THE MAN WHO FOUND HIMSELF

_By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE_

THE BEACH OF DREAMS
THE GHOST GIRL
THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF
THE GOLD TRAIL
SEA PLUNDER
THE PEARL FISHERS
THE PRESENTATION
THE NEW OPTIMISM
POPPYLAND
THE POEMS OF FRANÇOIS VILLON
  _Translated by H. De Vere Stacpoole_

The Man Who Found Himself
(Uncle Simon)

_By_
MARGARET AND H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

NEW YORK
JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMXX

Copyright, 1920,
BY STREET & SMITH

Copyright, 1920,
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER                                     PAGE
   I. SIMON                                    9

  II. MUDD                                    12

 III. DR. OPPENSHAW                           20

  IV. DR. OPPENSHAW--_continued_              30

   V. I WILL NOT BE HIM                       34

  VI. TIDD AND RENSHAW                        42

 VII. THE WALLET                              46

PART II

   I. THE SOUL'S AWAKENING                    51

  II. MOXON AND MUDD                          60

 III. SIMON'S OLD-FASHIONED NIGHT IN TOWN     73

PART III

   I. THE LAST SOVEREIGN                      87

  II. UNCLE SIMON                            105

 III. THE HUNDRED-POUND NOTE                 121

  IV. THE HUNDRED-POUND NOTE--_continued_    129

   V. THE HOME OF THE NIGHTINGALES           144

  VI. THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONFLY            154

 VII. NINE HUNDRED POUNDS                    164

 III. PALL MALL PLACE                        173

  IX. JULIA                                  181

PART IV

   I. THE GARDEN-PARTY                       191

  II. HORN                                   200

 III. JULIA--_continued_                     209

  IV. HORN--_continued_                      216

   V. TIDD _versus_ RENSHAW                  221

  VI. WHAT HAPPENED TO SIMON                 234

 VII. TIDD _versus_ BROWNLOW                 238

VIII. IN THE ARBOUR                          240

  IX. CHAPTER THE LAST                       243

PART I

THE MAN WHO FOUND HIMSELF

CHAPTER I

SIMON

King Charles Street lies in Westminster; you turn a corner and find
yourself in Charles Street as one might turn a corner and find oneself
in History. The cheap, the nasty, and the new vanish, and fine old
comfortable houses of red brick, darkened by weather and fog, take you
into their keeping, tell you that Queen Anne is not dead, amuse you with
pictures of Sedan chairs and running footmen and discharge you at the
other end into the twentieth century from whence you came.

Simon Pettigrew lived at No. 12, where his father, his grandfather, and
his great-grandfather had lived before him--lawyers all of them. So
respected, so rooted in the soil of the Courts as to be less a family of
lawyers than a minor English Institution. Divorce your mind entirely
from all petty matters of litigation in connection with the Pettigrews,
Simon or any of his forebears would have appeared just as readily in
their shirt-sleeves in Fleet Street as in County or Police Court for or
against the defendant; they were old family lawyers and they had a fair
proportion of the old English families in their keeping--deed-boxes
stuffed with papers, secrets to make one's hair curl.

To the general public this great and potent firm was almost unknown, yet
Pettigrew and Pettigrew had cut off enough heirs to furnish material for
a dozen Braddon novels, had smothered numerous screaming tragedies in
high life and buried them at dead of night, and all without a wrinkle on
the brow of the placid old firm that drove its curricle through the
reigns of the Georges, took snuff in the days of Palmerston, and in the
days of Edward Rex still refused to employ the typewriter.

Simon, the last of the firm, unmarried and without near relation, was at
the time of this story turned sixty--a clean-shaven, bright-eyed,
old-fashioned type of man, sedate, famed for his cellar, and a member of
the Athenæum. A man you never, never would have imagined to possess such
a thing as a Past. Never would have imagined to have been filled with
that semi-diabolical, semi-angelical joy of life which leads to the
follies of youth.

All the same, Simon, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two, had
raked the town vigorously more than viciously, haunted Evans'
supper-rooms, fallen madly in love with an actress, enjoyed life as only
the young can enjoy life in the gorgeous, dazzling, deceitful country of
Youth.

Driving in hansom cabs was then a pleasure! New clothes and outrageous
shirts and ties a delight, actresses goddesses. Then, one day his
actress turned out an actress, and the following night he came out of
the Cocoa Tree owing a gambling debt of a thousand pounds that he could
not pay. His father paid on his promising to turn over a new leaf, which
he did. But his youth was checked, his brightness eclipsed, and
arm-in-arm with common sense he set out on the long journey that led him
at last to the high position of a joyless, loveless, desolate, wealthy
solicitor of sixty--respected, very much respected. In fact, less a man
than a firm. Yet there still remained to him as a legacy of his youth, a
very pretty wit of his own, an irresponsible turn of talk when he gave
himself away--as at dinner-parties.

CHAPTER II

MUDD

Mudd was Simon's factotum, butler, and minister of inferior affairs.
Mudd was sixty-five and a bit; he had been in the services of the
Pettigrew family forty-five years, and had grown up, so to say, side by
side with Simon. For the last twenty years every morning Mudd had
brought up his master's tea, drawn up his blinds and set out his
clothes--seven thousand times or thereabouts, allowing for holidays and
illnesses. He was a clean-shaven old man, with rounded shoulders and a
way that had become blunt with long use; he only "sirred" Simon in the
presence of guests and servants, and had an open way of speaking on
matters of everyday affairs verging on the conjugal in its occasional
frankness.

This morning, the third of June, Mudd, having drawn up his master's
blinds and set out his boots and shaving things, vanished and returned
with his clothes, brushed and folded, and a jug of shaving water which
he placed on the wash-handstand.

"The arms will be out of this old coat if you go on wearing it much
longer," grumbled Mudd, as he placed the things on a chair. "It's been
in wear nearly a year and a half; you're heavy on the left elbow--it's
the desk does it."

"I'll see," said Simon.

He knew quite well the suggestion that lay in the tone and the words of
Mudd, but a visit to his tailors was almost on a par with a visit to his
dentists, and new clothes were an abhorrence. It took him a fortnight to
get used to a new coat, and as to being shabby, why, a decent shabbiness
was part of his personality and, vaguely perhaps, of his pride in life.
He could afford to be shabby.

Mudd having vanished, Simon rose and began his toilet, tubbing in a tin
bath--a flat Victorian tin bath--and shaving with a razor taken from a
case of seven, each marked with a day of the week.

This razor was marked "Tuesday."

Having carefully dried "Tuesday" and put it back between "Monday" and
"Wednesday," Simon closed the case with the care and precision that
marked all his actions, finished dressing, and looked out of the window
to see what sort of day it was.

A peep of glorious blue sky caught across the roofs of the opposite
houses informed him, leaving him unenthusiastic, and then, having wound
up his watch, he came downstairs to the Jacobean dining-room, where tea,
toast, frizzled bacon, and a well-aired _Times_ were awaiting him.

At a quarter to ten precisely Mudd opened the hall door, verified the
fact that the brougham was in waiting and informed his master, helped
him into his overcoat--a light summer overcoat--and closed the carriage
door on him.

A little after ten Simon reached Old Serjeants' Inn and entered his
office.

Brownlow, the chief clerk, had just arrived, and Simon, nodding to him,
passed into his private room, where his letters were laid out, hung up
his hat and coat, and set to business.

It was a sight to watch his face as he read letter after letter, laying
each in order under a marble paper-weight. One might have fancied
oneself watching Law at work, in seclusion and unadorned with robes. He
did not need glasses--his eyes were still the eyes of a young man.

Having finished his letters, he rang for his stenographer and began
dictating replies, sending out now and again for Brownlow to consult
upon details; then, this business finished and alone again, he sat
resting for a moment, leaning back in his chair and trimming his nails
with the little penknife that lay on the table. It was his custom at
twelve o'clock precisely to have a glass of old brown sherry. It was a
custom of the firm; Andrew Pettigrew had done the same in his day and
had handed on the habit to his son. If a favoured client were present
the client would be asked to have a glass, and the bottle and two
glasses were kept in the John Tann safe in the corner of the room. Ye
gods! Fancy in your modern solicitor's office a wine-bottle in the
principal safe and the solicitor asking a client to "have a drink"! Yet
the green-seal sherry, famous amidst the _cognoscenti_, and the safe and
the atmosphere of the room and the other-day figure of Simon, all were
in keeping, part of a unique and Georgian whole, like the component
parts of a Toby jug.

The old silver-faced clock on the mantel, having placed its finger on
midday, set up its silvery lisp, and Simon, rousing himself from his
reverie, rose, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the safe.

Then he stood looking at what was to be seen inside.

The safe contained two deed-boxes, one on top of the other, on the iron
fire-and-burglar-proof floor, and by the deed-boxes stood the sherry
bottle and the cut-glass satellite wine-glasses, whilst upon the topmost
deed-box reposed a black leather wallet.

Simon's eyes were fixed on the wallet, the thing seemed to hold him
spellbound; one might have fancied him gazing into the devilish-diamond
eyes of a coiled snake. The wallet had not been there when he closed the
safe last; there had been nothing in the safe but the boxes, the bottle
and the glasses, and of the safe there were but two keys, one at the
bank, one in his pocket. The manager of Cumber's Bank, a bald-headed
magnate with side-whiskers, even if he had means of access to the safe,
could not have been the author of this little trick, simply because the
key at the bank was out of his reach, being safely locked away in the
Pettigrew private deed-chest, and the key of the Pettigrew private
deed-chest was on the same bunch as that now hanging from the safe door.

The lock was unpickable.

Yet the look on Simon's face was less that of surprise at the thing
found than terror of the thing seen. Brownlow's head on a charger could
not have affected him much more.

Then, stretching out his hand, he took the wallet, brought it to the
table and opened it.

It contained bank-notes, beautiful, new, crisp Bank of England notes;
but the joy of the ordinary man in discovering a great unexpected wad of
bank-notes was not apparent in the face of Simon, unless beads of
perspiration are indications of joy. He turned to the sherry-bottle,
filled two glasses with a shaky hand and drained them; then he turned
again to the notes.

He sat down and, pushing the wallet aside, began to count them. Began to
count them feverishly, as though the result of the tally were a matter
of vast importance. There were four notes of a thousand, the rest were
hundreds and a few tens. Ten thousand pounds, that was the total.

He put the notes back in the case, buckled it, jumped up like a released
spring, flung the wallet on top of the deed-box and closed the safe with
a snap.

Then he stood, hands in pockets, examining the pattern of the Turkey
carpet.

At this moment a knock came to the door and a junior clerk appeared.

"What the devil do you want?" asked Simon.

The clerk stated his case. A Mr. Smith had called, craving an
interview.

"Ask Mr. Brownlow to see him," replied Simon; "but ask Mr. Brownlow to
step in here first."

In a moment Brownlow appeared.

"Brownlow," said Simon, "look up Dr. Oppenshaw's telephone number and
ask him can he give me ten minutes' interview before luncheon. Say it is
most urgently important. 110A, Harley Street, is his address--and, see
here, have a taxicab called--that's all."

Whilst Brownlow was away on his mission Simon put on his overcoat, put
on his hat, blew his nose lustily in the red bandanna handkerchief that
was part of his personality, opened the safe and took another peep at
the wallet, as if to make sure that the fairy hand that had placed it
there had not spirited it away again, and was in the act of locking the
safe when the senior clerk entered to say that Dr. Oppenshaw would be
visible at a quarter to one, and that Morgan, the office-boy, had
procured the cab.

Brownlow, though he managed to conceal his feelings, was disturbed by
the manner of his chief and by the telephone message to the doctor; by
the whole affair, in fact, for Simon never left the office till the
stroke of one, when the brougham called to take him to Simpson's in the
Strand for luncheon.

Was Simon ill? He ventured to put the question and nearly had his head
snapped off.

Ill! No, of course he wasn't ill, never better in his life; what on
earth put that idea into Brownlow's head?

Then the testy one departed in search of the taxi, and Brownlow returned
to his room and his duties.

DR. OPPENSHAW

Just as rabbit-burrows on the Arizona plain give shelter to a mixed
tenantry, a rabbit, an owl, and a snake often occupying the same hole,
so the Harley Street houses are, as a rule, divided up between dentists,
oculists, surgeons, and physicians, so that under the same roof you can,
if you are so minded, have your teeth extracted, your lungs percussed,
your eyes put right, and your surgical ailment seen to, each on a
different floor. Number 110A, Harley Street, however, contained only one
occupant--Dr. Otto Oppenshaw. Dr. Oppenshaw had no need of a sharer in
his rent burdens; a neurologist in the most nerve-ridden city of Europe,
he was making an income of some twenty-five thousand a year.

People were turned away from his door as from a theatre where a wildly
successful play is running. The main craving of fashionable neurotics, a
craving beyond, though often inspired by the craving for, the opium
alkaloids and cocaine, was to see Oppenshaw. Yet he was not much to
see: a little bald man like a turnip, with the manners of a butcher, and
gold-rimmed spectacles.

Dukes inspired with the desire to see Oppenshaw had to wait their turn
often behind tradesmen, yet he was at Simon Pettigrew's command. Simon
was his sometime lawyer. It was half-past twelve, or maybe a bit more,
when the taxi drew up at 110A and the lawyer, after a sharp legal
discussion over tuppence with the driver, mounted the steps and pressed
the bell.

The door was at once opened by a pale-faced man in black, who conducted
the visitor to the waiting-room, where a single patient was seated
reading a last year's volume of _Punch_ and not seeming to realise the
jokes.

This person was called out presently, and then came Simon's turn.

Oppenshaw got up from his desk and came forward to meet him.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Simon, when they had exchanged
greetings. "It's a difficult matter I have come to consult you about,
and an important one, else I would not have cut into your time like
this."

"State your case," said the other jovially, retaking his seat and
pointing out a chair.

"That's the devil of it," replied Simon; "it's a case that lies out of
the jurisdiction of common sense and common knowledge. Look at me. Do I
look as though I were a dreamer or creature of fancies?"

"You certainly don't," said Oppenshaw frankly.

"Yet what I have to tell you disgusts me--will disgust you."

"I'm used to that, I'm used to that," said the other. "Nothing you can
say will alarm, disgust, or leave me incredulous."

"Well, here it is," said the patient, plunging into the matter as a man
into cold water. "A year ago--a year and four weeks, for it was on the
third of May--I went down to my office one morning and transacted my
business as usual. At twelve o'clock I--er--had occasion to open my
safe, a safe of which I alone possess the key. On the top of a deed-box
in that safe I found a brown-paper parcel tied with red tape. I was
astonished, for I had put no parcel in."

"You might have forgotten," said Oppenshaw.

"I never forget," replied Simon.

"Go on," said Oppenshaw.

"I opened the parcel. It contained bank-notes to the amount of ten
thousand pounds."

"H'm--h'm."

"Ten thousand pounds. I could not believe my eyes. I sent for my chief
clerk, Brownlow. He could not believe his eyes, and I fear he even
doubted the statement of the whole case. Now listen. I determined to go
to my bank, Cumber's, and make enquiries as to my balance, ridden by the
seemingly absurd idea that I myself had drawn this amount and forgotten
the fact. I may say at once this was the truth, I _had_ drawn it,
unknown to myself. Well, that was the third of May, and when and where
do you think I found myself next?"

"Go on," said Oppenshaw.

"In Paris on the third of June."

"Ah--ah."

"Everything between those dates was a blank."

"Your case is not absolutely common," said Oppenshaw. "Rare, but not
without precedent--read the papers. Why, only yesterday a woman was
found on a seat at Brighton. She had left London a week ago; the
interval was to her a complete blank, yet she had travelled about and
lived like an ordinary mortal in possession of her ordinary senses."

"Wait a bit," said Simon. "I was not found on a seat in Paris. I found
myself in a gorgeously-furnished sitting-room of the Bristol Hotel, and
I was dressed in clothes that might have suited a young man--a fool of
twenty, and I very soon found that I had been acting--acting like a
fool. Of the ten thousand only five thousand remained."

"Five thousand in a month," said Oppenshaw. "Well, you paid the price of
your temporary youth. Tell me," said he, "and be quite frank. What were
you like when you were young? I mean in mind and conduct?"

Simon moved wearily.

"I was a fool for a while," said he. "Then I suddenly checked myself and
became sensible."

Oppenshaw rapped twice with his fingers on his desk as if in triumph
over his own perception.

"That clears matters," said he. "You were undoubtedly suffering from
Lethmann's disease."

"Good Lord!" said Simon. "What's that?"

"It's a form of aberration--most interesting. You have heard of double
personalities, of which a great deal of nonsense has been written? Well,
Lethmann's disease is just this: a man, say, of twenty, suddenly checked
in the course of his youth, becomes practically another person. You,
for instance, became, or fancied you became, another person; you
suddenly 'checked yourself and became sensible,' as you put it, but you
did not destroy that old foolish self. Nothing is destructible in mind
as long as the brain-tissue is normal; you put it in prison, and after
the lapse of many years, owing, perhaps, to some slight declension in
brain power, it broke out, dominated you, and lived again. Youth must be
served.

"It would have been perhaps better for you to have let your youth run
its course and expend itself normally. You have paid the price of your
own will-power. I am very much interested in this. Tell me as faithfully
as you can what you did in Paris, or at least what you gathered that you
did. When you came to, did you remember your actions during the month of
aberration?"

"When I came to," said Simon, speaking almost with his teeth set, "I was
like a person stunned. Then I remembered, bit by bit, what I had been
doing, but it was like vaguely remembering what another man had been
doing."

"Right," said Oppenshaw, "that tallies with your case. Go on."

"I had been doing foolish things. I had been living, so to say, on the
surface of life, without a thought of anything but pleasure, without the
slightest recollection of myself as I am. I had been doing things that I
might have done at twenty--extravagant follies; yet I believe not any
really vicious acts. I had been drinking too much champagne, for one
thing, and there were several ladies.... Good Lord! Oppenshaw, I'd blush
to confess it to anyone else, but I'd been going on like a boy, picking
flowers at Fontainebleau--writing verses to one of these hussies. I
could remember that. Me!--verses about blue skies and streams and
things! Me! It's horrible!"

"Used you to write verses when you were young?"

"Yes," said Simon, "I believe I used to make that sort of fool of
myself."

"You were full of the joy of living?"

"I suppose so."

"You see, everything tallies. Yes, without any manner of doubt it's a
case of Lethmann's disease rounded and complete. Now, tell me, when you
came to, you could remember all your actions in Paris; how far back did
that memory go?"

"I could remember dimly right back to when I was leaving the office in
Old Serjeants' Inn with the bundle of bank-notes to go to the bank.
Then all of a sudden it would seem I forgot all about my past and
became, as you insist, myself at twenty. I went to the Charing Cross
Hotel, where I had already, it would seem, hired rooms for myself, and
where I had directed new clothes to be sent, and then I went to Paris."

"This is most important," said Oppenshaw. "You had already hired rooms
for yourself and ordered clothes. Those acts must have been committed
before the great change came on you, and of course without your
knowledge."

"They must. Also the act of drawing the ten thousand from the bank."

"The concealed other self must have been working like a mole in the dark
for some days at least," said Oppenshaw, "utterly without your
knowledge."

"Utterly."

"Then having prepared in a vague sort of way a means for enjoying
itself, it burst out; it was like a butterfly coming out of a
chrysalis--excuse the simile."

"Something like that."

"So far so good. Well, now, when you came to your old self in Paris,
what did you do?"

"I came back to London, of course."

"But surely your sudden disappearance must have caused alarm? Why, it
would have been in the papers."

"Not a bit," said Simon grimly. "My other self, as you call it, had
prepared for that. It seems the night before the thing happened I told
Mudd--you know Mudd, the butler--that I might be called away suddenly
and be absent a considerable time, that I would buy clothes and
nightshirts and things, if that was so, at the place I was going to, and
that he was to tell the office if I went away, and to tell Brownlow to
carry on. Infernal, isn't it?"

"Infernally ingenious," said Oppenshaw; "but if you had ever studied the
subject of duplex personality you would not be surprised. I have seen a
young religious girl make most complex preparations for a journey as a
missionary to China, utterly without her own knowledge. We caught her at
the station, fortunately, just in time--but how did you find out that
you gave Mudd those instructions?"

"The whole way back from Paris," said Simon, "I was preparing to meet
all sorts of enquiry and bother as to my absence. Then, when I reached
home, Mudd did not seem to think it out of the way; he told me he had
followed my directions and notified the office when I did not return,
and told them that I might be some time away. Then I got out of him
what I had said about the clothes and so on."

"Tell me," said Oppenshaw suddenly, "why did you come to me to-day to
tell me all this?"

"Because," said Simon, "on opening my safe this morning I found in a
wallet on the top of the deed-box another bundle of notes for exactly
the same amount."

CHAPTER IV

DR. OPPENSHAW--_continued_

Oppenshaw whistled.

"A bundle of notes amounting to ten thousand pounds," said Simon;
"exactly the same amount."

Oppenshaw looked at his nails carefully without speaking. Simon watched
him.

"Tell me," said Simon, "is this confounded disease, or whatever it is,
recurrent?"

"You mean is there any fear that your old self--or, rather, your young
self--is preparing for another outbreak?"

"Precisely."

"That this drawing of another ten thousand, unknown to yourself, is only
the first act in a similar drama, or shall we say comedy?"

"Yes."

"Well, I can't say for certain, for the disease, or the ailment, if you
like the term better, has not been long enough before the eyes of
science to make quite definite statements. But, as far as I can judge,
I'm afraid it is."

Simon swallowed.

"Leaving aside the fact of the similarity of the action and the amount
of money drawn, we have the similarity in time. It is true that last
year it was in May you started the business."

"The third of May, a month's difference," said Simon.

"True, but it is less a question of a month more or less than of season.
Last early May and April end were abnormally fine. I remember that, for
I had to go to Switzerland. This May has been wretched. Then during the
last week we have had this burst of splendid weather--weather that makes
me feel young again."

"It doesn't me," said Simon.

"No, but it has evidently--at least probably--had that effect on your
other 'me.' The something that urges the return of the swallow has acted
in your subconsciousness with the coming of springlike weather just as
last year."

"Damn swallows!" cried Simon, rising up and pacing the floor. "Suppose
this thing lets me in for another five thousand, and Lord knows what
else? Oppenshaw," wheeling suddenly, "is nothing to be done? How can I
stop it?"

"Well," said Oppenshaw, "quite frankly, I think that the best means is
the exercise of your own will-power. You might, of course, take the
notes back to the bank and instruct them not to allow you to draw any
more money for, say, a month--but that would be unpleasant."

"Impossible!"

"You might, again, put yourself under restraint. I could do that for
you."

"Put myself in a mad-house?"

"No, no--a nursing home."

"Never!"

"You might, again, instruct your butler to follow you and, as a matter
of fact, keep his eye on you for the next month."

"Mudd!"

"Yes."

"Sooner die. Never could look him in the face again."

"Have you any near and trustworthy relatives?"

"Only a nephew, utterly wild and untrustworthy; a chap I've cut out of
my will and had to stop his allowance."

"And you are not married--that's a pity. A wife----"

"Hang wives!" cried Simon. "What's the good of talking of the
impracticable?"

"Well, there we are," continued Oppenshaw, perfectly unruffled. "I have
suggested everything; there is only will left. The greatest friend of a
man is his will. Determine in your own mind that this change will _not_
take place. I believe that will be your safest plan. The others I have
suggested are all impossible to your sense of _amour propre_, and,
besides that, there is the grave objection that they savour of force. It
might have bad consequences to use force to what would be practically
the subconscious mind. Your will is quite different. Will can never
unbalance mind. In fact, as a famous English neurologist has put it,
'Most cases of mental disturbances are due to an inflated ego--a
deflated will.'"

"Oh, my will's all right," said Simon.

"Well, then, use it and don't trouble. Say to yourself definitely--'This
shall not be.'"

"And that money in the safe?"

"Leave it there; dare your other self to take it. To remove it and place
it in other keeping would be a weakness."

"Thanks," said Simon. "I grasp what you mean." He took out his purse and
laid five guineas on the desk. Oppenshaw did not seem to see the money.
He accompanied his patient to the door. It was half-past one.

CHAPTER V

I WILL NOT BE HIM

Out in Harley Street Simon walked hurriedly and without goal. It was
getting past luncheon-time; he had forgotten the fact.

Oppenshaw was one of those men who carry conviction. You will have
noticed in life that quite a lot of people don't convince; they may be
good, they may be earnest, but they don't convince. Selling a full-grown
dog in the world's market, they have little chance against a convincing
competitor selling a pup.

Oppenshaw's twenty-five thousand a year came, in good part, from this
quality. He had convinced Simon of the fact that inside Simon lay Youth
that was once Simon--Youth that, though unseen and unknown to the world,
could still dominate its container even to the extent of meddling with
his bank balance.

That for Simon was at this moment the main fact in the situation. It was
sufficiently bad that this old imperious youth should be able to make
him act foolishly, but that was nothing to the fact that it was able to
tamper with his money.

Simon's money was the solid ground under his feet, and he recognised,
now, that it was everything to him--everything. He could have sacrificed
at a pinch all else; he could have sacrificed Mudd, his furniture, his
old prints, his cellar, but his money was even more than the ground
under his feet--it was himself.

Suppose this disease were to recur often and at shorter intervals, or
become chronic?

He calculated furiously that at the rate of five thousand a month his
fortune would last, roughly, a year and a half. He saw his securities
being sold, his property in Hertfordshire, his furniture, his pictures.

He had a remedy, it is true: to put himself under restraint. A nice sort
of remedy!

In Weymouth Street, the home of nursing homes and doctors, into which he
had wandered, his mind tension became so acute that the impulse came on
him to hurry back to Oppenshaw in the vague hope that something else
might be done--some operation, for instance. He knew little of medicine
and less of surgery, but he had heard of people being operated on for
brain mischief, and he remembered, now, having read of an old admiral
who had lost consciousness owing to an injury at the battle of the Nile,
and had remained unconscious till an operation cured him some months
later.

He was saved from bothering Oppenshaw again by an instinctive feeling
that it would be useless. You cannot extract the follies of youth by an
operation. He went on trending towards Oxford Street, but still without
object.

What made his position worse was his instinct as a solicitor. For forty
years he had, amongst other work, been engaged in tying up Youth so that
it could not get at Property, extracting Youth from pitfalls it had
tumbled into whilst carrying Property in its arms. The very words
"youth" and "property," innocent in themselves, were obnoxious to Simon
when combined. He had always held that no young man ought to inherit
till he was twenty-five, and, heaven knows, that opinion had a firm
basis in experience. He had always in law looked askance on youth and
its doings. In practice he had been tolerant enough, though, indeed,
youth comes little in the way of a hard-working and prominent elderly
solicitor, but in law, and he was mostly law, he had little tolerance,
no respect.

And here was youth with _his_ property in its arms, or what was,
perhaps, even worse, the imminent dread of that unholy alliance.

In Oxford Street he stopped at a shop window and inspected ladies'
blouses--that was his condition of mind; jewellers' windows held him,
not by the excellence of their goods, but by the necessity to turn his
back to the crowd and think--think--think.

His mind was in a turmoil, and he could no more control his thoughts
than he could have controlled the traffic; the wares of the merchants
exposed to view seemed to do the thinking. Gold alberts only held his
eye to explain that his lands in Hertfordshire flung on the market in
the present state of agriculture would not fetch a tithe of their worth,
but that his green-seal sherry and all the treasures of his cellar would
bring half the West End to their sale--Old Pettigrew's cellar.

Other things in other shops spoke to him in a like manner, and then he
found himself at Oxford Circus with the sudden consciousness that _this_
was not fighting Lethmann's disease by the exercise of will. His will
had, in fact, been in abeyance, his imagination master of him.

But a refuge in the middle of Oxford Circus was not exactly the place
for the re-equipment of will-power; the effort nearly cost him his life
from a motor-lorry as he crossed. Then, when he had reached the other
side and could resume work free of danger, he found that he had
apparently no will to re-equip.

He found himself repeating over and over the words, "I will not be
him--I will not be him." That seemed all right for a moment, and he
would have satisfied himself that his will-power was working splendidly,
had not a sudden cold doubt sprung up in his heart as to whether the
proper formula ought not to be, "He will not be me."

Ah! that was the crux of the business. It was quite easy to determine,
"I will not be him," but when it came to the declaration, "He will not
be me," Simon found that he had no will-power in the matter. It was
quite easy to determine that he would not do foolish things, impossible
to determine that another should not do them.

Then it came to his mind like a flash that the other one was not a
personality so much as a combination of foolish actions, old desires,
and alien motives let loose on the world without governance.

He turned mechanically into Verreys' and had a chop. At Simpson's in the
Strand he always had a chop or a cut from the saddle, or a cut from the
sirloin--like the razors, the daily menus following one another in
rotation. This was a chop day, just as it was a "Tuesday" day, and habit
prevented him from forgetting the fact. The chop and a half-bottle of
St. Estéphe made him feel a stronger man. He suddenly became cheerful
and valiant.

"If worst comes to worst," said he to himself, "I _can put_ myself under
restraint; nobody need know. Yes, begad! I have always that. I can put
myself under surveillance. Why, dash it! I can tie up my money so that I
can't touch it; it's quite easy."

The chop and St. Estéphe, hauling him out of the slough of despond, told
him this. It was a sure way of escape from losing his money. He had
furiously rejected the idea at Oppenshaw's, but at Oppenshaw's his
Property had not had time to talk fully to him, but in that awful
journey from Harley Street to Verreys' he had walked arm-in-arm with his
Property chattering on one side and dumb Bankruptcy on the other.

Restraint would have been almost as odious as bankruptcy to him, yet
now, as a sure means of escape from the other, it seemed almost a
pleasant prospect.

He left Verreys' and walked along feeling brighter and better. He turned
into the Athenæum. It was turning-in time at the Athenæum, and the big
armchairs were full of somnolent ones, bald heads drooping, whiskers
hidden by the sheets of the _Times_. Here he met Sir Ralph Puttick, Hon.
Physician to His Majesty, stiff, urbane, stately, seeming ever supported
on either side by a lion and a unicorn.

Sir Ralph and Simon were known one to the other and had much in common,
including anti-socialism.

In armchairs, they talked of Lloyd George--at least, Sir Ralph did,
Simon had other considerations on his mind. Leaning forward in his
chair, he suddenly asked, apropos of nothing:

"Did you ever hear of a disease called Lethmann's disease?"

Now Sir Ralph was Chest and Heart, nothing else. He was also nettled at
"shop" being suddenly thrust upon him by a damned attorney, for Simon
was "Simon Pettigrew, quite a character, one of our old-fashioned,
first-class English lawyers," when Sir Ralph was in a good temper and
happened to consider Simon; nettled, Simon was a "damned attorney."

"Never," said Sir Ralph. "What disease did you say?"

"Lethmann's. It's a new disease, it seems."

Another horrid blunder, as though the lion and unicorn man were only
acquainted with old diseases--out of date, in fact.

"Never," replied the other. "There's no such thing. Who told you about
it?"

"I read about it," said Simon. He tried to give a picture of the
symptoms and failed to convince, but he managed to irritate. The
semi-royal one listened with a specious appearance of attention and even
interest; then, the other having finished, he opened his batteries.

Simon left the Club with the feeling that he had been put upon the stand
beside charlatans, quacks, and the purveyor of crank theories; also that
he had been snubbed.

CHAPTER VI

TIDD AND RENSHAW

Did he mind? Not a bit; he enjoyed it.

If Sir Ralph had kicked him out of the Athenæum for airing false science
there he would have enjoyed it. He would have enjoyed anything casting
odium and discredit on the theory of double personality in the form of
Lethmann's disease.

For now his hunted soul, that had taken momentary refuge in the thought
of nursing homes and restraint, had left that burrow and was taking
refuge in doubt.

The whole thing was surely absurd. The affair of last year _must_ have
been a temporary aberration due to overwork, despite the fact that he
had, indeed, drawn another ten thousand unconsciously from the bank; it
was patently foolish to think that a man could be under the dominion of
a story-book disease. He had read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--that wild
fiction! Why, if this thing were true, it would be a fiction just as
wild. Oceans of comfort suddenly came to him. It gave him a new grip on
the situation, pointing out that the whole of this business as suggested
by Oppenshaw was on a level with a "silly sensational story," that is to
say with the impossible--therefore impossible.

He made one grave mistake--the mistake of reckoning Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde as a "silly sensational story."

Anyhow, he got comfort from what he considered fact, and at dinner that
night he was so restored that he was able to grumble because the mutton
"was done to rags."

He dined alone.

As he had not returned to the office in the afternoon, Brownlow had sent
some papers relative to a law case then pending for his consideration.
It often happened that Simon took business home with him, or, if he were
not able to attend at the office, important papers would be sent to his
house.

To-night, according to custom, he retired to his library, drank his
coffee, spread open the documents, and, comfortably seated in a huge
leathern armchair, plunged into work.

It was a difficult case, the case of Tidd _v._ Renshaw, complicated by
all sorts of cross-issues and currents. In its dry legal jargon it
involved the title to London house property, the credit of a woman, the
happiness of a family, and a few other things, all absolutely of no
account to Simon, engaged on the law of the case, and to whom the human
beings involved were simply as the chessmen in the hands of the player;
and necessarily, for a lawyer who allowed human considerations to colour
his view would be an untrustworthy lawyer.

At ten o'clock Simon, suddenly laying the documents on the floor beside
him, rose up, rang the bell, and stood on the hearthrug with his hands
linked behind him.

Mudd appeared.

"Mudd," said Simon, "I may be called away to-morrow and be absent some
time. If I am not at the office when the brougham comes to fetch me for
luncheon, you can notify the office that I have been called away. You
needn't bother about packing things for me; I will buy anything I want
where I am going."

"I could easily pack a bag for you," said Mudd, "and you could take it
with you to the office."

"I want no bag. I have given you your directions," said Simon, and Mudd
went off grumbling and snubbed.

Then the lawyer sat down and plunged into law again, folding up the
documents at eleven o'clock and putting them carefully in his bureau.
Then he switched off the electric light, examined the hall door to see
that it was properly bolted, and went up to bed carrying the case of
Tidd _v._ Renshaw with him as a nightcap.

It hung about his intellect like a penumbra as he undressed, warding
off, or partly warding off, thoughts about Oppenshaw and his own
condition that were trying to get into his mind.

Then he popped into bed, and, still pursuing Tidd _v._ Renshaw through
the labyrinths of the law, and holding tight on to their tails, fell
asleep.

CHAPTER VII

THE WALLET

He awoke to Mudd drawing the blinds and to another perfect day--a summer
morning, luxurious and warm, beautiful even in London. He had lost
clutch of Tidd and Renshaw in the land of sleep, but he had found his
strength and self-confidence again.

The terror of Lethmann's disease had vanished; the thing was absurd, he
had been frightened by a bogey. Oppenshaw was a clever man, but he was a
specialist, always thinking of nerve diseases, living in an atmosphere
of them. Sir Ralph Puttick, on the contrary, was a man of solid
understanding and wider views--a sane man.

So he told himself as he took "Wednesday" from its case and shaved
himself. Then he came down to the same frizzled bacon and the same aired
_Times_, put on the same overcoat and hat, and got into the same old
brougham and started for the office.

He went into his room, where his usual morning letters were laid out
for him. But he did not take off his coat and hat. He had come to a
determination. Oppenshaw had told him to leave the wallet where it was
and not take the notes back to the bank, as that would be a weakness.
Sir Ralph Puttick was telling him now that Oppenshaw was a fool. The
real weakness would be to follow the advice of Oppenshaw. To follow that
advice would be to play with this business and confess that there was
reality in it; besides, with those notes in the safe behind him he could
never do his morning's work.

No; back those notes should go to the bank. He opened the safe, and
there was the wallet seated like an evil genius on the deed-box. He took
it out and put it under his arm, locked the safe and left the room.

In the outer office all the clerks were busy, and Brownlow was in his
room with the door shut.

Simon, with the wallet under his arm, walked out and passed through the
precincts of Old Serjeants' Inn to Fleet Street, where a waft of warm
summer, yet springlike, wind met him in the face.

PART II

CHAPTER I

THE SOUL'S AWAKENING

He raised his head, sniffed as if inhaling something, and quickened his
step.

What a glorious day it was; even Fleet Street had a touch of youth about
it.

A flower-woman and her wares caught his eye; he bought a bunch of late
violets and, with his hat tilted back, dived in his trousers' pocket and
produced a handful of silver. He gave her a shilling and, without asking
for change, walked on, the violets in his buttonhole.

He was making west like a homing pigeon. He walked like a man in a hurry
but with no purpose, his glance skimmed things and seemed to rest only
on things coloured or pleasant to look on, his eyes showed no
speculation. He seemed like a person with no more past than a dreamer.
The present seemed to him everything--just as it is to the dreamer.

In the Strand he stopped here and there to glance at the contents of
shops; neckties attracted him. Then Fuller's drew him in by its colour.
He had a vanilla-and-strawberry ice and chatted to the girls, who did
not receive his advances, however, with much favour.

Then he came to Romanos'; it attracted him, and he went in. Gilded
youths were drinking at the bar, and a cocktail being mixed by the
bar-tender fascinated Simon by its colour; he had one like it, chatted
to the man, paid, and walked out.

It was now eleven.

Still walking gaily and lightly, as one walks in a happy dream, he
reached the Charing Cross Hotel, asked the porter to show him the rooms
he had reserved, and enquired if his luggage had come.

The luggage had come and was deposited in the bedroom of the suite: two
large brand-new portmanteaux and a hat-box, also a band-box from Lincoln
Bennett's.

The portmanteaux and hat-box were locked, but in the band-box were the
keys, gummed up in an envelope; there was also a straw hat in the
band-box--a boater.

The porter, having unstrapped the portmanteaux, departed with a tip, and
our gentleman began to unpack swiftly and with the eagerness of a child
going to a party.

O Youth! What a star thou art, yet what a folly! And yet can all wisdom
give one the pleasure of one's first ball-dress, of the young man's
brand-new suit? And there were brand-new suits and to spare, check
tweed, blue serge, boating flannels; shoes, too, and boots from the
Burlington Arcade, ties and socks from Beale and Inman's.

It was like a trousseau.

As he unpacked he whistled. Whistled a tune that was young in the
sixties--"Champagne Charley," no less.

Then he dressed, vigorously digging his head into a striped shirt,
donning a purple tie, purple socks, and a grey tweed suit of excellent
cut.

All his movements were feverish, light, rapid. He did not seem to notice
the details of the room around him; he seemed skimming along the surface
of things in a hurry to get to some goal of pleasure. Flushed and
bright-eyed, he scarcely looked fifty now, yet, despite this reduction
in age, his general get-up had a touch of the raffish. Purple socks and
ties are a bit off at fifty; a straw "boater" does not reduce the
effect, nor do tan shoes.

But Simon was quite satisfied with himself.

Still whistling, he bundled his old things away in a drawer and left the
other things lying about for the servants to put away, and sat down on
the side of the bed with the wallet in his hands.

He opened it and turned the notes out on the quilt. The gorgeous bundle
to "bust" or do what he liked with held him in its thrall as he turned
over the contents, not counting the amount, but just reviewing the notes
and the huge sums on most of them.

Heavens! What a delight even in a dream! To be young and absolutely free
from all restraint, free from all ties, unconscious of relatives,
unconscious of everything but immediate surroundings, with virginal
appetites and desires and countless sovereigns to meet them with.
Dangling his heels, and with his straw hat beside him, he gloated on his
treasure; then, picking out three ten-pound notes and putting the
remainder in the wallet, he locked the wallet away in his portmanteau
and put the key under the wardrobe.

Then, leaving his room, he came downstairs with his straw hat on the
back of his head and a smile for a pretty chambermaid who passed him
coming up.

The girl laughed and glanced back, but whether she was laughing at or
with him it would be hard to say. Chambermaids have strange tastes.

It was in the hall that he met Moxon, senior partner in Plunder's, the
great bill-discounting firm; a tall man, serious of face and manner.

"Why, God bless my soul, Pettigrew!" cried Moxon, "I scarcely knew you."

"You have the advantage of me, old cock," replied Simon airily, "for I'm
---- if I ever met you before."

"My mistake," said Moxon.

It was Pettigrew's face and voice, but all the rest was not Pettigrew,
and the discounter of bills hurried off, feeling as though he had come
across the uncanny--which he had.

Simon paused at the office, holding a lady clerk in light conversation
about the weather and turning upon her that sprightly wit already
mentioned. She was busy and stiff, and the weather and his wit didn't
seem to interest her. Then he asked for change of a ten-pound note, and
she gave it to him in sovereigns; then he asked for change of a
sovereign--she gave it to him; then he asked, with a grin, for change of
a shilling. She was outraged now; that which ought to have made her
laugh seemed to incense her. Do what he could, he couldn't warm her.

She was colder than the ice-cream girls. What the devil was the matter
with them all? She slapped the change for the shilling down and turned
away to her books.

Tilting his hat further back, he rapped with a penny on the ledge.

She got up.

"Well, what is it now?"

"Can you change me a penny, please?" said Simon.

"Mrs. Jones!" called the girl.

A stout lady manageress in black appeared.

"I don't know what this gentleman means."

The manageress raised her eyebrows at the jester.

"I asked the young lady for change of a penny. Can you let me have two
halfpence for a penny, please?"

The manageress opened the till and gave the change. The gay one
departed, chuckling. He had had the best of the girl, silly creature,
that could not take a joke in good part--but he had enjoyed himself.

Moving in the line of least resistance towards the phantom of pleasure,
he made for the hotel entrance and the sunlight showing through the
door, bought a cigar at the kiosk outside, and then bundled into a taxi.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"First bar," replied Simon. "First decent one, and look sharp."

The surly driver--Heavens, how the old hansom cabby of the sixties would
have hailed such a fare, and with what joy!--closed the door without a
word and started winding up the engine. He had difficulties, and as he
went on winding the occupant put his head out of the window and
addressed the station policeman who was looking on.

"Has the chap a licence for a barrel-organ?" asked Simon. "If he hasn't,
ask him to drive on."

He shut the window. They started, and stopped at a bar in Leicester
Square. Simon paid and entered.

It was a long bar, a glittering, loathsome, noxious place where, behind
a long counter, six barmaids were serving all sorts of men with all
sorts of drinks.

Simon seemed to find it all right. Puffing his cigar, he ordered a
brandy cold--a brandy cold! And sipping his brandy cold, he took stock
of the men around.

Even his innocence and newness--despite the crave for companionship now
on him--recognised that there were undesirables, and as for the bar
girls, they were frozen images--for him.

They were laughing and changing words with all sorts of young
men--counter-jumpers and horsey men--but for him they had nothing but
brandy cold and monosyllables. He was beginning to get irritated with
woman; but the sunlight outside and two cold brandies inside restored
his happy humour, and the idea of lunch was now moving before him,
luring him on.

Thinking thus, he was advancing not towards luncheon but towards Fate.

At Piccadilly Circus there was a crowd round an omnibus. There generally
are crowds round omnibuses just here, but this was a special crowd,
having for its core an irate bus conductor and a pretty girl.

Oh, such a pretty girl! Spring itself, dark-haired, dark-eyed, well
dressed, but with just that touch which tells of want of affluence. She
fascinated Simon as a flower fascinates a bee.

"But, sir, I tell you I have lost my purse; some pocket-picker has taken
it. I shall be pleased to tell you where I live and reward you if you
come for the money. My name is Cerise Rossignol." This, with just a
trace of foreign accent.

"I've been done twice this week by that game," said the brutal
conductor, speaking, however, the truth. "Come, search in your glove,
you'll find it."

Simon broke in.

"How much?" said he.

"Tuppence," said the conductor. Then the gods that preside over youth
might have observed this new Andromeda, released at the charge of
Tuppence, wandering off with her saviour and turning to him a face
filled with gratitude.

They were going in the direction of Leicester Square.

CHAPTER II

MOXON AND MUDD

Now, Moxon had come up that morning from Framlingham in Kent, where he
was taking a holiday, to transact some business. Amongst other things he
had to see Simon Pettigrew on a question about some bills.

The apparition he had encountered in the hall of the Charing Cross Hotel
pursued him to Plunder's office, where he first went, and, when he left
Plunder's for luncheon at Prosser's, in Chancery Lane, it still pursued
him.

Though he knew it could not be Pettigrew, some uneasy spirit in his
subconsciousness kept insisting that it was Pettigrew.

At two o'clock he called at Old Serjeants' Inn. He saw Brownlow, who had
just returned from lunch.

No, Mr. Pettigrew was not in. He had gone out that morning early and had
not returned.

"I must see him," said Moxon. "When do you think he will be in?"

Brownlow couldn't say.

"Would he be at his house, do you think?"

"Hardly," said Brownlow; "he might have gone home, but I think it's
improbable."

"I must see him," said Moxon again. "It's extraordinary. Why, I wrote to
him telling him I was coming this afternoon and he knows the importance
of my business."

"Mr. Pettigrew hasn't opened his morning letters yet," said Brownlow.

"Good Lord!" said Moxon.

Then, after a pause:

"Will you telephone to his house to see?"

"Mr. Pettigrew has no telephone," said Brownlow; "he dislikes them,
except in business."

Moxon remembered this and other old-fashioned traits in Pettigrew; the
remembrance did not ease his irritation.

"Then I'll go to his house myself," said he.

When he arrived at King Charles Street, Mudd opened the door.

Mudd and Moxon were mutually known one to the other, Moxon having often
dined there.

"Is your master in, Mudd?" asked Moxon.

"No, sir," answered Mudd; "he's not at home, and mayn't be at home for
some time."

"What do you mean?"

"He left me directions that if he wasn't at the office when the
brougham called to take him to luncheon I was to tell the office he was
called away; the coachman has just come back to say he wasn't there, so
I am sending him back to the office to tell them."

"Called away! For how long?"

"Well, it might be a month," said Mudd, remembering.

"Extraordinary!" said Moxon. "Well, I can't help it, and I can't wait; I
must take my business elsewhere. I thought I saw Mr. Pettigrew in the
Charing Cross Hotel, but he was dressed differently and seemed strange.
Well, this is a great nuisance, but it can't be helped, I suppose.... A
month...."

Off he went in a huff.

Mudd watched him as he went, then he closed the hall door. Then he sat
down on one of the hall chairs.

"Dressed differently and seemed strange." It only wanted those words to
start alarm in the mind of Mudd.

The affair of a year ago had always perplexed him, and now this!

"Seemed strange."

Could it be?... H'm.... He got up and went downstairs.

"Why, what's the matter with you, Mr. Mudd?" asked the
cook-housekeeper. "Why, you're all of a shake."

"It's my stomach," said Mudd.

He took a glass of ginger wine, then he fetched his hat.

"I'm going out to get the air," said Mudd. "I mayn't be back for some
time; don't bother about me if I aren't, and be sure to lock up the
plate."

"God bless my soul, what's the matter with the man?" murmured the
astonished housekeeper as Mudd vanished. "Blest if he isn't getting as
queer as his master!"

Out in the street Mudd paused to blow his nose in a bandanna
handkerchief just like Simon's. Then, as though this act had started his
mechanism, off he went, hailed an omnibus in the next street, and got
off at Charing Cross.

He entered the Charing Cross Hotel.

"Is a Mr. Pettigrew here?" asked Mudd of the hall porter.

The hall porter grinned.

"Yes, there's a Mr. Pettigrew staying here, but he's out."

"Well, I'm his servant," said Mudd.

"Staying here with him?" asked the porter.

"Yes. I've followed him on. What's the number of his room?"

"The office will know," replied the other.

"Well, just go to the office and get his key," said Mudd, "and send a
messenger boy to No. 12, King Charles Street--that's our address--to
tell Mrs. Jukes, the housekeeper, I won't be able to get back to-night
maybe. Here's a shilling for him--but show me his room first."

Mudd carried conviction.

The hall porter went to the office.

"Key of Mr. Pettigrew's room," said he; "his servant has just come."

The superior damsel detached herself from book-keeping, looked up the
number and gave the key.

Mudd took it and went up in the lift. He opened the door of the room and
went in. The place had not been tidied, clothes lay everywhere.

Mudd, like a cat in a strange house, looked around. Then he shut the
door.

Then he took up a coat and looked at the maker's name on the tab.

"Holland and Woolson"--Simon's tailors!

Then he examined all the garments. Such garments! Boating flannels,
serge suits! Then the shoes, the patent leather boots. He opened the
chest of drawers and found the bundle of discarded clothes--the old coat
with the left elbow "going," and the rest. He held them up, examined
them, folded them and put them back.

Then he sat down to recover himself, blew his nose, wondered whether he
or Simon were crazy, and then, rising up, began to fold and put away the
new things in the wardrobe and chest-of-drawers.

He noticed that one of the portmanteaux was locked. Yet there was
something in it that slid up and down as he tilted and lowered it.

Having looked round the room once again, he went downstairs, gave up the
key, made arrangements for his room, and started out.

He made for Sackville Street. Meyer, the foreman of Holland and
Woolson's, was known to him. He had sometimes called regarding Simon's
clothes with directions for this or that.

"That blue serge suit you've just sent for Mr. Pettigrew don't quite
rightly fit, Mr. Meyer," said the cunning Mudd. "I had the coat done up
in a parcel to bring back to you for the sleeves to be shortened half an
inch, but I forgot it; only remembered I'd forgot it at your door."

"We'll send for it," said Meyer.

"Right," said Mudd. Then, "No--on second thoughts, I'll fetch it myself
when I have a moment to spare, for we're going from home for a few
days. Mr. Pettigrew has had a good lot of clothes lately, Mr. Meyer."

"He has," said Meyer, with a twinkle in his eye; "suits and suits,
almost as if he were going to be married."

"Married!" cried the other. "What put that into your head, Mr. Meyer?
He's not a marrying man. Why, I've never seen him as much as glance an
eye at a female."

"Oh, it was only my joke," said Meyer.

Now, in Mudd's soul there had lain for years an uneasiness, a crumpled
rose-leaf of thought that touched him sometimes as he turned at night in
bed. It was the fear that some day Simon might ruin Mudd's life with a
mistress. He couldn't stand a mistress. He had always sworn that to
himself; the experience of fellow butlers whose lives were made
loathsome by mistresses would have been enough without his own
deep-rooted antipathy to females, except as spectacular objects. Mrs.
Jukes was a relation of his, and he could stand her; the maid-servants
were automata beneath his notice--but a mistress!

Mad alarm filled his mind, for his heart told him that the words of
Meyer had foundation in probability.

That affair of last year, when Simon had departed and returned in new
strange clothes, might have been the courting, this the real thing?

He left the tailor's, called a taxi and drove to the office.

Brownlow was in.

"What is it, Mudd?" asked Brownlow, as the latter was shown into his
room.

"Did you get my message, Mr. Brownlow?" asked Mudd.

"Yes."

"Oh, that's all right," said Mudd. "I just thought I'd call and ask. The
master told me to send the message; he's going away for a bit. Wants a
change, too. I think he's been overworking lately, Mr. Brownlow."

"He's always overworking," said Brownlow. "I think he's been suffering
from brain-fag, Mudd; he's very reticent about himself, but I'm glad he
saw a doctor."

"Saw a doctor! Why, he never told me."

"Didn't he? Well, he did--Dr. Oppenshaw, of Harley Street. This is
between you and me. Try and make him rest more, Mudd."

"I will," said Mudd. "He wants rest. I've been uneasy about him a long
while. What's the doctor's number in Harley Street, Mr. Brownlow?"

"110A," said Brownlow, picking the number out of his marvellous memory;
"but don't let Mr. Pettigrew know I told you. He's very touchy about
himself."

"I won't."

Off he went.

"Faithful old servitor," thought Brownlow.

The faithful old servitor got into a taxi. "110A, Harley Street," said
he to the driver; "and drive quick and I'll give you an extra tuppence."

Oppenshaw was in.

When he was informed that Pettigrew's servant had called to see him, he
turned over a duchess he was engaged on, gave her a harmless
prescription, bowed her out and rang the bell.

Mudd was shown in.

"I've come to ask----" said Mudd.

"Sit down," said Oppenshaw.

"I've come to speak----"

"I know; about your master. How is he?"

"Well, I've come to ask you, sir; he's at the Charing Cross Hotel at
present."

"Has he gone there to live?"

"Well, he's there."

"I saw him some time ago about the state of his health, and, frankly,
Mr. Mudd, it's serious."

Mudd nodded.

"Tell me," said Oppenshaw, "has he been buying new clothes?"

"Heaps; no end," said Mudd. "And such clothes--things he's never worn
before."

"So? Well, it's fortunate you found him. What is his conversation like?
Have you talked to him much?"

"I haven't seen him yet," Mudd explained.

"Well, stay close to him, and be very careful. He is suffering from a
form of mental upset. You must cross him as little as possible, use
persuasion, gentle persuasion. The thing will run its course. It mustn't
be suddenly checked."

"Is he mad?" asked the other.

"No, but he is not himself--or rather, he is himself--in a different
way; but a sudden check might make him mad. You have heard of people
walking in their sleep--well, this is something akin to that. You know
it is highly dangerous to awaken a sleep-walker suddenly. Well, it's
just the same with Mr. Pettigrew; it might imbalance his mind for good."

"What am I to do?"

"Just keep watch on him."

"But suppose he don't know me?"

"He won't know you, but if you are kind to him he will accept you into
his environment, and then you will link on to his mental state."

"He's out now, and God knows where, or doing what," said Mudd; "but I'll
be on the watch for him coming in--if he ever comes."

"Oh, he will come home right enough."

"Is there any fear of those women getting hold of him?" asked Mudd,
returning to his old dread.

"That's just what there is--every fear; but you must be very careful not
to interpose your will violently. Get gently between, gently between.
You understand me. Suggestion does a lot in these cases. Another thing,
you must treat him as one treats a boy. You must imagine to yourself
that your master is only twenty, for that, in truth, is what he is. He
has gone back to a younger state--or rather, a younger state has come to
meet him, having lain dormant, just as a wisdom tooth lies dormant, then
grows."

"Oh, Lord!" said Mudd. "I never did think I'd live to see this day."

"Oh, it might be worse."

"I don't see."

"Well, from what I can make out of his youth, it was not a vicious one,
only foolish; had he been vicious when young he might be terrible now."

"The first solicitor in London," said Mudd in a dreary voice.

"Well, he's not the first solicitor in London to make a fool of himself,
nor will he be the last. Cheer up and keep your eyes open and do your
duty; no man can do more than that."

"Shall I send for you, doctor, if he gets worse?"

"Well," said Oppenshaw; "from what you tell me he couldn't be much
worse. Oh no, don't bother to send--unless, of course, the thing took a
different course, and he were to become violent without reason; but that
won't happen, you can take my word for it."

Mudd departed.

He walked all the way back to the Charing Cross Hotel, but instead of
entering, he suddenly took a taxi, and returned to Charles Street. Here
he packed some things in a handbag, and having again given directions to
Mrs. Jukes to lock up the plate, he told her he might be some time gone.

"I'm going with the master on some law business," said Mudd. "Make sure
and bolt the front door--and lock up the plate."

It was the third or fourth time he had given her these instructions.

"He's out of his mind," said Mrs. Jukes, as she watched him go. She
wasn't far wrong.

Mudd had been used to a rut--a rut forty years deep. His light and
pleasant duties carried him easily through the day. Of evenings when
Simon was dining out he would join a social circle in the private room
of a highly respectable tavern close by, smoke his pipe, drink two hot
gins, and depart for home at ten-thirty. When Simon was in he could
smoke his pipe and read his paper in his own private room. He had five
hundred pounds laid by in the bank--no stocks and shares for Mudd--and
he would vary his evening amusements by counting the toll of his money.

It is easy to be seen that this jolt out of the rut was, literally, a
jolt.

At the Charing Cross Hotel he found the room allotted to him, deposited
his things and, disdaining the servants' quarters, went out to a tavern
to read the paper.

He reckoned Simon might not return till late, and he reckoned right.

SIMON'S OLD-FASHIONED NIGHT IN TOWN

Madame Rossignol was a charming old lady of sixty, a production of
France--no other country could have produced her. She lived in Duke
Street, Leicester Square, supporting herself and her daughter Cerise by
translating English books into French. Cerise did millinery. Madame
combined absolute innocence with absolute instinct. She knew all about
things; her innocence was not ignorance, it was purity--rising above a
knowledge of the world, and disdaining to look at evil.

She was dreadfully poor.

Her love for Cerise was like a disease always preying upon her. Should
she die, what would happen to Cerise?

Behold these together clasped in each other's arms. Set in the shabby
sitting-room, it might have been a scene at the Port St. Martin.

"Oh, mother," murmured the girl, "is he not good!"

"He is more than good," said Madame. "Most surely the _bon Dieu_ sent
him to be your guardian angel."

"Is he not charming?" went on Cerise, unlinking herself from the
maternal embrace and touching her hair into order again with a little
laugh. "So different from the leaden-faced English, so gay and yet
so--so----"

"There is a something--I do not know what--about him," said the old
lady; "something of Romance. Is it not like a little tale of Madame
Perichon's or a little play of Monsieur Baree? Might he not just have
come in as in one of those? You go out, lose your purse, are lost. I sit
waiting for you at your non-return in this wilderness of London; you
return, but not alone. With you comes the Marquis de Grandcourt, who
bows and says, 'Madame, I return you your daughter; I ask in return your
friendship. I am alone, like you; let us then be friends.' I reply,
'Monsieur, you behold our poverty, but you cannot behold our hearts or
the gratitude in my mind.' What a little story!"

"And how he laughed, and said, 'Hang monee!'" cut in Cerise. "What means
that 'hang monee!' maman? And how he pulled out all the gold pieces like
a boy, saying, 'I am rich!'--just as a little boy might say, 'I am
rich! I am rich!' No bourgeois could have done that without offending,
without giving one a shiver of the skin."

"You have said it," replied Madame. "A little boy--a great and good man,
yet a little boy. He is not in his first youth, but there are people,
like Pierre Pan, who never lose youth. It is so; I have seen it."

"Simon Pattigrew," murmured Cerise, with a little laugh.

A knock came to the door and a little maid-of-all-work, and down at
heel, entered with a huge bouquet, one of those bouquets youth flings at
_prima donnas_.

Simon, after leaving the Rossignols, had struck a flower shop--this was
the result. A piece of paper accompanied the bouquet, and on the paper,
written in a handwriting that hitherto had only appeared on letters of
business and documents of law, were the words: "From your Friend."

Simon, having struck the flower shop, might have struck a fruit shop and
a bonnet shop, only that the joy of love, the love that comes at first
sight, the love of dreams, made him incapable of any more business--even
the business of buying presents for his fascinator.

It was now five o'clock, and, pursuing his way West, he found
Piccadilly. He passed girls without looking at them--he saw only the
vision of Cerise. She led him as far as St. George's Hospital, as though
leading him away from the temptations of the West, but the gloomy
prospect of Knightsbridge headed him off, and, turning, he came back.
Big houses, signs of wealth and prosperity, seemed to hold him in a
charm, just as he was held by all things pretty, coloured, or dazzling.

A glittering restaurant drew him in presently, and here he had a jovial
dinner; all alone, it is true, but with plenty to look at.

He had also a half-bottle of champagne and a maraschino.

He had already consumed that day a cocktail coloured, two glasses of
brandy-and-water cold and a half-bottle of champagne. His ordinary
consumption of alcohol was moderate. A glass of green-seal sherry at
twelve, and a half-bottle of St. Estéphe at lunch, and, shall we say, a
small whisky-and-soda at dinner, or, if dining out or with guests, a
couple of glasses of Pommery.

And to-day he had been drinking restaurant champagne "_tres sec_"--and
two half-bottles of it! The excess was beginning to tell. It told in the
slight flush on his cheeks, which, strange to say, did not make him
look younger; it told in the tip he gave the waiter, and in the way he
put on his hat. He had bought a walking-stick during his peregrinations,
a dandy stick with a tassel--the passing fashion had just come in--and
with this under his arm he left the café in search of pleasures new.

The West End was now ablaze, and the theatres filling. Simon, like Poe's
man of the crowd, kept with the crowd; a blaze of lights attracted him
as a lamp a moth.

The Pallaceum sucked him in. Here, in a blue haze of tobacco-smoke and
to the tune of a band, he sat for awhile watching the show, roaring with
laughter at the comic turns, pleased with the conjuring business, and
fascinated--despite Cerise--with the girl in tights who did acrobatic
tricks aided by two poodles and a monkey.

Then he found the bar, and there he stood adding fuel to pleasure, his
stick under his arm, his hat tilted back, a new cigar in his mouth, and
a smile on his face--a smile with a suggestion of fixity. Alas! if
Cerise could have seen the Marquis de Grandcourt now!--or was it Madame
who raised him to the peerage of France? If she could have been by to
just raise her eyebrows at him! Yet she was there, in a way, for the
ladies of the _foyer_ who glanced at him not unkindly, taken perhaps by
his _bonhomie_, and smiling demeanour and atmosphere of wealth and
enjoyment, found no response. Yet he found momentary acquaintances, of a
sort. A couple of University men up in town for a lark seemed to find
him part of the lark; they all drank together, exchanged views, and then
the University men vanished, giving place to a gentleman in a very
polished hat, with diamond studs, and a face like a hawk, who suggested
"fizz," a small bottle of which was consumed mostly by the hawk, who
then vanished, leaving Simon to pay.

Simon ordered another, paid for it, forgot it, and found himself in the
entrance hall calling in a loud voice for a hansom.

A taxi was procured for him and the door opened. He got inside and said,
"Wait a moment--one moment."

Then he began paying half-crowns to the commissionaire who had opened
the taxi door for him. "That's for your trouble," said Simon. "That's
for your trouble. That's for your trouble. Where am I? Oh yes--shut that
confounded door, will you, and tell the chap to drive on!"

"Where to, sir?"

Oppenshaw would have been interested in the fact that champagne beyond
a certain amount had the effect of wakening Simon's remote past. He
answered:

"Evans'."

Consultation outside.

"Evans's? Which Evans's? There ain't no such 'otel, there ain't no such
bar. Ask him which Evans's?"

"Which Evanses did you say, sir?" asked the commissionaire, putting his
head in. "The driver don't know which you mean. Where does it lay?"

He got a chuck under the chin that nearly drove his head to the roof of
the taxi.

Then Simon's head popped out of the window. It looked up and down the
street.

"Where's that chap that put his head through the window?" asked Simon.

A small crowd and a policeman drew round. "What is it, sir?" asked the
policeman.

Simon seemed calculating the distance with a view to the bonneting of
the enquirer. Then he seemed to find the distance too far.

"Tell him to drive me to the Argyle Rooms," said he. Then he vanished.

Another council outside, the commissionaire presiding.

"Take him to the Leicester 'Otel. Why, Lord bless me! the Argyle Rooms
has been closed this forty years. Take him round about and let him have
a snooze."

The taximan started with the full intention of robbery--not by force,
but by strategy. Robbery on the dock. It was not theatre turning-out
time yet, and he would have the chance of earning a few dishonest
shillings. He turned every corner he could, for every time a taxi turns
a corner the "clock" increases in speed. He drove here and there, but he
never reached the Leicester 'Otel, for in Full Moon Street, the home of
bishops and earls, the noise inside the vehicle made him halt. He opened
the door and Simon burst out, radiant with humour and now much steadier
on his legs.

"How much?" said Simon, and then, without waiting for a reply, thrust
half a handful of coppers and silver into the fist of the taximan, hit
him a slap on the top of his flat cap that made him see stars, and
walked off.

The man did not pursue, he was counting his takings:
eleven-and-fivepence, no less.

"Crazy," said he; then he started his engine and went off, utterly
unconscious of the fact that he had entertained and driven something
worthy to be preserved in the British Museum--a real live reveller of
the sixties.

The full moon was shining on Full Moon Street, an old street that still
preserves in front of its houses the sockets for the torches of the
linkmen. It does not require much imagination to see phantom sedan
chairs in Full Moon Street on a night like this, or the watchman on his
rounds, and to-night the old street--if old streets have memories--must
surely have stirred in its dreams, for, as Simon went on his way, the
night began suddenly to be filled with cat-calls.

A lady airing a Pom whisked her treasure into the house as Simon passed,
and shut the door with a bang; such a bang that the knocker gave a jump
and Simon a hint.

Ten yards further on he went up steps, paused before a hall door that,
in daylight, would have been green, and took the knocker.

Just a few turns of his wrist and the knocker was his, a glorious brass
knocker, weighing half a pound. No other young man in London that night
could have done the business like that or shown such dexterity in an art
lost as the art of pinchbeck-making.

He collected two more knockers in that street, retaining only one as a
trophy. He threw the others into an area, pulled the house doorbell
violently, and ran.

In Berkeley Square he was just beginning to deal with another knocker,
when the door opened to an elderly woman of the housekeeper type and a
dachshund.

"What do you want?" asked the housekeeper.

"Does the Duke of Cu-cu-cumberland live here?" hiccupped Simon.

"No, sir, he does not."

"Sorry--sorry--sorry," said Simon. "My mistake--entirely my mistake.
Very sorry to trouble you indeed. What a pretty little dog! What's his
name?"

He was entirely affable now, and, forgetful of knockers, wished to
strike up a friendship, a desire unshared evidently by the lady.

"I think you had better go away," said she, recognising a gentleman and
mourning the fact.

He considered this proposition deeply for a moment.

"That's all very well," said he, "but where am I to go? That's the
question."

"You had better go home."

This seemed slightly to irritate him.

"_I'm_ not going home--_this_ time of night--not likely." He began to
descend the steps as if to get away from admonition. "Not me; you can go
home yourself."

Off he went.

He walked three times round Berkeley Square. He met a constable,
enquired where that street ended and when, found sympathy in return for
half-crowns, and was mothered into a straighter street.

Half-way down the straighter street he remembered he hadn't shown the
sympathetic constable his door-knocker, but the policeman, fortunately,
had passed out of sight.

Then he stood for awhile remembering Cerise. Her vision had suddenly
appeared before him; it threw him into deep melancholy--profound
melancholy. He went on till the lights and noise of Piccadilly restored
him. Then, further on, he entered a flaming doorway through which came
the music of a band.

PART III

CHAPTER I

THE LAST SOVEREIGN

On the morning of the fourth of June, the same morning on which Simon
had broken like a butterfly from his chrysalis of long-moulded custom
and stiff routine, Mr. Bobby Ravenshaw, nephew and only near relation of
Simon Pettigrew, awoke in his chambers in Pactolus Mansions, Piccadilly,
yawned, rang for his tea, and, picking up the book he had put beside him
on dropping to sleep, began to read.

The book was _Monte Cristo_. Now Pactolus Mansions, Piccadilly, sounds a
very grand address, and, as a matter of fact, it is a grand address, but
the address is grander than the place. For one thing, it is not in
Piccadilly, the approach is up a dubious side street; the word
"Pactolus" bears little relationship to it, nor the word "Mansions," and
the rents are moderate. Downstairs there is a restaurant and a lounge
with cosy corners.

People take chambers in Pactolus Mansions and vanish. The fact is never
reported to the Society for Psychical Research, the levitation being
always accountable for by solid reasons. To stop them from vanishing
before their rent is paid they have to pay their rent in advance. No
credit is given under any circumstances. This seems hard, yet there are
the compensating advantages that the rent is low, the service good, and
the address taking.

Bobby Ravenshaw had chosen to live in Pactolus Mansions because it was
the cheapest place he could get near the gayest place in town.

Bobby was an orphan, an Oxford man without a degree, and with a taste
for literature and fine clothes. Absolutely irresponsible. Five hundred
a year, derived from Simon, of whose only sister he was the son, and an
instinct for bridge that was worth another two hundred and fifty
supported Bobby in a lame sort of way, assisted by friends, confiding
tailors and bootmakers, and a genial moneylender who was also a cigar
merchant.

Bobby had started in life a year or two ago with cleverness of no mean
order and the backing of money, but Fate had dealt him out two bad
cards: a nature that was charming and irresponsible, and good looks.
Girls worshipped Bobby, and if his talents had only cast him on the
stage their worship might have helped. As it was, it hindered, for Bobby
was a literary man, and no girl has ever bought a book on the strength
of the good looks of the author.

His tea having arrived, Bobby drank it, finished the chapter in _Monte
Cristo_ and then rose and dressed.

He was leaving Pactolus Mansions that day for the very good reason that,
if he wished to stay beyond twelve o'clock, he would have to pay a
month's rent in advance, and he only had thirty shillings.

Uncle Simon had "foreclosed." That was Bobby's expression, a month ago.
For a month Bobby had watched the sands running down; no more money to
come in and all the time money running out. Absolutely unalarmed, and
only noticing the fact as he might have noticed a change in the weather,
he had made no provision, trusting to chance, to bridge that betrayed
him, and to friends. Literature could not help. He had got into a wrong
groove as far as moneymaking went. Little articles for literary papers
of limited circulation and a really cultivated taste are not the
immediate means to financial support in a world that devours its
fictional literature like ham sandwiches, forgotten as soon as
eaten--and only fictional literature pays.

He was thinking more of _Monte Cristo_ than of his own position as he
dressed. The fact that he had to look out for other rooms worried him as
an uncomfortable business to be performed, but not much. If he couldn't
get other rooms that day he could always stay with Tozer. Tozer was an
Oxford man with chambers in the Albany--chambers always open to Bobby at
any hour. A sure stand-by in trouble.

Then, having dressed, he took his hat and stick and the sovereign and
half-sovereign lying on the mantel, tipped the servant the
half-sovereign, and ordered that his things should be packed and his
luggage taken to the office to be left till he called for it.

"I'm going to the country," said Bobby, "and I'll send my address for
letters to be forwarded."

Then he started.

He called first at the Albany.

Tozer, the son of a big, defunct Manchester cotton merchant, was a man
of some twenty-three years, red-haired, with a taste for the good things
of life, a taste for boxing, a taste for music, and a hard common sense
that never deserted him even in his gayest and most frivolous moods.
His chambers were newly furnished, the walls of the sitting-room adorned
with old prints, mostly proofs before letter; boxing gloves and
single-sticks hinted of themselves, and a violoncello stood in the
corner.

He was at breakfast when Bobby arrived. Tozer rang for another cup and
plate.

"Tozer," said Bobby, "I'm bust."

"Aren't surprised to hear it," replied Tozer. "Try these kippers."

"One single sovereign in the world, my boy, and I'm hunting for new
rooms."

"What's the matter with your old rooms? Have they kicked you out?"

Bobby explained.

"Good Lord!" said Tozer. "You've cut the ground from under your feet,
staying at a place like that."

"It's not all my fault, it's my relative. I always boasted to him that I
paid my rent in advance; he took it as a sign of wisdom."

"What made him go back on you?"

"A girl."

"Which way?"

"Well, it was this way. I was staying with the Huntingdons, you know,
the Warwickshire lot."

"I know--bridge and brandy crowd."

"Oh, they're all right. Well, I was staying with them when I met her."

"What's her name?"

"Alice Carruthers."

"Heave ahead."

"I got engaged to her; she hadn't a penny."

"Just like you."

"And her people haven't a penny, and I wrote like a fool telling the
relative. He gave me the option of cutting her off or being cut off. It
seems her people were the real obstacle. He wrote quite libellous things
about them. I refused."

"Of course."

"And he cut me off. Well, the funny thing was she cut me off a week
later, and she's engaged now to a chap called Harkness."

"Well, why don't you tell the relative and make it up?"

"Tell him she'd fired me! Besides, it's no use, he'd just go on to other
things--what he calls extravagances and irresponsibilities."

"I see."

"That's just how it is."

"Look here, Bobby," said Tozer, "you've just got to cut all this
nonsense and get to work. You've been making a fool of yourself."

"I have," said Bobby, helping himself to marmalade.

"There's no use saying, 'I have,' and then forgetting. I know you.
You're a good sort, Bobby, but you are in the wrong set; you couldn't
keep the pace. You've loads of cleverness and you're going to rot.
Work!"

"How?"

"Write," said Tozer, who believed in Bobby and hated to see him going to
waste. "Write. I've always been urging you to settle down and write."

"I made five pounds ten last year writing," said Bobby.

"I know--articles on old French poetry and so on. You've got to write
fiction. You can do it. That little story you wrote for Tillson's was
ripping."

"The devil of it is," said Bobby, "I can't find plots. I can write all
right if I have only something to write about, but I can't find plots."

"That's rubbish, and pure laziness. Can't find plots, with your
experience of London and life! You've got to find plots, and find them
sharp; it's the only trade open to you. You can do it, and it pays. Now
look here, B. R. I'll finance you----"

"Thanks awfully," said Bobby, helping himself to a cigarette from a box
on a little table near by.

"Reserve your thanks. I'm not going to finance a slacker, which you are
at present, but a hard-working literary man, which you will be when I
have done with you. I will give you a room here on the strict conditions
that you keep early hours five days a week."

"Yes."

"That you give up bridge."

"Yes."

"And fooling after girls."

"Yes."

"And this day set out and find a plot for a good, honest, payable piece
of fiction, novel length. I'm not going to let you off with short-story
writing."

"Yes."

"I know a good publisher, and I will assure you that the thing shall be
published in the best form, that I will back the advertising and
pushing--see? And I will promise you that, however the thing turns out,
you shall have two hundred pounds. You will get all profits if it is a
success, understand me?"

"Yes."

"You shall have five pounds a week pocket-money whilst you are writing,
to be repaid out of profits if the profits exceed two hundred, not to be
repaid if they don't."

"I don't like taking money for nothing," said Bobby.

"You won't get it, only for hard work. Besides, it's for my amusement
and interest. I believe in you, and I want to see my belief justified.
You need never bother about taking money from me. First, I have plenty;
secondly, I never give it without a _quid pro quo_, the trading instinct
is too strong in me."

"Well," said Bobby, "it's jolly good of you, and I'll pay you the lot
back, if----"

Tozer was lighting a cigarette; he flung the match down impatiently.

"If! You'll do nothing if you begin with an 'if.' Now, make up your mind
quick without any 'ifs.' Will you, or won't you?"

"I will," said Bobby, suddenly catching on to the idea and taking fire.
"I believe I can do it if----"

"If!" shouted Tozer.

"I _will_ do it. I'll find a plot. I'll dig in my brains right
away--I'll hunt round."

"Off with you, then," said Tozer, "and send your luggage here and come
back to-night with your plot. You can work in your bedroom and you can
have all your meals here--I forgot to include that. Now I'm going to
have a tune on the 'cello."

Bobby departed with a light heart. His position, before calling on
Tozer, had really begun to weigh on him. Tozer had given him even more
than the promise of financial support, he had given him the backing of
his common sense. He had "jawed" him mildly, and Bobby felt all the
better for it. It was like a tonic. His high spirits as he descended the
stairs increased with every step taken.

Bobby was no sponge. Bridge and the relative had kept him going, and he
had always managed to meet his debts, with the exception, perhaps, of a
tradesman or two; nor would he have taken this favour from any other man
than Tozer, and perhaps not even from Tozer had it not been accompanied
by the "jawing."

So he set out, light of heart, young, good-looking, well-dressed, yet
with only a sovereign, to hunt through the summer landscape of London
for the plot for a novel.

Why, he was the plot for a novel, or at least the beginning of one, had
he known!

He did not, but he had an intimate knowledge of Tozer's fictional
proclivities and a fine understanding of exactly what Tozer wanted.
Bones, ribs, and vertebra, construction--or, in other words, story.
Tozer could not be fubbed off with fine writing, with long
introspective chapters dealing with the boyhood of the author, with sham
psychology masquerading as Fiction; nor, indeed, could Bobby have
supplied the two latter features. Tozer wanted action, people moving on
their feet under the dominion of the author's purpose, through
situations, towards a definite goal.

Out in Vigo Street, and despite the aura of inspiration around the
Bodley Head, Bobby's high spirits came slightly under eclipse; it all at
once seemed to him that he had undertaken a task. In Cork Street, as he
stood for a moment looking at the rare editions exposed in the windows
of Elkin Mathews, this feeling grew and put on horns.

A task to Bobby meant a thing disagreeable to do, and the elegant
volumes of minor poets, copies of the Yellow Book, and vellum-bound
editions of belles lettres were saying to him, "You've got to write a
novel, my boy, a good Mudie novel, the sort of novel the Tozers of life
will pay for; no little essays written with the little finger turned up.
No modern verses like your 'Harmonies and Discords,' that cost you
twenty-five pounds to produce and sold sixteen copies of itself,
according to last returns. You have got to be the harmonious blacksmith
now; get into your apron, get under your spreading chestnut-tree, and
produce."

In Bond Street he met Lord Billy Tottenham, a fellow Oxonian, who met
his death in a mud-hole in Flanders the other year.

Lord Billy, with a boyish, smug, but immovable face adorned with a
tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglass.

"Hello, Bobby!" said Billy.

"Hello, Billy!" said Bobby.

"What's wrong with you?" asked Billy.

"Broke to the world, my dear chap."

"What was the horse?" asked Billy.

"'Twasn't a horse--a girl, mostly."

"Well, you're not the first chap that's been broke by a girl," said
Billy. "Walk along a bit--but it might have been worse."

"How so?"

"She might have married you."

"Maybe; but the worst of it is I've got to work--tuck up my sleeves and
work."

"What at?"

"Novel-writing."

"Well, that's easy enough," said Billy cheerfully. "You can easily get
some literary cove to do the writing and stick your name to it, and
we'll all buy your books, my boy, we'll all buy your books; not that I
ever read books much, but I'll buy 'em if you write 'em. Come into
Jubber's."

Arm-in-arm they entered Long's Hotel, where Billy resided, and over a
mutual whisky-and-soda they forgot books and discussed horses; they
lunched together and discussed dogs, girls, and mutual friends. It was
like old times again, but over the liqueurs and over the cigarette-smoke
suddenly appeared to Bobby the vision of Tozer. He said good-bye to the
affluent one, and departed. "I've got to work," said Bobby.

His momentary lapse from the direction of the target only served to pull
him together, and it seemed, now, as though the luncheon and the lapse
had made things easier. He told himself if he hadn't brains enough to
scare up some sort of plot for a six-shilling novel he had better drown
himself. If he couldn't do what hundreds of people with half his
knowledge of the world and ability were doing he would be a mug of the
very first water.

If anything depressed him it was the horrible and futile assurance of
Billy that "his friends would buy his books." He went to Pactolus
Mansions and ordered his luggage to be sent to the Albany, then he
changed his sovereign and bought a cigar, then an omnibus gave him an
inspiration. He would get on top of an omnibus and in that cool and airy
position do a bit of thinking.

It was not an original idea; he had read, or heard, of a famous author
who thought out his plots on the tops of omnibuses--but it was an idea.
He clambered on to the top of an eastward-going bus, and, behind a fat
lady with bugles on her bonnet, tried to compose his mind.

Why not make a story about--Billy? People liked reading of the
aristocracy, and Billy was a character in his way and had many stories
attached to him. He could start the book grandly, simply out of
remembered visions of Lord William Tottenham in his gayest moods. L. W.
T. emptying bottles of cliquot into a grand piano at Oxford. Oxford--ay,
grander and grander--the book should begin at Oxford with a fresh and
vigorous picture of University life. Tozer would come in, and a host of
others; then, after Oxford, there was the rub.

The story that had begun so brightly suddenly ceased.

A character and a situation do not make a story.

They had reached the Bank--as if by derision, when he told himself this.
He got off the omnibus and got on a westward-bound one harking back to
the land he knew. He remembered the expression, "racking one's brains to
find a plot." He knew the meaning of it now.

At Piccadilly Circus, where all the things meet, a lanky, wild-looking,
red-haired girl in a picture hat and a fit of abstraction--that was the
impression she gave--caught his eye. In a moment he was after her.

Here was salvation. Julia Delyse, the last catch-on, whose books were
selling by the hundred thousand. He had met her at the Three Arts Ball
and once since. She had called him Bobby the second time. He had flirted
with her, as he flirted with everything with skirts on, and forgotten
her. She was very modern; modern enough to raise the hair on a
grandmother's scalp. Her looks were to match.

"Hello," said he.

"Hello, Bobby," said Julia.

"You are just the person I want to see," said Bobby.

"How's that?" said Julia.

"I'm in a fix."

"What sort of fix?"

"I've got to write a novel."

"What's the hurry?" asked Julia.

"Money," said Bobby.

"Make money?"

"Yes."

"If you write for money you're lost," said Julia.

"I'm lost anyway," replied Bobby. "Where are you going to?"

"Home; my flat's close by. Come and have some tea."

"I don't mind. Well now, see here; I've got to do it and I can't find
anything to write about."

"With all London before you?"

"I know, but when I start to think it all gets behind me. I want you to
start me with some idea; you're full of ideas and you know the ropes."

They had reached the flat, and the lady with ideas ushered him in.

The sitting-room was in a scheme of black with Japanese effects; she
offered cigarettes, lit one herself, and tea was brought in.

Then the hypnotism began.

The fact that she was a "famous authoress" would not have mattered a
button to Bobby yesterday; to-day, on his new strange road, it lent her
a charm that completed the fascination of her wondrous eyes. They seemed
wild in the street, but when she looked at one intensively they were
wonderful. Plots were forgotten, and in the twilight Bobby's full,
musical voice might have been heard discussing literature--with long
pauses.

"Dear old thing.... Is that cushion comfy?... Oh, bother the girl and
the tea-things!... Just put your head so--so...."

He had been hooked twenty times by girls and pulled off the hook by
parents or been thrown back by the fisherwoman on inspecting his bank
balance, but he had never been hooked like this before, for Julia had no
parents to speak of; she was above bank balances, and her grip was of
iron where passion was concerned, and publishers. Her publishers could
have told you that by the way she gripped her rights when they tried to
cheat her of them, for, despite her wondrous eyes and wild air and the
fact that she was a genius, she was practical as well as tenacious in
hold.

Then, at the end of the _séance_, Bobby found himself leaving the flat a
semi-tied-up man. He couldn't remember whether he had proposed to her or
she to him, or whether either of them had proposed or actually accepted,
but there was a tie between them, a tie slight enough and not binding in
any court; less an engagement than an attachment formed, so he told
himself.

He remembered in the street, however, that a tie between him and an
authoress was not what Tozer wanted; he had received no plot or even
literary hint. Had he retained his clear senses during the _séance_, and
had he possessed a knowledge of Julia Delyse's brilliant and cynical
books, he might have wondered where the brilliancy and cynicism came
from. In love, Julia was absolutely unliterary--and a bit
heavy--clinging, as it were.

The momentary idea of running back to ask for the forgotten plot, as for
a hat left behind, was dispelled by this sudden feeling that she was
heavy.

Under the fascination of her eyes and in that weird room she seemed
light; in St. James's Street, where he now was, she seemed heavy. And he
would have to go on with the attachment for awhile or be a brute. That
recognition, with the remembrance of Tozer and a recognition of his
failure in his search for the one essential thing, depressed him for a
moment. Then he determined to forget about everything and go and have
dinner. In other words, failing in his search for the thing he wanted,
he stopped searching, leaving the matter in the hands of blind chance.

CHAPTER II

UNCLE SIMON

Or fate, if you like it better, for it was fated that Bobby should find
that day the thing he was in search of.

He dined at a little club he patronised in a street off St. James's
Street, met a friend named Foulkes, and adjourned to the Alhambra,
Foulkes insisting on doing all the paying.

They left the Alhambra at half-past ten.

"I must be getting back to the Albany," said Bobby. "I'm sharing rooms
with a chap, and he's an early bird."

"Oh, let him wait," said Foulkes. "Come along for ten minutes to the
Stage Club."

They went to the Stage Club. Then, the place being empty and little
amusement to be found there, they departed, Foulkes declaring his
determination to see Bobby part of the way home.

Passing a large entrance hall blazing with light and filled with the
noise of a distant band, Foulkes stopped.

"Come in here for a moment," said he. In they went.

The place was gay--very gay. Little marble-topped tables stood about;
French waiters running from table to table and serving guests--ladies
and gentlemen.

At a long glittering bar many men were standing, and a Red Hungarian
Band was discoursing scarlet music.

Foulkes took a table and ordered refreshment. The place was horrid. One
could not tell exactly what there was about it that went counter to all
the finer feelings and the sense of home, simplicity, and happiness.

Bobby, rather depressed, felt this, but Foulkes, a man of tougher fibre,
seemed quite happy.

"What ails you, Ravenshaw?" asked Foulkes.

"Nothing," said Bobby. "No, I won't have any more to drink. I've work to
do----"

Then he stopped and stared before him with eyes wide.

"What is it now?" asked Foulkes.

"Good Lord!" said Bobby. "Look at that chap at the bar!"

"Which one?"

"The one with the straw hat on the back of his head. It can't be--but
it is--it's the Relative."

"The one you told me of that fired you out and cut you off with a
shilling?"

"Yes. Uncle Simon. No, it's not, it can't be. It is, though, in a straw
_hat_."

"And squiffy," said Foulkes.

Bobby got up and, leaving the other, strolled to the bar casually. The
man at the bar was toying with a glass of soda-water supplied to him on
sufferance. Bobby got close to him. Yes, that was the right hand with
the white scar--got when a young man "hunting"--and the seal ring.

The last time Bobby had met Uncle Simon was in the office in Old
Serjeants' Inn. Uncle Simon, seated at his desk-table with his back to
the big John Tann safe, had been in bitter mood; not angry, but stern.
Bobby seated before him, hat in hand, had offered no apologies or
exculpations for his conduct with girls, for his stupid engagement, for
his idleness. He had many bad faults, but he never denied them, nor did
he seek to minimise them by explanations and lies.

"I tried to float you," had said Uncle Simon, as though Bobby were a
company. "I have failed. Well, I have done my duty, and I clearly see
that I will not be doing my duty by continuing as I have done; the
allowance I have made you is ended. You will now have to swim for
yourself. I should never have put money in your hands; I quite see
that."

"I can make my own living," said Bobby. "I am not without gratitude for
what you have done----"

"And a nice way you have shown your gratitude," said the other,
"tangling yourself like that--gaming, frequenting bars."

So the interview had ended. Frequenting bars!

"Uncle Simon!" said Bobby half-nervously, touching the other on the arm.

Uncle Simon swung slowly round. Bobby might have been King Canute for
all Uncle Simon knew. He had got beyond the stage where the word "uncle"
from a stranger would have aroused ire or surprise.

"H'are you?" said Simon. "Have a drink?"

Yes, it was Uncle Simon right enough, and Bobby, in all his life, had
never received such a shock as that which came to him now with the full
recognition of the fact. St. Paul's Cathedral turned into a
gambling-shop, the Bishop of London dressed as a clown, would have been
nothing to this. He was horrified. He came to the swift conclusion that
Uncle Simon had come to smash somehow, and gone mad. A vague idea flew
through his mind that his respected relative was dressed like this as a
disguise to avoid creditors, but he had sense enough not to ask
questions.

"I don't mind," said he; "I'll have a small soda."

"Small grandmother," said the other; then, nodding to the bar-tender,
"'Nother same as mine."

"What have you been doing?" asked Bobby vaguely, as he took the glass.

"Roun' the town--roun' the town," replied the other. "Gl'd to meet you.
What've you been doin'?"

"Oh, I've just been going round the town."

"Roun' the town, that's the way--roun' the town," replied the other.
"Roun' an' roun' and roun' the town."

Foulkes broke into this intellectual discussion.

"I'm off," said Foulkes.

"Stay a minit," said Uncle Simon. "What'll you have?"

"Nothing, thanks," said Foulkes.

"Come on," said Bobby, taking the arm of his relative.

"W'ere to?" asked the other, hanging back slightly.

"Oh, we'll go round the town--round and round. Come on." Then to
Foulkes, "Get a taxi, quick!"

Foulkes vanished towards the door.

Then Simon, falling in with the round-the-town idea, arm-in-arm, the
pair threaded their way between the tables, the cynosure of all eyes,
Simon exhibiting dispositions to stop and chat with seated and absolute
strangers, Bobby perspiring and blushing. All the lectures on fast
living he had ever endured were nothing to this; the shame of folly, for
the first time in his life, appeared definitely before him, and the
relief of the street and the waiting taxi beyond words.

They bundled Simon in.

"No. 12, King Charles Street, Westminster," said Bobby to the driver.

Uncle Simon's head and bust appeared at the door of the vehicle, the
address given by Bobby seeming to have paralysed the round-the-town idea
in his mind.

"Ch'ing Cross Hotel," said he. "Wach you mean givin' wrong address? I'm
staying Ch'ing Cross Hotel."

"Well, let's go to Charles Street _first_," agreed Bobby.

"No--Ch'ing Cross Hotel--luggage waitin' there."

Bobby paused.

Could it be possible that this was the truth? It couldn't be stranger
than the truth before him.

"All right," said he. "Charing Cross Hotel, driver."

He said good-bye to Foulkes, got in, and shut the door.

Uncle Simon seemed asleep.

The Charing Cross Hotel was only a very short distance away, and when
they got there Bobby, leaving the sleeping one undisturbed, hopped out
to make enquiries as to whether a Mr. Pettigrew was staying there; if
not, he could go on to Charles Street.

In the hall he found the night porter and Mudd.

"Good heavens! Mr. Robert, what are you doing here?" said Mudd.

Bobby took Mudd aside.

"What's the matter with my uncle, Mudd?" asked Bobby in a tragic
half-whisper.

"Matter!" said Mudd, wildly alarmed. "What's he been a-doing of?"

"I've got him in a cab outside," said Bobby.

"Oh, thank God!" said Mudd. "He's not hurt, is he?"

"No; only three sheets in the wind."

Mudd broke away for the door, followed by the other.

Simon was still asleep.

They got him out, and between them they brought him in, Bobby paying the
fare with the last of his sovereign.

Arrived at the room, Mudd turned on the electric light, and then,
between them, they got the reveller to bed. Folding his coat, Mudd,
searching in the pockets, found a brass door-knocker. "Good Lord!"
murmured Mudd. "He's been a-takin' of knockers."

He hid the knocker in a drawer and proceeded. Two pounds ten was all the
money to be found in the clothes, but Simon had retained his watch and
chain by a miracle.

Bobby was astonished at Simon's pyjamas, taken out of a drawer by Mudd;
blue and yellow striped silk, no less.

"He'll be all right now, and I'll have another look at him," said Mudd.
"Come down, Mr. Robert."

"Mudd," said Bobby, when they were in the hall again, "what is it?"

"He's gone," said Mudd; "gone in the head."

"Mad?"

"No, not mad; it's a temporary abrogation. Some of them new diseases,
the doctor says. It's his youth come back on him, grown like a wisdom
tooth. Yesterday he was as right as you or me; this morning he started
off for the office as right as myself. It must have struck him sudden.
Same thing happened last year and he got over it. It took a month,
though."

"Good heavens!" said Bobby. "I met him in a bar, by chance. If he's
going on like this for a month you'll have your work cut out for you,
Mudd."

"There's no name to it," said Mudd. "Mr. Robert, this has to be kept
close in the family and away from the office; you've got to help with
him."

"I'll do my best," said Bobby unenthusiastically, "but, hang it, Mudd,
I've got my living to make now. I've no time to hang about bars and
places, and if to-night's a sample----"

"We've got to get him away to the country or somewhere," said Mudd,
"else it means ruin to the business and Lord knows what all. It's got to
be done, Mr. Robert, and you've got to help, being the only relative."

"Couldn't that doctor man take care of him?"

"Not he," said Mudd; "he's given me instructions. The master is just to
be let alone in reason; any thwarting or checking might send him clean
off. He's got to be led, not driven."

Bobby whistled softly and between his teeth. He couldn't desert Uncle
Simon. He never remembered that Uncle Simon had deserted him for just
such conduct, or even less, for Bobby, stupid as he was, had rarely
descended to the position he had found Uncle Simon in a little while
ago.

Bobby was young, generous, forgetful and easy to forgive, so the fact
that the Relative had deserted him and cut him off with a shilling never
occurred to his open soul at this critical moment.

Uncle Simon had to be looked after. He felt the truth of Mudd's words
about the office. If this thing were known it would knock the business
to pieces. Bobby was no fool, and he knew something of Simon's
responsibilities; he administered estates, he had charge of trust-money,
he was the most respected solicitor in London. Heavens! if this were
known, what a rabbit-run for frightened clients Old Serjeants' Inn would
become within twenty-four hours!

Then, again, Bobby was a Ravenshaw. The Ravenshaws were much above the
Pettigrews. The Ravenshaws were a proud race, and the old Admiral, his
father, who lost all his money in Patagonian Bonds, was the proudest of
the lot, and he had handed his pride to his son.

Yes, leaving even the office aside, Uncle Simon must be looked after.

Now if U. S. had been a lunatic the task would have been abominable but
simple, but a man who had suddenly developed extraordinary youth, yet
was, so the doctor said, sane--a man who must be just humoured and
led--was a worse proposition.

Playing bear-leader to a young fool was an entirely different thing to
being a young fool oneself. Even his experience of an hour ago told
Bobby this; that short experience was his first sharp lesson in the
disgustingness of folly. He shied at the prospect of going on with the
task. But Uncle Simon must be looked after. He couldn't get over or
under that fence.

"Well, I'll do what I can," said he. "I'll come round to-morrow morning.
But see here, Mudd, where does he get his money from?"

"He's got ten thousand pounds somewhere hid," said Mudd.

"Ten thousand what?"

"Pounds. Ten thousand pounds somewhere hid. The doctor told me he had
it. He drew the same last year and spent five in a month."

"Five pounds?"

"Five thousand, Mr. Robert."

"Five thousand in a month! I say, this is serious, Mudd."

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" said Mudd. "Don't tell me--I know--and, me, I've
been working forty years for five hundred."

"He couldn't have taken it out with him to-day, do you think?"

"No, Mr. Robert, I don't think he's as far gone as that. He's always
been pretty close with his money, and closeness sticks, abrogation or no
abrogation; but it's not the money I'm worritin' so much about as the
women."

"What women?"

"Them that's always looking out for such as he."

"Well, we must coosh them off," said Bobby.

"You'll be here in the morning, Mr. Robert?"

"Yes, I'll be here, and, meanwhile, keep an eye on him."

"Oh, I'll keep an eye on him," said Mudd.

Then the yawning night porter saw this weird conference close, Mudd
going off upstairs and Bobby departing, a soberer and wiser young man
even than when he had entered.

It was late when he reached the Albany. Tozer was sitting up, reading a
book on counterpoint.

"Well, what luck?" asked Tozer, pleased at the other's gravity and
sobriety.

"I've found a plot," said Bobby; "at least, the middle of one, but it's
tipsy."

"Tipsy?"

"It's my--Tozer, this is a dead secret between you and me--it's my
Relative."

"Your uncle?"

"Yes."

"What on earth do you mean?"

Bobby explained.

Tozer made some tea over a spirit lamp as he listened, then he handed
the other a cup.

"That's interesting," said he, as he sat down again and filled a pipe.
"That's interesting."

"But look here," said the other, "do you believe it? Can a man get young
again and forget everything and go on like this?"

"I don't know," said Tozer, "but I believe he can--and he seems to be
doing it, don't he?"

"He does; we found a knocker in his coat pocket."

"I beg your pardon, a what?"

"A door-knocker; he must have wrung it off a door somewhere, a big brass
one, like a lion's head."

"How old is he?"

"Uncle?"

"Yes."

"Sixty."

Tozer calculated.

"Forty years ago--yes, the young chaps about town were still ringing
door-knockers then; it was going out, but I had an uncle who did it.
This is interesting." Then he exploded. He had never seen Simon the
solicitor, or his mirth might have been louder.

"It's very easy to laugh," said Bobby, rather huffed, "but you would not
laugh if you were in my shoes--I've got to look after him."

"I beg your pardon," said Tozer. "Now let me be serious. Whatever
happens, you have got a fine _ficelle_ for a story. I'm in earnest; it
only wants working out."

"Oh, good heavens!" said Bobby. "Does one eat one's grandmother? And how
am I to write stories tied like this?"

"He'll write it for you," said Tozer, "or I'm greatly mistaken, if you
only hang on and give him a chance. He's begun it for you. And as for
eating your grandmother, uncles aren't grandmothers, and you can change
his name."

"I wish to goodness I could," said Bobby. "The terror I'm in is lest
his name should come out in some mad escapade."

"I expect he's been in the same terror of you," said Tozer, "many a
time."

"Yes, but I hadn't an office to look after and a big business."

"Well, you've got one now," said Tozer, "and it will teach you
responsibility, Bobby; it will teach you responsibility."

"Hang responsibility!"

"I know; that's what your uncle has often said, no doubt. Responsibility
is the only thing that steadies men, and the sense of it is the
grandfather of all the other decent senses. You'll be a much better man
for this, Bobby, or my name is not Tozer."

"I wish it were Ravenshaw," said Bobby. Then remembrance made him pause.

"I ought to tell you----" said he, then he stopped.

"Well?" said Tozer.

"I promised you to stop--um--fooling after girls."

"That means, I expect, that you have been doing it."

"Not exactly, and yet----"

"Go on."

Bobby explained.

"Well," said Tozer, "I forgive you. It was good intent spoiled by
atavism. You returned to your old self for a moment, like your Uncle
Simon. Do you know, Bobby, I believe this disease of your uncle's is
more prevalent than one would imagine--though of course in a less acute
form. We are all of us always returning to our old selves, by fits and
starts--and paying for the return. You see what you have done to-day.
Your Uncle Simon has done nothing more foolish, you both found your old
selves.

"Lord, that old self! All the experience and wisdom of the world don't
head it off, it seems to me, when it wants to return. Well, you've done
it, and when you write your story you can put yourself in as well as
your uncle, and call the whole thing, 'A Horrible Warning.' Good night."

THE HUNDRED-POUND NOTE

Uncle Simon awoke consumed by thirst, but without a headache; a good
constitution and years of regular life had given him a large balance to
draw upon.

Mudd was in the room arranging things; he had just drawn up the blind.

"Who's that?" asked Simon.

"Mudd," replied the other.

Mudd's _tout ensemble_ as a new sort of hotel servant seemed to please
Simon, and he accepted him at once as he accepted everything that
pleased him.

"Give me that water-bottle," said Simon.

Mudd gave it. Simon half-drained it and handed it back. The draught
seemed to act on him like the elixir vitæ.

"What are you doing with those clothes?" said he.

"Oh, just folding them," said Mudd.

"Well, just leave them alone," replied the other. "Is there any money
in the pockets?"

"These aren't what you wore last night," said Mudd; "there was two
pounds ten in the pockets of what you had on. Here it is, on the
mantel."

"Good," said Simon.

"Have you any more money anywhere about?" asked Mudd.

Now Simon, spendthrift in front of pleasure and heedless of money as the
wind, in front of Mudd seemed cautious and a bit suspicious. It was as
though his subliminal mind recognised in Mudd restraint and guardianship
and common sense.

"Not a halfpenny," said he. "Give me that two pounds ten."

Mudd, alarmed at the vigour of the other, put the money on the little
table by the bed.

Simon was at once placated.

"Now put me out some clothes," said he. He seemed to have accepted Mudd
now as a personal servant--hired when? Heaven knows when; details like
that were nothing to Simon.

Mudd, marvelling and sorrowing, put out a suit of blue serge, a blue
tie, a shirt and other things of silk. There was a bathroom, off the
bedroom, and, the things put out, Simon arose and wandered into the
bathroom, and Mudd, taking his seat on a chair, listened to him tubbing
and splashing--whistling, too, evidently in the gayest spirits, spirits
portending another perfect day.

"Lead him," had said Oppenshaw. Why, Mudd already was being led. There
was something about Simon, despite his irresponsibility and good humour,
that would not brook a halter even if the halter were of silk. Mudd
recognised that. And the money! What had become of the money? The locked
portmanteau might contain it, but where was the key?

Mudd did not even know whether his unhappy master had recognised him or
not, and he dared not ask, fearing complications. But he knew that Simon
had accepted him as a servant, and that knowledge had to suffice.

If Simon had refused him, and turned him out, that would have been a
tragedy indeed.

Simon, re-entering the bedroom, bath towel in hand, began to dress, Mudd
handing things which Simon took as though half oblivious of the presence
of the other. He seemed engaged in some happy vein of thought.

Dressed and smart, but unshaved, though scarcely showing the fact, Simon
took the two pounds ten and put it in his pocket, then he looked at
Mudd. His expression had changed somewhat; he seemed working out some
problem in his mind.

"That will do," said he; "I won't want you any more for a few minutes. I
want to arrange things. You can go down and come back in a few minutes."

Mudd hesitated. Then he went.

He heard Simon lock the door. He went into an adjoining corridor and
walked up and down, dumbly praying that Mr. Robert would come--confused,
agitated, wondering.... Suppose Simon wanted to be alone to cut his
throat! The horror of this thought was dispelled by the recollection
that there were no razors about; also by the remembered cheerfulness of
the other. But why did he want to be alone?

Two minutes passed, three, five--then the intrigued one, making for the
closed door, turned the handle. The door was unlocked, and Simon,
standing in the middle of the room, was himself again.

"I've got a message I want you to take," said Simon.

Ten minutes later Mr. Robert Ravenshaw, entering the Charing Cross
Hotel, found Mudd with his hat on, waiting for him.

"Thank the Lord you've come, Mr. Robert!" said Mudd.

"What's the matter now?" asked Bobby. "Where is he?"

"He's having breakfast," said Mudd.

"Well, that's sensible, anyhow. Cheer up, Mudd; why, you look as if
you'd swallowed a funeral."

"It's the money," said Mudd. Then he burst out, "He told me to go from
the room and come back in a minit. Out I went, and he locked the door.
Back I came; there was he standing. 'Mudd,' said he, 'I've got a message
for you to take. I want you to take a bunch of flowers to a lady.' Me!"

"Yes?" said Bobby.

"To a lady!"

"'Where's the flowers?' said I, wishing to head him off. 'You're to go
and buy them,' said he. 'I have no money,' said I, wishing to head him
off. 'Hang money!' said he, and he puts his hand in his pocket and out
he brings a hundred-pound note and a ten-pound note. And he had only two
pounds ten when I left him. He's got the money in that portmanteau, that
I'm sure, and he got me out of the room to get it."

"Evidently," said Bobby.

"'Here's ten pounds,' said he; 'get the best bunch of flowers money can
buy and tell the lady I'm coming to see her later on in the day.'

"'What lady?' said I, wishing to head him off.

"'This is the address,' said he, and goes to the writing-table and
writes it out."

He handed Bobby a sheet of the hotel paper. Simon's handwriting was on
it, and a name and address supplied by that memory of his which clung so
tenaciously to all things pleasant.

"Miss Rossignol, 10, Duke Street, Leicester Square."

Bobby whistled.

"Did I ever dream I'd see this day?" mourned Mudd. "Me! Sent on a
message like that, by _him_!"

"This is a complication," said Bobby. "I say, Mudd, he must have been
busy yesterday--upon _my_ soul----"

"Question is, what am I to do?" said Mudd. "I'm goin' to take no flowers
to hussies."

Bobby thought deeply for a moment.

"Did he recognise you this morning?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Mudd, "but he made no bones. I don't believe he
remembered me right, but he made no bones."

"Well, Mudd, you'd better just swallow your feelings and take those
flowers, for if you don't, and he finds out, he may fire you. Where
would we be then? Besides, he's to be humoured, so the doctor said,
didn't he?"

"Shall I send for the doctor right off, sir?" asked Mudd, clutching at a
forlorn hope.

"The doctor can't stop him from fooling after girls," said Bobby,
"unless the doctor could put him away in a lunatic asylum; and he can't,
can he, seeing he says he's not mad? Besides, there's the slur, and the
thing would be sure to leak out. No, Mudd, just swallow your feelings
and trot off and get those flowers, and, meanwhile, I'll do what I can
to divert his mind. And see here, Mudd, you might just see what that
girl is like."

"Shall I tell her he's off his head and that maybe she'll have the law
on her if she goes on fooling with him?" suggested Mudd.

"No," said the more worldly-wise Bobby; "if she's the wrong sort that
would only make her more keen. She'd say to herself, 'Here's a queer old
chap with money, half off his nut, and not under restraint; let's make
hay before they lock him up.' If she's the right sort it doesn't matter;
he's safe, and, right sort or wrong sort, if he found you'd been
interfering he might send you about your business. No, Mudd, there's
nothing to be done but get the flowers and leave them, and see the lady
if possible, and make notes about her. Say as little as possible."

"He told me to tell her he'd call later in the day."

"Leave that to me," said Bobby. "And now, off with you."

CHAPTER IV

THE HUNDRED-POUND NOTE--_continued_

Mudd departed and Bobby made for the coffee-room.

He entered and looked around. A good many people were breakfasting in
the big room, the ordinary English breakfast crowd at a big hotel;
family parties, lone men and lone women, some reading letters, some
papers, and all, somehow, with an air of divorcement from home.

Simon was there, seated at a little table on the right and enjoying
himself. Now, and in his right mind, Simon gave Bobby another shock.
Could it be possible that this pleasant-faced, jovial-looking gentleman,
so well-dressed and _à la mode_, was Uncle Simon? What an improvement!
So it seemed at first glance.

Simon looked up from his sausages--he was having sausages, saw
Bobby--and with his unfailing memory of pleasant things, even dimly
seen, recognised him as the man of last night.

"Hullo," said Simon, as the other came up to the table, "there you are
again. Had breakfast?"

"No," said Bobby. "I'll sit here if I may." He drew a chair to the
second place that was laid and took his seat.

"Have sausages," said Simon. "Nothing beats sausages."

Bobby ordered sausages, though he would have preferred anything else. He
didn't want to argue.

"Nothing beats sausages," said Uncle Simon again.

Bobby concurred.

Then the conversation languished, just as it may between two old friends
or boon companions who have no need to keep up talk.

"Feeling all right this morning?" ventured Bobby.

"Never felt better in my life," replied the other. "Never felt better in
my life. How did you manage to get home?"

"Oh, I got home all right."

Simon scarcely seemed to hear this comforting declaration; scrambled
eggs had been placed before him.

Bobby, in sudden contemplation of a month of this business, almost
forgot his sausages. The true horror of Uncle Simon appeared to him now
for the first time. You see, he knew all the facts of the case. An
ordinary person, unknowing, would have accepted Simon as all right, but
it seemed to Bobby, now, that it would have been much better if his
companion had been decently and honestly mad, less uncanny. He was
obviously sane, though a bit divorced from things; obviously sane, and
eating scrambled eggs after sausages with the abandon of a schoolboy on
a holiday after a long term at a cheap school; sane, and enjoying
himself after a night like that--yet he was Simon Pettigrew.

Then he noticed that Simon's eyes were constantly travelling, despite
the scrambled eggs, in a given direction. A pretty young girl was
breakfasting with a family party a little way off--that was the
direction.

There was a mother, a father, something that looked like an uncle, what
appeared to be an aunt, and what appeared to be May dressed in a washing
silk blouse and plain skirt.

November was glancing at May.

Bobby remembered Miss Rossignol and felt a bit comforted; then he began
to feel uncomfortable: the aunt was looking fixedly at Simon. His
admiration had evidently been noted by Watchfulness; then the uncle
seemed to take notice.

Bobby, blushing, tried to make conversation, and only got replies.
Then, to his relief, the family, having finished breakfast, withdrew,
and Simon became himself again, cheerful and burning for the pleasures
of the day before him, the pleasures to be got from London, money, and
youth.

His conversation told this, and that he desired to include Bobby in the
scheme of things, and the young man could not help remembering
Thackeray's little story of how, coming up to London, he met a young
Oxford man in the railway carriage, a young man half-tipsy with the
prospect of a day in town and a "tear round"--with the prospect, nothing
more.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Bobby, as the other rose from the
table.

"Shaved," said Simon; "come along and get shaved; can't go about like
this."

Bobby was already shaved, but he followed the other outside to a
barber's and sat reading a _Daily Mirror_ and waiting whilst Simon was
operated on. The latter, having been shaved, had his hair brushed and
trimmed, and all the time during these processes the barber spake in
this wise, Simon turning the monologue to a duologue.

"Yes, sir, glorious weather, isn't it? London's pretty full, too, for
the time of year--fuller than I've seen for a long time. Ever tried face
massage, sir? Most comforting. Can be applied by yourself. Can sell you
a complete outfit, Parker's face cream and all, two pound ten. Thank
you, sir. Staying in the Charing Cross 'Otel? I'll have it sent to your
room. Yes, sir, the 'otel is full. There's a deal of money being spent
in London, sir. Raise your chin, sir, a leetle more. Ever try a Gillette
razor, sir? Useful should you wish to shave in a 'urry; beautiful
plated. This is it, sir--one guinea--shines like silver, don't it? Thank
you, sir, I'll send it up with the other. Yes, sir, it's most convenient
havin' a barber's close to the 'otel. I supply most of the 'otel people
with toilet rekisites. 'Air's a little thin on the top, sir; didn't mean
no offence, sir, maybe it's the light. Dry, that's what it is; it's the
'ot weather. Now, I'd recommend Coolers' Lotion followed after
application by Goulard's Brillantine. Oh, Lord, no, sir! _Them_
brillantines is no use. Goulard's is the only real; costs a bit more,
but then, cheap brillantine is rewin. Thank you, sir. And how are you
off for 'air brushes, sir? There's a pair of bargains in that
show-case--travellers' samples--I can let you have, silver-plated, as
good as you'll get in London and 'arf the price. Shine, don't they? And
feel the bristles--real 'og. Thank you, sir. Two ten--one one--one
four--two ten--and a shillin' for the 'air cut and shave. No, sir, I
can't change an 'undred-pound note. A ten? Yes, I can manage a ten.
Thank you, sir."

Seven pounds and sixpence for a hair-cut and shave--with accompaniments.
Bobby, tongue-tied and aghast, rose up.

"'Air cut, sir?" asked the barber.

"No, thanks," replied Bobby.

Simon, having glanced at himself in the mirror, picked up his straw hat
and walking-stick, and taking the arm of his companion, out they walked.

"Where are you going?" asked Bobby.

"Anywhere," replied the other; "I want to get some change."

"Why, you've got change!"

Simon unlinked, and in the face of the Strand and the passers-by
produced from his pocket two hundred-pound notes, three or four
one-pound notes, and a ten-pound note; searching in his pockets to see
what gold he had, he dropped a hundred-pound note, which Bobby quickly
recovered.

"Mind!" said Bobby. "You'll have those notes snatched."

"That's all right," said Simon.

He replaced the money in his pocket, and his companion breathed again.

Bobby had borrowed five pounds from Tozer in view of possibilities.

"Look here," said he, "what's the good of staying in London a glorious
day like this? Let's go somewhere quiet and enjoy ourselves--Richmond or
Greenwich or somewhere. I'll pay expenses and you need not bother about
change."

"No, you won't," said Simon. "You're going to have some fun along with
me. What's the matter with London?"

Bobby couldn't say.

Renouncing the idea of the country, without any other idea to replace it
except to keep his companion walking and away from shops and bars and
girls, he let himself be led. They were making back towards Charing
Cross. At the _Bureau de Change_ Simon went in, the idea of changing a
hundred-pound note pursuing him. He wanted elbow-room for enjoyment, but
the Bureau refused to make change. The note was all right; perhaps it
was Simon that was the doubtful quantity. He had quite a little quarrel
over the matter and came out arm-in-arm with his companion and flushed.

"Come along," said Bobby, a new idea striking him. "We'll get change
somewhere."

From Charing Cross, through Cockspur Street, then through Pall Mall and
up St. James's Street they went, stopping at every likely and unlikely