The Moon Rock

by Arthur J. Rees

Barrant! Charles recognized the description with a sinking heart. He turned away with a sickening sense of the impotence of his own efforts. Scotland Yard was searching for Sisily, and no doubt had warned all the London police to look out for her. She might be arrested any minute. Outside the station he bought an evening paper from a yelling newsboy, and hastily scanned the headlines under the flare of a street lamp. There was nothing about the Cornwall murder. So far they were safe. His own departure from Cornwall had apparently caused no suspicion, and Sisily was still free—somewhere in London.

Where? To find her—that was his task. He rallied sharply from his despondency. He would pit himself against the police. A desperate man, guided by love, could do much—might even outwit the tremendous forces of Scotland Yard. He would not be worthy of Sisily if he lost heart because the odds were against him. Fortune’s wheel might have a lucky turn in store for him.

He beckoned a passing taxi-cab. “Euston Square,” he said as he entered. That was obviously the next point of his search.

But Fortune vouchsafed him no more favours that day. His dive into the crowded depths of Euston Square brought forth no result—no clue which would help in his search. He interviewed many keepers of the “temperance hotels” and boarding-houses which abounded in that quarter, all sorts of women, but all alike in their quick suspicious resentment of his guarded inquiries and in their pretended ignorance of past visitors to their dingy portals. He had little experience of the embittered sordid outlook of a class which earned its own bread by supplying indifferent food and shelter to London’s floating population, but after his fiftieth repulse he had no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that the police were again ahead of him with their inquiries.

Nevertheless he persevered fruitlessly until a late hour before returning to his hotel to pass a sleepless night in a fever of baffled excitement. Not till then did he realize how much he had been upheld by the hope of finding Sisily at Charleswood. He was lost in a maze of conjectures, fears, and impossible plans, though his intelligence told him that no plan of search he could form was likely to be of the slightest use. Only luck could help him there, and it was part of the hopelessness of the situation that he dared not invoke the aid of any of those agencies or organizations which make it their business to find persons who have disappeared in London. His search must be a solitary one.

The morning saw him enter upon it with a feverish energy borrowed from the future and the desperate optimism of a temperament willing to gamble with Fortune against such incalculable odds. At first he attempted to divine the motives likely to actuate a girl ignorant of London in seeking a hiding-place there, and shaped his search accordingly; but he gave that up after a while, and decided to search the streets of the inner suburbs, in the hope of encountering her sooner or later. His method was to purchase a map of each district, and explore it thoroughly from one end to the other. He got his meals anywhere, and slept in the nearest hotel where he happened to find himself late at night. But his meals were often missed and his broken sleep haunted with nightmare visions of the pitfalls and snares spread for inexperienced girls in London.

So Charles passed nearly a week of interminable tramping of London streets, scanning the endless medley of faces in the hope of a chance glimpse of Sisily’s wistful eyes and pale features. But it is one thing to gamble with Fortune, and another to win from her. Sometimes she flattered Charles with a chance resemblance which sent him flying across the traffic at the risk of his life, and once he sprang off a ‘bus after a girl he saw vanishing into an Underground lift, but it was not Sisily. The end of the week saw him returning from uncharted areas of outer London to the more familiar thoroughfares of the city’s life, for in that time his dauntless spirit had realized the colossal folly of any attempt to search London by system. He had no intention of abandoning his quest, but he now felt that it did not matter where his footsteps led him, because it was only by a piece of wonderful luck that he could ever hope to meet Sisily. He did not even know if she was in London. But he believed she was, and some indomitable inward whisper kept assuring him that he would find her sooner or later. So he kept on—and on, seeking the vision of his desires with the insatiable eagerness of a man pursuing the unreachable horizon of a hashish dream.

It was towards the end of this time that it occurred to Charles to wonder if Sisily had made her way to Charleswood since his first visit there. He was resting in a Lambeth public-house after an exhausting day’s wanderings over South London when this thought came to him. He sat up, slapping his thigh with excitement, asking himself why he had not thought of that before. It was a chance—certainly a chance. He decided to run down to Charleswood again on the following afternoon.

He did, and found himself disappointed once more. The elegant Miss Pursill had gone to Brighton for change of air, but the pretty maid, who had been left behind to look after the house and the decayed old lady, assured him that there had been nobody to see Mrs. Pursill since his last visit. Miss Pursill went away the very next day after he was down, and there had been no callers or visitors.

She imparted this information at first with a sparkle of coquetry in her eye, then with a glance of compassion as she noticed how much the debonair visitor had changed for the worse since she saw him last. She looked at him solicitously, as though she would have liked to remove with womanly hands the marks of neglect from his apparel. From the door she watched him making his way back to the station. She stood there in the shade of the evening, following him with her eyes until the bend of the road hid him from view.