CHAPTER 1: "WELCOME, HOWEVER YOU COME!"

UPON a walnut bed in a small, plainly furnished room which dawn had just begun grayly to illuminate, a man lay unconscious.

His thin face, indefinably boyish for all its gauntness, wore that placid, uncaring look which death shares with complete insensibility. Under him his right arm was doubled in an uncomfortable, strained position, while the left hand, slender and well cared for, trailed limp to the floor by the bedside. On his right temple there showed an ugly wound, evidently made by some blunt, heavy instrument, for the skin was burst rather than cut. His fair hair was plastered with blood from the wound, and a good deal of blood had also run down over the side of the face, lending a sinister and tragic aspect to his otherwise not unpleasant countenance. Fully dressed in a rather shabby blue serge, both appearance and attitude suggested that the man had been flung down here and left brutally to die or revive, as he might.

The dawn light grew brighter, and as if in sympathy with its brightening, the face of the man on the bed began to take on a look more akin to that of life. That alien, wax-like placidity of one who is done with pain slowly softened and changed. The features twitched; the lips which had fallen slightly apart, closed firmly. With a sudden contraction of the brows the man opened his eyes.

For several minutes he lay quiet, staring upward. Then he attempted to withdraw his right hand from beneath him, groaned, and by a considerable effort at last raised himself on one elbow. Gazing about the room with bewildered, pain-stricken eyes, he raised his hand to his head and afterward stared stupidly at the blood on his fingers. He seemed like one who, having fallen victim to some powerful drug, awakens in unfamiliar and inexplicable surroundings.

As he again looked about him, however, the expression changed. What he saw, it seemed, had revived some memory that mingled with a new and different bewilderment.

In a corner of the room, near the one window, stood a small, old-fashioned, black steel safe. The door of it was swung wide open, while scattered on the floor before it lay a mass of papers. From between loose pages and folded, elastic-bound documents gleamed a few small articles of jewelry. Two or three empty morocco cases had been carelessly tossed on top of the pile.

With eyes fixed on this heap, the man swung his legs over the side of the bed, and, staggering across to the safe, dropped on his knees beside it. He ran his hand through the papers, uncovered a small brooch which he picked up and examined with a curious frowning intentness; then let it fall and again raised a hand to his head.

In another corner of the room was a doorway through which he glimpsed a porcelain washbowl. Toward this the man dragged himself. Wetting a towel that hung there, he began bathing the wound on his temple. The cold water seemed to relieve the dizziness or nausea from which he suffered. Presently he was able to draw himself erect, and having contemplated his disheveled countenance in the small mirror above the bowl, he proceeded with some care to remove the more obvious traces of disaster. The blood fortunately had clotted and ceased to flow. Having washed, he sought about the room, found his hat, a worn, soft gray felt, on the floor near the bed, and, returning to the mirror, adjusted it with the apparent intent to conceal his wound.

The effort, though attended by a grimace of pain, was successful, and now at length the man returned his attention to that stack of miscellanies which had been the safe's contents.

Ignoring the papers, he began separating from them the few bits of jewelry. Beside the brooch there was a man's heavy gold signet ring, a pair of cuff links set with seed pearls, a bar pin of silver and moonstones, and a few similar trifles. He sorted and searched with an odd scowl, as if the task were unpleasant, though it might equally well have been the pain of his wound which troubled him.

As he found each piece he thrust it in his pocket without examination, until the displacing of a small bundle of insurance policies disclosed the first thing of any real value in the entire collection.

With an astonished ejaculation the man seized upon it, scrutinized it with wide, horrified eyes, and for a moment afterward knelt motionless, while his pallid face slowly flushed until it was nearly crimson in color.

"Good God!"

The man flung the thing from him as if it had burned his fingers. In a sudden frenzy of haste he tore from his pockets the trinkets he had placed there a few moments earlier, threw them all back on the stack of papers, and without another glance for the safe or its contents fairly ran across the room to the door. Flinging it open, he emerged into a short, narrow passageway.

There, however, he paused, listening intently at the head of a narrow stairway that led downward. Two other doors opened off the passage; but both were closed. Behind those doors and throughout the house below all was quiet. Ever and again, from the street, three stories below, there rose the heavy rattle of a passing truck or cart. Within the house there was no sound at all.

Assured of that, the man raised his eyes toward the ceiling. In its center was a closed wooden transom. Frowning, the man tested the transom with his finger tips, found it immovable, and, after some further hesitation, began descending the narrow stairs, a step at a time, very cautiously. They creaked under him, every creak startlingly loud in that otherwise silent place.

Reaching the landing at the floor below, he was about to essay the next flight downward, when abruptly, somewhere in the rear of the ground floor, a door opened and closed. The sound was followed by swift, light footfalls. They crossed the reception hall below, reached the stair, and began to mount.

His face bathed in a sudden sweat of desperation, the man above darted back along the second-floor hallway. One after the other he swiftly turned the handles of three closed doors. One was locked, one opened upon a closet stacked to overflowing with trunks and bags; the third disclosed a large bedroom, apparently empty, though the bed had evidently been slept in.

He sprang inside, shut the door softly, looked for a key, found none, and thereafter stood motionless, his hand gripping the knob, one ear against the panel.

Having ascended the stairs, the footsteps were now advancing along the passage. They reached that very door against which the man stood listening. They halted there. Some one rapped lightly.

With a groan the man inside drew back. Even as he did so he found himself whirled irresistibly about and away from the door.

A great hand had descended upon his shoulder from behind. That large hand, he discovered, belonged to a man immensely tall-a huge, looming giant of a man, who had stolen upon him while he had ears only for those footsteps in the passage.

The fellow's only garment was a Turkish robe, flung loosely about his enormous shoulders. His black hair, damp from the bath, stood out like a fierce, shaggy mane above a dark, savage face in which a pair of singularly bright blue eyes blazed angrily upon the intruder. This forceful and sudden apparition in a room which the latter had believed unoccupied, was sufficiently alarming. In the little sharp cry which escaped the intruder's throat, however, there seemed a note of emotion other than terror-different from and more painful than mere terror.

"You-you!" he muttered, and fell silent.

"For the love of-" began the giant. But he, too, seemed suddenly moved past verbal expression. As a somber landscape lights to the flash of sunshine, his heavy face changed and brightened. The black scowl vanished. Shaggy brows went up in a look of intense surprise, and the fiercely set mouth relaxed to a grin of amazed but supremely good-humored delight.

"Why, it is!" he ejaculated at length. "It surely is-Bob Drayton!"

And then, with a great, pleased laugh, he released the other's shoulder and reached for his hand.

The intruder made no movement of response. Instead, he drew away shrinkingly, and with hands behind him stood leaning against the door. When he spoke it was in the tone of quiet despair with which a man might accept an intolerable situation from which escape has become impossible.

"Yes, Trenmore, it's I," he said. Even as the words left his lips there came another loud rapping from outside. Some one tried the handle, and only Drayton's weight against the door kept it closed.

"Get away from there, Martin!" called the big man peremptorily. "I'll ring again when I want you. Clear out now! It's otherwise engaged I am."

"Very well, sir," came the muffled and somewhat wondering reply.

Staring solemnly at one another, the two in the bedroom stood silent while the invisible Martin's steps receded slowly along the hall and began to descend the stairs.

"And for why will you not take my hand?" demanded the giant with a frown that was bewildered, rather than angry.

The man with the bruised head laughed. "I can't-can't-" Unable to control his voice, he lapsed into miserable silence.

The giant's frown deepened. He drew back a little, hitching the robe up over his bare shoulders.

"What is it ails you, Bobby? Here I'm glad to see you the way I cannot find words to tell it and you will not take my hand! Did you get my letter, and is this a surprise visit? You're welcome, however you've come!"

But the other shrank still closer against the door, while his pallid face grew actually gray. "May I-may I sit down?" he gasped. He was swaying like a drunken man, and his knees seemed to have no strength left in them.

"Sit down! But you may indeed." Trenmore sprang instantly to help him to the nearest chair, one arm about his shoulder in a gentle, kindly pressure. "Tell me now, did you really get my letter?"

"What letter?"

"Then you did not. What ails you, man? You're white as the banshee herself! Is it bad hurt you are, and you not telling me?"

"No-yes. A trifle. It is not that."

"What, then? Have you been ill? Here, take a drop o' the brandy, lad. That's it. A fool could see you're a deathly sick man this minute."

Trenmore's voice was tender as only a woman's or an Irishman's can be; but Drayton shrank away as if its kindness only hurt him the more.

"Don't speak that way!" he cried harshly, and buried his face in his hands.

Very wonderingly, his host laughed and again put his arm about the other's bowed shoulders. "And why not, then?" he asked gently. "I should, perhaps, like to know why you bolt into my room in the early morn, bang to my door behind yourself, and then try to repel my hospitable reception; but you need tell me nothing. For me 'tis enough that you're here at all, whom I've been wanting to see this long while more than any other lad in the world."

"Stop it, I say!" cried Drayton, and raised his head abruptly. His pale face had flushed deeply, and he seemed to flinch at the sound of his own words. "I can't-can't take your welcome. I came here as a thief, Terry Trenmore! And for no other reason."

The Irishman's blue eyes flashed wide.

"A thief?" He laughed shortly. "And pray what of mine did you wish to steal, friend Bobby? Name the thing and it's yours!"

"Terry, I'm not off my head, as you think. Haven't any such excuse. I tell you, I'm a thief. Plain, ugly t-h-i-e-f, thief. I entered this particular house only because I found a way in. I didn't know it was your house."

In the midst of speech Drayton paused and started suddenly to his feet. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "I had half forgotten. Terry, I wasn't the only-er-burglar here last night!"

"And what are you meaning now?"

"Your safe was opened!"

Ere he could finish the sentence Trenmore had turned, crossed the room, and was pushing aside a silken curtain, hung from ceiling to floor, near the bed. It disclosed a squared, nickeled-steel door, set flush with the wall. After a moment's scrutiny he turned a freshly bewildered face to his visitor. "Broken open? But it's not! My poor boy, you are out of your mind this morning. It's a doctor you are needing."

"No, no. I don't mean that one. I mean the safe upstairs, in the small room at the front."

"Is there one there?" queried Trenmore. "I didn't know of it."

"What! This isn't your own place, then?"

The giant shook his head, smiling. "For why would you be expecting to find Terence Trenmore tied to a house of his own? It belongs to my cousin, on the mother's side, whom I'll be glad for you to know, though he's not here now. But you say there's been robbery done above-stairs?"

"I'm not exactly sure. There was something so strange about it all. Come up there with me, Terry, and look for yourself."

Either because of the brandy he had swallowed, or because the first shame and shock of confession were over, Drayton seemed to have recovered some measure of strength. He led the way upstairs to the front bedroom, and answered the Irishman's question with a slow gesture toward the violated safe. Trenmore stood thoughtfully over the neglected pile of papers and more or less valuable jewelry, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his bathrobe, brows drawn in a reflective scowl. "And what," he asked, "were they like, these queer thieves that left their plunder behind them?"

"I didn't see them."

"What?"

Drayton's boyish, sensitive mouth quivered. "If you don't believe me, I can't blame you, of course. By Heaven, I think it would be a relief if you would call in the police, Terry, and end the whole rotten affair that way. I wish with all my heart that they'd put me where they put my partner, poor old Warren!"

"And where is that? It's riddles you're talking."

"First in jail and now in his grave," answered Drayton grimly.

The Irishman flung back his great, black-maned head angrily-

"Bobby, my boy, we've had enough of that make of talk! I can see with half an eye that much has happened of which I know nothing, for I've been back in old Ireland this two years past. But for what sort of scoundrel do you take me, to throw over the man I've best liked in my whole life, and just because he chances to be in a bit of trouble? As I said before, 'tis a doctor you are needing, not a policeman. As for this," he pointed to the rifled safe, "it was my thought that you did things here last night of which you have now no memory. Others here? 'Tis not in the bounds of reason that two different thieves-pardon the word; it's your own-should honor this house in one night!"

By way of reply, Drayton removed his hat, and for the first time Trenmore saw the ugly wound its low-drawn brim had concealed. "They gave me that," said Drayton simply. "The room," he continued, "was dark. I came over the roofs and down through the first transom I found unfastened. I had just entered this room and discovered the safe when they, whoever they were, came on me from behind and knocked me out."

Trenmore's lips drew in with a little sympathetic sound. "Ah, and so that's why you're so white and all! But tell me, was the safe open then?"

"No. They must have done the trick afterward. I was left lying on that bed. And I may as well tell you that this morning, when I found myself alone here and that stuff on the floor, I was going to-was going to finish what they had begun."

"And what stopped you?" Trenmore eyed him curiously from beneath lowered brows.

"This." Stooping, Drayton picked up the thing he had flung so desperately away half an hour earlier. It was a thin gold cigarette case, plain save for a monogram done in inlaid platinum.

Trenmore looked, and nodded slowly.

"Your own gift to me, Bobby. I think a power o' that case. But how came it there, I wonder? The other day I mislaid it. Likely Jim found it and put it here while I was in Atlantic City yesterday. When I returned Jim had been called away. I wonder he did not put it in the wall safe, though, that he lent me the use of; but all that's no matter. What did you do after finding the case?"

"I tried to get out, but the transom had been fastened down from above. So I made for the front door. Your servant intercepted me, and I–I hid in your room, hoping he would pass on by."

"And that's the one piece of good luck you had, my boy!" cried Trenmore. Grasping Drayton's shoulder with one great hand, he shook him gently to and fro, as if he had been the child he seemed beside his huge friend.

"Don't look like that now! I'm not so easy shocked, and if you've seen fit to turn burglar, Bob Drayton, I'm only sure 'tis for some very good cause. And let you arrive through the roof or by the front door, it makes no difference at all. You're here now! Martin and I have the place to ourselves for a couple of days. Jimmy Burford's a jolly old bachelor to delight your heart, but he lives at his club mostly and keeps but one man-servant, and him he took to New York with him when he was called away. We'll do fine with Martin, though. The man's a born genius for cooking."

"You mean that you are only visiting here?" asked Drayton hesitantly. Trenmore seemed taking it rather for granted that he was to remain as a guest, who had entered as a very inefficient burglar.

"Just visiting, the while Viola is enjoying herself with some friends in Atlantic City. You know it's no social butterfly I am, and too much of that crowd I will not stand, even for her sake. D'you mind my ever speaking to you of my little sister Viola, that was in the convent school near Los Angeles? But I'm a dog to keep you standing there! Come down to my room while we fix that head of yours and I get myself decently dressed. Then we'll breakfast together, and perhaps you'll tell me a little of what's been troubling your heart? You need not unless-"

"But I will, of course!" broke in Drayton impulsively as he at last grasped the friendly, powerful hand which his innate and self-denied honesty had prevented his taking except on a basis of open understanding.

Gathering up the stuff on the floor in one great armful, Trenmore bore it down to his own bedroom, followed by Drayton.

"I'll advise Jimmy to get him a new safe," chuckled Trenmore as he tossed his burden on the bed. "If there's aught of value here he deserves to be robbed, keeping it in that old tin box of a thing. But perhaps I'm ungrateful. I never thought, so freely he offered it, that he had to clear his own things out of this wall safe to give me the use of it. I'll share it with him from this day, and if there's anything missing from this lot I'll make the value up to him so be he'll let me, which he will not, being proud, stiff-necked, and half a Sassenach, for all he's my mother's third cousin on the O'Shaughnessy side. So I'll do it in a most underhand and secretive manner and get the better of him."

Still running along in a light, commonplace tone which denied any trace of the unusual in the situation, he again rang for Martin, and when that young man appeared bade him prepare breakfast for his guest as well as himself. The servant did his best to conceal a not unnatural amazement; but his imitation of an imperturbable English man-servant was a rather forlorn and weak one.

He went off at last, muttering to himself: "How'd the fellow get in? That's what I want to know! He wasn't here last night, and Mr. Trenmore hasn't been out of his room or I'd have heard him, and I never let his friend in, that's sure!"

Not strangely, perhaps, it did not occur to Martin that Mr. Trenmore's mysterious friend might have come a-visiting through the roof.

CHAPTER 2: DUST OF PURGATORY

LESS than an hour later, Robert Drayton, amateur burglar and so shortly previous a desperate and hunted man, sat down at table in the respectable Philadelphia residence he had fortunately chosen for his first invasion. His wounded temple was adorned with several neatly adjusted strips of plaster, and if his head ached, at least his heart was lighter than it had been in many a day. This last, as it were, in spite of himself. He felt that he should really be cringing under the table-anywhere out of sight. But with Terence Trenmore sitting opposite, his countenance fairly radiating satisfaction and good cheer, Drayton could not for the life of him either cringe or slink.

The breakfast, moreover, proved Martin to be what his master had boasted-an uncommonly good cook. Before the charms of sweet Virginia ham, fresh eggs, hot muffins, and super-excellent coffee, Drayton's misery and humiliation strangely faded into the background of consciousness.

Trenmore was an older man than he, by ten years of time and thrice their equivalent in rough experience. The two had first met in Chicago during the strenuous period of a strike. Drayton, unwise enough to play peaceful bystander at a full-grown riot, had found himself involved in an embattled medley of muscular slaughter-house men and equally muscular and better-armed police. He had stood an excellent chance of being killed by one party or arrested by the other, and none at all of extricating himself, when Trenmore, overlooking the fight from the steps of a near-by building, and seeing a young, slender, well-dressed man in a struggle in which he obviously had no place, came to his aid and fought a way out for the two of them.

Later they had joined forces on a long vacation in the Canadian woods. Drayton was then a rising young lawyer of considerable independent means, high-strung, nervous, and with a certain disposition toward melancholy. In the Irishman, with his tireless strength and humorous optimism, he found an ideal companion for that outdoor life, while Trenmore, well read, but self-educated, formed a well-nigh extravagant admiration for the young lawyer's intellect and character. And Terence Trenmore, his faith once given, resembled a large, loyal mastiff; he was thenceforth ready to give at need all that was his, goods, gains, or the strength of his great brain and body.

Following those months in Canada, however, Drayton returned to Cincinnati, his home. The two had kept up for some time a desultory correspondence, but Trenmore's fortune, acquired in the Yukon, permitted him to live the roving life which suited his restless temperament. His address changed so frequently that Drayton found it difficult to keep track of him, and as the latter became more and more desperately absorbed in certain ruinous complications of his own affairs, he had allowed his correspondence with Trenmore to lapse to nothing.

Their appetites pleasantly quelled at last, and cigars lighted, the two men adjourned to the library and settled themselves to talk things out.

"You've been in Ireland, you say-" began Drayton, but the other interrupted with raised hand.

"Let that wait. Do you not guess that I'm fair burning up with curiosity? There, there, when you look like that you make me want to cry, you do! Tell me the name of the scoundrel that's been driving you and I'll-I'll obliterate him. But don't act like the world was all black and you at your own wake. Sure, there's no trouble in life that's worth it! Now, what's wrong?"

Drayton smiled in spite of himself. The big man's good humor was too infectious for resistance. His face, however, soon fell again into the tragic lines drawn there by recent events.

"It can be told quickly," he began. "You know we had a very fair legal practice, Simon Warren and I. Up there in the woods I'm afraid I talked a lot about myself, so I don't need to tell you of the early struggles of a couple of cub lawyers. It was Warren, though, who made us what we were. Poor Warren! He had married just before the crash, and his young wife died three days after Simon was sentenced to a ten-year term in the penitentiary."

"So? And what did your partner do to deserve all that?"

"That is the story. We had built up a good clientele among the Cincinnati real-estate men and contractors. Simon specialized on contracts, and I on the real-estate end. We had a pretty fair reputation for success, too.

"Then Warren found out a thing about Interstate General Merchandise which would have put at least five men behind the bars. Unluckily for us they were big men. Too big for us small fry to tackle, though we didn't quite realize that. They tried to settle it amicably by buying us over. We were just the pair they were looking for, they said. And both Warren and I could have cleared over twenty-five thousand a year at the work they offered.

"Well, we'd have liked the money, of course-who wouldn't? — but not enough to take it as blackmail. Simon stuck to his guns and laid the affair before the district attorney. Before we could clinch the matter, Interstate Merchandise came down on us like a triphammer on a soft-boiled egg.

"Oh, yes, they framed us. They got Simon with faked papers on a deal he wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pair of tongs. Of course we went down together. The disgrace killed his wife. Three weeks ago Simon died in prison of tuberculosis. That or a broken heart-

"And I-well, you see me here. I got off without a jail term. But I'd been disbarred for illegal practice, and what money I had was all gone in the fight. After that-I don't know if it was for revenge or that they were still afraid of me, but Terry, those Interstate devils hounded me out of one job after another-broke me-drove me clean out of life as I knew it.

"Yesterday I landed here in Philadelphia without a cent in my pockets, hungry and with no hope or faith left in anything. Last night I said, 'So be it! They have killed Simon, and they will not let me live as an honest man. But, by God, I'll live!' And that's the way criminals are created. I've learned it."

Drayton ended with a catch in his voice. His clear, honest eyes were bright with the memory of that desperate resolve, so utterly alien to his nature, and his long, sensitive fingers opened and closed spasmodically.

Then Trenmore did a strangely heartless thing. Having stared at his friend for a moment, he threw back his head and laughed-laughed in a great Olympian peal of merriment that rang through the silent house.

Drayton sprang to his feet. "By heavens, Terry, I wish I could see the joke! But I'm damned if there's anything funny about what I've been through!"

As abruptly as he had begun, his host stopped laughing and forced his face into solemnity. But his blue eyes still twinkled dangerously.

"Sit down-sit down, man, and forgive me for a fool of an Irishman! Should you kill me right here for laughing, I'd not be blaming you and my heart aching this minute the way I can't wait to get at the crooks that have ruined you, and as soon as may be we'll go back to your home, you and I, and see what there is to be done.

"But, sure you're the most original criminal that ever tried to rob a man! You get in, you locate the box-did you call it a box, Bobby? — all in good form. And, by the way, were you thinking of carrying the safe away in your pocket? Or had you a stick of dynamite handy? Well, some obliging professional comes along and works the combination for you and leaves the door open. You awaken from pleasant dreams to find all that was inside, or most of it, lying right at your feet. And what is it you do? You flee as if from the devil himself, and if I hadn't stopped you you'd be straying about the streets this minute as near starvation as you were before!"

Drayton forced a smile for his friend's good-natured raillery. He could not be angry at ridicule so obviously meant to dissipate self-condemnation in laughter. "I could hardly begin on you, Terry," he said. "And speaking of that, I've already enjoyed more hospitality than I have any right to. I'm cured of crime, Terry; but if you have any idea that I am going to load myself down on you-"

Springing up with his usual impetuosity, the big Irishman fairly hurled Drayton back into his chair.

"Sit down! Sit down there where you belong! Is it load yourself you're talking of? It's to be loaded with me you are! Do you know that my very life's been threatened?"

"Please don't joke any more, Terry," protested the other wearily.

"I've not gone into details, but all the fun has been crushed out of me in the last year or so."

"Take shame to yourself, then! But this is no joke. You'll well believe me it's not when you've heard it all. Stay here now a minute, for I've a thing to show you."

In no little wonder, Drayton obeyed while Trenmore left the room and ascended the stairs to his bedchamber. A few minutes later he returned, and, drawing his chair close to Drayton, dropped into it and disclosed the thing he had brought. It seemed to be a glass vial. About six inches in length, it tapered to a point at one end, while the other was capped with silver, daintily carved to the shape of three dogs' heads. These heads, with savage, snarling jaws, all emerged from one collar, set with five small but brilliant rubies. The vial was filled to the top with some substance of the color of gray emery.

"A pretty little thing," commented Drayton.

"Aye, 'tis a pretty little thing," the other assented, staring down at the odd trifle with frowning brows. "Now what would you be thinking it might be?"

"I could hardly say. It looks like a bottle for smelling salts. What is that stuff inside?"

"Ah, now you're asking! And what do you think of the handsome silver cap to it?"

"Really, Terry," replied Drayton with a touch of impatience, "I am no judge of that sort of work. It is intended, I suppose, to represent the three-headed dog, Cerberus-the one that guarded the gates of Pluto's realm in the old mythology. The carving is beautiful."

Trenmore nodded. "It is that. And now I'll tell you how I came by it. You know it's an ignorant, rude man I am; but hid away somewhere inside me there's a great love for little, pretty, delicate things. And though I've no real education like you, Bobby, I've picked up one thing here and another there, and when I happen on some trifle with a bit of a history it just puts the comether on me, and have it I must, whether or no.

"Behind that small steel door you saw in the wall of my room I've some amazing pretty toys that I'd not like to part with. I'll show you them later, if you care, and tell you the tales that go with them. Did you read in the paper last month how Thaddeus B. Crane was after dying and all his great collection to go at auction?"

"I didn't notice."

"You wouldn't. You'd something worse to think of. But I did; so I remembered this which I had heard the fame of, and to that auction I went three days running until they came to the thing I wanted. ',' it's called, just as you named it like the clever lad you are. It's old, and they say 'twas made in Florence centuries ago. But I'll read you the bit of description Crane had for it."

He produced a sheet of time-yellowed paper he read. "'Said to have been carved by Benvenuto Cellini for his patron, the Duke of Florence. Its contents have never been examined. The legend runs, however, that the gray dust within it was gathered from the rocks at the gates of Purgatory by the poet Dante, and that it was to contain this dust that the duke required the vial. More probably, from a modern viewpoint, the contents are some sort of poison, which a Florentine duke may well have carried in self-protection or for the destruction of his enemies. The vial itself is of rock crystal and the cap-closed with cement-a peculiarly beautiful specimen of sixteenth century work. It is probably a genuine Cellini. It passed into the hands-' But I'll not be reading the rest. It tells the names of those who have owned it, and the astonishing number of them that died violently or disappeared from the face of God's earth, and no more trace left of them than a puff of smoke from your cigar!"

Drayton's lips twisted to an involuntary smile.

"A very extraordinary history," he commented. "Dante, Benvenuto Cellini, and Dust from the Rocks of Purgatory! May I ask what you paid?"

"Only five hundred. There'd word got about that Crane was no good judge and that there were more copies than originals in his collections. The regular collectors bought shy, and I misdoubt Crane's widow realized the half of what he'd spent on the lot. There was little bidding for this. The tale's too extravagant, and most would not believe it a true Cellini. However, no sooner had I got it and walked out of the salesrooms than a gray-haired old party came running after me and caught me by the sleeve.

"'And is it you that bought the Cerberus?' he demands. 'It's myself that did,' I conceded him. 'And will you sell it again to me?' 'I will not,' says I. 'Not for twice what you paid for it?' inquires he with a cunning look in his eye that I did not like. 'No, I'll not,' says I. 'Nor for two or four times what I paid for it. I'm a gentleman collector. I am not a dealer. I bought this for myself and I will keep it. Good day to you, sir,' says I, and with that I walked on.

"But do you believe he would accept my polite rebuff? Not he. He runs along by the side of me, taking three steps to my one. 'If you'll not sell it me you'll be sorry,' he keeps on saying. 'It should be mine. I went to buy it, but my chauffeur ran over a man on Broadway. Confound the fool! The police took my chauffeur and delayed me till I came too late for the bidding. I'd have had it if it cost me five thousand, and that's what I'll give now, if you'll sell.'

"By then I'd taken a real dislike to the man with his persistence and his sharp eyes. In plain words I told him if he'd not desist from following me about I'd be calling an ambulance, for he'd be needing one shortly. 'You can join in the hospital the poor devil your car murdered,' says I. And at that he takes a squint up at me sideways, like I was an elephant he'd just discovered himself to be walking with and him thinking all along I was just a small pigling, and he turns white and stops dead in his tracks. The poor midget! I'd not have laid my little finger on him for fear of crushing him entirely. But for all that he gets courage to shake his fist and call after me, 'You'll be sorry for this. You don't know what you've bought and I do! I'll have it yet!'

"Well, I thought no more of the silly madman that day. But on the next I received a letter that came to me at the hotel where Viola and me were then stopping. It said that if I'd not sell for ten thousand I'd sell for worse than nothing, and to put an ad in the paper if I'd changed my mind.

"Of course, I did nothing. But from that day I've had no peace at all. Twice my baggage has been gone over, and last week two thugs tried to hold me up in Jersey City. The poor devils are in the hospital this minute; but they could not or would not tell the name of the man who employed them.

"There have been two more letters which I'll show you presently, and the last was addressed here, showing how the fellow has watched and spied on my movements. In it he declares that my very life shall not stand in the way, but he must have the Cerberus. I'm a man of peace, and it's fair getting on my nerves.

"Last night they must have tried again, and it's a wonder I was not murdered in my bed! You've come in the nick of time to save me from nervous prostration, Bobby, lad, for it's little they can do against the two of us, your brains and my brawn!"

Now it was Drayton's turn to laugh. The picture of Terence Trenmore suffering from nervous collapse, or caring two straws for all the crooks and madmen in America, was too much for his friend. He laughed and laughed, while the Irishman stared at him in a grieved surprise which only added fuel to his hysterical mirth.

"And why," demanded Trenmore indignantly, "why wouldn't I be thinking of you when I want a lad at my side? Jimmy, my host here, is a fine man, but not the one to consult on such a Mysterious matter, life meaning to him just business, with his club for diversion, heaven help him! And were he not a distant cousin of my own mother on the O'Shaughnessy side, Jimmy and me would have never become acquainted. And wasn't I meaning to go clear to Cincinnati next week, just to be asking your advice? And does that list of folk who have had ill luck from the Cerberus-does that mean nothing at all? I tell you, I need your help and counsel, Bobby, and it's glad I am that you are here to give it."

Drayton suddenly perceived that the Irishman had been entirely serious throughout. The tale was not, as he had believed, a mere excuse seized on with intent to delude him, Drayton, into feeling that he might be of value as an ally. Hidden away in one secret corner of his friend's giant heart there dwelt a small, imaginative and quite credulous child. "Dust from the Rocks of Purgatory!" It was that which had fascinated Trenmore, and it was that more than any dread of midnight assassins which had driven him to appeal to his lawyer friend. What he wished was moral, not physical, backing.

"But, Terry," said Drayton, sobered and really touched by this unexpected demand upon him, "if the thing bothers you so much why not sell and be rid of it?"

Trenmore's mouth set in a straight, obstinate line. "No, I'll not," he declared. "They cannot bully a Trenmore, and Viola says the same. But if I could I'd lay hands on the old villain that's after it the way he'd trouble us no more, so I would!"

"Have you tried the police?"

"To be sure."

"How about the auction rooms where you bought it? If this persecutor of yours is a collector, they might know him there by description."

"That I tried myself before I troubled the police. One young fellow remembered the old villain, and remembered him asking my name. They keep a register at the salesrooms. But as for the villain's own name, no one there seemed to know it."

"Well, then-" Drayton cast about in his mind somewhat vaguely. Then an idea struck him. "By the way, Terry, have you opened the vial and had the contents analyzed?"

Trenmore's blue eyes flashed wide. "I have not!" he exclaimed with considerable energy. "For why would I be intruding on such a matter? Surely, in the place where that Dust came from, they'd not be liking me to meddle with it!"

Drayton firmly suppressed a smile. The price of friendship is tolerance, and he was too grateful and too fond of his Irishman to express ridicule. "I really believe," he said gravely, "that, admitting the Purgatory part of the legend to be true, the Dust is too far separated from its origin, and too many centuries have elapsed since it was placed in this vial for any real danger to attach to it. And who knows? There may be diamonds, or some other jewels, hidden in that close-packed dust. If there is a question of the vial's authenticity as a Cellini it can't be the vial itself that your mysterious collector is ready to pay ten thousand for. Why not open it, anyway, and find out exactly where you are?"

The Irishman scratched his head with a curious expression of indecision. Physical dread was a sensation of which he was happily ignorant; but he possessed a strong disinclination to meddle with any affair that touched on the super-natural. He had bought the vial for the sake of its reputed creator, Cellini. Then his attention had become focused on the "Dust" and the uncanny description accompanying it, and while obstinacy forbade him to let the thing go by force, still it was to him a very uneasy possession. Had no one arisen to dispute its ownership, Trenmore would probably have rid himself of the Cerberus before this.

"Well," he said at length, "if you think opening it is the wise way to be doing, then let us do it and get it over. But myself, I dread it's a foolish trifling with powers we know little of!"

"Nonsense!" laughed Drayton. "That Dante Purgatory stuff has got your goat, Terry. Not," he added hastily, "that I am ridiculing the story, but you will admit that it is slightly-just slightly-improbable. Here!" He snatched a newspaper from a near-by table and spread it on the floor between them. "Give me that vial and I'll see if it is possible to get the cap open without injury. We mustn't risk any vandalism. It is a beautiful piece of work, Cellini or no Cellini."

Feeling in his pocket, he drew out a serviceable penknife, opened the large blade, and took the crystal vial from Trenmore's still reluctant hand. As the description had stated, the hinged cover, besides being fastened with a tiny hasp that formed the buckle of the jeweled collar, was cemented down. The cement showed as a thin, reddish line between silver and crystal. The lower sections of hinge and hasp were riveted to the crystal.

Drayton ran the point of his blade cautiously around the red line. "Hard as steel," he commented. "After all, perhaps we can't open it."

A flash of relief lighted Trenmore's heavy, anxious face. He stretched a quick hand to reclaim the vial, but Drayton drew back. Opening a thin small blade, he tried the cement from another angle.

"Aha!" said he triumphantly. "That does it. This stuff is old. I can't cut it, but you see it's easy to separate the cement from the crystal by running the blade underneath. And now-careful does it. There! Let's see how the hasp works."

He fumbled with it for a moment. There came a little snap, and the cover flew up as if propelled by a spring. At the same time a tiny cloud of fine, grayish particles arose from the open vial. They gleamed like diamond dust in the sunlight.

With a quick gasp, Trenmore sat back in his chair. Though the room was cool, his face was shining with perspiration; but Drayton paid him no heed. The ex-lawyer's curiosity was by this time fully aroused, and it was unclouded by any wraith of the superstition which claimed for the gray powder so unnatural an origin.

Without hesitation, he stooped and carefully emptied the vial upon the paper at his feet. The Dust was so finely pulverized that he had to proceed with the utmost care to prevent the stuff from rising into the air. At last the vial was empty. A dark heap, resembling gray flour or powdered emery, had been its sole contents.

"I was wrong," remarked Drayton, sitting up with the Cerberus in his hand. "There was nothing there but the Dust."

Now it was strange that after all his nervous dread and horror of the Dust, Trenmore should have done what he did. Perhaps, having seen Drayton handle it without harm, he had lost this fear; or it might have been the natural heedlessness of his impulsive nature. Whatever the explanation, as Drayton ceased speaking his friend leaned over and deliberately thrust two fingers into the powder, stirring it about and feeling its soft fineness.

And then occurred the first of that series of extraordinary incidents which were to involve both Trenmore and Robert Drayton in adventures so weird, so seemingly inexplicable, that for a time even Drayton came to share his friend's belief in the super-natural quality of that which had been guarded by Cellini's Cerberus.

There sat the two friends in Burford's pleasant sunlit library. Outside the frequent clang or rattle of passing traffic spoke of the "downtown" district which had crept up about Jimmy Burford and some other stubborn old residents of Walnut Street. There they sat, and the city was all about them-commonplace, busy, impatient, and skeptical of the miraculous as Drayton himself. Somewhere at the back of the house Martin was whistling cheerily about his work.

Leaning back in his chair, Drayton's eyes were fixed on his friend, a huge figure in his loose gray morning suit-a very monument of material flesh, bone, and muscle. The sunlight fell full on him as he bent above the Dust, bringing out every kindly line of his heavy, dark face. Drayton saw him stir the Dust with his fingers. And Drayton saw a small cloud of the stuff rise toward Trenmore's face, like a puff of thin, gray smoke.

Then Drayton cried out loudly. He pushed back his chair so sharply as to overset it, and sprang away from the newspaper and its burden.

Above the floor still hovered the thin gray cloud, growing thinner every moment as the particles settled again through the draftless air. But where was Trenmore?

There had been a quivering and a wavering of his great form, as if Drayton saw him through a haze of heat. And with that, as easily and completely as a wraith of smoke from his own cigar, the giant Irishman had vanished!

CHAPTER 3: ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

IN his first moments of stunned surprise it seemed to Drayton that the end of all things had come. The maddest, most impossible surmises flashed across his mind. He scarcely would have felt further amazement had Lucifer himself, in all the traditional panoply of hoofs, tail, and brimstone, risen sudden and flaming through the midst of that dreary-hued heap of mysterious Dust. Had the tables and chairs begun to move about the room on their own legs it would have appeared only the natural sequel to such an event as had just transpired. Indeed, it seemed strangely terrible that nothing more should occur. That Nature, having broken her most sacred law, the indestructibility of matter, should carry her sacrilege no further.

But had that law been broken? Was it possible that by some unheard-of property the gray powder had noiselessly, without shock or visible sign of explosion resolved the great body of his friend into the component gases to which all matter may, in one way or another, be reduced? Or was he, Robert Drayton, stark mad, and had the whole absurd, horrible episode been a part of some delirious dream?

There lay the crystal vial on the floor, where he had dropped it in his first dismay. There was the newspaper, with half of a bargain-sale advertisement extending from beneath the gray heap. And now he became aware that in the library a bell was ringing with regular, monotonous persistence.

Scarcely knowing what he did, Drayton crossed the room and lifted the telephone receiver from its hook.

"Hello, hello! What? Yes, this is James Burford's home. What's that? Mr.-Mr. Trenmore? Yes; he's here. No-I–I mean, he was here a moment ago. No; I don't know where he is or when he will be back. My God, I wish I did! What's that? You are-whom did you say?… Oh, my Lord!"

Drayton dropped the receiver and stood staring in blank horror. After a while, leaving the receiver to dangle and click unheeded, he turned and walked slowly back toward the chair on whose broad arm Terence Trenmore's cigar still glowed behind a lengthening ash. With a slight shudder he forced himself to pass his hands carefully over the chair's entire inner surface, seat, arms, and back. The leather covering retained a trace of warmth from its recent occupant; but it was most indubitably empty.

The enormity, the unprecedented horror of the whole situation swept up on Drayton like a rising tide, wiping out for a time all thought of the telephone or the person to whom he had just been speaking. With a dazed, sick look he again circled the newspaper and its burden, righted his own chair, and sat down. He had a queer feeling that some one had just played a particularly cruel practical joke of which he was the victim.

And yet-what if that gray Dust had really possessed just the terrific, unbelievable history with which Trenmore had credited it?

He strove to arrange his facts and premises in a logical and reasonable order, but found himself continually returning to that one scene-he, Drayton, sitting where he now sat; Trenmore opposite, bending over the paper; the cloud that rose, gray and nebulous, and hung in the air after his friend was gone.

Presently he was again roused from his stupor, and again by a bell. The sound came faintly from the rear of the house. Drayton waited, thinking to hear Martin pass through the reception hall on his way to the front door. Again the bell rang, and this time in a long, steady, insistent peal. Some one seemed to have placed a finger on the button and determined that it should not be removed until the door opened. Martin must be out, on an errand perhaps.

Half dazedly, as he had answered the phone, Drayton at length responded to this new demand. As he unlocked the front door and opened it a burst of summer sunshine rushed in and with it the small, angry figure of a much perturbed young lady.

"Where is he? What has happened to my brother? Who was that man at the telephone? Answer me instantly, I say! Where is my brother, Terry Trenmore?"

The questions beat upon Drayton's ears like blows, rousing him to some semblance of his normal self-possession.

"You are-you are Miss Trenmore?" he asked in turn, though a sudden conscience-stricken remembrance smote him and assured him that she was. He had terminated that telephone conversation so very abruptly. No doubt the girl had run in from Atlantic City to see her brother, called him up, and-

"I am Viola Trenmore, and I want my brother. Where is he?"

Drayton faced her with a feeling of helpless fright, though in herself, Trenmore's sister was of no terrifying appearance. Nearly as little as her brother was large, she looked even younger than the seventeen years Drayton knew to be hers. She had her brother's eyes, azure as an Italian sky, and her straight, fine brows and curling lashes were black-beautifully so and in vivid contrast to the clear white and rose of her eager face, flushed now like an excited child's. Her small, modish hat, trim pumps, and tailored suit, all matched in color the bright, clear hue of her eyes. Despite his desperate preoccupation, Drayton's first sight of Viola Trenmore brought him the same momentary flash of joy that comes with the sight of a bluebird in springtime. She was like a bluebird, fluttering in from the sunshine. His troubled mind scarcely recognized the thought, but always afterward he remembered that first beauty of her as the flash of a bluebird's wing.

"What have you done with him?" she demanded, while from those blue eyes there blazed the very twin spirit of Terence Trenmore-Terence the impetuous, angered and scorning all caution.

"I hardly know what to tell you, Miss Trenmore," began Drayton hesitatingly. "Your brother is not here. He has gone. Oh, but I don't myself know what has happened, or whether I am sane or crazy! Come in here, Miss Trenmore, and you shall at least hear the story."

Puzzled now, and watching him with a sort of alert wariness, Viola obeyed his gesture and entered the library. And there, in halting, broken sentences, Drayton told his incredible tale. He showed her the Dust on the paper, the empty crystal vial, the half-smoked cigar, whose fire had expired some minutes since, like a last living trace of the man who had lighted it.

And somehow, as Drayton talked, he knew that it was all true, and that Trenmore was dead. Dead and dissipated to the elements as thoroughly as if, instead of a bare half hour, ten thousand years had slipped by since his going. Grief clutched Drayton's throat and he finished his story in a hoarse, barely audible whisper.

"And so-he was gone! Like that. And nothing left. Nothing but that infernal stuff there that-that murdered him-my friend!"

For one moment the girl stood silent, and Drayton thought that she also was dazed, as he had been. But suddenly she flung back her head with Trenmore's very gesture.

"I don't believe you!" she cried vehemently. "I don't believe you! Did you expect me to believe you? Do you take me for an infant? Who are you that are here in my cousin's house, answer his telephone and his door, and meet me with this mad lie about Terry? I recognize that vial! And I know that some one has been trying to steal it from my brother. Are you that thief, and have you murdered Terry, as you threatened you would?"

She advanced upon him, her eyes two pools of blue, indignant fire; but the man stood his ground. "I am Robert Drayton," he said.

"Robert Drayton! But you can't be. Mr. Drayton is a good friend of Terry's, though I've never met him, and some way you know that and hope to deceive me! Mr. Drayton would not treat me like this. He would not lie to me. He would not-" Sobbing at last, she broke off and clenched her little hands fiercely. "I'll show you!" she cried. "I'll show you what I think of you and your lies, and then I'll make you tell me the true story!"

Before Drayton, springing forward with a cry of wild protest, could prevent, she had dropped on her knees beside the heap of Dust. Another instant and her white-gloved fingers had again raised that ominous gray cloud.

It rose in a spiral swirl-

For a second Drayton still saw her as a vague, translucent blur of blue shading into pink where her face had been. Then the air shimmered and cleared, and once more the unfortunate young man stood alone in Burford's pleasant library. This time not so much as a lighted cigar remained to remind him of recent companionship.

Mr. Robert Drayton began to swear. Serious profanity had never come easily to his lips. Now, however, he heard himself using phrases and words which he had not even been aware that he knew; a steady, low-voiced, earnest stream of expression whose utterance gave him the strangest satisfaction and relief. He swore for two minutes without a pause, then trailed off into silence. The superhuman tension had been broken, however, and he could again think.

This abruptness and totality of disappearance, that left him not so much as a corpse to mourn, awoke in him emotions different from any he had ever experienced. He found that he could not think of Trenmore and his sister as other than alive, nor rid himself of the idea that in some way they were yet present in the library. Not though the very clearest memory informed him that before his eyes those two had been resolved to nothingness.

Pondering on what he should do, however, it came to him that in honor only one course lay open. Had he been content to indulge Trenmore's superstitious regard for that infernal Dust, he would have been left confronting no such ghastly mystery. The fault, by this reckoning, was his. Let him pay, then.

With a firm, resolute tread Drayton approached the sinister gray pile, and of all its victims he alone loosed its deadliness knowingly-or believing that he knew.

Ten seconds later the library was empty of human life.

On the mantelpiece stood a clock which then pointed to the hour of nine-thirty. It ticked on solemnly, dutifully, wholly indifferent to any wonder save the great and perpetual miracle of Time itself. Minute by minute the long and the short hands crept over the dial, and on the vast looms of Eternity thread by thread was added to the universal fabric of the Past.

Ten-twenty-five, and Martin, out marketing among the stalls in the Reading Terminal Market, was very cheerful over some exceptionally large, juicy oranges. Mr. Trenmore liked oranges. He added two dozen of the fruit to his order and started homeward.

Back there in the library the Cerberus still gleamed where Drayton had flung it down. The Dust still lay on its newspaper, whose matter-of-factness seemed to deride all mystery connected with divorce, murder, or the wonderful cheapness of lace blouses and lingerie at Isaac Fineheimer's Stock Clearance Sale.

And as Martin, on his return journey, crossed Juniper Street, five blocks away, a caller arrived at a certain house on Walnut Street.

He was a short, rotund young gentleman. Attired in a suit of dark green, neatly matched by socks, tie, and the ribbon on his wellblocked hat, the one false note in his color scheme was struck by a pair of bright, too-bright tan shoes.

Twice he had passed the house saunteringly; then boldly ascended Mr. Burford's sedate white marble doorsteps. Boldly indeed he walked up and in at the open door; but once inside his demeanor underwent a change. No cat could have slunk more softly through vestibule and hall; no hunting animal could have been more keenly alert for any sound within the quiet, empty house.

He made straight for the stairs; but with one foot on the first step he paused. Through a half-open door he could see part of a large, book-lined room. Was it empty?

After short hesitation the rotund green gentleman stole over and peered cautiously round the edge of that door!

An instant later, and he had darted across the library with a silent, amazing celerity of movement. His attention, it seemed, had been caught by the Cerberus' gleaming in the sunlight. Picking up the vial, he examined it with swift care, thrust it in his pocket, and turned to leave. His cherubic face now wore the look of one who has achieved good fortune with almost suspicious ease; his pleased smile was half doubtful, and as he moved softly toward the door his small, darting eyes glanced from side to side quickly, thoughtful of hidden danger.

Unluckily for him, however, the real danger in that room was not bidden. It lay in full sight on a newspaper, flat on the floor between two chairs that faced one another companionably.

Frequently curiosity has been proved a fatal weakness.

How far the extraordinary affair might have progressed, how many of Philadelphia's citizens, innocent or otherwise, might have entered that library and been tempted to investigate the harmless looking gray peril on its floor, had not Martin been a careful and conscientious individual, is a problem for speculation. Fortunately, however, Martin was what he was. At exactly eleven o'clock he entered the library seeking his employer. Finding the room empty, and having searched the rest of the house in vain, he came to the natural and entirely correct conclusion. Mr. Trenmore was not at home.

The front door had been left open. Martin closed it. Then he returned to straighten the library and empty the ash trays.

Over the fatal Dust he hesitated. Was this gray, floury stuff rubbish left here to be thrown out? Arbitrary and uninstructed action never appealed to Martin. With wise caution-how wise he would have been panic-stricken to learn-he folded the newspaper together, taking pains that its contents be not scattered, made a neat packet of it, and tied it with red tape from the table drawer. This packet he carried upstairs and laid on Trenmore's chiffonier, where there could be no question of its being overlooked.

After that Martin sought the lower regions to prepare luncheon for Trenmore and his guest.

And in the library-that room of abominable and innocent looking emptiness-the clock ticked solemnly on.

CHAPTER 4: WHERE THE GRAY DUST LED

WHAT Robert Drayton expected when, without one glance for the world he felt himself to be forever leaving, he so deliberately followed the two Trenmores, he scarcely knew. Death, probably.

As he bent above the Dust, his back to the sunlight and to life, he was conscious of neither regret, fear, nor curiosity. He had reached that blank wall which seems to rise in moments of great crisis-a sense of nowness that cuts off past and future, leaving for standing place only the present, an infinitesimal point.

Carefully copying the actions of those who had preceded him, Drayton touched the Dust, first gently, then, in sudden haste for the end, giving it one vigorous stir with his forefinger.

Had he been a conventional suicide tugging at a trigger the result could have come no more promptly. As he had seen it rise before, so it rose now-that grim cloud which to Drayton presaged dissolution.

It reached his face, was in his eyes, his nostrils. With it came dizziness and a strong physical nausea. His mouth tasted sharply bitter, as if he had swallowed quinine. Drayton shuddered and gasped. He saw everything through a gray mist. The room was filled with it. It was a mist composed of thin, concentric rings, swirling slowly with himself for axis. The rings became thicker, denser-till he could perceive nothing else-till he could not see his hands, when, stretching them out to catch at a chair or table, they came in contact only with the air.

The bitter taste and the sickness increased. His hand was on the floor supporting him, and the floor felt strange; the carpet unlike any weave of human making. Presently even the dizziness and nausea were forgotten. He had attention only for that strange carpet. He could have sworn that what he touched with cautious, investigatory fingers was not carpet at all, but grass! Surely it was grass-long, matted, a tangle of brittle-dry blades.

While he still explored this odd phenomenon, the blinding grayness about him began to thin. All around him appeared the changing outlines of shapes, gray and mutable as the mist itself, but still shapes of a sort. Rapidly now these grew more coherent, solid, and acquired a more than shadowy substance, until, all in a moment, the gray, swirling veil was withdrawn.

Unless every sense of his body lied, Drayton was crouching on the ground in open air. Those gray shapes he had glimpsed were the fallen stones and broken walls of some old, ruined building.

Unspeakably bewildered, Drayton staggered to his feet. There before him stretched the broad level of a wide green plain, across which a low sun stared through a strata of reddened cloud. The ruins near which he stood crowned the summit of a little hill, all overgrown with that dry, tangled grass which had so puzzled him in the mist. Here and there a few small trees had sprung up among the stones. He heard their scant, yellowish foliage rustling stiffly in the slight breeze.

Turning slowly, he perceived that the hill of the gray ruins was the first of a low range of foothills, above whose summits in the east loomed the white peaks of mountains.

Following amazement, Drayton's first impression was one of intolerable loneliness. In the sky of this strange, wide world he had invaded not a bird flew; mountain, hill, and plain lay desolate, empty of any living creature; no sound broke the stillness save the gentle, unhuman whisper of the warm breeze, blowing from the plain upward across the hills.

And yet it was all very real; very convincing and earthlike. The shadows of the ruins stretched long and dark away from the almost level rays of the sinking sun. Stretching forth his hand, Drayton laid it cautiously upon the stone of a broken wall. The rough granite felt dusty and hot beneath his fingers. He broke off a bit of green-gray lichen that grew there, and it was just that-lichen and no more.

If he were dead, if this were the world that awaits the soul when the body perishes, why did he feel so uncommonly like his ordinary, everyday, physical self? How could he feel at all, in any common sense?

He was alive. His feet pressed the earth with the weight of a quite material body. Why, his very clothing denied any spirituality in this experience. There he stood, bareheaded, dressed in the same old blue serge suit he had bought five years ago in Cincinnati, and which now constituted his sole wardrobe. The sun was warm on his face; the air breathed clear and sweet. Surely he was no spirit, but a living man of flesh and blood.

Nowhere, however, was there hint or sign of other living humanity than himself. He was alone in a land so empty that only the greenness on hills and plain preserved it from utter desolation. The ruins spoke of man, but of man dead and gone so many ages since that their stones remembered his clean chisel strokes but vaguely.

What devilish nature had that Dust possessed, and where had it seen fit to deposit his fellow victims?

Drayton flung out his arms in a gesture of despair. For a long moment he stood so, a desolate figure in a vacant land. Then his hands dropped limp at his sides, and he began an aimless, wandering walk between the ruins.

Here, he thought with a faint flicker of interest, there had once stood a fortress or castle. Centuries ago it had fallen. All that remained were broken columns, heaps of rugged granite and portions of the thick outer walls. Within the latter he could trace the shape of a courtyard, still paved in places with crumbling flagstones.

Presently he came upon the remains of a gateway. The arch had fallen in and upon one of its stones Drayton observed traces of letters. He examined them curiously. Time, however, had done its work too thoroughly, and all he could decipher were the first few letters of two lines:

ULITH- MC

There was no clue in that to his whereabouts.

In despair of learning more, he strayed on, vaguely wondering why he should walk at all, until in the matted grass of the courtyard, close to the inner side of the same wall by which he had first found himself kneeling, his foot struck against something.

He stared downward. The sun was very low, the shadow of the wall was dark, and he could see only that there was a long mound there, under the tangled grass. But that soft, heavy resilience of the thing he had stumbled on, coupled with the length and shape of the mound-there was that in the combination which struck him unpleasantly.

He turned to leave it, then came back as if fascinated. Finally he stooped, and with nervous, desperate fingers dragged and tore at the network of dry, tangled fibers that covered the mound. At last he uncovered something that looked and felt like a piece of cloth. But the color of it-the color of it! Out of the dim shadow it gleamed at him, bright, clear, bluest and purest of blues-the hue of a bluebird's wing!

Frantically, with a growing sense of impending horror, Drayton persisted in his task until his worst fears were confirmed.

Beneath that grass lay the body of a woman, face down. Though the face was concealed, he knew her instantly. And she lay there, deathly quiet, face down and the grass had grown over her.

How long-good God! — how long a time had passed since he had stood face to face with this girl in James Burford's library? It had been morning there. Here it was sunset. Sunset? How many suns had set since that grass was young and began its task of shroud weaving?

Conquering a sudden and violent impulse to flee, Drayton turned the body over and laughed a little wildly. After all, the grass was a liar. Dead the girl might be-she lay still enough-but if dead she was most recently so. Her face was pale and sweet and perfect as a child's sleeping there in the shadow. The lids were closed softly over her eyes, as if at any moment the curling lashes might quiver and lift.

Scarcely breathing, Drayton knelt and laid his ear above her heart. Surely that was a faint flutter he felt! Raising her head, he sought some other sign of returning consciousness. There was none. He laid a hand on her forehead. It was cool, but not with the chilling coldness he dreaded.

Questioning no longer, but with a great hope in his heart, Drayton sprang to his feet and paused. Where in this empty, houseless land could he obtain any stimulant or even water to revive her? He must have it-he must save her before that faint trace of life should flicker out. Alone he had been nothing. With this small sister of Trenmore's at his side he could face all the mysteries of the universe with a cheerful carelessness. He loved her suddenly and joyously, not because she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but simply because she was human!

Yet should he leave her to seek water the girl might die in his absence. Better he had never found her than that! Despairing of other means, Drayton was about to try what resuscitation the chafing of wrists and forehead might effect when, glancing westward to judge how much of day might be left him, he beheld an odd, unlooked-for thing.

On the side of the ruins toward the plain stood the longest and highest fragment of the outer wall. On the left it rose in a jagged slant from the old foundations to a height of six or seven feet, extended level for a distance of four yards or so, then ended in an abrupt vertical line that exactly bisected the red sun, now touching the horizon. And from beyond its black silhouette, against the faint pink of the western sky, a thin puff of smoke was ascending!

It was dissipated by the slight breeze from the plain. Another puff and another followed it. Then the puffs ceased, to be succeeded by a slow, thin column of mysterious vapor.

Who or what was behind that wall?

Standing there alone and weaponless beside the unconscious girl, Drayton was swept by a terror deeper and more vivid than any dread he had ever before experienced. Smoke! The most familiar sight known to man. But in this strange, unhuman place? What vague demon might he not discover if he dared look behind that wall?

Yet his very fear drove him. Night was on its way to lend terror the cloak of invisibility. He must go while the sun befriended him.

Leaving the girl where she was, Drayton stumbled across the grass-hidden stones between him and the fragment of wall. He caught at its top with his hands and cautiously pulled himself up.

Just before his head cleared the ragged stones a voice began speaking. It was a deep, vibrant voice, entirely harmonious with the surroundings.

"Well," it declared, and the tone was somewhat plaintive, "and that is the last of my last cigar. Sure, it's a fine sunset they have here, but 'tis not my idea of Purgatory at all! 'Tis too dull, so it is. I wish-"

"Terry Trenmore!" With joyful, scarce-believing eyes, Drayton was staring over the wall. Then his muscles suddenly gave way and he dropped back on his own side.

For an instant there was dead silence. When the voice was heard again it was with an intonation of profound resignation.

"There now, it's begun at last! Sure, I never should have wished for excitement! But the devils will find Terence Trenmore game. Invisible voices shouting my own name! I wonder now, is that the best they can do? I wonder had I better-"

"Trenmore, it's I-Bob Drayton!"

As Drayton appeared suddenly around the end of the wall, the Irishman faced him calmly without rising. "I'm resigned," he said. "You might take a worse shape than that. What is it you'd be about now?"

Laughing outright, Drayton walked over and shook his giant friend by the shoulder.

"You blessed old idiot! Don't you know me? Have you been sitting here all this time while I mooned about thinking myself-By Heaven, Terry, do you know that Viola is here, too?"

"Viola, is it? Now I tell you straight, my lad, if you're what I suspect you of being you keep your tongue off my little sister or there'll be one devil the less in these parts!"

"Trenmore, have you gone stark mad? I'm no devil! Here, take my hand. Doesn't that feel like flesh and blood? I tell you, Viola is here. She came to the house after-after you went. And before I could prevent her she had stirred up that infernal gray powder."

"She did? Well, tell me then how you reached here yourself, and perhaps I'll begin to believe you."

Drayton shrugged. "I followed, of course. The whole thing was my fault. I thought you were both dead, and I could hardly do less than follow."

Trenmore sprang up and wrung the other's hand with his customary enthusiasm. "And now I do believe you!" he cried. "You're Bobby Drayton and none other, for you've acted like the man I knew you to be. But poor little Viola! And where is she now? Sure, if she's in this place, I misdoubt it's the one I took it for, after all!"

"She is over among the ruins, and she seems to have fainted. I found her all buried in grass. She mustn't be left alone another instant. Have you any whisky or brandy about you?"

"I have not-bad luck to me!"

Disappointed, but still hopeful, Drayton led the way, eagerly followed by his friend. The sun had sunk till it glowed like the half of a great, round, red lantern above the horizon's rim. Drayton was wondering what they should do if they failed to revive Viola before night came on; but this anxiety was wasted.

As they crossed the grass-grown court a little figure in blue dashed suddenly from behind a shattered column and flung itself bodily into the arms of Trenmore.

"Terry-oh, Terry, my dear!"

"Little Viola! There, there now. Is it crying you are? And for what?"

"Just for joy, Terry, dear. Don't mind me. There, I'll not cry any more. I waked up-all alone-in the shadow. And Terry, darling, I'd been dreaming that we both were dead!"

CHAPTER 5: THE WEAVER OF THE YEARS

WHEN the marvelous oversteps the bounds of known possibility there are three ways of meeting it. Trenmore and his sister, after a grave discussion of certain contingencies connected with the Catholic religion and a dismissal of them on grounds too utterly Celtic and dogmatic for Drayton to follow, took the first way. From that time on they faced every wonder as a fact by itself, to be accepted as such and let go at that.

Drayton, though all his life he had unconsciously so viewed such accustomed marvels as electricity or the phenomenon of his own life, could not here follow his Irish friends. He compromised on the second way, and accepted with a mental reservation, as "I see you now, but I am not at all sure that you are there or that I really believe in you!"

Fortunately there was not one of the three so lacking in mental elasticity as to discover the third way, which is madness.

"And what we should be thinking of," declared Viola presently, "is not how did we come here, but how are we to find our way home?"

This was a truism too obvious for dispute. And yet, to Drayton at least, it seemed that no amount of thinking or action either was likely to be of great service. They were without food or water. Without weapons or compass. Without the faintest glimmering of knowledge as to their actual geographic position upon the earth.

Drayton strained his eyes toward the hills, already purple in the sun's last rays. What hope was there among those desolate heights, more than was offered by the empty flatness of the plain?

How many miles could be traversed by this frail-looking sister of Trenmore's before those dainty, high-heeled pumps of hers were worn to rags? Before she dropped exhausted? How many more miles could he and Trenmore carry her if they found neither food nor water?

"We'll find food as we go," said Terence as if interpreting and answering the thought. "I never did see a green country like this and no sort of food in it. Viola, 'tis a plucky lass you've always been. I've often promised that some day you'd go wandering with me. Let's be starting. And, Bobby, lad, don't look so down-hearted. There's a way out of everything, and aren't we just the three ones to find it, wherever we are?"

Drayton realized that his gloomy countenance must be anything but encouraging to Viola. Determined that henceforth he would be a model adventurer at any cost, he smiled.

"I wasn't really worrying, old man. I was merely thinking-"

But what innocent fabrication he would have devised to account for his despondency they never discovered. His sentence ended abruptly, and the forced smile vanished.

The attention of all three had been caught by a strange, deep, moaning sound. Reaching for his sister, Trenmore drew her close to his side. They all stood very still and listened.

The moaning, which began at first faintly and in a low key, seemed to emanate from a source immediately beneath their feet. Swiftly, however, this source widened and spread outward, extending itself beneath the empty plain and under the hills toward the mountain peaks. As it spread the note rose in key and in volume until it was more than anything else like the sound which might be thrown out by an immense top, whirling with planetary speed.

The intense vibration became agonizing. The listeners clapped their hands over their ears in a vain effort to shut it out. Drayton, for his part, felt that in one more instant either his eardrums or his brain must give way.

Even as he thought it, however, the last segment of the sun's red periphery sank out of sight beneath the horizon. The terrible humming died away, melting into the universal silence in which it had found birth. With scarcely an intervening moment of twilight night swept down.

At first it seemed absolute as blindness, or the end of all created things. Then, as his pupils expanded, Drayton began dimly to perceive his companions, while, on looking upward, he beheld a sky powdered thick with clear, brilliant stars.

He drew a long breath, and heard it echoed by the others.

"They have a strange nightfall in this land," muttered Trenmore, "and they do make a great noise over it!"

"Yes," replied Drayton, the observant, "but those stars look familiar enough."

"Right as usual, Bobby. It's the same old stars they're using. Look, Viola! There's the old bear and her cub!"

"And the Milky Way," said Viola.

Somehow, in spite of all that had occurred, the sight of those familiar stars and constellations brought a feeling of almost-security, of at-homeness and actuality.

"Your talk of Purgatory," laughed Drayton, "and that abominable noise just now sent a few unearthly shivers down my back. Those stars tell a different story. We are surely somewhere on earth. Different longitude, perhaps, but in our own latitude, or nearly, even though night did shut down with such tropical suddenness. If we were in the tropics we should see a sky different from this-"

His astronomical observations were cut short by a low cry from Viola. Dimly he glimpsed her arm, stiffly outstretched and pointing.