The Project Gutenberg eBook, On the Borderland, by F. Britten (Frederick Britten) Austin

ON THE BORDERLAND

On the Borderland

By

F. Britten Austin

Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923 BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY IN THE UNITED STATES AND
GREAT BRITAIN
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY CONSOLIDATED MAGAZINES CORPORATION (THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE)
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
First Edition

TO
EDWARD CECIL
IN
OLD FRIENDSHIP

CONTENTS

ON THE BORDERLAND

ON THE BORDERLAND

BURIED TREASURE

For the last twenty minutes the after-dinner talk of the little group of men in the liner’s smoking-room had revelled in the uncanny. One man had started it, rather diffidently, with a strange yarn. Another had capped it. Then, no longer restrained by the fear of a humiliating scepticism in their audience, they gave themselves up to that mysteriously satisfying enjoyment of the inexplicably marvellous, vying with each other in stories which, as they were narrated, were no doubt more or less unconsciously modified to suit the argument, but which one and all dealt with experience that in the ultimate analysis could not be explained by the normal how and why of life.

“What do you think of all this, doctor?” said one of the story-tellers, turning suddenly to a keen-eyed elderly man who had been listening in silence. “As a specialist in mental disorders you must have had a vast experience of delusions of every kind. Is there any truth in all this business of spiritualism, automatic writing, reincarnation and the rest of it? What’s the scientific reason for it all?—for some reason there must be! People don’t tell all these stories just for fun.”

The doctor shifted his pipe in his mouth and smiled, his eyes twinkling.

“You seem to find a certain amount of amusement in it,” he remarked, drily. “The scientific reasons you ask for so easily are highly controversial. But many of the phenomena are undoubtedly genuine—automatic writing, for instance. It is a fact that persons of a certain type find their hand can write, entirely independent of their conscious attention, coherent sentences whose meaning is utterly strange to them. They need not even deliberately make their mind a blank. They may be surprised by their hand suddenly writing on its own initiative when their consciousness is fixed upon some other occupation, such as entering up an account-book. Always they have a vivid feeling that not their own but another distinctly separate intelligence guides the pen. This feeling is not evidence, of course. It may be an illusion; probably is.

“The best-analyzed reincarnation story is probably that dealt with by Professor Flournoy in his study of the famous medium Hélène Smith of Geneva. This lady sincerely believed herself to be a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette—and in her trance-state she acted the part with astonishing fidelity and dramatic power. In her normal condition she certainly possessed neither so much detailed knowledge of the life of the ill-fated queen nor so much histrionic ability. She also wrote automatically, and some of her productions were amazing, to say the least of them. Well, Professor Flournoy’s psychological investigations proved clearly to my thinking that it was a case of her subconscious mind dramatizing, with that wonderful faculty of impersonation which characterizes it, a few hints accidentally dropped into it and combining with her subconscious memory, which forgets nothing it has ever heard or read or even casually glanced at, to produce an almost perfect representation of Marie Antoinette. Also he proved that her automatic writing emanated from her own subconscious mind and nowhere else.

“Now, I am not going to say that discarnate spirits do not communicate through this subconscious activity of which one form is automatic writing. I am not going to say that we do not become reincarnated through an endless cycle of lives. I do not know enough about it to assert such a negative—no one does. All I know about the human mind is that we know very little about it. It is like the moon, of which you never see more than the small end. Infinite possibilities lie in the shadow. You are only conscious of a small fraction of your own personality. The subconscious—the unillumined portion of your soul—is incomputably vast. It learns everything, forgets nothing; possibly it even goes on from life to life. When it is tapped by any of those traditional means which nowadays we call spiritualistic one may—or may not—come across buried treasure.”

“But you yourself do not believe in the truth of spiritualism as an actual fact, doctor?” queried one of the group, a trace of aggression in his tone.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“I accord belief to a very limited number of attested facts, my friend,” he said. “That I am sitting here with you, for example. I am ready to adopt provisionally all sorts of hypotheses to explain those varied phenomena of life, the ultimate explanation of which must in any case elude me. They are hypotheses for myself—I do not announce them as dogmas for others. But—if you do not think it is too late—I will tell you a story, a rather queer experience of my own, and you can form your own hypotheses in explanation of it.”

There was a chorus of approval. The doctor waited while the steward refilled the glasses at the instance of one of the group, relit his pipe, and settled himself to begin.

It was in 1883. I was a young man. I had recently finished walking the hospitals, got my degree, and before settling down into practice at home had decided to see a little of the world. So I signed on for a few voyages as a ship’s doctor. At the termination of one of them I found myself at a loose end in New York. There I became friendly with the son of a man who in his young days had been a Californian “Fortyniner,” had made a pile, settled East, become a railroad speculator and made millions—William Vandermeulen.

Old Vandermeulen had a delicate daughter, Pauline, then about nineteen years of age and in the incipient stages of consumption. Under medical advice, he was accustomed to take her each winter for a cruise around the West Indies in his steam yacht. That year, young Geoffrey Vandermeulen persuaded his father to ship me as medical officer. There was nothing alarming in the young girl’s condition, of course, or a much older and more experienced man would have accompanied them. She was merely delicate.

We were a small party on board: the old man, his wife—a faded old lady with no personality whatever—Pauline, Geoffrey, and myself. Geoffrey was an ordinary, high-spirited young man, intelligent and a pleasant companion, but not particularly remarkable. His sister was mildly pretty but utterly devoid of attractiveness, extremely shy, and given to sitting in blank reverie over a book. Although she always had one in her hand, she read, as a matter of fact, very little. It was just an excuse for day-dreaming. Of this girl the old man, otherwise as keen as a razor and as hard as nails—commercially, I believe, he was little better than a pirate—was inordinately fond. Outside business, she was the absorbing passion of his life. There was no whim of hers that he would not gratify. It was rather pathetic to see the old scoundrel hanging over her frail innocence, all that he had of idealism centred in her threatened life.

The cruise was pleasant but uneventful enough for some weeks. We pottered down through the Bahamas to Jamaica and then turned eastward with intent to visit the various ports of the Antilles as far south as Barbados.

It was one evening while we were chugging peacefully across the Caribbean Sea that occurred the first of the remarkable incidents which made this voyage so memorable to me. I remember the setting of it perfectly. We were all in the saloon; I suppose because the night was for some reason unpleasant. The weather was calm, at any rate. Geoffrey and I were reading. Old Vandermeulen and his wife were playing cribbage. Pauline was sitting at a writing-table fixed in a corner of the saloon, entering up the day’s trivial happenings in the diary which she religiously kept. I remember glancing at her and noticing that she was chewing the nail of her left thumb—a habit of which I was vainly trying to break her—as she stared vacantly at the bulkhead, no doubt ransacking her memory for some incident to record.

Suddenly she turned round upon us with a startled cry.

“Look, Mamma!—I have scrawled all over my diary without knowing that I did it!—Isn’t that strange!”

We all of us looked up languidly. The mother made some banal remark, but did not withdraw her attention from her cards. The father glanced affectionately toward her without ceasing to count up the score he was about to peg on the board. Geoffrey and I continued our reading.

But the girl had been puzzling over the scrawl and all at once she jumped up from her seat and came across to us.

“Look!” she said. “Isn’t it funny? These words—they’re all like the words on blotting-paper—they go backwards and inside out! And there are figures, too!—Whatever could have made me do it?—And I don’t remember doing it either, though of course I must have done so. There was nothing on that page a minute before, I am sure of that!”

There was something curiously uneasy in the girl’s manner, a note in her voice that impressed me. I got up, took the open diary from her hand and there sure enough was a large uneven scrawl, two lines of it, diagonally across the page, and, as she said, reversed, as though it had been blotted down upon it.

Almost without thinking, I held the open page against one of the mirrors panelled in the saloon wall—and I could not repress a cry of astonishment. The scrawl was a decipherable sentence, mysterious enough, but coherent!—I’ll write it down for you as nearly as I remember it, so as to show you how it looked. He produced pencil and paper from his pocket, wrote: “lucia 1324 N 8127 W katalina sculle point SWbS 3 trees digge jno dawson youre turne:” There you are—the last two words were added like a postscript and were followed by a rough sketch, an irregular oval over a St. Andrew’s cross, like this—

I read out what was written, and Pauline stared at me wide-eyed.

“Whatever could have made me write that?” she exclaimed.

Geoffrey looked up, fraternally scornful.

“It’s a thin joke, Pauline! You can’t monkey us in that fashion! I suppose you want to pretend that the ghost of some old pirate wrote it down in your book so as to start us off on a Treasure Island hunt.” Stevenson’s romance was then in its first success and Geoffrey had just been reading it. “Of course, you wrote it deliberately—what nonsense!”

She turned round upon him, her eyes filling with tears in the vehemence of her protest.

“Geoffrey, I couldn’t!—I couldn’t write reversed like that if I tried!”

“Oh, yes, you could,” asserted Geoffrey, confidently. “It’s easy enough.”

“Supposing we all try,” said I, curious to test its feasibility. I felt considerably puzzled. Pauline was not at all the sort of girl one would expect to persist in such a pointless sort of practical joke as this, and persistent she was—tearful like a child unjustly accused of a crime of which it protests innocence.

Her mother and father renounced their game of cribbage and bent their heads together over the enigmatic screed, without proffering an opinion. It was evident that they did not wish to hurt their daughter’s feelings by open scepticism. They would have humoured her in anything, no matter how absurd.

I reiterated my suggestion and it was accepted in the spirit of a parlour-game. A line from a book was selected, we all tried—and we all failed hopelessly. None of us got more than two or three consecutive letters right. It is not so easy as it sounds. Try it for yourselves!

At that time, although spiritualism was a great craze in America, and D. D. Home, Eglinton, and other famous mediums, were arousing enormous interest and controversy in England, automatic script was an uncommon phenomenon. Table-rapping, levitation, slate-writing and materialization were the wonders in vogue—and I had then never heard of the “mirror-writing” which has since become a frequent form of automatic expression. Neither, of course, à fortiori, had the young girl who had just produced this mysterious specimen.

We all felt puzzled and impressed at our failure to imitate deliberately the reversed script. Old Vandermeulen picked up the diary and read the reflection of the scrawled page in the wall-mirror.

“Well, it’s sure strange!” he said in his twangy drawl. “Geoff! You write this down in a straightaway hand and we’ll see if we can get any sense out of it. I guess there’s some meaning in it. Pauline ain’t joking.”

Geoffrey obeyed and read out the script again.

“‘lucia 1324 N 8127 W katalina sculle point SWbS 3 trees digge jno dawson youre turne’—It’s exactly like the directions to a pirate’s buried treasure, Father!” he added, excitedly. “Skull and crossbones and all! But of course that’s ridiculous! Though I can’t understand how Pauline could have written it like she did!”

“And I did not know even that I was writing!” asseverated Pauline, “let alone know what I wrote! It was just as if my hand did not belong to me—it was a sort of numbness that made me look down.”

“Tear it up, dear!” implored her mother anxiously. “I am sure it comes from the Devil!” Mrs. Vandermeulen belonged to a particularly strict little sect and was always ready to discern the immediate agency of the Evil One.

“Devil or not!” said old Vandermeulen. “I guess if there’s any buried treasure lying around here, I’m going to peg out my claim on it.” He turned to me. “Young man, was there ever any pirates about these parts?” The old ruffian was quite illiterate; had never, I believe, read a book in his life.

“Why, yes,” I replied, “from the end of the sixteenth century these seas were the chief haunt of the buccaneers and, after them, of the pirates who were not entirely suppressed until well in the eighteenth century. There must be any amount of their hidden treasure buried in these islands.”

“You don’t say!” he exclaimed, his avaricious old eyes lighting up. “And here have I been running this yacht up and down these parts for five years at a dead loss!” His disgust would have been comic, were it not for the ugly, ruthless lust of gold which looked suddenly out of his face. “Guess I’m going to quit this fooling around right away! I don’t know and don’t care if it was the Devil himself wrote this specification in Pauline’s book—I’m darned sure she didn’t write it herself—the handwriting’s different, d’you see?”—It was, as a matter of fact, compared with the previous pages, quite another hand—hers was an upright, rounded schoolgirl calligraphy, this was a cursive old-fashioned script inclined well forward. “So as we’ve got nothing else to start upon, we may as well see if there’s anything to it.” He tossed Geoffrey’s transcription across to me. “What do you make of it, young man?” he asked, with the sneering condescension he accorded to my superior literary attainments.

I took it, rather amused at the old scoundrel’s simplicity. That there was any authentic meaning in Pauline’s scrawl seemed to me wildly improbable. I was a frank materialist in those days and had Carpenter’s formula of “unconscious cerebration” glibly ready to cover up anything psychologically abnormal. However, I considered the sheet of paper with attention.

“Assuming this to be a genuine message,” I said, “it would appear to give the precise latitude and longitude of some point where it is desirable to dig. I take it that the figures stand for 13 degrees 24 minutes North, 81 degrees 27 minutes West. The world ‘lucia’ puzzles me—unless the island of St. Lucia is meant. What ‘katalina’ stands for, I do not know—it is evidently a proper name of some kind, ‘sculle point SWbS 3 trees digge’ presumably means that one should dig under three trees south-west-by-south of Skull Point—wherever that is. ‘jno dawson’ is, of course, John Dawson. Assuming this to be a spirit-message from the other world,” I could not help smiling ironically, “it is possibly the name of the ghost who is communicating—and who desires to indicate to some person that it is his or her turn. He does not specify for what. I may remark that the ghost is either ill-educated or he has an archaic taste in spelling.”

“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Vandermeulen, querulously timid. “Do tear it up, William! I am sure harm will come of it!—It is the Devil tempting you!”

“So long as he’s serious, he can tempt me sure easy!” said the old ruffian in a tone of cool blasphemy which sent the colour out of his wife’s face. He rang the bell and the negro steward appeared. “Sam! Ask Captain Higgins to step in here for a moment!”

Captain Higgins, the skipper of the yacht, was a level-headed mariner of middle age whom nothing ever ruffled. He was competence itself.

“Good evening, Captain Higgins,” said old Vandermeulen, fixing him with the keen eyes under shaggy gray brows, eyes which defied you to divine his purpose whilst they probed yours. “What’s the latitude and longitude of the island of St. Lucia?”

“Fourteen North, sixty-one West,” replied Captain Higgins promptly.

Old Vandermeulen turned to me.

“Then it’s not St. Lucia, young man,” he said. He picked up Geoffrey’s transcription. “Well, now, Captain Higgins, is there any place thirteen-twenty-four North, eighty-one twenty-seven West?”

The skipper reflected a moment.

“No place of importance, certainly. I’ll get the chart.”

He returned with it, spread it out on the saloon table, ran his forefinger across it.

“Here you are!” he said. “A small island called Old Providence. It belongs to Colombia.”

Geoffrey, who was peering over his shoulder, uttered a startled exclamation.

“And look!” he cried. “There’s your Katalina!” He pointed to a small islet just north of Old Providence, a mere dot on the chart. “Santa Katalina!—My hat! that is weird!”

It certainly was. From whatever stratum of Pauline’s consciousness her writing had emanated, it was an amazing thing that she should have written down the exact latitude and longitude of a tiny island off the Nicaraguan coast and named it correctly. Even I could not help feeling that it was more than a fortuitous coincidence, that it was uncanny. The others surrendered themselves straight away.

I turned to look at Pauline. She was deathly white; evidently frightened at being made the vehicle of this message from the beyond. Her mother clutched at her, as though protecting her from unseen dangers. Geoffrey’s imagination had caught fire, his eyes were bright with excitement.

“My sakes! Pauline!” he cried. “I believe you now! You couldn’t have written that out of your head. I’ve read of things like this before—I guess you’re a medium and didn’t know it!—Father! We’ll track this message down, wherever it comes from, say now?”

“It comes from the Devil! Tear it up—oh, tear it up!” implored Mrs. Vandermeulen. “William! Tear it up—don’t follow it!”

Old Vandermeulen turned to the skipper. His jaw had set hard, his lips were compressed, only the glitter in his eyes, peering in a momentary fixation of thought from under his bent brows, showed that he shared the excitement of his son. So he must have looked in his office when he took the decisions which had made his millions.

“Captain Higgins,” he said, curtly ignoring the supplications of his wife, “how long will it take us to reach that island?”

The skipper put his finger on the chart at a point south of Haiti.

“We’re here,” he said. He measured off the distance. “At our best rate of twelve knots—about sixty hours steaming.”

The old man nodded.

“Put her about,” he said. His harsh tone had an odd ring about it, as though he was secretly conscious of affronting mysterious dangers, was all the more emphatic. “Right now!”

Captain Higgins never queried owners’ orders.

“Very good, sir,” he replied, stolidly, and walked out of the cabin.

A minute or two later we felt the yacht swing round. There is always something impressive when a ship on the open sea goes about upon her course, but I never felt it more powerfully than then. It seemed that there was a fateful significance in our deliberate action.

Geoffrey meanwhile was poring over the sheet of paper on which he had transcribed his sister’s reversed scrawl.

“It’s all perfectly clear,” he said, triumphantly. “We’ve got to make this island of Santa Katalina, thirteen-twenty-four North, eighty-one twenty-seven West, try and find a place called Skull Point, look for three trees south-west-by-south of it, and dig! We understand every word of it now!”

“All except the word ‘lucia’” I corrected, “and whose turn it is.”

“Yes—there’s that,” he said, dubiously. “I suppose every word has some meaning.”

“You can bet it has!” I replied, half sarcastically humouring his credulity, half surrendering myself to an uncritical acception of these mysteriously given directions. “I wonder who this John Dawson was—if he existed?”

“He’s a sure-enough ghost of some old pirate!” said Vandermeulen, with complete conviction. “And I guess he’s putting us fair and good on to his pile!”

I laughed, involuntarily, at this childishness. The old man frowned.

“There’s some things that perhaps even you all-fired clever young fellows don’t know,” he said, crushingly. “’Tain’t the first time I’ve heard of this sort of thing. A mate of mine in the old days at ’Frisco was waked up one morning by the ghost of a prospector who’d died up in the ranges. He told him just where he’d made his strike before his grub gave out. My mate had never heard of the place but he lit straight away on the trail—and sure enough the ghost was telling the truth. Old Jim Hamilton it was—and he drank himself to death on what he got out of it.” The old man looked me straight in the eyes as though challenging me to doubt him. Of course, I could say nothing. He grunted scornfully, and turned again to the chart still spread out upon the table. “It’s a nice quiet out-of-the-way place,” reflected the old ruffian, putting his thumb-nail on the lonely island. “Just the location for a cache—guess they’d feel pretty sure of not being interfered with there!” There was a grim undertone in his voice which was decidedly ugly. He might, himself, have been the reincarnation of just such a pirate as the one whose existence he was postulating.

Well, nothing more happened that night. Mrs. Vandermeulen, thoroughly alarmed and uneasy, hustled her daughter off to bed. Old Vandermeulen and his son sat up in an endless discussion of the mysterious script, referring again and again to the chart which so startlingly confirmed its indications, and speculating optimistically as to the nature and amount of the treasure they were convinced was buried in the designated place. They talked themselves into a complete faith in the supernatural origin of the message, and, father and son alike—it was curious to note the traits of resemblance which cropped out in them—were equally indifferent as to whether its source was diabolic or benevolent. Enormously wealthy although they already were, the prospect of this phantom gold waiting to be unearthed had completely fascinated them. At last I turned in, wearied with the thousand and one questions they asked me and to which I could give no answer, disgusted with their avarice, and scornfully contemptuous of their simplicity.

I found sleep no easy matter. Sceptical though I was, I could not get Pauline’s curious production out of my head, and the more I thought of it the more inexplicable seemed its coincidence with the chart. The subconscious mind, with its amazing memory, its dramatic faculty, its unexpected invasion of the surface consciousness in certain types, was not then the commonplace of psychology that it is now—or I should probably have referred the whole thing to the combination of a casual, apparently unheeding, glance at the chart with a memory of some of her brother’s remarks about “Treasure Island,” automatically and dramatically reproduced. As it was, I could formulate no explanation that satisfied me—though I utterly disbelieved in the ghost of a piratical John Dawson, of which the two Vandermeulens were now fully persuaded.

The next day found us steaming steadily westward. Father and son could talk of nothing else but their fancied buried treasure and their plans for digging it up without taking the crew of the yacht into their confidence. Mrs. Vandermeulen hovered round her daughter, horribly anxious of she knew not what, but—after having been once silenced by a peremptory oath from her husband—afraid to make further protest. Pauline herself sat all day in a deck-chair, more silent even than usual, staring dreamily across the empty sea in a reverie which ignored us all. Naturally, I watched her closely. But, except that her eyes had a kind of haunting fear in them, she seemed perfectly normal. Evidently the occurrence of the previous night had shocked her profoundly, for once, when I casually mentioned it, she shuddered and implored me not to speak of it again. The fear of the uncanny in herself stared out of her eyes as she entreated me.

This dreamy absorption in herself continued until supper time that evening. Throughout the meal, I do not think she uttered a single word. She seemed not even to hear the conversation around her, but toyed listlessly with her food and finally ceased to eat long before the others had finished. Watching her with a professionally interested observation, I was uneasy. She had leaned back in her chair, was gazing straight before her with wide-open eyes. Suddenly I noticed that they had glazed over. All expression faded out of her face. The arm that rested on the salmon-table stiffened into a cataleptic sort of rigidity.

Her mother was also anxiously watching her.

“Pauline!” she cried. “Are you ill?”

There was no answer. The girl sat like a statue. Mrs. Vandermeulen glanced at me in wild alarm, silently imploring my intervention. Old Vandermeulen and his son were hotly arguing the desirability or otherwise of informing Captain Higgins of their plans, and took no notice of us.

I got up from my seat and went round the table to the girl. I lifted up her lifelessly heavy arm with my fingers on her pulse. It was normal.

“Miss Vandermeulen!” I said, rather sharply. “Are you not well?”

She turned her head slowly round to me, like a sleep-walker faintly aware of some sound that does not, however, wake her, and stared me full in the face with eyes in which there was not the slightest glimmer of recognition.

“Pauline!” almost screamed her mother, “don’t you know your own name?”

An expression of curious intelligence dawned in her face—her aspect changed in some subtle manner, as though another, quite different, personality was emerging in her—she laughed in low, confident tones utterly unlike her ordinary laugh.

“My name is Lucia!” she said, as though stating a well-known fact.

Lucia! To say that we were startled is to understate our astonishment—we were dumbfounded. The first word of the cryptic message! We gazed at her for a moment as at a complete stranger from the clouds—and indeed she looked it, as she smiled at us with bright malicious eyes. The diffident Pauline we knew had completely disappeared.

“She is possessed!” screamed her mother. “Oh, God—restore her! restore her!”

The girl stood up suddenly from her chair, passed her hand over her eyes, shook herself as though shaking off sleep. She turned away from us deliberately.

“Oh, John!” she said, and there was an odd little foreign accent in her tone, “I have dreamed—such a strange dream! I dreamed—I know not!—that I was not Lucia!” She laughed softly in her new low tones, “—That strange people were asking me my name. Then I woke—oh, John!” she sidled up in a wheedling manner to what, so far as we could see, was vacant space. “I am Lucia, am I not?—And you love me? You love me?” Her shoulders moved sinuously as though she were putting herself under the caresses of a person invisible to us. “You love me—and I love you, although you have only that one terrible eye!” She still spoke with that curious foreign accent which lent a certain piquancy to her speech. “You love me, you John Dawson, you Englishman, you love me for ever, say?” She reminded me of Carmen sidling up to Don José. “You not deceive me—or——!” She looked up as into a tall man’s face with a sudden expression of feline vindictiveness, her white teeth showing in an ugly little rictus of the mouth, and slid her hand down stealthily toward her stocking. “But no!” She smiled; her hand came up again as though to rest upon a man’s shoulder. “You love me—and I love you—and,” her voice dropped, “when we have killed the others we go away with the treasure—you promise me, John Dawson?”

She appeared utterly unaware of our presence. There was a dramatic intensity in her voice and gestures which thrilled even me, although I had attended some hypnotic experiments in London and was aware of the complete realism with which a somnambulist will play a part suggested to him. I had no doubt whatever that she was in a state of hypnosis, accidentally self-induced, and that she was merely acting on the suggestions of the talk she had overheard.

Her mother, however, had no such consoling certitude. She hid her face in her hands, groaning: “She is possessed! She is possessed! Oh, God, cast out the evil spirit! cast out the evil spirit!”

Geoffrey was white to the lips, appalled, unable to utter a sound. The old man stared at her, fascinated, a strange gleam in his eyes.

The mother turned to me in despair.

“Oh, doctor! Do something—do something!—Oh, if only we had a minister here! She is possessed by an evil spirit! My Pauline! My Pauline!” She sank on her knees by one of the swivel-chairs, gave herself up to agonized prayers. “Oh, God, cast out the evil one! Oh, God, cast out the evil one!”

Thinking that this strange incident had already lasted more than long enough, I took a step toward the girl with a vague idea (though I didn’t quite know how) of breaking the hypnosis. She stood looking upward still, with a wheedling, diabolical smile, into apparent nothingness.

“We will go together—we two—with the treasure, say, John Dawson?” she murmured seductively, the very incarnation of a Delilah. “Mansvelt is dead—we will run away from Simon and go with my people before they kill us all—they are very many and you can only hold out two-three days—but we might take the treasure, John Dawson, the treasure you and Simon hid with Mansvelt—Simon, we will kill him—and we will go away and be rich—rich, John Dawson—say?” Her voice was perfidiously honeyed, her eyes glistened, as she caressed that uncanny empty air.

“What is she talking about?” muttered Geoffrey in a low, excited voice. “Who are these people—Mansvelt and Simon? Have you heard of them, doctor?”

I shook my head. They were utterly unknown to me. For a moment I hesitated, fascinated by the little drama, curious to hear more.

The mother moaned.

“Oh, do something, doctor! do something!—Save her! Save her! Oh, God, deliver her from the evil one!”

Her agony recalled me to my professional duty. I started forward but before I could reach her I was snatched back by a violent hand on my shoulder.

“Stand aside!” commanded old Vandermeulen in a terrible voice. “Evil spirit or no evil spirit, I guess it knows all about that treasure—and I’m going to hear what it’s got to say!” Of his normal love for his daughter there was not a trace. The man was completely dominated, to the exclusion of any other sentiment, by the lust for gold, more gold. He looked scarcely human as his eyes glowered upon me, murder in them if I thwarted him. “If it’s the Devil himself that’s got her—let her talk!”

But the mother sprang up with a wild shriek, rushed toward her daughter.

“Do you wish her eternal damnation?” she cried, flinging her arms about the girl. “Pauline! Pauline! For the love of God, don’t you know me?—Oh, say a prayer—say a prayer after me!” She commenced the Lord’s Prayer in a voice that trembled with anguish.

The girl stood rigid in her embrace, drawn up away from her, looking down upon her with fixed and hostile eyes. She made one instinctive movement to escape—and then suddenly crumpled in a swoon upon the floor.

She came round easily enough under simple restoratives, looked up at us with childish, bewildered eyes—the old Pauline again! Her mother completely broke down over her, sobbing in almost crazy joy at her restoration. Emotionally infected, perhaps, the girl also gave way to a hysterical passion of weeping, which would not be checked, and for which she could give no reason. She seemed not to have the slightest recollection of the part she had just played. Old Vandermeulen, still obsessed by his lust for the treasure, tried to question her. She only stared at him dumbly—a vague fear coming into her eyes, but giving no response. I silenced him with all the authority of my professional position, and got the girl into her stateroom, where we left her with her mother.

Throughout the next day neither of the two women appeared. Pauline was utterly prostrated, and she remained in bed. Her mother stayed with her, under strict injunctions to mention nothing of last night’s terrible scene.

Meanwhile, of course, we were steadily drawing nearer to the Nicaraguan coast and the island of Old Providence with its tiny and, to us, fascinating satellite, Santa Katalina. Even I could not help wondering what we should find there. The two Vandermeulens were in a fever of excitement, cursing at every moment the slowness of the yacht. We were, as a matter of fact, due to reach the island early next morning.

Some time in the afternoon, the old man approached me confidentially.

“Say, young know-all,” he said, “what d’you figure out was the meaning of last night’s gaff? I guess Pauline ain’t got no natural talent for play-acting like that.”

Rather foolishly, I amused myself with his credulity.

“Of course,” I said, concealing a smile, “it may be that in a previous existence your daughter’s name was Lucia—the Spanish lady friend of some of the buccaneers and particularly of a certain John Dawson, who is now directing her to the treasure they buried together a few hundred years ago.” I regretted my words the moment they were uttered. The man’s infatuation needed no fanning from me.

“By God, you’ve hit it!” he exclaimed. “And she’s just remembering!—I guess she can lead us straight to it!”

“Don’t be absurd!” I said, pettishly. “I was only joking!”

He glared at me in savage disappointment.

“You’re joking with the wrong man!” he said harshly. “Besides, it sure ain’t impossible!—You don’t know what happens to us when we’re dead, though you do think you know everything!”

“No—it’s not impossible,” I conceded. “But it’s improbable.”

“That’s your opinion,” he sneered. “You know nothing about it!—I’ve had them feelings myself—feelings that I’ve been to a place before when I sure know I haven’t. By God, that’s it!—Pauline’s just remembering—coming back to these old places—and she’ll take us a bee-line to the cache!”

He strode off to impart this illuminating theory to his son, and I saw no more of them until supper time. They were, I was sure, concerting some plan for cutting me out of a share in the treasure.

They had the furtive look of a couple of conspirators as we three, Pauline and her mother still absent, sat that night at table. Both forced themselves to exhibit a strained politeness to me, which obviously concealed some treacherous design. I didn’t like the atmosphere at all and was impelled to clear it.

“By the way,” I remarked, casually, “I don’t want a share in that treasure—I prefer to work for my living.” As I had not the slightest faith in its existence, this renunciation was not difficult. “Supposing your theory to be true, it belongs to Miss Vandermeulen if it belongs to any one.”

“Sure, that’s so!” agreed the old man. “It’s Pauline’s treasure, right enough. Ain’t it, Geoffrey?”

“I guess it’s no one else’s,” said Geoffrey, picking up the idea. “I’ll see to that.”

I could not help smiling at the gratuitous menace in his tone; he might have been sitting on the treasure-chests already.

At that moment we were startled by an appalling scream, a choking cry, from Pauline’s stateroom.

We rushed in and stood for a moment transfixed with horror. Pauline, leaning out of her bunk, was throttling with both hands the life out of her mother, who had been sitting by the bedside. In a flash of my first perception of the scene, I saw that the girl had reverted to her trance-personality. It was Lucia who had that deadly grip upon the other woman’s throat, Lucia who glared at her with fiendishly triumphant eyes, Lucia who gloated mockingly in her foreign accent: “Ah, Teresa!—You think you would take the Englishman from me—you think you would go away with John Dawson and the treasure?” She laughed, cruelly exultant. “I think no, Teresa—I think no—not with the treasure! You can go with that John Dawson, yes! But not with the treasure! You go and wait for him—for your John Dawson—I will send him to you—soon—soon!” Her low laugh was diabolical.

We flung ourselves upon her, but her strength was superhuman. She seemed utterly oblivious of us, as heedless of our struggles as though we were not there. Her eyes flashing, her teeth showing, she continued to jeer at her victim in her foreign voice: “He will come to you to-night—your John Dawson—as he promised, yes! I will send him to you——!” Only as we finally tore the almost strangled Mrs. Vandermeulen from her hands did she suddenly cease to speak. She sank back upon the bed, swooning into complete unconsciousness.

I drove out the father and son and applied myself to reviving the mother. I shall not forget the terrible night I had with her, after she had resuscitated. At length, I had to give her a few drops of laudanum to get her off to sleep. Pauline slept like a child.

I woke up the next morning to that strange feeling of hushed stillness which pervades a ship when her engines are at rest after a long period of unbroken activity. We were pitching heavily, evidently at anchor, for our upward rise was every now and then suddenly and jarringly arrested. We had arrived!

I went to look at my patients and found them both suffering from sea-sickness. This vicious plunging of the yacht was more than their weak stomachs could stand. I gave them each a steadying draught and then went on deck.

The two Vandermeulens were on the bridge with the skipper. I ignored them, instinctively avoiding their certain excitement. Upon our port bow was a fairly large island, its rocky shore crowned with a dense tropical foliage. On the other side of us was a small islet, barren save for a few sparse trees scattered over it, surf breaking white upon its beaches. Old Providence and its satellite, Santa Katalina! Between the two islands a strong current was running, with a heavy ground-swell in which we plunged and kicked, straining at our cables. No wonder the two ladies were ill, I thought, as the deck sank sickeningly sideways under my feet.

I went into the saloon and found that the Vandermeulens had already breakfasted. As I ate my solitary meal, I could hear the heavy trampling of feet on the deck overhead, and guessed that they were hoisting outboard the little steam-launch we used when in harbour.

When I had finished, I went to have another look at Pauline. Her mother was with her. Mentally, she was completely her normal self, with apparently no memory even of that trance-personality which had for the second time surged up in her. But she was feeling very ill in this violent and disturbing motion of the anchored yacht.

Old Vandermeulen came in.

“Get up and dress, Pauline!” he commanded, brutally, as though bearing down opposition in advance. “We’re going ashore!”

His wife sprang forward.

“Oh, no, no, William! Don’t take her! Don’t take her!—Don’t tempt Providence. Don’t go! William! William!” she clung to him in supplication. “She’s too ill to go! She’s too ill to go, isn’t she, doctor?”

The old man shook her off.

“Nonsense!” he said roughly. Nevertheless, he turned enquiringly to me.

I considered the pros and cons dispassionately for a moment. Of course, the old lady’s fears were mere superstition and did not influence me in the least.

“Well,” I said, “I think that if Miss Vandermeulen feels equal to the effort of dressing, it would do her good to get away from the yacht and walk about on firm land for an hour or two.”

“I should like to,” said Pauline, all docility. “Besides,” she smiled, “I should like to see for myself if there is any truth in that strange writing.”

Half an hour later we had, with some difficulty, stowed the ladies—for the mother insisted on coming also—in the stern-sheets of the little launch which rose and fell dizzily under the lee of the yacht. The two Vandermeulens were amidships, ready to give instructions to the helmsman. I noticed that they had a pick and shovel on board. I sat close to Pauline. She was looking pale, but the sea-sickness was in abeyance for the moment and a touch of digitalis I had given her had stiffened her up.

We sheered off, set a course over the rolling dark blue well toward the islet we could see as we lifted on the waves. We had anchored rather on the Old Providence side of the channel dividing the islands, and the launch was about midway between the two when Pauline, who had been looking around her with some curiosity, uttered a sudden ejaculation.

“That’s not the island!” she cried, with a gesture toward Santa Katalina. “It’s the other one—the big one!” She pointed to Old Providence. Then she checked herself, a peculiar look of puzzlement in her face. “I wonder whatever made me say that!” she exclaimed. “One would think I have been here before—but I can’t have!”

“But that’s Santa Katalina!” objected Geoffrey, pointing to the islet. It undoubtedly was.

“Wait!” said old Vandermeulen, who had been sharply watching his daughter for any sign of recognition. “I guess Pauline knows what she is talking about!”

He stopped the engine and for a few moments we rose and fell idly upon the waves, while the two men stared across to Old Providence.

“By Jove, yes!” cried Geoffrey suddenly. “Pauline’s right! Look! There’s Skull Point!”

He indicated, with outstretched hand, a jutting headland whose face had been weather-sculptured into the unmistakable semblance of a skull.

“Skull Point it is!” said old Vandermeulen, with such an oath as he did not usually let come to his daughter’s ears.

In another moment we had gone about and were throbbing quickly toward the headland. All eyes were fixed on it as we approached. Geoffrey had produced a compass.

“Look!” he cried. “The three trees! South-west-by-south from Skull Point!”

Sure enough, in the direction designated, three enormous trees, evidently hundreds of years old, raised their heads high above the mass of more recent vegetation.

A quarter of an hour later we were running into a little cove on the west side of the headland. A ledge of rock, sheltered from the swell, offered itself as a landing-stage, and we ran alongside and made fast.

Old Vandermeulen ordered the two members of the yacht’s crew, who had accompanied us, to remain in the launch. The rest of us started off into the island, Geoffrey carrying the tools. The three trees were at no great distance, at the summit of a slope of broken-down volcanic rock. Geoffrey arrived first.

“No need to worry where to dig, Father!” he shouted. “Here it is—plain enough!”

Under the centre tree was a cairn of loose stones, more than half buried under the detritus of many years, it is true, but evidently the work of men’s hands.

“That’s it, sure!” cried the old man. “First time you’ve seen this place, Pauline?” he queried, with a touch of grim cynicism.

“Of course!” she replied. “What do you mean, Father?—and yet—” she hesitated, looking around her—“yet I do have a strange sort of feeling as though I had been here before. But I can’t have! It’s absurd!”

Mother and daughter sat down under the shade of the trees whilst we three set to work to open the cairn. I was as excited as they by this time, and I helped with a will. The old man, wielding his pick with the skill of an ex-miner, loosened the stones on the surface. I rolled away the big ones, and Geoffrey shovelled away the smaller stuff. At the end of an hour we had made a pretty deep excavation. We then took it in turns to work with pick and shovel in the hole, from which we threw up the stones.

Suddenly Geoffrey uttered an exclamation.

“We’re on something!—What’s that, doctor?” He passed me up a long bone.

“That’s the tibia of a man,” I replied. “I expect you’ll find the rest of him there.”

“Sure thing!” he said. “Here he is!” He cleared away one or two large lumps of rock and revealed the grinning skeleton of a man. “Hallo!” he added, as he bent down to it, “what’s this?”

A long thin stiletto was lying loosely between the fleshless ribs of the skeleton.

The old man snatched it from him as he plucked it out.

“And by all that’s holy!” he cried, “it’s got her name on it! Look!”

I took it from him. The dagger was of antique pattern, its steel rusted and corroded but still resilient enough to make it a dangerous weapon, and on the hilt, still legible, roughly inlaid in silver like the amateur work of a sailorman, was the name—Lucia!

“I guess she murdered him with that!” said the old man, grimly, glancing from the stiletto to the skeleton grinning up at us from the hole where it had so long lain undisturbed. He turned toward where his daughter sat in the shade of the trees. “Here, Pauline!” he called to her. “Come and see—your friend the pirate and the knife that killed him!”

The girl jumped up and ran across to us, all excitement.

“How wonderful!” she said. “It’s like a dream come true!”

At the time, excited as we all were, I did not notice the strangeness of that spontaneous phrase. She stood upon the edge of the excavation and took the stiletto with eager curiosity from her father. She held it in both hands, breast-high, the point toward her, to read the name upon the hilt.

“Lucia!” she cried, with a strange look toward us, as though dimly and uncertainly recalling some terrible experience. “Lucia!” She repeated the name with a peculiar, slow intonation—an intonation of puzzled half-remembrance.

We stared at her, fascinated. Was our fantastic theory true?

Her gaze lost us, fixed itself into vacancy. Her features changed. An expression of vague fear—the fear of the hypnotic shrinking at some invisible danger—came into them. She opened her mouth as though to speak.

She uttered only an inarticulate cry—a cry of fright as the loose stones of the excavation slipped from under her. She fell headlong into the hole, where she lay oddly—ominously—still. I jumped down after her, lifted her up. The rusty old stiletto, caught under her in her fall, had driven straight into her heart—broken off at the hilt!

The doctor stopped, looked round upon his audience.

“And the treasure?” queried one of them.

“There was no treasure. There was no more digging that day. We took the poor girl’s corpse back to the yacht and I thought her mother would have died as well—or gone out of her mind. She was screaming to get away from the place. But the old man was not put off his game so easily. The next day, whilst I stayed on board with the distracted mother, he and his son went and dug again in that tragic cairn.

“They brought back all they found—the broken lid of a chest, branded with the date 1665. That, curiously enough, was underneath the skeleton, suggesting that the hoard had been rifled before the man, whoever he was, was killed.”

“A strange story!” commented another of the audience. “And what’s your hypothesis in explanation, doctor?”

The doctor smiled.

“Well—you can have your choice,” he said. “There is the possibility that, in a prior existence, Miss Vandermeulen was in fact Lucia, that she seduced John Dawson into revealing the secret of the treasure, that she murdered him on the spot and went off with it—and that the vengeful spirit of the old buccaneer, hovering around these latitudes, came into touch with her new reincarnation, and, playing with a fine irony upon that same lust of gold which was responsible for his murder but of which she was this time entirely innocent, led her to a death by that same poniard with which she had killed him. Alternatively, there is the hypothesis that her spontaneous writing and the impersonation of Lucia were but an automatic dramatization by her subconsciousness of hints dropped into it by her brother’s reading of ‘Treasure Island’ and subsequent conversations between her father and his son, and that her death was a mere coincidence.”

“An incredibly complete coincidence!” said one of the men.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“There was one other curious thing,” he said. “Some years later, in a history of the buccaneers, I came across a paragraph to the effect that the island called Old Providence since the eighteenth century was known to the buccaneers as Santa Katalina, and that only subsequently was that name transferred to the islet north of it. So Pauline’s subconscious memory was right! Furthermore, it stated that the large island, then called Santa Katalina, was seized and garrisoned by the buccaneers in 1664 under the leadership of a man named Mansvelt. He sailed off to get recruits, leaving the island in command of a certain Simon, and died upon the voyage. Simon surrendered the island to the Spaniards who had besieged it. The date was 1665.

“Of course, Miss Vandermeulen may have read that paragraph and subconsciously retained the names—but, for her, it was an improbable kind of reading. At any rate, she had a curious knowledge of an out-of-the-way piece of history. As I said, when you tap the subconsciousness you never know what buried treasure you may find. Well, I leave you to your hypotheses, gentlemen.” He stood up, knocked out his pipe. “Good-night!”

A PROBLEM IN REPRISALS

In the dusk of a winter afternoon a battalion of the French Contingent of the Army of Occupation dispersed to its billets in the little German village. The Chef-de-bataillon and the médecin-major, having installed their staffs in their respective bureaux, walked up the street in search of the quarters which had been chosen for them in the meanwhile. The scared faces of slatternly women, obsequiously gesturing the mud-stained French soldiers into occupation of their cottages, turned to look anxiously at them as they passed, in evident apprehension of the order which should let loose a vengeful destruction only too probable to their uneasy consciences. Here and there a haggard-looking man, an ex-soldier probably, slunk into his house, out of sight, but the native population of the village was preponderatingly feminine. The two officers—the commandant, good-humoured and inclined to rotundity, his eyes twinkling under brows a shade less gray than his moustache; the doctor, a middle-aged man, quiet, restrained to curtness in speech and expression, with eyes that swept sombrely without interest over his environment—ignored alike the false smiles and the genuinely alarmed glances of these wives and mothers of their once arrogant enemies.

A captain came down the street toward them and saluted on near approach. It was the adjutant of the battalion. He was young and his natural cheerfulness was enhanced to perpetual high spirits in the enjoyment of the experiences following upon overwhelming victory.

“We are well housed, mon commandant,” he said joyously, with a flash of white teeth under his little brown moustache. “Comfort moderne—presque! Not a château, it is true—but large enough. The best in the village, in any case. Bedrooms for the three of us, and a room for our popote. Our baggage is already in, and dinner will be ready in half an hour. Tout ce qu’il y a de mieux, n’est-ce pas?” He finished with his young laugh.

The gray eyes of the battalion-commander twinkled at him.

“And the patronne, Jordan?—Old and ugly?”

The young man’s face lit up. He put one finger to his lips and blew an airy kiss.

“Ah, mon commandant!” he replied in a tone of assumed ecstasy. “You shall see her! A pearl, a jewel, une femme exquise!—That is to say,” he added, with a change of note, “she would be if she were not a femme boche. One almost forgets it, to look at her. But boche or not, she is young, she is beautiful, and, mon commandant, rarest of all—she is intelligent!”

The battalion commander laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder and drew him along with them as they resumed their momentarily interrupted progress.

“I see I have to congratulate you upon another conquest,” he said, with amused tolerance. “He is incredible, notre cher Jordan, Delassus!” he added with a smile to the doctor.

“Je ne dis pas,” protested the young captain with an affectation of modesty. “But we understand each other and that is already much—although, unfortunately, she speaks no French and my German lacks vocabulary. But she made me understand that her husband was an officer killed in the war. ‘Mann—Offizier—tot—Krieg.’ That’s right, doctor, n’est-ce pas?—You are the linguist.”

The doctor nodded assent.

“Quite correct. You should make rapid progress under an instructor so willing to impart interesting information,” he said drily.

The young man protested warmly against the implication.

“Your cynicism is out of place, doctor. I assure you. She is timide—timide like a frightened bird.—I extorted it from her.—But you shall see for yourselves. Here we are!”

They were at the end of the village. The young captain led them through a carriage gateway, sadly in need of a coat of paint, up a weed-grown drive to a fairly large house, that had once been white but was now stained with the overflow of gutters long left out of repair. A belt of trees hid it from the road. The main door, in the centre of the house with windows on both sides of it, was open, as if in expectation of them. Wisps of smoke from several of the chimneys hinted at hospitality in preparation.

As the three of them entered the hall, a young woman appeared on the threshold of one of the rooms communicating with it. Her natural slimness was emphasized by a gown of black, and this sombre garb threw into relief the fair hair which was massed heavily above her delicate features. It needed, perhaps, the youthful enthusiasm of the captain to call her beautiful; but her appearance had something of fragile charm which conferred a distinction rare among German women. She stood there, a little drawn back from her first emergence, contemplating them with eyes that evidently sought to measure the potentiality for mischief in these forced guests. Her attitude appealed dumbly for protection, so forlorn and frail and timid was it as she shrunk back in the doorway.

“Introduce us, Jordan!” whispered the battalion-commander to his subordinate. “On est civilisé, quoi donc!”

The young captain had lost a considerable amount of his assurance. Rather flustered, he saluted and pointed to his superior.

“Commandant!” then, turning to the other, “Doctor!” he blurted, clumsily.

Their hostess bowed slightly with a pathetic little smile as the two officers saluted. The doctor advanced a step.

“Have no fear, gnädige Frau,” he said politely in German. “The war is over and France does not avenge itself upon women. No harm will come to you.”

Her face lit up.

“Ach, you speak German!”

“I studied in Germany in my youth, gnädige Frau, and I have not quite forgotten the language.”

She smiled at him.

“Gewiss nicht!” Then, with a swift change of expression, she clutched imploringly at his arm. “You will protect me? I am so alone and frightened!” She hesitated as though seeking a cognate circumstance in him that should compel his sympathy. “You are married?”

The polite smile went out of his face. His expression hardened.

“I was, gnädige Frau,” he replied, curtly.

She stared at him, divining that she had blundered upon some painful mystery. With feminine tact she steered quickly away from it into the region of safe commonplace. She threw open one of the doors leading into the hall.

“Here, meine Herren, is the Speisezimmer,” she said in a tone of colourless courtesy that contrasted with her emotion-charged voice of a moment before. “It is at your service for your meals. There,” she pointed to a door at the other side of the hall, “is the Salon—also at your service. I have had a fire lit in it. Your orderlies are now in the kitchen. I will send them to you to show you your rooms.” She inclined her head slightly in sign of farewell and passed out through a door at the end of the hall.

The young captain looked at his commanding officer.

“Eh bien, mon commandant? What did I tell you? Is she not——?”

His superior interrupted him, a twinkle in his eye.

“She is, mon cher Jordan—but you have not a chance against the doctor here!” He laughed, clapping the doctor on the back.

The médecin-major frowned. His ascetic features hardened again.

“Mon cher commandant, you do me too much honour,” he said coldly. “I assure you that there is no living woman who can interest me.”

“Bah!” said the battalion-commander a trifle fatuously, “moi, je suis connaisseur dans ces affaires-lá! I am sure that something is going to happen between you and that woman. I can always feel that sort of thing in the air like—” he hesitated for an illustration, “like some people can see ghosts.”

The doctor looked him in the eyes.

“Mon Commandant,” he said, curtly, “if you could see ghosts you would not feel so sure.”

There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The captain broke it by shouting for the orderlies.

The three officers were introduced to their rooms and parted to perform their toilet before dinner.

The meal which followed in the rather overfurnished Speisezimmer was overshadowed by the gloomy taciturnity of the doctor who appeared still to resent the battalion-commander’s suggestions of gallantry. Not all the sprightly sallies of the adjutant, not the persistent bonhomie of the battalion-commander, resolutely ignoring any hostility between himself and the doctor, could bring a smile into that hard-set face with the sombre eyes. Their hostess did not appear again and was not mentioned between them. When they had finished, the captain suggested that they should smoke their cigars in the Salon.

“I feel I want to put my feet on the piano,” he said, with a vague remembrance of a popular picture, “like the boches at Versailles in ’seventy! To infect our hostess’s curtains with cigar-smoke is a poor compromise, but it is something! Allons, messieurs!—let us indulge in hideous reprisals! The boche has devastated our homes—let us avenge ourselves by spoiling his curtains!”

The battalion-commander looked smilingly across to the doctor.

“Mon cher Delassus, are you for this policy of reprisals?”

The doctor looked up as though startled out of a train of thought.

“Mon commandant, it is a subject on which I dare not let myself think.”

There was something so harsh in his tone that neither of his companions could continue their banter. Both looked at the doctor. They knew little or nothing of his private life, for he had joined the battalion only just prior to the armistice, but evidently it contained a tragedy the memory of which they had unwittingly revived. Both maintained a respectful silence for a few moments. Then the adjutant rose and went out of the room. He called out to them from the Salon that a splendid fire awaited them, and the others rose from the table also.

The battalion-commander laid his hand affectionately upon the doctor’s shoulder.

“Mon cher,” he said, “forgive me if I have unconsciously wounded sacred sentiments.”

The doctor pressed the hand that was extended to him. They went together across the hall into the Salon.

A blazing wood fire fitfully lit up a large room still without other means of illumination. Jordan explained that he had sent an orderly for some candles, as Madame had no petroleum for the lamps. The battalion-commander and the doctor threw themselves luxuriously into deep armchairs on either side of the fireplace and lit their cigars. In a few minutes the orderly arrived with the candles. Jordan fitted them into two large candelabra on the mantelpiece and lit them.

The eyes of all three officers roved around the apartment. It was, like the dining-room, rather overfurnished and was particularly rich in bric-à-brac of all kinds. It was, in fact, overcrowded with porcelain figures, small mirrors, pictures of moderate size, all sorts of valuable objects that in almost every case were of easily portable dimensions. This last attribute leaped simultaneously to the minds of two of them.

“Mon commandant,” began Jordan, in a humorously affected judicial tone, “I am penetrated by an unworthy suspicion——!”

“French! Nom d’un nom!” cried the battalion-commander. “Everything here!—The collection of the burglar boche officer!—Doctor! You speak German!—Ask that woman——!”

Both were suddenly arrested by the attitude of the doctor. He was staring in a fixed fascination at a small Buhl clock upon the mantelpiece. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, snatched down the clock, and gazed eagerly at the back of it.

“Mon Dieu!” he cried. “This is mine!—it comes from my house!—Look!”

He showed them an inscription on the back:

[1]“A Jules, pour marquer les heures d’un amour qui ne cessera pas quand le temps même cessera, de sa Marcelle.”

He stared at them like a lunatic.

“My wife!” he cried. “My wife!—Oh, Marcelle, Marcelle, where are you? Where are you?”

The others also had risen to their feet. A tense silence followed upon the wild cry.

The battalion-commander touched the doctor’s arm.

“Mon ami,” he said gently, “—can we help you——?”

The erstwhile sombre eyes of the doctor blazed down upon him, as though searching for a mortal enemy even in this friend. Then, with a distinctly apparent effort of will, the anguished man mastered himself.

“Listen!” he said. “This clock was a present to me from my wife. It was a love-marriage, ours—we loved, she and I——” he broke off, his eyes blazing again. Then, with a gesture of the hand as though he put that from him, he continued: “Before the war I was in practice at Cambrai. We lived out of the town—in a country house such as this. In August, 1914, I was mobilized. They sent me to Lorraine. I left my wife at home, believing her to be safe. You know what happened. The enemy swept over that part of the country. Trench-warfare began and my home, all I cared for in the world—my wife—was in the German lines. I never saw her again. I could never get any news. I waited four desperate years—and then, when we advanced, I went to find my home. It simply did not exist—it was a heap of bricks with a trench through it. My wife—no hint!” He pressed a hand over his eyes, then stared once more at the clock. “And now—I find this—here!”

Again there was a tense silence. The battalion-commander broke it at last.

“Interrogate the woman,” he said, briefly. “She must know something.”

“It is a pity her husband is dead,” said the captain, with grim humour. “We could have the pleasure of condemning him by court-martial, after he had confessed—whatever there is to confess.”

The doctor’s face set hard. He replaced the clock on the mantelpiece and wrote a few words on a page of his notebook.

“I am going to have the truth,” he said, tearing out the page and folding it up. “Ring the bell, my dear Jordan.”

An orderly appeared.

“Take this to Madame,” said the doctor, “at once.”

The orderly departed. The three men waited, two of them tingling with the excitement of this unexpected drama, the third standing with compressed lips and eyes that seemed to be frowning into a world which transcended this. He was certainly oblivious of his companions in the fixity of his thought. At last his lips moved.

“Marcelle! Marcelle!” he murmured. “My love! I am going to know—and, if need be, to avenge!”

At that moment the door opened and the frail little figure of the German woman appeared upon the threshold.

“Meine Herren?” she said, in timid enquiry.

The doctor looked up. His companions marvelled to see the expression of his face change to a smiling courtesy. But there was a glitter in the usually sombre eyes which spurred their hardly repressed excitement.

“Will you have the kindness to enter, gnädige Frau?” said the doctor. His voice was suave, but there was a note in it which his companions, although they did not understand the words, recognized as compelling.

The German woman glanced at him apprehensively, and obeyed. The doctor drew up an armchair for her, close to the fire.

“Will you not seat yourself, gnädige Frau?” he asked still in the suave voice with the undertone of command.

She inclined her head speechlessly and sat down. They noticed that her hands were trembling. The doctor motioned his companions to resume their seats. He himself remained standing, his back to the fireplace, his form hiding the clock on the mantelpiece from the eyes of the woman had she looked up. He smiled at her in a reassuring manner, as she waited dumbly for him to state the reason for his summons.

“We are very much interested in your collection of porcelain, gnädige Frau,” he said, smoothly. “It is French, is it not?”

A sudden expression of alarm flitted into her eyes, was banished. She nodded her head.

“Ja—ja, mein Herr,” she answered hesitatingly. She moistened her lips. Her hands gripped each other tightly upon her lap.

The battalion-commander and the captain observed her with a quickened interest. Despite their ignorance of German, the word “Porzelän” gave them the clue to their comrade’s opening question.

“It is the result of many years’ gradual acquisition, I presume?” he pursued, in a casual tone.

She shot an upward glance at him from under her eyebrows ere she replied.

“Ja—mein Herr.”

“It is well chosen,” said the doctor. “I congratulate you on your knowledge and good taste. Perhaps you would explain some of the pieces to us—pieces I do not recognize?”

She looked up at him with wide and innocent eyes.

“I cannot, mein Herr. I know nothing about porcelain. It was my husband’s collection. I keep it in memory of him.”

There was an accent of sincerity in the last phrase which drew a sharp glance from the doctor.

“Ah,” he said quietly. “He was killed, was he not?”

Her eyes filled with tears, her mouth twitched.

“Killed in one of the very last battles, mein Herr.” She drew a long sobbing breath and looked wildly at him. “Ach Gott! do not remind me! do not remind me!” she cried. “He was all I had in the world—everything—everything! You do not know how good and kind and loving he was! And now he is gone—he will never come back—never—never! And I loved him so!” She broke down into sobs, hiding her face in her hands.

The doctor waited until the crisis had subsided. A diagnosis of hysteria formed itself in his professional mind.

“So you have no real interest in this collection?” he enquired. “Would you sell it?”

“Ach, nein—nein!” she answered. “I keep it in memory of him, my Heinrich, who loved it so.—I feel him here when I dust it and care for it.” She looked wildly round the room. “I feel him here now!”

The doctor nodded his head in courteous assent to a possibility.

“Did he inherit it?” he asked casually, as though merely pursuing a conversation which could not, in politeness, be allowed to cease on a note of distress.

She shook her head.

“Ah, he bought it?”

She moistened her lips nervously ere she replied.

“Yes.”

“Before the war?”

Her face hardened as she answered again.

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence and then the doctor changed his position slightly before the mantelpiece.

“And this pretty clock?” he asked, pointing to it. “Did he buy that also?”

She stared at it and then nodded her head.

“Ja, mein Herr.”

“So!—that is curious. I am particularly interested in that clock, gnädige Frau. Can you remember where it was bought?”

She hesitated, ventured a scared glance at him, and obviously forced herself to speech. The two officers involuntarily bent forward in their interest.

“No, mein Herr.”

She glanced round as though seeking an opportunity for escape.

The doctor repeated his question in a level tone of authority, his eyes fixed on her.

“You are sure you cannot remember where that clock was bought, gnädige Frau?”

“Quite sure.” Her breast was heaving. She half rose from her seat. “Why do you ask me all these questions? Let me go!—Let me go! You have no right to question me like this! I—I tell you it was bought—it was all bought!”

The doctor stepped forward with a quick movement, seized her wrist, and forced her back into her seat.

“I beg of you!” he said in a voice that compelled obedience.

She subsided, trembling in every limb. Her eyes followed his every movement with the fascinated attention of a frightened animal.

The doctor came close to her, and from her point of view glanced up to the mantelpiece. Then, stepping back, he arranged the candles so that the face of the clock, seen from her position, was a disc of bright reflection.

Without a word but with a deliberation which awed even the watching officers by its inflexible though mysterious purpose, he turned to her once more, and, with the gently firm touch of a medical man, posed her head so that she looked straight before her. Paralyzed under his masterful dominance, she submitted plastically. She was too frightened to utter a sound. Only her eyes widened as she saw him produce a heavy revolver.

“Now, gnädige Frau!” he said, and his voice, though passionless, was intense in its expression of level will-power, “do not move your head! Look up—under your eyebrows. You see that clock? Look at it—continue to look at it!—If you take your eyes off it for one fraction of a second I shall shoot you dead! You are looking at it? It marks a quarter to eight. When it strikes eight you will tell me quite truthfully how you came by it!”

He ceased. The young woman, her face white with terror, her mouth twitching, her nostrils distended, sat motionless, staring up under her eyebrows at the face of the clock.

There was a dead silence in the room. The minutes passed. The young woman did not move a muscle. Her wide-open eyes fixed on the clock, she seemed to stiffen into a cataleptic rigidity.

The doctor put aside his revolver. He approached her, took one of her wrists and lifted her hand from her lap. It lay limply in his.

“You are feeling sleepy,” he said in his level, positive voice. “You are going to sleep. My voice is sounding muffled and far away—but you will still hear it. You are losing the sense of your surroundings—but you still see that clock face. You cannot help but see it. And when it strikes eight you are going to tell the truth.” He dropped the hand which fell lifelessly again upon her lap.

The young woman sat motionless as a statue. Her breathing changed to the deep respirations of sleep, although her eyes remained wide open.

The clock struck eight. At the last of its thin, silvery notes the young woman shuddered. Her lips moved.

“My husband sent it to me,” she said in a toneless, dreamy voice.

“When?” asked the doctor.

“In 1915.”

“From whence?”

“From the front.”

“Do you know the place?”

“No.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“And all these other things?”

“My husband sent them to me.”

“From France?”

“Yes.”

“How did he become possessed of them?”

“He took them out of houses.”

There was a pause in which the young woman did not move in the slightest. She appeared like some oracular statue waiting for the next question.

“Why did you lie to me?” asked the doctor in his level voice.

“Because you would have thought my husband a thief, and I am so proud of him.”

“Can you be proud of him, knowing that he was a thief?”

“Yes,” came the dreamy answer. “It was not his crime. He sent these things to me because I asked him for them and he loved me.”

“You asked him to send you these things? Why?”

“Because all the other officers’ wives were having things sent to them.”

“So! Your husband would not have taken them if you had not asked for them?”

“No. He only took them to give me pleasure. He never thought of anybody but me. That is why I love him so—why I shall always love him.”

The doctor bit his lip, and hesitated for a moment.

“You do not think your husband would have offered violence to a woman in the house where he got this clock?”

“No. He loved me too much. He never thought of any woman but me. I am sure of it. He was an ideal man, my Heinrich—always gentle, always loving, always faithful.” She paused a moment before continuing. “It is cruel of you to make me realize how much I love him!”

The doctor stood over her, contemplating her, his brows wrinkled in a puzzled frown. His comrades looked at him enquiringly. He ignored them. The young woman, having ceased to speak, remained motionless and upright on her chair. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

Suddenly the doctor’s brows cleared in an evident decision. He lifted the young woman’s hand again as he spoke in his level, positive voice. His face was very grave.

“You are asleep. But you are going into a very much deeper sleep—a sleep so profound that it takes you far out of this time and place. Nevertheless you will remain in touch with me and you will hear my voice. But everything else is going from you. You are now released from the limitations of this body. You are on a plane from which you can enter into any time and place that I shall command.”

He dropped her hand and, with his finger-tips, closed the lids over her eyes. Her body still remained upright in its trancelike rigidity.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” came the dreamy answer.

“Where are you?”

“I do not know—I—I am nowhere, I think,” she said with hesitation. “I—I—oh, do not keep me like this!” There was a new note of anxiety in her voice.

“Wait a moment,” said the doctor. He turned to the mantelpiece, took down the clock, placed it on her lap, and clasped her hands about it.

“Now,” he said in his quiet, tense tones, “you are in touch with that clock. I want you to go into the time and place when that clock had another owner—before your husband had it. Focus yourself upon it. Go into the room where it stands.”

The young woman’s eyelids twitched flickeringly but otherwise her rigid attitude was unmodified.

“Yes,” she said, in a slow and doubtful tone, “yes——”

“What do you see?” asked the doctor. His lips compressed themselves firmly after the words, the muscles of his lean jaw stood out, in the intense effort of his will to keep emotion under control, to avoid an unconscious suggestion of ideas.

“I see a salon,” said the young woman dreamily, “a salon with French windows opening on to a lawn. There is a grand piano in it—and a young woman seated at the piano. She is dark—young—oh, she is very beautiful! She keeps on looking at the clock—the clock is on the mantelpiece between two bronze statuettes. She is expecting somebody——”

“Yes?” said the doctor, crouching over her, his fists clenched in a spasm of supremely willed self-control, his breath coming in the quick gasps enforced by that tumultuous beating of the heart he could not command.

“Yes?—Go on!”

“She hears a footstep—she jumps up from the piano. A man comes into the room—a civilian. She throws her arms about him and kisses him. She leads him across to the mantelpiece and takes up the clock. She puts it into his hands—she is showing him something on the back of it, something written! They kiss again. They are in love these two—how she loves him! I can feel that—I can feel her love vibrating in me!” She paused dreamily. “I know what real love is—and she loves him like that——”

“The man?” asked the doctor, his eyes wild. “The man?—describe him!”

“His back is turned to me—I cannot see his face. Ah, he turns round. The man is—you!”

The doctor looked as though he were going to collapse. His companions watched him, fascinated, completely mystified, trying to guess at the drama their ignorance of the language hid from them. He mastered himself with a mighty effort.

“Yes,” he said. “You have the place right—but not the time. Go on a year—more than a year! Go on to the time when this clock passed out of that woman’s possession!”

“More than a year!” she repeated dreamily. “I—I must sleep—I cannot——” She was silent for a few moments. “Yes—yes—I see the room again. The young woman is in it. She is seated at a little table—writing. She looks up—Oh, how sad and pale she is!—but she is still very beautiful. I am so sorry for her—she is so unhappy—and she is still in love, I can still feel it vibrating in me. She is picking up a photograph—she kisses it—it is yours!—she kisses it again and again. Why are you not with her? I feel that you are a great distance off—she does not know where you are. That worries her, because she loves you so.” She stopped.

“Go on,” said the doctor sternly. “What do you see next?”

“She puts away her writing hurriedly. She is frightened of something—someone is coming, I think—yes! The door opens—a soldier—no, a German officer! Oh, she is frightened of him, but she is brave! She stands up as he comes toward her. She draws back from him—he is between her and the door. He puts out his hands, tries to hold her—Ach!” her voice rose to a scream, “it is Heinrich!”

“Go on!” commanded the doctor. “Go on! What do you see?” His voice was terrible in its inexorability.

“Oh no, no!” she whispered. “No! Don’t make me see! don’t make me see! I don’t want to—I don’t want to—Ach, Heinrich, Heinrich!” Her voice came on a note of anguish. “I cannot bear it!”

The doctor frowned at the rigid figure with closed eyes that began to sway slightly to and fro upon its chair. Her face was drawn with a suffering beyond expression.

“See!” he commanded. “And tell me what you see!”

“Oh!” she moaned, “you are cruel—cruel! I do not want to see! I do not want to look!”

“You must!”

“Oh!” Evidently she surrendered helplessly. She commenced in a fatigued, dreary voice: “They are there together—the two of them! That beautiful woman—oh, I hate her now, I hate her!—Ach, Heinrich, have you forgotten me?” It was as if she called to him. “He does not hear me. His eyes are fixed on the woman.” She continued in short panting sentences uttered with increasing horror. “She is retreating from him—further and further back. He is following her. Oh, something terrible is going to happen—it is in the air—I feel it—something horrible!—What?—Ah, he is trying to kiss her! My Heinrich! Oh, how dreadful, how dreadful!—Oh, don’t make me see any more—don’t make me see any more!—He has got her in his arms—she is struggling. Oh, I can’t look—I will not look!—Oh, Heinrich, and I loved you so!” Her voice fell from the scream of a nightmare to a plaintive moaning. “Oh, no more—no more! I can bear no more!”

“Look!—Look to the very end!”

The doctor’s comrades shuddered at his aspect as he crouched over her, seeming as though he were trying to peer with her eyes into some scene of horror they could not even imagine.

The young woman’s face was a mask of agony.

“Oh, you torture me,” she moaned, “you torture me—I see, and I do not want to see—oh, I do not want to see——”

“What do you see?”

“They are struggling together!—She fights desperately—what a wild cat she is! He is pinning her arms to her sides with his embrace—she throws her head back, back, to escape him. Ah! She has broken away! She runs to the table. What is she going to do?” The seer’s voice rose in acute alarm. “Ach, a revolver! Oh, no, no!” The ejaculation was a vehement and agonized protest. “Heinrich! Oh, leave her—leave her!—No, he laughs at her as he follows—and she is so desperate. Ah, he has got her up in a corner—he has seized her again—she is crying out—it is a name—she cries it again and again——”

“What name?”

“I hear it! Jules!—Jules!—that is it—Jules! Oh, what a tone of despair!”

The doctor closed his eyes and swayed. Then, mastering himself with a superhuman effort, he said hoarsely:

“Go on!—To the end!”

“I cannot see plainly—they are struggling still. Ach! the revolver! She has fired! I see the thin smoke in the air.—What has happened? He has her in his arms—he stumbles with her.—Ach, she is dead! She has shot herself. He stretches her out on the floor—he is bending over her—Ach, Heinrich, Heinrich, you have broken my heart!” She wailed as if from the depths of a wretchedness beyond all solace. “You have killed my love for ever! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you as long as I live—I hate myself for having loved you! Faithless, despicable brute!”

She finished in a tone of fierce vindictiveness, a resentment, at once horrified and implacable, of unforgivable wrong.

But the doctor no longer heeded her. Hands to his brow, eyes closed, he reeled away from her.

“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” he groaned. “Marcelle, Marcelle! How shall I avenge you?”

He glanced at the now silent and still rigid figure of the young woman. Tears were trickling down her cheeks from the closed eyes. Her trance was unbroken. She sat still nursing the clock.

Then, with a deep breath, he drew himself erect. The jaw that expressed his powerful will set hard again. His two companions looked with horror upon the dreadful pallor of that face from which two fierce eyes blazed. A little laugh from him. It was a sickening mockery of mirth.

“Mes amis!” he said. “You asked me a little time ago what I thought of the policy of reprisals. I ask you that question now. That young woman, in a hypnotic trance, has just described to me, as though she had seen it acted before her eyes, the suicide of my wife. She killed herself rather than be outraged by that woman’s husband. In her waking life the young woman is, of course, totally ignorant of the event. In her waking life she adores the memory of her dead husband as of a perfect and faithful lover. Now, in her hypnotic state, she loathes him—her love has turned to bitter jealous hatred. She despises him. In fact, she feels toward him just as she would have felt had she witnessed the scene that destroyed my life’s happiness. It rests with me to call her back to waking life, totally ignorant of her husband’s crime, adoring him as before—or to leave her in an agony of shattered love. Virtually, her husband murdered my wife. Her memory of him is the only thing that I can touch. Shall I leave it sacred? Or shall I, justly, kill it?—What do you say?—It is a pretty little problem in reprisals for you!”

His comrades stared at him in horrified astonishment.

“But,” cried the battalion-commander, “are you sure——”

“Look at her!” replied the doctor.

The young woman still sat rigidly upright. Her face was drawn with anguish. Heavy tears rolled ceaselessly from under the closed eyelids. She sobbed quietly in a far-off kind of way that was nevertheless eloquent of an immense despair.

“She sees what happened——?” queried the captain in an incredulous and puzzled tone.

“Three years ago. She is looking at it now,” asserted the doctor. “She sees her husband bending over my dead wife.—Come, messieurs, let me have your verdict!” He seemed to be experiencing a grim, unhuman enjoyment at their evident recoil from the terrible problem he offered them. “I must wake her soon!”

“And if she wakes—knowing——?” faltered the captain.

“She will probably kill herself. She has been living in an intense love for the idealized memory of her husband. The revulsion will be overwhelming.”

The battalion-commander interposed.

“But, mon cher—a suicide—that goes beyond——”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“Her husband drove my wife to suicide——”

“It is terribly logical,” murmured the young captain, “but,” he glanced at the unconscious figure in its mysterious and awful grief, “one needs to be God to indulge in logic to that point.”

“And yet we are but men,” said the doctor, “and the problem is there before us—must be solved at once! In my place, what would you do?”

The battalion-commander rose. He went up to his comrade and looked him in the eyes.

“Mon cher,” he said solemnly, “God forbid that I should ever be in your place! I do not know.”

The doctor turned to the young man. There was a terrible smile on his lips.

“And you, mon cher Jordan?”

The captain rose also. He also read the hell in the doctor’s eyes. He shook his head and shuddered.

“Mon ami,” he replied, “I should go mad.”

The doctor nodded grimly.

“The terrible thing is that I cannot go mad,” he said. “I am still sane.—So you both decline the problem?”

The two officers shook their heads, not trusting themselves to speech.

The doctor turned away from them and covered his face with both hands. He reeled to the mantelpiece, leaned against it. They saw his body shake in the intensity of the nervous crisis which swept over him.

“Marcelle!” he cried. “Marcelle!—if you are a living spirit, counsel me! Shall I avenge?”

The watchers turned to the entranced woman as though involuntarily expecting a reply through her from that mysterious region where her soul was in touch with the long-past tragedy she had revealed. She still wept silently in that awful sleep which was no sleep. But no word passed her lips. Only the clock she held upon her lap struck one silvery note, marking the half-hour.

At the sound the doctor turned from the fireplace and took up the clock. He gazed, with a passionate intensity, upon the inscription on the back.

“Marcelle!” he murmured. “Our love ceases not when time itself shall cease! Though you are dead, that still lives—that was not murdered!—I understand, ma bien-aimée, I understand!”

He put the clock gently upon the mantelpiece and turned once more to the rigid, waiting figure. His comrades watched him, spell-bound, keying themselves to deduce his decision from the tone of his voice when he should speak. His stern face was set in an unfaltering resolve they could not penetrate. He lifted her hand.

“Gnädige Frau,” he said, and the level, passionless voice gave no hint to those ignorant of the language of the purport of the German words which followed, “when you wake from this sleep you will entirely forget the hideous dream through which you have passed. You will never remember it, waking or asleep. You will think of your husband as you have always thought of him—faithful and loving. You will completely resume your normal life. You will not even be aware that you have slept. It will seem to you as if you had only just sat down in this chair. But when you wake you will present me with the clock upon the mantelpiece. You will feel an overmastering impulse to do this, and you will obey it.—Now,” he wiped the tears from her face and blew sharply upon her closed eyelids, “wake!”

The two officers watched her, fascinated. Would she shriek? What terrible paroxysm would be the expression of a heart-broken despair? Or had he——? They held their breath.

Her eyelids flickered for a moment, and then, with one deep sigh, her eyes opened. She smiled round on them.

“Meine Herren?” she said in her voice of timid enquiry. Then, fixing her eyes on the doctor, “You sent for me?”

The doctor looked at her gravely.

“The Commandant desired me to assure you, gnädige Frau, that you need be under no apprehensions during our stay here. We consider ourselves the guests of a charming lady and we hope to leave only a pleasant memory behind us.”

His companions marvelled at the strength of will which could enforce so complete a normality of voice and feature.

The German woman smiled up at him, a pathetic little smile.

“You are very kind, Herr Doctor—please convey my thanks to the Commandant.” She made a little movement which drew attention to her black dress. “My—my husband in heaven, if he can see you, will—will bless you.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Please excuse me!” she said with a pretty little gesture of apology, “his memory is all I have—I cannot help bringing him into every act of my life.”

“Love need not cease with death, gnädige Frau,” replied the doctor. “One hopes that those we loved still watch over us—though we cannot see them.”

She smiled again.

“He had no thought but of me, Herr Doctor, and I have none but of him.—I see you understand,” she finished in a tone of involuntary sympathy. “You also have loved?”

“Ja, gnädige Frau,” he replied with a grave and enigmatic smile. “I also.”

Her eyes went past him to the mantelpiece, rested with a curiously fixed expression on the clock. Suddenly, as though moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she jumped up, took the clock from the mantelpiece and thrust it into the doctor’s hands.

“Please accept this!” she said appealingly.

The doctor fixed his grave eyes upon her.

“Why?” he asked.

She stammered, evidently at a loss for her reason.

“Because—because I want you to have it—because I feel, I do not know why, that you have protected me from something——” She stopped, puzzled by her own words. “That is absurd, I know!” she exclaimed. “But it belonged to two lovers, Herr Doctor—you, who understand love, will value it, I know. I—I feel you ought to have it!”

She left him standing with it. Then she turned to the other officers with her appealing little smile and bowed slightly in farewell.

“Gute Nacht, meine Herren!” she said, and went out of the room.

The doctor stared after her, his face deathly white. Suddenly his body broke and crumpled. He sank down to his knees by one of the chairs, still clasping the clock in his hands.

“Marcelle!” he cried, his head bowed over his recovered love-token, his body shaking, “Marcelle! have I done right?—have I done right?”

The battalion-commander touched his subordinate on the shoulder. Both tip-toed silently out of the room.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] “To Jules, to mark the hours of a love which will not cease when Time itself shall cease, from his Marcelle.”

SECRET SERVICE

“But, Excellenz——!” The entreaty, from such a man, was oddly and strikingly sincere. About forty years of age, sprucely dressed in a well-cut lounge suit, spats over patent boots, he was the type to be seen any day gazing rather aimlessly into the shop-windows of Piccadilly or the Rue de la Paix, the type that haunts the hotels frequented by the best society and yet is not of that society, the type that drifts behind the chairs of every gambling casino in the world. A dark moustache, carefully trimmed, curled over lips whose fine curves were unpleasantly thin and clear-cut. His complexion was sallow; his dark eyes, fixed on his companion in an accentuation of his entreaty, implored now with an expression of genuine truthfulness which was certainly not habitual to them. He gesticulated with a white and exquisitely manicured hand.

“But rubbish!” The speaker was an oldish, thick-set man in evening dress. His round red face, barred with a clipped white moustache, with a pair of small gray eyes vivacious behind pince-nez, was set upon a short apoplectic neck which rucked into folds above his collar. The scalp showed pink through close-cropped white hair. He stood warming himself with his back to the fire—a very large fire for Berlin in the winter of early 1918—and glared angrily at the young man. He spoke with the irascibility of a brutal superior whose impunity is of long date and unquestioned.

“Are you mad, Kranz? Do you take me for an imbecile old woman? Am I feeble-minded—do I look feeble-minded—that you should dare to—to play such a trick upon me?” He was obviously working himself up into one of his official rages. “You—you tell me that you have an infallible means for obtaining secret information, no matter how hidden. You persuade me to come and test it—me! I give you credit for your impudence!—and this is what it is!” He almost choked with offended dignity. “Be careful, Kranz! You have traded this once upon your record with us—you will never do it again! To bring me—me!—to this absurdity!—to expect me to listen to the hypnotic ravings of that idiot girl! I wonder you didn’t offer me crystal-gazing!”

“But, Excellenz——!”

The old man waved a hand at him.

“My dear Kranz,” he said, dropping suddenly into a tone of tolerant contempt. “I forgive you this once. I daresay you have been the victim of a genuine hallucination. You would not have dared else.—You don’t drug, do you?” The question was asked with a disconcertingly sudden sharpness. The younger man made a gesture of emphatic denial, defying the piercing gray eyes that probed him. The old man grunted. “Keep your sanity, Kranz—or the Bureau will lose a valued servant. Drop this nonsense. I know what I am talking about—I studied psychology under Wundt of Jena. The whole thing is a hallucination—the raving of the dream-self released from control—dummes Zeug!—Give me my coat!”

“Excellenz, I implore you!”

The old man looked at him with a snarl of savage mockery.

“Don’t waste any more of my time, Kranz! Look at her—is it even probable that an imbecile creature like that can be of use in our business? Look at her, I say!”

He flung out a hand toward a young girl who stood with obvious reluctance in the centre of the luxuriously furnished apartment. She was perhaps eighteen but her youth had neither beauty nor charm. Her features were soft and heavy; the nose thick; the chin receding; the eyes weak and protuberant. Unmistakably, her personality was of the feeblest. Her face flooded scarlet with shame and her eyes swam with tears at this brutal insult. Yet evidently she did not dare to rush away. Only she looked beseechingly toward Kranz, like a dog who awaits a sign from its master.

His sallow face blanched. The thin lips under the dark moustache lost their curves, became a straight line.

“Agathe!” he said, and his voice of command was strangely in contrast with the tone in which he had entreated the old man. “Go into the next room and wait!”

The girl vanished without a word. Kranz waited until she had closed the door, and then he turned once more to his superior.

“I implore Your Excellency to listen!” he said with a desperate gesture. “I stake my reputation upon it——”

The old man grunted scornfully.

“Your reputation!”

The dark eyes flashed.

“My reputation with you, Excellenz,” he corrected in a gentle voice of complete cynicism.

The old man stared at him.

“Well, go on!” he said brutally, after a short pause which was eloquent of his appraisement. He cleaned his pince-nez to mark his contemptuous indifference to anything that might be said.

“You remember Karl Wertheimer, Excellenz?”

The old man swung round on him, replaced the pince-nez.

“Shot by the English.—You’ll never equal him, Kranz.”

Kranz shrugged his shoulders.

“Excellenz, I believe neither in God nor Devil—until the other day I believed that death finished us completely—but I assure you solemnly upon my—upon anything which you think will bind me—that the soul, or whatever you choose to call it, of Karl Wertheimer speaks through that girl!” There was a pause of silence in which the old man’s eyes probed him to the depths. He proffered no comment and Kranz continued, his voice intensely earnest. “The English shot Karl Wertheimer in London—but they did not kill him. His—his soul is here, in Berlin, in this room, alive as ever, as eager as ever to work for the Fatherland!”

“He always had patriotic notions,” murmured the old man, with a sly smile at the obviously cosmopolitan Kranz, “—that is why he was such an invaluable agent. Go on with your little romance.”

“It is no romance, Excellenz, I assure you—it is living fact. Karl Wertheimer was a useful agent while he lived upon this earth—but he is immeasurably more useful now that he is a—a spirit. There are no walls that can keep him out—there is nothing he cannot see if he chooses to—there is no conversation he cannot overhear——”

“H’m!” grunted the old man, “admitted that if he is a spirit he can do all this—how can he communicate it to us?”

“Through this girl!”

“Who is she, this girl?”

“The daughter of some shopkeeper or other. I followed her ankles one evening in the Park—it was night, and I could not see her face.” He smiled cynically. “I won’t trouble Your Excellency with the details. I brought her in here and no sooner had she sat down in that chair when she swooned off. I was just cursing my luck—I saw her face for the first time then!—and wondering how I was going to get rid of her, when Karl spoke to me. I confess, Excellenz, it gave me a pretty bad turn. It was so utterly unexpected—his voice coming from her lips. However, I pulled myself together—and we had a most interesting conversation——”

“He could answer your questions?” interjected the old man, sharply.

“Just as if he were himself sitting in the chair. So, naturally, I kept a tight hold on the girl. She has not been allowed out since.”

“H’m!” The old man grunted again and looked at his watch. “Well, I have missed my appointment,” he said with the factitious bad temper he owed to his dignity. “I may as well see her performance. Fetch her in!”

Kranz went to the door and called.

“Agathe!”

The girl entered, stood with her eyes fixed timorously on him. He pointed to a large armchair by the fireplace.

“Sit down!” he commanded. The girl obeyed dully, one little apprehensive glance at him the only sign of any mental life in her. She sat upright, her hands on her lap, staring stupidly into the fire. Two heavy tears collected themselves in her protuberant eyes rolled down her cheeks. They seemed but to emphasize her degradation. Her tyrant stood over her, his dark eyes hard.

“Lean back and go to sleep!”

She sank back among the cushions. Obviously, she had no will at all of her own. Her eyes closed. Her expressionless face twitched for a moment and then was as still as a mask. Her bosom heaved in the commencement of deep and heavy breathing which continued in the normality of slumber. The old man watched her, keenly and contemptuously alert for any sign of simulation.

Kranz pulled a little table across to the fireplace. A telephone instrument, incongruously utilitarian in this luxurious room, and writing materials were on it.

“You should note down what is said, Excellenz,” he said earnestly, in a low voice.

The old man ignored him, his eyes on the girl. Suddenly he shuddered in a rush of cold air. The paper on the table fluttered as in a draught. He turned to Kranz in savage irritation.

“Shut that window!”

Kranz shook his head.

“They are all shut, Excellenz!” His whisper was one of genuine awe. “Hush! It’s beginning! He’s come!”

The old man favoured him with a glance of inexpressible contempt. The scorn was still in his eyes when he jerked round to the girl again in an involuntary start of surprise at a sudden greeting.

“Good evening, Excellenz!” The words issued from that expressionless mask of the deeply breathing girl, but they were uttered in a tone of easy jocularity, followed by a little good-humoured laugh, which was uncanny in its contrast with her degraded personality. Despite the feminine vocal chords which had articulated the phrase, the timbre and intonation were vividly those of a man of the world.

The old man stared speechlessly. His faculties seemed inhibited under the shock. The red faded out of his round face, left it ashen gray under the close-cropped white hair. Kranz, watching him narrowly, feared for his heart. He made a brusque little gesture as though seizing control of himself.

“Herr Gott! It’s—it’s his voice!” he gasped.

His eyes turned to Kranz and there was fear in them, a primitive fear of the supernatural. Trembling, he reeled rather than walked to the chair by the table with the telephone, dropped heavily into it. Kranz broke the oppressive silence, posed himself as master of the situation.

“Good evening, Karl!” he said as though welcoming an everyday acquaintance into the room.

“Hallo, Kranz!” came the easy, jocular voice through the lips of the entranced girl. “Wie gehts? I am glad you persuaded His Excellency to come. Now we can start!”

The old man pulled himself together, moistened his lips for speech.

“Is—is that really you, Karl?” he asked, unevenly.

The merry little laugh, so uncanny from the only origin visible, preceded the answer.

“Really I, Excellenz—Karl Wertheimer, shot six months ago by the English in the Tower of London, and as alive in this room as ever I was.” The tone changed to that of a humorously bantering introduction. “Karl Wertheimer, Excellenz, the terror of the English counterespionage department, at your service—still!”

The old man fumblingly produced a handkerchief and mopped at the perspiration on his brow. He hesitated for an appropriate remark.

“Why——?” he asked falteringly, and stopped.

The merry little laugh rang out again in the silent room.

“Why, Excellenz? Because in my earth-life I had only one passion—and it is as strong as ever it was. Stronger, for I owe our enemies a grudge for that little early-morning shooting party in the Tower. You’ve no idea how I long for a really good cigar, Excellenz,” he finished in a tone of jesting complaint.

The old man stared into the empty air beyond the girl.

“And you can really obtain information and convey it?” He was recovering his poise. The question was asked in the brusque tone familiar to his subordinates.

“Test me, Excellenz!”

“I assure you, Excellenz——!” interjected Kranz, eagerly.

His superior waved him aside. The brow under the short white hair had recovered its normal ruddiness, was wrinkled in cogitation. He felt in his pocket and produced a letter in a sealed envelope.

“Tell me from whom this comes,” he said.

He proffered the letter as though expecting it to be taken out of his fingers. Then, as it was not, he dropped his hand with a gesture of hopeless bafflement. There was so real a feeling of the actual presence of Karl Wertheimer in the room that the quite normal fact of the letter remaining untouched emphasized suddenly the uncanny nature of this conversation.

“Permit me, Excellenz,” said Kranz, politely. He took the letter and laid it on the girl’s brow. Her lips moved at once.

“This purports to be from the firm of Wilson and Staunton, Boston, to the firm of Jensen and Auerstedt, Christiania, with reference to an overdue account.” The voice was still the chuckling voice of Karl Wertheimer. “Actually, it is a communication in code to you from Heinrich Biedermann at New York. Do you wish me to read the message? I still remember the old code, Excellenz!”

“No—no!” interposed the old man. “Never mind!”

“Perhaps you would like me to tell you what Heinrich Biedermann is doing at this moment, Excellenz?”

“But he is in New York! You can’t be here and there, too!”

Again came the merry little laugh.

“Time and Space are an illusion of matter, Excellenz. I half forget that you are still subject to it.—Well, Heinrich Biedermann is sitting with a young woman in a restaurant, having tea. They are both very cheerful, for he has just received a remittance from you, and he has bought her a new hat. The sun is setting and he is lost in admiration of the glow of her red hair against the background of the illuminated sky which he can perceive through the window. He is hopelessly in love with her, which is unfortunate, as the lady happens to be a spy, by name Desirée Rochefort, in the pay of the French Secret Service.”

“The devil——!” ejaculated the old man.

“But,” said Kranz in a puzzled tone. “Sunset?—It is nearly midnight!”

The old man turned on him.

“Fool! There is a difference of six hours in time between here and America. That proves it—if anything can be proof of such wild improbability!”

“Test me again!” said the amused and confident voice of Karl Wertheimer. “Something really difficult this time!”

The old man leaned back in his chair and pondered. Then the gleam of an idea came into his malicious gray eyes.

“Right!” he said, emphatically. “You know the library in my house?”

“Certainly, Excellenz!”

“Go into my library. Read me the fifteenth line of the ninety-first page of the sixth volume on the third shelf of the right-hand side, without opening the book. Can you do that?”

“You shall see, Excellenz,” replied the voice, cheerfully. “The sixth volume counting from the left, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“I will note that,” said Kranz, coming to the table. He wrote the particulars and looked up to his superior. “Do you know what the line is, Excellenz?” he asked.

“I don’t even know what the book is!” replied the old man, harshly. He wrinkled his brows in impatience at the silence, which prolonged itself through several seconds. The girl seemed quite normally asleep.

“Here you are, Excellenz!” It was again the mocking voice of Karl Wertheimer which issued from her lips. “The book is Shakespeare. The line is ‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea.’ Can you interpret the omen, Excellenz?”

“The U-boat war——” murmured Kranz, as if to himself.

“Write it down!” commanded the old man. Kranz wrote the line.

His Excellency took up the telephone receiver.

“Hallo! Hallo!” He gave a number and waited. “Hallo! Is Wolff there?—Tell him I want him at once! Yes—a thousand devils!—Wolff! my secretary! Are you all deaf?” he vociferated irascibly. “Hallo! Is that you, Wolff? Yes, of course it is I speaking! You ought to know my voice by this time!—Go into the library and get—” He hesitated. Kranz passed him the sheet of paper “—get the sixth volume from the left on the third shelf of the right-hand side. Bring it to the telephone. Hurry now!”

Again he waited. There was a tense silence in the room, a silence which was emphasized by the heavy and regular breathing of the sleeping girl.

“Hallo! Are you there?—Is that you, Wolff? Be quiet! Answer my questions!—Have you got the book?—Right—What is it?—An English book?—Shakespeare—right!—Now turn up page—page ninety-one. Got it?—Count to the fifteenth line——” He turned from the telephone to Kranz. “Write down what I repeat!” Then again speaking into the telephone: “Yes? Read out the line!—what?—‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea’—a thousand devils!—Wolff! Wolff! wait a minute!—where did you find the book? On the shelf? Had it been touched? You are sure that it had not been touched—not opened? Oh, you have been in the library all the evening, working——”

“Tell him that the love-poem he has been writing to Fräulein Mimi in your library to-night is not only banal but it does not scan,” interjected the mocking voice of Karl Wertheimer. “The line ‘Unsere Herzen schlagen rhythmisch’ is particularly bad.”

The old man glanced toward the vacant air over the girl and grinned. He repeated the message into the telephone. He waited a moment—and then burst into chuckling laughter.

“Famos!—He’s smashed the receiver. Scared out of his life!—I heard him yell.” He put down the instrument and turned again to the chair. “Karl Wertheimer, I believe in your reality—I believe in your powers.” His voice was solemn. “The Fatherland has work for you to do.”

“That is why I am here, Excellenz.” The voice came jauntily through the expressionless lips of the unconscious girl.

The old man pursed his mouth under the clipped white moustache and pondered. Kranz watched him with acute interest.

“Listen!” said the old man, looking up in a sudden decision. “At the present time the Allied Military Missions in Washington are negotiating with the United States Government with regard to the despatch of the American Army to Europe, for the coming campaign. We know this—we know that any day now they may come to an agreement. It is of the utmost importance to us that we should know, immediately, the numbers promised and the schedule of sailings. The fate of the world depends upon it. The secret will be most jealously guarded—triply locked out of reach of any ordinary agent. Can you read it, as you read the line in that closed book?”

“I can, Excellenz—if you can give me some indication where to look,” replied the voice. “We must, so to speak, focus ourselves—I can’t now explain the conditions with us, but you will understand what I mean—spirit pervades——” For the first time in the colloquy the voice spoke with hesitation, as though despairing of explaining the inexplicable. “Direction—definite direction—is essential——”

“H’m,” the old man grunted. “Well, I suggest Forsdyke—you know, the permanent Chief of Department—as the man most likely to prepare the schedule. You know where he lives?”

“The very house in Washington!” replied the voice triumphantly. “Good enough! I will do my best, Excellenz.”

“To-day is the 21st of February,” said the old man. “We must know by the end of the month. Vast issues depend on it. Can you do it?”

“I will try.” The voice came feebly and as from far away. “I must go now, Excellenz—the power—the power is failing—fast. Good-bye—good-bye, Kranz—take—take care of the girl—she—she is the—only means—of—communication——” The last words came in a whisper, ceased. The girl appeared to be in normal slumber.

The old man turned to Kranz, spoke out of preoccupation which otherwise ignored him.

“Give me my hat and coat!”

A sudden anxiety paled the sallow face.

“Your Excellency remembers what Karl said,” he murmured as he assisted his chief into the heavy fur-lined garment.—“The girl is the only means of communication. I need not remind Your Excellency that the girl is my——”

“You need not remind me of anything, Kranz,” interrupted the old man, harshly. “You will not be forgotten. Good-night!”

Kranz accompanied him obsequiously to the door.

* * * * *

On that evening of the 21st of February a cheerful little party was assembled around the dinner-table of Henry Forsdyke, Chief of a certain department in the United States Administration. The large room, which had been built by a Southern magnate who led Washington society in pre-Civil War days, was illumined only by the shaded lights of the table, and beyond the dazzling shirt-fronts of the men it lapsed into a gloom that was intensified by the dark curtains over the long windows and was scarcely relieved by the glinting gilt frames of the pictures spaced on the walls hung in a dull tint. In that half-light the servants moved, scarcely real. Only the party within the illuminated oval of white napery, sparkling glass, and gleaming silver was vividly actual, plucked out of shadow. It was a fad of the host’s, this concentration of the light upon the table. He alleged that it emphasized the personalities of his guests. His daughter, who was irreverent, accused him of an atavistic tendency that craved for the candle-light of his ancestors.

Within the magic oval the party exchanged light-hearted talk that effervesced every now and then into merry laughter where a young girl’s voice predominated. All were in evident good spirits. The host himself, a man of between fifty and sixty years, with shrewd gray eyes looking out of a face characterized by a pointed and neatly clipped iron-gray beard, set the tone. He smiled down the table with a contentment that seemed to spring from a secret satisfaction, the contentment of a man who has completed an anxious and difficult task and can now relax. He was in his best vein of sententious humour.

The same undertone of relief could have been discerned by the acute in the gaiety of young Jimmy Lomax, Forsdyke’s private secretary, although one alone of the little glances between him and his host’s daughter, if intercepted, might have seemed sufficient reason.

Captain Sergeantson, Jimmy Lomax’s chum, had obvious cause for cheerfulness. Attached to a Special Service Department, he had just returned from Europe, where he had fulfilled an extremely difficult mission with conspicuous success. His home-coming had provided the excuse for this little dinner-party.

As for Professor Lomax, Jimmy’s father, no one had ever seen him other than in high spirits. The author—after a lifetime of profound and exact scientific research that had earned him a world-wide reputation—of an enquiry into the possible survival of human personality, which was the controversial topic of that winter and which threatened to deprive him of that reputation, he was in striking contrast with the idea of him propagated by the sensational Press. There was nothing of the visionary about those clear-cut features. A stranger would have diagnosed him as a lawyer—a lawyer whose judicial perception of evidence was clarified by a sense of humour. The mobile mouth, even in silence, hinted at this latter quality. The eyes twinkled, eminently sane, under a well-balanced brow. He joked like a schoolboy with his host’s daughter, exciting—for the secretly selfish pleasure of hearing it—her gay young laugh. Occasionally he glanced across to his son, approbation in his eyes.

Hetty Forsdyke, the only woman of the party, was a typical specimen of self-reliant, college-bred American girl. Good to look upon, her beauty hinted at a race which had been proud of its exclusiveness long after Napoleon had sold Louisiana to the States. Her vivacity and charm had roots, perhaps, in the same stock, but the cool, level-headed understanding of life, which she expressed in a slang that provoked her father to vain rebuke, and the genuineness of which was vouched for by her clear gray eyes, was an attribute of the Forsdykes and the North.

The dinner was nearly at an end. Forsdyke, launched on a story of a Presidential campaign in the Middle West a generation ago, had arrived at the stage where the chuckles of his hearers were on the point of culminating in the final burst of laughter. Hetty, her glass between her fingers, half-way to her mouth, was looking at him with a smile that pretended the story was quite new to her. Suddenly her expression changed. She stared, as if spell-bound, at the dark curtains from which her father’s oval face detached itself in the illumination of the table. The glass slipped from her fingers, smashed.

Forsdyke’s story ceased abruptly. Four pairs of alarmed eyes focussed themselves upon his daughter. Jimmy, involuntarily, had half risen from his chair. The movement seemed to recall the girl to her surroundings. She shuddered and then, with an evident effort of will, brought back her gaze to the table. Her smile routed the momentary anxiety of her companions.

“How careless of me!” she said easily, quelling, with quiet self-control, her confusion ere it could well be remarked. “I don’t know what I was thinking of!—Do go on, Poppa! It was just getting interesting.”

She signed composedly to a servant to pick up the broken glass, and settled herself, all attention, to the familiar story.

“What a hostess she is!” thought her father. “Just like——” He did not finish the complementary clause and stifled another which began: “I wonder what I shall do when——” He picked up his story again and was rewarded by his meed of laughter. But his eyes rested uneasily on his daughter and he promised himself a later enquiry into this abnormality.

The party withdrew into the drawing-room, where, since Forsdyke was a widower of many years’ masculine supremacy, the men lit their cigars. Hetty, at a request from her father, seated herself at the grand piano in the far corner, and commenced the soft chords of a Chopin prelude. Jimmy Lomax stood over her. There was already something proprietary in his air. But the girl, after one glance up at him, seemed to forget his presence in the spell of the music. Her position commanded a full view of the room and she looked dreamily across to where the three men were gathered by the white marble fireplace.

Suddenly the music stopped on a crashing discord. The girl had jumped to her feet, was trembling violently. Young Lomax clutched at her.

“Hetty! What——?”

She broke away from him, came swiftly across the room to his father.

“Professor!” she said. “You were once in practice as a doctor, weren’t you?”

The twinkling eyes went grave as they met hers. There was unmistakable seriousness in her question.

“Yes, my dear——”

“Then I want you to examine me right here, Professor!” she said. “Tell me if I’ve got fever!”

She met the amazed eyes of the other men with a look which announced that she knew her own business.

Without a word the Professor lifted up her wrist and felt her pulse. “Now show me your tongue!” She obeyed. He nodded his head, and placed his hand upon her brow. His eyes plunged into hers for one second of searching scrutiny and then he nodded his head again, satisfied. “My dear,” he said, “I haven’t a thermometer here, but I should say you are absolutely normal in every way. Your pulse is a shade rapid, perhaps.”

The girl took a long breath.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said, simply. She turned to the others. “You heard what the Professor said? There’s no fever about me. Now—listen! I want to tell you something. I’ve been waiting to tell you ever since we sat down to dinner—and now I must tell you! And you mustn’t laugh!—Poppa, this is serious!”

The four men, puzzled at her demeanour, grouped themselves round her. She assured herself of their gravity.

“This evening,” she began, “between five and six o’clock I suddenly developed a dreadful headache. It was so bad that I just had to go to my room and lie down. I went to sleep straight off. And then—then I had a—a dream—only,” she interposed quickly, to hold their interest, “it wasn’t like an ordinary dream. It was so vivid that I felt all the time it meant something. I dreamed that someone or something that I could feel was sort of loving and kind and earnest—very earnest, I could feel that strongly—took me into a room. And, somehow, I knew that the room was in Berlin. It seemed quite a nice room but I don’t remember much about the details of it. I only remember that I saw myself there with two men, one young and dark, the other old and white, who were staring at a girl sleeping in a big armchair. They took not the faintest notice of me, and I didn’t worry much about them. The girl was the interesting thing to all of us—and yet, though I was staring at her with a sort of fascination I couldn’t shake off, I didn’t know why. Then a strange thing happened. The girl kind of faded away—I don’t know how to describe it, because I felt all the time she was still there—and as she faded, there came up the figure of a man. He seemed to grow out of her—to take her place. It was real uncanny. This man that grew out of the girl like a—like a ghost—was somehow more living than any of us. It was as if he were in the limelight and we were in the shadow. I shall never forget his face. It was handsome but wicked—mocking—malicious—like a devil. And he had an ugly scar over the right eyebrow which made him look even more devilish——”

“What colour was his hair?” interposed Captain Sergeantson. “Any moustache?”

The girl looked at him in surprise at the question.

“Fair—sticking up straight. No moustache—why?”

Captain Sergeantson nodded.

“I only wondered. Go on, Miss Forsdyke.”

The girl resumed.

“Well—it seemed that we were all looking at this man and not the girl at all. She had disappeared behind him, or into him, I don’t know which. The other two men were talking to him—talking earnestly. And it seemed to me that it was extremely—oh, immensely—important that I should understand what they were saying. I listened with all my soul. It almost hurt me to listen as hard as I did—And yet I couldn’t get a word of it. What they said was, somehow, just out of reach—like people you see talking on the bioscope. And then, all of a sudden, I heard—one sentence—as clearly as possible, ‘Forsdyke is the man who prepares the schedule!’”

Jimmy Lomax uttered a sharp cry of amazement.

“What!” He turned to Forsdyke. “Chief, that’s strange!”

Forsdyke imposed silence with a gesture.

“Go on, Hetty,” he said, calmly. “What then?”

“Then I woke up. The words were ringing in my ears. They haunted me all the time I was dressing for dinner. I wondered if I ought to tell you. Something was whispering to me that I should. But I was afraid you would laugh at me. But that’s not all. You remember at dinner I dropped a glass.—Poppa!” Her voice suddenly became very earnest. “I saw that man—the man who had grown out of the girl—standing behind you. His eyes were fixed on you as though trying to read into you—so evilly that I went cold all over.”

The Professor gave her a sharp glance.

“No vision of the room in Berlin—or wherever it was?” he queried.

She shook her head.

“No. Just the man. But even that’s not all. Just now—when I was playing and looking across to you—I distinctly saw him again, close behind Poppa! He moved this time—moved with a funny little limp—just like a real man with a bad leg. I jumped up—and—and he was gone!” She looked around apprehensively as though expecting to see him still.

“Your liver’s out of order, my dear,” said her father. “Take a pill when you go to bed to-night.”

“No,” said the girl, “it’s not that. I know you would say I was ill—that is why I asked the Professor to examine me. I am sure it means something!”

Captain Sergeantson threw the end of his cigar into the fireplace and took a wallet out of his pocket. The wallet contained photographs. He handed them to the girl.

“Miss Forsdyke,” he said, gravely, “would you mind telling me if you have ever seen any of these people?”

The girl examined them. Suddenly she uttered a cry and held up one of the prints.

“This!” she said. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. “This is the man I saw!—There’s the scar, too—exactly!—Who is he? Do you know him?”

“That man,” replied Captain Sergeantson, sententiously, “is Karl Wertheimer. About the cutest spy the German Secret Service ever had.—I was going to tell Jimmy a story about him and brought his picture along with me,” he added in explanation. “I sort of recognized him from your description.”

The girl stared at the photograph.

“Of course,” continued Sergeantson, “he made up over that scar. He was an extraordinarily clever actor, by the way. They cleaned off the make-up when they took the photograph.”

“And he is a German spy!” mused the girl, still staring at the picture.

“He was!” replied Sergeantson, grimly. “The British shot him in the Tower when I was in London six months ago.”

The girl looked up sharply.

“I’m sure I’ve never seen his photograph before!” she said, as though answering an allegation she felt in the silence of the others. “How could I?”

“I can’t imagine, Miss Forsdyke. The extraordinary thing is that you should have got his limp. That’s what gave him away to the British. He broke his leg dropping over a wall in an exceedingly daring escape at the beginning of the war. But how you should know about it beats me all to pieces.”

“I didn’t know—I saw——”

“You saw his ghost, I guess, Miss Forsdyke—and that’s all there is to it.” Captain Sergeantson lit himself another cigar by way of showing how cold-blooded he could be in the possible presence of a spectre.

Jimmy shuddered. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“But why?” puzzled Hetty, wrinkling her brows. She turned to her father. “Poppa——!”

Forsdyke shook his head smilingly.

“I’m out of this deal. Ask the Professor. He’s the authority on spooks. What does it all mean, Lomax? Can you give an explanation that doesn’t outrage commonsense?”

The Professor smiled. The eyes in that clean-cut face twinkled.

“Commonsense?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We want to start by defining that—by defining all our senses—and we should never finish.” He looked with his challenging smile round the group. “I see you are inviting me to throw away my last little shred of reputation as a sane,” he said, humorously. “Well, I will not venture on any explanation of my own. The evidence, with all respect to Hetty here, is insufficient. We only know that she had a dream and a hallucination twice repeated. We know that the hallucination corresponds to a photograph in Captain Sergeantson’s pocket. We do not know what basis there is—if any—for her dream. But I will give you two alternative explanations that might be suggested by other people.—Will that satisfy you?”

“Go ahead, Professor,” said Forsdyke. “Don’t ask me to believe in ghosts, that’s all!”

“I don’t ask you to believe in anything,” replied the Professor. “I don’t ask you to believe in the reality of your presence and ours in this room. If you have ever read old Bishop Berkeley you will know that you would find it exceedingly difficult to evade the thesis that it may all be an illusion. Your consciousness—whatever that is—builds up a picture from impressions on your senses. You can’t test the reality of the origin of those impressions—you can only collate the subjective results. Everything—Time and Space—may be an illusion for all you or I know!”

“I heard that in my dream!” Hetty broke in. “Someone said it: ‘Time and Space are an illusion!’ I remember it so clearly now!” Her eyes glistened with excitement.

“All right, Hetty,” said her father. “Let the Professor have his say. It’s his turn. And don’t take us out of our depth, Lomax. You know as well as I do what I mean by commonsense.”

The Professor laughed.

“Well, I’m not going to guarantee either of the explanations, Forsdyke. I merely put them before you. The first is the out-and-out spiritualist explanation. Let us see what we can make of that. You must assume, with the spiritualists, that man has a soul which survives with its attributes of memory, volition, and a certain potentiality for action upon what we know as matter. Captain Sergeantson here vouches for the fact that a certain German spy, Karl Wertheimer, was shot in London six months ago. The spiritualist would allege that it is possible—under certain conditions which are very imperfectly under human command—for the soul (we’ll call it that) of Karl Wertheimer to put itself into communication with his old associates who still remain in the world of the living. There is an enormous mass of human testimony—which you may reject as worthless if you like—to the possibility of such a thing. Assume it is possible. Karl Wertheimer was a spy so successful, according to Captain Sergeantson, that it is reasonable to suppose that spying was his natural vocation, his life-passion, as much as painting pictures is the life-passion of an artist. It may be assumed that, if anything survives, one’s life-passion survives. Now suppose that Karl Wertheimer’s late employers believe in the possibility of communication with their late agent—that they find a medium—in this case, the young girl that Hetty saw in her dream—who can be controlled by the defunct Karl Wertheimer—through whom they can speak to him and receive communications from him—what is more natural than that they should do so? Admitting the premises, difficult as they are, it appears to me that the discarnate soul of Karl Wertheimer would be an extremely valuable secret agent——”

“Yes, suppose—suppose——” said Forsdyke. “It is all supposition. And it doesn’t explain Hetty’s dream.”

“I am coming to that,” pursued the Professor. “Grant me, for the sake of argument, all my suppositions. Karl Wertheimer’s employers are communicating with him and setting him tasks. One of those tasks, we will assume, concerns you. Now it may be, Forsdyke, that in the unseen world of discarnate spirits there is one who watches over you, guards you from danger. Someone, perhaps, who loved you in this life——”

Forsdyke glanced up to the portrait of his wife upon the wall.

“I leave the suggestion to you,” said the Professor, delicately. “We will merely pursue it as a hypothesis. Such a spirit would seek to warn you. It is obviously futile to discuss the means it might or might not employ. We know nothing of the conditions of discarnate life—nothing, at any rate, with scientific certainty. But we will assume that such a spirit, desirous of communicating, finds that Hetty here is temporarily in a mediumistic condition—and by ‘mediumistic’ I mean merely that she is in the abnormal state which, in all ages and in all countries, induces persons to declare that they see and hear things imperceptible to others. She certainly had an abnormal headache. She goes to sleep and dreams. We won’t analyze dream-consciousness now. I will only point out that, in a clearly remembered dream, the events of that dream are as real to consciousness as the events of waking life, and that the perception of Time is enormously modified—you dream through hours of experience while the hand marks minutes on the clock. You are subject to a different illusion of Time—and, as Time and Space are but two faces of the same phenomenon, it may be said that you are subject to a different illusion of Space as well. The spiritualist uses this undoubted fact to support his assertion that in dream-sleep the spirit of the living person is freed from the conditions of matter and is in a condition at least approximating to that of a person who is dead—that it can and does accompany the spirits of those who in this life were linked to it.

“The spiritualist, then, endeavouring to explain our present problem, would allege that a spiritual agency concerned with your welfare led Hetty’s spirit into a room in Berlin where Karl Wertheimer’s employers were indicating him to you for some special purpose—that Hetty, being then pure spirit, could actually perceive Karl Wertheimer as a living being when perhaps those in the room (if there was such a room) could only perceive the girl through whom he was speaking—that she could actually hear the significant phrase of their conversation. Further, the spiritualist would assert as a possibility that Karl Wertheimer, ordered to obtain information in your possession, is actually here—shadowing you more effectively than any mortal spy could do—and that Hetty, still retaining her mediumistic power, has actually seen him. That is a spiritualistic explanation—I apologize for its length, Forsdyke. Give me another of your very excellent and material cigars!”

“It is a fantastic explanation. I don’t believe a word of it,” said Forsdyke, passing him the box. “Let us have the other one.”

“The other one,” replied the Professor, cutting the tip of his cigar and lighting it carefully, with a critical glance at its even burning, “is shorter. It is the explanation of those who are determined to explain a great mass of well-attested and apparently abnormal facts by normal agency. Their explanation in one word is—telepathy. You know the idea—the common phenomenon of two people who utter a remark, unconnected with previous conversation, at the same moment. Living minds unconsciously act upon each other—that is experimentally proved. Why, therefore, drag in dead ones? That is their argument. Let us apply their theory. Hetty is in an abnormal condition. Captain Sergeantson is coming to dinner. In his pocket he has a photograph of the notorious German spy, Karl Wertheimer. In his mind he has a story about him which he intends to relate. Now there are well-documented cases of hallucinations of persons actually on their way to a house where they were not expected appearing to their destined hostesses. I could quote you dozens of examples. The telepathist says this is because the guest forms in his mind a vivid picture of himself in that house, which is projected forward to the hostess’s mind and causes her to think she sees him. Now, Captain Sergeantson’s mind is not full of himself—it is full of the story about Karl Wertheimer that he is going to tell. Hetty’s mind—somehow—picks this up. She goes to sleep and as in sleep, notoriously, the human mind has a faculty for building up pictures and a story. Hetty dreams this story about Karl Wertheimer. It is true that she has never seen Karl Wertheimer. But Captain Sergeantson presumably has a visualization of him, including the limp, in his mind. The subsequent hallucinations are explained by the tendency to automatic repetition of any vivid impression upon the nervous centres which excite a picture in consciousness. It is a more or less tenable theory, but it would be gravely shaken if it happened that, unknown to Hetty or Captain Sergeantson—you actually had something to do with a secret schedule which would interest our friends the enemy.”

There was a silence. Forsdyke’s brow wrinkled as he stared into the fire. Suddenly he switched round to the Professor.

“That’s the devil of it, Lomax!” he exclaimed. “I have! A most secret schedule. Thank God, it will be out of my possession to-morrow morning, when I——”

“Don’t, Poppa!” cried Hetty, clapping her hand over his mouth. She stared wildly around her. “I feel sure that someone is listening!”

Forsdyke freed himself with a gesture which expressed his impatience of this absurdity.

“What do you make of that, Lomax?” he asked.

“Of course,” murmured the Professor, “Hetty’s mind may be influenced by a dominant anxiety in yours.—I should not like to say, Forsdyke!” His tone was emphatic. “Personally, I have never heard of a spectral spy—but—well, you are, on your showing worth spying on. And there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—you know! If it is possible—then there are things more improbable than that this means of acquiring information should be used. Your schedule would, I take it, be priceless?”

“The fate of the world may be involved in it,” replied Forsdyke. “But I can’t believe——”

“I am certain!” exclaimed Hetty. “I feel there’s something uncanny around us now!” She shuddered. “Oh, do take care, Poppa!”

“But what can he do?” asked Jimmy, who had been listening anxiously to the Professor’s explanation. “What do you suggest, Sergeantson? You’re the authentic spycatcher. How can you defeat the ghost of one?”

“I pass!” replied Sergeantson, laconically. “Professor, the word’s to you!”

Forsdyke looked genuinely worried.

“Of course, I don’t believe it, Lomax,” he said. “But supposing—supposing there was something like you suggest—what could I do?”

The Professor’s eyes twinkled.

“Assuming the objective reality of our supposition, my dear Forsdyke,” he replied, “I can think of only one effective counterstroke.”

He held their interest for a moment in suspense.

“And that is——?”

“To drop a bomb on the girl!”

“A bomb—on the girl——” puzzled Jimmy slowly. “Why?”

“Because when you break the telephone receiver it doesn’t matter what the fellow at the other end says—you can’t hear!”

“But we can’t get at her,” said Sergeantson. “We don’t even know who she is, or where. We should never find out—in time.”

“That’s just it,” agreed the Professor. “You would have no time. Assuming that a ghostly spy is haunting our friend Forsdyke—the moment he reads that schedule, or even indicates where it is, the spy reads it too——”

“Reads it?” echoed Jimmy, incredulously. “But surely ghosts can’t read!”

“It is alleged they can,” replied the Professor. “There is, for example, a very curious case reported of the Rev. Stainton Moses, a teacher at the University College in London during the ’seventies. A spirit, purporting to be writing through his hand, quoted to him a paragraph from a closed book in a friend’s library. Moses merely indicated a book and a page at random, without knowing even to what book he referred. The quotation was correct. One of the foremost scientists of the present day has lent the weight of his authority to this story by incorporating it in his book as evidence of supernormal powers——”[2]

“That is sure incredible, Professor!” cried Sergeantson.

“We are dealing with what normally are incredibilities,” said the Professor, with a smile. “We agreed to assume an objective reality to our supposition—and, assuming it, the spy would read that schedule at the same moment as Forsdyke, and possibly communicate it instantaneously. As Forsdyke is going to do something with that schedule to-morrow morning, well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “my money would be on the ghost!”

“My God!” said Forsdyke, thoroughly alarmed, “if it’s true—it’s maddening! One can do nothing!”

“Nothing,” agreed the Professor. “There would be no time.”

The men stared at each other, exasperated at the hopelessness of the problem. If—they scarcely dared admit it to their sanity—it really were the case?

Hetty startled them by a sudden cry.

“Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you hear?” she exclaimed. “Someone laughing at us—close behind!—Oh, look! Look!” She pointed to empty space. “There he is again! Don’t you see?”

She fainted in Jimmy’s ready arms.

* * * * *

The next morning Hetty found her father already at breakfast.

“Well,” he asked, his dry smile mildly sarcastic, “any more dreams?”

“Horrid!” she replied with a little shudder as she poured herself out some coffee. “But I don’t remember them.”

“You will see the doctor to-day, young woman,” observed her father in a tone which indicated his verdict on the happenings of the previous night.

Hetty was docility itself, a phenomenon not altogether lost on her experienced parent.

“Very well, Poppa,” she agreed, demurely. “What are you going to do this morning?”

“I am going to the office to get some papers——”

“The papers——?” She checked herself with a little frightened glance round the room.

Her father laughed—a good, healthy, commonsense laugh.

“The papers!” he said. “No more nonsense about ghosts, Hetty. I’m going to get the papers from my office and take them round to the Conference. So now you know. And there’s a Colt automatic in the pocket of the automobile if any one tries tricks on the way.”

Hetty nodded her head sagely.

“Guess you’ve a place for me in that automobile, Poppa,” she said. “I’ll come with you to the office, wait while you get the papers, and go on with you to the Conference building—and while you’re there I’ll go on to see that doctor. I shall be back in time to pick you up before you are finished with your old Conference.”

Her father saw no objection to this, was in fact secretly glad to have her under his eye as long as possible.

“Mind, no tricks about the doctor!” he said, with an assumption of severity.

“Sure, Poppa!” was her equable reply.

A few minutes later saw them speeding through the keen air of a frosty morning toward Forsdyke’s office. But the interior of the limousine was warm, and Hetty, snug in her furs, looked a picture of young, healthy beauty, looked—— A memory came to Henry Forsdyke in a pang that brought a sigh. He thought of the Professor’s suggestion of last night. Of course, the whole thing was absurd!—but he wondered——

The car swung into the sidewalk in front of the Government building, stopped before the big doorway with the marble steps. Forsdyke got out.

“I shall be back in a few minutes,” he said.

Hetty watched him go across the pavement, ascend the marble steps. He looked neither to right nor left. Then who was that with him? Hetty felt her heart stop. Who was that who passed into the doorway with him? No one had been on the steps—she was suddenly sure of it. Yet—her heart began to pump again—certainly two figures had passed through the swing-doors! She sat chilled and paralyzed for the moment in which she visualized the memory of those two figures passing into the shadow of the interior—tried to think when she had first perceived the second. A certitude shot through her, a wild alarm.

She jumped to her feet, and with a blind, instinctive desire for a weapon, pulled the Colt out of the pocket of the limousine and thrust it into her muff. A moment later she was running across the pavement and up the marble steps. The janitor pulled open the swing-door for her. She fixed him with excited eyes.

“Who was that who came in with Mr. Forsdyke just now?” she asked breathlessly.

The janitor stared.

“No one, miss. Mr. Forsdyke was alone.”

Alone! She repressed an impulse to scream out, dashed to the elevator which had just come to rest after its descent. The attendant opened the gate at her approach.

“Did you take Mr. Forsdyke up just now?” she asked.

“Yes, miss.”

“Was he alone?”

“Sure!—He came in alone.”

“Take me up!” She trembled so that she could scarcely stand. Her eyes closed in a sickening anxiety as she swayed back against the wall of the elevator.

She shot upward. Another moment and she found herself racing along the corridor to her father’s rooms, twisting at the handle of the door.

She almost fell into the ante-room occupied by Jimmy Lomax. He jumped to his feet.

“Hetty!”

“Father!” She had scarcely breath enough for utterance. “Father!—I must see Father——!”

“Hetty, you can’t! He’s busy in his private room—no one dare——”

“I must!” she gasped. “Quick!—the ghost——!”

He stared in astonishment. She dodged past him, flung open the door into the next room.

Henry Forsdyke was standing, checking over a sheaf of papers in his hand, in front of the swung-open wall of the room, now revealed as a safe divided into many compartments. Hetty perceived him at the first glance; perceived, standing at his side, a man with a sardonic mocking face and a scar over the right eye who peered over his shoulder.

In a blind whirl of impulse she whipped out the automatic, rushed up close, and fired—into thin air!

Her father swung round on her in a burst of anger.

“Good God, Hetty!—Are you mad?”

She looked wildly at him.

“The ghost!—the ghost!”

He laughed despite his genuine wrath.

“Great heavens, what nonsense it all is!—What are you thinking of?—You can’t shoot a ghost!”

But Hetty had sunk on to a chair and was sobbing hysterically.

* * * * *

In the luxuriously furnished room in Berlin Kranz was speaking excitedly into the telephone.

“Excellenz!” he called. “Excellenz!—Are you there?—Quickly!—Karl says he will be with us in ten minutes!” He glanced toward the girl sleeping in the big chair. “Quickly!”

He listened for a moment and then put down the receiver with a satisfied air. He rose from his seat and began to pace nervously up and down the room. From time to time he threw a glance at the still figure stretched back among the cushions. She slept with a regular deep breathing. He listened, anxiously alert for any change.

The minutes passed, slowly enough to his impatience. He looked at his watch. It marked ten minutes to four. A thought occurred to him—he amplified it deliberately, to occupy his mind. Ten minutes to four!—What time would it be in Washington? Six hours—ten minutes to ten in the morning. What would be happening at ten minutes to ten? What was Karl looking at——?

The raucous hoot of a Klaxon horn startled him out of these meditations. He ran to the window, looked out. A familiar motor-car was drawing up by the pavement. His Excellency had lost no time!

A few moments later and the dreaded Chief stood in the room, formidable still despite his dwarfed appearance in the great fur coat turned up to his ears. The clipped white moustache bristled more than ever, it seemed, as he glared at Kranz through the pince-nez with a ferocity which was but the expression of his excitement.

“Yes?” he cried, ere the door had closed after him. “What has happened? Speak, man!”

“Nothing yet, Excellenz!” Kranz hastened to assure him. “The girl swooned off suddenly at about a quarter to four—I have not let her out of my sight since last night—and then Karl spoke. He said—and it sounded as though he meant it—that he would give us the information in ten minutes. I telephoned you at once.”

“Right! Quite right!” snapped His Excellency. “Ten minutes! The time must be up——”

“Good afternoon, Excellenz!” The old man jumped. The familiar mocking voice came from the lifeless mask of the sleeping girl. “Your suggestion was correct—Forsdyke! He is taking me to it now!” The derisive laugh rang out, uncanny in the silent room. “Patience for a few minutes!”

The old man made an effort of his will.

“Where are you now, Karl?” he asked.

“In a motor-car—funny story—tell you later—patience.” The voice sounded far away and faint. “Look to the girl, Kranz—not breathing properly—can’t speak—if—power—fails.”

Kranz went to the sleeping girl. Her head had fallen forward and she was breathing stertorously. He rearranged the cushions, posed her head so that she once more breathed deeply and evenly.

They waited in a tense silence. Then her lips moved again.

“Listen—now! Take it down as I read it!” Karl’s voice rang with an unholy triumph.

“Quick, Kranz!—Write!” commanded the old man.

His subordinate leaped to the table, settled himself pen in hand.

The girl’s lips trembled in the commencement of speech, opened.

“Schedule of Sailings of American Army to Europe!” began the triumphant voice.

There was a pause.

“Yes—yes!” cried the old man impatiently. “Go on!”

“Numbers for March”—Karl Wertheimer’s voice came with a curious deliberation as though he were memorizing figures. “—Ahh!” The voice broke in a wild, unearthly cry that froze the blood.

They waited. There was no sound. They heard their hearts beat in a growing terror.

Suddenly the old man spoke.

“The girl!—Look, Kranz!—She does not breathe!”

Kranz sprang to her, lifted her hand, bent suddenly down to her face. He looked up with the eyes of a baulked demon.

“She is dead!” he said hoarsely.

He turned to her again and, with a frenzied rage, tore away the clothes from her throat and chest. Just over her heart was a small round dark spot staining the unbroken skin.

“Look!” he cried.

The old man peered down at the mark, and then stared round the room.

“What has happened?” The wild cry quavered with the terror of the Unseen.

No answer came from the silence.

NOTE

The belief that an injury done to the “astral” body of a spirit is reproduced in the physical body of the medium en rapport with that spirit is found in all countries and in all times, from the most ancient to the present. The old-time witch or wizard is, of course, the same psychologically abnormal type as the “medium” of to-day. The genuineness or otherwise of their powers is beside the point. Phenomena of the same nature as that described above are reported again and again in the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century and in a comparatively recent legal case in France in 1853. Andrew Lang, analyzing this last case, says: “In the events at Cideville, and the depositions of witnesses, we have all the characteristics.... The phantom is wounded, a parallel wound is found on the suspected warlock.” Reporting the evidence in the trial, Lang continues: “Nails were driven into points on the floor where Lemonier saw the spectral figure standing. One nail became red-hot and the wood around it smoked: Lemonier said that this nail had hit ‘the man in the blouse’ on the cheek. Now, when Thorel was made to ask the boy’s pardon and was recognized by him as the phantom, Thorel bore on his cheek the mark of the wound!” The alleged wizard lost his case. (“A Modern Trial for Witchcraft,” in Cock Lane and Common-sense, 1894, p. 278.)

In this case it was the medium’s own spectre which appeared. But the modern spiritualist holds that there exists the same connection between the living body of the medium and the materialized spirit of the dead. “... The clutching of a [materialized] form hits the medium with a force like that of an electric shock, and many sensitives have been grievously injured by foolish triflers in this way.” (Spirit Intercourse, J. Hewat Mackenzie, 1916, p. 53.) Sir Wm. Crookes sounds the same warning note in his description of the famous “Katie King” case (Researches in Spiritualism, 1874, p. 108 et seq.).

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The reference is to The Survival of Man, Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 104-5.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. TODMORDEN

Mr. Todmorden rose from his seat in the railway carriage; he spoke in the tones of a man who ends a discussion:

“Well, gentlemen, this is my station, and you haven’t convinced me that a man ever commits a crime unless of his own free-will. I’d show no mercy to the rascal! Good-night!”

Mr. Todmorden was far from being so stern, either in appearance or character, as this emphatically uttered sentiment would suggest. As his short, stout figure moved along the platform, the head thrown back and a pair of bright little eyes, set in a chubby round face, glancing sharply through his spectacles for an acquaintance to smile at, he looked—what, in fact, he was—a successful city man whose original kindness of heart had mellowed into habitual benevolence—the type of man who moves through life beaming on people who touch their caps; salutation and recognition alike instinctive, meeting each other half-way.

Affable though Mr. Todmorden was, he had his prejudices and his pride; pride centred in the practice he had built up as a family solicitor of standing and renown: prejudices directed against those unfortunates who, from choice or necessity, transgressed the social code. His ideal in life was probity. He was intolerant of any infraction of it, and conducted his own affairs with punctilious scrupulousness. If he contemplated himself with some approbation it was justified. His fellow-men concurred in it.

In the warm light of a late summer sunset he strolled along the suburban streets to his home. His countenance expressed that contentment with himself and his surroundings usual with him. His mind, satisfied, played lightly over the headings of sundry affairs, neatly docketed and done with, he had settled that day. Other affairs, not so completed, were thrust into the background until the morrow. His good-humoured round face was in readiness for a smile.

Suddenly he stopped and contemplated through his spectacles a large house a little way back from the road. A long ladder resting against the wall was the uncommon object that had attracted his attention.

“Dear me!” he said to himself, “Old Miss Hartley having the house painted again!”

Miss Hartley was one of his oldest and most valued clients. In fact, both repudiated the business term and called each other “friends.” Their sentiments toward each other warranted it. She was an elderly spinster, eccentric and wealthy; he a bachelor who could and did afford himself a whim. They smiled at one another’s oddities without any lessening of the mutual respect many years of intercourse had induced. His attitude toward the old lady was almost fraternal. The long practice of watching her interests had developed a habit of affectionate protection in him. He advised her on countless petty manners and forgot to put them in the bill. He was personally, not merely professionally, anxious on her behalf when the occasion required it.

The sight of the ladder against the wall recalled one of his most common anxieties. It was a pet grievance of his that she would persist in living alone, save for one maid, in that large house. To his mind, she offered herself as a prey to the malefactor who should chance to correlate the two facts of her wealth and her solitude. He expressed that opinion frequently, and was obstinately smiled at. Now, as he walked on, the thought of the danger she invited recurred to him. It irritated him.

“Tut! tut!” he said. “That ladder, now, is just placed right for a burglar! I’m sure it is! Dear me! how careless! how very careless!” He tried to measure the ladder from his remembrance of it, and, to end his doubts, returned and examined it again. The ladder rested close to a freshly painted window-sill on the first floor.

“Dear me! dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden, genuinely perturbed. “That’s the window of Miss Hartley’s room!” He stood irresolute, debating whether he should ring the bell, and point out the dangerous position of the ladder. A nervous fear of the old lady’s smile restrained him. He knew she regarded him as an old “fusser.”

He walked on again, carrying his fears.

“She is really too foolish, too foolish!” he repeated. “Living alone there—with only that stupid girl in the house! Any one might break in. They’ve only to walk up that ladder! And she will persist in advertising that she has valuables!” The occasion of the final clause in Mr. Todmorden’s mental arraignment was a particularly fine diamond brooch the old lady wore at all times, despite his protests. If there was a sentimental reason for its continual use, she concealed it under her quiet smile. The memory of that smile irritated Mr. Todmorden. “Confound her! she’s so obstinate!” His thoughts focussed themselves on that brooch, with a criminal lurking in the background. Gradually, they drifted to the criminal. As his irritation faded under the soft warm light of the sunset, he amused himself by picturing types of possible burglars. Finally, forgetting his original preoccupation, he thought of an ancestor of his own—his maternal grandfather—who had been transported for a doubtful case of murder. In contrast to that squalid page of family history self-esteem read over his own achievements. Successful, respected, an alderman, a possible knighthood in front, he had surely wiped out that black patch on his pedigree. He savoured a very pleasant sense of personal probity as he walked up the drive to his house.

He ate his solitary dinner, and revived the feeling of well-being with a bottle of his favourite port. Then Miss Hartley’s brooch recurred to his mind, and was followed by a thought of the ladder which led to it, and of a criminal who might climb the ladder. As he sat in his big chair in the lonely dining-room, gazing at passing thoughts rather than thinking them, the case of his maternal grandfather cropped up in his reverie. Moved by a sudden whim, he rose from his chair and took down a battered volume of law reports. Fortified by another glass, he read through the case of his ancestor. He finished it, and sat thoughtful for a moment before replacing the book. “H’m, h’m,” he said to himself. “Very doubtful! Very doubtful! Ah, well, we’ve travelled a long road since then!” He smiled at his own success, and went off to bed in a contented mood. That doubtful grandfather was a long way back.

In the morning, as he walked down to the station to catch his usual train, he noticed a group of people standing on the pavement and gazing up at a house. An unreasoning anxiety gripped him. He hastened his pace. Yes—surely!—it was Miss Hartley’s house which excited this unwonted interest. He arrived among the crowd, rather out of breath.

“What is it? What is it, my man?” he demanded of a gazing spectator.

Half a dozen voices replied.

“It’s a murder! Old Miss Hartley——!”

Mr. Todmorden did not wait to hear more.

“Good gracious!” he said, as he hurried along the garden path, and “Good gracious!” he repeated, as he rang the bell. He could not formulate a thought. He gazed, mentally, at the awful thing, stunned.

The door was opened by a policeman. Behind him stood the maid-servant, white, frightened, and sobbing. She ran toward him with a cry of “Oh, sir!” but broke down, unable to utter a word.

“All right, all right, Ellen,” said Mr. Todmorden rather brusquely, pushing her aside. He addressed himself to the policeman. “What has happened, constable? Surely not murder?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so.” He looked doubtfully at his questioner. “Are you one of the old lady’s relatives, sir?”

“No. I’m her solicitor, and one of her oldest friends. Dear me! dear me! how terrible! Is there any one in authority here, constable?”

“Two inspectors upstairs, sir.”

“Can I see them?”

He was shown into the bedroom, and introduced himself to the police-officers. They welcomed him with gravity. On the bed lay a covered figure. Mr. Todmorden drew aside the sheet and gazed upon the features of his old friend. They were marred by a bullet-hole through the forehead. He turned away, trembling, his face working with emotion. He could scarcely speak, but made the effort due to his dignity, as the deceased’s legal adviser. “Any—any clue?” he asked.

“None, sir, at present,” was the reply.

“Dear me! how terrible! how very terrible! She was my oldest friend——” he could not find the strength to repress his grief—“my oldest friend! Oh, it’s awful, inspector, awful! The—the wickedness of it! She hadn’t an enemy.” He struggled for the control of himself. “What was it—robbery?”

“No, sir—nothing seems to be tampered with. Perhaps the murderer was startled.”

“When was it discovered?”

“This morning, when the maid brought in the tea. She says she heard nothing. She admits being a heavy sleeper.”

“And there is nothing missing?”

“Apparently not, sir. The drawers were locked, and the keys have not been interfered with. Nothing was disturbed, in fact.”

“Ah!” Mr. Todmorden was gradually getting back into his legal clearness of mind. “Has the girl looked carefully round to see if anything has disappeared?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Call her up, if you please, officer.”

Ellen appeared, still weeping, and was bidden to look round for anything out of place. Dabbing her eyes, she examined the room carefully. Suddenly she gave a cry.

“The mistress’s diamond brooch! I put it here last night!” She pointed to a tray on the dressing-table. “It’s gone!”

“Good God!” said Mr. Todmorden. “How very curious!”

The inspectors looked at him sharply.

“Does that give you any clue, sir?” asked one of them.

“No—no,” he replied, rather confused. “I—the fact is, I was thinking of that brooch only last night, and of how unprotected Miss Hartley was. I have often told her so—poor woman!”

“Ah!” said the inspectors in chorus. Mr. Todmorden felt there was something suspicious in their sharply uttered exclamation. Even to himself his explanation had sounded lame. The police-officers might imagine he was shielding somebody. The consciousness of his inability to explain how very startling the fulfilment of his fears had been to him made him feel awkward.

“Of course,” he said, “the murderer must have come in by the ladder.”

“The ladder?” asked one of the inspectors. “I saw no ladder.”

“There was certainly a ladder resting against the sill of this window at six o’clock last night,” asserted Mr. Todmorden. “The house, you will observe, is being redecorated. I noticed the ladder, and it occurred to me that a first-class opportunity was being offered to a burglar. In fact, I was on the point of calling on Miss Hartley and warning her of it. I wish I had done so!”

“H’m!” The inspector scarcely deigned to trifle with the suggestion. It could be understood that it was his professional prerogative to evolve theories. “Yes—perhaps. But I think we can explain the entrance in a more likely way,” he said, mysteriously. “It is scarcely probable that the decorator’s men would leave the ladder there all night, sir.”

“I’m sure the rascal came up the ladder!” Mr. Todmorden’s affirmation was so vehement, came so involuntarily, that it surprised himself. Why was he so positive? He felt uncomfortable. He put on a bustling, important air. “Well, well, I must get up to town, as I have a very important appointment. I will look in at the station on my way home this evening. If you hear of anything during the day you might communicate with me. Here is my card.”

The old gentleman took his way to the city, oppressed by grief. Bitterly he reproached himself for not having ceded to his impulse to point out the dangerous position of that fatal ladder.

As good as his word, he called at the police-station on his way home. The chief inspector received him:

“A very mysterious affair, Mr. Todmorden. Very mysterious!”

“It is very terrible to me,” replied the old gentleman. “Miss Hartley was a very old friend. I feel myself in some way responsible. The possibility of such a tragedy actually occurred to me on my way home last night, and I might have warned her of it. I shall never forgive myself. Miss Hartley relied upon me. It is terrible to think that I failed her in this supreme instance.”

“You refer to the ladder,” said the inspector. “We have made enquiries about that. It appears it was overlooked last night and was carried away by one of the decorator’s men at six o’clock this morning. Undoubtedly, the murderer used it. In fact, he left the window open after him.”

“I was certain of it,” said Mr. Todmorden. “And there is no clue to the rascal?”

“Hardly any. The constable on the beat reports that, at two o’clock this morning, he saw the figure of a man running along the road away from the house. That man was wearing a very light suit—possibly a flannel one. A curious dress for a burglar, I think you will admit. The constable particularly noticed that there was no sound of footsteps as the man ran. He must have been wearing rubber soles. Unfortunately, the constable lost sight of him when he turned the corner.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden. Only half his mind had listened to the inspector’s words; the other half was occupied by that curious and fairly common hallucination of a previous and identical incident. The description was oddly familiar. He seemed to know it in advance. At an intense moment of the hallucination, he had a glimpsed memory of himself running, running along a road at the dead of night, running silently. He shook off the uncomfortable and absurd feeling. “Dear me! How very strange!”

The inspector was observing him narrowly.

“I suppose you cannot give us any hint that might help us, Mr. Todmorden? You know no one who bore the old lady a grudge?”

“Certainly not. She was the best and kindest of women.”

“May I ask who benefits by her death?”

“She has only one relative, a nephew, who inherits everything. He is in America. I have cabled to him, and received a reply.”

“Ah! So he’s out of it.”

“Of course, of course.”

“This business of the brooch, Mr. Todmorden—it seems strange that the murderer should have taken that, and that only. He has made no attempt on anything else. You know no one who had an interest in the article?”

“No one. Miss Hartley wore it always. I have often expostulated with her for wearing so valuable a piece of jewellery in the street. Someone might have noticed it and resolved to obtain it.”

“Yes, yes, of course. A very strange affair, Mr. Todmorden, very strange! I confess I cannot see light in it. Er—her affairs are quite in order, of course?”

“Quite. I keep the accounts; they are open to investigation. The name of Todmorden and Baines is a sufficient guarantee, I think,” he added, with a smile. “But, of course, it is natural you should wish to make sure. You can examine the books to-morrow.”

“Unnecessary, my dear sir, I’m quite certain. Of course, I am bound to ask these unpleasant questions.”

“Don’t apologize. I am as anxious as you are to catch the criminal. I have, in fact, a personal interest in it. Miss Hartley was so good a friend to me that I shall never rest until I have brought the scoundrel to justice. A reward may help. I will personally give a hundred pounds for his apprehension. You might have bills printed to that effect.”

“Thank you, Mr. Todmorden. I hope we shall be able to claim it, though, at present, I see little chance of it. However, something may turn up.”

As Mr. Todmorden went home, he looked years older than the man who had traversed the same ground twenty-four hours earlier. Grief-stricken though he was, at the loss of his dear friend, his predominant emotion was a fierce lust for vengeance on the murderer. His fingers worked, gripped the air, as he brooded on him—the hated unknown—and his step oscillated from fast to slow and slow to fast, as thoughts, hopeful or despondent, got the upper hand. If he could only lay hands on the scoundrel. A black and bitter wrath seethed in him. It was, unjustifiably, the more bitter at the remembrance that Fate had placed for a moment in his hand the power to avert the tragedy, had given him a glimpse into the future—and yet had turned aside his will. The wickedness of it! That dear, kind, charitable old soul! Shot like a dog! He stamped his foot on the pavement at the thought of it; tears welled up in his eyes.

“I’ll double that reward if he isn’t caught within a week!” he decided. The decision comforted him.

All through his solitary dinner he brooded on the crime, and sat afterward, for long hours, trying to think of someone who might have an urgent reason for possessing himself of that diamond brooch. He went to bed at last, baffled, weary, heartsick. Had he met the murderer on the stairs he would gladly have throttled him with his own hands.

Putting on his pyjamas, he noticed something unusual—something hard—in the pocket. Mechanically, he drew out the object and looked at it. He stood as if petrified, his eyes staring, sweat breaking out on his brow.

In his hand he held Miss Hartley’s diamond brooch!

He gazed at it, overwhelmed with amazement and horror. What was happening? Was he crazed? Was his mind unhinged by the event of the morning, was this an hallucination? All that was his familiar self prayed, prayed hard, that this might be madness. Or—his instinct of self-preservation caused him to clutch at the thought—was he the victim of some atrocious trick? Impossible. Was it real? He felt the jewel—turned it, so that it sparkled under the electric light.

“My God!” said Mr. Todmorden, sinking into a chair. The familiar concrete surroundings crumbled about him, were dissipated. He gazed into unfathomable mysteries.

How could the brooch have got into his pocket? Someone must have put it there! Someone! Who? Who could have come into his bedroom and put that damnatory brooch into the pocket of his pyjamas? The servants? He reviewed them swiftly. Impossible! Then who? Not—surely not—he must be going mad—not himself! It was absurd, unthinkable. He had gone to bed and slept without a dream. Or, was there a dream—a dream of running in the darkness, fast, barefoot? Nonsense! Nonsense! He did not get up in the middle of the night, walk down the street, murder his dearest friend, and come back as though nothing had happened! His mind flashed on the portrait of Miss Hartley, and he felt the cruel irony of the supposition, though he himself made it. Then who—who? A wave of superstition swept over him. Devils? It was inexplicable. He revolted at something obscure within him, something which pointed a finger to the accusing brooch, which whispered the inexorable corollary in his ear. No! No! It could not be! He was innocent, he was conscious, instinctively conscious of his innocence.

But was he?

The something whispered persistently. An idea came to him—the proof. He went quickly across to a drawer in his dressing-table and took out his revolver. With trembling hands he examined the charges. One had been exploded! Had devils fired his revolver also? Oh, God! He thought he was going to faint.

How? Why? How? Why? These two questions besieged him incessantly, battering at his crumbling mind. He clasped his head in his hands, rocked to and fro on his chair.

Madness? Madness came in these sudden attacks, so an imp of thought assured him. He was mad! Mad!

For hours he strode up and down the room, wrestling with demons in the night. He had killed his dearest friend. He had no doubt of it; the realization filled him with an agony of horror and grief. He would gladly have died rather than have done this awful thing. And how had he done it? How had he committed this crime without the faintest remembrance of it? It was impossible! He had not—then he looked at the brooch, and knew he had. It was monstrous, unthinkable—but true.

At length, physically exhausted, he threw himself on the bed and continued the struggle—striving, striving to see light in this appalling mystery. At last he fell asleep.

He woke and looked around him. He was in a dark room. That was strange. He knew he had left the light on. He was standing up. He held something in his hand—a book. Puzzled, he put out his hand to where the switch of the electric light should be. It was not there. In a new terror that surged up, obliterating the older horrors of the night, he groped along the wall for the switch, and found it. The place sprang into light. He was in the dining-room! In his hand he held the report of his grandfather’s trial. The truth flashed on him.

He was a somnambulist.

With a wild cry he sank down in a swoon.

When he returned to consciousness, the electric lamps were yellow patches in the sunlight which filled the room. He struggled to his feet and switched them off. He stood for some moments unsteadily, trying to adjust his mind to these unfamiliar surroundings, to remember—to remember something. Then his ghastly situation rushed on his mind, vivid with a new light. He was a criminal! He risked discovery, ruin! He heard people moving about—servants. They must not suspect him of any abnormality. Haggard, trembling, giddy, an old, old man, he tottered up the stairs to his own bedroom.

Escape—escape from the consequences of his involuntary crime was his master impulse. He was no longer the benevolent Mr. Todmorden, successful, respected, the eminent solicitor; he was a hunted criminal, happed by Furies. He must not be found out. He sobbed in self-pity and strove for the control of his faculties. He must think—must think. The brooch must be got rid of. He would drop it over London Bridge. Yes, that was the way. The brooch gone beyond all possibility of recovery, who would suspect him? He had not suspected himself. He breathed more freely, feeling himself already safe. He would triple that reward. That would avert suspicion. Yes. Yes. He repeated the monosyllable to himself as he walked up and down the room.

But suppose there was some trace of the crime on him? He must make sure. The inspector’s story of the light-suited fugitive came into his mind—his pyjamas! That fugitive must have been himself in his pyjamas. He had again that flashed memory of running, running silently. He doubted no longer, but examined the pyjamas on his body, searching for a spot of blood, for any sign that might betray him. Yes! There on the trouser-leg was a smear of stone-coloured paint—the paint on Miss Hartley’s window-sill. He must get those pyjamas away, destroy them—somehow. He thought of half a dozen plans and rejected all. Everything he thought of seemed to proclaim his guilt. The problem was still unsolved when another danger occurred to him. His revolver contained a discharged cartridge. He must reload it. Feverishly he did so. As he clicked the chambers into place there was a knock at the door. He put down the revolver and listened in sudden panic. The knock was repeated. He tried to speak and could not. At last words came:

“What is it?”

“Please, sir, a man from the police-station wants to speak to you at once.”

He tried hard to reply in his normal tones.

“All right. Tell him I’ll be down presently.”

“Please, sir, he says he can’t wait. It’s very urgent.” Discovery? No! Impossible—as yet! He kept a tremor out of his voice by an effort.

“Show him into my dressing-room.”

Mr. Todmorden thought swiftly for a vivid second. That smear of paint must be concealed. He slipped on a dressing-gown. Then he caught sight of his revolver on the table, and, on a blind impulse, dropped it into his pocket. He took a long breath. Now—was there anything about him suspicious? He opened his dressing-gown and surveyed himself in the mirror. Yes!—there was a button gone from his pyjama-jacket! Where had he lost that button? He would have given anything for certainty. But he must not keep the police waiting. That would look strange. He girdled his gown about him and went into the dressing-room.

The chief inspector awaited him. A sharp expression of surprise came into the officer’s face.

“I have had a bad night, inspector,” said the old gentleman, noticing the look and feeling his haggard appearance needed explanation.

The inspector condoled with him.

“I am pleased to say we have found a slight clue to the criminal, Mr. Todmorden,” he said, looking again sharply at the old gentleman. Mr. Todmorden felt he quailed under the glance. “It’s a button. And, the curious thing is, it is a pyjama button.”

“Yes?” Mr. Todmorden’s mouth went dry.

“Funny wear for a burglar—pyjamas,” commented the inspector. “Don’t you think so, sir?”

“Very curious.” Mr. Todmorden recognized the urgent necessity for a normal voice. “Yes; very curious.” He must talk—say something! “By the way, inspector, I’ve been thinking about that reward. I’ve decided to triple it. I—I am determined to catch the scoundrel.”

“Very kind of you, sir. I hope we shall ask you for the cheque. We’re on the road, anyway. We’ve only got to find out where those pyjamas came from, and, quite likely, we shall get on his track.”

“Yes, yes, quite so.” Would the interview never end? Mr. Todmorden agonized.

“If we can only find some buttons like this we can make a start. There are differences even in pyjama buttons, you know, sir. I have compared it with mine, but it doesn’t tally. Would you mind comparing it with yours?”

Mr. Todmorden stared at him, speechless.

“Would you mind comparing it with yours, sir? We must not neglect any chance of getting a clue. Allow me!”

He stepped quickly to the old gentleman and flung aside his dressing-gown. The buttons, with the hanging thread of their missing fellow, were revealed. Triumph flashed in the inspector’s face.

“James Henry Todmorden, I——”

Mr. Todmorden jumped back from his grasp. With a sharp cry he drew his hand swiftly from his pocket. There was a report, and he dropped to the floor.

The inspector looked at his lifeless body.

“I thought the old rascal did it,” he said. “A well-planned bit of work, though.”

THROUGH THE GATE OF HORN

The young man’s face was pale. His jaw, hard-set in a grip of self-control, lent his clever, handsome features a suggestion of force remarkable for his twenty-two years. At maturity, his intellect, backed by so much character, would be formidable. He turned to the window, stared out of it for a long moment. Then he switched round upon the girl.

“So that’s your last word, Betty?—Finish?”

Her eyes dropped under his, were raised again in a volition which dared to match itself, though she was tremulous with the effort, against the challenge of his voice. Their blue depths were charmingly sincere.

“I cannot help myself, Jack.” She shook her head pathetically. “You ought to understand.”

His voice came grimly, with intent to wound.

“You are selling yourself to James Arrowsmith. Yes, I understand.”

She shuddered, turned away her head in despair of sympathetic comprehension. There was a silence during which both gazed down vistas of gloomy thought. Then she looked up again, diffidently venturing another appeal to his magnanimity.

“You know Father’s position——”

He nodded, sardonically.

“I know. He thinks his business is safe if James Arrowsmith is his son-in-law instead of merely his go-ahead competitor. He’s wrong. Arrowsmith would cut his own brother’s throat if he met him on a dark road and thought he had a dollar in his pocket. He’s just a modern brigand!”

The girl sighed.

“What can I do, Jack?—Father——”

He blazed out in a sudden fury.

“Oh, yes, I know! Father! I can’t help your father being a fool! It’s not my fault that he can’t recognize potentiality in a man—that he is only capable of appreciating a success that is already made, which he can measure by a balance in a bank! Give me ten years—I’ll eat up James Arrowsmith!”

The girl shook her head sadly.

“Ten years, Jack—it’s a long time ahead. We have got to deal with things as they are to-day. And to-day——”

“I’m nothing!” he said, bitterly.

She looked up at him.

“You are just a promising young man fresh from college, Jack! With a big future before you, I am sure of that—but it’s only a future!”

“I’ve started, anyway!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got that job on the Rostrum—begin next week. And I’m going to make good!”

“Of course you are—but—we can’t marry on your pay as a very junior sub-editor.” She shook her head again. “We must be reasonable, Jack. If I saw any chance——”

“Yes,” he interrupted, brutally, “if you saw any chance of my driving you about in six months’ time in a big motor-car like James Arrowsmith’s—then you would condescend to love me!”

She stood up, her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, don’t, Jack!” She turned away her head, pressed her hand to her eyes, dropped it in a hopeless gesture. She faced him again, her sensitive mouth quivering at the corners, her expression appealing from misery to compassion. Evidently, she hardly dared trust herself to speak. “You know I love you!” Her voice caught, almost broke. “You know I love you now—shall never love any one else. All my life I shall remember you—if I live fifty years——”

His short laugh was intended to express that terrible cynicism of Youth losing its first illusions.

“Cut it out, Betty! In fifty years you will be seventy. No doubt you will be a charming old lady. You may even be sentimental—you can indulge safely in the luxury, then! But you won’t even remember my name. You’ll only be interested in the love-affairs of your grandchildren!”

She smiled at him involuntarily—and then consciously maintained the gleam in her eyes, quick to emphasize and elaborate the note of comedy he had accidentally struck. It was escape from threatening acrimony.

“And you, Jack? In nineteen-seventy-two? Will you remember my name?—Will you be even sentimental, I wonder?—Oh, I should like to see you—a cynical old grandfather, telling your grandchildren not to marry for money, but to marry where money is!—Oh, Jack!” Her voice was genuinely mirthful. “You will come and see me and talk their affairs over with me, won’t you? We shall be two such dear old cronies!”

He had to concentrate on his frown, endangered by her infectious sense of humour.

“I shall never marry!” he announced, gloomily. “So there’s not much use in promising to discuss my grandchildren’s affairs with you fifty years hence. I shall never love another woman.”

She ignored the sombre vaticination, determined to keep on a safer plane of futurity.

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to see, Jack? Fifty years ahead—and all that will happen in the meantime?” There was just a hint of seriousness in the light tone, in the bright eyes which smiled into his. “If one could only know!” Her face went wistful. “I often wonder—these crystal-gazers and people—whether they can really see——” She looked up at, him. “Jack! You are so clever and know everything—don’t you know any place where one can go and really see what is going to happen?”

He smiled, half in pleasure at her flattery, half in the consciousness of being about to say a clever thing. The smile was wholly youthful, despite his assumption of withered cynicism.

“Yes. The place to which you are sending me.”

“What place?” Her tone was puzzled.

“Hell!” he said shortly.

She wrinkled her brows.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course, you haven’t read Virgil,” he said, with the crushing superiority of the newly fledged graduate. “It’s in the sixth book—where he takes Ænas into Hades. He describes two gates there—a gate of horn and a gate of ivory. They are the gates through which all dreams come. Those that pass through the ivory gate are false dreams—the true ones come out of the gate of horn. I will sit down beside it, and report if any of them concern you. You haven’t left me much other interest,” he concluded, bitterly, “and this life will be just Hell.”

She looked at him in a short silence.

“You are being very cruel, Jack. Do you think there will be much happiness for me?” She turned away her head.

He laid both his hands on her shoulders, compelled her gaze to meet his.

“Then let me give you happiness! Betty, I love you! I love you! I care for nothing in the world but you! Risk it! Forget everything except that you love me and I love you! You will never regret it. I will make you the happiest woman on earth as I shall be the happiest man. You cannot live without love! I love you, Betty!—and I shall always, always love you! Trust yourself to it, whatever happens!”