"Have you rooms to let?" asked Jones.

"Well, sir, I have the front parlour unoccupied," replied the landlady, "and two bed-rooms on the top floor. Are there any children?"

"No," said Jones. "I came down here alone for a holiday. May I see the rooms?"

She took him to the top front bed-room first. It was clean and tidy, just like herself, and gave a cheery view of the shop fronts on the opposite side of the street.

Jones, looking out of the window, saw something that held him for a moment fascinated and forgetful of his surroundings and his companion. Hoover, no less, walking hurriedly and accompanied by a man who looked like a gardener. They were passing towards the sea, looking about them as they went. Hoover had the appearance of a person who has lost a purse or some article of value, so Jones thought as he watched them vanish. He turned to the landlady.

"I like this room," said he, "it is cheerful and quiet, just the sort of place I want. Now let's see the parlour."

The parlour boasted of a horsehair sofa, chairs to match, pictures to match, and a glass fronted bookcase containing volumes of the Sunday Companion, Sword and Trowel, Home Influence, and Ouida's "Moths" in the old, yellow-back, two shilling edition.

"Very nice indeed," said Jones. "What do you charge?"

"Well, sir," said the landlady—her name was Henshaw—"it's a pound a week for the two rooms without board, two pounds with."

"Any extras?" asked the artful Jones.

"No, sir."

"Well, that will do me nicely. I came along here right from the station, and my portmanteau hasn't arrived, though it was labelled for here, and the porter told me he had put it on the train. I'll have to go up to the station this evening again to see if it has arrived. Meanwhile, seeing I haven't my luggage with me, I'll pay you in advance."

She assured him that this was unnecessary, but he insisted.

When she had accepted the money she asked him what he would have for supper, or would he prefer late dinner.

"Supper," replied Jones, "oh, anything. I'm not particular."

Then he found himself alone. He sat down on the horsehair sofa to think. Would Hoover circularise his description and offer a reward? No, that was highly improbable. Hoover's was a high class establishment, he would avoid publicity as much as possible, but he would be pretty sure to use the intelligence, such as it was, of the police, telling them to act with caution.

Would he make inquiries at all the lodging-houses? That was a doubtful point. Jones tried to fancy himself in Hoover's position and failed.

One thing certainly Hoover would do. Have all the exits from Sandbourne-on-Sea watched. That was the logical thing to do, and Hoover was a logical man.

There was nothing to do but give the hunt time to cool off, and at this thought the prospect of days of lurking in this room of right angles and horsehair-covered furniture, rose up before him like a black billow. Then came the almost comforting thought, he could not lurk without creating suspicion on the part of Mrs. Henshaw. He would have to get out, somehow. The weather was glorious, and the strip of seaweed hanging by the mantelpiece dry as tinder. A sea-side visitor who sat all day in his room in the face of such weather, would create a most unhealthy interest in the mind of any sea-side landlady. No, whatever else he might do he could not lurk.

The most terrible things in dramatic situations are the little things that speak to one for once in their lives. The pattern of the carpet that tells you that there is no doubt of the fact that your wife has run away with all your money, and left you with seven children to look after, the form of the chair that tells you that Justice with a noose in her hand is waiting on the front door step. Jones, just now, was under the obsession of the picture of the room, whose place was above the mantelpiece.

It was an oleograph of a gentleman in uniform, probably the Prince Consort, correct, sane, urbane—a terrible comparison for a man in an insane situation, for insanity is not confined to the brain of man or its productions—though heaven knows she has a fine field of movement in both.

A thundering rat-tat-tat at the hall door brought Jones to his feet. He heard the door answered, a voice outside saying "N'k you" and the door shut. It was some parcel left in. Then he heard Mrs. Henshaw descending the kitchen stairs and all was quiet. He turned to the bookcase, opened it, inspected the contents, and chose "Moths."



CHAPTER XXV

MOTHS

In ill-health or convalescence, or worry or tribulation, the ordinary mind does not turn to Milton or Shakespeare, or even to the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. There are few classics that will stand the test of a cold in the head, or a fit of depression, or a worrying husband, or a minor tragedy. Here the writer of "light fiction" stands firm.

Jones had never been a great reader, he had read a cheap novel or two, but his browsings in the literary fields had been mainly confined to the uplands where the grass is improving.

Colour, poetry, and construction in fiction were unknown to him, and now—he suddenly found himself on the beach at Trouville.

On the beach at Trouville with Lady Dolly skipping before him in the sea.

He had reached the forced engagement of the beautiful heroine to the wicked Russian Prince, when the door opened and the supper tray entered, followed by Mrs. Henshaw. Left to honour and her own initiative she had produced a huge lobster, followed by cheese, and three little dull looking jam tarts on a willow pattern plate.

When Jones had ruined the lobster and devoured the tarts he went on with the book. The lovely heroine had become for him Teresa, Countess of Rochester, the Opera singer himself, and the Russian Prince Maniloff.

Then the deepening dusk tore him from the book. Work had to be done.

He rang the bell, told Mrs. Henshaw that he was going to the railway station to see after his luggage, took his cap, and went out. Strangely enough he did not feel nervous. The first flurry had passed, and he had adapted himself to the situation, the deepening darkness gave him a sense of security, and the lights of the shops cheered him somehow.

He turned to the left towards the sea.

Fifty yards down the street he came across a Gentlemen's Outfitters, in whose windows coloured neckties screamed, and fancy shirts raised their discordant voices with Gent's summer waistcoats and those panama hats, adored in the year of this story by the river and sea-side youth.

Jones, under the hands of Rochester's valet, and forced by circumstances to use Rochester's clothes, was one of the best dressed men in London. Left to himself in this matter he was lost. He had no idea of what to wear or what not to wear, no idea of the social damnation that lies in tweed trousers not turned up at the bottom, fancy waistcoats, made evening ties, a bowler worn with a black morning coat, or dog-skin gloves. Heinenberg and Obermann of Philadelphia had dressed him till Stultz unconsciously took the business over. He was barely conscious of the incongruity of his present get-up topped by the tweed shooting cap of Hoover's, but he was quite conscious of the fact that some alteration in dress was imperative as a means towards escape from Sandbourne-on-Sea.

He entered the shop of Towler and Simpkinson, bought a six and elevenpenny panama, put it on and had the tweed cap done up in a parcel. Then a flannel coat attracted him, a grey flannel tennis coat price fifteen shillings. It fitted him to a charm, save for the almost negligible fact that the sleeves came down nearly to his knuckles. Then he bought a night shirt for three and eleven, and had the whole lot done up in one parcel.

At a chemist's next door he bought a tooth brush. In the mirror across the counter he caught a glimpse of himself in the panama. It seemed to him that not only had he never looked so well in any other head gear, but that his appearance was completely altered.

Charmed and comforted he left the shop. Next door to the chemist's and at the street corner was a public house.

Jones felt certain from his knowledge of Hoover that the very last place to come across one of his assistants would be a public house. He entered the public bar, took a seat by the counter and ordered a glass of beer and a packet of cigarettes. The place was rank with the fumes of cheap tobacco and cigarettes and the smell of beer. Hard gas light shewed no adornment, nothing but pitch pine panelling, spittoons, bottles on shelves and an almanac. The barmaid, a long-necked girl with red hands, and cheap rings and a rose in her belt, detached herself from earnest conversation with a youth in a bowler inhabiting the saloon bar, pulled a handle, dumped a glass of beer before Jones and gave him change without word or glance, returning to her conversation with the bowlered youth. She evidently had no eyes at all for people in the public bar. There are grades, even in the tavern.

Close to where Jones had taken his seat was standing a person in broken shoes, an old straw hat, a coat, with parcels evidently in the tail pockets, and trousers frayed at the heels. He had a red unshaven face, and was reading the Evening Courier.

Suddenly he banged the paper with the tips of the fingers of his right hand and cast it on the counter.

"Govinment! Govinment! nice sort of govinment, payin' each other four hundred a year for followin' Asquith and robbin' the landowners to get the money—God lumme."

He paused to light a filthy clay pipe. He had his eyes on Jones, and evidently considered him, for some occult reason, of the same way of political thinking as himself, and he addressed him in that impersonal way in which one addresses an audience.

"They've downed and outed the House o' Lords, an' now they're scraggin' the Welsh Church, after that they'll go for the Landed Prepriotor and finish him. And who's to blame? the Radicals—no, they ain't to blame, no more than rats for their instincts; we're to blame, the Conservatives is to blame, we haven't got a fightin' man to purtect us. The Radicals has got all the tallant—you look at the fight Bonna Lor's been makin' this week. Fight! A blind Tom cat with his head in an old t'marter tin would make a better fight than Bonna Lor's put up. Look at Churchill, that chap was one of us once, he was born to lead the clarses, an' now look at him leadin' the marses, up to his neck in Radical dirt and pretendin' he likes it. He doesn't, but he's a man with an eye in his head and he knows what we are, a boneless lot without organisation. I say it myself, I said it only larst night in this here bar, and I say it again, for two pins I'd chuck my party. I would so. For two pins I'd chuck the country, and leave the whole lot to stew in their own grease."

He addressed himself to his beer, and Jones, greatly marvelling, lit a cigarette.

"Do you live here?" asked he.

"Sh'd think I did," replied the other. "Born here and bred here, and been watchin' the place going down for the last twenty years, turnin' from a decent residential neighbourhood to a collection of schools and lodgin' houses, losin' clarse every year. Why the biggest house here is owned by a chap that sells patent food, there's two socialists on the town council, and the Mayor last year was Hoover, a chap that owns a lunatic 'sylum. One of his loonies got out last March and near did for a child on the Southgate Road before he was collared; and yet they make a Mayor of him."

"Have another drink?" said Jones.

"I don't mind if I do."

"Well, here's luck," said he, putting his nose into the new glass.

"Luck!" said Jones. "Do Hoover's lunatics often escape?"

"Escape—why I heard only an hour ago another of them was out. Gawd help him if the town folk catch him at any of his tricks, and Gawd help Hoover. A chap has no right comin' down and settin' up a business like that in a place like this full of nursemaids and children. People bring their innercent children down here to play on the sands, and any minit that place may break loose like a bum-shell. That's not marked down on the prospectices they publish with pictures done in blue and yaller, and lies about the air and water, and the salubriarity of the South Coast."

"No, I suppose not," said Jones.

"Well, I must be goin'," said the other, emptying his glass and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Good night to you."

"Good night."

The upholder of Church and State shuffled out, leaving Jones to his thoughts. Wind of the business had got about the town, and even at that moment no doubt people were carefully locking back doors and looking in out houses.

It was unfortunate that the last man to escape from the Hoover establishment had been violently inclined, that was the one thing needed to stimulate Rumour and make her spread.

Having sat for ten minutes longer and consumed another glass of tepid beer, he took his departure.

Mrs. Henshaw let him in, and having informed her of his journey to the station, the fruitlessness of his quest, and his opinion of the railway company, its servants and its methods, he received his candle and went to bed.



CHAPTER XXVI

A TRAMP, AND OTHER THINGS

He was awakened by a glorious morning, and, looking out of his window, he saw the street astir in the sunshine, stout men in white flannels with morning newspapers in their hands, children already on their way to the beach with spades and buckets, all the morning life of an English seacoast town in Summer.

Then he dressed. He had no razor, his beard was beginning to show, and to go about unshaved was impossible to his nature. For a moment the wild idea of letting his beard grow—that oldest form of disguise—occurred to him, only to be dismissed immediately. A beard takes a month to grow, he had neither the time nor the money to do it, nor the inclination.

At breakfast—two kippered herrings and marmalade—he held a council of war with himself.

Nature has equipped every animal with means for offence and defence. To man she has given daring, and that strange indifference in cool blood to danger, when danger has become familiar, which seems the attribute of man alone.

Jones determined to risk everything, go out, prospect, find some likely road of escape, and make a bold dash. The eight thousand pounds in the London Bank shone before him like a galaxy of eight stars; no one knew of its existence. What he was to do when he had secured it was a matter for future consideration. Probably he would return right away to the States.

One great thing about all this Hoover business was the fact that it had freed him from the haunting dread of those terrible sensations of duality and negation. Fighting is the finest antidote to nerve troubles and mental dreads, and he was fighting now for his liberty, for the fact stood clearly before him, that, whether the Rochester family believed him to be Rochester or believed him to be Jones, it was to their interest to hold him as a lunatic in peaceful retirement.

Having breakfasted he lit a cigarette, asked Mrs. Henshaw for a latch key so that he might not trouble her, put on his panama and went out. There was a barber's shop across the way, he entered it, found a vacant chair and was shaved. Then he bought a newspaper and strolled in the direction of the beach. The idea had come to him that he might be able to hire a sailing boat and reach London that way, a preposterous and vague idea that still, however, led him till he reached the esplanade, and stood with the sea wind blowing in his face.

The only sailing boats visible were excursion craft, guarded by longshoremen, loading up with trippers, and showing placards to allure the innocent.

The sands were swarming, and the bathing machines crawling towards the sea.

He came on to the beach and took his seat on the warm, white sands, with freedom before him had he been a gull or a fish. To take one of those cockleshell row boats and scull a few miles down the coast would lead him where? Only along the coast, rock-strewn beyond the sands and faced with cliffs. Of boat craft he had no knowledge, the sea was choppy, and the sailing boats now out seemed going like race horses over hurdles.

No, he would wait till after luncheon, then in that somnolent hour when all men's thoughts are a bit dulled, and vigilance least awake, he would find some road, on good hard land, and make his dash.

He would try and get a bicycle map of this part of Wessex. He had noticed a big stationers' and book-sellers' near the beach, and he would call there on his way back.

Then he fell to reading his paper, smoking cigarettes, and watching the crowd.

Watching, he was presently rewarded with the sight of the present day disgrace of England. Out of a bathing tent, and into the full sunlight, came a girl with nothing on, for skin tight blue stockinette is nothing in the eyes of Modesty; every elevation, every depression, every crease in her shameless anatomy exposed to a hundred pairs of eyes, she walked calmly towards the water. A young man to match followed. Then they wallowed in the sea.

Jones forgot Hoover. He recalled Lady Dolly in "Moths"—Lady Dolly, who, on the beach of Sandbourne-on-Sea would have been the pink of propriety, and the inhabitants of this beach were not wicked society people, but respectable middle class folk.

"That's pretty thick," said Jones to an old gentleman like a goat sitting close to him, whose eyes were fixed in contemplation on the bathers.

"What?"

"That girl in blue. Don't any of them wear decent clothes?"

"The scraggy ones do," replied the other, speaking in a far away and contented manner.

At about half past eleven Jones left the beach, tired of the glare and the bathers, and the sand digging children. He called at the book shop, and for a shilling obtained a bicycle map of the coast, and sitting on a seat outside the shop scanned it.

There were three roads out of Sandbourne-on-Sea; the London road; a road across the cliffs to the west; and a road across the cliffs to the east. The easterly road led to Northbourne, a sea-side town some six or seven miles away, the westerly road to Southbourne, some fifteen miles off. London lay sixty miles to the north. The railway touched the London road at Houghton Admiral, a station some nine miles up the line.

That was the position. Should he take the London road and board a train at Houghton Admiral, or take the road to Northbourne and get a train from there?

The three ways lay before him like the three Fates, and he determined on the London road.

However, Man proposes and God disposes.

He folded up the map, put it in his pocket and started for home—or at least Mrs. Henshaw's.

Just at the commencement of the street he paused before a photographer's to inspect the pictures exposed for view. Groups, family parties, children, and girls with undecided features. He turned from the contemplation of these things and found himself face to face with Hoover.

Hoover must have turned into the street from a bye way, for only sixty seconds before the street had been Hooverless. He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and his calves showed huge.

"Hello!" said Jones.

The exclamation was ejected from him so to speak, by the mental shock.

Hoover's hand shot out to grasp his prey. What happened then was described by Mr. Shonts, the German draper across the way, to a friend.

"The thin man hit Mr. Hoover in the stomack, who sat down, but lifted himself at wance and pursued him."

Jones ran. After him followed a constable, sprung from nowhere, boys, a dog that seemed running for exercise, and Hoover.

He reached the house of Mrs. Henshaw, pulled the latch key from his pocket, plunged it in the lock, opened the door and shut it. So close was the pursuit on him that the "bang-bang" of the knocker followed at once on the bang of the door.

Then the bell went, peal after peal.

Jones made for the kitchen stairs and bolted down them, found a passage leading to the back door, and, disregarding the bewildered Mrs. Henshaw, who was coming out of the kitchen with her hands all over flour, found the back yard.

A blank wall lay before him, another on the right, and another on the left. The left and right walls divided the Henshaw back yard from the yards of the houses on either side, the wall immediately before him divided it from the back yard of a house in Minerva Terrace, which was parallel to the High Street.

Jones chose this wall. A tenantless dog kennel standing before it helped him, and next moment he was over, shaken up with a drop of twelve feet and facing a clothes line full of linen. He dived under a sheet and almost into the back of a broad woman hanging linen on a second clothes line, found the back door of the house, which the broad woman had left open, ran down a passage, up a kitchen stairs and into a hall. An old gentleman in list slippers, coming out of a room on the right, asked him what he wanted. Jones, recalling the affair later, could hear the old gentleman's voice and words.

He did not pause to reply. He opened the hall door, and the next moment he was in Minerva Terrace. It was fortunately deserted. He ran to the left, found a bye way and a terrace of artisans' dwellings, new, hideous, and composed of yellow brick. In front of the terrace lay fields. A gate in the hedge invited him, he climbed over it, crossed a field, found another gate which led him to another field, and found himself surrounded by the silence of the country, a silence pierced and thrilled by the songs of larks. Larks make the sea lands of the south and east coasts insufferable. One lark in a suitable setting, and, for a while, is delightful, but twenty larks in all grades of ascent and descent, some near, some distant, make for melancholy.

Jones crouched in a hedge for a while to get back his breath. He was lost. Road maps were not much use to him here. The larks insisted on that, jubilantly or sorrowfully according to the stage of their flight.

Then something or someone immediately behind him on the other side of the hedge breathed a huge sigh, as if lamenting over his fate. He jumped up. It was a cow. He could see her through the brambles and smell her too, sweet as a Devonshire dairy.

Then he sat down again to think and examine the map, which he had fortunately placed in his pocket. The roads were there but how to reach them was the problem, and the London road, to which he had pinned his faith, was now impossible. It would be surely watched. He determined, after a long consultation with himself, to make for Northbourne, striking across the fields straight ahead, and picking up the cliff road somewhere on its course.

He judged, and rightly enough, that Hoover would hunt for him, not along the coast but inland. Northbourne was not the road to London, even though a train might be caught from Northbourne. The whole business was desperate, but this course seemed the least desperate way out of it. And he need not hurry, speed would be of no avail in this race against Fate.

He took the money from his pocket and counted it. Out of the nine pounds he started with from Hoover's there remained only five pounds eleven and ninepence.

He had spent as follows:

Mrs. Henshaw L2 0 0 Panama 6 11 Nightshirt 3 11 Coat 15 0 Public House 10 Shave and Newspaper 7 Road Map 1 0 ————— L3 8 3

He went over these accounts and checked them in his head. Then he put the money back in his pocket and started on his way across the fields.

Despite all his worries this English country interested him, it also annoyed him. Fields, the size of pocket handkerchiefs, divided one from the other by monstrous hedges and deep ditches. To cross this country in a straight line one would want to be a deer or a bounding kangaroo. Gates, always at corners and always diagonal to his path, gave him access from one field to the other. Trees there were none. The English tree has an antipathy to the sea, and keeps away from it, but the hedge has no sensitiveness of this sort. These hedges seemed to love the sea, to judge by their size.

He was just in the act of clambering over one of the innumerable gates when a voice hailed him. He looked back. A young man in leggings, who had evidently been following him unperceived, raised a hand. Jones finished his business with the gate, and then, with it between him and the stranger, waited. He was well dressed in a rough way, evidently a superior sort of farmer, and physically a person to be reckoned with. He was also an exceedingly cantankerous looking individual.

"Do you know that you are trespassing?" asked he, when they were within speaking distance.

"No," said Jones.

"Well, you are. I must ask you for your name and address, please."

"What on earth for—what harm am I doing your old fields?" Jones had forgotten his position, everything, before the outrage on common sense.

"You are trespassing, that's all. I must ask you for your name and address."

Now to Jones came the recollection of something he had read somewhere. A statement, that in England there was no law of trespass in the country places, and that a person might go anywhere to pick mushrooms or wild flowers, and no landlord could interfere so long as no damage was done.

"Don't you know the law?" asked Jones. He recited the law accordingly, to the Unknown.

The other listened politely.

"I ask you for your name and address," said he. "Our lawyers will settle the other matter."

Then anger came to Jones.

"I am the Earl of Rochester," said he, "and my address is Carlton House Terrace, London. I have no cards on me."

Then the queerest sensation came to Jones, for he saw that the other had recognised him. Rochester was evidently as well known to the ordinary Englishman, by picture and repute, as Lloyd George.

"I beg your pardon," said the other, "but the fact is that my land is over-run with people from Sandbourne—sorry."

"Oh, don't mention it," replied the Earl of Rochester. "I sha'n't do any damage. Good day." They parted and he pursued his way.

A mile farther on he came upon a person with broken boots, a beery face, and clothes to match his boots. This person was seated in the sunshine under a hedge, a bundle and a tin can beside him.

He hailed Jones as "Guvernor" and requested a match.

Jones supplied the match, and they fell into conversation.

"Northbourne," said the tramp. "I'm goin' that way meself. I'll shew you the quickest way when I've had a suck at me pipe."

Jones rested for a moment by the hedge whilst the pipe was lit. The trespass business was still hot in his mind. The cave-in of the Landlord had not entirely removed the sense of outrage.

"Aren't you afraid of being held up for trespass?" asked he.

"Trespass," replied the other, "not me. I ain't afeared of no farmers."

Jones gave his experience.

"Don't you be under no bloomin' error," said the tramp, when the recital was finished. "That chap was right enough. That chap couldn't touch the likes of me, unless he lied and swore I'd broke fences, but he could touch the likes of you. I know the Lor. I know it in and out. Landlords don't know it as well as me. That chap knows the lor, else he wouldn't a' been so keen on gettin' your name and where you lived."

"But how could he have touched me if he cannot touch you?"

The tramp chuckled.

"I'll tell you," said he, "and I'll tell you what he'll do now he's got where you live. He'll go to the Co't o' Charncery and arsk for a 'junction against you to stop you goin' over his fields. You don't want to go over his fields any more, that don't matter. He'll get his 'junction and you'll have to pay the bloomin' costs—see—the bloomin' costs, and what will that amahnt to? Gawd knows, maybe a hundred pound. Lots of folks take it into their silly heads they can go where they want. They carnt, not if the Landlord knows his Lor, not unless they're hoofin' it like me. Lot o' use bringin' me up to the Co't o' Charncery."

"Do you mean to say that just for walking over a field a man can be had up to the court of Chancery and fined a hundred pounds?"

"He ain't fined, it's took off him in costs."

"You seem to know a lot about the law," said Jones, calling up the man of the public house last night, and coming to the conclusion that amongst the English lower orders there must be a vast fund of a peculiar sort of intelligence.

"Yes," said the tramp. "I told you I did." Then interestedly, "What might your name be?"

Jones repeated the magic formula to see the effect.

"I am the Earl of Rochester."

"Lord Rochester. Thought I knew your face. Lost half a quid over your horse runnin' at Gatwood Park last Spring twel' months. 'White Lady' came in second to 'The Nun,' half a quid. I'd made a bit on 'Champane Bottle' in the sellin' plate. Run me eye over the lists and picked out 'White Lady.' Didn't know nothin' abaht her, said to a fren', 'here's my fancy. Don't know nothin' abaht her, but she's one of Lord Rawchester's, an' his horses run stright'—That's what I said—'His horses run stright' and give me a stright run boss with a wooden leg before any of your fliers with a dope in his belly or a pullin' jockey on his back. But the grown' did her, she was beat on the post by haff an 'eck, you'll remember. She'd a won be two lengths, on'y for that bit o' soggy grown' be the post. That grown' want over-haulin', haff a shower o' rain, and boss wants fins and flippers instead o' hoofs."

"Yes," said Jones, "that's so."

"A few barra' loads o' gravel would put it rite," continued the other, "it ain't fair on the hosses, and it ain't fair on the backers, 'arf a quid I dropped on that mucky bit o' grown'. Last Doncaster meetin' I was sayin' the very same thing to Lor' Lonsdale over the Doncaster Course. I met him, man to man like, outside the ring, and he handed me out a cigar. We talked same as you and me might be talkin' now, and I says to him: 'What we want's more money put into drains on the courses. Look at them mucky farmers they way they drains their land,' said I, 'and look at us runnin' hosses and layin' our bets and let down, hosses and backers and all, for want of the courses bein' looked after proper.'"

He tapped the dottle out of his pipe, picked up the bundle, and rose grumbling.

Then he led the way in the direction of Northbourne.

It was a little after three o'clock now, and the day was sultry. Jones, despite his other troubles, was vastly interested in his companion. The height of Rochester's position had never appeared truly till shown him by the farmer and this tramp. They knew him. To them, without any doubt, the philosophers and poets of the world were unknown, but they knew the Earl of Rochester, and not unfavourably.

Millions upon millions of the English world were equally acquainted with his lordship, he was most evidently a National figure. His unconventionality, his "larks," his lavishness, and his horse racing propensities, however they might pain his family, would be meat to the legions who loved a lord, who loved a bet, who loved a horse, and a picturesque spendthrift.

To be Rochester was not only to be a lord, it was more than that. It was to be famous, a national character, whose picture was printed on the retina of the million. Never had Jones felt more inclined to stick to his position than now, with the hounds on his traces, a tramp for his companion, and darkness ahead. He felt that if he could once get to London, once lay his hands on that eight thousand pounds lying in the National Provincial Bank, he could fight. Fight for freedom, get lawyers to help him, and retain his phantom coronet.

He had ceased to fear madness; all that dread of losing himself had vanished, at least for the moment. Hoover had cured him.

Meanwhile they talked as they went, the tramp laying down the law as to rights over commons and waste lands, seeming absolutely to forget that he was talking to, or supposed to be talking to, a landed proprietor. At last they reached the white ribbon that runs over the cliffs from Sandbourne to Northbourne and beyond.

"Here's the road," said the tramp, "and I'll be takin' leave of your lor'ship. I'll take it easy for a bit amongst them bushes, there's no call for me to hurry. I shawnt forget meetin' your lor'ship. Blimy if I will. Me sittin' there under that hedge an' thinkin' of that half quid I dropped over 'White Lady' and your lor'ship comin' along—It gets me!"

Up to this moment of parting he had not once Lordshipped Jones.

Jones, feeling in his pocket, produced the half sovereign, which, with five pounds one and nine pence made up his worldly wealth at the moment.

He handed it over, and the tramp spat on it for luck.

Then they parted, and the fugitive resumed his way with a lighter pocket but a somewhat lighter heart.

There are people who increase and people who reduce one's energy, it is sometimes enough to look at them without even talking to them. The tramp belonged to the former class. He had cheered Jones. There was nothing particularly cheery in his conversation, all the same the effect had been produced.

Now, along the cliff road and coming from the direction of Northbourne a black speck developed, resolving itself at last into the form of an old man carrying a basket. The basket was filled with apples and Banbury cakes. Jones bought eight Banbury cakes and two apples with his one and nine pence, and then took his seat on the warm turf by the way to devour them. He lay on his side as he ate and cursed Hoover.

To lie here for an hour on this idyllic day, to watch the white gulls flying, to listen to the whisper of the sea far below, what could be better than that? He determined if ever he should win freedom and money to return here for a holiday.

He was thinking this, when, raised now on his elbow, he saw something moving amongst the bushes and long grass of the waste lands bordering the cliff road.

It was a man, a man on all fours, yet moving swiftly, a sight natural enough in the deer-stalking Highlands, but uncanny on these Wessex downs.

Jones leaving four Banbury cakes uneaten on the grass, sprang to his feet, so did the crawling one.

Then the race began.

The pursuer was handicapped.

Any two sides of a triangle are longer than the third. A right line towards Jones would save many yards, but the going would be bad on account of the brambles and bushes, a straight line to the road would lenghten the distance to be covered, but would give a much better course when the road was reached. He chose the latter.

The result was, that when the race really started the pursuer was nearly half a mile to the bad. But he had not recently consumed four Banbury cakes and two apples. Super-Banbury cakes of the dear old days, when margarine was ninepence a pound, flour unlimited, and currants unsought after by the wealthy.

Jones had not run for years. And in this connection it is quite surprising how Society pursues a man once he gets over the barrier—and especially when he has to run for his liberty.

The first mile was bad, then he got his second wind handed to him, despite everything, by a fair constitution and a fairly respectable life, but the pursuer was now only a quarter of a mile behind. Up to this the course had been clear with no spectators, but now came along from the direction of Northbourne an invalid on the arm of an attendant, and behind them a boy on a bicycle. The bicycle was an inspiration.

It was also yellow painted, and bore a carrier in front blazoned with the name of a Northbourne Italian Warehouseman. It contained parcels, evidently intended for one of the few bungalows that strewed the cliff.

The boy fought to defend his master's property, briefly, but still he fought, till a happy stroke in the wind laid him on the sun-warmed turf. The screams of the invalid—it was a female—sounded in the ears of Jones like part of some fantastic dream, so seemed the bicycle. It had no bell, the saddle wanted raising at least two inches, still it went, and the wind was behind.

On the right was a sheer drop of two hundred feet, and the road here skirted the cliff edge murderously close, for the simple reason that cliff falls had eaten the bordering grass to within a few feet of the road. This course on an unknown and questionable bicycle laden with parcels of tea and sugar, was open to a good many objections; they did not occur to Jones; he was making good speed, or thought he was till the long declivity leading to Northbourne was reached. Here he began to know what speed really was, for he found on pressing the lever that the brake would not act. Fortunately it was a free wheel.

This declivity runs between detached villas and stone walls, sheltering prim gardens, right on to the west end of the esplanade, which is, in fact, a continuation of it. For the first few hundred yards Jones thought that nothing could go quicker than the houses and walls rushing past him, towards the end he was not thinking.

The esplanade opened out, a happy band of children with buckets and wooden spades, returning home to tea, opened out, gave place to rushing apartment houses with green balconies on the left, rushing sea scape and bathing machines on the right. Then the speed slackened.

He got off shaking, and looked behind him. He had reached the east end of the promenade. It lay, as it always lies towards five o'clock, absolutely deserted by visitors. In the distance and just stepped out of a newspaper kiosk a woman was standing, shading her eyes and looking towards him. Two boatmen near her were looking in the same direction. They did not seem excited, just mildly interested.

At that moment appeared on the long slope leading down to the esplanade the figure of a man running. He looked like a policeman—a sea-side policeman.

Jones did not pause to verify. He propped the bicycle against the rails of a verandahed house and ran.

The esplanade at this, the eastern end, ascends to the town by a zig-zag road. As he took this ascent the mind of Jones, far from being clouded or dulled, was acutely active. It saw that now the railway station of Northbourne was out of count, flight by train was impossible, for the station was the very first place that would be watched. The coast line, to judge by present results, was impossible, for it seemed that to keep to it he might go on for ever being chased till he reached John o' Groats.

Northbourne is the twin image of Sandbourne-on-Sea, the same long high street, the same shops with blinds selling the same wares, the same trippers, children with spades, and invalids.

The two towns are rivals, each claiming the biggest brass band, the longest esplanade, the fewer deaths from drowning, the best drains, the most sunlight, and the swiftest trains from London. Needless to say that one of them is not speaking the truth, a fact that does not seem to disturb either of them in the least.

Jones, walking swiftly, passed a sea-side boot shop, a butcher's, greengrocer's, and Italian warehouse—the same, to judge by the name over the door—that had sent forth the messenger boy on the bicycle. Then came a cinema palace, with huge pictures splashed across with yellow bands announcing:

"TO-NIGHT"

Then a milliner's, then a post office, and lastly a livery stable.

In front of the latter stood a char-a-banc nearly full. A blackboard announced in white chalk: "Two hours drive two shillings," and the congregation in the char-a-banc had that stamp. Stout women, children, a weedy man or two, and a honeymoon couple.

Jones, without the slightest hesitation, climbed into the char-a-banc. It seemed sent by Heaven. It was a seat, it went somewhere, and it was a hiding place. Seated amongst these people he felt intuitively that a viewless barrier lay between him and his pursuers, that it was the very last place a man in search of a runaway would glance at.

He was right. Whilst the char-a-banc still lingered on the chance of a last customer, the running policeman—he was walking now, appeared at the sea end of the street. He was a young man with a face like an apple, he wore a straw helmet—Northbourne serves out straw helmets for its police and straw hats for its horses on the first of June each year—and he seemed blown. He was looking about him from right to left, but he never looked once at the char-a-banc and its contents. He went on, and round the corner of the street he vanished, still looking about him.

A few moments later the vehicle started. The contents were cheerful and communicative one with the other, conversing freely on all sorts of matters, and Jones, listening despite himself, gathered all sorts of information on subjects ranging from the pictures then exhibiting at the cinema palace, to the price of butter.

He discovered that the contents consisted of three family parties—exclusive of the honeymoon couple—and that the appearance of universal fraternity was deceptive, that the parties were exclusive, the conversation of each being confined to its own members.

So occupied was his mind by these facts that they were a mile and a half away from Northbourne and in the depths of the country before a great doubt seized him.

He called across the heads of the others to the driver asking where they were going to.

"Sandbourne-on-Sea," said the driver.

Now, though the Sandbournites hate the Northbournites as the Guelphs the Ghibellines, though the two towns are at advertisemental war, the favourite pleasure drive of the char-a-bancs of Sandbourne is to Northbourne, and vice versa. It is chosen simply because the road is the best thereabouts, and the gradients the easiest for the horses.

"Sandbourne-on-Sea?" cried Jones.

"Yes," said the driver.

The vision of himself being carted back to Sandbourne-on-Sea with that crowd and then back again to Northbourne—if he were not caught—appeared to Jones for the moment as the last possible grimace of Fate. He struggled to get out, calling to the driver that he did not want to go to Sandbourne. The vehicle stopped, and the driver demanded the full fare—two shillings. Jones produced one of his sovereigns but the man could not make change, neither could any of the passengers.

"I'll call at the livery stables as I go back," said Jones, "and pay them there."

"Where are you stayin' in the town?" asked the driver.

"Belinda Villa," said Jones.

It was the name of the villa against whose rails he had left the bicycle. The idiocy of the title had struck him vaguely at the moment and the impression had remained.

"Mrs. Cass?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Cass's empty."

This unfortunate condition of Mrs. Cass did not floor Jones.

"She was yesterday," said he, "but I have taken the front parlour and a bed-room this afternoon."

"That's true," said a fat woman, "I saw the gentleman go in with his luggage."

In any congregation of people you will always find a liar ready to lie for fun, or the excitement of having a part in the business on hand; failing that, a person equipped with an imagination that sees what it pleases.

This amazing statement of the fat woman almost took Jones' breath away. But there are other people in a crowd beside liars.

"Why can't the gentleman leave the sovereign with the driver and get the change in the morning?" asked one of the weedy looking men. This scarecrow had not said a word to anyone during the drive. He seemed born of mischance to live for that supreme moment, diminish an honest man's ways of escape, and wither.

Jones withered him:

"You shut up," said he. "It's no affair of yours—cheek." Then to the driver: "You know my address, if you don't trust me you can come back with me and get change."

Then he turned and walked off whilst the vehicle drove on.

He waited till a bend of the road hid it from view, and then he took to the fields on the left.

He had still the remains of the packet of cigarettes he had bought at Sandbourne, and, having crossed four or five gates, he took his seat under a hedge and lit a cigarette.

He was hungry. He had done a lot of work on four Banbury cakes and an apple.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE ONLY MAN IN THE WORLD WHO WOULD BELIEVE HIM

The tobacco took the edge from his desire for food, increased his blood pressure, and gave rest to his mind.

He sat thinking. The story of "Moths" rose up before his mind and he fell to wondering how it ended and what became of the beautiful heroine with whom he had linked Teresa Countess of Rochester, of Zouroff with whom he had linked Maniloff, of Correze with whom he had linked himself.

The colour of that story had tinctured all his sea-side experiences. Then Mrs. Henshaw rose up before his mind. What was she thinking of the lodger who had flashed through her life and vanished over the back garden wall? And the interview between her and Hoover—that would have been well worth seeing. Then the boy on the bicycle and the screaming invalid rose before him, and that mad rush down the slope to the esplanade; if those children with spades and buckets had not parted as they did, if a dog had got in his way, if the slope had ended in a curve! He amused himself with picturing these possibilities and their results; and then all at once a drowsiness more delightful than any dream closed on him and he fell asleep.

It was after dark when he awoke with the remnant of a moon lighting the field before him. From far away and borne on the wind from the sea came a faint sound as of a delirious donkey with brass lungs braying at the moon. It was the sound of a band. The Northbourne brass band playing in the Cliff Gardens above the moonlit sea. Jones felt to see that his cigarettes and matches were safe in his pocket, then he started, taking a line across country, trusting in Providence as a guide.

Sometimes he paused and rested on a gate, listening to the faint and indeterminate sounds of the night, through which came occasionally the barking of a distant dog like the beating of a trip hammer.

It was a perfect summer's night, one of those rare nights that England alone can produce; there were glow worms in the hedges and a scent of new mown hay in the air. Though the music of the band had been blotted out by distance, listening intently he caught the faintest suspicion of a whisper, continuous, and evidently the sound of the sea.

An hour later, that is to say towards eleven o'clock, weary with finding his way out of fields into fields, into grassy lanes and around farm house buildings, desperate, and faint from hunger, Jones found a road and by the road a bungalow with a light in one of the windows.

A dauntingly respectable-looking bungalow in the midst of a well laid-out garden.

Jones opened the gate and came up the path. He was going to demand food, offer to pay for it if necessary, and produce gold as an evidence of good faith.

He came into the verandah, found the front door which was closed, struck a match, found the bell, pulled and pulled it. There was no response. He waited a little and then rang again, with a like result. Then he came to the lighted window.

It was a French window, only half closed, and a half turned lamp showed a comfortably furnished room and a table laid out for supper.

Two places were set. A cold fowl intact on a dish garnished with parsley stood side by side with a York ham the worse for wear, a salad, a roll of cowslip coloured butter, a loaf of home-made bread and a cheese tucked around with a snow-white napkin made up the rest of the eatables whilst a decanter of claret shone invitingly by the seat of the carver. There was nothing wanting, or only the invitation.

The fowl supplied that.

Jones pushed the window open and entered. Half closing it again, he took his seat at the table placing his hat on the floor beside him. Taking a sovereign from his pocket, he placed it on the white cloth. Then he fell to.

You can generally tell a man by his claret, and judging from this claret the unknown who had supplied the feast must have been a most estimable man.

A man of understanding and parts, a man not to be deluded by specious wine lists, a generous warmhearted and full-blooded soul—and here he was.

A step sounded on the verandah, the window was pushed open and a man of forty years or so, well-dressed, tall, thin, dark and saturnine stood before the feaster.

He showed no surprise. Removing his hat he bowed.

Jones half rose.

"Hello," said he confusedly, with his mouth full—then he subsided into his chair.

"I must apologise for being late," said the tall man, placing his hat on a chair, rubbing his long hands together and moving to the vacant seat. "I was unavoidably detained. But I'm glad you did not wait supper."

He took his seat, spread his napkin on his knees, and poured himself out a glass of claret. His eyes were fixed on the sovereign lying upon the cloth. He had noted it from the first. Jones picked it up and put it in his pocket.

"That's right," said the unknown. Then as if in reply to a question: "I will have a wing, please."

Jones cut a wing of the fowl, placed it in the extra plate which he had placed on one side of the table and presented it. The other cut himself some bread, helped himself to salad, salt and pepper and started eating, absolutely as though nothing unusual had occurred or was occurring.

For half a minute or so neither spoke. Then Jones said:

"Look here," said he, "I want to make some explanations."

"Explanations," said the long man, "what about?"

Jones laughed.

"That sovereign which I put on the table and which I have put back in my pocket. I must apologise. Had I gone away before you returned that would have been left behind to show that your room had been entered neither by a hobo nor a burglar, nor by some cad who had committed an impertinence—perhaps you will believe that."

The long man bowed.

"But," went on Jones, "by a man who was driven by circumstances to seek hospitality without an invitation."

The other had suddenly remembered the ham and had risen and was helping himself, his pince-nez which he wore on a ribbon and evidently only for reading purposes, dangling against his waistcoat-buttons.

"By circumstance," said he, "that is interesting. Circumstance is the master dramatist—are you interested in the Drama?"

"Interested!" said Jones. "Why, I am a drama. I reckon I'm the biggest drama ever written, and that's why I am here to-night."

"Ah," said the other, "this is becoming more interesting still or promising to become, for I warn you, plainly, that what may appear of intense interest to the individual is generally of little interest to the general. Now a man may, let's say, commit some little act that the thing we call Justice disapproves of, and eluding Justice finds himself pressed by Circumstance into queer and dramatic positions, those positions though of momentary and intense interest to the man in question would be of the vaguest interest to the man in the stalls or the girls eating buns in the gallery, unless they were connected by that thread of—what shall we call it—that is the backbone of the thing we call Story."

"Oh, Justice isn't bothering after me," said Jones—Then vague recollections began to stir in his mind, that long glabrous face, the set of that jaw, that forehead, that hair, brushed back.

"Why, you're Mr. Kellerman, aren't you?" said he.

The other bowed.

"Good heavens," said Jones, "I ought to have known you. I've seen your picture often enough in the States, and your cinema plays—haven't read your books, for I'm not a reading man—but I've been fair crazy over your cinema plays."

Kellerman bowed.

"Help yourself to some cheese," said he, "it's good. I get it from Fortnum and Masons. When I stepped into this room and saw you here, for the first moment I was going to kick you out, then I thought I'd have some fun with you and freeze you out. So you're American? You are welcome. But just tell me this. Why did you come in, and how?"

"I came in because I am being chased," said Jones. "It's not the law, I reckon I'm an honest citizen—in purpose, anyhow, and as to how I came in I wanted a crust of bread and rang at your hall door."

"Servants don't sleep here," said Kellerman. "Cook snores, bungalow like a fiddle for conveying sounds, come here for sleep and rest. They sleep at a cottage down the road."

"So?" said Jones. "Well, getting no reply I looked in at the window, saw the supper, and came in."

"That's just the sort of thing that might occur in a photo play," said Kellerman. "When I saw you, as I stepped in, sitting quietly at supper the situation struck me at once."

"You call that a situation," said Jones. "It's bald to some of the situations I have been in for the last God knows how long."

"You interest me," said Kellerman, helping himself to cheese. "You talk with such entire conviction of the value of your goods."

"How do you mean the value of my goods?"

"Your situations, if you like the term better. Don't you know that good situations are rarer than diamonds and more valuable? Have you ever read Pickwick?"

"Yep."

"Then you can guess what I mean. Situations don't occur in real life, they have to be dug for in the diamond fields of the mind and—"

"Situations don't occur in real life!" said Jones. "Don't they—now, see here, I've had supper with you and in return for your hospitality I'll tell you every thing that's happened to me if you'll hear it. I guess I'll shatter your illusions. I'll give you a sample: I belong to the London Senior Conservative Club and yet I don't. I have the swellest house in London yet it doesn't belong to me. I'm worth one million and eight thousand pounds, yet the other day I had to steal a few sovereigns, but the law could not touch me for stealing them. I have an uncle who is a duke yet I am no relation to him. Sounds crazy, doesn't it, all the same it's fact. I don't mind telling you the whole thing if you care to hear it. I won't give you the right names because there's a woman in the case, but I bet I'll lift your hair."

Kellerman did not seem elated.

"I don't mind listening to your story," said he, "on one condition."

"What's that?"

"That you will not be offended if I switch you off if the thing palls and hand you your hat, for I must tell you that though I came down here to get sleep, I do most of my sleeping between two in the morning and noon. I work at night and I had intended working to-night."

"Oh, you can switch me off when you like," said Jones.

Supper being finished, Kellerman fastened the window, and, carrying the lamp, led the way to a comfortably furnished study. Here he produced cigars and put a little kettle on a spirit stove to make tea.

Then, sitting opposite to his host, in a comfortable armchair, Jones began his story.

He had told his infernal story so often that one might have fancied it a painful effort, even to begin. It was not. He had now an audience in touch with him. He suppressed names, or rather altered them, substituting Manchester for Rochester and Birdwood for Birdbrook. The audience did not care, it recked nothing of titles, it wanted Story—and it got it.

At about one o'clock the recital was interrupted whilst tea was made, at two o'clock or a little after the tale finished.

"Well?" said Jones.

Kellerman was leaning back in his chair with eyes half closed, he seemed calculating something in his head.

"D' you believe me?"

Kellerman opened his eyes.

"Of course I believe you. If you had invented all that you would be clever enough to know what your invention is worth and not hand it out to a stranger. But I doubt whether anyone else will believe you—however, that is your affair—you have given me five reels of the finest stuff, or at least the material for it, and if I ever care to use it I will fix you up a contract giving you twenty-five per cent royalties. But there's one thing you haven't given me—the denouement. I'm more than interested in that. I'm not thinking of money, I'm a film actor at heart and I want to help in the play. Say, may I help?"

"How?"

"Come along with you to the end, give all the assistance in my power—or even without that just watch the show. I want to see the last act for I'm blessed if I can imagine it."

"I'd rather not," said Jones. "You might get to know the real names of the people I'm dealing with, and as there is a woman in the business I don't feel I ought to give her name away even to you. No. I reckon I'll pull through alone, but if you'd give me a sofa to sleep on to-night I'd be grateful. Then I can get away in the morning."

Kellerman did not press the point.

"I'll give you better than a sofa," he said. "There's a spare bed, and you'd better not start in the morning; give them time to cool down. Then towards evening you can make a dash. The servants here are all right, they'll think you are a friend run down from town to see me. I'll arrange all that."



CHAPTER XXVIII

PEBBLEMARSH

At five o'clock next day, Jones, re-dressed by Kellerman in a morning coat rather the worse for wear—a coat that had been left behind at the bungalow by one of Kellerman's friends—and a dark cloth cap, took his departure from the bungalow. His appearance was frankly abominable, but quite distinct from the appearance of a man dressed in a grey flannel tennis coat and wearing a Panama—and that was the main point.

Kellerman had also worked up a history and personality for the newly attired one.

"You are Mr. Isaacson," said he.

"Here's the card of a Mr. Isaacson who called some time ago, put it in your pocket. I will write you a couple of fake letters to back the card, you are in the watch trade. Pebblemarsh is the nearest town, only five miles down the road; there's a station there, but you'd better avoid that. There's a garage. You could get a car to London. If they nail you, scream like an excited Jew, produce your credentials, and if the worst comes to the worst refer to me and come back here. I would love that interview. Country policeman, lunatic asylum man, Mr. Isaacson highly excited, and myself."

He sat down to write the fake letters addressed to Mr. Isaacson by his uncle Julius Goldberg and his partner Marcus Cohen. As he wrote he talked over his shoulder on the subject of disguises, alleging that the only really impenetrable disguise was that of a nigger minstrel.

"You see, all black faces are pretty much the same," said he. "Their predominant expression is black, but I haven't got the fixings nor the coloured pants and things, to say nothing of a banjo, so I reckon you'll just have to be Mr. Isaacson, and you may thank the God of the Hebrews I haven't made you an old clothes man—watches are respectable. Here are your letters, they are short but credible. Have you enough money?"

"Lots," said Jones, "and I don't know in the least how to thank you for what you have done. I'd have been had, sure, wearing that hat and coat—well, maybe we'll meet again."

They parted at the gate, the hunted one taking the white, dusty road in the direction of Pebblemarsh, Kellerman watching till a bend hid him from view.

Kellerman had in some mysterious way added a touch of the footlights to this business. This confounded Kellerman who thought in terms of reels and situations, had managed to inspire Jones with the feeling that he was moving on the screen, and that any moment the hedgerows might give up an army of pursuers to the delight of a hidden audience.

However, the hedgerows of the Pebblemarsh road gave up nothing but the odours of briar and woodbine, nothing pursued him but the twitter of birds and the songs of larks above the summer-drowsy fields.

There is nothing much better to live in the memory than a real old English country road on a perfect summer afternoon, no pleasanter companion.

Pebblemarsh is a town of some four thousand souls. It possesses a dye factory. It once possessed the only really good trout stream in this part of the country, with the inevitable result, for in England when a really good trout stream is discovered a dye factory is always erected upon its banks. Pebblemarsh now only possesses a dye factory.

The main street runs north and south, and as Jones passed up it he might have fancied himself in Sandbourne or Northbourne, so much alike are these three towns.

Half way up and opposite the post office, an archway disclosed itself with, above it, the magic word,

"GARAGE"

He entered the place. There were no signs of cars, nothing of a movable description in that yard, with the exception of a stout man in leggings and shirtsleeves, who, seeing the stranger, came forward to receive him.

"Have you a car?" asked Jones.

"They're all out except a Ford," said the stout man. "Did you want to go for a drive?"

"No. I want to run up to London in a hurry—what's the mileage from here?"

"We reckon it sixty three miles from here to London—that is to say the Old Kent Road."

"That's near enough," said Jones. "What's the price?"

"A shilling a mile to take you, and a sixpence a mile for the car coming back."

"What's the total?"

The proprietor figured in his head for a moment. "Four, fifteen and six," said he.

"I'll take the car," said Jones, "and I'll pay you now. Can I have it at once?"

The proprietor went to a door and opened it. "Jim," cried he, "are you there? Gentleman wants the Ford taken to London, get her out and get yourself ready."

He turned to Jones.

"She'll be ready inside ten minutes if that will do?"

"That'll do," said Jones, "and here's the money." He produced the chamois leather bag, paid the five sovereigns, and received five and sixpence change—and also a receipt which he put in his pocket. Then Jim appeared, an inconspicuous looking man, wriggling into a driving coat that had seen better days, the Ford was taken from its den, the tyres examined, and the petrol tank filled.

"Haven't you an overcoat?" asked the proprietor. "It'll be chilly after sundown."

"No," said Jones. "I came down without one, the weather was so fine—It won't hurt."

"Better have a coat," said the proprietor. "I'll lend you one. Jim will fetch it back." He went off, and returned with a heavy coat on his arm.

"That's good of you," said Jones. "Thanks—I'll put it on now to save trouble." Then a bright idea struck him. "What I'm afraid of most is my eyes, the wind tries them. Have you any goggles?"

"I believe there's an old pair in the office," said the proprietor, "hold on a minute." He went off and returned with the goggles. Jones thanked him, put them on, and got into the car.

"Pleasant journey to you," said the proprietor.

Then they started.

They turned up the street and along the road by which Jones had come. Then they struck into the road where the "Lucknows" and "Cawnpores" hinted of old Indian Colonels.

They passed the gates of the Hoover establishment. It was open, and an attendant was gazing up and down the street. He looked at the car but he did not recognize the occupant, then several more residential roads were left behind, a highly respectable cemetery, a tin chapel, and the car, taking a hill as Fords know how, dropped Sandbourne-on-Sea to invisibility and surrounded itself with vast stretches of green and sun warmed country, June scented, and hazy with the warmth of summer.

They passed hop gardens and hamlets, broad meadows and grazing cattle, bosky woods and park lands.

Jones, though he had taken the goggles off, saw little of the beauty around him. He was recognising facts, and asking questions of himself.

If Hoover or the police were to call at the garage, what would happen? Knowing the route of the car could they telegraph to towns on the way and have him arrested? How did the English law stand as regards escaped gentlemen with hallucinations? Could they be arrested like criminals? Surely not—and yet as regards the law, who could be sure of anything? Jim, the speechless driver, could tell him nothing on these points.

Towards dusk they reached a fairly big town, and in the very centre of the main street, Jim stopped the car to light the headlamps. A policeman, passing on his beat, paused to inspect the operation and then moved on, and the car resumed its way, driving into a world of twilight and scented hedges, where the glowworms were lighting up, and over which the sky was showing a silvery sprinkle of stars.

Two more towns they passed unhindered, and then came the fringe of London, a maze of lights and ways and houses, tram lines, and then an endless road, half road, half street, lines of shops, lines of old houses and semi gardens.

Jim turned in his seat. "This here's the Kent Road," said he. "We're about the middle of it, which part did you want?"

"This will do," said Jones, "pull her up."

He got out, took the four and sixpence from his pocket, and gave Jim two shillings for a tip.

"Going all the way back to-night?" asked he, as he wriggled out of the coat, and handed it over with the goggles.

"No," said Jim. "I'll stop at the last pub we passed for the night. There ain't no use over taxin' a car."

"Well, good night to you," said Jones. He watched the car turning and vanishing, then, with a feeling of freedom he had never before experienced, he pushed on London-wards.

With only two and sixpence in his pocket, he would have to wander about all night, or sit on the embankment. He had several times seen the outcasts on the embankment seats at night, and pitied them; he did not pity them now. They were free men and women.

The wind had died away and the night was sultry, much pleasanter out of doors than in, a general term that did not apply to the Old Kent Road.

The old road leading down to Kent was once, no doubt, a pleasant enough place, but pleasure had long forsaken it, and cleanliness. It was here that David Copperfield sold his jacket, and the old clothiers' shops are so antiquated that any of them might have been the scene of the purchase. To-night the old Kent Road was swarming, and the further Jones advanced towards the river the thicker seemed the throng.

At a flaring public house, and for the price of a shilling, he obtained enough food in the way of sausages and mashed potatoes, to satisfy his hunger, a half pint tankard of beer completed the satisfaction of his inner man, and having bought a couple of packets of navy cut cigarettes and a box of matches, he left the place and pursued his way towards the river.

He had exactly tenpence in his pocket, and he fell to thinking as he walked, of the extraordinary monetary fluctuations he had experienced in this city of London. At the Savoy that fatal day he had less than ten pounds, next morning, though robed as a Lord, he had only a penny, the penny had been reduced to a halfpenny by the purchase of a newspaper, the halfpenny swelled to five pounds by Rochester's gift, the five pounds sprang in five minutes to eight thousand, owing to Voles, the eight thousand to a million eight thousand, owing to Mulhausen, Simms and Cavendish had stripped him of his last cent, the Smithers affair had given him five pounds, now he had only ten pence, and to-morrow at nine o'clock he would have eight thousand.

It will be noted that he did not consider that eight thousand his, till it was safe in his pocket in the form of notes—he had learned by bitter experience to put his trust in nothing but the tangible. He reached the river and the great bridge that spans it here, and on the bridge he paused, leaning his elbow on the parapet, and looking down stream.

The waning moon had risen, painting the water with silver; barge lights and the lights of tugs and police boats shewed points of orange and dribbles of ruffled gold, whilst away down stream to the right, the airy fairy tracery of the Houses of Parliament fretted the sky.

It was a nocturne after the heart of Whistler, and Jones, as he gazed at it, felt for the first time the magic of this wonderful half revealed city with its million yellow eyes. He passed on, crossing to the right bank, and found the Strand. Here in a bar, and for the price of half a pint of beer, he sat for some twenty minutes watching the customers and killing Time, then, with his worldly wealth reduced to eightpence, he wandered off westward, passing the Savoy, and pausing for a moment to peep down the great archway at the gaily lit hotel.

At midnight he had gravitated to the embankment, and found a seat not overcrowded.

Here he fell in with a gentleman, derelict like himself, a free spoken individual, whose conversation wiled away an hour.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE BLIGHTED CITY

Said the person after a request for a match: "Warm night, but there's a change in the weather coming on, or I'm greatly mistaken. I've lost nearly everything in the chops and changes of life, but there's one thing I haven't lost—my barometer—that's to say my rheumatism. It tells me when rain is coming as sure as an aneroid. London is pretty full for the time of year, don't you think?"

"Yes," said Jones, "I reckon it is."

They talked, the gentleman with the barometer passing from the weather to politics, from politics to high finance, from high finance to himself. He had been a solicitor.

"Disbarred, as you see, for nothing, but what a hundred men are doing at the present moment. There's no justice in the world, except maybe in the Law Courts. I'm not one of those who think the Law is an ass, no, there's a great deal of common sense in the Law of England. I'm not talking of the Incorporated Law Society that shut me out from a living, for a slip any man might make. I'm talking of the old Laws of England as administered by his Majesty's Judges; study them, and you will be astonished at their straight common-sense and justice. I'm not holding any brief for lawyers—I'm frank, you see—the business of lawyers is to wriggle round and circumvent the truth, to muddy evidence, confuse witnesses and undo justice. I'm just talking of the laws."

"Do you know anything of the laws of lunacy?" asked Jones.

"Something."

"I had a friend who was supposed to be suffering from mind trouble, two doctors doped him and put him away in an asylum—he was quite harmless."

"What do you mean by doped him?" asked the other.

"Gave him a drug to quiet him, and then took him off in an automobile."

"Was there money involved?"

"You may say there was. He was worth a million."

"Anyone to benefit by his being put away?"

"Well, I expect one might make out a case of that; the family would have the handling of the million, wouldn't they?"

"It all depends—but there's one thing certain, there'd be a thundering law case for any clever solicitor to handle if the plaintiff were not too far gone in his mind to plead. Anyhow, the drugging is out of order—whole thing sounds fishy."

"Suppose he escaped," said Jones. "Could they take him back by force?"

"That's a difficult question to answer. If he were cutting up shines it would be easy, but if he were clever enough to pretend to be sane it might be difficult. You see, he would have to be arrested, no man can go up and seize another man in the street and say: You're mad, come along with me, simply because, even if he holds a certificate of lunacy against the other man the other man might say you've made a mistake, I'm not the person you want. Then it would be a question of swearing before a magistrate. The good old Laws of England are very strict about the freedom of the body, and the rights of the individual man to be heard in his own defence. If your lunatic were not too insane, and were to take refuge in a friend's house, and the friend were to back him, that would make things more difficult still."

"If he were to take refuge in his own house?"

"Oh, that would make the thing still more difficult, very much more so. If, of course, he were not conducting himself in a manner detrimental to the public peace, firing guns out of windows and so forth. The laws of England are very strict about entering a man's house. Of course, were the pursuers to go before a magistrate and swear that the pursued were a dangerous lunatic, then a right of search and entry might be obtained, but on the pursuers would lie the onus of proof. Now pauper lunatics are very easily dealt with: the Relieving Officer, on the strength of a certificate of lunacy, can go to the poor man's cottage or tenement, and take him away, for, you see, the man possessing no property it is supposed that no man is interested in his internment, but once introduce the property element and there is the very devil to pay, especially in cases where the lunatic is only eccentric and does not come into court with straws in his hair, so to speak."

"I get you," said Jones. He offered cigarettes, and presently the communicative one departed, having borrowed fourpence on the strength of his professional advice.

The rest of that night was a very good imitation of a nightmare. Jones tried several different seats in succession, and managed to do a good deal of walking. Dawn found him on London Bridge, watching the birth of another perfect day, but without enthusiasm.

He was cheerful but tired. The thought that at nine o'clock or thereabouts, he would be able to place his hands on eight thousand pounds, gave him the material for his cheerfulness. He had often read of the joy of open air life, and the freedom of the hobo; but open air life in London, on looking back upon it, did not appeal to him. He had been twice moved on by policemen, and his next door neighbours, after the departure of the barometer man, were of a type that inspired neither liking nor trust.

He heard Big Ben booming six o'clock. He had three hours still before him, and he determined to take it out in walking. He would go citywards, and then come back with an appetite for breakfast.

Having made this resolve, he started, passing through the deserted streets till he reached the Bank, and then onwards till he reached the Mile End Road.

As he walked he made plans. When he had drawn his money he would breakfast at a restaurant, he fixed upon Romanos', eggs and bacon and sausages, coffee and hot rolls would be the menu. Then he fell to wondering whether Romanos' would be open for breakfast, or whether it was of the type of restaurant that only serves luncheons and dinners. If it were, then he could breakfast at the Charing Cross Hotel.

These considerations led him a good distance on his way. Then the Mile End Road beguiled him, lying straight and foreign looking, and empty in the sunlight. The Barometer man's weather apparatus must have been at fault, for in all the sky there was not a cloud, nor the symptom of the coming of a cloud.

Away down near the docks, a clock over a public house pointed to half past seven, and he judged it time to return.

He came back. The Mile End Road was still deserted, the city round the bank was destitute of life, Fleet Street empty.

Pompeii lay not more utterly dead than this weird city of vast business palaces, and the Strand shewed nothing of life or almost nothing, every shop was shuttered though now it was close upon nine o'clock.

Something had happened to London, some blight had fallen on the inhabitants, death seemed everywhere, not seen but hinted at. Stray recollections of weird stories by H. G. Wells passed through the mind of Jones. He recalled the city of London when the Martians had done with it, that city of death, and horror, and sunlight and silence.

Then of a sudden, as he neared the Law Courts, the appalling truth suddenly suggested itself to him.

He walked up to a policeman on point of duty at a corner, a policeman who seemed under the mesmerism of the general gloom and blight, a policeman who might have been the blue concrete core of negation.

"Say, officer," said Jones, "what day's to-day?"

"Sunday," said the policeman.



CHAPTER XXX

A JUST MAN ANGERED

When things are piled one on top of another beyond a certain height, they generally come down with a crash.

That one word "Sunday" was the last straw for Jones, sweeping away breakfast, bank and everything; coming on top of the events of the last twenty-four hours, it brought his mental complacency to ruin, ruin from which shot blazing jets of wrath.

Red rage filled him. He had been made game of, every man and everything was against him. Well, he would bite. He would strike. He would attack, careless of everything, heedless of everything.

A mesmerised looking taxi-cab, crawling along on the opposite side of the way, fortunately caught his eye.

"I'll make hay!" cried Jones, as he rushed across the street. He stopped the cab.

"10A, Carlton House Terrace," he cried to the driver. He got in and shut the door with a bang.

He got out at Carlton House Terrace, ran up the steps of 10A, and rang the bell.

The door was opened by the man who had helped to eject Spicer. He did not seem in the least surprised to see Jones.

"Pay that taxi," said Jones.

"Yes, my Lord," replied the flunkey.

Jones turned to the breakfast-room. The faint smell of coffee met him at the door as he opened it. There were no servants in the room. Only a woman quietly breakfasting with the Life of St. Thomas a Kempis by her plate.

It was Venetia Birdbrook.

She half rose from her chair when she saw Jones. He shut the door. The sight of Venetia acted upon him almost as badly as the word "Sunday" had done.

"What are you doing here?" said he. "I know—you and that lot had me tucked away in a lunatic asylum; now you have taken possession of the house."

Venetia was quite calm.

"Since the house is not yours," said she, "I fail to see how my presence here affects you. We know the truth. Dr. Simms has arrived at the conclusion that your confession was at least based on truth. That you are what you proclaimed yourself to be, a man named Jones. We thought you were mad, we see now that you are an impostor. Kindly leave this house or I will call for a policeman."

Jones' mind lost all its fire. Hatred can cool as well as inflame and he hated Venetia and all her belongings, including her dowager mother and her uncle the duke, with a hatred well based on reason and fact. All his fear of mind disturbance should he go on playing the part of Rochester had vanished, the fires of tribulation had purged them away.

"I don't know what you are talking about," said he. "Do you mean that joke I played on you all? I am the Earl of Rochester, this is my house, and I request you to leave it. Don't speak. I know what you are going to say. You and your family will do this and you will do that. You will do nothing. Even if I were an impostor you would dare to do nothing. Your family washing is far, far too much soiled to expose it in public.

"If I were an impostor, who can say I have not played an honourable game? I have recovered valuable property—did I touch it and take it away? Did I expose to the public an affair that would have caused a scandal? You will do nothing and you know it. You did not even dare to tell the servants here what has happened, for the servant who let me in was not a bit surprised. Now, if you have finished your breakfast, will you kindly leave my house?"

Venetia rose and took up her book.

"Your house," said she.

"Yes, my house. From this day forth, my house. But that is not all. To-morrow I will get lawyers to work and I'll get apologies as big as houses from the whole lot of you—else I'll prosecute." He was getting angry, "prosecute you for doping me." Recollections of the Barometer man's advice came to him, "doping me in order to lay your hands on that million of money."

He went to the bell and rang it.

"We want no scene before the servants," said Venetia hurriedly.

"Then kindly go," said Jones, "or you will have a perfect panorama before the servants."

A servant entered.

"Send Church here," said Jones. He was trembling like a furious dog.

He had got the whole situation in hand. He had told his tale and acted like an honourable man, the fools had disbelieved him and doped him. They had scented the truth but they dared do nothing. Mulhausen and the recovered mine, the Plinlimon letters, Rochester's past, all these were his bastions, to say nothing of Rochester's suicide.

The fear of publicity held them in a vice. Even were they to go to America and prove that a man called Jones exactly like the Earl of Rochester had lived in Philadelphia, go to the Savoy and prove that a man exactly like the Earl of Rochester had lived there, produce the clothes he had come home in that night—all of that would lead them, where—to an action at law.

They could not arrest him as an impostor till they had proved him an impostor. To prove that, they would have to turn the family history inside out before a gaping public.

Mr. Church came in.

"Church," said Jones, "I played a practical joke on—on my people. I met a man called Jones at the Savoy—well, we needn't go into details, he was very like me, and I told my people for a joke that I was Jones. The fools thought I was mad. They called in two doctors and drugged me and hauled me off to a place. I got out, and here I am back. What do you think of that?"

"Well, my Lord," said Church, "if I may say it to you, those practical jokes are dangerous things to play—Lord Langwathby—"

"Was he here?"

"He came last night, my Lord, to have a personal explanation about a telegram he said you sent him as a practical joke, some time ago, taking him up to Cumberland."

"I'll never play another," said Jones. "Tell them to bring me some breakfast, and look here, Church, I've told my sister to leave the house at once. I want no more of her here. See that her luggage is taken down at once."

"Yes, my Lord."

"And see here, Church, let no one in. Lord Langwathby, or anyone else. I want a little peace. By the way, have a taxi sent for, and tell me when my sister's luggage is down."

In the middle of breakfast, Church came in to say that Miss Birdbrook was departing and Jones came into the hall to verify the fact.

Venetia had brought a crocodile skin travelling bag and a trunk.

These were being conveyed to a taxi.

Not one word did she say to relieve her outraged feelings. The fear of a "scene before the servants" kept her quiet.



CHAPTER XXXI

HE FINDS HIMSELF

That evening at nine o'clock, Jones sat in the smoking-room, writing. He had trusted Church with an important mission on the upshot of which his whole future depended.

If you will review his story, as he himself was reviewing it now, you will see that, despite a strong will and a mind quick to act, the freedom of his will had always been hampered by circumstance.

Circumstance from the first had determined that he should be a Lord.

I leave it to philosophers to determine what Circumstance is. I can only say that from a fair knowledge of life, Circumstance seems to me more than a fortuitous happening of things. Who does not know the man of integrity and ability, the man destined for the Presidency or the College chair, who remains in an office all his life? Luck is somehow against him. Or the man who, starting in life with everything against him, arrives, not by creeping, but by leaps and bounds.

I do not wish to cast a shade on individual effort; I only say this: If you ever find Circumstance, whose other name is Fortune, feeling for you in order to make you a lord, don't kick, for when Fortune takes an interest in a man, she is cunning as a woman. She is a woman in fact.

At half past nine, a knock came to the door. It was opened by Church, who ushered in Teresa, Countess of Rochester.

Jones rose from his chair, Church shut the door, and they found themselves alone and face to face.

The girl did not sit down. She stood holding the back of a chair, and looking at the man before her. She looked scared, dazed, like a person suddenly awakened from sleep, in a strange place.

Jones knew at once.

"You have guessed the truth," said he, "that I am not your husband."

"I knew it," she replied, "when you told us in the drawing-room— The others thought you mad. I knew you were speaking the truth."

"That was why you ran from the room."

"Yes; what more have you to say?"

"I have a very great deal more to say; will you not sit down?"

She sat down on the edge of a chair, folded her hands and continued looking at him with that scared, hunted expression.

"I want to say just this," said Jones. "Right through this business from the very start I have tried to play a straight game. I can guess from your face that you fear me as if I were something horrible. I don't blame you. I ask you to listen to me.

"Your husband took advantage of two facts: the fact that I am his twin image, as he called it, and the fact that I was temporarily without money and stranded in London. I am not a drunkard, but that night I came under the influence of strong drink. He took advantage of that to send me home as himself. I am going to say a nasty thing; that was not the action of a gentleman."

The girl winced.

"Never," went on Jones, "would I say things against a man who is dead, yet I am forced to tell you the truth, so that you may see this man as he was—wait."

He went to the bureau and took out some papers. He handed her one. She read the contents:

"Stick to it—if you can. You'll see why I couldn't.

"ROCHESTER."

"That is your husband's handwriting?"

"Yes."

"Now think for a moment of his act as regards yourself. He sent me, a stranger, home, never thinking a thought about you."

Her breath choked back.

"As for me," went on Jones, "from the very first moment I saw you, I have thought of you and your welfare. I told my story for your sake, so that things might be cleared up, and they put me in an asylum for my pains. I escaped, I am here, and for your sake I am saying all this. Does it give me pleasure to show you your husband's character? I would sooner cut off my right hand, but that would not help you. You have got to know, else I cannot possibly get out of this. Read these."

He handed her the Plinlimon letters.

She read them carefully. Whilst she was doing so, he sat down and waited.

"These were written two years ago," said she in a sad voice, as she folded them together, "a year after we were married."

It was the tone of her voice that did it—as she handed the letters back to him, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears.

He put them back in the bureau without a word. He felt that he had struck the innocent again and most cruelly.

Then he came back to the chair on which he had been sitting and stood holding its back.

"You see how we are both placed," said he. "To prove your husband's death, all my business would have to be raked up. I don't mind, because I have acted straight, but you would mind. The fact of his suicide, the fact of his sending me home—everything, that would hit you again and again. Yet, look at your position—I do not know what we are to do. If I go away and go back to the States, I leave you before the world as the wife of a man still living who has deserted you, if I stay and go on being the Earl of Rochester, you are tied to a phantom."

He paced the floor, head down, wrestling with an insoluble problem, whilst she sat looking at him.

"Which is the easiest for you to do?" asked she.

"Oh, me," said he; "I'm not thinking of myself—back to the States, of course, but that's out of the question—there are lots of easy things to do, but when my case comes in contact with yours, there's nothing easy to do. Do you think it was easy for me to go off that night and leave you waiting for me, feeling that you thought me a skunk? No, that was not easy."

She had been sitting very calm and still up till now, then suddenly she looked down. She burst into tears.

"Oh," she cried, "why were you not him—if he had only been you. He cared nothing for me, yet I loved him—you—you—"

"I care for nothing at all but you," said he.

She shuddered all over and turned her head away.

"That's the mischief of it as far as I am concerned," he went on. "I can't escape without injuring you and so myself—yet I don't wonder at your hating me."

She turned her face to him, it was flushed and wet.

"I do not hate you," said she; "you are the only man I ever met—unselfish."

"No," he said, "I'm selfish. It's just because I love you that I think of you more than myself, and I love you because you are good and sweet. I could not do you wrong just because of that. If you were another woman, I would not bother about you. I'd be cruel enough, I reckon, and go off and leave you tied up, and get back to the States—but you are you, and that's my bother. I did not know till now how I was tied to you; yesterday at that asylum place and all last night I did not think of you. My one thought was to get away. I came here to-day, driven by want of money. I was so angry with the whole business, I determined to go on being Rochester—then you came into my mind and I sent Church to ask you to come and see me—much good it has done."

"I don't know," she said.

He looked at her quickly. Her glance fell.

Next moment he was beside her, kneeling and holding her hand.

For a moment, they said not one word. Then he spoke as though answering questions.

"We can get married— Oh, I don't mind going on being the Earl of Rochester. There were times when I thought I'd go cracked—but now you know the truth, I reckon I can go on pretending. People can have the marriage ceremony performed twice—of course, it would have to be private—I can't think this is true—I don't believe you can ever care for me—I don't know, maybe you will—do you care for me for myself in the least—I reckon I'm half mad, but say—when did you begin to like me for myself—was it only just because you thought I was unselfish—was it—"

"If I like you at all," she said, with a little catch in her voice, "perhaps it was that—night—"

"What night?"

"The night you struck—"

"The Russian—but you thought I was him then."

"Perhaps," said she, dreamily, "but, I thought it was unlike him—do you understand?"

"I don't know. I understand nothing but that I have got you to care for always, to worship, to lay myself down for you to trample on."

* * * * *

"Good-night," said she at last.

She was standing, preparing to go. "The family know the truth, at least they are sure of the truth, but, as you say, they can do nothing. Imagine their feelings when I tell them what we have agreed on! With me on your side they are absolutely helpless."

* * * * *

There is, fortunately enough, no law preventing two married people being re-married, privately; the good old lawyers of England considering, no doubt, that a man having gone through the ceremony once would think it enough.

* * * * *

All this that I have been telling you happened some years ago, years marked by some very practical and brilliant speeches in the House of Lords and the death of the Hon. Venetia Birdbrook from liver complaint. It is a queer story, but not queerer than the face of the Dowager Countess of Rochester when she reads in private all the nice complimentary things that the papers have to say about her son.

THE END

* * * * * *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Sea Plunder $1.30 net The Gold Trail $1.30 net The Pearl Fishers $1.30 net Poppyland $2.00 net The New Optimism $1.00 net The Poems of Francois Villon. Translated by H. De Vere Stacpoole. Boards $3.00 net Half Morocco $7.50 net