"I am essential to him," she thought ecstatically. "I stand between him and disaster. When he has succeeded his success will be my work and nobody else's. I have a mission. I must live for it.... If anyone had told me a year ago that a great French genius would be absolutely dependent upon me, and that I meant for him all the difference between failure and triumph, I should have laughed.... And yet!..." She looked at him surreptitiously. "He's an angel. But he's also a baby." The feelings of motherhood were as naught compared to hers.

Then she remarked harshly, icily:

"Well, I shall be much obliged if you will go back to Paris at once—to-day. Somebody must have a little sense."

Just at this point Aguilar interrupted. He came slouching round the corner of the clipped bushes, untidy, shabby, implacable, with some set purpose in his hard blue eyes. She could have annihilated him with satisfaction, but the fellow was indestructible as well as implacable.

"Could I have a word with ye, madam?" he mumbled, putting on his well-known air of chicane.

With the unexplained Musa close by her she could not answer: "Wait a little. I'm engaged." She had to be careful. She had to make out especially that she and the young man were up to nothing in particular, nothing that had the slightest importance.

"What is it, Aguilar?" she questioned, inimically.

"It's down here," said Aguilar, who recked not of the implications of a tone. And by the mere force of his glance he drew his mistress away, out of sight of Musa and the dog.

"Is that your motor-car at the gates, madam?" he demanded gloomily and confidentially, his gaze now fixed on the ground or on his patched boots.

"Of course it is," said Audrey. "Why, what's the matter?"

"That's all right then," said he. "But I thought it might belong to another person, and I had to make sure. Now if ye'll just step along a bit farther, I've a little thing as I want to point out to ye, madam. It's my duty to point it out, let others say what they will."

He walked ahead doggedly, and Audrey crossly came after, until they arrived nearly at the end of the hedge which, separating the upper from the lower garden, hid from those immediately behind it all view of the estuary. Here, still sheltered by the hedge, he stopped and Audrey stopped, and Aguilar absently plucked up a young plantain from the turf and dropped it into his pocket.

"There's been a man a-hanging round this place since yesterday mornin'," said Aguilar intimately. "I call him a suspicious character—at least, I did, till last night. He ain't slept in the village, that I do know, but he's about again this morning."

"Well," said Audrey with impatience. "Why don't you tell Inspector Keeble? Or have you quarrelled with Inspector Keeble again?"

"It's not that as would ha' stopped me from acquainting Inspector Keeble with the circumstances if I thought it my duty so to do," replied Aguilar. "But the fact is I saw the chap talking to Inspector Keeble yesterday evening. He don't know as I saw him. It was that as made me think; now is he a suspicious character or ain't he? Of course Keeble's a rare simple-minded 'un, as we all know."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"I thought you might like to have a look at him yeself, madam. And if you'll just peep round the end of this hedge casual-like, ye'll see him walking across the salting from Lousey Hard. He's a-comin' this way. Casual-like now—and he won't see ye."

Audrey had to obey. She peeped casual-like, and she did in fact see a man on the salting, and this man was getting nearer. She could see him very plainly in the brilliant clearness of the summer morning. After the shortest instant of hesitation she recognised him beyond any doubt. It was the detective who had been so plenteously baptised by Susan Foley in the area of the house at Paget Gardens. Aguilar looked at Audrey, and Audrey annoyed herself somewhat by blushing. However, an agreeable elation quickly overcame the blush.



CHAPTER XXVIII

ENCOUNTER

"Good morning," Audrey cried, very gaily, to the still advancing detective, who, after the slightest hesitation in the world, responded gaily:

"Good morning."

The man's accent struck her. She said to herself, with amusement:

"He's Irish!"

Audrey had left the astonished but dispassionate gardener at the hedge, and was now emerging from the scanty and dishevelled plantation close to the boundary wall of the estate. She supposed that the police must have been on her track and on the track of Jane Foley, and that by some mysterious skill they had hunted her down. But she did not care. She was not in the least afraid. The sudden vision of a jail did not affright her. On the contrary her chief sensation was one of joyous self-confidence, which sensation had been produced in her by the remarks and the attitude of Musa. She had always known that she was both shy and adventurous, and that the two qualities were mutually contradictory; but now it appeared to her that diffidence had been destroyed, and that that change which she had ever longed for in her constitution had at least really come to pass.

"You don't seem very surprised to see me," said Audrey.

"Well, madam," said the detective, "I'm not paid to be surprised—in my business."

He had raised his hat. He was standing on the dyke, and from that height he looked somewhat down upon Audrey leaning against the wall. The watercourse and the strip of eternally emerald-green grass separated them. Though neither tall nor particularly handsome, he was a personable man, with a ready smile and alert, agile movements. Audrey was too far off to judge of his eyes, but she was quite sure that they twinkled. The contrast between this smart, cheerful fellow and the half-drowned victim in the area of the house in Paget Gardens was quite acute.

"Now I've a good mind to hold a meeting for your benefit," said Audrey, striving to recall the proper phrases of propaganda which she had heard in the proper quarters in London during her brief connection with the cause. However, she could not recall them, "But there's no need to," she added. "A gentleman of your intelligence must be of our way of thinking."

"About what?"

"About the vote, of course. And so your conduct is all the more shocking."

"Why!" he exclaimed, laughing. "If it comes to that, your own sex is against you."

Audrey had heard this argument before, and it had the same effect on her as on most other stalwarts of the new political creed. It annoyed her, because there was something in it.

"The vast majority of women are with us," said she.

"My wife isn't."

"But your wife isn't the vast majority of women," Audrey protested.

"Oh yes, she is," said the detective, "so far as I'm concerned. Every wife is, so far as her husband is concerned. Sure, you ought to know that!" In his Irish way he doubled the "r" of the word "sure," and somehow this trick made Audrey like him still more. "My wife believes," he concluded, "that woman's sphere is the home."

("His wife is stout," Audrey decided within herself, on no grounds whatever. "If she wasn't, she couldn't be a vast majority.")

Aloud she said:

"Well, then, why can't you leave them alone in their sphere, instead of worrying them and spying on them down areas?"

"D'ye mean at Paget Gardens?"

"Of course."

"Oh!" he laughed. "That wasn't professional—if you'll excuse me being so frank. That was just due to human admiration. It's not illegal to admire a young woman, I suppose, even if she is a suffragette."

"What young woman are you talking about?"

"Miss Susan Foley, of course. I won't tell you what I think of her, in spite of all she did, because I've learnt that it's a mistake to praise one woman to another. But I don't mind admitting that her going off to the north has made me life a blank. If I'd thought she'd go, I should never have reported the affair at the Yard. But I was annoyed, and I'm rather hasty." He paused, and ended reflectively: "I committed follies to get a word with the young lady, and I didn't get it, but I'd do the same again."

"And you a married man!" Audrey burst out, startled, and diverted, at the explanation, but at the same time outraged by a confession so cynical.

The detective pulled a silky moustache.

"When a wife is very strongly convinced that her sphere is the home," he retorted slowly and seriously, "you're tempted at times to let her have the sphere all to herself. That's the universal experience of married men, and ye may believe me, miss—madam."

Audrey said:

"And now Miss Foley's gone north, you've decided to come and admire me in my home!"

"So it is your home!" murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey's old suspicions afresh—and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. "I assure you I came here to recover; I'd heard it was the finest climate in England."

"Recover?"

"Yes, from fire-extinguishers. D'ye know I coughed for twenty-four hours after that reception?... And you should have seen my clothes! The doctor says my lungs may never get over it.... That's what comes of admiration."

"It's what comes of behaving as no married man ought to behave."

"Did I say I was married?" asked the detective with an ingenuous air. "Well, I may be. But I dare say I'm only married just about as much as you are yourself, madam."

Upon this remark he raised his hat and departed along the grassy summit of the sea-wall.

Audrey flushed for the second time that morning, and more strikingly than before. She was extremely discontented with, and ashamed of, herself, for she had meant to be the equal of the detective, and she had not been. It was blazingly clear that he had indeed played with her—or, as she put it in her own mind: "He just stuffed me up all through."

She tried to think logically. Had he been pursuing the motor-car all the way from Birmingham? Obviously he had not, since according to Aguilar he had been in the vicinity of Moze since the previous morning. Hence he did not know that Audrey was involved in the Blue City affair, and he did not know that Jane Foley was at Frinton. How he had learnt that Audrey belonged to Moze, and why and what he had come to investigate at Moze, she could not guess. Nor did these problems appear to her to have an importance at all equal to the importance of hiding from the detective that she had been staying at Frinton. If he followed her to Frinton he would inevitably discover that Jane Foley was at Frinton, and the sequel would be more imprisonment for Jane. Therefore Audrey must not return to Frinton. Having by a masterly process of ratiocination reached this conclusion, she began to think rather better of herself, and ceased blushing.

"Aguilar," she demanded excitedly, having gone back through the plantation. "Did Miss Ingate happen to say where I was staying last night?"

"No, madam."

"I must run into the house and write a note to her, and you must take it down instantly." In her mind she framed the note, which was to condemn Miss Ingate to the torture of complete and everlasting silence about the episode at the Blue City and the flight eastwards.



CHAPTER XXIX

FLIGHT

"Fast, madam, did you say?" asked the chauffeur, bending his head back from the wheel as the car left the gates of Flank Hall.

"Fast."

"The Colchester road?"

"Yes."

"It's really just as quick to take the Frinton road for Colchester—it's so much straighter."

"No, no, no! On no account. Don't go near Frinton."

Audrey leaned back in the car. And as speed increased the magnificence of the morning again had its effect on her. The adventure pleased her far more than the perils of it, either for herself or for other people, frightened her. She knew that she was doing a very strange thing in thus leaving the Spatts and her luggage without a word of explanation before breakfast; but she did not care. She knew that for some reason which she did not comprehend the police were after her, as they had been after nearly all the great ones of the movement; but she did not care. She was alive in the rushing car amid the magnificence of the morning. Musa sat next to her. She had more or less incompletely explained the situation to him—it was not necessary to tell everything to a boy who depended upon you absolutely for his highest welfare—such boys must accept, thankfully, what they received. And Musa had indeed done so. He appeared to be quite happy and without anxieties. That was the worst He had wanted to be with her, and he was with her, and he cared for nothing else. He had no interest in what might happen next. He yielded himself utterly to the enjoyment of her presence and of the magnificent morning.

And yet Musa, whom Audrey considered that she understood as profoundly as any mother had ever understood any child—even Musa could surprise.

He said, without any preparation:

"I calculate that I shall have 3,040 francs in hand after the concerts, assuming that I receive only the minimum. That is, after paying the expenses of my living."

"But do you know how much it costs you to live?" Audrey demanded, with careless superiority.

"Assuredly. I write all my payments down in a little book. I have done so since some years."

"Every sou?"

"Yes. Every sou."

"But do you save, Musa?"

"Save!" he repeated the word ingenuously. "Till now to save has been impossible for me. But I have always kept in hand one month's subsistence. I could not do more. Now I shall save. You reproached me with having spent money in order to come to see you in England. But I regarded the money so spent as part of the finance of the concerts. Without seeing you I could not practise. Without practice I could not play. Without playing I could not earn money. Therefore I spent money in order to get money. Such, Madame, was the commercial side. What a beautiful lawn for tennis you have in your garden!"

Audrey was more than surprised, she was staggered by the revelation of the attitude of genius towards money. She had not suspected it. Then she remembered the simple natural tome in which Musa had once told her that both Tommy and Nick contributed to his income. She ought to have comprehended from that avowal more than she, in fact, had comprehended. And now the first hopes of worldly success were strongly developing that unsuspected trait in the young man's character. Audrey was aware of a great fear. Could he be a genius, after all? Was it conceivable that an authentic musical genius should enter up daily in a little book every sou he spent?

A rapid, spitting, explosive sound, close behind the car and a little to the right, took her mind away from Musa and back to the adventure. She looked round, half expecting what she should see—and she saw it, namely, the detective on a motor-cycle. It was an "Indian" machine and painted red. And as she looked, the car, after taking a corner, got into a straight bit of the splendid road and the motor-bicycle dropped away from it.

"Can't you shake off that motor-bicycle thing?" Audrey rather superciliously asked the chauffeur.

Having first looked at his mirror, the chauffeur, who, like a horse, could see in two directions at once, gazed cautiously at the road in front and at the motor-bicycle behind, simultaneously.

"I doubt it, madam," he said. And yet his tone and glance expressed deep scorn of the motor-bicycle. "As a general rule you can't."

"I should have thought you could beat a little thing like that," said Audrey.

"Them things can do sixty when they've a mind to," said the chauffeur, with finality, and gave all his attention to the road.

At intervals he looked at his mirror. The motor-bicycle had vanished into the past, and as it failed to reappear he gradually grew confident and disdainful. But just as the car was going down the short hill into the outskirts of Colchester the motor-bicycle came into view once more.

"Where to, madam?" inquired the chauffeur.

"This is Colchester, isn't it?" she demanded nervously, though she knew perfectly well that it was Colchester.

"Yes, madam."

"Straight through! Straight through!"

"The London road?"

"Yes. The London road," she agreed. London was, of course, the only possible destination.

"But breakfast, madam?"

"Oh! The usual thing," said Audrey. "You'll have yours when I have mine."

"But we shall run out of petrol, madam."

"Never mind," said Audrey sublimely.

The chauffeur, with characteristic skill, arranged that the car should run out of petrol precisely in front of the best hotel in Chelmsford, which was about half-way to London. The motor-bicycle had not been seen for several miles. But scarcely had they resumed the journey, by the Epping road, when it came again into view—in front of them. How had the fellow guessed that they would take the longer Epping road instead of the shorter Romford road?

"When shall we be arriving in Frinton?" Musa inquired, beatific.

"We shan't be arriving in Frinton any more," said Audrey. "We must go straight to London."

"It is like a dream," Musa murmured, as it were in ecstasy. Then his features changed and he almost screamed: "But my violin! My violin! We must go back for it."

"Violin!" said Audrey. "That's nothing! I've even come without gloves." And she had.

She reassured Musa as to the violin, and the chauffeur as to the abandoned Gladstone bag containing the chauffeur's personal effects, and herself as to many things. An hour and twenty minutes later the car, with three people in it, thickly dusted even to the eyebrows, drew up in the courtyard of Charing Cross railway station, and the motor-cycle was visible, its glaring red somewhat paled, in the Strand outside. The time was ten-fifteen.

"We shall take the eleven o'clock boat train for Paris," she said to Musa.

"You also?"

She nodded. He was in heaven. He could even do without his violin.

"How nice it is not to be bothered with luggage," she said.

The chauffeur was pacified with money, of which Audrey had a sufficiency.

And all the time Audrey kept saying to herself:

"I'm not going to Paris to please Musa, so don't let him think it! I'm only going so as to put the detective off and keep Jane Foley out of his clutches, because if I stay in London he'll be bound to find everything out."

While Musa kept watch for the detective at the door of the telegraph office Audrey telegraphed, as laconically as possible, to Frinton concerning clothes and the violin, and then they descended to subterranean marble chambers in order to get rid of dust, and they came up to earth again, each out of a separate cellar, renewed. And, lastly, Audrey slipped into the Strand and bought a pair of gloves, and thereafter felt herself to be completely equipped against the world's gaze.



CHAPTER XXX

ARIADNE

A few days later an automobile—not Audrey's but a large limousine—bumped, with slow and soft dignity, across the railway lines which diversify the quays of Boulogne harbour and, having hooted in a peculiar manner, came to a stop opposite nothing in particular.

"Here we are," said Mr. Gilman, reaching to open the door. "You can see her masthead light."

It was getting dark. Behind, over the station, a very faint flush lightened the west, and in front, across the water, and reflected in the water, the thousand lamps of the town rose in tiers to the lofty church which stood out a dark mass against the summer sky. On the quays the forms of men moved vaguely among crates and packages, and on the water, tugs and boats flitted about, puffing, or with the plash of oars, or with no sound whatever. And from the distance arrived the reverberation of electric trams running their courses in the maze of the town.

Madame Piriac and Audrey descended, after Mr. Gilman, from the car and Mr. Gilman turned off the electric light in the interior and shut the door.

"Do not trouble about the luggage, I beg you," said Mr. Gilman, breathing, as usual, rather noticeably. "Bon soir, Leroux. Don't forget to meet the nine-thirty-five." This last to the white-clad chauffeur, who saluted sharply.

At the same moment two sailors appeared over the edge of the quay, and a Maltese cross of light burst into radiance at the end of a sloping gangway, whose summit was just perched on the solid masonry of the port. The sailors were clothed in blue, with white caps, and on their breasts they bore the white-embroidered sign: "Ariadne, R.T.Y.C."

"Look lively, lads, with the luggage," said Mr. Gilman.

"Yes, sir."

Then another figure appeared under the Maltese cross. It was clad in white ducks, with a blue reefer ornamented in gold, and a yachting cap crowned in white: a stoutish and middle-aged figure, much like Mr. Gilman himself in bearing and costume, except that Mr. Gilman had no gold on his jacket.

"Well, skipper!" greeted Mr. Gilman, jauntily and spryly. In one moment, in one second, Mr. Gilman had grown at least twenty years younger.

"Captain Wyatt," he presented the skipper to the ladies. "And this is Mr. Price, my secretary, and Doctor Cromarty," as two youths, clothed exactly to match Mr. Gilman, followed the skipper up the steep incline of the gangway.

And now Audrey could see the Ariadne lying below, for it was only just past low water and the tide was scarcely making. At the next berth higher up, with lights gleaming at her innumerable portholes and two cranes hard at work producing a mighty racket on her, lay a Channel steamer, which, by comparison with the yacht, loomed enormous, like an Atlantic liner. Indeed, the yacht seemed a very little and a very lowly and a very flimsy flotation on the dark water, and her illuminated deck-house was no better than a toy. On the other hand, her two masts rose out of the deep high overhead and had a certain impressiveness, though not quite enough.

Audrey thought:

"Is this what we're going on? I thought it was a big yacht." And she had a qualm.

And then a bell rang twice, extremely sweet and mellow, somewhere on the yacht. And Audrey was touched by the beauty of its tone.

"Two bells. Nine o'clock," said Mr. Gilman. "Will you come aboard? I'll show you the way." He tripped down the gangway like a boy. Behind could be heard the sailors giving one another directions about the true method of handling luggage.

Audrey had met Madame Piriac by sheer hazard in a corset shop in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin. The fugitive from justice had been obliged, in the matter of wardrobe, to begin life again on her arrival trunkless in Paris, and the business of doing so was not disagreeable. Madame Piriac had greeted her with most affectionate warmth. One of her first suggestions had been that Audrey should accompany her on a short yachting trip projected by Mr. Gilman. She had said that though the excellent Gilman was her uncle, and her adored uncle, he was not her real uncle, and that therefore, of course, she was incapable of going unaccompanied, though she would hate to disappoint the dear man. As for Monsieur Piriac, the destiny of France was in his hands, and the moment being somewhat critical, he would not quit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without leaving a fixed telegraphic address.

On the next day Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac had called on Audrey at the Hotel du Danube, and the invitation became formal. It was pressing and flattering. Why refuse it? Mr. Gilman was obviously prepared to be her slave. She accepted, with enthusiasm. And she said to herself that in doing so she was putting yet another spoke in the wheel of the British police. Immediately afterwards she learnt that Musa also had been asked. Madame Piriac informed her, in reply to a sort of protest, that Musa's first concert was postponed by the concert agency until the autumn. "I never heard of that!" Audrey had cried. "And why should you have heard of it? Have you not been in England?" Madame Piriac had answered, a little surprised at Audrey's tone. Whereupon Audrey had said naught. The chief point was that Musa could take a holiday without detriment to his career. Moreover, Mr. Gilman, who possessed everything, possessed a marvellous violin, which he would put at the disposal of Musa on the yacht if Musa's own violin had not been found in the meantime. The official story was that Musa's violin had been mislaid or lost on the Metropolitain Railway, and the fact that he had been to England somehow did not transpire at all.

Mr. Gilman had gone forward in advance to make sure that his yacht was in a state worthy to receive two such ladies, and he had insisted on meeting them in his car at Abbeville on the way to Boulogne. He had not insisted on meeting Musa similarly. He was a peculiar and in some respects a stiff-necked man. He had decided, in his own mind, that he would have the two women to himself in the car, and so indeed it fell out. Nevertheless his attitude to Musa, and Madame Piriac's attitude to Musa, and everybody's attitude to Musa, had shown that the mere prospect of star-concerts in a first-class hall had very quickly transformed Musa into a genuine Parisian lion. He was positively courted. His presence on the yacht was deemed an honour, and that was why Mr. Gilman had asked him. Audrey both resented the remarkable change and was proud of it—as a mother perhaps naturally would do and be. The admitted genius was to arrive the next morning.

On boarding the Ariadne in the wake of Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac, the first thing that impressed Audrey was the long gangway itself. It was made of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing that impressed her was that immediately she got down on deck the yacht, in a very mysterious manner, had grown larger, and much larger. At the forward extremity of the deck certain blue figures lounging about seemed to be quite a long way off, indeed in another world. Here and there on the deck were circles of yellow or white rope, coiled as precisely and perfectly as Audrey could coil her own hair. Mr. Gilman led them to the door of the deck-house and they gazed within. The sight of the interior drew out of the ravished Audrey an ecstatic exclamation: "What a darling!" And at the words she saw that Mr. Gilman, for all his assumed nonchalant spryness, almost trembled with pleasure. The deck-house was a drawing-room whose walls were of carved and inlaid wood. Orange-shaded electric bulbs hung on short, silk cords from the ceiling, and flowers in sconces showed brilliantly between the windows, which were draped with curtains of silk matching the thick carpet. Several lounge chairs and a table of bird's-eye maple completed the place, and over the table were scattered newspapers and illustrated weeklies. Everything, except the literature, was somewhat diminished in size, but the smallness of the scale only intensified the pleasure derived from the spectacle.

Then they went "downstairs," as Audrey said; but Mr. Gilman corrected her and said "below," whereupon Audrey retorted that she should call it the "ground floor," and Mr. Gilman laughed as she had never heard a man of his age laugh. The sight of the ground floor still further increased Audrey's notion of the dimensions of the yacht, whose corridors and compartments appeared to stretch away endlessly in two directions. At the foot of the curving staircase Mr. Gilman, pulling aside a curtain, announced: "This is the saloon." When she heard the word Audrey expected a poky cubicle, but found a vast drawing-room with more books than she had ever seen in any other drawing-room, many pictures, an open piano, with music on it; sofas in every quarter, and about a thousand cupboards and drawers, each with a silver knob or handle. Above all was a dome of multi-coloured glass, and exactly beneath the dome a table set for supper, with the finest napery, cutlery and crystal. The apartment was dazzlingly lighted, and yet not a single lamp could be detected in the act of illumination. A real parlourmaid suddenly appeared at the far end of the room, and behind her two stewards in gilt-buttoned white Eton jackets and black trousers. Mr. Gilman, with seriousness, bade the parlourmaid take charge of the ladies and show them the sleeping-cabins.

"Choose any cabins you like," said he, as Madame Piriac and Audrey rustled off.

There might have been hundreds of sleeping-cabins. And there did, in fact, appear to be quite a number of them, to say nothing of two bathrooms. They inspected all of them save one, which was locked. In an awed voice the parlourmaid said, "That is the owner's cabin." At another door she said, in a different, disdainful voice, "That only leads to the galley and the crew's quarters." Audrey wondered what a galley could be, and the mystery of that name, and the mystery of the two closed doors, merely made the whole yacht perfect. The sleeping-cabins surpassed all else—they were so compact, so complex, so utterly complete. No large bedchamber, within Audrey's knowledge, held so much apparatus, and offered so much comfort and so much wardrobe room as even the least of these cabins. It was impossible, to be sure, that in one's amused researches one had not missed a cupboard ingeniously disguised somewhere. And the multiplicity of mirrors, and the message of the laconic monosyllable "Hot" on silver taps, and the discretion of the lighting, all indicated that the architect and creator of these marvellous microcosms had "understood." The cosy virtue of littleness, and the entire absurdity of space for the sake of space, were strikingly proved, and the demonstration amounted, in Audrey's mind, to a new and delicious discovery.

The largest of the cabins had two berths at right angles to one another, each a lovely little bed with a running screen of cashmere. Having admired it once, they returned to it.

"Do you know, my dear," said Madame Piriac in French, "I have an idea. You will tell me if it is not good.... If we shared this cabin...! In this so curious machine one feels a satisfaction, somehow, in being very near the one to the other. The ceiling is so low.... That gives you sensations—human sensations.... I know not if you experience the same...."

"Oh! Let's!" Audrey exclaimed impulsively in English. "Do let's!"

When the parlourmaid had gone, and before the luggage had come down, Madame Piriac caught Audrey to her and kissed her fervently on both cheeks, amid the glinting confusion of polished woods and draperies and silver mountings and bevelled glass.

"I am so content that you came, my little one!" murmured Madame Piriac.

The next minute the cabin and the corridor outside were full of open trunks and bags, over which bent the forms of Madame Piriac, Audrey and the parlourmaid. And all the drawers were gaping, and the doors of all the cupboards swinging, and the narrow beds were hidden under piles of variegated garments. And while they were engaged in the breathless business of installing themselves in the celestial domain, strange new thoughts flitted about like mice in Audrey's head. She felt as though she were in a refuge from the world, and as though her conscience was being narcotised. In that cabin, firm as solid land and yet floating on the water, with Mr. Gilman at hand her absolute slave—in that cabin the propaganda of women's suffrage presented itself as a very odd and very remote phenomenon, a phenomenon scarcely real. She had positively everything she wanted without fighting for it. The lion's share of life was hers. Comfort and luxury were desirable and beautiful things, not to be cast aside nor scorned. Madame Piriac was a wise woman and a good woman. She was a happy woman.... There was a great deal of ugliness in sitting on Joy Wheels and being chased by policemen. True, as she had heard, a crew of nineteen human beings was necessary to the existence of Mr. Gilman and his guests on board the yacht. Well, what then? The nineteen were undoubtedly well treated and in clover. And the world was the world; you had to take it as you found it.... And then in her mind she had a glimpse of the blissful face of Jane Foley—blissful in a different way from any other face she had met in all her life. Disconcerting, this glimpse, for an instant, but only for an instant! She, Audrey, was blissful, too. The intense desire for joy and pleasure surged up in her.... The bell which she had previously heard struck three; its delicate note vibrated long through the yacht, unwilling to expire. Half-past nine, and supper and the chivalry of Mr. Gilman waiting for them in the elegance of the saloon!

As the two women approached the portiere which screened the forward entrance to the saloon, they heard Mr. Gilman say, in a weary and resigned voice:

"Well, I suppose there's nothing better than a whisky and soda."

And the vivacious reply of a steward:

"Very good, sir."

The owner was lounging in a corner, with a gloomy, bored look on his face. But as soon as the portiere stirred and he saw the smiles of Madame Piriac and Audrey upon him, his whole demeanour changed in an instant. He sprang up, laughed, furtively smoothed his waistcoat, and managed to convey the general idea that he had a keen interest in life, and that the keenest part of that interest was due to a profound instinctive desire to serve these two beautiful benefactors of mankind—the idea apparently being that the charming creatures had conferred a favour on the human race by consenting to exist. He cooed round them, he offered them cushions, he inquired after their physical condition, he expressed his fear lest the cabins had not contained every convenience that caprice might expect. He was excited; surely he was happy! Audrey persuaded herself that this must, after all, be his true normal condition while aboard the yacht, and that the ennui visible on his features a moment earlier could only have been transient and accidental.

"I am sure the piano is as wonderful as all else on board," said Madame Piriac.

"Do play!" he entreated. "I love to hear music here. My secretary plays for me when I am alone."

"I, who do not adore music!" Madame Piriac protested against the invitation. But she sat down on the clamped music stool and began a waltz.

"Ah!" said Mr. Gilman, dropping into a seat by Audrey. "I wish I danced!"

"But you don't mean to say you don't," said Audrey, with fascination. She felt that she could fascinate him, and that it was her duty to fascinate him.

Mr. Gilman responded to the challenge.

"I suppose I do," he said modestly. "We must have a dance on deck one night. I'll tell my secretary to get the gramophone into order. I have a pretty good one."

"How lovely!" Audrey agreed. "I do think the Ariadne's the most heavenly thing, Mr. Gilman! I'd no idea what a yacht was! I hope you'll tell me the proper names for all the various parts—you know what I mean. I hate to use the wrong words. It's not polite on a yacht, is it?"

His smile was entranced.

"You and I will go round by ourselves to-morrow morning, Mrs. Moncreiff," he said.

Just then the steward appeared with the whisky and soda, but Mr. Gilman dismissed him with a sharp gesture, and he vanished back into the unexplored parts of the vessel. The implication was that the society of Audrey made whisky and soda a superfluity for Mr. Gilman. Although she was so young, he treated her with exactly the same deference as he lavished on Madame Piriac, indeed with perhaps a little more. If Madame Piriac was for him the incarnation of sweetness and balm and majesty, so also was Audrey, and Audrey had the advantage of novelty. She was growing, morally, every minute. The confession of Musa had filled her with a good notion of herself. The impulsive flattery of Madame Piriac in the joint cabin, and now the sincere, grave homage of Mr. Gilman, caused her to brim over with consciousness that she was at last somebody.

An automobile hooted on the quay, and at the disturbing sound Madame Piriac ceased to play and swung round on the stool.

"That—that must be our other lady guest," said Mr. Gilman, who had developed nervousness; his cheeks flushed darkly.

"Ah?" cautiously smiled Madame Piriac, who was plainly taken aback.

"Yes," said Mr. Gilman. "Miss Thompkins. Before I knew for certain that Mrs. Moncreiff could come with you, Hortense, I asked Miss Thompkins if she would care to come. I only got her answer this morning—it was delayed. I meant to tell you.... You are a friend of Miss Thompkins, aren't you?" He turned to Audrey.

Audrey replied gaily that she knew Tommy very well.

"I'd better go up," said Mr. Gilman, and he departed, and his back, though a nervous back, seemed to be defying Madame Piriac and Audrey to question in the slightest degree his absolute right to choose his own guests on his own yacht.

"Strange man!" muttered Madame Piriac. It was a confidence to Audrey, who eagerly accepted it as such. "Imagine him inviting Mees Thompkins without a word to us, without a word! But, you know, my dear uncle was always bizarre, mysterious. Yet—is he mysterious, or is he ingenuous?"

"But how did he come to know Miss Thompkins?" Audrey demanded.

"Ah! You have not heard that? Miss Thompkins gave a—a musical tea in her studio, to celebrate these concerts which are to occur. Musa asked the Foas to come. They consented. It was understood they should bring friends. Thus I went also, and Monsieur Gilman being at my orders that afternoon, he went too. Never have I seen so strange a multitude! But it was amusing. And all Paris has begun to talk of Musa. Miss Thompkins and my uncle became friends on the instant. I assume that it was her eyes. Also those Americans have vivacity, if not always distinction. Do you not think so?"

"Oh, yes! And do you mean to say that on the strength of that he asked her to go yachting?"

"Well, he had called several times."

"Aren't you surprised she accepted?" asked Audrey.

"No," said Madame Piriac. "It is another code, that is all. It is a surprise, but she will be amusing."

"I'm sure she will," Audrey concurred. "I'm frightfully fond of her myself."

They glanced at each other very intimately, like long-established allies who fear an aggression—and are ready for it.

Then steps were heard. Miss Thompkins entered.

"Well," drawled Miss Thompkins, gazing first at Audrey and then at Madame Piriac. "Of all the loveliest shocks——Say, Musa——"

Behind her stood Musa. It appeared that he had been able to get away by the same train as Tommy.



CHAPTER XXXI

THE NOSTRUM

The hemisphere of heaven was drenched in moonlight, and—rare happening either on British earth or on the waters surrounding it, in mid-summer—the night was warm. In the midst of the glittering sea the yacht moved without the appearance of motion; only by leaning over the rail and watching the bubbles glide away from her could you detect her progress. There were no waves, no ripples, nothing but a scarcely perceptible swell. The gentle breeze, unnoticeable on deck, was abaft; all the sails had been lowered and stowed except the large square sail bent on a yard to the mainmast and never used except with such a wind. The Ariadne had a strong flood tide under her, and her 200-h.p. twin motors were stopped. Hence there was no tremor in the ship and no odour of paraffin in the nostrils of those who chanced to wander aft of the engine-room. The deck awning had been rolled up to the centre, and at the four corners of its frame had been hung four temporary electric lights within Chinese lanterns. A radiance ascended from the saloon skylight; the windows of the deck-house blazed as usual, but the deck-house was empty; a very subdued glow indicated where the binnacle was. And, answering these signs of existence, could be distinguished the red and green lights of steamers, the firm rays of lighthouses, and the red or white warnings of gas-buoys run by clockwork.

The figures of men and women—the women in pale gowns, the men in blue-and-white—lounged or strolled on the spotless deck which unseen hands swabbed and stoned every morning at 6 o'clock; and among these figures passed the figure of a steward with a salver, staying them with flagons, comforting them with the finest exotic fruit. Occasionally the huge square sail gave an idle flap. "Get that lead out, 'Orace," commanded a grim voice from the wheel. A splash followed, as a man straddled himself over the starboard bow, swung a weighted line to and fro and threw it from him. "Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash. "Three-half." Another splash. "Three-half." Another splash. "Three." Another splash. "Two-half." Another splash. "Three." Another splash. "Five." "That'll do, 'Orace," came the voice from the wheel. Then an entranced silence.

The scene had the air of being ideal. And yet it was not. Something lacked. That something was the owner. The owner lay indisposed in the sacred owner's cabin. And this was a pity because a dance had been planned for that night. It might have taken place without the owner, but the strains of the gramophone and especially the shuffling of feet on the deck would have disturbed him. True, he had sent up word by Doctor Cromarty that he was not to be considered. But the doctor had delivered the message without any conviction, and the unanimous decision was that the owner must, at all costs, be considered.

It was Ostend, on top of the owner's original offer to Audrey, that had brought about the suggestion of a dance. They had coasted up round Gris-Nez from Boulogne to Ostend, and had reached the harbour there barely in time to escape from the worst of a tempest that had already begun to produce in the minds of sundry passengers a grave doubt whether yachting was, after all, the most delightful of pursuits. Some miles before the white dome of the Kursaal was sighted the process of moral decadence had set in, and passengers were lying freely to each other, and boastfully lying, just as though somebody had been accusing them of some dreadful crime of cowardice or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever. The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht's bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rectitude. Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the passengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing a yacht, and to visit the neighbourhood. The one was as wondrous as the other. They found letters and British and French newspapers on their plates at breakfast. And the first object they had seen on the quay, and the last object they saw there, was the identical large limousine which they had left on the quay at Boulogne. It would have taken them to Ghent but for the owner's powerful objection to their eating any meal off the yacht. Seemingly he had a great and sincere horror of local viands and particularly of local water. He was their slave; they might demand anything from him; he was the very symbol of hospitality and chivalry, but somehow they could not compass a meal away from the yacht. Similarly, he would have them leave the Kursaal not later than ten o'clock, when the evening had not veritably begun. They did not clearly understand by what means he imposed his will, but he imposed it.

The departure from Ostend was accomplished after the glass had begun to rise, but before it had finished rising, and there were apprehensions in the saloon and out of it, when the spectacle of the open sea, and the feel of it under the feet, showed that, as of old, water was still unstable. The process of moral decadence would have set in once more but for the prudence and presence of mind of Audrey, who had laid in a large stock of the specific which had been of such notable use to herself and Miss Ingate on previous occasions. Praising openly its virtues, confessing frankly her own weakness and preaching persuasively her own faith, she had distributed the nostrum, and in about a quarter of an hour had established a justifiable confidence. Mr. Gilman alone would not partake, and indeed she had hardly dared to offer the thing to so experienced a sailor. The day had favoured her. The sea grew steadily more tranquil, and after skirting the Belgian and French coasts for some little distance the Ariadne, under orders, had turned her nose boldly northward for the estuary of the Thames. The Ariadne was now in the midst of that very complicated puzzle of deeps and shallows. The passengers, in fact, knew that they were in the region of the North Edinburgh, but what or where the North Edinburgh was they had only the vaguest idea. The blot on the voyage had been the indisposition of Mr. Gilman, who had taken to his berth early, and who saw nobody but his doctor, through whom he benignantly administered the world of the yacht. Doctor Cromarty had a face which imparted nothing and yet implied everything. He said less and meant more than even the average pure-blooded Scotsman. It was imparted that Mr. Gilman had a chronic complaint. The implications were vast and baffling.

"We shall dance after all," said Miss Thompkins, bending with a mysterious gesture over Audrey, who reclined in a deck-chair near the companion leading to the deserted engine-room. Miss Thompkins was dressed in lacy white, with a string of many tinted beads round her slim neck. Her tawny hair was arranged in a large fluffiness, and the ensemble showed to a surprised Audrey what Miss Thompkins could accomplish when she deemed the occasion to be worthy of an effort.

"Shall we? What makes you think so, dear?" absently asked Audrey, in whom the scene had induced profound reflections upon life and the universe.

"He'll come up on deck," said Miss Thompkins, disclosing her teeth in an inscrutable smile that the moonbeams made more strange than it actually was. "Like to know how I know? Sure you'd like to know, Mrs. Simplicity?" Her beads rattled above Audrey's insignificant upturned nose. "Isn't a yacht the queerest little self-contained state you ever visited? It's as full of party politics as Massachusetts; and that's some. Well, I didn't use all my medicine you gave me. Didn't need it. So I've shared it with him. I got the empty packet with all the instructions on it, and I put two of my tablets in it, and if he hasn't swallowed them by this time my name isn't Anne Tuckett Thompkins."

"But you don't mean he's been——"

"Audrey, you're making a noise like a goose. 'Course I do."

"But how did you manage to——"

"I gave them to Mr. Price, with instructions to leave them by the—er—bedside. Mr. Price is a friend. I hope I've made that plain these days to everybody, including Mr. Gilman. Mr. Price is a good sample of what painters are liable to come to after they've found out they don't care for the smell of oil-tubes. I knew him when he always said 'Puvis' instead of 'Puvis de Chavannes.' He's cured now. If I hadn't happened to know he'd be on board I shouldn't have dared to come. He's my lifebuoy."

"But I assure you, Tommy, Mr. Gilman refused the stuff from me. He did."

"Oh! Dove! Wood-pigeon! Of course he refused it. He was bound to. Owner of a two-hundred-and-fifty-ton yacht taking a remedy for sea-sickness in public on the two-hundred-and-fifty-ton yacht! The very idea makes you shiver. But he'll take it down there. And he won't ask any questions. And he'll hide it from the doctor. And he'll pretend, and he'll expect everybody else to pretend, that he's never been within a mile of the stuff."

"Tommy, I don't believe you."

"And he's a lovely man, all the same."

"Tommy, I don't believe you."

"Yes, you do. You'd like not to, but you can't help it. I sometimes do bruise people badly in their organ of illusions-about-human-nature, but it is fun, after all, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Getting down to the facts."

Accompanied by the tattoo of her necklace, Miss Thompkins moved away in the direction of Madame Piriac, who was engaged with Musa.

"Admit I'm rather brilliant to-night," she threw over her shoulder.

The dice seem to be always loaded in favour of the Misses Thompkins of society. Less than a quarter of an hour later Doctor Cromarty, showing his head just above the level of the deck, called out:

"Price, ye can wind up that box o' yours. Mr. Gilman is coming on deck. He's wonderful better."



CHAPTER XXXII

BY THE BINNACLE

The owner was at the wheel. But he had not got there at once. This singular man, who strangely enough was wearing one of his most effulgent and heterogeneous club neckties, had begun by dancing. He danced with all three ladies, one after the other; and he did not merely dance—he danced modernly, he danced the new dances to the new tunes, given off like intoxicating gas from the latest of gramophones. He knew how to hold the arm of a woman above her head, while coiling his own around it in the manner of a snake, and he knew how to make his very body a vast syncopation. The effect of his arrival was as singular as himself. Captain Wyatt, Doctor Cromarty and Mr. Price withdrew to that portion of the deck about the wheel which convention had always roped off for them with invisible ropes. The captain, by custom, messed by himself, whereas the other two had their meals in the saloon, entering and leaving quickly and saying little while at table. But apart from meals the three formed a separate clan on the yacht. The indisposition of the owner had dissolved this clan into the general population of the saloon. The recovery of the owner re-created it. Mr. Price had suddenly begun to live arduously for the gramophone alone. And when summoned by the owner to come and form half of the third couple for dancing, Doctor Cromarty had the air of arousing himself from a meditation upon medicine. Also, the passengers themselves danced with conscientiousness, with elaborate gusto and with an earnest desire to reach a high standard. And between dances everybody went up to Mr. Gilman and said how lovely it all was. And it really was lovely.

Mr. Gilman had taken the wheel after about the sixth dance. Approaching Audrey, who owed him the next dance, he had said that the skipper had hinted something about his taking the wheel and he thought he had better oblige the old fellow, if Audrey was quite, quite sure she didn't mind, and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly desired that his momentary defection with a lady and in obedience to duty should not bring the ball to an end. Laughter and even giggles came from the ballroom. Males were dancing together. The power of the moon had increased. The binnacle-light, however, threw up a radiance of its own on to Mr. Gilman's lowered face, the face of a kind, a good, and a dependably expert individuality who was watching over the safety, the welfare and the highest interests of every soul on board.

"I was very sorry to be laid up to-day," Mr. Gilman began suddenly, in a very quiet voice, frowning benevolently at the black pointer on the compass. "But, of course, you know my great enemy."

"No, I don't," said Audrey gently.

"Hasn't Doc told you?"

"Doctor Cromarty? No, he doesn't tell much."

"Well," said Mr. Gilman, looking round quickly and shyly, rather in the manner of a boy, "it's liver."

Audrey seemed to read in his face, first, that Doctor Cromarty had received secret orders never to tell anybody anything, and, second, that the great enemy was not liver. And she thought: "So this is human nature! Mature men, wise men, dignified men, do descend to these paltry deceits just in order to keep up appearances, though they must know quite well that they don't deceive anyone who is worth deceiving." The remarkable fact was that she did not feel in the least shocked or disdainful. She merely decided—and found a certain queer pleasure in the decision—that human nature was a curious phenomenon, and that there must be a lot of it on earth. And she felt kindly towards Mr. Gilman.

"If you'd said gout——" she remarked. "I always understood that men generally had gout." And she consciously, with intention, employed a simple, innocent tone, knowing that it misled Mr. Gilman, and wanting it to mislead him.

"No!" he went on. "Liver. All sailors suffer from it, more or less. It's the bugbear of the sea. I have a doctor on board because, with a score or so of crew, it's really a duty to have a doctor."

"I quite see that," Audrey agreed, thinking mildly: "You only have a doctor on board because you're always worrying about your own health."

"However," said Mr. Gilman, "he's not much use to me personally. He doesn't understand liver. Scotsmen never do. Fortunately, I have a very good doctor in Paris. I prefer French doctors. And I'm sure they're right on the great liver question. All English doctors tell you to take plenty of violent exercise if you want to shake off a liver attack. Quite wrong. Too much exercise tires the body and so it tires the liver as well—obviously. What's the result? You can see, can't you? The liver works worse than ever. Now, a French doctor will advise complete rest until the attack is over. Then exercise, if you like; but not before. Of course, you don't know you've got a liver, and I dare say you think it's very odd of me to talk about my liver. I'm sure you do."

"I don't, honestly. I like you to talk like that. It's very interesting." And she thought: "Suppose Tommy was wrong, after all! ... She's very spiteful."

"That's you all over, Mrs. Moncreiff. You understand men far better than any other woman I ever saw, unless, perhaps, it's Madame Piriac."

"Oh, Mr. Gilman! How can you say such a thing?"

"It's not the first time you've heard it, I wager!" said Mr. Gilman. "And it won't be the last! Any man who knows women can see at once that you are one of the women who understand. Otherwise, do you imagine I should have begun upon my troubles?"

Now, at any rate, he was sincere—she was convinced of that. And he looked very smart as he spied the horizon for lights and peered at the compass, and moved the wheel at intervals with a strong, accustomed gesture. And, assuredly, he looked very experienced. Audrey blushed. She just had to believe that there must be something in what he said concerning her talent. She had noticed it herself several times.

In an interval of the music the sea washed with a long sound against the bow of the yacht; then silence.

"I do love that sudden wash against the yacht," said Audrey.

"Yes," agreed Mr. Gilman, "so do I. All doctors tell me that I should be better if I gave up yachting. But I won't. I couldn't. Whatever it costs in health, yachting's worth it."

"Oh! It must be!" cried Audrey, with enthusiasm. "I've never been on a yacht before, but I quite agree with you. I feel as if I could live on a yacht for ever—always going to new places, you know; that's how I feel."

"You do?" Mr. Gilman exclaimed and gazed at her for a moment with a sort of ecstasy. Audrey instinctively checked herself. "There's a freemasonry among those who like yachting." His eyes returned to the compass. "I've kept your secret. I've kept it like something precious. I've enjoyed keeping it. It's been a comfort to me. Now I wonder if you'll do the same for me, Mrs. Moncreiff?"

"Do what?" Audrey asked weakly, intimidated.

"Keep a secret. I shouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac. Will you? May I tell you?"

"Yes, if you think you can trust me," said Audrey, concealing, with amazing ease and skill, her excitement and her mighty pleasure in the scene.... "He wouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac." ...It is doubtful whether she had ever enjoyed anything so much, and yet she was as prim as a nun.

"I'm not a happy man, Mrs. Moncreiff. Materially, I've everything a man can want, I suppose. But I'm not happy. You may laugh and say it's my liver. But it isn't. You're a woman of the world; you know what life is; and yet experience hasn't spoilt you. I could say anything to you; anything! And you wouldn't be shocked, would you?"

"No," said Audrey, hoping, nevertheless, that he would not say "anything, anything," but somehow simultaneously hoping that he would. It was a disconcerting sensation.

"I want you always to remember that I'm unhappy and never to tell anybody," Mr. Gilman resumed.

"But why?"

"It will be a kindness to me."

"I mean, why are you unhappy?"

"My opinions have all changed. I used to think I could be independent of women. Not that I didn't like women! I did. But when I'd left them I was quite happy. You know what the facts of life are, Mrs. Moncreiff. Young as you are you are older than me in some respects, though I have a long life before me. It's just because I have a long life before me—dyspeptics are always long-lived—that I'm afraid for the future. It wouldn't matter so much if I was an old man."

"But," asked Audrey adventurously, "why should you be unhappy because your opinions have changed? What opinions?" She endeavoured to be perfectly judicial and indifferent, and yet kind.

"What opinions? Well, about Woman Suffrage, for instance. You remember that night at the Foas', and what I remarked afterwards about what you all said?"

"Yes, I remember," said Audrey. "But can you remember it? Fancy you remembering a thing like that!"

"I remember every word that was said. It changed me.... Not at first. Oh, no! Not for several days, perhaps weeks. I fought against it. Then I said to myself, 'How absurd to fight against it!' ... Well, I've come to believe in women having the vote. You've no more stanch supporter than I am. I want women to have the vote. And you're the first person I've ever said that to. I want you to have the vote."

He smiled at her, and she saw scores and scores of excellent qualities in his smile; she could not believe that he had any defect whatever. His secret was precious to her. She considered that he had confided it to her in a manner both distinguished and poetical. He had shown a quality which no youth could have shown. Youths were inferior, crude, incomplete. Not that Mr. Gilman was not young! Emphatically he was young, but her conception of the number of years comprised in youthfulness had been enlarged. She saw, as in a magical enlightenment, that forty was young, fifty was young, any age was young provided it had the right gestures. As for herself, she was without age. The obvious fact that Mr. Gilman was her slave touched her; it saddened her, but sweetly; it gave her a new sense of responsibility.

She said:

"I still don't see why this change of view should make you unhappy. I should have thought it would have just the opposite effect."

"It has altered all my desires," he replied. "Do you know, I'm not really interested in this new yacht now! And that's the truth."

"Mr. Gilman!" she checked him. "How can you say such a thing?"

It now appeared that she was not a nice girl. If she had been a nice girl she would not have comprehended what Mr. Gilman was ultimately driving at. The word "marriage" would never have sounded in her brain. And she would have been startled and shocked had Mr. Gilman even hinted that there was such a word in the dictionary. But not being, after all, a nice girl, she actually dwelt on the notion of marriage with somebody exactly like Mr. Gilman. She imagined how fine and comfortable and final it would be. She admitted that despite her riches and her independence she would be and could be simply naught until she possessed a man and could show him to the world as her own. Strange attitude for a wealthy feminist, but she had the attitude! And, moreover, she enjoyed having it; she revelled in it. She desired, impatiently, that Mr. Gilman should proceed further. She thirsted for his next remark. And her extremely deceptive features displayed only a blend of simplicity and soft pity. Those features did not actually lie, for she was ingenuous without being aware of it and her pity for the fellow-creature whose lot she could assuage with a glance was real enough. But they did suppress about nine-tenths of the truth.

"I tell you," said Mr. Gilman, "there is nothing I could not say to you. And—and—of course, you'll say I scarcely know you—yet——"

Clearly he was proceeding further. She waited as in a theatre one waits for a gun to go off on the stage. And then the gun did go off, but not the gun she was expecting.

Skipper Wyatt's head popped up like a cannon shot out of a hole in the forward deck, and it gazed sharply and apprehensively around the calm, moonlit sea. Mr. Gilman was, beyond question, perturbed by the movements of that head, though he could not see the expression of the eyes. This was the first phenomenon. The second phenomenon was a swirling of water round the after part of the ship, and this swirling went on until the water was white with a thin foam.

"Reverse those d——d engines!" shouted Captain Wyatt, quite regardless of the proximity of refined women. He had now sprung clear of the hole and was running aft. The whole world of the yacht could not but see that he was coatless and that his white shirtsleeves, being rather long, were kept in position by red elastic rings round his arms. "Is that blithering engineer asleep?" continued Captain Wyatt, ignoring the whole system of yacht etiquette. "She's getting harder on every second!"

"Ay, ay, skipper!" came a muffled voice from the engine-room.

"And not too soon either!" snapped the captain.

The yacht throbbed more violently; the swirling increased furiously. The captain stared over the rail. Then, after an interval, he stamped on the deck in disgust.

"Shut off!" he yelled. "It's no good."

The yacht ceased to throb. The swirling came to an end, and the thin white foam faded into flat sombre water. Whereupon Captain Wyatt turned back to the wheel, which, in his extreme haste, he had passed by.

"You've run her on to the sand, sir," said he to Mr. Gilman, respectfully but still accusingly.

"Oh, no! Impossible!" Mr. Gilman defended himself, pained by the charge.

"She's hard on, anyhow, sir. And many a good yacht's left her bones on this Buxey."

"But you gave me the course," protested Mr. Gilman, with haughtiness.

Captain Wyatt bent down and looked at the binnacle. He was contentedly aware that the compass of a yacht hard aground cannot lie and cannot be made to lie. The camera can lie; the speedometer of an automobile after an accident can lie—or can conceal the truth and often does, but the compass of a yacht aground is insusceptible to any blandishment; it shows the course at the moment of striking and nothing will persuade it to alter its evidence.

"What course did I give you, sir?" asked Captain Wyatt.

And as Mr. Gilman hesitated in his reply, the skipper pointed silently to the compass.

"Where's the chart? Let me see the chart," said Mr. Gilman with sudden majesty.

The chart in its little brass frame was handy. Mr. Gilman examined it in a hostile manner; one might say that he cross-examined it, and with it the horizon. "Ah!" he muttered at length, peering at the print under the chart, "'Corrected 1906.' Out of date. Pity they don't re-issue these charts oftener."

His observations had no relation whatever to the matter in hand; considered as a contribution to the unravelling of the matter in hand they were merely idiotic. Nevertheless, such were the exact words he uttered, and he appeared to get great benefit and solace from them. They somehow enabled him to meet, quite satisfactorily, the gaze of his guests who had now gathered in the vicinity of the wheel.

Audrey alone showed a desire to move away from the wheel. The fact was that the skipper had glanced at her in a peculiar way and his eyes had seemed to say, with disdain: "Women! Women again!" Nothing but that! The implications, however, were plain. Audrey may have been discountenanced by the look in the captain's eyes, but at the same time she had an inward pride, because it was undeniable that Mr. Gilman, owing to his extreme and agitated interest in herself, had put the yacht off the course and was thereby imperilling numerous lives. Audrey liked that. And she exonerated Mr. Gilman, and she hated the captain for daring to accuse him, and she mysteriously nursed the wounded dignity of Mr. Gilman far better than he could nurse it himself.

Her feelings were assuredly complex, and they grew more complex when the sense of danger began to dominate them. The sense of danger came to her out of the demeanour of her companions and out of the swift appearance on deck of every member of the crew, including the parlourmaid, and including three men who were incompletely clothed. The yacht was no longer a floating hotel, automobile and dancing-saloon; it was a stranded wreck. Not a passenger on board knew whether the tide was making or ebbing, but, secretly, all were convinced that it was ebbing and that they would be left on the treacherous sand and ultimately swallowed up therein, even if a storm did not supervene and smash the craft to bits in the classical manner. The skipper's words about the bones of many a good yacht had escaped no ear.

Further, not a passenger knew where the yacht was or whither, exactly, she was bound or whether the glass was rising or falling, for guests on yachts seldom concern themselves about details. Of course, signals might be made to passing ships, but signals were often, according to maritime history, unheeded, and the ocean was very large and empty, though it was only the German Ocean.... Musa was nervous and angry. Audrey knew from her intimate knowledge of him that he was angry and she wondered why he should be angry. Madame Piriac, on the other hand, was entirely calm. Her calmness seemed to say to those responsible, and even to the not-responsible passenger: "You got me into this and it is inconceivable that you should not get me out of it. I have always been looked after and protected, and I must be looked after and protected now. I absolutely decline to be worried." But Miss Thompkins was worried, she was very seriously alarmed; fear was in her face.

"I do think it's a shame!" she broke out almost loudly, in a trembling voice, to Audrey. "I do think it's a shame you should go flirting with poor Mr. Gilman when he's steering." And she meant all she said.

"Me flirting!" Audrey exclaimed, passionately resentful.

Withal, the sense of danger continued to increase. Still there were the boats. There were the motor-launch, the cutter and the dinghy. The sea was—for the present—calm and the moon encouraging.

"Lower the dinghy there and look lively now!" cried the captain.

This command more than ever frightened all the passengers who, in their nervousness and alarm, had tried to pretend to themselves that nervousness and alarm were absurd, and that first-class yachts never did, and could not, get wrecked. The command was a thunderstroke. It proved that the danger was immediate and intense. And the thought of all the beautiful food and drink on board, and all the soft cushions and the electric hair-curlers and the hot-water supply and the ice gave no consolation whatever. The idea of the futility and wickedness of luxury desolated the guests and made them austere, and yet even in that moment they speculated upon what goods they might take with them.

And why the dinghy, though it was a dinghy of large size? Why not the launch?

After the dinghy had been dropped into the sea an old sail was carefully spread amidships over her bottom and she was lugged, by her painter, towards the bow of the yacht where, with much grating of windlasses and of temperaments and voices, an anchor was very gently lowered into her and rested on the old sail. The anchor was so immense that it sank the dinghy up to Her gunwale, and then she was rowed away to a considerable distance, a chain grinding after her, and in due time the anchor was pitched with a great splash into the water. The sound of orders and of replies vibrated romantically over the surface of the water. Then a windlass was connected with the engine, and the passengers comprehended that the intention was to drag the yacht off the sand by main force. The chain clacked and strained horribly. The shouting multiplied, as though the vessel had been a great beast that could be bullied into obedience. The muscles of all passengers were drawn taut in sympathy with the chain, and at length there was a lurch and the chain gradually slackened.

"She's off!" breathed the captain. "We've saved a good half-hour."

"She'd have floated off by herself," said Mr. Gilman grandly.

"Yes, sir," said the captain. "But if it had happened to be the ebb, sir—" He left it at that and began on a new series of orders, embracing the dinghy, the engines, the anchor and another anchor.

And all the passengers resumed their courage and their ancient notions about the excellence of luxury, and came to the conclusion that navigation was a very simple affair, and in less than five minutes were sincerely convinced that they had never known fear.

Later, the impressive sight was witnessed of Madame Piriac, on her shoulders such a cloak as certainly had never been seen on a yacht before, bearing Mr. Gilman's valuable violin like a jewel casket. She had found it below and brought it up on deck.

The Ariadne, was now passing to port those twinkling cities of delight, Clacton and Frinton, and the long pier of Walton stretched out towards it, a string of topazes. The moon was higher and brighter than ever, but clouds had heaped themselves up to windward, and the surface of the water was rippled. Moreover, the yacht was now working over a strong, foul tide. The company, with the exception of Mr. Gilman, who had gone below—apparently in order to avoid being on the same deck with Captain Wyatt—had decided that Musa should be asked to play. Although the sound of his practising had escaped occasionally through the porthole of a locked cabin, he had not once during the cruise performed for the public benefit. Dancing was finished. Why should not the yacht profit by the presence of a great genius on board? The doctor and the secretary were of one mind with the women that there was no good answer to this question, and even the crew obviously felt that the genius ought to show what he was made of.

"Dare we ask you?" said Madame Piriac to the youth, offering him the violin case. Her supplicatory tone and attitude, though they were somewhat assumed, proved to what a height Musa had recently risen as a personage.

He hesitated, leaning against the rail and nervously fingering it.

"I know it is a great deal to ask. But you would give us so much pleasure," said Madame Piriac.

Musa replied in a dry, curt voice:

"I should prefer not to play."

"Oh! But Musa—" There was a general protest.

"I cannot play," Musa exclaimed with impatience, and moved almost savagely away.

The experience was novel for Madame Piriac, left standing there, as it were, respectfully presenting the violin case to the rail. This beautiful and not unpampered lady was accustomed to see her commands received as an honour; and when she condescended to implore, the effect usually was to produce a blissful and deprecatory confusion in the person besought. Her husband and Mr. Gilman had for a number of years been teaching her that whatever she desired was the highest good and the most complete felicity to everybody concerned in the fulfilment of the desire. She bore the blow from Musa admirably, keeping both her smile and her dignity, and with one gesture excusing Musa to all beholders as a capricious and a sensitive artist in whom moodiness was lawful. It was exquisitely done. It could not have been better done. But not even Madame Piriac's extreme skill could save the episode from having the air of a social disaster. The gaiety which had been too feverishly resumed after the salvage of the yacht from the sandbank expired like a pricked balloon. People silently vanished, and only Audrey was left on the after deck.

It was after a long interval that she became aware of the reappearance of Musa. Seemingly, he had been in the engine-room; since the beginning of the cruise he had shown a fancy for both the engine-room and the engineer. To her surprise, he marched straight towards her deckchair.

"I must speak to you," he said with emotion.

"Must you?" Audrey replied, full of hot resentment. "I think you've been horrid, Musa. Perfectly horrid! But I suppose you have your own notions of politeness now. Everything has been done for you, and—"

"What is that?" he stopped her. "Everything has been done for me. What is it that has been done for me? I play for years, I am ignored. Then I succeed. I am noticed. Men of affairs offer me immense sums. But am I surprised? Not the least in the world. It is the contrary which would have surprised me. It was inevitable that I should succeed. But note well—it is I myself who succeed. It is not my friends. It is not the concert agent. Do I regard the concert agent as a benefactor? Again, not the least in the world. You say everything has been done for me. Nothing has been done for me, Madame."

"Yes, yes," faltered Audrey, who was in a dilemma, and therefore more resentful than ever. "I—I only mean your friends have always stood by you." She gathered courage, sat up erect in her deck-chair, and finished haughtily: "And now you're conceited. You're insufferably conceited."

"Because I refused to play?" He laughed stridently and grimly. "No. I refused to play because I could not, because I was outside myself with jealousy. Yes, jealousy. You do not know jealousy. Perhaps you are incapable of it. But permit me to tell you, Madame, that jealousy is one of the finest and most terrible emotions. And that is why I must speak to you. I cannot live and see you flirt so seriously with that old idiot. I cannot live."

Audrey jumped up from the chair.

"Musa! I shall never speak to you again.... Me ... flirt.... And you call Mr. Gilman an old idiot!"

"What words would you employ, Madame? He was so agitated by your intimate conversation that he brought us all near to death, in any case. Moreover, it jumps to the eyes that the decrepit satyr is mad about you. Mad!"

And Musa's voice broke. In the midst of all her fury Audrey was relieved that it did break, for the reason that it was getting very loud, and the wheel, with Captain Wyatt thereat, was not far off.

There was one thing to do, and Audrey did it. She walked away rapidly. And, as she did so, she was startled to discover a sob in her throat. The drawn, highly emotionalised face of Musa remained with her. She was angry, indignant, infuriated, and yet her feelings were not utterly unpleasant, though she wanted them to be so. In the first place, they were exciting. And in the second place—what was it?—well, she had the strange, sweet sensation of being, somehow, the mainspring of the universe, of being immensely important in the scheme of things.

She thought her cup was full. It was not. Staring blankly over the side of the ship she saw a buoy float slowly by. She saw it with the utmost clearness, and on its round black surface was painted in white letters the word "Flank." There could not be two Flank buoys. It was the Flank buoy of the Mozewater navigable channel. ... She glanced around. The well-remembered shores of Mozewater were plainly visible under the moon. In the distance, over the bowsprit, she could discern the mass of the tower of Mozewater church. She could not distinguish Flank Hall, but she knew it was there. Why were they threading the Mozewater channel? It had been distinctly given out that the yacht would make Harwich harbour. Almost unconsciously she turned in the direction of the wheel, where Captain Wyatt was. Then, controlling herself, she moved away. She knew that she could not speak to the captain. She went below, and, before she could escape, found the saloon populated.

"Oh! Mrs. Moncreiff!" cried Madame Piriac. "It is a miraculous coincidence. You will never guess. One tells me we are going to the village of Moze for the night; it is because of the tide. You remember, I told you. It is where lives my little friend, Audrey Moze. To-morrow I visit her, and you must come with me. I insist that you come with me. I have never seen her. It will be all that is most palpitating."



CHAPTER XXXIII

AGUILAR'S DOUBLE LIFE

Madame Piriac came down into the saloon the next afternoon.

"Oh! You are still hiding yourself here!" she murmured gaily to Audrey, who was alone among the cushions.

"I was just resting," said Audrey. "Remember what a night we had!"

It was true that the yacht had not been berthed at Lousey Hard until between two and three o'clock in the morning, and that no guest had slept until after the job was done, though more than one had tried to sleep. It was also true that in consequence the saloon breakfast had been abrogated, that even the saloon lunch lacked vicacity, and that at least one passenger was at that moment dozing in his cabin. But not on account of fatigue and somnolence was Audrey remaining in the saloon instead of taking the splendid summer afternoon on deck under the awning. She felt neither tired nor sleepy. The true secret was that she feared the crowd of village idlers, quidnuncs, tattlers and newsmongers who all day gazed from Lousey Hard at the wonder-yacht.

Examining the line of faces as well as she could through portholes, she recognised nearly every one of them, and was quite sure that every one of them would recognise her face. To go ashore or to stay prominently on deck would, therefore, be to give away her identity and to be forced, sooner or later, to admit that she had practised a long and naughty deception. She could conceive some of those villagers greeting her loudly from the Hard if she should appear; for Essex manners were marked by strange freedoms. Her situation would be terrible. It, in fact, was terrible. Risks surrounded her like angry dogs. Musa, for example, ought surely to have noticed that the estuary in which the yacht lay was the same estuary which he had seen not long before from the garden of the house stated by Audrey to be her own, and he ought to have commented eagerly on the marvellous coincidence. Happily, he had not yet done so—no doubt because he had spent most of the time in bed. If and when he did so there would naturally be an excited outcry and a heavy rain of amazed questions which simply could not be answered.

"I am going almost at once to call on my little friend Audrey Moze, at Flank Hall," said Madame Piriac. "The house looks delicious from the deck. If you will come up I will show it to you. It is precisely like the picture post card which the dear little one sent to me last year. Are you ready to come with me?"

"But, darling, hadn't you better go alone?"

"But certainly not, darling! You are not serious. The meeting will be very agitating. With a third person, however, it will be less so. I count on you absolutely, as I have said already. Nay, I insist. I invoke your friendship."

"She may be out. She may be away altogether."

"In that case we shall return," said Madame Piriac briefly, and, not giving Audrey time to reply further, she vanished, with a firm carriage and an obstinate look in her eyes, towards the sleeping-cabins.

The next instant Mr. Gilman himself entered the saloon.

"Mrs. Moncreiff," he started nervously, in a confidential and deprecating tone, "this is the first chance I have had to tell you. We came into Mozewater without my orders. I won't say against my orders, but certainly not with them. On the plea that I had retired, Captain Wyatt changed our destination last night without going through the formality of consulting me. We ought to have made Harwich, but I am now told that we were running short of paraffin, and that if we had continued to Harwich we should have had the worst of the tide against us, whereas in coming up Mozewater the tide helped us; also that Captain Wyatt did not care about trying to get into Harwich harbour at night with the wind in its present quarter, and rising as it was then. Of course, Wyatt is responsible for the safety of the ship, and it is true that I had her designed with a very light draught on purpose for such waters as Mozewater; but he ought to have consulted me. We might get away again on this tide, but Hortense will not hear of it. She has a call to pay, she says. I can only tell you how sorry I am. And I do hope you will forgive me." The sincerity and alarm of his manly apology were touching.

"But, Mr. Gilman," said Audrey, with the simplicity which more and more she employed in talking to her host, "there is nothing to forgive. What can it matter to me whether we come here or go to Harwich?"

"I thought, I was afraid—" Mr. Gilman hesitated.

"In short ... your secret, Mrs. Moncreiff, which you asked me to keep, and which I have kept. It was here, at this very spot, with my old barge-yacht, that I first had the pleasure of meeting you. And I thought ... perhaps you had reasons.... However, your secret is safe."

"How nice you are, Mr. Gilman!" Audrey said, with a gentle smile. "You're kindness itself. But there is nothing to trouble about, really. Keep my little secret by all means, if you don't mind. As for anything else—that's perfectly all right.... Shall we go on deck?"

He thanked her without words.

She was saying to herself, rather desperately:

"After all, what do I care? I haven't committed a crime. It's nobody's business but my own. And I'm worth ten million francs. And if the fat's in the fire, and anything is found out, and people don't like it—well, they must do the other thing."

Thus she went on deck, and her courage was rewarded by the discovery of a chair on the starboard side of the deck-house, from which she could not possibly be seen by any persons on the Hard. She took this chair like a gift from heaven. The deck was busy enough. Mr. Price, the secretary, was making entries in an account book. Dr. Cromarty was pacing to and fro, expectant. Captain Wyatt was arguing with the chauffeur of a vast motor-van from Clacton, and another motor-van from Colchester was also present on the Hard. Rows of paraffin cans were ranged against the engine-room hatchway, and the odour of paraffin was powerfully conflicting with the odour of ozone and possibly ammonia from the marshes. Parcels kept coming down by hand from the village of Moze. Fresh water also came in barrels on a lorry, and lumps of ice in a dog-cart. The arrival of six bottles of aspirin, brought by a heated boy on a bicycle, from Clacton, and seized with gusto by Dr. Cromarty, completed the proof that money will not only buy anything, but will infallibly draw it to any desired spot, however out of the way the spot may be. The probability was that neither paraffin nor ice nor aspirin had ever found itself on Lousey Hard before in the annals of the world. Yet now these things forgathered with ease and naturalness owing to the magic of the word "yacht" in telegrams.

And over the scene floated the wavy, inspiring folds of the yacht's immense blue ensign, with the Union Jack in the top inside corner.

Mr. Price went into the deck-house and began to count money.

"Mr. Price," demanded Mr. Gilman urgently, "did you look up the facts about this village?"

"I was just looking up the place in 'East Coast Tours,' sir, when the paraffin arrived," replied Mr. Price. "It says that Moze is mentioned in 'Green's Short History of the English People.'"

"Ah! Very interesting. That work is a classic. It really treats of the English people, and not solely of their kings and queens. Dr. Cromarty, Mr. Price is busy, will you mind bringing me the catalogue of the library up here?"

Dr. Cromarty obeyed, and Mr. Gilman examined the typewritten, calf-bound volume.

"Yes," said he. "Yes. I thought we had Green on board, and we have. I should like extremely to know what Green says about Moze. It must have been in the Anglo-Saxon or Norman period. Dr. Cromarty, will you mind bringing me up the first three volumes of Green? You will find them on shelf Z8. Also the last volume, for the index."

A few moments later Mr. Gilman, with three volumes of Green on his knees and one in his hand, said reproachfully to Mr. Price:

"Mr. Price, I requested you to see that the leaves of all our books were cut. These volumes are absolutely uncut."

"Well, sir, I'm working through them as fast as I can. But I haven't got to shelf Z8 yet."

"I cannot stop to cut them now," said Mr. Gilman, politely displeased. "What a pity! It would have been highly instructive to know what Green says about Moze. I always like to learn everything I can about the places we stop at. And this place must be full of historic interest. Wyatt, have you had that paraffin counted properly?" He spoke very coldly to the captain.

It thus occurred that what John Richard Green said about Moze was never known on board the yacht Ariadne.

Audrey listened to the episode in a reverie. She was thinking about Musa's intractability and inexcusable rudeness, and about what she should do in the matter of Madame Piriac's impending visit to Audrey Moze at Flank Hall, and through the texture of these difficult topics she could see, as it were, shining the sprightly simplicity, the utter ingenuousness, the entirely reliable fidelity of Mr. Gilman. She felt, rather than consciously realised, that he was a dull man. But she liked his dullness; it reassured her; it was tranquillising; it was even adorable. She liked also his attitude towards Moze. She had never suspected, no one had ever hinted to her, that Moze was full of historic interest. But looking at it now from the yacht which had miraculously wafted her past the Flank buoy at dead of night, she perceived Moze in a quite new aspect—a pleasure which she owed to Mr. Gilman's artless interest in things. (Not that he was artless in all affairs! No; in the great masculine affairs he must be far from artless, for had he not made all his money himself?)

Then Madame Piriac appeared on deck, armed and determined. Audrey found, as hundreds of persons had found, that it was impossible to deny Madame Piriac. Beautiful, gracious, elegant, kind, when she would have a thing she would have it. Audrey had to descend and prepare herself. She had to reascend ready for the visit. But at the critical and dreadful moment of going ashore to affront the crowd she had a saving idea. She pointed to Flank Hall and its sloping garden, and to the sea-wall against which the high spring tide was already washing, and she suggested that they should be rowed thither in the dinghy instead of walking around by the sea-wall or through' the village.

"But we cannot climb over that dyke," Madame Piriac protested.

"Oh, yes, we can," said Audrey. "I can see steps in it from here, and I can see a gate at the bottom of the garden."

"What a vision you have, darling!" murmured Madame Piriac. "As you wish, provided we get there."

The dinghy, at Audrey's request, was brought round to the side of the yacht opposite from the Hard, and, screening her face as well as she could with an open parasol, she tripped down by the steps into it. If only Aguilar was away from the premises she might be saved, for the place would be shut up, and there would be nothing to do but return. Should Madame Piriac suggest going into the village to inquire—well, Audrey would positively refuse to go into the village. Yes, she would refuse!

As the boat moved away from the yacht, Musa showed himself on deck. Madame Piriac signalled to him a salutation of the finest good humour. She had forgotten his pettishness. By absolutely ignoring it she had made it as though it had never existed. This was her art. Audrey, observing the gesture, and Musa's smiling reply to it, acquired wisdom. She saw that she must treat Musa as Madame Piriac treated him. She had undertaken the enterprise of launching him on a tremendous artistic career, and she must carry it through. She wanted to make a neat, clean job of the launching, and she would do it dispassionately, like a good workwoman. He had admitted—nay, he had insisted—that she was necessary to him. Her pride in that fact had a somewhat superior air. He might be the most marvellous of violinists, but he was also a child, helpless without her moral support. She would act accordingly. It was absurd to be angry with a child, no matter what his vagaries.... At this juncture of her reflections she noticed that Mr. Gilman and Miss Thompkins had quitted the yacht together and were walking seawards. They seemed very intimate, impregnated with mutual understanding. And Audrey was sorry that Mr. Gilman was quite so simple, quite so straightforward and honest.

When the dinghy arrived at the sea-wall Audrey won the stalled admiration of the sailor in charge of the boat by pointing at once to the best—if not the only—place fit for a landing. The sailor was by no means accustomed to such flair in a yacht's guests. Indeed, it had often astonished him that people who, as a class, had so little notion of how to get into or out of a dinghy could have succeeded, as they all apparently had, in any department of life.

With continuing skill, Audrey guided Madame Piriac over the dyke and past sundry other obstacles, including a watercourse, to a gate in the wall which formed the frontier of the grounds of Flank Hall. The gate seemed at first to be unopenably fastened, but Audrey showed that she possessed a genius with gates, and opened it with a twist of the hand. They wandered through a plantation and then through an orchard, and at length saw the house. There was not a sign of Aguilar, but the unseen yard-dog began to bark, hearing which, Madame Piriac observed in French: "The property seems a little neglected, but there must be someone at home."

"Aguilar is bound to come now!" thought Audrey. "And I am lost!" Then she added to herself: "And I don't care if I am lost. What an unheard-of lark!" And to Madame Piriac she said lightly: "Well, we must explore."

The blinds were nearly all up on the garden front. And one window—the French window of the drawing-room—was wide open.

"The crisis will be here in one minute at the latest," thought Audrey.

"Evidently Miss Moze is at home," said Madame Piriac, gazing at the house. "Yes, it is distinguished. It is what I had expected.... But ought we not to go to the front door?"

"I think we ought," Audrey agreed.

They went round the side of the house, into the main drive, and without hesitation Madame Piriac rang the front door bell, which they could plainly hear. "I must have my cards ready," said she, opening her bag. "One always hears how exigent you are in England about such details, even in the provinces. And, indeed, why not?"

There was no answer to the bell. Madame Piriac rang again, and there was still no answer. And the dog had ceased to bark.

"Mon Dieu!" she muttered. "Have you observed, darling, that all the blinds are down on this facade?"

She rang a third time. Then, without a word, they returned slowly to the garden front.

"How mysterious! Mon Dieu! How English it all is!" muttered Madame Piriac. "It gives me fear."

Audrey had almost decided definitely that she was saved when she happened to glance through the open window of the drawing-room. She thought she saw a flicker within. She looked again. She could not be mistaken. Then she noticed that all the dust sheets had been removed from the furniture, that the carpet had been laid, that a table had been set for tea, that there were flowers and china and a teapot and bread-and-butter and a kettle and a spirit-lamp on the table. The flicker was the flicker of the blue flame of the spirit-lamp. The kettle over it was puffing out steam.

Audrey exclaimed, within herself:

"Aguilar!"

She had caught him at last. There were two cups and saucers—the best ancient blue-and-white china, out of the glass-fronted china cupboard in that very room! The celibate Aguilar, never known to consort with anybody at all, was clearly about to entertain someone to tea, and the aspect of things showed that he meant to do it very well. True, there was no cake, but the bread-and-butter was expertly cut and attractively arranged. Audrey felt sure that she was on the track of Aguilar's double life, and that a woman was concerned therein. She was angry, but she was also enormously amused and uplifted. She no longer cared the least bit about the imminent danger threatening her incognito. Her sole desire was to entrap Aguilar, and with deep joy she pictured his face when he should come into the room with his friend and find the mistress of the house already installed.

"I think we had better go in here, darling," she said to Madame Piriac, with her hand on the French window. "There is no other entrance."

Madame Piriac looked at her.

"Eh bien! It is your country, not mine. You know the habits. I follow you," said Madame Piriac calmly. "After all, my dear little Audrey ought to be delighted to see me. I have several times told her that I should come. All the same, I expected to announce myself.... What a charming room! So this is the English provinces!"

The room was certainly agreeable to the eye. And Audrey seemed to see it afresh, to see it for the first time in her life. And she thought: "Can this be the shabby old drawing-room that I hated so?"

The kettle continued to puff vigorously.

"If they don't come soon," said Audrey, "the water will be all boiled away and the kettle burnt. Suppose we make the tea?"

Madame Piriac raised her eyebrows.

"It is your country," she repeated. "That appears to be singular, but I have not the English habits."

And she sat down, smiling.

Audrey opened the tea caddy, put three spoonfuls of tea into the pot, and made the tea.

The clock struck on the mantelpiece. The clock was actually going. Aguilar was ever thorough in his actions.

"Four minutes to brew, and if they don't come we'll have tea," said Audrey, tranquil in the assurance that the advent of Aguilar could not now be long delayed.

"Do you take milk and sugar, darling?" she asked Madame Piriac at the end of the four minutes, which they had spent mainly in a curious silence. "I believe you do."

Madame Piriac nodded.

"A little bread-and-butter? I'm sorry there's no cake or jam."

It was while Madame Piriac was stirring her first cup that the drawing-room door opened, and at once there was a terrific shriek.

"Audrey!"

The invader was Miss Ingate. Close behind Miss Ingate came Jane Foley.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE TANK-ROOM

"Did you get my letter?" breathed Miss Ingate weakly, after she had a little recovered from the shock, which had the appearance of being terrific.

"No," said Audrey. "How could I? We're yachting. Madame Piriac, you know Miss Ingate, don't you? And this is my friend Jane Foley." She spoke quite easily and naturally, though Miss Ingate in her intense agitation had addressed her as Audrey, whereas the Christian name of Mrs. Moncreiff, on the rare occasions when a Christian name became necessary or advisable, had been Olivia—or, infrequently, Olive.

"Yachting!"

"Yes. Haven't you seen the yacht at the Hard?"

"No! I did hear something about it, but I've been too busy to run after yachts. We've been too busy, haven't we, Miss Foley? I even have to keep my dog locked up. I don't know what you'll say. Aud—Mrs. Moncreiff! I really don't! But we acted for the best. Oh! How dreadfully exciting my life does get at times! Never since I played the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street have I—! Oh! dear!"

"Have my tea, and do sit down, Winnie, and remember you're an Essex woman!" Audrey adjured her, going to the china cupboard to get more cups.

"I'll just tell you all about it, Mrs. Moncreiff, if you'll let me," Jane Foley began with a serene and happy smile, as she limped to a chair. "I'm quite ready to take all the consequences. It's the police again, that's all. I don't know how exactly they got on the track of the Spatts at Frinton. But I dare say you've seen that the police have seized a lot of documents at our head-quarters. Perhaps that explains it. Anyway I caught sight of our old friend at Paget Gardens nosing about, and so as soon as it was dark I left the Spatts. It's a horrid thing to say, but I never was so glad about anything as I was at leaving the Spatts. I didn't tell them where I was going, and they didn't ask. I'm sure the poor things were very relieved to have me go. Miss Ingate tells me to-day she's heard they've both resigned from the Union. Mr. Spatt went up to London on purpose to do it. And can you be surprised?"

"Yes, you can, and yet you can't!" exclaimed Miss Ingate. "You can, and yet you can't!"

"I met Miss Ingate on Frinton front," Jane Foley proceeded. "She was just getting into her carriage. I had my bag and I asked her to drive me to the station. 'To the station?' she said. 'What for? There's no train to-night.'"

"No more there wasn't!" Miss Ingate put in, "I'd been dining at the Proctors' and it was after ten, I know it was after ten because they never let me leave until after ten, in spite of the long drive I have. Fancy there being a train from Frinton after ten! So of course I brought Miss Foley along. Oh! It was vehy interesting. Vehy interesting. You see we had to think of the police. I didn't want the police coming poking round my house. It would never do, in a little place like Moze. I should never hear the last of it. So I—I thought of Flank Hall. I——"

Jane Foley went on:

"Miss Ingate was sure you wouldn't mind, Mrs. Moncreiff. And personally I was quite certain you wouldn't mind. We left the carriage at Miss Ingate's, and carried the bag in turns. And I stood outside while Miss Ingate woke up Mr. Aguilar. It was soon all right."