'That's this morning?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why didn't you tell me this last night?' Hugo roared.

'It slipped my memory, sir,' said Simon, surpassing all previous feats of insolence.

Hugo, speechless, waved him out of the room.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE LODGING-HOUSE

The thought of soon seeing her intoxicated him. His head swam, his heart leapt, his limbs did what they liked, being forgotten. And then, as he sobered himself, he tried seriously to find an answer to this question: Why had she returned, as it were surreptitiously, to the very building from which her funeral was supposed to have taken place? Could she imagine that oblivion had covered her adventure, and that the three thousand five hundred would ignore the fact that she was understood to be dead? He found no answer—at least, no satisfactory answer—except that women are women, and therefore incalculable.

'Go and see if she is there,' he said to Simon at five minutes to nine.

'She is there,' said Simon at five minutes past nine; 'in one of the work-rooms alone.'

Then Hugo put a heavy curb on his instincts, and came to a sudden resolve.

'Tell the new drapery manager,' he instructed Simon, 'to give instructions to Mrs. Tudor, or Miss Payne, whichever she calls herself, that she is to meet him in my central office at six o'clock this evening. He, however, is not to be there. She is to wait in the room alone, if I have not arrived. Inform no one that I have returned from Paris. I am now going out for the day.'

'Yes, sir.'

Hugo thereupon took train to Ealing. He walked circuitously through the middle of the day from Ealing to Harrow, alone with his thoughts in the frosty landscape. From Harrow he travelled by express to Euston, reaching town at five-thirty. Somehow or other the day had passed. He got to Sloane Street at six, and ascended direct to his central office.

Had his orders been executed? Would she be waiting? As he hesitated outside the door he was conscious that his whole frame shook. He entered silently.

Yes, she was there. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire, staring at the fire. She was dressed in the customary black. Ah! it was the very face he had seen in the coffin, the same marvellous and incomparable features; not even sadder, not aged by a day; the same!

She turned at the sound of the closing of the door, and, upon seeing him, started slightly. Then she rose, and delicately blushed.

'Good-evening, Mr. Hugo,' she said, in a low, calm voice. 'I did not expect to see you.'

Great poetical phrases should have rushed to his lips—phrases meet for a tremendous occasion. But they did not. He sighed. 'I can only say what comes into my head,' he thought ruefully. And he said:

'Did I startle you?'

'Not much,' she replied. 'I knew I must meet you one day or another soon. And it is better at once.'

'Just so,' he said. 'It is better at once. Sit down, please. I've been walking all day, and I can scarcely stand.' And he dropped into a chair. 'Do you know, dear lady,' he proceeded, 'that Doctor Darcy and I have been hunting for you all over Paris?'

He managed to get a little jocularity into his tone, and this achievement eased his attitude.

'No,' she said, 'I didn't know. I'm very sorry.'

'But why didn't you let Darcy know that you were coming to London?'

'Mr. Hugo,' she answered, with a charming gesture, 'I will tell you.' And she got up from her chair and came to another one nearer his own. This delicious action filled him with profound bliss. 'When I read in the paper that Mr. Ravengar had committed suicide, I had just enough money in my pocket to pay my expenses to London, and to keep me a few days here. And I did so want to come! I did so want to come! I came by the morning train. It was an inspiration. I waited for nothing. I meant to write to Mr. Darcy that same night, but that same night I caught sight of him here in Sloane Street, so I knew it was no use writing just then. And I didn't care for him to see me. I thought I would give him time to return. As a matter of fact, I wrote yesterday evening. He would get the letter to-night. I hope my disappearance didn't cause you any anxiety?'

'Anxiety!' He repeated the word. 'You don't know what I've been through. I feared that Ravengar, before killing himself, had arranged to—to—I don't know what I feared. Horrible, unmentionable things! You can't guess what I've been through.'

'I, too, have suffered since we met last,' said Camilla softly.

'Don't talk of it—don't talk of it!' he entreated her. 'I know all. I saw your image in a coffin. I have heard your late husband's statement. And Darcy has told me much. Let us forget all that, and let us forget it for evermore. But you have to remember, nevertheless, that in London you have the reputation of being dead.'

'I have not forgotten,' she said, with a beautiful inflection and a bending of the head, 'that I promised to thank you the next time we met for what you did for me. Let me thank you now. Tell me how I can thank you!'

He wanted to cry out that she was divine, and that she must do exactly what she liked with him. And then he wanted to take her and clasp her till she begged for her breath. And he was tempted to inform her that though she loved Darcy as man was never loved before, still she should marry him, Hugo, or Darcy should die.

'Sit down,' he said in a quiet, familiar voice. 'Don't bother about thanking me. Just tell me all about the history of your relations with Ravengar.' And to himself he said: 'She shall talk to me, and I will listen, and we shall begin to be intimate. This is the greatest happiness I can have. Hang the future! I will give way to my mood. Darcy said she didn't want to leave Paris, but she has left it. That's something.'

'I will do anything you want,' she answered almost gaily; and she sat down again.

'I doubt it,' he smiled. 'However—'

The sense of intimacy, of nearness, gave him acute pleasure, as at their first interview months ago.

'I would like to tell you,' she began; 'and there is no harm now. Where shall I start? Well'—she became suddenly grave—'Mr. Ravengar used to pass my father's shop in the Edgware Road. He came in to buy things. It was a milliner's shop, and so he could buy nothing but bonnets and hats. He bought bonnets and hats. I often served him. He gave my father some very good hints about shares, but my father never took them. When my parents both died, Mr. Ravengar was extremely sympathetic, and offered me a situation in his office. I took it. I became his secretary. He was always very polite and considerate to me, except sometimes when he got angry with everybody, including me. He couldn't help being rude then. He had an old clerk named Powitt, who sat in the outer office, and seemed to do nothing. Powitt had just brains enough to gamble, and he gambled in the shares of Mr. Ravengar's companies. I know he lost money, because he used to confide in me and grumble at Mr. Ravengar for not giving him proper tips. Mr. Ravengar simply sneered at him—he was very hard. Powitt had a younger brother, who was engaged in another City office, and this younger brother also gambled in Ravengar shares, and also lost. The two brothers gambled more and more, and old Powitt once told me that Mr. Ravengar misled them sometimes from sheer—what shall I call it?'

'Devilry,' Hugo suggested. 'I can believe it. That would be his idea of a good joke.'

'By-and-by I learnt that they were in serious difficulties. Young Powitt was married, but his wife left him—I believe he had taken to drink. There was a glass partition between my room and Mr. Ravengar's—ground glass at the bottom, clear glass at the top. One night, after hours, I went back to the office for an umbrella which I had forgotten, and I found young Powitt trying to open the petty-cash-box in my room. He had not succeeded, and I just told him to go, and that I should forget I had seen him there. He kissed my hand. And just then the outer door of the office opened, and someone entered. I turned off the light in my room. Young Powitt crouched down. It was Mr. Ravengar. He went to his own room. I jumped on a chair, and looked through the glass screen. Old Powitt was hanging by the neck from the brass curtain-rod in Mr. Ravengar's room. While young Powitt was trying to get out of their difficulties by thieving, old Powitt had taken a shorter way. Mr. Ravengar looked at the body swinging there, and I heard him say, "Ah!" Like that!'

'Great heaven!' cried Hugo, 'you've been through sufficient in your time!'

'Yes.' Camilla paused. 'Mr. Ravengar cut down the body, searched the pockets, took out a paper, read it, and put it in his own pocket. Then the old man's lips twitched. He was not quite dead, after all. Mr. Ravengar stared at the face; and then, by means of putting a chair on a table and lifting Powitt on to the chair, he tied up the cord which he had cut, and left the poor old man to swing again. It was an—an interrupted suicide.'

She stopped once more, and Hugo fervently wished he had never asked her to begin. He gazed at her set face with a fascinated glance.

'All this time,' she resumed, 'young Powitt had been crouching on the floor, and had seen nothing.'

'And what did you do?'

'I fainted, and fell off my chair. The noise startled Mr. Ravengar, and he came round into my room. Young Powitt met him at the door, and, to explain his presence there, he said that he had come to see his brother. Mr. Ravengar said: "Your brother is in the next room." But instead of going into the next room, young Powitt ran off. Then Mr. Ravengar perceived me on the floor. My first words to him when I recovered consciousness were: "Why did you hang him up again, Mr. Ravengar?" He was staggered. He actually tried to justify himself, and said it was best for the old man—the old man had wanted to die, and so on. Mr. Ravengar certainly thought that young Powitt had seen what I had seen. That very night young Powitt was arrested for another theft, from his own employers, and it was not till after his arrest that he learnt that his brother had committed suicide. He got four years. When he received sentence, he swore that he would kill Mr. Ravengar immediately he came out of prison. I heard his threat. I knew him, and I knew that he meant it. He argued that Mr. Ravengar's financial operations had ruined thousands of people, including his brother and himself.

'But the inquest on old Powitt—I seem to remember about it. Why didn't you give evidence?'

'Because I was ill with brain-fever. When I recovered, all was finished. What was I to do? I warned Mr. Ravengar that young Powitt meant to kill him. He laughed. Of course, I left him. It is my belief that Mr. Ravengar was always a little mad. If he was not so before, this affair had strained his intelligence too much.'

'You did a very wrong thing,' said Hugo, 'in keeping silence.'

'Put yourself in my place,' Camilla answered. 'Think of all the facts. It was all so queer, And—and—Mr. Ravengar had found me in the room with young Powitt. Suppose he had—'

'Say no more,' Hugo besought her. 'How long is this ago?'

'Three years last June. In six months young Powitt's sentence will be up.'

Hugo nearly leapt from his chair.

'Is it possible, Mrs. Tudor,' he asked her eagerly, 'that you are not aware that in actual practice a reasonably well-behaved prisoner never serves the full period of his sentence? Marks for good conduct are allowed, and each mark means so many days deducted from the term.'

'I didn't know,' said Camilla simply. 'How should I know a thing like that?'

'I have no doubt that young Powitt is already free. And if he is—'

'You think that Mr. Ravengar's suicide may not have been a suicide?'

Hugo hesitated.

'Yes,' he said, and lapsed into reflection.

* * * * *

'I shall see you home,' he said.

'I am going to walk,' she replied. 'And I have to get my things from the cloak-room.'

'I will walk with you,' he said.

'What style the woman has!' he thought, enraptured.

They proceeded southwards in silence. Then suddenly she asked how he had left Mr. Darcy, and they began to talk about Darcy and Paris. Hugo encouraged her. He wished to know the worst.

'Except my father,' she said, 'I have never met anyone with more sense than Mr. Darcy, or anyone more kind. I might have been dead now if it hadn't been for Mr. Darcy.'

'Mr. Darcy is a very decent fellow,' Hugo remarked experimentally.

She turned and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up.

'She loves him!' he thought. 'And what's more, if she hadn't made up her mind to marry him, she wouldn't be so precious easy and facile and friendly with me. I might have guessed that.'

They passed Victoria Station, and came into Horseferry Road. She had informed him that she had taken a furnished room in Horseferry Road. The high and sinister houses appeared unspeakably and disgracefully mean to him in the wintry gloom of the gaslights. She halted before a tenement that seemed even more odious than its neighbours. Was it possible that she should exist in such a quarter? The idea sickened him.

'Which floor?' he questioned.

'Oh,' she laughed, 'the top, the fifth. Good-night, Mr. Hugo.'

He pictured the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate?

'Good-night,' she repeated, and in a moment she had opened the door with a latchkey and disappeared. He stood staring at the door. He had by no means finished saying all that he meant to say to her. He must talk to her further. He must show her that he could not be dismissed in that summary fashion. He mounted the two dirty steps, and rang the bell in a determined manner. He heard it tinkle distantly.

She was divine, adorable, marvellous, and far beyond the deserts of any man; but she had not shaken hands with him, and she had treated him as she might have treated one of the shopwalkers. Moreover, the question of to-morrow had to be decided.

There was no answer to the bell, and he rang again, with an increase of energy.

Then he perceived through the fanlight an illumination in the hall. The door opened cautiously, as such doors always do open, and a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown stood before him. In the background he descried a small table with a candle on it, and the foul, polished walls of the narrow lobby—a representative London lodging-house.

'I want to see Mrs. Tudor,' said Hugo.

'Well, she ain't in at the moment,' replied the man.

'Excuse me,' Hugo corrected him, 'I saw her enter a minute ago with her latchkey.'

'No, you didn't,' the man persisted. 'I'm the landlord of this house, and I've been in my room at the back, and nobody's come in this last half-hour, for I can see the 'all and the stairs as I sits in my chair.'

'Wait a moment,' said Hugo; and he retreated to the kerb, in the expectation of being able to descry Camilla's light in the fifth story.

'Oh, you can look,' the landlord observed loftily, divining his intention; 'I warrant there's no light there.'

And there was not.

'Perhaps you'll call again,' said the landlord suavely.

'I suppose you haven't got a room to let?' Hugo demanded, fumbling about in his brain for a plan to meet this swift crisis.

'I can't tell you till my wife comes home.'

'And when will that be?'

'That'll be to-morrow.'

The door was banged to. Hugo rang again, wrathfully, but the door remained obstinate.



CHAPTER XXV

CHLOROFORM

'Come in,' said Simon grandly, in response to a knock.

He was seated in his master's chair in the dome, which was lit as though for a fete. The clock showed the hour of nine.

Albert entered.

'Oh, it's you, is it?' exclaimed Albert. 'Where's the governor?'

'I don't know where he is. He was in his office at something to seven, having an interview with Mrs. Tudor. Since then—'

Simon raised his eyebrows, and Albert expressed a similar sentiment by means of a whistle.

'Then, you've been telephoning on your own for me to come up?'

'Yes.'

'It's like your cheek!' Albert complained, calmly perching himself on the top of the grand piano.

'Perhaps it will be. I regret to tear you from your fireside, Alb, but I wish to consult you on a matter affecting the governor.'

'Go ahead, then,' said Albert. 'There's been enough talk about the governor to-day downstairs, I should hope.'

'You mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance?'

'Yes.' Albert imitated Simon's carefully enunciated periods. 'I do mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance. By the way, what the deuce are you burning all these lights for?'

'I was examining this photograph,' said Simon, handing to his brother a rather large unmounted silver-print photograph which had lain on his knees.

'What of it?' Albert asked, glancing at it. 'Medical and Pharmaceutical Department, isn't it? Not bad.'

'We're having a new series of full-plate photographs done for the next edition of the General Catalogue,' said Simon, 'and this is one of them. It contains forty-five figures. It was taken yesterday morning by that Curgenven flashlight process that we're running. Look at it. Don't you see anything?'

'Nothing special,' Albert admitted.

Simon rose and came towards the piano.

'Let me show you,' he said superiorly. 'You see the cash-desk to the left. There's a lady just leaving the cash-desk. And just behind her there's an oldish man. You can't see all of his face because of her hat. He's holding his bill in his hand—you can see the corner of it—and he's got some sort of a parcel under his arm. See?'

'Yes, Mr. Lecoq.'

'Well, doesn't he remind you of somebody?'

'He's rather like old Ravengar, perhaps,' said Albert dubiously.

'You've hit it!' Simon almost shouted. 'It is Ravengar.'

'This man's got no beard.'

'That comes well from a detective, that does!' said Simon scornfully. 'It needn't have cost him more than threepence to have his beard shaved off, need it?'

'And seeing that this photograph was taken yesterday morning, and Ravengar fell off a steamer into the Channel more than a week ago!'

'But did he fall off a steamer more than a week ago?'

'He was noticed on board the steamer before she started, and he wasn't on board when she arrived.'

'Couldn't he have walked on to the steamer with his luggage, and then walked off again and let her start without him?'

'But why?'

'Suppose he wanted to pretend to be dead?'

'Why should he want to pretend to be dead?' Albert defended his position.

Simon, entirely forgetful of that dignity which usually he was at such pains to preserve, sprang on to the piano alongside Albert.

'I'll tell you another thing,' said he. 'When I came in with the governor's tea this morning he was just dozing and half-dreaming like—he'd had a very bad night—and I heard him say, "So they think you are at the bottom of the Channel, Louis? I wish you were!" What do you think of that, my son?'

'Then the governor must know Ravengar didn't commit suicide in the Channel? The governor never said a word to me!'

'You don't imagine the governor tells you everything, do you?' said Simon cruelly.

'Have you shown him the photo?' Albert asked.

'No,' said Simon, with a certain bluntness.

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, I've had no chance, and for another I wanted to find out something more first. I'd just like the governor to see that I'm not an absolute idiot.... Though I should have thought he might have found that out before now.'

'He doesn't think you're an absolute idiot,' said Albert.

'He acts as if he did,' said Simon. The Paris trip still rankled.

A pause followed.

'Another thing,' Albert recommenced. 'Even supposing Ravengar's alive, it's not very likely he'd venture here, of all places.'

'Why not?' Simon argued. 'Scarcely anybody knows Ravengar by sight. He's famous for keeping himself to himself. He's one of the least known celebrities in London. He'd be safe from recognition almost anywhere. Moreover, supposing he wanted to buy something peculiar?'

'He might,' Albert admitted. 'But don't forget this is all theory. I suppose you've been making your own inquiries in the Medical Department?'

'Yes,' said Simon rather apologetically. 'But I couldn't find anyone among the staff who remembers serving such a man, or even seeing him. He may have had an accomplice, you know, on the staff. What makes it more awkward is that there were two photographs taken, one about eleven, and another about half-past, and the photographer got the plates mixed up, and doesn't know whether this one is the first or the second. You see, the clock doesn't show in the picture; otherwise, we might have pieced things together.'

'Pity!' Albert murmured.

'However,' said Simon, with an obvious intention to be dramatic, 'I thought of Lecoq, and I hit on something. You see the lady just leaving the cash-desk with her receipt? Can you read the number of her receipt?'

Albert peered.

'No, I can't,' he said.

'Neither could I,' Simon agreed. 'But I've had that part of the photograph enlarged to-night.'

'The deuce you have!' Albert opened his eyes.

'Yes, the deuce I have! And here it is.'

Simon took a photographic print from his pocket, showing the lady's hand and part of the receipt, very blurred and faint, with some hieroglyphic figures mistily appearing.

'Looks like 6,706,' said Albert.

'It's either 6,706 or 6,766,' Simon concurred. 'Now, Ravengar's receipt must be numbered next to hers. Consequently, if we go and look at the counterfoils and duplicates—'

'Yes,' said Albert, thoughtfully sliding down from the piano.

'We may be able to find out something very interesting,' Simon finished, descending also.

'Now?'

'Now. That's what I wanted you for. You've got your pass-keys and everything, haven't you?'

'Yes.'

'Then run down and search.'

'Aren't you coming too?'

'I was only thinking, suppose the governor came back and wanted me?'

Albert gazed contemptuously at this exhibition of timidity—the cowardice of a born valet, he deemed it.

'Oh, of course,' he exclaimed, 'if you—'

'I'll come,' said Simon boldly. 'If he wants me he must wait, that's all.'

They descended together in Hugo's private lift, direct from the dome; the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department was on the ground-floor. Simon acted as lift-man, and slammed the grill when they emerged.

'Just open that again, Si,' Albert requested him.

'Why? What's up?'

'Just open it.'

Albert was sniffing about like a dog that is trying to decide whether there is not something extremely attractive in the immediate neighbourhood. He re-entered the lift, and nosed it curiously.

Suddenly he bent down and peered under the cushioned seat of the lift, and drew forth an object that resembled in shape a canister of disinfectant powder.

'Conf—!' he exclaimed, dropping it sharply. 'It's hot. What in the name of—'

He kicked the object out of the lift on to the tessellated floor of a passage which led to the Fish and Game Department.

'I bet you I can hold it,' said Simon boastfully.

And, at the expense of his fingers, he picked it up, and successfully carried it into the Fish and Game Department, where a solitary light (which burnt night and day) threw a dim radiance over vast surfaces of white marble dominated by silver taps. The fish and game were below in the refrigerators. Simon let the cylinder fall on to a slab; Albert turned a tap, and immediately the cylinder was surrounded by clouds of steam. The phenomenon was like some alchemical and mysterious operation. And the steam, as it rose and spread abroad in the immense, pale interior, might have been the fumes of a fatal philtre distilled by a mediaeval sorcerer.

'I hope it won't blow up!' Simon ejaculated.

'Not it!' said Albert. 'Let's have a look at it now.'

Albert had a mechanical bent, and, with the aid of a tool, he soon discovered that the cylinder was divided into two parts. In the lower part was burning charcoal. In the upper, carefully closed, was paraffin. The division between the two compartments consisted of some sort of soldering lead, which the heat of the charcoal had gradually been melting.

'So when this stuff had melted,' he explained to Simon, 'the paraffin would run into the charcoal, and there would be a magnificent flare-up.'

They looked at one another, amazed, astounded, speechless.

And each knew that on the tip of the other's tongue, unuttered, was the word 'Ravengar.'

'But why was it put in the lift?' asked Simon.

'Because,' said Albert promptly, 'a lift-well is the finest possible place for a fire. There's a natural draught, and a free chance for every floor. Poof! And a flame's up nine stories in no time. And a really good mahogany lift would burn gorgeously, and give everything a good start.'

'There are fifteen lifts in this place,' Simon muttered.

'I know,' said Albert.

He approached a little glass square in the wall, broke it, pulled a knob, and looked at his watch.

'We'll test the Fire Brigade Department,' he remarked; and then, as he heard a man running down the adjacent corridor, 'Seven seconds. Not bad.'

In another seven minutes nine cylinders, which had been found in nine different lifts, were sizzling beside Albert's original discovery. The other five lifts appeared to have been omitted from this colossal scheme for providing London with a pyrotechnic display such as London had probably never had since the year 1666. The night fire staff, which consisted of some fifty men, had laid hose on to every hydrant, and were taking instructions from their chief for the incessant patrol of the galleries.

'See here,' said Albert, 'we'd better go on with what we started of now.'

'Had we?' Simon questioned somewhat dubiously.

'Of course,' said Albert. 'If that is Ravengar in the photo, and if we can find out anything to-night, and if Ravengar's in this business'—he jerked his elbow towards the cylinders—'we shall be so much to the good. Besides, it won't take us a minute.'

So they went forward, through twilit chambers and passages filled with sheeted objects, past miles of counters inhabited by thousands of chairs, through doors whose openings resounded strangely in the vast nocturnal silence of Hugo's, till they came to the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department. And the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department, in its night-garb, and illuminated by a single jet at either end of it, seemed to take on a kind of ghostly and scented elegance; it seemed to be a lunar palace of bizarre perfumes and crystal magics.

The two young men halted, and listened, and they could catch the distant footfall of the patrols echoing in some far-off corridor. That reassured them. They ceased to fancy the smell of burning and to be victimized by the illusion that a little tongue of flame darted out behind them.

Albert gained access to the accountant's cupboard, and pulled out a number of books, over which they pored side by side.

'Here you are!' exclaimed Simon presently. 'Receipts. January 9.'

And Albert read: 'No. 6,766, Mrs. Poidevin, 37, Prince's Gate; vinolia. No. 6,767, Dr. Woolrich, 23, Horseferry Road; chloroform! Can't make out the quantity, but it must be a lot, I should think; the price is eighteen and ninepence.'

'Dr. Woolrich, 23, Horseferry Road?' Simon repeated mechanically. 'Chloroform?'

'That's it,' said Albert. 'You may bet your boots. Let's look him up in the Medical Directory, if they've got one here. Yes, they're sure to have one.'

But there was no Dr. Woolrich in the Medical Directory.

Once more the brothers stared at each other. Was or was not Ravengar alive? Were they or were they not on his track?

'Listen, Si,' said Albert. 'I'll drive right down to 23, Horseferry Road, and have a look round. Eh? What do you say?'

'I think I'll come, too,' Simon replied.

In six minutes Albert pulled up the hansom at the end of the street, and they walked slowly towards No. 23, but on the opposite side of the road.

'That's it,' said Simon, pointing. 'What are you going to do now? Inquire there?'

At the same moment a window opened behind them, in the house immediately facing No. 23; they both heard a hissing sound, evidently designed to attract their attention, and they both turned their heads.

From a first-story window Hugo was gesticulating at them.



CHAPTER XXVI

SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON

'Come up at once,' Hugo whispered. 'Door opposite top of stairs.'

And he threw down on to the pavement a latchkey.

'What do you think of yourself now, Si?' Albert asked his brother, as they entered the house. 'You've let yourself in for something at last.'

They found Hugo in an ordinary bedsitting-room. He was wearing his hat and his overcoat, and staring out of the open window. It was a cold night, but he did not seem to feel the icy draught which blew into the apartment. The whole of his attention appeared to be concentrated on No. 23. He did not at first even turn to look at the brothers when they came in. They explained themselves.

'I will tell you why I am here, and what has occurred to me,' said Hugo, playing, perhaps rather nervously, with the knife and cheese-plate which still lay on the small table by the window. 'Then we can decide what to do. I've hired this room.'

No doubt existed in his mind that Simon had happened upon the track of the veritable living Ravengar. It could not be a coincidence that a man so strongly resembling Ravengar, a man posing as a doctor, and buying nearly a sovereign's worth of chloroform, should be occupying rooms in the same house as Camilla. The tremendous revelation of Ravengar's genius for stratagem and intrigue afforded by the recital of the two brothers came upon Hugo with a dazing shock. This man, whom he knew from Camilla's own story to be curiously deficient in ordinary human sentiments, had arranged a sham suicide for the benefit of the general public. He had let Hugo into the secret of that deception, but only to cheat him with another deception, and a more monstrous one. The brain that could conceive the fiction of suicide in the vault—a fiction which, while lulling Hugo into a false security as regards Camilla's safety, at the same time poisoned his happiness—such a brain might be capable of unimagined horrors. Sane or mad, the mere existence of that brain was a menace before which Hugo trembled. He realized that Ravengar had been consummately acting during the latter part of their interview on the first day of the sale, and again consummately acting when he spoke to Hugo on the telephone. Ravengar had, beyond doubt, deliberately set himself to lure Camilla back to England, and he had succeeded. Beyond doubt, all her movements had been spied and marked, and Ravengar had been in a position to complete his arrangements—whatever his arrangements were—at leisure and with absolute freedom. She had taken a room in Horseferry Road, and he had followed.... What was the sequel to be?

That she was in his power at that moment Hugo could not question.

And the chloroform?

At that moment Ravengar had meant that the Hugo building should have been a funeral pyre—a spectacle to petrify the Metropolis. And it seemed to Hugo that if Ravengar was mad, as he must be, he could only have designed the spectacle as something final, as at once a last revenge and an accompaniment to the supreme sacrifice of Camilla.

'We must get into that house immediately,' said Hugo, when he had finished his own narrative. 'The question is how?'

'I've got a card of Inspector Wilbraham's, of the Yard, in my pocket,' Albert suggested. 'We might use that, and make out that this purchase of chloroform under a false name had got to be explained to the Yard instantly.'

Albert had recently become rather intimate with Scotland Yard. Inspector Wilbraham had even called on him in reference to Bentley's death and the disappearance of Brown; and Albert was duly proud.

'We will try that,' said Hugo. 'Have you any handcuffs?'

'No, sir.'

'Go and obtain a couple of pairs. You can be back in twenty minutes. Bring also my revolver.'

Hugo and Simon were left alone. Hugo spoke no word.

'I'll put the room to rights, sir,' said Simon, after a pause. He could bear the inaction no longer.

Hugo nodded absently, and Simon collected the ruins of the vile repast which his master had consumed, and put them outside on a tray on the landing.

'There's a light now in the first story!' exclaimed Hugo. 'I hope that boy won't be long.'

And then Albert arrived with the revolver and the handcuffs. He had been supernaturally quick.

They descended and crossed the road.

'You understand,' Hugo instructed them. 'Let us have no mistake about getting in. Immediately the door is opened, in we all go. We can talk inside.'

'Supposing Albert and me went down to the area-door,' Simon ventured, 'instead of the front-door. We might get in easier that way. It's always easier to deal with servant-girls and persons of that sort in kitchens. Then we could come upstairs and let you in at the front-door. Three detectives seem rather a lot to be entering all at once. And, besides, you don't look like a detective, sir.'

'What do I look like?' Hugo asked coldly.

'You look too much like a gentleman, sir. It's the hat, sir,' he added.

Simon had certainly surpassed himself that day. He had begun by surpassing himself at early morning, and he had kept it up. Probably never before in his life had he been so loquacious and so happy in his loquacity.

'That's not a bad scheme, Simon,' said Hugo. 'Try it.'

The brothers went down the area-steps while Hugo remained at the gate. A light burned steadily in the first-floor window. And then another and a fainter light flickered in the hall, and after a few seconds the front-door opened. Hugo literally jumped into the house, and, safely within, he banged the door.

'Now,' he said.

A middle-aged woman, holding a candle, stood by Simon and Albert in the hall.

'Are you the servant?' Hugo demanded.

'No, sir; I'm the landlady. And I'd like to know—'

'Your husband told me you were away and wouldn't return till to-morrow.'

'Seeing as how my husband's been dead these thirteen years—'

'We're in, sir. We'd better search the house to start with,' said Albert. 'There's three of us. The man that opened the door to you must have been a wrong un, one of his.'

'Never have I had the police in my house before,' wailed the landlady of No. 23, Horseferry Road, while the candle dropped tallow tears on the oilcloth. 'And all I can say is I thank the blessed Lord it's dark, and you aren't in uniform. Doctor Woolrich's rooms are on the first floor, and you can go up and see for yourself, if you like. And how should I know he wasn't a real doctor?'

As the landlady spoke, sounds of footsteps made themselves heard overhead, and a door closed.

'Give me that candle, my good woman,' said Hugo, hastily snatching it from her.

The three men ran upstairs, leaving the hall to darkness and the landlady.

Whether Hugo dropped the candle in his excitement, or whether it was knocked out of his hand by means of a stick through the rails of the landing-banister as he ascended, will never be accurately known. He himself is not sure. The important fact is that the candle fell, and the trio stumbled up the last few stairs with nothing to guide them but a chink of light through a half-closed door. This door led to the rooms of Dr. Woolrich, and the rooms of Dr. Woolrich were well lighted with gas. But they were empty. There was a sitting-room and a bedroom, and on the round table in the centre of the sitting-room was a copy of the most modern edition of Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine,' edited by Murray, Harold, and Bosanquet, bound in half-morocco; the volume was open at the article 'Anaesthetics,' and Hugo will always remember that the page was sixty-two. No sooner were the rooms found to be empty than Hugo rushed back to the landing, followed by Simon. The landing, however, even with the sitting-room door thrown wide and the light streaming across the landing and down the stairs, showed no sign of life.

Then Albert, who had remained within the suite, called out:

'There must be a dressing-room off this bedroom, and it's locked.'

'Simon,' said Hugo, 'go to the front window and keep watch.'

And Hugo ran into the bedroom to Albert.

Decidedly there was a door in the bedroom which had the appearance of leading into a further room, but the door would not budge. The pair glanced about. No evidence of recent human habitation was visible either in the sitting-room or in the bedroom, save only the dictionary, and Albert commented on this.

'We must force that door,' Hugo decided, 'and be ready to look after yourself when it gives way.'

As he spoke he could see, in the tail of his eye, Simon opening the front window and then looking out into the street.

'One—two—charge!' cried Hugo; and he and Albert flung themselves valiantly against the door.

They made no impression upon it at all.

Breathless and shaken, they looked at each other.

'Suppose I fire into the lock?' said Hugo.

'We might try a key first,' Albert answered.

He took the key from the door between the bedroom and the sitting-room, and applied it to the lock of the obstinate portal. The obstinate portal opened at once.

'Empty!' ejaculated Albert, putting his nose into a small dressing-room.

With a gesture of disgust Hugo turned away. In the same instant Simon withdrew his head into the sitting-room.

'I've seen him,' Simon whispered in hoarse excitement. 'He just popped out of the kitchen and came half-way up the area steps. Then he ran back. He saw me looking at him.'

'Ravengar?'

Simon nodded. This was the hour of Simon's triumph, the proof that he had not been mistaken in the theory which he had raised on the foundation of the photograph.

'Come along,' said Hugo grimly, preparing to rush downstairs.

But a singular thing had occurred. While Simon had been staring out of the front window, and Hugo and Albert engaged in forcing a door which led to emptiness, the door of the sitting-room, the sole means of egress from the first-floor suite, had been shut and locked on the outside.

In vain Hugo assailed it with boot and shoulder; in vain Albert assisted him.

'Keep your eye on the street, you fool!' said Albert to Simon, when the latter offered to join the siege of the door.

Hugo and Albert multiplied their efforts.

'There's a cab driven up,' Simon informed them from the window. 'A man's got out. Now he's gone down the area steps. They're carrying something up, something big. Oh! look here, I must help you.'

And Simon ran to the door. Before the triple assault it fell at last, and the three tumbled pell-mell downstairs into the hall. The front-door was open.

A cab was just driving away. It drove rapidly, very rapidly.

'After it!' Hugo commanded.

The hunt was up.

Two minutes afterwards another cab drove up to the door.

Ravengar and another man emerged from the area holding between them the form of a woman. They got leisurely into the cab with the woman and departed.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE CEMETERY

Both Simon and Albert easily outran Hugo, and, fast as the first cab was travelling, they had gained on it by the time it turned into Victoria Street. And at the turning an incident happened. The driver, though hurried, was apparently to a certain extent careful and cautious, but he did not altogether avoid contact with a policeman at the corner. The policeman was obliged to step sharply out of the way of the cab, and even then the sleeve of his immaculate tunic was soiled by contact with the hind-wheel of the vehicle. Now, the driver might have scraped an ordinary person with impunity, and passed on unchallenged; he might even have soiled the sleeve of a veteran policeman and got nothing worse than a sharp word of censure and a fragment of good advice. But this particular policeman was quite a new policeman, whose dignity was as delicate and easily smirched as his beautiful shining tunic. And the result was that the cabby had to stop, give his number, and listen to a lecture.

Simon and Albert formed part of the audience for the lecture. It did not, however, interest them, for they had instantly perceived that the cab was empty.

Then, as the lecturer was growing eloquent, Hugo arrived, and was informed of the emptiness of the vehicle.

'It was just a trick,' Simon exclaimed; 'a trick to get us out of the house.'

'We must go back,' said Hugo, breathless.

At this moment the second cab appeared, was delayed a moment by the multitude listening to the lecture, and passed westwards into Victoria Street.

'They're in that!' cried Simon.

'Are you sure?' Hugo questioned.

'Of course I'm sure,' said Simon, who in the excitement of the trail had ceased to be a valet.

To jump into a hansom and order the driver to keep the four-wheeler in sight ought to have been the work of a few seconds, but it occurred, as invariably occurs when a hansom is urgently needed, that no hansom was available. The four-wheeler was receding at a moderate rate in the direction of the Grosvenor Hotel.

'Run after it!' said Hugo. 'I'll get a cab in the station-yard and follow.'

The quarry vanished round a corner just as they tumbled into the hansom on the top of Hugo, but it was never out of observation for more than a quarter of a minute. Through divers strange streets it came at length into Fulham Road at Elm Place, and thenceforward, at a higher rate of speed, it kept to the main thoroughfare. The procession passed the workhouse and the Redcliffe Arms. Between Edith Grove and Stamford Bridge the roadway was up for fundamental repairs, and omnibuses were being diverted down Edith Grove to King's Road. A policeman at the corner spoke to the driver of the four-wheeler, gave a sign of assent, and the four-wheeler went straight onwards into a medley of wood-blocks, which was all that was left of Fulham Road. The hansom followed intrepidly, and then its three occupants were conscious of a sudden halt.

'Bobby wants to know where you're going to,' said the driver, opening the trap.

There was a slight hesitation, and the policeman's voice could be heard:

'Come out of it!'

'We're following that four-wheeler,' Hugo was about to say, but he perceived the absurdity of saying such a thing in cold blood to a policeman.

All three descended. The cabman had to be paid. There was a difficulty about finding change—one of those silly and ridiculous difficulties that so frequently supervene in crises otherwise grave; in short, a succession of trifling delays, each of which might easily have been obviated by perfect forethought, or by perfect accord between the three men.

When next they came to close quarters with the four-wheeler it was leisurely driving away empty from a small semi-detached house which was separated from the road by a tiny garden. They ran into the garden. The one thing that flourished in it was a 'To Let' notice. The front-door, shaded by unpruned trees, was shut, and there were cobwebs on the handle, as Hugo plainly saw when he struck a match. They hastened round to the back of the house, where was a larger garden. A French window gave access to the house. This French window yielded at once to a firm push. The three men searched the ground-floor and found nothing. They then ascended the stairs and equally found nothing. The house must have been empty for many months. From the first-floor window at the back Hugo gazed out, baffled. Far off he could see lights of houses, but the foreground was all darkness and mystery.

'What lies between us and those lights?' he asked.

'It must be Brompton Cemetery, sir,' said Albert. 'The garden gives on the cemetery, I expect.'

As if suddenly possessed by a demon, Hugo flew out of the room, down the stairs, into the garden. At the extremity of the garden was a brick wall, and against the wall were two extremely convenient barrels; they might have been placed there specially for the occasion. In an instant he was in the cemetery.

* * * * *

The remainder of the adventure survives in Hugo's memory like a sort of night-picture in which all the minor details of life are lost in large, vague glooms, and only the central figures of the composition emerge clearly, in a sharp and striking brilliance, against the mysterious background.

He knew himself in the cemetery, and immediately, by a tremendous effort of the brain, he had arranged his knowledge of the place and decided exactly where he was. Instinctively he ran by side-alleys till he came to the broad central way which cuts this vast field of the dead north and south. He hurried northwards, and when he had gone about a hundred and fifty yards he turned to the left, and then went north again.

'It's here,' he muttered.

He was in the middle of that strange and sinister city within a city, that flat expanse of silence, decay, and putrefaction which is surrounded on every side by the pulsating arteries of London. The living visit the dead during the day, but at night the dead are left to themselves, and the very flowers which embroider their dissolution close up and forget them. Round about him everywhere trees and shrubs moved restlessly and plaintively in the night breeze; the angular grave-stones raised their kindly lies in the darkness. A few stars flickered in the sky; no moon. And miles off, so it seemed, north, south, east, and west, the yellow lights of human habitations, the lights of warm rooms where living people were so engaged in the business of being alive that they actually forgot death—these lights winked to each other across the waste and desolation of a hundred thousand tombs.

With the certainty of a blind man, the assurance of a seer who has divined what the future holds, he approached the vault. He was aware that the little gate in the railing would be open. It was. He was aware that the iron door in the side of the vault would be unlocked. It was. He pushed it and entered. All difficulties and hindrances had been removed. No odour of death greeted his nostrils, unless the strong smell of chloroform can be called the odour of death. He struck a match. The first thing he saw was a candle and a screwdriver, and then the match blew out. The door of the vault was ajar, and he would not close it. He dared not. He struck another match and put it to the candle, and the vault was full of jumping shadows. And he looked and looked again. Yes, down in that corner she lay, motionless, lifeless, done with for ever and ever. Only her face was visible. The rest of her seemed to be covered with a man's overcoat, flung hastily down. He stared, enchanted by the horror. What was that white stuff round her head? Part of it seemed to be torn, and a strip fluttered across her closed eyelids. He went nearer. He touched—cold! Could she be so soon cold? And then the truth swept over him, and almost swept his senses away, that this image in the corner was not she, but merely that waxen thing made by the sculptor in Paris, that counterfeit which had deceived him in the drawing-room of the flat.

Then where was she? And why was not this counterfeit in its coffin, in which it had been buried with all the rites of the Church? The coffin? Yes, the coffin was there at his feet, with its brass plate, which had rusted at the corners; and below it, in some undefined depth, was another coffin, the sarcophagus of Tudor himself. He stooped and shifted the candle. On Camilla's coffin were a number of screws, rolled about in various directions; only one screw was in its place. He seized the screwdriver—and in that moment a tiny part of his intelligence found leisure to decide that this screwdriver was slightly longer than the one he had used aforetime for a similar purpose—and he unscrewed the solitary screw and raised the lid of the coffin, letting all the screws roll off it with a great rattle.... An overwhelming rush of chloroform vapour escaped.... She lay within, dressed in her black dress, and her dress had been crammed into the coffin hastily, madly, and was thrust down in thick, disorderly folds about her feet, and her hair half covered her face. And her face was slightly flushed, and her eyelids quivered, and the cheeks were warm. He put his hands under her armpits and wrenched her out and carried her from the vault. And then he sank to the ground sobbing.

What caused him to sob? If any man dared now to ask him, and if he dared to answer, he might reply that it was not grief nor joy, nor the reaction from an intolerable strain, but simply the idea of the terrific and heart-breaking cruelty of Ravengar which had dragged from him a sob.

The path followed by the madman's brain was easy to pursue once the clue found. He had been cheated into the belief that Camilla's body rested in that coffin, and when he had discovered that it did not rest there he had determined that the mistake should be rectified, the false made true. That had seemed to him logical and just. She was supposed to be in the coffin; she should really be in the coffin; she should be forced and jammed into it. And his lunatic and inhuman fancy had added even to that conception. She should be drugged and carried to the vault, and drugged again, and then immured, unconscious, but alive; and if by chance she awoke from the chloroform sleep after he had finished screwing in the screws, so much the better! So it was that his mind had worked. And the scheme had been executed with that courage, that calmness, that audacity, that minute attention to detail, of which only madmen at their maddest appear to be capable. Beyond any question the scheme would have succeeded had not Hugo, the moment Albert Shawn uttered the word 'cemetery,' perceived the general trend of it in a single wondrous flash of intuition. He had guessed it, and even while afraid to believe that he was right, had known absolutely and convincingly that he was right.

Camilla murmured some phrase, and gave a sigh as she lay on the gravelled path.

She had recovered from the fatal torpor in the cool night air. He said nothing, because he felt that he could do nothing else. Albert and Simon were certainly looking for him in the maze of the cemetery; they would find him soon. It did not seem to him extraordinary that he had left them in that sudden, swift fashion without a word.

Then he heard, or thought he heard, a noise in the vault, and, summoning all his strength of will, he descended the steps again and glanced within. Ravengar was there. Had he been there all the time, hidden behind the door? Or had he fled and stealthily returned? Only Ravengar could say. He had taken up the image from the corner and was replacing it in the coffin. It was as if he had bowed his obstinate purpose to some higher power which was inscrutable to him. Children and madmen can practise this singular and surprising fatalism. Disturbed, he raised his head and caught sight of Hugo. They gazed at one another by the flickering candle.

'Where's the man who helped you?' Hugo demanded faintly.

He had not much heart, much force, much firmness left. Ravengar's eyes, at once empty and significant, blank and yet formidable, startled him. He had the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, but he could not have used them. Ravengar's eyes, so fiendish and so ineffably sad, melted his spine. Ravengar stepped forward and Hugo stepped back.

'Let me pass,' said Ravengar, in the tone of one who has suffered much and does not mean to suffer much more.

And Hugo let him pass, inexplicably, weakly; and at the end of a narrow path he merged into the vague, general darkness. And then Hugo heard the sound of a struggle, and the voices of Simon and Albert—young and boisterous and earthly and sane. And then scampering footfalls which died away in the uttermost parts of the cemetery.

And Camilla sat up, rubbing her eyes.

'It's all right,' he soothed her.



CHAPTER XXVIII

BEAUTY

'Hum! he's going to marry her,' Simon had said, and Albert had said, and Lily had said. 'I knew it all along.' When, at the end of six months, Hugo went away, much furnishing of rooms near the Dome took place by his orders during his absence.

Yet here was Hugo back at the end of the fortnight, radiant certainly, but alone.

'There was one little matter I forgot,' Hugo began, rather timidly, as Simon thought, when assured that everything was in order.

'Yes, sir?' said Simon.

'I want you to be good enough to give up your room.'

'My room, sir?'

'To oblige a lady.'

'A lady, sir?'

'I should say a lady's lady.'

Simon paused. He was wounded, but he would not show it.

'With pleasure, sir.'

'To-night,' Hugo proceeded, 'you can occupy my bed in the dome;' and he pointed to the spot where, during the day, the bed lay ingeniously hidden in a recess of the wall. 'I shall no longer need it. To-morrow we can make some more permanent arrangement for you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Also,' Hugo continued, 'I would like you to go along to the offices of the Morning Post for me some time to-night before ten o'clock and take this. There will be a guinea to pay.' Hugo handed him a slip of paper.

'Yes, sir.'

'Read it,' said Hugo.

And Simon read: '"A marriage has been arranged, and"—and—has taken place, sir?'

'Precisely.'

'Precisely, sir. "Has taken place at Hythe between Mr. Owen Hugo, of Sloane Street, London, and Mrs. Camilla Tudor, widow of the late Mr. Francis Tudor."'

'You are the first to know, Simon.'

Simon bowed.

'May I respectfully venture to wish you every happiness, sir?' Simon pronounced at his most formal.

'No, you may not,' said Hugo. 'But you may shake hands with me.'

And he respectfully ventured to explain to Simon how, in the case of a man like himself, with three thousand five hundred tongues ever ready to wag about him, absolute secrecy had been the only policy.

'Telephone down to the refreshment department for Tortoni to come up to me instantly. I must order a dinner for two. My wife and her maid will be here in half an hour. I shall not want you—at any rate, before ten-thirty or so.'

'Yes, sir. And the maid?'

'What about the maid?'

'You said you would order dinner for two, sir.'

'Look here, Simon,' said Hugo. 'If you will take the maid down to dine in the Central Restaurant and keep her there—take her with you for a drive to the Morning Post—I shall regard it as a favour. Catch!' And he threw to Simon the gold token, which made Simon master of all the good things in the entire building. 'Make use of that.'

Simon felt a little nervous at the prospect. He had not seen the maid. However, he hoped for the best, and assured Hugo of his delight.

'I forgot to inform you, sir,' he turned back to tell Hugo as he was leaving the room, 'Doctor Darcy called again to-day. He has called several times the last few days. He said he might look in again to-night.'

The bridegroom started.

'If he should,' Hugo ordered, 'don't say I'm in till you've warned me.'

'Yes, sir.'

Three hours later the bride and bridegroom were finishing one of the distinguished Tortoni's most elaborate dinners. Tortoni had protested that it was destructive of the elementary principles of art to order a dinner for eight-thirty at seven o'clock. However, he had not completely failed. The waiters had departed, and Camilla, in dazzling ivory-white, was pouring out coffee. Hugo was cutting a cigar. They did not speak; they felt. They were at the end of the brief honeymoon, and the day was at an end. The last remnants of twilight had vanished, and through the eastern windows of the dome the moon was rising. Neither the hour nor the occasion made for talkativeness. Life lay before Hugo and Camilla. Both were honestly convinced that they had not lived till that hour—that hour whence dated the commencement of their regular united existence. They looked at each other, satisfied, admiring, happy, expecting glorious things from Fate.

There was a discreet alarm at the door. Simon came in. It would have been a gross solecism to knock, but Simon performed the equivalent. He paused, struck when he beheld Camilla, as well he might; for Camilla was such a vision as is not often vouchsafed to the Simons of this world. She was peerless that evening. And she smiled charmingly on him, and asked after his health.

'Your coffee, dearest,' she murmured to Hugo.

It occurred to Simon that the dome would never be the same again. This miraculous and amazing creature was going to be always there, to form part of his daily life, to swish her wonderful skirts in and out of the rooms, to—to—He did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He knew only that he was perturbed, thrown off his balance, so much so that he forgot to explain his invasion.

'Well, Simon,' said Hugo, 'had your dinner and been to the Morning Post office?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Alone?'

Simon blushed.

'No, sir.'

'Good.'

'Doctor Darcy is here, sir. Are you at home?'

Hugo had utterly forgotten about Doctor Darcy. He glanced at his wife interrogatively, but Camilla looked at the moon through the window.

'Show Doctor Darcy in in five minutes,' said Hugo.

'Poor old Darcy!' exclaimed Camilla when they were alone. 'Does he know?'

'Know what? That we are married? No. I wrote to him nearly six months ago to tell him that you were safe and all that, and he acknowledged the letter on a postcard. Afterwards I sent him that trifle of money that you owed him, and he sent a stamped receipt.'

'He always hides his feelings,' said Camilla. 'This will be a blow for him!'

'How?'

'Didn't he tell you he was most violently in love with me in Paris?'

'He did not,' said Hugo. 'Did he tell you?'

'No, of course not. He was far too chivalrous for that. It would have seemed like taking advantage of my situation to force me into a marriage.'

'How do you know he was violently in love with you, bright star?' Hugo demanded in that amiably malicious tone which he could never withstand the temptation to employ.

'My precious boy,' replied Camilla, 'how does a woman know these things?'

And she came over and kissed Hugo.

'You shall talk to him first,' she said. 'I'll join you later.'

'Did he ever commit sublime follies for you,' Hugo asked, detaining her hand, 'as I did when I shut up the entire place because I thought you looked exhausted one hot morning?'

She bent over him.

'Darcy is incapable of any folly in regard to women,' she said. 'That is one reason why we should never have suited each other, he and I. A fool should always marry a fool. Consider my folly when I came back to work in your Department 42 simply because I could not forget your masterful face. Wasn't that also sublime?'

'You never told me—'

'But you guessed.'

'Perhaps.'

She withdrew her hand, and then that delicious swish of skirts which Simon's imagination had foretold thrilled Hugo with delight. He launched a kiss towards her as she vanished.

'We are all to be heartily congratulated,' said Darcy, somewhat astonished when Hugo had put him abreast of the times. 'At one period I suspected that you were going to make a match of it, and then, as I heard nothing, I began to be afraid that she had been unable to banish my humble self from her mind. And, to tell you the truth, the object of this present visit to London was to inform myself, and, if necessary, to—offer her—See?'

Hugo was bound to admit that he saw. Inwardly he laughed to think that he had been seriously disturbed by Darcy's statement in regard to the condition of Camilla's heart.

'Shall we go out to the top of the dome?' he suggested.

They rose.

And at that juncture Camilla reappeared.

The greeting between the Paris friends was commendably calm, but neither seemed to be able to speak freely. And at length Camilla said she would get a cloak and follow them to the belvidere.

The two men climbed to the summit which dominated the City of Pleasure. To the east the famous roof restaurant glittered and jingled under the moon. To the west the Great Wheel was outlined in flame—a symbol of the era. Hugo told Darcy the history of the night in the cemetery, and what preceded, and what came after it, including the strange death of Ravengar in a lunatic asylum, and how everything was explained or explicable—even Mr. Brown, the manager of the Safe Deposit, had run up against justice in Caracas—save and except the identity of Ravengar's accomplice during the last days. He was enlarging upon the inscrutability of that part of the affair, and upon the interest which it lent to the whole episode, when Darcy, who had not been listening, broke in upon his observation with an inapposite remark which obviously sprang from deep feeling.

'She's simply marvellous!' cried Darcy.

'Who?'

'Your wife. Simply marvellous! I had no idea—in Paris—'

'Recollect, you are not in love with her, my friend,' Hugo laughed.

'She must have the best blood in her veins. With that style, that carriage, she surely must be—'

'My dear fellow,' said Hugo, 'beauty has no rank. It bloweth where it listeth. It is the one thing in the world that you can't account for. You've only got to be thankful for it when it blows your way, that's all.'

A white figure appeared in the cavity of the steps leading to the circular gallery.

'What are you talking about?' Camilla inquired.

'Women,' said Hugo.



THE END



* * * * *

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.