Here Hardcastle's reflections came to an end. Some previous notes there were of superficial accidents in the Grey Room and a rough ground plan of it; but nothing more. He had evidently, for the time being, broken away from his environment and was merely thinking, with a pen on paper, when he died.



CHAPTER VII. THE FANATIC

A succession of incidents, that must have perturbed the doctor and his companion in earnest, had followed upon their departure from Chadlands, and Mary soon discovered that she was faced with a terrible problem.

For one young woman had little chance of winning her way against an old man and the religious convictions that another had impressed upon him. Sir Walter and the priest were now at one, nor did the common sense of a fourth party to the argument convince them. At dinner Septimus May declared his purpose.

"We are happily free of any antagonistic and material influence," he said. "Providence has willed that those opposed to us should be taken elsewhere, and I am now able to do my duty without more opposition."

"Surely, father, you do not wish this?" asked Mary. "I thought you—"

But the elder was fretful.

"Let me eat my meal in peace," he answered. "I am not made of iron, and reason cuts both ways. It was reasonable to deny Mr. May before these events. It would be unreasonable to pretend that the death of Peter Hardcastle has not changed my opinions. To cleave to the possibility of a physical explanation any longer is mere folly and obstinacy. I believe him to be right."

"This is fearful for me—and fearful for everybody here. Don't you see what it would mean if anything happened to you, Mr. May? Even supposing there is a spirit hidden in the Grey Room with power and permission to destroy us—why, that being so, are you any safer than dear Tom was or this poor man?"

"Because I am armed, Mary, and they were defenseless. Unhappily youth is seldom clothed in the whole armor of righteousness. My dear son was a good and honorable man, but he was not a religious man. He had yet to learn the incomparable and vital value of the practice of Christian faith. Hardcastle invited his own doom. He admitted—he even appeared to pride himself upon a crude and pagan rationalism. It is not surprising that such a man should be called away to learn the lessons of which he stood so gravely in need."

"I know that our dear Tom was bidden to higher work—to labor in a higher cause than here, to purer knowledge of those things that matter most to the human soul," said Mary. "But that is not to say God chose to take him by a miracle. For what you believe amounts to a miracle. You know that I am bearing my loss in the same spirit as yourself, but, granted it had to be at God's will, that is no reason why we should suppose the means employed were outside nature."

"How can you pretend they are inside nature, as we know it?" asked her father.

"We know nothing at all yet, and I implore Mr. May to wait until we are at least assured that science cannot find a reason."

"Fear not for me, my child," answered Septimus May. "You forget certain details that have assisted to decide me. Remember that Hardcastle had openly denied and derided the possibility of supernatural peril. He had challenged this potent thing not an hour before he was brought face to face with it. Tom went to his death innocently; this man cannot be absolved so easily. In my case, with my knowledge and faith, the conditions are very different, and I oppose an impregnable barrier between myself and the secret being. I am an old priest, and I go knowing the nature of my task. My weapons are such that a good spirit would applaud them and an evil spirit be powerless against them. Do you not see that the Almighty could never permit one of His creatures—for even the devils also are His—to defeat His own minister or trample on the name of Christ? It would amount to that. So armed one might walk in safety through the lowermost hell, for hell can only believe and tremble before the truth."

Mary looked hopelessly at her father; but he offered her small comfort. Sir Walter still found himself conforming to the fierce piety and dogmatic assurance of the man of God. In this welter and upheaval his modest intellect found only a foothold here, and his judgment now firmly inclined to the confident assertions of religion. He was himself a devout and conventional believer, and he turned to the support of faith, and shared, with increasing conviction, the opinion of Septimus May, as uttered in a volume of confident words. He became blind to the physical danger. He even showed a measure of annoyance at Mary's obstinate entreaties. She strove to calm him, and told him he was not himself—an assertion that, by his inner consciousness of its truth, seemed to incense Sir Walter.

He begged her to be silent, and declared that her remarks savored of irreverence. Startled and bewildered by such a criticism, the woman was indeed silent for some time, while her father-in-law flowed on and uttered his conviction. Yet not all his intensity and asseverations could justify such extravagant assertion. At another time they might even have amused Mary; but in sight of the fact that her father was yielding, and that the end of the argument would mean the clergyman in the Grey Room, she could win nothing but frantic anxiety from the situation. Sir Walter was broken; he had lost his hold on reality, and she realized that. His unsettled intelligence had gone over to the opposition, and there was none, as it seemed, to argue on her side.

Septimus May had acted like a dangerous drug on Sir Walter; he appeared to be intoxicated in some degree. But only in mind, not in manner. He argued for his new attitude, and he was not as excited as the priest, but maintained his usual level tones.

"I agreed with Mannering and Henry yesterday, as you know, Mary," he said, "and at my desire Mr. May desisted from his wish. We see how mistaken I was, how right he must have been. I have thought it out this afternoon, calmly and logically. These unfortunate young men have died without a reason, for be sure no explanation of Peter Hardcastle's death will be forthcoming though the whole College of Surgeons examines his corpse. Then we must admit that life has been snatched out of these bodies by some force of which we have no conception. Were it natural, science would have discovered a reason for death; but it could not, because their lives flowed away as water out of a bottle, leaving the bottle unchanged in every particular. But life does not desert its physical habitation on these terms. It cannot quit a healthy, human body neither ruined nor rent. You must be honest with yourself, my child, as well as with your father-in-law and me. A physical cause being absolutely ruled out, what remains? To-night I emphatically support Mr. May, and my conscience, long in terrible concern, is now at rest again. And because it is at rest, I know that I have done well. I believe that what dear Tom's father desires to do—namely, to spend this night in the Grey Room—is now within his province and entirely proper to his profession, and I share his perfect faith and confidence."

"It is you who lack faith, Mary," continued Septimus May. "You lack faith, otherwise you would appreciate the unquestionable truth of what your father tells you. Listen," he continued, "and understand something of what this means from a larger outlook than our own selfish and immediate interests. Much may come of my action for the Faith at large. I may find an answer to those grave questions concerning the life beyond and the whole problem of spiritualism now convulsing the Church and casting us into opposing sections. It is untrodden and mysterious ground; but I am called upon to tread it. For my part, I am never prepared to flout inquirers if they approach these subjects in a reverent spirit. We must not revile good men because they think differently from ourselves. We must examine the assertions of such inquirers as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle in a mood of reverence and sympathy. Some men drift away from the truth in vital particulars; but not so far that they cannot return if the road is made clear to them.

"We must remember that our conviction of a double existence rests on the revelation of God through His Son, not on a mere, vague desire toward a future life common to all sorts and conditions of men. They suspected and hoped; we know. Science may explain that general desire if it pleases; it cannot explain, or destroy, the triumphant certainty born of faith. Spiritualism has succeeded to the biblical record of 'possession,' and I, for my part, of course prefer what my Bible teaches. I do not myself find that the 'mediums' of modern spiritualism speak with tongues worthy of much respect up to the present, and it is certain that rogues abound; but the question is clamant. It demands to be discussed by our spiritual guides and the fathers of the Church. Already they recognize this fact and are beginning to approach it—some priests in a right spirit, some—as at the Church Congress last month—in a wrong spirit."

"A wrong spirit, May?" asked Sir Walter.

"In my opinion, a wrong spirit," answered the other. "There is much, even in a meeting of the Church Congress, that makes truly religious men mourn. They laughed when they should have learned. I refer to incidents and criticisms of last October. There the Dean of Manchester, who shows how those, who have apparently spoken to us from Beyond through the mouths of living persons, describe their different states and conditions. Stainton Moses gave us a vision of heaven such as an Oxford don and myself might be supposed to appreciate.

"Raymond describes a heaven wherein the average second lieutenant could find all that, for the moment, he needs. But why laugh at these things? If we make our own hells, shall we not make our own heavens? We must go into the next world more or less cloyed and clogged with the emotions and interests of this one. It is inevitable. We cannot instantly throw off a lifetime of interests, affections, and desires. We are still human and pass onward as human beings, not as angels of light.

"Therefore, we may reasonably suppose that the Almighty will temper the wind to the shorn lamb, nor impose too harsh and terrible a transformation upon the souls of the righteous departed, but lead one and all, by gradual stages and through not unfamiliar conditions, to the heaven of ultimate and absolute perfection that He has designed for His conscious creatures."

"Well spoken," said Sir Walter.

But Mr. May had not finished. He proceeded to the immediate point.

"Shall it be denied that devils have been cast out in the name of God?" he asked. "And if from human tenements, then why not from dwellings made with human hands also? May not a house be similarly cleansed as well as a soul? This unknown spirit—angel or fiend, or other sentient being—is permitted to challenge mankind and draw attention to its existence. A mystery, I grant, but its Maker has now willed that some measure of this mystery shall be revealed to us. We are called to play our part in this spirit's existence.

"It would seem that it has endured a sort of imprisonment in this particular room for more years than we know, and it may actually be the spirit of some departed human being condemned, for causes that humanity has forgotten, to remain within these walls. The nameless and unknown thing cries passionately to be liberated, and is permitted by its Maker to draw our terrified attention upon itself by the exercise of destructive functions transcending our reason.

"God, then, has willed that, through the agency of devout and living men, the unhappy phantom shall now be translated and moved from this environment for ever; and to me the appointed task is allotted. So I believe, as firmly as I believe in the death and resurrection of the Lord. Is that clear to you, Sir Walter?"

"It is. You have made it convincingly clear."

"So be it, then. I, too, Mary, am not dead to the meaning of science in its proper place. We may take an illustration of what I have told you from astronomy. As comets enter our system from realms of which we have no knowledge, dazzle us a little, awaken our speculations and then depart, so may certain immortal spirits also be supposed to act. We entangle them possibly in our gross air and detain them for centuries, or moments, until their Creator's purpose in sending them is accomplished. Then He takes the means to liberate them and set them on their eternal roads and to their eternal tasks once more."

The listening woman, almost against her reason, felt herself beginning to share these assumptions. But that they were fantastic, unsupported by any human knowledge, and would presently involve an experiment full of awful peril to the life of the man who uttered them, she also perceived. Yet her reasonable caution and conventional distrust began to give way a little under the priest's magnetic voice, his flaming eyes, his positive and triumphant certainty of truth. He burned with his inspiration, and she felt herself powerless to oppose any argument founded on facts against the mystic enthusiasm of such religious faith. His honesty and fervor could not, however, abate Mary's acute fear. Her father had entirely gone over to the side of the devotee and she knew it.

"It is well we have your opportunity to-night," he said, "for had the police arrived, out of their ignorance they might deny it to you."

Yet Mary fought on against them. In despair she appealed to Masters. He had been an officer's orderly in his day, and when he left the Army and came to Chadlands, he never departed again. He was an intelligent man, who occupied a good part of his leisure in reading. He set Sir Walter and Mary first in his affections; and that Mary should have won him so completely she always held to be a triumph, since Abraham Masters had no regard or admiration for women.

"Can't you help me, Masters?" she begged. "I'm sure you know as well as I do that this ought not to happen."

The butler eyed his master. He was handing coffee, but none took it.

"By all means speak," said Sir Walter. "You know how I rate your judgment, Masters. You have heard Mr. May upon this terrible subject, and should be convinced, as I am."

Masters was very guarded.

"It's not for me to pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the Witch of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more than she bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in India, from a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember the sense. They Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a closed door, the devil will open it—excuse my mentioning such a thing; but Hindoos are awful wise."

"And what then, Masters? I know not who may open the door of this mystery; but this I know, that, in the Name of the Most High God, I can face whatever opens it."

"I ain't particular frightened neither, your reverence," said Masters. "But I wouldn't chance it alone, being about average sinful and not near good enough to tackle that unknown horror hid up there single-handed. I'd chance it, though, in high company like yours. And that's something."

"It is, Masters, and much to your credit," declared Sir Walter. "For that matter, I would do the like. Indeed, I am willing to accompany Mr. May."

While Septimus May shook his head and Mary trembled, the butler spoke again.

"But there's nobody else in this house would. Not even Fred Caunter, who doesn't know the meaning of fear, as you can testify, Sir Walter. But he's fed up with the Grey Room, if I may say so, and so's the housekeeper, Mrs. Forbes, and so's Jane Bond. Not that they would desert the ship; but there's others that be going to do so. I may mention that four maids and Jackson intend to give notice to-morrow. Ann Maine, the second housemaid, has gone to-night. Her father fetched her. Excuse me mentioning it, but Mrs. Forbes will give you the particulars to-morrow, if you please."

"Hysteria," declared Sir Walter. "I don't blame them. It is natural. Everybody is free to go, if they desire to do so. But tell them what you have heard to-night, Masters. Tell them that no good Christian need fear to rest in peace. Explain that Mr. May will presently enter the Grey Room in the name of God; and bid them pray on their knees for him before they go to sleep."

Masters hesitated.

"All the same, I very much wish the reverend gentleman would give Scotland Yard a chance. If they fall, then he can wipe their eye after—excuse my language, Sir Walter. I've read a lot about the spirits, being terrible interested in 'em, as all human men must be; and I hear that running after 'em often brings trouble. I don't mean to your life, Sir Walter, but to your wits. People get cracked on 'em and have to be locked up. I stopped everybody frightening themselves into 'sterics at dinner to-day; but you could see how it took 'em; and, whether or no, I do beg Mr. May to be so kind as to let me sit up along with him to-night.

"You never hear of two people getting into trouble with these here customers, and while he was going for this blackguard ghost in the name of the Lord, I could keep my weather eye lifting for trouble. 'Tis a matter for common sense and keeping your nerve, in my opinion, and we don't want another death on our hands, I suppose. There'll be half the mountebanks and photograph men and newspaper men in the land here to-morrow, and 'twill take me all my time to keep 'em from over-running the house. Because if they could come in their scores for the late captain—poor gentleman!—what won't they try now this here famous detective has been done in?"

"Henry deplored the same thing," said Mary. "And I answer again, as I answered then," replied Septimus May. "You mean well, Sir Walter, and your butler means well; but you propose an act in direct opposition to the principle that inspires me."

"What do you expect to happen?" asked Mary. "Do you suppose you will see something, and that something will tell you what it is, and why it killed dear Tom?"

"That, at any rate, would be a very great blessing to the living," said her father.

"The least the creature could do, in my humble opinion," ventured Masters.

But Septimus May deprecated such curiosity.

"Hope for no such thing, and do not dwell upon what is to happen until I am able to tell you what does happen," he answered. "Allow no human weakness, no desire to learn the secrets of another world, to distract your thoughts. I am only concerned with what I know beyond possibility of doubt is my duty—to be entered upon as swiftly as possible. I hear my call in the very voice of the wind shouting round the house to-night. But beyond my duty I do not seek. Whether information awaits me, whether some manifestation indicating my success and valuable to humanity will be granted, I cannot say. I do not stop now to think about that.

"Alone I do this thing—yet not alone, for my hand is in my Maker's hand. Your part will not be to accompany me. Let each man and woman be informed of what I do, and let them lift a petition for me, that my work be crowned with success. But let them not assume that to-morrow I shall have anything to impart. The night may be one of peace within, though so stormy without. I may pray till dawn with no knowledge how my prayer prospers, or I may be called to face a being that no human eye has ever seen and lived. These things are hidden from us."

"You are wonderful, and it is heartening to meet with such mighty faith," replied Sir Walter. "You have no fear, no shadow of hesitation or doubt at the bottom of your mind?"

"None. Only an overmastering desire to obey the message that throbs in my heart. I will be honest with you, for I recognize that many might doubt whether you were in the right to let me face this ordeal. But I am driven by an overwhelming mandate. Did I fear, or feel one tremor of uncertainty, I would not proceed; for any wavering might be fatal and give me helpless into the power of this watchful spirit; but I am as certain of my duty as I am that salvation awaits the just man.

"I believe that I shall liberate this arrested being with cathartic prayer and cleansing petition to our common Maker. And have I not the spirit of my dead boy on my side? Could any living man, however well intentioned, watch with me and over me as he will? Fear nothing; go to your rest, and let all who would assist me do so on their knees before they sleep."

Even Masters echoed some of this fierce and absolute faith when he returned to the servants' hall.

"His eyes blaze," he said. "He's about the most steadfast man ever I saw inside a pulpit, or out of it. You feel if that man went to the window and told the rain to stop and the wind to go down, they would. No ghost that ever walked could best him anyway. They asked me to talk and say what I felt, and I did; but words are powerless against such an iron will as he's got.

"I doubted first, and Sir Walter said he doubted likewise; but he's dead sure now, and what's good enough for him is good enough for us. I'll bet Caunter, or any man, an even flyer that he's going to put the creature down and out and come off without a scratch himself. I offered to sit up with him, so did Sir Walter; but he wouldn't hear of it. So all we've got to do is to turn in and say our prayers. That's simple enough for God-fearing people, and we can't do no better than to obey orders."

It was none the less a nervous and highly strung household that presently went to bed, and no woman slept without another woman to keep her company. Sir Walter found himself worn out in mind and body. Mary made him take his bromide, and he slept without a dream, despite the din of the great "sou'-wester" and the distant, solemn crash of more than one great tree thrown upon the lap of mother earth at last.

Before he retired, however, something in the nature of a procession had escorted the priest to his ordeal. Mr. May donned biretta, surplice, and stole, for, as he explained, he was to hold a religious service as sacred and significant as any other rite.

"Lord send him no congregation then," thought Masters.

But, with Sir Walter and Mary, he followed the ministrant, and left him at the open door of the Grey Room. The electric light shone steadily; but the storm seemed to beat its fists at the windows, and the leaded panes shook and chattered. With no bell and candle, but his Bible alone, Septimus May entered the room, having first made the sign of the Cross before him; then he turned and bade good-night to all.

"Be of good faith!" were the last words he spoke to them.

Having done so he shut the door, and they heard his voice immediately uplifted in prayer. They waited a little, and the sound roiled steadily on. Sir Walter then bade Masters extinguish all the lights and send the household to bed, though the time was not more than ten o'clock.

As for Masters, the glamour and appeal of those strenuous words at the dinner-table had now passed, and presently, as he prepared to retire, he found himself far less confident and assured than his recent words had implied. He sank slowly from hope to fear, even pictured the worse, and asked himself what would follow if the worst happened. He believed that it might mean serious disaster for Sir Walter. If another life were sacrificed to this unknown peril, and it transpired that his master had sanctioned what would amount to suicide in the eyes of reason; then he began to fear that grave trouble must result. Already the burning words of Septimus May began to cool and sound unreal, and Masters suspected that, if they were repeated in other ears, which had not heard him utter them, or seen the fervor of religious earnestness and reverence in which they had been spoken, this feverish business of exorcising a ghost in the twentieth century might only awake derision and receive neither credence nor respect. His entire concern was for Sir Walter, not Mr. May. He could not sleep, lighted a pipe, considered whether it was in his power to do anything, felt a sudden impulse to take certain steps, yet hesitated—from no fear to himself, but doubt whether action might not endanger another. Mary did not sleep either, and she suffered more, for she had never approved, and now she blamed herself not a little for her weak opposition. A thousand arguments occurred to her while she lay awake. Then, for a time, she forgot present tribulations, and her own grief overwhelmed her, as it was wont to do by night. For while the events that had so swiftly followed each other since her husband's death banished him now and again, save from her subconscious mind, when alone he was swift to return and her sorrow made many a night sleepless. She was herself ill, but did not know it. The reaction had yet to come, and could not be long delayed, for her nervous energy was worn out now. She wept and lived days with the dead; then the present returned to her mind, and she fretted and prayed—for Septimus May and for daylight. She wondered why stormy nights were always the longest. She heard a thousand unfamiliar sounds, and presently leaped from her bed, put on a dressing-gown, and crept out into the house. To know that all was well with the watcher would hearten her. But then her feet dragged before she had left the threshold of her own room, and she stood still and shuddered a little. For how if all were not well? How if his voice no longer sounded?

She hesitated to make the experiment, and balanced the relief of reassurance against the horror of silence. She remembered a storm at sea, when through a long night, not lacking danger to a laboring steamer with weak engines, she had lain awake and felt her heart warm again when the watch shouted the hour.

She set out, then, determined to know if all prospered with her father-in-law. Nor would she give ear to misgiving or ask herself what she would do if no voice were steadily uplifted in the Grey Room.

The great wind seemed to play upon Chadlands like a harp. It roared and reverberated, now stilled a moment for another leap, now died away against the house, yet still sounded with a steady shout in the neighbor trees. At the casements it tugged and rattled; against them it flung the rain fiercely. Every bay and passage of the interior uttered its own voice, and overhead was creaking of old timbers, rattling of old slates, and rustling of mortar fragments dislodged by sudden vibrations.

Mary proceeded on her way, and then, to her astonishment, heard a footfall, and nearly ran into an invisible figure approaching from the direction of the Grey Room. Man and woman startled each other, but neither exclaimed, and Mrs. May spoke.

"Who is it?" she asked; and Masters answered:

"Oh, my gracious! Terrible sorry, ma'am! If I didn't think—"

"What on earth are you doing, Masters?"

"Much the same as you, I expect, ma'am. I thought just to creep along and see if the reverend gentleman was all right. And he is. The light's burning—you can see it under the door—and he's praying away, steady as a steam-threshing machine. I doubt he's keeping the evil creature at arm's length, and I'm a tidy lot more hopeful than what I was an hour ago. The thing ain't strong enough to touch a man praying to God like what he can. But if prayers keep it harmless, then it's got ears and it's alive!"

"Can you believe that, Masters?" she whispered.

"Got to, ma'am. If it was just a natural horror beyond the reach of prayer, it would have knocked his reverence out long before now, like other people. It settled the police officer in under an hour, and Mr. May's been up against it for three—nearly four hours, so far. He'll bolt it yet, I shouldn't wonder, like a ferret bolts a rat."

"You really feel more hopeful?"

"Yes, I do, ma'am; and if he can fire the creature and signal 'All's clear' for Chadlands, it will calm everybody and be a proper feather in his cap, and he did ought to be made a bishop, at the least. Not that Scotland Yard men will believe a word of it to-morrow, all the same. Ghosts are bang out of their line, and I never met even a common constable that believed in 'em, except Bob Parrett, and he had bats in the belfry, poor chap. No; they'll reckon it's somebody in the house, I expect, who wanted to kill t' others, but ain't got no quarrel with Mr. May. And you'd be wise to get back to bed, ma'am, and try to sleep, else you'll catch a cold. I'll look round again in an hour or to, if I don't go to sleep my self."

They parted, while the storm still ran high, and through the empty corridor, when it was lulled, a voice rolled steadily on from the Grey Boom.

When it suddenly ceased, an hour before dawn, the storm had already begun to sink, and through a rack of flying and breaking cloud the "Hunter" wheeled westerly to his setting.



CHAPTER VIII. THE LABORS OF THE FOUR

Despite the storm, Sir Walter slept through the night, and did not waken until his man drew the blinds upon a dawn sky so clear that it seemed washed of its blue. He had directed to be wakened at six o'clock.

"What of Mr. May?" he asked.

"Masters wants to know if we shall call him, Sir Walter."

"Not if he has returned to his room, but immediately if still in the Grey Room."

"He's not in his own room, sir."

"Then seek him at once."

The valet hesitated.

"Please, Sir Walter, there's none much cares to open the door."

He heard his daughter's voice outside at the same moment.

"Mr. May has not left the Grey Room, father."

"I'll be with you in a moment," he answered.

Then he rose, dressed partially, and joined her. She was full of active fear.

"All went well at two o'clock," she said, "for I crept out to listen. So did Masters. Mr. May's voice sounded clear and steady."

They found the butler at the door of the Grey Room. He was pale and mopping his forehead.

"I've called to him, but it's as silent as the grave in there," he said. "It's all up with the gentleman; I know it!"

"He may not be there; he may have gone out," answered Sir Walter.

Then he opened the door widely and entered. The electric light still shone and killed the pallid white stare of the morning. Upon a little table under it they observed Septimus May's Bible, open at an epistle of St. Paul, but the priest himself was on the floor some little distance away. He lay in a huddled heap of his vestments. He had fallen upon his right side apparently, and, though the surplice and cassock which he had worn were disarranged, he appeared peaceful enough, with his cheek on a foot stool, as though disposed deliberately upon the ground to sleep. His biretta was still upon his head; his eyes were open, and the fret and passion manifested by his face in life had entirely left it. He looked many years younger, and no emotion of any kind marked his placid countenance. But he was dead; his heart had ceased to beat and his extremities were already cold. The room appeared unchanged in every particular. As in the previous cases, death had come by stealth, yet robbed, as far as the living could judge, of all terror for its victim.

Masters called Caunter and Sir Walter's valet, who stood at the door. The latter declined to enter or touch the dead, but Caunter obeyed, and together the two men lifted Mr. May and carried him to his own room. In a moment it seemed that the house knew what had happened.

A scene of panic and hysteria followed below stairs, and, without Jane Bond's description of it, Mary knew the people were running out of the house as from a plague. She left her father with Masters, and strove to calm the frightened domestics. She spoke well, and explained that the event, horrible though it was, yet proved that no cause for their alarm any longer existed.

"If it had been a wicked spirit we do not understand, it would have had no power over Mr. May, who was a saint of God," she said. "Be at peace, restrain yourselves, and fear nothing now. There is no ghost here. Had it been a demon or any such thing, it must have been conscious, and therefore powerless against Mr. May. This proves that there is some fearful natural danger which we have not yet discovered hidden in the room, but no harm can happen to anybody if they do not go into the room. The police are coming from Scotland Yard in an hour or two, and you may feel as sure, as I do, and Sir Walter does, that they will find out the truth, whatever it is. You must none of you think of leaving before they come. If you do, they will only send for you again. Please prepare your breakfast and be reasonable. Sir Walter is terribly upset, and it would be a base thing if any of you were to desert him at a moment like this."

They grew steadier before her, and Mrs. Forbes, the housekeeper, who believed what Mary had said, added her voice.

Then Sir Walter's daughter returned to her father, who was with Masters in the study. A man had already started for a doctor, but with Mannering away there was none nearer than Neon Abbot.

Mary called on Masters to assert his authority, and reassure the household as she had done. She told him her argument, and he accepted it as a revelation.

"Thank God you could keep your senses and see that, ma'am! Tell the master the same, and make him drink a drop of spirits and get into his clothes. He's shook cruel!"

He had already brought the brandy, which was his panacea for all ills, and now left Mary and her father together. She found him collapsed, and forgot the cause for a few moments in her present concern for him. Indeed, she always thought, and often said afterwards, that but for the minor needs for action that intervened in this series of terrible moments she must herself have gone out of her mind. But something always happened, as in this case, to demand her full attention, and so arrest and deflect the strain almost at the moment of its impact.

She found that the ideas she had just employed to pacify the servants' hall were also in her father's thoughts. From them, however, he won no consolation, though he stood convinced. But the fact that Septimus May should have failed, and paid for his failure with his life, now assumed its true significance for Sir Walter. He was self-absorbed, prostrate, and desperate. In such a condition one is not master of oneself, and may say and do anything. The old man's armor was off, and in the course of his next few speeches, by a selfish forgetfulness that he would have been the first to condemn in another, he revealed a thing that was destined to cause the young widow bitter and needless pain. First, however, he pointed out what she already grasped and made clear to others.

"This upsets all May's theories and gives the lie to me as well. Why did I believe him! Why did I let him convince me against my better judgment?"

"Do not fret about that now."

"You might say, 'I told you so!' but you will not do that. Nevertheless, you were right to seek to stop this unfortunate man last night, and he was terribly mistaken. No being from another world had anything to do with his death. If we granted that, there is an end of religious faith."

"We can be sure of it, father. Evil spirits would have had no power over Mr. May, if there is a just God in heaven."

"Then it is something else. If not a spirit, then a living man—a human devil—and the police will discover him. In this house, one we have known and trusted; for all are known and trusted. They will blame me, with good reason, for sacrificing another life. The irony of fate that I, of all men, one so much alive to the meaning of mercy—that I, out of superstitious folly—But how will it look in the eyes of justice? Black—black! I am well prepared to suffer what I have deserved, Mary. Nothing that man can do to me equals the shame and dismay I feel when I consider what I have done to myself!"

"You must not talk so; it is unworthy of you. You know it, father, while you speak. Nobody has a right to question you or your opinions. Many would have been convinced by Mr. May last night. They may still think that he was right, and that, far from receiving evil treatment, he was blessed by being taken away into the next world without pain or shock. We must feel for him as we try to feel for dear Tom. And I do not mean that I am sorry for him; I am only sorry for us, because of the difficulty of explaining. Yet to tell the truth will not be difficult. They must do the best they can. It doesn't matter as much as you think. Indeed, how should they blame you at all until they themselves find out the truth?"

"They will—they must! They will discover the reason. They will hunt down the murderer, and they will inevitably attach utmost blame to me for listening to a man possessed. May was possessed, I tell you!"

"He was exceedingly convincing. When I listened to him he shook me, too."

"I should have supported you, instead of going over to him."

"He knows the truth now. He is with Tom now. We must remember that. We know they are happy, and that makes the opinion of living people matter very little."

Then, out of his weakness, he smote her, and thrust upon her some hours of agony, very horrible in their nature, which there was no good reason that Mary should have suffered.

"Who is alive and who is dead?" he asked. "We don't even know that. The police demanded to make their own inquiries, and Peter Hardcastle may at this moment be a living and breathing man, if they are right."

She stared at him and feared for his reason.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that they were not prepared to grant that he was dead. Henry and Mannering took him up on that assumption. He may have been restored to animation and his vital forces recovered. Why not? There was nothing visible to indicate dissolution. We have heard of trances, catalepsies, which simulate death so closely that even physicians are deceived. Have not men been buried alive? Tom's father at this moment might be restored to life, if we only knew how to act."

"Then—" she said, with horrified eyes, and stopped.

He saw what he had done.

"God forgive me! No, no, not that, Mary! It's all madness and moonshine! This is delirium; it will kill me! Don't think I believe them, any more than Mannering did, or Henry did. Henry has seen much death; he could not have been deceived. Tom was dead, and your heart told you he was dead. One cannot truly make any mistake in the presence of death; I know that."

Mary was marvellously restrained, despite the fact that she had received this appalling blow and vividly suffered all that it implied.

"I will try to put it out of my mind, father," she said quietly. "But if Mr. Hardcastle is alive, I shall go mad!"

"He is not. Mannering was positive."

"Nevertheless, he may be. And if he is, then Mr. May probably is."

"Grotesque, horrible, worse than death even! Keep your mind away from it, my darling, for the love of God!"

"Who knows what we can suffer till we are called to find out? No, I shall not go mad. But I must know to-day. I cannot eat or sleep until I know. I shall not live long if they don't tell me quickly."

Her father trembled and grew very white.

"This is the worst of all," he said. "These things will leave a burning brand. I am ruined by them, and my life thrown down. I, that thought I was strong, prove so weak that I can forget my own daughter, and out of cowardly misery speak of a thing she should never have known. You have your revenge, Mary, for I shall go a broken man from this hour. Nothing can ever be the same again. My self-respect is gone. I could have endured everything else—the things that I dreaded. All I could have suffered and survived; but to have forgotten and stabbed you—"

"Don't, don't—come—we have got each other, father—we have still got each other. The dead understand everything. Who else matters? Go to your room, and let your dear mind rest. I am not suffering. We cannot alter the past, and who would wish it, if they believe in eternal life? I would not call Tom back if I had the power to do so. Be sure of that."

She spoke comfortable words to him, and supported him to his room. She knew the police would soon arrive, and though they could not report concerning the life, or death, of Peter Hardcastle, she doubted not that definite information relating to him must come to Chadlands quickly. Upon that another life might hang. Yet, when the medical man arrived from Newton, he could only say that Septimus May was dead. He was a friend of Mannering, and knew the London opinion, that this form of apparent death might in reality conceal latent possibilities of resuscitation; but he spoke with absolute certainty. He was old, and had nearly fifty years of professional experience behind him.

"The man is dead, or I never saw death," he declared. "By a hundred independent evidences we can be positive. Post-mortem stains have already appeared, and were they ever known on a living body? Of the others who died in this room I know nothing personally; but here is death, and in twenty-four hours the fact will be plain to the perception of an idiot. What has happened is this: the London police have heard of a famous, recent German case mentioned in 'Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschraft'—an astonishing thing. A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently dead after a night's exposure in some lonely spot. There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat. Yet she was alive—existing without oxygen—an impossibility as we had always supposed. Seeing no actual evidence of death, the physicians injected camphor and caffein and took other restorative steps, with the result that in an hour the woman breathed again! Twenty-four hours later she was conscious and able to speak. It is assumed that the poison and the cold night air together had paralyzed her vasomotor nerves and reduced her body to a state akin to hibernation, wherein physical needs are at their minimum. That case has doubtless awakened these suspicions, and having regard to them, we will keep the poor gentleman in a warm room and proceed with the classical means for restoring respiration."

The doctor was thus engaged when four men reached Chadlands after their nightly journey. They were detective officers of wide reputation, and their chief—a grey-haired man with a round, amiable face and impersonal manner—listened to the events that had followed upon Peter Hardcastle's arrival and departure.

Sir Walter himself narrated the incidents, and perceiving his excitation, Inspector Frith assumed the gentlest and most forbearing attitude that he knew.

The police had come in a fighting humor. They arrived without any preconceived ideas or plan of action; but they were in bitter earnest, and knew that a great body of public opinion lay behind them. That Hardcastle, who had won such credit for his department and earned the applause of two continents, should have thus been lost, in a manner so mean and futile, exasperated not only his personal colleagues, but the larger public interested in his picturesque successes and achievements.

The new arrivals felt little doubt that their colleague was indeed dead, nor, when they heard of the last catastrophe, and presently stood by Septimus May, could they feel the most shadowy suspicion that life might be restored to him. Sir Walter found his nerve steadied on the arrival of these men. Indeed, by comparison with other trials, the ordeal before him now seemed of no complexity. He gave a clear account of events, admitted his great error, and answered all questions without any further confusion of mind.

"I am not concerned to justify my permission in the matter of Mr. May," he concluded. "I deeply deplore it, and bitterly lament the result; but my reasons for granting him leave to do what he desired I am prepared to justify when the time comes. Others also heard him speak, and though he did not convince my daughter, whose intellect is keener than my own, I honestly believed him with all my heart. It seemed to me that only so could any reasonable explanation be reached. Moreover, you have to consider his own triumphant conviction and power of argument. Rightly or wrongly, he made me feel that he was not mistaken—indeed, made me share his resolute convictions. These things I am prepared to explain if need be. But that will not matter to you. Personally I am now only too sure that both Septimus May and I were mistaken. I realize that there must exist some physical causes for these terrible things, that they are of human origin, and I hope devoutly that you will be permitted by Providence to discover them, and those responsible for them. But the peril is evidently still acute. The danger remains, and I need not ask you to recognize it."

Inspector Frith answered him, and proved more human than Sir Walter expected. He was an educated man of high standing in his business.

"We'll waste no time," he said. "Perhaps it is as well you are convinced, Sir Walter, that these things have happened inside natural laws, and don't depend on beings in some unknown fourth dimension. That is your affair, and I am very sure, as you say, that you can give good reasons for what you did at a future inquiry, though the results are so shocking. Poor Peter was taken back to London last night, you tell us, according to directions. If he's in the same case as this unfortunate gentleman, then there's not much doubt about his being dead. We must begin at the beginning, though for us, naturally, Hardcastle's operations and their failure are the most interesting facts to be dealt with. You have told us everything that happened to him. But we have not heard who found him."

"My nephew, Henry Lennox."

"He found Captain May, too?"

"He did. He was the last to see him alive, and the first to see him afterwards."

"Is he here?"

"He will be here in the course of the day. He travelled to London last night with the body of Mr. Hardcastle."

"Why?"

"The doctor, Mr. Mannering, wished him to do so. He desired to have a companion."

"Have you anything further that you would care to tell us?"

"Only this, that I think Mr. Hardcastle, with whom I had a long conversation on his arrival, gave it as his opinion that it was not in the Grey Room we must look for an explanation. I believe he regarded his visit to the room itself as a comparatively unimportant part of the case. He was really more interested in the life of my son-in-law and his relations with other people. I think he regarded May's death as a matter which had been determined outside the Grey Room. But, if I may presume to advise you, this view of his is surely proved mistaken in the light of his own destruction and what has happened since. It is certain now that the cause of danger lies actually in the room itself, and equally certain that what killed my son-in-law also killed Mr. Hardcastle and, last night, killed the Reverend Septimus May."

"On the fact of it, yes," admitted Frith. "I think, after we have considered the situation now developed and visited the Grey Room, we shall agree that there, at any rate, we may begin the work that has brought us. You understand we rule out the possibility of any supernatural event, as Hardcastle, of course, did. While he very properly centred on the history of Captain May, and, from his point of view, did not expect to find the accident of the captain's death in this particular place would prove important, we shall now assume otherwise, and give the room, or somebody with access to it, the credit for this destruction of human life. We shall fasten on the room therefore. Our inquiry is fairly simple at the outset, simpler than poor Hardcastle's. It will lie along one of two channels, and it depends entirely upon which channel we have to proceed whether the matter is going to take much time, and possibly fail of explanation at the end, or but a short time, and be swiftly cleared up. I hope the latter."

"I shall be glad if you can explain that remark," answered Sir Walter; but Mr. Frith was not prepared immediately to do so.

"Fully when the time comes, Sir Walter; but for the moment, no—not even to you. You will understand that our work must be entirely secret, and the lines on which we proceed known only to ourselves."

"That is reasonable, for you cannot tell yet whether I, who speak to you, may not be responsible for everything. At least, command me. I only hope to Heaven you are not going to discover a great crime."

"I share your hope. That is why I speak of two channels for inquiry," answered the detective. "Needless to say, we four men shall discuss the new light thrown upon the situation very fully. At present the majority of us are inclined to believe there is no crime, and the death of Mr. May does not, to my mind, increase the likelihood of such a thing. Indeed, it supports me, I should judge, in my present opinion. What that is will appear without much delay. We'll get to our quarters now, and ask to see the Grey Room later on."

"May I inquire concerning Mr. Hardcastle? I hope he had no wife or family to mourn him."

"He was a bachelor, and lived with his mother, who keeps a shop. The intention is to examine his body this morning, and submit it to certain conclusive tests. Nobody expects much from them, but they're not going to lose half a chance. He was a great man."

"You will hear at once from London if anything transpires to help you?"

"We shall hear by noon at latest."

Sir Walter left them then, and Masters took the four to their accommodation. Their rooms were situated together in the corridor, as near the east end of it as possible. But the four were not yet of one mind, and when they met presently, and walked together in the garden for an hour, it appeared that while two of them agreed with Inspector Frith, under whom all acted, the fourth held to a contrary view, and desired to take the second of the two channels his chief had mentioned.

Thus three men believed some extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, probably mechanical in operation, was responsible for all that had happened in the Grey Room; but the fourth, a man older than Frith, and in some sort his rival for many years, held to it that the reason of these things must be sought in an active and conscious agency. He trusted in a living cause, but felt confident that it was not a sane one. He had known a case when a madman, unsuspected of madness, had operated with extraordinary skill to destroy innocent persons and escape detection, and already he was disposed to believe that among the household of Chadlands might hide such an insane criminal.

On a similar plane, it was in his personal experience that weak-minded persons, possessed with a desire to do something out of the common, had often planned and perpetrated apparent physical phenomena, and created an appearance of supernatural visitations, only exposed after great difficulty by professional research. Along such lines, therefore, this man was prepared to operate, and he believed it might be possible that a maniac, in possession of some physical secret, would be found among the inhabitants of the manor house. He did not, however, elaborate this opinion, but kept it to himself. Indeed, the human element of jealousy, so often responsible for the frustration of the worthiest human ambitions, was not absent from the minds of the four now concerned with this problem.

Each desired to solve it, and while no rivalry existed among them, save in the case of the two older men, it was certain that the eldest of the four would not lose his hold on his own theory, or be at very vital pains to stultify it. All, however, were fully conscious of the danger before them, and Frith, from the first, directed that none was to work alone, either in the Grey Room or elsewhere.

At noon a telegram arrived for Mr. Frith from Scotland Yard. It recorded the fact that Peter Hardcastle was dead, and that examination had revealed no cause for his end. The news reached Sir Walter at once, and if ever he rejoiced in the death of a fellow-creature, it was upon this occasion. It meant unspeakable relief both for him and his daughter.

The detectives began their operations after a midday meal, and having first carefully studied the Grey Room in every visible particular, they emptied it of its contents, and placed the pictures, furniture, and statuette outside in the corridor. They asked for no assistance, and desired that none should visit the scene of their labors. The apartment, empty to the walls, they examined minutely; with the help of ladders, they investigated the outer walls on the east and south side; and they probed the chimney from above and below. They searched the adjoining room—Mary's old nursery—to satisfy themselves that no communication existed, and they drove an iron rod through the walls in various directions, only to prove they were of solid stone, eighteen inches thick within and two feet thick without. There was no apartment on the other side of the chamber. It completed the eastern angle of the house front, and behind it, inside, the corridor terminated at an eastern window parallel with the Grey Room oriel, but flat and undecorated—a modern window inserted by Sir Walter's grandfather to lighten a dark corner. Not a foot of the walls they left untested, and they examined and removed a portion of the paper upon them also. Then, taking up the carpet, they broke into the flooring and skirting boards, but discovered no indication that the grime and dust of centuries had ever been disturbed. The desiccated mummy of a rat alone rewarded their scrutiny. It lay between great timbers under the planking—beams that supported the elaborate stucco roof of a dwelling-room below.

To the ceiling of the Grey Room they next turned their attention, fastened an electric wire to the nearest point, and, through a trap-door in the roof of the passage, investigated the empty space between the ceiling and the roof. Not an inch of the massive oaken struts above did they fail to scrutinize, and they made experiments with smoke and water, to learn if, at any point, so much as a pin-hole existed in the face of the stucco. But it was solid, and spread evenly to a considerable depth. They studied it, then, from inside the room, to discover nothing but the beautifully modeled surface, encrusted with successive layers of whitewash. The workmanship belonged to a time when men knew not to scamp their labors and art and craft went hand in hand. Such enthusiasms perished with the improvement of education. They died with the Guilds, and the Unions are not concerned to revive them.

The detectives had finished this examination when, at an hour in the late afternoon, Henry Lennox and Dr. Mannering returned. The authorities had been informed of the death of Septimus May, and desired that no more than the ordinary formalities should be taken, unless their representatives at Chadlands thought otherwise. But they did not. They were now convinced that no communication existed between the Grey Room and the outer world, and they declared their determination to watch in it during the coming night. As a preliminary to this course, however, they examined each piece of furniture and every picture and other object that they had removed from the room. These told them nothing, and presently they restored the chamber in every particular, re-laid and nailed the carpet, and placed each article as it had stood when they arrived. They continued to decline assistance, and made it clear that nobody was to approach the end of the corridor in which they worked. Alive to the danger, but believing that, whatever its quality, four men could hardly be simultaneously destroyed, they prepared for their vigil. Nor did they manifest any fear of what awaited them. Facts, indeed, may be stubborn things, but even facts will not upset the convictions of a lifetime. Not one of the four for an instant imagined that a supernatural explanation of the mystery existed. Their minds were open, and their wits, long trained in problems obscure and difficult, assured them that the problem was capable of solution and within the power of their wits to solve. They apprehended no discovery from the watch to be undertaken; but, at Frith's orders, they set stolidly about it, as a preliminary to the proceedings of the following day. Once proved that the murderous force was powerless against men prepared and armed against it, and the practical inquiry as to these strange deaths would be entered upon.

They came with full powers, and designed to search the house without warning on the following morning, and examine all who dwelt in it.

Sir Walter invited them to dine with him, and they did so. There were present the master of Chadlands, Dr. Mannering—who asked to spend the night there—and Henry Lennox; while Masters and Fred Caunter waited upon them. The detectives heard with interest the result of the post-mortem conducted during the morning, and related incidents in the life of Peter Hardcastle. They were all unfeignedly amazed that a man with such a record—one who had carried his life in his hand on many occasions—should have lost it thus, at noonday and without a sound of warning to his fellow-creatures. Dr. Mannering told how he had watched the medical examination, but not assisted at it. All attempts to galvanize back life failed, as the experts engaged immediately perceived they must upon viewing the corpse; and during the subsequent autopsy, when the dead man's body had been examined by chemist and microscopist, the result was barren of any pathological detail. No indication to explain his death rewarded the search. Not a clue or suspicion existed. He was healthy in every particular, and his destruction remained, so far, inexplicable to science. Hardcastle had died in a syncope, as the other victims; that was all the most learned could declare.

Impressed by these facts, the four made ready, and Lennox observed that they neither drank during their meal nor smoked after it.

At nine o'clock they began their work of the night, but invited nobody to assist them, and begged that they might not be approached until daylight on the following morning.

Dr. Mannering took it upon himself earnestly to beg they would abandon the vigil. Indeed, he argued strongly against it.

"Consider, gentlemen," he said, "you are now possibly convinced in your own minds that the source of these horrible things is to be found outside the Grey Room, and not in it. I agree with you, so far. We have reached a pitch where, in my judgment, we are justified in believing that some motiveless malignity is at work. But by going into that room, are you not giving somebody another opportunity to do what has already been done? Evil performed without motive, as you know better than I can tell you, must be the work of a maniac, and there may exist in this house, unsuspected and unguessed, a servant afflicted in this awful way. One has heard of such things."

The eldest of his listeners felt unspeakable interest in these remarks, since his own opinion inclined in the same direction. He was, however, none the less chagrined that another should thus voice his secret theory. He did not answer, but his chief replied.

"It is proved," said Frith, "that no violence overtakes those subjected to this ordeal. And I have decided that we shall not be in danger, for this reason. We shall be armed as none of the dead were. Our precautions will preclude any possibility of foul play from a material assault. And, needless to say, we contemplate no other. We are free agents, and I should not quarrel with any among us who shirked; but duty is duty, and we have all faced dangers as great as this—probably far greater. What you say is most interesting, doctor, and I agree with you, that outside the room we must look for the explanation of these murders—if murders they are. Upon that business we shall start to-morrow. Forgive me for not going into details, because we have our personal methods. They embrace the element of surprise, and, of course, prevent any conversation concerning what we are going to do until we have done it."

"Supposing you are all found dead to-morrow?" asked Dr. Mannering bluntly.

"Then we are all found dead to-morrow; and others will have the satisfaction of finding out why."

"You suspect somebody, yet can absolve nobody?"

"Exactly, Sir Walter. I said pretty much that to the pressmen, who forced themselves in this afternoon. The accursed daily Press of this country has saved the skin of more blackguards than I like to count. Keep them and the photographers away. It ought to be criminal—their interference."

"I ordered that none was to be admitted for a moment."

"It is always very hard to keep them out. They are cunning devils, and take a perverse pleasure in adding to our difficulties. Little they care how they defeat justice if they can only get 'copy' for their infernal newspapers."

Inspector Frith spoke with some warmth; he had little for which to thank the popular Press.

Within an hour the four departed, and it was understood that they should not be disturbed until they themselves cared to reappear.

Mannering remained with Sir Walter and Lennox. He was dejected and exceedingly anxious. But the others did not share his fears. The younger, indeed, felt hopeful that definite results might presently be recorded, and he went to his bed very thankful to get there. But Sir Walter, now calm and refreshed by some hours of sleep during the afternoon, designed to keep his own vigil.

"Poor May lies in my library to-night," he said, "and I shall watch beside him. Mary also wishes to do so. It seems a proper respect to pay the dead. The inquest takes place to-morrow, and he will be buried in his parish. We must attend the funeral, Mary and I."

"If ever a man took his own life, that man did!" declared the doctor.



CHAPTER IX. THE NIGHT WATCH

Though a room had been prepared for Dr. Mannering, he did not occupy it long. The early hours of night found him in a bad temper, and suffering from considerable exacerbation of nerves. He troubled little for himself, and still less concerning the police, for he was human, and their indifference to his advice annoyed him; but for Sir Walter he was perturbed, and did not like the arrangements that he had planned. The doctor, however, designed to go and come and keep an eye upon the old man, and he hoped that the master of Chadlands would presently sleep, if only in his study chair. For himself he suffered a somewhat unpleasant experience toward midnight, but had himself to thank for it. He rested for an hour in his bedroom, then went downstairs, to find Mary and her father sitting quietly together in the great library. They were both reading, while at the farther end, where a risen moon already frosted the lofty windows above him, lay Septimus May in his coffin. Mary had plucked a wealth of white hothouse flowers, which stood in an old Venetian bowl at his feet.

Sir Walter was solicitous for the doctor.

"Not in bed!" he exclaimed. "This is too bad, Mannering. We shall have you ill next. You have been on your feet for countless hours and much lies before you to-morrow. Do be sensible, my dear fellow, and take some rest—even if you cannot sleep."

"There is no sleep to-night for me. Lord knows how soon I may be wanted by those fools playing with fire upstairs."

"We cannot interfere. For myself a great peace has descended upon me, now that initiative and the need for controlling and directing is taken out of my hands. I began to feel this when poor Hardcastle arrived; but that composure was sadly shattered. I am even prepared for the needful publicity now. I can face it. If I erred in the matter of this devoted priest, I shall not question the judgment of my fellow-men upon me."

"Fear nothing of that sort," answered Mannering. "Your fellow-man has no right to judge you, and the law, with all its faults, appreciates logic. Who can question your right to believe that this is a matter outside human knowledge? Your wisdom may be questioned, but not your right. Plenty would have felt the same. When the mind of man finds itself groping in the dark, you will see that, in the huge majority of cases, it falls back upon supernatural explanations for mystery. This fact has made fortunes for not a few who profit by the credulity of human nature. Faiths are founded on it. May carried too many guns for you. He honestly convinced you that his theory of his son's death was the correct theory; and I, for one, though I deplore the fact that you came to see with his eyes, and permitted him to do what he believed was his duty, yet should be the last to think your action open to judicial blame. No Christian judge, at any rate, would have the least right to question you. In a word, there is no case yet against anybody. The force responsible for these things is utterly unknown, and if ill betides the men upstairs, that is only another argument for you."

Sir Walter put down his book—a volume of pious meditations. Events had drawn him into a receptive attitude toward religion. He was surprised at Dr. Mannering.

"I never thought to hear you admit as much as that. How strangely the currents of the mind ebb and flow, Mannering. Here are you with your scepticism apparently weakening, while I feel thankfully assured, at any rate for the moment, that only a material reason accounts for these disasters."

"Why?" asked the physician.

"Because against the powers of any dark spirit Septimus May was safe. Even had he been right and his prayer had freed such a being and cast it out of my house, would the Almighty have permitted it to rend and destroy the agent of its liberation? May could not have suffered death by any conscious, supernatural means if our faith is true; but, as he himself said, when he came here after the death of his boy, he did not pretend that faith in God rendered a human being superior to the laws of matter. If, as was suggested at dinner to-day, there is somebody in this house with a mind unhinged who has discovered a secret of nature by which human life can be destroyed and leave no sign, then this dead clergyman was, of course, as powerless against such a hideous danger as any other human being."

"But surely such a theory is quite as wild as any based on supernatural assumptions? You know the occupants of this house—every one of them, Sir Walter. Mary knows them, Henry knows them. I have attended most of them at one time or another. Is there one against whom such a suspicion can be entertained?"

"Not one indeed."

"Could the war have made a difference?" asked Mary. "We know how shell shock and wounds to a poor man's head had often left him apparently sound, yet in reality weakened as to his mind."

"Yes, that is true enough. And when the unfortunate men get back into everyday life from the hospitals, or endeavor to resume their old work, the weakness appears. I have seen cases. But of all the men in Chadlands there are only three examples of any such catastrophe. I know a few in the village—none where one can speak of actual insanity, however. Here there is only Fred Caunter, who was hurt about the head on board ship, but the injury left no defect."

"Fred is certainly as sane as I am—perhaps saner," admitted Sir Walter.

"Don't think I really imagine there is anything of the kind here," added Mannering. "But if these four men are in a condition to proceed with their work to-morrow, you must expect them to make a searching examination of everybody in the house. And they may find a good number of nervous and hysterical women, if not men. It is not their province, however, to determine whether people are weak in the head, and I know, as well as you do, that none in this house had any hand in these disasters."

"Never was a family with fewer secrets than mine," declared Sir Walter.

"The morning may bring light," said Mary.

"I feel very little hope that it will," answered Mannering. "The inquiry will proceed, whatever happens to-night, and we may all have to go to London to attend it. After they have turned Chadlands and everybody in it upside down, as they surely will, then we may be called, if they arrive at no conclusion."

"I am prepared to be. I shall not leave the country, of course, until I receive permission to do so. It must be apparent to everybody that I am, of all men, if not the most involved, at least the most anxious to clear this mystery—that nobody can doubt."

"Then you must conserve your strength and be guided," said Mannering. "I do beg of you to retire now, and insist upon Mary doing the same. Nothing can be gained by the dead, and necessary energy is lost to the living by this irrational vigil. It is far past midnight; I beg you to retire, Sir Walter, and Mary, too. There is nothing that should keep you out of bed, and I urge you to go to it."

But the elder refused.

"Few will sleep under this roof to-night," he said. "There is a spirit of human anxiety and distress apparent, and naturally so. I will stay here with this good man. He is better company than many of the living. I feel a great peace here. The dead sustains me."

He joined Mannering, however, in an appeal to his daughter, and, satisfied that their friend would not be far off at any time, Mary presently left them. She declared herself as not anxious or nervous. She had never believed that anything but natural causes were responsible for her husband's death, and felt an assurance that morning would bring some measure, at least, of explanation. She went out of the room with Mannering, and, promising her to keep a close watch on her father, the doctor left Mary, lighted his pipe, and strolled to the billiard-room. Presently he patrolled the hall and pursued his own reflections. Where his thoughts bent, there his body unconsciously turned, and, forgetting the injunction of the silent men aloft—indeed, forgetting them also for a moment—Mannering ascended the stairs and proceeded along the corridor toward the Grey Room. But he did not get far. Out of the darkness a figure rose and stopped him. The man turned an electric torch on Dr. Mannering, and recognized him. It appeared that while one detective kept guard outside, the others watched within. At the sound of voices the door of the Grey Room opened, and in the bright light that streamed from it a weird figure stood—a tall, black object with huge and flashing eyes and what looked like an elephant's trunk descending from between them. The watchers, wearing hoods and gas masks, resembled the fantastic demons of a Salvator Rosa, or Fuselli. Their chief now accosted the doctor somewhat sharply. He knew his name and received his apology, but bade him leave the corridor at once. "I must, however, search you first," said Frith. "You were wrong to come," he continued. "This is no time to distract us. Explain to-morrow, please."

The doctor, after holding up his hands and submitting to a very close scrutiny, departed and swore at his own inadvertence. He had forgotten that, in common with everybody else involved, he must bear the brunt of suspicion, and he perceived that his approach to the Grey Room, after it was clearly understood that none should on any account attempt to do so, must attract unpleasant attention to himself. And he could offer no better excuse than that he had forgotten the order. He apprehended an unpleasantness on the following day, and wondered at himself that he could have done anything so open to question. Brain fag was a poor excuse, but he had none better.

In an hour he returned to Sir Walter, hoping to find him asleep; but the master of Chadlands was still reading, and in a frame of mind very quiet and peaceful. He regretted the forgetfulness that had taken his friend into the forbidden gallery.

"I am concerned for Mary," he said. "She is only keeping up at a terrible cost of nervous power. It is more than time that she was away; but she will not go until I am able to accompany her."

"It should not be long. We must hope they will get to the bottom of it soon, if not to-night. I am most anxious for both of you to be off."

"We design to go to Italy. She shrinks from the Riviera and longs for Florence, or some such peaceful place."

"It will be cold there."

"Cold won't hurt us."

"Shall you shut up Chadlands?"

"Impossible. It is the only home of half my elder people. But, if nothing is discovered and we are still left without an explanation, I shall seal the Grey Room—windows, door, and hearth—unless the authorities direct otherwise. I wish I could fill the place with solid stone or concrete, so that it would cease to be a room at all."

"That you can't do," answered the practical doctor. "Such a weight would bring down the ceiling beneath. But you can make it fast and block it up if the thing beats them."

"We are like the blind moving in regions unfamiliar to their touch," said Sir Walter. "I had hoped so much from the prayer of that just man. He, indeed, has gone to his reward. He is with the boy he loved better than anything on earth; but for us is left great sorrow and distress. Still, prayers continue to be answered, Mannering. I have prayed for patience, and I find myself patient. The iron has entered my soul. The horror of publicity—the morbid agony I experienced when I knew my name must be dragged through every newspaper in England—these pangs are past. My life seems to have ended in one sense, and, looking back, I cannot fail to see how little I grasped the realities of existence, how I took my easy days as a matter of course and never imagined that for me, too, extreme suffering and misery were lying in wait. Each man's own burden seems the hardest to bear, I imagine, and to me these events have shrivelled the very marrow in my bones. They scorched me, and the glare, thrown from the larger world into the privacy of my life, made me feel that I could call on the hills to cover me. But now I can endure all."

"You must not look at it so, Sir Walter. Everybody knows that you have done no wrong, and if your judgment is questioned, what is it? Only the fate every man—great or small, famous or insignificant—has to bear. You can't escape criticism in this world, any more than you can escape calumny. It is something that you can now speak so steadfastly, preserve such patience, and see so clearly, too. But, for my part, clear seeing only increases my anxiety to-night. I don't personally care a button for the welfare of those men, since they declined to take my advice; but I am human, and as I suffer with a sick patient and rejoice when he recovers, so I cannot help suffering at the thought of the risk these four are running. They sit there, I suppose, or else walk about. They wear gas masks, and carry weapons in their hands. But if we are opposed to a blind, deaf, unreasoning force, which acts unconsciously and inevitably, then the fate of ten men would be just as uncertain as the fate of one. The thing operates by day or night—that much has been proved—and, since it is probably acting automatically, as lightning or steam, how can they escape?"

"This invisible death-dealing force may be in the control of a human mind, remember."

"It is beyond the bounds of possibility, Sir Walter."

"You are a rash man to affirm anything so definite, after what you have gone through with the rest of us. Let me, in my turn, urge you to go to your rest. These things have told upon you. You are only flesh and blood, not iron, as you fancy. The men are all right so far."

"I'll get something to eat and drink," said Mannering, "and leave you in peace for a while."

"Do. You will find all you need in the dining-room. I directed Masters to leave ample there, in case the detectives might want food."

"Shall I bring you something—a whisky, and a biscuit?"

"No, no. I need nothing."

The doctor went his way, and passed an hour with meat and drink. Then he felt an overpowering desire to sleep, but resisted it, lighted his pipe again, and, resumed his march in the hall. He listened presently at the library door, and was gratified to hear a gentle but steady snore. The sound pleased Mannering well.

He padded about once more, resolved to keep awake until the vigil was ended. Then he would go to bed and sleep. It was now past three o'clock on a still, winter night—a lull and interval between yesterday's storm and rough weather yet to come. The doctor went out of doors for a time and tramped the terrace. A waning moon had risen, and the night was mild and cloudy.

Bright light shot out like fans into the murk from the east and south windows of the Grey Room. Returning to the house, the watcher listened at the foot of the staircase, and heard the mumble of men's voices and the sound of feet. They were changing the guard, and the detective in the corridor gave up his place to one from inside. All was well so far.

Then Mannering went to the billiard-room, lolled on the settee for a time, and drowsed through another hour. For a few minutes he lost consciousness, started up to blame his weakness, and looked at his watch. But he had only slumbered for five minutes.

At six o'clock he told himself that it was morning, and went in again to Sir Walter. The old man had wakened, and was sitting in quiet reflection until daylight should outline the great window above the dead.

"The night has been one of peace," he declared. "The spirit of poor May seemed near me, and I felt, too, as though his son were not far off, either. Is all well with the watchers?"

"I leave you to inquire, but don't go too near them. Night fades over the woods, so the day can be said to have begun."

"Doubtless the household will be stirring. I shall go and inquire, if they will permit me to do so. Oblige me by staying here a few minutes until I call my daughter. I do not want our poor friend to be alone until he leaves us."

"I will stay here for the present. But don't let Mary be called if she is sleeping, and turn in yourself for a few hours now."

"I have slept off and on."

Sir Walter left him and ascended to the corridor. Already light moved wanly in the windows.

He stood at the top of the staircase and raised his voice.

"Is all well, gentlemen?" he asked loudly; but he received no answer.

"Is all well?" he cried again.

And then from the gloom emerged Inspector Frith. He had doffed his gas mask.

Sir Walter switched on an electric light.

"Nothing, I trust, has happened?"

"Nothing whatever, Sir Walter. No sign or sound of anything out of the common can be recorded."

"Thank Heaven—thank Heaven for that!"

"Though we had exhausted the possibilities of such a thing, we none the less expected gas," explained the detective. "That seemed the only conceivable means by which life might be destroyed in that room. Therefore we wore gas masks of the latest pattern, supposed to defy any gaseous combination ever turned out of a laboratory. It is well known that new, destructive gases were discovered just before the end of the war—gases said to be infinitely more speedy and deadly than any that were employed. As to that, and whether the Government has the secret of them, I cannot say. But no gas was liberated in the Grey Room last night. Otherwise a rat in a trap and birds in a cage, which we kept by us, would have felt it. The room is pure enough."

Sir Walter followed him down the corridor, and chatted with the other men also. They had left the Grey Room and taken off their masks; they looked weary and haggard in the waxing, white light of day.

"You've done your duty, and I am beyond measure thankful that no evil has overtaken you. What can now be prepared for you in the way of food?"

They thanked him, and declared that in an hour they would be glad of breakfast. Then Sir Walter went to his own apartments, rang, and gave the needful directions. He joined Mary soon afterwards, and she shared his thanksgivings. She was already dressed, and descended immediately to Dr. Mannering.

Henry Lennox also appeared soon afterwards. He had already learned from Fred Caunter that the watchers were safely through the night.

Chadlands was the scene of another inquest, and again a coroner's jury declared that Septimus May, as his son before him, had died by the Hand of God. Later in the day the dead man was conveyed to his own parish, and two days later Sir Walter and Mary, with her cousin, attended the funeral.

Meantime, the detectives began their serious work. They proceeded with system and upon their own plan. They omitted to question not the least of the persons who dwelt at Chadlands, and inquired also privately concerning every member of the house party there assembled when Tom May died. Into the sailor's private life they also searched, and so gradually investigated every possible line of action and point of approach to his death. The cause of this they were content to disregard, arguing that if an assassin could be traced, his means of murder would then be learned; but, from the first, no sort of light illumined their activities, and nothing to be regarded as a clue could be discovered, either in Tom May's relations with the world, or in the history and character of anyone among the many who were subject for inquiry.

Concerning the house party, only Ernest Travers and his wife had met the sailor before, on the occasion of his wedding; while as to the staff at Chadlands, nothing transpired to indicate that any had ever had occasion to feel affronted by an act of his. They were, moreover, loyal to a man and woman. They furnished no peculiarities, and gave no ground for the least suspicion. The case, in Frith's opinion, was unique, because, despite the number of persons it was necessary to study and consider, in none of their relations with the family involved could there be found a shadow of unfriendly intercourse, a harbored grudge, or a suggestion of ill-feeling. The people were all simple and ingenuous. They declared and displayed nothing but regard for their employer, and many of them had succeeded their own parents in their present employment. It was a large household, very closely united by ties of tradition and affection. Henry Lennox also proved above suspicion, though his former attachment to Mary was not concealed. It needed no great student of character, however, to appreciate his transparent honesty under examination, a remark that extended to Dr. Mannering, whose incautious advent in the corridor on the night of their vigil had offended the watchers.

For three weeks they worked industriously—without vision, but to the best of their experience and intellectual powers. In the familiar phrase, they left no stone unturned; and following their report, which frankly admitted absolute failure, a small commission instituted a further inquiry on the evidence, and invited those chiefly concerned to attend it.

Sir Walter, his daughter, Henry Lennox, and Dr. Mannering were examined with sympathy and consideration. But they could offer no opinions, throw no light, and suggest no other lines of inquiry than those already pursued.

For the world the mystery died like a new star, which was blazed into fame only to retreat or diminish and disappear once more. Fresh problems and new sensations filled the newspapers, and a time at last came when, to his relief, Sir Walter could open his morning journal and find no mention of Chadlands therein. Architects examined the room a second time, and the authorities also gave permission to certain notable spiritualists to make further nocturnal and diurnal vigils therein, though no solitary watcher was permitted. Three came and passed a day and a night in the Grey Room. They were rewarded with no phenomena whatever.

The master of Chadlands was at length informed that he might leave England, but directed to set a seal on the Grey Room, and to treat it in such a manner that it should no longer be capable of entrance.

The red tape that had wound itself about the tragedy was thus unloosed at last, and the suffering pair made all haste to get away. Its owner undertook to treat the Grey Room as directed on his return from abroad, and meanwhile had both door and window boarded up with heavy timbers.

The household was long since restored to self-possession and even cheerfulness. Some felt pride in their passing publicity, and none expressed any fear of remaining. But Sir Walter guessed that few feet would tread the great corridor until a day was near for his return.



CHAPTER X. SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI.

Sir Walter persisted in his purpose and went to Florence. He believed that here Mary might find distractions and novelties to awaken interest which would come freshly into her life without the pain and poignancy of any recollection to lessen the work of peace. For himself he only desired to see her returning to content. Happiness he knew must be a condition far removed from her spirit for many days.

They stood one evening on the Piazza of Michelangelo and saw Florence, like a city of dim, red gold extended beneath them. The setting sunlight wove an enchantment over towers and roofs. It spread a veil of ineffable brightness upon the city and tinged green Arno also, where the river wound through the midst.

Sir Walter was quietly happy, because he knew that in a fortnight his friends, Ernest and Nelly Travers, would be at Florence. Mary, too, prepared to welcome them gladly, for her father's sake. He left his daughter largely undisturbed, and while they took their walks together, the old man, to whom neither music nor pictures conveyed much significance, let her wander at will, and the more readily because he found that art was beginning to exercise a precious influence over Mary's mind. There was none to guide her studies, but she pursued them with a plan of her own, and though at first the effort sometimes left her weary, yet she persisted until she began to perceive at least the immensity of the knowledge she desired to acquire.

Music soothed her mind; painting offered an interest, part sensuous, part intellectual. Perhaps she loved music best at first, since it brought a direct anodyne. In the sound of music she could bear to think of her brief love story. She even made her father come and listen presently to things that she began to value.

Their minds inevitably proceeded by different channels of thought, and while she strove resolutely to occupy herself with the new interests, and put away the agony of the past, till thinking was bearable again and a road to peace under her feet once more, Sir Walter seldom found himself passing many hours without recurrence of painful memories and a sustained longing to strip the darkness which buried them. To his forthright and simple intelligence, mystery was hateful, and the reflection that his home must for ever hold a profound and appalling mystery often thrust itself upon his thoughts, and even inclined him, in some moods, to see Chadlands no more. Yet a natural longing to return to the old environment, in which he could move with ease and comfort, gradually mastered him, and as the spring advanced he often sighed for Devonshire, yet wondered how he could do so. Then would return the gloomy history of the winter rolling over his spirit like a cloud, and the thought of going home again grew distasteful.

Mary, however, knew her father well enough, and at this lustrous hour, while Florence stretched beneath them in its quiet, evening beauty, she declared that they must not much longer delay their return.

"Plenty of time," he said. "I am not too old to learn, I find, and a man would indeed be a great fool if he could not learn in such a place as this. But though art can never mean much to me now, your case is different, and I am thankful to know that these things will be a great addition and interest to your future life. I'm a Philistine, and shall always so remain, but I'm a repentant one. I see my mistake too late."

"It's a new world, father," she said, "and it has done a great deal for an unhappy woman—not only in taking my thoughts off myself, but in lessening my suffering, too. I do not know why, or how, but music, and these great, solemn pictures painted by dead men, all touch my thoughts of dear Tom. I seem to see that there are so many more mighty ones dead than living. And yet not dead. They live in what they have made. And Tom lives in what he made—that was my love for him and his for me. He grows nearer and dearer than ever when I hear beautiful music. I can better bear to think of him at such times, and it will always help me to remember him."

"God bless art if it does so much," he said. "We come to it as little children, and I shall always be a child and never understand, but for you the valuable message will be received. May life never turn you away from these things in years to come."

"Never! Never!" she assured him. "Art has done too much for me. I shall not try to live my life without it. Already I feel I could not."

"What have you seen to-day?" he asked.

"I was at the Pitti all the morning. I liked best Fra Bartolommeo's great altar piece and Titian's portrait of Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici. You must see him—a strange, unhappy spirit only twenty-three years old. Two years afterwards he was poisoned, and his haunted, discontented eyes closed for ever. And the 'Concert'—so wonderful, with such a hunger-starved expression in the soul of the player. And Andrea del Sarto—how gracious and noble; but Henry James says he's second-rate, because his mind was second-rate, so I suppose he is, but not to me. He never will be to me. To-morrow you must come and see some of the things I specially love. I won't bore you. I don't know enough to bore you yet. Oh, and Allori's 'Judith'—so lovely, but I wonder if Allori did justice to her? Certainly his 'Judith' could never have done what the real Judith did. And there's a landscape by Rubens—dark and old—yet it reminded me of our woods where they open out above the valley."

He devoted the next morning to Mary, and wandered among the pictures with her. He strove to share her enthusiasm, and, indeed, did so sometimes. Then occurred a little incident, so trivial that they forgot all about it within an hour, yet were reminded of it at a very startling moment now fast approaching.

They had separated, and Sir Walter's eye was caught by a portrait. But he forgot it a moment later in passing interest of a blazoned coat of arms upon the frame—a golden bull's head on a red ground. The heraldic emblem was tarnished and inconspicuous, yet the spectator felt curiously conscious that it was not unfamiliar. It seemed that he had seen it already somewhere. He challenged Mary with it presently; but she had never observed it before to her recollection.

Sir Walter enjoyed his daughter's interest, and finding that his company among the pictures added to Mary's pleasure, while his comments caused her no apparent pain, he declared his intention of seeing more.

"You must tell me what you know," he said.

"It will be the blind leading the blind, dearest," she answered, "but my delight must be in finding things I think you'll like. The truth is that neither of us knows anything about what we ought to like."

"That's a very small matter," he declared. "We must begin by learning to like pictures at all. When Ernest comes, he will want us to live in his great touring car and fly about, so we should use our present time to the best advantage. Pictures do not attract him, and he will be very much surprised to hear that I have been looking at them."

"We must interest him, too, if we can."

"That would be impossible. Ernest does not understand pictures, and music gives him no pleasure. He regards art with suspicion, as a somewhat unmanly thing."

"Poor Mr. Travers!"

"Do not pity him, Mary. His life is sufficiently full without it."

"But I've lived to find out that no life can be." In due course Ernest and Nelly arrived, and, as Sir Walter had prophesied, their pleasure consisted in long motor drives to neighboring places and scenes of interest and beauty. His daughter, in the new light that was glimmering for her, found her father's friends had shrunk a little. She could speak with them and share their interests less whole-heartedly than of old; but they set it down to her tribulation and tried to "rouse" her. Ernest Travers even lamented her new-found interests and hoped they were "only a passing phase."