The Sixth Sense: A Novel

by Stephen McKenna

THE SIXTH SENSE

"There was no sound at all within the room. But ... he saw a woman's face.

"He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the face rising white from the white column of the throat, the dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved lips which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and troubled, which seemed to hint a prayer for help which they disdained to make—for five seconds, perhaps, the illusion remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him ... lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so vanished."

A.E.W. Mason: "Miranda of the Balcony."

Neither by inclination nor habit am I more blasphemous or foul-mouthed than my neighbour, but I should not relish being ordered a year in Purgatory for every occasion on which I repeated "Damn you, Seraph!" in the course of the following nineteen or twenty hours.

It was nearly midnight when we left Adelphi Terrace, and I had in my own mind fixed one hour as the maximum duration of my patience or willingness to humour a demented neurotic. Thirty minutes out, thirty minutes back, and then the Seraph would go to bed, if I had to keep him covered with my revolver. En parenthèse, I wish I could break myself of the habit of carrying loaded firearms by night. In the settled, orderly Old Countries it is unnecessary; in the West it is merely foolish. I should be the richer by the contents of six chambers before I had time to draw on the quick, resourceful child of a Western State.... Nevertheless, my revolver and I are inseparable.

We started down the Strand, along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace, and through Eaton Square to the Cadogan Estate. This was what I ought to have expected, if I had had time to sort out my expectations. The Seraph stood for a few minutes looking up at the Rodens' slumbering house, and then walked slowly eastward into Sloane Street.

"Shall we go back now?" I suggested, in the voice one uses to deceive a child.

"I'm not mad, Toby," he answered, like a boy repeating a lesson. "I must find Sylvia."

He wandered into Knightsbridge, hesitated, and then set out at an uncertain three miles an hour along the border of the park towards Kensington. I realized with a sinking heart that he was heading for Chiswick.

"Better leave it till the morning, Seraph," I urged, with a hand on his shoulder. "She'll be in bed, and we mustn't disturb her."

He shook me off, and wandered on—hands in pocket and eyes to the ground. Twice I thought he would have blundered into an early market-cart, but catastrophe was averted more by the drivers' resource than any prudence on his own part. As we left Kensington and trudged on through the hideous purlieus of Hammersmith, I began to visualize our arrival at the Fräulein's house, and my stammering, incoherent apologies for my companion's behaviour.

The deferential speech was not required. On entering Chiswick High Street we should have turned to the right up Goldhawk Road, and then taken the second or third turning to the left into Teignmouth Terrace. The Seraph plodded resolutely on, looking neither to the right nor left, through Hounslow, past the walls of Sion Park and the gas-works of Brentford, into Colnbrook and open country. There was no reason why he should not follow the great road as far as the Romans had built it—and beyond. Night was lifting, and the stars paled in the blue uncertain light of early dawn.

I gripped him by the shoulders and made him look me in the face.

"We're going back now," I said.

"You can."

"You're coming with me."

"I must find Sylvia."

"If you'll come back now, I'll take you to her in the morning."

"I'm not a child, Toby, and I'm not mad."

"You're behaving as if you were both."

"I must find Sylvia," he repeated, as though that were an answer to every conceivable question.

"If you're sane," I said, "you can appreciate the insanity of walking from London to Bath in search of a girl who may be in Scotland or on the Gold Coast for all you know. She's as likely to be in the Mile End Road as on the Bath Road. Why not look there? It's nearer Adelphi Terrace, at all events."

He looked at me for a moment reproachfully, as though his last friend had failed him, then turned and plodded westward....

"God's truth!" I cried. "Where are you off to?"

"I must find Sylvia," he answered.

"But where? Where?"

"I don't know."

"Why this God-stricken road rather than another?"

"She came along here."

"How do you know?"

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.

"She did," was all he would answer.

It was near Langley that I threatened him with personal injury. He had quickened his pace and shot slightly ahead of me. I have never been of a fleshy build, and with the exception of excessive cigar-smoking, my tastes are moderate. On the other hand, I never take exercise save under compulsion, or walk a mile if I can possibly ride, drive, or fly. We had covered some twenty miles since leaving home, my feet seemed cased in divers' boots, my mouth was parched with thirst, and I was ravenously hungry.

"Are you sane?" I asked, as I caught him up.

"As sane as I ever am."

"Then you will understand my terms. We are going to leave the main road and walk straight to Langley Station. We are going to take the first train back to town, and we are...."

"You can," he interrupted.

"You will come with me. Don't tell me you have to find Sylvia, because it will be waste of breath. I have here a six-chambered revolver, loaded. Unless you come to the station with me, here and now, I shall empty one chamber into each of your legs. And if any one thinks I'm murdering you, I shall say I'm in pursuit of a dangerous lunatic. And when they see you, they'll believe me."

He looked at me for perhaps half a second, and then walked on. It was, I suppose, the answer I deserved.

It came as a surprise to me when he accepted my breakfast proposition at Slough. I put his assent down to sheer perversity, for I should have breakfasted in any case. My mind was made up. I would ask him for the last time to accompany me back to London, and if he refused I would return to Adelphi Terrace and bed, leaving him to follow the sun's path till he pitched head-foremost into the Bristol Channel....

I breakfasted unwashed, unshaven, dusty, at full length on a sofa in a private room, simmering with grievance and irritability.

"Now then," I said, as I lit a cigar, threw the Seraph another, and turned to a Great Western time-table.

"I must be getting on," he answered, giving me back my cigar.

"Just a moment," I said. "Up-trains, Sundays. Up-trains, week-days. Ten-fifteen. Horses and carriages only. Ten-thirty; that'ull do me. I'll walk with you as far as the cross-roads."

I was so angry with myself and him that we parted without a word or shake of the hand. I watched him striding westward in the direction of Salt Hill, and carried my temper with me towards the station. The first twenty yards were covered at a swinging, resolute pace, the second more slowly. I was still far from the station when an absurd, irritating sensation of shame brought me to a standstill. Mad, unreasonable as I knew him to be, the more I thought of the Seraph, the less I liked the idea of leaving him in his present state. The sight of a garage, with cars for hire, decided me. I ordered one for the day, with the option of renewing on the same terms as long as I wanted it.

"Take the money while you can get it," I warned the proprietor, with the petulance of a tired man. "With luck you'll next hear of me from the inside of a padded cell. Now!" I said to the driver, "listen very carefully. I'm about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the ground. You're to keep him in sight wherever he goes. He's mad, and I'm mad, and everybody's mad. Follow him, and address a remark to me at your peril. I've been up all night, I've walked from London to Slough, and I'm now going to sleep."

My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.... My driver left me to slumber undisturbed.

I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph, pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke, asking the driver what had come of our quarry.

"He's following, sir," he told me.

I was struck with an ingenious idea.

"At the next cross-roads," I said, "turn off to the right or left, drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we'll lead him round in a circle and draw him back to London."

We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full view, and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!" I said, as I ordered the driver to start once more in pursuit.

At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge, into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street. Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.

It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.

"Wait here," I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead of us lay Reading and Bath.

The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled on towards Reading.

"Forward!" I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and bade him wait.

Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked back to the fork of the road, gazed north-west towards Henley, and stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.

I waited for him to fall. I say "waited" advisedly, for I could have done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and leaving him to his fate. His madness ... as I watched the strained pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.

With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes, and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.

"Stop where you are!" I called to the driver as I ran down the road and turned into the bridle-path.

The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.

"This way!" he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow—picturesque, peaceful, inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of green tins of motor spirit.

"She's there—Sylvia!" he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we walked down the bridle-path. "Go in and get her. Make them give her up!"

I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not there.... I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.

"We can't," I said weakly. "It's a strange house; we don't know that she's there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander...."

He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching. Then the door opened.

"I have come for Miss Roden," I heard him say.

"Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here."

The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face. I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.

"I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden."

The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.

"You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away, or I'll call a man and have you given in charge."

The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my walnut-tree, pushed open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck of bright red froth.

"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.

She looked at me in surprise.

"That is my name."

"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your name. We have called...."

"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous finger at the Seraph.

"He is. We have called for Miss Roden."

"She is not here."

"One minute gone," said the Seraph, watch in hand.

Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I think the name was "John."

"I am armed," I warned her.

She paid no attention.

"One minute and a half," said the Seraph.

I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.

"I don't think you appreciate the strength of our position," I began. "You are no doubt aware that the office of the New Militant has been raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant."

"They haven't caught her," said Miss Draper, defiantly.

I could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity that the mention of Joyce's name brought into her eyes.

"Do you know where she is?" asked the Seraph.

"I shan't say."

"I think it probable that you do not know," I answered. "Miss Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my friend's flat."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already suspected and watched."

"Why don't they search it?"

"Because England is a corrupt country," I said, boldly inventing. "I have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant's sister—Mrs. Wylton—is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of seeing Miss Davenant arrested—in a critical condition—if it can be avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their families before midnight to-night. I may say in passing that if Miss Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me. Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say how we found Miss Roden was being kept here——"

"She is not."

I sighed resignedly.

"You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?"

"You don't know where Miss Davenant is, and I do."

It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination, pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could, waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.

"I am now going to search the house," I told Miss Draper. "This is your last chance. Tell me where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested. Which is it to be?"

She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle was over.

"Where is she?" I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my lot to fight with women.

Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in the lock.

"No tricks?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"You had better make yourself scarce."

Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.

I returned to the hall—where the Seraph was sleeping upright against the wall—opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.

I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly to her feet. Then I shut the door and stood awkwardly at the window, while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.

"You didn't expect to see me, Sylvia," I said, as I buttered the stale crusts to make them less unappetizing.

She shook her head without answering.

"Did you think no one was ever coming?"

She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.

"No."

The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.

"How did you find me?"

"The Seraph brought me here."

Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"Outside."

"I must go to him!" she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying dizzily.

I pressed her back into her chair.

"Wait till you've had some food," I said, "and then I'll bring him in."

"But I don't want any more."

"Sylvia," I said firmly, "if you're not a good girl we shan't rescue you another time."

She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and laid him on the bed in Sylvia's prison. His heart was beating, but he seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of brandy.

I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and waiting for the eyes to open.

"Your prison doesn't run to brandy," I told her. "We must get him to Maidenhead, and I'll give him some there. I've got a car waiting about half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?"

"Don't be long," she said, with an anxious look at the white, still face.

"No longer than I can help. Here's a revolver in case any one wants to abduct either of you. It's loaded, so be careful."

I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.

"Sylvia!" I said at the door.

"Yes?"

"Can you be trusted to look after him properly?"

She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.

"I think so," she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away. "He's rather precious."

The car was brought to the door, and the driver—who, after all, had been paid not to be surprised—looked on unemotionally as we carried the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped up in the other.

On the way back I was compelled to repeat in extenso the whole story of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced my way into the darkened prison cell.

Sylvia's face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative proceeded.

"But how could he know?" she asked in a puzzled tone when I had ended. "You must explain that. I don't see how it's possible."

"Madam, I have provided you with a story," I replied in the manner of Dr. Johnson; "I am not obliged to provide you with a moral."

As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with its present angry wale.

Of course, if you point morals before there's a story to hang them from, you must expect to see them disregarded.

---

CHAPTER XIII[ToC]

OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE

"If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman—always a rash thing to do—he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The one thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.... The inherited stupidity of the race—sound English common sense...."

Oscar Wilde: "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

If the Seraph's quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the S.Y. Ariel.... I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would have forestalled me.

I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on Sylvia's character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes; I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an Oxford summer evening; I could recognise her from the Seraph's description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met—before her last parting from the Seraph—she had gone back to the earlier hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her least when she was regal.

And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.... I had watched the Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity—uneasiness— belief and disbelief—ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.

I remember it all, but I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of committing it to paper. No girl has ever spoken her heart to me as Sylvia then spoke it; I am not sure that I want to be again admitted to such confidences. It is all strange, and sad, and unsatisfactory; but above all it is sacred. Her imprisonment had taken the fire out of Sylvia's blood; and her meeting with the Seraph had worked on her emotions. At another time she would have been more reticent. As after our return from Oxford, I sometimes think we were punished by an extreme of cold for having been injudiciously admitted to bask in an extreme of heat. That is the way with the English climate, and with a certain number of reserved, proud girls who grow up under its influence....

I dropped Sylvia at Cadogan Square without going in, and carried the Seraph straight back to Adelphi Terrace. Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce an evening visit; the report was satisfactory so far as it went, but indicated that we must exercise great patience before a complete cure could be expected. I asked—on a matter of life and death—whether she could be moved in a week's time. He preferred to give no opinion, and reminded me that I must not attempt to see or speak to the patient. Then I turned him over to the Seraph, ordered myself some dinner, and went to bed.

In the morning a telephone message informed me that Arthur Roden would like us both to go round to Cadogan Square. I answered that it was out of the question so far as the Seraph was concerned; and it was not till late on the Saturday afternoon that I felt justified in letting him get out of bed and accompany me. He still looked perilously white and ill, and though one strain had been removed by the discovery of Sylvia, and another by the departure of the search-warrant bogey, I could see no good purpose in his being called in to assist at an affecting reconciliation, and having to submit to a noisy chorus of congratulation.

We were spared both. I suppose I shall never know the true reason for the reception that awaited us, but I distribute the responsibility in equal shares between Lady Roden and Nigel Rawnsley. And of course I have to keep reminding myself that I had been present at the search, while they were not; that they were plain, matter-of-fact materialists with a rational cause for every effect, while I—well, I put myself out of court at once by asking them to believe in an absurdity called a Sixth Sense.

I find it hard, however, to forgive Nigel his part in the scene that followed; so far as I can see he was actuated first by jealousy on Sylvia's account, secondly by personal venom against the Seraph as a result of the unauthorised search-party, and lastly by the obstinate anger of a strong-willed, successful egoist, who has been driven to dwell even temporarily in the shade of unsuccess. Lady Roden, it must never be forgotten, had to sink the memory of Rutlandshire Morningtons, and the quarterings and armorial devices of an entire Heralds' College, before she could be expected to do justice to a man like the Seraph.

We were shown into the library, and found Arthur, Nigel and Philip seated before us like the Beasts in Revelation. Lady Roden and Sylvia entered later and sat to one side. There was much bowing and no hand-shaking.

The story of the search was already known—Sylvia had told it as soon as she got home, probably in my own words; and in the first, fine, careless rapture, I have no doubt she had spoken of the Seraph in the strain I had heard in the car. If this were the case, Lady Roden's eyes must have been abruptly and painfully opened. I felt sorry for her. Rutlandshire Morningtons frowned sour disfavour from the walls at the possibility of her daughter—with her daughter's faith and wealth—allying herself with an infidel, unknown, relationless vagrant like Lambert Aintree. Rationalism in the person of Nigel Rawnsley was called in to discredit the story of the search and save Sylvia from squandering herself on a common adventurer.

"You remember the terms of our agreement last Wednesday?" he began. "I undertook to suspend application for a search warrant...."

"If we discovered Sylvia," I said. "Yes?"

"And my sister Mavis."

I hope Nigel did not see my jaw drop. Save for the moment when I looked casually through the other rooms in the Maidenhead bungalow I had completely forgotten the Mavis stipulation. Every plan and hope I had cherished in respect of Joyce had been cherished in vain.

"The time was to expire on Monday, at noon," said the Seraph.

"Exactly. I thought I would remind you that only half the undertaking had been carried out. That is all."

Nigel would make an admirable proctor; he is to the manner born. I had quite the old feeling of being five shillings the poorer for straying round the streets of Oxford at night without academical dress.

I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.

"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."

I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having to submit to examination by an old K.C.

"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the police on a most serious charge...."

"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an impatient glance at Nigel.

"No arrangement you may have made on Wednesday is binding on me."

"It was binding on your son, who sits on one side of you," I said, "and on Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, who sits on the other."

Arthur drew himself up, no doubt unconsciously.

"As a Minister of the Crown I cannot be a party to any connivance at crime."

"Philip and Nigel," I said. "As sons of Ministers of the Crown, I hope you will take that to heart."

"What I have to say——" Arthur began.

"One moment!" I interrupted. "Are you speaking as a Minister of the Crown or a father of a family? Sylvia's been restored to you as the result of your son and Nigel conniving at what you hope and believe to be a crime. You wouldn't have got her back without that immoral compromise."

"The flat would have been searched," said Nigel.

"It was. Paddy and Gartside searched it and declared themselves satisfied...."

"They lied."

"Will you repeat that to Gartside?" I asked invitingly. "I fancy not. They searched and declared themselves satisfied. I offered to show the detectives round ten minutes after—by all accounts—this woman ought to have taken refuge there. Anybody could have searched it if they'd approached the owner properly."

He ignored my implied reproof and stuck to his guns.

"There was a woman there when Gartside said there was not."

"Gartside only said Miss Davenant wasn't there."

It was the Seraph speaking, slowly and almost for the first time. His face flushed crimson as he said it. I could not help looking at Sylvia; I looked away again quickly.

"There was some woman there, then?" said Nigel.

My cue was plain, and I took it.

"Miss Davenant is the only person whose name is before the house," I interposed. "Gartside said she was not there. Were you satisfied, Phil? I thought so. It's no good asking you, Nigel; you won't be satisfied till you've searched in person, and that you can't do till after Monday. Every one who agreed to Wednesday's compromise is bound by it till Monday midday. If after that Nigel still thinks it worth while to conduct Scotland Yard over the flat, of course we shan't attempt to stop him. As for any one who was not present or personally bound by Wednesday's compromise, that is to say, you, Arthur—do you declare to win by 'Father of a Family' or 'Minister of the Crown'? You must take one or the other."

"The two are inseparable," he answered shortly.

"You must contrive to separate them. If you declare 'Father of a Family,' you must hold yourself bound by Phil's arrangement. If you declare 'Minister of the Crown,' you oughtn't to have profited by the compromise, you oughtn't to have allowed us to restore Sylvia to you. Common schoolboy honour tells you that. Incidentally, why haven't you had the flat searched already? As a Minister of the Crown, you know...."

If my heart had not been beating so quickly, I should have liked to study their faces at leisure. The history of the last two days was written with tolerable clearness. Nigel had told Arthur—and possibly his own father—the story of his visit to Adelphi Terrace; he had hinted sufficient to incite one or both to take the matter up officially. Then Philip had intervened and depicted himself as bound in honour to take no step until the expiration of the armistice. Their faces told a pretty tale of "pull devil, pull baker," with Nigel at the head, Philip at the feet, and Arthur twisting and struggling between them.

I had no need to ask why the flat had not yet been searched, but I repeated my question.

"And when are you going to search it?" I added.

Arthur attempted a compromise.

"If you will give me your word...." he began.

"Not a bit of it!" I said. "Are you bound or are you not? Sylvia's in the room to settle any doubts on the subject."

He yielded after a struggle.

"I will take no steps to search the flat until after midday on Monday, provided Mavis is restored by then."

I made another attempt to rise, but Arthur waved me back into my seat.

"I have not finished yet. As you point out, Sylvia is in the room. I wish to know how she got here, and I wish still more to know how she was ever spirited away in the first instance."

"I know nothing about the getting away. She may be able to throw light on that. Hasn't she told you how we found her?"

"She has given me your version."

"Then I don't suppose I can add anything to it."

"You might substitute a story that would hold a little more water."

"I am afraid I am not naturally inventive."

"Since when?"

His tone told me that I had definitely lost Arthur as a friend—which was regrettable, but if I could play the part of whetstone to his repartee I was content to see him draw profit from the débris of our friendship.

"It is only fair to say that you and Aintree are regarded with a good deal of suspicion," he went on. "Apart from the question of the flat...."

"Not again!" I begged.

"I have not mentioned the report of the officers who watched Miss Davenant's house in...."

"Nigel has," I interrupted. "Ad nauseam. My interview was apparently very different from their report. Suppose we have them in?"

"They are not in the house."

"Then hadn't we better leave them out of the discussion? What else are we suspected of?"

Arthur traced a pattern on the blotting-pad, and then looked up very sternly.

"Complicity with the whole New Militant campaign."

I turned to the Seraph.

"This is devilish serious," I said. "Incitement to crime, three abductions, more in contemplation. I shouldn't have thought it to look at you. Naughty boy!"

Arthur was really angry at that. I knew it by his old habit of growing red behind the ears.

"You appear to think this is a fit subject for jesting," he burst out.

"I laugh that I may not weep," I said. "A charge like this is rather upsetting. Have you bothered about any evidence?"

"You will find there is perhaps more evidence than you relish. Apart from your intimacy with Miss Davenant...."

"She's a very pretty woman," I interrupted.

"...you have successfully kept one foot in either camp. You were present when Rawnsley told me of the abduction of Mavis, and added that the matter was being kept secret. Miss Davenant at once published an article entitled 'Where is Miss Rawnsley?'"

"If she really abducted the girl, she'd naturally notice it was being kept quiet," I objected.

"On the day after Private Members' time had been appropriated, Jefferson's boy disappeared; Miss Davenant must have been warned in time to have her plans laid. She referred to my midland campaign, and had an accomplice lying in wait for my daughter with a car, the same day that Rawnsley made his announcement that there would be no autumn session."

"You will find all this on the famous Time Table," I reminded him.

"She got her information from some one who knew the arrangements of the Government."

"I'm surprised you continued to know me," I said, and turned to the Seraph. "It's devilish serious, as I said before, but it seems to be my funeral."

Arthur soon undeceived me.

"You are both equally incriminated. Aintree, is it not the case that on one occasion in Oxford and another in London, you warned my daughter that trouble was in store for her?"

The Seraph had been sitting silent and with closed eyes since his single intervention. He now opened his eyes and bowed without speaking.

"I suggest that you knew an attempt would be made to abduct her?"

"No."

"You are quite certain?"

"Quite."

"Then why the warning?"

"I knew trouble was coming; I didn't know she would be abducted."

"What form of trouble did you anticipate?"

"No form in particular."

"Why trouble at all?"

"I knew it was coming."

"But how?"

He hesitated, and then closed his eyes wearily.

"I don't know."

Arthur balanced a quill pen between the first fingers of both hands.

"On Wednesday last your rooms were visited, and the question of a search-warrant raised. You obtained a promise that the warrant would not be applied for if my daughter and Miss Rawnsley were restored within five days. Did you know at that time where they were?"

"No."

"When did you find out?"

"I don't know where Miss Rawnsley is. I didn't know where your daughter was till we came to the house."

"We none of us know our hats are in the hall till we look to make certain," Nigel interrupted; "but you found her?"

"Yes."

"No one told you where she was?" Arthur went on.

"No."

"Then how did you find her?"

"I believe she has told you."

"She has given me Merivale's version. I want yours."

"I don't know."

"How did you start?"

"She's told you. I walked out of the house, and went on till I found her."

"How did you know where to look?"

"I didn't."

"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles, passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house—a house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This was pure coincidence?"

"I knew she was there."

"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you mean?"

"I felt sure she was there."

"You felt that when you left London?"

"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."

"No one had told you where to look?"

"No."

"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one. You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"

"I ask you to believe nothing."

"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"

"No."

Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.

"Do you know where my sister is?"

"No."

"Can you—er—feel where she is?"

"No."

"Can you walk from this house and find her?"

"No."

"How soon will you be able to do so?"

With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.

"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."

"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"

"No."

"Then how do you propose to find her?"

"I don't."

"You know the consequences?"

"Yes."

Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy fidelity.

"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"

"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."

"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"

"That is so."

"You suggest no reason for the difference?"

For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia. Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much. I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same expression that had come over her face when he suggested the possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous Wednesday morning.

"I suggest no reason," he said at last.

Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a discreet distance from her mother.

"Not worth saving, Sylvia?" I asked.

A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed in him.

"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How could he, if he didn't know all along?"

"Remember Brandon Court," I said.

"Why didn't he mention it?"

I pointed to the Bench.

"My dear child, look at them! Why not talk higher mathematics to a boa-constrictor?"

"If he can't make them believe it, why should I?"

"Because you know."

"What?"

"Everything. You know he's in love with you, and you're in love with him."

"I'm not!"

Her voice quivered with passion; there was nothing for it but a bold stroke. And one risk more or less hardly mattered.

"Can you keep a secret, Sylvia?"

"It depends."

"No. Absolutely?"

"All right."

I lowered my voice to a whisper.

"There was a woman in his rooms last Wednesday, and she is the woman I am engaged to marry."

Her look of scorn was caused less by concern for my morals than by pity for my simplicity in thinking she would believe such a story.

"I don't believe it."

"You must. It's your last chance. If you let him go now, you'll lose him for ever, and I'm not going to let you blight your life and his, if I can stop it. You must make up your mind now. Do you believe me?"

Her expression of scorn had vanished and given place to one of painful perplexity.

"I'm not...."

"Do you believe me, Sylvia?"

She hesitated in an agony of indecision, until the moment was lost. The water had arrived, and Arthur was dismissing me from the Presence.

"You're not going to arrest us, then?" I said.

"I reserve perfect freedom of action," he answered, in the Front Bench manner.

"Quite right," I said. "I only wish you'd reserved the inquisition till this boy was in a better state to receive it. Would it interfere with your liberty of action if I asked you to say a word of thanks either to Aintree, myself, or both? I believe it is usual when a man loses his daughter and has her restored to him."

A few minutes more would have tried my temper. Arthur sat down again at his table, opened a drawer, and took out a cheque-book.

"According to your story it was Aintree who was chiefly instrumental in making the discovery?"

"That was the lie we agreed on," I said.

Arthur wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds, and handed it to the Seraph with the words—

"That, I think, clears all obligations between us."

"Except that of manners," I exclaimed. "The House of Commons——"

But he had rung the bell, and was tidying his papers into neat, superfluous bundles.

Philip had the courage to shake me by the hand and say he hoped to see me again soon. I am not sufficiently cynical to say it was prompted by the reflection that Gladys was my niece, because he was every whit as cordial to the Seraph.

I shook hands with Sylvia, and found her watching the Seraph fold and pocket the two thousand pound cheque.

"He's taking it!" she said.

"Your father should have been ashamed to make the offer. It serves him right if his offer's accepted. Don't blame the Seraph. If Nigel and your father proceed on the lines they've gone on this afternoon, one or both of us will have to cut the country. The Seraph's not made of money; he'll want all he can lay hands on. Now then, Sylvia, it's two lives you're playing with."

She had not yet made up her mind, and indecision chilled the warmth of her eyes and the smile on her lips. I watched the effort, and wondered if it would suffice for the Seraph. Then question and answer told their tale.

"When shall we see you again?" I heard her ask as I walked to the door.

"I can hardly say," came the low reply. "I'm leaving England shortly. I shall go across India, and spend some time in Japan—and then visit the Islands of the South Seas. It's a thing I've always wanted to do. After that? I don't know...."

---

CHAPTER XIV[ToC]

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

"The instant he entered the room it was plain that all was lost....

"'I cannot find it,' said he, 'and I must have it. Where is it?... Where is my bench?... Time presses; and I must finish those shoes.'

"They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.

"'Come, come!' said he, in a whimpering miserable way: 'let me get to work. Give me my work.'

"...Carton was the first to speak:

"'The last chance is gone: it was not much....'"

Charles Dickens: "A Tale of Two Cities."

As I helped the Seraph out of the house and into a taxi, I was trying to string together a few words of sympathy and encouragement. Then I looked at his face, and decided to save my breath. Physically and mentally he was too hard hit to profit by any consolation I could offer. As a clumsy symbol of good intention I held out my hand, and had it gripped and retained till we reached Adelphi Terrace.

"Never mind me," he said, in a slow, sing-song voice, hesitating like a man speaking an unfamiliar language. "It's you and Joyce we've got to consider."

"Don't worry your head, Seraph," I said. "We'll find a way out. You've got to be quiet and get well."

"But what are you going to do?"

"I've no idea," I answered blankly.

The Seraph sighed and lifted his feet wearily on to the seat opposite.

"You played that last hand well, Toby. I'm afraid you'll have to go on playing without any support from me. I'm dummy, I'm only good for two possible tricks."

I waited to see the hand exposed.

"I can't find Mavis," he went on. "You see that?"

"I do."

"You must ask Joyce to tell you. She spoke a few words this morning, and she's getting stronger. If she refuses ... but she won't if you ask her."

"If she does?"

"You must go on bluffing Nigel. He doesn't know who's in the flat, and old Roden doesn't know either. They'd have searched three days ago, they'd have arrested us to-day on suspicion if they hadn't been afraid of making fools of themselves. Keep bluffing, Toby. The keener you are to get the search over and done with, the more they'll be afraid of a mare's nest." The words trailed off in a sigh. "If there's anything I can do I'll do it, but I'm afraid you'll find me pretty useless."

"You're going quietly to bed for forty-eight hours," I told him.

He raised no protest, and I heard him murmur, "Saturday night. Sunday night. Monday night. It'll be all over then, one way or the other."

On reaching the flat I carried him upstairs, ordered some soup, and smoked a cigarette in the hall. Maybury-Reynardson was completing his evening inspection, and when he came out I asked for the bulletin.

"It's in the right direction," he told me, "but very, very slow. The mind's working back to normal whenever she wakes, and she's been talking a little. I'm afraid you must go on being patient."

"Could she answer a question?"

"You mustn't ask any."

"I'm afraid it's absolutely necessary."

"What d'you want to know?"

"The police will search this flat on Monday if we don't find out before then where Miss Rawnsley was taken to when she disappeared."

Maybury-Reynardson shook his head.

"You mustn't think of bothering her with questions of that kind. If you did, I don't suppose she could help you."

"But you said the mind was normal?"

"Working back to normal. Everything's there, but she can't put it in order. The memory larder is full, but her hands are too weak to lift things down from the shelves."

"It's a matter of life and death," I urged.

"If it was a matter of eternal salvation I doubt if she could help you. Do you dream? Well, could you piece together the fragments of all you dreamt last night? You might have done so a moment after waking, little pieces may come back to you when some one suggests the right train of thought. That's Miss Davenant's condition. To change the parallel, her eyes can see, but they see 'through a glass darkly.'"

I thought the matter over while he was examining and prescribing for the Seraph.

"We're in a tight corner, Seraph," I said when he had gone. "I don't see any other way out, I'm going to take the responsibility of disobeying him."

He offered no suggestion, and I walked to the door of Joyce's room and put my fingers to the handle. Then I came back and made him open his eyes and listen to me.

"I'll take the blame," I said; "but will you see if you can make her understand? She's known you longer."

It was not the true reason. When I reached the door I was smitten with the fear that she would not recognise me, and my nerve failed.

We explained our intentions to a reluctant nurse; I fidgeted outside in the hall and heard the Seraph walk up to the bedside and ask Joyce how she was.

"I'm better, thanks," she answered. "Let me see, do I know you?" There was a weak laugh. "I should like to be friends with you, you've got such nice eyes."

The Seraph took her hand and asked if she knew any one named Mavis Rawnsley.

"Oh, yes, I know her. Her father's the Prime Minister. Mavis, yes, I know her."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Mavis Rawnsley? She was at the theatre last night. What theatre was it? She was in the stalls, and I was in a box. Who else was there? Were you? She was with her mother. Where is she now? Yes, I know Miss Rawnsley well."

"Do you know where she is now?"

"I expect she's at the theatre."

She closed her eyes, and the Seraph came back to the door, shaking his head. I tiptoed into the room, looked round the screen and watched Joyce smiling in her sleep. As I looked, her eyes opened and met mine.

"Why, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're my husband. You took me to the theatre last night, when we saw Mavis Rawnsley. We were in a box, and she was in the stalls. Some one wanted to know where Mavis was. Tell them we saw her at the theatre, will you?"

She held out her hand to me; I bent down, kissed her forehead, and crept out of the room. The Seraph was lying on the bed we had made up for him in my room. I helped him to undress, and retired to the library with a cigar—to forget Joyce and plan the bluffing of Nigel.

My first act was to get into communication with Paddy Culling on the telephone.

"Will you do me another favour?" I began. "Well, it's this. I want you to get hold of Nigel and take him to lunch or dine to-morrow—Sunday—at the Club. Let me know which, and the time. When you've finished eating, lead him away to a quiet corner—the North Smoking Room or the Strangers' Card Room. Hold him in conversation till I come. I shall drop in accidentally, and start pulling his leg. You can help, but do it in moderation; we mustn't make him savage—only uncomfortable. You understand? Right."

Then I went to bed.

On Sunday morning I started out in the direction of Chester Square, and made two discoveries on the way. The first was that our house was being unceasingly watched by a tall Yorkshireman in plain clothes and regulation boots; the second, that the Yorkshireman was in his turn being intermittently watched by Nigel Rawnsley. His opinion of the Criminal Investigation Department must have been as low—if not as kindly—as my own. On two more occasions that day I found him engaged on a flying visit of inspection—to keep Scotland Yard up to the Rawnsley mark and answer the eternal question that Juvenal propounded and Michael Roden amended for his own benefit and mine at Henley.

Elsie received me with anxious enquiries after her sister. I gave a full report, propounded my plan of campaign, and was rewarded by being shown the extensive and beautiful contents of her wardrobe. I should never have believed one woman could accumulate so many clothes; there seemed a dress for every day and evening of the year, and she could have worn a fresh hat each hour without repeating herself. My own rule is to have one suit I can wear in a bad light, and four that I cannot. With hats the practice is even simpler; I flaunt a new one until it is stolen, and then wear the changeling until a substitute of even greater seediness has been supplied. My instincts are conservative, and my hats more symbolical than decorative; for me they typify the great, sad law that every change is a change for the worse.

My only complaint against Elsie was that her wardrobe contained too much of what university authorities would call the "subfuse" element. The most conspicuous garments I could find were a white coat and skirt, white stockings and shoes, black hat and veil, and heliotrope dust coat. I am no judge whether they looked well in combination, but I challenge the purblind to say they were inconspicuous. To my eyes the tout ensemble was so striking that I laid them on a chair and gazed in wondering admiration until it was time to call up Gartside and warn him that I stood in need of luncheon.

Carlton House Terrace had a depressing, derelict appearance that foreboded the departure of its lord. All the favourite pictures and ornaments seemed to have been stowed away in preparation for India, neat piles of books were distributed about the library floor, and every scrap of paper seemed to have been tidied into a drawer. We sat down a pleasant party of three, and I made the acquaintance of Gartside's cousin and aide-de-camp, Lord Raymond Sturling. An agreeable fellow he seemed, who put himself and his services entirely at my disposal in the event of my deciding to come for a part or all of the way. I could only avail myself of his offer to the extent of sending him to see if Mountjoy's villa at Rimini was still in the market, and if so what his figure was for giving me immediate possession.

Gartside himself was as hospitable as ever in offering me every available inch on the yacht for the accommodation of myself and any friends I might care to bring with me. I ran through the list and found myself wondering if Maybury-Reynardson could be persuaded to come. I had hardly known him long enough to call him a friend, but he had gone out of his way to oblige me in coming to attend Joyce, and on general principles I think most big London practitioners are the better for a few days at sea at the close of the London season.

I called round in Cavendish Square for a cup of tea, and told him he was pulled down and in need of a change.

"Look at the good it did my brother," I said. "Just to Marseilles and back. Or if you'll come to Genoa and overland to Rimini, I shall be very glad to put you up for as long as you can stay. It's Gartside's own yacht, and I'm authorised by him to invite whom I please. He's a capital host, and you'll be done to a turn. The only fault I have to find with his arrangements is that he carries no doctor, and I'm sufficiently middle-aged to be fussy on a point like that. Anybody taken ill, you know, anybody coming on board ill, and it would be devilish awkward. I shall insist on a doctor. He'll be Gartside's guest, but I shall pay his fees, of course, and he can name his own figure. What do you think of the idea? We shall be to all intents and purposes a bachelor party."

When Maybury-Reynardson's name was first mentioned to me on the evening of Joyce's flight, the Seraph had justly described him as a "sportsman." Under the grave official mask I could see a twinkling eye and a flickering smile.

"It depends on one case of nervous breakdown that I've got on hand at present," he said. "If my patient's well enough...."

"She's got to be," I said.

"When do you sail?"

"Friday."

"You can't make it later?"

"Absolutely impossible."

"This is Sunday. I'll tell you when we're a little nearer the day."

"She must be moved on Thursday afternoon."

"Must? Must?" he repeated with a smile. "Whose patient is she?"

"Whose wife's she going to be?" I asked in my turn.

"I suppose it'll be pretty hot," he said. "First week in August. I must get some thin clothes."

"Include them in the fee," I suggested.

"Damn the fee!" he answered, as we walked to the door.

Paddy Culling had arranged to give Nigel his dinner at eight. I had comfortable time to dress and dine at Adelphi Terrace, and nine-thirty found me wandering round the Club in search of company.

"Praise heaven for the sight of a friendly face!" I exclaimed as I stumbled across Paddy and Nigel in the North Smoking Room.

"Where was ut ye dined?" asked Paddy, as I pulled up a chair and rang for cigars. To a practised ear his brogue was an eloquent war signal.

"In the sick-house," I told him, "Adelphi Terrace."

"Is ut catching?" he inquired. "It's not for my own self I'm asking, but Nigel here. I owe ut to empire and postherity to see he runs no risks."

I reassured him on the score of posterity.

"He's just knocked up and over-tired," I said, "and I'm keeping him in bed till Wednesday or Thursday."

"Then he'll not be walking ye into the Lake District to find Miss Mavis for the present," Paddy observed with an eye on Nigel.

"He'll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest," I said with great determination.

Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.

"I'd have ye remember the days of grace," he grumbled.

I shrugged my shoulders without answering.

"Where's me pound of flesh?" he demanded. "Manin' no disrispec' to Miss Mavis," he added apologetically to Nigel.

"I'm afraid I can't help you to find her," I said.

"Can the Seraph?"

"I don't suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present."

Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked up the threads where they had been dropped.

"You say Aintree's ill," he began cautiously. "If I were disposed to regard the time of illness as so many dies non, would he be in a position to find my sister by the end of the week?"

"Frankly, I see no likelihood."

"It's an extra five days."

"What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?"

"You should know best."

"I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better means of finding out."

"And Aintree?"

"In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means of finding out he'd tell me."

Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.

"When the days of grace have expired, ye'll have yer contract unfulfilled?"

"And we shall be prepared to face the consequences."

"Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?"

"He can't help himself." I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no profit in staying longer. "I shall see you both to-morrow at noon?"

"Not me," said Paddy. "I've searched the place once."

"You, Nigel?"

"If I think fit," he answered loftily.

"I only ask, because you mustn't worry the Seraph. You can search his rooms, but you mustn't try to cross-question him. He's not equal to it."

"I think you'd be wise to accept the extension of time."

"My dear man, what's the good? If we can't find your sister, we can't. Saturday's no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time, you'd better stick to it and get your search over."

"If Aintree's ill...."

"Humbug! Nigel," I said. "If you believe we're harbouring a criminal, it's your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your superior wisdom. Bring 'em to-morrow; bring 'em to-night if you like, and as many as you can get. The more there are," I said, turning at the door to fire a last shot, "the more voices will be raised in thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley."

The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy's villa at Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On Thursday I called at Chester Square.

Elsie's car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce. The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might have belonged to either sister.

I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after Joyce, they would not be there for ever. As we crossed Trafalgar Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.

"Just as I thought," I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman from the corner of the Terrace.

"Bow to him," I said to Elsie. "He may not deign to recognise you, but he can't help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained ankle!"

With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out of my Yorkshire friend's field of vision.

I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce's room. I never waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time, weak, suffering and heart-broken—two large blue eyes gazing at me out of a white immobile face—I half regretted we had ever met, and heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all, he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting out solitary and unfriended—to forget....

Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little smile, bent over the Seraph's bed and kissed him, and then suffered me to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the footman and I took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his present scrutiny told him was that a woman's veil was up when she entered a house, and down when she left it.

We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us, and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.

"A mariage de convenance," Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw me inspecting the labels.

"Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. Ariel, Southampton," was the name and destination I found written.

"It may save trouble," he added apologetically. "I thought you wouldn't mind."

His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson, Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce's age and figure, and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.

"My wife," Sturling explained brusquely. "Yes, be as quick as you can, please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible. Sturling—aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht. There she is, the Ariel, sailing to-morrow. These gentlemen? Mr. Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That all?"

"All in order, my lord."

"Right away."

As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the Ariel. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to correct a popular delusion.

"Lady Raymond Sturling's" nurses arrived by an early train on Friday morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and five: "Sursum corda" was the first; "Keep your tails up" the second; and "Haste to the Wedding" completed the series.

I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters. Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning, and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been ruffled.

While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce his nightly visit, I paced the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar. As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.

"How did you find Sylvia?" he asked in a tone that showed how his thoughts had been occupied.

I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.

"Perhaps I'm not leaving so much behind after all," was his comment. "Good luck to the Seraph! He's a nice boy."

"He'll need all the luck he can get," I answered. "You'll get oil and water to mingle quicker than you'll bring those two together. Tell me how it's to be done, Gartside, and you'll put the coping-stone on all your labours."

In the darkness I heard him sigh.

"I can't help you. I'm not a diplomatist, I'm just a lumpy, good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!" he added softly. "He's as fond of her as we any of us were."

I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.

"That's like Paddy," he said with a laugh. "Well, he's right. You're the only one that's come out on top, and good wishes to you for the future!"

We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.

"You don't want thanks," I said, "but if you do you know where to come for them."

"Oh well!" I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes when the light of the chart-room lamp fell on his face. "If I can't get what I want, there's some satisfaction in helping a friend to get what he wants."

"I'll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass," I said. "I shall want that text during the next few months."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together," I answered in the same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage movement.

"And how are you going to do that?"

"God knows!" I replied with a woeful shake of the head.

---

CHAPTER XV[ToC]

THE RAID

"I can see you flying before the laughter like ... tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter will pursue you to Paris, where they'll make little songs about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera, where they'll sell your photographs on picture postcards. I can see you fleeing across the Atlantic to ... the immensity of America, and there the Yellow Press, pea-green with frenzy, will pile column of ridicule upon column of invective. Oh, ... do you think it isn't worth while to endure six months' hard labour to amuse the world so profoundly?"

W.S. Maugham: "Jack Straw."

The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited by the Individualist.

Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that reputation back.... Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness, imprisonment and—well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was calling down on her foolish young head.

It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism—the kind that sets your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your throat—but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce's bedroom, watched them meet and kiss.... "Gods of my fathers," I murmured, "what have you won, the pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?"

The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all; You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.

I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or chagrined—only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her campaign to win a reputation.

When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday at three, and at three-thirty Culling was to post a letter I had written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to overcome the Seraph's curious bent of self-depreciation.

Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph's condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.

I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him. Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening, catch the nine o'clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her husband to look after him.

Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous, undisciplined outlet. Nine o'clock came and went without bringing her a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting by his bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he began to grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she steal away to her sister's deserted room and lie down for a few hours' sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like slumber.

He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to Adelphi Terrace and going alone.

Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade her going, reminding her—I have no doubt—of Rutlandshire Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph's entire unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely resolute. The homily ended—as is the way of most sermons—when her mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her hat, called at a florist's on the way, and presented herself at Adelphi Terrace.

The Seraph's man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that the patient was still sleeping.

"I've brought him some flowers," she said. "I suppose it's no good waiting? You can't say how soon he's likely to wake up?"

Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.

Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted by the sound of men's voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.

"Here's the warrant," said a voice, "properly signed, all in order. If you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you do so at your own risk."

Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.

"One of you stay here," he went on, "and see that nobody leaves the flat. The other come with me. Take the library first."

The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the library's sole occupant.

"Sylvia!" he exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here?"

His tone so resembled her mother's that all Sylvia's latent opposition and obstinacy were called into play.

"Have you any objection to my being here?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It was rather a surprise."

"As I don't always warn you beforehand, I'm afraid a good many things I do must come as a surprise to you."

"And to yourself?"

"You must explain that."

"Surely no explanation is needed?"

"No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn't bother to explain my presence here."

Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.

"I imagine Aintree could supply that," he said.

She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.

"I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister, and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead."

"Do you imagine he had any hand in that?" she asked contemptuously.

"He knew where to look for you," was the significant answer, "and he found that out from the woman he's been hiding in these rooms. As it's too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I've called to gain that information from the lady herself."

"What are you going to do?"

"Search the flat."

"And if she isn't here?"

"She was."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, I admit I didn't see her. It may have been any one. But there's a very strong probability, and I'm going on that."

"And if there's no one here now?"

"She must have got away."

"Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself."

"What d'you mean?"

"What are you going to do if you find no one?"

"If there's no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant...." He paused delicately.

"Well?"

"I'm afraid he'll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment."

"You'll have him arrested?"

"That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. I shan't do anything."

"Except rub your hands?" she taunted.

"Not even that," he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his voice to summon the detectives into the library. "We'll take this room first," he told her, "and then leave you undisturbed."

The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she entered the library and in the Seraph's interests requested Nigel to carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.

"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night, so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll stay here and talk to Miss Roden."

Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement, humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.

"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."

"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern authority.

"It's some time now...."

"And how long have you been here?"

There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie's thoughts had been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open; outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.

"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.

The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to boiling point in Sylvia's mind.

"How long?" she repeated.

Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak, the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared in the doorway.

"She's not here," he announced.

"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at his untimely return.

"Your sister."

"Oh, I could have told you that."

"She was here."

"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm afraid you and the—er—gentleman outside have had your journey in vain."

Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had undertaken to educate.

"Not altogether," he said.

"No?"

"We've found Aintree."

"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to move yet."

"He may have to."

"Not yet."

"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well—and away."

Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier losings.

"So you're arresting him?" she said.

"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he answered with a lift of the eyebrows.

"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my sister?"

Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.

"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."

"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.

"Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested."

A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on Elsie's face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.

"Possibly he won't be arrested," she remarked.

"You will prevent it?"

"I leave that to you."

"It's a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it."

Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.

"You'll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation like the present," she told him with a wise shake of the head. "It's ridiculous enough to search a man's rooms for a woman who isn't there, but you can't—you really can't arrest a man for harbouring a woman when there's no shred of evidence to show she was ever under the same roof."

Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel's thin skin to an angry spot of red on either cheek.

"You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss Roden disappeared," he answered.

Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.

"I have every reason to remember it."

"Your sister was here then."

"You saw her?"

"I heard her."

"You heard a woman."

"It was your sister or yourself."

"Or one of a million others."

Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.

"I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday. Barring two nurses, and they're accounted for. You or your sister must have left here yesterday."

"And not come back?"

"No."

"Well, that makes it much easier, doesn't it? If one went out and never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it looks ... I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think, that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind."

"Exactly. And it's on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be arrested."

Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves. It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.

"All the same, what a pity you didn't come before the bird was flown!" Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.

"It's something to have found Aintree at home," Nigel returned.

"And you're going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?" Elsie walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb her: she was filled with pity and doubt—pity for Sylvia, and doubt whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. "I suppose—you're quite certain—he wasn't harbouring—me?"

Nigel's unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.

"There's no warrant against you."

"Fortunately not."

"Then why should he harbour you?"

Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of desperation.

"It's a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley."

There was a moment's silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with cheeks aflame.

"D'you mean you were here the whole time?"

"Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley."

"Were you?"

"D'you think it likely?"

"How should I know?"

Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome rôle to its bitter end.

"You know my character, you've not had time to forget my divorce or the way I thrust myself under the noses of respectable people. Have I got much more bloom to lose?"

"It's not true! The Seraph ... he wouldn't!"

"You used to see us about together."

"There's nothing in that!"

"Enough to make you cut him at Henley." Each fresh word fell like a lash across Sylvia's cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely at the door it was impossible to end the torture.

"Will you say whether you were here the whole time?" she demanded of Elsie.

"'Course she wasn't," Nigel struck in. "There are convenances even in this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time."

"Was he?" Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper down.

"I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes."

"You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from time to time? It's important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn't happen to be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn't have been harbouring my sister, but it's good-bye to the remains of my good name. And if Mr. Merivale was here, I couldn't have been living here too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which was it? I don't like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me confidentially what you believe yourself."

Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.

"As the conduct of the case is not in my hands," he answered loftily, "my opinion is of no moment."

Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling mischievously to herself.

"So there's nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, che sera sera: I suppose it'll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall be let out in time to see the fun. It'll be worth it. I wish women were admitted to your Club, it 'ud be so amusing to hear your friends chaffing you about your great mare's nest. 'Well, Rawnsley, what's this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?' Men are such cats, aren't they? Every one would start teasing you at the House, the thing 'ud get into the papers, they'd hear of it in your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and grow louder as every one joined in. They'd laugh at you in private houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They'd laugh at you in the streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on at the music halls and imitate you. They'd laugh and laugh till their sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you'd try to live it down and find you couldn't, and in the end you'd have to leave England and live abroad, until they'd found something else to laugh at. You're going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven't got the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!"

The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her voice and the laughter out of her eyes.

"Shall I go and see if the Seraph's awake yet?" she temporised, "or would you prefer to leave a message?"

Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come—only a dry, choking sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.

"Miss Roden! Sylvia!"

"Don't call me that!"

"I'm sorry. Miss Roden, I've got something to say to you!"

"I don't want to hear it, I only want to get away!"

"You must listen, your whole life's at stake—and the Seraph's, too."

The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"You must shut that door."

"I won't."

Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to light a cigarette.

"It's about—the woman who was here," she whispered as he began to descend the stairs.

"Was it you?"

Elsie shook her head.

"No, say it! say it! Yes or no."

The sound of Nigel's descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the angle of the stairs.

"For God's sake come back inside here a minute!" Elsie implored her.

"I won't, it's no good; I shouldn't believe you whatever you said. If you weren't here, why did you say you were? And if you were—— Oh, let me go, let me go!"

With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie's restraining hand and rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed the door and walked with a heavy heart into the library. On a table by the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had brought—lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and across the hall to the Seraph's door. He was still sleeping, but awoke in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.

"The search-party," Elsie told him, forcing a smile.

"Who was there?"

"Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives."

"Was that all?"

The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.

"Wasn't it enough?" she asked indifferently.

The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.

"I don't know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other people—some people—were near me. I fancied—when I was asleep—I suppose it must have been a dream—I don't know—I fancied there was some one else quite close."

He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie's fingers in a bloodless, wasted hand.

"How did you keep the search-party out?" he inquired.

"I didn't. They came in, and looked into every room. For some unaccountable reason," she added ironically, "Joyce was nowhere to be found."

"Were they surprised to see you here?"

"A little. I told them you were seedy and I'd called to inquire."

The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go on talking.

"I suppose they really thought you'd been here the whole time?"

"Oh no!"

"But how else...."

"I don't know," Elsie interrupted quickly. "You must ask them who the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They couldn't say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both compromised."

She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.

"Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in August isn't good for little boys."

"Where shall we go?"

"I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini."

The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.

"I can't go there yet. They'll be—frightfully happy—wrapped up in each other—all that sort of thing. I don't want to see them yet."

Elsie dropped no hint of the time that must elapse before Joyce was strong again or "frightfully happy."

"Where shall it be then?" she asked.

The Seraph pressed her fingers to his lips.

"You go there, Elsie. I must travel alone. I shall go to the East. I shan't come back for some time. If ever."

The effort of talking and the trend of the conversation had made him restless. Elsie smoothed his pillow, and rose to leave the room.

As he watched her walk to the door, his eyes fell for the first time on the bouquet of roses and lilies.

"Who brought those?" he inquired.

"I found them in the library," she answered.

"Is there no name?"

For a moment she pretended to look for a card, then shook her head without speaking. As she saw him lying in bed, she wondered if he would ever know the price at which his freedom from arrest had been purchased. Of her own sacrifice she thought little; it was but generous payment of a long outstanding debt. All her imagination was concentrated on Sylvia—her sanguine, happy arrival, the morning's long agony, her hopeless, agonised departure.

"And no message?" the Seraph persisted with a mixture of eagerness and disappointment.

"No."

"I wonder who they can be from."

"One of your numerous admirers, I suppose," Elsie answered carelessly. Then she opened the door, walked wearily to her own room, and tried—unsuccessfully—to cry.

---

CHAPTER XVI[ToC]

RIMINI

"We left our country for our country's good."

George Barrington: Prologue.

We arrived in Rimini at the end of the first week in August—Joyce, her two nurses, Maybury-Reynardson and I. Elsie joined us as soon as we were comfortably settled in the villa, and has stayed on week after week, month after month, tending her poor sister with a devotion that touched my selfish, hardened old heart. Dick came for a few days before the beginning of the law term; otherwise we have been a party of three, as the doctor and nurses returned to England as soon as Joyce appeared to be out of danger.

Rimini turns cold at the beginning of November, and we have had to make arrangements for going into winter quarters. Cairo and the Riviera are a little public for two escaped criminals, but I hear there is a tolerable hotel at Taormina; and as Joyce has never been in Sicily before, we might spend at least the beginning of our honeymoon there. For myself, I do not mind where we go so long as we can escape from Rimini. I want no unnecessary reminders of the last three months, the weary waiting, the frequent false dawns of convalescence, the regular relapses. They have been bad months for Joyce, but I venture to think they were worse for Elsie and myself. In my own case there definitely came an early day when my nervous system showed signs of striking work; it was then that I embarked on my first and last venture in prose composition.

When she is well enough to be bothered with such vain trivialities, I shall present my manuscript to Joyce. I hope she will read it, for I have intended it for her eyes alone; and if she rejects the task, I shall feel guilty of having wasted an incredible amount of good sermon paper. And when she has read it, she must light a little fire and burn every sheet of it; not even Elsie must see it, though she has been instrumental in giving me information over the last chapters that I should not otherwise have obtained.

I think my decision is wise and necessary. In part the book is too intimate an account of Sylvia's character and the Seraph's feelings for me to be justified in making it public: in part, the pair of us have already done sufficient injury to Rodens and Rawnsleys without giving the world our candid opinion of either family: in part, we have to remember that during the last eight months, wherever we found the law of England obtruding itself on our gaze, we broke it with a light heart and untroubled conscience. There is not the least good in taking the world into our confidence in the matter of these little transgressions.

In a week's time there will be a quiet wedding at the British Consulate; it will take place in the presence of a Consul who has treated me with such uniform kindness that I have sometimes wondered if he has ever heard of such things as extradition orders. Our marriage will be the last chapter of one phase in my life. It opened on a day when I walked up the steps of the Club, and paused for a moment to gaze at the altered face of Pall Mall and read on a contents-bill that the old militants had broken every window on the east side of Bond Street, interrupted a meeting, and burnt down an Elizabethan house in Hertfordshire. "Shocking," I remember thinking, "and quite unimpressive." Before I was twelve hours older, Fate had introduced me to a young woman whose machinations may or may not have been infinitely more shocking; they were certainly not unimpressive.

The closing scenes of the Militant campaign are soon given. Elsie left London and joined us here as soon as the Seraph was fit to travel. That was three days after Nigel's second raid. They must have been anxious days, as our rising young statesman seems to have been torn between a quite bloodthirsty lust for revenge and a morbid horror of another fiasco as humiliating as his search-party. Elsie went round by Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for Bombay and came overland to Rimini. When I met her and heard the details of her flight, I could tell her that all danger was over, and—if Justice had not been done—the stolen goods had at least been restored.

The news reached us as we came out of the Bay. Gartside and I were on deck, watching the sun strike golden splinters out of the hock-bottle towers of the royal palace at Cintra. The wireless operator came down with a tapped message that Mrs. Millington had revealed the whereabouts of Mavis Rawnsley and young Paul Jefferson. He added that the police had so far discovered no trace of that hardened criminal—Miss Joyce Davenant.

When Elsie joined us and told me the story of the Rawnsley raid, I could not help thinking once again, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." The gallant fight she had made for freedom and reputation ended in disaster, and she left England branded with the stigma that the Divorce Court had striven to impose and we had fought tooth and nail to remove. Joyce's struggle for the suffrage ended, as she now knows, in putting the suffrage further from the forefront of practical politics than it has been for a generation. When the recording angel allots to each one of us our share of responsibility in moulding the face of history, what effective change will be credited to the united or separate efforts of Rawnsleys and Rodens, Seraphs, Davenants and Merivales?

Two results stand out. The first is a marriage that will be celebrated at the Consulate in a week's time, the second is a listless letter penned in exile, signed by the Seraph and dated from Yokohama. Joyce knows I am tolerably fond of her, and will acquit me of speaking rhetorically if I say that I would wipe the last eight months—and all they mean to us both—from the pages of Time, if I could spare the Seraph what he has been through since I dined with him that first evening at the Ritz. Here is the letter, and no one will be surprised to learn that I spent a melancholy day after reading it.

"I send you the last chapters of Volume III. As you've waded through the earlier stuff, you may care to see the record brought up to date. I call it 'The End' because there's nothing more to write, and if there were, I shouldn't write it. Some day I suppose I may have to write again, when my present money (Roden's money) is exhausted. Not till then.

"India was one disappointment, and Japan another, though the fault, I imagine, lay in my lack of appreciation. The South Seas will be a third. 'Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.' I don't want to move on, but I can't stand Yokohama any longer.

"When I get to San Francisco I shall probably cross the States, arriving in New York at the end of December. Then I suppose one has to see this Panama Canal. After that, God knows.

"Before I left England I was looking for the MS. of the earlier chapters of Vol. III. I couldn't find them. Did you by any chance get them mixed up in your luggage? If so, please destroy them at once, with the new chapters, as soon as you have read them. Don't let anybody see them, even Joyce. In this I depend on your friendship and honour.

"I hope Joyce is all right again now. Give my love to her and Elsie, and take my best wishes for yourself. You—I suppose—are a fixture at Rimini, or at any rate out of England. I can't answer for myself, but I don't expect we shall meet again. You must have found me a depressing host in London. I'm sorry. Good-bye."

He said that even Joyce was not to see the third volume—put me on my honour, in fact—and see it she shall not. There is another reason. I read those last chapters and then went through the whole volume from beginning to end. Without exaggeration the effect was overwhelming—his style is so artless, his pathos so unpremeditated. I felt as if I had been re-reading Hardy's most poignant novels—"Tess" and "Jude" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes." It was horrible. I went up to my room, lit the fire and prepared for the holocaust.

Then I was tempted. Yes, he puts me on my honour, depends on my friendship, all that sort of thing.... But I did not burn a sheet. It was a chilly evening, I lit a cigar, and waited for the pyre to burst into destructive flame. As I watched and meditated, Sylvia's little face seemed to look at me out of the fire, the black coals crowning her forehead as I used to see it crowned with her own lustrous hair. I thought of our last meeting when she struggled with her devils of pride and unbelief; and of her meeting with Elsie when she came in hope and left in humiliation. I confess I love Sylvia very dearly—love her as all men love her—for her beauty, her queenliness and clean, passionate pride; love her because I know something of her loneliness, her passion for service, and the repeated rejections of her sacrifices. And I love her a little more on my own account, because she talked to me as if I had been her own sister, and I perhaps know—better than any one—what she must have been through during those sad, mad months in England.

Well, I broke faith with the Seraph and wrote her a line of overture. I was perhaps a fool to do it, as I had already had evidence in plenty of my incompetence to play the rôle of Providence. "I am sending you the MS. of a book," I told her. "It is the third volume of Gordon Tremayne's 'Child of Misery'. I know you have read the first two volumes, for we have discussed and admired them together a dozen times. Did you ever suspect who the author was?

"In telling you it was the Seraph, I am breaking my word to him and running the risk of being branded and disowned. I must tell you, though, to explain the existence of the third volume. I watched it being written, day by day. That evening on the Cher, when he anticipated some words you were going to say, the words had already been written down as part of the current chapter. I saw him brought up short when you were spirited away and the connection was broken. Most wonderful of all, I was present when the connection was re-established and he jumped up like one possessed, exclaiming, 'Sylvia wants me!'

"When you have read these pages, you will not be in a position to doubt any longer. He loves you as no woman was ever loved before, and in him you have found the half that completes and interprets your 'âme incomprise.' Get him back, Sylvia. I don't know how it's to be done, but you must use your woman's wit to find a way. I'm asking for his sake and yours, not for mine—though I would give much to see 'The Child of Misery' growing to happier manhood.

"I am afraid you will say I am hardly the man to ask anything of you or yours. The Rodens and Merivales have hardly made a success of their recent relationship. But I should like to be forgiven. What is my crime? That I helped to keep justice from touching a woman who had done you and your family a great wrong. Well, Sylvia, you'd have done the same thing and told the same lies, had you been in my place and had you wanted Joyce as badly as I wanted her. So will you forgive me and be friends? And if you forgive me, will you forgive the woman who's going to be my wife in a few days' time? I must reconcile myself to the idea of being estranged from the rest of your family, but (between ourselves) I'll let 'em all go if you'll write and say Joyce and I are not quite such monsters of iniquity as you may have thought us.

"One thing more. When you've read the third volume, you will no longer doubt that Mrs. Wylton's presence in Adelphi Terrace was due to charitable impulse towards Joyce and the Seraph. And you ought to think well of any one who played the Good Samaritan to the Seraph. Don't try to rehabilitate her character in public; it can only be done at a risk to the Seraph's personal safety. And in any case you won't convince a man like Nigel or the men he's already told the story to.

"Return me the MS. when you've read it, will you? I was entrusted with its destruction, and put on honour not to let another soul read it. You see how I keep my trust. The worst thing you can say of me is what I've already said of myself—that most damning of all judgments—that I meant well."

I sent that letter to Sylvia nine days ago, and received her reply this morning. She returned me the MS., and I burnt it—with the knowledge that I was destroying one of the greatest literary treasures of this generation.... Well, they had to do the same with some of Ruskin's letters.

"I wish you had not told me to send you back the book," she began. "I should have liked to keep it. Or rather—I don't know—I half wish you hadn't sent it at all. The time that has passed since the beginning of August has been rather hard to bear, and the book has only turned misgiving into certainty.

"Of course I forgive you! As if there were anything to forgive! And Miss Davenant too. I hope she is better now. Will you ask her to accept my love and best wishes for the future? And of course I include you. We were good friends, weren't we? As I said we should be the first time we met. Only I said then that you would find me worth having as a friend, and I'm afraid I did everything I could to disprove it. You stood me awfully well. I think you knew most of the dark corners in my mean little soul—and if you did, perhaps you see that I didn't do much beyond showing my true nature.

"This isn't a pose—I'm really—well, I was going to say 'broken'—but I hope I'm a little more tolerant. You'd hardly recognise me if you saw me, there's little enough of the 'Queen Elizabeth' about me now. It's a horrid, flat world, and I wish I could find something in it to interest me. May I ask for just one good mark? You wrote to me when you left England, telling me to swallow my pride and go to see the Seraph. Well, it was a struggle, but I did go—as you know. When I got there, I seemed to find more than I could bear, and so of course everything went wrong. But I did try, and you will give me my one little good mark, won't you? I want it.

"Mother says I'm run down and in need of a change, so Phil's taking me over to the United States at the beginning of December. There's a sort of Parliamentary Polytechnic Tour to Panama, every one who can get away is going to see the Canal. I don't in the least want to go, but I suppose the States can hardly be duller than England, and as long as mother thinks I must have a change, change I must have. If it isn't Panama it will be somewhere worse.

"We shall spend Christmas in New York. Will you send me a letter of good wishes to the Fifth Avenue Hotel? And tell me where you are going to settle permanently and whether you will let me come and see you. If your wife will not mind, I should like to see you both again—well and happy, I hope. Somebody must be happy in this world, or it wouldn't go on. I don't want to lose you as a friend; I'm feeling lonely enough as it is.

"I am hardly likely to see the Seraph again, but if you meet him, I should like you to give him a message. Say it is from a woman who did him a great wrong: say she now knows the wrong she did him and has been punished for it. Tell him you know how much she hates ever apologising or admitting she was wrong, but that she wants him to know of her apology before she finally passes out of his memory. Will you tell him that? It won't do any good, but it will make me more comfortable in my mind."

At the bottom of the page six words had been scratched out. I did not mean to read them, but the obliteration was incomplete, and the firelight shining up through the paper enabled me to decipher: "Oh, my God, I am miserable." Then followed the signature: "Affectionately yours (may I sign myself 'affectionately'?) Sylvia."

After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.

On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a villa at our leisure. Ambling out of the bank, I wandered in the direction of the telegraph office.

Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging berths on the Wagon-Lits—I knew it would. As soon as our places were booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired. "All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day, one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.—Toby."

Then I came back to the Villa Monreale.

Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time. Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the Seraph, and as husbands and wives in posse should have no secrets from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a study.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."

"Quite so," I assented.

"Did you order rooms?"

"Yes."

"Then we can't go to New York."

"I never proposed to."

"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"

"I didn't."

"Toby!"

She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I only borrowed it for the nonce.

"Will—you—lunch—Christmas Day——" I pointed out. "It doesn't say we shall be there to receive him."

"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little stratagem.

"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.

"Who?" she asked.

"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.

And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.

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