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The Vanished Messenger

by E. Phillips Oppenheim · English · Gutenberg #1699 · 477,776 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Vanished Messenger

Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim


        
Release date: April 1, 1999 [eBook #1699]
                Most recently updated: October 11, 2016

Language: English

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Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer





THE VANISHED MESSENGER

By E. Phillips Oppenheim




CHAPTER I


There were very few people upon Platform Number Twenty-one of Liverpool
Street Station at a quarter to nine on the evening of April 2--possibly
because the platform in question is one of the most remote and least
used in the great terminus. The station-master, however, was there
himself, with an inspector in attendance. A dark, thick-set man, wearing
a long travelling ulster and a Homburg hat, and carrying in his hand a
brown leather dressing-case, across which was painted in black letters
the name MR. JOHN P. DUNSTER, was standing a few yards away, smoking
a long cigar, and, to all appearance absorbed in studying the
advertisements which decorated the grimy wall on the other side of
the single track. A couple of porters were seated upon a barrow which
contained one solitary portmanteau. There were no signs of other
passengers, no other luggage. As a matter of fact, according to the
time-table, no train was due to leave the station or to arrive at it, on
this particular platform, for several hours.

Down at the other end of the platform the wooden barrier was thrust
back, and a porter with some luggage upon a barrow made his noisy
approach. He was followed by a tall young man in a grey tweed suit and a
straw hat on which were the colours of a famous cricket club.

The inspector watched them curiously. “Lost his way, I should think,” he
observed.

The station-master nodded. “It looks like the young man who missed the
boat train,” he remarked. “Perhaps he has come to beg a lift.”

The young man in question made steady progress up the platform. His
hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, and his forehead
was contracted in a frown. As he approached more closely, he singled out
Mr. John P. Dunster, and motioning his porter to wait, crossed to the
edge of the track and addressed him.

“Can I speak to you for a moment, sir?”

Mr. John P. Dunster turned at once and faced his questioner. He did so
without haste--with a certain deliberation, in fact--yet his eyes
were suddenly bright and keen. He was neatly dressed, with the quiet
precision which seems as a rule to characterise the travelling American.
He was apparently of a little less than middle-age, clean-shaven,
broad-shouldered, with every appearance of physical strength. He seemed
like a man on wires, a man on the alert, likely to miss nothing.

“Are you Mr. John P. Dunster?” the youth asked.

“I carry my visiting-card in my hand, sir,” the other replied, swinging
his dressing-case around. “My name is John P. Dunster.”

The young man’s expression was scarcely ingratiating. To a natural
sullenness was added now the nervous distaste of one who approaches a
disagreeable task.

“I want, if I may, to ask you a favour,” he continued. “If you don’t
feel like granting it, please say no and I’ll be off at once. I am on my
way to The Hague. I was to have gone by the boat train which left half
an hour ago. I had taken a seat, and they assured me that the train
would not leave for at least ten minutes, as the mails weren’t in. I
went down the platform to buy some papers and stood talking for a moment
or two with a man whom I know. I suppose I must have been longer than
I thought, or they must have been quicker than they expected with the
mailbags. Anyhow, when I came back the train was moving. They would
not let me jump in. I could have done it easily, but that fool of an
inspector over there held me.”

“They are very strict in this country, I know.”

Mr. Dunster agreed, without change of expression. “Please go on.”

“I saw you arrive--just too late for the train. While I was swearing
at the inspector, I heard you speak to the station-master. Since then I
have made inquiries. I understand that you have ordered a special train
to Harwich.”

Mr. John P. Dunster said nothing, only his keen, clear eyes seemed all
the time to be questioning this gloomy-looking but apparently harmless
young man.

“I went to the station-master’s office,” the latter continued, “and
tried to persuade them to let me ride in the guard’s van of your
special, but he made a stupid fuss about it, so I thought I’d better
come to you. Can I beg a seat in your compartment, or anywhere in the
train, as far as Harwich?”

Mr. Dunster avoided, for the moment, a direct reply. He had the air of a
man who, whether reasonably or unreasonably, disliked the request which
had been made to him.

“You are particularly anxious to cross to-night?” he asked.

“I am,” the youth admitted emphatically. “I never ought to have risked
missing the train. I am due at The Hague to-morrow.”

Mr. John P. Dunster moved his position a little. The light from a
rain-splashed gas lamp shone now full upon the face of his suppliant: a
boy’s face, which would have been pleasant and even handsome but for the
discontented mouth, the lowering forehead, and a shadow in the eyes, as
though, boy though he certainly was in years, he had already, at
some time or another, looked upon the serious things of life. His
nervousness, too, was almost grotesque. He had the air of disliking
immensely this asking a favour from a stranger. Mr. Dunster appreciated
all these things, but there were reasons which made him slow in granting
the young man’s request.

“What is the nature of your pressing business at The Hague?” he asked.

The youth hesitated.

“I am afraid,” he said grimly, “that you will not think it of much
importance. I am on my way to play in a golf tournament there.”

“A golf tournament at The Hague!” Mr. Dunster repeated, in a slightly
altered tone. “What is your name?”

“Gerald Fentolin.”

Mr. Dunster stood quite still for a moment. He was possessed of a
wonderful memory, and he was conscious at that moment of a subtle appeal
to it. Fentolin! There was something in the name which seemed to him
somehow associated with the things against which he was on guard. He
stood with puzzled frown, reminiscent for several minutes, unsuccessful.
Then he suddenly smiled, and moving underneath the gas lamp, shook open
an evening paper which he had been carrying. He turned over the pages
until he arrived at the sporting items. Here, in almost the first
paragraph, he saw the name which had happened to catch his eye a moment
or two before:

                     GOLF AT THE HAGUE

    Among the entrants for the tournament which commences
    to-morrow, are several well-known English players,
    including Mr. Barwin, Mr. Parrott, Mr. Hillard and
    Mr. Gerald Fentolin.

Mr. Dunster folded up the newspaper and replaced it in his pocket. He
turned towards the young man.

“So you’re a golfer, are you?”

“I play a bit,” was the somewhat indifferent reply.

Mr. Dunster turned to another part of the paper and pointed to the great
black head-lines.

“Seems a queer thing for a young fellow like you to be worrying about
games,” he remarked. “I haven’t been in this country more than a few
hours, but I expected to find all the young men getting ready.”

“Getting ready for what?”

“Why, to fight, of course,” Mr. Dunster replied. “Seems pretty clear
that there’s an expeditionary force being fitted out, according to this
evening’s paper, somewhere up in the North Sea. The only Englishman
I’ve spoken to on this side was willing to lay me odds that war would be
declared within a week.”

The young man’s lack of interest was curious.

“I am not in the army,” he said. “It really doesn’t affect me.”

Mr. Dunster stared at him.

“You’ll forgive my curiosity,” he said, “but say, is there nothing you
could get into and fight if this thing came along?”

“Nothing at all, that I know of,” the youth replied coolly. “War is an
affair which concerns only the military and naval part of two countries.
The civil population--”

“Plays golf, I suppose,” Mr. Dunster interrupted. “Young man, I haven’t
been in England for some years, and you rather take my breath away. All
the same, you can come along with me as far as Harwich.”

The young man showed signs of some satisfaction. “I am very much obliged
to you, sir,” he declared. “I promise you I won’t be in the way.”

The station-master, who had been looking through a little pile of
telegrams brought to him by a clerk from his office, now turned towards
them. His expression was a little grave.

“Your special will be backing down directly, sir,” he announced, “but
I am sorry to say that we hear very bad accounts of the line. They say
that this is only the fag-end of the storm that we are getting here, and
that it’s been raging for nearly twenty-four hours on the east coast. I
doubt whether the Harwich boat will be able to put off.”

“We must take our chance about that,” Dunster remarked. “If the
mail boat doesn’t run, I presume there will be something else we can
charter.”

The station-master looked the curiosity which he did not actually
express in words.

“Money will buy most things, nowadays, sir,” he observed, “but if it
isn’t fit for our mail boat, it certainly isn’t fit for anything else
that can come into Harwich Harbour. However, you’ll hear what they say
when you get there.”

Mr. Dunster nodded and relapsed into a taciturnity which was obviously
one of his peculiarities. The young man strolled down the platform, and
catching up with the inspector, touched him on the shoulder.

“Do you know who the fellow is?” he asked curiously. “It’s awfully
decent of him to let me go with him, but he didn’t seem very keen about
it.”

The inspector shook his head.

“No idea, sir,” he replied. “He drove up just two minutes after the
train had gone, came straight into the office and ordered a special.
Paid for it, too, in Bank of England notes before he went out. I fancy
he’s an American, and he gave his name as John P. Dunster.”

The young man paused to light a cigarette.

“If he’s an American, I suppose that accounts for it,” he observed. “He
must be in a precious hurry to get somewhere, though.”

“A night like this, too!” the inspector remarked, with a shiver.
“I wouldn’t leave London myself unless I had to. They say there’s
a tremendous storm blowing on the east coast. Here comes the train,
sir--just one saloon and the guard’s van.”

The little train backed slowly along the platform side. The engine was
splashed with mud and soaking wet. The faces of the engine-driver and
his companion shone from the dripping rain. The station-master held open
the door of the saloon.

“You’ve a rough journey before you, sir,” he said. “You’ll catch the
boat all right, though--if it goes. The mail train was very heavy
to-night. You should catch her up this side of Colchester.”

Mr. Dunster nodded.

“I am taking this young gentleman with me,” he announced shortly.
“It seems that he, too, missed the train. I am much obliged to you,
station-master, for your attention. Good night!”

They were about to start when Mr. Dunster once more let down the window.

“By the way,” he said, “as it is such a wild night, you will oblige me
very much if you will tell the engine-driver that there will be a
five pound note for himself and his companion if we catch the mail.
Inspector!”

The inspector touched his hat. The station-master had turned discreetly
away. He had been an inspector himself once, and sovereigns had been
useful to him, too. Then the train glided from the platform side,
plunged with a scream through a succession of black tunnels, and with
rapidly increasing speed faced the storm.




CHAPTER II

The young man sat on one side of the saloon and Mr. John P. Dunster on
the other. Although both of them were provided with a certain amount of
railway literature, neither of them made any pretence at reading. The
older man, with his feet upon the opposite seat and his arms folded,
was looking pensively through the rain-splashed window-pane into the
impenetrable darkness. The young man, although he could not ignore his
companion’s unsociable instincts, was fidgety.

“There will be some floods out to-morrow,” he remarked.

Mr. Dunster turned his head and looked across the saloon. There was
something in the deliberate manner of his doing so, and his hesitation
before he spoke, which seemed intended to further impress upon the young
man the fact that he was not disposed for conversation.

“Very likely,” was his sole reply.

Gerald Fentolin sighed as though he regretted his companion’s
taciturnity and a few minutes later strolled to the farther end of the
saloon. He spent some time trying to peer through the streaming window
into the darkness. He chatted for a few minutes with the guard, who was,
however, in a bad temper at having had to turn out and who found little
to say. Then he took one of his golf clubs from the bag and indulged in
several half swings. Finally he stretched himself out upon one of the
seats and closed his eyes.

“May as well try to get a nap,” he yawned. “There won’t be much chance
on the steamer, if it blows like this.”

Mr. Dunster said nothing. His face was set, his eyes were looking
somewhere beyond the confines of the saloon in which he was seated. So
they travelled for over an hour. The young man seemed to be dozing in
earnest when, with a succession of jerks, the train rapidly slackened
speed. Mr. Dunster let down the window. The interior of the carriage was
at once thrown into confusion. A couple of newspapers were caught up and
whirled around, a torrent of rain beat in. Mr. Dunster rapidly closed
the window and rang the bell. The guard came in after a moment or two.
His clothes were shiny from the wet; raindrops hung from his beard.

“What is the matter?” Mr. Dunster demanded. “Why are we waiting here?”

“There’s a block on the line somewhere,” the man replied. “Can’t
tell where exactly. The signals are against us; that’s all we know at
present.”

They crawled on again in about ten minutes, stopped, and resumed their
progress at an even slower rate. Mr. Dunster once more summoned the
guard.

“Why are we travelling like this?” he asked impatiently. “We shall never
catch the boat.”

“We shall catch the boat all right if it runs, sir,” the man assured
him. “The mail is only a mile or two ahead of us; that’s one reason why
we have to go so slowly. Then the water is right over the line where
we are now, and we can’t get any news at all from the other side of
Ipswich. If it goes on like this, some of the bridges will be down;
that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Mr. Dunster frowned. For the first time he showed some signs of
uneasiness.

“Perhaps,” he muttered, half to himself, “a motor-car would have been
better.”

“Not on your life,” his young companion intervened. “All the roads to
the coast here cross no end of small bridges--much weaker affairs
than the railway bridges. I bet there are some of those down already.
Besides, you wouldn’t be able to see where you were going, on a night
like this.”

“There appears to be a chance,” Mr. Dunster remarked drily, “that you
will have to scratch for your competition to-morrow.”

“Also,” the young man observed, “that you will have taken this special
train for nothing. I can’t fancy the Harwich boat going out a night like
this.”

Mr. Dunster relapsed into stony but anxious silence. The train continued
its erratic progress, sometimes stopping altogether for a time, with
whistle blowing repeatedly; sometimes creeping along the metals as
though feeling its way to safety. At last, after a somewhat prolonged
wait, the guard, whose hoarse voice they had heard on the platform of
the small station in which they were standing, entered the carriage.
With him came a gust of wind, once more sending the papers flying around
the compartment. The rain dripped from his clothes on to the carpet.
He had lost his hat, his hair was tossed with the wind, his face was
bleeding from a slight wound on the temple.

“The boat train’s just ahead of us, sir,” he announced. “She can’t get
on any better than we can. We’ve just heard that there’s a bridge down
on the line between Ipswich and Harwich.”

“What are we going to do, then?” Mr. Dunster demanded.

“That’s just what I’ve come to ask you, sir,” the guard replied. “The
mail’s going slowly on as far as Ipswich. I fancy they’ll lie by
there until the morning. The best thing that I can see is, if you’re
agreeable, to take you back to London. We can very likely do that all
right, if we start at once.”

Mr. Dunster, ignoring the man’s suggestion, drew from one of the
voluminous pockets of his ulster a small map. He spread it open upon the
table before him and studied it attentively.

“If I cannot get to Harwich,” he asked, “is there any possibility of
keeping straight on and reaching Yarmouth?”

The guard hesitated.

“We haven’t heard anything about the line from Ipswich to Norwich, sir,”
 he replied, “but we can’t very well change our course without definite
instructions.”

“Your definite instructions,” Mr. Dunster reminded him drily, “were to
take me to Harwich. You have been forced to depart from them. I see no
harm in your adopting any suggestions I may have to make concerning our
altered destination. I will pay the extra mileage, naturally.”

“How far did you wish to go, sir?” the guard enquired.

“To Yarmouth,” Mr. Dunster replied firmly. “If there are bridges down,
and communication with Harwich is blocked, Yarmouth would suit me better
than anywhere.”

The guard shook his head.

“I couldn’t go on that way, sir, without instructions.”

“Is there a telegraph office at this station?” Mr. Dunster inquired.

“We can speak anywhere on the line,” the guard replied.

“Then wire to the station-master at Liverpool Street,” Mr. Dunster
instructed. “You can get a reply from him in the course of a few
minutes. Explain the situation and tell him what my wishes are.”

The guard hesitated.

“It’s a goodish way from here to Norwich,” he observed, “and for all we
know--”

“When we left Liverpool Street Station,” Mr. Dunster interrupted, “I
promised five pounds each to you, the engine-driver, and his mate. That
five pounds shall be made twenty-five if you succeed in getting me to
the coast. Do your best for me.”

The guard raised his hat and departed without another word.

“It will probably suit you better,” Mr. Dunster continued, turning to
his companion, “to leave me at Ipswich and join the mail.”

The latter shook his head.

“I don’t see that there’s any chance, anyway, of my getting over in time
now,” he remarked. “If you’ll take me on with you as far as Norwich, I
can go quietly home from there!”

“You live in this part of the world, then?” Mr. Dunster asked.

The young man assented. Again there was a certain amount of hesitation
in his manner.

“I live some distance the other side of Norwich,” he said. “I don’t want
to sponge on you too much,” he went on, “but if you’re really going to
stick it out and try and get there, I’d like to go on, too. I am afraid
I can’t offer to share the expense, but I’d work my passage if there was
anything to be done.”

Mr. Dunster drummed for a moment upon the table with his fingers. All
the time the young man had been speaking, his eyes had been studying his
face. He turned now once more to his map.

“It was my idea,” he said, “to hire a steam trawler from Yarmouth. If I
do so, you can, if you wish, accompany me so far as the port at which we
may land in Holland. On the other hand, to be perfectly frank with you,
I should prefer to go alone. There will be, no doubt, a certain amount
of risk in crossing to-night. My own business is of importance. A golf
tournament, however, is scarcely worth risking your life for, is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that!” the young man replied grimly. “I fancy
I should rather like it. Let’s see whether we can get on to Norwich,
anyhow, shall we? We may find that there are bridges down on that line.”

They relapsed once more into silence. Presently the guard reappeared.

“Instructions to take you on to Yarmouth, if possible, sir,” he
announced, “and to collect the mileage at our destination.”

“That will be quite satisfactory,” Mr. Dunster agreed. “Let us be off,
then, as soon as possible.” Presently they crawled on. They passed the
boat train in Ipswich Station, where they stayed for a few moments.
Mr. Dunster bought wine and sandwiches, and his companion followed his
example. Then they continued their journey. An hour or more passed; the
storm showed no signs of abatement. Their speed now rarely exceeded ten
or fifteen miles an hour. Mr. Dunster smoked all the time, occasionally
rubbing the window-pane and trying to look out. Gerald Fentolin slept
fitfully.

“Have you any idea where we are?” Mr. Dunster asked once.

The boy cautiously let down the window a little way. With the noise of
the storm came another sound, to which he listened for a moment with
puzzled face: a dull, rumbling sound like the falling of water. He
closed the window, breathless.

“I don’t think we are far from Norwich. We passed Forncett, anyhow, some
time ago.”

“Still raining?”

“In torrents! I can’t see a yard ahead of me. I bet we get some floods
after this. I expect they are out now, if one could only see.”

They crept on. Suddenly, above the storm, they heard what sounded at
first like the booming of a gun, and then a shrill whistle from some
distance ahead. They felt the jerk as their brakes were hastily applied,
the swaying of the little train, and then the crunching of earth beneath
them, the roar of escaping steam as their engine ploughed its way on
into the road bed.

“Off the rails!” the boy cried, springing to his feet. “Hold on tightly,
sir. I’d keep away from the window.”

The carriage swayed and rocked. Suddenly a telegraph post seemed to come
crashing through the window and the polished mahogany panels. The young
man escaped it by leaping to one side. It caught Mr. Dunster, who had
just risen to his feet, upon the forehead. There was a crash all around
of splitting glass, a further shock. They were both thrown off their
feet. The light was suddenly extinguished. With the crashing of glass,
the splitting of timber--a hideous, tearing sound--the wrecked saloon,
dragging the engine half-way over with it, slipped down a low embankment
and lay on its side, what remained of it, in a field of turnips.




CHAPTER III

As the young man staggered to his feet, he had somehow a sense of
detachment, as though he were commencing a new life, or had suddenly
come into a new existence. Yet his immediate surroundings were charged
with ugly reminiscences. Through a great gap in the ruined side of the
saloon the rain was tearing in. As he stood up, his head caught the
fragments of the roof. He was able to push back the wreckage with ease
and step out. For a moment he reeled, as he met the violence of the
storm. Then, clutching hold of the side of the wreck, he steadied
himself. A light was moving back and forth, close at hand. He cried out
weakly: “Hullo!”

A man carrying a lantern, bent double as he made his way against the
wind, crawled up to them. He was a porter from the station close at
hand.

“My God!” he exclaimed. “Any one alive here?”

“I’m all right,” Gerald muttered, “at least, I suppose I am. What’s it
all--what’s it all about? We’ve had an accident.”

The porter caught hold of a piece of the wreckage with which to steady
himself.

“Your train ran right into three feet of water,” he answered. “The rails
had gone--torn up. The telegraph line’s down.”

“Why didn’t you stop the train?”

“We were doing all we could,” the man retorted gloomily. “We weren’t
expecting anything else through to-night. We’d a man along the line with
a lantern, but he’s just been found blown over the embankment, with his
head in a pool of water. Any one else in your carriage?”

“One gentleman travelling with me,” Gerald answered. “We’d better try to
get him out. What about the guard and engine-driver?”

“The engine-driver and stoker are both alive,” the porter told him.
“I came across them before I saw you. They’re both knocked sort of
sillylike, but they aren’t much hurt. The guard’s stone dead.”

“Where are we?”

“A few hundred yards from Wymondham. Let’s have a look for the other
gentleman.”

Mr. John P. Dunster was lying quite still, his right leg doubled up, and
a huge block of telegraph post, which the saloon had carried with it
in its fall, still pressing against his forehead. He groaned as they
dragged him out and laid him down upon a cushion in the shelter of the
wreckage.

“He’s alive all right,” the porter remarked. “There’s a doctor on the
way. Let’s cover him up quick and wait.”

“Can’t we carry him to shelter of some sort?” Gerald proposed.

The man shook his head. Speech of any sort was difficult. Even with his
lips close to the other’s ears, he had almost to shout.

“Couldn’t be done,” he replied. “It’s all one can do to walk alone when
you get out in the middle of the field, away from the shelter of the
embankment here. There’s bits of trees flying all down the lane. Never
was such a night! Folks is fair afraid of the morning to see what’s
happened. There’s a mill blown right over on its side in the next field,
and the man in charge of it lying dead. This poor chap’s bad enough.”

Gerald, on all fours, had crept back into the compartment. The bottle
of wine was smashed into atoms. He came out, dragging the small
dressing-case which his companion had kept on the table before him. One
side of it was dented in, but the lock, which was of great strength,
still held.

“Perhaps there’s a flask somewhere in this dressing-case,” Gerald said.
“Lend me a knife.”

Strong though it had been, the lock was already almost torn out from its
foundation. They forced the spring and opened it. The porter turned his
lantern on the widening space. Just as Gerald was raising the lid very
slowly to save the contents from being scattered by the wind, the man
turned his head to answer an approaching hail. Gerald raised the lid a
little higher and suddenly closed it with a bang.

“There’s folks coming at last!” the porter exclaimed, turning around
excitedly. “They’ve been a time and no mistake. The village isn’t a
quarter of a mile away. Did you find a flask, sir?”

Gerald made no answer. The dressing-case once more was closed, and his
hand pressed upon the lid. The porter turned the light upon his face and
whistled softly.

“You’re about done yourself, sir,” he remarked. “Hold up.”

He caught the young man in his arms. There was another roar in Gerald’s
ears besides the roar of the wind. He had never fainted in his life, but
the feeling was upon him now--a deadly sickness, a swaying of the earth.
The porter suddenly gave a little cry.

“If I’m not a born idiot!” he exclaimed, drawing a bottle from the
pocket of his coat with his disengaged hand. “There’s whisky here. I was
taking it home to the missis for her rheumatism. Now, then.”

He drew the cork from the bottle with his teeth and forced some of the
liquid between the lips of the young man. The voices now were coming
nearer and nearer. Gerald made a desperate effort.

“I am all right,” he declared. “Let’s look after him.”

They groped their way towards the unconscious man, Gerald still gripping
the dressing-case with both hands. There were no signs of any change
in his condition, but he was still breathing heavily. Then they heard a
shout behind, almost in their ears. The porter staggered to his feet.

“It’s all right now, sir!” he exclaimed. “They’ve brought blankets and a
stretcher and brandy. Here’s a doctor, sir.”

A powerful-looking man, hatless, and wrapped in a great ulster, moved
towards them.

“How many are there of you?” he asked, as he bent over Mr. Dunster.

“Only we two,” Gerald replied. “Is my friend badly hurt?”

“Concussion,” the doctor announced. “We’ll take him to the village. What
about you, young man? Your face is bleeding, I see.”

“Just a cut,” Gerald faltered; “nothing else.”

“Lucky chap,” the doctor remarked. “Let’s get him to shelter of some
sort. Come along. There’s an inn at the corner of the lane there.”

They all staggered along, Gerald still clutching the dressing-case,
and supported on the other side by an excited and somewhat incoherent
villager.

“Such a storm as never was,” the latter volunteered. “The telegraph
wires are all down for miles and miles. There won’t be no trains running
along this line come many a week, and as for trees--why, it’s as though
some one had been playing ninepins in Squire Fellowes’s park. When the
morning do come, for sure there will be things to be seen. This way,
sir. Be careful of the gate.”

They staggered along down the lane, climbing once over a tree which lay
across the lane and far into the adjoining field. Soon they were joined
by more of the villagers, roused from their beds by rumours of terrible
happenings. The little, single-storey, ivy-covered inn was all lit up
and the door held firmly open. They passed through the narrow entrance
and into the stone-flagged barroom, where the men laid down their
stretcher. As many of the villagers as could crowd in filled the
passage. Gerald sank into a chair. The sudden absence of wind was almost
disconcerting. He felt himself once more in danger of fainting. He was
only vaguely conscious of drinking hot milk, poured from a jug by a
red-faced and sympathetic woman. Its restorative effect, however, was
immediate and wonderful. The mist cleared from before his eyes, his
brain began to work. Always in the background the horror and the
shame were there, the shame which kept his hand pressed with unnatural
strength upon the broken lock of that dressing-case. He sat a little
apart from the others and listened. Above the confused murmur of voices
he could hear the doctor’s comment and brief orders, as he rose to his
feet after examining the unconscious man.

“An ordinary concussion,” he declared. “I must get round and see the
engine-driver now. They have got him in a shed by the embankment. I’ll
call in again later on. Let’s have one more look at you, young man.”

He glanced at the cut on Gerald’s forehead, noted the access of colour
in his cheeks, and nodded.

“Born to be hanged, you were,” he pronounced. “You’ve had a marvellous
escape. I’ll be in again presently. No need to worry about your friend.
He looks as though he’d got a mighty constitution. Light my lantern,
Brown. Two of you had better come with me to the shed. It’s no night for
a man to be wandering about alone.”

He departed, and many of the villagers with him. The landlady sat down
and began to weep.

“Such a night! Such a night!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands. “And
there’s the doctor talks about putting the poor gentleman to bed! Why,
the roof’s off the back part of the house, and not a bedroom in the
place but mine and John’s, and the rain coming in there in torrents.
Such a night! It’s the judgment of the Lord upon us! That’s what it
is--the judgment of the Lord!”

“Judgment of the fiddlesticks!” her husband growled. “Can’t you light
the fire, woman? What’s the good of sitting there whining?”

“Light the fire,” she repeated bitterly, “and the chimney lying out in
the road! Do you want to suffocate us all, or is the beer still in your
head? It’s your evil doings, Richard Budden, and others like you, that
have brought this upon us. If Mr. Wembley would but come in and pray!”

Her husband scoffed. He was dressed only in his shirt and trousers, his
hair rough, his braces hanging down behind.

“Come in and pray!” he repeated. “Not he! Not Mr. Wembley! He’s safe
tucked up in his bed, shivering with fear, I’ll bet you. He’s not
getting his feet wet to save a body or lend a hand here. Souls are his
job. You let the preacher alone, mother, and tell us what we’re going to
do with this gentleman.”

“The Lord only knows!” she cried, wringing her hands.

“Can I hire a motor-car from anywhere near?” Gerald asked.

“There’s motor-cars, right enough,” the innkeeper replied, “but not many
as would be fools enough to take one out. You couldn’t see the road, and
I doubt if one of them plaguey things would stir in this storm.”

“Such nonsense as you talk, Richard Budden!” his wife exclaimed sharply.
“It’s twenty minutes past three of the clock, and there’s light coming
on us fast. If so be as the young gentleman knows folks round about
here, or happens to live nigh, why shouldn’t he take one of them
motor-cars and get away to some decent place? It’ll be better for the
poor gentleman than lying here in a house smitten by the Lord.”

Gerald rose stiffly to his feet. An idea was forming in his brain. His
eyes were bright. He looked at the body of John Dunster upon the floor,
and felt once more in his pocket.

“How far off is the garage?” he asked.

“It’s right across the way,” the innkeeper replied, “a speculation of
Neighbour Martin’s, and a foolish one it do seem to me. He’s two cars
there, and one he lets to the Government for delivering the mails.”

Gerald felt in his pocket and produced a sovereign.

“Give this,” he said, “to any man you can find who will go across
there and bring me a car--the most powerful they’ve got, if there’s any
difference. Tell them I’ll pay well. This--my friend will be much better
at home with me than in a strange place when he comes to his senses.”

“It’s sound common sense,” the woman declared. “Be off with you,
Richard.”

The man was looking at the coin covetously, but his wife pushed him
away.

“It’s not a sovereign you’ll be taking from the gentleman for a little
errand like that,” she insisted sharply. “He shall pay us for what he’s
had when he goes, and welcome, and if so be that he’s willing to make it
a sovereign, to include the milk and the brandy and the confusion we’ve
been put to this night, well and good. It’s a heavy reckoning, maybe,
but the night calls for it. We’ll see about that afterwards. Get along
with you, I say, Richard.”

“I’ll be wet through,” the man muttered.

“And serve you right!” the woman exclaimed. “If there’s a man in this
village to-night whose clothes are dry, it’s a thing for him to be
ashamed of.”

The innkeeper reluctantly departed. They heard the roar of the wind as
the door was opened and closed. The woman poured out another glass of
milk and brought it to Gerald.

“A godless man, mine,” she said grimly. “If so happen as Mr. Wembley had
come to these parts years ago, I’d have seen myself in my grave before
I’d have married a publican. But it’s too late now. We’re mostly too
late about the things that count in this world. So it’s your friend
that’s been stricken down, young man. A well-living man, I hope?”

Gerald shivered ever so slightly. He drank the milk, however. He felt
that he might need his strength.

“What train might you have been on?” the woman continued. “There’s none
due on this line that we knew of. David Bass, the station-master, was
here but two hours ago and said he’d finished for the night, and praised
the Lord for that. The goods trains had all been stopped at Ipswich, and
the first passenger train was not due till six o’clock.”

Gerald shook his head with an affectation of weariness.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t remember anything about it. We were
hours late, I think.”

The woman was looking down at the unconscious man. Gerald rose slowly to
his feet and stood by her side. The face of Mr. John P. Dunster, even in
unconsciousness, had something in it of strength and purpose. The shape
of his head, the squareness of his jaws, the straightness of his thick
lips, all seemed to speak of a hard and inflexible disposition. His hair
was coal black, coarse, and without the slightest sprinkling of grey. He
had the neck and throat of a fighter. But for that single, livid, blue
mark across his forehead, he carried with him no signs of his accident.
He was a little inclined to be stout. There was a heavy gold chain
stretched across his waist-coat. From where he lay, the shining handle
of his revolver protruded from his hip, pocket.

“Sakes alive!” the woman muttered, as she looked down. “What does he
carry a thing like that for--in a peaceful country, too!”

“It was just an idea of his,” Gerald answered. “We were going abroad in
a day or two. He was always nervous. If you like, I’ll take it away.”

He stooped down and withdrew it from the unconscious man’s pocket. He
started as he discovered that it was loaded in every chamber.

“I can’t bear the sight of them things,” the woman declared. “It’s the
men of evil ways, who’ve no trust in the Lord, who need that sort of
protection.”

They heard the door pushed open, the howl of wind down the passage,
and the beating of rain upon the stone flags. Then it was softly closed
again. The landlord staggered into the room, followed by a young man.

“This ‘ere is Mr. Martin’s chaffer,” he announced. “You can tell him
what you want yerself.”

Gerald turned almost eagerly towards the newcomer.

“I want to go to the other side of Holt,” he said, “and get my
friend--get this gentleman away from here--get him home, if possible.
Can you take me?”

The chauffeur looked doubtful.

“I’m afraid of the roads, sir,” he replied. “There’s talk about many
bridges down, and trees, and there’s floods out everywhere. There’s
half a foot of water, even, across the village street now. I’m afraid we
shouldn’t get very far.”

“Look here,” Gerald begged eagerly, “let’s make a shot at it. I’ll pay
you double the hire of the car, and I’ll be responsible for any damage.
I want to get out of this beastly place. Let’s get somewhere, at any
rate, towards a civilised country. I’ll see you don’t lose anything.
I’ll give you a five pound note for yourself if we get as far as Holt.”

“I’m on,” the young man agreed shortly. “It’s an open car, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gerald replied. “I can stick it in front with you,
and we can cover--him up in the tonneau.”

“You’ll wait until the doctor comes back?” the landlord asked.

“And why should they?” his wife interposed sharply. “Them doctors are
all the same. He’ll try and keep the poor gentleman here for the sake
of a few extra guineas, and a miserable place for him to open his
eyes upon, even if the rest of the roof holds, which for my part I’m
beginning to doubt. They’d have to move him from here with the daylight,
anyhow. He can’t lie in the bar parlour all day, can he?”

“It don’t seem right, somehow,” the man complained doggedly. “The
doctor didn’t say anything about having him moved.”

“You get the car,” Gerald ordered the young man. “I’ll take the whole
responsibility.”

The chauffeur silently left the room. Gerald put a couple of sovereigns
upon the mantelpiece.

“My friend is a man of somewhat peculiar temperament,” he said quietly.
“If he finds himself at home in a comfortable room when he comes to his
senses, I am quite sure that he will have a better chance of recovery.
He cannot possibly be made comfortable here, and he will feel the shock
of what has happened all the more if he finds himself still in the
neighbourhood when he opens his eyes. If there is any change in his
condition, we can easily stop somewhere on the way.”

The woman pocketed the two sovereigns.

“That’s common sense, sir,” she agreed heartily, “and I’m sure we are
very much obliged to you. If we had a decent room, and a roof above it,
you’d be heartily welcome, but as it is, this is no place for a sick
man, and those that say different don’t know what they are talking
about. That’s a real careful young man who’s going to take you along in
the motor-car. He’ll get you there safe, if any one will.”

“What I say is,” her husband protested sullenly, “that we ought to wait
for the doctor’s orders. I’m against seeing a poor body like that jolted
across the country in an open motor-car, in his state. I’m not sure that
it’s for his good.”

“And what business is it of yours, I should like to know?” the woman
demanded sharply. “You get up-stairs and begin moving the furniture from
where the rain’s coming sopping in. And if so be you can remember while
you do it that this is a judgment that’s come upon us, why, so much the
better. We are evil-doers, all of us, though them as likes the easy ways
generally manage to forget it.”

The man retreated silently. The woman sat down upon a stool and waited.
Gerald sat opposite to her, the battered dressing-case upon his knees.
Between them was stretched the body of the unconscious man.

“Are you used to prayer, young sir?” the woman asked.

Gerald shook his head, and the woman did not pursue the subject. Only
once her eyes were half closed and her words drifted across the room.

“The Lord have mercy on this man, a sinner!”




CHAPTER IV

“My advice to you, sir, is to chuck it!”

Gerald turned towards the chauffeur by whose side he was seated a little
stiffly, for his limbs were numbed with the cold and exhaustion. The
morning had broken with a grey and uncertain light. A vaporous veil of
mist seemed to have taken the place of the darkness. Even from the top
of the hill where the car had come to a standstill, there was little to
be seen.

“We must have come forty miles already,” the chauffeur continued, “what
with going out of our way all the time because of the broken bridges.
I’m pretty well frozen through, and as for him,” he added, jerking his
thumb across his shoulder, “it seems to me you’re taking a bit of a
risk.”

“The doctor said he would remain in exactly the same condition for
twenty-four hours,” Gerald declared.

“Yes, but he didn’t say anything about shaking him up over forty
miles of rough road,” the other protested. “You’ll excuse me, sir,” he
continued, in a slightly changed tone; “it isn’t my business, of course,
but I’m fairly done. It don’t seem reasonable to stick at it like this.
There’s Holt village not a mile away, and a comfortable inn and a fire
waiting. I thought that was as far as you wanted to come. We might lie
up there for a few hours, at any rate.”

His passenger slipped down from his place, and, lifting the rug, peered
into the tonneau of the car, over which they had tied a hood. To all
appearance, the condition of the man who lay there was unchanged. There
was a slightly added blueness about the lips but his breathing was still
perceptible. It seemed even a little stronger. Gerald resumed his seat.

“It isn’t worth while to stay at Holt,” he said quietly. “We are
scarcely seven miles from home now. Sit still for a few minutes and get
your wind.”

“Only seven miles,” the chauffeur repeated more cheerfully. “That’s
something, anyway.”

“And all downhill.”

“Towards the sea, then?”

“Straight to the sea,” Gerald told him. “The place we are making for is
St. David’s Hall, near Salthouse.”

The chauffeur seemed a little startled.

“Why, that’s Squire Fentolin’s house!”

Gerald nodded.

“That is where we are going. You follow this road almost straight
ahead.”

The chauffeur slipped in the clutch.

“Oh, I know the way now, sir, right enough!” he exclaimed. “There’s
Salthouse marsh to cross, though. I don’t know about that.”

“We shall manage that all right,” Gerald declared. “We’ve more light
now, too.”

They both looked around. During the last few minutes the late morning
seemed to have forced its way through the clouds. They had a dim,
phantasmagoric view of the stricken country: a watery plain, with here
and there great patches of fields, submerged to the hedges, and houses
standing out amidst the waste of waters like toy dwellings. There were
whole plantations of uprooted trees. Close to the road, on their left,
was a roofless house, and a family of children crying underneath a
tarpaulin shelter. As they crept on, the wind came to them with a
brackish flavour, salt with the sea. The chauffeur was gazing ahead
doubtfully.

“I don’t like the look of the marsh,” he grumbled. “Can’t see the road
at all. However, here goes.”

“Another half-hour,” Gerald assured him encouragingly, “and we shall be
at St. David’s Hall. You can have as much rest as you like then.”

They were facing the wind now, and conversation became impossible.
Twice they had to pull up sharp and make a considerable detour, once
on account of a fallen tree which blocked the road, and another time
because of the yawning gap where a bridge had fallen away. Gerald,
however, knew every inch of the country they were in and was able to
give the necessary directions. They began to meet farm wagons now, full
of people who had been driven from their homes. Warnings and information
as to the state of the roads were shouted to them continually. Presently
they came to the last steep descent, and emerged from the devastated
fragment of a wood almost on to the sea level. The chauffeur clapped on
his brakes and stopped short.

“My God!” he exclaimed. “Here’s more trouble!”

Gerald for a moment was speechless. They seemed to have come suddenly
upon a huge plain of waters, an immense lake reaching as far as they
could see on either side. The road before them stretched like a ribbon
for the next three miles. Here and there it disappeared and reappeared
again. In many places it was lapped by little waves. Everywhere the
hedges were either altogether or half under water. In the distance was
one farmhouse, only the roof of which was visible, and from which the
inhabitants were clambering into a boat. And beyond, with scarcely a
break save for the rising of one strangely-shaped hill, was the sea.
Gerald pointed with his finger.

“There’s St. David’s Hall,” he said, “on the other side of the hill. The
road seems all right.”

“Does it!” the chauffeur grunted. “It’s under water more than half the
way, and Heaven knows how deep it is at the sides! I’m not going to risk
my life along there. I am going to take the car back to Holt.”

His hand was already upon the reverse lever, but Gerald gripped it.

“Look here,” he protested, “we haven’t come all this way to turn back.
You don’t look like a coward.”

“I am not a coward, sir,” was the quiet answer. “Neither am I a fool.
I don’t see any use in risking our lives and my master’s motor-car,
because you want to get home.”

“Naturally,” Gerald answered calmly, “but remember this. I am
responsible for your car--not you. Mr. Fentolin is my uncle.”

The chauffeur nodded shortly.

“You’re Mr. Gerald Fentolin, aren’t you, sir?” he remarked. “I thought I
recognised you.”

“I am,” Gerald admitted. “We’ve had a rough journey, but it doesn’t seem
sense to turn back now, does it, with the house in sight?”

“That’s all very well, sir,” the chauffeur objected doubtfully, “but I
don’t believe the road’s even passable, and the floods seem to me to be
rising.”

“Try it,” the young man begged. “Look here, I don’t want to bribe you,
or anything of that sort. You know you’re coming out of this well. It’s
a serious matter for me, and I shan’t be likely to forget it. I want to
take this gentleman to St. David’s Hall and not to a hospital. You’ve
brought me here so far like a man. Let’s go through with it. If the
worst comes to the worst, we can both swim, I suppose, and we are not
likely to get out of our depth.”

The chauffeur moved his head backwards.

“How about him?”

“He must take his chance,” Gerald replied. “He’s all right where he is.
The car won’t upset and there are plenty of people who’ll see if we get
into trouble. Come, let’s make a dash for it.”

The chauffeur thrust in his clutch and settled himself down. They glided
off along that winding stretch of road. To its very edge, on either side
of them, so close that they could almost touch it, came the water,
water which stretched as far as they could see, swaying, waveless,
sinister-looking. Even Gerald, after his first impulse of wonder, kept
his eyes averted and fixed upon the road ahead. Soon they reached a
place where the water met in front. There were only the rows of white
palings on either side to guide them. The chauffeur muttered to himself
as he changed to his first speed.

“If the engine gets stopped,” he said, “I don’t know how we shall get
out of this.”

They emerged on the other side. For some time they had a clear run. Then
suddenly the driver clapped on his brakes.

“My God!” he cried. “We can’t get through that!”

In front of them for more than a hundred yards the water seemed suddenly
to have flowed across the road. Still a mile distant, perched on a ridge
of that strangely-placed hill, was their destination.

“It can’t be done, sir!” the man groaned. “There isn’t a car ever built
could get through that. See, it’s nearly up to the top of those posts. I
must put her in the reverse and get back, even if we have to wait on the
higher part of the road for a boat.”

He glanced behind, and a second cry broke from his lips. Gerald stood up
in his place. Already the road which had been clear a few minutes before
was hidden. The water was washing almost over the tops of the white
posts behind them. Little waves were breaking against the summit of the
raised bank.

“We’re cut off!” the chauffeur exclaimed. “What a fool I was to try
this! There’s the tide coming in as well!”

Gerald sat down in his place.

“Look here,” he said, “we can’t go back, whether we want to or not. It’s
much worse behind there than it is in front. There’s only one chance. Go
for it straight ahead in your first speed. It may not stop the engine.
In any case, it will be worse presently. There’s no use funking it. If
the worst happens, we can sit in the car. The water won’t be above our
heads and there are some boats about. Blow your horn well first, in case
there’s any one within hearing, and then go for it.”

The chauffeur obeyed. They hissed and spluttered into the water. Soon
all trace of the road was completely lost. They steered only by the tops
of the white posts.

“It’s getting deeper,” the man declared. “It’s within an inch or two of
the bonnet now. Hold on.”

A wave broke almost over them but the engine continued its beat.

“If we stop now,” he gasped, “we’re done!”

The engine began to knock.

“Stick at it,” Gerald cried, rising in his place a little. “Look,
there’s only one post lower than the last one that we passed. They get
higher all the time, ahead. You can almost see the road in front there.
Now, in with your gear again, and stick at it.”

Another wave broke, this time completely over them. They listened with
strained ears--the engine continued to beat. They still moved slowly.
Then there was a shock. The wheel had struck something in the road--a
great stone or rock. The chauffeur thrust the car out of gear. The
engine still beat. Gerald leaped from the car. The water was over his
knees. He crossed in front of the bonnet and stooped down.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed, tugging hard. “It’s a stone.”

He moved it, rolled it on one side, and pushed at the wheel of the car
as his companion put in the speed. They started again. He jumped back
his place.

“We’ve done it, all right!” he cried. “Don’t you see? It’s getting lower
all the time.”

The chauffeur had lost his nerve. His cheeks were pale, his teeth
were chattering. The engine, however, was still beating. Gradually the
pressure of the water grew less. In front of them they caught a glimpse
of the road. They drew up at the top of a little bridge over one of the
dikes. Gerald uttered a brief exclamation of triumph.

“We’re safe!” he almost sobbed. “There’s the road, straight ahead and
round to the right. There’s no more water anywhere near.”

They had left the main part of the flood behind them. There were still
great pools in the side of the road, and huge masses of seaweed had
been carried up and were lying in their track. There was no more water,
however. At every moment they drew nearer to the strangely-shaped hill
with its crown of trees.

“The house is on the other side,” Gerald pointed out. “We can go through
the lodge gates at the back here. The ascent isn’t so steep.”

They turned sharply to the right, along another stretch of straight road
set with white posts, ending before a red brick lodge and a closed
gate. They blew the horn and a gardener came out. He gazed at them in
amazement.

“It’s all right,” Gerald cried. “Let us through quickly, Foulds. We’ve a
gentleman in behind who’s ill.”

The man swung open the gate with a respectful salute. They made their
way up a winding drive of considerable length, and at last they came
to a broad, open space almost like a platform. On their left were the
marshes, and beyond, the sea. Along their right stretched the long front
of an Elizabethan mansion. They drew up in front of the hall door. Their
coming had been observed, and servants were already waiting. Gerald
sprang to the ground.

“There’s a gentleman in behind who’s ill,” he explained to the butler.
“He has met with an accident on the way. Three or four of you had better
carry him up to a bedroom--any one that is ready. And you, George,” he
added, turning to a boy, “get into the car and show this man the way
round to the garage, and then take him to the servants’ hall.”

Several of the servants hastened to do his bidding, and Gerald did his
best to answer the eager but respectful stream of questions. And then,
just as they were in the act of lifting the still unconscious man on
to the floor of the hall, came a queer sound--a shrill, reverberating
whistle. They all looked up the stairs.

“The master is awake,” Henderson, the butler, remarked, dropping his
voice a little.

Gerald nodded.

“I will go to him at once,” he said.




CHAPTER V

Accustomed though he was to the sight which he was about to face,
Gerald shivered slightly as he opened the door of Mr. Fentolin’s room.
A strange sort of fear seemed to have crept into his bearing and
expression, a fear of which there had been no traces whatever during
those terrible hours through which he had passed--not even during that
last reckless journey across the marshes. He walked with hesitating
footsteps across the spacious and lofty room. He had the air of some
frightened creature approaching his master. Yet all that was visible of
the despot who ruled his whole household in deadly fear was the kindly
and beautiful face of an elderly man, whose stunted limbs and body were
mercifully concealed. He sat in a little carriage, with a rug drawn
closely across his chest and up to his armpits. His beautifully shaped
hands were exposed, and his face; nothing else. His hair was a silvery
white; his complexion parchment-like, pallid, entirely colourless. His
eyes were a soft shade of blue. His features were so finely cut and
chiselled that they resembled some exquisite piece of statuary. He
smiled as his nephew came slowly towards him. One might almost have
fancied that the young man’s abject state was a source of pleasure to
him.

“So you are back again, my dear Gerald. A pleasant surprise, indeed, but
what is the meaning of it? And what of my little commission, eh?”

The young man’s face was dark and sullen. He spoke quickly but without
any sign of eagerness or interest in the information he vouchsafed.

“The storm has stopped all the trains,” he said. “The boat did not cross
last night, and in any case I couldn’t have reached Harwich. As for your
commission, I travelled down from London alone with the man you told me
to spy upon. I could have stolen anything he had if I had been used to
the work. As it was--I brought the man himself.”

Mr. Fentolin’s delicate fingers played with the handle of his chair.
The smile had passed from his lips. He looked at his nephew in gentle
bewilderment.

“My dear boy,” he protested, “come, come, be careful what you are
saying. You have brought the man himself! So far as my information
goes, Mr. John P. Dunster is charged with a very important diplomatic
commission. He is on his way to Cologne, and from what I know about the
man, I think that it would require more than your persuasions to induce
him to break off his journey. You do not really wish me to believe that
you have brought him here as a guest?”

“I was at Liverpool Street Station last night,” Gerald declared. “I had
no idea how to accost him, and as to stealing any of his belongings, I
couldn’t have done it. You must hear how fortune helped me, though. Mr.
Dunster missed the train; so did I--purposely. He ordered a special.
I asked permission to travel with him. I told him a lie as to how I had
missed the train. I hated it, but it was necessary.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded approvingly.

“My dear boy,” he said, “to trifle with the truth is always unpleasant.
Besides, you are a Fentolin, and our love of truth is proverbial. But
there are times, you know, when for the good of others we must sacrifice
our scruples. So you told Mr. Dunster a falsehood.”

“He let me travel with him,” Gerald continued. “We were all night
getting about half-way here. Then--you know about the storm, I suppose?”

Mr. Fentolin spread out his hands.

“Could one avoid the knowledge of it?” he asked. “Such a sight has never
been seen.”

“We found we couldn’t get to Harwich,” Gerald went on. “They telegraphed
to London and got permission to bring us to Yarmouth. We were on our way
to Norwich, and the train ran off the line.”

“An accident?” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed.

Gerald nodded.

“Our train ran off the line and pitched down an embankment. Mr. Dunster
has concussion of the brain. He and I were taken to a miserable little
inn near Wymondham. From there I hired a motor-car and brought him
here.”

“You hired a motor-car and brought him here,” Mr. Fentolin repeated
softly. “My dear boy--forgive me if I find this a little hard to
understand. You say that you have brought him here. Had he nothing to
say about it?”

“He was unconscious when we picked him up,” Gerald explained. “He
is unconscious now. The doctor said he would remain so for at least
twenty-four hours, and it didn’t seem to me that the journey would do
him any particular harm. The roof had been stripped off the inn where
we were, and the place was quite uninhabitable, so we should have had
to have moved him somewhere. We put him in the tonneau of the car and
covered him up. They have carried him now into a bedroom, and Sarson is
looking after him.”

Mr. Fentolin sat quite silent. His eyes blinked once or twice, and there
was a curious curve about his lips.

“You have done well, my boy,” he pronounced slowly. “Your scheme of
bringing him here sounds a little primitive, but success justifies
everything.”

Mr. Fentolin raised to his lips and blew softly a little gold whistle
which hung from a chain attached to his waistcoat. Almost immediately
the door opened. A man entered, dressed somberly in black, whose bearing
and demeanour alike denoted the servant, but whose physique was the
physique of a prize-fighter. He was scarcely more than five feet six in
height, but his shoulders were extraordinarily broad. He had a short,
bull neck and long, mighty arms. His face, with the heavy jaw and small
eyes, was the face of the typical fighting man, yet his features seemed
to have become disposed by habit into an expression of gentle, almost
servile civility.

“Meekins,” Mr. Fentolin said, “a visitor has arrived. Do you happen to
have noticed what luggage he brought?”

“There is one small dressing-case, sir,” the man replied; “nothing else
that I have seen.”

“That is all we brought,” Gerald interposed.

“You will bring the dressing-case here at once,” Mr. Fentolin directed,
“and also my compliments to Doctor Sarson, and any pocket-book or papers
which may help us to send a message to the gentleman’s friends.”

Meekins closed the door and departed. Mr. Fentolin turned back towards
his nephew.

“My dear boy,” he said, “tell me why you look as though there were
ghosts flitting about the room? You are not ill, I trust?”

“Tired, perhaps,” Gerald answered shortly. “We were many hours in the
car. I have had no sleep.”

Mr. Fentolin’s face was full of kindly sympathy.

“My dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “I am selfish, indeed! I should not have
kept you here for a moment. You had better go and lie down.”

“I’ll go directly,” Gerald promised. “Can I speak to you for one moment
first?”

“Speak to me,” Mr. Fentolin repeated, a little wonderingly. “My dear
Gerald, is there ever a moment when I am not wholly at your service?”

“That fellow Dunster, on the platform, the first moment I spoke to him,
made me feel like a cur,” the boy said, with a sudden access of vigour
in his tone. “I told him I was on my way to a golf tournament, and he
pointed to the news about the war. Is it true, uncle, that we may be at
war at any moment?”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“A terrible reflection, my dear boy,” he admitted softly, “but, alas!
the finger of probability points that way.”

“Then what about me?” Gerald exclaimed. “I don’t want to complain, but
listen. You dragged me home from a public school before I could even
join my cadet corps. You’ve kept me banging around here with a tutor.
You wouldn’t let me go to the university. You’ve stopped my entering
either of the services. I am nineteen years old and useless. Do you know
what I should do to-morrow if war broke out? Enlist! It’s the only thing
left for me.”

Mr. Fentolin was shocked.

“My dear boy!” he exclaimed. “You must not talk like that! I am quite
sure that it would break your mother’s heart. Enlist, indeed! Nothing of
the sort. You are part of the civilian population of the country.”

“Civilian population be d----d!” the boy suddenly cried, white with rage.
“Uncle, forgive me, I have stood all I can bear. If you won’t let me go
in for the army--I could pass my exams to-morrow--I’m off. I’ll enlist
without waiting for the war. I can’t bear this idle life any longer.”

Mr. Fentolin leaned a little forward in his chair.

“Gerald!” he said softly.

The boy turned his head, turned it unwillingly. He had the air of
a caged animal obeying the word of his keeper. A certain savage
uncouthness seemed to have fallen upon him during the last few minutes.
There was something almost like a snarl in his expression.

“Gerald!” Mr. Fentolin repeated.

Then it was obvious that there was something between those two, some
memory or some living thing, seldom, if ever, to be spoken of, and yet
always present. The boy began to tremble.

“You’re a little overwrought, Gerald,” Mr. Fentolin declared. “Sit
quietly in my easy-chair for a few moments. Wait until I have examined
Mr. Dunster’s belongings. Ah! Meekins has been prompt, indeed.”

There was a stealthy tap at the door. Meekins entered with the small
dressing-case in his hand. He brought it over to his master’s chair. Mr.
Fentolin pointed to the floor.

“Open it there, Meekins,” he directed. “I fancy that the pocket-book you
are carrying will prove more interesting. We will just glance through
the dressing-case first. Thank you. Yes, you can lay the things upon the
floor. A man of Spartan-like life, I should imagine Mr. Dunster. A
spare toothbrush, though, I am glad to see. Pyjamas of most unattractive
pattern. And what a taste in shirts! Nothing but wearing apparel and
singularly little of that, I fancy.”

The dressing-case was empty, its contents upon the floor. Mr. Fentolin
held out his hand and took the pocket-book which Meekins had been
carrying. It was an ordinary morocco affair, similar to those issued by
American banking houses to enclose letters of credit. One side of it was
filled with notes. Mr. Fentolin withdrew them and glanced them through.

“Dear me!” he murmured. “No wonder our friend engages special trains! He
travels like a prince, indeed. Two thousand pounds, or near it, in this
little compartment. And here, I see, a letter, a sealed letter with no
address.”

He held it out in front of him. It was a long commercial envelope of
ordinary type, and although the flap was secured with a blob of sealing
wax, there was no particular impression upon it.

“We can match this envelope, I think,” Mr. Fentolin said softly. “The
seal we can copy. I think that, for the sake of others, we must discover
the cause for this hurried journey on the part of Mr. John P. Dunster.”

With his long, delicate forefinger Mr. Fentolin slit the envelope and
withdrew the single sheet of paper which it contained. There were
a dozen lines of written matter, and what appeared to be a dozen
signatures appended. Mr. Fentolin read it, at first with ordinary
interest. Then a change came. The look of a man drawn out of himself,
drawn out of all knowledge of his surroundings or his present state,
stole into his face. Literally he became transfixed. The delicate
fingers of his left hand gripped the sides of his little carriage.
His eyes shone as though those few written lines upon which they were
riveted were indeed some message from an unknown, an unimagined world.
Yet no word ever passed his lips. There came a time when the tension
seemed a little relaxed. With fingers which still trembled, he folded up
the sheet and replaced it in the envelope. He guarded it with both
his hands and sat quite still. Neither Gerald nor his servant moved.
Somehow, the sense of Mr. Fentolin’s suppressed excitement seemed to
have become communicated to them. It was a little tableau, broken at
last by Mr. Fentolin himself.

“I should like,” he said, turning to Gerald, “to be alone. It may
interest you to know that this document which Mr. Dunster has brought
across the seas, and which I hold in my hands, is the most amazing
message of modern times.”

Gerald rose to his feet.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked abruptly. “Do you want any
one in from the telegraph room?”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head slowly.

“At present,” he announced, “I am going to reflect. Meekins, my chair
to the north window--so. I am going to sit here,” he went on, “and I am
going to look across the sea and reflect. A very fortunate storm, after
all, I think, which kept Mr. John P. Dunster from the Harwich boat last
night. Leave me, Gerald, for a time. Stand behind my chair, Meekins, and
see that no one enters.”

Mr. Fentolin sat in his chair, his hands still gripping the wonderful
document, his eyes travelling over the ocean now flecked with sunlight.
His eyes were fixed upon the horizon. He looked steadily eastward.



CHAPTER VI

Mr. John P. Dunster opened his eyes upon strange surroundings. He found
himself lying upon a bed deliciously soft, with lace-edged sheets and
lavender-perfumed bed hangings. Through the discreetly opened upper
window came a pleasant and ozone-laden breeze. The furniture in the
room was mostly of an old-fashioned type, some of it of oak, curiously
carved, and most of it surmounted with a coat of arms. The apartment was
lofty and of almost palatial proportions. The whole atmosphere of the
place breathed comfort and refinement. The only thing of which he did
not wholly approve was the face of the nurse who rose silently to her
feet at his murmured question:

“Where am I?”

She felt his forehead, altered a bandage for a moment, and took his
wrist between her fingers.

“You have been ill,” she said. “There was a railway accident. You are to
lie quite still and not say a word. I am going to fetch the doctor now.
He wished to see you directly you spoke.”

Mr. Dunster dozed again for several moments. When he reopened his eyes,
a man was standing by his bedside, a short man with a black beard
and gold-rimmed glasses. Mr. Dunster, in this first stage of his
convalescence, was perhaps difficult to please, for he did not like the
look of the doctor, either.

“Please tell me where I am?” he begged.

“You have been in a railway accident,” the doctor told him, “and you
were brought here afterwards.”

“In a railway accident,” Mr. Dunster repeated. “Ah, yes, I remember! I
took a special to Harwich--I remember now. Where is my dressing-bag?”

“It is here by the side of your bed.”

“And my pocket-book?”

“It is on your dressing-table.”

“Have any of my things been looked at?”

“Only so far as was necessary to discover your identity,” the doctor
assured him. “Don’t talk too much. The nurse is bringing you some beef
tea.”

“When,” Mr. Dunster enquired, “shall I be able to continue my journey?”

“That depends upon many things,” the doctor replied.

Mr. Dunster drank his beef tea and felt considerably stronger. His head
still ached, but his memory was returning.

“There was a young man in the carriage with me,” he asked presently.
“Mr. Gerald something or other I think he said his name was?”

“Fentolin,” the doctor said. “He is unhurt. This is his relative’s house
to which you have been brought.”

Mr. Dunster lay for a time with knitted brows. Once more the name of
Fentolin seemed somehow familiar to him, seemed somehow to bring with it
to his memory a note of warning. He looked around the room fretfully.
He looked into the nurse’s face, which he disliked exceedingly, and he
looked at the doctor, whom he was beginning to detest.

“Whose house exactly is this?” he demanded.

“This is St. David’s Hall--the home of Mr. Miles Fentolin,” the doctor
told him. “The young gentleman with whom you were travelling is his
nephew.”

“Can I send a telegram?” Mr. Dunster asked, a little abruptly.

“Without a doubt,” the doctor replied. “Mr. Fentolin desired me to ask
you if there was any one whom you would like to apprise of your safety.”

Again the man upon the bed lay quite still, with knitted brows. There
was surely something familiar about that name. Was it his fevered fancy
or was there also something a little sinister?

The nurse, who had glided from the room, came back presently with
some telegraph forms. Mr. Dunster held out his hand for them and then
hesitated.

“Can you tell me any date, Doctor, upon which I can rely upon leaving
here?”

“You will probably be well enough to travel on the third day from now,”
 the doctor assured him.

“The third day,” Mr. Dunster muttered. “Very well.”

He wrote out three telegrams and passed them over.

“One,” he said, “is to New York, one to The Hague, and one to London.
There was plenty of money in my pocket. Perhaps you will find it and pay
for these.”

“Is there anything more,” the doctor asked, “that can be done for your
comfort?”

“Nothing at present,” Mr. Dunster replied. “My head aches now, but I
think that I shall want to leave before three days are up. Are you the
doctor in the neighbourhood?”

Sarson shook his head.

“I am physician to Mr. Fentolin’s household,” he answered quietly. “I
live here. Mr. Fentolin is himself somewhat of an invalid and requires
constant medical attention.”

Mr. Dunster contemplated the speaker steadfastly.

“You will forgive me,” he said. “I am an American and I am used to
plain speech. I am quite unused to being attended by strange doctors. I
understand that you are not in general practice now. Might I ask if you
are fully qualified?”

“I am an M.D. of London,” the doctor replied. “You can make yourself
quite easy as to my qualifications. It would not suit Mr. Fentolin’s
purpose to entrust himself to the care of any one without a reputation.”

He left the room, and Mr. Dunster closed his eyes. His slumbers,
however, were not altogether peaceful ones. All the time there seemed to
be a hammering inside his head, and from somewhere back in his obscured
memory the name of Fentolin seemed to be continually asserting itself.
From somewhere or other, the amazing sense which sometimes gives warning
of danger to men of adventure, seemed to have opened its feelers. He
rested because he was exhausted, but even in his sleep he was ill at
ease.

The doctor, with the telegrams in his hand, made his way down a splendid
staircase, past the long picture gallery where masterpieces of Van Dyck
and Rubens frowned and leered down upon him; descended the final stretch
of broad oak stairs, crossed the hall, and entered his master’s rooms.
Mr. Fentolin was sitting before the open window, an easel in front of
him, a palette in his left hand, painting with deft, swift touches.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, without looking around, “it is my friend the doctor,
my friend Sarson, M.D. of London, L.R.C.P. and all the rest of it. He
brings with him the odour of the sick room. For a moment or two, just
for a moment, dear friend, do not disturb me. Do not bring any alien
thoughts into my brain. I am absorbed, you see--absorbed. It is a
strange problem of colour, this.”

He was silent for several moments, glancing repeatedly out of the window
and back to his canvas, painting all the time with swift and delicate
precision.

“Meekins, who stands behind my chair,” Mr. Fentolin continued, “even
Meekins is entranced. He has a soul, my friend Sarson, although you
might not think it. He, too, sees sometimes the colour in the skies, the
glitter upon the sands, the clear, sweet purity of those long stretches
of virgin water. Meekins, I believe, has a soul, only he likes better to
see these things grow under his master’s touch than to wander about and
solve their riddles for himself.”

The man remained perfectly immovable. Not a feature twitched. Yet it
was a fact that, although he stood where Mr. Fentolin could not possibly
observe him, he never removed his gaze from the canvas.

“You see, my medical friend, that there has been a great tide in the
night, following upon the flood? Even our small landmarks are shifted.
Soon, in my little carriage, I shall ride down to the Tower. I shall sit
there, and I shall watch the sea. I think that this evening, with the
turn of the tide, the spray may reach even to my windows there. I
shall paint again. There is always something fresh in the sea, you
know--always something fresh in the sea. Like a human face--angry or
pleased, sullen or joyful. Some people like to paint the sea at its
calmest and most beautiful. Some people like to see happy faces around
them. It is not every one who appreciates the other things. It is not
quite like that with me, eh, Sarson?”

His hand fell to his side. Momentarily he had finished his work. He
turned around and eyed the doctor, who stood in taciturn silence.

“Answer. Answer me,” he insisted.

The doctor’s gloomy face seemed darker still.

“You have spoken the truth, Mr. Fentolin,” he admitted. “You are not one
of the vulgar herd who love to consort with pleasure and happiness. You
are one of those who understand the beauty of unhappiness--in others,”
 he added, with faint emphasis.

Mr. Fentolin smiled. His face became almost like the face of one of
those angels of the great Italian master.

“How well you know me!” he murmured. “My humble effort, Doctor--how do
you like it?”

The doctor bent over the canvas.

“I know nothing about art,” he said, a little roughly. “Your work seems
to me clever--a little grotesque, perhaps; a little straining after the
hard, plain things which threaten. Nothing of the idealist in your work,
Mr. Fentolin.”

Mr. Fentolin studied the canvas himself for a moment.

“A clever man, Sarson,” he remarked coolly, “but no courtier. Never
mind, my work pleases me. It gives me a passing sensation of happiness.
Now, what about our patient?”

“He recovers,” the doctor pronounced. “From my short examination, I
should say that he had the constitution of an ox. I have told him that
he will be up in three days. As a matter of fact, he will be able, if he
wants to, to walk out of the house to-morrow.”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head.

“We cannot spare him quite so soon,” he declared. “We must avail
ourselves of this wonderful chance afforded us by my brilliant young
nephew. We must keep him with us for a little time. What is it that you
have in your hands, Doctor? Telegrams, I think. Let me look at them.”

The doctor held them out. Mr. Fentolin took them eagerly between his
thin, delicate fingers. Suddenly his face darkened, and became like the
face of a spoilt and angry child.

“Cipher!” he exclaimed furiously. “A cipher which he knows so well as to
remember it, too! Never mind, it will be easy to decode. It will amuse
me during the afternoon. Very good, Sarson. I will take charge of
these.”

“You do not wish anything dispatched?”

“Nothing at present,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “It will be well, I think,
for the poor man to remain undisturbed by any communications from his
friends. Is he restless at all?”

“He wants to get on with his journey.”

“We shall see,” Mr. Fentolin remarked. “Now feel my pulse, Sarson. How
am I this morning?”

The doctor held the thin wrist for a moment between his fingers, and let
it go.

“In perfect health, as usual,” he announced grimly.

“Ah, but you cannot be sure!” Mr. Fentolin protested. “My tongue, if you
please.”

He put it out.

“Excellent!”

“We must make quite certain,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “There are so
many people who would miss me. My place in the world would not be easily
filed. Undo my waistcoat, Sarson. Feel my heart, please. Feel carefully.
I can see the end of your stethoscope in your pocket. Don’t scamp it.
I fancied this morning, when I was lying here alone, that there was
something almost like a palpitation--a quicker beat. Be very careful,
Sarson. Now.”

The doctor made his examination with impassive face. Then he stepped
back.

“There is no change in your condition, Mr. Fentolin,” he announced. “The
palpitation you spoke of is a mistake. You are in perfect health.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed gently.

“Then,” he said, “I will now amuse myself by a gentle ride down to the
Tower. You are entirely satisfied, Sarson? You are keeping nothing back
from me?”

The doctor looked at him with grim, impassive face. “There is nothing to
keep back,” he declared. “You have the constitution of a cowboy. There
is no reason why you should not live for another thirty years.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed, as though a weight had been removed from his heart.

“I will now,” he decided, reaching forward for the handle of his
carriage, “go down to the Tower. It is just possible that a few days’
seclusion might be good for our guest.”

The doctor turned silently away. There was no one there to see his
expression as he walked towards the door.




CHAPTER VII

The two men who were supping together in the grillroom at the Cafe Milan
were talking with a seriousness which seemed a little out of keeping
with the rose-shaded lamps and the swaying music of the band from the
distant restaurant. Their conversation had started some hours before in
the club smoking-room and had continued intermittently throughout the
evening. It had received a further stimulus when Richard Hamel, who had
bought an Evening Standard on their way from the theatre a few minutes
ago, came across a certain paragraph in it which he read aloud.

“Hanged if I understand things over here, nowadays, Reggie!” he
declared, laying the paper down. “Here’s another Englishman imprisoned
in Germany--this time at a place no one ever heard of before. I won’t
try to pronounce it. What does it all mean? It’s all very well to shrug
your shoulders, but when there are eighteen arrests within one week on a
charge of espionage, there must be something up.”

For the first time Reginald Kinsley seemed inclined to discuss the
subject seriously. He drew the paper towards him and read the little
paragraph, word by word. Then he gave some further order to an attentive
maitre d’hotel and glanced around to be sure that they were not
overheard.

“Look here, Dick, old chap,” he said, “you are just back from abroad
and you are not quite in the hang of things yet. Let me ask you a plain
question. What do you think of us all?”

“Think of you?” Hamel repeated, a little doubtfully. “Do you mean
personally?”

“Take it any way you like,” Kinsley replied. “Look at me. Nine years
ago we played cricket in the same eleven. I don’t look much like cricket
now, do I?”

Hamel looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a man who was doubtless
still young, Kinsley had certainly an aged appearance. The hair about
his temples was grey; there were lines about his mouth and forehead. He
had the air of one who lived in an atmosphere of anxiety.

“To me,” Hamel declared frankly, “you look worried. If I hadn’t heard so
much of the success of your political career and all the rest of it, I
should have thought that things were going badly with you.”

“They’ve gone well enough with me personally,” Kinsley admitted, “but
I’m only one of many. Politics isn’t the game it was. The Foreign Office
especially is ageing its men fast these few years. We’ve been going
through hell, Hamel, and we are up against it now, hard up against it.”

The slight smile passed from the lips of Hamel’s sunburnt, good-natured
face. He himself seemed to become infected with something of his
companion’s anxiety.

“There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there, Reggie?” he asked.

“Dick,” said Kinsley, with a sigh, “I am afraid there is. It’s very
seldom I talk as plainly as this to any one but you are just the person
one can unburden oneself to a little; and to tell you the truth, it’s
rather a relief. As you say, these eighteen arrests in one week do mean
something. Half of the Englishmen who have been arrested are, to my
certain knowledge, connected with our Secret Service, and they have
been arrested, in many cases, where there are no fortifications worth
speaking of within fifty miles, on one pretext or another. The fact of
the matter is that things are going on in Germany, just at the present
moment, the knowledge of which is of vital interest to us.”

“Then these arrests,” Hamel remarked, “are really bona fide?”

“Without a doubt,” his companion agreed. “I only wonder there have not
been more. I am telling you what is a pretty open secret when I tell
you that there is a conference due to be held this week at some place or
another on the continent--I don’t know where, myself--which will have a
very important bearing upon our future. We know just as much as that and
not much more.”

“A conference between whom?” Hamel asked.

Kinsley dropped his voice almost to a whisper.

“We know,” he replied, “that a very great man from Russia, a greater
still from France, a minister from Austria, a statesman from Italy, and
an envoy from Japan, have been invited to meet a German minister whose
name I will not mention, even to you. The subject of their proposed
discussion has never been breathed. One can only suspect. When I tell
you that no one from this country was invited to the conference, I think
you will be able, broadly speaking, to divine its purpose. The clouds
have been gathering for a good many years, and we have only buried our
heads a little deeper in the sands. We have had our chances and wilfully
chucked them away. National Service or three more army corps four years
ago would have brought us an alliance which would have meant absolute
safety for twenty-one years. You know what happened. We have lived
through many rumours and escaped, more narrowly than most people
realise, a great many dangers, but there is every indication this time
that the end is really coming.”

“And what will the end be?” Hamel enquired eagerly.

Kinsley shrugged his shoulders and paused while their glasses were
filled with wine.

“It will be in the nature of a diplomatic coup,” he said presently. “Of
that much I feel sure. England will be forced into such a position that
she will have no alternative left but to declare war. That, of course,
will be the end of us. With our ridiculously small army and absolutely
no sane scheme for home defence, we shall lose all that we have worth
fighting for--our colonies--without being able to strike a blow. The
thing is so ridiculously obvious. It has been admitted time after time
by every sea lord and every commander-in-chief. We have listened to it,
and that’s all. Our fleet is needed under present conditions to protect
our own shores. There isn’t a single battleship which could be safely
spared. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, India, must take care
of themselves. I wonder when a nation of the world ever played fast and
loose with great possessions as we have done!”

“This is a nice sort of thing to hear almost one’s first night in
England,” Hamel remarked a little gloomily. “Tell me some more about
this conference. Are you sure that your information is reliable?”

“Our information is miserably scanty,” Kinsley admitted. “Curiously
enough, the man who must know most about the whole thing is an
Englishman, one of the most curious mortals in the British Empire. A spy
of his succeeded in learning more than any of our people, and without
being arrested, too.”

“And who is this singular person?” Hamel asked.

“A man of whom you, I suppose, never heard,” Kinsley replied. “His name
is Fentolin--Miles Fentolin--and he lives somewhere down in Norfolk. He
is one of the strangest characters that ever lived, stranger than any
effort of fiction I ever met with. He was in the Foreign Office once,
and every one was predicting for him a brilliant career. Then there
was an accident--let me see, it must have been some six or seven years
ago--and he had to have both his legs amputated. No one knows exactly
how the accident happened, and there was always a certain amount of
mystery connected with it. Since then he has buried himself in the
country. I don’t think, in fact, that he ever moves outside his place;
but somehow or other he has managed to keep in touch with all the
political movements of the day.”

“Fentolin,” Hamel repeated softly to himself. “Tell me, whereabouts does
he live?”

“Quite a wonderful place in Norfolk, I believe, somewhere near the sea.
I’ve forgotten the name, for the moment. He has had wireless telegraphy
installed; he has a telegraph office in the house, half-a-dozen private
wires, and they say that he spends an immense amount of money keeping in
touch with foreign politics. His excuse is that he speculates largely,
as I dare say he does; but just lately,” Kinsley went on more slowly,
“he has been an object of anxiety to all of us. It was he who sent the
first agent out to Germany, to try and discover at least where this
conference was to be held. His man returned in safety, and he has one
over there now who has not been arrested. We seem to have lost nearly
all of ours.”

“Do you mean to say that this man Fentolin actually possesses
information which the Government hasn’t as to the intentions of foreign
Powers?” Hamel asked.

Kinsley nodded. There was a slight flush upon his pallid cheeks.

“He not only has it, but he doesn’t mean to part with it. A few hundred
years ago, when the rulers of this country were men with blood in their
veins, he’d have been given just one chance to tell all he knew, and
hung as a traitor if he hesitated. We don’t do that sort of thing
nowadays. We rather go in for preserving traitors. We permit them even
in our own House of Commons. However, I don’t want to depress you and
play the alarmist so soon after your return to London. I dare say the
old country’ll muddle along through our time.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Hamel begged. “There’s no other subject of
conversation could interest me half as much. Have you formed any idea
yourself as to the nature of this conference?”

“We all have an idea,” Kinsley replied grimly; “India for Russia; a
large slice of China for Japan, with probably Australia thrown in;
Alsace-Lorraine for France’s neutrality. There’s bribery for you. What’s
to become of poor England then? Our friends are only human, after all,
and it’s merely a question of handing over to them sufficient spoil.
They must consider themselves first: that’s the first duty of their
politicians towards their country.”

“You mean to say,” Hamel asked, “that you seriously believe that a
conference is on the point of being held at which France and Russia are
to be invited to consider suggestions like this?”

“I am afraid there’s no doubt about it,” Kinsley declared. “Their
ambassadors in London profess to know nothing. That, of course, is their
reasonable attitude, but there’s no doubt whatever that the conference
has been planned. I should say that to-night we are nearer war, if we
can summon enough spirit to fight, than we have been since Fashoda.”

“Queer if I have returned just in time for the scrap,” Hamel remarked
thoughtfully. “I was in the Militia once, so I expect I can get a job,
if there’s any fighting.”

“I can get you a better job than fighting--one you can start on
to-morrow, too,” Kinsley announced abruptly, “that is if you really want
to help?”

“Of course I do,” Hamel insisted. “I’m on for anything.”

“You say that you are entirely your own master for the next six months?”

“Or as much longer as I like,” Hamel assented. “No plans at all, except
that I might drift round to the Norfolk coast and look up some of
the places where the governor used to paint. There’s a queer little
house--St. David’s Tower, I believe they call it--which really belongs
to me. It was given to my father, or rather he bought it, from a man
who I think must have been some relative of your friend. I feel sure the
name was Fentolin.”

Reginald Kinsley set down his wine-glass.

“Is your St. David’s Tower anywhere near a place called Salthouse?” he
asked reflectively.

“That’s the name of the village,” Hamel admitted. “My father used to
spend quite a lot of time in those parts, and painted at least a dozen
pictures down there.”

“This is a coincidence,” Reginald Kinsley declared, lighting a
cigarette. “I think, if I were you, Dick, I’d go down and claim my
property.”

“Tired of me already?” Hamel asked, smiling.

Reginald Kinsley knocked the ash from his cigarette.

“It isn’t that. The fact is, that job I was speaking to you about was
simply this. We want some one to go down to Salthouse--not exactly as a
spy, you know, but some one who has his wits about him. We are all of us
very curious about this man Fentolin. There are no end of rumours which
I won’t mention to you, for they might only put you off the scent. But
the man seems to be always intriguing. It wouldn’t matter so much if he
were our friend, or if he were simply a financier, but to tell you the
truth, we have cause to suspect him.”

“But he’s an Englishman, surely?” Hamel asked. “The Fentolin who was my
father’s friend was just a very wealthy Norfolk squire--one of the best,
from all I have heard.”

“Miles Fentolin is an Englishman,” Kinsley admitted. “It is true, too,
that he comes of a very ancient Norfolk family. It doesn’t do, however,
to build too much upon that. From all I can learn of him, he is a sort
of Puck, a professional mischief-maker. I don’t suppose there’s anything
an outsider could find out which would be really useful to us, but
all the same, if I had the time, I should certainly go down to Norfolk
myself.”

The conversation drifted away for a while. Mutual acquaintances entered,
there were several introductions, and it was not until the two found
themselves together in Kinsley’s rooms for a few minutes before parting
that they were alone again. Hamel returned then once more to the
subject.

“Reggie,” he said, “if you think it would be of the slightest use, I’ll
go down to Salthouse to-morrow. I am rather keen on going there, anyway.
I am absolutely fed up with life here already.”

“It’s just what I want you to do,” Kinsley said. “I am afraid Fentolin
is a little too clever for you to get on the right side of him, but if
you could only get an idea as to what his game is down there, it would
be a great help. You see, the fellow can’t have gone into all this sort
of thing blindfold. We’ve lost several very useful agents abroad and
two from New York who’ve gone into his pay. There must be a method in
it somewhere. If it really ends with his financial operations--why,
all right. That’s very likely what it’ll come to, but we should like to
know. The merest hint would be useful.”

“I’ll do my best,” Hamel promised. “In any case, it will be just the few
days’ holiday I was looking forward to.”

Kinsley helped himself to whisky and soda and turned towards his friend.

“Here’s luck to you, Dick! Take care of yourself. All sorts of things
may happen, you know. Old man Fentolin may take a fancy to you and tell
you secrets that any statesman in Europe would be glad to hear. He may
tell you why this conference is being held and what the result will be.
You may be the first to hear of our coming fall. Well, here’s to you,
anyway! Drop me a line, if you’ve anything to report.”

“Cheero!” Hamel answered, as he set down his empty tumbler. “Astonishing
how keen I feel about this little adventure. I’m perfectly sick of the
humdrum life I have been leading the last week, and you do sort of take
one back to the Arabian Nights, you know, Reggie. I am never quite sure
whether to take you seriously or not.”

Kinsley smiled as he held his friend’s hand for a moment.

“Dick,” he said earnestly, “if only you’d believe it, the adventures in
the Arabian Nights were as nothing compared with the present-day
drama of foreign politics. You see, we’ve learned to conceal things
nowadays--to smooth them over, to play the part of ordinary citizens to
the world while we tug at the underhand levers in our secret moments.
Good night! Good luck!”




CHAPTER VIII

Richard Hamel, although he certainly had not the appearance of a person
afflicted with nerves, gave a slight start. For the last half-hour,
during which time the train had made no stop, he had been alone in his
compartment. Yet, to his surprise, he was suddenly aware that the seat
opposite to him had been noiselessly taken by a girl whose eyes, also,
were fixed with curious intentness upon the broad expanse of marshland
and sands across which the train was slowly making its way. Hamel had
spent a great many years abroad, and his first impulse was to speak with
the unexpected stranger. He forgot for a moment that he was in England,
travelling in a first-class carriage, and pointed with his left hand
towards the sea.

“Queer country this, isn’t it?” he remarked pleasantly. “Do you know,
I never heard you come in. It gave me quite a start when I found that I
had a fellow-passenger.”

She looked at him with a certain amount of still surprise, a look which
he returned just as steadfastly, because even in those few seconds he
was conscious of that strange selective interest, certainly unaccounted
for by his own impressions of her appearance. She seemed to him, at that
first glance, very far indeed from being good-looking, according to any
of the standards by which he had measured good looks. She was thin, too
thin for his taste, and she carried herself with an aloofness to which
he was unaccustomed. Her cheeks were quite pale, her hair of a soft
shade of brown, her eyes grey and sad. She gave him altogether an
impression of colourlessness, and he had been living in a land where
colour and vitality meant much. Her speech, too, in its very restraint,
fell strangely upon his ears.

“I have been travelling in an uncomfortable compartment,” she observed.
“I happened to notice, when passing along the corridor, that yours was
empty. In any case, I am getting out at the next station.”

“So am I,” he replied, still cheerfully. “I suppose the next station is
St. David’s?”

She made no answer, but so far as her expression counted for anything at
all, she was a little surprised. Her eyes considered him for a moment.
Hamel was tall, well over six feet, powerfully made, with good features,
clear eyes, and complexion unusually sunburnt. He wore a flannel collar
of unfamiliar shape, and his clothes, although they were neat enough,
were of a pattern and cut obviously designed to afford the maximum of
ease and comfort with the minimum regard to appearance. He wore, too,
very thick boots, and his hands gave one the impression that they
were seldom gloved. His voice was pleasant, and he had the easy
self-confidence of a person sure of himself in the world. She put him
down as a colonial--perhaps an American--but his rank in life mystified
her.

“This seems the queerest stretch of country,” he went on; “long spits of
sand jutting right out into the sea, dikes and creeks--miles and miles
of them. Now, I wonder, is it low tide or high? Low, I should think,
because of the sea-shine on the sand there.”

She glanced out of the window.

“The tide,” she told him, “is almost at its lowest.”

“You live in this neighbourhood, perhaps?” he enquired.

“I do,” she assented.

“Sort of country one might get very fond of,” he ventured.

She glanced at him from the depths of her grey eyes.

“Do you think so?” she rejoined coldly. “For my part, I hate it.”

He was surprised at the unexpected emphasis of her tone--the first time,
indeed, that she had shown any signs of interest in the conversation.

“Kind of dull I suppose you find it,” he remarked pensively, looking
out across the waste of lavender-grown marshes, sand hummocks piled
with seaweed, and a far distant line of pebbled shore. “And yet, I don’t
know. I have lived by the sea a good deal, and however monotonous it may
seem at first, there’s always plenty of change, really. Tide and wind do
such wonderful work.”

She, too, was looking out now towards the sea.

“Oh, it isn’t exactly that,” she said quietly. “I am quite willing to
admit what all the tourists and chance visitors call the fascination
of these places. I happen to dislike them, that is all. Perhaps it is
because I live here, because I see them day by day; perhaps because the
sight of them and the thought of them have become woven into my life.”

She was talking half to herself. For a moment, even the knowledge of his
presence had escaped her. Hamel, however, did not realise that fact. He
welcomed her confidence as a sign of relaxation from the frigidity of
her earlier demeanour.

“That seems hard,” he observed sympathetically. “It seems odd to
hear you talk like that, too. Your life, surely, ought to be pleasant
enough.”

She looked away from the sea into his face. Although the genuine
interest which she saw there and the kindly expression of his eyes
disarmed annoyance, she still stiffened slightly.

“Why ought it?”

The question was a little bewildering.

“Why, because you are young and a girl,” he replied. “It’s natural to be
cheerful, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” she answered listlessly. “I cannot tell. I have not had much
experience.”

“How old are you?” he asked bluntly.

This time it certainly seemed as though her reply would contain some
rebuke for his curiosity. She glanced once more into his face, however,
and the instinctive desire to administer that well-deserved snub
passed away. He was so obviously interested, his question was asked
so naturally, that its spice of impertinence was as though it had not
existed.

“I am twenty-one,” she told him.

“And how long have you lived here?”

“Since I left boarding-school, four years ago.”

“Anywhere near where I am going to bury myself for a time, I wonder?” he
went on.

“That depends,” she replied. “Our only neighbours are the Lorneybrookes
of Market Burnham. Are you going there?”

He shook his head.

“I’ve got a little shanty of my own,” he explained, “quite close to St.
David’s Station. I’ve never even seen it yet.”

She vouchsafed some slight show of curiosity.

“Where is this shanty, as you call it?” she asked him.

“I really haven’t the faintest idea,” he replied. “I am looking for it
now. All I can tell you is that it stands just out of reach of the full
tides, on a piece of rock, dead on the beach and about a mile from the
station. It was built originally for a coastguard station and meant to
hold a lifeboat, but they found they could never launch the lifeboat
when they had it, so the man to whom all the foreshore and most of
the land around here belongs--a Mr. Fentolin, I believe--sold it to my
father. I expect the place has tumbled to pieces by this time, but I
thought I’d have a look at it.”

She was gazing at him steadfastly now, with parted lips.

“What is your name?” she demanded.

“Richard Hamel.”

“Hamel.”

She repeated it lingeringly. It seemed quite unfamiliar.

“Was your father a great friend of Mr. Fentolin’s, then?” she asked.

“I believe so, in a sort of way,” he answered. “My father was Hamel the
artist, you know. They made him an R.A. some time before he died. He
used to come out here and live in a tent. Then Mr. Fentolin let him use
this place and finally sold it to him. My father used often to speak to
me about it before he died.”

“Tell me,” she enquired, “I do not know much about these matters, but
have you any papers to prove that it was sold to your father and that
you have the right to occupy it now when you choose?”

He smiled.

“Of course I have,” he assured her. “As a matter of fact, as none of us
have been here for so long, I thought I’d better bring the title-deed,
or whatever they call it, along with me. It’s with the rest of my traps
at Norwich. Oh, the place belongs to me, right enough!” he went on,
smiling. “Don’t tell me that any one’s pulled it down, or that it’s
disappeared from the face of the earth?”

“No,” she said, “it still remains there. When we are round the next
curve, I think I can show it to you. But every one has forgotten, I
think, that it doesn’t belong to Mr. Fentolin still. He uses it himself
very often.”

“What for?”

She looked at her questioner quite steadfastly, quite quietly,
speechlessly. A curious uneasiness crept into his thoughts. There were
mysterious things in her face. He knew from that moment that she, too,
directly or indirectly, was concerned with those strange happenings at
which Kinsley had hinted. He knew that there were things which she was
keeping from him now.

“Mr. Fentolin uses one of the rooms as a studio. He likes to paint there
and be near the sea,” she explained. “But for the rest, I do not know. I
never go near the place.”

“I am afraid,” he remarked, after a few moments of silence, “that I
shall be a little unpopular with Mr. Fentolin. Perhaps I ought to have
written first, but then, of course, I had no idea that any one was
making use of the place.”

“I do not understand,” she said, “how you can possibly expect to come
down like this and live there, without any preparation.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t any servants nor any furniture nor things to cook with.”

He laughed.

“Oh! I am an old campaigner,” he assured her. “I meant to pick up a few
oddments in the village. I don’t suppose I shall stay very long, anyhow,
but I thought I’d like to have a look at the place. By-the-by, what sort
of a man is Mr. Fentolin?”

Again there was that curious expression in her eyes, an expression
almost of secret terror, this time not wholly concealed. He could have
sworn that her hands were cold.

“He met with an accident many years ago,” she said slowly. “Both his
legs were amputated. He spends his life in a little carriage which he
wheels about himself.”

“Poor fellow!” Hamel exclaimed, with a strong man’s ready sympathy for
suffering. “That is just as much as I have heard about him. Is he a
decent sort of fellow in other ways? I suppose, anyhow, if he has really
taken a fancy to my little shanty, I shall have to give it up.”

Then, as it seemed to him, for the first time real life leaped into
her face. She leaned towards him. Her tone was half commanding, half
imploring, her manner entirely confidential.

“Don’t!” she begged. “It is yours. Claim it. Live in it. Do anything you
like with it, but take it away from Mr. Fentolin!”

Hamel was speechless. He sat a little forward, a hand on either
knee, his mouth ungracefully open, an expression of blank and utter
bewilderment in his face. For the first time he began to have vague
doubts concerning this young lady. Everything about her had been so
strange: her quiet entrance into the carriage, her unusual manner of
talking, and finally this last passionate, inexplicable appeal.

“I am afraid,” he said at last, “I don’t quite understand. You say the
poor fellow has taken a fancy to the place and likes being there. Well,
it isn’t much of a catch for me, anyway. I’m rather a wanderer, and I
dare say I shan’t be back in these parts again for years. Why shouldn’t
I let him have it if he wants it? It’s no loss to me. I’m not a painter,
you know, like my father.”

She seemed on the point of making a further appeal. Her lips, even, were
parted, her head a little thrown back. And then she stopped. She said
nothing. The silence lasted so long that he became almost embarrassed.

“You will forgive me if I am a little dense, won’t you?” he begged. “To
tell you the truth,” he went on, smiling, “I’ve got a sort of feeling
that I’d like to do anything you ask me. Now won’t you just explain a
little more clearly what you mean, and I’ll blow up the old place sky
high, if it’s any pleasure to you.”

She seemed suddenly to have reverted to her former self--the cold and
colourless young woman who had first taken the seat opposite to his.

“Mine was a very foolish request,” she admitted quietly. “I am sorry
that I ever made it. It was just an impulse, because the little building
we were speaking of has been connected with one or two very disagreeable
episodes. Nevertheless, it was foolish of me. How long did you think of
staying there--that is,” she added, with a faint smile, “providing that
you find it possible to prove your claim and take up possession?”

“Oh, just for a week or so,” he answered lightly, “and as to regaining
possession of it,” he went on, a slightly pugnacious instinct stirring
him, “I don’t imagine that there’ll be any difficulty about that.”

“Really!” she murmured.

“Not that I want to make myself disagreeable,” he continued, “but the
Tower is mine, right enough, even if I have let it remain unoccupied for
some time.”

She let down the window--a task in which he hastened to assist her.
A rush of salt, cold air swept into the compartment. He sniffed it
eagerly.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed.

She stretched out a long arm and pointed. Away in the distance, on the
summit of a line of pebbled shore, standing, as it seemed, sheer over
the sea, was a little black speck.

“That,” she said, “is the Tower.”

He changed his position and leaned out of the window.

“Well, it’s a queer little place,” he remarked. “It doesn’t look worth
quarrelling over, does it?”

“And that,” she went on, directing his attention to the hill, “is Mr.
Fentolin’s home, St. David’s Hall.”

For several moments he made no remark at all. There was something
curiously impressive in that sudden sweep up from the sea-line; the
strange, miniature mountain standing in the middle of the marshes, with
its tree-crowned background; and the long, weather-beaten front of the
house turned bravely to the sea.

“I never saw anything like it,” he declared. “Why, it’s barely a quarter
of a mile from the sea, isn’t it?”

“A little more than that. It is a strangely situated abode, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful!” he agreed, with emphasis. “I must study the geological
formation of that hill,” he continued, with interest. “Why, it looks
almost like an island now.”

“That is because of the floods,” she told him. “Even at high tide the
creeks never reach so far as the back there. All the water you see
stretching away inland is flood water--the result of the storm, I
suppose. This is where you get out,” she concluded, rising to her feet.

She turned away with the slightest nod. A maid was already awaiting her
at the door of the compartment. Hamel was suddenly conscious of the fact
that he disliked her going immensely.

“We shall, perhaps, meet again during the next few days,” he remarked.

She half turned her head. Her expression was scarcely encouraging.

“I hope,” she said, “that you will not be disappointed in your
quarters.”

Hamel followed her slowly on to the platform, saw her escorted to a
very handsome motor-car by an obsequious station-master, and watched
the former disappear down the stretch of straight road which led to the
hill. Then, with a stick in one hand, and the handbag which was his sole
luggage in the other, he left the station and turned seaward.




CHAPTER IX

Mr. Fentolin, surrounded by his satellites, was seated in his chair
before the writing-table. There were present in the room most of the
people important to him in his somewhat singular life. A few feet away,
in characteristic attitude, stood Meekins. Doctor Sarson, with his hands
behind him, was looking out of the window. At the further end of the
table stood a confidential telegraph clerk, who was just departing with
a little sheaf of messages. By his side, with a notebook in her hand,
stood Mr. Fentolin’s private secretary--a white-haired woman, with
a strangely transparent skin and light brown eyes, dressed in somber
black, a woman who might have been of any age from thirty to fifty.
Behind her was a middle-aged man whose position in the household no one
was quite sure about--a clean-shaven man whose name was Ryan, and
who might very well have been once an actor or a clergyman. In the
background stood Henderson, the perfect butler.

“It is perhaps opportune,” Mr. Fentolin said quietly, “that you all whom
I trust should be present here together. I wish you to understand one
thing. You have, I believe, in my employ learned the gift of silence. It
is to be exercised with regard to a certain visitor brought here by my
nephew, a visitor whom I regret to say is now lying seriously ill.”

There was absolute silence. Doctor Sarson alone turned from the window
as though about to speak, but met Mr. Fentolin’s eye and at once resumed
his position.

“I rely upon you all,” Mr. Fentolin continued softly. “Henderson, you,
perhaps, have the most difficult task, for you have the servants to
control. Nevertheless, I rely upon you, also. If one word of this
visitor’s presence here leaks out even so far as the village, out they
go, every one of them. I will not have a servant in the place who does
not respect my wishes. You can give any reason you like for my orders.
It is a whim. I have whims, and I choose to pay for them. You are all
better paid than any man breathing could pay you. In return I ask only
for your implicit obedience.”

He stretched out his hand and took a cigarette from a curiously carved
ivory box which stood by his side. He tapped it gently upon the table
and looked up.

“I think, sir,” Henderson said respectfully, “that I can answer for the
servants. Being mostly foreigners, they see little or nothing of the
village people.”

No one else made any remark. It was strange to see how dominated they
all were by that queer little fragment of humanity, whose head scarcely
reached a foot above the table before which he sat. They departed
silently, almost abjectly, dismissed with a single wave of the hand. Mr.
Fentolin beckoned his secretary to remain. She came a little nearer.

“Sit down, Lucy,” he ordered.

She seated herself a few feet away from him. Mr. Fentolin watched her
for several moments. He himself had his back to the light. The woman, on
the other hand, was facing it. The windows were high, and the curtains
were drawn back to their fullest extent. A cold stream of northern
light fell upon her face. Mr. Fentolin gazed at her and nodded his head
slightly.

“My dear Lucy,” he declared, “you are wonderful--a perfect cameo, a gem.
To look at you now, with your delightful white hair and your flawless
skin, one would never believe that you had ever spoken a single angry
word, that you had ever felt the blood flow through your veins, or that
your eyes had ever looked upon the gentle things of life.”

She looked at him, still without speech. The immobility of her face was
indeed a marvellous thing. Mr. Fentolin’s expression darkened.

“Sometimes,” he murmured softly, “I think that if I had strong
fingers--really strong fingers, you know, Lucy--I should want to take
you by the throat and hold you tighter and tighter, until your breath
came fast, and your eyes came out from their shadows.”

She turned over a few pages of her notebook. To all appearance she had
not heard a word.

“To-day,” she announced, “is the fourth of April. Shall I send out
the various checks to those men in Paris, New York, Frankfort, St.
Petersburg, and Tokio?”

“You can send the checks,” he told her. “Be sure that you draw them,
as usual, upon the Credit Lyonaise and in the name you know of. Say
to Lebonaitre of Paris that you consider his last reports faulty. No
mention was made of Monsieur C’s visit to the Russian Embassy, or of
the supper party given to the Baron von Erlstein by a certain Russian
gentleman. Warn him, if you please, that reports with such omissions are
useless to me.”

She wrote a few words in her book.

“You made a note of that?”

She raised her head.

“I do not make mistakes,” she said.

His eyebrows were drawn together. This was his work, he told himself,
this magnificent physical subjection. Yet his inability to stir her
sometimes maddened him.

“You know who is in this house?” he asked. “You know the name of my
unknown guest?”

“I know nothing,” she replied. “His presence does not interest me.”

“Supposing I desire you to know?” he persisted, leaning a little
forward. “Supposing I tell you that it is your duty to know?”

“Then,” she said, “I should tell you that I believe him to be the
special envoy from New York to The Hague, or whatever place on the
Continent this coming conference is to be held at.”

“Right, woman!” Mr. Fentolin answered sharply. “Right! It is the special
envoy. He has his mandate with him. I have them both--the man and his
mandate. Can you guess what I am going to do with them?”

“It is not difficult,” she replied. “Your methods are scarcely original.
His mandate to the flames, and his body to the sea!”

She raised her eyes as she spoke and looked over Mr. Fentolin’s
shoulder, across the marshland to the grey stretch of ocean. Her eyes
became fixed. It was not possible to say that they held any expression,
and yet one felt that she saw beneath the grey waves, even to the rocks
and caverns below.

“It does not terrify you, then,” he asked curiously, “to think that a
man under this roof is about to die?”

“Why should it?” she retorted. “Death does not frighten me--my own or
anybody else’s. Does it frighten you?”

His face was suddenly livid, his eyes full of fierce anger. His lips
twitched. He struck the table before him.

“Beast of a woman!” he shouted. “You ghoul! How dare you! How dare
you--”

He stopped short. He passed his hand across his forehead. All the time
the woman remained unmoved.

“Do you know,” he muttered, his voice still shaking a little, “that
I believe sometimes I am afraid of you? How would you like to see me
there, eh, down at the bottom of that hungry sea? You watch sometimes
so fixedly. You’d miss me, wouldn’t you? I am a good master, you know.
I pay well. You’ve been with me a good many years. You were a different
sort of woman when you first came.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “I was a different sort of woman.”

“You don’t remember those days, I suppose,” he went on, “the days when
you had brown hair, when you used to carry roses about and sing to
yourself while you beat your work out of that wretched typewriter?”

“No,” she answered, “I do not remember those days. They do not belong to
me. It is some other woman you are thinking of.”


Their eyes met. Mr. Fentolin turned away first. He struck the bell at
his elbow. She rose at once.

“Be off!” he ordered. “When you look at me like that, you send shivers
through me! You’ll have to go; I can see you’ll have to go. I can’t keep
you any longer. You are the only person on the face of the earth who
dares to say things to me which make me think, the only person who
doesn’t shrink at the sound of my voice. You’ll have to go. Send Sarson
to me at once. You’ve upset me!”

She listened to his words in expressionless silence. When he had
finished, carrying her book in her hand, she very quietly moved towards
the door. He watched her, leaning a little forward in his chair,
his lips parted, his eyes threatening. She walked with steady, even
footsteps. She carried herself with almost machine-like erectness; her
skirts were noiseless. She had the trick of turning the handle of the
door in perfect silence. He heard her calm voice in the hall.

“Doctor Sarson is to go to Mr. Fentolin.”

Mr. Fentolin sat quite still, feeling his own pulse.

“That woman,” he muttered to himself, “that--woman--some day I shouldn’t
be surprised if she really--”

He paused. The doctor had entered the room.

“I am upset, Sarson,” he declared. “Come and feel my pulse quickly. That
woman has upset me.”

“Miss Price?”

“Miss Price, d--n it! Lucy--yes!”

“It seems unlike her,” the doctor remarked. “I have never heard her
utter a useless syllable in my life.”

Mr. Fentolin held out his wrist.

“It’s what she doesn’t say,” he muttered.

The doctor produced his watch. In less than a minute he put it away.

“This is quite unnecessary,” he pronounced. “Your pulse is wonderful.”

“Not hurried? No signs of palpitation?”

“You have seven or eight footmen, all young men,” Doctor Sarson replied
drily. “I will wager that there isn’t one of them has a pulse so
vigorous as yours.”

Mr. Fentolin leaned a little back in his chair. An expression of
satisfaction crept over his face.

“You reassure me, my dear Sarson. That is excellent. What of our
patient?”

“There is no change.”

“I am afraid,” Mr. Fentolin sighed, “that we shall have trouble with
him. These strong people always give trouble.”

“It will be just the same in the long run,” the doctor remarked,
shrugging his shoulders.

Mr. Fentolin held up his finger.

“Listen! A motor-car, I believe?”

“It is Miss Fentolin who is just arriving,” the doctor announced. “I saw
the car coming as I crossed the hall.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded gently.

“Indeed?” he replied. “Indeed? So my dear niece has returned. Open the
door, friend Sarson. Open the door, if you please. She will be anxious
to see me. We must summon her.”




CHAPTER X

Mr. Fentolin raised to his lips the little gold whistle which hung from
his neck and blew it. He seemed to devote very little effort to the
operation, yet the strength of the note was wonderful. As the echoes
died away, he let it fall by his side and waited with a pleased smile
upon his lips. In a few seconds there was the hurried flutter of skirts
and the sound of footsteps. The girl who had just completed her railway
journey entered, followed by her brother. They were both a little out
of breath, they both approached the chair without a smile, the girl
in advance, with a certain expression of apprehension in her eyes. Mr.
Fentolin sighed. He appeared to notice these things and regret them.

“My child,” he said, holding out his hands, “my dear Esther, welcome
home again! I heard the car outside. I am grieved that you did not at
once hurry to my side.”

“I have not been in the house two minutes,” Esther replied, “and I
haven’t seen mother yet. Forgive me.”

She had come to a standstill a few yards away. She moved now very slowly
towards the chair, with the air of one fulfilling a hateful task. The
fingers which accepted his hands were extended almost hesitatingly. He
drew her closer to him and held her there.

“Your mother, my dear Esther, is, I regret to say, suffering from a
slight indisposition,” he remarked. “She has been confined to her room
for the last few days. Just a trifling affair of the nerves; nothing
more, Doctor Sarson assures me. But my dear child,” he went on, “your
fingers are as cold as ice. You look at me so strangely, too. Alas! you
have not the affectionate disposition of your dear mother. One would
scarcely believe that we have been parted for more than a week.”

“For more than a week,” she repeated, under her breath.

“Stoop down, my dear. I must kiss your forehead--there! Now bring up a
chair to my side. You seem frightened--alarmed. Have you ill news for
me?”

“I have no news,” she answered, gradually recovering herself.

“The gaieties of London, I fear,” he protested gently, “have proved a
little unsettling.”

“There were no gaieties for me,” the girl replied bitterly. “Mrs.
Sargent obeyed your orders very faithfully. I was not allowed to move
out except with her.”

“My dear child, you would not go about London unchaperoned!”

“There is a difference,” she retorted, “between a chaperon and a
jailer.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed. He shook his head slowly. He seemed pained.

“I am not sure that you repay my care as it deserves, Esther,” he
declared. “There is something in your deportment which disappoints me.
Never mind, your brother has made some atonement. I entrusted him with
a little mission in which I am glad to say that he has been brilliantly
successful.”

“I cannot say that I am glad to hear it,” Esther replied quietly.

Mr. Fentolin sat back in his chair. His long fingers played nervously
together, he looked at her gravely.

“My dear child,” he exclaimed, in a tone of pained surprise, “your
attitude distresses me!”

“I cannot help it. I have told you what I think about Gerald and the
life he is compelled to live here. I don’t mind so much for myself, but
for him I think it is abominable.”

“The same as ever,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “I fear that this little change
has done you no good, dear niece.”

“Change!” she echoed. “It was only a change of prisons.”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head slowly--a distressful gesture. Yet all the
time he had somehow the air of a man secretly gratified.

“You are beginning to depress me,” he announced. “I think that you can
go away. No, stop for just one moment. Stand there in the light. Dear
me, how unfortunate! Who would have thought that so beautiful a mother
could have so plain a daughter!”

She stood quite still before him, her hands crossed in front of her,
something of the look of the nun from whom the power of suffering has
gone in her still, cold face and steadfast eyes.

“Not a touch of colour,” he continued meditatively, “a figure straight
as my walking-stick. What a pity! And all the taste, nowadays, they tell
me, is in the other direction. The lank damsels have gone completely
out. We buried them with Oscar Wilde. Run along, my dear child. You do
not amuse me. You can take Gerald with you, if you will. I have nothing
to say to Gerald just now. He is in my good books. Is there anything
I can do for you, Gerald? Your allowance, for instance--a trifling
increase or an advance? I am in a generous humour.”

“Then grant me what I begged for the other day,” the boy answered
quickly. “Let me go to Sandhurst. I could enter my name next week for
the examinations, and I could pass to-morrow.”

Mr. Fentolin tapped the table thoughtfully with his forefinger.

“A little ungrateful, my dear boy,” he declared, “a little ungrateful
that, I think. Your confidence in yourself pleases me, though. You think
you could pass your examinations?”

“I did a set of papers last week,” the boy replied. “On the given
percentages I came out twelfth or better. Mr. Brown assured me that I
could go in for them at any moment. He promised to write you about it
before he left.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded gently.

“Now I come to think of it, I did have a letter from Mr. Brown,” he
remarked. “Rather an impertinence for a tutor, I thought it. He devoted
three pages towards impressing upon me the necessity of your adopting
some sort of a career.”

“He wrote because he thought it was his duty,” the boy said doggedly.

“So you want to be a soldier,” Mr. Fentolin continued musingly. “Well,
well, why not? Our picture galleries are full of them. There has been a
Fentolin in every great battle for the last five hundred years. Sailors,
too--plenty of them--and just a few diplomatists. Brave fellows! Not
one, I fancy,” he added, “like me--not one condemned to pass their days
in a perambulator. You are a fine fellow, Gerald--a regular Fentolin.
Getting on for six feet, aren’t you?”

“Six feet two, sir.”

“A very fine fellow,” Mr. Fentolin repeated. “I am not so sure about the
army, Gerald. You see, there are some people who say, like your American
friend, that we are even now almost on the brink of war.”

“All the more reason for me to hurry,” the boy begged.

Mr. Fentolin closed his eyes.

“Don’t!” he insisted. “Have you ever stopped to think what war
means--the war you speak of so lightly? The suffering, the misery of
it! All the pageantry and music and heroism in front; and behind, a
blackened world, a trail of writhing corpses, a world of weeping women
for whom the sun shall never rise again. Ugh! An ugly thing war, Gerald.
I am not sure that you are not better at home here. Why not practise
golf a little more assiduously? I see from the local paper that you are
still playing at two handicap. Now with your physique, I should have
thought you would have been a scratch player long before now.”

“I play cricket, sir,” the boy reminded him, a little impatiently, “and,
after all, there are other things in the world besides games.”

Mr. Fentolin’s long finger shot suddenly out. He was leaning a little
from his chair. His expression of gentle immobility had passed away. His
face was stern, almost stony.

“You have spoken the truth, Gerald,” he said. “There are other things in
the world besides games. There is the real, the tragical side of
life, the duties one takes up, the obligations of honour. You have not
forgotten, young man, the burden you carry?”

The boy was paler, but he had drawn himself to his full height.

“I have not forgotten, sir,” he answered bitterly. “Do I show any signs
of forgetting? Haven’t I done your bidding year by year? Aren’t I here
now to do it?”

“Then do it!” Mr. Fentolin retorted sharply. “When I am ready for you
to leave here, you shall leave. Until then, you are mine. Remember that.
Ah! this is Doctor Sarson who comes, I believe. That must mean that it
is five o’clock. Come in, Doctor. I am not engaged. You see, I am alone
with my dear niece and nephew. We have been having a little pleasant
conversation.”

Doctor Sarson bowed to Esther, who scarcely glanced at him. He remained
in the background, quietly waiting.

“A very delightful little conversation,” Mr. Fentolin concluded. “I have
been congratulating my nephew, Doctor, upon his wisdom in preferring the
quiet country life down here to the wearisome routine of a profession.
He escapes the embarrassing choice of a career by preferring to
devote his life to my comfort. I shall not forget it. I shall not be
ungrateful. I may have my faults, but I am not ungrateful. Run away
now, both of you. Dear children you are, but one wearies, you know, of
everything. I am going out. You see, the twilight is coming. The tide is
changing. I am going down to meet the sea.”

His little carriage moved towards the door. The brother and sister
passed out. Esther led Gerald into the great dining-room, and from
there, through the open windows, out on to the terrace. She gripped his
shoulder and pointed down to the Tower.

“Something,” she whispered in his ear, “is going to happen there.”




CHAPTER XI

The little station at which Hamel alighted was like an oasis in the
middle of a flat stretch of sand and marsh. It consisted only of a few
raised planks and a rude shelter--built, indeed, for the convenience of
St. David’s Hall alone, for the nearest village was two miles away. The
station-master, on his return from escorting the young lady to her car,
stared at this other passenger in some surprise.

“Which way to the sea?” Hamel asked.

The man pointed to the white gates of the crossing.

“You can take any of those paths you like, sir,” he said. “If you
want to get to Salthouse, though, you should have got out at the next
station.”

“This will do for me,” Hamel replied cheerfully.

“Be careful of the dikes,” the station-master advised him. “Some of them
are pretty deep.”

Hamel nodded, and passing through the white gates, made his way by a
raised cattle track towards the sea. On either side of him flowed a
narrow dike filled with salt-water. Beyond stretched the flat marshland,
its mossy turf leavened with cracks and creeks of all widths, filled
also with sea-slime and sea-water. A slight grey mist rested upon the
more distant parts of the wilderness which he was crossing, a mist which
seemed to be blown in from the sea in little puffs, resting for a time
upon the earth, and then drifting up and fading away like soap bubbles.

More than once where the dikes had overflown he was compelled to change
his course, but he arrived at last at the little ridge of pebbled beach
bordering the sea. Straight ahead of him now was that strange-looking
building towards which he had all the time been directing his footsteps.
As he approached it, his forehead slightly contracted. There was ample
confirmation before him of the truth of his fellow-passenger’s words.
The place, left to itself for so many years, without any attention from
its actual owner, was neither deserted nor in ruins. Its solid grey
stone walls were sea-stained and a trifle worn, but the arched wooden
doors leading into the lifeboat shelter, which occupied one side of the
building, had been newly painted, and in the front the window was hung
with a curtain, now closely drawn, of some dark red material. The lock
from the door had been removed altogether, and in its place was the
aperture for a Yale latch-key. The last note of modernity was supplied
by the telephone wire attached to the roof of the lifeboat shelter. He
walked all round the building, seeking in vain for some other means
of ingress. Then he stood for a few moments in front of the curtained
window. He was a man of somewhat determined disposition, and he found
himself vaguely irritated by the liberties which had been taken with his
property. He hammered gently upon the framework with his fist, and the
windows opened readily inwards, pushing back the curtain with them.
He drew himself up on to the sill, and, squeezing himself through the
opening, landed on his feet and looked around him, a little breathless.

He found himself in a simply furnished man’s sitting-room. An easel
was standing close to the window. There were reams of drawing paper and
several unfinished sketches leaning against the wall. There was a small
oak table in the middle of the room; against the wall stood an exquisite
chiffonier, on which were resting some cut-glass decanters and goblets.
There was a Turkey carpet upon the floor which matched the curtains, but
to his surprise there was not a single chair of any sort to be seen.
The walls had been distempered and were hung with one or two engravings
which, although he was no judge, he was quite sure were good. He
wandered into the back room, where he found a stove, a tea-service upon
a deal table, and several other cooking utensils, all spotlessly clean
and of the most expensive description. The walls here were plainly
whitewashed, and the floor was of hard stone. He then tried the door on
the left, which led into the larger portion of the building--the shed in
which the lifeboat had once been kept. Not only was the door locked, but
he saw at once that the lock was modern, and the door itself was secured
with heavy iron clamps. He returned to the sitting-room.

“The girl with the grey eyes was right enough,” he remarked to himself.
“Mr. Fentolin has been making himself very much at home with my
property.”

He withdrew the curtains, noticing, to his surprise, the heavy shutters
which their folds had partly concealed. Then he made his way out along
the passage to the front door, which from the inside he was able to open
easily enough. Leaving it carefully ajar, he went out with the intention
of making an examination of the outside of the place. Instead, however,
he paused at the corner of the building with his face turned landwards.
Exactly fronting him now, about three-quarters of a mile away, on the
summit of that strange hill which stood out like a gigantic rock in
the wilderness, was St. David’s Hall. He looked at it steadily and with
increasing admiration. Its long, red brick front with its masses of
clustering chimneys, a little bare and weather-beaten, impressed him
with a sense of dignity due as much to the purity of its architecture
as the singularity of its situation. Behind--a wonderfully effective
background--were the steep gardens from which, even in this uncertain
light, he caught faint glimpses of colouring subdued from brilliancy by
the twilight. These were encircled by a brick wall of great height, the
whole of the southern portion of which was enclosed with glass. From the
fragment of rock upon which he had seated himself, to the raised
stone terrace in front of the house, was an absolutely straight path,
beautifully kept like an avenue, with white posts on either side, and
built up to a considerable height above the broad tidal way which ran
for some distance by its side. It had almost the appearance of a racing
track, and its state of preservation in the midst of the wilderness was
little short of remarkable.

“This,” Hamel said to himself, as he slowly produced a pipe from his
pocket and began to fill it with tobacco from a battered silver box, “is
a queer fix. Looks rather like the inn for me!”

“And who might you be, gentleman?”

He turned abruptly around towards his unseen questioner. A woman was
standing by the side of the rock upon which he was sitting, a woman from
the village, apparently, who must have come with noiseless footsteps
along the sandy way. She was dressed in rusty black, and in place of a
hat she wore a black woolen scarf tied around her head and underneath
her chin. Her face was lined, her hair of a deep brown plentifully
besprinkled with grey. She had a curious habit of moving her lips, even
when she was not speaking. She stood there smiling at him, but there was
something about that smile and about her look which puzzled him.

“I am just a visitor,” he replied. “Who are you?”

She shook her head.

“I saw you come out of the Tower,” she said, speaking with a strong
local accent and yet with a certain unusual correctness, “in at the
window and out of the door. You’re a brave man.”

“Why brave?” he asked.

She turned her head very slowly towards St. David’s Hall. A gleam of
sunshine had caught one of the windows, which shone like fire. She
pointed toward it with her head.

“He’s looking at you,” she muttered. “He don’t like strangers poking
around here, that I can tell you.”

“And who is he?” Hamel enquired.

“Squire Fentolin,” she answered, dropping her voice a little. “He’s
a very kind-hearted gentleman, Squire Fentolin, but he don’t like
strangers hanging around.”

“Well, I am not exactly a stranger, you see,” Hamel remarked. “My father
used to stay for months at a time in that little shanty there and paint
pictures. It’s a good many years ago.”

“I mind him,” the woman said slowly. “His name was Hamel.”

“I am his son,” Hamel announced.

She pointed to the Hall. “Does he know that you are here?”

Hamel shook his head. “Not yet. I have been abroad for so long.”

She suddenly relapsed into her curious habit. Her lips moved, but no
words came. She had turned her head a little and was facing the sea.

“Tell me,” Hamel asked gently, “why do you come out here alone, so far
from the village?”

She pointed with her finger to where the waves were breaking in a thin
line of white, about fifty yards from the beach.

“It’s the cemetery, that,” she said, “the village cemetery, you know. I
have three buried there: George, the eldest; James, the middle one;
and David, the youngest. Three of them--that’s why I come. I can’t put
flowers on their graves, but I can sit and watch and look through the
sea, down among the rocks where their bodies are, and wonder.”

Hamel looked at her curiously. Her voice had grown lower and lower.

“It’s what you land folks don’t believe, perhaps,” she went on, “but
it’s true. It’s only us who live near the sea who understand it. I am
not an ignorant body, either. I was schoolmistress here before I married
David Cox. They thought I’d done wrong to marry a fisherman, but I bore
him brave sons, and I lived the life a woman craves for. No, I am not
ignorant. I have fancies, perhaps--the Lord be praised for them!--and I
tell you it’s true. You look at a spot in the sea and you see nothing--a
gleam of blue, a fleck of white foam, one day; a gleam of green with a
black line, another; and a grey little sob, the next, perhaps. But you
go on looking. You look day by day and hour by hour, and the chasms of
the sea will open, and their voices will come to you. Listen!”

She clutched his arm.

“Couldn’t you hear that?” she half whispered.

“‘The light!’ It was David’s voice! ‘The light!’” Hamel was speechless.
The woman’s face was suddenly strangely transformed. Her mood, however,
swiftly changed. She turned once more towards the hall.

“You’ll know him soon,” she went on, “the kindest man in these parts,
they say. It’s not much that he gives away, but he’s a kind heart. You
see that great post at the entrance to the river there?” she went
on, pointing to it. “He had that set up and a lamp hung from there.
Fentolin’s light, they call it. It was to save men’s lives. It was
burning, they say, the night I lost my lads. Fentolin’s light!”

“They were wrecked?” he asked her gently.

“Wrecked,” she answered. “Bad steering it must have been. James would
steer, and they say that he drank a bit. Bad steering! Yes, you’ll meet
Squire Fentolin before long. He’s queer to look at--a small body but a
great, kind heart. A miserable life, his, but it will be made up to him.
It will be made up to him!”

She turned away. Her lips were moving all the time. She walked about a
dozen steps, and then she returned.

“You’re Hamel’s son, the painter,” she said. “You’ll be welcome down
here. He’ll have you to stay at the Hall--a brave place. Don’t let him
be too kind to you. Sometimes kindness hurts.”

She passed on, walking with a curious, shambling gait, and soon she
disappeared on her way to the village. Hamel watched her for a moment
and then turned his head towards St. David’s Hall. He felt somehow that
her abrupt departure was due to something which she had seen in that
direction. He rose to his feet. His instinct had been a true one.



CHAPTER XII

From where Hamel stood a queer object came strangely into sight. Below
the terrace of St. David’s Hall--from a spot, in fact, at the base of
the solid wall--it seemed as though a gate had been opened, and there
came towards him what he at first took to be a tricycle. As it came
nearer, it presented even a weirder appearance. Mr. Fentolin, in a black
cape and black skull cap, sat a little forward in his electric carriage,
with his hand upon the guiding lever. His head came scarcely above
the back of the little vehicle, his hands and body were motionless.
He seemed to be progressing without the slightest effort, personal or
mechanical, as though he rode, in deed, in some ghostly vehicle. From
the same place in the wall had issued, a moment or two later, a man upon
a bicycle, who was also coming towards him. Hamel was scarcely conscious
of this secondary figure. His eyes were fixed upon the strange personage
now rapidly approaching him. There was something which seemed scarcely
human in that shrunken fragment of body, the pale face with its waving
white hair, the strange expression with which he was being regarded. The
little vehicle came to a standstill only a few feet away. Mr. Fentolin
leaned forward. His features had lost their delicately benevolent
aspect; his words were minatory.

“I am under the impression, sir,” he said, “that I saw you with my
glasses from the window attempting to force an entrance into that
building.”

Hamel nodded.

“I not only tried but I succeeded,” he remarked. “I got in through the
window.”

Mr. Fentolin’s eyes glittered for a moment. Hamel, who had resumed his
place upon the rock close at hand, had been mixed up during his lifetime
in many wild escapades. Yet at that moment he had a sudden feeling that
there were dangers in life which as yet he had not faced.

“May I ask for your explanation or your excuse?”

“You can call it an explanation or an excuse, whichever you like,” Hamel
replied steadily, “but the fact is that this little building, which
some one else seems to have appropriated, is mine. If I had not been
a good-natured person, I should be engaged, at the present moment, in
turning out its furniture on to the beach.”

“What is your name?” Mr. Fentolin asked suddenly.

“My name is Hamel--Richard Hamel.”

For several moments there was silence. Mr. Fentolin was still leaning
forward in his strange little vehicle. The colour seemed to have left
even his lips. The hard glitter in his eyes had given place to an
expression almost like fear. He looked at Richard Hamel as though he
were some strange sea-monster come up from underneath the sands.

“Richard Hamel,” he repeated. “Do you mean that you are the son of
Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my
brother’s friend.”

“I am his son.”

“But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his name
in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here.”

Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“I take a lot of killing,” he observed. “I was in that earthquake, right
enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of
Philadelphia who died.”

Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments. He seemed, if
possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still. A few yards
behind, Meekins had alighted from his bicycle and was standing waiting.

“So you are Richard Hamel,” Mr. Fentolin said at last very softly.
“Welcome back to England, Richard Hamel! I knew your father slightly,
although we were never very friendly.”

He stretched out his hand from underneath the coverlet of his little
vehicle--a hand with long, white fingers, slim and white and shapely
as a woman’s. A single ring with a dull green stone was on his fourth
finger. Hamel shook hands with him as he would have shaken hands with
a woman. Afterwards he rubbed his fingers slowly together. There was
something about the touch which worried him.

“You have been making use of this little shanty, haven’t you?” he asked
bluntly.

Mr. Fentolin nodded. He was apparently beginning to recover himself.

“You must remember,” he explained suavely, “that it was built by my
grandfather, and that we have had rights over the whole of the foreshore
here from time immemorial. I know quite well that my brother gave it to
your father--or rather he sold it to him for a nominal sum. I must tell
you that it was a most complicated transaction. He had the greatest
difficulty in getting any lawyer to draft the deed of sale. There were
so many ancient rights and privileges which it was impossible to
deal with. Even now there are grave doubts as to the validity of the
transaction. When nothing was heard of you, and we all concluded that
you were dead, I ventured to take back what I honestly believed to be
my own. Owing,” he continued slowly, “to my unfortunate affliction, I
am obliged to depend for interest in my life upon various hobbies. This
little place, queerly enough, has become one of them. I have furnished
it, in a way; installed the telephone to the house, connected it with my
electric plant, and I come down here when I want to be quite alone, and
paint. I watch the sea--such a sea sometimes, such storms, such colour!
You notice that ridge of sand out yonder? It forms a sort of natural
breakwater. Even on the calmest day you can trace that white line of
foam.”

“It is a strange coast,” Hamel admitted.

Mr. Fentolin pointed with his forefinger northwards.

“Somewhere about there,” he indicated, “is the entrance to the tidal
river which flows up to the village of St. David’s yonder. You see?”

His finger traced its course until it came to a certain point near the
beach, where a tall black pillar stood, surmounted by a globe.

“I have had a light fixed there for the benefit of the fishermen,” he
said, “a light which I work from my own dynamo. Between where we are
sitting now and there--only a little way out to sea--is a jagged
cluster of cruel rocks. You can see them if you care to swim out in
calm weather. Fishermen who tried to come in by night were often trapped
there and, in a rough sea, drowned. That is why I had that pillar of
light built. On stormy nights it shows the exact entrance to the water
causeway.”

“Very kind of you indeed,” Hamel remarked, “very benevolent.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“So few people have any real feeling for sailors,” he continued. “The
fishermen around here are certainly rather a casual class. Do you know
that there is scarcely one of them who can swim? There isn’t one of them
who isn’t too lazy to learn even the simplest stroke. My brother used to
say--dear Gerald--that it served them right if they were drowned. I have
never been able to feel like that, Mr. Hamel. Life is such a wonderful
thing. One night,” he went on, dropping his voice and leaning a little
forward in his carriage--“it was just before, or was it just after I
had fixed that light--I was down here one dark winter night. There was a
great north wind and a huge sea running. It was as black as pitch, but I
heard a boat making for St. David’s causeway strike on those rocks
just hidden in front there. I heard those fishermen shriek as they went
under. I heard their shouts for help, I heard their death cries. Very
terrible, Mr. Hamel! Very terrible!”

Hamel looked at the speaker curiously. Mr. Fentolin seemed absorbed in
his subject. He had spoken with relish, as one who loves the things he
speaks about. Quite unaccountably, Hamel found himself shivering.

“It was their mother,” Mr. Fentolin continued, leaning again a little
forward in his chair, “their mother whom I saw pass along the beach just
now--a widow, too, poor thing. She comes here often--a morbid taste. She
spoke to you, I think?”

“She spoke to me strangely,” Hamel admitted. “She gave me the impression
of a woman whose brain had been turned with grief.”

“Too true,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “The poor creature! I offered her a
small pension, but she would have none of it. A superior woman in her
way once, filled now with queer fancies,” he went on, eyeing Hamel
steadily,--“the very strangest fancies. She spends her life prowling
about here. No one in the village even knows how she lives. Did she
speak of me, by-the-by?”

“She spoke of you as being a very kind-hearted man.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“The poor creature! Well, well, let us revert to the object of your
coming here. Do you really wish to occupy this little shanty, Mr.
Hamel?”

“That was my idea,” Hamel confessed. “I only came back from Mexico last
month, and I very soon got fed up with life in town. I am going abroad
again next year. Till then, I am rather at a loose end. My father was
always very keen indeed about this place, and very anxious that I should
come and stay here for a little time, so I made up my mind to run down.
I’ve got some things waiting at Norwich. I thought I might hire a woman
to look after me and spend a few weeks here. They tell me that the early
spring is almost the best time for this coast.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded slowly. He moistened his lips for a moment. One
might have imagined that he was anxious.

“Mr. Hamel,” he said softly, “you are quite right. It is the best time
to visit this coast. But why make a hermit of yourself? You are a family
friend. Come and stay with us at the Hall for as long as you like.
It will give me the utmost pleasure to welcome you there,” he went on
earnestly, “and as for this little place, of what use is it to you? Let
me buy it from you. You are a man of the world, I can see. You may be
rich, yet money has a definite value. To me it has none. That little
place, as it stands, is probably worth--say a hundred pounds. Your
father gave, if I remember rightly, a five pound note for it. I will
give you a thousand for it sooner than be disturbed.”

Hamel frowned slightly.

“I could not possibly think,” he said, “of selling what was practically
a gift to my father. You are welcome to occupy the place during my
absence in any way you wish. On the other hand, I do not think that I
care to part with it altogether, and I should really like to spend
just a day or so here. I am used to roughing it under all sorts of
conditions--much more used to roughing it than I am to staying at
country houses.”

Mr. Fentolin leaned a little out of his carriage. He reached the younger
man’s shoulder with his hand.

“Ah! Mr. Hamel,” he pleaded, “don’t make up your mind too suddenly. Am I
a little spoilt, I wonder? Well, you see what sort of a creature I am. I
have to go through life as best I may, and people are kind to me. It is
very seldom I am crossed. It is quite astonishing how often people let
me have my own way. Do not make up your mind too suddenly. I have a
niece and a nephew whom you must meet. There are some treasures, too, at
St. David’s Hall. Look at it. There isn’t another house quite like it in
England. It is worth looking over.”

“It is most impressive,” Hamel agreed, “and wonderfully beautiful. It
seems odd,” he added, with a laugh, “that you should care about this
little shanty here, with all the beautiful rooms you must have of your
own.”

“It’s Naboth’s vineyard,” Mr. Fentolin groaned. “Now, Mr. Hamel, you
are going to be gracious, aren’t you? Let us leave the question of your
little habitation here alone for the present. Come back with me. My
niece shall give you some tea, and you shall choose your room from
forty. You can sleep in a haunted chamber, or a historical chamber, in
Queen Elizabeth’s room, a Victorian chamber, or a Louis Quinze room. All
my people have spent their substance in furniture. Don’t look at your
bag. Clothes are unnecessary. I can supply you with everything. Or, if
you prefer it, I can send a fast car into Norwich for your own things.
Come and be my guest, please.”

Hamel hesitated. He had not the slightest desire to go to St. David’s
Hall, and though he strove to ignore it, he was conscious of an aversion
of which he was heartily ashamed for this strange fragment of humanity.
On the other hand, his mission, the actual mission which had brought him
down to these parts, could certainly best be served by an entree into
the Hall itself--and there was the girl, whom he felt sure belonged
there. He had never for a moment been able to dismiss her from his
thoughts. Her still, cold face, the delicate perfection of her clothes
and figure, the grey eyes which had rested upon his so curiously,
haunted him. He was desperately anxious to see her again. If he refused
this invitation, if he rejected Mr. Fentolin’s proffered friendship, it
would be all the more difficult.

“You are really very kind,” he began hesitatingly--.

“It is settled,” Mr. Fentolin interrupted, “settled. Meekins, you can
ride back again. I shall not paint to-day. Mr. Hamel, you will walk by
my side, will you not? I can run my little machine quite slowly. You
see, I have an electric battery. It needs charging often, but I have
a dynamo of my own. You never saw a vehicle like this in all your
travellings, did you?”

Hamel shook his head.

“An electrical bath-chair,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “Practice has made
me remarkably skilful in its manipulation. You see, I can steer to an
inch.”

He was already turning around. Hamel rose to his feet.

“You are really very kind,” he said. “I should like to come up and see
the Hall, at any rate, but in the meantime, as we are here, could I just
look over the inside of this little place? I found the large shed where
the lifeboat used to be kept, locked up.”

Mr. Fentolin was manoeuvring his carriage. His back was towards Hamel.

“By all means,” he declared. “We will go in together. I have had the
entrance widened so that I can ride straight into the sitting-room. But
wait.”

He paused suddenly. He felt in all his pockets.

“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “I find that I have left the keys! We will
come down a little later, if you do not mind, Mr. Hamel. Or to-morrow,
perhaps. You will not mind? It is very careless of me, but seeing you
about the place and imagining that you were an intruder, made me angry,
and I started off in a hurry. Now walk by my side up to the house,
please, and talk to me. It is so interesting for me to meet men,” he
went on, as they started along the straight path, “who do things in
life; who go to foreign countries, meet strange people, and have new
experiences. I have been a good many years like this, you know.”

“It is a great affliction,” Hamel murmured sympathetically.

“In my youth I was an athlete,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “I played
cricket for the Varsity and for my county. I hunted, too, and shot. I
did all the things a man loves to do. I might still shoot, they tell me,
but my strength has ebbed away. I am too weak to lift a gun, too weak
even to handle a fishing-rod. I have just a few hobbies in life which
keep me alive. Are you a politician, Mr. Hamel?”

“Not in the least,” Hamel replied. “I have been out of England too long
to keep in touch with politics.”

“Naturally,” Mr. Fentolin agreed. “It amuses me to follow the course of
events. I have a good many friends in London and abroad who are kind to
me, who keep me informed, send me odd bits of information not available
for every one, and it amuses me to put these things together in my mind
and to try and play the prophet. I was in the Foreign Office once,
you know. I take up my paper every morning, and it is one of my chief
interests to see how near my own speculations come to the truth. Just
now for example, there are strange things doing on the Continent.”

“In America,” Hamel remarked, “they affect to look upon England as a
doomed Power.”

“Not altogether supine yet,” Mr. Fentolin observed, “yet even this
last generation has seen weakening. We have lost so much self-reliance.
Perhaps it is having these grown-up children who we think can take care
of us--Canada and Australia, and the others. However, we will not talk
of politics. It bores you, I can see. We will try and find some other
subject. Now tell me, don’t you think this is ingenious?”

They had reached the foot of the hill upon which the Hall was situated.
In front of them, underneath the terrace, was a little iron gate, held
open now by Meekins, who had gone on ahead and dismounted from his
bicycle.

“I have a subterranean way from here into the Hall,” Mr. Fentolin
explained. “Come with me. You will only have to stoop a little, and it
may amuse you. You need not be afraid. There are electric lights every
ten yards. I turn them on with this switch--see.”

Mr. Fentolin touched a button in the wall, and the place was at once
brilliantly illuminated. A little row of lights from the ceiling and the
walls stretched away as far as one could see. They passed through the
iron gates, which shut behind them with a click. Stooping a little,
Hamel was still able to walk by the side of the man in the chair. They
traversed about a hundred yards of subterranean way. Here and there a
fungus hung down from the wall, otherwise it was beautifully kept and
dry. By and by, with a little turn, they came to an incline and another
iron gate, held open for them by a footman. Mr. Fentolin sped up the
last few feet into the great hall, which seemed more imposing than ever
by reason of this unexpected entrance. Hamel, blinking a little, stepped
to his side.

“Welcome!” Mr. Fentolin cried gaily. “Welcome, my friend Mr. Hamel, to
St. David’s Hall!”




CHAPTER XIII

During the next half-hour, Hamel was introduced to luxuries to which,
in a general way, he was entirely unaccustomed. One man-servant was
busy preparing his bath in a room leading out of his sleeping apartment,
while another brought him a choice of evening clothes and superintended
his disrobing. Hamel, always observant, studied his surroundings
with keen interest. He found himself in a queerly mixed atmosphere of
luxurious modernity and stately antiquity. His four-poster, the huge
couch at the foot of his bed, and all the furniture about the room,
was of the Queen Anne period. The bathroom which communicated with his
apartment was the latest triumph of the plumber’s art--a room with floor
and walls of white tiles, the bath itself a little sunken and twice the
ordinary size. He dispensed so far as he could with the services of the
men and descended, as soon as he was dressed, into the hall. Meekins was
waiting at the bottom of the stairs, dressed now in somber black.

“Mr. Fentolin will be glad if you will step into his room, sir,” he
announced, leading the way.

Mr. Fentolin was seated in his chair, reading the Times in a corner of
his library. Shaped blocks had been placed behind and in front of
the wheels of his little vehicle, to prevent it from moving. A shaded
reading-lamp stood on the table by his side. He did not at once look
up, and Hamel glanced around with genuine admiration. The shelves which
lined the walls and the winged cases which protruded into the room were
filled with books. There was a large oak table with beautifully carved
legs, piled with all sorts of modern reviews and magazines. A log fire
was burning in the big oaken grate. The perfume from a great bowl of
lavender seemed to mingle curiously yet pleasantly with the half musty
odour of the old leather-bound volumes. The massive chimneypiece was of
black oak, and above it were carved the arms of the House of Fentolin.
The walls were oak-panelled to the ceiling.

“Refreshed, I hope, by your bath and change, my dear visitor?” the head
of the house remarked, as he laid down his paper. “Draw a chair up here
and join me in a glass of vermouth. You need not be afraid of it. It
comes to me from the maker as a special favour.”

Hamel accepted a quaintly-cut wine-glass full of the amber liquid. Mr.
Fentolin sipped his with the air of a connoisseur.

“This,” he continued, “is one of our informal days. There is no one in
the house save my sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, and a poor
invalid gentleman who, I am sorry to say, is confined to his bed. My
sister-in-law is also, I regret to say, indisposed. She desired me to
present her excuses to you and say how greatly she is looking forward to
making your acquaintance during the next few days.”

Hamel bowed.

“It is very kind of Mrs. Fentolin,” he murmured.

“On these occasions,” Mr. Fentolin continued, “we do not make use of a
drawing-room. My niece will come in here presently. You are looking at
my books, I see. Are you, by any chance, a bibliophile? I have a case of
manuscripts here which might interest you.”

Hamel shook his head.

“Only in the abstract, I fear,” he answered. “I have scarcely opened a
serious book since I was at Oxford.”

“What was your year?” Mr. Fentolin asked.

“Fourteen years ago I left Magdalen,” Hamel replied. “I had made up
my mind to be an engineer, and I went over to the Boston Institute of
Technology.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded appreciatively.

“A magnificent profession,” he murmured. “A healthy one, too, I should
judge from your appearance. You are a strong man, Mr. Hamel.”

“I have had reason to be,” Hamel rejoined. “During nearly the whole
of the time I have been abroad, I have been practically pioneering.
Building railways in the far West, with gangs of Chinese and Italians
and Hungarians and scarcely a foreman who isn’t terrified of his job,
isn’t exactly drawing-room work.”

“You are going back there?” Mr. Fentolin asked, with interest.

Hamel shook his head.

“I have no plans,” he declared. “I have been fortunate enough, or shall
I some day say unfortunate enough, I wonder, to have inherited a large
legacy.”

Mr. Fentolin smiled.

“Don’t ever doubt your good fortune,” he said earnestly. “The longer I
live--and in my limited way I do see a good deal of life--the more
I appreciate the fact that there isn’t anything in this world that
compares with the power of money. I distrust a poor man. He may mean to
be honest, but he is at all times subject to temptation. Ah! here is my
niece.”

Mr. Fentolin turned towards the door. Hamel rose at once to his feet.
His surmise, then, had been correct. She was coming towards them very
quietly. In her soft grey dinner-gown, her brown hair smoothly brushed
back, a pearl necklace around her long, delicate neck, she seemed to him
a very exquisite embodiment of those memories which he had been carrying
about throughout the afternoon.

“Here, Mr. Hamel,” his host said, “is a member of my family who has
been a deserter for a short time. This is Mr. Richard Hamel, Esther; my
niece, Miss Esther Fentolin.”

She held out her hand with the faintest possible smile, which might have
been of greeting or recognition.

“I travelled for some distance in the train with Mr. Hamel this
afternoon, I think,” she remarked.

“Indeed?” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed. “Dear me, that is very
interesting--very interesting, indeed! Mr. Hamel, I am sure, did not
tell you of his destination?”

He watched them keenly. Hamel, though he scarcely understood, was quick
to appreciate the possible significance of that tentative question.

“We did not exchange confidences,” he observed. “Miss Fentolin only
changed into my carriage during the last few minutes of her journey.
Besides,” he continued, “to tell you the truth, my ideas as to my
destination were a little hazy. To come and look for some queer sort of
building by the side of the sea, which has been unoccupied for a dozen
years or so, scarcely seems a reasonable quest, does it?”

“Scarcely, indeed,” Mr. Fentolin assented. “You may thank me, Mr. Hamel,
for the fact that the place is not in ruins. My blatant trespassing has
saved you from that, at least. After dinner we must talk further about
the Tower. To tell you the truth, I have grown accustomed to the use of
the little place.”

The sound of the dinner gong boomed through the house. A moment later
Gerald entered, followed by a butler announcing dinner.

“The only remaining member of my family,” Mr. Fentolin remarked,
indicating his nephew. “Gerald, you will be pleased, I know, to meet
Mr. Hamel. Mr. Hamel has been a great traveller. Long before you can
remember, his father used to paint wonderful pictures of this coast.”

Gerald shook hands with his visitor. His face, for a moment, lighted up.
He was looking pale, though, and singularly sullen and dejected.

“There are two of your father’s pictures in the modern side of the
gallery up-stairs,” he remarked, a little diffidently. “They are great
favourites with everybody here.”

They all went in to dinner together. Meekins, who had appeared silently,
had glided unnoticed behind his master’s chair and wheeled it across the
hall.

“A partie carree to-night,” Mr. Fentolin declared. “I have a resident
doctor here, a very delightful person, who often dines with us, but
to-night I thought not. Five is an awkward number. I want to get to know
you better, Mr. Hamel, and quickly. I want you, too, to make friends
with my niece and nephew. Mr. Hamel’s father,” he went on, addressing
the two latter, “and your father were great friends. By-the-by, have
I told you both exactly why Mr. Hamel is a guest here to-night--why he
came to these parts at all? No? Listen, then. He came to take possession
of the Tower. The worst of it is that it belongs to him, too. His father
bought it from your father more years ago than we should care to talk
about. I have really been a trespasser all this time.”

They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the
dining-room. The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table seemed
to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness. The gloomy
faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the walls were
almost invisible. The servants themselves, standing a little outside the
halo of light, were like shadows passing swiftly and noiselessly back
and forth. At the far end of the room was an organ, and to the left a
little balcony, built out as though for an orchestra. Hamel looked about
him almost in wonderment. There was something curiously impressive in
the size of the apartment and its emptiness.

“A trespasser,” Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and
criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyeglass, “that is what I have
been, without a doubt.”

“But for your interest and consequent trespass,” Hamel remarked, “I
should probably have found the roof off and the whole place in ruins.”

“Instead of which you found the door locked against you,” Mr. Fentolin
pointed out. “Well, we shall see. I might, at any rate, have lost the
opportunity of entertaining you here this evening. I am particularly
glad to have an opportunity of making you known to my niece and nephew.
I think you will agree with me that here are two young people who are
highly to be commended. I cannot offer them a cheerful life here. There
is little society, no gaiety, no sort of excitement. Yet they never
leave me. They seem to have no other interest in life but to be always
at my beck and call. A case, Mr. Hamel, of really touching devotion. If
anything could reconcile me to my miserable condition, it would be the
kindness and consideration of those by whom I am surrounded.”

Hamel murmured a few words of cordial agreement. Yet he found himself,
in a sense, embarrassed. Gerald was looking down upon his plate and
his face was hidden. Esther’s features had suddenly become stony and
expressionless. Hamel felt instinctively that something was wrong.

“There are compensations,” Mr. Fentolin continued, with the air of one
enjoying speech, “which find their way into even the gloomiest of lives.
As I lie on my back, hour after hour, I feel all the more conscious
of this. The world is a school of compensations, Mr. Hamel. The
interests--the mental interests, I mean--of unfortunate people like
myself, come to possess in time a peculiar significance and to yield
a peculiar pleasure. I have hobbies, Mr. Hamel. I frankly admit it.
Without my hobbies, I shudder to think what might become of me. I might
become a selfish, cruel, misanthropical person. Hobbies are indeed a
great thing.”

The brother and sister sat still in stony silence. Hamel, looking across
the little table with its glittering load of cut glass and silver and
scarlet flowers, caught something in Esther’s eyes, so rarely expressive
of any emotion whatever, which puzzled him. He looked swiftly back at
his host. Mr. Fentolin’s face, at that moment, was like a beautiful
cameo. His expression was one of gentle benevolence.

“Let me be quite frank with you,” Mr. Fentolin murmured. “My occupation
of the Tower is one of these hobbies. I love to sit there within a few
yards of the sea and watch the tide come in. I catch something of the
spirit, I think, which caught your father, Mr. Hamel, and kept him a
prisoner here. In my small way I, too, paint while I am down there,
paint and dream. These things may not appeal to you, but you must
remember that there are few things left to me in life, and that those,
therefore, which I can make use of, are dear to me. Gerald, you are
silent to-night. How is it that you say nothing?”

“I am tired, sir,” the boy answered quietly.

Mr. Fentolin nodded gravely.

“It is inexcusable of me,” he declared smoothly, “to have forgotten even
for a moment. My nephew, Mr. Hamel,” he went on, “had quite an exciting
experience last night--or rather a series of experiences. He was first
of all in a railway accident, and then, for the sake of a poor fellow
who was with him and who was badly hurt, he motored back here in the
grey hours of the morning and ran, they tell me, considerable risk
of being drowned on the marshes. A very wonderful and praiseworthy
adventure, I consider it. I trust that our friend up-stairs, when he
recovers, will be properly grateful.”

Gerald rose to his feet precipitately. The service of dinner was almost
concluded, and he muttered something which sounded like an excuse. Mr.
Fentolin, however, stretched out his hand and motioned him to resume his
seat.

“My dear Gerald!” he exclaimed reprovingly. “You would leave us so
abruptly? Before your sister, too! What will Mr. Hamel think of our
country ways? Pray resume your seat.”

For a moment the boy stood quite still, then he slowly subsided into
his chair. Mr. Fentolin passed around a decanter of wine which had been
placed upon the table by the butler. The servants had now left the room.

“You must excuse my nephew, if you please, Mr. Hamel,” he begged.
“Gerald has a boy’s curious aversion to praise in any form. I am looking
forward to hearing your verdict upon my port. The collection of wine and
pictures was a hobby of my grandfather’s, for which we, his descendants,
can never be sufficiently grateful.”

Hamel praised his wine, as indeed he had every reason to, but for a
few moments the smooth conversation of his host fell upon deaf ears. He
looked from the boy’s face, pale and wrinkled as though with some sort
of suppressed pain, to the girl’s still, stony expression. This was
indeed a house of mysteries! There was something here incomprehensible,
some thing about the relations of these three and their knowledge of one
another, utterly baffling. It was the queerest household, surely, into
which any stranger had ever been precipitated.

“The planting of trees and the laying down of port are two virtues in
our ancestors which have never been properly appreciated,” Mr. Fentolin
continued. “Let us, at any rate, free ourselves from the reproach of
ingratitude so far as regards my grandfather--Gerald Fentolin--to whom I
believe we are indebted for this wine. We will drink--”

Mr. Fentolin broke off in the middle of his sentence. The august calm of
the great house had been suddenly broken. From up-stairs came the tumult
of raised voices, the slamming of a door, the falling of something
heavy upon the floor. Mr. Fentolin listened with a grim change in his
expression. His smile had departed, his lower lip was thrust out, his
eyebrows met. He raised the little whistle which hung from his chain. At
that moment, however, the door was opened. Doctor Sarson appeared.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Fentolin,” he said, “but our patient is
becoming a little difficult. The concussion has left him, as I feared it
might, in a state of nervous excitability. He insists upon an interview
with you.”

Mr. Fentolin backed his little chair from the table. The doctor came
over and laid his hand upon the handle.

“You will, I am sure, excuse me for a few moments, Mr. Hamel,” his host
begged. “My niece and nephew will do their best to entertain you. Now,
Sarson, I am ready.”

Mr. Fentolin glided across the dim, empty spaces of the splendid
apartment, followed by the doctor; a ghostly little procession it
seemed. The door was closed behind them. For a few moments a curious
silence ensued. Gerald remained tense and apparently suffering from
some sort of suppressed emotion. Esther for the first time moved in her
place. She leaned towards Hamel. Her lips were slowly parted, her
eyes sought the door as though in terror. Her voice, although save for
themselves there was no one else in the whole of that great apartment,
had sunk to the lowest of whispers.

“Are you a brave man, Mr. Hamel?” she asked.

He was staggered but he answered her promptly.

“I believe so.”

“Don’t give up the Tower--just yet. That is what--he has brought you
here for. He wants you to give it up and go back. Don’t!”

The earnestness of her words was unmistakable. Hamel felt the thrill of
coming events.

“Why not?”

“Don’t ask me,” she begged. “Only if you are brave, if you have feeling
for others, keep the Tower, if it be for only a week. Hush!”

The door had been noiselessly opened. The doctor appeared and advanced
to the table with a grave little bow.

“Mr. Fentolin,” he said, “has been kind enough to suggest that I take a
glass of wine with you. My presence is not needed up-stairs. Mr. Hamel,”
 he added, “I am glad, sir, to make your acquaintance. I have for a long
time been a great admirer of your father’s work.”

He took his place at the head of the table and, filling his glass,
bowed towards Hamel. Once more Gerald and his sister relapsed almost
automatically into an indifferent and cultivated silence. Hamel found
civility towards the newcomer difficult. Unconsciously his attitude
became that of the other two. He resented the intrusion. He found
himself regarding the advent of Doctor Sarson as possessing some
secondary significance. It was almost as though Mr. Fentolin preferred
not to leave him alone with his niece and nephew.

Nevertheless, his voice, when he spoke, was clear and firm.




CHAPTER XIV

Mr. Fentolin, on leaving the dining-room, steered his chair with great
precision through the open, wrought-iron doors of a small lift at the
further end of the hall, which Doctor Sarson, who stepped in with him,
promptly directed to the second floor. Here they made their way to the
room in which Mr. Dunster was lying. Doctor Sarson opened the door and
looked in. Almost immediately he stood at one side, out of sight of Mr.
Dunster, and nodded to Mr. Fentolin.

“If there is any trouble,” he whispered, “send for me. I am better away,
for the present. My presence only excites him.”

Mr. Fentolin nodded.

“You are right,” he said. “Go down into the dining-room. I am not sure
about that fellow Hamel, and Gerald is in a queer temper. Stay with
them. See that they are not alone.”

The doctor silently withdrew, and Mr. Fentolin promptly glided past him
into the room. Mr. John P. Dunster, in his night clothes, was sitting on
the side of the bed. Standing within a few feet of him, watching him
all the time with the subtle intentness of a cat watching a mouse, stood
Meekins. Mr. Dunster’s head was still bound, although the bandage had
slipped a little, apparently in some struggle. His face was chalklike,
and he was breathing quickly.

“So you’ve come at last!” he exclaimed, a little truculently. “Are you
Mr. Fentolin?”

Mr. Fentolin gravely admitted his identity. His eyes rested upon his
guest with an air of tender interest. His face was almost beautiful.

“You are the owner of this house--I am underneath your roof--is that
so?”

“This is certainly St. David’s Hall,” Mr. Fentolin replied. “It really
appears as though your conclusions were correct.”

“Then will you tell me why I am kept a prisoner here?”

Mr. Fentolin’s expression was for a moment clouded. He seemed hurt.

“A prisoner,” he repeated softly. “My dear Mr. Dunster, you have surely
forgotten the circumstances which procured for me the pleasure of this
visit; the condition in which you arrived here--only, after all, a very
few hours ago?”

“The circumstances,” Mr. Dunster declared drily, “are to me still
inexplicable. At Liverpool Street Station I was accosted by a young man
who informed me that his name was Gerald Fentolin, and that he was on
his way to The Hague to play in a golf tournament. His story seemed
entirely probable, and I permitted him a seat in the special train I had
chartered for Harwich. There was an accident and I received this blow to
my head--only a trifling affair, after all. I come to my senses to find
myself here. I do not know exactly what part of the world you call this,
but from the fact that I can see the sea from my window, it must be some
considerable distance from the scene of the accident. I find that
my dressing-case has been opened, my pocket-book examined, and I am
apparently a prisoner. I ask you, Mr. Fentolin, for an explanation.”

Mr. Fentolin smiled reassuringly.

“My dear sir,” he said, “my dear Mr. Dunster, I believe I may have
the pleasure of calling you--your conclusions seem to me just a little
melodramatic. My nephew--Gerald Fentolin--did what I consider the
natural thing, under the circumstances. You had been courteous to him,
and he repaid the obligation to the best of his ability. The accident to
your train happened in a dreary part of the country, some thirty
miles from here. My nephew adopted a course which I think, under the
circumstances, was the natural and hospitable one. He brought you to his
home. There was no hospital or town of any importance nearer.”

“Very well,” Mr. Dunster decided. “I will accept your version of the
affair. I will, then, up to this point acknowledge myself your debtor.
But will you tell me why my dressing-case has been opened, my clothes
removed, and a pocket-book containing papers of great importance to me
has been tampered with?”

“My dear Mr. Dunster,” his host repelled calmly, “you surely cannot
imagine that you are among thieves! Your dressing-case was opened and
the contents of your pocket-book inspected with a view to ascertaining
your address, or the names of some friends with whom we might
communicate.”

“Am I to understand that they are to be restored to me, then?” Mr.
Dunster demanded.

“Without a doubt, yes!” Mr. Fentolin assured him. “You, however, are not
fit for anything, at the present moment, but to return to your bed, from
which I understand you rose rather suddenly a few minutes ago.”

“On the contrary,” Mr. Dunster insisted, “I am feeling absolutely
well enough to travel. I have an appointment on the Continent of great
importance, as you may judge by the fact that at Liverpool Street I
chartered a special train. I trust that nothing in my manner may have
given you offence, but I am anxious to get through with the business
which brought me over to this side of the water. I have sent for you to
ask that my pocket-book, dressing-case, and clothes be at once restored
to me, and that I be provided with the means of continuing my journey
without a moment’s further delay.”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head very gently, very regretfully, but also
firmly.

“Mr. Dunster,” he pleaded, “do be reasonable. Think of all you have been
through. I can quite sympathise with you in your impatience, but I am
forced to tell you that the doctor who has been attending you since
the moment you were brought into this house has absolutely forbidden
anything of the sort.”

Mr. Dunster seemed, for a moment, to struggle for composure.

“I am an American citizen,” he declared. “I am willing to listen to the
advice of any physician, but so long as I take the risk, I am not bound
to follow it.

“In the present case I decline to follow it. I ask for facilities to
leave this house at once.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

“In your own interests,” he said calmly, “they will not be granted to
you.”

Mr. Dunster had spoken all the time like a man struggling to preserve
his self-control. There were signs now that his will was ceasing to
serve him. His eyes flashed fire, his voice was raised.

“Will not be granted to me?” he repeated. “Do you mean to say, then,
that I am to be kept here against my will?”

Mr. Fentolin made no immediate reply. With the delicate fingers of his
right hand he pushed back the hair from his forehead. He looked at his
questioner soothingly, as one might look at a spoiled child.

“Against my will?” Mr. Dunster repeated, raising his voice still higher.
“Mr. Fentolin, if the truth must be told, I have heard of you before and
been warned against you. I decline to accept any longer the hospitality
of your roof. I insist upon leaving it. If you will not provide me with
any means of doing so, I will walk.”

He made a motion as though to rise from the bed. Meekins’ hand very
gently closed upon his arm. One could judge that the grip was like a
grip of iron.

“Dear me,” Mr. Fentolin said, “this is really very unreasonable of
you! If you have heard of me, Mr. Dunster, you ought to understand
that notwithstanding my unfortunate physical trouble, I am a person
of consequence and position in this county. I am a magistrate, ex-high
sheriff, and a great land-owner here. I think I may say without boasting
that I represent one of the most ancient families in this country.
Why, therefore, should you treat me as though it were to my interest to
inveigle you under my roof and keep you there for some guilty purpose?
Cannot you understand that it is for your own good I hesitate to part
with you?”

“I understand nothing of the sort,” Mr. Dunster exclaimed angrily. “Let
us bring this nonsense to an end. I want my clothes, and if you won’t
lend me a car or a trap, I’ll walk to the nearest railway station.”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head.

“I am quite sure,” he said, “that you are not in a position to travel.
Even in the dining-room just now I heard a disturbance for which I was
told that you were responsible.”

“I simply insisted upon having my clothes,” Mr. Dunster explained. “Your
servant refused to fetch them. Perhaps I lost my temper. If so, I am
sorry. I am not used to being thwarted.”

“A few days’ rest--” Mr. Fentolin began.

“A few days’ rest be hanged!” Mr. Dunster interrupted fiercely. “Listen,
Mr. Fentolin,” he added, with the air of one making a last effort to
preserve his temper, “the mission with which I am charged is one of
greater importance than you can imagine. So much depends upon it that
my own life, if that is in danger, would be a mere trifle in comparison
with the issues involved. If I am not allowed to continue upon my
journey at once, the consequences may be more serious than I can tell
you, to you and yours, to your own country. There!--I am telling you a
great deal, but I want you to understand that I am in earnest. I have a
mission which I must perform, and which I must perform quickly.”

“You are very mysterious,” Mr. Fentolin murmured.

“I will leave nothing to chance,” Mr. Dunster continued. “Send this man
who seems to have constituted himself my jailer out of earshot, and I
will tell you even more.”

Mr. Fentolin turned to Meekins.

“You can leave the room for a moment,” he ordered. “Wait upon the
threshold.”

Meekins very unwillingly turned to obey.

“You will excuse me, sir,” he objected doubtfully, “but I am not at all
sure that he is safe.”

Mr. Fentolin smiled faintly.

“You need have no fear, Meekins,” he declared. “I am quite sure that
you are mistaken. I think that Mr. Dunster is incapable of any act of
violence towards a person in my unfortunate position. I am willing to
trust myself with him--perfectly willing, Meekins.”

Meekins, with ponderous footsteps, left the room and closed the door
behind him. Mr. Fentolin leaned a little forward in his chair. It
seemed as though he were on springs. The fingers of his right hand
had disappeared in the pocket of his black velvet dinner-coat. He was
certainly prepared for all emergencies.

“Now, Mr. Dunster,” he said softly, “you can speak to me without
reserve.”

Mr. Dunster dropped his voice. His tone became one of fierce eagerness.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, “I don’t think you ought to force me to give
myself away like this, but, after all, you are an Englishman, with a
stake in your country, and I presume you don’t want her to take a
back seat for the next few generations. Listen here. It’s to save your
country that I want to get to The Hague without a second’s delay. I tell
you that if I don’t get there, if the message I convey doesn’t reach
its destination, you may find an agreement signed between certain Powers
which will mean the greatest diplomatic humiliation which Great Britain
has ever known. Aye, and more than that!” Mr. Dunster continued. “It
may be that the bogey you’ve been setting before yourself for all
these years may trot out into life, and you may find St. David’s Hall a
barrack for German soldiers before many months have passed.”

Mr. Fentolin shook his head in gentle disbelief.

“You are speaking to one,” he declared, “who knows more of the political
situation than you imagine. In my younger days I was in the Foreign
Office. Since my unfortunate accident I have preserved the keenest
interest in politics. I tell you frankly that I do not believe you. As
the Powers are grouped at present, I do not believe in the possibility
of a successful invasion of this country.”

“Perhaps not,” Mr. Dunster replied eagerly, “but the grouping of the
Powers as it has existed during the last few years is on the eve of a
great change. I cannot take you wholly into my confidence. I can only
give you my word of honour as a friend to your country that the message
I carry is her only salvation. Having told you as much as that, I do
not think I am asking too much if I ask you for my clothes and
dressing-case, and for the fastest motor-car you can furnish me with.
I guess I can get from here to Yarmouth, and from there I can charter
something which will take me to the other side.”

Mr. Fentolin raised the little gold whistle to his lips and blew it very
softly. Meekins at once entered, closing the door behind him. He moved
silently to the side of the man who had risen now from the bed, and who
was standing with his hand grasping the post and his eyes fixed upon Mr.
Fentolin, as though awaiting his answer.

“Our conversation,” the latter said calmly, “has reached a point, Mr.
Dunster, at which I think we may leave it for the moment. You have
told me some very surprising things. I perceive that you are a more
interesting visitor even than I had thought.”

He raised his left hand, and Meekins, who seemed to have been waiting
for some signal of the sort, suddenly, with a movement of his knee and
right arm, flung Dunster back upon the bed. The man opened his mouth
to shout, but already, with lightning-like dexterity, his assailant
had inserted a gag between his teeth. Treating his struggles as the
struggles of a baby, Meekins next proceeded to secure his wrists with
handcuffs. He then held his feet together while he quietly wound a coil
of cord around them. Mr. Fentolin watched the proceedings from his chair
with an air of pleased and critical interest.

“Very well done, Meekins--very neatly done, indeed!” he exclaimed. “As
I was saying, Mr. Dunster,” he continued, turning his chair, “our
conversation has reached a point at which I think we may safely leave
it for a time. We will discuss these matters again. Your pretext of a
political mission is, of course, an absurd one, but fortunately you have
fallen into good hands. Take good care of Mr. Dunster, Meekins. I can
see that he is a very important personage. We must be careful not to
lose sight of him.”

Mr. Fentolin steered his chair to the door, opened it, and passed
out. On the landing he blew his whistle; the lift almost immediately
ascended. A moment or two later he glided into the dining-room. The
three men were still seated around the table. A decanter of wine, almost
empty, was before Doctor Sarson, whose pallid cheeks, however, were as
yet unflushed.

“At last, my dear guest,” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed, turning to Hamel, “I
am able to return to you. If you will drink no more wine, let us have
our coffee in the library, you and I. I want to talk to you about the
Tower.”




CHAPTER XV

Mr. Fentolin led the way to a delightful little corner of his library,
where before the open grate, recently piled with hissing logs, an easy
chair had been drawn. He wheeled himself up to the other side of the
hearthrug and leaned back with a little air of exhaustion. The butler,
who seemed to have appeared unsummoned from somewhere among the shadows,
served coffee and poured some old brandy into large and wonderfully thin
glasses.

“Why my house should be turned into an asylum to gratify the hospitable
instincts of my young nephew, I cannot imagine,” Mr. Fentolin grumbled.
“A most extraordinary person, our visitor, I can assure you. Quite
violent, too, he was at first.”

“Have you had any outside advice about his condition?” Hamel inquired.

Mr. Fentolin glanced across those few feet of space and looked at Hamel
with swift suspicion.

“Why should I?” he asked. “Doctor Sarson is fully qualified, and the
case seems to present no unusual characteristics.”

Hamel sipped his brandy thoughtfully.

“I don’t know why I suggested it,” he admitted. “I only thought that an
outside doctor might help you to get rid of the fellow.”

Mr. Fentolin shrugged his shoulders.

“After all,” he said, “the matter is of no real consequence. Doctor
Sarson assures me that we shall be able to send him on his way very
shortly. In the meantime, Mr. Hamel, what about the Tower?”

“What about it?” Hamel asked, selecting a cigar from the box which had
been pushed to his side. “I am sure I haven’t any wish to inconvenience
you.”

“I will be quite frank,” Mr. Fentolin declared. “I do not dispute your
right for a moment. On the other hand, my few hours daily down there
have become a habit with me. I do not wish to give them up. Stay here
with us, Mr. Hamel. You will be doing us a great kindness. My nephew and
niece have too little congenial society. Make up your mind to give us a
fortnight of your time, and I can assure you that we will do our best to
make yours a pleasant stay.”

Hamel was a little taken aback.

“Mr. Fentolin,” he said, “I couldn’t think of accepting your hospitality
to such an extent. My idea in coming here was simply to fulfil an old
promise to my father and to rough it at the Tower for a week or so, and
when that was over, I don’t suppose I should ever be likely to come back
again. You had better let me carry out that plan, and afterwards the
place shall be entirely at your disposal.”

“You don’t quite understand,” Mr. Fentolin persisted, a little
irritably. “I sit there every morning. I want, for instance, to be there
to-morrow morning, and the next morning, and the morning afterwards, to
finish a little seascape I have commenced. Nowhere else will do. Call it
a whim or what you will I have begun the picture, and I want to finish
it.”

“Well, you can sit there all right,” Hamel assured him. “I shall be out
playing golf or fishing. I shall do nothing but sleep there.”

“And very uncomfortable you will be,” Mr. Fentolin pointed out. “You
have no servant, I understand, and there is no one in the village fit to
look after you. Think of my thirty-nine empty rooms, my books here, my
gardens, my motor-cars, my young people, entirely at your service. You
can have a suite to yourself. You can disappear when you like. To all
effects and purposes you will be the master of St. David’s Hall. Be
reasonable. Don’t you think, now, that you can spend a fortnight more
pleasantly under such circumstances than by playing the misanthrope down
at the Tower?”

“Please don’t think,” Hamel begged, “that I don’t appreciate your
hospitality. I should feel uncomfortable, however, if I paid you a visit
of the length you have suggested. Come, I don’t see,” he added, “why my
occupation of the Tower should interfere with you. I should be away from
it by about nine or ten o’clock every morning. I should probably only
sleep there. Can’t you accept the use of it all the rest of the time? I
can assure you that you will be welcome to come and go as though it were
entirely your own.”

Mr. Fentolin had lit a cigarette and was watching the blue smoke curl
upwards to the ceiling.

“You’re an obstinate man, Mr. Hamel,” he sighed, “but I suppose you must
have your own way. By-the-by, you would only need to use the up-stairs
room and the sitting-room. You will not need the outhouse--rather more
than an outhouse, though isn’t it? I mean the shed which leads out from
the kitchen, where the lifeboat used to be kept?”

“I don’t think I shall need that,” Hamel admitted, a little
hesitatingly.

“To tell you the truth,” Mr. Fentolin continued, “among my other hobbies
I have done a little inventing. I work sometimes at a model there. It is
foolish, perhaps, but I wish no one to see it. Do you mind if I keep the
keys of the place?”

“Not in the least,” Hamel replied. “Tell me, what direction do your
inventions take, Mr. Fentolin?”

“Before you go,” Mr. Fentolin promised, “I will show you my little model
at work. Until then we will not talk of it. Now come, be frank with me.
Shall we exchange ideas for a little time? Will you talk of books? They
are my daily friends. I have thousands of them, beloved companions on
every side. Or will you talk of politics or travel? Or would you
rather be frivolous with my niece and nephew? That, I think, is Esther
playing.”

“To be quite frank,” Hamel declared bluntly, “I should like to talk to
your niece.”

Mr. Fentolin smiled as though amused. His amusement, however, was
perfectly good-natured.

“If you will open this door,” he said, “you will see another one exactly
opposite to you. That is the drawing-room. You will find Esther there.
Before you go, will you pass me the Quarterly Review? Thank you.”

Hamel crossed the hall, opened the door of the room to which he had been
directed, and made his way towards the piano. Esther was there, playing
softly to herself with eyes half closed. He came and stood by her side,
and she stopped abruptly. Her eyes questioned him. Then her fingers
stole once more over the keys, more softly still.

“I have just left your uncle,” Hamel said. “He told me that I might come
in here.”

“Yes?” she murmured.

“He was very hospitable,” Hamel continued. “He wanted me to remain here
as a guest and not go to the Tower at all.”

“And you?”

“I am going to the Tower,” he said. “I am going there to-morrow or the
day after.”

The music swelled beneath her fingers.

“For how long?”

“For a week or so. I am just giving your uncle time to clear out his
belongings. I am leaving him the outhouse.”

“He asked you to leave him that?” she whispered.

“Yes!”

“You are not going in there at all?”

“Not at all.”

Again she played a little more loudly for a few moments. Then the music
died away once more.

“What reason did he give for keeping possession of that?”

“Another hobby,” Hamel replied. “He is an inventor, it seems. He has the
model of something there; he would not tell me what.”

She shivered a little, and her music drifted away. She bent over the
keys, her face hidden from him.

“You will not go away just yet?” she asked softly. “You are going to
stay for a few days, at any rate?”

“Without a doubt,” he assured her. “I am altogether my own master.”

“Thank God,” she murmured.

He leaned with his elbow against the top of the piano, looking down at
her. Since dinnertime she had fastened a large red rose in the front of
her gown.

“Do you know that this is all rather mysterious?” he said calmly.

“What is mysterious?” she demanded.

“The atmosphere of the place: your uncle’s queer aversion to my having
the Tower; your visitor up-stairs, who fights with the servants while we
are at dinner; your uncle himself, whose will seems to be law not only
to you but to your brother, who must be of age, I should think, and who
seems to have plenty of spirit.”

“We live here, both of us,” she told him. “He is our guardian.”

“Naturally,” Hamel replied, “and yet, it may have been my fancy, of
course, but at dinnertime I seemed to get a queer impression.”

“Tell it me?” she insisted, her fingers breaking suddenly into a
livelier melody. “Tell it me at once? You were there all the time. I
could see you watching. Tell me what you thought?”

She had turned her head now, and her eyes were fixed upon his. They were
large and soft, capable, he knew, of infinite expression. Yet at that
moment the light that shone from them was simply one of fear, half
curious, half shrinking.

“My impression,” he said, “was that both of you disliked and feared Mr.
Fentolin, yet for some reason or other that you were his abject slaves.”

Her fingers seemed suddenly inspired with diabolical strength and
energy. Strange chords crashed and broke beneath them. She played some
unfamiliar music with tense and fierce energy. Suddenly she paused and
rose to her feet.

“Come out on to the terrace,” she invited. “You are not afraid of cold?”

He followed her without a word. She opened the French windows, and they
stepped out on to the long, broad stone promenade. The night was dark,
and there was little to be seen. The light was burning at the entrance
to the waterway; a few lights were twinkling from the village. The soft
moaning of the sea was distinctly audible. She moved to the edge of the
palisading. He followed her closely.

“You are right, Mr. Hamel,” she said. “I think that I am more afraid of
him than any woman ever was of any man in this world.”

“Then why do you live here?” he protested. “You must have other
relations to whom you could go. And your brother--why doesn’t he do
something--go into one of the professions? He could surely leave easily
enough?”

“I will tell you a secret,” she answered calmly. “Perhaps it will help
you to understand. You know my uncle’s condition. You know that it was
the result of an accident?”

“I have heard so,” he replied gravely.

She clutched at his arm.

“Come,” she said.

Side by side they walked the entire length of the terrace. When they
reached the corner, they were met with a fierce gust of wind. She
battled along, and he followed her. They were looking inland now.
There were no lights visible--nothing but dark, chaotic emptiness. From
somewhere below him he could hear the wind in the tree-tops.

“This way,” she directed. “Be careful.”

They walked to the very edge of the palisading. It was scarcely more
than a couple of feet high. She pointed downwards.

“Can you see?” she whispered.

By degrees his eyes faintly penetrated the darkness. It was as though
they were looking down a precipice. The descent was perfectly sheer for
nearly a hundred feet. At the bottom were the pine trees.

“Come here again in the morning,” she whispered. “You will see then. I
brought you here to show you the place. It was here that the accident
happened.”

“What accident?”

“Mr. Fentolin’s,” she continued. “It was here that he went over. He was
picked up with both his legs broken. They never thought that he would
live.”

Hamel shivered a little. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness,
he saw more distinctly than ever the sheer fall, the tops of the bending
trees below.

“What a horrible thing!” he exclaimed.

“It was more horrible than you know,” she continued, dropping her voice
a little, almost whispering in his ear. “I do not know why I tell you
this--you, a stranger--but if I do not tell some one, I think that the
memory of it will drive me mad. It was no accident at all. Mr. Fentolin
was thrown over!”

“By whom?” he asked.

She clung to his arm for a moment.

“Ah, don’t ask me!” she begged. “No one knows. My uncle gave out, as
soon as he was conscious, that it was an accident.”

“That, at any rate, was fine of him,” Hamel declared.

She shivered.

“He was proud, at least, of our family name. Whatever credit he deserves
for it, he must have. It was owing to that accident that we became his
slaves: nothing but that--his absolute slaves, to wait upon him, if he
would, hand and foot. You see, he has never been able to marry. His life
was, of course, ruined. So the burden came to us. We took it up, little
thinking what was in store for us. Five years ago we came here to live.
Gerald wanted to go into the army; I wanted to travel with my mother.
Gerald has done all the work secretly, but he has never been allowed
to pass his examinations. I have never left England except to spend two
years at the strictest boarding-school in Paris, to which I was taken
and fetched away by one of his creatures. We live here, with the shadow
of this thing always with us. We are his puppets. If we hesitate to do
his bidding, he reminds us. So far, we have been his creatures, body and
soul. Whether it will go on, I cannot say--oh, I cannot say! It is bad
for us, but--there is mother, too. He make

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