took my arm as we went down the hill. Inside, the room smelled of beer and wet clothes. The policeman had gone. There were fewer people at the tables, and the daughter of the house was carrying empty glasses to the bar. The proprietor sat on his high stool and played with his eyes on the floor. His ankle-bells sounded each time his foot came down.

Georgette was dancing with a small man in a dark blue suit. He held her a little away from him and watched their feet. She had her hat on again. The young men Brett had come with were gone.

The patronne saw me and reached under the bar.

"Here you are, Monsieur."

She gave me the envelope. It was sealed as I had left it. I put it in my inside pocket.

"She did not ask for you," the patronne said.

"She's been busy."

"She dances very well."

Brett leaned against the bar and ordered a brandy and soda. I had a beer. When the music stopped Georgette left the small man and came over to us.

"So," she said. "You come back."

"Yes."

"You are very funny."

"Have you had a good time?"

"I've had enough."

She looked at Brett.

"You took him away?"

"He wanted to go," Brett said in French.

"He always wants to go somewhere. Then he comes back."

"Have a drink," I said.

"No. I want my coat."

The daughter brought it from the hanger. One sleeve had turned inside out and Georgette pushed her hand through it, holding her bag between her knees. I took the envelope out of my pocket and opened it. I gave her the note.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"For the evening."

She looked at it, folded it, and put it into her bag.

"You might have said good night."

"You were dancing."

"You could have waited."

"Yes."

The small man came up carrying his hat. He spoke to her and she answered without looking at him. He waited while she fastened her coat.

"That's my cousin," she told me. "He works near here."

"Good night, Georgette."

"Good night. Don't drink any more of that stuff."

She nodded toward my glass. Then she and the small man went out. The daughter wiped the bar where Georgette had rested her bag.

"She's rather good," Brett said.

"Yes."

"You didn't tell me she was good."

"I didn't know."

We finished our drinks. The proprietor played another tune, but nobody got up to dance. Halfway through it he stopped and lifted the bells off his ankle.

"That's us," Brett said.

Outside, the street had grown cold. We stood close to the wall while two men carried a handcart past. There were folded sacks on it and one of the wheels squeaked.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

"I think so."

"We could get something at the markets."

"Is it very far?"

"We can take a cab."

"No. Let's walk a little."

We went down toward the river. At the boulevard we found a taxi and I gave the driver the address of a place near the Halles. Brett sat upright this time. She kept her hat on and watched the streets. The driver went fast along the empty part of the boulevard, then slowed behind a wagon loaded with vegetables.

"Look at all that," Brett said.

"What?"

"Things to eat. I had quite forgotten people wanted them."

"You wanted something yourself."

"Yes. I'm becoming very ordinary."

The restaurant was full of men who had been working. Their clothes smelled of the market. There was a basket under one table and a pair of wooden shoes under another. The woman at the desk sent us to a little table at the back.

We ordered onion soup and white wine. Brett took off her hat and put it on the hook above the seat. She looked tired under the light. The waiter brought bread and she broke a piece before the soup came.

"This was a good idea," she said.

The soup was hot and there was a great deal of cheese on it. We ate without talking. At the next table two men argued over a slip of paper. One had a pencil and made figures on the tablecloth. The other shook his head. After a while they called the woman over and she did the figures for them.

"She knows," Brett said.

"She's had practice."

"I wish I could do something like that."

"You can add."

"Not when it matters."

She finished her soup and pushed the plate away. I poured the rest of the wine into our glasses.

"I've been rotten to you to-night," she said.

"You've been all right."

"No."

"Eat some bread."

"I don't want any."

I put the bottle down. The waiter came and cleared the plates. He wanted to know if we would have anything else. We ordered coffee.

Brett sat with her hands flat on the table. A man passed us carrying a basket and she drew her chair in to let him through. He thanked her. She smiled at him and then looked down at her hands again.

"I didn't want to go home," she said.

"I know."

"I didn't want to be by myself."

"You aren't."

"Not yet."

The coffee came in thick cups. Brett put in sugar and stirred it until the waiter had gone. I drank mine without sugar. Beyond the door the carts were passing all the time now. Men shouted to one another, and you could hear a horse stamping on the stones.

We sat until the woman came to change the cloth on the table beside us. The men with the figures had gone. Brett reached for her hat.

"We ought to go," she said.

I paid at the desk and we went out into the market traffic. The sky above the roofs had begun to get light. A porter came by with an empty barrow and we stood aside for him. Brett buttoned her coat.

"It's cold."

"We'll find a taxi."

"I can walk as far as the river."

We walked down through the narrow streets. At one corner a boy was opening a bakery and there was a warm smell from inside. Brett stopped to look in, but the boy had gone to the back. We went on. She took my arm and held it until we reached the quay.

A taxi came across the bridge and I stepped into the road and stopped it. Brett gave the driver her address. I opened the door for her.

"You're going to walk?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You'll be tired."

"I'll sleep."

She got in and arranged her skirt under her coat. I shut the door and stood by the window.

"Good night, Jake."

"Good night."

She looked at me and then leaned back. The taxi went along the quay and turned off beyond the bridge. I watched until it was gone.

It was dawn now. Across the river a man was taking down the shutters of a shop. The water was grey except where it caught the pale light between the buildings. I put my hands in my coat pockets and walked home along the river.

I was still awake when the light came. My wife had gone upstairs, and I sat by the open window of my study, turning over a page I had written that afternoon. A moth fluttered against the lamp chimney. Outside, the garden was dark, save where the light from my window fell upon the leaves of a pear tree; and beyond the hedge I could hear someone walking along the road with a slow, deliberate tread.

Then the paper under my hand became green.

For an instant I supposed that something had happened to the lamp. I looked up and saw the whole window filled with a pale brilliance, and the branches of the pear tree standing black against it. A streak of green fire crossed the sky above the roofs towards Ottershaw. It was unlike any shooting star I had ever seen, both in its apparent breadth and in the deliberateness of its passage. Behind it there remained a faint luminous track, which broke into scattered patches and vanished.

I rose so hastily that I upset my chair.

"What was that?" my wife called from upstairs.

"A meteor," I answered, going out upon the doorstep.

The man in the road had stopped. I heard him say something to himself, and then he came back a few paces and asked whether I had seen it. We stood looking over the houses. A dog began barking somewhere towards the common. After an interval there came a dull concussion, less like thunder than the dropping of some immense weight upon the ground. I felt it through the soles of my feet.

"That's down," said the man.

He waited a little longer, as though another sound might tell him where, and then resumed his walk. My wife came to the door with a shawl about her shoulders. I told her that a very large meteor had probably fallen somewhere beyond the village, and that Ogilvy would be sorry to have missed it. There was no glow upon the horizon, no continued disturbance of any kind. Presently we went indoors.

I lay awake for some time, considering the direction of the fall. The green illumination had made the familiar road appear strange, and I remembered particularly the white face of the man who had spoken to me. But even then I thought chiefly of the rarity of my good fortune in witnessing such a thing. I resolved to look for Ogilvy in the morning.

It was my wife who first heard where the meteor had fallen. A boy bringing milk had met a labourer who declared that there was something smoking in the old gravel workings beside the road towards Ottershaw. These workings had been abandoned for several years. Water collected in the deeper excavations, and I had sometimes seen boys fishing there, although what they expected to catch I never understood.

My wife brought this intelligence to me while I was shaving.

"If you are going to look at it," she said, "I shall come too."

We breakfasted earlier than usual and set out a little after seven. The morning was already warm. Along the road the dust retained the marks of yesterday's wheels, and the grass by the hedges glittered with dew. Nothing had altered in the houses we passed. At one a woman was shaking a mat from an upper window; at another a man in his shirt sleeves was washing his bicycle. He called after us to ask if we were going to see the star.

Until that moment I had not realised how quickly the news was spreading.

We left the road by a cart track and crossed a strip of rough grass. The gravel pit lay behind a low rise, so that we saw the steam before we saw the water. It ascended in a white column, spread a little at the top, and drifted towards the trees. There was a faint hissing, interrupted now and again by a heavier bubbling sound.

At the edge of the excavation my wife caught my arm.

The object lay in the shallow end of the pool, half-submerged. Beyond it the water was brown with disturbed sand, and little waves travelled outwards from its sides. Its upper part rose perhaps four feet above the surface. Steam clung to it and obscured its farther extremity, but I could see a broad, dark mass, rounded along the top, with patches of a dull reddish substance adhering to it. In places these patches had fallen away, leaving a smoother surface beneath.

On the bank behind it there was a deep fresh wound in the earth. Gravel had been thrown up over the grass, and a young birch lay with its roots exposed. The thing had struck the sloping side of the pit and come to rest in the water. I could trace something of its passage by the broken bushes and the long scrape through the bank.

Ogilvy was below us, standing on a shelf of gravel with his boots close to the water. Beside him was a labourer carrying a spade. A small boy sat farther up the slope and watched them with the solemn attention that boys give to any occupation from which they are excluded.

Ogilvy looked round at our footsteps.

"You saw it?" he cried.

I told him that I had, and described the green light and the sound that followed. He questioned me about the interval between them, taking out his watch as though it might assist my recollection.

"I cannot give you the seconds," I said. "I was much too surprised."

"Twenty, perhaps? Thirty?"

I admitted that either was possible. He appeared disappointed, but only for a moment.

"A splendid fall," he said. "An extraordinary piece of good fortune. There will be half the geologists in England here when they hear of it."

My wife asked whether we could safely come nearer.

"On the bank, certainly. Keep away from the water. It is hot close to the meteorite."

He spoke with the brisk confidence of a man who had already made the necessary distinctions. We descended a little, choosing our footing among the loose stones. From there the object seemed larger than it had from above. Its visible length was difficult to judge because of the steam, but I estimated it at twenty feet or more.

"That is a prodigious meteorite," I said.

"It is indeed."

"And a singular shape."

Ogilvy glanced at me.

"Iron," he said. "Almost certainly meteoric iron. The outside has melted in its passage through the atmosphere."

I looked at the smooth curve that ran along the exposed portion. A flake of the reddish crust slipped off while I watched, dropped into the water, and disappeared with a sharp hiss.

"Does melting account for that regularity?"

"What regularity?"

"The sides. So far as one can see them, they seem almost parallel."

He moved impatiently along the gravel shelf.

"You are looking at only a part of it. The rest is under water. An irregular mass may present a very regular outline from a particular position."

"But the rounded end?"

"Fusion again. You must remember the speed at which it entered the air."

I had no answer ready to this, but his explanation did not satisfy me. There was something about the proportion of the visible mass that troubled my eye. I had expected a stone, enormously enlarged perhaps, but still with the accidental inequalities of a stone. This seemed to have acquired its shape by some process I could not identify.

"You are quite sure it is an ordinary meteorite?" I asked.

"An ordinary meteorite of an extraordinary size," he replied. "What else should it be?"

I hesitated.

"We have been watching very extraordinary things upon Mars."

Ogilvy laughed, and the labourer looked up at us.

"My dear fellow, every light in the sky is not a message. We have volcanic disturbances upon Mars, and we have a meteorite in a gravel pit. You join the two because they have happened to engage your attention in the same fortnight."

"I suggest the connexion. I do not assert it."

"There is no need even to suggest it until we have examined the iron."

He turned away and asked the labourer whether the pool could be drained. The man scratched his cheek with the handle of his spade and said there was a lower ditch on the other side, but that cutting through to it would be a considerable job.

My wife had listened without speaking. When Ogilvy moved farther along the bank she asked me quietly whether I really believed that the object had come from Mars.

"I do not know what I believe," I said. "I should like to see more of it."

"So should Mr. Ogilvy," she answered. "Only he seems to know already what he will see."

I remember this remark because it amused me then. We were still capable of finding amusement in our several ways of being ignorant.

By eight o'clock there were a dozen people at the pit. Most came from the neighbouring houses, but one man had walked over from Chertsey after hearing the news at the station. Each newcomer first looked at the steam, then asked where the meteor was. On discovering that the dark object in the water was the meteor itself, several expressed disappointment. They had expected something luminous.

A carter said that he had seen a blue ball fall behind the trees. Another man disputed the colour. There followed an argument about the hour, in which a woman who had seen nothing took the most decided part. Ogilvy tried to obtain separate accounts, but the witnesses corrected one another until it became impossible to distinguish recollection from agreement.

Meanwhile the steam diminished. The sun rose above the trees and struck the water, and the object became more plainly visible. Its nearer end rested against a tongue of gravel that ran down into the pool. One could have reached it from dry ground, although the last few feet were slippery and broken.

Ogilvy warned a boy away from this place, and I supposed that everyone had heard him.

It was shortly afterwards that a young man in a brown cap came down the slope. I had seen him about the village, but did not know his name. He carried a walking stick and had the air of being unwilling to accept anything upon another man's authority.

"That's no stone," he said.

"Iron," Ogilvy answered.

The young man poked at the exposed end with his stick. The point scraped away some of the crust and made a faint metallic sound.

"Well, it's cooled now," he said.

"No," my wife called. "You must not touch it."

Whether he failed to hear her, or whether the warning provoked him, I cannot say. He stepped forward and laid his left hand flat upon the smoother patch he had uncovered.

He snatched it back with a cry.

For a moment he stood staring at his palm, holding his fingers apart. Then he stumbled backwards, dropped his stick, and began shaking his hand with a rapid, helpless movement.

"Water!" he shouted. "Where's some water?"

He made towards the pool, and Ogilvy caught him by the shoulder.

"Not there. That water is hot."

The labourer had brought a can of drinking water and left it beneath the bank. My wife fetched it while I helped the young man sit upon the grass. She poured the water over his hand. The skin of his palm had turned white in one place, and there was a red mark across the fingers. He was trembling, and presently became angry with us, as though our knowledge of the danger made us responsible for his hurt.

Someone ran to a cottage for a clean cloth. My wife wrapped his hand loosely, and the woman who brought the cloth undertook to walk with him to the doctor. He went up the slope still complaining, with his cap pushed back and his injured hand held before him.

After that the crowd kept farther away.

The accident changed my wife's manner. Until then she had regarded our visit as an unusual morning excursion. Now she watched every movement upon the bank, and called out whenever a child ventured down. I helped Ogilvy drag a fallen branch across the easiest descent. It was a poor barrier, but people respected it for a time.

The morning wore on. Men arrived who had heard that a house had been struck, or that the water in the pit had caught fire. Two cyclists left their machines against the hedge and hurried across the grass without asking anyone anything. A little girl brought her father's dinner tied in a handkerchief and stayed to look. The crowd spread along the rim of the excavation, crushing the grass and dislodging stones that rattled down towards us.

Ogilvy had gone to a neighbouring house to send a telegram. He returned with renewed importance and began speaking of the arrangements that would be necessary for a proper examination. He still called the thing a meteorite. I found myself using the same word, though with less conviction.

Near noon my wife said that we ought to go home.

I had been looking at a patch on the object where the crust had detached itself. I wanted to remain until Ogilvy had someone there better qualified than I was to judge its shape.

"You go," I said. "I shall follow presently."

She looked at the people arriving along the cart track.

"You have been saying presently for an hour."

I told her that someone should see to the house, and that I would come as soon as there was anything definite to report. At last she consented. I walked with her to the top of the bank and pointed out a path that avoided the incoming crowd. She reminded me to keep away from the hot metal, then turned towards home.

I watched until she had passed the hedge. A church clock began striking twelve. Below me Ogilvy was explaining the fall to a fresh group of listeners, and beyond them more people were crossing the grass. I went down again to the edge of the pit.

She was awakened by Mrs. Medlock taking her by the shoulder and giving her a little shake.

"Here we are," she said. "Wake up and mind your things. You've slept through the last two stations."

Mary opened her eyes and looked about her. The window was quite black now, except where a lamp outside shone upon the wet glass. The train had stopped, and there were voices on the platform and a great deal of noise about luggage. She felt stiff and cross, and for a moment she could not remember where she was.

"Is this England?" she asked.

"It's Yorkshire," answered Mrs. Medlock. "And cold enough you'll find it. Come along."

A porter opened the door, and Mrs. Medlock stepped down first. When Mary followed her she saw that a tall man in a dark travelling coat stood a few feet away from them. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, and he held his head as if he did not care to look at the people who passed him. His face was thin and pale, and his eyes seemed to be looking at something a long way off, though there was nothing before him but the little station and its lamps.

Mrs. Medlock stopped short.

"Mr. Craven, sir!" she exclaimed.

He turned his eyes upon Mary.

"The child?" he said.

"Yes, sir. Miss Mary Lennox. We've got here quite safe, though it's been a wet journey."

Mary looked up at him without speaking. This was her uncle, then. She had expected some one uglier and more extraordinary. She did not think he looked like a person who would listen if she told him she was tired.

"Come," he said.

That was all he said to her. He turned away, and Mrs. Medlock began giving directions to the porter with such briskness that Mary had to follow without asking anything.

The carriage stood beyond the station lamps. It was a large closed carriage, and the horses moved their feet impatiently on the wet stones. A man in a thick coat held the door open. Mr. Craven got in first and sat in the farthest corner. Mrs. Medlock put Mary beside her, the door shut, and they drove away.

For a little while they passed houses with lights in their windows. Mary saw a woman drawing a curtain and a boy standing in a doorway with something white in his hand. She wondered what he was eating. She had eaten very little herself, and now that she had waked she began to feel hungry.

Then the houses grew fewer, and presently there were no houses at all.

Mr. Craven did not speak. The light of a passing lamp had shown Mary that his eyes were shut, but she did not know whether he was asleep. Mrs. Medlock sat very straight and kept her hands folded upon the bag in her lap. She seemed a different person from the woman who had talked in the railway carriage.

Mary pressed her face near the window.

"What is there outside?" she asked at last.

"The moor," Mrs. Medlock answered in a low voice.

"I can't see it."

"You wouldn't, on a night like this."

There was no longer any rain beating against the glass, but the wind made a sound about the carriage and sometimes shook it. Mary could see a pale piece of road immediately beside them, and beyond it something dark which seemed to have no end. In India there had always been things to see, even at night. Here there seemed to be nothing.

"Are there people living on it?" she asked.

"A few, here and there. Farms and cottages. We're miles from most of them."

Mary did not like the answer. She drew back into her corner and tucked her hands beneath the folds of her mantle. She would have liked to tell some one to make the carriage warmer, but she had begun to discover that there were people who did not do things merely because she told them to.

They had driven for some time when the horses suddenly stopped. There was a shout from the box, and then another voice answered out of the darkness.

Mrs. Medlock leaned forward.

"What's amiss?" she said.

The carriage door opened, and the coachman showed his wet face.

"Sheep in t' road, ma'am. There's a hurdle down, an' one on 'em's fast in it. We mun get it clear."

Mr. Craven opened his eyes.

"Get it clear," he said.

The man shut the door again, but it did not catch, and the wind pushed it a little way open. Mrs. Medlock was looking through the other window.

"These moor sheep are forever where they shouldn't be," she said. "Keep your feet covered, child."

But Mary had heard a scrambling sound close beside the carriage, and something had struck the step. She thought at first that it might be a dog. She bent forward and peeped through the opening.

She could see nothing distinctly. This annoyed her, and as Mrs. Medlock was still looking the other way she put one foot upon the step and climbed down.

The wind caught her at once. It pushed her mantle against her knees and blew the loose hair out from beneath her hat. She had never felt such a wind. There was no warm smell in it, and no smell of flowers or dust. It was cold and wet and strange.

A carriage lamp showed her the road and a broken wooden hurdle lying across part of it. Beyond the lamp there were little moving shapes and a man bending down. Something gave a sharp bleat.

Mary took two steps away from the carriage. Her shoe sank into soft ground at the edge of the road, and when she pulled it out there was mud upon it. She looked up angrily, as if some one must be to blame.

Then she forgot her shoe for a moment.

There was so much darkness about her. It was not the darkness of a room, which had walls one could find by putting out a hand. The wind came over miles of country she could not see. A low cloud moved across a small pale opening in the sky, and she caught sight of a long rising stretch of ground with nothing standing upon it.

She felt very small, and she did not like feeling small.

"Miss Mary!" cried Mrs. Medlock behind her. "Whatever are you doing?"

Mary turned. Mrs. Medlock had opened the door wide, and her bonnet flowers trembled in the light.

"I wanted to see what it was," Mary said.

"Get into the carriage this minute. Do you want to be lost on the moor?"

Mary had not thought of being lost. She looked once more at the dark ground, and it seemed quite possible that if the carriage went away she might never find anything again.

"Get in," said Mr. Craven from within.

She climbed up without answering. Mrs. Medlock pulled the door to and fastened it.

"Your shoes are wet now," she said. "A nice beginning!"

Mary sat with her lips pressed together. She had been outside scarcely a minute, but her fingers were cold and her heart beat faster than usual. She was glad when the horses began to move again. She would not have said she was glad if any one had asked her.

After that the drive seemed very long. Once or twice she thought she saw a light, but it disappeared before she could be sure. At last the carriage turned, and the sound of the wheels altered. They passed beneath trees whose bare branches made a noise overhead, and then a great dark mass rose before them.

There were lights in a few of its windows. The rest were black.

"Misselthwaite," said Mrs. Medlock.

Mary looked at it as the carriage drew up. She could not count its windows or see where it ended. It seemed much too large for the few lights which burned in it.

The door of the house opened before they got out. An elderly man stood in the light, and Mr. Craven walked past him.

"Pitcher," he said, and added something so low that Mary did not hear it.

The old man followed him across the hall. Mr. Craven did not turn back or say good-night. In another moment he had disappeared through a door.

Mrs. Medlock gave a little breath and straightened her mantle.

"Come with me," she said to Mary.

The hall was so large that the fire burning at one end did not seem to warm it. There were things upon the walls which Mary might have looked at if she had not been cold and sleepy, but Mrs. Medlock took her past them and up a broad staircase. Their footsteps made an odd noise. Mary thought there must be a great many empty places for the noise to go into.

They went along one passage and turned into another. Mrs. Medlock carried a candle now, and its light moved over doors and over dark pictures of people whose faces Mary could scarcely see.

"Is my room a long way off?" she asked fretfully.

"It's here," said Mrs. Medlock, and opened a door.

It was a good-sized room with a fire and a bed hung with curtains. There was a smaller room beyond it, and upon a table stood a basin and a jug of hot water. Mary went straight to the fire.

"You'll have your supper here," Mrs. Medlock said. "Your box will be brought up. Take off those wet shoes."

"Who will take them off?" asked Mary.

Mrs. Medlock looked at her.

"You've got hands, haven't you?"

Mary stared back. Then she sat down and began to pull at a button.

Mrs. Medlock helped her at last, but she did it with an expression which Mary disliked very much. She put dry slippers beside her chair and went away to see about the luggage.

Presently there was a knock, and a manservant came in carrying a tray. He was a broad, elderly man with a red face and hair which stood stiffly above his ears. Mary had expected a woman, and she watched him with some surprise as he set the tray upon the table.

"Tha'll be ready for summat," he said. "It's a fair long way fra' t' station of a rough neet."

Mary looked at him more sharply.

"What did you say?"

He took the cover off a plate.

"A bit o' chicken, an' bread an' butter. Sit thee down while it's hot. Tha's nobbut a little un to be out on t' moor i' this weather."

"I don't understand what you are saying," Mary announced. "You don't talk properly."

The man looked at her, and then his face spread into a slow smile.

"Nay," he said. "Happen tha'll get used to Yorkshire."

"I have never heard any one talk like you."

"There's plenty does," he answered, quite undisturbed. He put a glass of milk beside her plate. "Now then. Sup up."

She did not know whether he meant the milk or the chicken, and she was too hungry to ask. She began to eat. The man made up the fire and carried away the empty coal scuttle.

Mary ate more than she had expected to eat. The room was warmer now, and she began to look at the bed and the heavy curtains with less dislike. If she had had an Ayah there, and if the Ayah had understood everything she said, it might have been a tolerable room.

She was drinking the last of her milk when she heard the sound.

It came from somewhere outside her door. At first she thought that a heavy piece of furniture had been drawn across a floor. Then there was a pause and a dull knocking, followed by a long, low sound which seemed to pass away into the house.

Mary put down her glass.

When Mrs. Medlock returned she was still looking at the door.

"What was that?" she asked.

"What was what?"

"The noise outside."

Mrs. Medlock set down the clothes she had taken from Mary's box.

"There's wind enough to make noises to-night," she said. "You'll hear plenty of it here."

"It sounded as if something was moving."

"The wind moves things. It gets into the passages and rattles doors. This isn't a little bungalow with every room on one floor."

Mary listened. The sound had ceased.

Mrs. Medlock helped her undress, told her where the bell was, and drew back one of the bed curtains. Then she took up the candle.

"Go to sleep," she said. "You've had travelling enough for one day."

She went out, and the room grew dark except for the red light of the fire.

Mary lay upon her back and looked at the dim folds above her. She was tired, but she did not go to sleep. After a while the fire sank lower, and she could no longer see the chair where her clothes lay.

Then the dull knocking came again, very far away.

She listened until it stopped. Perhaps it was the wind. Mrs. Medlock had said it was, but Mrs. Medlock had not listened at all.

Mary turned her face upon the pillow and kept her eyes open in the dark. She had decided that she would find out for herself what the sound was.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

Kept in phonograph.

27 May.

Morris gave us an excellent dinner last night. I had almost sent an excuse, but was ashamed to put him to the trouble of receiving one after he had been at such pains to bring us together. I arrived first, and found him examining the table with a seriousness which would have become an operation. He had ordered flowers, and was now removing them.

"Jack," he said, "there are occasions when a man wants to see the fellow opposite him. These things would hide a buffalo."

I helped him to carry them to the window. When Arthur came in, Quincey was standing with a great bunch of roses in either hand, and bowed to him with such extravagance that we all laughed. It was a relief to laugh. I had feared that we should each be watching the others, and that every harmless word would need consideration before it could be spoken.

Arthur brought messages from Miss Westenra. Mine was that I had promised her mother the name of a physician who understood a certain complaint of an old servant, and that I must not suppose an engagement had made her forget her friends. Quincey's concerned a story which he had left unfinished. Arthur delivered them faithfully, without any of the awkwardness which another man might have felt.

I found myself talking of the servant's symptoms as though the matter were of the first importance. Quincey listened, and asked whether the poor woman could take exercise. He knew why I had seized upon it. When the servant entered with the soup he began an account of a dinner we had once eaten in camp, and before long Arthur was correcting him, and I was being called upon to decide between them.

There was no ceremony over the health until the cloth had been removed. Then Morris filled our glasses and stood up.

"Art, old fellow, we have had some good luck together, but you have beaten us this time. May you keep what you have won, and deserve it."

Arthur rose also. He looked at us both before answering, and for a moment I thought he would find it difficult to speak.

"I don't know how to thank you," he said. "Lucy told me I should find you generous, and I said I knew that already. There is only one thing I want to ask. Don't begin to treat me as though I had become a different fellow."

Quincey reached across and shook his hand.

"You'll have to give us better cause than this."

I shook it too. I could say little, but Arthur understood. There are some things which a man may accept from his friends without feeling poorer for having accepted them.

We sat late. Morris would have us fix another evening before we parted, and Arthur proposed that next time we should dine with him. I pleaded my work, which is a convenient refuge even when it is a real obligation; but they would not let me escape altogether, and we agreed that I should come if the assistant could take my rounds.

I walked part of the way home. For the first time since Sunday I had an appetite, and was provoked to discover it at an hour when there was nothing to eat. I record this small fact because yesterday I should have thought such a recovery impossible. A physician ought to remember how readily he mistakes his present condition for a permanent one.

28 May.

An unexpected question from Renfield this morning.

I had entered his room to see whether he had resumed the habit of setting his chair square with the boards of the floor. He had done so, and had placed a folded newspaper beneath the shorter leg. Before I spoke, he said:

"Is Miss Westenra going to marry Mr. Holmwood?"

The use of her name took me so much by surprise that I answered, "Why do you ask?" with more sharpness than I intended.

"Because I should like to know whether the newspaper is correct."

He pointed to the sheet under his chair. It was yesterday's paper, which an attendant had given him after reading it. There was a short announcement of the engagement amongst the fashionable intelligence. I had not seen it.

"Yes," I said. "I believe it is correct."

"Then they ought to print it without that word 'understood.' Either the lady has accepted him, or she has not. What is understood by one person may be misunderstood by another."

He spoke quite reasonably, and waited while I read the paragraph. I found that I had been prepared to attach importance to the question merely because it touched my own affairs.

"Do you know either of them?" I asked.

"No. I know their names now. You know them, I suppose?"

I told him that I did.

"Then your answer is better than the paper's."

After this he returned to a complaint about the chair. He wished for one with four legs of equal length, and argued that the expenditure of a penny upon a wedge would preserve a newspaper worth twice as much. I directed the attendant to have the leg repaired.

I must take care in my dealings with this man. His illness is sufficiently perplexing without my adding observations which belong to myself.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

29 May.

My dearest Mina,

Arthur has told me about the dinner, and I am so glad they were happy together. I had been afraid of it, though I would not tell him so. One can write that one wishes everybody to remain friends, but when the friends actually sit down at the same table it must be a different matter. Mr. Morris sent me the roses next morning, with a message that they had done their duty without interrupting the conversation.

Mamma was much pleased with them. She said that Americans understood these little attentions better than Englishmen, and Arthur, who was present, asked whether he ought to send flowers after every dinner he attended. You should have seen her look at him! He has a way of pretending to be quite helpless which always makes her explain things to him, and I believe he enjoys the explanation as much as the joke.

We have been very busy to-day. Mamma took me to see about some linen, and I thought that I should never again wish to hear the word dozen. There were dozens of everything, and when I had made up my mind about one pattern the woman brought another, which mamma said was more suitable. I tried to be sensible, but I kept thinking how much pleasanter it would be to choose things with you.

I am determined that you shall come as soon as the school can spare you. We need not wait until all our arrangements are settled. Indeed, I should like to have you here before they are, for you would remember what had been decided, and I am always obliged to ask mamma again.

You have said so little about Jonathan in your last two letters. Has he written to say when he will be home? I have been looking at a railway map, but it leaves off just where I most wanted it to go on. Arthur says that a journey may take longer than a traveller expects, especially when he has business to finish. He seemed so certain that I felt quite comforted on your behalf.

Write soon, dear, and tell me the very day you can come.

Your loving

LUCY.

Letter, Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra.

30 May.

My dearest Lucy,

Your letter came whilst I was correcting exercises, and I fear that the last few received less attention than the first. I am glad about the dinner. Jonathan thinks so highly of friendship between men that he would have been pleased to hear of it, and I shall keep your letter for him.

I cannot yet give you the day of my coming. There is some work which I promised to finish before the holidays, and I should be sorry to leave it for another person. But I have put your invitation beside my little calendar, where I can see it whenever I make an entry.

You ask about Jonathan. I have had no further news which fixes his return. I did not mean to conceal this from you; I only thought that each post would bring something definite, and that I could then write without troubling you over a delay which might already be ended.

Mr. Hawkins has been very kind. He says that business connected with property abroad often requires more time than people here allow for it. He has written to make inquiries at the hotel where Jonathan stayed before going on to his destination. I felt a little foolish when he told me, for I had thought of doing the same thing and had not done it, because I did not know whether Jonathan would like me to interfere with his business.

I have been practising my typing every evening. There is a great deal of comfort in a task which shows exactly how much one has done. Yesterday I copied a whole page without an error, and then spoilt the last line by putting my own name where another ought to have been. I was thinking of a letter, you see.

Do not give up choosing the linen until I come. I should like to help with something that you will use every day.

Ever your loving

MINA.

Letter, Emil Kraus to Miss Mina Murray.

The Golden Krone, Bistritz.

28 May.

Madam,

Mr. Peter Hawkins of Exeter has addressed an inquiry to the proprietor of this hotel concerning Mr. Jonathan Harker, who was our guest at the beginning of the present month. He has also supplied your address, with the request that any information respecting a delay in Mr. Harker's return should be communicated directly to you. I therefore take the liberty of writing.

Mr. Harker has been delayed in the completion of his business. This information was given here on the evening of the 26th by a commercial traveller, Herr Anton Weiss, who stated that he had lately spoken with him. According to Herr Weiss, certain papers required for the transaction were not ready, and Mr. Harker could not fix a day for his departure until they had been examined.

Herr Weiss further stated that Mr. Harker was in good health, and desired that his friends should not alter their arrangements on account of him. He expected that the remaining business would occupy only a few days.

I must explain that I have not myself seen Mr. Harker since he left this hotel, and that I report the traveller's statement as it was given to me. Herr Weiss knew Mr. Harker's profession and the name of Mr. Hawkins, which led us to accept his information. He left yesterday for Klausenburg. We have asked him, should he again meet Mr. Harker, to advise him that inquiries have arrived.

I have sent the same particulars to Mr. Hawkins. Should any letter or message reach us, we shall forward it without delay.

I remain, Madam,

Your obedient servant,

EMIL KRAUS,

Clerk to the proprietor.

Mina Murray's Journal.

2 June.

The letter from Bistritz came this morning. I read it twice before I understood that the writer had not seen Jonathan himself. At first the words "in good health" seemed all that mattered.

I took it to Mr. Hawkins after school. He had received his own letter, and was glad that I had brought mine, for he wished to compare them. They agreed in everything of consequence. He read the signature carefully and said that the clerk had written a proper business letter, distinguishing what he knew from what he had merely been told.

I asked whether papers could really detain Jonathan so long.

"They can detain much older men," he said. "I have spent a fortnight waiting for a document which was lying all the time in a drawer not ten yards from my office."

This made me laugh, and he seemed pleased. He would have me stay to tea, but I could not, as I had promised to take some books to one of the girls who has been absent from school.

Before I left he asked permission to keep the letter until to-morrow. He wished to write again, and thought there might be some small particular in it which would help his inquiry. I gave it to him, though I had meant to carry it home and put it with Jonathan's letters.

How odd it is that a stranger's assurance should make one able to do all the ordinary things again! I bought ribbon on my way back, and remembered afterwards that I had stood before the same shop yesterday without caring to go in.

3 June.

Mr. Hawkins returned the letter by hand, with a note saying that he had telegraphed to Bistritz. He had asked the proprietor to obtain Herr Weiss's present address. There might be an opportunity, he said, of sending a message to Jonathan through him.

I have written down several things which I want to tell Jonathan when he comes. They seemed too small to put in a letter, but I should be sorry if I forgot them. Lucy's account of the flowers is amongst them.

4 June.

I finished the promised school work to-day. I had meant to write to Lucy this evening and tell her that I could now begin to arrange my visit.

Mr. Hawkins sent for me before I had begun. His messenger said only that a reply had come to the telegram, and that I was to bring the Bistritz letter with me. I put it in my bag at once.

Telegram, Emil Kraus to Peter Hawkins, Exeter.

4 June.

Informant arrested for forgery. His account of Jonathan Harker's delay false. Whereabouts unknown.

KRAUS.

The symptoms described there agreed so closely with those I had witnessed that I closed the volume with a feeling almost of triumph. Here, at least, was something definite. I had scarcely allowed for the possibility that the same symptoms might bear a different interpretation to a man who understood them.

I hurried out of the house. The morning air struck pleasantly cool upon my face, though the sun already promised another day of heat. No rain had fallen during the night. The gravel was dry, and a little cloud of dust rose behind a cart upon the village road.

Poirot lodged in a small house with several of his compatriots. I found the front door open, and was about to knock upon an inner one when my friend appeared upon the stairs. He wore a dressing-gown of remarkable magnificence, and his moustaches, even at that hour, were carefully arranged.

“Ah, Hastings! I have been expecting you.”

“You know, then?”

“Annie, the housemaid, told me. She came to fetch the nurse who lives next door. There was some delay, and I heard her talking in the passage.”

“Mrs. Inglethorp is dead.”

He bowed his head.

“Yes. The poor lady!”

For a moment he was silent. Then his manner changed.

“You have come with the permission of the family?”

“John has given me a free hand. The doctors have insisted upon a post-mortem. Poirot, I am convinced that it is strychnine.”

“You are convinced? Upon what do you base your conviction?”

I gave him a rapid account of the convulsions, and mentioned my researches in the library.

He listened without interruption.

“And the book, it has told you who administered it?”

“Of course not.”

“Or whether anyone administered it?”

I stared at him.

“But surely the symptoms——”

“Are very important. Yes. You will tell me about them again, slowly. For the present, permit me to dress.”

He was already turning towards his room.

“I must tell John you are coming,” I said. “I left without speaking to him again.”

“Go, then. I shall follow in a quarter of an hour. And, Hastings, do not arrange anything for my convenience. Leave things as they are.”

I took the shorter path across the fields. As I approached the house, I saw a tall figure coming through the entrance gates. It was Alfred Inglethorp.

He walked with his usual measured tread, carrying his hat in his hand. The sight of him filled me with an indignation which I had some difficulty in concealing. He stopped when he perceived me.

“Mr. Hastings! You are abroad early.”

“There has been dreadful trouble. Your wife was taken ill during the night.”

His hand tightened upon the brim of his hat.

“Ill? Seriously ill?”

“She is dead.”

For a few seconds he did not speak. Then he passed his hand across his forehead.

“Dead? Emily dead? There must be some mistake.”

“Both doctors have been here.”

He moved past me towards the house. I followed him into the hall, where John stood at the dining-room door.

“John, what is this Hastings tells me?”

John answered him quietly. Alfred sank into a chair beside the hall table, and covered his face with his hands. There was something theatrical in the gesture, but I reminded myself that grief takes strange forms.

At last John said:

“We tried to find you. Where did you spend the night?”

“With Denby, the estate agent. I called upon him after leaving Dr. Bauerstein. We had business to discuss, and it kept us until nearly twelve. When I discovered that I had forgotten my latch-key, he insisted upon my staying. I slept upon his sofa.”

“You had forgotten the key?”

“Yes. I meant to take it, but I must have left it on this table. I was looking for my gloves at the time.”

John glanced at the bare table.

“There is no key here now.”

“One of the servants may have put it away.” Alfred rose. “I must go to her.”

“The rooms are locked,” said John. “Bauerstein thought it better.”

Alfred looked from one of us to the other.

“Locked? Why?”

“There will have to be a post-mortem.”

He received this announcement with a bewildered expression. John explained, in a few words, the doctors’ decision. Alfred made no protest. He seemed scarcely to attend, and presently asked for a little brandy.

John took him into the dining-room. I remained in the hall, where Dorcas had appeared with a tray.

“He says he left his latch-key here,” I remarked, indicating the table. “Have you seen it?”

“No, sir.”

“You are certain?”

“I am certain he took it out with him, sir. I handed it to him myself. He put it in his waistcoat pocket, and I closed the front door behind the two gentlemen.”

“Did he come back for anything?”

“No, sir. He went straight down the drive with Dr. Bauerstein.”

She spoke with the quiet confidence of a servant who knows precisely what she has done. I was still considering this contradiction when the bell rang, and Poirot arrived.

John came out to receive him. My friend expressed his sympathy in a few simple words, and asked whether he might see the room in which Mrs. Inglethorp had died.

“Certainly. I have the keys.”

He led us upstairs. At the door he hesitated.

“Is there anything you will require?”

“For the moment, only your permission to examine what is here. Later, perhaps, I shall ask a few questions.”

John unlocked the door and handed Poirot the keys.

“I shall be downstairs.”

We entered. John closed the door behind us, and I heard his footsteps retreat along the passage.

The curtains had been drawn back. In the clear morning light the room seemed smaller than it had during the dreadful confusion of the night. Someone had replaced the overturned table, but the broken pieces of a cup still lay near the bed. Upon the counterpane rested the hands which, a few hours before, had struggled so terribly.

Poirot stood quite still. He looked at the bed, then slowly about the room. I felt an impatient desire to direct his attention to the things which appeared to me important.

“The coffee cup is there,” I said.

“So I perceive.”

“And that is the communicating door which we broke down.”

“Yes.”

He approached it, examined the damaged framework, and bent to inspect the bolt.

“Who entered first?”

“John, I think. Lawrence and I were immediately behind him.”

“And you opened the door into the passage?”

“I unbolted it.”

“Was the key also turned?”

I considered.

“Yes. I remember turning it before drawing back the bolt.”

“You are sure?”

“Perfectly.”

He nodded, and crossed to the door leading into Cynthia’s room. Its bolt remained fastened. He tried it gently, without drawing it back, then examined the windows.

I watched him with growing disappointment. There was no eagerness in his movements. He might have been a house-agent considering the condition of the property.

Presently he knelt beside the hearth.

“There was a fire last night?” he asked.

“There were still some ashes glowing when we came in. I noticed them particularly.”

“Why particularly?”

“Because Lawrence was staring in that direction. He looked positively terrified. I followed his eyes, but there was nothing to see.”

Poirot turned his head.

“Nothing that you saw,” he corrected mildly.

He examined the hearth with great attention, but touched nothing. Then he moved to the bedside table and studied the objects upon it.

“Has this table been put back exactly where it stood?”

“I cannot say. It was overturned when we entered.”

“Then we shall not assume that it has.”

He lowered himself to one knee again. A corner of the rug had been caught under a leg of the table. He freed it, lifted the edge, and remained motionless.

“What is it?” I cried.

Without replying, he took a small envelope from his pocket. With the point of a pair of tweezers he picked something off the carpet and held it towards me.

It was a little brass screw, scarcely half an inch long. About its upper threads clung two or three strands of dark blue silk.

“A screw!” I exclaimed.

“Precisely.”

“From the table?”

He looked at me over the tweezers.

“You are very anxious that it should come from the table, my friend.”

“But what does it mean?”

“That is what I propose to consider.”

He slipped it into the envelope.

“You might at least tell me why you attach importance to it.”

“I have not yet told you that I do.”

“But you have taken it!”

“Yes. That is an action. You are asking me for an explanation. The two things need not occur together.”

I found this excessively irritating. However, I knew Poirot too well to press him further.

He completed his inspection without making another discovery that I could observe. The despatch-case stood upon a chair near the wardrobe. He looked at it, asked whether that was the one Cynthia had brought upstairs, and passed on when I answered in the affirmative.

At length he requested me to describe the events of the night from the moment Lawrence awakened me. This time he would permit no haste. Again and again he brought me back to some trifling detail.

Where had Mary stood? Had Cynthia spoken? Which servant fetched the brandy? Had Lawrence put down his candle before or after the gas was lit?

To this last question I could give no satisfactory answer.

“You see,” said Poirot, “the things which happen before our eyes are not always the things which we remember.”

He locked the room when we left it.

Downstairs, the household had gathered in the dining-room. Breakfast stood almost untouched upon the table. Alfred was no longer there. John told us that he had gone into the garden.

Cynthia sat by the window. Her cheeks had lost their unnatural colour, but she still looked tired and confused. Mary stood behind her chair, one hand resting upon its back.

Poirot approached the girl.

“Miss Cynthia, did you sleep last night as you usually do?”

“No,” she answered at once. “I generally wake if anyone opens my door. Last night I heard nothing until Mary shook me, and even then I could hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Thank you, mademoiselle.”

He asked her nothing more. I was surprised, for her room adjoined Mrs. Inglethorp’s, and she might surely have supplied useful information. But he turned to John and requested permission to speak with Dorcas.

We found her in the morning-room. She had evidently been crying, and the sight of her grief affected Poirot. He drew a chair forward for her before taking one himself.

At his request she gave an account of her mistress’s movements on the previous afternoon. She was unwilling to repeat the words of the quarrel, and Poirot did not insist. He asked instead at what time she had seen Mrs. Inglethorp afterwards, and whether the fire in the bedroom had been laid that day.

“The mistress rang for it herself, sir, just before she went up.”

“In such heat?”

“She said she felt chilly. I thought she looked very much upset.”

“And you lit it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Poirot asked whether she had noticed anything unusual about the room. Dorcas shook her head.

“The rug, perhaps? Was it lying flat?”

“As far as I remember, sir. I should have straightened it if it wasn’t.”

He thanked her. As she rose, I could contain myself no longer.

“Tell Mr. Poirot about the latch-key.”

She glanced at me, then repeated what she had said in the hall.

Poirot listened without any change of expression.

“You gave it into Mr. Inglethorp’s hand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And saw him put it in his pocket?”

“His waistcoat pocket, sir.”

“Thank you. That is quite clear.”

When she had gone, I told him Alfred’s account.

“There!” I concluded. “What do you make of that?”

“That the two accounts differ.”

“Surely it is more than that?”

“It may become more than that. At present we have one gentleman who says he left a key upon a table, and one servant who says she saw him put it in his pocket.”

“Dorcas is absolutely trustworthy.”

“I have not said otherwise.”

He looked at the clock.

“It is now half-past eight. I should like to see the outside of the house.”

We spent some time in the garden. Poirot examined the ground beneath the bedroom windows, though I pointed out that they were too high for anyone to reach without a ladder. He agreed with me, and continued his examination.

Afterwards he walked to the gates and back. I could discover no purpose in these proceedings. He appeared chiefly concerned with the time required to go from one place to another.

Upon our return we encountered Lawrence in the hall. He looked exhausted.

“I hope Hastings has not made too much of this,” he said. “We have had trouble enough.”

“My friend has told me what he witnessed,” replied Poirot. “That is all I have asked of him.”

Lawrence gave a short laugh.

“He sees mysteries everywhere.”

I was about to retort, but Poirot laid a hand upon my arm.

We went into the little sitting-room, where he made notes in a minute book. He would not discuss his conclusions, and I found his silence increasingly trying. Twice I attempted to return to the contradiction about the key. Twice he checked me by asking some question about the arrangement of the bedroom.

At eleven John brought us coffee. He had sent a telegram to Miss Howard, and expected a reply shortly. The business of the morning had aged him. I wished I could offer some assurance that Poirot had made progress, but I had no grounds for doing so.

My friend drank his coffee, set the cup down neatly in its saucer, and rose.

“Come, Hastings. We will look once more.”

We went upstairs. Poirot admitted us to Mrs. Inglethorp’s room, closed the door, and turned the key. The house was very quiet. Through the open window came the distant sound of a mowing-machine.

He drew two chairs towards the little table, and placed his envelope upon it. Then he tipped out the brass screw.

In the stronger light the threads caught beneath its head were plainly blue. I bent over them, puzzled.

“Well?” I said.

Poirot did not answer immediately. He looked at the screw, then at the rug, and finally towards the broken communicating door.

“Does that belong to something which has been taken away?” I asked.

“Perhaps.”

“And you think that if we find the thing——”

He shook his head.

I looked again at the tiny object between us. I could make nothing of it, nor of the satisfaction which had appeared upon his face.

Poirot folded his hands.

“It is curious, Hastings. We broke down the door to enter this room. Someone else appears to have required it closed in order to leave.”

Mr. Franklin helped me up, and shook the sand out of the skirts of my coat, with as much attention as if I had been the gentleman and he had been the servant. There was a great deal to like in him, whatever foreign countries might have done towards spoiling the rest.

“And how is my aunt?” he asked. “And how is everybody? And why are you looking at your watch?”

I told him how my lady was; I told him that the household was well; and I told him that I was looking at my watch because there were four hours between the time of his coming and the time at which we had expected him.

“That is easily accounted for,” says Mr. Franklin. “I changed my train.”

There are answers which answer a question, and answers which only give you the trouble of asking it again. Mr. Franklin’s was one of the latter sort.

“What made you change your train, sir?”

“A letter.”

He took his arm out of mine, and put his hand into the breast of his coat. While he was searching for the letter, I asked how he had found his way to me.

“I left my luggage at the house. Your daughter told me where you were, and directed me through the plantation. I thought I would begin with you, Betteredge. You know everything, and you never ask inconvenient questions.”

This, after the question I had just asked him, was either a compliment or a warning. I took it as a compliment. At my age, if there are two ways of understanding what a young man says, you save yourself a world of trouble by choosing the pleasant way.

He found the letter, and handed it to me.

“Read that,” he said. “It reached me in London yesterday evening, after I had written to my aunt about my arrival. There was no time to send her another letter which would get here before me.”

The writing was Mr. Bruff’s. I had seen enough of the lawyer’s hand, in my lady’s business, to know it before I came to the signature. Mr. Franklin stood beside me while I read.

“London, Wednesday, May 24th, 1848.

“My dear Franklin,

“I have considered the question which you put to me this morning. My advice is that you should take the packet with you to Yorkshire, and place it, immediately on your arrival, in the custody of some person whom Lady Verinder trusts.

“Betteredge will answer the purpose. Ask him to lock it up with the plate, and to keep the key himself. There is no occasion to acquaint him with the contents; and there is every reason for avoiding a discussion of the matter among the servants.

“I should prefer your going by the first train tomorrow. You will then arrive while the household is about its ordinary business, and have time to make the arrangement before the evening. The delay proposed in your letter to your aunt has no advantage which I can discover.

“Until we have spoken again, keep the seal unbroken. You may write to me at this address if any difficulty arises.

“Your father was here today. I gave him your message.

“Yours truly, “Matthew Bruff.”

I folded the letter, and gave it back.

“Well, sir,” I said, “there is nothing against coming early, that I know of. But if you had meant to surprise us, you couldn’t have done it better.”

“The first train did not surprise me agreeably,” says Mr. Franklin. “I was obliged to get up before I had properly gone to bed. There is the explanation of my arrival. Now for the business which brought me.”

He took a small packet from another pocket, and put it into my hand.

It was wrapped and sealed. I noticed that much, because I had to take care of it; and I noticed no more, because Mr. Bruff’s letter had expressly told me that I need not know what was inside.

“Will you do what he asks?” said Mr. Franklin.

“Certainly, sir.”

“And keep it till tomorrow morning?”

“Till tomorrow morning, or till tomorrow twelvemonth, if my lady wishes it.”

He laughed at that, and then became serious again.

“I shall ask you for it myself,” he said. “Nobody else is to trouble you about it.”

I put the packet into the inside pocket of my waistcoat, where I kept papers which were not to be mixed up with the keys and the loose money.

The proper course, no doubt, would have been to ask whether my lady knew of this addition to the property under my charge. But Mr. Bruff managed her affairs; Mr. Franklin was her nephew; and the plate-room was my own particular province. Between the three of us, I thought we might be trusted with a small sealed packet for one night.

If you think I was wrong, pray remember that you have the advantage of knowing there is a story to be told. I had only the advantage of being an old servant, trusted in the house for more years than Mr. Franklin had lived in it.

We turned towards the plantation.

He began asking questions again, faster than I could answer them. Had my lady altered much? Did she still breakfast at the old hour? Was the pony-carriage still in use? Had Miss Rachel kept up her drawing?

I answered as well as I could. Before we had gone far, I found myself wondering which of the questions he most wanted answered. He came back to the drawing after we had done with the pony-carriage; and he came back to Miss Rachel after we had done with my lady’s breakfast.

There is no harm in a young gentleman’s being interested in his cousin. I mention the circumstance as it struck me at the time, and leave the younger part of my readers to make what they please of it.

At the house, the first person we met was Penelope.

She was standing at the entrance to the back court, and looked beyond us towards the plantation before she spoke.

“Did you find Rosanna, father?”

“I found her, and sent her home to dinner. Haven’t you seen her?”

“No. Nancy has been asking for her again.”

Mr. Franklin looked at his watch.

“I must wash the railway off me before my aunt comes in,” he said. “Where have they put me, Betteredge?”

I told him; and he went upstairs, with a nod to Penelope. My daughter waited till he was out of hearing.

“Rosanna has gone to Cobb’s Hole,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“The gardener’s boy saw her take the path across the field. He spoke to her, and she said she was going to see her friend.”

“Then why did you ask if I had found her?”

“Because I thought you might have gone after her.”

Here was another consequence of having a daughter. You do a charitable action, and she expects you to keep on doing it for the rest of the afternoon.

I told Penelope that Rosanna had been low in her spirits, and that, if a visit to her friend would mend them, I saw no objection to it. Dinner could be kept for her.

“She ought to have come back first,” said Penelope. “I don’t like her going off in that way.”

“Nor do I. But there’s no use in finding fault with a girl who isn’t here to hear you.”

My daughter gave me one of her looks. She had heard something very like that observation from me on other occasions, when the absent person had happened to be myself.

“You are fond of Rosanna, father,” she said.

“I am fond of justice.”

“Well, then, I will tell Nancy to put her dinner by.”

She left me, and I went straight to the plate-room.

I have always held that, when you undertake to lock a thing up, you should lock it up before you undertake anything else. If you carry it about while you attend to other people’s business, somebody calls you, or something falls, or a woman asks you a question; and the thing which was perfectly safe in your pocket is presently nowhere to be found.

The plate-room opened off the passage near my sitting-room. I unlocked it, put Mr. Franklin’s packet on an upper shelf, and turned the key upon it. I tried the door afterwards, according to my usual custom. The key went into my pocket.

There was an end of that business for the night, so far as I could see.

My lady came home soon afterwards. I heard the carriage, and went to the hall in time to see Mr. Franklin run down the stairs to receive her.

She held him away from her for a moment, with her hands on his shoulders, and looked at him.

“You are very like your mother,” she said.

He kissed her hand. There was nothing foreign in his manner then which I could find fault with.

They went into the morning-room together. I should have withdrawn, but my lady called me in to answer a question about the dinner. When I had answered it, Mr. Franklin stopped me at the door.

“Betteredge has done me a service already, aunt. He has taken charge of something which Mr. Bruff advised me to bring here.”

My lady’s face altered.

“Is this connected with John Herncastle?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She sat down before she said anything more. Mr. Franklin remained standing beside her chair.

“I have received you gladly,” she said. “You know that.”

“I do, aunt.”

“I must ask you to understand one thing at the beginning of your visit. John Herncastle is not to be discussed under my roof. Whatever arrangements you and Mr. Bruff have thought necessary, make them between yourselves. I will hear no defence of him, and I will hear no account of him.”

“I had no intention of distressing you.”

“I believe it. But we shall do better to settle the matter now.”

Mr. Franklin bowed his head.

“We have settled it,” he said. “I agree.”

My lady looked at me next.

“Have you anything to ask, Betteredge?”

“Nothing, my lady. The thing Mr. Franklin gave me is locked up.”

“Very well.”

She held out her hand to her nephew, and he took it. I withdrew while she was asking him about his father.

I have heard many people speak of my lady’s kindness, and some of them speak as if kindness meant that she could never say No. They knew very little of her. Once she had decided what was right, there was no getting round her by argument; and no getting round her by affection either, though affection might cost her more to resist.

I thought of this as I sat down to my own dinner, which was later than usual. The mutton had suffered by waiting. That was my fault, and I ate it without complaint.

Towards evening, Mr. Franklin found me in my sitting-room.

“All safe?” he asked.

“All safe, sir.”

“You haven’t been troubled with any curiosity?”

“Not yet.”

He looked a little surprised.

“Mr. Bruff seems to have understood you better than I did.”

“Mr. Bruff has known me longer.”

“That is true,” says Mr. Franklin. “And I have been away long enough to forget a good many things which I ought to remember.”

He sat down, and talked for a little while about his journey and his life abroad. I had difficulty following him when he spoke of pictures; but I understood him very well when he spoke of dinners. By keeping him to that part of the subject, I got through the conversation creditably.

Presently he noticed the key on the table beside me. I had put it there while changing my coat.

“Is that the key?”

“It is, sir.”

He picked it up, looked at it, and laid it down again.

“You will keep it yourself?”

I put it into the pocket of the coat I had just put on.

He coloured a little at having asked the same thing twice. I respected him for colouring, and made no remark.

When he had left me, Penelope came in. Rosanna had not returned. The gardener’s boy had been down towards Cobb’s Hole on an errand later in the afternoon, and had seen her near her friend’s door. There was no mistake, therefore, about where she had gone.

“Her work is waiting for her,” said Penelope. “And the others are beginning to talk.”

“The others had better begin to work.”

“I have told them that.”

Here was one point on which my daughter and I agreed. I took a little comfort from it.

The evening wore on. The house quieted after dinner; the last of the dishes came downstairs; and I went my accustomed round. At the plate-room I tried the door again. It was fast.

I looked into the servants’ hall. Rosanna’s place was empty.

Nancy had put aside the mutton and pudding, as Penelope had requested. She asked whether they were to be kept any longer.

“Yes,” I said.

“I suppose Rosanna can come home when she pleases?”

“You can ask her that when she comes.”

Nancy turned back to her work. I was sorry for the sharpness of my answer as soon as I had given it. She had a right to think that one servant should keep the hours required of another. But she had not sat beside Rosanna at the sands, and I had.

By the time I reached the back court, there was barely light enough left to distinguish the flower-pots against the wall. I stood a minute listening. A footstep in the passage made me turn; it was only Penelope, bringing my candle.

“Not back?” I asked.

“Not back, father.”

“She has a safe road, and she knows it.”

“Yes.”

Neither of us seemed to find much satisfaction in that.

I took my candle and my Robinson Crusoe to the beehive chair. The court was sheltered, and I had sat there on colder nights without coming to harm. Penelope brought my old cloak before she went upstairs. She tucked it about my knees, which put me in mind of the little grey cloak I had seen disappearing among the sandhills.

I opened my book. For once, I had some trouble attending to it. I read a sentence, heard a sound, and looked towards the passage; then I read the sentence again.

It was late that evening when I made up my mind to leave the house door to the person whose business it was to attend to it, and to keep to my book. The key was in my pocket; the sealed packet was locked away in the plate-room. I settled myself in the beehive chair, with Robinson Crusoe open on my knee.

Rosanna had still not come home.

"You have walked too far," said Robert, accommodating his step to Madame Ratignolle's. "You should have sent for me. I would have brought a chair down to the beach, and we might have carried you home in triumph."

"And frightened my husband out of his senses when he hears of it! No, thank you. It is only that I have been sitting so long. In another moment I shall walk as well as you."

She nevertheless continued to lean upon his arm. Her veil had slipped backward, and he stopped while she drew it over her face and fastened it beneath her chin.

"What have you been talking about all morning?" he asked.

"A great many things. You must not expect me to remember them all for your benefit."

"I thought Mrs. Pontellier looked different when we came up."

"Different? In what way?"

"I don't know. Sometimes she looks as if she were listening to something that the rest of us cannot hear."

Madame Ratignolle laughed.

"Perhaps she was listening to me. You arrived just when I had ceased talking. That does not happen so often that you should fail to recognize the occasion."

He laughed with her, but did not appear altogether satisfied with her explanation. He broke off a branch which thrust itself across the path and threw it among the weeds. They were approaching the houses, and Madame Ratignolle began to speak of a little garment which she wished her mother to send from the city. Robert offered to write the letter for her, to procure the garment himself, to do anything, in fact, which might spare her the least exertion.

By the time they reached her door she had quite recovered the use of her limbs, and dismissed him with thanks and a request that he see whether the children were becoming too much sunburned.

Edna remained under the awning until the nurse reminded her that it was time to return. Raoul had dug a hole which he wished his mother to inspect. He was disappointed because she could discover no particular difference between it and the hole his brother had made. She listened gravely while he explained, and promised to look at it again another day.

The walk home seemed hotter than the walk down. The children disputed over a shell, then surrendered it to the nurse and forgot it. Edna's thoughts returned to things she had said to Madame Ratignolle. Some of them surprised her now that she recalled them without the encouragement of her friend's presence. She wondered if she had really spoken them aloud.

A telegram lay upon the table in her room. It had been brought over from the main house during her absence. She opened it standing, with her hat still upon her head.

"Detained by business. Cannot come Saturday. All well. Write if anything needed. Léonce."

She read it twice. There was nothing unusual in the detention; her husband had more than once been obliged to remain in the city when he had intended coming to Grand Isle. Yet the few words seemed to make some alteration in the day. She laid the paper beside her brushes and began to remove her hat-pins.

The children wanted to know what their father had sent them. When she told them, they wished to know whether he would come on Sunday instead. She said she did not think so, and they accepted this without further concern. Raoul had found the shell in the nurse's pocket and was again insisting upon his claim to it.

At dinner Edna mentioned the telegram. Madame Lebrun regretted Monsieur Pontellier's disappointment and assured her that the city must be intolerable in such weather. Robert wondered how any man could consent to remain there. He was sitting some distance from Edna, and made his observation to the table at large.

She ate little, though she felt neither sad nor ill. She was aware of Robert's voice whenever it sounded among the others, and once looked up to find him watching her. He asked if she would go down to bathe later. She replied that she had not decided.

After dinner Madame Ratignolle came to the cottage with her needlework. The children had gone indoors with the nurse, and the gallery was quiet. She settled herself in a rocking-chair and drew a long thread through the seam she was sewing.

"Robert said such a curious thing about you this morning," she observed.

"About me?"

"When we were coming home. He said that sometimes you looked as if you were listening to something that the rest of us could not hear. I told him you had been listening to me. Wasn't that an excellent explanation?"

Edna smiled, but her eyes remained upon Madame Ratignolle's hands.

"I wonder what he meant."

"Oh, he has his fancies. You know how he talks. Give me your scissors, dear; I have left mine in my room."

Edna brought them, and stood beside the chair while her friend cut a loose thread. Madame Ratignolle went on to describe a dress she intended making for her little girl. Edna answered when an answer was required. She could not have said why Robert's observation interested her; it was scarcely a compliment, and might have been an impertinence in another person. She wished she had heard him make it.

Madame Ratignolle presently grew sleepy and carried her work away. Edna remained sitting for a while. Then she went into her room, took the bath-house key from the table, and left the cottage.

No one called to her as she passed the main house. Somewhere within it a piano was being played with a patient repetition of the same few bars. The sound followed her a little way along the sandy path, then ceased to be distinguishable.

The wind had fallen since morning. There was still a movement upon the water, but the small waves broke without the angry whiteness which had marked them earlier. The children's tent was empty. Far along the beach she saw two men walking toward a boat.

She changed her dress in the bath-house and stood for a moment upon the gallery before going down. It seemed strange to have come without Robert, who was usually ready to find a missing shoe or carry a towel, and whose presence she had scarcely thought of as a thing to be dispensed with.

The water was warm about her ankles. She advanced until it reached her waist, then stopped. She had made so many attempts to swim that the movements were familiar to her, though she had never succeeded in trusting herself to them. Always there had been the abrupt descent of her feet to the bottom, the little gasp, and somebody's encouraging voice.

There was no voice now. She bent forward and put out her hands. Her feet left the sand for an instant, and returned to it. She stood up, impatient with herself, and wiped the water from her eyes.

On the next attempt she did not look for the bottom. She moved her arms and felt her body go forward. One stroke followed another. It was only a few feet; she could still have stood erect with her head above water. But she had passed over that little distance without touching the sand.

When she rose she was trembling. She looked toward the bath-houses, almost expecting some one to have seen her. No one was upon their galleries except the lady in black, who sat at the farther end with her book.

Edna tried once more, and accomplished less. The effort disturbed the assurance of the first success, and she would not repeat it. She came out of the water with an unreasonable fear that she might somehow lose what she had gained by remaining there.

As she approached her bath-house the lady in black closed her book upon one finger.

"You have been bathing alone, Madame Pontellier?"

It was the first time she had addressed Edna. Her voice was lower and less severe than Edna would have expected.

"Yes. It is very pleasant this afternoon."

"I have been watching the water. There is scarcely any wind."

She looked out over the Gulf, and Edna stood with one hand upon the gallery post. They had passed each other daily without speaking; now she felt that another word was required, but could think of none.

"Will you bathe?" she asked at last.

"No; I prefer to sit here."

The lady opened her book again. Edna went into the bath-house and dressed slowly. She told herself that there had been nothing to relate. A few strokes in shallow water were scarcely worth the telling. Nevertheless, she knew she would not have mentioned them even to Robert.

He was waiting upon her gallery when she returned. He had brought a magazine which he thought might amuse her, and complained of having searched everywhere for her.

"I went down to the beach," she said.

"And you might have taken me."

"You were not there."

"I should have been there if I had known."

He remained until the bell summoned them to supper. Edna listened to his account of some ridiculous encounter between Victor and a fisherman, and laughed in the right places. Once he asked whether anything had happened at the beach.

"The lady in black spoke to me," she answered.

This astonished him sufficiently to occupy the remainder of their talk.

The evening passed without incident. Edna heard the children say their prayers, and remained in their room until the nurse had put out the light. Raoul called her back to ask once more about his father's coming. She answered him and waited until he had settled himself.

Later she went out upon the gallery. The cottages were quiet, though there were voices at the main house. Robert was among them. She could distinguish his laugh, but presently even that ceased.

The telegram lay upon the table indoors. She had forgotten to put it away. She thought of doing so, then remained where she was.

The children slept, and there was no one beside her. She rested her head against the chair and looked into the darkness beyond the gallery. She could hear the water, faintly and at intervals. Robert's remark, as Adèle had repeated it, was still in her mind, and she found herself listening.

In the waiting-room Eve found a small boy examining the umbrella with the concentrated interest of one who hoped that, by pressing something, he might cause it to go off. She rescued it before he had advanced beyond the preliminary stages of research, and descended into Shaftesbury Avenue. The rain had ceased. London, having washed its face, was making an effort to look agreeable.

It seemed a suitable moment to return the umbrella. Eve had no very definite plan for doing so, but she supposed that clubs possessed door-keepers and that door-keepers, properly approached, could cope with umbrellas. She walked back to Dover Street.

The porter of the Drones was a man who had seen much and been surprised by little. He received Eve's statement with composure.

"A gentleman from here lent it to me this morning."

"Yes, miss."

"I don't know his name."

"No, miss."

"He was very tall."

"Yes, miss."

"And wore an eyeglass."

A faint gleam of recognition appeared in the porter's eye.

"Would you like to leave a message, miss?"

"Could I write one?"

He provided paper and an envelope, and Eve, after a moment's thought, wrote:

"Thank you very much for the umbrella. It saved my hat, which is practically all I possess. I am returning it before you have time to repent."

She read this over, smiled, and signed it "E. H."

The porter, who had watched her put the note into its envelope, seemed to feel that the proceedings lacked something.

"What name shall I say, miss?"

"Miss Eve Halliday. But he doesn't know me. Just say the girl under the awning."

"Yes, miss."

Eve departed, leaving the porter with the umbrella, the envelope, and the comfortable sense of having handled a delicate matter well.

At almost precisely this moment, in the smoking-room upstairs, the Honourable Hugo Walderwick was discovering that the conduct of his fellow-man could still astonish him.

"Did you take my umbrella?" he demanded.

Psmith, who was seated in an arm-chair with his long legs extended before him, lowered his newspaper.

"Comrade Walderwick! You appear disturbed."

"Did you?"

"There is a certain abruptness about this opening which makes conversation difficult. We have omitted the weather altogether."

"The chap downstairs says you took my umbrella."

"A conscientious fellow. Nothing escapes him."

"Well, where is it?"

Psmith placed the newspaper on his knees. His manner suggested that a business proposition of some magnitude had been brought before a board of directors.

"Before we proceed further, what is your opinion of umbrellas as an investment?"

"What?"

"Do you cling to this particular specimen through sentiment, or would you consider a reasonable offer?"

Walderwick stared. He was a pink young man with a small moustache and the general air of having been interrupted at breakfast.

"It cost me three pounds ten."

"A useful foundation for our negotiations. I will give you twenty."

"Twenty pounds?"

"Twenty pounds. I dislike haggling. It wears the tissues."

Walderwick's indignation underwent a remarkable change. It did not disappear immediately, but it ceased to occupy the whole of his face.

"What on earth do you want to give me twenty pounds for?"

"The purchaser's motives are seldom disclosed in these transactions. You may have noticed that when a man buys a railway he does not explain himself to the booking-clerk."

"There's nothing special about it."

"To you, perhaps. You have lived with it. Familiarity has done its work. To the stranger, approaching it with an unspoiled mind, it presents possibilities."

"You're rotting."

Psmith took out his pocket-book and laid four five-pound notes on the table.

"The currency of the realm. Examine it. Hold it to the light. If necessary, bite it."

Walderwick examined the notes. Whatever else might be said against the affair, the notes were sound.

"Well, if you really mean it."

"I have seldom meant anything more."

"All right."

"An excellent morning's work. You have realised a handsome profit, and I have acquired an umbrella. Commerce could hardly wish for more."

"But where is the thing?"

"That," said Psmith, rising, "is a question which can now concern only its new owner."

He glanced at the clock and collected his hat.

"If it should present itself while I am absent, instruct our faithful guardian below to retain it for me. I have business which calls me forth."

Walderwick, still counting the notes, said that he would.

It was a little after three when Eve came out of a second-hand bookshop near Piccadilly carrying a volume entitled Practical Hints for the Amateur Librarian.

She had bought it for ninepence after a struggle with herself. Ninepence was not a sum to be dispersed carelessly, but the afternoon's interview had begun to weigh upon her. Thus far she had regarded cataloguing a library as something which any girl with a pencil and a reasonable command of the alphabet could accomplish. A glance through Practical Hints had shaken this comfortable belief. The author appeared to consider the alphabet merely a beginning.

On the pavement she opened the book again, to discover whether accession numbers were as bad as they sounded, and became aware of a tall young man standing beside her. He had stopped to allow a boy with a hand-cart to pass, and was inspecting the world through a monocle.

"Oh!" said Eve.

The young man raised his hat.

"You gave me an umbrella!"

A look of respectful interest appeared on Psmith's face.

"An umbrella?"

"This morning. Across the road from your club."

"I fear," said Psmith, "that a superficial resemblance has misled you."

Eve looked at him searchingly.

"You are exactly like him."

"These things happen. The supply of faces is limited."

"He wore an eyeglass."

"A widespread weakness."

"And he hadn't a hat."

"That narrows the field, but does not settle the matter. Many excellent men go about without hats. Some have lost them. Others are acting on medical advice."

Eve laughed.

"Well, whoever he was, he saved mine."

"A public benefactor, then. It would have been a national calamity if anything had happened to that hat."

She regarded him with renewed suspicion.

"Are you sure it wasn't you?"

Psmith met her gaze with untroubled gravity.

"I have always understood that evidence of identity should be treated with caution. There was a case in the papers recently in which a man identified his brother, and it turned out to be a plumber from Ealing."

"You aren't a plumber from Ealing?"

"No. That much I can state definitely."

"I took it back to the club."

"The umbrella?"

"Yes."

"An admirable instinct. The return of borrowed property is what keeps civilisation going."

"I left a note."

"Thorough in every detail."

He looked at the book in her hand.

"May I ask what branch of literature is engaging your attention?"

Eve showed him the title.

"I am going to have an interview about a job."

"Ah!"

"Cataloguing a library. And I thought I had better find out something about it."

"A sound precaution. Employers are apt to be curious."

"I've just discovered that I know nothing whatever."

"That is always the first result of reading a handbook. The authors arrange it so. Otherwise nobody would buy the second volume."

"Do you know anything about cataloguing?"

"I know that books are involved. Beyond that, I should prefer to have notice of the question."

Eve turned a page.

"What would you say if somebody asked you about cross-references?"

"I should speak warmly of them. I should say that, properly handled, they were capable of doing much good."

"That wouldn't help."

"It would establish a friendly atmosphere. You could then ask the employer what he thought about them, and let him do the talking. Men enjoy explaining things. By the time he had finished, he would have formed a high opinion of your intelligence."

"That's rather clever."

"It has carried me through many an awkward quarter of an hour."

The hand-cart had long since disappeared, but neither seemed to feel that this removed their reason for standing where they were.

"I suppose you have had lots of jobs," said Eve.

"One. It has occupied me so completely that I have had no opportunity of collecting others."

"What was it?"

"Fish."

"Fish?"

"I see that the word conveys all that is necessary. We need not pursue it."

"I was told yesterday about a man who was in the fish business."

"Then you will have heard enough to last you for some time."

"He was a friend of a friend of mine."

"Fish has a way of entering the most sheltered circles."

Eve glanced at a clock above a neighbouring shop.

"I must go. My appointment is at half-past three."

"Approach it with confidence. If cross-references are mentioned, remember that you are entirely in favour of them."

She smiled and moved away.

Psmith remained where he was until the black feather had vanished among the crowd. Then he turned in the opposite direction and walked towards Shaftesbury Avenue. For the first time since resigning from the fish business, he felt that employment might become tolerable, provided he chose it carefully.

Lord Emsworth was waiting in a private sitting-room at his hotel, deeply absorbed in a seed catalogue. Beside him stood a tray of cold tea, and on the table lay a sheet of instructions prepared by Baxter. The sheet had originally occupied a commanding position in the centre of the table. His lordship had moved it to make room for the catalogue, and it was now under a plate of bread-and-butter.

He looked up when Eve entered.

"Ah, yes. Quite so. Sit down."

Eve sat down.

"You have come about the library."

"Yes, Lord Emsworth."

"Excellent. Most satisfactory."

Encouraged by this beginning, Eve placed Practical Hints for the Amateur Librarian on her knee, with one finger between the pages dealing with cross-references.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.

"Waiting? No, no. I was reading."

He tapped the catalogue.

"A very interesting book."

Eve looked at its coloured cover.

"Yes?"

"Remarkable what they can do nowadays."

There was a pause. Lord Emsworth appeared to be waiting for something. Eve supposed that he was marshalling his questions. In reality he was wondering whether, if he put on his glasses, it would be rude to resume his study of sweet peas.

"I have not catalogued a large library before," she said at length, feeling that honesty would provide a safe beginning.

"Eh?"

"But I am very fond of books."

"Are you? So am I. Very fond of them."

He looked at her with genuine interest.

"Have you seen this?"

He passed her the seed catalogue, open at a page on which a rose of quite exceptional redness confronted the reader.

"It looks lovely," said Eve.

"Doesn't it! I've been trying to remember whether Beach said there was a letter for me from that man."

Eve, who had not expected Beach to enter into the examination, waited cautiously.

"Which man?" she asked.

"The man who wrote to me."

She could think of no adequate reply to this.

Lord Emsworth frowned at the table.

"Baxter put it all down somewhere."

He lifted the catalogue, a newspaper, and the lid of the tea-pot. Eve, perceiving a corner of paper beneath the plate, drew it out and handed it to him.

"Perhaps this is it."

"Ah! Thank you. Yes."

He read the sheet with close attention.

"Do you recommend thinning in July?"

Eve's finger tightened upon Practical Hints.

"Thinning?"

"Yes. In July."

The interview had taken an unexpected turn. She wondered whether this was some technical expression for disposing of duplicate copies.

"I should think it would depend upon how many there were," she said.

"Exactly! That's what I always say. But McAllister won't listen."

"If there were too many, I suppose you would have to remove some."

"Precisely."

His lordship beamed. Eve felt that the handbook had underestimated the value of common sense.

"And what about soot?"

This was more difficult.

"Soot?"

"On the beds."

Eve abandoned the theory of duplicate copies.

"Do you mean flower-beds?"

"Of course I mean flower-beds."

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about gardening."

Lord Emsworth's satisfaction faded.

"Don't know anything about gardening?"

"Very little."

"But I understood that you did. I understood that you were an expert."

"I came about cataloguing the library."

"Yes, yes. But this man said you knew all about roses."

He consulted the paper again. For several seconds he stared at it. Then a faint flush appeared above his collar.

"Oh, dear me!"

Eve waited.

"These are the questions for the nurseryman," said Lord Emsworth. "I am seeing him to-morrow morning. Baxter has written them on the other side."

He turned the sheet over.

"I do beg your pardon."

"Then I needn't know about soot?"

"Not unless you wish to. Though it's a very interesting subject."

He read silently, his lips moving.

"References. Experience. Date of arrival. Ah, yes."

Eve sat upright.

"As I said, I haven't done a large library before."

"No, no. Quite unnecessary. My sister has settled all that."

"But won't you want references?"

"My sister has them, I expect. She generally has everything."

He looked relieved.

"You can come on Friday?"

"Yes."

"Capital. Beach will know about your room."

He had reached the last of Baxter's headings, and the ordeal was over. Eve rose before he could turn the paper back to the nurseryman.

"I shall do my best."

"Of course you will. Most kind of you."

At the door she looked back. Lord Emsworth had already opened the catalogue again and was gazing at the rose.

By evening the smoking-room of the Drones had emptied. Its occupants had gone to dress, to dine, or to explain to somebody why they had done neither. Psmith sat by the window. His business at Miss Clarkson's had produced no immediate result, but it had not depressed him. He was considering whether the library profession might contain openings for men.

The porter came in carrying an umbrella and an envelope.

"The young lady brought this back, sir."

Psmith accepted the umbrella.

"Our lost friend!"

"The Honourable Mr. Walderwick said it was yours now, sir."

"He spoke with authority."

"And she left this note."

Psmith opened the envelope and read the message. He read it a second time.

"Did the young lady give any name?"

"Miss Eve Halliday, sir."

"Thank you."

The porter withdrew, closing the door. Psmith was alone. He rested the umbrella against his knee and looked again at the two initials beneath the note.

"Eve Halliday," he said softly.

Outside, the last sunlight touched the awning of Thorpe & Briscoe. Psmith sat for some time without moving. Then he picked up the umbrella and examined it with the satisfaction of a man whose investment has begun to justify itself.

The First National Bank was three blocks away. I walked over to it and asked for the man who could tell me about Donald Willsson's account.

A clerk took my card through a gate in the counter. Presently he came back and let me through. Behind the gate a bald man with a long upper lip stood up from a desk. His coat was hanging on a hook. His shirt sleeves were held up by purple bands.

"I'm Arthur Bell," he said. "What can we do for you?"

I told him about the five-thousand-dollar stub.

He put on spectacles, took them off to wipe them, put them on again, and asked:

"Have you the check?"

"If I had it I wouldn't have to ask where it went."

"I don't know that we can give out information concerning a depositor's affairs."

"He's dead. I'm the detective he brought here. You can telephone his office and find out whether I've been there this morning, or you can telephone the police and give them a chance to get whatever you know before I do."

He considered that without pleasure.

"Was the check dated yesterday?"

"The stub didn't say. It was the last one in his book. His secretary saw him write it yesterday afternoon."

Bell picked up a telephone and spoke into it. He didn't give my name. He asked somebody to bring him the Willsson account and yesterday's certifications.

While we waited he straightened a blotter that was straight enough and said:

"Mr. Willsson was here yesterday."

"With the check?"

"I couldn't say. He spoke to me about some payments the publishing company would have to make next week."

"Did he draw five thousand in cash?"

"No."

"Buy a draft?"

"Not from me."

"Let's find out whether he bought it from anybody."

He looked at me over his spectacles. Then he used the telephone again.

A girl brought him two books. He worked through them with a finger that had a flattened nail. Another clerk came over, answered a couple of questions, and went away.

Bell shut the books.

"No check for five thousand dollars has been presented against Mr. Willsson's account," he said. "And no such check has been certified. He made no withdrawal yesterday."

"Was there enough money to cover it?"

"Yes."

"Much more?"

"There was enough."

"Did he ask you whether there was?"

"No. He knew his balance."

"How long was he here?"

"Perhaps ten minutes. I didn't time him."

"Anybody with him?"

"No."

"Anybody waiting for him?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Did he show you a check, put one in his pocket, or tear one up?"

"He had some papers in his hand. I didn't examine them."

That was as far as Bell could take me. I gave him the hotel's number and asked him to let me know if the check came in. He said he would refer the matter to the bank's counsel. I said the bank's counsel could telephone me too.

I ate lunch in a restaurant where the waiter spent more time watching the door than watching his customers. Nobody came in who seemed worth the trouble. After lunch I went to the Great Western.

The desk clerk handed me my key and said:

"Mrs. Willsson is waiting in the parlor."

"How long?"

"About twenty minutes."

She was sitting beside a window that gave her a view of the elevators. She wore black and had put some powder on her face. It didn't make her look less tired. Her shoes were black too.

She stood up when she saw me.

"I should like to speak to you."

We took a pair of chairs in a corner. A woman at the other end of the room turned a newspaper page and kept her eyes on us over its top.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"You said last night you were staying here."

"What can I do for you?"

"Tell me why you went to my husband's father."

"Did he tell you I went?"

"He telephoned me."

"Then you know why."

Her fingers tightened on the clasp of her bag.

"He said you had accused me of murdering Donald."

"I told him what happened while I was in your house."

"That is not the same thing."

"I didn't think it was. He did."

She studied me for a moment.

"You saw something on my slipper?"

"Something red."

"It was blood."

"Whose?"

"My husband's."

The woman with the newspaper stopped turning pages.

I said:

"You'd better come upstairs."

Mrs. Willsson got up without looking around. In my room she took the chair by the window. I left the door open until the bell-boy who had come up with us went away. Then I shut it and sat on the bed.

"Now tell it," I said.

"Someone telephoned me last night and told me Donald was in Hurricane Street. He gave me the number of a house. He said I should come at once."

"A man?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"What sort of voice?"

"A man's voice."

"Did he talk loud?"

"No."

"Whisper?"

She raised her chin.

"If you mean Mr. Thaler, I don't know. I had never heard his voice before this morning."

"What else did the man say?"

"He said my husband needed me."

"Was he hurt?"

"He didn't say."

"And you didn't ask?"

"I asked what had happened. He said I should hurry."

"Then you went."

"Yes."

"To what number?"

"Eleven twenty-three."

"Find him there?"

"I found him on the pavement."

"What time?"

"I don't know. There were no clocks in the street."

"Anybody with him?"

She looked down at her bag.

"There was a man."

"What was he doing?"

"He was bending over Donald."

"Was Donald alive?"

"No."

"How did you know?"

"I touched him. I spoke to him. He didn't answer."

"That doesn't prove he was dead."

"I know he was dead."

"What did the other man do?"

"He went away."

"Before you did?"

"Yes."

"What did he look like?"

"It was dark."

"Big? Little? Young? Old?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"You weren't blind."

"He had his back to me. When I came near he stood up and went away. I was looking at Donald."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing."

"Which way did he go?"

"Across the street."

"Into the alley?"

"I don't know."

I let her have a little silence. She looked at the window. Across the street a man was painting gilt letters on a second-floor pane. His hand moved between us and his face.

"Why didn't you call the police?" I asked.

"I was frightened."

"Of what?"

"Of being there. Of what they would say. Of everything."

"So you drove home and told me your husband wouldn't come home that night."

"Yes."

"That was putting it mildly."

Her mouth shook. She pressed it straight before she spoke.

"I didn't know what to do with you. I wanted you to go. I wanted everyone to go."

"Did you know why Donald had sent for me?"

"He said he was bringing a detective here."

"What for?"

"He didn't tell me."

"Did you ask?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"That I would know when there was something to tell."

"Did he usually answer you that way?"

"Sometimes."

"Did he tell you he had an appointment in Hurricane Street?"

"No."

"Or that he had written a check for five thousand dollars?"

Her eyes came back from the window.

"Five thousand?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"For whom?"

"That's what I'm trying to learn."

She opened her bag, looked into it without taking anything out, and shut it.

"What did Thaler want this morning?" I asked.

She didn't answer immediately.

"You knew he came?"

"I saw him go in."

"He wanted to know whether Donald had left any papers with me."

"What papers?"

"He wouldn't say."

"Letters?"

"He said papers."

"Did he get them?"

"No."

"Didn't you have them, or wouldn't you give them up?"

"I didn't have them."

"Did he ask about money?"

"No."

"Did he tell you why he thought you might have the papers?"

"He said Donald had been careless with something that belonged to him."

"To Donald?"

"To Mr. Thaler."

"Was he polite?"

"Very."

"That bother you?"

"Yes."

She said it without trying to make anything of it. I believed that much of her story.

"Had you ever met him before?"

"No."

"Did Donald know him?"

"I suppose so."

"Suppose he had paid Thaler five thousand dollars. What would you think he was paying for?"

"I don't know."

"Suppose a woman had got it?"

She looked at me steadily now.

"You are asking whether I was jealous."

"I'm asking what you'd think."

"I would think you should find the woman and ask her."

"That's reasonable. Know any woman I ought to start with?"

"No."

She stood up.

"Am I to be arrested?"

"Not by me this afternoon."

"Will you tell the police what I have told you?"

"Yes."

"All of it?"

"All I can remember."

She pulled at the fingers of one glove.

"I thought perhaps you would help me."

"I'll try. You can help yourself by remembering more about the man in the street."

"I have told you what I remember."

She went out. I rode down with her, saw her through the front door, and returned to the desk.

The clerk had an envelope for me. It was cheap white paper, unsealed. Inside was a sheet torn from a small pad. There were four lines on it, written in a small round hand:

"Willsson's wife has trouble enough. Keep her out of it. If you want anything from me send word here. Max Thaler."

"When did this come?"

"Just now."

"Who brought it?"

"A boy."

"What boy?"

"I don't know him."

"Where's 'here'?"

The clerk looked at the writing.

"He didn't say."

"Did the boy wait for an answer?"

"No."

I took the note upstairs. It didn't smell of anything. There were no marks on the back. Thaler had either forgotten to give me his address or figured the hotel knew where to find him. I figured the second.

I called police headquarters and asked for Noonan. He wasn't there. The man who answered wanted my name. I gave it to him and said I was at the Great Western, working on the Willsson killing. He said he would tell the chief.

Then I called the Herald. The Lewis girl had gone home. I asked for her father at Elihu Willsson's house and got the secretary after a wait.

"Where did you and Donald have dinner yesterday?"

He named a restaurant near the paper's office.

"What time did you leave him?"

"A little before eight."

"At the restaurant?"

"No. We returned to the office. I left him there."

"Did he say where he was going afterward?"

"No."

"Have any papers with him?"

"He had his usual brief-case."

"What was in it?"

"I don't know."

"Anything said about five thousand dollars?"

There was a pause.

"Not to me."

"Did he seem worried?"

"Mr. Donald had much to worry him."

"Did he seem worried about anything new?"

"I noticed nothing."

I thanked him and hung up. There was no use asking him what he thought of Mrs. Willsson. His employer had probably supplied him with all the thoughts he needed.

At the desk I borrowed a telegraph blank. Then I went back to my room and wrote a report in longhand before cutting it down for the wire. There were a lot of things I thought and very few I could charge the agency for knowing.

By the time I had finished, the man across the street had quit painting. The gilt letters were hard to read against the dark window. Lights came on below them.

I wired:

"OLD MAN CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO. DONALD WILLSSON MURDERED BEFORE INTERVIEW. SIX SHOTS FROM THIRTY TWO PISTOL FIRED FROM ALLEY HURRICANE STREET TEN FORTY LAST NIGHT. FOUR HITS. ENGAGEMENT WITH ME AT HIS HOUSE TEN. WIDOW RECEIVED TELEPHONE CALL TEN TWENTY DIRECTING HER TO ELEVEN TWENTY THREE HURRICANE. LEFT HOUSE RETURNED ELEVEN FIVE WITH BLOOD ON SHOE. TODAY ADMITS FINDING HUSBAND DEAD AND MAN BENDING OVER HIM. CLAIMS CANNOT IDENTIFY MAN OR CALLER. MAX THALER VISITED HER THIS MORNING ASKING FOR PAPERS SHE SAYS SHE DID NOT HAVE. THALER SENT ME WRITTEN MESSAGE TODAY ASKING THAT SHE BE KEPT OUT OF CASE. WILLSSON WROTE FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK YESTERDAY AFTERNOON FOLLOWING TELEPHONE APPOINTMENT APPARENTLY WITH WOMAN FOR TEN. STUB HAS AMOUNT ONLY. ARTHUR BELL FIRST NATIONAL BANK STATES CHECK NEVER PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED. WILLSSON VISITED BANK YESTERDAY BUT MADE NO WITHDRAWAL. PURPOSE OUR EMPLOYMENT UNKNOWN. INVESTIGATION CONTINUING. OPERATIVE."

I took it down to the desk and had the clerk send it. I waited while he telephoned it through, paid the charge, and got my copy.

Dinner didn't improve the case. I ate it, smoked a cigar in the lobby, and watched the front door for a while. Nobody brought me another message. Noonan hadn't called.

It was night when I went upstairs again. I put the copy of the wire beside Thaler's note on the table. The window was black except for the lights in the building opposite.

I tried the door, turned off the light, and sat down on the bed. The wire was sent. I had a widow who admitted the blood, a gambler who wanted her left alone, and a bank account that hadn't lost a dollar.

The check had left the desk. I still didn't know where it had gone.