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[Illustration: Cover art]




  Wilhelmina in London

  By

  Barry Pain

  Author of “Eliza,” “Eliza Getting On,”
  “Exit Eliza,” etc.


  NEW EDITION


  London
  John Long, Limited
  Norris Street, Haymarket
  1912




Contents


I. STRANDED

II. MR. NATHAN GOULD

III. THE MAN OF MEANS

IV. THE MAN BEHIND THE DOOR

V. THE SPIRITS OF HANFORD GARDENS

VI. UNREWARDED

VII. A QUEER COMMISSION

VIII. THE PEGASUS CAR

IX. A LOSS AND A GAIN




Wilhelmina in London




I

STRANDED

It is quite possible to love a person whom one does not respect, of
whom one even disapproves.  I loved my father, but I certainly did
not respect him.  He did not even respect himself.

When he married my mother, much against the wishes of his family, my
grandfather bought him an annuity of two hundred a year, and desired
to have nothing more to do with him.  My mother died when I was quite
a little girl, but I have a vivid recollection that she was just
about as helpless as my father.  In times of financial crisis--and,
thanks to my father, these were very frequent--the two would sit
staring at one another over the fire, and say that this was the
beginning of the end, or exhort each other to hope and courage, but
never, by any chance, take any practical way of dealing with the
situation.  On these gloomy occasions my father generally made a
will.  I do not think he, at any time, had anything to leave us worth
mentioning, but the sonorous phrases and the feeling that he was
doing something business-like seemed to give him a melancholy
satisfaction.  I have the last will that he made before me now.  It
begins: “I, Bernard Castel, being of sound mind and understanding,
and at peace with God and man, do hereby give and bequeath all my
real and personal estate, of whatsoever kind, to my only beloved
daughter, Wilhelmina.”  There followed directions as to the ways of
disposing of this estate, supposing it should exceed twenty-five
thousand pounds at the time of his death, and further directions if
it should exceed fifty thousand.  At that time we were as usual
skating on the very edge of bankruptcy.  I remember my father
returned in triumph from dealing with the local tradesman who was his
principal creditor.  “I have done it, Wilhelmina,” he said.  “And I
doubt if any other man in the world could have done it.  Another coat
of paint and there would have been a collision.”

I suppose he really loved me.  He often told me, especially when a
financial crisis was at its worst, that I was all he had in the
world.  But he never insured his life, and never made any provision
for me after his death.  After all, I believe that a father and a
girl of sixteen, even if they happen to be gentle-folks, can live in
the country on two hundred a year, and even put by a few pounds for
insurance.  The trouble was that my father could not let his income
alone.  Every quarter-day brought some new scheme, generally of a
wildly speculative and gambling character.  And before next
quarter-day we were terribly hard up.  At first my father confided
these schemes to me, but I am quite practical, and I hated them, and
told him so.  Then he kept his schemes to himself, merely observing,
in the deepest despondency when the bottom had dropped out of them,
“Wilhelmina, I fear that I have made a fool of myself again.”  He
sometimes earned a little money by writing, and I think might have
earned more.  He wrote stories of the most extreme sentimentality and
of the most aggressively moral character; and one of the Sunday
magazines used to publish them.  He and I have screamed over them
many a time.  Shortly after one quarter-day he went down to a land
auction in Essex and bought a small plot for ten pounds.  When I
remonstrated, he said feebly that an excellent free luncheon had been
provided for all who attended the sale, and that, after all, much
money had been made by poultry farming.  I asked him if either he or
I knew one single fact about poultry, except that they never laid as
many eggs as one expected.  He admitted it, and in a rare fit of
remorse sat down at once and wrote a story about a girl with
consumption which brought him in nearly enough to cover the
difference between the price he had paid for the land and the price
he sold it for a few days later.

He was popular, as most extravagant men with a sense of humour are,
but his sense of humour had a blind point.  He could never see that
any of his wild-cat business was utterly ridiculous, or understand
why sometimes in the middle of our deepest distress I could not help
laughing at him.  Yet he did not take his literary work seriously at
all, and it used to be my chief amusement to get him to read out his
own stories, with his own parenthetical comments.  His popularity
certainly served him at some of the times of crisis, and made his
creditors lenient with him.  During his last illness several people
to whom he owed money, and had owed money for a long time, sent him
presents.  I thought it was rather touching.  We were living then at
a village called Castel-on-Weld, and we lived there simply and solely
because my father happened to come upon the name in an old Bradshaw,
and thought that it would be nice and hereditary to be Bernard
Castel, Esq., of Castel-on-Weld.  I am not aware that any of his
ancestors had ever lived within a hundred miles of the place.

On the day after the funeral I got the only letter I ever received
from my grandfather.  It did not pretend to any grief over the dead,
and it informed me, in a courteously acidulated way, that he did not
wish to see me and that I had nothing to expect from him.  But it
enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, to cover present expenses
and until I was able to get work.

Now, I think a really fine and high-spirited girl out of a penny book
would have torn that cheque in half and sent it back to him with a
few dignified words.  But I did not see why my butcher and baker and
candlestick maker should be called upon to finance my exhibition of a
proud and imperious nature.  That was what it would have come to, for
we owed money to the butcher and the baker, and I do not doubt we
should have owed it to the candlestick maker as well, but for the
fact that there was no candlestick maker in the village.  So I
wrote:--


“DEAR GRANDPAPA,--Thanks very much for the two hundred pounds, which
will be most useful, but you don’t seem to know how to write a letter
to a girl who has just lost her father.  I shan’t bother you.--Your
affectionate granddaughter,

“WILHELMINA.”


Then the parson and the doctor came round, and they were two good
men.  The doctor said that medical etiquette did not permit him to
make any charge to an orphan girl, and that if he took my money he
would be hounded out of the profession, and quite properly.  But I
told him that I thought he was lying, and made him take the money.
As it was, he had given us any amount of his care and time and
charged about half nothing for it.  He was not a rich man either.
The parson said that his wife wanted someone to act as a companion
and to assist in looking after the little girls.  I thanked him very
much, but I said that I believed, if she thought it over, she would
find that she didn’t.  They gave me lots of good advice, and when I
sold all the furniture and effects they bid frantically against one
another for the six bottles of distinctly inferior sherry which at
that time constituted our entire cellar.  Other friends did similar
acts of kindness at the sale.  I had meant it to be a perfectly
genuine sale, but all the time I felt that I was passing round the
hat.  I do not think the auctioneer has ever forgotten it.  The way
that sherry, with the maker’s name giving it away on every bottle,
fetched the price of a vintage Chateau d’Yquem of great age, must
have made an indelible impression.

I had thought it all out.  I really did not want to take from these
good people what was given in the merest charity.  I was not, as a
matter of fact, very intimate with any of them.  I did not want to be
a companion, even if the parson’s wife had had any sort of use for a
companion.  I had quite clearly made up my mind that there was no
work in the world that I should be ashamed to do, if I could do it;
but that I would not take up anything which could not possibly lead
to anything.  Now, nearly every feminine occupation recommended to
the distressed but untrained gentlewoman is a _cul-de-sac_, and when
you get over the wall at the end of the _cul-de-sac_ you are in the
workhouse.  I had also decided that I must get out of Castel-on-Weld,
because things did not happen there, and in consequence I could not
take advantage of things happening.  I determined to go to London.

Beyond the general principles which I have indicated I had no clear
idea of what I was going to do, but I had got new clothes, no debts,
and about seventy-five pounds in cash.  I think I was well educated,
though rather in a general and erratic way.  My father, who had never
been in France in his life, spoke the most idiomatic, and even the
most argotic, French, with the vilest of accents.  He infinitely
preferred French fiction to English, and I will do him the justice to
say that he generally remembered to look it up.  It is possible that,
with my knowledge of French, music and literature, I might have
become a governess, but to become a governess is to walk deliberately
into the _cul-de-sac_.  I had vague ideas that I should like to get
into some kind of business, and by cleverness, and practicality, and
temperance, and early rising, and the rest of the bag-of-tricks, worm
my way slowly upwards until I was a manageress and indispensable.
All the time I should be saving money, and should then be ready to
start for myself.  I had not decided what the business was to be;
once in London I should have time to look about me.

I had also thought of marriage.  Even if I had not thought of it, the
fact that the doctor proposed to me twice would have reminded me of
it.  I was pretty enough, and though the idea of falling in love
never occurred to me, I thought that I might marry rather well one
day.  That was an additional reason for leaving Castel-on-Weld.  I
had already twice refused the only marriageable man in the
neighbourhood.  But in any case I was only eighteen and I did not
mean to marry for some time to come.

I was going to play a lone hand, and the honest truth is that I
rather enjoyed the prospect.  I was going to London, a place where
things happen, and I was going to do what I wanted in the way I
wanted.  And perhaps I should starve, and perhaps I should have fun.
So one morning I got into a third-class railway carriage, and an old
woman talked to me at length about her somewhat unseemly physical
infirmities.  I hope I was sympathetic, but my mind was already in
London, looking out for the possibility of adventure.

I did not have to wait long in London to discover that strange things
happen there.  The first thing that I noticed on my arrival at
Charing Cross was that on the platform, under the clock, there were
some fifteen girls, all of whom wore the closest possible physical
resemblance to myself.  We might all have been sisters.




II

MR. NATHAN GOULD

It was something of a surprise.

If on my arrival in London I had found waiting on the platform at
Charing Cross one girl of the same height as myself, the same colour
of hair, the same type of face, and the same style of clothes, I
might have thought it merely a coincidence.  But here were fifteen
girls, all, so far as I could see, exactly similar.  They were not in
groups, but scattered about the platform under the clock.  They never
spoke to one another, but it struck me that they looked at one
another curiously and with something like veiled hostility.  I saw
the same expression on their faces whenever one of them happened to
pass me.  I could not imagine what it meant, and I wanted to find
out.  I sent a porter to the cloak-room with my belongings, and stood
against the bookstall waiting events.  It was then two minutes to one.

At one o’clock precisely a man of about thirty-five, in a light
overcoat, with a folded newspaper in his hand, walked rapidly into
the station and stood still, looking about him.  His personal
appearance was not in his favour.  He wore too much jewellery, and
the expression on his face was one of furtive spite.  One of the
girls who were waiting walked close past him very slowly.  He looked
at her intently, but made no sign, and she then passed out of the
station.  A second girl did the same thing, except that she lingered
at a little distance from him.  A third was just approaching, when he
came rapidly forward to me and raised his hat.

“I think,” he said, in a slightly foreign accent, “I am right in
presuming that you are here in response to my advertisement in this
morning’s _Mail_.”

“No,” I said, “I have seen no advertisement.  I don’t know you, and
don’t understand why you should speak to me.”

“I hope,” he said, “you will give me an opportunity of explaining.
It can do you no harm, and may be very profitable to you.  It is a
matter of life and death, or I would not trouble you.  I assure you
that I mean no disrespect whatever.”

By his tone and manner it was perfectly evident that he was not
talking to me merely because I was a pretty girl.  He was the kind of
man whom anyone would distrust at sight, but of whom no one could
have been afraid.  I was not in the least afraid.  I shrugged my
shoulders.

“This is wildly unusual,” I said, “and I don’t like it.  You may
begin your explanations.  If at any moment I think them at all
unsatisfactory, I shall send you away.  Begin by showing me the
advertisement.”

He handed me the paper in his hand, with the advertisement marked,
and I read as follows:--


“If the lady of eighteen with dark hair and blue eyes, pale
complexion, good-looking, height five-foot-seven, will be on the
platform of Charing Cross, under the clock, at 1 p.m. precisely this
morning, the man in the light overcoat, with the folded newspaper,
will meet her there and liberally reward her services.”


“Well?” I said.

“The advertisement was not addressed to any particular lady.  I
merely wanted to find one who would bear a close resemblance to my
half-sister, who died about a month ago.  My mother is seriously ill,
and the death of my half-sister, to whom she was devoted, has been
kept from her.  If she knew of that death there is no doubt that she
would succumb at once.  She has been told that my half-sister is away
in the country, but she has begun to suspect, and we have had to
promise to produce her.  You are exactly like her, you have the same
tone of voice, you spoke to me exactly as she would have spoken if a
stranger had addressed her.  The impersonation will be a very easy
one; you will have to be in the same room with my mother for a few
moments, and will have little to say.  The room will not be brightly
lit, and the doctor would not permit any but the briefest interview.
You will be prolonging her life for a few days--at the best I fear it
cannot be for more than that--and you will remove a load of terrible
suffering from her mind.  For this I am ready to pay you five pounds
now, and one pound for every day that you remain at my house.  My
name is Gould--Mr. Nathan Gould.  Here is my card.”

The card bore an address in Wilbraham Square, Bloomsbury.  I thought
the matter over for a few seconds.  One can do a great deal of
thinking in a few seconds.  “Mr. Gould,” I said, “if I believed your
story entirely I would do what you want for nothing.  I neither
believe it nor disbelieve it entirely.  I have the impression that
you are keeping something back.”

“Not intentionally.  I explained myself as quickly and briefly as
possible, but I am ready to answer any questions.”

“Possibly I am not in a position to ask the questions which would be
material.”  At this I thought he winced slightly.  “I consider that I
take a great risk, and I do not take a great risk unless the
consideration is proportionately great.  If you will pay me fifty
pounds in cash now, and five pounds for every day that I remain in
your house, I will come.  I have only just arrived in London, have no
friends here, and was on the point of going to an hotel.  If you
accept my terms I can come at once.  If not, there is no more to be
said.”

He did not seem much surprised.  “Is that your last word?” he asked.

“It is.”

“Very well.  You shall have my cheque for fifty pounds as soon as we
reach my house, and the rest of the money will be paid you day by
day.”

“That will not do,” I said.  “We will drive now to your bank, and you
will draw fifty pounds in notes or gold.  We shall then go on to my
bank, where I shall deposit the money.  After that I am at your
service.”

“You are a business-like woman,” he said.  “It is queer to be
distrusted when one is really perfectly honest, but it shall be as
you wish.  If you will come with me I will call a cab.”

“You will call two,” I said.  “A four-wheeler for myself and my
luggage, and a hansom for yourself.”

My programme was punctually carried out.  As it happened, we both
banked in Lombard Street, and it was not long before that part of the
business was concluded and we had arrived at the house in Wilbraham
Square.  It was a good Georgian house, and looked well kept.  Gould
paid the cabman and introduced his latch-key.

“No,” I said, “ring.  I prefer it.”  I wanted particularly to see who
would answer the door.  An extremely commonplace and honest-looking
parlourmaid answered it.  When she saw me she staggered back aghast.

“That’s all right, Annie,” said Mr. Gould reassuringly.  “The
resemblance is striking, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the maid.  “It took me very much by surprise.”

“All right upstairs?” asked Gould.

“I believe so.  The doctor is just leaving.”

By this time the man had brought my luggage into the hall.  At the
same moment a grey-headed old gentleman came down the stairs,
slipping a stethoscope into his side-pocket.  He also seemed startled
at seeing me.

I trusted that old gentleman, and I trusted the maid who had opened
the door, and I did not trust Mr. Nathan Gould a bit.  At this moment
his air was far more that of a man who has recently pulled off a
clever financial coup than of a son who has succeeded in saving a
mother to whom he is devoted from a great sorrow.  Gould went forward
to the doctor at once.

“How is she?” he asked eagerly.

“No change,” said the doctor.  He looked across at me.  “Really,” he
said, “the resemblance is astounding.”

Gould brought him up to me.  “This is our doctor,” he said.  “Dr.
Wentworth.”  Gould hesitated.  I had not given him my name.

“I am Miss Tower,” I said.

The doctor bowed.  “May I ask,” I said, “if you have been attending
Mrs. Gould for some time?”

“Certainly,” he said.  “For the last five years.”

“I should like very much to speak with you alone for a few minutes.
Have you the time, and would you be so very kind as to do this for
me?”

The doctor looked inquiringly at Gould.  Gould was furious.  He knew,
of course, that I was about to ask for his character.  But he
restrained himself.  “Miss Tower,” he said, with a touch of
bitterness, “has already made it quite clear to me that she must have
her own way.  I believe there is no one in the drawing-room.”  The
doctor held open the door for me.

“I will give you as many minutes as you want, with pleasure,” he said.

I gave him my story as briefly as I could, and told him all that had
passed between Mr. Gould and myself.  “I am going to be quite frank,”
I went on.  “I do not trust the man in the least.  I do not believe
he has one atom of love or respect for his mother.”

“He has not,” said the doctor.

“Why then does he want this impersonation?”

“What he has told you is true.  Mrs. Gould is very ill.  There are
various complications, but it is the heart which we have to fear
principally.  It is impossible to cure her, but I confidently believe
that by coming here you will prolong her life and make her last days
much happier.  As to Mr. Gould’s motives, I have perhaps no right to
speak.  He has not confided in me.  I will only give you the facts.
Mrs. Gould is one of two sisters, of equal fortune, and bitterly
jealous of one another.  The elder sister died in her seventy-fourth
year.  She did not wish Mrs. Gould to have any advantage over her,
and left her money to accumulate until Mrs. Gould’s seventy-third
birthday, when Mrs. Gould comes into it.  She was a cranky old woman,
and did not like the idea of her sister having any more money than
she had.  Mrs. Gould is a wealthy woman now, and on her seventy-third
birthday, which will be in a few days’ time, will be twice as
wealthy.  If she does not live till her seventy-third birthday, the
whole of her sister’s money goes to the London Hospital.  Do you see?”

“Yes,” I said, “I see.  She has doubtless left her money to her son,
and in the event of her surviving until her seventy-third birthday he
will profit.”

“Precisely.  Her entire estate is left equally between Mr. Gould and
his half-sister, and in the event of the death of either the whole
goes to the survivor.  That is the situation in a nutshell.”

“Then what have I to fear?”

“Nothing at all until after that seventy-third birthday.”

“I see,” I said meditatively.  I could imagine that after that date
Mr. Gould’s filial affection might undergo some remarkable changes.

The doctor gave me some useful information about the half-sister and
explained to me exactly what I was to do when I was admitted to his
patient’s room.  He also gave me his address.  “You may find that
useful in a week’s time,” he said.

My luggage had already been taken up and the maid showed me the way
to my room.  On the stairs we met Mr. Gould.  “It is all right,” he
said in a low voice, “I have just come from my mother’s room.  She is
overjoyed.  You will see her this evening.”  He paused and added,
“And have you heard the worst of me?”

“Not yet,” I said.  “That will come.”

Then he guessed how much I knew, and hated me almost as much as I
hated him.

The maid who was unpacking for me asked me if I would lunch
downstairs with Mr. Gould, or if I preferred to lunch in my own room.
It is always well to get to know one’s enemy, and I did not hesitate.
A few minutes later I was sitting down to lunch alone with a man whom
two hours before I had never seen in my life, and of whom I now knew
very little, and nothing which was not dead against him.

He was really very clever.  He hardly spoke of his mother at all, he
was quiet in his manner, and showed himself most attentive to my
personal comfort.  I was not to consider myself a prisoner at all.  I
could have the brougham that afternoon and go anywhere I liked.  If
it was convenient to me to be back at six o’clock, that would be the
best time for me to see his mother.  But if not, some other
arrangement might be made.  Did I like the room that had been given
me?  If not, it could be changed.  There was another little room just
opposite to it in the same passage, which was being got ready to
serve as a private sitting-room for me.

I thanked him, and said I was not going out.  Turning the
conversation away from myself, I made him talk to me about his
half-sister.  He talked about her in the most easy and matter-of-fact
way.  I do not suppose he ever cared for her or for anybody except
himself.  All the same, the information that I got as to minute
points of her personal appearance and her manner of speaking were
very useful.

At six o’clock I was quite ready.  Mr. Gould now seemed a little
nervous and excited.  He kept on giving me fragments of stupid advice
and telling me things that he had told me before.  The interview was
to be a very short one, and the doctor and the nurse were both in the
dimly lit room when I entered it, though they stood at some distance
from the bed.  On the bed lay the dying woman--a handsome old Jewess,
with white-yellow skin of one even tint, colourless lips, and blazing
eyes.  I went straight up to the bed and took her claw of a hand and
bent over her and kissed her.  She spoke in a very low voice, and I
just caught the words, “Thought I’d lost you.”

“No,” I said, “I’m here, and I will not leave you again until you get
better.”

Her eyes closed and opened again and fixed themselves on me.  “Pray
for me,” she said.

Still holding her hand, I dropped down on my knees by her bedside.
My thoughts flew frantically in unlikely directions.  I remembered my
own mother sitting before the fire and saying with helpless solemnity
that it was the beginning of the end.  I was not quite sure where I
had put my watch-key, and puzzled about it.  I recalled vividly a fat
old woman who had travelled up in the same compartment with me and I
wondered where she had gone.  And all the time I was holding the old
woman’s hands and trying to pray, and hearing the clock on the
mantelpiece tick, as it seemed to me, constantly quicker and quicker.

Presently the doctor touched me on the shoulder.  I opened my eyes
and saw that the old woman had fallen asleep.  I released her hand
gently, and slipped out of the room.  When I got outside I was
shaking like a leaf, and there was Mr. Gould full of eager questions.
I answered him as well as I could.  He was delighted.

“Now,” I said, “let me go to my own rooms for the rest of the day.”

He looked at me curiously.  “Why,” he said, “you seem upset.  I
suppose you are not as used to it as we are.  You ought to have a
brandy-and-soda.  Let me get it for you.”

I refused that, went off to my own room, lay down on the bed, and
began to cry.  I had not the faintest idea what I was crying about.
It was all so strange and horrible.  But soon I sat up and bullied
myself.  I could see that there might be much to do which would want
all my sense and none of my emotion.  I dined in my own room, and
with my dinner there was brought to me a letter from Mr. Gould,
thanking me for my kindness and enclosing a five-pound note.

The next two days passed quietly enough.  I now saw the old woman two
or three times a day.  The third day was the day before the birthday.
In the afternoon Mrs. Gould, who had been getting much better, became
rapidly worse, fainted, and was unconscious for quite a long time.
Gould made a fool of himself.  He whipped the doctor off into the
dining-room, and talked so loudly that I could hear in the
drawing-room.  “Look here, doctor,” he said, “you must keep her alive
for another nine hours.  You can do it if you like, you know.  Use
more stimulants.  You want to flog that heart.  Keep it going
somehow.  Were you trying oxygen?”

“Mr. Gould,” said the doctor, “you know that your mother refuses to
see any other doctor, and that any attempt to force one upon her
would certainly be fatal.  Otherwise I should have thrown up this
case before.  As it is, I am not going to enter into any consultation
with yourself or any other ignorant and unqualified person.  And it
would help me to keep my temper, and would therefore facilitate my
work, if I had no interviews with you of any kind.  Send your
inquiries through the servant.”

The doctor came out and shut the door.  He looked into the
drawing-room for a moment.  “Miss Tower,” he said, “if Mrs. Gould
lives until after twelve to-night, look out.”

“I had meant to,” I said.

Then he went up to his patient.

At twelve that night Mrs. Gould was alive and sleeping peacefully.
As soon as Mr. Gould had heard this glad news he went up to bed.
That night, for the first time, I had not received my fee.  At
breakfast next morning he was distinctly disrespectful in his manner.
“Look here,” he said, “the best of friends must part.  You’ve done
all I wanted, and there is no doubt my mother will get on all right
without you now.  She has got rid of the idea that my half-sister is
dead, and that was the main point.  I’ve told them to pack your
things, and as soon as you’re ready to go you shall have that last
fiver you managed to screw out of me.  You’ve been paid a sight too
well, but I’m a man of my word.”

“I’m not going,” I said.

“Not going?  Don’t talk in that silly way.  You’ll have to go.  I can
starve you out--I can throw you out by force if you like.  Still, I
don’t want a scene.  I suppose I must make it two fivers instead of
one.  That’s what you’re after.”

I took out the slip of paper on which Dr. Wentworth had written down
his address for me.  “It’s quite true,” I said.  “You may have my
things packed and put on a cab, and may ask me to leave the house.
If I do so that will be the address to which the cabman will drive,
and the consequences are likely to be serious for you.”

He raved and abused like a drunken cad for a few moments, and then
went out of the room--and, a moment later, out of the house.

At eleven that morning Mrs. Gould died suddenly in my arms.  It was a
quick and painless ending.  A telegram was sent to Mr. Gould’s office
in the City, and the reply came back that he was not there.  Dr.
Wentworth came down to the drawing-room with me and seemed slightly
hesitating.  “Excuse me,” he said, “for asking the question, but have
you any friends in London?”

“None,” I said.

“And have you any plans?”

“None; except to leave this place immediately.  I shall see what
happens.  It was through seeing what happened that I came here.  At
any rate, I’m not going to take on any of the underpaid work leading
to nothing of which women seem to be so fond.”

“I don’t quite like this,” he said.  “I rather wish you’d go and talk
things over with my wife.  But you won’t, and after all, I don’t know
that it would do much good.  You’re playing a lone hand and you
rather like it, and you can take care of yourself.”

I talked to him a little longer and then my cab came.  As I drove
away I saw Mr. Gould approaching the house.  He was not helpless, but
he was a little more than half drunk.  I wondered for what act he had
been trying to find the courage.




III

THE MAN OF MEANS

My principal feeling on leaving Mr. Gould’s house was one of extreme
weariness.  The emotions wear one out more than work does.  I had
been living idly and even luxuriously, but I was more tired than I
used to be in the days when I lived with my father and during some
financial or domestic crisis the whole of the housework fell to my
lot.  I had Mr. Gould’s five-pound notes in my pocket, and I drove to
a good hotel.  I stopped there for three days, and I think I spent
most of my time in bed and asleep.  Then I said to myself,
“Wilhelmina, this will not do.  You are spending too much, and you
are earning nothing, and you are not even looking about you.”  So I
left my good hotel and went to a cheap boarding-house.  And on the
second night that I was there a young Hindoo proposed marriage to me.
Also the cooking was very bad.  So I left.

While I was there I had calculated that I had enough money to furnish
a very small flat and to live for very nearly a year.  I found my
flat in a Brompton back street.  It was not one of the mansions with
lifts and liveried porters and electric light and lots of white
paint.  It was a little thirty-pound house which had been ingeniously
converted into three flats.  One was in the basement, and you entered
it down the area steps, and paid seven shillings a week when you got
there.  The ground-floor flat was eight shillings, and the upstairs
flat seven-and-six.  I went in for luxury and eight shillings.  I had
a separate entrance, and when I shut my front door I was alone in my
own little world.  The world contained a sitting-room, bedroom and
kitchen, and was extremely dirty and horrible until I set to work on
it.  I need not say that I spent more money than I had intended on
cleaning, furnishing and decorating.  Everybody does that.  As an
economy and a punishment I did everything for myself.  The flat above
me was occupied by a horse-keeper from one of the ’bus-yards and his
wife.  The wife did a little intermittent cheap dressmaking.  They
both drank, used improper language, and occasionally flung paraffin
lamps at one another.  The flat below had been occupied by an old man
who lived alone, and had got tired of it and died.  I met his dead
body coming up those area steps as I moved in.  After that the flat
remained untenanted.  Every Saturday a knowing-looking young man with
a pencil behind his ear, and an account book and a black bag, called
for the eight shillings.  And as long as you paid that, nobody cared
who you were, or what you did, or why you did it.  I rather liked
that.

When I was comfortably installed I began to think things out.  I
decided at first to go in for the gratitude of the aged.  You know
the kind of thing.  You render the old gentleman or old lady some
slight service in a ’bus or railway carriage, and a month later they
die and leave you all their money.  I think I was right in believing
in the gratitude of the aged.  Compared with the young they are very
grateful.  But I fancy they have a great tendency to have wives and
children or other near relations, and to abstain from leaving their
money to the entire stranger who has opened the carriage door for
them.  One day, in Chancery Lane, a horse in a hansom cab came down
rather excessively, and a very aged solicitor shot out in a
miscellaneous heap into the middle of the road.  I helped him up,
saved his hat from the very jaws of an omnibus, so to speak, and said
I was sorry for him.  He did not even ask for my name and address,
and at the moment of going to press I have heard nothing further from
him.  The other old people to whom I was able to offer some slight
service seemed to think that a few words of warm thanks would be all
I required.  I began to disbelieve in the familiar stories of the
wills of the wealthy.

And then I embarked on a business which I am afraid must prove
conclusively that I was a daughter of my father, for it was just the
mad, wild-cat kind of thing that he would certainly have embarked on
himself, if he had ever thought of it.  Briefly, I put an
advertisement in one of the most popular of the Sunday papers, and
also in the _Morning Post_, addressed to all who were unhappy in
love.  “I know the heart, and I know the world,” was the way I began.
I pointed out cunningly that however much one might need advice in
these matters, there was always a feeling of embarrassment in
consulting anyone who knew you.  The only person in whom one could
confide was the entire stranger.  I pointed out, moreover, that real
names and addresses need never be given to me.  I only required to
know the facts, and I would send a letter of advice specially written
for each case for the sum of half a crown.  Their letters were to be
directed to “Irma.”  And I gave the address of a little newsagent,
who took in letters for me.

I ran this business for about two months.  It began slowly, but after
the first fortnight I really had as much as I could do.  I always
asked the people to whom I sent letters to recommend me to their
friends, and in many cases I know that they did so.  I gave the best
advice that I could, and I had a small shilling book on the marriage
laws which I found very useful.  Not one couple in a hundred that
wants to get married really knows how it may or may not be done.  My
clients were chiefly women, and I have grave doubts as to the
seriousness of some of the few men who applied to me.  But I did not
mind in the least so long as their postal orders were enclosed.  The
women seemed to belong almost exclusively to two sets--domestic
servants and foolish people in smart society.  The middle-class would
have nothing to do with me, and I am not sure, although I always gave
the best advice I could, that the middle-class was not right.  Only
once or twice, in the curious confessions that were poured out on me,
did I come upon anything that I should have called real romance.
There was plenty of vanity, there was plenty of sentimentality, and
there was a good deal of acute money-grubbing.  It was really
interesting work, though it kept me a great deal indoors, and though
I am not sure even now that it was quite honest.

At the end of the first month some blessed young man, whom I am glad
to have this opportunity of thanking, wrote a short and chaffing
article about my advertisement.  For days after this I was simply
inundated with letters, and I had to send out post cards to my
clients explaining that, owing to the pressure of business, my
letters of advice to them would probably be delayed for some days.
Among those letters was one bearing the address of a house in
Berkeley Square, which was so extraordinary that I give it in full.
It was one of the few letters that I received from men:--


“DEAR MADAM,--I have seen your advertisement, and also the short
article upon it in the _Daily Courier_, and my own case is so curious
that I have decided to address you.  I enclose a postal order for
half a crown as required, but I am a man of means, and in the event
of your being able to assist me I shall, as you will see, propose a
more adequate remuneration.  I have been a great traveller and
sportsman, and you may possibly have come upon my recent work on
_Sport in Thibet_.  I have now returned to England and am anxious to
marry.  But I am prevented by a strange psychological characteristic
of my own.

“The fact, put briefly, is that I cannot stand fear.  Any evidence of
timidity in a man inspires me with rage, and in a woman with disgust.
However attractive she may be, at the slightest sign that she fears
me, love vanishes completely.  I cannot stand her, I cannot bear to
be with her.  This is the more unfortunate because I am by nature a
dominant person.  I have been told that my eyes are mesmeric.  I do
not believe in this nonsense, but certainly women seem to find it
difficult to meet my gaze fairly and squarely.  I have a somewhat
hasty temper, and nothing exasperates it more than the attempt to
smooth it down, accompanied as it always is by fear of what I may do
next.  I want a woman who does not care one straw what I do next--who
will be absolutely free from every form of cowardice, physical or
moral, as I am myself.  The mother of my children must not be a
coward.

“I am thirty-seven years of age, wealthy, and not, I believe, much
uglier than other men, and I cannot find the woman that I require.
Possibly, among the many cases which must have been brought to your
notice, you will have come across some such woman.  If so, and if you
will arrange a meeting between her and me, I will pay you the sum of
one hundred pounds, provided, of course, that I am satisfied on the
question of her courage.  If, though satisfied on this point, I do
not wish to marry her, I will pay her also the sum of one hundred
pounds for the trouble which I have given her.  She must, of course,
not be older than I am myself, and I confess that good looks are a
great consideration with me.  Social standing is of no importance
whatever.  I do not allow popular prejudices to interfere with my
actions, even when they are of the least importance, and far less do
I admit of such interference in my choice of a wife.--I am, my dear
madam, faithfully yours, ----.”


I do not give his signature.  It is a name that you will find in
Debrett, though I did not look it up at the time.  That letter gave
me a great deal to think over.  There was a queer mixture of bragging
and modesty about it.  Yet, I asked myself, how could he give me the
facts which it was necessary for me to know without appearing to
brag?  The commission of one hundred pounds was certainly tempting,
but none of my correspondents occurred to me as being likely to meet
his requirements, even if they had not had their own affairs on their
hands.  Fear is a feminine quality.  Women have a right to it;
without being cowardly, they may be able to realise a danger, and
they may have delicate nerves.  Nor can I see that they are any the
worse for it.  After a little reflection I wrote to say that I
believed I should be able to assist him if he could wait for about a
fortnight.  And I had a reply on the following day to say that he
would wait with pleasure.

I was not, decidedly not, thirty-seven, and I was as pretty as I
thought he had any right to expect.  I was not the creature of steel
that he required, but, none the less, my nerves were in fairly good
order, and I thought that I could get through, at any rate, any of
the preliminary tests to which he might subject me.  Two hundred
pounds are better than one hundred.  Possibly I might marry this man.
I did not know, and did not want to marry anybody.  But he might take
his chance and, in case of failure, fall in line with the doctor at
Castel-on-Weld and the young Hindoo in the boarding-house.  It is
wonderful how many excuses one can find for an action which brings in
two hundred pounds.

At the end of the fortnight I wrote and gave him an appointment for
the afternoon of two days later, outside the Stores in Victoria
Street, when I said that the young lady whom I had selected as likely
to meet his requirements would meet him.  I suggested that there
should be some sign by which he might be known.  Next day I received
a telegram in these words:--


“I shall come dashing up.  The red rose is, and always has been, my
sign.”


I thought over that telegram for a long time, and I did not quite
like it.  It was altogether too queer.  But I meant to see the thing
through.  After all, I had given him no sign by which he could
recognise me, and I could always back out at the last moment if I
thought it necessary.  So, at the time appointed, which was at three
in the afternoon, I was in Victoria Street at some little distance
from the Stores, waiting to see what might happen.

What actually happened was rather grotesque.  A four-wheeled cab
drove up, and an old gentleman got out.  He wore a red rose in his
button-hole and another in his hat.  He took four rosebushes in pots
from the interior of the cab and placed them on the pavement; dived
back into his cab once more, and came out with a large florist’s box.
This was packed with red roses which he proceeded to scatter
broadcast.  His cabman laughed till he nearly fell off the box, and a
large crowd quickly gathered round.  The crowd seemed to annoy the
old gentleman.  I heard him shouting in a querulous voice, “I am here
for a special purpose.  Kindly go away.  I require this street for
the afternoon.”  A small boy knocked over one of the little
rose-bushes, and this exasperated the old gentleman still further.
In a moment he had whipped a revolver out of his pocket, and began
firing it up into the air in an indiscriminate manner.  The police
very promptly got him.  And I said nothing to anybody and went home.

Naturally the case was reported in all the papers.  The old man had
been strange in his manner for some time, but his relations had not
apprehended anything serious.  This afternoon he had been
particularly enraged because he could not get a four-wheeler, and he
was too nervous to ride in hansoms.

I never heard any more of the case, but it gave me a dislike of the
business which I was engaged upon and the dislike was increased a few
days later.  I was looking out of my windows when I saw a woman of
common appearance give an almost imperceptible nod to a passing
policeman.  She then came on to my flat and knocked.  I let her in.

“You are the lady who advertises as ‘Irma’?” she said.

“I am.  How did you know that I lived here?”

“They told me at the tobacconist’s where your letters are sent.  Now,
I want you to give me some help.  I have got the money here, and I
can pay well.”

“What is it you want?” I asked.

“Well, I’m told that you are a wise woman and know the future.  A
man, rather younger than myself, has every appearance of being
attracted by me, but I don’t know whether he means anything serious
or not.  I thought perhaps you’d look at my hand and tell me what was
destined.”

I sent her away at once.  It was a police trap, of course.  When you
receive many letters, containing many postal orders, and you cash
those orders all at one office, I suppose the police become
interested.  It seemed degrading, and I hated it.  Also I had
reflected that this was not really work that would lead to anything.

I sat down there and then and wrote letters withdrawing the “Irma”
advertisements.  My total profit, after all expenses were paid,
amounted to a little over twenty pounds.




IV

THE MAN BEHIND THE DOOR

Being still young and passably beautiful, I had no wish to become a
cynic.  But the events of the next fortnight tended to make me so.  I
reverted to my old idea of making a conquest of some big business
firm in my belief that I had ideas and could make suggestions and
that these were worth money.

I still believe that ideas and suggestions are worth money--pots of
money.  I also believe that it is extremely difficult to get a guinea
for the best of them.

I tried an inflated and gigantic shop, one of the stores where you
buy everything, and I asked to see the manager.  I do not suppose I
did see the manager, but I saw someone who was more or less in
authority in a back office.  There was a clerk at work in that
office, and the clerk made me nervous.  If I could have rung and had
him removed I might have got on better.  As I was pretty and well
dressed and did not look poor, and might have called to complain of
the quality of the bacon supplied, the managerial person was at first
extremely polite, and asked in what way he could serve me.

“I believe,” I said, “that this is a business in which new ideas are
of value.”

“Yes,” he said suavely, “in fact, we’ve already noticed it.”  He was
still polite, but one could detect a slight shade of irony.

“Well,” I said blunderingly, “I am a woman with ideas--heaps of
ideas.  I have thought about your business particularly, and I am
full of suggestions.  I believe them to be valuable, but before I
hand them over to you I should like to come to some business
arrangement; either in the way of a cash payment, or, where
practicable, a percentage on profits.  In the latter case, of course,
I should expect permission to inspect your books and----”

At this moment the clerk, who had been writing at a side table, with
his back to me, went off like a soda-water bottle.  I am inclined to
think now that for some moments he must have been suffering severely.

“Shut up, or get out!” said the manager to the clerk.

The clerk, being unable to shut up, got out at once.  Then the
manager turned to me.

“Extraordinary!” he said seriously.  “Most extraordinary.  And yet
you don’t look as if you’d been drinking.”

Then I got up.  “My proposal seems to you very silly,” I said.  “And,
because I was nervous, I put it all very badly.  But I do not think
that justifies you in behaving like a cad.”

He gave a jump in his chair.  Being a person in authority, he did not
get a chance to hear the plain truth about himself often.

“Nor do I,” he said reflectively.  “I beg your pardon.  Still, the
thing was so outrageous; you must see, my dear young lady, that we
could not dream for one moment----”

“Thanks,” I said.  “I won’t trouble you any further.”

If I had stuck to that man and given him one or two of my ideas in
advance, reserving the question of terms, I am not sure that I might
not have done something.  He would have liked to compensate for his
rudeness, if he could have done it.  But, being proud and angry and
an idiot, I walked out.  My one idea was to get out of the awful
place.

I tried two or three other shops, and began at the right end, but did
very little better.  One man listened to three of my ideas for
Christmas novelties, very politely regretted that he could not avail
himself of them, and showed me out.  He used two of those ideas
subsequently and made money with them, and I hope it may choke him.
Another man listened to a still longer list and, while disclaiming
any legal liability, offered me five shillings for my trouble.

So, as things were going rather badly, I was particularly glad of the
windfall which came to me in connection with the man behind the door.
It was one of those queer things that cannot happen except in big
cities.  It is part of the fascination of London that every moment of
the day and night something more wicked and more strange is happening
than one could ever invent.

I had been into the North End Road to do a little shopping.  I had
got six eggs and a pound of tomatoes and a new tooth-brush and some
other luxuries, and my hands were full.  I managed to get my door
open with the latch-key, but in trying to get it out again I nearly
dropped those eggs.  So I went through into my little sitting-room,
put my parcels down carefully, and was just going back to shut the
outer door and get my key, when I distinctly heard the door shut.  It
did not shut with a bang, as if it had been blown to; it was shut
very gently and carefully, as if the object had been to avoid noise.
So I was just about as frightened as a school girl in a barrel of
live mice.  But I went out into the passage all the same.

There, in the passage behind the door, stood a tall and extremely
well-dressed gentleman of about forty.  His frock-coat was buttoned
and fitted his good figure to perfection.  In one hand he held the
glossiest of silk hats, and in the other his gloves and
walking-stick.  His appearance was foreign; his hair was not
grotesque, but it was longer than an Englishman generally wears it.
He wore a pointed beard and, for a man, he was by no means ugly.  He
spoke good enough English, though with a slight accent.

“Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said.  “I would not have taken this
liberty except under great compulsion.  If you will permit me to
remain here for a few minutes you will be doing me a very important
service.  I assure you of my good intentions, and of my reluctance to
annoy you in this way.  Only,” he paused and shrugged his shoulders,
“one is reluctant to die also.  Permit me to hand you your latch-key.”

I suppose I ought to have thought the man was mad, or worse.  But it
never occurred to me.  He had not the manner of it.

“Thanks,” I said, as I took the key.  “You may wait a few moments if
you like, and if you will tell me what is the matter.  Won’t you come
into the sitting-room?”

“You are too kind, mademoiselle.  I will explain myself fully.  But
may I ask, in your sitting-room should I be seen from the street?”

“Not if you stand at the back of the room.”

“That is very good.  I shall stand at the back of the room.  If you
would do me one more favour, you would stand at the window and tell
me who comes past.”

I went to the window without a word, and turned back to him.  “There
is a policeman,” I said.

“Ah, the London policeman.  He is a charming man.  I love him.  And
next?”

“A lady in black.”

“Possibly bereaved.  Poor lady.  But I know nothing of her.  But do
you not see a man of much the same appearance as myself?”

“No.  I mean, yes.  He has just come into view.  He is remarkably
like you.  He walks very fast.”

At this the man in my room sat down and looked very white and shaky.
His back-bone seemed to have been taken out and he was all huddled up.

“You can’t faint in here, you know,” I said sharply.

“Has he gone?” he asked hoarsely.

“Gone?  Of course he’s gone.  He’s at the other end of the street by
this time.”  As I spoke I poured out a glass of water and handed it
to him.  He thanked me, protested that he was not in the least faint,
and took a sip of the water.  Then he turned to me.

“Now, mademoiselle, I must really explain myself.”

“Well?” I said.  I rather liked the idea of having helped him to
escape.  Any woman would help anyone to escape from anything.  And
after all, this was more romantic than talking about corkscrews to a
shopman who did not want to listen.

“I have been hunted,” he said.  “I have been hunted all the morning.
Three years ago I left France to get away from this man who, by the
way, is my brother.  For those three years I have been in England.
You see I speak the English very nicely--is it not so?”

“Yes, you speak it well enough.  Go on.”

“During the whole of that time I never met my brother.  This morning
I came upon him, face to face, at Charing Cross Station.  I walked
away, and he came after me.  I went down the steps to the underground
station and booked to Wimbledon.  He followed and did the same.  I
got out at Gloucester Road, and he stepped out of the next
compartment after me.  I took a hansom back to Charing Cross.  He
followed in another.  Then I tried to tire him out with walking.  I
have walked all the way here, and have not come directly, but by the
most circuitous routes.  Always he was a little way behind me.  As we
drew near to this street I quickened my pace very much.  He was
tired, and I saw there was no cab.  I got round the corner, nearly a
hundred yards ahead of him, and saw your door open.  What a chance!”

“It sounds queer enough to be true.”

“Mademoiselle,” he said in a pained voice, “I would not repay your
kindness by deceiving you.”

“But I don’t understand.  What did your brother say when you met?”

“Nothing.  Nor I.  We shall not speak again, except perhaps at the
very last.”

“But why?  Why do you run away from him?  What does he want?”

“He wants,” said the man dreamily, “and I think that it is the only
thing in the world that he does want, to kill me.  He has wanted that
for just a little more than three years.  He does not wish for any
publicity or, if possible, any scandal.  He would have liked this
morning to have found out where I lived and then made his
opportunity.”

“But this is perfectly absurd.  The law does not permit anything of
the kind.  If you thought your brother was following you with the
intention of injuring you in any way, you had only to speak to the
nearest policeman.”

“Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, with an indulgent smile, “there are just
a few matters on which one does not speak to the nearest policeman,
and this is one of them.  It is a private matter--a family matter.
The honour of three women is involved in it.  Our family name is
involved in it.  We do not want talk in the newspapers.”

“What a cold-blooded brute your brother must be!”

“Really, I do not think so.  I can quite understand his desire to
kill me.  If he succeeded it would be but just.  All the same I do
not wish to die.  I have escaped him for three years, and I propose
to go on escaping.  But here I babble of my own affairs and do not
even thank you for having saved my life.  You have done me a great
service, mademoiselle--a very great service.  I shall not forget it.”

At this I laughed.  “It is not a very great matter.  Indeed, it is
hardly worth thanks.”

“You shall not find me ungrateful.  But I must not inflict myself
upon you longer than is necessary.  If the coast is clear now, I can
get away with safety.  Might I ask you to inspect from the window
once more?”

I went to the window and turned back to him.  “It is no good,” I
said, “your brother has come back again.  He is standing on the
opposite side of the road.”

“He saw you?”

“Yes, I think so.  Indeed, I am sure of it.”

“Then he saw, as I did, that you gave a little start.  Possibly he
also saw you watching at the window when he passed the first time.
He is rather a clever man, and he can make deductions.  I fear,
mademoiselle, that in a few moments you will be troubled with a visit
from my brother.”

“But you,” I said, “what about you?”

“If I got through the window of the room at the back of this flat
where should I be?”

“You would drop into the little yard of the flat below this.  It is
at present untenanted, and you might make your way into it, or else
climb the wall and get----”

My electric bell purred loudly.  A shower of light taps came from the
knocker of the door.

“Keep him back for a minute or two, if you can!” said my guest in a
whisper.

I waited until the kitchen door had closed on him, and then opened
the front door to his brother.

Seeing him now close at hand, I found that he differed in many ways
from the man that he was pursuing.  He was much older and his hair
was beginning to go grey.  He gave me the impression of being a
better man altogether than his brother.  I do not know and shall
never know what the quarrel between them was, but I feel sure it was
his brother who was in the wrong.

He told me with a pleasant smile that he had come from the house
agents who had the letting of these fiats.  He could not remember
their names; he was a foreigner and these English names easily
escaped him.  But he believed that there was a flat to be let in that
block.

“Yes,” I said, “the basement flat is to let.  You understand--the
basement flat?  You go down the area steps to get to it.  Why ring
here in order to tell me that?”

He was desolated.  “Because, mademoiselle, I have had the very great
misfortune to lose the key of that basement flat.  Possibly your own
latch-key would fit it.”

“No, it would not.  But you need not mind, for you would not have
taken the flat in any case.  They are not intended for rich people.”

He laughed.  “Appearances are so deceptive,” he said.  Then quite
suddenly and rather adroitly he stepped past me into the passage.
“Ah,” he said, looking round, “if I could have a little place like
this, furnished and arranged with the exquisite taste that is shown
here, I should be perfectly content.”

“Will you please go away?” I said.

“Certainly, mademoiselle, in one moment.  Your kindness will permit
me just to see the arrangement of the rooms, so that I may determine
whether a flat here would be suitable for me.  You have made me a
little nervous by casting doubt upon it.”

“You cannot see any of the rooms,” I said.  “You must go at once.”

“And if not?”  He smiled.

“If not, I shall fetch a policeman and hand you over to him.”

He still smiled.  “Believe me,” he said, “I am sorry indeed to give
you this extra trouble, but I am afraid I must ask you to fetch that
policeman.  In your absence I can inspect the rooms at my leisure.  I
can at least promise you that I will take the greatest care not to
injure them in any way.”

Quickly and adroitly he slipped past me again and went straight into
the kitchen.  I held my breath and listened, and did not fetch the
policeman.  In a moment he came out of the kitchen again.

“No policeman yet?” he said.  “You are kind to me, and I will repay
it by leaving at once.  I see,” he added meaningly, “that you keep
your kitchen window wide open.  The English love fresh air, do they
not?  Good morning.”

So that was all right.  The man behind the door had escaped.

* * * * * *

Two days later I received two surprises.  The van of a West-End
florist degraded itself by stopping at my flat and delivered a hamper
of exquisite flowers and fruit.  I had ordered nothing, and could not
at first believe that they were intended for me.  But a short note
was enclosed.


“Permit me, dear mademoiselle, with these few flowers to make my
apologies look prettier than my rudeness the other day.  I shall not
take the basement flat after all.”


The evening post brought me another letter, registered, containing
five Bank of England twenty-pound notes, and another letter.


“You seemed, mademoiselle, to think so little of your great kindness
to me on Tuesday, that I think you should have some souvenir of it.
It would be idle of me to match my taste against yours, and with
renewed gratitude I leave the choice to you.”


Neither letter bore any address or any signature.  At first I was a
little puzzled to make out how they had got my name.  But there were
many ways in which that might have been managed.  A simple inquiry at
the house agents would have been one of them.  It was impossible to
return their presents, and, to be quite honest, I doubt if I should
have returned them if it had been possible.  For the next few days I
fed on peaches and bought things and lived gloriously.

* * * * * *

About a year later I read in a newspaper a curious story.  A man had
jumped overboard in mid-Channel and another had immediately gone over
after him.  It was supposed to be a gallant attempt at rescue, and
the statement of a passenger that he saw the rescuer grip the other
man by the throat as if to choke him was not credited.  The men bore
different names, but in personal appearance were remarkably like one
another.  The phrase used was, “They might have been brothers.”  A
description of the appearance left little doubt in my mind, and I
could fully believe that passenger’s story.




V

THE SPIRITS OF HANFORD GARDENS

The windfall which came to me from my adventure with “The Man behind
the Door” tempted me to engage some help in the domestic work of my
little flat.  I cooked admirably, but I did other things less well
and they bored me; so I talked to my baker, a man of genial and
mature wisdom, and he said that I couldn’t do better than take Minnie
Saxe if I could get her.  So I set out to engage Minnie Saxe; and in
the end Minnie Saxe engaged me.

She was a girl of sixteen, as flat as a board, with a small bun of
sand-coloured hair, a mouth like a steel vice, and an eye like a
gimlet.

Given the sex and the opportunities she would have been Napoleon.  As
it was, she was a manager, given up to managing everything and
everybody, including her own weak-kneed father.  To see her was to
know that she was capable, but I thought I ought to put the usual
questions as to previous experience and character.  She waived them
aside.

“You don’t want to trouble about that, miss.  I’m all right.  If I
say I’ll do for you, I will, and you won’t ’ave no fault to find.
Now then, what do you do for yerself--I mean, for a livin’?”

“Well,” I said, “I have some independent means.”

“I see--money of yer own.”

“Yes, though not much.  Then I had thoughts of some business.  Lately
I’ve been writing a little--stories for a magazine.”

“I see, miss.  Unsettled.  Well, church or chapel?”

I fenced with that question discreetly, and she came off it at once
to tell me, almost threateningly, that I couldn’t have my breakfast
before eight.  I said that even so late an hour as nine would suit me.

“And what time should I ’ave finished doin’ of you up if you didn’t
breakfast afore nine?  That wouldn’t do neither.  Well, I shall be
there soon after seven.  You’ll ’ave your breakfast at eight and I
shall go as soon as I’m through with what’s wanted.  I may look in in
the evening again, but that ’ull be accordin’.  And my money will be
four shillin’ a week.  I can but try it.”

So I was engaged as mistress to Minnie Saxe, and I am glad to say
that I gave satisfaction.  On the first morning, just before she
went, she asked candidly if there was anything I “wanted done
different,” and the few suggestions which I made were never
forgotten.  “And there’s just one thing,” she said at the door.  “If
my fawther comes round ’ere subbin’--I mean wanting a shillin’ or two
o’ my money what’s comin’--’e ain’t to ’ave nutthink.  If ’e says I
sent ’im, jest tell ’im ’e’s a liar.”

“Do you have trouble with your father?”

“Should do, if I took my eye off of ’im.  ’E’s afride of me.”

I could understand that.  I tried to say something delicate and
sympathetic about the wide spread evils of intemperance, Minnie Saxe
looked puzzled.

“Watcher mean, miss?  Drink?  Why, ’e’s a life-long teetotal.  No,
it’s sweets as ’e can’t keep awye from--sugar an’ choclit, an’
pyestry, and ice-creams from the Italyuns.  ’E’s no better nor a
child--mikin’ ’isself a laughin’-stock an’ wyestin’ ’is money.  And
if I ’ont give ’im none for such truck ’e’s as cunnin’ as a cart-load
of monkeys about gettin’ it.  That’s why I dropped you that word o’
warnin’.”

The word of warning was wanted.  Her father called a few days later
to say that Minnie had asked him to look in on his way back from work
to ask the kindness of sixpence in advance as they had friends to
supper.  He was a fat little man with a round innocent face, and
really looked much younger than his daughter.  I lectured him
severely and he made no defence.  “I did think that sixpence was a
cert,” he said sadly.  “But there--she don’t leave one no chawnst.”

I consoled him with a large slice of cake.  But unfortunately Minnie
found him in the street in the act of devouring it.  “And,” she told
me, “of course I knowed that kike by sight.  And a pretty
dressin’-down I give ’im fur ’is cadgin’ wyes.”  He worked for a
book-binder when he could get a job, and was also intermittently a
house-painter and a night-watchman.

I got on very well with Minnie.  She shopped admirably and got things
cheaper and better than I had ever done.  Owing to her fine
independence of character she was occasionally rude, but there was
always a penitential reaction; she did not apologise or even allude
to the past, but for a few days she would call me “m’lady,” give me
more hot water than usual in the morning, and bring every bit of
brass in the place to a state of brilliant polish that seemed almost
ostentatious.  She respected my cooking and despised my
story-writing, and I am inclined to think she was right.  “You can
cook my ’ead off,” she said in a complimentary moment; but I never
attempted that delicacy.  The trouble with my stories was that I had
not got my poor dear papa’s style and could not get it.  The children
in my stories were just as consumptive and just as misunderstood as
in his; they forgave their mother and saved the kitten from drowning
and died young.  And the excessively domestic magazine that always
accepted him almost always refused me.

I began to get rather nervous.  I had given up the notion of
capturing some big business by the sheer brilliance of my ideas.  I
had no business training and no familiarity with the ways of it.  I
was unproved, and firms would not let me begin at the top to prove
me.  Perhaps it was not unnatural, though I still feel sure that some
of the ideas had lots of money in them, if only I could have found
any backing.  I did not make anything like enough by story-writing to
pay my expenses, and in consequence I was eating up my capital.
“Wilhelmina Castel,” I said to myself severely, “this cannot go on.”
I could not hope for a continual supply of windfalls.  My hatred of
the usual feminine professions, with thirty shillings a week as the
top-note and a gradual diminuendo into the workhouse, was as strong
as ever.  Yet I questioned whether it would not be better for me to
spend capital in learning shorthand and typewriting, worm my way into
a good business house as a clerk, and then trust to my intelligence
to find or make the opportunities that would ultimately lead to a
partnership.  I wished I had someone with whom I could talk it over.
But what Minnie Saxe said was perfectly true.

“You ain’t got no friends seemingly,” said Minnie Saxe.

“Yes, I have, Minnie, but not here.  In London I’m playing a lone
hand, as they say.”

“Well, it ain’t right.  And I shan’t be lookin’ in We’n’sday night,
’cos I’ve promised to do up Mrs. Saunders.”  She always spoke of her
employers as if they were parcels.

It is easy enough for a girl who is alone in London to make friends,
but in nine cases out of ten they are not friends.  The friend is not
made but arrives in the usual formal channels.  And when these usual
channels are closed it is perhaps better to do without friends.  Yet
I had made one or two acquaintances.

One of them was a neat little woman in a brown coat and skirt.  We
had come across one another while shopping in the North End Road.
One day when we were both in the grocer’s shop her string-bag
collapsed and I assisted at a rescue of the parcels.  She thanked me;
she had a musical voice and spoke well--with a slight American
accent.  After that, we always spoke when we met; it was mostly about
the weather, but gradually she told me one or two things about
herself.  She was married and had no children and wanted none.  She
liked old houses, and lived in one.  “There are plenty of them in
Fulham, if you know where to look,” she added.

On the night that Minnie was “doing up” Mrs. Saunders, I dined at a
little confectioner’s near Walham Green.  That is to say, I had a
mutton chop, a jam tartlet, and a glass of lemonade there.  One took
this weird meal in a little place at the back of the shop, just big
enough to hold two small tables and the chairs thereof, and decently
veiled by a bead curtain from the eye of the curious.  I sat waiting
for my chop and reading the evening paper when a rattle of the
curtain made me look up.  In came the little woman in brown.  She
seemed rather bewildered at seeing me, said “Good evening,” and
modestly took her place at the other table.  But she had clearly
hesitated about it, and I could not seem too unsociable.

“Won’t you come and sit here?” I said.  “Unless, of course, you are
expecting anybody.”

“Thanks so much, I’m quite alone.  I didn’t know--I thought you might
be waiting for a friend.”

I laughed.  “No, I have no friends--in London at any rate.”

“I am sure you have no enemies,” she said with conviction.

“I don’t think I have.  I’m all alone, you see.  Do you often come
here?  It’s a quaint little place.”

“Not very often.  But to-night my husband is out--professionally
engaged--he is a spiritualist, you know.  So I let my maid go out
too, and locked up the house and came here.”

“So your husband is a spiritualist.  That sounds interesting.  Does
he see visions and make tables jump, and do automatic writing, and
all those things?”

“Oh, no!  He has been for years a student of spiritualism.  And, of
course, he is, as I am, a profound believer in it.  He understands
the best ways to conduct a _séance_, and mediums like to work with
him for that reason, but he is not a medium himself.  I am a
medium--at least, I was.”  She fiddled with a little pepper-pot on
the table, turning it round and round.  “Oh, I wish I were you!” she
said suddenly.

I was astonished.  “But why?” I asked.

“Well, the story is no secret if it won’t bore you.  It’s known to
many people already.  Have you ever heard of Mr. Wentworth Holding?”

“Of course.  You mean the financier and millionaire.”

“Yes.  Well, he heard of my husband and of his medium, Una.  I was
always known as Una.  I have heard it said that these hard men of
business are often superstitious.  I should put it that they are
shrewd enough to see that there is something beyond them.  Mr.
Holding wrote to my husband to ask him to find out the future of a
certain stock.  Now that money-making kind of question is one which
the spirits always dislike.  As a rule they refuse to answer, or
answer ambiguously.  My husband did not expect much, but he gave me
the question, and as soon as it was controlled my hand wrote, ‘Heavy
fall in three days.’  My husband telegraphed this at once to Holding.
The financier could not quite believe or quite disbelieve.  He did
not bear the stock, but also he did not buy it--as in his own
judgment he had intended to do.  The fall took place, and he sent my
husband the biggest fee we have ever received, and said we should
hear from him again.”

“But why does all this make you wish you were I?”

“That’s soon told.  Holding has written again and wishes to engage
the services of my husband and his medium exclusively.  My husband
has warned him that the spirits will not continue to interest
themselves in his business, but he says that he does not mind that
and that there are other things that interest him as much as
business.  The terms he offers are princely.  The work would delight
us both.  And here comes the trouble: from the moment that I answered
that question about the stock--perhaps because I answered it--I have
lost power.  My husband has searched London for a medium to take my
place and can find none.  Some of them drink, and very many of them
cheat, and those who are decent and honest very often fail to get the
results.  And that is why I wish I were you; for I feel just as sure
that you are an excellent medium as I am that you are good and above
any kind of trickery.  You won’t think me impertinent?  I’ve always
studied faces, you know.”

“But how can I be a medium?  I have never done anything of the kind
in my life.”

“But that does not matter--not in the very least.  I am quite sure of
what I say.  I only wish you had some spare evenings, and wanted to
make money, and could help us.”

“All my evenings are spare evenings, and I do want to make money.
But I fear my help would be worth nothing.”

“Come and see at least.”  She glanced at her watch.  “My husband will
be back in a few minutes.  We live at 32 Hanford Gardens--quite near
here.”  Perhaps she noticed the look of cautious hesitation on my
face.  “Or would you rather come later?  You might prefer to----”

“No,” I said, “I’ll come now.”  I confess that I felt rather curious.
I was not in the least a believer in spiritualism, but I did
believe--and do still believe--that things happen for which no known
law supplies the explanation.

No. 32 Hanford Gardens was a little box of a place with a small
walled garden.  It was an old house, and the tiny room into which my
new friend brought me was panelled.  The panels had been painted a
dark green, and the thick noiseless carpet was of the same colour.
It struck me, I remember, that they must have given a good price for
that carpet.  It was scantily furnished with a square table, a few
solid mahogany chairs, and a couch in the recess by the fireplace.  A
man sat by the table, and in front of him was what looked like a
glass ball, the size of a cricket-ball, resting on a strip of black
velvet.  He rose as we came in.  The light was dim--for the room was
lit only by one small shaded lamp in a sconce on the wall--but I
could see that he was a gaunt man of forty, hollow-eyed, with a
strong blue chin, looking like a tired actor.

I had already given my new acquaintance my name and learned that she
was Mrs. Dentry.  She presented her husband, and in a few words
explained the situation.  He had a pleasant voice and rather a
dreamy, abstracted manner.

“It is very kind of you,” he said hesitatingly.  “I do not know, of
course, if you have a spiritual power, and one meets with many
disappointments--as I have already done this evening.  Still, one can
try.”

“My husband,” said Mrs. Dentry, in explanation, “has been to-night to
see a medium who professed to get most wonderful results.  So he was
no good, Hector?”

“Worse than that.  Conjuring tricks--and not even new conjuring
tricks.”

Then he turned to me with a host of rapid questions, and seemed
satisfied with my answers. “We may have no results, but at any rate
there will be no trickery.” He glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, I
have to go out for half an hour to see a client of mine. But my wife
knows what to do--you will be able to make your first experiments
without me.”

He went out and presently I heard the front door bang. Mrs. Dentry made
me sit at the table and place my hands on it. “Wait,” she said, “until
you are sure that the spirits are present, and then ask them aloud to
raise the table from the floor.”

She went over to the other end of the room and turned out the lamp;
then she lit a lamp that gave a little blue flicker, by which I could
distinguish nothing except the face of Mrs. Dentry standing beside it.

For a few moments nothing happened; then loud raps came from all
parts of the room, and the pictures rattled on the walls, and a cold
wind blew sharply across my face and hands.  I was astounded.  Mrs.
Dentry had not moved from her position at the other end of the room,
and I could just see that she was smiling.

“I knew it would be all right,” she said softly.  “Go on, please.”

“If there are spirits here,” I said--and somehow the voice hardly
sounded like my own--“I ask them to raise this table from the ground.”

Very gradually I felt the table--which was fairly solid and
heavy--begin to rise.  It rose about two feet in the air and
remained suspended.  I pressed on it with my hands and could not
force it down.  After a moment or two it fell to the ground with a
bang, and I removed my hands.

“That will do,” I said faintly, and Mrs. Dentry struck a match and
re-lit the lamp.  Then she and I sat on the sofa and talked.  She
said that I was wonderful and must certainly come and help them.  If
she might mention terms, she knew that her husband would pay a guinea
for each sitting; at any rate I must come while the Wentworth Holding
business was on.  She urged that I owed it to myself to develop my
marvellous powers.  As she was talking I heard the click of a key in
the front door and Mr. Dentry entered, his hat and gloves still in
his hands.

“Well?” he said eagerly.  “Did you get anything?”

“Anything?” said his wife.  “Everything.  Miss Castel is a really
wonderful medium.”

We talked on for some time.  I would promise them nothing definitely.
But I gave them my address, and said that I would probably come once
again at any rate.  They were in despair that I would not give them
any further assurance, but I was obstinate.  I regarded the whole
thing with a curious mixture of curiosity and repulsion.

* * * * * *

Next morning Mrs. Dentry called to see me.  Wentworth Holding was
sending a man of science that night to examine into the whole thing;
it was essential that I should be there.

“If I go,” I said, “I do not want my name given.”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Dentry.  “You will be addressed as Una.”

“Then,” I said, “Mr. Holding’s tame investigator would be made to
believe that I was the same medium that foretold the fall of the
stock.  I don’t like that.”

“True,” said Mrs. Dentry.  “I hadn’t thought of that.  It doesn’t
really much matter.  But you’d better be called Una all the same;
there’s no cheating about it, because you’re ever so much better than
the original Una.”

“I don’t think so.  This morning, for instance, I tried the automatic
writing and got nothing.”

“That’s because you don’t know how to set about it.  My husband will
show you.  I myself failed scores of times at first.  But as for the
name, that must be just as you wish.  You may be quite nameless if
you like.”

“I should prefer it.”

“And please don’t make any more experiments without us.  If the
conditions are not right you will get no results, and in any case you
will be tiring yourself.  We want you to-night to be as fresh and
full of vitality as possible.  If you could get an hour’s sleep this
afternoon it would be all the better.”

But I could not sleep that afternoon although I made the attempt.
There were things in my interview with Mrs. Dentry that I did not
quite like.  I began to wish that I had never gone into the business
at all.

* * * * * *

I kept my appointment at nine that night, and the Dentrys’ rather
frowsy maid showed me into the room where I had been on the previous
evening.  Two men in evening dress stood by the fireplace.  One was
Dentry; the other was a short, solid-looking man with a closely
clipped grey beard.  At the table sat an elderly lady in black, with
tight lips and a proud, disapproving face.  Dentry thanked me for
coming, and explained that his wife could not be present.  “She is,
in fact, taking some of my regular work in order that I may be free.”
The grey-bearded man was introduced to me as Dr. Morning.  The
elderly lady, to whom I was not presented, was his wife.

“The doctor and Mrs. Morning are acting for Mr. Wentworth Holding,”
said Dentry.  “They are here to find out whether we cheat.  I admit
the unfortunate necessity of such an examination, and I may add that
I welcome it.  How will you begin, Dr. Morning?”

“With the walls.”

“Certainly,” said Dentry.  He changed his position and leaned against
one of the panels.  The doctor began with that panel, but neither
there nor in the rest of his thorough examination of the room did he
seem to come across anything of a suspicious character.  This part of
the business rather bored me.  I wanted to get on and see what would
happen.

The doctor produced several straps with bells attached to them, and
Mrs. Morning fastened a couple of these on my hands and wrists.  She
did this without speaking a word to me, and as she tightened the
strap on my wrists she looked as if she wished they had been
handcuffs.  The doctor secured Dentry in a similar manner.  If either
he or I moved hand or foot the sound of the bells would betray us.
The doctor, Dentry and myself took our seats at the table in the
usual way.  Mrs. Morning sat at a little distance.  All the lights
were put out, but there was an unlit candle on a little table beside
Mrs. Morning, and she held a box of matches ready in her hand.

Almost immediately Dentry asked, in a clear, loud voice, “Is there
any spirit here present?  From a far corner of the room came a low
snarl as of some wild beast.

“The spirit present,” said Dentry, “is an evil spirit.  It will be
safer not to go on with the sitting.”

“We will go on, please,” said Dr. Morning.

“Very well,” said Dentry.  “I disclaim all responsibility.”

“Of course,” said the doctor.  There was distinctly a note of
contempt in his voice.

For a few slow minutes we went on sitting in silence, and then I
heard a crash.  Mrs. Morning struck a match and lit the candle at her
side.  I could see that the doctor had been thrown violently to the
ground.  “All right, all right,” he said to his wife.  “I’m not hurt.
Let me have a little more light, please.”

He remained seated on the carpet while his wife lit the lamp and
Dentry stood over him expressing his regret for what had happened.
The doctor took no notice of Dentry.  He put on a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles, and as soon as the lamp was lit put his head down so that
his eyes were nearly level with the carpet.  Then he got up briskly,
brushing the dust from his clothes.  “That will do,” he said.  “We
will be going now, and I will call on you, Mr. Dentry, to-morrow
morning at ten o’clock, if that suits you.”

“Certainly,” said Dentry.  “Any time you like, Dr. Morning.”  He
seemed to me to be trying to cover with an attempt at swagger some
real uneasiness.  He kept on pointing out to the doctor how severe
the test conditions had been.

I was left alone when they had passed out into the hall, but the
doctor came back almost immediately on the plea that he had left his
spectacles.  He turned to me at once.  “Know these people well?” he
said.

“No; my acquaintance with Mrs. Dentry was a chance one.”

“Done this kind of thing often before?”

“Only once, on the one occasion when I was here before.  Mrs. Dentry
told me I was a medium.”

“She would,” said the doctor grimly.  “Well, you’re not.  You’d
better leave it.”

“I will.”

“I believe,” he said meditatively, “you are all right.  Good night.”
And he held out his hand to me.  I followed him into the hall, and I
noticed that he did not shake hands with Dentry.

After the doctor and his wife had gone Dentry pressed me to wait for
a few minutes to see his wife.  She would be certain to return in a
few minutes.

I refused, and I also refused to let him escort me home.  But, as it
chanced, I had an escort all the same.  For just outside in the
street I happened to meet Minnie Saxe.

“I didn’t know you went to that place, miss,” said Minnie Saxe
severely.

“What’s the matter with it?” I asked.  And Minnie Saxe told me what
was the matter with it.

* * * * * *

After breakfast next morning I sat and thought it over.  Minnie Saxe
and her father had been employed as caretakers at 32 Hanford Gardens.
Her father had been also employed to repaint some of the rooms.  Thus
Minnie Saxe knew that the wainscot in the recess on the left of the
fireplace in the front room was removable.  It was impossible for
anyone in the front room to detect this.  On that side it appeared to
be tightly nailed and solid.  But anyone in the back room could slide
a couple of bolts and find a way open into the front room.  Also,
nobody knew how Mr. and Mrs. Dentry made their money.  Also, Mr.
Dentry drank.  And it was Minnie Saxe’s belief that they were engaged
in the manufacture of false coin.

It was all quite clear to me now. The Dentrys had required an
accomplice. And an accomplice is a very dangerous person. If they could
get some simple, honest fool, like myself, to believe she was a medium
and that she was in reality responsible for the manifestations, all
would be safe. The accomplice would not even know that there was any
trickery. On the first occasion when I was at Hanford Gardens, Mr.
Dentry had not left the house. A front door may shut heavily though no
one goes in or out. And I could see that Dentry had brought his hat and
gloves into the room instead of leaving them in the hall, with a view
to impressing me with the idea that he had not been in the house. Of
course he had been in the back room and had entered by the wainscot.
There was a reason doubtless for that thick and noiseless carpet. At
the next sitting Mrs. Dentry had simply taken the place of her husband.

I knew that Dr. Morning had discovered the trick, but I could not make
out how he had discovered it. He had removed a couch and examined that
particular piece of wainscot with the utmost care, and I am sure that
he had been perfectly satisfied with it.

In the meantime, what was I to do?  Ought I to inform the police, or
to write to Mr. Wentworth Holding, or to call on Dr. Morning?  Great
though my disgust with the Dentrys was, I had a stupid woman’s
reluctance to get them into serious trouble.  As I was thinking over
these things there came a tap at my outer door.  Minnie Saxe had gone
and I opened the door myself.  Mrs. Dentry stood there, looking very
nice and fresh and neat.

“Have you just a few minutes to spare?” she said.

I asked her to come in.

“It’s such a disappointment,” she began.  “Dr. Morning was quite
satisfied--indeed, under his conditions any trickery would have been
impossible.  But Mr. Holding has developed religious scruples.  He
won’t go on.  So I fear I have no more work of the kind to offer you.
In fact, we are leaving for Liverpool to-morrow ourselves.  We have
heard of an opening there.  But I have brought your fee.”  She began
fumbling with her purse.

“I shall not take your money, Mrs. Dentry,” I said.  “I know exactly
how the swindle is worked.  Minnie Saxe, who was once employed by you
as caretaker, is at present my servant.  And she is a very observant
and intelligent child.  But there are two things I don’t understand,
and I should like you to explain them.”

Beyond the fact that she breathed a little quicker, Mrs. Dentry
seemed quite unput out.  “What are your questions?” she asked.

“I have never given you my address.  How did you know it?”

“My husband followed you home last night.  He was afraid of any
communication between you and the doctor.  He did not recognise
Minnie Saxe, nor do I think he knows how much she has found out.  And
the other question?”

“How did Dr. Morning find out?  I am sure his examination of the
walls of the room told him nothing.”

“You are quite right,” she said.  “It was only at the last moment
that he discovered anything.”

“You mean that he saw you under the sofa, or that you had not time to
replace the wainscot?”

Mrs. Dentry smiled sadly.  “Oh, I’m not quite so clumsy as that,” she
said.  “I was out in the other room and the wainscot was in its place
even before the match was struck.”

“You had left something behind you, perhaps?  A handkerchief?”

“No, I don’t leave things behind me.  I wear a dress the colour of
the carpet and specially suited for quick, athletic movement.  It has
no pockets in it.  I’m not sure if you’d call it a dress at all.  The
thing was simplicity itself.  I had warned my husband against it
before.  The carpet has a long thick pile.  When anybody crawls
across a carpet of that kind they leave a trail that it does not take
an Indian to discover.  Dr. Morning chanced to think of that, and saw
that the trail led directly under the sofa.  He began this morning by
saying to me, ‘If you will not let me see the room on the other side
of this wall, the whole thing is a swindle, and I shall give Mr.
Holding my reasons for thinking so.’  I tried to bluster it out.  The
game was lost, but I might at any rate have managed to put a good
face on it.  Unfortunately, my husband came in.  He’d been drinking.
It was too awful, and----”

Here Mrs. Dentry collapsed suddenly and burst into tears.

It is not very easy to be severe with a woman who is crying because
her husband is a blackguard and she is a failure.  I, at any rate, am
not clever enough for it.  Before she went she gave me some curious
scraps of her personal history.  She and her husband had always been,
and still were, firm believers in spiritualism.  When she wrote down
the fall of the stock about which Mr. Holding was inquiring, she was
convinced that her hand was really controlled.  In order to make a
living though, and to attract the public, more was required than
could legitimately be obtained.  It was necessary to supplement.
This struck me as a nice euphemism.

I gave a sigh of relief when she had gone.  I was glad to be quit of
that business.




VI

UNREWARDED

As I have already explained, my adventures with the spiritualists
were more interesting than remunerative.  I contrasted rather
bitterly my light-hearted start upon my career in London and my
present condition.  It had seemed so simple to forsake the usual
futile and ill-paid lines of women’s work and to find a new and
better way for myself.  I had found nothing.  It was due more to my
luck than my judgment that I was not already at the end of my
resources.  As it was they were fast dwindling.

Every day I made a point of going out into the stimulating life of
crowded London streets.  Somewhere in them I felt that I should find
my chance.  Amid so much that was happening there would be some
circumstance that I could use to my profit.  I trained myself to
observe.  Whether it was by day or by night that I had taken my walk
I always sat down on my return and reviewed in my mind what I had
seen and wondered whether there were anything that I could turn to
account.

One morning after breakfast, as I picked up my newspaper, my eye fell
on an announcement that a lady had lost a pug-dog and would pay one
guinea for his restoration.  It seemed to me queer that I had never
thought of this before.  Why should I not find things and get
rewards?  Pug-dogs at a guinea a time did not represent wealth, but
there were more serious losses that brought higher rewards.  The same
paper provided me with an instance.  On the evening of the 20th
inst., in or near Erciston Square, West, Lady Meskell had lost a
pearl necklace.  A description of it was appended and a reward of
four hundred pounds was offered.

I knew Erciston Square very well.  It had been rather a favourite
place with me in my wanderings.  I liked to see the arrivals and
departures at dinners, dances and receptions.  Sometimes great people
were pointed out to me.

“That’s the Spanish Ambassador,” I heard one ragged boy say to
another.  I have not the least conception how he knew, but I am quite
certain he was right.  That was at No. 14, and it was to No. 14 that
the pearl necklace, if found, was to be restored.  It struck me that
the reward offered was unusually large.  I had seen pearl necklaces
in shop windows which could be bought for less.  Still, undoubtedly
their value might mount to almost any figure.

A paragraph in the paper threw a little more light on the subject.
Lady Meskell was a fashionable woman, and was always taking stalls at
bazaars, or acting in amateur theatricals on behalf of different
charities.  She affected to treat her loss lightly.  “The necklace
was not really very valuable,” she said, “but I prized it for its
associations.  It was given me by my husband.  On Wednesday night I
was walking in the garden of the Square, as I often do on fine summer
evenings.  I believe,” she added, “that I am the only resident who
makes any use of the garden at all, except perhaps a few children in
the afternoon.  My necklace must have dropped either in the garden or
the street.  As soon as I discovered my loss I had the garden, which
of course is not accessible to the public, thoroughly searched from
end to end, and nothing was found.  I’m afraid it must have dropped
in the street, where, of course, it would have been snapped up at
once.”  She had communicated with the police and was quite hopeful
that the necklace would be recovered.  “You see,” she added, “I am
offering a reward which is really more than a thief would be able to
get for it.”

There were one or two points about her statements which seemed to me
rather curious.  I turned up a very rough and abbreviated diary that
I was in the habit of keeping, and found, as I had expected, that on
the evening of Wednesday the 20th I had walked through Erciston
Square.  The time must have been between six and seven.  I lay back
in my chair and closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Erciston
Square garden as seen by the public from outside.  It was much like
any other of the square gardens.  Masses of sooty evergreens gave it
a decent privacy.  Geraniums and blue lobelias struggled for life in
a prim bed that skirted a formal and shaven lawn.  There were a few
big plane trees, and in the middle of the garden there was a kind of
summer-house or shelter.  What had I seen in Erciston Square on
Wednesday evening which would throw any light on the matter?  I had
seen something; I had seen somebody leave the garden, and that
somebody was most certainly not Lady Meskell.  A faint idea came to
me--it was hardly a theory as yet.

I went to the public reading-room next day and looked over those
papers which purvey fashionable intelligence and personal paragraphs,
and as Lady Meskell had been brought into the public eye by the loss
of her pearls I found a good deal about her.  Her present age was not
given, but she was spoken of as being young.  And there were the
usual rhapsodies about her beauty.  She was of mixed parentage, her
mother having been Spanish and her father English.  She had inherited
fortunes both from her father and her husband.  The latter had been
dead about three years, and she had not re-married.  She had one
daughter, a girl of nine.  She was generous, particularly to her
favourite charities, and her dramatic abilities were spoken of in
terms that the Press do not often spare for amateurs.  Well, there
was nothing here to contradict the idea that I had already formed.
Indeed, there was one detail that confirmed it.

For a week I hesitated.  Every day I saw in the paper Lady Meskell’s
announcement of the reward of four hundred pounds.  I wanted those
four hundred pounds rather badly.  Suppose I called at No. 14
Erciston Square?  If my guess was wrong as it might very easily be, I
should make Lady Meskell exceedingly angry.  Need that concern me
very much?  If I were right, then the possibilities were great.

That afternoon I bought a new hat, which suited me.  That always
gives me courage.  And I took a hansom.  Nothing keeps one’s nerves
steadier and raises one’s self-respect more than a little
extravagance, and I could not afford either the hat or the hansom.  I
drove to No. 14, and demanded in a clear and unfaltering voice if I
could see Lady Meskell.

“Her ladyship is not at home,” said the butler.  And I own that it
was some relief to me to hear it.

“Will you tell her ladyship,” I said, as I handed him my card, “that
I called with reference to her pearl necklace?”

The man hesitated.  “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he
said.  “If you will wait for one minute I will inquire.”

He showed me into a big, over-furnished and over-decorated
drawing-room.  As I was looking at rather a nice copy of a well-known
Rubens, the door opened and Lady Meskell came towards me.

Lady Meskell was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five.  She
was still distinctly beautiful.  Her eyes and hair were very dark.
Her complexion was perhaps a little too pale, but I liked it.  Rouge
would not have suited her.  Her general appearance seemed to suggest
a curious association of poetry and commonness.  The commonness was
not in her dress, which was very quiet, very expensive, and in the
fashion of the day after to-morrow.  I think it lay in her mouth (she
had a brute of a mouth) and in her rather podgy white hands.  Her
smile of welcome showed perfect teeth--perhaps it was intended to
show them.  The fat fingers of one hand twisted up my card.

“This is very good of you, Miss Castel,” she said at once.  “Do sit
down and tell me all about it.  And first of all, have you got my
pearls?”

“No, Lady Meskell,” I said, “I have not got them.”

Her expression did not change at this.  She still listened with an
air of polite attention.

“But,” I continued, “I have thought over the case and I have formed a
theory.  If the theory is correct I can tell you where your pearls
are.”

“How interesting!  The police, you know, have been no good at all.  I
shall be so glad to have some fresh light on the subject, even if it
does not actually lead to anything.”

I felt convinced that she did not expect me to be able to tell her
anything at all, and that, as a kind-hearted woman, she meant to let
me babble for a few minutes and then get rid of me.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if my theory should happen to be wrong,
you will be exceedingly angry with me.”

Lady Meskell laughed.  “Oh, I hope not,” she said.  “I am very seldom
angry, but when I am I become rather awful.”

“The Spanish are privileged to have passions,” I said, “and you, I
think, are partly Spanish.  You begin to frighten me.”

Again she laughed.  “You needn’t be afraid really.  How did you know
I was partly Spanish?  Oh, yes, it was in the papers, of course.
Whatever your theory is, I want to hear it.  And I will take all the
responsibility of making you tell me it.”

“That’s very kind of you.  Your pearl necklace was not lost at all.
It was stolen by a man of about forty.  He was wearing a dark suit, a
dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat.  He
left the Square garden at five-and-twenty minutes to seven by the
gate on the other side of the Square.  He was a foreigner and is
almost certainly employed in some menial capacity.  I cannot tell you
his name, but I have no doubt that further information could be
obtained at the Spanish Embassy.  Although I have brought you here
the information which may enable you to recover your necklace, it is
information that you had in your possession all along.  You know more
even than I do, for you know both the names of this man.”

“This is really very interesting,” said Lady Meskell.  “You saw this
man leave the garden, I suppose?”

“I did.”

“And you have remembered it all this time?”

“I have trained myself to remember.”

“You are right in your description of his appearance.  He is a
foreigner, and he is--or was--a servant.  What made you suggest that
anything could be heard of him at the Spanish Embassy?”

“Your mother was Spanish.  The Spanish Ambassador attends your
receptions.  His carriage was pointed out to me.”

“A mistake,” said Lady Meskell bluntly.  “He has never been here, and
I know no Spaniards.  Deduction is a dangerous game, and it seems to
me that you’ve been playing it rather freely.  You deduced, for
instance, that what you said would make me extremely angry.  Now,
nothing that you have said could possibly make anybody angry.  Not
even your suggestion of complicity.  But I can quite imagine that
something which you thought might annoy a woman in my position
extremely.  Now tell me what you thought.”

“I have made a mistake.  I am sorry to have troubled you, and I will
go now, please.”

“Please don’t.  You won’t tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Meskell.  “I will take a hand at
this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you
do.  You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite
wrongly, that I had some connection with the Spanish Embassy.  Why
should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly,
and in the Square garden?  How could he get into the Square garden
unless I lent him a key?  There must be a romance here.  Romance fits
well with the Spanish blood, doesn’t it?  Briefly, you scented a love
affair.  The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back.
But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.”  She
looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this.  “You are quite
right,” she continued.  “I do not want the world to hear any such
story.  Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for
your silence.”  She took a step or two towards the writing-table.
“Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.

By this time I had become rather angry myself.  “I don’t know,” I
said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought
correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you,
or that you can offer me money in that way----”

Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of
laughter.  She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully.
“You are a very good girl,” she said.  “I thought you were from the
first.  But I was just making sure.  No, unromantic though it may
seem, there is no _liaison_ between myself and the man--he happens to
be a cook--whom you saw leaving the garden.  But, amid your mistakes,
you made one or two very happy guesses.  It is true that he took my
pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew
his name.  The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of
this week.  I have my own reasons for that.  But, as a matter of
fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday.  I
have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like,
before you go.”

“They were returned to you by this cook man?”

“Oh, dear, no!  That wouldn’t have done at all.  I can’t compound a
felony.  At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it.  My
friend the cook quite understood that.  A nice, ruddy-faced cabman
brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found
them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn
them ever since.  He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and
he knew that I knew.  But we went through it all with perfect
solemnity.  My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all
right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman.  But I think
that as you’ve been so clever--a little too clever, perhaps--you
ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story.  I did
not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody
laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed.  Tell me, did
you find out nothing else about me?”

“Two or three other things.  You were connected in different ways
with several charities.  Then again, you----”

“That’ll do.  It began with the charities.  I came across this good
gentleman in hospital.  He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny
imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of
Tottenham Court Road.  After demanding a pledge of secrecy he
confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”

“Then it was romantic, after all?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t.  I am sometimes inclined to think that nothing
ever is.  But I thought it was romantic.  I was as bad in that
respect as you are.  He had something on his mind, which he wished to
tell me.  He was to leave the hospital next day--I could not go to
see him, nor would it be safe for him to call at my house.  I had
servants who knew him.  He gave me the name of one of them, and quite
correctly too.  I have no idea how he got hold of it.  Would I give
him a meeting one evening in the Square garden?  What he had to tell
me was a matter of life and death.  It was a matter, in fact, that
concerned the life of the greatest in the land.  He was most urgent
and most serious.  If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot
his own life would be forfeited.  I told him that luckily I was in
the habit of walking in the Square garden on fine summer evenings.  I
am inclined to think that he knew this already.  I would go to the
summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he
might join me there, coming in from the other side of the Square.
Well, he came.”

“Wasn’t it very rash of you?”

“Very likely.  I may be a lot of other things, but I am not a funk.
I carried a useful weapon--it was not a dagger or revolver, but
merely a police whistle.  I was not in the least afraid of him.  He
kept it up splendidly to the very end.  He told me a long and
beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace.  The
plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and
my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited.
He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out
of the country.  As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my
cloak.  That was his opportunity.  I did not discover the loss until
I got back to my own house.  Even then, when I felt certain that he
had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve
his story.  It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct
in every point in which I was able to check it.  I drove at once to
Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made
up my mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story.  I
dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at
any time on any Anarchist in London.  I merely notified them that I
had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it.  I wished
to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot-free--not on his own
account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know
what an idiot I had made of myself.”

“And what about that servant who knew the Italian?”

“Simplicity itself.  He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian
know him.  The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that
name.  Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself
on that point.  Really, do you know, when I remember how my
advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the
reward.  Won’t you let me write that cheque?”

“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t feel as if I’ve
earned it myself.  And so I can’t take it.  I am sorry to have wasted
your time with my mistakes.”  I held out my hand to say good-bye.

She glanced at the clock nervously.  “But you mustn’t go yet--not
until you have seen the pearls.”  She rang and had the necklace
brought to her.  It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not
imagine why she had bothered about it.  I admired it and again said
good-bye.

“But you must stay and have some tea with me.  I am quite alone, and
it would be so kind of you.  I want you to tell me all about this
marvellous memory of yours.  I would give anything if I could
cultivate it in myself.”  Once more she glanced at the clock.

It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover,
that she was trying to keep me.  I was determined to go.  She
implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought
round to drive me back.  She could not bear to think of the amount of
trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me.  I might at
least let her carriage take me home.  But I immediately determined to
walk.  She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but
I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the Square.  I
walked round to the other side of it, and there, in the Square
garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign
appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet
collar, and a hard felt hat.

And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and, at the same
time, what an absolute fool Lady Meskell was.

I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few
weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in
the papers.  She had met him, it was said, in a hospital, where she
was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one
another.

As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really
dropped in the street, and really found by the cabman’s child, and
that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it.  It is
very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity,
the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell’s lies
to me, I had some feeling of envy.  It was only the chance that I
decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square
garden that gave her away to me.  I could not have done as well for
myself in so tight a place.




VII

A QUEER COMMISSION

For a time things went very badly.  My luck was right out.  A point
was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four
shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe.  I
was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies.
I was quite willing to economise on food and firing and--yes, even on
dress.  But I did not want to make my own bed any more.  I had to get
the more sordid part of the work of living done for me.  Naturally I
was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my
luck and the lowness of my exchequer.  She accepted without comment
my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast
if one were going to work in the morning.  She said nothing when I
found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room.  When she came in
unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea
and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather
rude.  Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had
sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the
liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all
my kindness to her.  I went into my own room to cry, and then came
back and had a kipper for breakfast.  They were remarkably good
kippers, fat and well-liking.

An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good
for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the
imagination.  The editors at this time sent my work back with
commendable promptitude; but I did get one little story placed in
_Tomlinson’s Magazine_, which I had considered to be altogether too
high for me and had only attempted in desperation.  I had a
mutton-chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross
feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in
the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of
serial that _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ would like.  I planned it all out
that night.  Next morning I took a ’bus to the City to see the editor
of _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ and tell him all about my idea.

He consented to see me.  He seemed to be a very young man and very
tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette-smoker.  An older
and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and
was handing him some proof sheets for inspection.

“Cut out ‘A Mother’s Prayer,’ and fill up with small jokes.
Otherwise all right.”  The fat man went out and the editor turned to
me.  I began to tell him my business.

“About a serial story!” he said.  “All right, send it in and we’ll
read it.”  He rose from his chair and glanced at the large, framed
notice on the wall.  The notice said--

  “YOU CAN SAY IT ALL IN FIVE MINUTES.”


I followed the glance and looked back at him.  “So I can,” I said,
“and I don’t want to waste any time over a long story unless I know
that it has, at any rate, a chance.”

“Certainly,” he said.  “Quite natural.  The first few chapters and a
synopsis will be enough.”  He was opening the door and shaking hands
with me.  The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to
him that after all he would let that “Mother’s Prayer” stand.  Some
people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.

I got on a ’bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless.  I rode
on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil
notes.  In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that
he had a strong face, full of character.  A moment later I noticed
that he had left his pocket-book behind him.  I picked it up and
dashed after him.

“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on
the ’bus.”

He took off his hat and looked at me keenly with deep-set, blazing
eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.  “My house is quite near, in the Square here.
I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few
minutes.”

“I don’t want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don’t see what there
is to say.”

“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.”  He grinned pleasantly.
“You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the
blunder.  But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you
to understand how great it is.  I shall wish very probably to speak
to you on quite a different matter.  We cannot talk here.  Come, my
name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in
Berkeley Square.”

“Very well,” I said.  “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable.  I
will come.  I know your name, of course.  In fact, I once met an
agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”

He looked at me sharply.  “Were you the honest medium?” he said.

“I was.”

“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially
his wife.”  I certainly had not thought so at the time.  “He couldn’t
make out how you got mixed up with that crew.  You will have to tell
me that, for I can’t make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”

I laughed.  “Oh, I’ll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.

The library of his house was on the ground floor.  Every available
inch of wall space was covered with book-shelves, and when I sat down
I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism.  He
remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it
contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.

“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance.  These
pages of memoranda are worth more.  At any rate there are people in
the City who would have given you a good deal more for them.  If you
had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding
your market.  Don’t you think you had better have slipped the book
into your pocket and said nothing?”

I hated this kind of thing.  “No,” I said bluntly.  “Why say these
things?”

He looked at me long and seriously.  “You are,” he said, “in many
respects exactly like Charles.  Charles,” he added, “is my son.  He
is a singularly quixotic young man, and at present he’s in the deuce
of a mess.”

What on earth was I to say to that?  As I did not know, I said
nothing.

“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”

“I write stories which are not accepted.  I have tried other
things--taking good ideas to a business man, for instance.  But I
could do nothing with it.  My time is my own.”

“You live alone?”

“Quite alone.”

He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a
chair opposite to me.  “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to
telling me rather more about yourself?  I can assure you that I do
not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say
will be repeated.”

“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life.
At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”

“No more do I,” he repeated.  “Except that I have some delicate work
that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who
could do it for me properly.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work.  I’ll tell you.”

I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done.  I noticed at the time
that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do.  He put
in a keen question here and there.  At the end he turned to me with a
smile.

“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel.  I
should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”

“He was--but I don’t let you say so.  You can speak quite plainly
about myself.”

“Certainly,” he said.  “We will begin then with you.  You have a
decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition.  For the rest,
you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire
confidence, and you have tact.  You are not, perhaps, the most
perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done, but the
work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better.  The
work concerns my son Charles.  Do you know him?”

“No,” I said.

“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man.  He is quixotically
good.  I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but
I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it.  He has
none.  He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing.  He
buys cheap clothes, and when I get angry in consequence he tells me
that these are not the things which matter.  He might marry
brilliantly, but he will not.  He has decided to marry a poor girl
who has worked for her living.  I don’t mind that in the least, but,
if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to
marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Matter with her?  Haven’t I said the name?--Sibyl Norton.”

“Yes, but I don’t know it.”

“You don’t want to know it.  It’s a name that gives itself away.
It’s obviously not a real name.  It’s dishonest; it’s stagey; it
makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”

I laughed.  “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant.  Is that all
you’ve got against her?”

“No.  I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance.  She is
quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a
cartload of monkeys.  She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main
chance.  She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less
individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life.  It is with the
greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can
manage to remember that she is there at all.  To come to business,
the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss
Sibyl Norton.”

“How?”

“Any way you like.  That’s your affair.  When I tell a clerk to get
me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’  He knows how to do it, and
he knows that I don’t.”

I got up to go.  “Thanks,” I said.  “But I don’t think I care about
this kind of thing.”

“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sit down!  I am quite serious about this.
Look here, I’ll give you all the help I can.  Why do you suppose I
had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning?  It is not like a
millionaire; it is especially not like me.  Often and often I have
had to borrow my ’bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because
I have no money whatever in my pocket.  I had that money with me this
morning because I wanted an argument.  A thousand pounds is as good
an argument as I know, except more thousands.  I had been down to
Dingleton’s, the private detective’s.  I meant to go in there and
tell them to buy this girl off.  A thousand pounds was to be the
first instalment of her price.  When I came there I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t go inside their beastly office.  It was too low down on
Charles.  Their underbred and under-educated agents would have made
some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me.  But
I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy
her.  A discreditable past would be of very little assistance,
because Charles is a quixotic fool.  The more he learned that she was
the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate
chivalry would drive him to marry her.”

“Why should one be able to buy her off?  I presume your only son is
your heir?”

“He is, at present.  But I can disinherit him to-morrow.  That point
might be made clear to Miss Norton.  I think a woman of her
astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth
more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”

“I don’t know your son, and I don’t know her.”

“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day.  You can meet Miss Sibyl
Norton whenever you like.  For, at present, she is getting a
precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist.  Pretty
combination, isn’t it?  Takes the mystery out of your hand first, and
then cuts your nails.”

“Very well,” I said.  “I am going to see these two people.
Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”

I lunched at the house that day.  There were about twenty at the
luncheon-party, and my clothes were all wrong for it, and I did not
care a bit.  I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that
he answered fairly well to his father’s description.  He was noble,
but vacuous.  A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have
been good-looking.  I would have trusted him better in temptation
than in a street riot.  He had a great admiration for Lovelace, and
was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite
poems.  Would I permit him to send me one?  I would.  He scribbled my
address on his shirt-cuff.

I got away from the house about three in the afternoon.  Mr.
Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising
for not being able to let me have his carriage.  “You see,” he said,
“you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she
knows my horses and liveries.”

I had not intended to go at once.  I wanted to get home and think
over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure.  But, after
all, it did not much matter.  A hansom took me to Miss Norton’s dingy
lodgings in Northumberland Street.  The tow-coloured aunt received me
in a dusty room and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry.

“Both,” I said.

“Miss Norton’s fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please.  I will
give you a receipt.”  Then she faded out of the room, saying that
Miss Norton would be down in a minute.

Miss Norton was down in a minute.  She wore a theatrical tea-gown,
had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to
be a fairly hard case.  I talked to her the whole time that she was
polishing my nails.  When it came to the other section of her weird
business I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.

“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said.  “But I can tell
you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines
of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or
later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present
engaged.  The second is, that you will have no success whatever in
the attempt.”  She broke off laughing.  “I did not read that in your
hand, of course.  I saw you in Berkeley Square conversing earnestly
with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning.  The rest was easy enough to
guess.  Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”

I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I
made a very fine figure.  “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly,
“why you would refuse?”

“I will tell you, but you won’t believe it.  Money has nothing
whatever to do with the matter.  If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper
it would be all the same to me.  If it were necessary, I could earn
enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”

“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me
personally.  Will you go on reading my hand, please?”

She took her revenge by giving me a remarkably bad character.

I took a hansom back to my rooms.  “Take cabs everywhere when you are
on my business,” Mr. Holding had said, though he seemed to prefer the
’bus himself.  The bothering thing was that everybody was quite
right.  Mr. Holding had not exaggerated the bad points of Miss
Norton’s character or the weakness of his son.  But Miss Norton,
dishonest money-grubber though she was, was perfectly sincere in her
attachment to Charles Holding and was not to be influenced by money
in that particular.  The position was impossible of solution, and I
decided that I had nothing to do but to call on Mr. Wentworth Holding
on the following day and tell him so.

I did not find the volume of poems awaiting me, and had not expected
to find it, but there was a letter in my letter-box, which began by
explaining why it had not arrived.  Mr. Charles Holding had wished to
have it put into a rather more suitable dress before it was presented
to me.  His letter went on to say that his meeting with me had been a
revelation to him.  It had compelled him to break off his engagement.
It was not a time to hesitate.  Whatever might be the attractions of
the woman whom he had once meant to marry, she had not the high
ideals, the quixotic spirit, the chivalrous devotion to all that is
best which he had found in me.  (Naturally, in talking to him I had
humoured him a little in what I knew to be his bent.  I even saw that
I had made some impression on him, but this was too astounding.)  The
letter went on in rather enraptured terms to speak of the loveliness
of my hair and to propose marriage to me.

So the game had, of its own accord, dropped neatly into my hand.  I
refused Mr. Charles Holding in writing and immediately, and the same
post transmitted to his father Charles Holding’s letter to me.  The
queer thing about the whole business, in the eyes of Mr. Wentworth
Holding, was that Miss Sibyl Norton did not bring an action for
breach of promise and scornfully refused the extremely handsome
solatium which was suggested to her.  But this did not surprise me.

I had to show a certain amount of conscience myself, or I should have
been made rich and unhappy, for Mr. Wentworth Holding’s gratitude was
extreme.  Even as it was I was enabled to feel myself out of all
danger of such privations as I had recently suffered for the next
year or two.




VIII

THE PEGASUS CAR

Extreme poverty and a low diet are not in themselves attractive, but
in some ways I was happier in my low-water period than I was now with
enough money banked to keep me in moderate comfort for a couple of
years.  I might be more satisfied with my circumstances, but I now
had leisure to become profoundly dissatisfied with myself.  I had
come to London to play a lone hand and do well by it.  I was not
going into any of the ruts.  I would not become a governess.  I had
brilliant ideas and enterprise and all the rest of the bag of tricks
to make a millionairess of me, yet I had only made few and
comparatively small sums by my wits; the rest had been pure luck
or--and this seemed more degrading still--had come to me more because
of the outside of my head than of the inside.  On my arrival in
London I did extremely well, merely from the fact that there was a
chance resemblance between a girl who was dead and myself.  My
success in the strange commission that Mr. Wentworth Holding gave me
had not been due in the least to my cleverness but to the fact that I
was pretty.  I had been outwitted by a fraudulent spiritualist and by
a romantic lady of title.  My attempts at literature had been
practically a failure.  When I had taken my bright ideas to business
men they had either ridiculed me or robbed me.  So, on a general
review of the case, I did not think as well of myself as I had done.
Self-disapproval is not only very unpleasant but it is positively bad
for one.  It takes away one’s spirit; it checks one’s invention.  I
determined to make a serious and sober effort to recover my own
esteem and incidentally to make a little money.

I looked round for a point from which to start, and after a great
deal of consideration I noted as a very useful fact that new motor
cars sold for very high prices.  A person who could influence the
sale of motor cars would be likely to make a good commission.  In the
old days, after this brief reflection, I should have put on a
cheerful smile and my best hat and gone round to one of the big
places in Long Acre to explain that I should like to sell cars for
them, and the manager of that place, having discovered in twenty
seconds that I knew nothing whatever about motor cars, had no
influential connection, and was about as likely to sell a motor car
as I was to sell the moon, would have shown me out--quite politely,
because I happened to be pretty.

So I began in a different way.  I went out and bought dark blue
linen--many yards of it--and came back and consulted with Minnie Saxe
on the manufacture of a garment.  Ultimately it was manufactured, and
I have seldom seen anyone look more pained and distressed than Minnie
Saxe did when I put the abomination on.

“I can’t let you go out in that, miss,” she said.  “You’d ’ave all
the boys in the place callin’ after you, and that brings disgrice on
me, it being known as I work for you.”

“That’s all right, Minnie,” I said.  “I’m not going to wear it in the
street.”

So far I had not gone outside my own province, and had moved with
comparative ease.  My next step had to be more circumspect, for I was
about to attack the business man once more.

There are many cars, and at that time they were all the same to me.
I read the motoring news in the daily papers assiduously for a week,
and then I thought that I would try the Pegasus people.  The Pegasus
car had just done some remarkable trials; it had one or two novelties
in construction; it had not an immense reputation already, but it
seemed to have a chance of making one.

So one afternoon I put on gorgeous apparel and walked into the
show-room of the Pegasus people looking exactly as if I were about to
buy a car.  I even felt a little like it too.  A tall, handsome man
in a frock coat and a powerful little fellow in a dirty overall
removed their attention from a car’s duodenum as I approached.  The
handsome man came forward.  The powerful, squat man remained by the
car; he still seemed busy with its vermiform appendix, but he was
listening all the time.

“I want,” I said, “to learn how to drive the Pegasus car.  I want
also to learn a good deal about the interior of the car so that I can
do adjustments and slight repairs.  And I want to learn everything
about tyres.”

There was just the flicker of a smile over the handsome man’s face,
but in a moment he had stowed it away at the back of his head and was
asking me suavely if I wished to buy a car.

“No,” I said boldly.  “Not at all.  I could not afford it.  I have
not the money.  Buy a car?  I’m more likely to sell one.  All I want
at present is to understand the car thoroughly, and to know how to
drive it.”

The handsome man hesitated.  The man in the dirty overall lifted up a
bit of the car’s femoral artery, looked at it, and then gave his
undivided attention to the handsome man and myself.

“I should, of course, be prepared to pay,” I added.

“Yes, of course, miss,” said the handsome man, “but you see--well, so
much of the work is hardly suited for a lady.  Some of it requires a
good deal of muscular strength.  Then, if I may mention it, you would
spoil your hands.  Then, again, you would hardly like to work in our
repairing shop among the ordinary workmen who are there.  There
really are many difficulties.  Hadn’t you better think it over,
perhaps?”

“Marshall.”  It was the voice of the powerful man in the dirty
overall.  It was a loud voice, and packed full of authority.

“Yes, sir,” said the handsome man in the frock coat.

“You will arrange that.  See?  Do the best you can for the lady.”

Then he wandered away through a glazed door which seemed to lead to
outer darkness, carrying tenderly in one hand one of the car’s
vertebræ.

I had been imagining all this time that the frock coat was the
supreme manager and general god of the place, and that dirty overall
was a mere workman.  I now saw that this was not the case.

“Well, miss,” said Mr. Marshall, “we can but try it, as Mr. James
says so.  You will have to get something to cover up your clothes if
you don’t want to spoil them.”

“I have got that already,” I said.  “I don’t want to work many hours
a day.  Two or three in the morning would be quite enough.  I suppose
I could not begin by driving?”

“No,” said Mr. Marshall.  “You would begin by trying to understand
the car; then, of course, the rest would depend upon how you get on.”
There was no hope in his face whatever.

Nothing remained but to settle the terms, and here it seemed to me
that Mr. Marshall was very reasonable and lenient.  But the man to
whom I should have liked to talk was Mr. James, and he did not appear
again that morning.

A very few days were enough to show me that there was a good deal to
be said for Mr. Marshall’s point of view.  I had expected to get my
hands covered with black oil, and I was not in the least
disappointed.  I did not like breaking my nails, but that happened
also.  It takes more force than a woman generally uses to take a tyre
off or to screw a thing up really tight.  The workmen in the place
were all decent, intelligent mechanics, a little inclined to be
amused at me at first, but concealing their amusement, and having the
fear of Mr. James before their eyes.  I saw him several times in the
course of my lessons.  He could do anything that had to be done in
the shop rather better than anybody else in it.

At the end of a month I was still learning my business.  One morning
as I was leaving Mr. James stood outside with one of the big Pegasus
cars in waiting.  The overall had vanished.  He looked smart, clean,
and indefinitely connected with His Majesty’s navy.

“If you have an hour to spare, Miss Castel, I want you to begin to
learn how to drive these cars.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.  “I should like it.  Who’ll teach me?”

“I shall,” said Mr. James.  “Now, if you’ll get in, please----”

I rather despised his style of driving then.  He was particularly
careful; slowed down round every corner, did not exceed the speed
limit, did not take narrow shaves.  He made the car go fast up hill,
and steadied her coming down.  He was an excellent driver really; a
driver with great knowledge and good nerve, and without any of the
vain idiot’s desire to show off.

Some weeks afterwards, when my motor education was nearing its
completion, Mr. James asked me suddenly one day what I was doing it
for.  “Do you mean to get a post as driver?” he asked.  “You could,
you know.  We could fairly recommend you, and I daresay some ladies
would prefer to have a lady driver.”

“No,” I said, “that was not my idea.  My idea was to work for your
firm when you think I am good enough.”

“You drive all right.  I’ll guarantee you know a lot more about the
car than a good many men do who are driving it about the country at
present.  But what was it that you are proposing to do for us?”

“I am proposing to show cars for you.  The fact is that your car
looks a little bit complicated at first.  If an intending purchaser
found that a young girl understood it and drove it easily he would be
reassured.”

“Yes,” said Mr. James reflectively.  “I’d thought of that.  There’s
something in it, perhaps.”

He seemed to be debating the matter with himself in silence for a few
moments, then he said, “Look here.  I’ve got a man coming up
to-morrow.  He may buy a Pegasus, or he may buy some other car.
Anyhow, he’s going to buy a car, and we should prefer that he bought
a Pegasus.  He’s a nervous kind of man, and my first idea was that in
order to make him feel quite secure I would drive him myself.  Now
I’ll change my mind.  He’d be more impressed if I sent the car out
with a girl.  If you sell the car to him we will pay you a small
commission.  Remember, he’s a nervous man.  You don’t want to show
him how fast the car can go.  Show him how handy it is in a block or
very slow traffic; the ease with which it is steered; the quietness
of the engines; the impossibility of a skid.”

“Yes, yes,” I said.  “I see all that.  I shall sell him that car.”

I was round next morning at eleven.  The possible purchaser was an
elderly solicitor, retired from practice, who after long searchings
of heart had decided that he would have a motor car.  He looked
dubiously at the big Pegasus waiting to take him his trial trip as if
he expected that it might go off any moment.  He was a good deal
startled when he was told that I should drive him.

“Is that all right?” I heard him ask Mr. James.

“I am sending you out,” said Mr. James, “with one of the best drivers
we’ve got.”

I got up, switched on the spark, and the engines started.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Hoskins, “I was always under the impression that
it was necessary to wind it up--to turn a handle.”

“So it would be,” I said, “if the car had been standing for a long
time, or on a very cold day, but a good four-cylinder car will
generally start with switching on the spark.”

“You are a careful driver, I hope,” he said, as I took him through
Piccadilly Circus.

“Yes, I think so,” I said, “but then this car is particularly easy to
manage.”

His nervousness wore off as we got further away from London.  He
desired me ardently to show him the utmost the car could do.  As it
could do fifty miles an hour and we were in a police-trapped country
at the time I refrained, but I showed him what it was to have plenty
of power in going up steep hills.  The car made nothing of them.  He
became silent as we drove back, and I did not bother him by
chattering.  Just as we were nearing home he said, “I like this car.
It goes well, and there can be no great difficulty about it if a girl
can drive it.  I shall buy it.”

He did not buy that particular car.  He got one like it, and we tuned
it up for him and found him a driver.  He was in great trouble about
myself.  If one of the ordinary drivers had taken him he would have
tipped the man, but he felt that he could not tip me although he
could see that I was an employed person.  He sent me a charming
letter of thanks and a very good motor rug.  And I got my commission.
Better still, I had now got back my self-respect.

After this I often drove for Mr. James when he wanted to show a car.
Naturally I did not always find a purchaser, but on the whole I was
fairly successful.  Mr. James himself seemed to think that I had
unusually good luck.  I did not in the least mind what work I did.  I
was there one morning when Mr. Marshall had just opened a telegram.
It was from a young man living in Bedford who had bought one of the
cars, and it had been delivered the day before.  The car had been
driven to Bedford by one of Mr. James’s mechanics.  It had already
been run for a hundred miles and properly tuned up, and the mechanic
had had no trouble of any sort with it.  The telegram said, “Engines
will not start.  Please send man.”

“We can’t,” said Marshall.

Mr. James reflected.  It was a very busy time, and everybody on the
place was fully engaged.  “It can’t be anything serious,” said Mr.
James.  “It’s some fool thing or other that he’s done.”

Then I volunteered.  “I’ll go, if you like,” I said.

“Really?” said Mr. James.  “It would be awfully good of you if you
would.  Will you go by train or drive yourself down?”

I decided to go by train.  At Bedford I took a cab to the house, and
told the butler who answered the door that I had called about the
car.  He looked a little puzzled, and showed me into the
drawing-room.  I was wearing my most enchanting clothes.  I had put
them on with intent for the fun of the thing, but I had brought my
overall with me in case of need.  A puzzled and sweet-looking young
lady came into the room, said “Good-morning,” and shook hands, and
then, “Am I right?  I understand you have called about my husband’s
car?”

“Yes,” I said.  “He wired to the Pegasus people for an engineer to be
sent.  I am the engineer.”

She seemed considerably staggered.  “Do you mean this?  Really?  You
an engineer?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Do you mind?”  It was rather cheeky.

Then she found her husband for me, a fluffy, enthusiastic young man,
weary and dirty with long wrestling with that car’s interior.  I went
with him to the shed and looked it over.

There was perhaps one teaspoonful of petrol in the tank.  I pointed
out to him that petrol cars went better when petrol was used.  We
then filled up the tank and started.  I think I never saw anyone so
absolutely abject.  What he wanted to do, and did not dare to do, was
to ask me not to reveal the nature of the trouble to the firm when I
got back.  He needn’t have minded.  To the firm it was all in the
day’s work.  And the curious thing was that the young man was by no
means a fool in mechanical matters; it was simply that he had not
happened to think of the petrol.

I got along very well now.  I might have saved myself a good deal of
trouble if I had started on this business at once.  I was now making
an income which justified me, I thought, in removing from my little
flat to something better and nearer to the middle of civilisation.
It was Minnie Saxe who decided it for me.  She lingered one morning
after she had brought my breakfast; not lachrymose--for she never
wept--but stern and depressed.

“I am afraid I shall have to leave you, miss,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “Why?”

“Well, father’s broken down again.  These last three weeks he’s
brought back his money a shilling short, and great paper bags of
almond-rock in his pocket.  Nothing I can say seems to be able to
save him.”

I did not smile outwardly.  “Well, what are you going to do about it,
Minnie?”

“I am going to do what I ought to have done long ago.  He’s got a bit
of money put by, and I know where there’s a good opening.  I’m going
into the sweets and general.”

“What!” I said.  “Going to sell sweets?  But your father will eat the
stock.”

“That’s just it,” said Minnie.  “What’s more, he’ll be encouraged to
eat it.  What’s more, when he’s finished he’ll be made to go on
again.  He’ll get that and nothing else for a week, and if he can
look sugar in the face at the end of it I’m a Dutchman.  Him a grown
man too!  I could find another girl to do you, miss, I think, though
I won’t say that she’d be quite my class.  Still, I would have her
here the week before I left, and if anybody can knock a thing into a
girl’s head I think I can.”

I explained to Minnie that she need not trouble, and that I should
move from the neighbourhood.

Some time later I made a point of visiting Miss Saxe’s emporium.  I
was served by her father, who looked distinctly chastened and rather
thinner.  He told me that his daughter was a wonderful girl, and I
believed him.  He waved one hand over the assorted boxes on the
counter.  “I never touch anything of this kind now,” he said.  “One
loses one’s taste for it as one gets older.”  So Mr. Saxe was happily
reclaimed.

The Pegasus people began now to manufacture a light cheap 6½ h.-p.
runabout car.  It was entered for a reliability trial, and Mr. James
told me that I was to drive it.  I was nearly off my head with joy
over that.  Subsequently I nearly broke my heart over it.  I’ll tell
the story as briefly as possible.  I had already tried the car
thoroughly myself and did not know of anything in the same class to
touch it.  I was not the least nervous; indeed, now I come to think
of it, I believe I have never been nervous.  The first day it did
splendidly, and we were more than a minute ahead of everything up
Onslow Hill.  The second day the car broke down, and Mr. James and
myself were unable to find what was wrong and put it right again
within the time limit.  Nothing but the turn of a screw was required,
and a few minutes later we were ready to start, but our chance was
gone as far as that trial was concerned.  Mr. James got a couple of
pressmen whom he knew to get up on the car, and we had a little
private demonstration.  One of the pressmen afterwards wrote on the
question as to whether reliability trials really proved reliability.
I did not talk much during our run; I was too much upset by the
failure of the car.  As soon as I could I got back to the muggy
little hotel.

Mr. James came in there and asked for me, and I went down to see him.

“What have you been crying for?” he said sharply.

“Nothing,” I said, which is what an ass of a woman would say.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he went on.  “It was my fault for sleeping in
a bedroom.  The next time I go in for one of these things I’ll sleep
on my car.  That needle valve never went wrong by itself.  Prove it?
Of course I can’t prove it.  But I know it, though I am going to say
nothing about it.”

So far we had been standing up.  He then sat down and immediately and
in rather a dictatorial way asked me if I would marry him.

I told him that I would not.  He could do all these things without
appearing in the least to be a fool.  It was I and not he who seemed
to be humiliated when I refused him.

I left the service of the Pegasus people in consequence.  Mr. James
thought it would be better, and had no doubt whatever that he could
find me another post.  So these external personal qualities which had
brought me fortune before, now cut off, for the time at least, the
profitable employment which I had found for myself by sheer hard work
and common sense.

I sometimes thought at this time that if there were no men in the
world women would get on a good deal better.




IX

A LOSS AND A GAIN

Shortly after the events which I last narrated I happened one sunny
morning to be walking down Oxford Street.  I had just come back from
an interview with a firm of motor manufacturers.  They had made me an
offer and I had refused it.  As I was walking along I found myself
touched on the arm by a girl of about my own age.  She was extremely
well dressed--much better dressed than I was; and in appearance she
was not altogether unlike me, except for two points--she was
exceedingly pale, and her expression was one of acute anxiety.

“Will you help me?” she said.

It was impossible to suppose that she was a beggar.  The idea that
she was insane flashed across me for a moment; then I noted her
extreme pallor and thought that she might be ill.  I am not quite
inhuman.

“Yes,” I said.  “I will help you if I can.  What is the matter?”

“I have lost my memory,” she said.  “It has all gone suddenly and
absolutely.  I do not know what my name is or where I am.  I am very
reluctant to apply to the police--it means so much publicity.  It
would be horrible to me.  If you could take me somewhere where I
could rest for a little time I think my memory would come back again.
I hope so.  I can’t tell you how grateful I should be to you.”

“What made you ask me?”

“Because you looked so nice,” she said simply.  “A long stream of
people went past me, and at first they confused me very much; then I
began looking at faces.  I looked for a long time, and yours was the
first I could trust.  If you would take me with you I would not give
you more trouble than I could help and I would do everything I was
told.  I--I believe there is some money in the bag I have here.”

“That is not a very important point,” I said.

“I don’t know.  I think I must have money.  I think I must always
have had it.  I have been looking at my clothes, and they seem to me
to be very good.”

“So they are,” I said.

She smiled faintly.  “It seems so queer to be talking to a stranger
like this; only you see I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how I
came here or where I am to go.”

I liked the girl.  “At present,” I said, “you will come with me to my
flat and have some luncheon.  If your memory doesn’t come back then
you can stay there for the present.  I have a spare room, and will
make you quite comfortable.  I live alone.  Then to-morrow, if your
memory has not returned, we can talk about it and decide what is best
to do.  You must have friends.  They will almost certainly advertise
for you.”

“Thank you.  Thank you so much.  I feel quite safe now that I have
met you.  A few moments ago I was frightened out of my life.  How
long will it take us to walk to your flat?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “and in all probability I never shall.”  I
stopped a four-wheeler that was crawling past us.  The girl was
obviously too tired and ill to walk.  “Won’t you get in?” I said.

She got in and leaned back.  “I feel utterly worn out,” she said.  “I
shall have to wait a little before I can tell you how much I thank
you.”

“Come,” I said.  “You mustn’t be silly.  After all we are both human
beings.  Don’t look on an act of ordinary decency as if it were
unparalleled heroism.”

Again came that ghost of a smile.  I could see that she and I would
laugh at the same things, which is in itself a bond of union.  She
talked no more until we were nearing Hensley Mansions.  When the cab
stopped she was quite wide awake and alert, but although she was
sitting next the door she did not attempt to open it.

I noted that.  The conscious mind could remember nothing, but the
sub-conscious mind was remembering absolutely.  She was a girl whose
carriage door was opened for her.

It was really delightful to see the change which came over her when
she got into my flat.  “Now at last I feel safe,” she said, and drew
a deep breath.  “Don’t let me go out again.  Don’t leave me alone if
you can help it.  I’m quite all right really, it’s only that I feel
terribly pulled down, and for the moment some of myself is not in my
keeping.  I’m sure it will come back.  I shall remember directly.”
Suddenly she stopped and seized my hand and kissed it.  I told her
not to be an idiot, and we both laughed.  She absolutely refused to
go to bed.  She said, “I have had too much of that,” without seeming
to know the meaning of the words she used.  At this time my flat was
run by a good woman who was an excellent cook.  She was also a widow,
but that did not matter so much.  I explained to Mrs. Mason so far as
I could do so discreetly the state of affairs, and she at once became
intensely interested.  She also became slightly disapproving.  She
let me see clearly that she considered that I had not done enough.
My suggestions as to luncheon were waived aside imperiously.  “Leave
it to me, miss,” said Mrs. Mason.  “I know what illness is.  I
shouldn’t wish to seem to boast, but there are few families has had
as much illness as mine has.  Leave it to me.”

So my new friend--if one must condescend to details--received
quintessential soup, roast chicken, and a milk pudding.  As Mrs.
Mason knows, if there is one thing I hate more than another it is
milk pudding, but very little she cared.

As we sat down to luncheon my friend said suddenly, “I have forgotten
my medicine.”

Here was a cue.  I tried to show no absorbing interest and to ask
quite casually, “What medicine do you mean?”

The look of pained anxiety which had quite left her face now came
back again.  “What medicine do I mean?” she repeated.  “There was
something--always--before luncheon.  Please don’t ask me any
questions.  It’s no good.  I can’t remember, and it makes me so
wretched.”  She seemed to be on the verge of tears.  I asked her no
more questions, and I felt like a perfect pig for having asked her
that one, but I had the usual fool-consolation that I had acted for
the best.  I could not find out that there was anything wrong with
her mind.  Distinctly she had a humorous side.  She could see all
that was quaint in Mrs. Mason, and asked numberless questions about
her.  She was not in the least surprised when I told her that I was
an engineer.

“Almost everybody’s something nowadays,” she remarked, and I was
quite certain that it was not her own remark; it was an echo which
her subconscious mind had caught up from the time before she lost her
memory and had now reproduced at the call of a fitting occasion.  But
of whatever subject we spoke she always came back to the same thing.
It was always, “I am safe now.  I’m quite safe.  I needn’t bother any
more.  It will come right.  Oh, you are good to me!”

I made her drink one glass of port at luncheon, and I made her sleep
afterwards.  At first she hesitated, but I told her that I was not
going out--that I should be in the next room all the time.  Then she
consented.  This was a crucial test with me.  I went into her room
twice, and found her fast asleep.  It would not have surprised me if,
when she woke again, she had entirely failed to remember me or the
circumstances which had led to her making my acquaintance.  On the
contrary, she remembered me perfectly.  The only curious thing that
struck me at tea-time was that she called me Rose at times.  “Thanks
awfully, Rose,” she would say when I passed her anything.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why she called me Rose, but the
other question which I had put to her had been disastrous, and I
refrained.  After tea she put her head in her hands and said she was
going to think hard and it would all come back.  She made me renew a
promise that I would not go to the police.  I think she struggled in
this way for about an hour, and then she flung herself back in her
chair and burst into tears.  I consoled her as well as I could, and
by dinner-time she was quite herself again; there was even a touch of
colour in her face.  She talked well; I think even it would have been
said that she talked brilliantly.  There was nothing apparently wrong
with her but her lapse of memory.

After dinner I said to her, “I have sent for my doctor.  He’s quite a
nice old man, and you won’t mind him a bit.  I have not told him that
you have lost your memory, and I shall not tell him so.  Perhaps he
will be able to give you something that is good for you.”

Dr. Morning (whose acquaintance I had continued) came and saw my
friend, and saw me afterwards.  I gave him no information and no lead.

“Well?” I said.

“Yes, Miss Castel,” said the doctor.  “Your friend--by the way you
forgot to give me her name--is extremely anæmic.  She is recovering
from a severe illness.  She has had diphtheria badly.  Let her rest
and feed her up, and don’t let her worry.  She seems inclined to
worry about something or other.  I’ll send something round for her
directly.”

After the doctor had gone I found from my friend that she had been
perplexed by some of his questions.  She hoped that she had answered
rightly--that he had suspected nothing.  I recalled the faintest
possible twinkle in Dr. Morning’s eye as he told me that I had
forgotten to give him my friend’s name.  I wished now that I had made
a clean breast of it.  He was probably aware, anyhow, that he was
dealing with a quite interesting case of amnesia.

The whole thing came out as my friend was going to bed.  I had gone
to her room with her, and as she was saying good night she suddenly
observed, “But I don’t know your name.  It’s ridiculous.  I never
asked you.  Do tell me what your name is.”

“I’m Miss Castel--Wilhelmina Castel.”

She clasped her hands impulsively together, and then pressed them
over her eyes.

“Wait!” she cried.  “Wait!  It’s all coming back.  You cannot be Miss
Castel.  I’m Miss Castel--Cynthia Castel.  I remember it distinctly.
I remember Marley Court, and my sweet nurse Rose.  Yes, I remember
everything.”

I laughed.  “It’s all quite simple,” I said.  “Marley Court is where
my grandfather lives.  He quarrelled with my father--you may have
heard him speak of it.  You are a daughter of my father’s younger
brother.  I heard of you as a baby once in days long back.  We are
first cousins.  Isn’t it ridiculous and melodramatic?”

After that there was a long hour’s talk.  My cousin’s memory had come
back as suddenly as it had gone.  This, I was told afterwards, is not
unusual.  She could tell me a good deal about my grandfather.  One
sentence stuck in my memory, “He’s not violent any more.”  Cynthia
had lived with him since her parents’ death.  I was calling her
Cynthia before the end of that hour’s talk, when I reproached myself
for keeping her awake too long and insisted on leaving her.  Her joy
at recovering her memory was pathetic, and her intense gratitude to
myself was absurd.

“Suppose,” she said, “that I had not asked you for your name?”

“Well,” I said, “aren’t your things marked?”

She shook her head.

“Only initials.”

“And the bag?” I asked.

We hunted up the bag.  It contained the return half of her ticket, a
handkerchief, and a purse with four shillings and sixpence in it, but
nothing by which I could certainly have identified her.  She could
remember now why she had come to London; it was an old and
unimportant engagement with a dressmaker.  It had been cancelled in
consequence of her health.  She could not remember going to the
station.  From that point until she met me everything was like a
forgotten dream.

There were advertisements in every paper next morning--discreet
advertisements with no name given.  I put her into the train, and
spoke to the guard about her.  I might have travelled with her, but
I did not wish to meet grandpapa.  I had not forgotten the letter he
wrote to me when my father died.

I did meet him in the end.  One has to forgive one’s own flesh and
blood.  The letter which he sent to me was pathetic in its senile
shakiness and absolutely right.  He could not begin to thank me, so
he said, for what I had done for Cynthia; all he wanted was to say he
was sorry and ashamed.  He would have liked to be friends with me
before he died, but he supposed that was impossible.  He would have
liked also to have been of service to me, but from what he heard I no
longer needed his help and was too proud to take it in any case.
“Otherwise I should have liked a chance to have made up to you a very
little for my obstinate cruelty to your father.”

The letter touched me, and I am an impulsive person.  I sent a
telegram and followed it.

Cynthia met me at the station, driving a fat pony in a governess
cart, and very much inclined to cry when she saw me.  I met my
grandfather, who was very vague and grey and shrunk and sad.  We
became friends at once.  I met Rose, the woman who had nursed
Cynthia, and Rose said that I had supplanted her and she would call
me out.  She was quite charming.  Many people were staying at the
house, amongst others I met----

Let me get it over quickly, for the one thing that I will not tell is
my love-story.  It was very brief and tempestuous.  In a few months I
was playing with the lone hand no longer.  I, with all my
independence and all my common sense, fell hopelessly in love, and
acknowledged in white satin, Honiton lace and orange blossom that I
was a woman after all.  Well, one might be worse things.  One of the
most expensive of my wedding presents came from Mr. James.  The 36
h.-p. Pegasus car is of importance.  I taught my husband to drive it.




POSTSCRIPT

I have been looking at these pages over again.  I wrote them at the
time when the things happened, and that is years ago; yet they all
seem but yesterday.  It seems but yesterday that Minnie Saxe brought
to me, in the days of my extreme poverty and hunger, six kippers, fat
and well-liking.  It seems but yesterday that I stepped out on the
platform at Charing Cross station and drove from there with the man
whom I had never met in my life in order that I might personate a
dead woman.  And now?

And now, right away in the country, it is all very quiet but for the
voices of two small children overhead.  Even as I write this I am
interrupted by a grave man of imperturbable mien--a man who may
possibly have seen a joke in the servants’ hall, but has never
permitted himself to see one outside of it.  He announces, with the
utmost solemnity, “Master Bernard desired me to say, m’lady, that the
head of the toy duck has come off, and he would be glad if your
ladyship would step upstairs and see about it.”

“Thanks, Jenkins,” I said.  “Tell him I’m coming.”



THE END



  WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
  PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH


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