"I thought he was unwell," I interpolated, in surprise.

"That's so. He's a sick man, not hardly fit to be about, but for all that he's off. He ought to be back again in—well, in a few days, however."

"A few days!" I echoed.

"More or less. By George! he will be mad when he knows he's kept you waiting. For, of course, you will wait, won't you, Mr. Stanton?"

"I should certainly like to see him before I go back to the East," I said; and I spoke no more than the truth, for, putting my cordial feeling for Farnham out of the question, it might be that valuable information concerning Wildred's past could be wrested from him with due diplomacy. "Still, I hardly feel like hanging about Denver for an indefinite length of time, doing nothing. I shouldn't mind a little journey, as I've come so far. If he's at any of the Colorado mines, perhaps I might run out and join him; I've been there with him before, you may remember."

"You might indeed, sir," returned Bennett, still embarrassed, "if he was in any such place, which he isn't. To tell you the plain truth, Mr. Stanton, as I'm sure Mr. Farnham would wish, if he could dream it was you I was talking to, why, this little journey of his is strictly on the 'Q. T.' I guess from what he said there's a lady mixed up in it."

Exactly what Wildred had said, when explaining his friend's absence on Christmas Day from the House by the Lock! I remembered the coincidence, though I could hardly see that it bore with any importance on the present case. Farnham might hold several feminine trump cards to play at the end of a trick for all I knew, or had a right to know.

"I tell you what to do, Mr. Stanton," Bennett continued, recovering his wonted self-possession. "You just go up to the house, and make yourself at home there till Mr. Farnham gets back. You know what a big place it is, and how glad the chief is to fill it with his friends, especially such friends as you. Then, by the end of next week, anyhow——"

I interrupted him impatiently. "What, will he be away till then?"

"I should think it was probable from what he said before he left, sir."

"I wish," I exclaimed desperately, "that you could see your way to making things a little clearer for me. I don't want to pry into Farnham's affairs, of course—that goes without saying. But perhaps, without any betrayal of confidence, you might let me know exactly what he did tell you in regard to his return."

"Well," said Bennett, with a short laugh, "seeing it's you! The fact is, Mr. Stanton, it'll be a considerable relief to my mind to talk over the matter, and ask your opinion as to one or two points that have been rather troubling me."

He glanced up into my face, almost for the first time since we had begun the discussion, and I saw that I was to hear something which he considered of importance.

Of how great importance it was to prove for me, I did not dare to dream.



CHAPTER XXI

A Picture from the Past

"The fact is," said Bennett, "I haven't quite known what to make of Mr. Farnham since he's been back on this side the herring-pond. Of course he hasn't been well, but that would hardly be enough to account for the change in him. Did you see him, may I ask, Mr. Stanton, when he was in England?"

I informed him that I had done so, not thinking it best to volunteer the statement that I had only met him once.

"And did he seem like himself?"

This was rather turning the tables upon me. I was not prepared to answer many questions, but without hesitation I replied to this one, saying that, in my opinion, Farnham had seemed uncommonly jolly and well.

Bennett looked thoughtful. "He got home here in Denver at night," he said, "after telegraphing from New York he was coming; I went to call at his request—another wire—not a letter—and he saw me in bed. Mr. Farnham is fond of plenty of light and noise as a rule, but in his bedroom he had refused to have the electricity turned on, and there was only a lamp on the table, as far as possible from the bed. I called out, 'How do you do?' in my usual tones, but he answered me almost in a whisper. There were some important papers which had been waiting for him to sign, and I had taken them with me, thinking he'd be anxious to attend to them—he was always so keen and prompt in business—but he seemed quite angry when I suggested it, and said he wasn't to be bothered about anything of the sort for a week.

"Next evening I saw him again for a few moments, and there was the same dim light, the same whispering. He was going away again immediately, he informed me, and when I objected that he didn't seem up to travelling, he answered that when there was a lady in the case there was no question of a man being 'up to' things. I might send his letters to the Santa Anna Hotel, San Francisco, he went on, until further notice, which I should receive by telegraph in about ten days if his plans went well. Just as I was going he said, kind of laughing and yet partly in earnest too, 'Well, Bennett, if you don't hear from me at the end of that time, you'd better begin to look me up. The game that I mean to try and win is a dangerous one. There are others who want the lady beside myself.'

"Now, if there was a town on the face of the earth that Mr. Farnham used to hate, that town was San Francisco. It was because he hated the journey, and never wanted to take it again, that he sold his mine out in California to the English gentleman, Mr. Wildred. I wouldn't have supposed that there was a woman alive would have got him to go to San Francisco, and I used to think, too, that Mr. Farnham didn't care much for women; but no doubt the longer one lives the more one learns, and the more surprises one gets in such matters. I needn't say much about his being away from Denver for a few days, even at the office, he hinted to me; and with that we parted. Next morning early he left, and not a line have I had except a wire, merely announcing his safe arrival at the Santa Anna Hotel."

I listened in silence. Before Bennett had finished speaking my thoughts were far away—as far as San Francisco.

"By Jove!" I exclaimed aloud, with a rushing of blood to my brain that pulsed to bursting in the little veins at my temples. "The Santa Anna Hotel!"

"Do you know it, Mr. Stanton?" enquired Bennett, evidently surprised at my sudden vehemence.

"I was there once many years ago," I said. "The name has brought back an old association to my mind which I had thought was lost."

I knew now where I had seen those strange light eyes of Carson Wildred's, and what was the deed with which they had connected themselves in my mind. After all, perhaps, I had not come to America for nothing!

My memory travelled back over a space of ten years. I had then come back to San Francisco after an expedition into distant wilds with a party of friends shooting grizzlies in the Rockies. I had stopped at the Santa Anna Hotel, a small hostelry lately built, having an English landlord, and therefore greatly frequented by Englishmen.

On the night of my arrival there had been a serious disturbance in the house. Three men who had been stopping at the place got quarrelling over a game of cards which they were playing in a private parlour. Two, who were the hosts, and were entertaining the third, had set upon him with intent to kill, being accused of cheating. I and several of my friends had run out from the billiard-room, hearing a yell for help, just in time to see a man in evening dress stagger, bleeding, from the opposite door. "I'm killed! That devil has murdered me!" he exclaimed, and fell forward on his face.

At Bennett's mention of the Santa Anna Hotel the whole scene had come up before me as vividly as though it had been enacted but yesterday. The open door, showing a brilliantly-lighted interior; cards scattered on the carpet; a young man—almost a boy—standing, as if frozen with horror, by an overset table; a large bowie knife, common to the country, apparently fallen from his right hand to the floor.

At the door itself an older man, who had followed the victim, no doubt with the intention of keeping him from making an outcry or escaping into the hall. But he had been too late, and the expression of his face as he met our eyes was hideous. Though the knife had to all appearance been used by his companion, it was at him that the murdered man had pointed before he fell and died. He was the one apostrophised as "that devil" by the death-stricken wretch; and though he had had a high, aquiline nose, red hair, and bristling auburn brows that met across his forehead, the eyes had been those of Carson Wildred.

They were eyes not easy to forget, especially as they blazed defiance into those of the men who sprang forward to lay hands upon him. "There stands the murderer, gentlemen, as you see," he had said, making a gesture towards his young companion, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, who seemed too astonished and horrified to move. Despite the evidence of the fallen knife, however, not one among the men who witnessed the end of the scene believed that the youth was guilty. Murder was in the eyes of the other, and must have betrayed him, even if the last words of the dead man had not accused him.

California was somewhat wilder in those days than it is at present, and men were more ready to act upon impulse. So it was that, as two of us gripped the fierce, red-haired fellow, another of the party flung some whispered word to the boy, who had only spoken to murmur brokenly, "God knows I'm innocent!"

What that whispered word was no one knew save he who spoke it and he to whom it was addressed. But whatever it might have been, it seemed to rouse the young man to life and a realisation of his position. With a leap he was at the long window and had sprung out on to a verandah, which ran round three sides and three stories of the house. The room was on the first floor, and it was easy enough for an active young fellow to let himself down by one of the twisted pillars which supported the verandah of the lower storey.

It could not have been so easy to escape those who half-heartedly followed; but the boy must have found some safe sanctuary near by, for not only did he evade his pursuers, but was never found or brought to trial.

The other, an Australian, calling himself Willis Collins, known as a gambler, suspected as a card "sharper," was less fortunate. But for the cry of the dying man he might have cleared himself; but his reputation was against him to begin with; it was proved that the other was a young Englishman who had lost his money through Collins, and been duped by him, and altogether matters went hardly with the elder of the two confederates. He was tried and condemned (not for murder, as it happened, but manslaughter), and sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years.

The incident had passed out my mind until, on a visit to America six years later (four years previous to my present one), a man who had been of our bear-shooting party in the Rocky Mountains had chanced to mention that the fellow had very cleverly succeeded in making his escape from the prison where he had been confined.

I had had no personal interest in the affair, and though it had made considerable impression upon me at that time, through being called up at the trial as a witness, I do not suppose I had summoned it to my recollection for many a long day until now, at the mention of the Santa Anna Hotel.

It was no wonder, I told myself, that I had not been able to decide where and how I had seen Carson Wildred previous to the night when Farnham had introduced us to each other at the theatre. Unless I could collect proofs not at present in my possession, it would even now be useless to instill my conviction into the mind of anyone else.

Carson Wildred had a peculiarly flat nose; Willis Collins had had a particularly high one. Carson Wildred's hair was inky black; Willis Collins's had been a bright auburn. Wildred's face was smooth; Collins's mouth and chin had been concealed by a heavy though close-cropped red beard. So far as I knew there was but one man living who could have effected so radical a change, not only in the appearance, but in the actual conformation of features, in the countenance of any human being, and that was an old fellow in Paris, who had gained a reputation and a fortune among men who had reason to cut loose from the moorings of their past. I had met this famous (or infamous) person in a curious way, and had heard some strange stories from his lips. If I had made his acquaintance, why should not Collins or Wildred have done so and profited by the friendship, as fortunately I had neither the desire nor need to do? I determined that, unless my present researches were more successful than I now dared expect them to be, I would, on my return to the other side, run across to France, and endeavour to piece together the bits of this old but newly-discovered puzzle.

Meanwhile, however, I had other work, and work closer at hand.

"While you've been talking, Mr. Bennett," said I, "I have been coming to a conclusion."

He smiled. "I'm glad of that, sir," he returned. "I have risked betraying Mr. Farnham's confidence that I may ask you what you think of that last hint of his, which, to tell the truth, has troubled me very much, coming, as it did, on top of so many queer actions. Although he was, or pretended to be, half in joke, ought I to let him stay away without taking any measures to find out whether his life really was threatened in California, and trying to help him out of a scrape if necessary? Of course, if it was all straight he'd be furious to have a watch set on his actions, and would never forgive me the indiscretion. Still, I haven't heard from him, as I said, since the day of his arrival, and neither my mind nor my conscience is very easy, Mr. Stanton. The question is, What would you do if you were in my place?"

I was delighted at this, and turned half away, that he might not see my change of countenance.

"It's rather a difficult position," I said, slowly, "for you. But there's a simple way out of it, without the necessity for you to run any risk of losing Mr. Farnham's favour. I've been to the Santa Anna Hotel before. There's no reason why I shouldn't go again if I choose, and no reason why I should mention having spoken with you at all if I meet my old friend. I'm something of a nomad, you know, and if I'm in England one month, and turn up in Kamtchatka the next, nobody is ever in the least surprised."

"But have you been thinking of going to California?" asked Bennett, half relieved and half dubious as to the course proposed.

"Oh, yes, I've been thinking of it," I promptly answered. But I neglected to add that it had only been during the past five minutes.



CHAPTER XXII

Face to Face

It was very nearly dinner time, two days later, when I drove up to the Santa Anna Hotel in San Francisco. Far away the bay could be seen and the Seal Rock, with the light of a great yellow moon touching its dark outlines and mingling with the blue, wintry twilight.

The neighbourhood was greatly changed since my last visit, but the hotel remained much the same. My first thought, after greeting the bluff old compatriot who kept the house, was to look at the visitors' book.

My heart gave a quick thump as I came on the name of Harvey Farnham. It was not in his handwriting, which, though I had not seen it for some time, I remembered quite distinctly.

"Ah, gentleman's ill," said the proprietor, when I cautiously questioned him. "Had his arm in a sling—got my clerk to put his name down for him, I recollect, as I was standing by. Mr. Farnham has been out a good deal, however, since he arrived, and, indeed, is out at present. He usually comes in about dinner time though."

This was an incentive to me not to miss that meal. I got into my evening togs in a hurry and was in the dining-room before anyone else, save a hungry-looking old man.

It was not a good season for the "Santa Anna," so the proprietor had confidentially informed me, but two or three dozen people strolled into the room before I had been there for half an hour. Still, I saw no familiar face, and was beginning to think in angry desperation that I had been eluded again, when the door opened to admit a tall and slender figure.

I looked up, my pulses quickening, my breath coming fast.

The man had a green shade over his eyes, was limping slightly, had his right arm in a sling, and altogether presented a somewhat battered appearance. But, I said to myself, if it was not Harvey Farnham it was his twin brother.

With all my eyes I stared at him. Almost as though there had been some magnetic influence in them to draw him he came towards me, and finally approaching my table, motioned to the attentive waiter to draw out a certain chair.

He sat down, leaned back with an audible sigh, shook out his serviette with his left hand, slightly pushed up the green shade that shadowed his eyes, and began looking carelessly about the room.

As he did so his glance passed over my face. There was not the slightest hint of recognition in it. "Hullo, Farnham!" I said, carefully controlling the agitation in my voice.

He started violently and nearly dropped the soup spoon, which he had picked up with his left hand. Then, pulling himself together by a violent effort, he smiled, without any of the old cordiality. Almost mechanically he had reached up for the green shade, and given it a hasty pull downward.

"Hullo!" he responded in a hoarse voice, following the word with a cough. "This is a surprise, eh?"

"Yes," I replied slowly. "People do run against each other in unexpected places, don't they? Now I will wager something that you've forgotten my name?"

He smiled again, with a relieved expression. "Well"—still hoarsely—"I'm afraid I have, for a moment. It'll come back, no doubt, but would you mind enlightening me, meanwhile?"

"My name is Noel Stanton," I very quietly said. But I could have shouted aloud. Notwithstanding the extraordinary resemblance, this man was no more Harvey Farnham than I was!



CHAPTER XXIII

A Counterfeit Presentment

We had not much talk together. The few questions which I cautiously put evidently rendered him uncomfortable, and I on my part, having made sure of one all-potent fact, was anxious to get away and think the puzzle over.

I was at the last course of my dinner when the man entered, and having finished I rose.

"Are you stopping long in San Francisco?" I asked, with my best air of carelessness.

"A couple of days or so," he said. "See you again to-morrow, I daresay." It was plain that he was glad to get rid of me. Naturally he was afraid of all men, strangers to him, who claimed knowledge of him as Harvey Farnham. He was playing a bold and dangerous game, and no doubt he was aware that, unless he kept himself in hand, and never for an instant lost his presence of mind, any moment might find him beaten.

So dizzy was I with the fumes of my discovery that my brain would not answer to my command. I could not think. I could only say over and over again—"Not Harvey Farnham! The fellow is a mere decoy!"

Out in the open I knew that I should have a better chance of mastering myself. On the way to the door I stepped into the "office" again and glanced at the visitors' book. Harvey Farnham's name was written down opposite the number 249, and I knew, therefore, that his room must be near, and in the same wing in the back as mine.

The glorious salt wind soon restored me to myself, and I wandered through some of the streets I had known and forgotten, thinking busily. I could understand much now that had been dark to me, though even yet far too much for my peace of mind remained hidden.

It was no wonder that this counterfeit presentment of a dead man (for I was certain enough now that poor Farnham was dead) had cumbered himself with bandages, and simulated sprains, and thickened his voice with an alleged bronchitis. There was a wonderful family likeness between voices, when they only spoke in a rough whisper, and the green shade over the eyes had doubtless proved very advantageous in keeping up the optical illusion on which the man had courageously dared to count, even among Farnham's Denver friends. To be sure he had hurried away as soon as possible from every place where he had stayed since arriving at New York on the St. Paul. In each one he had accomplished an object vital to the interest of the plot. He had been able to refute the story of Harvey Farnham's murder, in person, and having evidently been well grounded in all prominent facts connected with Farnham's life, habits, and trip to England, had made a coup in his interview with the New York police.

Having done all that was necessary in the east, he had then taken the final and most hazardous step of going to Farnham's home. It was hardly remarkable, therefore, that he had seized the opportunity of escaping so trying an ordeal at once. It seemed to me impossible that he should intend returning to Denver, where, in the light of day, and among old business and domestic associates, he could not long hope to escape detection, perfect as the likeness seemed to be. What, then, would he do, I eagerly asked myself? He had so far been successful in establishing the fact all along his route that Harvey Farnham had not only returned in safety to America, but had shown himself at home. So much having been gained, Wildred must perforce be relieved of all suspicion of the crime which I had tried to fasten upon him, and this being the case, I assured myself that it was Wildred's hand only which had contrived this intricate and ingenious plot. This man, disguised as Farnham, was in Wildred's pay, there could be no doubt of that, and had in all probability been engaged for the purpose he was now carrying out before the murder had taken place.

I tried as I walked to put myself in the place of the schemers, and thus hew out, through an intimate mental process, some idea as to how the loose ends of the mystery were to be disposed of.

"If I were that fellow," I said to myself at last, "I should think it was about time to disappear. I should feel sure I'd come to the end of my tether, and that somehow or other Harvey Farnham, as represented by me, had got to be unostentatiously wiped out."

Farnham, however, was too rich and important a man in the western states of his own country to disappear conveniently and with impunity. There would be a hue and cry, and suspicious facts might somehow be brought to light. The only safe way, I decided, would be for the alleged Harvey Farnham to kill himself; but this it did not appear very likely that the most dazzling bribe could induce him to do. He meant to find some more comfortable way out of the hole into which he had so deliberately crept than the way of suicide, and it began to seem that the only method by which I could prove my case would be by finding out what that way was to be.

At present, unless I could have the fellow arrested, and such disguise as he might wear dragged off, I should have great difficulty in obtaining credence of my story. The incidents were all so remarkable that they must be certified with the best of evidence, and such evidence as I wanted could only be forthcoming from Bennett, or someone else in Denver who knew Farnham equally well.

What I must do, I thought, would be to keep on the man's track, and never for an hour lose sight of him. I must do this without arousing any suspicion on his part as to my motives until the last moment, when I should be prepared to accuse him.

This conclusion naturally reminded me that at the very moment it was reached I had virtually lost sight of my quarry, and that already I might have missed my chance. Accordingly, I hurried back to the Santa Anna Hotel, and though it was then too late to wire Bennett, I determined to do so early the next morning. I would request him to come on to San Francisco at once on a matter of extreme importance, and—his mind being already disturbed concerning his employer—he would lose no time in obeying. In Bennett, if I could fairly corner the bogus Farnham, I should have the most valuable witness in the world.

My first question was as to whether Mr. Farnham were in the hotel. He had not yet returned from a call which he had gone to make after dinner, and I sat down, therefore, in the corridor inside the front doors, through which he would have to pass on entering.

I pretended to be absorbed in a local paper, but in reality my thoughts were a maelstrom. Suppose he had already escaped me!

At half-past eleven, however, he came in. I did not seem to lift my eyes from the pages before them. He would have to go directly by me on his way upstairs; time enough to appear to observe him then.

"Cablegram for you, Mr. Farnham," said the clerk of the hotel.

"Ah!" The exclamation was one of surprise. He had not, then, been expecting the message.

I could not resist looking up after all to watch him in the act of reading it, and as I did so my eyes caught a gleam from his, under the green shade, as they turned to my face with an expression that was like a hunted animal's. In the instant I was as positive as though he had told me in so many words that the cablegram he had received was from Carson Wildred, and intimately concerned me. Probably it said, "If a man named Noel Stanton turns up, he is an enemy—beware of him."

I regretted immediately that I had given him my real name when we met at dinner, for, warned now by Wildred, he would be ever on his guard. He was seized with a creditable fit of coughing as he passed me, and having growled out something about being "deuced tired, and sleeping like a log," he went upstairs.

I followed him in time to see him enter his own room, which was only half a dozen doors from mine, and to hear him noisily lock the door. It occurred to me that he was desirous to have me know that he had locked it, and I wondered if already he had begun to suspect my motive.



CHAPTER XXIV

Fire!

I went to bed determined not to sleep, but to keep my ears open for any sound in the passage outside. Luckily there was a creaky board on which he had stepped a few minutes ago. If he attempted to go away during the night he would very possibly step on it again. But I was exceedingly tired after my long journey. Before I had been in bed an hour I was dreaming so vividly a pursuit of my quarry through the streets of San Francisco, that I fully believed I had waked, got up, and gone out after him.

In the end the dream seemed to change. The pretender had boarded a railway train, and I was with the engine-driver of another, following at a dare-devil speed. The place was reeking hot. In my dream I choked in the smoke which flew into my face, and was dazzled with the red glare of the fire, on which the engine-driver was piling great pieces of fat bacon. As we flew along the rails the locomotive swayed from side to side, and I could hear a loud rattling of wheels and of window glass.

Suddenly a puff of smoke seemed on the very point of stifling me, and I awoke to find myself sitting up in bed and gasping for breath.

I had not dreamed the rattling of glass, nor the jarring sensation, nor yet the smoke and heat and lurid light. The walls shook with a dull vibration, and the window-panes were like castanets. Through the glass transom over the door I could see a shimmering, ruddy glow that rose and fell, and was brightened by bursting sparks and little darting tongues of yellow flame. Apart from this one lurid spot all was thickly curtained into darkness by a heavy pall of smoke.

Had I lain for a few moments longer I must have suffocated in my sleep. Even as it was, my brain felt dull and stupid, and I could scarcely collect my senses.

Choking and coughing, tears running from my eyes that smarted with the pungent wood smoke, I sprang out of bed, and then sat down again with a slight exclamation, drawing up my feet. The floor was so hot that the touch of it, even for an instant, had almost scorched my skin.

Close at hand were my boots. I drew them on and then fumbled about for one or two articles of clothing. The wild light that rushed past the transom told me that escape by way of the passage was already cut off, and even as I looked a small, curling tress of flame blew in through the crack between the door and the worn sill.

The window was less easy to find. As I felt for it through the veil of smoke strange conjectures stole into my brain. What if this were the plan of Carson Wildred's wily accomplice for getting safely rid of me?

I had no intention of being got rid of thus easily, however. I found the window and opened the lower sash. With the rush of air from outside my oppressed lungs got relief for a second or two, but the draught drew in the flames that rioted through the hall; the glass in the transom, already cracked, burst with a loud explosive sound, and a torrent of fire and smoke poured in through the aperture.

Had I not leaped on to the window-sill, and without an instant's hesitation let myself swing over, I could not have kept my senses in that raging furnace.

If I had had a room in the main building of the hotel, I should only have had to step on to a verandah outside my window, but in this wing (which I had chosen as my place of residence because I had inhabited it before) there was nothing of the sort, and I had now the space of about ten seconds to decide whether to jump or have my hands burnt off my wrists.

In any case the decision could not have been a difficult one, but, as it happened, the need was rendered the more imperative by the fact that smoke had already begun to pour from the window below. Very shortly escape would be cut off in all directions.

My room was on the second floor, high enough to give me a severe fall, perhaps a fatal one, and I felt that my life was of value now. Cautiously but hurriedly I reached out with one hand to the side of the window, hanging with all my weight from the other, which clutched the sill. My groping fingers came in contact with a twisted rope of creepers; bare of leaves for winter, and serviceable for the use I wished to put it to. I grasped the thick stems for dear life, and went down hand over hand, dimly hearing voices from below cheering me in my descent.

I had been unconscious of the noise until that moment, but as my feet touched the ground I was received with acclamations, and saw that a crowd was rapidly collecting on the spot. The firemen were arriving, and as I reached terra firma a great spout of water went up over the burning wing.

The main portion of the house, which was built of stone, save for the surrounding verandahs was still uninjured, but the wing at the back, which had been a later addition, run hastily up to meet the needs of business, was of frame, and it was burning like tinder. Though it seemed that the alarm had only been given five minutes before my appearance on the scene, already it was beyond saving. My reason for preferring the wing I have already stated, but what the pretended Harvey Farnham's had been I had yet to learn, for so far was the main portion of the hotel from being crowded on this occasion, that we two had been the only ones who slept in the annex. Otherwise the alarm must have been given from inside, instead of by a policeman, who had seen a sudden light leap up while passing on his beat.

Where was Mr. Farnham? That was the question asked by the excited landlord, who, half-dressed, had come out to give what help he could. By this time a sheet of flame was pouring from his windows, so much more violent than in any other portion of the fated wing, that I could but fancy, as I looked up, that the fire must have started thereabouts.

The only hope was to save the main building—the frame addition had been doomed from the first. Everyone had come out, guests and servants alike, in varying stages of deshabille, which might under ordinary circumstances have struck one as comic enough, but the supposed Farnham was nowhere to be seen.

When it became known that there was another occupant of the burning annex, the firemen made heroic efforts to reach the windows on their ladders, but each time they were beaten back by the blinding flame and smoke—a salamander could not have existed there for an instant.

Murmurs of horror and dismay came from the lips of the crowd as they stared with a species of fearful fascination at the flames, which must long ago have destroyed, not only life, but all vestiges of humanity, if indeed a human being had been there when they began their revel. But I said nothing. I thought now that I understood the reason why my friend had taken the room in the frame addition to the Santa Anna Hotel. The plan commenced to take form in my mind, and I believed that the cablegram had only precipitated its execution.



CHAPTER XXV

"It's Dogged as Does It"

Fortunately, to prevent delay and temporary embarrassment, there was plenty of gold for present needs in the pockets of the one garment which I had put on before escaping. Everything else which I had brought to the Santa Anna Hotel was lost; but never, perhaps, was a man more completely indifferent to such loss than I. The only thing on the American side of the Atlantic which now interested me was to find out whether the false Harvey Farnham had actually (by an irony of fate) perished in the flames, or whether—as I more than suspected—he himself was responsible for the fire.

It would be impossible to ascertain the truth until such time as the ruins of the burnt wing of the hotel should have sufficiently cooled to render a search practicable. Even then, if no other measures were taken, the fact might never be absolutely substantiated. If nothing more was ever heard of Harvey Farnham, it would probably be taken for granted that he had met his death in the fire at the Santa Anna Hotel, even though no actual traces of his body were forthcoming. His heirs, whoever they might be, would doubtless claim their inheritance, and even assurance money, if such there were to be had, before many months had passed. Carson Wildred would be for ever safe, and my quest would have ended in nothing but bitterness and disappointment.

This being the case, I could not afford to wait until the burnt building should be ransacked for Harvey Farnham's remains, I must take it for granted that no such remains were there, and go in search of the living, breathing body. I tried to put myself mentally in place of the man who had stolen his identity from the dead. Were I he, I thought, and had I done that of which I believed he had been guilty, I would lose no time in putting myself beyond the reach of possible pursuit. I would have laid my plans with some exactitude, and would have been prepared for the necessity of flight. I would have thrown aside as many details of my likeness to Harvey Farnham as nature had not provided me with, and having set fire to the room I had occupied, I would have got out of the hotel as quietly and quickly as practicable. If it had been comparatively easy for me to escape by means of the creepers down the side of the house, the same means might well have been employed by the man whose movements I was mentally trying to follow.

Success having attended my movements so far, I should have gone straight to a railway station, and would never have breathed freely until I had left San Francisco well behind me.

So wise, under the given circumstances, did this course of action seem to me, that I promptly decided no other would have been feasible. The thing for me to do, therefore, was to find out what trains left San Francisco during the night time. I thought I might calculate upon the fellow's having boarded a passenger train in an open and ordinary manner as, if his plans had been properly laid, no suspicion could attach to him, and there would be no necessity for more desperate precautions.

He could have had a good start before the fire spread and was discovered, and—still taking it for granted that I was correct in my deductions—the sooner I was on his track the better. My hands were burned, I was practically without clothes, and had suffered a considerable nervous shock, which at another time I might have had leisure to feel and analyse.

But I did neither at the present juncture. I simply procured a stiff portion of brandy neat, drank it at a gulp, purchased a few articles of clothing from an accommodating waiter, dressed myself with all speed, and set off to the principal railway station, or "depot," of San Francisco.

"It's dogged as does it," I quoted to myself, with a certain grimness of resolution, when my spirits began to flag.

As I got inside the station there was a certain bustle and stir of departure or arrival in the air. "Train going out or coming in?" I asked shortly of a sleepy porter.

"Going out—Salt Lake City," grumbled the man in reply.

I don't know why I instantly felt the conviction that the bogus Farnham was in that train, but I did feel it, and so intensely that when I saw the long line of cars beginning to move it seemed to me that not to reach it and jump on board would mean the ruin of my life.

I have a dim recollection of persons shouting at me, of feeling a detaining hand trying to drag me back. I remember, too, thrashing out with considerable force, ridding myself of my would-be preserver. I caught on by the rear platform, and after flying helplessly for an instant like a ribbon in the wind as the train increased its speed, I got a foothold and climbed up the steps.

At the top was a negro night porter, ash-coloured with fright. He helped to pull me on board, and I tipped him generously (when I began to regain my breath and scattered wits) for agreeing not to make an excitement by reporting the affair to the conductor.

I panted out that I wanted a berth, found that there would be a vacant one on board the "sleeper" at my disposal, and sat down in the smoking-room, ostensibly to wait while the bed was made up for me.

I must have been a curious object to look upon in my dishevelled and hybrid costume, not an article of which, save the boots and trousers, had been made for me. But I had no thoughts to waste upon my own appearance. I sat wondering at the unhesitating way in which I had rushed ahead, and staked my all on this one throw of the dice, so to say. If my man had not left San Francisco, or if he had left, and in another direction, in great probability I had lost all trace of him for ever. Yet I had flung myself on board this train as though I had had my quarry in my eye, and had but to put out my hand to lay hold upon him. I was now beginning to be very much astonished at myself.

Having come on board, however, I would at once begin a tour of exploration, I resolved, going from one end of the train to the other, and not forgetting a visit (with or without leave) to the "cab" of the engine.

I rose, pulling myself together, and saying again between my teeth, "Yes, it's dogged as does it," when a man came into the smoking-room. I had been alone before.

We looked at each other. He was a tall, slim, young fellow, with a smooth face. At sight of me he stopped short, flushed to the roots of his close-cropped hair, and would precipitately have retired had I not taken one quick step forward and grasped him by the shoulder.

Gone was the curly wig, the beard, and the lump on the nose, which had been modelled after Farnham's; gone was the green shade, the sling, and the limp, but much of the odd resemblance, which had been heightened in so artistic a manner, still remained. At last, after crossing an ocean and a continent to do it, I had got my hands on the man I had come to find, and I didn't mean to let him go.

Yes, it certainly had been "dogged" that had done it.



CHAPTER XXVI

A Tell-tale Ornament

"No, you don't!" I remarked, cheerfully, and with the force of superior muscles I pulled him towards me. "Come, sit down here by me," I said. "I want to talk to you." And somehow it came about that we subsided on the cushioned seat together.

He had recognised me, of course, as the man he had seen in the hotel—the man, Noel Stanton, against whom I did not doubt his cablegram had warned him. He was pale as death, and I could see that this meeting, added, like the piling of Ossa upon Pelion, on top of all that he had already gone through, had robbed him of the shattered remnant of his nerve.

Still, he was ready to "bluff" and brave if out while he could. "Confound you!" he exclaimed. "What are you about? You must be mad to attack a stranger without the slightest provocation. Let me alone, sir, or I'll rouse the car."

"I wouldn't, you know, if I were you," I said coolly, for the more excited he grew the more did my own calmness come back to me. "You've been playing a dangerous game ever since you took your passage in the American liner St. Paul (or, rather, since Carson Wildred took it for you), but you've never, perhaps, steered so close to the wind as to-night, when you resorted to incendiarism as a finishing stroke."

The fellow stared at me in simulated nonchalance and defiance, but my hand was on his shoulder still, and I could feel the shudder that ran through his body.

"I say you must be mad," he reiterated.

"So you observed before; but I could very easily prove to you that I'm not, if you were not already sure of it. You can call for assistance if you like, but if you do the story I've got to tell will go flashing over the wires back to 'Frisco, and on to Denver, and you will find yourself in almost as hot a place as if you had stayed at the Santa Anna Hotel, where you wanted the world to think that poor Harvey Farnham had been roasted."

Once more the fit of shivering seized him. He glanced wildly about, as though to find some means of escape, but there was none.

"I am a bigger man and a stronger man than you," I remarked, in a significant and reflective manner. "Better hear the alternative I've got to offer. I know everything, you see—that is, everything that concerns you, and the curious game you've been playing.

"I've been just three days behind you everywhere since you left New York. I've got every link in the evidence now, and what with Bennett, of Denver, and the proprietor of the Santa Anna Hotel, and a few others, I can burst your wretched little soap bubble plot in four-and-twenty hours. There's just one way in which you can stay my hand."

"What's that?" He had spoken out impulsively, before he had stopped to think. The instant the words were uttered he saw all that they admitted, and bit his lip. But it was too late; he was completely trapped.

"I'll tell you," I said, keeping my hand on his shoulder, almost caressingly. "I'd listen attentively, if I were in your place. What you can do is to make a clean breast of your story from beginning to end. I'm willing to pay you more for confessing than Wildred did for plotting. Then you must go back to England with me, and stand by while the thing is made public."

As I spoke he did not once take his eyes from me. It was remarkable even yet, now that he was out of his disguise, how strong his likeness was to Farnham. He might have been a younger brother.

When I had finished he sighed and drooped his head. His own hair, which was very closely cut, was of a beautiful reddish golden colour, much the shade of Karine Cunningham's, as the light fell on it from above. I thought of her with a great wave of passionate love, and more of hope than I had dared to feel for many a long day.

Perhaps it was the recollection of her lovely face and the wonderful halo of her hair which caused me for an instant to relax my grasp. I only became conscious of having done so when the fellow twisted himself from under my hand, and springing lithely to his feet would have darted through the swing door had I not leaped after him like a tiger.

We fought together as the car swayed and bounded along its tracks. Once he dived under my arm and was almost out of my clutches, but I caught him by the collar with so fierce a grip that the linen of his shirt tore, and the garment ripped open to the waistcoat.

Something which he wore beneath snapped, as he still struggled to escape me, and a bright object flashed under my eyes as it fell, and dropped with a slight metallic noise to the floor.

Evidently it was to him an article of value. Impulsively he stooped, forgetful for a second of the object which had animated him, and thus the advantage became all mine again. I had him pinioned fast.

At our feet, I now had time to observe, lay a broken gold chain and a locket.

Twisting my hand firmly in his collar I bent over and picked up the ornaments. "Allow me," I said, smiling. And as I was about to put the locket in his hand I could not avoid seeing the portrait that it framed. It was an open-faced, old-fashioned thing, set round with a rim of pearls. The crystal had been cracked across in the fall, but the delicately painted ivory miniature within was intact, and I gave a slight exclamation as I saw that it represented Karine Cunningham.

If I had been surprised to see her picture in the "studio" at the House by the Lock, I was doubly surprised to see it in a locket worn by a young desperado on the other side of the world. Impulsively I withdrew my hand which held the ornament, with the feeling that the man had no right to it—that I could not return it to him again.

"Give it back to me!" he ejaculated, forgetting his evident fear of me for the first time, and speaking with a certain manly fierceness that thawed the chill of my contempt for him. "If I've got a right to nothing else on earth, I've got a right to that. It's a portrait of my sister."

"Your sister! You swear that?"

"Of course I swear it. I don't see why you shouldn't know it—though I haven't done much credit to the name of Cunningham."

I could not doubt him. Not that I had not every reason to believe that he would be willing to lie as fast as he could speak if it happened to suit his purpose, but the ring of sincerity in his voice was unmistakable.

I let go my hold upon him. Such was his astonishment at the manoeuvre that he made no attempt to take advantage of his freedom, but simply stood still and stared at me.

"Here is the locket," I said. "I came from England to California to serve Miss Cunningham's interests, and I will not lay my hand upon her brother."

"I don't know what you mean," he said, sullenly.

"I'll tell you," I returned, "if you'll sit down here and listen to me for a few minutes longer. After that, as far as I am concerned, you are free to do as you choose. You look surprised—but whatever may have been your faults and your offences, I would stake my life you love your sister."

"She is the only being on earth I do love," he replied, still half dazedly.

Then he sat down, his eyes furtively on me, and I seated myself beside him.

"She is sacrificing herself for someone," I remarked. "I think I begin dimly to understand now who that someone may be. I think, too, that circumstances have given me the right to be inquisitive, as I can still further explain to you later on. Is Miss Cunningham going to marry Carson Wildred to save you from any unpleasant consequences of the past, for instance?"

He started as though he had been struck.

"She is not going to marry Carson Wildred!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, she is, unless it can be prevented. I see I have even more to tell you than I thought. Is it long, may I ask, since you have seen your sister?"

"Last November," he said drooping his head, and bringing under my eyes again the hair that was like hers.

"Ah, that explains your ignorance. The man had not shown his hand at that time. Now I am going to trust to your affection for Miss Cunningham, to your presumable wish to save her from unhappiness, and talk to you as though we had been allies instead of enemies. Perhaps I may be a fool for my pains; but something seems to say to me——"

"Something says right. Go on!" he ejaculated, gruffly.

No doubt the very most dunder-headed of lawyers or detectives would have told me that I was mad, thus deliberately to give all my good trumps away to the treacherous, hired scoundrel whom I had been hunting down with the dogged ferocity of a bloodhound. On principle, of course, I was all wrong, and I knew it; but still I went on.

I told him the strange story of the past few weeks from beginning to end. I commenced with the part which concerned Farnham and Carson Wildred alone. I did not pass over that which had to do with Karine, my hopeless and unrequited love for her, my passionate anxiety to serve her at all costs; and I ended by declaring my certainty that Carson Wildred and Willis Collins were one and the same man.

"He is doubly a murderer," I said. "And yet, unless you and I together can keep him from it, he will be your sister's husband."

"I'll kill him first!" exclaimed my companion.

"I think the trick can be done without resorting to such extreme measures as that," I returned, "especially if you are willing to come over from his camp to mine."

He looked at me sharply for a moment without answering, then he said:

"You seem pretty quick, I've noticed, in what you've just been telling me at putting two and two together. Well, you say you were at the Santa Anna Hotel the night the murder was committed ten years ago. You knew there were two men mixed up in it. You remembered one of them; would you remember the other?"

"He was a mere boy," I said, "and it's a long time ago. He must have changed almost beyond recognition."

"He's just twenty-nine at present; I've good reason to know, as I'm he."

It was my turn to be astonished, but it was not policy to show it. Therefore I merely said, "Oh, indeed!"

"You see," he went on dully, "that's where Wildred has had his pull over me since he ran across me, by a piece of devil's own luck, in Canada five years ago. As you say, I have changed; but his eyes are like gimlets, they'd pierce a stone wall. It's quite true, as you suspected, that he and Collins are one. I knew him by a queer scar on his hand, shaped like a star—perhaps you've observed it? But he didn't mind. He seemed even to find a sort of pleasure in telling me how he had been to a clever fellow in Paris, and got himself made over into another man, so that he might the more easily turn his back upon various little episodes of the past. I couldn't have proved it if I'd wanted to, he was so different, and had worked up such a new record for himself to travel on. He knew that, and he knew, too, that I was in his power."

"I don't exactly see how that came about," I objected.

"Don't you? You're not so quick as usual, then. I'd been accused of the murder at the Santa Anna Hotel. I hooked it, and got over to Mexico, so to Spain and France. I'd always been a black sheep, you know, but that was the first really serious trouble I'd got into. However, as I said, five years later, when Wildred and I met, I was in Canada; I'd turned actor (I'd always a little talent that way), and was doing pretty well. He pointed out to me—and I wasn't very long in seeing his point—that I was not so much changed but what I should easily be recognised by those who had known me during those wild days when I'd been under his thumb in San Francisco, and the authorities there would still be very glad to hear of me. He didn't happen to want anything of me just then, but he allowed me to understand that it was to my interest to keep sweet with him. And from that day to this he's had his eye on me."

"But it was he who was accused of that murder, not you," I said.

"What!"

The man seemed either not to believe or understand me.

I repeated the statement, and then, when he stammered his astonishment, his ignorance of all that had taken place in San Francisco after his escape (at which we had all tacitly connived at the time), I went on to explain the true circumstances of the case. Carson Wildred had deceived him into the belief that he alone had been suspected—that if he were caught he would be promptly hanged.

"He has told the same story to your sister, I would swear!" I exclaimed, hotly. "It is for this reason that she has been persuaded into promising to marry him. Believing that he knows your whereabouts, and holds it in his power at any moment to have you punished as a murderer—believing, too, no doubt, that you did commit the murder, she has been ready to save your life by the sacrifice of all that has made hers dear."

"Curse him! I'd take my oath you're right!" he asseverated. "He's sly enough and vile enough for anything."

"Did you ever see Harvey Farnham?" I questioned.

"Yes, years ago I knew him well, and liked him immensely—as he did me, I think. It was in Tuolumne County, California, where he had a gold mine—the Miss Cunningham. It was I who named that, oddly enough it may seem to you, after my sister, of course. He wasn't aware of that, but thought it was just a whim of mine, that probably I'd admired some girl called 'Miss Cunningham,' and wanted to pay her a compliment. You see, no one knew me by my right name even then.

"It was before that hateful time when I got in with Collins, or Wildred, whichever you like to call him, and not long after I'd run away from home and England under the assumed name of Hartley—it was my mother's maiden name. I was only seventeen or eighteen, but I was pretty sharp for my years, I'm afraid, for I'd been among a queer lot already, and one night I would have got into a row with some older man over cards, a row that might have ended badly if it hadn't been for Mr. Farnham, who had dropped into the place to look on, and who stood by me for all he was worth.

"It seemed he noticed me the moment he entered the room, thinking that I looked enough like him to be his own son. Afterward he took me up, making a lot of me, wanting to find out where I'd come from, and all that. He thought my resemblance to him (which everyone who saw us together invariably remarked) a wonderful joke, and used to call me his 'boy,' and 'sonny,' getting it into his head that I was a sort of 'Mascot,' who brought luck to him in whatever he undertook. That was the principal reason, of course, that he was so keen on having me name his mine for him. I think if I had sowed all my wild oats, and been willing to settle down a bit into a respectable member of society, there was a time when he wouldn't have minded adopting me, for some old, unhappy love affair or other had kept him out of the marriage-market, eligible as he was, and he swore that he never meant to marry, even for the hope of having an heir to all his money. Yes, I might have been that heir if I hadn't been a fool, for Farnham certainly thought the world and all of me in those days. As it was, he did me many a kindness."

"And now, by way of repaying that affection and those kindnesses," I could not help exclaiming, with a returning touch of the old bitter contempt, "you've undertaken to help his murderer to get off scot free. You've been masquerading in the very clothes the poor fellow wore, you've been using his luggage, trading on the likeness to him which once won for you his regard, heightening it in every way by artificial means, so that not only shall Carson Wildred, or Willis Collins, escape suspicion, but that he may enrich himself on the dead man's millions. You even set an hotel on fire to finish the whole fiendish plot with a fine dramatic effect!"

The poor wretch, who had made such a wreck of his young life, was white as death, and shaking like an aspen. I could see the beads of sweat oozing out on his pale forehead. "For God's sake," he implored, "don't say that to me; I can't bear it! Until you told me just now I swear to you by all I hold sacred—by my sister's love, which I so little deserve—that I never dreamed of Harvey Farnham's being dead. You may believe me or not, as you like, but you're her friend, so I should be glad that you should believe. And, at least, you owe it to me in common justice to hear what I've got to say.

"Collins always managed to keep his eye on me, and knew my whereabouts and my doings, making me feel that at any moment he could come down on me if he chose. I daresay he had other men in his power like that, men whom he thought he might wish to make his tools at one time or other. I didn't often hear from him, though I knew myself shadowed, and knew also, only too well, whom I had to thank for it. You can't guess the horror of the feeling, or how it got on my nerves. I fancied it would drive me to madness or suicide one day, always knowing I was watched, that I could never, try as I would, escape that Eye, which was really Willis Collins's, spying me out across the ocean.

"Well, a cablegram came from him commanding rather than asking me to go to England, saying that it would be much to my advantage to do so, and that my fare and all expenses would at once be sent me in advance. There was just a hint that I had better not refuse, which I understood as well as if it had been a definite threat; and, anyhow, there was a certain attractiveness in the idea of going home—I hadn't seen Karine or England for so long.

"I didn't mean to let my sister know of my presence—I would have spared her that—but I fancied myself standing among the crowd in the Park, watching her drive by, or something of that sort. Even a glimpse of her face would have been sweet.

"But when I arrived one of the first things Wildred did was to tell me that he knew the Tressidys, with whom Karine was living, that he had heard my sister often speak of me, and that he would secretly arrange a meeting between us. I couldn't resist the temptation of having a few words with her when it was offered for the asking, and I saw her at the House by the Lock. An excuse was made to bring her and Lady Tressidy there—something about a portrait of Karine that was in a queer room called the 'studio'—and while Wildred was showing Lady Tressidy over the house I saw my sister, and had a talk with her. She felt grateful to Wildred for bringing it about, and fool that I was, I didn't suspect the deep game he meant to play with her, using me as the decoy. I thought he had merely been willing to take the trouble that he might get the more work out of me when he wanted it, though what the work was for which he had brought me to England I didn't yet know.

"After that first meeting with Karine I had given Wildred my word never to try and see her again; now I understand why. He wished to revive all the old love she had felt by the sight of me, awaken her sympathy for my troubles, when she should learn his version of them from his lips, and then keep me from her, lest I should hear that he had asked her to be his wife, threatening to betray me if she did not accept, and so, in spite of my cowardice (for I am a moral coward), setting me against him, to be his slave and tool no more.

"When I had been in England about three or four weeks, keeping out of the way of anyone who might possibly remember me, Wildred suggested the scheme of my travelling back to America, impersonating Farnham, and finally finishing the plot, as I did finish it to-night. He admitted that it was for this he had sent for me, but swore Farnham himself was in the thing as deep as he; that it meant a fortune to them both, which they were to share, and which could be had in no other way. He explained that Farnham had had bad luck in speculations, was bankrupt, hadn't the pluck to begin over again on the lowest rounds of the ladder, nor to undertake carrying out this plan himself. He would funk the fire business, Wildred said, and might, instead of escaping, actually be burned to death. The object to be gained, of course, I was made to believe, was getting the life assurance. Farnham was supposed to have several policies, each one for an enormous sum; he had left everything of which he should die possessed, life assurance and all the rest, to Wildred, who would actually go halves with Farnham when the money should be secured.

"I have nothing of my own, you know, except what I can make by my wits, for my father disinherited me, and I've had just a little too much pride ever to take anything from Karine. Wildred offered me ten thousand pounds to work this business for him; half to be paid down, half when the thing had been successfully carried through to the close.

"Of course, I had sense enough to know it was a villainous fraud, but I've never been very scrupulous, and it was easy to persuade myself that I owed Harvey Farnham a good turn for what he did for me in the past. Besides, I wanted the money, and there was five thousand in notes (Wildred was too sly to give a cheque) on the table for me to take or leave. I didn't see that I was going to do much harm to anybody except the insurance companies, who are rich enough to lose, as Farnham hadn't a relative in the world; but before heaven, if I'd dreamed of the truth, I'd have let Wildred do his worst before I'd have gone in with him.

"As for the Santa Anna, I knew that every board of the hotel was assured—the landlord would lose nothing, and after I'd kindled the fire I knocked like mad on your door. I fancy, though you didn't know it, it must have been that which first began to rouse you. I didn't give myself much time to get out, after taking off the disguise (which I flatter myself I did pretty well), but I just managed it. I can tell you I was desperate when I walked in here and found you; but now I was never so thankful for anything in the course of my life."

"The present question is, then," I said, "whether you will go straight to England with me and tell all you know about Carson Wildred? If we stopped on this side, to prove things step by step as we went, we should labour under two disadvantages. It would mean indefinite delay, and you would get into trouble about that business at the hotel to-night. To sail at once for England, and let matters here take care of themselves for the present, is our only plan, I think. What do you say?"

"You are sure that Wildred can't swear my life away?"

"As sure as I am that we are both alive at this moment."

"Then I'm in your hands. I'll save my sister, and I'll get even with Wildred for making a tool and a dupe of me."

"By the time we have landed on the other side," I answered, "there'll still be a clear fortnight to do the first, and I think we may accomplish the latter transaction simultaneously."



CHAPTER XXVII

Too Late!

We had a stormy passage, and arrived at Southampton four-and-twenty hours later than we should have done. It was Cunningham who bought a paper as we got into the train. I was too completely preoccupied to have absorbed a line of news, even had my eyes mechanically perused the printed matter. Cunningham (who was always restless, and could not bear to be left at the mercy of his own thoughts) read incessantly, however, and at the end of half an hour or so handed over his paper to me.

"Look at this," he said, with some eagerness, pointing out a paragraph. I glanced at it carelessly at first, but in an instant I was as keen as Cunningham had been.

"Another Fortune for a Millionaire," the paragraph was headed, and beneath was set forth the interesting fact that Mr. Carson Wildred, who was shortly to marry Miss Cunningham, the celebrated beauty and heiress, had just heard of a legacy of half a million pounds, left him by an American friend, Mr. Harvey Farnham, lately burned to death in a San Francisco hotel.

"So you see it wasn't only the mine, and the money he should have paid for the mine, he wanted," said Cunningham. "Oh, he's a marvellous chap, this Wildred!"

I acquiesced in this opinion, and recalled a remark made in the club by a mutual acquaintance. "Carson Wildred is always inheriting fortunes from chaps that die at the four corners of the globe," he had curiously announced. I wondered grimly, as I remembered the speech, whether all these benefactors had met their death after the manner of poor Harvey Farnham.

Time was pressing now, and our idea was to go straight to Karine, I to appear only as the supporter of her brother. A desire for the punishment of Wildred might have held a prominent place both in Cunningham's mind and mine, but our first thought was to save Karine from becoming the murderer's wife.

She must be disabused of the belief that her brother was in any way in Wildred's power. She must know that, as Cunningham expressed it, the "shoe was on the other foot." She must be shown the black depths of Carson Wildred's villainy, and be dragged back from the brink of the precipice on which she had stood.

Ours was a quick train, and went straight through to London without stopping. After arriving at Waterloo station, therefore, we were obliged to wait for nearly an hour before we could get another which would take us to Haslemere.

A curious feeling that I had passed through all this before came over me, and as we stepped out of our carriage on the platform of the Haslemere station it seemed but yesterday that I had arrived at the same place, intent on bidding Karine that farewell which never had been spoken.

The time of day gave me the only sense of difference. We had left the ship early in the morning, had made our first journey in two hours, and now it was only very little past noon.

I had wished (considering the reception I had met at Sir Walter Tressidy's on my first and last visit at his country house) to remain at an hotel in Haslemere, there to await such news as Cunningham might have to bring. For Karine's sake, I thought, it would be better for me not to appear openly in the matter, unless it proved that the influence of her brother and his narrative were not as potent in their effect as I anticipated. Should he require any attestations from me, I was only too glad to be on the spot and to be called upon to give them.

Cunningham, however, had overruled this programme of mine. No one could tell, he said, how he might be received. He might be sorely in need of me to back him up—perhaps even to prove the truth of his otherwise unsupported assertions.

The Tressidys, he alleged, were peculiar. Though his sister had not confided in him, he knew that she was unhappy with them. They had very little money of their own on which to keep up the appearance they wished to make in the eyes of their world, and Cunningham did not believe that Lady Tressidy would be above accepting a heavy bribe from Wildred for furthering his suit, by almost any means, with poor Karine.

Half against my will, therefore, yet not wholly with reluctance, I must confess, I entered the carriage which was to drive us both to the house where a few weeks ago I had been so ruthlessly repulsed.

"Thank heaven!" I said, as we rattled up the hill (perhaps in the same vehicle which had driven me before), "that the storm wasn't just a degree more severe in crossing. It was touch and go with us one day, at all events, I believe; but a fraction worse, and we shouldn't have been here now to stand between Miss Cunningham and that villain. A week or ten days more, perhaps, and even if we'd reached her we might have been too late."

There was a certain tumultuous joy in my heart, far removed from happiness, yet intoxicating as new wine. Karine might never be mine, but she was saved, and it would be I who had saved her. I could never be regarded by her quite with indifference after this day.

As we drove we made various hurried plans as to what we should do if we were refused admittance. We were determined at least to see Karine, even if we were obliged to force our way into her presence.

As we got out of the carriage and ran up the four or five broad stone steps that led to the front door, something crackled under our feet like exaggerated grains of sand. We were far enough, however, from guessing the nature of the foreign substance that was thus crushed beneath our disregarding boot-soles.

The door was opened by a smiling footman. He was not the man I had previously seen, and evidently, judging from the genial flush on his face and the twinkle in his eye, something agreeable or amusing had recently taken place. He tried to draw his countenance into the conventional lines of footman-like solemnity, but, his eyes lighting upon Cunningham, the expression changed to one of surprise. Very possibly he noted the similarity of colouring between the brother and sister, and a certain vague haunting likeness that would show itself at times.

"If Miss Cunningham is at home, tell her that her brother has come and wishes to see her immediately on a matter of importance," said my companion, valiantly taking the bull by the horns.

"Miss Cunningham is not at home, sir," replied the servant. "She—that is—in fact, sir, she has just left us for good and all. She—she was married, sir, at half-past ten o'clock this morning, and the wedding breakfast's only been over since an hour ago."

The gritty substance under our feet had been the rice thrown, as though in mockery, after Karine as she passed to her carriage on her husband's arm.



CHAPTER XXVIII

A Wild-Goose Chase

"Do you know where the—the bride and groom have gone?" questioned Cunningham, grudgingly.

"No, sir. I heard Lady Tressidy say only this morning that even she hadn't been told. Mr. Wildred had some idea of a surprise, I believe, sir."

The fact that not only had my companion claimed to be the brother of the bride, but that his facial expression and colouring answered for his truth, caused the fellow to feel apparently that we had a right to explanations.

There was no use in endeavouring to make further enquiries. Even if Lady Tressidy or Sir Walter did know the destination of the newly-wedded pair, it was more than improbable that they would be ready to share their knowledge with us. And it was like Carson Wildred to be prepared even for the very emergency which had now arisen, by taking just such precautions as he had.

Had we not been impatient and chosen the steep road, less often travelled than the other, we should no doubt have met the carriage which drove the bridal couple to the Haslemere station. Another exemplification of the old proverb, that "the more haste, the less speed." We could now only repair our mistake, if it still admitted of reparation, by giving chase with such speed as was practicable.

I gave the order to the coachman, "Drive to the station as quick as you can," and in another moment we were off.

Fate seemed to have ordained that I should meet nothing save disappointment at this door; but to-day's experience had brought me something far deeper and more cruel than mere disappointment. I had not counted upon the chance that Wildred would be permitted to hurry on the wedding during my absence, and now I felt as though a chasm had suddenly yawned under my feet. Karine was Carson Wildred's wife!

"What are we to do?" questioned her brother dully. "We can't leave her with him, you know."

Leave her with him! The very fact that I was obliged to answer him gave me back the power of concentrating thought. A moment before my mind had been a blank, a chaos; but now I returned, unhesitatingly—

"We'll find out where they've gone, and have him arrested and your sister taken from him before nightfall."

"But supposing they've gone abroad—which is what they very likely mean—before we can catch them?"

"We must catch them. There won't be a train till later in the afternoon by which they can get away now. They'd have to go by the night boat, if it was France. Somehow or other—though everything seems against us, and we are only two, where there ought to be a dozen going in as many ways at once—we'll circumvent that devil yet."

"You have plenty of confidence in yourself," said Cunningham. "Perhaps you don't know Carson Wildred as well as I do."

I did not answer, though the words rang ominously in my ears. I was very busy with my own thoughts.

As soon as we could find out where Wildred had taken Karine (even within my own mind I would not call her his wife), we must lodge such information with the police that he could be arrested at once, either on English or foreign soil, as the case might be. A man accused of murder, as he would be, could, fortunately, be apprehended anywhere.

At Haslemere station they could only inform us that the party of which we were in search had had tickets for London, and had left about three-quarters of an hour before our arrival.

Even if we could have told our story with sufficient succinctness to have Wildred met at Waterloo by the police, there would have been no time to do so. We must simply follow as we could. Luckily there was a slow train due in a few moments, otherwise I think we (I at least) must have gone mad with the strain of waiting.

At Waterloo we heard of them. A porter had taken their luggage and put it on a cab. The gentleman and lady had driven away in a private carriage. What direction had been given to the coachman or the cabman he had not happened to hear.

I now proposed that Cunningham should proceed immediately to Scotland Yard, while I busied myself elsewhere. He was the one who could tell of the plot by which he had personated Farnham in America, by Wildred's desire, and in the hope of obtaining a substantial bribe. The authorities were already in possession of such separate information as I could give, and now that they would learn from Cunningham how Farnham had never gone to America at all, a very different and more lurid light would be shed upon the past.

Meanwhile I would drive to Charing Cross, and might yet be in time to intercept the couple if they were intending to depart for France.

At Charing Cross they had not appeared, and hastening to a telegraph office, I sent messages containing Wildred's description and Karine's to every one of the principal railway stations in London. Replies were paid, and were to be received for me at the Charing Cross Hotel. Having done so much, I drove to the piers from which the Holland boats sailed; then, having discovered nothing, back to Charing Cross again. The train which would catch the night boat at Dover was just about going out, but Wildred and Karine were not visible.

When the last moment had come and gone I betook myself to the hotel, where my telegrams were to await me. I also looked for Cunningham, who was to have met me there, after Scotland Yard, and decided upon forthcoming arrangements. Despatches were awaiting me from the head porters of various stations—Victoria, Euston, Paddington, and so on—but no Cunningham had as yet appeared.

I opened the message from Paddington last; the others had no news for me, but it seemed that at Paddington a lady and gentleman, apparently answering the description given, had taken tickets for Maidenhead. All the blood in my body seemed to mount to my head. Unless there had been a mistake in the identity, Wildred must have carried Karine off to the House by the Lock!

It was horrible to me that she should be there. The thought of the house, and what I believed had happened to Harvey Farnham under its roof, was abhorrent. Why had he chosen to take his young bride, on the day of their marriage, to that gloomy and accursed spot? A strange thrill of apprehension, vague, yet none the less dreadful, shook my nerves.

I consulted the latest A.B.C. time-table, which lay in the reading-room of the hotel. In exactly an hour another train would leave Paddington for Maidenhead and Marlow (the nearest stations to Purley Lock), and after that there would not be another until ten o'clock.

I should not have much more than time to catch the former, if I intended to go by it—and I did intend to go. Exactly what I was to do, how I was to get Karine away from her husband, I did not dare stop to think, but somehow I would do it. So great was my dread of Wildred as a criminal, and my respect for him as a schemer, that I even feared dimly for Karine's safety with him. It was madness to entertain such a doubt, I assured myself, for great heiress as she was, Karine was lovely enough and sweet enough to inspire genuine love even in so cold-hearted a villain as Wildred.

He might tire of her in the end, but for the present her life, at least, would be safe with him. So I repeated mentally, over and over again; but still I was pricked with a boding fear for more than her peace of mind. Why had he taken her to that grim, hateful house by the river?



CHAPTER XXIX

At the House by the Lock

I would have wished to wait for Cunningham, both because I wanted him with me, and because I was anxious to hear what he had done at Scotland Yard. However, he did not come, so I wired him to the latter place, left a short note for him also at the hotel, to be kept till called for, and started off in a cab (when I dared delay no longer) at breakneck pace for Paddington station.

I just caught the train I wanted, changed at Maidenhead, and arrived at Marlow by half-past eight o'clock. This time I had neither leisure nor inclination to walk, as upon my first visit to the place on Christmas Day, but took a fly, and offered the man an extra fare if he would make haste.

A little short of the House by the Lock I stopped him. A certain instinct seemed to bid me not be too ostentatious in the manner of announcing my arrival. I got out, and by the light of a round, red moon rising over black trees in the east I glanced at my watch. It was five-and-twenty past nine. The whole day, since my arrival at Southampton in the morning, had gone in searching for Karine, and it might be that I was as far from success now as I had been in the beginning.

A hundred yards away a small yellow light shone steadily through the moon-tinged darkness. I thought it came from the House by the Lock, though the one poor ray made but scant cheer of illumination for a bride's homecoming.

"Wait here for me," I said to the driver. "I may come within half an hour, I may be much longer; but, at all events, wait. Here is a sovereign for you, and you shall have as much again when I return."

The tone of his voice told me that he was suspicious, as well as curious, regarding the mysterious intentions of his fare; but I was sure that he would not fail me. Two pounds were not to be so easily picked up every evening.

I walked on rapidly. As I approached the House by the Lock I lost sight of the yellow gleam which for some time had guided me, but the moon glinted bleakly on the staring panes of dark, upper windows.

Desolate as the place had appeared at the hour of sunset, it had had an air of hospitable welcome at that time compared to that which it wore now. Never, it seemed to me, had I seen a habitation so grim, so silently suggestive of haunting, evil things. The face of the moon, as it rose, lost the ruddy hue which had coloured it nearer the horizon, and its paling disc was swept by black and ragged storm clouds. The wind moaned through the trees like the wail of a lost soul, and there was a stealthy, monotonous lapping of the dark waters so close at hand.

Other sound there was none, and, though I had seen the small ray from a distance, now—so far as I could ascertain—not a window in the whole gloomy pile was lighted.

I went up the path, knocked, and rang the bell, which sent back jangling echoes, such as belong in one's fancy to an uninhabited house. From a distant kennel a dog began to bay. Otherwise I was not answered, and as I rang and thundered on the knocker again, the animal's voice at length subsided into a protesting whine.

I ought by this time to have been sure that Wildred and Karine were not in the house, but, on the contrary, I was by no means certain of that fact. Mentally I argued that, if the master was absent, a caretaker or servant would certainly have been left, and unless a stone-deaf person had been selected for the post my violent alarms would have brought him to me.

If any reason existed, however, why the door should not be opened, it would be easy to understand how and why the caretaker might be suddenly afflicted with an inability to hear.

Instead of being plunged into discouragement, an ever-kindling fire of rage mounted within me. Rather than go away ignorant as to whether Karine was hidden in this hateful house or not, I would force an entrance. I sprang down the steps and went to one of the bow windows nearest the door.

Not an instant's hesitation had I in kicking in one of the panes of glass, but, as it happened, I had only my trouble for my pains. There were solidly-barred shutters inside, so heavy that even I, strong man as I was, could not break them open.

Furious now, I ran up to the door again, and drove my gloved fist through the glass in one of the curious, six-inch-wide window panes that ran the length of the door on either side. The shivered glass jingled sharply on the polished wood of the floor inside, and I thrust in my arm up to the elbow, hoping to get at the lock on the door within. As I did so footsteps came running in the distance.

"Here! Here! What's the matter with you?" cried an imperative voice.

I had heard it before, I remembered. It was that of the eminently respectable-looking servant who had so cleverly defended his master's reputation on the occasion of my former visit to the House by the Lock.

"If you're a burglar," remarked the voice, "you'd better go away while you can. I have a revolver, and my hand is on the trigger now."

"I am no burglar," I returned. "This is not exactly the time of night to expect such gentry, is it? But you've kept me waiting long enough. I wish to see your master and mistress, whom I happen to know are here this evening, and I don't mean to go away without doing it."

The man inside chuckled.

"Nice way of announcing yourself, ain't it, sir? But as it happens you'll have to go elsewhere to see my master and the new mistress. I don't know where they are—it ain't likely I should—but I do know they aren't in this house, where there isn't a solitary soul but me. As for the time of night, that's neither here nor there, so long as I'd chosen to go to bed; and I can't dress all of a minute to please anybody that likes to come banging at the door. You deserve to be had up for damaging the house, that you do, whoever you may be."

There was a ring of virtuous indignation in the voice, and for a few seconds' length I hesitated. Perhaps, after all, the fellow was telling the truth. I was very certain of his capacity for lying, but it might well be that Wildred and Karine had not really come here. Still——

Far away a door slammed sharply, and just in time to decide me. The man had lied. He had just told me that he was alone in the house, and this one sound had unmistakably proved the falsehood. It was not the sort of noise with which the wind shuts a door, even had the wind been violent enough to do so, and windows open to admit it. The latch had been lifted by a human hand.

The servant, who was entirely out of my sight, began talking hurriedly, jabbering any nonsense, as though to cover what had happened. I listened intently, and through his chattering I fancied that I could hear—subdued with distance and intervening walls—the sound of a woman's crying.

My heart seemed to leap into my throat. I could feel the blood throbbing almost to bursting at my temples.

"You liar!" I roughly exclaimed. "They are here, and I will see them, if I have to break the door down!"

"Try it, then!" the man cried, tauntingly. "Just try it—and you may try all night. Ta, ta! Good-bye, and good luck to you!"

I heard his feet tapping swiftly along the uncovered floor as he ran away. Another door was opened and closed, and he was out of earshot.

Desperately I again endeavoured to find the lock. It was no use. Thrust in my arm as far as I might I could not touch it, and though I broke the narrow pane on the other side as well, the fastenings of the door were beyond my reach.

With all my strength I flung myself against the door, but the heavy wood stood firm as though it had been a sheet of iron. There was evidently no hope in that direction, and dizzy with my own rage and desperation, I began attempting some of the windows. But all were secured with the impregnable shutters and bars inside, and it would have seemed that the inmates of the House by the Lock were prepared to stand a siege.

Whether it was Karine whom I believed I had heard weeping or not, I could not be sure. I could not even have taken my oath that there had been such a sound at all, but I was morally certain of it.

I ran round the house, trying in vain to batter in another door, and was met everywhere by silence and darkness. At the side, however, I came at last upon the extension with the tower, whence I had seen the suspicious smoke and flame pouring on that memorable Christmas afternoon. Over the roof of the low "studio," which possessed no windows, I could see a faint yellow glow, like a luminous halo or crown, and suddenly, as I stood regarding it in some bewilderment, I recollected the skylight which I had observed from within.

If I could in some way climb to the top, break through the glass and let myself down, the problem as to how I should get into the house would be effectually solved.

It now struck me that the studio, as seen from outside, was disproportionately large compared with the room inside, as I remembered it. There had been only the one, which apparently constituted the sole purpose of the building, and yet it appeared to me that there might have been space for two of the same small size.

Low as the erection was it was too high for me to climb, and I began hastily looking about for some means of assistance in carrying out my plan.

In the coach-house, I thought, there might be a ladder, and thither I repaired without delay. But the doors were padlocked, and try them as I might I could not open them.

What was I to do? The more difficulties which encumbered my path, the more did I determine to surmount them. Returning towards the house I noticed a large rustic seat placed under an ancient apple tree, and it occurred to me that if I could balance the article against the projection of the building I might, by standing it on end, use it as an improvised ladder. If I could only mount for a certain distance I could pull myself up by the ledge of stonework which ran along the edge of the flat roof.

The light which apparently filtered through the skylight had warned me to be cautious in my movements. Whoever was in the house must have known long ago that someone was determined upon forcing an entrance, but, judging by the laughing taunts of the servant, it would be believed that the boast had been a vain one.

If anyone was in the studio it might be as well if, for a few moments at least, I could see without being seen or heard. I therefore went about my preparations as quietly as possible.

I dragged the rustic seat across the grass and set it in an angle between the tower and the low building of the studio, giving it a certain slanting inclination, that it might not fall when burdened with my weight. Then I scrambled up, not venturing to pause for an instant at the top, for I could feel that the thing was slowly beginning to slide from under me.

With a leap I caught the ledge of stone that ran round the roof, and setting my knee against the wall, helped myself up. It may read simply enough when written down in black and white, but it was rather a difficult task in the accomplishment, and I felt that I had reason to congratulate myself on my own success when it was done.

Framed in a margin of dark roof eight to ten feet in width was the skylight, through which penetrated a subdued radiance.

Cautiously, noiselessly, I crawled to the round bubble of glass and looked down. A curtain of embroidered Indian silk was drawn half across, but through the open space that was left I could see something of the interior.

The jewelled lamp which I had previously observed hanging from the centre alone illumined the octagonal room. Now that I was on the roof I was able to appreciate more than ever the smallness of the studio. There was space for a wide passage running all the way round, between the inner walls and the outer walls. I suspected method in this design—a secret which Wildred had cleverly contrived to hide, and which, in conjunction with the mystery of the tower, might account for much that had been dark before.

As I looked a figure passed into my line of vision. It was Wildred walking restlessly up and down with his hands behind him. I could hear the murmur of his voice, though through the glass of the skylight the words were not distinguishable.

Suddenly there came a sharp exclamation in a woman's voice, and my heart gave a responsive bound. Wildred was talking to Karine, and it was she who had answered him with a cry.

I had not expected, when I decided upon trying to enter like a burglar through the skylight, that Karine would be in the studio. It would doubtless frighten her very much if I should suddenly make my appearance beside her amid a shower of broken glass, and I hesitated so to alarm her, unless the man down there was already commencing to use his power to torment her. If she would only go out and leave me to give Wildred a surprise I would have been thankful; but as I could not hope for her to do that, I determined to know what her companion was saying to her, which had caused her to exclaim in astonishment or perhaps in fear.

I took out my pocket-knife, and with great care to avoid all noise I began to loosen one of the small diamond-shaped panes from its leaden setting. As soon as it was released at one end I slipped the point of the knife underneath and so raised it that there might be no danger of its falling downward and startling those within the room.



CHAPTER XXX

Conclusion

I bent my ear over the tiny aperture. It made all the difference in the world. I could now hear every word that Wildred was saying.

"I have always, and with some reason, I think," was the first sentence that I caught, "considered myself a man of more than average mental ability. I am usually prepared for any traps which can possibly be sprung for me; but in this instance I find I have made my one mistake. I believed in a woman's devotion. Probably it serves me right to have been deceived. Since you have found it all out through her, I may as well admit to you that it is true. She did live here. Nobody suspected her presence, or even her existence. She was very useful to me in many ways. If she had proved troublesome I could have rid myself of her at any time, and she knew it. Instead of doing what I ought to have done, I believed that she was willing to go away without betraying me, and I let her go free with a present of a thousand pounds. She could even have asked for more when that was gone, and I would not have refused her. I was a fool ever to marry her, but she was the handsomest woman I had seen at that time, and as you know I was some years younger, some degrees more impulsive than I am now. I was still more of a fool not to have put her out of the way, knowing what she did—but as I remarked, that was the mistake of a lifetime. She has told you such of my secrets as she knew, she has shown you certain things in this house which have very naturally displeased and shocked you. She timed her return very well—jealous idiot!—but she will pay for what she has done."

"How will she pay?"

I could not see Karine, but I could hear her voice, vibrant with the fear and horror that she felt.

"Better not ask; the question doesn't concern you. She will simply become familiarised with the secrets of the House by the Lock in a manner upon which she didn't count, that's all."