← catalogue

The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations

by Arthur Machen · English · Gutenberg #35517 · 337,946 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations

Author: Arthur Machen


        
Release date: March 8, 2011 [eBook #35517]
                Most recently updated: May 17, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35517

Credits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE IMPOSTORS; OR, THE TRANSMUTATIONS ***

THE THREE IMPOSTORS

or The Transmutations

by

ARTHUR MACHEN



TRANSLATOR OF 'L'HEPTAMERON' AND 'LE MOYEN DE PARVENIR';

AUTHOR OF 'THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY' AND 'THE GREAT GOD PAN'



BOSTON: Roberts Bros, 1895

LONDON: John Lane, Vigo St.




CONTENTS

    PROLOGUE
    ADVENTURE OF THE GOLD TIBERIUS
    THE ENCOUNTER OF THE PAVEMENT
       NOVEL OF THE DARK VALLEY
    ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING BROTHER
       NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL
    INCIDENT OF THE PRIVATE BAR
    THE DECORATIVE IMAGINATION
       NOVEL OF THE IRON MAID
    THE RECLUSE OF BAYSWATER
       NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER
    STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN CLERKENWELL
       HISTORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH SPECTACLES
    ADVENTURE OF THE DESERTED RESIDENCE




THE THREE IMPOSTORS.




PROLOGUE.


"And Mr. Joseph Walters is going to stay the night?" said the smooth
clean-shaven man to his companion, an individual not of the most
charming appearance, who had chosen to make his ginger-colored mustache
merge into a pair of short chin-whiskers.

The two stood at the hall door, grinning evilly at each other; and
presently a girl ran quickly down the stairs, and joined them. She was
quite young, with a quaint and piquant rather than a beautiful face, and
her eyes were of a shining hazel. She held a neat paper parcel in one
hand, and laughed with her friends.

"Leave the door open," said the smooth man to the other, as they were
going out. "Yes, by----," he went on with an ugly oath. "We'll leave the
front door on the jar. He may like to see company, you know."

The other man looked doubtfully about him. "Is it quite prudent do you
think, Davies?" he said, pausing with his hand on the mouldering
knocker. "I don't think Lipsius would like it. What do you say, Helen?"

"I agree with Davies. Davies is an artist, and you are commonplace,
Richmond, and a bit of a coward. Let the door stand open, of course. But
what a pity Lipsius had to go away! He would have enjoyed himself."

"Yes," replied the smooth Mr. Davies, "that summons to the west was very
hard on the doctor."

The three passed out, leaving the hall door, cracked and riven with
frost and wet, half open, and they stood silent for a moment under the
ruinous shelter of the porch.

"Well," said the girl, "it is done at last. I shall hurry no more on the
track of the young man with spectacles."

"We owe a great deal to you," said Mr. Davies politely; "the doctor said
so before he left. But have we not all three some farewells to make? I,
for my part, propose to say good-by, here, before this picturesque but
mouldy residence, to my friend Mr. Burton, dealer in the antique and
curious," and the man lifted his hat with an exaggerated bow.

"And I," said Richmond, "bid adieu to Mr. Wilkins, the private
secretary, whose company has, I confess, become a little tedious."

"Farewell to Miss Lally, and to Miss Leicester also," said the girl,
making as she spoke a delicious courtesy. "Farewell to all occult
adventure; the farce is played."

Mr. Davies and the lady seemed full of grim enjoyment, but Richmond
tugged at his whiskers nervously.

"I feel a bit shaken up," he said. "I've seen rougher things in the
States, but that crying noise he made gave me a sickish feeling. And
then the smell--But my stomach was never very strong."

The three friends moved away from the door, and began to walk slowly up
and down what had been a gravel path, but now lay green and pulpy with
damp mosses. It was a fine autumn evening, and a faint sunlight shone on
the yellow walls of the old deserted house, and showed the patches of
gangrenous decay, and all the stains, the black drift of rain from the
broken pipes, the scabrous blots where the bare bricks were exposed, the
green weeping of a gaunt laburnum that stood beside the porch, and
ragged marks near the ground where the reeking clay was gaining on the
worn foundations. It was a queer rambling old place, the centre perhaps
two hundred years old, with dormer windows sloping from the tiled roof,
and on each side there were Georgian wings; bow windows had been carried
up to the first floor, and two dome-like cupolas that had once been
painted a bright green were now gray and neutral. Broken urns lay upon
the path, and a heavy mist seemed to rise from the unctuous clay; the
neglected shrubberies, grown all tangled and unshapen, smelt dank and
evil, and there was an atmosphere all about the deserted mansion that
proposed thoughts of an opened grave. The three friends looked dismally
at the rough grasses and the nettles that grew thick over lawn and
flower-beds; and at the sad water-pool in the midst of the weeds. There,
above green and oily scum instead of lilies, stood a rusting Triton on
the rocks, sounding a dirge through a shattered horn; and beyond, beyond
the sunk fence and the far meadows, the sun slid down and shone red
through the bars of the elm trees.

Richmond shivered and stamped his foot. "We had better be going soon,"
he said; "there is nothing else to be done here."

"No," said Davies, "it is finished at last. I thought for some time we
should never get hold of the gentleman with the spectacles. He was a
clever fellow, but, Lord! he broke up badly at last. I can tell you he
looked white at me when I touched him on the arm in the bar. But where
could he have hidden the thing? We can all swear it was not on him."

The girl laughed, and they turned away, when Richmond gave a violent
start. "Ah!" he cried, turning to the girl, "what have you got there?
Look, Davies, look! it's all oozing and dripping."

The young woman glanced down at the little parcel she was carrying, and
partially unfolded the paper.

"Yes, look both of you," she said; "it's my own idea. Don't you think it
will do nicely for the doctor's museum? It comes from the right hand,
the hand that took the gold Tiberius."

Mr. Davies nodded with a good deal of approbation, and Richmond lifted
his ugly high-crowned bowler, and wiped his forehead with a dingy
handkerchief.

"I'm going," he said; "you two can stay if you like."

The three went round by the stable path, past the withered wilderness of
the old kitchen garden, and struck off by a hedge at the back, making
for a particular point in the road. About five minutes later two
gentlemen, whom idleness had led to explore these forgotten outskirts of
London, came sauntering up the shadowy carriage drive. They had spied
the deserted house from the road, and as they observed all the heavy
desolation of the place they began to moralize in the great style, with
considerable debts to Jeremy Taylor.

"Look, Dyson," said the one as they drew nearer, "look at those upper
windows; the sun is setting, and though the panes are dusty, yet

     "The grimy sash an oriel burns."

"Phillipps," replied the elder and (it must be said) the more pompous of
the two, "I yield to fantasy, I cannot withstand the influence of the
grotesque. Here, where all is falling into dimness and dissolution, and
we walk in cedarn gloom, and the very air of heaven goes mouldering to
the lungs, I cannot remain commonplace. I look at that deep glow on the
panes, and the house lies all enchanted; that very room, I tell you, is
within all blood and fire."




ADVENTURE OF THE GOLD TIBERIUS.


The acquaintance between Mr. Dyson and Mr. Charles Phillipps arose from
one of those myriad chances which are every day doing their work in the
streets of London. Mr. Dyson was a man of letters, and an unhappy
instance of talents misapplied. With gifts that might have placed him in
the flower of his youth among the most favored of Bentley's favorite
novelists, he had chosen to be perverse; he was, it is true, familiar
with scholastic logic, but he knew nothing of the logic of life, and he
flattered himself with the title of artist, when he was in fact but an
idle and curious spectator of other men's endeavors. Amongst many
delusions, he cherished one most fondly, that he was a strenuous worker;
and it was with a gesture of supreme weariness that he would enter his
favorite resort, a small tobacco shop in Great Queen Street, and
proclaim to any one who cared to listen that he had seen the rising and
setting of two successive suns. The proprietor of the shop, a
middle-aged man of singular civility, tolerated Dyson partly out of good
nature, and partly because he was a regular customer; he was allowed to
sit on an empty cask, and to express his sentiments on literary and
artistic matters till he was tired or the time for closing came; and if
no fresh customers were attracted, it is believed that none were turned
away by his eloquence. Dyson was addicted to wild experiments in
tobacco; he never wearied of trying new combinations, and one evening he
had just entered the shop and given utterance to his last preposterous
formula, when a young fellow, of about his own age, who had come in a
moment later, asked the shopman to duplicate the order on his account,
smiling politely, as he spoke, to Mr. Dyson's address. Dyson felt
profoundly flattered, and after a few phrases the two entered into
conversation, and in an hour's time the tobacconist saw the new friends
sitting side by side on a couple of casks, deep in talk.

"My dear sir," said Dyson, "I will give you the task of the literary man
in a phrase. He has got to do simply this: to invent a wonderful story,
and to tell it in a wonderful manner."

"I will grant you that," said Mr. Phillipps, "but you will allow me to
insist that in the hands of the true artist in words all stories are
marvellous, and every circumstance has its peculiar wonder. The matter
is of little consequence, the manner is everything. Indeed, the highest
skill is shown in taking matter apparently commonplace and transmuting
it by the high alchemy of style into the pure gold of art."

"That is indeed a proof of great skill, but it is great skill exerted
foolishly, or at least unadvisedly. It is as if a great violinist were
to show us what marvellous harmonies he could draw from a child's
banjo."

"No, no, you are really wrong. I see you take a radically mistaken view
of life. But we must thresh this out. Come to my rooms; I live not far
from here."

It was thus that Mr. Dyson became the associate of Mr. Charles
Phillipps, who lived in a quiet square not far from Holborn. Thenceforth
they haunted each other's rooms at intervals, sometimes regular, and
occasionally the reverse, and made appointments to meet at the shop in
Queen Street, where their talk robbed the tobacconist's profit of half
its charm. There was a constant jarring of literary formulas, Dyson
exalting the claims of the pure imagination, while Phillipps, who was a
student of physical science and something of an ethnologist, insisted
that all literature ought to have a scientific basis. By the mistaken
benevolence of deceased relatives both young men were placed out of
reach of hunger, and so, meditating high achievements, idled their time
pleasantly away, and revelled in the careless joys of a Bohemianism
devoid of the sharp seasoning of adversity.

One night in June Mr. Phillipps was sitting in his room in the calm
retirement of Red Lion Square. He had opened the window, and was smoking
placidly, while he watched the movement of life below. The sky was
clear, and the afterglow of sunset had lingered long about it; and the
flushing twilight of a summer evening, vying with the gas-lamps in the
square, had fashioned a chiaroscuro that had in it something unearthly;
and the children, racing to and fro upon the pavement, the lounging
idlers by the public, and the casual passers-by rather flickered, and
hovered in the play of lights than stood out substantial things. By
degrees in the houses opposite one window after another leaped out a
square of light, now and again a figure would shape itself against a
blind and vanish, and to all this semi-theatrical magic the runs and
flourishes of brave Italian opera played a little distance off on a
piano-organ seemed an appropriate accompaniment, while the deep-muttered
bass of the traffic of Holborn never ceased. Phillipps enjoyed the scene
and its effects; the light in the sky faded and turned to darkness, and
the square gradually grew silent, and still he sat dreaming at the
window, till the sharp peal of the house bell roused him, and looking at
his watch he found that it was past ten o'clock. There was a knock at
the door, and his friend Mr. Dyson entered, and, according to his
custom, sat down in an armchair and began to smoke in silence.

"You know, Phillipps," he said at length, "that I have always battled
for the marvellous. I remember your maintaining in that chair that one
has no business to make use of the wonderful, the improbable, the odd
coincidence in literature, and you took the ground that it was wrong to
do so, because, as a matter of fact, the wonderful and the improbable
don't happen, and men's lives are not really shaped by odd coincidence.
Now, mind you, if that were so, I would not grant your conclusion,
because I think the "criticism-of-life" theory is all nonsense; but I
deny your premise. A most singular thing has happened to me to-night."

"Really, Dyson, I am very glad to hear it. Of course I oppose your
argument, whatever it may be; but if you would be good enough to tell me
of your adventure I should be delighted."

"Well, it came about like this. I have had a very hard day's work;
indeed, I have scarcely moved from my old bureau since seven o'clock
last night. I wanted to work out that idea we discussed last Tuesday,
you know, the notion of the fetish-worshipper."

"Yes, I remember. Have you been able to do anything with it?"

"Yes; it came out better than I expected; but there were great
difficulties, the usual agony between the conception and the execution.
Anyhow I got it done at about seven o'clock to-night, and I thought I
should like a little of the fresh air. I went out and wandered rather
aimlessly about the streets; my head was full of my tale, and I didn't
much notice where I was going. I got into those quiet places to the
north of Oxford Street as you go west, the genteel residential
neighborhood of stucco and prosperity. I turned east again without
knowing it, and it was quite dark when I passed along a sombre little
by-street, ill lighted and empty. I did not know at the time in the
least where I was, but I found out afterwards that it was not very far
from Tottenham Court Road. I strolled idly along, enjoying the
stillness; on one side there seemed to be the back premises of some
great shop; tier after tier of dusty windows lifted up into the night,
with gibbet-like contrivances for raising heavy goods, and below large
doors, fast closed and bolted, all dark and desolate. Then there came a
huge pantechnicon warehouse; and over the way a grim blank wall, as
forbidding as the wall of a jail, and then the headquarters of some
volunteer regiment, and afterwards a passage leading to a court where
wagons were standing to be hired. It was, one might almost say, a street
devoid of inhabitants, and scarce a window showed the glimmer of a
light. I was wondering at the strange peace and dimness there, where it
must be close to some roaring main artery of London life, when suddenly
I heard the noise of dashing feet tearing along the pavement at full
speed, and from a narrow passage, a mews or something of that kind, a
man was discharged as from a catapult under my very nose and rushed past
me, flinging something from him as he ran. He was gone and down another
street in an instant, almost before I knew what had happened, but I
didn't much bother about him, I was watching something else. I told you
he had thrown something away; well, I watched what seemed a line of
flame flash through the air and fly quivering over the pavement, and in
spite of myself I could not help tearing after it. The impetus lessened,
and I saw something like a bright half-penny roll slower and slower, and
then deflect towards the gutter, hover for a moment on the edge, and
dance down into a drain. I believe I cried out in positive despair,
though I hadn't the least notion what I was hunting; and then to my joy
I saw that, instead of dropping into the sewer, it had fallen flat
across two bars. I stooped down and picked it up and whipped it into my
pocket, and I was just about to walk on when I heard again that sound of
dashing footsteps. I don't know why I did it, but as a matter of fact I
dived down into the mews, or whatever it was, and stood as much in the
shadow as possible. A man went by with a rush a few paces from where I
was standing, and I felt uncommonly pleased that I was in hiding. I
couldn't make out much feature, but I saw his eyes gleaming and his
teeth showing, and he had an ugly-looking knife in one hand, and I
thought things would be very unpleasant for gentleman number one if the
second robber, or robbed, or what you like, caught him up. I can tell
you, Phillipps, a fox hunt is exciting enough, when the horn blows clear
on a winter morning, and the hounds give tongue, and the red-coats
charge away, but it's nothing to a man hunt, and that's what I had a
slight glimpse of to-night. There was murder in the fellow's eyes as he
went by, and I don't think there was much more than fifty seconds
between the two. I only hope it was enough."

Dyson leant back in his armchair and relit his pipe, and puffed
thoughtfully. Phillipps began to walk up and down the room, musing over
the story of violent death fleeting in chase along the pavement, the
knife shining in the lamplight, the fury of the pursuer, and the terror
of the pursued.

"Well," he said at last, "and what was it, after all, that you rescued
from the gutter?"

Dyson jumped up, evidently quite startled. "I really haven't a notion. I
didn't think of looking. But we shall see."

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a small and shining
object, and laid it on the table. It glowed there beneath the lamp with
the radiant glory of rare old gold; and the image and the letters stood
out in high relief, clear and sharp, as if it had but left the mint a
month before. The two men bent over it, and Phillipps took it up and
examined it closely.

"Imp. Tiberius Cæsar Augustus," he read the legend, and then, looking at
the reverse of the coin, he stared in amazement, and at last turned to
Dyson with a look of exultation.

"Do you know what you have found?" he said.

"Apparently a gold coin of some antiquity," said Dyson, coolly.

"Quite so, a gold Tiberius. No, that is wrong. You have found _the_ gold
Tiberius. Look at the reverse."

Dyson looked and saw the coin was stamped with the figure of a faun
standing amidst reeds and flowing water. The features, minute as they
were, stood out in delicate outline; it was a face lovely and yet
terrible, and Dyson thought of the well-known passage of the lad's
playmate, gradually growing with his growth and increasing with his
stature, till the air was filled with the rank fume of the goat.

"Yes," he said, "it is a curious coin. Do you know it?"

"I know about it. It is one of the comparatively few historical objects
in existence; it is all storied like those jewels we have read of. A
whole cycle of legend has gathered round the thing; the tale goes that
it formed part of an issue struck by Tiberius to commemorate an infamous
excess. You see the legend on the reverse: 'Victoria.' It is said that
by an extraordinary accident the whole issue was thrown into the melting
pot, and that only this one coin escaped. It glints through history and
legend, appearing and disappearing, with intervals of a hundred years in
time and continents in place. It was discovered by an Italian humanist,
and lost and rediscovered. It has not been heard of since 1727, when Sir
Joshua Byrde, a Turkey merchant, brought it home from Aleppo, and
vanished with it a month after he had shown it to the virtuosi, no man
knew or knows where. And here it is!"

"Put it into your pocket, Dyson," he said, after a pause. "I would not
let any one have a glimpse of the thing, if I were you. I would not talk
about it. Did either of the men you saw see you?"

"Well, I think not. I don't think the first man, the man who was vomited
out of the dark passage, saw anything at all; and I am sure that the
second could not have seen me."

"And you didn't really see them. You couldn't recognize either the one
or the other if you met him in the street to-morrow?"

"No, I don't think I could. The street, as I said, was dimly lighted,
and they ran like mad-men."

The two men sat silent for some time, each weaving his own fancies of
the story; but lust of the marvellous was slowly overpowering Dyson's
more sober thoughts.

"It is all more strange than I fancied," he said at last. "It was queer
enough what I saw; a man is sauntering along a quiet, sober, every-day
London street, a street of gray houses and blank walls, and there, for a
moment, a veil seems drawn aside, and the very fume of the pit steams up
through the flagstones, the ground glows, red hot, beneath his feet, and
he seems to hear the hiss of the infernal caldron. A man flying in mad
terror for his life, and furious hate pressing hot on his steps with
knife drawn ready; here indeed is horror. But what is all that to what
you have told me? I tell you, Phillipps, I see the plot thicken, our
steps will henceforth be dogged with mystery, and the most ordinary
incidents will teem with significance. You may stand out against it, and
shut your eyes, but they will be forced open; mark my words, you will
have to yield to the inevitable. A clue, tangled if you like, has been
placed by chance in our hands; it will be our business to follow it up.
As for the guilty person or persons in this strange case, they will be
unable to escape us, our nets will be spread far and wide over this
great city, and suddenly, in the streets and places of public resort, we
shall in some way or other be made aware that we are in touch with the
unknown criminal. Indeed, I almost fancy I see him slowly approaching
this quiet square of yours; he is loitering at street corners,
wandering, apparently without aim, down far-reaching thoroughfares, but
all the while coming nearer and nearer, drawn by an irresistible
magnetism, as ships were drawn to the Loadstone Rock in the Eastern
tale."

"I certainly think," replied Phillipps, "that, if you pull out that coin
and flourish it under people's noses as you are doing at the present
moment, you will very probably find yourself in touch with the criminal,
or a criminal. You will undoubtedly be robbed with violence. Otherwise,
I see no reason why either of us should be troubled. No one saw you
secure the coin, and no one knows you have it. I, for my part, shall
sleep peacefully, and go about my business with a sense of security and
a firm dependence on the natural order of things. The events of the
evening, the adventure in the street, have been odd, I grant you, but I
resolutely decline to have any more to do with the matter, and, if
necessary, I shall consult the police. I will not be enslaved by a gold
Tiberius, even though it swims into my ken in a manner which is somewhat
melodramatic."

"And I for my part," said Dyson, "go forth like a knight-errant in
search of adventure. Not that I shall need to seek; rather adventure
will seek me; I shall be like a spider in the midst of his web,
responsive to every movement, and ever on the alert."

Shortly afterwards Dyson took his leave, and Mr. Phillipps spent the
rest of the night in examining some flint arrow-heads which he had
purchased. He had every reason to believe that they were the work of a
modern and not a palæolithic man, still he was far from gratified when a
close scrutiny showed him that his suspicions were well founded. In his
anger at the turpitude which would impose on an ethnologist, he
completely forgot Dyson and the gold Tiberius; and when he went to bed
at first sunlight, the whole tale had faded utterly from his thoughts.




THE ENCOUNTER OF THE PAVEMENT.


Mr. Dyson, walking leisurely along Oxford Street, and staring with
bland inquiry at whatever caught his attention, enjoyed in all its
rare flavors the sensation that he was really very hard at work. His
observation of mankind, the traffic, and the shop-windows tickled his
faculties with an exquisite bouquet; he looked serious, as one looks
on whom charges of weight and moment are laid, and he was attentive
in his glances to right and left, for fear lest he should miss some
circumstance of more acute significance. He had narrowly escaped being
run over at a crossing by a charging van, for he hated to hurry his
steps, and indeed the afternoon was warm; and he had just halted by a
place of popular refreshment, when the astounding gestures of a well
dressed individual on the opposite pavement held him enchanted and
gasping like a fish. A treble line of hansoms, carriages, vans, cabs,
and omnibuses, was tearing east and west, and not the most daring
adventurer of the crossings would have cared to try his fortune; but
the person who had attracted Dyson's attention seemed to rage on
the very edge of the pavement, now and then darting forward at the
hazard of instant death, and at each repulse absolutely dancing with
excitement, to the rich amusement of the passers-by. At last, a gap
that would, have tried the courage of a street-boy appeared between the
serried lines of vehicles, and the man rushed across in a frenzy, and
escaping by a hair's breadth pounced upon Dyson as a tiger pounces on
her prey. "I saw you looking about you," he said, sputtering out his
words in his intense eagerness; "would you mind telling me this? Was
the man who came out of the Aerated Bread Shop and jumped, into the
hansom three minutes ago a youngish looking man with dark whiskers and
spectacles? Can't you speak, man? For Heaven's sake can't you speak?
Answer me; it's a matter of life and death."

The words bubbled and boiled out of the man's mouth in the fury of his
emotion, his face went from red to white, and the beads of sweat stood
out on his forehead, and he stamped his feet as he spoke and tore with
his hand at his coat, as if something swelled and choked him, stopping
the passage of his breath.

"My dear sir," said Dyson, "I always like to be accurate. Your
observation was perfectly correct. As you say, a youngish man, a man, I
should say, of somewhat timid bearing, ran rapidly out of the shop here,
and bounced into a hansom that must have been waiting for him, as it
went eastwards at once. Your friend also wore spectacles, as you say.
Perhaps you would like me to call a hansom for you to follow the
gentleman?"

"No, thank you; it would be waste of time." The man gulped down
something which appeared to rise in his throat, and Dyson was alarmed to
see him shaking with hysterical laughter, and he clung hard to a
lamp-post and swayed and staggered like a ship in a heavy gale.

"How shall I face the doctor?" he murmured to himself. "It is too hard
to fail at the last moment." Then he seemed to recollect himself, and
stood straight again, and looked quietly at Dyson. "I owe you an apology
for my violence," he said at last. "Many men would not be so patient as
you have been. Would you mind adding to your kindness by walking with me
a little way? I feel a little sick; I think it's the sun."

Dyson nodded assent, and devoted himself to a quiet scrutiny of this
strange personage as they moved on together. The man was dressed in
quiet taste, and the most scrupulous observer could find nothing amiss
with the fashion or make of his clothes, yet, from his hat to his boots,
everything seemed inappropriate. His silk hat, Dyson thought, should
have been a high bowler of odious pattern worn with a baggy
morning-coat, and an instinct told him that the fellow did not commonly
carry a clean pocket-handkerchief. The face was not of the most
agreeable pattern, and was in no way improved by a pair of bulbous
chin-whiskers of a ginger hue, into which mustaches of light color
merged imperceptibly. Yet in spite of these signals hung out by nature,
Dyson felt that the individual beside him was something more than
compact of vulgarity. He was struggling with himself, holding his
feelings in check, but now and again passion would mount black to his
face, and it was evidently by a supreme effort that he kept himself
from raging like a madman. Dyson found something curious and a little
terrible in the spectacle of an occult emotion thus striving for the
mastery, and threatening to break out at every instant with violence,
and they had gone some distance before the person whom he had met by so
odd a hazard was able to speak quietly.

"You are really very good," he said. "I apologize again; my rudeness was
really most unjustifiable. I feel my conduct demands an explanation, and
I shall be happy to give it you. Do you happen to know of any place near
here where one could sit down? I should really be very glad."

"My dear sir," said Dyson, solemnly, "the only café in London is close
by. Pray do not consider yourself as bound to offer me any explanation,
but at the same time I should be most happy to listen to you. Let us
turn down here."

They walked down a sober street and turned into what seemed a narrow
passage past an iron-barred gate thrown back. The passage was paved with
flagstones, and decorated with handsome shrubs in pots on either side,
and the shadow of the high walls made a coolness which was very
agreeable after the hot breath of the sunny street. Presently the
passage opened out into a tiny square, a charming place, a morsel of
France transplanted into the heart of London. High walls rose on either
side, covered with glossy creepers, flower-beds beneath were gay with
nasturtiums, geraniums, and marigolds, and odorous with mignonette, and
in the centre of the square a fountain hidden by greenery sent a cool
shower continually plashing into the basin beneath, and the very noise
made this retreat delightful. Chairs and tables were disposed at
convenient intervals, and at the other end of the court broad doors had
been thrown back; beyond was a long, dark room, and the turmoil of
traffic had become a distant murmur. Within the room one or two men were
sitting at the tables, writing and sipping, but the courtyard was empty.

"You see, we shall be quiet," said Dyson. "Pray sit down here, Mr.--?"

"Wilkins. My name is Henry Wilkins."

"Sit here, Mr. Wilkins. I think you will find that a comfortable seat. I
suppose you have not been here before? This is the quiet time; the place
will be like a hive at six o'clock, and the chairs and tables will
overflow into that little alley there."

A waiter came in response to the bell; and after Dyson had politely
inquired after the health of M. Annibault, the proprietor, he ordered a
bottle of the wine of Champigny.

"The wine of Champigny," he observed to Mr. Wilkins, who was evidently a
good deal composed by the influence of the place, "is a Tourainian wine
of great merit. Ah, here it is; let me fill your glass. How do you find
it?"

"Indeed," said Mr. Wilkins, "I should have pronounced it a fine
Burgundy. The bouquet is very exquisite. I am fortunate in lighting upon
such a good Samaritan as yourself. I wonder you did not think me mad.
But if you knew the terrors that assailed me, I am sure you would no
longer be surprised at conduct which was certainly most unjustifiable."

He sipped his wine, and leant back in his chair, relishing the drip and
trickle of the fountain, and the cool greenness that hedged in this
little port of refuge.

"Yes," he said at last, "that is indeed an admirable wine. Thank you;
you will allow me to offer you another bottle?"

The waiter was summoned, and descended through a trap-door in the floor
of the dark apartment, and brought up the wine. Mr. Wilkins lit a
cigarette, and Dyson pulled out his pipe.

"Now," said Mr. Wilkins, "I promised to give you an explanation of my
strange behavior. It is rather a long story, but I see, sir, that you
are no mere cold observer of the ebb and flow of life. You take, I
think, a warm and an intelligent interest in the chances of your
fellow-creatures, and I believe you will find what I have to tell not
devoid of interest."

Mr. Dyson signified his assent to these propositions, and though he
thought Mr. Wilkins's diction a little pompous, prepared to interest
himself in his tale. The other, who had so raged with passion half an
hour before, was now perfectly cool, and when he had smoked out his
cigarette, he began in an even voice to relate the




NOVEL OF THE DARK VALLEY.


I am the son of a poor but learned clergyman in the West of
England,--but I am forgetting, these details are not of special
interest. I will briefly state, then, that my father, who was, as I
have said, a learned man, had never learnt the specious arts by which
the great are flattered, and would never condescend to the despicable
pursuit of self-advertisement. Though his fondness for ancient
ceremonies and quaint customs, combined with a kindness of heart that
was unequalled and a primitive and fervent piety, endeared him to his
moor-land parishioners, such were not the steps by which clergy then
rose in the Church, and at sixty my father was still incumbent of the
little benefice he had accepted in his thirtieth year. The income of the
living was barely sufficient to support life in the decencies which are
expected of the Anglican parson; and when my father died a few years
ago, I, his only child, found myself thrown upon the world with a
slender capital of less than a hundred pounds, and all the problem of
existence before me. I felt that there was nothing for me to do in the
country, and as usually happens in such cases, London drew me like a
magnet. One day in August, in the early morning, while the dew still
glittered on the turf, and on the high green banks of the lane, a
neighbor drove me to the railway station, and I bade good-bye to the
land of the broad moors and unearthly battlements of the wild tors. It
was six o'clock as we neared London; the faint sickly fume of the
brickfields about Acton came in puffs through the open window, and a
mist was rising from the ground. Presently the brief view of successive
streets, prim and uniform, struck me with a sense of monotony; the hot
air seemed to grow hotter; and when we had rolled beneath the dismal and
squalid houses, whose dirty and neglected back yards border the line
near Paddington, I felt as if I should be stifled in this fainting
breath of London. I got a hansom and drove off, and every street
increased my gloom; gray houses with blinds drawn down, whole
thoroughfares almost desolate, and the foot-passengers who seemed to
stagger wearily along rather than walk, all made me feel a sinking at
heart. I put up for the night at a small hotel in a street leading from
the Strand, where my father had stayed on his few brief visits to town;
and when I went out after dinner, the real gayety and bustle of the
Strand and Fleet Street could cheer me but little, for in all this great
city there was no single human being whom I could claim even as an
acquaintance. I will not weary you with the history of the next year,
for the adventures of a man who sinks are too trite to be worth
recalling. My money did not last me long; I found that I must be neatly
dressed, or no one to whom I applied would so much as listen to me; and
I must live in a street of decent reputation if I wished to be treated
with common civility. I applied for various posts, for which, as I now
see, I was completely devoid of qualification; I tried to become a clerk
without having the smallest notion of business habits, and I found, to
my cost, that a general knowledge of literature and an execrable style
of penmanship are far from being looked upon with favor in commercial
circles. I had read one of the most charming of the works of a famous
novelist of the present day, and I frequented the Fleet Street taverns
in the hope of making literary friends, and so getting the
introductions which I understood were indispensable in the career of
letters. I was disappointed; I once or twice ventured to address
gentlemen who were sitting in adjoining boxes, and I was answered,
politely indeed, but in a manner that told me my advances were unusual.
Pound by pound, my small resources melted; I could no longer think of
appearances; I migrated to a shy quarter, and my meals became mere
observances. I went out at one and returned to my room at two, but
nothing but a milk-cake had occurred in the interval. In short, I became
acquainted with misfortune; and as I sat amidst slush and ice on a seat
in Hyde Park, munching a piece of bread, I realized the bitterness of
poverty, and the feelings of a gentleman reduced to something far below
the condition of a vagrant. In spite of all discouragement I did not
desist in my efforts to earn a living. I consulted advertisement
columns, I kept my eyes open for a chance, I looked in at the windows of
stationers' shops, but all in vain. One evening I was sitting in a Free
Library, and I saw an advertisement in one of the papers. It was
something like this: "Wanted, by a gentleman a person of literary taste
and abilities as secretary and amanuensis. Must not object to travel."
Of course I knew that such an advertisement would have answers by the
hundred, and I thought my own chances of securing the post extremely
small; however, I applied at the address given, and wrote to Mr. Smith,
who was staying at a large hotel at the West End. I must confess that my
heart gave a jump when I received a note a couple of days later, asking
me to call at the Cosmopole at my earliest convenience. I do not know,
sir, what your experiences of life may have been, and so I cannot tell
whether you have known such moments. A slight sickness, my heart beating
rather more rapidly than usual, a choking in the throat, and a
difficulty of utterance; such were my sensations as I walked to the
Cosmopole. I had to mention the name twice before the hall porter could
understand me, and as I went upstairs my hands were wet. I was a good
deal struck by Mr. Smith's appearance; he looked younger than I did, and
there was something mild and hesitating about his expression. He was
reading when I came in, and he looked up when I gave my name. "My dear
sir," he said, "I am really delighted to see you. I have read very
carefully the letter you were good enough to send me. Am I to understand
that this document is in your own handwriting?" He showed me the letter
I had written, and I told him I was not so fortunate as to be able to
keep a secretary myself. "Then, sir," he went on, "the post I advertised
is at your service. You have no objection to travel, I presume?" As you
may imagine, I closed pretty eagerly with the offer he made, and thus I
entered the service of Mr. Smith. For the first few weeks I had no
special duties; I had received a quarter's salary, and a handsome
allowance was made me in lieu of board and lodging. One morning,
however, when I called at the hotel according to instructions, my master
informed me that I must hold myself in readiness for a sea-voyage, and,
to spare unnecessary detail, in the course of a fortnight we had landed
at New York. Mr. Smith told me that he was engaged on a work of a
special nature, in the compilation of which some peculiar researches had
to be made; in short, I was given to understand that we were to travel
to the far West.

After about a week had been spent in New York we took our seats in the
cars, and began a journey tedious beyond all conception. Day after day,
and night after night, the great train rolled on, threading its way
through cities the very names of which were strange to me, passing at
slow speed over perilous viaducts, skirting mountain ranges and pine
forests, and plunging into dense tracts of wood, where mile after mile
and hour after hour the same monotonous growth of brushwood met the eye,
and all along the continual clatter and rattle of the wheels upon the
ill-laid lines made it difficult to hear the voices of our
fellow-passengers. We were a heterogeneous and ever-changing company;
often I woke up in the dead of night with the sudden grinding jar of the
brakes, and looking out found that we had stopped in the shabby street
of some frame-built town, lighted chiefly by the flaring windows of the
saloon. A few rough-looking fellows would often come out to stare at the
cars, and sometimes passengers got down, and sometimes there was a party
of two or three waiting on the wooden sidewalk to get on board. Many of
the passengers were English; humble households torn up from the moorings
of a thousand years, and bound for some problematical paradise in the
alkali desert or the Rockies. I heard the men talking to one another of
the great profits to be made on the virgin soil of America, and two or
three, who were mechanics, expatiated on the wonderful wages given to
skilled labor on the railways and in the factories of the States. This
talk usually fell dead after a few minutes, and I could see a sickness
and dismay in the faces of these men as they looked at the ugly brush or
at the desolate expanse of the prairie, dotted here and there with
frame-houses, devoid of garden, or flowers or trees, standing all alone
in what might have been a great gray sea frozen into stillness. Day
after day the waving sky line, and the desolation of a land without form
or color or variety, appalled the hearts of such of us as were
Englishmen, and once in the night as I lay awake I heard a woman weeping
and sobbing, and asking what she had done to come to such a place. Her
husband tried to comfort her in the broad speech of Gloucestershire,
telling her the ground was so rich that one had only to plough it up and
it would grow sunflowers of itself, but she cried for her mother and
their old cottage and the beehives, like a little child. The sadness of
it all overwhelmed me, and I had no heart to think of other matters; the
question of what Mr. Smith could have to do in such a country, and of
what manner of literary research could be carried on in the wilderness,
hardly troubled me. Now and again my situation struck me as peculiar; I
had been engaged as a literary assistant at a handsome salary, and yet
my master was still almost a stranger to me; sometimes he would come to
where I was sitting in the cars and make a few banal remarks about the
country, but for the most part of the journey he sat by himself, not
speaking to any one, and so far as I could judge, deep in his thoughts.
It was I think on the fifth day from New York when I received the
intimation that we should shortly leave the cars; I had been watching
some distant mountains which rose wild and savage before us, and I was
wondering if there were human beings so unhappy as to speak of home in
connection with those piles of lumbered rock, when Mr. Smith touched me
lightly on the shoulder. "You will be glad to be done with the cars, I
have no doubt, Mr. Wilkins," he said. "You were looking at the
mountains, I think? Well, I hope we shall be there to-night. The train
stops at Reading, and I dare say we shall manage to find our way."

A few hours later the brakeman brought the tram to a standstill at the
Reading depot and we got out. I noticed that the town, though of course
built almost entirely of frame-houses, was larger and busier than any we
had passed for the last two days. The depot was crowded, and as the bell
and whistle sounded, I saw that a number of persons were preparing to
leave the cars, while an even greater number were waiting to get on
board. Besides the passengers, there was a pretty dense crowd of people,
some of whom had come to meet or to see off their friends and relatives,
while others were mere loafers. Several of our English fellow passengers
got down at Reading, but the confusion was so great that they were lost
to my sight almost immediately. Mr. Smith beckoned to me to follow him,
and we were soon in the thick of the mass; and the continual ringing of
bells, the hubbub of voices, the shrieking of whistles, and the hiss of
escaping steam, confused my senses, and I wondered dimly as I struggled
after my employer, where we were going, and how we should be able to
find our way through an unknown country. Mr. Smith had put on a
wide-brimmed hat, which he had sloped over his eyes, and as all the men
wore hats of the same pattern, it was with some difficulty that I
distinguished him in the crowd. We got free at last, and he struck down
a side street, and made one or two sharp turns to right and left. It was
getting dusk, and we seemed to be passing through a shy portion of the
town, there were few people about in the ill-lighted streets, and these
few were men of the most unprepossessing pattern. Suddenly we stopped
before a corner house, a man was standing at the door, apparently on the
look-out for some one, and I noticed that he and Smith gave sharp
glances one to the other.

"From New York City, I expect, mister?"

"From New York!"

"All right; they're ready, and you can have 'em when you choose. I know
my orders, you see, and I mean to run this business through."

"Very well, Mr. Evans, that is what we want. Our money is good, you
know. Bring them round."

I had stood silent, listening to this dialogue, and wondering what it
meant. Smith began to walk impatiently up and down the street, and the
man Evans was still standing at his door. He had given a sharp whistle,
and I saw him looking me over in a quiet leisurely way, as if to make
sure of my face for another time. I was thinking what all this could
mean, when an ugly, slouching lad came up a side passage, leading two
raw-boned horses.

"Get up, Mr. Wilkins, and be quick about it," said Smith. "We ought to
be on our way."

We rode off together into the gathering darkness, and before long I
looked back and saw the far plain behind us, with the lights of the town
glimmering faintly; and in front rose the mountains. Smith guided his
horse on the rough track as surely as if he had been riding along
Piccadilly, and I followed him as well as I could. I was weary and
exhausted, and scarcely took note of anything; I felt that the track was
a gradual ascent, and here and there I saw great boulders by the road.
The ride made but little impression on me; I have a faint recollection
of passing through a dense black pine forest, where our horses had to
pick their way among the rocks, and I remember the peculiar effect of
the rarefied air as we kept still mounting higher and higher. I think I
must have been half asleep for the latter half of the ride, and it was
with a shock that I heard Smith saying--

"Here we are, Wilkins. This is Blue-Rock Park. You will enjoy the view
to-morrow. To-night we will have something to eat, and then go to bed."

A man came out of a rough-looking house and took the horses, and we
found some fried steak and coarse whiskey awaiting us inside. I had come
to a strange place. There were three rooms,--the room in which we had
supper, Smith's room and my own. The deaf old man who did the work slept
in a sort of shed, and when I woke up the next morning and walked out I
found that the house stood in a sort of hollow amongst the mountains;
the clumps of pines and some enormous bluish-gray rocks that stood here
and there between the trees had given the place the name of Blue-Rock
Park. On every side the snow-covered mountains surrounded us, the breath
of the air was as wine, and when I climbed the slope and looked down, I
could see that, so far as any human fellowship was concerned I might as
well have been wrecked on some small island in mid-Pacific. The only
trace of man I could see was the rough log-house where I had slept, and
in my ignorance I did not know that there were similar houses within
comparatively easy distance, as distance is reckoned in the Rockies. But
at the moment, the utter, dreadful loneliness rushed upon me, and the
thought of the great plain and the great sea that parted me from the
world I knew, caught me by the throat, and I wondered if I should die
there in that mountain hollow. It was a terrible instant, and I have not
yet forgotten it. Of course I managed to conquer my horror; I said I
should be all the stronger for the experience, and I made up my mind to
make the best of everything. It was a rough life enough, and rough
enough board and lodging. I was left entirely to myself. Smith I
scarcely ever saw, nor did I know when he was in the house. I have often
thought he was far away, and have been surprised to see him walking out
of his room, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his
pocket; and on several occasions when I fancied he was busy in his room,
I have seen him come in with his boots covered with dust and dirt. So
far as work went I enjoyed a complete sinecure; I had nothing to do but
to walk about the valley, to eat, and to sleep. With one thing and
another I grew accustomed, to the life, and managed to make myself
pretty comfortable, and by degrees I began to venture farther away from
the house, and to explore the country. One day I had contrived to get
into a neighboring valley, and suddenly I came upon a group of men
sawing timber. I went up to them, hoping that perhaps some of them might
be Englishmen; at all events they were human beings, and I should hear
articulate speech, for the old man I have mentioned, besides being half
blind and stone deaf, was wholly dumb so far as I was concerned. I was
prepared to be welcomed in a rough and ready fashion, without much of
the forms of politeness, but the grim glances and the short gruff
answers I received astonished me. I saw the men glancing oddly at each
other, and one of them who had stopped work began fingering a gun, and I
was obliged to return on my path uttering curses on the fate which had
brought me into a land where men were more brutish than the very brutes.
The solitude of the life began to oppress me as with a nightmare, and a
few days later I determined to walk to a kind of station some miles
distant, where a rough inn was kept for the accommodation of hunters and
tourists. English gentlemen occasionally stopped there for the night,
and I thought I might perhaps fall in with some one of better manners
than the inhabitants of the country. I found as I had expected a group
of men lounging about the door of the log-house that served as a hotel,
and as I came nearer I could see that heads were put together and looks
interchanged, and when I walked up the six or seven trappers stared at
me in stony ferocity, and with something of the disgust that one eyes a
loathsome and venomous snake. I felt that I could bear it no longer, and
I called out:--

"Is there such a thing as an Englishman here, or any one with a little
civilization?"

One of the men put his hand to his belt, but his neighbor checked him
and answered me.

"You'll find we've got some of the resources of civilization before very
long, mister, and I expect you'll not fancy them extremely. But anyway,
there's an Englishman tarrying here, and I've no doubt he'll be glad to
see you. There you are, that's Mr. D'Aubernoun."

A young man, dressed like an English country squire, came and stood at
the door, and looked at me. One of the men pointed to me and said:--

"That's the individual we were talking about last night. Thought you
might like to have a look at him, squire, and here he is."

The young fellow's good-natured English face clouded over, and he
glanced sternly at me, and turned away with a gesture of contempt and
aversion.

"Sir," I cried, "I do not know what I have done to be treated in this
manner. You are my fellow-countryman, and I expected some courtesy."

He gave me a black look and made as if he would go in, but he changed
his mind, and faced me.

"You are rather imprudent, I think, to behave in this manner. You must
be counting on a forbearance which cannot last very long; which may last
a very short time, indeed. And let me tell you this, sir, you may call
yourself an Englishman and drag the name of England through the dirt,
but you need not count on any English influence to help you. If I were
you, I would not stay here much longer."

He went into the inn, and the men quietly watched my face, as I stood
there, wondering whether I was going mad. The woman of the house came
out and stared at me as if I were a wild beast or a savage, and I turned
to her, and spoke quietly.

"I am very hungry and thirsty, I have walked a long way. I have plenty
of money. Will you give me something to eat and drink?"

"No, I won't," she said. "You had better quit this."

I crawled home like a wounded beast, and lay down on my bed. It was all
a hopeless puzzle to me. I knew nothing but rage and shame and terror,
and I suffered little more when I passed by a house in an adjacent
valley, and some children who were playing outside ran from me
shrieking. I was forced to walk to find some occupation. I should have
died if I had sat down quietly in Blue Rock Park and looked all day at
the mountains; but wherever I saw a human being I saw the same glance of
hatred and aversion, and once as I was crossing a thick brake I heard a
shot, and the venomous hiss of a bullet close to my ear.

One day I heard a conversation which astounded me; I was sitting behind
a rock resting, and two men came along the track and halted. One of them
had got his feet entangled in some wild vines, and swore fiercely, but
the other laughed, and said they were useful things sometimes.

"What the hell do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing much. But they're uncommon tough, these here vines, and
sometimes rope is skerse and dear."

The man who had sworn chuckled at this, and I heard them sit down and
light their pipes.

"Have you seen him lately?" asked the humorist.

"I sighted him the other day, but the darned bullet went high. He's got
his master's luck, I expect, sir, but it can't last much longer. You
heard about him going to Jinks's and trying his brass, but the young
Britisher downed him pretty considerable, I can tell you."

"What the devil is the meaning of it?"

"I don't know, but I believe it'll have to be finished, and done in the
old style, too. You know how they fix the niggers?"

"Yes, sir, I've seen a little of that. A couple of gallons of
kerosene'll cost a dollar at Brown's store, but I should say it's cheap
anyway."

They moved off after this, and I lay still behind the rock, the sweat
pouring down my face. I was so sick that I could barely stand, and I
walked home as slowly as an old man, leaning on my stick. I knew that
the two men had been talking about me, and I knew that some terrible
death was in store for me. That night I could not sleep. I tossed on the
rough bed and tortured myself to find out the meaning of it all. At last
in the very dead of night I rose from the bed, and put on my clothes,
and went out. I did not care where I went, but I felt that I must walk
till I had tired myself out. It was a clear moonlight night, and in a
couple of hours I found I was approaching a place of dismal reputation
in the mountains, a deep cleft in the rocks, known as Black Gulf Cañon.
Many years before, an unfortunate party of Englishmen and Englishwomen
had camped here and had been surrounded by Indians. They were captured,
outraged, and put to death with almost inconceivable tortures, and the
roughest of the trappers or woodsmen gave the cañon a wide berth even in
the day-time. As I crushed through the dense brushwood which grew above
the cañon, I heard voices, and wondering who could be in such a place at
such a time, I went on, walking more carefully and making as little
noise as possible. There was a great tree growing on the very edge of
the rocks, and I lay down and looked out from behind the trunk. Black
Gulf Cañon was below me, the moonlight shining bright into its very
depths from midheaven, and casting shadows as black as death from the
pointed rock, and all the sheer rock on the other side, overhanging the
cañon, was in darkness. At intervals a light veil obscured the
moonlight, as a filmy cloud fleeted across the moon; and a bitter wind
blew shrill across the gulf. I looked down as I have said, and saw
twenty men standing in a semicircle round a rock; I counted them one by
one, and knew most of them. They were the very vilest of the vile, more
vile than any den in London could show, and there was murder and worse
than murder on the heads of not a few. Facing them and me stood Mr.
Smith with the rock before him, and on the rock was a great pair of
scales, such as are used in the stores. I heard his voice ringing down
the cañon as I lay beside the tree, and my heart turned cold as I heard
it.

"Life for gold," he cried, "a life for gold. The blood and the life of
an enemy for every pound of gold."

A man stepped out and raised one hand, and with the other flung a bright
lump of something into the pan of the scales, which clanged down, and
Smith muttered something in his ear. Then he cried again:--

"Blood for gold; for a pound of gold, the life of an enemy. For every
pound of gold upon the scales, a life."

One by one the men came forward, each lifting up his right hand; and the
gold was weighed in the scales, and each time Smith leaned forward and
spoke to each man in his ear. Then he cried again:--

"Desire and lust, for gold on the scales. For every pound of gold,
enjoyment of desire."

I saw the same thing happen as before; the uplifted hand, and the metal
weighed, and the mouth whispering, and black passion on every face.

Then, one by one, I saw the men again step up to Smith. A muttered
conversation seemed to take place; I could see that Smith was explaining
and directing, and I noticed that he gesticulated a little as one who
points out the way, and once or twice he moved his hands quickly as if
he would show that the path was clear and could not be missed. I kept my
eyes so intently on his figure that I noted little else, and at last it
was with a start that I realized that the cañon was empty. A moment
before I thought I had seen the group of villainous faces, and the two
standing, a little apart by the rock; I had looked down a moment, and
when I glanced again into the cañon there was no one there. In dumb
terror I made my way home, and I fell asleep in an instant from
exhaustion. No doubt I should have slept on for many hours, but when I
woke up, the sun was only rising, and the light shone in on my bed. I
had started up from sleep with the sensation of having received a
violent shock, and as I looked in confusion about me I saw to my
amazement that there were three men in the room. One of them had his
hand on my shoulder and spoke to me.

"Come, mister, wake up. Your time's up now, I reckon, and the boys are
waiting for you outside, and they're in a big hurry. Come on; you can
put on your clothes, it's kind of chilly this morning."

I saw the other two men smiling sourly at each other, but I understood
nothing. I simply pulled on my clothes, and said I was ready.

"All right, come on then. You go first, Nichols, and Jim and I will give
the gentleman an arm."

They took me out into the sunlight, and then I understood the meaning of
a dull murmur that had vaguely perplexed me while I was dressing. There
were about two hundred men waiting outside, and some women too, and when
they saw me there was a low muttering growl. I did not know what I had
done, but that noise made my heart beat and the sweat come out on my
face. I saw confusedly, as through a veil, the tumult and tossing of the
crowd, discordant voices were speaking, and amongst all those faces
there was not one glance of mercy, but a fury of lust that I did not
understand. I found myself presently walking in a sort of procession up
the slope of the valley, and on every side of me there were men with
revolvers in their hands. Now and then a voice struck me, and I heard
words and sentences of which I could form no connected story. But I
understood that there was one sentence of execration; I heard scraps of
stories that seemed strange and improbable. Some one was talking of men,
lured by cunning devices from their homes and murdered with hideous
tortures, found writhing like wounded snakes in dark and lonely places,
only crying for some one to stab them to the heart, and so end their
torments; and I heard another voice speaking of innocent girls who had
vanished for a day or two, and then had come back and died, blushing red
with shame even in the agonies of death. I wondered what it all meant,
and what was to happen, but I was so weary that I walked on in a dream,
scarcely longing for anything but sleep. At last we stopped. We had
reached the summit of the hill, overlooking Blue Rock Valley, and I saw
that I was standing beneath a clump of trees where I had often sat. I
was in the midst of a ring of armed men, and I saw that two or three men
were very busy with piles of wood, while others were fingering a rope.
Then there was a stir in the crowd, and a man was pushed forward. His
hands and feet were tightly bound with cord, and though his face was
unutterably villainous I pitied him for the agony that worked his
features and twisted his lips. I knew him; he was amongst those that had
gathered round Smith in Black Gulf Cañon. In an instant he was unbound,
and stripped naked; and borne beneath one of the trees, and his neck
encircled by a noose that went around the trunk. A hoarse voice gave
some kind of order; there was a rush of feet, and the rope tightened;
and there before me I saw the blackened face and the writhing limbs and
the shameful agony of death. One after another, half a dozen men, all of
whom I had seen in the cañon the night before, were strangled before me,
and their bodies were flung forth on the ground. Then there was a pause,
and the man who had roused me a short while before, came up to me and
said:--

"Now, mister, it's your turn. We give you five minutes to cast up your
accounts, and when that's clocked, by the living God we will burn you
alive at that tree."

It was then I awoke and understood. I cried out:--

"Why, what have I done? Why should you hurt me? I am a harmless man, I
never did you any wrong." I covered my face with my hands; it seemed so
pitiful, and it was such a terrible death.

"What have I done?" I cried again. "You must take me for some other man.
You cannot know me."

"You black-hearted devil," said the man at my side, "we know you well
enough. There's not a man within thirty miles of this that won't curse
Jack Smith when you are burning in hell."

"My name is not Smith," I said, with some hope left in me. "My name is
Wilkins. I was Mr. Smith's secretary, but I knew nothing of him."

"Hark at the black liar," said the man. "Secretary be damned! You were
clever enough, I dare say, to slink out at night, and keep your face in
the dark, but we've tracked you out at last. But your time's up. Come
along."

I was dragged to the tree and bound to it with chains, and I saw the
piles of wood heaped all about me, and shut my eyes. Then I felt myself
drenched all over with some liquid, and looked again, and a woman
grinned at me. She had just emptied a great can of petroleum over me and
over the wood. A voice shouted, "Fire away," and I fainted and knew
nothing more.

When I opened my eyes I was lying on a bed in a bare comfortless room. A
doctor was holding some strong salts to my nostrils, and a gentleman
standing by the bed, whom I afterwards found to be the sheriff,
addressed me:--

"Say, mister," he began, "you've had an uncommon narrow squeak for it.
The boys were just about lighting up when I came along with the posse,
and I had as much as I could do to bring you off, I can tell you. And,
mind you, I don't blame them; they had made up their minds, you see,
that you were the head of the Black Gulf gang, and at first nothing I
could say would persuade them you weren't Jack Smith. Luckily, a man
from here named Evans, that came along with us, allowed he had seen you
with Jack Smith, and that you were yourself. So we brought you along and
jailed you, but you can go if you like, when you're through with this
faint turn."

I got on the cars the next day, and in three weeks I was in London;
again almost penniless. But from that time my fortune seemed to change.
I made influential friends in all directions; bank directors courted my
company, and editors positively flung themselves into my arms. I had
only to choose my career, and after a while I determined that I was
meant by nature for a life of comparative leisure. With an ease that
seemed almost ridiculous I obtained a well-paid position in connection
with a prosperous political club. I have charming chambers in a central
neighborhood close to the parks; the club _chef_ exerts himself when I
lunch or dine, and the rarest vintages in the cellar are always at my
disposal. Yet, since my return to London, I have never known a day's
security or peace; I tremble when I awake lest Smith should be standing
at my bed, and every step I take seems to bring me nearer to the edge of
the precipice. Smith, I knew, had escaped free from the raid of the
vigilantes, and I grew faint at the thought that he would in all
probability return to London, and that suddenly and unprepared I should
meet him face to face. Every morning as I left my house, I would peer up
and down the street, expecting to see that dreaded figure awaiting me; I
have delayed at street corners, my heart in my mouth, sickening at the
thought that a few quick steps might bring us together; I could not bear
to frequent the theatres or music halls, lest by some bizarre chance he
should prove to be my neighbor. Sometimes, I have been forced, against
my will, to walk out at night, and then in silent squares the shadows
have made me shudder, and in the medley of meetings in the crowded
thoroughfares, I have said to myself, "It must come sooner or later; he
will surely return to town, and I shall see him when I feel most
secure." I scanned the newspapers for hint or intimation of approaching
danger, and no small type nor report of trivial interest was allowed to
pass unread. Especially I read and re-read the advertisement columns,
but without result. Months passed by and I was undisturbed till, though
I felt far from safe, I no longer suffered from the intolerable
oppression of instant and ever present terror. This afternoon as I was
walking quietly along Oxford Street, I raised my eyes, and looked across
the road, and then at last I saw the man who had so long haunted my
thoughts.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Wilkins finished his wine, and leaned back in his chair, looking
sadly at Dyson; and then, as if a thought struck him, fished out of an
inner pocket a leather letter case, and handed a newspaper cutting
across the table.

Dyson glanced closely at the slip, and saw that it had been extracted
from the columns of an evening paper. It ran as follows:--

               WHOLESALE LYNCHING.

                 SHOCKING STORY.

A Dalziel telegram from Reading (Colorado) states that advices received
there from Blue Rock Park report a frightful instance of popular
vengeance. For some time the neighborhood has been terrorized by the
crimes of a gang of desperadoes, who, under the cover of a carefully
planned organization, have perpetrated the most infamous cruelties on
men and women. A Vigilance Committee was formed, and it was found that
the leader of the gang was a person named Smith, living in Blue Rock
Park. Action was taken, and six of the worst in the band were summarily
strangled in the presence of two or three hundred men and women. Smith
is said to have escaped.

       *       *       *       *       *

"This is a terrible story," said Dyson; "I can well believe that your
days and nights are haunted by such fearful scenes as you have
described. But surely you have no need to fear Smith? He has much more
cause to fear you. Consider: you have only to lay your information
before the police, and a warrant would be immediately issued for his
arrest. Besides, you will, I am sure, excuse me for what I am going to
say."

"My dear sir," said Mr. Wilkins, "I hope you will speak to me with
perfect freedom."

"Well, then, I must confess that my impression was that you were rather
disappointed at not being able to stop the man before he drove off. I
thought you seemed annoyed that you could not get across the street."

"Sir, I did not know what I was about. I caught sight of the man, but it
was only for a moment, and the agony you witnessed was the agony of
suspense. I was not perfectly certain of the face; and the horrible
thought that Smith was again in London overwhelmed me. I shuddered at
the idea of this incarnate fiend, whose soul is black with shocking
crimes, mingling free and unobserved amongst the harmless crowds,
meditating perhaps a new and more fearful cycle of infamies. I tell
you, sir, that an awful being stalks through the streets, a being before
whom the sunlight itself should blacken, and the summer air grow chill
and dank. Such thoughts as these rushed upon me with the force of a
whirlwind; I lost my senses."

"I see. I partly understand your feelings, but I would impress on you
that you have nothing really to fear. Depend upon it, Smith will not
molest you in any way. You must remember he himself has had a warning;
and indeed from the brief glance I had of him, he seemed to me to be a
frightened-looking man. However, I see it is getting late, and if you
will excuse me, Mr. Wilkins, I think I will be going. I dare say we
shall often meet here."

Dyson walked off smartly, pondering the strange story chance had brought
him, and finding on cool reflection that there was something a little
strange in Mr. Wilkins's manner, for which not even so weird a catalogue
of experiences could altogether account.




ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING BROTHER.


Mr. Charles Phillipps was, as has been hinted, a gentleman of pronounced
scientific tastes. In his early days he had devoted himself with fond
enthusiasm to the agreeable study of biology, and a brief monograph on
the Embryology of the Microscopic Holothuria had formed his first
contribution to the belles lettres. Later, he had somewhat relaxed the
severity of his pursuits, and had dabbled in the more frivolous subjects
of palæontology and ethnology; he had a cabinet in his sitting-room
whose drawers were stuffed with rude flint implements, and a charming
fetish from the South Seas was the dominant note in the decorative
scheme of the apartment. Flattering himself with the title of
materialist, he was in truth one of the most credulous of men, but he
required a marvel to be neatly draped in the robes of science before he
would give it any credit, and the wildest dreams took solid shape to him
if only the nomenclature were severe and irreproachable; he laughed at
the witch, but quailed before the powers of the hypnotist, lifting his
eyebrows when Christianity was mentioned, but adoring protyle and the
ether. For the rest, he prided himself on a boundless scepticism; the
average tale of wonder he heard with nothing but contempt, and he would
certainly not have credited a word or syllable of Dyson's story of the
pursuer and pursued unless the gold coin had been produced as visible
and tangible evidence. As it was he half suspected that Dyson had
imposed on him; he knew his friend's disordered fancies, and his habit
of conjuring up the marvellous to account for the entirely commonplace;
and on the whole he was inclined to think that the so-called facts in
the odd adventure had been gravely distorted in the telling. Since the
evening on which he had listened to the tale, he had paid Dyson a visit,
and had delivered himself of some serious talk on the necessity of
accurate observation, and the folly, as he put it, of using a
kaleidoscope instead of a telescope in the view of things, to which
remarks his friend had listened with a smile that was extremely sardonic.
"My dear fellow," Dyson had remarked at last, "you will allow me to tell
you that I see your drift perfectly. However, you will be astonished to
hear that I consider you to be the visionary, while I am a sober and
serious spectator of human life. You have gone round the circle, and
while you fancy yourself far in the golden land of new philosophies, you
are in reality a dweller in a metaphorical Clapham; your scepticism has
defeated itself and become a monstrous credulity; you are in fact in the
position of the bat or owl, I forget which it was, who denied the
existence of the sun at noonday, and I shall be astonished if you do not
one day come to me full of contrition for your manifold intellectual
errors, with a humble resolution to see things in their true light for
the future." This tirade had left Mr. Phillipps unimpressed; he
considered Dyson as hopeless, and he went home to gloat over some
primitive stone implements that a friend had sent him from India. He
found that his landlady, seeing them displayed in all their rude
formlessness upon the table, had removed the collection to the dustbin,
and had replaced it by lunch; and the afternoon was spent in malodorous
research. Mrs. Brown, hearing these stones spoken of as very valuable
knives, had called him in his hearing "poor Mr. Phillipps," and between
rage and evil odors he spent a sorry afternoon. It was four o'clock
before he had completed his work of rescue; and, overpowered with the
flavors of decaying cabbage-leaves, Phillipps felt that he must have a
walk to gain an appetite for the evening meal. Unlike Dyson, he walked
fast, with his eyes on the pavement, absorbed in his thoughts and
oblivious of the life around him; and he could not have told by what
streets he had passed, when he suddenly lifted up his eyes and found
himself in Leicester Square. The grass and flowers pleased him, and he
welcomed the opportunity of resting for a few minutes, and glancing
round, he saw a bench which had only one occupant, a lady, and as she
was seated at one end, Phillipps took up a position at the other
extremity, and began to pass in angry review the events of the
afternoon. He had noticed as he came up to the bench that the person
already there was neatly dressed, and to all appearance young; her face
he could not see, as it was turned away in apparent contemplation of the
shrubs, and moreover shielded with her hand; but it would be doing
wrong to Mr. Phillipps to imagine that his choice of a seat was dictated
by any hopes of an affair of the heart; he had simply preferred the
company of one lady to that of five dirty children, and having seated
himself was immersed directly in thoughts of his misfortunes. He had
meditated changing his lodgings; but now, on a judicial review of the
case in all its bearings, his calmer judgment told him that the race of
landladies is like to the race of the leaves, and that there was but
little to choose between them. He resolved, however, to talk to Mrs.
Brown, the offender, very coolly and yet severely, to point out the
extreme indiscretion of her conduct, and to express a hope for better
things in the future. With this decision registered in his mind,
Phillipps was about to get up from the seat and move off, when he was
intensely annoyed to hear a stifled sob, evidently from the lady, who
still continued her contemplation of the shrubs and flower-beds. He
clutched his stick desperately, and in a moment would have been in full
retreat, when the lady turned her face towards him, and with a mute
entreaty bespoke his attention. She was a young girl with a quaint and
piquant rather than a beautiful face, and she was evidently in the
bitterest distress, and Mr. Phillipps sat down again, and cursed his
chances heartily. The young lady looked at him with a pair of charming
eyes of a shining hazel, which showed no trace of tears, though a
handkerchief was in her hand; she bit her lip, and seemed to struggle
with some overpowering grief, and her whole attitude was all beseeching
and imploring. Phillipps sat on the edge of the bench gazing awkwardly
at her, and wondering what was to come next, and she looked at him still
without speaking.

"Well, madam," he said at last, "I understood from your gesture that you
wished to speak to me. Is there anything I can do for you? Though, if
you will pardon me, I cannot help saying that that seems highly
improbable."

"Ah, sir," she said in a low murmuring voice, "do not speak harshly to
me. I am in sore straits, and I thought from your face that I could
safely ask your sympathy, if not your help."

"Would you kindly tell me what is the matter?" said Phillipps. "Perhaps
you would like some tea?"

"I knew I could not be mistaken," the lady replied. "That offer of
refreshment bespeaks a generous mind. But tea, alas! is powerless to
console me. If you will let me, I will endeavor to explain my trouble."

"I should be glad if you would."

"I will do so, and I will try and be brief, in spite of the numerous
complications which have made me, young as I am, tremble before what
seems the profound and terrible mystery of existence. Yet the grief
which now racks my very soul is but too simple; I have lost my brother."

"Lost your brother! How on earth can that be?"

"I see I must trouble you with a few particulars. My brother, then, who
is by some years my elder, is a tutor in a private school in the extreme
north of London. The want of means deprived him of the advantages of a
University education; and lacking the stamp of a degree, he could not
hope for that position which his scholarship and his talents entitled
him to claim. He was thus forced to accept the post of classical master
at Dr. Saunderson's Highgate Academy for the sons of gentlemen, and he
has performed his duties with perfect satisfaction to his principal for
some years. My personal history need not trouble you; it will be enough
if I tell you that for the last month I have been governess in a family
residing at Tooting. My brother and I have always cherished the warmest
mutual affection; and though circumstances into which I need not enter
have kept us apart for some time, yet we have never lost sight of one
another. We made up our minds that unless one of us was absolutely
unable to rise from a bed of sickness, we would never let a week pass by
without meeting, and some time ago we chose this square as our
rendezvous on account of its central position and its convenience of
access. And indeed, after a week of distasteful toil, my brother felt
little inclination for much walking, and we have often spent two or
three hours on this bench, speaking of our prospects and of happier
days, when we were children. In the early spring it was cold and chilly;
still we enjoyed the short respite, and I think that we were often taken
for a pair of lovers, as we sat close together, eagerly talking.
Saturday after Saturday we have met each other here, and though the
doctor told him it was madness, my brother would not allow the influenza
to break the appointment. That was some time ago; last Saturday we had
a long and happy afternoon, and separated more cheerfully than usual,
feeling that the coming week would be bearable, and resolving that our
next meeting should be if possible still more pleasant. I arrived here
at the time agreed upon, four o'clock, and sat down and watched for my
brother, expecting every moment to see him advancing towards me from
that gate at the north side of the square. Five minutes passed by, and
he had not arrived; I thought he must have missed his train, and the
idea that our interview would be cut short by twenty minutes, or perhaps
half an hour, saddened me; I had hoped we should be so happy together
to-day. Suddenly, moved by I know not what impulse, I turned abruptly
round, and how can I describe to you my astonishment when I saw my
brother advancing slowly towards me from the southern side of the
square, accompanied by another person. My first thought, I remember, had
in it something of resentment that this man, whoever he was, should
intrude himself into our meeting; I wondered who it could possibly be,
for my brother had, I may say, no intimate friends. Then as I looked
still at the advancing figures, another feeling took possession of me;
it was a sensation of bristling fear, the fear of the child in the dark,
unreasonable and unreasoning, but terrible, clutching at my heart as
with the cold grip of a dead man's hands. Yet I overcame the feeling,
and looked steadily at my brother, waiting for him to speak, and more
closely at his companion. Then I noticed that this man was leading my
brother rather than walking arm-in-arm with him; he was a tall man,
dressed in quite ordinary fashion. He wore a high bowler hat, and, in
spite of the warmth of the day, a plain black overcoat, tightly
buttoned, and I noticed his trousers, of a quiet black and gray stripe.
The face was commonplace too, and indeed I cannot recall any special
features, or any trick of expression; for though I looked at him as he
came near, curiously enough his face made no impression on me, it was as
though I had seen a well-made mask. They passed in front of me, and to
my unutterable astonishment I heard my brother's voice speaking to me,
though his lips did not move, nor his eyes look into mine. It was a
voice I cannot describe, though I knew it, but the words came to my ears
as if mingled with plashing water and the sound of a shallow brook
flowing amidst stones. I heard, then, the words, 'I cannot stay,' and
for a moment the heavens and the earth seemed to rush together with the
sound of thunder, and I was thrust forth from the world into a black
void without beginning and without end. For, as my brother passed me, I
saw the hand that held him by the arm, and seemed to guide him, and in
one moment of horror I realized that it was as a formless thing that has
mouldered for many years in the grave. The flesh was peeled in strips
from the bones, and hung apart dry and granulated, and the fingers that
encircled my brother's arm were all unshapen, claw-like things, and one
was but a stump from which the end had rotted off. When I recovered my
senses I saw the two passing out by that gate. I paused for a moment,
and then with a rush as of fire to my heart I knew that no horror
could stay me, but that I must follow my brother and save him, even
though all hell rose up against me. I ran out and looked up the
pavement, and saw the two figures walking amidst the crowd. I ran across
the road, and saw them turn up that side street, and I reached the
corner a moment later. In vain I looked to right and left, for neither
my brother nor his strange guardian was in sight; two elderly men were
coming down arm-in-arm, and a telegraph boy was walking lustily along
whistling. I remained there a moment horror-struck, and then I bowed my
head and returned to this seat, where you found me. Now, sir, do you
wonder at my grief? Oh, tell me what has happened to my brother, or I
feel I shall go mad."

Mr. Phillipps, who had listened with exemplary patience to this tale,
hesitated a moment before he spoke.

"My dear madam," he said at length, "you have known how to engage me in
your service, not only as a man, but as a student of science. As a
fellow-creature I pity you most profoundly; you must have suffered
extremely from what you saw, or rather from what you fancied you saw.
For, as a scientific observer, it is my duty to tell you the plain
truth, which, indeed, besides being true, must also console you. Allow
me to ask you then to describe your brother."

"Certainly," said the lady, eagerly; "I can describe him accurately. My
brother is a somewhat young-looking man; he is pale, has small black
whiskers, and wears spectacles. He has rather a timid, almost a
frightened expression, and looks about him nervously from side to side.
Think, think! Surely you must have seen him. Perhaps you are an
_habitué_ of this engaging quarter; you may have met him on some
previous Saturday. I may have been mistaken in supposing that he turned
up that side street; he may have gone on, and you may have passed each
other. Oh, tell me, sir, whether you have not seen him?"

"I am afraid I do not keep a very sharp lookout when I am walking," said
Phillipps, who would have passed his mother unnoticed; "but I am sure
your description is admirable. And now will you describe the person,
who, you say, held your brother by the arm?"

"I cannot do so. I told you, his face seemed devoid of expression or
salient feature. It was like a mask."

"Exactly; you cannot describe what you have never seen. I need hardly
point out to you the conclusion to be drawn; you have been the victim of
an hallucination. You expected to see your brother, you were alarmed
because you did not see him, and unconsciously, no doubt, your brain
went to work, and finally you saw a mere projection of your own morbid
thoughts; a vision of your absent brother, and a mere confusion of
terrors incorporated in a figure which you can't describe. Of course
your brother has been in some way prevented from coming to meet you as
usual. I expect you will hear from him in a day or two."

The lady looked seriously at Mr. Phillipps, and then for a second there
seemed almost a twinkling as of mirth about her eyes, but her face
clouded sadly at the dogmatic conclusions to which the scientist was
led so irresistibly.

"Ah," she said, "you do not know. I cannot doubt the evidence of my
waking senses. Besides, perhaps I have had experiences even more
terrible. I acknowledge the force of your arguments, but a woman has
intuitions which never deceive her. Believe me, I am not hysterical;
feel my pulse, it is quite regular."

She stretched out her hand with a dainty gesture, and a glance that
enraptured Phillipps in spite of himself. The hand held out to him was
soft and white and warm, and as, in some confusion, he placed his
fingers on the purple vein, he felt profoundly touched by the spectacle
of love and grief before him.

"No," he said, as he released her wrist, "as you say, you are evidently
quite yourself. Still, you must be aware that living men do not possess
dead hands. That sort of thing doesn't happen. It is, of course, barely
possible that you did see your brother with another gentleman, and that
important business prevented him from stopping. As for the wonderful
hand, there may have been some deformity, a finger shot off by accident,
or something of that sort."

The lady shook her head mournfully.

"I see you are a determined rationalist," she said. "Did you not hear me
say that I have had experiences even more terrible? I too was once a
sceptic, but after what I have known I can no longer affect to doubt."

"Madam," replied Mr. Phillipps, "no one shall make me deny my faith. I
will never believe, nor will I pretend to believe, that two and two make
five, nor will I on any pretences admit the existence of two-sided
triangles."

"You are a little hasty," rejoined the lady. "But may I ask you if you
ever heard the name of Professor Gregg, the authority on ethnology and
kindred subjects?"

"I have done much more than merely hear of Professor Gregg," said
Phillipps. "I always regarded him as one of our most acute and
clear-headed observers; and his last publication, the 'Text-book of
Ethnology,' struck me as being quite admirable in its kind. Indeed, the
book had but come into my hands when I heard of the terrible accident
which cut short Gregg's career. He had, I think, taken a country house
in the West of England for the summer, and is supposed to have fallen
into a river. So far as I remember, his body was never recovered."

"Sir, I am sure that you are discreet. Your conversation seems to
declare as much, and the very title of that little work of yours which
you mentioned, assures me that you are no empty trifler. In a word, I
feel that I may depend on you. You appear to be under the impression
that Professor Gregg is dead; I have no reason to believe that that is
the case."

"What?" cried Phillipps, astonished and perturbed. "You do not hint that
there was anything disgraceful? I cannot believe it. Gregg was a man of
clearest character; his private life was one of great benevolence; and
though I myself am free from delusions, I believe him to have been a
sincere and devout Christian. Surely you cannot mean to insinuate that
some disreputable history forced him to flee the country?"

"Again you are in a hurry," replied the lady. "I said nothing of all
this. Briefly, then, I must tell you that Professor Gregg left his house
one morning in full health both of mind and body. He never returned, but
his watch and chain, a purse containing three sovereigns in gold and
some loose silver, with a ring that he wore habitually, were found three
days later on a wild and savage hillside, many miles from the river.
These articles were placed beside a limestone rock of fantastic form;
they had been wrapped into a parcel with a kind of rough parchment which
was secured with gut. The parcel was opened, and the inner side of the
parchment bore an inscription done with some red substance; the
characters were undecipherable, but seemed to be a corrupt cuneiform."

"You interest me intensely," said Phillips. "Would you mind continuing
your story? The circumstance you have mentioned seems to me of the most
inexplicable character, and I thirst for an elucidation."

The young lady seemed to meditate for a moment, and she then proceeded
to relate the




NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL.


I must now give you some fuller particulars of my history. I am the
daughter of a civil engineer, Steven Lally by name, who was so
unfortunate as to die suddenly at the outset of his career, and before
he had accumulated sufficient means to support his wife and her two
children. My mother contrived to keep the small household going on
resources which must have been incredibly small; we lived in a remote
country village, because most of the necessaries of life were cheaper
than in a town, but even so we were brought up with the severest
economy. My father was a clever and well-read man, and left behind him a
small but select collection of books, containing the best Greek, Latin,
and English classics, and these books were the only amusement we
possessed. My brother, I remember, learned Latin out of Descartes'
"Meditationes," and I, in place of the little tales which children are
usually told to read, had nothing more charming than a translation of
the "Gesta Romanorum." We grew up thus, quiet and studious children, and
in course of time my brother provided for himself in the manner I have
mentioned. I continued to live at home; my poor mother had become an
invalid, and demanded my continual care, and about two years ago she
died after many months of painful illness. My situation was a terrible
one; the shabby furniture barely sufficed to pay the debts I had been
forced to contract, and the books I despatched to my brother, knowing
how he would value them. I was absolutely alone. I was aware how poorly
my brother was paid; and though I came up to London in the hope of
finding employment, with the understanding that he would defray my
expenses, I swore it should only be for a month, and that if I could not
in that time find some work, I would starve rather than deprive him of
the few miserable pounds he had laid by for his day of trouble. I took a
little room in a distant suburb, the cheapest that I could find. I lived
on bread and tea, and I spent my time in vain answering of
advertisements, and vainer walks to addresses I had noted. Day followed
on day, and week on week, and still I was unsuccessful, till at last the
term I had appointed drew to a close, and I saw before me the grim
prospect of slowly dying of starvation. My landlady was good-natured in
her way; she knew the slenderness of my means, and I am sure that she
would not have turned me out of doors. It remained for me then to go
away, and to try and die in some quiet place. It was winter then, and a
thick white fog gathered in the early part of the afternoon, becoming
more dense as the day wore on; it was a Sunday, I remember, and the
people of the house were at chapel. At about three o'clock I crept out
and walked away as quickly as I could, for I was weak from abstinence.
The white mist wrapped all the streets in silence, and a hard frost had
gathered thick upon the bare branches of the trees, and frost crystals
glittered on the wooden fences, and on the cold cruel ground beneath my
feet. I walked on, turning to right and left in utter haphazard, without
caring to look up at the names of the streets, and all that I remember
of my walk on that Sunday afternoon seems but the broken fragments of an
evil dream. In a confused vision I stumbled on, through roads half town
and half country; gray fields melting into the cloudy world of mist on
one side of me, and on the other comfortable villas with a glow of
firelight flickering on the walls; but all unreal, red brick walls, and
lighted windows, vague trees, and glimmering country, gas-lamps
beginning to star the white shadows, the vanishing perspectives of the
railway line beneath high embankments, the green and red of the signal
lamps,--all these were but momentary pictures flashed on my tired brain
and senses numbed by hunger. Now and then I would hear a quick step
ringing on the iron road, and men would pass me well wrapped up, walking
fast for the sake of warmth, and no doubt eagerly foretasting the
pleasures of a glowing hearth, with curtains tightly drawn about the
frosted panes, and the welcomes of their friends; but as the early
evening darkened and night approached, foot-passengers got fewer and
fewer, and I passed through street after street alone. In the white
silence I stumbled on, as desolate as if I trod the streets of a buried
city; and as I grew more weak and exhausted, something of the horror of
death was folding thickly round my heart. Suddenly, as I turned a
corner, some one accosted me courteously beneath the lamp-post, and I
heard a voice asking if I could kindly point the way to Avon Road. At
the sudden shock of human accents I was prostrated and my strength gave
way, and I fell all huddled on the side-walk and wept and sobbed and
laughed in violent hysteria. I had gone out prepared to die, and as I
stepped across the threshold that had sheltered me, I consciously bade
adieu to all hopes and all remembrances; the door clanged behind me with
the noise of thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on the
brief passages of my life, and that henceforth I was to walk a little
way in a world of gloom and shadow; I entered on the stage of the first
act of death. Then came my wandering in the mist, the whiteness wrapping
all things, the void streets, and muffled silence, till when that voice
spoke to me, it was as if I had died and life returned to me. In a few
minutes I was able to compose my feelings, and as I rose I saw that I
was confronted by a middle-aged gentleman of specious appearance, neatly
and correctly dressed. He looked at me with an expression of great pity,
but before I could stammer out my ignorance of the neighborhood, for
indeed I had not the slightest notion of where I had wandered, he spoke.

"My dear madam," he said, "you seem in some terrible distress. You
cannot think how you alarmed me. But may I inquire the nature of your
trouble? I assure you that you can safely confide in me."

"You are very kind," I replied; "but I fear there is nothing to be done.
My condition seems a hopeless one."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You are too young to talk like that. Come, let
us walk down here, and you must tell me your difficulty. Perhaps I may
be able to help you."

There was something very soothing and persuasive in his manner, and as
we walked together, I gave him an outline of my story, and told of the
despair that had oppressed me almost to death.

"You were wrong to give in so completely," he said, when I was silent.
"A month is too short a time in which to feel one's way in London.
London, let me tell you, Miss Lally, does not lie open and undefended;
it is a fortified place, fossed and double-moated with curious
intricacies. As must always happen in large towns, the conditions of
life have become hugely artificial; no mere simple palisade is run up to
oppose the man or woman who would take the place by storm, but serried
lines of subtle contrivances, mines, and pitfalls which it needs a
strange skill to overcome. You, in your simplicity, fancied you had only
to shout for these walls to sink into nothingness, but the time is gone
for such startling victories as these. Take courage; you will learn the
secret of success before very long."

"Alas, sir," I replied, "I have no doubt your conclusions are correct,
but at the present moment I seem to be in a fair way to die of
starvation. You spoke of a secret; for heaven's sake, tell it me, if you
have any pity for my distress."

He laughed genially. "There lies the strangeness of it all. Those who
know the secret cannot tell it if they would; it is positively as
ineffable as the central doctrine of Freemasonry. But I may say this,
that you yourself have penetrated at least the outer husk of the
mystery," and he laughed again.

"Pray do not jest with me," I said. "What have I done, _que sais-je_? I
am so far ignorant that I have not the slightest idea of how my next
meal is to be provided."

"Excuse me. You ask what you have done? You have met me. Come, we will
fence no longer. I see you have self-education, the only education
which is not infinitely pernicious, and I am in want of a governess for
my two children. I have been a widower for some years; my name is Gregg.
I offer you the post I have named, and shall we say a salary of a
hundred a year?"

I could only stutter out my thanks, and slipping a card with his address
and a bank-note by way of earnest into my hand, Mr. Gregg bade me
good-bye, asking me to call in a day or two.

Such was my introduction to Professor Gregg, and can you wonder that the
remembrance of despair and the cold blast that had blown from the gates
of death upon me, made me regard him as a second father? Before the
close of the week I was installed in my new duties; the professor had
leased an old brick manor house in a western suburb of London, and here,
surrounded by pleasant lawns and orchards, and soothed with the murmur
of the ancient elms that rocked their boughs above the roof, the new
chapter of my life began. Knowing as you do the nature of the
professor's occupations, you will not be surprised to hear that the
house teemed with books; and cabinets full of strange and even hideous
objects filled every available nook in the vast low rooms. Gregg was a
man whose one thought was for knowledge, and I too before long caught
something of his enthusiasm, and strove to enter into his passion for
research. In a few months I was perhaps more his secretary than the
governess of the two children, and many a night I have sat at the desk
in the glow of the shaded lamp while he, pacing up and down in the rich
gloom of the firelight, dictated to me the substance of his "Text-book
of Ethnology." But amidst these more sober and accurate studies I always
detected a something hidden, a longing and desire for some object to
which he did not allude, and now and then he would break short in what
he was saying and lapse into revery, entranced, as it seemed to me, by
some distant prospect of adventurous discovery. The text-book was at
last finished, and we began to receive proofs from the printers, which
were intrusted to me for a first reading, and then underwent the final
revision of the professor. All the while his weariness of the actual
business he was engaged on increased, and it was with the joyous laugh
of a schoolboy when term is over that he one day handed me a copy of the
book. "There," he said, "I have kept my word; I promised to write it,
and it is done with. Now I shall be free to live for stranger things; I
confess it, Miss Lally, I covet the renown of Columbus. You will, I
hope, see me play the part of an explorer."

"Surely," I said, "there is little left to explore. You have been born a
few hundred years too late for that."

"I think you are wrong," he replied; "there are still, depend upon it,
quaint undiscovered countries and continents of strange extent. Ah, Miss
Lally, believe me, we stand amidst sacraments and mysteries full of awe,
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Life, believe me, is no
simple thing, no mass of gray matter and congeries of veins and muscles
to be laid naked by the surgeon's knife; man is the secret which I am
about to explore, and before I can discover him I must cross over
weltering seas indeed, and oceans and the mists of many thousand years.
You know the myth of the lost Atlantis; what if it be true, and I am
destined to be called the discoverer of that wonderful land?"

I could see excitement boiling beneath his words, and in his face was
the heat of the hunter; before me stood a man who believed himself
summoned to tourney with the unknown. A pang of joy possessed me when I
reflected that I was to be in a way associated with him in the
adventure, and I too burned with the lust of the chase, not pausing to
consider that I knew not what we were to unshadow.

The next morning Professor Gregg took me into his inner study, where
ranged against the wall stood a nest of pigeon-holes, every drawer
neatly labelled, and the results of years of toil classified in a few
feet of space.

"Here," he said, "is my life; here are all the facts which I have
gathered together with so much pains, and yet it is all nothing. No,
nothing to what I am about to attempt. Look at this;" and he took me to
an old bureau, a piece fantastic and faded, which stood in a corner of
the room. He unlocked the front and opened one of the drawers.

"A few scraps of paper," he went on, pointing to the drawer, "and a lump
of black stone, rudely annotated with queer marks and scratches,--that
is all that drawer holds. Here you see is an old envelope with the dark
red stamp of twenty years ago, but I have pencilled a few lines at the
back; here is a sheet of manuscript, and here some cuttings from
obscure local journals. And if you ask me the subject matter of the
collection, it will not seem extraordinary. A servant girl at a
farmhouse, who disappeared from her place and has never been heard of, a
child supposed to have slipped down some old working on the mountains,
some queer scribbling on a limestone rock, a man murdered with a blow
from a strange weapon; such is the scent I have to go upon. Yes, as you
say, there is a ready explanation for all this; the girl may have run
away to London, or Liverpool, or New York; the child may be at the
bottom of the disused shaft; and the letters on the rock may be the idle
whims of some vagrant. Yes, yes, I admit all that; but I know I hold the
true key. Look!" and he held me out a slip of yellow paper.

"Characters found inscribed on a limestone rock on the Gray Hills," I
read, and then there was a word erased, presumably the name of a county,
and a date some fifteen years back. Beneath was traced a number of
uncouth characters, shaped somewhat like wedges or daggers, as strange
and outlandish as the Hebrew alphabet.

"Now the seal," said Professor Gregg, and he handed me the black stone,
a thing about two inches long, and something like an old-fashioned
tobacco stopper, much enlarged.

I held it up to the light, and saw to my surprise the characters on the
paper repeated on the seal.

"Yes," said the professor, "they are the same. And the marks on the
limestone rock were made fifteen years ago, with some red substance. And
the characters on the seal are four thousand years old at least. Perhaps
much more."

"Is it a hoax?" I said.

"No, I anticipated that. I was not to be led to give my life to a
practical joke. I have tested the matter very carefully. Only one person
besides myself knows of the mere existence of that black seal. Besides,
there are other reasons which I cannot enter into now."

"But what does it all mean?" I said. "I cannot understand to what
conclusion all this leads."

"My dear Miss Lally, that is a question I would rather leave unanswered
for some little time. Perhaps I shall never be able to say what secrets
are held here in solution; a few vague hints, the outlines of village
tragedies, a few marks done with red earth upon a rock, and an ancient
seal. A queer set of data to go upon? Half-a-dozen pieces of evidence,
and twenty years before even so much could be got together; and who
knows what mirage or terra incognita may be beyond all this? I look
across deep waters, Miss Lally, and the land beyond may be but a haze
after all. But still I believe it is not so, and a few months will show
whether I am right or wrong."

He left me, and alone I endeavored to fathom the mystery, wondering to
what goal such eccentric odds and ends of evidence could lead. I myself
am not wholly devoid of imagination, and I had reason to respect the
professor's solidity of intellect; yet I saw in the contents of the
drawer but the materials of fantasy, and vainly tried to conceive what
theory could be founded on the fragments that had been placed before me.
Indeed, I could discover in what I had heard and seen but the first
chapter of an extravagant romance; and yet deep in my heart I burned
with curiosity, and day after day I looked eagerly in Professor Gregg's
face for some hint of what was to happen.

It was one evening after dinner that the word came.

"I hope you can make your preparations without much trouble," he said
suddenly to me. "We shall be leaving here in a week's time."

"Really!" I said in astonishment. "Where are we going?"

"I have taken a country house in the west of England, not far from
Caermaen, a quiet little town, once a city, and the headquarters of a
Roman legion. It is very dull there, but the country is pretty, and the
air is wholesome."

I detected a glint in his eyes, and guessed that this sudden move had
some relation to our conversation of a few days before.

"I shall just take a few books with me," said Professor Gregg, "that is
all. Everything else will remain here for our return. I have got a
holiday," he went on, smiling at me, "and I shan't be sorry to be quit
for a time of my old bones and stones and rubbish. Do you know," he went
on, "I have been grinding away at facts for thirty years; it is time for
fancies."

The days passed quickly; I could see that the professor was all
quivering with suppressed excitement, and I could scarce credit the
eager appetence of his glance as we left the old manor house behind us,
and began our journey. We set out at mid-day, and it was in the dusk of
the evening that we arrived at a little country station. I was tired
and excited, and the drive through, the lanes seems all a dream. First
the deserted streets of a forgotten village, while I heard Professor
Gregg's voice talking of the Augustan Legion and the clash of arms, and
all the tremendous pomp that followed the eagles; then the broad river
swimming to full tide with the last afterglow glimmering duskily in the
yellow water, the wide meadows, and the cornfields whitening, and the
deep lane winding on the slope between the hills and the water. At last
we began to ascend, and the air grew rarer; I looked down and saw the
pure white mist tracking the outline of the river like a shroud, and a
vague and shadowy country, imaginations and fantasy of swelling hills
and hanging woods, and half-shaped outlines of hills beyond, and in
the distance the glare of the furnace fire on the mountain, growing by
turns a pillar of shining flame, and fading to a dull point of red. We
were slowly mounting a carriage drive, and then there came to me the
cool breath and the scent of the great wood that was above us; I seemed
to wander in its deepest depths, and there was the sound of trickling
water, the scent of the green leaves, and the breath of the summer
night. The carriage stopped at last, and I could scarcely distinguish
the form of the house as I waited a moment at the pillared porch; and
the rest of the evening seemed a dream of strange things bounded by the
great silence of the wood and the valley and the river.

The next morning when I awoke and looked out of the bow window of the
big old-fashioned bedroom, I saw under a gray sky a country that was
still all mystery. The long, lovely valley, with the river winding in
and out below, crossed in mid vision by a mediæval bridge of vaulted
and buttressed stone, the clear presence of the rising ground beyond,
and the woods that I had only seen in shadow the night before, seemed
tinged with enchantment, and the soft breath of air that sighed in at
the opened pane was like no other wind. I looked across the valley, and
beyond, hill followed on hill as wave on wave, and here a faint blue
pillar of smoke rose still in the morning air from the chimney of an
ancient gray farmhouse, there was a rugged height crowned with dark
firs, and in the distance I saw the white streak of a road that climbed
and vanished into some unimagined country. But the boundary of all was a
great wall of mountain, vast in the west, and ending like a fortress
with a steep ascent and a domed tumulus clear against the sky.

I saw Professor Gregg walking up and down the terrace path below the
windows, and it was evident that he was revelling in the sense of
liberty, and the thought that he had, for a while, bidden good-bye to
task-work. When I joined him there was exultation in his voice as he
pointed out the sweep of valley and the river that wound beneath the
lovely hills.

"Yes," he said, "it is a strangely beautiful country; and to me, at
least, it seems full of mystery. You have not forgotten the drawer I
showed you, Miss Lally? No; and you have guessed that I have come here
not merely for the sake of the children and the fresh air?"

"I think I have guessed as much as that," I replied; "but you must
remember I do not know the mere nature of your investigations; and as
for the connection between the search and this wonderful valley, it is
past my guessing."

He smiled queerly at me. "You must not think I am making a mystery for
the sake of mystery," he said. "I do not speak out because, so far,
there is nothing to be spoken, nothing definite I mean, nothing that can
be set down in hard black and white, as dull and sure and irreproachable
as any blue book. And then I have another reason: many years ago a
chance paragraph in a newspaper caught my attention, and focussed in an
instant the vagrant thoughts and half-formed fancies of many idle and
speculative hours into a certain hypothesis. I saw at once that I was
treading on a thin crust; my theory was wild and fantastic in the
extreme, and I would not for any consideration have written a hint of it
for publication. But I thought that in the company of scientific men
like myself, men who knew the course of discovery, and were aware that
the gas that blazes and flares in the gin-palace was once a wild
hypothesis; I thought that with such men as these I might hazard my
dream--let us say Atlantis, or the philosopher's stone, or what you
like--without danger of ridicule. I found I was grossly mistaken; my
friends looked blankly at me and at one another, and I could see
something of pity, and something also of insolent contempt, in the
glances they exchanged. One of them called on me next day, and hinted
that I must be suffering from overwork and brain exhaustion. 'In plain
terms,' I said, 'you think I am going mad. I think not;' and I showed
him out with some little appearance of heat. Since that day I vowed that
I would never whisper the nature of my theory to any living soul; to no
one but yourself have I ever shown the contents of that drawer. After
all, I may be following a rainbow; I may have been misled by the play of
coincidence; but as I stand here in this mystic hush and silence amidst
the woods and wild hills, I am more than ever sure that I am hot on the
scent. Come, it is time we went in."

To me in all this there was something both of wonder and excitement; I
knew how in his ordinary work Professor Gregg moved step by step,
testing every inch of the way, and never venturing on assertion without
proof that was impregnable. Yet I divined more from his glance and the
vehemence of his tone than from the spoken word that he had in his every
thought the vision of the almost incredible continually with him; and I,
who was with some share of imagination no little of a sceptic, offended
at a hint of the marvellous, could not help asking myself whether he was
cherishing a monomania, and barring out from this one subject all the
scientific method of his other life.

Yet, with, this image of mystery haunting my thoughts, I surrendered
wholly to the charm of the country. Above the faded house on the
hillside began the great forest; a long dark line seen from the opposing
hills, stretching above the river for many a mile from north to south,
and yielding in the north to even wilder country, barren and savage
hills, and ragged common land, a territory all strange and unvisited,
and more unknown to Englishmen than the very heart of Africa. The space
of a couple of steep fields alone separated the house from the wood, and
the children were delighted to follow me up the long alleys of
undergrowth, between smooth pleached walls of shining beech, to the
highest point in the wood, whence one looked on one side across the
river and the rise and fall of the country to the great western mountain
wall, and on the other, over the surge and dip of the myriad trees of
the forest, over level meadows and the shining yellow sea to the faint
coast beyond. I used to sit at this point on the warm sunlit turf which
marked the track of the Roman Road, while the two children raced about
hunting for the whinberries that grew here and there on the banks. Here
beneath the deep blue sky and the great clouds rolling, like olden
galleons with sails full-bellied, from the sea to the hills, as I
listened to the whispered charm of the great and ancient wood, I lived
solely for delight, and only remembered strange things when we would
return to the house, and find Professor Gregg either shut up in the
little room he had made his study, or else pacing the terrace with the
look, patient and enthusiastic, of the determined seeker.

One morning, some eight or nine days after our arrival, I looked out of
my window and saw the whole landscape transmuted before me. The clouds
had dipped low and hidden the mountain in the west, and a southern wind
was driving the rain in shifting pillars up the valley, and the little
brooklet that burst the hill below the house now raged, a red torrent,
down to the river. We were perforce obliged to keep snug within doors,
and when I had attended to my pupils, I sat down in the morning-room
where the ruins of a library still encumbered an old-fashioned bookcase.
I had inspected the shelves once or twice, but their contents had failed
to attract me; volumes of eighteenth century sermons, an old book on
farriery, a collection of "Poems" by "persons of quality," Prideaux's
"Connection," and an odd volume of Pope were the boundaries of the
library, and there seemed little doubt that everything of interest or
value had been removed. Now, however, in desperation, I began to
re-examine the musty sheepskin and calf bindings, and found, much to my
delight, a fine old quarto printed by the Stephani, containing the three
books of Pomponius Mela, "De Situ Orbis," and other of the ancient
geographers. I knew enough of Latin to steer my way through an ordinary
sentence, and I soon became absorbed in the odd mixture of fact and
fancy; light shining on a little of the space of the world, and beyond
mist and shadow and awful forms. Glancing over the clear-printed pages,
my attention was caught by the heading of a chapter in Solinus, and I
read the words:--

MIRA DE INTIMIS GENTIBUS LIBYAE, DE LAPIDE
             HEXECONTALITHO.

"The wonders of the people that inhabit the inner parts of Libya, and of
the stone called Sixtystone."

The odd title attracted me and I read on:--

"Gens ista avia et secreta habitat, in montibus horrendis foeda
mysteria celebrat. De hominibus nihil aliud illi præferunt quam
figuram, ab humano ritu prorsus exulant, oderunt deum lucis. Stridunt
potius quam loquuntur; vox absona nec sine horrore auditur. Lapide
quodam gloriantur, quem Hexecontalithon vocant, dicunt enim hunc lapidem
sexaginta notas ostendere. Cujus lapidis nomen secretum ineffabile
colunt: quod Ixaxar."

"This folk," I translated to myself, "dwells in remote and secret
places, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have they
in common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are wholly
strange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak;
their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. They boast of
a certain stone, which they call Sixtystone; for they say that it
displays sixty characters. And this stone has a secret unspeakable name;
which is Ixaxar."

I laughed at the queer inconsequence of all this, and thought it fit for
Sinbad the Sailor or other of the supplementary Nights. When I saw
Professor Gregg in the course of the day, I told him of my find in the
bookcase, and the fantastic rubbish I had been reading. To my surprise,
he looked up at me with an expression of great interest.

"That is really very curious," he said. "I have never thought it worth
while to look into the old geographers, and I daresay I have missed a
good deal. Ah, that is the passage, is it. It seems a shame to rob you
of your entertainment, but I really think I must carry off the book."

The next day the professor called to me to come to the study. I found
him sitting at a table in the full light of the window, scrutinizing
something very attentively with a magnifying-glass.

"Ah, Miss Lally," he began, "I want to use your eyes. This glass is
pretty good, but not like my old one that I left in town. Would you
mind examining the thing yourself, and telling me how many characters
are cut on it?"

He handed me the object in his hand, and I saw that it was the black
seal he had shown me in London, and my heart began to beat with the
thought that I was presently to know something. I took the seal, and
holding it up to the light checked off the grotesque dagger-shaped
characters one by one.

"I make sixty-two," I said at last.

"Sixty-two? Nonsense; it's impossible. Ah, I see what you have done, you
have counted that and that," and he pointed to two marks which I had
certainly taken as letters with the rest.

"Yes, yes," Professor Gregg went on; "but those are obvious scratches,
done accidentally; I saw that at once. Yes, then that's quite right.
Thank you very much, Miss Lally."

I was going away, rather disappointed at my having been called in merely
to count a number of marks on the black seal, when suddenly there
flashed into my mind what I had read in the morning.

"But, Professor Gregg," I cried, breathless, "the seal, the seal. Why, it
is the stone Hexecontalithos that Solinus writes of; it is Ixaxar."

"Yes," he said, "I suppose it is. Or it maybe a mere coincidence. It
never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidence
killed the professor."

I went away puzzled by what I had heard, and as much as ever at a loss
to find the ruling clew in this maze of strange evidence. For three days
the bad weather lasted, changing from driving rain to a dense mist, fine
and dripping, and we seemed to be shut up in a white cloud that veiled
all the world away from us. All the while Professor Gregg was darkling
in his room, unwilling, it appeared, to dispense confidences or talk of
any kind, and I heard him walking to and fro with a quick, impatient
step, as if he were in some way wearied of inaction. The fourth morning
was fine, and at breakfast the professor said briskly:--

"We want some extra help about the house; a boy of fifteen or sixteen,
you know. There are a lot of little odd jobs that take up the maids'
time, which a boy could do much better."

"The girls have not complained to me in any way," I replied. "Indeed,
Anne said there was much less work than in London, owing to there being
so little dust."

"Ah, yes, they are very good girls. But I think we shall do much better
with a boy. In fact, that is what has been bothering me for the last two
days."

"Bothering you?" I said in astonishment, for as a matter of fact the
professor never took the slightest interest in the affairs of the house.

"Yes," he said, "the weather, you know. I really couldn't go out in that
Scotch mist; I don't know the country very well, and I should have lost
my way. But I am going to get the boy this morning."

"But how do you know there is such a boy as you want anywhere about?"

"Oh, I have no doubt as to that. I may have to walk a mile or two at the
most, but I am sure to find just the boy I require."

I thought the professor was joking, but though his tone was airy enough
there was something grim and set about his features that puzzled me. He
got his stick, and stood at the door looking meditatively before him,
and as I passed through the hall he called to me.

"By the way, Miss Lally, there was one thing I wanted to say to you. I
daresay you may have heard that some of these country lads are not over
bright; idiotic would be a harsh word to use, and they are usually
called 'naturals,' or something of the kind. I hope you won't mind if
the boy I am after should turn out not too keen-witted; he will be
perfectly harmless, of course, and blacking boots doesn't need much
mental effort."

With that he was gone, striding up the road that led to the wood; and I
remained stupefied, and then for the first time my astonishment was
mingled with a sudden note of terror, arising I knew not whence, and all
unexplained even to myself, and yet I felt about my heart for an instant
something of the chill of death, and that shapeless, formless dread of
the unknown that is worse than death itself. I tried to find courage in
the sweet air that blew up from the sea, and in the sunlight after rain,
but the mystic woods seemed to darken around me; and the vision of the
river coiling between the reeds, and the silver gray of the ancient
bridge, fashioned in my mind symbols of vague dread, as the mind of a
child fashions terror from things harmless and familiar.

Two hours later Professor Gregg returned. I met him as he came down the
road, and asked quietly if he had been able to find a boy.

"Oh, yes," he answered; "I found one easily enough. His name is Jervase
Cradock, and I expect he will make himself very useful. His father has
been dead for many years, and the mother, whom I saw, seemed very glad
at the prospect of a few shillings extra coming in on Saturday nights.
As I expected, he is not too sharp, has fits at times, the mother said;
but as he will not be trusted with the china, that doesn't much matter,
does it? And he is not in any way dangerous, you know, merely a little
weak."

"When is he coming?"

"To-morrow morning at eight o'clock. Anne will show him what he has to
do, and how to do it. At first he will go home every night, but perhaps
it may ultimately turn out more convenient for him to sleep here, and
only go home for Sundays."

I found nothing to say to all this. Professor Gregg spoke in a quiet
tone of matter-of-fact, as indeed was warranted by the circumstance; and
yet I could not quell my sensation of astonishment at the whole affair.
I knew that in reality no assistance was wanted in the housework, and
the professor's prediction that the boy he was to engage might prove a
little "simple," followed by so exact a fulfilment, struck me as bizarre
in the extreme. The next morning I heard from the housemaid that the
boy Cradock had come at eight, and that she had been trying to make him
useful. "He doesn't seem quite all there, I don't think, miss," was her
comment; and later in the day I saw him helping the old man who worked
in the garden. He was a youth of about fourteen, with black hair and
black eyes, and an olive skin, and I saw at once from the curious
vacancy of his expression that he was mentally weak. He touched his
forehead awkwardly as I went by, and I heard him answering the gardener
in a queer, harsh voice that caught my attention; it gave me the
impression of some one speaking deep below under the earth, and there
was a strange sibilance, like the hissing of the phonograph as the
pointer travels over the cylinder. I heard that he seemed anxious to do
what he could, and was quite docile and obedient, and Morgan the
gardener, who knew his mother, assured me he was perfectly harmless.
"He's always been a bit queer," he said, "and no wonder, after what his
mother went through before he was born. I did know his father, Thomas
Cradock, well, and a very fine workman he was too, indeed. He got
something wrong with his lungs owing to working in the wet woods, and
never got over it, and went off quite sudden like. And they do say as
how Mrs. Cradock was quite off her head; anyhow, she was found by Mr.
Hillyer, Ty Coch, all crouched up on the Gray Hills, over there, crying
and weeping like a lost soul. And Jervase he was born about eight months
afterwards, and as I was saying, he was a bit queer always; and they do
say when he could scarcely walk he would frighten the other children
into fits with the noises he would make."

A word in the story had stirred up some remembrance within me, and
vaguely curious, I asked the old man where the Gray Hills were.

"Up there," he said, with the same gesture he had used before; "you go
past the Fox and Hounds, and through the forest, by the old ruins. It's
a good five mile from here, and a strange sort of a place. The poorest
soil between this and Monmouth, they do say, though it's good feed for
sheep. Yes, it was a sad thing for poor Mrs. Cradock."

The old man turned to his work, and I strolled on down the path between
the espaliers, gnarled and gouty with age, thinking of the story I had
heard, and groping for the point in it that had some key to my memory.
In an instant it came before me; I had seen the phrase "Gray Hills" on
the slip of yellowed paper that Professor Gregg had taken from the
drawer in his cabinet. Again I was seized with pangs of mingled
curiosity and fear; I remembered the strange characters copied from the
limestone rock, and then again their identity with the inscription on
the age-old seal, and the fantastic fables of the Latin geographer. I
saw beyond doubt that, unless coincidence had set all the scene and
disposed all these bizarre events with curious art, I was to be a
spectator of things far removed from the usual and customary traffic and
jostle of life. Professor Gregg I noted day by day. He was hot on his
trail, growing lean with eagerness; and in the evenings, when the sun
was swimming on the verge of the mountain, he would pace the terrace to
and fro with his eyes on the ground, while the mist grew white in the
valley, and the stillness of the evening brought far voices near, and
the blue smoke rose a straight column from the diamond-shaped chimney of
the gray farmhouse, just as I had seen it on the first morning. I have
told you I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little or
nothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterated
dogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system of
things there is no undiscovered land even beyond the remotest stars,
where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on this
the thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that
science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than
a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place.

There is one day that stands up from amidst the others as a grim red
beacon, betokening evil to come. I was sitting on a bench in the garden,
watching the boy Cradock weeding, when I was suddenly alarmed by a harsh
and choking sound, like the cry of a wild beast in anguish, and I was
unspeakably shocked to see the unfortunate lad standing in full view
before me, his whole body quivering and shaking at short intervals as
though shocks of electricity were passing through him, and his teeth
grinding, and foam gathering on his lips, and his face all swollen and
blackened to a hideous mask of humanity. I shrieked with terror, and
Professor Gregg came running; and as I pointed to Cradock, the boy with
one convulsive shudder fell face forward, and lay on the wet earth, his
body writhing like a wounded blind-worm, and an inconceivable babble of
sounds bursting and rattling and hissing from his lips; he seemed to
pour forth an infamous jargon, with words, or what seemed words, that
might have belonged to a tongue dead since untold ages, and buried deep
beneath Nilotic mud, or in the inmost recesses of the Mexican forest.
For a moment the thought passed through my mind, as my ears were still
revolted with that infernal clamor, "Surely this is the very speech of
hell," and then I cried out again and again, and ran away shuddering to
my inmost soul. I had seen Professor Gregg's face as he stooped over the
wretched boy and raised him, and I was appalled by the glow of
exultation that shone on every lineament and feature. As I sat in my
room with drawn blinds, and my eyes hidden in my hands, I heard heavy
steps beneath, and I was told afterwards that Professor Gregg had
carried Cradock to his study, and had locked the door. I heard voices
murmur indistinctly, and I trembled to think of what might be passing
within a few feet of where I sat; I longed to escape to the woods and
sunshine, and yet I dreaded the sights that might confront me on the
way. And at last, as I held the handle of the door nervously, I heard
Professor Gregg's voice calling to me with a cheerful ring: "It's all
right now, Miss Lally," he said. "The poor fellow has got over it, and I
have been arranging for him to sleep here after to-morrow. Perhaps I may
be able to do something for him."

"Yes," he said later, "it was a very painful sight, and I don't wonder
you were alarmed. We may hope that good food will build him up a little,
but I am afraid he will never be really cured;" and he affected the
dismal and conventional air with which one speaks of hopeless illness,
and yet beneath it I detected the delight that leapt up rampant within
him, and fought and struggled to find utterance. It was as if one
glanced down on the even surface of the sea, clear and immobile, and saw
beneath raging depths, and a storm of contending billows. It was indeed
to me a torturing and offensive problem that this man, who had so
bounteously rescued me from the sharpness of death, and showed himself
in all the relations of life full of benevolence and pity and kindly
forethought, should so manifestly be for once on the side of the demons,
and take a ghastly pleasure in the torments of an afflicted
fellow-creature. Apart, I struggled with the horned difficulty, and
strove to find the solution, but without the hint of a clue; beset by
mystery and contradiction, I saw nothing that might help me, and began
to wonder whether, after all, I had not escaped from the white mist of
the suburb at too dear a rate. I hinted something of my thought to the
professor; I said enough to let him know that I was in the most acute
perplexity, but the moment after regretted what I had done, when I saw
his face contort with a spasm of pain.

"My dear Miss Lally," he said, "you surely do not wish to leave us? No,
no, you would not do it. You do not know how I rely on you; how
confidently I go forward, assured that you are here to watch over my
children. You, Miss Lally, are my rear-guard; for, let me tell you, that
the business in which I am engaged is not wholly devoid of peril. You
have not forgotten what I said the first morning here; my lips are shut
by an old and firm resolve, till they can open to utter no ingenious
hypothesis or vague surmise but irrefragable fact, as certain as a
demonstration in mathematics. Think over it, Miss Lally, not for a
moment would I endeavor to keep you here against your own instincts, and
yet I tell you frankly that I am persuaded that it is here, here amidst
the woods, that your duty lies."

I was touched by the eloquence of his tone, and by the remembrance that
the man, after all, had been my salvation, and I gave him my hand on a
promise to serve him loyally and without question. A few days later the
rector of our church, a little church, gray and severe and quaint, that
hovered on the very banks of the river and watched the tides swim and
return, came to see us, and Professor Gregg easily persuaded him to stay
and share our dinner. Mr. Meyrick was a member of an antique family of
squires, whose old manor house stood amongst the hills some seven miles
away, and thus rooted in the soil, the rector was a living store of all
the old fading customs and lore of the country. His manner, genial with
a deal of retired oddity, won on Professor Gregg; and towards the
cheese, when a curious Burgundy had begun its incantations, the two men
glowed like the wine, and talked of philology with the enthusiasm of a
burgess over the peerage. The parson was expounding the pronunciation of
the Welsh _ll_, and producing sounds like the gurgle of his native
brooks, when Professor Gregg struck in.

"By the way," he said, "that was a very odd word I met with the other
day. You know my boy, poor Jervase Cradock. Well, he has got the bad
habit of talking to himself, and the day before yesterday I was walking
in the garden here and heard him; he was evidently quite unconscious of
my presence. A lot of what he said I couldn't make out, but one word
struck me distinctly. It was such an odd sound; half-sibilant,
half-guttural, and as quaint as those double _ll_'s you have been
demonstrating. I do not know whether I can give you an idea of the
sound. "Ishakshar" is perhaps as near as I can get; but the _k_ ought to
be a Greek _chi_ or a Spanish _j_. Now what does it mean in Welsh?"

"In Welsh?" said the parson. "There is no such word in Welsh, nor any
word remotely resembling it. I know the book-Welsh, as they call it, and
the colloquial dialects as well as any man, but there's no word like
that from Anglesea to Usk. Besides, none of the Cradocks speak a word of
Welsh; it's dying out about here."

"Really. You interest me extremely, Mr. Meyrick. I confess the word
didn't strike me as having the Welsh ring. But I thought it might be
some local corruption."

"No, I never heard such a word, or anything like it. Indeed," he added,
smiling whimsically, "if it belongs to any language, I should say it
must be that of the fairies,--the Tylwydd Têg, as we call them."

The talk went on to the discovery of a Roman villa in the neighborhood;
and soon after I left the room, and sat down apart to wonder at the
drawing together of such strange clues of evidence. As the professor had
spoken of the curious word, I had caught the glint of his eye upon me;
and though the pronunciation he gave was grotesque in the extreme, I
recognized the name of the stone of sixty characters mentioned by
Solinus, the black seal shut up in some secret drawer of the study,
stamped forever by a vanished race with signs that no man could read,
signs that might, for all I knew, be the veils of awful things done long
ago, and forgotten before the hills were moulded into form.

When, the next morning, I came down, I found Professor Gregg pacing the
terrace in his eternal walk.

"Look at that bridge," he said when he saw me, "observe the quaint and
Gothic design, the angles between the arches, and the silvery gray of
the stone in the awe of the morning light. I confess it seems to me
symbolic; it should illustrate a mystical allegory of the passage from
one world to another."

"Professor Gregg," I said quietly, "it is time that I knew something of
what has happened, and of what is to happen."

For the moment he put me off, but I returned again with the same
question in the evening, and then Professor Gregg flamed with
excitement. "Don't you understand yet?" he cried. "But I have told you a
good deal; yes, and shown you a good deal. You have heard pretty nearly
all that I have heard, and seen what I have seen; or at least," and his
voice chilled as he spoke, "enough to make a good deal clear as noonday.
The servants told you, I have no doubt, that the wretched boy Cradock
had another seizure the night before last; he awoke me with cries in
that voice you heard in the garden, and I went to him, and God forbid
you should see what I saw that night. But all this is useless; my time
here is drawing to a close; I must be back in town in three weeks, as I
have a course of lectures to prepare, and need all my books about me. In
a very few days it will be all over, and I shall no longer hint, and no
longer be liable to ridicule as a madman and a quack. No, I shall speak
plainly, and I shall be heard with such emotions as perhaps no other man
has ever drawn from the breasts of his fellows."

He paused, and seemed to grow radiant with the joy of great and
wonderful discovery.

"But all that is for the future, the near future certainly, but still
the future," he went on at length. "There is something to be done yet;
you will remember my telling you that my researches were not altogether
devoid of peril? Yes, there is a certain amount of danger to be faced; I
did not know how much when I spoke on the subject before, and to a
certain extent I am still in the dark. But it will be a strange
adventure, the last of all, the last demonstration in the chain."

He was walking up and down the room as he spoke, and I could hear in his
voice the contending tones of exultation and despondence, or perhaps I
should say awe, the awe of a man who goes forth on unknown waters, and I
thought of his allusion to Columbus on the night he had laid his book
before me. The evening was a little chilly, and a fire of logs had been
lighted in the study where we were, and the remittent flame and the glow
on the walls reminded me of the old days. I was sitting silent in an
armchair by the fire, wondering over all I had heard, and still vainly
speculating as to the secret springs concealed from me under all the
phantasmagoria I had witnessed, when I became suddenly aware of a
sensation that change of some sort had been at work in the room, and
that there was something unfamiliar in its aspect. For some time I
looked about me, trying in vain to localize the alteration that I knew
had been made; the table by the window, the chairs, the faded settee
were all as I had known them. Suddenly, as a sought-for recollection
flashes into the mind, I knew what was amiss. I was facing the
professor's desk, which stood on the other side of the fire, and above
the desk was a grimy looking bust of Pitt, that I had never seen there
before. And then I remembered the true position of this work of art; in
the furthest corner by the door was an old cupboard, projecting into the
room, and on the top of the cupboard, fifteen feet from the floor, the
bust had been, and there no doubt it had delayed, accumulating dirt
since the early years of the century.

I was utterly amazed, and sat silent still, in a confusion of thought.
There was, so far as I knew, no such thing as a step-ladder in the
house, for I had asked for one to make some alterations in the curtains
of my room; and a tall man standing on a chair would have found it
impossible to take down the bust. It had been placed not on the edge of
the cupboard, but far back against the wall; and Professor Gregg was, if
anything, under the average height.

"How on earth did you manage to get down Pitt?" I said at last.

The professor looked curiously at me, and seemed to hesitate a little.

"They must have found you a step-ladder, or perhaps the gardener brought
in a short ladder from outside."

"No, I have had no ladder of any kind. Now, Miss Lally," he went on with
an awkward simulation of jest, "there is a little puzzle for you; a
problem in the manner of the inimitable Holmes; there are the facts,
plain and patent; summon your acuteness to the solution of the puzzle.
For Heaven's sake," he cried with a breaking voice, "say no more about
it. I tell you, I never touched the thing," and he went out of the room
with horror manifest on his face, and his hand shook and jarred the door
behind him.

I looked round the room in vague surprise, not at all realizing what had
happened, making vain and idle surmises by way of explanation, and
wondering at the stirring of black waters by an idle word, and the
trivial change of an ornament. "This is some petty business, some whim
on which I have jarred," I reflected; "the professor is perhaps
scrupulous and superstitious over trifles, and my question may have
outraged unacknowledged fears, as though one killed a spider or spilled
the salt before the very eyes of a practical Scotchwoman." I was
immersed in these fond suspicions, and began to plume myself a little on
my immunity from such empty fears, when the truth fell heavily as lead
upon my heart, and I recognized with cold terror that some awful
influence had been at work. The bust was simply inaccessible; without a
ladder no one could have touched it.

I went out to the kitchen and spoke as quietly as I could to the
housemaid.

"Who moved that bust from the top of the cupboard, Anne?" I said to her.
"Professor Gregg says he has not touched it. Did you find an old
step-ladder in one of the outhouses?"

The girl looked at me blankly.

"I never touched it," she said. "I found it where it is now the other
morning when I dusted the room. I remember now, it, was Wednesday
morning, because it was the morning after Cradock was taken bad in the
night. My room is next to his, you know, miss," the girl went on
piteously; "and it was awful to hear how he cried and called out names
that I couldn't understand. It made me feel all afraid, and then master
came, and I heard him speak, and he took down Cradock to the study and
gave him something."

"And you found that bust moved the next morning?"

"Yes, miss, there was a queer sort of a smell in the study when I came
down and opened the windows; a bad smell it was, and I wondered what it
could be. Do you know, miss, I went a long time ago to the Zoo in London
with my cousin Thomas Barker, one afternoon that I had off, when I was
at Mrs. Prince's in Stanhope Gate, and we went into the snake-house to
see the snakes, and it was just the same sort of a smell, very sick it
made me feel, I remember, and I got Barker to take me out. And it was
just the same kind of a smell in the study, as I was saying, and I was
wondering what it could be from, when I see that bust with Pitt cut in
it standing on the master's desk, and I thought to myself, now who has
done that, and how have they done it? And when I came to dust the
things, I looked at the bust, and I saw a great mark on it where the
dust was gone, for I don't think it can have been touched with a duster
for years and years, and it wasn't like finger-marks, but a large patch
like, broad and spread out. So I passed my hand over it, without
thinking what I was doing, and where that patch was it was all sticky
and slimy, as if a snail had crawled over it. Very strange, isn't it,
miss? and I wonder who can have done it, and how that mess was made."

The well-meant gabble of the servant touched me to the quick. I lay down
upon my bed, and bit my lip that I should not cry out loud in the sharp
anguish of my terror and bewilderment. Indeed, I was almost mad with
dread; I believe that if it had been daylight I should have fled hot
foot, forgetting all courage and all the debt of gratitude that was due
to Professor Gregg, not caring whether my fate were that I must starve
slowly so long as I might escape from the net of blind and panic fear
that every day seemed to draw a little closer round me. If I knew, I
thought, if I knew what there were to dread, I could guard against it;
but here, in this lonely house, shut in on all sides by the olden woods
and the vaulted hills, terror seems to spring inconsequent from every
covert, and the flesh is aghast at the half-heard murmurs of horrible
things. All in vain I strove to summon scepticism to my aid, and
endeavored by cool common-sense to buttress my belief in a world of
natural order, for the air that blew in at the open window was a mystic
breath, and in the darkness I felt the silence go heavy and sorrowful
as a mass of requiem, and I conjured images of strange shapes gathering
fast amidst the reeds, beside the wash of the river.

In the morning, from the moment that I set foot in the breakfast-room I
felt that the unknown plot was drawing to a crisis; the professor's face
was firm and set, and he seemed hardly to hear our voices when we spoke.

"I am going out for rather a long walk," he said, when the meal was
over. "You mustn't be expecting me, now, or thinking anything has
happened if I don't turn up to dinner. I have been getting stupid
lately, and I dare say a miniature walking tour will do me good. Perhaps
I may even spend the night in some little inn, if I find any place that
looks clean and comfortable."

I heard this, and knew by my experience of Professor Gregg's manner that
it was no ordinary business or pleasure that impelled him. I knew not,
nor even remotely guessed, where he was bound, nor had I the vaguest
notion of his errand, but all the fear of the night before returned; and
as he stood, smiling, on the terrace, ready to set out, I implored him
to stay, and to forget all his dreams of the undiscovered continent.

"No, no, Miss Lally," he replied, still smiling, "it's too late now.
_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_, you know, is the device of all true
explorers, though I hope it won't be literally true in my ease. But,
indeed, you are wrong to alarm yourself so; I look upon my little
expedition as quite commonplace; no more exciting than a day with the
geological hammers. There is a risk, of course, but so there is on the
commonest excursion. I can afford to be jaunty; I am doing nothing so
hazardous as 'Arry does a hundred times over in the course of every Bank
Holiday. Well, then, you must look more cheerfully; and so good-by till
to-morrow at latest."

He walked briskly up the road, and I saw him open the gate that marks
the entrance of the wood, and then he vanished in the gloom of the
trees.

All the day passed heavily with a strange darkness in the air, and again
I felt as if imprisoned amidst the ancient woods, shut in an olden land
of mystery and dread, and as if all was long ago and forgotten by the
living outside. I hoped and dreaded, and when the dinner-hour came, I
waited expecting to hear the professor's step in the hall, and his voice
exulting at I knew not what triumph. I composed my face to welcome him
gladly, but the night descended dark, and he did not come.

In the morning when the maid knocked at my door, I called out to her,
and asked if her master had returned; and when she replied that his
bedroom stood open and empty, I felt the cold clasp of despair. Still, I
fancied he might have discovered genial company, and would return for
luncheon, or perhaps in the afternoon, and I took the children for a
walk in the forest, and tried my best to play and laugh with them, and
to shut out the thoughts of mystery and veiled terror. Hour after hour I
waited, and my thoughts grew darker; again the night came and found me
watching, and at last, as I was making much ado to finish my dinner, I
heard steps outside and the sound of a man's voice.

The maid came in and looked oddly at me.

"Please, miss," she began, "Mr. Morgan the gardener wants to speak to
you for a minute, if you didn't mind."

"Show him in, please," I answered, and I set my lips tight.

The old man came slowly into the room, and the servant shut the door
behind him.

"Sit down, Mr. Morgan," I said; "what is it that you want to say to me?"

"Well, miss, Mr. Gregg he gave me something for you yesterday morning,
just before he went off; and he told me particular not to hand it up
before eight o'clock this evening exactly, if so be as he wasn't back
again home before, and if he should come home before I was just to
return it to him in his own hands. So, you see, as Mr. Gregg isn't here
yet, I suppose I'd better give you the parcel directly."

He pulled out something from his pocket, and gave it to me, half rising.
I took it silently, and seeing that Morgan seemed doubtful as to what he
was to do next, I thanked him and bade him good-night, and he went out.
I was left alone in the room with the parcel in my hand,--a paper parcel
neatly sealed and directed to me, with the instructions Morgan had
quoted all written in the professor's large loose hand. I broke the
seals with a choking at my heart, and found an envelope inside,
addressed also, but open, and I took the letter out.

       *       *       *       *       *

"MY DEAR MISS LALLY," it began, "To quote the old logic manual, the case
of your reading this note is a case of my having made a blunder of some
sort, and, I am afraid, a blunder that turns these lines into a
farewell. It is practically certain that neither you nor anyone else
will ever see me again. I have made my will with provision for this
eventuality, and I hope you will consent to accept the small remembrance
addressed to you, and my sincere thanks for the way in which you joined
your fortunes to mine. The fate which has come upon me is desperate and
terrible beyond the remotest dreams of man; but this fate you have a
right to know--if you please. If you look in the left-hand drawer of my
dressing-table, you will find the key of the escritoire, properly
labelled. In the well of the escritoire is a large envelope sealed and
addressed to your name. I advise you to throw it forthwith into the
fire; you will sleep better of nights if you do so. But if you must know
the history of what has happened, it is all written down for you to
read."

       *       *       *       *       *

The signature was firmly written below, and again I turned the page and
read out the words one by one, aghast and white to the lips, my hands
cold as ice, and sickness choking me. The dead silence of the room, and
the thought of the dark woods and hills closing me in on every side,
oppressed me, helpless and without capacity, and not knowing where to
turn for counsel. At last I resolved that though knowledge should haunt
my whole life and all the days to come, I must know the meaning of the
strange terrors that had so long tormented me, rising gray, dim, and
awful, like the shadows in the wood at dusk. I carefully carried out
Professor Gregg's directions, and not without reluctance broke the seal
of the envelope, and spread out his manuscript before me. That
manuscript I always carry with me, and I see that I cannot deny your
unspoken request to read it. This, then, was what I read that night,
sitting at the desk, with a shaded lamp beside me.

The young lady who called herself Miss Lally then proceeded to recite:--

       *       *       *       *       *

_The Statement of William Gregg, F.R.S., etc._

It is many years since the first glimmer of the theory which is now
almost, if not quite, reduced to fact dawned first on my mind. A
somewhat extensive course of miscellaneous and obsolete reading had done
a good deal to prepare the way, and, later, when I became somewhat of a
specialist and immersed myself in the studies known as ethnological, I
was now and then startled by facts that would not square with orthodox
scientific opinion, and by discoveries that seemed to hint at something
still hidden for all our research. More particularly I became convinced
that much of the folk-lore of the world is but an exaggerated account of
events that really happened, and I was especially drawn to consider the
stories of the fairies, the good folk of the Celtic races. Here I
thought I could detect the fringe of embroidery and exaggeration, the
fantastic guise, the little people dressed in green and gold sporting in
the flowers, and I thought I saw a distinct analogy between the name
given to this race (supposed to be imaginary) and the description of
their appearance and manners. Just as our remote ancestors called the
dreaded beings "fair" and "good" precisely because they dreaded them, so
they had dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be the
very reverse. Literature, too, had gone early to work, and had lent a
powerful hand in the transformation, so that the playful elves of
Shakespeare are already far removed from the true original, and the real
horror is disguised in a form of prankish mischief. But in the older
tales, the stories that used to make men cross themselves as they sat
round the burning logs, we tread a different stage; I saw a widely
opposed spirit in certain histories of children and of men and women who
vanished strangely from the earth. They would be seen by a peasant in
the fields walking towards some green and rounded hillock, and seen no
more on earth; and there are stories of mothers who have left a child
quietly sleeping with the cottage door rudely barred with a piece of
wood, and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon,
but a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin and black piercing
eyes, the child of another race. Then, again, there were myths darker
still; the dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the Sabbath, and
the hint of demons who mingled with the daughters of men. And just as we
have turned the terrible "fair folk" into a company of benignant, if
freakish, elves, so we have hidden from us the black foulness of the
witch and her companions under a popular _diablerie_ of old women and
broomsticks and a comic cat with tail on end. So the Greeks called the
hideous furies benevolent ladies, and thus the northern nations have
followed their example. I pursued my investigations, stealing odd hours
from other and more imperative labors, and I asked myself the question:
Supposing these traditions to be true, who were the demons who are
reported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need not say that I laid aside
what I may call the supernatural hypothesis of the middle ages, and came
to the conclusion that fairies and devils were of one and the same race
and origin; invention, no doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days had
done much in the way of exaggeration and distortion; yet I firmly
believed that beneath all this imagery there was a black background of
truth. As for some of the alleged wonders, I hesitated. While I should
be very loth to receive any one specific instance of modern spiritualism
as containing even a grain of the genuine, yet I was not wholly prepared
to deny that human flesh may now and then, once perhaps in ten million
cases, be the veil of powers which seem magical to us; powers which, so
far from proceeding from the heights and leading men thither, are in
reality survivals from the depths of being. The amoeba and the snail
have powers which we do not possess; and I thought it possible that the
theory of reversion might explain many things which seem wholly
inexplicable. Thus stood my position; I saw good reason to believe that
much of the tradition, a vast deal of the earliest and uncorrupted
tradition of the so-called fairies, represented solid fact, and I
thought that the purely supernatural element in these traditions was to
be accounted for on the hypothesis that a race which had fallen out of
the grand march of evolution might have retained, as a survival, certain
powers which would be to us wholly miraculous. Such was my theory as it
stood conceived in my mind; and working with this in view, I seemed to
gather confirmation from every side, from the spoils of a tumulus or a
barrow, from a local paper reporting an antiquarian meeting in the
country, and from general literature of all kinds. Amongst other
instances, I remember being struck by the phrase "articulate-speaking
men" in Homer, as if the writer knew or had heard of men whose speech
was so rude that it could hardly be termed articulate; and on my
hypothesis of a race who had lagged far behind the rest, I could easily
conceive that such a folk would speak a jargon but little removed from
the inarticulate noises of brute-beasts.

Thus I stood, satisfied that my conjecture was at all events not far
removed from fact, when a chance paragraph in a small country print one
day arrested my attention. It was a short account of what was to all
appearance the usual sordid tragedy of the village; a young girl
unaccountably missing, and evil rumor blatant and busy with her
reputation. Yet I could read between the lines that all this scandal was
purely hypothetical, and in all probability invented to account for what
was in any other manner unaccountable. A flight to London or Liverpool,
or an undiscovered body lying with a weight about its neck in the foul
depths of a woodland pool, or perhaps murder,--such were the theories of
the wretched girl's neighbors. But as I idly scanned the paragraph, a
flash of thought passed through me with the violence of an electric
shock: What if the obscure and horrible race of the hills still
survived, still remained haunting wild places, and barren hills, and now
and then repeating the evil of Gothic legend, unchanged and
unchangeable as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of Spain. I have
said that the thought came with violence; and indeed I drew in my breath
sharply, and clung with both hands to my elbow-chair, in a strange
confusion of horror and elation. It was as if one of my _confrères_ of
physical science, roaming in a quiet English wood, had been suddenly
stricken aghast by the presence of the slimy and loathsome terror of the
ichthyosaurus, the original of the stories of the awful worms killed by
valorous knights, or had seen the sun darkened by the pterodactyl, the
dragon of tradition. Yet as a resolute explorer of knowledge, the
thought of such a discovery threw me into a passion of joy, and I cut
out the slip from the paper, and put it in a drawer in my old bureau,
resolved that it should be but the first piece in a collection of the
strangest significance. I sat long that evening dreaming of the
conclusions I should establish, nor did cooler reflection at first dash
my confidence. Yet as I began to put the case fairly, I saw that I might
be building on an unstable foundation; the facts might possibly be in
accordance with local opinion; and I regarded the affair with a mood of
some reserve. Yet I resolved to remain perched on the look-out, and I
hugged to myself the thought that I alone was watching and wakeful,
while the great crowd of thinkers and searchers stood heedless and
indifferent, perhaps letting the most prerogative facts pass by
unnoticed.

Several years elapsed before I was enabled to add to the contents of the
drawer; and the second find was in reality not a valuable one, for it
was a mere repetition of the first, with only the variation of another
and distant locality. Yet I gained something; for in the second case, as
in the first, the tragedy took place in a desolate and lonely country,
and so far my theory seemed justified. But the third piece was to me far
more decisive. Again, amongst outland hills, far even from a main road
of traffic, an old man was found done to death, and the instrument of
execution was left beside him. Here, indeed, there was rumor and
conjecture, for the deadly tool was a primitive stone axe, bound by gut
to the wooden handle, and surmises the most extravagant and improbable
were indulged in. Yet, as I thought with a kind of glee, the wildest
conjectures went far astray; and I took the pains to enter into
correspondence with the local doctor, who was called at the inquest. He,
a man of some acuteness, was dumfoundered. "It will not do to speak of
these things in country places," he wrote to me; "but, frankly, Professor
Gregg, there is some hideous mystery here. I have obtained possession of
the stone axe, and have been so curious as to test its powers. I took it
into the back-garden of my house one Sunday afternoon when my family and
the servants were all out, and there, sheltered by the poplar hedges, I
made my experiments. I found the thing utterly unmanageable. Whether
there is some peculiar balance, some nice adjustment of weights, which
require incessant practice, or whether an effectual blow can be struck
only by a certain trick of the muscles, I do not know; but I assure you
that I went into the house with but a sorry opinion of my athletic
capacities. It was like an inexperienced man trying 'putting the
hammer;' the force exerted seemed to return on oneself, and I found
myself hurled backwards with violence, while the axe fell harmless to
the ground. On another occasion I tried the experiment with a clever
woodman of the place; but this man, who had handled his axe for forty
years, could do nothing with the stone implement, and missed every
stroke most ludicrously. In short, if it were not so supremely absurd, I
should say that for four thousand years no one on earth could have
struck an effective blow with the tool that undoubtedly was used to
murder the old man." This, as may be imagined, was to me rare news; and
afterwards, when I heard the whole story, and learned that the
unfortunate old man had babbled tales of what might be seen at night on
a certain wild hillside, hinting at unheard-of wonders, and that he had
been found cold one morning on the very hill in question, my exultation
was extreme, for I felt I was leaving conjecture far behind me. But the
next step was of still greater importance. I had possessed for many
years an extraordinary stone seal,--a piece of dull black stone, two
inches long from the handle to the stamp, and the stamping end a rough
hexagon an inch and a quarter in diameter. Altogether, it presented the
appearance of an enlarged tobacco-stopper of an old-fashioned make. It
had been sent to me by an agent in the East, who informed me that it had
been found near the site of the ancient Babylon. But the characters
engraved on the seal were to me an intolerable puzzle. Somewhat of the
cuneiform pattern, there were yet striking differences, which I
detected at the first glance, and all efforts to read the inscription on
the hypothesis that the rules for deciphering the arrow-headed writing
would apply proved futile. A riddle such as this stung my pride, and at
odd moments I would take the Black Seal out of the cabinet, and
scrutinize it with so much idle perseverance that every letter was
familiar to my mind, and I could have drawn the inscription from memory
without the slightest error. Judge then of my surprise, when I one day
received from a correspondent in the west of England a letter and an
enclosure that positively left me thunderstruck. I saw carefully traced
on a large piece of paper the very characters of the Black Seal, without
alteration of any kind, and above the inscription my friend had written:
_Inscription found on a limestone rock on the Gray Hills, Monmouthshire.
Done in some red earth and quite recent_. I turned to the letter. My
friend wrote: "I send you the enclosed inscription with all due reserve.
A shepherd who passed by the stone a week ago swears that there was then
no mark of any kind. The characters, as I have noted, are formed by
drawing some red earth over the stone, and are of an average height of
one inch. They look to me like a kind of cuneiform character, a good
deal altered, but this of course is impossible. It may be either a hoax
or more probably some scribble of the gypsies, who are plentiful enough
in this wild country. They have, as you are aware, many hieroglyphics
which they use in communicating with one another. I happened to visit
the stone in question two days ago in connection with a rather painful
incident which has occurred here."

As may be supposed, I wrote immediately to my friend, thanking him for
the copy of the inscription, and asking him in a casual manner, the
history of the incident he mentioned. To be brief, I heard that a woman
named Cradock, who had lost her husband a day before, had set out to
communicate the sad news to a cousin who lived some five miles away. She
took a short cut which led by the Gray Hills. Mrs. Cradock, who was then
quite a young woman, never arrived at her relative's house. Late that
night a farmer who had lost a couple of sheep, supposed to have wandered
from the flock, was walking over the Gray Hills, with a lantern and his
dog. His attention was attracted by a noise, which he described as a
kind of wailing, mournful and pitiable to hear; and, guided by the
sound, he found the unfortunate Mrs. Cradock crouched on the ground by
the limestone rock, swaying her body to and fro, and lamenting and
crying in so heart-rending a manner that the farmer was, as he says, at
first obliged to stop his ears, or he would have run away. The woman
allowed herself to be taken home, and a neighbor came to see to her
necessities. All the night she never ceased her crying, mixing her
lament with words of some unintelligible jargon, and when the doctor
arrived he pronounced her insane. She lay on her bed for a week, now
wailing, as people said, like one lost and damned for eternity, and now
sunk in a heavy coma; it was thought that grief at the loss of her
husband had unsettled her mind, and the medical man did not at one time
expect her to live. I need not say that I was deeply interested in this
story, and I made my friend write to me at intervals with all the
particulars of the case. I heard then that in the course of six weeks
the woman gradually recovered the use of her faculties and some months
later she gave birth to a son, christened Jervase, who unhappily proved
to be of weak intellect. Such were the facts known to the village; but
to me while I whitened at the suggested thought of the hideous
enormities that had doubtless been committed, all this was nothing short
of conviction, and I incautiously hazarded a hint of something like the
truth to some scientific friends. The moment the words had left my lips
I bitterly regretted having spoken, and thus given away the great secret
of my life, but with a good deal of relief mixed with indignation, I
found my fears altogether misplaced, for my friends ridiculed me to my
face, and I was regarded as a madman; and beneath a natural anger I
chuckled to myself, feeling as secure amidst these blockheads, as if I
had confided what I knew to the desert sands.

But now, knowing so much, I resolved I would know all, and I
concentrated my efforts on the task of deciphering the inscription on
the Black Seal. For many years I made this puzzle the sole object of my
leisure moments; for the greater portion of my time was, of course,
devoted to other duties, and it was only now and then that I could
snatch a week of clear research. If I were to tell the full history of
this curious investigation, this statement would be wearisome in the
extreme, for it would contain simply the account of long and tedious
failure. By what I knew already of ancient scripts I was well-equipped
for the chase, as I always termed it to myself. I had correspondents
amongst all the scientific men in Europe, and, indeed, in the world, and
I could not believe that in these days any character, however ancient
and however perplexed, could long resist the search-light I should bring
to bear upon it. Yet, in point of fact, it was fully fourteen years
before I succeeded. With every year my professional duties increased,
and my leisure became smaller. This no doubt retarded me a good deal;
and yet, when I look back on those years I am astonished at the vast
scope of my investigation of the Black Seal. I made my bureau a centre,
and from all the world and from all the ages I gathered transcripts of
ancient writing. Nothing, I resolved, should pass me unawares, and the
faintest hint should be welcomed and followed up. But as one covert
after another was tried and proved empty of result, I began in the
course of years to despair, and to wonder whether the Black Seal were
the sole relic of some race that had vanished from the world and left no
other trace of its existence,--had perished, in fine, as Atlantis is
said to have done, in some great cataclysm, its secrets perhaps drowned
beneath the ocean or moulded into the heart of the hills. The thought
chilled my warmth a little, and though I still persevered, it was no
longer with the same certainty of faith. A chance came to the rescue. I
was staying in a considerable town in the north of England, and took the
opportunity of going over the very creditable museum that had for some
time been established in the place. The curator was one of my
correspondents; and, as we were looking through one of the mineral
cases, my attention was struck by a specimen, a piece of black stone
some four inches square, the appearance of which reminded me in a
measure of the Black Seal. I took it up carelessly, and was turning it
over in my hand, when I saw, to my astonishment, that the under side was
inscribed. I said, quietly enough, to my friend the curator that the
specimen interested me, and that I should be much obliged if he would
allow me to take it with me to my hotel for a couple of days. He, of
course, made no objection, and I hurried to my rooms, and found that my
first glance had not deceived me. There were two inscriptions; one in
the regular cuneiform character, another in the character of the Black
Seal, and I realized that my task was accomplished. I made an exact copy
of the two inscriptions; and when I got to my London study, and had the
Seal before me, I was able seriously to grapple with the great problem.
The interpreting inscription on the museum specimen, though in itself
curious enough, did not bear on my quest, but the transliteration made
me master of the secret of the Black Seal. Conjecture, of course, had to
enter into my calculations; there was here and there uncertainty about a
particular ideograph, and one sign recurring again and again on the Seal
baffled me for many successive nights. But at last the secret stood open
before me in plain English, and I read the key of the awful
transmutation of the hills. The last word was hardly written, when with
fingers all trembling and unsteady I tore the scrap of paper into the
minutest fragments, and saw them flame and blacken in the red hollow of
the fire, and then I crushed the gray films that remained into finest
powder. Never since then have I written those words; never will I write
the phrases which tell me how man can be reduced to the slime from which
he came, and be forced to put on the flesh of the reptile and the snake.
There was now but one thing remaining. I knew; but I desired to see, and
I was after some time able to take a house in the neighborhood of the
Gray Hills, and not far from the cottage where Mrs. Cradock and her son
Jervase resided. I need not go into a full and detailed account of the
apparently inexplicable events which have occurred here, where I am
writing this. I knew that I should find in Jervase Cradock something of
the blood of the "Little People," and I found later that he had more
than once encountered his kinsmen in lonely places in that lonely land.
When I was summoned one day to the garden, and found him in a seizure
speaking or hissing the ghastly jargon of the Black Seal, I am afraid
that exultation prevailed over pity. I heard bursting from his lips the
secrets of the underworld, and the word of dread, "Ishakshar," the
signification of which I must be excused from giving.

But there is one incident I cannot pass over unnoticed. In the waste
hollow of the night I awoke at the sound of those hissing syllables I
knew so well; and on going to the wretched boy's room, I found him
convulsed and foaming at the mouth, struggling on the bed as if he
strove to escape the grasp of writhing demons. I took him down to my
room and lit the lamp, while he lay twisting on the floor, calling on
the power within his flesh to leave him. I saw his body swell and become
distended as a bladder, while the face blackened before my eyes; and
then at the crisis I did what was necessary according to the directions
on the Seal, and putting all scruple on one side, I became a man of
science, observant of what was passing. Yet the sight I had to witness
was horrible, almost beyond the power of human conception and the most
fearful fantasy; something pushed out from the body there on the floor,
and stretched forth, a slimy wavering tentacle, across the room, and
grasped the bust upon the cupboard, and laid it down on my desk.

When it was over, and I was left to walk up and down all the rest of the
night, white and shuddering, with sweat pouring from my flesh, I vainly
tried to reason with myself; I said, truly enough, that I had seen
nothing really supernatural, that a snail pushing out his horns and
drawing them in was but an instance on a smaller scale of what I had
witnessed; and yet horror broke through all such reasonings and left me
shattered and loathing myself for the share I had taken in the night's
work.

There is little more to be said. I am going now to the final trial and
encounter; for I have determined that there shall be nothing wanting,
and I shall meet the "Little People" face to face. I shall have the
Black Seal and the knowledge of its secrets to help me, and if I
unhappily do not return from my journey, there is no need to conjure up
here a picture of the awfulness of my fate.

Pausing a little at the end of Professor Gregg's statement, Miss Lally
continued her tale in the following words:--

Such was the almost incredible story that the professor had left behind
him. When I had finished reading it, it was late at night, but the next
morning I took Morgan with me, and we proceeded to search the Gray Hills
for some trace of the lost professor. I will not weary you with a
description of the savage desolation of that tract of country, a tract
of utterest loneliness, of bare green hills dotted over with gray
limestone boulders, worn by the ravage of time into fantastic semblances
of men and beasts. Finally, after many hours of weary searching, we
found what I told you--the watch and chain, the purse, and the
ring--wrapped in a piece of coarse parchment. When Morgan cut the gut
that bound the parcel together, and I saw the professor's property, I
burst into tears, but the sight of the dreaded characters of the Black
Seal repeated on the parchment froze me to silent horror, and I think I
understood for the first time the awful fate that had come upon my late
employer.

I have only to add that Professor Gregg's lawyer treated my account of
what had happened as a fairy tale, and refused even to glance at the
documents I laid before him. It was he who was responsible for the
statement that appeared in the public press, to the effect that
Professor Gregg had been drowned, and that his body must have been swept
into the open sea.

Miss Lally stopped speaking and looked at Mr. Phillipps, with a glance
of some enquiry. He, for his part, was sunken in a deep revery of
thought; and when he looked up and saw the bustle of the evening
gathering in the square, men and women hurrying to partake of dinner,
and crowds already besetting the music-halls, all the hum and press of
actual life seemed unreal and visionary, a dream in the morning after an
awakening.

"I thank you," he said at last, "for your most interesting story,
interesting to me, because I feel fully convinced of its exact truth."

"Sir," said the lady, with some energy of indignation, "you grieve and
offend me. Do you think I should waste my time and yours by concocting
fictions on a bench in Leicester Square?"

"Pardon me, Miss Lally, you have a little misunderstood me. Before you
began I knew that whatever you told would be told in good faith, but
your experiences have a far higher value than that of _bona fides_. The
most extraordinary circumstances in your account are in perfect harmony
with the very latest scientific theories. Professor Lodge would, I am
sure, value a communication from you extremely; I was charmed from the
first by his daring hypothesis in explanation of the wonders of
Spiritualism (so called), but your narrative puts the whole matter out
of the range of mere hypothesis."

"Alas, sir, all this will not help me. You forget, I have lost my
brother under the most startling and dreadful circumstances. Again, I
ask you, did you not see him as you came here? His black whiskers, his
spectacles, his timid glance to right and left; think, do not these
particulars recall his face to your memory?"

"I am sorry to say I have never seen any one of the kind," said
Phillipps, who had forgotten all about the missing brother. "But let me
ask you a few questions. Did you notice whether Professor Gregg--"

"Pardon me, sir, I have stayed too long. My employers will be expecting
me. I thank you for your sympathy. Good bye."

Before Mr. Phillipps had recovered from his amazement at this abrupt
departure, Miss Lally had disappeared from his gaze, passing into the
crowd that now thronged the approaches to the Empire. He walked home in
a pensive frame of mind, and drank too much tea. At ten o'clock he had
made his third brew, and had sketched out the outlines of a little work
to be called _Protoplasmic Reversion_.




INCIDENT OF THE PRIVATE BAR.


Mr. Dyson often meditated at odd moments over the singular tale he had
listened to at the Café de la Touraine. In the first place he cherished
a profound conviction that the words of truth were scattered with a too
niggardly and sparing hand over the agreeable history of Mr. Smith and
the Black Gulf Cañon; and, secondly, there was the undeniable fact of
the profound agitation of the narrator, and his gestures on the
pavement, too violent to be simulated. The idea of a man going about
London haunted by the fear of meeting a young man with spectacles struck
Dyson as supremely ridiculous; he searched his memory for some precedent
in romance, but without success; he paid visits at odd times to the
little café, hoping to find Mr. Wilkins there; and he kept a sharp watch
on the great generation of the spectacled men without much doubt that he
would remember the face of the individual whom he had seen dart out of
the Aerated Bread Shop. All his peregrinations and researches, however,
seemed to lead to nothing of value, and Dyson needed all his warm
conviction of his innate detective powers and his strong scent for
mystery to sustain him in his endeavors. In fact, he had two affairs on
hand; and every day, as he passed through streets crowded or deserted,
and lurked in the obscure districts, and watched at corners, he was more
than surprised to find that the affair of the gold coin persistently
avoided him; while the ingenious Wilkins, and the young man with
spectacles whom he dreaded, seemed to have vanished from the pavements.

He was pondering these problems one evening in a house of call in the
Strand, and the obstinacy with which the persons he so ardently desired
to meet hung back gave the modest tankard before him an additional touch
of bitter. As it happened, he was alone in his compartment, and, without
thinking, he uttered aloud the burden of his meditations. "How bizarre
it all is!" he said, "a man walking the pavement with the dread of a
timid-looking young man with spectacles continually hovering before his
eyes. And there was some tremendous feeling at work, I could swear to
that." Quick as thought, before he had finished the sentence, a head
popped round the barrier, and was withdrawn again; and while Dyson was
wondering what this could mean, the door of the compartment was swung
open, and a smooth, clean-shaven, and smiling gentleman entered.

"You will excuse me, sir," he said politely, "for intruding on your
thoughts, but you made a remark a minute ago."

"I did," said Dyson; "I have been puzzling over a foolish matter, and I
thought aloud. As you heard what I said, and seem interested, perhaps
you may be able to relieve my perplexity?"

"Indeed. I scarcely know; it is an odd coincidence. One has to be
cautious. I suppose, sir, that you would have no repulsion in assisting
the ends of justice."

"Justice," replied Dyson, "is a term of such wide meaning, that I too
feel doubtful about giving an answer. But this place is not altogether
fit for such a discussion; perhaps you would come to my rooms?"

"You are very kind; my name is Burton, but I am sorry to say I have not
a card with me. Do you live near here?"

"Within ten minutes' walk."

Mr. Burton took out his watch and seemed to be making a rapid
calculation.

"I have a train to catch," he said; "but after all, it is a late one.
So, if you don't mind, I think I will come with you. I am sure we should
have a little talk together. We turn up here?"

The theatres were filling as they crossed the Strand, the street seemed
alive with voices, and Dyson looked fondly about him. The glittering
lines of gas-lamps, with here and there the blinding radiance of an
electric light, the hansoms that flashed to and fro with ringing bells,
the laden buses, and the eager hurrying east and west of the foot
passengers, made his most enchanting picture; and the graceful spire of
St. Mary le Strand, on the one hand, and the last flush of sunset on the
other, were to him a cause of thanksgiving, as the gorse blossom to
Linnæus. Mr. Burton caught his look of fondness as they crossed the
street.

"I see you can find the picturesque in London," he said. "To me this
great town is as I see it is to you, the study and the love of life. Yet
how few there are that can pierce the veils of apparent monotony and
meanness! I have read in a paper which is said to have the largest
circulation in the world, a comparison between the aspects of London and
Paris, a comparison which should be positively laureat, as the great
masterpiece of fatuous stupidity. Conceive if you can a human being of
ordinary intelligence preferring the Boulevards to our London streets;
imagine a man calling for the wholesale destruction of our most charming
city, in order that the dull uniformity of that whited sepulchre called
Paris should be reproduced here in London. Is it not positively
incredible?"

"My dear sir," said Dyson, regarding Burton with a good deal of
interest. "I agree most heartily with your opinions, but I really cannot
share your wonder. Have you heard how much George Eliot received for
'Romola'? Do you know what the circulation of 'Robert Elsmere' was? Do
you read 'Tit Bits' regularly? To me, on the contrary, it is constant
matter both for wonder and thanksgiving that London was not
boulevardized twenty years ago. I praise that exquisite jagged sky line
that stands up against the pale greens and fading blues and flushing
clouds of sunset, but I wonder even more than I praise. As for St. Mary
le Strand, its preservation is a miracle, nothing more or less. A thing
of exquisite beauty _versus_ four buses abreast! Really, the conclusion
is too obvious. Didn't you read the letter of the man who proposed that
the whole mysterious system, the immemorial plan of computing Easter,
should be abolished off-hand because he doesn't like his son having his
holidays as early as March 25th? But shall we be going on?"

They had lingered at the corner of a street on the north side of the
Strand, enjoying the contrasts and the glamour of the scene. Dyson
pointed the way with a gesture, and they strolled up the comparatively
deserted streets, slanting a little to the right, and thus arriving at
Dyson's lodging on the verge of Bloomsbury. Mr. Burton took a
comfortable armchair by the open window, while Dyson lit the candles and
produced the whiskey and soda and cigarettes.

"They tell me these cigarettes are very good," he said, "but I know
nothing about it myself. I hold at last that there is only one tobacco,
and that is shag. I suppose I could not tempt you to try a pipeful?"

Mr. Burton smilingly refused the offer, and picked out a cigarette from
the box. When he had smoked it half through, he said with some
hesitation:--

"It is really kind of you to have me here, Mr. Dyson; the fact is that
the interests at issue are far too serious to be discussed in a bar,
where, as you found for yourself, there may be listeners, voluntary or
involuntary, on each side. I think the remark I heard you make was
something about the oddity of an individual going about London in deadly
fear of a young man with spectacles."

"Yes, that was it."

"Well, would you mind confiding to me the circumstances that gave rise
to the reflection?"

"Not in the least; it was like this." And he ran over in brief outline
the adventure in Oxford Street, dwelling on the violence of Mr.
Wilkins's gestures, but wholly suppressing the tale told in the café.
"He told me he lived in constant terror of meeting this man; and I left
him when I thought he was cool enough to look after himself," said
Dyson, ending his narrative.

"Really," said Mr. Burton. "And you actually saw this mysterious
person."

"Yes."

"And could you describe him?"

"Well, he looked to me a youngish man, pale and nervous. He had small
black side whiskers, and wore rather large spectacles."

"But this is simply marvellous! You astonish me. For I must tell you
that my interest in the matter is this. I am not in the least in terror
of meeting a dark young man with spectacles, but I shrewdly suspect a
person of that description would much rather not meet me. And yet the
account you give of the man tallies exactly. A nervous glance to right
and left--is it not so? And, as you observed, he wears prominent
spectacles, and has small black whiskers. There cannot be surely two
people exactly identical--one a cause of terror, and the other, I should
imagine, extremely anxious to get out of the way. But have you seen this
man since?"

"No, I have not; and I have been looking out for him pretty keenly. But,
of course, he may have left London, and England too for the matter of
that."

"Hardly, I think. Well, Mr. Dyson, it is only fair that I should explain
my story, now that I have listened to yours. I must tell you, then, that
I am an agent for curiosities and precious things of all kinds. An odd
employment, isn't it? Of course I wasn't brought up to the business; I
gradually fell into it. I have always been fond of things queer and
rare, and by the time I was twenty I had made half a dozen collections.
It is not generally known how often farm laborers come upon rarities;
you would be astonished if I told you what I have seen turned up by the
plough. I lived in the country in those days, and I used to buy anything
the men on the farms brought me; and I had the queerest set of rubbish,
as my friends called my collection. But that's how I got the scent of
the business, which means everything; and, later on, it struck me that I
might very well turn my knowledge to account and add to my income. Since
those early days I have been in most quarters of the world, and some
very valuable things have passed through my hands, and I have had to
engage in difficult and delicate negotiations. You have possibly heard
of the Khan opal--called in the East 'The Stone of a Thousand and One
Colors'? Well, perhaps the conquest of that stone was my greatest
achievement. I call it myself the stone of the thousand and one lies,
for I assure you that I had to invent a cycle of folk-lore before the
Rajah who owned it would consent to sell the thing. I subsidized
wandering story-tellers, who told tales in which the opal played a
frightful part; I hired a holy man, a great ascetic, to prophesy against
the thing in the language of Eastern symbolism; in short, I frightened
the Rajah out of his wits. So you see there is room for diplomacy in
the traffic I am engaged in. I have to be ever on my guard, and I have
often been sensible that unless I watched every step and weighed every
word my life would not last me much longer. Last April I became aware of
the existence of a highly valuable antique gem. It was in Southern
Italy, and in the possession of persons who were ignorant of its real
value. It has always been my experience that it is precisely the
ignorant who are most difficult to deal with. I have met farmers who
were under the impression that a shilling of George I. was a find of
almost incalculable value; and all the defeats I have sustained have
been at the hands of people of this description. Reflecting on these
facts, I saw that the acquisition of the gem I have mentioned would be
an affair demanding the nicest diplomacy; I might possibly have got it
by offering a sum approaching its real value, but I need not point out
to you that such a proceeding would be most unbusinesslike. Indeed, I
doubt whether it would have been successful, for the cupidity of such
persons is aroused by a sum which seems enormous, and the low cunning
which serves them in place of intelligence immediately suggests that the
object for which such an amount is offered must be worth at least
double. Of course, when it is a matter of an ordinary curiosity--an old
jug, a carved chest, or a queer brass lantern--one does not much care;
the cupidity of the owner defeats its object, the collector laughs, and
goes away, for he is aware that such things are by no means unique. But
this gem I fervently desired to possess; and as I did not see my way to
giving more than a hundredth part of its value, I was conscious that
all my, let us say, imaginative and diplomatic powers would have to be
exerted. I am sorry to say that I came to the conclusion that I could
not undertake to carry the matter through single-handed, and I
determined to confide in my assistant, a young man named William
Robbins, whom I judged to be by no means devoid of capacity. My idea was
that Robbins should get himself up as a low-class dealer in precious
stones; he could patter a little Italian, and would go to the town in
question and manage to see the gem we were after, possibly by offering
some trifling articles of jewelry for sale, but that I left to be
decided. Then my work was to begin, but I will not trouble you with a
tale told twice over. In due course, then, Robbins went off to Italy
with an assortment of uncut stones and a few rings, and some jewelry I
bought in Birmingham, on purpose for his expedition. A week later I
followed him, travelling leisurely, so that I was a fortnight later in
arriving at our common destination. There was a decent hotel in the
town, and on my inquiring of the landlord whether there were many
strangers in the place, he told me very few; he had heard there was an
Englishman staying in a small tavern, a pedlar he said, who sold
beautiful trinkets very cheaply, and wanted to buy old rubbish. For five
or six days I took life leisurely, and I must say I enjoyed myself. It
was part of my plan to make the people think I was an enormously rich
man; and I knew that such items as the extravagance of my meals, and the
price of every bottle of wine I drank, would not be suffered, as Sancho
Panza puts it, to rot in the landlord's breast. At the end of the week I
was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Signor Melini, the
owner of the gem I coveted, at the café, and with his ready hospitality
and my geniality I was soon established as a friend of the house. On my
third or fourth visit I managed to make the Italians talk about the
English pedlar, who, they said, spoke a most detestable Italian. 'But
that does not matter,' said the Signora Melini, 'for he has beautiful
things, which he sells very very cheap.' 'I hope you may not find he has
cheated you,' I said, 'for I must tell you that English people give
these fellows a very wide berth. They usually make a great parade of the
cheapness of their goods, which often turn out to be double the price of
better articles in the shops.' They would not hear of this, and Signora
Melini insisted on showing me the three rings and the bracelet she had
bought of the pedlar. She told me the price she had paid; and after
scrutinizing the articles carefully, I had to confess that she had made
a bargain, and indeed Robbins had sold her the things at about fifty per
cent below market value. I admired the trinkets as I gave them back to
the lady, and I hinted that the pedlar must be a somewhat foolish
specimen of his class. Two days later, as I was taking my vermouth at
the café with Signor Melini, he led the conversation back to the pedlar,
and mentioned casually that he had shown the man a little curiosity, for
which he had made rather a handsome offer. 'My dear sir,' I said, 'I
hope you will be careful. I told you that the travelling tradesman does
not bear a very high reputation in England; and notwithstanding his
apparent simplicity, this fellow may turn out to be an arrant cheat. May
I ask you what is the nature of the curiosity you have shown him?' He
told me it was a little thing, a pretty little stone with some figures
cut on it: people said it was old. 'I should like to examine it,' I
replied; 'as it happens I have seen a good deal of these gems. We have
a fine collection of them in our museum at London.' In due course I was
shown the article, and I held the gem I so coveted between my fingers. I
looked at it coolly, and put it down carelessly on the table. 'Would you
mind telling me, signor,' I said, 'how much my fellow-countryman offered
you for this?' 'Well,' he said, 'my wife says the man must be mad; he
said he would give me twenty lire for it.'

"I looked at him quietly, and took up the gem and pretended to examine
it in the light more carefully; I turned it over and over, and finally
pulled out a magnifying glass from my pocket, and seemed to search every
line in the cutting with minutest scrutiny. 'My dear sir,' I said at
last, 'I am inclined to agree with Signora Melini. If this gem were
genuine, it would be worth some money; but as it happens to be a rather
bad forgery, it is not worth twenty centesimi. It was sophisticated, I
should imagine, some time in the last century, and by a very unskilful
hand.' 'Then we had better get rid of it,' said Melini. 'I never thought
it was worth anything myself. Of course I am sorry for the pedlar, but
one must let a man know his own trade. I shall tell him we will take the
twenty lire.' 'Excuse me,' I said, 'the man wants a lesson. It would be
a charity to give him one. Tell him that you will not take anything
under eighty lire, and I shall be much surprised if he does not close
with you at once.

"A day or two later I heard that the English pedlar had gone away, after
debasing the minds of the country people with Birmingham art jewelry;
for I admit that the gold sleeve links like kidney beans, the silver
chains made apparently after the pattern of a dog-chain, and the initial
brooches, have always been heavy on my conscience. I cannot acquit
myself of having indirectly contributed to debauch the taste of a simple
folk; but I hope that the end I had in view may finally outbalance this
heavy charge. Soon afterwards, I paid a farewell visit at the Melinis,
and the signor informed me with an oily chuckle that the plan I had
suggested had been completely successful. I congratulated him on his
bargain, and went away after expressing a wish that heaven might send
many such pedlars in his path.

"Nothing of interest occurred on my return journey. I had arranged that
Robbins was to meet me at a certain place on a certain day, and I went
to the appointment full of the coolest confidence; the gem had been
conquered, and I had only to reap the fruits of victory. I am sorry to
shake that trust in our common human nature which I am sure you possess,
but I am compelled to tell you that up to the present date I have never
set eyes on my man Robbins, or on the antique gem in his custody. I have
found out that he actually arrived in London, for he was seen three
days before my arrival in England by a pawnbroker of my acquaintance
consuming his favorite beverage, four ale, in the tavern where we met
to-night. Since then he has not been heard of. I hope you will now
pardon my curiosity as to the history and adventures of dark young men
with spectacles. You will, I am sure, feel for me in my position; the
savor of life has disappeared for me; it is a bitter thought that I have
rescued one of the most perfect and exquisite specimens of antique art
from the hands of ignorant, and indeed unscrupulous persons, only to
deliver it into the keeping of a man who is evidently utterly devoid of
the very elements of commercial morality."

"My dear sir," said Dyson, "you will allow me to compliment you on your
style; your adventures have interested me exceedingly. But, forgive me,
you just now used the word morality; would not some persons take
exception to your own methods of business? I can conceive, myself, flaws
of a moral kind being found in the very original conception you have
described to me. I can imagine the Puritan shrinking in dismay from your
scheme, pronouncing it unscrupulous, nay, dishonest."

Mr. Burton helped himself, very frankly, to some more whiskey.

"Your scruples entertain me," he said. "Perhaps you have not gone very
deeply into these questions of ethics. I have been compelled to do so
myself, just as I was forced to master a simple system of book-keeping.
Without book-keeping, and still more without a system of ethics, it is
impossible to conduct a business such as mine. But I assure you that I
am often profoundly saddened as I pass through the crowded streets and
watch the world at work by the thought of how few amongst all these
hurrying individuals, black hatted, well dressed, educated we may
presume sufficiently,--how few amongst them have any reasoned system of
morality. Even you have not weighed the question; although you study
life and affairs, and to a certain extent penetrate the veils and masks
of the comedy of man, even you judge by empty conventions, and the false
money which is allowed to pass current as sterling coin. Allow me to
play the part of Socrates; I shall teach you nothing that you do not
know. I shall merely lay aside the wrappings of prejudice and bad logic,
and show you the real image which you possess in your soul. Come then.
Do you allow that happiness is anything?"

"Certainly," said Dyson.

"And happiness is desirable or undesirable?"

"Desirable of course."

"And what shall we call the man who gives happines

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35517