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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 04

by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #30700 · 586,059 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 04

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Other: Andrew Lang


        
Release date: December 17, 2009 [eBook #30700]
                Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

Original publication: London: Chatto and Windus; in association with, 1911

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30700

Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON - SWANSTON EDITION, VOL. 04 ***




Produced by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









       THE WORKS OF
  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

     SWANSTON EDITION

        VOLUME IV


  _Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
  Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
  STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
  have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
  Copies are for sale._

  _This is No._ .......


  [Illustration: TREE AT SWANSTON BEARING INITIALS OF R. L. S.]

  THE WORKS OF
  ROBERT LOUIS
   STEVENSON

  VOLUME FOUR


  LONDON : PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
  WINDUS : IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
  AND COMPANY LIMITED : WILLIAM
  HEINEMANN : AND LONGMANS GREEN
  AND COMPANY      MDCCCCXI

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS


  THE SUICIDE CLUB
                                                                    PAGE

    STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE CREAM TARTS                        5

    THE STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN AND THE SARATOGA TRUNK                 37

    THE ADVENTURE OF THE HANSOM CABS                                  65


  THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND

    STORY OF THE BANDBOX                                              86

    STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN IN HOLY ORDERS                            111

    THE STORY OF THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN BLINDS                     127

    THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCE FLORIZEL AND A DETECTIVE                 159


  THE PAVILION ON THE LINKS

    CHAPTER

       I. TELLS HOW I CAMPED IN GRADEN SEA-WOOD, AND BEHELD A
               LIGHT IN THE PAVILION                                 167

      II. TELLS OF THE NOCTURNAL LANDING FROM THE YACHT              174

     III. TELLS HOW I BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MY WIFE                 180

      IV. TELLS IN WHAT A STARTLING MANNER I LEARNED THAT I WAS
               NOT ALONE IN GRADEN SEA-WOOD                          189

       V. TELLS OF AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN NORTHMOUR, CLARA, AND
               MYSELF                                                197

      VI. TELLS OF MY INTRODUCTION TO THE TALL MAN                   202

     VII. TELLS HOW A WORD WAS CRIED THROUGH THE PAVILION WINDOW     208

    VIII. TELLS THE LAST OF THE TALL MAN                             214

      IX. TELLS HOW NORTHMOUR CARRIED OUT HIS THREAT                 221


  A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT                                            227

  THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR                                       250

  PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR                                          273




NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS




TO

ROBERT ALAN MOWBRAY STEVENSON

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR YOUTH AND THEIR ALREADY OLD AFFECTION




NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS




THE SUICIDE CLUB


STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE CREAM TARTS

During his residence in London, the accomplished Prince Florizel of
Bohemia gained the affection of all classes by the seduction of his
manner and by a well-considered generosity. He was a remarkable man even
by what was known of him; and that was but a small part of what he
actually did. Although of a placid temper in ordinary circumstances, and
accustomed to take the world with as much philosophy as any ploughman,
the Prince of Bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more
adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his
birth. Now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no
laughable play to witness in any of the London theatres, and when the
season of the year was unsuitable to those field sports in which he
excelled all competitors, he would summon his confidant and Master of
the Horse, Colonel Geraldine, and bid him prepare himself against an
evening ramble. The Master of the Horse was a young officer of a brave
and even temerarious disposition. He greeted the news with delight, and
hastened to make ready. Long practice and a varied acquaintance of life
had given him a singular facility in disguise; he could adapt, not only
his face and bearing, but his voice and almost his thoughts, to those of
any rank, character, or nation; and in this way he diverted attention
from the Prince, and sometimes gained admission for the pair into
strange societies. The civil authorities were never taken into the
secret of these adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the
ready invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them
through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as time
went on.

One evening in March they were driven by a sharp fall of sleet into an
Oyster Bar in the immediate neighbourhood of Leicester Square. Colonel
Geraldine was dressed and painted to represent a person connected with
the Press in reduced circumstances; while the Prince had, as usual,
travestied his appearance by the addition of false whiskers and a pair
of large adhesive eyebrows. These lent him a shaggy and weather-beaten
air, which, for one of his urbanity, formed the most impenetrable
disguise. Thus equipped, the commander and his satellite sipped their
brandy and soda in security.

The bar was full of guests, male and female; but though more than one of
these offered to fall into talk with our adventurers, none of them
promised to grow interesting upon a nearer acquaintance. There was
nothing present but the lees of London and the commonplace of
disrespectability; and the Prince had already fallen to yawning, and was
beginning to grow weary of the whole excursion, when the swing doors
were pushed violently open, and a young man, followed by a couple of
commissionaires, entered the bar. Each of the commissionaires carried a
large dish of cream tarts under a cover, which they at once removed; and
the young man made the round of the company, and pressed these
confections upon every one's acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy.
Sometimes the offer was laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or
even harshly, rejected. In these latter cases the new-comer always ate
the tart himself, with some more or less humorous commentary.

At last he accosted Prince Florizel.

"Sir," said he, with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at the
same time between his thumb and forefinger, "will you so far honour an
entire stranger? I can answer for the quality of the pastry, having
eaten two dozen and three of them myself since five o'clock."

"I am in the habit," replied the Prince, "of looking not so much to the
nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered."

"The spirit, sir," returned the young man, with another bow, "is one of
mockery."

"Mockery!" repeated Florizel. "And whom do you propose to mock?"

"I am not here to expound my philosophy," replied the other, "but to
distribute these cream tarts. If I mention that I heartily include
myself in the ridicule of the transaction, I hope you will consider
honour satisfied and condescend. If not, you will constrain me to eat my
twenty-eighth, and I own to being weary of the exercise."

"You touch me," said the Prince, "and I have all the will in the world
to rescue you from this dilemma, but upon one condition. If my friend
and I eat your cakes--for which we have neither of us any natural
inclination--we shall expect you to join us at supper by way of
recompense."

The young man seemed to reflect.

"I have still several dozen upon hand," he said at last; "and that will
make it necessary for me to visit several more bars before my great
affair is concluded. This will take some time; and if you are
hungry----"

The Prince interrupted him with a polite gesture.

"My friend and I will accompany you," he said; "for we have already a
deep interest in your very agreeable mode of passing an evening. And now
that the preliminaries of peace are settled, allow me to sign the treaty
for both."

And the Prince swallowed the tart with the best grace imaginable.

"It is delicious," said he.

"I perceive you are a connoisseur," replied the young man.

Colonel Geraldine likewise did honour to the pastry; and every one in
that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies, the young
man with the cream tarts led the way to another and similar
establishment. The two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown
accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after; and
the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm-in-arm, and smiling
to each other as they went. In this order the company visited two other
taverns, where scenes were enacted of a like nature to that already
described--some refusing, some accepting, the favours of this vagabond
hospitality, and the young man himself eating each rejected tart.

On leaving the third saloon the young man counted his store. There were
but nine remaining, three in one tray and six in the other.

"Gentlemen," said he, addressing himself to his two new followers, "I am
unwilling to delay your supper. I am positively sure you must be hungry.
I feel that I owe you a special consideration. And on this great day for
me, when I am closing a career of folly by my most conspicuously silly
action, I wish to behave handsomely to all who give me countenance.
Gentlemen, you shall wait no longer. Although my constitution is
shattered by previous excesses, at the risk of my life I liquidate the
suspensory condition."

With these words he crushed the nine remaining tarts into his mouth, and
swallowed them at a single movement each. Then, turning to the
commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns.

"I have to thank you," said he, "for your extraordinary patience."

And he dismissed them with a bow apiece. For some seconds he stood
looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants, then,
with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and signified
his readiness for supper.

In a small French restaurant in Soho, which had enjoyed an exaggerated
reputation for some little while, but had already begun to be forgotten,
and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three companions made a
very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles of champagne,
talking the while upon indifferent subjects. The young man was fluent
and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a person of polite
breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice took sudden and
surprising inflections, which seemed to be independent of his will. The
dessert had been cleared away, and all three had lighted their cigars,
when the Prince addressed him in these words:--

"You will, I am sure, pardon my curiosity. What I have seen of you has
greatly pleased but even more puzzled me. And though I should be loth to
seem indiscreet, I must tell you that my friend and I are persons very
well worthy to be entrusted with a secret. We have many of our own,
which we are continually revealing to improper ears. And if, as I
suppose, your story is a silly one, you need have no delicacy with us,
who are two of the silliest men in England. My name is Godall,
Theophilus Godall; my friend is Major Alfred Hammersmith--or at least,
such is the name by which he chooses to be known. We pass our lives
entirely in the search for extravagant adventures; and there is no
extravagance with which we are not capable of sympathy."

"I like you, Mr. Godall," returned the young man; "you inspire me with a
natural confidence; and I have not the slightest objection to your
friend the Major, whom I take to be a nobleman in masquerade. At least,
I am sure he is no soldier."

The Colonel smiled at this compliment to the perfection of his art; and
the young man went on in a more animated manner.

"There is every reason why I should not tell you my story. Perhaps that
is just the reason why I am going to do so. At least, you seem so well
prepared to hear a tale of silliness that I cannot find it in my heart
to disappoint you. My name, in spite of your example, I shall keep to
myself. My age is not essential to the narrative. I am descended from my
ancestors by ordinary generation, and from them I inherited the very
eligible human tenement which I still occupy and a fortune of three
hundred pounds a year. I suppose they also handed on to me a harebrain
humour, which it has been my chief delight to indulge. I received a good
education. I can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money in the
orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite. The same remark applies to the
flute and the French horn. I learned enough of whist to lose about a
hundred a year at that scientific game. My acquaintance with French was
sufficient to enable me to squander money in Paris with almost the same
facility as in London. In short, I am a person full of manly
accomplishments. I have had every sort of adventure, including a duel
about nothing. Only two months ago I met a young lady exactly suited to
my taste in mind and body; I found my heart melt; I saw that I had come
upon my fate at last, and was in the way to fall in love. But when I
came to reckon up what remained to me of my capital, I found it amounted
to something less than four hundred pounds! I ask you fairly--can a man
who respects himself fall in love on four hundred pounds? I concluded,
certainly not; left the presence of my charmer, and slightly
accelerating my usual rate of expenditure, came this morning to my last
eighty pounds. This I divided into two equal parts; forty I reserved for
a particular purpose; the remaining forty I was to dissipate before the
night. I have passed a very entertaining day, and played many farces
besides that of the cream tarts which procured me the advantage of your
acquaintance; for I was determined, as I told you, to bring a foolish
career to a still more foolish conclusion; and when you saw me throw my
purse into the street the forty pounds were at an end. Now you know me
as well as I know myself: a fool, but consistent in his folly; and, as I
will ask you to believe, neither a whimperer nor a coward."

From the whole tone of the young man's statement it was plain that he
harboured very bitter and contemptuous thoughts about himself. His
auditors were led to imagine that his love affair was nearer his heart
than he admitted, and that he had a design on his own life. The farce of
the cream tarts began to have very much the air of a tragedy in
disguise.

"Why, is this not odd," broke out Geraldine, giving a look to Prince
Florizel, "that we three fellows should have met by the merest accident
in so large a wilderness as London, and should be so nearly in the same
condition?"

"How?" cried the young man. "Are you, too, ruined? Is this supper a
folly like my cream tarts? Has the devil brought three of his own
together for a last carouse?"

"The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing,"
returned Prince Florizel; "and I am so much touched by this coincidence
that, although we are not entirely in the same case, I am going to put
an end to the disparity. Let your heroic treatment of the last cream
tarts be my example."

So saying, the Prince drew out his purse and took from it a small bundle
of bank-notes.

"You see, I was a week or so behind you, but I mean to catch you up and
come neck-and-neck into the winning-post," he continued. "This," laying
one of the notes upon the table, "will suffice for the bill. As for the
rest----"

He tossed them into the fire, and they went up the chimney in a single
blaze.

The young man tried to catch his arm, but as the table was between them
his interference came too late.

"Unhappy man," he cried, "you should not have burned them all! You
should have kept forty pounds."

"Forty pounds!" repeated the Prince. "Why, in Heaven's name, forty
pounds?"

"Why not eighty?" cried the Colonel; "for to my certain knowledge there
must have been a hundred in the bundle."

"It was only forty pounds he needed," said the young man gloomily. "But
without them there is no admission. The rule is strict. Forty pounds for
each. Accursed life, where a man cannot even die without money!"

The Prince and the Colonel exchanged glances.

"Explain yourself," said the latter. "I have still a pocket-book
tolerably well lined, and I need not say how readily I should share my
wealth with Godall. But I must know to what end: you must certainly tell
us what you mean."

The young man seemed to awaken: he looked uneasily from one to the
other, and his face flushed deeply.

"You are not fooling me?" he asked. "You are indeed ruined men like me?"

"Indeed, I am for my part," replied the Colonel.

"And for mine," said the Prince, "I have given you proof. Who but a
ruined man would throw his notes into the fire? The action speaks for
itself."

"A ruined man--yes," returned the other suspiciously, "or else a
millionaire."

"Enough, sir," said the Prince; "I have said so, and I am not accustomed
to have my word remain in doubt."

"Ruined?" said the young man. "Are you ruined, like me? Are you, after a
life of indulgence, come to such a pass that you can only indulge
yourself in one thing more? Are you"--he kept lowering his voice as he
went on--"are you going to give yourselves that last indulgence? Are you
going to avoid the consequences of your folly by the one infallible and
easy path? Are you going to give the slip to the sheriff's officers of
conscience by the one open door?"

Suddenly he broke off and attempted to laugh.

"Here is your health!" he cried, emptying his glass, "and good-night to
you, my merry ruined men."

Colonel Geraldine caught him by the arm as he was about to rise.

"You lack confidence in us," he said, "and you are wrong. To all your
questions I make answer in the affirmative. But I am not so timid, and
can speak the Queen's English plainly. We too, like yourself, have had
enough of life, and are determined to die. Sooner or later, alone or
together, we meant to seek out death and beard him where he lies ready.
Since we have met you, and your case is more pressing, let it be
to-night--and at once--and, if you will, all three together. Such a
penniless trio," he cried, "should go arm-in-arm into the halls of
Pluto, and give each other some countenance among the shades!"

Geraldine had hit exactly on the manners and intonations that became the
part he was playing. The Prince himself was disturbed, and looked over
at his confidant with a shade of doubt. As for the young man, the flush
came back darkly into his cheek, and his eyes threw out a spark of
light.

"You are the men for me!" he cried, with an almost terrible gaiety.
"Shake hands upon the bargain!" (his hand was cold and wet). "You little
know in what a company you will begin the march! You little know in what
a happy moment for yourselves you partook of my cream tarts! I am only a
unit, but I am a unit in an army. I know Death's private door. I am one
of his familiars, and can show you into eternity without ceremony and
yet without scandal."

They called upon him eagerly to explain his meaning.

"Can you muster eighty pounds between you?" he demanded.

Geraldine ostentatiously consulted his pocket-book, and replied in the
affirmative.

"Fortunate beings!" cried the young man. "Forty pounds is the
entry-money of the Suicide Club."

"The Suicide Club," said the Prince, "why, what the devil is that?"

"Listen," said the young man; "this is the age of conveniences, and I
have to tell you of the last perfection of the sort. We have affairs in
different places; and hence railways were invented. Railways separated
us infallibly from our friends; and so telegraphs were made that we
might communicate speedily at great distances. Even in hotels we have
lifts to spare us a climb of some hundred steps. Now, we know that life
is only a stage to play the fool upon as long as the part amuses us.
There was one more convenience lacking to modern comfort: a decent, easy
way to quit that stage; the back stairs to liberty; or, as I said this
moment, Death's private door. This, my two fellow-rebels, is supplied by
the Suicide Club. Do not suppose that you and I are alone, or even
exceptional, in the highly reasonable desire that we profess. A large
number of our fellowmen, who have grown heartily sick of the performance
in which they are expected to join daily, and all their lives long, are
only kept from flight by one or two considerations. Some have families
who would be shocked, or even blamed, if the matter became public;
others have a weakness at heart and recoil from the circumstances of
death. That is, to some extent, my own experience. I cannot put a pistol
to my head and draw the trigger; for something stronger than myself
withholds the act; and although I loathe life, I have not strength
enough in my body to take hold of death and be done with it. For such as
I, and for all who desire to be out of the coil without posthumous
scandal, the Suicide Club has been inaugurated. How this has been
managed, what is its history, or what may be its ramifications in other
lands, I am myself uninformed; and what I know of its constitution, I
am not at liberty to communicate to you. To this extent, however, I am
at your service. If you are truly tired of life, I will introduce you
to-night to a meeting; and if not to-night, at least some time within
the week, you will be easily relieved of your existences. It is now
(consulting his watch) eleven; by half-past, at latest, we must leave
this place; so that you have half an hour before you to consider my
proposal. It is more serious than a cream tart," he added, with a smile;
"and I suspect more palatable."

"More serious, certainly," returned Colonel Geraldine; "and as it is so
much more so, will you allow me five minutes' speech in private with my
friend Mr. Godall?"

"It is only fair," answered the young man. "If you will permit, I will
retire."

"You will be very obliging," said the Colonel.

As soon as the two were alone--"What," said Prince Florizel, "is the use
of this confabulation, Geraldine? I see you are flurried, whereas my
mind is very tranquilly made up. I will see the end of this."

"Your Highness," said the Colonel, turning pale; "let me ask you to
consider the importance of your life, not only to your friends, but to
the public interest. 'If not to-night,' said this madman; but supposing
that to-night some irreparable disaster were to overtake your Highness's
person, what, let me ask you, what would be my despair, and what the
concern and disaster of a great nation?"

"I will see the end of this," repeated the Prince in his most deliberate
tones; "and have the kindness, Colonel Geraldine, to remember and
respect your word of honour as a gentleman. Under no circumstances,
recollect, nor without my special authority, are you to betray the
incognito under which I choose to go abroad. These were my commands,
which I now reiterate. And now," he added, "let me ask you to call for
the bill."

Colonel Geraldine bowed in submission; but he had a very white face as
he summoned the young man of the cream tarts, and issued his directions
to the waiter. The Prince preserved his undisturbed demeanour, and
described a Palais-Royal farce to the young suicide with great humour
and gusto. He avoided the Colonel's appealing looks without ostentation,
and selected another cheroot with more than usual care. Indeed, he was
now the only man of the party who kept any command over his nerves.

The bill was discharged, the Prince giving the whole change of the note
to the astonished waiter; and the three drove off in a four-wheeler.
They were not long upon the way before the cab stopped at the entrance
to a rather dark court. Here all descended.

After Geraldine had paid the fare, the young man turned, and addressed
Prince Florizel as follows:--

"It is still time, Mr. Godall, to make good your escape into thraldom.
And for you too, Major Hammersmith. Reflect well before you take another
step; and if your hearts say no--here are the cross-roads."

"Lead on, sir," said the Prince, "I am not the man to go back from a
thing once said."

"Your coolness does me good," replied their guide. "I have never seen
any one so unmoved at this conjuncture; and yet you are not the first
whom I have escorted to this door. More than one of my friends has
preceded me, where I knew I must shortly follow. But this is of no
interest to you. Wait me here for only a few moments; I shall return as
soon as I have arranged the preliminaries of your introduction."

And with that the young man, waving his hand to his companions, turned
into the court, entered a doorway and disappeared.

"Of all our follies," said Colonel Geraldine in a low voice, "this is
the wildest and most dangerous."

"I perfectly believe so," returned the Prince.

"We have still," pursued the Colonel, "a moment to ourselves. Let me
beseech your Highness to profit by the opportunity and retire. The
consequences of this step are so dark, and may be so grave, that I feel
myself justified in pushing a little further than usual the liberty
which your Highness is so condescending as to allow me in private."

"Am I to understand that Colonel Geraldine is afraid?" asked his
Highness, taking his cheroot from his lips, and looking keenly into the
other's face.

"My fear is certainly not personal," replied the other proudly; "of that
your Highness may rest well assured."

"I had supposed as much," returned the Prince, with undisturbed
good-humour; "but I was unwilling to remind you of the difference in our
stations. No more--no more," he added, seeing Geraldine about to
apologise; "you stand excused."

And he smoked placidly, leaning against a railing, until the young man
returned.

"Well," he asked, "has our reception been arranged?"

"Follow me," was the reply. "The President will see you in the cabinet.
And let me warn you to be frank in your answers. I have stood your
guarantee; but the club requires a searching inquiry before admission;
for the indiscretion of a single member would lead to the dispersion of
the whole society for ever."

The Prince and Geraldine put their heads together for a moment. "Bear me
out in this," said the one; and "bear me out in that," said the other;
and by boldly taking up the characters of men with whom both were
acquainted, they had come to an agreement in a twinkling, and were ready
to follow their guide into the President's cabinet.

There were no formidable obstacles to pass. The outer door stood open;
the door of the cabinet was ajar; and there, in a small but very high
apartment, the young man left them once more.

"He will be here immediately," he said with a nod, as he disappeared.

Voices were audible in the cabinet through the folding-doors which
formed one end; and now and then the noise of a champagne cork, followed
by a burst of laughter, intervened among the sounds of conversation. A
single tall window looked out upon the river and the embankment; and by
the disposition of the lights they judged themselves not far from
Charing Cross station. The furniture was scanty, and the coverings worn
to the thread; and there was nothing movable except a hand-bell in the
centre of a round table, and the hats and coats of a considerable party
hung round the wall on pegs.

"What sort of a den is this?" said Geraldine.

"That is what I have come to see," replied the Prince. "If they keep
live devils on the premises, the thing may grow amusing."

Just then the folding-door was opened no more than was necessary for the
passage of a human body; and there entered at the same moment a louder
buzz of talk, and the redoubtable President of the Suicide Club. The
President was a man of fifty or upwards; large and rambling in his gait,
with shaggy side whiskers, a bald top to his head, and a veiled grey
eye, which now and then emitted a twinkle. His mouth, which embraced a
large cigar, he kept continually screwing round and round and from side
to side, as he looked sagaciously and coldly at the strangers. He was
dressed in light tweeds, with his neck very open in a striped shirt
collar; and carried a minute-book under one arm.

"Good-evening," said he, after he had closed the door behind him. "I am
told you wish to speak with me."

"We have a desire, sir, to join the Suicide Club," replied the Colonel.

The President rolled his cigar about in his mouth.

"What is that?" he said abruptly.

"Pardon me," returned the Colonel, "but I believe you are the person
best qualified to give us information on that point."

"I?" cried the President. "A Suicide Club? Come, come! this is a frolic
for All Fools' Day. I can make allowances for gentlemen who get merry
in their liquor; but let there be an end to this."

"Call your club what you will," said the Colonel; "you have some company
behind these doors, and we insist on joining it."

"Sir," returned the President curtly, "you have made a mistake. This is
a private house, and you must leave it instantly."

The Prince had remained quietly in his seat throughout this little
colloquy; but now, when the Colonel looked over to him, as much as to
say, "Take your answer and come away, for God's sake!" he drew his
cheroot from his mouth, and spoke--

"I have come here," said he, "upon the invitation of a friend of yours.
He has doubtless informed you of my intention in thus intruding on your
party. Let me remind you that a person in my circumstances has
exceedingly little to bind him, and is not at all likely to tolerate
much rudeness. I am a very quiet man, as a usual thing; but, my dear
sir, you are either going to oblige me in the little matter of which you
are aware, or you shall very bitterly repent that you ever admitted me
to your ante-chamber."

The President laughed aloud.

"That is the way to speak," said he. "You are a man who is a man. You
know the way to my heart, and can do what you like with me. Will you,"
he continued, addressing Geraldine, "will you step aside for a few
minutes? I shall finish first with your companion, and some of the
club's formalities require to be fulfilled in private."

With the words he opened the door of a small closet, into which he shut
the Colonel.

"I believe in you," he said to Florizel, as soon as they were alone;
"but are you sure of your friend?"

"Not so sure as I am of myself, though he has more cogent reasons,"
answered Florizel, "but sure enough to bring him here without alarm. He
has had enough to cure the most tenacious man of life. He was cashiered
the other day for cheating at cards."

"A good reason, I daresay," replied the President; "at least, we have
another in the same case, and I feel sure of him. Have you also been in
the Service, may I ask?"

"I have," was the reply; "but I was too lazy--I left it early."

"What is your reason for being tired of life?" pursued the President.

"The same, as near as I can make out," answered the Prince:
"unadulterated laziness."

The President started. "D--n it," said he, "you must have something
better than that."

"I have no more money," added Florizel. "That is also a vexation,
without doubt. It brings my sense of idleness to an acute point."

The President rolled his cigar round in his mouth for some seconds,
directing his gaze straight into the eyes of this unusual neophyte; but
the Prince supported his scrutiny with unabashed good temper.

"If I had not a deal of experience," said the President at last, "I
should turn you off. But I know the world; and this much any way, that
the most frivolous excuses for a suicide are often the toughest to stand
by. And when I downright like a man, as I do you, sir, I would rather
strain the regulation than deny him."

The Prince and the Colonel, one after the other, were subjected to a
long and particular interrogatory: the Prince alone; but Geraldine in
the presence of the Prince, so that the President might observe the
countenance of the one while the other was being warmly cross-examined.
The result was satisfactory; and the President, after having booked a
few details of each case, produced a form of oath to be accepted.
Nothing could be conceived more passive than the obedience promised, or
more stringent than the terms by which the juror bound himself. The man
who forfeited a pledge so awful could scarcely have a rag of honour or
any of the consolations of religion left to him. Florizel signed the
document, but not without a shudder; the Colonel followed his example
with an air of great depression. Then the President received the entry
money; and without more ado, introduced the two friends into the
smoking-room of the Suicide Club.

The smoking-room of the Suicide Club was the same height as the cabinet
into which it opened, but much larger, and papered from top to bottom
with an imitation of oak wainscot. A large and cheerful fire and a
number of gas-jets illuminated the company. The Prince and his follower
made the number up to eighteen. Most of the party were smoking, and
drinking champagne; a feverish hilarity reigned, with sudden and rather
ghastly pauses.

"Is this a full meeting?" asked the Prince.

"Middling," said the President.--"By the way," he added, "if you have
any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. It keeps up a good
spirit, and is one of my own little perquisites."

"Hammersmith," said Florizel, "I may leave the champagne to you."

And with that he turned away and began to go round among the guests.
Accustomed to play the host in the highest circles, he charmed and
dominated all whom he approached; there was something at once winning
and authoritative in his address; and his extraordinary coolness gave
him yet another distinction in this half-maniacal society. As he went
from one to another he kept both his eyes and ears open, and soon began
to gain a general idea of the people among whom he found himself. As in
all other places of resort, one type predominated: people in the prime
of youth, with every show of intelligence and sensibility in their
appearance, but with little promise of strength or the quality that
makes success. Few were much above thirty, and not a few were still in
their teens. They stood, leaning on tables and shifting on their feet;
sometimes they smoked extraordinarily fast, and sometimes they let
their cigars go out; some talked well, but the conversation of others
was plainly the result of nervous tension, and was equally without wit
or purport. As each new bottle of champagne was opened, there was a
manifest improvement in gaiety. Only two were seated--one in a chair in
the recess of the window, with his head hanging and his hands plunged
deep into his trousers pockets, pale, visibly moist with perspiration,
saying never a word, a very wreck of soul and body; the other sat on the
divan close by the chimney, and attracted notice by a trenchant
dissimilarity from all the rest. He was probably upwards of forty, but
he looked fully ten years older; and Florizel thought he had never seen
a man more naturally hideous, nor one more ravaged by disease and
ruinous excitements. He was no more than skin and bone, was partly
paralysed, and wore spectacles of such unusual power that his eyes
appeared through the glasses greatly magnified and distorted in shape.
Except the Prince and the President, he was the only person in the room
who preserved the composure of ordinary life.

There was little decency among the members of the club. Some boasted of
the disgraceful actions, the consequences of which had reduced them to
seek refuge in death; and the others listened without disapproval. There
was a tacit understanding against moral judgments; and whoever passed
the club doors enjoyed already some of the immunities of the tomb. They
drank to each other's memories, and to those of notable suicides in the
past. They compared and developed their different views of death--some
declaring that it was no more than blackness and cessation; others full
of a hope that that very night they should be scaling the stars and
commercing with the mighty dead.

"To the eternal memory of Baron Trenck, the type of suicides!" cried
one. "He went out of a small cell into a smaller, that he might come
forth again to freedom."

"For my part," said a second, "I wish no more than a bandage for my eyes
and cotton for my ears. Only they have no cotton thick enough in this
world."

A third was for reading the mysteries of life in a future state; and a
fourth professed that he would never have joined the club if he had not
been induced to believe in Mr. Darwin.

"I could not bear," said this remarkable suicide, "to be descended from
an ape."

Altogether, the Prince was disappointed by the bearing and conversation
of the members.

"It does not seem to me," he thought, "a matter of so much disturbance.
If a man has made up his mind to kill himself, let him do it, in God's
name, like a gentleman. This flutter and big talk is out of place."

In the meanwhile Colonel Geraldine was a prey to the blackest
apprehensions; the club and its rules were still a mystery, and he
looked round the room for some one who should be able to set his mind at
rest. In this survey his eye lighted on the paralytic person with the
strong spectacles; and seeing him so exceedingly tranquil, he besought
the President, who was going in and out of the room under a pressure of
business, to present him to the gentleman on the divan.

The functionary explained the needlessness of all such formalities
within the club, but nevertheless presented Mr. Hammersmith to Mr.
Malthus.

Mr. Malthus looked at the Colonel curiously, and then requested him to
take a seat upon his right.

"You are a new-comer," he said, "and wish information? You have come to
the proper source. It is two years since I first visited this charming
club."

The Colonel breathed again. If Mr. Malthus had frequented the place for
two years there could be little danger for the Prince in a single
evening. But Geraldine was none the less astonished, and began to
suspect a mystification.

"What!" cried he, "two years! I thought--but indeed I see I have been
made the subject of a pleasantry."

"By no means," replied Mr. Malthus mildly. "My case is peculiar. I am
not, properly speaking, a suicide at all; but, as it were, an honorary
member. I rarely visit the club twice in two months. My infirmity and
the kindness of the President have procured me these little immunities,
for which besides I pay at an advanced rate. Even as it is, my luck has
been extraordinary."

"I am afraid," said the Colonel, "that I must ask you to be more
explicit. You must remember that I am still most imperfectly acquainted
with the rules of the club."

"An ordinary member who comes here in search of death, like yourself,"
replied the paralytic, "returns every evening until fortune favours him.
He can even, if he is penniless, get board and lodging from the
President: very fair, I believe, and clean, although, of course, not
luxurious; that could hardly be, considering the exiguity (if I may so
express myself) of the subscription. And then the President's company is
a delicacy in itself."

"Indeed!" cried Geraldine, "he had not greatly prepossessed me."

"Ah!" said Mr. Malthus, "you do not know the man: the drollest fellow!
What stories! What cynicism! He knows life to admiration, and, between
ourselves, is probably the most corrupt rogue in Christendom."

"And he also," asked the Colonel, "is a permanency--like yourself, if I
may say so without offence?"

"Indeed, he is a permanency in a very different sense from me," replied
Mr. Malthus. "I have been graciously spared, but I must go at last. Now
he never plays. He shuffles and deals for the club, and makes the
necessary arrangements. That man, my dear Mr. Hammersmith, is the very
soul of ingenuity. For three years he has pursued in London his useful
and, I think I may add, his artistic calling; and not so much as a
whisper of suspicion has been once aroused. I believe himself to be
inspired. You doubtless remember the celebrated case, six months ago,
of the gentleman who was accidentally poisoned in a chemist's shop? That
was one of the least rich, one of the least racy, of his notions; but
then, how simple! and how safe!"

"You astound me," said the Colonel. "Was that unfortunate gentleman one
of the----" He was about to say "victims"; but bethinking himself in
time, he substituted--"members of the club?"

In the same flash of thought it occurred to him that Mr. Malthus himself
had not at all spoken in the tone of one who is in love with death; and
he added hurriedly--

"But I perceive I am still in the dark. You speak of shuffling and
dealing; pray, for what end? And since you seem rather unwilling to die
than otherwise, I must own that I cannot conceive what brings you here
at all."

"You say truly that you are in the dark," replied Mr. Malthus with more
animation. "Why, my dear sir, this club is the temple of intoxication.
If my enfeebled health could support the excitement more often, you may
depend upon it I should be more often here. It requires all the sense of
duty engendered by a long habit of ill-health and careful regimen, to
keep me from excess in this, which is, I may say, my last dissipation. I
have tried them all, sir," he went on, laying his hand on Geraldine's
arm, "all, without exception, and I declare to you, upon my honour,
there is not one of them that has not been grossly and untruthfully
overrated. People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong
passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must
trifle if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living. Envy me--envy
me, sir," he added with a chuckle, "I am a coward!"

Geraldine could scarcely repress a movement of repulsion for this
deplorable wretch; but he commanded himself with an effort, and
continued his inquiries.

"How, sir," he asked, "is the excitement so artfully prolonged? and
where is there any element of uncertainty?"

"I must tell you how the victim for every evening is selected," returned
Mr. Malthus; "and not only the victim, but another member, who is to be
the instrument in the club's hands, and death's high priest for that
occasion."

"Good God!" said the Colonel, "do they then kill each other?"

"The trouble of suicide is removed in that way," returned Malthus with a
nod.

"Merciful heavens!" ejaculated the Colonel, "and may you--may I--may
the--my friend, I mean--may any of us be pitched upon this evening as
the slayer of another man's body and immortal spirit? Can such things be
possible among men born of women? Oh! infamy of infamies!"

He was about to rise in his horror, when he caught the Prince's eye. It
was fixed upon him from across the room with a frowning and angry stare.
And in a moment Geraldine recovered his composure.

"After all," he added, "why not? and since you say the game is
interesting, _vogue la galère_--I follow the club!"

Mr. Malthus had keenly enjoyed the Colonel's amazement and disgust. He
had the vanity of wickedness; and it pleased him to see another man give
way to a generous movement, while he felt himself, in his entire
corruption, superior to such emotions.

"You now, after your first moment of surprise," said he, "are in a
position to appreciate the delights of our society. You can see how it
combines the excitement of a gaming-table, a duel, and a Roman
amphitheatre. The Pagans did well enough; I cordially admire the
refinement of their minds; but it has been reserved for a Christian
country to attain this extreme, this quintessence, this absolute of
poignancy. You will understand how vapid are all amusements to a man who
has acquired a taste for this one. The game we play," he continued, "is
one of extreme simplicity. A full pack--but I perceive you are about to
see the thing in progress. Will you lend me the help of your arm? I am
unfortunately paralysed."

Indeed, just as Mr. Malthus was beginning his description, another pair
of folding-doors was thrown open, and the whole club began to pass, not
without some hurry, into the adjoining room. It was similar in every
respect to the one from which it was entered, but somewhat differently
furnished. The centre was occupied by a long green table, at which the
President sat shuffling a pack of cards with great particularity. Even
with the stick and the Colonel's arm, Mr. Malthus walked with so much
difficulty that everyone was seated before this pair and the Prince, who
had waited for them, entered the apartment; and, in consequence, the
three took seats close together at the lower end of the board.

"It is a pack of fifty-two," whispered Mr. Malthus. "Watch for the ace
of spades, which is the sign of death, and the ace of clubs, which
designates the official of the night. Happy, happy young men!" he added.
"You have good eyes, and can follow the game. Alas! I cannot tell an ace
from a deuce across the table."

And he proceeded to equip himself with a second pair of spectacles.

"I must at least watch the faces," he explained.

The Colonel rapidly informed his friend of all that he had learned from
the honorary member, and of the horrible alternative that lay before
them. The Prince was conscious of a deadly chill and a contraction about
his heart; he swallowed with difficulty, and looked from side to side
like a man in a maze.

"One bold stroke," whispered the Colonel, "and we may still escape."

But the suggestion recalled the Prince's spirits.

"Silence!" said he. "Let me see that you can play like a gentleman for
any stake, however serious."

And he looked about him, once more to all appearance at his ease,
although his heart beat thickly, and he was conscious of an unpleasant
heat in his bosom. The members were all very quiet and intent; every one
was pale, but none so pale as Mr. Malthus. His eyes protruded; his head
kept nodding involuntarily upon his spine; his hands found their way,
one after the other, to his mouth, where they made clutches at his
tremulous and ashen lips. It was plain that the honorary member enjoyed
his membership on very startling terms.

"Attention, gentlemen!" said the President.

And he began slowly dealing the cards about the table in the reverse
direction, pausing until each man had shown his card. Nearly every one
hesitated; and sometimes you would see a player's fingers stumble more
than once before he could turn over the momentous slip of pasteboard. As
the Prince's turn drew nearer, he was conscious of a growing and almost
suffocating excitement; but he had somewhat of the gambler's nature, and
recognised almost with astonishment that there was a degree of pleasure
in his sensations. The nine of clubs fell to his lot; the three of
spades was dealt to Geraldine; and the queen of hearts to Mr. Malthus,
who was unable to suppress a sob of relief. The young man of the cream
tarts almost immediately afterwards turned over the ace of clubs, and
remained frozen with horror, the card still resting on his finger; he
had not come there to kill, but to be killed; and the Prince in his
generous sympathy with his position almost forgot the peril that still
hung over himself and his friend.

The deal was coming round again, and still Death's card had not come
out. The players held their respiration, and only breathed by gasps. The
Prince received another club; Geraldine had a diamond; but when Mr.
Malthus turned up his card a horrible noise, like that of something
breaking, issued from his mouth; and he rose from his seat and sat down
again, with no sign of his paralysis. It was the ace of spades. The
honorary member had trifled once too often with his terrors.

Conversation broke out again almost at once. The players relaxed their
rigid attitudes, and began to rise from the table and stroll back by
twos and threes into the smoking-room. The President stretched his arms
and yawned, like a man who has finished his day's work. But Mr. Malthus
sat in his place, with his head in his hands, and his hands upon the
table, drunk and motionless--a thing stricken down.

The Prince and Geraldine made their escape at once. In the cold night
air their horror of what they had witnessed was redoubled.

"Alas!" cried the Prince, "to be bound by an oath in such a matter! to
allow this wholesale trade in murder to be continued with profit and
impunity! If I but dared to forfeit my pledge!"

"That is impossible for your Highness," replied the Colonel, "whose
honour is the honour of Bohemia. But I dare, and may with propriety,
forfeit mine."

"Geraldine," said the Prince, "if your honour suffers in any of the
adventures into which you follow me, not only will I never pardon you,
but--what I believe will much more sensibly affect you--I should never
forgive myself."

"I receive your Highness's commands," replied the Colonel. "Shall we go
from this accursed spot?"

"Yes," said the Prince. "Call a cab in Heaven's name, and let me try to
forget in slumber the memory of this night's disgrace."

But it was notable that he carefully read the name of the court before
he left it.

The next morning, as soon as the Prince was stirring, Colonel Geraldine
brought him a daily newspaper, with the following paragraph marked:--

  "MELANCHOLY ACCIDENT.--This morning, about two o'clock, Mr.
  Bartholomew Malthus, of 16 Chepstow Place, Westbourne Grove, on his
  way home from a party at a friend's house, fell over the upper
  parapet in Trafalgar Square, fracturing his skull and breaking a leg
  and an arm. Death was instantaneous. Mr. Malthus, accompanied by a
  friend, was engaged in looking for a cab at the time of the
  unfortunate occurrence. As Mr. Malthus was paralytic, it is thought
  that his fall may have been occasioned by another seizure. The
  unhappy gentleman was well known in the most respectable circles, and
  his loss will be widely and deeply deplored."

"If ever a soul went straight to Hell," said Geraldine solemnly, "it was
that paralytic man's."

The Prince buried his face in his hands, and remained silent.

"I am almost rejoiced," continued the Colonel, "to know that he is dead.
But for our young man of the cream tarts I confess my heart bleeds."

"Geraldine," said the Prince, raising his face, "that unhappy lad was
last night as innocent as you and I; and this morning the guilt of blood
is on his soul. When I think of the President, my heart grows sick
within me. I do not know how it shall be done, but I shall have that
scoundrel at my mercy as there is a God in heaven. What an experience,
what a lesson, was that game of cards!"

"One," said the Colonel, "never to be repeated."

The Prince remained so long without replying that Geraldine grew
alarmed.

"You cannot mean to return," he said. "You have suffered too much and
seen too much horror already. The duties of your high position forbid
the repetition of the hazard."

"There is much in what you say," replied Prince Florizel, "and I am not
altogether pleased with my own determination. Alas! in the clothes of
the greatest potentate what is there but a man? I never felt my weakness
more acutely than now, Geraldine, but it is stronger than I. Can I
cease to interest myself in the fortunes of the unhappy young man who
supped with us some hours ago? Can I leave the President to follow his
nefarious career unwatched? Can I begin an adventure so entrancing, and
not follow it to an end? No, Geraldine, you ask of the Prince more than
the man is able to perform. To-night, once more, we take our places at
the table of the Suicide Club."

Colonel Geraldine fell upon his knees.

"Will your Highness take my life?" he cried. "It is his--his freely; but
do not, O do not! let him ask me to countenance so terrible a risk."

"Colonel Geraldine," replied the Prince, with some haughtiness of
manner, "your life is absolutely your own. I only looked for obedience;
and when that is unwillingly rendered, I shall look for that no longer.
I add one word: your importunity in this affair has been sufficient."

The Master of the Horse regained his feet at once.

"Your Highness," he said, "may I be excused in my attendance this
afternoon? I dare not, as an honourable man, venture a second time into
that fatal house until I have perfectly ordered my affairs. Your
Highness shall meet, I promise him, with no more opposition from the
most devoted and grateful of his servants."

"My dear Geraldine," returned Prince Florizel, "I always regret when you
oblige me to remember my rank. Dispose of your day as you think fit, but
be here before eleven in the same disguise."

The club, on this second evening, was not so fully attended; and when
Geraldine and the Prince arrived there were not above half a dozen
persons in the smoking-room. His Highness took the President aside and
congratulated him warmly on the demise of Mr. Malthus.

"I like," he said, "to meet with capacity, and certainly find much of it
in you. Your profession is of a very delicate nature, but I see you are
well qualified to conduct it with success and secrecy."

The President was somewhat affected by these compliments from one of his
Highness's superior bearing. He acknowledged them almost with humility.

"Poor Malthy!" he added, "I shall hardly know the club without him. The
most of my patrons are boys, sir, and poetical boys, who are not much
company for me. Not but what Malthy had some poetry too; but it was of a
kind that I could understand."

"I can readily imagine you should find yourself in sympathy with Mr.
Malthus," returned the Prince. "He struck me as a man of a very original
disposition."

The young man of the cream tarts was in the room, but painfully
depressed and silent. His late companions sought in vain to lead him
into conversation.

"How bitterly I wish," he cried, "that I had never brought you to this
infamous abode! Begone, while you are clean-handed. If you could have
heard the old man scream as he fell, and the noise of his bones upon the
pavement! Wish me, if you have any kindness to so fallen a being--wish
the ace of spades for me to-night!"

A few more members dropped in as the evening went on, but the club did
not muster more than the devil's dozen when they took their places at
the table. The Prince was again conscious of a certain joy in his
alarms; but he was astonished to see Geraldine so much more
self-possessed than on the night before.

"It is extraordinary," thought the Prince, "that a will, made or unmade,
should so greatly influence a young man's spirit."

"Attention, gentlemen!" said the President, and he began to deal.

Three times the cards went all round the table, and neither of the
marked cards had yet fallen from his hand. The excitement as he began
the fourth distribution was overwhelming. There were just cards enough
to go once more entirely round. The Prince, who sat second from the
dealer's left, would receive, in the reverse mode of dealing practised
at the club, the second last card. The third player turned up a black
ace--it was the ace of clubs. The next received a diamond, the next a
heart, and so on; but the ace of spades was still undelivered. At last
Geraldine, who sat upon the Prince's left, turned his card; it was an
ace, but the ace of hearts.

When Prince Florizel saw his fate upon the table in front of him, his
heart stood still. He was a brave man, but the sweat poured off his
face. There were exactly fifty chances out of a hundred that he was
doomed. He reversed the card; it was the ace of spades. A loud roaring
filled his brain, and the table swam before his eyes. He heard the
player on his right break into a fit of laughter that sounded between
mirth and disappointment; he saw the company rapidly dispersing, but his
mind was full of other thoughts. He recognised how foolish, how
criminal, had been his conduct. In perfect health, in the prime of his
years, the heir to a throne, he had gambled away his future and that of
a brave and loyal country. "God," he cried, "God forgive me!" And with
that the confusion of his senses passed away, and he regained his
self-possession in a moment.

To his surprise, Geraldine had disappeared. There was no one in the
card-room but his destined butcher consulting with the President, and
the young man of the cream tarts, who slipped up to the Prince and
whispered in his ear--

"I would give a million, if I had it, for your luck."

His Highness could not help reflecting, as the young man departed, that
he would have sold his opportunity for a much more moderate sum.

The whispered conference now came to an end. The holder of the ace of
clubs left the room with a look of intelligence, and the President,
approaching the unfortunate Prince, proffered him his hand.

"I am pleased to have met you, sir," said he, "and pleased to have been
in a position to do you this trifling service. At least, you cannot
complain of delay. On the second evening--what a stroke of luck!"

The Prince endeavoured in vain to articulate something in response, but
his mouth was dry and his tongue seemed paralysed.

"You feel a little sickish?" asked the President, with some show of
solicitude. "Most gentlemen do. Will you take a little brandy?"

The Prince signified in the affirmative, and the other immediately
filled some of the spirit into a tumbler.

"Poor old Malthy!" ejaculated the President, as the Prince drained the
glass. "He drank near upon a pint, and little enough good it seemed to
do him!"

"I am more amenable to treatment," said the Prince, a good deal revived.
"I am my own man again at once, as you perceive. And so, let me ask you,
what are my directions?"

"You will proceed along the Strand in the direction of the City, and on
the left-hand pavement, until you meet the gentleman who has just left
the room. He will continue your instructions, and him you will have the
kindness to obey; the authority of the club is vested in his person for
the night. And now," added the President, "I wish you a pleasant walk."

Florizel acknowledged the salutation rather awkwardly, and took his
leave. He passed through the smoking-room, where the bulk of the players
were still consuming champagne, some of which he had himself ordered and
paid for; and he was surprised to find himself cursing them in his
heart. He put on his hat and greatcoat in the cabinet, and selected his
umbrella from a corner. The familiarity of these acts, and the thought
that he was about them for the last time, betrayed him into a fit of
laughter which sounded unpleasantly in his own ears. He conceived a
reluctance to leave the cabinet, and turned instead to the window. The
sight of the lamps and the darkness recalled him to himself.

"Come, come, I must be a man," he thought, "and tear myself away."

At the corner of Box Court three men fell upon Prince Florizel, and he
was unceremoniously thrust into a carriage, which at once drove rapidly
away. There was already an occupant.

"Will your Highness pardon my zeal?" said a well-known voice.

The Prince threw himself upon the Colonel's neck in a passion of relief.

"How can I ever thank you?" he cried. "And how was this effected?"

Although he had been willing to march upon his doom, he was overjoyed to
yield to friendly violence, and return once more to life and hope.

"You can thank me effectually enough," replied the Colonel, "by avoiding
all such dangers in the future. And as for your second question, all has
been managed by the simplest means. I arranged this afternoon with a
celebrated detective. Secrecy has been promised and paid for. Your own
servants have been principally engaged in the affair. The house in Box
Court has been surrounded since nightfall, and this, which is one of
your own carriages, has been awaiting you for nearly an hour."

"And the miserable creature who was to have slain me--what of him?"
inquired the Prince.

"He was pinioned as he left the club," replied the Colonel, "and now
awaits your sentence at the Palace, where he will soon be joined by his
accomplices."

"Geraldine," said the Prince, "you have saved me against my explicit
orders, and you have done well. I owe you not only my life, but a
lesson; and I should be unworthy of my rank if I did not show myself
grateful to my teacher. Let it be yours to choose the manner."

There was a pause, during which the carriage continued to speed through
the streets, and the two men were each buried in his own reflections.
The silence was broken by Colonel Geraldine.

"Your Highness," said he, "has by this time a considerable body of
prisoners. There is at least one criminal among the number to whom
justice should be dealt. Our oath forbids us all recourse to law; and
discretion would forbid it equally if the oath were loosened. May I
inquire your Highness's intention?"

"It is decided," answered Florizel; "the President must fall in duel. It
only remains to choose his adversary."

"Your Highness has permitted me to name my own recompense," said the
Colonel. "Will he permit me to ask the appointment of my brother? It is
an honourable post, but I dare assure your Highness that the lad will
acquit himself with credit."

"You ask me an ungracious favour," said the Prince, "but I must refuse
you nothing."

The Colonel kissed his hand with the greatest affection; and at that
moment the carriage rolled under the archway of the Prince's splendid
residence.

An hour after, Florizel in his official robes, and covered with all the
orders of Bohemia, received the members of the Suicide Club.

"Foolish and wicked men," said he, "as many of you as have been driven
into this strait by the lack of fortune shall receive employment and
remuneration from my officers. Those who suffer under a sense of guilt
must have recourse to a higher and more generous Potentate than I. I
feel pity for all of you, deeper than you can imagine; to-morrow you
shall tell me your stories; and as you answer more frankly, I shall be
the more able to remedy your misfortunes. As for you," he added, turning
to the President, "I should only offend a person of your parts by any
offer of assistance; but I have instead a piece of diversion to propose
to you. Here," laying his hand on the shoulder of Colonel Geraldine's
young brother, "is an officer of mine who desires to make a little tour
upon the Continent; and I ask you, as a favour, to accompany him on
this excursion. Do you," he went on, changing his tone, "do you shoot
well with the pistol? Because you may have need of that accomplishment.
When two men go travelling together, it is best to be prepared for all.
Let me add that, if by any chance you should lose young Mr. Geraldine
upon the way, I shall always have another member of my household to
place at your disposal; and I am known, Mr. President, to have long
eyesight, and as long an arm."

With these words, said with much sternness, the Prince concluded his
address. Next morning the members of the club were suitably provided for
by his munificence, and the President set forth upon his travels, under
the supervision of Mr. Geraldine, and a pair of faithful and adroit
lackeys, well trained in the Prince's household. Not content with this,
discreet agents were put in possession of the house in Box Court, and
all letters or visitors for the Suicide Club or its officials were to be
examined by Prince Florizel in person.


_Here_ (says my Arabian author) _ends The Story of_ THE YOUNG MAN WITH
THE CREAM TARTS, _who is now a comfortable householder in Wigmore
Street, Cavendish Square. The number, for obvious reasons, I suppress.
Those who care to pursue the adventures of Prince Florizel and the
President of the Suicide Club, may read_


THE STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN AND THE SARATOGA TRUNK

Mr. Silas Q. Scuddamore was a young American of a simple and harmless
disposition, which was the more to his credit as he came from New
England--a quarter of the New World not precisely famous for those
qualities. Although he was exceedingly rich, he kept a note of all his
expenses in a little paper pocket-book; and he had chosen to study the
attractions of Paris from the seventh story of what is called a
furnished hotel in the Latin Quarter. There was a great deal of habit in
his penuriousness; and his virtue, which was very remarkable among his
associates, was principally founded upon diffidence and youth.

The next room to his was inhabited by a lady, very attractive in her air
and very elegant in toilette, whom, on his first arrival, he had taken
for a Countess. In course of time he had learned that she was known by
the name of Madame Zéphyrine, and that whatever station she occupied in
life it was not that of a person of title. Madame Zéphyrine, probably in
the hope of enchanting the young American, used to flaunt by him on the
stairs with a civil inclination, a word of course, and a knock-down look
out of her black eyes, and disappear in a rustle of silk, and with the
revelation of an admirable foot and ankle. But these advances, so far
from encouraging Mr. Scuddamore, plunged him into the depths of
depression and bashfulness. She had come to him several times for a
light, or to apologise for imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his
mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French
promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was
gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from
throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely
alone with a few males.

The room on the other side of the American's--for there were three rooms
on a floor in the hotel--was tenanted by an old English physician of
rather doubtful reputation. Dr. Noel, for that was his name, had been
forced to leave London, where he enjoyed a large and increasing
practice; and it was hinted that the police had been the instigators of
this change of scene. At least he, who had made something of a figure in
earlier life, now dwelt in the Latin Quarter in great simplicity and
solitude, and devoted much of his time to study. Mr. Scuddamore had made
his acquaintance, and the pair would now and then dine together
frugally in a restaurant across the street.

Silas Q. Scuddamore had many little vices of the more respectable order,
and was not restrained by delicacy from indulging them in many rather
doubtful ways. Chief among his foibles stood curiosity. He was a born
gossip; and life, and especially those parts of it in which he had no
experience, interested him to the degree of passion. He was a pert,
invincible questioner, pushing his inquiries with equal pertinacity and
indiscretion; he had been observed, when he took a letter to the post,
to weigh it in his hand, to turn it over and over, and to study the
address with care; and when he found a flaw in the partition between his
room and Madame Zéphyrine's, instead of filling it up, he enlarged and
improved the opening, and made use of it as a spy-hole on his
neighbour's affairs.

One day, in the end of March, his curiosity growing as it was indulged,
he enlarged the hole a little further, so that he might command another
corner of the room. That evening, when he went as usual to inspect
Madame Zéphyrine's movements, he was astonished to find the aperture
obscured in an odd manner on the other side, and still more abashed when
the obstacle was suddenly withdrawn and a titter of laughter reached his
ears. Some of the plaster had evidently betrayed the secret of his
spy-hole, and his neighbour had been returning the compliment in kind.
Mr. Scuddamore was moved to a very acute feeling of annoyance; he
condemned Madame Zéphyrine unmercifully: he even blamed himself; but
when he found, next day, that she had taken no means to baulk him of his
favourite pastime, he continued to profit by her carelessness, and
gratify his idle curiosity.

That next day Madame Zéphyrine received a long visit from a tall,
loosely-built man of fifty or upwards, whom Silas had not hitherto seen.
His tweed suit and coloured shirt, no less than his shaggy
side-whiskers, identified him as a Britisher, and his dull grey eye
affected Silas with a sense of cold. He kept screwing his mouth from
side to side and round and round during the whole colloquy, which was
carried on in whispers. More than once it seemed to the young New
Englander as if their gestures indicated his own apartment; but the only
thing definite he could gather by the most scrupulous attention was this
remark, made by the Englishman in a somewhat higher key, as if in answer
to some reluctance or opposition--

"I have studied his taste to a nicety, and I tell you again and again
you are the only woman of the sort that I can lay my hands on."

In answer to this, Madame Zéphyrine sighed, and appeared by a gesture to
resign herself, like one yielding to unqualified authority.

That afternoon the observatory was finally blinded, a wardrobe having
been drawn in front of it upon the other side; and while Silas was still
lamenting over this misfortune, which he attributed to the Britisher's
malign suggestion, the _concierge_ brought him up a letter in a female
handwriting. It was conceived in French of no very rigorous orthography,
bore no signature, and in the most encouraging terms invited the young
American to be present in a certain part of the Bullier Ball at eleven
o'clock that night. Curiosity and timidity fought a long battle in his
heart; sometimes he was all virtue, sometimes all fire and daring; and
the result of it was that, long before ten, Mr. Silas Q. Scuddamore
presented himself in unimpeachable attire at the door of the Bullier
Ball Rooms, and paid his entry money with a sense of reckless devilry
that was not without its charm.

It was Carnival time, and the Ball was very full and noisy. The lights
and the crowd at first rather abashed our young adventurer, and then,
mounting to his brain with a sort of intoxication, put him in possession
of more than his own share of manhood. He felt ready to face the devil,
and strutted in the ball-room with the swagger of a cavalier. While he
was thus parading, he became aware of Madame Zéphyrine and her
Britisher in conference behind a pillar. The cat-like spirit of
eavesdropping overcame him at once. He stole nearer and nearer on the
couple from behind, until he was within earshot.

"That is the man," the Britisher was saying; "there--with the long blond
hair--speaking to a girl in green."

Silas identified a very handsome young fellow of small stature, who was
plainly the object of this designation.

"It is well," said Madame Zéphyrine. "I shall do my utmost. But,
remember, the best of us may fail in such a matter."

"Tut!" returned her companion; "I answer for the result. Have I not
chosen you from thirty? Go; but be wary of the Prince. I cannot think
what cursed accident has brought him here to-night. As if there were not
a dozen balls in Paris better worth his notice than this riot of
students and counter-jumpers! See him where he sits, more like a
reigning Emperor at home than a Prince upon his holidays!"

Silas was again lucky. He observed a person of rather a full build,
strikingly handsome, and of a very stately and courteous demeanour,
seated at table with another handsome young man, several years his
junior, who addressed him with conspicuous deference. The name of Prince
struck gratefully on Silas's Republican hearing, and the aspect of the
person to whom that name was applied exercised its usual charm upon his
mind. He left Madame Zéphyrine and her Englishman to take care of each
other, and threading his way through the assembly, approached the table
which the Prince and his confidant had honoured with their choice.

"I tell you, Geraldine," the former was saying, "the action is madness.
Yourself (I am glad to remember it) chose your brother for this perilous
service, and you are bound in duty to have a guard upon his conduct. He
has consented to delay so many days in Paris; that was already an
imprudence, considering the character of the man he has to deal with;
but now, when he is within eight-and-forty hours of his departure, when
he is within two or three days of the decisive trial, I ask you, is this
a place for him to spend his time? He should be in a gallery at
practice; he should be sleeping long hours and taking moderate exercise
on foot; he should be on a rigorous diet, without white wines or brandy.
Does the dog imagine we are all playing comedy? The thing is deadly
earnest, Geraldine."

"I know the lad too well to interfere," replied Colonel Geraldine, "and
well enough not to be alarmed. He is more cautious than you fancy, and
of an indomitable spirit. If it had been a woman I should not say so
much, but I trust the President to him and the two valets without an
instant's apprehension."

"I am gratified to hear you say so," replied the Prince; "but my mind is
not at rest. These servants are well-trained spies, and already has not
this miscreant succeeded three times in eluding their observation and
spending several hours on each in private, and most likely dangerous,
affairs? An amateur might have lost him by accident, but if Rudolph and
Jérome were thrown off the scent, it must have been done on purpose, and
by a man who had a cogent reason and exceptional resources."

"I believe the question is now one between my brother and myself,"
replied Geraldine, with a shade of offence in his tone.

"I permit it to be so, Colonel Geraldine," returned Prince Florizel.
"Perhaps, for that very reason, you should be all the more ready to
accept my counsels. But enough. That girl in yellow dances well."

And the talk veered into the ordinary topics of a Paris ball-room in the
Carnival.

Silas remembered where he was, and that the hour was already near at
hand when he ought to be upon the scene of his assignation. The more he
reflected the less he liked the prospect, and as at that moment an eddy
in the crowd began to draw him in the direction of the door, he
suffered it to carry him away without resistance. The eddy stranded him
in a corner under the gallery, where his ear was immediately struck with
the voice of Madame Zéphyrine. She was speaking in French with the young
man of the blond locks who had been pointed out by the strange Britisher
not half an hour before.

"I have a character at stake," she said, "or I would put no other
condition than my heart recommends. But you have only to say so much to
the porter, and he will let you go by without a word."

"But why this talk of debt?" objected her companion.

"Heavens!" said she, "do you think I do not understand my own hotel?"

And she went by, clinging affectionately to her companion's arm.

This put Silas in mind of his billet.

"Ten minutes hence," thought he, "and I may be walking with as beautiful
a woman as that, and even better dressed--perhaps a real lady, possibly
a woman of title."

And then he remembered the spelling, and was a little downcast.

"But it may have been written by her maid," he imagined.

The clock was only a few minutes from the hour, and this immediate
proximity set his heart beating at a curious and rather disagreeable
speed. He reflected with relief that he was in no way bound to put in an
appearance. Virtue and cowardice were together, and he made once more
for the door, but this time, of his own accord, and battling against the
stream of people which was now moving in a contrary direction. Perhaps
this prolonged resistance wearied him, or perhaps he was in that frame
of mind when merely to continue in the same determination for a certain
number of minutes produces a reaction and a different purpose.
Certainly, at least, he wheeled about for a third time, and did not
stop until he had found a place of concealment within a few yards of the
appointed place.

Here he went through an agony of spirit, in which he several times
prayed to God for help, for Silas had been devoutly educated. He had now
not the least inclination for the meeting; nothing kept him from flight
but a silly fear lest he should be thought unmanly; but this was so
powerful that it kept head against all other motives; and although it
could not decide him to advance, prevented him from definitely running
away. At last the clock indicated ten minutes past the hour. Young
Scuddamore's spirit began to rise; he peered round the corner and saw no
one at the place of meeting; doubtless his unknown correspondent had
wearied and gone away. He became as bold as he had formerly been timid.
It seemed to him that if he came at all to the appointment, however
late, he was clear from the charge of cowardice. Nay, now he began to
suspect a hoax, and actually complimented himself on his shrewdness in
having suspected and out-manoeuvred his mystifiers. So very idle a
thing is a boy's mind!

Armed with these reflections, he advanced boldly from his corner; but he
had not taken above a couple of steps before a hand was laid upon his
arm. He turned and beheld a lady cast in a very large mould and with
somewhat stately features, but bearing no mark of severity in her looks.

"I see that you are a very self-confident lady-killer," said she; "for
you make yourself expected. But I was determined to meet you. When a
woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance,
she has long ago left behind her all considerations of petty pride."

Silas was overwhelmed by the size and attractions of his correspondent
and the suddenness with which she had fallen upon him. But she soon set
him at his ease. She was very towardly and lenient in her behaviour; she
led him on to make pleasantries, and then applauded him to the echo; and
in a very short time, between blandishments and a liberal exhibition of
warm brandy, she had not only induced him to fancy himself in love, but
to declare his passion with the greatest vehemence.

"Alas!" she said; "I do not know whether I ought not to deplore this
moment, great as is the pleasure you give me by your words. Hitherto I
was alone to suffer; now, poor boy, there will be two. I am not my own
mistress. I dare not ask you to visit me at my own house, for I am
watched by jealous eyes. Let me see," she added; "I am older than you,
although so much weaker; and while I trust in your courage and
determination, I must employ my own knowledge of the world for our
mutual benefit. Where do you live?"

He told her that he lodged in a furnished hotel, and named the street
and number.

She seemed to reflect for some minutes, with an effort of mind.

"I see," she said at last. "You will be faithful and obedient, will you
not?"

Silas assured her eagerly of his fidelity.

"To-morrow night, then," she continued, with an encouraging smile, "you
must remain at home all the evening; and if any friends should visit
you, dismiss them at once on any pretext that most readily presents
itself. Your door is probably shut by ten?" she asked.

"By eleven," answered Silas.

"At a quarter past eleven," pursued the lady, "leave the house. Merely
cry for the door to be opened, and be sure you fall into no talk with
the porter, as that might ruin everything. Go straight to the corner
where the Luxembourg Gardens join the Boulevard; there you will find me
waiting you. I trust you to follow my advice from point to point: and
remember, if you fail me in only one particular, you will bring the
sharpest trouble on a woman whose only fault is to have seen and loved
you."

"I cannot see the use of all these instructions," said Silas.

"I believe you are already beginning to treat me as a master," she
cried, tapping him with her fan upon the arm. "Patience, patience! that
should come in time. A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although
afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying. Do as I ask you, for
Heaven's sake, or I will answer for nothing. Indeed, now I think of it,"
she added, with a manner of one who has just seen further into a
difficulty, "I find a better plan of keeping importunate visitors away.
Tell the porter to admit no one for you, except a person who may come
that night to claim a debt; and speak with some feeling, as though you
feared the interview, so that he may take your words in earnest."

"I think you may trust me to protect myself against intruders," he said,
not without a little pique.

"That is how I should prefer the thing arranged," she answered coldly.
"I know you men; you think nothing of a woman's reputation."

Silas blushed and somewhat hung his head; for the scheme he had in view
had involved a little vain-glorying before his acquaintances.

"Above all," she added, "do not speak to the porter as you come out."

"And why?" said he. "Of all your instructions, that seems to me the
least important."

"You at first doubted the wisdom of some of the others, which you now
see to be very necessary," she replied. "Believe me, this also has its
uses; in time you will see them; and what am I to think of your
affection, if you refuse me such trifles at our first interview?"

Silas confounded himself in explanations and apologies; in the middle of
these she looked up at the clock and clapped her hands together with a
suppressed scream.

"Heavens!" she cried, "is it so late? I have not an instant to lose.
Alas, we poor women, what slaves we are! What have I not risked for you
already?"

And after repeating her directions, which she artfully combined with
caresses and the most abandoned looks, she bade him farewell and
disappeared among the crowd.

The whole of the next day Silas was filled with a sense of great
importance; he was now sure she was a countess; and when evening came he
minutely obeyed her orders and was at the corner of the Luxembourg
Gardens by the hour appointed. No one was there. He waited nearly half
an hour, looking in the face of every one who passed or loitered near
the spot; he even visited the neighbouring corners of the Boulevard and
made a complete circuit of the garden railings; but there was no
beautiful countess to throw herself into his arms. At last, and most
reluctantly, he began to retrace his steps towards his hotel. On the way
he remembered the words he had heard pass between Madame Zéphyrine and
the blond young man, and they gave him an indefinite uneasiness.

"It appears," he reflected, "that every one has to tell lies to our
porter."

He rang the bell, the door opened before him, and the porter in his
bed-clothes came to offer him a light.

"Has he gone?" inquired the porter.

"He? Whom do you mean?" asked Silas, somewhat sharply, for he was
irritated by his disappointment.

"I did not notice him go out," continued the porter, "but I trust you
paid him. We do not care, in this house, to have lodgers who cannot meet
their liabilities."

"What the devil do you mean?" demanded Silas, rudely. "I cannot
understand a word of this farrago."

"The short, blond young man who came for his debt," returned the other.
"Him it is I mean. Who else should it be, when I had your orders to
admit no one else?"

"Why, good God! of course he never came," retorted Silas.

"I believe what I believe," returned the porter, putting his tongue into
his cheek with a most roguish air.

"You are an insolent scoundrel," cried Silas, and, feeling that he had
made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time
bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned and began to run upstairs.

"Do you not want a light, then?" cried the porter.

But Silas only hurried the faster, and did not pause until he had
reached the seventh landing and stood in front of his own door. There he
waited a moment to recover his breath, assailed by the worst
forebodings, and almost dreading to enter the room.

When at last he did so he was relieved to find it dark, and to all
appearance untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in
safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been
his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began
to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew
upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an
obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he
touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly
visible, he knew he must be at the foot of the bed, and had only to feel
his way along it in order to reach the table in question.

He lowered his hand, but what it touched was not simply a
counterpane--it was a counterpane with something underneath it like the
outline of a human leg. Silas withdrew his arm and stood a moment
petrified.

"What, what," he thought, "can this betoken?"

He listened intently, but there was no sound of breathing. Once more,
with a great effort, he reached out the end of his finger to the spot he
had already touched; but this time he leaped back half a yard, and stood
shivering and fixed with terror. There was something in his bed. What it
was he knew not, but there was something there.

It was some seconds before he could move. Then, guided by an instinct,
he fell straight upon the matches, and, keeping his back towards the
bed, lighted a candle. As soon as the flame had kindled, he turned
slowly round and looked for what he feared to see. Sure enough, there
was the worst of his imaginations realised. The coverlid was drawn
carefully up over the pillow, but it moulded the outline of a human body
lying motionless; and when he dashed forward and flung aside the sheets,
he beheld the blond young man whom he had seen in the Bullier Ball the
night before, his eyes open and without speculation, his face swollen
and blackened, and a thin stream of blood trickling from his nostrils.

Silas uttered a long, tremulous wail, dropped the candle and fell on his
knees beside the bed.

Silas was awakened from the stupor into which his terrible discovery had
plunged him, by a prolonged but discreet tapping at the door. It took
him some seconds to remember his position; and when he hastened to
prevent any one from entering it was already too late. Dr. Noel, in a
tall nightcap, carrying a lamp which lighted up his long white
countenance, sidling in his gait, and peering and cocking his head like
some sort of bird, pushed the door slowly open, and advanced into the
middle of the room.

"I thought I heard a cry," began the Doctor, "and fearing you might be
unwell I did not hesitate to offer this intrusion."

Silas, with a flushed face and a fearful beating heart, kept between the
Doctor and the bed; but he found no voice to answer.

"You are in the dark," pursued the Doctor; "and yet you have not even
begun to prepare for rest. You will not easily persuade me against my
own eyesight; and your face declares most eloquently that you require
either a friend or a physician--which is it to be? Let me feel your
pulse, for that is often a just reporter of the heart."

He advanced to Silas, who still retreated before him backwards, and
sought to take him by the wrist; but the strain on the young American's
nerves had become too great for endurance. He avoided the Doctor with a
febrile movement, and, throwing himself upon the floor, burst into a
flood of weeping.

As soon as Dr. Noel perceived the dead man in the bed his face
darkened; and hurrying back to the door, which he had left ajar, he
hastily closed and double-locked it.

"Up!" he cried, addressing Silas in strident tones; this is no time for
weeping. "What have you done? How came this body in your room? Speak
freely to one who may be helpful. Do you imagine I would ruin you? Do
you think this piece of dead flesh on your pillow can alter in any
degree the sympathy with which you have inspired me? Credulous youth,
the horror with which blind and unjust law regards an action never
attaches to the doer in the eyes of those who love him; and if I saw the
friend of my heart return to me out of seas of blood he would be in no
way changed in my affection. Raise yourself," he said; "good and ill are
a chimera; there is nought in life except destiny, and however you may
be circumstanced there is one at your side who will help you to the
last."

Thus encouraged, Silas gathered himself together, and in a broken voice,
and helped out by the Doctor's interrogations, contrived at last to put
him in possession of the facts. But the conversation between the Prince
and Geraldine he altogether omitted, as he had understood little of its
purport, and had no idea that it was in any way related to his own
misadventure.

"Alas!" cried Dr. Noel, "I am much abused, or you have fallen innocently
into the most dangerous hands in Europe. Poor boy, what a pit has been
dug for your simplicity! into what a deadly peril have your unwary feet
been conducted! This man," he said, "this Englishman, whom you twice
saw, and whom I suspect to be the soul of the contrivance, can you
describe him? Was he young or old? tall or short?"

But Silas, who, for all his curiosity, had not a seeing eye in his head,
was able to supply nothing but meagre generalities, which it was
impossible to recognise.

"I would have it a piece of education in all schools!" cried the Doctor
angrily. "Where is the use of eyesight and articulate speech if a man
cannot observe and recollect the features of his enemy? I, who know all
the gangs of Europe, might have identified him, and gained new weapons
for your defence. Cultivate this art in future, my poor boy; you may
find it of momentous service."

"The future!" repeated Silas. "What future is there left for me except
the gallows?"

"Youth is but a cowardly season," returned the Doctor; "and a man's own
troubles look blacker than they are. I am old, and yet I never despair."

"Can I tell such a story to the police?" demanded Silas.

"Assuredly not," replied the Doctor. "From what I see already of the
machination in which you have been involved, your case is desperate upon
that side; and for the narrow eye of the authorities you are infallibly
the guilty person. And remember that we only know a portion of the plot;
and the same infamous contrivers have doubtless arranged many other
circumstances which would be elicited by a police inquiry, and help to
fix the guilt more certainly upon your innocence."

"I am then lost, indeed!" cried Silas.

"I have not said so," answered Dr. Noel, "for I am a cautious man."

"But look at this!" objected Silas, pointing to the body. "Here is this
object in my bed: not to be explained, not to be disposed of, not to be
regarded without horror."

"Horror?" replied the Doctor. "No. When this sort of clock has run down,
it is no more to me than an ingenious piece of mechanism, to be
investigated with the bistoury. When blood is once cold and stagnant, it
is no longer human blood; when flesh is once dead, it is no longer that
flesh which we desire in our lovers and respect in our friends. The
grace, the attraction, the terror, have all gone from it with the
animating spirit. Accustom yourself to look upon it with composure; for
if my scheme is practicable you will have to live some days in constant
proximity to that which now so greatly horrifies you."

"Your scheme?" cried Silas. "What is that? Tell me speedily, Doctor;
for I have scarcely courage enough to continue to exist."

Without replying, Dr. Noel turned towards the bed, and proceeded to
examine the corpse.

"Quite dead," he murmured. "Yes, as I had supposed, the pockets empty.
Yes, and the name cut off the shirt. Their work has been done thoroughly
and well. Fortunately, he is of small stature."

Silas followed these words with an extreme anxiety. At last the Doctor,
his autopsy completed, took a chair and addressed the young American
with a smile.

"Since I came into your room," said he, "although my ears and my tongue
have been so busy, I have not suffered my eyes to remain idle. I noted a
little while ago that you have there, in the corner, one of those
monstrous constructions which your fellow-countrymen carry with them
into all quarters of the globe--in a word, a Saratoga trunk. Until this
moment I have never been able to conceive the utility of these
erections; but then I began to have a glimmer. Whether it was for
convenience in the slave-trade, or to obviate the results of too ready
an employment of the bowie-knife, I cannot bring myself to decide. But
one thing I see plainly--the object of such a box is to contain a human
body."

"Surely," cried Silas, "surely this is not a time for jesting."

"Although I may express myself with some degree of pleasantry," replied
the Doctor, "the purport of my words is entirely serious. And the first
thing we have to do, my young friend, is to empty your coffer of all
that it contains."

Silas, obeying the authority of Dr. Noel, put himself at his
disposition. The Saratoga trunk was soon gutted of its contents, which
made a considerable litter on the floor; and then--Silas taking the
heels and the Doctor supporting the shoulders--the body of the murdered
man was carried from the bed, and, after some difficulty, doubled up and
inserted whole into the empty box. With an effort on the part of both,
the lid was forced down upon this unusual baggage, and the trunk was
locked and corded by the Doctor's own hand, while Silas disposed of what
had been taken out between the closet and a chest of drawers.

"Now," said the Doctor, "the first step has been taken on the way to
your deliverance. To-morrow, or rather to-day, it must be your task to
allay the suspicions of your porter, paying him all that you owe; while
you may trust me to make the arrangements necessary to a safe
conclusion. Meantime, follow me to my room, where I shall give you a
safe and powerful opiate; for, whatever you do, you must have rest."

The next day was the longest in Silas's memory; it seemed as if it would
never be done. He denied himself to his friends, and sat in a corner
with his eyes fixed upon the Saratoga trunk in dismal contemplation. His
own former indiscretions were now returned upon him in kind; for the
observatory had been once more opened, and he was conscious of an almost
continual study from Madame Zéphyrine's apartment. So distressing did
this become that he was at last obliged to block up the spy-hole from
his own side; and when he was thus secured from observation he spent a
considerable portion of his time in contrite tears and prayer.

Late in the evening Dr. Noel entered the room carrying in his hand a
pair of sealed envelopes without address, one somewhat bulky, and the
other so slim as to seem without enclosure.

"Silas," he said, seating himself at the table, "the time has now come
for me to explain my plan for your salvation. To-morrow morning, at an
early hour, Prince Florizel of Bohemia returns to London, after having
diverted himself for a few days with the Parisian Carnival. It was my
fortune, a good while ago, to do Colonel Geraldine, his Master of the
Horse, one of those services, so common in my profession, which are
never forgotten upon either side. I have no need to explain to you the
nature of the obligation under which he was laid; suffice it to say
that I knew him ready to serve me in any practicable manner. Now, it was
necessary for you to gain London with your trunk unopened. To this the
Custom House seemed to oppose a fatal difficulty; but I bethought me
that the baggage of so considerable a person as the Prince is, as a
matter of courtesy, passed without examination by the officers of
Custom. I applied to Colonel Geraldine, and succeeded in obtaining a
favourable answer. To-morrow, if you go before six to the hotel where
the Prince lodges, your baggage will be passed over as a part of his,
and you yourself will make the journey as a member of his suite."

"It seems to me, as you speak, that I have already seen both the Prince
and Colonel Geraldine; I even overheard some of their conversation the
other evening at the Bullier Ball."

"It is probable enough; for the Prince loves to mix with all societies,"
replied the Doctor. "Once arrived in London," he pursued, "your task is
nearly ended. In this more bulky envelope I have given you a letter
which I dare not address; but in the other you will find the designation
of the house to which you must carry it along with your box, which will
there be taken from you and not trouble you any more."

"Alas!" said Silas, "I have every wish to believe you; but how is it
possible? You open up to me a bright prospect, but, I ask you, is my
mind capable of receiving so unlikely a solution? Be more generous, and
let me further understand your meaning."

The Doctor seemed painfully impressed.

"Boy," he answered, "you do not know how hard a thing you ask of me. But
be it so. I am now inured to humiliation; and it would be strange if I
refused you this, after having granted you so much. Know, then, that
although I now make so quiet an appearance--frugal, solitary, addicted
to study--when I was younger, my name was once a rallying-cry among the
most astute and dangerous spirits of London; and while I was outwardly
an object for respect and consideration, my true power resided in the
most secret, terrible, and criminal relations. It is to one of the
persons who then obeyed me that I now address myself to deliver you from
your burden. They were men of many different nations and dexterities,
all bound together by a formidable oath, and working to the same
purposes; the trade of the association was in murder; and I who speak to
you, innocent as I appear, was the chieftain of this redoubtable crew."

"What?" cried Silas. "A murderer? And one with whom murder was a trade?
Can I take your hand? Ought I so much as to accept your services? Dark
and criminal old man, would you make an accomplice of my youth and my
distress?"

The Doctor bitterly laughed.

"You are difficult to please, Mr. Scuddamore," said he; "but I now offer
you your choice of company between the murdered man and the murderer. If
your conscience is too nice to accept my aid, say so, and I will
immediately leave you. Thenceforward you can deal with your trunk and
its belongings as best suits your upright conscience."

"I own myself wrong," replied Silas. "I should have remembered how
generously you offered to shield me, even before I had convinced you of
my innocence, and I continue to listen to your counsels with gratitude."

"That is well," returned the Doctor; "and I perceive you are beginning
to learn some of the lessons of experience."

"At the same time," resumed the New Englander, "as you confess yourself
accustomed to this tragical business, and the people to whom you
recommend me are your own former associates and friends, could you not
yourself undertake the transport of the box, and rid me at once of its
detested presence?"

"Upon my word," replied the Doctor, "I admire you cordially. If you do
not think I have already meddled sufficiently in your concerns, believe
me, from my heart I think the contrary. Take or leave my services as I
offer them; and trouble me with no more words of gratitude, for I value
your consideration even more lightly than I do your intellect. A time
will come, if you should be spared to see a number of years in health of
mind, when you will think differently of all this, and blush for your
to-night's behaviour."

So saying, the Doctor arose from his chair, repeated his directions
briefly and clearly, and departed from the room without permitting Silas
any time to answer.

The next morning Silas presented himself at the hotel, where he was
politely received by Colonel Geraldine, and relieved, from that moment,
of all immediate alarm about his trunk and its grisly contents. The
journey passed over without much incident, although the young man was
horrified to overhear the sailors and railway porters complaining among
themselves about the unusual weight of the Prince's baggage. Silas
travelled in a carriage with the valets, for Prince Florizel chose to be
alone with his Master of the Horse. On board the steamer, however, Silas
attracted his Highness's attention by the melancholy of his air and
attitude as he stood gazing at the pile of baggage; for he was still
full of disquietude about the future.

"There is a young man," observed the Prince, "who must have some cause
for sorrow."

"That," replied Geraldine, "is the American for whom I obtained
permission to travel with your suite."

"You remind me that I have been remiss in courtesy," said Prince
Florizel, and advancing to Silas, he addressed him with the most
exquisite condescension in these words:

"I was charmed, young sir, to be able to gratify the desire you made
known to me through Colonel Geraldine. Remember, if you please, that I
shall be glad at any future time to lay you under a more serious
obligation."

And he then put some questions as to the political condition of America,
which Silas answered with sense and propriety.

"You are still a young man," said the Prince; "but I observe you to be
very serious for your years. Perhaps you allow your attention to be too
much occupied with grave studies. But, perhaps, on the other hand, I am
myself indiscreet and touch upon a painful subject."

"I have certainly cause to be the most miserable of men," said Silas;
"never has a more innocent person been more dismally abused."

"I will not ask you for your confidence," returned Prince Florizel. "But
do not forget that Colonel Geraldine's recommendation is an unfailing
passport; and that I am not only willing, but possibly more able than
many others, to do you a service."

Silas was delighted with the amiability of this great personage; but his
mind soon returned upon its gloomy preoccupations; for not even the
favour of a Prince to a Republican can discharge a brooding spirit of
its cares.

The train arrived at Charing Cross, where the officers of the Revenue
respected the baggage of Prince Florizel in the usual manner. The most
elegant equipages were in waiting; and Silas was driven, along with the
rest, to the Prince's residence. There Colonel Geraldine sought him out,
and expressed himself pleased to have been of any service to a friend of
the physician's, for whom he professed a great consideration.

"I hope," he added, "that you will find none of your porcelain injured.
Special orders were given along the line to deal tenderly with the
Prince's effects."

And then, directing the servants to place one of the carriages at the
young gentleman's disposal, and at once to charge the Saratoga trunk
upon the dickey, the Colonel shook hands and excused himself on account
of his occupations in the princely household.

Silas now broke the seal of the envelope containing the address, and
directed the stately footman to drive him to Box Court, opening off the
Strand. It seemed as if the place were not at all unknown to the man,
for he looked startled and begged a repetition of the order. It was
with a heart full of alarms that Silas mounted into the luxurious
vehicle, and was driven to his destination. The entrance to Box Court
was too narrow for the passage of a coach; it was a mere footway between
railings, with a post at either end. On one of these posts was seated a
man, who at once jumped down and exchanged a friendly sign with the
driver, while the footman opened the door and inquired of Silas whether
he should take down the Saratoga trunk, and to what number it should be
carried.

"If you please," said Silas. "To number three."

The footman and the man who had been sitting on the post, even with the
aid of Silas himself, had hard work to carry in the trunk; and before it
was deposited at the door of the house in question, the young American
was horrified to find a score of loiterers looking on. But he knocked
with as good a countenance as he could muster up, and presented the
other envelope to him who opened.

"He is not at home," said he, "but if you will leave your letter and
return to-morrow early, I shall be able to inform you whether and when
he can receive your visit. Would you like to leave your box?" he added.

"Dearly," cried Silas; and the next moment he repented his
precipitation, and declared, with equal emphasis, that he would rather
carry the box along with him to the hotel.

The crowd jeered at his indecision, and followed him to the carriage
with insulting remarks; and Silas, covered with shame and terror,
implored the servants to conduct him to some quiet and comfortable house
of entertainment in the immediate neighbourhood.

The Prince's equipage deposited Silas at the Craven Hotel in Craven
Street, and immediately drove away, leaving him alone with the servants
of the inn. The only vacant room, it appeared, was a little den up four
pairs of stairs, and looking towards the back. To this hermitage, with
infinite trouble and complaint, a pair of stout porters carried the
Saratoga trunk. It is needless to mention that Silas kept closely at
their heels throughout the ascent, and had his heart in his mouth at
every corner. A single false step, he reflected, and the box might go
over the banisters and land its fatal contents, plainly discovered, on
the pavement of the hall.

Arrived in the room, he sat down on the edge of his bed to recover from
the agony that he had just endured; but he had hardly taken his position
when he was recalled to a sense of his peril by the action of the boots,
who had knelt beside the trunk, and was proceeding officiously to undo
its elaborate fastenings.

"Let it be!" cried Silas. "I shall want nothing from it while I stay
here."

"You might have let it lie in the hall, then," growled the man; "a thing
as big and heavy as a church. What you have inside I cannot fancy. If it
is all money, you are a richer man than we."

"Money?" repeated Silas, in a sudden perturbation. "What do you mean by
money? I have no money, and you are speaking like a fool."

"All right, captain," retorted the boots with a wink. "There's nobody
will touch your lordship's money. I'm as safe as the bank," he added;
"but as the box is heavy, I shouldn't mind drinking something to your
lordship's health."

Silas pressed two Napoleons upon his acceptance, apologising, at the
same time, for being obliged to trouble him with foreign money, and
pleading his recent arrival for excuse. And the man, grumbling with even
greater fervour, and looking contemptuously from the money in his hand
to the Saratoga trunk, and back again from the one to the other, at last
consented to withdraw.

For nearly two days the dead body had been packed into Silas's box; and
as soon as he was alone the unfortunate New Englander nosed all the
cracks and openings with the most passionate attention. But the weather
was cool, and the trunk still managed to contain his shocking secret.

He took a chair beside it, and buried his face in his hands, and his
mind in the most profound reflection. If he were not speedily relieved,
no question but he must be speedily discovered. Alone in a strange city,
without friends or accomplices, if the Doctor's introduction failed him,
he was indubitably a lost New Englander. He reflected pathetically over
his ambitious designs for the future; he should not now become the hero
and spokesman of his native place of Bangor, Maine; he should not, as he
had fondly anticipated, move on from office to office, from honour to
honour; he might as well divest himself at once of all hope of being
acclaimed President of the United States, and leaving behind him a
statue, in the worst possible style of art, to adorn the Capitol at
Washington. Here he was, chained to a dead Englishman doubled up inside
a Saratoga trunk; whom he must get rid of, or perish from the rolls of
national glory!

I should be afraid to chronicle the language employed by this young man
to the Doctor, to the murdered man, to Madame Zéphyrine, to the boots of
the hotel, to the Prince's servants, and, in a word, to all who had been
ever so remotely connected with his horrible misfortune.

He slunk down to dinner about seven at night; but the yellow coffee-room
appalled him, the eyes of the other diners seemed to rest on his with
suspicion, and his mind remained upstairs with the Saratoga trunk. When
the waiter came to offer him cheese, his nerves were already so much on
edge that he leaped half-way out of his chair and upset the remainder of
a pint of ale upon the table-cloth.

The fellow offered to show him to the smoking-room when he had done; and
although he would have much preferred to return at once to his perilous
treasure, he had not the courage to refuse, and was shown downstairs to
the black, gas-lit cellar, which formed, and possibly still forms, the
divan of the Craven Hotel.

Two very sad betting men were playing billiards, attended by a moist,
consumptive marker; and for the moment Silas imagined that these were
the only occupants of the apartment. But at the next glance his eye
fell upon a person smoking in the farthest corner, with lowered eyes and
a most respectable and modest aspect. He knew at once that he had seen
the face before; and, in spite of the entire change of clothes,
recognised the man whom he had found seated on a post at the entrance to
Box Court, and who had helped him to carry the trunk to and from the
carriage. The New Englander simply turned and ran, nor did he pause
until he had locked and bolted himself into his bedroom.

There, all night long, a prey to the most terrible imaginations, he
watched beside the fatal boxful of dead flesh. The suggestion of the
boots that his trunk was full of gold inspired him with all manner of
new terrors, if he so much as dared to close an eye; and the presence in
the smoking-room, and under an obvious disguise, of the loiterer from
Box Court convinced him that he was once more the centre of obscure
machinations.

Midnight had sounded some time, when, impelled by uneasy suspicions,
Silas opened his bedroom door and peered into the passage. It was dimly
illuminated by a single jet of gas; and some distance off he perceived a
man sleeping on the floor in the costume of an hotel under-servant.
Silas drew near the man on tiptoe. He lay partly on his back, partly on
his side, and his right fore-arm concealed his face from recognition.
Suddenly, while the American was still bending over him, the sleeper
removed his arm and opened his eyes, and Silas found himself once more
face to face with the loiterer of Box Court.

"Good-night, sir," said the man pleasantly.

But Silas was too profoundly moved to find an answer, and regained his
room in silence.

Towards morning, worn out by apprehension, he fell asleep on his chair,
with his head forward on the trunk. In spite of so constrained an
attitude and such a grisly pillow, his slumber was sound and prolonged,
and he was only awakened at a late hour and by a sharp tapping at the
door.

He hurried to open, and found the boots without.

"You are the gentleman who called yesterday at Box Court?" he asked.

Silas, with a quaver, admitted that he had done so.

"Then this note is for you," added the servant, proffering a sealed
envelope.

Silas tore it open, and found inside the words: "Twelve o'clock."

He was punctual to the hour; the trunk was carried before him by several
stout servants; and he was himself ushered into a room, where a man sat
warming himself before the fire with his back towards the door. The
sound of so many persons entering and leaving, and the scraping of the
trunk as it was deposited upon the bare boards, were alike unable to
attract the notice of the occupant; and Silas stood waiting, in an agony
of fear, until he should deign to recognise his presence.

Perhaps five minutes had elapsed before the man turned leisurely about,
and disclosed the features of Prince Florizel of Bohemia.

"So, sir," he said, with great severity, "this is the manner in which
you abuse my politeness. You join yourself to persons of condition, I
perceive, for no other purpose than to escape the consequences of your
crimes; and I can readily understand your embarrassment when I addressed
myself to you yesterday."

"Indeed," cried Silas, "I am innocent of everything except misfortune."

And in a hurried voice, and with the greatest ingenuousness, he
recounted to the Prince the whole history of his calamity.

"I see I have been mistaken," said his Highness, when he had heard him
to an end. "You are no other than a victim, and since I am not to punish
you may be sure I shall do my utmost to help.--And now," he continued,
"to business. Open your box at once, and let me see what it contains."

Silas changed colour.

"I almost fear to look upon it," he exclaimed.

"Nay," replied the Prince, "have you not looked at it already? This is a
form of sentimentality to be resisted. The sight of a sick man, whom we
can still help, should appeal more directly to the feelings than that of
a dead man who is equally beyond help or harm, love or hatred. Nerve
yourself, Mr. Scuddamore,"--and then, seeing that Silas still hesitated,
"I do not desire to give another name to my request," he added.

The young American awoke as if out of a dream, and with a shiver of
repugnance addressed himself to loose the straps and open the lock of
the Saratoga trunk. The Prince stood by, watching with a composed
countenance and his hands behind his back. The body was quite stiff, and
it cost Silas a great effort, both moral and physical, to dislodge it
from its position, and discover the face.

Prince Florizel started back with an exclamation of painful surprise.

"Alas!" he cried, "you little know, Mr. Scuddamore, what a cruel gift
you have brought me. This is a young man of my own suite, the brother of
my trusted friend; and it was upon matters of my own service that he has
thus perished at the hands of violent and treacherous men. Poor
Geraldine," he went on, as if to himself, "in what words am I to tell
you of your brother's fate? How can I excuse myself in your eyes, or in
the eyes of God, for the presumptuous schemes that led him to this
bloody and unnatural death? Ah, Florizel! Florizel! when will you learn
the discretion that suits mortal life, and be no longer dazzled with the
image of power at your disposal? Power!" he cried; "who is more
powerless? I look upon this young man whom I have sacrificed, Mr.
Scuddamore, and feel how small a thing it is to be a Prince."

Silas was moved at the sight of his emotion. He tried to murmur some
consolatory words, and burst into tears. The Prince, touched by his
obvious intention, came up to him and took him by the hand.

"Command yourself," said he. "We have both much to learn, and we shall
both be better men for to-day's meeting."

Silas thanked him in silence with an affectionate look.

"Write me the address of Doctor Noel on this piece of paper," continued
the Prince, leading him towards the table; "and let me recommend you,
when you are again in Paris, to avoid the society of that dangerous man.
He has acted in this matter on a generous inspiration; that I must
believe; had he been privy to young Geraldine's death he would never
have despatched the body to the care of the actual criminal."

"The actual criminal!" repeated Silas in astonishment.

"Even so," returned the Prince. "This letter, which the disposition of
Almighty Providence has so strangely delivered into my hands, was
addressed to no less a person than the criminal himself, the infamous
President of the Suicide Club. Seek to pry no further in these perilous
affairs, but content yourself with your own miraculous escape, and leave
this house at once. I have pressing affairs, and must arrange at once
about this poor clay, which was so lately a gallant and handsome youth."

Silas took a grateful and submissive leave of Prince Florizel, but he
lingered in Box Court until he saw him depart in a splendid carriage on
a visit to Colonel Henderson of the police. Republican as he was, the
young American took off his hat with almost a sentiment of devotion to
the retreating carriage. And the same night he started by rail on his
return to Paris.


_Here_ (observes my Arabian author) _is the end of_ THE HISTORY OF THE
PHYSICIAN AND THE SARATOGA TRUNK. _Omitting some reflections on the
power of Providence, highly pertinent in the original, but little suited
to our Occidental taste, I shall only add that Mr. Scuddamore has
already begun to mount the ladder of political fame, and by last advices
was the Sheriff of his native town._


THE ADVENTURE OF THE HANSOM CABS

Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich had greatly distinguished himself in one of
the lesser Indian hill wars. He it was who took the chieftain prisoner
with his own hand; his gallantry was universally applauded; and when he
came home, prostrated by an ugly sabre-cut and a protracted
jungle-fever, society was prepared to welcome the Lieutenant as a
celebrity of minor lustre. But his was a character remarkable for
unaffected modesty; adventure was dear to his heart, but he cared little
for adulation; and he waited at foreign watering-places and in Algiers
until the fame of his exploits had run through its nine days' vitality
and begun to be forgotten. He arrived in London at last, in the early
season, with as little observation as he could desire; and as he was an
orphan and had none but distant relatives who lived in the provinces, it
was almost as a foreigner that he installed himself in the capital of
the country for which he had shed his blood.

On the day following his arrival he dined alone at a military club. He
shook hands with a few old comrades, and received their warm
congratulations; but as one and all had some engagement for the evening,
he found himself left entirely to his own resources. He was in dress,
for he had entertained the notion of visiting a theatre. But the great
city was new to him; he had gone from a provincial school to a military
college, and thence direct to the Eastern Empire; and he promised
himself a variety of delights in this world for exploration. Swinging
his cane, he took his way westward. It was a mild evening, already dark,
and now and then threatening rain. The succession of faces in the
lamplight stirred the Lieutenant's imagination; and it seemed to him as
if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere and
surrounded by the mystery of four million private lives. He glanced at
the houses, and marvelled what was passing behind those warmly-lighted
windows; he looked into face after face, and saw them each intent upon
some unknown interest, criminal or kindly.

"They talk of war," he thought, "but this is the great battlefield of
mankind."

And then he began to wonder that he should walk so long in this
complicated scene, and not chance upon so much as the shadow of an
adventure for himself.

"All in good time," he reflected. "I am still a stranger, and perhaps
wear a strange air. But I must be drawn into the eddy before long."

The night was already well advanced when a plump of cold rain fell
suddenly out of the darkness. Brackenbury paused under some trees, and
as he did so he caught sight of a hansom cabman making him a sign that
he was disengaged. The circumstance fell in so happily to the occasion
that he at once raised his cane in answer, and had soon ensconced
himself in the London gondola.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"Where you please," said Brackenbury.

And immediately, at a pace of surprising swiftness, the hansom drove off
through the rain into a maze of villas. One villa was so like another,
each with its front garden, and there was so little to distinguish the
deserted lamp-lit streets and crescents through which the flying hansom
took its way, that Brackenbury soon lost all idea of direction. He would
have been tempted to believe that the cabman was amusing himself by
driving him round and round and in and out about a small quarter, but
there was something business-like in the speed which convinced him of
the contrary. The man had an object in view, he was hastening towards a
definite end; and Brackenbury was at once astonished at the fellow's
skill in picking a way through such a labyrinth, and a little concerned
to imagine what was the occasion of his hurry. He had heard tales of
strangers falling ill in London. Did the driver belong to some bloody
and treacherous association? and was he himself being whirled to a
murderous death?

The thought had scarcely presented itself, when the cab swung sharply
round a corner and pulled up before the garden gate of a villa in a long
and wide road. The house was brilliantly lighted up. Another hansom had
just driven away, and Brackenbury could see a gentleman being admitted
at the front door and received by several liveried servants. He was
surprised that the cabman should have stopped so immediately in front of
a house where a reception was being held; but he did not doubt it was
the result of accident, and sat placidly smoking where he was, until he
heard the trap thrown open over his head.

"Here we are, sir," said the driver.

"Here!" repeated Brackenbury. "Where?"

"You told me to take you where I pleased, sir," returned the man with a
chuckle, "and here we are."

It struck Brackenbury that the voice was wonderfully smooth and
courteous for a man in so inferior a position; he remembered the speed
at which he had been driven; and now it occurred to him that the hansom
was more luxuriously appointed than the common run of public
conveyances.

"I must ask you to explain," said he. "Do you mean to turn me out into
the rain? My good man, I suspect the choice is mine."

"The choice is certainly yours," replied the driver; "but when I tell
you all, I believe I know how a gentleman of your figure will decide.
There is a gentleman's party in this house. I do not know whether the
master be a stranger to London and without acquaintances of his own; or
whether he is a man of odd notions. But certainly I was hired to kidnap
single gentlemen in evening dress, as many as I pleased, but military
officers by preference. You have simply to go in and say that Mr. Morris
invited you."

"Are you Mr. Morris?" inquired the Lieutenant.

"Oh, no," replied the cabman. "Mr. Morris is the person of the house."

"It is not a common way of collecting guests," said Brackenbury: "but
an eccentric man might very well indulge the whim without any intention
to offend. And suppose that I refuse Mr. Morris's invitation," he went
on, "what then?"

"My orders are to drive you back where I took you from," replied the
man, "and set out to look for others up to midnight. Those who have no
fancy for such an adventure, Mr. Morris said, were not the guests for
him."

These words decided the Lieutenant on the spot.

"After all," he reflected, as he descended from the hansom, "I have not
had long to wait for my adventure."

He had hardly found footing on the side-walk, and was still feeling in
his pocket for the fare, when the cab swung about and drove off by the
way it came at the former break-neck velocity. Brackenbury shouted after
the man, who paid no heed, and continued to drive away; but the sound of
his voice was overheard in the house, the door was again thrown open,
emitting a flood of light upon the garden, and a servant ran down to
meet him holding an umbrella.

"The cabman has been paid," observed the servant in a very civil tone;
and he proceeded to escort Brackenbury along the path and up the steps.
In the hall several other attendants relieved him of his hat, cane, and
paletot, gave him a ticket with a number in return, and politely hurried
him up a stair adorned with tropical flowers, to the door of an
apartment on the first story. Here a grave butler inquired his name, and
announcing, "Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich," ushered him into the
drawing-room of the house.

A young man, slender and singularly handsome, came forward and greeted
him with an air at once courtly and affectionate. Hundreds of candles,
of the finest wax, lit up a room that was perfumed, like the staircase,
with a profusion of rare and beautiful flowering shrubs, A side-table
was loaded with tempting viands. Several servants went to and fro with
fruits and goblets of champagne. The company was perhaps sixteen in
number, all men, few beyond the prime of life, and, with hardly an
exception, of a dashing and capable exterior. They were divided into two
groups, one about a roulette-board, and the other surrounding a table at
which one of their number held a bank of baccarat.

"I see," thought Brackenbury, "I am in a private gambling saloon, and
the cabman was a tout."

His eye had embraced the details, and his mind formed the conclusion,
while his host was still holding him by the hand; and to him his looks
returned from this rapid survey. At a second view Mr. Morris surprised
him still more than on the first. The easy elegance of his manners, the
distinction, amiability, and courage that appeared upon his features,
fitted very ill with the Lieutenant's preconceptions on the subject of
the proprietor of a hell; and the tone of his conversation seemed to
mark him out for a man of position and merit. Brackenbury found he had
an instinctive liking for his entertainer; and though he chid himself
for the weakness, he was unable to resist a sort of friendly attraction
for Mr. Morris's person and character.

"I have heard of you, Lieutenant Rich," said Mr. Morris, lowering his
tone; "and believe me I am gratified to make your acquaintance. Your
looks accord with the reputation that has preceded you from India. And
if you will forget for a while the irregularity of your presentation in
my house, I shall feel it not only an honour, but a genuine pleasure
besides. A man who makes a mouthful of barbarian cavaliers," he added
with a laugh, "should not be appalled by a breach of etiquette, however
serious."

And he led him towards the sideboard and pressed him to partake of some
refreshment.

"Upon my word," the Lieutenant reflected, "this is one of the
pleasantest fellows and, I do not doubt, one of the most agreeable
societies in London."

He partook of some champagne, which he found excellent; and observing
that many of the company were already smoking, he lit one of his own
Manillas, and strolled up to the roulette-board, where he sometimes made
a stake and sometimes looked on smilingly on the fortune of others. It
was while he was thus idling that he became aware of a sharp scrutiny to
which the whole of the guests were subjected. Mr. Morris went here and
there, ostensibly busied on hospitable concerns; but he had ever a
shrewd glance at disposal; not a man of the party escaped his sudden,
searching looks; he took stock of the bearing of heavy losers, he valued
the amount of the stakes, he paused behind couples who were deep in
conversation; and, in a word, there was hardly a characteristic of any
one present but he seemed to catch and make a note of it. Brackenbury
began to wonder if this were indeed a gambling-hell: it had so much the
air of a private inquisition. He followed Mr. Morris in all his
movements; and although the man had a ready smile, he seemed to
perceive, as it were under a mask, a haggard, careworn, and preoccupied
spirit. The fellows around him laughed and made their game; but
Brackenbury had lost interest in the guests.

"This Morris," thought he, "is no idler in the room. Some deep purpose
inspires him; let it be mine to fathom it."

Now and then Mr. Morris would call one of his visitors aside; and after
a brief colloquy in an ante-room, he would return alone, and the
visitors in question reappeared no more. After a certain number of
repetitions, this performance excited Brackenbury's curiosity to a high
degree. He determined to be at the bottom of this minor mystery at once;
and strolling into the ante-room, found a deep window recess concealed
by curtains of the fashionable green. Here he hurriedly ensconced
himself; nor had he to wait long before the sound of steps and voices
drew near him from the principal apartment. Peering through the
division, he saw Mr. Morris escorting a fat and ruddy personage, with
somewhat the look of a commercial traveller, whom Brackenbury had
already remarked for his coarse laugh and under-bred behaviour at the
table. The pair halted immediately before the window, so that
Brackenbury lost not a word of the following discourse:--

"I beg you a thousand pardons!" began Mr. Morris, with the most
conciliatory manner; "and, if I appear rude, I am sure you will readily
forgive me. In a place so great as London accidents must continually
happen; and the best that we can hope is to remedy them with as small
delay as possible. I will not deny that I fear you have made a mistake
and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, I
cannot at all remember your appearance. Let me put the question without
unnecessary circumlocution--between gentlemen of honour a word will
suffice--Under whose roof do you suppose yourself to be?"

"That of Mr. Morris," replied the other, with a prodigious display of
confusion, which had been visibly growing upon him throughout the last
few words.

"Mr. John or Mr. James Morris?" inquired the host.

"I really cannot tell you," returned the unfortunate guest. "I am not
personally acquainted with the gentleman, any more than I am with
yourself."

"I see," said Mr. Morris. "There is another person of the same name
farther down the street; and I have no doubt the policeman will be able
to supply you with his number. Believe me, I felicitate myself on the
misunderstanding which has procured me the pleasure of your company for
so long; and let me express a hope that we may meet again upon a more
regular footing. Meantime, I would not for the world detain you longer
from your friends. John," he added, raising his voice, "will you see
that this gentleman finds his great-coat?"

And with the most agreeable air Mr. Morris escorted his visitor as far
as the ante-room door, where he left him under conduct of the butler. As
he passed the window, on his return to the drawing-room, Brackenbury
could hear him utter a profound sigh, as though his mind was loaded with
a great anxiety, and his nerves already fatigued with the task on which
he was engaged.

For perhaps an hour the hansoms kept arriving with such frequency that
Mr. Morris had to receive a new guest for every old one that he sent
away, and the company preserved its number undiminished. But towards the
end of that time the arrivals grew few and far between, and at length
ceased entirely, while the process of elimination was continued with
unimpaired activity. The drawing-room began to look empty: the baccarat
was discontinued for lack of a banker; more than one person said
good-night of his own accord, and was suffered to depart without
expostulation; and in the meanwhile Mr. Morris redoubled in agreeable
attentions to those who stayed behind. He went from group to group and
from person to person with looks of the readiest sympathy and the most
pertinent and pleasing talk; he was not so much like a host as like a
hostess, and there was a feminine coquetry and condescension in his
manner which charmed the hearts of all.

As the guests grew thinner, Lieutenant Rich strolled for a moment out of
the drawing-room into the hall in quest of fresher air. But he had no
sooner passed the threshold of the ante-chamber than he was brought to a
dead halt by a discovery of the most surprising nature. The flowering
shrubs had disappeared from the staircase; three large furniture-waggons
stood before the garden gate; the servants were busy dismantling the
house upon all sides; and some of them had already donned their
great-coats and were preparing to depart. It was like the end of a
country ball, where everything has been supplied by contract.
Brackenbury had indeed some matter for reflection. First, the guests,
who were no real guests, after all, had been dismissed; and now the
servants, who could hardly be genuine servants, were actively
dispersing.

"Was the whole establishment a sham?" he asked himself. "The mushroom of
a single night which should disappear before morning?"

Watching a favourable opportunity, Brackenbury dashed upstairs to the
higher regions of the house. It was as he had expected. He ran from room
to room, and saw Although the house had been painted and papered, it
was not only uninhabited at present, but plainly had never been
inhabited at all. The young officer remembered with astonishment its
specious, settled, and hospitable air on his arrival. It was only at a
prodigious cost that the imposture could have been carried out upon so
great a scale.

Who, then, was Mr. Morris? What was his intention in thus playing the
householder for a single night in the remote west of London? And why did
he collect his visitors at hazard from the streets?

Brackenbury remembered that he had already delayed too long, and
hastened to join the company. Many had left during his absence; and,
counting the Lieutenant and his host, there were not more than five
persons in the drawing-room--recently so thronged. Mr. Morris greeted
him, as he re-entered the apartment, with a smile, and immediately rose
to his feet.

"It is now time, gentlemen," said he, "to explain my purpose in decoying
you from your amusements. I trust you did not find the evening hang very
dully on your hands; but my object, I will confess it, was not to
entertain your leisure, but to help myself in an unfortunate necessity.
You are all gentlemen," he continued, "your appearance does you that
much justice, and I ask for no better security. Hence, I speak it
without concealment, I ask you to render me a dangerous and delicate
service; dangerous because you may run the hazard of your lives, and
delicate because I must ask an absolute discretion upon all that you
shall see or hear. From an utter stranger the request is almost
comically extravagant; I am well aware of this; and I would add at once,
if there be any one present who has heard enough, if there be one among
the party who recoils from a dangerous confidence and a piece of
Quixotic devotion to he knows not whom--here is my hand ready, and I
shall wish him good-night and God-speed with all the sincerity in the
world."

A very tall, black man, with a heavy stoop, immediately responded to
this appeal.

"I commend your frankness, sir," said he; "and, for my part, I go. I
make no reflections; but I cannot deny that you fill me with suspicious
thoughts. I go myself, as I say; and perhaps you will think I have no
right to add words to my example."

"On the contrary," replied Mr. Morris, "I am obliged to you for all you
say. It would be impossible to exaggerate the gravity of my proposal."

"Well, gentlemen, what do you say?" said the tall man, addressing the
others. "We have had our evening's frolic; shall we all go homeward
peaceably in a body? You will think well of my suggestion in the
morning, when you see the sun again in innocence and safety."

The speaker pronounced the last words with an intonation which added to
their force; and his face wore a singular expression, full of gravity
and significance. Another of the company rose hastily, and, with some
appearance of alarm, prepared to take his leave. There were only two who
held their ground, Brackenbury and an old red-nosed cavalry Major; but
these two preserved a nonchalant demeanour, and, beyond a look of
intelligence which they rapidly exchanged, appeared entirely foreign to
the discussion that had just been terminated.

Mr. Morris conducted the deserters as far as the door, which he closed
upon their heels; then he turned round, disclosing a countenance of
mingled relief and animation, and addressed the two officers as follows.

"I have chosen my men like Joshua in the Bible," said Mr. Morris, "and I
now believe I have the pick of London. Your appearance pleased my hansom
cabmen; then it delighted me; I have watched your behaviour in a strange
company, and under the most unusual circumstances: I have studied how
you played and how you bore your losses; lastly, I have put you to the
test of a staggering announcement, and you received it like an
invitation to dinner. It is not for nothing," he cried, "that I have
been for years the companion and the pupil of the bravest and wisest
potentate in Europe."

"At the affair of Bunderchang," observed the Major, "I asked for twelve
volunteers, and every trooper in the ranks replied to my appeal. But a
gaming party is not the same thing as a regiment under fire. You may be
pleased, I suppose, to have found two, and two who will not fail you at
a push. As for the pair who ran away, I count them among the most
pitiful hounds I ever met with.--Lieutenant Rich," he added, addressing
Brackenbury, "I have heard much of you of late; and I cannot doubt but
you have also heard of me. I am Major O'Rooke."

And the veteran tendered his hand, which was red and tremulous, to the
young Lieutenant.

"Who has not?" answered Brackenbury.

"When this little matter is settled," said Mr. Morris, "you will think I
have sufficiently rewarded you; for I could offer neither a more
valuable service than to make him acquainted with the other."

"And now," said Major O'Rooke, "is it a duel?"

"A duel after a fashion," replied Mr. Morris, "a duel with unknown and
dangerous enemies, and, as I gravely fear, a duel to the death. I must
ask you," he continued, "to call me Morris no longer; call me, if you
please, Hammersmith; my real name, as well as that of another person to
whom I hope to present you before long, you will gratify me by not
asking, and not seeking to discover for yourselves. Three days ago the
person of whom I speak disappeared suddenly from home; and, until this
morning, I received no hint of his situation. You will fancy my alarm
when I tell you that he is engaged upon a work of private justice. Bound
by an unhappy oath, too lightly sworn, he finds it necessary, without
the help of law, to rid the earth of an insidious and bloody villain.
Already two of our friends, and one of them my own born brother, have
perished in the enterprise. He himself, or I am much deceived, is taken
in the same fatal toils. But at least he still lives and still hopes,
as this billet sufficiently proves."

And the speaker, no other than Colonel Geraldine, proffered a letter,
thus conceived:--

  "MAJOR HAMMERSMITH,--On Wednesday, at 3 A.M., you will be admitted by
  the small door to the gardens of Rochester House, Regent's Park, by a
  man who is entirely in my interest. I must request you not to fail me
  by a second. Pray bring my case of swords, and, if you can find them,
  one or two gentlemen of conduct and discretion to whom my person is
  unknown. My name must not be used in this affair.

     T. GODALL."

"From his wisdom alone, if he had no other title," pursued Colonel
Geraldine, when the others had each satisfied his curiosity, "my friend
is a man whose directions should implicitly be followed. I need not tell
you, therefore, that I have not so much as visited the neighbourhood of
Rochester House; and that I am still as wholly in the dark as either of
yourselves as to the nature of my friend's dilemma. I betook myself, as
soon as I had received this order, to a furnishing contractor, and, in a
few hours, the house in which we now are had assumed its late air of
festival. My scheme was at least original; and I am far from regretting
an action which has procured me the services of Major O'Rooke and
Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich. But the servants in the street will have a
strange awakening. The house which this evening was full of lights and
visitors they will find uninhabited and for sale to-morrow morning. Thus
even the most serious concerns," added the Colonel, "have a merry side."

"And let us add a merry ending," said Brackenbury.

The Colonel consulted his watch.

"It is now hard on two," he said. "We have an hour before us, and a
swift cab is at the door. Tell me if I may count upon your help."

"During a long life," replied Major O'Rooke, "I never took back my hand
from anything, nor so much as hedged a bet."

Brackenbury signified his readiness in the most becoming terms; and
after they had drunk a glass or two of wine, the Colonel gave each of
them a loaded revolver, and the three mounted into the cab and drove off
for the address in question.

Rochester House was a magnificent residence on the banks of the canal.
The large extent of the garden isolated it in an unusual degree from the
annoyances of neighbourhood. It seemed the _parc aux cerfs_ of some
great nobleman or millionaire. As far as could be seen from the street,
there was not a glimmer of light in any of the numerous windows of the
mansion; and the place had a look of neglect, as though the master had
been long from home.

The cab was discharged, and the three gentlemen were not long in
discovering the small door, which was a sort of postern in a lane
between two garden walls. It still wanted ten or fifteen minutes of the
appointed time; the rain fell heavily, and the adventurers sheltered
themselves below some pendent ivy, and spoke in low tones of the
approaching trial.

Suddenly Geraldine raised his finger to command silence, and all three
bent their hearing to the utmost. Through the continuous noise of the
rain, the steps and voices of two men became audible from the other side
of the wall; and, as they drew nearer, Brackenbury, whose sense of
hearing was remarkably acute, could even distinguish some fragments of
their talk.

"Is the grave dug?" asked one.

"It is," replied the other; "behind the laurel hedge. When the job is
done, we can cover it with a pile of stakes."

The first speaker laughed, and the sound of his merriment was shocking
to the listeners on the other side.

"In an hour from now," he said.

And by the sound of the steps it was obvious that the pair had
separated, and were proceeding in contrary directions.

Almost immediately after the postern door was cautiously opened, a white
face was protruded into the lane, and a hand was seen beckoning to the
watchers. In dead silence the three passed the door, which was
immediately locked behind them, and followed their guide through several
garden alleys to the kitchen entrance of the house. A single candle
burned in the great paved kitchen, which was destitute of the customary
furniture; and as the party proceeded to ascend from thence by a flight
of winding stairs, a prodigious noise of rats testified still more
plainly to the dilapidation of the house.

Their conductor preceded them, carrying the candle. He was a lean man,
much bent, but still agile; and he turned from time to time and
admonished silence and caution by his gestures. Colonel Geraldine
followed on his heels, the case of swords under one arm, and a pistol
ready in the other. Brackenbury's heart beat thickly. He perceived that
they were still in time; but he judged from the alacrity of the old man
that the hour of action must be near at hand; and the circumstances of
this adventure were so obscure and menacing, the place seemed so well
chosen for the darkest acts, that an older man than Brackenbury might
have been pardoned a measure of emotion as he closed the procession up
the winding stair.

At the top the guide threw open a door and ushered the three officers
before him into a small apartment, lighted by a smoky lamp and the glow
of a modest fire. At the chimney corner sat a man in the early prime of
life, and of a stout but courtly and commanding appearance. His attitude
and expression were those of the most unmoved composure; he was smoking
a cheroot with much enjoyment and deliberation, and on a table by his
elbow stood a long glass of some effervescing beverage which diffused an
agreeable odour through the room.

"Welcome," said he, extending his hand to Colonel Geraldine. "I knew I
might count on your exactitude."

"On my devotion," replied the Colonel, with a bow.

"Present me to your friends," continued the first; and, when that
ceremony had been performed, "I wish, gentlemen," he added, with the
most exquisite affability, "that I could offer you a more cheerful
programme; it is ungracious to inaugurate an acquaintance upon serious
affairs; but the compulsion of events is stronger than the obligations
of good-fellowship. I hope and believe you will be able to forgive me
this unpleasant evening; and for men of your stamp it will be enough to
know that you are conferring a considerable favour."

"Your Highness," said the Major, "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable
to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major
Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London
unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too much at
Fortune's hands."

"Prince Florizel!" cried Brackenbury in amazement.

And he gazed with the deepest interest on the features of the celebrated
personage before him.

"I shall not lament the loss of my incognito," remarked the Prince, "for
it enables me to thank you with the more authority. You would have done
as much for Mr. Godall, I feel sure, as for the Prince of Bohemia; but
the latter can perhaps do more for you. The gain is mine," he added,
with a courteous gesture.

And the next moment he was conversing with the two officers about the
Indian army and the native troops, a subject on which, as on all others,
he had a remarkable fund of information and the soundest views.

There was something so striking in this man's attitude at a moment of
deadly peril that Brackenbury was overcome with respectful admiration;
nor was he less sensible to the charm of his conversation or the
surprising amenity of his address. Every gesture, every intonation, was
not only noble in itself, but seemed to ennoble the fortunate mortal for
whom it was intended; and Brackenbury confessed to himself with
enthusiasm that this was a sovereign for whom a brave man might
thankfully lay down his life.

Many minutes had thus passed, when the person who had introduced them
into the house, and who had sat ever since in a corner, and with his
watch in his hand, arose and whispered a word into the Prince's ear.

"It is well, Dr. Noel," replied Florizel aloud; and then addressing the
others, "You will excuse me, gentlemen," he added, "if I have to leave
you in the dark. The moment now approaches."

Dr. Noel extinguished the lamp. A faint, grey light, premonitory of the
dawn, illuminated the window, but was not sufficient to illuminate the
room; and when the Prince rose to his feet, it was impossible to
distinguish his features or to make a guess at the nature of the emotion
which obviously affected him as he spoke. He moved towards the door, and
placed himself at one side of it in an attitude of the wariest
attention.

"You will have the kindness," he said, "to maintain the strictest
silence, and to conceal yourselves in the densest of the shadow."

The three officers and the physician hastened to obey, and for nearly
ten minutes the only sound in Rochester House was occasioned by the
excursions of the rats behind the woodwork. At the end of that period, a
loud creak of a hinge broke in with surprising distinctness on the
silence; and shortly after, the watchers could distinguish a slow and
cautious tread approaching up the kitchen stair. At every second step
the intruder seemed to pause and lend an ear, and during these
intervals, which seemed of an incalculable duration, a profound disquiet
possessed the spirit of the listeners. Dr. Noel, accustomed as he was to
dangerous emotions, suffered an almost pitiful physical prostration; his
breath whistled in his lungs, his teeth grated one upon another, and his
joints cracked aloud as he nervously shifted his position.

At last a hand was laid upon the door, and the bolt shot back with a
slight report. There followed another pause, during which Brackenbury
could see the Prince draw himself together noiselessly as if for some
unusual exertion. Then the door opened, letting in a little more of the
light of the morning; and the figure of a man appeared upon the
threshold and stood motionless. He was tall, and carried a knife in his
hand. Even in the twilight they could see his upper teeth bare and
glistening, for his mouth was open like that of a hound about to leap.
The man had evidently been over the head in water but a minute or two
before; and even while he stood there the drops kept falling from his
wet clothes and pattered on the floor.

The next moment he crossed the threshold. There was a leap, a stifled
cry, an instantaneous struggle; and before Colonel Geraldine could
spring to his aid, the Prince held the man, disarmed and helpless, by
the shoulders.

"Dr. Noel," he said, "you will be so good as to re-light the lamp."

And relinquishing the charge of his prisoner to Geraldine and
Brackenbury, he crossed the room and set his back against the
chimney-piece. As soon as the lamp had kindled the party beheld an
unaccustomed sternness on the Prince's features. It was no longer
Florizel, the careless gentleman; it was the Prince of Bohemia, justly
incensed and full of deadly purpose, who now raised his head and
addressed the captive President of the Suicide Club.

"President," he said, "you have laid your last snare, and your own feet
are taken in it. The day is beginning; it is your last morning. You have
just swum the Regent's Canal; it is your last bathe in this world. Your
old accomplice, Dr. Noel, so far from betraying me, has delivered you
into my hands for judgment. And the grave you had dug for me this
afternoon shall serve, in God's almighty providence, to hide your own
just doom from the curiosity of mankind. Kneel and pray, sir, if you
have a mind that way; for your time is short, and God is weary of your
iniquities."

The President made no answer either by word or sign; but continued to
hang his head and gaze sullenly on the floor, as though he were
conscious of the Prince's prolonged and unsparing regard.

"Gentlemen," continued Florizel, resuming the ordinary tone of his
conversation, "this is a fellow who has long eluded me, but whom, thanks
to Dr. Noel, I now have tightly by the heels. To tell the story of his
misdeeds would occupy more time than we can now afford; but if the canal
had contained nothing but the blood of his victims, I believe the wretch
would have been no drier than you see him. Even in an affair of this
sort I desire to preserve the forms of honour. But I make you the
judges, gentlemen--this is more an execution than a duel; and to give
the rogue his choice of weapons would be to push too far a point of
etiquette. I cannot afford to lose my life in such a business," he
continued, unlocking the case of swords; "and as a pistol-bullet travels
so often on the wings of chance, and skill and courage may fall by the
most trembling marksman, I have decided, and I feel sure you will
approve my determination, to put this question to the touch of swords."

When Brackenbury and Major O'Rooke, to whom these remarks were
particularly addressed, had each intimated his approval, "Quick, sir,"
added Prince Florizel to the President, "choose a blade and do not keep
me waiting; I have an impatience to be done with you for ever."

For the first time since he was captured and disarmed the President
raised his head, and it was plain that he began instantly to pluck up
courage.

"Is it to be stand up?" he asked eagerly, "and between you and me?"

"I mean so far to honour you," replied the Prince.

"Oh, come!" cried the President. "With a fair field, who knows how
things may happen? I must add that I consider it handsome behaviour on
your Highness's part; and if the worst comes to the worst I shall die by
one of the most gallant gentlemen in Europe."

And the President, liberated by those who had detained him, stepped up
to the table and began, with minute attention, to select a sword. He was
highly elated, and seemed to feel no doubt that he should issue
victorious from the contest. The spectators grew alarmed in the face of
so entire a confidence, and adjured Prince Florizel to reconsider his
intention.

"It is but a farce," he answered; "and I think I can promise you,
gentlemen, that it will not be long a-playing."

"Your Highness will be careful not to overreach," said Colonel
Geraldine.

"Geraldine," returned the Prince, "did you ever know me fail in a debt
of honour? I owe you this man's death, and you shall have it."

The President at last satisfied himself with one of the rapiers, and
signified his readiness by a gesture that was not devoid of a rude
nobility. The nearness of peril, and the sense of courage, even to this
obnoxious villain, lent an air of manhood and a certain grace.

The Prince helped himself at random to a sword.

"Colonel Geraldine and Doctor Noel," he said, "will have the goodness to
await me in this room. I wish no personal friend of mine to be involved
in this transaction. Major O'Rooke, you are a man of some years and a
settled reputation--let me recommend the President to your good graces.
Lieutenant Rich will be so good as lend me his attentions: a young man
cannot have too much experience in such affairs."

"Your Highness," replied Brackenbury, "it is an honour I shall prize
extremely."

"It is well," returned Prince Florizel; "I shall hope to stand your
friend in more important circumstances."

And so saying he led the way out of the apartment and down the kitchen
stairs.

The two men who were thus left alone threw open the window and leaned
out, straining every sense to catch an indication of the tragical events
that were about to follow. The rain was now over; day had almost come,
and the birds were piping in the shrubbery and on the forest-trees of
the garden. The Prince and his companions were visible for a moment as
they followed an alley between two flowering thickets; but at the first
corner a clump of foliage intervened, and they were again concealed from
view. This was all that the Colonel and the Physician had an opportunity
to see, and the garden was so vast, and the place of combat evidently so
remote from the house, that not even the noise of sword-play reached
their ears.

"He has taken him towards the grave," said Dr. Noel, with a shudder.

"God," cried the Colonel, "God defend the right!"

And they awaited the event in silence, the Doctor shaking with fear, the
Colonel in an agony of sweat. Many minutes must have elapsed, the day
was sensibly broader, and the birds were singing more heartily in the
garden before a sound of returning footsteps recalled their glances
towards the door. It was the Prince and the two Indian officers who
entered. God had defended the right.

"I am ashamed of my emotion," said Prince Florizel; "I feel it is a
weakness unworthy of my station, but the continued existence of that
hound of hell had begun to prey upon me like a disease, and his death
has more refreshed me than a night of slumber. Look, Geraldine," he
continued, throwing his sword upon the floor, "there is the blood of the
man who killed your brother. It should be a welcome sight. And yet," he
added, "see how strangely we men are made! my revenge is not yet five
minutes old, and already I am beginning to ask myself if even revenge be
attainable on this precarious stage of life. The ill he did, who can
undo it? The career in which he amassed a huge fortune (for the house
itself in which we stand belonged to him)--that career is now a part of
the destiny of mankind for ever; and I might weary myself making thrusts
in carte until the crack of judgment, and Geraldine's brother would be
none the less dead, and a thousand other innocent persons would be none
the less dishonoured and debauched! The existence of a man is so small a
thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ! Alas!" he cried, "is there
anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?"

"God's justice has been done," replied the Doctor. "So much I behold.
The lesson, your Highness, has been a cruel one for me; and I await my
own turn with deadly apprehension."

"What was I saying?" cried the Prince. "I have punished, and here is the
man beside us who can help me to undo. Ah, Dr. Noel! you and I have
before us many a day of hard and honourable toil; and perhaps, before we
have done, you may have more than redeemed your early errors."

"And in the meantime," said the Doctor, "let me go and bury my oldest
friend."


_And this_ (observes the erudite Arabian) _is the fortunate conclusion
of the tale. The Prince, it is superfluous to mention, forgot none of
those who served him in this great exploit; and to this day his
authority and influence help them forward in their public career, while
his condescending friendship adds a charm to their private life. To
collect_, continues my author, _all the strange events in which this
Prince has played the part of Providence were to fill the habitable
globe with books. But the stories which relate to the fortunes of_ THE
RAJAH'S DIAMOND _are of too entertaining a description, says he, to be
omitted. Following prudently in the footsteps of this Oriental, we shall
now begin the series to which he refers with the_ STORY OF THE BANDBOX.




THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND


STORY OF THE BANDBOX

Up to the age of sixteen, at a private school and afterwards at one of
those great institutions for which England is justly famous, Mr. Harry
Hartley had received the ordinary education of a gentleman. At that
period he manifested a remarkable distaste for study; and his only
surviving parent being both weak and ignorant, he was permitted
thenceforward to spend his time in the attainment of petty and purely
elegant accomplishments. Two years later, he was left an orphan and
almost a beggar. For all active and industrious pursuits, Harry was
unfitted alike by nature and training. He could sing romantic ditties,
and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful
although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and
nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging
exteriors that can well be fancied. Blond and pink, with dove's eyes and
a gentle smile, he had an air of agreeable tenderness and melancholy and
the most submissive and caressing manners. But when all is said, he was
not the man to lead armaments of war or direct the councils of a State.

A fortunate chance and some influence obtained for Harry, at the time of
his bereavement, the position of private secretary to Major-General Sir
Thomas Vandeleur, C.B. Sir Thomas was a man of sixty, loud-spoken,
boisterous, and domineering. For some reason, some service the nature of
which had been often whispered and repeatedly denied, the Rajah of
Kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth known diamond of the
world. The gift transformed General Vandeleur from a poor into a
wealthy man, from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of the lions
of London society; the possessor of the Rajah's Diamond was welcome in
the most exclusive circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful,
and well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the
price of marriage with Sir Thomas Vandeleur. It was commonly said at the
time that, as like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another;
certainly Lady Vandeleur was not only a gem of the finest water in her
own person, but she showed herself to the world in a very costly
setting; and she was considered by many respectable authorities as one
among the three or four best-dressed women in England.

Harry's duty as secretary was not particularly onerous; but he had a
dislike for all prolonged work; it gave him pain to ink his fingers; and
the charms of Lady Vandeleur and her toilettes drew him often from the
library to the boudoir. He had the prettiest ways among women, could
talk fashions with enjoyment, and was never more happy than when
criticising a shade of ribbon or running on an errand to the milliner's.
In short, Sir Thomas's correspondence fell into pitiful arrears, and my
Lady had another lady's maid.

At last the General, who was one of the least patient of military
commanders, arose from his place in a violent access of passion, and
indicated to his secretary that he had no further need for his services,
with one of those explanatory gestures which are most rarely employed
between gentlemen. The door being unfortunately open, Mr. Hartley fell
downstairs head-foremost.

He arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved. The life in the
General's house precisely suited him; he moved, on a more or less
doubtful footing, in very genteel company, he did little, he ate of the
best, and he had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of Lady
Vandeleur, which, in his own heart, he dubbed by a more emphatic name.

Immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he hurried
to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows.

"You know very well, my dear Harry," replied Lady Vandeleur, for she
called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, "that you never
by any chance do what the General tells you. No more do I, you may say.
But that is different. A woman can earn her pardon for a good year of
disobedience by a single adroit submission; and, besides, no one is
married to his private secretary. I shall be sorry to lose you; but
since you cannot stay longer in a house where you have been insulted, I
shall wish you good-bye, and I promise you to make the General smart for
his behaviour."

Harry's countenance fell; tears came into his eyes, and he gazed on Lady
Vandeleur with a tender reproach.

"My Lady," said he, "what is an insult? I should think little indeed of
any one who could not forgive them by the score. But to leave one's
friends; to tear up the bonds of affection----"

He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began to
weep.

Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression.

"This little fool," she thought, "imagines himself to be in love with
me. Why should he not become my servant instead of the General's? He is
good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides, it will keep
him out of mischief. He is positively too pretty to be unattached."

That night she talked over the General, who was already somewhat ashamed
of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department,
where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with
uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could
entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry. He took a pride in
servility to a beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur's commands as so
many marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other
men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's-maid
and man-milliner. Nor could he think enough of his existence from a
moral point of view. Wickedness seemed to him an essentially male
attribute, and to pass one's days with a delicate woman, and principally
occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an enchanted isle among the
storms of life.

One fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange some
music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the
apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie
Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation, and very
lame of one foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no
regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of their conversation.

"To-day or never," said the lady. "Once and for all, it shall be done
to-day."

"To-day, if it must be," replied the brother, with a sigh. "But it is a
false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall live to repent it
dismally."

Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely in the
face.

"You forget," she said; "the man must die at last."

"Upon my word, Clara," said Pendragon, "I believe you are the most
heartless rascal in England."

"You men," she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never
appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent,
immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the
future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You
would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find
in us."

"You are very likely right," replied her brother; "you were always
cleverer than I. And, anyway, you know my motto: The family before all."

"Yes, Charlie," she returned, taking his hand in hers, "I know your
motto better than you know it yourself. 'And Clara before the family!'
Is not that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the best of brothers,
and I love you dearly."

Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family
endearments.

"I had better not be seen," said he. "I understand my part to a miracle,
and I'll keep an eye on the Tame Cat."

"Do," she replied. "He is an abject creature, and might ruin all."

She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother
withdrew by the boudoir and the back stair.

"Harry," said Lady Vandeleur turning towards the secretary as soon as
they were alone, "I have a commission for you this morning. But you
shall take a cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled."

She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half-motherly pride
that caused great contentment to poor Harry; and he professed himself
charmed to find an opportunity of serving her.

"It is another of our great secrets," she went on archly, "and no one
must know of it but my secretary and me. Sir Thomas would make the
saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am of these
scenes! O Harry, Harry, can you explain to me what makes you men so
violent and unjust? But, indeed, I know you cannot; you are the only man
in the world who knows nothing of these shameful passions; you are so
good, Harry, and so kind; you, at least, can be a woman's friend; and,
do you know? I think you make the others more ugly by comparison."

"It is you," said Harry gallantly, "who are so kind to me. You treat me
like----"

"Like a mother," interposed Lady Vandeleur; "I try to be a mother to
you. Or, at least," she corrected herself with a smile, "almost a
mother. I am afraid I am too young to be your mother really. Let us say
a friend--a dear friend."

She paused long enough to let her words take effect in Harry's
sentimental quarters, but not long enough to allow him a reply.

"But all this is beside our purpose," she resumed. "You will find a
bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is underneath the
pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin. You will take it
immediately to this address," and she gave him a paper, "but do not, on
any account, let it out of your hands until you have received a receipt
written by myself. Do you understand? Answer, if you please--answer!
This is extremely important, and I must ask you to pay some attention."

Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she was
just going to tell him more when General Vandeleur flung into the
apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate
milliner's bill in his hand.

"Will you look at this, madam?" cried he. "Will, you have the goodness
to look at this document? I know well enough you married me for my
money, and I hope I can make as great allowances as any other man in the
service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to put a period to this
disreputable prodigality."

"Mr. Hartley," said Lady Vandeleur, "I think you understand what you
have to do. May I ask you to see to it at once?"

"Stop," said the General, addressing Harry, "one word before you go."
And then, turning again to Lady Vandeleur, "What is this precious
fellow's errand?" he demanded. "I trust him no further than I do
yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as the rudiments of
honesty, he would scorn to stay in this house; and what he does for his
wages is a mystery to all the world. What is his errand, madam? and why
are you hurrying him away?"

"I supposed you had something to say to me in private," replied the
lady.

"You spoke about an errand," insisted the General. "Do not attempt to
deceive me in my present state of temper. You certainly spoke about an
errand."

"If you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating
dissensions," replied Lady Vandeleur, "perhaps I had better ask Mr.
Hartley to sit down. No?" she continued; "then you may go, Mr. Hartley.
I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this room; it may be
useful to you."

Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran
upstairs he could hear the General's voice upraised in declamation, and
the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at every
opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skilfully she could
evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery she repeated her
instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and on the other hand,
how he detested the husband!

There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he was
continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret missions,
principally connected with millinery. There was a skeleton in the house,
as he well knew. The bottomless extravagance and the unknown liabilities
of the wife had long since swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day
by day to engulf that of the husband. Once or twice in every year
exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all
sorts of furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small
advances on the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the
lady and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double
capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war; not only did he
adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but he naturally
sympathised with the love of finery, and his own single extravagance was
at the tailor's.

He found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his toilette
with care, and left the house. The sun shone brightly; the distance he
had to travel was considerable, and he remembered with dismay that the
General's sudden irruption had prevented Lady Vandeleur from giving him
money for a cab. On this sultry day there was every chance that his
complexion would suffer severely; and to walk through so much of London
with a bandbox on his arm was a humiliation almost insupportable to a
youth of his character. He paused, and took counsel with himself. The
Vandeleurs lived in Eaton Place; his destination was near Notting Hill;
plainly, he might cross the Park by keeping well in the open and
avoiding populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected
that it was still comparatively early in the day.

Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than his
ordinary, and he was already some way through Kensington Gardens when,
in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself confronted by the
General.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas," observed Harry, politely falling on one
side; for the other stood directly in his path.

"Where are you going, sir?" asked the General.

"I am taking a little walk among the trees," replied the lad.

The General struck the bandbox with his cane.

"With that thing?" he cried; "you lie, sir, and you know you lie!"

"Indeed, Sir Thomas," returned Harry, "I am not accustomed to be
questioned in so high a key."

"You do not understand your position," said the General. "You are my
servant, and a servant of whom I have conceived the most serious
suspicions. How do I know but that your box is full of tea-spoons?"

"It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend," said Harry.

"Very well," replied General Vandeleur. "Then I want to see your
friend's silk hat. I have," he added grimly, "a singular curiosity for
hats; and I believe you know me to be somewhat positive."

"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas; I am exceedingly grieved," Harry
apologised; "but indeed this is a private affair."

The General caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while he
raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other. Harry gave
himself up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven vouchsafed him an
unexpected defender in the person of Charlie Pendragon, who now strode
forward from behind the trees.

"Come, come, General, hold your hand," said he; "this is neither
courteous nor manly."

"Aha!" cried the General, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "Mr.
Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had
the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged
and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My
acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite
for the other members of her family."

"And do you fancy, General Vandeleur," retorted Charlie, "that because
my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there and then
forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own, sir, that by that
action she did as much as anybody could to derogate from her position;
but to me she is still a Pendragon. I make it my business to protect her
from ungentlemanly outrage, and if you were ten times her husband I
would not permit her liberty to be restrained, nor her private
messengers to be violently arrested."

"How is that, Mr. Hartley?" interrogated the General. "Mr. Pendragon is
of my opinion, it appears. He too suspects that Lady Vandeleur has
something to do with your friend's silk hat."

Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he
hastened to repair.

"How, sir?" he cried; "I suspect, do you say? I suspect nothing. Only
where I find strength abused and a man brutalising his inferiors, I take
the liberty to interfere."

As he said these words he made a sign to Harry, which the latter was too
dull or too much troubled to understand.

"In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded Vandeleur.

"Why, sir, as you please," returned Pendragon.

The General once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie's
head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his
umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable adversary.

"Run, Harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt!"

Harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the two men sway together
in this fierce embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he
cast a glance over his shoulder he saw the General prostrate under
Charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the
situation; and the Gardens seemed to have filled with people, who were
running from all directions towards the scene of fight. This spectacle
lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace until he had
gained the Bayswater Road, and plunged at random into an unfrequented
by-street.

To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each
other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the sight; he
desired, above all, to put as great a distance as possible between
himself and General Vandeleur; and in his eagerness for this he forgot
everything about his destination, and hurried before him headlong and
trembling. When he remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one
and the sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched
with sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his
own situation in the General's household looked hardly so pleasing as
usual in the light of these violent transactions.

He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations,
before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of the
bandbox on his arm.

"Heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have I wandered?"

Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given him.
The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply directed to
ask for "the gentleman who expected a parcel from Lady Vandeleur," and
if he were not at home to await his return. The gentleman, added the
note, should present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself.
All this seemed mightily mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished
at the omission of the name and the formality of the receipt. He had
thought little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation;
but reading it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other
strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in perilous
affairs. For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady Vandeleur herself; for
he found these obscure proceedings somewhat unworthy of so high a lady,
and became more critical when her secrets were preserved against
himself. But her empire over his spirit was too complete, he dismissed
his suspicions, and blamed himself roundly for having so much as
entertained them.

In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and his
terrors, coincided--to get rid of the bandbox with the greatest possible
despatch.

He accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired his way. It
turned out that he was already not far from his destination, and a walk
of a few minutes brought him to a small house in a lane, freshly
painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention. The knocker and
bell-pull were highly polished: flowering pot-herbs garnished the sills
of the different windows; and curtains of some rich material concealed
the interior from the eyes of curious passengers. The place had an air
of repose and secrecy; and Harry was so far caught with this spirit that
he knocked with more than usual discretion, and was more than usually
careful to remove all impurity from his boots.

A servant-maid of some personal attractions immediately opened the door,
and seemed to regard the secretary with no unkind eyes.

"This is a parcel from Lady Vandeleur," said Harry.

"I know," replied the maid, with a nod. "But the gentleman is from home.
Will you leave it with me?"

"I cannot," answered Harry. "I am directed not to part with it but upon
a certain condition, and I must ask you, I am afraid, to let me wait."

"Well," said she, "I suppose I may let you wait. I am lonely enough, I
can tell you, and you do not look as though you would eat a girl. But be
sure and do not ask the gentleman's name, for that I am not to tell
you."

"Do you say so?" cried Harry. "Why, how strange! But indeed for some
time back I walk among surprises. One question I think I may surely ask
without indiscretion: Is he the master of this house?"

"He is a lodger, and not eight days old at that," returned the maid.
"And now a question for a question: Do you know Lady Vandeleur?"

"I am her private secretary," replied Harry, with a glow of modest
pride.

"She is pretty, is she not?" pursued the servant.

"Oh, beautiful!" cried Harry; "wonderfully lovely, and not less good and
kind!"

"You look kind enough yourself," she retorted; "and I wager you are
worth a dozen Lady Vandeleurs."

Harry was properly scandalised.

"I!" he cried. "I am only a secretary!"

"Do you mean that for me?" said the girl. "Because I am only a
housemaid, if you please." And then, relenting at the sight of Harry's
obvious confusion, "I know you mean nothing of the sort," she added;
"and I like your looks; but I think nothing of your Lady Vandeleur. Oh,
these mistresses!" she cried. "To send out a real gentleman like
you--with a bandbox--in broad day!"

During this talk they had remained in their original positions--she on
the doorstep, he on the side-walk, bare-headed for the sake of coolness,
and with the bandbox on his arm. But upon this last speech Harry, who
was unable to support such point-blank compliments to his appearance,
nor the encouraging look with which they were accompanied, began to
change his attitude, and glance from left to right in perturbation. In
so doing he turned his face towards the lower end of the lane, and
there, to his indescribable dismay, his eyes encountered those of
General Vandeleur. The General, in a prodigious fluster of heat, hurry,
and indignation, had been scouring the streets in chase of his
brother-in-law; but so soon as he caught a glimpse of the delinquent
secretary, his purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel, and
he turned on his heel and came tearing up the lane with truculent
gestures and vociferations.

Harry made but one bolt of it into the house, driving the maid before
him; and the door was slammed in his pursuer's countenance.

"Is there a bar? Will it lock?" asked Harry, while a salvo on the
knocker made the house echo from wall to wall.

"Why, what is wrong with you?" asked the maid. "Is it this old
gentleman?"

"If he gets hold of me," whispered Harry, "I am as good as dead. He has
been pursuing me all day, carries a sword-stick, and is an Indian
military officer."

"These are fine manners," cried the maid. "And what, if you please, may
be his name?"

"It is the General, my master," answered Harry. "He is after this
bandbox."

"Did not I tell you?" cried the maid in triumph. "I told you I thought
worse than nothing of your Lady Vandeleur; and if you had an eye in your
head you might see what she is for yourself. An ungrateful minx, I will
be bound for that!"

The General renewed his attack upon the knocker, and his passion growing
with delay, began to kick and beat upon the panels of the door.

"It is lucky," observed the girl, "that I am alone in the house; your
General may hammer until he is weary, and there is none to open for him.
Follow me!"

So saying she led Harry into the kitchen, where she made him sit down,
and stood by him herself in an affectionate attitude, with a hand upon
his shoulder. The din at the door, so far from abating, continued to
increase in volume, and at each blow the unhappy secretary was shaken to
the heart.

"What is your name?" asked the girl.

"Harry Hartley," he replied.

"Mine," she went on, "is Prudence. Do you like it?"

"Very much," said Harry. "But hear for a moment how the General beats
upon the door. He will certainly break it in, and then, in Heaven's
name, what have I to look for but death?"

"You put yourself very much about with no occasion," answered Prudence.
"Let your General knock, he will do no more than blister his hands. Do
you think I would keep you here if I were not sure to save you? Oh, no,
I am a good friend to those that please me! and we have a back door upon
another lane. But," she added, checking him, for he had got upon his
feet immediately on this welcome news, "But I will not show where it is
unless you kiss me. Will you, Harry?"

"That I will," he cried, remembering his gallantry, "not for your back
door, but because you are good and pretty."

And he administered two or three cordial salutes, which were returned to
him in kind.

Then Prudence led him to the back gate, and put her hand upon the key.

"Will you come and see me?" she asked.

"I will indeed," said Harry. "Do not I owe you my life?"

"And now," she added, opening the door, "run as hard as you can, for I
shall let in the General."

Harry scarcely required this advice; fear had him by the forelock; and
he addressed himself diligently to flight. A few steps, and he believed
he would escape from his trials, and return to Lady Vandeleur in honour
and safety. But these few steps had not been taken before he heard a
man's voice hailing him by name with many execrations, and, looking over
his shoulder, he beheld Charlie Pendragon waving him with both arms to
return. The shock of this new incident was so sudden and profound, and
Harry was already worked into so high a state of nervous tension, that
he could think of nothing better than to accelerate his pace and
continue running. He should certainly have remembered the scene in
Kensington Gardens; he should certainly have concluded that, where the
General was his enemy, Charlie Pendragon could be no other than a
friend. But such was the fever and perturbation of his mind that he was
struck by none of these considerations, and only continued to run the
faster up the lane.

Charlie, by the sound of his voice and the vile terms that he hurled
after the secretary, was obviously beside himself with rage. He, too,
ran his very best; but, try as he might, the physical advantages were
not upon his side, and his outcries and the fall of his lame foot on the
macadam began to fall farther and farther into the wake.

Harry's hopes began once more to arise. The lane was both steep and
narrow, but it was exceedingly solitary, bordered on either hand by
garden walls, overhung with foliage; and, for as far as the fugitive
could see in front of him, there was neither a creature moving nor an
open door. Providence, weary of persecution, was now offering him an
open field for his escape.

Alas! as he came abreast of a garden door under a tuft of chestnuts, it
was suddenly drawn back, and he could see inside, upon a garden path,
the figure of a butcher's boy with his tray upon his arm. He had hardly
recognised the fact before he was some steps beyond upon the other side.
But the fellow had had time to observe him; he was evidently much
surprised to see a gentleman go by at so unusual a pace; and he came out
into the lane and began to call after Harry with shouts of ironical
encouragement.

His appearance gave a new idea to Charlie Pendragon, who, although he
was now sadly out of breath, once more upraised his voice.

"Stop, thief!" he cried.

And immediately the butcher's boy had taken up the cry and joined in the
pursuit.

This was a bitter moment for the hunted secretary. It is true that his
terror enabled him once more to improve his pace, and gain with every
step on his pursuers; but he was well aware that he was near the end of
his resources, and should he meet any one coming the other way, his
predicament in the narrow lane would be desperate indeed.

"I must find a place of concealment," he thought, "and that within the
next few seconds, or all is over with me in this world."

Scarcely had the thought crossed his mind than the lane took a sudden
turning, and he found himself hidden from his enemies. There are
circumstances in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to
behave with vigour and decision, and the most cautious forget their
prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions. This was one of those
occasions for Harry Hartley; and those who knew him best would have been
the most astonished at the lad's audacity. He stopped dead, flung the
bandbox over a garden wall, and leaping upward with incredible agility,
and seizing the cope-stone with his hands, he tumbled headlong after it
into the garden.

He came to himself a moment afterwards, seated in a border of small
rose-bushes. His hands and knees were cut and bleeding, for the wall had
been protected against such an escalade by a liberal provision of old
bottles; and he was conscious of a general dislocation and a painful
swimming in the head. Facing him across the garden, which was in
admirable order, and set with flowers of the most delicious perfume, he
beheld the back of a house. It was of considerable extent, and plainly
habitable; but, in odd contrast to the grounds, it was crazy, ill-kept,
and of a mean appearance. On all other sides the circuit of the garden
wall appeared unbroken.

He took in these features of the scene with mechanical glances, but his
mind was still unable to piece together or draw a rational conclusion
from what he saw. And when he heard footsteps advancing on the gravel,
although he turned his eyes in that direction, it was with no thought
either for defence or flight.

The new-comer was a large, coarse, and very sordid personage, in
gardening clothes, and with a watering-pot in his left hand. One less
confused would have been affected with some alarm at the sight of this
man's huge proportions and black and lowering eyes. But Harry was too
gravely shaken by his fall to be so much as terrified; and if he was
unable to divert his glances from the gardener, he remained absolutely
passive, and suffered him to draw near, to take him by the shoulder, and
to plant him roughly on his feet, without a motion of resistance.

For a moment the two stared into each other's eyes, Harry fascinated,
the man filled with wrath and a cruel, sneering humour.

"Who are you?" he demanded at last. "Who are you to come flying over my
wall and break my _Gloire de Dijons_? What is your name?" he added,
shaking him; "and what may be your business here?"

Harry could not as much as proffer a word in explanation.

But just at that moment Pendragon and the butcher's boy went clumping
past, and the sound of their feet and their hoarse cries echoed loudly
in the narrow lane. The gardener had received his answer; and he looked
down into Harry's face with an obnoxious smile.

"A thief!" he said. "Upon my word, and a very good thing you must make
of it; for I see you dressed like a gentleman from top to toe. Are you
not ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with honest folk, I
daresay, glad to buy your cast-off finery second-hand? Speak up, you
dog," the man went on; "you can understand English, I suppose; and I
mean to have a bit of talk with you before I march you to the station."

"Indeed, sir," said Harry, "this is all a dreadful misconception; and if
you will go with me to Sir Thomas Vandeleur's in Eaton Place, I can
promise that all will be made plain. The most upright person, as I now
perceive, can be led into suspicious positions."

"My little man," replied the gardener, "I will go with you no farther
than the station-house in the next street. The inspector, no doubt, will
be glad to take a stroll with you as far as Eaton Place, and have a bit
of afternoon tea with your great acquaintances. Or would you prefer to
go direct to the Home Secretary? Sir Thomas Vandeleur, indeed! Perhaps
you think I don't know a gentleman when I see one, from a common
run-the-hedge like you? Clothes or no clothes, I can read you like a
book. Here is a shirt that maybe cost as much as my Sunday hat; and that
coat, I take it, has never seen the inside of Rag-fair, and then your
boots----"

The man, whose eyes had fallen upon the ground, stopped short in his
insulting commentary, and remained for a moment looking intently upon
something at his feet. When he spoke his voice was strangely altered.

"What, in God's name," said he, "is all this?"

Harry, following the direction of the man's eyes, beheld a spectacle
that struck him dumb with terror and amazement. In his fall he had
descended vertically upon the bandbox, and burst it open from end to
end; thence a great treasure of diamonds had poured forth, and now lay
abroad, part trodden in the soil, part scattered on the surface in regal
and glittering profusion. There was a magnificent coronet which he had
often admired on Lady Vandeleur; there were rings and brooches,
ear-drops and bracelets, and even unset brilliants rolling here and
there among the rose-bushes like drops of morning dew. A princely fortune
lay between the two men upon the ground--a fortune in the most inviting,
solid, and durable form, capable of being carried in an apron, beautiful
in itself, and scattering the sunlight in a million rainbow flashes.

"Good God!" said Harry, "I am lost!"

His mind racked backwards into the past with the incalculable velocity
of thought, and he began to comprehend his day's adventures, to conceive
them as a whole, and to recognise the sad imbroglio in which his own
character and fortunes had become involved. He looked round him as if
for help, but he was alone in the garden, with his scattered diamonds
and his redoubtable interlocutor; and when he gave ear, there was no
sound but the rustle of the leaves and the hurried pulsation of his
heart. It was little wonder if the young man felt himself deserted by
his spirits, and with a broken voice repeated his last ejaculation--

"I am lost!"

The gardener peered in all directions with an air of guilt; but there
was no face at any of the windows, and he seemed to breathe again.

"Pick up a heart," he said, "you fool! The worst of it is done. Why
could you not say at first there was enough for two? Two?" he repeated,
"ay, and for two hundred! But come away from here, where we may be
observed; and, for the love of wisdom, straighten out your hat and brush
your clothes. You could not travel two steps the figure of fun you look
just now."

While Harry mechanically adopted these suggestions, the gardener,
getting upon his knees, hastily drew together the scattered jewels and
returned them to the bandbox. The touch of these costly crystals sent a
shiver of emotion through the man's stalwart frame; his face was
transfigured, and his eyes shone with concupiscence; indeed, it seemed
as if he luxuriously prolonged his occupation, and dallied with every
diamond that he handled. At last, however, it was done; and concealing
the bandbox in his smock, the gardener beckoned to Harry and preceded
him in the direction of the house.

Near the door they were met by a young man, evidently in holy orders,
dark and strikingly handsome, with a look of mingled weakness and
resolution, and very neatly attired after the manner of his caste. The
gardener was plainly annoyed by this encounter; but he put as good a
face upon it as he could, and accosted the clergyman with an obsequious
and smiling air.

"Here is a fine afternoon, Mr. Rolles," said he: "a fine afternoon, as
sure as God made it! And here is a young friend of mine who had a fancy
to look at my roses. I took the liberty to bring him in, for I thought
none of the lodgers would object."

"Speaking for myself," replied the Reverend Mr. Rolles, "I do not; nor
do I fancy any of the rest of us would be more difficult upon so small a
matter. The garden is your own, Mr. Raeburn; we must none of us forget
that; and because you give us liberty to walk there we should be indeed
ungracious if we so far presumed upon your politeness as to interfere
with the convenience of your friends. But, on second thoughts," he
added, "I believe that this gentleman and I have met before. Mr.
Hartley, I think. I regret to observe that you have had a fall."

And he offered his hand.

A sort of maiden dignity, and a desire to delay as long as possible the
necessity for explanation, moved Harry to refuse this chance of help,
and to deny his own identity. He chose the tender mercies of the
gardener, who was at least unknown to him, rather than the curiosity and
perhaps the doubts of an acquaintance.

"I fear there is some mistake," said he. "My name is Thomlinson and I am
a friend of Mr. Raeburn's."

"Indeed?" said Mr. Rolles. "The likeness is amazing."

Mr. Raeburn, who had been upon thorns throughout this colloquy, now felt
it high time to bring it to a period.

"I wish you a pleasant saunter, sir," said he.

And with that he dragged Harry after him into the house, and then into a
chamber on the garden. His first care was to draw down the blind, for
Mr. Rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of
perplexity and thought. Then he emptied the broken bandbox on the table,
and stood before the treasure, thus fully displayed, with an expression
of rapturous greed, and rubbing his hands upon his thighs. For Harry,
the sight of the man's face under the influence of this base emotion
added another pang to those he was already suffering. It seemed
incredible that, from his life of pure and delicate trifling, he should
be plunged in a breath among sordid and criminal relations. He could
reproach his conscience with no sinful act; and yet he was now suffering
the punishment of sin in its most acute and cruel forms--the dread of
punishment, the suspicions of the good, and the companionship and
contamination of vile and brutal natures. He felt he could lay his life
down with gladness to escape from the room and the society of Mr.
Raeburn.

"And now," said the latter, after he had separated the jewels into two
nearly equal parts, and drawn one of them nearer to himself; "and now,"
said he, "everything in this world has to be paid for, and some things
sweetly. You must know, Mr. Hartley, if such be your name, that I am a
man of a very easy temper, and good-nature has been my stumbling-block
from first to last. I could pocket the whole of these pretty pebbles, if
I chose, and I should like to see you dare to say a word; but I think I
must have taken a liking to you; for I declare I have not the heart to
shave you so close. So, do you see, in pure kind feeling, I propose that
we divide; and these," indicating the two heaps, "are the proportions
that seem to me just and friendly. Do you see any objection, Mr.
Hartley, may I ask? I am not the man to stick upon a brooch."

"But, sir," cried Harry, "what you propose to me is impossible. The
jewels are not mine, and I cannot share what is another's, no matter
with whom, nor in what proportions."

"They are not yours, are they not?" returned Raeburn. "And you could not
share them with anybody, couldn't you? Well, now, that is what I call a
pity; for here am I obliged to take you to the station. The
police--think of that," he continued; "think of the disgrace for your
respectable parents; think," he went on, taking Harry by the wrist;
"think of the Colonies and the Day of Judgment."

"I cannot help it," wailed Harry. "It is not my fault. You will not come
with me to Eaton Place."

"No," replied the man; "I will not, that is certain. And I mean to
divide these playthings with you here."

And so saying he applied a sudden and severe torsion to the lad's wrist.

Harry could not suppress a scream, and the perspiration burst forth upon
his face. Perhaps pain and terror quickened his intelligence, but
certainly at that moment the whole business flashed across him in
another light; and he saw that there was nothing for it but to accede to
the ruffian's proposal, and trust to find the house and force him to
disgorge, under more favourable circumstances, and when he himself was
clear from all suspicion.

"I agree," he said.

"There is a lamb," sneered the gardener. "I thought you would recognise
your interests at last. This bandbox," he continued, "I shall burn with
my rubbish; it is a thing that curious folk might recognise; and as for
you, scrape up your gaieties and put them in your pocket."

Harry proceeded to obey, Raeburn watching him, and every now and again,
his greed rekindled by some bright scintillation, abstracting another
jewel from the secretary's share, and adding it to his own.

When this was finished, both proceeded to the front door, which Raeburn
cautiously opened to observe the street. This was apparently clear of
passengers; for he suddenly seized Harry by the nape of the neck, and
holding his face downward so that he could see nothing but the roadway
and the door steps of the houses, pushed him violently before him down
one street and up another for the space of perhaps a minute and a half.
Harry had counted three corners before the bully relaxed his grasp, and
crying, "Now be off with you!" sent the lad flying head-foremost with a
well-directed and athletic kick.

When Harry gathered himself up, half-stunned and bleeding freely at the
nose, Mr. Raeburn had entirely disappeared. For the first time, anger
and pain so completely overcame the lad's spirits that he burst into a
fit 

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