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The Crimson Blind

by Fred M. White · English · Gutenberg #9832 · 660,350 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Crimson Blind

Author: Fred M. White


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9832]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9832

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIMSON BLIND ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team










THE CRIMSON BLIND

By FRED. M. WHITE

1905







CONTENTS


CHAPTER


       I. "WHO SPEAKS?"
      II. THE CRIMSON BLIND
     III. THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS
      IV. IN EXTREMIS
       V. "RECEIVED WITH THANKS"
      VI. A POLICY OF SILENCE
     VII. No. 218, BRUNSWICK SQUARE
    VIII. HATHERLY BELL
      IX. THE BROKEN FIGURE
       X. THE HOUSE OF THE SILENT SORROW
      XI. AFTER REMBRANDT
     XII. "THE CRIMSON BLIND"
    XIII. "GOOD DOG!"
     XIV. BEHIND THE BLIND
      XV. A MEDICAL OPINION
     XVI. MARGARET SEES A GHOST
    XVII. THE PACE SLACKENS
   XVIII. A COMMON ENEMY
     XIX. ROLLO SHOWS HIS TEETH
      XX. FRANK LITTIMER
     XXI. A FIND
    XXII. "THE LIGHT THAT FAILED"
   XXIII. INDISCRETION
    XXIV. ENID LEARNS SOMETHING
     XXV. LITTIMER CASTLE
    XXIV. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST
   XXVII. SLIGHTLY FARCICAL
  XXVIII.  A SQUIRE OF DAMES
    XXIX.  THE MAN WITH THE THUMB AGAIN
     XXX.  GONE!
    XXXI.  BELL ARRIVES
   XXXII.  HOW THE SCHEME WORKED OUT
  XXXIII.  THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE
   XXXIV.  THE PUZZLING OF HENSON
    XXXV.  CHRIS HAS AN IDEA
   XXXVL.  A BRILLIANT IDEA
  XXXVII.  ANOTHER TELEPHONIC MESSAGE
 XXXVIII.  A LITTLE FICTION
   XXXIX.  THE FASCINATION OF JAMES MERRITT
      XL.  A USEFUL DISCOVERY
     XLI.  A DELICATE ERRAND
    XLII.  PRINCE RUPERT'S RING
   XLIII.  NEARING THE TRUTH
    XLIV.  ENID SPEAKS
     XLV.  ON THE TRAIL
    XLVI.  LITTIMER'S EYES ARE OPENED
   XLVII.  THE TRACK BROADENS
  XLVIII.  WHERE IS RAWLINS?
    XLIX.  A CHEVALIER OF FORTUNE
       L.  RAWLINS IS CANDID
      LI.  HERITAGE IS WILLING
     LII.  PUTTING THE LIGHT OUT
    LIII.  UNSEALED LIPS
     LIV.  WHERE IS THE RING?
      LV.  KICKED OUT
     LVI.  WHITE FANGS
    LVII.  HIDE AND SEEK




THE CRIMSON BLIND.




CHAPTER I

"WHO SPEAKS?"


David Steel dropped his eyes from the mirror and shuddered as a man who
sees his own soul bared for the first time. And yet the mirror was in
itself a thing of artistic beauty--engraved Florentine glass in a frame
of deep old Flemish oak. The novelist had purchased it in Bruges, and now
it stood as a joy and a thing of beauty against the full red wall over
the fireplace. And Steel had glanced at himself therein and seen murder
in his eyes.

He dropped into a chair with a groan for his own helplessness. Men have
done that kind of thing before when the cartridges are all gone and the
bayonets are twisted and broken and the brown waves of the foe come
snarling over the breastworks. And then they die doggedly with the stones
in their hands, and cursing the tardy supports that brought this black
shame upon them.

But Steel's was ruin of another kind. The man was a fighter to his
finger-tips. He had dogged determination and splendid physical courage;
he had gradually thrust his way into the front rank of living novelists,
though the taste of poverty was still bitter in his mouth. And how good
success was now that it had come!

People envied him. Well, that was all in the sweets of the victory. They
praised his blue china, they lingered before his Oriental dishes and the
choice pictures on the panelled walls. The whole thing was still a
constant pleasure to Steel's artistic mind. The dark walls, the old oak
and silver, the red shades, and the high artistic fittings soothed him
and pleased him, and played upon his tender imagination. And behind there
was a study, filled with books and engravings, and beyond that again a
conservatory, filled with the choicest blossoms. Steel could work with
the passion flowers above his head and the tender grace of the tropical
ferns about him, and he could reach his left hand for his telephone and
call Fleet Street to his ear.

It was all unique, delightful, the dream of an artistic soul realised.
Three years before David Steel had worked in an attic at a bare deal
table, and his mother had £3 per week to pay for everything. Usually
there was balm in this recollection.

But not to-night, Heaven help him, not to-night! Little grinning demons
were dancing on the oak cornices, there were mocking lights gleaming from
Cellini tankards that Steel had given far too much money for. It had not
seemed to matter just at the time. If all this artistic beauty had
emptied Steel's purse there was a golden stream coming. What mattered it
that the local tradesmen were getting a little restless? The great
expense of the novelist's life was past. In two years he would be rich.
And the pathos of the thing was not lessened by the fact that it was
true. In two years' time Steel would be well off. He was terribly short
of ready money, but he had just finished a serial story for which he was
to be paid £500 within two months of the delivery of the copy; two novels
of his were respectively in their fourth and fifth editions. But these
novels of his he had more or less given away, and he ground his teeth as
he thought of it. Still, everything spelt prosperity. If he lived, David
Steel was bound to become a rich man.

And yet he was ruined. Within twenty-four hours everything would pass out
of his hands. To all practical purposes it had done so already. And all
for the want of £1,000! Steel had earned twice that amount during the
past twelve months, and the fruits of his labour were as balm to his soul
about him. Within the next twelve months he could pay the debt three
times over. He would cheerfully have taken the bill and doubled the
amount for six months' delay.

And all this because he had become surety for an absconding brother.
Steel had put his pride in his pocket and interviewed his creditor, a
little, polite, mild-eyed financier, who meant to have his money to the
uttermost farthing. At first he had been suave and sympathetic, until he
had discovered that Steel had debts elsewhere, and then--

Well, he had signed judgment, and to-morrow he could levy execution.
Within a few hours the bottom would fall out of the universe so far as
Steel was concerned. Within a few hours every butcher and baker and
candle-stick-maker would come abusively for his bill. Steel, who could
have faced a regiment, recoiled fearfully from that. Within a week his
oak and silver would have to be sold and the passion flower would wither
on the walls.

Steel had not told anybody yet; the strong man had grappled with his
trouble alone. Had he been a man of business he might have found some way
out of the difficulty. Even his mother didn't know. She was asleep
upstairs, perhaps dreaming of her son's greatness. What would the dear
old mater say when she knew? Well, she had been a good mother to him, and
it had been a labour of love to furnish the house for her as for himself.
Perhaps there would be a few tears in those gentle eyes, but no more.
Thank God, no reproaches there.

David lighted a cigarette and paced restlessly round the dining-room.
Never had he appreciated its quiet beauty more than he did now. There
were flowers, blood-red flowers, on the table under the graceful electric
stand that Steel had designed himself. He snapped off the light as if the
sight pained him, and strode into his study. For a time he stood moodily
gazing at his flowers and ferns. How every leaf there was pregnant with
association. There was the Moorish clock droning the midnight hour. When
Steel had brought that clock--

"Ting, ting, ting. Pring, pring, ping, pring. Ting, ting, ting, ting."

But Steel heard nothing. Everything seemed as silent as the grave. It was
only by a kind of inner consciousness that he knew the hour to be
midnight. Midnight meant the coming of the last day. After sunrise some
greasy lounger pregnant of cheap tobacco would come in and assume that he
represented the sheriff, bills would be hung like banners on the outward
walls, and then.--

"Pring, pring, pring. Ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting.
Pring, pring, pring."

Bells, somewhere. Like the bells in the valley where the old vicarage
used to stand. Steel vaguely wondered who now lived in the house where he
was born. He was staring in the most absent way at his telephone, utterly
unconscious of the shrill impatience of the little voice. He saw the
quick pulsation of the striker and he came back to earth again.

Jefferies of the _Weekly Messenger_, of course. Jefferies was fond of a
late chat on the telephone. Steel wondered grimly, if Jefferies would
lend him £1,000. He flung himself down in a deep lounge-chair and placed
the receiver to his ear. By the deep, hoarse clang of the wires, a
long-distance message, assuredly.

"From London, evidently. Halloa, London! Are you there?"

London responded that it was. A clear, soft voice spoke at length.

"Is that you, Mr. Steel? Are you quite alone? Under the circumstances you
are not busy to-night?"

Steel started. He had never heard the voice before. It was clear and
soft and commanding, and yet there was just a suspicion of mocking
irony in it.

"I'm not very busy to-night," Steel replied. "Who is speaking to me?"

"That for the present we need not go into," said the mocking voice. "As
certain old-fashioned contemporaries of yours would say, 'We meet as
strangers!' Stranger yet, you are quite alone!"

"I am quite alone. Indeed, I am the only one up in the house."

"Good. I have told the exchange people not to ring off till I have
finished with you. One advantage of telephoning at this hour is that one
is tolerably free from interruption. So your mother is asleep? Have you
told her what is likely to happen to you before many hours have elapsed?"

Steel made no reply for a moment. He was restless and ill at ease
to-night, and it seemed just possible that his imagination was playing
him strange tricks. But, no. The Moorish clock in its frame of
celebrities droned the quarter after twelve; the scent of the Dijon roses
floated in from the conservatory.

"I have told nobody as yet," Steel said, hoarsely. "Who in the name of
Heaven are you?"

"That in good time. But I did not think you were a coward."

"No man has ever told me so--face to face."

"Good again. I recognise the fighting ring in your voice. If you lack
certain phases of moral courage, you are a man of pluck and resource.
Now, somebody who is very dear to me is at present in Brighton, not
very far from your own house. She is in dire need of assistance. You
also are in dire need of assistance. We can be of mutual advantage to
one another."

"What do you mean by that?" Steel whispered.

"Let me put the matter on a business footing. I want you to help my
friend, and in return I will help you. Bear in mind that I am asking you
to do nothing wrong. If you will promise me to go to a certain address in
Brighton to night and see my friend, I promise that before you sleep the
sum of £1,000 in Bank of England notes shall be in your possession."

No reply came from Steel. He could not have spoken at that moment for the
fee-simple of Golconda. He could only hang gasping to the telephone. Many
a strange and weird plot came and went in that versatile brain, but never
one more wild than this. Apparently no reply was expected, for the
speaker resumed:--

"I am asking you to do no wrong. You may naturally desire to know why my
friend does not come to you. That must remain my secret, our secret. We
are trusting you because we know you to be a gentleman, but we have
enemies who are ever on the watch. All you have to do is to go to a
certain place and give a certain woman information. You are thinking that
this is a strange mystery. Never was anything stranger dreamt of in your
philosophy. Are you agreeable?"

The mocking tone died out of the small, clear voice until it was
almost pleading.

"You have taken me at a disadvantage," Steel said. "And you know--"

"Everything. I am trying to save you from ruin. Fortune has played you
into my hands. I am perfectly aware that if you were not on the verge of
social extinction you would refuse my request. It is in your hands to
decide. You know that Beckstein, your creditor, is absolutely merciless.
He will get his money back and more besides. This is his idea of
business. To-morrow you will be an outcast--for the time, at any rate.
Your local creditors will be insolent to you; people will pity you or
blame you, as their disposition lies. On the other hand, you have but to
say the word and you are saved. You can go and see the Brighton
representatives of Beckstein's lawyers, and pay them in paper of the Bank
of England."

"If I was assured of your bona-fides," Steel murmured.

A queer little laugh, a laugh of triumph, came over the wires.

"I have anticipated that question. Have you Greenwich time about you?"

Steel responded that he had. It was five-and-twenty minutes past twelve.
He had quite ceased to wonder at any questions put to him now. It was all
so like one of his brilliant little extravanganzas.

"You can hang up your receiver for five minutes," the voice said.
"Precisely at half-past twelve you go and look on your front doorstep.
Then come back and tell me what you have found. You need not fear that I
shall go away."

Steel hung up the receiver, feeling that he needed a little rest. His
cigarette was actually scorching his left thumb and forefinger, but he
was heedless of the fact. He flicked up the dining-room lights again and
rapidly made himself a sparklet soda, which he added to a small whisky.
He looked almost lovingly at the gleaming Cellini tankard, at the pools
of light on the fair damask. Was it possible that he was not going to
lose all this, after all?

The Moorish clock in the study droned the half-hour.

David gulped down his whisky and crept shakily to the front door with a
feeling on him that he was doing something stealthily. The bolts and
chain rattled under his trembling fingers. Outside, the whole world
seemed to be sleeping. Under the wide canopy of stars some black object
picked out with shining points lay on the white marble breadth of the top
step. A gun-metal cigar-case set in tiny diamonds.

The novelist fastened the front door and staggered to the study. A
pretty, artistic thing such as David had fully intended to purchase for
himself. He had seen one exactly like it in a jeweller's window in North
Street. He had pointed it out to his mother. Why, it was the very one! No
doubt whatever about it! David had had the case in his hands and had
reluctantly declined the purchase.

He pressed the spring, and the case lay open before him. Inside were
papers, soft, crackling papers; the case was crammed with them. They were
white and clean, and twenty-five of them in all. Twenty-five Bank of
England notes for £10 each--£250!

David fought the dreamy feeling off and took down the telephone receiver.

"Are you there?" he whispered, as if fearful of listeners. "I--I have
found your parcel."

"Containing the notes. So far so good. Yes, you are right, it is the
same cigar-case you admired so much in Lockhart's the other day. Well,
we have given you an instance of our bona-fides. But £250 is of no use
to you at present. Beckstein's people would not accept it on
account--they can make far more money by 'selling you up,' as the poetic
phrase goes. It is in your hands to procure the other £750 before you
sleep. You can take it as a gift, or, if you are too proud for that, you
may regard it as a loan. In which case you can bestow the money on such
charities as commend themselves to you. Now, are you going to place
yourself entirely in my hands?"

Steel hesitated no longer. Under the circumstances few men would, as he
had a definite assurance that there was nothing dishonourable to be
done. A little courage, a little danger, perhaps, and he could hold up
his head before the world; he could return to his desk to-morrow with
the passion flowers over his head and the scent groves sweet to his
nostrils. And the mater could dream happily, for there would be no
sadness or sorrow in the morning.

"I will do exactly what you tell me," he said.

"Spoken like a man," the voice cried. "Nobody will know you have left
the house--you can be home in an hour. You will not be missed. Come, time
is getting short, and I have my risks as well as others. Go at once to
Old Steine. Stand on the path close under the shadow of the statue of
George IV. and wait there. Somebody will say 'Come,' and you will follow.
Goodnight."

Steel would have said more, but the tinkle of his own bell told him that
the stranger had rung off. He laid his cigar-case on the writing-table,
slipped his cigarette-case into his pocket, satisfied himself that he had
his latch-key, and put on a dark overcoat. Overhead the dear old mater
was sleeping peacefully. He closed the front door carefully behind him
and strode resolutely into the darkness.




CHAPTER II

THE CRIMSON BLIND


David walked swiftly along, his mind in a perfect whirl. Now that once he
had started he was eager to see the adventure through. It was strange,
but stranger things had happened. More than one correspondent with queer
personal experiences had taught him that. Nor was Steel in the least
afraid. He was horribly frightened of disgrace or humiliation, but
physical courage he had in a high degree. And was he not going to save
his home and his good name?

David had not the least doubt on the latter score. Of course he would
do nothing wrong, neither would he keep the money. This he preferred
to regard as a loan--a loan to be paid off before long. At any rate,
money or no money, he would have been sorry to have abandoned the
adventure now.

His spirits rose as he walked along, a great weight had fallen from his
shoulders. He smiled as he thought of his mother peacefully sleeping at
home. What would his mother think if she knew? But, then, nobody was to
know. That had been expressly settled in the bond.

Save for an occasional policeman the streets were deserted. It was a
little cold and raw for the time of year, and a fog like a pink blanket
was creeping in from the sea. Down in the Steine the big arc-lights
gleamed here and there like nebulous blue globes; it was hardly possible
to see across the road. In the half-shadow behind Steel the statue of the
First Gentleman in Europe glowed gigantic, ghost-like in the mist.

It was marvellously still there, so still that David could hear the
tinkle of the pebbles on the beach. He stood back by the gate of the
gardens watching the play of the leaf silhouettes on the pavement,
quaint patterns of fantastic designs thrown up in high relief by the
arc-light above. From the dark foggy throat of St. James's Street came
the tinkle of a cycle bell. On so still a night the noise seemed bizarre
and out of place. Then the cycle loomed in sight; the rider, muffled and
humped over the front wheel, might have been a man or a woman. As the
cyclist flashed by something white and gleaming dropped into the road,
and the single word "Come" seemed to cut like a knife through the fog.
That was all; the rider had looked neither to the right nor to the left,
but the word was distinctly uttered. At the same instant an arm dropped
and a long finger pointed to the gleaming white square in the road. It
was like an instantaneous photograph--a flash, and the figure had
vanished in the fog.

"This grows interesting," Steel muttered. "Evidently my shadowy friend
has dropped a book of rules in the road for me. The plot thickens."

It was only a plain white card that lay in the road. A few lines were
typed on the back of it. The words might have been curt, but they were to
the point:--

"Go along the sea front and turn into Brunswick Square. Walk along the
right side of the square until you reach No. 219. You will read the
number over the fanlight. Open the door and it will yield to you; there
is no occasion to knock. The first door inside the hall leads to the
dining-room. Walk into there and wait. Drop this card down the gutter
just opposite you."

David read the directions once or twice carefully. He made a mental note
of 219. After that he dropped the card down the drain-trap nearest at
hand. A little way ahead of him he heard the cycle bell trilling as if in
approval of his action. But David had made up his mind to observe every
rule of the game. Besides, he might be rigidly watched.

The spirit of adventure was growing upon Steel now. He was no longer
holding the solid result before his eyes. He was ready to see the thing
through for its own sake. And as he hurried up North Street, along
Western Road, and finally down Preston Street, he could hear the purring
tinkle of the cycle bell before him. But not once did he catch sight of
the shadowy rider.

All the same his heart was beating a little faster as he turned into
Brunswick Square. All the houses were in pitchy darkness, as they
naturally would be at one o'clock in the morning, so it was only with
great difficulty that Steel could make out a number here and there. As he
walked slowly and hesitatingly along the cycle bell drummed impatiently
ahead of him.

"A hint to me," David muttered. "Stupid that I should have forgotten the
directions to read the number over the fanlight. Also it is logical to
suppose that I am going to find lights at No. 219. All right, my friend;
no need to swear at me with that bell of yours."

He quickened his pace again and finally stopped before one of the big
houses where lights were gleaming from the hall and dining-room windows.
They were electric lights by their great power, and, save for the hall
and dining-room, the rest of the house lay in utter darkness. The cycle
bell let off an approving staccato from behind the blankety fog as Steel
pulled up.

There was nothing abnormal about the house, nothing that struck the
adventurer's eye beyond the extraordinary vividness of the crimson
blind. The two side-windows of the big bay were evidently shuttered,
but the large centre gleamed like a flood of scarlet overlaid with a
silken sheen. Far across the pavement the ruby track struck into the
heart of the fog.

"Vivid note," Steel murmured. "I shall remember that impression."

He was destined never to forget it, but it was only one note in the gamut
of adventure now. With a firm step he walked up the marble flight and
turned the handle. It felt dirty and rusty to the touch. Evidently the
servants were neglectful, or they were employed by people who had small
regard for outward appearances.

The door opened noiselessly, and Steel closed it behind him. A Moorish
lantern cast a brilliant flood of light upon a crimson carpet, a chair,
and an empty oak umbrella-stand. Beyond this there was no atom of
furniture in the hall. It was impossible to see beyond the dining-room
door, for a heavy red velvet curtain was drawn across. David's first
impression was the amazing stillness of the place. It gave him a queer
feeling that a murder had been committed there, and that everybody had
fled, leaving the corpse behind. As David coughed away the lump in his
throat the cough sounded strangely hollow.

He passed into the dining-room and looked eagerly about him. The room was
handsomely furnished, if a little conventional--a big mahogany table in
the centre, rows of mahogany chairs upholstered in morocco, fine modern
prints, most of them artist's proofs, on the walls. A big marble clock,
flanked by a pair of vases, stood on the mantelshelf. There were a large
number of blue vases on the sideboard. The red distemper had faded to a
pale pink in places.

"Tottenham Court Road," Steel smiled to himself. "Modern, solid,
expensive, but decidedly inartistic. Ginger jars fourteen guineas a pair,
worth about as many pence. Moneyed people, solid and respectable, of the
middle class. What brings them playing at mystery like this?"

The room was most brilliantly lighted both from overhead and from the
walls. On the shining desert of the dining-table lay a small, flat parcel
addressed to David Steel, Esq. The novelist tore off the cover and
disclosed a heap of crackling white papers beneath. Rapidly he fluttered
the crisp sheets over--seventy-five Bank of England notes for £10 each.

It was the balance of the loan, the price paid for Steel's presence. All
he had to do now was to place the money in his pocket and walk out of the
house. A few steps and he would be free with nobody to say him nay. It
was a temptation, but Steel fought it down. He slipped the precious notes
into his pocket and buttoned his coat tightly over them. He had no fear
for the coming day now.

"And yet," he murmured, "what of the price I shall have to pay for this?"

Well, it was worth a ransom. And, so long as there was nothing
dishonourable attached to it, Steel was prepared to redeem his pledge. He
knew perfectly well from bitter experience that the poor man pays
usurious rates for fortune's favours. And he was not without a strange
sense of gratitude. If--

Click, click, click. Three electric switches were snapped off almost
simultaneously outside, and the dining-room was plunged into pitchy
darkness. Steel instantly caught up a chair. He was no coward, but he was
a novelist with a novelist's imagination. As he stood there the sweetest,
most musical laugh in the world broke on his ear. He caught the swish of
silken drapery and the subtle scent that suggested the fragrance of a
woman's hair. It was vague, undefined, yet soothing.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Steel," the silvery voice said. "Believe me, had
there been any other way, I would not have given you all this trouble.
You found the parcel addressed to you? It is an earnest of good faith. Is
not that a correct English expression?"

David murmured that it was. But what did the speaker mean? She asked the
question like a student of the English language, yet her accent and
phrasing were perfect. She laughed again noiselessly, and once more Steel
caught the subtle, entrancing perfume.

"I make no further apology for dragging you here at this time," the sweet
voice said. "We knew that you were in the habit of sitting up alone late
at night, hence the telephone message. You will perhaps wonder how we
came to know so much of your private affairs. Rest assured that we learnt
nothing in Brighton. Presently you may gather why I am so deeply
interested in you; I have been for the past fortnight. You see, we were
not quite certain that you would come to our assistance unless we could
find some means of coercing you. Then we go to one of the smartest
inquiry agents in the world and say: 'Tell us all about Mr. David Steel
without delay. Money is no object.' In less than a week we know all about
Beckstein. We leave matters till the last moment. If you only knew how
revolting it all was!"

"So your tone seems to imply, madam," Steel said, drily.

"Oh, but truly. You were in great trouble, and we found a way to get you
out. At a price; ah, yes. But your trouble is nothing compared with
mine--which brings me to business. A fortnight ago last Monday you posted
to Mr. Vanstone, editor of the _Piccadilly Magazine_, the synopsis of the
first four or five chapters of a proposed serial for the journal in
question. You open that story with a young and beautiful woman who is in
deadly peril. Is not that so?"

"Yes," Steel said, faintly. "It is just as you suggest. But how--"

"Never mind that, because I am not going to tell you. In common
parlance--is not that the word?--that woman is in a frightful fix.
There is nothing strained about your heroine's situation, because I
have heard of people being in a similar plight before. Mr. Steel, I
want you to tell me truthfully and candidly, can you see the way clear
to save your heroine? Oh, I don't mean by the long arm of coincidence
or other favourite ruses known to your craft. I mean by common sense,
logical methods, by brilliant ruses, by Machiavelian means. Tell me, do
you see a way?"

The question came eagerly, almost imploringly, from the darkness. David
could hear the quick gasps of his questioner, could catch the rustle of
the silken corsage as she breathed.

"Yes," he said, "I can see a brilliant way out that would satisfy the
strictest logician. But you--"

"Thank Heaven! Mr. Steel, I am your heroine. I am placed in exactly the
same position as the woman whose story you are going to write. The
setting is different, the local colouring is not the same, but the same
deadly peril menaces me. For the love of Heaven hold out your hand to
save a lonely and desperate woman whose only crime is that she is rich
and beautiful. Providence had placed in my hands the gist of your
heroine's story. Hence this masquerade; hence the fact that you are here
to-night. I have helped _you_--help _me_ in return."

It was some time before Steel spoke.

"It shall be as you wish," he said. "I will tell you how I propose to
save my heroine. Her sufferings are fiction; yours will be real. But if
you are to be saved by the same means, Heaven help you to bear the
troubles that are in front of you. Before God, it would be more merciful
for me to be silent and let you go your own way."




CHAPTER III

THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS


David was silent for some little time. The strangeness of the situation
had shut down on him again, and he was thinking of nothing else for the
moment. In the dead stillness of the place he could hear the quick
breathing of his companion; the rustle of her dress seemed near to him
and then to be very far off. Nor did the pitchy darkness yield a jot to
his now accustomed eyes. He held a hand close to his eyes, but he could
see nothing.

"Well?" the sweet voice in the darkness said, impatiently. "Well?"

"Believe me, I will give you all the assistance possible. If you would
only turn up the light--"

"Oh, I dare not. I have given my word of honour not to violate the seal
of secrecy. You may say that we have been absurdly cautious in this
matter, but you would not think so if you knew everything. Even now the
wretch who holds me in his power may have guessed my strategy and be
laughing at me. Some day, perhaps--"

The speaker stopped, with something like a sob in her throat.

"We are wasting precious time," she went on, more calmly. "I had better
tell you my history. In _your_ story a woman commits a crime: she is
guilty of a serious breach of trust to save the life of a man she loves.
By doing so she places the future and the happiness of many people in the
hands of an abandoned scoundrel. If she can only manage to regain the
thing she has parted from the situation is saved. Is not that so?"

"So far you have stated the case correctly," David murmured.

"As I said before, I am in practically similar case. Only, in my
situation, I hastened everything and risked the happiness of many people
for the sake of a little child."

"Ah!" David cried. "Your own child? No! The child of one very near and
dear to you, then. From the mere novelist point of view, that is a far
more artistic idea than mine. I see that I shall have to amend my story
before it is published."

A rippling little laugh came like the song of a bird in the darkness.

"Dear Mr. Steel," the voice said, "I implore you to do nothing of the
kind. You are a man of fertile imagination--a plot more or less makes
no difference to you. If you publish that story you go far on the way
to ruin me."

"I am afraid that I am in the dark in more senses than one," David
murmured.

"Then let me enlighten you. Daily your books are more widely read. My
enemy is a great novel reader. You publish that story, and what results?
You not only tell that enemy my story, but you show him my way out of the
difficulty, and show him how he can checkmate my every move. Perhaps,
after I have escaped from the net--"

"You are right," Steel said, promptly. "From a professional point of view
the story is abandoned. And now you want me to show you a rational and
logical, a _human_ way out."

"If you can do so you have my everlasting gratitude."

"Then you must tell me in detail what it is you want to recover. My
heroine parts with a document which the villain knows to be a forgery.
Money cannot buy it back because the villain can make as much money as he
likes by retaining it. He does as he likes with the family property; he
keeps my heroine's husband out of England by dangling the forgery and its
consequences over his head. What is to be done? How is the ruffian to be
bullied into a false sense of security by the one man who desires to
throw dust in his eyes?"

"Ah," the voice cried, "ah, if you could only tell me that! Let _my_
ruffian only imagine that I am dead; let him have proofs of it, and the
thing is done. I could reach him _then_; I could tear from him the letter
that--but I need not go into details. But he is cunning as the serpent.
Nothing but the most convincing proofs would satisfy him."

"A certificate of death signed by a physician beyond reproach?"

"Yes, that would do. But you couldn't get a medical man like that to
commit felony."

"No, but we could trick him into it," Steel exclaimed. "In my story a
fraud is perpetrated to blind the villain and to deprive him of his
weapons. It is a case of the end justifying the means. But it is one
thing, my dear lady, to commit fraud actually and to perpetrate it in a
novel. In the latter case you can defy the police, but unfortunately you
and I are dealing with real life. If I am to help you I must be a party
to a felony."

"But you will! You are not going to draw back now? Mr. Steel, I have
saved your home. You are a happy man compared to what you were two hours
ago. If the risk is great you have brains and imagination to get out of
danger. Show me how to do it, and the rest shall be mine. You have never
seen me, you know nothing, not even the name of the person who called you
over the telephone. You have only to keep your own counsel, and if I wade
in blood to my end you are safe. Tell me how I can die, disappear,
leaving that one man to believe I am no more. And don't make it too
ingenious. Don't forget that you promised to tell me a rational way out
of the difficulty. How can it be done?"

"In my pocket I have a cutting from the _Times_, which contains a
chapter from the history of a medical student who is alone in London. It
closely resembles my plot. He says he has no friends, and he deems it
prudent for reasons we need not discuss to let the world assume that he
is dead. The rest is tolerably easy. He disguises himself and goes to a
doctor of repute, whom he asks to come and see his brother--_i.e.,_
himself--who is dangerously ill. The doctor goes later in the day and
finds his patient in bed with severe internal inflammation. This is
brought about by a free use of albumen. I don't know what amount of
albumen one would take without extreme risk, but you could pump that
information out of any doctor. Well, our medical man calls again and yet
again, and finds his patient sinking. The next day the patient,
disguised, calls upon his doctor with the information that his 'brother'
is dead. The doctor is not in the least surprised, and without going to
view the body gives a certificate of death. Now, I admit that all this
sounds cheap and theatrical, but you can't get over facts. The thing
actually happened a little time ago in London, and there is no reason
why it shouldn't happen again."

"You suggest that I should do this thing?" the voice asked.

"Pardon me, I did nothing of the kind," Steel replied "You asked me to
show you how my heroine gets herself out of a terrible position, and I am
doing it. You are not without friends. The way I was called up tonight
and the way I was brought here prove that. With the aid of your friends
the thing is possible to you. You have only to find a lodging where
people are not too observant and a doctor who is too busy, or too
careless, to look after dead patients, and the thing is done. If you
desire to be looked upon as dead--especially by a powerful enemy--I
cannot recommend a more natural, rational way than this. As to the
details, they may be safely left to you. The clever manner in which you
have kept up the mystery to-night convinces me that I have nothing to
teach you in this direction. And if there is anything more I can do--"

"A thousand, thousand thanks," the voice cried, passionately. "To be
looked upon as 'dead,' to be near to the rascal who smiles to think that
I am in my grave.... And everything so dull and prosaic on the surface!
Yes, I have friends who will aid me in the business. Some day I may be
able to thank you face to face, to tell you how I managed to see your
plot. May I?"

The question came quite eagerly, almost imploringly. In the darkness
Steel felt a hand trembling on his breast, a cool, slim hand, with many
rings on the fingers. Steel took the hand and carried it to his lips.

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he said. "And may you be
successful. Good-night."

"Good-night, and God bless you for a real gentleman and a true friend. I
will go out of the room first and put the lights up afterwards. You will
walk away and close the door behind you. The newspaper cutting! Thanks.
And once more good-night, but let us hope not good-bye."

She was gone. Steel could hear the distant dying swish of silk, the
rustling of the portière, and then, with a flick, the lights came up
again. Half-blinded by the sudden illumination Steel fumbled his way to
the door and into the street. As he did so Hove Town Hall clock chimed
two. With a cigarette between his teeth David made his way home.

He could not think it all out yet; he would wait until he was in his own
comfortable chair under the roses and palms leading from his study. A
fine night of adventure, truly, and a paying one. He pressed the precious
packet of notes to his side and his soul expanded.

He was home at last. But surely he had closed the door before he started?
He remembered distinctly trying the latch. And here the latch was back
and the door open. The quick snap of the electric light declared nobody
in the dining-room. Beyond, the study was in darkness. Nobody there,
but--stop!

A stain on the carpet; another by the conservatory door. Pots of flowers
scattered about, and a huddled mass like a litter of empty sacks in one
corner. Then the huddled mass resolved itself into the figure of a man
with a white face smeared with blood. Dead! Oh, yes, dead enough.

Steel flew to the telephone and rang furiously.

"Give me 52, Police Station," he cried. "Are you there? Send somebody at
once up here--15, Downend Terrace. There has been murder done here. For
Heaven's sake come quickly."

Steel dropped the receiver and stared with strained eyes at the dreadful
sight before him.




CHAPTER IV

IN EXTREMIS


For some time--a minute, an hour--Steel stood over the dreadful thing
huddled upon the floor of his conservatory. Just then he was incapable of
consecutive ideas.

His mind began to move at length. The more he thought of it the more
absolutely certain he was that he had fastened the door before leaving
the house. True, the latch was only an ordinary one, and a key might
easily have been made to fit it. As a matter of fact, David had two, one
in reserve in case of accidents. The other was usually kept in a
jewel-drawer of the dressing-table. Perhaps--

David went quietly upstairs. It was just possible that the murderer was
in the house. But the closest search brought nothing to light. He pulled
out the jewel-drawer in the dressing-table. The spare latchkey had gone!
Here was something to go upon.

Then there was a rumbling of an electric bell somewhere that set David's
heart beating like a drum. The hall light streamed on a policeman in
uniform and an inspector in a dark overcoat and a hard felt hat. On the
pavement was a long shallow tray, which David recognised mechanically as
the ambulance.

"Something very serious, sir?" Inspector Marley asked, quietly. "I've
brought the doctor with me."

David nodded. Both the inspector and the doctor were acquaintances of
his. He closed the door and led the way into the study. Just inside the
conservatory and not far from the huddled figure lay David's new
cigar-case. Doubtless, without knowing it, the owner had whisked it off
the table when he had sprung the telephone.

"'Um," Marley muttered. "Is this a clue, or yours, sir?"

He lifted the case with its diamonds gleaming like stars on a dark night.
David had forgotten all about it for the time, had forgotten where it
came from, or that it contained £250 in bank-notes.

"Not mine," he said. "I mean to say, of course, it is mine. A recent
present. The shock of this discovery has deprived me of my senses
pretty well."

Marley laid the cigar-case on the table. It seemed strange to him, who
could follow a tragedy calmly, that a man should forget his own property.
Meanwhile Cross was bending over the body. David could see a face smooth
like that of a woman. A quick little exclamation came from the doctor.

"A drop of brandy here, and quick as possible," he commanded.

"You don't mean to say," Steel began; "you don't--"

Cross waved his arm, impatiently. The brandy was procured as speedily as
possible. Steel, watching intently, fancied that he detected a slight
flicker of the muscles of the white, stark face.

"Bring the ambulance here," Cross said, curtly. "If we can get this poor
chap to the hospital there is just a chance for him. Fortunately, we have
not many yards to go."

As far as elucidation went Marley naturally looked to Steel.

"I should like to have your explanation, sir," he said, gravely.

"Positively, I have no explanation to offer," David replied. "About
midnight I let myself out to go for a stroll, carefully closing the door
behind me. Naturally, the door was on the latch. When I came back an hour
or so later, to my horror and surprise I found those marks of a struggle
yonder and that poor fellow lying on the floor of the conservatory."

"'Um. Was the door fast on your return?"

"No, it was pulled to, but it was open all the same."

"You didn't happen to lose your latch-key during your midnight
stroll, sir?"

"No, it was only when I put my key in the door that I discovered it to be
open. I have a spare latch-key which I keep for emergencies, but when I
went to look for it just now the key was not to be found. When I came
back the house was perfectly quiet."

"What family have you, sir? And what kind of servants?"

"There is only myself and my mother, with three maids. You may dismiss
any suspicion of the servants from your mind at once. My mother trained
them all in the old vicarage where I was born, and not one of the trio
has been with us less than twelve years."

"That simplifies matters somewhat," Marley said, thoughtfully.
"Apparently your latch-key was stolen by somebody who has made careful
study of your habits. Do you generally go for late walks after your
household has gone to bed, sir?"

David replied somewhat grudgingly that he had never done such a thing
before. He would like to have concealed the fact, but it was bound to
come out sooner or later. He had strolled along the front and round
Brunswick Square. Marley shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it's a bit of a puzzle to me," he admitted. "You go out for a
midnight walk--a thing you have never done before--and when you come back
you find somebody has got into your house by means of a stolen latch-key
and murdered somebody else in your conservatory. According to that, two
people must have entered the house."

"That's logic," David admitted. "There can be no murder without the slain
_and_ the slayer. My impression is that somebody who knows the ways of
the house watched me depart. Then he lured his victim in here under
pretence that it was his own house--he had the purloined latch-key--and
murdered him. Audacious, but a far safer way than doing it out of doors."

But Marley's imagination refused to go so far. The theory was plausible
enough, he pointed out respectfully, if the assassin had been assured
that these midnight rambles were a matter of custom. The point was a
shrewd one, and Steel had to admit it. He almost wished now that he had
suggested that he often took these midnight rambles. He regretted the
fiction still more when Marley asked if he had had some appointment
elsewhere to-night.

"No," David said, promptly, "I hadn't."

He prevaricated without hesitation. His adventure in Brunswick Square
could not possibly have anything to do with the tragedy, and nothing
would be gained by betraying that trust.

"I'll run round to the hospital and come and see you again in the
morning, sir," Marley said. "Whatever was the nature of the crime, it
wasn't robbery, or the criminal wouldn't have left that cigar-case of
yours behind. Sir James Lythem had one stolen like that at the last
races, and he valued it at £80."

"I'll come as far as the hospital with you," said Steel.

At the bottom of the flight of steps they encountered Dr. Cross and the
policeman. The former handed over to Marley a pocket-book and some
papers, together with a watch and chain.

"Everything that we could find upon him," he explained.

"Is the poor fellow dead yet?" David asked.

"No," Cross replied. "He was stabbed twice in the back in the region of
the liver. I could not say for sure, but there is just a chance that he
may recover. But one thing is pretty certain--it will be a good long
time before he is in a position to say anything for himself. Good-night,
Mr. Steel."

David went indoors thoughtfully, with a general feeling that something
like a hand had grasped his brain and was squeezing it like a sponge. He
was free from his carking anxiety now, but it seemed to him that he was
paying a heavy price for his liberty. Mechanically, he counted out the
bank-notes, and almost as mechanically he cut his initials on the
gun-metal inside the cigar-case. He was one of the kind of men who like
to have their initials everywhere.

He snapped the lights out and went to bed at last. But not to sleep. The
welcome dawn came at length and David took his bath gratefully. He would
have to tell his mother what had happened, suppressing all reference to
the Brunswick Square episode. It was not a pleasant story, but Mrs. Steel
assimilated it at length over her early tea and toast.

"It might have been you, my dear," she said, placidly. "And, indeed, it
is a dreadful business. But why not telephone to the hospital and ask how
the poor fellow is?"

The patient was better but was still in an unconscious condition.



CHAPTER V

"RECEIVED WITH THANKS."


Steel swallowed a hasty breakfast and hurried off town-wards. He had
£1,000 packed away in his cigar-case, and the sooner he was free from
Beckstein the better he would be pleased. He came at length to the
offices of Messrs. Mossa and Mack, whose brass-plate bore the legend that
the gentry in questions were solicitors, and that they also had a
business in London. As David strode into the offices of the senior
partner that individual looked up with a shade of anxiety in his deep,
Oriental eyes.

"If you have come to offer terms," he said, nasally, "I am sorry--"

"To hear that I have come to pay you in full," David said, grimly; "£974
16s. 4d. up to yesterday, which I understand is every penny you can
rightfully claim. Here it is. Count it."

He opened the cigar-case and took the notes therefrom. Mr. Mossa
counted them very carefully indeed. The shade of disappointment was
still upon his aquiline features. He had hoped to put in execution
to-day and sell David up. In that way quite £200 might have been added
to his legitimate earnings.

"It appears to be all correct," Mossa said, dismally.

"So I imagined, sir. You will be so good as to indorse the receipt on the
back of the writ. Of course you are delighted to find that I am not
putting you to painful extremities. Any other firm of solicitors would
have given me time to pay this. But I am like the man who journeyed from
Jericho to Jerusalem--"

"And fell amongst thieves! You dare to call me a thief? You dare--"

"I didn't," David said, drily. "That fine, discriminating mind of yours
saved me the trouble. I have met some tolerably slimy scoundrels in my
time, but never any one of them more despicable than yourself. Faugh!
the mere sight of you sickens me. Let me get out of the place so that I
can breathe."

David strode out of the office with the remains of his small fortune
rammed into his pocket. In the wild, unreasoning rage that came over him
he had forgotten his cigar-case. And it was some little time before Mr.
Mossa was calm enough to see the diamonds winking at him.

"Our friend is in funds," he muttered. "Well, he shall have a dance for
his cigar-case. I'll send it up to the police-station and say that some
gentleman or other left it here by accident. And if that Steel comes back
we can say that there is no cigar-case here. And if Steel does not see
the police advertisement he will lose his pretty toy, and serve him
right. Yes, that is the way to serve him out."

Mr. Mossa proceeded to put his scheme into execution whilst David was
strolling along the sea front. He was too excited for work, though he
felt easier in his mind than he had done for months. He turned
mechanically on to the Palace Pier, at the head of which an Eastbourne
steamer was blaring and panting. The trip appealed to David in his
present frame of mind. Like most of his class, he was given to acting on
the spur of the moment.... It was getting dark as David let himself into
Downend Terrace with his latchkey.

How good it was to be back again! The eye of the artist rested fondly
upon the beautiful things around. And but for the sport of chance, the
whim of fate, these had all passed from him by this time. It was good to
look across the dining-table over venetian glass, to see the pools of
light cast by the shaded electric, to note the feathery fall of flowers,
and to see that placid, gentle face in its frame of white hair opposite
him. Mrs. Steel's simple, unaffected pride in her son was not the least
gratifying part of David's success.

"You have not suffered from the shock, mother?" he asked.

"Well, no," Mrs. Steel confessed, placidly. "You see, I never had what
people call nerves, my dear. And, after all, I saw nothing. Still, I am
very, very sorry for that poor young man, and I have sent to inquire
after him several times."

"He is no worse or I should have heard of it."

"No, and no better. And Inspector Marley has been here to see you
twice to-day."

David pitied himself as much as a man could pity himself considering his
surroundings. It was rather annoying that this should have happened at a
time when he was so busy. And Marley would have all sorts of questions to
ask at all sorts of inconvenient seasons.

Steel passed into his study presently and lighted a cigarette. Despite
his determination to put the events of yesterday from his mind, he found
himself constantly returning to them. What a splendid dramatic story they
would make! And what a fascinating mystery could be woven round that
gun-metal cigar-case!

By the way, where was the cigar-case? On the whole it would be just as
well to lock the case away till he could discover some reasonable excuse
for its possession. His mother would be pretty sure to ask where it came
from, and David could not prevaricate so far as she was concerned. But
the cigar-case was not to be found, and David was forced to the
conclusion that he had left it in Mossa's office.

A little annoyed with himself he took up the evening _Argus_. There was
half a column devoted to the strange case at Downend Terrace, and just
over it a late advertisement to the effect that a gun-metal cigar-case
had been found and was in the hands of the police awaiting an owner.

David slipped from the house and caught a 'bus in St. George's Road.

At the police-station he learnt that Inspector Marley was still on the
premises. Marley came forward gravely. He had a few questions to ask, but
nothing to tell.

"And now perhaps you can give me some information?" David said, "You are
advertising in to-night's _Argus_ a gun-metal cigar-case set with
diamonds."

"Ah," Marley said, eagerly, "can you tell us anything about it?"

"Nothing beyond the fact that I hope to satisfy you that the case is
mine."

Marley stared open-mouthed at David for a moment, and then relapsed into
his sapless official manner. He might have been a detective
cross-examining a suspected criminal.

"Why this mystery?" David asked. "I have lost a gun-metal cigar-case set
with diamonds, and I see a similar article is noted as found by the
police. I lost it this morning, and I shrewdly suspect that I left it
behind me at the office of Mr. Mossa."

"The case was sent here by Mr. Mossa himself," Marley admitted.

"Then, of course, it is mine. I had to give Mr. Mossa my opinion of him
this morning, and by way of spiting me he sent that case here, hoping,
perhaps, that I should not recover it. You know the case Marley--it was
lying on the floor of my conservatory last night."

"I did notice a gun-metal case there," Marley said, cautiously.

"As a matter of fact, you called my attention to it and asked if it
was mine."

"And you said at first that it wasn't, sir."

"Well, you must make allowances for my then frame of mind," David
laughed. "I rather gather from your manner that somebody else has been
after the case; if that is so, you are right to be reticent. Still, it is
in your hands to settle the matter on the spot. All you have to do is to
open the case, and if you fail to find my initials, D.S., scratched in
the left-hand top corner, then I have lost my property and the other
fellow has found his."

In the same reticent fashion Marley proceeded to unlock a safe in the
corner, and from thence he produced what appeared to be the identical
cause of all this talk. He pulled the electric table lamp over to him and
proceeded to examine the inside carefully.

"You are quite right," he said, at length. "Your initials are here."

"Not strange, seeing that I scratched them there last night," said David,
drily. "When? Oh, it was after you left my house last night."

"And it has been some time in your possession, sir?"

"Oh, confound it, no. It was--well, it was a present from a friend for a
little service rendered. So far as I understand, it was purchased at
Lockhart's, in North Street. No, I'll be hanged if I answer any more of
your questions, Marley. I'll be your Aunt Sally so far as you are
officially concerned. But as to yonder case, your queries are distinctly
impertinent."

Marley shook his head gravely, as one might over a promising but
headstrong boy.

"Do I understand that you decline to account for the case?" he asked.

"Certainly I do. It is connected with some friends of mine to whom I
rendered a service a little time back. The whole thing is and must remain
an absolute secret."

"You are placing yourself in a very delicate position, Mr. Steel."

David started at the gravity of the tone. That something was radically
wrong came upon him like a shock. And he could see pretty clearly that,
without betraying confidence, he could not logically account for the
possession of the cigar-case. In any case it was too much to expect
that the stolid police officer would listen to so extravagant a tale
for a moment.

"What on earth do you mean, man?" he cried.

"Well, it's this way, sir," Marley proceeded to explain. "When I pointed
out the case to you lying on the floor of your conservatory last night
you said it wasn't yours. You looked at it with the eyes of a stranger,
and then you said you were mistaken. From information given me last night
I have been making inquiries about the cigar-case. You took it to Mr.
Mossa's, and from it you produced notes to the value of nearly £1,000 to
pay off a debt. Within eight-and forty hours you had no more prospect of
paying that debt than I have at this moment. Of course, you will be able
to account for those notes. You can, of course?"

Marley looked eagerly at his visitor. A cold chill was playing up
and down Steel's spine. Not to save his life could he account for
those notes.

"We will discuss that when the proper time comes," he said, with fine
indifference.

"As you please, sir. From information also received I took the case to
Walen's, in West Street, and asked Mr. Walen if he had seen the case
before. Pressed to identify it, he handed me a glass and asked me to find
the figures (say) '1771. x 3,' in tiny characters on the edge. I did so
by the aid of the glass, and Mr. Walen further proceeded to show me an
entry in his purchasing ledger which proved that a cigar-case in
gun-metal and diamonds bearing that legend had been added to the stock
quite recently--a few weeks ago, in fact."

"Well, what of that?" David asked, impatiently. "For all I know, the case
might have come from Walen's. I said it came from a friend who must needs
be nameless for services equally nameless. I am not going to deny that
Walen was right."

"I have not quite finished," Marley said, quietly. "Pressed as to when
the case had been sold, Mr. Walen, without hesitation, said: 'Yesterday,
for £72 15s.' The purchaser was a stranger, whom Mr. Walen is prepared
to identify. Asked if a formal receipt had been given, Walen said that it
had. And now I come to the gist of the whole matter. You saw Dr. Cross
hand me a mass of papers, etc., taken from the person of the gentleman
who was nearly killed in your house?"

David nodded. His breath was coming a little faster. His quick mind had
run on ahead; he saw the gulf looming before him.

"Go on," said he, hoarsely, "go on. You mean to say that--"

"That amongst the papers found in the pocket of the unfortunate stranger
was a receipted bill for the very cigar-case that lies here on the table
before you!"




CHAPTER VI

A POLICY OF SILENCE


Steel dropped into a chair and gazed at Inspector Marley with mild
surprise. At the same time he was not in the least alarmed. Not that he
failed to recognise the gravity of the situation, only it appealed in the
first instance to the professional side of his character.

"Walen is quite sure?" he asked. "No possible doubt about that, eh?"

"Not in the least. You see, he recognised his private mark at once, and
Brighton is not so prosperous a place that a man could sell a £70
cigar-case and forget all about it--that is, a second case, I mean. It's
most extraordinary."

"Rather! Make a magnificent story, Marley."

"Very," Marley responded, drily. "It would take all your well-known
ingenuity to get your hero out of this trouble."

Steel nodded gravely. This personal twist brought him to the earth again.
He could clearly see the trap into which he had placed himself. There
before him lay the cigar-case which he had positively identified as his
own; inside, his initials bore testimony to the fact. And yet the same
case had been identified beyond question as one sold by a highly
respectable local tradesman to the mysterious individual now lying in the
Sussex County Hospital.

"May I smoke a cigarette?" David asked.

"You may smoke a score if they will be of any assistance to you, sir,"
Marley replied. "I don't want to ask you any questions and I don't want
you--well, to commit yourself. But really, sir, you must admit--"

The inspector paused significantly. David nodded again.

"Pray proceed," he said: "speak from the brief you have before you."

"Well, you see it's this way," Marley said, not without hesitation. "You
call us up to your house, saying that a murder has been committed there;
we find a stranger almost at his last gasp in your conservatory with
every signs of a struggle having taken place. You tell us that the
injured man is a stranger to you; you go on to say that he must have
found his way into your house during a nocturnal ramble of yours. Well,
that sounds like common sense on the face of it. The criminal has studied
your habits and has taken advantage of them. Then I ask if you are in the
habit of taking these midnight strolls, and with some signs of hesitation
you say that you have never done such a thing before. Charles Dickens was
very fond of that kind of thing, and I naturally imagined that you had
the same fancy. But you had never done it before. And, the only time, a
man is nearly murdered in your house."

"Perfectly correct," David murmured. "Gaboriau could not have put it
better. You might have been a pupil of my remarkable acquaintance
Hatherly Bell."

"I am a pupil of Mr. Bell's," Marley said, quietly. "Seven years ago he
induced me to leave the Huddersfield police to go into his office, where
I stayed until Mr. Bell gave up business, when I applied for and gained
my present position. Curious you should mention Mr. Bell's name, seeing
that he was here so recently as this afternoon."

"Staying in Brighton?" Steel asked, eagerly. "What is his address?"

"No. 219, Brunswick Square."

It took all the nerve that David possessed to crush the cry that rose to
his lips. It was more than strange that the man he most desired to see at
this juncture should be staying in the very house where the novelist had
his great adventure. And in the mere fact might be the key to the problem
of the cigar-case.

"I'll certainly see Bell," he muttered. "Go on, Marley."

"Yes, sir. We now proceed to the cigar-case that lies before you. It was
also lying on the floor of your conservatory on the night in question. I
suggested that here we might have found a clue, taking the precaution at
the same time to ask if the article in question was your property. You
looked at the case as one does who examines an object for the first time,
and proceeded to declare that it was not yours. I am quite prepared to
admit that you instantly corrected yourself. But I ask, is it a usual
thing for a man to forget the ownership of a £70 cigar-case?"

"A nice point, and I congratulate you upon it," David said.

"Then we will take the matter a little farther. A day or two ago you were
in dire need of something like £1,000. Temporarily, at any rate, you were
practically at the end of your resources. If this money were not
forthcoming in a few hours you were a ruined man. In vulgar parlance, you
would have been sold up. Mossa and Mack had you in their grip, and they
were determined to make all they could out of you. The morning following
the outrage at your house you call upon Mr. Mossa and produce the
cigar-case lying on the table before you. From that case you produce
notes sufficient to discharge your debt--Bank of England notes, the
numbers of which, I need hardly say, are in my possession. The money is
produced from the case yonder, which case we _know_ was sold to the
injured man by Mr. Walen."

Marley made a long and significant pause. Steel nodded.

"There seems to be no way out of it," he said.

"I can see one," Marley suggested. "Of course, it would simplify matters
enormously if you merely told me in confidence whence came those notes.
You see, as I have the numbers, I could verify your statement beyond
question, and--"

Marley paused again and shrugged his shoulders. Despite his cold,
official manner, he was obviously prompted by a desire to serve his
companion. And yet, simple as the suggestion seemed, it was the very last
thing with which Steel could comply.

The novelist turned the matter over rapidly in his mind. His quick
perceptions flashed along the whole logical line instantaneously. He was
like a man who suddenly sees a midnight landscape by the glare of a
dazzling flash of lightning.

"I am sorry," he said, slowly, "very sorry, to disappoint you. Were our
situations reversed, I should take up your position exactly. But it so
happens that I cannot, dare not, tell you where I got those notes from.
So far as I am concerned they came honestly into my hands in payment for
special services rendered. It was part of my contract that I should
reveal the secret to nobody. If I told you the story you would decline to
believe it; you would say that it was a brilliant effort of a novelist's
imagination to get out of a dangerous position."

"I don't know that I should," Marley replied. "I have long since ceased
to wonder at anything that happens in or connected with Brighton."

"All the same I can't tell you, Marley," Steel said, as he rose. "My lips
are absolutely sealed. The point is: what are you going to do?"

"For the present, nothing," Marley replied. "So long as the man in the
hospital remains unconscious I can do no more than pursue what
Beaconsfield called 'a policy of masterly inactivity.' I have told you a
good deal more than I had any right to do, but I did so in the hope that
you could assist me. Perhaps in a day or two you will think better of it.
Meanwhile--"

"Meanwhile I am in a tight place. Yes, I see that perfectly well. It is
just possible that I may scheme some way out of the difficulty, and if so
I shall be only too pleased to let you know. Good-night, Marley, and many
thanks to you."

But with all his ingenuity and fertility of imagination David could see
no way out of the trouble. He sat up far into the night scheming; there
was no flavour in his tobacco; his pictures and flowers, his silver and
china, jarred upon him. He wished with all his heart now that he had let
everything go. It need only have been a temporary matter, and there were
other Cellini tankards, and intaglios, and line engravings in the world
for the man with money in his purse.

He could see no way out of it at all. Was it not possible that the whole
thing had been deliberately planned so as to land him and his brains into
the hands of some clever gang of swindlers? Had he been tricked and
fooled so that he might become the tool of others? It seemed hard to
think so when he recalled the sweet voice in the darkness and its
passionate plea for help. And yet the very cigar-case that he had been
told was the one he admired at Lockhart's had proved beyond question to
be one purchased from Walen's!

If he decided to violate his promise and tell the whole story nobody
would believe him. The thing was altogether too wild and improbable for
that. And yet, he reflected, things almost as impossible happen in
Brighton every day. And what proof had he to offer?

Well, there was one thing certain. At least three-quarters of those
bank-notes--the portion he had collected at the house with the crimson
blind--could not possibly be traced to the injured man. And, again, it
was no fault of Steel's that Marley had obtained possession of the
numbers of the notes. If the detective chose to ferret out facts for
himself no blame could attach to Steel. If those people had only chosen
to leave out of the question that confounded cigar-case!

David's train of thought was broken as an idea came to him. It was not so
long since he had a facsimile cigar-case in his hand at Lockhart's, in
North Street. Somebody connected with the mystery must have seen him
admiring it and reluctantly declining the purchase, because the voice
from the telephone told him that the case was a present and that it had
come from the famous North Street establishment.

"By Jove!" David cried. "I'll go to Lockhart's tomorrow and see if the
case is still there. If so, I may be able to trace it."

Fairly early the next morning David was in North Street. For the time
being he had put his work aside altogether. He could not have written a
dozen consecutive lines to save the situation. The mere effort to
preserve a cheerful face before his mother was a torture. And at any time
he might find himself forced to meet a criminal charge.

The gentlemanly assistant at Lockhart's remembered Steel and the
cigar-case perfectly well, but he was afraid that the article had been
sold. No doubt it would be possible to obtain a facsimile in the course
of a few days.

"Only I required that particular one," Steel said. "Can you tell me when
it was sold and who purchased it?"

A junior partner did, and could give some kind of information. Several
people had admired the case, and it had been on the point of sale several
times. Finally, it had passed into the hands of an American gentleman
staying at the Metropole.

"Can you tell me his name?" David asked, "or describe him?"

"Well, I can't, sir," the junior partner said, frankly. "I haven't the
slightest recollection of the gentleman. He wrote from the Metropole on
the hotel paper describing the case and its price and inclosed the full
amount in ten-dollar notes and asked to have the case sent by post to the
hotel. When we ascertained that the notes were all right, we naturally
posted the case as desired, and there, so far as we are concerned, was an
end of the matter."

"You don't recollect his name?"

"Oh, yes. The name was John Smith. If there is anything wrong---"

David hastily gave the desired assurance. He wanted to arouse no
suspicion. All the same, he left Lockhart's with a plethora of suspicions
of his own. Doubtless the jewellers would be well and fairly satisfied so
long as the case had been paid for, but from the standpoint of David's
superior knowledge the whole transaction fairly bristled with suspicion.

Not for one moment did Steel believe in the American at the Metropole.
Somebody stayed there doubtless under the name of John Smith, and that
said somebody had paid for the cigar-case in dollar notes the tracing of
which might prove a task of years. Nor was it the slightest use to
inquire at the Metropole, where practically everybody is identified by a
number, and where scores come and go every day. John Smith would only
have to ask for his letters and then drop quietly into a sea of oblivion.

Well, David had got his information, and a lot of use it was likely to
prove to him. As he walked thoughtfully homewards he was debating in his
mind whether or not he might venture to call at or write to 219,
Brunswick Square, and lay his difficulties before the people there. At
any rate, he reflected, with grim bitterness, they would know that he was
not romancing. If nothing turned up in the meantime he would certainly
visit Brunswick Square.

He sat in his own room puzzling the matter out till his head ached and
the flowers before him reeled in a dazzling whirl of colour. He looked
round for inspiration, now desperately, as he frequently did when the
warp of his delicate fancy tangled. The smallest thing sometimes fed the
machine again--a patch of sunshine, the chip on a plate, the damaged edge
of a frame. Then his eye fell on the telephone and he jumped to his feet.

"What a fool I am!" he exclaimed. "If I had been plotting this business
out as a story. I should have thought of that long ago.... No, I don't
want any number, at least, not in that way. Two nights ago I was called
up by somebody from London who held the line for fully half an hour or
so. I've--I've forgotten the address of my correspondent, but if you can
ascertain the number ... yes, I shall be here if you will ring me up when
you have got it.... Thanks."

Half an hour passed before the bell trilled again. David listened
eagerly. At any rate, now he was going to know the number whence the
mysterious message came--0017, Kensington, was the number. David muttered
his thanks and flew to his big telephone directory. Yes, there it
was--"0017, 446, Prince's Gate, Gilead Gates."

The big volume dropped with a crash on the floor. David looked down at
the crumpled volume with dim, misty amazement.

"Gilead Gates," he murmured. "Quaker, millionaire, and philanthropist.
One of the most highly-esteemed and popular men in England. And from his
house came the message which has been the source of all the mischief. And
yet there are critics who say the plots of my novels are too fantastic!"




CHAPTER VII

NO. 218, BRUNSWICK SQUARE


The emotion of surprise seemed to have left Steel altogether. After the
last discovery he was prepared to believe anything. Had anybody told him
that the whole Bench of Bishops was at the bottom of the mystery he would
have responded that the suggestion was highly probable.

"Still, it's what the inimitable Dick Swiveller would call a
staggerer," he muttered. "Gates, the millionaire, the one great
capitalist who has the profound respect of the labour world. No, a man
with a record like that couldn't have anything to do with it. Still, it
must have been from his house that the mysterious message came. The
post-office people working the telephone trunk line would know that--a
fact which probably escaped the party who called me up.... I'll go to
Brunswick Square and see that woman. Money or no money, I'll not lie
under an imputation like this."

There was one thing to be done beforehand, and that was to see Dr. Cross.
From the latter's manner he evidently knew nothing of the charge hanging
over Steel's head. Marley was evidently keeping that close to himself and
speaking to nobody.

"Oh, the man is better." Cross said, cheerfully. "He hasn't been
identified yet, though the Press has given us every assistance. I fancy
the poor fellow is going to recover, though I am afraid it will be a
long job."

"He hasn't recovered consciousness, then?"

"No, and neither will he for some time to come. There seems to be a
certain pressure on the brain which we are unable to locate, and we dare
not try the Röntgen rays yet. So on the whole you are likely to escape
with a charge of aggravated assault."

David smiled grimly as he went his way. He walked the whole distance to
Hove along North Street and the Western Road, finally turning down
Brunswick Square instead of _up_ it, as he had done on the night of the
great adventure. He wondered vaguely why he had been specially instructed
to approach the house that way.

Here it was at last, 219, Brunswick Square--220 above and, of course, 218
below the house. It looked pretty well the same in the daylight, the same
door, the same knocker, and the same crimson blind in the centre of the
big bay window. David knocked at the door with a vague feeling of
uncertainty as to what he was going to do next. A very staid,
old-fashioned footman answered his ring and inquired his business.

"Can--can I see your mistress?" David stammered.

The staid footman became, if possible, a little more reserved. If the
gentleman would send in his card he would see if Miss Ruth was
disengaged. David found himself vaguely wondering what Miss Ruth's
surname might be. The old Biblical name was a great favourite of his.

"I'm afraid I haven't a card," he said. "Will you say that Mr. Steel
would like to see--er--Miss Ruth for a few minutes? My business is
exceedingly pressing."

The staid footman led the way into the dining-room. Evidently this was no
frivolous house, where giddy butterflies came and went; such gaudy
insects would have been chilled by the solemn decorum of the place. David
followed into the dining-room in a dreamy kind of way, and with the
feeling that comes to us all at times, the sensation of having done and
seen the same thing before.

Nothing had been altered. The same plain, handsome, expensive furniture
was here, the same mahogany and engravings, the same dull red walls, with
the same light stain over the fire-place--a dull, prosperous,
square-toed-looking place. The electric fittings looked a little
different, but that might have been fancy. It was the identical room.
David had run his quarry to earth, and he began to feel his spirits
rising. Doubtless he could scheme some way out of the difficulty and
spare his phantom friends at the same time.

"You wanted to see me, sir? Will you be so good as to state your
business?"

David turned with a start. He saw before him a slight, graceful figure,
and a lovely, refined face in a frame of the most beautiful hair that he
had ever seen. The grey eyes were demure, with just a suggestion of mirth
in them; the lips were made for laughter. It was as if some dainty little
actress were masquerading in Salvation garb, only the dress was all
priceless lace that touched David's artistic perception. He could imagine
the girl as deeply in earnest as going through fire and water for her
convictions. Also he could imagine her as Puck or Ariel--there was
rippling laughter in every note of that voice of hers.

"I--I, eh, yes," Steel stammered. "You see, I--if I only knew whom I had
the pleasure of addressing?"

"I am Miss Ruth Gates, at your service. Still, you asked for me by name."

David made no reply for a moment. He was tripping over surprises again.
What a fool he had been not to look out the name of the occupant of 219
in the directory. It was pretty evident that Gilead Gates had a house in
Brighton as well as one in town. Not only had that telephone message
emanated from the millionaire's residence, but it had brought Steel to
the philanthropist's abode in Brighton. If Mr. Gates himself had strolled
into the room singing a comic song David would have expressed no emotion.

"Daughter of the famous Gilead Gates?" David asked, feebly.

"No, niece, and housekeeper. This is not my uncle's own house, he has
merely taken this for a time. But, Mr. Steel--"

"Mr. _David_, Steel--is my name familiar to you?"

David asked the question somewhat eagerly. As yet he was only feeling
his way and keenly on the lookout for anything in the way of a clue. He
saw the face of the girl grow white as the table-cover, he saw the
lurking laughter die in her eyes, and the purple black terror dilating
the pupils.

"I--I know you quite well by reputation," the girl gasped. Her little
hands were pressed to her left side as if to check some deadly pain
there. "Indeed, I may say I have read most of your stories. I--I hope
that there is nothing wrong."

Her self-possession and courage were coming back to her now. But the
spasm of fear that had shaken her to the soul was not lost upon Steel.

"I trust not," he said, gravely. "Did you know that I was here two
nights ago?"

"Here!" the girl cried. "Impossible! In the house! The night before last!
Why, we were all in bed long before midnight."

"I am not aware that I said anything about midnight," David
responded, coldly.

An angry flush came sweeping over the face of the girl, annoyance at her
own folly, David thought. She added quickly that she and her uncle had
only been down in Brighton for three days.

"Nevertheless, I was in this room two nights ago," David replied. "If you
know all about it, I pray you to give me certain information of vital
importance to me; if not, I shall be compelled to keep my extraordinary
story to myself, for otherwise you would never believe it. Do you or do
you not know of my visit here?"

The girl bent her head till Steel could see nothing but the glorious
amber of her hair. He could see, too, the fine old lace round her throat
was tossing like a cork on a stream.

"I can tell you nothing," she said. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

It was the voice of one who would have spoken had she dared. With
anybody else Steel would have been furiously angry. In the present case
he could only admire the deep, almost pathetic, loyalty to somebody who
stood behind.

"Are you sure you were in this house?" the girl asked, at length.

"Certain!" David exclaimed. "The walls, the pictures, the
furniture--all the same. I could swear to the place anywhere. Miss
Gates, if I cannot prove that I was here at the time I name, it is
likely to go very hard with me."

"You mean that a certain inconvenience--"

"Inconvenience! Do you call a charge of murder, or manslaughter at best,
inconvenient? Have you not seen the local papers? Don't you know that two
nights ago, during my absence from home, a strange man was practically
done to death in my conservatory? And during the time of the outrage, as
sure as Heaven is above us, I was in this room."

"I am sorry, but I am sure that you were not."

"Ah, you are going to disappoint me? And yet you know something. You
might have been the guiltiest of creatures yourself when I disclosed my
identity. No prisoner detected in some shameful crime ever looked more
guilty than you."

The girl stood there, saying nothing. Had she rang the bell and ordered
the footman to put him out of the house, Steel would have had no cause
for complaint. But she did nothing of the kind. She stood there torn by
conflicting emotions.

"I can give you no information," she said, presently. "But I am as
positive one way as you are another that you have never been in this
house before. I may surmise things, but as I hope to be judged fairly I
can give you no information. I am only a poor, unhappy girl, who is doing
what she deems to be the best for all parties concerned. And I can tell
you nothing, nothing. Oh, won't you believe that I would do anything to
serve you if I were only free?"

She held out her hand with an imploring gesture, the red lips were
quivering, and her eyes were full of tears. David's warm heart went out
to her; he forgot all his own troubles and dangers in his sympathy for
the lovely creature in distress.

"Pray say no more about it," he cried. He caught the outstretched hand in
his and carried it to his lips. "I don't wish to hurry you; in fact,
haste is dangerous. And there is ample time. Nor am I going to press you.
Still, before long you may find some way to give me a clue without
sacrificing a jot of your fine loyalty to--well, others. I would not
distress you for the world, Miss Gates. Don't you think that this has
been the most extraordinary interview?"

The tears trembled like diamonds on the girl's long lashes and a smile
flashed over her face. The sudden transformation was wonderfully
fascinating.

"What you might call an impossible interview," she laughed. "And all the
more impossible because it was quite impossible that you could ever have
been here before."

"When I was in this room two nights ago," David protested, "I saw---"

"Did you see me, for instance? If not, you couldn't have been here."

A small, misshapen figure, with the face of a Byron--Apollo on the bust
of a Satyr--came in from behind the folding doors at the back of the
dining-room carrying some letters in his hand. The stranger's dark,
piercing eyes were fixed inquiringly upon Steel.

"Bell," the latter cried; "Hatherly Bell! you have been listening!"

The little man with the godlike head admitted the fact, coolly. He
had been writing letters in the back room and escape had been
impossible for him.

"Funny enough, I was going to look you up to-day," he said. "You did me
a great service once, and I am longing to repay you. I came down here to
give my friend Gates the benefit of my advice and assistance over a
large philanthropic scheme he has just evolved. And, writing letters
yonder on that subject, I heard your extraordinary conversation. Can I
help you, Steel?"

"My dear fellow," David cried, "if you offered me every intellect in
Europe I should not choose one of them so gladly as yours."

"Then let us shake hands on the bargain. And now I am going to stagger
you; I heard you state positively that two nights ago you were in this
very room."

"I am prepared to testify the fact on oath anywhere, my dear Bell."

"Very well; will you be good enough to state the hour?"

"Certainly. I was here from one o'clock--say between one and two."

"And I was here also. From eleven o'clock till two I was in this very
room working out some calculations at this very table by the aid of my
reading-lamp, no other light being in the room, or even in the house, as
far as I know. It is one of my fads--as fools call them--to work in a
large, dark room with one brilliant light only. Therefore you could not
possibly have been in the house, to say nothing of this room, on the
night in question."

David nodded feebly. There was no combating Bell's statement.

"I presume that this is No. 219?" he asked.

"Certainly it is," Miss Gates replied. "We are all agreed about _that_."

"Because I read the number over the fanlight," Steel went on. "And I came
here by arrangement. And there was everything as I see it now. Bell, you
must either cure me of this delusion, or you must prove logically to me
that I have made a mistake. So far as I am concerned, I am like a child
struggling with the alphabet."

"We'll start now," said Bell. "Come along."

Steel rose none too willingly. He would fain have lingered with Ruth. She
held out her hand; there was a warm, glad smile on her face.

"May you be successful," she whispered. "Come and see me again, because I
shall be very, very anxious to know. And I am not without guilt.... If
you only knew!"

"And I may come again?" David said, eagerly.

A further smile and a warm pressure of the hand were the only reply.
Presently Steel was standing outside in the road with Bell. The latter
was glancing at the house on either side of 219. The higher house was
let; the one nearest the sea--218--was empty. A bill in the window gave
the information that the property was in the hands of Messrs. Wallace and
Brown, Station Quadrant, where keys could be obtained.

"We'll make a start straightaway," said Bell. "Come along."

"Where are you going to at that pace?" Steel asked.

"Going to interview Messrs. Wallace and Brown. At the present moment I am
a gentleman who is in search of a house of residence, and I have a
weakness for Brunswick Square in particular, especially for No. 218.
Unless I am greatly mistaken I am going to show you something that will
startle even the most callous novelist."




CHAPTER VIII

HATHERLY BELL


The queer, misshapen figure striding along by Steel's side would have
attracted attention anywhere; indeed, Hatherly Bell had been an
attractive personality from his schooldays. A strange mixture of vanity
and brilliant mental qualities, Bell had almost as many enemies as
friends. He was morbidly miserable over the score of his personal
appearance despite the extraordinary beauty of his face--to be pitied or
even sympathised with almost maddened him. Yet there were many women who
would gladly have shared the lot of Hatherly Bell.

For there was strength in the perfectly moulded face, as well as beauty.
It was the face of a man possessed of marvellous intellectual powers, and
none the less attractive because, while the skin was as fair as a woman's
and the eyes as clear as a child's, the wavy hair was absolutely white.
The face of a man who had suffered fiercely and long. A face hiding a
great sorrow.

Time was when Bell had promised to stand in the front rank of operative
physicians. In brain troubles and mental disorders he had distinguished
himself. He had a marvellous faculty for psychological research; indeed,
he had gone so far as to declare that insanity was merely a disease and
capable of cure the same as any ordinary malady. "If Bell goes on as he
has started," a great German specialist once declared, "he will
inevitably prove to be the greatest benefactor to mankind since the
beginning of the world." Bell was to be the man of his time.

And then suddenly he had faded out as a star drops from the zenith. There
had been dark rumours of a terrible scandal, a prosecution burked by
strong personal influence, mysterious paragraphs in the papers, and the
disappearance of the name of Hatherly Bell from the rank of great medical
jurists. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, but Bell was ignored by
all except a few old friends, and henceforth he devoted his attention to
criminology and the evolution of crime. It was Bell's boast that he could
take a dozen men at haphazard and give you their vices and virtures
point-blank. He had a marvellous gift that way.

A few people stuck to him, Gilead Gates amongst the number. The
millionaire philanthropist had need of someone to pick the sheep from the
goats, and Bell made no mistakes. David Steel had been able to do the
specialist some slight service a year or two before, and Bell had been
pleased to magnify this into a great favour.

"You are a fast walker," David said, presently.

"That's because I am thinking fast," Bell replied. "Steel, you are in
great trouble?"

"It needs no brilliant effort on your part to see that," David said,
bitterly. "Besides, you heard a great deal just now when you--you--"

"Listened," Bell said, coolly. "Of course I had no intention of playing
eavesdropper; and I had no idea who the Mr. Steel was who wanted to see
Miss Gates. They come day by day, my dear fellow, garbed in the garb of
Pall Mall or Petticoat Lane as the case may be, but they all come for
money. Sometimes it is a shilling, sometimes £100. But I did not gather
from your chat with Miss Gates what your trouble was."

"Perhaps not, but Miss Gates knew perfectly well."

Bell patted his companion, approvingly.

"It is a pleasure to help a lucid-minded man like yourself," he said.
"You go straight to the root of the sore and cut all the superfluous
matter away. I was deeply interested in the conversation which I
overheard just now. You are in great trouble, and that trouble is
connected with 219, Brunswick Square--a house where you have never
been before."

"My dear chap, I was in that dining-room two nights ago. Nothing will
convince me to the--"

"There you are wrong, because I am going to convince you to the
contrary. You may smile and shake your head, but before an hour has
passed I am going to convince you beyond all question that you were
never inside No. 219."

"Brave words," David muttered. "Still, an hour is not a long time to
wait."

"No. But you must enlighten me if I am to assist you. I am profoundly
interested. You come to the house of my friend on a desperate errand.
Miss Gates is a perfect stranger to you, and yet the mere discovery of
your identity fills her with the most painful agitation. Therefore,
though you have never been in 219 before, you are pretty certain, and I
am pretty certain, that Ruth Gates knows a deal about the thing that is
touching you. On the contrary, I know nothing on that head. Won't you let
me into the secret?"

"I'll tell you part," Steel replied. "And I'll put it pithily. For mere
argument we assume that I am selected to assist a damsel in distress who
lives at No. 219, Brunswick Square. We will assume that the conversation
leading up to the flattering selection took place over the telephone. As
a matter of fact, it did take place over the telephone. The thing was
involved with so much secrecy that I naturally hesitated. I was offered
£1,000 for my services; also I was reminded by my unseen messenger that I
was in dire need of that money."

"And were you?"

"My dear fellow, I don't fancy that I should have hesitated at burglary
to get it. And all I had to do was to meet a lady secretly in the dead of
night at No. 219, and tell her how to get out of a certain difficulty. It
all resolved itself round the synopsis of a proposed new story of mine.
But I had better go into details."

David proceeded to do so. Bell, with his arm crooked through that of his
companion, followed the story with an intelligent and flattering interest.

"Very strange and very fascinating," he said, presently. "I'll think it
out presently. Nobody could possibly think of anything but their toes in
Western Road. Go on."

"Now I am coming to the point. I had the money, I had that lovely
cigar-case, and subsequently I had that battered and bleeding specimen of
humanity dumped down in the most amazing manner in my conservatory. The
cigar-case lay on the conservatory floor, remember--swept off the table
when I clutched for the telephone bell to call for the police. When
Marley came he asked if the cigar-case was mine. At first I said no,
because, you see--"

"I see quite plainly. Pray go on."

"Well, I lose that cigar-case; I leave it in the offices of Mossa, to
whom I pay nearly £1,000. Mossa, to spite me, takes or sends the case to
the police, who advertise it not knowing that it is mine. You will see
why they advertise it presently--"

"Because it belonged to the injured man, eh?"

David pulled up and regarded his companion with amazement.

"How on earth--" he gasped. "Do you mean to say that you know--"

"Nothing at present, I assure you," Bell said, coolly. "Call it
intuition, if you like. I prefer to call it the result of logical mental
process. I'm right, of course?"

"Of course you are. I'd claimed that case for my own. I had cut my
initials inside, as I showed Marley when I went to the police-station.
And then Marley tells me how I paid Mossa nearly £1,000; how the money
must have come into my hands in the nick of time. That was pretty bad
when I couldn't for the life of me give a lucid reason for the possession
of those notes; but there was worse to come. In the pocket of the injured
man was a receipt for a diamond-studded gun-metal cigar-case, purchased
the day of the outrage. And Walen, the jeweller, proved beyond a doubt
that the case I claimed was purchased at his shop."

Bell nodded gravely.

"Which places you in an exceedingly awkward position," he said.

"A mild way of putting it," David replied. "If that fellow dies the
police have enough evidence to hang me. And what is my defence? The story
of my visit to No. 219. And who would believe that cock-and-bull story?
Fancy a drama like that being played out in the house of such a pillar of
respectability as Gilead Gates."

"It isn't his house," said Bell. "He only takes it furnished."

"In anybody else your remark would be puerile," David said, irritably.

"It's a deeper remark than you are aware of at present," Bell replied. "I
quite see your position. Nobody would believe you, of course. But why not
go to the post-office and ask the number of the telephone that called you
up from London?"

The question seemed to amuse David slightly. Then his lips were drawn
humorously.

"When my logical formula came back I thought of that," he said. "On
inquiring as to who it was rang me up on that fateful occasion I learnt
that the number was 0017 Kensington and that--"

"Gates's own number at Prince's Gate," Bell exclaimed. "The plot
thickens."

"It does, indeed," David said, grimly. "It is Wilkie Collins gone mad,
Gaboriau _in extremis_, Du Boisgobey suffering from _delirium tremens_.
I go to Gates's house here, and am solemnly told in the midst of
surroundings that I can swear to that I have never been there before;
the whole mad expedition is launched by the turning of the handle of a
telephone in the house of a distinguished, trusted, if prosaic,
citizen. Somebody gets hold of the synopsis of a story of mine, Heaven
knows how--"

"That is fairly easy. The synopsis was short, I suppose?"

"Only a few lines, say 1,000 words, a sheet of paper. My writing is very
small. It was tucked into a half-penny open envelope--a magazine office
envelope, marked 'Proof, urgent.' There were the proofs of a short story
in the buff envelope."

"Which reached its destination in due course?"

"So I hear this morning. But how on earth--"

"Easily enough. The whole thing gets slipped into a larger open envelope,
the kind of big-mouthed affair that enterprising firms send out circulars
and patterns with. This falls into the hands of the woman who is at the
bottom of this and every other case, and she reads the synopsis from
sheer curiosity. The case fits her case, and there you are. Mind you, I
don't say that this is how the thing actually happened, but how it might
have done so. When did you post the letter?"

"I can't give you the date. Say ten days ago."

"And there would be no hurry for a reply," Bell said, thoughtfully. "And
you had no cause for worry on that head. Nor need the woman who found it
have kept the envelope beyond the delay of a single post, which is only a
matter of an hour or so in London. If you go a little farther we find
that money is no object, hence the £1,000 offer and the careful, and
doubtless expensive, inquiry into your position. Steel, I am going to
enjoy this case."

"You're welcome to all the fun you can get out of it," David said,
grimly. "So far as I am concerned, I fail to see the humour. Isn't this
the office you are after?"

Bell nodded and disappeared, presently to return with two exceedingly
rusty keys tied together with a drab piece of tape. He jingled them on
his long, slender forefinger with an air of positive enjoyment.

"Now come along," he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked down
something rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to Brunswick
Square exactly the same way as you approached it on the night of the
great adventure."




CHAPTER IX

THE BROKEN FIGURE


"Any particular object in that course?" David asked.

"There ought to be an object in everything that even an irrational man
says or does," Bell replied. "I have achieved some marvellous results by
following up a single sentence uttered by a patient. Besides, on the
evening in question you were particularly told to approach the house from
the sea front."

"Somebody might have been on the look-out near the Western Road
entrance," Steel suggested.

"Possibly. I have another theory.... Here we are. The figures over the
fanlights run from 187 upwards, gradually getting to 219 as you breast
the slope. At one o'clock in the morning every house would be in
darkness. Did you find that to be so?"

"I didn't notice a light anywhere till I reached 219."

"Good again. And you could only find 219 by the light over the door.
Naturally you were not interested in and would not have noticed any other
number. Well, here is 218, where I propose to enter, and for which
purpose I have the keys. Come along."

David followed wonderingly. The houses in Brunswick Square are somewhat
irregular in point of architecture, and Nos. 218 and 219 were the only
matched pair thereabouts. Signs were not wanting, as Bell pointed out,
that at one time the houses had been occupied as one residence. The two
entrance-halls were back to back, so to speak, and what had obviously
been a doorway leading from one to the other had been plastered up within
comparatively recent memory.

The grim and dusty desolation of an empty house seemed to be supplemented
here by a deeper desolation. Not that there was any dust on the ground
floor, which seemed a singular thing seeing that elsewhere the boards
were powdered with it, and festoons of brown cobwebs hung everywhere.
Bell smiled approvingly as David Steel pointed the fact out to him.

"Do you note another singular point?" the former asked.

"No," David said, thoughtfully; "I--stop! The two side-shutters in the
bay-windows are closed, and there is the same vivid crimson blind in the
centre window. And the self colour of the walls is exactly the same. The
faint discoloration by the fireplace is a perfect facsimile."

"In fact, _this_ is the room you were in the other night," Bell
said, quietly.

"Impossible!" Steel cried. "The blind may be an accident, so might the
fading of the distemper. But the furniture, the engravings, the fittings
generally--"

"Are all capable of an explanation, which we shall arrive at with
patience."

"Can we arrive at the number over the door with patience?"

"Exactly what I was coming to. I noticed an old pair of steps in the back
sitting-room. Would you mind placing them against the fanlight for me?"

David complied readily enough. He was growing credulous and interested in
spite of himself. At Bell's instigation he placed the steps before the
fanlight and mounted them. Over his head were the figures 218 in
elongated shape and formed in white porcelain.

"Now then," Bell said, slowly. "Take this pocket-knife, apply the blade
to the _right-hand_ lower half of the bottom of the 8--to half the small
O, in fact--and I shall be extremely surprised if the quarter section
doesn't come away from the glass of the fanlight, leaving the rest of the
figure intact. Very gently, please. I want you to convince yourself that
the piece comes away because it is broken, and not because the pressure
has cracked it. Now then."

The point of the knife was hardly under the edge of the porcelain before
the segment of the lower circle dropped into Steel's hand. He could feel
the edges of the cement sticking to his fingers. As yet the full force of
the discovery was not apparent to him.

"Go out into the road and look at the fanlight," Bell directed.

David complied eagerly. A sharp cry of surprise escaped him as he looked
up. The change was apparent. Instead of the figures 218 he could read now
the change to 219--a fairly indifferent 9, but one that would have passed
muster without criticism by ninety-nine people out of a hundred. With a
strong light behind the figures the clumsy 9 would never have been
noticed at all. The very simplicity and ingeniousness of the scheme was
its safeguard.

"I should like to have the address of the man who thought that out,"
David said, drily.

"Yes, I fancy that you are dealing with quite clever people," Bell
replied. "And now I have shown you how utterly you have been deceived
over the number we will go a little farther. For the present, the way in
which the furniture trick was worked must remain a mystery. But there has
been furniture here, or this room and the hall would not have been so
carefully swept and garnished whilst the rest of the house remains in so
dirty a condition. If my eyes don't deceive me I can see two fresh nails
driven into the archway leading to the back hall. On those nails hung the
curtain that prevented you seeing more than was necessary. Are you still
incredulous as to the house where you had your remarkable adventure?"

"I confess that my faith has been seriously shaken," David admitted. "But
about the furniture? And about my telephone call from Mr. Gates's town
house? And about my adventure taking place in the very next house to the
one taken by him at Brighton? And about Miss Gates's agitation when she
learnt my identity? Do you call them coincidences?"

"No, I don't," Bell said, promptly. "They are merely evidences of clever
folks taking advantage of an excellent strategic position. I said just
now that it was an important point that Mr. Gates had merely taken the
next door furnished. But we shall come to that side of the theory in due
course. Have you any other objection to urge?"

"One more, and I have finished for the present. When I came here the
other night--provided of course that I did come here--immediately upon my
entering the dining-room the place was brilliantly illuminated. Now,
directly the place was void the supply of electric current would be cut
off at the meter. So far as I can judge, some two or three units must
have been consumed during my visit. There could not be many less than ten
lights burning for an hour. Now, those units must show on the meter. Can
you read an electric meter?"

"My dear fellow, there is nothing easier."

"Then let us go down into the basement and settle the matter. There is
pretty sure to be a card on the meter made up to the day when the last
tenant went out. See, the supply is cut off now."

As Steel spoke he snapped down the hall switch and no result came. Down
in the basement by the area door stood the meter. Both switches were
turned off, but on Bell pressing them down Steel was enabled to light
the passage.

"There's the card," Bell exclaimed. "Made up to 25th June, 1895, since
when the house has been void. Just a minute whilst I read the meter. Yes,
that's right. According to this the card in your hand, provided that the
light has not been used since the index was taken, should read at 1521.
What do you make of the card?"

"1532," David cried. "Which means eleven units since the meter was last
taken. Or, if you like to put it from your point of view, eleven units
used the night that I came here. You are quite right, Bell. You have
practically convinced me that I have been inside the real 219 for the
first time to-day. And yet the more one probes the mystery the more
astounding does it become.... What do you propose to do next?"

"Find out the name of the last tenant or owner." Bell suggested.
"Discover what the two houses were used for when they were occupied by
one person. Also ascertain why on earth the owners are willing to let a
house this size and in this situation for a sum like £80 per annum. Let
us go and take the keys back to the agents."

Steel was nothing loth to find himself in the fresh air again. Some
progress had been made like the opening of a chess-match between masters,
and yet the more Steel thought of it the more muddled and bewildered did
he become. No complicated tangle in the way of a plot had ever been
anything like the skein this was.

"I'm like a child in your hands," he said. "I'm a blind man on the end of
a string; a man dazed with wine in a labyrinth. And if ever I help a
woman again--"

He paused as he caught sight of Ruth Gates's lovely face through the
window of No. 219. Her features were tinged with melancholy; there was a
look of deepest sympathy and feeling and compassion in her glorious
eyes. She slipped back as Steel bowed, and the rest of his speech was
lost in a sigh.




CHAPTER X

THE HOUSE OF THE SILENT SORROW


A bell tolled mournfully with a slow, swinging cadence like a passing
bell. On winter nights folks, passing the House of the Silent Sorrow,
compared the doleful clanging to the boom that carries the criminal from
the cell to the scaffold. Every night all the year round the little
valley of Longdean echoed to that mournful clang. Perhaps it was for this
reason that a wandering poet christened the place as the House of the
Silent Sorrow.

For seven years this had been going on now, until nobody but strangers
noticed it. From half-past seven till eight o'clock that hideous bell
rang its swinging, melancholy note. Why it was nobody could possibly
tell. Nobody in the village had ever been beyond the great rusty gates
leading to a dark drive of Scotch firs, though one small boy bolder than
the rest had once climbed the lichen-strewn stone wall and penetrated the
thick undergrowth beyond. Hence he had returned, with white face and
staring eyes, with the information that great wild dogs dwelt in the
thickets. Subsequently the village poacher confirmed this information. He
was not exactly loquacious on the subject, but merely hinted that the
grounds of Longdean Grange were not salubrious for naturalists with a
predatory disposition.

Indeed, on moonlight nights those apocryphal hounds were heard to bay and
whimper. A shepherd up late one spring night averred that he had seen two
of them fighting. But nobody could say anything about them for certain;
also it was equally certain that nobody knew anything about the people at
Longdean Grange. The place had been shut up for thirty years, being
understood to be in Chancery, when the announcement went forth that a
distant relative of the family had arranged to live there in future.

What the lady of the Grange was like nobody could say. She had arrived
late one night accompanied by a niece, and from that moment she had never
been beyond the house. None of the large staff of servants ever left the
grounds unless it was to quit altogether, and then they were understood
to leave at night with a large bonus in money as a recompense for their
promise to evacuate Sussex without delay. Everything was ordered by
telephone from Brighton, and left at the porter's lodge. The porter was a
stranger, also he was deaf and exceedingly ill-tempered, so that long
since the village had abandoned the hope of getting anything out of him.
One rational human being they saw from the Grange occasionally, a big man
with an exceedingly benevolent face and mild, large, blue eyes--a man
full of Christian kindness and given to largesse to the village boys. The
big gentleman went by the name of "Mr. Charles," and was understood to
have a lot of pigeons of which he was exceedingly fond. But who "Mr.
Charles" was, or how he got that name, it would have puzzled the wisest
head of the village to tell.

And yet, but for the mighty clamour of that hideous bell and that belt of
wildness that surrounded it, Longdean Grange was a cheerful-looking house
enough. Any visitor emerging from the drive would have been delighted
with it. For the lawns were trim and truly kept, the beds were blazing
masses of flowers, the creepers over the Grange were not allowed to riot
too extravagantly. And yet the strange haunting sense of fear was there.
Now and again a huge black head would uplift from the coppice growth, and
a long, rumbling growl come from between a double row of white teeth. For
the dogs were no fiction, they lived and bred in the fifteen or twenty
acres of coppice round the house, where they were fed regularly and
regularly thrashed without mercy if they showed in the garden. Perhaps
they looked more fierce and truculent than they really were, being Cuban
bloodhounds, but they gave a weird colour to the place and lent it new
terror to the simple folk around.

The bell was swinging dolefully over the stable-turret; it rang out its
passing note till the clock struck eight and then mercifully ceased. At
the same moment precisely as she had done any time the last seven years
the lady of the house descended the broad, black oak staircase to the
hall. A butler of the old-fashioned type bowed to her and announced that
dinner was ready. He might have been the butler of an archbishop from
his mien and deportment, yet his evening dress was seedy and shiny to
the last degree, his patent leather boots had long lost their lustre,
his linen was terribly frayed and yellow. Two footmen in livery stood in
the hall. They might have been supers playing on the boards of a
travelling theatre, their once smartly cut and trimmed coats hung
raggedly upon them.

As to the lady, who was tall and handsome, with dark eyes and features
contrasting strangely with hair as white as the frost on a winter's
landscape, there was a far-away, strained look in the dark eyes, as if
they were ever night and day looking for something, something that would
never be found. In herself the lady was clean and wholesome enough, but
her evening dress of black silk and lace was dropping into fragments, the
lace was in rags upon her bosom, though there were diamonds of great
value in her white hair.

And here, strangely allied, were wealth and direst poverty; the whole
place was filled with rare and costly things, pictures, statuary, china;
the floors were covered with thick carpets, and yet everything was
absolutely smothered in dust. A thick, white, blankety cloud of it lay
everywhere. It obscured the china, it dimmed the glasses of the pictures,
it piled in little drifts on the heads and arms of the dingy statues
there. Many years must have passed since a housemaid's brush or duster
had touched anything in Longdean Grange. It was like a palace of the
Sleeping Beauty, wherein people walked as in a waking dream.

The lady of the house made her way slowly to the dining-room. Here dinner
was laid out daintily and artistically enough--a _gourmet_ would have
drawn up to the table with a feeling of satisfaction. Flowers were there,
and silver and cut-glass, china with a history of its own, and the whole
set out on a tablecloth that was literally dropping to pieces.

It was a beautiful room in itself, lofty, oak panelled from floor to
roof, with a few pictures of price on the walls. There was plenty of
gleaming silver glowing like an argent moon against a purple sky, and yet
the same sense of dust and desolation was everywhere. Only the dinner
looked bright and modern.

There were two other people standing by the table, one a girl with a
handsome, intellectual face full of passion but ill repressed; the other
the big fair man known to the village as "Mr. Charles." As a matter of
fact, his name was Reginald Henson, and he was distantly related to Mrs.
Henson, the strange chatelaine of the House of the Silent Sorrow. He was
smiling blandly now at Enid Henson, the wonderfully beautiful girl with
the defiant, shining eyes.

"We may be seated now that madam is arrived," Henson said, gravely.

He spoke with a certain mocking humility and a queer wry smile on his
broad, loose mouth that filled Enid with a speechless fury. The girl was
hot-blooded--a good hater and a good friend. And the master passion of
her life was hatred of Reginald Henson.

"Madam has had a refreshing rest?" Henson suggested. "Pardon our anxious
curiosity."

Again Enid raged, but Margaret Henson might have been of stone for all
the notice she took. The far-away look was still in her eyes as she felt
her way to the table like one in a dream. Then she dropped suddenly into
a chair and began grace in a high, clear voice.

".... And the Lord make us truly thankful. And may He, when it seemeth
good to Him, remove the curse from this house and in due season free the
innocent and punish the guilty. For the burden is sore upon us, and there
are times when it seems hard to bear."

The big man played with his knife and fork, smilingly. An acute observer
might have imagined that the passionate plaint was directed at him. If so
it passed harmlessly over his broad shoulders. In his immaculate evening
dress he looked strangely out of place there. Enid had escaped the
prevailing dilapidation, but her gown of grey homespun was severe as the
garb of a charity girl.

"Madam is so poetical," Henson murmured. "And charmingly sanguine."

"Williams," Mrs. Henson said, quite stoically, "my visitor will have some
champagne."

She seemed to have dropped once again into the commonplace, painfully
exact as a hostess of breeding must be to an unwelcome guest. And yet she
never seemed to see him; those dark eyes were looking, ever looking, into
the dark future. The meal proceeded in silence save for an oily sarcasm
from Henson. In the dense stillness the occasional howl of a dog could be
heard. A slight flush of annoyance crossed Henson's broad face.

"Some day I shall poison all those hounds," he said.

Enid looked up at him swiftly.

"If _all_ the hounds round Longdean were poisoned or shot it would be a
good place to live in," she said.

Henson smiled caressingly, like Petruchio might have done in his
milder moments.

"My dear Enid, you misjudge me," he said. "But I shall get justice
some day."

Enid replied that she fervently hoped so, and thus the strange meal
proceeded with smiles and gentle words from Henson, and a wild outburst
of bitterness from the girl. So far as she was concerned the servants
might have been mere automatons. The dust rose in clouds as the latter
moved silently. It was hot in there, and gradually the brown powder
grimed like a film over Henson's oily skin. At the head of the table
Margaret Henson sat like a woman in a dream. Ever, ever her dark eyes
seemed to be looking eagerly around. Thirsty men seeking precious water
in a desert might have looked like her. Ever and anon her lips moved, but
no sound came from them. Occasionally she spoke to one or the other of
her guests, but she never followed her words with her eyes. Such a sad,
pathetic, pitiable figure, such a grey sorrow in her rags and snowy hair.

The meal came to an end at length, and Mrs. Henson rose suddenly. There
was a grotesque suggestion of the marionette in the movement. She bowed
as if to some imaginary personage and moved with dignity towards the
door. Reginald Henson stood aside and opened it for her. She passed
into the dim hall as if absolutely unconscious of his presence. Enid
flashed a look of defiance at him as she disappeared into the gloom and
floating dust.

Henson's face changed instantly, as if a mask had fallen from his smug
features. He became alert and vigorous. He was no longer patron of the
arts, a wide-minded philanthropist, the man who devotes himself to the
good of humanity. The blue eyes were cold and cruel, there was a hungry
look about the loose mouth.

"Take a bottle of claret and the cigars into the small library,
Williams," he said. "And open the window, the dust stifles me."

The dignified butler bowed respectfully. He resembled the typical bad
butler of fiction in no respect, but his thoughts were by no means
pleasant as he hastened to obey. Enid was loitering in the hall as
Williams passed with the tray.

"Small study and the window open, miss," he whispered. "There's some game
on--oh, yes, there is some blessed game on again to-night. And him so
anxious to know how Miss Christiana is. Says she ought to call him in
professionally. Personally I'd rather call in an undertaker who was
desperately hard up for a job."

"All right, Williams," Enid replied. "My sister is worse to-night. And
unless she gets better I shall insist upon her seeing a doctor. And I am
obliged for the hint about Mr. Henson. The little study commands the
staircase leading to my sister's bedroom."

"And the open window commands the garden," Williams said, drily.

"Yes, yes. Now go. You are a real friend, Williams, and I will never
forget your goodness. Run along--I can actually _feel_ that man coming."

As a matter of fact, Henson was approaching noiselessly. Despite his
great bulk he had the clean, dainty step of a cat; his big, rolling ears
were those of a hare. Henson was always listening. He would have listened
behind a kitchen door to a pair of chattering scullery-maids. He liked to
find other people out, though as yet he had not been found out himself.
He stood before the world as a social missioner; he made speeches at
religious gatherings and affected the women to tears. He was known to
devote a considerable fortune to doing good; he had been asked to stand
for Parliament, where his real ambition lay. Gilead Gates had alluded to
Reginald Henson as his right-hand man.

He crept along to the study, where the lamps were lighted and the silver
claret-jug set out. He carefully dusted a big arm-chair and began to
smoke, having first carefully extinguished the lamps and seen that the
window leading to the garden was wide open. Henson was watching for
something. In his feline nature he had the full gift of feline patience.
To serve his own ends he would have sat there watching all night if
necessary. He heard an occasional whimper, a howl from one of the dogs;
he heard Enid's voice singing in the drawing-room. The rest of the house
was quite funereal enough for him.

In the midst of the drawing-room Margaret Henson sat still as a statue.
The distant, weary expression never left her eyes for a moment. As the
stable clock, the only one going on the premises, struck ten, Enid
crossed over from the piano to her aunt's side. There was an eager look
on her face, her eyes were gleaming like frosty stars.

"Aunt," she whispered; "dear, I have had a message!"

"Message of woe and desolation," Margaret Henson cried. "Tribulation and
sorrow on this wretched house. For seven long years the hand of the Lord
has lain heavily upon us."

She spoke like one who was far away from her surroundings. And yet no
one could look in her eyes and say that she was mad. It was a proud,
passionate spirit, crushed down by some bitter humiliation. Enid's
eyes flashed.

"That scoundrel has been robbing you again," she said.

"Two thousand pounds," came the mechanical reply, "to endow a bed in some
hospital. And there is no escape, no hope unless we drag the shameful
secret from him. Bit by bit and drop by drop, and then I shall die and
you and Christiana will be penniless."

"I daresay Chris and myself will survive that," Enid said, cheerfully.
"But we have a plan, dear aunt; we have thought it out carefully.
Reginald Henson has hidden the secret somewhere and we are going to find
it. The secret is hidden not far off, because our cousin has occasion to
require it frequently. It is like the purloined letter in Edgar Poe's
wonderful story."

Margaret Henson nodded and mumbled. It seemed almost impossible to make
her understand. She babbled of strange things, with her dark eyes ever
fixed on the future. Enid turned away almost despairingly. At the same
time the stable clock struck the half-hour after ten. Williams slipped
in with a tray of glasses, noiselessly. On the tray lay a small pile of
tradesmen's books. The top one was of dull red with no lettering upon
it at all.

"The housekeeper's respectful compliments, miss, and would you go through
them to-morrow?" Williams said. He tapped the top book significantly.
"To-morrow is the last day of the month."

Enid picked up the top book with strange eagerness. There were pages of
figures and cabalistic entries that no ordinary person could make
anything of. Pages here and there were signed and decorated with pink
receipt stamps. Enid glanced down the last column, and her face grew a
little paler.

"Aunt," she whispered, "I've got to go out. At once; do you understand?
There is a message here; and I am afraid that something dreadful has
happened. Can you sing?"

"Ah, yes; a song of lamentation--a dirge for the dead."

"No, no; seven years ago you had a lovely voice. I recollect what a
pleasure it was to me as a child; and they used to say that my voice
was very like yours, only not so sweet or so powerful. Aunt, I must go
out; and that man must know nothing about it. He is by the window in
the small library now, watching--watching. Help me, for the love of
Heaven, help me."

The girl spoke with a fervency and passion that seemed to waken a
responsive chord in Margaret Henson's breast. A brighter gleam crept
into her eyes.

"You are a dear girl," she said, dreamily; "yes, a dear girl. And I loved
singing; it was a great grief to me that they would not let me go upon
the stage. But I haven't sung since--since _that_--"

She pointed to the huddled heap of china and glass and dried, dusty
flowers in one corner. Ethel [Updater's note: Enid?] shuddered slightly
as she followed the direction of the extended forefinger.

"But you must try," she whispered. "It is for the good of the family, for
the recovery of the secret. Reginald Henson is sly and cruel and clever.
But we have one on our side now who is far more clever. And, unless I can
get away to-night without that man knowing, the chance may be lost for
ever. Come!"

Margaret commenced to sing in a soft minor. At first the chords were thin
and dry, but gradually they increased in sweetness and power. The
hopeless, distant look died from the singer's eyes; there was a flush on
her cheeks that rendered her years younger.

"Another one," she said, when the song was finished, "and yet another.
How wicked I have been to neglect this balm that God sent me all these
years. If you only knew what the sound of my own voice means to me!
Another one, Enid."

"Yes, yes," Enid whispered. "You are to sing till I return. You are
to leave Henson to imagine that I am singing. He will never guess.
Now then."

Enid crept away into the hall, closing the door softly behind her. She
made her way noiselessly from the house and across the lawn. As Henson
slipped through the open window into the garden Enid darted behind a
bush. Evidently Henson suspected nothing so far as she was concerned, for
she could see the red glow of the cigar between his lips. The faint
sweetness of distant music filled the air. So long as the song continued
Henson would relax his vigilance.

He was pacing down the garden in the direction of the drive. Did the man
know anything? Enid wondered. He had so diabolically cunning a brain. He
seemed to find out everything, and to read others before they had made up
their minds for themselves.

The cigar seemed to dance like a mocking sprite into the bushes. Usually
the man avoided those bushes. If Reginald Henson was afraid of one thing
it was of the dogs. And in return they hated him as he hated them.

Enid's mind was made up. If the sound of that distant voice should only
cease for a moment she was quite sure Henson would turn back. But he
could hear it, and she knew that she was safe. Enid slipped past him into
the bushes and gave a faint click of her lips. Something moved and
whined, and two dark objects bounded towards her. She caught them
together by their collars and cuffed them soundly. Then she led the way
back so as to get on Henson's tracks.

He was walking on ahead of her now, beating time softly to the music of
the faintly distant song with his cigar. Enid could distinctly see the
sweep of the red circle.

"Hold him, Dan," she whispered. "Watch, Prance; watch, boy."

There was a low growl as the hounds found the scent and dashed forward.
Henson came up all standing and sweating in every pore. It was not the
first time he had been held up by the dogs, and he knew by hard
experience what to expect if he made a bolt for it.

Two grim muzzles were pressed against his trembling knees; he saw four
rows of ivory flashing in the dim light. Then the dogs crouched at his
feet, watching him with eyes as red and lurid as the point of his own
cigar. Had he attempted to move, had he tried coercion, they would have
fallen upon him and torn him in pieces.

"Confusion to the creatures!" he cried, passionately. "I'll get a
revolver; I'll buy some prussic acid and poison the lot. And here I'll
have to stay till Williams locks up the stables. Wouldn't that little
Jezebel laugh at me if she could see me now? She would enjoy it better
than singing songs in the drawing-room to our sainted Margaret. Steady,
you brutes! I didn't move."

He stood there rigidly, almost afraid to take the cigar from his lips,
whilst Enid sped without further need for caution down the drive. The
lodge-gates were closed and the deaf porter's house in darkness, so that
Enid could unlock the wicket without fear of detection. She rattled the
key on the bars and a figure slipped out of the darkness.

"Good heavens, Ruth, is it really _you_?" Enid cried.

"Really me, Enid. I came over on my bicycle. I am supposed to be round at
some friend's house in Brunswick Square, and one of the servants is
sitting up for me. Is Reginald safe? He hasn't yet discovered the secret
of the tradesman's book?"

"That's all right, dear. But why are you here? Has something dreadful
happened?"

"Well, I will try to tell you so in as few words as possible. I never
felt so ashamed of anything in my life."

"Don't tell me that our scheme has failed!" "Perhaps I need not go so far
as that. The first part of it came off all right, and then a very
dreadful thing happened. We have got Mr. David Steel into frightful
trouble. He is going to be charged with attempted murder and robbery."

"Ruth! But tell me. I am quite in the dark."

"It was the night when--well, you know the night. It was after Mr. Steel
returned home from his visit to 219, Brunswick Square--"

"You mean 218, Ruth."

"It doesn't matter, because he knows pretty well all about it by this
time. It would have been far better for us if we hadn't been quite so
clever. It would have been far wiser to have taken Mr. Steel entirely
into our confidence. Oh, oh, Enid, if we had only left out that little
sentiment over the cigar-case! Then we should have been all right."

"Dearest girl, my time is limited. I've got Reginald held up for the
time, but at any moment he may escape from his bondage. What about the
cigar-case?"

"Well, Mr. Steel took it home with him. And when he got home he found a
man nearly murdered lying in his conservatory. That man was conveyed to
the Sussex County Hospital, where he still lies in an unconscious state.
On the body was found a receipt for a gun-metal cigar-case set with
diamonds."

"Good gracious, Ruth, you don't mean to say--"

"Oh, I do. I can't quite make out how it happened, but that same case
that we--that Mr. Steel has--has been positively identified as one
purchased from Walen by the injured man. There is no question about it.
And they have found out about Mr. Steel being short of money, and the
£1,000, and everything."

"But we _know_ that that cigar-case from Lockhart's in North Street was
positively--"

"Yes, yes. But what has become of that? And in what strange way was the
change made? I tell you that the whole thing frightens me. We thought
that we had hit upon a scheme to solve the problem, and keep our friends
out of danger. There was the American at Genoa who volunteered to assist
us. A week later he was found dead in his bed. Then there was
Christiana's friend, who disappeared entirely. And now we try further
assistance in the case of Mr. Steel, and he stands face to face with a
terrible charge. And he has found us out."

"He has found us out? What do you mean?"

"Well, he called to see me. He called at 219, of course. And directly I
heard his name I was so startled that I am afraid I betrayed myself. Such
a nice, kind, handsome man, Enid; so manly and good over it all. Of
course he declared that he had been at 219 before, and I could only
declare that he had done nothing of the kind. Never, never have I felt so
ashamed of myself in my life before."

"It seems a pity," Enid said, thoughtfully. "You said nothing about 218?"

"My dear, he found it out. At least, Hatherly Bell did for him. Hatherly
Bell happened to be staying down with us, and Hatherly Bell, who knows
Mr. Steel, promptly solved, or half solved, that side of the problem. And
Hatherly Bell is coming here to-night to see Aunt Margaret. He--"

"Here!" Enid cried. "To see Aunt Margaret? Then he found out about you.
At all hazards Mr. Bell must not come here--he _must_ not. I would rather
let everything go than that. I would rather see auntie dead and Reginald
Henson master here. You _must_--"

In the distance came the rattle of harness bells and the trot of a horse.

"I'm afraid it's too late," Ruth Gates said, sadly. "I am afraid that
they are here already. Oh, if we had only left out that wretched
cigar-case!"




CHAPTER XI

AFTER REMBRANDT


"Before we go any farther," Bell said, after a long pause, "I should like
to search the house from top to bottom. I've got a pretty sound theory in
my head, but I don't like to leave anything to chance. We shall be pretty
certain to find something."

"I am entirely in your hands," David said, wearily. "So far as I am
capable of thinking out anything, it seems to me that we have to find
the woman."

"_Cherchez la femme_ is a fairly sound premise in a case like this, but
when we have found the woman we shall have to find the man who is at the
bottom of the plot. I mean the man who is not only thwarting the woman,
but giving you a pretty severe lesson as to the advisability of minding
your own business for the future."

"Then you don't think I am being made the victim of a vile conspiracy?"

"Not by the woman, certainly. You are the victim of some fiendish
counterplot by the man, who has not quite mastered what the woman is
driving at. By placing you in dire peril he compels the woman to speak to
save you, and thus to expose her hand."

"Then in that case I propose to sit tight," David said, grimly. "I am
bound to be prosecuted for robbery and attempted murder in due course. If
my man dies I am in a tight place."

"And if he recovers your antagonist may be in a tighter," Bell chuckled.
"And if the man gets well and that brain injury proves permanent--I mean
if the man is rendered imbecile--why, we are only at the very threshold
of the mystery. It seems a callous thing to say, but this is the
prettiest problem I have had under my hands."

"Make the most of it," David said, sardonically. "I daresay I should see
the matter in a more rational light if I were not so directly concerned.
But, if we are going to make a search of the premises, the sooner we
start the better."

Upstairs there was nothing beyond certain lumber. There were dust and
dirt everywhere, save in the hall and front dining-room, which, as
Bell sapiently pointed out, had obviously been cleared to make ready
for Steel's strange reception. Down in the housekeeper's room was a
large collection of dusty furniture, and a number of pictures and
engravings piled with their faces to the wall. Bell began idly to turn
the latter over.

"I am a maniac on the subject of old prints," he explained. "I never see
a pile without a wild longing to examine them. And, by Jove, there are
some good things here. Unless I am greatly mistaken--here, Steel, pull up
the blinds! Good heavens, is it possible?"

"Found a Sistine Madonna or a stray Angelo?" David asked. "Or a ghost?
What _is_ the matter? Is it another phase of the mystery?"

"The Rembrandt," Bell gasped. "Look at it, man!"

Steel bent eagerly over the engraving. An old print, an old piece of
china, an antique jewel, always exercised a charm over the novelist. He
had an unerring eye for that kind of thing.

"Exquisite," he cried. "A Rembrandt, of course, but I don't recollect
the picture."

"The picture was destroyed by accident after Rembrandt had engraved it
with his own hand," Bell proceeded to explain. He was quite coherent now,
but he breathed fast and loud, "I shall proceed to give you the history
of the picture presently, and more especially a history of the
engraving."

"Has it any particular name?" David asked.

"Yes, we found that out. It was called 'The Crimson Blind!'"

"No getting away from the crimson blind," David murmured. "Still, I can
quite imagine that to have been the name of the picture. That shutter
or blind might have had a setting sun behind it, which would account
for the tender warmth of the kitchen foreground and the deep gloom
where the lovers are seated. By Jove, Bell, it is a magnificent piece
of work. I've a special fancy for Rembrandt engravings, but I never saw
one equal to that."

"And you never will," Bell replied, "save in one instance. The picture
itself was painted in Rembrandt's modest lodging in the Keizerskroon
Tavern after the forced sale of his paintings at that hostel in the year
1658. At that time Rembrandt was painfully poor, as his recorded tavern
bills show. The same bills also disclose the fact that 'The Crimson
Blind' was painted for a private customer with a condition that the
subject should be engraved as well. After one impression had been taken
off the plate the picture was destroyed by a careless servant. In a
sudden fit of rage Rembrandt destroyed the plate, having, they say, only
taken one impression from it."

"Then there is only one of these engravings in the world? What a find!"

"There is one other, as I know to my cost," Bell said, significantly.
"Until a few days ago I never entertained the idea that there were two.
Steel, you are the victim of a vile conspiracy, but it is nothing to the
conspiracy which has darkened my life."

"Sooner or later I always felt that I should get to the bottom of the
mystery, and now I am certain of it. And, strange as it may seem, I
verily believe that you and I are hunting the same man down--that the one
man is at the bottom of the two evils. But you shall hear my story
presently. What we have to find out now is who was the last tenant and
who is the present owner of the house, and incidentally learn who this
lumber belongs to. Ah, this has been a great day for me!"

Bell spoke exultingly, a great light shining in his eyes. And David
sapiently asked no further questions for the present. All that he wanted
to know would come in time. The next move, of course, was to visit the
agent of the property.

A smart, dapper little man, looking absurdly out of place in an
exceedingly spacious office, was quite ready to give every information.
It was certainly true that 218, Brunswick Square, was to be let at an
exceedingly low rent on a repairing lease, and that the owner had a lot
more property in Brighton to be let on the same terms. The lady was
exceedingly rich and eccentric; indeed, by asking such low rents she was
doing her best to seriously diminish her income.

"Do you know the lady at all?" Bell asked.

"Not personally," the agent admitted. "So far as I can tell, the property
came into the present owner's hands some years ago by inheritance. The
property also included a very old house, called Longdean Grange, not far
from Rottingdean, where the lady, Mrs. Henson, lives at present. Nobody
ever goes there, nobody ever visits there, and to keep the place free
from prying visitors a large number of savage dogs are allowed to prowl
about the grounds."

Bell listened eagerly. Watching him, David could see that his eyes
glinted like points of steel. There was something subtle behind all this
common-place that touched the imagination of the novelist.

"Has 218 been let during the occupation of the present owner?"
Bell asked.

"No," the agent replied. "But the present owner--as heir to the
property--I am told, was interested in both 218 and 219, which used to be
a kind of high-class convalescent home for poor clergy and the widows and
daughters of poor clergy in want of a holiday. The one house was for the
men and the other for the women, and both were furnished exactly alike;
in fact, Mr. Gates's landlord, the tenant of 219, bought the furniture
exactly as it stands when the scheme fell through."

Steel looked up swiftly. A sudden inspiration came to him.

"In that case what became of the precisely similar furniture in
218?" he asked.

"That I cannot tell you," the agent said. "That house was let as it stood
to some sham philanthropist whose name I forget. The whole thing was a
fraud, and the swindler only avoided arrest by leaving the country.
Probably the goods were stored somewhere or perhaps seized by some
creditor. But I really can't say definitely without looking the matter
up. There are some books and prints now left in the house out of the
wreck. We shall probably put them in a sale, only they have been
overlooked. The whole lot will not fetch £5."

"Would you take £5 for them?" Bell asked.

"Gladly. Even if only to get them carted away."

Bell gravely produced a £5 note, for which he asked and received a
receipt. Then he and Steel repaired to 218 once more, whence they
recovered the Rembrandt, and subsequently returned the keys of the house
to the agent. There was an air of repressed excitement about Bell which
was not without its effect upon his companion. The cold, hard lines
seemed to have faded from Bell's face; there was a brightness about him
that added to his already fine physical beauty.

"And now, perhaps, you will be good enough to explain," David suggested.

"My dear fellow, it would take too long," Bell cried. "Presently I am
going to tell you the story of the tragedy of my life. You have doubtless
wondered, as others have wondered, why I dropped out of the road when the
goal was in sight. Well, your curiosity is about to be gratified. I am
going to help you, and in return you are going to help me to come back
into the race again. By way of a start, you are going to ask me to come
and dine with you to-night."

"At half-past seven, then. Nothing will give me greater pleasure."

"Spoken like a man and a brother. We will dine, and I will tell you my
story after the house is quiet. And if I ask you to accompany me on a
midnight adventure you will not say me nay?"

"Not in my present mood, at any rate. Adventure, with a dash of danger in
it, suits my present mood exactly. And if there is to be physical
violence, so much the better. My diplomacy may be weak, but physically I
am not to be despised in a row."

"Well, we'll try and avoid the latter, if possible," Bell laughed.
"Still, for your satisfaction, I may say there is just the chance of a
scrimmage. And now I really must go, because I have any amount of work to
do for Gates. Till half-past seven, _au revoir_."

Steel lighted a cigarette and strolled thoughtfully homewards along the
front. The more he thought over the mystery the more tangled it became.
And yet he felt perfectly sure that he was on the right track. The
discovery that both those houses had been furnished exactly alike at one
time was a most important one. And David no longer believed that he had
been to No. 219 on the night of the great adventure. Then he found
himself thinking about Ruth Gates's gentle face and lovely eyes, until he
looked up and saw the girl before him.

"You--you wanted to speak to me?" he stammered.

"I followed you on purpose," the girl said, quietly, "I can't tell you
everything, because it is not my secret to tell. But believe me
everything will come out right in the end. Don't think badly of me, don't
be hard and bitter because--"

"Because I am nothing of the kind," David smiled. "It is impossible to
look into a face like yours and doubt you. And I am certain that you are
acting loyally and faithfully for the sake of others who--"

"Yes, yes, and for your sake, too. Pray try and remember that. For your
sake, too. Oh, if you only knew how I admire and esteem you! If only--"

She paused with the deep blush crimsoning her face. David caught her
hand, and it seemed to him for a moment that she returned the pressure.

"Let me help you," he whispered. "Only be my friend and I will forgive
everything."

She gave him a long look of her deep, velvety eyes, she flashed him a
little smile, and was gone.




CHAPTER XII

"THE CRIMSON BLIND"


Hatherly Bell turned up at Downend Terrace gay and debonair as if he had
not a single trouble in the world. His evening dress was of the smartest
and he had a rose in his buttonhole. From his cab he took a square brown
paper parcel, which he deposited in David's study with particular care.

He made no allusion whatever to the sterner business of the evening; he
was gay and light-hearted as a child, so that Mrs. Steel sat up quite an
hour later than her usual time, absolutely unconscious of the fact that
she had broken a rigid rule of ten years' standing.

"Now let us go into the study and smoke a cigar," David suggested.

Bell dragged a long deck-chair into the conservatory and lighted a Massa.
Steel's offer of whisky and soda was declined.

"An ideal place for a novelist who has a keen eye for the beautiful,"
he said. "There you have your books and pictures, your stained glass
and china, and when you turn your eyes this way they are gladdened by
green foliage and lovely flowers. It's hard to connect such a room with
a tragedy."

"And yet the tragedy was worked out close by where you are sitting. But
never mind that. Come to your story, and let me see if we can fit it
into mine."

Bell took a fresh pull at his cigar and plunged into his subject.

"About seven years ago professional business took me to Amsterdam; a
brilliant young medical genius who was drinking himself prematurely into
his grave had made some wonderful discoveries relating to the brain and
psychology generally, so I decided to learn what I could before it
  was too late. I found the young doctor to be an exceedingly good
  fellow, only too ready to speak of his discoveries, and there I
  stayed for a year. My word! what do I not owe to that misguided
  mind! And what a revolution he would have made in medicine and
  surgery had he only lived!

"Well, in Amsterdam I got to know everybody who was worth
knowing--medical, artistic, social. And amongst the rest was an
Englishman called Lord Littimer, his son, and an exceedingly clever
nephew of his, Henson by name, who was the son's tutor. Littimer was a
savant, a scholar, and a fine connoisseur as regarded pictures. He was
popularly supposed to have the finest collection of old prints in
England. He would travel anywhere in search of something fresh, and the
rumour of some apocryphal treasure in Amsterdam had brought him thither.
He and I were friends from the first, as, indeed, were the son and
myself. Henson, the nephew, was more quiet and reserved, but fond, as I
discovered, of a little secret dissipation.

"In those days I was not averse to a little life myself. I was
passionately fond of all games of cards, and I am afraid that I was in
the habit of gambling to a greater extent than I could afford. I don't
gamble now and I don't play cards: in fact, I shall never touch a card
again as long as I live. Why, you shall hear all in good time.

"We were all getting on very well together at that time when Lord
Littimer's sister paid us a visit. She came accompanied by a daughter
called Enid. I will not describe her, because no words of mine could do
her justice. In a word, I fell over head and ears in love with Enid, and
in that state I have remained ever since. Of all the crosses that I have
to bear the knowledge that I love Enid and that she loves--and
despises--me, is by far the heaviest. But I don't want to dwell upon
ythat."

"We were a very happy party there until Van Sneck and Von Gulden turned
up. Enid and I had come to an understanding, and, though we kept our
secret, we were not going to do so for long. From the very first Von
Gulden admired her. He was a handsome, swaggering soldier, a
good-looking, wealthy man, who had a great reputation for gallantry, and
something worse. Perhaps the fellow guessed how things lay, for he never
troubled to conceal his dislike and contempt for me. It is no fault of
mine that I am extremely sensitive as to my personal appearance, but Von
Gulden played upon it until he drove me nearly mad. He challenged me
sneeringly to certain sports wherein he knew I could not shine; he
challenged me to écarté, where I fancied I was his master.

"Was I? Well, we had been dining that night, and perhaps too freely, for
I entirely lost my head before I began the game in earnest. Those covert
sneers had nearly driven me mad. To make a long story short, when I got
up from the table that night, I owed my opponent nearly £800, without the
faintest prospect of paying a tenth part of it. I was only a poor,
ambitious young man then, with my way to make in the world. And if that
money were not forthcoming in the next few days I was utterly ruined."

"The following morning the great discovery was made. The Van Sneck I have
alluded to was an artist, a dealer, a man of the shadiest reputation,
whom my patron, Lord Littimer, had picked up. It was Van Sneck who
produced the copy of 'The Crimson Blind.' Not only did he produce the
copy, but he produced the history from some recently discovered papers
relating to the Keizerskroon Tavern of the year 1656, which would have
satisfied a more exacting man than Littimer. In the end the Viscount
purchased the engraving for £800 English.

"You can imagine how delighted he was with his prize--he had secured an
engraving by Rembrandt that was absolutely unique. Under more favourable
circumstances I should have shared that pleasure. But I was face to face
with ruin, and therefore I had but small heart for rejoicing.

"I came down the next morning after a sleepless night, and with a wild
endeavour to scheme some way of getting the money to pay my creditor. To
my absolute amazement I found a polite note from the lieutenant coldly
thanking me for the notes I had sent him by messenger, and handing me a
formal receipt for £800. At first I regarded it as a hoax. But, with all
his queer ways, Von Gulden was a gentleman. Somebody had paid the debt
for me. And somebody had, though I have never found out to this day."

"All the same, you have your suspicions?" Steel suggested.

"I have a very strong suspicion, but I have never been able to verify it.
All the same, you can imagine what an enormous weight it was off my mind,
and how comparatively cheerful I was as I crossed over to the hotel of
Lord Littimer after breakfast. I found him literally beside himself with
passion. Some thief had got into his room in the night and stolen his
Rembrandt. The frame was intact, but the engraving had been rolled up and
taken away."

"Very like the story of the stolen Gainsborough."

"No doubt the one theft inspired the other. I was sent off on foot to
look for Van Sneck, only to find that he had suddenly left the city. He
had got into trouble with the police, and had fled to avoid being sent to
gaol. And from that day to this nothing has been seen of that picture."

"But I read to-day that it is still in Littimer Castle," said David.

"Another one," Bell observed. "Oblige me by opening yonder parcel. There
you see is the print that I purchased to-day for £5. This, _this_, my
friend, is the print that was stolen from Littimer's lodgings in
Amsterdam. If you look closely at it you will see four dull red spots in
the left-hand corner. They are supposed to be blood-spots from a cut
finger of the artist. I am prepared to swear that this is the very print,
frame and all, that was purchased in Amsterdam from that shady scoundrel
Van Sneck."

"But Littimer is credited with having one in his collection,"
David urged.

"He has one in his collection," Bell said, coolly, "And, moreover, he is
firmly under the impression that he is at present happy in the possession
of his own lost treasure. And up to this very day I was under exactly the
same delusion. Now I know that there must have been two copies of the
plate, and that this knowledge was used to ruin me."

"But," Steel murmured, "I don't exactly see--"

"I am just coming to that. We hunted high and low for the picture, but
nowhere could it be found. The affair created a profound impression in
Amsterdam. A day or two later Von Gulden went back to his duty on the
Belgian frontier and business called me home. I packed my solitary
portmanteau and departed. When I arrived at the frontier I opened my
luggage for the Custom officer and the whole contents were turned out
without ceremony. On the bottom was a roll of paper on a stick that I
quite failed to recognise. An inquisitive Customs House officer opened it
and immediately called the lieutenant in charge. Strange to say, he
proved to be Von Gulden. He came up to me, very gravely, with the paper
in his hand.

"'May I inquire how this came amongst your luggage?' he asked.

"I could say nothing; I was dumb. For there lay the Rembrandt. The red
spots had been smudged out of the corner, but there, the picture was.

"Well, I lost my head then. I accused Von Gulden of all kinds of
disgraceful things. And he behaved like a gentleman--he made me ashamed
of myself. But he kept the picture and returned it to Littimer, and I
was ruined. Lord Littimer declined to prosecute, but he would not see me
and he would hear of no explanation. Indeed, I had none to offer. Enid
refused to see me also or reply to my letters. The story of my big
gambling debt, and its liquidation, got about. Steel, I was ruined. Some
enemy had done this thing, and from that day to this I have been a
marked man."

"But how on earth was it done?" Steel cried.

"For the present I can only make surmises," Bell replied. "Van Sneck was
a slippery dog. Of course, he had found two of those plates. He kept the
one back so as to sell the other at a fancy price. My enemy discovered
this, and Van Sneck's sudden flight was his opportunity. He could afford
to get rid of me at an apparently dear rate. He stole Littimer's
engraving--in fact, he must have done so, or I should not have it at this
moment. Then he smudged out some imaginary spots on the other and hid it
in my luggage, knowing that it would be found. Also he knew that it would
be returned to Littimer, and that the stolen plate could be laid aside
and produced at some remote date as an original find. The find has been
mine, and it will go hard if I can't get to the bottom of the mystery
now. It is strange that your mysterious trouble and mine should be bound
up so closely together, but in the end it will simplify matters, for the
very reason that we are both on the hunt for the same man."

"Which man we have got to find, Bell."

"Granted. We will bait for him as one does for a wily old trout. The fly
shall be the Rembrandt, and you see he will rise to it in time. But
beyond this I have made one or two important discoveries to-day. We are
going to the house of the strange lady who owns 218 and 219, Brunswick
Square, and I shall be greatly mistaken if she does not prove to be an
old acquaintance of mine. There will be danger."

"You propose to go to-night?"

"I propose to go at once," Bell said. "Dark hours are always best for
dark business. Now, which is the nearest way to Longdean Grange?"

"So the House of the Silent Sorrow, as they call it, is to be our
destination! I must confess that the place has ever held a strange
fascination for me. We will go over the golf links and behind Ovingdean
village. It is a rare spot for a tragedy."

Bell rose and lighted a fresh cigar.

"Come along," he said. "Poke that Rembrandt behind your books with its
face to the wall. I would not lose that for anything now. No, on second
thoughts I find I shall have to take it with me."

David closed the door carefully behind him, and the two stepped out into
the night.




CHAPTER XIII

"GOOD DOG!"


Two dancing eyes of flame were streaming up the lane towards the girls, a
long shadow slanted across the white pathway, the steady flick of hoofs
drew nearer. Then the hoofs ceased their smiting of the dust and a man's
voice spoke.

"Better turn and wait for us by the farm, driver," the voice said. "Bell,
can you manage, man?"

"Who was that?" Enid whispered. "A stranger?"

"Not precisely," Ruth replied. "That is Mr. David Steel. Oh, I am sure
we can trust him. Don't annoy him. Think of the trouble he is in for
our sakes."

"I do," Enid said, drily. "I am also thinking of Reginald. If our dear
Reginald escapes from the fostering care of the dogs we shall be ruined.
That man's hearing is wonderful. He will come creeping down here on those
large flat feet of his, and that cunning brain will take in everything
like a flash. Good dog!"

A hound in the distance growled, and then another howled mournfully. It
was the plaint of the beast who has found his quarry, impatient for the
gaoler to arrive. So long as that continued Henson was safe. Any attempt
to escape, and he would be torn to pieces. Just at the present moment
Enid almost hoped that the attempt would be made. It certainly was all
right for the present, but then Williams might happen along on his way to
the stables at any moment.

The two men were coming nearer. They both paused as the dogs gave tongue.
Through the thick belt of trees lights gleamed from one or two windows of
the house. Steel pulled up and shuddered slightly in spite of himself.

"Crimson blinds," he said. "Crimson blinds all through this business.
They are beginning to get on my nerves. What about those dogs, Bell?"

"Dogs or no dogs, I am not going back now," Bell muttered. "It's
perfectly useless to come here in the daytime; therefore we must fall
back upon a little amateur burglary. There's a girl yonder who might have
assisted me at one time, but--"

Enid slipped into the road. The night was passably light and her
beautiful features were fairly clear to the startled men in the road.

"The girl is here," she said. "What do you want?"

Bell and his companion cried out simultaneously: Bell because he was so
suddenly face to face with one who was very dear to him, David because it
seemed to him that he recognised the voice from the darkness, the voice
of his great adventure. And there was another surprise as he saw Ruth
Gates side by side with the owner of that wonderful voice.

"Enid!" Bell cried, hoarsely. "I did not expect--"

"To confront me like this," the girl said, coldly. "That I quite
understand. What I don't understand is why you intrude your hated
presence here."

Bell shook his handsome head mournfully. He looked strangely downcast and
dejected, and none the less, perhaps, because a fall in crossing the down
had severely wrenched his ankle. But for a belated cab on the Rottingdean
road he would not have been here now.

"As hard and cruel as ever," he said. "Not one word to me, not one word
in my defence. And all the time I am the victim of a vile conspiracy--"

"Conspiracy! Do you call vulgar theft a conspiracy?"

"It was nothing else," David put in, eagerly. "A most extraordinary
conspiracy. The kind of thing that you would not have deemed possible out
of a book."

"And who might this gentleman be?" Enid asked, haughtily.

"A thousand pardons for my want of ceremony," David said. "If I had not
been under the impression that we had met before I should never have
presumed--"

"Oh, a truce to this," Bell cried. "We are wasting time. The hour is not
far distant, Enid, when you will ask my pardon. Meanwhile I am going up
to the house, and you are going to take me there. Come what way, I don't
sleep to-night until I have speech with your aunt."

David had drawn a little aside. By a kind of instinct Ruth Gates
followed him. A shaft of grey light glinted upon her cycle in the grass
by the roadside. Enid and Bell were talking in vehement whispers--they
seemed to be absolutely unconscious of anybody else but themselves.
David could see the anger and scorn on the pale, high-bred face; he
could see Bell gradually expanding as he brought all his strength and
firm power of will to bear.

"What will be the upshot of it?" Ruth asked, timidly.

"Bell will conquer," David replied. "He always does, you know."

"I am afraid you don't take my meaning, Mr. Steel."

David looked down into the sweet, troubled face of his companion, and
thence away to the vivid crimson patches beyond the dark belt of foliage.
Ever and anon the intense stillness of the night was broken by the
long-drawn howl of one of the hounds. David remembered it for years
afterwards; it formed the most realistic chapter of one of his most
popular novels.

"Heaven only knows," he said. "I have been dragged into this business,
but what it means I know no more than a child. I am mixed up in it,
and Bell is mixed up in it, and so are you. Why we shall perhaps know
some day."

"You are not angry with me?"

"Why, no. Only you might have had a little more confidence in me."

"Mr. Steel, we dared not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even
now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over
yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have
come forward to our assistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had
dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we should morally have
murdered you."

"Am I not within the charmed circle now?" David smiled.

"Not of our free will," Ruth said, eagerly. "You came into the tangle
with Hatherly Bell. Thank Heaven you have an ally like that. And yet I am
filled with shame--"

"My dear young lady, what have you to be ashamed of?"

Ruth covered her face with her hands for a moment and David saw a tear or
two trickle through the slim fingers. He took the hands in his, gently,
tenderly, and glanced into the fine, grey eyes. Never had he been moved
to a woman like this before.

"But what will you think of me?" Ruth whispered. "You have been so good
and kind and I am so foolish. What can you think of a girl who is all
this way from home at midnight? It is so--so unmaidenly."

"It might be in some girls, but not in you," David said, boldly. "One has
only to look in your face and see that only the good and the pure dwell
there. But you were not afraid?"

"Horribly afraid. The very shadows startled me. But when I discovered
your errand to-night I was bound to come. My loyalty to Enid demanded it,
and I had not one single person in the world whom I could trust."

"If you had only come to me, Miss Ruth--"

"I know, I know now. Oh, it is a blessed thing for a lonely girl to have
one good man that she can rely upon. And you have been so very good, and
we have treated you very, very badly."

But David would not hear anything of the kind. The whole adventure was
strange to a degree, but it seemed to matter nothing so long as he had
Ruth for company. Still, the girl must be got home. She could not be
allowed to remain here, nor must she be permitted to return to Brighton
alone. Bell strode up at the same moment.

"Miss Henson has been so good as to listen to my arguments," he said. "I
am going into the house. Don't worry about me, but send Miss Gates home
in the cab. I shall manage somehow."

David turned eagerly to Ruth.

"That will be best," he said. "We can put your machine on the cab, and
I'll accompany you part of the way home. Our cabman will think that you
came from the house. I shan't be long, Bell."

Ruth assented gratefully. As David put her in the cab Bell whispered to
him to return as soon as possible, but the girl heard nothing of this.

"How kind--how kind you are," she murmured.

"Perhaps some day you will be kind to me," David said, and Ruth blushed
in the darkness.




CHAPTER XIV

BEHIND THE BLIND


There was a long pause till the sound of the horse's hoofs died away.
Bell was waiting for his companion to speak. Her head was partly turned
from him, so that he could only watch the dainty beauty of her profile.
She stood there cold and still, but he could see that she was
profoundly agitated.

"I never thought to see the day when I should trust you again," she said;
"I never expected to trust any man again."

"You will trust me, darling," Bell said, passionately. "If you still care
for me as I care for you. _Do_ you?"

The question came keen as steel. Enid shivered and hesitated. Bell laid a
light hand on her arm.

"Speak," he said. "I am going to clear myself, I am going to take back
my good name. But if you no longer care for me the rest matters
nothing. Speak."

"I am not one of those who change, God pity me," Enid murmured.

Bell drew a long, deep breath. He wanted no assurance beyond that.

"Then lead the way," he said. "I have come at the right time; I have been
looking for you everywhere, and I find you in the hour of your deepest
sorrow. When I knew your aunt last she was a cheerful, happy woman. From
what I hear now she is suffering, you are all suffering, under some
blighting grief."

"Oh, if you only knew what that sorrow was, Hatherly."

"Hatherly! How good the old name sounds from your lips. Nobody has ever
called me that since--since we parted. And to think that I should have
been searching for you all these years, when Miss Ruth Gates could have
given me the clue at any time. And why have you been playing such strange
tricks upon my friend David Steel? Why have you---What is that?"

Somebody was moving somewhere in the grounds, and a voice shouted for
help. Enid started forward.

"It is Williams coming from the stables," she said. "I have so arranged
it that the dogs are holding up my dear cousin, Reginald Henson, who is
calling upon Williams to release him. If Reginald gets back to the house
now we are ruined. Follow me as well as you can."

Enid disappeared down a narrow, tangled path, leaving Bell to limp along
painfully in her track. A little way off Henson was yelling lustily for
assistance. Williams, who had evidently taken in the situation, was
coming up leisurely, chuckling at the discomfiture of the enemy. The
hounds were whining and baying. From the house came the notes of a love
song passionately declaimed. A couple of the great dogs came snarling up
to Bell and laid their grimy muzzles on his thighs. A cold sensation
crept up and down his spine as he came to a standstill.

"The brutes!" he muttered. "Margaret Henson must be mad indeed to have
these creatures about the place. Ah! would you? Very well, I'll play the
game fairly, and not move. If I call out I shall spoil the game. If I
remain quiet I shall have a pleasant night of it. Let us hope for the
best and that Enid will understand the situation."

Meanwhile Enid had come up with Williams. She laid her hand imperiously
upon his lips.

"Not a word," she whispered. "Mr. Henson is held up by the dogs. He must
remain where he is till I give you the signal to release him. I know you
answered his call, but you are to go no farther."

Williams assented willingly enough. Everything that tended to the
discomfort of Reginald Henson filled him with a peculiar and
deep-seated pleasure.

"Very well, miss," he said, demurely. "And don't you hurry, miss. This is
a kind of job that calls for plenty of patience. And I'm really shocking
deaf tonight."

Williams retreated leisurely in the direction of the stables, but his
malady was not so distressing that he failed to hear a groan and a
snarling curse from Henson. Enid fled back along the track, where she
found Bell standing patiently with a dog's muzzle close to either knee.
His face was white and shining, otherwise he showed no signs of fear.
Enid laid a hand on the head of either dog, and they rolled like great
cats at her feet in the bushes.

"Now come swiftly," she whispered. "There is no time to be lost."

They were in the house at last, crossing the dusty floor, with the motes
dancing in the lamp-light, deadening their footsteps and muffling the
intense silence. Above the stillness rose the song from the drawing-room;
from without came the restless murmur of the dogs. Enid entered the
drawing-room, and Bell limped in behind her. The music immediately
ceased. As Enid glanced at her aunt she saw that the far-away look had
died from her eyes, that the sparkle and brightness of reason were there.
She had come out of the mist and the shadows for a time at any rate.

"Dr. Hatherly Bell to see you, aunt," Enid said, in a low tone.

Margaret Henson shot up from the piano like a statue. There was no
welcome on her face, no surprise there, nothing but deep, unutterable
contempt and loathing.

"I have been asleep," she said. She passed her hand dreamily over her
face. "I have been in a dream for seven long years. Enid brought me back
to the music again to-night, and it touched my heart, and now I am awake
again. Do you recollect the 'Slumber Song,' Hatherly Bell? The last time
I sang it you were present. It was a happy night; the very last happy
night in the world to me."

"I recollect it perfectly well, Lady Littimer," Bell said.

"Lady Littimer! How strange it is to hear that name again. Seven years
since then. Here I am called Margaret Henson, and nobody knows. And
now _you_ have found out. Do you come here to blackmail and rob me
like the rest?"

"I come here entirely on your behalf and my own, my lady."

"That is what they all say--and then they rob me. You stole the
Rembrandt."

The last words came like a shot from a catapult. Enid's face grew colder.
Bell drew a long tube of discoloured paper carefully tied round a stick
from his pocket.

"I am going to disprove that once and for all," he said. "The Rembrandt
is at present in Lord Littimer's collection. There is an account of it in
to-day's _Telegraph_. It is perfectly familiar to both of you. And, that
being the case, what do you think of this?"

He unrolled the paper before Enid's astonished eyes. Margaret Henson
glanced at it listlessly; she was fast sinking into the old, strange
oblivion again. But Enid was all rapt attention.

"I would have sworn to that as Lord Littimer's own," she gasped.

"It is his own," Bell replied. "Stolen from him and a copy placed by some
arch-enemy in my portmanteau, it was certain to be found on the frontier.
Don't you see that there were two Rembrandts? When the one from my
portmanteau was restored to Littimer his own was kept by the thief.
Subsequently it would be exposed as a new find, with some story as to its
discovery, only, unfortunately for the scoundrel, it came into my
possession."

"And where did you find it?" Enid asked. "I found it," Bell said, slowly,
"in a house called 218, Brunswick Square, Brighton."

A strange cry came from Enid's lips. She stood swaying before her lover,
white as the paper upon which her eyes were eagerly fixed. Margaret
Henson was pacing up and down the room, her lips muttering, and raising a
cloud of pallid dust behind her.

"I--I am sorry," Enid said, falteringly. "And all these years I have
deemed you guilty. But then the proof was so plain; I could not deny the
evidence of my own senses. And Von Gulden came to me saying how deeply
distressed he was, and that he would have prevented the catastrophe if he
could. Well?"

A servant stood waiting in the doorway with wondering eyes at the sight
of a stranger.

"I'm sorry, miss," she said, "but Miss Christiana is worse; indeed, she
quite frightens me. I've taken the liberty of telephoning to Dr. Walker."

The words seemed to bring consciousness to Margaret Henson.

"Christiana worse," she said. "Another of them going; it will be a happy
release from a house of sorrow like this. I will come up, Martin."

She swept out of the room after the servant. Enid appeared hardly to have
heard. Bell looked at her inquiringly and with some little displeasure.

"I fancy I have heard you speak of your sister Christiana," he said.
"Is she ill?"

"She is at the point of death, I understand; you think that I am callous.
Oh, if you only knew! But the light will come to us all in time, God
willing. Look at this place, look at the blight of it, and wonder how we
endure it. Hatherly, I have made a discovery."

"We seem to be living in an atmosphere of discoveries. What is it?"

"I will answer your question by asking another. You have been made the
victim of a vile conspiracy. For seven years your career has been
blighted. And I have lost seven years of my life, too. Have you any idea
who your enemy is?"

"Not the faintest, but, believe me, I shall find out in time. And
then---"

A purple blackness like the lurid light of a storm flashed into his eyes,
the lines of his mouth grew rigid. Enid laid a hand tenderly on his arm.

"Your enemy is the common enemy of us all," she said. "We have wasted the
years, but we are young yet. Your enemy is Reginald Henson."

"Enid, you speak with conviction. Are you sure of this?"

"Certain. When I have time I will tell you everything. But not now. And
that man must never know that you have been near the house to-night, not
so much for your sake as for the sake of your friend David Steel. Now I
can see the Providence behind it all. Hatherly, tell me that you forgive
me before the others come back."

"My darling, I cannot see how you could have acted otherwise."

Enid turned towards him with a great glad light in her eyes. She said
nothing, for the simple reason that there was nothing to say. Hatherly
Bell caught her in his strong arms, and she swayed to reach his lips. In
that delicious moment the world was all forgot.

But not for long. There was a sudden rush and a tumble of feet on the
stairs, there was a strange voice speaking hurriedly, then the
drawing-room door opened and Margaret Henson came in. She was looking
wild and excited and talked incoherently. An obviously professional man
followed her.

"My dear madam," he was saying, "I have done all I can. In the last few
days I have not been able to disguise from myself that there was small
hope for the patient. The exhaustion, the shock to the system, the
congestion, all point to an early collapse."

"Is my sister so much worse, Dr. Walker?" Enid asked, quietly.

"She could not be any worse and be alive," the doctor said. "Unless I am
greatly mistaken the gentleman behind you is Mr. Hatherly Bell. I presume
he has been called in to meet me? If so, I am sincerely glad, because I
shall be pleased to have a second opinion. A bad case of"--here followed
a long technical name--"one of the worst cases I have ever seen."

"You can command me, Enid," Bell said. "If I can."

"No, no," Enid cried. "What am I saying? Please to go upstairs
with Martin."

Bell departed, wonderingly. Enid flew to the door and out into the night.
She could hear Henson cursing and shouting, could hear the snarling
clamour of the dogs. At the foot of the drive she paused and called Steel
softly by name. To her intense relief he came from the shadow.

"I am here," he cried. "Do you want me?"

"Yes, yes," Enid panted. "Never more were your services needed. My sister
is dying; my sister must--die. And Hatherly Bell is with her, and--you
understand?"

"Yes," said David. A vivid flash of understanding had come to him. "Bell
shall do as I tell him. Come along."

"Hold him up, dear doggies," Enid murmured. "Hold him up and I'll love
both of you for ever."




CHAPTER XV

A MEDICAL OPINION


David Steel followed his guide with the feelings of the man who has
given himself over to circumstances. There was a savour of nightmare
about the whole thing that appealed distinctly to his imagination. The
darkness, the strange situation, the vivid streaks of the crimson
blinds--the crimson blind that seemed an integral part of the
mystery--all served to stimulate him. The tragic note was deepened by
the whine and howling of the dogs.

"There is a man over there," David whispered.

"A man who is going to stay there," Enid said, with grim satisfaction.
"It is virtually necessary that Mr. Reginald Henson should not be
disturbed. The dogs have a foolish weakness for his society. So long as
he shows no signs of boredom he is safe."

David smiled with a vague grasp of the situation. Apparently the cue was
to be surprised at nothing that he saw about the House of the Silent
Sorrow. The name of Reginald Henson was more or less familiar to him as
that of a man who stood high in public estimation. But the bitter
contempt in his companion's voice suggested that there was another side
to the man's character.

"I hope you are not asking me to do anything wrong," David murmured.

"I am absolutely certain of it," the girl said. "It is a case of the end
justifying the means; and if ever the end justified the means, it does in
this case. Besides--"

Enid Henson hesitated. David's quick perception prompted him.

"Besides, it is my suggestion," he said. "When I had the pleasure of
seeing you before--"

"Pardon me, you have never had the pleasure of seeing me before."

"Ah, you would make an excellent Parliamentary fencer. I bow to your
correction and admit that I have never _seen_ you before. But your voice
reminds me of a voice I heard very recently under remarkable
circumstances. It was my good fortune to help a lady in distress a little
time back. If she had told me more I might have aided her still further.
As it is, her reticence has landed me into serious trouble."

Enid grasped the speaker's arm convulsively.

"I am deeply sorry to hear it," she whispered. "Perhaps the lady in
question was reticent for your sake. Perhaps she had confided more
thoroughly in good men before. And suppose those good men had
disappeared?"

"In other words, that they had been murdered. Who by?"

There was a snarl from one of the hounds hard by, and a deep, angry curse
from Henson. Enid pointed solemnly in his direction. No words of hers
would have been so thrilling and eloquent. David strode along without
further questions on that head.

"But there is one thing that you must tell me," he said, as they stood
together in the porch. "Is the first part of my advice going to be
carried out?"

"Yes. That is why you are here now. Stay here one moment whilst I get you
pencil and paper... There! Now will you please write what I suggest? Dr.
Bell is with my sister. At least, I suppose he is with her, as Dr. Walker
desired to have his opinion. My sister is dying--dying, you understand?"

Enid's voice had sunk to a passionate whisper. The hand that she laid on
David's shoulder was trembling strangely. At that moment he would've done
anything for her. A shaft of light filtered from the hall into the porch,
and lit up the paper that the girl thrust upon Steel.

"Now write," she commanded. "Ask no questions, but write what I ask, and
trust me implicitly."

David nodded. After all, he reflected, he could not possibly get himself
into a worse mess than he was in already. And he felt that he could trust
the girl by his side. Her beauty, her earnestness, and her obvious
sincerity touched him.

"Write," Enid whispered. "Say, 'See nothing and notice nothing, I implore
you. Only agree with everything that Dr. Walker says, and leave the room
as quickly as possible!' Now sign your name. We can go into the
drawing-room and wait till Dr. Bell comes down. You are merely a friend
of his. I will see that he has this paper at once."

Enid led the way into the drawing-room. She gave no reasons for the
weird strangeness of the place, it was no time for explanations. As for
Steel, he gazed around him in fascinated astonishment. A novelist ever
on the look-out for new scenes and backgrounds, the aspect of the room
fascinated him. He saw the dust rising in clouds, he saw the wilted
flowers, he noted the overturned table, obviously untouched and
neglected for years, and he wondered. Then he heard the babel of
discordant voices overhead. What a sad house it was, and how dominant
was the note of tragedy.

Meanwhile, with no suspicion of the path he was treading, Bell had gone
upstairs. He came at length to the door of the room where the sick girl
lay. There was a subdued light inside and the faint suggestion of illness
that clings to the chamber of the sufferer. Bell caught a glimpse of a
white figure lying motionless in bed. It was years now since he had acted
thus in a professional capacity, but the old quietness and caution came
back by instinct. As he would have entered Margaret Henson came out and
closed the door.

"You are not going in there," she said. "No, no. Everything of mine
you touch you blight and wither. If the girl is to die, let her die
in peace."

She would have raised her voice high, but a lightning glance from Bell
quieted her. It was not exactly madness that he had to deal with, and he
knew it. The woman required firm, quiet treatment. Dr. Walker stood
alongside, anxious and nervous. The man with the quiet practice of the
well-to-do doctor was not used to scenes of this kind.

"You have something to conceal," Bell said, sternly. "Open the door."

"Really, my dear sir," Walker said, fussily. "Really, I fancy that under
the circumstances--"

"You don't understand this kind of case," Bell interrupted. "I do."

Walker dropped aside with a muttered apology. Bell approached the figure
in the doorway and whispered a few words rapidly in her ear. The effect
was electrical. The figure seemed to wilt and shrivel up, all the power
and resistance had gone. She stepped aside, moaning and wringing her
hands. She babbled of strange things; the old, far-away look came into
her eyes again.

Without a word of comment or sign of triumph Bell entered the sick room.
Then he raised his head and sniffed the heavy atmosphere as an eager
hound might have done. A quick, sharp question rose to his lips, only to
be instantly suppressed as he noted the vacant glance of his colleague.

The white figure on the bed lay perfectly motionless. It was the figure
of a young and exceedingly beautiful girl, a beauty heightened and
accentuated by the dead-white pallor of her features. Still the face
looked resolute and the exquisitely chiselled lips were firm.

"Albumen," Bell muttered. "What fiend's game is this? I wonder if that
scoundrel--but, no. In that case there would be no object in concealing
my presence here. I wonder--"

He paused and touched the pure white brow with his fingers. At the
same moment Enid came into the room. She panted like one who has run
fast and far.

"Well," she whispered, "is she better, better or--Hatherly, read this."

The last words were so low that Bell hardly heard them. He shot a swift
glance at his colleague before he opened the paper. One look and he had
mastered the contents. Then the swift glance was directed from Walker to
the girl standing there looking at Bell with a world of passionate
entreaty and longing in her eyes.

"It is _your_ sister who lies there," Bell whispered, meaningly, "and
yet you--"

He paused, and Enid nodded. There was evidently a great struggle going on
in Bell's mind. He was grappling with something that he only partially
understood, but he did know perfectly well that he was being asked to do
something absolutely wrong and that he was going to yield for the sake of
the girl he loved.

He rose abruptly from the bedside and crossed over to Walker.

"You are perfectly correct," he said. "At this rate--at this rate the
patient cannot possibly last till the morning. It is quite hopeless."

Walker smiled feebly.

"It is a melancholy satisfaction to have my opinion confirmed," he said.
"Miss Henson, if you will get Williams to see me as far as the
lodge-gates ... it is so late that--er--"

Williams came at length, and the little doctor departed. Enid fairly
cowered before the blazing, searching look that Bell turned upon her. She
fell to plucking the bedclothes nervously.

"What does it mean?" he asked, hoarsely. "What fiend's plaything are you
meddling with? Don't you know that if that girl dies it will be murder?
It was only for your sake that I didn't speak my mind before the fool who
has just gone. He has seen murder done under his eyes for days, and he is
ready to give a certificate of the cause of death. And the strange thing
is that in the ordinary way he would be quite justified in doing so."

"Chris is not going to die; at least, not in that way," Enid
whispered, hoarsely.

"Then leave her alone. No more drugs; no medicine even. Give Nature a
chance. Thank Heaven, the girl has a perfect constitution."

"Chris is not going to die," Enid repeated, doggedly, "but the
certificate will be given, all the same. Oh, Hatherly, you must trust
me--trust me as you have never done before. Look at me, study me. Did you
ever know me to do a mean or dishonourable thing?"

They were down in the drawing-room again; David waiting, with a strange
sense of embarrassment under Margaret Henson's distant eyes; indeed, it
was probable that she had never noticed him at all. All the same she
turned eagerly to Bell.

"Tell me the worst," she cried. "Tell me all there is to know."

"Your niece's sufferings are over," Bell said, gravely; "I have no more
to tell you."

A profound silence followed, broken presently by angry voices outside.
Then Williams looked in at the door and beckoned Enid to him. His face
was wreathed in an uneasy grin.

"Mr. Henson has got away," he said. "Blest if I can say how. And they
dogs have rolled him about, and tore his clothes, and made such a picture
of him as you never saw. And a sweet temper he's in!"

"Where is he now?" Enid asked. "There are people here he must not see."

"Well, he came back in through the study window, swearing dreadful for so
respectable a gentleman. And he went right up to his room, after ordering
whisky and soda-water."

Enid flew back to the drawing-room. Not a moment was to be lost. At any
hazard Reginald Henson must be kept in ignorance of the presence of
strangers. A minute later, and the darkness of the night had swallowed
them up. Williams fastened the lodge-gates behind them, and they turned
their faces in the direction of Rottingdean Road.

"A strange night's work," David said, presently.

"Aye, but pregnant with result," Bell answered. There was a stern,
exulting ring in his voice. "There is much to do and much danger to be
faced, but we are on the right track at last. But why did you send me
that note just now?"

David smiled as he lighted a cigarette.

"It is part of the scheme," he said. "Part of my scheme, you understand.
But, principally, I sent you the note because Miss Enid asked me to."




CHAPTER XVI

MARGARET SEES A GHOST


With a sigh of unutterable relief Enid heard Williams returning. Reginald
Henson had not come down yet, and the rest of the servants had retired
some time. Williams came up with a request as to whether he could do
anything more before he went to bed.

"Just one thing," said Enid. "The good dogs have done their work well
to-night, but they have not quite finished. Find Rollo for me, and bring
him here quick. Then you can shut up the house, and I will see that Mr.
Henson is made comfortable after his fright."

The big dog came presently and followed Enid timidly upstairs. Apparently
the great black-muzzled brute had been there before, as evidently he knew
he was doing wrong. He crawled along the corridor till he came to the
room where the sick girl lay, and here he followed Enid. The lamp was
turned down low as Enid glanced at the bed. Then she smiled faintly, yet
hopefully.

There was nobody in the room. The patient's bed was empty!

"It works well," Enid murmured. "May it go on as it has been started.
Lie down, Rollo; lie there, good dog. And if anybody comes in tear him
to pieces."

The great brute crouched down obediently, thumping his tail on the floor
as an indication that he understood. As if a load had been taken from her
mind Enid crept down the stairs. She had hardly reached the hall before
Henson followed her. His big face was white with passion; he was
trembling from head to foot from fright and pain. There was a red rash on
his forehead that by no means tended to improve his appearance.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, hoarsely.

Enid looked at him coolly. She could afford to do so now. All the danger
was past, and she felt certain that the events of the evening were
unknown to him.

"I might ask you the same question," she said. "You look white and
shaken; you might have been thrown violently into a heap of stones. But
please don't make a noise. It is not fitting now. Chris--"

Enid hesitated; the prevarication did not come so easily as she
had expected.

"Chris has gone," she said. "She passed away an hour ago."

Henson muttered something that sounded like consolation. He could be
polite and suave enough on occasions, but not to-night. Even
philanthropists are selfish at times. Moreover, his nerves were badly
shaken and he wanted a stimulant badly.

"I am going to bed," Enid said, wearily. "Goodnight."

She went noiselessly upstairs, and Henson passed into the library. He was
puzzled over this sudden end of Christiana Henson. He was half inclined
to believe that she was not dead at all; he belonged to the class of men
who believe nothing without proof. Well, he could easily ascertain that
for himself. There would be quite time enough in the morning.

For a long time Henson sat there thinking and smoking, as was his usual
custom. Like other great men, he had his worries and troubles, and that
they were mainly of his own making did not render them any lighter. So
long as Margaret Henson was under the pressure of his thumb, money was no
great object. But there were other situations where money was utterly
powerless.

Henson was about to give it up as a bad job, for tonight at any rate. He
wondered bitterly what his admirers would say if they knew everything. He
wondered--what was that?

Somebody creeping about the house, somebody talking in soft, though
distinct, whispers. His quick ears detected that sound instantly. He
slipped into the hall; Margaret Henson was there, with the remains of
what had once been a magnificent opera-cloak over her shoulders.

"How you startled me!" Henson said, irritably. "Why don't you go to bed?"

Enid, looking over the balustrade from the landing, wondered so also, but
she kept herself prudently hidden. The first words that she heard drove
all the blood from her heart.

"I cannot," the feeble, moaning voice said. "The house is full of ghosts;
they haunt and follow me everywhere. And Chris is dead, and I have seen
her spirit."

"So I'm told," Henson said, with brutal callousness. "What was the
ghost like?"

"Like Chris. All pale and white, with a frightened look on her face. And
she was all dressed in white, too, with a cloak about her shoulders. And
just when I was going to speak to her she turned and disappeared into
Enid's bedroom. And there are other ghosts--"

"One at a time, please," Henson said, grimly. "So Christiana's ghost
passed into her sister's bedroom. You come and sit quietly in the library
whilst I investigate matters."

Margaret Henson complied in her dull, mechanical way, and Enid flew like
a flash of light to her room. Another girl was there--a girl exceedingly
like her, but looking wonderfully pale and drawn.

"That fiend suspects," Enid said. "How unfortunate it was that you
should meet aunt like that. Chris, you must go back again. Fly to your
own room and compose yourself. Only let him see you lying white and still
there, and he must be satisfied."

Chris rose with a shudder.

"And if the wretch offers to touch me," she moaned, "If he does--"

"He will not. He dare not. Heaven help him if he tries any experiment of
that kind. If he does, Rollo will kill him to a certainty."

"Ah, I had forgotten the faithful dog. Those dogs are more useful to us
than a score of men. I will step by the back way and through my
dressing-room. Oh, Enid, how glad I shall be to find myself outside the
walls of this dreadful house!"

She flew along the corridor and gained her room in safety. It was an
instant's work to throw off her cloak and compose herself rigidly under
the single white sheet. But though she lay still her heart was beating
to suffocation as she heard the creak and thud of a heavy step coming up
the stairs. Then the door was opened in a stealthy way and Henson came
in. He could see the outline of the white figure, and a sigh of
satisfaction escaped him. A less suspicious man would have retired at
once; a man less engaged upon his task would have seen two great amber
eyes close to the floor.

"An old woman's fancy," he muttered. "Still, as I am here, I'll make
sure that--"

He stretched out his hand to touch the marble forehead, there was a snarl
and a gurgle, and Henson came to the ground with a hideous crash that
carried him staggering beyond the door into the corridor. Rollo had the
intruder by the throat; a thousand crimson and blue stars danced before
the wretched man's eyes; he grappled with his foe with one last
despairing effort, and then there came over him a vague, warm
unconsciousness. When he came to himself he was lying on his bed, with
Williams and Enid bending over him.

"How did it happen?" Enid asked, with simulated anxiety.

"I--I was walking along the corridor," Henson gasped, "going--going to
bed, you see; and one of those diabolical dogs must have got into the
house. Before I knew what I was doing the creature flew at my throat and
dragged me to the floor. Telephone for Walker at once. I am dying,
Williams."

He fell back once more utterly lost to his surroundings. There was a
great, gaping, raw wound at the side of the throat that caused Enid
to shudder.

"Do you think he is--dead, Williams?" she asked.

"No such luck as that," Williams said, with the air of a confirmed
pessimist. "I hope you locked that there bedroom door and put the key in
your pocket, miss. I suppose we'd better send for the doctor, unless you
and me puts him out of his misery. There's one comfort, however, Mr.
Henson will be in bed for the next fortnight, at any rate, so he'll be
powerless to do any prying about the house. The funeral will be over long
before he's about again."

       *       *       *       *       *

The first grey streaks of dawn were in the air as Enid stood outside the
lodge-gates. She was not alone, for a neat figure in grey, marvellously
like her, was by her side. The figure in grey was dressed for travelling
and she carried a bag in her hand.

"Good-bye, dear, and good luck to you," she said. "It is dangerous
to delay."

"You have absolutely everything that you require?" Enid asked.

"Everything. By the time you are at breakfast I shall be in London. And
once I am there the search for the secret will begin in earnest."

"You are sure that Reginald Henson suspected nothing?"

"I am perfectly certain that he was satisfied; indeed, I heard him say
so. Still, if it had not been for the dogs! We are going to succeed,
Enid, something at my heart tells me so. See how the sun shines on
your face and in your dear eyes. Au revoir, an omen--an omen of a
glorious future."




CHAPTER XVII

THE PACE SLACKENS


Steel lay sleepily back in the cab, not quite sure whether his
cigarette was alight or not. They were well into the main road again
before Bell spoke.

"It is pretty evident that you and I are on the same track," he said.

"I am certain that I am on the right one," David replied; "but, when I
come to consider the thing calmly, it seems more by good luck than
anything else. I came out with you to-night seeking adventure, and I am
bound to admit that I found it. Also, I found the lady who interviewed me
in the darkness, which is more to the point."

"As a matter of fact, you did nothing of the kind," said Bell, with the
suggestion of a laugh.

"Oh! Case of the wrong room over again. I was ready to swear it. Whom did
I speak to? Whose voice was it that was so very much like hers?"

"The lady's sister. Enid Henson was not at 218, Brunswick Square, on
the night in question. Of that you may be certain. But it's a queer
business altogether. Rascality I can understand. I am beginning to
comprehend the plot of which I am the victim. But I don't mind
admitting that up to the present I fail to comprehend why those girls
evolved the grotesque scheme for getting assistance at your hands. The
whole thing savours of madness."

"I don't think so," David said, thoughtfully. "The girls are romantic as
well as clever. They are bound together by the common ties of a common
enmity towards a cunning and utterly unscrupulous scoundrel. By the
merest accident in the world they discovered that I am in a position to
afford them valuable advice and assistance. At the same time they don't
want me to be brought into the business, for two reasons--the first,
because the family secret is a sacred one; the second, because any
disclosures would land me in great physical danger. Therefore they put
their heads together and evolve this scheme. Call it a mad venture if you
like, but if you consider the history of your own country you can find
wilder schemes evolved and carried out by men who have had brains enough
to be trusted with the fortunes of the nation. If these girls had been
less considerate for my safety--"

"But," Bell broke in eagerly, "they failed in that respect at the very
outset. You must have been spotted instantly by the foe, who has
cunningly placed you in a dangerous position, perhaps as a warning to
mind your own business in future. And if those girls come forward to save
you--and to do so they must appear in public, mind you--they are bound to
give away the whole thing. Mark the beautiful cunning of it. My word, we
have a foe worthy of our steel to meet."

"_We_? Do you mean to say that your enemy and mine is a common one?"

"Certainly. When I found my foe I found yours."

"And who may he be, by the same token?"

"Reginald Henson. Mind you, I had no more idea of it than the dead when I
went to Longdean Grange to-night. I went there because I had begun to
suspect who occupied the place and to try and ascertain how the Rembrandt
engraving got into 218, Brunswick Square. Miss Gates must have heard us
talking over the matter, and that was why she went to Longdean Grange
to-night."

"I hope she got home safe," said David. "The cab man says he put her down
opposite the Lawns."

"I hope so. Well, I found out who the foe was. And I have a pretty good
idea why he played that trick upon me. He knew that Enid Henson and
myself were engaged; he could see what a danger to his schemes it would
be to have a man like myself in the family. Then the second Rembrandt
turned up, and there was his chance for wiping me off the slate. After
that came the terrible family scandal between Lord Littimer and his wife.
I cannot tell you anything of that, because I cannot speak with definite
authority. But you could judge of the effect of it on Lady Littimer
to-night."

"I haven't the faintest recollection of seeing Lady Littimer to-night."

"My dear fellow, the poor lady whom you met as Mrs. Henson is really Lady
Littimer. Henson is her maiden name, and those girls are her nieces.
Trouble has turned the poor woman's brain. And at the bottom of the whole
mystery is Reginald Henson, who is not only nephew on his mother's side,
but is also next heir but one to the Littimer title. At the present
moment he is blackmailing that unhappy creature, and is manoeuvring to
get the whole of her large fortune in his hands. Reginald Henson is the
man those girls want to circumvent, and for that reason they came to you.
And Henson has found it out to a certain extent and placed you in an
awkward position."

"Witness my involuntary guest and the notes and the cigar-case," David
said. "But does he know what I advised one of the girls--my princess of
the dark room--to do?"

"I don't fancy he does. You see, that advice was conveyed by word of
mouth. The girls dared not trust themselves to correspondence, otherwise
they might have approached you in a more prosaic manner. But I confess
you startled me to-night."

"What do you mean by that?"

"When you sent me that note. What you virtually asked me to do was to
countenance murder. When I went into the sick room I saw that Christiana
Henson was dying. The first idea that flashed across my mind was that
Reginald Henson was getting the girl out of the way for his own purposes.
My dear fellow, the whole atmosphere literally spoke of albumen. Walker
must have been blind not to see how he was being deceived. I was about to
give him my opinion pretty plainly when your note came up to me. And
there was Enid, with her whole soul in her large eyes, pleading for my
silence. If the girl died I was accessory after and before the fact. You
will admit that that was a pretty tight place to put a doctor in."

"That's because you didn't know the facts of the case, my dear Bell."

"Then perhaps you'll be so good as to enlighten me," Bell said, drily.

"Certainly. That was part of my scheme. In that synopsis of the story
obtained by the girls by some more or less mechanical means, the reputed
death of a patient forms the crux of the tale. The idea occurred to me
after reading a charge against a medical student some time ago in the
_Standard_. The man wanted to get himself out of the way; he wanted to
be considered as dead, in fact. By the artful use of albumen in certain
doses he produced symptoms of disease which will be quite familiar to
you. He made himself so ill that his doctor naturally concluded that he
was dying. As a matter of fact, he was dying. Had he gone on in the same
way another day he would have been dead. Instead of this he drops the
dosing and, going to his doctor in disguise, says that he _is_ dead. He
gets a certificate of his own demise, and there you are. I am not
telling you fiction, but hard fact recorded in a high-class paper. The
doctor gave the certificate without viewing the body. Well, it struck me
that we had here the making of a good story, and I vaguely outlined it
for a certain editor. In my synopsis I suggested that it was a woman who
proposed to pretend to die thus so as to lull the suspicions of a
villain to sleep, and thus possess herself of certain vital documents.
My synopsis falls into certain hands. The owner of those hands asks me
how the thing was done. I tell her. In other words, the so-called murder
that you imagined you had discovered to-night was the result of design.
Walker will give his certificate, Reginald Henson will regard Miss
Christiana as dead and buried, and she will be free to act for the
honour of the family."

"But they might have employed somebody else."

"Who would have had to be told the history of the family dishonour. So
far I fancy I have made the ground quite clear. But

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