He stood upright in the drawing-room, restored the blind and the heavy curtains to their positions, and then ventured to press the button of his lamp. He saw once more the vast outlines of the room which he had last seen under such circumstances of woe. The great pieces of furniture were enveloped in holland covers, and resembled formless ghosts in the pale illumination of the lamp. He shivered again. He was afraid now, with the fear of the unknown, the forbidden, and the withheld. Why was he there? What could he hope to discover?

In answer to these questions, he replied:

'Why did Francis Tudor order that the flat should be closed? He must have had some reason. I will find it out. It is essential to my peace of mind to know. I meant to commit murder to-day; I have only committed burglary. I ought to congratulate myself and sing for joy, instead of feeling afraid.'

So he reassured his spirit as he stepped carefully into the midst of the holland-covered and moveless ghosts. On the mantelpiece to the left there still stood the electric table-light, and by its side still lay the screwdriver.... He determined to pass straight through the drawing-room. At the further edge of the carpet, on the parquet flooring between the carpet and the portiere leading to the inner hall, he noticed under the ray of his lamp footprints in the dust—footprints of a man, and smaller footprints, either of a woman or a child. He remained motionless, staring at them. Then it occurred to him that during the days between the death of its tenant and the sealing-up the flat would probably not have been cleaned, and that these footprints must have been made months ago by the last persons to leave the flat. Little dust would fall after the closing of the flat. He was glad that he had thought of that explanation. It was a convincing explanation.

Nevertheless he dared not proceed. For on the other mantelpiece to the right there was a clock, and while staring in the ghostly silence at the footprints, he had fancied that his ear caught the ticking of the clock. Imagination, doubtless! But he dared not proceed until he had satisfied himself that his ears had deluded him; and, equally, he dared not approach the clock to satisfy himself. He could only gaze at the reflection of the clock in the opposite mirror. In the opposite mirror the hands indicated half a minute past nine; hence the clock was really at half a minute to three, and if it was actually going, it might be expected to strike immediately. He waited. He heard a preliminary grinding noise familiar to students of symptoms in clocks, and in the fraction of a second he was bathed from head to foot in a cold perspiration.

The clock struck three.

The next instant he walked boldly up to the clock and bent his ear to it. No, he could hear nothing. It had stopped. He glared steadily at the hands for two minutes by his own watch; they did not move.

In the back of his head, in the small of his back, in his legs, little tracts of his epidermis tickled momentarily. He wiped his face, and walked boldly away from the clock to the portiere, which he lifted with one arm. Then he threw the light of his lamp direct on the dial, and glared at it again, fearful lest it should have taken advantage of his departure to resume its measuring of eternity.

Could a clock go for four months? A clock could be made that would go for four months. But this was not a freak-clock. It was a large Louis Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own knowledge; he had bought it.

He dropped the portiere between himself and the clock, and stood in the inner hall. He had had as much of the drawing-room as was good for his nerves.

The inner hall was oblong in shape, and measured about twelve feet at its greatest width. In front of him, as he stood with his back to the drawing-room, was a closed door, which he knew led into the principal bedroom of the flat. To his right another heavy portiere divided the inner from the outer hall. This portiere hung in straight perpendicular folds. He wondered why the portieres had not been taken down and folded away.

He decided to penetrate first into the bedroom, partly because he deemed the bedroom might contain the solution of the enigma, and partly because his eye had fancied it saw a slight tremor in the portiere leading to the outer hall. So he stepped stoutly across the space which separated him from the bedroom door. But he had not reached the door before there was a loud, sharp explosion, and a panel of the door splintered and showed a hole, and he thought he heard a faint cry.

A revolver shot!

He did not believe in anything so far-fetched as man-traps and spring-guns. Hence there must be some person or persons in the flat. Some unseen intelligence was following him. Some mysterious will had ordained that he should not enter that bedroom. The shot was a warning. He guessed from the flight of the splinters and the appearance of the hole that the mysterious will must be on the other side of the portiere, but the portiere gave no sign.

What was he to do? He had brought with him no weapon. He had not anticipated that revolvers would be needed in the exploration of an empty and forbidden flat. The very definite terrors of the inner hall seemed to him to surpass the vaguer terrors of the drawing-room, and he decided to return thither in order to consider quietly what his tactics should be; if necessary, he could return to the dome for arms and assistance. But no sooner did he move a foot towards the drawing-room than another shot sounded. The drawing-room portiere trembled, and something crashed within the apartment. The mysterious will had ardently decided that he should go neither back nor forward.

'Who's there? Who's that shooting?' he muttered thickly, and extinguished his lamp.

He had meant to cry out loud, but, to his intense surprise, his throat was dried up.

There was no answer, no stir, no noise. The silence that exists between the stars seemed to close in upon him. Then he really knew what fear was. He admitted to himself that he was unmistakably and horribly afraid. He admitted that life was inconceivably precious, and the instinct to preserve it the greatest of all instincts. And gradually he came to see that the safest course was the most desperate course, and gradually his courage triumphed over his fear.

He dropped gently to his hands and knees, and began, with a thousand precautions, to crawl like a serpent towards the outer hall. The darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly over his head. At last his hands touched the portiere. He hesitated, listened, and put one hand under the portiere. Then, relighting the lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portiere, and clutched for the unseen intelligence.

But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the cabinet de toilette, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants' quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily.



CHAPTER XVII

POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN

Then it was that he heard a noise, something between scratching and fumbling, on the further side of the front-door, in the main corridor of the flats. He could see through the ground glass over the door that the corridor was lighted as usual.

He thought: 'Someone is breaking the seal on that door!' And his next idea was: 'Since the seal is being broken in the full light of the public corridor, it is being broken by someone who has the right to break it. Only one man has the right, and that man is Francis Tudor's executor, Senior Polycarp.'

The noise of scratching and fumbling ceased, and a key was placed in the lock.

Hugo hastily extinguished his lamp, and hid behind the portiere. Immediately the lamp was extinguished he observed, what he had not observed before, that a faint light came through the aperture of the door leading to the servants' quarters.

The front-door opened, and he heard footsteps in the hall. Then ensued a pause. Then the footsteps advanced, and the newcomer evidently went into the room where the faint light was.

'Come out of that!'

Yes; it was Polycarp's quiet, mincing, imperious voice.

'Come out of it yourself!'

The answering tones were gruff, heavy, full, the speech of a strong coarse-fibred man.

Hugo peeped cautiously through the portiere. Polycarp was backing slowly out of the room into the hall, followed by a tall, dark, scowling man, who bore an ordinary kitchen candle. Polycarp halted in the middle of the floor. The man also halted; he seemed to be towering over Polycarp in an attitude of menace.

'Let me pass,' said the man. 'I've had enough of this.'

Polycarp smiled scornfully.

'You're caught,' said he. 'You're one of Hawke's men, aren't you?'

'Go to h—-!' was the man's ferocious reply.

'Answer my question, sir.'

'What if I am?' the man grumbled.

'In five minutes you'll be in the hands of the police. I got wind yesterday of what your rascally agency was up to. You needn't deny anything. You're working on behalf of Mr. Ravengar. You know me! Mr. Ravengar happens to be a client of mine, but after to-night he will be so no longer. What he wants done in this flat I cannot guess, but it's an absolute certainty that you're in for three years' penal, my friend.'

'Let me pass,' the man repeated, lifting his jaw, 'or I'll blow your brains out!'

He produced his revolver.

'Oh no, you won't,' said Polycarp coldly. 'You daren't. You aren't on the stage, and you aren't in Texas. And you aren't a bold Bret Harte villain. You're simply the creature of a private inquiry agency, as it's called, the most miserable of trades! Usually you spend your time in manufacturing divorces, but just now you're doing something more dangerous even than that, something that needed more pluck than you've got. I should advise you to come with me quietly.'

Polycarp was in evening dress, and carried a pair of white gloves. Hugo decidedly admired the old dandy as he stood there gazing up so condescendingly at the man with the candle.

'Look here!' said the man with the candle. 'Let me pass. I don't want any fuss. I want to go. There's more in this flat than I bargained for. Let me pass.'

'Give me that revolver,' Polycarp smoothly demanded.

'Curse it!' cried the man. 'I'll give it you! Hands up, you old fool! Do you think I'm here for fun?'

And he raised the revolver.

'I shall not put my hands up.'

'I'll count five,' said the man grimly, 'and if you don't—'

'Count.'

'One!... two!... three! Can't you see I mean it?'

Hugo perceived plainly the murderous, wild look on the man's face. He knew what it was to feel murderous. He knew that in a fit of homicide all considerations of prudence, all care for the future, vanish away, that the mind is utterly monopolized by the obsession of the one single desire.

Polycarp disdainfully sneered:

'Four!'

Hugo could withstand the strain no more. He bounded out from his concealment, and snatched the revolver from the man's hand.

'I forgot you,' growled the man, glancing at him, disgusted.

And so saying he dashed the candle in Polycarp's face and knocked him violently against Hugo. Both Hugo and Polycarp fell to the ground. The man made a leap for the door, and in a second had fled, banging it after him. Hugo and Polycarp rose with stiff movements. Hugo picked up his lamp, and the two confronted each other. It was a highly delicate situation.

'Your life is, at any rate, saved,' said Hugo at length.

'You think it was in danger?'

Polycarp's lip curled.

'I think so.'

'Possibly you foresaw the danger I ran,' Polycarp remarked with frigid irony, 'and came into the flat with the intention of protecting me. May I ask how you came in?'

'I came in through the drawing-room window,' said Hugo. 'I did not interfere with your seals, however,' he added.

'You know you are guilty of a criminal offence?'

'I know it.'

'And that I, as executor of the late Francis Tudor, have a duty which I must perform, no matter how unpleasant both for you and for me?'

'Just so.'

'What are you doing here? Do you think your conduct is worthy of a gentleman?'

Hugo put the candle down on a table, and dug his hands into his pockets.

'At this moment,' said he, 'I am not a gentleman. I am just a man. Nothing else. I will appeal to you as another man. I need hardly say that I have no connection with the opposition firm; I was entirely ignorant of the presence of Hawke's mission here when I broke into the flat. I had no notion that Ravengar was pursuing investigations similar to mine. Mr. Polycarp, Ravengar is, or was, a client of yours—'

'Was.'

'Yes, I heard what you said a few moments ago. Was a client of yours. I am sure, therefore, that no one knows better than you that Ravengar is not an honest man. On the other hand, I am equally sure that on the few occasions when you and I have met I must have impressed you as a comparatively honest man. Is it not so? I speak without false modesty. Is it not so?'

Polycarp nodded.

'Well, then,' proceeded Hugo, walking slowly about, 'you will probably need no convincing that in any difficulty between me and Ravengar I am in the right. Now, there have been, and are, matters between Ravengar and me in which others had best not interfere, even indirectly. I shall end those matters in my own way, because I am the strongest, and because my hands are clean. I can give you no details. But let me tell you that once the whole of my life's dream was in this flat, this flat which you have legally closed, and I have illegally opened. Let me tell you that my life, the only part of my life for which I cared, came to an end in this flat some months ago: and that a mystery hangs over that event which has lately made intolerable even the dead-alive existence which Fate had left to me. Let me tell you that circumstances have arisen this very day which rendered it impossible for me to keep myself out of this flat, be the penalty what it might. And, finally, let me make my appeal to you.'

'What do you want?' asked Polycarp quietly. The sincerity of Hugo's emotion had touched him. 'Don't ask me to act contrary to my duty.'

'But that is just what I shall ask!' Hugo exclaimed. 'Leave me. Leave me till to-morrow: that is my sole wish. What is your duty, after all? Tudor is dead. He is beyond the reach of harm. He requires the protection of no lawyer. Trust me, and leave me. I am an honest man. Forget your law, forget your parchments, forget the conventions of society, forget everything except that you are human, and can do a service to a fellow-creature. Exercise some imagination, and see how artificial and absurd is the world of ideas in which you live. Listen to your heart, and help me. I am worth it. Can't you see how I suffer? To-day I have been through as much as I can stand. I am at the end of my forces, and I must have sympathy. You will be guilty of deliberate neglect of duty in leaving me here, but I implore you to leave me. And I give no specific reason why you should. Will you?'

There was a silence.

'Yes,' said Polycarp.

'I thank you.'

'I don't know why I should consent,' Polycarp continued, 'but I do. I am quite in the dark. Legally, I am a disgrace to my profession. I forfeit my professional honour. But I will consent. Do what you like. Go out as you came in and leave no trace. If, however—'

'Don't trouble to say that,' Hugo interrupted him. 'I shall take no unfair advantage of your generosity. The flat and all its contents are absolutely safe in my hands. And if you should decide, in the future, that I must accept the consequences of to-night's work, I shall not shuffle. All I want is to be left alone now.'

Polycarp opened the door.

'Good-night,' he said. 'Perhaps you did save my life. But if you had appealed on that account to my gratitude I should have been obliged to refuse your request.'

'I know it,' said Hugo. 'I knew whom I was talking to. Good-night, and thanks.'

'I shall lock this door,' Polycarp called out, departing.

'Yes, do; and, I say, you'll lay hands on that man of Hawke's easily enough in a day or two.'

'Oh, certainly,' said Polycarp. 'I have not forgotten him. But I was compelled to deal with you first.'

Twisting his white moustache, and buttoning his overcoat across the vast acreage of his shirt-front, Polycarp disappeared from Hugo's view into the corridor.



CHAPTER XVIII

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Hugo bolted the front-door on the inside, relighted the candle which Hawke's man had used as a weapon, and placed it in the middle of the hall floor. He then penetrated into the servants' part of the flat, and emerged on to the balcony by the small side-door, which was open, and had evidently been forced by Hawke's man. And there, on the balcony, he leaned over the balustrade in the cold humid night, and tried to recover his calmness. He felt that any systematic, scientific search of the premises would be impossible to him until his mind resembled somewhat less a sea across which a hurricane has just passed.

Many questions stood ready to puzzle his brain, but he ignored them all, and fell into a vague reverie, of which Camilla was the centre. And from this reverie he was suddenly startled by the clear, unmistakable sound of a door being shut within the flat. It was not the shutting of a door by the wind, but the careful, precise shutting of a door by some person who had a habit of shutting doors as doors ought to be shut.

'Polycarp has returned!' was his first thought. But he remembered. 'No! I bolted the front-door on the inside.'

The conundrum of the clock and of the two sizes of footprints in the drawing-room recurred to him. Without allowing himself to hesitate, he strode back again into the flat, with a sort of unbreathed sigh, an unuttered complaint against circumstances for not giving him an instant's peace.

The candle was still placidly burning in the hall, but its position had certainly been shifted by at least three feet. It was much nearer the portiere leading to the inner hall. Hugo listened intently. Not a sound! And he stared interrogatively at the candle as though the candle were a guilty thing.

However, he now possessed the revolver of Hawke's man, and this gave him confidence. He left the perambulating candle to itself, and proceeded to the inner hall by the light of his own electric lamp. The door of the principal bedroom, which he had originally meant to invade, lay to his right; the entrance to the drawing-room lay to his left. He thought he would take another look at the drawing-room, and then he thought:

'No; I'll tackle the bedroom.'

And he seized the handle of the bedroom door. At the first trial it would not turn, but in a moment it turned a little, and then turned back against his pressure.

'Someone's got hold of it inside!' he said to himself.

He put the lamp on a chair, and took the revolver from his pocket in readiness for any complications that might follow his forcing of the door.

Then he heard a woman's voice within the bedroom.

'I shall open it, Alb, if you kill me for it. I don't care who it is. You may be dying of loss of blood. In fact, I'm sure you are.'

And the door was pulled wide open with a single sweeping movement, and Hugo beheld the figure, slightly dishevelled and more than slightly perturbed, of Mrs. Albert Shawn.

'Oh, Alb!' cried Lily. 'It's Mr. Hugo! Oh, Mr. Hugo! whatever next will happen in this world?'

The swift loosing of the tension of Hugo's nerves was too much for his self-possession. He burst into a peal of loud laughter. It was unnaturally loud, it was hysterical; but it was genuine laughter, and it did him good.

Lily straightened herself. So far, she had not admitted Hugo into the chamber.

'It's all very well for you to laugh like that, Mr. Hugo,' she protested sharply; 'but perhaps you don't know that you've nearly killed my husband with that there revolver. The shot came through the door, and took him in the arm just as he was emptying this safe.'

Hugo saw Albert Shawn lying on the stripped bed, a handkerchief tied round his arm, and in the corner near the door a large safe opened, and its contents in a heap on the floor.

'It's all right, sir,' said Albert; 'come in. I'm nowhere near croaking. I didn't know you were on this lay as well as me, sir. I thought I was going to come down on you to-morrow with a surprise like a thousand of bricks.'

'What lay, Albert?' asked Hugo, advancing into the room.

'The secret-finding lay, sir,' said Albert.

'Your wife has the right to be anxious about you,' Hugo observed, after a pause. 'But you don't seem to be quite dying, Shawn; and I think it will be as well if you explain to me why you have adopted the profession of burglar. It is extremely singular that there should have been three burglars here to-night. You, and then me—'

'What did I tell you, Alb?' Mrs. Albert Shawn exclaimed. 'Didn't I tell you I heard a scuffle?'

'The scuffle was between me and No. 3. And be it known to you, Mrs. Shawn, that the revolver was not fired by me, but by No. 3. I took it off him, afterwards.'

'Then No. 3 must have come on behalf of Mr. Ravengar, sir,' said Albert.

'You are no doubt right,' Hugo agreed. 'But how did you know that?'

'Hawke's Detective Agency, sir. I found out before my wedding that one of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him. I spun him a yarn how I'd been with Hawke's once, and they gave me the bag, and I wasn't satisfied, and he'd got a lot of grievances against Hawke's, too, he had. We got very friendly. Pity I had to leave the thing for my wedding. But I came back after a week.'

'Yes, that he did, sir,' said Lily proudly, 'and insisted on it.'

'I soon knew they were going to burglarize this flat to get some phonograph records.'

'Phonograph records!' Hugo repeated, pondering.

'Yes, sir; and so I thought I'd be beforehand with 'em.'

'Why didn't you tell me directly you knew?'

'You gave me that Gaboriau book to read, sir, and I learnt a lot from it. It's put me up to a power of things. And, amongst others, that two people can't manage one job. One job, one man.'

'You'll excuse Albert, sir,' said Lily; 'that's only his way of talking.'

'It was simply this, sir. I found out enough to make me as sure as eggs is eggs that you'd like to have those phonograph records yourself, without having to inquire too much where they came from or how they came.'

'I see.'

'Exactly, sir. Well, to cut a long story short, sir, I happened to come across something yesterday that made me think that the annual sale was going to be interfered with by parties unknown. But I'd got all I could manage, and I left that alone; I'd no time for it. And last night parties unknown tried to break my leg for me with an open cellar-flap. I knew it was a plant, and so I pretended it had succeeded.'

'He made me think his ankle was that sprained he couldn't walk. He wouldn't trust even me, sir,' said Lily.

'Gaboriau,' Albert explained briefly. 'I knew I was watched, and I told Lily to tell the milkman I couldn't walk. It was all over Radipole Road at eight o'clock this morning. And so, while parties unknown thought I was fast on a sofa, I slipped out by the back-door as soon as I'd sent Lily here to warn you about the annual sale, in case of necessity. I must say I thought I should be twenty-four hours in front of Hawke's men, but I expect they changed their plans. I brought Lily along with me at the last moment. She's read Gaboriau, too, sir, and she's mighty handy.'

'I am aware of it,' said Hugo.

'Anyhow, we got in here first, by the side-door on the balcony. Hawke's man must have come in about an hour after us, and you just after him. That's how I reckon it.'

'You went into the drawing-room, didn't you?' Hugo asked.

'Just looked in.'

'And played with the clock?'

Here he glanced sternly at Lily.

'I shook it to start it, sir, to see if it would go,' Lily admitted.

'I reckon you turned out Hawke's man, sir?' Albert queried.

'It amounted to that,' said Hugo. 'But these phonograph records—what are they?'

'I don't know what they are,' said Albert, descending from the bed, 'but I know that Mr. Ravengar wanted them very badly. It seems Mr. Tudor was a great hand at phonographs and gramophones. Like me, sir.'

'Yes, sir; we've got a beauty. My uncle gave it us,' Lily put in. 'Oh, Alb! your arm's all burst out again.'

The bandage was, in fact, slightly discoloured.

'Oh, that's nothing, my dear,' said Albert.

He pushed up a pile of discs from in front of the safe, and displayed them to Hugo.

'Can we try them here?' Hugo demanded, in a voice suddenly and profoundly eager.

'Certainly, sir. Here's the machine. You undo this catch, and then you—'

Albert was mounted on his latest hobby, and in a few minutes, although he could only use one arm, the phonograph, which stood on the table near the safe, was ready for its work of reproduction. Albert started it.

'Follow me, follow me!'

It began to sing the famous ditty in the famous voice of Miss Edna May.

'Stop that!' cried Hugo, and Albert stopped it.

The next two discs proved to be respectively a series of stories of Mr. R.G. Knowles and 'The Lost Chord,' played on a cornet. And these also were cut short. Then came a bundle of discs tied together. Hugo himself fixed the top one, and the machine, after whirring inarticulately, said in slow, clear tones:

'In case I should die before—'

Hugo arrested the action.

'Go,' he said, almost threateningly, to Albert and his wife. 'Mrs. Shawn, look after your husband's wound. It needs it. See the blood!'

'But—'

'Go,' said Hugo.

And they went.

And when they were gone he released the mechanism, and in the still solitude of the bedroom listened to the strange story of Francis Tudor, related in Francis Tudor's own voice. It occurred to him that the man must have been talking into a phonograph shortly before he died. He remembered the monotonous voice on that fatal night in August.



CHAPTER XIX

WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID

In case I should die before I can complete my arrangements for the future (said the phonograph, reproducing the voice of Francis Tudor), I am making a brief statement of the whole case into this phonograph. I am exhausted with to-day's work, and I shall find it easier and much quicker to speak than to write; and I'm informed that I ought never to exert myself more than is necessary. Supposing I were to die within the next few days—and I have yet to go through the business of the funeral ceremonies!—circumstances might arise which might nullify part of my plan, unless a clear account of the affair should ultimately come into the hands of some person whom I could trust not to make a fool of himself—such as Polycarp, my solicitor, for instance.

Hence I relate the facts for a private record.

When I first met Camilla Payne she was shorthand clerk or private secretary, or whatever you call it, to Louis Ravengar. I saw her in his office. Curiously, she didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this, you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But do you hate sentimental details? I don't know. Anyhow, this isn't a counsel's brief. What was I saying? Oh! She didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment, but I thought of her afterwards. I thought of her a good deal in a quiet way after I had left her—so much so that I made a special journey to Ravengar's a few days afterwards, when there was no real need for me to go, in order to have a look at her face again. I should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very unpleasant for any bearer of that name. Still, Ravengar happened to be the man I wanted to deal with, and so I didn't let any stupid resentment on my part stop me from dealing with him. He was a scoundrel, but he played the game, I may incidentally mention. I venture to give this frank opinion about one of your most important clients, because he'll be dead before you read this, Polycarp. At least, I expect so.

Well, the day I called specially with a view to seeing her she was not there. She had left Ravengar's employment, and disappeared. Ravengar seemed to be rather perturbed about it. But perhaps he was perturbed about the suicide which had recently taken place in his office. I felt it—I mean I felt her disappearance. However, the memory of her face gave me something very charming to fall back on in moments of depression, and it was at this time something occurred sufficient to make me profoundly depressed for the remainder of my life. I was over in Paris, and seeing a good deal of Darcy, my friend the English doctor there. We were having a long yarn one night in his rooms over the Cafe Americain, and he said to me suddenly: 'Look here, old chap, I'm going to do something very unprofessional, because I fancy you'll thank me for it.' He said it just like that, bursting out all of a sudden. So I said, 'Well?' He said: 'It's very serious, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand I should be a blundering idiot to tell you.' I said to him: 'You've begun. Finish. And let's see whether I'll thank you.' He then told me that I'd got malignant disease of the heart, might die at any moment, and in any case couldn't live more than a few years. He said: 'I thought you'd like to know, so that you could arrange your life accordingly.' I thanked him. I was really most awfully obliged to him. It wanted some pluck to tell me. He said: 'I wouldn't admit to anyone else that I'd told you.' I never admired Darcy more than I did that night. His tone was so finely casual.

In something like a month I had got used to the idea of being condemned to death. At any rate, it ceased to interfere with my sleep. I purchased a vault for myself in Brompton Cemetery. Then I took this flat that I'm talking in now, and began deliberately to think over how I should finish my life. I'd got money—much more than old Ravengar imagined—and I'm a bit of a philosopher, you know; I have my theories as to what constitutes real living. However, I won't bother you with those. I expect they're pretty crude, after all. Besides, my preparations were all knocked on the head. I saw Camilla Payne again in Hugo's. She had stopped typewriting, and was a milliner there. I tried my level best to strike up an intimacy with her, but I failed. She wouldn't have it. The fact is, I was too rich and showy. And I had a reputation behind me which, possibly—well, you're aware of all that, Polycarp. In about a fortnight I worshipped her—yes, I did actually worship her. I would have done anything she ordered me, except leave her alone; and that I wouldn't do. I dare say I might have got into a sort of friendship with her if she'd had any home, any relatives, any place to receive me in. But what can a girl do with nothing but a bed-sitting-room? I asked her to go up the river; I asked her to dinner and to lunch, and to bring her friends with her; I even asked her to go with me to an A.B.C. shop, but she wouldn't. She was quite right, in a general way. How could she guess I wasn't like the rest, or like what I had been?

Once, when she let me walk with her from Hugo's down to Walham Green, I nearly went mad with joy. I think I verily was mad for a time. I used to take out licenses for our marriage, and I used to buy clothes for her—heaps of clothes, in case. Yes, I was as good as mad then. And when she made it clear that this walking by my side was nothing at all, meant nothing, and must be construed as nothing, I grew still more mad.

At last I wrote to her that if she didn't call and see me at my flat, I should blow my brains out. I didn't expect her to call, and I did expect that I should blow my brains out. I was ready to do so. A year more or a year less on this earth—what did it matter to me?

Some people may think—you may think, Polycarp—that a man like me, under sentence of death from a doctor, had no right to make love to a woman. That may be so. But in love there isn't often any question of right. Human instincts have no regard for human justice, and when the instinct is strong enough, the sense of justice simply ceases to exist for it. When you're in love—enough—you don't argue. You desire—that's all.

To my amazement, she came to the flat. When she was announced, I could scarcely tell the servant to show her in, and when she entered, I couldn't speak at all for a moment. She was so—however, I won't describe her. I couldn't, for one thing. No one could describe that woman. She didn't make any fuss. She didn't cry out that she had ruined her reputation or anything like that. She simply said that she had received my letter, and that she had believed the sincerity of my threat, while regretting it, and what did I wish to say to her—she wouldn't be able to stay long. It goes without saying I couldn't begin. I couldn't frame a sentence. So I suggested we should have some tea. Accordingly, we had some tea. She poured it out, and we discussed the furniture of the drawing-room. I might have known she had fine taste in furniture. She had. When tea was over, she seemed to be getting a little impatient. Then I rang for the tray to be removed, and as soon as we were alone again, I started: 'Miss Payne—'

Now, when I started like that, I hadn't the ghost of a notion what I was going to say. And then the idea stepped into my head all of a sudden: 'Why not tell her exactly what your situation is? Why not be frank with her, and see how it works?' It was an inspiration. Though I didn't believe in it, and thought in a kind of despair that I was spoiling my chances, it was emphatically an inspiration, and I was obliged to obey it.

So I told her what Darcy had told me. I explained how it was that I couldn't live long. I said I had nothing to hope for in this world, no joy, nothing but blackness and horror. I said how tremendously I was in love with her. I said I knew she wasn't in love with me, but at the same time I thought she ought to have sufficient insight to see that I was fundamentally a decent chap. I went so far as to say that I didn't see how she could dislike me. And I said: 'I ask you to marry me. It will only be for a year or two, but that year or two are all my life, while only a fraction of yours. I am rich, and after my death you will be rich, and free from the necessity of this daily drudgery of yours. But I don't ask you to marry me for money; I ask you to marry me out of pity. I ask you, out of kindness to the most unfortunate and hopeless man in the world, to give me a trifle out of your existence. Merely out of pity; merely because it is a woman's part in the world to render pity and balm. I won't hide anything from you. There will be the unpleasant business of my sudden death, which will be a shock to you, even if you learn to hate me. But you would get over that. And you would always afterwards have the consciousness of having changed the last months of a man's career from hell to heaven. There's no disguising the fact that it's a strange proposition I'm making to you, but the proposition is not more strange than the situation. Will you consent, or won't you?' She was going to say something, but I stopped her. I said: 'Wait a moment. I shan't try to terrorize you by threats of suicide. And now, before you say "Yes" or "No," I give you my solemn word not to commit suicide if you say "No."' Then I went on in the same strain appealing to her pity, and telling her how humble I should be as a husband.

I could see I had moved her; and now I think over the scene I fancy that my appeal must have been a lot more touching than I imagined it was when I was making it.

She said: 'I have always liked you a little. But I haven't loved you, and I don't love you.' And then, after a pause—I was determined to say nothing more—she said: 'Yes, I will marry you. I may be doing wrong—I am certainly doing something very unusual; but I have no one to advise me against it, and I will follow my impulse and marry you. I needn't say that I shall do all I can to be a good wife to you. Ours will be a curious marriage.... Perhaps, after all, I am very wicked!'

I cried out: 'No, you aren't—no you aren't! The saints aren't in it with you!'

She smiled at this speech. She's so sensible, Camilla is. She's like a man in some things; all really great women are.

I could tell you a lot more that passed immediately afterwards, but I can feel already my voice is getting a bit tired. Besides, it's nothing to you, Polycarp.

Then, afterwards, I said: 'You will love me, you know.'

And I meant it. Any man in similar circumstances would have said it and meant it. She smiled again. And then I wanted to be alone with her, to enjoy the intimacy of her presence, without a lot of servants all over the place; so I went out of the drawing-room and packed off the whole tribe for the evening, all except Mrs. Dant. I kept Mrs. Dant to attend on Camilla.

We had dinner sent up; it was like a picnic, jolly and childish. Camilla was charming. And then I took photographs of her by flashlight, with immense success. We developed them together in the dark-room. That evening was the first time I had ever been really happy in all my life. And I was really happy, although every now and then the idea would shoot through my head: 'Only for a year or two at most; perhaps only for a day or two!'

I returned to the dark-room alone for something or other, and when I came back into the drawing-room she was not there. By heaven! my heart went into my mouth. I feared she had run away, after all. However, I met her in the passage. She looked very frightened; her face was quite changed; but she said nothing had occurred. I kissed her; she let me.

Soon afterwards she went on to the roof. She tried to be cheerful, but I saw she had something on her mind. She said she must go home, and begged my permission to precede me into the flat in order to prepare for her departure. I consented. When ten minutes had elapsed I followed, and in the drawing-room, instead of finding Camilla, I found Louis Ravengar.

I needn't describe my surprise at all that.

Ravengar was beside himself with rage. I gathered after a time that he claimed Camilla as his own. He said I had stolen her from him. I couldn't tell exactly what he was driving at, but I parleyed with him a little until I could get my revolver out of a drawer in my escritoire. He jumped at me. I thrust him back without firing, and we stood each of us ready for murder. I couldn't say how long that lasted. Suddenly he glanced across the room, and his eyes faltered, and I became aware that Camilla had entered silently. I was so startled at her appearance and by the transformation in Ravengar that I let off the revolver involuntarily. I heard Camilla order him, in a sharp, low voice, to leave instantly. He defied her for a second, and then went. Before leaving he stuttered, in a dreadful voice: 'I shall kill you'—meaning her. 'I may as well hang for one thing as for another.'

I said to Camilla, gasping: 'What is it all? What does it mean?'

She then told me, after confessing that she had caught Ravengar hiding in the dressing-room, and had actually suspected that I had been in league with him against her, that long ago she had by accident seen Ravengar commit a crime. She would not tell me what crime; she would give me no particulars. Still, I gathered that, if not actually murder, it was at least homicide. After that Ravengar had pestered her to marry him—had even said that he would be content with a purely formal marriage; had offered her enormous sums to agree to his proposal; and had been constantly repulsed by her. She admitted to me that he had appeared to be violently in love with her, but that his motive in wanting marriage was to prevent her from giving evidence against him. I asked her why she had not communicated with the police long since, and she replied that nothing would induce her to do that.

'But,' I said, 'he will do his best to kill you.'

She said: 'I know it.'

And she said it so solemnly that I became extremely frightened. I knew Ravengar, and I had marked the tone of his final words; and the more I pondered the more profoundly I was imbued with this one idea: 'The life of my future wife is not safe. Nothing can make it safe.'

I urged her to communicate with the police. She refused absolutely.

'Then one day you will be killed,' I said.

She gazed at me, and said: 'Can't you hit on some plan to keep me safe for a year?'

I demanded: 'Why a year?'

I thought she was thinking of my short shrift.

She said: 'Because in a year Mr. Ravengar will probably have—passed away.'

Not another word of explanation would she add.

'Yes,' I said; 'I can hit on a plan.'

And, as a matter of fact, a scheme had suddenly flashed into my head.

She asked me what the scheme was. And I murmured that it began with our marriage on the following day. I had in my possession a license which would enable us to go through the ceremony at once.

'Trust me,' I said. 'You have trusted me enough to agree to marry me. Trust me in everything.'

I did not venture to tell her just then what my scheme was.

She went to her lodging that night in my brougham. After she had gone I found poor old Mrs. Dant drugged in the kitchen. On the next morning Camilla and I were married at a registry office. She objected to the registry-office at first, but in the end she agreed, on the condition that I got her a spray of orange-blossom to wear at her breast. It's no business of yours, Polycarp, but I may tell you that this feminine trait, this almost childish weakness, in a woman of so superb and powerful a character, simply enchanted me. I obtained the orange-blossom.

Then you will remember I sent for you, Polycarp, made my will, and accompanied you to my safe in your private vault, in order to deposit there some secret instructions. I shall not soon forget your mystification, and how you chafed under my imperative commands.

Camilla and I departed to Paris, my brain full of my scheme, and full of happiness, too. We went to a private hotel to which Darcy had recommended us, suitable for honeymoons. The following morning I was, perhaps, inclined to smile a little at our terror of Ravengar; but, peeping out of the window early, I saw Ravengar himself standing on the pavement in the Rue St. Augustin.

I told Camilla I was going out, and that she must not leave that room, nor admit anyone into it, until I returned. I felt that Ravengar, what with disappointed love, and jealousy, and fear of the consequences of a past crime, had developed into a sort of monomaniac in respect to Camilla. I felt he was capable of anything. I should not have been surprised if he had hired a room opposite to us on the other side of that narrow street, and directed a fusillade upon Camilla.

When I reached the street he had disappeared—melted away.

It was quite early. However, I walked up the Rue de Grammont, and so to Darcy's, and I routed him out of bed. I gave him the entire history of the case. I convinced him of its desperateness, and I unfolded to him my scheme. At first he fought shy of it. He said it might ruin him. He said such things could not be done in London. I had meant to carry out the scheme in this flat. Hence the reason, Polycarp, of the clause in my will which provides for the sealing up of the flat in case I die within two months of my wedding. You see, I feared that I might be cut off before the plan was carried out or before all traces of it were cleared away, and I wanted to keep the place safe from prying eyes. As it happened, there was no need for such a precaution, as you will see, and I shall make a new will to-morrow.

Darcy said suddenly: 'Why not carry out your plan here in Paris; and now?'

The superior advantages of this alternative were instantly plain. It would be safer for Camilla, since it would operate at once; and also Darcy said that the formal details could be arranged much better in Paris than in London, as doctors could be found there who would sign anything, and clever sculptors, who did not mind a peculiar commission, were more easily obtainable in the Quartier Montparnasse than in the neighbourhood of the Six Bells and the Arts Club, Chelsea.

We found the doctor and the sculptor.

The hotel was informed that Camilla was ill, and that the symptom pointed to typhoid fever. Naturally, she kept her room. That day the sculptor, a young American, who said that a thing was 'bully' when he meant it was good, arrived, and took a mask of Camilla's head. By the way, this was a most tedious and annoying process. The two straws through which the poor girl had to breathe while her face was covered with that white stuff—! Oh, well, I needn't go into that.

The next day typhoid fever was definitely announced. Hotels generally prefer these things to be kept secret, but we published it everywhere—it was part of our plan. In a few hours the entire Rue St. Augustin was aware that the English bride recently arrived from London was down with typhoid fever.

The disease ran its course. Sometimes Camilla was better, sometimes worse. Then all of a sudden a haemorrhage supervened, and the young wife died, and the young husband was stricken with trouble and grief. The whole street mourned. The death even got into the Paris dailies, and the correspondence column of the Paris edition of the New York Herald was filled with outcries against the impurities of Parisian water.

It was colossal. I laughed, Polycarp.

My mind unhinged by sorrow, I insisted on taking the corpse to London for burial. I had a peculiar affection for the Brompton Cemetery, though neither her ancestors nor mine had been buried there. I insisted on Darcy accompanying me. The procession left the Rue St. Augustin, and the hotel was disinfected. This alone cost me a thousand francs. I gave the sculptor one thousand five hundred, and the doctor two thousand. Then there were the expenses of the journey with the coffin. I forget the figure, but I know it was prodigious.

But I was content. For, of course, Camilla was not precisely in that coffin. Camilla had not been suffering from precisely typhoid fever. In strict fact, she had never been ill the least bit in the world. In strict fact, she had been spirited out of the hotel one night, and at the very moment when her remains were crossing the Channel in charge of an inconsolable widower, she was in the middle of the Mediterranean on a steamer. The coffin contained a really wonderful imitation of her outward form, modelled and coloured by the American sculptor in a composition consisting largely of wax. The widower's one grief was that he was forced to separate himself from his life's companion for a period of, at least, a week.

A pretty enough scheme, wasn't it, Polycarp? We shall shortly bury the wax effigy in Brompton Cemetery, with the assistance of Hugo's undertakers, and a parson or so, and grave-diggers, and registrars of deaths, and so on and so on. Louis Ravengar will breathe again, thankful that typhoid fever has relieved him of an unpleasant incubus, and since Camilla is underground, he will speedily forget all about her. She will be absolutely safe from him. The inconsolable widower will ostentatiously seek distraction in foreign travel, and in a fortnight, at most, will, under another name, resume his connubial career in a certain villa unsurpassed, I am told, for its picturesque situation.

To-morrow or the next day I must make that new will, dispensing with the shutting-up of the flat. The secret instructions, however, will stand.

You may wonder why I confide all this to the phonograph, Polycarp. I will tell you. The record will be placed by me to-morrow in my safe in your vault. To-night I shall lock it up in the safe here. When I am dead, Polycarp, you will find that the secret instructions instruct you to realize all my estate, and to keep the proceeds in negotiable form until a lady named Mrs. Catherine Pounds, a widow, comes to you with an autograph letter from me. You will hand everything to that lady, or to her representative, without any further inquiry. But it has struck me this very day, Polycarp, that you, with your confounded suspicious and legal nature, when you see Mrs. Catherine Pounds, if she should come in person, may recognise in her a striking resemblance to Camilla. And you may put difficulties in the way, and rake up history which was not meant to be raked up. This phonographic record is to prevent you from doing so, if by chance you have an impulse to do so. Think it over carefully, Polycarp. Consider our situation, and obey my instructions without a murmur. The thought of the false death certificates and burial certificates, and of the unprofessionalism of Darcy, will abrade your legal susceptibilities; but submit to the torture for my sake, Polycarp. You are human. I shall add to the letter which Mrs. Catherine Pounds will bring you a note to say that if you have any scruples, you are to listen to the phonographic records in the safe; if not, you are to destroy the phonographic records.

Do I seem gay, Polycarp?

I ought to be. I have carried through my scheme. I have outwitted Ravengar. I have saved Camilla from death at his hands. I can look forward to an idyll—brief, perhaps, but ecstatic—in a villa with the loveliest view on all the Mediterranean. I ought to be gay. And yet I am not. And it is not the knowledge of my fatal disease that saddens me. No; I think I have been saddened by a day and a night spent with that coffin. It is a fraud of a coffin, but it exists. And when I saw it just now occupying the drawing-room, it gave me a sudden shock. It somehow took hold of my imagination. I was obliged to look within, and to touch the waxen image there. And that image seemed unholy. I did not care to dwell on the thought of it going into the ground, with all the solemnities of the real thing. What do you suppose will happen to that waxen image on the Judgment Day, Polycarp? Surely, someone in authority, possibly a steward, fussy and overworked, will exclaim: 'There is some mistake here!' I can hear you say that I am mad, Polycarp, that Francis Tudor was always a little 'wrong.' But I am not mad. It is only that my brain is too agile, too fanciful. I am a great deal more sane than you, Polycarp.

And I am trying to put some heart into myself. I am trying to make ready to enjoy the brief ecstatic future where Camilla awaits me. But I am so tired, Polycarp. And there's no disguising the fact that it's an awful nuisance never to be quite sure whether you won't fall down dead the next minute or the next second. I must go in and have another glance at that singular swindle of a coffin.

* * * * *

The phonograph went off into an inarticulate whirr of its own machinery. The recital was over. Tudor must have died immediately after securing the record in the safe in his bedroom, where Hugo had just listened to it.

'She lives!' was Hugo's sole thought.

The profound and pathetic tragedy of Tudor's career did not touch him until long afterwards.

'She lives! Ravengar lives! Ravengar probably knows where she is, and I do not know! And Ravengar is at large! I have set him at large.'

His mind a battlefield on which the most glorious hope struggled against a frenzied fear, Hugo rose from the chair in front of the phonograph-stand, and, after a slight hesitation, left the flat as he had entered it. Before dawn the pane had been replaced in the drawing-room window, and the side-door secured.



PART III

THE TOMB



CHAPTER XX

'ARE YOU THERE?'

The next morning Hugo's dreams seemed to be concerned chiefly with a telephone, and the telephone-bell of his dreams made the dreams so noisy that even while asleep he knew that his rest was being outrageously disturbed. He tried to change the subject of his fantastic visions, but he could not, and the telephone-bell rang nearly all the time. This was the more annoying in that he had taken elaborate precautions to secure perfect repose. Perfect repose was what he needed after quitting Tudor's flat. He felt that he had stood as much as a man can expect himself to stand. In the vault, and again in the flat, his life had been in danger; he had suffered the ignominy of the ruined sale; he had come to grips with Ravengar, and let Ravengar go free; he had listened to the amazing recital of the phonograph. Moreover, between the interview with Ravengar and the burglary of the flat he had summoned his Council of Ten, or, rather, his Council of Nine (Bentley being absent, dead), had addressed all his employes, had separated three traitorous shopwalkers, ten traitorous cashiers, and forty-two traitorous servers from the main body, and sent them packing, had arranged for the rehabilitation of Lady Brice (nee Kentucky-Webster), had appointed a new guardian to the Safe Deposit, had got on the track of the stolen stoles, and had approved special advertisements for every daily paper in London.

And, finally and supremely, he had experienced the greatest stroke of joy, ecstatic and bewildering joy, of his whole existence—the news that Camilla lived. It was this tremendous feeling of joy, and not by any means his complex and variegated worries, that might have prevented him from obtaining the sleep which Nature demanded.

On reaching the dome at 2 a.m., he had taken four tabloids, each containing 0.324 gramme of trional, and had drunk the glass of hot milk which Simon always left him in case he should want it. And he had written on a sheet of paper the words: 'I am not to be disturbed before 10 a.m., no matter what happens; but call me at ten.—H.'; and had put the sheet of paper on Simon's door-mat. And then he had stumbled into bed, and abandoned himself to sleep—not without reluctance, for he did not care to lose, even for a few hours, the fine consciousness of that sheer joy. He desired to rush off instantly into the universe at large and discover Camilla, wherever she might be.

Of course, he had dreamed of Camilla, but the telephone-bell had drowned the remembered accents of her voice. The telephone-bell had silenced everything. The telephone-bell had grown from a dream into a nightmare; and at last he had said to himself in the nightmare: 'I might just as well be up and working as lying throttled here by this confounded nightmare.' And by an effort of will he had wakened. And even after he was roused, and had switched on the light, which showed the hands of the clock at a quarter to ten, he could still hear the telephone-bell of his nightmare. And then the truth occurred to him, as the truth does occur surprisingly to people whose sleep has been disturbed, that the telephone-bell was a real telephone-bell, and not in the least the telephone-bell of a dream, and it was ringing, ringing, ringing in the dome. There were fifteen lines of telephone in the Hugo building, and one of them ran to the dome. Few persons called him up on it, because few persons knew its precise number, but he used it considerably himself.

'Anyhow,' he murmured, 'I've had over seven and a half hours' sleep, and that's something.'

And as he got out of bed to go across to the telephone, his great joy resumed possession of him, and he was rather glad than otherwise that the telephone had forced him to wake.

'Well, well, well?' he cried comically, lifting the ear-piece off the hook and stopping the bell.

'Are you there?' the still small voice of the telephone whispered in his ear.

'I should think I was here!' he cried. 'Who are you?'

'Are you Mr. Hugo?' asked the voice.

'I'm what's left of Mr. Hugo,' he answered in a sort of drunken tone. The power of the sedative was still upon him. 'Who are you? You've pretty nearly rung my head off.'

'I just want to say good-bye to you,' said the voice.

'What!'

Hugo started, glancing round the vast room, which was in shadow except where a solitary light threw its yellow glare on the dial of the clock.

'Are you there?' asked the voice patiently once again.

'It isn't'—something prompted him to use a Christian name—'it isn't Louis?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you, then?' Hugo demanded.

'Not far off,' replied the mysterious voice in the telephone.

It was unmistakably the voice of Louis Ravengar, but apparently touched with some new quality, some quality of resigned and dignified despair. Hugo wondered where the man could be. And the sinister magic of the telephone, which brought this sad, quiet voice to him from somewhere out of the immensity of England, but which would not yield up the secret of its hiding, struck him strangely.

'Are you there?' said the voice yet again.

'Yes.'

Hugo shivered, but whether it was from cold—he wore nothing but his pyjamas—or from apprehension he could not decide.

'I'm saying good-bye,' said the voice once more. 'I suppose you mean to have the police after me, and so I mean to get out of their way. See? But first I wished to tell you—crrrck cluck—Eh? What?'

'I didn't speak.'

'It's these Exchange hussies, then. I wanted to tell you I've thought a lot about our interview last night. What you said was true enough, Owen. I admit that, and so I am going to end it. Eh? Are you there? That girl keeps putting me off.'

'End what?'

'End it—it—it! I'm not making anybody happy, not even myself, and so I'm going to end it. But I'll tell you her address first. I know it.'

'Whose address?'

'Hers—Camilla's. If I tell you, will you promise not to say a word about me speaking to you on the telephone this morning?'

'Yes.'

'Not a word under any circumstances?'

'Certainly.'

'Well, it's 17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges, Belgium.'

'17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges. That's all right. I shan't forget. Look here, Louis, you'd better clear out of England. Go to America. Do you hear? I don't understand this about "ending it." You surely aren't thinking of—'

He felt quite magnanimous towards Ravengar. And he was aware that he could get to Bruges in six hours or so.

'That idea of yours about chloroform,' said the voice, 'and going into the vault, and being shut up there, is a very good one. Nobody would know, except the person whom one paid to shut the door after one.'

'I say, where are you?' Hugo asked curtly. He was at a loss how to treat these singular confidences.

'And so is that idea good about merely ending one incarnation and beginning another. That's much better than calling it death.'

'I shall ring you off,' said Hugo.

'Wait a moment,' said the voice, still patiently. 'If you should hear the name Callear—'

There was a pause.

'Well?' Hugo inquired, 'what name?'

'Callear—C-a-l-l-e-a-r. If you should hear that name soon—'

'What then?'

'Remember your promise of secrecy—that's all. Good-bye.'

'I wish you'd tell me where you are.'

'Not far off,' said the voice. 'I shall never be far off, I think. When you've found Camilla and brought her here'—the tone of the voice changed and grew almost malignant despite its reticence—'you'd like to know that I was always near to, somewhere underneath, mouldering, wouldn't you?'

'What did you say?'

'I said mouldering. Good-bye.'

'But look here—'

The bell rang off. Louis Ravengar had finished his good-bye. Hugo tried in vain to resume communication with him. He could not even get any sort of reply from the Exchange.

'It's a queer world,' he soliloquized, as he returned to bed. 'What does the man mean?'

He was still happy in the prospect of finding Camilla, but it was as though his happiness were a pool in a private ground, and some trespasser had troubled it with a stone.

The clock struck ten, and Simon entered with tea and the paper.



CHAPTER XXI

SUICIDE

The paper contained a whole-page advertisement of Hugo's great annual sale, and also a special half-page advertisement headed 'Hugo's Apology and Promise'—a message to the public asking pardon of the public for the confusion, inconvenience, and disappointments of the previous day, hinting that the mystery of the affair would probably be elucidated in a criminal court, and stating that a prodigious number of silvered fox-stoles would positively be available from nine o'clock that morning at a price even lower than the figure named in the original announcement. The message further stated that a special Complaint Office had been opened as a branch of the Inquiry Bureau, and that all complaints by customers who had suffered on New Year's Day would there be promptly and handsomely dealt with.

In addition to Hugo's advertisements, there were several columns of news describing the singular phenomena of the sale, concluding with what a facetious reporter had entitled 'Interviews with Survivors.'

As he read the detailed accounts Hugo knew, perhaps for the first time in his life, what it was 'to go hot and cold all over.' However, he was decidedly inclined to be optimistic.

'Anyhow,' he said, 'it's the best ad. I ever had. Still, it's a mercy there were no deaths.'

He began to dress hurriedly, furiously. Already the second day of the sale had been in progress for more than an hour, and he had not even visited the scene of the campaign. Simon had said nothing; it was not Simon's habit to speak till he was spoken to. And Hugo did not feel inclined to ask questions; he preferred to reconnoitre in person. Yes, he would descend instantly, and afterwards, when he had satisfied himself that the evil had been repaired, he would consider about Camilla.... By neglecting all else, he could reach her in time for dinner.... Should he?... (At this point he plunged into his cold bath.) ... No! He was Hugo before he was Camilla's lover. He would be a tradesman for yet another ten hours. He had a duty to London....

Then Ravengar wandered into his thoughts and confused them.

Just as he was assuming his waistcoat, Simon entered.

'Mr. Galpin, sir.'

'And who the d—-l is Mr. Galpin?' asked Hugo.

'Mr. Galpin is the gentleman who saved your life yesterday, sir,' said Simon with admirable sangfroid. 'He has called for a hundred pounds.'

'Show him in here immediately,' said Hugo.

Mr. Galpin appeared in the dressing-room, looking more than ever like an extremely successful commercial traveller. Hugo could not think of any introductory remark worthy of the occasion.

'I needn't say how grateful I am,' Hugo began.

'Certainly you needn't,' said Mr. Galpin. 'I understand. I've been under lock and key myself.'

'I should offer you more than this paltry sum,' said Hugo, with a smile, 'but I know, of course, that a man like you can always obtain all the money he really wants.'

Mr. Galpin smiled, too.

'However,' continued Hugo, detaching his watch from his waistcoat, 'I will ask you to take something that you can't get elsewhere. This is the thinnest watch in the world. Breguet, of the Rue de la Paix, Paris, made it specially for me. It is exactly the same size as a five-shilling piece. It repeats the quarters, shows the time in four cities, and does practically everything except tell the weather and the political party in power. It has one drawback. Only Breguet can clean it, and he will charge you five guineas for the job, besides probably having you arrested for unlawful possession. I must write to him. Such as it is, accept it.'

The golden, jewelled toy was offered and received with a bow. The practised hands of Mr. Galpin had opened the case in two seconds.

'How do you regulate it?' demanded Mr. Galpin, staring at the movement.

'You don't,' said Hugo proudly; 'it never needs it.'

Mr. Galpin stood corrected.

'If there's anything in my line I can do for you at any time, sir,' said he.

Hugo pondered.

Mr. Galpin put the watch in his waistcoat-pocket, and, tearing the hundred-pound note in two halves, placed one half in the left breast pocket of his coat, and the other half in the right breast pocket of his coat.

'Could you have opened that vault,' Hugo asked, 'if both keys had been lost?'

'No, sir, I could not. It's such people as you who are ruining my profession, sir.'

'You think the vault is impregnable?'

'Yes, sir,' said Mr. Galpin. 'I should say its name was just about as near being Gibraltar as makes no matter.'

'I was only wondering,' Hugo mused aloud, 'only wondering.... Ah, well, I won't trouble you with my fancies.'

'As you wish, sir. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye, Mr. Galpin. And thank you!'

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr. Galpin, and disappeared.

'Simon,' Hugo ordered immediately afterwards, handing Simon the token, 'run down and get me the best gold watch in the place.'

Throughout the morning Hugo's thoughts were far away. Most frequently they were in Belgium, but now and then they paid a strange incomprehensible visit with Ravengar to the vault.

While he was lunching under the dome, Albert Shawn came in with the early edition of the Evening Herald, containing a prominent item headed, 'Feared Suicide of Mr. Louis Ravengar.' The paper stated that Mr. Ravengar had gone to Dover on the previous evening, had been seen to board the Calais steamer, and had been missed soon after the boat had left the harbour. His hat, umbrella, rug, and bag had been found on deck. As the night was quite calm, there could be no other explanation than that of suicide. The Evening Herald gave a sympathetic biography of Mr. Ravengar ('one of our proprietors'), and attributed his suicide to a fit of depression caused by the entirely groundless rumours which had circulated during the late afternoon connecting him with the scandalous disturbances at Hugo's sale.

Hugo dropped the organ of public opinion.

'H'm!' he observed to Albert.

'I'm not surprised, sir,' said Albert.

'Aren't you?' said Hugo. 'Then, there's nothing more to be said.'

Since Louis Ravengar had certainly been talking with Hugo that selfsame morning, it was obviously impossible that he should have committed suicide in the English Channel some twelve hours earlier. Why, then, had he arranged for this elaborate deception to be practised? What was his scheme? His voice through the telephone had been so quiet, so resigned, so pathetic; only towards the end had it become malevolent.

Hugo perceived that he must go down to the vault. No! He dared not go himself. The sight of that vault, after yesterday's emotions, would surely be beyond his power to bear!

'Albert,' he said, 'go to the Safe Deposit.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And inquire if anyone named—'

Hugo stopped.

'Named what, sir?'

'Never mind. I'll go myself. By the way,' he said, 'I must run over to Belgium to-night. Perhaps I may take you with me.'

'Don't forget the inquest on Bentley to-morrow, sir. You'll have to attend that.'

Hugo made a gesture of excessive annoyance. He had forgotten the inquest.

'Take this telegram,' he said, suddenly inspired; and he scribbled out the following words: 'Darcy, 16, Boulevard des Italiens, Paris. Please come instantly; urgent case.—HUGO, London.'

'At any rate, I've made a beginning,' he murmured when Albert had gone. 'I can find out all that is to be known about Camilla from Darcy—if he comes. I wonder if he'll come. He'd better.'

And then, collecting his powers of self-control, he went slowly down to the Safe Deposit, and entered those steely and dreadful portals.

'Getting on all right?' he said to the newly-installed manager, a young man with light hair from the counting-house.

'Oh yes, Mr. Hugo.'

'Any new customers?'

He trembled for the reply.

'Yes, sir. Two gentlemen came as soon as we opened this morning, and took Vault 39. They paid a year's rent in advance. Two hundred pounds.'

'What did they want a whole vault for?'

'I can't say, sir. There was a lot of going to and fro with parcels and things, sir, and a lot of telephoning in the waiting-room. And one of them asked for a glass and some water. They were here a long time, sir.'

'When did they go?'

'It was about ten-thirty, sir, when one of the two gentlemen called me to bring my key and lock up the vault. The vault was properly locked, first with his key, and then with mine, and then he left. Perhaps it might be a quarter to eleven, sir.'

'But the other gentleman?'

'Oh, he must have slipped off earlier, sir. I didn't see him go.'

'What did he look like?'

'Oldish man, Mr. Hugo. Gray.'

The manager was somewhat mystified by this cross-examination.

'And the name?'

'The name? Let me see. Callear. Yes, Callear, sir.'

'What?'

'C-a-l-l-e-a-r.'

'What was the address?'

'Hotel Cecil. He said he would send a permanent address in a day or two.'

In half an hour Hugo had ascertained that no person named Callear was staying at the Hotel Cecil.

He understood now, understood too clearly, the meanings of Ravengar's strange utterances on the telephone. The man had determined to commit suicide, and he had chosen a way which was calculated with the most appalling ingenuity to ruin, if anything would ruin, Hugo's peace of mind for years to come—perhaps for ever. For the world, Ravengar was drowned. But Hugo knew that his body was lying in that vault.

'Louis had an accomplice,' Hugo reflected. 'Who can that have been? Who could have been willing to play so terrible a role?'



CHAPTER XXII

DARCY

That night, when he was just writing out some cheques in aid of charities conducted by Lady Brice (nee Kentucky-Webster), Simon entered with a card. The hour was past eleven.

Hugo read on the card, 'Docteur Darcy.'

He had nearly forgotten that he had sent for Darcy; in fact, he was no longer quite sure why he had sent for him, since he meant, in any case, to hasten to Belgium at the earliest moment.

'You are exceedingly prompt, doctor,' he said, when Darcy came into the dome. 'I thank you.'

The cosmopolitan physician appeared to be wearing the same tourist suit that he had worn on the night of Tudor's death. The sallowness of his impassive face had increased somewhat, and his long thin hands had their old lackadaisical air. 'You don't look at all the man for such a part,' said Hugo in the privacy of his brain, 'but you played your part devilish well that night, my pale friend. You deceived me perfectly.'

'Prompt?' smiled the doctor, shaking hands, and removing his overcoat with fatigued gestures.

'Yes; you must have caught the 4 p.m. express, and come via Folkstone and Boulogne.'

'I did,' said Darcy.

'And yet I expect you didn't get my telegram till after two o'clock.'

'I have received no telegram from you, my dear Mr. Hugo. It had not arrived when I left.'

'Then your presence here to-night is due to a coincidence merely?'

'Not at all,' said Darcy; 'it is due to an extreme desire on my part to talk to you.'

'The desire is mutual,' Hugo answered, gently insisting that Darcy should put away his cigarettes and take a Muria. 'Dare I ask—'

Darcy had become suddenly nervous, and he burst out, interrupting Hugo:

'The suicide of Mr. Ravengar was in this morning's Paris papers. And I may tell you at once that it's in connection with that affair that I'm here.'

'I also—' Hugo began.

'I may tell you at once,' Darcy proceeded with increasing self-consciousness, 'that when I had the pleasure of meeting you before, Mr. Hugo, I was forced by circumstances, and by my promise to a dead friend, to behave in a manner which was very distasteful to me. I was obliged to lie to you, to play a trick on you—in short—well, I can only ask you for your sympathy. I have a kind of a forlorn notion that you'll understand—after I've explained, as I mean to do—'

'If you refer to the pretended death of Tudor's wife—' said Hugo.

'Then you know?' Darcy cried, astounded.

'I know. I know everything, or nearly everything.'

'How?' Darcy retreated towards the piano.

'I will explain how some other time,' Hugo replied, going also to the piano and facing his guest. 'You did magnificently that night, doctor. Don't imagine for a moment that my feelings towards you in regard to that disastrous evening are anything but those of admiration. And now tell me about her—about her. She is well?'

Hugo put a hand on the man's shoulder, and persuaded him back to his chair.

'She is well—I hope and believe,' answered Darcy.

'You don't see her often?'

'On the contrary, I see her every day, nearly.'

'But if she lives at Bruges and you are in Paris—'

'Bruges?'

'Yes; Place Saint-Etienne.'

Darcy thought for a second.

'So it's you who have been on the track,' he murmured.

Hugo, too, became meditative in his turn.

'I wish you would tell me all that happened since—since that night,' he said at length.

'I ask nothing better,' said Darcy. 'Since Ravengar is dead and all danger passed, there is no reason why you should not know everything that is to be known. Well, Mr. Hugo, I have had an infinity of trouble with that girl.'

Hugo's expression gave pause to the doctor.

'I mean with Mrs. Tudor,' he added correctively. 'I'll begin at the beginning. After the disappearance—the typhoid disappearance, you know—she went to Algiers. Tudor had taken a villa at Mustapha Superieure, the healthiest suburb of the town. After Tudor's sudden death I telegraphed to her to come back to me in Paris. I couldn't bring myself to wire that Tudor was dead. I only said he was ill. And at first she wouldn't come. She thought it was a ruse of Ravengar's. She thought Ravengar had discovered her hiding-place, and all sorts of things. However, in the end she came. I met her at Marseilles. You wouldn't believe, Mr. Hugo, how shocked she was by the news of her husband's death. Possibly I didn't break it to her too neatly. She didn't pretend to love him—never had done—but she was shocked all the same. I had a terrible scene with her at the Hotel Terminus at Marseilles. Her whole attitude towards the marriage changed completely. She insisted that it was plain to her then that she had simply sold herself for money. She said she hated herself. And she swore she would never touch a cent of Tudor's fortune—not even if the fortune went to the Crown in default of legal representatives.'

'Poor creature!' Hugo breathed.

'However,' Darcy proceeded, 'something had to be done. She was supposed to be dead, and if her life was to be saved from Ravengar's vengeance, she just had to continue to be dead—at any rate, as regards England. So she couldn't go back to England. Now I must explain that my friend Tudor hadn't left her with much money.'

'That was careless.'

'It was,' Darcy admitted. 'Still, he naturally relied on me in case of necessity. And quite rightly. I was prepared to let Mrs. Tudor have all the money she wanted, she repaying me as soon as events allowed her to handle Tudor's estate. But as she had decided never to handle Tudor's estate, she had no prospect of being able to repay me. Hence she would accept nothing. Hence she began to starve. Awkward, wasn't it?'

'I see clearly that she could not come to England to earn her living,' said Hugo, 'but could she not have earned it in Paris?'

'No,' Darcy replied; 'she couldn't earn it regularly. And the reason was that she was too beautiful. Situation after situation was made impossible for her. She might easily have married in Paris, but earn her living there—no! In the end she was obliged to accept money from me, but only in very small sums, such as she could repay without much difficulty when Ravengar's death should permit her to return to England. She was always sure of Ravengar's death, but she would never tell me why. And now he's dead.'

'And there is no further obstacle to her coming to England?'

'None whatever. That is to say—except one.'

'What do you mean?' Hugo demanded.

Darcy had flushed.

'I'm in a very delicate position,' said Darcy. 'I've got to explain to you something that a man can't explain without looking an ass. The fact is—of course, you see, Mr. Hugo, I did all I could for her all the time. Not out of any special regard for her, but for Tudor's sake, you understand. She's awfully beautiful, and all that. I've nothing against her. But I believe I told you last year that I had been in love once. That "once" was enough. I've done with women, Mr. Hugo.'

'But how does this affect—' Hugo began to inquire, rather inimically.

'Can't you see? She doesn't want to leave Paris. I did all I could for her all the time. I've been her friend in adversity, and so on, and so on, and she's—she's—'

'What on earth are you driving at, man?'

'She's fallen in love with me. That's what I'm driving at. And now you know.'

'My dear sir,' said Hugo earnestly, 'if she is in love with you, you must marry her and make her happy.'

He did not desire to say this, but some instinct within him compelled him to utter the words.

'You told me that you loved her,' Darcy retorted.

'I told you the truth. I do.'

A silence ensued. All Hugo's previous discouragements, sadnesses, preoccupations, despairs, were as nothing in comparison with the black mood which came upon him when he learnt this simple fact—that Camilla had fallen in love with Darcy.

'She is still in Paris?' he asked, to end the silence.

'I—I don't know. I called at her lodgings at noon, and she had gone and left no address.'

Hugo jumped up.

'She can't have disappeared again?'

'Oh no; rest assured. Doubtless a mere change of rooms. When I return I shall certainly find a letter awaiting me.'

'Why did you come to me?'

'Well,' Darcy said, 'you told me you loved her, and I thought—I thought perhaps you'd come over to Paris, and see—see what could be done. That's why I came. The thing's on my mind, you know.'

'Just so,' Hugo answered, 'and I will come.'



CHAPTER XXIII

FIRST TRIUMPH OF SIMON

A week later, Simon and Albert stood talking together in Simon's room adjoining the dome. Simon had that air of absolute spruceness and freshness which in persons who have stayed at home is so extremely offensive to persons who have just arrived exhausted and unclean from a tiresome journey. It was Albert who, with Hugo, had arrived from the journey.

'Had a good time, Alb?' Simon asked.

'So-so,' said Albert cautiously.

'By the way, what did you go to Paris for?'

'Didn't you know?'

'How should I know, my son?'

'The governor wanted to find that girl of his.'

'What girl?' Simon asked innocently.

'Oh, chuck it, Si!' Albert remonstrated against these affectations of ignorance in a relative from whom he had no secrets.

'You mean Mrs. Tudor?'

'Yes.'

'She's disappeared again, has she? And you couldn't find her?'

Albert concurred.

'It seems to me, Alb,' said Simon, 'that you aren't shining very brilliantly just now as a detective. And I'm rather surprised, because I've been doing a bit of detective work myself, and it's nothing but just using your eyes.'

'What have you been up to?' Albert inquired.

'Oh, nothing. Never you mind. It's purely unofficial. You see, I'm not a detective. I'm only a servant that gets left at home. I've only been amusing myself. Still, I've found out a thing or two that you'd give your eyes to know, my son.'

'What?'

Albert pursued his quest of knowledge.

'You get along home to your little wife,' Simon enjoined him. 'You're a professional detective, you are. No doubt when you've recovered from Paris, and got into your stride, you'll find out all that I know and a bit over in about two seconds. Off you go!'

Simon's eyes glinted.

And later, when he was giving Hugo the last ministrations for the night, Simon looked at his lord as a cat looks at the mouse it is playing with—humorously, viciously, sarcastically.

'I'll give him a night to lie awake in,' said Simon's eyes.

But he only allowed his eyes to make this speech while Hugo's back was turned.

The next morning Hugo's mood was desolating. To speak to him was to play with fire. Obviously, Hugo had heard the clock strike all the hours. Nevertheless, Simon permitted himself to be blithe, even offensively blithe. And when Hugo had finished with him he ventured to linger.

'You needn't wait,' said Hugo, in a voice of sulphuric acid.

'So you didn't find Mrs. Francis Tudor, sir?' responded Simon, with calm and beautiful insolence.

It was insolence because, though few of Hugo's secrets were hid from Simon, the intercourse between master and servant was conducted on the basis of a convention that Simon's ignorance of Hugo's affairs was complete. And if the convention was ignored, as it sometimes was, Hugo alone had the right to begin the ignoring of it.

'What's that you said?' Hugo demanded.

'You didn't find Mrs. Francis Tudor, sir?' Simon blandly repeated.

'Mind your own business, my friend,' he said.

'Certainly, sir,' said Simon. 'But I had intended to add that possibly you had not been searching for Mrs. Tudor in the right city.'

Hugo stared at Simon, who retreated to the door.

'What in thunder do you mean?' Hugo asked coldly and deliberately.

At last Simon felt a tremor.

'I mean, sir, that I think I know where she is. At least, I know where she will be in a couple of hours' time.'

'Where?'

'In Department 42—her old department, sir.'

By a terrific effort Hugo kept calm.

'Simon,' he said, 'don't play any tricks on me. If you do, I'll thrash you first, and then dismiss you on the spot.'

'It's through the new manager of the drapery, sir, in place of Mr. Bentley—I forget his name. Mr. Bentley's room being all upset with police and accountants and things, the new manager has been using your office. And I was in there to-day, and he was engaging a young lady for the millinery, sir. He didn't recognise her, not having been here long enough, but I did. It was Miss Payne.'

'Impossible!'

'Yes, sir; Miss Payne—that is to say, Mrs. Tudor. I heard him say, "Very well, you can start to-morrow morning."'