Poison shadows
Date: 2025-12-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Detective and mystery stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction

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Title: Poison shadows

Author: William Le Queux

Release date: December 1, 2025 [eBook #77378]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77378

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POISON SHADOWS ***

POISON SHADOWS

BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
AUTHOR OF “THE TATTOO MYSTERY”

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

[COPYRIGHT]

Published in England under the title
“THE CHAMELEON”

Copyright, 1927, by
WILLIAM Le QUEUX

CONTENTS

I. A SOUL FOR SALE

II. THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT

III. WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW

IV. THE SIGN OF EVIL

V. SHADOWS

VI. MISTRESS AND MAN

VII. THE MAN WITH RED HAIR

VIII. MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE

IX. THE LURE OF THE SNOW

X. SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”

XI. A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE

XII. WITHOUT FEAR

XIII. TRUTH OR FANTASY?

XIV. UNCLEAN HANDS

XV. THE SECRET CAVALIER

XVI. MAN AND WOMAN

XVII. EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY

XVIII. THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

XIX. THE DEVIL’S PARADE

XX. THE SHADOW

XXI. THE GREEN BAIZE APRON

XXII. UNDER THE HAMMER

XXIII. OUR SINISTER WORLD

XXIV. UNKNOWN!

XXV. THE DOWNWARD STEP

XXVI. BEFORE THE DAWN

XXVII. BY WIRELESS

XXVIII. A DEADLOCK

XXIX. FURTHER MYSTERY

XXX. THE PLOT

XXXI. REJUVENATION

XXXII. THE MONKEY-GOD

XXXIII. CONCLUSION

ENDNOTE

POISON SHADOWS

CHAPTER I.
A SOUL FOR SALE

“You must be firm, Gordon. It doesn’t matter in the least whether Sibell loves him or hates him. She must marry him, otherwise we shall both find ourselves in the cart. So there must be no argument. Don’t you agree?” asked the woman.

“Of course I agree, my dear Etta. But my ward is stubborn and absolutely refuses to see him again,” replied the bald-headed, deformed man who stood at Lady Wyndcliffe’s side at the window of her private sitting-room overlooking the golden sands and summer sea at the Grand Hotel on the Digue at Knocke, on the Belgian coast.

“It’s all rot! She must be made to see reason!” replied the slim, dark-haired, good-looking woman in a flimsy blue-striped frock, which mutely spoke of the Parisian couturière. “Young Otway is all very well, but he hasn’t a penny, while Gretton inherited over half a million from his father, who made a satisfactory deal in wool during the war and by it became Mayor of Bradford. Gussie’s a bit of an ass, but all the better for us. We both want money very badly. And I’ve so far worked the cards so that he is madly in love with her. Only we must at all hazards get rid of Otway. A penniless young doctor is no good for Sibell.”

“I agree with every word you say,” replied the queer old hunchback, Gordon Routh, in his high-pitched, squeaky voice. “You and I have had many deals which have been mutually satisfactory, and now is it not strange that we should be bartering away the girl’s future?”

“Oh, hang sentiment!” laughed the Countess. “We must have funds at any cost. Gussie Gretton is rich, and if Sibell marries him we must squeeze enough out of him to keep us in all we want of this world’s goods.”

“The Bank of England wouldn’t be sufficient for you, my dear Etta,” laughed the man. “You’d spend it all, and then try and get an overdraft. You’re the most extravagant woman I know.”

“What about your own losses at Monte—eighty thousand pounds in one year—eh?” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe. “I’ve been an infernal fool at the tables also, I admit. I lost forty thousand francs at the Casino last night, and have given an IOU to the accommodating old bean who runs the show.”

“Like myself, you broadcast the handy little slips, scatter them all over Europe, and they are accepted because of your high title, and the ingenuity of your press-agent,” remarked the bald-headed, bead-eyed little man whose humorous smile lit up his countenance always. Then he looked at her admiringly, and added: “I wonder, my dear Etta, what the world really thinks of you?”

“I don’t care a Belgian franc what the devil it thinks,” she laughed. “The public know that the Countess of Wyndcliffe moves in the best society and is seen everywhere—at Court, at Epsom, at Cowes, at Deauville, at St. Moritz, and at Monte Carlo. Her photographs look out upon the suburban buyers of the sixpenny illustrated weeklies, and she has always one, or perhaps two débutantes under her wing. She is what the good people of Hampstead, Watford, Richmond, or Felixstowe term ‘in Society.’ ”

“And thank heaven I’m out of it now,” the man laughed.

His companion drew a long sigh, and her well-arched brows contracted.

“I only wish I were. It’s a wearing life this, with lots of friends, lots of limelight, and no money. Wyndcliffe is getting quite impossible nowadays. Billesdon is let to a retired straw-hat maker from Luton, and I can hardly make enough, or save enough, to live.”

Etta Wyndcliffe—or, to give her her full title from Burke, Countess of Wyndcliffe of Billesdon Hall, Rutland; Cloyne Castle, Aberdeenshire; 112A West Halkin Street; and Villa Mon Aise, Cannes—was one of the many bright young Society women of to-day who lead a reckless, hectic life with the fees they earn by introducing daughters of rich commoners into the fringe of Society.

Watch your newspaper, and you will often see in the season that Lady So-and-So gave a dance at Claridge’s for the daughter of Mrs. Fitz-Allan Smith. It is Mrs. Fitz-Allan Smith who pays Lady So-and-So heavily for the privilege of shaking hands and dancing with her guests who go there to obtain a champagne supper gratis.

Etta Wyndcliffe was one of the great crowd of impecunious aristocrats, with a wide circle of friends, some of whom nowadays open shops, while others breed dogs, others keep beauty-parlors, and still others manage to pay their way by taking the womenfolk of parvenus under their wing, and sometimes presenting them at Court. Etta was young for her age, slim, refined, with handsome features, dark, penetrating eyes, and a fine complexion. Though thirty-three, she did not look more than twenty-five, while she danced and played tennis or golf as actively as any young girl. She was the second wife of old Wyndcliffe, who went through Carey Street about a year after he married her, and she had had to shift for herself ever since.

She lived in West Halkin Street, and managed somehow to scrape along upon funds provided by the parents of girls whom she chaperoned. The hectic, adventurous life she led in London during the season, and at the Continental resorts out of it, had caused her to become greedy and unscrupulous, for she drove hard bargains with mothers of marriageable daughters, whom she hawked around in the hope of finding them husbands. Her enemies—and she had many—said very hard things of her—how, having grown tired of one particular friend, a hard-up ne’er-do-well named Eustace Power, she had induced a wealthy American girl whom she was chaperoning to marry him, and they had actually split the commission.

As she stood at the hotel window that August morning, the Countess of Wyndcliffe looked little more than a girl, with a face so innocent and charming that it gave no index to her insatiable mania for gambling, or of the fast and vicious circle in which she moved.

“You really can’t be so horribly broke,” the man said. “You got three thousand when the Clements girl was married in June.”

“And I worked terribly hard for it, I assure you. I also had the vinegar man’s girl on my hands, as well as Sibell.”

“You got nothing for Sibell, and she’s cost you a lot in lunches, theatre-tickets, and dances, I know. It was very good of you, Etta, to take her.”

“And now, just when we’ve played our cards discreetly, the infernal little hussy—excuse me calling her that, even though I am her aunt—refuses to see Gussie Gretton again.”

“He hasn’t the best of reputations, she says.”

“What man has until after he’s sown his wild oats?” she asked.

“Well, according to all accounts, Gretton has sown a pretty heavy crop. He’s already narrowly escaped being cited in two divorce cases,” said Sibell’s guardian.

“That makes the women run after him all the more,” declared the irresponsible Countess. “Sibell ought to be proud that he, with all his wealth, wants to marry her. She’s a darned little idiot. I tell you, Gordon, I’m fed up to the teeth. Gretton is so infatuated that he has promised me five thousand on the day he marries her, and I’m ready to split it with you. Then you’ll split with me anything we get afterwards,” she said, discussing the sale of the girl’s soul as she would a business deal.

“I’ll try and do my best. But she’s over head and ears in love with that young Otway.”

“Love! Bah! There’s really no such thing as true love nowadays. Smart frocks, a pretty face, and proper environment, and girls think that men fall in love. The idea of real love disappeared with the hansom cab.”

“But, really, Etta, there is surely some affection left in the world!” piped the deformed old gambler.

“Among the common folk, I suppose. Not among us. Marriage nowadays merely means the uniting of money and poverty, or vice versa. The modern girl does not begin to know what life is until she’s divorced.”

“And to you, my dear Etta, a neat little secret commission comes in from both sides!”

The pretty Society adventuress grinned.

“Well, when one has to live on one’s wits—as I have, alas! because Wyndcliffe is such a fool—one must not be too particular with whom one mixes. Heaven knows! I have sometimes to lunch and dine with most fearful crooks and howling dagoes. Only a fortnight ago in Paris I found myself in debt forty thousand francs at ‘chemmy’ at the Bel Air. It was three o’clock in the morning, and I only had fifty francs in the world to pay my taxi to the hotel. Old Ducocq, the director, a decent sort of paternal crook, took my IOU, but next day he came to the hotel and demanded as the price of its return that I should entertain at dinner at the Ritz a pair of American financiers whom I knew to be clever crooks, and two innocent Englishmen, their ‘pigeons,’ whom they were inducing to put money into some rotten scheme. In return for the bit of paper I signed, I had to carry out their demand, and I read in the next day’s Paris Daily Mail that I had asked the pair of share-swindlers to dinner. No, my dear Gordon, I’m not sailing in smooth waters, just now, I can assure you.”

“My dear Etta, you’re like me! We are merely gipsies in the world. When our hats are on, our roofs are on. We live for to-day, and to-morrow may take care of itself. The tables are my curse, just as they are yours. You’ll admit that?”

“Certainly I do. I’ve nothing to hide from you, my dear old Gordon. Do you remember that night in the Cercle Privé in Monte, when I was broke to the world and you helped me out with three billets de mille. I took to you from that moment, and I even tried to save you from plunging as you did. But you wouldn’t hear me. I don’t blame you, my dear Gordon. Why should I? I listen to nobody myself. That’s why we are both so damnably hard up and are kindred spirits—eh?”

“Hard up! Why, at this moment I have only a couple of hundred francs to my name,” said the hunchback, who had run through a fortune. “I don’t see how I’m going to pay my hotel bill.”

“I’m in just the same box,” replied her smart little ladyship. “We must raise it from somewhere even if I have to get a little loan from Gussie.”

“A bit on account of commission, eh?” laughed the man.

“If you go to the tables you can always ask a friend for a loan, making a run of bad luck the legitimate excuse. It doesn’t then look as though you really are hard up—only temporarily embarrassed,” said the Countess, pulling a wry face. “But,” she added, “I’m chronically affected that way.”

Suddenly the door opened and a bright-faced, fair, shingled-haired girl in a flimsy summer frock burst gaily into the room, greeting her guardian, and then turning to her aunt, she said:

“You’re up early, auntie! Why, it must have been nearly three when we left Roberts’. I went for a walk by the sea after that. It was simply gorgeous.”

“With Gussie?”

“No. With Leonard Capel. We’re entering for the tango competition at the Memling to-morrow night.”

The Countess and the hunchback exchanged glances.

“I don’t think, Sibell, you should go for nocturnal rambles with a stranger,” said the Countess reprovingly.

“Why not, auntie? Several other girls went for walks with their dancing-partners,” remarked Sibell. “Besides, it isn’t any worse than dancing in a night-club with some dago you’ve never set eyes upon before and allowing him to pay for your supper,” she added meaningly.

Etta knew at what the girl hinted. They had both danced with a rich young Argentine, whose name they did not know, at the Florida Club in London one night a month before, and he had paid sixteen pounds for supper for the three.

But Lady Wyndcliffe led a hectic life paid for by those she took beneath her aristocratic wing, and, after all, in the course of her butterfly career she had done much more risky things than that.

Sibell Dare was extremely pretty, with a sweet, intelligent countenance, big, wondering eyes of childlike blue, a small mouth with full, red lips that required not the application of lip-stick, and a slim, supple figure the grace of which had been improved by constant dancing. After Cheltenham College, she had been two years in Paris, and now she was as smart and attractive a girl as could be found in all London. Her aunt, the Countess, had taken her from Routh’s home at Cookham and introduced her into Society, where she had many admirers, of whom Augustus Gretton was the most ardent.

She, however, cared for none of them, being devoted to Brinsley Otway, a struggling young doctor practising out at Golder’s Green. They had met at the house of a married school-friend up at Hampstead two years before, and had been lovers ever since.

“Leonard Capel wants me to go to Ostend to spend the day. I’m going,” said the girl, feeling somehow that she had interrupted a conversation between her deformed guardian and the Countess.

“My dear child! Why, you hardly know the man!” Etta chimed in quickly. “If you want to go to Ostend, why not accept Gussie’s invitation to motor you there? I heard him ask you yesterday.”

“Well, just because Gussie doesn’t interest me at all. He’s such a he-haw, superior person that I have no patience with him. I tell you frankly he bores me stiff, for he regards himself as very superior, and, after all, his father only started life as a cheap tailor. My father was, at least, a man of independent means.”

“I’m glad you are proud of your birth, child,” said the old man in his curious voice. “But nowadays you must remember that men are judged only by their pockets, not by their ancestry. Personally, I think Gussie a very excellent and worthy fellow.”

“When I have a husband—if that time ever comes—I shall want him all to myself, uncle, and not share him with half a dozen women, as Gussie’s wife must,” replied the high-spirited girl frankly.

“A man, when he marries, gives up all his feminine entanglements,” declared Etta. “Look at old Lord Ushaw, one of the worst roués in all Mayfair. He married little Ena Urquhart, to whom I introduced him, and now there’s no happier pair in all England.”

“An exception does not make the rule,” laughed the girl. “But I want you both to be reassured upon one point—that I shall never marry Gussie Gretton—even if there isn’t another man in the world.”

The Countess pursed her thin carmine lips at the girl’s open defiance, while her guardian turned away to conceal his annoyance.

“Well, I think you’re a little idiot!” declared Etta, who always spoke her mind to the girls she chaperoned. “You may never have the chance to marry such a charming and wealthy man. Brinsley Otway is not to be compared with him; besides, he has only the few guineas he earns by doctoring. It wouldn’t buy you your shoes.”

The girl paused for a few moments, and, noticing her guardian’s head turned away towards the sunlit sea, exclaimed:

“Well, auntie, we shall never agree upon the point, so why discuss it further? I’ll be back to dinner. We’re lunching at the Continental in Ostend, and going to the Casino afterwards. Bye-bye, uncle! Cheerio!”

And the girl went out, closing the door after her.

“That seems farewell to all our hopes, Etta, doesn’t it?” remarked the old hunchback despairingly.

“I don’t know,” replied the well-dressed woman in a hard, determined voice. “We must assume different tactics. I, for one, don’t intend to be beaten, and I’m sure Gussie doesn’t.”

CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT

Three months had gone by.

The hunchback Routh and his ward were back at home at The Myrtles, a pretty, rose-embowered cottage situated at the end of a garden that ran down to the picturesque Thames close to Cookham.

It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, and Elsie, the stout maid-of-all-work, had placed the breakfast on the table of the cosy old-world sitting-room. Sibell, looking charming in her cotton gown, sat in the deep window-seat reading a letter she had just had from Brinsley Otway while she waited for her guardian to return from his morning walk.

Besides the letter from her lover the girl had received a second letter from a firm of solicitors, Harrington, Bailey, Marsham & Keys, of Bedford Row, London, informing her that by that post they had written to Mr. Gordon Routh and that he would inform her of the contents of their letter.

The letter in question she had placed beside old Mr. Routh’s plate.

A few minutes later the hunchback came in with a cheery greeting, and before he sat down to breakfast tore open the letter and read it.

“My dear Sibell!” he gasped. “Think of it! Your old Uncle Henry has died in Brisbane, and has left you the whole of his fortune and all his property!”

The girl stood staring at him, scarce believing the truth.

“Poor Uncle Henry dead!” she cried. “Why, I’ve heard it said that he had twenty thousand a year!”

“Quite. His property was a very valuable one. Besides, he inherited your Aunt Henrietta’s money also. But the lawyers say that according to his will, dated two years ago, all is left to you. By Jove, Sibell! you’re the luckiest girl in England!” added the old man.

“Well, if I am to have Uncle Henry’s money, I won’t forget you,” declared the pretty girl affectionately. “You’ve been a father to me ever since I was a tiny tot, and I know after you lost all your money how difficult it has been to make both ends meet. This place, for instance, is pleasant enough in summer—but it isn’t like Curzon Street.”

Gordon Routh read the letter again, and said enthusiastically:

“Well, after this good news let’s have breakfast and run up to town and see these lawyers. They ask you to call upon them as soon as convenient. They were your father’s lawyers, and I know old Harrington very well.”

They ate their meal hurriedly, and Sibell rushed upstairs, changed into a town kit, and at eleven o’clock they alighted from a taxi in Bedford Row, that broad street of dismal lawyers’ offices in the vicinity of Gray’s Inn.

Without ceremony they were ushered into the private room of Mr. Alexander Harrington, a white-haired old solicitor, head of the well-known firm, who greeted them, and, producing a file of papers, addressed Sibell, saying:

“No doubt my letter came as a surprise to you, Miss Dare. My late client, Mr. Henry Dare—who, as you know, has lived abroad for some thirty years or more—died on June 10th last at Brisbane, and I have his will here, by which you are sole legatee under a certain condition which I think you will not find very irksome. The estate is a very considerable one, consisting of railway securities, a quantity of valuable house property in the West End of London, the family estate at Coningsby, near Wotton-under-Edge, and the old Guest House at Hampton Court.”

“I’ve heard that the place has been closed for about thirty years,” remarked Sibell’s guardian.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Harrington. “According to the terms of the will, the contents can be sold, and Miss Dare has to refurnish the house and live in it.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” asked old Mr. Harrington, arching his grey brows. “My late client was a somewhat eccentric man. Possibly you know the romance and tragedy connected with the Guest House?”

Sibell declared that she was in ignorance.

“Well, when I was a young man,” said the old solicitor, “Mr. Beeforth Dare, a client of my father, met with a fatal accident in the hunting field early in 1895, and his son Henry, aged twenty-one, succeeded him. The Guest House at Hampton Court, together with its original Elizabethan furniture, was left to him as one of the ancestral homes of the Dares, and just at that time your Uncle Henry fell in love and became engaged to marry Mary Forrester, one of the Forresters of Glencree. A week before the date fixed for her marriage she went down to Hampton Court to stay with her fiancé’s mother, when, while out walking in Bushey Park, she was suddenly taken mysteriously ill, was carried back, and died within an hour. An autopsy was held, and the poor girl’s death was declared to be due to heart disease.

“This so upset your Uncle Henry that he had the house at once closed, just as it stood, without moving anything. His mother went to live in London, while he went abroad to his brother John who, after a somewhat disgraceful career, had gone out to the Malay States as an assistant-manager of a rubber plantation. For three years my client lived in Singapore. Then he travelled from place to place for over twenty years, never returning to England, and he has unfortunately died in Australia. Two years ago he called me to Paris, where, at the Hôtel Continental, I executed his will.”

“Then, according to its terms, I am compelled to live at the Guest House?” asked the girl, naturally much interested.

“That is so. If you fail to do so, one third of my late client’s property goes to the London Hospital, one third to the Middlesex, and the remainder to your guardian, Mr. Gordon Routh,” said old Mr. Harrington. “When he was making his will I queried the clause, but he said he intended to see you and explain his reasons why he wished you to live at the Guest House. He has unfortunately died before he could do so.”

“But as he hated the place himself it is hardly fair to expect my ward to live there, is it?” exclaimed the hunchback in his shrill voice.

“I admit, it is not. But the house, when reopened, will be found to be a very quiet and pleasant residence. It must, of course, be very dirty and neglected at present. The door has never been opened for about thirty years. The furniture is antique, and no doubt in a very bad state. If it were mine I should sell it all by auction, and have the place redecorated and refurnished.”

“That’s what I must do,” Sibell said.

“Very well. Then I will give the matter over to the firm of estate agents who have had it in hand, and you can go and inspect the place and pick out anything you wish to keep. At the same time, I will take steps to prove the will immediately, as all the formalities have been observed in Australia.”

“The place was the scene of the great blow which befell my Uncle Henry. I hope its possession will not be harmful to me,” remarked the happy girl, with a nervous laugh.

“Why should it be?” asked the old solicitor. “The death of my late client’s fiancée was a natural event, and might, of course, have taken place anywhere.”

That same afternoon Sibell and her guardian took a taxi through Hammersmith and Richmond to Hampton Court, where they had no difficulty in finding the ancient red-brick mansion, an old Tudor place built at the same time as Hampton Court Palace itself, standing back behind rusted railings in its neglected grounds, with great spreading oaks and chestnuts. The roomy old house, with its mullioned windows and high chimneys, was half covered with ivy, which had so climbed that in one part it overspread the roof. The windows were mostly boarded up, the carriage-drive overgrown with bushes and weeds, and the broad stone steps leading to the portico were deep in moss and lichen.

From two windows on the ground floor the boards had rotted and fallen away, disclosing ragged holland blinds that were once yellow, but now black and stained; while the huge, rusty padlock and chain on the gate told their own tale.

They of course could not enter the place, but even on that bright autumn afternoon its exterior looked terribly neglected, depressing, and mysterious, though the view afforded of Bushey Park, its deer and its famous avenue of chestnuts, was most picturesque and charming.

In the immediate vicinity were several other old-world houses, all of them prosperous-looking and well kept, but the Guest House, the scene of that broken romance of long ago, presented a sorry appearance of neglect, a derelict in that quiet, peaceful backwater of modern life.

“When it is put into order, repainted and redecorated, it will be a very fine residence,” declared old Mr. Routh, looking through the gate into the weedy wilderness that was once a garden.

The girl standing at her guardian’s side reflected. The falling leaves of the great trees were stirred in the golden autumn sunset, and from somewhere came a sharp bugle call from the barracks in the vicinity. Her eyes were fixed upon the heavy oak door, grey and weather-beaten, that door which had not been opened for thirty years to admit light and air to the deserted place.

What did that house of mystery contain for her? It was her possession, hers by right, and in order to secure her splendid inheritance she must live within those time-mellowed, red-brick walls.

The fair-haired girl in jumper and skirt drew a long breath. Something—she knew not what it was—warned her of some sinister influence that was exercised there. She was no believer in psychic forces. Many of her silly companions had attended séances and believed in spiritualism, but she, a level-headed, intelligent girl, had never believed in what she termed the “bunkum” of it all. There were, she admitted, certain secrets of Nature hidden from mankind, but discovered in modern times—the mysteries of steam, of electricity, of the internal combustion engine, aeronautics, submarine navigation, wireless communication, and radio-television. But the supernatural she had always ruled out, even though the Countess of Wyndcliffe, to be up to date and in the swim, was essentially “psychic”—as the term is known in Society—and she had been compelled to follow her.

That night the old gambler and his protégée returned to Cookham, naturally elated at the day’s surprises. Sibell, instead of a needy girl dependent upon the old gambler’s slender means, was now a considerable heiress and her own mistress, hence she sat down and wrote to her lover, Otway, a brief résumé of the good news and of her day’s doings.

In the issue of the Richmond and Twickenham Times on the following Saturday there appeared a letter above the signature “Scrutator” headed “The Guest House, Hampton Court,” which created a good deal of local interest, and a cutting of which Mr. Harrington sent to Sibell. The letter read:

“It is understood that the Guest House at Hampton Court is at last to be reopened, after being closed by its former owner, Mr. Henry Dare, thirty years ago. The house was built in 1541 for the reception of visitors who could not be entertained in the Royal Palace, but tradition has it—and the facts have been recorded by the archæologists Emberley and Wright—that certain curious phenomena were observed there during the eighteenth century.

“According to the earliest record, preserved in the Record Office in London, it was purchased in 1595 by a French nobleman, the Marquis D’Aire of Aire, a town in Gascony, who was French Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth—whose descendants afterwards anglicised their name to Dare. From time to time at least two sudden and mysterious deaths took place within its walls, culminating in the tragic death of the fiancée of the late owner, a pretty girl of twenty-one named Mary Forrester, who one day in October 1895 was taken suddenly ill while on a visit when walking in Bushey Park, and died in a chair in the drawing-room in her lover’s arms.

“A very similar incident occurred in the house in question in 1784, on a day when George III drove down from London to Hampton Court to receive one of the Spanish Princes. On that day, after leaving the Palace, the Marquis Henri D’Aire, in whose possession the house was then, was taken suddenly ill on descending the stairs, and expired two hours later from causes which the doctors could not ascertain.

“To archæologists and others the reopening of this house of mystery, after having been closed for so many years, will be of considerable interest, as it is known to contain much valuable Tudor furniture and many objects of art brought from France by the ancestors of its late owner, to whom its possession brought the great tragedy of his life.”

On receipt of the cutting Sibell went up to London and showed it to Brinsley Otway, whom she found in his surgery in his small corner house at Golder’s Green. The dark-haired, clean-shaven, alert young man who had distinguished himself at Guy’s and been fully qualified about three years before, stood in his rather shabby consulting-room and read it over carefully.

“It is most interesting,” he said. “We must find the writer, who no doubt can give us some further information.”

That afternoon he gave over his work to a friend, and a visit to the editor of the newspaper at Richmond revealed the fact that the writer was a Mr. Geoffrey Sharp, long a resident at East Molesey, on the opposite bank of the Thames to Hampton Court, and a well-known local antiquary.

That same evening Sibell and her tall, athletic lover called upon the white-haired old gentleman, who, as soon as Sibell had introduced herself as the heiress of the late Mr. Henry Dare, at once became communicative.

“The Guest House is of great interest in many respects,” declared the old man, peering at her through his steel-rimmed spectacles as he sat in his book-lined den. “It is mentioned by several authorities as the scene of several—well—accidental and unaccountable deaths.”

And he showed them two large volumes by noted antiquaries in which mention was made of the place and the mysterious occurrences.

“But, my dear young lady,” he added, “of course there are many other houses around which evil tradition has arisen. Much of it has been due to ill-natured reports spread long ago by neighbors who, disliking the owners of the premises, invented all sorts of stories in order to depreciate the value of the property.”

“Have there been any other stories regarding the place?” inquired the girl eagerly.

“Er—well—nothing that has ever been substantiated except the sudden deaths which were probably mere coincidences,” replied old Mr. Sharp. “Therefore, if I were you, I would not allow the matter to worry you in the least. When the place is cleaned and redecorated it will no doubt prove a most delightful old-world residence, and I, for one, hope you will one day marry and enjoy it.”

The girl exchanged glances with her lover, blushed, and thanked the old man for his good wishes. Then, later on, they left.

On the following morning Mr. Herbert Gray, junior partner in the firm of Shalford, Stevens & Gray, the well-known estate agents and auctioneers of Kingston-on-Thames, arrived at the rusty iron gate of the Guest House, accompanied by three men, namely, two of his clerks and a local locksmith. The great old padlock was so rusty that it could not be opened, hence the steel chain had to be filed and broken, an operation which took nearly an hour.

Then the quartette of explorers mounted the moss-grown steps leading to the portico, but after thirty years of neglect the key would not turn in the lock. So with a crowbar the grey old oak door was forced, and from the dingy interior came a dank, mouldy whiff of stale air. Everywhere in the hall hung great blankets of dusty cobwebs which swayed in the wind admitted through the open door.

The place was in semi-darkness, therefore the workman, aided by the two young clerks, opened the shutters and windows of room after room, admitting light and air, and revealing the hopelessly neglected condition of the house, with its marvellous collection of Elizabethan furniture, the upholstery of which, like the tapestry and carpets, was ragged and decaying. Through the dirt-encrusted windows of ancient green glass set in lead, the weak autumn sunshine tried to struggle, falling instead upon the moth-eaten carpets.

In the big dining-room there still remained upon the long table with great carved legs a cloth that had once been white, and whereon stood blackened silver bowls that had once contained fruit, an empty champagne bottle, and three dusty glasses. Everything had been left just as it was on the day of the death of Henry Dare’s poor little Victorian fiancée, Mary Forrester.

“By Jove!” remarked the auctioneer to one of his clerks. “What a chance for collectors! A lot of this must go to Christie’s. Look at that tallboy yonder, that fifteenth-century credence, and that Carolean day-bed!”

Half-an-hour or so, with their coats off, they spent opening the ground-floor rooms and examining the dusty contents, getting their hands and faces covered in dust and dirt. Now and then they heard the sounds of scurrying rats behind the old oak panelling, while ever and anon great wreaths of cobwebs, swaying in the wind, were torn away and fell.

For them all, even used as they were to enter old houses, it was a strange experience. As a connoisseur of antique furniture, Mr. Herbert Gray realized the considerable value of certain “museum pieces,” as they are called in the trade. He saw that more than one piece of Tudor and Elizabethan furniture would be welcomed in the national collection at South Kensington, and his business mind anticipated a fat commission from the sale of “the valuable contents” of the ancient house.

From the spacious, stone-flagged entrance-hall ran a broad oaken staircase with low steps, worn thin by the tread of generations of the D’Aires. Up them the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey himself, and afterwards Thomas Cromwell, the arch-enemy of the Papists and destroyer of monasteries, had often ascended to visit the Ambassador, the Marquis Louis D’Aire, in the long withdrawing-room on the first floor. And up those same stairs went the auctioneer and his assistants on their journey of investigation.

The junior partner of the firm led the way, examining with deliberation some fine family portraits by Kneller, Romney, and Sir Peter Lely as he went, and upon the wide landing came to an open door leading into a great dark apartment.

Very soon the five long windows of the huge room were unshuttered, revealing the spacious withdrawing-room, the walls of which were covered with ancient tapestry, which hung ragged, forlorn, and rotting, some magnificent old furniture, including an early satinwood spinet of genuine Louis XIV and some George I chairs, with carved cabriole legs, a lacquer screen inlaid with jade, soapstone, and agate, and a quantity of dusty but valuable old china. For the first time for thirty years the light of day fell into that apartment, and the sickly beams of the sun gave it an aspect of dismal bygone glory, of an age long past and forgotten.

“What a magnificent room!” remarked Mr. Gray, as he crossed it and, standing at one of the windows, gazed round in admiration upon some exquisite pieces of Elizabethan furniture, all original and unrestored, as they all were, also three Chinese vases with covers of the Yung Cheng period.

For a second he paused, and, placing his hand upon his chest, he glanced out of the dingy window into the neglected garden below, a tangle of bushes and weeds.

Then of a sudden, before anyone could approach him, he was seized by an inexplicable faintness, and, staggering across the room, sank into an old arm-chair upholstered in faded crimson velvet.

“I—I’m ill!” he managed to gasp to his three companions. “Oh! the pains—pains—around my heart! Oh! It’s agony!”

“Get a doctor—quick!” cried one of the clerks, while the other dashed out to the nearest telephone, leaving the locksmith and the chief clerk at his side.

The pair endeavored to rouse him, but his face had gone as white as paper, and, staring fixedly, he lay back inert and motionless in the chair. Once he drew a long breath, convulsions shook his frame, and then he remained white and still.

Within ten minutes an elderly doctor, who arrived in a car, was at his side, but after a brief examination he raised his head to the three anxious men, and said:

“A very serious heart attack! I hope it may not prove fatal. But, gentlemen, I cannot conceal from you the fact that he may not recover!”

CHAPTER III.
WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW

The doctor, whose name was Clements, dashed in his car across the bridge to his surgery in East Molesey, where he snatched up some drugs and restoratives, and ten minutes later had recrossed the river and was again beside his unconscious patient.

By dint of constant and unremitting attention, lasting for over two hours, the stricken man was brought back to consciousness, and presently was able to describe his symptoms.

“I believe this is an accursed house!” he said. “I felt a curious dizziness as soon as I entered this room. Though I said nothing, I felt a strange sensation in my arms, which spread slowly across my chest until a sudden spasm shot through my heart, causing me to hold my breath. Time after time I felt the pain repeatedly, until it became excruciating. I couldn’t get my breath, and suddenly I was plunged in darkness and knew nothing more.”

“Have you ever had similar attacks before?” asked Dr. Clements, standing beside the patient’s chair and holding his hand.

“Never. It is the first—and I hope it will be the last,” he replied, smiling faintly.

“Well, I must run you home in the car, and you must keep quiet for a few days. I will examine you to-morrow,” said the doctor. “I think you may be suffering from what we term false angina—nothing to be really alarmed about.”

“I have never experienced such curious pains in my arms and chest,” Mr. Gray declared. “I’m forty, and have had excellent health up to the present.”

“The heart is always a mysterious thing,” remarked Dr. Clements. “While every other organ of the body may be in perfect order, the heart may be seriously affected and give no warning until suddenly death intervenes. Therefore nobody should ever boast of his good health. It is always dangerous to do so.”

Hence, about two hours and a half after Mr. Herbert Gray’s sudden illness, he was conveyed by the doctor to his home at Surbiton, he giving strict injunctions to his clerks that no word was to be said in the office concerning his mysterious seizure.

The house having been opened forcibly, the locksmith that evening placed a new Yale latch upon the front door, while an ex-constable named Farmer, who frequently became caretaker on premises for which the firm of Shalford, Stevens & Gray acted as agents, was placed in charge.

The autumn twilight was falling as the stout, round-faced Farmer was standing alone on the moss-grown doorstep smoking his pipe, when suddenly a police constable on his beat made his appearance.

Knowing the house so well, he was naturally surprised to see the shutters open and the caretaker at the door. Instantly he recognised him as an ex-constable of his own Division, and, approaching, exclaimed:

“Hulloa, Dick! What’s up here?”

“I dunno! They seem to have opened this old place for some reason. It’s in a horrible state o’ dirt. I’ve been half choked with dust and cobwebs. Come in and have a liker.”

Thus invited by his friend Farmer, Police Constable Askew of the T Division Metropolitan Police, followed him into the hall, dark, dusty, and mysterious in the fading light.

“I don’t like this place,” Askew said, glancing around. “It’s haunted.”

“Haunted be blowed! You aren’t afraid of ghosts, are yer?”

“I don’t know,” replied the constable in an uncertain tone. “I don’t like this house—and never have ever since I’ve been in Hampton.”

“Only because it’s been shut up a long time,” replied Farmer. “I’ve lived in lots of old houses since I went on pension, and I’ve never seen anything more terrifying than a rat or two, or perhaps a bat. I’ve heard lots of noises that I couldn’t account for—but noises hurt nobody. I tell yer, Askew, you haven’t done twenty-eight years on the streets as I have, but you’ll never see anything uglier than your own self. And that’s the truth!”

“That’s all right,” replied the younger man in uniform. “But I’ve seen something in this here place that I don’t like at all. I haven’t told anybody, because they’d laugh at me, a constable. At the section house they’d say I was drunk, and the subdivisional inspector would have his eye on me. But I saw something here a week ago what wants a lot of explaining away.”

“Now that’s interesting!” said the caretaker. “Get a chair and let’s sit outside. I’d like to know what you saw.”

Both men took valuable old spindle-legged chairs from beneath the staircase and placed them in the portico, in the darkening night.

Distant lights twinkled across the wide, level swards of Bushey Park, while at the barracks a bugle sounded, and somewhere from afar up the winding Thames came the shrill whistle of a tug towing barges to the upper reaches.

Askew, an ex-sergeant of Fusiliers in the Great War, pulled out a “gasper” and lit it, though not supposed to smoke on duty, while Farmer filled his heavy briar, applied a match deliberately, and said:

“Now, tell me. What did you see here?”

“Something funny—can’t account for it any way.”

“Before that article appeared in the Richmond and Twickenham Times—or after?”

“A week before,” Askew replied. “I of course saw what they said in the paper about the happenings in this house thirty years ago.”

“And what did you actually see? Personally I don’t believe in anything supernatural.”

“Well, I don’t hardly know how to describe it,” said the constable, taking a long draw at his cigarette and holding his helmet on his knee. “It was last Monday week, at about a quarter-past two in the morning. The weather was rainy, and I was coming up the road to the Green when I saw something in the window just here on the left of the hall”—and he pointed to it. “It’s the window where the shutter had fallen half away. I saw an indistinct green light. For the moment I thought I was dreaming, for no light had ever been seen in the house before. I stood and watched. The light got greener, and then slowly it faded away. Once I thought that it was flames and that the place was on fire. That’s all, Dickie. Now how do you account for that, eh?”

“Did you examine the premises?” asked Farmer, recollecting the strict official orders in the case of anything mysterious seen at night.

“I did most certainly. The first thing I did was to see that the lock on the gate had not been tampered with. Then, ten minutes after the light had faded, I climbed the wall and made a thorough examination of the premises in order to be able to give evidence if any burglars had been at work. But I found absolutely nothing. I’ve been over the wall here dozens of times, especially when those fire-raisers of country houses were about. I had special orders to keep this place under observation when I was on night duty. All I’ve ever seen, however, was that funny dull green light. The dirty old holland blind was down, so I could not see anybody inside. That’s where the mystery of it all comes in. I’ve told my wife, and she tells me to say nothing to nobody.”

“Are you quite sure that nobody was in the house—no thief?” asked Farmer, puzzled, for Askew was so insistent.

“As certain as I sit here. I examined all the doors and windows, as we’ve been ordered to do, as you know. Nothing had been disturbed.” Then, after a pause, he added, “I don’t like the place, and I can quite imagine that people die mysteriously here. Why has it been opened after thirty years?”

“Perhaps it is to release the evil spirits, of which your green light is one,” Farmer laughed.

Police Constable Askew, a tall, athletic Cornishman, drew himself up in his chair, and asked:

“Do you think I’m a liar? Do you doubt what I tell you—that I saw the green light with my own eyes?”

“No, I don’t,” replied the caretaker. “But, while some people see things, it seems that others see nothing. They aren’t gifted with second sight as they calls it. How long did this light last?”

“Oh, only about a second or two. If it hadn’t been for that dirty old blind I could have seen right into the hall here. I tell you, Dickie, I’ve seen something that can’t be explained, and I fully agree with that article in the Richmond Times that this here house on the Green brings sudden death on to people. Mind you yourself don’t have heart disease,” he added warningly.

“Phew! No fear of that, old man,” Farmer laughed. “After all my years on the streets in the ‘T’ I’m not addicted to either fright or heart trouble in any way. I was married twenty-one years ago, when I joined at Bow Street. But,” he added, “don’t you think it was just a little bit of imagination on your part—that green light? Just think!”

“No. I’ve seen it three times now.”

“Tell me exactly what it’s like,” asked Farmer, most interested.

“Well, I can only describe it as a dull, pale-green glow—and then it quickly fades away. If it was at sunset I could quite imagine that it was a light reflected through a window upon some bright, polished surface, but there isn’t any sun at two o’clock in the morning. Further, the place being locked and barred as it has been all these years, there can have been nobody inside. If there had been, then Mr. Gray and his people would have noticed traces of anybody being unlawfully on the premises.”

“Quite true. They found the place just as it had been left thirty years ago. Perry, our chief clerk, told me. It seems that the heavy dust and close atmosphere upset Mr. Gray, so he went home early, a bit off color.”

“Yes. The air is pretty thick inside, I should fancy.”

“It is. To-morrow I’m going to clear up one of the rooms and bring my old camp-bed and some cooking things,” said Farmer. “There’s going to be an auction, and I feel sure the things’ll fetch good prices unless there’s a big ‘knock-out.’ ”

“Knock-outs aren’t fair. They ought to be stopped,” declared the tall man in uniform. “But I tell you, Farmer, I’d rather that you took care of these blooming premises than me. I’ll have to go on now, for I’ve got to meet my sergeant at the Palace Gates, and I have only just time,” he added, glancing at his wristlet watch.

“I’m not going to bed yet. Come back here and have a few whiffs when you’ve gone round.”

“Righto!” replied the tall constable, and, hitching up his belt, he descended the moss-grown, slippery steps, tramping heavily away in the direction of the gates of the old-world Palace of Wolsey, the point where he had to report to his sergeant.

The autumn night was still and warm. After Askew had gone, Farmer sat back lazily in his chair smoking his pipe and reflecting that for the first time in thirty years that heavy old front door had been opened. Now and then as he sat alone, whiffs of close, mouldy air came from within, air that filtered through those blankets of heavy dust-laden cobwebs which festooned the ceilings, the work of the busy spiders through three decades. Ever and anon strange noises, and creaks of highly seasoned wood, came from the dark interior. Weird they were in the dead silence, yet Farmer, used to “noises” in unoccupied houses, smoked on, quite unperturbed.

The old turret clock in Hampton Court Palace chimed the hour—two o’clock—and the paraffin lamp which the caretaker had set in the hall was growing dim because he had not replenished it before he began his vigil. Had there been sleeping accommodation Farmer would have gone to bed, but as there was none he sat quite unruffled in the old spindle-legged chair in the wide portico and dozed.

Presently he fell asleep. How long he was unconscious he did not know, but he was at last awakened by Askew crying:

“Are you asleep, Farmer? Did you see it?”

“See what?” asked the other, springing startled to his feet, with heavy eyes.

“Why! the light!”

“The light? What the deuce do you mean, sonny?”

“That funny light! It was showing in the window only a few seconds ago as I came across the Green!” cried the man excitedly.

“Now look here, Askew!” exclaimed Farmer. “You’ve gone dotty!”

“I swear that I saw it just for one second,” declared the constable. “You were asleep?”

“I suppose I must ha’ been,” admitted the stout caretaker. “But I don’t believe in ghosts and green lights at night.”

“Well, I don’t care what you or anybody says, that’s the fourth time I’ve seen that mysterious green glow. What the devil it is I don’t know—only I’ve seen it!”

“I wish I’d seen it also,” laughed Farmer, still unconvinced.

Constable Askew shone his lantern into the dark hall, but all remained undisturbed.

“Shall we have a look around?” he asked. “It won’t do us any harm.”

So the two men entered the dusty, neglected place, Askew shining his electric lantern into every dark corner, but finding nothing.

“It’s got on your nerves,” declared Farmer, when they were again standing together in the portico. “I’d ask for a change of beat, if I were you.”

“Then you really don’t believe what I’ve told you, eh?” asked the constable.

“I only believe what I see, my dear sonny,” was the caretaker’s quiet reply.

“You’ll see it one day, mark me! I haven’t told anybody, because I know I won’t be believed,” said the police officer excitedly.

“I sincerely hope I shall,” laughed Farmer, relighting his pipe and reseating himself in his chair. “But you take my advice, P.C. Askew, and get on another beat where you can’t give your imagination quite so much play.”

“I tell you it isn’t imagination,” declared the other vehemently. “Surely I can believe my own eyes!”

“You may be able to, but I’m older than you, and I find I sometimes can’t. In any case, my dear boy, I don’t believe in your green light till I myself sees it,” Farmer said frankly. “You’re surely old enough in the Force to know how many haunted houses there are about. Why, I’ve known dozens of ’em, but there’s never been any truth in any of the stories.”

“There is in this one. You saw what they said in the paper about it.”

“I did, of course. But they were only coincidences. Besides, they said nothing about this curious glow you’ve seen.”

“Because they know nothing about it,” he replied, taking a draw at the “gasper” he had lit.

“I’d write to the papers about it if I were you,” remarked Farmer sarcastically.

“And be put down as a blooming fool. Not quite!” was the constable’s reply.

“Then next time you see the green glow in the window just come straight in and have a good liker around to make sure your eyes haven’t deceived you,” urged the stout ex-policeman. “One thing, I’ll bet you, sonny, that in this place you’ll see nothing uglier than Police Officer Askew himself.” And he laughed.

“I don’t care what you think, but I’ve seen a mysterious light in this here locked-up house! And one day you’ll see it too. Mark me! Good morning, Farmer.”

And in the first grey dawn Askew turned and strode leisurely away from the Green, continuing his beat in the direction of Hampton Wick.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SIGN OF EVIL

At eleven o’clock on the following morning Brinsley Otway, having arranged with a fellow-doctor named Tarrant, living in the Finchley Road at Golder’s Green, to look after his practice for the day, met Sibell at Paddington, crossed to Waterloo by tube, and took train to Hampton Court, where they lunched at the old-world “Mitre” and afterwards went on to the Guest House.

“Ugh! What a place!” exclaimed the fair-haired, well-dressed girl as she entered the front door, which was open to admit sunshine and air. “How dreadfully mouldy it smells, and look at all the cobwebs!”

“Only what one must expect after being closed so long,” remarked the dark-faced young doctor beside her.

Farmer, the caretaker, and two of the auctioneer’s men in green baize aprons were in the dining-room, raising a terrible dust in their futile endeavor to clean up the place, so that they might catalogue its contents prior to the sale, and allow a few days’ private view.

As Sibell stood in the doorway of the great old room, she could scarcely see across it for clouds of dust. Through the open windows came the pale autumn sunlight, which showed up the general shabbiness and decay of the place, the damp-rotted carpet and hangings, the moth-eaten tapestry, and the heavy Tudor furniture.

“I could never live in this dreadful place, Brin,” she declared, using the pet name she had bestowed upon him. “Isn’t it horribly dull and depressing?”

“It is. But it is very interesting to be in an atmosphere of centuries ago,” her lover said. “The world has progressed, while this house has remained just the same. Successive owners have never altered it. It has been their creed. Apparently they held, for centuries, the same idea of keeping it just as its original owner had it. The place reminds me of the old house of Plantin, the Flemish patrician and printer in Antwerp, who started to print in 1576, and his business has been carried on uninterrupted till to-day. His house and furniture have never been altered. It is the same here in the Guest House, which should be preserved as a museum!”

“If I am compelled to live in it I want everything quite modern,” declared the girl. “I will have everything cleared out and sold.”

“Won’t you keep anything?” asked the young doctor. “I would certainly retain something of your ancestors—if I were you, dearest.”

“Perhaps I will when I’ve seen everything. But isn’t the place in a terrible state?”

It certainly was.

No word had reached either of them regarding the mysterious attack from which Mr. Gray had suffered on the previous day, or the fact that he was still confined to his bed with his doctor in attendance. Mr. Gray had ordered his staff to keep the mysterious affair a complete secret, being afraid to frighten the young lady into whose possession the Guest House had so suddenly passed. As a man of business he hesitated to be any party to the sensational tradition of sinister happenings in the place. His firm had had the house under its charge for half a century, and he naturally felt that he should not encourage any undue interest that might be derogatory to the value of the estate.

Only that morning he had again telephoned from his bedside ordering that not a word should leak out to Miss Dare.

From room to room Sibell and her lover wandered, examining the dusty, neglected home of the D’Aires, finding each room filled with furniture and objects of art which any museum would be proud to possess.

Upon the panelled walls of several rooms hung time-mellowed family portraits by great painters of the past, including one of a pretty little daughter of the ancient French house, Gabrielle D’Aire. Sibell admired it, and said she would retain it. Not till afterwards did she learn that it was one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s hitherto unknown pictures, nor that the larger one which hung beside it was a Rembrandt. Indeed it was not until a fortnight after, when the art dealers were allowed to inspect the house, that the treasures were identified.

Through the dismal, dust-laden house the lovers wandered from room to room. Everywhere the autumn sunlight fell across the faded carpets through those old leaded windows of green glass, many panes of which were broken. Over everything lay the decay of thirty years—the brilliant, prosperous days of Victoria the Good, the height of Britain’s world-power.

Together they entered a small room at the rear, the windows of which overlooked the tangled garden, where the golden leaves of autumn were fluttering down from the high elms which overshadowed the house. The little room was lined from floor to ceiling with heavy books, the leather bindings of which smelt close and stuffy—the eighteenth-century room of a studious man, which had probably been neglected ever since the accession of George the Third. The writing-table was a little narrow one like a bedside table, and the chairs were all Carolean, cane-seated and cane-backed.

“This seems to be one of the cosiest rooms,” Sibell remarked. “It shall be your own little den, Brin. You can fit it up as a laboratory, so that you can study all your germs, or ‘bugs,’ as you call them.”

Her lover, who had his hand already clasped in hers, for they were alone, kissed her upon the lips, and replied:

“My darling, any room will do for my research work. It is best upstairs in the attics, so as to be out of the way.”

“But, my dear Brin, I insist that you have a nice room, dearest,” she said, looking up into his face with eyes full of the lovelight. “This room will be quite handy for everything.”

She gazed into his face with wondering eyes—those big eyes which always held him beneath her spell, so that he could never look upon another woman with any other feeling than as a doctor would towards his female patients.

“Only if we marry, Sibell.”

“Marry? Of course we shall!” she cried. “I am yours, if you will only accept me! Did we not decide that long ago?”

“You were poor then. Now you are rich, my darling. A penniless doctor like myself is but a poor husband for you.”

“My darling Brin. How very foolish you are! What are you talking about?”

“Only that I think Gretton would make a far better husband for you. Your guardian doesn’t care for me—neither does Lady Wyndcliffe. I feel it always. I am only a mere hard-working suburban doctor, with nothing except the fees I earn in the poor but respectable neighborhood of the Finchley Road, and without even a single public appointment. Each one I seek is always given to somebody else. And yet in bacteriology and toxicology I earned honors at my examinations.”

“Don’t worry, my dear old Brin. I am yours—and you know it. I want no other man and will have no other,” declared the girl sweetly, as she drew his head towards her.

He hugged her to his breast and kissed her fondly upon the lips, for they were alone in that dingy room, nobody being near. Her words gave him the greatest comfort and encouragement any man could receive, for he realized that he loved her with that great, all-absorbing affection which, alas! comes to few men, love, alas! being so often a mere passionate pretence in order to secure sympathy, companionship, or, more often, fortune. As it has ever been through all the ages, so it is to-day, every woman of every country is open to the flattery of a man who seeks her, not from any love of her, but for his own self-advancement in finance, in the higher social scale, or the puny one of suburban or provincial bridge-parties.

The onlooker who travels the world over, and whose heart is hidebound, sees so much that is amusing, on board liners, on expensive tours, and in hotels-de-luxe from end to end of Europe or America, that he begins to wonder if there really exists any real love commencing with the capital L.

This is the note of this present romance of the writer’s observation—the love between the poor but pretty, neat-ankled girl who suddenly inherited a fortune, and with it a house of evil repute as residence, and a hard-working suburban London doctor, whose modern knowledge was equal to many great specialists in Harley Street, and—though he did not know it—his name had already been placed upon the list of Home Office experts to be called upon to analyse and fix the culprit in the next case of any fresh mystery of crime submitted by Scotland Yard.

As an ordinary hard-working practitioner in Golder’s Green he had given evidence at the Old Bailey, six months before, in a most complicated case which concerned the introduction of germs of a fatal disease into the whiskey-and-soda nightcap of a man who had motored a friend and his wife home from the Palace Theatre. Otway had, with unerring knowledge, fixed the guilt upon both the accused, who were convicted for attempted murder, Scotland Yard having afterwards sent him their thanks.

Through that trial Otway had been marked out for advancement on the lines followed by Pepper, Willcox, and the select list of Home Office pathologists whose word is law to a jury in any criminal court.

Though the pair were unaware of it, the room in which they stood had been the study of the great lawyer Sir Geoffrey Dare, who was famous in the early days of King George III, and whose name has been handed down in legal history as the prosecutor in the famous case of the Durrants, husband and wife, whom he proved to have poisoned a family of six persons in order to secure their inheritance. In that room many conferences had been held with witnesses in the famous trial, which resulted in both prisoners being hanged at Tyburn. Sir Geoffrey, who was the most famous criminal lawyer of his time, was brother of John Dare, the traveller who first explored the Areg region of the Sahara.

Otway took from one of the shelves a heavy, parchment-bound tome, and found it to be an old treatise on Roman law, while next to it was an early folio edition of Shakespeare. As a lover of books, sight of them appealed to him, and he said:

“Before these are sold I would love to go through them. This Shakespeare, though not the first folio, is evidently of considerable value.”

“You’ll be choked with dust, darling,” she replied. “Wait until they clean down the place. Isn’t it awful? Look at the cobwebs.”

They took a final glance around the dingy little room, where the light struggled in through the dirt-encrusted windows, which could not be opened because their frames had rotted. Hence the place smelt close and musty.

“When cleaned and redecorated it will be most charming,” her lover reassured her. “I can’t think what has given rise to the belief that this is a house of evil. It certainly has been neglected, and, as in many other houses all over the country, people have died suddenly here, but the evil is, I feel certain, only imaginary—the result of some ill-natured local gossip that has grown into tradition.”

Had he known of the sudden and unaccountable manner in which Mr. Gray had been attacked he would certainly not have expressed such an opinion. But happily for the lovers, the occurrence was being kept a profound secret.

They ascended the broad oak staircase, on which the thick-pile carpet still remained, though it was in holes in many places, showing the wood beneath. In the great drawing-room the lovers found much to interest them as they made a tour of inspection of the spacious apartment. At once they saw that the furniture, though sadly out of repair, was genuinely antique, and that the pictures were of considerable value. Near the centre of the room stood the ancient armchair upholstered in faded crimson velvet to which Mr. Gray had staggered when he had been so mysteriously seized with illness, and the young doctor, knowing nothing of the occurrence, remarked upon the handsome Renaissance carving of its short, bulbous legs.

Together the pair stood at the dingy, weather-stained old windows gazing down upon the big, neglected garden, where the weeds grew breast high and the leaves were floating down from the ancient trees. By its successive owners that room had been kept practically the same as it was in Henry the Eighth’s time, except that the carpets and some of the furniture had been renewed by the father of the last owner on his marriage; an apartment full of objects of art, the atmosphere of which was that of the days of the Great Cardinal and possibly one of the most carefully preserved rooms in the whole Kingdom.

From room to room they passed, ascending to the bedrooms and servants’ quarters just as Mr. Gray and his assistants had done. They saw the ancient four-poster bedsteads, with their hangings of faded and time-stained chintz, the genuine Chippendale washstands and mirrors, the old fire-screens of needlework, and cushions worked in colored wools by hands that had crumbled to dust two centuries ago.

Wherever they went they raised dust, causing Sibell to sneeze violently, and by each thing they touched their hands became blackened, the girl remarking that her gloves were already ruined.

After nearly a couple of hours they descended, and, having chatted with the fat caretaker Farmer—who made no mention of Askew’s experience on the previous night, as he treated it as mere imagination—they left and returned to London, where, after dining together at the Trocadero, Otway saw his sweetheart off to Cookham from Paddington.

Next day the young doctor, having arranged with his friend Tarrant to look after his practice, set out early for the Guest House and spent the whole of the day in the great lawyer’s close-smelling library going through his books. Already an expert from a well-known West End dealer in rare books was there at the invitation of the auctioneers, a snuffy, white-bearded old gentleman named Ebenezer Tewe, and together they dusted and examined the title-pages and condition of volume after volume.

Some of them Mr. Tewe set aside as valuable, and others which took Otway’s fancy he, in turn, put away from the others. One treasure Otway found, which Mr. Tewe agreed was extremely valuable, was a vellum-bound volume of copies of the secret archives of Venice under the Doges concerning unknown poisons, how they were concocted, how they were used to remove the enemies of the ancient Republic of Venice, and the fees paid by the Republic to the secret assassins.

As a research worker in the field of toxicology, Brinsley Otway seized upon it, while Mr. Tewe agreed that it was one of the most unique and valuable of all the volumes in the library.

“There are only three copies extant,” said the snuffy old bibliophile. “One is in the Bodleian, the other in the French National Library, and the third is in private hands in America. It was sold at Sotheby’s for £6,300, and unfortunately went across the Atlantic. The compilation of it must have meant a lifetime of delving into the faded parchments in the archives of Venice.”

“The old Italian language will puzzle me, but the Latin part is quite easy,” Otway said, highly delighted with his fortunate find.

Throughout the day the two men worked together in the close little room, regardless of the half-inch of dust everywhere. Mr. Tewe identified several rare early printed books from the Nüremberg and Venetian presses, while with them was a file of Punch, from its earliest number down to 1883, together with the first six years of the issue of The Times, bound in calf, in a dozen volumes.

But the majority of the books were out-of-date law treatises, practically worthless to-day, though among them was a manuscript book upon English heraldry, with illuminated coats-of-arms, written in the crabbed and faded hand of Sir William Segar, Garter King of Arms in the reign of James the First.

Without thought of lunch, so absorbed were they, they continued their investigations until the light faded, and then Otway, having packed up the precious volume of Venetian archives, together with two or three other books, ascended the broad staircase to speak with the auctioneer’s representative, who was in the upper drawing-room.

Afterwards he left and hurried back across London to the small, red-brick, corner house of jerry-built type in the Finchley Road where he carried on his practice.

Old Mrs. Mobbs, his housekeeper, handed him several telephone messages from patients which she had given over to Dr. Tarrant, who lived farther up the road and who was going on a fortnight’s holiday, during which time Otway had promised to look after his practice.

In the cosy little bachelor sitting-room his modest dinner was laid, a single cover, for he usually ate a chop at nine o’clock, when the last of his suburban patients had left the surgery.

He was in the act of eating a peach, which he had taken from a plate on the sideboard, after untying the parcel of books which he had brought from the Guest House, when he was suddenly seized by an unusual faintness.

For a few seconds he stood rigid. The peach fell from his nerveless fingers. Then, crossing to the mahogany sideboard, he poured out unsteadily some brandy and swallowed it. It burned his throat. At the same moment he was seized by a violent fit of shivering. Convulsions shook his strong frame, while excruciating pains shot through his extremities. He stood as one transfixed, when a sudden spasm shot through his heart, and the glass fell from his fingers and was smashed to fragments.

Instantly he realized that the symptoms were such as he had never observed before. He held his breath and set his teeth. Then, with a supreme effort, and his eyes starting from his head, he managed to utter a sharp cry which brought his old housekeeper hurriedly into the room.

“I—I’m very ill!” he gasped. “Fetch Dr. Tarrant! Quick! Tell him that—that—I——”

But, alas! the sentence remained unfinished, for the poor fellow reeled and fell senseless upon the carpet, yet another victim of that mysterious evil influence which pervaded the long-closed house at Hampton Court.

CHAPTER V.
SHADOWS

Called by telephone, Dr. Tarrant hurried along to his young colleague Otway, whom he found stretched upon the carpet, a cushion having been placed beneath his head by the faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Mobbs. The portly old woman, in her neat black, was naturally greatly agitated. The practitioner fell upon his knees and unloosened the stricken man’s collar.

“I heard him cry out, and rushed in to find him suddenly attacked. He could hardly speak,” the woman explained. “He managed to tell me to ring you up, and then he fell on the floor.”

The doctor was busy unbuttoning the young man’s clothes and feeling his pulse and the region of the heart. He could discover no pulsation, and, as far as he could judge, Brinsley Otway appeared to be already dead. There was no sign of any flicker of life. The heart, indeed, had ceased to beat!

He straightened himself and held his breath. Even to him, a medical man of long practice, the affair came as a complete shock.

“But what can have happened?” he asked breathlessly. “Tell me exactly what happened—every detail,” he urged.

“I don’t know, doctor,” replied the bewildered woman. “He’s been away all day down at Hampton Court, as you know. He gets back just before half-past seven, when I had his dinner ready. He says to me, ‘I won’t have it for ten minutes,’ and comes in here. I saw him untying that parcel of books on the sideboard just as I passed to go to the kitchen, and then I suddenly heard him cry out. I dashed in just in time to see him collapse.”

“Did he drink anything?” asked the doctor, rising and going to the sideboard, where the package of old books lay open.

The broken glass on the floor aroused his suspicions.

“Did he go into the dispensary?” asked Tarrant, suddenly recollecting that he might have gone there on his return, fagged and tired, and mixed himself a cocktail from the many bottles there, for he dispensed his own mixtures.

“No, doctor. He didn’t go along the passage at all,” declared the woman. “I know he never passed the kitchen door.”

“Nor did he go upstairs, eh? He simply came straight into this room.”

“Yes, doctor. He came straight in here after he hung his hat in the hall.”

Dr. Tarrant crossed to the telephone and rang up Dr. Randall, another of his colleagues, an old practitioner who lived close by in a new street off the Finchley Road.

Then again he fell upon his knees beside the inert form of Brinsley Otway. The patient lay there with half-closed eyes, his face white as marble and his hands cold and stiffening.

Again and again the doctor sought for signs of life, but failed to discover any. Respiration had ceased, and with it the pulsations of the heart. The attack was most mystifying, for he had never before come across such inexplicable symptoms.

Randall was an old-fashioned, white-headed doctor of the highly pedantic type, who, rather rusty and out of date in his medical methods, concealed his ignorance, like so many others, by constantly referring to his Cambridge days and making the most of his knowledge of the classics. Patients of unimportance he did not take the trouble to impress, simply doling out innocuous pills and draughts, and trusting that the poor people would not worry him further. But his better-class patients he always took great pains to impress by his ’Varsity speech and manner.

As a matter of fact, he was utterly unable to diagnose such a case, leaving Tarrant, who was nearly twenty years younger and much more up to date, to solve the mystery.

Dr. Randall’s car, as it happened, was standing at his door; therefore, on receiving the call, he at once sprang in, and in five minutes was round at Otway’s.

When he saw the prostrate man he became instantly grave, and, after hearing briefly from Tarrant what had occurred, his clean-shaven, white-fringed face assumed a very grave expression. In contrast to Tarrant—who was an alert, dark-haired man of forty, and enjoyed a very wide and lucrative practice in the district—old Randall went about with an assumed air of superiority which caused him to be very much disliked, hence his practice had greatly fallen off.

“Heart disease,” Tarrant exclaimed after a long examination. “Angina—without a doubt!”

“That’s exactly my opinion,” said Randall, though he really held no opinion, being ready to agree with anything his friend might suggest.

“He probably walked home from the station too quickly,” Tarrant said. “He complained to me about a month ago of sharp pain in the chest, which he put down to acute indigestion. On feeling ill he apparently took some brandy,” he added, smelling the broken glass.

Together they lifted the inanimate form of their young colleague upon the old leather-covered couch, and placed his head upon a pillow.

At that moment Dr. Tarrant noticed a half-eaten peach lying upon the floor beneath the little table in the window.

“Why, he’s been eating!” he exclaimed, picking it up and examining it curiously. “I wonder if this has anything to do with the attack?”

“Oh, doctor, he’s eaten one of them there peaches!” exclaimed the old housekeeper. “I meant to tell him about them when he came in, but it went right out of my head. They were brought by a young woman who said she came from a firm in the West End, and, as they were addressed to my master and marked ‘perishable,’ I opened them and put them on a plate. There was no name of who sent them. Perhaps he ordered them. He orders things himself sometimes, and they are delivered.”

The two doctors exchanged puzzled glances.

“We had better have this analysed,” Tarrant said, holding in his hand the half-consumed fruit, which still retained the stone, and regarding it with a puzzled expression.

He placed it upon one of the clean plates upon the dining-table and put it aside, together with the other four ripe peaches.

“He may be poisoned!” suggested Randall. “But if so, it acted uncommonly quick.”

“When I saw him, only a minute before, he had just untied the string of the parcel, so he must have been taken ill almost instantly after biting the fruit.”

“Exactly. He did not have time to eat it all,” remarked Tarrant. “That is, perhaps, as well, for it may furnish us with the truth concerning the mystery.”

Turning again, he glanced at the white-faced figure lying so prostrate and still, and drew a deep sigh. He liked Brinsley Otway. Indeed, everyone liked the smart, up-to-date young fellow who was such a good friend to his charity patients, and so often attended the poor without taking a fee. There were times, too, when in a poverty-stricken home his hand went into his pocket and pulled out half a crown as “a present for the children.” And the starving mother knew not that that coin he gave often deprived him of his box of his favorite brand of Egyptian cigarettes.

“Don’t you think, doctor, that we ought to let Miss Dare know?” suggested the stout old woman, who had been gazing upon her young master’s marble face. “Poor girl, I’m afraid the shock will kill her! She’s such a sweet little thing, and they’re so devoted to each other. It’s a sin that the awful truth should be told her. But it must be.”

“Yes, my good woman,” said Dr. Randall in his best ’Varsity manner. “But it must be. Alas! that our love idylls never last. It is the same everywhere—the broken column of happiness and the realization that all earthly bliss is only a pipe-dream.”

“Well, call Miss Dare,” Tarrant said. “I know her quite well. She helped us at the piano in a concert for the blind held at Hampstead a few months ago.”

Mrs. Mobbs gave him the telephone number, and he at once telephoned to Cookham. Briefly he explained who he was, and told her that Otway had been taken rather queer, and suggested that she should come up to London at once to see him.

He heard her voice in reply, asking in anxiety what was the matter with him. But Dr. Tarrant answered in a calm, even voice:

“He’s had a rather nasty heart-attack through hurrying from the station, and he is asking for you.”

“I’ll come at once,” she replied breathlessly, and, after some further inquiries, rang off.

It was past ten o’clock when Sibell, hurrying, her big blue eyes anxious, alighted from a taxi in the Finchley Road. Entering her lover’s room, she found him lying upon the frayed old couch, the two doctors kneeling by his side, while standing near, watching the prostrate man, was the faithful old housekeeper.

As she entered, Dr. Tarrant, recognising her, rose to his feet and greeted her in a whisper.

“I’m awfully sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Dare,” he said, “but I thought it my duty to do so.”

“Is he alive?” gasped the white-faced girl, bending to the rigid face of the man she loved. His collar and tie had been removed, and he lay there fully dressed, his eyes closed as one dead.

“He is still breathing,” replied the elder of the two doctors. “His seizure is most unaccountable. He was in the act of eating a peach, it seems, when he suddenly collapsed.”

“There was nothing wrong with the fruit, I hope,” cried the distressed girl. “I bought them in Regent Street this afternoon, and sent them to him.”

“Ah! I’m glad we know that!” remarked Dr. Randall. “We were told by Mrs. Mobbs that a strange woman had left them.”

“I forgot to put in my card,” Sibell said. “But will he recover?” she asked breathlessly.

“We are doing our best for him,” answered Tarrant, whom she had met once before. “His heart is unfortunately very weak.”

“But what can be the cause?”

“The symptoms are those of sudden failure of the heart,” was the reply.

“Then his illness has nothing to do with the fruit?” she asked eagerly.

“Probably not. I will send the rest of the peach he was in the act of eating, with the others in the basket and the broken glass, to Sir George Orelebar to be analysed as soon as I can. Then we shall know the truth. Of course he may be poisoned, but I do not anticipate it.”

Sibell breathed more freely, and for a long time stood staring at the unconscious man, whose countenance was white as marble. The doctors, with their stethoscopes, knelt and listened constantly to his breathing. She watched their faces. Once that of Dr. Randall assumed a graver expression.

“No! Don’t!” she shrieked, laying her trembling fingers upon his arm. “No. For God’s sake—don’t tell me he’s dying!”

The white-haired old doctor shook his head gravely, and replied:

“A flicker of the fire of life is still discernible, but whether he will pull through we cannot yet tell. It is a serious attack—very serious indeed.”

At that moment Dr. Tarrant’s big-built Irish chauffeur burst into the room and handed his master a tiny phial with a glass stopper for measuring drops. Instantly Randall poured out some water into a small glass, to which he very carefully added ten drops of the drug. Afterwards he held it to the light, examining it critically, and, while Tarrant held up Otway’s head, the other forced the draught between his teeth; and, the helpless girl stood watching.

The whole tragic affair was most puzzling. The girl had flung off her coat and hat, and, in a sleeveless gown of black georgette trimmed with silver, which made her neck and arms look like alabaster, she again sank upon her knees, and, as they laid his head back upon the pillow, she bent forward and kissed his cold, hard face in front of them all.

The room was warm even to stuffiness, so the window was opened, and through it came the chimes of the church in the Finchley Road as the clock struck the hour.

Would he live? The scene was pathetic. Of all the crowd of medical students at Guy’s, Brinsley Otway had been one of the most popular. He was certainly the leading light of the Medical School, and in preparation of charity “rags” he was always full of new ideas for “stunts.”

“I fear it is a case of mitral incompetence of the heart,” remarked Dr. Tarrant in a low voice to his companion. “The symptoms are very evident; there is the feeble pulse, œdema of the lower extremities, and anasarca.”

“Where there is mitral incompetence there is usually some pulmonary congestion,” remarked the other. “That condition appears to be absent.”

Sibell heard, but did not understand their argument.

“Is it very critical?” she asked.

“Very,” replied Tarrant. “We had better place him on his bed.”

Quickly the bed upstairs was arranged by Sibell, and the two men, assisted by Mrs. Mobbs, carried him in, when Sibell left while they undressed him.

The poor girl was beside herself with grief. With blanched face and clenched hands, she paced the narrow passage feverishly. She blamed herself for sending him that fatal peach. Would he be spared to her? If he died, then her future life would be a blank, for she could never love again. Brinsley was her ideal; she worshipped him as a god.

She remained there during the night, but there was no improvement in her stricken lover’s condition. The two doctors remained with him till two o’clock, when Tarrant left, carrying with him the remainder of the peach, and the fruit which had not been eaten.

Hour after hour, with her lover’s coat wrapped about her bare shoulders, the girl sat near the patient’s bed, while Mrs. Mobbs made tea for Randall and herself. Time after time the girl tenderly smoothed the unconscious man’s pillow, and ever and anon kissed his cold, white brow.

“Is mitral incompetence of the heart very serious?” she asked Tarrant when he returned to relieve his colleague.

“Very serious indeed, Miss Dare,” replied the collapsed man’s friend. “Few people recover, but we hope that Brinsley, being in such good health, will get through it.”

“What is the use of being pessimistic, sir?” remarked Mrs. Mobbs. “We can’t afford to lose the young master, and, moreover, we’re not going to do so,” she added vehemently.

“The crisis is from twelve to fifteen hours after the attack. That will be before mid-day,” he said.

The girl, with weary, deep-set eyes, waited till five o’clock, but, as there was no sign of returning consciousness, though Tarrant declared that he was still living, she went into an adjoining room and cast herself upon the bed, where she dropped off to sleep, thoroughly exhausted.

At three o’clock that afternoon Dr. Tarrant, having driven to Kensington, stood in the laboratory of Professor Orelebar, the well-known Government analyst, whose evidence was so often taken in criminal cases.

“The peaches you brought this morning show no sign whatever of contamination,” declared the shrunken little man in a black coat which seemed several sizes too large for him. “I have submitted them to every known test, but I have failed to establish any evidence which could lead to the supposition of poisoning. We have worked all day upon it, and Professor Grant entirely agrees with me. The glass contained pure brandy.”

Dr. Tarrant thanked the famous adviser to the Home Office, and, as he walked back to the High Street, Kensington station, he became fully convinced that the young man’s condition was due to heart trouble.

Sibell lived through an interminable week of dread and uncertainty.

She went to stay with her aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, in West Halkin Street, but each day she went to Finchley Road, yet her lover still lay unconscious, watched by a nurse and Mrs. Mobbs, Dr. Tarrant visiting him thrice each day. The report, alas! was always the same. The patient showed no sign either of improvement or returning consciousness. He lay motionless and white in that small, darkened room, hovering hour by hour between life and death.

Dr. Orlando Snow, a bald-headed Harley Street specialist, was brought by Dr. Tarrant one afternoon, and, standing by the inanimate form lying there so blanched and still, he heard from him exactly how he had been discovered, while the housekeeper described the distress which Sibell was suffering.

“She comes here every day and sits in tears. Poor girl, she’s inconsolable! It must be a terrible blow for her,” said the sympathetic Mrs. Mobbs.

“It must be,” replied the specialist. “I wonder what caused the attack?”

“Heart—mitral incompetence; that’s my diagnosis,” said Tarrant.

Snow was silent for a few moments, his eyes fixed upon the immobile countenance of the patient. Then he made his own examination, and agreed entirely with the general practitioner.

“Serious?” asked Tarrant.

“Very. I don’t like his condition at all,” the grey-bearded specialist answered gravely. “But he may just pull through”; and he gave several directions to doctor and nurse.

“Poor Brinsley,” exclaimed Tarrant. “I do hope he’ll pull through.

“The whole affair is a complete mystery,” Tarrant remarked. Then, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, he added: “Œdema of the lower extremities, anasarca, and all that.”

“Yes; were it not for Orelebar’s declaration that there was nothing wrong with the peaches, I should suspect poisoning,” declared the great specialist.

“But Mrs. Mobbs now admits that when the peaches were left she ate one of them from the basket. She suffered no ill-effects. Therefore why was Otway taken suddenly ill when eating one of them some hours later?”

“He only ate half,” the specialist pointed out. “The other half and the stone have been analysed by Orelebar and Grant, both great experts in poisons, and have been declared to be quite sound and good, without traces of any toxic substance. Yet I repeat that, if it were not for the symptoms of heart-trouble, I should certainly suspect poison.”

None, not even Sibell herself, had any knowledge of the strange experience which had befallen the auctioneer, Mr. Herbert Gray, while inspecting the Guest House, or the serious illness that had followed. Some evil influence was at work at the House on the Green. But what was it?

CHAPTER VI.
MISTRESS AND MAN

More than a fortnight elapsed before Brinsley Otway had sufficiently recovered to get up and sit by the window. Thin and pale, a mere shadow of his former self, he had been very near death, yet, thanks in a great measure to the attention of the nurse who had come from the Middlesex Hospital to attend him, and the constant care of Dr. Tarrant and Sibell, he had slowly struggled back to life.

Sibell’s joy knew no bounds when she heard that her lover was at last out of danger. She visited him daily, brought him all sorts of delicacies, and sat with him for hours while the nurse went out for her daily relaxation.

Each afternoon they were alone, and often sat locked in each other’s arms, he raining kisses upon her full red lips.

“You have been given back to me by God, my darling!” she one day whispered to him, her slim, tender hand smoothing the dark hair from his brow. “I constantly prayed that your life might be spared. And God has answered my appeal.” And she gazed into his countenance with the lovelight in her big blue eyes.

He drew down her head and kissed her upon the lips for the thousandth time, unable to utter the thoughts which arose within him. Hand in hand they sat together for fully five minutes without speaking. The fire burned brightly, and the place was warm and cosy that chilly autumn day, for outside it was dark and rainy, with the eternal honking of the motor traffic below in the Finchley Road.

“I hope the doctors will be able to cure you, entirely,” the girl said, with serious apprehension. “Does Dr. Tarrant think you might have another sudden attack?”

“He thinks it improbable. My heart is quite normal, and it only remains for me to gain weight. He says I’m to have a holiday. But where can one go in England at this time of year?” he asked.

She reflected for a moment.

“Aunt Etta wants to take me to the Riviera in the second week in November. Uncle Edward is going to New York. Why not come out with us?” she suggested.

“A good idea! I’d be delighted, if I could arrange for a ‘locum.’ But your aunt might not approve,” said the young man.

“I’ll suggest it to her to-night. I feel sure she’d love to have you. They have a sweet villa at Cannes—a delightful place on the hill. Do come!” she cried enthusiastically. “The sunshine and flowers and blue sea will soon put you right again, dear. And, besides,” she added with a delightful smile, “I don’t want to be parted from you for four whole months. It would seem an eternity.”

“Don’t you, darling?” he laughed, stroking her fair shingled hair. “Well, ascertain your aunt’s views.”

“I will. And, if she agrees, I’ll book you a berth on the Blue Train we are travelling by. Ashe, and Bevan, my aunt’s maid, are going with us. Ashe is invaluable. Aunt Etta never travels without him. Uncle Edward has some business in New York for a company of which he is a director. He is to join us for a few weeks before we come home at the end of March.”

Old Mrs. Mobbs brought up their tea, which Sibell poured, and, after a cosy meal by the fireside, they both smoked cigarettes until the nurse returned to take up her duties. Then Sibell put on her smart fur coat, and, with a silent kiss in secret, bade him farewell.

At West Halkin Street she found the Countess alone, reading in a corner of the drawing-room, a handsomely-furnished apartment on the first floor, and at once suggested that Brinsley might go to Cannes with them.

Lady Wyndcliffe stirred in her chair, and, looking over her book, replied:

“I’ll ask your uncle, and hear his opinion, dear. Do you mean that he should be our guest—or go to an hotel?”

“Why, be our guest—if he could, auntie. If we are alone, we can go to so few places. If Brinsley is with us, he can take us to dances and all sorts of shows. It was, as you know, horribly dull last year till we met Mr. Lavis.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s true I like the air on the Riviera. It always agrees with me. But the people are such a horribly mixed lot. The world and the half-world rub shoulders, and the former imitate the latter, till one can scarcely discern the dividing-line,” her aunt said with an air of utter boredom.

Lady Wyndcliffe had shown herself much better disposed towards her niece since she heard the news of her great inheritance.

“Yes, auntie. But it’s often very amusing on the Riviera—if you have a man to take you about. And Brinsley is such an excellent dancer—which you admit.”

“He is. I like dancing with him,” her aunt declared. “Of course if I can persuade your uncle to let him go with us, I certainly will.”

“Thank you, auntie dear,” cried the delighted girl. “I’ll go up and take off my things.”

And she ran to her room full of eager anticipation of a merry time with Brinsley amid the gaiety of the Azure Coast, with its palms and olives, its blue seas and flower-scented zephyrs.

They dined alone en famille at the polished oval table with shaded candelabra, and an epergne of great chrysanthemums as a centre-piece. In the dim light Ashe, the discreet, obsequious butler, a clean-shaven man whose hair was edged with silver, moved silently in the shadows of the luxuriously-furnished room, and served them with that soft voice and deftness characteristic of the perfect family retainer.

Lady Wyndcliffe, who had been out at a charity matinée that afternoon, gossiped about it during the meal.

Afterwards a friend of hers, a Mrs. Hall-Carew, who lived in Curzon Street, called for Sibell and took her to the theatre, while later on, Lord Wyndcliffe, a bald-headed, heavy-faced man, went out to play bridge with some friends in Mount Street, leaving his wife alone.

The slim, handsome woman sat for a full quarter of an hour pondering, her brows knit, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting upon her hands, gazing at the carpet.

“I wonder if it would be quite safe?” she pondered.

Presently, as though in sudden decision, she rose and pressed the bell.

The door opened a few minutes later and the exemplary Ashe entered, closing the door quietly after him.

“Well?” he asked abruptly. “What’s the matter now?”

His manner was completely different from the polite, well-mannered butler who had served dinner. He was self-possessed and arrogant, more as though he were master of the house and the Countess a menial.

“I was just going out,” he said gruffly. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, Albert,” said the woman in a low-cut sleeveless black gown embroidered with silk flowers around the hem and corsage. “Sit down.”

“What about?” he snapped. “Don’t let us carry on that discussion of this morning. I’m fed up with the whole damned thing!”

“Not more so than myself,” replied the woman, in a tone which one does not use towards servants. “Sit down, please, and hear calmly what I’ve got to say, Albert.”

“I’ll go and get a drink and a cigar first. I can be more attentive then”; and, laughing grimly, he descended the stairs to the dining-room. On his return he was smoking one of her husband’s choicest cigars, while in his hand he carried a glass of whiskey-and-soda.

He turned the key in the door and threw himself carelessly into an arm-chair. He said at last:

“Now, Etta, my dear, I’m all attention.”

The woman looked at him strangely. There was a curious aspect about the dark head with its poise of proud aloofness, its subtle air of distinction, and the unmoving, absorbed way it was turned to the man-servant who sat before her.

What had caused that burning melancholy in her eyes? Was it due to the subtle chiselling of her white, heavily-fringed lids? And the sorrowful lifting of her brows? Could that, too, be merely caused by exquisitely-sculptured contours? Or were they merely mute signals of a soul in distress—a distress so deep that the woman had ceased to struggle and had given herself up to terrible despair? What pitiless fate could have made her look like that?

“I see that something’s a bit wrong,” said the butler. “You were not like this at dinner. What’s the matter?”

“I’ve had bad news,” the pretty Countess said. “I wore my mask at dinner—as I am always compelled to wear it. I’ve had bad news.”

“I guessed as much,” said Ashe, holding his cigar in his fingers. “Well, let’s know the worst.”

“Rupert is coming to London!”

“Rupert!” gasped the man, starting to his feet. “By heaven! He mustn’t come—he mustn’t ever find you!”

“He will probably have a difficulty, now that I’ve changed my name and married Wyndcliffe.”

“It was a damned bad move on your part, Etta, ever to have married the old ass. I told you so at the time.”

“I know—I know!” cried the unhappy woman. “But he has been so very good to me, so what would he say if he knew the truth?”

“He will never know—provided you are discreet,” Ashe assured her, his rather bloated face set hard, and his brows knit in thought. The problem presented by his mistress’s announcement was certainly a very difficult one, a contretemps which would require the greatest tact and ingenuity to avoid successfully. He contemplated the end of the excellent cigar for a few moments.

“How do you know Rupert is coming?” he inquired suddenly.

“I had a letter from Eric Britton, in San Francisco, by this afternoon’s post, giving me warning.”

“I don’t trust that stiff Britton,” the man snapped.

“He knows nothing of my present whereabouts. He sent the letter addressed to Morgan’s Bank in Pall Mall, and they forwarded it on to Burton’s Library, in Kensington—where I am known as Mrs. Higham.”

“If Rupert is in search of you, then mind he doesn’t trace letters sent to Horgan’s Bank,” her companion said.

“I’ve already thought of that. I’ve written to the bank, asking them to send all my letters to the Poste Restante at Melbourne, as I am going on a pleasure trip to Australia. Instead of that, we are going to the Riviera.”

“That’s all right,” said the manservant. “But it would be far better to prevent Rupert from coming over to London at all. If he’s here, then there is constant danger. Think of the big stake we might so easily lose. Think of this present life, Etta—of the terrible uncertainty of it all; of the daily fear you have of Wyndcliffe discovering the truth. Reflect upon it all,” he urged, standing before her. “There must be some way out of this. And the only way out I see is to prevent him from coming over.”

“How can you do that, Albert?” asked the woman in despair. “How is it possible?”

“It wants all thinking over,” he snapped, a hard, determined expression on his countenance. “I must devise some plan. But we won’t trust that fellow Britton, for, if the worst came to the worst, he’d certainly smell a rat. And we surely don’t want that. No, you must just fade out for a bit.”

“To the Riviera, I suppose,” she said. “Sibell wants me to invite Otway. What do you think?”

The man, to whom his mistress was so familiar and confidential, hesitated for a few moments.

“Well, in the circumstances he might perhaps be useful. But I do hope they’re not too deeply in love with each other, otherwise it may cause us a good deal of trouble. You know what I mean?” he added, regarding her very strangely.

She swallowed the lump which arose in her throat, and in a low voice exclaimed:

“I know at what you are hinting. Please do not refer to it, I beg of you.”

“I won’t. I only point out that the less love existing between the pair, the better for everybody concerned,” he said. “On the other hand, I can see no reason why the young fellow should not go with you both as companion, especially as I shall not be there.”

“You’re not coming with us?” asked Lady Wyndcliffe, aghast.

“No. I shall have other matters much more important to attend to,” he replied in a mysterious manner. “I haven’t yet thought out this sudden danger which threatens. When there’s danger, you know, Etta, I’m the first to face it. It isn’t the first little alarm we’ve had by several. So just leave it to me to find a way out. We can’t go on much longer as we’ve been going. Happily for our success, Sibell knows nothing, and suspects nothing. Neither does your ass of a husband. But we are both out for money—big money—is not that so?”

“I agree,” his mistress said. “But I won’t go to Cannes without you.”

“I’ll get a good servant for you, never fear. I’ll see about it to-morrow. There’s a man named Nivern just leaving Lord Cathlake’s. He’s quite reliable, I happen to know.”

“Where shall you go?”

“I don’t know just yet. Rupert must be prevented from coming to London, and it’s no use sitting here awaiting disaster, is it? If he comes, then he must meet you or Sibell sooner or later. Therefore he is best over in America. Let’s see—it’s quite five years or more since that affair in New York.”

“Well, nobody knows about that except you,” said the woman grimly.

“No. You’ve led old Wyndcliffe up the garden very well indeed, Etta,” laughed the man, drinking deeply of his whiskey-and-soda.

“Give me twenty pounds,” he said suddenly. “I’ve had a rough week. Every horse I fancied went down.”

Without protest, the heavy-eyed woman rose, and, going to her room, returned with two ten-pound notes, which she handed to him.

“Thanks,” he said, as he crushed them into his vest pocket. “I’ll want three hundred or so to go on with when I leave. I’m just going out for an hour or two.”

And, carefully throwing his cigar-end out of the window, he turned and left.

Next morning, after breakfast, Lord Wyndcliffe and Sibell were sitting in the morning-room, the girl idling over a picture-paper, when they heard a violent altercation in the dining-room between her ladyship and the butler, Ashe.

“I’ll hear no more!” Sibell heard her aunt shout. “I will not stand your abominable insolence any longer! You are dismissed, and will leave the house this morning. You can have a month’s wages in lieu of notice, but I’ll not have you in my house another hour!”

And Lady Wyndcliffe dashed into the morning-room and burst out crying.

“Ashe has been most abominably insolent to me, dear!” she declared to her husband through her tears. “I’ve sent him away.”

“Insolent to you!” cried the man, starting angrily to his feet.

“No, dear!” she urged, her hand upon his shoulder. “Please don’t excite yourself. He’s gone to pack up. I’ll send his check into the kitchen, and we are well rid of such a fellow.”

“I’ve never liked him,” declared the Earl.

“Neither have I,” Sibell agreed. “He’s always seemed so abominably familiar, auntie.”

“Never mind, dear. He’s going. So we must look out for another man. Mrs. Owen Clark gave me the name of a man the other day. I’ve got his address somewhere.”

And so, an hour later, the faithful Mr. Albert Ashe, who had been nearly two years in the employ of Lady Wyndcliffe, left West Halkin Street with his luggage on a taxi-cab.

But before he went he managed to snatch a few whispered words with his mistress in her boudoir.

“When you go to Cannes, be extremely careful to hide everything from young Otway. Remember the great secret I told you the other day!”

The woman nodded, her face white to the lips.

“Well, if you hear of anything happening, keep your own counsel, and put two and two together. That’s all! Be very careful of Otway. He may be of great use to both of us. You carried out the quarrel admirably. I’ll meet you again soon, Etta! We’re out for a big stake, and we’ll win—never fear!”

CHAPTER VII.
THE MAN WITH RED HAIR

When that morning, after Ashe’s departure, Sibell’s aunt told her that she had decided to invite Brinsley to accompany them to Cannes, she at once rang him up to tell him the joyful news.

Then she put on her coat and hat and went down to the office of the International Sleeping Car Company, in Cockspur Street, where she was fortunate enough to find that a one-berth compartment on the Blue Train from Calais to Ventimiglia on the day they had booked sleepers had been cancelled, so she at once engaged it.

Otway was not yet well enough to go out, therefore she called in the afternoon and, as usual, sat with him by the fire and took tea and toast which the housekeeper brought up.

They were both enthusiastic concerning their journey south, for Brinsley had never been to the Riviera, therefore she described some of the pleasures and gaiety of winter life by the Mediterranean.

“I’m trying to persuade auntie to send out the car with Craven,” she said. “Uncle will be away, so he won’t want it. Besides, a car is so handy on the Riviera. One can run about and see one’s friends, or go over in the evening to Monte. We really must have it. I’m insisting upon it. It will be cheaper for Craven to take it across from Boulogne, than to hire one in Cannes.”

“If you use your persuasive powers upon your Aunt Etta, you’ll no doubt succeed, darling,” he said, with an affectionate hug.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” exclaimed the girl. “Ashe has gone!”

“Ashe gone!” cried her lover in surprise.

“Yes. He’s Aunt Etta’s right hand, so I don’t suppose he’ll be away from us for long,” Sibell said. “There was a row after breakfast this morning—exactly why I can’t discover—but in any case the excellent Ashe was impudent about some order he was given, so auntie simply gave him the sack at a moment’s notice, paid him up, and away he went. He was out of the house in a quarter of an hour.”

“H’m, a bit of an upset, eh?” remarked the young doctor.

“Uncle was furious, but she managed to calm him down. Isn’t it priceless? Hitherto, auntie would never have a single word said about him.”

“I’ve never liked the fellow,” declared her lover. “He always seemed to assume such superior, supercilious airs, and in his face there was a low cunning expression that always made me suspect him of robbing your uncle over the wines and cigars. When he went off duty he became the gentleman, I suppose. I met him one night at Hyde Park Corner, and he looked like a smart club man.”

“I know. I’ve seen him dressed quite elegantly when he went out. To me he was, however, always very polite and obedient. So I’ve nothing to complain about, except of his rather brusque, familiar manner towards my aunt sometimes. Several times I mentioned it, but auntie told me to take no notice, as it was only his way.”

“Well, though he used to serve me very well, and was most attentive at table when I dined at West Halkin Street, I’m rather glad he’s gone. Why I disliked him I couldn’t tell you, dearest. But I did. I can’t explain the reason. It was intuition, I think.”

“Auntie has written to a new man, and if she engages him, he’ll go to Cannes with us. He could go in the car with Craven. I’ll suggest it.”

When Sibell had kissed him and had gone, after the return of the nurse, Brinsley Otway sat in the old arm-chair with his arms folded, silent in deep thought.

The sudden and unexpected dismissal of the Earl’s faithful man, Ashe, puzzled him. Was there anything behind that violent quarrel? He himself, during the evenings spent at West Halkin Street, had not failed to notice the familiar manner in which the fellow treated Sibell’s rather go-ahead aunt. His demeanor was certainly not befitting that of a servant. Once, too, he had overheard some whispered words between mistress and man. He was alone in the study one evening, choosing a book from the shelves, and happened to be stooping down behind a small screen and thus concealed when he heard the Countess slip noiselessly into the room, followed by Ashe.

“What is that telegram you’ve just received?” demanded the man quickly in a low whisper. “Tell me the truth,” he growled threateningly.

“Here it is,” faltered the woman, apparently haunted by dread. “You need not be so fierce. It’s only from that freak Emily Taylor, who wants to come to town and stay with me.”

“Oh!” Ashe replied. “I feared it might be from him! I’m sorry. No harm done.”

And then the servant slipped out of the room, followed by his mistress.

Those strange words Otway overheard had since caused him to ponder frequently. Being on such terms as they were, it seemed more than curious that they should part after a violent altercation.

As he sat he remembered that curious conversation, every word of which had sunk indelibly into his brain. Ashe’s manner to his mistress was so deferential and obsequious at table that the conversation in question both puzzled and intrigued him. Of course he had said nothing to Sibell, but the scene at West Halkin Street which she had described caused him again to ponder.

At dinner that night, served by one of the maids, Lady Wyndcliffe, addressing her bald-headed husband across the table, said:

“I’ve seen the man recommended to me a little time ago, dear. I telephoned to him, and he came this afternoon. Quite nice and smart. A trifle younger than Ashe. He has excellent references, so I’ve engaged him. He is coming to us the day after to-morrow.”

“Good!” said his lordship, settling his dress tie. “I’m glad you gave that fellow Ashe the sack. He was always drinking my whiskey and smoking my cigars. I used to smell them when I came home at night. The fellow used to smoke in the drawing-room. I’m sure of it. Why, I came in late last night after you’d all gone to bed, and I distinctly smelt one of my cigars in the drawing-room. Been up there while we were all out, no doubt. Damn the fellow!”

“Ashe was all right if he could refrain from being insolent,” remarked his wife. “He was an excellent servant, but he had that one fault.”

“Well, auntie, we’re well rid of him, I think,” Sibell chimed in. “Let’s hope this new man will turn out well. I’d let him go with Craven in the car. Let them start three days before us.”

“Who said we were taking the car?” asked the Countess.

“Well, surely it’s cheaper to take your own bus than to hire! You know how last year we found the hire absolutely ruinous. And one can do nothing on the Riviera without a car. Besides, uncle will like it when he comes out. The run across France only costs a few pounds.”

The Earl laughed in his brainless way, remarking:

“I suppose you want it out there because you like to drive yourself, eh?”

“Well, there’s a good deal in that!” the girl admitted. “But without a car it’s simply dreadful there.”

A long argument ensued, but in the end Sibell cajoled her aunt into the idea of sending the chauffeur Craven with the car, and the new butler, to the South of France—a fact which Brinsley duly learnt over the telephone.

About ten o’clock one evening a few days later, a rather short, thick-set man in well-cut evening clothes and a five-diamond ring upon his finger entered “The Owls,” one of the small dance clubs in Wardour Street, Soho, the chief patrons of which were writers, painters, the lesser lights of the drama of both sexes, mannequins at West End shops, art students of both sexes and their models; indeed it was one of London’s centres of Bohemia—or what still remains of it nowadays.

The man, who was apparently well known, handed in his coat, signed the members’ book, and passed into the ground-floor room, at the end of which was a bar. The stuffy little place was nearly filled by a gay crowd of reckless young men and women, many of whose faces bore traces of dissipation and late nights. From the basement below came the strident strains of a jazz band mingled with gay shouts and laughter as the man, whose eyes had eagerly searched around as though expecting somebody, seated himself on a high stool at the bar and ordered a cocktail. Then he lit a cigarette, and, with one eye on the door, sat smoking and chatting to the barman, a foreigner in a white linen coat who was deftly serving drinks.

Suddenly a man entered, and, as the other waved to him in recognition, came forward.

“Hulloa, Mr. Ashe!” exclaimed the short, thick-set little man, evidently Italian from his accent. “Haven’t seen you lately, sare.”

“No, Johnnie. I’ve been away in the country,” replied the discharged butler. “Thought I’d just look in for half-an-hour. Have a drink?”

“Thank you, sare,” replied the dapper little Italian, who was maître d’hôtel at one of the smartest West End restaurants.

“You remember one day, about three weeks ago, you told me of a young man you know who lives in the same house as yourself in Guilford Street—that man who was suddenly taken ill.”

“Oh, Meester Fetherstone! Oh, yes. He’s better now.”

“It was influenza, wasn’t it?” he said, bending to him and whispering.

The little dark-eyed man raised his shoulders and pulled a wry face.

“You recollect what you told me—the conversation about detectives. There were several young men in the sitting-room that night, eh?”

“Several of them. They were discussing some secret about evil influences.”

“That’s interesting, anyway,” laughed Mr. Ashe. “They evidently know something about evil curses and such-like mysteries. Yet I don’t see why such things as curses should concern ’Varsity students. Tell me about Fetherstone.”

“All of the boys seemed most interested,” Johnnie said in English with a strong Tuscan accent. “Fetherstone comes here sometimes. He has red hair.”

“You told me about him. I wonder if he is downstairs? I’d like to be introduced to him.”

“I’ll go and see,” said the man from Leghorn, who at once went below to the dance-room. On returning a few moments later, he said:

“Meester Fetherstone is downstairs. He is dancing.”

Both drained their glasses and went below into the rather low-pitched basement, which was spacious, running as it did beneath the two adjoining houses. Around the walls were set a number of little tables at which drinks were being served, at the end was the usual platform with its jazz orchestra, while the centre of the floor was so crowded by dancers, mostly in their day clothes, that it seemed difficult to circulate.

On every hand large notices stated: “Hard-boiled shirts not allowed!” together with humorous distortions of well-known proverbs and many flags and streamers. Ashe and his companion found a table after some little difficulty, and, the dance being concluded, the Italian, whose full name was Giovanni Savini, pointed out Fetherstone, who was seated with a fair-haired, rather smartly-dressed mannequin on the opposite side of the room.

“Contrive to introduce me later on, Johnnie,” Ashe said. “Do you really think you are right?”

“I don’t know, Meester Ashe, but I have my ears open you know, and I hear a lot of discussions. My bedroom is next their sitting-room,” replied the maître d’hôtel, “and sometimes I hear very funny things.”

Ashe and Savini had been friends for a considerable time. They had first met in Paris six years before, the Italian then being a waiter at the Grand Hotel while Ashe was for some months living as guest in that colossal establishment. Then, three years afterwards, the Italian had one night served him in the Savoy in London, and they had recognised each other. The smart maître d’hôtel possessed a wide knowledge of London’s underworld; hence they were often out together late at night after the closing hour of the restaurant de luxe in the West End where the Italian was now employed.

Ashe, with his shrewd observation and acumen, had long ago discovered that his friend was, in secret, the associate of adventurers and crooks of both sexes, who brought their “pigeons” to lunch or dine at the expensive establishment where he was such an ubiquitous and obliging servitor. And, being attracted by crookdom, he had cultivated the man’s acquaintance.

Half an hour afterwards, Fetherstone’s lady friend having left him to Charleston with a white-haired and well-known portrait painter, Savini went up to him and invited him to their table, where Ashe was introduced, and the trio were soon taking drinks in the form of whiskey-and-soda served in teacups and poured from a tea-pot.

The place was now crowded by a very mixed assembly. The theatres were over, and all sorts of men and women, including many of the night-hawks of London, were shouting, laughing, drinking, dancing, and throwing serpentines to the strains of the deafening orchestra; hence conversation was difficult, and Ashe could scarcely make himself heard to the young student across the table.

The ex-butler took infinite trouble to impress Fetherstone with his air of careless bonhomie, but presently a black-haired girl, an artist’s model, came along, and, greeting the young fellow, sat down uninvited at the table and began some good-humored banter, which immensely amused both the student and the Italian.

“I like that man Ashe,” remarked Fetherstone to the Italian as they walked past the dark façade of the British Museum on the way to Guilford Street. A church clock somewhere in Bloomsbury had just struck half-past three, and the winter’s morning was frosty and bitterly cold.

“Meester Ashe is a very good friend of mine. Un buon amico,” declared Savini.

“What is he?” inquired the student.

“He does nothing. Spends a lot of money, and when he gives a leetle dinner he orders always the best. He leave it to me.”

“Yes, he’s a real decent sort,” declared the red-headed young man enthusiastically. “I’m meeting him at the Idlers on Wednesday night.”

“Ah! I am on duty that night. We have a large private party—Lord Melfort’s coming of age,” Savini said. “So I can’t join you, sare.”

“Do so another time, Johnnie,” Fetherstone urged. “Ashe is a fine fellow to spend an evening with—full of fun, isn’t he?”

Arrived at Guilford Street, they let themselves into the silent, frowsy-smelling old house and crept upstairs to their respective rooms.

On Wednesday evening, according to appointment, Fetherstone met Ashe in the obscure little club in Wardour Street, where they had several drinks, and on two occasions girls known to the light-hearted student of Bart’s carried him off to dance with them. At such establishments the girls seem mostly dance-mad, for they live a hectic, unhealthy life, often stimulated by “snow” and other deadly things which are procurable in secret on the premises—provided one has the money.

CHAPTER VIII.
MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE

Feigning to be tired of the deafening orchestra and the atmosphere of the Idlers, Mr. Ashe suddenly suggested that they should take a taxi to the private hotel off the Strand where he was living, and where they could have a drink and a smoke amid more peaceful surroundings. In consequence, half an hour later they were seated in deep easy-chairs before the fire in a cosy little private sitting-room in Norfolk Street, with long glasses at their elbows.

Ashe had been describing his imaginary travels in Chile, Argentine, and Brazil, and told his companion that he contemplated going on a trip up the Amazon.

“I’m a writer, you know. That is why I travel so extensively,” he explained.

“It must be most interesting,” said Fetherstone, much impressed by his newly-found friend’s conversation. “Authors can travel about, but doctors never, unless they enter the service of a shipping line. But that isn’t a paying proposition. I’m going in for medicine. When you work up a practice you’re in the same corner-house for life. My father has promised, as soon as I’m fully qualified, to buy one for me. Then I shall be expected to vegetate in some country town, or perhaps in some smiling village, and remain there till I expire of sheer boredom. But I’m not going to do that, if I know it!” he declared, with a laugh.

“I should think not! Be ambitious. Set yourself out a task and achieve it against all odds. That’s the only way to success, my dear boy,” said Ashe. “Apart from the scientific interest in the practice of medicine, I should fancy the ordinary practitioner’s life to be the deadliest and dullest of all professions—even the profession of hair-cutting.”

Both men laughed.

“At Bart’s we’re quite a cheery crowd,” explained the young fellow presently. “We sometimes manage to wake up things a bit in the evening. But we all dread the time when we are passed out upon the world as ‘duly qualified.’ ”

“Yes, I must admit that an author leads an untrammelled life, going hither and thither over the face of the world just as he pleases in search of fresh material with which to interest his readers. Nowadays an author can’t afford to stay at home and write about everyday occurrences. He must hit upon some new theme, and, if he is a novelist, some fresh local color not hitherto portrayed. Novelists are spread all over the world. From the Arctic tundras to the jungles of Africa and the Far East, and from the film studios of Hollywood to the slums of that almost extinct port of Vladivostock, are hundreds of wandering writers, each collecting materials and atmosphere for new books which, sooner or later, will, in pictorial covers, be displayed in booksellers’ windows”; and then Ashe, in his well-cut evening clothes, sat back, sipped his drink, and posed as an author.

“What are you writing about just now?” asked Fetherstone, much interested.

“Well, I’m busy studying a rather unusual subject—the old mediæval curses and their results. I want to write a novel and introduce some curse so subtle that it cannot be detected.”

The young man pursed his lips. The mere mention of curses aroused his interest. He did not know the name of Ashe as a novelist, yet, being no novel-reader, it was not surprising that the name was unfamiliar.

“Well,” he said, “we hear much about curses, anathemas, and imprecations and all that sort of thing in the Middle Ages, but to-day it is all out of date. Curses are only believed in by neurotic persons whose mentality is unbalanced.”

“But those mediæval curses, and the evil placed upon old houses and persons inhabiting them, I am studying, and the ancient beliefs of some of the uncivilized countries.”

“A most interesting study, I should say,” remarked Fetherstone. “Very little is really known about them, except that there are some curiously well-authenticated cases.”

“I suppose you have studied the question, eh?” asked Ashe.

“Yes, superficially. There are several houses supposed to be haunted by evil in England, and several in France and Italy.”

“Do you happen to know anything of them?” asked his companion in an artless way.

“Oh, just a little—what I’ve read, that’s all. There are quite a lot of books on the subject,” said the red-headed man. “The tales of certain old châteaux in Hungary are, to me, of the greatest interest. Until a short time ago, though I had heard strange stories about them, as any person interested in the subject hears, I placed no credence in their claims. Now, however, my opinion has quite altered.”

“What do you mean?” asked Albert Ashe, instantly interested.

“I mean that it seems without doubt that there was an evil placed upon the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoe Selo in Russia, and in consequence the régime of the Romanoffs was brought to an end. It was due to the baneful influence of the mock monk Rasputin, who caused the illnesses of the Tsar’s young son. The monk, who was an intimate friend of the Imperial Family, would prophesy that on a certain day—perhaps in a month’s time—the boy would be seized with an illness which would prove fatal. After that his accessory, Madame Vyrubova, the Tsaritsa’s lady-in-waiting, would treat him, and surely enough on the day prophesied by the ‘Holy Father’ the lad would have a sudden seizure. Then Rasputin would pray at the stricken lad’s bedside, and the poor little fellow would regain consciousness and recover in fulfilment of Rasputin’s prophecy and mock prayers. He was the Evil Spirit of Imperial Russia.”

“A very clever bit of swindling,” laughed Ashe. “But Rasputin was one of the most remarkable charlatans in history. The downfall of Russia was due to him, wasn’t it?”

“Who knows truly? As an evil-minded scoundrel he had possession of some secret, and used it to demonstrate to the Imperial Russian Family the accuracy of his prophecies and the efficacy of what he pretended were his prayers.”

“Well, if any person learned such secret of evil he could commit any amount of crimes without being found out, for he might be even on the other side of the Equator when the tragedy occurred and nobody could connect him with it. This is a complete revelation to me,” declared Ashe, with truth. “I never knew that such things could exist.”

“Not a dozen people in the whole world know the secret evil that can be influenced by some,” the medical student alleged with equal truth.

“And you are one of them, eh?” remarked Ashe, with a mysterious smile.

“Yes. The information came to me in a very curious and confidential way from an old uncle of mine.”

“Intensely interesting,” declared Ashe, whose face had now assumed a deep, thoughtful look. “It is just the baneful influence I want to describe in my new novel. My plot just requires that one thing to complete it. I suppose the truth cannot be described. It is only known to a very few?”

“A dead secret, and hardly one which should be revealed to the public, do you think?” asked the younger man.

“Certainly not, unless in such a manner that it could not be used for evil,” Ashe said. “But could such a condition of evil be invoked here in London?”

“It can be invoked anywhere. I happen to know that there is one person capable of exercising his powers in London at the present moment!”

“Is there?” cried Ashe, with a sudden eagerness that he was unable to repress. Next moment, however, he cleverly assumed an air of unconcern. Then he laughed, and asked: “Have you ever heard of a man named Bettinson?”

“No. Bettinson? Who is he?”

“Oh, I’ve heard vaguely of him as a student of the occult. That’s all.”

He was clever enough not to press the conversation further, and Fetherstone accepted him at his own valuation, that of a writer struggling into fame.

They chatted until nearly two o’clock in the morning, when, after a final drink, they parted, and the medical student walked home to Bloomsbury through the drizzling rain.

Soon after ten o’clock on the following evening, while Mr. Ashe was smoking his cigar in a comfortable chair before the fire, in his hotel off the Strand, a page-boy brought up a card bearing the name of “Mrs. Denham.” He rose and gave orders for the lady to be shown up, whereupon Lady Wyndcliffe, a smart, erect figure, entered the room.

“I’m glad you got my message, Etta,” he said. “I couldn’t leave London before I saw you. Take off your coat and sit down.”

And he helped her off with her handsome sable coat, which had been given her by a friend on her last birthday.

“Sibell is with Otway, so I was alone when your friend rang up,” she said. “Is it very important?”

“Yes, rather. Do you know whether Otway has any friend named Fetherstone, a medical student?”

“Fetherstone? Yes, I believe he has. Why?”

“I only wanted to know if they were acquainted,” replied the ex-servant reflectively. “I have reason for wanting to know.”

“What reason?”

“I’ll tell you afterwards,” replied the man, sinking lazily into his chair again, a mask-like smile gathering around his thin lips.

“It isn’t very safe for me to come here,” her ladyship said apprehensively.

“Bah! There’s nobody to follow you. You’re getting chicken-hearted nowadays. What are you afraid of?”

“Lots of things,” answered his late mistress.

“Bosh! We’ll only have to go slow for a while, till we pull the wool over Rupert’s eyes again. Very soon his own affairs will keep him from coming over to England and butting in.”

“What do you mean?” his visitor asked.

A deep red mounted slowly to the man’s face.

“You know what I mean well enough. Are you blind? Luck is playing into our hands, my dear Etta. Don’t get funky.”

He summoned the handsome woman’s downcast eyes to his, and the soul that looked at him from under a wealth of black lashes seemed writhing in purgatory.

“Danger threatens us both, so we must face the music,” the man went on sternly. “Mind that Otway doesn’t grow too fond of Sibell. That must not happen. You understand!”

“Yes, but love is the strongest chain in the world, and Sibell is in love with him. Besides, she’s independent now, remember!”

“Then I’m half inclined to think that Otway had better stay in London. Only he may very possibly be of use to us. It’s quite true what you say of love. But love has wings, and if you bore it or allow it to feel lonely, then it can fly away,” he added, with a supercilious laugh.

Suddenly the determination upon his face deepened, and he said:

“If a certain person gets to London, then we’d be able to climb out of the soup again. If he doesn’t come to London, then think what it would mean to us both!” And he paused and looked at her. “Leave me to use my wits, Etta,” he added, an evil gleam struggling into his eyes.

“And—and you want me to—what?” began the terrified woman.

“I want you to do nothing, my dear Etta, except to keep a still tongue. Go to the Riviera and enjoy yourself. Don’t write to me, or try and communicate. If I want to let you know anything I’ll write to ‘Mrs. Harrison’ at the Poste Restante, Cannes. Go there on the first of each month and see if there is a letter.”

And he rose, a surly look upon his sinister face.

“I know of something that will let the dogs loose on him all right.”

“You—you vindictive devil!” cried the woman. “I know what you are hinting at!”

“Well, surely we must protect ourselves. He’d do the same to me—if he could!” And the cold grey eyes shone with a horrible insinuation. “He’d close my lips if he dared. But two can play the same game.”

“And—and poor Sibell!” gasped the girl’s aunt, pale-faced and trembling. “What of her?”

He paused, and looked again straight into her face.

Under his gaze a look of abject horror came into her eyes.

She rose abruptly, and put on her coat with nervous fingers, her chest heaving beneath the filmy black corsage.

She came towards him with knit brows and searched his face nervously.

“Damn you! I know what you mean!” she cried at last. “But you sha’n’t! My God—you sha’n’t!”

The man who had posed as her exemplary butler only gave vent to a harsh, forced laugh as she flung herself out of the room and closed the door after her.

“Sha’n’t I?” he muttered aloud, between his set teeth. “You will see very soon, my lady! And you won’t dare to squeal because of your own neck!”

CHAPTER IX.
THE LURE OF THE SNOW

Etta Wyndcliffe had changed her mind. It was a frequent habit of hers. At the last moment she had decided that it was a little too early for the Riviera, therefore she chose winter sports in Switzerland as a prelude to the Côte d’Azur. Hence, a week after her angry parting with the estimable Ashe, she, with Sibell, Brinsley, and her maid, left London for Nature’s white wonderland at Gurnigel, the new palatial winter resort, high in the mountains above Berne.

After stepping from the comfortable wagon-lit of the Oberland Express, which had brought them in the night from Calais to Berne, they found awaiting them a powerful car, with chains upon its wheels on account of the mountain snows, and soon they were on their way, in the bright morning sunshine, upon a fine, open road which ran along the lower slope of a steep hill, affording a wide view of the snow-clad but fertile valley of the Gürbe towards Thun; then, rising higher, they passed through cherry orchards now white with snow, but in April white with blossom. Everywhere the spotless mantle of Nature lay thickly piled upon the wide, overhanging roofs of wooden chalets and outbuildings. Through quiet little hamlets they passed, one after another, until, after leaving the pretty, homely village of Riggisberg, the real steep ascent of the mountain lay before them.

“How perfectly wonderful!” cried Sibell, gazing delightedly through the window to where, far across the lake of Thun, rose the giants, the Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau, and others of that chain, with their eternal glaciers and everlasting snows.

“Yes,” exclaimed her lover, who sat opposite her. “What a complete change from dark, dreary London, with its fogs and rain! How glorious!”

“They call it Glorious Gurnigel,” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe, gazing around. “And it really seems as though the adjective is appropriate.”

They were now in the heart of rural Switzerland, and, as the steep road rose higher and yet higher by many curves, they entered the great snow-laden pine-forests, those forests which abound everywhere in that region and breathe their health-giving odor into the crisp, frosty air.

Another sudden turn of the road, and there suddenly came into view the great, long white building where high piled wood fires and a warm welcome from the genial director, Mr. Schelb, awaited them.

Inside the huge hotel they quickly found themselves in the midst of a merry winter sports crowd of young English people, the girls mostly in bright-colored jerseys and breeches, including a few in black, and gay scarves, with well-cut trousers which some girls prefer to stockings. The men were mostly in ski-ing kit, and the chatter at lunch was, of course, of ski-ing, skating, or bobbing. There was an irresponsible atmosphere of gaiety everywhere, either in the hotel or out of it, for everybody was bent on enjoyment, the high spirits being contagious; for even the elderly quickly find themselves feeling rejuvenated by the wonderful pine-laden air at four to five thousand feet above sea level.

On every side the country belonged to the hotel. To give one an idea of the size of the estate, there are over thirty miles of walks and paths on it!

They rested after their journey, then they donned their sports-clothes and snow-resisting boots, and went forth into the picturesque white world to take the Belle Vue Walk, and so make their first acquaintance with Glorious Gurnigel, the aristocrat among resorts.

Outside, Sibell and Otway, walking alone together, were at once in a great forest of snow-laden pines and firs in which the whispering wind was the only sound, for they were now high up above the abode of man. The trees bring an income to the great estate—not very much in these days, but sufficient to employ many peasants. In the colony which has arisen about the hotel there is a sawmill, and in it about a thousand trees are annually cut into boards, to be sent down to Berne and sold for the construction of chalets, while the useless branches are cut up for firewood which, in addition to the radiators, heat the hotel in winter. Of the thousand or so trees cut down, many straight stems, after seventy or eighty years of growth, go down to the lowlands to rise again as telegraph-poles. And, for those thousand cut down in the thinning process of those delightful woods, four thousand saplings are planted each year. The number is such that only one tree in four comes to maturity, for many die or grow with crooked trunks, and hence are sacrificed for firewood early in their growth.

Thus the forestry on the huge estate is no mean matter, and it was an interesting reflection, as they sauntered along a descending path beside a brook—now frozen in winter’s grip—that on those woodland paths, or open ski slopes, stretching everywhere, nobody could say them nay.

After luncheon Lady Wyndcliffe was busy with her maid, unpacking, therefore the lovers wandered along that romantic forest path, picturesque and sparkling like a Christmas card at every turn, which eventually led to the wonderful viewpoint called the Belle Vue.

At last, in the twilight, they came to a steep descent, and, rather than reclimb it, they sat upon a convenient seat to rest.

A bevy of laughing girls in bright sports costumes, accompanied by several young English undergraduates, passed by on their way back for tea, making the forest echo with their merriment, while after them came a tall, athletic man in dark blue, and wearing a guide’s cap, gliding along on skis.

In the latter both were interested, for neither had before seen a person on those long wooden laths.

“I’m quite sure I’ll never be able to ski!” Sibell declared—as she watched the man disappearing along the path.

“Oh, yes, you will. Harman, who was at Bart’s with me, went out to Wengen one season and learnt in a week,” he replied. “You’ll soon do all right under a good instructor. I’ll see about it to-morrow.”

“But look how long and unwieldy the things are!” protested the girl.

“When you’ve once learned, you can do anything on them. It’s only a question of knack and balance, like learning to cycle.”

“I can cycle all right.”

“Then you’ll very soon be able to ski,” he assured her. “I asked the concierge, and he tells me there’s an excellent instructor here, one of the best in the Oberland. He’s a Swiss from Mürren named von Allmen—all the English here call him ‘John.’ ”

“Very well,” she laughed. “I’ll have John to teach me.”

“Good! I’ll fix the lesson for to-morrow,” said her lover; and then, taking her thickly gloved hand in his, he looked into her fine eyes, and added: “Is not this place a perfect paradise, darling—a paradise for you and me? Compare the hectic, artificial life of overdressing, vice, and gambling on the Riviera with this clean, wholesome, germ-free air—this gorgeous scenery, these great forests, and towering mountains, this spot where all is natural and of God’s creation. Is it not all wonderful—glorious!”

The girl held her breath for a moment; then, as she looked into her lover’s eyes, she replied:

“Yes, it is, Brin! I am so very happy to-day—too happy, because I—well, I somehow feel that this perfect bliss is too complete to last! I——”

But Otway did not allow her to express any further apprehensions, for he suddenly took her in his arms and, holding her firmly, kissed her many times upon her lips.

Then, as it was growing dark in the forest, they rose and, arm in arm, found their way back to the huge, brilliantly-lit hotel, where, in the great lounge at the end of the magnificent ballroom, Sibell’s aunt had secured a table for tea.

“We’ve been exploring the place, auntie,” Sibell said as she sat down. “The walks are simply wonderful. I’m so delighted we came here!”

“So am I,” declared Otway.

“Ena Oxenford told me about it,” said her ladyship. “She was here last summer. No doubt it will become a second St. Moritz very soon—when people know of it. I agree that at present it is charming.”

Sibell looked very chic in her tailor-made, black ski-ing suit and well-cut trousers, the only touch of color being her bright blue and red scarf which matched her Norwegian anklets. She wore a peaked guide’s cap, and into it she had already pinned the little pale-blue and white badge of the Gurnigel Ski Club, which she had joined at once on arrival.

As they sat amid the gay, chatting English crowd, they had full view of the ballroom—perhaps one of the finest in all Switzerland—where people were dancing to an excellent orchestra. There was merriment and bonhomie on every hand, even though a party of about sixty Germans of the better class were also visitors there. Such an incident was not usual, for in winter Gurnigel is kept essentially English. Nevertheless, that season such was the fact, and it was especially noticeable that no racial hatred existed between the two nationalities. In neutral-Switzerland they were upon common ground.

Unseen by either Sibell or her lover, there was, however, sitting on the opposite side of the hall a dark, sleek-haired young man, thick-lipped and sensuous, who, from behind one of the marble columns, was eyeing the girl furtively as he lazily sipped his tea and smoked his Egyptian cigarette.

He had attempted a familiar conversation with the fair-haired, muslin-aproned Swiss maid who had served him, but had been ignored, and now his large black eyes were fixed upon Sibell, whose beauty and smartness were outstanding, even amid that very smart crowd.

“I really think that winter sports are a fitting prelude to the Riviera,” Sibell’s aunt was saying, as she lazily selected a cigarette from her gold case and tapped it. “Agatha, that little American cat whom I took around last season, wanted to go to St. Moritz, but I refused. I’m sorry now that I didn’t go. Of course, you two will go ski-ing to-morrow.”

“Yes,” replied the girl. “We’re both having our first lesson with John. I saw him in the hall just as we came in. Isn’t he a good-looking boy, Brin?”

Her lover agreed, and then suggested to her that they should dance.

Next moment they were upon the well-kept floor of the great white-and-gold ballroom, where at the many tables around sat a gay crowd of winter sports devotees, yet still unaware of the pair of dark eyes of the man, seated half-concealed, who somehow appeared fascinated by Sibell’s outstanding beauty.

Gurnigel in summer is a marvellous woodland retreat—a gorgeous spot where no sound disturbs the mountain silence save the singing of the birds, the ripple of the many streams, the musical tinkle of the cow-bells, and perhaps the blows of the woodman’s axe. But as soon as the slow, sleek cows with their bells are driven in and the first snow of winter falls, there comes a transformation to a great snow-clad countryside, wherein a gay crowd disport themselves in genuine good humor and with united efforts to make fun out of everything. There is no standoffishness, nor are there unsociable cliques. The newcomer of either sex is instantly welcomed, taken into the circle, so that there is never any lack of companions for ski-ing, or partners for dancing.

The joyous convivialities of January are events one will long remember, for neither trouble nor expense are spared to effect the success of the various festivals, the guests entering into the true spirit of things, so that there is not a single dull moment; all goes with a swing, and it becomes a time of strenuous gaiety. If the weather happens to be bad, or the snow may leave a little to be desired, then there are all kinds of indoor games—bowls, indoor curling, ping-pong, and hosts of other diversions, the tea-time dancing being not the least, and the merry crowd pities the poor drenched and fog-bound folk at home.

It was so with the new arrivals—indeed, with everyone who came fresh from London.

Glorious Gurnigel was, they found, indeed glorious in every sense of the term.

When, later, Sibell, in a dainty white dance frock embroidered with beads, which suited her fair complexion so admirably, came down to meet the young doctor for dinner, she encountered in the long, red-carpeted corridor, that ran parallel with the ballroom, the tall, erect young man whose eyes had been on her while she had sat at tea and while she had danced.

He idled past her, smiled broadly, whispered something, and, bowing, wished her “Good evening” in a low tone in German.

With her English hauteur she drew herself up, stared him full in the face, and passed on, nevertheless remembering that at such resorts introductions are easily made, and friendships as easily dropped.

When, a few moments later, Otway and her aunt joined her, she made no mention of the incident. She knew it would most certainly provoke her lover’s indignation that she could not be left for a moment alone in the hotel without a stranger attempting to get in conversation with her; and, besides, she did not desire a scene.

That evening, after dining in the fine restaurant, they occupied a table at the end of the ballroom near the orchestra, and many times the happy pair danced together, refraining only when a “Paul Jones” was announced.

Next morning they had their first lesson in ski-ing. The tall, athletic young Swiss ski-instructor, in his neat blue suit, with his guide’s badge upon his breast, fitted their skis to their boots and took them out upon what is known as the “nursery slopes,” where all beginners make a start by learning to stand on their skis and how to fall into the soft, powdery snow in such a manner that they do not injure themselves.

In spite of many tumbles and much humorous banter, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves for two hours, unconscious still that that pair of evil, black eyes was closely watching them from a window on the first floor with that same fixed, sinister expression.

That afternoon, after luncheon, the pair, oblivious of the attention they had attracted, joined a small party of skiers, and climbed above the tree-line to the summit of Mount Gurnigel, a matter of another thousand feet or so, where, standing in the afternoon sunshine upon the verandah of the weather-beaten shelter hut of the Swiss Alpine Club, they gazed at one of the most marvellous panoramas of valley, lake, and mountain in all Switzerland. Before them, far below, lay the whole of the district of Thun and its delightful lake, flanked on one side by the mountains of the Emmental, and on the other by the jagged, frowning Stockhorn, and the conical Niesen, with the steepest mountain railway in Europe, while beyond rose, white, majestic, and just tipped by the delicate rose light of the Alpine glow, the Jungfrau and her neighbors. The scene was like one obtained from an aeroplane, and, as the others of the party had climbed on skis, they ran swiftly down home, first over some wide, steep slopes, then, joining the road, passed along its edge through Black Lake wood and straight down to the hotel.

But Sibell and her lover, not being able to ski, stood alone and silent in the sunset, children of the heights. Their hearts were too full for mere words.

At last, as they stood facing the giant Jungfrau, upon whose lofty crest the gorgeous pink glow was deepening, he bent and kissed her, and then, hand in hand, they commenced to descend the steep, winding road, arriving back in the hotel just as the twilight had deepened into darkness.

And as they rejoined Lady Wyndcliffe at her tea-table in the corner, that pair of dark, haunting eyes fell again upon them.

CHAPTER X.
SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”

Sibell had her second lesson in ski-ing on the third day after their arrival.

On the second day it snowed so heavily that in the afternoon it developed into quite a blizzard. But in a winter sports centre fresh snow is always hailed with delight by old and young, and the morrow, with its delights, is eagerly looked forward to.

The morning turned out to be perfect, the thermometer down to zero and the sky cloudless, with a warm, health-giving sun, while deep in the valley lay the dark rain-clouds, rendering the lower altitudes damp and gloomy.

The ever-faithful John took his charges up the steep hill behind the hotel to the gentle slopes at the rear of that range of farm buildings known as the Stock-Hut, and, halting suddenly, addressed the girl in his quaint Swiss-English:

“Now, Mees Dare, I will put your skis [pronounced shees] on, here. The snow is too deep for you to walk farther.”

While Otway was busy clipping on his own skis, John knelt down and fixed Sibell’s, she balancing herself on one foot and holding on to his shoulder. When the pair were ready to climb the slope, Sibell cried:

“Good heavens, John! I can’t get up there on these things.”

“Oh, yes, you will, mees,” replied the good-looking Swiss expert. “It is quite easy. I will go and make a track for you.”

Then, after a lot of exertion, she slipped and fell in the snow several times, always being picked up quickly by the alert John.

“Really, Sibell!” exclaimed her lover in a low tone. “I believe you are sitting down purposely, so that your good-looking guide may come to the rescue. I’m right out of it!”

He was unaware that John overheard his words, and was secretly amused. But John was quite used to hearing such talk between young loving couples who were his pupils on the snow.

As the lesson commenced, John, by giving demonstrations, explained clearly to both of them the art of ski-ing. Sibell being rather timid, as are all girls at first, he took her by the arm and steadied her as they glided together down the slope. Then Sibell lost her balance and fell head foremost into the soft snow, her skis in the air.

“Well!” asked John, in feigned surprise. “For what purpose do you fall, mees?”

“Why, to sit down and stop myself!” replied the girl, laughing heartily as he assisted her to her feet again.

A moment later she fell again, whereupon John said:

“Now, there was surely no necessity for that! Try and get up yourself, but remember, when on a slope like this, never let your skis look downhill. You must turn him so that he looks sideways uphill,” he added. A peculiarity of his English was that to him all skis were masculine. “Otherwise he will slip, and you will not be able to stop him,” he added.

After Sibell had lain in the snow a minute or two, twisting and turning her skis in all sorts of contortions, to the great amusement of Otway, she at last managed to right herself with the aid of John’s ready hand.

“Now, mees!” he said, after she had stood to recover her breath. “We will try the stem turn. This is a very important turn to learn, as it helps one in all the more complicated ones. Look! Watch me!”

He then glided down the slope a short distance and demonstrated what he meant, as the lovers watched and admired the ease and gracefulness of his ski-ing.

“Now, mees, will you try?” he said, on returning to her side, placing his gloves together in his belt.

Taking courage, the girl started slowly to descend, John following her closely, with her lover watching.

“Now, right foot forward!” ordered the lithe Swiss. “Bring it round, and press outwards on your heel. On your heel! Now, hard!”

Alas! by the time the last word of command reached her, she found herself in a hopeless muddle, and fell half covered in the deep snow with both skis practically hidden.

The first time one does a stem turn it always puts one in difficulty. But it is only a matter of knack and balance, and is soon easily learnt.

John was up with her in a moment, flying down and doing a perfect “telemark,” by which he stopped dead at the exact spot, where he stood for a second laughing heartily at her plight.

“Never mind, Mees Dare!” he said encouragingly. “You will find it quite easy after one or two failures.”

“John!” she cried, with feigned resentment. “If you laugh at me when I’m in this awful muddle I’ll loathe you!”

“Oh, please don’t say that!” John pleaded. “You started very fine, but when you commenced the turn you leaned inwards, instead of outwards.”

“Brin! You’re laughing at me!” shouted the girl to her lover. “You wait till you try it!”

“Now, mees,” said John, “I will show you again”; and he made a graceful stem turn just near her, pointing out the fault which all beginners make.

Six times she tried it and failed, but on the seventh she succeeded in turning quite well, and repeated it twice without falling.

Then, her hour’s lesson being up, they returned to the hotel. Otway was to learn on the following morning.

That day proved a somewhat eventful one for Gurnigel.

When one speaks of the winter sunshine, those uninitiated into winter sports in Switzerland naturally think of the Riviera. But in the Alps they have, in winter, sun hotter than at Nice, with clear blue sky, even though the thermometer will show ten or more degrees of frost. It is one of the phenomena of the Alps that one gets sun-tanned amidst the snow.

As they entered the hotel half-an-hour before luncheon, Otway noticed, pinned to one of the high pillars of the entrance hall, a notice headed:

“Froth-Blowers! Emergency Notice! A meeting of the Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers will be held in the recreation-room at 2.30 p.m. to-day. All Blowers are to attend.—Blaster No. 24.”

It struck Otway and Sibell as amusing, and, laughing, they passed into the restaurant to lunch, in ignorance of what was in active progress.

“What are the Froth-Blowers?” asked the girl as they sat together.

“Oh, I’ve heard of them,” replied her lover. “It’s a widespread society of Englishmen all over the world, They wear silver cuff-links with dark-blue initials—A.O.F.B.—as badge, while their subscriptions of five shillings for life membership go to alleviate the sufferings of poor children. It is a band of patriotic and philanthropic English to help the helpless.”

“I wonder why an emergency meeting has been called?” remarked Lady Wyndcliffe. “I know quite a dozen ‘Blowers’ who wear their links both by day and at evening. Woe betide a blower who forgets his cuff-links, for he has to pay for the refreshment of everyone present. That is one rule of the Order.”

“Brin, you’ll have to be a ‘Blower’!” laughed Sibell merrily. “I’ll pay the five shillings subscription for you!”

And then the subject dropped.

At half-past two, sixteen young, athletic Englishmen assembled in a side-room where games were played on wet or foggy days—which were, indeed, very few at Gurnigel—under the presiding of the “Blaster,” an elderly, round-faced man named Gordon Mitchell. A “Blaster,” be it said, is the title accorded to a Froth-Blower who obtains twenty-five recruits to the Order, and in reward he wears silver insignia behind the lapel of his coat.

Five minutes’ grace was accorded to late comers. Then Mr. Mitchell exhibited his badge, closed the door, locked it, and turning to the young men assembled, he said:

“Fellow Blowers, we have a decision to make, but it must not be hasty or ill-considered. We are all of us Englishmen, and there must be no hatred of race. This is a matter of broad principles. In this hotel there is a certain man who must be taught a lesson—and a severe one. The man in question has insulted no fewer than eight young English ladies. To one he has written an abominable letter, which I will not read, but I will hand it to you. The brother of that young girl is present. In another case he followed a young English lady, who is here with her mother, into the wood, seized her, kissed her, and, in consequence of her shrieks, another English lady had to go to her rescue. Now, Blowers, shall we tolerate this?”

“No!” they all shouted with one accord. “Let’s out him!”

“I agree,” said the grey-haired man very calmly. “The man’s name is Ira Frank, and he comes from Frankfort. We have discovered, after some inquiries, that he is a sensuous libertine and hunter of women. I have shown this letter to the director of the hotel, who, in consequence, has requested him to leave by the next automobile, which leaves for Berne at 3.30.”

“He won’t leave till I’ve had something to say!” cried the offended girl’s brother, a young London medical student, whereupon all his friends agreed, and discussed what should be done.

“Blowers!” cried Mr. Mitchell. “Silence, please! First, not a hand must be laid upon him, for he is a German. And, before anything is done, I shall go to Dr. Rothe, the head of the German party of visitors, and tell him what we have discovered, show him the letter, and inform him of our intentions.”

“Yes!” cried a voice. “Let’s pelt him out of it! He sha’n’t interfere with our girls again! He’s tried Glorious Gurnigel—and he won’t come back here a second time!” Whereat there was a peal of laughter.

“He’ll try and slip away, boys,” said another. “There must be scouts round the hotel. I’ll lead you!”

“Not until I have heard Dr. Rothe’s views,” cried Mr. Mitchell, holding up a warning hand. “We might easily create a riot here, and surely we must not do that! Reassemble here in half an hour, and I will tell you the result of my negotiations.”

And the square-built, grey-haired man went off to find the leader of the German winter sports party.

Five minutes later he was alone in his private sitting-room with a pleasant-faced, polite, middle-aged German, who, when he heard the facts and was shown the offending letter, sat amazed.

The letter was written on the culprit’s business paper, bearing his Frankfort address and signed by him.

“Well,” said the doctor in good English, “it is a consolation that he is an outsider. He is not of our party. He asked to join it, and we consented.”

“I know we are treading upon rather thin ice,” Mr. Mitchell said, “but the young Englishmen here are determined that he leave in ignominy. Before any action is taken, I would request you to consult with some of the more influential members of your party and ascertain their views. I would venture to point out this is no racial hatred, for, had an Englishman acted as he has done, we should have taken the law into our own hands in exactly the same manner.”

“I quite understand, and, on behalf of my party, I thank you very sincerely, Mr. Mitchell,” answered the German, shaking the Englishman’s hand. “If you will wait for ten minutes, I will return and tell you our views. Of course there will be no violence?”

“None whatever, I assure you. He will be only taught a lesson,” was the Englishman’s answer.

Ten minutes later the burly German doctor re-entered the room.

“We entirely agree that the fellow should be taught a lesson,” he said. “With one eye we shall laugh at his shame, but with the other we shall, alas! cry because he is a German.”

“Then it is agreed,” said Mr. Mitchell, again taking the German’s hand.

“The relations between my friends and the English visitors are, thanks to yourself, most cordial, Mr. Mitchell,” the doctor said. “You have done everything to remove any little prejudices your friends may have had against us. And I assure you we all heartily appreciate it.”

The Englishman thanked him, expressed regret that the unpleasant incident had occurred, and then went at once to where the Froth-Blowers were awaiting the decision.

In a few brief words he told them of his negotiation and the decision of the Germans, whereup a dozen of them rushed away to obtain ammunition in the shape of eggs—which they bought from the stores, there being no stale ones—decayed tomatoes, oranges, and lemons, while others went out and gathered filth in newspapers. Then, in five minutes, all the “Blowers” were posted round the hotel awaiting the fellow’s appearance.

Sibell was standing with Brinsley upon the balcony above the main entrance to the hotel, and, noticing the sudden rush of twenty or so young fellows, said:

“I wonder what all this excitement is!”

Scarcely had the words left her mouth than there was a shout, “Blowers!” and next moment she saw the dark-eyed stranger, who had whispered to her in the corridor the other night, dashing down the snow-clad hill on a small toboggan.

In a moment twenty athletic young fellows were after him. The brother of the girl to whom he had written the letter, a good sprinter, took a short cut and seized him, whereupon the others pelted the culprit mercilessly with all sorts of missiles and filth, to the glee and hilarity of a hundred or so lookers-on.

“Take that, you German hog!” cried the angry brother, clapping some filth in a newspaper full over the fellow’s face. “That will teach you to write your accursed love-letters in future.”

The scoundrel had lost his hat, and his hair was covered with broken eggs and rotten tomatoes. His clothes were such a mass of disgusting filth that they could never be worn again, and the last seen of him was his staggering down the hill to the jeers of the crowd, both Germans and English.

Truly it was an exciting afternoon in Gurnigel.

CHAPTER XI.
A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE

Before leaving for Switzerland, Otway and Sibell had paid several visits to the long-closed Guest House at Hampton Court, and, accompanied by a Mr. Sheldon, a well-known author and antiquary, the girl had picked out a number of the most valuable pieces of furniture, a quantity of old silver—including two Charles the Second cups—and a number of family portraits, all of which had been sent into store until such time as the old house should be decorated and refurnished.

The furniture included a number of very rare Caroline, Queen Anne, and William and Mary pieces, all entirely genuine, with no trace of the restorer’s hand.

Indeed, the old antiquary pointed out that a set of genuine Chippendale chairs and a Queen Anne tallboy were such as might well be acquired by the South Kensington Museum. Neither the young doctor nor his rather modern fiancée were lovers of the antique, so they merely picked out, at Mr. Sheldon’s suggestion, a few objects, as a matter of sentiment.

On the other hand, the news of the valuable contents of the Guest House had spread far and wide among dealers all over the country, and, in consequence of their inquiries, Mr. Gray predicted a highly profitable sale.

The latter was somewhat delayed owing to certain legal formalities abroad not having been complied with, but in the meantime Farmer, the heavily-built caretaker, had many applicants to view the contents privately, and many a half-crown fell into his ready palm, in consequence.

Sometimes Police Constable Askew, when on duty on that beat, would look in and spend half an hour in the little room on the left of the hall in which Farmer had taken up his quarters, the caretaker smoking his strong briar, while the man in uniform loosened his belt and enjoyed his “gasper.”

“I wonder when the sale’s to be?” Askew remarked one rough night when, just before midnight, he had taken shelter from the storm and hung up his dripping cape in the hall.

“Not till some legal formalities have been settled,” was the other’s reply. “Mr. Gray was here yesterday, and told me so. I saw a photograph of the young couple in the Sketch the other day. They had those long bits of wood fastened on to their boots—things they call skis. How they get along on such things beats me.”

“I suppose the young doctor is quite better now,” Askew said. “He had a narrow squeak, I’ve heard.”

“Yes. He was one of those affected by this house. Very uncanny, ain’t it? I’ve never been troubled yet.”

“Don’t you boast, old man,” said the constable warningly. “There’s something mysterious and unaccountable in this old place. I’m sure of that”; and he glanced apprehensively around the small, dark-papered room, where a bright fire burned in the grate and a paraffin lamp stood upon the table.

“Bosh! I don’t believe in it!” laughed the man Farmer, who had spent all the years since his retirement from the police force in taking care of other people’s property.

“You don’t believe in what I’ve seen?” asked Askew with quick resentment.

“I never believe anything I don’t see with my own eyes,” was the other’s quiet reply.

“Well, I’m not a liar, I assure you. I’ve seen something here—that’s all I can tell you.”

“And I’ve seen nothing, so let’s leave it at that,” said the man in charge of the place.

“What about those strange seizures?”

“Mere coincidences,” laughed the matter-of-fact Farmer. “I hope the facts won’t leak out or we’ll have all sorts of people here—spiritualists, ghost hunters, and those people whose dead aunts tell them what they’ve had for supper.”

“Yes. It is to be hoped it won’t come out. I’ve told nobody,” said Askew.

“But that chap who writes to the Richmond and Twickenham Times may be keeping his eyes and ears open. He seems to me to be a bit of a Nosey Parker.”

“Well, if there are any inquiries, we must deny everything,” the constable said.

“I’ve never admitted anything. You’ve got to deny what you say that you’ve seen.”

“But surely you saw it too?”

“I told you I didn’t! I’ve seen nothing, I’ve heard nothing, and I think nothing—see?” declared Farmer. “I’m only the caretaker, paid by the week to keep my mouth shut and frighten away thieves and burglars”; and he laughed heartily.

“But what’s going to happen here?” asked the constable, lighting a fresh cigarette and glancing at Farmer’s cheap alarm clock on the mantelshelf. Outside, the big trees swayed, the wind howled around the place, and the rain pattered upon the window-panes in sudden gusts.

“Happen? Why, it will be wedding-bells after the sale,” Farmer said. “Before Miss Dare left she ordered the grounds to be put in order, and there have been six men at work grubbing out all the undergrowth, taking out unwanted trees, and lopping the rest. By Jove! you should see the impenetrable jungle it was before they started. Thirty years of undergrowth takes some grubbing out. They’re letting in light and air, and making a new tennis-lawn. When it’s finished it will be a very beautiful garden, no doubt. There’s going to be central heating, baths, a servants’ hall, electric light, and all the most up-to-date contrivances. It will cost a big sum, but when a young girl comes into a big fortune, as she’s done, a few thousand don’t matter much, I suppose.”

“I expect the sale will bring in a tidy sum,” remarked the police constable, holding his hands out to the fire to warm them.

“I heard Mr. Gray tell his partner last Tuesday, when they were here together, that the pictures alone will probably bring in twenty thousand. Six of them have been sent up to Bond Street on show already.”

“Lucky girl, eh?” remarked the constable of the T Division of Metropolitan Police, rising slowly and stretching himself. “Well, I’ll have to go, Mr. Farmer. Thanks so much”; and he finished the bottle of ale his host had placed before him, on entering.

“So long. Look in again when you can. Three taps on the door if you see my light a-burning. Good-night, and good luck to you.”

Askew threw his wet cape around his shoulders, straightened himself, put on his helmet, arranged his lamp, and strode heavily along the stone hall, and out to continue his vigilance in the stormy night, while the lonely caretaker, heedless of the dismal howling of the wind and the many weird noises through the house, finished his glass of beer, smoked a final pipe as he read the evening paper by the fire, and then turned into his narrow bed.

About ten o’clock next morning there came a tug at the clanging old bell, and Farmer opened the door to confront a rather wizened-up little old man in a drab mackintosh and holding an umbrella against the pelting rain.

“Excuse me,” he said very politely in a thin, refined voice. “Are you caretaker here?”

“I am, sir,” replied the broad-shouldered, plethoric Farmer.

“Well, I’ve heard very much about this old house and the treasures it contains, so I’ve come up from Newcastle-on-Tyne wondering if you would allow me to go through the rooms,” he said. “My name is Bettinson. I’m a great lover of the antique—indeed, a collector.”

“I’m very sorry, sir, but the firm of auctioneers which employ me have given me strict orders to allow nobody to view. The things were on view some little time ago, but the sale has now been postponed.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the little old man in deep disappointment. “Then the contents of the house will not be sold?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“And what’s the name of the fortunate young lady who owns the house?”

“Dare, sir—Miss Sibell Dare.”

The old man nodded as slowly understanding the situation. “But I wonder,” he said, after a pause, during which he drew a ten-shilling note from his vest pocket, “I wonder if this would be any inducement for you to allow me just a brief glance through the rooms?”

Farmer smiled. Caretakers are all human, and, after all, there could be little danger of theft in allowing the inoffensive, odd-looking old fellow a peep at the shabby, neglected rooms.

Two minutes later old Mr. Bettinson was inside, and, leaving his umbrella in the hall, followed his guide first into the library, where the books had already been tied in parcels ready for offering at auction, though nothing had yet been catalogued or numbered. The heavy furniture in the dining-room, especially the long oak refectory-table, with its bulbous legs and worn struts, attracted him.

“A perfect specimen!” he exclaimed, as though to himself. “Genuine Tudor, without a doubt!” And he placed his fingers caressingly upon the polished wood.

The huge buffet also attracted his admiration, as well as a pair of Queen Anne candelabra and a large silver salver of the same period.

Then, upstairs, he stood for some moments in the big drawing-room, gazing around in a strange, half-bewildered manner. He sat upon the big old velvet-covered chair—the same into which Mr. Gray, the estate agent, had sunk when he had had that mysterious attack—and admired many of the unique pieces of furniture, including the big carved chair, with its tattered crimson covering, in which he was seated.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “A perfect museum! Why, this collection ought never to be dispersed. It is a sin. The house and its contents should be acquired by the nation.”

“The young lady can’t sell it, I believe, sir,” remarked his guide. “By the terms of the will she is compelled to live here.”

“Ah! The testator was some fool of a crank, I suppose,” snapped the old man. “Fancy condemning any young girl to live in a dismal place like this!”

“She’s going to be married, so I suppose they’ll renovate the place and make it their headquarters,” Farmer said. “But I’ve heard that she’s hitherto been abroad a lot.”

“Well, this is no house for a young couple,” grunted old Mr. Bettinson as, after sitting in contemplation for a quarter of an hour, he arose from the huge chair of carved walnut—a handsome Italian Renaissance piece—following the stout man in charge into other rooms on the same floor, where, through the dingy panes of old green glass, the garden, with its high holly hedges now trimmed and clipped, could be seen.

“I’ve noted one or two pieces which I intend to buy,” the old man said as he at last descended the stairs, thanking his conductor for allowing him sight of them. “I shall commission a dealer to secure them for me. I mean to have them, regardless of what others will offer. I’m a collector, as I’ve told you, and when I set my mind on buying a piece I never rest until it is mine. It may be bought over my head and be sent away, but I follow it and always get it in the long run, for I never mind what price I pay.”

“Well, sir, I’m glad you are satisfied,” Farmer said pleasantly, whereupon the old chap drew out his leather cigar-case and emptied it into the caretaker’s hands. “Here,” he said, “take them. You’ll find they’re pretty good ones”; and Farmer’s trained eye saw that they were of a very expensive and choice variety.

“Funny old bloke!” he remarked aloud to himself as he saw the queer old fellow hobble away beneath his umbrella and disappear from the gate. “But all these people with hobbies are a bit cranky. I’ve seen such lots of ’em in my time.”

That same afternoon, just before dark, the bell rang, and Farmer went to the door, believing it to be the milkman, when, to his surprise, he found the same old gentleman standing beneath the porch.

“Hulloa!” he exclaimed. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Good afternoon,” responded old Mr. Bettinson. “I’m so sorry to trouble you,” he went on apologetically, “but I hope this will act as solace for again disturbing you”; and he handed him a second ten-shilling note. “The fact is that I want to have a second look at that exquisite little inlaid tallboy in the drawing-room. I want to make up my mind as to how much I shall bid for it.”

“Oh, certainly, sir,” said Farmer politely. “Come in. There’s just enough light, I think, to enable you to see it. But I’ll bring up a lamp”; and he allowed the old man to reclimb the wide, old-fashioned stairs to the first floor.

He ascended slowly, mumbling something to himself, while Farmer went down to the basement to obtain his hurricane lamp. Having lit it, he followed the old visitor, whom he discovered standing in the centre of the big, dark room with his arms outstretched, waving them wildly towards the windows, with his head thrown back, uttering some kind of weird incantation which was all gibberish to him.

“What the deuce are you doing?” demanded the caretaker. “Have you suddenly gone crazy?”

But, without response, the old man, his thin hands outstretched, a weird and mysterious figure in the faint light shed by the lantern, turned slowly towards him, still continuing his monotonous gibberish drone in which “The Voice of the Four Winds,” “Unconquerable Spirit of Satin,” “Ruler of Thy Life,” “The Evil World,” “The Plane of Human Perfection,” “The Sacred Cubit,” “The Rejoin of the Well-Shaft’s Upper Mouth,” “The Glory of Death,” and “When Restitution is Complete,” were the only words distinguishable. For the rest, the man’s utterances might have been in Arabic, Hebrew, or Chinese so far as Farmer could understand them.

“Look here!” he said with humor. “You’d better get out of this, old sonny! You’ve evidently got bats in the belfry! For Heaven’s sake get away, and don’t look at me like that!”

The old stranger’s face had become long, drawn, and evilly distorted, as though he had taken leave of his senses or had become entranced. His bony hands clutched the air as he continued to wave his arms and call down some blessing or some curse upon the mysterious house and its contents, until Farmer, not usually perturbed, began to grow apprehensive lest his visitor should prove a raving lunatic.

“Now just come out of this at once and go away,” he said roughly. “Here’s your ten-bob note.”

“Touch me!” shrieked the old man, defiantly clawing the air. “Touch me, and it will be death to you! I am invulnerable!”

“I don’t care what you are, or who the devil you are, but you’ll get out of this at once!” cried Farmer, and, with an ex-policeman’s grip, he took him by the collar, shook him like a rat, and dragged him to the stairs.

“Now, go down and out quietly,” he advised him when they were upon the landing. “We can do with cranks here, but we don’t want any lunatics.”

In an instant the old fellow’s manner altered.

“My dear man, I am very, very sorry for you,” he said as he commenced to descend the stairs.

“You needn’t be. I want no sympathy,” laughed the caretaker.

“Not to-night,” replied the old man mysteriously. “But you will to-morrow”; and he gave vent to a harsh laugh of triumph. “I warned you, but you took no heed, so you will take the consequences. You will see.”

And with those parting words he passed out.

Farmer shut the door, walked back to his little den, and exclaimed aloud:

“Yes. This morning I thought he was a funny bloke. He’s mad, no doubt, poor fellow!”

And then he busied himself at the fire, toasting a round of bread for his tea.

CHAPTER XII.
WITHOUT FEAR

At seven o’clock on the following morning, just as it was getting light, the milkman, in the habit of leaving the usual half-pint for Mr. Farmer at the Guest House, found a scrap of paper beneath the jug, while the front door stood ajar, which was unusual.

The scribbled words in pencil which the man deciphered were, “Come in at once. Am very ill!”

Without ado, the man put down his can, and, entering the hall, cried:

“Mr. Farmer! Where are you?”

Hearing a groan along the passage, he quickly found the small, stuffy room where, on the bed, lay the stout caretaker, half dressed, writhing in apparent pain.

“Fetch a doctor, quick!” he gasped. “I’ve been taken ill.”

“How long ago?” asked the man in alarm.

“I—I don’t know. Get Dr. Truman. He lives just across the bridge. Quick as you can—quick—quick—as—you—can!” And he drew a long breath and stretched his arms over his head.

The milkman lost not a moment, and within a quarter of an hour the local, middle-aged practitioner stood at the prostrate man’s side, asking him to describe his symptoms.

“My heart seems so funny,” the stricken man managed to gasp.

“Have you ever suffered from heart before?” inquired the medical man.

“Never.”

“Then I must take your blood pressure,” he said, producing from his bag the band of webbing which he strapped upon the man’s bare arm, and then proceeded to pump air into it, watching the telltale dial intently. Three times he repeated it, so that there should be no error. Afterwards he sounded his patient with his stethoscope, his countenance assuming a grave look after listening for a few moments in various spots on his broad chest.

“Never had such an attack before, eh?” he asked. “Been exerting yourself unduly?”

“Not in the least,” Farmer replied in a thin, weak voice quite unusual to him. “It’s morning—isn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor. “About seven.”

“Then I haven’t been to bed. I recollect coming over funny-like just as I was undressing, about eleven o’clock. But I didn’t know anything else till I awoke and saw it was half-past six. Then I managed to write a note and put it under the milk-jug.”

“I found it when I got here,” explained the milkman, standing beside the doctor. “It ain’t like Mr. Farmer to be ill,” he added.

But Dr. Truman continued his investigations, asking many questions of the prostrate man, each reply seeming to puzzle him the more.

“You remain here,” he said to the milkman. “I’ll go back and get some mixture that will ease him.”

And, so saying, he went out to his little two-seater and drove quickly to his surgery, returning a quarter of an hour later.

After giving Farmer a draught, he said:

“You’ll have to remain very quiet. And you’d better have some friend to come and look after you.”

“Is it serious, doctor?” asked the caretaker. “I ask you this because—well, because I have a reason—a strong reason.”

“It might be serious if you’re not very careful,” was Truman’s reply.

The patient drew a long breath, and then allowed the doctor, assisted by the milkman, to undress him and put him into bed.

When at last he was more comfortable, he turned to Dr. Truman, and said in a low, weak voice, hardly above a whisper:

“Doctor, I want to tell you what happened here yesterday”; and he motioned Truman to a chair, while the milkman still stood by to listen.

“I—I had a visitor yesterday—a very extraordinary old man he was. He said his name was Bettinson, and that he was a collector of antiques. He—he asked to see the stuff privately, as he wanted to bid for some at auction, and—and I—like a fool—took him through the rooms.” Then he paused in exhaustion.

“And what has that to do with it?” asked the doctor, interested.

“A lot—a big lot! That old devil came back late in the afternoon and wanted to have another look at something in the drawing-room upstairs. I went and got a light for him, but when I got up there I found he’d gone mad.”

“Mad! What do you mean?”

“Why, he was waving his arms about like a lunatic and shouting all sorts of things in a language I’d never heard of before. He seemed to be bringing down the curses of Satan and all the evil spirits on to this place, and was shouting about the glories of death—and—and, well, I stood dumbfounded. I think the old idiot was talking Chinese. I—I fancy he was possessed of the devil, so I chucked him out!”

“And a good job too,” remarked the milkman.

“No, it wasn’t—at least, not for me. When I took him by the scruff of the neck he told me that he was very sorry for me, because anyone who dared to lay hands upon him would die. And—well, doctor,” he added very faintly, “would you believe it that about six hours after I’d put the odd old man outside I began to feel queer—and here I am!”

“That’s very curious,” said the doctor, now greatly interested. “Have you ever seen the man before?”

“Never in my life. He seemed to be one of those spooky blokes who talk to the dead. Perhaps he was holding forth to them when I found him gassing in the drawing-room. That’s why I put him out. But—well, doctor, I’m sorry I defied him. He said he was invulnerable—whatever that means.”

“Well, keep quiet. You seem to have had a bit of a shock. But you’ll get over it all right,” Truman declared with confidence. “Who shall I get to look after you?”

Farmer thought a few moments, and then said:

“I’ve got a friend, Police Constable Askew, round at the station. He’s got a young brother, George; lives over in Molesey. I wish you’d let Askew know I’m queer—will you, sir?”

“Certainly,” replied the doctor, and, having received the assurance of the patient that he felt a trifle better, he left him in the care of the milkman.

Askew chanced to be off duty that morning, and was soon round to see his friend.

When they were alone together, the caretaker described his sudden attack and then seemed to become very exhausted. He motioned to the constable in plain clothes to give him another dose of the mixture which the doctor had left, with instructions.

“He’s coming back in a couple of hours,” said the man lying in bed, his face pale and his breathing stertorous. “He told me to take another dose if my heart pained me. And it’s simply awful now,” he added, placing his hand upon it.

His friend measured out a dose carefully and assisted Farmer to sit up to swallow it.

“This isn’t like you, Dick,” Askew said, with a good-humored laugh. “You told me once you only went sick twice in all your years in the force.”

“And that’s right. The first was when I was in the ‘Y’. I had a touch of pleurisy. And the other time was when I was stationed at Leman Street during the Ripper scare. That’s years ago now.”

“But how did this really happen?”

“I got cursed yesterday,” was Farmer’s reply in a low, hoarse voice.

“Cursed? What do you mean?”

“A darned old lunatic who spoke Chinese or something, and seemed to talk to the devil in his own language, warned me not to lay a finger on him,” Farmer answered. Then, after a pause, he went on, “I didn’t want lunatics or spook-hunters in here, so I ousted him. And this is what I’ve got for looking after Shalford, Stevens & Gray’s interests”; and he grinned.

“That’s devilish funny. How could the fellow curse you? Surely you don’t believe in evil spells, and all that historical rot?”

“I don’t,” answered the man in bed, as he shifted uneasily in apparent pain. “But the fact remains that I was quite well before that old scoundrel came and had a liker round. Why he returned a second time I can’t imagine. There must have been some distinct motive. If he’d attempted to sneak anything in the dark I could have understood it.”

“But tell me exactly what happened,” the constable urged. “Don’t distress yourself—just take your time. I’ll be making a cup of tea in the meanwhile.”

“Ask your brother George to come round and look after things for me. He’s out of work, isn’t he?”

“Yes. They’re not doing much at the garage this time of the year, so he’s been put off for six weeks. He’ll be pleased to come round.”

Then, while Askew proceeded to light the fire and put on the little black kettle, the caretaker related in short sentences, rendered abrupt by the pain in his heart, the advent of the mysterious Mr. Bettinson, and his curious attitude on the occasion of his second call, to which his friend listened with all attention.

“Well, Dick,” said the younger man, when he had finished, “if I didn’t know you as an ex-policeman, and a man of iron nerve and without fear, I’d think that it was all your imagination.”

“It isn’t any imagination to fall ill after you’ve been cursed, is it? And it isn’t imagination that I’m lying here sick!”

“Of course not. But it only adds one more mystery to this infernal house! You wouldn’t believe that uncanny things had happened in this accursed place. You put it down to coincidence and all that. But I’m more than ever convinced that this old place exerts some evil or fatal influence over certain persons—always men, never women. That’s a funny point. Why?”

“I confess I’m now beginning to alter my mind,” Farmer said. “I used to laugh at what people alleged and suspected. But my present condition is no laughing matter, I assure you.”

“It isn’t. And if I were you, when I got better I’d leave this damnable place for good and all.”

“I only hope that Nosey Parker who writes in the Richmond paper, won’t get hold of what’s happened to me,” said Farmer. “I hope Dr. Truman won’t say anything.”

“Doctors never do. He’s our divisional surgeon, and a very nice fellow,” Askew said. “I had him when I had flu last year.”

Presently, when the tea was ready, both had a cup, and they continued to discuss the strange happenings in that long-closed house.

“You know that Mr. Gray himself had a very sudden attack here as soon as the place was opened,” Farmer said confidentially. “I heard about it by a side wind from one of the clerks in the office. Mr. Gray has hushed it up, and so has his doctor.”

“But why?”

“Because they don’t want the place to get a bad name. It’s been made mysterious enough by that antiquary fellow who wrote in the paper. Estate-agents never like to deal with property which has a bad reputation.”

“Well, even now, Dick, you don’t believe in what I’ve seen with my own eyes.”

“What you said, sonny, was due to your imagination. I’ve seen funny lights flashing from windows many a time when I’ve been on night duty. But when I’ve investigated I found them only to be reflections,” said the retired policeman.

“But your illness is no imagination,” growled young Askew.

“That’s true. And I tell you I feel a lot worse than when the doctor was here,” said the prostrate man. Then, glancing at the timepiece, he sighed, and added: “He’ll be here again within an hour. He’s having his breakfast, I suppose.”

“Shall I go across now and send George to you?” asked his friend.

“I wish you would. And ask him to get me a quarter of brandy from old Chippy at the Sun. He’ll let him have it if he says I’m ill.” And, after a pause, he slowly raised himself on his elbow, and, placing his left hand upon his heart, he gasped: “My God! I do feel awful now. There’s a pain like red-hot needles in my heart!”

“Have another dose of medicine,” Askew suggested, at which the prostrate man nodded assent.

Five minutes after swallowing it, he seemed to be slightly better. In answer to his friend’s question if he felt easier, he nodded.

Finding such a change in him, Askew hesitated to go in search of his brother, so remained seated at his side, watching him.

Presently he grew better, and said:

“That was a pretty sharp turn! But I’m far easier now. Give me another cup of tea.”

This he drank with avidity, and then went on:

“I’ve just remembered. Mr. Gray is coming here about noon. Go and get George, as he must take care of the place while I’m ill. See that he’s here before Mr. Gray comes.”

“Quite sure you are all right, Dick?”

“Quite, sonny. Why, I’m much better than I was an hour ago.”

And he certainly looked better.

“I’ll leave the door ajar, so that George and I can get in,” Askew said. “You’ll listen to hear if anybody comes. We’ll be here before the doctor arrives.”

“Righto,” replied the prostrate man cheerily. “Don’t forget the drop of brandy. There’s a quarter bottle in there.” And he pointed to a long, narrow cupboard let into the wall beside the old-fashioned grate.

His friend placed the little flat bottle in his pocket, and, buttoning his blue overcoat, said:

“Good-bye, old man. I won’t be long,” and went out.

His brother George was not at home, therefore he went at once in search of him, obtaining the brandy at The Sun on his way.

Meanwhile, half an hour after Askew had left his friend, Dr. Truman drove up to the Guest House in his car, and, finding the door ajar, made his way in.

On entering the narrow, stuffy little room, he saw the caretaker lying pale and motionless. One arm had been thrown out, and lay limp over the side of the bed, while the other hand was upon his heart.

The doctor spoke, touched him, shook him, and then listened to his heart.

In a moment the truth was, alas! too plain.

The caretaker Farmer was dead!

CHAPTER XIII.
TRUTH OR FANTASY?

Dr. Truman, who, with his colleague Dr. Greig, of Hampton Wick, made an autopsy, came to the conclusion that the man Farmer’s death was due to natural causes—heart disease.

At the inquest duly held he gave evidence to that effect.

“Did the deceased make any statement to you before he died?” inquired the white-headed Coroner. “I ask this because rumors are afloat concerning certain mysterious happenings previously in the Guest House.”

“Well, he certainly made a rambling and rather fantastic statement,” replied the doctor. “I regarded it as imagination.”

“Please tell us what he said,” said the Coroner, pausing with his pen in his hand as he sat facing the thirty or so interested members of the public who attended out of curiosity, as people always do at inquests.

“He told me how, on the previous day, a short old gentleman, who gave his name as Bettinson and announced himself to be a collector of antique furniture, presented himself at the door, and that, contrary to the orders he had received from his employers, Shalford & Co., the estate-agents, he had taken him through the rooms,” said the doctor. “The man admired several pieces of furniture, and then left. Late that afternoon, however, just as it was growing dark, he returned and asked to be allowed another look at a piece in the upstairs drawing-room. It being dark, the deceased went to obtain a lamp, when, on gaining the upstairs room, he found the old stranger throwing his arms about and uttering some weird incantations—‘cursing the house,’ he described it.”

“Curious,” remarked the Coroner. “And what else?”

“The deceased told me that his visitor appeared to have suddenly gone mad, and, turning to him, cursed him also, using some language which he had never heard before. The stranger declared that he was invulnerable, but the deceased said he took him by the collar and dragged him to the head of the stairs. Thereupon the old man expressed sorrow at what his fate would be—death!”

There was a moment’s silence when the doctor had concluded.

“Yes, I quite agree. A most fantastic story. He must have imagined it,” said the Coroner. “A stranger uttering incantations and predicting death to those who dare to lay hands upon him! Most absurd. The result of your post-mortem was, I take it, that death was due to heart disease?”

“It was.”

Hence the Coroner registered the verdict, and the proceedings closed, not, however, without a good deal of wagging of tongues among those who had been present. Indeed, the story told by the doctor was published in that evening’s papers, but everyone regarded it as the delirious imaginings of a dying man.

George Askew, the constable’s brother, a tall, thin young fellow who had been employed to do odd jobs in a garage at Molesey, was engaged by Mr. Gray to take his friend’s place as caretaker at the Guest House. His brother did not fail to warn him of the weird happenings in the place, but he smoked his eternal “gaspers” and laughed the whole thing to scorn.

“I don’t believe in curses, or spooks, or anything else,” George declared to his brother on the first night, when, at a late hour, the constable, being on duty, dropped in to see him.

George had changed his quarters to the library; he had erected a little camp-bed which he had hired, and lived among the piles of tied-up parcels of old brown-bound books which lay heaped everywhere, ready for the sale.

“Well, I advise you to be careful,” the other replied warningly. “Poor old Farmer laughed at the evil, and see where he is now!”

“But what is this evil influence, or whatever you call it, in this house?” asked the young matter-of-fact fellow, who had distinct political views with a leaning towards Communism.

“How do I know? We don’t know the cause, George. We only know the results. I pity the young couple who are coming to live here.”

“Bosh! The decorators will clean out all the dirt and cobwebs and it will be fresh and wholesome again,” his brother laughed. “It’s musty enough now, in all conscience,” he added, as his brother, with a glance at the dead man’s timepiece, put on his helmet, and, buttoning his coat to the throat, walked out.

Meanwhile Sibell Dare and Brinsley Otway were having a wonderful time at winter sports.

Fresh snow had fallen upon the mountains around Gurnigel. They found there a gay little world running riot with harmless fun and merriment, and the mountain slopes re-echoed with shouts and laughter of the open-air. Young English and American men and girls who, attracted by the lure of the snow, came there to enjoy the healthful recreation of ski-ing, bobbing, or lugeing, while their elders found ample sport in the quieter games of curling, or gliding across the perfectly kept ice-rinks on skates.

For the variety of ski-runs, and the constant round of amusements by day, and the gaiety at night, the place was unequalled. There were ski-races for novices and experts, team races, ladies’ races, and ice gymkhanas, and lastly “tailing”—little luges sufficient for one person to sit on are tied in a string of half a dozen or more behind a two-horse sleigh—which is a merry sport along the flat roads down in the valley to the homely little villages of Riggisberg or Guggisberg, where one has such wonderful teas and cakes.

Gurnigel in winter is a veritable paradise for young people. No spot in all the Oberland offers so many attractions, outdoor sport by day, and the indoor fun at night. The spirit of merriment is infectious, and ski-ing is an incomparable sport. No Alpine resort has a better average of second-class ski-runners, while there are polite English skiers, many of them experts, who soon put the novice into the way of passing their third-class test. The talk in Gurnigel in winter is mainly the jargon of ski-ing, of “stemming,” “Christianias,” “telemarks,” and such-like turns, while the famous “John” gives advice and instruction to those who need it.

One day General Horton, an athletic man who was among the first to introduce ski-ing from Norway into Switzerland, was chatting with Otway and Lady Wyndcliffe.

“Of course there are many—the nouveau riche and the overdressed, the people who take Bond Street and Dover Street in their innovation-trunks—who sneer at the Oberland, and prefer the Engadine,” he said. “But those are the exotics. I know Switzerland, and am an old hand at ski-ing, and I know the advantages of the various resorts, and vice versa. I admit that the Cresta is the finest bob-run, and that Mürren is only notable for its increasing prices, its inferior accommodation, and its high excellence of ski-ing, to the detriment of the beginner. The Kandahars constitute for the main part the snobbery of ski-ing, and everyone else in Mürren seems to take a back seat. At Wengen the winter-sport enthusiast is far better treated, getting better value for his money without that superior snobbery which seems to have sprung up with good ski-ing, and he is allowed to enjoy himself just as he wishes. Then Engelberg is good, and so is Gstaad, and, at the end of the season, Sannenmöser. But here in Gurnigel one can get all one wants—a better hotel than in any other place I know in the Oberland, good snow, merriment without women constantly changing their frocks, and—well, what does one want more?”

And the slim, sporty old officer in his dark-blue ski-ing suit laughed merrily as he gave his expert opinion, with which two well-known skiers, who stood listening, heartily agreed.

That night there was another event. The winter fun in the handsome ballroom, with its colored festoons and gay balloons, was being broadcast to the world. It was a Swiss evening. The celebrated yodelers from Interlaken—the best in the Oberland—arrived, together with an expert upon the hand-organ, the national Swiss instrument, and a remarkable programme had been arranged by Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who, as President of the Amusements Committee, was responsible for the entertainment.

For many hours three radio engineers were busy fitting up a room as a studio, with a microphone, all carefully blanketed for the accommodation of the announcer. Then a cable was laid through the hotel and attached to the telephone-line to the great radio station at Munchenbuchsee, outside Berne, while another microphone was placed high upon a tripod near the orchestra in the ballroom—preparations watched with great interest by Lady Wyndcliffe, her niece, and the young doctor.

At last, about six o’clock, after the tea-dancing had ended, Mr. Mitchell stood in the centre of the ballroom, and in his ordinary voice, said: “Hulloa, Radio, Berne! Hulloa, Radio, Berne! Test number one.” And then he counted the numbers one to ten, and afterwards backwards.

The two engineers listening upon the valve receiving set of the hotel reported excellent results, but on a second and third test being made, it became clearer and stronger, owing to the modulation at the Berne station.

Thus by dinner-time all was in readiness to broadcast across Europe the winter fun at gay Gurnigel, and many of the visitors, who had let their friends in England know of the broadcasting, became highly excited and interested.

That night the ballroom was crowded, and at half-past nine, the usual dancing having commenced, Mr. Mitchell went into the silence of the improvised studio, where he opened the microphone and made a short introductory speech, beginning:

“Hulloa, the British Isles! Hulloa, everybody! This is Gurnigel, in Switzerland, calling. We are about to give you some idea of a Swiss evening at a gay winter sports centre. Hulloa, the British Isles! Gurnigel, in Switzerland, calling!”

Then, having paused for a few moments, he spoke in a clear radio voice—for he was used to speaking into the microphone—as follows:

“Here we are, far above the clouds and rain of winter, enjoying by day glorious sunshine and bright, crisp, starlit nights. The mountain heights are covered with deep snow, where our young people by day disport themselves ski-ing, tobogganing, lugeing, or going for long, healthy walks through the beautiful pine forests. We say among the young people that the man ‘she’s’ and the girl ‘he’s’! Be it at a new winter-sports place like this, or at one of the old ones, everywhere the enchanting scenery and the delightfully pure atmosphere, not forgetting the exuberant feeling of well-being which possesses everyone, lends itself to numerous flirtations and snow romances.

“Winter sports are essentially for young people, for they are full of fun and merriment, and a young girl looks her best in her smart ski-costume of black gabardine with trousers, and a guide’s peaked cap.

“Here at Gurnigel, as well as at most of the well-known winter sports places in Switzerland, there is a merry crowd assembled. In my long experience of winter sports I have never known a brighter season. This open-air life in a clear atmosphere as invigorating as champagne, and the call of the snow—which, once experienced, draws the winter holiday-makers back to Switzerland, nature’s mountain fairyland—are responsible for the gay crowds filling the Swiss hotels. If the days are spent out of doors in the healthiest possible way, the long winter evenings are not, as some people may think, in the least dull and uninteresting. On the contrary, the evenings at a winter-sports place are most enjoyable in that no trouble is ever spared in giving the hotel guests all kinds of amusements, such as concerts, dances, indoor-games, etc.

“We are about to show our listeners what a merry evening at a Swiss winter-sports place can be. To-night we are enjoying at Gurnigel a Swiss evening—that is, a concert consisting mainly of Swiss music and songs.

“The Interlaken yodelers are going to give you several peasant songs such as are sung by the shepherds in the Bernese Oberland when leading their herds of cows to the pastures to the accompaniment of the lovely and famous Swiss cow-bells.

“After this you will hear dance music played on a hand-harmonica, the most popular instrument in the Swiss mountains. The hotel orchestra will play some dance music. We are also very fortunate to count amongst our guests Madame Gruscha, dramatic soprano of the States Opera House in Vienna. Madame Gruscha has kindly consented to give two songs. To crown the evening’s entertainment, joyful members of ‘Ye Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers,’ a society well known to all English listeners—who, by the way, are nothing loath to blow the froth off good old Swiss beer—will thunder out their accustomed hymn. The rule of ‘Drinks all round’ for those Blowers listening-in and not wearing their cuff-links will not be enforced to-night.

“Well, I hope everybody will enjoy this concert, broadcast for the first time from a Swiss winter-sports resort, and which we hope will help our listeners to form some idea of the fast and furious fun which goes on at this high altitude, amongst the glorious scenery.” And then Mr. Mitchell added, as though an afterthought: “I may say that those who intend to visit Switzerland for winter sports will find late January and February the finest time, and the Swiss will welcome you.”

Then the Swiss announcer said in German, French, and English:

“The first item will be the yodel of the Emmenthal Valley, where the Swiss cheeses come from, sung by the Interlaken yodelers.”

Next moment the microphone was switched over to the ballroom, where upon the platform stood the ten celebrated singers of the Bernese peasant songs, in their short black velvet jackets trimmed with scarlet and silver lace, and their leather skull-caps, the Sunday attire of the cowherds. At a signal from Mr. Mitchell, they sang that sweet melody which one hears at dawn and at sunset in summer, echoing in the high mountains, as they chant to each other across the fertile valleys.

The applause was loud and enthusiastic, and over a radius of two thousand miles or so, hundreds of thousands of listeners, who had picked up Mr. Mitchell’s introductory speech, instantly became interested.

In the British Isles thousands were listening to the unusual programme.

Madame Gruscha, whose marvellous voice rang out through the huge ballroom, then gave a selection from La Tosca, in which she had, only a week before, been singing at the Vienna Opera, and was greeted with thunders of applause. Then the peasant with his hand-organ took the centre of the orchestra and began to play a Swiss national dance, to which the yodelers danced with the English guests in a kind of village dance, greatly to everyone’s amusement.

Sibell was being whirled around by a stout, good-looking Swiss yodeler who was an express engine-driver on the Simplon line, when the concierge motioned to her and handed her a telegram. It was from the Richmond estate-agents—Messrs. Shalford, Stevens & Gray—stating that the caretaker Farmer had died under very mysterious circumstances, though a verdict had been registered that he had died from natural causes.

CHAPTER XIV.
UNCLEAN HANDS

Notwithstanding the verdict of the Hampton Coroner, the police, whose interest was aroused by the curious reports of strange happenings at the Guest House, commenced to make inquiries regarding the deceased man’s strange visitor.

The record of the romance and history of the place, as published in the Richmond newspaper, had drawn their attention to it, inasmuch as Mr. Gray was questioned by the Richmond police and reluctantly admitted his strange attack and narrow escape.

The Criminal Investigation Department explored all sorts of channels to discover the old man Bettinson, who had been fairly clearly described to the doctor by his patient. There were two well-known collectors of antique furniture of that name, it was found—one a dealer having a shop in Chester, who was a man of thirty-five who had recently succeeded to the business of his dead father; a second was a solicitor in Plymouth, who was well-known and of ample means, but in no way resembled the odd old fellow who had appeared at the Guest House; while a third, a man living near Harwich, was reported to have purchased some old furniture for an ancient house he had bought outside Ipswich.

The search was, after all, only a half-hearted one, for on the face of it the dead man’s statement was rather too fantastic to be credited by many, while it seemed certain that if the old man had actually paid a visit to the house of mystery with any evil intent he would hardly have given his real name.

When Etta Wyndcliffe had been shown the telegram by her niece, she had merely shrugged her shoulders, and said:

“That house is evidently a house of evil, my dear! I can’t see how you can possibly live in it.”

She had been watching with critical eyes the enjoyment of the happy pair at winter sports. Thanks to the expert tuition of John, the guide, they were now able to ski quite well, and do “stem turns” and “telemarks” in very fair fashion. Indeed, they had both passed their third-class test, and now each morning they took the yellow automobile up to the Seelibühl peak, and then ran down over the powdery snow through the Happy Valley back to the hotel, a spin of wild delight as the snow hissed beneath their skis.

Etta Wyndcliffe was not at all pleased at the turn which events were taking. She remembered those parting words of Albert Ashe, her exemplary butler, the man who held such a strange influence over her. She remembered, too, old Routh’s declaration that Sibell must marry Gussie Gretton, and did not fail to foresee that such a union would bring them both a handsome profit.

Etta Wyndcliffe was out for money always. Smart, clever, and utterly unscrupulous from the time she was at school, she took the fat checks from the mothers of the girls she chaperoned, and was hawk-like in her efforts to get them married, with further pecuniary profit to herself. In this she was not unique in London society. There were fully a dozen like her, hard-up women with old titles and without money, ready to do any dirty, underhand action, or to sell a girl, body and soul, in the marriage market so long as it brought them a substantial check which would most certainly be frittered away at baccarat and “chemmy.”

That afternoon, as she sat at tea in the big hall with the young North London doctor and her pretty niece, her active mind reverted to that parting with Ashe in West Halkin Street, when in secret the man had whispered to her, “I’ll meet you again soon, Etta. We’re out for a big stake. And we’ll win—never fear.”

She glanced through her cigarette smoke at the handsome, happy pair at the table before her and wondered. Would they win? She doubted it.

The check which she knew Gussie Gretton would slip into her hand, on the day of his marriage to Sibell, was daily disappearing into the ether. Time after time she had tried by most subtle means to sow dissension between the pair, but all to no purpose. Their affection was complete; and, to her fear, it would be lasting.

Brinsley Otway was always charming to her, though instinctively he knew that she was no friend of his. He studiously gave her every attention, dancing with her each night, and never failing to behave with the acme of courtesy and charm.

Etta Wyndcliffe had written to old Gordon Routh a long letter in which she realized the hopelessness of parting the pair, and asked his advice and suggestions. On the other hand, Ashe, after his vague threat on the last occasion they had met, had entirely disappeared. She had written him on the second day of their arrival at Gurnigel, but had had no acknowledgment.

This fact caused her great apprehension. Was he really playing the game? She knew his hard, bitter nature, his unreliability, his quick resentment, and his ready shiftiness. She had trusted him for several years, and he knew certain secrets of hers. But of late she had slowly realized that he would hesitate at nothing, or even sacrifice her, in order to gain his own despicable ends. And his estimate of her was a very similar one.

That night she sent a marconigram to him, addressed to an obscure sporting club in the Adelphi, where he went every day for his letters. Next day at noon she received a reply which ran:

“Meet me at the Schweizerhof Hotel in Berne on Thursday at noon. Important.”

Hence, on the Wednesday evening, pleading to the happy couple that she had some shopping to do in Berne and also had to make a call upon an English lady friend who was married to a Swiss doctor, she took the car down the sixteen miles of winding, snowy road to the capital and put up at the Schweizerhof, that big hotel facing the railway station. She engaged a private sitting-room and bedroom, so that their interview should be a secret one. That night, as she ate her dinner alone, she wondered with what object he was travelling so suddenly out to see her.

Wyndcliffe had arrived in New York a week before, and she hoped he would remain there, for there was not the slightest spark of affection between them. When in London he was only an incubus. True, he meandered around with her to the drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia, just for the appearance of the thing, but he was always pestering her for money and deploring the cost of everything.

Money had come to her niece, it was true, but how could she profit by the sudden turn of fortune?

Impatiently she awaited from her window the arrival of the Oberland express from Boulogne, until at last she descried Ashe’s tall, burly figure in a dark overcoat, followed by a hotel porter carrying his suitcase, crossing the wide square to the hotel.

Five minutes later he entered her sitting-room, and, throwing off his travelling-coat, cast himself into a chair.

He explained that he had breakfasted on the train after passing the frontier at Delle, and then lit a cigarette.

“Well?” she asked, leaning against the table and facing him. “What’s the matter?”

“A lot,” he snapped. “Lock the door and speak in whispers.”

When she had crossed the room and bolted the door, he looked straight into her face, and said in a low, serious voice:

“We’re in an infernally tight corner, Etta!”

“How?” she asked apprehensively.

“Rupert is in London!”

“Rupert!” she gasped, and in an instant her lips blanched as a look of terror overspread her face.

“Yes,” he whispered. “And he knows a lot—a damned lot more than is good for us!”

“You’ve seen him, eh?” she gasped.

“I’ve seen him. But he hasn’t seen me.”

“That’s good. What are we to do?”

“I’ve come here to talk the matter over with you, my dear Etta,” said the ex-butler. “We’ve got to face the music. That’s plain.”

“How?”

Her visitor paused for some moments, his dark, narrow eyes set upon hers.

“For God’s sake,” she cried, “don’t look at me like that, Albert!”

“Do you forget how we parted in that little hotel in Norfolk Street?” he asked, still gazing at her intently.

“You threatened to—to——” And she paused.

“I simply pointed out to you the only way in which we could save ourselves if Rupert came to London,” he said quietly. “Well—he’s come! It’s now up to us to take the initiative. You know what I mean, don’t you?” And he looked steadily into her eyes.

“You mean what you hinted at when we last met!” she cried suddenly, covering her face with her white, bejewelled hands.

“You defied me! You told me that you forbade it, Etta,” he said quite quietly. “Well, if you wish to have the whole sordid story exposed in a criminal court and go to prison perhaps for the remainder of your life, you can do so,” he went on, with an air of nonchalance. “Personally, I intend to save myself, whatever your decision may be.”

“No, Albert, don’t desert me; no, I beg of you,” cried the unhappy peeress. “I’ve always stuck to you.”

“Except when you grow chicken-hearted, as you did at Norfolk Street, and—and once when you thought you could feather your nest without my help.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in instant defiance.

“Oh, nothing,” he said sneeringly.

“I demand to know what is passing through your mind!” she cried, her fists clenched as she stood before him.

“Only one simple little incident,” he answered, with a faint smile. “The tragic death of that poor little American girl Heula Murray on board the Nile boat an hour before it was moored at Assouan. She died of pneumonia, didn’t she?”

“You swine!” she cried, striking him full in the face with her fist. “I know what you insinuate,” she cried. “But it’s a lie—a damned lie, and you shall prove it. You’ve hinted at that before. You were with me!”

“I was—as your servant. But, my dear Etta, don’t get excited,” he said, his face reddened where she had struck him. “I don’t intend to give you away, even though I have retained a certain little capsule which was hermetically sealed before you broke it open. No, my dear girl, don’t worry. It isn’t worth while. Please understand that we’re both sailing in the same boat, and if you go on the rocks I’ll go with you. But we are going to steer clear, into smooth waters, or I’m much mistaken.”

“How?” asked Lady Wyndcliffe, with frantic effort to calm herself.

“By taking matters in our own hands. You will have to meet Rupert.”

“Meet him! Never!” she cried, horrified at the mere thought.

“He’s in search of you; let him find you, and become friendly with him. Disarm his suspicion, and then——” And he paused.

“And then? Ah! I know what you mean.”

“Well, that’s the only way, my dear Etta. Believe me, it is.”

“I can’t. It would be impossible. I couldn’t do it, Albert,” she declared decisively.

“Very well. Then I fear you’ll have to face the consequences, if you don’t make up the quarrel,” Ashe said. “He’s in London in search of you, and he’ll send you to penal servitude. You’ll go there as sure as my name’s Albert, if you don’t try and save yourself. Just think!” he went on. “Aren’t we both on the brink of disaster? You’ve allowed young Otway to carry off our only decent asset, the girl Sibell. If Gussie Gretton had married her you’d have got a fat commission out of it. But, as it is, there’s nothing for us.”

“But there may be,” said Lady Wyndcliffe. “If a quarrel arose between the pair and they parted, Gussie might easily step into the breach and console her for the falsity of this young medico. And Gussie, on marrying a rich wife, would double his commission to us. Don’t forget that.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Ashe. “I never thought of that. You’re darned clever, Etta—one of the cleverest women I know. The worst of it is that after the affair of that little American girl in Egypt, which reaped you in a full five thousand pounds, you are so very punctilious over dealing with an enemy.”

“Because I now trust nobody,” she snapped. “Once I trusted you, but I have ever since had occasion to regret it.”

“Thanks, my dear girl, you are really most polite,” he laughed, with mock courtesy. “But, you see, I, too, don’t put any faith in you. Nevertheless, if you don’t stick by me, you can do the reverse. I shall leave Berne to-night, and I sha’n’t care for you, or for the future. I know how to save myself. I prepared my channel of escape long ago.”

The Countess of Wyndcliffe took her gold cigarette-case from her bag, and, opening it, slowly selected a cigarette. She tapped it quietly and then lit it, first going to the window to gaze out on the trams passing across the square before the station.

When she had repassed across the room she suddenly halted before the man who, though posing as her obsequious butler in West Halkin Street, seemed now to be her master, and said:

“Well, Albert. Let me hear your suggestions.”

“I have two. The one carries with it the other. The first is that you must resume your relations with Rupert—in pretence of courage. The second is that Sibell and young Otway must be parted at all hazards—by you.”

“Then the girl must be part of the sacrifice, eh?” asked her aunt, with knit brows.

“It can’t be helped. There’s no money for us if they marry. And old Routh is also out for profit. I saw him in London the other day, and he’s dead against the marriage and Sibell’s money slipping away from us all.”

“But about Rupert? Do you think he can be kept quiet, after all that’s happened?”

“Only by you,” he said, with a sudden change in his voice from defiance to softness. “You know what a seductive little devil you can be when you like, Etta. God! you can charm any man of any age.”

“And without—without a tragedy. Assure me of that?” she said eagerly.

Albert Ashe remained silent for a few moments. He was asked for an assurance which he had not expected he would be called upon to give.

“Well,” he said evasively at last, “if you call the parting of Sibell from her lover a tragedy, that can’t be avoided. The girl is rich, and she’ll soon console herself with the smart and popular Gussie, who is such a splendid dancer, so good-looking, and with whom dozens of girls are madly in love. He’s essentially a lady’s man, not like that big-headed, big-eyed, thoughtful doctor out at Golder’s Green. All that I leave to you,” he went on. “But time presses. Leave the turtledoves at Gurnigel for the present, and slip back to London to meet Rupert and make it up with him. We can deal with the lovers later on. It will only be a question of a week or two.”

“But, Albert, I—I really don’t know how to act—what to do—how I can possibly——”

“Rot!” he cried angrily. “Let me guide you, and let’s both climb out of the soup as soon as possible with a nice little bank balance to the credit of both of us—instead of appearing side by side at the Old Bailey, as we will certainly do if you act the fool any longer. Don’t you agree?”

She hesitated for a moment.

“Yes,” she said in a low, hoarse whisper. “I do agree, Albert. I see that I must. Sibell must be parted from Brinsley.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I’m glad you at last see reason. So go to work with your clever woman’s wiles as soon as you possibly can. Get back to London at once and meet dear Rupert, and greet him with regret as his long-lost friend. He must never suspect that I’m in England. But I will be behind you to advise you and bring you to triumph.”

And he put out his well-manicured hand, which the Countess of Wyndcliffe grasped in an unholy contract for the sale of an innocent girl’s soul.

CHAPTER XV.
THE SECRET CAVALIER

That evening the Countess of Wyndcliffe appeared at dinner, in the gay restaurant at Gurnigel, looking radiant in a pretty cyclamen gown and wearing her pearls—bought, by the way, out of the check which came to her after the tragic death from pneumonia of an American girl she had been chaperoning up the Nile.

To the handsome young pair she gave a glowing description of her old friend Nellie Price, who had married a well-known Swiss heart specialist, and how she had, after her visit, had her shingled hair trimmed by a Spaniard who was an artist, at a coiffeur’s close to the station.

Her ex-butler was still in Berne, and was leaving by the ten o’clock express for Calais that night—a fact which of course she withheld from the happy pair. They had been out on a ski picnic with the expert runner, Mr. Mallins, who had taken out a party, and to whom the visitors at the hotel were all indebted for kindly advice and help.

In every winter-sports hotel there crop up English nobodies, mostly with a military title, who proclaim themselves skiers or bob-runners, who put on immaculate winter-sports suits and sweaters, and pose as experts, only to be driven out by those who really can ski or bob. It was so at Gurnigel, just as at all winter-sports centres—centres, alas! of petty jealousies, and where men and women make fools of themselves.

After all, when one leaves Dover for gaiety on the Continent, what matters? What mattered, indeed, when at a winter-sports hotel at Mürren the visitors were once invited by a notice posted in the hall to subscribe to an amusement fund, and the visitors were at once lavish in their gifts? What mattered when, a few nights later, there was bought a handsome prize for the best dress at a midnight carnival, and lo! the proprietress of the hotel won it, and carried away the prize her visitors had subscribed for?

What matters? Nobody cared. Happily, that was unique. Only such an incident is actively discussed when visitors to Switzerland return to London and chat over their reminiscences in their own drawing-rooms. Yet there remains the fact that Switzerland is the winter playground of Europe, and it well deserves to be so till the end of time.

It was a gala night at Gurnigel, a masked ball, with a midnight supper in the interval. So after dinner Sibell put on the sari of an Indian lady of high caste, a wonderful garment of shot orange, gold and green tissue, with her scarlet marriage brand upon her brow, but masked of course, while Brinsley Otway was dressed as an Arab sheik, with darkened face, also masked, and daggers stuck in his belt; but Lady Wyndcliffe was too tired to put on one of her fancy costumes.

The great ballroom was the scene of mad gaiety that night. As fancy dresses were not put on till after dinner, the maskers could be recognized only by their friends.

After two fox-trots with her lover, Sibell suddenly looked up and saw a rather tall, masked man in the costume of a cavalier bowing and sweeping his plumed hat across his knees, and at the same time, in a low half-whisper, he invited her to dance.

She accepted, and instantly knew what an excellent dancer he was.

They went around the ballroom without exchanging words with each other, until suddenly he whispered into her ear:

“I know you, Miss Dare. When we have finished this dance, will you allow me to sit with you for a few moments? I want to tell you something in strictest confidence.”

Much intrigued, the girl, wondering who the cavalier might be and what he desired to say, assented. Therefore, when the dance had ended, instead of continuing in the encore, they both strolled away to the big lounge adjoining the dance-room, and sat down apart from the rest.

“Miss Dare,” he said, “you have no idea of my identity, and you will never know. I am speaking quite seriously. I may as well say that I am no friend of yours, not even an acquaintance, but simply the bearer of an urgent message to you. Before I deliver it, however, I must have your solemn assurance that you breathe not a word of it to a soul—not even to Dr. Otway, to whom you are engaged.”

“I don’t understand!” she exclaimed in slight alarm. “I don’t follow you! At least you can disclose your name.”

“My Christian name is Edward—simply that. Just think of me as Edward,” was his answer.

“Edward what?”

But he only chuckled to himself behind his mask, replying:

“That does not matter. Will you give me the undertaking I seek? Please do, as we cannot sit here together very long without arousing your fiancé’s interest in me. And I am not anxious for that.”

“Why should Dr. Otway be kept in ignorance?” she asked resentfully, with natural curiosity.

“Because I am instructed that it should be so,” the stranger replied. “As I have told you, I am merely acting as the mouthpiece of another.”

“You are indeed very mysterious! Surely you can be more explicit!” she protested. “You ask me to keep a secret from the man whom I am about to marry. It’s hardly fair, is it?”

“If you give me your undertaking you will, on hearing what I have to say, quickly realize that, in the circumstances, silence will be best. Really, Miss Dare,” he went on, “I regret to say so, but there is no time for argument. I see that the doctor is already in search of you.”

“Very well,” said the girl hastily. “I give my undertaking to tell him nothing.”

“Good. Then my message, sent you in secret by one who wishes you well, and will help you in dire necessity, is to the effect that there is a conspiracy—a subtle and damnable plot—to part you from Dr. Otway. So be forewarned.”

“A plot!” gasped the girl. “By whom?”

“I’m sorry, but I unfortunately have no information upon that point,” replied the mysterious stranger in the exquisite garb of a cavalier. “My only duty has been to warn you. I beg of you to take precautions. Of how the coup will be effected I have no knowledge, neither has, I believe, the person whose mouthpiece I am. It was not deemed safe to write to you, hence this present subterfuge of mine.”

“But how can we possibly be separated, devoted as we are to each other?” she asked, her nervous fingers toying with her jewelled wrist-watch.

“Other lovers, as devoted as you both are, have, alas! been victims of wicked cunning and despicable plots. Parents and relatives are often to blame where it is a question of money, or of social advancement.”

“But my aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, heartily approves of Brinsley,” she declared.

“If you are quite certain of that, then I fear I can make no further suggestion,” he said, in a voice that sounded curious.

“What do you mean? Do you know my aunt?”

“Not from Adam.”

“She’s sitting over there, in a cyclamen frock, with those two elderly men”; and the girl indicated the trio.

“Oh!” he said. “So that’s Lady Wyndcliffe! How very interesting. I’ve heard of her, of course—of her gay dances at Claridge’s, and her luncheons and dinners at the Ritz. She’s always in the limelight, it seems.”

“You seem to hint, Mr. Edward, that she is not quite so favorable to my marriage with Dr. Otway as she makes out, eh?”

“My dear Miss Dare, I hint at nothing. I have merely delivered my message, in the hope that you will heed it, and keep both eyes and ears open.”

“What you have said has entirely mystified me,” she remarked. “Who is this unknown friend of mine who keeps his or her identity a secret?”

“It is a friend who desires to remain unidentified. But do believe me when I tell you that, although your friend has never seen you—only photographs of you—you nevertheless have a true friend.”

The girl paused. The more the stranger said the more deeply did she become intrigued.

“Well,” she exclaimed, after reflection, “if you refuse to disclose the identity of this unknown friend of mine, please present to him my compliments and thanks. Tell him that I am much mystified.”

“Naturally,” laughed her companion. “Take my advice, Miss Dare, and be prepared for any untoward circumstance that might lead to a breach between your lover and yourself. As I have already suggested to you, be forearmed against any contretemps.”

“Will it come soon, do you think?” she inquired in a low, tremulous voice, her eyes showing narrowed and anxious through her mask.

“Ah! How can we tell?” he asked, drawing a slight sigh, which she in an instant regarded as a sign of sympathy. “When the blow falls you will be expecting it, and be able to stave it off.”

“And may I not warn Brinsley?” she begged. “It isn’t fair to him to keep him in the dark.”

“I agree. But I can give no permission myself, Miss Dare,” he replied seriously. “I have to obtain it. This I will do. Look in the personal column of The Times of next Monday for a message addressed to ‘S,’ and the word will be either ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ And if the latter, you will know that the decision is inexorable. Your friend wishes you well, but he is compelled, because of certain contingencies, to exercise the greatest caution. He sends you word through myself of the clever plot against your happiness, in order that you may expect and frustrate it.”

“But is my aunt implicated in it? Surely not?”

“I am entirely ignorant of the details,” was the mysterious masquerader’s quiet response. “However, I would ask you one question which your unknown friend is anxious to know”; and, after he had paused for a few moments, he inquired: “Did your aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, once have in her service a butler named Ashe?”

“Ashe!” she echoed. “Of course she had! He was discharged for impertinence not very long ago.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “That is all my friend wishes to know.”

“Surely Ashe has nothing to do with my affairs!” she exclaimed excitedly.

“How can he? A mere servant,” he said; and as at that moment the man in the garb of an Arab sheik was seen approaching, the mysterious cavalier rose, bowed courteously, waved his plumed hat across his knees again, and, strolling away, was seen in the ballroom no more.

“Who’s your gay cavalier?” asked Brinsley with natural inquisitiveness, as he rejoined his fiancée.

“I—well, I really don’t know. Quite a nice man he seems, but he made himself mysterious. That’s all!”

“He seemed to be talking to you very seriously.”

“Yes,” she said, her woman’s innate wit coming to her rescue on the instant. “He seems to be a very sad person. A new arrival, I suppose. He was telling me of his wife. They were both here last season, but she has left him, and he seems inconsolable, poor fellow!”

“I wonder who he is,” exclaimed Brinsley in sympathy, his jealousy quite disarmed by Sibell’s explanation. “Take good stock of him, and let’s try and identify him afterwards. Did he tell you his name?”

“Of course not, Brin. He was masked. And why should I want to know the man’s name?” she laughed.

As a waltz was just commencing, they rose together and joined in the dancing. Little did Brinsley Otway dream of those warning words which had been whispered into Sibell’s ear, or little did the pair suspect the fatal pitfall which had been opened before them by the base and unscrupulous machinations of those bent upon feathering their own nests at the expense of a girl’s love and happiness.

The mad dance proceeded. Balloons and serpentines were everywhere. The electroliers were festooned with thousands of yards of multicolored paper ribbon, and thousands of yards of the same clung to the feet of the dancers. Confetti was half an inch deep everywhere, and, to the strains of the amateur jazz-band which had temporarily relieved the professional orchestra, the lovers fox-trotted around the room, watched furtively by the young-looking peeress in cyclamen.

Sibell’s brain was awhirl. What could the stranger have meant by his dark hints of conspiracy against her happiness? As she danced in her lover’s arms she tried to recall all that he had said; all those meaning words he had used; all the hints and warnings. The latter were certainly serious enough, but why had he, a perfect stranger, who admitted that he had never met her before that evening, made such a curious inquiry as he had done regarding her aunt’s discharged manservant, Albert Ashe?

She recollected that, although the fellow had always been most polite and courteous, even to obsequiousness, yet she had always instinctively disliked him, and was secretly very glad when he had been discharged for impertinence. Nevertheless, it was indeed strange that the mysterious masquerader should know of him.

That there was a conspiracy afoot, a secret plot, conceived by an enemy, to part her from Brinsley, was the main point. What she had heard from the masked man’s lips held her stunned and stupefied, yet, by reason of her promise to divulge nothing to her lover, she was now held dumb and powerless.

Who could possibly be jealous of her happiness? Bliss such as she was now experiencing amid these unsullied snows had never been hers before in all her life. Why should it all end? Who was there in the world who could conspire to prevent their union?

The dance was concluded, and supper was announced. They went to a long table in the big dining-room, where they joined a party of about twenty others with whom they had formed friendships in the hotel. Chatter and loud peals of laughter sounded on every hand, masks were lifted, champagne corks popped, and serpentines came hurtling through the air and fell upon the table. But Sibell had lost interest in it all.

Her keen eyes were diligently searching everywhere to discover her secret cavalier. But from the moment he had bowed so courteously and left her, he had disappeared. He had delivered his mysterious message, and his mission was apparently at an end.

Not far away from her, at a table-à-deux in a corner, was seated a middle-aged man in the brown habit of a Capuchin monk, chatting merrily with a pretty, fair-haired girl dressed as a Columbine.

Now and then the man raised his brown eyes, and watched Sibell furtively, but so changed was he in appearance that it was not surprising that she failed to again recognize him.

CHAPTER XVI.
MAN AND WOMAN

Etta Wyndcliffe, the incomparable chaperon, of dainty frock and exquisite etiquette, entered Sibell’s room just after finishing her coffee and rolls, as she was in the act of taking up her strong, well-oiled ski-boots. To get into ski-ing kit is always a troublesome operation for a girl; the heavy socks, the “turn-overs,” the Norwegian bindings at the ankles, all go to irritate the wearer in the early morning.

“Drat this infernal lace!” Sibell exploded aloud just as her aunt opened the door.

“Do you know, dear, I’ve just had a wire, and I must go to London this afternoon!” exclaimed her ladyship fussily. “Isn’t this the limit, just when I was enjoying myself so very much here? Yet I’m ever so glad we came to Gurnigel. I shall come again.”

“Is it very urgent, auntie? Can’t you wait till Friday week? We’re due to go down to the Riviera then, aren’t we?”

“No. I must go to-day. I’ve some urgent business with my bank, my dear. You and Brinsley can remain here, and I’ll meet you on the Riviera. There is no need whatever for you to return to London.”

“But it’ll be so horribly dull here without you, auntie,” the girl said.

“Well, dear, I’m afraid I must go. It’s imperative,” she said. “I’m just going to pack. I’ll get the concierge to ’phone down to Berne for a sleeper to-night. The motor-car to Berne goes at half-past three, I hear.”

“Yes, auntie. But all this is very disappointing!” declared the pretty girl, in ignorance of the real reason of her aunt’s sudden desire to return to London.

“I know, dear. But those horrible bankers have a nasty habit of calling your immediate attention to any little overdraft you may happen to have. And one can’t afford to neglect to call upon the good-looking manager and cajole him into straightening things out.”

And she smiled at the many recollections of how she had borrowed money upon all sorts of frail security.

“Well, we’re going out for an hour’s run with John,” said her niece, “so we’ll be back before noon. Can I help you to pack?”

“Not at all. Bevan is seeing to everything,” her ladyship replied, and then left the room to go down to the concierge.

That gay little snow-bound world of winter sports, notwithstanding all the petty jealousies and bickerings of little, unknown people, was a world of its own, a happy coterie of devotees of winter sports.

The one man in the whole hotel who laughed at it all was Mr. Gordon Mitchell. He was a stout, smiling, hail-fellow-well-met man, to whose initiative was due the opening of Gurnigel in winter. He was a popular artist whose work adorned one of the best London illustrated papers, an irresponsible Bohemian bachelor who had not a single care in the world, and who moved up and down Europe as Society went from pillar to post throughout the four seasons.

He always dubbed himself “the looker-on,” for he sketched assiduously and saw most of the games, whether it be at Deauville, Le Touquet, Dinard, or Biarritz in summer, the Riviera in spring, Scotland in the autumn, or winter in the Engadine or the Bernese Oberland. It was he who, one spring day, had passed Gurnigel in his car and, looking up at the huge white façade of the colossal hotel, wondered why it had never been opened in winter.

His chauffeur told him that it was a summer resort only.

“Well,” he said, “it must be opened in winter. I will see that it is opened.”

And he saw to it, with the result that at that moment all the four hundred odd rooms were occupied, while the servants’ quarters were also invaded by visitors.

The other Swiss hôteliers had stood aghast at Gurnigel’s brilliant success. Some resorts had not been half full that season. Indeed, two winter-sports centres had not opened at all. And yet Gurnigel was overflowing.

But it was due, they all knew, to Mr. Gordon Mitchell, the lover of Switzerland, and they knew that, being a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan, he was open to do his best to advertise and attract visitors to every place in turn in the glorious Bernese Oberland.

In that spirit Mr. Gordon Mitchell watched the course of events. He was one of those old-young travellers, wanderers to and fro across Europe, who loved to see young folk enjoy themselves, and, though something of an old fogey and stickler for etiquette, could perform to perfection the duties of a floor-manager of any ballroom. Indeed, his performances upon the drum in an amateur band were well known in every resort in Switzerland.

At half-past three that afternoon, as Lady Wyndcliffe descended the snowy steps to enter the big, yellow automobile of the Swiss Federal Post—one of those long, powerful motor-cars of the mountains—Mr. Mitchell, bare-headed, bowed over her hand and wished her bon voyage.

“You have my address,” her ladyship said with a merry smile. “Now if you don’t call on me, I’ll never forgive you, Mr. Mitchell! As I’ve told you, I know lots of artistic friends of yours of the Savage and the Ham Bone. You’ll call? Promise me. And do look after Sibell and Brinsley for me, won’t you?” she added mischievously.

The others heard it, and were much impressed.

“We’ll look after Mr. Mitchell for you, auntie!” cried Sibell in defiance, waving her hand merrily as Etta, in her magnificent sable coat, climbed into the big autobus.

Shouts, hand-waves, and a low bow from the black frock-coated concierge with keys upon his shoulders, and the post automobile, with heavy chains on all four wheels, started down the steep, slippery hill on the long, winding highroad to the Swiss capital.

Then, when Lady Wyndcliffe had gone, Sibell and her lover took a luge and, seated together upon it, started down the steep run at an exhilarating pace, both yelling “Achtung!” as warning to any pedestrians in their path.

Yet all day Sibell could not put from herself the remembrance of that dark man of mystery who, dressed as a cavalier, had told her such a strange, remarkable story. A hundred times she wondered why he had made that queer inquiry regarding the identity of Albert Ashe. What could he know of her aunt’s butler?

At luncheon she had scrutinized every table, but had failed to identify her masked informant. Some visitors had left by the early morning autobus at eight o’clock, so she concluded that he must have been among them.

She longed to be able to tell Brinsley of what the stranger had said, but she saw that she would be compelled to await the cryptic message in the personal column of The Times.

So the days passed—bright, sunlit days, with cloudless skies and perfect snow, and frosty nights, brilliant and starlit, most perfect weather for winter sports. At last one afternoon the post came in. She saw the page carry The Times to the reading-room, and pounced eagerly upon it. Yes, the message was there at the top of the second column, addressed to her. But it was in the negative.

Brinsley Otway was to be kept in ignorance of the plot against them!

That same afternoon was dark and rainy in London, as Lady Wyndcliffe climbed the stairs of some bachelor chambers in Duke Street, St. James’s, and rapped upon a door, which was quickly opened by her ex-butler, Ashe.

“Well, Etta?” he asked, and, having ushered her into a cosy little sitting-room, where a bright fire was burning, and placed a chair for her, he said, “How did you get on?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the pretty woman wearily, throwing her furs carelessly upon the couch. “The fact is, I haven’t screwed up enough courage to face it.”

“What?” cried the man, glaring at her. “Don’t be a fool! Why, don’t you see that every day brings us nearer disaster? Every hour! Suppose he goes to the police? They’ll soon find you, and it will then be too late for him to withdraw. You must see him to-night—at once.”

“I can’t! I—I really can’t,” cried the white-faced woman in desperation. “Suppose he turns hostile, and gives me into custody?”

“He won’t do that if you are clever and don’t lose your head, Etta. You know he was in love with you, and may still be for all we know,” he said.

“Not after what has passed,” she replied, shaking her head. “I ruined him!”

“He’s not the only man ruined by a woman, my dear girl,” replied Ashe lightly. “Put on your best smile and a little sob-stuff, and he’ll soon forgive. Tell him you have come to him to make amends.”

“How can I possibly make amends for it all?” she asked bitterly.

“Pretend penitence and make all sorts of promises,” he urged. “Get on the right side of him, and he won’t harm you. But you must see him. Don’t let him hunt you out. You are not at West Halkin Street, are you?”

“No, I’m at the Grosvenor, under another name—Mrs. Wilcox.”

“As I’ve told you, he is at the Carlton,” said Ashe.

“No. He’s left there—gone to Manchester, and staying at the Midland. I was told so this morning when I rang them up.”

“Then you must go to Manchester to-night. Stay at the Midland, and see him in the morning. That’s my advice,” said the man, who was standing with arms akimbo on the hearthrug before her.

“But what am I to say?” she cried in despair. “What can I say?”

“Say that you heard he was back in England, and that you travelled at once from Switzerland to see him and to ask his forgiveness, and beg him to allow bygones to be bygones. He’ll do so, no doubt, if you play your cards cleverly. Once he becomes friendly, then we shall be able to deal with him and settle accounts.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Albert. It horrifies me,” she cried, covering her face with her hands, a habit of hers whenever she heard anything unpleasant.

“Well, my dear girl, we’ve got to face the music, haven’t we? It’s no use trying to evade the issue,” he said. “The first step is for you to appease him. And in order to do so, you must follow him to Manchester. Send a page to his room with a message that Mrs. Wilcox wishes to see him on a private matter. When a strange woman calls upon a man, he always becomes intrigued. Don’t announce yourself, as he might resent it.”

“But he might refuse to see me,” she protested.

“He won’t. He’s essentially a lady’s man, as you know.”

“But is there no other way?” she asked. “I feel so terrified lest he should call in the police and give me into custody. Think of the scandal of it all!”

“He won’t do that, provided you give him the real sob-stuff. And you know how to do that all right. I recollect one or two encounters you had with Wyndcliffe. You’re a damned fine actress, Etta, when you think it worth your while. And it is well worth it in this case, I assure you. Upon your trip to Manchester depends the liberty of us both, so the sooner you screw up courage the better.”

“Couldn’t you go and face him for me?”

“I!” cried the man, staring at her. “Why, I’d be bundled into the police-station within five minutes. Dear Rupert doesn’t love me—and never will!”

The woman paused for some minutes, her dark, apprehensive eyes gazing thoughtfully into the fire.

“But how can I make it up with him?” she faltered at last in a dull, broken voice quite unusual to her. “Think how I have treated him; of the sacrifice he made for me!”

“Oh, don’t wax romantic, my dear Etta,” he laughed. “Simply ask his forgiveness, say you still love him and all that, and——”

“And suppose he has discovered that I’ve married Wyndcliffe. What then, eh?” she interrupted.

The man pulled a wry face, but, after a moment’s silence, replied:

“I don’t see how he can know. You did not use your own name when you became Lady Wyndcliffe. Besides, you are Mrs. Wilcox, a widow, now.”

“But suppose he has discovered it, how am I to act?” she demanded. “What excuse can I make?”

“He won’t have found it out—not yet, at least. Therefore if you act at once and boldly you’ll hold all the honors in your hands. Take my advice and leave by the diner to Manchester this evening, sleep calmly at the Midland to-night, and look your prettiest and brace yourself up for to-morrow morning.”

“I dread the ordeal, Albert,” declared the unhappy woman.

“I have no doubt you do, my dear girl. But, as I have already said, we must call the music and Rupert must dance to our tune—if we are to get out of this unholy tangle.”

“He may have seen my portrait in the illustrated papers,” she remarked.

“No. He’s been in America all the time, in a place where he didn’t see papers”—and he grinned.

The woman drew a long breath, and he noticed that her jaw was twitching. Her nerves were unstrung. So he poured her out some brandy, which she swallowed at a gulp.

“It all remains with you, Etta,” he said very seriously, putting his hand upon her shoulder and bending over her. “Get him out of his present hostile mood. Promise him everything—to return to America with him if he wants you to do so; anything. Because once he resumes his friendship—and he will do so if you play the game properly—then all will be plain sailing for us in the future.”

“You mean—I know what you mean!” she whispered hoarsely, staring at him with horrified eyes. “You mean that I am to—to lure him to his death!”

CHAPTER XVII.
EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY

“Mr. Kimball says he’s very busy, madam. But he’ll see you for a few moments. Will you please come up to his sitting-room?” said the small boy in uniform.

Etta Wyndcliffe, wearing her daintiest little hat and her sable coat, stepped into the lift, and, piloted by the page, at last stood before a door upon which the lad rapped.

“Come in!” cried a gruff voice from within. The page opened the door, and next second Etta and her arch-enemy, Rupert Kimball, stood face to face.

The man—tall, burly, and clean-shaven, a typical American business man, upright and shrewd—removed his cigar in amazement, and, after staring at her for a second, exclaimed:

“Etta! And pray what the hell brings you here?”

“I came to meet you,” the woman faltered in a low voice, still standing upon the threshold.

“H’m! Thought it best to come to me, did you?” he growled, while his expression instantly altered, and there was a gleam of hatred in his sharp, dark eyes.

A well-dressed man of about fifty with iron-grey hair, his sunken eyes told of some deep sorrow, illness, or perhaps business failure.

“I don’t want to see you, woman!” he flared up, speaking with a forced American accent. “The very sight of you is hateful to me. Get out!” he added roughly.

“But, Rupert!” she cried piteously, closing the door behind her and advancing into the room. “Don’t send me away before you give me a chance to tell you—to tell you the truth”; and she put out her hands imploringly.

“The truth!” he laughed with sarcasm. “The truth from a woman like you!”

And he turned from her in disgust and walked across to the window.

“Don’t you remember the past? Don’t you ever think of——”

“I think of the hell’s witch that you are, and how you played me false!” he snapped between his teeth. “I tell you frankly that I’m here in England to bring you to justice.”

“But, Rupert, for God’s sake hear me!” she implored. “Before you take action against me, listen to what I have to say. I’ve rushed back from Switzerland to see you. Maudie Ashley wrote to me saying that you had left St. Louis and were on your way to London. I rang up the Carlton yesterday, and they told me you were here. I—I wanted to see you—to——”

“And I don’t want to see you. That’s the difference,” he snarled. “You came up here on false pretences—Mrs. Wilcox.”

“Because I feared that you would refuse to see me,” declared the unhappy woman with truth.

“I should certainly have refused. The past is all too horrible. Your face brings back to me all your foul plots and the evil worked against me. All my misfortunes I owe to your damnable cunning.”

“Rupert!” she said in a changed, intense voice. “I have come to you to try and atone for what I did. I know I was a swine to you. But I stand before you, and—and I humbly ask your forgiveness!”

Then before the man was aware of it she had sunk upon her knees before him, grasped his hand, and was kissing it fervently.

He tried to snatch his hand from her, but she held his wrist tightly with both hands.

“No, Rupert, no!” she cried frantically. “Forgive me, I implore you. Let us talk it all over.”

“There’s nothing to talk over,” he replied savagely. “You wrecked my life because I foolishly listened to your wicked scheming. You formed the plot out of your own evil brain; I listened to you, and did what you suggested. Then, when you had secured your own ends, you secretly gave me away for the reward, and left me to face disgrace and punishment. But now I’m free again, woman, I mean to at least be even with you! Forgive you! Never!” And he snatched his hand from her so roughly that she rolled to the floor at his feet.

“I got no reward!” she protested angrily. “It’s a lie.”

“Then that man who was behind your evil schemes took it. They told me all afterwards!”

“I know nothing about it, Rupert,” she said. “I admit that I have been your enemy. I now, however, want to stand as your friend—to help you to a new life.”

“Because you’re in mortal fear of me!” he laughed triumphantly. “You don’t think I’m a lovesick fool any longer? You surely don’t think that I believe a single word you say?”

“I can’t help that. What I say now, I mean.”

“Become very honest all of a sudden, it seems!” he sneered. “You look prosperous enough—more than you did six years ago. What are you doing for a living just now? That coat of yours must have cost a tidy few dollars.”

“I’m living honestly, at any rate,” was her sharp reply.

“For the first time in your life,” he laughed. “When I first met you, you were Snakey Toulmin, the decoy of Bud Taylor and his precious gang of sharpers working the Atlantic ferry. And an infernally smart little rogue you were. Those who made your acquaintance were always thousands of dollars the poorer on the trip. I was one of your pigeons.”

“That’s all of the past. Let’s wipe it out, Rupert.”

“H’m! You appear to think you can change your damned black soul as easily as you can change your frock,” he growled. “No, I have the past always with me. I had it for those years in a prison cell.”

“Forget it all,” urged the pretty but unhappy woman. “I know I’m utterly worthless, Rupert. But I’ve never had a single chance to be honest in my life till now. My father was a card-sharper, as you well know, and I was brought up from childhood to exercise my woman’s wiles upon men. I’m not wholly to blame.”

“You are wholly to blame for my ruin,” he answered. “You induced me to knock the bank-messenger on the head on that winter day in New York and steal his wallet. I very nearly committed murder at your instigation in order to provide you with a fine house and fine clothes, as I thought. But you in turn stole the money from me, gave me away to the police, and then escaped, leaving me to face prosecution and punishment. You didn’t think of me, Etta, did you? No, only of yourself and that swine who haunted you like a black shadow. I’ll hunt him out one day soon, never fear. I know he’s here in England, and then it will be my triumph when we meet,” he said savagely.

“My dear Rupert, I know all that you must feel, and how hostile and bitter you must be against me,” she said, assuming a softer attitude towards him. “I deserve it all. I don’t endeavor to excuse myself one iota for what I did. I only desire to atone for it all.”

“Atone!” exclaimed the man looking sternly into her face. “How?”

“By trying to help you, and perhaps to make you happy.”

“How can you help me? Got any money?” he asked.

“You can’t want money if you can afford to stay at the Carlton in London, and have a sitting-room here,” she ventured to remark.

“I’m doing some business up here,” he explained. “So I’ve had to have a sitting-room.”

“I hope it’s a profitable business.”

“Oh, it’s quite a square deal,” he said. “A bit of agency work for a New York wireless firm—component parts for amateurs’ sets. These English seem to have gone crazy on radio. It has taken America to show them the way.”

He smiled, and she instantly saw that his hostile attitude was slowly decreasing, though he naturally could not at once overlook her dastardly behavior in stealing from him those bundles of bank-notes and negotiable securities, which he had filched from the messenger whom he had knocked senseless at the street corner in Park Avenue.

“Yes,” she said. “The English are horribly slow to take up any innovation. Little old New York puts a polish on any new invention or labor-saving device before London can rub its eyes even to look at it. I hope you’ll do good business in radio, Rupert. And if I can be of any help, why, I’m right there at once.”

“Do you happen to know any radio firms?” he asked quickly.

“Well,” she replied, “I happen to know one of the B.B.C., and I daresay I could get you an introduction to several of the big retail houses, which might be of advantage to you.”

“Very well, Etta,” he said, “I’m open for business.”

“On one condition, Rupert,” she said, with a woman’s clever cunning. “That you make no inquiry as to my present position or mode of life. I live honestly, of that I assure you. And my reputation for honesty may serve you well in the near future. I’ll stir heaven and earth for you, in order to make atonement for my damnable behavior in the past, and to put you upon a proper and prosperous business footing in the future. Is that a bargain?”

For a few minutes he remained silent. Then he said: “You’re a clever little witch, Etta. You look prosperous, and you probably are. We swam on the same tide before, and if you can help me, then we’ll do so again—on the tide which must bring us both to fortune.”

“Ah, Rupert!” she cried wildly, looking into his eyes. “I knew that you would forgive me. All these years I’ve been filled with bitter remorse, and have shed many tears over—over you and how disgracefully I treated you”; and then, bowing her head over his hand, she burst into quick sobs.

“I—I’ll try and recover your good opinion of me,” she went on, her tears rolling down her cheeks. “I—I know I’m a worthless woman; a woman who has wrecked the life of a great, strong, self-willed man. But it was your overbearing attitude to the world that led me to it. I—I—was mad. I set out to allure you—to cheat you, to throw you into the melting-pot—and I succeeded. At first I was full of glee. I escaped to Valparaiso and then across to Australia. Afterwards I got back to London, and in the American papers I read the account of your trial and your condemnation. I prayed for you. I could not sleep at night for thinking of you in your prison cell, because I had treated you so, and it was all my fault, Rupert,” she cried, taking him by both shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “I’m a woman. We women are mostly weird creatures. We can’t control ourselves. Sometimes we grow to hate those whom we really love, and sometimes we love those whom we hate the most. We are the weaker sex—and perhaps I am the weakest of them all.”

Rupert Kimball, the well-dressed American, whom none in England would dream to be a gaol-bird recently released from St. Louis convict prison, turned from the window slowly.

“I accept all you say, my dear girl,” he said hesitatingly. “But what I want to know is, how you are living so prosperously. That sable coat of yours intrigues me.”

“I do a little business in French model frocks and lingerie,” she said, with the first excuse which arose to her lying lips. “This coat isn’t mine. I only wear it as an advertisement.”

“Then you are on a commission basis?”

“Yes. We are both in business. So why not let us work together?”

“But you are very reticent regarding yourself, Etta,” he said.

“I have to be. After all, I don’t want my wretched past to be raked up, any more than you do, eh? So the least we say about each other the better. Let’s unite our forces instead of being enemies, and let’s make money. I’ll help you in your wireless business. I know I can.”

He walked back to her from the window.

“Now,” he said, suddenly halting in front of her, “are you playing the straight game, Etta? If you’re not, then, by God! I’ll send you to twenty years. You know what I mean—the proofs I have against you and your accursed hanger-on Belton, or Ashe, or whatever he now calls himself.”

“Oh! I haven’t seen him for years, my dear old bean,” laughed Etta. “He treated me rottenly, as all men of his low-down class treat women. When he saw the red light he turned tail and scooted. He left me in Valparaiso, and a jolly good job too. He was no good, anyway. He hadn’t the courage of a flea.”

“Exactly what I thought. But I believed he would have stuck to you,” said Kimball. “Tell me how you have fared while I’ve been all that time in the penitentiary”; and he stood before her, for the first time realizing that she looked not a year older than when he last saw her in their flat, before he went out on that snowy day with an iron bar as a walking-stick to waylay the unsuspecting messenger of the United States Allied Bank.

“Oh, I’ve managed to scrape along. I’ve formed a good many friendships with people with money, better-class people in London. Hence I’ve lots of influential friends, and will be able to help you in your new venture.”

“Not married yet, eh?”

“Married!” she laughed scornfully. “Take me for an idiot? No, I’ll never be a man’s domestic slave. Let other women have the worry of a home and children, but not for me.”

Then, seizing her opportunity, she held out her hand to him, asking: “Won’t you really forgive me, Rupert? I promise that in future I will stand your friend.”

“Do you actually mean that?” he demanded fiercely. “Can I trust you?”

The woman’s face relaxed into one of those sweet smiles that men had found, to their cost, so alluring.

“Yes, Rupert. You may now,” she said, and made a motion as though to put her lips to his.

“No. I don’t want your kisses, thank you,” he said in a hard, abrupt tone. “I’d rather be without them.” But, taking her hand, he added in a quieter tone: “We’ll be friends, as you wish it. But you’ll have to prove your friendship towards me before I wholly forgive you for the ruin you’ve brought upon me. You told me you’ve just come back from Switzerland. Do you live there nowadays?”

“Sometimes,” she answered. “Sometimes I live at a cottage on the Thames. But I’m always a wanderer—just as I’ve ever been.”

“And you call yourself Wilcox—a widow, I presume?” And he grinned.

“Yes,” she laughed, inwardly wondering what he would think and how he would act if he knew her true position in London Society, at the same time fearing lest he should discover her rank and title. She saw that at all hazards he must not know that she, the Snakey Toulmin of the cross-Atlantic gang, had married an English peer.

Nevertheless, much elated at the successful manner in which she had appeased the man who had come to England to expose and prosecute her, she took his hand, and in gratitude, kissed it again and again.

Yet it was only to gain time, she knew. His enemy, Albert Ashe, had sworn to be even with him if he ever dared to put foot on British soil.

She knew that the threats of the man whose strange career had included masquerading as her butler in West Halkin Street, were never idle ones.

So an hour later she went out to the railway station and sent him a telegram with two words only: “Forgiven—Etta.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

In early February the winter sports season at Gurnigel was already on the wane.

The four hundred odd people in the great big hotel de luxe had dwindled down to about three hundred, all of them English, yet the gaieties both day and night proceeded merrily under the direction of the genial and ever-popular manager, whose chief object was to know each of his visitors personally and see that they were looked after by his efficiently-trained staff.

The Swiss have ever been the best hôteliers in the world. Wherever you go in either hemisphere, you know that if you decide upon a Swiss-managed hotel you will be comfortable at moderate expense.

So it was at Gurnigel. The many petty jealousies and little bickerings between the English clientèle often caused the amiable director to retire to his chalet at night and clench his fists in desperation. And well he might. He held an onerous and responsible position, and no one knew his troubles more intimately than the old artist Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who almost daily sat in his private office and held counsel with him.

Mitchell was a man of world-wide repute who had no axe to grind. He very naturally treated the conspiracy against himself by a few nobodies as the result of disappointed ambitions. “People pay their little round sums to a tourist agency, and expect to be regarded as little tin gods,” was how he expressed it to his intimates.

One day Sibell, who had grown friendly with the smiling, round-faced old bachelor, was sitting at tea with him and her financé, when she said:

“Do you know, I’d love to see a glacier. I’ve read lots about them, but I’ve never seen one.”

“Well, Miss Dare, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Why not take the train up to the Little Scheidegg, and go out upon the Eiger Glacier? That would give you a very good idea of what a glacier is like.” Then, turning to Otway, he said: “I have to go up to the Scheidegg the day after to-morrow, and I’ll escort you both, if you like. You’ll want a guide. Why not take John? He’s excellent at glacier work—that is, if you can induce him to leave here for three days.”

The idea appealed to the young pair.

“Your aunt put you both in my charge before she went away, you know,” Mr. Mitchell laughed. “So I make no excuse for the suggestion. You want to go on a glacier, so I’m ready to take you there. The Eiger Glacier is close to the Jungfrau, beneath it, as a matter of fact, and will give you perhaps the best idea of glaciers you can get in Switzerland.”

“But what is a glacier really like?” asked the girl in her ignorance.

“Imagine a sea of ice with huge fissures in it on every hand, cracks hundreds of feet deep—all pure grey-green ice—the ice of ages,” answered Mr. Mitchell, who, in his younger days, had been an ardent Alpine climber. “Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to see an ice avalanche, you witness one of the most stupendous alterations of Nature. You see the ice edge of a gigantic glacier of countless ages break away and fall with thunder over a precipice, the great ice boulders bounding from rock to rock down thousands of feet until they become pulverized, and, like white powder, stream down like swift-moving rivers out of the ravines, into the valley below. The sight of a great ice-avalanche is one of the most awe-inspiring scenes in the world, hundreds of thousands of tons of the remains of the ice age breaking from the edge of the dangerous glaciers to be hurled into space with irresistible force, carrying everything before them. It is usual for all glaciers to move forward some eight or ten inches each day, and as they move, they form deep and dangerous crevasses, sometimes two hundred feet deep, terrible death-traps for the Alpinist who climbs.”

“How wonderful!” said the girl. “I’d love to see a glacier and go on it.”

“Well, I am ready to take you both,” said the grey-haired old Alpine climber. “So if you like to fix it, I’m quite game to go to Interlaken, and then up the Wengern Alp to Scheidegg.”

They decided to go, and two days later took train up the delightful valley of Lauterbrunnen, and there by the rack and pinion mountain line for a further four thousand feet, climbing on the face of the Alps past the popular winter-sports village of Wengen up to Wengern Alp and Scheidegg.

As they sat together upon a seat at the lonely little mountain halt, with the dark Trummelbach Valley between them, and beyond, the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, with the Schneehorn and a dozen other finely poised peaks, with their glaciers, black rocks, and fields of eternal snow forming a wonderful panorama, they suddenly heard a roar.

“Avalanche!” cried Mr. Gordon Mitchell, springing to his feet. “Look! Several!”

Then across from the valley came an increasing thunderous roar of ice-avalanches from the glaciers of the Kühlauenen, the two Bandlauenen, and from the deeply-cleft Giessen and the Lammlaui in rapid succession, while, from one or other of the five narrow gullies in the black rocks, the steam of ice, ground to powder, poured forth, raising great clouds of dust. It was a unique sight and never to be forgotten, for they were face to face with Nature, witnessing the irresistible force of the mighty, grinding glaciers, as they slowly moved down towards the valley, until in the ages to come the last relics of the Ice Age will have vanished and left their traces upon the ice-worn rocks through which they have passed.

Have you ever seen an avalanche? The warm wind, known in the Alps as the Föhn, is probably blowing. The glaciers and snowy sides of the mountains are slowly thawing. We hear ominous cracking sounds deep in the crevasses if we happen to be on the glacier, while water is everywhere trickling across the surface of the ice, for under the Föhn the snow is gradually disappearing.

As the trio watched, the roar slowly died away.

“Look!” cried Sibell, pointing to another glacier high up near the summit before them. “There’s another! Oh, what a wonderful sight!”

Of a sudden Nature trembled as though in expectation. They held their breaths instinctively, when, in a few seconds, they saw great walls of ice collapse, detaching themselves from the glacier and toppling over the edge of a precipice, followed by rumbling, a blustering, and then a deafening roar, as from the lowest part of the glacier the ice smashed in its fall, and poured through the funnels of rock, far down into the valley, just as it has done for thousands of years, and as it will for yet more thousands. The thundering of the avalanche is the angry voice of the Giants disturbed from their winter silence by the presence of man. It was an awe-inspiring sight, the memory of which would live with them always.

That night they spent at the comfortable Bellevue Hotel at Scheidegg, over seven thousand feet above the sea, and, looking from their windows, saw deep in the valley the lights of gay Grindelwald twinkling thousands of feet below.

After sunset a keen frost set in, as it always does at that altitude. Scheidegg is, par excellence, the resort of the practised skier, who can run down to Grindelwald or to Wengen without danger, and it is consequently very popular, for the snow up there is always good when often impossible at lower heights.

After dinner the well-known artist sat with his two young friends over the big log fire in the hall, all three smoking cigarettes with their coffee and kirsch discussing the morrow’s adventure on the Eiger Glacier.

“I’m getting most excited!” cried Sibell. “Fancy walking out upon a glacier!”

“Yes, but it is not without a certain element of danger,” remarked Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who had had a good deal of experience in glacier work, and who had picked up his ice-axe at the well-known Hôtel du Lac in Interlaken, where he kept it from year to year. Sibell and her lover had borrowed axes from the hotel in which they had taken shelter for the night, and they had been greatly interested in the strongly-made implements, with their hafts of ash and hatchets of finest steel, upon which human life so often depends in the Alps.

While they were enjoying the warmth of the fire and chatting with half a dozen skiers of both sexes who, like themselves, were going on an expedition in the morning, the smart Swiss hotel manager entered, and, addressing Mr. Mitchell, whom he knew well as a devotee of winter sports, said:

“John, the guide, has just telephoned from Gurnigel that he has unfortunately hurt his ankle while giving a lesson this afternoon. Somebody ran into him, so he cannot come up in the morning. I propose to telephone to Amacher and Stutz down in Wengen to come up by the first train. Both are good guides of the Jungfrau and they know the glacier well.”

“Excellent!” said Mr. Mitchell. “I’ve had Amacher before, up to the Guggi Hut and also to the summit of the Breithorn and on other tours. He’s a first-class fellow. Thanks, if you’ll get them both for us, I’ll be obliged.”

“Stutz was one of those who climbed with Prince Chichibu of Japan last season,” said the hotel manager. “The Prince is a wonderful climber, he says, as well as a good skier. Everyone in the Oberland admired him when he was in Mürren. A pity he had to leave to return to Japan under such tragic circumstances.”

“Yes. Everyone knows what a real winter sportsman he is,” remarked the old Alpinist. And then the conversation turned upon the daring exploits of the Imperial Japanese Prince in the Bernese Alps.

That night a blizzard raged, one of those blinding snowstorms which arise in the high mountains so suddenly and abate so rapidly, yet are so dangerous to those who may be caught in them without shelter. The railway watchmen on duty, seeing the rapidly increasing drifts, telephoned down to Lauterbrunnen to set the snow-ploughs at work in order to keep open communication with the world below. So all night the electric ploughs were slowly going up and down to keep the road clear, though it was impossible to keep open that section of a couple of miles between Scheidegg and the Eiger Gletscher station, where the tunnel enters the mountain and climbs to the Jungfrau.

Hence, when Sibell—rising early and putting on her mountain kit, consisting of a waterproof wind-jacket and breeches, thick woollen stockings and her heavily nailed climbing-boots, which differed in many respects from those built for ski-ing—appeared below in the hall, she met Mr. Mitchell, who said:

“The line is blocked, so we’ll have to walk to the glacier. Amacher and Stutz are here having breakfast, and they are packing their rucksacks for us.”

Just then Brinsley put in an appearance, and the three went into the salle-à-manger to a substantial English meal of ham and eggs, which the popular artist had specially ordered as a preliminary to the day’s expedition.

Later the two guides joined them in the hall. Amacher, a short, thick-set man, dark and ill-shaven, with that keen eagle’s look in his great blue eyes which seems inborn in the mountain guide, approached and greeted Mr. Mitchell.

“Grüss Gott, Herr Mitchell!” he exclaimed, putting out his big, hard hand. He wore a battered round felt cap with his snow-glare glasses around the band, and over his shoulder a coiled safety-rope of best and strongest hemp, while suspended from his wrist was his trusty ice-axe, that had saved his life in a dozen or so tight corners when climbing.

“Goin’ across the glacier to-day, eh?” he asked in his kind of parrot-English. He was one of the bravest guides of that perilous range, and always acted as director of the search-party of guides who were ever ready to risk their lives to save those reported missing upon mountain or glacier.

“Yes, Fritz. We want you to take us on the glacier. My friends here are anxious to see the crevasses—the deep ones.”

The sturdy, sun-tanned Swiss—brown-faced because of the reflection of the glaring sun upon the ice—replied:

“All right, Herr Mitchell.” And then he introduced the tall, thin, wiry man who stood behind him, as Hans Stutz. The guide, proud of the bronze badge with the white enamelled cross on his chest, which showed him to be approved and licensed by the Swiss Alpine Club, smiled and lifted his peaked cap and wished them “Good morning, gentlemen and lady.”

He, too, had his rope on his shoulder, his well-filled rucksack upon his back, and his ice-axe ready for the crossing of the treacherous glacier.

“The weather is none too good,” Fritz mentioned to Hans in Swiss-German, and Mr. Mitchell, understanding the remark, asked at once, “Look here, Amacher, is there any danger?”

“Oh, no,” laughed the guide. “If the weather turns bad we can get back again. We will go by the safe route and show the lady and gentleman the deep crevasses. There are lots of them just now—after the Föhn. We’ve got the food in our rucksacks. Shall we go?”

The others assented, for all were ready dressed.

“Walk very slowly, mees, over the snow,” Amacher advised, taking the girl’s arm. “You have a long way to go and hard walking. Just easy—easy—so!” And he slowed down and made her walk his pace. “You see, we are climbing another thousand feet, before we get to the glacier, and you must not be fatigued before we get there. If you hear noises, great cracklings, water running far below and look down into the darkness, don’t get frightened. Hans and I are with you. We know the glacier from boys.”

“I trust in you,” said the girl, placing her gloved hand upon his strong arm, while Brinsley was walking with the tall Stutz.

“No danger. Not at all,” Amacher said. “I am guide. Trust me, mees.”

“I do, Amacher,” she said, and they went along up the steep hill, following the railway lines and passing the kennels of the grey wolf Uke Arctic dogs kept there, until at last they reached the moraine, that beach of stones and débris left by the Ice Age, while beyond it lay an undulating mass of square miles of ice, full of treacherous ice-bridges across wide and fatal crevasses, yawning chasms from twenty to three hundred feet deep.

At the edge of the ice they paused. It seemed to them—as it really was—the roof of the world.

The guides removed their rucksacks from their backs to rest, and Sibell, at Amacher’s invitation, seated herself on one of them and had a cigarette her lover offered her.

The sky had changed. From the howling blizzard of early morning the bad weather had abated, and now the sun shone so brightly in a cloudless sky that Amacher and Stutz had put down their glare-glasses over their eyes as precaution, though their charges felt no inconvenience.

Already it was noon, so it was decided to have a sandwich before venturing out upon the glacier. Weatherwise, Amacher scanned the mountains around, and in a low voice remarked in his native Swiss-German to his fellow-guide: “Bad weather coming, friend Hans.”

“Yes,” replied Stutz. “We won’t go very far. Up to the corner, if it’s narrow enough to get them over.”

Mr. Mitchell, who understood only very little Swiss-German, for it is a language which few Englishmen have ever been able to master, believed it to be a joke between the two guides, for both men laughed.

A few minutes later Amacher uncoiled his rope and began to make mysterious turns and knots in it as he placed it over Sibell’s shoulders, naturally thrilling her with the idea of mountaineering in the high Alps.

Having securely roped her around her waist, and putting a hitch over her shoulder, he gave her several coils of slack to hold and then roped her to her lover in the same way, and afterwards to Mr. Mitchell, while he roped himself to one end of the file, and Stutz fastened on the other.

“Now,” he said warningly, “be careful. I go first and prick the snow with my axe. Watch me, all of you, and put your feet exactly in the steps I have made. Now—off!”

And they went out upon the snow-covered glacier in single file, Amacher in front picking his way very carefully, fearful of stepping upon a thin crust of snow concealing some deep crevasse.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE DEVIL’S PARADE

At first the way across the undulating virgin snowfield, upon which here and there showed dark, jagged lines—those terrible fissures in the ice—looked easy, and Sibell, in her ignorance, wondered why the dark-spectacled Amacher, with his coil of slack rope in his hand and bending intent upon his path, should carefully prick the snow with his axe and feel what seemed always to be firm ground.

She was next to him, about four yards behind, with Brinsley third, and Mr. Mitchell and Hans following. On every hand she heard from deep down below the rippling of water, the slow melting of the eternal ice which ran into the dark, deep-cut valley of the Trummelbach, that mysterious narrow split in the mountains which leads away through Lauterbrunnen, where the stream has, through countless ages, fed the deep lake of Brienz, and which, in due course, through the fast-flowing Aar, feeds the mighty Rhine across Europe to the Dutch coast.

The two Alpine guides, their eyes painful because of the constant sun-glare, presented a goggled appearance as Amacher every now and then halted, retraced his steps carefully, whereupon the others turned and went backward until he again struck out at a different angle.

Below, the lovers heard ominous crackings as the ice, ever-shifting day and night in all the seasons, slowly moved towards the valley, at one season going down and at the other shrinking and remaining nearly where it was in the season before.

For nearly two hours they went along, their progress being very slow, but Fritz Amacher never took undue risks. The safety of those in his charge was always his first consideration. Dozens of tales were related in the little cafés in the mountain villages of his courage and heroism out on the mountains; of his experience with two young Englishmen in winter when, overtaken by a blizzard, they were compelled to spend the night under a rock on the other side of the glacier, and only because he gave them his own rations of food and red wine, and starved himself, were they able to exist until the dawn.

Gordon Mitchell had heard many stories of his gallant heroism, and how often he had faced death, while nearly as many stories were told of Hans Stutz. Indeed, Alpine guides are recognized all over the world as the finest and most reliable type of Europe.

They had been walking for over two hours, often taking wide turns to avoid those deep fissures in the ice which yawned to mysterious darkness.

Sometimes Amacher would hurl a big stone into one of them, when it could be heard bounding from side to side of the crevasse, long after it had disappeared into the darkness down hundreds of feet into the abyss.

Presently he paused and looked around, as though puzzled. They had wandered upon a spot surrounded on all sides by open fissures, and, though the guide went to and fro, he could not discover again the narrow snow-ridge over which they had crossed, and which was evidently the entrance to what was an impasse.

His keen eye, however, discovered a spot where two big open crevasses were joined by only a narrow, jagged gap, which was as deep as the rest, and there remained nothing for it but to descend and cut steps in the side of the glacier to the narrowest point where they could swing themselves across.

For him and Stutz it was mere child’s play, but to the inexperienced, horrifying and perilous.

Gordon Mitchell, as a practised Alpinist, at once realized Amacher’s intention. At the guide’s order all held the rope taut while he descended, and, swinging his axe, deftly and quickly cut deep steps in the ice, sprang across to the opposite side, and then cut two steps, which enabled him to climb to the opposite edge of the ice-wall.

Planting himself well back, he took up the slack of rope and then called to Sibell to follow.

“Go slowly, miss,” he cried. “Have your ice-axe ready, and grip the edge with it, as I did,” he urged. “Very slowly down, and you’ll find it quite easy,” he cried. “We’ve got hold of you. You can’t fall.”

“Oh, I’m so terrified!” cried the girl breathlessly, for, indeed, the appearance of that dark, grey-green, yawning abyss open to an unknown depth was sufficient to strike terror to the heart of any novice.

“Keep cool, dear!” cried Brinsley. “I’m holding you.”

Thus encouraged, the girl turned her face boldly to the descending wall of ice and, kneeling, drove the head of her axe deeply into the ice, and slowly lowered herself by its shaft until her foot touched the step. Then, slowly again, she descended to the next step, and, without daring to glance into the fatal depths below, she swung herself across, helped by Amacher’s rope, to the opposite side of the great fissure, and then clambered up, helping herself with her axe to scramble to the top.

“There!” she cried triumphantly, waving her axe to her lover. “That was all right, wasn’t it?”

“Bravo!” cried the old artist. “Most excellent! Very plucky indeed!”

“Now, Brin!” she cried. “It’s your turn. I’ll hold you.”

But Amacher advanced to the rope between her and her lover, saying in a kindly tone:

“No, miss. You must allow me”; and, taking an expert hitch with the rope, he leant back and held it taut while the young doctor emulated the feat of his fiancée.

He managed to descend safely, but in swinging across to the other side of the crevasse his foot slipped, and next instant he was held dangling on the rope, held fast in readiness by the guide and Mr. Mitchell.

Sibell shrieked when she saw his peril, but Alpine ropes are made of the best hemp, and are as carefully attended to in the guide’s chalet as is his own bed, therefore there is no danger of snapping under any sudden strain.

For a few seconds Otway, thoroughly alarmed, of course, and winded by the sudden strain of the rope upon him, struggled, but quickly he regained his foothold, and was soon hauled up by the ever-watchful Amacher.

For a few moments he could not breathe, but the Swiss guide supported him, took some brandy from his rucksack, and made him swallow it, and in a few minutes he was all right again.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, as soon as he could gain breath, while Sibell still held his arm. “I don’t want that experience again! I thought I’d gone! My foot slipped from the step.”

“Never mind,” laughed Amacher in his cheery way, peering at him through his dark glasses. “You’re over all right.”

Afterwards the guide shouted across:

“Come on, Herr Mitchell!”

And, taking the rope from the young man, he held it while the practised climber came nimbly down, crossed, and clambered up to them. And afterwards the tall Hans swung himself over without the slightest difficulty.

They soon resumed their way, walking in Indian file as before; Amacher testing every yard of the way with his axe, now and then halting and turning to avoid danger, until at last they found themselves upon a part of the glacier which he knew was free from crevasses, so they halted, opened their rucksacks, and finished their luncheon, which all found very welcome, especially the cakes of plain chocolate without which no Alpine lunch is complete.

Afterwards, the winter sun declining, they set their faces towards the distant moraine—débris of stones and rock brought down by the glacier through the ages—to the spot whence they had started, arriving there just as the pale-rose afterglow began to tint the high-up snows of the towering Jungfrau.

Before dusk they were back, warming themselves by the welcome log-fire of the hotel, the lovers thrilled by their first experience upon a glacier.

“I wouldn’t have missed to-day for worlds!” Sibell declared enthusiastically, and then, when they were alone, she whispered: “Brin, when we are married, let us come up here, high above the earth and far from the haunts of men, for our honeymoon. Think how lovely it is here, face to face with Nature in a land unspotted by the hand of man. I love it—every moment of it!”

“Yes, my darling,” he said, kissing her fondly upon her lips.

Suddenly, as he held her in his arms, he felt her shiver.

“I hope you haven’t caught a chill, darling!” he said anxiously. “You’re cold!”

“No, really I’m not, Brin. I honestly am not. I just shivered. I don’t know why. That’s all.”

But in her heart she knew why. At that moment of her enthusiasm for the high Alps a black shadow had fallen across her memory.

Her thought was of that elegant masked cavalier who had disclosed to her a secret which that cryptic message in The Times had ordered her to conceal from the man she loved.

There was a plot to part them! Could they ever be parted? Was not her whole future life bound up in Brin’s? Was he not all in all to her?

Ten minutes later, in the privacy of her little room where she had gone to change from her mountain clothes, she locked the door, and, falling upon her knees beside her bed, prayed earnestly for deliverance from the hand of her unknown enemy.

Next morning Mr. Mitchell, expert skier that he was, took Amacher with him from the Scheidegg down to Grindelwald, where they had early tea at Frau Wolter’s, or, rather, the commodious place which once belonged to the popular old lady, now, alas! dead.

That night he met the lovers at the Hôtel du Lac in Interlaken, the comforts of which are so well known to every winter-sports visitor to the Bernese Oberland, and next day they returned to Gurnigel.

Five days later they bade farewell to their friend Mr. Mitchell, and, the winter sports season being practically over, they travelled to Milan by the Simplon, and thence by the train-de-luxe which took them by way of Genoa, San Remo, and Ventimiglia along through the palms and olives to Cannes.

In Milan they had received a telegram from Sibell’s aunt to say that she had been unwell with a mild attack of influenza, suggesting that they should go to the Beau Site until she was well enough to travel and go into residence at the villa.

They obeyed the injunction, and found the sunshine and brightness of the Riviera delightful, but even on the first day after their arrival Sibell declared that the high Alps, with their wonderful germ-free atmosphere, were far more congenial than the gaiety, the artificiality, the gambling, and the vice of the much-vaunted Côte d’Azur.

It was true that she met several people she knew in that fine hotel which is the rendezvous of the best tennis-players in the world, but somehow she never seemed to have Brin to herself as she had had him in Gurnigel, amid those marvellous and romantic forest walks and extensive ski-ing fields.

To Brinsley Otway the reckless life of the Riviera was a novelty, hence she constituted herself his guide. Carnival was in full swing in Nice, so twice they went over, once to the famous ball, and once to the first Battle of Flowers, and on both occasions they had a most hilarious time.

Then she took him several times to Monte Carlo, where she initiated him into the intricacies of roulette and trente-et-quarante. Both risked modest stakes, of course, but neither won. Therefore, beyond sight of the crowds in the stuffy, unventilated rooms, the Casino did not appeal very much to either of them.

One Sunday morning, having left Cannes for Monte Carlo early, they took their cocktails in front of the Café de Paris, and afterwards went for an idle stroll in the sunshine along the world-famed Terraces.

It was eleven o’clock, the hour of the Sunday parade, and Sibell was dressed as smartly as any. All types were there—the newly rich in great plebeian force, swindlers, rogues, peers, and flappers, some women half bare and others wrapped in furs—not because it was cold, but the furs were expensive and must be exhibited—a multicolored stream which below showed a continuous flicker of light stockings and shoes, and above a struggling crowd of gaudy sunshades. From flappers in sky-blue to painted Jezebels of every age to eighty; from typical French artists in broad-brimmed hats, flowing cravats, and peg-top trousers, to staid English business men, members of Parliament, and prosperous share swindlers; from athletic young English girls with complexions that required no rouge, to dozens of overdressed, bejewelled women of all ages and all nationalities, whose names were notorious all over Europe, all were chatting together, rubbing shoulders, and enjoying the brilliant sunshine.

“This, I should take it, is the most cosmopolitan and best-dressed crowd in the world,” remarked Otway as three laughing young French girls, Parisiennes of the ultra-modern type, pushed past him in the crowd.

“Most interesting, aren’t they?” she agreed.

At that moment a well-dressed man in grey passed them, walking with a self-absorbed look, his hands behind his back and taking notice of no one. Yet, if the truth were known, he was the great François Lebeau, one of the most famous of European police officials, and his presence there denoted that observation was being kept upon some rogue or criminal lured there by the strange fascination the place always exercises over evil-doers.

Too intent in conversation were the lovers to notice that, as the man in grey passed by, he lifted his dark eyes with a momentary glance of inquiry, and then lowered them again.

On one side of that processional way, where vice flaunts on every Sabbath from eleven till half-an-hour past noon, rose a bank of palms, shrubs, and cacti, with masses of red and yellow blossoms, scented heliotropes, mimosa, and festoons of climbing geraniums, with the wonderful façade of the Casino rising high above, while on the other, beyond the white balustrade, lay, deep down, the azure sea, calm and unruffled, with the big white steam-yachts and a giant pleasure-liner lying at anchor in the little territorial waters of His Highness Prince Rouge-et-Noir.

Sibell and Brinsley were, that sunny morning, childishly happy in their own perfect love, yet had the girl but known the identity of a stranger who, having encountered them, seemed to have suddenly become interested, she would have surely again reflected upon that strange warning uttered by her masked cavalier.

The man who passed and repassed them closely several times was short of stature, with soft white hair, dressed in black, with a grey felt hat, and wore a heavy gold watch-chain. His appearance was that of a scholar, perhaps a bookworm, but something of a dandy. He carried a malacca cane, and from his neck wore a horn-rimmed monocle suspended by a rather broad black ribbon. Patent leather shoes, white spats, and yellow gloves completed his dress.

Had the caretaker at the Guest House at Hampton Court been alive, he would have instantly identified him as the mysterious Mr. Bettinson, the man who had uttered those strange incantations in the house of evil.

CHAPTER XX.
THE SHADOW

François Lebeau, the apathetic man in grey, stepped into a powerful limousine at the end of the long range of flower-beds in front of the Casino, and gave orders to the chauffeur to drive with all speed to Nice.

Prior to doing this he gave a secret signal, by blowing his nose, to a slim, dark-haired young man who had also been following him along the Terrace. The man, who was one of his most astute assistants, realized his orders, and obeyed by dropping back into obscurity in the crowd.

Along the winding Corniche, in a cloud of white dust, the powerful police-car sped with its shrieking horn with the green disc which the chauffeur had suddenly put up by means of a switch, a sign to the police patrols to allow it to proceed at whatever pace.

Meanwhile Lebeau removed his hat, revealing his domed bald head which he was always at such trouble to conceal. As chief inspector of the Paris Sûreté he was one of the most famous detectives of modern France. As a young man he had worked as a humble police-agent of the Eighth Arrondissement under the great Goron, and afterwards under Harnard, and now he was chief of the department of surveillance upon the person of the President of the Republic, and any notable foreigners, princes or others, who came to France.

Whenever the Prince of Wales put his foot upon French soil, for example, Monsieur Lebeau was always near him as his personal protector.

He sat in the corner of the roomy car as it whirled through Beaulieu, with its wealth of flowers, handsome villas, and big hotels facing the blue bay, and thought deeply.

It was indeed a strange, unheard-of mystery which, related on many sheets of pale-yellow official paper, had been placed upon his table at the headquarters of the Sûreté in Paris.

The translation in French was from the report of the Metropolitan Police in London, and the story so attracted him that he had taken it home on the night of its arrival and thoroughly examined every point it contained. Indeed, as he went along, he selected a tiny key from a bunch upon his watch-chain, opened a small, cupboard-like recess in the upholstery before him, and from some files of papers there he took out the copy of the reports from London.

As the car approached Villefranche he became once more absorbed in the story, one so amazing and incredible that even he, practised police-agent that he was, felt half inclined to dismiss it as a mere fantasy, a chimera of somebody’s imagination.

Yet the Criminal Investigation Department of London never made a report without careful and thorough investigation, and, though the local subdivision of police at Hampton were unaware of it, the famous council of the C.I.D. were bent upon investigating and probing the strange secret of the long-closed Guest House.

As the car entered Nice, the chauffeur pressed a button and the green disc disappeared, while the car, to all appearances a private one, pulled up beside the chief post office, and its occupant alighted and walked to the Préfecture of Police, so as to pass unnoticed by those in the street.

He ran alertly up the stone stairs to the first floor, and, passing through an anteroom, the door of which was guarded by a detective, who saluted him, entered the private room of the Sous-Préfet.

Taking up the telephone, he asked in sharp, quick tones for conversation with Monsieur Feydit at the Sûreté in Paris.

Then, while awaiting the connection, he sat down and began to write rapidly a long report in an almost copper-plate and microscopic hand. The through express from Nice to Calais and London would leave at half-past two, and he was anxious that his message should reach Scotland Yard on the following evening. Hence his frantic hurry, for if he caught the train his message would be at Victoria soon after five o’clock on the following day.

Time was pressing. He glanced at the clock, and his pen flew rapidly over the paper. The inquiry was doubtless one of highest importance, or he would not have taken it up personally.

He had finished it and sealed it with black wax in a large blue envelope, when the telephone bell rang sharply.

“Hulloa! Monsieur Feydit, is that you?” he asked in French, in clear, calm tones.

Then, receiving an answer in the affirmative, he went on:

“Please listen, and take down the following.”

And from a slip of paper upon which he had pencilled them, he read off about fifteen words of the French police telegraphic code, all of which were repeated over the wire back from Paris.

“Très bien!” said Lebeau. “And listen further. On the train Nice-Paris-Calais reaching the Gare de Lyon at 8.40 to-morrow morning, there will be an urgent train-letter for London. Get it from the controller, and send Richaud through to London with it. He will await a reply and leave London again the same night. Advise me here of the reply by code.”

“I understand, monsieur,” came his trusty assistant’s voice across France, and then the famous detective hung up the receiver.

Afterwards he rang a bell, and, handing the sealed letter to the clerk who entered, gave him instructions to hand it to the controller of the Paris express.

Then, replacing the file of yellow papers in his pocket, he sauntered in the sunshine round to the Hôtel Negresco, where he was staying as Monsieur Ducret, rentier of Lyons, and ate a lonely and belated déjeuner.

Meanwhile the lovers had lunched at the gay Café de Paris, and Brinsley had paid a bill that was amazing for the omelette and cutlets, with petits-pois, which they had. The big, garish restaurant was crowded and noisy, as it is every day during the season, filled to overflowing with that same mixed throng which had, an hour before, disported itself along the Terrace in the sunshine.

Crooks and millionaires sat laughing and eating with cocottes and innocent flappers, while English peeresses drank vintage wines paid for by fat, uncouth food profiteers of Smithfield or Mincing Lane—for there is only one god at Monte Carlo year in and year out, and that god is Mammon.

So loud was the laughter, and so hilarious became a party at the table next to them, that conversation was rendered impossible. Two young Englishmen of the superior, military type were lunching with two over-dressed women twenty years their senior, and when the wine-card was presented to them, it became instantly obvious that the elder of the women, a painted old hag of seventy, was paying for their meal. But such sights are common at Monte—old women of fortune, imagining themselves still young, paying for the pleasures of any handsome young fellow they may meet at the tables.

The luncheons of to-day are but the aftermath of chance meetings in the Rooms on the previous night, for by a discreet loan of five louis a man often makes a female friend in a social circle to which he could never aspire otherwise.

Yes, the world Rouge-et-Noir is indeed a wonderful, mysterious world, which certainly opened the eyes of the upright, steady-going young doctor who plodded at his increasing practice in Golder’s Green.

Amid that crowd of gamblers and adventuresses, honest men and rogues, women of the haut-monde and the demi-monde, escrocs and respectable folk, they remained in ignorance of the presence of that unobtrusive little old man in black with the white hair, who had passed and repassed them several times on the Devil’s Parade.

Seated alone at a table in the corner, not far from them, he had ordered his lunch with careful selection, a meal which the maître-d’hôtel admired, for it showed the unusual discriminations of one well-versed in good food.

The old man at once became immersed in an English newspaper which he had brought with him, and apparently took no notice of anyone. Yet a careful observer would have noticed that ever and anon he cast furtive glances at the happy young pair, and that in his eyes shone a peculiar, evil glint.

That same expression in his eyes had showed when, in the big, moth-eaten drawing-room at the Guest House, poor Farmer had discovered him uttering those weird incantations, that same expression when he had plainly told the ex-policeman that he felt sympathy for him because he was doomed to die.

Little did the old man who had given his name as Bettinson dream that he had that morning been watched by one of the greatest criminal investigators in Europe. But, even had he known it, perhaps he would have laughed. He was a man who had never taken life seriously, regarding it always as a huge comedy, just as, at the moment, he regarded Sibell Dare’s affection for the young doctor as a mere passing fancy. Before that day he had never set eyes upon either of them, but now he sat close by, watching them in secret, and inwardly laughing in triumph.

At two o’clock Sibell and her well-set-up lover, whose health, after his strange attack, had been much improved by the fresh mountain air of Switzerland, had their coffee and cigarettes under one of the sun umbrellas at the café opposite, and, after a stroll to inspect the shops, wandered into the Casino.

Already the Rooms were overcrowded, for it was the height of the season, and people stood three and four deep around the roulette-tables, the novices of both sexes putting on wild stakes impossible to win, while the old gamblers stayed their hands, and now and then won a coup. The same crowd was there as in the Hôtel de Paris and on the parade—that hectic, overdressed scum of the world and the half-world, sadists and soubrettes, effeminates and escrocs, moralists and marcheurs, with well-dressed thieves of both sexes and all nationalities.

At the end table on the left—the one which for years was known as “The Suicides’ Table”—Brinsley Otway put a louis on zéro-trois and won, much to the surprise of them both.

Then he played on the first dozen and lost, and again lost on the rouge. But he won on the last dozen and en plein on twenty-two, which satisfied him for the day.

Through it all the little man in black watched the pair narrowly.

Once only he played, throwing ten louis carelessly upon the red, and won the even chance.

This fact attracted Sibell’s attention, but, unaware of his identity with the mysterious Mr. Bettinson, for whom the police were in such active search, she took no further notice of the odd-looking little old gentleman.

Careful not to be seen again by the mistress of the Guest House, he travelled by the same train as they took back to Cannes, and, alighting at Nice, he entered a taxi, which took him down to the Negresco, where he passed a rather handsome bald-headed man in a snuff-colored suit who was idly smoking an excellent cigar, sipping an apéritif, and watching the gay crowd entering and leaving the afternoon dance.

Without glancing at the old man, Lebeau allowed him to pass, and then, rising leisurely, strolled towards the concierge’s desk.

The latter handed the little man in black a small registered packet, for which he signed in the name of “George Peterson,” and then, entering the lift, was whirled up to the third floor.

Next moment, at signal from Lebeau, the porter passed to him the book wherein the visitor had signed his name.

The ruse was a good one to obtain a specimen signature, for he took the book to a side-room, and there compared Mr. Peterson’s autograph with one he had on a letter which he took from his pocket-book.

A moment afterwards he put the letter away, and, with a smile of satisfaction, returned the book to the concierge.

The signatures were identical.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE GREEN BAIZE APRON

Sibell and Brinsley had been at the Beau Site at Cannes for about a fortnight, daily awaiting the arrival of Lady Wyndcliffe.

Happy in each other’s ecstatic affection, they went for long walks each day in the beautiful countryside at the back of the gay resort. Now and then they would hire a car and go for a day’s excursion up to Grasse, with its sweet-smelling fields of flowers grown for the perfume factory, or to one or other of the rock villages which lay in the higher lands between Cannes and Nice, those quaint, old-world places where at the local café one can obtain such delicious luncheons eaten outdoors in the winter sunshine.

“I begin to dread returning to Golder’s Green after this delightful time,” the young doctor said one bright, cloudless morning as they were walking arm in arm through the groves of grey, twisted olives a couple of miles or so from the town.

“But why should you go back to Golder’s Green, Brin?” asked the sweet-faced girl with some surprise. “When you are my husband I shall surely have enough for both of us.”

“I know that, darling,” he said. “But—well, I’m not the sort of fellow to exist without working. I couldn’t do it. My profession interests me, and gives me a zest in life. Not that your presence doesn’t do that,” he hastily explained, with a laugh. “But I know you understand my meaning. I must work for myself. I could never live in idleness on your money.”

“Of course I understand, Brin,” she said, squeezing his arm affectionately. “But I really don’t see why you should return to that dull, suburban spot again. Couldn’t you sell the practice, and buy one in some pleasant seaside town?”

“Yes, I might, of course, darling. But you forget that, under the terms of the will, you are compelled to live at the Guest House.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed disappointedly. “I had forgotten that.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about it of late,” he said. “I feel that it is dangerous for you to live in that place. Some spirit of evil exists there. My own attack, after going through those books, is quite unaccountable, and then the mystery of the caretaker Farmer’s death, after the incantations of a stranger, is most inexplicable.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Sometimes I think that all the weird stories about the old place are just legendary or gossip, and yet at others I see the dire results to those who scoff at them.”

“But the most mysterious fact of all is, that no woman entering there has ever felt any ill effect,” he remarked.

“I wonder how that is accounted for?” she asked, as they strolled slowly up a narrow path, where from between the olives they looked down upon the wide expanse of sapphire sea.

“Who knows, darling?” he asked. “This strange inheritance of yours seems to be overshadowed by some tangle of mystery—grim tragedy and death.”

“A pity they cannot find that old man Bettinson,” said the girl, smart in her brown sports kit, with a neat little brown felt hat, and carrying a comity stick with a steel spike in it. She was typically English, a lithe open-air girl fond of every sport ever since she had been at school, a graceful dancer, and a fine rider, as all the women of the D’Aires had been.

“Perhaps they may discover the old fellow one day,” remarked Otway. “But of course the police and coroner’s jury appear inclined to the opinion that the whole scene was a chimera of the dying man’s imagination. Personally I know of no human condition in which death can be brought about by a verbal curse. We hear of such things happening in the Middle Ages, and some people, even in our own enlightened age, are sufficiently superstitious to believe in the efficacy of an execration.”

“Then you think that the caretaker simply died of natural causes?” asked his fiancée eagerly.

“I believe that the verdict at the inquest must have been a true one. All sorts of fantastic tales are told by neurotic people at inquests.”

“But don’t you agree that a good many verdicts recorded of death from natural causes are untrue ones?” she asked.

“My opinion is the same as that of most men in my profession, that murder is very easily committed, and frequently goes undetected, and hence unpunished. Further,” he said, “I have an increasing dread of the evil influence which seems to spread like a pall upon any male who enters that accursed house in which you are compelled to live.”

“Really, Brin, you are making me feel quite terrified. I heard from Mr. Gray yesterday that the first day of the sale is to-morrow. He enclosed a catalogue. I’ll show it to you when we get back.”

“The sooner the place is cleared of all the old stuff the better,” Otway declared. “I’ll be glad to see the decorators in and the place refurnished for you and fit to live in, and of course half the dealers in England will be there. Mr. Gray told me that very big prices would, no doubt, be obtained for some of the furniture and tapestries. There are two authentic relics of Cardinal Wolsey which will certainly bring big money.”

“How much it all brings does not matter to me, Brin,” she said, halting in the shadows beneath the trees and looking earnestly into her lover’s face, while he bent and kissed her fondly.

“My only thought, darling, is of your own safety in that weird house,” her lover said.

“Why?” she laughed. “Have you not only a few minutes ago told me that no woman suffers there?”

“Yes. That’s one of the greatest problems,” he replied.

Throughout the whole morning they wandered, until they joined a long, white road which wound up the mountainside among the pines and ilexes, until at last they came to a small, remote village perched upon the edge of a high, precipitous rock, one of those villages which long ago were so often ravaged and burned by the Barbary pirates.

In the narrow, cobbled street they discovered a modest little café-restaurant, in which a buxom “madame” was bustling about serving her customers. Therefore they entered, and sitting down to clean napery, a bottle of white wine, and fresh sections of yard-long bread, they ordered the plât-du-jour, and enjoyed an excellent meal.

That afternoon, on re-entering the hotel, Otway obtained their letters and handed one to Sibell.

She recognised Lady Wyndcliffe’s sprawly handwriting, and after reading it, exclaimed in dismay:

“Auntie Etta has left Southampton to-day for New York. Uncle is ill and telegraphed for her.”

“Then she isn’t coming here at all?”

“No. She says we’d better return as soon as we like. Isn’t it really too bad? She doesn’t say what uncle is suffering from. But he is evidently very ill—or she wouldn’t cross the Atlantic. She’s always told me she is a terribly bad sailor.”

“Well, darling, it is her duty, isn’t it?” Brinsley remarked. “I suppose we shall have to leave very soon.”

“And I’ll have to return to Cookham, while you go to Golder’s Green,” she said, with a deep sigh of regret. “We won’t go till next week, eh?”

“When you wish it, darling,” he said; and, after washing their hands, they returned to the big lounge for tea.

Next day proved dry and fine at Hampton Court, and long before noon the trams and trains discharged hundreds of passengers bent upon attending the important sale at the Guest House.

Long before noon the premises overflowed with the curious and those eager for bargains, for an auction sale of such genuine antiques seldom took place in the vicinity of London. Every class of dealer and amateur collector was represented, from Whitechapel, from Bond Street, from every metropolitan district came men and many women with their pockets full of Treasury notes ready for a bargain, whether a pitcher or a picture, a water-can or a whatnot, a saucepan or a sideboard.

Through the rooms the crowd surged, and the auctioneer’s men had considerable difficulty in preventing small articles from being purloined, for those loungers with big overcoats and stout women with big pockets, all ready to grab any unconsidered trifle, were there in full force, as they always are at crowded auctions.

Outside upon the roughly-cut lawn, which had not yet had time to get into condition after the clearance of thirty years of growth upon it, a number of heavy pieces of furniture and a miscellaneous collection of household goods from the ground floor had been placed, each numbered, while behind stood a rostrum upon which, punctually at noon, Mr. Gray mounted, mallet in hand.

Below sat his two clerks, while four men in green baize aprons bustled about among the throng.

Mr. Gray, in a dark-blue overcoat and bowler hat, cleared his throat, and, looking smilingly around at the mass of faces turned towards him, recognized many well-known dealers, some of whom were the most reliable and reputed in their profession.

He cleared his throat, and made a little introductory speech, in which he referred to the unique opportunity of acquiring many very fine, unrestored pieces of antique furniture and objects of art which had been in that historic house ever since the days of King Henry the Eighth and the great Cardinal Wolsey.

“Some of this furniture was, no doubt, brought across here from the Palace of Hampton Court yonder, to furnish this house as a Guest House for friends of the Cardinal,” he went on. “Therefore, gentlemen, I tell you frankly that I shall not be content with paltry prices. On some of the pieces there is naturally a reserve, and some of them will be able to be acquired by private tender afterwards. The majority of these unique lots are, however, open for your purchase, but I would implore you not to start your bidding at ridiculous figures, as it will only hamper us all and waste our valuable time. With that request, gentlemen, I propose to proceed with the sale.”

After he paused, he called to his foreman.

“Greening! Lot number one! Jacobean fire-back of Surrey iron, with the arms of the Overtons of Godalming Hall. One of the Overtons married a Miss D’Aire in 1796. How much?”

“A pound!” shouted a man at the rear.

Thirty shillings was instantly bid in two places. Then two pounds, which was increased quickly to five. At that figure the bidding ceased until somebody cried “Guineas!” And at a nod from a well-known dealer in close proximity, the auctioneer cried:

“Five pound ten is bid for the Jacobean fire-back! Any advance? Come, gentlemen!”

“Six!” sounded from somewhere, followed by “Guineas,” and then “Six-ten.”

By slow degrees Mr. Gray’s persuasive powers had effect, until ten guineas was reached.

“Going at ten guineas! Going! Gone!” And the mallet fell sharply upon the table, as he added, “Ten guineas—Mr. Sheldon.”

The next lot was a small oak gate-table in splendid condition, of Queen Anne period. Such an article, when genuine and unrestored, is always eagerly sought by dealers, as there is a ready sale for them among collectors. There are thousands of imitations and facsimiles, complete with wormholes and every sign of long usage, but specimen pieces like the one exhibited by the man in the baize apron are few and far between.

The bidding started at two guineas, and quickly rose to twenty. On every side the competition became keen. To the ordinary eye it was only a little table such as could be purchased for a pound or two at any furnishing establishment in the Tottenham Court Road, but to the shrewd, hard-headed crowd of bargain-hunters assembled in that garden it was a perfect little gem.

As such, it was eventually knocked down to a famous West End dealer for forty-two pounds ten.

A fine old oak refectory table with big, bulbous legs and a foot-rail worn by the sandals of the monks of centuries ago, which had stood in the big stone hall, was next brought forward, a heavy piece which took six men to move it. It was capable of seating quite twenty people.

“This table, no doubt, came from the suppressed monastery at Chiddingfold in Surrey,” said Mr. Gray. “The monastery was dismantled and destroyed by Thomas Cromwell. At one end of the table you will find carved the sign of the cross, with the word ‘Chyddyngforde’ and the initials ‘A de B’—Alfred de Beson, who was abbot there in 1496. Now, gentlemen, what shall we say for this unique and historic piece? Such a table does not appear in the market every day, as all of us know. Shall we start at two hundred guineas?”

And with a persuasive smile, Mr. Gray glanced around him, mallet in hand.

Suddenly he recognised a nod, and said in his quick, business-like manner:

“Two hundred and twenty pounds. Thank you, sir! Two hundred and twenty is bid for this historic piece!”

Another pause.

“Two hundred and thirty in two places! Two-forty!—fifty!—sixty!—seventy!—eighty!—ninety!—three hundred. Three hundred—thank you, sir!” And, after another pause, he went on: “Now, gentlemen, we’re not here for amusement, and we’ve a lot to get through this afternoon! Who will give three hundred and ten?”

“Ten!” came a shout. Then, from another quarter, “Fifteen,” followed by bids of “Twenty” and by five pounds the competition, mostly between the Bond Street fraternity, rose till three hundred and eighty-five pounds was bid.

“Any further bid?” asked the auctioneer. “Three-eighty-five?”

And he sipped his glass of water in order to allow the competitors time to reflect.

“Dirt cheap, gentlemen,” he cried. “You, all of you know its true value. May I say three-ninety, Mr. Deeping?” he asked, addressing a well-known dealer, who usually bought for America.

Mr. Deeping gave a nod in the affirmative.

“Three-ninety!” shouted Mr. Gray. “Any advance! Four hundred, Mr. Steen?” he inquired of the head of one of the greatest Bond Street galleries.

A nod from the stout, well-dressed man who stood smoking a cigar, and then Mr. Deeping and Mr. Steen began to bid against each other until, after a fierce fight which became highly exciting, Mr. Deeping secured it for five hundred and twenty-three pounds.

At the moment the hammer dropped sudden shouts were heard, and a great commotion took place in the back of the crowd, close to the flight of steps which led to the front door.

Mr. Gray stood in surprise, angry at the sudden interruption.

Next second, however, the attention of the crowd was diverted to the scene of the disturbance, and all turned away from the rostrum to discover what was the trouble which had so unexpectedly arisen.

CHAPTER XXII.
UNDER THE HAMMER

Some few minutes elapsed before Mr. Gray, descending from the platform, furious at such sudden interruption of his business, was able to gather vaguely from excited persons what had occurred.

The throng were passing around the steps, so that he, in charge of the auction, could not get near.

Of a sudden, an excited man, tall, thin-faced, and wearing a faded blue rain-coat, a type of low-class dealer seen at every auction all over the country, rushed up to him, saying:

“Ain’t it terrible, Mr. Gray?”

“What’s happened?” asked the auctioneer, who was so well-known and popular in that riverside district.

“Why, a poor little chap—a telegraph boy! ’E fell down the steps, and they say ’e’s dead!”

“Fell down? What? Stumbled?”

“They say ’e came ’ere with a wire for somebody named Long, a chap from Birmingham. Somebody saw Mr. Long go into the ’ouse, and, hearing the lad shout the name, sent him inside. He found him, and as he went out to get his bike, which ’e left at the steps, he fell down, and they say he’s dead!”

Mr. Gray stood staggered at the story. And well he might, recollecting his own strange experience, followed by that of Doctor Otway and the death of Farmer the caretaker.

The unconscious lad was quickly carried up the steps into the dining-room by willing hands, and soon a doctor was present.

“He’s still alive,” the medical man declared. “But he’s suffering from some violent shock, I think.”

Meanwhile the police were warned by telephone, and in a car belonging to a West End dealer the poor lad was hurried away to the Richmond Hospital.

Fully half-an-hour elapsed before calm reigned among the crowd of buyers.

The incident was discussed by everyone. Some of those present remembered what had appeared in the papers concerning the long-closed house and the evil upon it, and began to talk of curses and of the bad luck which might follow those who bought any of its contents. They were members of what is known in auction circles as “the knock-out”—a ring of dealers who were there to rope in all they could get at lowest prices, by not bidding against each other, one of the most insidious and dishonest forms of purchasing.

This reached Mr. Gray’s ears, and when order was at length restored, by a telephone message from the hospital, which announced that the lad was simply in an epileptic fit and would recover, he again mounted the rostrum.

“Gentlemen!” he cried, striking the table with his mallet, “the interruption upon our day’s proceedings has been a most unfortunate occurrence—the more unfortunate because a certain ring of ill-disposed people have circulated an utterly fantastic story that upon the contents of these premises there exists an evil influence—a curse it has been called. This is a further illustration of the low depths to which our friends of the ‘knock-out’ will descend. I put it to you, gentlemen, is this not hitting us all, myself included, beneath the belt? I am open, as the majority of you here are, for a fair and honest deal. We are all out to make a margin of profit for ourselves—myself included. The more commission I get, the happier I shall be!”

Whereat a great laugh resounded through the garden, and a man’s voice cried: “Good old Gray! You’re one of us!”

“I am,” declared the auctioneer, laughing, and putting everyone in a good temper. “So don’t let us waste any further time, gentlemen. Let’s get to business.”

The next lot was a Charles the Second day-bed, cane-bottomed with spindle legs, in preservation so perfect that it might have been made but forty years ago. All specimens have the canes damaged or holed, but in this case it was flawless.

“Now, gentlemen! How much for this perfect specimen?—a museum piece. Nobody here has ever set eyes upon any day-bed as fine as this. We’re not dealing with Curtain Road stuff to-day, gentlemen, but museum pieces. What shall I say for this magnificent specimen? Two hundred and fifty guineas?”

A little, grey-faced old man in the front of the crowd nodded in assent. He had not bid before, and the crowd of dealers, looking eagerly at him, saw he was not of them—an amateur, no doubt.

Another voice instantly cried “Two-sixty!”

“Two hundred and sixty guineas I am offered for this lot!” cried Mr. Gray. “Come, gentlemen,” he said in his ordinary voice. “The figure is ridiculous. Please don’t let us stay here all the afternoon. Three hundred pounds is offered. Three hundred! Any advance?”

“Guineas!” said the little old stranger in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, as he glanced round apprehensively to see if anyone was about to outbid him.

“Three fifty pounds!” came good-humoredly from a well-known Kensington firm of antique dealers.

“Three-sixty,” added the diminutive old stranger.

“Seventy,” replied the man from Kensington.

“Four hundred pounds,” said the little old man quite calmly.

“Four-ten,” was bid by the other.

“Fifteen!” exclaimed somebody at the back, whereupon the manager of a well-known firm in Wigmore Street, perhaps one of the greatest dealers in first-class antiques, whispered to a friend:

“Not worth more than that!”

To which his fellow dealer agreed.

“Twenty!” exclaimed the old amateur.

“Four hundred and twenty pounds for this perfect Charles the Second day-bed!” cried the man with the hammer. “Four-twenty-five! Four-twenty-five? Now, Mr. Lewis,” he went on, looking at the Kensington dealer. “Four-twenty-five. A unique piece you must acknowledge!”

The dealer from Kensington nodded.

“Four-twenty-five is offered sir,” exclaimed the auctioneer, fixing his eyes upon the little old man.

But the latter shook his head, and when the hammer fell his shiny face relaxed into a triumphant smile, for he had never had any intention whatever of buying it, and had simply run up the price out of mere devilry.

The auction proceeded, but the old gentleman, who was evidently a person of discretion and knowledge, elbowed his way into the house and went upstairs from room to room, examining the contents of each apartment—which would occupy three days in the selling—with critical eyes.

Presently, in descending, he passed for the second time into the long, old drawing-room where the faint wintry light came through the dingy, old, glass windows.

He was alone. For the moment the crowd were all eagerly excited at the sale below.

Glancing apprehensively around, he suddenly clenched his hands, and, raising his face to the ceiling, began to utter some words in gibberish that was quite unintelligible. “The great mystery,” “the strife of Lucifer,” “the all-powerful King,” “the Evil which is Ruler of the Universe,” “the Death God of the Humans!” and such-like expressions were all that were distinguishable.

In those few minutes his breath came and went in short, hard gasps as he lifted his skinny hands and grasped the air in his excitement and fervor.

In language which was cryptic and unintelligible he seemed to be invoking evil upon the place, though no one was present to see him.

Two women suddenly entered that room in which Mr. Gray had been attacked upon the reopening of the disused house, when suddenly the stranger ceased his imprecations, and, pretending to closely examine one of the pictures, a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, he strolled out and down the wide stairs. On returning to the crowd he found a set of ancient wrought iron fire-dogs being put up, but evinced no interest in them. For a quarter of an hour he idled about the grounds, and then left to stroll back to the station.

As he ambled along, absorbed apparently in his own thoughts, he took no notice of a tall, rather thickly-built man of middle age who had been present at the sale, and who, like himself, was on his way to the station to take the next train back to London. The pair arrived at the station almost at the same moment and passed the ticket collector one behind the other. The elder man entered a first-class carriage, but the other went third, yet on arrival at Waterloo about half-past four, the younger man watched the other’s movements closely, and, when he entered a taxi, the other followed him across Waterloo Bridge in another cab.

It was a case of cat-and-mouse, for the elder man who had made such a close bid for the Carolean day-bed was none other than the promenader at Monte Carlo, in whose movements François Lebeau had been so deeply interested, while the man who had travelled up to London was Albert Ashe, the ex-butler of the Countess of Wyndcliffe!

CHAPTER XXIII.
OUR SINISTER WORLD

Soon after ten o’clock that night Mr. Ashe called at the Grosvenor Hotel, and, inquiring for Mrs. Wilcox, was at once shown up to Etta’s sitting-room.

The handsome woman, in a pale-mauve and silver dinner-frock, was reclining upon a couch near the fire reading the evening paper.

“I’ve seen some of the prices fetched at the sale,” were her first words as her ex-butler entered.

“Yes, fairly high, eh?” he said. “But how did you get on with Rupert?”

“Rotten,” she replied, suddenly raising herself and taking a cigarette from the onyx box beside her.

“What do you mean?” asked the man, who did not take off his overcoat, but cast himself into a chair after helping himself to a drink from the decanter on the sideboard. “Why rotten?”

“I really can’t tell you, my dear Albert, but I’ve one of my psychic feelings that all is not running as we expected it. There’s some grit in the wheels of the machine somewhere.”

“H’m! You’re nervy! That’s evident! You women are so damned unreliable, and you rat when it comes to a real pinch,” he growled, lighting a cigarette which he took from her box.

“I’m not nervy at all, you fool! Only I have an intuition that things don’t go as they should, and they won’t.”

“Funnily enough, as a matter of fact, I’ve the same notion, my dear girl.”

Then he told her of the incident of the telegraph boy’s sudden seizure at the Guest House and the sensation it had caused.

“The paper says nothing about it.”

“I suppose a mere boy who has a fit doesn’t matter to the papers. But there you are—another remarkable and inexplicable circumstance. I’m getting the wind up, I don’t mind telling you!”

“What! that you’ll also be stricken down?” laughed Etta, flicking her cigarette-ash into the fire and glancing up at him with those magnetic eyes of hers. “You’re a bit of a coward, my dear Albert, after all!”

“I’m not. But how are we going to put these turtledoves apart? That’s what I want to know, and that’s what concerns us both,” said the adventurer who had played so many parts successfully on both sides of the Atlantic. “If we don’t act very soon, and with a strong and relentless hand, then the wedding-bells at St. Margaret’s will be playing a requiem to all our hopes and happy aspirations. Oh, it is all too fearful for words! What does old Gordon Routh say?”

“Gordon! He’s a complete wash-out! A fine old sportsman across the tables, I admit, but a white-livered old fossil when there is anything really serious doing,” replied the adventuress, with whom so many men—and girls, too—had had bitter reason to regret acquaintanceship.

Bearing the name of one of England’s oldest earldoms, she had not so long ago been a bedecked decoy of the supergang of trans-Atlantic card-sharpers, blackmailers, and confidence tricksters, and yet only a year before in London she had presented two girls at Court and held three big balls at Claridge’s. How strange our everyday world has now become—our world where honest folk of both sexes are elbowed out by food profiteers, escrocs, and adventuresses.

Truly our octopus London is increasingly amazing. Its greedy struggle for Press notoriety at so much a paragraph is astounding, while its open immorality is fast approaching that of the ancient orgies of Rome. Yet nobody cares.

The seasons come and go, “Little” and “High,” in which innocent girls of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are ever sacrificed upon the altar of Mammon—with perhaps a big car thrown in. The invention of the motor-car introduced a new medium for immorality, for the young man’s car is usually a bird-cage, while the rich old man cages his young bird in its beautifully upholstered interior.

The schemers sat silent, smoking, and looking into the glowing fire.

It was upon the tip of Ashe’s tongue to mention having seen that mysterious man of execrations who had given the name of Bettinson. Being a wise person, he resolved to keep his knowledge to himself.

From without, in the rainy night came the noise of taxis and throbbing motor-buses in the station square, that racket and shouting which is always consequent upon railway arrivals and departures.

The comfortable Grosvenor, the jumping-off place for the Continent, patronized by worldly London and the provinces, is a place where, in the hall, everyone of note meets everyone else of note going to and fro to the ends of the earth. The square hall, in which laughter is rife all day and hot tears are shed morning and evening, is the common meeting-ground for those journeying eastward, whether to Paris, India, or Japan.

Ashe glanced at the green marble timepiece and rose. He was uneasy and did not concentrate.

“Going so soon?” Etta asked. “Why? I’m alone. Do remain and keep me company.”

“No, my dear Etta. I’m awfully sorry, but I have a special appointment,” replied the man. “When you’ve seen Rupert again let me know at once. Have you heard from Wyndcliffe?”

“I had a letter last night from Boston. He’s on some wild-goose financial scheme, as usual. It seems that somebody named Schendel is buying up all the candy stores in the States, and wants Wyndcliffe to be chairman of the company. A big swindle, I expect, like that Stream Line Motors, of Detroit. Personally, I don’t trust any of those financial propositions. I like to see cash down on the table,” she said.

Then, tapping her cigarette, in its long tortoise-shell holder, she looked up at him with half-closed, alluring eyes, and laughed.

“I agree, Etta, dollar bills or treasury notes are far better than being left by these share-pushers to nurse the baby.”

“Oh! Let’s discuss the future,” she said impatiently.

“Well, what about it?” Ashe asked.

The pretty woman shrugged her shapely shoulders.

“You haven’t rid yourself of your incubus yet,” he said, regarding her.

“Oh, that ass, Rupert! I don’t know really what to do.”

“You surely do. I’ve told you what to do a hundred times, my dear girl.”

“No! Not that!” she cried frantically, with a look of horror on her face. “Not that!”

“Well, you want to discuss the future,” the broad-shouldered man went on. “As far as I can see, we are both completely in the cart with our assets each hour slipping away from us. Think of to-day’s sale—thousands of pounds profit which ought to be ours. And they haven’t yet touched the really good things—tapestries or pictures.”

“I agree, my dear Albert. It’s all rotten and very disappointing.”

“You’ve only yourself to blame, Etta. You haven’t yet got rid of Rupert, and also you’ve let the turtledoves coo too long.”

The woman stirred uneasily from her couch, and, tearing her cigarette-end out of its holder, flung it viciously into the fire.

“Give me a drink,” she said, and obediently he crossed and mixed one, afterwards watching her as she drank it.

“We must have money, Albert,” she said, after taking a good gulp of her brandy-and-soda.

“Certainly we must,” replied the man. “You’ve never been squeamish in the old days, eh?” And he laughed lightly. “You’re a really wonderful woman, Etta, when you put your fine wits to work.”

“Bah! Don’t flatter me,” she replied in a hard, determined voice. “Let us both face the music and just discern a way out,” she went on. “If Sibell died, then all the estate would go to Gordon Routh and——”

“And old Gordon would chuck it all away at Monte in a single season,” Ashe interrupted.

“Agreed. But supposing nothing happened to Sibell—except what might possibly occur in that accursed old house of hers, and there one never knows what might take place—and she married Gussie Gretton? What then?”

“Easy as melting ice,” laughed Ashe. “Gussie is the biggest rotter I know, immensely rich, for his father made hundreds of thousands with his chain of cheap tailors’ shops—reach-me-down, ready-for-service shoddy suits sold at big profits. His headquarters was a brilliantly-lit shop in the Whitechapel Road, where he began life in a back room, a Pole whose name was Grabov. His son, who has washed his hands of all sartorial dealings, is a wealthy and eligible bachelor, a member of the Bachelors’ and White’s, with a flat in Park Lane.”

“I only wish I could see them marry,” exclaimed Etta wholeheartedly.

“We’d have twenty thousand to divide at the very least. Perhaps more. I’d try and push up a bit more of course. Gussie is awfully keen on her, as we both know.”

“Then let’s make another effort, and try to do it,” said the woman.

“You can, my dear Etta, but I can’t. Use all your woman’s wits and your influence to get Otway back to his beloved practice once and for all. Get old Gordon into our swim, as there’s certainly something for him out of it, My great, God-fearing aunt! Fancy letting a cool ten thousand slip through one’s fingers. It’s really criminal!”

“Quite so. But I want to put a serious question to you, Albert,” said the woman, rising to her feet and facing him earnestly. “Have you any idea—or even any suspicion—of the basis of that extraordinary evil which asserts itself at the Guest House? To what can it be due? Now, tell me the truth, for we are both afloat on the same tide, and I admit I’m mystified.”

“I tell you the honest truth,” replied the man who was her associate. “I am just as mystified as you are. I can’t see any solution of the problem. Why should that poor telegraph boy fall down in a fit to-day, for example? The whole affair is most amazing, astounding, and uncanny. You see, even Otway was taken ill, yet no woman has ever been affected! That to me is the most puzzling point in the whole weird affair.”

“If women were affected, then perhaps Sibell might—well, feel its sinister influence,” the woman said after a pause. “The caretaker died after the incantations of that mysterious old stranger, who is apparently the unknown evil genius of the place.”

“I confess that it’s all beyond me,” Ashe declared. “I’m not usually nervy, as you well know. But I admit that I shouldn’t like to enter that accursed house. I’m a bit too sinful perhaps”; and he grinned.

“Nor should I,” laughed Etta grimly, while the man drained his glass and announced that he really must go.

“Look here, Etta,” he added, taking up his hat and buttoning his black evening overcoat. “At all hazards get rid of Rupert. Send him back, bury him, do whatever you like with him. But while he’s here a danger exists every moment—the danger of him finding out that you’re Wyndcliffe’s wife. It isn’t a savory theme, is it?”

“And you’re going to leave me to face everything, eh?” she cried suddenly, her eyes flashing.

“Not at all, my dear girl. I’m going to work at once in our mutual interests as I’ve always done. You are an English peeress, and I’m only your abusive butler. Funny, isn’t it? How the people in the States would laugh if they knew how you and I have pulled the legs of exclusive London Society, and you at Court too!” And he added: “Well, good-night, Etta, dear. We’ve always been pals, and we always will remain so”; and then, suddenly taking her slim, white hand, he bent over it with a studied courtesy and kissed it.

“Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox,” he said, laughing. “But do get a move on and in the direction we are agreed. Get the lovers back and play chess with them—as you’ve done before”; and he went out.

Otway and Sibell had delayed their return to London for a week, for he had arranged with his locumtenens to carry on until the date of his arrival back at Golder’s Green. To both it was a great disappointment that Lord Wyndcliffe’s beautiful villa was not to be reopened that season. On several occasions they had been up to it, and had taken tea upon the great, broad terrace, with its climbing flowers and gorgeous views of the green Estrelles and the ever-changing Mediterranean, sometimes sapphire-colored, sometimes grey, or at other times the deep color of lapis lazuli. The two old French servants, husband and wife, had served them with tea, and in the gardens they had picked the orange-blossoms—emblem of marriage—and the violets, daffodils, and yellow mimosa to carry back to the hotel. Life for them was certainly one of exquisite bliss, their hearts beating ever in unison, and their own little world confined to their own whims and pleasures of the moment.

One day, having been over to the Municipal Casino at Nice to an afternoon dance, Sibell, on her return in the evening, suddenly discovered that she had lost a little chain-bracelet set with turquoises, a birthday present from her mother in her school-days.

Next morning Brinsley left to go back to Nice to try and recover it from the lost-property office at the Casino; when, on descending into the lounge, Sibell met a girl she instantly recognised, Marigold Ibbetson, one of her old schoolfellows at Cheltenham College, whom she had not seen for three years.

Their meeting was cordial, and they took their petit déjeuner together.

“I’ve been here over a week,” laughed the auburn-haired, rather good-looking girl. “Auntie is not very well to-day, and she’s not coming down till luncheon. I thought it was you, but only last night I asked the concierge your name, and he told me. Well, and how has the world been treating you, old girl?”

“Oh, not so badly. I’ve been travelling a lot,” Sibell replied. “My aunt, Lady Wyndcliffe, who has a villa here, was to meet me, but she hasn’t turned up—gone to America instead.”

“Meet you, eh?” laughed the slim, well-dressed girl. “You mean both of you—you and your fiancé?”

“How did you know?” inquired the girl quickly.

They had just left the hotel and were out in the flower-garden.

“Because I’ve watched you, and it is obvious. I congratulate you, Sibell. Who is he?”

Her friend told her, speaking enthusiastically as may be well imagined. And as they walked down the gravelled drive to the road, they were joined by a tall, long-limbed, plain girl, to whom Sibell was introduced. Her name was Moyna Lascelles, who had been at Cheltenham after Sibell had left.

As they took a pleasant stroll along the Croisette together, Moyna suddenly turned to Sibell and congratulated her upon her engagement to Brinsley Otway.

“As a matter of fact, I know Brinsley quite well,” the girl said. “When he was at the Hospital School he was an intimate friend of my brother Fred, and very often he spent week-ends with us at Thames Ditton. But please don’t say a word, because of a very tragic circumstance. Promise me you won’t, eh?”

“Yes, I’ll promise of course,” Sibell said.

“Well, one evening he took out to a dance at a riverside hotel a girl named Peterson, who lived opposite in a house-boat with her parents, who were music-hall artistes. On the way back the boat capsized, and the poor girl was drowned. He swam to save her, but the current proved too strong, and he narrowly escaped with his own life.”

“He has never told me that,” Sibell said.

“Perhaps not,” laughed the girl. “That’s why Brinsley is such a good fellow. My pal Jack Cranston, the cross-channel air-pilot, who is here with my mother, is his friend, and he tells me what a fine fellow he is. I hear he’s a good dancer too.”

Sibell only smiled at hearing such laudation of her fiancé. It comforted and gratified her, as it certainly would any girl whose lover was her ideal. And what girl of any class exists who has no ideal of a gallant and strong lover who will hold her in his arms and fight for her until death?

Men may be deceivers ever, but a woman’s heart, once won, is the great and incomparable gem which crowns human life, true and unbending in adversity or prosperity until the parting by death.

Alas! that men are so egotistical, so self-confident, that they so frequently leave women to weep over the burden of their overbearance, and their illogical misunderstanding of woman’s heart.

CHAPTER XXIV.
UNKNOWN!

Brinsley Otway had for a week or two had his eyes upon a beautiful square-cut diamond and emerald ring in platinum—a single diamond, set with a very fine, well-matched emerald on either side—which was shown in the window of that expensive jeweller’s in the Galerie Charles X at Monte Carlo. It had been sold by one of the Hapsburg princesses, who had, like many, been temporarily embarrassed at the tables, so the jeweller said, and, after considerable bargaining, Brinsley bought it, and on his return, presented it to his fiancée.

It fitted perfectly on her finger, and she was beside herself with delight, and kissed him fondly, time after time, for his beautiful present, intended as a birthday gift, for her anniversary would be in about a week’s time.

Next day turned out grey and damp, with a slight drizzle, one of the days all know on the Riviera. Otway went out for exercise about eleven o’clock, leaving Sibell to write letters, when suddenly he encountered the tall, thin-faced air-pilot Jack Cranston, whom he knew during the war, at the ill-fated aerodrome at Dunkirk.

“Hulloa, Otway,” he cried merrily. “Fancy! After all this time! Only yesterday I heard you were here through my friend Miss Ibbetson.”

“Really!” replied Brinsley. “She is an old schoolfellow of my fiancée whom you know, I think. They were at Cheltenham College together.”

“Marigold is a great friend of Moyna Lascelles. I’m staying here with her mother, who is a distant relation of mine. She has a villa out on the road to Nice.”

Then, as they walked together towards the Casino, Cranston suddenly turned, and said:

“Look here, Brinsley, excuse me for asking the question, but is it true that you’re engaged to Sibell Dare?”

“Of course I am,” replied the other in considerable surprise at his tone of voice. “I thought everybody knew that!”

“Oh, I see,” exclaimed the other. “But of course I mean no offence. Understand that!”

“Why should I take offence?” asked the young doctor, facing him inquiringly.

“Nothing, my dear old fellow, nothing. I’m sorry I mentioned it, that’s all. Forgive me, I’m a fool.”

“Why should you regret? I thought everyone knew it. The announcement was in the papers weeks ago.”

“I’ve been abroad for months, my dear old chap, so I haven’t seen it,” replied his friend quite honestly.

“Come over into the bar yonder”; and Brinsley indicated the Casino. “Let’s have a drink and talk it over,” he suggested.

“I’d really rather not, old man,” was the other’s reply. “What I may say might only give you pain. And, further, it’s really none of my business what girl you marry, is it, now?”

“Well, I should think not, all things considered.”

“Then why should we discuss the matter? Let’s talk of something else. Do!”

“No, we won’t, Cranston,” said Otway insistently. “You’ll just come in and have a drink with me and tell me what’s at the back of your mind. Now is it about that infernal house of old Henry the Eighth’s time at Hampton Court that people are discussing?”

The keen-faced cross-channel pilot laughed heartily.

“Oh, my dear Brinsley, of course not. You surely don’t believe in curses, do you? I don’t.”

“No. Who does? There seems, however, to have been a lot of uncanny happenings there,” his friend replied. “I myself had a very curious attack after spending some hours in the old place. Indeed, I nearly lost my life over it.”

And then he went on to explain the mysterious circumstances which occurred after his visit to the Guest House to inspect those old books in the long-shut-up library.

At last Cranston, induced by Otway, went through the spacious hall of the Casino, and entered the bar, where they both sat at a little table in the corner to smoke and gossip. The usual crowd of Riviera idlers of all ages who assemble each morning were already there, but amid the chatter, laughter, and discussions over the previous night’s play in the Rooms their conversation could not be overheard.

“Now, tell me frankly, my dear Jack,” said Otway at last, leaning both elbows upon the little table and looking straight into his friend’s eyes. “Why are you so devilish mysterious about Sibell?”

“I’m not mysterious, my dear old chap—not at all,” declared the other. “I’m not going to interfere in the least in anything that doesn’t concern me. Forgive me, won’t you?”

“It isn’t the point of interference. Are we not friends, you and I?”

“I—well, I think so.”

“Then why don’t you speak out to me as a friend, as man to man? What are you concealing?”

“Nothing,” was the other’s reply.

“You swear that!” cried Otway, half rising, his face strong and intent.

Cranston wavered for only a second, and then excused himself, saying:

“Really, I didn’t come in here to be subjected to any inquisition! I must refuse.”

“My dear Cranston, I’m no inquisitor—only your good friend. Yet I demand to know why you are so reticent about Sibell. I noticed that curl of your lip, that glance of sarcasm when you mentioned her name. Now, if you are a real pal, as you pretend to be, out with it! What do you know? If you are not a pal—a false friend—then remain silent. And that’s the end.”

The pair sat facing each other for a full minute. Cranston felt himself cornered, as indeed he was.

“Well, Otway,” he said at last, speaking very slowly, “I really don’t know how to reply to you. I only know that to-day you are one of the happiest men in all the world—a charming girl, who is to be your wife, with so much money that you will never want to work another single day in all your life. Would not a million men like to be in your shoes?”

“Yes, I suppose they would,” replied his friend.

“I run lots of engaged couples and honeymooners over from Croydon to Le Bourget almost daily and I see a lot—I can assure you. We pilots see funny things very often, for our passengers are closely associated with us, especially if there’s any element of danger over the sea. Girls get the wind up terribly sometimes, and I’ve seen brave men turn pale when things are not going quite to my liking.”

“But how does that concern me?” asked Otway. “You seem somehow to be warning me! Tell me if you are, now, straight out.”

For a few moments Jack Cranston remained silent. Then, fixing his keen, hawk-like blue eyes upon his friend, he said:

“Yes. I’ll speak frankly and damn the consequences, Brinsley. I am warning you!”

“Of what?” the other gasped, staring at him.

“Of the girl you are about to marry. You’re trusting her far too implicitly.”

“What the devil do you mean?” asked the lover, rising quickly in fierce resentment. “Say that again!”

“I repeat it,” the air-pilot answered quite calmly.

“What do you say against Sibell, eh?”

“Merely that she’s not quite so true to you as she pretends, that’s all! I’m sorry to utter those words, Brinsley, but you’ve forced me to do so.”

“Then you mean that she’s playing me false?” he said in a hard, hoarse voice.

“That’s my meaning. But I regret if my words hurt you. I know they do, old chap. But I leave you to discover the truth. That’s all.”

“It’s a damned lie!” cried Otway, striking the table with his fist and causing the others in the bar to look round.

“That is for you alone to discover, my dear Brinsley,” exclaimed his friend, still calmly. “If it is a lie then everyone believes it. That’s why they pity you, good, honest pal that you are, they pity you that you should be made sport of by that girl and her suave gentleman friend.”

“Who is the man?” demanded Otway fiercely. “Give me his name!”

“Are you really certain that you want it? Would it not be far the best way for you to set watch, and to discover for yourself? Believe me, my dear old Otway, that’s by far the best course. If I told you, then you would only say that I’m his enemy, or that I am prejudiced.”

“But I demand his name!” cried the unhappy lover vehemently.

Again a silence fell between them.

“Ask others. They will tell you. I refuse to say more,” said the airman.

“By God! I’ll drag the name out of you,” cried the distracted man in fury.

“No heroics, my dear fellow. Remain calm, and just watch. That’s my advice!” responded the keen-faced man, who on more than one occasion had lain in a shallow dug-out with yellow water trickling in, and braved the daily bombings of the Huns upon Dunkirk, those days when the German airmen absolutely wiped our stores and our planes out of existence.

“But can’t you give me any clue? For God’s sake, Cranston—at least do that!”

“I’d tell you his name, but surely you realize how painful it would be for me; how unfair it would be to give away a friend—just as you are.”

“Is he a man whom she has lately met—or one she has known a long time? Tell me that,” he asked in all eagerness, as may well be imagined. At one blow, all the poor fellow’s illusions as to Sibell’s all-absorbing love had been converted into a dark cloud of suspicion. And yet, he now asked himself the real reason—as well he might.

“I really can’t answer that question. I’m sorry,” was Cranston’s reply. “Just watch—that’s all I suggest.”

“Then you refuse to reveal the scoundrel’s name? He’s a friend of yours. That you admit, eh?”

“Not much of a friend, really. Only that I have once met him. My standpoint is that I refuse to be regarded as one who has any axe to grind, Otway. I simply tell you what I know, what many people gossip about, and suggest that you make independent inquiries for your own satisfaction. That’s all”; and he rose from the table, adding: “I’m going. I would never have said all these painful things had I not been really forced to do so.”

“And even now you refuse to give me the slightest hint as to this secret rival of mine!” cried Otway in fury.

“I have already explained the reason. Investigate for yourself and—well, forget that we met this morning. I’m leaving for Paris by the rapide at three-thirty, for I’m on duty again at the aerodrome to cross in the morning. Why don’t you come for a flip over with me one day?”

“I may when all this is cleared up, Cranston,” he replied. “But I tell you now frankly that I don’t believe it!”

The aviator shrugged his shoulders, and replied:

“I expected so. That’s exactly why I refuse to mention the name.”

And together they walked outside in silence, when, with estrangement, they parted.

On his way back to the Beau Site, passing the gay home-going tennis-playing crowd, Brinsley Otway walked with his eyes upon the ground, deep in thought. The seeds of deep suspicion had been sown, but, man-of-the-world that he was, he tried to steel himself not to believe them.

In any case his war-time friend had not substantiated anything. He had spoken through his hat, as it were, he reflected. Yet, why? What ulterior motive could Cranston have to warn him that Sibell was playing him false?

For a full hour he walked along the Croisette, and to ease his mind and pass the time, he went into a little café and called for an apéritif in order to think it all over.

He reflected upon the past. His first chance meeting with Sibell, who had come so entirely and wholeheartedly into his life to console and become his other self—a woman who, in her ideals, in her aspirations, in her religious beliefs, and in her quality of soul, he found to be heights above any other girl he had ever met—his own affinity.

Yet, when poison of the mind is sown, it sweeps into an ever-increasing flood, to raise a tide that will overwhelm even the level-headed, and to swirl against the rocks of truth.

And where can one find truth, save in the bottom of the deepest well?

The man or woman who dares to tell the truth to-day deserves a statue as an heroic example. The ever-ready lie is to be found in every household, be it the cottage or the castle, whether at Sydenham or Sydney, Mayfair or Manitoba, and I leave the reader to complete the geographical survey.

If the woman of Mayfair is “peevy” and yet religious, she tells her butler that she is “not at home.” And that deliberate lie goes down through all the classes, even to the grey-haired wives of Church of England country parsons themselves.

And yet, is not the lie forbidden to the Christian? And if lies are told daily, even by those chosen to administer in religion, why should anyone hold the lie in abhorrence? We are a wonderful people. The village parson, with his tea upon his knees, will say in his best Oxford drawl:

“Oh, I’m sorry. But I never eat cakes!” And only because the cakes in question are underdone and hence do not appeal to his digestion.

A man who is now a Bishop of the Church of England once, in his early days, before his election to the House of Lords, was open enough to wire to his would-be hostess, a well-known peeress:

“Regret quite impossible. Lie follows by post.”

In such a mood, thinking out all the past, and contemplating the future, Brinsley re-entered the gay hotel, and, finding Sibell chatting in the lounge with her old school-friend Marigold, to whom she introduced him, he sat down beside them and ordered three cocktails.

As a real man-of-the-world, and a true lover, he tried to crush down those fierce feelings which had arisen within him in consequence of his friend’s warning, while Sibell, glancing at him, thought that her ideal lover had never appeared to be so charming.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE DOWNWARD STEP

The Myrtles at Cookham was, after all, a dull, damp place in March, with the mists hanging all day over the Thames, the trees leafless, the garden pretty in summer of course, but leaf-strewn, with rough lawn and weedy paths, in winter. After the gaiety of Cannes it was to Sibell terribly depressing.

With her Aunt Etta supposed to be away in America with her husband, and Brinsley back at his practice in Golder’s Green, she led a life of daily boredom, listening to old Gordon Routh’s many complaints, as to both depleted finance and his failing health.

Worn-out gamester that he was, he sat every evening over the wood-fire in the cottage sitting-room asking questions about the Rooms at Monte, the play, and the nightly sensation of high stakes and great losses, for the Administration of the Society of Sea-baths always take their lion’s share.

“Yes,” he said one stormy evening while the wind howled round the old house, and the rain beat heavily about the windows, “Monte Carlo can’t be the same as when Prince Albert ruled it. Nowadays Monaco has fallen into the hands of the big speculators. First Zaharoff and his friends, and now speculating friends of theirs. No! It can’t be the same. The rich Russians who lived on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, and who were the real players, are no longer there. They get no big coups as I knew them in the ’nineties, when Saturday nights were nights indeed.”

“You had your fling there, according to all accounts!” the girl laughed, looking up from the evening paper, warming her shapely feet upon the fender.

“I did. Then I got something for my money, in any case. To-day they seem in the public rooms to play what, in the old days, we might class as shove-ha’penny in any of our village pubs. Of course, I suppose stakes run a bit higher in the Cercle Privé!”

“They do,” said the girl, and for the next half-hour she described to him the Monte Carlo as it is to-day.

Every evening it was the same terrible boredom. By day the girl took long tramps alone over those wet, dismal roads up and down the lonesome hills, or else sat and wrote long letters to Brinsley. Then at evening she sat over the fire to gossip with the old hunchback, who always deplored his own bad luck at trente-et-quarante.

So bored did she become that one day, with old Routh’s permission, she wrote to Moyna Lascelles, who lived near Birmingham, to come and spend the week-end with her.

Since that day at Cannes the two girls had become firm friends, and since Sibell’s return, they had met twice in town and lunched together. So, in order to further cement their friendship, Sibell sent the invitation, which was at once accepted, old Gordon Routh expressing delight that Sibell should have found such a congenial companion.

The Guest House had meanwhile been cleared of its contents, and the decorators were hard at work cleaning, repainting, and papering the interior, planing and polishing the oaken floors, putting in fittings for electric cooking and light, new baths, central heating, and every modern labor-saving contrivance; while outside, the builders were at work removing the overgrowth of ivy from the red bricks, which they scraped and repointed. They reconditioned both lead-work and tiles on the roof, and the woodwork of window-sashes and doors.

Ten thousand pounds had already been placed to Sibell’s credit at the bank by the lawyers, therefore all went merrily, and, thanks to the girl’s generosity, old Gordon Routh found himself free from household expenses and certain little debts he had contracted in that pretty riparian village.

Brinsley’s habit was to ring her up each night at nine o’clock, after he came in from his heavy day’s work, before he sat down to his lonely evening meal. One night the bell went at half-past seven, just as they were sitting down to dinner.

Sibell rushed to the ’phone, only to hear bad news. Brinsley’s widowed mother, who lived outside Carlisle, had been taken suddenly ill, and he had been telegraphed for.

“I’ve managed to arrange for my absence with a chap I know named Lancaster, who is coming here to-night,” he said. “He was with me at the hospital, and it’s awfully fortunate that I could get hold of him. So I’m leaving Euston late to-night, darling. I’ll let you know by wire to-morrow.”

“But, my darling Brin, how sudden! I expected you would meet Moyna with me at the Trocadero for lunch to-morrow. We’re both horribly disappointed. But, of course, I realize how very worried you must be, dearest. I do hope you’ll find your mother better. Wire me in the morning, won’t you?”

“Of course, darling. I’m so sorry I cannot lunch with you, for I, too, was so looking forward to seeing you. But there you are! It can’t be helped,” he said.

And then, after some comforting words, her fiancé wished her good-night, and the conversation ended.

On returning to the little dining-room, she related what Otway had told her, but, in her ignorance, she never realized the strange look which overspread Moyna’s countenance.

“How very unfortunate!” she exclaimed. “We’ll postpone our trip to town till he’s back.”

And in that way the question was settled.

“What a glorious ring yours is!” remarked Moyna, when the two girls were seated beside the fire after dinner. “By Jove! it must have cost an awful lot,” she added, taking her friend’s hand and admiring it. “I wish I had one like it!”

“I expect it cost a good sum,” Sibell replied. “It’s a real good birthday gift, isn’t it?”

At breakfast next morning old Gordon Routh received a business letter which necessitated his presence for a couple of days in London, and at his suggestion, the two girls accompanied him, arriving at the Hotel Cecil just after tea.

Gordon Routh’s habit had been to stay there through many years; indeed, ever since that colossal hotel on the Embankment had been opened. Routh took his own favorite room on the fourth floor, while the girls had two rooms on the floor beneath.

After taking tea together in the great palm court, the old man rose, expressing regret that he would have to leave for his appointment.

“I don’t expect I’ll see you again to-night, girls, for no doubt I’ll be late. I’m not dressing for dinner. You’ll be able to amuse yourselves—go to a cinema or something, eh?”

And then he left them seated to watch the dancing.

“What shall we do?” asked Sibell of her friend. “How about a theatre? We can dine as early as we like, and so on. What would you like to see?”

After some discussion, they decided to go to the Haymarket, and Sibell obtained tickets at the box-office agency in the hotel. Afterwards they went upstairs, dressed leisurely, and about seven o’clock descended to the great grill-room for dinner. Sibell looked extremely charming—as, indeed, she always did—in a dainty frock of one of the new shades of green which she had had made for Gurnigel, while her rather saucy-faced girl friend was in black.

At table their conversation turned upon women’s charm. Sibell declared that, while the cult of beauty through the media of face-powders, lip-sticks, and massage has attracted notice, the effect of emotions and temperament as a connecting-link in its development had been entirely overlooked.

They were sitting at one of the side-tables in the long windows which by day overlook the busy Embankment and the Thames, but, now that the blinds were drawn, the spot was warm and cozy, being out of the hearing of the many other diners.

“I agree with you, my dear, to a certain extent,” replied her new-found friend. “Of course the first asset of good looks is good health. I’ve a pretty fair constitution, but I certainly haven’t any good looks. So I can’t help it”; and she laughed.

“But don’t you think that everyone’s character is reflected in one’s face, both in men and women?” Sibell asked. “However good a face may be in form or feature, it is chiefly the expression of it that attracts or repels. One’s face is surely the mirror of one’s mind, hence no beautiful character can be ugly in expression.”

“And yet one must not forget that old adage that beauty is but skin deep,” Moyna remarked, as she finished her filleted sole and raised her glass of Chablis.

“I hardly agree with that,” Sibell declared. “Gloomy faces always reflect gloomy minds, and disappointment shows its indelible mark in our wrinkles, which are an indication of a despondent outlook.”

“You seem uncommonly philosophical to-night,” laughed her friend, toying with her glass.

“Well, perhaps I am. Only I’ve been thinking over it all to-day.”

“Depressed because Brinsley is not with us, eh, Sibell?”

“Not exactly. I’m only thinking that fear, grief, and worry are depressing and must impair the digestion and deplete the vitality.”

“Well, my dear, you’ve nothing to worry about, lucky girl that you are!” exclaimed the other. “Your happy outlook should help all your mental and physical ills. For indeed joy is the greatest tonic and beautifier, and you should surely have enough of it—with a big fortune at your disposal and a handsome lover into the bargain!”

Scarcely had she uttered those words, than both girls, at the same moment, became conscious of a tall man in evening dress standing smiling before them.

“Well, Sibell!” he exclaimed cheerily. “I can hardly believe my eyes! Is it really you?”

The girl addressed looked up in surprise, and instantly recognized the broad-shouldered, good-humored man who held out his hand so frankly.

“How are you?” she asked in amazement, taking his proffered hand.

“Quite all right, my dear Sibell. I was sitting over yonder, and chanced to see you here. I thought you were on the Riviera with your aunt.”

“I’ve been there, but, as you see, I’m back again.” Then, glancing towards her companion, she asked: “May I introduce you to an old friend of mine, Mr. Gretton?”

The girl smiled as the man bowed, and then he asked if he might have a chair at their table, adding: “I’ve finished, and I’m just off. What are you doing?”

“Going to the Haymarket,” Sibell replied.

“I’m at a loose end. Can’t I come with you?” he asked. “As a matter of fact, I’m staying here.”

“So are we,” said Moyna. “I’ve never been here before, but it seems to be Mr. Routh’s pet haunt.”

“I’m often here,” he laughed. “I’ve let my rooms in St. James’s because I’ve been across to New York on business, so I’m pushed out here till next week-end.”

“Auntie is over in America. Lord Wyndcliffe is ill, and she’s joined him,” Sibell said.

“So you’re back at Cookham again, I suppose,” laughed the middle-aged, rather good-looking man, who was so well known about town as an eligible bachelor. “I saw your aunt at Lady Deepdene’s a few weeks ago, but she told me nothing about Wyndcliffe’s illness.”

“You really don’t want to go to the Haymarket, do you?” asked Sibell, wishing in her heart to get rid of him.

“I do. Really I do! I’ve wanted to see the piece. If I may come, I’ll be delighted. I’ll run up and get a seat before it’s too late.”

Then, hardly ere the girl had given her permission, he was on his feet, striding out of the restaurant.

“An awfully nice man!” Moyna remarked.

“Yes,” replied Sibell. “But he’s a bit of an ass—one of those who think that every woman is in love with him.”

“H’m. That’s the conclusion I’ve already formed. But, after all, he’ll be company for us to-night, won’t he?”

And she produced her long tortoise-shell cigarette-tube and began to smoke.

Gussie Gretton soon returned, his face wreathed in smiles. He had secured a stall in the same row as theirs, and, after he had given them coffee and liqueurs in the lounge, he took them in a taxi to the theatre. He was, of course, compelled to sit apart from them, but when he rejoined them at the fall of the curtain, he suggested:

“Now what about a spot of supper and a dance, Sibell? That is, of course, if you don’t think Otway would object. I’ve never met him, but I hear he’s a real good sort.”

The girls looked at each other in indecision, which he saw at once.

“Come to the Florida. It’s always cheery there. There’s a glass floor, and good food. Come along, girls.”

“Shall we?” asked Moyna. “I’d love it! Do come, Sibell.”

And so, having got their wraps, they drove round to Bruton Mews to taste the delights of one of the most exclusive dance clubs in London.

Gussie Gretton, being one of the club’s chief supporters, was at once received by a dapper little sous-maître d’hôtel, who was none other than Giovanni Savini, the friend of Albert Ashe. He piloted the trio to a cozy walled-off corner, where a table was set for four, with softly shaded lights, spotless napery, and a big central bowl of Emperor daffodils.

Already a few couples were dancing upon the glass floor to one of the best orchestras in London.

The evergreen and dandified Gussie, having nodded acquaintance with a bald-headed old earl who was supping with one of the principal and most daring dancers in a Parisian revue, at once ordered cocktails, and then examined the menu with the eye of the gourmet.

He ordered a delicious little meal with the inner knowledge of one well versed in London life, a meal which he knew would well suit the palates of his two charming guests. And hardly had he ordered it than he invited Sibell to dance.

She could scarcely refuse, because they were old friends. Gussie was one of her Aunt Etta’s pets, who went to and fro at her bidding. Yet, be it said, he had never known of her trans-Atlantic past, nor did Sibell, innocent girl that she was.

Her only thought that night was of her lover Brinsley and his terrible worry beside his mother’s bed. She had waited, but heard nothing from him, yet she still hoped that on her return to the Cecil she would receive a wire.

All three ate a merry supper together. Gussie was in his best form, telling them risqué stories of scandals in London Society and of the world of New York from which he had just returned.

“But, I say, Sibell,” he said suddenly, “what is that all concerning the house that you and Otway are to be doomed to live in? There’s been an awful lot about it in the papers.” And he placed another strong cocktail before her.

“I know nothing except what I hear. As far as I can ascertain, it seems to be all bunkum!” was her honest reply.

“Of course it is, my dear Sibell!” he laughed, raising his glass to her. “Here’s the best of luck to you.”

Clean-living and abstemious girl that she was, the cocktails she had taken were sadly muddling her, though she did not realize it. Insidious drinks did not affect Moyna, for she was used to them, but in the ordinary way a single glass of port always caused Sibell’s head to reel.

Suddenly, just as he had invited her to dance a foxtrot, he ejaculated:

“Oh, what a lovely ring you have there! A present from Otway, I’ll wager, eh? Do let me see it! I love gems—and especially emeralds. Do take it off.”

She did as he suggested, and under the shaded light he ran it to and fro before his eyes, admiring its multicolored flashes, for the three gems were certainly perfect specimens.

“I’d love to examine it again after the dance. May I?” he asked. “I’m mad on emeralds, as you know,” and, so saying, he slipped the ring into his waistcoat pocket and they both passed out upon the glass floor to dance, Sibell’s brain being awhirl because of the potent cocktails.

CHAPTER XXVI.
BEFORE THE DAWN

Gretton and Sibell returned to their table, whereon Moyna was leaning her shapely bare arms and smoking through her long cigarette-tube, watching them lazily.

Sibell, unsteady in movement, her brain muddled by the insidious drinks to which she was unused, sank upon the red silken settee and sighed deeply.

“I feel horribly tired,” she murmured, passing her hand wearily across her white brow and disarranging her evenly cut fringe of fair hair that so well became her.

“It’s awfully close in this place,” Moyna declared sympathetically. “I can’t think why it is that at any dance club they seem to be afraid of a little ventilation—not draughts, but a little fresh air.”

“I’m so very sorry, Sibell,” declared the tall, well-groomed man, bending over the girl whom he so greatly admired, and had hoped, before the unwelcome advent of young Brinsley Otway, to make his wife. “I’m afraid—I ought not to have asked you to dance. Do forgive me, Sibell, won’t you?” he asked, deeply penitent.

“Of course,” replied the girl, whose head was swimming. “It was not your fault. I’m—well, I’m a little giddy, that’s all. Give Moyna a dance, will you? I’ll sit quiet.”

Thus invited, her friend asked:

“You are quite sure you’re all right, dear? If not, we’ll go back to the hotel at once.”

“Quite. I’ll feel better if I remain here.”

So the pair crossed to the floor and began to Charleston.

“She looks rather bad,” Gretton murmured into his partner’s ear.

“Yes. We’d better take her home soon, I think. She’s not used, it seems, to hectic nights”; and she smiled.

Meanwhile to Sibell it seemed as though the dancers were floating around her, while the music sounded harsh and discordant, far away. She was twisting her bracelet around her wrist nervously and staring straight before her. Both Gretton and his dancing-partner at once realized that she was not herself.

“I feel very faint,” she replied, when Moyna asked how she was.

“Then we’d better get back. Don’t you think so, Mr. Gretton?” the girl asked anxiously. “Don’t come with us. We can easily go back in a taxi. It’s awfully good of you to have given both of us such a jolly nice time. I’m only anxious for Sibell’s health. I’ve been like this myself more than once. It’s nerves, of course.”

“No doubt,” said the man, taking up the cigarette he had left in the tray and which was still alight. “But, of course, I’ll see you back to the hotel.”

“You won’t,” declared the girl vehemently. “I won’t allow you to spoil your evening. You’ve lots of friends here. I can take her home quite well, so just see us to the ladies’ room—that’s all.”

“My dear Miss Lascelles, do you really think that I would allow you to take Sibell back?” he protested. Then, with a smile, he added, “Sibell and I are very old friends, and I would not dream of allowing you two to go alone.”

And he called the obsequious waiter, to whom he hurriedly handed a five-pound note, to pay the supper-bill.

As he was assisting Sibell into a taxi, the change was thrust into his hand by the alert little Italian, who received a ten-shilling note as his pourboire, and next moment the three were on their way back to the Hotel Cecil.

On arrival Gretton accompanied them to the lift, saying:

“I hope you’ll be all right in the morning, my dear Sibell. It is most unfortunate, isn’t it?” Then, turning to Moyna, he added, “If you want anything in the night, just call me. I’m in No. 231.”

“Righto! and lots of thanks,” replied the girl, shaking his hand, while Sibell, her brain still awhirl, sat in the lift and then managed to walk along the corridor to her room, even though a trifle unsteadily. Those ingeniously concocted cocktails, which are mixed in all the dance clubs, had done their work, and she only had a most hazy idea of what had occurred since her return to the table after dancing.

“Oh, my dear!” she gasped, as she sank upon her bed. “I—I feel most awfully ill. I—I really don’t know what is the matter with me. I came over horribly queer suddenly after that last drink which Gussie pressed me to have. Did you have one?”

“Of course I did. But I’m quite all right. So why should you be so queer?”

“I—I really don’t know, dear,” replied the girl, looking around the room blankly with wild, startled eyes. “I was a silly fool. I ought never to have allowed him to take us there. I’m sure Brin would have strongly objected.”

“Well, he doesn’t know, and he need never know, my dear old girl—unless you tell him.”

Then, as Moyna was helping the girl to undress, she went to the toilet-table, and saw a telegram lying upon the white cloth.

“Why, here’s a wire for you! Fancy, we’ve never noticed it before!”

And she handed it to Sibell, who tore it open with nervous fingers.

“Brin will be back in London at half-past seven to-morrow morning!” she said. “He has got word from Cookham that we are here for the night. So he’ll call on us for early breakfast. Won’t it be fun?”

“Yes. But of course you’ll say nothing about meeting Gussie Gretton?”

“No. Of course not. It would only worry the dear old thing. And surely he has lots of worry already. I’ll go to bed.”

And, while Moyna waited, she undressed, washed, put on a dainty boudoir cap, and made her toilette for the night, assuming a pretty nightie of pale-mauve crêpe-de-Chine.

She was already comfortably snuggled up in bed, and her friend had kissed her good night, when suddenly Moyna, glancing at her hand, exclaimed:

“Why, where’s your beautiful ring?”

Sibell started up in bed, staring aghast.

“Why, Gussie has got it! He wanted to have another look at it, and has forgotten to give it back to me.”

“That’s awkward! Brinsley, when he meets you at breakfast, will surely notice that it isn’t on your hand,” Moyna said. “You’ll have to get it back—and to-night. You must, my dear!”

The girl, sitting up in her bed, gazed around her, her blue eyes terror-stricken at her friend’s words. In an instant she was out of bed.

“I—I must! Of course I must! Brin’s birthday-present to me! Oh!” And she gasped, clutching her throat for air. “Oh, what a fool I was to let Gussie have it! How absurd of him to keep it! What can I possibly do?”

Then, glancing at the clock on the mantel-shelf, she said:

“Look! It’s late—past two o’clock! Where is he? How can I get it from him?” she asked distractedly and half-dazed.

“He gave us the number of his room—231. Don’t you remember? It’s on the second floor, evidently.”

“But Mr. Routh! He’s home by this time, no doubt. He could go and get it,” Sibell suggested, standing beside the toilet-table and staring vacantly into the mirror.

“For heaven’s sake, no! The old man might blurt it out in fun, and Brinsley might know that Mr. Gretton is here. Don’t be a fool! Put on your dressing-gown, and go down to Mr. Gretton’s room and get your ring. There’s nobody about, and, besides, he’s forgotten all about it, no doubt, and will hand it out to you!”

“Are you quite sure there’s nobody about?” asked the girl, and, to reassure her, her friend opened the door cautiously and, looking up and down the long corridor, said:

“No, nobody! Not a soul. Go down, and you’ll easily find the room and get the ring. Then all will be well in the morning, and your fiancé need not know anything. Why should he, after all?”

Sibell, instead of taking her kimono, slipped her feet into her little pink slippers and put on her long fur travelling-coat over her nightie, and in that attire and her boudoir cap, crept out of her room and, slipping down the broad flight of red-carpeted stairs in the silence of the night, stole quietly along the corridor until she found Gretton’s room.

Very softly she tapped upon the door. At first there was no response, but on tapping rather more loudly, she heard a movement within, and next moment the door was opened by Gussie, in blue-striped pyjamas.

“Good heavens! Sibell! What’s the matter?” he asked. “Come inside. Somebody may see you!” he whispered.

Next moment the girl was in his room, and they stood facing each other with the door closed.

“I—I’ve come for my ring,” she managed to gasp. “Do give it back to me at once. I must fly, for Moyna is waiting for me.”

The man instantly saw by her unusual expression that the cocktails and champagne she had drunk had muddled her brain, and at once sought to take advantage of it.

“Of course I’ll give you back the ring, my dear girl. But wouldn’t you trust me with it till the morning?”

“No. Brinsley will be here before you are up. He’s coming to breakfast. So he would certainly notice that I was not wearing it.”

“You could have made an excuse that you’d left it in your room,” Gretton said with a smile, for in her pretty cap and with her nightdress showing under her fur coat she looked extremely bewitching.

“No. I—I was afraid. Do give it to me at once, and let me go,” she implored him.

“Of course I will,” he said, crossing the room to where his evening clothes were folded upon a chair, and from the waistcoat pocket he took the handsome ring.

Then, walking back to the door, he laughed, saying:

“I’ll give it to you, my dear Sibell, but only on one condition—that you give me a kiss for its return.” And he placed his hand upon her shoulder.

In an instant she shook him off, and, drawing herself up, said:

“I most certainly refuse! I’ve never kissed you, and I never will.”

“Ah! That’s the worst of it,” he sighed with a touch of sarcasm. “Otway has all your caresses nowadays!”

“You are jealous of him, I know.”

“Perhaps I am,” the man said frankly. “You know how deeply I love you, Sibell. At least, if you don’t, your aunt does. She has no use for that young doctor, I tell you.”

The girl faced him, her eyes flashing.

“And what do my affairs concern my aunt, or even you, I ask?” she cried. “You’ve told me your worn-out old story before—how you love me and all that. But I’ve never believed you. Why, my dear man, you pretend to love a dozen girls at the same time. What woman could ever trust a man with your reputation?”

“You are extremely polite, I must say,” was his angry response.

“I merely tell you to keep your hands off me, and that I desire none of your detestable love-making.”

“But why are you so intent on marrying this doctor fellow, Sibell?” he asked in a more kindly voice. “Do you really think you are suited to each other? You love life and gaiety, while he is a steady, plodding, studious fellow, who must sooner or later bore you stiff.”

“Oh, don’t argue!” she said. “Just give me back my ring and let me go. What will Moyna think if I’m down here so long?”

“Think!” he laughed. “Why, nothing! Girls don’t think nowadays; they just act as their will directs them. It is Victorian to think.”

“But do let me get back, I beg of you, Gussie,” she cried.

“Gussie!” he echoed in gratification. “I like to hear you call me by that name. You’ve always been so studiously formal and called me Mr. Gretton. Do let me have a kiss—just one—in return for your ring.”

“I refuse! It isn’t fair of you to make such a condition when you know so well the whole circumstances of my engagement,” protested the girl.

“But you look so sweet to-night that I can’t resist, even at the risk of incurring your anger,” he said, and suddenly, ere she was aware of it, he had gripped her and was raining hot kisses upon her unresponsive lips.

Suddenly, with a supreme effort, she struck him a blow full in the face, which caused him to release his hold, and then, like a tigress, she fought, until at last, breathless and overcome, she sank half-fainting into an arm-chair.

He held a glass of water to her dry lips as she lay back inert, her boudoir cap awry, her eyes half closed, dazed and semi-conscious.

A few moments later she felt him take her hand and gently slip the ring upon her finger.

Then she heard his voice, sounding as though afar off.

“Sibell,” he whispered into her ear, “I’m a brute! Forgive me! Do—I beg of you! I—I lost my head. I—I didn’t know what I was doing! I’m a damned blackguard to have kissed you against your will. I apologize. Tell me that you will forgive me and—forget to-night,” he begged of her, on his knees in supplication.

For some time she remained silent, then slowly her eyes became fixed upon his countenance in a strange, stony stare.

“You have no right to have treated me so!” she declared in a hard, bitter tone. “I came here to you in desperation to get my ring, because I feared that my fiancé might miss it. What would he have said had he discovered it in your possession?”

“Quite true,” said the man. “What indeed would Otway say if he ever knew that you had been here for over half-an-hour!”

She stood rigid. Then she cried:

“God! I never thought of that! Let me go, you swine! Let me get back at once—at this moment, before anyone sees me.” Then, turning to him suddenly, she put her arms out, and said breathlessly: “If you want my forgiveness, Gussie—let me go. Peep outside and see that no one is in the corridor.”

“Don’t be afraid, child! There’s nobody about at this hour—only the night-watchman, who carries his tell-tale clock around at every hour, which registers his tour of the hotel.” Then, as he raised her slim hand and kissed it with studied courtesy, he asked: “Am I forgiven? Say, yes.”

“You will be if you let me go. Look at the time. What will Moyna think?”

“She’ll think nothing if she’s the sport I take her to be,” he replied, with a man’s usual selfish disregard for the woman he may so easily compromise.

Without a sound he advanced to the door, drew back the bolt, and peeped out.

“Nobody!” he whispered. “Good night, my dear Sibell! When we meet again let us both forget this meeting, I beg of you.”

Next instant she was in the corridor, dishevelled, for in her excitement she had not looked at herself in the glass. Over the thick carpet she passed silently in her slippers until, just as she came to the stairs, two figures suddenly emerged from the shadows.

One man was a porter in uniform, and the other she recognized in a flash.

She heard the words, hard and hoarse:

“Sibell! Now that I have watched I know it is true! I thought they lied to me, but now I know that you do not belong to me—but to that swine!”

The speaker was Brinsley Otway!

CHAPTER XXVII.
BY WIRELESS

A month had gone by—for Sibell a month of dark anxiety, shattered hopes, a terrible blank despair, which had shattered her nerves, poor child.

Constant appeals made to Brinsley had exacted nought, for he had refused to see her; all her explanatory letters had been returned unopened, which added to her despondency. A dozen times she had been to Golder’s Green, but he had always been “out”; frantic telegrams had had no effect in inducing him to grant her even a moment’s interview. He had cut her out of his life.

Moyna Lascelles, sniggering and artificial after expressions of regret, had gone to Yorkshire on a visit to a mythical cousin, while Gussie Gretton, to whom Sibell wrote telling him of the tragic dénouement of the incident of the ring, had come quickly to her side, apologizing most deeply, and trying to console her.

Old Gordon Routh, in whom his ward was compelled to confide, extended to her his deepest sympathy, and made pretence of writing himself strongly to Otway.

The girl’s lover, who had been so devoted, remained obdurate. He had heeded that secret warning sent to him anonymously by one of Etta’s friends. He had watched the girl enter Gretton’s room, and, with the hotel valet, had stood concealed outside for over half-an-hour, when he had caught her creeping back in her nightdress. What further proof of her infidelity was wanted? He had watched with his own eyes, and, consumed by most intense hatred for his rival, he would listen to no extenuating circumstance or excuse.

Little did the poor fellow know of the deep and dastardly conspiracy on the part of Etta Wyndcliffe and the man Ashe, or that long ago Gussie Gretton had made the ex-decoy of trans-Atlantic card sharpers a firm offer of five thousand or more on the day he married Sibell.

The girl had come into money, but that made the sensuous man-about-town all the more keen, and he had increased his commission. Therefore it was not surprising that old Routh, suspecting the truth of the secret arrangement with Etta, welcomed him to Cookham in order that he should make pretence of sympathy and perhaps bring off the coup.

Sibell hated the fellow the more she saw of him. Her dire position was entirely due to him. One afternoon, as he sat in the little cottage drawing-room, she told him so. Coward that he was, he at once placed the onus upon her, declaring that it was her fault alone that she had gone to his room at that hour, when she might have so easily waited till the morning.

“By the way,” he asked suddenly, “how long have you known that gay young friend of yours, Moyna?”

“Marigold Ibbetson, an old schoolfellow of mine at Cheltenham, introduced her to me at Cannes. She was with a friend of Brinsley’s—an air-pilot named Cranston.”

The tall man, who sat back in the easy-chair with his long legs crossed before the fire, grunted. A strange thought had arisen in his mind. He had never told Sibell the truth, that on the day he had met her at the Cecil he had received a mysterious telegram signed “Richard,” telling him that if he stayed at the hotel in question that night he would meet Sibell and a girl friend who were both at a loose end.

Upon that message he had acted. He was now wondering who his friend “Richard” might be. He knew many men by that name, and one day he would no doubt discover the identity of the giver of such welcome news.

“Why do you ask about Moyna?” inquired the girl, noticing that he seemed very preoccupied.

Then, of a sudden, and for the first time, those words of the masked cavalier at Gurnigel, who had uttered that strange warning, recurred to her.

“Nothing,” he replied. “I merely wondered whether you knew her very well.”

“It was all a sinister plot!” cried Sibell next moment, starting to her feet wildly and pushing back her fair hair. “I see it all, now!—a plot to part Brinsley from me! I was warned—and yet, I never heeded it. I’ve been an absolute fool!”

“A plot, my dear Sibell! How could it be?” he asked in surprise, also springing to his feet.

“It was—my God, it was! I was ignorant, but my enemies took advantage of my innocence, and have brought all this to me! That man who warned me,” she added. “Oh, if I only could know who he is!” And she wrung her hands in desperation.

“What man? Dear child, do tell me. Even if you hate me, confide in me. We’ve been friends for a good many years, haven’t we?”

“A—a man who warned me of the plot. And I’ve been blind to it—blind until this moment.”

“Well, at least tell me how you received the warning,” Gretton begged of her.

She stood against a chair, swaying to and fro, for at that moment she had become half hysterical, and in a few brief sentences related to him what had happened at the gay masked ball at the winter sports, and the sudden disappearance of her gallant cavalier.

Gretton questioned her closely, but she knew nothing more than what has already been related in these pages.

“But if there was a plot, how could that stranger possibly know?” queried Gretton reflectively. “And, further, why should there be any plot? If you fell in love with young Otway, that is surely your own affair, and his. I admit, my dearest Sibell, that for a long time I’ve been very fond of you, and I am still, but surely you don’t suspect me of having any hand in any plot?”

“Oh, I can’t think! I can’t act—now that I have lost Brin!” cried the white-faced girl in despair. “I have come into an inheritance which is accursed. Yes, trebly accursed! Of that I am now confident!”

“How?” he asked.

“Is there not a curse placed upon the Guest House—a curse of many years ago, probably in the days of Cardinal Wolsey? I am doomed to live there, and my life wrecked! I hate the very name of the place after all the terrible things that have happened there. And yet—yet, if I do not live in that awful place, I lose my inheritance!”

Augustus Gretton, his countenance heavy and thoughtful, crossed the room and looked gloomily out upon the small garden, with its early spring flowers discernible in the dusk, and the grey chill river beyond.

He was bewildered, perhaps for the first time in his hectic life. He was indeed quiet, seeing light through the cloud of mystery, for he recollected that Satanic bargain he had made with Sibell’s aunt, the dance fiend who was a peeress, the bargain which had been raised to twenty thousand pounds if he married her. He had offered a price for the girl’s body, as an Arab sheik would offer, because he was wealthy, and his money could buy all that he desired in the wealth-eager world of London, wherein religion is to-day surely a mockery, and morals a ridiculous farce with the curtains drawn down.

“I—I can’t bear you any more, Gussie—please forgive me,” the frantic girl said, suddenly putting her hands upon his shoulder. “Do go. I beg of you. If you were a girl you’d know. You are my friend, so you’ll go and leave me to think. My God! I’d rather drown myself in the river down there beyond the lawn than carry on any further. I—I’m desperate! Don’t you see? We were both of us fools, Gussie—idiotic fools. But I mean to discover who engineered us both into this plight of which that mysterious man, the cavalier, warned me, a thousand miles away,” she added determinedly.

“Then you will really forgive me?” said the man, with a true expression of sympathy. “Do regard me, Sibell, not as the horrible hog you think me. I’m sorry, awfully sorry that I kissed you in my room, but—but really you were so sweet and charming that you were irresistible. And, after all, you never kissed me—you never have.”

“What can I say?” replied the distracted girl, who stood before him in her smart golfing kit.

“Only say, Sibell, that you forgive me, and let’s cry quits,” the man said earnestly in a low, persuasive voice.

“Quits! And then?” asked the girl, for she was of strong and determined will, a fact that her aunt, Etta Wyndcliffe, the seller of souls, had never realized. The woman, adventuress as she was, had merely regarded her as a very pretty, fair-haired débutante, to be sold in the marriage market to the highest bidder, with of course big profit to herself, just as she had sold others, and as she had decided with the old hunchback guardian, Routh, beside that calm sea upon those Belgian dunes in the previous summer.

That same afternoon, as Sibell, in the fast-falling dusk, sat with the rich, thick-lipped sensualist who coveted her, a strange, tragic scene was in progress in mid-Atlantic, where in the aftermath of a sudden storm the sea ran high, causing the great liner on its way from Southampton to New York to roll heavily.

The captain, a thick-set, round-faced, cheery man, was having his tea alone in his cabin, as was his wont, when the ship’s doctor suddenly entered.

“Have a cup, Dayne?” asked the well-known Atlantic commander. “We’re in for another spell, I think.”

The doctor, a sharp-featured, narrow-faced, black-moustached man, who had been on the Ciceronic for five years, sank into the other chintz-covered chair set before the fire and, with a word of thanks, said:

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there’s to be a death on board.”

“A death! That’s unfortunate. A passenger?”

“Yes, sir. A Mr. Rupert Kimball, United States subject of St. Louis. He was quite well on the first day out. Has a lady friend on board—a Mrs. Wilcox. Took ill last night with heart, and I’m afraid he won’t last very long.”

“Any relatives to wireless to?” asked the captain sharply, pouring out the doctor’s tea.

“I believe the lady is sending a message.”

“Will he last till we get over?” asked the captain, who, like all seafaring men, hated a death on the voyage. He had a caul on board in secret, as all men do who go down to the sea in ships. The secret caul is supposed to give sailors immunity from disaster, even though a corpse be carried to port. Yet they never speak about it.

“I don’t know. The poor chap seems to be in the last stage of angina, and of course in such condition one can never tell.”

“Bad luck, doc,” said the captain, filling his big briar pipe, for at that hour he always indulged in a smoke privately. It was the one hour of the whole long day which he held sacred to himself, sacred from passengers, worries, or official complaints. In that daily tea-hour he became master of himself, as well as of the great thirty-thousand tonner which carried the mails so regularly between Southampton and New York. That was his one hour’s leisure in the day’s run.

Both he and the doctor were near neighbors and lived with their wives in Southampton, and naturally began to chat about home affairs, when of a sudden there came a knock at the cabin door, and the head purser entered, saying:

“Sorry, sir. May I speak a moment with you, doctor?”

Dayne rose instantly, swallowed the tea the captain had poured out, and walked unsteadily outside, for the ship was rolling heavily.

“I’m afraid that gentleman, Mr. Kimball, is very bad,” said the man in uniform with a strong American accent. “The lady has just sent for you. She says he’s dying!”

The ship’s doctor, hurrying along the deck, swiftly descended to the sick man’s stateroom, where he found the dark-eyed, well-dressed woman standing beside her sick friend’s bed, as she had done for the past forty hours.

“I believe poor Rupert is dead!” she whispered, her face blanched and staring. “A few moments ago he raised himself with a great effort and insisted upon kissing me. Then fell back—and I’m afraid he’s gone!”

And, unable to control herself, she burst into a torrent of tears.

It did not take Dr. Dayne long to ascertain the truth. Rupert Kimball was dead. He had succumbed to heart disease!

Tenderly, after making certain that life no longer existed, he drew the sheet across the dead man’s face, and then led the deceased’s friend silently from that little white enamelled stateroom, with its narrow brass bed.

The woman staggered away, but he, turning the other way, did not observe that the look on her face was more of horror than of distress.

Half an hour later the wireless operator tapped out a message to an address at St. Louis in the United States, announcing the sudden death of the passenger, but the truth was kept from everyone on board at the captain’s request to Mrs. Wilcox, therefore dinner and dancing proceeded, with the usual nightly gaiety, as it ever does on a trans-Atlantic liner.

Etta Wyndcliffe dared not venture into the saloon, but commanded her meal to be brought to her in her cabin, where alone she sat, her mouth half-open, staring at her closed porthole, in front of which that little silken curtain of pale-green swayed with the ship’s roll.

“I wonder! I wonder!” she whispered to herself in a low voice, scarce above a whisper. She had not dressed for dinner, and passed the tempting dishes untouched. The man who had come between herself and fortune lay dead in the stateroom above.

Albert Ashe was anxiously awaiting news. She knew he was waiting for the result of their clever scheme, the removal of their enemy by means which should leave no trace.

She pretended to eat, and then at last, after the sweets were served, she rose and placed both hands into her hair in desperation.

“Yes!” she cried aloud hoarsely. “I must arouse no suspicion. I must remain calm! I must play my part as his friend—yes, play it to the end.”

So, putting on her coat, she left her cabin and ascended to the wireless office, where the young operator sat with the telephones upon his ears.

He smiled, and, removing one of the ’phones from his ear, heard her say in a low, tremulous voice.

“I—I want to send a very urgent message.”

“Yes, madam,” replied the polite young Marconi operator in uniform, indicating the desk and pad of forms.

Upon one she wrote a message which she addressed to:

“Thomas, Regent Palace Hotel, London. Poor Rupert has died suddenly from heart disease. Am desolate. Inform mother. Have wired St. Louis.—Wilcox.”

And within a few minutes the operator, with his hand upon his key, tapped out the anxiously awaited news to Albert Ashe, who was purposely at the hotel in question under the name of Sidney Thomas.

The sinister plot of the Guest House and its weird influence was perhaps unequalled in the annals of the world’s crimes.

Only Etta and her accomplice knew. The truth was on the day before she and Rupert Kimball sailed, she had, still posing as Mrs. Wilcox, hired a car from a garage and driven her unwanted friend down to Hampton Court, taking him, out of curiosity, to the Guest House, about which there had been so much gossip.

Previously she had related to him the strange stories, and gave him to read the article in the Richmond and Twickenham Times. It had intrigued him; hence their visit there.

They passed through the house by permission of the foreman of the decorators, and his only comment was:

“Well, it seems a very charming old house for any newly-married couple to live in. That blue and grey scheme in the drawing-room is really very artistic. An old house like this would be snapped up at a very huge price in America, wouldn’t it? I’m glad to have seen it.”

Then, after remaining there half an hour, during which time they visited all the rooms, they re-entered the hired car and drove back by way of Kew and Hammersmith to London.

Poor fellow! Rupert Kimball, whatever might have been his past, never in all his innocence dreamed of the poison shadows that had fallen upon him—that mysterious evil which only five days later resulted in his death from natural causes.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
A DEADLOCK

Lady Wyndcliffe had returned from America and was staying for two days at the Myrtles.

Sibell had been compelled to describe to her aunt that unfortunate incident at the hotel in London, and how she had suddenly become parted from Brinsley. Etta became furious, and declared that the sole blame should be taken by Gretton.

“Gussie always was an ass! He ought to have known better,” cried the well-preserved woman, who, after a week in New York, where her friend had been buried, had hastened back to London, travelling, of course, in the name of Mrs. Wilcox. “I sympathize with you, my dear Sibell,” she went on. “Can’t you make it up with Brinsley?” she asked, puffing at her eternal cigarette, as they sat in the little drawing-room.

“He will not reply to any of my letters, nor will he consent to see me,” said the girl despondently. “He has a locum now at Golder’s Green, and has gone back to his mother’s.”

“H’m!” grunted the adventuress who bore such an honorable name. “Well, it’s rather natural, after all, isn’t it? No man would stand seeing with his own eyes his fiancée in déshabille creeping out of a man’s bedroom at three o’clock in the morning, would he?”

“I suppose not. But he won’t hear the truth.”

“The truth, my dear Sibell, is pathetic. Owing to your own foolish action in going down to Gussie’s room at that hour, you’ve brought all this upon yourself. As far as I can see, your engagement has been entirely broken off, eh?”

“It has, no doubt,” said Sibell tearfully. “What am I to do, auntie? Do advise me.”

The dark-haired woman remained silent for a few moments in order to impress her niece. Then, looking her straight in the face very earnestly, said:

“There is only one thing to do, my dear. And I strongly advise it. Gussie is devoted to you—you know that well. He is frantic about you, and has written three letters to me. He loves you quite as well as Otway ever did. You’ve lost Otway—accept Gussie.”

“Never!” she cried, stamping her little foot in desperation. “I’ll never marry him!”

“But just pause for a moment. Don’t get into a temper, dear, because I want to give you sound advice. Gussie is very rich, and, with your own fortune, think what you both could do! In a moment you would figure in Society and move in the best circles, and, further,” she added, again pausing and remembering the clause of the will by which part of Henry Dare’s fortune would revert to Gordon Routh, “have you never thought that if you cared you need not live in that accursed Guest House? If you liked to marry Gussie you could forego this evil inheritance left you by your Uncle Henry.”

The point had never occurred to her, and, admitting it, she sat for a few minutes very calm and thoughtful.

“But I could never marry Mr. Gretton, auntie—never!” she declared at last. “I don’t love him—especially after that night at the Cecil!”

“Then all I can say is that you’re a silly little fool,” declared Lady Wyndcliffe. “I’ve met so many of your romantic temperament—girls I’ve taken round Society. But very soon romance gets knocked out of them by their daily disillusions, and they end by making marriages of convenience, and money makes up for what men call love.”

“You sneer at love, auntie,” cried the girl reproachfully.

“Indeed, I don’t, dear,” the woman replied. “I only say that the girl who marries for love nowadays suffers a silly martyrdom of jealousy, for in these hectic days a man is seldom, if ever, true to a woman, either before marriage or after.”

“Even though you have had wide experience, auntie, I refuse to believe it to be the general rule.” Then of a sudden, she remarked: “It’s a lovely afternoon. I’m going to take ‘Tiz-oh’ for a walk,” indicating her sweet little Pekingese, who, hearing his name, rose, stretched himself, and came waddling towards her.

Five minutes later the girl went forth into the glorious spring afternoon with her pet at her heels.

Already the beautiful Thames valley was clothed in its freshest green, the orchards were white with blossom, the birds in full song, and the sky cloudless as she swung along, a smart, well-set-up figure in her beige jumper-suit and close-fitting black hat.

From her usually bright, open countenance all the sunshine of life had died out. Pale, hollow-eyed, and despairing, her face gave a true index to her perplexed state of mind.

As she strode along blindly, she was reflecting upon her aunt’s suggestion that, Brinsley having forsaken her, she should at once accept Augustus Gretton’s offer, and take her place in Society with the smart house in Upper Brook Street which was Gussie’s.

As Etta had pointed out, with her artful insidiousness, Gussie was well-known in London, and already the Conservatives had tried three times—on account of his ability to contribute to the Party funds—to induce him to put up for a borough constituency. The Borough of Guildford was suggested, and after that Bournemouth, and then West Hartlepool. But man-about-town that he was, and gossiper at his club, with his perfect English—for indeed no better English is spoken than in a West End club—political bickering had never appealed to him.

As she swung along the long, damp road, stick in hand and her pet Pekingese beside her, she reflected deeply upon her position.

Brinsley, to whom she was devoted, whose every word had been her law, whose lips she had met in those hot, fevered caresses, whose hugs had thrilled her with a sensation that had become her delirium of delight, had now cast her aside as worthless, and had gone away.

She had now to decide whether to accept her uncle’s fortune and live alone in that ancient house of evil at Hampton Court, or live with Gretton as her husband, a mockery of life of up-to-date gaiety—a hollow sham such as many a girl might enjoy.

Which should she choose? As she went along that dull, muddy road in her thick golfing brogues and swinging her ash stick, she thought it all over.

Now and then “Tiz-oh” her Peke lagged behind, and she would whistle him to come to heel. In her walk she became self-absorbed. Her aunt had put before her the most difficult of all the problems in her young life.

She had passed the Ferry Hotel, that riverside resort so popular in summer, with its pretty lawn and landing-stage, which was usually so gay with its punts and riverside folk, yet on this early spring afternoon was deserted and forlorn.

At the door stood a youngish, clean-shaven man in a dark blue rain-coat, erect and smart, with something of the appearance of a ship’s officer. His grey felt hat was set at an angle, and as she passed, he was so entirely engaged in lighting his cigarette in the wind that he scarcely looked up at her. The glance was only a momentary one, but sufficient to cause him to become the more intent upon lighting his cigarette.

Sibell, in her distracted state, did not give the young fellow another glance, but continued down the road. He was no doubt one of the many Thames lovers who, year in and year out, stay at the Ferry.

The young man turned back into the hotel, and, on second thoughts, entered the coffee-room and ordered his tea. Then he took up an old illustrated paper and began to read.

Just as the neat waitress brought in the tray, heavy footsteps were heard descending the stairs, and into the room came a man who had been staying there for the past three days, taking long walks about the country-side, a hale and hearty old gentleman named Mr. Herbert Smee, who came from Northampton, and was a retired leather merchant.

“Nice afternoon, sir!” cheerily exclaimed the younger man, whose name was Gleeson, and who was a commercial traveller. “I was just going for a stroll, but thought I’d first have my tea.”

“So am I,” replied the rather short old man. “May I come out with you?”

“Certainly,” was the younger man’s reply, for Mr. Smee had, during the two days they had been fellow-guests there, struck him as an extremely intelligent and well-informed old fellow, possessed of a vast amount of learning. His business, he understood, had taken him abroad a great deal, especially to the East and to the centres of the trade in hides.

After tea they strolled out together, when, in about half an hour, they met Sibell with her dog returning. As she passed, the younger man gave her an inquiring glance, but at the same time he kept a watchful eye upon his companion’s grey face. The elder man, though he pretended not to notice her, had turned somewhat pale, and then halted for a moment in pretence of searching his pockets for his pipe, but in reality in order to recover himself from that unexpected meeting, which young Gleeson had so cleverly engineered.

Presently they returned to the pleasant little village, passing beyond their hotel, and continued on for a further quarter of an hour, when, from the gate of the Myrtles, there emerged Sibell, accompanied by her aunt, who wore a handsome fur coat, both women walking in their direction.

The men were discussing a film which both had seen in London, when Gleeson suddenly interrupted the other by saying:

“Here comes a very handsome woman. Don’t you think so? I wonder who she is?”

“Who knows?” grunted the old man, whose face clouded instantly, and his watchful companion was intrigued to notice his disguised anxiety to avoid her.

After another twenty minutes or so they returned to the Ferry, where, in the hour before dinner, they sat smoking and gossiping.

Meanwhile at the Myrtles Etta Wyndcliffe, who had suddenly remembered an engagement in London, was busily packing in order to leave directly after dinner.

The presence at Cookham of that little old fellow and his companion had alarmed her.

She had recognized the stranger staying at the Ferry as Albert Ashe’s mysterious friend, a Mr. Pearson.

What was he doing at Cookham? That was the point which puzzled her. And who was the smart, alert man who appeared to be his bosom friend?

Before ten o’clock that night she was at Paddington, and, having taken a room at the Great Western Hotel in the name of Mrs. Wilcox, she at once drove to Ashe’s rooms in St. James’s.

Having previously telephoned from her room in the hotel, she found the man anxiously awaiting her.

In a few quick, breathless sentences she told him of her encounter, while he stood aghast.

“What the devil is he doing down there? Why?” he cried, surprised. “And who can his companion be? Suppose Sibell has recognized him?”

“She hasn’t. They’ve never met. Unless she remembers him at Cannes.”

“By Jove! They must never meet, eh? We had one damned narrow escape with the dear, departed Rupert. We don’t want to risk a second.”

“I’ve been persuading Sibell to marry Gussie,” said the woman, casting off her furs wearily. “She’s an obdurate little simpleton, for any other girl but her would jump at the chance, thereby giving us all the commission we want and making everybody happy, even doddering old Gordon himself. But life is so full of disappointments, annoyances, and—well, narrow escapes, eh? my dear Albert!”

“And how does the girl take it?” asked the ex-butler, as he helped himself to a drink from the decanter on the sideboard.

“Resentful at first, but, after due reflection, she’s rather inclined to change her views. We must not allow her to make it up with Otway at all costs,” the woman added.

“That she’ll never do. I’ve made friends with the doctor who is looking after his practice, a fellow named Lancaster, and you bet I gave the young lady a great character for honesty. I saw that my words sank in, and I know he’ll let out what he has learnt from a reliable source—myself. I urged him to keep the secret, but he’s a blithering young idiot, and I know he’ll tell Otway at the first opportunity.”

“That’s all very well, Albert. But things are rapidly coming to a crisis. Where do we really stand?”

“We stand in with Gordon, don’t we?—not with old Pearson, surely.”

“I don’t know so much about that. He might very easily be in the cart with all three of us if we’re not very careful, you know! It’s a desperate game we are now playing!”

“There! You’ve got the wind up again—you silly fool!” said the man.

“Why do you say that? I didn’t have it on that terrible voyage to New York! I played the game—That you must admit.”

“Then play it again,” urged the man, with a weird grin. “We’ve gone so far, and we can’t turn back now. Sibell must marry Gussie Gretton—she has to—or, by heaven, we shall both be up at the Old Bailey. So the future is up to you. Up to you! You hear that?” he cried in a hard, decisive voice.

The woman placed her hands over her ears to shut out his fierce and unholy demands.

CHAPTER XXIX.
FURTHER MYSTERY

Next morning, readers of the Daily Express were much intrigued by a paragraph below a heavy head-line, “The House of Mystery,” which appeared in that journal.

Albert Ashe’s habit was to have the paper brought by the man with his early tea, and as he lazily scanned it, his eye caught the heading. He read it through, then, springing suddenly from his bed, he crossed to the telephone near the door and rang up Mrs. Wilcox at the Great Western Hotel.

In a few moments he was put through to her.

“Listen, Etta! Get the Daily Express and read what’s there. Have your breakfast first, and then come over here to me,” he said guardedly.

“What’s in the paper? Anything wrong?” asked the woman in quick apprehension.

“I can’t tell you on the ’phone. Just get the paper and read it. See you later.” And he rang off. His full face was pale and his hands trembling, for he was evidently terrified at what he had read.

He sat upon the side of his bed in his pyjamas and reread as follows.

“For some months great curiosity and much controversy have been evoked by the reopening of an ancient mansion, the Guest House, at Hampton Court—so called because it was used by Cardinal Wolsey to house his guests when, with his boundless hospitality, they overflowed from Hampton-Court Palace. It’s romantic history, and the reason its late owner closed it years ago, has already been told in the Daily Express, but some entirely inexplicable occurrences have lately happened there from time to time which have led the local residents to regard it as a House of Evil.

“After a recent auction sale, in which the whole antique contents were cleared at enormous prices, a firm of decorators—Messrs. Hudson & Brown, of Hammersmith—were given orders to entirely renovate and redecorate the place, so that it might be refurnished and rendered fit for the new proprietress—a young lady who benefited under the will—to take up her residence there. Following the reopening of the place, after being closed for over thirty years, there were curious circumstances. Several men were unaccountably taken ill, and, after a critical period, recovered, while in one case, at least, a victim of the evil influence, a caretaker and ex-police-constable named Farmer, died mysteriously—all being affected by some fatal disease of the heart.

“The latest mystery connected with these premises, upon which a sinister influence appears to rest, occurred at four o’clock yesterday afternoon, when, the redecoration of the premises being near completion, a French-polisher named Burton, living at the Mall, Hammersmith, while at his work upon the main staircase, suddenly collapsed, and within five minutes expired.

“The police were at once notified, and the body was, in due course, removed to the mortuary, where an inquest will be held.”

“Damn it! What next!” ejaculated Ashe, and then with hard, serious face he shaved and dressed, ready to meet the woman to whom he had posed as servant at West Halkin Street.

An hour later she stood in his room.

“Well? You’ve seen it, eh?” he exclaimed. “The poor devil died, and now there’ll be yet another inquiry! Suppose Sibell goes there and she gets affected! What about her marriage, and what about us? She has to be protected: you’ll admit that?”

“Of course, my dear Albert,” replied the handsome woman standing at the window and looking aimlessly down upon the dull, narrow West End thoroughfare. “What I’m working for is the amalgamation of the two fortunes. If we can do that, we can screw up Gussie to almost any figure we like. Sibell must not be frightened into giving up her inheritance, as she very well may be. If so, Gordon Routh will reap all the benefit of our constant labors. And we can’t afford that, eh?”

“I see in the same paper that Wyndcliffe is coming home on the Homeric,” he said.

“Not yet. I cabled to him yesterday saying that I was bored with London, and would join him next month, and go across to California with him. I’m getting him to buy an orange ranch there to keep him employed. So his return here is only paper talk. The further he is out of the way the better. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course I do, my dear girl. This occurrence last night is, however, most unfortunate, as it brings another official inquiry, and the more the public curiosity is aroused, the more insecure our position. The girl’s a damned little fool not to marry Gussie straight away and cut that young bug-hunter out of it. She must—she must!” he cried vehemently.

“Yes, Albert,” declared the woman, “I agree that she must, for the sake of all of us.”

“But what do you suspect to be the true secret of the Guest House? I ask you that,” he demanded.

“My dear Albert, I tell you quite frankly that I’m just as much in the dark as you are. It’s horrible—demoniac, one might say.”

He paused.

“Well, don’t, for heaven’s sake, let us take any risks ourselves.”

“I shan’t, because I’m a woman,” she said. “You may—as a man.”

“God help me, I hope not. But I tell you that, after reading this report, I’m absolutely afraid to enter the place,” Ashe said.

“Lots of other people are, too. This affair of the man Burton is absolutely amazing! Yet, if no woman has been affected, why should not Sibell be immune? That’s a problem.”

“But has it never occurred to you that the girl Forrester, whom Henry Dare was about to marry years ago, was taken ill there, and died mysteriously?”

“Not taken ill actually in the house,” Lady Wyndcliffe retorted. “According to what we know, she was walking in Bushey Park—up the chestnut avenue one spring morning, to be exact—and suddenly she felt faint, stumbled, and fell, and was carried to the Guest House to die. Again”—and she lowered her voice to a whisper, and said—“remember that Rupert did not feel any ill-effects of his visit to the place until at sea six days later. How can anybody account for it?”

“Nobody can, my dear Etta, and nobody ever will, if we still remain astute and wary,” said the big, athletic man. “Your plan, now that Rupert doesn’t trouble us any more, is to get Sibell to marry Gretton. I’m broke to the world—and so are you, I expect. I’ve about fifty quid between myself and a Rowton House, that’s all. The landlord of this place will never be paid, I can assure you”; and he chuckled hoarsely to himself. “Men who pay landlords are fools—unless they live in hotels. Then the weekly bill on one’s dressing-table has to be settled, aye or nay.”

“What are we to do, Albert?” the woman asked eagerly.

“Wait and see what the coroner’s jury have to say; and let’s hope that Sibell doesn’t see the case in the papers. If so, she’ll be more scared than ever.”

“Perhaps it will induce her to throw up the inheritance and fall into Gussie’s ready embraces. I only hope so.”

“Heavens! So do I,” laughed the man. “We must wait, my dear girl, and that’s all. But we must also find out from the old man first why he is at the Ferry at Cookham, and, secondly, who is the friend who walks with him there.”

“I’m a bit suspicious of that young fellow,” declared the woman. “And yet the old man is the most clever and elusive person I’ve ever met—and I’ve met a few men in my time. You know what I mean?”

After that Ashe nodded, and his visitor, swallowing a liqueur brandy which he poured out for her, wished him a merry adieu, and left him.

The report of the mysterious death of the workman Burton was seen by Gordon Routh, who at once showed it to his ward, hoping thereby, as Etta hoped, that it would bring her to a decision to forgo her evil inheritance and accept Gussie.

The girl read the account and shuddered. The Guest House was, indeed, a house of death, and hers was only a fatal inheritance.

Was she to share the same fate as Henry Dare’s fiancée in the Victorian days? She reflected that the innocent girl who, like herself, was in a few days to be a bride, had not been taken ill in the house, but outside, in the public park close by. Again, it was more than curious that, though so many women had entered the house since its reopening, viewing its contents and attending the three-days’ sale, no one had suffered any deleterious effect.

Two days later the result of the inquest was reported. The man Burton had died of a heart attack, revealed by the post-mortem examination, hence, to the public, the affair was no longer a mystery.

On that day Etta, who was pretending to Sibell to be staying with some friends at Hampstead, went down to the Myrtles to remain for a couple of nights, her real object being at all hazards to induce the girl to accept Gretton. Sweet and lovable as was Sibell’s nature, she was also a girl of strong and determined will. Once she made a decision, it was almost impossible to persuade her otherwise. She had lost the one and only love of her life, therefore she felt that she could never simulate affection for any other man than Brinsley, her ideal, her soul-mate, and the controller of her destiny.

Hour by hour she sat in that dull country cottage, with the old hunchback ever working out his eternal “systems” of roulette and trente-et-quarante. In those hours she dissected her own soul, becoming more and more convinced that marriage with Gretton was utterly impossible.

When her aunt very discreetly broached the subject after dinner, while they were alone, she told her quietly and frankly that her unalterable decision was to remain single.

“What, live alone in that awful place?” cried her aunt. “Why, my dear Sibell, it would be all too impossible! You’re absolutely mad to think of such a thing! And then, if you don’t live there, you will be compelled to relinquish your fortune!”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve already decided to live there, and discover the cause of this strange evil which appears to pervade the place,” was the girl’s calm, well-thought-out reply. “Already I have given orders for the carpets, and a portion of the furniture. I’ve given the people carte blanche to furnish it up to three thousand pounds. That will be a beginning.”

“But surely you won’t live alone there?” her aunt said, her eyes staring as she suddenly realized that not only her fat commission, but Routh’s share, were also slipping from them.

“I can hire a companion. Lots of girls are fond of adventure. I know one who was at school with me at Cheltenham.”

“Well, my dear, I tell you frankly that I’d be scared out of my wits if I had to live in such an awful tomb. Satan himself seems to dwell there.”

“My dear auntie,” replied the girl, “you don’t understand! Now that I’ve lost Brin I’ve lost all interest in everything in life, except to solve the problem of that house of evil,” she went on in a hard, despairing tone quite unusual to her. “In three weeks the house will be finished in readiness for me. I made up my mind over a week ago. Old Martha, who was Mrs. Sherwood’s servant at Ripley before her death, is coming as my housekeeper, and she is engaging the servants.”

Etta’s alert mind was quickly at work.

“You’ll surely want a man in the house, dear, if you really intend to embark upon this curious housekeeping,” she said. “Why not let me try and find Ashe? He was an excellent man. I fear I was rather peevish with him that day when I dismissed him so abruptly. I’ve been sorry ever since.”

“Well, you said all sorts of nasty things against him, auntie,” remarked the girl. “But certainly I know him, and perhaps, after all, he’d be better than a stranger. I wonder where he is.”

“Oh, I’ll find out,” replied her aunt quickly. “You really can’t do better than engage him, if you are actually going to set up house alone. I expect the agency in Marylebone Street from which I engaged him will know. He’s awfully loyal, and such an excellent man at table. It will be funny, when I come as your guest, that he will wait upon me, won’t it?”

CHAPTER XXX.
THE PLOT

In the dreary weeks which followed, while Sibell waited for her home to be prepared, she often stayed at a small private hotel in Cork Street, where she had lived in the London Season with her hunchbacked guardian, old Routh.

She had engaged as companion a girl named Edith Pearman, who, on leaving Cheltenham, had become a governess in a private school at Scarborough, and welcomed her old school-friend’s proposition. A well-educated girl of a somewhat severe, angular exterior, she wore horn-rimmed glasses, as a school-mistress should, yet, at heart, she was a most cheerful, laughing optimist, and, having learnt all about her friend’s bitter disappointment, consoled her.

Meanwhile, Gussie Gretton, prompted by Lady Wyndcliffe of course, was constant in the renewal of his attentions. He came round to Cork Street daily to take her out in his car for one or two runs to places, where they lunched and chatted, but all with little satisfaction to the ardent lover. Sibell was, of course, entirely ignorant of the vile compact which her go-ahead aunt had made, and simply regarded the elegant man’s desire to please as the natural outcome of his responsibility for Otway’s parting from her.

For a young doctor, fresh from hospital, to obtain even a foothold in his profession is indeed hard enough to-day. The old and out-of-date general practitioners, who have made enough to retire upon, are mostly snappy and crusty; if his young partner is a few minutes late for “surgery” he will not fail to snarl at him.

But Brinsley had been through the mill as house surgeon at an infirmary, and had actually secured a corner house with a red lamp, as every general practitioner longs for, and had very soon, by his merry disposition and kindness to the poor, acquired quite a good practice among the good people of that London suburb, Golder’s Green.

Yet, in a single night, all his love for Sibell had been blotted out, and well it might have been in such circumstances. Poor Sibell remained disillusioned and dispirited, with one determination only—to discover the secret of that evil influence which pervaded the house wherein the guests of Cardinal Wolsey had often been entertained in those long-ago days of the full glories of Hampton Court Palace.

More than once, accompanied by her new companion, Edith, she drove down to the Guest House in a hired car, and went over the place, here and there directing the furnishers, who were busily at work. The work occupied her distracted mind.

The long drawing-room, so dull, stately, and full of a bygone atmosphere, had assumed an entirely modern aspect, with its white-bordered panels of old-rose brocade, and a rich Wilton carpet to match. Some of the best pieces of old furniture were there—the fifteenth-century credence, which Bond Street dealers had begged her to sell; the old oaken cupboard with long, wrought-iron hinges, where, upon its top, an Elizabethan helmet, deeply rusted, had been placed.

When first she entered to inspect the spacious apartment, with its long windows, she expressed delight at its transformation. In one corner stood that heavy old velvet-covered armchair of the Florentine Renaissance, into which Mr. Gray, the auctioneer, had sunk, half-insensible, when he collapsed so suddenly.

A strong smell of fresh enamel and varnish pervaded everything, each room having been redecorated and refurnished out of all recognition. Some of the old leaded diamond panes of the ancient windows had been replaced by sheets of plate glass, and on every hand there were modern conveniences—electric lights cunningly concealed in heavy white cornices, and hot-water radiators were in all the bedrooms.

As on that day she went with Edith over the place, the foreman of the furnishing house said to her, after descending from the upper floor:

“The only thing that has not been touched is the wine-cellar, Miss Dare. At Mr. Gray’s orders it has not been opened, for he has the key. He said he would consult you before any alteration is made there.”

“Yes. I will see him about it when I come to live here,” replied the girl, expressing the greatest satisfaction as to the up-to-date scheme of furnishing.

“I fear some things may appear incongruous,” said the pleasant-faced man in a black overcoat. “There are several really priceless old pieces here, mixed up with quite modern stuff—an arrangement of which a connoisseur might not approve. But we understood, Miss Dare, that what you had put aside in storage was to be used.”

“Most certainly. The house is mine,” she laughed. “It is not the house of a connoisseur.”

On her return to Cork Street she found a telephone message from her aunt awaiting her, saying that she was calling at six o’clock.

Almost punctually she arrived, and, bursting into the room in her usual impetuous way, she exclaimed:

“Oh, my dear Sibell, I’ve to-day discovered where Ashe is to be found! If you write to him to Hammond’s Registry, Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road, the letter will find him. I’d write at once, dear, if I were you.”

Sibell promised she would, whereupon Lady Wyndcliffe said:

“You’re going to the new house on Monday week, aren’t you? Poor Gordon will be awfully lonely without you.”

“Oh, I hope to see him as my guest very often, auntie—and you also,” she declared. “I’ve just been down to Hampton Court, and the place is quite transformed—so bright and artistic. You must really come and see it.”

“I fear I can’t, dear. I’m so sorry. As you know, I’ve closed West Halkin Street while Wyndcliffe is away, and I’m going to Scotland to-morrow to visit the McKays at Dalry. But I do hope you’ll be very happy, notwithstanding that you have not chosen Gussie as a husband.”

“I might change my mind,” laughed the girl saucily. “Who knows?”

“Well, dear, I heartily hope you will, for a life alone in that house is surely no existence for you.”

And, having applied her lipstick before the mirror and rearranged her hat, she shook hands and left, saying as she went out:

“Now, mind that you write to Ashe to-night or you may lose him!”

CHAPTER XXXI.
REJUVENATION

Spring was lengthening into summer, and already the spacious garden of the Guest House, now so well kept after so many years of neglect, was full of bright flowers, while the ancient trees, including a rare “strawberry-tree,” threw a welcome shade on a sunny day.

Sibell and her boon companion, Edith Pearman, had already installed themselves for over three weeks, living quietly and comfortably, though in the long hours the girl’s thoughts were ever of her lost lover—the love of her life. The servants, under the trusted old cook-housekeeper, carried on well, but in place of the obedient Ashe—who, at the last moment, made excuses not to enter Miss Dare’s service—an erect, rather smart, and narrow-faced youngish man, named Charlesworth, had applied for the post and obtained it.

At their first interview Sibell felt just a faint suspicion that she had seen the young man before, but after long cogitation, and examining the excellent credentials from a peer who had recently died which he presented to her, she had engaged him. The fact was that they had met before, but the girl could not recall the circumstances.

Ashe had at first been most anxious to become butler to his ex-mistress’s niece, but, having talked it all over in his room in St. James’s with the former, he declared himself too nervous to live in that house.

“Remember what happened to our dear departed Rupert after you had taken him to see the place,” he said to her. “No, my dear girl, I’m not going to risk it! Are you?”

Hence, Ashe having withdrawn, Charles Charlesworth became installed in his place.

Sibell had allowed herself the luxury of a new and expensive car, with a good-looking young chauffeur named Budd; therefore, when old Gordon Routh came to his ward’s house as visitor for a week, she took him for pleasant runs down to Brighton, Bournemouth, and Guildford.

With a big bank balance and quite a new set of friends growing up around her, Sibell Dare would have been intensely happy had she still possessed the affection of the one man whom she adored.

Alas! his silence remained unbroken. He was living with his mother in the North, a disappointed, disillusioned misanthrope, from whose heart all the zest of life had been crushed.

Gussie Gretton had driven down to call. His visit had been a mere formal one to look her up, and both were careful to avoid any discussion concerning the past.

One bright afternoon he called a second time, being admitted by the quiet-mannered Charlesworth.

“Well, Sibell!” he cried cheerily as he entered the long, handsome drawing-room. “Going on all right? No spooks or devils, or that kind of unholy influence, now that all the cobwebs have been cleared away, eh?”

“Nothing,” answered the girl, laughing merrily. “I’m beginning to think, Gussie, that those various affairs were all mere coincidences. Some enemy of our family gave the place a bad name, and it has stuck to it. That’s the opinion I am beginning to form, and Mr. Routh thinks so, too.”

“Well, it really seems so,” agreed her visitor, taking the cigarette she offered him. “People have declared this place to be a house of death, and some fussy old men, who call themselves antiquaries, have professed to have dug out all sorts of weird stories of its past. All uncanny, I admit; but how can people possibly come here and be affected by some evil influence which causes illness, and in more than one instance, actual death? It’s all bunkum, I say!” Then, as an after-thought, he added, “By the way, have you heard yet from Otway?”

The girl shook her head sadly in the negative, and in an instant he saw that he had approached the most painful subject in her heart.

“Do forgive me, Sibell. I’m awfully sorry that I should have referred to the past!” he hastened to say, laying his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. “I don’t forget that it was all my fault, and now I frankly tell you, my dear Sibell, that if ever I can help you in any way whatever in the future, you have only to count upon me as your friend.”

She sat up in her chair and looked into his eyes, half believing him.

At that moment the well-set-up young butler, Charlesworth, entered, carrying the big Georgian silver tea-tray, and, having arranged it, left silently and closed the door after him.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked.

“I honestly do,” he answered. “And do you know why, Sibell?” And he paused. “Well, strictly between ourselves, I believe that you’ve been the victim of some vile, damnable conspiracy, which has something to do with your inheritance. More, I do not know. That is my distinct and unalterable suspicion.”

“But why?” cried the blue-eyed girl excitedly. “Why should anyone plot against me? Surely, in all my life, I haven’t done a soul any harm!”

“Those who are innocent always suffer where greed of money is concerned,” the man replied. He had assumed a friendly and kindly attitude towards her. “That there is a plot, Sibell, I feel convinced,” he said, recollecting the vile proposition concerning commission that Lady Wyndcliffe had put to him one night at Ciro’s eighteen months before. He, as one of the most eligible bachelors in London, was reflecting upon a phase of life that he knew.

Open your morning paper and glance at the simpering Society brides in their little lace caps edged with orange blossom, smiling on the arms of their bridegrooms as they leave West End churches. Then, for a moment, reflect upon those who grace the dinner-tables of Mayfair, and reap their harvest of fat commissions each London season.

“Fewer marriage-mongers, fewer divorces,” said a candid judge in the Divorce Court not so very long ago. In the papers the Society divorce equals in attraction the Society marriage, until the commonplace would become staggered by the matrimonial chessboard of Who’s Who.

Gussie Gretton, awkward, as is every man, sat with his well-toasted tea-cake upon his lap and drank his China tea, and then, excusing himself to Sibell and to Edith, who had come in late after a walk over to Molesey, he rose, and was handed into his car by the ever-ready Charlesworth.

Sibell went to her room. She wanted to be alone to think. Already, after those few weeks, the big house, which smelt so strongly of fresh enamel and the odor of new carpets, had begun to pall upon her.

She cast herself into a soft chair, and in the dull twilight thought over Gretton’s curious suggestion that there was some desperate and most insidious plot against her in order to compel her to leave the house and refuse to live there.

Her lawyers had made it entirely plain to her that in such case, under the terms of her Uncle Henry’s will, she would have no alternative but to relinquish all claims to its benefits. She realized, too, that the only person to derive profit would be her hunchback guardian, old Gordon Routh.

That night she dined early with Edith, and afterwards went up to town in the car to a new play at Wyndham’s. Budd, the smart chauffeur, in his dark-green livery and polished gaiters, had been in the service of a queen of the variety stage, and was most polite and attentive in the wrapping of warm wraps. He had good wages and full licence to go hither and thither, save when he was wanted to drive, therefore he naturally regarded his mistress with the same solicitude as he had done the alert little lady of the music-halls who had married a peer’s son.

When the theatres had “burst”—that time-signal known to every London chauffeur or taxi-driver—he carried his charges speedily back to Hampton Court, though the night was misty.

It was late when the car drove in, but the alert Charlesworth was up to serve the girls with their cups of tea before retiring.

On the table in the dining-room lay a wire from Sibell’s aunt, which read:

“Returning to town to-morrow. Can I stay with you next Thursday for the week-end?”

The girl showed it to her companion, and agreed that they would both be delighted to have Lady Wyndcliffe as guest. Only a week before, in the London gossip of the Daily Sketch, there had been a brief paragraph that “Sadie Dexter, daughter of Issy Dexter, the great real-estate millionaire of Detroit, has been placed beneath the social wing of Lady Wyndcliffe, whose intimate circle of bright young people is so well-known, and who gives such exclusive dances in the season. Miss Dexter is a relation of Colonel Frank Dexter, who was the chief adviser to General Hughes during the Great War.”

Etta’s press-agent had been at work. He was a small, withered little old journalist who lived in a single room out at Balham and whose old-fashioned landlady took pity upon him. And yet in Fleet Street his name was one to conjure with. He made or marred reputations, because he knew exactly how to distribute dope to his pals in the various Fleet Street inns.

He could always slip a Treasury note into the hands of an outside gossip-writer on a daily newspaper, wrapped up in a paragraph. Thus who could tell of the “graft” when next day the important journal appeared with a photograph of a nobody who was being secretly boomed? So it is that, in this age of publicity, nobody of any note, and nobodies of any note, as well as the somebodies who count, from the highest to the lowest, can afford to neglect the offers of a press-agent.

In our present age of advertising, real worth hardly counts, and merit is valueless in any walk of life without a Press boom behind it, until the best-hated man or woman now becomes the most talked of and popular. Hence one dismisses most of the social gossip of the newspapers as mere inconsistent twaddle, which interests illiterate suburbia and benighted country cousins, who to-day are not so benighted as the directors of our Press seem to think. Once the Press created public opinion, but, thank heaven! the public nowadays thinks for itself—the public of whatever political views.

Sibell read the paragraph about Etta’s latest capture and smiled inwardly, wondering how much it had cost the ambitious American father. It was no affair of hers, for she had known such cases each season. After all, the title “Countess” covers such a multitude of judgment summonses and “orders of the Court.”

Nevertheless Sibell was ignorant that, though she led such a quiet, uneventful life, with Edith Pearman as her companion, very often the dark figure of a man would be in the vicinity of the Guest House after dark, waiting for hours sometimes, even from early evening, and often through the long dark watches of the night. The figure would draw back and conceal itself when any constable chanced to come along after midnight, yet the man was often there, watching the windows of Miss Dare’s room as though keeping a constant vigil upon the old-world house.

It was a haunting shadow, but it was there always—the shadow of evil or of good.

But those who lived in the newly-decorated house were completely in ignorance of that keen pair of eyes which kept an ever-vigilant watch.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE MONKEY-GOD

Early one stormy morning, about two o’clock, when the rain beat upon the window-panes, Charlesworth and the smart chauffeur, Budd, were seated together in complete darkness in the long dining-room. They sat but uttered no word. Indeed, the only signs of anyone being present were two red ends of cigarettes, for both were smoking.

Sitting in silence with drawn blinds, they had been there since the house had been closed at eleven, none of the occupants aware that they were keeping a night vigil, or that they had done so for many previous nights.

So as not to show any light, they lit one cigarette by the end of the other, and smoked on without a single word. Continual smoking kept them from dozing, as night after night they had sat there, each with a bottle of beer at his elbow, until dawn, when they would noiselessly retire. This strange procedure had been repeated nightly by the two men ever since they had entered Sibell’s service.

Suddenly there sounded a noise in the farther corner of the dark room—a slight hiss, which caused both men to spring to their feet. The low hiss, as though of some reptile or large insect, was repeated twice.

“Careful!” whispered Charlesworth to his fellow-servant. “Not a sound!”

“Right,” was Budd’s whispered reply, and, opening the well-oiled door, they both crept in their socks out into the hall, where, at the top of the staircase, they saw a small, dull-green light moving very slowly, until it stopped at the head of the stairs. By its light they could distinguish something moving—a gloved human hand, it appeared, holding something that shone—a knife. The hand seemed to be carefully scraping or picking the handsome carved mahogany post which held the heavy balustrade.

For fully three minutes the two watchers, warned of some intrusion by the electrical contrivance which had produced the curious hissing in the dining-room, looked on in surprise. That tiny green light was distinctly weird and uncanny.

Presently the light moved from the head of the staircase slowly along the corridor to an end room, which Sibell had made into her own little den. Its door stood open. The faint, dull light of the night sky, the blind not having been drawn, revealed that the green light was carried by a man bent and short of stature, a man who wore surgical rubber gloves, and evidently also felt slippers, as his feet fell silently. Creeping behind him, the two men watched him advance to Sibell’s writing-table, upon which he placed his little green lamp, with an open penknife. Then, selecting her fountain-pen from the silver tray of the handsome inkstand, he carefully unscrewed the cap. It was a self-filler of unusual type. Taking from his pocket a small phial of some liquid, which appeared to be ink, he inserted the nib of the pen and quickly filled it. Then, with gloved hands, he carefully plunged the whole pen into the inky liquid, and afterwards screwed on the cap, and then replaced it just as he had found it.

Upon the polished silver tray he allowed a few drops of ink to fall, and at the same time he rubbed, with his rubber glove, a quantity of the liquid upon the polished writing-table.

It was as though he was intent upon polishing the whole table with ink.

As the stranger turned, Charlesworth suddenly flashed his bright electric torch full upon his face, causing him to stagger back in fright, while at that same second, Budd switched on the electric light in the room.

“We are officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I arrest you, John Dare, alias Bettinson, and lots of other names, upon charges of wilful murder,” Charlesworth said in his deep voice.

“You—you arrest me!” screamed the wily, white-haired old fellow. “Arrest me! And in my own house! I defy you! Touch me if you dare, and from the slightest scratch with this knife you’ll die!” And with a demoniacal grin he held up his little pen-knife, which he had used upon the stairs.

Next instant Detective-Sergeant Budd threw himself upon him, seizing the hand which held the fatal blade, while Inspector Charlesworth strove to get the dangerous knife from his hand. But the old man, in that demented state, screamed and yelled like some wild animal, fighting with the ferocity of a tiger, twisting and swaying as he tried to wound one or the other of his captors.

“This house is mine—mine! You understand?” he shrieked wildly. “My brother Henry should have left it to me! It is mine by law! All these years I’ve waited and have been in it, and now those who usurp what is my property—all who dare enter here—must die. They die mysteriously—of—of heart disease!” And then he gave vent to a most hideous screeching laugh that showed him to have suddenly become raving in his lunacy.

To secure him was nearly impossible, and as Sibell and two maids, awakened in fright, appeared in their dressing-gowns, Charlesworth turned to his mistress, and said:

“Excuse me, miss, we’ve caught a burglar! Will you please telephone to the police-station at once, and simply say that Charlesworth wants immediate assistance here? They’ll know.”

At hearing those words, the homicidal maniac made a renewed and most desperate struggle, still holding the dangerous knife in a grip of steel. Then, of a sudden, Charlesworth, in his efforts to obtain possession of it, drew his hand so close to the prisoner’s neck that the point of the blade entered just beneath his right jaw.

“God!” he shrieked, realizing what had happened. “I—I’ll die! You damned fiends—you—you——” But slowly, a few seconds later, he collapsed, while the knife fell from his nerveless fingers. “This place is mine!—mine by inheritance!” he wailed. “Henry had no right to it—never had,” he went on. “I was born here, and—and I—I die here! But I’ve cheated you all. Of the Malays I learnt of their wonderful ipoh gadong, the poison of which, by a tiny scratch, or a little beneath the finger-nails, causes certain death—the time-poison which no Western doctor can yet detect—how its effect can be delayed for a day, a week, or a month. I know! I alone hold the secret of the old Bomor Enche Jalal of Kelentan. I brought the ingredients to England with me. And you sha’n’t know them—no, never shall know them. Their secret is mine, and I alone will hold it!”

In the arms of the two detectives the old fellow became limp and inert, so that they placed him upon the couch, where he lay until Sibell, naturally very excited, ran back from the telephone.

Suddenly old John Dare started, and with his thin, upraised hands began a series of wild incantations which, though nobody understood, were undoubtedly in Malay, for he called upon the langsuir, which is, to the natives, a terrible female vampire who afflicts only brides. He imitated the repulsive laugh—“haw-haw haw-ho”—of the Malayan fish-owl, or “ghost-bird,” while time after time he invoked the anger of Hantu Doman, his deity, the Monkey-God.

To those present it was only gibberish, but apparently he made use of the same incantations as he did in the presence of poor Farmer before his mysterious death.

“Did you hear that?” asked Inspector Charlesworth to Budd. “Take a note of the name of that poison—ipoh gadong.” Then he turned to Sibell, and warned her not to touch her fountain-pen or the balustrade of the stairs.

“Later I’ll explain all to you, miss,” the police officer added. “It is a great consolation to us that, after all, we’ve caught ‘The Chameleon.’ We know that they called him that in France, where he committed at least two murders by means of his poison secret, and, after trial at the Assizes of the Seine, he was confined in the French criminal lunatic asylum at Toulouse for life. But he escaped, and arrived in London, where he’s been earning a precarious living in the City on account of his knowledge of the Malay language. And so——”

His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the inspector from Hampton and two constables.

“Fixed up ‘The Chameleon’ all right, sir?” asked the rosy-faced officer, taking in the situation at a glance.

“Yes, Fowler. All is O.K. Caught him red-handed, and he’s poisoned himself. I don’t expect he’ll live long. Good job for him if he doesn’t, eh?”

“You swine!” whined the prostrate man suddenly. “Live long! I don’t care how long I live! This house is mine. They sold its contents, but those who helped to do it suffered!” And he yelled like a maniac. “The man in charge dared to lay a hand upon me, and he died. The doctor who was to marry the girl who took my inheritance from me had a narrow escape, because—because I timed it wrong. I was a fool to do so—a fool—fool!”

The police officers looked at each other in silence, while Charlesworth in a kind voice suggested that Sibell and the maids might return to their rooms.

This they did, when, a quarter of an hour later, the prisoner was removed on the ambulance to the police-station, but on the way his heart failed, so that on arrival he was found to be dead.

Before midday the fountain-pen, with its infected ink, and some fine splinters of mahogany from the carved head-post of the banisters, were in the hands of the Home Office pathologist, who, after careful analysis extending over the next four days, certified that the most dangerous and most virulent poison had been applied.

A most scrupulous examination was afterwards made of the house of evil, where it was discovered that “The Chameleon,” a nickname given him in the asylum at Toulouse because of his amazingly clever disguises, his strange adventures, and his sound knowledge of medicine, and as such registered in the criminal archives at the Paris Sûreté, had, even before the death of his brother Henry, been in the habit of entering the house at night with his green light, and in his demented state he had often sat and enjoyed himself through the night hours in those long-closed rooms, imagining himself the possessor of the long-closed-up house.

His mode of entry into the place was discovered on the evening of the day of his death.

When Inspector Charlesworth was faced with the puzzling problem, he most naturally thought of the shut-up wine-cellar. The door of this they found ajar, and, with Budd, they struggled past a number of well-filled bins of old port and sherry to an exit which consisted of a rotting wooden lattice covered by brambles. They struggled through these, to find themselves ascending some moss-grown stone steps, after which, after another struggle, and tearing their clothes, they found themselves in a thicket on the other side of the adjoining garden!

By such means had the lunatic brother of Henry Dare—who for years lodged with a dear, deaf old widow at Molesey—gained access to the old house that had once been his home, and of which he still, in his demented state, felt that he held possession.

To the public the actual truth never leaked out. It was better so. The coroner, after a consultation at the Home Office, held his inquiry without the aid of a jury, and all the world was told was that at a house at Hampton Court a burglar had been captured by the police, and that the shock to him proved so great that, on being conveyed to the police-station, he had died of heart disease.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
CONCLUSION

If the reader cares to take the trouble to cross the wide green at Hampton Court, close to the fine old red-brick turreted palace, with its wonderful old-world flower-gardens, he may see the spick-and-span Guest House of the great Cardinal standing back amid the ancient trees, as it has done ever since the days when Anne Boleyn visited it with Henry VIII.

Of the amazing career of “The Chameleon” nobody is aware save Dr. and Mrs. Otway—who now live so happily there—the police, of course, Routh, the old gambler, Lady Etta, and the adventurous Ashe. From all others the secret of the evil which pervaded the place has been strictly withheld.

The young couple are highly popular. Brinsley, having disposed of his practice and his corner house at Golder’s Green, is looking out for one in the West End, determined not to live upon his wife’s money.

The reconciliation between the pair was effected by no less a person than Gussie Gretton himself. He admired, perhaps even he loved, Sibell, for he would, indeed, have readily paid the fat commission which the adventuress demanded. But, realizing his mistake, as well as Sibell’s devotion to Otway, he one day went North, and, forcing himself upon Otway, described to him frankly and honestly all that had occurred.

At first Brinsley indignantly refused to see Sibell, whereupon Gretton turned to him reproachfully, saying:

“In that case, Otway, you’re not fair to the woman who loves you. Do give her one chance to explain with her own lips. I’ve known her longer than you have, and I’ve a right to appeal to you for her sake. Surely you can realize the hell she’s gone through since that unfortunate night? Come to London with me. Do.”

Otway remained obdurate, while Gretton, on his part, again declared that the meeting had not been planned, and nothing had occurred between them which he had not described. He admitted kissing her against her will, and for that he deeply and most humbly apologized.

That night, after obtaining his whilom rival’s promise to reconsider his decision, Gretton returned to town, while the early train next morning carried Brinsley to the side of the girl to whom he was so wholeheartedly devoted.

Explanations in that long, white-enamelled drawing-room did not take very long, for in an instant they were clasped in each other’s ready arms, he raining hot kisses upon her lips, while she sobbed for joy.

That night Sibell wrote to her aunt telling her the glad news, which, of course, created the greatest disappointment among those who had so cunningly plotted to part the pair, and so obtain a considerable sum of money if their clever scheme had been successful. Though Sibell was unaware of it, Lady Wyndcliffe had secretly been introduced by Ashe to John Dare, who represented himself as a Mr. Pearson, manager of the electric lighting firm which was fitting up the Guest House, and in that capacity he invited her to bring her American friend, Mr. Kimball, to see over the interesting old place.

This she did on the following day, when, without doubt, the homicidal old maniac, in one of his chameleon-like disguises, played some devilry with that deadly liquid in his possession, whereby Etta’s unsuspicious companion had become infected with that most deadly of all poisons, which he had so concocted as to produce a fatal effect within a week—as it had done, in mid-Atlantic. Sibell did not know till long afterwards that Scotland Yard was already on the track of Ashe and Etta, and that on the morning in Berne, Inspector Charlesworth had been in the adjoining room and had overheard the plot. It was he who, disguised as a cavalier, had gone to the masked ball at Gurnigel and warned her.

John Dare had revealed to nobody either his real name, or the secret manner in which he removed those who invaded what he had determined was his domain by right. Etta and Ashe only knew that he held some strange and astounding secret.

Etta Wyndcliffe, as soon as she learned the truth, feared to be implicated in the affair, and therefore left at once for Kenya Colony, where Wyndcliffe, ignorant of everything, of course, joined her, while Albert Ashe, equally fearing exposure—for at his suggestion Etta had taken Kimball to the Guest House, “to see if the evil would fall upon him,” as he put it—escaped to the Continent, where he still remains.

Only by the analysis of the dangerous secret held by “The Chameleon” of the ipoh gadong,[1] which is mixed with the inspissated juices of two jungle vines and the poisonous spines of certain fishes, have modern toxicologists been forced to admit the existence of an actual time-poison that can be absorbed through the skin, which has been strenuously denied, ever since mediæval days, by all chemists and pathologists.

Sibell, indeed, had a most narrow escape, for had she innocently handled her fountain-pen, she would undoubtedly have been stricken dead by the ink coming into contact with her fingers.

Hence men working in wonder in rubber gloves, after mysterious warnings, spent weeks in cleaning down the big house a second time, and in removing and planing down smoothly the sharp splinters of infected mahogany upon the big carved post at the head of the stairs, which had no doubt been responsible for those imperceptible pricks and scratches which had infected the unfortunate ones with the deadliest poison known to-day. When studying the problem, Otway, himself deeply interested in toxicology, suddenly realised the reason why women visitors to the house had escaped. The explanation was simple. They had touched nothing which the midnight intruder, with his green lamp, had with his satanic cunning arranged; for they wore gloves!

The public have not hitherto learnt the truth as here recorded, nor have they known of the strange history and astounding exploits of the criminal lunatic who swept away his imaginary enemies in that subtle and ingenious manner, yet for several years the French police had kept the weird old fellow under surveillance, because upon him rested the suspicion of at least two cases of secret poisoning—one at Bordeaux and the other in Paris—yet so elusive was he, and so chameleon-like in his constant changes, that the Sûreté could never obtain direct evidence.

His presence at Cookham was certainly with some evil intent against Sibell, but his young fellow-guest at the Ferry Hotel was really an astute young detective-sergeant of the T Division of Metropolitan Police, whose watchfulness was later taken up by the well-known officer, Inspector Charlesworth of Scotland Yard, and Detective-Sergeant Budd.

Sibell was deeply sorry when her two faithful menservants were compelled to so suddenly resign. By their constant vigilance her life had been spared, while Brinsley’s return brought her all the happiness for which she had craved.

At the time of penning this record of one of the strangest dramas of London’s hectic life that had ever been recorded in the annals of Scotland Yard, Sibell’s old hunchback guardian, the optimistic Gordon Routh, lives in three comfortable rooms on the upper floor of the Guest House, and is usually immersed in the intricate problems of the chances at roulette and the proving of the infallible “system” which he has invented to his own satisfaction.

The big file now reposing in the criminal archives of Scotland Yard, and the equally large records at the bureau of the Sûreté in Paris, record the career of John Dare, rubber planter in Malaya, who became a criminal lunatic. They show no parallel in the history of crime. Against him the infamous Neil Cream, with his tiny poison pills, which he administered to the unfortunates of Lambeth, fades into insignificance, for John Dare, of the house of D’Aire, had brought to London the secret of the one terrible Eastern time-poison of which toxicologists had now learnt by the analysis of that little phial of ink and poison found upon him after death. The formula of it is to-day kept the most profound secret by those who know, lest it might be used any day by enemies who desire to take human life with perfect immunity from arrest.

The many typewritten pages which constitute the police record of John Dare, criminal lunatic, alias Bettinson, Pearson, and many other names, lying in the archives at Scotland Yard—a carbon copy of which reposes in the great department of criminal records in Paris—concludes as follows:

“John Dare, alias Bettinson.—One of the cleverest, most elusive, and plausible assassins ever reported to the international police. Was in possession of a secret poison hitherto unknown to medical science, and his known crimes in England and France numbered eight. So alert and adroit was he in changing his facial expression, together with his attire and his calling, in order to wipe out those whom he believed to be intruders into his rightful possessions, that, by his associates and also by the police, he became known all over the Continent as ‘The Chameleon.’ ”

THE END

ENDNOTE

[1] Author’s Note.—The actual mode of preparation and formula I have purposely omitted, for most obvious reasons.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. armchair/arm-chair, card sharpers/card-sharpers, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings and some missing/invisible periods.

Convert the footnote to an endnote.

[Chapter VI]

Change “and an epergne of great chrysanthemums as a centre-plece” to piece.

“Ashe, the discreet, obsequlous butler, a clean-shaven man” to obsequious.

[Chapter IX]

“and hence are sacrified for firewood early in their growth” to sacrificed.

[Chapter XXVI]

(“It is most unforunate, isn’t it?” Then, turning) to unfortunate.

[Chapter XXVII]

“fair-haired débutante, to be sold in the marrige market” to marriage.

[Chapter XXXI]

“uneventful life, with Edith Pearman as her companian” to companion.

[End of text]

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Table of Contents

- POISON SHADOWS
- [COPYRIGHT]
- CONTENTS

- POISON SHADOWS

- CHAPTER I. A SOUL FOR SALE

- CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE AT HAMPTON COURT

- CHAPTER III. WHAT POLICE CONSTABLE ASKEW SAW

- CHAPTER IV. THE SIGN OF EVIL
- CHAPTER V. SHADOWS
- CHAPTER VI. MISTRESS AND MAN
- CHAPTER VII. THE MAN WITH RED HAIR
- CHAPTER VIII. MR. ASHE IS INQUISITIVE
- CHAPTER IX. THE LURE OF THE SNOW
- CHAPTER X. SKIERS AND “FROTH-BLOWERS”
- CHAPTER XI. A VISITOR AT THE GUEST HOUSE
- CHAPTER XII. WITHOUT FEAR
- CHAPTER XIII. TRUTH OR FANTASY?
- CHAPTER XIV. UNCLEAN HANDS
- CHAPTER XV. THE SECRET CAVALIER
- CHAPTER XVI. MAN AND WOMAN
- CHAPTER XVII. EXPLANATION AND APOLOGY
- CHAPTER XVIII. THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
- CHAPTER XIX. THE DEVIL’S PARADE
- CHAPTER XX. THE SHADOW
- CHAPTER XXI. THE GREEN BAIZE APRON
- CHAPTER XXII. UNDER THE HAMMER
- CHAPTER XXIII. OUR SINISTER WORLD
- CHAPTER XXIV. UNKNOWN!
- CHAPTER XXV. THE DOWNWARD STEP
- CHAPTER XXVI. BEFORE THE DAWN
- CHAPTER XXVII. BY WIRELESS
- CHAPTER XXVIII. A DEADLOCK
- CHAPTER XXIX. FURTHER MYSTERY
- CHAPTER XXX. THE PLOT
- CHAPTER XXXI. REJUVENATION
- CHAPTER XXXII. THE MONKEY-GOD
- CHAPTER XXXIII. CONCLUSION

- ENDNOTE
- TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE