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The Brightener

by A. M. Williamson · English · Gutenberg #32428 · 509,389 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Brightener

Author: A. M. Williamson
        C. N. Williamson

Illustrator: Walter DeMaris


        
Release date: May 19, 2010 [eBook #32428]
                Most recently updated: January 26, 2014

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32428

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIGHTENER ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                            THE BRIGHTENER

                      BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

                    FRONTISPIECE BY WALTER DE MARIS


GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY AINSLEE's MAGAZINE CO., NEW YORK AND GREAT BRITAIN.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




[Illustration: "A SLIGHT SOUND ATTRACTED OUR ATTENTION TO THE HISTORIC
STAIRWAY"]




PREFACE

_To the Kind People Who Read Our Books:_


I want to explain to you, in case it may interest you a little, why it
is that I want to keep the "firm name" (as we used to call it) of "C. N.
& A. M. Williamson," although my husband has gone out of this world.

It is because I feel very strongly that he helps me with the work even
more than he was able to do in this world. I always had his advice, and
when we took motor tours he gave me his notes to use as well as my own.
But now there is far more help than that. I cannot explain in words: I
can only feel. And because of that feeling, I could not bear to have the
"C. N." disappear from the title page.

Dear People who may read this, I hope that you will wish to see the
initials "C. N." with those of

A. M. WILLIAMSON




CONTENTS


BOOK I. THE YACHT

       I. DOWN AND OUT

      II. UP AND IN

     III. THUNDERBOLT SIX

      IV. THE BLACK THING IN THE SEA

       V. WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN

      VI. THE WOMAN OF THE PAST

     VII. THE SECRET BEHIND THE SILENCE

    VIII. THE GREAT SURPRISE

      IX. THE GAME OF BLUFF


BOOK II. THE HOUSE WITH THE TWISTED CHIMNEY

       I. THE SHELL-SHOCK MAN

      II. THE ADVERTISEMENT

     III. THE LETTER WITH THE PURPLE SEAL

      IV. THE TANGLED WEB

       V. THE KNITTING WOMAN OF DUN MOAT

      VI. THE LIGHTNING STROKE

     VII. THE RED BAIZE DOOR

    VIII. "WHEN IN DOUBT, PLAY A TRUMP"

      IX. THE RAT TRAP


BOOK III. THE DARK VEIL

       I. THE GIRL WITH THE LETTER

      II. THE HERMIT

     III. THE CHAIR AT THE SAVOY

      IV. THE SPIRIT OF JUNE

       V. THE BARGAIN

      VI. THE LAST SEANCE


BOOK IV. THE MYSTERY OF MRS. BRANDRETH

       I. THE MAN IN THE CUSHIONED CHAIR

      II. MRS. BRANDRETH

     III. THE CONDITION SHE MADE

      IV. THE OLD LOVE STORY

       V. THE MAN WITH THE BRILLIANT EYES

      VI. THE PICTURES

     VII. SIR BEVERLEY'S IMPRESSIONS

    VIII. WHILE WE WAITED

      IX. THE GOOD NEWS

       X. THE CLIMAX

      XI. WHAT GABY TOLD

     XII. THE WOMAN IN THE THEATRE

    XIII. MRS. BRANDRETH'S STORY




THE BRIGHTENER




BOOK I

THE YACHT




CHAPTER I

DOWN AND OUT


"I wonder who will tell her," I heard somebody say, just outside the
arbour.

The somebody was a woman; and the somebody else who answered was a man.
"Glad it won't be me!" he replied, ungrammatically.

I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the
first instant the one thing I did care about was, that they should
remain outside my arbour, instead of finding their way in. Then, the
next words waked my interest. They sounded mysterious, and I loved
mysteries--_then_.

"It's an awful thing to happen--a double blow, in the same moment!"
exclaimed the woman.

They had come to a standstill, close to the arbour; but there was hope
that they mightn't discover it, because it wasn't an ordinary arbour. It
was really a deep, sweet-scented hollow scooped out of an immense _arbor
vitae_ tree, camouflaged to look like its sister trees in a group beside
the path. The hollow contained an old marble seat, on which I was
sitting, but the low entrance could only be reached by one who knew of
its existence, passing between those other trees.

I felt suddenly rather curious about the person struck by a "double
blow," for a "fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind"; and at that
moment I was a sort of modern, female Damocles myself. In fact, I had
got the Marchese d'Ardini to bring me away from the ball-room to hide in
this secret arbour of his old Roman garden, because my mood was out of
tune for dancing. I hadn't wished to come to the ball, but Grandmother
had insisted. Now I had made an excuse of wanting an ice, to get rid of
my dear old friend the Marchese for a few minutes.

"She couldn't have cared about the poor chap," said the man in a hard
voice, with a slight American accent, "or she wouldn't be here
to-night."

My heart missed a beat.

"They say," explained the woman, "that her grandmother practically
forced her to marry the prince, and arranged it at a time when he'd have
to go back to the Front an hour after the wedding, so they shouldn't be
_really_ married, if anything happened to him. I don't know whether
that's true or not!"

But I knew! I knew that it was true, because they were talking about me.
In an instant--before I'd decided whether to rush out or sit still--I
knew something more.

"_You_ ought to be well informed, though," the woman's voice continued.
"You're a distant cousin, aren't you?"

"'Distant' is the word! About forty-fourth cousin, four times removed,"
the man laughed with frank bitterness. (No wonder, as he'd
unsuccessfully claimed the right to our family estate, to hitch on to
his silly old, dug-up title!) Not only did I know, now, of whom they
were talking, but I knew one of those who talked: a red-headed giant of
a man I'd seen to-night for the first time, though he had annoyed
Grandmother and me from a distance, for years. In fact, we'd left home
and taken up the Red Cross industry in Rome, because of him. Indirectly
it was his fault that I was married, since, if it hadn't been for him, I
shouldn't have come to Italy or met Prince di Miramare. I did not stop,
however, to think of all this. It just flashed through my subconscious
mind, while I asked myself, "What has happened to Paolo? Has he been
killed, or only wounded? And what do the brutes mean by a 'double
blow'?"

I had no longer the impulse to rush out. I waited, with hushed breath. I
didn't care whether it were nice or not to eavesdrop. All I thought of
was my intense desire to hear what those two would say next.

"Like grandmother, like grand-daughter, I suppose," went on the
ex-cowboy baronet, James Courtenaye. "A hard-hearted lot my only
surviving female relatives seem to be! Her husband at the Front, liable
to die at any minute; her grandmother dying at home, and our fair young
Princess dances gaily to celebrate a small Italian victory!"

"You forget what's happened to-night, Sir Jim, when you speak of your
'_surviving_' female relatives," said the woman.

"By George, yes! I've got but one left now. And I expect, from what I
hear, I shall be called upon to support her!"

Then Grandmother was dead!--wonderful, indomitable Grandmother, who,
only three hours ago, had said, "You _must_ go to this dance, Elizabeth.
I wish it!" Grandmother, whose last words had been, "You are worthy to
be what I've made you: a Princess. You are exactly what I was at your
age."

Poor, magnificent Grandmother! She had often told me that she was the
greatest beauty of her day. She had sent me away from her to-night, so
that she might die alone. Or--had the news of the _other_ blow come
while I was gone, and killed her?

Dazedly I stumbled to my feet, and in a second I should have pushed past
the pair; but, just at this moment, footsteps came hurrying along the
path. Those two moved out of the way with some murmured words I didn't
catch: and then, the Marchese was with me again. I saw his plump figure
silhouetted on the silvered blue dusk of moonlight. He had brought no
ice! He flung out empty hands in a despairing gesture which told that he
also _knew_.

"My dear child--my poor little Princess----" he began in Italian; but I
cut him short.

"I've heard some people talking. Grandmother is dead. And--Paolo?"

"His plane crashed. It was instant death--not painful. Alas, the
telegram came to your hotel, and the Signora, your grandmother, opened
it. Her maid found it in her hand. The brave spirit had fled! Mr.
Carstairs, her solicitor, and his kind American wife came here at once.
How fortunate was the business which brought him to Rome just now,
looking after your interests! A search-party was seeking me, while I
sought a mere ice! And now the Carstairs wait to take you to your hotel.
I cannot leave our guests, or I would go with you, too."

He got me back to the old palazzo by a side door, and guided me to a
quiet room where the Carstairs sat. They were not alone. An American
friend of the ex-cowboy was with them--(another self-made millionaire,
but a _much_ better made one, of the name of Roger Fane)--and with him a
school friend of mine he was in love with, Lady Shelagh Leigh. Shelagh
ran to me with her arms out, but I pushed her aside. A darling girl, and
I wouldn't have done it for the world, if I had been myself!

She shrank away, hurt; and vaguely I was conscious that the dark man
with the tragic eyes--Roger Fane--was coaxing her out of the room. Then
I forgot them both as I turned to the Carstairs for news. I little
guessed how soon and strangely my life and Shelagh's and Roger Fane's
would twine together in a Gordian knot of trouble!

I don't remember much of what followed, except that a taxi rushed
us--the Carstairs and me--to the Grand Hotel, as fast as it could go
through streets filled with crowds shouting over one of those October
victories. Mrs. Carstairs--a mouse of a woman in person, a benevolent
Machiavelli in brain--held my hand gently, and said nothing, while her
clever old husband tried to cheer me with words. Afterward I learned
that she spent those minutes in mapping out my whole future!

You see, _she_ knew what I didn't know at the time: that I hadn't enough
money in the world to pay for Grandmother's funeral, not to mention our
hotel bills!

       *       *       *       *       *

A clock, when you come to think of it, is a fortunate animal.

When it runs down, it can just comfortably stop. No one expects it to do
anything else. No one accuses it of weakness or lack of backbone because
it doesn't struggle nobly to go on ticking and striking. It is not
sternly commanded to wind itself. Unless somebody takes that trouble off
its hands, it stays stopped. Whereas, if a girl or a young, able-bodied
woman runs down (that is, comes suddenly to the end of everything,
including resources), she mayn't give up ticking for a single second.
_She_ must wind herself, and this is really quite as difficult for her
to do as for a clock, unless she is abnormally instructed and
accomplished.

I am neither. The principal things I know how to do are, to look pretty,
and be nice to people, so that when they are with me they feel purry and
pleasant. With this stock-in-trade I had a perfectly gorgeous time in
life, until--Fate stuck a finger into my mechanism and upset the working
of my pendulum.

I ought to have realized that the gorgeousness would some time come to a
bad and sudden end. But I was trained to put off what wasn't delightful
to do or think of to-day, until to-morrow; because to-morrow could take
care of itself and droves of shorn lambs as well.

Grandmother and I had been pals since I was five, when my father (her
son) and my mother quietly died of diphtheria, and left me--her
namesake--to her. We lived at adorable Courtenaye Abbey on the
Devonshire Coast, where furniture, portraits, silver, and china fit for
a museum were common, every-day objects to my childish eyes. None of
these things could be sold--or the Abbey--for they were all heirlooms
(of _our_ branch of the Courtenayes, not the Americanized ex-cowboy's
insignificant branch, be it understood!). But the place could be let,
with everything in it; and when Mr. Carstairs was first engaged to
unravel Grandmother's financial tangles, he implored her permission to
find a tenant. That was before the war, when I was seventeen; and
Grandmother refused.

"What," she cried (I was in the room, all ears), "would you have me
advertise the fact that we're reduced to beggary, just as the time has
come to present Elizabeth? I'll do nothing of the kind. You must stave
off the smash. That's your business. Then Elizabeth will marry a title
with money, or an American millionaire or someone, and prevent it from
_ever_ coming."

This thrilled me, and I felt like a Joan of Arc out to save her family,
not by capturing a foe, but a husband.

Mr. Carstairs did stave off the smash, Heaven or its opposite alone
knows how, and Grandmother spent about half a future millionaire
husband's possible income in taking a town house, with a train of
servants; renting a Rolls-Royce, and buying for us both the most divine
clothes imaginable. I was long and leggy, and thin as a young colt; but
my face was all right, because it was a replica of Grandmother's at
seventeen. My eyes and dimples were said to be Something to Dream About,
even then (I often dreamed of them myself, after much flattery at
balls!), and already my yellow-brown braids measured off at a yard and a
half. Besides, I had Grandmother's Early Manner (as one says of an
artist: and really she _was_ one), so, naturally, I received proposals:
_lots_ of proposals. But--they were the wrong lots!

All the good-looking young men who wanted to marry me had never a penny
to do it on. All the rich ones were so old and appalling that even
Grandmother hadn't the heart to order me to the altar. So there it
_was_! Then Jim Courtenaye came over from America, where, after an
adventurous life (or worse), he'd made pots of money by hook or by
crook, probably the latter. He stirred up, from the mud of the past, a
trumpery baronetcy bestowed by stodgy King George the Third upon an
ancestor in that younger, less important branch of the Courtenayes. Also
did he strive expensively to prove a right to Courtenaye Abbey as well,
though not one of _his_ Courtenayes had ever put a nose inside it and I
was the next heir, after Grandmother. He didn't fight (he kindly
explained to Mr. Carstairs) to snatch the property out of our mouths. If
he got it, we might go on living there till the end of our days. All he
wanted was to _own_ the place, and have the right to keep it up
decently, as we'd never been able to do.

Well, he had to be satisfied with his title and without the Abbey; which
was luck for us. But there our luck ended. Not only did the war break
out before I had a single proposal worth accepting, but an awful thing
happened at the Abbey.

Grandmother had to keep on the rented town house, for patriotic motives,
no matter _what_ the expense, because she had turned it into an
_ouvroir_ for the making of hospital supplies. She directed the work
herself, and I and Shelagh Leigh (Shelagh was just out of the schoolroom
then) and lots of other girls slaved seven hours a day. Suddenly, just
when we'd had a big "hurry order" for pneumonia jackets, there was a
shortage of material. But Grandmother wasn't a woman to be conquered by
shortages! She remembered a hundred yards of bargain stuff she'd bought
to be used for new dust-sheets at the Abbey; and as all the servants but
two were discharged when we left for town, the sheets had never been
made up.

_She_ could not be spared for a day, but I could. By this time I was
nineteen, and felt fifty in wisdom, as all girls do, since the war.
Grandmother was old-fashioned in some ways, but new-fashioned in others,
so she ordered me off to Courtenaye Abbey by myself to unlock the room
where the bundle had been put. Train service was not good, and I would
have to stay the night; but she wired to old Barlow and his wife--once
lodge-keepers, now trusted guardians of the house. She told Mrs. Barlow
(a pretty old Devonshire Thing, like peaches and cream, called by me
"Barley") to get my old room ready; and Barlow was to meet me at the
train. At the last moment, however, Shelagh Leigh decided to go with me;
and if we had guessed it, this was to turn out one of the most important
decisions of her life. Barlow met us, of course; and how he had changed
since last I'd seen his comfortable face! I expected him to be charmed
with the sight of me, if not of Shelagh, for I was always a favourite
with Barl and Barley; but the poor man was absent-minded and queer. When
a stuffy station-cab from Courtenaye Coombe had rattled us to the
shut-up Abbey, I went at once to the housekeeper's room and had a
heart-to-heart talk with the Barlows. It seemed that the police had been
to the house and "run all through it," because of reports that lights
had flashed from the upper windows out to sea at night--"_signals to
submarines_!"

Nothing suspicious was found, however, and the police made it clear that
they considered the Barlows themselves above reproach. Good people, they
were, with twin nephews from Australia fighting in the war! Indeed, an
inspector had actually apologized for the visit, saying that the police
had pooh-poohed the reports at first. They had paid no attention until
"the story was all over the village"; and there are not enough miles
between Courtenaye Abbey and Plymouth Dockyard for even the rankest
rumours to be disregarded long.

Barley was convinced that one of our ghosts had been waked up by the
war--the ghost of a young girl burned to death, who now and then rushes
like a column of fire through the front rooms of the second floor in the
west wing; but the old pet hoped I wouldn't let this idea of hers keep
me awake. The ghost of a nice English young lady was preferable in her
opinion to a German spy in the flesh! I agreed, but I was not keen on
seeing either. My nerves had been jumpy since the last air-raid over
London, consequently I lay awake hour after hour, though Shelagh was in
Grandmother's room adjoining mine, with the door ajar between.

When I did sleep, I must have slept heavily. I dreamed that I was a
prisoner on a German submarine, and that signals from Courtenaye Abbey
flashed straight into my face. They flashed so brightly that they set me
on fire; and with the knowledge that, if I couldn't escape at once, I
should become a Family Ghost, I wrenched myself awake with a start.

Yes, I _was_ awake; though what I saw was so astonishing that I thought
it must be another nightmare. There really was a strong light pouring
into my eyes. What it came from I don't know to this day, but probably
an electric torch. Anyhow, the ray was so powerful that, though directed
upon my face, it faintly lit another face close to mine, as I suddenly
sat up in bed.

Instantly that face drew back, and then--as if on a second thought,
after a surprise--out went the light. By contrast, the darkness was
black as a bath of ink, though I'd pulled back the curtains before going
to bed, and the sky was sequined with stars. But on my retina was
photographed a pale, illumined circle with a face looking out of
it--looking straight at me. You know how quickly these light-pictures
begin to fade, but, before this dimmed I had time to verify my first
waking impression.

The face was a woman's face--beautiful and hideous at the same time,
like Medusa. It was young, yet old. It had deep-set, long eyes that
slanted slightly up to the corners. It was thin and hollow-cheeked, with
a pointed chin cleft in the middle; and was framed with bright auburn
hair of a curiously _unreal_ colour.

When the blackness closed in, and I heard in the dark scrambling sounds
like a rat running amok in the wainscot, I gave a cry. In my horror and
bewilderment I wasn't sure yet whether I were awake or asleep; but
someone answered. Dazed as I was, I recognized Shelagh's sweet young
voice, and at the same instant her electric bed-lamp was switched on in
the next room. "Coming!--coming!" she cried, and appeared in the
doorway, her hair gold against the light.

By this time I had the sense to switch on my own lamp, and, comforted by
it and my pal's presence, I told Shelagh in a few words what had
happened. "Why, how weird! I dreamed the same dream!" she broke in. "At
least, I dreamed about a light, and a face."

Hastily we compared notes, and realized that Shelagh had not dreamed:
that the woman of mystery had visited us both; only, she had gone to
Shelagh first, and had not been scared away as by me, because Shelagh
hadn't thoroughly waked up.

We decided that our vision was no ghost, but that, for once, rumour was
right. In some amazing way a spy had concealed herself in the rambling
old Abbey (the house has several secret rooms of which we know; and
there might be others, long forgotten), and probably she had been
signalling until warned of danger by that visit from the police. We
resolved to rise at daybreak, and walk to Courtenay Coombe to let the
police know what had happened to us; but, as it turned out, a great deal
more was to happen before dawn.

We felt pretty sure that the spy would cease her activities for the
night, after the shock of finding our rooms occupied. Still it would be
cowardly--we thought--to lie in bed. We slipped on dressing-gowns,
therefore, and with candles (only our wing was furnished with electric
light, for which dear Grandmother had never paid) we descended
fearsomely to the Barlows' quarters. Having roused the old couple and
got them to put on some clothes, a search-party of four perambulated the
house. So far as we could see, however, the place was innocent of spies;
and at length we crept into bed again.

We didn't mean or expect to sleep, of course, but we must all have
"dropped off," otherwise we should have smelt the smoke long before we
did smell it. As it was, the great hall slowly burned until Barlow's
usual getting-up hour. Shelagh and I knew nothing until Barl came
pounding at my door. Then the stinging of our nostrils and eyelids was a
fire alarm!

It's wonderful how quickly you can do things when you have to! Ten
minutes later I was running as fast as I could go to the village, and
might have earned a prize for a two-mile sprint if I hadn't raced alone.
By the time the fire-engines reached the Abbey it was too late to save a
whole side of the glorious old "linen fold" panelling of the hall. The
celebrated staircase was injured, too, and several suits of historic
armour, as well as a number of antique weapons.

Fortunately the portraits were all in the picture gallery, and the fire
was stopped before it had swept beyond the hall. Where it had started
was soon learned, but "_how_" remained a mystery, for shavings and
oil-tins had apparently been stuffed behind the panelling. The theory of
the police was, that the spy (no one doubted the spy's existence now!)
had seen that the "game was up," since the place would be strictly
watched from that night on. Out of sheer spite, the female Hun had
attempted to burn down the famous old house before she lost her chance;
or had perhaps already made preparations to destroy it when her other
work should be ended.

There was a hue and cry over the county in pursuit of the fugitive,
which echoed as far as London; but the woman had escaped, and not even a
trace of her was found.

Grandmother openly claimed that HER inspiration in sending for some
dust-sheets had not only saved the Abbey, but England. It was most
agreeable to bask in self-respect and the praise of friends. When,
however, we were bombarded by newspaper men, who took revenge for
Grandmother's snubs by publishing interviews with Sir "Jim" (by this
time Major Courtenaye, D. S. O., M. C., unluckily at home with a
"Blighty" wound), the haughty lady lost her temper.

It was bad enough, she complained, to have the Abbey turned prematurely
into a ruin, but for That Fellow to proclaim that it wouldn't have
happened had _he_ been the owner was _too_ much! The democratic and
socialist papers ("rags," according to Grandmother) stood up for the
self-made cowboy baronet, and blamed the great lady who had "thrown away
in selfish extravagance" what should have paid the upkeep of an historic
monument. This, to a woman who directed the most patriotic _ouvroir_ in
London! And to pile Ossa on Pelion, our Grosvenor Square landlord was
cad enough to tell his friends (who told theirs, etc., etc.) that he had
never received his rent! Which statement, by the way, was all the more
of a libel because it was true.

Now you understand how Sir James Courtenaye was responsible for driving
us to Italy, and indirectly bringing about my marriage; for Grandmother
wiped the dust of Grosvenor Square from our feet with Italian passports,
and swept me off to new activities in Rome.

Here was Mr. Carstairs' moment to say, "I told you so! If only you had
left the Abbey when I advised you that it was best, all would have been
well. Now, with the central hall in ruins, nobody would be found dead in
the place, not even a munition millionaire." But being a particularly
kind man he said nothing of the sort. He merely implored Grandmother to
live economically in Rome: and of course (being Grandmother!) she did
nothing of the sort.

We lived at the most expensive hotel, and whenever we had any money,
gave it to the Croce Rossa, running up bills for ourselves. But we mixed
much joy with a little charity, and my descriptive letters to Shelagh
were so attractive that she persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Pollen, her guardians
(uncle and aunt; sickening snobs!), to bring her to Rome; pretext, Red
Cross work, which covered so much frivolling in the war! Then, not long
after, the cowboy's friend, Roger Fane, appeared on the scene, in the
American Expeditionary Force; a thrilling, handsome, and mysteriously
tragic person. James Courtenaye also turned up, having been ordered to
the Italian Front; but Grandmother and I contrived never to meet him.
And when our financial affairs began to rumble like an earthquake, Mr.
Carstairs decided to see Grandmother in person.

It was when she received his telegram, "Coming at once," that she
decided I must accept Prince di Miramare. She had wanted an Englishman
for me; but a Prince is a Prince, and though Paolo was far from rich at
the moment, he had the prospect of an immediate million--liras, alas!
not pounds. An enormously rich Greek offered him that sum for the
fourteenth-century Castello di Miramare on a mountain all its own, some
miles from Rome. In consideration of a large sum paid to Paolo's younger
brother Carlo, the two Miramare princes would break the entail; and this
quick solution of our difficulties was to be a surprise for Mr.
Carstairs.

Paolo and I were married as hastily as such matters can be arranged
abroad, between persons of different nations; and it was true (as those
cynics outside the arbour said) that my soldier prince went back to the
Front an hour after the wedding. It was just after we were safely
spliced that Grandmother ceased to fight a temperature of a hundred and
three, and gave up to an attack of 'flu. She gave up quite quietly, for
she thought that, whatever happened, I would be rich, because she had
browbeaten lazy, unbusinesslike Paolo into making a will in my favour.
The one flaw in this calculation was, his concealing from her the fact
that the entail was not yet legally broken. No contract between him and
the Greek could be signed while the entail existed; therefore Paolo's
will gave me only his personal possessions. These were not much; for I
doubt if even the poor boy's uniforms were paid for. But I am thankful
that Grandmother died without realizing her failure; and I hope that her
spirit was far away before the ex-cowboy began making overtures.

If it had not been for Mrs. Carstairs' inspiration, I don't know what
would have become of me!




CHAPTER II

UP AND IN


You may remember what Jim Courtenaye said in the garden: that he would
probably have to support me.

Well, he dared to offer, through Mr. Carstairs, to do that very thing,
"for the family's sake." At least, he proposed to pay off all our debts
and allow me an income of four hundred a year, if it turned out that my
inheritance from Paolo was nil.

When Mr. Carstairs passed on the offer to me, as he was bound to do, I
said what I felt dear Grandmother would have wished me to say: "I'll see
him d--d first!" And I added, "I hope you'll repeat that to the
_Person_."

I think from later developments that Mr. Carstairs cannot have repeated
my reply verbatim. But I have not yet quite come to the part about those
developments. After the funeral, when I knew the worst about the entail,
and that Paolo's brother Carlo was breaking it wholly for his _own_
benefit, and not at all for mine, Mrs. Carstairs asked sympathetically
if I had thought what I should like to do.

"Like to do?" I echoed, bitterly. "I should like to go home to the dear
old Abbey, and restore the place as it ought to be restored, and have
plenty of money, without lifting a finger to get it. What I _must_ do is
a different question."

"Well, then, my dear, supposing we put it in that brutal way. Have you
thought--er----"

"I've done nothing except think. But I've been brought up with about as
much earning capacity as a mechanical doll. The only thing I have the
slightest talent for being, is--a detective!"

"Good gracious!" was Mrs. Carstairs' comment on that.

"I've felt ever since spy night at the Abbey that I had it in me to make
a good detective," I modestly explained.

"'Princess di Miramare, Private Detective,' would be a distinctly
original sign-board over an office door," the old lady reflected. "But I
believe _I've_ evolved something more practical, considering your
name--and your age--(twenty-one, isn't it?)--and your _looks_. Not that
detective talent mayn't come in handy even in the profession I'm going
to suggest. Very likely it will--among other things. It's a profession
that'll call for all the talents you can get hold of."

"Do you by chance mean marriage?" I inquired, coldly. "I've never been a
wife. But I suppose I _am_ a sort of widow."

"If you weren't a sort of widow you couldn't cope with the profession
I've--er--invented. You wouldn't be independent enough."

"Invented? Then you _don't_ mean marriage! And not even the stage. I
warn you that I solemnly promised Grandmother never to go on the stage."

"I know, my child. She mentioned that to Henry--my husband--when they
were discussing your future, before you both left London. My idea is
_much_ more original than marriage, or even the stage. It popped into my
mind the night Mrs. Courtenaye died, while we were in a taxi between the
Palazzo Ardini and this hotel. I said to myself, 'Dear Elizabeth shall
be a Brightener!'"

"A Brightener?" I repeated, with a vague vision of polishing windows or
brasses. "I don't----"

"You wouldn't! I told you I'd invented the profession expressly for you.
Now I'm going to tell you what it is. I felt that you'd not care to be a
tame companion, even to the most gilded millionairess, or a social
secretary to a----"

"Horror!--no, I couldn't be a tame anything."

"That's why brightening is your line. A Brightener couldn't _be_ a
Brightener and tame. She must be brilliant--winged--soaring above the
plane of those she brightens; expensive, to make herself appreciated;
capable of taking the lead in social direction. Why, my dear, people
will fight to get you--pay any price to secure you! _Now_ do you
understand?"

I didn't. So she explained. After that dazzling preface, the explanation
seemed rather an anti-climax. Still, I saw that there might be something
in the plan--if it could be worked. And Mrs. Carstairs guaranteed to
work it.

My widowhood (save the mark!) qualified me to become a chaperon. And my
Princesshood would make me a gilded one. Chaperonage, at its best, might
be amusing. But chaperonage was far from the whole destiny of a
Brightener. A Brightener need not confine herself to female society, as
a mere Companion must. A young woman, even though a widow and a
Princess, could not "companion" a person of the opposite sex, even if he
were a _hundred_. But she might, from a discreet distance, be his
Brightener. That is, she might brighten a lonely man's life without
tarnishing her own reputation.

"After all," Mrs. Carstairs went on, "in spite of what's said against
him, Man _is_ a Fellow Being. If a cat may look at a King, Man may look
at a Princess. And unless he's in her set, he can be made to pay for the
privilege. Think of a lonely button or boot-maker! What would he give
for the honour of invitations to tea, with introductions and social
advice, from the popular Princess di Miramare? He might have a wife or
daughters, or both, who needed a leg up. _They_ would come extra! He
might be a widower--in fact, I've caught the first widower for you
already. But unluckily you can't use him yet."

"Ugh!" I shuddered. "Sounds as if he were a fish--wriggling on a hook
till I'm ready to tear it out of his gills!"

"He is a fish--a big fish. In fact, I may as well break it to you that
he is Roger Fane."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "It would take more electricity than I'm fitted
with to brighten his tragic and mysterious gloom!"

"Not at all. In fact, you are the only one who can brighten it."

"What are you driving at? He's dead in love with Shelagh Leigh."

"That's just _it_. As things are, he has no hope of marrying Shelagh.
She likes him, as you probably know better than I do, for you're her
best pal, although she's a year or so younger than you----"

"Two years."

"Well, as I was going to say, in many ways she's a child compared to
you. She's as beautiful as one of those cut-off cherubs in the
prayer-books, and as old-fashioned as an early Victorian sampler. These
blonde Dreams with naturally waving golden hair and rosebud mouths, and
eyes big as half-crowns, _have_ that drawback, as I've discovered since
I came to live in England. In _my_ country we don't grow early Victorian
buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens,
don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh in spite of his money. Money's
the _one_ nice thing they've got themselves, which they can pass on to
Shelagh. Probably they forced the wretched Miss Pollen, who was the male
snob's sister, to marry the old Marquis of Leigh just as they wish to
_compel_ Shelagh to marry some other wreck of his sort--and die young,
as her mother did. The girl's a dear--a perfect _lamb_!--but lambs can't
stand up against lions. They generally lie down inside them. But with
_you_ at the helm, the Pollen lions could be forced----"

"Not if they knew it!" I cut in.

"They wouldn't know it. Did _you_ know that you were being forced to
marry that poor young prince of yours?"

"I wasn't forced. I was persuaded."

"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme
I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the _sea_ in
every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till
you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of
goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up
Brightening. The question is, _do_ you agree?"

"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at
Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it
was.

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's _that_! The next thing is
to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have
a background of your own."

"You forget--I haven't a farthing!" I fiercely reminded her. "But Mr.
Carstairs won't forget! I've made him too much trouble. The best
Brightening won't run to _half_ a Background in Berkeley Square."

"Wait," Mrs. Carstairs calmed me. "I haven't finished the whole
proposition yet. In America, when we run up a sky-scraper, we don't
begin at the bottom, in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel
girders into the earth; then we start at the top and work down. That's
what I've been doing with my plan. It's perfect. Only you've got to
support it with something."

"What is it you're trying to break to me?" I demanded.

The dear old lady swallowed heavily. (It must be something pretty awful
if it daunted _her_!)

"You like Roger Fane," she began.

"Yes, I admire him. He's handsome and interesting, though a little too
mysterious and tragic to live with for my taste."

"He's not mysterious at all!" she defended Fane. "His tragedy--for there
_was_ a tragedy!--is no secret in America. I often met him before the
war, when I ran over to pay visits in New York, though he was far from
being in the Four Hundred. But at the moment I've no more to say about
Roger Fane. I've been using him for a handle to brandish a friend of his
in front of your eyes."

My blood grew hot. "_Not_ the ex-cowboy?"

"That's no way to speak of Sir James Courtenaye."

"Then _he's_ what you want to break to me?"

"I want--I mean, I'm _requested_!--to inform you of a way he proposes
out of the woods for you--at least, the darkest part of the woods."

"I told Mr. Carstairs I'd see James Courtenaye d--d rather than----"

"_This_ is a different affair entirely. You must listen, my dear, unless
I'm to wash my hands of you! What I have to describe is the foundation
for the Brightening."

I swallowed some more of Grandmother's expressions which occurred to me,
and listened.

Sir James Courtenaye's second proposition was not an offer of charity.
He suggested that I let Courtenaye Abbey to him for a term of years, for
the sum of one thousand five hundred pounds per annum, the first three
years to be paid in advance. (This clause, Mrs. Carstairs hinted, would
enable me to dole out crumbs here and there for the quieting of
Grandmother's creditors.) Sir James's intention was, not to use the
Abbey as a residence, but to make of it a show place for the public
during the term of his lease. In order to do this, the hall must be
restored and the once-famous gardens beautified. This expense he would
undertake, carrying the work quickly to completion, and would reimburse
himself by means of the fees--a shilling a head--charged for viewing the
house and its historic treasures.

When I had heard all this, I hesitated what to answer, thinking of
Grandmother, and wondering what she would have said had she been in my
shoes. But as this thought flitted into my mind, it was followed by
another. One of Grandmother's few old-fashioned fads was her style of
shoe: pattern 1875. The shoes I stood in, at this moment, were pattern
1918. In _my_ shoes Grandmother would simply scream! And I wouldn't be
at my best in hers. This was the parable which commonsense put to me,
and Mrs. Carstairs cleverly offering no word of advice, I paused no
longer than five minutes before I snapped out, "Yes! The horrid brute
can have the darling place till I get rich."

"How sweet of you to consent so _graciously_, darling!" purred Mrs.
Carstairs. Then we both laughed. After which I fell into her arms, and
cried.

For fear I might change my mind, Mr. Carstairs got me to sign some
dull-looking documents that very day, and the oddness of their being all
ready to hand didn't strike me till the ink was dry.

"Henry had them prepared because he knew how _sensible_ you are at
heart--I mean _at head_," his wife explained. "Indeed, it is a
compliment to your intelligence."

Anyhow, it gave me a wherewithal to throw sops to a whole Zooful of
Cerberuses, and still keep enough to take that flat in the Carstairs'
house in Berkeley Square. Of course to do all this meant leaving Italy
for good and going back to England. But there was little to hold me in
Rome. My inheritance from my husband-of-an-hour could be packed in a
suitcase! Shelagh and her snobs travelled with us. And as soon as they
were demobilized, Roger Fane and James Courtenaye followed, if not us,
at least in our direction.

I don't think that Aladdin's Lamp builders "had anything on" Sir Jim's
(as he himself said), judging by the way the restorations simply flew.
From what I heard of the sums he spent, it would take the shillings of
all England and America as sightseers to put him in pocket. But as Mr.
Carstairs pointed out, that was _his_ business.

Mine was to gird my loins at Lucille's and Redfern's, in order to become
a Brightener. For my pendulum was ticking regularly now. I was no longer
down and out. I was up and in. Elizabeth, Princess di Miramare, was
spoiling for her first job.




CHAPTER III

THUNDERBOLT SIX


Looking back through my twenty-one-and-three-quarter years, I divide my
life, up to date, into thunderbolts.

     Thunderbolt One: Death of my Father and Mother.

     Thunderbolt Two: Spy Night at the Abbey.

     Thunderbolt Three: My Marriage to Paolo di Miramare.

     Thunderbolt Four: The "Double Blow."

     Thunderbolt Five: Beggary!

Which brings me along the road to Thunderbolt Six.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Percy-Hogge was, and is, exactly what you would think from her
name; which is why I don't care to dwell at length on the few months I
spent brightening her at Bath. It was bad enough _living_ them!

Now, if I were a Hogge instead of a Courtenaye, plus Miramare, I would
_be_ one, plain, unadulterated, and unadorned. _She_ adulterated her
Hogg with an "e," and adorned it with a "Percy," her late husband's
Christian name. He being in heaven or somewhere, the hyphen couldn't
hurt him; and with it, and his money, _and_ Me, she began at Bath the
attempt to live down the past of a mere margarine-making Hogg. Whole
bunches of Grandmother's friends were in the Bath zone just then, which
is why I chose it, and they were so touched by my widow's weeds that
they were charming to Mrs. P.-H. in order to please me. As most of
them--though stuffy--were titled, and there were two Marchionesses and
one Duchess, the result for Mrs. Percy-Hogge was brilliant. She, who had
never before known any one above a knight-ess, was in Paradise. She had
taken a fine old Georgian house, furnished from basement to attic by
Mallet, and had launched invitations for a dinner-party "to meet the
Dowager-Duchess of Stoke," when--bang fell Thunderbolt Six!

Naturally it fell on me, not her, as thunderbolts have no affinity for
Hoggs. It fell in the shape of a telegram from Mrs. Carstairs.

She wired:

     Come London immediately, for consultation. Terrible theft at Abbey.
     Barlows drugged and bound by burglars. Both prostrated. Affair
     serious. Let me know train. Will meet. Love.

     CAROLINE CARSTAIRS.

I wired in return that I would catch the first train, and caught it. The
old lady kept her word also, and met me. Before her car had whirled us
to Berkeley Square I had got the whole story out of her; which was well,
as an ordeal awaited me, and I needed time to camouflage my feelings.

I had been sent for in haste because the news of the burglary was not to
leak into the papers until, as Mrs. Carstairs expressed it, "those most
concerned had come to some sort of understanding." "You see," she added,
"this isn't an ordinary theft. There are wheels within wheels, and the
insurance people will kick up a row rather than pay. That's why we must
talk everything over; you, and Sir James, and Henry--and Henry is never
_quite_ complete without me, so I intend to be in the offing."

I knew she wouldn't stay there; but that was a detail!

The robbery had taken place the night before, and Sir James himself had
been the one to discover it. Complication number one (as you'll see in a
minute).

He, being now "demobbed" and a man of leisure, instead of reopening his
flat in town, had taken up quarters at Courtenaye Coombe to superintend
the repairs at the Abbey. His ex-cowboy habits being energetic, he
usually walked the two miles from the village, and appeared on the scene
ahead of the workmen.

This morning he arrived before seven o'clock, and went, according to
custom, to beg a cup of coffee from Mrs. Barlow. She and her husband
occupied the bedroom and sitting room which had been the housekeeper's;
but at that hour the two were invariably in the kitchen. Sir Jim let
himself in with his key, and marched straight to that part of the house.
He was surprised to find the kitchen shutters closed and the range
fireless. Suspecting something wrong, he went to the bedroom door and
knocked. He got no answer; but a second, harder rap produced a muffled
moan. The door was not locked. He opened it, and was horrified at what
he saw: Mrs. Barlow, on the bed, gagged and bound; her husband in the
same condition, but lying on the floor; and the atmosphere of the closed
room heavy with the fumes of chloroform.

It was Mrs. Barlow who managed to answer the knock with a moan. Barlow
was deeper under the spell of the drug than she, and--it appeared
afterward--in a more serious condition of collapse.

The old couple had no story to tell, for they recalled nothing of what
had happened. They had made the rounds of the house as usual at night,
and had then gone to bed. Barlow did not wake from his stupor until the
village doctor came to revive him with stimulants, and Mrs. Barlow's
first gleam of consciousness was when she dimly heard Sir James
knocking. She strove to call out, felt aware of illness, realized with
terror that her mouth was distended with a gag, and struggled to utter
the faint groan which reached his ears.

As soon as Sir Jim had attended to the sufferers, he hurried out, and,
finding that the workmen had arrived, rushed one of them back to
Courtenaye Coombe for the doctor and the village nurse. The moment he
(Sir Jim) was free to do so, he started on a voyage of discovery round
the house, and soon learned that a big haul had been brought off. The
things taken were small in size but in value immense, and circumstantial
evidence suggested that the thief or thieves knew precisely what they
wanted as well as where to get it.

In the picture gallery a portrait of King Charles I (given by himself to
a General Courtenaye of the day) had been cleverly cut out of its frame,
also a sketch of the Long Water at Hampton Court, painted and signed by
King Charles. The green drawing room was deprived of its chief treasure,
a quaint sampler embroidered by the hand of Mary Queen of Scots for her
"faithful John Courtenaye." From the Chinese boudoir a Buddha of the
Ming period was gone, and a jewel box of marvellous red lacquer
presented by Li Hung Chang to my grandmother. The silver cabinet in the
oak dining room had been broken open, and a teapot, sugar bowl, and
cream-jug, given by Queen Anne to an ancestress, were absent. The China
cabinet in the same room was bared of a set of green-and-gold coffee
cups presented by Napoleon I to a French great-great-grandmother of
mine; and from the big dining hall adjoining, a Gobelin panel, woven for
the Empress Josephine, after the wedding picture by David, had vanished.

A few _bibelots_ were missing also, here and there; snuff boxes of Beau
Nash and Beau Brummel; miniatures, old paste brooches and buckles
reminiscent of Courtenaye beauties; and a fat watch that had belonged to
George IV.

"All my pet things!" I mourned.

"Don't say that to any one except me," advised Mrs. Carstairs. "My dear,
_bits of a letter torn into tiny pieces--a letter from you--were found
in the Chinese Room_, and the Insurance people will be hatefully
inquisitive!"

"You don't mean to insinuate that they'll suspect me?" I blazed at her.

"Not of stealing the things with your own hands; and if they did, you
could easily prove an alibi, I suppose. Still, they're bound to follow
up every clue, and bits of paper with your writing on them, apparently
dropped by the thieves, _do_ form a tempting clue. You can't help
admitting it."

I did not admit it in the least, for at first glance I couldn't see
where the "temptation" lay to steal one's own belongings. But Mrs.
Carstairs soon made me see. Though the things were mine in a way, in
another way they were not mine. Being heirlooms, I could not profit by
them financially, in the open. Yet if I could cause them to disappear,
without being detected, I should receive the insurance money with one
hand, and rake in with the other a large bribe from some supposititious
purchaser.

"On the contrary, why shouldn't our brave Bart be suspected of precisely
the same fraud, and more of it?" I inquired. "If I could steal the
things, so could he. If they're my pets, they may be his. And he was on
the spot, with a lot of workmen in his pay! Surely such circumstantial
evidence against him weighs more heavily in the scales than a mere scrap
of paper against me? I've written Sir Jim once or twice, by the way, on
business about the Abbey since I've been in Bath. All he'd have to do
would be to tear a letter up small enough, so it couldn't be pieced
together and make sense----"

"Nobody's weighing anything in scales against either of you--yet,"
soothed Mrs. Carstairs, "unless you're doing it against each other! But
we don't know what may happen. That's why it seemed best for you and Sir
James to come together and exchange blows--I mean, _views_!--at once. He
called my husband up by long-distance telephone early this morning, told
him what had happened, and had a pow-wow on ways and means. They decided
not to inform the police, but to save publicity and engage a private
detective. In fact, Sir J---- asked Henry to send a good man to the
Abbey by the quickest train. He went--the man, I mean, not Henry; and
the head of his firm ought to arrive at our flat in a few minutes now,
to meet you and Sir James."

"Sir James! Even a galloping cowboy can't be in London and Devonshire at
the same moment."

"Oh, I forgot to mention, he must have travelled up by _your_ train. I
suppose you didn't see him?"

"I did not!"

"He was probably in a smoking carriage. Well, anyhow, he'll soon be with
us."

"Stop the taxi!" I broke in; and stopped it myself by tapping on the
window behind the chauffeur.

"Good heavens! what's the matter?" gasped my companion.

"Nothing. I want to inquire the name of that firm of private detectives
Sir James Courtenaye got Mr. Carstairs to engage."

"Pemberton. You must have seen it advertised. But why stop the taxi to
ask that?"

"I stopped the taxi to get out, and let you run home alone while I find
another cab to take me to another detective. You see, I didn't want to
go to the same firm."

"Isn't one firm of detectives enough at one time, on one job?"

"It isn't one job. You're the shrewdest woman I know. You _must_ see
that James Courtenaye has engaged _his_ detective to spy upon me--to dog
my footsteps--to discover if I suddenly blossom out into untold
magnificence on ill-got gains. I intend to turn the tables on him, and
when I come back to your flat, it will be in the company of my very own
little pet detective."

Mrs. Carstairs broke into adjurations and arguments. According to her, I
misjudged my cousin's motives; and if I brought a detective, it would be
an insult. But I checked her by explaining that my man would not give
himself away--he would pose as a friend of mine. I would select a
suitable person for the part. With that I jumped out of the taxi, and
the dear old lady was too wise to argue. She drove sadly home, and I
went into the nearest shop which looked likely to own a directory. In
that volume I found another firm of detectives with an equally
celebrated name. I taxied to their office, explained something of my
business, and picked out a person who might pass for a pal of a
(socialist) princess. He and I then repaired to Berkeley Square, and Sir
James and the Pemberton person (also Mr. Carstairs) had not been waiting
_much_ more than half an hour when we arrived.

I don't know what my "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" thought
about my dashing in with a strange Mr. Smith who apparently had nothing
to do with the case. And I didn't care. No, not even if he imagined the
square-jawed bull-dog creature to be a choice specimen of my circle at
Bath. In any case, my Mr. Smith was a dream compared with his Pemberton.
As to himself, however--Sir Jim--I had to acknowledge that he was far
from insignificant in personality. If there were to be any battle of
wits or manners between us, I couldn't afford to despise him.

When I had met him before, I was too utterly overwhelmed to study, or
even to notice him much, except to see that he was a big, red-headed
fellow, who loomed unnaturally large when viewed against the light. Now
I classified him as resembling a more-than-life-size statue--done in
pale bronze--of a Red Indian, or a soldier of Ancient Rome. The only
flaws in the statue were the red hair and the fiery blackness of the
eyes.

My Mr. Smith, as I have explained, wasn't posing as a detective, but he
was engaged to stop, look, listen, for all he was worth, and tell me his
impressions afterward--just as, no doubt, Mr. Pemberton was to tell Sir
James _his_.

We talked over the robbery in conclave; we amateurs suggesting theories,
the professionals committing themselves to nothing so premature. Why, it
was too early to form judgments, since the detective on the spot had not
yet been able to report upon fingerprints or other clues! The sole
decision arrived at, and agreed to by all, was to keep the affair among
ourselves for the present. This could be managed if none but private
detectives were employed and the police not brought into the case. When
the meeting broke up and I was able to question Mr. Smith, I was
disappointed in him. I had hoped and expected (having led up to it by
hints) that he would say: "Sir James Courtenaye is in this." On the
contrary, he tactlessly advised me to "put that idea out of my head.
There was nothing in it." (I hope he meant the idea, not the head!)

"I should say, speaking in the air," he remarked, "that the caretakers
are the guilty parties, or at least have had some hand in the business.
Though of course I might change my mind if I were on the spot."

I assured him fiercely that any one possessed of a mind at all would
change it at sight of dear old Barl and Barley. Nothing on earth would
make me believe anything against them. Why, if they didn't have
Almost-Haloes and Wings, Sir James and the insurance people would have
objected to them as guardians. The very fact that they had been kept on
without a word of protest from any one, when Courtenaye Abbey was let to
Sir James was, I argued, the best of testimonials to the Barlows'
character. Nevertheless, my orders were that Mr. Smith should go to
Devonshire and take a room at the Courtenaye Arms, dressed and painted
to represent a landscape artist. "The Abbey is to be opened to the
public in a few days, in spite of the best small show-things being
lost," I reminded him, from what we had heard Sir Jim say. "You can see
the Barlows, and judge of them. But what is _much_ more important,
you'll also see Sir James Courtenaye, who lodges in the inn, and can
judge of _him_. In my opinion he has revenged himself for losing his
suit to grab the Abbey and everything in it, by taking what he could lay
his hands on without being suspected."

"But you do suspect him?" said Mr. Smith.

"For that matter, so does he suspect me," I retorted.

"You _think_ so," the detective amended.

"Don't you?"

"No, Princess, I do not."

"What _do_ you think, then? Or don't you think _anything_?"

"I do think something." He tried to justify his earning capacity.

"What, if I may ask?"

He--a Smith, a mere Smith!--dared to grin.

"Of course you may ask, Princess," he replied. "But it's too early yet
for me to answer your question in fairness to myself. About the theft I
have not formed a firm theory, but I have about Sir James Courtenaye. I
would not have ventured even to mention it, however, if you had not
drawn me out, for it is indirectly concerned with the case."

"Directly or indirectly, I wish to know it," I insisted. "And as you're
in my employ, I think I have the right."

"Very well, madam, you shall know it--later," he said.




CHAPTER IV

THE BLACK THING IN THE SEA


I went back to Bath, and Mrs. Percy-Hogge; but I no longer felt that I
was enjoying a rest cure. Right or wrong, I had the impression of being
_watched_. I was sure that Sir James Courtenaye had put detectives "on
my track," in the hope that I might be caught communicating with my
hired bravos or the wicked receiver of my stolen goods. In other days
when a man stared or turned to gaze after me, I had attributed the
attention to my looks; now I jumped to the conviction that he was a
detective. And in fact, I began to jump at anything--or nothing.

It was vain for Mrs. Carstairs (who ran down to Bath, after I'd written
her a wild letter) to guarantee that even an enemy--(which she vowed Sir
James _wasn't_!)--could rake up no shred of evidence against me, with
the exception of the torn letter. She couldn't deny that, materially
speaking, it _would_ be a "good haul" for me to sell the heirlooms, and
obtain also the insurance money. But then, I hadn't done it, and nobody
could accuse me of doing it, because no one knew the things were gone.
Oh, well, _yes_! Some detectives knew; and the poor old Barlows had
bitter cause to know. A few others, too, including Sir James Courtenaye.
None of them _counted_, however, because none of them would talk.

Mrs. Carstairs said it was absurd of me to imagine that Sir James was
having me watched. But imagination and not advice had the upper hand of
my nerves; and, seeing this, she prescribed a change of air.

"I meant Mrs. Percy-Hogge only for a stop-gap," she explained. "You've
squeezed her into Society now; and for yourself, you've come to the time
when you can lighten your mourning. I've waited for that, to start you
on your new job. You'll go what my cook calls 'balmy on the crumpet' if
you keep fancying every queer human being you meet in Milsom Street a
detective on your track. The best thing for you is, not to _have_ a
track! And the way to manage that, is to be at _sea_."

I was at sea--figuratively--till Mrs. Carstairs explained more. She
recalled to my mind what she had said in our first chat about
Brightening: how she had suggested my "taking the helm," to steer Roger
Fane into the Social Sea.

"I think I mentioned then that I referred to the sea, in the literal
sense of the word," she went on. "I promised to tell you what I meant,
when the right moment came, and now it has come. I haven't been idle
meanwhile, I assure you, for I like Roger Fane as much as _you_ like
Shelagh Leigh. And between us two, we'll marry them over the Pollens'
snobby heads."

In short, Mr. Carstairs had a client who had a yacht at Plymouth. The
client's name was Lord Verrington. The yacht's name was _Naiad_, and
Lord Verrington wished to let her for an absurdly large sum. Roger Fane
didn't mind paying this sum. It was the right time of year for a
yachting trip. If I would lend eclat to such a trip by Brightening it,
the Pollens would permit their precious Shelagh to go. Mr. Pollen (whom
Grandmother had refused to know) would even join the party himself.
Indeed, no one would refuse if asked by me, and the Pollens would be so
dazzled by Roger Fane's sudden social success that their consent to the
engagement was a foregone conclusion.

I snapped at the chance of escape. To be sure, it was a temporary
escape, as the guests were invited for a week only; still, lots of
things may happen in a week. Why look beyond seven perfectly good days?
Besides, I was to be given a huge "bonus" for my services, enough to pay
the rent of my expensive flat for a year. But I wasn't entirely selfish
in accepting. I've never half described to you the odd, reserved charm
of that mysterious millionaire, Roger Fane, whose one fault was his
close friendship with Sir James Courtenaye. And for his sake, as well as
dear little Shelagh's, I would gladly have done all I could to bring the
two together.

Knowing that titles impressed the Pollens, I secured several: one earl
with countess attached (legally, at all events), a pretty sister of the
latter; a bachelor marquis, and ditto viscount. These, with Shelagh,
myself, Roger Fane, and Mr. Pollen, would constitute the party, should
all accept.

They all did, partly for me, perhaps, and partly for each other, but
largely from curiosity, as the _Naiad_ had the reputation of being the
most luxuriously appointed small steam yacht in British waters, (She had
been "interned" in Spain during the war!) Also, Roger had secured as
_chef_ a famous Frenchman, just demobilized. Altogether, the prospect
offered attractions. The start was to be made from Plymouth on a summer
afternoon. We were to cruise along the coast, and eventually make for
Jersey and Guernsey, where none of the party had ever been. My things
were packed, and I was ready to take a morning train for Plymouth--a
train by which all those of us in town would travel--when a letter
arrived for me. It was from Mrs. Barlow, announcing the sudden death of
her husband, from heart failure. He had never recovered the shock of the
robbery, or the heavy dose of chloroform which the thieves had
administered. And this, Barley added, as if in reproach, was not all
Barlow had been forced to endure. It had been a cruel blow to find
himself supplanted as guardian at the Abbey. The excuse for thus
superseding him and his wife was, of course, the state of their health
after the ordeal through which they had passed. Nevertheless, Barlow
felt (said his wife) that they were no longer trusted. They had loved
the lodge, which was home to them in old days; but they had been
promoted from lodge-keeping to caretaking, and it was humiliating to be
sent back while strangers usurped their place at the Abbey. This
grievance (in Barley's opinion) had killed her husband. As for her, she
would follow him into the grave, were it not for the loving care of
Barlow's nephews from Australia, the brave twin soldier boys she had
often mentioned to me. They were with her now, and would take her to the
old family home close to Dudworth Cove, which the boys had bought back
from the late owner. Barlow's body would go with them, and be buried in
the graveyard where generations of Barlows slept.

It was a blow to hear of the old man's death, and to learn that I was
blamed for heartlessness by Barley. Of course I had nothing to do with
the affair. The Barlows were not really suspected, and had in truth been
removed for their own health's sake to the lodge where their possessions
were. The new caretakers had been engaged by Sir James, in consultation,
I believed, with the insurance people: and my secret conviction was,
that they had been supplied by Pemberton's Agency of Private Detectives.
My impulse was to rush to the Abbey and comfort Mrs. Barlow, even at the
risk of meeting my tenant engaged in the same task. But to do this would
have meant delaying the trip, and disappointing everyone, most of all
Shelagh and Roger Fane; so, advised by Mrs. Carstairs, I sent a telegram
instead, picked up Shelagh and her uncle, and took the Plymouth train.
This was the easier to do, because the wonderful old lady offered to go
herself to the Abbey on a mission of consolation. She promised to send a
telegram to our first port, saying how Barley was, and everything else I
wished to know.

Shelagh was so happy, so excited, that I was glad I'd listened to reason
and kept the tryst. Never had I seen her as pretty as she looked on that
journey to Devon: her eyes blue stars, her cheeks pink roses. But when
the skies began to darken her eyes darkened, too. Had she been a
barometer she could not have responded more sensitively to the storm;
for a storm we had, cats and dogs pelting down on the roof of the train.

"I was sure something horrid would happen!" she whispered. "It was too
good to be true that Roger and I should have a whole, heavenly week
together on board a yacht. Now we shall have to wait till the weather
clears. Or else be sea-sick. I don't know which is worse!"

Roger met us, in torrents of rain and gusts of wind, at Plymouth. But
things were not so black as they looked. He had engaged rooms for
everyone, and a private salon for us all, at the best hotel. We would
stay the night and have a dance, with a band of our own. By the next day
the sea would have calmed down enough to please the worst of sailors,
and we would start. Perhaps we could even get off in the morning.

This prophecy was rather too optimistic, for we didn't get off till
afternoon; but by that time the water was flat as a floor, and one was
tempted to forget there had ever been a storm. We were not to forget it
for long, alas! Brief as it had been, that storm was to leave its
lasting influence upon our fate: Roger Fane's, Shelagh Leigh's, and
mine.

By four-thirty, the day after the downpour, we had all come on board the
lovely _Naiad_, had "settled" into our cabins, and were on deck--the
girls in white serge or linen, the men in flannels--ready for tea.

If it had arrived, and we had been looking into our tea cups instead of
at the seascape, the whole of Roger Fane's and Shelagh's life might have
been different--mine, too, perhaps! But as it was, Shelagh and Roger
were leaning on the rail together, and her gaze was fixed upon the blue
water, because somehow she couldn't meet Roger's just then. What he had
said to her I don't know; but more to avoid giving an answer than
because she was wildly interested, the girl exclaimed: "What can that
dark thing be, drifting--and bobbing up and down in the waves? I suppose
it couldn't be a dead _shark_?"

"Hardly in these waters," said Roger Fane. "Besides, a dead shark floats
wrong side up, and his wrong side is white. This thing looks black."

In ordinary circumstances I wouldn't have broken in on a _tete-a-tete_,
but others were extricating themselves from their deck chairs, so I
thought there was no harm in my being the first.

"More like a coffin than a shark," I said, with my elbows beside
Shelagh's on the rail.

At that the whole party hurled itself in our direction, and the nearer
the _Naiad_ brought us to the floating object, the more like a coffin it
became to our eyes. At last it was so much like, that Roger decided to
stop the yacht and examine the thing, which might even be an odd-shaped
small boat, overturned. He went off, therefore, to speak with the
captain, leaving us in quite a state of excitement.

Almost before we'd thought the order given, the _Naiad_ slowed down, and
came to rest like a great Lohengrin swan in the clear azure wavelets. A
boat was quickly lowered, and we saw that Roger himself accompanied the
two rowers.

A few moments before he had looked so happy, so at peace with the world,
that the tragic shadow in his eyes had actually vanished. His whole
expression and bearing had been different, and he had seemed years
younger--almost boyish, in his dark, shy, reserved way. But as he went
down in the boat, he was again the Roger Fane I had known and wondered
about.

"If he's superstitious, this will seem a bad omen," I thought. "That is,
if the thing _does_ turn out to be a coffin."

None of us remembered the tea we'd been pining for, though a white-clad
steward was hovering with trays of cakes, cream, and strawberries. We
could do nothing but hang over the rail and watch the _Naiad's_ boat. We
saw it reach the Thing, in whose neighbourhood it paused with lifted
oars, while a discussion went on between Roger and the rowers.
Apparently they argued, with due respect, against the carrying out of
some order or suggestion. He was not a man to be disobeyed, however.
After a moment or two, the work of taking the black thing in tow was
begun.

We were very near now, and could plainly see all that went on. Coffin or
not, the mysterious object was a long, narrow box of some sort (the
men's reluctance to pick it up pretty well proved _what_ sort, to my
mind), and curiously enough a rope was tied round it. There appeared to
be a lump of knots on top, and a loose end trailing like seaweed, which
made the task of taking the derelict in tow an easy one. To this broken
rope Roger deftly attached the rope carried in the boat, and it was not
long before the rescue party started to return.

"Is it a coffin or a treasure chest?" girls and men eagerly called down
to Roger. Everyone screamed some question--except Shelagh and me. We
were silent, and Shelagh's colour had faded. She edged closer to me,
until our shoulders touched. Hers felt cold to my warm flesh.

"Why, you're shivering, dear!" I said. "You're not _afraid_ of that
wretched thing--whatever it is?"

"We both _know_ what it is, without telling, don't we?" she replied, in
a half whisper. "I'm not _afraid_ of it, of course. But--it's awful that
we should come across a coffin floating in the sea, on our first day
out. I feel as if it meant bad luck for Roger and me. How can they all
squeal and chatter so? I suppose Roger is bound to bring the dreadful
thing on board. It wouldn't be decent not to. But I wish he needn't."

I rather wished the same, partly because I knew how superstitious
sailors were about such matters, and how they would hate to have a
coffin--presumably containing a dead body--on board the _Naiad_. It
really wasn't a gay yachting companion! However, I tried to cheer
Shelagh. It would take more than this to bring her bad luck _now_, I
said, when things had gone so far; and she might have more trust in me,
whom she had lately named her _mascotte_.

All the men frankly desired to see the _trouvaille_ at close quarters,
and most of the women wanted a peep, though they weren't brutally open
about it. If there had been any doubt, it would have vanished as the
Thing was being hauled on board by grave-faced, suddenly sullen sailors.
It was a "sure enough" coffin, and--it seemed--an unusually large one!

It had to be placed on deck, for the moment, but Roger had the dark
shape instantly covered with tarpaulins; and an appeal from his clouded
eyes made me suggest adjourning indoors for tea. We could have it in the
saloon, which was decorated like a boudoir, and full of lilies and
roses--Shelagh's favourite flowers.

"Let's not talk any more about the business!" Roger exclaimed, when
Shelagh's uncle seemed inclined to mix the subject with food. "I wish it
hadn't happened, as the men are foolishly upset. But it can't be helped,
and we must do our best. The--er--it sha'n't stop on deck. That would be
to keep Jonah under our eyes. I've thought of a place where we can
ignore it till to-morrow, when we'll land it as early as we can at St.
Heliers. I'm afraid the local authorities will want to tie us up in a
lot of red tape. But the worst will be to catechize us as if we were
witnesses in court. Meanwhile, let's forget the whole affair."

"Righto!" promptly exclaimed all three of the younger guests; but Mr.
Pollen was not thus to be deprived of his morbid morsel.

"Certainly," he agreed. "But before the subject is shelved, _where_ is
the 'place' you speak of? I mean, where is the coffin to rest throughout
the night?"

Roger gave a grim laugh, and looked obstinate. "I'll tell you this
much," he said. "None of you'll have it for a near neighbour, so none of
you need worry."

After that, even Mr. Pollen could not persist. We disposed of an
enormous tea, after the excitement, and then some of us played bridge.
When we separated, however, to pace the deck--two by two, for a
"constitutional" before dinner--one could see by the absorbed expression
on faces, and guess by the low-toned voices, what each pair discussed.

My companion, Lord Glencathra, thought that Somebody must have died on
Some Ship, and been thrown overboard. But I argued that this could
hardly be, because--surely--bodies buried at sea were not put into
coffins, were they? I had heard that the custom was to sew them up in
sailcloth or something, and weight them well. Besides, there was the
broken rope tied round the coffin, which seemed to show that it had been
tethered, and got loose--in the storm, perhaps. How did Lord Glencathra
account for that fact? He couldn't account for it. Nor could any one
else.




CHAPTER V

WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN


I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of
a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I
succeeded. But whenever there was an instant's lull in the conversation,
I felt that everyone was asking him or herself, "_Where_ is the coffin?"

The plan had been to have a little moonlight fox-trotting and jazzing on
deck; but with that Black Thing hidden somewhere on board, we confined
ourselves to more bridge and star-gazing, according to taste. I, as
professional Brightener, nobly kept Mr. Pollen out of everybody's way by
annexing him for a stroll. This deserved the name of a double
brightening act, for I brightened the lives of his fellow guests by
saving them from him; and I brightened his by encouraging him to talk of
Well-Connected People.

"Who _was_ she before she married Lord Thingum-bob?" ... or, "Yes, she
was Miss So-and-So, a cousin of the Duke of Dinkum," might have been
heard issuing sapiently from our lips, had any one been mentally
destitute enough to eavesdrop. But I had my reward. Dear little Shelagh
Leigh and Roger Fane seemed to have cheered each other. I left them
standing together, elbows on the rail, as they had stood before the
affair of the afternoon. The moonlight was shining full upon Shelagh's
bright hair and pearl-white face, as she looked up, eager-eyed, at
Roger; and _he_ looked--at least, his _back_ looked!--as if there were
nobody on land or sea except one Girl.

Having lured Mr. Pollen to make a fourth at a bridge table where the
players were too polite to kill him, I ventured to vanish. There being
no one on board with whom I wished to flirt, my one desire after two
hard hours of Brightening was to curl up in my cabin with a nice book. I
quite looked forward to the moment for shutting myself cosily in, for
the cabin was a delicious pink-and-white nest--the biggest room on
board, as a tribute to my princesshood.

Hardly had I opened the door, however, when my dream-bubble broke. A
very odd and repellent odour greeted me, and seemed almost to push me
back across the threshold. I held my ground, however, and sniffed with
curiosity and disgust.

Somebody had been at my perfume--my expensive pet perfume, made
especially for me in Rome (one drop exquisite; two, oppressive), and
must have spilt the lot. But worse than this, the heavy fragrance was
mingled with a reek of stale brandy.

Anger flashed in me, like a match set to gun-cotton. Some impertinent
person had sneaked into my stateroom and played a stupid practical joke.
Or, if not that, one of the pleasantly prim, immaculate women (a cross
between the stewardess and ladies'-maid type) engaged to hook up our
frocks and make up our cabins, was secretly a confirmed--_ROTTER_!

I switched on the light, shut the door smartly without locking it, and
flung a furious glance around. The creature had actually dared to place
a brandy bottle conspicuously upon my dressing table, among gold-handled
brushes and silver gilt boxes, and, as a crowning impertinence, had left
a tumbler beside the bottle, a quarter full of strong-smelling brown
stuff. Close by lay my lovely crystal flask of "Campagna Violets,"
empty. I could get no more anywhere, and it had cost five pounds! I
could hardly breathe in the room. Oh, evidently a stewardess must have
gone stark mad, or else some practical joker had waited to play the
_coup_ until the stewardesses were in bed!

As I thought this, my eyes as well as my nostrils warned me of something
strange. The rose-coloured silk curtains which, when I went to dinner,
had been gracefully looped back at head and foot of my pretty bed (a
real bed, not a mere berth!) were now closely drawn with a secretive
air. This made me imagine that it was a practical joke I had to deal
with, and my fancy flew to all sorts of weird surprises, any one of
which I might find hidden behind the draperies.

I trust that I have a sense of humour, and I can laugh at a jest against
myself as well as any woman, perhaps better than most. But to-night I
was in no mood to laugh at jests, and I wondered how anybody had the
heart (not to mention the _cheek_!) to perpetrate one after the shock we
had experienced. Besides, I couldn't think of a person likely to play a
trick on me. Certainly my host wouldn't do so. Shelagh, my best and most
intimate pal, was far too gentle and sensitive-minded. As for the other
guests, none were of the noisy, bounding type who take liberties even
with distant acquaintances, for fun.

All this ran through my mind, as a cinema "cut-in" flashes across the
screen; and it wasn't until I'd passed in review the characters of my
fellow guests that I summoned courage to pull back the bed-curtains.
When I did so, I gave a jerk that slipped them along the rod as far as
they would go. And then--I saw the last thing in the world I could have
pictured.

A woman, fully dressed, was stretched on the pink silk coverlet fast
asleep, her head deep sunk in the embroidered pillow.

It was all I could do to keep back a cry--for this was no woman I had
seen on board, not even a drunken or sleep-walking stewardess. Yet her
face was not strange to me. That was the most horrible, the most
mysterious part! There was no mistake, for the face was impossible to
forget. As I stared, almost believing that I dreamed, another scene rose
between my eyes and the dainty little cabin of the _Naiad_.

It also was a scene in a dream. I knew it was a dream, but it was
torturingly vivid. I was a prisoner on a German submarine, in war-time,
and signals from my own old home--Courtenaye Abbey--flashed into my
eyes. They flashed so brightly that they set me on fire. I wakened from
the nightmare with a start. A strong light dazzled me, and, striking my
face, lit up another face as well. Just for an instant I saw it; then
the revealing ray died into darkness. But on my retina was photographed
those features, in a pale, illumined circle.

A second sufficed to bring back to my brain this old dream and the
waking reality which followed, that night at the Abbey, long ago--the
night which Shelagh and I called "Spy Night." For here, in my cabin on
the yacht _Naiad_, on the crushed pillow of my bed, was that face.

As I realized this, without benefit of any doubt, a faint sickness swept
over me. It was partly horror of the past; partly physical disgust of
the brandy-reek--stronger than ever now--hanging like an unseen canopy
over the bed; and partly cold fear of a terrifying Presence.

There she lay, sunk in drugged and drunken sleep, the Woman of Mystery,
in whose existence no one but Shelagh and I had ever quite believed: the
woman who had visited us in our sleep, and who--almost certainly--had
fired the Abbey, hoping that we and the Barlows might suffocate in our
beds.

The face was just the same as it had been then: "beautiful and hideous
at the same time, like Medusa," I had described it; only now it was
older, and though still beautiful, somehow _ravaged_. The hair still
glowed with the vivid auburn colour which I had thought "unreal
looking"; but now it was tumbled and unkempt. Loose locks strayed over
the dainty pillow, and at the bottom of the bed, pushed tightly against
the footboard by a pair of untidy, high-heeled shoes, was a dusty black
toque half covered with a very thick motor-veil of gray tissue. There
was a gray cloak, too, in a tumbled mass on the pink coverlet, and a
pair of soiled gloves. Everything about the sleeper was sordid and
repulsive, a shuddering contrast to the exquisite freshness of the bed
and room--everything, that is, except the face. Its half-wrecked beauty
was still supreme, and even in the ruin drink or drugs had wrought, it
forced admiration.

"_A German spy_--here in my cabin--on board Roger Fane's yacht!" I said
the words slowly in my mind, not with my tongue. Not a sound, not the
faintest whisper, passed my lips. Yet suddenly the long, dark lashes on
bruise-blue lids began to quiver. It was as if my _thought_ had shaken
the woman by the shoulder, and roused what was left of her soul.

I should have liked to dash out of the room and with a shriek bring
everyone on board to my cabin. But I stood motionless, concentrating my
gaze on those trembling eyelids. Something inside me seemed to say:
"Don't be a coward, Elizabeth Courtenaye!" It was exactly like
Grandmother's voice. I had a conviction that _she_ wanted me to see this
thing through as a Courtenaye should, shirking no responsibility, and
solving the mystery of past and present without bleating for help.

The fringed lids parted, shut, quivered again, and flashed wide open. A
pair of pale eyes stared into mine--wicked eyes, cruel eyes, green as a
cat's. Like a cat, too, the creature gathered herself together as if for
a spring. Her muscles rippled and jerked. She sat up, and in chilled
surprise I thought I saw recognition in her stare.




CHAPTER VI

THE WOMAN OF THE PAST


"Oh, you've come at last!" she rasped, in a harsh, throaty voice
roughened by drink. "I know you. I----"

"And I know you!" I cut her short, to show that I was not cowed.

Sitting up in bed, hugging her knees, she started at my words so that
the springs shook. Whatever it was she had meant to say, she forgot it
for the moment, and challenged me: "That's a lie!" she snapped. "You
_don't_ know me yet--but you soon will."

"I've known you since you came into my room at Courtenaye Abbey the
night you tried to burn down the house," I said. "You were spying for
the Germans in the war. Heaven knows all the harm you may have done. I
can't imagine for whom you're spying now. Anyhow, you can't frighten me
again. The war's over, but I'll have you arrested for what you did when
it was on."

The woman scowled and laughed, more Medusa-like than ever. I really felt
as if she might turn me to stone. But she shouldn't guess her power.

"Pooh!" she said, showing tobacco-stained teeth. "You won't want to
arrest me when you hear who I am, Lady Shelagh Leigh!"

"Lady Shelagh Leigh!" It was on my lips to cry, "I'm not Shelagh Leigh!"
But I stopped in time. The less I let her find out about me, and the
more I could find out about her before rousing the yacht, the better. I
spoke not a word, but waited for her to go on--which she did in a few
seconds.

"That makes you sit up, doesn't it?" she sneered. "That hits you where
you _live_! Why did you think I chose your cabin? I didn't select it by
chance. I confess I was taken back at your remembering. I thought I
hadn't given you time for much study of my features that other night.
But it doesn't matter. You can't do anything to me. I'll soon prove
_that_! But I had a good look at _you_, there in your friend's old
Devonshire rat-trap. I knew who you both were. It was easy to find out!
And the other day, when I heard that Lady Shelagh Leigh was likely to
marry Roger Fane, I said to myself, 'Gosh! One of the girls I saw at the
darned old Abbey!'"

"Oh, you said _that_ to yourself!" I echoed. And, though my knees
failed, I kept to my feet. To stand towering above the squatting figure
on the bed seemed to give me moral as well as physical advantage. "How
did you know, pray, which girl I was?"

"I knew, 'pray,'" she mocked, "because you've got the best room on this
yacht. Roger'd be sure to give that to his best girl. Which is how I'm
sure you're not Elizabeth Courtenaye."

"How clever you are!" I said.

"Yes--I'm clever--when I'm not a fool. Don't think, anyhow, that you can
beat me in a battle of brains. I've come on board this boat to succeed,
and I _will_ succeed in one of two ways, I don't care a hang which. But
nothing on God's earth can hold me back from one or the other--least of
all, can _you_. Why, you can ask any question you please, and I'll
answer. I'll tell the truth, too--for the more I say, and the more
you're shocked, the more helpless you are--do you see?"

"No, I don't see," I drew her on.

"Don't you guess yet who I am?"

"I've guessed what you _were_--a German spy."

"That's ancient history. One must live--and one must have money--plenty
of money. I must! And I've had it. But it's gone from me--like most good
things. Now I must have more--a lot more. Or else I must die. I don't
care which. But _others_ will care. I'll make them."

Looking at her, I doubted if she had the power; though she must have had
it in lost days of gorgeous youth. Yet again I remained silent. I saw
that she was leading up to something in particular, and I let her go on.

"You're not much of a guesser," she said, "so I'll introduce myself.
Lady-who-thinks-she's-going-to-marry Roger Fane, let me make known to
you the lady who _has_ married him--Mrs. Fane, _nee_ Linda Lehmann. I've
changed my name since, more than once. At present I'm Katherine Nelson.
But Linda Lehmann is the name that matters to Roger. You're nothing in
looks, by the by, to what _I_ was at your age. _Nothing!_"

If my knees had been weak before, they now felt as if struck with a
mallet! She might be lying, but something within me was horribly sure
that she spoke the truth. I'd never heard full details of Roger Fane's
"tragedy," but Mrs. Carstairs had dropped a few hints which, without
asking questions, I'd patched together. I had gleaned that he'd married
(when almost a boy) an actress much older than himself; and that, till
her sudden and violent death after many years--nine or ten at least--his
life had been a martyrdom. How the woman contrived to be alive I
couldn't see. But such things happened--to people one didn't know! The
worst of it was that _I did_ know Roger Fane, and liked him. Besides, I
loved Shelagh, whose happiness was bound up with Roger's. It seemed as
if I couldn't bear to have those two torn apart by this cruel
creature--this drunkard--this _spy_! Yet--what could I do?

At the moment I could think of nothing useful, because, if she was
Roger's wife, her boast was justified: for his sake and Shelagh's she
mustn't be handed over to the police, to answer for any political crime
I might prove against her--or even for trying to burn down the Abbey.
Oh, this business was beyond what I bargained for when I engaged to
"brighten" the trip on board the _Naiad_! Still, all the spirit in me
rallied to work for Roger Fane--even to work out his salvation if that
could be. And I was glad I'd let the woman believe I was Shelagh Leigh.

"Roger's wife died five years ago, just before the war began," I said.
"She was killed in a railway accident--an awful one, where she and a
company of actors she was travelling with were burned to death."

The creature laughed. "Have you never been to a movie show, and seen how
easy it is to die in a railway accident?--to _stay_ dead to those you're
tired of, and to be alive in some other part of this old world, where
you think there's more fun going on? It's been done on the screen a
hundred times--and off it, too. I was sick to death of Roger. I'd never
have married a stick like him--always preaching!--if I hadn't been down
and out. When I met him, it was in a beastly one-horse town where I was
stranded. The show had chucked me--gone off and left me without a cent.
I was sick--too big a dose of dope, if you want to know. But _Roger_
didn't know--you can bet. Not then! I took jolly good care to toe the
mark, till he'd married me all right. He _was_ a sucker! I suppose he
was twenty-two and over, but Peter Pan wasn't in it with him in some
ways. He kept me off the stage--and tried to keep me off everything else
worth doing for five years. Then I left him, for my health and looks had
come back, and I got a fair part in a play on tour. There I met a
countryman of mine--oh! don't be encouraged to hope! I never gave Roger
any cause to divorce me; and if I had, I'd have done it so he couldn't
prove a thing!"

"When you say the man was your countryman, I suppose you mean a German,"
I said.

"Well, yes," she replied, with the flaunting frankness she affected in
these revelations. "German-American he was. I'm German by birth, and
grew up in America. I've been back often and long since then. But this
man had a scheme. He wanted me to go into it with him. I didn't see my
way at first though there was big money, so he left the show before the
accident. When I found myself alive and kicking among the dead that day,
however, I saw my chance. I left a ring and a few things to identify me
with a woman who was killed, and I lit out. It was in the dead of night,
so luck was on my side for once. I wrote my friend, and it wasn't long
before I was at work with him for the German Government. The Abbey
affair was after he'd got out of England and into Germany through
Switzerland. He was a sailor, and had been given command of a big new
submarine. If it hadn't been for the row you and your pal kicked up,
we--he on the water and I on land--might have brought off one of the big
stunts of the war. You tore it--after I'd been mewed up in the old
rat-warren for a week, and everything was working just right! I wish to
goodness the whole house had burned, and I did wish _you'd_ burned with
it. But I don't know if to-night isn't going to pay me--and you--just as
well. There's a lot owing from you to me. I haven't told you all yet. My
friend's submarine was caught, and he went down with her. I blame that
to you. If I hadn't failed him with the signals, he might be alive now."

"I was more patriotic than I knew!" I flung back. "As you're so
confidential, tell me how you got into the Abbey, and where you hid."

She shook her dyed and tousled head. "That's where I draw the line," she
said. "I've told you what I have told to please myself, not you. You
can't profit by a word of it. That's where my fun comes in! If I split
about the Abbey, you might profit somehow--or your friend the Courtenaye
girl would. I want to punish her, too."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Perhaps in that case you won't care to explain
how you came on board the _Naiad_?"

"I don't mind that," the ex-spy made concession. "I went out of England
after the Abbey affair--friends helped me away--and I worked in New York
till things grew too hot. Then I came over as a Red Cross nurse, got
into France, and stopped till the other day. I'd be there still if I
hadn't picked up a weekly London gossip-rag, and seen a paragraph about
a certain rumoured engagement! You can guess _whose_! It called
Roger--_my_ Roger, mind you!--a 'millionaire.' He never was poor, even
in my day; he'd made a lucky strike before we met, with an invention. I
said to myself: 'Linda, my girl, 'twould be tempting Providence to lie
low and let another woman spend his money.' I started as soon as I
could, but missed him in London, and hurried on to Plymouth. If it
hadn't been for that bally storm I shouldn't have caught him up! The
yacht would have sailed. As it was, before you came on board this
afternoon I presented myself, thickly veiled. I had a card from a London
newspaper, and an old card of Roger's which was among a few things of
his I'd kept for emergencies. I can copy his handwriting well enough not
be suspected, except by an intimate friend of his, so I scribbled on the
card an order to view the yacht. I got on all right, and wandered about
with a notebook and a stylo. I soon found the right place to hide--in
the storeroom, behind some barrels. But I had to make everyone who'd
seen me think I'd gone on shore. That was easy! I told a sailor fellow
by the gang plank I was going, and said I'd mislaid an envelope in which
I'd slipped a tip for him and another man. I thought I'd left it on a
table in the dining saloon, and he'd better look for it, or it might be
picked up by somebody. He went before I could say 'knife!' and the
envelope really _was_ there, so he didn't have to hurry back. Two
minutes later I was in the storeroom, and no one the wiser. Lord! but I
got the jumps waiting for the stewardesses to be safe in bed before I
could creep out to pay your cabin a call!"

"So, to cure the 'jumps' you annexed a whole bottle of brandy," I said.

"I did--for that and another reason you may find out by and by. But I'm
hanged if you're not a cool hand, for a young girl who has just heard
her lover's a married man. I thought by this time you'd be in
hysterics."

"Girls of _my_ generation don't have hysterics," I taunted her. By the
dyed hair and vestiges of rouge and powder which streaked the battered
face I guessed that a sneer at her age would sting like a wasp. I wanted
to rouse the woman's temper. If she lost her head, she might show her
hand!

"You'll have worse than hysterics, you fool, before I finish," she
snapped. "I'm going to make Roger Fane acknowledge me as his wife and
give me everything I want--money, and motor cars, and pearls--and, best
of all, a _position in society_. I'm tired of being a free lance."

"He won't do it!" I cried.

"He'll have to--when he hears what will happen if he doesn't. If I can't
live a life worth living, I'll die. Roger Fane will go off this yacht
under arrest as my murderer."

"You deserve that he should kill you, but he will not," I said.

"He'll _hang_ for killing me, anyhow. You see, the more _motive_ he has
to destroy me, the more impossible for him--or you--to prove his
innocence. Do you think I'd have told you all this, if any one was
likely to believe such a cock-and-bull story as the truth would sound to
a jury? But I'm through now! I've said what I came to say. I'm ready to
act. Do you want a row, or will you go quietly to the door of Roger's
cabin (he must be there by this time) and tell him that his wife, Linda
Lehmann, is waiting for him in your stateroom? _That_'ll fetch him!"

I had no doubt it would. My only doubt was what to do! But if I refused,
the woman was sure to keep her word, and rouse the yacht by screams.
That would be the worst thing possible for Shelagh and Roger. I decided
to go, and break to him the news with merciful swiftness.

If I could, I would have turned a key upon the creature, but the doors
of the _Naiad's_ cabins were furnished only with bolts. My one hope,
that she'd keep to my room, owed itself to the fact that she was too
drunk to move comfortably, and that, despite her bluff, the best trump
she had was quiet diplomacy with Roger.

Softly I closed the door, and tiptoed to his, three staterooms distant
from mine. My tap was so light that, if he had gone to sleep, I should
have had to knock again. But he opened the door at once. He was fully
dressed, and had a book in his hand.

"Something has happened," I whispered in answer to his amazed look. "Let
me come in and explain. I can't talk out here."

He stood aside in silence, and I stepped in. Then I motioned him to shut
the door.




CHAPTER VII

THE SECRET BEHIND THE SILENCE


This was the first time I'd seen Roger's cabin, and I had no eyes now
for its charm of decoration; but I saw that it was large, and divided by
a curtained arch into a bedroom and a tiny yet complete study fitted
with bookshelves and a desk.

"You're pale as death!" He lowered his voice cautiously. "Sit down in
this chair." As he spoke he led me through the bedroom part of the cabin
to the study, and there I sank gratefully into the depths of a big
chair, where, no doubt, he had sat reading under the light of a shaded
lamp.

"Now what is it?" he asked, bending over me. As I stammered out my
story, for a few seconds I forgot the fear of being followed. Our backs
were turned to the door. But I had not got far in the tale when I felt
that _she_ had come into the room. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw
her--a shabby, sinister figure--hanging on to the curtain that draped
the archway.

Roger's start and stifled exclamation proved that, whatever else she
might be, the woman was no imposter.

"You devil!" he gasped.

"Your wife!" she retorted.

"Hush," I whispered. "For every sake let's keep this quiet!"

"_I'll_ be quiet for my own sake, if he accepts my terms," said the
woman. "If not, the whole yacht----"

"Be silent!" Roger commanded. "Princess, I've got to see this through.
You'd better go now, and leave me alone with her."

He was right. My presence would hinder rather than help. I saw the
greenish eyes dart from his face to mine when he called me "Princess";
but she must have fancied it a pet name, for no question flashed from
her lips as I tiptoed across the room.

When I got back to my own quarters, I noticed at once that the brandy
bottle and the tumbler which had accompanied it were gone from my
dressing table. Nor were they to be found in the cabin. The woman must
have taken them to Roger's room, and placed them somewhere before I saw
her. "Disgusting!" I murmured, for my thought was that the debased
wretch had clung lovingly to the drink. Even though I'd sharpened my
wits to search all her motives, I failed over that simple-seeming act.

"Oh, poor Roger!" I said to myself. "And poor Shelagh!"

I sat miserably on the window seat (for the rumpled bed was now
abhorrent), and wondered what would happen next. But I had not long to
wait. A few moments passed--how many I don't know--and the crystalline
silence of the gliding _Naiad_ was splintered by a scream.

'Scream' is the word one must use for a cry of pain or fear. Yet it
isn't the right word for the sound that snatched me to my feet. It was
not shrill, it was not loud. What might have ended in a shriek subsided
to a choked breath, a gurgle. My heart's pounding seemed louder as I
listened. My ears expected a following cry, but it did not come. Two or
three doors gently opened, that was all. Again dead silence fell; and I
felt in it that others listened, fearing to speak lest the sound had
been no more than a moan in a dream. Presently the doors closed again,
each listener afraid of disturbing a neighbour. And even I, who knew the
secret behind the silence, prayed that the choked scream might have come
when it did as a mere coincidence. Someone might really have had
nightmare!

As time passed, I almost persuaded myself that it was so, and that, at
worst, there would be no crime to mark this night with crimson on the
calendar. But the next quarter hour was the _deadest_ time I'd ever
known. I felt like one entombed alive, praying to be liberated from a
vault. Then, at last--when those who'd waked slept again--came a faint
knock at my door.

I flew to slip back the bolt, and pulled Roger Fane into the room. One
would not have believed a face so brown could bleach so white!

For an instant we stared into each other's eyes. When I could speak, I
stammered a question--I don't know what, and I don't think he
understood. But the spell broke.

"You _heard_?" he faltered.

"The cry? Yes. It was----"

"She's dead."

"_Dead!_ You killed her?"

"My God, no! But if you think that, what will--_others_ think?"

"If you had killed her, you couldn't be blamed," I tried to encourage
him. "Only----"

"Didn't she make some threat to you? I hoped she had. She told me----"

"Yes, there was something--I hardly remember what. It was like
drunkenness. She said--I think--that if you wouldn't take her back,
you'd be arrested--as her murderer."

"That was it--her ultimatum. She must have been mad. I offered a big
allowance, if she'd go away and not make a scandal. I'd have to give up
Shelagh, of course, but I wanted to save my poor little love from
gossip. That devil would have no compromise. It should be all or
nothing. I must swear to acknowledge her as my wife on board this
yacht--to-morrow morning--before Shelagh--before you all. If I wouldn't
promise that, she'd kill herself at once, in a way to throw the guilt on
me. She'd do it so that I couldn't clear myself or be cleared. I
wouldn't promise, of course. I hoped, anyhow, that she was bluffing. But
I didn't know her! When nothing would change me, she showed a tiny phial
she had in her hand, and said she'd drink the stuff in it before I could
touch her. It was prussic acid, she told me--and already she'd poured
enough to kill ten men into a tumbler she'd stolen from my cabin on
purpose. She'd mixed the poison with brandy from the storeroom. Even if
I threw the tumbler through the porthole, mine would be missing. There's
one to match each room, you see. A small detail, but important.

"'Now will you promise?' she repeated. I couldn't--for I should not have
kept my word. She looked at me a second. I saw in her eyes that she was
going to do the thing, and I jumped at her--but I was too late. She
nearly drained the phial. And she'd hardly flung it away before she was
dead--with an awful, twisted face--and that cry. If I hadn't caught her,
she'd have fallen with a crash. This is the end of things for me."

"Oh, no--don't say that!" I begged.

"What else is there to say? There she lies, dead in my cabin. There's
prussic acid on the floor--and the phial broken. The room reeks of
bitter almonds. No one but you will believe I didn't kill her--perhaps
not even Shelagh. Just because the woman made my past life horrible--and
I had a chance of happiness--the temptation would be irresistible."

"Let me think. Do let me think!" I persisted. "Surely there's a way out
of the trap."

"I don't _see_ one," said Roger. "Throwing a body overboard is the
obvious thing. But it would be worse than----"

"Wait!" I cut him short. "I've thought of another thing--_not_ obvious.
But it's hard to do--and hateful. The only help I could lend you is--a
hint. The rest would depend on yourself. If you were strong
enough--brave enough--it might give you Shelagh."

"I'm strong enough for anything with the remotest hope of Shelagh,
and--I trust--brave enough, too. Tell me your plan."

I had to draw a long breath before I could answer. I needed air! "You're
right." I said. "To give the body to the sea would make things worse.
You couldn't be sure it would not be found, and the woman traced by the
police. If they discovered who she was--that she'd been your wife--you
would be suspected even if nothing were proved through those who saw a
veiled woman come on board."

"That's what I meant. Yet you must see that even with your testimony, my
innocence can't be proved if the story of this night has to be told."

"I do see. You might not be proved guilty, but you'd be under a cloud.
Shelagh would still want to marry you. But she's very young, and easy to
break as a butterfly. The Pollens----"

"I wouldn't accept such a sacrifice even if they'd let her make it. Yet
you speak of hope!----"

"I do--a desperate hope. Can you open that coffin you brought on board
to-day, take out--whatever is in it--and--and----"

"My God!"

"I warned you the plan was terrible. I hardly thought you would----"

"I would--for Shelagh. But you don't understand. That coffin will be
opened by the police at St. Heliers to-morrow, and----"

"I do understand. It's you who do not. Everyone on board knows that the
coffin was floating in the sea--that we came on it by accident. You
could have had nothing to do with its being where it was. If you had,
you wouldn't have taken it on board! The body found in that coffin
to-morrow won't be associated with you. _She_--must have altered
horribly since old days. And she has changed her name many times. The
initials on her linen won't be L.L. There'll be a nine-days' wonder over
the mystery. But _you_ won't be concerned in it. As for what's in the
coffin now, _that_ can safely be given to the sea. Whatever it may be,
and whenever or wherever it's found, it won't be connected with the name
of Roger Fane. If there's the name of the maker on the coffin, it must
come off. Oh, don't think I do not realize the full horror of the thing.
I do! But between two evils one must choose the less, if it hurts no
one. It seems to me it is so with this. Why should Shelagh's life and
yours be spoiled by a cruel woman--a criminal--whose last act was to try
to ruin the man she'd injured, sinned against for years? As for--_the
other_--the unknown one--if the spirit can see, surely it would be glad
to help in such a cause? What you would have to do, you'd do reverently.
There must be tarpaulin on board, or canvas coverings that wouldn't be
looked for, or missed. There must be a screw-driver--and things like
that. The great danger is, if the coffin's in plain sight anywhere, and
a man on watch----"

"There's no danger of that kind. The coffin is in the bathroom adjoining
my cabin."

"Then--doesn't it seem that Fate bade you put it there?"

For a moment Roger covered his face with his hands. I saw him shudder.
But he flung back his head and looked me in the eyes. "I'll go on
obeying Fate's orders," he said.

Without another word between us, he left me. The door shut, and I sat
staring at it, as if I could see beyond.

I had spoken only the truth. There was no sin against living or dead in
what I had urged Roger to do. Yet the bare thought of it was so grim
that I felt like an up-to-date Lady Macbeth.

I had forgotten to beg that he would come back and tell of his success
or--failure. But I was sure he would come, sooner or later, whatever
happened, and I sat quite still--waiting. I kept my eyes on the door, to
see the handle turn, or gazed at my little travelling clock to watch the
dragging moments. I longed for news. Yet I was glad when time went on
without a sign. The quick coming back of Roger would have meant that he
had failed--that all hope was ended.

Twenty minutes; thirty; forty; fifty, passed, seeming endless. But when
with the sixtieth minute came the faint tap I awaited, down sank my
heart. Roger could not have finished his double task in an hour!

I dashed to the door, and the light from my cabin showed the man's face,
ashy pale. Yet I did not read despair on it.

Without a word I dragged him into the room once more; and only when the
door was closed did I dare to whisper "_Well?_"




CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT SURPRISE


"_There was no body in the coffin_," Roger said.

"Empty?" I gasped.

"Not empty. No. There was something there. Will you come to my cabin and
see what it was? Don't look frightened. There's nothing to alarm you.
And--Princess, the rest of the plan you gave me has been--_carried out_.
Thanks to your woman's wit, I believe that my future and Shelagh's is
clear. And, before Heaven, my conscience is clear, too."

"Oh, Roger, it's thanks to your own courage more than to me. Is--is all
_safe_?"

"The coffin--isn't empty now. It is fastened up, just as it was. The
broken rope is round it again. It's covered with the tarpaulin as
before. No one outside the secret would guess it had been disturbed.
There's no maker's mark to trace it by. I owe more than my life--I owe
my very _soul_--to you. For I haven't much fear of what may come at St.
Heliers to-morrow or after."

"Nor I. Oh, I am _thankful_, for Shelagh's sake even more than yours, if
possible. Her heart would have broken. Now she need never know."

"She must know--and choose. I shall tell her--everything I did. Only I
need not bring you into it."

"If you tell her about yourself, you must tell her about me," I said.
"I'd like to be with you when you speak to her--if you think you must
speak."

"I'm sure I must. If all goes well to-morrow, she can marry me without
fear of scandal--if she's willing to marry me, after what I've done
to-night."

"She will be. And she shall hear from me that this woman who killed
herself and our spy of the Abbey were one. As for to-morrow--all _must_
go well! But--the thing you found--in the coffin. You'll have to dispose
of it somehow."

"It's for _you_ to decide about that--I think."

"For me? What can it have to do with me?"

"You'll see--in my cabin. If you'll trust me and come."

I went with him, my heart pounding as I entered the room. It seemed as
if some visible trace of tragedy must remain. But there was nothing. All
was in order. The brandy bottle had disappeared--into the sea, no doubt.
The tumbler so cleverly taken from this cabin was clean, and in its
place. There were no bits of broken glass from the phial to be seen. And
the odour of bitter almonds with which the place had reeked was no
longer very strong. The salt breeze blowing through two wide-open
portholes would kill it before dawn.

"But where is the _thing_?" I asked.

"In the study," Roger answered. He motioned me to pass through the
curtained archway, as I had passed before; and there I had to cover my
lips with my hand to press back a cry. The desk, the big chair I had sat
in, and a sofa were covered with objects familiar to me as my own face
in a looking-glass. There was Queen Anne's silver tea-service and
Napoleon's green-and-gold coffee cups. There were Li Hung Chang's box of
red lacquer and the wondrous Buddha; there were the snuff-boxes, the
miniatures, the buckles and brooches; the fat watch of George the
Fourth; half unrolled lay Charles the First's portrait and sketch, and
the Gobelin panel which had been the Empress Josephine's. In fact, all
the treasures stolen from Courtenaye Abbey! Here they were in Roger
Fane's cabin on board the _Naiad_, and they had come out of a coffin
found floating in the sea!

       *       *       *       *       *

When I could think at all, I tried to think the puzzle out, and I tried
to do it alone, for Roger was in no state to bend his mind to trifles.
But, in his almost pathetic gratitude, he wished to help me; and when we
had locked up the things in three drawers of his desk, we sat together
discussing theories. Something must be planned, something settled,
before day!

It was Roger who unfolded the whole affair before my eyes, unfolded it
so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust--everyone's
trust--in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If
they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through as
nobody else could have carried it through.

I told Roger of the two demobilized nephews about whom--if he had
heard--he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a
brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them to Australia years ago when
they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young,
Barlow had worried over news from Australia: his nephews had been in
trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that
was ancient history! The twins had evidently "made good." They had
fought in the war, and had done well. They must have saved money, or
they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast which had
belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however,
that Roger stopped me. _Had_ the boys "saved" money, or--had they got it
in a way less meritorious? Had they needed, for pressing reasons of
their own, to possess that place on the coast? The very question called
up a picture--no, a series of pictures--before my eyes. I saw, or Roger
made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been
worked--_must_ have been worked!--from beginning to end; and how at last
it had most strangely failed. Again, the Fate that had sailed on the
Storm! For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as
the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the
sky framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did
not go to bed (I could not, where _she_ had lain!) and I didn't sleep.
But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head,
and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine,
of how I could return the heirlooms yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim
would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I
thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.

Yes, that was far more important to him even than to me! For the fact
that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim
would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would
therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and--Roger was safe!

The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage through blue,
untroubled waters; and there we came in for all the red tape that Roger
had foreseen, if not more. But how inoffensive, even pleasing, is red
tape to a man saved from handcuffs and a prison cell!

The body of an unknown woman in a coffin picked up at sea gave the
chance for a dramatic "story" to flash over the wires from Jersey to
London; and the evident fact that death had been caused by poison added
an extra thrill. Every soul on board the _Naiad_ was questioned, down to
the _chef's_ assistant; but the same tale was told by all. The coffin
had first been sighted at a good distance, and mistaken for a dead shark
or a small, overturned boat. The whole party were agreed that it must be
brought on board, though no one had wanted it for a travelling
companion, and the sailors especially had objected. (Now, by the way,
they were revelling in reflected glory. They would not have missed this
experience for the world!) I quaked inwardly, fearing that someone might
mention the veiled female journalist who had arrived before the start,
with an order to view the _Naiad_. But so completely was her departure
from the yacht taken for granted, that none who had seen her recalled
the incident.

There was no suspicion of Roger Fane, nor of any one else on board, for
there was no reason to suppose that any of us had been acquainted with
the dead.

The description wired to London was of "a woman unknown; probable age
between forty and fifty; hair dyed auburn; features distorted by effect
of poison; hands well shaped, badly kept; figure medium; black serge
dress; underclothing plain and much torn, without initials or
laundry-marks; no shoes."

It was unlikely that landlords or chance acquaintances should identify
the woman newly arrived from France with the woman picked up in a coffin
at sea. And the gray-veiled motor toque, the gray cloak worn by the
"journalist," and even the battered boots, with high, broken heels, were
safely hidden with the heirlooms from the Abbey.

All through the week of our trip the three drawers in Roger's desk
remained locked, the little Yale key hanging on Roger's key ring. And
all that week (there was no excuse to make for home before the appointed
time) our Plan had to lie in abeyance. I was impatient. Roger was not.
With Shelagh by his side--and very often in his arms--the incentive for
haste was all mine. But I was happy in their happiness, wondering only
whether Roger would not be tempting Providence if he told the truth to
Shelagh.

Nothing, however, would move the man from his resolution. The one point
he would yield was to postpone the confession (if "confession" is a fair
word) until the last day, in order not to disturb Shelagh's pleasure in
the trip. She was to hear the story the night before we landed; and I
begged once more that I might be present to help plead his cause. But
Roger wanted no help. And he wanted Shelagh to decide for herself. He
would state the case plainly, for and against. Hearing him, the girl
would know what was for her own happiness.

"At worst I shall have these wonderful days with her to remember," he
said to me. "Nothing can rob me of them. And they are a thousand times
the best of my life so far."

I believed that, equally, nothing could rob him of Shelagh! But--I
wasn't quite sure. And the difference between just "believing" and being
"quite sure" is the difference between mental peace and mental storm. I
had gone through so much with Roger, and for him, that by this time I
loved the man as I might love a brother--a dear and somewhat trying
brother. As for Shelagh, I would have given one of my favourite fingers
or toes to buy her happiness. Consequently, the hour of revelation was a
bad hour for me.

I knew that, till it was over, I should be incapable of Brightening.
Lest I should be called upon in any such capacity, therefore, I went to
bed after dinner with an official headache.

"Now he must be telling her," I groaned to my pillow.

"Now he must have told!"

"Now she must be making up her mind!"

"Now it must be _made_ up. She'll be giving her answer. And if it's
'no,' he won't by a word or look plead his own cause. _Hang_ the fool!
And bless him!"

Then followed a blank interval when I couldn't at all guess what might
be happening. I no longer speculated on the chances. My brain became a
blank. And my pillow was a furnace.

I was striving in vain to read a book whose pages I scarcely saw, and
whose name I've forgotten, when a tap came at the door. Shelagh Leigh
burst in before I could answer.

"Oh, _Elizabeth_!" she gasped, and fell into my arms.

I held the girl tight for an instant, her beating heart against mine.
Then I inquired: "What does 'Oh, Elizabeth!' mean precisely?"

"It means, of course, that I'm going to marry poor, darling Roger as
soon as I possibly can, to comfort him all the rest of his life. And
that you'll be my 'Matron of Honour,' American fashion," she explained.
"Roger is a hero, and you are a heroine."

"No, a Brightener," I corrected. But Shelagh didn't understand. And it
didn't matter that she did not.




CHAPTER IX

THE GAME OF BLUFF


When the trip finished where it had begun, instead of travelling up to
London with most of my friends, I stopped behind in Plymouth. If any one
fancied I was going to Courtenaye Abbey to wail at the shrine of lost
treasures, why, I had never said (in words) that such was my intention.
In fact, it was not.

What I did, as soon as backs were turned, was to make straight for
Dudworth Cove, on the rocky Dorset Coast. I went by motor car with Roger
Fane as chauffeur; and by aid of a road map and a few questions we drove
to the old farmhouse which the Barlow boys had lately bought.

Of course it was possible that Mrs. Barlow and the two Australian
nephews had departed in haste, after their loss. They might or might not
have read in the papers about the coffin containing the body of a woman
picked up at sea by a yacht. Probably they had read of it, since the
word "coffin" at the head of a column would be apt to catch their guilty
eyes. But even so, they would hardly expect that this coffin, containing
a corpse, and a certain other coffin, with very different contents, were
one and the same. In any case, they need not greatly fear suspicion
falling upon them, and Roger and I thought they would remain at the farm
engaged in eager, secret search. As for Barlow, for whom the coffin had
doubtless been made, he, too, might be there; or he might have left the
Abbey at night, about the time of his "death," to wait in some
agreed-upon hiding place.

The house was visible from the road; rather a nice old house, built of
stone, with a lichened roof and friendly windows. It had a lived-in air,
and a thin wreath of smoke floated above the kitchen chimney. There were
two gates, and both were padlocked, so the car had to stop in the road.
I refused Roger's companionship, however. The fact that he was close by
and knew where I was seemed sufficient safeguard. I climbed over the
fence with no more ado than in pre-flapper days, and walked across the
weedy grass to the house. No one answered a knock at the front door, so
I went to the back, and caught "Barley" feeding a group of chickens.

The treacherous old thing was in deep mourning, with a widow's cap, and
her dress of black bombazine (or some equally awful stuff) was pinned up
under a big apron. At sight of me she jumped, and almost dropped a pan
of meal; but even the most innocent person is entitled to jump! She
recovered herself quickly, and called up the ghost of a welcoming
smile--such a smile as may decently decorate the face of a newly made
widow.

"Why, Miss--Princess!" she exclaimed. "This is a surprise. If anything
could make me happy in my sad affliction it would be a visit from you.
My nephews are out fishing--they're very fond of fishing, poor
boys!--but come in and let me give you a cup of tea."

"I will come in," I said, "because I must have a talk with you, but I
don't want tea. And, really, Mrs. Barlow, I wonder you have the _cheek_
to speak of your 'sad affliction.'"

By this time I was already over the threshold, and in the kitchen, for
she had stood aside for me to pass. Just inside the door I turned on
her, and saw the old face--once so freshly apple-cheeked--flush darkly,
then fade to yellow. Her eyes stared into mine, wavered, and dropped;
but no tears came.

"'Cheek?'" she repeated, as if reproving slang. "Miss--Princess--I don't
know what you mean."

"I think you know very well," I said, "because you have _no_ 'sad
affliction.' Your husband is as much alive as I am. The only loss you've
suffered is the loss of the coffin in which he _wasn't_ buried!"

The woman dropped, like a jelly out of its mould, into a kitchen chair.
"My Heavens! Miss Elizabeth, you don't know what you're saying!" she
gasped, dry-lipped.

"I know quite well," I caught her up. "And to show that I know, I'm
going to reconstruct the whole plot." (This was bluff. But it was part
of the Plan). "Barlow's nephews were expert thieves. They'd served a
term for stealing at home, in Australia. They spent a short leave at
Courtenaye Coombe, and you showed them over the Abbey. Then and there
they got an idea. They bribed you and Barlow to help them carry it out
and give them a letter of mine to tear into bits and turn suspicion on
me. Probably they worked with rubber gloves and shoes--as you know the
detectives have found no fingermarks or footprints. Every man is said to
have his price. You two had yours! Just how much more than others you
knew about old secret 'hidie-holes' in the Abbey I can't tell, but I'm
sure you did know more than any of us. There was always the lodge, too,
which was the same as your own, and full of your things! I'm practically
certain there's a secret way to it, through the cellars. Ah, I thought
so!" (As her face changed.) "Trusted as you were, a burglary in the
night was easy as falling off a log--and all that binding and gagging
business. The trouble was to get the stolen things out of the
country--let's say to Australia, where Barlow's nephews could count upon
a receiver, or a buyer, maybe some old associate of their pre-prison
days. Among you all, you hit on quite a clever plan. Only a dear, kind
creature like you, respected by everyone, could have hypnotized even old
Doctor Pyne into believing Barlow was dead--no matter _what_ strong drug
you used! You wouldn't let any one come near the body afterward. You
loved your husband so much you would do everything for him yourself--in
death as in life. How pathetic--how estimable! And then you and the two
'boys' brought the coffin here, to have it buried in the old cemetery,
with generations of other respectable Barlows. The night after the
funeral the twins dug it up, as neatly as they dug trenches in France,
and left the case underground as a precaution. Perhaps Barlow's 'ghost'
watched the work. But that's of no importance. What was of importance
was the next step. They took the coffin to a nice convenient cave
(that's what made this house worth buying back, isn't it?) and tethered
the thing there to wait an appointed hour. At that hour a boat would
quietly appear, and bear it away to a smart little sailing ship.
Then--ho! for Australia or some place where heirlooms from this country
can be disposed of without talk or trouble. I would bet that Barlow is
on that ship now, and you meant to join him, instead of waiting for a
better world. But there came the storm, and a record wave or two ran
into the cave. Alas for the schemes of mice and men--and Barlow's!"

Not once did she interrupt. I doubt if the woman could have uttered a
word had she dared; for the game of Bluff was new to her. She believed
that by sleuth-hound cunning I had tracked her down, following each move
from the first, and biding my time to strike until all proofs (the
coffin and its contents) were within my grasp. By the time I had paused
for lack of breath, the old face was sickly white, like candle-grease,
and the remembrance of affection was so keen that I could not help
pitying the creature. "You realize," I said, "everything is known. Not
only do _I_ know, but others. And we have all the stolen things in our
possession. I've come here to offer you a chance of saving
yourselves--though it's compounding a felony or something, I suppose! We
can put you in the way of replacing the heirlooms in the night, just as
they were taken away--by that secret passage you know. If you try to
play us false, and hope to get the things back, we won't have mercy a
second time. We shall find Barlow before you can warn him. And as for
his nephews----"

"Yes! _What_ about his nephews?" broke in a rough voice.

I started (only a statue could have resisted that start!) and turning my
head I saw a tall young man close behind me, in the doorway by which I'd
entered. Whether or not Mrs. Barlow had seen him, I don't know. She did
not venture to speak, but a glance showed me a gleam of malicious relief
in the eyes I had once thought limpid as a brook. If she'd ever felt any
fondness for me, it was gone. She hated and feared me with a deadly
fear. The thought shot through my brain that she would willingly sit
still and see me murdered, if she and her husband could be saved from
open shame by my disappearance.

The man in the doorway was sunburned to a lobster-red, and had features
like those of some gargoyle. He must have been eavesdropping long enough
to gather a good deal of information, for there was fury in his eyes,
and deadly decision in the set of his big jaw.

Where was Roger Fane? I wondered. Without Roger I was lost, and my fate
might never be known. Suddenly I was icily afraid--for something might
have happened to Roger. But at that same frozen instant a very strange
thing happened to me. _My thoughts flew to Sir James Courtenaye!_ I had
always disliked him--or fancied so. But he was so strong--such a giant
of a man! What a wonderful champion he would be now! What _hash_ he
would make of the Barlow twins! Quickly I controlled myself. This was
the moment when the game of Bluff (which had served me well so far)
might be my one weapon of defence.

"As for Barlow's nephews," I echoed, with false calmness, "theirs is the
principal guilt, and theirs ought to be the heaviest punishment."

The Crimson Gargoyle shut the door, deliberately, with a horrid,
purposeful kind of deliberation, and with a stride or two came close to
me. I stepped back, but he followed, towering above me with the air of a
big bullying boy out to scare the life from a little one. To give him
stare for stare I had to look straight up, my chin raised, and the
threatening eyes, the great red face, seemed to fill the world--as a
cat's face and eyes must seem to a hypnotized mouse.

I shook myself free from the hypnotic grip. Yet I would not let my gaze
waver. Grandmother wouldn't, and no Courtenaye should!

"Who is going to punish us?" barked the Gargoyle.

"The police," I barked back. And almost I could have laughed at the
difference in size and voice. I was so like a slim young Borzoi yapping
at the nose of a bloodhound.

"Rot!" snorted the big fellow. "Damn rot!" (and I thought I heard a
faint chuckle from the chair). "If the police were on to us, you
wouldn't be here. This is a try-on."

"You'll soon see whether it's a try-on or not," I defied him. "As a
matter of fact, out of pity for your two poor old dupes, we haven't told
the police yet of what we've found out. I say 'we,' for I'm far from
being alone or unprotected. I came to speak with Mrs. Barlow because she
and her husband once served my family, and were honest till you tempted
them. But if I'm kept here more than the fifteen minutes I specified,
there is a man who----"

"There isn't," snapped the Gargoyle. "There was, but there isn't now. My
brother Bob and me was out in our boat. I don't mind tellin' you, as you
know so much, that we've spent quite a lot of time beatin' and prowlin'
around these shores since the big storm." (The thought flashed through
my brain: "Then they haven't read about the _Naiad_! Or else they didn't
guess that the coffin was the same. That's _one_ good thing! They can
never blackmail Roger, whatever happens to me!") But I didn't speak. I
let him pause for a second, and go on without interruption. "Comin' home
we seen that car o' yourn outside our gate. Thought it was queer! Bob
says to me, 'Hank, go on up to the house, and make me a sign from behind
the big tree if there's anythin' wrong.' The feller in the car hadn't
seen or heard us. We took care o' that! I slid off my shoes before I got
to the door here, and listened a bit to your words o' wisdom. Then I
slipped out as fur as the tree, and I made the sign. Bob didn't tell me
what he meant to do. But I'm some on mind readin'. I guess that
gentleman friend of yourn has gone to sleep in his automobile, as any
one might in this quiet neighbourhood, where folks don't pass once in
four or five hours. Bob can drive most makes of cars. Shouldn't wonder
if he can manage this one. If you hear the engine tune up, you'll know
it's him takin' the chauffeur down to the sea."

My bones felt like icicles; but I thought of Grandmother, and wouldn't
give in. Also, with far less reason, I thought of Sir James. Strange,
unaccountable creature that I was, my soul cried aloud for the
championship of his strength! "The sea hasn't brought you much luck
yet," I brazened. "I shouldn't advise you to try it again."

"I ain't askin' your advice," retorted the man who had indirectly
introduced himself as "Hank Barlow." "All I ask is, where's the stuff?"

"What stuff?" I played for time, though I knew very well the "stuff" he
meant.

"The goods from the Abbey. I won't say you wasn't smart to get on to the
cache, and nab the box out o' the cave. Only you wasn't quite smart
enough--savez? The fellers laugh best who laugh last. And we're those
fellers!"

"You spring to conclusions," I said. But my voice sounded small in my
own ears--small and thin as the voice of a child. (Oh, to know if this
brute spoke truth about his brother and Roger Fane and the car, or if he
were fighting me with my own weapon--Bluff!)

Henry Barlow laughed aloud--though he mightn't laugh last! "Do you call
yourself a 'conclusion'? I'll give you just two minutes, my handsome
lady, to make up your mind. If you don't tell me then where to lay me
'and on you know _what_, I'll spring at _you_."

By the wolf-glare in his eyes and the boldness of his tone I feared that
his game wasn't wholly bluff. By irony of Fate, he had turned the tables
on me. Thinking the power was all on my side and Roger's, I'd walked
into a trap. And if, indeed, Roger had been struck down from behind, I
did not see any way of escape for him or me. I had let out that I knew
too much.

Even if I turned coward, and told Hank Barlow that the late contents of
his uncle's coffin were on board the _Naiad_, he could not safely allow
Roger or me to go free. But I _wouldn't_ turn coward! To save the secret
of the Abbey treasures meant saving the secret of what that coffin now
held. My sick fear turned to hot rage. "Spring!" I cried. "Kill me if
you choose. _My_ coffin will keep a secret, which yours couldn't do!"

He glared, nonplussed by my violence.

"Devil take you, you cat!" he grunted.

"And you, you hound!" I cried.

His eyes flamed. I think fury would have conquered prudence, and he
would have sprung then, to choke my life out, perhaps. But he hadn't
locked the door. At that instant it swung open, and a whirlwind burst
in. The whirlwind was a man. And the man was James Courtenaye.

       *       *       *       *       *

I did not tell Sir Jim that my spirit had forgotten itself so utterly as
to call him. It was quite unnecessary, as matters turned out, to "give
myself away" to this extent. For, you see, it was not my call that
brought him. It was Roger's.

As Shelagh Leigh was my best friend, so was, and is, Jim Courtenaye
Roger Fane's. All the first part of Roger's life tragedy was known to my
"forty-fourth cousin four times removed." For years Roger had given him
all his confidence. The ex-cowboy had even advised him in his love
affair with Shelagh, to "go on full steam ahead, and never mind
breakers"--(alias Pollens). This being the case, it had seemed to Roger
unfair not to trust his chum to the uttermost end. He had not intended
to mention me as his accomplice; but evidently cowboys' wits are as
quick as their lassoes. Jim guessed at my part in the business,
thinking, maybe--that only the sly sex could hit upon such a Way Out.
Anyhow, he was far from shocked; in fact, deigned to approve of me for
the first time, and hearing how I had planned to restore the stolen
heirlooms, roared with laughter.

Roger, conscience-stricken because my secret had leaked out with his,
wished to atone by telling me that his friend had scented the whole
truth. Jim Courtenaye, however, urged him against this course. He
reckoned the Barlow twins more formidable than Roger and I had thought
them, and insisted that he should be a partner in our game of Bluff.
Only, he wished to be a silent partner till the right time came to
speak. Or that was the way he put it. His real reason, as he boldly
confessed afterward, was that, if I knew he was "in it," I'd be sure to
make a "silly fuss"!

It was arranged between him and Roger that he should motor from
Courtenaye Coombe to Dudworth Cove, put up his car at the small hotel,
and inconspicuously approach the Barlows' farm on foot. In some quiet
spot which he would guarantee to find, he was to "lurk" and await
developments. If help were wanted, he would be there to give it. If not,
he would peacefully remove himself, and I need never know that he had
been near the place.

All the details of this minor plot were well mapped out, and the only
one that failed (not being mapped out) was a tyre of his Rolls-Royce
which stepped on a nail as long as Jael's. Wishing to do the trick
alone, Jim had taken no chauffeur; and he wasn't as expert at pumping up
tyres as at breaking in bronchos. He was twenty minutes past scheduled
time, in consequence, and arrived at the spot appointed just as Bob
Barlow had bashed Roger Fane smartly on the head from behind.

Naturally this incident kept his attention engaged for some moments. He
had to overpower the Barlow twin, who was on the alert, and not to be
taken by surprise. The Australian was still in good fighting trim, and
gave Sir James some trouble before he was reduced to powerlessness. Then
a glance had to be given Roger, to make sure he had not got a knock-out
blow. Altogether, Hank Barlow had five minutes' grace indoors with me,
before--the whirlwind. If it had been _six_ minutes----But then, it
wasn't! So why waste thrills upon a horror which had not time to
materialize? And oh, how I _did_ enjoy seeing those twins trussed up
like a pair of monstrous fowls on the kitchen floor! It had been clever
of Sir Jim to place a coil of rope in Roger's car in case of
emergencies. But when I said this, to show my appreciation, he replied
drily that a cattleman's first thought is rope! "That's what you are
accustomed to call me, I believe," he added. "A cattleman."

"I shall never call you it again," I quite meekly assured him.

"You won't? What will you call me, then?"

"Cousin--if you like," I said.

"That'll do--for the present," he granted.

"Or 'friend,' if it pleases you better?" I suggested.

"Both are pretty good to go on with."

So between us there was a truce--and no more Pembertons or even Smiths:
which is why "Smith" never revealed what _he_ thought about what Sir Jim
thought of me. And I would not try to guess--would you? But it was only
to screen Roger, and not to content me, that Sir James Courtenaye
allowed my original plan to be carried out: the heirlooms to be
mysteriously returned by night to the Abbey, and the Barlow tribe to
vanish into space, otherwise Australia. He admitted this bluntly. And I
retorted that, if he hadn't saved my life, I should say that such
friendship wasn't worth much. But there it was! He _had_ saved it. And
things being as they were, Shelagh told Roger that I couldn't reasonably
object if Jim were asked to be best man at the wedding, though I was to
be "best woman."

She was right. I couldn't. And it was a lovely wedding. I lightened my
mourning for it to white and lavender--just for the day. Mrs. Carstairs
said I owed this to the bride and bridegroom--also to myself, as
Brightener, to say nothing of Sir Jim.




BOOK II

THE HOUSE WITH THE TWISTED CHIMNEY




CHAPTER I

THE SHELL-SHOCK MAN


"Do you want to be a Life Preserver as well as a Brightener, Elizabeth,
my child?" asked Mrs. Carstairs.

"Depends on whose life," I replied, making a lovely blue smoke ring
before I spoke and another when I'd finished.

I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old
lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed.
She was not scandalized. She asked for a cigarette, and took it; my
last.

"The latest style in my country is to make your smoke ring loop the
loop, and do it through the nose," she informed me, calmly. "I can't do
it myself--yet. But Terry Burns can."

"Who's Terry Burns?" I asked.

"The man whose life ought to be preserved."

"It certainly ought," said I, "if he can make smoke rings loop the loop
through his nose. Oh, you know what I _mean_!"

"He hardly takes enough interest in things to do even that, nowadays,"
sighed Mrs. Carstairs.

"Good heavens! what's the matter with the man--senile decay?" I flung at
her. "Terry isn't at all a decayed name."

"And Terry isn't a decayed man. He's about twenty-six, if you choose to
call that senile. He's almost _too_ good-looking. He's not physically
ill. And he's got plenty of money. All the same, he's likely to die
quite soon, I should say."

"Can't anything be done?" I inquired, really moved.

"I don't know. It's a legacy from shell shock. You know what _that_ is.
He's come to stay with us at Haslemere, poor boy, because my husband was
once in love with his mother--at the same time I was worshipping his
father. Terry was with us before--here in London in 1915--on leave soon
after he volunteered. Afterward, when America came in, he transferred.
But even in 1915 he wasn't exactly _radiating_ happiness (disappointment
in love or something), but he was just boyishly cynical then, nothing
worse; and _the_ most splendid specimen of a young man!--his father over
again; Henry says, his _mother_! Either way, I was looking forward to
nursing him at Haslemere and seeing him improve every day. But, my
_dear_, I can do _nothing_! He has got so on my nerves that I _had_ to
make an excuse to run up to town or I should simply have--_slumped_. The
sight of me slumping would have been terribly bad for the poor child's
health. It might have finished him."

"So you want to exchange my nerves for yours," I said. "You want me to
nurse your protege till _I_ slump. Is that it?"

"It wouldn't come to that with you," argued the ancient darling. "You
could bring back his interest in life; I know you could. You'd think of
something. Remember what you did for Roger Fane!"

As a matter of fact, I had done a good deal more for Roger Fane than
dear old Caroline knew or would ever know. But if Roger owed anything to
me, I owed him, and all he had paid me in gratitude and banknotes, to
Mrs. Carstairs.

"I shall never forget Roger Fane, and I hope he won't me," I said.
"Shelagh won't let him! But _he_ hadn't lost interest in life. He just
wanted life to give him Shelagh Leigh. She happened to be my best pal;
and her people were snobs, so I could help him. But this Terry Burns of
yours--what can I do for him?"

"Take him on and see," pleaded the old lady.

"Do you wish him to fall in love with me?" I suggested.

"He wouldn't if I did. He told me the other day that he'd loved only one
woman in his life, and he should never care for another. Besides, I
mustn't conceal from you, this would be an unsalaried job."

"Oh, indeed!" said I, slightly piqued. "I don't want his old love! Or
his old money, either! But--well--I might just go and have a look at
him, if you'd care to take me to Haslemere with you. No harm in seeing
what can be done--if anything. I suppose, as you and Mr. Carstairs
between you were in love with all his ancestors, and he resembles them,
he must be worth saving--apart from the loops. Is he English or American
or _what_?"

"American on one side and What on the other," replied the old lady.
"That is, his father, whom I was in love with, was American. The mother,
whom Henry adored, was French. All that's quite a romance. But it's
ancient history. And it's the present we're interested in. Of course I'd
care to take you to Haslemere. But I have a better plan. I've persuaded
Terry to consult the nerve specialist, Sir Humphrey Hale. He's
comparatively easy to persuade, because he'd rather yield a point than
bother to argue. That's how I got my excuse to run up to town: to
explain the case to Sir Humphrey, and have my flat made ready for
Terence to live in, while he's being treated."

"Oh, that's it," I said, and thought for a minute.

My flat is in the same house as the Carstairs', a charming old house in
which I couldn't afford to live if Dame Caroline (title given by me, not
His Gracious Majesty) hadn't taught me the gentle, well-paid Art of
Brightening.

You might imagine that a Brightener was some sort of patent polisher for
stoves, metal, or even boots. But you would be mistaken. _I_ am the one
and only Brightener!

But this isn't what I was thinking about when I said, "Oh, that's it?" I
was attempting to track that benevolent female fox, Caroline Carstairs,
to the fastness of her mental lair. When I flattered myself that I'd
succeeded, I spoke again.

"I see what you'd be at, Madame Machiavelli," I warned her. "You and
your husband are so fed up with the son of your ancient loves, that he's
spoiling your holiday in your country house. You've been wondering how
on earth to shed him, anyhow for a breathing space, without being
unkind. So you thought, if you could lure him to London, and lend him
your flat----"

"Dearest, you are an ungrateful young Beastess! Besides, you're only
half right. It's true, poor Henry and I are worn out from sympathy. Our
hearts are squeezed sponges, and have completely collapsed. Not that
Terry complains. He doesn't. Only he is so horribly bored with life and
himself and us that it's killing all three. I _had_ to think of
something to save him. So I thought of you."

"But you thought of Sir Humphrey Hale. Surely, if there's any cure for
Mr.----"

"Captain----"

"Burns. Sir Humphrey can----"

"He can't. But I had to _use_ him with Terry. I couldn't say: 'Go live
in our flat and meet the Princess di Miramare. He would believe the
obvious thing, and be put off. You are to be thrown in as an extra: a
charming neighbour who, as a favour to me, will see that he's all right.
When you've got him interested--not in yourself, but in life--I shall
explain--or confess, whichever you choose to call it. He will then
realize that the fee for his cure ought to be yours, not Sir Humphrey's,
though naturally you couldn't accept one. Sir Humphrey has already told
me that, judging from the symptoms I've described, it seems a case
beyond doctor's skill. You know, Sir H---- has made his pile, and
doesn't have to tout for patients. But he's a good friend of Henry's and
mine."

"You have very strong faith in _me_!" I laughed.

"Not too strong," said she.

The Carstairs' servants had gone with them to the house near Haslemere;
but if Dame Caroline wanted a first-rate cook at a moment's notice, she
would wangle one even if there were only two in existence, and both
engaged. The shell-shock man had his own valet--an ex-soldier--so with
the pair of them, and a char-creature of some sort, he would do very
well for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I hardly thought that, in the end,
he would be braced up to the effort of coming, and I should not have
been surprised to receive a wire:

     Rather than move, Terry has cut his throat in the Japanese garden.

Which shows that despite all past experiences, I little knew my
Caroline!

Captain Burns--late of the American Flying Corps--did come; and what is
more, he called at my flat before he had been fifteen minutes in his
own. This he did because Mrs. Carstairs had begged him to bring a small
parcel which he must deliver by hand to me personally. She had
telegraphed, asking me to stop at home--quite a favour in this wonderful
summer, even though it was July, the season proper had passed; but I
couldn't refuse, as I'd tacitly promised to brighten the man. So there I
sat, in my favourite frock, when he was ushered into the drawing room.

Dame Caroline had told me that "Terry" was good-looking, but her
description had left me cold, and somehow or other I was completely
unprepared for the real Terry Burns.

Yes, _real_ is the word for him! He was so real that it seemed odd I had
gone on all my life without having known there was this Terence Burns.
Not that I fell in love with him. Just at the moment I was much occupied
in trying to keep alight an old fire of resentment against a man who had
saved my life; a "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" (as he called
himself), Sir James Courtenaye. But when I say "real," I mean he was one
of those few people who would seem important to you if you passed him in
a crowd. You would tell yourself regretfully that there was a friend
you'd missed making: and you would have had to resist a strong impulse
to rush back and speak to him at any price.

If, at the first instant of meeting, I felt this strong personal
magnetism, or charm, or whatever it was, though the man was down
physically at lowest ebb, what would the sensation have been with him at
his best?

He was tall and very thin, with a loose-boned look, as if he ought to be
lithe and muscular, but he came into the room listlessly, his shoulders
drooping, as though it were an almost unbearable bore to put one foot
before another. His pallor was of the pathetic kind that gives an odd
transparence to deeply tanned skin, almost like a light shining through.
His hair was a bronzy brown, so immaculately brushed back from his
square forehead as to remind you of a helmet, except that it rippled all
over. And he had the most appealing eyes I ever saw.

They were not dark, tragic ones like Roger Fane's. I thought that when
he was well and happy, they must have been full of light and joy. They
were slate-gray with thick black lashes, true Celtic eyes: but they were
dull and tired now, not sad, only devoid of interest in anything.

It wasn't flattering that they should be devoid of interest in me. I am
used to having men's eyes light up with a gleam of surprise when they
see me for the first time. This man's eyes didn't. I seemed to read in
them: "Yes, I suppose you're very pretty. But that's nothing to me, and
I hope you don't want me to flirt with you, because I haven't the energy
or even the wish."

I'm sure that, vaguely, this was about what was in his mind, and that he
intended getting away from me as soon as would be decently polite after
finishing his errand. Still, I wasn't in the least annoyed. I was sorry
for him--not because he didn't want to be bothered with me, but because
he didn't want to be bothered with anything. Millionaire or pauper, I
didn't care. I was determined to brighten him, in spite of himself. He
was too dear and delightful a fellow not to be happy with somebody, some
day. I couldn't sit still and let him sink down and down into the
depths. But I should have to go carefully, or do him more harm than
good. I could see that. If I attempted to be amusing he would crawl
away, a battered wreck.

What I did was to show no particular interest in him. I took the tiny
parcel Mrs. Carstairs had ordered him to bring, and asked casually if
he'd care to stop in my flat till his man had finished unpacking.

"I don't know how _you_ feel," I said, "but I always hate the first hour
in a new place, with a servant fussing about, opening and shutting
drawers and wardrobes. I loathe things that squeak."

"So do I," he answered, dreamily. "Any sort of noise."

"I shall be having tea in a few minutes," I mentioned. "If you don't
mind looking at magazines or something while I open Mrs. Carstairs'
parcel, and write to her, stay if you care to. I should be pleased. But
don't feel you'll be rude to say 'no.' Do as you like."

He stayed, probably because he was in a nice easy chair, and it was
simpler to sit still than get up, so long as he needn't make
conversation. I left him there, while I went to the far end of the room,
where my desk was. The wonderful packet, which must be given into my
hand by his, contained three beautiful new potatoes, the size of
marbles, out of the Carstairs' kitchen garden! I bit back a giggle, hid
the rare jewels in a drawer, and scribbled any nonsense I could think of
to Dame Caroline, till I heard tea coming. Then I went back to my guest.
I gave him tea, and other things. There were late strawberries, and some
Devonshire cream, which had arrived by post that morning, anonymously.
Sir James Courtenaye, that red-haired cowboy to whom I'd let the
ancestral Abbey, was in Devonshire. But there was no reason why he
should send me cream, or anything else. Still, there it was. Captain
Burns, it appeared, had never happened to taste the Devonshire variety.
He liked it. And when he had disposed of a certain amount (during which
time we hardly spoke), I offered him my cigarette case.

For a few moments we both smoked in silence. Then I said, "I'm
disappointed in you."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you haven't looped any loops through your nose."

He actually laughed! He looked delightful when he laughed.

"I was trying something of the sort one day, and failing," I explained.
"Mrs. Carstairs said she had a friend who could do it, and his name was
Terence Burns."

"I've almost forgotten that old stunt," he smiled indulgently. "Think of
Mrs. Carstairs remembering it! Why, I haven't had time to remember it
myself, much less try it out, since I was young."

"That _is_ a long time ago!" I ventured, smoking hard.

"You see," he explained quite gravely, smoking harder, "I went into the
war in 1915. It wasn't _our_ war then, for I'm an American, you know.
But I had a sort of feeling it ought to be everybody's war. And besides,
I'd fallen out of love with life about that time. War doesn't leave a
man feeling very young, whether or not he's gone through what I have."

"I know," said I. "Even we women don't feel as young as we hope we look.
I'm twenty-one and a half, and feel forty."

"I'm twenty-seven, and feel ninety-nine," he capped me.

"Shell shock is--the _devil_!" I sympathized. "But men get over it. I
know lots who have." I took another cigarette and pushed the case toward
him.

"Perhaps they wanted to get over it. I don't want to, particularly,
because life has rather lost interest for me, since I was about
twenty-two; I'm afraid that was one reason I volunteered. Not very
brave! I don't care now whether I live or die. I didn't care then."

"At twenty-two! Why, you weren't grown up!"

"_You_ say that, at twenty-one?"

"It's different with a girl. I've had such a lot of things to make me
feel grown up."

"So have I, God knows." (By this time he was smoking like a chimney.)
"Did _you_ lose the one thing you'd wanted in the world? But no--I
mustn't ask that. I don't ask it."

"You may," I vouchsafed, charmed that--as one says of a baby--he was
"beginning to take notice." "No, frankly, I didn't lose the one thing in
the world I wanted most, because I've never quite known yet what I did
or do want most. But not knowing leaves you at loose ends, if you're
alone in the world as I am." Then, having said this, just to indicate
that my circumstances conduced to tacit sympathy with his, I hopped like
a sparrow to another branch of the same subject. "It's bad not to get
what we want. But it's dull not to want anything."

"Is it?" Burns asked almost fiercely. "I haven't got to that yet. I wish
I had. When I want a thing, it's in my nature to want it for good and
all. I want the thing I wanted before the war as much now as ever.
That's the principal trouble with me, I think. The hopelessness of
everything. The uselessness of the things you _can_ get."

"Can't you manage to want something you might possibly get?" I asked.

He smiled faintly. "That's much the same advice that the doctors have
given--the advice this Sir Humphrey Hale of the Carstairs will give
to-morrow. I'm sure. 'Try to take an interest in things as they are.'
Good heavens! that's just what I _can't_ do."

"_I_ don't give you that advice," I said. "It's worse than useless to
_try_ and take an interest. It's _stodgy_. What I mean is, _if_ an
interest, alias a chance of adventure, should breeze along, don't shut
the door on it. Let it in, ask it to sit down, and see how you like it.
But then--maybe you wouldn't recognize it as an adventure if you saw it
at the window!"

"Oh, I think I should do that!" he defended himself. "I'm man enough yet
to know an adventure when I meet it. That's why I came into your war.
But the war's finished, and so am I. Really, I don't see why any one
bothers about me. I wouldn't about myself, if they'd let me alone!"

"There I'm with you," said I. "I like to be let alone, to go my own way.
Still, people unfortunately feel bound to do their best. Mrs. Carstairs
has done hers. If Sir Humphrey gives you up, she'll thenceforward
consider herself free from responsibility--and you free to 'dree your
own weird'--whatever that means!--to the bitter end. As for me, I've no
responsibility at all. I don't advise you! In your place, I'd do as
you're doing. Only, I've enough fellow feeling to let you know, in a
spirit of comradeship, if I hear the call of an adventure.... There, you
_did_ the 'stunt' all right that time! A _lovely_ loop the loop! I
wouldn't have believed it! Now watch, please, while I try!"

He did watch, and I fancy that, in spite of himself, he took an
interest! He laughed out, quite a spontaneous "Ha, ha!" when I began
with a loop and ended with a sneeze.

It seems too absurd that a siren should lure her victim with a sneeze
instead of a song. But it was that sneeze which did the trick. Or else,
my mumness now and then, and not seeming to care a Tinker's Anything
whether he thought I was pretty or a fright. He warmed toward me visibly
during the loop lesson, and I was as proud as if a wild bird had settled
down to eat out of my hand.

That was the beginning: and a commonplace one, you'll say! It didn't
seem commonplace to me: I was too much interested. But even I did not
dream of the weird developments ahead!




CHAPTER II

THE ADVERTISEMENT


It was on the fourth day that I got the idea--I mean, the fourth day of
Terry Burns' stay in town.

He had dropped in to see me on each of these days, for one reason or
other: to tell me what Sir Humphrey said; to sneer at the treatment; to
beg a cigarette when his store had given out; or something else equally
important; I (true to my bargain with Caroline) having given up all
engagements in order to brighten Captain Burns.

I was reading the _Times_ when a thought popped into my head. I shut my
eyes, and studied its features. They fascinated me.

It was morning: and presently my Patient unawares strolled in for the
eleven-o'clock glass of egg-nogg prescribed by Sir Humphrey and offered
by me.

He drank it. When he had pronounced it good, I asked him casually how he
was. No change. At least, none that he noticed. Except that he always
felt better, more human, in my society. That was because I appeared to
be a bit fed up with life, too, and didn't try to cheer him.

"On the contrary," I said, "I was just wondering whether I might ask you
to cheer _me_. I've thought of something that might amuse me a little.
Yes, I'm sure it would! Only I'm not equal to working out the details
alone. If I weren't afraid it would bore you...."

"Of course it wouldn't, if it could amuse you!" His eyes lit. "Tell me
what it is you want to do?"

"I'm almost ashamed. It's so childish. But it would be _fun_."

"If I could care to do anything at all, it would be something childish.
Besides, I believe you and I are rather alike in several ways. We have
the same opinions about life. We're both down on our luck."

I gave myself a mental pat on the head. I ought to succeed on the stage,
if it ever came to that!

"Well," I hesitated. "I got the idea from an article in the _Times_.
There's something on the subject every day in every paper I see, but it
never occurred to me till now to get any fun out of it: the Housing
Problem, you know. Not the one for the working classes--I wouldn't be so
mean as to 'spoof' them--nor the _Nouveaux Pauvres_, of whom I'm one!
It's for the _Nouveaux Riches_. They're fair game."

"What do you want to do to them?" asked Terry Burns.

"Play a practical joke; then dig myself in and watch the result. Perhaps
there'd be none. In that case, the joke would be on me."

"And on me, if we both went in for the experiment. We'd bear the blow
together."

"It wouldn't kill us! Listen--I'll explain. It's simply idiotic. But
it's something to _do_: something to make one wake up in the morning
with a little interest to look forward to. The papers all say that
_every_body is searching for a desirable house to be sold, or let
furnished; and that there _aren't_ any houses! On the other hand, if you
glance at the advertisement sheets of _any_ newspaper, you ask yourself
if every second house in England isn't asking to be disposed of! Now, is
it only a 'silly-season' cry, this grievance about no houses, or is it
true? What larks to concoct an absolutely adorable 'ad.', describing a
place with every perfection, and see what applications one would get!
Would there be thousands or just a mere dribble, or none at all? Don't
you think it would be fun to find out--and reading the letters if there
were any? People would be sure to say a lot about themselves. Human
nature's _like_ that. Or, anyhow, we could force their hands by putting
into the 'ad.' that we would let our wonderful house only to the right
sort of tenants. 'No others need apply'."

"But that would limit the number of answers--and our fun," said Terry.
On his face glimmered a grin. After all, the "kid" in him had been
scotched, not killed.

"Oh, no," I argued. "They'd be serenely confident that they and they
alone were the right ones. Then, when they didn't hear from the
advertiser by return, they'd suppose that someone more lucky had got
ahead of them. Yes, we're on the right track! We must want to let our
place furnished. If we wished to sell, we'd have no motive in trying to
pick and choose our buyer. Any creature with money would do. So our
letters would be tame as Teddy-bears. What _we_ want is human
documents!"

"Let's begin to think out our 'ad.'!" exclaimed the patient, sitting up
straighter in his chair. Already two or three haggard years seemed to
have fallen from his face. I might have been skilfully knocking them off
with a hammer!

Like a competent general, I had all my materials at hand: Captain Burns'
favourite brand of cigarettes, matches warranted to light without damns,
a notebook, several sharp, soft-leaded pencils, and some illustrated
advertisements cut from _Country Life_ to give us hints.

"What sort of house _have_ we?" Terry wanted to know. "Is it town or
country; genuine Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne, or Georgian----"

"Oh, _country_! It gives us more scope," I cried. "And I think Tudor's
the most attractive. But I may be prejudiced. Courtenaye Abbey--our
place in Devonshire--is mostly Tudor. I'm too poor to live there.
Through Mr. Carstairs it's let to a forty-fourth cousin of mine who did
cowboying in all its branches in America, coined piles of oof in
something or other, and came over here to live when he'd collected
enough to revive a little old family title. But I adore the Abbey."

"Our house shall be Tudor," Terry assented. "It had better be historic,
hadn't it?"

"Why not? It's just as easy for us. Let's have the _oldest_ bits earlier
than Tudor--what?"

"By Jove! Yes! King John. Might look fishy to go behind _him_!"

So, block after block, by suggestion, we two architects of the aerial
school built up the noble mansion we had to dispose of. With loving and
artistic touch, we added feature after feature of interest, as
inspirations came. We were like benevolent fairy god-parents at a baby's
christening, endowing a beloved ward with all possible perfections.

Terry noted down our ideas at their birth, lest we should forget under
pressure of others to follow; and at last, after several discarded
efforts, we achieved an advertisement which combined every attribute of
an earthly paradise.

This is the way it ran:

"To let furnished, for remainder of summer (possibly longer), historic
moated Grange, one of the most interesting old country places in
England, mentioned in Domesday Book, for absurdly small rent to
desirable tenant; offered practically free. The house, with foundations,
chapel, and other features dating from the time of King John, has
remained unchanged save for such modern improvements as baths (h. & c.),
electric lighting, and central heating, since Elizabethan days. It
possesses a magnificent stone-paved hall, with vaulted chestnut roof
(15th century), on carved stone corbels; an oak-panelled banqueting hall
with stone, fan-vaulted roof and mistrels' gallery. Each of the several
large reception rooms is rich in old oak, and has a splendid Tudor
chimney-piece. There are over twenty exceptionally beautiful bedrooms,
several with wagon plaster ceilings. The largest drawing-room overlooks
the moat, where are ancient carp, and pink and white water-lilies. All
windows are stone mullioned, with old leaded glass; some are exquisite
oriels; and there are two famous stairways, one with dog gates. The
antique furniture is valuable and historic. A fascinating feature of the
house is a twisted chimney (secret of construction lost; the only other
known by the advertiser to exist being at Hampton Court). All is in good
repair; domestic offices perfect, and the great oak-beamed,
stone-flagged kitchen has been copied by more than one artist. There are
glorious old-world gardens, with an ornamental lake, some statues,
fountains, sundials; terraces where white peacocks walk under the shade
of giant Lebanon cedars; also a noble park, and particularly charming
orchard with grass walks. Certain servants and gardeners will remain if
desired; and this wonderful opportunity is offered for an absurdly low
price to a tenant deemed suitable by the advertiser. Only gentlefolk,
with some pretensions to intelligence and good looks, need reply, as the
advertiser considers that this place would be wasted upon others. Young
people preferred. For particulars, write T. B., Box F., the _Times_."

We were both enraptured with the result of our joint inspirations. We
could simply _see_ the marvellous moated grange, and Terry thought that
life would be bearable after all if he could live there. What a pity it
didn't exist, he sighed, and I consoled him by saying that there were
perhaps two or three such in England. To my mind Courtenaye Abbey was as
good, though moatless.

       *       *       *       *       *

We decided to send our darling not only to the _Times_, but to five
other leading London papers, engaging a box at the office of each for
the answers, the advertisement to appear every day for a week. In order
to keep our identity secret even from the discreet heads of advertising
departments, we would have the replies called for, not posted. Terry's
man, Jones, was selected to be our messenger, and had to be taken more
or less into our confidence. So fearful were we of being too late for
to-morrow's papers, that Jones was rushed off in a taxi with
instructions, before the ink had dried on the last copy.

Our suspense was painful, until he returned with the news that all the
"ads." had been in time, and that everything was satisfactorily settled.
The tidings braced us mightily. But the tonic effect was brief. Hardly
had Terry said, "Thanks, Jones. You've been very quick," when we
remembered that to-morrow would be a blank day. The newspapers would
publish T. B.'s advertisement to-morrow morning. It would then be read
by the British public in the course of eggs and bacon. Those who
responded at once, if any, would be so few that it seemed childish to
think of calling for letters that same night.

"I suppose, if you go the rounds in the morning of day after to-morrow,
it will be soon enough," Terry remarked to the ex-soldier, with the
restrained wistfulness of a child on Christmas Eve asking at what hour
Santa Claus is due to start.

I also hung upon Jones' words; but still more eagerly upon Captain
Burns' expression.

"Well, sir," said the man, his eyes on the floor--I believe to hide a
joyous twinkle!--"that might be right for letters. But what about the
telegrams?"

"Telegrams!" we both echoed in the same breath.

"Yes, sir. When the managers or whatever they were had read the 'ad.,'
they were of opinion there might be telegrams. In answer to my question,
the general advice was to look in and open the boxes any time after
twelve noon to-morrow."

Terry and I stared at each other. Our hearts beat. I knew what his was
doing by the state of my own. He who would have sold his life for a song
(a really worthwhile song) was eager to preserve it at any price till
his eyes had seen the full results of our advertisement.

_Telegrams!_

Could it be possible that there would be telegrams?




CHAPTER III

THE LETTER WITH THE PURPLE SEAL


I invited Terry to breakfast with me at nine precisely next day, and
each of us was solemnly pledged not to look at a newspaper until we
could open them together.

We went to the theatre the night before (the first time Terry could
endure the thought since his illness), and supped at the Savoy
afterward, simply to mitigate the suffering of suspense. Nevertheless, I
was up at seven-thirty A. M., and at eight-forty-eight was in the
breakfast room gazing at six newspapers neatly folded on the
flower-decked table.

At eight-fifty-one, my guest arrived, and by common consent we seized
the papers. He opened three. I opened three. Yes, there it _was_! How
perfect, how thrilling! How even better it appeared in print than we had
expected! Anxiously we read the other advertisements of country houses
to let or sell, and agreed that there was nothing whose attractions came
within miles of our, in all senses of the word, priceless offer.

How we got through the next two and a half hours I don't know!

I say two and a half advisedly: because, as Jones had six visits to pay,
we thought we might start him off at eleven-thirty. This we did; but his
calmness had damped us. _He_ wasn't excited. Was it probable that any
one else--except ourselves--could be?

Cold reaction set in. We prepared each other for the news that there
were no telegrams or answers of any sort. Terry said it was no use
concealing that this would be a bitter blow. I had not the energy to
correct his rhetoric, or whatever it was, by explaining that a blow
can't be bitter.

Twelve-thirty struck, and produced no Jones; twelve-forty-five; one;
Jones still missing.

"I ought to have told him to come back at once after the sixth place,
even if there wasn't a thing," said Terry. "Like a fool, I didn't: he
may have thought he'd do some other errands on the way home, if he'd
nothing to report. Donkey! Ass! Pig."

"Captain Burns' man, your highness," announced my maid. "He wants to
know----"

"Tell him to come in!" I shrieked.

"Yes, your highness. It was only, should he bring them all in here, or
leave them in Mr. Carstairs' apartment below."

"_All!_" gasped Terry.

"Here," I commanded.

Jones staggered in.

You won't believe it when I tell you, because you didn't see it. That
is, you won't unless _you_ have inserted _the_ Advertisement of the
Ages--the Unique, the Siren, the Best yet Cheapest--in six leading
London journals at once.

There were eight bundles wrapped in newspaper. Enormous bundles! Jones
had two under each arm, and was carrying two in each hand, by loops of
string. As he tottered into the drawing room, the biggest bundle
dropped. The string broke. The wrapping yawned. Its contents gushed out.
Not only telegrams, but letters with no stamps or post-marks! They must
have been rushed frantically round to the six offices by messengers.

It was true, then, what the newspapers said: all London, all England,
yearned, pined, prayed for houses. Yet people must already be living
_somewhere_!

Literally, there were thousands of answers. To be precise, Captain
Burns, Jones, and I counted two thousand and ten replies which had
reached the six offices by noon on the first day of the advertisement:
one thousand and eight telegrams; the rest, letters dispatched by hand.
Each sender earnestly hoped that his application might be the first!
Heaven knew how many more might be _en route_! What a tribute to the
Largest Circulations!

Jones explained his delay by saying that "the stuff was coming in thick
as flies"; so he had waited until a lull fell upon each great office in
turn. When the count had been made by us, and envelopes neatly piled in
stacks of twenty-four on a large desk hastily cleared for action, Terry
sent his servant away. And then began the fun!

Yes, it was fun: "fun for the boys," if "death to the frogs." But we
hadn't gone far when between laughs we felt the pricks of conscience.
Alas for all these people who burned to possess our moated grange
"practically free," at its absurdly low rent! And the moated grange
didn't exist. Not one of the unfortunate wretches would so much as get
an answer to his S. O. S.

They were not all _Nouveaux Riches_ by any means, these eager senders of
letters and telegrams. Fearing repulse from the fastidious moat-owner,
they described themselves attractively, even by wire, at so much the
word. They were young; they were of good family; they were lately
married or going to be married. Their husbands or fathers were V. C.'s.
There was every reason why they, and they alone, should have the house.
They begged that particulars might be telegraphed. They enclosed stamps
on addressed envelopes. As the moated grange was "rich in old oak," so
did we now become rich in new stamps! Some people were willing to take
the house on its description without waiting to see it. Others assured
the advertiser that money was no object to them; he might ask what rent
he liked; and these were the ones on whom we wasted no pity. If this was
what the first three hours brought forth, how would the tide swell by
the end of the day--the end of the _week_? Tarpeia buried under the
shields and bracelets wasn't _in_ it with us!

Terry and I divided the budget, planning to exchange when all had been
read. But we couldn't keep silent. Every second minute one or other of
us exploded: "You _must_ hear this!" "Just listen to _one_ more!"

About halfway through my pile, I picked up a remarkably alluring
envelope. It was a peculiar pale shade of purple, the paper being of
rich satin quality suggesting pre-war. The address of the newspaper
office was in purple ink, and the handwriting was impressive. But what
struck me most was a gold crown on the back of the envelope, above a
purple seal; a crown signifying the same rank as my own.

I glanced up to see if Terry were noticing. If he had been, I should
have passed the letter to him as a _bonne bouche_, for this really was
_his_ show, and I wanted him to have all the plums. But he was grinning
over somebody's photograph, so I broke the seal without disturbing him.

I couldn't keep up this reserve for long, however; I hadn't read far
when I burst out with a "By Jove!"

"What is it?" asked Terry.

"We've hooked quite a big fish," said I. "Listen to this: 'The Princess
Avalesco presents her compliments to T. B., and hopes that he will----'
but, my goodness _gracious_, Captain Burns! What's the matter?"

The man had gone pale as skim-milk, and was staring at me as though I'd
turned into a Gorgon.




CHAPTER IV

THE TANGLED WEB


"Read the name again, please," Terry said, controlling his voice.

"Avalesco--the Princess Avalesco." I felt suddenly frightened. I'd been
playing with the public as if people were my puppets. Now I had a vague
conviction at the back of my brain that Fate had made a puppet of me.

"I thought so. But I couldn't believe my own ears," said Terry. "Good
heavens! what a situation!"

"I--don't understand," I hesitated. "Perhaps you'd rather not have me
understand? If so, don't tell me anything."

"I must tell you!" he said.

"Not unless you wish."

"I do! We are pals now. You've helped me. Maybe you can go on helping.
You'll advise me, if there's any way I can use this--this _amazing_
chance."

I said I'd be glad to help, and then waited for him to make the next
move.

Captain Burns sat as if dazed for a few seconds, but presently he asked
me to go on with the letter.

I took it up where I'd broken off. "Compliments to T. B., and hopes that
he will be able to let his moated grange to her till the end of
September. The Princess feels sure, from the description, that the place
will suit her. T. B. will probably know her name, but if not, he can
have any references desired. She is at the Savoy and has been ill, or
would be glad to meet T. B. in person. Her companion, Mrs. Dobell, will,
however, hold herself free to keep any appointment which may be made by
telephone. The Princess hopes that the moated grange is still free, and
feels that, if she obtains early possession, her health will soon be
restored in such beautiful surroundings. P. S.--The Princess is
particularly interested in the _twisted chimney_, and trusts there is a
history of the house."

I read fast, and when I'd finished, looked up at Terry. "If you have a
secret to tell, I'm ready with advice and sympathy," said my eyes.

"When the Princess Avalesco was Margaret Revell, I was in love with
her," Terry Burns answered them. "I adored her! She was seven or eight
years older than I, but the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Of course
she wouldn't look at me! I was about as important as a slum child to
her. In America, the Revells were like your royalties. She was a
princess, even then--without a title. To get one, she sold herself. To
think that _she_ should answer that fool advertisement of ours! Heavens!
I'm like Tantalus. I see the blessed water I'd give my life to drink,
held to my lips, only to have it snatched away!"

"Why snatched away?" I questioned.

"'Why?' Because if there _were_ a moated grange, I could meet her. Her
husband's dead. You know he was killed before Roumania'd been fighting a
week. Things are very different with me, too, these days. I'm a man--not
a boy. And I've come into more money than I ever dreamed I'd have. Not a
huge fortune like hers, but a respectable pile. Who knows what might
have happened? But there's _no_ moated grange, and so----"

"Why shouldn't there be one?" I broke in. And while he stared blankly, I
hurried on. I reminded Captain Burns of what I had said yesterday: that
there were houses of that description, more or less, in England, _real_
houses!--my own, for instance. Courtenaye Abbey was out of the question,
because it was let to my cousin Jim, and was being shown to the public
as a sort of museum; but there were other places. I knew of several. As
Captain Burns was so rich, he might hire one, and let it to the Princess
Avalesco.

For a moment he brightened, but a sudden thought obscured him, like a
cloud.

"Not places with twisted chimneys!" he groaned.

This brought me up short. I stubbed my brain against that twisted
chimney! But when I'd recovered from the blow, I raised my head. "Yes,
places with twisted chimneys! At least, _one_ such place."

"Ah, Hampton Court. You said the only other twisted chimney was there."

"The _advertisement_ said that."

"Well----"

"It's a pity," I admitted, "that I thought of the twisted chimney. It
was an unnecessary extravagance, though I meant well. But it never would
have occurred to me as an extra lure if I hadn't known about a house
where such a chimney exists. The one house of the kind I ever heard of
except Hampton Court."

Terry sprang to his feet, a changed man, young and vital.

"Can we get it?"

"Ah, if I knew! But we can try. If you don't care what you pay?"

"I don't. Not a--hang."

I, too, jumped up, and took from my desk a bulky volume--Burke. This I
brought back to my chair, and sat down with it on my lap. On one knee
beside me, Terry Burns watched me turn the pages. At "Sc" I stopped, to
read aloud all about the Scarletts. But before beginning I warned Terry:
"I never knew any of the Scarletts myself," I said, "but I've heard my
grandmother say they were the wickedest family in England, which meant a
lot from _her_. She wasn't exactly a _saint_!"

We learned from the book what I had almost forgotten, that Lord
Scarlett, the eleventh baron, held the title because his elder brother,
Cecil, had died in Australia unmarried. He, himself, was married, with
one young son, his wife being the daughter of a German wine merchant.

As I read, I remembered the gossip heard by my childish ears. "Bertie
Scarlett," as Grandmother called him, was not only the wickedest, but
the poorest peer in England according to her--too poor to live at Dun
Moat, his place in Devonshire, my own county. The remedy was
marriage--with an heiress. He tried America. Nothing doing. The girls he
invited to become Lady Scarlett drew the line at anything beneath an
earl. Or perhaps his reputation was against him. There were many people
who knew he was unpopular at Court; unpopular being the mildest word
possible. And he was middle-aged and far from good-looking. So the best
he could manage was a German heiress, of an age not unsuited to his own.
Her father, Herr Goldstein, lived in some little Rhine town, and was
supposed to be rolling in marks (that was six or seven years before the
war); however, the Goldsteins met Lord Scarlett not in Germany but at
Monte Carlo, where Papa G. was a well-known punter. Luck went wrong with
him, and later the war came. Altogether, the marriage had failed to
accomplish for Bertie Scarlett's pocket and his place what he had hoped
from it. And apparently the one appreciable result was a little boy,
half of German blood. There were hopes that, after the war, Herr
Goldstein's business might rise again to something like its old value,
in which case his daughter would reap the benefit. Meanwhile, however,
if Grandmother was right, things were at a low ebb; and I thought that
Lord Scarlett would most likely snap at an offer for Dun Moat.

Terry was immensely cheered by my story and opinion. But such a
ready-made solution of the difficulty seemed too good to be true. He got
our advertisement, and read it out to me, pausing at each detail of
perfection which we had light-heartedly bestowed upon our moated grange.
"The twisted chimney and the moat aren't everything," he groaned. "Carp
and water-lilies we might supply, if they don't exist; peacocks, too.
Nearly all historic English houses are what the agents call 'rich in old
oak.' But what about those 'exquisite oriels,' those famous fireplaces,
those stairways, those celebrated ceilings, and corbels--whatever they
are? No one house, outside our brains, can have them _all_. If
anything's missing in the list she'll cry off, and call T. B. a fraud."

"She'll only remember the most exciting things," I said. "I don't see
her walking round the house with the 'ad.' in her hand, do you? She'll
be captured by the _tout ensemble_. But the first thing is to catch our
hare--I mean our house. You 'phone to the companion, Mrs. Dobell, at
once. Say that before you got her letter you'd practically given the
refusal of your place to someone else, but that you met the Princess
Avalesco years ago, and would prefer to have her as your tenant, if she
cares to leave the matter open for a few days. She'll say 'yes' like a
shot. And meanwhile, I'll be inquiring the state of affairs at Dun
Moat."

"How can you inquire without going there, and wasting a day, when we
might be getting hold of another place, perhaps, and--and _building_ a
twisted chimney to match the 'ad.'?" Terry raged, walking up and down
the room.

"Quite simply," I said. "I'll get Jim Courtenaye on long-distance 'phone
at the Abbey, where he's had a telephone installed. He doesn't live
there, but at Courtenaye Coombe, a village close by. However, I hear
he's at the Abbey from morn till dewy eve, so I'll ring him up. What he
doesn't know about the Scarletts he'll find out so quickly you'll not
have time to turn."

"How do you know he'll be so quick?" persisted Terry. "If he's only your
forty-fourth cousin he may be luke-warm----"

I stopped him with a look. "Whatever else Jim Courtenaye may be, he's
_not_ luke-warm!" I said. "He has red hair and black eyes. And he is
either my fiercest enemy or my warmest friend, I'm not sure which.
Anyhow, he saved my life once, at great trouble and danger to himself;
so I don't think he'll hesitate at getting a little information for me
if I pay him the compliment of calling him up on the 'phone."

"I _see_!" said Terry. And I believe he did see--perhaps more than I
meant him to see. But at worst, he would in future realize that there
_were_ men on earth not so blind to my attractions as he.

While Terry 'phoned from the Carstairs' flat to the companion of
Princess Avalesco, I 'phoned from mine to Jim. And I could not help it
if my heart beat fast when I in London heard his voice answering from
Devonshire. He has one of those nice, drawly American voices that _do_
make a woman's heart beat for a man whether she likes him or hates him!

I explained what I wanted to find out about the Scarletts, and that it
must be "quite in confidence." Jim promised to make inquiries at once,
and when I politely said: "Sorry to give you so much bother," he
replied, "You needn't let _that_ worry you, my dear!"

Of course, he had no right to call me his "dear." I never heard of it
being done by the _best_ "forty-fourth cousins." But as I was asking a
favour of him, for Terry Burns' sake I let it pass.

These Americans, especially ex-cowboy ones, _do_ seem to act with
lightning rapidity. I suppose it comes from having to lasso creatures
while going at cinema speed, or else getting out of their way at the
same rate of progress! I expected to hear next morning at earliest, but
that evening, just before shutting-up time for post offices, my 'phone
bell rang. Jim Courtenaye was at the other end, talking from the Abbey.

"Lord and Lady Scarlett are living at Dun Moat," he said, "with their
venomous little brute of a boy; and they must be dashed hard up, because
they have only one servant in their enormous house, and a single
gardener on a place that needs a dozen. But it seems that Scarlett has
refused several big offers both to sell and let. Heaven knows why.
Perhaps the man's mad. Anyhow, that's all I can tell you at present.
They say it's no good hoping Scarlett will part. But I might find out
_why_ he won't, if that's any use."

"It isn't," I answered. "But thanks, all the same. How did you get hold
of this information so soon?"

"Very simply," said Jim. "I ran over to the nearest town, Dawlish, in
the car, and had a pow-wow with an estate agent, as if I were wanting
the house myself. I'm just back."

"You really are good!" I exclaimed, rather grudgingly, for Grandmother
and I always suffered in changing our opinions of people, as snakes must
suffer when they change their skins.

"I'd do a lot more than that for you, you know!" he said.

I did know. He had already done more--much more. But my only response
was to ring off. That was safest!

Next morning Terry Burns and I took the first train to Devonshire, and
at Dawlish hired a taxi for Dun Moat, which is about twelve miles from
there.

We were going to beard the Scarlett lion in his den!




CHAPTER V

THE KNITTING WOMAN OF DUN MOAT


"I must and _shall_ have this place!" Terry said, as our humble taxi
drove through the glorious old park, and came in sight of the house.

There were the old-world gardens; the statues; the fountains (it was a
detail that they didn't fount!); there were the white peacocks
(moulting); there was the moat so crammed with water-lilies that if the
Scarletts had eaten the carp, they would never be missed. There were the
"exquisite oriels," and above all, there was the twisted chimney!

An air of tragic neglect hung over everything. The grass needed mowing;
the flowers grew as they liked. Glass was even missing from several
windows. Still, it was miraculously the twin of the place we had
described in our embarrassingly perfect "ad."

As we stood in front of the enormous, nail-studded door, and Terry
pressed again and again an electric bell (the one modern touch about the
place), he had the air of waiting a signal to go "over the top."

"You look fierce enough to bayonet fifty Boches off your own bat!" I
whispered.

"Lady Scarlett _is_ a Boche, isn't she?" he mumbled back. And just
then--after we'd rung ten times--an old woman opened the door--a witch
of an old woman; a witch out of a German fairy-book.

The instant I saw her, I felt that there was _something wrong_ about
this house. From under wrinkled lids the woman peered out, ratlike; and
though her lips were closed--leaving the first word to us--her eyes
said, "What the devil do you want? Whatever it is, you won't get it, so
the sooner you go the better."

We had planned that I should start the ball rolling, by mention of my
grandmother's name. But Terry was bursting with renewed interest in
life, and the woman was answering his question before I had time to
speak. "Let the place? No, sir! His lordship refuses all offers. It is
useless to make one. He does not see strangers."

"We are not strangers," I rapped out with all Grandmother's haughtiness.
"Tell Lord Scarlett that the Princess di Miramare, grand-daughter of
Mrs. Raleigh Courtenaye, wishes a few words with him."

_That_ was the way to manage her! She came of a breed over whom for
centuries Prussian Junkers had power of life and death; and though she
spoke English, it was with the precise wording of one who has learned
the language painfully. In me she recognized the legitimate tyrant, and
yielded.

We were admitted with reluctance into a magnificent hall which magically
matched our description: stone-paved, with a vaulted roof, and an
immense oriel window the height of two stories. While our gaze travelled
from the carved stone chimney-piece to ancient suits of armour, and such
Tudor and Jacobean furniture as remained unsold, a slight sound
attracted our attention to the "historic staircase," with its
"dog-gates."

A woman was coming down. She had knitting in her hand, and had dropped
one of her needles. It was that which made the slight noise we'd heard;
and Terry stepped quickly forward to pick it up.

His back was turned to me as he offered the stiletto-like instrument to
its owner, so I could not see his face. But I could imagine that
charming smile of his, as he looked up at the figure on the stairs. Just
so might Sir Walter Raleigh have looked when he'd neatly spread his
cloak for Queen Bess; and if he had happened to ask a favour then, it
would have been hard for the sovereign to resist!

The woman coming downstairs did not resemble any portrait of the Virgin
Queen. She was stout and short-necked; and with her hard, dark face, her
implacable eyes, and her knitting, was as much like Madame Defarge in
modern dress as a German could be. But even Madame Defarge was a woman!
And probably she used her influence now and then in favour of some
handsome male head, preferring to see female ones pop into the sawdust!

Her face softened slightly as she accepted the needle, and stiffened
again as I came forward.

"My husband is occupied," she said, in much the same stilted English as
that of her old servant. "He sends his compliments to the Princess di
Miramare and her friend, and hopes both will excuse him. If it is an
offer for our place you have come to make, I must refuse in his name. We
do not wish to move."

Her tone, her expression, gave to her words the solemnity of an oath
sworn by a houseful of Medes and Persians.

It seemed that there was nothing left for us to do, save bow to Lady
Scarlett's decision, and retire defeated to our taxi. But I felt that my
reputation as a Brightener was at stake, with Terry's hopes. If we
failed, instead of brightening I should have blighted him for ever! That
couldn't, shouldn't be!

All there was of me yearned for an inspiration, and it came.

"My friend, Captain Burns, wouldn't ask you to move," I heard myself
saying. "He's so anxious to have Dun Moat that he'd offer you any rent
within reason, and would invite you to select some retired rooms for
yourselves, where you might live undisturbed by the tenant. This house
is so large it occurs to me that such an arrangement wouldn't be
uncomfortable."

Terry flashed me a look of amazement, which turned to acquiescence; and
the surprise on Lady Scarlett's face was encouraging. Evidently no one
else had made such a suggestion. She seemed not only astonished, but
tempted.

For a moment she reflected; then admitted that my proposal was a new
one. She would submit it to her husband. They would talk it over if we
cared to wait. We did care to; and the lady vanished like a stout ghost
into the dimness of stony shadows.

Terry said that he felt his head growing gray, hair by hair, with
suspense; but when Lady Scarlett came back at last no change could be
seen by the naked eye.

"My husband and I will consider your proposal," she said, "provided the
price is satisfactory, and taking it for granted that we agree on the
rooms for our occupation. We should want those known as the 'garden
court suite.' And we should ask one hundred and fifty pounds a week, for
a possible term of ten weeks, on the proviso that we could terminate the
tenancy with a fortnight's notice at any time after the first month."

I was dumbfounded. The place, unique and beautiful as it was, had been
allowed to run down so disastrously, and everything outside and inside
seemed to be in such a state of disrepair, that it was worth at most a
rent of thirty guineas a week. Terry might call himself rich, but surely
he'd not consent to being rooked to that extent, in order to be landlord
to his love. I expected him to protest, to bargain, and beat the lady
down. But he brushed the financial question away like a cobweb, and
began to haggle about the rooms.

"The money part will be all right," he said. "But I want a lady to come
here--a lady who's been ill. She must have the prettiest rooms there
are: something overlooking the moat, with jolly oriel windows and plenty
of old oak."

Lady Scarlett smiled. "There is no obstacle to that! The suite I specify
is at the far end of the house, in a comparatively modern wing, and most
people would think it the least desirable. We like it because it is
compact and private. We can keep it going with one servant. It is called
the 'garden court suite' because it is built round a small square. There
is a separate outside entrance, as well as one door communicating with
the house. The suite has generally been occupied by a bachelor heir."

As she talked, Terry reflected. "Look here, Lady Scarlett!" he
exclaimed, just contriving not to break in. "I've half a mind to confide
in you. The truth is, I want to pose as the owner of this place. I
suppose you wouldn't sell it?"

"We could not if we would," replied the daughter of the German
wine-seller. "It is entailed and the entail cannot be broken till our
son comes of age."

"That settles _that_! But you said beforehand, nothing would induce you
to turn out----"

"No money you could offer: not a thousand, not ten thousand a week--at
least, at present. The garden court suite is the one solution."

"Well, so be it! But--I beg your pardon if I'm rude--could you--er--seem
not to be there? Could I say I'd lent the rooms to someone I didn't like
to turn out? If you'd consent, I'd make it two hundred a week."

Lady Scarlett's blackberry-and-skim-milk eyes lit. "You want the lady to
believe that you have bought Dun Moat?"

For answer, he told her of our advertisement, and the result. I thought
this a mistake. You'd only to look at the woman to see that she'd no
sense of humour; and to confide in a person without one is courting
trouble. Besides, I still had that impression of _something wrong_. I
had no definite suspicion; but why had the Scarletts, poor as they were,
determined to stick to the house? However, I could no more have stopped
Terry Burns when he got going than I could have stopped a torrent by
throwing in rose-petals. Which shows how he had changed. The worry a few
days ago would have been to get him going!

As Lady Scarlett listened she knitted, with strong, predatory hands.
Language, they say, is used to conceal thought. So, it occurred to me,
is knitting. I felt, watching her as a wise mouse should watch a cat,
that she was making up her mind to some action more beneficial to
herself than Terry. But for my life I couldn't guess what. She seemed to
weave a knitted screen between my mind and hers!

In the end, however, she announced that for two hundred pounds a week
her family could--to all intents and purposes--blot itself temporarily
out of existence, in the suite of the garden court. The American lady
might believe them to be poor relations of Captain Burns, or even
servants, for all she cared! Having arrived at this conclusion, she
proposed fetching her husband, that an agreement of an informal kind
might be drawn up. Again she vanished; and when Lord Scarlett appeared,
it was alone.

There were a number of ancestral portraits hanging on the walls of the
great hall: fox-faced men, most of them, with a prevailing, sharp-nosed,
slant-eyed type; and "Bertie" Scarlett was no exception to the rule. As
he came deliberately down the stairway which his wife had descended, I
remembered a scandal of his youth that Grandmother had sketched. He'd
been in a crack regiment once, and though desperately poor had tried to
live as a smart man about town. At some country-house party he'd been
accused of cheating at baccarat. The story was hushed up, but he had
left the army; and people--particularly royalties--had looked down their
noses at him ever since. His tweeds were shabby now, and he was growing
middle-aged and bald; all the same he had the air of the leading man in
a _cause celebre_. I hadn't liked his wife, and I liked him as little!

He made the same point as hers: that the agreement might be terminated
by him (_not_ by the tenant) with a fortnight's notice, given at any
time after the first month. This was a queer proviso, as queer as the
family resolve to remain on the spot. And it seemed to me that one was
part and parcel of the other, though I couldn't see the link which
united the two.

As for Terry, he puzzled over none of these things. He wanted the place
even on preposterous terms. When Lord Scarlett had drawn up an
agreement, his signature flashed across the paper like a streak of
lightning, so wild was he to rush back to London bearing the news to his
princess. Lord Scarlett--sure of his mad client--offered to have the
agreement polished up in legal form without further bother for Captain
Burns, and we were free to go.

Terry could talk of nothing on the way home but his marvellous luck.
_Hang_ the money! He'd have paid twice as much, if need be. The next
thing was to smarten the place: buy some more "historic" furniture to
fill the gaps made by sales, send down a decorator to see what beds,
etc., needed renovating, have an expert look at the drains and the
central heating (long unused) which had been put in with German money,
engage a staff of servants for indoors and out; get hold of two or three
young peacocks whose tails hadn't moulted.

"If I don't care how much I spend, don't you think we can make an
earthly paradise of the place in a week?" he appealed.

"We?" I echoed. "Why, I thought my part was played!"

His grieved eyes reproached me. What? After going so far, I was going to
desert him in the midst of the woods? He begged me to stand by him till
all was ready to receive the Princess. If I didn't, something was sure
to go wrong.

Well, once a Brightener, always a Brightener, I suppose! And acting on
this principle I yielded. I promised to stop for a week at Dawley St.
Ann, a village within a mile of Dun Moat (there's a dear old inn
there!), and superintend preparations for the beloved tenant. When she
was safely installed, I would go home--or elsewhere, and Terry could
take my rooms at the inn. Being her neighbour as well as landlord, he'd
easily find excuses to see the Princess every day, and thus get his
money's worth of Dun Moat.

All this was settled before we reached London; and the first thing Terry
thought of on entering the flat (mine, not his!) was to ring up the
Savoy. The answer came quickly; and I saw a light of rapture on his
face. The Princess herself was at the telephone!




CHAPTER VI

THE LIGHTNING STROKE


It was amazing what Terry and I accomplished in the next few days, I at
Dawley St. Ann, close to Dun Moat, he flashing back and forth between
there and London!

My incentive and reward in one consisted of the all but incredible
change for the better in him. Terry's, was the hope of meeting the
Adored Lady; for he had not met her yet. Her voice thrilled him through
the telephone, saying that of _course_ she "remembered Terry Burns," but
it was her companion, Mrs. Dobell, who received him at the Savoy. She it
was who carried messages from the still-ailing Princess Avalesco to him,
and handed on to the Princess his vague explanations as to how he had
acquired Dun Moat. But Terry had seen, in the two ladies' private
sitting room at the hotel, an ivory miniature of the Princess, and its
beauty had poured oil on the fire of his love. At what period in her
career it had been painted he didn't know, not daring or caring to ask
Mrs. Dobell; but one thing was sure--it showed her lovelier than of old.

Seeing the boy on the way to such a cure as twenty Sir Humphrey Hales
could never have produced, I was happy while wrestling for his sake with
the servant problem, plac

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