Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project

Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE GREAT SECRET

BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. ROOM No. 317

II. A MIDNIGHT RAID

III. MISS VAN HOYT

IV. A MATCH AT LORD'S

V. ON THE TERRACE

VI. "MR. GUEST"

VII. A "TÊTE-À-TÊTE" DINNER

VIII. IN THE TOILS

IX. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

X. "WORTLEY FOOTE—THE SPY"

XI. A LEGACY OF DANGER

XII. OLD FRIENDS

XIII. THE SHADOW DEEPENS

XIV. GATHERING JACKALS

XV. A DYING MAN

XVI. I TAKE UP MY LEGACY

XVII. NAGASKI'S INSTINCT

XVIII. IN THE DEATH CHAMBER

XIX. AN AFFAIR OF STATE

XX. TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

XXI. "FOR YOU!"

XXII. "LOVED I NOT HONOR MORE"

XXIII. THE PRETENDER

XXIV. A PRACTICAL WOMAN

XXV. A CABLE FROM EUROPE

XXVI. FOR VALUE RECEIVED

XXVII. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

XXVIII. DOUBLE DEALING

XXIX. I CHANGE MY NATIONALITY

XXX. THE "WAITERS' UNION"

XXXI. IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP

XXXII. SIR GILBERT HAS A SURPRISE

XXXIII. A REUNION OF HEARTS

XXXIV. RIFLE PRACTICE

XXXV. "HIRSCH'S WIFE"

XXXVI. AN URGENT WARNING

XXXVII. THE BLACK BAG

XXXVIII. A LAST RESOURCE

XXXIX. WORKING The Oracle

XL. The Oracle SPEAKS

CHAPTER I

ROOM NO. 317

I laid my papers down upon the broad mahogany counter, and exchanged greetings with the tall frock-coated reception clerk who came smiling towards me.

"I should like a single room on the third floor east, about the middle corridor," I said. "Can you manage that for me? 317 I had last time."

He shook his head at once. "I am very sorry, Mr. Courage," he said, "but all the rooms in that corridor are engaged. We will give you one on the second floor at the same price."

I was about to close with his offer, when, with a word of excuse, he hurried away to intercept some one who was passing through the hall. A junior clerk took his place, and consulted the plan for a moment doubtfully.

"There are several rooms exactly in the locality you asked for," he remarked, "which are simply being held over. If you would prefer 317, you can have it, and I will give 217 to our other client."

"Thank you," I answered, "I should prefer 317 if you can manage it."

He scribbled the number upon a ticket and handed it to the porter, who stood behind with my dressing-case. A page caught up the key, and I followed them to the lift. In the light of things which happened afterwards, I have sometimes wondered what became of the unfortunate junior clerk who gave me room number 317.

* * * * *

It was six o'clock when I arrived at the Hotel Universal. I washed, changed my clothes, and was shaved in the barber's shop. Afterwards, I spent, I think, the ordinary countryman's evening about town—having some regard always to the purpose of my visit. I dined at my club, went on to the Empire with a couple of friends, supped at the Savoy, and, after a brief return visit to the club, a single game of billiards and a final whisky and soda, returned to my hotel contented and sleepy, and quite prepared to tumble into bed. By some chance—the history of nations, as my own did, will sometimes turn upon such slight events—I left my door ajar whilst I sat upon the edge of the bed finishing a cigarette and treeing my boots, preparatory to depositing them outside. Suddenly my attention was arrested by a somewhat curious sound. I distinctly heard the swift, stealthy footsteps of a man running at full speed along the corridor. I leaned forward to listen. Then, without a moment's warning, they paused outside my door. It was hastily pushed open and as hastily closed. A man, half clothed and panting, was standing facing me—a strange, pitiable object. The boots slipped from my fingers. I stared at him in blank bewilderment.

"What the devil—" I began.

He made an anguished appeal to me for silence. Then I heard other footsteps in the corridor pausing outside my closed door. There was a moment's silence, then a soft muffled knocking. I moved towards it, only to be met by the intruder's frenzied whisper—

"For God's sake keep quiet!"

The man's hot breath scorched my cheek, his hands gripped my arm with nervous force, his hysterical whisper was barely audible, although his lips were within a few inches of my ear.

"Keep quiet," he muttered, "and don't open the door!"

"Why not?" I asked.

"They will kill me," he answered simply.

I resumed my seat on the side of the bed. My sensations were a little confused. Under ordinary circumstances, I should probably have been angry. It was impossible, however, to persevere in such a sentiment towards the abject creature who cowered by my side.

Yet, after all, was he abject? I looked away from the door, and, for the second time, studied carefully the features of the man who had sought my protection in so extraordinary a manner. He was clean shaven, his features were good; his face, under ordinary circumstances, might have been described as almost prepossessing. Just now it was whitened and distorted by fear to such an extent that it gave to his expression a perfectly repulsive cast. It was as though he looked beyond death and saw things, however dimly, more terrible than human understanding can fitly grapple with. There were subtleties of horror in his glassy eyes, in his drawn and haggard features.

Nothing, perhaps, could more completely illustrate the effect his words and appearance had upon me than the fact that I accepted his extraordinary statement without any instinct of disbelief! Here was I, an Englishman of sound nerves, of average courage, and certainly untroubled with any superabundance of imagination, domiciled in a perfectly well-known, if somewhat cosmopolitan, London hotel, and yet willing to believe, on the statement of a person whom I had never seen before in my life, that, within a few yards of me, were unseen men bent upon murder.

From outside I heard a warning chink of metal, and, acting upon impulse, I stepped forward and slipped the bolt of my door. Immediately afterwards a key was softly inserted in the lock and turned. The door strained against the bolt from some invisible pressure. Then there came the sound of retreating footsteps. We heard the door of the next room opened and closed. A moment later the handle of the communicating door was tried. I had, however, bolted it before I commenced to undress.

"What the mischief are you about?" I cried angrily. "Can't you leave my room alone?"

No answer; but the panels of the communicating door were bent inwards until it seemed as though they must burst. I crossed the room to where my portmanteau stood upon a luggage-rack, and took from it a small revolver. When I stood up with it in my hand, the effect upon my visitor was almost magical. He caught at my wrist and wrested it from my fingers. He grasped it almost lovingly.

"I can at least die now like a man," he muttered. "Thank Heaven for this!"

I sat down again upon the bed. I looked at the pillow and the unturned coverlet doubtfully. They had obviously not been disturbed. I glanced at my watch! it was barely two o'clock. I had not even been to bed. I could not possibly be dreaming! The door was straining now almost to bursting. I began to be annoyed.

"What the devil are you doing there?" I called out.

Again there was no answer, but a long crack had appeared on the panel. My companion was standing up watching it. He grasped the revolver as one accustomed to the use of such things. Once more I took note of him.

I saw now that he was younger than I had imagined, and a trifle taller. The ghastly pallor, which extended even to his lips, was unabated, but his first paroxysm of fear seemed, at any rate, to have become lessened. He looked now like a man at bay indeed, but prepared to fight for his life. He had evidently been dressed for the evening, for his white tie was still hanging about his neck. Coat and waistcoat he had left behind in his flight, but his black trousers were well and fashionably cut, and his socks were of silk, with small colored clocks. The fingers were white and delicate, and his nails well cared for. There was one thing more, the most noticeable of all perhaps. Although his face was the face of a young man, his hair was as white as snow.

"Look here," I said to him, "can't you give me some explanation as to what all this means? You haven't been getting yourself into trouble, have you?"

"Trouble!" he repeated vaguely, with his eyes fixed upon the door.

"With the police!" I explained.

"No, these are not the police," he answered.

"I don't mind a row particularly," I continued, "but I like to know something about it. What do these people want with you?"

"My life!" he answered grimly.

"Why?"

"I cannot tell you!"

A sudden and ridiculously obvious idea struck me for the first time. A small electric bell and telephone instrument were by the side of the bed. I leaned over and pressed the knob with my finger. My companion half glanced towards me, and back again instantly towards the door.

"No use," he muttered, "they will not come!"

Whereupon a thoroughly British sentiment was aroused in me. Of the liberties which had been taken with my room, both by this man and by his pursuers, I scarcely thought, but that any one should presume to interfere with my rights as an hotel guest angered me! I kept my finger on the knob of the bell; I summoned chambermaid, waiter, valet and boots. It was all to no effect. No one came. The telephone remained silent. The door was on the point of yielding.

I abandoned my useless efforts, and turned towards the man whom I was sheltering.

"How many are there in the next room?" I asked.

"Two!"

"If I stand by you, will you obey me?"

He hesitated for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Yes!"

"Get behind the bed then, and give me the revolver."

He parted with it reluctantly. I took it into my hand, only just in time. The door at last had burst away from its hinges. With perfect self-possession I saw one of the two men who had been engaged in its demolition calmly lean it up against the wall. The other stared at me as though I had been a ghost.

CHAPTER II

A MIDNIGHT RAID

I could see at once that neither of the two men who confronted me had really believed that the room into which their victim had escaped was already occupied by any other person than the one of whom they were in pursuit. Their expression of surprise was altogether genuine. I myself was, perhaps, equally taken aback. Nothing in their appearance suggested in the least the midnight assassin! I turned towards the one who had leaned the door up against the wall, and addressed him.

"May I ask to what I am indebted for the pleasure of this unexpected visit?" I inquired.

The man took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He was short and stout, with a bushy brown beard, and eyes which blinked at me in amazement from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore a grey tweed travelling suit, and brown boots. He had exactly the air of a prosperous middle-class tradesman from the provinces.

"I am afraid, sir," he said, "that we have made a mistake—in which case we shall owe you a thousand apologies. We are in search of a friend whom we certainly believed that we had seen enter your room."

Now all the time he was talking his eyes were never still. Every inch of my room that was visible they ransacked. His companion, too, was engaged in the same task. There were no traces of my visitor to be seen.

"You can make your apologies and explanations to the management in the morning," I answered grimly "Pardon me!"

I held out my arm across the threshold, and for the first time looked at the other man who had been on the point of entering. He was slight and somewhat sallow, with very high forehead and small deep-set eyes. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, the details of which, however, betrayed his status. He wore a heavy gold chain, a dinner coat, and a made-up white tie, with the ends tucked in under a roll collar. He appeared to be objectionable, but far from dangerous.

"You are still a trifle over-anxious respecting the interior of my room!"
I remarked, pushing him gently back.

He spoke to me for the first time. He spoke slowly and formally, and his accent struck me as being a little foreign.

"Sir," he said, "you may not be aware that the person of whom we are in search is a dangerous, an exceedingly dangerous character. If he should be concealed in your room the consequences to yourself might be most serious."

"Thank you," I said, "I am quite capable of taking care of myself."

Both men were standing as close to me as I was disposed to permit. I fancied that they were looking me over, as though to make an estimate of the possible amount of resistance I might be able to offer should they be disposed to make a rush. The odds, if any, must have seemed to them somewhat in my favor, for I was taller by head and shoulders than either of them, and a life-long devotion to athletics had broadened my shoulders, and given me strength beyond the average. Besides, there was the revolver in my right hand, which I took occasion now to display. The shorter of the two men again addressed me.

"My dear sir," he said softly, "it is necessary that you should not misapprehend the situation. The person of whom we are in search is one whom we are pledged to find. We have no quarrel with you! Why embroil yourself in an affair with which you have no concern?"

"I am not seeking to do so," I answered. "It is you and your friend who are the aggressors. You have forced an entrance into my room in a most unwarrantable fashion. Your missing friend is nothing to me. I desire to be left in peace."

Even as I spoke the words, I knew that there was to be no peace for me that night, for, stealthy though their movements were, I saw something glisten in the right hands of both of them. The odds now assumed a somewhat different appearance. I drew back a pace, and stood prepared for what might happen. My vis-à-vis in the gold-rimmed spectacles addressed me again.

"Sir," he said, "we will not bandy words any longer. It is better that we understand one another. There is a man hidden in your room whom we mean to have. You will understand that we are serious, when I tell you that we have engaged every room in this corridor, and the wires of your telephone are cut. If you will permit us to come in and find him, I promise that nothing shall happen in your room, that you shall not be compromised in any way. If you refuse, I must warn you that you will become involved in a matter more serious than you have any idea of."

For answer, I discharged my revolver twice at the ceiling, hoping to arouse some one, either guests or servants, and fired again at the shoulder of the man whose leap towards me was like the spring of a wild-cat. Both rooms were suddenly plunged into darkness, the elder of the two men, stepping back for a moment, had turned out the electric lights. For a short space of time everything was chaos. My immediate assailant I flung away from me with ease; his companion, who tried to rush past me in the darkness, I struck with a random blow on the side of the head, so that he staggered back with a groan. I knew very well that neither of them had passed me, and yet I fancied, as I paused to take breath for a moment, that I heard stealthy footsteps behind, in the room which I had been defending. I called again for help, and groped about on the wall for the electric light switches. The footsteps ceased, a sudden cry rang out from somewhere behind the bed-curtains, a cry so full of horror, that I felt the blood run cold in my veins, and the sweat break out upon my forehead. I sought desperately for the little brass knobs of the switches, listening all the while for those footsteps. I heard nothing save a low, sickening groan, which followed upon the cry, but I felt, a moment later, the hot breath of a human being upon my neck. I sprang aside, barely in time to escape a blow obviously aimed at me with some weapon or other, which cut through the air with the soft, nervous swish of an elastic life-preserver. I knew that some one who sought my life was within a few feet of me, striving to make sure before the second blow was aimed. In my stockinged feet I crept along by the wall. I could hear no sound of movement anywhere near me, and yet I knew quite well that my hidden assailant was close at hand. Just then, I heard at last what I had been listening for so long and so eagerly, footsteps and a voice in the corridor outside. Somebody sprang past me in the darkness, and, for a second, amazement kept me motionless. The thing was impossible, or I could have sworn that my feet were brushed by the skirts of a woman's gown, and that a whiff of perfume—it was like the scent of dying violets—floated past me. Then the door of my room, from which I had withdrawn the bolt, was flung suddenly open, and almost simultaneously my fingers touched the knob of the electric light fittings. The whole place was flooded with light. I looked around, half dazed, but eager to see what had become of my assailants. Both rooms were empty, or apparently so. There was no sign or evidence of any other person there save myself. On the threshold of my own apartment was standing the night porter.

"Have you let them go by?" I called out. "Did you see them in the corridor?"

"Who, sir?" the porter asked stolidly.

"Two men who forced their way into my room—look at the door. One was short and stout and wore glasses, the other was taller and thin. They were here a few seconds ago. Unless they passed you, they are in one of the rooms now."

The man came inside, and looked around him.

"I can't see any one, sir! There wasn't a soul about outside."

"Then we had better look for them!" I exclaimed. "Be careful, for they are armed."

There was no one in the adjoining room. We had searched it thoroughly before I suddenly remembered the visitor who had been the innocent cause of these exciting moments.

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, "there's a wounded man by the side of my bed! I quite forgot him, I was so anxious to catch these blackguards."

The porter looked at me with distinct suspicion.

"A wounded man, sir?" he remarked. "Where?"

"On the other side of the bed," I answered. "It's the man all this row was about."

I hurried round to where I had left my terrified visitor hiding behind the bed-curtain. There was no one there. We looked under the bed, even in the wardrobes. It was obvious, when we had finished our search, that not a soul was in either of the rooms except our two selves. The porter looked at me, and I looked at the porter.

"It's a marvellous thing!" I declared.

"It is," the porter agreed.

"You can see for yourself that that door has been battered in," I remarked, pointing to it.

The fellow smiled in such a manner, that I should have liked to have kicked him.

"I can see that it has been battered in," he said. "Oh! yes! I can see that!"

"You perhaps don't believe my story?" I asked calmly.

"It isn't my place to believe or disbelieve it," he answered. "I certainly didn't meet any one outside—much less three people. I shall make my report to the manager in the morning, sir! Good night."

So I was left alone, and, extraordinary as it may seem, I was asleep in less than half an hour.

CHAPTER III

MISS VAN HOYT

I was awakened at about nine o'clock the next morning by a loud and persistent knocking at the door of my room. I sat up in bed and shouted,

"Come in!"

A waiter entered bearing a note, which he handed to me on a salver. I looked at him, around the room, which was still in some confusion, and down at the note, which was clearly addressed to me, J. Hardross Courage, Esq. Suddenly my eyes fell upon the smashed door, and I remembered at once the events of the previous night. I tore open the note. It was typewritten and brief:—

"The manager presents his compliments to Mr. Hardross Courage, and would be obliged if he will arrange to vacate his room by midday. The manager further regrets that he is unable to offer Mr. Courage any other accommodation."

"Tell the valet to let me have a bath in five minutes," I ordered, springing out of bed, "and bring me some tea. Look sharp!"

I was in a furious temper. The events of the night before, strange though they had been, left me comparatively unmoved. I was filled, however, with a thoroughly British indignation at the nature of this note. My room had been broken into in the middle of the night; I had narrowly escaped being myself the victim of a serious and murderous assault; and now I was calmly told to leave the hotel! I hastened downstairs and into the office.

"I wish to see the manager as soon as possible," I said to one of the reception clerks behind the counter.

"Certainly, sir, what name?" he asked; drawing a slip of paper towards him.

"Courage—" I told him, "Mr. Hardross Courage!"

The man's manner underwent a distinct change.

"I am sorry, sir," he said, "but Mr. Blumentein is engaged. Is there anything I can do?"

"No!" I answered him bluntly. "I want the manager, and no one else will do. If he cannot see me now I will wait. If he does not appear in a reasonable time, I shall go direct to Scotland Yard and lay certain information before the authorities there."

The clerk stared at me, and then smiled in a tolerant manner. He was short and dark, and wore glasses. His manner was pleasant enough, but he had the air of endeavoring to soothe a fractious child—which annoyed me.

"I will send a message down to Mr. Blumentein, sir," he said, "but he is very busy this morning."

He called a boy, but, after a moment's hesitation, he left the office himself. I lit a cigarette, and waited with as much patience as I could command. The people who passed in and out interested me very little. Suddenly, however, I gave a start and looked up quickly.

A woman had entered the reception-room, passing so close to me that her skirts almost brushed my feet. She was tall, quietly and elegantly dressed, and she was followed by a most correct looking maid, who carried a tiny Japanese spaniel. I did not see her face, although I knew by her carriage and figure that she must be young. That she was a person of importance it was easy to see by the attention which was at once paid her. Her interest for me, however, lay in none of these things. I had been conscious, as she had passed, of a whiff of faint, very delicate perfume—and with it, of a sudden, sharp recollection. It was a perfume which I had distinguished but once before in my life, and that only a few hours ago.

She gave her key in at the desk, received some letters, and turning round passed within a few feet of me. Perhaps she realized that I was watching her with more than ordinary attention, and her eyes fell for a moment carelessly upon mine. They were withdrawn at once, and she passed on with the slightest of frowns—just sufficient rebuke to the person who had forgotten himself so far as to stare at a woman in a public place. The maid, too, glanced towards me with a slight flash in her large black eyes, as though she, also, resented my impertinence, and the little Japanese spaniel yawned as he was carried past, and showed me a set of dazzling white teeth. I was in disgrace all round, because I had looked for a second too long into his mistress' deep blue eyes and pale, proud face. Nevertheless, I presumed even further. I changed my position, so that I could see her where she stood in the hall, talking to her maid.

Like a man who looks half unwillingly into the land of hidden things, knowing very well that his own doom or joy is there, if he has the wit to see and the strength to grasp it, so did I deliberately falsify the tenets and obligations of my order, and, standing half in the hall, half in the office, I stared at the lady and the maid and the spaniel. She was younger even than I had thought her, and I felt that there was something foreign in her appearance, although of what nationality she might be I could not determine. Her hair was of a shade between brown and golden, and, as she stood now, with her back to me, I could see that it was so thick and abundant that her maid's art had been barely sufficient to keep it within bounds. In the front it was parted in the middle, and came rather low down over her forehead. Now I could see her profile—the rather long neck, which the lace scarf about her shoulders seemed to leave a little more than usually bare; the soft and yet firm outline of features, delicate enough and yet full of character. Just then her maid said something which seemed to call her attention to me. She half turned her head and looked me full in the face. Her eyes seemed to narrow a little, as though she were short-sighted. Then she very slowly and very deliberately turned her back upon me, and continued talking to her maid. My cheeks were tanned enough, but I felt the color burn as I prepared to move away. At that moment the lift stopped just opposite to her, and Mr. Blumentein stepped out, followed by his dapper little clerk.

Mr. Blumentein was a man of less than medium height, with grey hair and beard, powerfully built and with a sleek, well-groomed appearance. Hat in hand, and with many bows and smiles, he addressed a few remarks to the lady, who answered him courteously, but with obvious condescension. Then he came on to me, and his manner was very different indeed. The dapper little clerk, who had pointed me out, slipped away.

"Mr. Courage?" he inquired; "you wished to speak to me."

I handed him the typewritten communication which I had received.

"I wish for some explanation of this," I said.

He glanced at it, and shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot permit such proceedings as took place last night in this hotel," he said. "I can find no trace of the two persons whom you described as having broken into your room, and I am not at all satisfied with the explanations which have been given."

"Indeed," I answered. "I can assure you that I find the situation equally unsatisfactory. I come here in the ordinary way as a casual guest. My room is broken into in the middle of the night. I myself am assaulted, and another man, a stranger to me, is nearly murdered. If any explanations or apologies are due at all, I consider that they are due to me."

Mr. Blumentein edged a little away.

"You should consider yourself exceedingly fortunate," he declared, "to be spared the inconvenience of a police inquiry. My directors dislike very much any publicity given to brawls of this sort in the hotel, or you might find yourself in a somewhat awkward position. I have nothing more to say about it."

He would have moved away, but I stood directly in front of him.

"It happens that I have," I said. "I am not a thief or an adventurer, and my bona-fides are easily established. I am a magistrate in two counties; Sir Gilbert Hardross, who is a patron of your restaurant, is my cousin, and I expect him here to call for me within half an hour. I am up in town to play for my County against the M.C.C. at Lord's; I am a person who is perfectly well known, and my word as to what happened last night will be readily accepted. If you do not alter your tone at once, I shall take a cab to Scotland Yard, and insist upon a complete investigation into the affairs of last night."

There was no doubt as to the effect of my words upon Mr. Blumentein. He was seriously perturbed, and wholly unable to conceal it.

"You can prove what you say, Mr. Courage, I suppose?" he remarked hesitatingly.

"Absolutely!" I answered; "look in this week's Graphic. You will see a photograph of me in the Medchestershire Cricket Team. Come into my room, and I will show you as many letters and papers as you please. Do you know that gentleman?"

"Certainly!" Mr. Blumentein answered, bowing low. "Good morning, Sir
Charles!"

A young man in a flannel suit and straw hat sauntered up to us. He nodded condescendingly to the hotel manager, and shook hands with me.

"How are you, Courage?" he said. "I'm coming down to Lord's this afternoon to see the match."

He passed on. Mr. Blumentein was distinctly nervous.

"Will you do me the favor to come down to my room for a moment, Mr.
Courage?" he begged. "I should like to speak to you in private."

I followed him down into his office. He closed the door, and set his hat down upon the desk.

"I have caused the strictest inquiries to be made, and I have been unable to obtain the slightest trace either of the man whom you say took shelter in your room, or the two others you spoke of. Under those circumstances, you will understand that your story did not sound very probable."

"Perhaps not," I admitted; "but I don't know what your night-porter could have been about, if he really saw nothing of them. I can give you a detailed description of all three if you like."

"One moment," Mr. Blumentein said, taking up pen and paper. "Now, if you please!"

I described the three men to the best of my ability, and Mr. Blumentein took down carefully all that I said.

"I will have the fullest inquiries made," he promised, "and let you know the result. In the meantime, I trust that you will consider the letter I wrote you this morning unwritten. You will doubtless prefer to leave the hotel after what has happened, but another time, I trust that we may be honored by your patronage."

I hesitated for a moment. It was clear that the man wanted to get rid of me. For the first time, the idea of remaining in the hotel occurred to me.

"I will consider the matter," I answered. "In the meantime, I hope you will have inquiries made at once. The man who took refuge in my room was in a terrible state of fright, and from what I saw of the other two, I am afraid you may find this a more serious affair than you have any idea of. By the bye, one of the two told me that they had engaged every room in that corridor. You may be able to trace him by that."

Mr. Blumentein shrugged his shoulders.

"That statement, at any rate, was a false one," he said. "All the rooms in the vicinity of yours were occupied by regular customers."

Now, in all probability, if Mr. Blumentein had looked me in the face when he made this last statement, I should have left the hotel within half an hour or so for good, and the whole episode, so far as I was concerned, would have been ended. But I could not help noticing a somewhat unaccountable nervousness in the man's manner, and it flashed into my mind suddenly that he knew a good deal more than he meant to tell me. He was keeping something back. The more I watched him, the more I felt certain of it. I determined not to leave the hotel.

"Well," I said, "we will look upon the whole affair last night as a misunderstanding. I will keep on my room for to-night, at any rate. I shall be having some friends to dine in the restaurant."

The man's face expressed anything but pleasure.

"Just as you like, Mr. Courage," he said. "Of course, if, under the circumstances, you preferred to leave us, we should quite understand it!"

"I shall stay for to-night, at any rate," I answered. "I am only up for a day or two."

He walked with me to the door. I hesitated for a moment, and then asked him the question which had been in my mind for some time.

"By the bye, Mr. Blumentein," I said, "if it is a permissible question, may I ask the name of the young lady with whom you were talking in the hall just now—a young lady with a French maid and a Japanese spaniel?"

Mr. Blumentein was perceptibly paler. His eyes were full of suspicion, almost fear.

"Why do you ask me that?" he inquired sharply.

"Out of curiosity, I am afraid," I answered readily. "I am sorry if I have been indiscreet!"

The man made an effort to recover his composure. I could see, though, that, for some reason, my question had disquieted him.

"The lady's name is Miss Van Hoyt," he said slowly. "I believe that she is of a very well-known American family. She came here with excellent recommendations; but, beyond her name, I really know very little about her. Nothing more I can do for you, Mr. Courage?"

"Nothing at all, thank you," I answered, moving towards the door.

"They have just telephoned down to say that a gentleman has called for you—Sir Gilbert Hardross, I believe."

I nodded and glanced at the clock.

"Thanks!" I said, "I must hurry."

"I will reserve a table for you in the restaurant to-night, sir," Mr.
Blumentein said, bowing me out.

"For three, at eight o'clock," I answered.

CHAPTER IV

A MATCH AT LORD'S

My cousin, Gilbert Hardross, was eight years older than I, and of intensely serious proclivities. He was, I believe, a very useful member of the House, and absolutely conscientious in the discharge of what he termed his duty to his constituents. We drove down together to Lord's, and knowing him to be a person almost entirely devoid of imagination, I forbore to make any mention of the events of the previous night. One question, however, I did ask him.

"What sort of an hotel is the Universal supposed to be, Gilbert? Rather a queer lot of people staying there, I thought."

My cousin implied by a gesture that he was not surprised.

"Very cosmopolitan indeed," he declared. "It is patronized chiefly, I believe, by a certain class of Americans and gentlemen of the sporting persuasion. The restaurant, of course, is good, and a few notabilities stay there now and then. I should have thought the Carlton would have suited you better."

I changed the subject.

"How are politics?" I asked.

He looked at me as though in reproach at the levity of my question.

"You read the papers, I suppose?" he remarked. "You know for yourself that we are passing through a very critical time. Never," he added, "since I have been in the House, have I known such a period of anxiety."

Considering that Gilbert represented a rural constituency, and that his party was not even in office, I felt inclined to smile. However, I took him seriously.

"Same old war scare, I suppose?" I remarked.

"It has been a 'scare' for a good many years," he replied seriously. "People seem inclined to forget that behind the shadow all the time there is the substance. I happen to know that there is a great deal of tension just now at the Foreign Office!"

"Things seem pretty much as they were six months ago," I remarked. "There is no definite cause for alarm, is there?"

"No definite cause, perhaps, that we know of," my cousin answered; "but there is no denying the fact that an extraordinary amount of apprehension exists in the best informed circles. As Lord Kestelen said to me yesterday, one seems to feel the thunder in the air."

I was thoughtful for a moment. Perhaps, after all, I was inclined to envy my cousin. My own life was a simple and wholesome one enough, but it was far removed indeed from the world of great happenings. Just then, I felt the first premonitions of dissatisfaction.

"I believe I'm sorry after all, that I didn't go in for a career of some sort," I remarked.

My cousin looked gratified. He accepted my regret as a tribute to his own larger place in the world.

"In some respects," he admitted, "it is regrettable. Yet you must remember that you are practically the head of the family. I have the title, but you have the estates and the money. You should find plenty to do!"

I nodded.

"Naturally! That isn't exactly what I meant, though. Here we are, and by
Jove, I'm late!"

My cousin cared for cricket no more than for any other sports, but because he represented Medchestershire, he made a point of coming to see his County play. He took up a prominent position in the pavilion enclosure, and requested me to inform the local reporters, who had come up from Medchester, of his presence. I changed into my flannels quickly, and was just in time to go out into the field with the rest of the team.

The morning's cricket was not particularly exciting, and I had hard work to keep my thoughts fixed upon the game. Our bowling was knocked about rather severely, but wickets fell with reasonable frequency. It was just before luncheon time that the most surprising event of the day happened to me. The captain of the M.C.C., who had just made his fifty, drove a full pitch hard towards the boundary on the edge of which I was fielding. By fast sprinting, and a lot of luck, I brought off the catch, and, amidst the applause from the pavilion within a few feet of me, I heard my cousin's somewhat patronizing congratulations:—

"Fine catch, Jim! Very fine catch indeed!"

I glanced round, and stood for a moment upon the cinder-path as though turned to stone. My cousin, who had changed his seat, was smiling kindly upon me a few yards away, and by his side, talking to him, was a young lady with golden-brown hair, a French maid dressed in black, and a Japanese spaniel. Her eyes met mine without any shadow of recognition. She looked upon me from her raised seat, as though I were a performer in some comedy being played for her amusement, in which she found it hard, however, to take any real interest. I went back to my place in the field, without any clear idea of whether I was upon my head or my heels, and my fielding for the rest of the time was purely mechanical.

In about half an hour the luncheon bell rang. I made straight for my cousin's seat, and, to my intense relief, saw that neither of them had as yet quitted their places. Gilbert seemed somewhat surprised to see me!

"Well," he remarked, "you haven't done so badly after all. Five wickets for 120 isn't it? You ought to get them out by four o'clock."

He hesitated. I glanced towards his companion, and he had no alternative.

"Miss Van Hoyt," he said, "will you allow me to introduce my cousin, Mr.
Hardross Courage?"

She bowed a little absently.

"Are you interested in cricket, Miss Van Hoyt?" I asked inanely.

"Not in the least," she answered. "I have a list somewhere—in my purse, I think—of English institutions which must be studied before one can understand your country-people. Cricket, I believe, is second on the list. Your cousin was kind enough to tell me about this match, and how to get here."

"We are staying at the same hotel, I think," I remarked.

"Very likely," she answered, "I am only in London for a short time. Is the cricket over for the day now?"

I hastened to explain the luncheon arrangements. She rose at once.

"Then we will go," she said, turning to her maid and addressing her in
French. "Janette, we depart!"

The maid rose with suspicious alacrity. The spaniel yawned and looked at me out of the corner of his black eye. I believe that he recognized me.

"Dare I ask you to honor us by lunching with my cousin and myself here,
Miss Van Hoyt?" I asked eagerly.

She smiled very slightly, but the curve of her lips was delightful.

"And see more cricket?" she asked. "No! I think not—many thanks all the same!"

"I will put you in a hansom," my cousin said, turning towards her and ignoring me.

She looked over her shoulder and nodded. The maid looked at me out of her great black eyes, as though daring me to follow them, and, was it my fancy, or did that little morsel of canine absurdity really show me its white teeth on purpose? Anyhow, they strolled away, and left me there. I waited for Gilbert.

He reappeared in about five minutes, with a hateful smirk upon his well-cut but somewhat pasty features. I laid my hand upon his arm.

"Where did you meet her, Gilbert?" I asked. "Who is she? Where does she come from? How long have you known her?"

"Gently, my dear fellow!" he answered calmly. "I met her at Lady Tredwell's about a fortnight ago. I really know very little about her, except that she seems a charming young lady."

"Where does she come from?" I asked—"what country, I mean? She speaks like a foreigner!"

"Oh! she's American, of course," he told me—"a young American lady of fortune, I believe."

"American," I repeated vaguely, "are you sure?"

"Perfectly!" he answered.

"Any relatives here?" I asked.

"None that I know of," he admitted.

"Any connection with the stage?"

"Certainly not! I told you that I met her at Lady Tredwell's."

We walked into the luncheon room in silence. Presently my cousin showed signs of irritation.

"What the mischief are you so glum about?" he asked.

I looked up.

"I am not glum," I answered. "I was just thinking that the Hotel Universal seemed rather a queer place for a young lady with a French maid, a Japanese spaniel, and—no chaperon."

"You are an ass!" my cousin declared.

* * * * *

It was not until the evening that Gilbert unbent. When, however, he studied the menu of the dinner which I had ordered for his delectation, and learned that I had invited his particular friend, Lord Kestelen, to meet him, he invited me to descend below to the American bar and take a cocktail while we waited for our guest.

"By the bye, Jim," he remarked, slipping his arm through mine, "I thought that Miss Van Hoyt was particularly inquisitive about you this morning."

"In what way?" I asked, at once interested.

"She wanted to know what you did—how you spent your time. When I told her that you had no profession, that you did nothing except play cricket and polo, and hunt and shoot, she seemed most unaccountably surprised. She appeared almost incredulous when I told her that you seldom came to London, and still more seldom went abroad. I wonder what she had in her head?"

"I have no idea," I answered thoughtfully. "I suppose it was only ordinary curiosity. In America all the men do something."

"That must be so, no doubt," my cousin admitted, "but it didn't sound like it. I wonder whether we shall see her this evening?"

I did not wonder at all! It seemed to me that I knew!

CHAPTER V

ON THE TERRACE

It was not until after my guests had departed, and I had almost given up hope, that I caught sight of her. She was seated at a table in the writing-room, and was in the act of sealing a letter. She looked up as I entered, and, after a second's hesitation, bowed coldly. I summoned up all my pluck, however, and approached her.

"Good evening, Miss Van Hoyt!" I said.

"Good evening, Mr. Courage!" she answered, proceeding to stamp her envelope.

"Have you been to the theatre?" I asked.

"Not this evening," she replied; "I have been to a meeting."

"A meeting!" I repeated; "that sounds interesting!"

"I doubt whether you would have found it so," she answered dryly.

Her manner, without being absolutely repellent, was far from encouraging. I found myself in the embarrassing position of having nothing left to say. I gave up all attempt at conversational philandering.

"May I talk to you for a few minutes, Miss Van Hoyt?" I asked.

She raised her head and looked at me meditatively. Her eyes were the color of early violets, but they were also very serious and very steady. She appeared to be deliberately taking stock of me, but I could not flatter myself that there was anything of personal interest in her regard.

"Yes!" she answered at last, "for a few minutes. Not here though. Go through the drawing-room on to the terrace, and wait for me there. Don't go at once. Go downstairs and have a drink or something first."

I could see her looking through the glass doors, and divining her wishes, I turned away at once. Mr. Blumentein was standing there, looking upon us. His smile was almost ghastly in its attempted cordiality. He took off his hat as I passed, and we exchanged some commonplace remark. I went downstairs and strolled up and down. The minutes passed ridiculously slowly. I looked at my watch a dozen times. At last I decided that I had waited long enough. I ascended the stairs, and made my way through the drawing-room on to the terrace. The place was deserted, but I had scarcely walked to the farther end, before I heard the soft trailing of a woman's skirt close at hand. I looked up eagerly, and she stepped out from the drawing-room. For a moment she hesitated. I remained motionless. I could do nothing but look at her. She wore a black evening dress—net I think it was, with deep flounces of lace. Her neck and arms were dazzlingly white in the half light; her lips were a little parted as she stood and listened. Her whole expression was natural, almost childlike. Suddenly she dropped the curtain and came swiftly towards me.

"Well," she said softly, "now that I am here, what have you to say to me?"

I was horribly tempted to say things which must have sounded unutterably foolish. With an effort I restrained myself. I addressed her almost coldly.

"Miss Van Hoyt," I said, "I want to know whether you are the only woman in this hotel who uses—that perfume."

She took out her handkerchief. A little whiff of faint fragrance came floating out from its crumpled lace.

"You recognize it?"

"Yes!"

"So much the better!" she declared. "Let me tell you this at once. I have not come here to answer questions. I have come to ask them. Are you content?"

"I am content—so long as you are here," I murmured.

"The man whom you protected last night—whose life you probably saved—on your honor, was he a stranger to you?"

"On my honor he was," I answered gravely.

"You have never seen him before?"

"To my knowledge—no!"

"You have never spoken to him before?"

"Never!"

She drew a little sigh.

"Your defence of him then," she said, "was simply accidental?"

"Entirely!" I answered.

"Has he communicated with you since?"

"Not in any way," I assured her.

She drew a little away from me. Her eyes were still fixed eagerly upon my face.

"Are you inclined to believe in me—to believe what I say?" she asked.

"Absolutely," I answered.

"Then listen to me now," she said. "That man, never mind his name, is one of nature's criminals. He is a traitor, a renegade, a malefactor. He has sinned against every law, he has written his own death-warrant. He deserves to die, he will die! That is a certain thing. He would have been dead before now, but for me! Do you know why I have made them spare his life?"

"No!" I answered. "Who are they? and who is to be his executioner? Surely, if he is all that you say there are laws under whose ban he must have come. It is not safe to talk like this of life and death here. All those things are arranged nowadays in the courts."

She smiled at me scornfully.

"Never mind that," she said. "You speak now of things which you do not understand. I want to tell you why I would not let them kill him."

"Well?"

"It is because if he is killed the secret goes with him. Never mind how he came by it, or who he is. It is sufficient for you to know that he has it. Up to now, he has resisted even torture. You remember the color of his hair? It went like that in a night, but he held out. Now he knows that he is going to die, and he is seeking for some one to whom he may pass it on."

"What is this secret then?" I asked, perplexed.

"Don't be absurd," she answered. "If I knew it, should I be likely to tell it to you? I have an idea of the nature of it, of course. But that is not enough."

"But—who is he then?" I asked. "How came he to obtain possession of it?"

"Now you are asking questions," she reminded me. "Believe me, you are safer, very much safer knowing nothing. If I were your friend—"

She hesitated. All the time her eyes were fixed upon me. She seemed to be trying to read the thoughts which were passing through my brain.

"If you were my friend," I repeated—"well?"

"I would give you some excellent advice," she said slowly.

"I am ready to take it!" I declared.

"On trust?"

"I believe so," I answered. "At least, you might give me the chance." She sank down upon the settee at the extreme end of the terrace. There was little chance here of being overheard, as we had a clear view of the only approach.

"After all," she said, "I do not think that it would be worth while. You belong to a class which I do not understand—which I do not pretend to understand. The things which seemed reasonable to me would probably seem banal to you. I am sure that it would be useless!"

"But why?" I persisted. "You have said so much, you must say more. I insist!"

A little wearily she pushed back the masses of hair from her forehead. Her head rested for a moment upon her fingers. Her eyes deliberately sought mine.

"Let me warn you," she said; "I am not the sort of woman whom you know anything about. The usual things do not attract me; I have never been in love with a man. I hope that I never shall be. And yet I think that I find my way a little further into life than most of my sex."

"You have other interests," I murmured.

"I have! What they are it is not for you to know. I am only interested in your sex so far as they are useful to me. You, if you were a different sort of man, might be very useful to me."

"At least give me the chance," I begged.

She shook her head.

"This morning," she said, "it seemed to me that I saw in one moment an epitome of your life. I saw every nerve of your body strained, I saw you wound up to a great effort. It was to catch a ball! You succeeded, I believe."

I laughed a little awkwardly.

"Yes! I caught it!" I remarked. "Success is something after all, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," she admitted. "Afterwards I spoke to your cousin about you. He told me that you lived on your estates, that you played games well, that you shot birds and rabbits, and sent to prison drunken men and poachers. 'But about his life?' I asked. 'This is his life,' your cousin answered. 'He has never gone in for a career!'"

"I suppose," I said slowly, "that this seems to you a very unambitious sort of existence!"

"Existence!" she answered scornfully, "it does not seem like existence at all! Your joys are the joys of a highly trained animal; your sorrows and your passions and your disappointments—they are at best those of the yokel. What has life to do with games and sports? These things may have their place and their use, but to make them all in all! The men whom I have met are not like that!"

"I am sorry," I said. "You see the other things have not come my way!"

"You mean that you have not been out to seek them," she declared. "The pulse of the world beats only for those who care to feel it."

"Let us take it for granted, for a moment, that you are right," I said, "and that I am a convert. I am willing to abjure my sports and my quiet days for a plunge into the greater world. Who will be my guide? Which path shall I follow?"

"You are not in earnest," she murmured.

"Perhaps I am, perhaps not," I answered. "At any rate, there have been times when I have found life a tame thing. Such a feeling came to me two years ago, and I went to Africa to shoot lions."

She leaned towards me.

"You should hunt men, not lions," she whispered. "It is only the animal courage in you which keeps you cool when you face wild beasts. It is a different thing when you measure wits and strength with one of your own race!"

"Count me a willing listener and go on," I said. "If you can show me the way, I am willing to take it."

"Why not?" she said, half to herself. "You have strength, you have courage! Why shouldn't you come a little way into life?"

"If it is by your side," I began passionately.

She stopped me with a look.

"Please go away," she said firmly. "You only weary me! If it is to gain an opportunity of saying this sort of rubbish that you have induced me to take you seriously, I can only say that I am sorry I have wasted a second of my time upon you!"

"The two things are apart," I answered. "I will not allude to the one again. My interest in what you have said is genuine. I am waiting for your advice."

She rose slowly to her feet. She looked me in the eyes, but there was no shadow of kindness in their expression.

"If I were a man," she said—"if I were you, I would seek out the person whom you befriended—he goes by the name of Guest—and I would learn from him—the secret!"

"Where can I find him?" I asked eagerly. "He seems to have disappeared entirely."

Her voice sank to a whisper. Her breath fanned my cheek, so that I felt half mad with the desire to hold her in my arms, if only for a moment. I think that she must have seen the light flash in my eyes, but she ignored it altogether.

"Go to your room," she said, "and wait till a messenger comes to you."

CHAPTER VI

"MR. GUEST"

I had been alone for nearly an hour before there came a cautious tapping at my door, I opened it at once, and stared at my visitor in surprise. It was the man in the grey tweed suit, who had broken into my room the night before.

"You!" I exclaimed; "what the mischief are you doing here?"

"If you will permit me to enter," he said, "I shall be glad to explain."

He stepped past me into the room. I closed the door behind him.

"What do you want with me?" I asked.

My visitor regarded me thoughtfully through his gold-rimmed spectacles. I, too, was taking careful note of him. Any one more commonplace—with less of the bearing of a conspirator—it would be impossible to imagine. His features, his clothes, his bearing, were all ordinary. His face had not even the shrewdness of the successful business man. His brown beard was carefully trimmed, his figure was a little podgy, his manner undistinguished. I found it hard to associate him in my mind with such things as the woman whom I had left a few moments ago had spoken of.

"I understand," he said, "that you wish for an interview with your friend, Mr. Leslie Guest. His room happens to be close to mine. I shall be pleased to conduct you there!"

"You have seen Miss Van Hoyt then?" I exclaimed.

"I have just left her!" he answered.

I stared at him incredulously.

"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that, after last night, you have dared to remain in the hotel—that you have a room here?"

My visitor smiled.

"But certainly," he said, "you are under some curious apprehension as to the events of last night. My friend and I are most harmless individuals. We only wanted a little business conversation with Mr. Guest, which he was foolish enough to try and avoid. That is all arranged, now, however!"

"Is it?" I answered curtly. "Then I am sorry for Mr. Guest!"

Again my visitor smiled—quite a harmless smile it was, as of pity for some unaccountably foolish person.

"You do not seem," he remarked, "if I may be pardoned for saying so, a very imaginative person, Mr. Courage, but you certainly have some strange ideas as to my friend and myself. Possibly Mr. Guest himself is responsible for them! A very excitable person at times!"

"You had better take me to him, if that is your errand," I said shortly.
"This sort of conversation between you and me is rather a waste of time."

"Certainly!" he answered. "Will you follow me?"

We took the lift to the sixth floor, traversed an entire corridor, and then, mounting a short and narrow flight of stairs, we arrived at a passage with three or four doors on either side, and no exit at the further end. We seemed to be entirely cut off from the main portion of the hotel, and I noticed that there were no numbers on the doors of the rooms. A very tall and powerful-looking man came to the head of the stairs, on hearing our footsteps, and regarded us suspiciously. Directly he recognized my companion, however, he allowed us to pass.

"A nice quiet part of the hotel this," my guide remarked, glancing towards me.

"Very!" I answered dryly.

"A man might be hidden here very securely," he added.

"I can well believe it," I assented.

He knocked softly at the third door on the left. A woman's voice answered him. A moment later, the door was opened by a nurse in plain hospital dress.

"Good evening, nurse!" my companion said cheerfully. "This gentleman would like to see Mr. Guest! Is he awake?"

The nurse opened the door a little wider, which I took for an invitation to enter. She closed it softly behind me. My guide remained outside.

The room was a very small one, and furnished after the usual hotel fashion. The only light burning was a heavily-shaded electric lamp, placed by the bedside. The nurse raised it a little, and looked down upon the man who lay there motionless.

"He is asleep," she remarked. "It is time he took his medicine. I must wake him!"

She spoke with a pronounced foreign accent. Her fair hair and stolid features left me little doubt as to her nationality. I was conscious of a strong and instinctive dislike to her from the moment I heard her speak and watched her bending over the bed. I think that her face was one of the most unsympathetic which I had ever seen.

She poured some medicine into a glass, and turned on another electric light. Her patient woke at once. Directly he opened his eyes, he recognized me with a little start.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You!"

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"You haven't forgotten me then?" I remarked. "I'm sorry you're queer!
Nothing serious, I hope?"

He ignored my words. He was looking at me all the time, as though inclined to doubt the evidence of his senses.

"Who let you come—up here?" he asked in a whisper.

"I made inquiries about you, and got permission to come up," I answered.
"How are you feeling this evening?"

"I don't understand why they let you come," he said uneasily. "Stoop down!"

The nurse came forward with a wineglass.

"Will you take your medicine, please?" she said.

"Presently," he answered, "put it down."

She glanced at the clock and held the glass out once more.

"It is past the time," she said.

"I have had two doses to-day," he answered. "Quite enough, I think. Set it down and go away, please. I want to talk with this gentleman."

"Talking is not good for you," she said, without moving. "Better take your medicine and go to sleep!"

He took the glass from her hand, and, with a glance at its contents which puzzled me, drank it off.

"Now will you go?" he asked, handing back the glass to her.

She dragged her chair to the bedside.

"If you will talk," she said stolidly, "I must watch that you do not excite yourself too much!"

He glanced meaningly at me.

"I have private matters to discuss!" he said.

"You are not well enough to talk of private matters, or anything else important," she declared. "You will excite yourself. You will bring on the fever. I remain here to watch. It is by the doctor's orders."

She sat down heavily within a few feet of us.

"You speak French?" Guest asked me.

I nodded.

"Fairly well!"

"Watch her! See whether she seems to understand. I want to speak of what she must not hear."

She half rose from her chair. So far as her features could express anything, they expressed disquietude.

"She does not understand," I said. "Go on!"

She bent over the bedside.

"You must not talk any more," she said. "It excites you! Your temperature is rising."

He ignored her altogether.

"Listen," he said to me, "why they have let you come here I cannot tell!
You know that I am in prison—that I am not likely to leave here alive!"

"I don't think that it is so bad as that," I assured him.

"It is worse! I am likely to die without the chance of finishing—my work. Great things will die with me. God knows what will happen."

"You have a doctor and a hospital nurse," I remarked. "That doesn't look as though they meant you to die!"

"You don't know who I am, and you don't know who they are," he answered, dropping his voice almost to a whisper.

"I want a month, one more month, and I might cheat them yet!"

"I don't think that they mean you to die," I said. "They have an idea that you are in possession of some marvellous secret. They want to get possession of that first."

"They persevere," he murmured. "In Paris—but never mind. They know very well that that secret, if I die before I can finish my work, dies with me, or—"

The nurse, who had left us a few moments before, re-entered the room. She went straight to a chair at the further end of the apartment, and took up a book. Guest looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"Stranger still!" he said, "we are allowed to talk."

"It may be only for a moment," I reminded him.

"Or pass it on to a successor who will complete my work," he said slowly.
"I fear that I shall not find him. The time is too short now."

"Have you no friends I could send for?" I asked.

"Not one!" he answered.

I looked at him curiously. A man does not often confess himself entirely friendless.

"I need a strong, brave man," he said slowly—"one who is not afraid of
Death, one who has the courage to dare everything in a great cause!"

"A great cause!" I repeated. "They are few and far between nowadays."

He looked at me steadily.

"You are an Englishman!"

I laughed.

"Saxon to the backbone," I admitted.

"You would consider it a great cause to save your country from ruin, from absolute and complete ruin!"

"My imagination," I declared, "cannot conceive such a situation."

"A flock of geese once saved an empire," he said, "a child's little finger in the crack of the dam kept a whole city from destruction. One man may yet save this pig-headed country of ours from utter disaster. It may be you—it may be I!"

"You are also an Englishman!" I exclaimed.

"Perhaps!" he answered shortly. "Never mind what I am. Think! Think hard! By to-morrow you must decide! Are you content with your life? Does it satisfy you? You have everything else; have you ambition?"

"I am not sure," I answered slowly. "Remember that this is all new to me.
I must think!"

He raised himself a little in the bed. At no time on this occasion had he presented to me the abject appearance of the previous night. His cheeks were perfectly colorless, and this pallor, together with his white hair, and the spotless bed-linen, gave to his face a somewhat ghastly cast, but his dark eyes were bright and piercing, his features composed and natural.

"Listen," he said, "they may try to kill me, but I have a will, too, and I say that I will not die till I have found a successor to carry on—to the end—what I have begun. Mind, it is no coward's game! It is a walk with death, hand in hand, all the way."

He raised suddenly a warning finger. There was a knock at the door. The nurse who answered it came to the bedside.

"The gentleman has stayed long enough," she announced. "He must go now!"

I rose and held out my hand. He held it between his for a moment, and his eyes sought mine.

"You will come—to-morrow?"

"I will come," I promised. "To-morrow evening."

CHAPTER VII

A TÊTE-À-TÊTE DINNER

At about nine o'clock the following morning a note was brought to my room addressed to me in a lady's handwriting. I tore it open at once. It was, as I bad expected, from Miss Van Hoyt.

"DEAR MR. COURAGE,—

"I should like to see you for a few minutes at twelve o'clock in the reading-room.

"Yours sincerely,

"ADÈLE VAN HOYT."

I wrote a reply immediately:—

"DEAR MISS VAN HOYT,—

"I regret that I am engaged for the day, and have to leave the hotel in an hour. I shall return about seven o'clock. Could you not dine with me this evening, either in the hotel or elsewhere?

"Yours sincerely,

"J. HARDROSS COURAGE."

Over my breakfast I studied the handwriting of her note. It might indeed have served for an index to so much of her character as had become apparent to me. The crisp, clear formation of the letters, the bold curves and angular terminations, seemed to denote a personality free from all feminine weaknesses. I was reminded at once of the unfaltering gaze of her deep blue eyes, of the chill precision of her words and manner. I asked myself, then, why a character so free, apparently, from all the lovable traits of her sex, should have proved so attractive to me. I had known other beautiful women, I was not untravelled, and I had met women in Paris and Vienna who also possessed the more subtle charms of perfect toilet and manners, and were free from the somewhat hopeless obviousness of most of the women of our country. There was something beneath all that. At the moment, I could not tell what it was. I simply realized that, for the first time, a woman stood easily first in my life, that my whole outlook upon the world was undermined.

Just as I was leaving the hotel, I saw her maid coming down the hall with a note in her hand. I waited, and she accosted me.

"Monsieur Courage!"

"Yes!" I answered.

She gave me the note.

"There is no reply at present," she said, dropping her voice almost to a whisper. "Monsieur might open it in his cab."

She gave me a glance of warning, and I saw that the hall porter and one of his subordinates were somewhat unnecessarily near me. Then she glided away, and I drove off in my cab. Directly we had started, I tore open the envelope and read these few lines.

"DEAR MR. COURAGE,—

"I will dine with you to-night at the Café Français at eight o'clock. Please take a table upstairs. Do not ask for me again or send me any further message until we meet there.

"Yours sincerely,

"ADÈLE VAN HOYT."

At Lord's I was compelled to spend half the day hanging about the pavilion, smoking a good many more cigarettes than I was accustomed to, and finding the cricket much less interesting than usual. My own innings fortunately kept me distracted for a little more than two hours, and the effort of it soothed my nerves and did me good all round. On my way back to the hotel, I determined to forget everything except that I was going to dine alone with the one companion I would have chosen first out of the whole world. In that frame of mind I bathed, changed my clothes, and made my way a little before the appointed time to the Café Français.

I found out my table, sent for some more flowers, and ordered the wine.
Then I descended to the hall just in time to meet my guest.

She wore nothing over her evening dress save a lace scarf, which she untwisted as we ascended the stairs. For some reason I fancied that she was not very well pleased with me. Her greeting was certainly cool.

"Is this your favorite restaurant?" I asked, as the head-waiter ushered us to our table.

"I have no favorite restaurant," she answered; "only to-night I felt in the humor for French cooking—and French service."

I fancied that there was some meaning in the latter part of her sentence; but at that time I did not understand. I had ordered the dinner carefully; and I was glad to see that, although she ate sparingly, she showed appreciation. Wine she scarcely touched.

"So you have been particularly engaged to-day," was almost her first remark.

"I was forced to go to Lord's," I reminded her. "A cricket match lasts three days."

"Three whole days!" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

"Certainly! unless it is over before," I replied.

"And you mean to say that you are a prisoner there all that time—that you could not leave if you chose to?"

"I am afraid not," I answered. "Cricket is a serious thing in this country, you know. If you are chosen to play and commence in the match, you must go through with it. Surely you have met with something of the same sort of thing in the football matches in America!"

"I have never been interested in such things," she said. "I suppose that is why I have never realized their importance. I am afraid, Mr. Courage—"

"Well?"

She lifted her eyes to mine. What a color!—and what a depth. Then I knew, as though by inspiration, how it was that I found myself passing into bondage. Cold she might seem, and self-engrossed! It was because the right chord had never been struck. Some day another light should shine in those wonderful eyes. I saw her before me transformed, saw color in her still, marble cheeks, saw her lips drift into a softer curve, heard the tremor of passion in her quiet, languid tone.

"Do you know that you are staring at me?" she remarked, calmly.

I apologized profusely.

"It is a bad habit of mine," I assured her. "I was looking—beyond."

There was real interest then in her face. She leaned a little forward. Perhaps it was my fancy, but I thought that she seemed to regard me differently.

"How interesting!" she said. "Do you know I had not given you credit for much imagination. You must tell me what you saw!"

"Impossible!" I declared.

"Rubbish!" she answered, "nothing is impossible. Besides, I ask it,"

"I do not know you well enough," I declared, helping myself to an artichoke, "to be personal."

"The liberties you take in your thoughts," she answered, "I permit you to render into speech. It is the same thing."

"One's thoughts," I answered, "are too phantasmagorial. One cannot collect them into speech."

"You must try," she declared, "or I shall never, never dine with you again. Nothing is so interesting as to see yourself from another's point of view!"

"Is it understood," I asked, "that I am not held personally responsible for my thoughts—that if I try to clothe them with words, I am held free from offence?"

She considered for a moment.

"I suppose so," she said. "Yes! Go on."

I drank off my glass of wine, and waited until the waiter, who had been carving a Rouen duckling on a stand by the side of the table, had stepped back into the background.

"Very well!" I said. "I am thirty-three years old and a bachelor, well off, and I have never been a stay-at-home. I know something of society in Paris, in Vienna, in Rome, as well as London. I have always found women agreeable companions, and I have never avoided them. The sex, as a whole, has attracted me. From individual members of it I have happened to remain absolutely heart-whole."

"Marvellous," she murmured in gentle derision. "Please pass the toast.
Thank you!"

"I have been compelled," I said, "to be egotistical. I must now become personal. I saw you for the first time in the hall at the Universal, the morning before yesterday. I encountered you the night before under extremely dubious circumstances. I spoke to you for the first time yesterday. I have met other women as beautiful, I have met many others who have been more gracious to me. These things do not seem to count. You have asked for truth, mind, and you are going to have it. As surely as we are sitting here together, I know that, from henceforth, for me there will be—there could be—no other woman in the world!"

She moved in her chair a little restlessly. Her eyes avoided mine. Her eyebrows had contracted a little, but I could not see that she was angry.

"What am I to think of such a declaration as that?" she asked quietly. "You are not a wizard. You have seen of me what I chose, and you have seen nothing which a man should find lovable, except my looks."

I smiled as I leaned a little forward.

"Don't do me an injustice," I begged. "You have brought me now to the very moment when I forgot myself, and prompted your question. Remember that one has always one's fancy. I looked at you to-night, and I thought that I saw another woman—or rather I thought that I saw the woman that you might be, that I would pray to make you. The other woman is there, I think. I only hope that it may be my good fortune to call her into life."

Her head was bent over her plate. She seemed to be listening to the music—or was there something there which she did not wish me to see? I could not tell. The waiter intervened with another course. When she spoke to me again, her tone was almost cold, but it troubled me very little. There was a softness in her eyes which she could not hide.

"It seems to me," she said, "that we have been very frivolous. I agreed to dine with you that we might speak together of this unfortunate person, Leslie Guest. You saw him last night?"

"Yes," I answered, "I saw him."

My tone had become grave, and my face overcast. She was watching me curiously.

"Well!"

"I am bothered," I admitted. "I don't quite know what I ought to do!"

"Explain!"

"It seemed to me," I said, "that the man was neither more nor less than a prisoner there in the hands of those who, for some reason or other, are his enemies."

"That," she admitted, "is fairly obvious; what of it?"

"Well," I said, "the most straightforward thing for me to do, I believe, would be to go to the nearest police-station and tell them all I know."

She laughed softly.

"What an Englishman you are!" she exclaimed. "The law, or a letter to the Times. These are your final resources, are they not? Well, in this case, let me assure you that neither would help you in the least."

"I am not so sure," I answered. "At any rate, I do not see the fun of letting him remain there, to be done to death by those mysterious enemies of his."

"Then why not take him away?" she asked quietly.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Your own home, if you are sufficiently interested in him!"

"Do you mean that?" I asked.

"I do! Listen! I have no pity for the man who calls himself Leslie Guest! Death he has deserved, and his fate, whomever might intervene, is absolutely inevitable. But I do not wish him to die—at present!"

"Why not?"

"You can imagine, I think. He has the secret."

"He does not seem to me," I remarked, "the sort of man likely to part with it."

"Not to me," she answered quickly, "not to those others. From us he would guard it with his life! With you it is different."

"I am not sure," I said slowly, "that I wish to become a sharer of such dangerous knowledge."

"You are afraid?" she asked coldly.

"I do not see what I have to gain by it," I admitted. "I am not curious, and the possession of it certainly seems to entail some inconvenience, if not danger."

Her lip curled a little. She nodded as though she quite understood my point of view.

"You have said enough," she declared; "I perceive that I was not mistaken! You are exactly the sort of man I thought you were from the first. It is better for you to return to your cricket and your sports. You are at home with them; in the great world you would soon be weary and lost. Call for your bill, please, and put me in a cab. I have a call to make before I return to the hotel"

"One moment more," I begged. "You have not altogether understood me! I have spoken from my own point of view only. I have no interest in the salvation of Leslie Guest, beyond an Englishman's natural desire to see fair play. I have no wish to be burdened with a secret which seems to spell life or death in capital letters. But show me where your interest lies, and I promise you that I will be zealous enough! Tell me what to do and I will do it. My time and my life are yours. Do what you will with them! Can I say more than that?"

She flashed a wonderful look at me across the table—such a look that my heart beat, and my pulses flowed to a strange, new music. Her tone was soft, almost caressing.

"You mean this?"

"Upon my honor I do!" I answered.

"Then take Leslie Guest with you back to your home in the country," she said. "Keep him with you, keep every one else away from him. In less than a week he will tell you his secret!"

"I will do it," I answered.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE TOILS

"This," the nurse said, after a moment's somewhat awkward pause, "is the doctor—Dr. Kretznow!"

A tall, awkwardly built man, wearing heavy glasses, turned away from the bedside, and looked at me inquiringly.

"My name is Courage, doctor," I said; "I am an acquaintance of your patient's."

The doctor frowned on me as he picked up his hat.

"I have given no permission," he said, "for my patient to receive visitors."

"I trust that you don't consider him too ill," I answered. "I was hoping to hear that he was better!"

"He is doing well enough," the doctor declared, "if he is left alone.
But," he added, in a lower tone, "he is a sick man—a very sick man."

I glanced towards the bedside, and was shocked at the deathly pallor of his face. His eyes were half closed. He had not the air of hearing anything that we said. I walked towards the door with the doctor.

"What is the matter with him, doctor?" I asked.

He glanced towards me suspiciously.

"I was told," he said, "that my patient was without friends here, or any one for whom he could send."

"I have only known him a very short time," I answered, "but I am interested in him. If I may be allowed to say so, I am perfectly willing to defray any charges—"

He stopped me impatiently.

"I am physician to the hotel," he said, "Mr. Blumentein arranges all that with me!"

"Then perhaps as I have told you I am interested in him, I can trespass so far upon your courtesy as to inquire into the nature of his ailment," I said.

"I am afraid," he said, "that as you are not a medical man, I could scarcely make you understand."

"There was—an accident, I think," I began.

"A trifle! Nothing at all," the doctor declared hastily. "The trouble is with his heart. You will excuse me! I have many calls to make this evening."

"Perhaps you would kindly give me your address," I said. "Dr. Mumford, the heart specialist, is an acquaintance of mine. You would not object to meet him in consultation?"

He looked at me for a moment fixedly.

"It is not at all necessary!" he declared. "If Mr. Blumentein is not satisfied with my conduct of the case, I will withdraw from it at once! Otherwise, I shall not tolerate any interference!"

He left me without another word. I returned to the bedside. As I approached, Guest deliberately opened one eye and then closed it again. I addressed him in French:

"How are you?"

"About as I am meant to be," he answered.

The nurse came over to the bedside.

"It is not well for the gentleman to talk to-night," she said. "The doctor has said that he must be quite quiet."

"I shall only stay a few minutes," I answered; "and I will be careful not to disturb him."

She stood quite still for a moment, looking sullenly at us. Then she turned away and left the room. Guest raised himself a little in the bed.

"She has gone to fetch one of my—guardians," he remarked grimly.

"I am going to take you away from here—down to my home in the country,"
I said. "Do you think you can stand the journey?"

"Whether I can or not makes no difference," he answered. "I shall never be allowed to leave this room alive."

The Britisher in me was touched.

"Rubbish," I answered, "if you talk like that, I shall go to Scotland Yard at once. I tell you frankly, I don't like your nurse. I don't like your doctor, I don't like their shutting you up in this lonely part of the hotel, and I can't understand the attitude of Mr. Blumentein at all. He must know what he is risking in attempting this sort of thing, in London of all places in the world."

He interrupted me impatiently.

"Don't talk about Scotland Yard," he said. "These people are not fools.
They would have a perfect answer to any charge you might bring."

"You don't mean that you intend to lie here and be done to death?" I protested.

"Death for me is a certain thing," he answered. "I have been a doomed man for months. There was never a chance for me after I entered the portals of this hotel. I knew that; but I backed my luck. I thought that I might have had time to finish my work—to lay the match to the gunpowder."

"Listen," I said, "there is a lady—a young lady staying here, a Miss Van
Hoyt."

"Well?"

"It was her suggestion that I should take you away with me!"

His eyes seemed to dilate as he stared at me.

"Say that again," he murmured.

I repeated my words. He raised himself a little in the bed.

"What do you know of her?" he asked.

"Not much," I answered. "She came to Lord's cricket ground. My cousin was with her. We have spoken about you."

"You know—"

"I know that she is or appears to be one of your—what shall I say—enemies."

"She is willing," he repeated, "for me to go away with you! Ah!"

A sudden understanding came into his face.

"Yes!" he declared hoarsely, "I think that I understand. Go back to her! Say that I consent. She—she is different to those others. She plays—the great game! Hush! I go to sleep!"

He closed his eyes. The door opened, and the nurse entered, followed by a man who bowed gravely to me. He was still wearing a grey tweed suit and a red tie; his eyes beamed upon me from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

"Ah!" he exclaimed softly, "so you have come to see your friend. It is very kind of you! I trust that you find him better."

I pointed to the nurse.

"Send her away," I said. "I want to talk to you!"

"We will talk with pleasure," the newcomer answered, "but why here? We shall disturb our friend. Come into my room, and we will drink a whisky and soda together."

"Thank you, no!" I answered dryly. "I will drink with you at the bar, or in the smoking-room if you like—not in your room."

He bowed.

"An admirable precaution, sir," he declared. "We will go to the smoking-room."

I glanced towards the bed. Guest was sleeping, or feigning sleep. My companion's eyes followed mine sympathetically.

"Poor fellow!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid that he is very ill!"

I opened the door and pushed him gently outside.

"We will go downstairs and have that talk," I said.

We found a quiet corner in the smoking-room, where there was a little recess partitioned off from the rest of the room. My companion drew a small card-case from his pocket.

"Permit me, Mr. Courage," he said, "to introduce myself. My name is
Stanley, James Stanley, and I come from Liverpool. Waiter, two best
Scotch whiskies, and a large Schweppe's soda."

"Mr. Stanley," I said, "I am glad to know a name by which I can call you, but this is going to be a straight talk between you and me; and I may as well tell you that I do not believe that your name is Stanley, or that you come from Liverpool!"

"Ah! It is immaterial," he declared softly.

"I want to speak to you," I said, "about the man Guest upstairs. It seems to me that there is a conspiracy going on against him in this hotel. I want you to understand that I am not prepared to stand quietly aside and see him done to death!"

My companion laughed softly. He took off his spectacles, and wiped them with a silk handkerchief.

"A conspiracy," he repeated, "in the Hotel Universal. My dear sir, you are letting your indignation run away with you! Consider for a moment what you are saying. The hotel is full of visitors from all parts of England. It is one of the largest and best known in London. Its reputation—"

"Oh! spare me all this rot," I interrupted rudely. "Let me remind you of what happened two nights ago, when you broke into my room in search of Guest."

"Ah!" he remarked, "that, no doubt, must have seemed an odd proceeding to you. But, in the first place, you must remember we had no idea that the room was occupied. We were very anxious to have an explanation with our friend, purely a business matter, and he had irritated us both by his persistent avoidance of it. We have had our little talk now, and the matter is over. My partner has already left, and I am returning to Liverpool myself to-morrow or the next day. I fear that you were misled by my language and manner on that unfortunate evening. I am sorry; but I must admit that I was over-excited."

"Very good," I said. "Then, perhaps, as you are so fluent with your explanations, you will tell me why Mr. Guest has been removed to a part of the hotel which I am quite sure that no one knows anything about, is being attended by a doctor of most unprepossessing appearance, and a nurse who treats him as a jailer would!"

Mr. Stanley's face beamed with good-humored mirth.

"You young men," he declared, "are so imaginative. Mr. Guest has simply been removed to the part of the hotel which is reserved for sick people. No one likes to know that they have anybody next door to them who is seriously ill. As for the doctor, he is a highly qualified practitioner, and visits the hotel every day by arrangement with the manager; and the nurse was sent from the nearest nurses' home."

"You think, then," I continued, "that if I were to go to Scotland Yard, and tell them all that I know, that I should be making a fool of myself."

Mr. Stanley's eyes twinkled.

"Why not try it?" he suggested. "There is a detective always in attendance on the premises. Send for him now, and let us hear what he says."

"Very well, Mr. Stanley," I said, "your explanations all sound very reasonable. I am to take it, then, that if Mr. Guest desired to—say leave the hotel to-morrow, no one would make any objection!"

Mr. Stanley was almost distressed.

"Objection! My dear sir! Mr. Guest is his own master, is he not? He pays his own bill, and he leaves when he likes. At present, of course, he is not able to, but that is simply a matter of health."

"I am proposing," I said, "to take Mr. Guest away with me into the country to-morrow."

Mr. Stanley looked at me steadily. There was a subtle change in his face. I was watching him closely, and I saw the glint of his eyes behind his spectacles. I began to think I had been rash to lay my cards upon the table.

"I am afraid," he said gently, "that you are proposing what would be—certain death to Mr. Guest—in his present state of health."

"I am afraid," I replied, "that if I leave him here, it will also be—to certain death!"

Mr. Stanley called to the waiter.

"One small drink more, and I must go to bed," he said. "Up to a certain point, I agree with you. I believe that Leslie Guest is a dying man. Whether he stays here or goes makes little difference—very little difference indeed to me. Your health, Mr. Courage! A farewell drink this, I am afraid!"

I raised my tumbler to my lips, and nodded to him. Then I rose to my feet, but almost as I did so, I realized what had happened. The floor heaved up beneath my feet, my knees trembled, I felt the perspiration break out upon my forehead. Through the mist which was gathering in front of my eyes, I could see the half-curious, half-derisive glances of the other occupants of the room; and opposite, Mr. Stanley, his eyes blinking at me from behind his spectacles, his expression one of grieved concern. I leaned over toward him.

"You d——d scoundrel!" I exclaimed.

After that, my head fell forward upon my folded arms, and I remembered no more!

CHAPTER IX

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

I sat up in bed, heavy, unrefreshed, and with a splitting headache. The clock on the mantelpiece was striking three o'clock; from below I could hear the clatter of vehicles in the courtyard, and the distant roar of traffic from the streets beyond. Slowly I realized that it was three o'clock in the afternoon; the events of the night before re-formed themselves in my mind. I rang the bell for the valet and sprang out of bed.

"Why didn't you call me this morning?" I asked angrily.

"You gave no orders, sir," the man answered. "I have been in the room once or twice, but you were sleeping so soundly that I didn't like to disturb you."

I began tearing on my clothes.

"What sort of weather has it been?" I asked.

"Pouring rain since seven o'clock, sir!" the man answered. "No chance of play at Lord's, sir!"

"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed fervently. "Order me a cup of tea, will you, and—stop a minute—take this note round to Miss Van Hoyt—367."

He returned in a few minutes with the tea; but he brought my note back again.

"Miss Van Hoyt left the hotel this morning, sir," he announced.

I turned round quickly.

"She is coming back, of course!" I exclaimed.

"The chambermaid thought not, sir," the man declared. "She has given up her room, at any rate. They would know for certain down in the office."

I finished the rest of my toilet in a hurry, and went straight to the reception bureau. I fancied that the clerk to whom I addressed myself eyed me queerly.

"Can you tell me if Miss Van Hoyt has left the hotel?" I asked.

"She left this morning, sir," he replied.

"Is there any message for me—Mr. Courage?" I asked.

He disappeared for a moment, but I fancied that his search was only perfunctory.

"Nothing at all for you, sir," he announced.

I concealed my surprise as well as I could.

"Will you send my card up and ascertain if I can see Mr. Leslie Guest?" I asked. "He is staying somewhere in the south wing."

"Mr. Leslie Guest left just before one o'clock, sir," the clerk answered.

"Left the hotel!" I repeated. "Why! He was in bed yesterday, and scarcely able to move."

The clerk shrugged his shoulders. He had the air of being a little tired of me.

"He was probably better to-day," he answered. "At any rate, he was well enough to travel."

"Is Mr. James Stanley, of Liverpool, in?" I asked.

"Mr. Stanley paid his bill and went away at eight o'clock this morning," the man answered, going back to his ledger.

"I must see the manager at once," I declared firmly.

The clerk called a page-boy.

"Take this gentleman's name down to Mr. Blumentein," he ordered shortly.

I waited for several minutes. Then the boy returned, and beckoned me to follow him.

"Mr. Blumentein will see you in his office, sir," he announced. "Will you come this way?"

It was a very different Mr. Blumentein who looked up now, as I was shown into his private room. He regarded me with a frown, and his manner was indubitably hostile.

"You wish to speak to me, sir?" he asked curtly.

"I do!" I answered. "There is a good deal going on in your hotel which I do not understand; and I may as well tell you that I am determined to get to the bottom of it. I was drugged in the public smoking-room last night by a man who called himself Stanley, acting in collusion with one of the waiters."

Mr. Blumentein looked at me superciliously.

"Mr. Courage," he said, "the events of last night preclude my taking you seriously any more; but I should like you to understand that you have proved yourself an extremely troublesome guest here."

"What do you mean by the events of last night?" I asked.

"You were drunk in the smoking-room," Mr. Blumentein replied curtly, "and had to be assisted to your room. Don't trouble to deny it. There are a dozen witnesses, if necessary. I shall require you to leave the hotel within the next few hours."

"You know very well that I was nothing of the sort," I answered hotly.

"It is easily proved," Mr. Blumentein asserted. "Please understand that I am not prepared to discuss the matter with you."

"Very well," I answered. "Let it go at that. Whilst I was safely put out of the way, several of your guests seem to have left. Will you give me Miss Van Hoyt's address?"

"I will not," the manager answered.

"Mr. Leslie Guest's then?"

"I do not know it," he declared.

I turned towards the door.

"Very well, Mr. Blumentein," I said; "but if you imagine that this matter is going to rest where it is, you are very much mistaken. I am going straight to a private detective's, who is also a friend of mine!"

"Then for Heaven's sake go to him!" Mr. Blumentein declared irritably.
"We have nothing to conceal here! All that we desire is to be left alone
by guests whose conduct about the place is discreditable. Good afternoon,
Mr. Courage!"

I returned to my room and had my bag packed. Then I sat down to think. I reviewed the course of events carefully since the night before last. Try how I could, I found it absolutely impossible to arrive at any clear conclusion with regard to them. The whole thing was a phantasmagoria. The one person in whom I had believed, and at whose bidding I was willing to take a hand in this mysterious game, had disappeared without a word of explanation or farewell. There could be only one reasonable course of action for me to pursue, and that was to shrug my shoulders and go my way. I had my own life to live, and although its limitations might be a little obvious, it was yet a reasonable and sane sort of life. Of Adèle I refused resolutely to think. I knew very well that I should not be able to forget her. On the other hand, I was convinced now that she was simply making use of me. I would go back home and forget these two days. I would reckon them as belonging to some one else's life, not mine.

I paid my bill, left the hotel, and caught the five o'clock train from St. Pancras to Medchester. From there I had a ten-mile drive, and it was almost dusk when we turned off the main road into the private approach to Saxby Hall—my old home. Every yard of the land around, half meadow-land, half park, I knew almost by heart; every corner and chimney of the long irregular house was familiar to me. It all looked very peaceful as we drove up to the front; the blue smoke from the chimneys going straight up in a long, thin line; not a rustle of breeze or movement anywhere. Perkins, my butler, came out to the steps to meet me, and successfully concealed his surprise at my return two days before I was expected.

"Any news, Perkins?" I inquired, as he helped me off with my coat.

"Nothing in any way special, sir," Perkins replied. "The cricket team from Romney Court were over here yesterday, sir, for the day."

"Gave 'em a licking, I hope?" I remarked.

"We won by thirty runs, sir," Perkins informed me. "Johnson was bowling remarkably well, sir. He took seven wickets for fifteen!"

I nodded, and was passing on to my study. Perkins followed me.

"We got your first telegram early this morning, sir!" he remarked.

I stopped short.

"What telegram?" I asked.

"The one telling us to prepare for the gentleman, sir," Perkins explained. "We had to guess at the train; but we sent the brougham in for the twelve o'clock, and Johnson waited. We've given him the south room, sir, and I think that he's quite comfortable."

"What the devil are you talking about?" I asked.

It was Perkins' turn to stare, which he did for a moment blankly.

"The gentleman whose arrival you wired about, sir," he answered. "Mr.
Guest, I believe his name is."

"Mr. Guest is here now?" I asked.

"Certainly, sir! In the south room, sir! He asked to be told directly you arrived, sir!"

I turned abruptly towards the staircase. I said not another word to Perkins, but made my way to the room which he had spoken of. I knocked at the door, and it was Guest's voice which bade me enter. It was Guest himself, who in a grey travelling suit, which made him look smaller and frailer than ever, lay stretched upon the sofa over by the great south windows!

CHAPTER X

"WORTLEY FOOTE—THE SPY"

He sat up at once, but he did not attempt to rise. His eyes watched me anxiously. My surprise seemed to trouble him.

"I am afraid—" he began hesitatingly.

"You need be afraid of nothing," I interrupted, going over and taking his hand. "Only how on earth did you get here?"

He looked around before replying. The old habits had not deserted him.

"Your friend, Miss Van Hoyt, arranged it," he said. "The others had another plan; but they were no match for her."

"But how did you come?" I asked. "You were not well enough to travel alone."

"She left me at Medchester station," he answered. "Your carriage brought me over here, and your servants have been most kind. But—but before I go to bed to-night, there are things which I must say to you. We must not sleep under the same roof until we have arrived at an understanding."

I looked at him with compassion. He had shaved recently, and his face, besides being altogether colorless, seemed very wan and pinched. His clothes seemed too big for him, his eyes were unnaturally clear and luminous.

"We will talk later on," I said, "if it is really necessary. Shall you feel well enough to come down and have dinner with me, or would you like something served up here?"

"I should like to come down," he answered, "if you will lend me your man to help me dress."

"Come as you are," I said. "We shall be alone!"

He smiled a little curiously.

"I should like to change," he declared. "A few hours of civilization, after all I have been through, will be rather a welcome experience."

"Very well," I told him, "I will send my man at once. There is just another thing which I should like to ask you. Have you any objection to seeing my doctor?"

"None whatever," he answered. "I think perhaps," he added, "that it would be advisable, in case anything should happen while I am here."

I laughed cheerfully.

"Come," I declared, "nothing of that sort is going to happen now. You are perfectly safe here, and this country air is going to do wonders for you."

He made no answer in words. His expression, however, plainly showed me what he thought. I did not pursue the subject.

"I will send a man round at once," I said, turning away. "We dine at eight."

My guest at dinner-time revealed traces of breeding and distinction which I had not previously observed in him. He was obviously a man of birth, and one who had mixed in the very best society of other capitals, save London alone. He ate very little, but he drank two glasses of my "Regents" Chambertin, with the air of a critic. He declined cigars, but he carried my cigarette box off with him into the study; and he accepted without hesitation some '47 brandy with his coffee. All the time, however, he had the air of a man with something on his mind, and we had scarcely been alone for a minute, before he brushed aside the slighter conversation which I was somewhat inclined to foster, and plunged into the great subject.

"Mr. Courage," he said, "I want to speak to you seriously." I nodded.

"Why don't you wait for a few days, until you have pulled up a little?" I suggested. "There is no hurry. You are perfectly safe down here."

He looked at me as one might look at a child.

"There is very urgent need for hurry," he asserted, "and apart from that, death waits for no man, and my feet are very near indeed to the borderland. There must be an understanding between us."

"As you will," I answered, "although I won't admit that you are as ill as you think you are!"

He smiled faintly.

"That," he said, "is because you do not know. Now listen. You have to make, within the next few minutes, a great decision. Very likely, after you have chosen, you will curse me all your days. It was a freak of fate which brought us together. But I must say this. You are the sort of man whom I would have chosen, if any measure of choice had fallen to my lot. And yet," he looked around, "I am almost afraid to speak now that I have seen you in your home, now that I have realized something of what your life must be."

All the time, underneath the flow of his level words, there trembled the sub-note of a barely controlled emotion. The man's eyes were like fire. His cigarette had gone out. He lit another with restless, twitching fingers.

"Words, at any rate, can do me no harm," I said encouragingly. "Go on! I should like to hear what you have to say."

"Words," he exclaimed, "bring knowledge, and with knowledge comes all the majesty or the despair of life. One does not need to be a student of character to know that you are a contented man. You are well off. You have a beautiful home, you are a sportsman, your days are well-ordered, life itself slips easily by for you. You have none of the wanderer's discontent, none of the passionate heart longings of the man who has lifted even the corner of the veil to see what lies beyond. If I speak, all this may be changed to you. Why should I do it?"

His words stirred me. The eloquence of real conviction trembled in his tone. I felt some answering spark of excitement creep into my own blood.

"Let me hear what you have to say, at all events!" I exclaimed. "Don't take too much for granted. Mine has been a simple life, but there have been seasons when I would have changed it. I come of an adventurous race, though the times have curbed our spirits. It was my grandfather, Sir Hardross Courage, who was ambassador at Paris when Napoleon—"

"I know! I know!" he exclaimed. "Your grandfather! Good! And Nicholas
Courage—what of him?"

"My uncle!" I answered. "You have heard of him in Teheran."

A spot of color burned in his pallid cheeks.

"I hesitate no longer," he cried. "These were great men; but I will show you the way to deeds which shall leave their memory pale. Listen! Did you ever hear of Wortley Foote?"

"The spy," I answered, "of course!"

He started as though he were stung even to death. His cheeks were flushed, and then as suddenly livid. He seemed to have grown smaller in his chair, to be shrinking away as though I had threatened him with a blow.

"I forgot," he muttered. "I forgot. Never mind. I am Wortley Foote. At least it has been my name for a time."

It was my turn to be astonished. I looked at him for a moment petrified. Was this indeed the man who had brought all Europe to the verge of war, who was held responsible for the greatest international complication of the century? Years had passed, but I remembered well that week of fierce excitement when the clash of arms rang through Europe, when three great fleets were mobilized, and the very earth seemed to reverberate with the footsteps of the gathering millions, moving always towards one spot. Disaster was averted by what seemed then to be a miracle; but no one ever doubted but that one man, and one man alone, was responsible for what might have been the most awful catastrophe of civilized times. And it was that man who sat in my study and watched me now, with ghastly face and passionately inquiring eyes. When he spoke, his voice sounded thin and cracked.

"I had forgotten," he said, "that I was speaking to one of the million. To you, mine must seem a name to shudder at. Yet listen to me. My life is finished. I have lied before now in great causes. No man in my position could have avoided it. To-day, I speak the truth. You must believe me! Do you hear?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I hear!"

"Death is my bedfellow," he continued. "Death is by my side like my own shadow. In straits like mine, the uses of chicanery are past. I come of a family of English gentlemen, even as you, Hardross Courage. We are of the same order, and I speak to you man to man, with the dew of death upon my lips. You will listen?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I will listen!"

"You will believe?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I will believe!"

He drew a breath of relief. A wonderful change lightened his face.

"Diplomacy demanded a victim," he said, "and I never flinched. Two men knew the truth, and they are dead. My scheme was a bold one. If it had succeeded, it would have meant an alliance with Germany, an absolute incontrovertible alliance and an imperishable peace. France and Russia would have been powerless—the balance of strength, of accessible strength, must always have been with us. Every German statesman of note was with me. The falsehood, the vilely egotistic ambition of one man, chock-full to the lips with personal jealousy, a madman posing as a genius, wrecked all my plans. My life's work went for nothing. We escaped disaster by a miracle and my name is written in the pages of history as a scheming spy—I who narrowly escaped the greatest diplomatic triumph of all ages. That is the epitome of my career. You believe me?"

"I must," I answered.

"I was reported to have committed suicide," he continued. "Nothing was ever farther from my thoughts."

I followed an ancient maxim. I sought safety in the shadow of the enemy.
I went to Berlin."

"The man who foiled you—" I said slowly.

"You know who it was," he interrupted. "The man who believes that he hears voices from heaven, that by the side of his Divine wisdom his ministers are fools and children, crying for they know not what! I may not see it, but you most surely will see the pricking of the bubble of his reputation. His name may stand for little more than mine, when the book of fate is finally closed."

He was silent for a moment, and glanced towards the sideboard. I could see the perspiration standing out in little white beads upon his forehead; he had the air of a man utterly exhausted. I poured him out a glass of wine, and brought it over. He drank it slowly, and reached out his hand for a cigarette.

"Never mind these things," he said more quietly. "A man in my condition should avoid talking of his enemies. I lived for two years quietly in Berlin. I changed as much of my appearance as illness had left recognizable; and during all that time I lived the ordinary life of a German citizen of moderate means, without my identity being once suspected. I frequented the cafés, I made friends with people in official positions. At the end of that time, I commenced to shape my plans. You can imagine of what nature they were. You can imagine what it was that I desired. I wanted to catch my enemy tripping."

I looked across at him a little incredulously. This was a strange story which he was telling me, and I knew very well, from the growing excitement of his manner, that its culmination was to come.

"But how could you in Berlin, alone, hope to accomplish this?" I asked.

"I knew the ropes," he answered simply, "and I lived for nothing else. I saw him drive amongst his people every day, and I bowed with the rest, I who could have spat in his face, I who carried with me the secret of his miserable perfidy, who knew alone why his ministers regarded him as a spoilt and fretful child. But I waited. Gradually I wormed my way a little into the fringe of the German Secret Service. I took them scraps of information; but such scraps that they were always hungry for more. I posed as a Dutch South African. They even chaffed me about my hatred for England. All the time I progressed, until, by chance, I stumbled across one of the threads which led—to the great Secret!"

There was a discreet knocking at the door. We both turned impatiently around. A servant was just ushering in our village doctor.

"Dr. Rust, sir," he announced.

CHAPTER XI

A LEGACY OF DANGER

I was scarcely aware myself to what an extent my attention had been riveted upon this strange story of my guest's, until the interruption came. The entry of the cheerful little village doctor seemed to dissolve an atmosphere thick with sensation. I drew a long breath as I rose to my feet. There was a certain measure of relief in the escape from such high tension.

"Glad to see you, doctor," I said mechanically. "My friend here, Mr. Guest, Dr. Rust," I added, completing the introduction, "is a little run down. I thought that I would like you to have a look at him."

The doctor sniffed the air disparagingly as he shook hands.

"Those beastly cigarettes," he remarked. "If you young men would only take to pipes!"

"Our insides aren't strong enough for your sort of tobacco, doctor," I answered. "I will leave you with Mr. Guest for a few minutes. You may like to overhaul him a little."

I made my way into the gardens, and stood for a few minutes looking out across the park. It was a still, hot evening; the scene was perhaps as peaceful a one as a man could conceive. The tall elms stood out like painted trees upon a painted sky, the only movement in the quiet pastoral landscape was where a little string of farm laborers were trudging homeward across the park, with their baskets over their shoulders. Beyond, the land sloped into a pleasant tree-encompassed hollow, and I could see the red-tiled roofs of the cottages, and the worn, grey spire of the village church. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Everything around me seemed to stand for peace. Many a night before I had stood here, smoking my pipe and drinking it all in—absolutely content with myself, my surroundings, and my life. And to-night I felt, with a certain measure of sadness, that it could never be the same again. A few yards behind me, in the room which I had just quitted, a man was looking death in the face; a man, the passionate, half-told fragments of whose life had kindled in me a whole world of new desires. These two, the man and the girl, enemies perhaps, speaking from the opposite poles of life, had made sad havoc with my well-ordered days. The excitement of his appeal was perhaps more directly potent; yet there was something far more subtle, far stranger, in my thoughts of her. She and her maid and her queer, black-eyed poodle were creatures of flesh and blood without a doubt; yet they had come into my life so strangely, and passed into so wonderful a place there, that I thought of them with something of the awe which belongs to things having in themselves some element of the mystic, if not of the supernatural. The blue of her eyes was not more wonderful than the flawless grace of her person and her environment. I could compare her only with visions one has read and dreamed about in the unreal worlds of poetry and romance. Her actual existence as a woman of the moment, a possible adventuress, certainly a very material and actual person, was hard indeed to realize.

I moved a little farther away into the gardens. The still air was full of the perfume of sweet-smelling flowers, of honeysuckle and roses, climbing about the maze of arches which sheltered the lower walks. To-night their sweetness seemed to mean new things to me. The twilight was falling rapidly; the shadows were blotting out the landscape. Out beyond there, beyond the boundaries of my walled garden, I seemed to be looking into a new and untravelled world. I knew very well that the old days were over. Already the change had come.

I turned my head at the sound of a footstep upon the gravel path. The doctor was standing beside me.

"Well," I asked, "what do you think of him?"

He answered me a little evasively. The cheerful optimism which had made him a very popular practitioner seemed for the moment to have deserted him.

"Your friend is in rather a curious state of health," he said slowly. "To tell you the truth, I scarcely know how to account for certain of his symptoms."

I smiled.

"He seems in a very weak state," I remarked supinely.

"Is he a very old friend?" the doctor asked.

"Why do you ask that?" I inquired curiously.

"Simply because I thought that you might know something of his disposition," the doctor answered. "Whether, for instance, he is the sort of man who would be likely to indulge in drugs."

I shook my head.

"I cannot tell," I said.

"There is something a little peculiar about his indifference," the doctor continued. "He answers my questions and submits to my examination, and all the time he has the air of a man who would say, 'I could tell you more about myself, if I would, than you could ever discover.' He has had a magnificent constitution in his time."

"Is he likely to die?" I asked.

"Not from any symptoms that I can discover," the doctor answered. "Yet, as I told you before, there are certain things about his condition which I do not understand. I should like to see him again in the morning! I am giving him a tonic, more as a matter of form. I scarcely think his system will respond to it!"

"It has not occurred to you, I suppose," I remarked, "that he might be suffering from poisoning?"

The doctor shook his head.

"There are no traces of anything of the sort," he declared. "My own impression is that he has been taking some sort of drug."

"Will you come in and have something?" I asked, as we neared the house.

The doctor shook his head.

"Not to-night," he answered; "I have another call to pay."

So I went back into the house alone, and found my guest waiting for me in some impatience. He was lying upon a sofa, piled up with cushions, and the extreme pallor of his face alarmed me.

"Give me some brandy and soda," he demanded. "Your village Aesculapius has been prodding me about, till I scarcely know where I am."

I hastened to the sideboard and attended to his wants.

"Well, did he invent a new disease for me?" he asked.

"No!" I answered. "On the contrary, he admitted that he was puzzled."

"Honest man! What did he suggest?"

"He asked whether you were in the habit of taking drugs," I answered.

"Never touched such a thing in my life," he declared.

"Neither did I," I remarked grimly, "until last night." And then I told him what had happened to me. He listened eagerly to my story.

"So there is a division in the camp," he murmured softly. "I imagined as much. As usual, it is the woman who plays the whole game."

"I wonder," I said, "whether you would mind telling me what you know of
Miss Van Hoyt?"

He moved on the couch a little uneasily. The request, for some reason or other, seemed to disquiet him. Nevertheless, he answered me.

"Miss Van Hoyt," he said, "is an American young lady of excellent family and great fortune. She has lived for the last few years in Berlin and other European capitals. She has intimate friends, I believe, attached to the court at Berlin. She is a young person of an adventurous turn of mind, and she has, I believe, no particular love for England and English institutions."

"You number her," I remarked, "amongst your enemies?"

"And amongst yours," he answered dryly.

"Yet it was through her that I was able to bring you away," I remarked.

He turned his head towards me.

"You are not supposing, for one moment," he said, "that any measure of kindness was included in her motive."

"I suppose not," I answered doubtfully.

"Listen!" he said, "I fell into a trap at the Universal. I have been in danger too often not to recognize a hopeless position when I see one. I knew that escape for me was impossible. It was not as though my task were finished. I had months of work before me, and I was tracked down, so that I could not have moved except on sufferance. Our genial friend, whom you will remember in the grey tweed suit and glasses, and who has the knack of sticking to any one in whom he is interested like a leech, thought that my death, with as much dispatch as was wise, would be the simplest and pleasantest way out of the difficulty. The young lady, however, plays for the great stakes, She wanted to succeed where others have failed."

He paused for a moment, and drank from his tumbler. There were dark lines under his eyes, and I felt that I ought to stop him talking.

"Tell me the rest in the morning," I suggested. "I am sure that you ought to go to bed."

"You forget," he remarked grimly, "that for me there may be no morning. I am drawing very near the end, or even she would not have dared to let me come. Besides, you must understand, for it must be through you that she hopes—to succeed. She expects that I shall tell you, that you will be the legatee of this knowledge, which she would give so much to gain. And I suppose—don't be offended—that she counts you amongst the fools whom a woman's lips can tempt to any dishonor. You needn't glare at me like that. Miss Van Hoyt is very young and very beautiful. She has not yet learnt all the lessons of life—amongst which are her limitations. You see I do not ask you for any pledge—for any promise. But I do ask you, as an Englishman—and a man of honor—to take my burden from my back, and carry it on—to the end!"

I came over to his side.

"What does it mean?" I asked quietly.

"Death, very likely," he answered. "Danger always. No more sport, no more living in the easy places. But in the end glory—and afterwards peace. A man can die but once, Courage!"

"I am not afraid," I answered slowly. "But am I the man, do you think, for a task like this?"

"None better," he answered. "Listen, where do you sleep?"

"In the next room to yours," I answered.

"Good! Will you leave your door open, so that if I call in the night you may hear?"

"Certainly! You can have a servant sleep on the couch in your room, if you like."

He shook his head.

"I would rather not," he answered. "Just now I cannot talk any more. If my time comes in the night, I shall wake you. If not—to-morrow!"

CHAPTER XII

OLD FRIENDS

A flavor of unreality hung about the events of the last few days. I felt myself slowly waking as though from a nightmare. The dazzling sunshine was everywhere around us; the whir of reaping machines, the slighter humming of bees, and the song of birds, were in our ears; the perfume of all manner of flowers, and of the new-mown hay, made the air wonderfully sweet. My guest, in a cool grey flannel suit and a Panama hat, was by my side, looking like a man who has taken a new lease of life. He had patted my shire horses, and admired those of my hunters which were on view. He had walked three times round my walled garden, and amazed my head-gardener by his intimate acquaintance with the science of pruning. We had talked country talk and nothing else. From the moment when, somewhat to my surprise, he had appeared upon the terrace just as I was finishing my after-breakfast pipe, no word of any more serious subject had passed our lips. We had talked and passed the time very much as any other host and guest the first morning in a quiet country house. We were standing now upon a little knoll in the park, and I was pointing out my deer. He looked beyond to where the turrets and chimneys of a large, grey, stone house were half visible through the trees.

"Who is your neighbor?" he asked.

"Lord Dennisford," I answered. "A very decent fellow, too, although I don't see much of him. He spends most of his time abroad."

"Lord Dennisford!"

I turned to look at my companion. He had repeated the name very softly, yet with a peculiar intonation, which made me at once aware that the name was of interest to him.

"Yes! Do you know him?" I asked inanely.

"Is his wife here?" he asked.

"Lady Dennisford is seldom away," I answered. "She entertains a good deal down here. A very popular woman in the county."

He seemed to be measuring the distance across the park with his eyes.

"Let us go across and see her," he said.

I looked at him doubtfully.

"Can you walk as far?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Yes! I have my stick, and, if necessary, you can help me!"

So we set out across the park. I asked him no questions. He told me nothing. But when we had crossed the road, and were on our way up the avenue to Dennisford House, he clutched at my arm.

"I want to see her—alone," he muttered.

"I will see what I can do," I answered. "Lady Dennisford and I are old friends."

We reached the great sweep in front of the house. I pointed to the terrace, on which were several wicker chairs.

"The windows from the drawing-room, where I shall probably see Lady Dennisford, open out there," I remarked. "If you could give me any message which would interest her, perhaps—"

"Tell her," he muttered, "that you have a guest who walked with her once under the orange trees at Seville, and who—in a few days—will walk no more anywhere! She will come!"

He made his way along the terrace, leaning heavily upon his stick, and sank with a little sigh of relief into one of the cushion-laden wicker chairs. I watched him lean back with half-closed eyes; and I realized then what an effort this walk must have been to him. Before me the great front doors stood open, and with the familiarity of close neighborship, I passed into the cool shaded hall, with its palms and flowers, its billiard-table invitingly uncovered, its tiny fountain playing in its marble basin. There was no one in sight; but, stretched upon a bright crimson cushion, set back in the heart of a great easy-chair, was a small Japanese spaniel.

Our recognition was mutual. The dog rose slowly to his haunches, and sat there looking at me. His apple-green bow had wandered to the side of his neck, and one ear was turned back. Yet notwithstanding the fact that his appearance was so far grotesque, I felt no inclinations whatever towards mirth. His coal-black eyes were fixed upon me steadfastly, his tiny wrinkled face seemed like the shrivelled and age-worn caricature of some Eastern magician. He showed no signs of pleasure or of welcome at my coming, nor did he share any of the bewilderment with which I gazed at him. But for the absurdity of the thing, I should have said that he had been sitting there waiting for me.

While I stood there dumfounded, not so much in wonder at this meeting with the dog, but amazed beyond measure at the things which his presence there seemed to indicate, he descended carefully from his chair, and crossing the smooth oak-laid floor, he made his way to the foot of the great staircase, and after a premonitory yawn, he indulged in one sharp penetrating bark. Almost immediately, the French maid came gliding down the stairs, still gowned in the sombrest black, still as pale as a woman could be. The dog looked at her and looked at me. Then, apparently conceiving that his duty was finished, he returned to his chair and curled himself up. I spoke to the maid.

"Is your mistress staying here?" I asked.

"But yes, monsieur!" she answered. "We arrived yesterday."

"Is she in now?" I asked. "Could I see her?"

"I will inquire," the maid answered. "Mademoiselle is in her room."

She turned and left me, and almost immediately the butler entered the hall. He was one of the local cricket eleven, and had been in service in the neighborhood all his life, so he knew me well, and greeted me at once with respectful interest.

"Is her Ladyship in, Murray?" I asked.

"I believe so, sir," he answered. "Will you come into the drawing-room?"

I followed him into Lady Dennisford's presence. She was writing letters in a small sanctum leading out of the drawing-room, and she looked round and nodded a cheery greeting to me.

"In one moment, Hardross," she exclaimed. "I've just finished."

I had known Lady Dennisford all my life; but I found myself studying her now with altogether a new interest. She was a slim, elegant woman, pale and perhaps a little insipid looking at ordinary times, but a famous and reckless rider to hounds, and an enthusiastic sportswoman. She was one of the few women concerning whom I never heard a single breath of scandal, notwithstanding her husband's long and frequent absences. She gave me little time, however, to revise my impressions of her; for, with a little spluttering of her pen, she finished her letter and came towards me.

"I hope you've come to lunch," she remarked; "I have the most delightful young person staying with me. You'll be charmed with her."

"A young lady?" I remarked.

"Yes! An American girl who talks English—and doesn't enthuse. Seems to know something about horses too!"

"Where did you discover this paragon?" I asked.

"My cousin sent her down. She knows everybody," Lady Dennisford answered. "I met her at lunch last week, and she spoke of hunting with the Pytchley next season. She's going to have a look at the country. Sorry the rain spoilt your match."

I hesitated a moment.

"Lady Dennisford," I said, "I had a particular reason for coming to see you this morning."

She raised her eyebrows.

"My dear Jim!"

"I, too, have a visitor," I told her; "rather a more mysterious person than yours seems to be. He is very ill indeed; and he is almost a stranger to me. But he was once, I believe, a friend of yours."

"A friend of mine!" she repeated. "How interesting! Do tell me his name!"

"I cannot do that," I answered, "because I do not know it—not his real name. But in the park this morning, I happened to tell him who lived here, and although he is very weak, he insisted upon paying you an immediate visit."

She looked around the room.

"But where is he?" she asked.

"He is outside on the terrace," I answered.

"My dear Jim!" she exclaimed, "really, all this mystery isn't like you. Aren't you overdoing it a little? Do call your friend in, and let me see who he is!"

"Lady Dennisford," I said, "of course, my guest may have misled me; but he seemed to think that an abrupt meeting might be undesirable. He wished me to tell you that he used once to walk with you under the orange trees of Seville, and to ask you to go out to him alone!"

Lady Dennisford sat quite still for several seconds. Her eyes were fixed upon me; but I am quite certain that I had passed from within the orbit of her vision. The things which she saw were of another world—somehow it seemed sacrilege on my part to dream of peering even into the dimmest corner of it. So I looked away, and I could never tell altogether what effect my words had had upon her. For when I looked up, she was gone! …

CHAPTER XIII

THE SHADOW DEEPENS

"Mr. Courage!"

I looked up quickly. She was within a few feet of me, although I had not heard even the rustling of her gown. The dog, with his apple-green bow now put to rights, was sitting upon her shoulder. By the side of his uncanny features, it seemed to me that I had never sufficiently appreciated the fresh girlishness, the almost ingenuous beauty of her own face. She wore a plain, white, linen gown, and a magnificent blossom of scarlet geraniums in her bosom.

"Miss Van Hoyt!" I exclaimed.

She nodded, but glanced warningly at the window.

"They must not hear," she said softly. "Remember your cousin introduced you to me at Lord's—our only meeting."

My heart sank. I hated all this incomprehensible secrecy; a moment before she had seemed so different.

"Come out into the other room," she said. "They cannot hear us from there." We passed into the drawing-room. An uncomfortable thought struck me.

"You were here all the time!" I exclaimed.

"Certainly! I wanted to hear you and Lady Dennisford converse!"

"Eavesdropping, in fact," I remarked savagely.

"Precisely!" she agreed.

We were silent for a moment. Her eyes were full of mild amusement.

"I thought," she said demurely, "that you would be glad to see me."

"Glad! of course I am glad," I answered. "I'm such a poor fool that I can't help it. Why did you leave me in London without a word?"

"Why on earth not!" she exclaimed, smiling. "Besides, I knew that I should see you here very soon. I had to act quickly too! They did not want"—she glanced towards the terrace—"him to leave London."

"It was you, then," I remarked, "who had him sent down to my place?"

She nodded.

"It was not easy," she said. "If they had known that you were going to have a doctor to visit him, it would have been impossible."

"He has been poisoned, I suppose?" I said calmly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"He will die, and die very soon," she answered. "That is certain. But I think you will find no doctor here who will have anything to say about poison."

She moved a little nearer to me. The overhanging bunch of scarlet geraniums from her waistband brushed against my coat; the beady black eyes of the dog upon her shoulder were fixed steadily upon me.

"Has he said anything?" she murmured.

"Not yet," I answered.

"He will do so," she declared confidently, "and before long. That is why I am here. You must come to me the moment—the very moment you know! You understand that?"

"Yes!" I answered, a little discontentedly, "I understand!"

Her expression suddenly changed. A frown darkened her face.

"Perhaps," she said, "you have already repented."

"Repented of what?" I asked quickly.

"That you have moved a little out of the rut, that you have taken a hand, even if it is a dummy's hand, in the game of life! Do you wish to draw back?"

"No!" I answered.

"Do you wish to be relieved of Leslie Guest? I could arrange it; it would be a matter of a few hours only."

"No!" I answered again. "I wish for one thing only!"

"And that?"

"You know!" I declared.

She turned a little way from me.

"I am not a magician," she declared.

"And yet you know," I answered. "A woman always does! I have no idea what these ties are, which seem to bind you to a life of mystery and double-dealing, but I should like to cut them loose. You have talked to me of ambition, of a larger life, where excitement and tragedy walk hand in hand! I should like to sweep all that away. I should like to convert you to my point of view."

She looked at me curiously. Never in my experience of her sex had I seen any one who varied so quickly in appearance, who seemed to pass with such effortless facility from the girl with the Madonna-like face and dreamy eyes, to the thoughtful and scheming woman of the world. Her rapid changes were a torture to me! I felt the elusiveness of her attitude.

"You would like me," she said scornfully, "to lead your village life, to watch the seasons pass from behind your windows. I was not born for that sort of thing! The thirst for life was in my veins from the nursery. You and I are as far apart as the North Star and the unknown land over which it watches! Sin itself would be less terrible to me than the indolence of such a life!"

"You have never tried it," I remarked.

"Nor shall I ever," she answered, "unless—"

"Unless what?"

She raised her eyebrows and flashed a sudden strange look upon me. There was mockery in it, subtlety, and a certain uneasiness which pleased me most. After all, she was like a beautiful wild young creature. The ways of her life were not yet wholly decreed.

"Unless the great magician comes and waves his wand," she declared. "The magic may fall upon my eyes, you know, and I may see new things."

I touched her hand for a moment. The dog's face was wrinkled like a monkey's, he growled, and his narrow red tongue shot out threateningly.

"It is that," I murmured, "which I shall pray for!"

She raised her head suddenly. We heard Lady Dennisford moving upon the terrace. She leaned over towards me.

"Leslie Guest," she whispered, "will not live for more than forty-eight hours. Make him tell you—to-night! To-morrow may be too late. Do you hear?—to-night!"

I was absolutely tongue-tied. Wherever else she failed, she was certainly a superb actress. A moment ago, she had been keeping my earnestness at bay with bantering words; then, at the sound of Lady Dennisford's approach, had come those few dramatic words; and now, at her entrance, I felt at once that I was the casual guest, being entertained as a matter of duty during my hostess' absence.

"I told you, didn't I, that I had met Mr. Courage in town?" she remarked, looking up. "After all, it is such a small world, isn't it?"

Lady Dennisford was scarcely in a condition to be observant. I believe that if we had been sitting hand in hand, she would scarcely have noticed the fact. She was very pale, and her eyes were exceedingly bright. She passed half-way through the room without even seeming to realize our presence. Then she stopped suddenly and addressed me.

"I am ordering a pony-cart," she said, "to take Mr. Guest back. He seems over-fatigued."

"Very thoughtful of you, Lady Dennisford," I answered. "We certainly did not mean to walk so far when we came out into the park."

A servant entered the room. She gave him some orders, and then, with a word of excuse to Adèle, she came over to my side.

"Hardross," she said softly, "what is the matter with him?"

"General breakdown," I answered; "I do not know of anything else."

"What does the doctor say?"

"The London doctor," I admitted, "gave little hope. Rust cannot discover that anything much is the matter with him."

"You yourself—what do you think?"

I hesitated. Her fingers gripped my arm.

"I think that he is very ill," I answered.

"Dying?"

"I should not be surprised."

She looked back towards the terrace. Her eyes were full of tears.

"Do what you can for him," she said softly. "He was once a great friend of mine. He was different then! Will you go out to him now? I promised to send you."

Guest was sitting upon the terrace, exactly as I had left him. His eyes were fixed upon vacancy, his lips were slightly curled in a meditative smile. There was a distinct change in his appearance. His expression was more peaceful, the slight restlessness had disappeared from his manner. But he had never looked to me more like a dying man.

"Lady Dennisford sent me out," I remarked, "She has ordered a pony-cart to take us home."

He nodded.

"I am quite ready," he said.

He tried to rise, but the effort seemed too much for him. I hastened to his aid, or I think that he would have fallen. He leaned on my arm heavily as we passed on our way to the avenue, where a carriage was already awaiting us.

"I was once," he remarked, in an ordinary conversational tone, "engaged to be married to Lady Dennisford."

"There was no—disagreement between you?" I asked.

"None that has not been healed," he answered softly.

"You would consider her to-day as a friend—not a likely enemy?" I asked.

He looked at me curiously.

"She is my friend," he answered softly. "Of that there is no doubt at all. Why do you ask?"

"Because," I answered, "for your friend, she has a strange guest."

"Whom do you mean?" he asked.

"Mademoiselle, and her maid—and poodle," I answered. "They are all here!"

I felt him shiver, for he was leaning heavily upon me. Nevertheless, he answered me with confidence.

"It is the gathering of the jackals," he muttered—"the jackals who are going to be disappointed. But you may be sure of one thing, my friend. The young lady is here as an ordinary guest! That was a matter very easy to arrange. There is a great social backing behind her. She can come and go where she pleases. But Lady Dennisford's knowledge of her is wholly innocent."

We drove back almost in silence. Rust was waiting for us when we arrived, and he eyed his patient curiously, and hurried him off to the house. They were alone together for some time, and when he came out his face was very grave. He came out into the garden in search of me!

"Courage," he said, "I wish to heavens I had never seen your guest!"

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Have you been quarrelling?"

"Quarrelling, no! One doesn't quarrel with a dying man," he answered.

"A dying man!" I repeated.

He nodded.

"He was on the verge of a collapse just now," he said. "I honestly fear that he will not live many more hours. Yet, though I could fill in his death certificate plausibly enough, if you were to ask me honestly to-day what was the matter with him, I could not tell you. Do you mind if I wire for a friend of mine to come down and see him?"

"By all means," I answered; "you mean a specialist, I suppose?"

"Yes!"

"On the heart?" I asked.

"No! a toxicologist!" Rust remarked dryly.

I glanced into his face. He was in deadly earnest.

"You believe—"

"What the devil is one to believe?" the doctor exclaimed irritably. "The man is sound, but he is dying. If I told you that I understood his symptoms, I should be a liar. I can think only of one thing. You yourself gave me the idea."

"Wire by all means," I said.

"I shall go to the village," Rust said, "and return immediately. Don't let him be left alone. He has a draught to take in case of necessity."

I turned back to the house with a sigh. I am afraid that I had as little faith in medicine as Guest himself.

CHAPTER XIV

GATHERING JACKALS

Guest for the remainder of the morning seemed to have fallen into a sort of stupor. He declined to sit in the garden or come down to lunch. When I went up to his room, he was lying upon a couch, half undressed, and with a dressing-gown wrapped around him. He opened his eyes when I came in, but waved me away.

"I am thinking," he said. "Don't interrupt me; I want to be alone for an hour or so."

"But you must have something to eat," I insisted. "You will lose your strength if you don't."

"Quite right," he admitted. "Send me up some soup, and let me have pencil and paper."

He was supplied with both. When I went up an hour later, he was smoking a cigarette and writing.

"I do not wish," he said, "to be worried with any more doctors. It is only a farce, and I have little time to spare."

"Nonsense!" I answered. "Rust declares that there is very little the matter with you. He has sent for a friend to come and have a look at you."

A little gesture of impatience escaped him.

"My dear Courage," he said, "I am obliged to you for all this care; but I am quite sure that, in your inner consciousness, you realize as I do that it is sheer waste of time."

He drew his dressing-gown a little closer around him. The hollows under his eyes seemed to have grown deeper since the morning.

"I am fairly run to earth," he continued. "Even these few hours of life I owe to my enemies. They hope to profit by them, of course. If you are the man I think you are, they will be mistaken. But don't waste my time with doctors."

He began to write again. I made some perfunctory remark which he entirely ignored. Just then I was called away. He watched my departure with obvious relief.

I was told that a stranger was waiting to see me in the library. My first thought was of the doctor. When I arrived there, I found a young man whose face was familiar, but whom I could not at once place. Then, like a flash, I remembered. It was the younger of the two men who had forced their way into my room at the Hotel Universal.

Now I was in no very good humor for dealing with these gentry. I had a distinct inclination to take him by the collar of the coat and throw him out. I fancy that he divined from my face how I was feeling, for he began hastily to explain his presence.

"I am very sorry to be an intruder, Mr. Courage," he said in his slow, precise English. "I had no wish to come at all. We were willing to leave you undisturbed. But we do not understand why you have sent for a doctor from London—and especially Professor Kauppmann!"

I looked at him deliberately. He was wearing English clothes—a dark tweed suit, ill-cut, and apparently ready-made; but the foreigner was written large all over him, from the tie of his bow to his narrow patent boots. His eyes were fixed anxiously upon me—large black eyes with long, feminine eyelashes. I think that if he had not been under the shelter of my own roof, I must have laid violent hands upon him.

"Why the devil should you understand?" I exclaimed. "Mr. Guest is my visitor, and if I choose to send for a doctor to see him, it is my business and nobody else's. If you have come here with any idea of bullying me, I am afraid you have wasted your time."

"You have evidently," he answered, "not troubled yourself to understand the situation! Mr. Guest is our prisoner!"

"Your what?" I exclaimed.

"Our prisoner," the young man answered. "Let me ask you this! Has Mr. Guest himself encouraged you in your attempt to interfere between him and his inevitable fate? No! I am sure that he has not! He accepts what he knows must happen! A few days more or less of life—what do they matter?"

"You make me feel inclined," I said grimly, "to test your theory."

The young man stepped back. My fingers were itching to take him by the throat, and I think that he read the desire in my face.

"Will you allow me to see Mr. Guest?" he asked.

"No! I'm d——d if I will," I answered. "I shall give you," I added, with my hand upon the bell, "exactly two minutes to leave this house."