THE BRIGHTENER

BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

FRONTISPIECE
BY WALTER DE MARIS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY AINSLEE's MAGAZINE CO., NEW YORK AND GREAT BRITAIN.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

"A SLIGHT SOUND ATTRACTED OUR ATTENTION TO THE HISTORIC STAIRWAY"

PREFACE

To the Kind People Who Read Our Books:

I want to explain to you, in case it may interest you a little, why it is that I want to keep the "firm name" (as we used to call it) of "C. N. & A. M. Williamson," although my husband has gone out of this world.

It is because I feel very strongly that he helps me with the work even more than he was able to do in this world. I always had his advice, and when we took motor tours he gave me his notes to use as well as my own. But now there is far more help than that. I cannot explain in words: I can only feel. And because of that feeling, I could not bear to have the "C. N." disappear from the title page.

Dear People who may read this, I hope that you will wish to see the initials "C. N." with those of

A. M. Williamson

CONTENTS

[BOOK I. THE YACHT]
[CHAPTER I. Down and out]
[CHAPTER II. Up and in]
[CHAPTER III. Thunderbolt Six]
[CHAPTER IV. The Black Thing in the Sea]
[CHAPTER V. What I Found in My Cabin]
[CHAPTER VI. The Woman of the Past]
[CHAPTER VII. The Secret Behind the Silence]
[CHAPTER VIII. The Great Surprise]
[CHAPTER IX. The Game of Bluff]
[BOOK II. THE HOUSE WITH THE TWISTED CHIMNEY]
[CHAPTER I. The Shell-Shock Man]
[CHAPTER II. The Advertisement]
[CHAPTER III. The Letter with the Purple Seal]
[CHAPTER IV. The Tangled Web]
[CHAPTER V. The Knitting Woman of Dun Moat]
[CHAPTER VI. The Lightning Stroke]
[CHAPTER VII. The Red Baize Door]
[CHAPTER VIII. "When in Doubt, Play a Trump"]
[CHAPTER IX. The Rat Trap]
[BOOK III. THE DARK VEIL]
[CHAPTER I. The Girl With the Letter]
[CHAPTER II. The Hermit]
[CHAPTER III. The Chair at the Savoy]
[CHAPTER IV. The Spirit of June]
[CHAPTER V. The Bargain]
[CHAPTER VI. The Last Séance]
[BOOK IV. THE MYSTERY OF MRS. BRANDRETH]
[CHAPTER I. The Man in the Cushioned Chair]
[CHAPTER II. Mrs. Brandreth]
[CHAPTER III. The Condition She Made]
[CHAPTER IV. The Old Love Story]
[CHAPTER V. The Man with the Brilliant Eyes]
[CHAPTER VI. The Pictures]
[CHAPTER VII. Sir Beverley's Impressions]
[CHAPTER VIII. While We Waited]
[CHAPTER IX. The Good News]
[CHAPTER X. The Climax]
[CHAPTER XI. What Gaby Told]
[CHAPTER XII. The Woman in the Theatre]
[CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Brandreth's Story]
[BOOKS BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON]

THE BRIGHTENER

BOOK I

THE YACHT

CHAPTER I

DOWN AND OUT

"I wonder who will tell her," I heard somebody say, just outside the arbour.

The somebody was a woman; and the somebody else who answered was a man. "Glad it won't be me!" he replied, ungrammatically.

I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the first instant the one thing I did care about was, that they should remain outside my arbour, instead of finding their way in. Then, the next words waked my interest. They sounded mysterious, and I loved mysteries—then.

"It's an awful thing to happen—a double blow, in the same moment!" exclaimed the woman.

They had come to a standstill, close to the arbour; but there was hope that they mightn't discover it, because it wasn't an ordinary arbour. It was really a deep, sweet-scented hollow scooped out of an immense arbor vitæ tree, camouflaged to look like its sister trees in a group beside the path. The hollow contained an old marble seat, on which I was sitting, but the low entrance could only be reached by one who knew of its existence, passing between those other trees.

I felt suddenly rather curious about the person struck by a "double blow," for a "fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind"; and at that moment I was a sort of modern, female Damocles myself. In fact, I had got the Marchese d'Ardini to bring me away from the ball-room to hide in this secret arbour of his old Roman garden, because my mood was out of tune for dancing. I hadn't wished to come to the ball, but Grandmother had insisted. Now I had made an excuse of wanting an ice, to get rid of my dear old friend the Marchese for a few minutes.

"She couldn't have cared about the poor chap," said the man in a hard voice, with a slight American accent, "or she wouldn't be here to-night."

My heart missed a beat.

"They say," explained the woman, "that her grandmother practically forced her to marry the prince, and arranged it at a time when he'd have to go back to the Front an hour after the wedding, so they shouldn't be really married, if anything happened to him. I don't know whether that's true or not!"

But I knew! I knew that it was true, because they were talking about me. In an instant—before I'd decided whether to rush out or sit still—I knew something more.

"You ought to be well informed, though," the woman's voice continued. "You're a distant cousin, aren't you?"

"'Distant' is the word! About forty-fourth cousin, four times removed," the man laughed with frank bitterness. (No wonder, as he'd unsuccessfully claimed the right to our family estate, to hitch on to his silly old, dug-up title!) Not only did I know, now, of whom they were talking, but I knew one of those who talked: a red-headed giant of a man I'd seen to-night for the first time, though he had annoyed Grandmother and me from a distance, for years. In fact, we'd left home and taken up the Red Cross industry in Rome, because of him. Indirectly it was his fault that I was married, since, if it hadn't been for him, I shouldn't have come to Italy or met Prince di Miramare. I did not stop, however, to think of all this. It just flashed through my subconscious mind, while I asked myself, "What has happened to Paolo? Has he been killed, or only wounded? And what do the brutes mean by a 'double blow'?"

I had no longer the impulse to rush out. I waited, with hushed breath. I didn't care whether it were nice or not to eavesdrop. All I thought of was my intense desire to hear what those two would say next.

"Like grandmother, like grand-daughter, I suppose," went on the ex-cowboy baronet, James Courtenaye. "A hard-hearted lot my only surviving female relatives seem to be! Her husband at the Front, liable to die at any minute; her grandmother dying at home, and our fair young Princess dances gaily to celebrate a small Italian victory!"

"You forget what's happened to-night, Sir Jim, when you speak of your 'surviving' female relatives," said the woman.

"By George, yes! I've got but one left now. And I expect, from what I hear, I shall be called upon to support her!"

Then Grandmother was dead!—wonderful, indomitable Grandmother, who, only three hours ago, had said, "You must go to this dance, Elizabeth. I wish it!" Grandmother, whose last words had been, "You are worthy to be what I've made you: a Princess. You are exactly what I was at your age."

Poor, magnificent Grandmother! She had often told me that she was the greatest beauty of her day. She had sent me away from her to-night, so that she might die alone. Or—had the news of the other blow come while I was gone, and killed her?

Dazedly I stumbled to my feet, and in a second I should have pushed past the pair; but, just at this moment, footsteps came hurrying along the path. Those two moved out of the way with some murmured words I didn't catch: and then, the Marchese was with me again. I saw his plump figure silhouetted on the silvered blue dusk of moonlight. He had brought no ice! He flung out empty hands in a despairing gesture which told that he also knew.

"My dear child—my poor little Princess——" he began in Italian; but I cut him short.

"I've heard some people talking. Grandmother is dead. And—Paolo?"

"His plane crashed. It was instant death—not painful. Alas, the telegram came to your hotel, and the Signora, your grandmother, opened it. Her maid found it in her hand. The brave spirit had fled! Mr. Carstairs, her solicitor, and his kind American wife came here at once. How fortunate was the business which brought him to Rome just now, looking after your interests! A search-party was seeking me, while I sought a mere ice! And now the Carstairs wait to take you to your hotel. I cannot leave our guests, or I would go with you, too."

He got me back to the old palazzo by a side door, and guided me to a quiet room where the Carstairs sat. They were not alone. An American friend of the ex-cowboy was with them—(another self-made millionaire, but a much better made one, of the name of Roger Fane)—and with him a school friend of mine he was in love with, Lady Shelagh Leigh. Shelagh ran to me with her arms out, but I pushed her aside. A darling girl, and I wouldn't have done it for the world, if I had been myself!

She shrank away, hurt; and vaguely I was conscious that the dark man with the tragic eyes—Roger Fane—was coaxing her out of the room. Then I forgot them both as I turned to the Carstairs for news. I little guessed how soon and strangely my life and Shelagh's and Roger Fane's would twine together in a Gordian knot of trouble!

I don't remember much of what followed, except that a taxi rushed us—the Carstairs and me—to the Grand Hotel, as fast as it could go through streets filled with crowds shouting over one of those October victories. Mrs. Carstairs—a mouse of a woman in person, a benevolent Machiavelli in brain—held my hand gently, and said nothing, while her clever old husband tried to cheer me with words. Afterward I learned that she spent those minutes in mapping out my whole future!

You see, she knew what I didn't know at the time: that I hadn't enough money in the world to pay for Grandmother's funeral, not to mention our hotel bills!

A clock, when you come to think of it, is a fortunate animal.

When it runs down, it can just comfortably stop. No one expects it to do anything else. No one accuses it of weakness or lack of backbone because it doesn't struggle nobly to go on ticking and striking. It is not sternly commanded to wind itself. Unless somebody takes that trouble off its hands, it stays stopped. Whereas, if a girl or a young, able-bodied woman runs down (that is, comes suddenly to the end of everything, including resources), she mayn't give up ticking for a single second. She must wind herself, and this is really quite as difficult for her to do as for a clock, unless she is abnormally instructed and accomplished.

I am neither. The principal things I know how to do are, to look pretty, and be nice to people, so that when they are with me they feel purry and pleasant. With this stock-in-trade I had a perfectly gorgeous time in life, until—Fate stuck a finger into my mechanism and upset the working of my pendulum.

I ought to have realized that the gorgeousness would some time come to a bad and sudden end. But I was trained to put off what wasn't delightful to do or think of to-day, until to-morrow; because to-morrow could take care of itself and droves of shorn lambs as well.

Grandmother and I had been pals since I was five, when my father (her son) and my mother quietly died of diphtheria, and left me—her namesake—to her. We lived at adorable Courtenaye Abbey on the Devonshire Coast, where furniture, portraits, silver, and china fit for a museum were common, every-day objects to my childish eyes. None of these things could be sold—or the Abbey—for they were all heirlooms (of our branch of the Courtenayes, not the Americanized ex-cowboy's insignificant branch, be it understood!). But the place could be let, with everything in it; and when Mr. Carstairs was first engaged to unravel Grandmother's financial tangles, he implored her permission to find a tenant. That was before the war, when I was seventeen; and Grandmother refused.

"What," she cried (I was in the room, all ears), "would you have me advertise the fact that we're reduced to beggary, just as the time has come to present Elizabeth? I'll do nothing of the kind. You must stave off the smash. That's your business. Then Elizabeth will marry a title with money, or an American millionaire or someone, and prevent it from ever coming."

This thrilled me, and I felt like a Joan of Arc out to save her family, not by capturing a foe, but a husband.

Mr. Carstairs did stave off the smash, Heaven or its opposite alone knows how, and Grandmother spent about half a future millionaire husband's possible income in taking a town house, with a train of servants; renting a Rolls-Royce, and buying for us both the most divine clothes imaginable. I was long and leggy, and thin as a young colt; but my face was all right, because it was a replica of Grandmother's at seventeen. My eyes and dimples were said to be Something to Dream About, even then (I often dreamed of them myself, after much flattery at balls!), and already my yellow-brown braids measured off at a yard and a half. Besides, I had Grandmother's Early Manner (as one says of an artist: and really she was one), so, naturally, I received proposals: lots of proposals. But—they were the wrong lots!

All the good-looking young men who wanted to marry me had never a penny to do it on. All the rich ones were so old and appalling that even Grandmother hadn't the heart to order me to the altar. So there it was! Then Jim Courtenaye came over from America, where, after an adventurous life (or worse), he'd made pots of money by hook or by crook, probably the latter. He stirred up, from the mud of the past, a trumpery baronetcy bestowed by stodgy King George the Third upon an ancestor in that younger, less important branch of the Courtenayes. Also did he strive expensively to prove a right to Courtenaye Abbey as well, though not one of his Courtenayes had ever put a nose inside it and I was the next heir, after Grandmother. He didn't fight (he kindly explained to Mr. Carstairs) to snatch the property out of our mouths. If he got it, we might go on living there till the end of our days. All he wanted was to own the place, and have the right to keep it up decently, as we'd never been able to do.

Well, he had to be satisfied with his title and without the Abbey; which was luck for us. But there our luck ended. Not only did the war break out before I had a single proposal worth accepting, but an awful thing happened at the Abbey.

Grandmother had to keep on the rented town house, for patriotic motives, no matter what the expense, because she had turned it into an ouvroir for the making of hospital supplies. She directed the work herself, and I and Shelagh Leigh (Shelagh was just out of the schoolroom then) and lots of other girls slaved seven hours a day. Suddenly, just when we'd had a big "hurry order" for pneumonia jackets, there was a shortage of material. But Grandmother wasn't a woman to be conquered by shortages! She remembered a hundred yards of bargain stuff she'd bought to be used for new dust-sheets at the Abbey; and as all the servants but two were discharged when we left for town, the sheets had never been made up.

She could not be spared for a day, but I could. By this time I was nineteen, and felt fifty in wisdom, as all girls do, since the war. Grandmother was old-fashioned in some ways, but new-fashioned in others, so she ordered me off to Courtenaye Abbey by myself to unlock the room where the bundle had been put. Train service was not good, and I would have to stay the night; but she wired to old Barlow and his wife—once lodge-keepers, now trusted guardians of the house. She told Mrs. Barlow (a pretty old Devonshire Thing, like peaches and cream, called by me "Barley") to get my old room ready; and Barlow was to meet me at the train. At the last moment, however, Shelagh Leigh decided to go with me; and if we had guessed it, this was to turn out one of the most important decisions of her life. Barlow met us, of course; and how he had changed since last I'd seen his comfortable face! I expected him to be charmed with the sight of me, if not of Shelagh, for I was always a favourite with Barl and Barley; but the poor man was absent-minded and queer. When a stuffy station-cab from Courtenaye Coombe had rattled us to the shut-up Abbey, I went at once to the housekeeper's room and had a heart-to-heart talk with the Barlows. It seemed that the police had been to the house and "run all through it," because of reports that lights had flashed from the upper windows out to sea at night—"signals to submarines!"

Nothing suspicious was found, however, and the police made it clear that they considered the Barlows themselves above reproach. Good people, they were, with twin nephews from Australia fighting in the war! Indeed, an inspector had actually apologized for the visit, saying that the police had pooh-poohed the reports at first. They had paid no attention until "the story was all over the village"; and there are not enough miles between Courtenaye Abbey and Plymouth Dockyard for even the rankest rumours to be disregarded long.

Barley was convinced that one of our ghosts had been waked up by the war—the ghost of a young girl burned to death, who now and then rushes like a column of fire through the front rooms of the second floor in the west wing; but the old pet hoped I wouldn't let this idea of hers keep me awake. The ghost of a nice English young lady was preferable in her opinion to a German spy in the flesh! I agreed, but I was not keen on seeing either. My nerves had been jumpy since the last air-raid over London, consequently I lay awake hour after hour, though Shelagh was in Grandmother's room adjoining mine, with the door ajar between.

When I did sleep, I must have slept heavily. I dreamed that I was a prisoner on a German submarine, and that signals from Courtenaye Abbey flashed straight into my face. They flashed so brightly that they set me on fire; and with the knowledge that, if I couldn't escape at once, I should become a Family Ghost, I wrenched myself awake with a start.

Yes, I was awake; though what I saw was so astonishing that I thought it must be another nightmare. There really was a strong light pouring into my eyes. What it came from I don't know to this day, but probably an electric torch. Anyhow, the ray was so powerful that, though directed upon my face, it faintly lit another face close to mine, as I suddenly sat up in bed.

Instantly that face drew back, and then—as if on a second thought, after a surprise—out went the light. By contrast, the darkness was black as a bath of ink, though I'd pulled back the curtains before going to bed, and the sky was sequined with stars. But on my retina was photographed a pale, illumined circle with a face looking out of it—looking straight at me. You know how quickly these light-pictures begin to fade, but, before this dimmed I had time to verify my first waking impression.

The face was a woman's face—beautiful and hideous at the same time, like Medusa. It was young, yet old. It had deep-set, long eyes that slanted slightly up to the corners. It was thin and hollow-cheeked, with a pointed chin cleft in the middle; and was framed with bright auburn hair of a curiously unreal colour.

When the blackness closed in, and I heard in the dark scrambling sounds like a rat running amok in the wainscot, I gave a cry. In my horror and bewilderment I wasn't sure yet whether I were awake or asleep; but someone answered. Dazed as I was, I recognized Shelagh's sweet young voice, and at the same instant her electric bed-lamp was switched on in the next room. "Coming!—coming!" she cried, and appeared in the doorway, her hair gold against the light.

By this time I had the sense to switch on my own lamp, and, comforted by it and my pal's presence, I told Shelagh in a few words what had happened. "Why, how weird! I dreamed the same dream!" she broke in. "At least, I dreamed about a light, and a face."

Hastily we compared notes, and realized that Shelagh had not dreamed: that the woman of mystery had visited us both; only, she had gone to Shelagh first, and had not been scared away as by me, because Shelagh hadn't thoroughly waked up.

We decided that our vision was no ghost, but that, for once, rumour was right. In some amazing way a spy had concealed herself in the rambling old Abbey (the house has several secret rooms of which we know; and there might be others, long forgotten), and probably she had been signalling until warned of danger by that visit from the police. We resolved to rise at daybreak, and walk to Courtenay Coombe to let the police know what had happened to us; but, as it turned out, a great deal more was to happen before dawn.

We felt pretty sure that the spy would cease her activities for the night, after the shock of finding our rooms occupied. Still it would be cowardly—we thought—to lie in bed. We slipped on dressing-gowns, therefore, and with candles (only our wing was furnished with electric light, for which dear Grandmother had never paid) we descended fearsomely to the Barlows' quarters. Having roused the old couple and got them to put on some clothes, a search-party of four perambulated the house. So far as we could see, however, the place was innocent of spies; and at length we crept into bed again.

We didn't mean or expect to sleep, of course, but we must all have "dropped off," otherwise we should have smelt the smoke long before we did smell it. As it was, the great hall slowly burned until Barlow's usual getting-up hour. Shelagh and I knew nothing until Barl came pounding at my door. Then the stinging of our nostrils and eyelids was a fire alarm!

It's wonderful how quickly you can do things when you have to! Ten minutes later I was running as fast as I could go to the village, and might have earned a prize for a two-mile sprint if I hadn't raced alone. By the time the fire-engines reached the Abbey it was too late to save a whole side of the glorious old "linen fold" panelling of the hall. The celebrated staircase was injured, too, and several suits of historic armour, as well as a number of antique weapons.

Fortunately the portraits were all in the picture gallery, and the fire was stopped before it had swept beyond the hall. Where it had started was soon learned, but "how" remained a mystery, for shavings and oil-tins had apparently been stuffed behind the panelling. The theory of the police was, that the spy (no one doubted the spy's existence now!) had seen that the "game was up," since the place would be strictly watched from that night on. Out of sheer spite, the female Hun had attempted to burn down the famous old house before she lost her chance; or had perhaps already made preparations to destroy it when her other work should be ended.

There was a hue and cry over the county in pursuit of the fugitive, which echoed as far as London; but the woman had escaped, and not even a trace of her was found.

Grandmother openly claimed that her inspiration in sending for some dust-sheets had not only saved the Abbey, but England. It was most agreeable to bask in self-respect and the praise of friends. When, however, we were bombarded by newspaper men, who took revenge for Grandmother's snubs by publishing interviews with Sir "Jim" (by this time Major Courtenaye, D. S. O., M. C., unluckily at home with a "Blighty" wound), the haughty lady lost her temper.

It was bad enough, she complained, to have the Abbey turned prematurely into a ruin, but for That Fellow to proclaim that it wouldn't have happened had he been the owner was too much! The democratic and socialist papers ("rags," according to Grandmother) stood up for the self-made cowboy baronet, and blamed the great lady who had "thrown away in selfish extravagance" what should have paid the upkeep of an historic monument. This, to a woman who directed the most patriotic ouvroir in London! And to pile Ossa on Pelion, our Grosvenor Square landlord was cad enough to tell his friends (who told theirs, etc., etc.) that he had never received his rent! Which statement, by the way, was all the more of a libel because it was true.

Now you understand how Sir James Courtenaye was responsible for driving us to Italy, and indirectly bringing about my marriage; for Grandmother wiped the dust of Grosvenor Square from our feet with Italian passports, and swept me off to new activities in Rome.

Here was Mr. Carstairs' moment to say, "I told you so! If only you had left the Abbey when I advised you that it was best, all would have been well. Now, with the central hall in ruins, nobody would be found dead in the place, not even a munition millionaire." But being a particularly kind man he said nothing of the sort. He merely implored Grandmother to live economically in Rome: and of course (being Grandmother!) she did nothing of the sort.

We lived at the most expensive hotel, and whenever we had any money, gave it to the Croce Rossa, running up bills for ourselves. But we mixed much joy with a little charity, and my descriptive letters to Shelagh were so attractive that she persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Pollen, her guardians (uncle and aunt; sickening snobs!), to bring her to Rome; pretext, Red Cross work, which covered so much frivolling in the war! Then, not long after, the cowboy's friend, Roger Fane, appeared on the scene, in the American Expeditionary Force; a thrilling, handsome, and mysteriously tragic person. James Courtenaye also turned up, having been ordered to the Italian Front; but Grandmother and I contrived never to meet him. And when our financial affairs began to rumble like an earthquake, Mr. Carstairs decided to see Grandmother in person.

It was when she received his telegram, "Coming at once," that she decided I must accept Prince di Miramare. She had wanted an Englishman for me; but a Prince is a Prince, and though Paolo was far from rich at the moment, he had the prospect of an immediate million—liras, alas! not pounds. An enormously rich Greek offered him that sum for the fourteenth-century Castello di Miramare on a mountain all its own, some miles from Rome. In consideration of a large sum paid to Paolo's younger brother Carlo, the two Miramare princes would break the entail; and this quick solution of our difficulties was to be a surprise for Mr. Carstairs.

Paolo and I were married as hastily as such matters can be arranged abroad, between persons of different nations; and it was true (as those cynics outside the arbour said) that my soldier prince went back to the Front an hour after the wedding. It was just after we were safely spliced that Grandmother ceased to fight a temperature of a hundred and three, and gave up to an attack of 'flu. She gave up quite quietly, for she thought that, whatever happened, I would be rich, because she had browbeaten lazy, unbusinesslike Paolo into making a will in my favour. The one flaw in this calculation was, his concealing from her the fact that the entail was not yet legally broken. No contract between him and the Greek could be signed while the entail existed; therefore Paolo's will gave me only his personal possessions. These were not much; for I doubt if even the poor boy's uniforms were paid for. But I am thankful that Grandmother died without realizing her failure; and I hope that her spirit was far away before the ex-cowboy began making overtures.

If it had not been for Mrs. Carstairs' inspiration, I don't know what would have become of me!

CHAPTER II

UP AND IN

You may remember what Jim Courtenaye said in the garden: that he would probably have to support me.

Well, he dared to offer, through Mr. Carstairs, to do that very thing, "for the family's sake." At least, he proposed to pay off all our debts and allow me an income of four hundred a year, if it turned out that my inheritance from Paolo was nil.

When Mr. Carstairs passed on the offer to me, as he was bound to do, I said what I felt dear Grandmother would have wished me to say: "I'll see him d—d first!" And I added, "I hope you'll repeat that to the Person."

I think from later developments that Mr. Carstairs cannot have repeated my reply verbatim. But I have not yet quite come to the part about those developments. After the funeral, when I knew the worst about the entail, and that Paolo's brother Carlo was breaking it wholly for his own benefit, and not at all for mine, Mrs. Carstairs asked sympathetically if I had thought what I should like to do.

"Like to do?" I echoed, bitterly. "I should like to go home to the dear old Abbey, and restore the place as it ought to be restored, and have plenty of money, without lifting a finger to get it. What I must do is a different question."

"Well, then, my dear, supposing we put it in that brutal way. Have you thought—er——"

"I've done nothing except think. But I've been brought up with about as much earning capacity as a mechanical doll. The only thing I have the slightest talent for being, is—a detective!"

"Good gracious!" was Mrs. Carstairs' comment on that.

"I've felt ever since spy night at the Abbey that I had it in me to make a good detective," I modestly explained.

"'Princess di Miramare, Private Detective,' would be a distinctly original sign-board over an office door," the old lady reflected. "But I believe I've evolved something more practical, considering your name—and your age—(twenty-one, isn't it?)—and your looks. Not that detective talent mayn't come in handy even in the profession I'm going to suggest. Very likely it will—among other things. It's a profession that'll call for all the talents you can get hold of."

"Do you by chance mean marriage?" I inquired, coldly. "I've never been a wife. But I suppose I am a sort of widow."

"If you weren't a sort of widow you couldn't cope with the profession I've—er—invented. You wouldn't be independent enough."

"Invented? Then you don't mean marriage! And not even the stage. I warn you that I solemnly promised Grandmother never to go on the stage."

"I know, my child. She mentioned that to Henry—my husband—when they were discussing your future, before you both left London. My idea is much more original than marriage, or even the stage. It popped into my mind the night Mrs. Courtenaye died, while we were in a taxi between the Palazzo Ardini and this hotel. I said to myself, 'Dear Elizabeth shall be a Brightener!'"

"A Brightener?" I repeated, with a vague vision of polishing windows or brasses. "I don't——"

"You wouldn't! I told you I'd invented the profession expressly for you. Now I'm going to tell you what it is. I felt that you'd not care to be a tame companion, even to the most gilded millionairess, or a social secretary to a——"

"Horror!—no, I couldn't be a tame anything."

"That's why brightening is your line. A Brightener couldn't be a Brightener and tame. She must be brilliant—winged—soaring above the plane of those she brightens; expensive, to make herself appreciated; capable of taking the lead in social direction. Why, my dear, people will fight to get you—pay any price to secure you! Now do you understand?"

I didn't. So she explained. After that dazzling preface, the explanation seemed rather an anti-climax. Still, I saw that there might be something in the plan—if it could be worked. And Mrs. Carstairs guaranteed to work it.

My widowhood (save the mark!) qualified me to become a chaperon. And my Princesshood would make me a gilded one. Chaperonage, at its best, might be amusing. But chaperonage was far from the whole destiny of a Brightener. A Brightener need not confine herself to female society, as a mere Companion must. A young woman, even though a widow and a Princess, could not "companion" a person of the opposite sex, even if he were a hundred. But she might, from a discreet distance, be his Brightener. That is, she might brighten a lonely man's life without tarnishing her own reputation.

"After all," Mrs. Carstairs went on, "in spite of what's said against him, Man is a Fellow Being. If a cat may look at a King, Man may look at a Princess. And unless he's in her set, he can be made to pay for the privilege. Think of a lonely button or boot-maker! What would he give for the honour of invitations to tea, with introductions and social advice, from the popular Princess di Miramare? He might have a wife or daughters, or both, who needed a leg up. They would come extra! He might be a widower—in fact, I've caught the first widower for you already. But unluckily you can't use him yet."

"Ugh!" I shuddered. "Sounds as if he were a fish—wriggling on a hook till I'm ready to tear it out of his gills!"

"He is a fish—a big fish. In fact, I may as well break it to you that he is Roger Fane."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "It would take more electricity than I'm fitted with to brighten his tragic and mysterious gloom!"

"Not at all. In fact, you are the only one who can brighten it."

"What are you driving at? He's dead in love with Shelagh Leigh."

"That's just it. As things are, he has no hope of marrying Shelagh. She likes him, as you probably know better than I do, for you're her best pal, although she's a year or so younger than you——"

"Two years."

"Well, as I was going to say, in many ways she's a child compared to you. She's as beautiful as one of those cut-off cherubs in the prayer-books, and as old-fashioned as an early Victorian sampler. These blonde Dreams with naturally waving golden hair and rosebud mouths, and eyes big as half-crowns, have that drawback, as I've discovered since I came to live in England. In my country we don't grow early Victorian buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens, don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh in spite of his money. Money's the one nice thing they've got themselves, which they can pass on to Shelagh. Probably they forced the wretched Miss Pollen, who was the male snob's sister, to marry the old Marquis of Leigh just as they wish to compel Shelagh to marry some other wreck of his sort—and die young, as her mother did. The girl's a dear—a perfect lamb!—but lambs can't stand up against lions. They generally lie down inside them. But with you at the helm, the Pollen lions could be forced——"

"Not if they knew it!" I cut in.

"They wouldn't know it. Did you know that you were being forced to marry that poor young prince of yours?"

"I wasn't forced. I was persuaded."

"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the sea in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up Brightening. The question is, do you agree?"

"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it was.

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's that! The next thing is to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have a background of your own."

"You forget—I haven't a farthing!" I fiercely reminded her. "But Mr. Carstairs won't forget! I've made him too much trouble. The best Brightening won't run to half a Background in Berkeley Square."

"Wait," Mrs. Carstairs calmed me. "I haven't finished the whole proposition yet. In America, when we run up a sky-scraper, we don't begin at the bottom, in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel girders into the earth; then we start at the top and work down. That's what I've been doing with my plan. It's perfect. Only you've got to support it with something."

"What is it you're trying to break to me?" I demanded.

The dear old lady swallowed heavily. (It must be something pretty awful if it daunted her!)

"You like Roger Fane," she began.

"Yes, I admire him. He's handsome and interesting, though a little too mysterious and tragic to live with for my taste."

"He's not mysterious at all!" she defended Fane. "His tragedy—for there was a tragedy!—is no secret in America. I often met him before the war, when I ran over to pay visits in New York, though he was far from being in the Four Hundred. But at the moment I've no more to say about Roger Fane. I've been using him for a handle to brandish a friend of his in front of your eyes."

My blood grew hot. "Not the ex-cowboy?"

"That's no way to speak of Sir James Courtenaye."

"Then he's what you want to break to me?"

"I want—I mean, I'm requested!—to inform you of a way he proposes out of the woods for you—at least, the darkest part of the woods."

"I told Mr. Carstairs I'd see James Courtenaye d—d rather than——"

"This is a different affair entirely. You must listen, my dear, unless I'm to wash my hands of you! What I have to describe is the foundation for the Brightening."

I swallowed some more of Grandmother's expressions which occurred to me, and listened.

Sir James Courtenaye's second proposition was not an offer of charity. He suggested that I let Courtenaye Abbey to him for a term of years, for the sum of one thousand five hundred pounds per annum, the first three years to be paid in advance. (This clause, Mrs. Carstairs hinted, would enable me to dole out crumbs here and there for the quieting of Grandmother's creditors.) Sir James's intention was, not to use the Abbey as a residence, but to make of it a show place for the public during the term of his lease. In order to do this, the hall must be restored and the once-famous gardens beautified. This expense he would undertake, carrying the work quickly to completion, and would reimburse himself by means of the fees—a shilling a head—charged for viewing the house and its historic treasures.

When I had heard all this, I hesitated what to answer, thinking of Grandmother, and wondering what she would have said had she been in my shoes. But as this thought flitted into my mind, it was followed by another. One of Grandmother's few old-fashioned fads was her style of shoe: pattern 1875. The shoes I stood in, at this moment, were pattern 1918. In my shoes Grandmother would simply scream! And I wouldn't be at my best in hers. This was the parable which commonsense put to me, and Mrs. Carstairs cleverly offering no word of advice, I paused no longer than five minutes before I snapped out, "Yes! The horrid brute can have the darling place till I get rich."

"How sweet of you to consent so graciously, darling!" purred Mrs. Carstairs. Then we both laughed. After which I fell into her arms, and cried.

For fear I might change my mind, Mr. Carstairs got me to sign some dull-looking documents that very day, and the oddness of their being all ready to hand didn't strike me till the ink was dry.

"Henry had them prepared because he knew how sensible you are at heart—I mean at head," his wife explained. "Indeed, it is a compliment to your intelligence."

Anyhow, it gave me a wherewithal to throw sops to a whole Zooful of Cerberuses, and still keep enough to take that flat in the Carstairs' house in Berkeley Square. Of course to do all this meant leaving Italy for good and going back to England. But there was little to hold me in Rome. My inheritance from my husband-of-an-hour could be packed in a suitcase! Shelagh and her snobs travelled with us. And as soon as they were demobilized, Roger Fane and James Courtenaye followed, if not us, at least in our direction.

I don't think that Aladdin's Lamp builders "had anything on" Sir Jim's (as he himself said), judging by the way the restorations simply flew. From what I heard of the sums he spent, it would take the shillings of all England and America as sightseers to put him in pocket. But as Mr. Carstairs pointed out, that was his business.

Mine was to gird my loins at Lucille's and Redfern's, in order to become a Brightener. For my pendulum was ticking regularly now. I was no longer down and out. I was up and in. Elizabeth, Princess di Miramare, was spoiling for her first job.

CHAPTER III

THUNDERBOLT SIX

Looking back through my twenty-one-and-three-quarter years, I divide my life, up to date, into thunderbolts.

Thunderbolt One: Death of my Father and Mother.

Thunderbolt Two: Spy Night at the Abbey.

Thunderbolt Three: My Marriage to Paolo di Miramare.

Thunderbolt Four: The "Double Blow."

Thunderbolt Five: Beggary!

Which brings me along the road to Thunderbolt Six.

Mrs. Percy-Hogge was, and is, exactly what you would think from her name; which is why I don't care to dwell at length on the few months I spent brightening her at Bath. It was bad enough living them!

Now, if I were a Hogge instead of a Courtenaye, plus Miramare, I would be one, plain, unadulterated, and unadorned. She adulterated her Hogg with an "e," and adorned it with a "Percy," her late husband's Christian name. He being in heaven or somewhere, the hyphen couldn't hurt him; and with it, and his money, and Me, she began at Bath the attempt to live down the past of a mere margarine-making Hogg. Whole bunches of Grandmother's friends were in the Bath zone just then, which is why I chose it, and they were so touched by my widow's weeds that they were charming to Mrs. P.-H. in order to please me. As most of them—though stuffy—were titled, and there were two Marchionesses and one Duchess, the result for Mrs. Percy-Hogge was brilliant. She, who had never before known any one above a knight-ess, was in Paradise. She had taken a fine old Georgian house, furnished from basement to attic by Mallet, and had launched invitations for a dinner-party "to meet the Dowager-Duchess of Stoke," when—bang fell Thunderbolt Six!

Naturally it fell on me, not her, as thunderbolts have no affinity for Hoggs. It fell in the shape of a telegram from Mrs. Carstairs.

She wired:

Come London immediately, for consultation. Terrible theft at Abbey. Barlows drugged and bound by burglars. Both prostrated. Affair serious. Let me know train. Will meet. Love.

Caroline Carstairs.

I wired in return that I would catch the first train, and caught it. The old lady kept her word also, and met me. Before her car had whirled us to Berkeley Square I had got the whole story out of her; which was well, as an ordeal awaited me, and I needed time to camouflage my feelings.

I had been sent for in haste because the news of the burglary was not to leak into the papers until, as Mrs. Carstairs expressed it, "those most concerned had come to some sort of understanding." "You see," she added, "this isn't an ordinary theft. There are wheels within wheels, and the insurance people will kick up a row rather than pay. That's why we must talk everything over; you, and Sir James, and Henry—and Henry is never quite complete without me, so I intend to be in the offing."

I knew she wouldn't stay there; but that was a detail!

The robbery had taken place the night before, and Sir James himself had been the one to discover it. Complication number one (as you'll see in a minute).

He, being now "demobbed" and a man of leisure, instead of reopening his flat in town, had taken up quarters at Courtenaye Coombe to superintend the repairs at the Abbey. His ex-cowboy habits being energetic, he usually walked the two miles from the village, and appeared on the scene ahead of the workmen.

This morning he arrived before seven o'clock, and went, according to custom, to beg a cup of coffee from Mrs. Barlow. She and her husband occupied the bedroom and sitting room which had been the housekeeper's; but at that hour the two were invariably in the kitchen. Sir Jim let himself in with his key, and marched straight to that part of the house. He was surprised to find the kitchen shutters closed and the range fireless. Suspecting something wrong, he went to the bedroom door and knocked. He got no answer; but a second, harder rap produced a muffled moan. The door was not locked. He opened it, and was horrified at what he saw: Mrs. Barlow, on the bed, gagged and bound; her husband in the same condition, but lying on the floor; and the atmosphere of the closed room heavy with the fumes of chloroform.

It was Mrs. Barlow who managed to answer the knock with a moan. Barlow was deeper under the spell of the drug than she, and—it appeared afterward—in a more serious condition of collapse.

The old couple had no story to tell, for they recalled nothing of what had happened. They had made the rounds of the house as usual at night, and had then gone to bed. Barlow did not wake from his stupor until the village doctor came to revive him with stimulants, and Mrs. Barlow's first gleam of consciousness was when she dimly heard Sir James knocking. She strove to call out, felt aware of illness, realized with terror that her mouth was distended with a gag, and struggled to utter the faint groan which reached his ears.

As soon as Sir Jim had attended to the sufferers, he hurried out, and, finding that the workmen had arrived, rushed one of them back to Courtenaye Coombe for the doctor and the village nurse. The moment he (Sir Jim) was free to do so, he started on a voyage of discovery round the house, and soon learned that a big haul had been brought off. The things taken were small in size but in value immense, and circumstantial evidence suggested that the thief or thieves knew precisely what they wanted as well as where to get it.

In the picture gallery a portrait of King Charles I (given by himself to a General Courtenaye of the day) had been cleverly cut out of its frame, also a sketch of the Long Water at Hampton Court, painted and signed by King Charles. The green drawing room was deprived of its chief treasure, a quaint sampler embroidered by the hand of Mary Queen of Scots for her "faithful John Courtenaye." From the Chinese boudoir a Buddha of the Ming period was gone, and a jewel box of marvellous red lacquer presented by Li Hung Chang to my grandmother. The silver cabinet in the oak dining room had been broken open, and a teapot, sugar bowl, and cream-jug, given by Queen Anne to an ancestress, were absent. The China cabinet in the same room was bared of a set of green-and-gold coffee cups presented by Napoleon I to a French great-great-grandmother of mine; and from the big dining hall adjoining, a Gobelin panel, woven for the Empress Josephine, after the wedding picture by David, had vanished.

A few bibelots were missing also, here and there; snuff boxes of Beau Nash and Beau Brummel; miniatures, old paste brooches and buckles reminiscent of Courtenaye beauties; and a fat watch that had belonged to George IV.

"All my pet things!" I mourned.

"Don't say that to any one except me," advised Mrs. Carstairs. "My dear, bits of a letter torn into tiny pieces—a letter from you—were found in the Chinese Room, and the Insurance people will be hatefully inquisitive!"

"You don't mean to insinuate that they'll suspect me?" I blazed at her.

"Not of stealing the things with your own hands; and if they did, you could easily prove an alibi, I suppose. Still, they're bound to follow up every clue, and bits of paper with your writing on them, apparently dropped by the thieves, do form a tempting clue. You can't help admitting it."

I did not admit it in the least, for at first glance I couldn't see where the "temptation" lay to steal one's own belongings. But Mrs. Carstairs soon made me see. Though the things were mine in a way, in another way they were not mine. Being heirlooms, I could not profit by them financially, in the open. Yet if I could cause them to disappear, without being detected, I should receive the insurance money with one hand, and rake in with the other a large bribe from some supposititious purchaser.

"On the contrary, why shouldn't our brave Bart be suspected of precisely the same fraud, and more of it?" I inquired. "If I could steal the things, so could he. If they're my pets, they may be his. And he was on the spot, with a lot of workmen in his pay! Surely such circumstantial evidence against him weighs more heavily in the scales than a mere scrap of paper against me? I've written Sir Jim once or twice, by the way, on business about the Abbey since I've been in Bath. All he'd have to do would be to tear a letter up small enough, so it couldn't be pieced together and make sense——"

"Nobody's weighing anything in scales against either of you—yet," soothed Mrs. Carstairs, "unless you're doing it against each other! But we don't know what may happen. That's why it seemed best for you and Sir James to come together and exchange blows—I mean, views!—at once. He called my husband up by long-distance telephone early this morning, told him what had happened, and had a pow-wow on ways and means. They decided not to inform the police, but to save publicity and engage a private detective. In fact, Sir J—— asked Henry to send a good man to the Abbey by the quickest train. He went—the man, I mean, not Henry; and the head of his firm ought to arrive at our flat in a few minutes now, to meet you and Sir James."

"Sir James! Even a galloping cowboy can't be in London and Devonshire at the same moment."

"Oh, I forgot to mention, he must have travelled up by your train. I suppose you didn't see him?"

"I did not!"

"He was probably in a smoking carriage. Well, anyhow, he'll soon be with us."

"Stop the taxi!" I broke in; and stopped it myself by tapping on the window behind the chauffeur.

"Good heavens! what's the matter?" gasped my companion.

"Nothing. I want to inquire the name of that firm of private detectives Sir James Courtenaye got Mr. Carstairs to engage."

"Pemberton. You must have seen it advertised. But why stop the taxi to ask that?"

"I stopped the taxi to get out, and let you run home alone while I find another cab to take me to another detective. You see, I didn't want to go to the same firm."

"Isn't one firm of detectives enough at one time, on one job?"

"It isn't one job. You're the shrewdest woman I know. You must see that James Courtenaye has engaged his detective to spy upon me—to dog my footsteps—to discover if I suddenly blossom out into untold magnificence on ill-got gains. I intend to turn the tables on him, and when I come back to your flat, it will be in the company of my very own little pet detective."

Mrs. Carstairs broke into adjurations and arguments. According to her, I misjudged my cousin's motives; and if I brought a detective, it would be an insult. But I checked her by explaining that my man would not give himself away—he would pose as a friend of mine. I would select a suitable person for the part. With that I jumped out of the taxi, and the dear old lady was too wise to argue. She drove sadly home, and I went into the nearest shop which looked likely to own a directory. In that volume I found another firm of detectives with an equally celebrated name. I taxied to their office, explained something of my business, and picked out a person who might pass for a pal of a (socialist) princess. He and I then repaired to Berkeley Square, and Sir James and the Pemberton person (also Mr. Carstairs) had not been waiting much more than half an hour when we arrived.

I don't know what my "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" thought about my dashing in with a strange Mr. Smith who apparently had nothing to do with the case. And I didn't care. No, not even if he imagined the square-jawed bull-dog creature to be a choice specimen of my circle at Bath. In any case, my Mr. Smith was a dream compared with his Pemberton. As to himself, however—Sir Jim—I had to acknowledge that he was far from insignificant in personality. If there were to be any battle of wits or manners between us, I couldn't afford to despise him.

When I had met him before, I was too utterly overwhelmed to study, or even to notice him much, except to see that he was a big, red-headed fellow, who loomed unnaturally large when viewed against the light. Now I classified him as resembling a more-than-life-size statue—done in pale bronze—of a Red Indian, or a soldier of Ancient Rome. The only flaws in the statue were the red hair and the fiery blackness of the eyes.

My Mr. Smith, as I have explained, wasn't posing as a detective, but he was engaged to stop, look, listen, for all he was worth, and tell me his impressions afterward—just as, no doubt, Mr. Pemberton was to tell Sir James his.

We talked over the robbery in conclave; we amateurs suggesting theories, the professionals committing themselves to nothing so premature. Why, it was too early to form judgments, since the detective on the spot had not yet been able to report upon fingerprints or other clues! The sole decision arrived at, and agreed to by all, was to keep the affair among ourselves for the present. This could be managed if none but private detectives were employed and the police not brought into the case. When the meeting broke up and I was able to question Mr. Smith, I was disappointed in him. I had hoped and expected (having led up to it by hints) that he would say: "Sir James Courtenaye is in this." On the contrary, he tactlessly advised me to "put that idea out of my head. There was nothing in it." (I hope he meant the idea, not the head!)

"I should say, speaking in the air," he remarked, "that the caretakers are the guilty parties, or at least have had some hand in the business. Though of course I might change my mind if I were on the spot."

I assured him fiercely that any one possessed of a mind at all would change it at sight of dear old Barl and Barley. Nothing on earth would make me believe anything against them. Why, if they didn't have Almost-Haloes and Wings, Sir James and the insurance people would have objected to them as guardians. The very fact that they had been kept on without a word of protest from any one, when Courtenaye Abbey was let to Sir James was, I argued, the best of testimonials to the Barlows' character. Nevertheless, my orders were that Mr. Smith should go to Devonshire and take a room at the Courtenaye Arms, dressed and painted to represent a landscape artist. "The Abbey is to be opened to the public in a few days, in spite of the best small show-things being lost," I reminded him, from what we had heard Sir Jim say. "You can see the Barlows, and judge of them. But what is much more important, you'll also see Sir James Courtenaye, who lodges in the inn, and can judge of him. In my opinion he has revenged himself for losing his suit to grab the Abbey and everything in it, by taking what he could lay his hands on without being suspected."

"But you do suspect him?" said Mr. Smith.

"For that matter, so does he suspect me," I retorted.

"You think so," the detective amended.

"Don't you?"

"No, Princess, I do not."

"What do you think, then? Or don't you think anything?"

"I do think something." He tried to justify his earning capacity.

"What, if I may ask?"

He—a Smith, a mere Smith!—dared to grin.

"Of course you may ask, Princess," he replied. "But it's too early yet for me to answer your question in fairness to myself. About the theft I have not formed a firm theory, but I have about Sir James Courtenaye. I would not have ventured even to mention it, however, if you had not drawn me out, for it is indirectly concerned with the case."

"Directly or indirectly, I wish to know it," I insisted. "And as you're in my employ, I think I have the right."

"Very well, madam, you shall know it—later," he said.

CHAPTER IV

THE BLACK THING IN THE SEA

I went back to Bath, and Mrs. Percy-Hogge; but I no longer felt that I was enjoying a rest cure. Right or wrong, I had the impression of being watched. I was sure that Sir James Courtenaye had put detectives "on my track," in the hope that I might be caught communicating with my hired bravos or the wicked receiver of my stolen goods. In other days when a man stared or turned to gaze after me, I had attributed the attention to my looks; now I jumped to the conviction that he was a detective. And in fact, I began to jump at anything—or nothing.

It was vain for Mrs. Carstairs (who ran down to Bath, after I'd written her a wild letter) to guarantee that even an enemy—(which she vowed Sir James wasn't!)—could rake up no shred of evidence against me, with the exception of the torn letter. She couldn't deny that, materially speaking, it would be a "good haul" for me to sell the heirlooms, and obtain also the insurance money. But then, I hadn't done it, and nobody could accuse me of doing it, because no one knew the things were gone. Oh, well, yes! Some detectives knew; and the poor old Barlows had bitter cause to know. A few others, too, including Sir James Courtenaye. None of them counted, however, because none of them would talk.

Mrs. Carstairs said it was absurd of me to imagine that Sir James was having me watched. But imagination and not advice had the upper hand of my nerves; and, seeing this, she prescribed a change of air.

"I meant Mrs. Percy-Hogge only for a stop-gap," she explained. "You've squeezed her into Society now; and for yourself, you've come to the time when you can lighten your mourning. I've waited for that, to start you on your new job. You'll go what my cook calls 'balmy on the crumpet' if you keep fancying every queer human being you meet in Milsom Street a detective on your track. The best thing for you is, not to have a track! And the way to manage that, is to be at sea."

I was at sea—figuratively—till Mrs. Carstairs explained more. She recalled to my mind what she had said in our first chat about Brightening: how she had suggested my "taking the helm," to steer Roger Fane into the Social Sea.

"I think I mentioned then that I referred to the sea, in the literal sense of the word," she went on. "I promised to tell you what I meant, when the right moment came, and now it has come. I haven't been idle meanwhile, I assure you, for I like Roger Fane as much as you like Shelagh Leigh. And between us two, we'll marry them over the Pollens' snobby heads."

In short, Mr. Carstairs had a client who had a yacht at Plymouth. The client's name was Lord Verrington. The yacht's name was Naiad, and Lord Verrington wished to let her for an absurdly large sum. Roger Fane didn't mind paying this sum. It was the right time of year for a yachting trip. If I would lend éclat to such a trip by Brightening it, the Pollens would permit their precious Shelagh to go. Mr. Pollen (whom Grandmother had refused to know) would even join the party himself. Indeed, no one would refuse if asked by me, and the Pollens would be so dazzled by Roger Fane's sudden social success that their consent to the engagement was a foregone conclusion.

I snapped at the chance of escape. To be sure, it was a temporary escape, as the guests were invited for a week only; still, lots of things may happen in a week. Why look beyond seven perfectly good days? Besides, I was to be given a huge "bonus" for my services, enough to pay the rent of my expensive flat for a year. But I wasn't entirely selfish in accepting. I've never half described to you the odd, reserved charm of that mysterious millionaire, Roger Fane, whose one fault was his close friendship with Sir James Courtenaye. And for his sake, as well as dear little Shelagh's, I would gladly have done all I could to bring the two together.

Knowing that titles impressed the Pollens, I secured several: one earl with countess attached (legally, at all events), a pretty sister of the latter; a bachelor marquis, and ditto viscount. These, with Shelagh, myself, Roger Fane, and Mr. Pollen, would constitute the party, should all accept.

They all did, partly for me, perhaps, and partly for each other, but largely from curiosity, as the Naiad had the reputation of being the most luxuriously appointed small steam yacht in British waters, (She had been "interned" in Spain during the war!) Also, Roger had secured as chef a famous Frenchman, just demobilized. Altogether, the prospect offered attractions. The start was to be made from Plymouth on a summer afternoon. We were to cruise along the coast, and eventually make for Jersey and Guernsey, where none of the party had ever been. My things were packed, and I was ready to take a morning train for Plymouth—a train by which all those of us in town would travel—when a letter arrived for me. It was from Mrs. Barlow, announcing the sudden death of her husband, from heart failure. He had never recovered the shock of the robbery, or the heavy dose of chloroform which the thieves had administered. And this, Barley added, as if in reproach, was not all Barlow had been forced to endure. It had been a cruel blow to find himself supplanted as guardian at the Abbey. The excuse for thus superseding him and his wife was, of course, the state of their health after the ordeal through which they had passed. Nevertheless, Barlow felt (said his wife) that they were no longer trusted. They had loved the lodge, which was home to them in old days; but they had been promoted from lodge-keeping to caretaking, and it was humiliating to be sent back while strangers usurped their place at the Abbey. This grievance (in Barley's opinion) had killed her husband. As for her, she would follow him into the grave, were it not for the loving care of Barlow's nephews from Australia, the brave twin soldier boys she had often mentioned to me. They were with her now, and would take her to the old family home close to Dudworth Cove, which the boys had bought back from the late owner. Barlow's body would go with them, and be buried in the graveyard where generations of Barlows slept.

It was a blow to hear of the old man's death, and to learn that I was blamed for heartlessness by Barley. Of course I had nothing to do with the affair. The Barlows were not really suspected, and had in truth been removed for their own health's sake to the lodge where their possessions were. The new caretakers had been engaged by Sir James, in consultation, I believed, with the insurance people: and my secret conviction was, that they had been supplied by Pemberton's Agency of Private Detectives. My impulse was to rush to the Abbey and comfort Mrs. Barlow, even at the risk of meeting my tenant engaged in the same task. But to do this would have meant delaying the trip, and disappointing everyone, most of all Shelagh and Roger Fane; so, advised by Mrs. Carstairs, I sent a telegram instead, picked up Shelagh and her uncle, and took the Plymouth train. This was the easier to do, because the wonderful old lady offered to go herself to the Abbey on a mission of consolation. She promised to send a telegram to our first port, saying how Barley was, and everything else I wished to know.

Shelagh was so happy, so excited, that I was glad I'd listened to reason and kept the tryst. Never had I seen her as pretty as she looked on that journey to Devon: her eyes blue stars, her cheeks pink roses. But when the skies began to darken her eyes darkened, too. Had she been a barometer she could not have responded more sensitively to the storm; for a storm we had, cats and dogs pelting down on the roof of the train.

"I was sure something horrid would happen!" she whispered. "It was too good to be true that Roger and I should have a whole, heavenly week together on board a yacht. Now we shall have to wait till the weather clears. Or else be sea-sick. I don't know which is worse!"

Roger met us, in torrents of rain and gusts of wind, at Plymouth. But things were not so black as they looked. He had engaged rooms for everyone, and a private salon for us all, at the best hotel. We would stay the night and have a dance, with a band of our own. By the next day the sea would have calmed down enough to please the worst of sailors, and we would start. Perhaps we could even get off in the morning.

This prophecy was rather too optimistic, for we didn't get off till afternoon; but by that time the water was flat as a floor, and one was tempted to forget there had ever been a storm. We were not to forget it for long, alas! Brief as it had been, that storm was to leave its lasting influence upon our fate: Roger Fane's, Shelagh Leigh's, and mine.

By four-thirty, the day after the downpour, we had all come on board the lovely Naiad, had "settled" into our cabins, and were on deck—the girls in white serge or linen, the men in flannels—ready for tea.

If it had arrived, and we had been looking into our tea cups instead of at the seascape, the whole of Roger Fane's and Shelagh's life might have been different—mine, too, perhaps! But as it was, Shelagh and Roger were leaning on the rail together, and her gaze was fixed upon the blue water, because somehow she couldn't meet Roger's just then. What he had said to her I don't know; but more to avoid giving an answer than because she was wildly interested, the girl exclaimed: "What can that dark thing be, drifting—and bobbing up and down in the waves? I suppose it couldn't be a dead shark?"

"Hardly in these waters," said Roger Fane. "Besides, a dead shark floats wrong side up, and his wrong side is white. This thing looks black."

In ordinary circumstances I wouldn't have broken in on a tête-à-tête, but others were extricating themselves from their deck chairs, so I thought there was no harm in my being the first.

"More like a coffin than a shark," I said, with my elbows beside Shelagh's on the rail.

At that the whole party hurled itself in our direction, and the nearer the Naiad brought us to the floating object, the more like a coffin it became to our eyes. At last it was so much like, that Roger decided to stop the yacht and examine the thing, which might even be an odd-shaped small boat, overturned. He went off, therefore, to speak with the captain, leaving us in quite a state of excitement.

Almost before we'd thought the order given, the Naiad slowed down, and came to rest like a great Lohengrin swan in the clear azure wavelets. A boat was quickly lowered, and we saw that Roger himself accompanied the two rowers.

A few moments before he had looked so happy, so at peace with the world, that the tragic shadow in his eyes had actually vanished. His whole expression and bearing had been different, and he had seemed years younger—almost boyish, in his dark, shy, reserved way. But as he went down in the boat, he was again the Roger Fane I had known and wondered about.

"If he's superstitious, this will seem a bad omen," I thought. "That is, if the thing does turn out to be a coffin."

None of us remembered the tea we'd been pining for, though a white-clad steward was hovering with trays of cakes, cream, and strawberries. We could do nothing but hang over the rail and watch the Naiad's boat. We saw it reach the Thing, in whose neighbourhood it paused with lifted oars, while a discussion went on between Roger and the rowers. Apparently they argued, with due respect, against the carrying out of some order or suggestion. He was not a man to be disobeyed, however. After a moment or two, the work of taking the black thing in tow was begun.

We were very near now, and could plainly see all that went on. Coffin or not, the mysterious object was a long, narrow box of some sort (the men's reluctance to pick it up pretty well proved what sort, to my mind), and curiously enough a rope was tied round it. There appeared to be a lump of knots on top, and a loose end trailing like seaweed, which made the task of taking the derelict in tow an easy one. To this broken rope Roger deftly attached the rope carried in the boat, and it was not long before the rescue party started to return.

"Is it a coffin or a treasure chest?" girls and men eagerly called down to Roger. Everyone screamed some question—except Shelagh and me. We were silent, and Shelagh's colour had faded. She edged closer to me, until our shoulders touched. Hers felt cold to my warm flesh.

"Why, you're shivering, dear!" I said. "You're not afraid of that wretched thing—whatever it is?"

"We both know what it is, without telling, don't we?" she replied, in a half whisper. "I'm not afraid of it, of course. But—it's awful that we should come across a coffin floating in the sea, on our first day out. I feel as if it meant bad luck for Roger and me. How can they all squeal and chatter so? I suppose Roger is bound to bring the dreadful thing on board. It wouldn't be decent not to. But I wish he needn't."

I rather wished the same, partly because I knew how superstitious sailors were about such matters, and how they would hate to have a coffin—presumably containing a dead body—on board the Naiad. It really wasn't a gay yachting companion! However, I tried to cheer Shelagh. It would take more than this to bring her bad luck now, I said, when things had gone so far; and she might have more trust in me, whom she had lately named her mascotte.

All the men frankly desired to see the trouvaille at close quarters, and most of the women wanted a peep, though they weren't brutally open about it. If there had been any doubt, it would have vanished as the Thing was being hauled on board by grave-faced, suddenly sullen sailors. It was a "sure enough" coffin, and—it seemed—an unusually large one!

It had to be placed on deck, for the moment, but Roger had the dark shape instantly covered with tarpaulins; and an appeal from his clouded eyes made me suggest adjourning indoors for tea. We could have it in the saloon, which was decorated like a boudoir, and full of lilies and roses—Shelagh's favourite flowers.

"Let's not talk any more about the business!" Roger exclaimed, when Shelagh's uncle seemed inclined to mix the subject with food. "I wish it hadn't happened, as the men are foolishly upset. But it can't be helped, and we must do our best. The—er—it sha'n't stop on deck. That would be to keep Jonah under our eyes. I've thought of a place where we can ignore it till to-morrow, when we'll land it as early as we can at St. Heliers. I'm afraid the local authorities will want to tie us up in a lot of red tape. But the worst will be to catechize us as if we were witnesses in court. Meanwhile, let's forget the whole affair."

"Righto!" promptly exclaimed all three of the younger guests; but Mr. Pollen was not thus to be deprived of his morbid morsel.

"Certainly," he agreed. "But before the subject is shelved, where is the 'place' you speak of? I mean, where is the coffin to rest throughout the night?"

Roger gave a grim laugh, and looked obstinate. "I'll tell you this much," he said. "None of you'll have it for a near neighbour, so none of you need worry."

After that, even Mr. Pollen could not persist. We disposed of an enormous tea, after the excitement, and then some of us played bridge. When we separated, however, to pace the deck—two by two, for a "constitutional" before dinner—one could see by the absorbed expression on faces, and guess by the low-toned voices, what each pair discussed.

My companion, Lord Glencathra, thought that Somebody must have died on Some Ship, and been thrown overboard. But I argued that this could hardly be, because—surely—bodies buried at sea were not put into coffins, were they? I had heard that the custom was to sew them up in sailcloth or something, and weight them well. Besides, there was the broken rope tied round the coffin, which seemed to show that it had been tethered, and got loose—in the storm, perhaps. How did Lord Glencathra account for that fact? He couldn't account for it. Nor could any one else.

CHAPTER V

WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN

I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I succeeded. But whenever there was an instant's lull in the conversation, I felt that everyone was asking him or herself, "Where is the coffin?"

The plan had been to have a little moonlight fox-trotting and jazzing on deck; but with that Black Thing hidden somewhere on board, we confined ourselves to more bridge and star-gazing, according to taste. I, as professional Brightener, nobly kept Mr. Pollen out of everybody's way by annexing him for a stroll. This deserved the name of a double brightening act, for I brightened the lives of his fellow guests by saving them from him; and I brightened his by encouraging him to talk of Well-Connected People.

"Who was she before she married Lord Thingum-bob?" ... or, "Yes, she was Miss So-and-So, a cousin of the Duke of Dinkum," might have been heard issuing sapiently from our lips, had any one been mentally destitute enough to eavesdrop. But I had my reward. Dear little Shelagh Leigh and Roger Fane seemed to have cheered each other. I left them standing together, elbows on the rail, as they had stood before the affair of the afternoon. The moonlight was shining full upon Shelagh's bright hair and pearl-white face, as she looked up, eager-eyed, at Roger; and he looked—at least, his back looked!—as if there were nobody on land or sea except one Girl.

Having lured Mr. Pollen to make a fourth at a bridge table where the players were too polite to kill him, I ventured to vanish. There being no one on board with whom I wished to flirt, my one desire after two hard hours of Brightening was to curl up in my cabin with a nice book. I quite looked forward to the moment for shutting myself cosily in, for the cabin was a delicious pink-and-white nest—the biggest room on board, as a tribute to my princesshood.

Hardly had I opened the door, however, when my dream-bubble broke. A very odd and repellent odour greeted me, and seemed almost to push me back across the threshold. I held my ground, however, and sniffed with curiosity and disgust.

Somebody had been at my perfume—my expensive pet perfume, made especially for me in Rome (one drop exquisite; two, oppressive), and must have spilt the lot. But worse than this, the heavy fragrance was mingled with a reek of stale brandy.

Anger flashed in me, like a match set to gun-cotton. Some impertinent person had sneaked into my stateroom and played a stupid practical joke. Or, if not that, one of the pleasantly prim, immaculate women (a cross between the stewardess and ladies'-maid type) engaged to hook up our frocks and make up our cabins, was secretly a confirmed—ROTTER!

I switched on the light, shut the door smartly without locking it, and flung a furious glance around. The creature had actually dared to place a brandy bottle conspicuously upon my dressing table, among gold-handled brushes and silver gilt boxes, and, as a crowning impertinence, had left a tumbler beside the bottle, a quarter full of strong-smelling brown stuff. Close by lay my lovely crystal flask of "Campagna Violets," empty. I could get no more anywhere, and it had cost five pounds! I could hardly breathe in the room. Oh, evidently a stewardess must have gone stark mad, or else some practical joker had waited to play the coup until the stewardesses were in bed!

As I thought this, my eyes as well as my nostrils warned me of something strange. The rose-coloured silk curtains which, when I went to dinner, had been gracefully looped back at head and foot of my pretty bed (a real bed, not a mere berth!) were now closely drawn with a secretive air. This made me imagine that it was a practical joke I had to deal with, and my fancy flew to all sorts of weird surprises, any one of which I might find hidden behind the draperies.

I trust that I have a sense of humour, and I can laugh at a jest against myself as well as any woman, perhaps better than most. But to-night I was in no mood to laugh at jests, and I wondered how anybody had the heart (not to mention the cheek!) to perpetrate one after the shock we had experienced. Besides, I couldn't think of a person likely to play a trick on me. Certainly my host wouldn't do so. Shelagh, my best and most intimate pal, was far too gentle and sensitive-minded. As for the other guests, none were of the noisy, bounding type who take liberties even with distant acquaintances, for fun.

All this ran through my mind, as a cinema "cut-in" flashes across the screen; and it wasn't until I'd passed in review the characters of my fellow guests that I summoned courage to pull back the bed-curtains. When I did so, I gave a jerk that slipped them along the rod as far as they would go. And then—I saw the last thing in the world I could have pictured.

A woman, fully dressed, was stretched on the pink silk coverlet fast asleep, her head deep sunk in the embroidered pillow.

It was all I could do to keep back a cry—for this was no woman I had seen on board, not even a drunken or sleep-walking stewardess. Yet her face was not strange to me. That was the most horrible, the most mysterious part! There was no mistake, for the face was impossible to forget. As I stared, almost believing that I dreamed, another scene rose between my eyes and the dainty little cabin of the Naiad.

It also was a scene in a dream. I knew it was a dream, but it was torturingly vivid. I was a prisoner on a German submarine, in war-time, and signals from my own old home—Courtenaye Abbey—flashed into my eyes. They flashed so brightly that they set me on fire. I wakened from the nightmare with a start. A strong light dazzled me, and, striking my face, lit up another face as well. Just for an instant I saw it; then the revealing ray died into darkness. But on my retina was photographed those features, in a pale, illumined circle.

A second sufficed to bring back to my brain this old dream and the waking reality which followed, that night at the Abbey, long ago—the night which Shelagh and I called "Spy Night." For here, in my cabin on the yacht Naiad, on the crushed pillow of my bed, was that face.

As I realized this, without benefit of any doubt, a faint sickness swept over me. It was partly horror of the past; partly physical disgust of the brandy-reek—stronger than ever now—hanging like an unseen canopy over the bed; and partly cold fear of a terrifying Presence.

There she lay, sunk in drugged and drunken sleep, the Woman of Mystery, in whose existence no one but Shelagh and I had ever quite believed: the woman who had visited us in our sleep, and who—almost certainly—had fired the Abbey, hoping that we and the Barlows might suffocate in our beds.

The face was just the same as it had been then: "beautiful and hideous at the same time, like Medusa," I had described it; only now it was older, and though still beautiful, somehow ravaged. The hair still glowed with the vivid auburn colour which I had thought "unreal looking"; but now it was tumbled and unkempt. Loose locks strayed over the dainty pillow, and at the bottom of the bed, pushed tightly against the footboard by a pair of untidy, high-heeled shoes, was a dusty black toque half covered with a very thick motor-veil of gray tissue. There was a gray cloak, too, in a tumbled mass on the pink coverlet, and a pair of soiled gloves. Everything about the sleeper was sordid and repulsive, a shuddering contrast to the exquisite freshness of the bed and room—everything, that is, except the face. Its half-wrecked beauty was still supreme, and even in the ruin drink or drugs had wrought, it forced admiration.

"A German spy—here in my cabin—on board Roger Fane's yacht!" I said the words slowly in my mind, not with my tongue. Not a sound, not the faintest whisper, passed my lips. Yet suddenly the long, dark lashes on bruise-blue lids began to quiver. It was as if my thought had shaken the woman by the shoulder, and roused what was left of her soul.

I should have liked to dash out of the room and with a shriek bring everyone on board to my cabin. But I stood motionless, concentrating my gaze on those trembling eyelids. Something inside me seemed to say: "Don't be a coward, Elizabeth Courtenaye!" It was exactly like Grandmother's voice. I had a conviction that she wanted me to see this thing through as a Courtenaye should, shirking no responsibility, and solving the mystery of past and present without bleating for help.

The fringed lids parted, shut, quivered again, and flashed wide open. A pair of pale eyes stared into mine—wicked eyes, cruel eyes, green as a cat's. Like a cat, too, the creature gathered herself together as if for a spring. Her muscles rippled and jerked. She sat up, and in chilled surprise I thought I saw recognition in her stare.

CHAPTER VI

THE WOMAN OF THE PAST

"Oh, you've come at last!" she rasped, in a harsh, throaty voice roughened by drink. "I know you. I——"

"And I know you!" I cut her short, to show that I was not cowed.

Sitting up in bed, hugging her knees, she started at my words so that the springs shook. Whatever it was she had meant to say, she forgot it for the moment, and challenged me: "That's a lie!" she snapped. "You don't know me yet—but you soon will."

"I've known you since you came into my room at Courtenaye Abbey the night you tried to burn down the house," I said. "You were spying for the Germans in the war. Heaven knows all the harm you may have done. I can't imagine for whom you're spying now. Anyhow, you can't frighten me again. The war's over, but I'll have you arrested for what you did when it was on."

The woman scowled and laughed, more Medusa-like than ever. I really felt as if she might turn me to stone. But she shouldn't guess her power.

"Pooh!" she said, showing tobacco-stained teeth. "You won't want to arrest me when you hear who I am, Lady Shelagh Leigh!"

"Lady Shelagh Leigh!" It was on my lips to cry, "I'm not Shelagh Leigh!" But I stopped in time. The less I let her find out about me, and the more I could find out about her before rousing the yacht, the better. I spoke not a word, but waited for her to go on—which she did in a few seconds.

"That makes you sit up, doesn't it?" she sneered. "That hits you where you live! Why did you think I chose your cabin? I didn't select it by chance. I confess I was taken back at your remembering. I thought I hadn't given you time for much study of my features that other night. But it doesn't matter. You can't do anything to me. I'll soon prove that! But I had a good look at you, there in your friend's old Devonshire rat-trap. I knew who you both were. It was easy to find out! And the other day, when I heard that Lady Shelagh Leigh was likely to marry Roger Fane, I said to myself, 'Gosh! One of the girls I saw at the darned old Abbey!'"

"Oh, you said that to yourself!" I echoed. And, though my knees failed, I kept to my feet. To stand towering above the squatting figure on the bed seemed to give me moral as well as physical advantage. "How did you know, pray, which girl I was?"

"I knew, 'pray,'" she mocked, "because you've got the best room on this yacht. Roger'd be sure to give that to his best girl. Which is how I'm sure you're not Elizabeth Courtenaye."

"How clever you are!" I said.

"Yes—I'm clever—when I'm not a fool. Don't think, anyhow, that you can beat me in a battle of brains. I've come on board this boat to succeed, and I will succeed in one of two ways, I don't care a hang which. But nothing on God's earth can hold me back from one or the other—least of all, can you. Why, you can ask any question you please, and I'll answer. I'll tell the truth, too—for the more I say, and the more you're shocked, the more helpless you are—do you see?"

"No, I don't see," I drew her on.

"Don't you guess yet who I am?"

"I've guessed what you were—a German spy."

"That's ancient history. One must live—and one must have money—plenty of money. I must! And I've had it. But it's gone from me—like most good things. Now I must have more—a lot more. Or else I must die. I don't care which. But others will care. I'll make them."

Looking at her, I doubted if she had the power; though she must have had it in lost days of gorgeous youth. Yet again I remained silent. I saw that she was leading up to something in particular, and I let her go on.

"You're not much of a guesser," she said, "so I'll introduce myself. Lady-who-thinks-she's-going-to-marry Roger Fane, let me make known to you the lady who has married him—Mrs. Fane, née Linda Lehmann. I've changed my name since, more than once. At present I'm Katherine Nelson. But Linda Lehmann is the name that matters to Roger. You're nothing in looks, by the by, to what I was at your age. Nothing!"

If my knees had been weak before, they now felt as if struck with a mallet! She might be lying, but something within me was horribly sure that she spoke the truth. I'd never heard full details of Roger Fane's "tragedy," but Mrs. Carstairs had dropped a few hints which, without asking questions, I'd patched together. I had gleaned that he'd married (when almost a boy) an actress much older than himself; and that, till her sudden and violent death after many years—nine or ten at least—his life had been a martyrdom. How the woman contrived to be alive I couldn't see. But such things happened—to people one didn't know! The worst of it was that I did know Roger Fane, and liked him. Besides, I loved Shelagh, whose happiness was bound up with Roger's. It seemed as if I couldn't bear to have those two torn apart by this cruel creature—this drunkard—this spy! Yet—what could I do?

At the moment I could think of nothing useful, because, if she was Roger's wife, her boast was justified: for his sake and Shelagh's she mustn't be handed over to the police, to answer for any political crime I might prove against her—or even for trying to burn down the Abbey. Oh, this business was beyond what I bargained for when I engaged to "brighten" the trip on board the Naiad! Still, all the spirit in me rallied to work for Roger Fane—even to work out his salvation if that could be. And I was glad I'd let the woman believe I was Shelagh Leigh.

"Roger's wife died five years ago, just before the war began," I said. "She was killed in a railway accident—an awful one, where she and a company of actors she was travelling with were burned to death."

The creature laughed. "Have you never been to a movie show, and seen how easy it is to die in a railway accident?—to stay dead to those you're tired of, and to be alive in some other part of this old world, where you think there's more fun going on? It's been done on the screen a hundred times—and off it, too. I was sick to death of Roger. I'd never have married a stick like him—always preaching!—if I hadn't been down and out. When I met him, it was in a beastly one-horse town where I was stranded. The show had chucked me—gone off and left me without a cent. I was sick—too big a dose of dope, if you want to know. But Roger didn't know—you can bet. Not then! I took jolly good care to toe the mark, till he'd married me all right. He was a sucker! I suppose he was twenty-two and over, but Peter Pan wasn't in it with him in some ways. He kept me off the stage—and tried to keep me off everything else worth doing for five years. Then I left him, for my health and looks had come back, and I got a fair part in a play on tour. There I met a countryman of mine—oh! don't be encouraged to hope! I never gave Roger any cause to divorce me; and if I had, I'd have done it so he couldn't prove a thing!"

"When you say the man was your countryman, I suppose you mean a German," I said.

"Well, yes," she replied, with the flaunting frankness she affected in these revelations. "German-American he was. I'm German by birth, and grew up in America. I've been back often and long since then. But this man had a scheme. He wanted me to go into it with him. I didn't see my way at first though there was big money, so he left the show before the accident. When I found myself alive and kicking among the dead that day, however, I saw my chance. I left a ring and a few things to identify me with a woman who was killed, and I lit out. It was in the dead of night, so luck was on my side for once. I wrote my friend, and it wasn't long before I was at work with him for the German Government. The Abbey affair was after he'd got out of England and into Germany through Switzerland. He was a sailor, and had been given command of a big new submarine. If it hadn't been for the row you and your pal kicked up, we—he on the water and I on land—might have brought off one of the big stunts of the war. You tore it—after I'd been mewed up in the old rat-warren for a week, and everything was working just right! I wish to goodness the whole house had burned, and I did wish you'd burned with it. But I don't know if to-night isn't going to pay me—and you—just as well. There's a lot owing from you to me. I haven't told you all yet. My friend's submarine was caught, and he went down with her. I blame that to you. If I hadn't failed him with the signals, he might be alive now."

"I was more patriotic than I knew!" I flung back. "As you're so confidential, tell me how you got into the Abbey, and where you hid."

She shook her dyed and tousled head. "That's where I draw the line," she said. "I've told you what I have told to please myself, not you. You can't profit by a word of it. That's where my fun comes in! If I split about the Abbey, you might profit somehow—or your friend the Courtenaye girl would. I want to punish her, too."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Perhaps in that case you won't care to explain how you came on board the Naiad?"

"I don't mind that," the ex-spy made concession. "I went out of England after the Abbey affair—friends helped me away—and I worked in New York till things grew too hot. Then I came over as a Red Cross nurse, got into France, and stopped till the other day. I'd be there still if I hadn't picked up a weekly London gossip-rag, and seen a paragraph about a certain rumoured engagement! You can guess whose! It called Roger—my Roger, mind you!—a 'millionaire.' He never was poor, even in my day; he'd made a lucky strike before we met, with an invention. I said to myself: 'Linda, my girl, 'twould be tempting Providence to lie low and let another woman spend his money.' I started as soon as I could, but missed him in London, and hurried on to Plymouth. If it hadn't been for that bally storm I shouldn't have caught him up! The yacht would have sailed. As it was, before you came on board this afternoon I presented myself, thickly veiled. I had a card from a London newspaper, and an old card of Roger's which was among a few things of his I'd kept for emergencies. I can copy his handwriting well enough not be suspected, except by an intimate friend of his, so I scribbled on the card an order to view the yacht. I got on all right, and wandered about with a notebook and a stylo. I soon found the right place to hide—in the storeroom, behind some barrels. But I had to make everyone who'd seen me think I'd gone on shore. That was easy! I told a sailor fellow by the gang plank I was going, and said I'd mislaid an envelope in which I'd slipped a tip for him and another man. I thought I'd left it on a table in the dining saloon, and he'd better look for it, or it might be picked up by somebody. He went before I could say 'knife!' and the envelope really was there, so he didn't have to hurry back. Two minutes later I was in the storeroom, and no one the wiser. Lord! but I got the jumps waiting for the stewardesses to be safe in bed before I could creep out to pay your cabin a call!"

"So, to cure the 'jumps' you annexed a whole bottle of brandy," I said.

"I did—for that and another reason you may find out by and by. But I'm hanged if you're not a cool hand, for a young girl who has just heard her lover's a married man. I thought by this time you'd be in hysterics."

"Girls of my generation don't have hysterics," I taunted her. By the dyed hair and vestiges of rouge and powder which streaked the battered face I guessed that a sneer at her age would sting like a wasp. I wanted to rouse the woman's temper. If she lost her head, she might show her hand!

"You'll have worse than hysterics, you fool, before I finish," she snapped. "I'm going to make Roger Fane acknowledge me as his wife and give me everything I want—money, and motor cars, and pearls—and, best of all, a position in society. I'm tired of being a free lance."

"He won't do it!" I cried.

"He'll have to—when he hears what will happen if he doesn't. If I can't live a life worth living, I'll die. Roger Fane will go off this yacht under arrest as my murderer."

"You deserve that he should kill you, but he will not," I said.

"He'll hang for killing me, anyhow. You see, the more motive he has to destroy me, the more impossible for him—or you—to prove his innocence. Do you think I'd have told you all this, if any one was likely to believe such a cock-and-bull story as the truth would sound to a jury? But I'm through now! I've said what I came to say. I'm ready to act. Do you want a row, or will you go quietly to the door of Roger's cabin (he must be there by this time) and tell him that his wife, Linda Lehmann, is waiting for him in your stateroom? That'll fetch him!"

I had no doubt it would. My only doubt was what to do! But if I refused, the woman was sure to keep her word, and rouse the yacht by screams. That would be the worst thing possible for Shelagh and Roger. I decided to go, and break to him the news with merciful swiftness.

If I could, I would have turned a key upon the creature, but the doors of the Naiad's cabins were furnished only with bolts. My one hope, that she'd keep to my room, owed itself to the fact that she was too drunk to move comfortably, and that, despite her bluff, the best trump she had was quiet diplomacy with Roger.

Softly I closed the door, and tiptoed to his, three staterooms distant from mine. My tap was so light that, if he had gone to sleep, I should have had to knock again. But he opened the door at once. He was fully dressed, and had a book in his hand.

"Something has happened," I whispered in answer to his amazed look. "Let me come in and explain. I can't talk out here."

He stood aside in silence, and I stepped in. Then I motioned him to shut the door.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECRET BEHIND THE SILENCE

This was the first time I'd seen Roger's cabin, and I had no eyes now for its charm of decoration; but I saw that it was large, and divided by a curtained arch into a bedroom and a tiny yet complete study fitted with bookshelves and a desk.

"You're pale as death!" He lowered his voice cautiously. "Sit down in this chair." As he spoke he led me through the bedroom part of the cabin to the study, and there I sank gratefully into the depths of a big chair, where, no doubt, he had sat reading under the light of a shaded lamp.

"Now what is it?" he asked, bending over me. As I stammered out my story, for a few seconds I forgot the fear of being followed. Our backs were turned to the door. But I had not got far in the tale when I felt that she had come into the room. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw her—a shabby, sinister figure—hanging on to the curtain that draped the archway.

Roger's start and stifled exclamation proved that, whatever else she might be, the woman was no imposter.

"You devil!" he gasped.

"Your wife!" she retorted.

"Hush," I whispered. "For every sake let's keep this quiet!"

"I'll be quiet for my own sake, if he accepts my terms," said the woman. "If not, the whole yacht——"

"Be silent!" Roger commanded. "Princess, I've got to see this through. You'd better go now, and leave me alone with her."

He was right. My presence would hinder rather than help. I saw the greenish eyes dart from his face to mine when he called me "Princess"; but she must have fancied it a pet name, for no question flashed from her lips as I tiptoed across the room.

When I got back to my own quarters, I noticed at once that the brandy bottle and the tumbler which had accompanied it were gone from my dressing table. Nor were they to be found in the cabin. The woman must have taken them to Roger's room, and placed them somewhere before I saw her. "Disgusting!" I murmured, for my thought was that the debased wretch had clung lovingly to the drink. Even though I'd sharpened my wits to search all her motives, I failed over that simple-seeming act.

"Oh, poor Roger!" I said to myself. "And poor Shelagh!"

I sat miserably on the window seat (for the rumpled bed was now abhorrent), and wondered what would happen next. But I had not long to wait. A few moments passed—how many I don't know—and the crystalline silence of the gliding Naiad was splintered by a scream.

'Scream' is the word one must use for a cry of pain or fear. Yet it isn't the right word for the sound that snatched me to my feet. It was not shrill, it was not loud. What might have ended in a shriek subsided to a choked breath, a gurgle. My heart's pounding seemed louder as I listened. My ears expected a following cry, but it did not come. Two or three doors gently opened, that was all. Again dead silence fell; and I felt in it that others listened, fearing to speak lest the sound had been no more than a moan in a dream. Presently the doors closed again, each listener afraid of disturbing a neighbour. And even I, who knew the secret behind the silence, prayed that the choked scream might have come when it did as a mere coincidence. Someone might really have had nightmare!

As time passed, I almost persuaded myself that it was so, and that, at worst, there would be no crime to mark this night with crimson on the calendar. But the next quarter hour was the deadest time I'd ever known. I felt like one entombed alive, praying to be liberated from a vault. Then, at last—when those who'd waked slept again—came a faint knock at my door.

I flew to slip back the bolt, and pulled Roger Fane into the room. One would not have believed a face so brown could bleach so white!

For an instant we stared into each other's eyes. When I could speak, I stammered a question—I don't know what, and I don't think he understood. But the spell broke.

"You heard?" he faltered.

"The cry? Yes. It was——"

"She's dead."

"Dead! You killed her?"

"My God, no! But if you think that, what will—others think?"

"If you had killed her, you couldn't be blamed," I tried to encourage him. "Only——"

"Didn't she make some threat to you? I hoped she had. She told me——"

"Yes, there was something—I hardly remember what. It was like drunkenness. She said—I think—that if you wouldn't take her back, you'd be arrested—as her murderer."

"That was it—her ultimatum. She must have been mad. I offered a big allowance, if she'd go away and not make a scandal. I'd have to give up Shelagh, of course, but I wanted to save my poor little love from gossip. That devil would have no compromise. It should be all or nothing. I must swear to acknowledge her as my wife on board this yacht—to-morrow morning—before Shelagh—before you all. If I wouldn't promise that, she'd kill herself at once, in a way to throw the guilt on me. She'd do it so that I couldn't clear myself or be cleared. I wouldn't promise, of course. I hoped, anyhow, that she was bluffing. But I didn't know her! When nothing would change me, she showed a tiny phial she had in her hand, and said she'd drink the stuff in it before I could touch her. It was prussic acid, she told me—and already she'd poured enough to kill ten men into a tumbler she'd stolen from my cabin on purpose. She'd mixed the poison with brandy from the storeroom. Even if I threw the tumbler through the porthole, mine would be missing. There's one to match each room, you see. A small detail, but important.

"'Now will you promise?' she repeated. I couldn't—for I should not have kept my word. She looked at me a second. I saw in her eyes that she was going to do the thing, and I jumped at her—but I was too late. She nearly drained the phial. And she'd hardly flung it away before she was dead—with an awful, twisted face—and that cry. If I hadn't caught her, she'd have fallen with a crash. This is the end of things for me."

"Oh, no—don't say that!" I begged.

"What else is there to say? There she lies, dead in my cabin. There's prussic acid on the floor—and the phial broken. The room reeks of bitter almonds. No one but you will believe I didn't kill her—perhaps not even Shelagh. Just because the woman made my past life horrible—and I had a chance of happiness—the temptation would be irresistible."

"Let me think. Do let me think!" I persisted. "Surely there's a way out of the trap."

"I don't see one," said Roger. "Throwing a body overboard is the obvious thing. But it would be worse than——"

"Wait!" I cut him short. "I've thought of another thing—not obvious. But it's hard to do—and hateful. The only help I could lend you is—a hint. The rest would depend on yourself. If you were strong enough—brave enough—it might give you Shelagh."

"I'm strong enough for anything with the remotest hope of Shelagh, and—I trust—brave enough, too. Tell me your plan."

I had to draw a long breath before I could answer. I needed air! "You're right." I said. "To give the body to the sea would make things worse. You couldn't be sure it would not be found, and the woman traced by the police. If they discovered who she was—that she'd been your wife—you would be suspected even if nothing were proved through those who saw a veiled woman come on board."

"That's what I meant. Yet you must see that even with your testimony, my innocence can't be proved if the story of this night has to be told."

"I do see. You might not be proved guilty, but you'd be under a cloud. Shelagh would still want to marry you. But she's very young, and easy to break as a butterfly. The Pollens——"

"I wouldn't accept such a sacrifice even if they'd let her make it. Yet you speak of hope!—--"

"I do—a desperate hope. Can you open that coffin you brought on board to-day, take out—whatever is in it—and—and——"

"My God!"

"I warned you the plan was terrible. I hardly thought you would——"

"I would—for Shelagh. But you don't understand. That coffin will be opened by the police at St. Heliers to-morrow, and——"

"I do understand. It's you who do not. Everyone on board knows that the coffin was floating in the sea—that we came on it by accident. You could have had nothing to do with its being where it was. If you had, you wouldn't have taken it on board! The body found in that coffin to-morrow won't be associated with you. She—must have altered horribly since old days. And she has changed her name many times. The initials on her linen won't be L.L. There'll be a nine-days' wonder over the mystery. But you won't be concerned in it. As for what's in the coffin now, that can safely be given to the sea. Whatever it may be, and whenever or wherever it's found, it won't be connected with the name of Roger Fane. If there's the name of the maker on the coffin, it must come off. Oh, don't think I do not realize the full horror of the thing. I do! But between two evils one must choose the less, if it hurts no one. It seems to me it is so with this. Why should Shelagh's life and yours be spoiled by a cruel woman—a criminal—whose last act was to try to ruin the man she'd injured, sinned against for years? As for—the other—the unknown one—if the spirit can see, surely it would be glad to help in such a cause? What you would have to do, you'd do reverently. There must be tarpaulin on board, or canvas coverings that wouldn't be looked for, or missed. There must be a screw-driver—and things like that. The great danger is, if the coffin's in plain sight anywhere, and a man on watch——"

"There's no danger of that kind. The coffin is in the bathroom adjoining my cabin."

"Then—doesn't it seem that Fate bade you put it there?"

For a moment Roger covered his face with his hands. I saw him shudder. But he flung back his head and looked me in the eyes. "I'll go on obeying Fate's orders," he said.

Without another word between us, he left me. The door shut, and I sat staring at it, as if I could see beyond.

I had spoken only the truth. There was no sin against living or dead in what I had urged Roger to do. Yet the bare thought of it was so grim that I felt like an up-to-date Lady Macbeth.

I had forgotten to beg that he would come back and tell of his success or—failure. But I was sure he would come, sooner or later, whatever happened, and I sat quite still—waiting. I kept my eyes on the door, to see the handle turn, or gazed at my little travelling clock to watch the dragging moments. I longed for news. Yet I was glad when time went on without a sign. The quick coming back of Roger would have meant that he had failed—that all hope was ended.

Twenty minutes; thirty; forty; fifty, passed, seeming endless. But when with the sixtieth minute came the faint tap I awaited, down sank my heart. Roger could not have finished his double task in an hour!

I dashed to the door, and the light from my cabin showed the man's face, ashy pale. Yet I did not read despair on it.

Without a word I dragged him into the room once more; and only when the door was closed did I dare to whisper "Well?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT SURPRISE

"There was no body in the coffin," Roger said.

"Empty?" I gasped.

"Not empty. No. There was something there. Will you come to my cabin and see what it was? Don't look frightened. There's nothing to alarm you. And—Princess, the rest of the plan you gave me has been—carried out. Thanks to your woman's wit, I believe that my future and Shelagh's is clear. And, before Heaven, my conscience is clear, too."

"Oh, Roger, it's thanks to your own courage more than to me. Is—is all safe?"

"The coffin—isn't empty now. It is fastened up, just as it was. The broken rope is round it again. It's covered with the tarpaulin as before. No one outside the secret would guess it had been disturbed. There's no maker's mark to trace it by. I owe more than my life—I owe my very soul—to you. For I haven't much fear of what may come at St. Heliers to-morrow or after."

"Nor I. Oh, I am thankful, for Shelagh's sake even more than yours, if possible. Her heart would have broken. Now she need never know."

"She must know—and choose. I shall tell her—everything I did. Only I need not bring you into it."

"If you tell her about yourself, you must tell her about me," I said. "I'd like to be with you when you speak to her—if you think you must speak."

"I'm sure I must. If all goes well to-morrow, she can marry me without fear of scandal—if she's willing to marry me, after what I've done to-night."

"She will be. And she shall hear from me that this woman who killed herself and our spy of the Abbey were one. As for to-morrow—all must go well! But—the thing you found—in the coffin. You'll have to dispose of it somehow."

"It's for you to decide about that—I think."

"For me? What can it have to do with me?"

"You'll see—in my cabin. If you'll trust me and come."

I went with him, my heart pounding as I entered the room. It seemed as if some visible trace of tragedy must remain. But there was nothing. All was in order. The brandy bottle had disappeared—into the sea, no doubt. The tumbler so cleverly taken from this cabin was clean, and in its place. There were no bits of broken glass from the phial to be seen. And the odour of bitter almonds with which the place had reeked was no longer very strong. The salt breeze blowing through two wide-open portholes would kill it before dawn.

"But where is the thing?" I asked.

"In the study," Roger answered. He motioned me to pass through the curtained archway, as I had passed before; and there I had to cover my lips with my hand to press back a cry. The desk, the big chair I had sat in, and a sofa were covered with objects familiar to me as my own face in a looking-glass. There was Queen Anne's silver tea-service and Napoleon's green-and-gold coffee cups. There were Li Hung Chang's box of red lacquer and the wondrous Buddha; there were the snuff-boxes, the miniatures, the buckles and brooches; the fat watch of George the Fourth; half unrolled lay Charles the First's portrait and sketch, and the Gobelin panel which had been the Empress Josephine's. In fact, all the treasures stolen from Courtenaye Abbey! Here they were in Roger Fane's cabin on board the Naiad, and they had come out of a coffin found floating in the sea!

When I could think at all, I tried to think the puzzle out, and I tried to do it alone, for Roger was in no state to bend his mind to trifles. But, in his almost pathetic gratitude, he wished to help me; and when we had locked up the things in three drawers of his desk, we sat together discussing theories. Something must be planned, something settled, before day!

It was Roger who unfolded the whole affair before my eyes, unfolded it so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust—everyone's trust—in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through as nobody else could have carried it through.

I told Roger of the two demobilized nephews about whom—if he had heard—he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them to Australia years ago when they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young, Barlow had worried over news from Australia: his nephews had been in trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that was ancient history! The twins had evidently "made good." They had fought in the war, and had done well. They must have saved money, or they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast which had belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however, that Roger stopped me. Had the boys "saved" money, or—had they got it in a way less meritorious? Had they needed, for pressing reasons of their own, to possess that place on the coast? The very question called up a picture—no, a series of pictures—before my eyes. I saw, or Roger made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been worked—must have been worked!—from beginning to end; and how at last it had most strangely failed. Again, the Fate that had sailed on the Storm! For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the sky framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did not go to bed (I could not, where she had lain!) and I didn't sleep. But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head, and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine, of how I could return the heirlooms yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.

Yes, that was far more important to him even than to me! For the fact that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and—Roger was safe!

The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage through blue, untroubled waters; and there we came in for all the red tape that Roger had foreseen, if not more. But how inoffensive, even pleasing, is red tape to a man saved from handcuffs and a prison cell!

The body of an unknown woman in a coffin picked up at sea gave the chance for a dramatic "story" to flash over the wires from Jersey to London; and the evident fact that death had been caused by poison added an extra thrill. Every soul on board the Naiad was questioned, down to the chef's assistant; but the same tale was told by all. The coffin had first been sighted at a good distance, and mistaken for a dead shark or a small, overturned boat. The whole party were agreed that it must be brought on board, though no one had wanted it for a travelling companion, and the sailors especially had objected. (Now, by the way, they were revelling in reflected glory. They would not have missed this experience for the world!) I quaked inwardly, fearing that someone might mention the veiled female journalist who had arrived before the start, with an order to view the Naiad. But so completely was her departure from the yacht taken for granted, that none who had seen her recalled the incident.

There was no suspicion of Roger Fane, nor of any one else on board, for there was no reason to suppose that any of us had been acquainted with the dead.

The description wired to London was of "a woman unknown; probable age between forty and fifty; hair dyed auburn; features distorted by effect of poison; hands well shaped, badly kept; figure medium; black serge dress; underclothing plain and much torn, without initials or laundry-marks; no shoes."

It was unlikely that landlords or chance acquaintances should identify the woman newly arrived from France with the woman picked up in a coffin at sea. And the gray-veiled motor toque, the gray cloak worn by the "journalist," and even the battered boots, with high, broken heels, were safely hidden with the heirlooms from the Abbey.

All through the week of our trip the three drawers in Roger's desk remained locked, the little Yale key hanging on Roger's key ring. And all that week (there was no excuse to make for home before the appointed time) our Plan had to lie in abeyance. I was impatient. Roger was not. With Shelagh by his side—and very often in his arms—the incentive for haste was all mine. But I was happy in their happiness, wondering only whether Roger would not be tempting Providence if he told the truth to Shelagh.

Nothing, however, would move the man from his resolution. The one point he would yield was to postpone the confession (if "confession" is a fair word) until the last day, in order not to disturb Shelagh's pleasure in the trip. She was to hear the story the night before we landed; and I begged once more that I might be present to help plead his cause. But Roger wanted no help. And he wanted Shelagh to decide for herself. He would state the case plainly, for and against. Hearing him, the girl would know what was for her own happiness.

"At worst I shall have these wonderful days with her to remember," he said to me. "Nothing can rob me of them. And they are a thousand times the best of my life so far."

I believed that, equally, nothing could rob him of Shelagh! But—I wasn't quite sure. And the difference between just "believing" and being "quite sure" is the difference between mental peace and mental storm. I had gone through so much with Roger, and for him, that by this time I loved the man as I might love a brother—a dear and somewhat trying brother. As for Shelagh, I would have given one of my favourite fingers or toes to buy her happiness. Consequently, the hour of revelation was a bad hour for me.

I knew that, till it was over, I should be incapable of Brightening. Lest I should be called upon in any such capacity, therefore, I went to bed after dinner with an official headache.

"Now he must be telling her," I groaned to my pillow.

"Now he must have told!"

"Now she must be making up her mind!"

"Now it must be made up. She'll be giving her answer. And if it's 'no,' he won't by a word or look plead his own cause. Hang the fool! And bless him!"

Then followed a blank interval when I couldn't at all guess what might be happening. I no longer speculated on the chances. My brain became a blank. And my pillow was a furnace.

I was striving in vain to read a book whose pages I scarcely saw, and whose name I've forgotten, when a tap came at the door. Shelagh Leigh burst in before I could answer.

"Oh, Elizabeth!" she gasped, and fell into my arms.

I held the girl tight for an instant, her beating heart against mine. Then I inquired: "What does 'Oh, Elizabeth!' mean precisely?"

"It means, of course, that I'm going to marry poor, darling Roger as soon as I possibly can, to comfort him all the rest of his life. And that you'll be my 'Matron of Honour,' American fashion," she explained. "Roger is a hero, and you are a heroine."

"No, a Brightener," I corrected. But Shelagh didn't understand. And it didn't matter that she did not.

CHAPTER IX

THE GAME OF BLUFF

When the trip finished where it had begun, instead of travelling up to London with most of my friends, I stopped behind in Plymouth. If any one fancied I was going to Courtenaye Abbey to wail at the shrine of lost treasures, why, I had never said (in words) that such was my intention. In fact, it was not.

What I did, as soon as backs were turned, was to make straight for Dudworth Cove, on the rocky Dorset Coast. I went by motor car with Roger Fane as chauffeur; and by aid of a road map and a few questions we drove to the old farmhouse which the Barlow boys had lately bought.

Of course it was possible that Mrs. Barlow and the two Australian nephews had departed in haste, after their loss. They might or might not have read in the papers about the coffin containing the body of a woman picked up at sea by a yacht. Probably they had read of it, since the word "coffin" at the head of a column would be apt to catch their guilty eyes. But even so, they would hardly expect that this coffin, containing a corpse, and a certain other coffin, with very different contents, were one and the same. In any case, they need not greatly fear suspicion falling upon them, and Roger and I thought they would remain at the farm engaged in eager, secret search. As for Barlow, for whom the coffin had doubtless been made, he, too, might be there; or he might have left the Abbey at night, about the time of his "death," to wait in some agreed-upon hiding place.

The house was visible from the road; rather a nice old house, built of stone, with a lichened roof and friendly windows. It had a lived-in air, and a thin wreath of smoke floated above the kitchen chimney. There were two gates, and both were padlocked, so the car had to stop in the road. I refused Roger's companionship, however. The fact that he was close by and knew where I was seemed sufficient safeguard. I climbed over the fence with no more ado than in pre-flapper days, and walked across the weedy grass to the house. No one answered a knock at the front door, so I went to the back, and caught "Barley" feeding a group of chickens.

The treacherous old thing was in deep mourning, with a widow's cap, and her dress of black bombazine (or some equally awful stuff) was pinned up under a big apron. At sight of me she jumped, and almost dropped a pan of meal; but even the most innocent person is entitled to jump! She recovered herself quickly, and called up the ghost of a welcoming smile—such a smile as may decently decorate the face of a newly made widow.

"Why, Miss—Princess!" she exclaimed. "This is a surprise. If anything could make me happy in my sad affliction it would be a visit from you. My nephews are out fishing—they're very fond of fishing, poor boys!—but come in and let me give you a cup of tea."

"I will come in," I said, "because I must have a talk with you, but I don't want tea. And, really, Mrs. Barlow, I wonder you have the cheek to speak of your 'sad affliction.'"

By this time I was already over the threshold, and in the kitchen, for she had stood aside for me to pass. Just inside the door I turned on her, and saw the old face—once so freshly apple-cheeked—flush darkly, then fade to yellow. Her eyes stared into mine, wavered, and dropped; but no tears came.

"'Cheek?'" she repeated, as if reproving slang. "Miss—Princess—I don't know what you mean."

"I think you know very well," I said, "because you have no 'sad affliction.' Your husband is as much alive as I am. The only loss you've suffered is the loss of the coffin in which he wasn't buried!"

The woman dropped, like a jelly out of its mould, into a kitchen chair. "My Heavens! Miss Elizabeth, you don't know what you're saying!" she gasped, dry-lipped.

"I know quite well," I caught her up. "And to show that I know, I'm going to reconstruct the whole plot." (This was bluff. But it was part of the Plan). "Barlow's nephews were expert thieves. They'd served a term for stealing at home, in Australia. They spent a short leave at Courtenaye Coombe, and you showed them over the Abbey. Then and there they got an idea. They bribed you and Barlow to help them carry it out and give them a letter of mine to tear into bits and turn suspicion on me. Probably they worked with rubber gloves and shoes—as you know the detectives have found no fingermarks or footprints. Every man is said to have his price. You two had yours! Just how much more than others you knew about old secret 'hidie-holes' in the Abbey I can't tell, but I'm sure you did know more than any of us. There was always the lodge, too, which was the same as your own, and full of your things! I'm practically certain there's a secret way to it, through the cellars. Ah, I thought so!" (As her face changed.) "Trusted as you were, a burglary in the night was easy as falling off a log—and all that binding and gagging business. The trouble was to get the stolen things out of the country—let's say to Australia, where Barlow's nephews could count upon a receiver, or a buyer, maybe some old associate of their pre-prison days. Among you all, you hit on quite a clever plan. Only a dear, kind creature like you, respected by everyone, could have hypnotized even old Doctor Pyne into believing Barlow was dead—no matter what strong drug you used! You wouldn't let any one come near the body afterward. You loved your husband so much you would do everything for him yourself—in death as in life. How pathetic—how estimable! And then you and the two 'boys' brought the coffin here, to have it buried in the old cemetery, with generations of other respectable Barlows. The night after the funeral the twins dug it up, as neatly as they dug trenches in France, and left the case underground as a precaution. Perhaps Barlow's 'ghost' watched the work. But that's of no importance. What was of importance was the next step. They took the coffin to a nice convenient cave (that's what made this house worth buying back, isn't it?) and tethered the thing there to wait an appointed hour. At that hour a boat would quietly appear, and bear it away to a smart little sailing ship. Then—ho! for Australia or some place where heirlooms from this country can be disposed of without talk or trouble. I would bet that Barlow is on that ship now, and you meant to join him, instead of waiting for a better world. But there came the storm, and a record wave or two ran into the cave. Alas for the schemes of mice and men—and Barlow's!"

Not once did she interrupt. I doubt if the woman could have uttered a word had she dared; for the game of Bluff was new to her. She believed that by sleuth-hound cunning I had tracked her down, following each move from the first, and biding my time to strike until all proofs (the coffin and its contents) were within my grasp. By the time I had paused for lack of breath, the old face was sickly white, like candle-grease, and the remembrance of affection was so keen that I could not help pitying the creature. "You realize," I said, "everything is known. Not only do I know, but others. And we have all the stolen things in our possession. I've come here to offer you a chance of saving yourselves—though it's compounding a felony or something, I suppose! We can put you in the way of replacing the heirlooms in the night, just as they were taken away—by that secret passage you know. If you try to play us false, and hope to get the things back, we won't have mercy a second time. We shall find Barlow before you can warn him. And as for his nephews——"

"Yes! What about his nephews?" broke in a rough voice.

I started (only a statue could have resisted that start!) and turning my head I saw a tall young man close behind me, in the doorway by which I'd entered. Whether or not Mrs. Barlow had seen him, I don't know. She did not venture to speak, but a glance showed me a gleam of malicious relief in the eyes I had once thought limpid as a brook. If she'd ever felt any fondness for me, it was gone. She hated and feared me with a deadly fear. The thought shot through my brain that she would willingly sit still and see me murdered, if she and her husband could be saved from open shame by my disappearance.

The man in the doorway was sunburned to a lobster-red, and had features like those of some gargoyle. He must have been eavesdropping long enough to gather a good deal of information, for there was fury in his eyes, and deadly decision in the set of his big jaw.

Where was Roger Fane? I wondered. Without Roger I was lost, and my fate might never be known. Suddenly I was icily afraid—for something might have happened to Roger. But at that same frozen instant a very strange thing happened to me. My thoughts flew to Sir James Courtenaye! I had always disliked him—or fancied so. But he was so strong—such a giant of a man! What a wonderful champion he would be now! What hash he would make of the Barlow twins! Quickly I controlled myself. This was the moment when the game of Bluff (which had served me well so far) might be my one weapon of defence.

"As for Barlow's nephews," I echoed, with false calmness, "theirs is the principal guilt, and theirs ought to be the heaviest punishment."

The Crimson Gargoyle shut the door, deliberately, with a horrid, purposeful kind of deliberation, and with a stride or two came close to me. I stepped back, but he followed, towering above me with the air of a big bullying boy out to scare the life from a little one. To give him stare for stare I had to look straight up, my chin raised, and the threatening eyes, the great red face, seemed to fill the world—as a cat's face and eyes must seem to a hypnotized mouse.

I shook myself free from the hypnotic grip. Yet I would not let my gaze waver. Grandmother wouldn't, and no Courtenaye should!

"Who is going to punish us?" barked the Gargoyle.

"The police," I barked back. And almost I could have laughed at the difference in size and voice. I was so like a slim young Borzoi yapping at the nose of a bloodhound.

"Rot!" snorted the big fellow. "Damn rot!" (and I thought I heard a faint chuckle from the chair). "If the police were on to us, you wouldn't be here. This is a try-on."

"You'll soon see whether it's a try-on or not," I defied him. "As a matter of fact, out of pity for your two poor old dupes, we haven't told the police yet of what we've found out. I say 'we,' for I'm far from being alone or unprotected. I came to speak with Mrs. Barlow because she and her husband once served my family, and were honest till you tempted them. But if I'm kept here more than the fifteen minutes I specified, there is a man who——"

"There isn't," snapped the Gargoyle. "There was, but there isn't now. My brother Bob and me was out in our boat. I don't mind tellin' you, as you know so much, that we've spent quite a lot of time beatin' and prowlin' around these shores since the big storm." (The thought flashed through my brain: "Then they haven't read about the Naiad! Or else they didn't guess that the coffin was the same. That's one good thing! They can never blackmail Roger, whatever happens to me!") But I didn't speak. I let him pause for a second, and go on without interruption. "Comin' home we seen that car o' yourn outside our gate. Thought it was queer! Bob says to me, 'Hank, go on up to the house, and make me a sign from behind the big tree if there's anythin' wrong.' The feller in the car hadn't seen or heard us. We took care o' that! I slid off my shoes before I got to the door here, and listened a bit to your words o' wisdom. Then I slipped out as fur as the tree, and I made the sign. Bob didn't tell me what he meant to do. But I'm some on mind readin'. I guess that gentleman friend of yourn has gone to sleep in his automobile, as any one might in this quiet neighbourhood, where folks don't pass once in four or five hours. Bob can drive most makes of cars. Shouldn't wonder if he can manage this one. If you hear the engine tune up, you'll know it's him takin' the chauffeur down to the sea."

My bones felt like icicles; but I thought of Grandmother, and wouldn't give in. Also, with far less reason, I thought of Sir James. Strange, unaccountable creature that I was, my soul cried aloud for the championship of his strength! "The sea hasn't brought you much luck yet," I brazened. "I shouldn't advise you to try it again."

"I ain't askin' your advice," retorted the man who had indirectly introduced himself as "Hank Barlow." "All I ask is, where's the stuff?"

"What stuff?" I played for time, though I knew very well the "stuff" he meant.

"The goods from the Abbey. I won't say you wasn't smart to get on to the cache, and nab the box out o' the cave. Only you wasn't quite smart enough—savez? The fellers laugh best who laugh last. And we're those fellers!"

"You spring to conclusions," I said. But my voice sounded small in my own ears—small and thin as the voice of a child. (Oh, to know if this brute spoke truth about his brother and Roger Fane and the car, or if he were fighting me with my own weapon—Bluff!)

Henry Barlow laughed aloud—though he mightn't laugh last! "Do you call yourself a 'conclusion'? I'll give you just two minutes, my handsome lady, to make up your mind. If you don't tell me then where to lay me 'and on you know what, I'll spring at you."

By the wolf-glare in his eyes and the boldness of his tone I feared that his game wasn't wholly bluff. By irony of Fate, he had turned the tables on me. Thinking the power was all on my side and Roger's, I'd walked into a trap. And if, indeed, Roger had been struck down from behind, I did not see any way of escape for him or me. I had let out that I knew too much.

Even if I turned coward, and told Hank Barlow that the late contents of his uncle's coffin were on board the Naiad, he could not safely allow Roger or me to go free. But I wouldn't turn coward! To save the secret of the Abbey treasures meant saving the secret of what that coffin now held. My sick fear turned to hot rage. "Spring!" I cried. "Kill me if you choose. My coffin will keep a secret, which yours couldn't do!"

He glared, nonplussed by my violence.

"Devil take you, you cat!" he grunted.

"And you, you hound!" I cried.

His eyes flamed. I think fury would have conquered prudence, and he would have sprung then, to choke my life out, perhaps. But he hadn't locked the door. At that instant it swung open, and a whirlwind burst in. The whirlwind was a man. And the man was James Courtenaye.

I did not tell Sir Jim that my spirit had forgotten itself so utterly as to call him. It was quite unnecessary, as matters turned out, to "give myself away" to this extent. For, you see, it was not my call that brought him. It was Roger's.

As Shelagh Leigh was my best friend, so was, and is, Jim Courtenaye Roger Fane's. All the first part of Roger's life tragedy was known to my "forty-fourth cousin four times removed." For years Roger had given him all his confidence. The ex-cowboy had even advised him in his love affair with Shelagh, to "go on full steam ahead, and never mind breakers"—(alias Pollens). This being the case, it had seemed to Roger unfair not to trust his chum to the uttermost end. He had not intended to mention me as his accomplice; but evidently cowboys' wits are as quick as their lassoes. Jim guessed at my part in the business, thinking, maybe—that only the sly sex could hit upon such a Way Out. Anyhow, he was far from shocked; in fact, deigned to approve of me for the first time, and hearing how I had planned to restore the stolen heirlooms, roared with laughter.

Roger, conscience-stricken because my secret had leaked out with his, wished to atone by telling me that his friend had scented the whole truth. Jim Courtenaye, however, urged him against this course. He reckoned the Barlow twins more formidable than Roger and I had thought them, and insisted that he should be a partner in our game of Bluff. Only, he wished to be a silent partner till the right time came to speak. Or that was the way he put it. His real reason, as he boldly confessed afterward, was that, if I knew he was "in it," I'd be sure to make a "silly fuss"!

It was arranged between him and Roger that he should motor from Courtenaye Coombe to Dudworth Cove, put up his car at the small hotel, and inconspicuously approach the Barlows' farm on foot. In some quiet spot which he would guarantee to find, he was to "lurk" and await developments. If help were wanted, he would be there to give it. If not, he would peacefully remove himself, and I need never know that he had been near the place.

All the details of this minor plot were well mapped out, and the only one that failed (not being mapped out) was a tyre of his Rolls-Royce which stepped on a nail as long as Jael's. Wishing to do the trick alone, Jim had taken no chauffeur; and he wasn't as expert at pumping up tyres as at breaking in bronchos. He was twenty minutes past scheduled time, in consequence, and arrived at the spot appointed just as Bob Barlow had bashed Roger Fane smartly on the head from behind.

Naturally this incident kept his attention engaged for some moments. He had to overpower the Barlow twin, who was on the alert, and not to be taken by surprise. The Australian was still in good fighting trim, and gave Sir James some trouble before he was reduced to powerlessness. Then a glance had to be given Roger, to make sure he had not got a knock-out blow. Altogether, Hank Barlow had five minutes' grace indoors with me, before—the whirlwind. If it had been six minutes——But then, it wasn't! So why waste thrills upon a horror which had not time to materialize? And oh, how I did enjoy seeing those twins trussed up like a pair of monstrous fowls on the kitchen floor! It had been clever of Sir Jim to place a coil of rope in Roger's car in case of emergencies. But when I said this, to show my appreciation, he replied drily that a cattleman's first thought is rope! "That's what you are accustomed to call me, I believe," he added. "A cattleman."

"I shall never call you it again," I quite meekly assured him.

"You won't? What will you call me, then?"

"Cousin—if you like," I said.

"That'll do—for the present," he granted.

"Or 'friend,' if it pleases you better?" I suggested.

"Both are pretty good to go on with."

So between us there was a truce—and no more Pembertons or even Smiths: which is why "Smith" never revealed what he thought about what Sir Jim thought of me. And I would not try to guess—would you? But it was only to screen Roger, and not to content me, that Sir James Courtenaye allowed my original plan to be carried out: the heirlooms to be mysteriously returned by night to the Abbey, and the Barlow tribe to vanish into space, otherwise Australia. He admitted this bluntly. And I retorted that, if he hadn't saved my life, I should say that such friendship wasn't worth much. But there it was! He had saved it. And things being as they were, Shelagh told Roger that I couldn't reasonably object if Jim were asked to be best man at the wedding, though I was to be "best woman."

She was right. I couldn't. And it was a lovely wedding. I lightened my mourning for it to white and lavender—just for the day. Mrs. Carstairs said I owed this to the bride and bridegroom—also to myself, as Brightener, to say nothing of Sir Jim.

BOOK II

THE HOUSE WITH THE TWISTED CHIMNEY

CHAPTER I

THE SHELL-SHOCK MAN

"Do you want to be a Life Preserver as well as a Brightener, Elizabeth, my child?" asked Mrs. Carstairs.

"Depends on whose life," I replied, making a lovely blue smoke ring before I spoke and another when I'd finished.

I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed. She was not scandalized. She asked for a cigarette, and took it; my last.

"The latest style in my country is to make your smoke ring loop the loop, and do it through the nose," she informed me, calmly. "I can't do it myself—yet. But Terry Burns can."

"Who's Terry Burns?" I asked.

"The man whose life ought to be preserved."

"It certainly ought," said I, "if he can make smoke rings loop the loop through his nose. Oh, you know what I mean!"

"He hardly takes enough interest in things to do even that, nowadays," sighed Mrs. Carstairs.

"Good heavens! what's the matter with the man—senile decay?" I flung at her. "Terry isn't at all a decayed name."

"And Terry isn't a decayed man. He's about twenty-six, if you choose to call that senile. He's almost too good-looking. He's not physically ill. And he's got plenty of money. All the same, he's likely to die quite soon, I should say."

"Can't anything be done?" I inquired, really moved.

"I don't know. It's a legacy from shell shock. You know what that is. He's come to stay with us at Haslemere, poor boy, because my husband was once in love with his mother—at the same time I was worshipping his father. Terry was with us before—here in London in 1915—on leave soon after he volunteered. Afterward, when America came in, he transferred. But even in 1915 he wasn't exactly radiating happiness (disappointment in love or something), but he was just boyishly cynical then, nothing worse; and the most splendid specimen of a young man!—his father over again; Henry says, his mother! Either way, I was looking forward to nursing him at Haslemere and seeing him improve every day. But, my dear, I can do nothing! He has got so on my nerves that I had to make an excuse to run up to town or I should simply have—slumped. The sight of me slumping would have been terribly bad for the poor child's health. It might have finished him."

"So you want to exchange my nerves for yours," I said. "You want me to nurse your protégé till I slump. Is that it?"

"It wouldn't come to that with you," argued the ancient darling. "You could bring back his interest in life; I know you could. You'd think of something. Remember what you did for Roger Fane!"

As a matter of fact, I had done a good deal more for Roger Fane than dear old Caroline knew or would ever know. But if Roger owed anything to me, I owed him, and all he had paid me in gratitude and banknotes, to Mrs. Carstairs.

"I shall never forget Roger Fane, and I hope he won't me," I said. "Shelagh won't let him! But he hadn't lost interest in life. He just wanted life to give him Shelagh Leigh. She happened to be my best pal; and her people were snobs, so I could help him. But this Terry Burns of yours—what can I do for him?"

"Take him on and see," pleaded the old lady.

"Do you wish him to fall in love with me?" I suggested.

"He wouldn't if I did. He told me the other day that he'd loved only one woman in his life, and he should never care for another. Besides, I mustn't conceal from you, this would be an unsalaried job."

"Oh, indeed!" said I, slightly piqued. "I don't want his old love! Or his old money, either! But—well—I might just go and have a look at him, if you'd care to take me to Haslemere with you. No harm in seeing what can be done—if anything. I suppose, as you and Mr. Carstairs between you were in love with all his ancestors, and he resembles them, he must be worth saving—apart from the loops. Is he English or American or what?"

"American on one side and What on the other," replied the old lady. "That is, his father, whom I was in love with, was American. The mother, whom Henry adored, was French. All that's quite a romance. But it's ancient history. And it's the present we're interested in. Of course I'd care to take you to Haslemere. But I have a better plan. I've persuaded Terry to consult the nerve specialist, Sir Humphrey Hale. He's comparatively easy to persuade, because he'd rather yield a point than bother to argue. That's how I got my excuse to run up to town: to explain the case to Sir Humphrey, and have my flat made ready for Terence to live in, while he's being treated."

"Oh, that's it," I said, and thought for a minute.

My flat is in the same house as the Carstairs', a charming old house in which I couldn't afford to live if Dame Caroline (title given by me, not His Gracious Majesty) hadn't taught me the gentle, well-paid Art of Brightening.

You might imagine that a Brightener was some sort of patent polisher for stoves, metal, or even boots. But you would be mistaken. I am the one and only Brightener!

But this isn't what I was thinking about when I said, "Oh, that's it?" I was attempting to track that benevolent female fox, Caroline Carstairs, to the fastness of her mental lair. When I flattered myself that I'd succeeded, I spoke again.

"I see what you'd be at, Madame Machiavelli," I warned her. "You and your husband are so fed up with the son of your ancient loves, that he's spoiling your holiday in your country house. You've been wondering how on earth to shed him, anyhow for a breathing space, without being unkind. So you thought, if you could lure him to London, and lend him your flat——"

"Dearest, you are an ungrateful young Beastess! Besides, you're only half right. It's true, poor Henry and I are worn out from sympathy. Our hearts are squeezed sponges, and have completely collapsed. Not that Terry complains. He doesn't. Only he is so horribly bored with life and himself and us that it's killing all three. I had to think of something to save him. So I thought of you."

"But you thought of Sir Humphrey Hale. Surely, if there's any cure for Mr.——"

"Captain——"

"Burns. Sir Humphrey can——"

"He can't. But I had to use him with Terry. I couldn't say: 'Go live in our flat and meet the Princess di Miramare. He would believe the obvious thing, and be put off. You are to be thrown in as an extra: a charming neighbour who, as a favour to me, will see that he's all right. When you've got him interested—not in yourself, but in life—I shall explain—or confess, whichever you choose to call it. He will then realize that the fee for his cure ought to be yours, not Sir Humphrey's, though naturally you couldn't accept one. Sir Humphrey has already told me that, judging from the symptoms I've described, it seems a case beyond doctor's skill. You know, Sir H—— has made his pile, and doesn't have to tout for patients. But he's a good friend of Henry's and mine."

"You have very strong faith in me!" I laughed.

"Not too strong," said she.

The Carstairs' servants had gone with them to the house near Haslemere; but if Dame Caroline wanted a first-rate cook at a moment's notice, she would wangle one even if there were only two in existence, and both engaged. The shell-shock man had his own valet—an ex-soldier—so with the pair of them, and a char-creature of some sort, he would do very well for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I hardly thought that, in the end, he would be braced up to the effort of coming, and I should not have been surprised to receive a wire:

Rather than move, Terry has cut his throat in the Japanese garden.

Which shows that despite all past experiences, I little knew my Caroline!

Captain Burns—late of the American Flying Corps—did come; and what is more, he called at my flat before he had been fifteen minutes in his own. This he did because Mrs. Carstairs had begged him to bring a small parcel which he must deliver by hand to me personally. She had telegraphed, asking me to stop at home—quite a favour in this wonderful summer, even though it was July, the season proper had passed; but I couldn't refuse, as I'd tacitly promised to brighten the man. So there I sat, in my favourite frock, when he was ushered into the drawing room.

Dame Caroline had told me that "Terry" was good-looking, but her description had left me cold, and somehow or other I was completely unprepared for the real Terry Burns.

Yes, real is the word for him! He was so real that it seemed odd I had gone on all my life without having known there was this Terence Burns. Not that I fell in love with him. Just at the moment I was much occupied in trying to keep alight an old fire of resentment against a man who had saved my life; a "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" (as he called himself), Sir James Courtenaye. But when I say "real," I mean he was one of those few people who would seem important to you if you passed him in a crowd. You would tell yourself regretfully that there was a friend you'd missed making: and you would have had to resist a strong impulse to rush back and speak to him at any price.

If, at the first instant of meeting, I felt this strong personal magnetism, or charm, or whatever it was, though the man was down physically at lowest ebb, what would the sensation have been with him at his best?

He was tall and very thin, with a loose-boned look, as if he ought to be lithe and muscular, but he came into the room listlessly, his shoulders drooping, as though it were an almost unbearable bore to put one foot before another. His pallor was of the pathetic kind that gives an odd transparence to deeply tanned skin, almost like a light shining through. His hair was a bronzy brown, so immaculately brushed back from his square forehead as to remind you of a helmet, except that it rippled all over. And he had the most appealing eyes I ever saw.

They were not dark, tragic ones like Roger Fane's. I thought that when he was well and happy, they must have been full of light and joy. They were slate-gray with thick black lashes, true Celtic eyes: but they were dull and tired now, not sad, only devoid of interest in anything.

It wasn't flattering that they should be devoid of interest in me. I am used to having men's eyes light up with a gleam of surprise when they see me for the first time. This man's eyes didn't. I seemed to read in them: "Yes, I suppose you're very pretty. But that's nothing to me, and I hope you don't want me to flirt with you, because I haven't the energy or even the wish."

I'm sure that, vaguely, this was about what was in his mind, and that he intended getting away from me as soon as would be decently polite after finishing his errand. Still, I wasn't in the least annoyed. I was sorry for him—not because he didn't want to be bothered with me, but because he didn't want to be bothered with anything. Millionaire or pauper, I didn't care. I was determined to brighten him, in spite of himself. He was too dear and delightful a fellow not to be happy with somebody, some day. I couldn't sit still and let him sink down and down into the depths. But I should have to go carefully, or do him more harm than good. I could see that. If I attempted to be amusing he would crawl away, a battered wreck.

What I did was to show no particular interest in him. I took the tiny parcel Mrs. Carstairs had ordered him to bring, and asked casually if he'd care to stop in my flat till his man had finished unpacking.

"I don't know how you feel," I said, "but I always hate the first hour in a new place, with a servant fussing about, opening and shutting drawers and wardrobes. I loathe things that squeak."

"So do I," he answered, dreamily. "Any sort of noise."

"I shall be having tea in a few minutes," I mentioned. "If you don't mind looking at magazines or something while I open Mrs. Carstairs' parcel, and write to her, stay if you care to. I should be pleased. But don't feel you'll be rude to say 'no.' Do as you like."

He stayed, probably because he was in a nice easy chair, and it was simpler to sit still than get up, so long as he needn't make conversation. I left him there, while I went to the far end of the room, where my desk was. The wonderful packet, which must be given into my hand by his, contained three beautiful new potatoes, the size of marbles, out of the Carstairs' kitchen garden! I bit back a giggle, hid the rare jewels in a drawer, and scribbled any nonsense I could think of to Dame Caroline, till I heard tea coming. Then I went back to my guest. I gave him tea, and other things. There were late strawberries, and some Devonshire cream, which had arrived by post that morning, anonymously. Sir James Courtenaye, that red-haired cowboy to whom I'd let the ancestral Abbey, was in Devonshire. But there was no reason why he should send me cream, or anything else. Still, there it was. Captain Burns, it appeared, had never happened to taste the Devonshire variety. He liked it. And when he had disposed of a certain amount (during which time we hardly spoke), I offered him my cigarette case.

For a few moments we both smoked in silence. Then I said, "I'm disappointed in you."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you haven't looped any loops through your nose."

He actually laughed! He looked delightful when he laughed.

"I was trying something of the sort one day, and failing," I explained. "Mrs. Carstairs said she had a friend who could do it, and his name was Terence Burns."

"I've almost forgotten that old stunt," he smiled indulgently. "Think of Mrs. Carstairs remembering it! Why, I haven't had time to remember it myself, much less try it out, since I was young."

"That is a long time ago!" I ventured, smoking hard.

"You see," he explained quite gravely, smoking harder, "I went into the war in 1915. It wasn't our war then, for I'm an American, you know. But I had a sort of feeling it ought to be everybody's war. And besides, I'd fallen out of love with life about that time. War doesn't leave a man feeling very young, whether or not he's gone through what I have."

"I know," said I. "Even we women don't feel as young as we hope we look. I'm twenty-one and a half, and feel forty."

"I'm twenty-seven, and feel ninety-nine," he capped me.

"Shell shock is—the devil!" I sympathized. "But men get over it. I know lots who have." I took another cigarette and pushed the case toward him.

"Perhaps they wanted to get over it. I don't want to, particularly, because life has rather lost interest for me, since I was about twenty-two; I'm afraid that was one reason I volunteered. Not very brave! I don't care now whether I live or die. I didn't care then."

"At twenty-two! Why, you weren't grown up!"

"You say that, at twenty-one?"

"It's different with a girl. I've had such a lot of things to make me feel grown up."

"So have I, God knows." (By this time he was smoking like a chimney.) "Did you lose the one thing you'd wanted in the world? But no—I mustn't ask that. I don't ask it."

"You may," I vouchsafed, charmed that—as one says of a baby—he was "beginning to take notice." "No, frankly, I didn't lose the one thing in the world I wanted most, because I've never quite known yet what I did or do want most. But not knowing leaves you at loose ends, if you're alone in the world as I am." Then, having said this, just to indicate that my circumstances conduced to tacit sympathy with his, I hopped like a sparrow to another branch of the same subject. "It's bad not to get what we want. But it's dull not to want anything."

"Is it?" Burns asked almost fiercely. "I haven't got to that yet. I wish I had. When I want a thing, it's in my nature to want it for good and all. I want the thing I wanted before the war as much now as ever. That's the principal trouble with me, I think. The hopelessness of everything. The uselessness of the things you can get."

"Can't you manage to want something you might possibly get?" I asked.

He smiled faintly. "That's much the same advice that the doctors have given—the advice this Sir Humphrey Hale of the Carstairs will give to-morrow. I'm sure. 'Try to take an interest in things as they are.' Good heavens! that's just what I can't do."

"I don't give you that advice," I said. "It's worse than useless to try and take an interest. It's stodgy. What I mean is, if an interest, alias a chance of adventure, should breeze along, don't shut the door on it. Let it in, ask it to sit down, and see how you like it. But then—maybe you wouldn't recognize it as an adventure if you saw it at the window!"

"Oh, I think I should do that!" he defended himself. "I'm man enough yet to know an adventure when I meet it. That's why I came into your war. But the war's finished, and so am I. Really, I don't see why any one bothers about me. I wouldn't about myself, if they'd let me alone!"

"There I'm with you," said I. "I like to be let alone, to go my own way. Still, people unfortunately feel bound to do their best. Mrs. Carstairs has done hers. If Sir Humphrey gives you up, she'll thenceforward consider herself free from responsibility—and you free to 'dree your own weird'—whatever that means!—to the bitter end. As for me, I've no responsibility at all. I don't advise you! In your place, I'd do as you're doing. Only, I've enough fellow feeling to let you know, in a spirit of comradeship, if I hear the call of an adventure.... There, you did the 'stunt' all right that time! A lovely loop the loop! I wouldn't have believed it! Now watch, please, while I try!"

He did watch, and I fancy that, in spite of himself, he took an interest! He laughed out, quite a spontaneous "Ha, ha!" when I began with a loop and ended with a sneeze.

It seems too absurd that a siren should lure her victim with a sneeze instead of a song. But it was that sneeze which did the trick. Or else, my mumness now and then, and not seeming to care a Tinker's Anything whether he thought I was pretty or a fright. He warmed toward me visibly during the loop lesson, and I was as proud as if a wild bird had settled down to eat out of my hand.

That was the beginning: and a commonplace one, you'll say! It didn't seem commonplace to me: I was too much interested. But even I did not dream of the weird developments ahead!

CHAPTER II

THE ADVERTISEMENT

It was on the fourth day that I got the idea—I mean, the fourth day of Terry Burns' stay in town.

He had dropped in to see me on each of these days, for one reason or other: to tell me what Sir Humphrey said; to sneer at the treatment; to beg a cigarette when his store had given out; or something else equally important; I (true to my bargain with Caroline) having given up all engagements in order to brighten Captain Burns.

I was reading the Times when a thought popped into my head. I shut my eyes, and studied its features. They fascinated me.

It was morning: and presently my Patient unawares strolled in for the eleven-o'clock glass of egg-nogg prescribed by Sir Humphrey and offered by me.

He drank it. When he had pronounced it good, I asked him casually how he was. No change. At least, none that he noticed. Except that he always felt better, more human, in my society. That was because I appeared to be a bit fed up with life, too, and didn't try to cheer him.

"On the contrary," I said, "I was just wondering whether I might ask you to cheer me. I've thought of something that might amuse me a little. Yes, I'm sure it would! Only I'm not equal to working out the details alone. If I weren't afraid it would bore you...."

"Of course it wouldn't, if it could amuse you!" His eyes lit. "Tell me what it is you want to do?"

"I'm almost ashamed. It's so childish. But it would be fun."

"If I could care to do anything at all, it would be something childish. Besides, I believe you and I are rather alike in several ways. We have the same opinions about life. We're both down on our luck."

I gave myself a mental pat on the head. I ought to succeed on the stage, if it ever came to that!

"Well," I hesitated. "I got the idea from an article in the Times. There's something on the subject every day in every paper I see, but it never occurred to me till now to get any fun out of it: the Housing Problem, you know. Not the one for the working classes—I wouldn't be so mean as to 'spoof' them—nor the Nouveaux Pauvres, of whom I'm one! It's for the Nouveaux Riches. They're fair game."

"What do you want to do to them?" asked Terry Burns.

"Play a practical joke; then dig myself in and watch the result. Perhaps there'd be none. In that case, the joke would be on me."

"And on me, if we both went in for the experiment. We'd bear the blow together."

"It wouldn't kill us! Listen—I'll explain. It's simply idiotic. But it's something to do: something to make one wake up in the morning with a little interest to look forward to. The papers all say that everybody is searching for a desirable house to be sold, or let furnished; and that there aren't any houses! On the other hand, if you glance at the advertisement sheets of any newspaper, you ask yourself if every second house in England isn't asking to be disposed of! Now, is it only a 'silly-season' cry, this grievance about no houses, or is it true? What larks to concoct an absolutely adorable 'ad.', describing a place with every perfection, and see what applications one would get! Would there be thousands or just a mere dribble, or none at all? Don't you think it would be fun to find out—and reading the letters if there were any? People would be sure to say a lot about themselves. Human nature's like that. Or, anyhow, we could force their hands by putting into the 'ad.' that we would let our wonderful house only to the right sort of tenants. 'No others need apply'."

"But that would limit the number of answers—and our fun," said Terry. On his face glimmered a grin. After all, the "kid" in him had been scotched, not killed.

"Oh, no," I argued. "They'd be serenely confident that they and they alone were the right ones. Then, when they didn't hear from the advertiser by return, they'd suppose that someone more lucky had got ahead of them. Yes, we're on the right track! We must want to let our place furnished. If we wished to sell, we'd have no motive in trying to pick and choose our buyer. Any creature with money would do. So our letters would be tame as Teddy-bears. What we want is human documents!"

"Let's begin to think out our 'ad.'!" exclaimed the patient, sitting up straighter in his chair. Already two or three haggard years seemed to have fallen from his face. I might have been skilfully knocking them off with a hammer!

Like a competent general, I had all my materials at hand: Captain Burns' favourite brand of cigarettes, matches warranted to light without damns, a notebook, several sharp, soft-leaded pencils, and some illustrated advertisements cut from Country Life to give us hints.

"What sort of house have we?" Terry wanted to know. "Is it town or country; genuine Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne, or Georgian——"

"Oh, country! It gives us more scope," I cried. "And I think Tudor's the most attractive. But I may be prejudiced. Courtenaye Abbey—our place in Devonshire—is mostly Tudor. I'm too poor to live there. Through Mr. Carstairs it's let to a forty-fourth cousin of mine who did cowboying in all its branches in America, coined piles of oof in something or other, and came over here to live when he'd collected enough to revive a little old family title. But I adore the Abbey."

"Our house shall be Tudor," Terry assented. "It had better be historic, hadn't it?"

"Why not? It's just as easy for us. Let's have the oldest bits earlier than Tudor—what?"

"By Jove! Yes! King John. Might look fishy to go behind him!"

So, block after block, by suggestion, we two architects of the aerial school built up the noble mansion we had to dispose of. With loving and artistic touch, we added feature after feature of interest, as inspirations came. We were like benevolent fairy god-parents at a baby's christening, endowing a beloved ward with all possible perfections.

Terry noted down our ideas at their birth, lest we should forget under pressure of others to follow; and at last, after several discarded efforts, we achieved an advertisement which combined every attribute of an earthly paradise.

This is the way it ran:

"To let furnished, for remainder of summer (possibly longer), historic moated Grange, one of the most interesting old country places in England, mentioned in Domesday Book, for absurdly small rent to desirable tenant; offered practically free. The house, with foundations, chapel, and other features dating from the time of King John, has remained unchanged save for such modern improvements as baths (h. & c.), electric lighting, and central heating, since Elizabethan days. It possesses a magnificent stone-paved hall, with vaulted chestnut roof (15th century), on carved stone corbels; an oak-panelled banqueting hall with stone, fan-vaulted roof and mistrels' gallery. Each of the several large reception rooms is rich in old oak, and has a splendid Tudor chimney-piece. There are over twenty exceptionally beautiful bedrooms, several with wagon plaster ceilings. The largest drawing-room overlooks the moat, where are ancient carp, and pink and white water-lilies. All windows are stone mullioned, with old leaded glass; some are exquisite oriels; and there are two famous stairways, one with dog gates. The antique furniture is valuable and historic. A fascinating feature of the house is a twisted chimney (secret of construction lost; the only other known by the advertiser to exist being at Hampton Court). All is in good repair; domestic offices perfect, and the great oak-beamed, stone-flagged kitchen has been copied by more than one artist. There are glorious old-world gardens, with an ornamental lake, some statues, fountains, sundials; terraces where white peacocks walk under the shade of giant Lebanon cedars; also a noble park, and particularly charming orchard with grass walks. Certain servants and gardeners will remain if desired; and this wonderful opportunity is offered for an absurdly low price to a tenant deemed suitable by the advertiser. Only gentlefolk, with some pretensions to intelligence and good looks, need reply, as the advertiser considers that this place would be wasted upon others. Young people preferred. For particulars, write T. B., Box F., the Times."

We were both enraptured with the result of our joint inspirations. We could simply see the marvellous moated grange, and Terry thought that life would be bearable after all if he could live there. What a pity it didn't exist, he sighed, and I consoled him by saying that there were perhaps two or three such in England. To my mind Courtenaye Abbey was as good, though moatless.

We decided to send our darling not only to the Times, but to five other leading London papers, engaging a box at the office of each for the answers, the advertisement to appear every day for a week. In order to keep our identity secret even from the discreet heads of advertising departments, we would have the replies called for, not posted. Terry's man, Jones, was selected to be our messenger, and had to be taken more or less into our confidence. So fearful were we of being too late for to-morrow's papers, that Jones was rushed off in a taxi with instructions, before the ink had dried on the last copy.

Our suspense was painful, until he returned with the news that all the "ads." had been in time, and that everything was satisfactorily settled. The tidings braced us mightily. But the tonic effect was brief. Hardly had Terry said, "Thanks, Jones. You've been very quick," when we remembered that to-morrow would be a blank day. The newspapers would publish T. B.'s advertisement to-morrow morning. It would then be read by the British public in the course of eggs and bacon. Those who responded at once, if any, would be so few that it seemed childish to think of calling for letters that same night.

"I suppose, if you go the rounds in the morning of day after to-morrow, it will be soon enough," Terry remarked to the ex-soldier, with the restrained wistfulness of a child on Christmas Eve asking at what hour Santa Claus is due to start.

I also hung upon Jones' words; but still more eagerly upon Captain Burns' expression.

"Well, sir," said the man, his eyes on the floor—I believe to hide a joyous twinkle!—"that might be right for letters. But what about the telegrams?"

"Telegrams!" we both echoed in the same breath.

"Yes, sir. When the managers or whatever they were had read the 'ad.,' they were of opinion there might be telegrams. In answer to my question, the general advice was to look in and open the boxes any time after twelve noon to-morrow."

Terry and I stared at each other. Our hearts beat. I knew what his was doing by the state of my own. He who would have sold his life for a song (a really worthwhile song) was eager to preserve it at any price till his eyes had seen the full results of our advertisement.

Telegrams!

Could it be possible that there would be telegrams?

CHAPTER III

THE LETTER WITH THE PURPLE SEAL

I invited Terry to breakfast with me at nine precisely next day, and each of us was solemnly pledged not to look at a newspaper until we could open them together.

We went to the theatre the night before (the first time Terry could endure the thought since his illness), and supped at the Savoy afterward, simply to mitigate the suffering of suspense. Nevertheless, I was up at seven-thirty A. M., and at eight-forty-eight was in the breakfast room gazing at six newspapers neatly folded on the flower-decked table.

At eight-fifty-one, my guest arrived, and by common consent we seized the papers. He opened three. I opened three. Yes, there it was! How perfect, how thrilling! How even better it appeared in print than we had expected! Anxiously we read the other advertisements of country houses to let or sell, and agreed that there was nothing whose attractions came within miles of our, in all senses of the word, priceless offer.

How we got through the next two and a half hours I don't know!

I say two and a half advisedly: because, as Jones had six visits to pay, we thought we might start him off at eleven-thirty. This we did; but his calmness had damped us. He wasn't excited. Was it probable that any one else—except ourselves—could be?

Cold reaction set in. We prepared each other for the news that there were no telegrams or answers of any sort. Terry said it was no use concealing that this would be a bitter blow. I had not the energy to correct his rhetoric, or whatever it was, by explaining that a blow can't be bitter.

Twelve-thirty struck, and produced no Jones; twelve-forty-five; one; Jones still missing.

"I ought to have told him to come back at once after the sixth place, even if there wasn't a thing," said Terry. "Like a fool, I didn't: he may have thought he'd do some other errands on the way home, if he'd nothing to report. Donkey! Ass! Pig."

"Captain Burns' man, your highness," announced my maid. "He wants to know——"

"Tell him to come in!" I shrieked.

"Yes, your highness. It was only, should he bring them all in here, or leave them in Mr. Carstairs' apartment below."

"All!" gasped Terry.

"Here," I commanded.

Jones staggered in.

You won't believe it when I tell you, because you didn't see it. That is, you won't unless you have inserted the Advertisement of the Ages—the Unique, the Siren, the Best yet Cheapest—in six leading London journals at once.

There were eight bundles wrapped in newspaper. Enormous bundles! Jones had two under each arm, and was carrying two in each hand, by loops of string. As he tottered into the drawing room, the biggest bundle dropped. The string broke. The wrapping yawned. Its contents gushed out. Not only telegrams, but letters with no stamps or post-marks! They must have been rushed frantically round to the six offices by messengers.

It was true, then, what the newspapers said: all London, all England, yearned, pined, prayed for houses. Yet people must already be living somewhere!

Literally, there were thousands of answers. To be precise, Captain Burns, Jones, and I counted two thousand and ten replies which had reached the six offices by noon on the first day of the advertisement: one thousand and eight telegrams; the rest, letters dispatched by hand. Each sender earnestly hoped that his application might be the first! Heaven knew how many more might be en route! What a tribute to the Largest Circulations!

Jones explained his delay by saying that "the stuff was coming in thick as flies"; so he had waited until a lull fell upon each great office in turn. When the count had been made by us, and envelopes neatly piled in stacks of twenty-four on a large desk hastily cleared for action, Terry sent his servant away. And then began the fun!

Yes, it was fun: "fun for the boys," if "death to the frogs." But we hadn't gone far when between laughs we felt the pricks of conscience. Alas for all these people who burned to possess our moated grange "practically free," at its absurdly low rent! And the moated grange didn't exist. Not one of the unfortunate wretches would so much as get an answer to his S. O. S.

They were not all Nouveaux Riches by any means, these eager senders of letters and telegrams. Fearing repulse from the fastidious moat-owner, they described themselves attractively, even by wire, at so much the word. They were young; they were of good family; they were lately married or going to be married. Their husbands or fathers were V. C.'s. There was every reason why they, and they alone, should have the house. They begged that particulars might be telegraphed. They enclosed stamps on addressed envelopes. As the moated grange was "rich in old oak," so did we now become rich in new stamps! Some people were willing to take the house on its description without waiting to see it. Others assured the advertiser that money was no object to them; he might ask what rent he liked; and these were the ones on whom we wasted no pity. If this was what the first three hours brought forth, how would the tide swell by the end of the day—the end of the week? Tarpeia buried under the shields and bracelets wasn't in it with us!

Terry and I divided the budget, planning to exchange when all had been read. But we couldn't keep silent. Every second minute one or other of us exploded: "You must hear this!" "Just listen to one more!"

About halfway through my pile, I picked up a remarkably alluring envelope. It was a peculiar pale shade of purple, the paper being of rich satin quality suggesting pre-war. The address of the newspaper office was in purple ink, and the handwriting was impressive. But what struck me most was a gold crown on the back of the envelope, above a purple seal; a crown signifying the same rank as my own.

I glanced up to see if Terry were noticing. If he had been, I should have passed the letter to him as a bonne bouche, for this really was his show, and I wanted him to have all the plums. But he was grinning over somebody's photograph, so I broke the seal without disturbing him.

I couldn't keep up this reserve for long, however; I hadn't read far when I burst out with a "By Jove!"

"What is it?" asked Terry.

"We've hooked quite a big fish," said I. "Listen to this: 'The Princess Avalesco presents her compliments to T. B., and hopes that he will——' but, my goodness gracious, Captain Burns! What's the matter?"

The man had gone pale as skim-milk, and was staring at me as though I'd turned into a Gorgon.

CHAPTER IV

THE TANGLED WEB

"Read the name again, please," Terry said, controlling his voice.

"Avalesco—the Princess Avalesco." I felt suddenly frightened. I'd been playing with the public as if people were my puppets. Now I had a vague conviction at the back of my brain that Fate had made a puppet of me.

"I thought so. But I couldn't believe my own ears," said Terry. "Good heavens! what a situation!"

"I—don't understand," I hesitated. "Perhaps you'd rather not have me understand? If so, don't tell me anything."

"I must tell you!" he said.

"Not unless you wish."

"I do! We are pals now. You've helped me. Maybe you can go on helping. You'll advise me, if there's any way I can use this—this amazing chance."

I said I'd be glad to help, and then waited for him to make the next move.

Captain Burns sat as if dazed for a few seconds, but presently he asked me to go on with the letter.

I took it up where I'd broken off. "Compliments to T. B., and hopes that he will be able to let his moated grange to her till the end of September. The Princess feels sure, from the description, that the place will suit her. T. B. will probably know her name, but if not, he can have any references desired. She is at the Savoy and has been ill, or would be glad to meet T. B. in person. Her companion, Mrs. Dobell, will, however, hold herself free to keep any appointment which may be made by telephone. The Princess hopes that the moated grange is still free, and feels that, if she obtains early possession, her health will soon be restored in such beautiful surroundings. P. S.—The Princess is particularly interested in the twisted chimney, and trusts there is a history of the house."

I read fast, and when I'd finished, looked up at Terry. "If you have a secret to tell, I'm ready with advice and sympathy," said my eyes.

"When the Princess Avalesco was Margaret Revell, I was in love with her," Terry Burns answered them. "I adored her! She was seven or eight years older than I, but the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Of course she wouldn't look at me! I was about as important as a slum child to her. In America, the Revells were like your royalties. She was a princess, even then—without a title. To get one, she sold herself. To think that she should answer that fool advertisement of ours! Heavens! I'm like Tantalus. I see the blessed water I'd give my life to drink, held to my lips, only to have it snatched away!"

"Why snatched away?" I questioned.

"'Why?' Because if there were a moated grange, I could meet her. Her husband's dead. You know he was killed before Roumania'd been fighting a week. Things are very different with me, too, these days. I'm a man—not a boy. And I've come into more money than I ever dreamed I'd have. Not a huge fortune like hers, but a respectable pile. Who knows what might have happened? But there's no moated grange, and so——"

"Why shouldn't there be one?" I broke in. And while he stared blankly, I hurried on. I reminded Captain Burns of what I had said yesterday: that there were houses of that description, more or less, in England, real houses!—my own, for instance. Courtenaye Abbey was out of the question, because it was let to my cousin Jim, and was being shown to the public as a sort of museum; but there were other places. I knew of several. As Captain Burns was so rich, he might hire one, and let it to the Princess Avalesco.

For a moment he brightened, but a sudden thought obscured him, like a cloud.

"Not places with twisted chimneys!" he groaned.

This brought me up short. I stubbed my brain against that twisted chimney! But when I'd recovered from the blow, I raised my head. "Yes, places with twisted chimneys! At least, one such place."

"Ah, Hampton Court. You said the only other twisted chimney was there."

"The advertisement said that."

"Well——"

"It's a pity," I admitted, "that I thought of the twisted chimney. It was an unnecessary extravagance, though I meant well. But it never would have occurred to me as an extra lure if I hadn't known about a house where such a chimney exists. The one house of the kind I ever heard of except Hampton Court."

Terry sprang to his feet, a changed man, young and vital.

"Can we get it?"

"Ah, if I knew! But we can try. If you don't care what you pay?"

"I don't. Not a—hang."

I, too, jumped up, and took from my desk a bulky volume—Burke. This I brought back to my chair, and sat down with it on my lap. On one knee beside me, Terry Burns watched me turn the pages. At "Sc" I stopped, to read aloud all about the Scarletts. But before beginning I warned Terry: "I never knew any of the Scarletts myself," I said, "but I've heard my grandmother say they were the wickedest family in England, which meant a lot from her. She wasn't exactly a saint!"

We learned from the book what I had almost forgotten, that Lord Scarlett, the eleventh baron, held the title because his elder brother, Cecil, had died in Australia unmarried. He, himself, was married, with one young son, his wife being the daughter of a German wine merchant.

As I read, I remembered the gossip heard by my childish ears. "Bertie Scarlett," as Grandmother called him, was not only the wickedest, but the poorest peer in England according to her—too poor to live at Dun Moat, his place in Devonshire, my own county. The remedy was marriage—with an heiress. He tried America. Nothing doing. The girls he invited to become Lady Scarlett drew the line at anything beneath an earl. Or perhaps his reputation was against him. There were many people who knew he was unpopular at Court; unpopular being the mildest word possible. And he was middle-aged and far from good-looking. So the best he could manage was a German heiress, of an age not unsuited to his own. Her father, Herr Goldstein, lived in some little Rhine town, and was supposed to be rolling in marks (that was six or seven years before the war); however, the Goldsteins met Lord Scarlett not in Germany but at Monte Carlo, where Papa G. was a well-known punter. Luck went wrong with him, and later the war came. Altogether, the marriage had failed to accomplish for Bertie Scarlett's pocket and his place what he had hoped from it. And apparently the one appreciable result was a little boy, half of German blood. There were hopes that, after the war, Herr Goldstein's business might rise again to something like its old value, in which case his daughter would reap the benefit. Meanwhile, however, if Grandmother was right, things were at a low ebb; and I thought that Lord Scarlett would most likely snap at an offer for Dun Moat.

Terry was immensely cheered by my story and opinion. But such a ready-made solution of the difficulty seemed too good to be true. He got our advertisement, and read it out to me, pausing at each detail of perfection which we had light-heartedly bestowed upon our moated grange. "The twisted chimney and the moat aren't everything," he groaned. "Carp and water-lilies we might supply, if they don't exist; peacocks, too. Nearly all historic English houses are what the agents call 'rich in old oak.' But what about those 'exquisite oriels,' those famous fireplaces, those stairways, those celebrated ceilings, and corbels—whatever they are? No one house, outside our brains, can have them all. If anything's missing in the list she'll cry off, and call T. B. a fraud."

"She'll only remember the most exciting things," I said. "I don't see her walking round the house with the 'ad.' in her hand, do you? She'll be captured by the tout ensemble. But the first thing is to catch our hare—I mean our house. You 'phone to the companion, Mrs. Dobell, at once. Say that before you got her letter you'd practically given the refusal of your place to someone else, but that you met the Princess Avalesco years ago, and would prefer to have her as your tenant, if she cares to leave the matter open for a few days. She'll say 'yes' like a shot. And meanwhile, I'll be inquiring the state of affairs at Dun Moat."

"How can you inquire without going there, and wasting a day, when we might be getting hold of another place, perhaps, and—and building a twisted chimney to match the 'ad.'?" Terry raged, walking up and down the room.

"Quite simply," I said. "I'll get Jim Courtenaye on long-distance 'phone at the Abbey, where he's had a telephone installed. He doesn't live there, but at Courtenaye Coombe, a village close by. However, I hear he's at the Abbey from morn till dewy eve, so I'll ring him up. What he doesn't know about the Scarletts he'll find out so quickly you'll not have time to turn."

"How do you know he'll be so quick?" persisted Terry. "If he's only your forty-fourth cousin he may be luke-warm——"

I stopped him with a look. "Whatever else Jim Courtenaye may be, he's not luke-warm!" I said. "He has red hair and black eyes. And he is either my fiercest enemy or my warmest friend, I'm not sure which. Anyhow, he saved my life once, at great trouble and danger to himself; so I don't think he'll hesitate at getting a little information for me if I pay him the compliment of calling him up on the 'phone."

"I see!" said Terry. And I believe he did see—perhaps more than I meant him to see. But at worst, he would in future realize that there were men on earth not so blind to my attractions as he.

While Terry 'phoned from the Carstairs' flat to the companion of Princess Avalesco, I 'phoned from mine to Jim. And I could not help it if my heart beat fast when I in London heard his voice answering from Devonshire. He has one of those nice, drawly American voices that do make a woman's heart beat for a man whether she likes him or hates him!

I explained what I wanted to find out about the Scarletts, and that it must be "quite in confidence." Jim promised to make inquiries at once, and when I politely said: "Sorry to give you so much bother," he replied, "You needn't let that worry you, my dear!"

Of course, he had no right to call me his "dear." I never heard of it being done by the best "forty-fourth cousins." But as I was asking a favour of him, for Terry Burns' sake I let it pass.

These Americans, especially ex-cowboy ones, do seem to act with lightning rapidity. I suppose it comes from having to lasso creatures while going at cinema speed, or else getting out of their way at the same rate of progress! I expected to hear next morning at earliest, but that evening, just before shutting-up time for post offices, my 'phone bell rang. Jim Courtenaye was at the other end, talking from the Abbey.

"Lord and Lady Scarlett are living at Dun Moat," he said, "with their venomous little brute of a boy; and they must be dashed hard up, because they have only one servant in their enormous house, and a single gardener on a place that needs a dozen. But it seems that Scarlett has refused several big offers both to sell and let. Heaven knows why. Perhaps the man's mad. Anyhow, that's all I can tell you at present. They say it's no good hoping Scarlett will part. But I might find out why he won't, if that's any use."

"It isn't," I answered. "But thanks, all the same. How did you get hold of this information so soon?"

"Very simply," said Jim. "I ran over to the nearest town, Dawlish, in the car, and had a pow-wow with an estate agent, as if I were wanting the house myself. I'm just back."

"You really are good!" I exclaimed, rather grudgingly, for Grandmother and I always suffered in changing our opinions of people, as snakes must suffer when they change their skins.

"I'd do a lot more than that for you, you know!" he said.

I did know. He had already done more—much more. But my only response was to ring off. That was safest!

Next morning Terry Burns and I took the first train to Devonshire, and at Dawlish hired a taxi for Dun Moat, which is about twelve miles from there.

We were going to beard the Scarlett lion in his den!

CHAPTER V

THE KNITTING WOMAN OF DUN MOAT

"I must and shall have this place!" Terry said, as our humble taxi drove through the glorious old park, and came in sight of the house.

There were the old-world gardens; the statues; the fountains (it was a detail that they didn't fount!); there were the white peacocks (moulting); there was the moat so crammed with water-lilies that if the Scarletts had eaten the carp, they would never be missed. There were the "exquisite oriels," and above all, there was the twisted chimney!

An air of tragic neglect hung over everything. The grass needed mowing; the flowers grew as they liked. Glass was even missing from several windows. Still, it was miraculously the twin of the place we had described in our embarrassingly perfect "ad."

As we stood in front of the enormous, nail-studded door, and Terry pressed again and again an electric bell (the one modern touch about the place), he had the air of waiting a signal to go "over the top."

"You look fierce enough to bayonet fifty Boches off your own bat!" I whispered.

"Lady Scarlett is a Boche, isn't she?" he mumbled back. And just then—after we'd rung ten times—an old woman opened the door—a witch of an old woman; a witch out of a German fairy-book.

The instant I saw her, I felt that there was something wrong about this house. From under wrinkled lids the woman peered out, ratlike; and though her lips were closed—leaving the first word to us—her eyes said, "What the devil do you want? Whatever it is, you won't get it, so the sooner you go the better."

We had planned that I should start the ball rolling, by mention of my grandmother's name. But Terry was bursting with renewed interest in life, and the woman was answering his question before I had time to speak. "Let the place? No, sir! His lordship refuses all offers. It is useless to make one. He does not see strangers."

"We are not strangers," I rapped out with all Grandmother's haughtiness. "Tell Lord Scarlett that the Princess di Miramare, grand-daughter of Mrs. Raleigh Courtenaye, wishes a few words with him."

That was the way to manage her! She came of a breed over whom for centuries Prussian Junkers had power of life and death; and though she spoke English, it was with the precise wording of one who has learned the language painfully. In me she recognized the legitimate tyrant, and yielded.

We were admitted with reluctance into a magnificent hall which magically matched our description: stone-paved, with a vaulted roof, and an immense oriel window the height of two stories. While our gaze travelled from the carved stone chimney-piece to ancient suits of armour, and such Tudor and Jacobean furniture as remained unsold, a slight sound attracted our attention to the "historic staircase," with its "dog-gates."

A woman was coming down. She had knitting in her hand, and had dropped one of her needles. It was that which made the slight noise we'd heard; and Terry stepped quickly forward to pick it up.

His back was turned to me as he offered the stiletto-like instrument to its owner, so I could not see his face. But I could imagine that charming smile of his, as he looked up at the figure on the stairs. Just so might Sir Walter Raleigh have looked when he'd neatly spread his cloak for Queen Bess; and if he had happened to ask a favour then, it would have been hard for the sovereign to resist!

The woman coming downstairs did not resemble any portrait of the Virgin Queen. She was stout and short-necked; and with her hard, dark face, her implacable eyes, and her knitting, was as much like Madame Defarge in modern dress as a German could be. But even Madame Defarge was a woman! And probably she used her influence now and then in favour of some handsome male head, preferring to see female ones pop into the sawdust!

Her face softened slightly as she accepted the needle, and stiffened again as I came forward.

"My husband is occupied," she said, in much the same stilted English as that of her old servant. "He sends his compliments to the Princess di Miramare and her friend, and hopes both will excuse him. If it is an offer for our place you have come to make, I must refuse in his name. We do not wish to move."

Her tone, her expression, gave to her words the solemnity of an oath sworn by a houseful of Medes and Persians.

It seemed that there was nothing left for us to do, save bow to Lady Scarlett's decision, and retire defeated to our taxi. But I felt that my reputation as a Brightener was at stake, with Terry's hopes. If we failed, instead of brightening I should have blighted him for ever! That couldn't, shouldn't be!

All there was of me yearned for an inspiration, and it came.

"My friend, Captain Burns, wouldn't ask you to move," I heard myself saying. "He's so anxious to have Dun Moat that he'd offer you any rent within reason, and would invite you to select some retired rooms for yourselves, where you might live undisturbed by the tenant. This house is so large it occurs to me that such an arrangement wouldn't be uncomfortable."

Terry flashed me a look of amazement, which turned to acquiescence; and the surprise on Lady Scarlett's face was encouraging. Evidently no one else had made such a suggestion. She seemed not only astonished, but tempted.

For a moment she reflected; then admitted that my proposal was a new one. She would submit it to her husband. They would talk it over if we cared to wait. We did care to; and the lady vanished like a stout ghost into the dimness of stony shadows.

Terry said that he felt his head growing gray, hair by hair, with suspense; but when Lady Scarlett came back at last no change could be seen by the naked eye.

"My husband and I will consider your proposal," she said, "provided the price is satisfactory, and taking it for granted that we agree on the rooms for our occupation. We should want those known as the 'garden court suite.' And we should ask one hundred and fifty pounds a week, for a possible term of ten weeks, on the proviso that we could terminate the tenancy with a fortnight's notice at any time after the first month."

I was dumbfounded. The place, unique and beautiful as it was, had been allowed to run down so disastrously, and everything outside and inside seemed to be in such a state of disrepair, that it was worth at most a rent of thirty guineas a week. Terry might call himself rich, but surely he'd not consent to being rooked to that extent, in order to be landlord to his love. I expected him to protest, to bargain, and beat the lady down. But he brushed the financial question away like a cobweb, and began to haggle about the rooms.

"The money part will be all right," he said. "But I want a lady to come here—a lady who's been ill. She must have the prettiest rooms there are: something overlooking the moat, with jolly oriel windows and plenty of old oak."

Lady Scarlett smiled. "There is no obstacle to that! The suite I specify is at the far end of the house, in a comparatively modern wing, and most people would think it the least desirable. We like it because it is compact and private. We can keep it going with one servant. It is called the 'garden court suite' because it is built round a small square. There is a separate outside entrance, as well as one door communicating with the house. The suite has generally been occupied by a bachelor heir."

As she talked, Terry reflected. "Look here, Lady Scarlett!" he exclaimed, just contriving not to break in. "I've half a mind to confide in you. The truth is, I want to pose as the owner of this place. I suppose you wouldn't sell it?"

"We could not if we would," replied the daughter of the German wine-seller. "It is entailed and the entail cannot be broken till our son comes of age."

"That settles that! But you said beforehand, nothing would induce you to turn out——"

"No money you could offer: not a thousand, not ten thousand a week—at least, at present. The garden court suite is the one solution."

"Well, so be it! But—I beg your pardon if I'm rude—could you—er—seem not to be there? Could I say I'd lent the rooms to someone I didn't like to turn out? If you'd consent, I'd make it two hundred a week."

Lady Scarlett's blackberry-and-skim-milk eyes lit. "You want the lady to believe that you have bought Dun Moat?"

For answer, he told her of our advertisement, and the result. I thought this a mistake. You'd only to look at the woman to see that she'd no sense of humour; and to confide in a person without one is courting trouble. Besides, I still had that impression of something wrong. I had no definite suspicion; but why had the Scarletts, poor as they were, determined to stick to the house? However, I could no more have stopped Terry Burns when he got going than I could have stopped a torrent by throwing in rose-petals. Which shows how he had changed. The worry a few days ago would have been to get him going!

As Lady Scarlett listened she knitted, with strong, predatory hands. Language, they say, is used to conceal thought. So, it occurred to me, is knitting. I felt, watching her as a wise mouse should watch a cat, that she was making up her mind to some action more beneficial to herself than Terry. But for my life I couldn't guess what. She seemed to weave a knitted screen between my mind and hers!

In the end, however, she announced that for two hundred pounds a week her family could—to all intents and purposes—blot itself temporarily out of existence, in the suite of the garden court. The American lady might believe them to be poor relations of Captain Burns, or even servants, for all she cared! Having arrived at this conclusion, she proposed fetching her husband, that an agreement of an informal kind might be drawn up. Again she vanished; and when Lord Scarlett appeared, it was alone.

There were a number of ancestral portraits hanging on the walls of the great hall: fox-faced men, most of them, with a prevailing, sharp-nosed, slant-eyed type; and "Bertie" Scarlett was no exception to the rule. As he came deliberately down the stairway which his wife had descended, I remembered a scandal of his youth that Grandmother had sketched. He'd been in a crack regiment once, and though desperately poor had tried to live as a smart man about town. At some country-house party he'd been accused of cheating at baccarat. The story was hushed up, but he had left the army; and people—particularly royalties—had looked down their noses at him ever since. His tweeds were shabby now, and he was growing middle-aged and bald; all the same he had the air of the leading man in a cause célèbre. I hadn't liked his wife, and I liked him as little!

He made the same point as hers: that the agreement might be terminated by him (not by the tenant) with a fortnight's notice, given at any time after the first month. This was a queer proviso, as queer as the family resolve to remain on the spot. And it seemed to me that one was part and parcel of the other, though I couldn't see the link which united the two.

As for Terry, he puzzled over none of these things. He wanted the place even on preposterous terms. When Lord Scarlett had drawn up an agreement, his signature flashed across the paper like a streak of lightning, so wild was he to rush back to London bearing the news to his princess. Lord Scarlett—sure of his mad client—offered to have the agreement polished up in legal form without further bother for Captain Burns, and we were free to go.

Terry could talk of nothing on the way home but his marvellous luck. Hang the money! He'd have paid twice as much, if need be. The next thing was to smarten the place: buy some more "historic" furniture to fill the gaps made by sales, send down a decorator to see what beds, etc., needed renovating, have an expert look at the drains and the central heating (long unused) which had been put in with German money, engage a staff of servants for indoors and out; get hold of two or three young peacocks whose tails hadn't moulted.

"If I don't care how much I spend, don't you think we can make an earthly paradise of the place in a week?" he appealed.

"We?" I echoed. "Why, I thought my part was played!"

His grieved eyes reproached me. What? After going so far, I was going to desert him in the midst of the woods? He begged me to stand by him till all was ready to receive the Princess. If I didn't, something was sure to go wrong.

Well, once a Brightener, always a Brightener, I suppose! And acting on this principle I yielded. I promised to stop for a week at Dawley St. Ann, a village within a mile of Dun Moat (there's a dear old inn there!), and superintend preparations for the beloved tenant. When she was safely installed, I would go home—or elsewhere, and Terry could take my rooms at the inn. Being her neighbour as well as landlord, he'd easily find excuses to see the Princess every day, and thus get his money's worth of Dun Moat.

All this was settled before we reached London; and the first thing Terry thought of on entering the flat (mine, not his!) was to ring up the Savoy. The answer came quickly; and I saw a light of rapture on his face. The Princess herself was at the telephone!

CHAPTER VI

THE LIGHTNING STROKE

It was amazing what Terry and I accomplished in the next few days, I at Dawley St. Ann, close to Dun Moat, he flashing back and forth between there and London!

My incentive and reward in one consisted of the all but incredible change for the better in him. Terry's, was the hope of meeting the Adored Lady; for he had not met her yet. Her voice thrilled him through the telephone, saying that of course she "remembered Terry Burns," but it was her companion, Mrs. Dobell, who received him at the Savoy. She it was who carried messages from the still-ailing Princess Avalesco to him, and handed on to the Princess his vague explanations as to how he had acquired Dun Moat. But Terry had seen, in the two ladies' private sitting room at the hotel, an ivory miniature of the Princess, and its beauty had poured oil on the fire of his love. At what period in her career it had been painted he didn't know, not daring or caring to ask Mrs. Dobell; but one thing was sure—it showed her lovelier than of old.

Seeing the boy on the way to such a cure as twenty Sir Humphrey Hales could never have produced, I was happy while wrestling for his sake with the servant problem, placing brand-new "antique" furniture in half-empty rooms, and watching neglected lawns rolled to velvet. But not once during my daily pilgrimage to Dun Moat did I catch sight of Lord or Lady Scarlett or their old German servant. True to the bargain, they had officially ceased to exist; and my one tangible reminder of the family was a glimpse of a little boy who stared through a closed window of the end wing—the "suite of the garden court."

I'd been passing that way to criticize the work of the gardeners, and looked up to admire the twisted chimney, which rose practically at the junction of the oldest part of the house with the newest. Just for an instant, a small hatchet face peered at me, and vanished as if its owner had been snatched away by a strong hand; but I had time to say to myself, "Like father like son!" And I smiled in remembering that Jim Courtenaye had called the Scarlett's heir a "venomous little brute."

At last came the day when the Princess Avalesco, Mrs. Dobell, and a maid were to motor down and take possession of Dun Moat. Terry (much thanked through the telephone for supplying the place with servants, etcetera) was on the spot before them. He had dashed over to see me at Dawley St. Ann (where I was packing for my return to town), looking extremely handsome; and had excitedly offered to run back and tell me "all about her" before I had to take my train.

"I shall go with you to the station," he said. "You've been the most gorgeous brick to me! You've given me happiness and new life. And the one thing which could make to-day better than it is, would be your stopping on."

I merely smiled at this, for I'd pointed out that my continued presence would be misunderstood by the Princess Avalesco, to his disadvantage; and he reluctantly agreed. So when he had gone to meet his Wonder-of the-World I continued to pack.

Very likely he would forget such a trifle as the time for my train, I thought, and if he did turn up it would be at the last minute. I was surprised, therefore, when, after an hour, I saw him whirling up to the inn door in the one and only village taxi.

A moment later I was bidding him enter my sitting room. A question trembled on my lips, but the sight of his face choked it into a gasp.

Terry came in, and flung himself into a chair.

"Good heavens, what's happened?" I ventured.

He did not answer at first. He only stared. Then he found his voice. "I don't know how to tell you what's happened," he groaned. "You'll despise me. You'll want to kick me out of your room."

"I won't!" I spoke sharply, to bring him to himself. "What is it? Hasn't she come?"

"She has come. That's it!"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, my dear Pal, I—I don't love her any more."

If I hadn't been sitting in a chair I should have collapsed on to one—or the floor.

"You don't love her?" I faltered.

"No. And that's not all. It's perhaps not even the worst!"

"If you don't tell me at once, I shall scream."

"I hardly know how. I—oh, good lord!—I—I've fallen in love with someone else."

I must now make a confession as shameful as his. My mind jumped to the conclusion that Terry Burns was referring to me. I expected him to explain that, on seeing his ideal after these many years, he found that after all it was his faithful Pal he loved! I was conceited enough to think this quite natural, though regrettable, and my first impulse was to spare us both the pain of such an avowal.

"Good gracious!" I warded him off. "So hearts can really be caught in the rebound? But what I most want to know is, why have you unloved Princess Avalesco?"

"It's most horribly disloyal and beastly of me. If you must know, it's because she's lost her beauty, and has got fat. I wouldn't have believed that a few years could make such a difference. And she can't be thirty-five! But she's a mountain. And her hair looks jolly queer. I think it must have come out with some illness, and she's got on her head one of those things you call a combination."

"We don't! We call it a transformation," I corrected him in haste. "Oh, this is awful! Think of the fortune you've spent to offer Dun Moat to your lady-love for a few weeks, only to discover that she isn't your lady-love! What a waste! I suppose now you'll go up to London——"

"No," said Terry, "I shall stay here. And—I can't feel that the money's wasted in taking Dun Moat. Just seeing such a face as I've seen is worth every sovereign."

"Face?" I echoed.

"Yes. I told you I'd fallen in love. You must have guessed it was with someone at Dun Moat, as I've been nowhere else."

I hadn't guessed that. But I wasn't going to let him know that my guesses had come home to roost! "It can't be Mrs. Dobell," I said, "because you've seen her before, and she's old. Has the Princess got a beautiful Cinderella for a maid, and——"

"No—no!" Terry protested. "I almost wish it were like that. It would be humiliating, but simple. The thing that's happened—this lightning stroke—is far from simple. I may have gone mad. Or, I may have fallen in love with a ghost."

Relieved of my first suspicion, I pressed him to tell the story in as few words as possible.

It seemed that Terry had arrived at Dun Moat before the Princess; and to pass the time he began strolling about the gardens. His walk took him all round the rambling old house, and something made him glance suddenly up at one of the windows. There was no sound; yet it was as if a voice had called. And at the window stood a girl.

She was looking down at him. And though the window was high and overhung with ivy, Terry's eyes met hers. It was, he repeated, "a lightning stroke!"

"She was rather like what Margaret Revell used to be years ago, when I was a boy and fell in love with her," Terry went on. "I mean, she was that type. And though she looked even lovelier than Margaret in those days—lots lovelier, and younger, too—I thought it must be the Princess. You see, there didn't seem to be any one else it could be. And at that distance, behind window glass, and after all these years, how could I be sure? I said to myself, 'So the auto must have come and I've missed hearing it. She's making her tour of the house without me!' I couldn't stand that, so I sprinted for the door. And I was just in time to meet the motor drawing up in front of it. Great Heligoland! The shock I got when—at that moment of all others, my eyes dazzled with a dream—I saw the real Princess! Somehow I blundered through the meeting with her, and didn't utterly disgrace myself. But I made an excuse about taking a friend to a train, and bolted as soon as I could. I didn't come straight here. I went back to the window where I'd seen the face—the vision—the ghost—whatever it was. No one was there. A curtain was pulled across. And I remembered then that I'd always seen it covered. Say, Princess, do you think I'm going mad—just when I hoped I was cured? Was it the spirit of Margaret Revell's lost youth I saw, or—or——"

"At which window was the—er—Being?" I cut in sharply.

"It was close under the twisted chimney."

"Ah! In the wing where the Scarletts are: the suite of the garden court!"

"Yes. I forgot when I thought it must be Margaret, that the window was in the Scarletts' wing. Of course, Margaret couldn't have gone there. Princess, you're afraid to tell me, but you do think I'm off my head!"

"I don't," I assured him. "Just what I think I hardly know myself. But I shouldn't wonder if you'd stumbled on to the key of the mystery."

"What mystery?"

"The mystery of Dun Moat; the mystery of the Scarletts; why they wouldn't let or sell the place until I happened to think of bribing them with the suggestion that they should stay on. Captain Burns, it wasn't a ghost you saw, never fear! It was a real live person—the incarnate reason why at all costs the Scarletts must stay at Dun Moat."

Terry blushed with excitement. "Oh, if I could believe you, I should be almost happy! If that girl—that heavenly girl!—exists at Dun Moat, and I'm the tenant, I shall meet her. I——"

He went on rhapsodizing until the look in my eyes pulled him up short! "What is it?" he asked. "Don't you approve of my wanting to meet her? Don't you——"

"I approve with all my heart," I said. "But I'm wondering—wondering! Why are the Scarletts hiding a girl? Has she done something that makes it wise to keep her out of sight? Or is it they who don't wish her to be seen, for reasons of their own?"

"Madam, the porter is asking if your luggage is ready to go down," announced a maid.

"Luggage!" Terry and I stared at each other. I had forgotten that I was going to London.

"But you can't leave me now!" he implored.

"I've changed my mind," I explained to the maid. "I shall take another train!"

CHAPTER VII

THE RED BAIZE DOOR

It ended in my deciding to stop on at the inn, while Terry Burns went into lodgings. I felt that he was right. I had to stand by!

It wasn't only the romance of Terry falling out of love with his Princess, and in love with a face, which held me. There was more in the affair than that. The impression I had received when the old servant first opened the door of Dun Moat came back to me sharply—and indeed it had never gone—an impression that there was something wrong in the house.

I didn't for a moment believe that Terry had "seen a ghost," or had an optical illusion. He'd distinctly beheld a girl at the window—evidently the same window from which the Scarlett boy had looked at me. Though he had seen her for a moment only, by questioning I got quite an accurate description of her appearance: large dark eyes in a delicate oval face; full red lips, the upper one very short; a cleft chin; a slender little aquiline nose, and auburn hair parted Madonna fashion on a broad forehead. She had worn a black dress, Terry thought, cut rather low at the throat. In order to look out, she had held back the gray curtain; and recalling the picture she made, it seemed to him that she had a frightened air. His eyes had met hers, and she had bent forward, as if she wished to speak. He had paused, but as he did so the girl started, and drew hastily back. It was then that Terry ran toward the door, thinking a rejuvenated, rebeautified Margaret Revell was making a tour of exploration without him.

Now that he was out of love with the Princess Avalesco, there was no longer a pressing reason to keep me in the background. For all he cared, she might misunderstand the situation as much as she confoundedly pleased! It was decided, therefore, that I should promptly call. I would be nice to her, and try to get myself invited often to Dun Moat. I would wander in the garden, where I must be seen by the Scarletts; and as their presence in the "suite of the garden court" was no secret from me, it seemed that there would be no indiscretion in my visiting Lady Scarlett. Once in that wing, it would go hard if I didn't get a peep at all its occupants!

I knew that the Scarletts kept up communication with the outer world, so far as obtaining food was concerned, through the old German woman, whose name was Hedwig Kramm. She lived in the main part of the house, and was ostensibly in the service of the tenant, but most of her time was spent in looking after her master and mistress. I thought that she might be handy as a messenger.

I went next day to Dun Moat, Terry having explained me as a friend who'd helped get the house ready for guests, and thus deserved gratitude from them. If I had inwardly reproached him for fickleness when he confessed his volte face, I exonerated him at sight of his old love. On principle, regard for a woman shouldn't change with her looks. But a man's affection can't spread to the square inch!

Not that the Princess Avalesco's inches were square. They were, on the contrary, quite, quite round. But there were so terribly many of them, mostly in the wrong place! And what was left of her beauty was concentrated in a small island of features at the centre of a large sea of face; one of those faces that ought to wear stays! Luckily she needed no pity from me. She didn't know she was a tragic figure—if you could call her a figure! And she didn't miss Terry's love, because she loved herself overwhelmingly.

I succeeded in my object. She took a fancy to me as (so to speak) a fellow princess. I sauntered through garden paths, hearing about all the men who wanted to marry her, and was able to get a good look at the window. There was, however, nothing to see there. An irritating gray curtain covered it like a shut eyelid.

"Captain Burns has put some sort of old retainers into that wing it seems," said Princess Avalesco, seeing me glance up. "He has a right to do so, of course, as I'm paying a ridiculously low rent for this wonderful house, and I've more rooms anyhow than I know what to do with. He tells me the wing is comparatively modern, and not interesting, so I don't mind."

I rejoiced that she was resigned! I'm afraid, if I'd been the tenant of Dun Moat, I should have felt about that "suite of the garden court" as Fatima felt about Bluebeard's little locked room. In fact, I did feel so; and though I was able to say "Yes" and "No" and "Oh, really?" at the right places, I was thinking every moment how to find out what that dropped curtain hid.

At first, I had planned to send Lady Scarlett a message by Kramm; but I reflected that a refusal to receive visitors would raise a barrier difficult to pass except by force. And force, unless we could be sure of an affair for the police, was out of the question.

"L'audace! Toujours l'audace!" was the maxim which rang through my head; and before I had been long with the Princess Avalesco that day I'd resolved to try its effect.

My hostess and her companion had arranged to motor to Dawlish directly after tea. They invited me to go with them, or if I didn't care to do that, they offered to put off the excursion, rather than my visit should be cut short. I begged them to go, however, asking permission to remain in their absence to chat with the housekeeper, and learn whether various things ordered at Captain Burns' request had arrived.

With this excuse I got rid of the ladies, and as the new servants had been engaged by me, I was persona grata in the house. Five minutes after the big car had spun away, I was hurrying through a long corridor that led to the end wing. As it had been built for bachelors, there was only one means of direct communication with the house. This was on the ground floor, and all I knew of it by sight was a door covered with red baize. I judged that this door would be locked, and that Kramm would have a key. If I could make myself heard on the other side, I hoped that the Scarletts would think Kramm had mislaid her key, and would come to let her in.

I was right. The red door was provided with a modern Yale lock. This looked so new that I fancied it had been lately supplied; and, if so, the Scarletts—not Terry—had provided it! Now, a surface of baize is difficult to pound upon with any hope of being heard at a distance. I resorted to tapping the silver ball handle of my sunshade on the door frame; and this I did again and again without producing the effect I wanted.

The sole result was a horrid noise which I feared might attract the attention of some servant. With each rap I threw a glance over my shoulder. Luckily, however, the long passage with its stone floor, its row of small, deep windows, and its dark figures in armour, was far from any part of the house where servants came and went.

At last I heard a sound behind the baize. It was another door opening, and a child's voice squeaked, "Who's there? Is that you, Krammie?"

For an instant I was taken aback—but only for an instant. "No," I confessed in honeyed tones, "it isn't Krammie; but its someone with something nice for you. Can't you open the door?"

A latch turned, and a cautious crack revealed one foxy eye and half a freckled nose. "Oh, it's you, is it?" was the greeting. "I saw you in the garden."

"And I saw you at the window," said I. "That's why I've brought you a present. I like boys."

"What have you brought?" was the canny question.

Ah, what had I brought? I must make up my mind quickly, for to cement a friendship with this boy might be important. "A wrist-watch," I said, deciding on a sacrifice. "A ripping watch, with radium figures you can see in the dark. It's on a jolly gray suède strap. I'll give it to you now—that is, if you'd like it.'

"Ye—es, I'd like it," said little Fox-face. "But my mother and father don't want any one except Kramm to come in here. I'd get a whopping if I let you in."

The door was wider open now. I could easily have pushed past the child; but I was developing a plan more promising.

"Are your parents at home?" I primly asked.

"Yes. They're home, all right. They're never anywhere else, these days! But they're in the garden court. I was going up to my room when I heard the row at this door. I thought it must be Krammie."

"Look here," I said, "would your mother mind if you came out with me? I know her, so I don't see why she should object. I'd give you the watch, and a tophole tip, too. I think boys like tips! What do you say?"

"I'll come for a bit," he decided. "Mother'd be in a wax if she knew, and so'd Father! But what I was going upstairs for when I heard you was a punishment. I was sent to my room. Nobody'll look for me till food time, and then 'twill only be Kramm. She's all right, Krammie is! She won't give me away. She'll let me in again with her key, and they won't know I've been out. But we've got to find her."

"I'll find her," I promised. "Come along!"

He came, sneaking out like the little fox he was. I caught a glimpse of two steps leading down to a stone vestibule, and beyond that a heavy wooden door which the boy had shut behind him before beginning to parley with me. Gently as I could, I closed the baize door, which locked itself automatically; and the child being safely barred out from his own quarters, I broke it to him that we must delay seeing Kramm. She'd be sure to fuss, and want to bundle him back! We'd better have our fun first. There was time.

Fox-face agreed, though with reluctance, which showed his fear of that "whopping." But he brightened when I proposed foraging in the big hall for some cakes left from tea. To my joy they were still on the table, and, seizing a plate of chocolate éclairs, I rejoined the boy on the terrace. We sat on a cushioned stone seat, and Fox-face (who said that his name was "the same as his father's, Bertie") began industriously to stuff. He did not, however, forget the watch or the tip. With his mouth full he demanded both, and got them. In his delight, he warmed to something more than fox, and I snatched this auspicious moment. Delicately, as if walking on eggs (at sixpence each), I questioned him. How did he like being mewed up in one wing of his own home? What did he do to amuse himself? Wasn't it dull with no one to play with?

"Well, of course, there's Cecil," he said, munching. "I liked her at first. She's pretty, about as pretty as you are, or maybe prettier. And she brought me presents, just like you have. But she's in bed most of the time now, so she's no fun any more. I sit with her sometimes, to see she keeps still, and doesn't go to the window. She did go one day, when I went out for a minute, because I thought she was asleep. But Mother came and caught her at it."

"Oh, yes, Cecil!" I echoed. "That pretty girl with dark eyes, and hair the colour of chestnuts. What relation is she to you?"

"I s'pose she's my cousin," said Bertie. "That's what she told me the day she came—when she brought the presents. But Mother says she's no proper relation. How do you know about her hair and eyes? You didn't see her, did you? Mother'll have a fit if you did! She and Father don't want any one to see Cecil. The minute she told them all about herself they made her hide."

I was thinking hard. "Cecil" was the girl's name! That Lord Scarlett who died in Australia had been Cecil. Grandmother had talked of him, and said he was the "only decent one of the lot, though a ne'er-do-weel." Now, the likeness of the name, and the boy's babblings, made me suspect the plot of an old-fashioned melodrama.

"Oh, I guessed about her hair and eyes, because you said she was so pretty; and dark eyes and auburn hair are the prettiest of all," I assured him gaily. "I'm great at guessing things; I can guess like magic! Now, I guess the presents she brought you were from Australia."

"So they were!" laughed Bertie. "That's what she said. And she told me stories about things out there, before she got so weak."

"Poor Cecil! What's the matter with her?" I ventured.

"I don't know," mumbled the boy, interested in an éclair. "She cries a lot. Mother says she's in a decline."

"Oughtn't she to see a doctor?" I wondered.

"Mother thinks a doctor'd be no good. Besides, I don't 'spect she'd let one see Cecil, anyhow. I told you she won't allow any one in."

"Why does your mother give Cecil a room whose window looks over the moat, if it's so important she should hide?" I persisted.

"All the rooms in that wing where we live are like that," Bertie explained. "They've windows on the little court inside, and windows outside, on the moat. But the outside window in Cecil's room is nailed shut now, so she couldn't open it if she tried. And those little old panes set in lead are thick as thick! I don't believe you could smash one unless you had a hammer. Father says you couldn't. I mean, he says Cecil couldn't. And since the day Mother scolded Cecil for looking out, the curtain's nailed down. It doesn't matter, though. Plenty of light comes from the garden side."

"Where was Cecil before you went to live in the wing?" I asked. "Was she in the house?"

"Oh, she'd been in that wing for weeks before Father and I moved in," said the boy. "Mother slept there at night. And Cecil could look out as much as she liked, because there was no one about except us, and Krammie. Krammie doesn't count! She's the same as the family, because she's so old—she nursed Mother when Mother was a baby. Seems funny she could have been a baby, doesn't it? But Krammie loves her better than any one, except me. She never splits on me to them if I do anything. But now I've eaten all the cakes, so we'd better go and find Krammie. If we don't, she may go into the wing first. There'd be the devil to pay then!"

It seemed to me that there was the devil to pay already—a devil in woman's form—unless my imagination had made a fool of me. I shivered with disgust at the thought of those two witches—the middle-aged one and the hag. I hope I didn't take their wickedness for granted because they were both Germans, though we have got into that habit in the last five years, with all we've gone through, and with the villains who used to be Russian in novels now being German!

If I did hand over my prize to the elder witch, the boy was lost to me. I should never get a second chance to catch my fox with cake! And even were I sure that he wouldn't blab, or that Kramm wouldn't, the secret of our meeting was certain to leak out. In that case, the red baize door would never again open to my knock. So what was I to do?

"Come along," urged the boy. Having got all he could get out of me, he began to sulk. "I don't want to stay with you any more."

"Wait a minute," I pleaded. "I'm thinking of something—something to do for you."

Though I wasn't a German, the most diabolical plot had just jumped into my head!

CHAPTER VIII

"WHEN IN DOUBT, PLAY A TRUMP"

It was a case of now or never!

"Look here, Bertie," I said, "what I've been thinking of is this: you'd better hide, and let me go alone to find Krammie. Suppose your mother has looked in your room! She'll know from Kramm that the ladies are motoring, so she may come out to speak with Kramm and ask for you. Squeeze into this clump of lilac bushes at the end of the terrace! Trust me to make everything right, and be back soon."

The picture of his mother on the warpath transformed Bertie to a jelly. He was in the lilac bushes almost before I'd finished; and I hurried off, ostensibly to seek Kramm. I did not, however, seek far, or in any direction where she was likely to be. Presently I came back and in my turn plunged into the bushes. I broke the news that I hadn't seen Kramm. It looked as if the worst had happened. But Bertie must buck up. I'd thought of a splendid plan! "How would you like to stay with me," I wheedled, "until your mother is ready to crawl to get you back, cry and sob, and swear not to punish you?"

The boy looked doubtful. "I've heard my mother swear," he said, "but never cry or sob. Do you think she would?"

"I'm sure," I urged. "And you'll have the time of your life with me! All the money you want for toys and chocolates. And you needn't go to bed till you choose."

"What kind of toys?" he bargained. "Tanks and motor cars that go?"

"Rather! And marching soldiers, and a gramophone."

"Righto, I'll come! And I don't care a darn if I never see Mother or Father again!" decided the cherub.

I would have given as much for a taxi as Richard the Third for a horse; but I'd walked from the village, and must return in the same way. We started at once, hand in hand, stepping out as Bertie Scarlett the second had never, perhaps, stepped before. It was only a mile to Dawley St. Ann, and in twenty minutes I had smuggled my treasure into the inn by a little-used side door. This led straight to my rooms, and I whisked the boy in without being seen. So far, so good. But what to do with him next was the question!

I saw that, in such an emergency, Terry Burns would hinder more than help. He was cured of the listlessness, the melancholia, which had been the aftermath of shell shock; but he was rather like a male Sleeping Beauty just roused from a hundred years' nap—full of reawakened fire and vigour, though not yet knowing what use to make of his brand-new energy. It was my job to advise him, not his to counsel me! And if I flung at his head my version of the "Cecil" story, his one impulse would be to batter down the sported oak of the garden court suite.

He and I had agreed, in calm moments, that it would be vain and worse than vain to appeal to the police. But calm moments were ended, especially for Terry. He might think that the police would act on the story we could now patch together. I didn't think so, or I wouldn't have stolen the heir of all the Scarletts.

Well, I had stolen him. Here he was in my small sitting room, stuffing chocolates bestowed on me by Terry. On top of uncounted cakes they would probably make him sick; and I couldn't send for a doctor without endangering the plot.

No! the child must be disposed of, and there wasn't a minute to waste. Terry's lodgings were as unsuited for a hiding-place as my rooms at the inn. Both of us were likely to be suspected when Bertie was missed. I didn't much care for myself, but I did care for Terry, because my business was to keep him out of trouble, not to get him into it, even for his love's sake.

Suddenly, as I concentrated on little Fox-face, and how to camouflage him for my purpose, Jim Courtenaye's description of the child drifted into my head.

Jim! The thought of Jim just then was like picking up a pearl on the way to the poor-house!

Dear Jim! I hadn't been sure what my feeling for him was, but at this minute I adored him. I adored him because he was a wild-western devil capable of lassoing enemies as he would cows. I adored him because the fire of his nature blazed out in his red hair and his black eyes. Jim was an anachronism from some barbaric century of Courtenayes. Jim was a precious heirloom. He had called the Scarlett boy a "venomous little brute!" I could hear again his voice through the telephone "I'd do more than that for you."

Idiot that I was, in that I'd rung him off! And I hadn't made a sign of life since, though he was sure to have heard that I was at Dawley St. Ann, within forty miles of the Abbey and Courtenaye Coombe.

I could have torn my hair, only it's too pretty to waste. Instead, I ran into the next room, pulled the bell-rope and demanded the village taxi immediately, if not sooner. Then I flew back to Bertie and made him up for a new part.

This was done—to his mingled amusement and disgust—by means of a tight-fitting, veiled motor-hood of my own and a scarlet cape, short for a grown-up girl, but long for a small boy. This produced a fair imitation of what the police would call "a female child," should they catch sight of my companion. But as it happened, they did not; nor did any one else at Dawley St. Ann, so far as I was aware. By my instructions the taxi drew up at the side door, and while Timmins, the chauffeur, was starting the engine (he'd stopped it, as I kept him waiting), I rushed Bertie into the car. Once in, I squashed him down on the floor, seated tailor fashion, with a perfectly good, perfectly new box of burnt almonds on his lap.

"Drive as fast as you dare without being held up," I ordered; and Timmins, lately demobbed from the Tank Corps, obeyed with violence. The distance was forty miles; the hour of starting, six; and at seven-thirty we were spinning up the long avenue at Courtenaye Abbey; good going for Devonshire hills!

I took the chance that Jim might be at the Abbey rather than at Courtenaye Coombe, where he lodged. The way was shorter and—there were as many hiding-places in the Abbey as at Dun Moat. Luck was with me! It had been one of the days when Jim opened the Abbey to tourists, and he was late because he'd gone the rounds with the guardian. His small car, which he drove himself, stood before the door, and from that door he flew like a Jack-in-the-box as we dashed up.

"Elizabeth! I mean Princess!" he exclaimed.

"Call me anything!" I whispered, recklessly, bending out of the car as we shook hands. "Mum's the word! But look what I've brought; something I want you to store for me."

A jerk of my head introduced him to a red-cloaked, gray-veiled child asleep on the taxi floor.

Most men would have shown some sign of surprise or other emotion. But Jim Courtenaye's sang-froid is a tribute to the cinema life he must have led even before he burst into the war. Whether he thought that the object in red was my own offspring, concealed from the world till now, I don't know and probably never shall. All I do know is that, judging from his expression, it might have been a borrowed shoulder of veal.

Deftly he scooped Bertie up without rousing him, and had borne the bundle gently through the open door before it occurred to Timmins to turn his head. "Hurray!" thought I. "Not a soul has seen the little wretch between Dun Moat and here!"

I jumped out of the car and followed Jim into the house, which I'd never entered since it had been let to him. He had not paused in the great hall, but was carrying his burden toward a small room which Grandmother had used for receiving tenants, and such bothersome business. I flashed in after him, and realized that Jim had fitted it up as a private sanctum.

Somehow I didn't like him to go on fancying quaint things about my character, and by the time he'd deposited Bertie on a huge sofa like a young bed, I had plunged into my story.

I told him all from beginning to end; and when I'd reached the latter, to my surprise Jim jumped up and shook my hands. "Are you congratulating me?" I asked.

"No. It's because I'm so pleased I don't need to!"

"You mean?"

"Well, let's put it that I'm glad Burns may have to be congratulated some day on being engaged to the Baroness Scarlett, instead of to—the Princess Miramare."

So, he had known of my activities, and had misunderstood my interest in Terry! Brighteners alas! are always being misunderstood.

"I'd forgotten," I said, primly, "that the women of the Scarlett family inherit the title if there's no son. That would account for a lot!... And so you don't think my theory of what's going on at Dun Moat is too melodramatic?"

"My experience is," said Jim, "that nothing is ever quite so melodramatic as real life. I believe this Cecil girl must be a legitimate daughter of the chap who died in Australia. She must have proofs, and they're probably where the Scarlett family can't lay hands on them, otherwise she'd be under the daisies before this. That Defarge type you talk about doesn't stop at trifles, especially if it's made in Germany. And we both know Scarlett's reputation. I needn't call him 'Lord Scarlett' any more! But what beats me is this: why did the fly walk into the spider-web? If the girl had common sense she must have seen she wouldn't be a welcome visitor, coming to turn her uncle out of home and title for himself and son. Yet you say she brought presents for the kid."

"I wonder," I thought aloud, "if she could have meant to suggest some friendly compromise? Maybe she'd heard a lot from her father about the marvellous old place. Grandmother said, I remember, that Cecil Scarlett was so poor he lived in Australia like a labourer, though his father died here, while he was there, and he inherited the title. Think what the description of Dun Moat would be like to a girl brought up in the bush! And maybe her mother was of the lower classes, as no one knew about the marriage. What if the daughter came into money from sheep or mines, or something, and meant to propose living at Dun Moat with her uncle's family? I can see her, arriving en surprise, full of enthusiasm and loving-kindness, which wouldn't 'cut ice' with Madame Defarge!"

"Not much!" agreed Jim, grimly. "She'd calmly begin knitting the shroud!"

So we talked on, thrashing out one theory after another, but sure in any case that there was a prisoner at Dun Moat. Jim made me quite proud by applauding my plot, and didn't need to be asked before offering to help carry it out. Indeed, as my "sole living relative" (he put it that way), he would now take the whole responsibility upon himself. The police were not to be called in except as a last resort: and that night or next day, according to the turn of the game, the trump card I'd pulled out of the pack should be played for all it was worth!

CHAPTER IX

THE RAT TRAP

Did you ever see a wily gray rat caught in a trap? Or, still more thrilling, a pair of wily gray rats?

This is what I saw that same night when I'd motored back from Courtenaye Abbey to Dawley St. Ann.

But let me begin with what happened first.

Jim wished to go with me, to be on hand in case of trouble. But the reason why I'd hoped to find him at the Abbey was because we have a secret room there which everyone knows (including tourists at a shilling a head), and at least one more of which no outsiders have been told. The latter might come in handy, and I begged Jim to "stand by," pending developments.

I'd asked Terry to dine and had forgotten the invitation; consequently he was at the inn in a worried state when I returned. He feared there had been an accident, and had not known where to seek for my remains. But in my private parlour over a hasty meal (I was starving!) I told him the tale as I had told it to Jim.

Of course he behaved just as I'd expected—leaped to his feet and proposed breaking into the wing of the garden court.

"They may kill her to-night!" he raged. "They'll be capable of anything when they find the boy gone."

I'd hardly begun to point out that the girl had never been in less danger, when someone tapped at the door. We both jumped at the sound, but it was only a maid of the inn. She announced that a servant from Dun Moat was asking for me, on business of importance.

Terry and I threw each other a look as I said, "Give Captain Burns time to go; then bring the person here."

Terry went at my command, but not far; he was ordered to the public parlour—to toy with Books of Beauty. Of course it was old Hedwig Kramm who had come.

Her eyes darted hawk glances round the room, seeming to penetrate the chintz valances on chairs and sofa! She announced that the son of Lord Scarlett was lost. Search was being made. She had called to learn if I had seen him.

"Why do you think of me?" I inquired arrogantly.

The boy had been noticed peeping out of the window when I walked in the garden. He had said that I was "a pretty lady," and that he wished he were down there with me. He would get me to take him in my motor, if I had one.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I can't tell you where he is," I said, "and even if I could, why should I? Let Lord and Lady Scarlett call, if they wish to catechise me."

"They cannot," objected the old woman. "Her ladyship is prostrated with grief. His lordship is with her."

"As they please," I returned. "I have nothing more to say—to you."

The creature was driven to bay. She loved the "venomous little brute!" "Would you have something more to say if they did come?" she faltered. "Something about the child?"

"I might," I drawled, "rack my memory for the time when I saw him last."

"You do know where he is!" she squealed.

"I'm afraid," I said, "that I must ask you to leave my room."

She bounced out as if she'd been shot from an air gun!

It was ten o'clock, but light enough for me to see her scuttling along the road as I peered through the window. When she had scuttled far enough, I called to Terry.

"The Scarletts are coming!" I sang to the tune of "The Campbells." "Whether it's maternal instinct or a guilty conscience or what, Madame Defarge has guessed that I've got the child. She'll be doubly sure when Kramm reports my gay quips and quirks. To get here by the shortest and quietest way, the Scarletts must pass your lodgings. The instant you see them, take Jones and race to Dun Moat. When you reach there you'll know what to do. But in case they hide the girl as a Roland for my Oliver, I'm going to play the most beautiful game of bluff you ever saw."

"I wish I could see it!" said Terry.

"But you'd rather see Cecil! You'd better start now. It's on the cards that the Scarletts came part way with Kramm to wait for her news."

Whether they had done this or not, I don't know. But the effect on Terry of the suggestion was good. And certainly the pair did arrive almost before it seemed that Kramm's short legs could have carried her to Dun Moat.

They gloomed into my sitting room like a pair of funeral mutes.

"My servant tells me you have seen my son," the woman I had known as Lady Scarlett began.

"She has imagination!" I smiled.

"You mean to say you have not seen him?" blustered Fox-face Père.

"I say neither that I have nor that I haven't," I replied. "The little I know about the child inclines me to believe he wasn't too happy at home, so why——"

"Oh, you admit knowing something!" The woman caught me up like a dropped stitch in her knitting. "I believe you've got the child here. We can have you arrested for kidnapping. The police——"

I laughed. "Have the police ever seen the little lamb? If they have, they might doubt the force of his attraction on a woman of my type. And you have no proof. But I'll let the local police look under my bed and into my wardrobes, if you'll let them search the suite you occupy at Dun Moat on proof I can produce."

"What are you hinting at?" snapped the late Lord Scarlett. "Do you intimate that we've hidden our own child at home and come to you with some blackmailing scheme——"

"No," I stopped him. "I don't think you're in a position to try a blackmail 'stunt.' My 'hints,' as you call them, concerned the real Lady Scarlett; the legitimate daughter of your elder brother Cecil, and his namesake."

As I flung this bomb I sprang up and stood conspicuously close to the old-fashioned bell rope.

The man and woman sprang up also. The former had turned yellowish green, the latter brick-red. They looked like badly lit stage demons.

"So that's it!" spluttered the German wine merchant's daughter, when she could speak.

"That's it," I echoed. "Now, do you still want to call the police and charge me with kidnapping? You can search my rooms yourselves if you like. You'll find nothing. Can you say the same of your own?"

"Yes!" Scarlett jerked the word out. "We can and do say the same. Do you think we're fools enough to leave the place alone with only Kramm on guard, if we had someone concealed there?"

"Ah, the cap fits!" I cried. "I didn't accuse you. As you said, I merely 'hinted.'"

I scored a point, to judge by their looks. But they had scored against me also. I realized that my guess had not been wrong. There was a secret hiding-place to which the garden court suite had access. That was one reason why the Scarletts had chosen the suite. By this time Terry Burns was there, with Kramm laughing in her sleeve while pretending to be outraged at his intrusion. If only I were on the spot instead of Terry, I might have a sporting chance to ferret out the secret, for I—so to speak—had been reared in an atmosphere of "hidie-holes" for priests, cavaliers, and kings, of whom several in times of terror had found asylum at our old Abbey. But Terry Burns was an American. It wasn't in his blood to detect secret springs and locks!

I ceased to depend on what Terry might do, and "fell back upon myself."

"You talk like a madwoman!" sneered Madame Defarge. But her hands trembled. She must have missed her knitting!

"Mine is inspired madness," said I. And then I did feel an inspiration coming—as one feels a sneeze in church. "Of course," I went on, "if you've hidden the poor drugged girl in that cubby-hole under the twisted chimney——"

The woman would have sprung at me if Scarlett had not grabbed her arm. My hand was on the tassel of the bell rope; and joy was in my heart, for at last I'd grabbed their best trump. If Bertie The Second was the Ace, the twisted chimney had supplied its Jack!

"Keep your head, Hilda," Scarlett warned his wife. "There's a vile plot against us. This—er—lady and her American partner have tricked us into letting Dun Moat, with the object of blackmail. We must be careful——"

"No," I corrected him, "you must be frank. So will I. We knew nothing of your secret when we came to Dun Moat. We got on the track by accident. As a matter of fact, Captain Burns saw the real Lady Scarlett at the window, and she would have called to him for help if she could. No doubt by that time she'd realized that you were slowly doing her to death——"

"What a devilish accusation!" Scarlett boomed. "Since you know so much, in self-defence I'll tell you the true history of this girl. We have taken my brother's daughter into the house. We have given her shelter. She is not legitimate. My brother was married in England before going to Australia, and his wife—an actress—still lives. Therefore, to make known Cecil's parentage would be to accuse her father of bigamy and soil the name. Hearing the truth about him turned her brain. She fell into a kind of fit and was very ill, raving in delirium for days on end. My wife was nursing her in the garden court rooms when you came with Burns and begged us to let the house. My poverty tempted me to consent. For the honour of my family I wished to hide the girl! And frankly (you ask for frankness!), had she died despite my wife's care, I should have tried to give the body—private burial. Now, you've heard the whole unvarnished tale."

"Doubtless I've heard the tale told to that poor child," I said. "At last I understand how you persuaded her to hide like a criminal while you two thoroughly cooked up your plot against her. But the tale isn't unvarnished! It's all varnished and nothing else. I'm not my grandmother's grand-daughter for nothing! What she didn't know and remember about the 'noble families of England'—especially in her own country—wasn't worth knowing! I inherit some of her stories and all of her memory. The last Lord Scarlett, your elder brother, went to Australia because that actress he was madly in love with had a husband who popped up and made himself disagreeable. Oh, I can prove everything against you! And I know where the true Lady Scarlett is at this minute. You can prove nothing against me. You don't know where your son is, and you won't know till you hand that poor child from Australia over to Captain Burns and me. If you do that, and she recovers from your wife's 'nursing,' I can promise for all concerned that bygones shall be bygones, and your boy shall be returned to you. I dare say that's 'compounding a felony' or something. But I'll go as far as that. What's your answer?"

The two glared into one another's eyes. I thought each said to the other, "This was your idea. It's all your fault. I told you how it would end!" But wise pots don't waste time in calling kettles black. They saved their soot-throwing for me.

"You are indeed a true descendant of old Elizabeth Courtenaye," rasped the man. "You're even more dangerous and unscrupulous than your grandmother! My wife and I are innocent. But you and your American are in a position to turn appearances against us. Besides, you have our son in your power; and rather than the police should be called into this affair by either side, my brother's daughter—ill as she is—shall be handed over to you when Bertie is returned to us."

"That won't do," I objected. "Bertie is at a distance. I can't communicate with—his guardian—till the post office opens to-morrow. On condition that Lady Scarlett is released to-night, however, and only on that condition, I will guarantee that the boy shall be with you by ten-thirty A. M. Meanwhile, you can be packing to clear out of Dun Moat, as I hardly think you'll care to claim your niece's hospitality longer, in the circumstances."

"We have no money!" the woman choked.

"You've forgotten what you took from Lady Scarlett. And six weeks' advance of rent paid you by Captain Burns: twelve hundred pounds. He'll forget, too, if you offer the right inducement. You could have had more from him, if you hadn't insisted on the clause leaving you free to turn your tenant out at a fortnight's notice after the first month. I understand now why you wanted it. If the girl had signed her name to a document you'd prepared, leaving her money to you—shares in some Australian mine, perhaps—it would have been convenient to you for her to die. And then——"

"Why waste time in accusations?" quailed Scarlett. "We won't waste it defending ourselves! If you're so anxious to get hold of the girl, come home with us and we'll turn over all responsibility to you."

"Very well," I said, and pulled the bell.

The woman started. "What are you doing that for?" she jerked.

"I wish to order the taxi to take us to Dun Moat," I explained. "I confess I'm not so fond of your society that I'd care to walk a mile with you at night along a lonely road. I'm not a coward, I hope. But you'd be two against one. And you might hold me up——"

"As you've held us up!" the man snapped.

"Exactly," I agreed.

Wolves in sheep's clothing have to behave like sheep when they're in danger of having their nice white wool stripped off. No doubt this is the reason that, when we arrived at the outside entrance of the bachelor's wing, my companions were meek as Mary's lamb.

Inside the suite of the garden court we found Terry Burns and his man raging, and Kramm sulking, in a room with a broken window. Terry had smashed the glass in order to get in, but his search had been vain. To do the old servant justice, she had the instinct of loyalty. I believe that no bribe would have induced her to betray her mistress. It remained for the Scarletts to give themselves away, which they did—with the secret of the room under the twisted chimney.

The room was built into the huge thickness of the wall which formed a junction between the old house and the more modern wing. The wonderful chimney was not a true chimney at all, but gave ventilation and light, also a means of escape by way of a rope ladder over the roof. But the rope had fallen to pieces long ago, and the prisoner of these days might never have found means of escape, had it not been for that trump-card named Bertie. The room under the twisted chimney would have been a convenient home substitute for the family vault.

Fate was for us, however—and for her. Even the Lady with the Shears might have felt compunction in cutting short the thread of so fair, so sweet a life as Cecil Scarlett's. Anyhow, that was what Terry said in favour of Destiny, when some days had passed, and it was clear that with good care the girl would live.

We didn't take her to the inn, as I had planned when keeping the taxi, for Terry—caring less than nothing now for the night's rest of Princess Avalesco—ruthlessly routed the ladies from their beauty sleep. What they thought about us, and about the half-conscious invalid, I don't know; for true to my bargain with the Scarletts, no explanations detrimental to them were made. I think it passed with the ladies that the girl had arrived ill, in a late train; and that Terry, emboldened by love of her, begged his tenant's hospitality. So, you see, they were partly right. Besides, the Princess Avalesco had lived in Roumania, where anything can happen.

When Jim brought back Bertie, he brought also a doctor—by request. The doctor was his friend; and Jim's friends are generally ready to—well, to overlook unconventionalities.

I told you Princess Avalesco loved herself so much that she didn't miss Terry's love. She missed it so little that after a few weeks' romance she proposed a bedside wedding at Dun Moat, with herself as hostess; for, of course, nothing would induce her to shorten her tenancy!

Cecil had confessed to falling in love with Terry through the window, at first sight.

Therefore the wedding did take place, with Jim Courtenaye as best man, and myself as "Matron of Honour," as Americans say. Cecil looked so divine as a bride that no woman who saw her could have helped wishing to be married against a background of pillows! I almost envied her. But Jim said that he didn't envy Terry. His ideal of a bride was entirely different, and he was prepared to describe her to me some day when I was in a good humour!

BOOK III

THE DARK VEIL

CHAPTER I

THE GIRL WITH THE LETTER

Brightening continued to be fun. As time went on I brightened charming people, queer people, people with their hearts in the right place and their "H's" in the wrong one. I was an expensive luxury, but it paid to have me, as it pays to get a good doctor or the best quality in boots.

After several successful operations and some lurid adventures, I was doing so well on the whole that I felt the need of a secretary. How to hit on the right person was the problem, for I wanted her young, but not too young; pretty, but not too pretty; lively, not giddy; sensible, yet never a bore; a lady, but not a howling swell; accomplished, but not overwhelming; in fact, perfection.

This time I didn't hide my light under a bushel of initials, nor in a box at a newspaper office. I announced that the "Princess di Miramare requires immediately the services of a gentlewoman (aged from twenty-one to thirty) for secretarial work four or five hours six days of the week. Must be intelligent and experienced typist-stenographer. Salary, three guineas a week. Apply personally, between 9:30 and 11:30 A. M. No letters considered."

I gave the address of my own flat and awaited developments with high hope; for I conceitedly expected an "ad." under my own name to attract a good class of applicants.

It appeared in several London dailies and succeeded like a July sale. I wouldn't have believed that there were such crowds of pretty typists on earth! Luckily, the lift boy was young, so he enjoyed the rush.

As for me, I felt like a spider that has got religion and pities its flies; there were so many flies—I mean girls—and each in one way or other was more desirable than the rest! I might have been reduced to tossing up a copper or having the applicants draw lots, if something very special hadn't happened.

The twenty-sixth girl brought a letter of introduction from Robert Lorillard.

Robert Lorillard! Why, the very name is a thrill!

Of course I was in love with Robert Lorillard when I was seventeen, just before the war. Everybody was in love with him that year. It was the fashionable thing to be. Whenever Grandmother let me come up to town I went to the theatre to adore dear Robert. Women used to boast that they'd seen him fifty times in some favourite play. But never did he act on the stage so stirring a part as that thrust upon him in August, 1914! I must let the girl with the letter wait while I tell you the story, in case you've not heard the true version.

While she hung upon my decision, and I gazed at Lorillard's signature (worth guineas as an autograph), my mind raced back along the years.

Oh, that gorgeous spring before the war!

I wasn't "out"; but somehow I contrived to be "in." That is, in all the things that I'd have died rather than miss.

We were absurdly poor, but Grandmother knew everyone; and that April, while she was looking for a town house and arranging to present me, we stayed with the Duchess of Stane. Her daughter, Lady June, was the girl in Society just then. She had been The Girl for several years. She was the prettiest, the most original, and the most daring one in her set. She wasn't twenty-three, but she'd picked up the most extraordinary reputation! I should think there could hardly have been more interest in the doings of "professional beauties" in old days than was taken in hers. No illustrated weekly was complete without her newest portrait done by the photographer of the minute; no picture Daily existed that wouldn't pay well for a snapshot of Lady June Dana, even with a foot out of focus, or a hand as big as her head! And she loved it all! She lived, lived every minute! It didn't seem as if there could be a world without June.

I was only a flapper, but I worshipped at the shrine, and the goddess didn't mind being worshipped. She used to let me perch on her bed when she took her morning tea, looking a dream in a rosebud-wreathed bit of tulle called a boudoir cap, and a nighty like the first outline sketch for a ballgown. She reeled off yards of stuff for my benefit about the men who loved her (their name was legion!), and among others was Robert Lorillard.

All the clever people who "did" things came to Stane House, provided they were good to look at and interesting in themselves. Lorillard was there nearly every Sunday for luncheon, and at other times, too. I couldn't help staring at him, though I knew it was rude, for he was so handsome, so—almost divine!

One laughs at writers who make their heroes "Greek statues," but really Lorillard was like the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican: those perfect features, that high yet winning air (someone has said) "of the greatest statue that ever was a gentleman, the greatest gentleman that ever was a statue."

I think June met Lorillard away from home often: and once, when Grandmother and I had gone to live in our own house, and I'd been presented, June took me behind the scenes after a matinée at his theatre. He was charming to me, and I loved him more than ever, with that delicious, hopeless, agonizing love of seventeen.

People talked about June with Lorillard, but no more than with a dozen other men. Nobody dreamed of their marrying, and none less than she herself. As for him, though he was madly in love, he must have known that as an eligible he'd have as much chance with a royal princess as with Lady June Dana.

It was in this way that matters stood when the war broke out. And among the first volunteers of note went Robert Lorillard. No doubt he would have gone sooner or later in any case. But being taken up, thrown down, smiled at, and frowned on by June was getting upon his nerves, as even I could see, so war—fighting, and dying perhaps—must have been a welcome counter-irritant.

The season was over, but Grandmother kept on the house she had taken, as an ouvroir, where she mobilized a regiment of women for war work. It was in the same square as Stane House, where the Duchess was mobilizing a rival regiment. June and I worked under our different taskmistresses; but I saw a good deal of her—and all that went on. The moment she heard that Lorillard had offered himself, and was furiously training for a commission, she was a changed girl. She was like a creature burning with fever; but I thought her more beautiful than she'd ever been, with that rose-flame in her cheeks and blue fire in her eyes.

One afternoon she got me off from work, asking me to shop with her. But instead of going to Bond Street, we made straight for Robert Lorillard's flat in St. James's Square. How he could have been there that day I don't know, for he was in some training camp or other I suppose; but she'd sent an urgent wire, no doubt, begging him to get a few hours' leave.

Anyhow, there he was—waiting for us. I shall never forget his face—though he forgot my existence! June forgot it also. I'd been dragged at her chariot wheels (it was a taxi!) to play propriety; my first appearance as a chaperon. I might as well have been a fly on the wall for both of them!

Robert opened the door of the flat himself when we rang (servants were superfluous for that interview!) and they looked at each other, those two. Eyes drank eyes! Lorillard didn't seem to see me. I drifted vaguely in after June, and effaced myself superficially. The most rarefied sense of honour couldn't be expected, perhaps, in a flapper whose favourite stage hero was about to play the part of his life—unrehearsed—with the said flapper's most admired heroine.

Instead of shutting myself up in a cupboard or something, or at the least closing my eyes and stuffing my fingers into my ears, I hovered in a handy background. I saw June burst out crying and throw herself into Lorillard's arms. I heard her sob that she realized now she couldn't live without him; that he was the only person on earth who mattered—ever had, or ever would matter. I heard him gasp a few explosive "Darlings!" and "Angels!" And then I heard June coolly—no, hotly!—propose that they should be married at once—at once!

Even I floated sympathetically on a rose-coloured wave of love, as I listened and looked; so where must Lorillard have floated—he who had adored, and never hoped?

In one of his own plays the noble hero would have put June from him in super-unselfishness, declaiming "No, beloved. I cannot accept this sacrifice, made on a mad impulse. I love you too much to take you for my own." But, thank God, real men aren't built on those stiff lines! As for this one, he simply hugged his glorious, incredible luck (including the giver) as hard as he could.

It took the two about one hour to come to themselves, and remember that they had heads as well as hearts; while I, for my part, remembered mostly my right foot, which had gone to sleep during efforts of self-obliteration. I had to stamp it at last, which drew surprised attention to me; so I was officially offered the rôle of confidante, and agreed with June that the wedding must be secret. The Duchess and four terrifically powerful uncles would make as much fuss as if June were Queen Elizabeth bent on marrying a commoner, and it would end in the lovers being parted.

Well, they were married by special license three days later, with me and a man friend of Lorillard's as witnesses. When the knot was safely tied, June and Robert went together and broke it to the Duchess—not the knot, but the news. The Duchess of Stane is supposed to know more bad words than any other peeress in England, and judging from June's account of the scene, she hurled them all at Lorillard, with a few spontaneous creations for her daughter. When the lady and her vocabulary were exhausted, however, common sense refilled the vacuum. The Duchess and the Family made the best of a bad bargain, hoping, no doubt, that Lorillard would soon be safely killed; and a delicious dish of romance was served up to the public.

I was the only one beyond pardon, it seemed. According to the Duchess I was a wicked little treacherous cat not to have told her what was going on, so that it could have been stopped in time. A complaint was made to Grandmother. But that peppery old darling—after scolding me well—took my part, and quarrelled with the Duchess.

June was too busy being The Bride of All War Brides to bother much with me, and Lorillard was training hard for France. So a kind of magic glass wall arose between the Affair and me. Months passed (everyone knows the history of those months!) and then the air raids began: Zeppelins over London!

It was smart, you know, not to be frightened, but to run out and gape, or go up on the roof, when one of those great silver shapes was sighted in the night sky. June went on the roof. Oh poor, beautiful June! A fragment of shrapnel pierced her heart and killed her instantly, before she could have felt a pang.

The news almost "broke Lorillard up," so his pal who witnessed the marriage with me put the case. Robert hadn't even once been back in "Blighty" since he first went out. Ninety-six hours' leave was due just then. He spent it coming to June's funeral, and—returning to the Front.

Since that tragic time long ago he had seen a great deal of fighting, had been wounded twice, had received his Captaincy and a D. S. O. Four years and a half had been eaten by Hun locusts since he'd last appeared on the stage, and more than three since the death of June. Everyone thought that Lorillard would take up his old career where he had laid it down. But he refused several star parts, and announced that he never intended to act again. The reason was, he said, that he did not wish to do so; that he could hardly remember how he had felt at the time when acting made up the great interest of his life.

He bought a quaint old cottage near the river, not many miles from a house the Duchess owned—a happy house, where he had spent week-ends that wonderful summer of 1914. June had loved the place, and her body lay (buried in a glass coffin to preserve its beauty for ever) in the cedar-shaded graveyard of the country church near by. Once she had laughingly told Lorillard she would like to lie there if she died, and he had persuaded the Duchess to fulfil the wish. Instead of a gravestone there was a sundial, with the motto "All her days were happy days and all her hours were hours of sun."

Robert Lorillard's cottage was within walking distance of the churchyard, and I imagine he often went there. Anyhow, he went nowhere else. After some months an anonymous book of poems appeared—poems of such extreme beauty and pure passion that all the critics talked about them. Bye and bye others began to talk, and it leaked out through the publisher that Lorillard was the author.

I loved those poems so much that I couldn't resist scribbling a few lines to Robert in my first flush of enthusiasm. He didn't answer. I'd hardly expected a reply; but now, long after, here was a letter from him introducing a girl who wanted to be my secretary!

He wrote:

Dear Princess di Miramare,

I don't ask if you remember me. I know you do, because of one we have both greatly loved. I meant to thank you long ago for the kind things you took the trouble to say about my verses. The thoughts your name called up were very poignant. I put off acknowledging your note. But you will forgive me, because you are a real friend; and for that reason I venture to send you a strong personal recommendation with Miss Joyce Arnold, who will ask for a position as your secretary. I saw your advertisement in the Times, and showed it to Miss Arnold, offering to introduce her to you. She nursed me in France when she was a V. A. D. (she has a decoration, bye the bye, for her courage in hideous air raids), and she has been my secretary for some months. All I need say about her I can put into a few words. She is absolutely perfect. It will be a great wrench for me to lose her valuable help with the work I give my time to nowadays, but I am going abroad for a while, and shall not need a secretary.

You too have lived and suffered since we met! Do take from me remembrances and thoughts of a friendship which will never fade.

Yours sincerely always,

Robert Lorillard.

I'd been too much excited when she said, "I have an introduction to you from Captain Lorillard," to do more than glance at the girl, and ask her to sit down. But as I finished the letter I looked up, to meet the gaze of a pair of gray eyes.

Caught staring, Miss Arnold blushed; and what with those eyes and that colour I thought her one of the most delightful girls I'd ever seen.

I don't mean that she was one of the prettiest. She was (and is) pretty. But it wasn't entirely her looks you thought of, in seeing her first. It was something that shone out from her eyes, and seemed to make a sweet, happy brightness all around her. Eyes are windows, and something must be on the other side, but, alas! it seldom shines through. The windows are dim, or the blinds are down to cover dulness. Joyce Arnold had a living spirit behind those big, bright soul-windows that were her eyes!

As for the rest, she was tall and slim, and delicately long-limbed. She had milk-white skin with a soft touch of rose on the cheek bones; a few freckles which were like the dust from tiger-lily petals, and a charming, sensitive mouth, full and red.

"Why, of course I want you!" I said. "I'm lucky to secure you, too! How glad I am that you didn't come after I'd engaged someone else! But even if you had, I'd have managed to get rid of her one way or other."

Miss Arnold smiled. She had the most contagious smile!—though it struck me even then that it wasn't a merry smile. Her face, with its piquant little nose, was meant to be gay and happy I thought; yet it wasn't either. It was more plucky and brave; and the eyes had known sadness, I felt sure. I guessed her age as twenty-three or twenty-four.

She said that she would love to work for me. The girls who were waiting to be interviewed were sent politely away in search of other engagements while I settled things with Miss Arnold. The more I looked at her, the more I talked with her, the more definite became an impression that I'd seen her before—a long time ago. At last I asked her the question: "Can it be that we've met somewhere?"

Colour streamed over her pale face. "Yes, Princess, we have," she said. "At least, we didn't exactly meet. It couldn't be called that."

"What was it then, if not a meeting?" I encouraged her.