The Chapters

She did not know how long she had slept. She was wakened by Mrs. Medlock shaking her shoulder rather roughly and saying in her brisk, hard voice,

"Wake up! Wake up! We shall be there in a minute. You have been asleep a long time."

Mary sat up and rubbed her eyes and tried to look as if she had not been sleeping at all. The rain still streamed down the windows, but it was darker now, and the carriage lights had been lighted, and the rain made a more dismal sound upon the roof of the railway carriage. She felt stiff and disagreeable, and her thin black dress was creased and her black crepe hat was tipped a little to one side over her limp light hair. She stared out of the window as Mrs. Medlock gathered up her parcels and her bag. The train was slackening its speed and presently it began to crawl into a dimly lighted little station. There was no other train in sight and no crowd upon the platform; there was only one lamp burning under the roof, and its light fell upon a wet stone platform and upon the shining rails. The wind was making a high, rushing sound and drove the rain sideways.

Mary thought that the place looked small and lonely, and that no one at all was there to meet them. But Mrs. Medlock, who had pressed her face to the window, made a queer, short sound in her throat and pulled down her veil and settled her black bonnet with the trembling purple flowers.

"There is Mr. Craven himself," she said, in a lowered voice, as if she did not wish to be overheard. "He has come. I did not expect it."

Mary looked out with more attention. At the end of the platform, standing quite still apart from the porter who was waiting with a truck, was a tall, black figure. The light from the station lamp did not reach him clearly, but Mary could see that he was dressed in black and that his face looked pale under his hat. His shoulders had a peculiar high outline, and as he moved a step forward the light showed more plainly the stoop which made his back crooked. It was Mr. Archibald Craven. Mary remembered at once that Basil had said he was a hunchback and that Mrs. Medlock had said it had set him wrong.

The train stopped quite gently, and the porter came forward to open the door. Mrs. Medlock stepped out first, importantly, and Mary followed her, trying to hold her black dress out of the wet and to keep her head up as well as she could. The wind blew her hat and made her eyes blink. Mr. Craven did not come to meet them. He stood waiting, and when they came near to him Mrs. Medlock bobbed a curtsy.

"Oh, sir! I am Mrs. Medlock, sir," she said, and her loud voice sounded smaller than it had in the railway carriage. "I have brought the child, sir, as you directed."

Mr. Craven lifted his hat a little. He looked at Mary for a second, and Mary looked at him. She saw that he was not so old as she had thought he would be, but his face was lined and his dark eyes looked hollow and tired. She was not frightened of him, though she thought his face was not a pleasant one.

"You are Mary Lennox," he said.

It was not a question. His voice was low and rather cold.

"Yes," said Mary.

He said nothing more for a moment and seemed to have forgotten her. Then he said, as if speaking to Mrs. Medlock and not to her at all,

"Take her to the house. I am going another way."

That was all. He turned away and spoke a word to the porter, and then he walked to the far end of the platform where a closed carriage was not to be seen in the dark, but where Mary saw a tall horse move its head. The porter took Mrs. Medlock's trunk and set it upon the other vehicle which stood close to the steps—a broad, low carriage with a high seat for the driver, and two horses stamping in the rain. Mrs. Medlock pushed Mary toward it.

"Come along," she said. "He never stays talking. He does not like it."

Mary was obliged to climb up into the carriage, and Mrs. Medlock climbed heavily after her, spreading her wet black mantle over her knees. The porter fastened the trunk on behind, the driver cracked his whip, and they drove away from the small station and were at once upon a dark road which seemed to go straight out into nothing.

It was very dark indeed. Mary could scarcely see anything except the backs of the two horses and the driver's coat before her. The wind rushed and whistled and made a strange, low roaring. Mrs. Medlock sat with her hands folded in her lap and said nothing. Mary had thought that she would speak again about Mr. Craven, but she did not. After a little while Mary began to feel that they were no longer upon a road at all, but upon something wide and open. The horses' feet made a softer, duller sound, and the wind blew more strongly, without any wall or house to stop it.

"We are on the moor," said Mrs. Medlock suddenly, as if she had guessed that Mary was wondering. "We have five miles to go across it. It's a wild place in the dark."

Mary said nothing, but she pressed her lips together and looked out into the darkness. It was like looking out at a black sea. She could not see where the ground ended and the sky began. Sometimes a stronger gust made the carriage sway a little and the driver spoke to the horses in a low call she could hardly hear for the wind. She began to feel queer and small, as if she were being driven farther and farther away from everything she had ever known. She was not frightened, but she was very cold and her thin hands in her black gloves felt stiff.

They had driven perhaps half an hour when the horses slackened their pace all at once and then stopped so sharply that Mary was thrown a little forward. She heard the driver call out something and Mrs. Medlock leaned forward.

"What is it, Robinson?" she cried.

There was a black, low mass in the road before the horses, darker than the darkness itself. The driver had got down from his seat and was standing by the horses' heads, holding them while they tossed and blew. He answered over his shoulder, but the wind took his words.

"There's summat i' t' road," he said louder. "A sheep, belike. It's fallen or summat."

Mrs. Medlock made an impatient sound. The sheep did not move. It lay quite still across the narrow moor road as if it were too weary to get up, and the horses would not pass it.

"Tha'll have to shift it," the driver said to no one in particular, and he tugged at the bridle.

While he was speaking Mary did a strange thing for her. She had sat so still for so long, cold and silent and peevish, that Mrs. Medlock had quite forgotten her. All at once she pushed the carriage rug from her knees and scrambled down from the high step before Mrs. Medlock could put out her hand to stop her.

"Where are you going?" cried Mrs. Medlock sharply. "Stay in the carriage! You'll be wet through. Come back!"

But Mary did not come back. She had stepped out upon the moor itself. The ground was soft and springy under her thin boots and covered with close, rough grass and tufts of something darker and more wiry. The wind caught her directly and blew her black dress against her legs and nearly took her hat off. The rain was not falling so heavily here in the open, but the air was full of dampness. For one full minute she stood quite still in the dark, while the driver bent over the sheep in the road and lifted it with a heave. It was more wonderful and more dreadful than anything she had ever felt. The darkness was so huge all about her, and the wind made such a crying, sweeping sound over the vastness, that she felt as if she were very small indeed and as if the moor were going to swallow her up. She could smell the wet earth and the heather though she did not know it was heather, and she shivered though she was not sure whether it was with cold or with strangeness.

"Mistress! Come back here!" Mrs. Medlock called again, and this time her voice had a sharpness which was almost alarm.

The driver had dragged the sheep to the side of the road, where it stood trembling for a second before it trotted off into the darkness. He climbed back to his seat.

"Now then, up tha' gets," he said gruffly to Mary, not unkindly, and he put out a large, rough hand and helped her to scramble up again as if she had been a parcel. Mary felt his hand very big and hard through her wet glove.

As soon as she was seated the horses started forward again, and the carriage rattled on over the soft road, swaying and jolting. Mrs. Medlock pulled the rug roughly over Mary's knees and said nothing more, but she breathed hard for some time as if Mary had given her a fright. Mary herself sat still and said nothing. She was thinking about the minute she had stood upon the moor. She had never stood upon such a place before. It had not been like India at all. In India everything had been hot and still and close, but here all was cold and wide and wild.

After that they drove for a long time without stopping. At last they saw lights. First they were only small, twinkling points far off, and then they grew larger and brighter. Presently the carriage passed through a great gateway with tall stone pillars on either side, and Mary saw a long, low mass which was the house, with many windows gleaming through the rain. It looked very large and very still, and its stone front was dark with wet. The carriage drew up with a splash under a pillared porch, and a door was opened from within, throwing a square of yellow light upon the wet drive.

Inside, the house was warmer but no less gloomy. A great hall opened before them, with stone flags upon the floor and portraits upon the walls that Mary could scarcely see in the dim light. A fire burned low in a huge fireplace. Mrs. Medlock hurried Mary forward, and Mary heard her shoes echo as they went. She was very tired and her hair was damp, and she felt more sallow and plain than ever in her creased black dress.

Mrs. Medlock took her through several passages and up a short flight of broad, shallow stairs, and then along another passage where the walls were hung with pictures and the corners were dark. At last she opened a door and pushed Mary into a room where a bright fire was burning and a lamp stood upon a table.

"You'll bide here," she said. "I will send your supper to you. Go and warm yourself at the fire."

She went out and closed the door, and Mary stood and looked about her. The room was not so grand as she had expected from the hall, but it was comfortable enough. There were heavy, old-fashioned furnishings and a small, high bed in the corner with white curtains. A red rug lay before the hearth, and Mary went and stood upon it, holding out her cold hands to the blaze. She was beginning to feel hungry, and as she stood there the door opened again.

It was not Mrs. Medlock who came in. It was a tall old manservant, with a thin, rather bent figure and a weathered face and thick grey eyebrows. He carried a tray with a covered dish and a jug, and he set it down upon the table with hands that shook a little. His coat was dark and plain, and he looked as if he had been a servant in the house for a very long time.

He glanced at Mary and said something. Mary heard the words, but she did not understand them at all. They were not like the English she had heard in London or from Mrs. Medlock. They were broad and thick and strange.

"Tha' mun eat summat, lass," he said. "I've browt thee porridge an' a bit o' cold meat. Sup it while it's hot."

Mary stared at him with her disagreeable, old-fashioned stare. She frowned because she could not understand.

"I cannot understand you," she said stiffly. "Speak English. I do not know what you say."

The old man looked at her more closely and then gave a short, rather grim chuckle, not as if he were amused but as if he understood that she was a foreign child.

"Eh, but tha's like to learn Yorkshire fast enow," he said, speaking more slowly and still broadly. "Eat thy supper, little miss. Tha'rt fair clemmed, I'll warrant."

Mary still did not know what "clemmed" meant, and she did not like being spoken to as if she were a common child. She said nothing, but she sat down at the table when he had gone, and uncovered the dish. The food was plain and hot, and though she was inclined to be contrary even about eating, she was too hungry to refuse it. The old manservant came back after a little while to take the tray. He said another word she did not catch — something like "Good neet" — and went out, closing the door softly behind him. Mary thought that he was probably the Pitcher whom Mrs. Medlock had spoken of, the old fellow who knew Mr. Craven's ways.

When she had eaten, Mrs. Medlock returned. She had taken off her wet bonnet and mantle, and her red cheeks were even redder from the wind.

"Are you warm now?" she asked, looking at Mary rather as if she were a troublesome parcel which had been delivered safely.

"Yes," said Mary.

"You had better go to bed," said Mrs. Medlock. "You have had a long journey. I will send a maid in the morning to help you, but you must not go wandering about. Do you hear?"

"I shall not want to go wandering about," said Mary, in the same sour tone she had used in the railway carriage.

Mrs. Medlock looked at her for a moment with her sharp black eyes and then turned toward the door.

"Pitcher will come to put out the lamp," she said. "You will sleep well enough with the fire."

She went out, and Mary stood for a little while looking at the small bed with its white curtains and at the firelight flickering on the dark oak panels. No one had said good night to her kindly, and she did not expect it. She undressed slowly, for she was not used to dressing or undressing herself, and her thin fingers were clumsy with buttons. When she was at last in her nightgown and had climbed into the high bed, the old manservant came in again and silently turned down the lamp until its flame was low, and then took it away. Only the firelight was left, casting a red glow upon the hearth and making strange shadows upon the walls.

The house was very still. She could hear the wind outside, rushing and wuthering over the moor, and sometimes a gust drove the rain against the window with a sudden patter. She lay and listened to it, feeling very far away from every one. She was just beginning to feel drowsy again when she heard a sound quite distinct from the wind.

It was not the wind against the window nor the roaring over the moor. It was a sound inside the house itself, far away down some distant passage or corridor. At first it was so faint that she thought she had imagined it, but presently it came again, thin and high, borne upon the air like a cry that was not a cry. She sat up in bed and held her breath. The fire crackled, the wind blew, and then the sound came once more, a little louder, wandering as if some one were walking with it through the house.

Mary's heart beat rather faster. She remembered that Mrs. Medlock had said she must not go wandering and poking about, and that Mr. Craven shut himself up in the West Wing and would not be disturbed. She slipped out of bed and went to the door and opened it a little way and called in a small, sharp whisper,

"Mrs. Medlock! Mrs. Medlock!"

After a moment there was a heavy step in the passage, and Mrs. Medlock appeared in the doorway with a candle in her hand. Her face looked cross and not at all pleased at being called.

"What is it now?" she said. "Why are you not asleep?"

"I heard a sound," said Mary. She tried to make her voice sound as contrary and unconcerned as usual, but it shook a little. "I heard it twice. It was not the wind. What was it?"

Mrs. Medlock's sharp black eyes looked at her hard, and then she answered quickly and a little too loudly.

"There is nothing. It was the wind. The wind wuthering round the house. It makes queer sounds on the moor when it blows in the chimneys. You need not listen to it. Go back to bed."

"It did not sound like the wind," said Mary obstinately, staring at her.

"It was the wind," said Mrs. Medlock, quite sharply. "And if you go listening you will only fancy things. There is nothing else to hear in this house. Now go to sleep."

She set the candle down upon the table, gave the bedclothes a rough pull, and went out, closing the door with a firm sound. Mary could hear her footsteps going away down the passage until they were gone.

Mary lay down again and pulled the clothes up to her chin, but she did not close her eyes. The wind was still wuthering outside and the fire had sunk to a dull red glow, so that the room was almost dark. In a little while the sound came again. It was very faint and very far off, but Mary heard it plainly through the wind, and this time she knew that Mrs. Medlock had not told her the truth. It was not the wind, though the wind tried to cover it. It was a sound inside the house, and it was like nothing she had ever heard before.

She lay in the dark, awake, with her thin hands clasped together under the coverlet and her eyes wide open. She was no longer sleepy at all. She listened and listened, and presently she said to herself, quite aloud though very softly, because no one could hear her,

"I shall find out for myself what it was."

I was still sitting on the sand, with one hand pressed to my side where Mr. Franklin's embrace had squeezed the wind out of me, and the other planted firmly on my stick to keep me from toppling over sideways, when that young gentleman recovered himself enough to remember that I was three-score years and more, and that hugging an old man as if he was a countryman of his from foreign parts was not altogether the kindest way of greeting him.

"You will pardon my high spirits, Betteredge," says he, picking himself up on his knees and dusting the sand from his beautiful fawn-coloured trousers with his beautiful fawn-coloured gloves. "I have been travelling since daybreak, and the sight of your honest face is as good as rest and meat to me."

"And the sight of you, Mr. Franklin, is as good as both to me and to my lady," I answered. "But how comes it, sir, if I may make so bold, that you are here at all? We looked for you not till tea-time — your aunt herself told me, not four hours hence — and here you are, with the sun still high over the Shivering Sand?"

Mr. Franklin laughed, and helped me, not without difficulty, to my legs. I observed, while he did so, that his face, browned by foreign suns as it was, had nevertheless a drawn look about the eyes which did not quite become his natural gaiety. He had got his rose in his buttonhole, as I have told you; but his travelling coat had the dust of the railway upon it, and his hat, though to be sure it matched his gloves, sat on his head as if he had clapped it there in a hurry.

"That is just what I am going to explain, Betteredge," he says. "You were always a shrewd man in your way — what do you say to a proof of it before we go back to the house? Do you remember how keen you were last year about the new police arrangements, and how you told my aunt that no man's house was safe with a letter-box that any tramp might put his hand into?"

I remembered it well enough. I had read it in the newspaper, and I had mentioned it over our audit dinner, and my lady had laughed, and Mr. Franklin himself had called me an old Tory at the time. What that had to do with his coming four hours before his time, I was at a loss, as you will be, to see.

"Well," says Mr. Franklin, "it seems the tramps have proved you right, after a fashion. Step a little aside here, where the sandhills will keep us from being overlooked, and I will show you why I am beforehand with my welcome."

He looked round him, as if he half expected to see Rosanna Spearman listening behind a hillock, though the poor girl had vanished already in the direction of the plantation. Being satisfied that we were alone, he put his hand inside the breast of his coat and drew out a letter. The envelope was much crumpled, as from being pressed close upon his person, and it bore a London postmark.

"This came to me in London," he says, in a lower voice than was natural to him. "I got it yesterday morning, Betteredge, just as I was ordering my traps to be packed for the five o'clock train to-day. Read it, and you will see why I ordered them for the ten o'clock train instead, and why I have kept my arrival as quietly as I could, till I could speak to you first."

He put the letter into my hand. You will wish to see it for yourself; so I copy it here, word for word, as I read it then, sitting on the slope above the Shivering Sand, with Mr. Franklin standing over me and shading the paper from the wind with his hat.

"London, 23rd May, 1848. My dear Franklin,— Do not, I entreat you, keep to your intention of coming to Yorkshire by to-morrow evening's train, as you proposed when you last wrote. Come by the morning train to-morrow (Thursday) instead & so be here some hours before you are looked for.

My reason has, I know, the air of being fanciful; but I write in earnest, & I beg you will indulge me. The three Indians who annoyed us last year at my brother Herncastle's — you will remember my speaking of them — have been seen in London again this week. Inquiries have been made concerning you (under pretence of asking after curiosities) at your lodgings in town. If you have any charge to bring with you of value or importance to me, I implore you to keep that charge safe about your own person by day, & under your own eye at night, until you are under my roof. Travel by daylight, if you can; take no man into your confidence who need not be trusted; & come to me early, while strangers innocent & guilty are alike still abed, or busy elsewhere.

I say no more. The bearer of this knows nothing. Burn what I have written, when you have read it, & rely upon my prudence as I rely upon yours.

Your affectionate Aunt, JULIA VERINDER."

You may suppose I read this twice over before I gave it back. The second time, I read it slower, and with a certain sinking at my heart which you, in my place, would perhaps have felt also. I am not unused, Heaven knows, to being trusted with my lady's secrets; but this was the first time I had ever seen her hand tremble, as it had plainly trembled here, over a letter of hers. The very ink, in two places, was blotted, as if she had paused and pressed too hard.

"Well, Mr. Franklin?" says I, when I had done.

"Well, Betteredge," says he, folding the letter again and putting it back into his breast, "my aunt's good sense would sooner trust the Bank of England than a dream. If she writes in that strain about Indians and inquiries, you may be sure there is something at the bottom of it. I did as she bade me — I took the earlier train, I kept my own counsel in London, and I have come here with no servant and no luggage to speak of, except what follows me by the evening goods. The question now is — where to put what I have got about me, till my aunt can take it into her own hands?"

He said those last words looking straight at the quicksand, as Rosanna had looked, but with a very different face. Mine, I dare say, showed plainly enough that I did not half like the turn things were taking.

"Whatever you have got, sir," I said, "my lady's house is yours to command, as you know. But if it is money or papers, or anything of weight in that way, the plate-room is the place for it — strong door and iron bars, and Superintendent Seegrave himself not to get in without the key that I carry on my own watch-chain."

Mr. Franklin nodded, as if I had hit the nail on the head.

"The very place, Betteredge, and you the very man. I have got a little packet here — sealed — no larger than a small book — which I must ask you to take charge of for me till to-night is over. No one, not my aunt herself, need know of it till I put it into her hands to-morrow. Will you do that for me?"

And with that, he drew from the inner pocket of his waistcoat a small packet, wrapped in oiled paper and sealed in two places with dark red wax. It was about the size of my snuff-box, though a little flatter, and it lay heavy in the palm, for all its smallness, as if there was metal inside. What metal, or what else, I neither knew then nor know now; for though you will think me an old gossip, curious as any woman, I give you my word of honour I never so much as held it to my ear to shake it.

"Sealed, you see," says Mr. Franklin, turning it over once in his hand before he gave it me. "Keep it sealed, Betteredge — and keep it safe. You will put it away now, before we go up to the house, where curious eyes may be about?"

"If you please, sir, we will put it away together," I said, liking his caution the better the more I saw of it. "No chances, Mr. Franklin, where a sealed packet is concerned."

He took my arm at once, in his hearty foreign way, and we set off through the plantation towards the house. I think I have not yet told you that the plate-room at our place is at the end of the north passage, next to my lady's own sitting-room, and that the key, by old Sir John's order, sleeps under my pillow by night and walks abroad with me by day on my watch-chain, as I have said. There is a second key with my lady, which never leaves her dressing-case. No other soul in the house so much as handles the lock. This I mention, because you will presently see that I am particular about locking and unlocking.

On our way back we met Penelope coming quickly down the fir walk, with her cap-strings flying behind her. When she saw Mr. Franklin she stopped and coloured up, and made her curtsey very prettily, for my daughter Penelope is a good girl and no prude, though I say it who am her father.

"Why, Penelope!" says Mr. Franklin, as if they had been playfellows but yesterday — which, in a manner, they had — "have you forgotten me?"

Penelope smiled, and said, "No, Mr. Franklin," very modestly, and looked down at her shoes, which was more than Rosanna had been able to do on the sands.

"Have you seen anything of Rosanna Spearman?" I asked, before more words were lost. "Your new fellow-servant, Mr. Franklin, who was late for dinner and whom I went to fetch in."

Penelope's face altered on a sudden. She looked from me to Mr. Franklin, and back again to me, in a manner which, I must own, set my old head wondering.

"I went to look for her, father, as you told Nancy you would," she said. "She is not on the beach now. The fishermen at the boat-house saw her go by half an hour ago, with her face set towards Cobb's Hole. She did not turn when they called to her. They say she walks that way when she goes to see Mrs. Yolland."

Mrs. Yolland, you must know, keeps the post-office and the fishing-tackle shop at Cobb's Hole, and lets two or three clean upper rooms to lodgers in the summer season. Rosanna, having no other friend that we knew of in these parts, had taken a liking, in her solitary way, to Mrs. Yolland's daughter, who is lame like herself, only more so. Whether Penelope's news quieted me or made me uneasy, I hardly knew. Cobb's Hole was not on our road; and Rosanna, who had been told to come in to dinner, had no business that I knew of at Cobb's Hole till past supper-time. However, there was nothing to be done but to let her have her head till she came home of herself. "If she comes back before I do," I said to Penelope, "send her to me to ask my pardon before my lady. If not, let her bide."

Penelope promised this, and we parted — she to go back to the house, and we to go round by the yard to the plate-room, that we might without notice from the other servants do what we had to do.

You have, I dare say, seen satisfiers enough in your time to know that a man past seventy does not take kindly to being hurried when he has a key to turn and a lock to look after. Mr. Franklin, to give him his due, stood by very patiently while I fitted the key — which is an old-fashioned one and requires a little coaxing — and while I opened the stout oak door with the iron grill inside it. The room itself is little bigger than a cupboard, but it holds all our plate worth the holding, and the iron safe built into the wall holds my lady's jewels when she is not wearing them. I set the sealed packet upright on the middle shelf, between the two silver waiters, where no hand could reach it without first moving the waiters, and so could not do it quietly.

"There, sir," says I, shutting the inner grill and then the door. "Your packet will lie there as safe as in the Bank, and no soul in the house but my lady and I will know it is there to-night. Will that content you?"

"It contents me entirely, Betteredge," says he, and shook me by the hand as if I had done him a service fit for a prince. "One thing more — not a word to any one, not even to my aunt, till I speak. My aunt will take charge of it to-morrow — let that be enough."

I promised him on my word, and I kept my word. Which, as you will find, was more than some others did.

By this time the household had got wind of Mr. Franklin's arrival, though we had slipped in by the back way. The bell rang for my lady, and Samuel, the footman, came out breathless to say she desired to see Master Franklin in the little sitting-room. I left Mr. Franklin to go to her, and busied myself in putting the key back on my chain and feeling to be sure it was safe there; for though I am not, thank God, a nervous man, the letter I had read and the packet I had locked up had between them made me feel as if there was a draught in the house that no fire could warm.

Perhaps ten minutes later — I was still in the north passage, pretending to look at the barometer, which I tap for form's sake every time I pass it — the sitting-room door opened, and Mr. Franklin came out, not with the light step he had on the sands, but slowly, and with his hat in his hand. My lady followed him as far as the door, holding herself very upright, as she does when she has made up her mind and means to be obeyed.

"Remember, Franklin," she said to him, in that clear voice of hers which every servant in the house knows — "remember, if you please, that one subject is forbidden under this roof. Colonel Herncastle's name, and all that belongs to him, will not be mentioned here. You understand me, nephew?"

If you had told me beforehand that my lady would speak so to her own sister's son, whom she indulges in most things, I should have thought you were talking nonsense. As it was, I heard it with my own ears.

Mr. Franklin bowed his head, as grave all at once as any judge in the land.

"I understand, aunt," he said. "Not a word of that name shall pass my lips — nor, with your leave, any other word to-night that can distress you. We will speak of pleasanter things to-morrow."

My lady looked at him steadily for a moment, and then laid her hand for an instant on his shoulder, very kindly.

"Keep your packet safe, Franklin," she said, in a lower tone, "till to-morrow." And with that she went back into the room and shut the door.

You may imagine I pricked up my ears at the word "packet." So my lady knew of it, after all, though Mr. Franklin had bidden me say nothing! I thought it over, and concluded that ladies will have their own ways, and that it was no business of mine to put this and that together. Still, it gave me a queer turn to hear her name the very thing I had just locked up, and twice over, too — once in her letter, though she had not called it by name there, and once now from her own mouth.

Mr. Franklin saw me in the passage and gave me a nod, as much as to say, "All well." He went up to dress for dinner, and I went about my other duties, looking after the wine and seeing that Nancy laid the cloth right, for the cook was in a temper about Rosanna's absence. At dinner — where I had the honour of waiting, as usual, behind my lady's chair — everything went pleasantly enough, considering. My lady was a little paler than common, but she talked as well as ever to Mr. Franklin about his travels, and asked after my lord knows how many foreign grandees by name, as readily as if she had known them herself. Not one word about the forbidden subject passed, on either side; and that, you will remark, is just what Mr. Franklin had promised.

It was only later, when the servants' supper had been cleared and the house quieted for the night, that I had cause to remember Penelope's words. Rosanna had not come in. Penelope had been to the back door and looked out towards the village road; Nancy had been to the yard-gate; Samuel had stepped as far as the shrubbery clump and whistled the housemaid's call — all to no purpose. Cobb's Hole is near a mile off by the footpath, but a young woman with long legs and a trouble on her mind will do it in half an hour and think nothing of it. Still, she should have been back by nine o'clock, and it was now past ten, and the moon risen, and as fine a night as you could wish to see.

I went to my own room at last, as is my custom when my lady has done with me, to have my pipe and my Robinson Crusoe before I go to bed. You will laugh at me, perhaps, for reading Robinson Crusoe over again at my age; but I have found it a wonderful book for clearing the mind when the mind has been put out. I took down the volume, and I took my beehive chair — the same wherein you left me napping this afternoon — and I set the lamp ready and the key safe on the table beside me. The house was all quiet; my lady's light, as I passed her door, had just gone out; Mr. Franklin's candle still burned steady on the second floor. And the little sealed packet, for which I was answerable till morning, lay safe behind its iron grill and its oak door, with both keys accounted for — my lady's in her dressing-case and mine warm upon my watch-chain against my waistcoat.

It was a comfort to think of that, at any rate.

But not, as you will understand, a comfort sufficient to put Rosanna Spearman out of my head. Late though it was — for I sat till past eleven, with Robinson Crusoe open at the one hundred and fifty-eighth page and never a word of it read — Rosanna Spearman was still not back in the house.

I had gone to bed that night with the sense of security still warm upon me, and for a little while I lay awake listening to the familiar sounds of the house settling and to my wife breathing softly beside me. The talk of Mars and of the strange jets of gas that Ogilvy had shown me seemed, after that quiet walk home, to belong to another world than the one in which our small domestic life was set. The shunting of trains in the distance had ceased, the lights in the upper windows opposite had been extinguished one by one, and the sky beyond the blind, when I rose to draw it a little aside, was clear and steady and profoundly tranquil. I remember that I looked once more toward the red point of Mars, now high overhead, and felt nothing but the mild curiosity of a man who has been shown a mathematical wonder and has not understood it. Then I slept.

I was awakened, I should think it must have been between one and two in the morning, by my wife stirring and by a curious pallor of light upon the ceiling of our bedroom. At first I thought that some early vehicle was passing in the lane with an unwonted lamp, but the light increased and took on a greenish tinge, and I rose upon my elbow. My wife murmured sleepily, and I whispered to her to lie still. Going to the window, which looks south-westward toward Ottershaw, I drew the blind fully up and saw at once the cause.

Across the northern sky, for all that it moved from east to west, a great streak of flame went rushing silently. It was of a vivid, almost coppery green, brighter than any falling star I had ever seen, and it left behind it a livid trail that persisted for some seconds after the head had passed. It seemed to fall with extraordinary swiftness, not with the leisurely drift of an ordinary meteor, but as if it were a heavy thing hurled with intent. For an instant it lit the whole countryside with a ghastly illumination; I could see the roofs of Chertsey distinct against the sky and the black outline of the pines upon the common beyond Ottershaw. Then it vanished beyond the dark rim of the horizon, and as it did so I fancied I heard, very faintly and after an interval, a deep, concussive thud, not loud, but felt rather than heard, as one feels distant artillery through the ground. The trail faded, the stars reappeared, and the night was as before.

My wife was now awake beside me, asking what had happened.

“Only a shooting star,” I said, though the words sounded inadequate even as I uttered them. “A very bright one. It fell over beyond the common.”

She came and stood beside me at the window, her hand upon my arm, and we listened together, but there was no further sound except the barking of a dog somewhere in Chertsey that had been roused by the light. I told her, with an assurance I did not altogether feel, that such meteors were common enough and that we should read of it in the paper, and after a little while we returned to bed. Yet for a long time I could not sleep, for the swiftness and colour of that flight remained with me, and behind it, unbidden, came the recollection of Ogilvy’s jets of gas upon the face of Mars and his talk of probabilities. The coincidence, if it were a coincidence, was too precise to be comfortable, and I found myself counting in the darkness — ten shots, Ogilvy had said; ten nights of flame — and wondering whether this green fire that had just passed over us was in some way related to those distant eruptions. Towards three I fell into an uneasy doze.

In the morning I woke late, with the sun already high. My wife had let me sleep, and I found her downstairs reading. There had been no blaze of excitement in the household, no sense that anything extraordinary had occurred. It was not until Henderson, who keeps the *Chertsey News* and job printing office, came past upon his bicycle at about nine o’clock and called to me over the garden gate, that I understood that the fall had been more than an appearance.

“You saw it, then?” he said, leaning upon his handlebars, his face flushed with riding. “A meteor it was, sir, fallen on Horsell Common. Half the boys in Ottershaw were out before seven to look for it. They say it lies in the old sand pit near Horsell, the one that has been full of water since the spring rains. Smokes like a kiln, they say.”

The sand pit he meant I knew well enough. It lies on the Chertsey side of Horsell Common, not two miles from our cottage as the crow flies, a somewhat lonely excavation made in former years for gravel, surrounded by gorse and young pines, and now, through neglect and the wetness of the season, brimmed with a shallow, brownish water that catches the sky. That such a place should be the resting place of a celestial missile seemed at once plausible and strangely disconcerting, and the thud I had fancied in the night now took on a new significance.

I set off at once to see for myself, meaning at first to go alone, but my wife, who had come to the gate beside me and had heard Henderson’s account, declared that she would accompany me after I had breakfasted. I hesitated, for the common at Horsell is rough walking and the morning was already warm, but she was insistent, and indeed I was glad enough not to go alone.

Before we had gone half a mile along the Ottershaw road we met Ogilvy, coming from the direction of the common upon his bicycle, his coat pocket bulging with instruments and a small field glass slung about his neck. He dismounted when he saw us and his manner, which I had always known as deliberate and somewhat sceptical, was curiously excited.

“You have heard, then?” he said, addressing me rather than my wife. “Henderson has been chattering, I suppose. Well, you saw that star last night with me at the observatory, and you saw this one. Two great meteors in a fortnight — what do you make of that? I am just come from the pit.”

“What is it like?” I asked.

“A great stone, very great,” he said quickly. “Lying half in the water at the eastern end of the pit. The water all about it is steaming. The thing itself is still so hot that the surface cannot be approached. Scores of people are already there — labourers from Horsell and Chertsey idlers — staring like yokels at a fair.”

“Half in the water?” my wife repeated.

“Precisely. It buried itself in the soft sand under the shallow pool. The impact must have been prodigious. It has thrown up banks of earth and clay and scorched the gorse for twenty yards about. But it is a meteor — an ordinary meteor, though an exceptionally large one. I measured its visible diameter as best I could from the bank — perhaps thirty yards across — and it appears cylindrical rather than spherical, but that is no doubt an effect of perspective or of fracture in the atmosphere. These bodies are often irregular.”

I found myself, I know not why, unwilling to accept this easy explanation. Perhaps it was that green light, so unlike the white fire of common meteors, or perhaps it was the memory of those ten successive jets upon Mars, still vivid from our talk in the observatory. “A cylinder,” I said. “Ogilvy, did you ever hear of a cylindrical meteorite?”

He laughed, a little impatiently. “My dear fellow, meteors are not turned upon a lathe. The heat of passage — the enormous friction of the air — rounds and pits them, but they may break. What you saw last night was assuredly a meteor, though a very large one. The chances against its being anything else are a million to one, as I told you before. Do you imagine Mars throwing stones at us? Be reasonable.”

“The shots,” I said, “those flames we watched. Ten in succession. And now within a fortnight of the last—”

“Coincidence,” he interrupted, but with less conviction than his words implied. “Or rather, you connect two series of events that have no necessary relation. I grant you the Martian eruptions are remarkable — profoundly remarkable — but to argue that a light seen on Mars and a meteor seen to fall on Horsell Common are cause and effect is to argue like an astrologer. The universe is not so easily bridged.”

My wife looked from one of us to the other, a little bewildered by our earnestness.

“But you will come back with me to the pit,” Ogilvy said, remounting his bicycle. “You will see for yourself. A great, pitted mass of iron, no doubt, half sunk in mud and steaming like a cauldron. Nothing more supernatural than that.” And with a nod he rode off toward Ottershaw, saying he must fetch a tape and a barometer and would return forthwith.

We continued toward the common, my wife with her hand upon my arm, through lanes where the honeysuckle was just coming into bloom and the air was heavy with its scent. The day was exceptionally hot for early summer, without a breath of wind, and the sky a pale, unclouded blue that seemed to press down upon the fields. As we approached Horsell the road became bordered by gorse, and we could see ahead of us, straggling along the path toward the pit, small groups of people moving in the same direction — two boys running, a woman with a child, a gardener in his shirt sleeves. The news, spread by Henderson and by the boys who had first discovered the thing at dawn, had plainly roused the neighbourhood.

The pit itself lies in a hollow, screened on one side by firs and on the other by a steep bank of sand and heather. As we came over the last rise the scene opened before us quite suddenly, and my wife uttered a little exclamation and clutched my arm more tightly. At the far end of the excavation, where the water had been deepest, lay the object, and no description that Ogilvy or Henderson had given had prepared me for its strangeness.

It was indeed enormous, far greater than I had imagined a meteorite to be. It lay half submerged, tilted at an angle, so that one vast, curved flank rose out of the brown water like the back of some titanic creature wallowing in the shallows. The exposed portion was perhaps thirty yards in length, dark and dull, with a rough, scaly crust as of caked rust, and here and there brighter streaks where the surface had been fractured or abraded. From it, and from the disturbed water about its base, a great cloud of steam rose steadily into the still air, with a faint hissing sound that we could hear even from the bank where we stood. The water itself was agitated and muddy, bubbling about the submerged portion as if it boiled, and the sand and clay of the pit sides had been flung outward in great heaps that had flattened the gorse and turned it brown. The pines nearest the impact were singed and drooped.

A crowd of perhaps thirty or forty people had gathered upon the nearer bank, keeping at what they evidently considered a safe distance. There were labourers from the brickfield, boys from Horsell and Chertsey, a few women, and one or two better-dressed men whom I took to be clerks who had come out from Woking upon their bicycles. They stood in knots, talking in low voices and pointing, with that peculiar English reserve that persists even before the incomprehensible. No one ventured near the water's edge below the object, though the heat, even where we stood some fifty yards away, was perceptible upon the face.

Ogilvy returned within a quarter of an hour, pushing his bicycle, and joined us at the rim. He had brought with him a large steel tape and a small pocket aneroid, and he immediately began to descant upon the phenomenon for the benefit of my wife and myself, though in a louder tone that invited the attention of the bystanders.

“You observe,” he said, pointing with his stick, “the characteristic pitting and the fused exterior. Meteoric iron invariably presents such a crust after passage through the air. The steam is simply the result of the incandescent mass coming into contact with the water of the pit. In an hour — perhaps in two — it will have cooled sufficiently to permit a closer inspection. At present to approach it would be foolhardy.”

“It does not look like iron,” I said, for the surface, where the steam parted for a moment, had a curious yellowish tinge and seemed oddly wrought, as if hammered into plates.

“Nickeliferous iron, perhaps, with admixtures,” he answered promptly. “Or stony matter. Analysis will tell. But mark my words, it is a meteor, and a very fine specimen. The Museum will be wrangling over it before the week is out.”

I was about to reply that the shape seemed to me too regular — that the visible end, where it rose clear of the water, was not jagged like a broken stone but smoothly rounded, with what looked uncommonly like a broad, flat rim — when an incident occurred that drove all argument from our minds for the moment.

A young man, one of the labourers from the Horsell brickfield, a fellow in a blue jersey and corduroy trousers whose name I afterwards learned was Simmons, had been emboldened either by incredulity or by the desire to display his courage before the crowd, and had slipped away from the main group while we talked and made his way down the sandy slope toward the water. Several people called to him to come back, and Ogilvy shouted a sharp warning, but he paid no heed or pretended not to hear.

“Let’s see if it be hot as they say,” we heard him call back, half laughing.

He reached the margin where the mud met the water, where the steam lay thickest, and before any of us could prevent him he stooped, stretched out his hand, and laid his palm flat upon the dark surface of the mass where it sloped down into the pool.

There was a sudden, sharp hiss, far louder than the steady steaming, and the man snatched his hand away with a cry that was not loud but curiously hoarse and startled. He staggered backward up the bank, clutching his hand against his chest, and his face was contorted. The skin of his palm and fingers, as we saw when he held it out, was already reddening and blistering, a livid white and angry red together, as if it had been pressed against a stove. A woman screamed, and two of his companions ran to him. Ogilvy was among the first to reach him, and I followed.

“It burns still — like fire,” the man gasped, his teeth set against the pain, while Ogilvy examined the hand with a professional air that ill concealed his alarm.

“I warned you,” Ogilvy said sternly, though not unkindly. “Fellow, you have had a narrow escape. The thing retains an enormous heat. You must get it dressed at once — cold water, then lint.” And he turned to the crowd, raising his voice. “Will no one keep these fools back? The mass is still incandescent. Any part of it will maim you if you touch it.”

The injured man was led away, still nursing his burned hand and muttering curses, by two of his mates toward Horsell village. The crowd, which had pressed a little forward in curiosity, now drew back perceptibly, and a murmur of awe went about. My wife, who had watched the whole incident from above with a hand to her mouth, was pale when I rejoined her.

“Come,” I said to her, “this is no place for you. Let us go home.” But she would not go at once, being anxious to see more, and indeed the fascination of the thing, even with its manifest danger, was not easily resisted. We remained some while longer upon the bank, watching the steam rise and listening to Ogilvy, who, having recovered his composure, resumed his exposition with somewhat less confidence than before, insisting again that what we saw was merely the retained heat of meteoric descent, though he now admitted the temperature was “anomalous.” Another sceptic in the crowd, a stout tradesman from Chertsey, asked him how long such a stone might remain hot, and Ogilvy answered somewhat evasively that it depended upon its bulk and composition.

By eleven o’clock the crowd had more than doubled. Fresh parties arrived every few minutes from Woking and Ottershaw and Chertsey, some on foot, some upon bicycles, and one cab that had brought two gentlemen with field glasses. Boys clambered into the pines to get a better view. The pit, with its steaming intruder, became the centre of a curious, almost festive assembly, though the memory of Simmons’s burn kept all at a respectful distance. The sun stood now almost directly overhead, pouring a fierce heat upon the sand and upon the dull flank of the object, which seemed to drink the light rather than reflect it.

About noon my wife complained of the heat and of a certain oppression in the air, which indeed was heavy with the smell of hot metal and brackish steam. I saw that the excitement and the crowd distressed her, and though I myself was reluctant to leave — for I felt, even as Ogilvy argued, that this thing which had fallen so patly out of the heavens was no common meteor and that to leave it unobserved was to miss some grave significance — I knew it was wiser to persuade her homeward.

“You had best go back, my dear,” I said to her quietly, apart from the others. “There is nothing more to be seen now, and the sun is too strong. I will follow you presently, after I have spoken again with Ogilvy.”

She looked toward the pit with a lingering uneasiness, then at the gathering people, and at last nodded.

“You will not go near it?” she said.

“No nearer than this bank,” I promised.

She took the path back toward Ottershaw alone, turning once to wave, her light dress visible for a long while between the gorse bushes, until a bend in the lane hid her from sight. The crowd still thickened about the rim. Ogilvy stood a little apart from me, his glass trained upon the strange cylinder in the water, muttering to himself about cooling rates and specific heats. I remained where I was, upon the sandy crest, watching the steam rise straight and unwavering into the motionless noonday air, and waiting, as it seemed to me, for I knew not what.

It was settled that both advisers should be summoned to Kellynch Hall without delay, for Sir Walter felt the urgency of his situation to be of a kind which required not only advice, but sympathy; and though he had little expectation that any scheme proposed to him would be found entirely unobjectionable, he was willing to hear what Lady Russell and Mr Shepherd might have to suggest, provided that what they suggested did not at all interfere with his dignity or his comforts.

Accordingly, on the following morning, which was fine and mild for the season, Lady Russell arrived from Kellynch Lodge before eleven, and Mr Shepherd, who had ridden over from the market town upon the same summons, was shown into the small breakfast parlour within five minutes afterwards. Sir Walter received them with that grave civility which a man assumes when he is about to ask for counsel which he has determined beforehand not to take, and Elizabeth, who had taken her place beside her father at the fire, with an air of elegant despondence, inclined her head to each in turn, as one who presides over a council of state rather than a consultation upon tradesmen's bills. Anne alone was seated a little apart, near the window, with her work in her hands, though she was not working; and being nobody with either father or sister, was at liberty to observe without being expected to speak.

Lady Russell, who from affection and long habit considered the honour and well-being of the family as almost her own, was the first to open the business. She did it with all the delicacy which her good sense could supply, yet with a plainness which the occasion demanded. After premising that she had reflected much upon the state of Sir Walter's affairs, and that she was persuaded a moderate and temporary retrenchment would suffice to restore every thing to order, she laid before him the plan which she had conceived to be at once the least painful and the most effectual. The establishment, she observed, might be reduced without any real sacrifice of propriety, if a number of useless servants were discharged, if the second carriage were laid down, and if the annual journey to London were for the present relinquished. She added, that by dining less frequently in company, and by a general diminution of that hospitality which, however creditable to Kellynch Hall, was by no means obligatory upon its master, a very considerable saving would be effected; and that, in short, by living in a more retired and less expensive manner for two or three years, Sir Walter might find himself enabled to discharge his debts gradually, and to preserve his estate unencumbered, without any reduction which the world need perceive, or which his daughters need severely feel.

Sir Walter heard her to the end with an expression of countenance in which polite attention was very nicely blended with fixed incredulity. When she had done, he bowed, and replied that he was infinitely obliged to her ladyship for the interest she took in his concerns, but that her plan, though no doubt very well intended, was utterly inadmissible.

“You must allow me, dear Lady Russell,” said he, “to understand my own situation a little better than any body else can pretend to do. To retrench in the manner you describe would be to proclaim myself distressed to all Somersetshire. What would it avail me to keep Kellynch Hall, if I am not to live in it as Kellynch Hall ought to be lived in? To lay down the second carriage! Why, every second family of any consequence in the country keeps two. I should be the ridicule of my neighbours. To discharge superfluous servants! My servants are already the fewest that any man of my rank can appear with. Lady Russell must excuse me, but I cannot adopt any such scheme. It would be a degradation which nothing but absolute ruin could justify; and thank Heaven, we are not come to that.”

Elizabeth assented, with a slight elevation of her eyebrows, and said that she had always foreseen that Lady Russell's goodness would lead her to propose what no Elliot could submit to; and Lady Russell, though disappointed, was too well acquainted with Sir Walter's vanity to be surprised, and contented herself for the present with looking grave and silent.

Mr Shepherd, who had listened with great deference to Lady Russell, and with still greater to Sir Walter, now thought it his turn to speak. He approached the subject with all the caution of a man of business who knows that he must please his patron while he instructs him. After apologizing for the liberty he was about to take, and observing how deeply he felt the honour of being consulted upon any point touching the Kellynch estate, he produced his own plan, which differed in its particulars from Lady Russell's, though it tended to the same end. He proposed, with the utmost respect, that Sir Walter should make some advantageous arrangement of his outlying farms, that certain leases should be renewed upon higher terms, that the park and shrubberies should be kept with less expense by curtailing the labour bestowed upon them, that the present excessive expenditure of the stable and the gardens should be moderately checked, and that a part of the plate, which was never used, might, without any eclat, be disposed of in London for its full value. By these means, he conceived, added to a strict regulation of the house bills and a forbearance from new purchases for a year or two, the income might be made to meet the expenditure, and time be gained without any apparent alteration in the style of living at the Hall, which, as he justly observed, was a point of the greatest consequence.

Sir Walter's countenance, which had cleared a little during the enumeration of the farms and leases, clouded again at the mention of plate, and before Mr Shepherd had well finished his sentence, he interrupted him with a degree of asperity which the agent had seldom witnessed in his patron.

“Mr Shepherd!” he cried, “you surprise me. I had expected better things from you. Do you imagine I will sell my plate? Do you suppose that Sir Walter Elliot is to be seen weighing his silver against his debts? No, sir; my plate is a part of my consequence, and shall remain where it is. Your plan, like Lady Russell's, is quite out of the question. I will not curtail my gardens, I will not have my stables starved, I will not have my estate hawked about among farmers and attorneys as if I were a grazier. I asked for retrenchment, but not for annihilation. Such schemes are totally inapplicable to my situation.”

Mr Shepherd bowed very low, and begged pardon a great many times, protesting that he had meant nothing disrespectful to the family honour, and that he had only presumed to state what had occurred to a humble professional man; and Elizabeth, with more condescension than she usually bestowed upon the agent, assured him that he had meant very kindly, but that gentlemen who lived always in town could not understand the necessities of a country establishment.

There was a short silence, during which Sir Walter took up the Baronetage and turned over its leaves with an air of consolation, as if to reassure himself that, whatever his tradesmen might think, he at least remained indisputably Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall.

It was then that Anne, who had hitherto said nothing, and who had been supposed by the company to have nothing to say, laid down her work, and rising a little, spoke.

In a voice which, though low, was perfectly distinct, and which from its very gentleness commanded the attention of all present, she said that she begged leave to offer a thought which had occurred to her while Lady Russell and Mr Shepherd were speaking, and which she trusted would not be deemed presumptuous in one who had so little pretensions to advise. If retrenchment must be had, and if neither of the plans proposed were such as her father could approve, would it not be better to retrench more openly and more effectually at once, than to attempt trifling expedients which could neither satisfy creditors nor preserve appearance? Her idea—if she might be forgiven for stating it—was that a more decided and honest economy would in the end be less mortifying than a partial one. To give up London altogether, for perhaps two seasons; to reduce the number of servants kept at Kellynch to such as were strictly necessary; to live entirely without company, except what civility required; to discontinue every expense of mere ostentation which could be discontinued without injury to the estate itself;—such a plan, though severe, would at least be intelligible, and would in a short time place affairs upon a footing which no longer need be concealed. She spoke with diffidence, but with a steadiness which showed that she had considered the matter; and she concluded by saying, that to submit cheerfully to such privations for a time appeared to her more becoming the dignity of the family than any attempt to conceal distress by expedients that must be seen through.

Every body looked surprised. Lady Russell turned upon her god-daughter a glance of mingled pleasure and astonishment; Mr Shepherd stared; and Sir Walter, who had half expected from Anne only some timid assent to what had already been said, had the air of a man who has mislaid something and finds it in an unexpected place.

Elizabeth, to the general amazement, was the first to answer.

“I believe Anne is quite right,” said she, in a tone of calm decision which no one present had ever before heard her employ in support of her sister. “Indeed, I think her plan infinitely preferable to either of the others. It has at least the merit of being thorough. If we are to retrench, let us retrench effectually, and not fritter away our consequence by half-measures. To shut up a part of the house, to see no body we do not like, and to live quite retired for a year or two, appears to me far less degrading than to retain the name of hospitality without the means of exercising it, or to keep up a shew of wealth which every body knows we have not. I will support Anne in this. Let us do something that will really be of use.”

The effect of this speech upon the company was very great. That Elizabeth Elliot, the proud, the fastidious Elizabeth, who had never in her life been known to prefer Anne's opinion to any other, should now publicly adopt it, and with emphasis, was a circumstance so new, so unlooked for, that Lady Russell could scarcely conceal her satisfaction, and Mr Shepherd, who had begun to fear that his client would hear no reason at all, brightened visibly at the thought that the young ladies were at last united.

Sir Walter himself was not insensible to the novelty. He looked at Elizabeth, as if to be sure that it was indeed Elizabeth who had spoken, and then at Anne, with something like a faint revival of attention. For a moment it seemed as if the sisters, thus combined, might carry their point by mere weight of concert.

But the impression was transient. Sir Walter, after a short pause, resumed his air of dignified resignation.

“Your zeal does you credit, Anne,” said he, “and Elizabeth's kindness in supporting you is very pretty. But you are both very young, and you do not understand the world. A baronet cannot live like a yeoman. Kellynch Hall must be maintained as Kellynch Hall has always been, or it had better not be maintained at all. I am grieved to be obliged to say that your plan, my dear, though more spirited than the rest, is still more objectionable than either of Lady Russell's or Mr Shepherd's. It would be nothing less than to sink into obscurity, and I cannot condescend to do that.”

And so saying, he dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand, as one who had decided beyond appeal.

Mr Shepherd, who had been encouraged by the ladies' intervention to venture a little farther, now cleared his throat, and in a hesitating, half-apologetic manner, observed that there was yet another expedient which had sometimes been adopted by gentlemen in similar circumstances, and which, though he had scarcely ventured to mention it before, he might perhaps be permitted to hint at, merely as a matter of speculation.

Sir Walter desired him to speak plainly.

“Why, Sir Walter,” said Mr Shepherd, lowering his voice, though there was no one present to overhear him but the family, “if it were possible—if, by any arrangement, the Hall itself were—were let for a few years—to a responsible—a very unexceptionable tenant—”

He got no farther. The word tenant had scarcely passed his lips before Sir Walter started from his chair as if he had been stung.

“Tenant!” he exclaimed, in a tone of the utmost abhorrence and indignation. “Do I hear aright, Mr Shepherd? Did you presume to utter the word tenant in this house, and to me? Do you know to whom you speak, sir? I will have no tenant in Kellynch Hall. I will not have the blood of the Elliots lodged under another man's roof, while I am above ground to prevent it. The Hall was built for Sir Walter Elliot, and shall be inhabited by Sir Walter Elliot, while Sir Walter Elliot has a shilling left to keep a fire in it. Let me never hear that word again. I forbid it. I forbid the very idea. If you value your situation, Mr Shepherd, never again let such an expression escape you in my presence. A tenant! Good Heaven!”

Mr Shepherd, pale and confounded, made the most abject excuses, protesting that he had thrown out the suggestion with the greatest diffidence, that he himself saw a thousand objections to it, and that he heartily wished he had never named it; and Lady Russell, who disapproved the idea almost as warmly as Sir Walter himself, though upon different grounds, hastened to interpose, and by her calm reprehension of Mr Shepherd's imprudence, restored a little order to the room. Elizabeth declared that nothing could be more shocking than to think of strangers rambling over Kellynch Hall, and Anne, though she said nothing, felt a sickness at heart at the thought of seeing the ancient seat of her family thus exposed, even in imagination, to the possession of others.

Peace was with difficulty restored; and the party were still sitting in some embarrassment, Sir Walter opening and shutting the Baronetage with restless fingers, and Mr Shepherd affecting to examine his memorandums, when a servant entered and delivered a letter to Anne.

It was from Mary. The direction in Mary's hasty hand, the seal of Uppercross, and the bulk of the epistle, which promised no common effusion, were at once perceived by all; and Anne, with a slight blush at finding herself thus made the centre of observation, broke it open and read the contents, first to herself, and then, at the general request, aloud. The letter was dated from Uppercross Cottage, that very morning, and ran in the following manner:

“My dear Anne—You will be surprised to hear that I have been very ill, indeed I may say very seriously ill, for these three days past, though Charles says it is nothing and will not send for the apothecary, which I think extremely unfeeling of him, and Mrs Musgrove tells me I make myself worse by moping, which only shews how little she knows of my constitution. I am sure I have suffered more than any body can possibly imagine, and nobody attends to me. Charles has been out shooting every day, and Henrietta and Louisa take no notice whatever, but are always running about after I know not what. I have had no one to comfort me but the children, and little Charles is so naughty that I cannot bear him near me. I beg you will come to me directly, for I am quite worn out and want your advice, as Lady Russell is not here, and you know nobody understands my complaints so well as you do. I have written to papa and Elizabeth to the same purpose, but I depend chiefly upon you, and entreat you will set off as soon as you receive this, for I am very miserable though I hope not in any immediate danger. Your affectionate sister, M. Musgrove.”

When Anne had finished, there was a general pause. Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders and said she supposed Mary was always ailing, and Lady Russell smiled faintly and said poor Mary never knew how to be ill without a letter.

Sir Walter observed that Mrs Charles Musgrove must be very ill indeed if she thought an apothecary necessary, but that he saw no reason why Anne should be troubled; and Mr Shepherd, glad to divert attention from his late offence, remarked that Uppercross was at least within a reasonable distance.

Anne alone felt the appeal as it was meant to be felt. With all Mary's exaggeration, with all her habitual querulousness, which Anne knew but too well, there was still that tone of real dependence which had never failed to move her. To be wanted where she could be of use, to be claimed by one who loved her, however weakly, was to Anne a call which her affections could not resist; and after a few minutes' private consideration, she declared, quietly but firmly, that she thought she ought to go to Uppercross, and that she would, if her father could spare her, set out on the morrow.

Elizabeth made no objection; Sir Walter, who was already sufficiently wearied by the morning's consultations, gave a languid assent, observing that Anne might do as she pleased, and that Mary was always sending for somebody; and Lady Russell, though she could not but lament that Anne's presence at Kellynch at such a crisis should be withdrawn, felt that to nurse a sister who desired her was an office too natural and too proper to be refused, and therefore said all that was kind and reasonable in approbation of the design.

Mr Shepherd soon after took his leave, still confused and bowing very low, and Lady Russell shortly followed him, leaving the two sisters to settle what little there was to settle about Anne's journey; and the morning, which had begun with so much expectation of economy and arrangement, ended without any one plan having been adopted, without any one bill having been lessened, and without any one retrenchment having been resolved upon, except that which Anne's absence would itself occasion.

In the evening, when the house was quiet, and Elizabeth had retired to dress for no company, and Sir Walter was occupied in his dressing-room with his mirrors and his newspapers, Anne remained alone in the drawing-room. The fire was low, the light was fading, and the great Hall without, and the debts within, seemed alike to press upon her with a cheerless and unabated weight. She thought of her father's infatuation and her sister's disappointment, of Lady Russell's disappointed prudence and Mr Shepherd's mortifying rebuff, of the word which might never again be spoken, and of the many words which had been spoken to no purpose. Nothing was settled; nothing was saved; the evil remained entire, and to-morrow must find the family as deeply involved as yesterday. Yet amidst this general failure, her own course lay plain before her. She would go to Mary; she could at least be useful there; and as she folded Mary's letter and laid it upon the table, she resolved, with a calm and melancholy satisfaction, that early on the following morning she would set forward for Uppercross, leaving Kellynch and its embarrassments behind her for a time, but carrying with her the perfect conviction that the question which had occupied the whole day was still as entirely unsettled as at its beginning.

Robert accommodated his step to hers, holding his arm a little stiffly, as one does who is not altogether accustomed to being leaned upon.

The path was narrow where the camomile grew thickest, and the sand worked its way into their shoes. Madame Ratignolle lifted her skirts slightly with her free hand, complaining in a low, pleasant voice of the heat, of the stiffness, of the folly of sitting too long upon hard pillows in the damp shade. Robert listened, or seemed to listen, with that air of half amused deference which he wore with all women, and which with Madame Ratignolle was habitual.

"It is strange," he said, after a little, looking ahead toward the white cottages that showed between the orange trees, "how Mrs. Pontellier has changed this summer. One does not know what to make of her. She was very reserved, and now—one feels she is thinking aloud, though she says almost nothing. When she looked out at the water just now, I had the feeling she did not see the water at all, nor any of us."

Madame Ratignolle laughed, fanning herself with the fan she had recovered, and gave his arm a light pat.

"What would you have her see, Robert? She saw a meadow in Kentucky, it appears. That is no small thing to see while sitting on a gallery at Grand Isle."

"It is as if she has been awakened to something she had not seen before," Robert said. "As if a curtain had been lifted. I cannot say it better than that."

They went on so, talking of trifles that rose and dissolved in the hot air, and presently reached the hedge of oleander behind the Ratignolle cottage, where Madame Ratignolle declared herself restored and let go his arm.

Edna had remained with the children under the awning. She had shaken the sand from the rug and folded it, and stood watching Raoul and his brother, who with Madame Ratignolle's little girl were digging with tin pails at the edge of the water, under the eye of the quadroon nurse. The sun had passed its height and lay heavily upon the beach. The bath-houses cast short, dense shadows on the sand. The lateen sail that had hung near Cat Island was gone, and the water, under the stiff wind, broke in small, white-capped waves that came in with a regular, hissing rush.

She did not follow Robert and Madame Ratignolle at once, but let them go ahead, and then walked slowly back herself, holding the straw hat against the wind. The children ran to overtake her, and she took a hand of each, though they soon pulled away to chase a crab that scuttled sidewise toward a pool. At the cottage, Madame Lebrun was on the porch, calling to Victor to bring more ice, and the air smelled faintly of boiled shrimp and of coffee.

On the table in the Pontellier cottage, held down against the draught from the open door by a shell which had served Raoul as a paperweight, was a yellow envelope. The boy who had brought it from the telegraph office at Grand Terre still lingered by the steps, expecting a coin.

Edna opened it while the children crowded about her skirts. The message was brief, in Léonce's compact hand as transcribed by the operator:

WILL NOT COME SATURDAY BUSINESS DETAINED NEW ORLEANS. WILL WRITE. ALL WELL. LÉONCE.

She read it twice, the second time more slowly, as if to be certain. The nurse took the envelope from her fingers to show the boys the strange, foreign stamp upon it. Edna gave the boy a nickel from the table drawer and he went away.

She felt neither disappointment nor relief, but a flatness, as if something that had stretched taut within her had suddenly slackened. Saturday without Léonce meant another Sunday of sleeping late, of the loose hours that belonged to no one. The cottage would not require setting to rights; there would be no need to explain to Léonce why the pantry stoves were unblacked, or why her sketches lay unrolled upon the floor. She placed the telegram upon the mantel beside the little clock, where Léonce's photograph already stood.

Madame Ratignolle came over in the course of the afternoon, bringing a plate of early figs, which she set down with the explanation that her cook had sent too many. She found Edna seated by the window, attempting to read, but letting the book fall closed upon her lap while she gazed at the bright, empty yard.

"So your husband will not come," she said, having glanced at the yellow paper on the mantel. "That is well enough. Men think they must be missed. Perhaps it is better to let them learn we can breathe without them for a week. My Alphonse would be inconsolable for a day, and on the second would forget we existed. Adèle laughed, then seated herself and undid the ribbon of her fan.

"You know what Robert said of you when we walked back together?" she went on, idly, as if the recollection had only just returned to her. "He said it was as if a curtain had been lifted from before you, and you were seeing something that none of us had seen. I told him it was only that you had remembered Kentucky. But he persisted. He said Mrs. Pontellier has been awakened to something. It was prettily said, for Robert."

Edna did not answer at once. She turned the fig in her fingers without eating it. The words, repeated in Adèle's easy, affectionate tone, took on a different weight than they had perhaps been meant to bear. She felt a sudden, quick blush upon her neck, not from confusion, but from the unexpectedness of being perceived.

"That is very fanciful of Robert," she said at last, lightly, and changed the subject to the figs, which she praised for their ripeness, though she did not taste them.

Madame Ratignolle did not linger, for one of her children was calling from the adjoining cottage. When she had gone, Edna sat for a long while with the untouched fruit before her, listening to the clock ticking and to the nurse's low chant as she put the boys to their nap.

The afternoon wore on with a heavy heat. By three o'clock the wind, which had whipped the water in the morning, had fallen to a steady, warm breeze, and the sea lay flattened, glinting under a high sun, with none of the hard, choppy froth of the earlier hours. From the porch Edna could see that the beach was deserted. The bath-houses stood empty, their doors ajar; the tent where the lovers had been had collapsed at one corner. The lady in black, who at that hour was ordinarily at her devotions, was not upon her gallery, but further down the beach, walking very slowly near the water's edge, her rosary visible between her fingers.

Edna had not intended to bathe. She had told Madame Ratignolle that she did not care for the water that day, and indeed the morning's talk had left her heavy and disinclined to exertion. Yet she found herself putting on her bathing dress, a dark blue, shapeless garment which hung loosely upon her, and taking up the towels without any fixed purpose, as if obeying a habit that belonged to another person. She told the nurse she was going for a little walk and would not be long, and went down the sandy path alone.

The beach, when she reached it, was solitary except for the distant figure of the lady in black, who had seated herself upon a low ridge of sand and sat looking out, her Prayer book closed upon her knees. Edna entered the Pontellier bath-house, left her hat and slippers there, and came out to the gallery that faced the sea. The water invited her with a soft, lapping sound. For weeks she had tried to swim and had failed, clinging to the rope, gasping and frightened, while Robert had stood by laughing and offering his arm, and Léonce had pronounced her a poor swimmer who would never learn.

She waded out now, without the rope, until the water reached her knees, then her waist, and felt its coolness enwrap her limbs. She had been instructed to breathe regularly, to trust the water, to make long strokes. Before, she had been conscious of the watching eyes on the beach, of the chill that seized her, of the absurdity of her position. Now there was no one to watch but the distant, unseeing woman in black, and the vast water itself, which seemed to her less hostile than indifferent.

She threw herself forward, as she had seen the young Creole girls do, and began to move her arms. The first stroke was awkward, a flailing that brought water into her mouth; the second steadier. For a moment she felt the familiar panic rising, the conviction that the sea would take her, that her feet would not find the bottom, that she would sink. She did not stop. She extended her body and struck out again, and this time the water bore her. She moved, not far, not gracefully, but certainly — three, four, five strokes — her head above water, her breath coming short and exultant. She turned and, with the same ungainly earnestness, made her way back to where she could stand.

She stood there, waist deep, her hair clinging in wet strands, her bathing dress heavy about her, and laughed aloud, a low sound that was lost in the wash of the waves. No one heard. She did not call out. She did not wish to be heard, or to be praised, or to be corrected. The accomplishment was hers alone, entire, and she guarded it with a quick, instinctive jealousy. She waded ashore, wrapped herself in the towel, and sat for some minutes upon the gallery of the bath-house, her feet buried in the warm sand, recovering her breath, feeling the sun dry the water upon her skin.

The lady in black, who had risen from her place, passed slowly before the Pontellier compartment on her way back toward the cottages. She did not at first appear to see Edna, who sat very still within the shadow of the gallery. Then she paused. Her face was pale and lined, framed by the severe black of her dress and veil, and her eyes were not unkind.

"You love the water, Mrs. Pontellier," she said. Her voice was low and had the dry, careful enunciation of one who speaks seldom. It was the first time she had addressed Edna directly in all the weeks at Grand Isle.

Edna started a little, drawing the towel closer about her shoulders.

"I find I do, today," she answered.

The lady in black nodded, as if that reply confirmed something she had long known. "The sea is a great lover," she said. "It whispers and it embraces, and sometimes it holds too fast. One must be careful, but one must not be afraid. I have been coming here for many summers and watching the young ones learn to love it. You will love it more and more."

She did not wait for an answer, nor seem to expect one. She continued on her way, her beads slipping through her fingers, her steps leaving shallow prints that the next high tide would smooth away. Edna watched her until she was a small black figure against the white sand, and then until she disappeared among the oleanders.

Edna dressed and walked back to the cottage with a quick, light step that surprised her. The knowledge of what she had done lay within her like a small, bright stone, warm from being held in the closed hand. She did not tell Madame Lebrun, who asked if the water had been cold, nor the nurse, nor the children. When Robert, who had been fishing with Victor off the wharf, returned at dusk and asked if she had bathed, she said only that she had been down to the beach and found the air pleasant, letting him think what he would.

Supper was early, and the children, sunburned and tired, ate sparingly and were soon undressed and put to bed. Edna heard the nurse murmuring a lullaby through the thin partition, and then silence. A lamp was lighted on the table, but she turned its wick low. Madame Lebrun's cottages grew quiet one by one; from the Ratignolle cottage came the final clatter of dishes, and then quiet there as well.

She carried a chair out to the gallery and sat alone. The night was warm and moonless, but the sky was thick with stars that reflected faintly upon the dark water. The Gulf was no longer visible, but she could hear it, a steady, unhurried breathing against the shore. The air smelled of brine and of the night-blooming jasmine that Madame Lebrun trained along the railing.

She sat with her hands in her lap, her hair still damp at the temples beneath its loose coil, and thought of nothing that could be shaped into words. Only one thing remained distinct, as if spoken a moment before and still hanging near her in the darkness. She had not sought it, nor did she put it away. It was Robert's remark, as Adèle had repeated it — that it was as if a curtain had been lifted, and she had been awakened to something. She did not know if it were true, or what it might mean, but it stayed with her, gentle and insistent, while the children slept within and the night deepened about the cottage.

I closed the book softly. Strychnine, it said, acted quickly, produced violent tetanic convulsions ending in asphyxia, with arching of the body in the manner I had just seen, and was bitter to the taste. The description tallied only too closely with what I had witnessed in the room above. I put the book back upon the shelf, my hand not quite steady, and went in search of John.

I found him in his bedroom, standing by the window with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his dressing-gown, looking out across the park where the light was now fully come, pale and watery, and the air still heavy before the storm.

"John," I said, "you gave me leave to act. I mean to go at once to the village and fetch Poirot. Every minute lost may destroy some clue."

He turned slowly. His face was grey and drawn.

"Do you think it necessary, Hastings? Wilkins talks of heart failure — he will certify that way if we let him."

"Bauerstein will not," I said. "You heard him. He will insist upon the post-mortem and the inquest will come in any case. Better to have a clear head now, before anything is touched."

He nodded, almost apathetically. "As you will. You have my consent. Only — for Mary's sake, and for Cynthia's — keep it as quiet as you can."

"I will bring him up by the back lane," I promised. "No one need know he is here until you wish it."

Lawrence was not in the house — Annie said he had gone out into the grounds — and there was no time to tell him. I found a cap and caught up my stick, and let myself out by the side door while Dorcas was laying the early tea-tray in the hall, her eyes red with crying.

The morning was close and oppressive. Low clouds hung over Styles St. Mary as though the storm that had threatened in the night had not yet broken, but only gathered itself. The road to the village, which I had driven so gaily with Lawrence only the day before, seemed altered and strange in the flat morning light.

I had reached the lodge gates and was turning into the lane where the Belgian refugees were housed, when I heard quick footsteps behind me and was overtaken by Alfred Inglethorp himself. He must have come up the main drive on foot, for there was no bicycle with him, and his appearance startled me considerably. He was without a hat, his black beard was unkempt, his evening dress rumpled as though he had slept in it, and over it he had thrown a heavy overcoat, although the morning was warm. His face was haggard, and there was a wildness in his eyes that I had never seen there before.

"Mr. Hastings!" he cried, stopping short at sight of me. "What is this I hear? My wife — my poor Emily —? I met Baily on the road. He told me she had been taken ill in the night."

It was plain that Baily had not told him the whole truth. For a moment I hesitated, then thought it better he should hear it from me at once than blunder in unprepared.

"Mr. Inglethorp," I said quietly, "your wife died this morning. At about five o'clock. We could not save her. The doctors are not satisfied as to the cause."

He stared at me as though I had struck him.

"Dead?" he said hoarsely. "Emily — dead? Impossible."

I said nothing, and after a moment he went on, in a hurried, almost gabbling manner, as though eager to justify himself before any question could be asked.

"I have been away all night — you must understand — I walked to the village with our friend Bauerstein and remained there. I did not wish to disturb the household by returning late with the latch-key. I considered it better to stay. I spent the night at the Three Ashes Inn. The landlord, Mr. Stevens, will vouch for me. I had supper with him and slept in the little room over the bar — I left only just now, at six o'clock, to walk home. I knew nothing — nothing at all — until Baily met me."

His words came quickly, with too much detail in one place and too little in another, and I thought his eyes avoided mine.

We walked together towards the house, neither of us speaking, until we reached the front door where Dorcas was standing with her apron to her face. She dropped a half curtsey to Mr. Inglethorp, but her expression was stony.

"Oh, sir," she said, in answer to his repeated question, "it's true enough. The poor mistress is gone, sir."

He pressed past her into the hall, where John and Mary Cavendish had now come down, and I heard him repeat, with more coherence, the account he had just given me, of his night at the Three Ashes. John listened with his head bent, saying nothing. Mary stood a little apart, her arms folded in her land smock, her face unreadable.

It was then that Dorcas, who had followed us in with the tea-tray trembling in her hands, spoke up in her flat, respectful voice.

"Beg pardon, sir," she said, looking straight at Alfred Inglethorp. "But Mr. Stevens' boy was up at the house at half-past ten last night to return Mrs. Cavendish's parcel, and he said the Three Ashes was shut close and all dark from nine o'clock on account of Mr. Stevens' sister's funeral over at Tadminster. He said there wasn't a light nor a soul stirring there."

A silence fell upon the hall that was more dreadful than any outcry. Inglethorp flushed to the roots of his black beard.

"The boy is mistaken," he said sharply. "I was there. I tell you I was there. Stevens sat with me until past eleven."

Dorcas did not answer, but only set the tray down with a sharp clatter, and John said quietly, "We will talk of this later, Alfred. Hastings is going to bring Poirot."

The name seemed to startle Inglethorp. "Poirot?" he repeated. "That Belgian fellow? What need have we of him?"

"No need at all if all is as it should be," said John, with a steadiness I had not expected from him. "Let Hastings go."

I did not wait for more. I left them standing there — John grave and upright, Inglethorp flushed and sullen, Dorcas with her mouth set in a thin line — and slipped out again into the heavy morning. I walked fast towards the village, my mind in a whirl of half-formed suspicions, the words strychnine and tetanic beating in my head like a drum.

The little house assigned to the Belgians was one of a pair of labourers' cottages, newly whitewashed, with a tiny garden before it. A soldierly old man was sweeping the path. Before I could knock, the door opened and Poirot himself stood there, exquisitely neat as always, his moustaches waxed to perfection, his head a little on one side, regarding me with bright, inquisitive eyes.

"Mon ami Hastings!" he cried. "What brings you so early? The air before the storm, he is not good for the sick, no? Come in, come in."

I stared at him. There was no surprise in his manner, no question as to why I should be upon his doorstep at such an hour.

"You know, then?" I said.

"But yes," he said gravely, his liveliness falling from him like a cloak. "I know. I have heard the sad news."

"You have heard?" I exclaimed. "But who could have told you already? It is barely six o'clock. We have only just —"

He held up a small, fastidiously kept hand.

"It was the young Baily who told me," he said. "He came to fetch Dr. Wilkins with the motor, and seeing my light — for I rise very early — he stopped and knocked and told me Madame Inglethorp was very ill, dying perhaps, and that Dr. Bauerstein was with her. He was much agitated, that young man. He prayed me to come, but I said I could not intrude without invitation from the family. And now you come to invite me. C'est bien. I will come at once."

"Baily, was it?" I said, astonished. For a moment I had imagined that John had sent a message unknown to me, or that Wilkins had spread it. That it should be Baily, the rough farm lad who worked about the estate, struck me as strange, until I reflected that Baily had indeed driven the car downtown for Wilkins, and the cottages lay directly by the lodge gates. He must have passed them in the grey dawn, and knowing by sight the little Belgian who tended his garden at all hours, had paused out of that communicativeness that comes with disaster.

Poirot had already taken his hat and his little ebony stick, and was calling over his shoulder to his companion.

"I go to Styles, I shall return for déjeuner, perhaps not. Keep the coffee hot, my friend."

We set out together up the lane, Poirot walking with his quick, mincing steps, his head thrust forward, his eyes darting this way and that, missing nothing, as I had seen him do in Belgium in the old days when he was yet with the police. He asked me no more questions upon the road; he only said once, "Tell me, Hastings, this latch-key of which you spoke — he took it with him, hein?"

I said that Alfred Inglethorp had taken it, telling the household not to sit up for him.

Poirot nodded, but said no more until we reached the house. There we found the hall empty, and John waiting for us in the library, pacing up and down.

"Monsieur Poirot," he said, holding out his hand, "this is very kind of you. Hastings has told you —?"

Poirot bowed. "He has told me nothing except that Madame your mother died suddenly in the night. That there is some question — what you call in English — of foul play. Is that not so?"

John's face worked. "It may be nothing. Bauerstein suspects — but Wilkins at first believed it was heart failure. I scarcely know what to think. But we would be grateful if you would look into it. Make what examination you wish."

"It is well," said Poirot quietly. "I will see the room. But first, I would wish to speak with those who were last with her. And — if I may — to keep everything as it was? No one has entered?"

"Both doors are locked," said John. "Bauerstein locked them and gave me the keys."

He produced them from his pocket — two large, old-fashioned keys tied together with tape — and handed them to Poirot. Poirot weighed them in his hand for a moment, then slipped them into his pocket.

"Bien. We will go up."

We went together up the great staircase, John leading, Poirot following with his soft, noiseless tread, I at the rear. At the top of the gallery, Cynthia Murdoch came out of her room, very pale, her fair hair hanging loose about her shoulders, her eyes swollen as though with much yawning or weeping. Mary Cavendish was behind her, a hand upon her shoulder.

"Poirot!" Cynthia cried, with a catch in her voice. "Oh, M. Poirot — is it true? Could nothing be done?"

Poirot bowed to her with great gentleness.

"I grieve for you, mademoiselle. I have come to see if I can help."

He looked at her for a moment with those bright, searching eyes, and then, in the quietest voice, asked her a single question.

"Mademoiselle Cynthia, did you sleep without waking through the whole night?"

She hesitated, and her flush deepened oddly.

"No," she said, at last, in a low voice. "I did not. I woke at about half-past twelve. I thought I heard — something — a door shut — but I was so sleepy — so terribly sleepy — I could not keep awake. I must have slept again at once."

Poirot bowed again, as though satisfied, and did not press her further, though I thought her answer had a strange effect upon him. Mary Cavendish drew the girl away without a word, and we went on towards the right wing.

John unlocked both doors in turn — first the corridor door, then the connecting door through Alfred Inglethorp's room — and stood aside to let Poirot pass. The late morning light, dull though it was with the coming storm, fell across the disordered room and showed it plainly. The bedclothes were tossed and tumbled, the small table beside the bed overturned, a tray with a spirit lamp, a saucepan, a cup and saucer lying upon its side, and beside it Emily Inglethorp's despatch-case, its key still in the lock. The gas was out now, and the ashes in the grate were cold and grey.

Poirot stood just within the threshold for a full minute without moving, his eyes travelling slowly round the room, from floor to ceiling, from bed to grate to window. I felt, rather than saw, the intensity of his observation. He moved then, not quickly as I had expected, but with deliberate, almost dainty precision, stooping here, peering there, touching nothing with his hands until he had first examined it with his eyes.

He went to the mantelpiece and looked long at the row of ornaments there — a pair of china dogs, a small clock, a set of jade figures — and then, almost carelessly, ran his finger along the edge of the shelf. He frowned at the dust upon it. He knelt by the overturned table and, without lifting it, peered beneath it. He lifted the cup and saucer, sniffed delicately at the dark stain within the cup, set it down again, and then, with a sudden quick movement, picked up something from the carpet close beside the leg of the bed.

It was a very small object. From where I stood I could not see what it was — something dark and glinting, no larger than a thumbnail. Poirot slipped it between his thumb and forefinger and brought it to the light of the window. He examined it minutely, turning it over and over.

I came closer. "What is it?" I whispered.

He held it out upon the palm of his hand for me to see. It was a tiny fragment of some dark green or brownish fabric, stiff with starch, with a minute fleck of something whitish clinging to its edge — what I took to be a scrap torn from a cuff or a dress, and the fleck, a spot of powder or coffee.

"There, Hastings," he said softly. "Regardez."

"What does it mean?" I asked eagerly. "Is it —?"

He closed his hand over it quickly and slipped it into his little pocket-book, shaking his head with a faint smile.

"Ah, that I will not tell you, mon ami. Not yet. It would be to spoil the little surprise. But it is — how do you say — suggestive, very suggestive."

I was a little piqued at his reticence, for I felt that here, at last, was a tangible clue, and his air of mystery seemed almost playful at such a moment, but I knew of old that there was no moving him when he chose to be secretive.

He continued his slow circuit of the room, opening the despatch-case without removing anything, glancing at the heap of papers within, tapping the pink-stained blotting paper that lay upon the writing-table, and at last straightening himself and announcing that he had seen enough for the present.

John, who had waited in the doorway with evident impatience, locked the doors again behind us, and we descended. In the hall below a little group had gathered — Mary, Lawrence, and Inglethorp, who stood apart by the fireplace, his overcoat now discarded, his hands clasped behind his back, his face a mask of sullen endurance. No one spoke as we passed through to the library.

It was now not far from eleven o'clock; the gong for luncheon would sound soon, but no one had thought of eating. The household moved on tiptoe, in that hushed, unnatural quiet that follows sudden death. Poirot requested that he might be left alone for a little while to think, and John at once placed the morning-room at his disposal. I was about to withdraw with the others, when Poirot detained me with a touch upon the arm.

"Remain, Hastings," he said. "You will help me."

When the door had closed upon the rest, he unlocked, with John's keys, the bedroom door once more and led me inside, locking it behind us. We were alone in that silent, disordered chamber, the air still faintly acrid with the smell of coffee and the lingering odour of sickness. The small object lay now upon the washstand between us, upon a clean sheet of notepaper where Poirot had placed it, and we both looked down upon it.

I waited, expecting some explanation, some sudden illumination which would make all clear. Instead Poirot, after gazing at the fragment for a long moment, looked up at me, his eyes extraordinarily bright and grave.

"Eh bien, Hastings," he said, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, "and now that we are alone in the locked room which no one could enter, tell me — who was it that blew out the candle?"

I stared at him, bewildered, for I did not understand him at all.

Letter from Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra.

"27 May.

"My dearest Lucy,--

"You will think me very neglectful not to have answered your dear letter of the 24th before this, and indeed I do owe you many thanks for telling me all so frankly and so sweetly. I have read it three times over, and cried a little over poor Dr. Seward and brave Mr. Morris, and laughed out quite happily over the end of it, for I knew before I turned the page that number Three must be dear Arthur, and that you are indeed as happy as you deserve to be. I pray for your happiness with all my heart, and Jonathan, when I tell him, will pray for it too, for he loves to hear of kindness and constancy, and yours and Arthur's is of the truest kind. You ask me not to tell the girls, and indeed I shall not, though Miss Violet at the school pressed me very close yesterday to know if there were any news of you, and I said only that you were very well and very happy, which is true without betraying any secret.

"Dear Lucy, I have had a strange interruption to my quiet days here, and one which has made me more anxious than I should like to own, though perhaps there is nothing at all to be anxious about. You know how I have been counting the days for Jonathan's return, for he was to have been back by the 20th at latest, having written from Buda-Pesth that his business was all but concluded and that he would come home by way of Munich and Paris and so to London. I had looked for a letter every morning, and when none came I told myself it was the posts abroad which are so slow and so uncertain, and that he was travelling and could not write. But yesterday morning there came to me a letter which I did not know at all, in a strange hand, and with foreign stamps and a postmark which I could scarcely read, and at first I thought it must be some mistake, for it was addressed to 'Miss Mina Murray, Care of Mr. Peter Hawkins, Solicitor, Exeter,' and I have not lived under that direction since winter, though dear Mr. Hawkins still forwards my letters. I opened it with a beating heart, and found that it concerned Jonathan. I enclose for you a true copy of it, word for word, as I have copied it into this letter, for the original is on thin foreign paper and the ink is very pale, and I fear to trust it to the post lest it should be lost. You will see what it says, that he has been delayed. I have written at once to the gentleman who sent it, to thank him and to beg for more news, and I have written also to Mr. Hawkins to ask what he thinks should be done, for Mr. Hawkins is Jonathan's master as well as ours, and will know best. Do not be alarmed for me, dear, for the gentleman writes most kindly, and says Jonathan is in good hands, and I try to believe that it is only a little fever or a missed connexion which keeps him, and not anything worse. Write to me very soon, and tell me that you are still so happy, for it does me good to think of your happiness just now.

"Your loving "MINA."

"Copy enclosed:--

Letter from Herr Richard Kupfer to Miss Mina Murray.

"Klausenburg, "20 May.

"Dear Madam,--

"Your address was given to me by Herr Jonathan Harker of London, Solicitor, who informs me that if any necessity arise letters for him may be addressed under your care through his employer in Exeter. I therefore take the liberty to write to you, as I have had the honour to make Mr. Harker's acquaintance upon his journey homewards. He arrived in Klausenburg on the evening of the 16th inst., by diligence from Bistritz, intending to proceed by rail on the following morning to Buda-Pesth, and thence by express to Vienna and Paris. On the morning of the 17th, however, he complained of great fatigue and of a slight feverish cold, such as travellers often acquire by exposure in the mountains, and upon my advice, which I gave as a private gentleman and not as a physician, he consented to rest for one or two days at the inn, the Mediasch House, where he lodges. There he has remained under quiet observation, and though he is not seriously ill, he is not yet fit to continue a long journey without risk, and his medical attendant, Dr. Wilhelm Berger, is of opinion that he should keep his room for a week longer and should not attempt any close application to business. Mr. Harker desired me particularly to assure you that you are not to be uneasy on his account, and that his detention here is only a delay occasioned by ordinary indisposition, and that he will write to you himself so soon as he is able, but that he begs you will not expect letters by every post, as he is ordered to rest his eyes and to avoid writing. I have undertaken, at his request, to communicate this intelligence to you, and to add that he has been well cared for, and wants for nothing. I shall, if you will permit me, write again in a few days to report his progress.

"I am, dear Madam, "Your obedient servant, "RICHARD KUPFER, "Mediasch House, Klausenburg, Transylvania."

Dr. Seward's Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May.--I was awaked early by the attendant who watches Renfield in the night, to say that the patient had been restless before dawn and had called out loudly several times, though not in his usual manner of demanding attention. I went down at once before breakfast, for I find it best to see these paroxysms at their height, when the mind betrays more than it intends.

I found him seated upon the edge of his bed, fully dressed, though it was not yet six o'clock, with his hands folded quite neatly upon his knees and his eyes fixed upon the window, where the light was beginning to harden. He bade me good morning with a civility which is unusual to him when his excitement is upon him, and asked me if I had slept well. I replied that I had, and inquired after his own rest. He said he had not required much sleep, for his thoughts had kept him company very pleasantly.

We conversed for some minutes upon indifferent matters, of the weather, which has been close and thundery, and of the new wing which is being repaired, and I observed that he answered with a coherence and a self-possession which I have not always found in him. Then, quite unprompted, and without any leading question from me, and indeed without any previous mention by either of us of any person outside this house, he looked at me directly and said, "Doctor, you know Miss Westenra, do you not? The young lady with the fine dark hair whom Mr. Holmwood is to marry?"

The question, put so plainly and with such a particular naming of the lady, took me aback, for I have never at any time spoken to Renfield of Miss Westenra, nor indeed of any of my friends not connected with his case, and I keep my private letters under lock and key, and my attendants are instructed to mention no names before the patients. I asked him, as calmly as I could, what had put Miss Westenra into his thoughts. He smiled in a manner which I can only describe as complacent, and said, "Oh, we hear things, Doctor, even in here. A gentleman does not forget a beautiful lady when once he has heard her spoken of, even by chance." He would say no more, though I pressed him gently, but returned to the arrangement of some papers upon his table, counting them over and over as is his habit, and humming to himself. I made a note to inquire of the night attendant whether any visitor had been talking within his hearing yesterday, but the man assures me no stranger has been upon the ward. The incident is trifling, yet I record it accurately, for such unprompted knowledge, however obtained, is often of clinical significance in cases of monomania.

Later.--Have received Quincey Morris's note again to remind me that we are to dine at his rooms to-morrow at eight. I had half a mind to excuse myself, for my spirits are still low, but I think it is better to go, lest Arthur should think I bear him any grudge, which God knows I do not. There is work enough for all.

Letter from Miss Lucy Westenra to Miss Mina Murray.

"17, Chatham Street, "28 May.

"My dearest Mina,--

"Your letter has just reached me as I was sitting with mamma over our breakfast, and I am so very sorry to hear that you have had such a fright about dear Jonathan. I read the copy you sent me twice over, and then read it aloud to mamma, who says as I do, that the letter seems most considerate and reassuring, and that a cold caught in those high mountains is just the sort of thing that any traveller might suffer, and that rest is all that is wanted. You must not, dear Mina, torment yourself with imaginings, though I know very well how hard it is not to do so when one loves anyone very much, and when the posts are so slow. Jonathan will be vexed enough with himself for causing you a moment's uneasiness, and I am sure he will be writing to you himself in a day or two, and telling you that he is quite well again and scolding you for being anxious. Do write at once to Mr. Hawkins as you say you have done, for he is a man of business and will know whether you should go to meet Jonathan or whether it is better to let him come home quietly in his own time.

"I am longing to come to you, but mamma has made an engagement for us to go into the country for a few days next week to see an old cousin of hers at Greenwich, who has a garden that runs almost to the river, and she says the change will do us both good, and I cannot bear to disappoint her when she has set her heart upon it. Arthur comes and goes every day, and is so kind, and talks so sensibly about everything, that mamma declares he has quite cured her of her low spirits. He asked after you very particularly yesterday, and when I told him that Jonathan was still detained abroad he said at once that if there were any means by which he could be of service, through his correspondents or otherwise, you had only to command him. I told him you would thank him very much, and would let him know if anything were needed, but that I believed Mr. Hawkins would attend to it all.

"Dear Mina, I shall keep your letter by me till I see you, and shall not speak of it to any one but mamma and Arthur, as you would wish. Try to sleep well, and to think of Jonathan as already on his way home, for I feel sure he will be with you very soon. I am, as ever, your loving and anxious friend,

"LUCY.

"P.S.--Mamma sends her love, and begs you will eat a good dinner and not read too many anxious letters before bed."

Dr. Seward's Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

28 May.--The dinner at Quincey's has taken place, and I am returned before midnight, having promised the attendant to look in upon Renfield before he sleeps. I set down the particulars while they are fresh, for there were moments in the evening which I desire to remember correctly.

Quincey has taken chambers in Albemarle Street, upon the second floor, not large but very handsome and well appointed, with dark oak panels and a good fire, though the night is not cold. He had arranged a table for three only, with no display beyond a few dishes well chosen, and a decanter of Burgundy which he said had been sent to him from his father's cellar in Texas, and which he had kept for an occasion of this kind. Arthur arrived first, at a quarter before eight, looking very well, though somewhat browned as if he had been much out of doors at his place at Ring, and in excellent spirits. He shook my hand with a warmth which quite removed any awkwardness I had felt since the 24th, and said at once that he was glad to see me, and that he would not have us speak of anything that should make either of us uncomfortable, for we were to be friends as before, and more than before. I thanked him, and I believe we understood one another without further words.

Quincey received us in a coat of a light colour, with a flower in his buttonhole, and with that easy American hospitality which puts a guest at once at ease. He had provided oysters, and a roast fowl, and afterwards a gooseberry tart, which he declared was the nearest thing to a prairie apple pie that London could afford, and we ate with good appetite, or at least Arthur and Quincey did, for my own was still indifferent. Quincey presided with great jollity, telling us stories of his life in the West, of hunting and of camps upon the Pampas, but without any of that slang which he uses when he wishes to amuse Miss Westenra, for he spoke to us plainly as one man to another, and with a good deal of feeling. After the cloth was removed, he filled our glasses and rose to his feet, and said, "Boys, I asked you here to-night that we might drink a health together, and there is but one health that any of us cares to drink just now." He then gave us Arthur's health, and the health of Miss Westenra, coupling their names together as those of a lady and gentleman about to be married, and wishing them length of days and happiness without alloy. Arthur coloured deeply and thanked him with much simplicity, saying that he had hoped we would be as brothers to him, and that there was no man in England whose esteem he valued more than that of the two friends who had pledged him to-night. We drank the health standing, and I felt, as I set down my glass, that some weight which had lain upon my heart since last week was sensibly lightened.

Afterwards we fell to smoking, and Quincey showed us a lasso which he had brought from Texas, and Arthur tried his hand at casting it over a chair, at which we laughed a good deal, for he caught the chimney ornaments instead and very nearly brought down the mantelpiece. There was no constraint amongst us, and we parted at half-past eleven with many promises to meet again, Quincey engaging to come to my asylum to see some of my patients, and Arthur asking me to dine with him at Chatham Street before he goes down to Ring next week. I came home through streets that were quiet and well lit, and found my thoughts more composed than they have been of late.

Telegram from Mr. Peter Hawkins to Miss Mina Murray.

"Miss Mina Murray, Exeter.--Jonathan starts to-morrow, arrives London Friday. Meet him. Hawkins."

The cab went down the hill and I could feel the wind coming in the open window. Brett kept her eyes closed. She was leaning back in the corner and her hand was in mine. Her hand was small and hard.

"Oh, darling, I've been so miserable," she said again.

"Tell him where to go," I said. "We're going to the Parc Montsouris."

She opened her eyes.

"No," she said. "Take me to Zelli's. Take me down to Zelli's."

"I told him Montsouris."

"Tell him Zelli's. I want to go to Zelli's. I want music."

I leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. He slowed and turned his head.

"Change it," I said. "Boulevard de Clichy. Zelli's."

"Zelli's," he said. "Bon."

He turned around the next street and started back up the hill toward Montmartre. The taxi went fast and Brett sat close against me. She was looking out the window.

"You know I hate that Montsouris park at night," she said. "It makes me feel damned empty."

"It's a lovely park in the day," I said.

"Everything's lovely in the day," she said.

We went up the Rue Denfert and then out onto the boulevard. The night was warm and the trees were black against the electric light. There were still people on the terraces of the cafés.

"Do you remember Zelli's?" Brett said.

"Yes."

"Good. We'll have champagne. I'm going to get tight if I want to. I said I wouldn't, but I'm going to."

"That's your business," I said.

"Oh, Jake. Don't be like that."

"Like what?"

"That superior way. Oh, hell. I don't know."

We didn't say anything for a while. The taxi was climbing toward Montmartre. Brett had taken off her hat and was running her hand through her hair. She let the wind blow it.

"You know," she said, "I met a very useful man last week."

"Who?"

"Chap named Evan Shipman. American. He has that big motor-car and a house at Neuilly. Heaps of money. He wants me to go to Biarritz."

"I don't know him," I said. I had never heard of him.

"No, you wouldn't. Nobody knows him. But he's got heaps of money. He came up to me at the Races at Saint-Cloud. Frances introduced me. He said he'd seen me at the other place."

"Do you like him?"

"Oh, he's all right. Very dull. But he has money. He said he'd buy me a car if I wanted."

"What did you say?"

"I told him I'd think about it. Jake, I need money. I really do."

"I know," I said.

"He's disgustingly rich," she said. "He made it in steel or something. In America. He showed me a photograph of his place at Neuilly. It's got a garden."

"Are you going to Biarritz with him?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I can't go on like this. I'm damned sick of it."

The taxi turned onto the Boulevard de Clichy. The lights of Zelli's were on and you could hear the music from inside. There was a line of taxis along the curb. We stopped.

"You pay it," Brett said. "I'm broke."

I paid the driver and we went in. The doorman knew Brett. He smiled and opened the door. Inside it was crowded and smoky and the band was playing. Zelli himself was standing at the door of the room in a dinner jacket. He waved at Brett.

"Good evening, Lady Ashley," he said.

"Hello, Zelli."

We went to a table near the band. The music was loud and it was hot in the room. A waiter came up.

"Champagne," Brett said. "Brut."

"Yes, milady."

"Jake, you do like me, don't you?"

"Sure," I said.

"Oh, don't say 'sure'," she said. "Please say you like me."

"I like you," I said.

"You don't have to pretend."

"I'm not pretending."

She looked at me and laughed. Her face was very lovely in the light.

"You're a great pretender," she said.

"You're a great pretender, too."

"Yes," she said. "Isn't it grand?"

The champagne came and the waiter poured it. Brett drank hers quickly.

"That's better," she said. "You know, I'm really very fond of you."

"I'm very fond of you," I said.

"Let's not talk rot," she said. "Let's drink."

We drank. The band started a waltz. People were dancing close together. The floor was small and the dancers bumped each other.

"Should we dance?" Brett said.

"Do you want to?"

"If you like."

"We can sit."

"Yes. Let's sit. I'm tired."

She poured more champagne. Her hand shook a little when she poured.

"You know Evan Shipman says he'll give me five hundred pounds if I come to Biarritz," she said.

"That's a lot of money," I said.

"Yes. It is a lot of money. I could do a lot with five hundred pounds."

"You could."

"Don't you think I should take it?" she said. She was looking at me straight. Her eyes were very clear.

"Whatever you want," I said.

"Don't say that. Say whether you think I should."

"I think you should do whatever you want to do."

"Oh, hell, Jake," she said. "Don't be so decent."

"I mean it," I said. "I don't want to tell you what to do."

We both sat and didn't say what we meant. She meant do you want me to go, and I meant I want you not to go, and neither of us said it. I felt lonely and sick that I loved her and could not have her and that she had to talk about another man with money.

"I don't know," she said. "I'm too damned honest, really. For a woman, I mean."

The band played loud. A man at the next table was singing. He was drunk and singing in English.

"I'm going to get awfully tight," Brett said.

"You are tight now," I said.

"No, I'm not. Not nearly."

She looked away from me. I watched her face. She was very handsome and she looked tired.

"Jake," she said, and did not look at me. "Do you still love me?"

"Yes," I said.

"You don't have to answer like that."

"Yes, I love you," I said.

"Oh, let's not talk about it," she said. "Let's just have fun. We're at Zelli's. It's supposed to be fun."

"It is fun," I said.

"Isn't it though," she said. She smiled. Then she said, "I have to go powder. Will you be here?"

"Yes."

"Don't go away."

"I won't."

She got up and went between the tables toward the ladies' room. I sat and drank the champagne and watched the dancers. The man who had been singing was now dancing with a girl in a red dress. Zelli was talking to some people at the door.

I thought about Georgette and the fifty francs in the envelope at the bal musette. I had told the patronne to keep it if Georgette went out with one of them. Brett would think I had been a fool.

Brett came back. She had put on lipstick.

"Let's dance," she said.

"We're drinking champagne."

"Let's dance one, then."

We danced. The floor was crowded and the music was hot. Brett danced well. She kept her body straight and moved easily.

Afterward we sat down. The champagne was warm.

"Jake," Brett said. "I must go."

"Where?"

"I don't know. I must go somewhere. Take me somewhere."

"You want to leave Zelli's?"

"Yes. I don't like it here any more. Let's get out."

I called the waiter and paid. Outside the air was cool after the hot room. It was still dark but the sky was getting thin.

"What time is it?" Brett said.

"About three."

"I must get some sleep."

"I'll put you in a taxi."

"No, stay with me a little."

"I have to go back to the bal," I said. "I left an envelope there."

"What envelope?"

"I left fifty francs for Georgette. At the bar. I told the patronne to give it to her."

"Georgette? Your poule?"

"Yes."

"Oh. You are funny, Jake. You're very decent."

"I said I'd leave it. I want to go and get it if she hasn't gone. Or give it to her."

"Of course," Brett said. "We can go back there. Is it near?"

"Not far. Rue de la Montagne."

"We can walk a little, then taxi," she said.

We found a taxi on the boulevard. The driver was asleep in his seat. I woke him and told him the address of the bal musette.

"Do you want to come in?" I said to Brett when we stopped.

"No. I'll wait here. Bring your Georgette if you like. I'd like to see her again."

"I'll be right out."

The bal was still open. The light was on over the door and I could hear the accordion. When I opened the door the policeman was gone and the daughter of the house was sitting at one of the tables asleep with her head on her arms. The proprietor was still playing. There were only a few people left. Two couples were dancing slowly.

Georgette was sitting at a table near the bar with one of the young men from Brett's crowd. The tall one called Lett was gone. The young man was drinking beer and Georgette had a glass of something in front of her. She saw me and waved.

"Eh, Jake!" she called. "You came back!"

The proprietor stopped playing when he saw me. The patronne came from behind the zinc.

"Monsieur, I have kept it for you," she said, and took the envelope from under the bar. "She did not go. She waited."

"Thank you," I said. I put the envelope in my pocket. It was still sealed.

"The mademoiselle waited for you," the patronne said, and smiled.

I walked over to Georgette's table.

"Hello, Georgette," I said.

"Hello, Jake," she said. "This is André."

The young man stood up and smiled. He had white hands and wavy hair. He was very polite.

"Enchanté," he said.

"Georgette, do you want to go?" I asked.

"As you wish," she said. "You left money for me?"

"Yes. The patronne kept it."

"That's very nice of you," she said. She stood up. "André is sweet, but I will go with you if you wish."

"No," I said. "It's all right. I only came to give you the envelope." I took it out and put it on the table in front of her. "Fifty francs."

She picked it up and put it in her bag.

"You are very nice, Jake," she said. "You are a nice boy. Will you dance one?"

"No," I said. "I have to go. I have a friend outside."

"The beautiful lady?" she said. "She came back?"

"She's outside in a taxi."

"Tell her I said hello," Georgette said, and smiled that smile with her lips closed.

"Good night," I said.

"Good night, Jake. Come and eat again some time."

I waved to the patronne and the proprietor and went out. The accordion started again as I closed the door.

Brett was still in the taxi. She had her eyes closed again.

"Did you find her?" she said.

"Yes. She was still there. I gave her the envelope."

"Was she angry?"

"No. She was fine."

"Good," Brett said. "You're so damned good to people, Jake."

We started again. The driver had not turned off his engine.

"Where now?" the driver asked.

"Boulevard Montparnasse," Brett said. "The Select."

We went down the hill. The streets were empty. A baker's cart went by with the horse trotting fast. The sky was light now. It was morning and the electric signs were off.

At the Select there were still people, but not many. Brett said she did not want to go in.

"I'll put you in a taxi to go home," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I'm awfully tired now."

We stopped in front of the Select. I got out and helped her out. She stood on the pavement and shivered a little. The morning air was cool.

"Don't be miserable," I said.

"I'm not," she said. "I'm awfully tired, though."

I found a taxi and told the driver Brett's address. I did not know it exactly, but Brett told him. She got in.

"Good night, darling," she said. "Thank you for tonight."

"Good night," I said.

The taxi went off up the boulevard. I stood and watched it go. Then I started to walk home. It was dawn now and light on the river. The river looked flat and grey. A tug went by, making a wash against the stone walls. I walked along the quay. The street was wet where they had washed it down. A man was opening the shutters of a café. I walked on. The river was very still. I put my hands in my pockets and walked home along the river in the dawn.

Eve descended the narrow staircase that led from the offices of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau with the umbrella held before her like a sacred relic. The rain had abated to a thin, apologetic drizzle, the sort of rain which seems to feel that it has made itself a nuisance and is trying to atone, and Shaftesbury Avenue shone damply in the watery sunlight. She had intended to proceed directly to the Tube station, for there was shopping to be done and letters to be written and a hat, though superb, that could not pay for itself, but the umbrella presented an immediate moral problem.

It was, she perceived upon closer inspection, an uncommonly good umbrella. The handle was of malacca, smooth to the touch, and the ribs had that well-bred rigidity which suggests an expensive education. A small silver band encircled it midway, engraved with initials. W. W. W., or possibly M. M. M., according as one peered. No gilt monstrosity from a hurried purchase at Charing Cross, this, but the sort of umbrella a man becomes attached to, the sort of umbrella whose loss provokes letters to the Times. It was absurd, of course, to suppose that its owner had intended it as a gift. Even the most chivalrous young man with a monocle does not bestow malacca-handled umbrellas upon strange girls beneath chemists' awnings as a matter of habit. He expects them back.

Eve stood irresolute upon the pavement, while traffic eddied about her. To keep the thing would be theft. To attempt to return it to its club across Dover Street would be, if not exactly perilous, at least conspicuous. Girls did not, as a rule, go popping in and out of the Drones Club. And yet there was plainly no alternative. Common honesty demanded it. Besides, there was the note to be considered.

For Eve, who had been brought up by a father who believed that every human transaction should be acknowledged in writing, felt strongly on the subject of notes. To borrow an umbrella from a hatless stranger without so much as a word of thanks was unthinkable. She hesitated only over the form of words. On the second floor of the Bureau there was a table devoted to applicants awaiting interview, equipped with pens, ink of a light amber hue, and paper headed in severe black type with the words ADA CLARKSON — PROMPTITUDE — COURTESY — INTELLIGENCE. Borrowing a sheet of this paper and a pen which had obviously been selected for its moral rather than its practical qualities, she wrote quickly, propping the umbrella against her knee.

The result, after two false starts and a blot which she turned with some ingenuity into a decorative flourish, read as follows:

*Dear Sir — Thank you so very much for your great kindness in lending me your umbrella this morning in Dover Street. It kept my hat quite dry, which was most important to me. I am returning it at once to the porter of your club. I hope you did not get wet going across the road without it.*

*Yours sincerely,* *E. Halliday.*

She read this over, considered adding *I am so grateful*, decided that gratitude had already been adequately expressed, folded the paper neatly, and set out with brisk determination in the direction of Dover Street. The walk did her good. By the time she had reached the grave and dignified exterior of the Drones Club she had convinced herself that the whole proceeding was perfectly simple and ladylike.

The porter of the Drones Club was a man of massive calm, accustomed to beholding strange sights without surprise. He had seen members arrive in full evening dress at ten in the morning, and members depart in bathing suits at midnight, and nothing short of an earthquake could have ruffled the settled melancholy of his countenance. When Eve appeared before his glass enclosure, clasping an umbrella and a folded note as if they were weapons of offence, he regarded her with a benevolent detached interest, as one might regard a newly discovered species of bird.

"If you please," said Eve, all in a breath, "this umbrella was lent to me this morning by a gentleman of your club — a tall gentleman with a monocle — I was sheltering from the rain under the awning opposite — and he was most kind — and I wanted to return it —"

The porter received the umbrella with the air of a priest accepting an offering. He examined the silver band.

"Mr. Walderwick's, miss," he said, with the quiet satisfaction of an expert.

"Yes. And would you be so kind as to give him this note when he calls for it?"

The porter took the note between finger and thumb as if it might explode.

"Certainly, miss. I will see that Mr. Walderwick gets it directly he comes in. He is in the club now, taking his luncheon."

"Oh, then —" Eve hesitated. The thought of encountering the monocled young man again in the flesh, while still in possession of all her composure, was daunting. "Then perhaps you will just put it with the umbrella where he will find it. Thank you so much."

She fled, feeling that Promptitude, Courtesy and Intelligence had all been adequately served, and that Providence might now be trusted to do the rest.

* * * * *

Psmith, meanwhile, having discharged his errand of mercy in Dover Street, had returned to the Drones Club with the light heart of one who has done a good deed before luncheon and expects no immediate retribution. He had restored to the cloak-room the two umbrellas which had failed to meet his exacting standards and was now seated in the smoking-room with a thoughtful cup of coffee, meditating upon Life, Philosophy, and the singular charm of girls who wear black birds of Paradise upon their hats. The rain, he noted with approval, had ceased. The world was once more a fit place for well-dressed men to move about in.

It was at about one o'clock, when the room was beginning to fill with young men in search of nourishment, that the atmosphere was disturbed by a sharp exclamation from the doorway.

"Dash it, where's my umbrella?"

The speaker was a young man of pink and wholesome exterior, with hair of the colour of marmalade and a waistcoat which had been constructed on the principle that if a little is good a lot must be better. Psmith recognized him without enthusiasm as the Honourable Waldo Walderwick, a recent addition to the Drones, whose chief recommendation in Psmith's eyes was that he seldom spoke and never remained long in one spot. At present, however, he showed every sign of remaining.

"I left it here this morning," said Walderwick, addressing the room at large and with particular severity the attendant who presided over the cloak-room. "Malacca handle, silver band. Can't have vanished into thin air."

Psmith sipped his coffee. He had foreseen that some such inquiry might arise, and he had prepared a policy.

The attendant, summoned, reported that no umbrella answering that description was now in the rack, but that a gentleman — he indicated Psmith with a respectful jerk of the head — had taken one out about eleven.

A silence fell upon the smoking-room. Six pairs of eyes turned upon Psmith, who, far from showing embarrassment, beamed genially through his monocle.

"Ah, Walderwick," he said, "you seek your umbrella?"

"I do," said Walderwick, with some heat. "I want my umbrella."

"Comrade Walderwick," said Psmith, rising with the graceful languor of a cat stretching after sleep, "your desire does you credit. Far be it from me to withhold from a fellow clubman the implement which keeps the rain from his well-oiled head. And yet, before I restore it, I would put a proposition to you. How much did you give for that umbrella?"

Walderwick stared.

"How much did I give? Three guineas. What of it?"

"Three guineas," repeated Psmith soulfully. "A not inconsiderable sum. And yet, Comrade Walderwick, I will tell you frankly that I have taken a fancy to that umbrella. Its lines appeal to me. Its symmetry soothes me. To part with it would be like tearing a child from its mother. Would you, I wonder, as a matter of good fellowship between Dronesmen, consent to sell it to me?"

Walderwick's mouth opened.

"Sell it?"

"For," said Psmith, producing his wallet with the air of a conjurer bringing rabbits from a hat, "five pounds."

There was an audible gasp from a neighbouring table where a young man was trying to eat kedgeree and read the Sporting Times at the same time. Five pounds for an umbrella which had cost three guineas was, even by Drones standards, a startling figure.

Walderwick blinked. The pink of his cheeks deepened to a richer hue.

"Five pounds?"

"Five pounds," said Psmith. " spot cash, no questions asked, and the transaction to be regarded as final and binding. What do you say?"

"Well, dash it," said Walderwick, wavering between avarice and suspicion, "if you really want it—"

"I do," said Psmith. "I do want it. With an intensity which amounts to passion. Here is the money. Count it."

Walderwick counted it. He counted it twice. He then pocketed it with a briskness which suggested that he feared it might evaporate.

"Right-o," he said. "It's yours."

"Comrade Walderwick," said Psmith, pocketing the umbrella and inclining his head with the gravity of one who has completed a treaty between nations, "you are a gentleman and a sportsman. I thank you."

Walderwick, finding himself richer by nearly two pounds and relieved of all further responsibility in the matter, retired to luncheon in a glow of self-satisfaction. Psmith resumed his seat, placed the umbrella tenderly against the arm of his chair, and returned to his coffee, which had cooled to a temperature more suited to philosophy than to drinking. He felt that he had acquitted himself well. The ethics of the transaction were, of course, not flawless, but Psmith had long since come to terms with his conscience. Conscience, he held, was like a pince-nez; it could be mislaid with a little effort, and he had seldom found difficulty in mislaying his.

* * * * *

At three o'clock that afternoon Eve Halliday presented herself at the small private hotel in Jermyn Street where, according to Miss Clarkson's careful note, the Earl of Emsworth was staying during his visit to London. She had spent the intervening hours in a state of nervous preparation which had involved re-reading her testimonials, brushing her hat until the bird of Paradise quivered, and rehearsing a speech which began "I understand you require someone to catalogue your library" and ended, rather lamely, "and I am very fond of books."

The Earl of Emsworth, when at length she was shown into his sitting-room, did not at first sight suggest a formidable employer. He was a tall, thin, elderly gentleman with a mild and vaguelooking face, half-concealed behind spectacles which had apparently been put on in a hurry. He was peering anxiously about the room as if he had lost something, which indeed he had. His pince-nez, missing since breakfast, had taken refuge, as was its custom, in the crevice between the cushions of his chair, but Lord Emsworth, having searched everywhere else, was now engaged in looking for it under the blotter.

Eve coughed gently.

"Lord Emsworth? I am Miss Halliday — Miss Eve Halliday — about the cataloguing—"

Lord Emsworth looked up with a start, as if Eve had been conjured from the carpet.

"Eh? Oh, yes, yes, to be sure. Miss Halliday. Miss Clarkson's young lady. Yes, yes. Delighted. Sit down, my dear, sit down. Have you — have you happened to see a pair of pince-nez anywhere?"

Eve, who had not, admitted as much.

"Most vexing," said Lord Emsworth. "Baxter — my secretary, you know — always finds them. But Baxter is at Blandings. He does not like London. Says —" He broke off and regarded Eve with renewed interest. "You are fond of books, Miss Clarkson said?"

"I am very—"

"Excellent. Excellent. The library at Blandings is in a deplorable state. Books everywhere. No system. My sister Constance complains. She says —" He rummaged vaguely upon the mantelpiece. "Do you know anything about cataloguing?"

"Well, I — I have done a little," said Eve truthfully, "at Wayland House. And I — I love arranging things."

"Capital. Capital. And have you — this is important — have you any views on pigs?"

Eve blinked. This was not in the rehearsed speech.

"Pigs, Lord Emsworth?"

"The Empress," said Lord Emsworth, warming slightly. "My sow, you know. The Blandings Empress. A noble animal. Black Berkshire. Has won two silver medals. I had hoped — Miss Clarkson led me to expect — that the new librarian might have some practical knowledge of pig-keeping. The last young lady — Miss Peters — read Keats aloud to the Empress with excellent results. The Empress gained three pounds in a week."

Eve, whose experience of pigs was limited to seeing them from railway carriages, felt the interview slipping from her grasp.

"I — I'm afraid I don't know much about pigs," she faltered. "But I could learn —"

"Ah," said Lord Emsworth, a little disappointed. He found his pince-nez at this moment, perched it upon his nose, and stared at Eve more clearly. "Can you type?"

"Yes," said Eve, brightening. This at least was solid ground.

"And you were recommended by — by whom was it? Freddie? My son Frederick?"

Eve, who had indeed mentioned Freddie's name to Miss Clarkson as a person who knew her well, assented.

"Freddie Threepwood? Yes, he suggested I should apply."

Lord Emsworth's face clouded.

"Freddie is in London," he said querulously. "He was to meet me at Paddington. He did not arrive. I do not understand Freddie. He wanted money. Everyone wants money. My brother-in-law Joseph Keeble wanted money. It is very trying."

Eve, sensing that the conversation had drifted into deep waters, attempted to steer it back.

"About the library," she said gently. "When would you want me to begin?"

Lord Emsworth looked at her vaguely, as if surprised to find her still there.

"Begin? Oh, the cataloguing. Yes, yes. On Monday, I suppose. Come to Blandings on Monday. Speak to Baxter. He will arrange everything. He arranges everything. Most efficient fellow, Baxter. Finds my pince-nez. You will like Baxter."

Eve's heart leapt. The interview, which she had felt to be an unmitigated disaster — she had confessed ignorance of pigs, she had been unable to produce testimonials because in her agitation she had left them in the bureau's waiting-room, she had mentioned Freddie, who was evidently not in favour — had somehow not ended in dismissal.

"Oh, thank you, Lord Emsworth," she said, with genuine gratitude. "I will be there on Monday, without fail."

"Eh? Yes, yes. On Monday. Excellent. And if you see Freddie, tell him — tell him I have mislaid my — no, I have found them — tell him —" He waved a vague hand. "Good afternoon, my dear. Good afternoon."

Eve backed out, clutching her bag, and closed the door with the quiet reverence of one leaving a temple where strange rites have been performed. In the corridor she paused to breathe deeply. She had not been turned down. On the contrary, she had been engaged, or at least half-engaged, which for one who had spent the morning wondering how to pay for luncheon was a considerable advance. Only on reaching the street did it occur to her that Lord Emsworth had not asked about wages, hours, or qualifications, and that he appeared to believe she could recite poetry to a pig.

* * * * *

The afternoon was now well advanced, and Piccadilly was at its most cheerful. The drizzle had given way to a pale, apologetic sunshine, and the pavements were crowded with shoppers and strollers taking advantage of the clemency. Eve, her spirits restored by the interview's unexpectedly mild conclusion, turned into a tea-shop near Fortnum's for a cup of tea which economy had denied her at luncheon. The establishment was small, hot, and crowded, filled with the clatter of cups and the low hum of feminine conversation.

She had just settled herself at a table by the window and given her order — tea and bread-and-butter, with perhaps, as a celebration, a small cake — when a shadow fell across the cloth and a familiar voice, drawling and precise, said, "I beg your pardon, is this seat engaged?"

Eve looked up, and recognized with a start the tall young man with the monocle. He was without his hat, as before, and his grave, solemn countenance was as impassive as she remembered it beneath the Thorpe & Briscoe awning. In his hand, however, he now carried not one umbrella but no umbrella at all, which struck Eve as peculiar, though she could not at once say why.

"Oh —" she said.

Psmith, for it was he, bowed. He did not smile. His manner was that of a perfect stranger who is merely asking a civil question about a vacant chair.

"I am expecting a friend," he said, "but he appears to be delayed. If you would permit a fellow sufferer to share your table until he comes, I should be grateful."

Eve, who had been upon the point of exclaiming, "Why, you are the umbrella man!", checked herself. There was something in his demeanour which suggested, not discourtesy, but a deliberate and courteous abstraction, as if he had never seen her before in his life and had no intention of doing so now. It was disconcerting. For an instant she stared at him doubtfully, then, reflecting that after all a tea-shop table is public property and that the man had indeed behaved with extraordinary kindness that morning, she nodded.

"Of course — please do."

Psmith seated himself with courtly deliberation, placed his gloves upon the table, and ordered tea with lemon, no sugar. He then gazed out of the window at the traffic with the air of one who finds the London scene endlessly diverting.

Eve stirred her tea. The silence lengthened. A clock ticked somewhere behind the counter.

"It was kind of you —" Eve began at last, unable to endure the absurdity any longer, "this morning — in Dover Street — I —"

Psmith turned his monocle upon her with polite inquiry.

"I beg your pardon? Dover Street? Were you in Dover Street this morning? I was myself in Dover Street about eleven. A most agreeable thoroughfare. One can see the premises of Messrs. Thorpe and Briscoe to great advantage from the Drones Club opposite."

Eve flushed pink.

"I was sheltering from the rain under their awning," she said. "A gentleman — you — you lent me an umbrella."

Psmith raised his eyebrows. The expression of grave surprise which he assumed would have done credit to a diplomat confronted with unexpectedly good news.

"An umbrella?" he said. "Dear me. An umbrella? No, I fear you mistake me for some other fellow. Some more fortunate fellow, I should say, who had the privilege of assisting you. I am not conscious of having bestowed umbrellas upon anyone today. Though now that you mention it, I did observe a young lady sheltering under an awning. A very striking young lady, if I may say so. Wearing — if memory serves — a most admirable hat with a bird of Paradise feather."

Eve opened her mouth, then closed it. The man's face was so perfectly serious, his denial so bland and unembarrassed, that she felt suddenly foolish. Perhaps, after all, she was mistaken. Perhaps there were two tall young men with monocles who haunted the Drones Club. London was full of tall young men with monocles.

"I — I beg your pardon," she said. "I thought —"

"Not at all," said Psmith cordially. "An easy mistake. We monocle-wearers all look alike, I am told."

He sipped his tea, and thereafter discoursed for some minutes, with much fluency, upon the extraordinary humidity of the English summer and the difficulty of procuring decent toast in tea-shops. Eve listened, answered mechanically, and found herself, to her annoyance, strangely reluctant to let the subject of the umbrella drop, and yet unable to pursue it without appearing to accuse her companion of prevarication. When at last she rose to go, Psmith rose also, bowed, and resumed his contemplation of Piccadilly as if she had never existed.

Outside, Eve stood for a moment on the pavement, frowning. Then she shook her head, laughed at herself for being fanciful, and hurried toward the Tube station, where a train was about to bear her back to West Kensington and Phyllis.

She did not look back. Had she done so, she would have seen Psmith still seated at the window, watching her retreating hat with an expression of melancholy approval, as a connoisseur might watch a favourite picture being removed to another gallery.

* * * * *

Evening had settled upon Dover Street, filling the smoking-room of the Drones Club with a pleasant gloom. The lamps were lit, casting pools of yellow light upon arm-chairs and evening papers, and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke and the comfortable somnolence of young men who have dined well. Psmith was alone. Or, to be precise, he was alone except for the umbrella.

The umbrella lay across his knees. Having paid five pounds for it, Psmith felt that the least he could do was to keep it by him and cultivate its acquaintance. He polished the malacca handle absently with his sleeve and reflected that there are worse ways of spending an evening than in the company of a well-bred umbrella, even if one has been compelled to purchase it under what might be termed false pretences. His meditations were interrupted by the approach of the porter, who bore in his hand Eve's folded note, now somewhat crumpled from having been transferred from Walderwick's pocket, where Walderwick had thrust it unread in the agitation of counting his gains.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the porter. "Mr. Walderwick left this. Said it came with the umbrella this afternoon. A young lady brought it back. Thought you might like to see it, sir, seeing as you bought the umbrella."

Psmith took the paper, unfolded it, and read. His monocle gleamed.

"Ah," he said softly.

The porter lingered, as porters do when they have interesting information to impart and are not discouraged.

"Very nice young lady, sir. Miss Halliday, she said her name was. Miss Eve Halliday. A friend of Mr. Jackson's, I believe, sir. Mr. Mike Jackson was in here just now, asking if anyone had seen her."

Psmith looked up. For the first time that day his composure showed a crack, like ice in spring.

"Eve Halliday?" he said.

"Yes, sir. Miss Eve Halliday, of Wayland House way. Mr. Jackson said she is going to Blandings Castle to do some cataloguing for his lordship. Lord Emsworth, sir."

Psmith remained motionless for a moment, the note held delicately between finger and thumb. Then he folded it with care and placed it in his breast pocket, patting it gently as if to ensure it was comfortable.

"Eve Halliday," he repeated, as one might repeat the name of a favourite poem to savour its cadence. "I thank you, my worthy fellow. You have, as usual, proved yourself a mine of useful information."

The porter withdrew, satisfied. Psmith leaned back in his chair, the umbrella still across his knees, and gazed through the window at the darkened facade of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe opposite, where no young lady now sheltered, but where the awning still hung, damp and still, in the evening air.

I left the Herald with the check book stub still creasing my coat pocket and went down Broadway toward the First National Bank. It was not yet noon and the street was full of the kind of crowd that makes a mining town look busy whether there is work or not.

The First National Bank was a gray stone box with brass that had been polished lately. Inside it was cool and quiet after the street. A marble counter ran half the length of it and behind it half a dozen men worked under green shades. The air smelled of money and floor polish.

I asked the man at the information window where I could find out about a check. He sent me to a cage at the end of the counter where a thin man with spectacles and a bald head was writing in a big ledger. His name plate said MR. FLAX. That was my named employee.

"Mr. Flax?" I said.

He looked up. His eyes behind the spectacles were pale and tired.

"Can you tell me whether a check has been presented or certified?" I asked.

"Certainly. If it is drawn on us." He had a soft voice that went with the quiet of the bank.

I took out Donald Willsson's check book and turned it so he could see the stub. I did not show him the name on the cover.

"Five thousand dollars," I said. "Drawn yesterday afternoon, sometime between two and three o'clock, by Donald Willsson. I want to know if it has been cashed, presented, or certified."

He took the book in his careful hands and looked at the stub. Then he looked at me. He did not ask who I was.

"A large amount," he said. "One moment, please."

He went to a file and then to another ledger, running a finger down columns. He did that for a long while, moving his lips. Another man came and spoke to him in a low voice and he shook his head and went on looking. Presently he closed the ledger and came back to the window.

"No," he said. "No check of Mr. Willsson's for that amount has been presented for payment. None has been certified. The last check of his to clear was for eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents, day before yesterday, to the Personville Stationery Company. There is no record of a five-thousand-dollar check."

"You are sure?" I asked. "It might not have been brought here yet. It might have been taken to another bank."

"If certified it would have passed through us," he said. "If not certified, but deposited elsewhere, we would have no record until it cleared, that is true. But it has not been certified here. On that I can be positive."

"Could he have drawn it as cash? A check to cash?"

"The stub would still be marked cash if that were his custom, but it is marked nothing. And the check itself would tell us. But no such check has come in."

He handed the book back. His hands were dry and careful.

"Thank you," I said. "That is what I wanted to know."

"It is a matter for the police?" he asked, not prying, just making conversation.

"It may be," I said.

He nodded as if I had not said anything and went back to his ledger. I put the book away and went out into the sun again.

Outside I stood a minute on the steps. Five thousand dollars written out at a little before three, twenty minutes gone out of the office, and the check not certified and not presented. That left it floating somewhere. If Willsson had paid it to someone, that someone had not been in a hurry to bank it. If he had not paid it, it might still be on his body, or in his house, or in an alley on Hurricane Street. The police had not reported any such find. That meant something, though I did not know what.

I walked back toward the Great Western. The day had gone hot. The wind that comes down from the mines had stopped and the dust hung in the air.

The Great Western's lobby was dark after the street, with a few old men sitting around trying to keep cool. The clerk behind the desk lifted a hand when he saw me and said, "There's a lady waiting to see you."

I said, "Where?"

He nodded toward the settee against the far wall. Mrs. Willsson was there.

She had not changed much from the night before, except that in daylight her face looked thinner. She wore a white dress with a little blue in it and a white hat, and her blonde hair was tucked under it. Her shoes were white, not green, and I could not see her left slipper. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, looking at nothing. When she saw me she stood up.

I went over to her. Close up her eyes were red at the edges, as if she had not slept. Her accent was still there, a little thicker when she was nervous.

"You are the man from San Francisco," she said. It was not a question. "I must speak with you."

I said, "We can talk up in my room if you want. It's quieter there."

She said that would be suitable, and we went across the lobby and into the elevator. Nobody said anything on the way up. The boy who ran the elevator looked straight ahead.

My room was on the third floor, small and hot, with a window looking out on an air shaft. There were two chairs and the bed and a table with a telephone on it. I shut the door after we were in and pulled one of the chairs out for her. She sat down, not taking off her hat. I sat on the edge of the bed.

"You came to my house last night," she said. Her voice was low and even, the way people talk when they have rehearsed it. "You said you were a friend of my husband."

"I was sent for by him," I said. "My name is not Neill. I am an operative of the Continental Detective Agency, San Francisco branch. Your husband hired us."

She did not look surprised. She looked as if she had expected me to say that.

"I know," she said. "My husband told me a man was coming. He did not tell me it was a detective." She fiddled with the strap of her white handbag. "Why did he want a detective?"

"He did not write why. He asked for a man to be sent to do some work for him."

She looked at me a long time. Then she said, "Have you seen my father-in-law this morning?"

"Yes."

"What did he tell you?"

"He told me you killed your husband."

Her face did not change. Her hands tightened on the bag.

"And do you believe that?" she asked.

"I believe a woman and a man were seen bending over him after he was shot," I said. "I believe you left my presence between ten-twenty and eleven-five and came back with something on your shoe that looked like blood. Those are facts. What I believe is not important yet."

She opened the bag and took out a handkerchief, but she did not use it. She held it wadded in her hand.

"I did not kill my husband," she said. "I went out last night because I received a telephone call. A woman told me my husband was with another woman in a house on Hurricane Street. She said if I came there I would see. I told you he would not be home. That was what I meant. I thought he would be—otherwise engaged. I went to Hurricane Street in my car. I did not find the house. I drove around. The street was dark. I saw no one. I came home."

"Who was the woman on the phone?"

"I do not know. I had never heard her voice."

"What did the voice sound like?"

She hesitated. "Young. Perhaps American. She spoke quickly."

"And you went alone?"

"Yes. I did not wish anyone to know."

"Did your husband have another woman?"

"I thought so." She said it flatly. "There was a girl at his office. I thought there was something."

"Lewis? His secretary?"

"I do not know her name. A girl with brown hair."

"That would be Lewis," I said.

She shrugged a little.

"I went to look," she said. "I did not kill him. When I came back you were still there. If I had shot him I would have blood on my dress, on my hands, not only a spot that you thought you saw on my shoe."

"That could be," I said. "Where did you drive on Hurricane Street?"

"The eleven-hundred block. That is where they told me."

That was the block where he had been shot, at ten-forty, while she had been out from ten-twenty to eleven-five. The timing fit too well to be comfortable.

"Did you see your husband at all?" I asked.

"No. I told you I saw no one."

"Did you stop the car? Get out?"

"I stopped once. I got out and looked at the numbers on a house. Then I got in and drove home."

"You could have stepped in something."

"Yes."

We looked at each other. Her eyes were steady, but her mouth was tired. She was either telling the truth or she had learned her story well.

"Why did you come to me?" I asked.

"Because they will say I did it," she said. "My father-in-law will say it. The police will say it because he tells them to. I have no friends here. My husband sent for you. I thought perhaps you would be—fair."

"Maybe," I said. "Did your husband have five thousand dollars on him last night? Or a check for that amount?"

She frowned. "I do not know. He never spoke of money to me."

"He left his office at a little after three yesterday to go to the bank or somewhere with a blank check for five thousand. It has not been cashed. Do you know anything about it?"

"No." She said it quickly. Too quickly, maybe. "We kept our money separate. His father gave him an allowance from the papers."

"Did he have enemies besides the people his papers were attacking?"

"Everyone was his enemy here," she said bitterly. "This is Poisonville. My husband wanted to make it clean. That is why he is dead."

She stood up. I stood up too.

"Will you help me?" she asked.

"I am trying to find out who killed him," I said. "If you did not, that will help you."

She looked as if that was not enough, but she did not say more. She went to the door, opened it herself, and went out. I did not follow her. I heard her heels on the hall carpet going away.

I sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. The room was hot and smelled of tobacco and dust. Through the window I could hear the street cars on Broadway.

Before I had finished the cigarette there was a knock. I called come in and a boy from downstairs came in with a folded piece of paper on a tray.

"For you, sir," he said. He was maybe fifteen, with a thin face. He left before I could ask who sent him.

The paper was cheap tablet paper, folded once. Inside, written in pencil in a small neat hand, was:

"Don't try to be too smart in Poisonville. You don't know what you're stepping into. Go back to Frisco while you can. Your friend."

There was no signature, but at the bottom, drawn in the same pencil, was a tiny figure that was meant to be a whisper, or a wind—two curved lines like lips blowing. I had seen Max Thaler's nickname before. Quint had described him—pretty, dark, brown clothes—and the papers called him Whisper. This was his mark.

He had not come himself. The note had been sent by hand, maybe by the boy, maybe not. But the message was Thaler's. He had known where I was staying. He had known I was working the Willsson job. He wanted me to lay off or get out.

I turned the paper over. Nothing on the back. I folded it and put it in my pocket with the check book.

Thaler sending me a message without showing himself meant he was watching. It meant he thought I was worth warning, which meant he thought I might be getting close to something, or that he wanted me to think I was.

I picked up the telephone and called the long-distance operator. I gave her the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco and asked for the Old Man.

While I waited I sat and listened to the clicks on the line. The room was getting hotter as the afternoon went on.

When I got the Old Man his voice came thin and far away, but clear enough.

"Operative speaking from Personville," I said. "Willsson case."

He said, "Go ahead."

I gave him the wire I had already written out in my head, so it would be exact on the record. I read it slow so the operator could take it.

The text was this:

OLD MAN CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO STOP CLIENT DONALD WILLSSON FOUND SHOT DEAD ELEVEN HUNDRED HURRICANE STREET TEN FORTY PM YESTERDAY STOP SIX SHOTS FIRED FROM ALLEY THIRTY TWO CALIBRE TWO MISSED STOP MAN AND WOMAN SEEN BENDING OVER BODY FLED STOP CLIENT HAD DRAWN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK AFTERNOON BEFORE DEATH NOT PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED FIRST NATIONAL BANK PER MR FLAX STOP CLIENTS WIFE HAD MOTIVE OPPORTUNITY BUT DENIES GUILT STOP FATHER ELIHU WILLSSON UNCOOPERATIVE BUT CONFIRMS CLIENTS REFORM CAMPAIGN AGAINST PEET FINN LEW YARD MAX THALER WHISPER AND CHIEF NOONAN STOP WHISPER SENT WARNING MESSAGE TODAY STOP REQUEST AUTHORITY CONTINUE INVESTIGATION POISONVILLE STOP SIGNED OP PERSONVILLE

The Old Man repeated it back through the operator. Then he said, "Authority granted. Stay and clean it up. Report daily."

I said I would and hung up.

The wire was sent. That was done. But the check was still not accounted for. Five thousand dollars that had left the Herald office in Willsson's pocket at three o'clock and had not come to the bank by noon today, and was not on his body when they found him, and was not in his desk where I had looked. Somewhere between the bank he never reached and the alley across from where he died, it had gone. And the man and the woman bending over him in the dark had gone with it, or after it.

Night came on while I sat there. The light in the air shaft went gray and then black. Down on Broadway the signs came on. The room was dark except for the little light over the telephone. I did not turn on the overhead. I sat alone in my hotel room, smoking, with the folded warning in my pocket and the check book stub creasing against it, and the question of where the check went still open.