The Chapters

When Mary waked the train was moving slowly and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her by the shoulder.

"We're here," she said. "Wake up."

Mary sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes with her black-gloved hands. She had slept a long time and her neck was stiff and her thin legs were cramped. The rain had left off and the carriage window was no longer streaming, but the light was low and grey and everything outside looked dim. The train drew in beside a small platform with a lamp burning upon it, though it was not yet quite night, and there was no one to be seen except one porter and a lady and gentleman who were getting out at the other end.

Mrs. Medlock gathered her baskets with a bustling, important air.

"Now then," she said, "bestir yourself. We get out here."

Mary stood up, feeling cross and strange because she had been waked suddenly. Her black crêpe hat was tipped over one ear and her coat was creased. She followed Mrs. Medlock on to the platform with her head in the air, as she had followed her through the London station, because she did not wish it to be supposed that she belonged to her.

There was a tall gentleman standing a little apart under the lamp. He stood very still with his hands in the pockets of his great overcoat, and he was looking at the train without seeming to see it. When Mrs. Medlock saw him she gave a start and turned quite red under her highly coloured cheeks.

"Mr. Craven!" she exclaimed. "Sir!"

Mary looked at him at once with all her might. This then was her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, of Misselthwaite Manor. She had thought so much about the hunchback that she expected to see something dreadful, but he was not dreadful to look at except that his face was dark and forbidding and his black brows were drawn together. He was tall and thin and he held himself upright, though one shoulder stood higher than the other. His clothes were dark and his overcoat hung about him as if it were too large. He did not take his hands from his pockets.

"Is that the child?" he said, glancing at Mary without interest.

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Medlock, and she gave Mary a little push forward. "Mistress Mary Lennox. She has given no trouble on the journey, sir."

He looked at her for a moment longer, up and down, as if she had been a parcel. Mary stared back at him stonily because she did not know what else to do. She thought his eyes looked tired and angry.

"Get in," he said.

That was all. He turned and walked toward the end of the platform where a closed carriage was waiting with a pair of horses and a driver upon the box. He did not offer his hand and he did not speak again. Mrs. Medlock followed him hurriedly, and Mary followed Mrs. Medlock, trying to keep her black dress from touching the damp stones.

The porter put the small trunk up behind. Mr. Craven got into the carriage first and seated himself in the corner with his back to the horses. Mrs. Medlock took the seat opposite to him and made Mary sit beside herself. The door was shut with a sharp sound and the horses started forward at once.

No one spoke. Mary thought it very strange and unpleasant to sit so close to a man who was her own relation and who said nothing at all to her. She had not expected that he would kiss her or shake hands with her, for she had never been kissed or shaken hands with in her life, but she had expected that he would at least ask her if she had had a good voyage. He did not. He sat with his arms folded and looked out of the window at the greyness which grew darker every minute. His mouth was shut in a straight line and his brows were still drawn together. After a little while Mrs. Medlock seemed afraid to speak too.

The carriage drove on and on through a road which seemed to have no end. Mary looked out of her window because there was nothing else to do. At first there were hedges and trees and now and then a cottage with a light in it, but presently there were no more hedges and no more cottages. There was nothing but a great, dark, open waste which went on and on under the sky. The wind came sweeping over it with a low rushing sound and made the grasses bend all one way. There was not a house to be seen and not a tree except here and there a stunted one twisted by the wind.

"What is this place?" Mary asked at last, because the silence was too heavy. She spoke to Mrs. Medlock in a low, unwilling voice, as if she did not wish Mr. Craven to hear.

"That's th' moor," said Mrs. Medlock briefly, and she glanced at Mr. Craven as if she feared she had said too much.

Mary said no more. She looked out at the moor. It was so wide and dark and empty that she felt as if she were being driven away from the world. She had never seen such a place. In India the land had been hot and bright and crowded with people and things growing, and she had never felt lonely because there had always been servants near. Here there was no one but themselves and the wind.

After they had driven for what seemed a very long time the horses suddenly stopped with a jerk which threw Mary forward in her seat. The driver called out something from the box and got down. Mr. Craven lifted his head.

"What's amiss?" he said. It was the second time he had spoken.

Mrs. Medlock put down the window and leaned out into the dark.

"There's sheep i' th' road," the driver answered from below.

Sure enough there was a soft pattering and bleating in front of the horses. A little flock of sheep had strayed across the narrow road and stood huddled together, stupid with fright at the lamps. The driver went to them, speaking low and trying to turn them aside.

The carriage was quite still and the wind came sharp against the windows. Mary could hear the bleating more plainly now and the sound of the man's boots upon the hard ground. The air which came in at the open window smelt cold and fresh and unlike any air she had ever breathed. It made her feel suddenly restless. Before Mrs. Medlock could stop her she had pushed open the door upon her own side and slipped down the step on to the road.

"Hey! Miss! Come back!" Mrs. Medlock cried.

"I will only stand a minute," said Mary.

She stood upon the moor in the dark. Her feet touched short, springy turf and her nostrils were filled with the strange, damp smell of it. All round her was darkness stretching without end, and above her the wind passed with a rushing that was like the sea. For a minute she forgot to be disagreeable. She felt small and alone and curious. Something moved near her foot and she started, but it was only a tuft of heather shaking. The sheep bleated again and one ran past her with a hurried rush, its wool brushing her black dress.

"Get in with you," said Mrs. Medlock sharply, leaning from the doorway and catching at her arm. "You'll catch your death o' cold. Get in."

Mary got in obediently because the wind cut through her thin coat and made her shiver. The driver got up again upon the box and touched the horses, and they went on once more over the moor. Mr. Craven had not moved and had not looked out. He sat with his arms folded exactly as before, as if sheep in the road and little girls upon the moor were nothing to him.

It was quite dark when at last the carriage turned in between two tall stone pillars with lamps upon them and rolled up a long, dark drive. Mary could see nothing but the flash of bare branches overhead and then, suddenly, a great house rose before them with many windows shining dimly through the trees. It looked long and low and gloomy, with towers at the corners, and its stone front seemed to frown down upon the drive.

The carriage stopped before a wide door under a portico, and a manservant opened it and came out to the step with a lamp in his hand. Mr. Craven got out without haste and without glancing at Mary.

"Take the child to her rooms, Medlock," he said. "See that she has supper. I am going to my own." And he walked past the servant into the house and disappeared down a long passage without another word.

Mrs. Medlock gave a sort of sniff as she followed Mary in.

"That's his way," she said. "You'll see him now and then, perhaps, and you'll not see him again for weeks. He's not going to trouble himself about you."

Mary said nothing. She was looking about her at the hall. It was a great, dim place with a flagged floor and portraits hanging upon the walls, so dark with age that she could scarcely see their faces. A fire of logs burned in a wide fireplace, but it did not make the place cheerful. A great stuffed stag's head stared down at her and made her feel shy. Everything was old and hard and still.

Mrs. Medlock led her up a broad staircase and down a long corridor where the candles in the sconces flickered in the draught. Their footsteps echoed upon the stone. At the end of the corridor Mrs. Medlock opened a door and pushed Mary into a large bedroom she had never seen the like of. It had a high, canopied bed with heavy curtains, and tall, carved furniture, and a fire burning in the grate which crackled cheerfully. Beyond it a small room was lighted, where a table was laid for supper.

"You'll bide here," said Mrs. Medlock. "These two rooms is yours. Don't go fiddling out of 'em without knowing what you're about. Mr. Craven won't have folks wandering. Your supper'll be brought to you presently. I must go and see to things."

She went away, rustling in her purple dress, and Mary was left alone. She stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked about her. She did not like it. It was too large and too silent. The bed was so high that she wondered how she should climb into it. The pictures upon the walls were dark and strange. The fire made shadows start upon the ceiling. She went to the window and drew back the heavy curtain, but there was nothing to see except blackness with the wind driving past.

Presently there was a knock at the door and it opened to admit an old manservant carrying a tray. He was a lean old man with a wrinkled face and thin grey hair, and he wore a dark livery which was too big for him. He set the tray down upon the table in the inner room and stood back, rubbing his hands.

"Here's thy supper, Miss," he said.

Mary went in and looked at the tray. There was soup and roast meat and bread and milk and cake. She was hungry, for she had eaten nothing since morning, but the old man's speech had been so broad and strange that she had scarcely understood a word of it.

"I beg your pardon?" she said stiffly, drawing herself up.

He repeated what he had said, smiling and nodding toward the chair, and this time he spoke more slowly, but his words still sounded thick and queer in her ears.

"I cannot understand what you say," Mary said plainly. "You speak so that I do not know what you mean."

He chuckled a little to himself, but not unkindly.

"Ay, it's Yorkshire," he said. "Tha'll learn it i' time, happen. Sit thee down an' eat thy meat."

Mary understood "sit" and "eat" and she sat down because she wished to show him that she was not afraid of plain servants. He stood a moment watching her as she took up her spoon, and then he touched the bread and pointed to the milk as if to tell her they were for her, and went to mend the fire. He moved slowly and heavily, as if his joints were stiff, but he laid the logs deftly and swept the hearth.

When he had done he stood by the door and looked at her again.

"Good neet to thee, Miss," he said.

Mary bent her head and did not answer, because she did not know what to say to such talk. He shut the door quietly behind him and his footsteps died away down the corridor.

Mary ate her supper alone. No one came to sit with her and no one talked to her. The meat was hot and good and the fire burned bright, but the rooms were so large and still that she was glad when she had finished and could go back into the bedroom where the blaze was. She sat down upon the hearthrug and warmed her hands because they were cold. Her black dress looked blacker than ever against the red light.

While she sat there Mrs. Medlock came back, without her bonnet and mantle, and told her that it was time for bed. She helped her awkwardly out of her travelling clothes and into a white nightgown which had been laid out upon the bed, and she brushed her limp hair with a hard brush which made Mary scowl.

As she stood by the bed, pulling the curtains back, Mary heard it. It was a sound somewhere far off inside the house. It came and went upon the wind that rushed through the passages, a long, low, wandering sound, rising and falling, as if it were carried from a great distance. She lifted her head and listened.

"What is that?" she said.

Mrs. Medlock went on smoothing the pillow and did not look at her.

"What is what?" she said.

"That sound," said Mary. "That sound I hear. It comes again."

Mrs. Medlock listened a moment herself, with her head on one side, and then she shook out the counterpane with a snap.

"It's th' wind," she said. "Th' wind blowing round th' house an' down th' chimneys an' across th' moor. There's nowt else to hear on a night like this."

Mary listened again. The sound rose once more and died away. It did not seem to her like wind. Wind rushed and whistled, but this had a different note, strange and restless, as if it came from within walls.

"It does not sound like wind," she said obstinately.

"It's th' wind, I tell you," said Mrs. Medlock shortly. "Get into bed and go to sleep and you'll hear no more."

Mary climbed up into the high bed because there was nothing else to do. The sheets were cold and smelt of lavender. Mrs. Medlock drew the heavy curtains half round her, set the candle upon the table by the bed, and told her to blow it out when she was ready to sleep. Then she went away and shut the door, and Mary could hear her firm footsteps going down the long corridor until they were lost in the stillness.

Mary lay still for a little while, watching the firelight flicker upon the dark curtains. Then she stretched out her hand and blew out the candle, and the room was left in darkness except for the dying red of the fire. The house was so silent that she could hear the cinders settle in the grate. Outside, the wind rushed across the waste with the same low rushing she had heard upon the moor.

Then, through the silence and the wind together, the sound came again. It was faint and far away, but it was there, rising and falling as before, and it was not the rush of the night air. Mary sat up in bed and held her breath to listen. Her heart beat quickly because she was alone in a strange house with a hundred shut rooms, and no one had told her the truth about anything since she came.

Mrs. Medlock said it was the wind. Mary pressed her thin hands together under the bedclothes and stared into the dark. It was not the wind. She knew it was not. And lying there awake, with the empty house all about her, she made up her mind that she would find out for herself what the sound was.

I left the Herald with nothing in my pockets but the stub of that five-thousand-dollar check and the Lewis girl's story about a telephone call from a woman.

It was a little after two when I got to the First National Bank. It was a squat stone building with brass that needed polishing, and inside it smelled of ink and damp wool. A rail ran across the lobby and behind it four cages. I asked for the man who would know about a depositor's checks, and after some talk back and forth a fellow in eye-shades came out and said Mr. Farr would see me.

Farr's office was glassed off at the rear, with his name on the door in gold leaf, assistant cashier under it. He was a middle-aged man with a yellow face and patient hands, the kind that counts money without liking it. He did not ask me to sit down.

I told him I was making inquiries for the Willsson family and that I wanted to know about a check drawn the day before by Donald Willsson for five thousand dollars.

"What about it?" he said.

"Has it been presented? Has it been certified?"

He shook his head at once, as if he had been expecting something worse.

"No," he said. "Nothing of Mr. Donald Willsson's for that amount has come in."

"You are sure?" I asked. "Drawn yesterday afternoon, around three o'clock. Five thousand even."

"I am sure, Mr.--" He waited.

"Neill," I said. "Henry Neill."

"Mr. Neill," he said, "a five-thousand-dollar item would not go through this bank without my seeing it. No such check has been presented for payment, and none has been certified. I can tell you that without looking at the books. If you want it in form I will look."

I said I wanted it in form. He rang a bell and had a ledger brought in, and ran a finger down a page, and showed me with his finger, not letting me hold the book, that Donald Willsson's balance was something over seven thousand and that no charge of five thousand had been made against it in better than a month.

"You keep his cancelled checks?" I asked.

"When they come in."

"Any large ones lately?"

Farr looked at me over his shades. "What is your interest in this, Mr. Neill?"

"Mr. Elihu Willsson's interest," I said. "His son is dead. Somebody ought to know where his money went the day he died."

That loosened him a little and tightened him a little, both at once. This was Elihu Willsson's bank as much as it was anybody's bank in Poisonville, and Farr knew it. He wanted to be helpful to the family and he did not want to be caught being helpful.

He said, carefully, "Mr. Donald Willsson drew no large checks through us recently except his regular monthly household check. His account has been quiet."

"Could he have had another account? Another bank?"

"Not in Personville," Farr said. "There is the Miners' and Merchants', but the family does not do business there."

"Could he have drawn cash? Five thousand in cash?"

"Not here. Not yesterday. I would have known."

I thanked him and left him polishing his shades with his handkerchief and wishing I had never come in. Outside it was starting to rain a thin cold rain that made Broadway shine like black glass.

At the Great Western I shook the water off my hat and went to the desk for my key. With it the clerk passed me a folded look of surprise.

"A lady to see you," he said, nodding toward the lobby. "She's waiting."

It was young Mrs. Willsson. She was sitting in one of the leather chairs with her hands in a gray fur muff and her feet tucked back under the chair. She wore a dark blue coat with a fur collar and a small blue hat pulled low. She looked smaller than she had looked the night before in her own house, and tired. When she saw me she stood up at once.

She said, "You are the man from San Francisco."

"Yes," I said. "I didn't expect you here."

"I came without being asked," she said. Her accent was French, plain enough when she was nervous. "I must talk to you."

I took her up to my room because the lobby was full of travelling salesmen playing cards and trying to look as if they were not listening. She walked ahead of me down the hall and into the room without hesitation, and stood in the middle of the floor while I shut the door.

She said, "My father-in-law tells me you are a detective."

"Stanley tell you that?" I asked.

"No. Elihu himself. He telephoned. He is in a rage. He says you accused me of killing my husband."

"I told him what I saw," I said. "You got a call at twenty past ten, went out in the Buick, and came back at five past eleven with something on your slipper that could have been blood. Your husband was shot at ten-forty in Hurricane Street."

"He thinks I did it," she said. "You think I did it."

"I think somebody did it," I said. "Sit down."

She did not sit down. She said, "I did not kill Donald. I swear it."

"Then where were you between ten-twenty and eleven-five?"

"Driving," she said quickly. Too quickly. "I was driving. I got a message to meet Donald. When I got there he was not there. I waited and then I came home."

"Where did you go to meet him?"

She shook her head. Her mouth was a thin line.

"I will not tell you that," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because it would do no good. Because you would not believe me. Because it is private."

"That is a good way to get yourself hung," I told her. "Your husband is dead in the street and you were out in a car at the time with blood on your shoe, and you won't say where you went. Do you think Elihu will let that stand?"

Her face went white the way it had gone white the night before. She put a hand out and steadied herself on the back of the chair.

"I went to meet a woman," she said at last. "About Donald. She telephoned me. She said Donald was with her and that if I came at once I would find them. It was a lie. There was no one. I waited in the rain and then I drove home."

"What woman?"

"I do not know her name. She did not give it. I have never heard her voice before."

"Where was the meeting to be?"

"In Hurricane Street," she said unwillingly. "Near the eleven-hundred block."

That stopped me for a minute. It fitted too neatly and not neatly enough.

"You went to Hurricane Street at ten-twenty, your husband is shot there at ten-forty, and you saw nothing and heard nothing?"

"I heard shots," she said. "When I was coming back to my car. Distant. I thought nothing of them. There are often shots in that part of the city. And it was dark. And raining."

"And the blood on your slipper?"

She looked down at her feet as if surprised to find shoes on them. She was wearing brown pumps now.

"I stepped in something in the gutter," she said. "It may have been blood. There is filth in those streets. How should I know?"

"Did you see your husband at all?"

"No." She lifted her head. "I tell you I did not see him. I did not see anyone bending over anyone. I came home and told you he would not be home because I was ashamed to tell you I had been chasing after him on a fool's errand from a woman who would not give her name."

"Why did you go at all, if you didn't believe it?"

"Because I am jealous," she said simply. "Elihu will have told you that. It is true. Donald was good and kind, but he had secrets. Since we came here he was different. He did not trust me. He thought I told his father things. And so I thought--" She broke off. "A wife is a fool."

I let that sit. The rain was hitting the window now in earnest.

"Did Donald have enemies you knew about?" I asked.

"Every one," she said bitterly. "The papers made enemies of every one. Max Thaler came to our house this morning. You saw him. He came to offer his sympathy. Sympathy!" Her hands tightened on the muff. "And the police do nothing. And Elihu screams that I am a murderess."

"Thaler knew Donald?"

"Donald was going to print things about him. Lies, perhaps. Truth, perhaps. Who knows in Personville? Donald believed he was cleaning the city. He was a child about such things."

"Did Donald carry large sums? Did he talk about paying money? Five thousand dollars?"

She stared. "Five thousand? No. Why should he? We are not poor, but five thousand is much. He gave me the household money on the first. There was nothing else."

"Did he have a safe box? A private drawer?"

"He kept his papers at the Herald. At home, nothing. Ask his secretary, that Lewis girl who spies for her father."

She said that with venom, and then caught herself, and put her hand to her mouth.

"I should not have come," she said. "You will tell Elihu what I say and he will use it against me."

"I'll tell him what helps find who killed your husband," I said. "That may or may not help you."

She went to the door then. With her hand on the knob she turned.

"If you find that woman who telephoned me," she said, "you will find who killed him. Not I."

Then she was gone, leaving a faint smell of perfume and wet fur in the room.

I washed my hands and face and went down to get a sandwich and coffee I didn't want. When I came back the clerk stopped me again.

"Another message for you, Mr. Neill. A boy brought it. No answer back."

It was a plain envelope with my name printed on it in pencil in block letters. Inside on a sheet of cheap lined paper was more of the same printing:

STAY OUT OF HURRICANE STREET. MIND YOUR FRISCO BUSINESS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

There was no signature, but I didn't need one. The boy who brought it, the clerk said, was a kid off the street paid a quarter to deliver it, and the man who paid him was a thin man in brown who talked husky and did not show his face plain. The clerk thought he waited across the street in a Stutz car while the boy came in.

Whisper without showing himself. That was his style according to Quint, and it was good enough style for me for the present. I put the note in my pocket and went upstairs.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while listening to the rain and thinking about checks that were written and never cashed and women who drove to Hurricane Street and heard nothing. Then I took out my book and wrote out a wire to San Francisco. I had been hired to come here by a dead man, accused by a sick old man of letting his daughter-in-law run loose, warned off by a gambler who whispered, and pumped dry by everybody at the Herald. It was time the Old Man knew it.

I carried it down to the Western Union office on the corner myself because I didn't want it read off a hotel blotter. The girl counted the words and gave me change. I stood and watched her click it out.

This is what I sent:

OLD MAN CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA STOP CLIENT DONALD WILLSSON SHOT DEAD LAST NIGHT TEN FORTY HURRICANE STREET STOP SIX SHOTS THIRTY TWO CALIBRE FROM ALLEY STOP SAW NO WITNESSES STOP WIDOW OUT DRIVING DURING SHOOTING ADMITS VICINITY DENIES KNOWLEDGE STOP ELIHU WILLSSON ACCUSES WIDOW STOP NO EVIDENCE YET STOP THALER INTERESTED WARNED ME OFF BY NOTE STOP WILLSSON DREW FIVE THOUSAND CHECK YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AFTER FEMALE PHONE CALL CHECK NOT PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED FIRST NATIONAL STOP STUB BLANK STOP PURPOSE UNKNOWN STOP POLICE INACTIVE STOP REQUEST AUTHORITY REMAIN INVESTIGATE STOP REPORT FOLLOWS STOP NEILL GREAT WESTERN HOTEL PERSONVILLE.

It was full night when I got back to the room, and the rain was still coming down. I locked the door, put the chair against it from habit, hung up my wet coat, and sat in my shirtsleeves by the window with a cigar that wouldn't draw.

The wire was sent. The Old Man would read it in the morning over his toast and know as much as I knew. Which was nothing that held together.

Donald Willsson had written a check for five thousand dollars at a little before three, had gone out for twenty minutes, had come back, had taken a woman's call to be somewhere at ten, had kept a date with me at his house at ten that he never meant to keep, and had got himself killed at ten-forty in a dark street.

Farr at the bank swore that check had never come back, either to be paid or to be made safe. The widow swore she knew nothing of five thousand dollars. The Lewis girl knew nothing beyond the stub. And somewhere in Poisonville there was a slip of paper worth five thousand dollars to somebody, that nobody would admit having seen, and that had not been near a bank.

I sat there alone with the rain on the glass and the warning note in my pocket, and I could not get past that one plain fact. Where the hell had the check gone?

But to have done with these prologues of security, I must come now to the night itself on which the first of those missiles fell to earth, and to the strange quiet morning that followed it.

It was, I think, four nights after that walk with my wife of which I have just spoken. The talk of volcanoes upon Mars had already grown stale in the papers, and Markham's photograph was forgotten for a newer sensation of a music-hall divorce. I had been working late over my papers upon moral progress, for the air of the summer evening had made me restless within doors, and about half-past eleven I had put my lamp out and stepped into the garden behind our house at Ottershaw to cool my head before sleeping. My wife had already gone up. The night was exceedingly clear and still, though the heat of the day had not wholly passed out of the ground, and the stars shone with that hard brilliance that comes after fine hot weather.

Mars was then high towards the south-west, a steady ember of orange light among the lesser stars, and as I looked at it idly, thinking of Ogilvy's million to one and of Lavelle's jet of gas, there came a sudden streak of greenish light across the sky. It moved swiftly and silently, brightening as it moved, and left behind it a train of pale phosphorescence that lingered for a second or two after its head was gone. It fell, as I judged, towards the east and south, over towards Chertsey and the Thames, and vanished below the dark line of the pines that fringed our garden.

I stood staring after it. A falling star at that season was no very uncommon thing, and in any other summer I should have thought no more of it than to wish, as country folk do, upon its flight. But coming as it did upon the heels of those midnight flarings upon Mars, and of all our talk at the observatory, it startled me with a queer uneasiness that I could not at the time explain. I had a fancy — it seems absurd enough now to set down — that the light had not fallen down out of the heavens at random, but had come with intention, had aimed itself, as it were, at this earth. I listened for some distant thud or explosion, but heard nothing save the chirring of the crickets in the grass and the faint, far-off rumble of the last train from Weybridge drawing into Chertsey.

I went within at last, and told my wife, who was leaning from the bedroom window to see what kept me, that I had seen a meteor fall towards Chertsey. She laughed at my gravity, and bade me come to bed and not trouble over Ogilvy's volcanoes. And presently I slept.

I awoke soon after sunrise with the same odd expectation upon me, and, finding sleep would not return, dressed hastily and went out before breakfast to learn if anything had been heard of a fallen stone. The morning was brilliantly fine, with a low white mist hanging over the meadows towards the Bourne, and promise of great heat at noon. As I came by the lane towards Ottershaw park a labourer going to his work told me that about midnight a great flare had been seen in the sky over the common that lies between Ottershaw and Chertsey, and that a cottager had heard a crash like distant thunder. This set my curiosity aflame, and without waiting for breakfast I struck across the fields, bicycle in hand, for I meant to ride out after eating, towards the place indicated.

I found Ogilvy already astir. He had been up half the night with his telescope, he said, for there had been another outburst upon Mars, fainter than the former ones, and at half-past one, just as he was locking up the observatory, he too had seen that greenish flash, much brighter from his roof, falling to the north-eastward. He had thought little of it at the time — "shooting stars are thick in August," he said — but in the morning a farm hand had come up with a tale of a fallen meteor on the common, and he was going down to see. I left my machine with him and walked beside him, our boots wet with dew, talking as we went of meteors and of the improbability of anything reaching the ground unburnt.

It was perhaps half a mile beyond the sand-pits, where the common dips to a shallow, reedy hollow that in winter is a pond and in summer is for the most part a black mud flat with a central pool, that we came upon the thing. I remember pushing through a fringe of willows and stepping upon trampled rushes, and then stopping short at the sight before us.

Half sunk in the soft ooze at the margin of the pool, tilted over at a strange angle, lay a huge, rounded mass, some thirty yards perhaps in diameter, though fully a third of it was hidden in the water and the mud. The morning sun caught its upper curve, which was of a dull, scaly brown, streaked and mottled as with cinders, and from its surface, and more particularly from the dark line where the metal met the water, thin white wisps of steam curled and drifted upward into the still air. The water about it hissed faintly and was filmed with an oily scum, and the mud for many yards around was baked and cracked, as if by fierce heat, and strewn with charred tufts of grass and blackened willow twigs. A scorched smell hung over the place, acrid and sulphurous, unlike any smell I knew.

For a moment neither of us spoke. Then Ogilvy gave a little involuntary cry.

"A meteorite!" he said. "A very fine meteorite! The biggest in the world, I should think."

I did not answer at once, for I was possessed by the strangeness of its shape. It was no irregular lump of stone such as falls from heaven in the common way, but seemed almost perfectly cylindrical from the portion that showed above the mud, and its upper end, which rose several feet clear of the water, was not jagged but oddly smooth and rounded, like the head of a great shell. The scales upon it, which Ogilvy took for the usual thumb-marks of a siderite, seemed to me too regular, and ran in a sort of spiral about its body.

"It came from Mars," I said at last. "It is one of Lavelle's shots. You saw the flash yourself."

Ogilvy turned upon me almost sharply.

"Nonsense, my dear fellow," he said. "You let your imagination run with those gas jets. This is a stone from interplanetary space, thrown off, no doubt, from some shattered planet, that has chanced to strike the earth. The green flash you saw is characteristic of meteoric iron. And see — steam from the heated surface. Perfectly ordinary. It will cool in a day or two, and then the Museum men will be down for it."

"But a cylinder?" I said. "Did you ever hear of a cylindrical meteorite? And the size of it! It must have weighed tons before the air had done with it. How came it to fall so softly as to bury itself in mud and not shatter itself to fragments or dig a crater a hundred feet deep?"

He laughed, a little impatiently, I thought, for he loved to be the explainer, and to be doubted vexed him.

"You forget the retarding action of the atmosphere," he said. "And as for shape, the heating and ablation in passage will account for much rounding. Besides, half of it is under water. You see only what the mud leaves uncovered. Wait till it cools and we can measure it. I tell you it is an ordinary chondrite, very likely with occluded gases. That accounts for the hissing."

We argued thus beside the steaming mass for some minutes, he growing the more positive as I pressed him, I the more unconvinced as he explained. It is curious how firm a hold the commonplace had upon even so acute a mind as Ogilvy's. Here, after ten nights of firing from a distant planet, after a missile seen in flight across forty millions of miles of void, was this vast artificial-seeming thing fallen within two miles of his telescope, and yet he would have it to be a mere stone, because stones had fallen before and cylinders from Mars had not. I reminded him of Schiaparelli's markings and of the snow-caps melting and flooding the Martian temperate zones, and of the Tasmanians and the bison, and of all we had said of the pressure of necessity brightening intellects upon that cooling world.

"Even if they fired shots at us," he said, "how should they contrive to throw them across space so as to fall upon one particular spot upon this moving earth? The marksmanship is impossible. No — it is a coincidence, and a fortunate one for science."

While we disputed there came up two or three farm lads and a man with a spade from the Chertsey road, attracted by the tale already spreading, and stood at a respectful distance staring at the steaming monster and listening to our talk. Presently Ogilvy, to make an end of argument, picked up a small pebble and tossed it towards the mass. It struck the brown crust with a sharp metallic clink and rebounded, and I noticed that where it had struck a little patch of paler colour showed.

"You see?" he said. "Stone and iron. Ordinary enough."

I went home to breakfast then in a state of profound excitement, full of my discovery and of my difference with Ogilvy, and told my wife the whole story at the table, mimicking, perhaps unkindly, his positiveness about his "ordinary chondrite." She, who had laughed overnight at my meteor, was now eager to see the wonder for herself, for no such stone, she said, had ever fallen in Surrey in her lifetime, and she must needs come back with me at once before the Museum men carried it away.

About nine o'clock, therefore, we set out together across the dewy fields, she with a little straw hat against the sun, which was already hot, I carrying my bicycle-fork for a walking-stick and expounding as I went my theory that we had here no meteorite at all but a shot from Mars. She listened half credulously and half in jest, and pointed out how green the country looked after the night, and how peaceful the cattle stood knee-deep in the far meadow, as if to rebuke my talk of war from heaven.

The scene at the pit was already much changed. The steam rose less thickly, though a shimmer of heat still danced above the brown dome, and the water hissed no longer so loudly. Perhaps a dozen people were gathered — labourers from the Chertsey brickfields, a boy with a dog, a woman with a baby in her arms, and one or two cyclists who had turned aside from the road. They stood in a ragged crescent upon the firmer turf, kept back partly by the mud and partly by a wholesome fear of the hot metal, and talked in low tones of where it had come from and what it was worth.

Ogilvy was still there, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat in his hand, superintending, as it were, the wonder, and explaining to all newcomers that it was a meteorite and quite cool enough presently to examine. To prove his confidence he had, I believe, already walked round it upon the baked mud as close as the heat would permit.

My wife clung to my arm as we pressed through to a better view, exclaiming at the size and at the strange scaly hide of it, now drying in the sun to a darker, more leaden hue. "But fancy its coming all the way from Mars!" she said. "Mr. Ogilvy will not have it, I know, but you must be right, for who ever heard of stones falling so large and so round?" Several of the bystanders laughed at this sally, and Ogilvy smiled with good-natured superiority.

"Madam," he said, "the heavens rain stones continually, though we seldom see them fall so handsomely into a pond to preserve them. In a day or two, when this crust has cooled, you shall see pittings and flow-lines such as every meteorite shows, and you will confess me right."

"And if it be hollow?" I said. "A shell, not a stone?"

"Then," he said, "I will eat my hat upon this spot."

At that there was general laughter, and a brickfield man, a burly fellow in a fustian jacket, emboldened by the talk and desirous to show his mates he feared nothing, pushed forward through the mud with a shout of "Let's have a touch on't, then!" and before any could stay him laid his bare hand flat upon the rounded shoulder of the mass.

There was a sharp cry and a smell of burnt flesh. He staggered back, nursing his palm against his breast, his face twisted with pain, while his companions crowded about him. The surface, which in the morning sun looked dull and cool enough at a distance, was still searing hot to the touch — heated, Ogilvy explained hastily, by its rush through the air, and retaining its heat the longer by reason of its bulk. The man had burnt himself severely across the fingers and the ball of the thumb, raising a white blister almost in an instant. My wife turned pale at his groans and at the sight, and I had to support her for a moment upon my arm. A murmur of awe went through the crowd, and all drew back a pace or two farther from the treacherous monster, which sat there steaming gently in its muddy bath as if insensible of the mischief it had done.

Ogilvy bound up the man's hand with his own handkerchief after dipping it in the pool — at a safe distance from the hot metal — and lectured him roundly for his folly, while I stood looking at that vast, silent bulk and thinking, with a sudden coldness in spite of the heat, of the forty millions of miles it had flown, and of the vast and cool intelligences that might have launched it sunward. The man's burn seemed to me an omen, a first small earnest of the hostility of this thing, though as yet I could give my fear no shape even to myself.

Through the rest of the morning the crowd increased steadily. A butcher's boy came galloping from Chertsey with the news, and returned with two companions; a gardener from Ottershaw brought his wife; even an invalid gentleman, carried in a bath-chair from the Woking road, took up a position upon the rise. All stood gazing at the half-drowned cylinder, hazarding guesses, disputing whether it was stone or iron, and whether it had fallen in the night or been there since the creation of the world. The midday sun beat down fiercely, the steam had now almost ceased, but the air above the metal still quivered, and none dared touch it again.

My wife stayed beside me long after I wished her gone, for the heat and the smell and the sight of the burnt man's bandaged hand distressed her, though curiosity held her. At last, towards noon, when the gathering showed no sign of thinning but rather of thickening with dinner-hour idlers from both villages, I persuaded her that she should go home and rest herself and leave me to watch with Ogilvy until the officials came.

"You will get a sunstroke standing here," I said, "and there is nothing more to see till it cools. Go home and eat, and I will come after with the news."

She consented unwillingly, bidding me promise not to touch the thing nor to venture into the mud, and looking back more than once as she crossed the common towards Ottershaw with the sun upon her straw hat. I watched her until the willows hid her from sight, and then turned again to the pit, where Ogilvy still held his ground among the newcomers, repeating his assurances that it was an ordinary meteorite and would be cool by evening. And there I stayed, with the crowd growing about me, waiting for what the cooling of that strange visitor might reveal.

The consultation so anxiously solicited by Sir Walter and his eldest daughter was fixed for the following morning, and in a manner the most flattering to their consequence, for both the advisers thus summoned were to attend in person at Kellynch Hall.

Lady Russell was the first to arrive. She came on foot from the Lodge, as was her frequent custom, with a countenance composed to that cheerful gravity which she believed best suited to counsel without alarm; and she was received in the morning-room with a cordiality which, had she been less accustomed to the manners of her old friend, might have deceived her into a belief that advice was already half accepted. Sir Walter handed her to the most commodious chair, Elizabeth inquired after her health with more than usual attention, and Anne, who had been sitting a little apart with her work, laid it down to welcome a presence which was at all times her chief comfort in that house.

Mr Shepherd followed within a quarter of an hour. He came from the market town in his gig, with papers in his pocket and complaisance in his looks, bowing low to Sir Walter, lower still to Miss Elliot, and with a respectful nod to Miss Anne, whom he had known since her childhood, and to whom he had never yet denied the reputation of good sense, though he had seldom had occasion to profit by it. His entrance completed the party which was to decide, if decision were possible, the future credit of Kellynch.

Sir Walter opened the business himself, with a dignity which forbade any supposition that distress could have anything ungentlemanlike in it. He spoke of the unpleasant hints which even a gentleman must sometimes receive, of the necessity, however deplorable, of appearing to yield to the times, and of his desire to be directed by such friends as Lady Russell and Mr Shepherd into any path which should preserve his establishment from vulgar observation. Elizabeth sat beside him, erect and handsome, prepared to assent to everything that should not touch the drawing-room, the carriage, or the journey to London; Anne listened with folded hands and an attention which neither father nor sister thought it necessary to remark.

Lady Russell then delivered her plan. She had given, she said, the most serious consideration to the state of affairs confided to her, and she laid her sentiments before Sir Walter with a diffidence which her long friendship alone could embolden her to overcome. She proposed a general and honest retrenchment. The London excursion of the ensuing spring might be given up without any real sacrifice of health or pleasure; a second footman might be dismissed without inconvenience; the table might be served with less profusion, yet with every appearance of elegance; the charities, though she named them with pain, might for a season be curtailed; and with these savings, steadily pursued through one whole year, she trusted that the most pressing demands would be satisfied, and the necessity of any further mortification spared. She spoke of economy as a duty which even rank could not set aside, and as a virtue which, when practised without meanness, rather adorned than diminished a great family.

Sir Walter heard her to the end with a politeness which did not conceal his disgust. He thanked her with a cold smile, and rejected the whole without hesitation or reserve. To relinquish London, he said, was to relinquish all that distinguished persons of condition from those who merely lived. A baronet without his season in town was a title without its lustre. To lessen his servants was to invite the pity of his neighbours. To contract his table was to confess a poverty which he would never confess, because he did not feel it. "What!" cried he, "am I to drive through Kellynch village with one footman behind me, that Farmer Mitchell may count my livery and calculate my debts? No, madam. Your scheme is well meant, but it is quite inadmissible. I will do nothing so unworthy of my name."

Mr Shepherd, thus encouraged to display his own superior knowledge of business, next produced his plan, in a tone of professional humility tempered by confidence. He had turned the matter over in his mind, he assured Sir Walter, with a wakeful night's reflection; and his advice was, that there should be no sudden alteration to excite remark, but a quiet, gradual reduction, such as the world need never perceive. He would advise the discharge of two female servants in the laundry, the sale of a pair of supernumerary horses, the discontinuance of presents and of new liveries for the present year, and an application of the rents of the detached farm at Winthrop to the discharge of interest, by which means, with patience and with the continuance of good seasons, matters might in time right themselves, without any abatement of that outward respectability on which so much depended. He spoke much of credit, of keeping up appearances, and of the folly of alarming creditors by too precipitate a reform.

Sir Walter rejected this plan as outright as he had the former. "Mr Shepherd," said he, "you speak as an attorney, not as a gentleman. Sell my horses! Dismiss my servants by halves, as if I were to dole out my poverty in pennyworths to be pitied by degrees! I had hoped for counsel that should preserve Kellynch from degradation, not lower it by inches. Your expedients are as objectionable as Lady Russell's, and I will have nothing to do with either."

There was a short and painful silence. Lady Russell looked mortified and surprised, Mr Shepherd turned over his papers as if to find comfort in figures, Elizabeth coloured with displeasure at hearing two such friends so dismissed. Anne, who had hitherto sat silent because her opinion had never been asked in that house since her mother's death, felt her heart beat with a force unusual to her modest habits, and found herself, almost before she knew her own intention, speaking aloud and in company.

"If I might be permitted to offer an opinion," she said in a low but steady voice, which caused every eye to turn towards her with astonishment, "I think that neither of these plans goes far enough to be of use. While we retrench only in trifles, the evil will remain. A stricter economy, honestly owned and resolutely pursued, would do more for our credit in a twelvemonth than any concealment. Let us give up the horses altogether, except for necessary use; let us dismiss more than a footman; let us close some rooms of the house through the winter; let us renounce London entirely till our debts are cleared; let us live within our income here at Kellynch, plainly and without pretence, rather than abroad with an appearance we cannot support. It would be painful at first, but it would be respectable always, and no one of real understanding would think the worse of us for it."

She stopped, trembling at her own boldness, and expecting the rebuke which, from her father, such presumption had never failed to receive. But to the surprise of everyone present, and to no one more than herself, Elizabeth spoke, and spoke in her favour.

"Anne is right," said Elizabeth, raising her head with the air of one who confers distinction by agreement. "I have been thinking so myself this half hour. These half measures will only make us ridiculous. If we are to retrench, let it be completely. I would rather retrench handsomely, and at once, than be supposed to be starving by piecemeal. Anne's plan has spirit in it. It is better to shut up a room than to be seen counting candles."

Lady Russell gazed at her young friend with mingled admiration and concern; Mr Shepherd stared as if a new authority had entered the room; Sir Walter looked from one daughter to the other as if he doubted which had offended him most. That Anne should have dared to advise, and that Elizabeth should have condescended to support her, was a double shock to his composure which he was some moments in recovering.

"Fine counsel indeed!" he at length exclaimed. "Shut up my house! Give up London! Live like a farmer's family, that Miss Anne may have the pleasure of preaching economy! Have I lived to hear my children recommend their father to obscurity? Your scheme, Anne, is wilder than all the rest, and I reject it outright, as I have rejected the others. Kellynch Hall shall be maintained as Kellynch Hall has ever been, while I am its master."

Mr Shepherd, perceiving that all plans of mere saving were thus rendered useless, and feeling that his consequence as a man of business required some further expedient, cleared his throat, glanced towards the window that looked upon the park, and, with an appearance of great deference, ventured upon a new idea, which he owned had that morning for the first time occurred to him.

"There is, Sir Walter," said he, "another mode which, in many families of distinction, has been found effectual, and which avoids all the unpleasantness of personal privation. If Kellynch Hall, during a term of years, were to be let to a tenant of respectability, whose rent should more than cover the interest of present incumbrances, your family might reside elsewhere at a smaller expense, and return, when affairs are retrieved, with renewed splendour to your proper station. I mention it only as a possibility, which in these times has been adopted without disgrace by —"

He could proceed no farther. Sir Walter started from his chair as if stung by an insult that cancelled all obligations of hospitality.

"Let Kellynch Hall!" he cried, with a vehemence which made Lady Russell turn pale. "Let my house! Bring a stranger into my place, to stare at my pictures, to trample my grounds, to be called the possessor of Kellynch, while I am lodged in some cottage to wait his pleasure! And you dare to speak to me of a tenant! I desire, Mr Shepherd, that the word tenant may never again be pronounced in my presence. It is a word which no gentleman ought to hear applied to his own seat. My daughters will bear witness that I have submitted to much in listening to these humiliating proposals, but there are bounds to endurance. I will hear no more."

Elizabeth drew herself up in full sympathy with this indignation; Mr Shepherd bowed himself into silence, shuffling his papers with mortified haste; Lady Russell cast a deprecating look at Anne, as if to lament the uselessness of reason when opposed to vanity. The consultation, so hopefully begun, was evidently at an end, with every plan proposed and every plan refused, and the debts of the family not one shilling the lighter for all the wisdom assembled to remove them.

At this moment of general embarrassment, the door opened, and a servant entered with a letter, just brought by the post from Uppercross. The direction was in a hurried female hand, and Elizabeth, to whom it was addressed, broke the seal with an air of relief at any interruption, glanced over the first lines, and tossed it withTemplate slight contempt towards Anne.

"It is only Mary," said she. "A budget of complaints, as usual. You may read it, Anne, for it concerns you more than me."

Anne took the letter and read aloud, at Lady Russell's request, what Mary, Mrs Charles Musgrove, had thought proper to communicate from Uppercross.

"Dear Elizabeth," the letter ran, "I write in the greatest hurry and low spirits to tell you how very ill I have been, and how much I stand in need of company. Charles is so little attentive to me, except when out shooting, that I have nobody to speak to half the day. Mrs Musgrove does not understand my complaints, and Henrietta and Louisa are always running out. I had a very bad night, with pains in my head and side, and am sure I caught cold at the last dinner at the Great House, where nobody thought of changing my place though the door was open. I wish Anne would come to me. Nobody nurses me half so well, and she always knows what is the matter. Papa, I hope, will spare her for a week or two, for I am really very poorly, and want her directly. Your affectionate sister, Mary Musgrove."

The letter, with its querulous demands and its accustomed disregard of every convenience but its writer's own, produced different effects upon its hearers. Sir Walter observed that Mary was always ailing and always tiresome; Elizabeth declared that she could not be spared from Kellynch upon every fancy of an hysterical sister; Lady Russell looked kindly at her god-daughter, as knowing how willingly she would undertake a duty, however thankless; Mr Shepherd folded his papers, glad of an excuse to withdraw from a conference which had so little flattered his talents.

Anne folded the letter again in silence, but her thoughts were already decided. If her presence was of so little consequence at home, where her counsel was despised and her convenience never consulted, it might at least be of comfort abroad, where it was entreated, even though in peevishness. To go to Mary at Uppercross would relieve Kellynch of one useless member during this season of ill-humour, would gratify Lady Russell's wish for her usefulness, and would, above all, give her own heart that occupation of kindness which it had so long been denied at home.

The advisers soon after took their leave, Lady Russell with grave disappointment, Mr Shepherd with professional civility, both sensible that nothing had been gained but the knowledge that nothing would be gained. Sir Walter retired to his dressing-room to recover his spirits by the contemplation of his own face in the glass; Elizabeth shut herself into her chamber to lament the cruelty of being nine-and-twenty with debts for companions.

Evening came on soft and still over the grounds of Kellynch, and found Anne alone at the window of the little parlour which had been her mother's favourite retreat. The house was quiet, the consultation of the morning seemed already like a troubled dream, yet the question which had occasioned it remained exactly as before, entirely unsettled, without retrenchment resolved, without expedient admitted, without a single bill the less for all the talking. She thought of her father's vanity, of her sister's pride, of Lady Russell's fruitless affection, and of Mary's importunate summons, and amidst them all she saw her own path clearly. She would go to Uppercross. The letter lay open upon the table beside her, and as the last light faded from the park, she resolved, with a calm and gentle firmness which no one in that house would have expected from only Anne, that on the morrow she would offer, and if possible depart, to nurse her sister.

I closed the medical book with hands that shook in spite of myself. The description was short, exact, and terrible. The tetanic convulsions, the arching of the body, the sudden end — every detail answered too closely to what I had seen in that dim bedroom an hour before for any doubt to remain in my own mind. Whatever Dr. Wilkins might say to comfort himself, Dr. Bauerstein had seen it at once, and I had seen him see it.

It was ten minutes past six. The house was very still after the confusion of the night. From the landing I could hear John's low voice in the dining-room, and the chink of a cup. No one had thought of breakfast, and yet the ordinary things of life were beginning again, as they will, even on such a morning. I washed my face and hands, changed my collar, and went down. John looked up as I entered. He was pale and heavy-eyed, and had plainly not slept again.

"I am going now, John," I said. "For Poirot, you know. The sooner he sees everything undisturbed, the better."

Lawrence, who was standing by the window staring out at the washed morning brightness, turned sharply.

"Need you drag the fellow into it at this hour? Let the poor woman rest. Wilkins may yet——"

"What may Wilkins do?" said John wearily. "Bauerstein was clear enough. There must be a post-mortem, and, that being so, Hastings is right. Let his friend come and look about before anything is touched."

Lawrence shrugged his shoulders and turned again to the window. I left them to it and let myself out by the side door. The air outside struck me, after the closeness of the house, cold and exquisitely clean. The storm that had threatened all the previous evening had broken in the night. The gravel was dark with rain and pitted with little pools, the leaves in the park dripped, and beyond the lodge gates the lane to Styles St. Mary glistened in the early sun. It was the fresh, innocent morning that makes a violent death seem most impossible.

I walked fast. The village is no great distance, and I had been told by Cynthia which cottage the Belgians occupied — a small, whitewashed place, Le Maisons, lent by Mrs. Inglethorp herself. The garden gate stood ajar, and before I could lift my hand to the knocker the door itself opened and Poirot stood before me, complete to his patent boots, his moustaches waxed to their habitual precision, regarding me with an expression of the gravest sympathy.

"Ah, mon ami Hastings," he cried, before I could utter a word. "I was awaiting you. Enter, I pray you."

"You — you have heard?" I stammered.

"But certainly. How could I not? Your good Baily stopped at my gate as he drove for Dr. Wilkins, and told me that Madame Inglethorp had passed away in the night in a fit. A most sad affair. I told him I would hold myself at the disposition of the family."

I stared at him. In the midst of my own agitation his composure, his air of being already fully informed and quietly prepared, gave me a curious feeling of relief.

"Baily told you, did he?" I said. "I am glad. I was coming to beg you to come up to Styles. John — Mr. Cavendish — wishes you to look into the matter. Bauerstein suspects——" I checked myself. The lane was empty, but it seemed to me too grave a word to speak aloud in that bright air. "The doctors can give no certificate," I finished lamely. "There will have to be a post-mortem."

Poirot nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving my face.

"I see. And you, Hastings, you suspect also?"

"The convulsions were tetanic," I blurted out. "I read it in a book not half an hour ago. It was — it must have been poison."

"Possibly," said Poirot calmly. "We shall see. Method, order, above all observation — these things we shall employ. You will permit that I finish my coffee and take my hat? Madame, my hostess, is desolated. Then I am at your service. Go back, my friend, and tell Monsieur John that I follow in a quarter of an hour. I would walk slowly and observe the approach."

I was too eager to argue. Having delivered my message, I felt every minute lost was folly, and I hastened back up the lane, leaving him to follow. The sun was higher now, and the birds were in full chorus as I came through the lodge gates and up the drive. At the front door a small group was assembled, and my heart gave a sudden bound, for in the midst of them, in evening clothes, dusty and unshaven but perfectly self-possessed, stood Alfred Inglethorp himself.

He had returned.

John was facing him, very erect, and Mary Cavendish stood a little apart with her arms folded in her land smock, which she had not yet changed. Dorcas hovered in the background, and Baily stood by the motor, which was splashed with mud to the axles.

"Ah, Hastings," said John, turning as I came up the steps. "Here is Alfred back at last."

Inglethorp bowed to me with a kind of weary civility. He looked a man who had passed a disturbed night, yet his manner was unhurried, almost languid.

"You find me returned only this moment," he said, in his deep voice. "I am overwhelmed to hear what has occurred in my absence. My poor Emily. To think that I was not here."

"Where have you been, Alfred?" asked John bluntly.

Inglethorp stroked his black beard.

"I walked with Dr. Bauerstein as far as the village last evening, as you know. There I found I had missed my appointment, so I went on to Tadminster to see a friend who had promised me some assistance in a small matter of business. It grew late, the storm broke, and he pressed me to remain the night. He has an excellent spare room at the King's Arms, and I accepted. I walked back this morning directly after breakfast, knowing nothing of this calamity until I reached the lodge."

"And the latch-key?" said John. "You took the latch-key with you last night."

"Did I?" Inglethorp raised his eyebrows. "I think not. I fancy I left it on the hall table that I might not lock you all out. I am careless with such things."

There was a short silence. Then Dorcas stepped forward, her face flushed but resolute.

"Begging your pardon, sir," she said firmly, looking not at John but at Inglethorp, "but you did take the key, sir. You took it from the hook yourself, and said particular not to sit up, as you would let yourself in. And the key's not on the table this morning, sir, for Annie dusted it."

Inglethorp looked at her for a moment without speaking. Something flickered in his dark eyes.

"Ah, possibly, possibly," he said at last, with a little wave of the hand. "One forgets these trifles. Grief — shock — you understand."

He passed into the house, and John followed him after a glance at me that spoke volumes. Mary did not move. She watched Inglethorp's broad back disappear through the doorway, and her mouth tightened.

I waited on the steps, too restless to go in, until at length I saw the small, neat figure of Poirot coming up the drive with short, deliberate steps, pausing now and again to glance at the plants by the path and at the windows of the house. I ran to meet him.

"Alfred Inglethorp has just come back," I told him breathlessly. "He says he spent the night at Tadminster."

"Ah!" said Poirot. "He says so, does he? Come, my friend, present me to the family, and let us see this chamber where the poor lady died."

I led him in. John received him with a grave courtesy that concealed, I thought, a strong reluctance, Mary with a quick, searching look, Lawrence with a frown. Inglethorp, who had gone upstairs, did not reappear. Poirot bowed to each in turn, very correct, very foreign, and begged in his broken English to be allowed to do what little he could.

"If Monsieur John will give me the keys that the good doctors left, and will permit me to view the rooms exactly as they are, I shall be infinitely obliged."

John produced the two keys from his pocket.

"Bauerstein locked both doors — my mother's and Alfred's — and told me to keep them locked. I have touched nothing. Wilkins agreed the post-mortem should be to-night."

"Then let us mount," said Poirot.

We went up in a body — John, Lawrence, Mary, and I — with Poirot trotting lightly at my side. Cynthia Murdoch met us on the landing. She looked very young and shaken, her eyes red, a white apron still tied over her dark dress. Mary put an arm about her.

"This is our friend Monsieur Poirot, Cynthia," said John. "He has kindly come to help us."

Poirot bowed very low.

"Mademoiselle will pardon me if I ask but one thing," he said gently. "Last night you slept — you slept heavily, without waking?"

Cynthia stared at him, surprised into frankness.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I never woke once. I was dead tired from the dispensary, and I must have slept like a log. Mary had to shake me and shake me."

Poirot inclined his head gravely and asked her nothing more. He turned to John.

"And now the room, if you please."

John unlocked the door that gave on the corridor — the outer door, which we had unbolted from within a few hours before — and we passed into Mrs. Inglethorp's bedroom. The gas was out now, and the morning light fell coldly across the disorder. The bedclothes were thrown back, the small table by the bed lay overturned where the dying woman's convulsions had flung it, and beside it on the carpet lay a shattered cup and saucer, stained dark brown, with the spoon a little distance off. On the washstand stood the despatch-case, square and locked, exactly as Cynthia had carried it up. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to a quarter past five and had stopped. The ashes in the grate were grey and powdery, save for one curled scrap of paper, half-burned, that had fallen forward on to the fender.

Poirot moved about the room without haste and without noise, his head a little on one side like a bird. He looked long at the bed, at the two bolted communicating doors — that into Mr. Inglethorp's room and that, never undone, into Cynthia's — at the windows, which were fastened, at the overturned table and the stained cup. He knelt, with a little grunt of effort, and peered under the bed. He lifted the mattress with John's help and let it fall again. He took up the spoon and smelt it, then set it down. At last his eye fell upon the floor between the bed and the mantelpiece, where the candle Lawrence had held had sputtered in the night.

He stooped, and with finger and thumb picked something up. He held it to the light, then produced from his pocket a small clean envelope and slipped it inside with great care.

"What is it?" I whispered, unable to contain myself.

He showed me, for an instant, cupped in the palm of his hand before he sealed it — a tiny fragment of china, no larger than a sixpence, white on one side and stained brown on the other, with a thin, dark edge as though it had been scorched.

"You recognize it, Hastings? No? Ah, well." He tapped the envelope. "For the present I say nothing. It is a little idea of my own, that is all."

"But Poirot——" I began.

"Not now, I beg of you. Later, perhaps, when I have reflected."

He replaced the envelope in his breast pocket and continued his circuit, testing the bolts with his own hands, measuring with his eyes the distance from bed to door, standing for a full minute motionless before the mantelpiece with its row of prim ornaments, one of which — a small china shepherdess — stood a fraction out of line.

John watched him with growing impatience.

"Is there anything more?" he asked at last. "It is painful for us to remain here."

"But a very little," said Poirot amiably. "If Monsieur Lawrence and Madame would be so kind as to leave us — and Mademoiselle also — I would be alone for five minutes with my friend Hastings to fix my impressions. After that I shall lock the door again and return you the key."

They filed out without protest, though Lawrence shot me a look of sullen dislike as he passed. The door closed behind Mary, and Poirot turned the key softly in the lock from within, so that we were shut in together in that silent, sunlit chamber of death.

For a moment he said nothing at all. He took the little envelope from his pocket, shook the fragment of china out upon his handkerchief, and laid it carefully upon the washstand between us, smoothing the handkerchief flat so that the speck of brown and white lay exactly in the centre, catching the light.

Outside a thrush sang again and again in the park, and the clock of the village church began to strike the half-hour. It was close upon half-past eleven, and the room, locked and deserted, seemed to hold its breath about us.

Poirot looked from the fragment to the overturned table, and from the table to the stopped clock, nodding slowly to himself, and then he fixed his bright green eyes upon mine and said: "You see, Hastings, it is the cup that was not drunk that will speak the loudest," and for the life of me I could make nothing of it.

They went slowly up the long sandy path that led back from the beach to Madame Lebrun's, Madame Ratignolle leaning a little heavily upon Robert's arm and complaining still of the stiffness in her ankles.

"You walk too much upon that soft sand," said Robert, adjusting his pace to hers. "You go too far for a woman who ought to be resting in the shade."

"Ah! but it is good to be for once without the children at my skirts," she answered, fanning herself as they walked, for the sun was high and the camomile gave back the heat in waves. "Mrs. Pontellier would leave them all behind if she could, I think; and for this morning we did. It was she who insisted."

Robert laughed and struck at the tall weeds beside the path with the stick he had picked up below.

"She is not made to have her skirts pulled at," he said. "She moves as if there were no one to hold her. Did you ever see her look at the sea this morning? She looked as if she wanted to be alone with it, and not to have us talking beside her."

Madame Ratignolle glanced up at him sideways, amused and a little out of breath.

"What is it you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that Mrs. Pontellier is different," he said. "She is not one of us. When she looks at a thing it is as if she were seeing it for the first time, and thinking her own thoughts about it behind her eyes."

He said it lightly, as one says a thing that has no weight, and began at once to talk of something else, of the dinner and of the fish that old Celestine had promised for it, and of the letter his mother had received that morning from her sister in the city. But Madame Ratignolle remembered the words.

Edna had remained behind at the bath-house to fold the rug and to lock the door. When she reached the house the dinner bell was already ringing, and the children, fresh from the tent and full of sand and clamor, ran to meet her across the gallery. The quadroon nurse followed them, dragging Madame Ratignolle's little girl by the hand, her face expressing the profound resignation of one who has watched too long beside other people's pleasure.

The dinner was served late and eaten in haste, for every one was hungry and heated. Madame Lebrun presided with her accustomed briskness, inquiring after appetites and scolding the servant for the soup. Monsieur Farival talked of the weather. The lady in black, at the small table near the window, ate her meal in silence with her eyes cast down, as if she heard none of the chatter about her. Robert sat opposite Edna and served her twice with the fish, and made her laugh once by telling how Madame Ratignolle's youngest had buried his own shoes in the sand and wept because the sea would not give them back.

After dinner there was the usual drowsy scattering for the midday rest. Edna went with Adèle as far as the Ratignolle cottage, for Adèle declared she was still tired from the walk and must lie down.

"You are pale this morning, yourself," said Madame Ratignolle, looking at her as they stood a moment in the shade of the gallery. "The sun was too strong upon the beach. You opened your dress to it as if you loved it."

"I did love it," said Edna. "I felt as if the wind and the sun were speaking to me, and I was listening. I never listened before as I listened this morning."

"Ah! you are a poet," laughed Adèle. "And Robert says of you—what was it he said? That you are not one of us; that when you look at a thing you see it for the first time and think your own thoughts behind your eyes."

She spoke gaily, pinning up a loose coil of her hair before she entered the house. Edna colored faintly and did not answer at once.

"Does he think so much about what I see?" she asked at last, with a short laugh which did not wholly hide her seriousness.

"But he thinks of every one, Robert," said Adèle easily. "It is his occupation. When he is not making verses for you, he is rocking my babies to sleep. Go now and rest, ma chérie. You look as if you had drunk too much strong coffee."

Edna returned to her own cottage and lay down upon the bed in the little room that smelled of salt and of clean linen. The children were put to sleep in the next room by the nurse, who fanned them with a palmetto leaf till their eyelids closed. Through the thin partition Edna could hear their breathing settle into regularity, and the nurse's chair creak as she herself dozed. For a while Edna could not sleep. Robert's remark, as Adèle had repeated it, stayed with her and repeated itself without her will. She is not one of us. She thought her own thoughts behind her eyes. It pleased her obscurely, as if a truth had been spoken aloud which she had never dared to utter. It troubled her too, for she did not know what thoughts they were which she kept behind her eyes, nor where they would lead her if she once let them go free.

She slept at last, heavily and without dreams, and awoke to find the afternoon far advanced and a boy from the village standing upon the gallery with a yellow envelope in his hand.

It was a telegram from Léonce, sent from the city. Business of importance, he wrote, would detain him beyond the week. He would not come out to Grand Isle at the week-end as he had intended. He hoped she and the children were well, that Raoul's fever had left no ill effects, and that she would want for nothing, as he had sent ample funds for every contingency. He embraced them all in thought.

Edna read the message twice over, standing in the doorway with the light full upon her face. The nurse, who had risen and come to look, asked if Monsieur would arrive on Saturday.

"No; Monsieur will not come," said Edna quietly, folding the paper and putting it into her pocket. "It is business."

She felt no disappointment such as a wife might be expected to feel, and the absence of it vaguely surprised her. It seemed to her that Saturday was a great way off, and that it mattered very little whether Léonce came or stayed. The summer stretched before her like the meadow of her childhood, without end, and she might walk in it as she pleased. She went inside and wrote a short reply at the little desk, telling him that they were all well and that he must not trouble himself to come if affairs detained him. When the boy had gone with the message she felt lightened, as if a small duty had been lifted and set aside.

The heat of the afternoon had lessened. A breeze had risen from the Gulf and was shaking the leaves of the orange trees and sending cool gusts along the galleries. The beach at that hour would be empty, for the bathers did not go down till near sunset. Edna changed her dress for a looser one, took her straw hat from the peg, and without telling the nurse or any one where she was going, set out alone down the sandy path.

The water looked different in the afternoon light, gray-green and restless, with white caps breaking far out where the lateen sails had been motionless in the morning. The bath-houses stood silent with their doors closed. Edna unlocked her compartment by force of habit, though she had no need to enter it, and hung her hat upon the peg inside. She stood a moment upon the gallery in her bare feet, feeling the warm boards under them, and looked out at the sea which had held her eyes all morning.

She had never learned to swim. Like many Creole women of her acquaintance, she had been content to wade and to splash, clinging to the rope or to some stronger arm. The year before she had made attempts under Robert's instruction, and under Adèle's laughing encouragement, but her fear had always overcome her after a few unavailing strokes, and she had returned to shore trembling and ashamed of her failure.

Now no one was there to watch her. The lady in black was sitting at some distance upon the sand, with her prayer-book open upon her knees, but her eyes fixed upon the horizon. Two fishermen were mending a net far down the beach. Edna walked out to where the water reached her knees, then to where it touched her waist, holding up her skirts. The water was cold about her limbs and the sand slipped from beneath her feet.

She let herself go, remembering what Robert had taught her about the movement of the arms and the breathing. At first the old terror seized her, the sense of depth and of power beyond her control. She struggled, sank, recovered, and found to her astonishment that she did not sink but floated. She moved her hands as if swimming through the tall grass of Kentucky, beating the water as one strikes out in the sea. She made three, four, five strokes, awkward and short, but her head remained above the surface and she advanced a little way from where she had stood. Then she touched bottom again and stood upright, panting, with her heart beating violently against her ribs.

She did not cry out. She looked quickly about her to see if any one had observed. No one had. The lady in black had not turned her head. The fishermen were bent over their net. The sea, which had seemed to her that morning a distant, beautiful picture, was now about her body, holding her, resisting her, and yielding to her all at once. She repeated the strokes again, more deliberately, feeling her strength and her awkwardness together. A sense of exultation filled her, keen and unfamiliar, as if some new faculty had been awakened in her which she had never suspected.

She remained but a short time in the water, for she was afraid of fatigue and of the chill. When she came out her limbs trembled and her dress clung to her, but she felt as if she had escaped from something invisible that had held her for years. She wrung out her hair with her hands, put on her hat, and locked the bath-house door behind her. She told herself that she would tell no one of what she had done. It was her own secret, like the thoughts behind her eyes, and she would keep it until she understood it better.

As she turned to go up the beach the lady in black closed her prayer-book and rose stiffly from the sand. Edna had never exchanged a word with her, though she had seen her daily at meals and upon the beach, always alone, always in mourning, always reading. The old woman now looked directly at Edna for the first time, with eyes that were pale and uncurious.

"The sea is cold this afternoon," she said in a thin, even voice.

"Yes," said Edna, startled into answering. "It is cooler than this morning. But it is pleasant once one is in."

The lady in black nodded slowly, as if that were an answer she had expected long ago.

"You will go out again," she said. "The sea never keeps back what belongs to it. I have been coming here for thirty years, and I have seen them go and come."

She did not wait for a reply, but walked on toward the bath-houses with her book held tightly against her breast. Edna watched her go, wondering at the strangeness of the speech and at the flat certainty of its tone. It seemed less a remark than a judgment, pronounced without interest, and it left a faint chill upon her pleasant warmth.

The sun was low when she reached the house. The children were awake and playing with pebbles upon the gallery. Madame Ratignolle called to her from the road, where she walked with her husband, who had come out on the evening boat, carrying the baby in his arms like a bundle. Robert passed with a group of young men going toward Klein's, and lifted his cap to her with a smile that seemed to her to contain a question. She smiled back without stopping, for she did not wish to speak just then.

Supper was early and simple. The children ate with good appetite and quarreled softly over a shell. Afterwards the nurse undressed them in the next room, and Edna heard their voices grow drowsy and cease. She sat for a while beside their beds in the darkening room, listening to their even breathing, feeling the day settle about her like dust.

When they were asleep she went out alone upon the gallery of the cottage. The night had come quickly, warm and starless in patches where the clouds hung low. The sea could not be seen, but it could be heard, monotonous and insistent, sending its rhythm up through the darkness. A light burned in Madame Lebrun's window. Somewhere a guitar was being tuned. Edna drew her chair to the edge of the gallery and sat with her hands in her lap, doing nothing, thinking of nothing consecutive, yet with Robert's remark, as Adèle had repeated it, still in her mind, turning and returning like a small wave that would not go back to sea.

The cab jerked and then settled into the smooth roll down the dark street. Brett was still leaning back in the corner with her eyes closed.

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

"It's all right," I said. "We're out now."

She opened her eyes and looked at me and then closed them again. The driver went on down toward the Parc Montsouris. It was dark in the streets and the lamps made pools on the wet asphalt. There was no one about except a policeman at a corner and a woman hurrying with a shawl over her head.

"Where are we going?" she said.

"I told him the Parc Montsouris."

"Oh, rot," she said. "Let's not go there. It's too far and too dark."

"Where do you want to go?"

She sat up and put her hand on the strap and looked out. Her hair was brushed back close and the street light came in and showed her face clean and lovely in the dark of the cab.

"Jake, take me to Les Halles," she said. "Take me to get onion soup. I want to go somewhere lighted where there are people."

"All right," I said. I leaned forward and tapped on the glass. The driver slowed and turned his head. "Les Halles," I said. "Au pavillon. You know where."

"Oui, monsieur," he said, and turned the cab in the next street to come back north. The cab climbed and the motor labored. Brett leaned against me. I put my arm around her shoulder and she sat quiet with my arm around her and we watched the streets go by.

"That's better," she said. "I hate driving around with nothing to go to."

"We have something to go to now."

"Soup," she said and laughed. "Good old soup. You're a good chap, Jake."

We came up into the lighted boulevards again and the cab went fast through the empty late streets. A bus passed us and then a taxi with its flag up. Brett took off her hat and held it in her lap and ran her hand back through her hair.

"My hair's a mess," she said. "It gets blown in those open cars."

"It's fine."

"No, it's not. You always say it's fine."

We crossed the Seine at the Chatelet. The river was black and the lights of the bateaux were yellow in the water. A man was fishing from the quay in the dark.

"I met a man last week who might do something for Mike," Brett said. "Dawson Williams. He's got pots of money. American. Oil or something. He was frightfully nice to me."

"I never heard of him," I said.

"No, you wouldn't have. He only got over last week. He knows everybody in London. He says he'll get Mike out of Scotland if it comes to that."

"Good," I said. "Is he in Paris now?"

"He was at Zelli's last night with some people. He wanted me to go to Biarritz with them next week."

"Are you going?"

"Don't be a fool," she said. "I have to stay here till Mike comes up."

We turned into Les Halles. The pavilions were lighted and the trucks were backed up to the curb and men in blouses were carrying sides of beef and baskets of vegetables. The smell of the market was sweet and heavy and rotten in the warm night. The cafe at the corner was bright and crowded. The driver pulled up.

"Wait," I told him, and paid him and he gave me a ticket number. We went in and sat down at a marble table near the window. The waiter came and Brett ordered onion soup for two and a bottle of Graves.

"It's good here at night," Brett said. She looked around and lit a cigarette. "I like to see them working. It makes me feel clean."

"It's a good place."

"You come here a lot?"

"Sometimes after working late."

The soup came in heavy bowls and we grated cheese into it and drank the wine. Brett ate with appetite and drank the wine and color came back into her face.

"You feel better?" I said.

"Much better," she said. "Food's a wonderful thing. I was empty."

"You're all right now."

"I'm all right for the moment." She looked at me over the bowl. "Do you think we're happy?"

"I think we're fed."

"Don't be clever. I mean really."

"We're all right."

"All right's rotten," she said.

"It's what there is."

She put down her spoon and lighted another cigarette off the first one and blew the smoke out through her nose. She smiled at me and her smile was crooked and very fine.

"You're always the good chap," she said. "You always behave."

"Somebody has to."

"Don't moralize. It makes me sick."

"I'm not moralizing. I'm drinking wine."

We touched glasses and drank. The workmen came in and out for coffee at the bar and the market roared outside. A drunk woman argued with the patron and he put her out quietly into the street.

I loved Brett and I knew there was nothing I could do for her.

"What's the matter?" she said. "You look solemn."

"Nothing. Soup."

"Good old soup," she said. "Tell me something funny, Jake."

"There's nothing funny."

"Tell me something true, then."

"It's late," I said. "We ought to move."

She looked at her wrist watch. It was thin gold and small on her brown wrist.

"Half past two," she said. "The night's still young. Where shall we go?"

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

"What envelope?"

"Fifty francs for Georgette. I told the woman to give it to her if she asked for me. If she went off with one of those chaps I was to have it back."

"Oh," Brett said. "Poor Georgette. Did you like her?"

"She was all right to eat with."

"Let's go and get it," Brett said. "I'm tired of sitting. Let's go back there and then go on to Montmartre."

"If she's gone I get the money back."

"And if she's there?"

"Then I'll give it to her."

Brett called for the bill and paid it before I could get it. "You paid for the cab," she said. "Don't argue."

Outside the air was cool after the heat of the cafe and the smell of the market was strong. We found a taxi at the rank and got in. The driver was asleep and woke up and cranked the car.

"Rue de la Montagne Sainte Genevieve," I said. "Au bal musette. You know?"

He nodded and drove up through the empty streets. Brett sat close to me with her hat in her lap and did not talk. The car climbed the hill of St. Genevieve and stopped in front of the closed shutters of the shops. Music came from the open door of the bal.

Inside it was still hot and crowded. The accordion man was still playing with the bells on his ankle and the floor was full. The policeman was gone from the door. The proprietor's wife was still behind the zinc. Lett and his friends were at a table with bottles. Georgette was with them, her hat off, her hair damp on her forehead, dancing a glass of beer in front of her.

She saw me and waved.

"Eh, Jacob," she called. "You come back. You behave."

"Hello, Georgette," I said.

Brett stood beside me and took off her gloves slowly.

"So this is where you spend your evenings," she said to me.

"Sometimes."

Lett got up and bowed very formally.

"Do join us," he said. "We have been looking after your charming friend."

"I'm sure you have," Brett said.

I went to the bar and the patronne saw me and reached under the counter.

"Monsieur," she said, and handed me the envelope. It was sealed as I had left it. "Mademoiselle is still here, as you see. I have kept it as you said."

"Thank you," I said. "She is still here, so it is for her."

I opened the envelope and took out the fifty-franc note. Georgette came over to the bar.

"You go off and leave me," she said. "You are a dirty type."

"I left money for you," I said. "Here."

She took the note and put it in her bag and snapped the bag shut.

"You might have told me," she said. "I thought you were gone for good."

"I told the patronne."

"Oh, la patronne." She looked at Brett. "You go off with fine ladies now."

"This is Lady Brett Ashley," I said. "This is Georgette."

"Enchantee," said Georgette, and did not smile. "You have a good friend in Jacob. He picks up girls in the street and takes them to dinner and then runs away."

"Don't be disagreeable," I said.

"I'm not disagreeable. I'm tired." She turned to the bar and ordered a beer. "Dance with me?" she said to Lett, who had come up. "These people bore me."

Lett bowed again and led her to the floor. The accordion wheezed and the banjo joined in. Brett and I stood at the bar and drank a fine.

"She's angry," Brett said.

"She has a right to be."

"Did you have a good time with her?"

"We ate well."

"Poor child. Give her another fifty."

"I haven't that much on me."

Brett opened her bag. "Here," she said. "Give her this from me."

"No," I said. "She's all right now. She's taken up."

We watched the dancing. The Braddocks party had gone. The floor belonged to the boys from Montparnasse and the girls from the quarter and Lett's friends. Georgette danced with her eyes half closed, her mouth open to show her bad teeth, moving heavily to the music.

"Let's get out," Brett said. "This place makes me nervous."

We said good night to the patronne and went out into the street. The night was cool on the hill and the sky was clear. A taxi came down the steep street with its brakes squeaking. We hailed it.

"Where to?" I said.

"Oh, drive around," Brett said. "No. Take me up to Montmartre. I told them I'd look in."

The driver nodded. We got in and he turned down toward the river to cross by the Pont Neuf. Brett was quiet. She held my hand hard in both of hers and looked out the window.

"I'm tired, Jake," she said. "I'm so tired I could die."

"Sleep, then."

"I can't sleep when I'm like this. Can you?"

"Sometimes."

The cab went along the quais. The Seine was smooth and dark and the lights of the bridges lay on the water. A barge went down with its lights on and a man standing at the sweep. We passed Notre Dame, black against the sky, and the cab turned up toward Montmartre.

At Zelli's the street was full of cars and the light came out of the door. Music came up from below. Brett did not move.

"I don't want to go in," she said.

"Good."

"Tell him to go away. Tell him to take me to my hotel."

I told the driver the Hotel Crillon, Place de la Concorde. He turned the car. Brett leaned back and closed her eyes. We went down the hill without talking. At the Concorde the lamps were burning yellow and the fountains threw water in the dark. The cab stopped at the hotel entrance. The porter came out.

I got out and helped Brett out. She stood on the pavement and pulled her coat around her.

"Good night, darling," she said. "You've been wonderful."

"Good night," I said. "Sleep well."

"You'll call tomorrow?"

"Yes."

She went in with the porter. I told the driver to go on. He looked disappointed to lose a fare.

"Where to, monsieur?"

"Just go along the river," I said. "I'll get out at the Pont Royal."

I got in and rode alone. The streets were empty and the sky was beginning to pale over the roofs on the left bank. At the bridge I got out and paid. The taxi went on and left me alone on the quay.

Dawn was coming gray over the Louvre and the water was gray and smooth. A man walked by with a bag of tools. The swallows were flying under the bridge. I put my hands in my pockets and walked home along the river in the cool morning air, and the stones were damp under my shoes.

Eve stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs that led down from the offices of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau, and opened the umbrella with something of the care which a bomb-disposal expert might employ upon a suspicious parcel. It was a beautiful umbrella, of rich silk, with a silver band and a handle of the sort that invites confidence. It had kept the rain off her hat with a thoroughness which compelled gratitude, and gratitude, Eve felt, demanded action. A girl who has been brought up, as she had, upon a hundred and fifty pounds a year and a lively sense of other people's property, does not lightly walk off with a strange young man's umbrella, even when that young man has thrust it upon her with a bow and vanished like a stage fairy.

The rain had stopped. Shaftesbury Avenue glittered with that fresh-washed cheerfulness which follows a summer shower, and the hats of the passers-by were once more tilted at their customary angle of optimism. Eve looked at the sky, looked at the umbrella, and made up her mind. She would take it back at once, before business or modesty could be overtaken by temptation. After all, Dover Street was not so very far, and she had half an hour to spare before the appointment which really mattered, the interview about the cataloguing post for which Freddie Threepwood, in one of his rarer lucid intervals, had suggested her name.

She found a bus that bumped her, umbrella and hat and all, to within a few minutes' walk of the Drones Club, and presently she was standing, a little flushed and considerably determined, before the large, impassive porter who guarded that institution like a amiable bulldog.

She had expected difficulties. Porters, in her experience, looked upon unaccompanied young women at the doors of clubs as Nature looks upon a vacuum, with disapproval. This one exceeded expectation. He surveyed her, the hat, the feather, and the umbrella with an eye in which suspicion wrestled with respect for the feather, and won on points.

"I want you to give this to the gentleman who lent it to me this morning," said Eve, holding out the umbrella as one offering a sceptre. "He was very kind. He ran out of here with it just after half past ten. He was tall and thin and he had no hat and he wore an eyeglass. Will you see that he gets it?"

The porter took the umbrella as if it might go off.

"We do not hold ourselves responsible, miss," he said doubtfully.

"Oh, but it's his own umbrella," said Eve. "Or somebody's. He got it out of your cloak-room. I saw him dash across the road to Messrs. Thorpe and Briscoe's awning where I was sheltering, and put it into my hand, and dash back again. I never thanked him properly. I was too surprised. Will you give him this note with it? It's to explain."

She had written the note on the bus, in pencil, on the back of one of Miss Clarkson's prospectuses. It was brief, and, as she flattered herself, neat.

"Dear Sir -- Thank you a thousand times for being so very kind in the rain. I am returning the umbrella with many apologies for the trouble. It kept my hat perfectly dry. Yours gratefully, E. H."

She had debated about the signature. Eve Halliday in full, she felt, would look bold. E. H. had a modest, ladylike reticence, and would, she hoped, convey everything that was proper without conveying anything that was not.

The porter read the note without enthusiasm, as one who had seen better notes in his time, and stowed it in his waistcoat pocket.

"Very good, miss," he said. "I'll see to it."

"Thank you so much," said Eve, relieved. "You are very kind."

She smiled at him, straightened the bird of Paradise feather, which the bus had treated with levity, and walked away briskly in the direction of Piccadilly, where her interview awaited her. The porter watched her go with the thoughtful air of a man who has decided that there are worse things in the world than umbrellas.

Psmith, meanwhile, had returned to the smoking-room window and was engaged in deep and pleasing thought. He had performed a good action with grace and despatch, and the world seemed to him an excellent place, full of awnings conveniently placed opposite clubs. He was still dwelling upon the vision which had so improved the Thorpe and Briscoe frontage when a shadow fell across his meditations and a voice, sharp with injury, broke in upon them.

"I say! Look here! You're the chap, aren't you?"

Psmith raised his monocle and regarded the speaker without haste. He was a young man of pink and puppylike indignation, with a small moustache which bristled with emotion. Behind him hovered the porter, carrying, like a standard, the umbrella.

"You're the chap that took my umbrella," said the young man. "This man says you took it out of the rack this morning. Walderwick's my name. The Honourable Hugo Walderwick. That," he said, pointing dramatically, "is my umbrella."

A lesser man might have explained, apologised, protested good intentions. Psmith did none of these things. He perceived at once that explanation would involve a lady, a crowd, a hat, a feather, and a shower of rain, and that a gentleman who drags a lady, even anonymously, into the conversation of the Drones smoking-room at half past eleven in the morning is no gentleman. He smiled gently.

"Ah, Walderwick," he said, as one greeting an old friend after long absence. "A delightful name. A stout, Anglo-Saxon name. And is this your umbrella? A very fine umbrella. I congratulate you upon your taste in umbrellas."

"Never mind about that," said Mr. Walderwick. "You took it without asking. The porter saw you."

"Quite true," said Psmith. "I did. I was moved by a sudden and irresistible need for an umbrella. It is a need which comes upon all of us in this climate. One moment there is blue sky, the next, as it were, Niagaras. I saw your umbrella, I coveted your umbrella, I operated upon your umbrella. And now," he added handsomely, "I wish to buy it."

Mr. Walderwick blinked. The conversation, which had promised to proceed along the familiar lines of recrimination and bluster, had taken an unexpected turning.

"Buy it?" he said.

"Buy it," said Psmith firmly. "Name your price. I am in a buying mood this morning. I have just resigned from a lucrative position in the fish trade and feel that only an umbrella can fill the void. What shall we say? Five pounds?"

"Five pounds!" Mr. Walderwick's moustache quivered. "For an umbrella?"

"You think it too little? Your acumen reproves me. Ten pounds, then. Ten pounds for this superb, this almost hallucinatingly beautiful umbrella."

"But it cost only thirty shillings."

"Then you have made a handsome profit," said Psmith, producing a pocket-book with an air of quiet satisfaction. "Here are ten one-pound notes, crisp from the mint. Take them, Walderwick, and spend them on riotous living. And give me the umbrella, that I may treasure it as a memento of a delightful acquaintance."

Mr. Walderwick took the notes with the dazed air of a man who has ordered a chop and been presented with a roast peacock. He looked at the money, he looked at Psmith, he looked at the porter, who maintained a judicial neutrality.

"Well, if you put it that way--" he said.

"I do put it that way," said Psmith. "I put it precisely that way."

"Well--thanks very much," said Mr. Walderwick, pocketing the notes. He hesitated, as if feeling that dignity required a parting shot, but finding none handy. "You're a rum chap," he concluded, and drifted away.

Psmith tucked the umbrella under his arm with affection. The porter withdrew, shaking his head in the manner of one who has seen the aristocracy go steadily downhill since the war, and Psmith was once more alone with his thoughts.

The afternoon, which had begun with sunshine and a light breeze from the west, forgot its good resolutions at about half past three. Eve, emerging from a tea-shop in Sackville Street where she had fortified herself with a bun and a silent rehearsal of all the Latin authors she could remember, found the sky once more of that dubious grey which London affects when it meditates rain. She had still twenty minutes before she was due to present herself for the interview concerning the Blandings Castle library, an interview which Miss Clarkson had arranged by post and which was to take place, most conveniently, at the Senior Conservatives' Club in St. James's, where her prospective employer was staying in town. She quickened her pace, clutching her handbag, and regretting, for the first time that day, that chivalry which had restored the umbrella to its rack.

It was at the corner of Piccadilly that the rain, which had been threatening for some minutes, fulfilled its threat with sudden heartiness. Eve darted back under the overhanging edge of a shop, and collided smartly with a tall young man who had taken shelter there an instant before her. He stepped aside with instant politeness, raising his hat.

"Allow me," he said, opening a large silk umbrella with practised ease. "There is ample room, and the shower will not last long."

Eve thanked him and edged under the silk dome. She was grateful, but she was also observant, and she observed that her new protector was very tall, very thin, and very well dressed, with a monocle in his right eye through which he regarded the weather with philosophic calm. There was something oddly familiar about him, something in the grave friendliness of his manner which tugged at her memory.

"Have we met before?" she asked impulsively.

Psmith shook his head with gentle regret. He had recognised her at once, hat and feather and all, with a pleased shock which he concealed admirably beneath his customary solemnity. To admit that he was the hatless altruist of Dover Street would, he felt, be to embarrass a sensitive girl who had manifestly done her best to close the incident with a note and a porter. A man of tact does not paw at a closed incident.

"I think not," he said. "I have a memory for faces which is the envy of my circle, and I am quite sure I should have remembered yours. No doubt I remind you of someone. I am often told I resemble a well-known cinema actor, though modesty forbids me to mention which one."

Eve laughed, and dismissed the fancy. After all, London was full of tall young men in good clothes, and this one wore a hat and carried his own umbrella quite openly, whereas her morning benefactor had been hatless and mysterious and had vanished.

"It must have been someone else," she said. "This morning a most extraordinary thing happened to me. I was caught in the rain in Dover Street, and a young man ran out of a club and gave me an umbrella and disappeared without a word."

"Amazing England," said Psmith. "What will she do next? And did you ever see him again?"

"Never. I took it back to the porter with a note. I do hope he got it."

"I am sure he is even now weeping grateful tears upon it," said Psmith warmly. "These club porters have deep feelings, though they hide them beneath a mask of brass buttons. And now, if I may ask, does the rain show any sign of abating in your trained opinion?"

They discussed the weather for some minutes with the earnestness of two experts, until the shower thinned to a drizzle and then to nothing. Eve thanked her companion, declined his offer to see her to St. James's on the ground that she was already late, and hurried away, leaving Psmith gazing after her with respectful approval at the way the feather survived the damp.

He did not follow. He had an appointment of his own, of a vague but social nature, and, besides, he had learned early in life that to pursue a young woman through the streets of London with an umbrella is a course which, however well meant, is apt to attract the attention of the constabulary. He strolled slowly towards the Drones, twirling the Walderwick umbrella, well pleased with the afternoon.

Eve arrived at the Senior Conservatives' Club at four minutes past four, breathless but composed, and was shown into a small morning-room which smelled of leather and furniture polish. Her prospective employer rose to greet her with old-fashioned courtesy, peering at her in a myopic and apologetic manner which she found immediately engaging.

Lord Emsworth was a tall, thin, worried-looking peer of some sixty years, with a mild face which at the moment wore an expression of acute distress. In his hand he held a pair of pince-nez with a broken cord, and on the table beside him lay a large garden catalogue, open at a coloured plate of roses.

"Miss--ah--Halliday?" he said. "Do sit down, Miss Halliday. Baxter said four o'clock. Or was it half past? Dear me. You are the young lady about the library, are you not? About cataloguing the library at Blandings?"

"Yes, Lord Emsworth," said Eve, sitting very straight and trying not to look at the feather, which in the mirror opposite appeared to be nodding at her encouragingly. "Miss Clarkson wrote to you. I have done a good deal of indexing. My father was a writer, and I used to help him."

"Quite so, quite so," said Lord Emsworth, nodding vaguely. He fumbled with the pince-nez, dropped them, dived to retrieve them, and came up pink and apologetic. "My secretary, Baxter, will tell you all about the pay and the hours and all that. Very efficient fellow, Baxter. Finds my glasses down my back and all that sort of thing. Have you ever seen a pig, Miss Halliday?"

Eve blinked.

"A pig, Lord Emsworth?"

"My pig, Empress of Blandings. A Berkshire sow. A most remarkable animal. I have a photograph somewhere." He began to shuffle among the papers on the table, scattering envelopes. "Dear me, where did I put it? Baxter had it this morning. Or was it Freddie? My younger son Freddie is in London. A good boy, but restless. He keeps talking about money. Young men do. When I was young--"

The door opened and a waiter entered with tea. Lord Emsworth seized the interruption with relief, upset the milk jug with his elbow, apologised profusely to Eve, to the waiter, and to the table, and spent the next five minutes mopping with his handkerchief. In the process the pince-nez, which he had perched precariously upon his nose, slipped off and fell with a soft plop into the slop-basin.

"Dear me!" said Lord Emsworth, peering helplessly into the brown depths. "How very awkward. I cannot see a thing without them. Could you--would you mind--?"

Eve, suppressing an inclination to laugh which she felt would be fatal to her prospects, fished out the dripping pince-nez, wiped them on her own handkerchief, and restored them to their owner. Lord Emsworth replaced them with trembling gratitude.

"Thank you, my dear, thank you. Most kind. Most capable. Just the sort of capable young woman we need at Blandings. Baxter will be delighted. You must come down on Monday. Baxter will write. Or shall I write? I never remember. But come down on Monday. The library is in a shocking state. Books everywhere. And you like flowers? The gardens are very fine in July. You shall see the rose garden. And the pig. You must see the pig."

Eve rose, dazed but elated. She had answered no question about cataloguing, had produced no testimonial, had mentioned no terms, and yet, unless she was much mistaken, she had been engaged. The interview, as an interview, had been a complete and even farcical failure, and she had secured the post by rescuing eyeglasses from tea.

"Thank you very much, Lord Emsworth," she said. "I shall be delighted to come on Monday."

"Splendid, splendid," said Lord Emsworth, shaking her warmly by the hand and stepping into the waste-paper basket. "Baxter will arrange. Good afternoon, Miss--ah--"

"Halliday," said Eve helpfully.

"Halliday," repeated Lord Emsworth. "Just so."

She left him searching for his hat, which was upon his head, and walked out into St. James's with the feeling that life, after all, had its compensations.

It was evening when Psmith returned to the smoking-room of the Drones Club. The room was empty save for the evening papers and the agreeable smell of leather and tobacco. He settled himself in the window-seat with the Walderwick umbrella across his knees, regarding it with the fond eye of a collector who has secured a treasure at small cost. Ten pounds, he reflected, was a bagatelle for romance, mystery, and first-class silk.

The door opened and Mike Jackson came in, looking tired but cheerful in the manner of a man who has spent the day being pleasant to strangers for no salary. He dropped into the chair opposite Psmith and accepted a cigarette.

"Hullo, Psmith," he said. "Still in London? I thought you'd gone back to the fish."

"I have left the fish," said Psmith with dignity. "The fish and I have parted for ever. Henceforth I am a man of leisure, waiting upon Fortune. I spent the morning distributing umbrellas to distressed beauty and the afternoon sharing my own umbrella with the same. A busy day for a capitalist."

Mike laughed.

"You haven't changed," he said. "By the way, Phyllis had her old school friend to tea yesterday. Eve Halliday. You'd like her. She was telling us about some library job at Blandings. She wears a hat with a bird on it that you could stable a horse under."

Psmith paused in the act of polishing his monocle. Through the window the lights of Dover Street winked in the dusk, and opposite the dark front of Thorpe and Briscoe slept quietly without its awning.

"Eve Halliday," he repeated thoughtfully. "Eve Halliday."

"That's the name," said Mike. "Why? Have you met her?"

Psmith looked down at the umbrella in his lap and smiled, a slow, solemn smile which spread across his face like primrose.

"I have had that pleasure," he said.

If I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget how light my heart felt, and how heavy my old body showed itself, when I tried to get on my legs again with Mr. Franklin pulling at one arm, and my stick, which had sunk in the sand, refusing to pull at the other. He kept his arm round my neck, foreign fashion, after he had got me up, and he gave my cheek another squeeze, as if cheeks were things to be squeezed in England as they are in France and Italy.

“Seven-and-sixpence, Betteredge,” says he, rattling my loose silver in my waistcoat pocket in the old boyish way. “You lent it to me when I was a lad, and I have never paid you back. I’ll pay you back now, with interest. Look at me! Here I am, four hours before you expected me, and ready to explain myself.”

I looked at him, and I will own it, I felt the tears coming into my eyes. A finer young fellow for his age, as to face and figure, you shall not set eyes on in a summer’s day. His beard was close-cropped — they had not got to chin-beards then among the young gentlemen in England — his complexion was of a good brown, not too dark and not too light; his eyes were bright, and his smile was pleasant, and his voice was kind. Tall and active he was, and dressed — well, I have said already how he was dressed, and I won’t say it again, for fear of making you envious. It is enough to remark that the varnish from foreign parts, which I had joked about on Rosanna’s account, sat easily and naturally upon him.

“Where is Rosanna gone?” I asked, looking round for her, and seeing only the flutter of her cloak disappearing over the sandhills. “What did you frighten her for, Mr. Franklin?”

“I am sorry for that, Betteredge. I didn’t mean to stare, but I never saw a girl change colour so before in my life. What is the matter with her?”

“The matter with her is a little pride and a little temper of her own, sir,” I said, not caring to open out upon Rosanna’s past history to a young gentleman, even though the young gentleman was Mr. Franklin. “She is our second housemaid, and the other women don’t make it smooth for her. She took my scolding kindly, and your coming, all of a sudden, confused her. Girls will blush, Mr. Franklin, when a handsome young gentleman looks hard at them for the first time.”

With which explanation — which I consider to have been one of the neatest things I ever said in my life — I took him by the arm and turned him towards the plantation. He laughed, and took his rose out of his button-hole, and threw it after Rosanna’s retreating figure.

“I beg her pardon,” he said gaily. “A peace-offering to Miss Rosanna, in case I meet her again. Now, Betteredge, you want to know why I have come four hours before my time. Shrewd old friend, you shall know it. Walk slow, for I am out of breath with running to surprise you, and give me your arm to lean upon.”

I gave him my arm, which he took in the old affectionate way that he had as a boy, and we went on together through the fir plantation. Mindful of my duty as narrator of this strange history, I must request you to have patience with me here, if I stop to notice, in passing, how strangely things fall out in this world. Here was I, an old man of past seventy, with a young gentleman leaning on my arm to help himself along — instead of its being the young gentleman, as nature and propriety require, who ought to have lent the old man his arm. So do the years turn everything topsy-turvy in their course. And so, if you live long enough, you may yet see your own son offering you a stick, when you ought to be offering him a scolding.

“Well, sir,” I said, “why are you so early?”

“Because I got a letter in London, Betteredge, which hurried me off,” says Mr. Franklin. “A letter which you shall judge of for yourself.”

He stopped, and took out his pocket-book, and produced from it a letter in a lady’s handwriting, which he put into my hands.

“Read it,” he said. “It is short, and it is to the purpose.”

I put on my spectacles, and read it, there in the fir plantation, with Mr. Franklin looking over my shoulder. The letter, which I remember as if I had copied it yesterday, ran in these words:

“Tuesday, 23rd May.

“My dear Franklin,

“Rachel and I have settled that we want you here a little earlier than we first proposed. The birthday dinner is, as you know, on Friday the second of June; and we have music coming in the evening which Rachel is anxious that you should help her to arrange. The luggage-train brings heavy boxes, and you will do well to leave it to follow you. Come yourself, dear, if you possibly can, by the mid-day train which leaves London at one o’clock on Thursday, and which will set you down with us between three and four in the afternoon, instead of late in the evening as you proposed. Penelope is to meet the evening train, in case you miss the earlier one; but pray, if you love us, do not miss it.

“Your affectionate aunt,

“Julia Verinder.”

“P.S. — Keep this alteration in your hour of arrival to yourself, till you see us. Rachel has a little surprise in store for the servants on your birthday arrival, and we must not spoil it beforehand.”

There! I set the letter down here at full length, that you may see for yourself what a sensible, kind, considerate letter it is. In my time I have seen a good many letters, and I say without fear or favour that a better letter for hurrying a young gentleman out of London, and into Yorkshire, was never put upon paper.

“Well, sir?” I said, when I had read it through, and had handed it back.

“Well, Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, putting the letter carefully into his pocket-book again, “I had made my plan for leaving London to-morrow evening, and spending half the night upon the railway, only this morning. When I got my aunt’s letter by the first post, I turned my whole day topsy-turvy, sent my heavy luggage on by itself to follow me, packed a hand-bag, and caught the one o’clock train. Here I am, at your service, four good hours before my time — and Penelope waiting at the station, I suppose, for an evening train that I have not travelled by.”

“The postscript explains it, sir,” I said. “My lady always thinks of everybody. I’ll send word at once to Penelope to come back.”

He stopped me from going on in a hurry, by laying his hand on my shoulder.

“Wait a little, Betteredge,” he says. “There is something else I want to say to you before we go to the house.”

Saying those words, he opened his travelling bag, which he had carried in his hand all the way from the station — no servant with him, you understand, and he liked it, being a free-and-easy young gentleman with his foreign training — and he took out of it a small square packet, carefully tied up with string, and sealed all round with black wax.

“Put this up for me, Betteredge,” he said, “under lock and key, in a safe place of your own choosing, till to-morrow morning.”

I took the packet. It was light, and it felt, through the paper, as if there might be a little box inside. Who does not know the curiosity of an old servant on such occasions? I will own I turned it over in my hands, and looked hard at the seals, as if I expected to see through paper and wax to what was inside.

“No questions,” says Mr. Franklin, with his finger on his lip, and his bright eyes laughing at me. “You are to lock it up to-night, and I will ask you for it again myself to-morrow. No harm will come to it in your keeping. Only keep it safe, my old friend, and keep it secret.”

“Safe it shall be, sir, and secret it shall be,” I answered, putting the packet into my own breast-pocket, next to my heart, as it were. “May I ask if it is anything that will go bad in a damp place?”

Mr. Franklin laughed again. “The plate-room is dry enough, isn’t it?” he said. “Put it in the plate-room to-night, Betteredge, under lock and key, and you will oblige me.”

The plate-room, I must tell you, is the small strong room next to my sitting-room, where her ladyship’s silver is kept, with an iron door to it and a patent lock of my own choosing. Nobody goes there but my lady and myself, and I keep the key on my own bunch. I promised Mr. Franklin faithfully to bestow his packet there, that very afternoon, and to give it back into no hands but his own.

“You don’t know how you relieve me, Betteredge,” he said, with a sigh, as if a weight was off his mind. “I have carried that trumpery thing about me since I left London, and I am glad to be rid of it.”

That was all he said. Not a word more as to what was inside the seals passed his lips. An old servant’s discretion, you know, is never to ask what he is not told. I asked nothing, and I learnt nothing. I only promised, and I kept my promise — as you shall presently see.

We went on again through the plantation. My mind, it is needless to say, was running on Penelope and the three Indians, and on what my daughter had seen in the boy’s hand. Here was Mr. Franklin come as the boy had foretold, with It about him — for so Penelope had understood the gibberish — and here was Mr. Franklin confessing himself relieved of the weight of something that he had carried secretly from London. Put those two things together, good friend, as I did, and judge for yourself if an old man’s head might not be a little puzzled. Mine was puzzled, I freely own it, and more than a little.

I was still turning the matter over, when we came out upon the lawn, and saw the house before us in the afternoon sun. At the back door stood Penelope, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking out anxiously towards the railway station. When she saw us coming the other way, she started, and ran to meet us, rosy-red with pleasure at the sight of Mr. Franklin, whom she had known, like me, since he was a child.

“Penelope!” cries Mr. Franklin, holding out both his hands. “You were to meet the evening train. Here I am by the afternoon one. Is this surprise or disappointment?”

Penelope took his hands and blushed. “Oh, Mr. Franklin, we are all so glad!” she said. “My lady and Miss Rachel —” She stopped, remembering her manners, and made him her curtsey. “My lady will be so pleased, sir. I was just going to the station —”

“I know, my dear,” says Mr. Franklin kindly. “Your father has told me all about the letter. How is your mother? No — never mind that now. Tell me one thing first. Where is Rosanna Spearman?”

Penelope stared. “How did you — ?” she began.

“Your father and I met her on the sands,” says Mr. Franklin. “I thought she would have come straight back to the house. Has she come back?”

“No, sir,” says Penelope, looking grave directly. “She has not come back to the house. Nancy has had her dinner, and has gone up-stairs grumbling, and Rosanna’s dinner is cold on the dresser. I saw her myself, sir, ten minutes since, from the upper window, walking fast, with her head down, along the cliff path that leads to Cobb’s Hole. She never turned once to look behind her. She has gone on to Cobb’s Hole, father — there is no doubt of it — to see that friend of hers, the fisherman’s wife, that lives there.”

My heart sank at hearing this. A second housemaid out without leave, on a visitor’s first day, with her dinner uneaten, was a thing unheard of in my lady’s house.

“Say nothing to your mistress about it yet awhile,” I said to Penelope. “Mr. Franklin and I will see my lady first. Do you run, my dear, and tell your mistress that Mr. Franklin is here.”

Penelope ran. Mr. Franklin turned to me, twirling his stick in the air in his airy foreign way.

“So Rosanna has got a friend at Cobb’s Hole!” he said. “Betteredge, I am more sorry than ever for having stared at her. What sort of a friend is it?”

“A respectable married woman, sir, though in a humble station,” I answered, thinking of Limping Lucy, the fisherman’s daughter, with her lame foot and her sharp tongue, known all about our parts for a strange solitary creature, much of Rosanna’s own way of thinking. “A little queer in her manners, like Rosanna herself. They took to each other when Rosanna went there once or twice on her Sunday out. It is the only company the poor girl seems to care for.”

Mr. Franklin nodded, and said no more. We followed Penelope into the house, and I bestowed the little sealed packet in my breast-pocket with a pat, to make sure it was safe, while we waited in the hall.

In a minute Penelope came back, with a smile on her face and a message on her lips. My lady would receive Mr. Franklin in her own sitting-room. Would he walk up at once, and would I show him the way?

Up we went, Mr. Franklin’s arm in mine again on the stairs, for he would have it so. My lady was on the sofa, with a book by her side which she had not been reading. She got up with a cry of pleasure, and held out both her hands. Mr. Franklin kissed her on the cheek, after the foreign fashion again, and sat down by her, holding one of her hands in his. To see them together, and to remember that she had been like a mother to him since his father and mother died, did my old eyes good.

“You are welcome, Franklin, love, earlier as well as later,” says my lady. “Rachel will be as surprised and as glad as I am. She is out with the gardener, choosing roses for your room. Sit down and tell me about London.”

They talked of London for a while, and of friends, and of the journey. I stood by the door, waiting to be wanted, and turning the sealed packet over in my mind. Presently my lady’s face grew serious, and she looked at Mr. Franklin with the look which no one in the house ever disobeyed.

“Franklin,” she said, “there is one thing I must ask of you, now that you are under my roof. It is a painful subject, and I mention it only once. Not one word, if you please, from this time forth, about your uncle John Herncastle, is to be spoken in this house. His name is never to pass your lips or mine, before Rachel or before any one. You understand me, love?”

I saw Mr. Franklin’s bright face cloud a little. He pressed my lady’s hand.

“I understand you, aunt,” he said quietly. “Not a word about my uncle Herncastle shall pass my lips while I am your guest. I promise you that faithfully.”

“Thank you, Franklin,” says my lady, and leaned back satisfied. “Now go and wash the dust off, my dear, and make yourself comfortable in your own room. Betteredge will show you up. Dinner is at six, and Rachel will be back by then.”

Mr. Franklin promised, and my lady kissed him, and let him go. As we went out, I heard her sigh, as if the forbidding of that one named subject had cost her something. What quarrel there had been, years back, between my lady and her brother-in-law, Colonel Herncastle of unhappy memory, was more than I knew then. I only knew that my lady meant what she said, and that Mr. Franklin meant his promise to obey her.

I showed Mr. Franklin to his room — the pretty room at the west of the house, looking on the sea — and left him to his washing and changing, with Penelope to see to his unpacking. As for myself, I went straight down to my sitting-room, and took the little sealed packet from my breast, and locked it up then and there, with my own hands, in the plate-room, in the empty cupboard where the old christening cup used to stand. I turned the patent key twice in the iron door, and put the bunch back in my pocket, and felt as proud as if I had locked up the Bank of England.

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough. Miss Rachel — who, you will please to remember, does not appear in person in this part of my story — sent word by Penelope that she was charmed to hear of Mr. Franklin’s early arrival, and would see him at dinner. Dinner went off, by all accounts from Nancy and the cook, with laughter and talk upstairs, and with extra cleaning of plates downstairs. I waited at table as usual on such occasions, in my black suit, and saw with my own eyes that Mr. Franklin was the life of the company, though my lady was a little grave now and then when his foreign spirits ran away with him.

Late that evening, when the house was quiet, I sat alone in my beehive chair in my own little room, with my Robinson Crusoe open on my knee at the old place where I like best to read him after a day’s worry, about the footprint on the sand. The patent key was safe in my pocket, and the small sealed packet was safe behind the iron door in the plate-room, for Mr. Franklin to claim in the morning. My lamp burned low, and the clock had struck eleven, and still there was one uneasiness on my mind that kept me from my sleep and from my book.

Rosanna Spearman was still not back in the house.

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

27 May, Exeter.

My dearest Lucy,

I was so glad of your long letter, though it made me cry a little in the schoolroom to read of poor Dr. Seward and poor Mr. Morris, and then to laugh directly after at your happiness with Arthur. You have, as you say, told me all, and I am proud you trust me, and Jonathan shall hear it all from me, as you permit, when he comes home, for a woman ought to have no secret from her husband that she would keep from her dearest friend, and I know he will rejoice for you.

I write in haste in our dinner hour, with the copy-books piled about me to correct, and Miss Harris keeping the girls at their scales. I try to keep up my shorthand as I promised, and I take down whole pages of the reading lesson to keep my hand in, for Jonathan will laugh if his little wife is slower than his clerks at Hawkins. He writes to me that I am to mind my stops and to practise the typewriter an hour each evening, which I do, though the keys bruise my fingers sadly.

It is now near a fortnight since his hurried lines from Transylvania, in which he said he would be returning in about a week, and I have had no line since. I know the posts are slow in those parts, and Mr. Hawkins tells me I must not fret, for business with foreign deeds drags on, and gentlemen are detained at law offices and by trains missed and such like hindrances. Yet I cannot but feel uneasy, for Jonathan is so punctual a correspondent, and I picture him tired and far from home amongst strangers, with no one to mend his cuffs or to see that he takes his meals. I lie awake and rehearse all I will say when he is safe in England again, and scold myself for folly.

Write soon, dear, and tell me of Arthur, and of the day fixed, and whether your mamma is pleased. I long for the sea air with you, and for one of our old talks by the fire, hair down, with nothing between us.

Your loving MINA.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

27 May. Kept in phonograph.

I find the habit of speaking into the machine steadies me after a broken night. Yesterday left me low, and to-day I have sought relief, as before, in work amongst my patients.

Renfield I followed through the grounds in the forenoon. He was quiet, almost rational, picking up flies against the south wall and marking their number in a little book with a pencil stump, which he guards jealously. He spoke freely of his fancies, if fancies they be, of gathering life, as he terms it, from small things to greater, and was civil and even merry, offering to show me how a spider will take a fly if I will wait. There was in my manner, I fear, too keen a wish to trace his fixed idea to its root, for I plied him with questions upon his lists and his hours, till he grew sullen and turned his back.

Presently, without any leading from me, and after a full minute of silence, he looked up sideways and said, quite plainly, Tell me, Doctor, how is Miss Westenra?

I was taken aback, I own. I asked him what he meant and where he had heard the name. He smiled in his sly way and would add nothing, save that a gentleman hears much that is not told him. I pressed him, and he said at last that an attendant had spoken in the corridor of a young lady to be married, and he had picked up the name. This may well be true, for Hennessey talks freely before the patients, and I have had occasion to reprove him. I let the matter drop, for excitement does him harm, and noted it here as worth remembrance that even in seclusion the talk of the house reaches their ears. He returned to his flies directly, and was quite content.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

17, Chatham Street, 28 May.

My dearest Mina,

Your sweet anxious note came this morning, and I kiss you for it. You must not fret about Jonathan. Men are such bad writers when business keeps them, and Arthur tells me that in the autumn he was six weeks in Scotland about a lease and wrote but twice, though he loved me, or was to love me, all the time. Jonathan will come back brown and hungry and full of stories of strange inns and mountains, and you will typewrite his journal for him and scold him for his boots, and all will be as it should.

We are all bustle here. Mamma is better in spirits and takes an interest in linen, which is a good sign, and Arthur comes in and out as if the house were already his own, which indeed it nearly is. He brings his sister to call, and they tease me about housekeeping, in which, as you know, I am sadly to seek. Mr. Morris has written Arthur a merry note, and Dr. Seward calls less often, but when he does he is kindness itself, and looks me straight in the face in that grave way of his, and says he hopes I am happy, which I am, oh so happy that it frightens me.

You ask of the day. Arthur wishes September, when his father takes the moors, that we may be quiet. Think of me then, Mina, a sober married woman, despising vanity, as we agreed. I practise ordering dinner and mending gloves, and burn the pudding with great regularity. Arthur eats it and says it is perfection, which shows either love or stupidity, and I tell him so.

Keep up your brave heart, dear. Jonathan is strong and clever, and Hawkins thinks highly of him, and a week of delay in foreign places is nothing. When he is home you must bring him to town, and Arthur and you and I will go to the picture-galleries together, and Mr. Morris shall make American slang for us if he will.

Ever your loving LUCY. P.S. Arthur sends his regards to Mr. Harker, whom he longs to meet.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

29 May, morning. Kept in phonograph.

Last evening Quincey Morris kept his promise of a camp-fire in London. Arthur and I dined with him in his chambers in Piccadilly at eight. The rooms are small but snug, hung with skins and horns from Texas and the Marquesas, and a photograph of our tent at the Korea, which made us all laugh to remember.

We were but the three of us, as arranged, for the lady whose health we were to drink was, as Morris put it, engaged elsewhere. Dinner was plain and excellent, soup and roast and claret, served by his man, whom he had trained to leave us alone with the wine. Arthur was in high spirits, and wore in his buttonhole a white flower which a certain hand had given him. Morris was at his best, merry without folly, and told yarns of prairie nights to cover any awkwardness towards me, for which I was grateful. There was no constraint between us.

After the cloth was drawn Morris rose and said, Art, Jack, fill to the brim, for we drink to the happiest man in the wide world and to the noblest heart God ever made. We stood and drank to Lucy and Arthur, and Arthur flushed and shook us both by the hand, and said words had been given him which would make our ears tingle the night before, and now he gave them back doubled. He told us the wedding is to be in September, and that his mother is to lend them the house at Hillingham for the honeymoon, and asked me to stand with Morris at the ceremony. I pledged myself willingly, though with a sore heart bravely hidden, for I would not cloud his joy.

We smoked late and parted the best of friends. Morris walked with me to my cab and said, Jack, you behaved like a true fellow, and I honour you. I came home eased. Work and friendship are good physicians.

Letter, Sister Agatha, Hospital of St. Joseph, Buda-Pesth, to Miss Mina Murray.

28 May.

Dear Madam,

I write by request of your friend, Mr. Jonathan Harker, of Exeter, England, who is now under our care in this hospital, and who begs that you will not be alarmed at hearing from a stranger in a foreign place.

Mr. Harker reached this town on the 24th inst. in a state of great exhaustion and nervous fever, having travelled night and day from the interior, with little food or rest. He was for some days light-headed and unable to give a clear address, but he held fast a little book and a crucifix upon a string, and repeated your name continually. By the goodness of God the fever has now turned, and he sleeps quietly and takes broth, though he remains very weak and thin, and the doctor forbids all exertion of mind.

He desires me to tell you that he is safe and in kind hands, and that you are not to grieve. He has been delayed by this sickness, and will not be able to leave here for some weeks, till strength returns. He asks forgiveness for silence, which was not his fault, and prays you will inform his employer, Mr. Hawkins, that papers entrusted to him have miscarried upon the road, and business must wait upon health.

I am to add that he talks much of returning to England and of home, and this hope aids his recovery. If you wish to write, a letter directed here will reach him, though he may not yet answer it himself.

Commend him to your prayers.

I am, dear Madam, yours faithfully in Christ, SISTER AGATHA.

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

30 May, Exeter.

My dearest Lucy,

You will have had my note of yesterday when this reaches you, and now all is changed. Even as I wrote that Jonathan was merely detained by business, there came to me by the afternoon post the enclosed letter from Buda-Pesth, which I copy out lest the original miscarry, for you must read every word.

Oh, Lucy, he has been ill, very ill, with fever amongst strangers, and I knew nothing. I sat in the schoolroom correcting sums whilst he called for me. Sister Agatha writes kindly, but weeks, she says, before he may travel. Mr. Hawkins has been most good, and says my place must be to go to him at once, for a nurse who loves him is worth physic, and my summer holiday may be taken now. I have my savings, and Miss Harris will take my class.

I go to-morrow by the morning train to town, and thence by the night mail to Dover and onward. I have telegraphed to the hospital that I am coming. Do not fear for me, dear. I am strong when there is duty to be done, and my shorthand will serve to take the doctor's orders. Pray for Jonathan and for me, that I may find him mending and bring him home your Jonathan's wife in deed as in heart.

I cannot write more. Kiss Arthur for me, and tell him to keep a place for us at the wedding. Keep my secret till I am gone, save to your mamma.

Your loving MINA.

Telegram from Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

30 May. Arrive Exeter to-morrow with Jonathan married this morning God bless us Mina