The Disappearing Eye

by Fergus Hume

"If you aren't smashed up, or locked up, meanwhile," said the boy, swinging his portmanteau off the back of the car. "I'll keep an eye on the police news for the next few days. I daresay I'll have to bail you out. Well," he gave my hand a grip, "thanks awfully, old son, for bringing me over."

"Only too pleased," I muttered, beginning to move away. "Good-bye."

I had been to Murchester before, and knew the locality moderately well. Therefore, after leaving Cannington I spun through the Barrack grounds and emerged on to a somewhat suburban road, which led towards the outskirts of the town. A dampish August twilight filled the air with rapidly darkening shadows, and a marked chill in the warmth hinted at the coming night. The sun had already withdrawn behind a bank of western clouds, before vanishing over the verge of the world. I drove the machine at half speed, as there were many country carts about, and ran down a lengthy sloping hill towards a distant glimpse of green. Clankton, which is a fishing village rapidly rising into notoriety as a seaside resort, was over thirty miles away, so if I wished to be seated at my dinner by seven o'clock, it behooved me to use all the power of which the Rippler was capable. Hunger forced me to increase the pace.

Motoring was the one form of amusement which I truly enjoyed, and which a somewhat limited income earned by hard brain-work enabled me to indulge in. But the indulgence precluded my partaking in many other pleasures of this luxurious age, for the Rippler had cost much to buy and cost a considerable sum monthly to keep going. But motoring is less expensive than horse-racing and doctors' bills; and the fresh air, after enforced sedentary deskwork, swept away possible illness. As a moderately popular playwright I made a tolerably good income, although less than I was credited with earning. Still by devoting myself to two machines, a motor and a type-writer, one for play and the other for work, I managed to keep out of debt and keep my Rippler at the same time. But because the machine was a smart one, and because I was constantly on the move between whiles of manufacturing melodramas, people declared that I was a literary millionaire. As though any writer ever became a Crœsus.

I must say that I had greater ambitions than to write cheap sensational plays, and that I did write them at all was due--as it would seem--to mere chance. After I left Oxford my parents died, and--owing to their extravagances--everything was sold. I came to London with an income of fifty pounds a year. I could not exactly starve on one pound a week, but I had a sufficiently bad time, and tried to supplement my income by writing for the papers. An old actor, boarding at a house wherein I had taken up my abode, suggested that I should attempt a melodrama. I did so with his assistance, and between us we managed to get it staged at a small theatre in the East End. To my surprise, the play was a great success, being sufficiently lurid to capture the tastes of the somewhat rough audience. Since that time I had been committed to this particular form of entertainment, and try as I might I could not escape from the memory of my first hit.

But I did not surrender my earlier ambitions, as I have before stated. I worked hard at the cheap sensational plays, which were produced at second-class theatres, and saved all the money I could, in the hope of gathering together sufficient principal to give me an assured income of five hundred a year. When independent, I determined to devote myself to writing really good plays--high-class comedies and poetic dramas for choice--but meanwhile served my apprenticeship to the writing craft under the eye of the public. On the whole, I had very little to complain about, and my portion of the viands at Life's Banquet was moderately tempting, if not superlatively delicate.

I do not think there is anything more to explain about myself, save that I was not handsome, that I had never been in love, and that I occupied a tiny flat in West Kensington, where the rents are moderate. As a rule I wrote furiously every day until a play was completed, then attended to the rehearsing and saw the production. Afterwards I took to my motor, and scoured the country, partly to get fresh air, and partly because I had a chance of stumbling across incidents in real life which afforded me material for plots, situations, scenes, and characters.

At the present moment I was in search of the new and the real, intending to weave actual facts into the sort of melodrama for which Cyrus Vance was famous, or shall we say notorious, as the penny-dreadful success I had won could scarcely be dignified by an adjective applicable only to the career of Napoleon or Cæsar. But I little thought when leaving Murchester, that I was also leaving the long lane of petty success down which I had plodded so soberly, and that the new road opening out before me was one which led to--but I really cannot say just now what it led to. And in this last sentence you will see the cunning of the story-teller, who desires to keep the solution of his mystery until the last chapter. But I am a playwright and not a novelist--two very different beings. Destiny is writing this tale, and I am simply the amanuensis. Therefore you will see how infinitely more ingenious is the goddess than the mere mortal, in constructing an intricate scheme of life and in dealing with the puppets entangled therein.

So in this life-story, which starts in the middle, as it were, and travels both ways to beginning and end, blame Destiny for whatever does not please. I merely recount what happened--simply describe the various scenic backgrounds and rough out the characters. But Destiny weaves the happenings, brings about the unexpected, and solves the mystery, which is of her ingenious contrivance. And throughout I am only the clay which she, the potter, moulds at her will.

In a motor car it is much easier to go wrong on the outskirts of a town than amidst any other surroundings that I know of. When in the open, one can rise in the car and see one's way; but bewildered by streets and houses and traffic and wary policemen, and misled by those who do not know their own locality over-well, one finds a town somewhat perplexing. Making for the west, you get twisted round and emerge into open country towards the east. A single wrong road in the suburbs will lead the complete motorist astray, and will introduce him to a new country of whose geography he is entirely ignorant. Therefore some miles beyond perplexing Murchester I became aware, by questioning an intelligent rustic, that I was going away from Clankton. After some swearing and a close examination of the map, I lighted the lamps and turned on my tracks. Having gone so far out of my way, I had unnecessarily used up a lot of power, and then the inevitable happened--I discovered, to my dismay, that I was short of petrol in the tank. I had no further supply, worse luck! and unless I could obtain some, I began to see that I should have to camp in the fields, or at all events in the nearest village. But, thanks to motoring, petrol is fairly plentiful in unexpected places. If I could discover some village, I made sure of chancing upon a shop wherein to purchase petrol, and therefore was hopeful.