Produced by Al Haines

THE FOUR STRAGGLERS

BY

FRANK L. PACKARD

THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED

TORONTO

COPYRIGHT, 1923,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE FOUR STRAGGLERS.  II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: THE FOUR OF THEM

BOOK I: SHADOW VARNE

CHAPTER

    I  THREE YEARS LATER
   II  AN IRON IN THE FIRE
  III  THREE OF THEM
   IV  GOLD PLATE
    V  "DEAR GUARDY"
   VI  THE WRITING ON THE WALL

BOOK II: THE ISLE OF PREY

    I  THE SPELL OF THE MOONBEAMS
   II  THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
  III  THE MAD MILLIONAIRE
   IV  THE UNKNOWN
    V  THE GUTTER-SNIPE
   VI  THE MAN IN THE MASK
  VII  THE FIGHT
 VIII  THE MESSAGE

BOOK III: THE PENALTY

    I  THE WHITE SHIRT SLEEVE
   II  THE BRONZE KEY
  III  THE WARP AND THE WOOF
   IV  THE TIME-LOCK OF THE SEA

PROLOGUE: THE FOUR OF THEM

THE FOUR STRAGGLERS

PROLOGUE

THE FOUR OF THEM

The crash of guns.  A flare across the heavens.  Battle.  Dismay.
Death.  A night of chaos.

And four men in a thicket.

One of them spoke:

"A bloody Hun prison, that's us!  My Gawd!  Where are we?"

Another answered caustically:

"Monsieur, we are lost--and very tired."

A third man laughed.  The laugh was short.

"A Frenchman!  Where in hell did you come from?"

"Where you and the rest of us came from."  The Frenchman's voice was
polished; his English faultless.  "We come from the tickling of the
German bayonets."

The first man elaborated the statement gratuitously:

"I don't know about you 'uns; but our crowd was done in good and proper
two days ago.  Gawd! ain't there no end to 'em?  Millions!  And us
running!  What I says is let 'em have the blinking channel ports, and
lets us clear out.  I wasn't noways in favour of mussing up in this
when the bleeding parliament says up and at 'em in the beginning,
leastways nothing except the navy."

"Drafted, I take it?" observed the third man coolly.

There was no answer.

The fourth man said nothing.

There was a whir in the air ... closer ... _closer_; a roar that surged
at the ear drums; a terrific crash near at hand; a tremble of the earth
like a shuddering sob.

The first man echoed the sob:

"Carry on!  Carry on!  I _can't_ carry on.  Not for hours.  I've been
running for two days.  I can't even sleep.  My Gawd!"

"No good of carrying on for a bit," snapped the third man.  "There's no
place to carry on _to_.  They seem to be all around us."

"That's the first one that's come near us," said the Frenchman.  "Maybe
it's only--what do you call it?--a straggler."

"Like us," said the third man.

A flare, afar off, hung and dropped.  Nebulous, ghostlike, a faint
shimmer lay upon the thicket.  It endured for but a moment.  Three men,
huddled against the tree trunks, torn, ragged and dishevelled men,
stared into each others' faces.  A fourth man lay outstretched,
motionless, at full length upon the ground, as though he were asleep or
dead; his face was hidden because it was pillowed on the earth.

"Well, I'm damned!" said the third man, and whistled softly under his
breath.

"Monsieur means by that?" inquired the Frenchman politely.

"Means?" repeated the third man.  "Oh, yes!  I mean it's queer.  Half
an hour ago we were each a separate bit of driftwood tossed about out
there, and now here we are blown together from the four winds and
linked up as close to each other by a common stake--our lives--as ever
men could be.  I say it's queer."

He lifted his rifle, and, feeling out, prodded once or twice with the
butt.  It made a dull, thudding sound.

"What are you doing?" asked the Frenchman.

"Giving first aid to Number Four," said the third man grimly.  "He's
done in, I fancy.  I'm not sure but he's the luckiest one of the lot."

"You're bloody well right, he is!" gulped the first man.  "I wouldn't
mind being dead, if it was all over, and I was dead.  It's the dying
and the thinking about it I can't stick."

"I can't see anything queer about it."  The Frenchman was judicial; he
reverted to the third man's remark as though no interruption had
occurred in his train of thought.  "We all knew it was coming, this
last big--what do you call it?--push of the Boche.  It has come.  It is
gigantic.  It is tremendous.  A tidal wave.  Everything has gone down
before it; units all broken up, mingled one with another, a mêlée.  It
has been _sauve qui peut_ for thousands like us who never saw each
other before, who did not even know each other existed.  I see nothing
queer in it that some of us, though knowing nothing of each other, yet
having the same single purpose, rest if only for a moment, shelter if
only for a moment, should have come together here.  To me it is not
queer."

"Well, perhaps, you're right," said the third man.  "Perhaps
adventitious would have been better than queer."

"Nor adventitious," dissented the Frenchman.  "Since we have been
nothing to each other in the past, and since our meeting now offers us
collectively no better chance of safety or escape than we individually
had before, there is nothing adventitious about it."

"Perhaps again I am wrong."  There was a curious drawl in the third
man's voice now.  "In fact, I will admit it.  It is neither queer nor
adventitious.  It is quite--oh, quite!--beyond that.  It can only be
due to the considered machinations of the devil on his throne in the
pit of hell having his bit of a fling at us--and a laugh!"

"You're bloody well right!" mumbled the first man.

"Damn!" said the Frenchman with asperity.  "I don't understand you at
all."

The third man laughed softly.

"Well, I don't know how else to explain it, then," he said.  "The last
time we--"

"The _last_ time!" interrupted the Frenchman.  "I did not get a very
good look at you when that flare went up, I'll admit; but enough so
that I would swear I had never seen you before."

"Quite so!" acknowledged the third man.

"Gawd!" whimpered the first man.  "Look at that!  Listen to that!"

A light, lurid, intense for miles around opened the darkness--and died
out.  An explosion rocked the earth.

"Ammunition dump!" said the Frenchman.  "I'm sure of it now.  I've
never seen any of you before."

The third man now sat with his rifle across his knees.

The fourth man had not moved from his original position.

"I thought you were officers, blimy if I didn't, from the way you
talked," said the first man.  "Just a blinking Tommy and a blinking
_Poilu_!"

"Monsieur," said the Frenchman, and there was a challenge in his voice,
"I never forget a face."

"Nor I," said the third man quietly.  "Nor other things; things that
happened a bit back--after they put the draft into England, but before
they called up the older classes.  I don't know just how they worked it
over here--that is, how some of them kept out of it as long as they
did."

"Godam!" snarled the Frenchman.  "Monsieur, you go too far!
And--monsieur appears to have a sense of humour peculiarly his
own--perhaps monsieur will be good enough to explain what he is
laughing at?"

"With pleasure," said the third man calmly.  "I was laughing at the
recollection of a night, not like this one, though there's a certain
analogy to it for all that, when an attack was made on--a strong box in
a West End residence in London.  Lord Seeton's, to be precise."

The first man stirred.  He seemed to be groping around him where he sat.

"Foolish days!  Perverted patriotism!" said the third man.  "The family
jewels, the hereditary treasures, gathered together to be offered on
the altar of England's need!  Fancy!  But it was being done, you know.
Rather!  Only in this case the papers got hold of it and played it up a
bit as a wonderful example, and that's how three men, none of whom had
anything to do with the others, got hold of it too--no, I'm wrong
there.  Lord Seeton's valet naturally had inside information."

"Blimy!" rasped the first man suddenly.  "A copper in khaki!  That's
what!  A bloody, sneaking swine!"

It was inky black in the thicket.  The third man's voice cut through
the blackness like a knife.

"You put that gun down!  I'll do all the gun handling there's going to
be done.  Drop it!"

A snarl answered him--a snarl, and the rattle of an object falling to
the ground.

"There were three of them," said the third man composedly.  "The valet,
who hadn't reached his class in the draft; a Frenchman, who spoke
marvellous English, which is perhaps after all the reason why he had
not yet, at that time, served in France; and--and some one else."

"Monsieur," said the Frenchman silkily, "you become interesting."

"The curious part of it is," said the third man, "that each of them in
turn got the swag, and each of them could have got away with it with
hardly any doing at all, if it hadn't been that in turn each one
chivied the other.  The Frenchman took it from the valet, as the valet,
stuffed like a pouter pigeon with diamonds and brooches and pendants
and little odds and ends like that, was on his way to a certain
pinch-faced fence named Konitsky in a slimy bit of neighbourhood in the
East End; the Frenchman, who was an _Englishman_ in France, took the
swag to a strange little place in a strange little street, not far from
the bank of the Seine, the place of one Père Mouche, a place that in
times of great stress also became the shelter and home of this same
Frenchman, who--shall I say?--I believe is outstandingly entitled to
the honour of having raised his profession to a degree of art
unapproached by any of his confreres in France to-day."

"_Sacré nom_!" said the Frenchman with a gasp.  "There is only one
Englishman who knew that, and I thought he was dead.  An Englishman
beside whom the Frenchman you speak of is not to be compared.  You
are--"

"_I_ haven't mentioned any names," said the third man smoothly.  "Why
should you?"

"You are right," said the Frenchman.  "Perhaps we have already said too
much.  There is a fourth here."

"No," said the third man.  "I had not forgotten him."  He toyed with
the rifle on his knee.  "But I had thought perhaps you would have
recognised the valet's face."

"Strike me pink!" muttered the first man.  "So Frenchy's the blighter
that did me in, was he!"

"It is the uniform, and the dirt perhaps, and the very poor light,"
said the Frenchman apologetically.

"But you--pardon, monsieur, I mean the other of the three--I did not
see him; and monsieur will perhaps understand that I am deeply
interested in the rest of the story."

The third man did not answer.  A sort of momentary, weird and
breathless silence had settled on the thicket, on all around, on the
night, save only for the whining of some oncoming thing through the
air.  Whine ... whine ... _whine_.  The nerves, tautened, loosened,
were jangling things.  The third man raised his rifle.  And somewhere
the whining shell burst.  And in the thicket a minor crash; a flash,
gone on the instant, eye-blinding.

The first man screamed out:

"Christ!  What have you done?"

"I think he was done in anyway," said the third man calmly.  "It was as
well to make sure."

"Gawd!" whimpered the first man.

"Monsieur," said the Frenchman, "I have always heard that you were
incomparable.  I salute you!  As you said, you had not forgotten.  We
can speak at ease now.  The rest of the story--"

The third man laughed.

"Come to me in London--after the war," he said, "and I will tell it to
you.  And perhaps there will be--other things to talk about."

"I shall be honoured," said the Frenchman.  "We three!  I begin to
understand now.  A house should not be divided against itself.  Is it
not so?  We should go far!  It is fate to-night that--"

"Or the devil," said the third man.

"My Gawd!"  The first man began to laugh--a cracked, jarring laugh.
"After the war, the blinking war--after _hell_!  There ain't no end,
there ain't no--"

And then a flare hung again in the heavens, and in the thicket three
men sat huddled against the tree trunks, torn, ragged and dishevelled
men, but they were not staring into each others' faces now; they were
staring, their eyes magnetically attracted, at a spot on the ground
where a man, a man murdered, should be lying.

But the man was not there.

The fourth man was gone.

BOOK I: SHADOW VARNE

--I--

THREE YEARS LATER

The East End being, as it were, more akin to the technique and the
mechanics of the thing, applauded the craftsmanship; the West End, a
little grimly on the part of the men, and with a loquacity not wholly
free from nervousness on the part of the women, wondered who would be
next.

"The cove as is runnin' that show," said the East End, with its tongue
delightedly in its cheek, "knows 'is wye abaht.  Wish I was 'im!"

"The police are nincompoops!" said the outraged masculine West End.
"Absolutely!"

"Yes, of course!  It's quite too impossible for words!" said the female
of the West End.  "One never knows when one's own--_do_ let me give you
some tea, dear Lady Wintern..."

From something that had merely been of faint and passing interest, a
subject of casual remark, it had grown steadily, insidiously, had
become conversationally epidemic.  All London talked; the papers
talked--virulently.  Alone in that great metropolis, New Scotland Yard
was silent, due, if the journals were to be believed, to the fact that
that world-famous institution was come upon a state of hopeless and
atrophied senility.

With foreknowledge obtained in some amazing manner, with ingenuity,
with boldness, and invariably with success, a series of crimes,
stretching back several years, had been, were being, perpetrated with
insistent regularity.  These crimes had been confined to the West End
of London, save on a few occasions when the perpetrators had gone
slightly afield--because certain wealthy West-Enders had for the moment
changed their accustomed habitat.  The journals at spasmodic intervals
printed a summary of the transactions.  In jewels, and plate, and cash,
the figures had reached an astounding total, not one penny of which had
ever been recovered or traced.  Secret wall safes, hidden depositories
of valuables opened with obliging celerity and disgorged their contents
to some apparition which immediately vanished.  There was no clue.  It
simply happened again and again.  Traps had been set with patience and
considerable artifice.  The traps had never been violated.  London was
accustomed to crimes, just as any great city was; there were hundreds
of crimes committed in London; but these were of a _genre_ all their
own, these were distinctive, these were not to be confused with other
crimes, nor their authors with other criminals.

And so London talked--and waited.

It was raining--a thin drizzle.  The night was uninviting without; cosy
within the precincts of a certain well-known West End club, the
Claremont, to be exact.  Two men sat in the lounge, in a little recess
by the window.  One, a man of perhaps thirty-three, of athletic build,
with short-cropped black hair and clean-shaven face, a one-time captain
of territorials in the late war, and though once known on the club
membership roll as Captain Francis Newcombe was to be found there now
as Francis Newcombe, Esquire; the other, a very much older man, with a
thin, grey little face and thin, grey hair, would, on recourse to the
club roll, have been found to be Sir Harris Greaves, Bart.

The baronet made a gesture with his cigar, indicative of profound
disgust.

"Democracy!" he ejaculated.  "The world safe for democracy!  I am
nauseated with that phrase.  What does it mean?  What did it ever mean?
We have had three years now since the war which was to work that
marvel, and I have seen no signs of it yet.  So far as I--"

Captain Francis Newcombe laughed.

"And yet," he said, "I embody in my person one of those signs.  You can
hardly deny that, Sir Harris.  Certainly I would never have had, shall
I call it the distinction, of being admitted to this club had it not
been for the democratic leaven working through the war.  You remember,
of course?  An officer and a gentleman!  We of England were certainly
consistent in that respect.  While one was an officer one was a
gentleman.  The clubs were all pretty generally thrown open to officers
during the war.  Some of them came from the Lord knows where.  T.G.'s
they were called, you remember--Temporary Gentlemen.  Afterward--but of
course that's another story so far as most of them were concerned.
Take my own case.  I enlisted in the ranks, and toward the latter end
of the war I obtained my commission--I became a T.G.  And as such I
enjoyed the privileges of this club.  I was eventually, however, one of
the fortunate ones.  At the close of the war the club took me on its
permanent strength and, ergo, I became a--Permanent Gentleman.
Democracy!  Private Francis Newcombe--Captain Francis Newcombe--Francis
Newcombe, Esquire."

"A rather thin case!" smiled the baronet.  "What I was about to say
when you interrupted me was that, so far as I can see, all that the
world has been made safe for by the war is the active expression of the
predatory instinct in man.  I refer to the big interests, the trusts;
to the radical outcroppings of certain labour elements; to--yes!"--he
tapped the newspaper that lay on the table beside him--"the Simon-pure
criminal such as this mysterious gang of desperadoes that has London at
its wits' ends, and those of us who have anything to lose in a state of
constant apoplexy."

Captain Francis Newcombe shook his head.

"I think you're wrong, sir," he said judicially.  "It isn't the
aftermath of the war, or the result of the war.  It is _the_ war, of
which the recent struggle was only a phase.  It's been going on since
the days of the cave man.  You've only to reduce the nation to the
terms of the individual, and you have it.  A nation lusts after
something which does not belong to it.  It proceeds to take it by
force.  If it fails it is punished.  That is war.  The criminal lusts
after something.  He flings down his challenge.  If he is caught he is
punished.  That is war.  What is the difference?"

The baronet sipped at his Scotch and soda.

"H'm!  Which brings us?" he suggested.

"Nowhere!" said Captain Francis Newcombe promptly.  "It's been going on
for ages; it'll go on for all time.  Always the individual predatory;
inevitably in cycles, the cumulative individual running amuck as a
nation.  Why, you, sir, yourself, a little while ago when somebody here
in the room made a remark to the effect that he believed this
particular series of crimes was directly attributable to the war
because it would seem that some one of ourselves, some one who has the
entrée everywhere, who, through being contaminated by the filth out
there, had lost poise and was probably the guilty one, meaning, I take
it, that the chap finding himself in a hole wasn't so nice or
particular in his choice of the way out of it as he would have been but
for the war--you, Sir Harris, denied this quite emphatically.
It--er--wouldn't you say, rather bears me out?"

The old baronet smiled grimly.

"Quite possibly!" he said.  "But if so, I must confess that my
conclusion was based on a very different premise from yours.  In fact,
for the moment, I was denying the theory that the criminal in question
was one of ourselves, quite apart from any bearing the war might have
had upon the matter."

The ex-captain of territorials selected a cigarette with care from his
case.

"Yes?" he inquired politely.

The old baronet cleared his throat.  He glanced a little whimsically at
his companion.

"It's been a hobby, of course, purely a hobby; but in an amateurish
sort of way as a criminologist I have spent a great deal of time and
money in--"

"By Jove!  Really!" exclaimed Captain Newcombe.  "I didn't know, Sir
Harris, that you--"  He paused suddenly in confusion.  "That's anything
but a compliment to your reputation though, I'm afraid, isn't it?  A
bit raw of me!  I--I'm sorry, sir."

"Not at all!" said the old baronet pleasantly; and then, with a wry
smile: "You need not feel badly.  In certain quarters much more
intimate with the subject than you could be supposed to be, I am
equally unrecognised."

"It's very good of you to let me down so easily," said the ex-captain
of territorials contritely.  "Will you go on, sir?  You were saying
that you did not believe these crimes were being perpetrated by one in
the same sphere of life as those who were being victimised.  Why is
that, sir?  The theory seemed rather logical."

"Because," said the old baronet quietly, "I believe I know the man who
is guilty."

The ex-captain of territorials stared.

"Good Lord, sir!" he gasped out.  "You--you can't mean that?"

"Just that!"  A grim brusqueness had crept into the old baronet's
voice.  "And one of these days I propose to prove it!"

"But, sir"--the ex-captain of territorials in his amazement was still
apparently groping out for his bearings--"in that case, the
authorities--surely you--"

"They were very polite at Scotland Yard--_very_!"  The old baronet
smiled drily again.  "That was the quarter to which I referred.
Socially and criminologically--if I may be permitted the word--I fear
that the Yard regards me from widely divergent angles.  But damme,
sir"--he became suddenly irascible--"they're too self-sufficient!  I am
a doddering and interfering old idiot!  But nevertheless I am firmly
convinced that I am right, and they haven't heard the end of the
matter--if I have to devote every penny I've got to substantiating my
theory and bringing the guilty man to justice!"

Captain Francis Newcombe coughed in an embarrassed way.

The old baronet reached for his tumbler, and drank generously.  It
appeared to soothe his feelings.

"Tut, tut!" he said self-chidingly.  "I mean every word of that--that
is, as to my determination to pursue my own investigations to the end;
but perhaps I have not been wholly fair to the Yard.  So far, I lack
proof; I have only theory.  And the Yard too has its theory.  It is a
very common disease.  The theory of the Yard is that the man I believe
to be guilty of these crimes of to-day died somewhere around the middle
stages of the war."

"By Jove!"  Captain Francis Newcombe leaned sharply forward on the arms
of his chair.  "You don't say!"

The old baronet wrinkled his brows, and was silent for a moment.

"It's quite extraordinary!" he said at last, with a puzzled smile.  "I
can't for the life of me understand how I got on this subject, for I
think we were discussing democracy--but you appear to be interested."

"That is expressing it mildly," said the ex-captain of territorials
earnestly.  "You can't in common decency refuse me the rest of the
story now, Sir Harris."

"There is no reason that I know of why I should," said the old baronet.
"Did you ever hear of a man called Shadow Varne?"

Captain Francis Newcombe shook his head.

"No," he said.

"Possibly, then," said the old baronet, "you may remember the robbery
at Lord Seeton's place?  It was during the war."

"No," said the other thoughtfully.  "I can't say I do.  I don't think I
ever heard of it."

"Well, perhaps you wouldn't," nodded the old baronet.  "It happened at
a time when, from what you've said, I would imagine you were in the
ranks, and--however, it doesn't matter.  The point is that the robbery
at Lord Seeton's is amazingly like, I could almost say, each and every
one of this series of robberies that is taking place to-day.  The same
exact foreknowledge, the hidden wall safe, or hiding place, or
repository, or whatever it might be, that was supposedly known only to
the family; the utter absence of any clue; the complete disappearance
of--shall we call it?--the loot itself.  There is only one difference.
In the case of Lord Seeton, the jewels--it was principally a jewel
robbery--were eventually recovered.  They were found in Paris in the
possession of Shadow Varne.  But"--the old baronet smiled a little
grimly again--"the police were not to blame for that."

Sir Harris Greaves, amateur criminologist, reverted to his tumbler of
Scotch and soda.

Captain Francis Newcombe knocked the ash from his cigarette with little
taps of his forefinger.

"Yes?" he said.

"It's a bit of a story," resumed the old baronet slowly.  "Yes, quite a
bit of a story.  I do not know how Shadow Varne got to Paris; I simply
know that, had he not taken sick, neither he nor the jewels would ever
have been found.  But perhaps I am getting a little too far ahead.  I
think I ought to say that Shadow Varne, though he had never actually up
to this time been known in a _physical_ sense to the police, had
established for himself a widespread and international reputation.  His
name here, for instance, amongst the criminal element of our own East
End was a sort of talisman, something to conjure with, as it were,
though no one could ever be found who had seen or could describe the
man.  I suppose that is how he got the name of Shadow.  Some must have
known him, of course, but they were tight-lipped; and even these, I am
inclined to believe, would never have been able to lay fingers on him,
even had they dared.  He was at once an inscrutable and diabolical
character.  I would say, and in this at least Scotland Yard will agree
with me, he seemed like some evil, unembodied spirit upon whom one
could never come in a tangible sense, but that hovered always in the
background, dominating, permeating with his personality the criminal
world."

"But if this is so, if no one knew him, or had ever seen him," said the
ex-captain of territorials in a puzzled way, "how was he recognised as
Shadow Varne in Paris?"

"I am coming to that," said the old baronet quietly.  "As you know very
well, in those days they were always poking into every rat hole in
Paris for draft evaders.  That is how they stumbled on Shadow Varne.
They dug him out of one of those holes, a very filthy hole, like a
rat--like a very sick rat.  The man was raving in delirium.  That is
how they knew they had caught Shadow Varne--because in his delirium he
disclosed his identity.  And that is how they recovered Lord Seeton's
jewels."

"My word!" ejaculated Captain Francis Newcombe.  "A bit tough, I call
that!  My sympathies are almost with the accused!"

"I am afraid I have failed to make you understand the inhuman qualities
of the man," said the old baronet tersely.  "However, Shadow Varne was
even then too much for them--at least temporarily.  A few nights later
he escaped from the hospital; but he was still too sick a man to stand
the pace, and they were too close on his heels.  He had possibly, all
told, a couple of hours of liberty, running, dodging through the
streets of Paris.  The chase ended somewhere on the bank of the Seine.
He was fired at here as he ran, and though quite a few yards in the
lead, he appeared to have been hit, for he was seen to stagger, fall,
then recover himself and go on.  He refused to halt.  They fired and
hit him again--or so they believed.  He fell to the ground--and rolled
over the edge into the water.  And that was the last that was ever seen
of him."

"My word!" ejaculated the ex-captain of territorials again.  "That's a
nice end!  And I must say, with all due deference to you, Sir Harris,
that I can't see anything wrong with Scotland Yard's deduction.  I
fancy he's dead, fast enough."

"Yes," said the old baronet deliberately, "I imagined you would say so;
and I, too, would agree were it not for two reasons.  First, had it
been any other man than Shadow Varne; and, second, that the body was
never recovered."

"But," objected Captain Francis Newcombe, "if, as you believe, the man
is still carrying on, having been identified once, he would, wouldn't
you say, be recognised again?"

"Not at all!" said the old baronet decidedly.  "You must take into
account the man's sick and emaciated condition when he was caught, and
the subsequent hospital surroundings.  Let those who saw him then see
the same man to-day, robust, in health, and in an entirely different
atmosphere, locality and environment!  Recognised?  I would lay long
odds against it, even leaving out of account the man's known ingenuity
for evading recognition."

The ex-captain of territorials nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes," he said, "that is quite possible; but, even granting that he is
still alive, I can't see--"

"Why I should believe he is at the bottom of what is going on to-day
here in London?" supplied the old baronet quickly.  "Perhaps intuition,
perhaps the mystery about the man that has interested me from the time
I first heard of him in the early years of the war, and which has ever
since been a fascinating study with me, has something to do with it.  I
told you to begin with that my _proof_ was theory.  But I believe it.
I do not say he is alone in this, or was alone in the Lord Seeton
affair; but he is certainly the head and front and brains of whatever
he was, or is, engaged in.  As for the similarity of the cases, I will
admit that might be pure coincidence, but we _know_ that Shadow Varne
did have the Seeton jewels in his possession.  The strongest point,
however, that I have to offer in a tangible sense, bearing in mind the
man himself and his hideously elusive propensities, is the fact there
is no absolute proof of his death.  Why wasn't his body recovered?  You
will answer me probably along the same lines that the Paris police
argued and that were accepted by Scotland Yard.  You will say that it
was dark, that the body might not have come to the surface immediately,
and under the existing conditions, by the time they procured a boat and
began their search, it might easily be missed.  Very good!  That is
quite possible.  But why, then, was not the body eventually recovered
in two or three days, say--a week, if you like?  You will say that this
would probably be very far indeed from being the first instance in
which a body was never recovered from the Seine.  And here, too, you
would be quite right.  But I do not believe it.  I do not believe it
was a dead man, or a man mortally wounded, or a man wounded so badly
that he must inevitably drown, who pitched helplessly into the water
that night.  I believe he did it voluntarily, and with considered
cunning, as the only chance he had.  Go into the East End.  Listen to
the stories you will hear about him.  The world does not get rid of
such as he so easily!  The man is not human.  The crimes he has
committed would turn your blood cold.  He is the most despicable, the
most wanton thing that I ever heard of.  He would kill with no more
compunction than you would break in two that match you are holding in
your hand.  Where he came from God alone knows, and--"

A club attendant had stopped beside the old baronet's chair.

"Yes?" said the old baronet.

"I beg pardon, Sir Harris, but your car is here," announced the man.

"Very good!  Thank you!"  The old baronet drained his glass and stood
up.  "Well, you have heard the story, captain," he said with a dry
smile.  "I shall not embarrass you by asking you to decide between
Scotland Yard and myself, but I shall at least expect you to admit that
there is some slight justification for my theory."

The ex-captain of territorials, as he rose in courtesy, shook his head
quietly.

"If I felt only that way about it," he said slowly, "I should simply
thank you for a very interesting story and your confidence.  As it is,
there is so much justification I feel impelled to say to you that, if
this man is what you describe him to be, is as dangerous as you say he
is, I would advise you, Sir Harris, in all seriousness to leave him--to
Scotland Yard."

"What!" exclaimed the old baronet sharply.  "And let him go free!  No,
sir!  Not if every effort I can put forth will prevent it!  Never,
sir--under any circumstances!"

Captain Francis Newcombe smiled gravely, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, at least, I felt I ought to say it," he said.  "Good-night, Sir
Harris--and thank you so much!"

"Good-night, captain!" replied the old baronet cordially, as he turned
away.  "Good-night to you, sir!"

Captain Francis Newcombe watched the other leave the room, then he
walked over to the window.  The drizzle had developed into a downpour
with gusts of wind that now pelted the rain viciously at the window
panes.  He frowned at the streaming glass.

A moment later, as he moved away from the window, he consulted his
watch.  It was a quarter past eleven.  Downstairs he secured his hat
and stick, and spoke to the doorman.

"Get a taxi, please, Martin," he requested, "and tell the chap to drive
me home."

He lighted a cigarette as he waited, and then under the shelter of the
doorman's umbrella entered the taxi.

It was not far.  The taxi stopped before a flat in a fashionable
neighbourhood that was quite in keeping with the fashionable club
Captain Francis Newcombe had just left.  His man admitted him.

"It's a filthy night, Runnells," said the ex-captain of territorials.

Runnells slammed the door against a gust of wind.

"You're bloody well right!" said Runnells.

--II--

AN IRON IN THE FIRE

It was a neighbourhood of alleyways and lanes of ferocious darkness; of
ill-lighted, baleful streets, of shadows; and of doorways where no
doors existed, black, cavernous and sinister openings to inner chambers
of misery, of squalid want, of God-knows-what.

It was the following evening, and still early--barely eight o'clock.
Captain Francis Newcombe turned the corner of one of these gloomily
lighted streets, and drew instantly back to crouch, as an animal
crouches before it springs, in the deep shadows of a wretched tenement
building.  Light footfalls sounded; came nearer.  Two forms, skulking,
yet moving swiftly, came into sight around the corner.

Captain Francis Newcombe sprang.  His fist crashed with terrific force
to the point of an opposing jaw.  A queer grunt--and one of the two men
sprawled his length on the pavement and lay quite still.  Captain
Francis Newcombe's movements were incredibly swift.  His left hand was
at the second man's throat now, and a revolver was shoved into the
other's face.

The tableau held for a second.

"A bit of a 'cushing' expedition, was it?" said the ex-captain of
territorials calmly.  "I looked a likely victim, didn't I?  Just the
usual bash on the head with a neddy, and then the usual stripping even
down to the boots if they were good enough--and mine were good enough,
eh?  And I might get over that bash on the head, or my skull might be
cracked; I might wake up in one of your filthy passageways here, or I
might never wake up!  What would it matter?  It's done every night.
You make your living that way.  And who's to know who did it?"  His
grip tightened suddenly on the other's throat.  "Your kind are better
dead," said Captain Francis Newcombe, and there was something of
horrible callousness in his conversational tones.  "You lack art; you
have no single redeeming feature."  It was as though now he were
debating in cold precision with himself.  "Yes, you are much better
dead!"

"Gor' blimy, guv'nor, let me go," half choked, half whined the other.
"We wasn't goin' to touch you.  No fear!  Me an' me mate was just goin'
round to the pub for an 'arf-pint--"

"It would make a noise," said Captain Francis Newcombe unemotionally.
"That is the trouble.  I should have to clear out of here, and be put
to the annoyance of waiting a half hour or so before I could come back
and attend to my own affairs.  That's the only reason I haven't fired
this thing off in your face, and I'm not sure that reason's good
enough.  But it's a bit of a fag to argue it out, so--don't move, you
swine, or that'll settle it quicker still!"  His fingers, from the
other's throat, searched his own waistcoat pocket, and produced a
silver coin.  "Heads or tails?" he inquired casually.  "You call it."

"My Gawd, guv'nor," whimpered the man, "yer don't mean that!  Yer
wouldn't shoot a cove down like that, would yer?  My Gawd, yer wouldn't
do that!"

"Heads or tails?"  The ex-captain of territorial's voice was bored.  "I
shan't ask you again."

The light was poor.  The man's features, save that they were dirty and
unshaven, were almost indistinguishable; but the eyes roved everywhere
in hunted fear, and he lumped the fingers of one hand together and
plucked with them in an unhinged way at his lips.

"I--no!" gurgled the man.  "My Gawd!"  His words were thick.  His
fingers, plucking, clogged his lips.  "I carn't--I--"  The mechanism of
the revolver intruded itself--as unemotional as its owner--an
unemotional click.  The man screamed out.  "No, no--wait, guv'nor!
Wait!" he screamed.  "'Eads!  Gawd!  'Eads!"

Captain Francis Newcombe examined the coin; the sense of touch, as he
rubbed his fingers over it, helping out the bad light.

"Right, you are!" he said indifferently.  "Heads it is!  You're in
luck!"  He tossed the coin on the pavement.  "I'd keep that, if I were
you."  His voice was still level, still bored.  "You haven't got
anything, of course, to do any sniping with, for anything as valuable
as that would never remain in the possession of your kind for more than
five minutes before you would have pawned it."  He glanced at the
prostrate form of the thug's companion, who was now beginning to show
signs of returning consciousness.  "I fancy you'll find his jaw's
broken.  Better give him a leg up," he said, and, turning on his heel,
walked on down the street.

Captain Francis Newcombe did not look back.  He traversed the murky
block, turned a corner, turned still another, and presently made his
way through an entrance, long since doorless, into the hallway of a
tenement house.  It was little better than a pit of blackness here, but
his movements were without hesitation, as one long and intimately
familiar with his surroundings.  He mounted a rickety flight of stairs,
and, without ceremony, opened the door of a room on the first landing,
entered, and closed the door behind him.  The room had no light in it.

"Who's there?" demanded a weak, querulous, female voice.

The visitor made no immediate reply.  The place reeked with the odour
of salt fish; the air was stale, and an offence that assaulted the
nostrils.  Captain Francis Newcombe crossed to the window, wrenched at
it, and flung it viciously open.

A protracted fit of coughing came from a corner behind him.

"Didn't I tell you never to _send_ for me?" he snapped out in abrupt
menace.

"'Ow, it's you, is it?" said the woman's voice.  "Well, I ain't never
done it afore, 'ave I?  Not in three years I ain't."

"You've done it now; you've done it to-night--and that's once too
often!" returned Captain Francis Newcombe savagely.  "And before I'm
through with you, I'll promise you you'll never do it again!"

"No," she answered out of the darkness, "I won't never do it again, an'
that's why I done it to-night--'cause I won't never 'ave another
chance.  The doctor 'e says I ain't goin' to be 'ere in the mornin'."

Captain Francis Newcombe lit a match.  It disclosed a tallow dip and a
piece of salt fish on a battered chair--and, beyond, the shadowy
outline of a bed.  He swept the piece of fish to the floor out of his
way, lighted the candle, and, leaning forward, held it over the bed.

A woman's face stared back at him in the flickering light; a curiously
blotched face, and one that was emaciated until the cheek bones seemed
the dominant feature.  Her dull, almost glazed, grey eyes blinked
painfully in even the candle rays; a dirty woollen wrap was fastened
loosely around a scrawny neck, and over this there straggled strands of
tangled and unkempt grey hair.

"Well, I fancy the diagnosis isn't far wrong," said the ex-captain of
territorials critically.  "I've been too good to you--and prosperity's
let you down.  For three years you haven't lifted a finger except to
carry a glass of gin to your lips.  And now this is the end, is it?"

The woman did not answer.  She breathed heavily.  The hectic spots on
her cheeks burned a little wider.

Captain Francis Newcombe set the candle back on the chair, and, with
his hands in his pockets, stood looking at her.  His face exhibited no
emotion.

"I haven't heard yet _why_ you sent for me," he said sharply.

"Polly," she said thickly.  "I wanter know wot abaht Polly?"

Captain Francis Newcombe smiled without mirth.

"My dear Mrs. Wickes," he said evenly, "you know all about Polly.  I
distinctly remember bringing you the letter she enclosed for you in
mine ten days ago, because I distinctly remember that after you had
read it I watched you tear it up.  And as your education is such that
you cannot write in return, I also distinctly remember that you gave me
messages for her which I was to incorporate in my own reply.  Since
then I have not heard from Polly."

The woman raised herself suddenly on her elbow, and, her face
contorted, shook her fist.

"My dear Mrs. Wickes!" she mimicked furiously through a burst of
coughing.  "Yer a cool 'un, yer are.  That's wot yer says, yer stands
there an' smiles like a bloomin' hangel, an' yer says, my dear Mrs.
Wickes!  Curse yer, I knows more abaht yer than yer thinks for.  Three
years I've watched yer, an' hif I've kept my tongue to meself that
don't say I don't know wot I knows."

"Indeed!"  Captain Francis Newcombe shrugged his shoulders.  He smiled
slightly.  "Then I should say, if it were true, that it is sometimes
_dangerous_, Mrs. Wickes--to know even a little about some things."

The woman rocked in the bed, and hugged her thin bosom against a spasm
of coughing that came near to strangulation.

"Bah!" she shouted, when she could get her breath.  "I ain't afraid of
yer any more.  Damn yer, I'm dyin' anyhow!  It's nothin' to you wiv yer
smug smile, except yer glad I'll be out of the wye--an'--an', Gawd, it
ain't nothin' to me either.  I'm sick, of it all, an' I'm glad, I am;
but afore I goes I wanter know wot abaht Polly.  Wot'd yer tyke her
awye for three years ago?"

"For the price of two quid paid weekly to a certain Mrs. Wickes, who is
Polly's mother," said Captain Francis Newcombe composedly; "and with
which the said Mrs. Wickes has swum in gin ever since."

Mrs. Wickes fell back exhausted on her pillow.

"Wot for?" she whispered in fierce insistence.  "I wanter know wot for?"

"Well," said Captain Francis Newcombe, "even at fifteen Polly was an
amazingly pretty little girl--and she showed amazing promise.  I'm
wondering how she has developed.  Extremely clever youngster!  Don't
see, in fact, Mrs. Wickes, where she got it from!  Not even the local
desecration of the king's English--in spite of the board schools!
Amazing!  We couldn't let a flower like that bloom uncultivated, could
we?"

The woman was up in the bed again.

"A gutter brat!" she cried out.  "An' you says send 'er to school wiv
the toffs in America, 'cause there wouldn't be no chance of doin' that
'ere at 'ome; an' I says the toffs don't tyke 'er kind there neither.
An' you says she goes as yer ward, an' yer can get 'er in, only she 'as
to forget abaht these 'ere London slums.  An' she ain't to write no
letters to me except through you, 'cause hif any was found down 'ere
they'd turn their noses up over there an' give Polly the bounce."

"Quite right, Mrs. Wickes!" said Captain Francis Newcombe
imperturbably.  "And for three years Polly has been in one of the most
exclusive girls' seminaries in America--and incidentally I might say I
am arranging to go over there shortly for a little visit.  If her
photographs are to be relied upon, she has more than fulfilled her
early promise.  A very beautiful young woman, educated, and now, Mrs.
Wickes--a lady.  She has made a circle of friends among the best and
the wealthiest.  Why, even now, with the summer holidays coming on, you
know, I understand she is to be the guest of a school friend in a
millionaire's home.  Think of that, Mrs. Wickes!  What more could any
woman ask for her daughter?  And why should you, for instance, ask more
to-night?  Why this eleventh hour curiosity?  You agreed to it all
three years ago, Mrs. Wickes--for two quid a week."

"Yes," said the woman passionately, "an' I'm probably goin' to 'ell for
it now!  I knowed then yer wasn't doin' this for Polly's sake, an' in
the three years I kept on knowin' yer more an' more for the devil you
are.  But I says to meself that I'm 'ere to see Polly don't come to no
harm, but--but I ain't goin' to be 'ere no more, an' that's wot I wants
to know to-night.  An' I asks yer, wot's yer game?"

"Really!"  Captain Francis Newcombe shrugged his shoulders again.
"This isn't very interesting, Mrs. Wickes.  And in any case, I fail to
see what you are going to do about it, or what lever you could possibly
bring to bear to make me divulge what you are pleased to imagine is
some base and ulterior motive in what I have done.  It is quite well
known among Captain Newcombe's circle that he is educating a ward in
America.  It is--er--rather to his credit, is it not?"

"Gawd curse yer wiv yer smooth tongue!" said Mrs. Wickes wildly.  "I
knows!  I knows yer got a game--some dirty game wiv Polly in it.  Yer
clever, yer are--an' yer ain't human.  But yer won't win, an' all along
'o Polly.  She won't do nothin' that ain't straight, she won't.  Polly
ain't that kind."

"Oh, as to that, and granting my wickedness," said Captain Francis
Newcombe indifferently, "I shouldn't worry.  Having you in mind, Mrs.
Wickes, I fancy even that would be quite all right--blood always tells,
you know."

"Blood!  Blood'll tell, will it?"  The woman was rocking in the bed
again.  She burst into harsh laughter.  It brought on another, and even
more severe, strangling fit of coughing.  "Blood'll tell, will it?" she
choked, as she gasped for breath.  "Well, so it will!  So it will!"

Captain Francis Newcombe stared at her from narrowed eyes.  "What do
you mean by that?" he demanded sharply.

But Mrs. Wickes had fallen back upon her pillow in utter exhaustion.
She lay fighting painfully, pitifully now for every breath.

"What do you mean by that?" repeated Captain Francis Newcombe still
more sharply.

And then suddenly, as though some strange premonition were at work, all
fight gone from her, the woman threw out her arms in a broken gesture
of supplication.

"I'm a wicked woman, a bloody wicked 'un I've been.  Gawd forgive me
for it!" she whispered.  "Polly ain't no blood of mine."

Captain Francis Newcombe rested his elbows on the back of the chair,
and smiled coolly.

"I think," he said evenly, "it's my turn now to ask what the game is?
That's a bit thick, isn't it--after three years?"

The hectic spots had faded from the woman's face, and an ominous
greyness was taking their place.  She was crying now.

"It's Gawd's truth," she said.  "I was afraid yer wouldn't 'ave give me
the two quid a week hif yer'd known I 'adn't no 'old on 'er.  Polly
don't know.  No one knows but me, an'--"  Her voice trailed off through
weakness.

Captain Francis Newcombe, save that his eyes had narrowed a little
more, made no movement.  He watched her without comment as she
struggled for her breath again.

"I didn't mean to 'ave no fight wiv yer, Gawd knows I didn't.  Gawd
knows I didn't send for yer for that.  I only wanted to ask yer wot
abaht Polly, an' to ask yer to be good to 'er, an'--an' tell yer wot
I'm tellin' yer now afore it's too late.  An'--an'--"  She raised
herself with a sudden convulsive effort to her elbow.  "Gawd, I--I'm
goin' _now_."

With a swift movement Captain Francis Newcombe whipped a flask from his
pocket, and held it to the woman's lips.

She swallowed a few drops with difficulty, and lay still.

Presently Mrs. Wickes' lips moved.

Captain Francis Newcombe, close beside the bed now, leaned over her.

"A lydy 'er mother was, an' 'er father 'e was a gentleman born 'e was.
I--I don't know nothin' abaht 'em except she was a guverness an' 'e
'adn't much money.  Neither of 'em 'adn't no family accordin' to 'er,
an' countin' wot 'appened she told the truth, poor soul."

Again Mrs. Wickes lay silent.  Her lips continued to move, but they
were soundless.  She seemed suddenly to become conscious of this, and
motioned weakly for the flask.  And again with difficulty she swallowed
a few drops.

"Years ago this was."  Mrs. Wickes forced the words with long pauses
between.  "'Ard times came on 'em.  'E got killed in a haccident.  An'
she took sick after Polly came, an' the money went, an' she wouldn't
'ave charity, an' she got down to this, like us 'uns 'ere, tryin' to
keep body an' soul together on the bit she 'ad left.  An' she died, an'
I took Polly.  Two years old Polly was then.  There wasn't no good of
tellin' Polly an' 'ave 'er give 'erself airs when she 'ad to go out an'
do 'er bit an' earn something.  An', wot's more, if she'd known I
wasn't 'er mother she might 'ave stopped workin' for me--an' I couldn't
'ave made 'er, 'avin' lost my hold on 'er--an' I wasn't goin' to 'ave
anything like that.  Polly Wickes--Polly Wickes--the flower girl.
Flowers--posies--pretty posies--that's where yer saw 'er--"

The woman's voice had thickened; her words, in snatches, were
incoherent:

"Polly Wickes--Polly Wickes--Polly Gray--Polly Gray 'er name is--Polly
Gray.  I got the lines an' the birth paper.  I kept 'em all these
years.  'Ere!  I got 'em 'ere."

"Where?" said Captain Francis Newcombe tersely.

"'Ere!"  Mrs. Wickes plucked feebly at the edge of the bed clothing.
"'Ere!"

Captain Francis Newcombe thrust his hand quickly in under the mattress.
After a moment's search he brought out a soiled envelope.  It bore a
faded superscription in a scrawling hand.  He picked up the candle from
the chair and read it:

  "Polly's papers which is God's truth,
      Mrs. Wickes X her mark."

He tore the envelope open rather carefully at the end.  It contained
two papers that were turned a little yellow with age.  Yes, it was
quite true!  His eyes travelled swiftly over the names:

"Harold Morton Gray....  Elizabeth Pauline Forbes.  Pauline Gray...."

There was a sudden sound from the bed--like a long, fluttering sigh.
Captain Francis Newcombe swung sharply about.  The woman's arm was
stretched out toward him; dulled eyes seemed to be striving desperately
in their fading vision to search his face.

"Polly!" Mrs. Wickes whispered.  "For--for for Christ's sake--be--be
good to Polly--be good to--"

The outstretched arm fell to the bed covering--and Mrs. Wickes lay
still.

Captain Francis Newcombe leaned forward, holding the candle, searching
the form on the bed critically with his eyes.  After a moment he
straightened up.

Mrs. Wickes was dead.

Captain Francis Newcombe replaced the papers in the envelope, and
placed the envelope in his pocket.  He set the candle back on the
chair, blew it out, and walked across the room to the door.

"Gray, eh?" said Captain Francis Newcombe under his breath, as he
closed the door behind him.  "Polly Gray, eh?  Well, it doesn't matter,
does it?  It's just as good an iron in the fire whether it's--Wickes or
Gray!"

--III--

THREE OF THEM

Twenty-five minutes later, Captain Francis Newcombe stood at the door
of his apartment.  Runnells admitted him.

"Paul Cremarre here yet?" demanded the ex-captain of territorials
briskly.

"Yes," said Runnells.  "Been here half an hour."

With Runnells behind him, Captain Francis Newcombe entered the living
room of the apartment.  A tall man, immaculately dressed, with a small,
very carefully trimmed black moustache, with eyes that were equally
black but whose pupils were curiously minute, stood by the mantel.

"Ah, monsieur!"  He waved his arm in greeting.  "_Salut_!"

"Back, eh, Paul?" nodded Captain Francis Newcombe, flinging himself
into a lounge chair.  "Expected you, of course, to-night.  Well, what's
the news?  How's the fishing smack?"

Paul Cremarre smiled faintly.

"Ah, the poor _Marianne_!" he said.  "Such bad weather!  It is always
the bilge.  If it did not leak so furiously!"  He lifted his shoulders,
and blew a wreath of cigarette smoke languidly ceilingward.

"So!" said Captain Francis Newcombe.  "Been searched again, eh?"

The Frenchman laughed softly.

"Two very charming old gentlemen who were summering on the French
coast, and were so interested in everything.  Could they come aboard?
But, why not?  It was a pleasure!  Such harmless old children they
looked--not at all like Leduc and Colferre of the Préfecture!"

"One more sign of the times!" commented Captain Francis Newcombe a
little shortly.  "And Père Mouche?"

"Ah!" murmured the Frenchman.  "That is another story!  I am afraid it
is true that his back is really bending under the load.  He has done
amazingly, but though the continent is wide, it can only absorb so
much, and there are always difficulties.  He says himself that we feed
him too well."

Captain Francis Newcombe frowned.

"Well, he's right, of course!  Leduc and Colferre, eh?  I don't like
it!  If we needed anything further to back us up in our decision lately
that it was about time to lay low for a while, we've got it here.
There is to-morrow night's affair, of course, that naturally we will
carry through, but after that I think we should come to a full stop
for, say--a six months' holiday.  Personally, as you know, I'm rather
anxious to make a little trip to America.  I'll take Runnells along as
my man for the looks of it.  He can play at valeting and still enjoy
himself if he keeps out of mischief--which I will see to it"--Captain
Francis Newcombe's lips thinned--"that he does!  That will account for
the temporary closing up of this apartment here.  And you, Paul--I
suppose it will be the Riviera for you?"

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah!" he said.  "As to that I do not know, but what does it matter?"
He laughed good-humouredly.  "I have no attraction such as monsieur
with a charming ward in America.  I am of the desolate, one of the
forlorn of the earth in whom no one has more than a passing interest."

"Except Scotland Yard and the Préfecture," said the ex-captain of
territorials with a grim smile.  He rose suddenly from his chair and
paced once or twice the length of the room.  "Yes," he said decisively,
"we'd be fools to do anything else.  It will give Père Mouche a chance
to work down his surplus stock, and the police to lose a little of
their ardour.  It's getting a bit hot.  Scotland Yard is badly flicked
on the raw.  London is becoming unhealthy.  Even Runnells here, whom I
would never accuse of having any delicate sense of prescience, has been
uneasy of late as though he felt the net drawing in."

"You're bloody well right!" said Runnells gruffly.  "I don't know how,
but it's true.  Let the coppers nose a cold scent for a while, I says.
I can do with a bit of America whenever you're ready!"

"Quite so!" said Captain Francis Newcombe.  "It's in the air.  Like
Runnells, I do not know exactly where it comes from, but I know it's
there."

"Monsieur," said the Frenchman, "I have often wondered about the
fourth--stragglers, I think you called us that night--about the fourth
straggler."

"You mean?" demanded Captain Francis Newcombe sharply.

"Nothing!" said the Frenchman.  "One sometimes wonders, that is all.
The thought flashed through my mind as you spoke.  But it means
nothing.  How could it?  More than three years have gone.  Let us
forget my remark."  He flicked the ash from his cigarette.  "Well,
then, as I am the only one left to speak, I will say that I too agree.
For six months we do not exist so far as business is concerned--after
to-morrow night."  He made a wry face, and laughed.  "Well, it will be
dull!  I fear it will be dull, and one will become _ennuyé_, but it is
wise.  So!  It is decided.  And so there remains only to-morrow night.
I was to be here this evening to discuss the details--and here I am.
Shall we proceed to discuss them?  I have made a promise to the little
Père Mouche that when I return he shall eat a _ragoût_ from a veritable
gold plate, and that Scotland Yard--"

The doorbell interrupted the Frenchman's words.

Runnells left the room to answer the summons.  He was back in a moment
with a card on a silver tray, which he handed to the ex-captain of
territorials.

The card tray was significant.  Captain Francis Newcombe glanced first
at Runnell's face, frowned--then picked up the card.  His eyes narrowed
as he read it.  On the card was written:

  DETECTIVE-SERGEANT MULLINS
    NEW SCOTLAND YARD

He handed the card coolly to Paul Cremarre.

"Everything all right so far as you are concerned?" he demanded in a
low, quick tone.

The Frenchman smiled at the card in a curious way, handed it back, and
lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Yes," he said.

"_Sure?_" said Captain Francis Newcombe.

"Absolutely!" replied the Frenchman in the same low tone.

"Very good!" said the ex-captain of territorials.  "Don't look so
damned white around the gills, Runnells.  _And watch yourself!_"  He
raised his voice.  "Show the sergeant in, Runnells!" he said.

A minute later, Runnells ushered in a thick-set, florid-faced man.

"Sergeant Mullins, sir!" he announced, and withdrew from the room.

The sergeant looked inquiringly from one to the other of the two men.

"I'm sorry to intrude, gentlemen," he said.  "It's Captain Newcombe,
I--"

Captain Francis Newcombe waved his hand pleasantly.

"Not at all, sergeant!" he said.  "I am Captain Newcombe.  What can I
do for you?"

"Well, sir," said the man from Scotland Yard, "I'm not saying you can
do anything, and then again maybe you can."  He glanced at the
Frenchman, and coughed slightly.

"Mr. Cremarre is a close friend of mine," said Captain Francis Newcombe
quietly.  "You may speak quite freely before him, so far as I am
concerned."

"Very good, sir!" said Sergeant Mullins.  "Well, then, even if the
papers hadn't been full of it all day, you'd probably know about it
anyway, being as how you were a friend of his.  It's Sir Harris
Greaves, sir--Sir Harris' murder."

Captain Francis Newcombe, as though instinctively, turned toward an
evening paper that lay upon the table, its great headlines screaming
the murder across the front page.

"Good God, sergeant--yes!" he exclaimed.  "It's a shocking thing!
Shocking!"  He jerked his head toward the paper, and glanced at Paul
Cremarre.  "You've read it, of course, Paul?"

"I've never read anything like it before," said the Frenchman grimly.
"The most wanton thing I ever heard of!  Absolutely purposeless!"

"Don't you be too sure about that, sir," said Detective-Sergeant
Mullins crisply.  "Things aren't done purposelessly--leastways, not
them kind of things."

"Exactly!" agreed Captain Francis Newcombe.  "Right you are, sergeant!
But you'll pardon me if I appear a bit curious as to why you should
have come to me about it."

"Well, sir," said Sergeant Mullins, "that's simple enough.  You are the
last one as had any conversation with Sir Harris before he was
murdered."

Captain Francis Newcombe stared at the Scotland Yard man in a puzzled
way.

"I am afraid I don't quite understand, sergeant," he said a little
helplessly.  "According to the published accounts, Sir Harris was
stabbed in his bed, presumably during the early morning hours, though
no sound was heard, and the crime wasn't discovered until his man went
to take Sir Harris his tea at the usual hour this morning.  But perhaps
the accounts are inaccurate?"

"No, sir," said Sergeant Mullins; "as far as that goes, they're
accurate enough.  The doctors say it must have been somewhere between
two and three o'clock in the morning."

"Quite so!" said Captain Francis Newcombe.  "That is what I had in
mind.  The last time I saw Sir Harris was yesterday evening at the
club.  Sir Harris left the club shortly before I did.  I have no exact
idea what the hour was, though the doorman would probably be able to
say, but I am quite certain it could not have been later than half past
eleven."

"It wasn't even as late as that, sir," said the man from Scotland Yard
seriously.  "Ten after eleven, it was, when Sir Harris left; and you,
sir, at a quarter past.  But I didn't say, sir, that you were the last
one as _spoke_ to Sir Harris alive.  Conversation was what I said,
sir--and a lengthy one too.  One says a lot in an hour or so, sir."

"Oh, I see!" said Captain Francis Newcombe, with a smile.  "Or,
rather--I don't!  What about this conversation, sergeant?"

"Well, sir, if you don't mind," said Detective-Sergeant Mullins,
"that's what I'd like to know--what it was about?"

"Good Lord!" gasped the ex-captain of territorials feebly.  "I'm not
sure I know myself--now.  What do men generally talk about over a
Scotch and soda?  I believe we started with the subject of democracy,
and I'm afraid, in fact I'm certain, I talked a good bit of drivel, and
incidentally settled several of the world questions and so on, and then
we drifted from one thing to another in a desultory fashion."

"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Mullins.  "And the things you drifted
to--could you remember them, sir?  It's very important, sir, that you
should."

"Well, if it's important, I'll try," said Captain Francis Newcombe
gravely.  "The shows, of course, and the American Yacht race, horses, a
hunting lodge Sir Harris had in Scotland, and--yes, I believe that's
all, sergeant.  But it's quite a range, at that."

Detective-Sergeant Mullins inspected the bottom button of his waistcoat
intently.

"Sir Harris was a bit of a criminologist in his way, as perhaps you've
heard, sir?" he said.

"Yes, I believe I have heard it said that was a hobby of his," nodded
Captain Francis Newcombe.  "But I wouldn't have known it from anything
Sir Harris said last night, if that's what you mean.  The subject
wasn't mentioned."

"Nor any crime?  And particularly any particular criminal?" prodded the
Scotland Yard man.

Captain Francis Newcombe shook his head.

"Not a word," he said.

Detective-Sergeant Mullins looked up a little gloomily from his
waistcoat button.

"I'm sorry for that," he said.

"So am I, if it would have helped any," said the ex-captain of
territorials heartily.  "But what's the point, sergeant?"

"Well, you see, sir," said the Scotland Yard man, "with all due respect
to the dead, Sir Harris fancied himself a bit, he did, along those
lines.  Some queer notions he had, sir--and stubborn, as you might say.
He's got himself into trouble more than once, and the Yard's had its
own time with him.  He's been warned, sir, often enough--and if he was
alive, he wouldn't say he hadn't.  It's what he's been told might
happen.  There's no other reason, as far as we've gone, why he should
have been murdered.  It looks the likely thing that he went too far
this time, and got to know more than some crook took a notion it was
safe to have him know."

Paul Cremarre smiled inscrutably at the Scotland Yard man.

"I take back what I said about it being a purposeless murder,
sergeant," he murmured.

"Yes, sir," said Detective-Sergeant Mullins.  "Well, I fancy that's
all, gentlemen.  We were hoping that if matters had reached as grave a
state as that--that is, if Sir Harris ever realised how deep he'd got
in--it would have been a bit on his mind, as you might say, and in the
course of a long conversation with a friend, sir, a hint of it, even if
he didn't go any further, might have cropped up."  He buttoned his
coat.  "You're quite sure, Captain Newcombe, thinking it over, that
there wasn't anything mentioned, even casually like, that would give us
a clue?"

"Quite, sergeant!" said the ex-captain of territorials emphatically.

"Well, I'll be going, then," said the Scotland Yard man.  "And sorry to
have taken up your time, sir."

"You've done nothing but your duty," said Captain Francis Newcombe
pleasantly.  He rang the bell.  "Runnells, bring Sergeant Mullins a
drink!"  And with a smile to the Scotland Yard man: "Will it be Scotch,
sergeant?"

"Why, thank you very much, sir," said Detective-Sergeant Mullins.  He
took the glass from Runnells.  "Here's how, sir!"  He wiped his lips
with the back of his hand.  "Good-night, gentlemen!"

"Good-night, sergeant," said the ex-captain of territorials.

"Good-night, sergeant," said the Frenchman.

Detective-Sergeant Mullins' footsteps died away in the hall.

Captain Francis Newcombe's dark eyes rested unemotionally upon the
Frenchman.

The Frenchman leaned against the mantel and stared at the end of his
cigarette.

The front door closed, and Runnells came back into the room.

"Now, Runnells," said Captain Francis Newcombe blandly, "bring us _all_
a drink, and we will talk about--to-morrow night."

--IV--

GOLD PLATE

A motor ran swiftly along a country road.

Two men sat in the front seat.

"My friend, Runnells," said one of the two quizzically, after a silence
that had endured for miles, "what in hell is the matter with you
to-night?"

"I don't know," said Runnells, who drove the car.  "What the captain
was talking about last night, maybe--the things you feel in the air."

"Bah!" said Paul Cremarre composedly.  "If it is only the air!  For
three years we have found nothing in the air but good fortune."

"That's all right," Runnells returned sullenly.  "But just the same
that's the way I feel, and I can't help it.  We're going to lay low for
a spell after to-night, and maybe that's what's wrong too--kind of as
though we were pushing our luck over the edge by sticking it just one
night too many."

The Frenchman whistled a bar lightly under his breath.

"I should be delighted--_delighted_," he said, "to leave to-night
alone--but not the Earl of Cloverley's gold plate!  Have you forgotten
that I told you I had made a promise to our little Père Mouche--to eat
_ragoût_ from a gold plate?  I have never eaten from a gold plate.  It
is a dream!"

"You're bloody well right, it is!" said Runnells gruffly.  "And I only
hope it ain't going to be anything worse'n a dream to-night."

"It is evident," said Paul Cremarre, with a low laugh, "that, whatever
you have eaten _from_, and whatever you have eaten _of_, to-night, my
Runnells, it has not agreed with you!  Is it not so?"

"Look here!" said Runnells suddenly.  "If you want to know, I'll tell
you.  I know everything's fixed for to-night, maybe better than it's
ever been fixed before--it ain't that.  It's _last_ night.  It's damned
queer, that bloke from Scotland Yard showing up in our rooms!"

"Ah!" murmured Paul Cremarre.  "Yes, my Runnells, I too have thought of
that.  But you were at home the night before, when Sir Harris Greaves
was murdered, you and the captain, were you not?  It is nothing, is it?
A mere little coincidence--yes?  You should know better than I do."

"There's nothing to know," said Runnells shortly.  "It's just the idea
of a Scotland Yard man coming to _our_ diggings.  Like a warning,
somehow, it looks."

"Yes," said Paul Cremarre.  "Quite so!  And the headlights now--hadn't
you better switch them off?  And run a little slower, Runnells.  It is
not far now, if I have made no mistake in my bearings."

Darkness fell upon the road; the motor slackened its speed.

"You were speaking of the visit from Scotland Yard," resumed the
Frenchman calmly.  "You were at home, of course, when Captain Newcombe
returned from the club the night before last at--what time was it, he
said?"

"Oh, that's straight enough!" grunted Runnells.  "He came in about half
past eleven, and we were both in bed by twelve.  I've told you it ain't
that.  What would he have to do with sticking an old toff like Sir
Harris that never done him any harm?"

"Nothing," said Paul Cremarre.  "I was simply thinking that Sergeant
Mullins' theory reminded me of something that you, too, may perhaps
remember."

"What's that?" inquired Runnells.

"A rifle shot that was fired one night in a thicket when the Boche had
us on the run," said Paul Cremarre.

Runnells swung sharply in his seat.

"Gawd!" he said hoarsely.  "What d'you want to bring _that_ up for
to-night?  I--damn it--I can see it out there in the black of the road
now!"

The Frenchman remained silent.

Runnells spoke again after a moment.

"He's a rare 'un, all right, he is, is the captain," he said slowly;
"but it wasn't him that did in Sir Harris Greaves.  I'd take my oath on
that.  We was both in bed by twelve, as I told you, and he was still
sleeping like a babe when I got up in the morning."

"And you, Runnells," inquired the Frenchman softly, "you too slept
well?"

"You mean," said Runnells quickly, "that he slipped out again during
the night?"

"Not at all!" said Paul Cremarre quietly.  "How should I know?  I mean
nothing, except that Captain Francis Newcombe is a man like no other
man in the world; that he is, as I once had the honour to
remark--incomparable."

Runnells grunted over the wheel.

"I shan't ask him," he said tersely.

"Nor I," said Paul Cremarre.

Again there was silence; then the Frenchman spoke abruptly:

"Slower, Runnells.  If I am not mistaken, we are arrived.  The lodge
gates can't be more than a quarter of a mile on, and the bit of lane
that borders the park ought to be just about here--yes, there it is!"

Runnells stopped the motor; and then, with the engine running softly,
backed it for a short distance from the main road down an intensely
black, tree-lined lane.

"That's far enough," said Paul Cremarre.  "We can't take any risk of
being heard from the Hall.  Now edge her in under the trees."

"What for?" grumbled Runnells.  "It's so bloody dark, I'd probably
smash her.  She's right enough as she is.  There's a fat chance of any
one coming along this here lane at two o'clock in the morning, ain't
there?"

"Runnells," said the Frenchman smoothly, "I quote from the book of
Captain Francis Newcombe: 'Chance is the playground of fools.'  Edge
her in, my Runnells."

"Oh, all right!" said Runnells--and a moment later the lane was empty.

Still another moment, and the two men, each carrying two rather
large-sized, empty travelling bags, began to make their way silently
and cautiously through the thickly wooded park of the estate.  It was
not easy going in the darkness.  Now and then they stumbled.  Once or
twice Runnells cursed fiercely under his breath; once or twice the
Frenchman lost his urbanity and swore softly in his native tongue.

Five, ten minutes passed.  And now the two reached the farther edge of
the wooded park, and halted here, drawn back a little in the shadow of
the trees.  Before them was a narrow breadth of lawn; and, beyond, a
great, rambling, turreted pile lay black even against the darkness, its
castellated roof and points making a jagged fringe against the sky line.

Runnells appeared suddenly to find vent for his ill humour in a savage
chuckle.

"What is it, Runnells?" demanded the Frenchman.

"I was just thinking that in the five or six years since I was here
with Lord Seeton, you know, I ain't forgotten his nibs the Earl of
Cloverley.  I'd like to see his face in the morning!  He's a crabbed
old bird.  My word!  He'll die of apoplexy, he will!  And if he don't,
he won't be so keen on his 'ouse parties to visiting nabobs and cabinet
ministers.  He didn't send into London and get his gold service out of
the bank for _us_ when we were here."

"Perhaps," said the Frenchman gently, "he did not know that you were
valeting Lord Seeton at the time--or perhaps it was because he did!"

"Aw, chuck it!" said Runnells gruffly.  He stared at the black, shadowy
building for a minute.  Then abruptly: "It's two o'clock, ain't it?
You looked, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Paul Cremarre.  "I looked when we left the motor.  The
time's right.  It was just ten minutes of two."

"Well, what the blinking 'ell's the matter now, then?" complained
Runnells.  "The place is as black as a cat.  They're all in bed, aren't
they?"

"That is not for me to say," replied the Frenchman calmly.  "We will
wait, Runnells."

Runnells, with another grunt, sat down on one of the bags, his back
against a tree.  The Frenchman remained standing, his eyes glued on the
great house across the lawn.

"Aye," said Runnells after a moment, and chuckled savagely to himself
again, "I'd give a bob or two, I would, to see the old boy in the
morning!  A fussy, nosey, old fidge-budget, that's what he is!
A-poking of his sharp little nose into everything, and always afraid
some 'un won't earn the measly screw he's paying for work he'd ought to
pay twice as much for!  It's no wonder he's rich!"

"You seem to have very pleasant recollections of your visit, Runnells,"
said the Frenchman slyly.  "I wonder what he caught you at?"

"He didn't catch _me_!" said Runnells defiantly.  "Though I'll say
this, that if I'd known then that I was ever coming back now, I'd have
kept my eyes peeled, and he'd be going into mourning for more'n his
blessed gold plate to-night!  He didn't bother me none, me being Lord
Seeton's man, but at that I saw enough of him so that the talk that
went on in the servants' hall wasn't in any foreign language that I
couldn't tumble to.  My eye!" said Runnells.  "A rare state he'll be
in!"

The Frenchman said nothing.

The minutes dragged along.  Runnells too had relapsed into silence.  A
quarter of an hour passed.  Then Runnells commenced to mutter under his
breath and move restlessly on his improvised seat; and then, getting up
suddenly, he moved close over beside the Frenchman.

"I say!" whispered Runnells uneasily.  "I don't like this, I don't!
What d'you suppose is up?"

"A great deal, I have no doubt, my Runnells," said the Frenchman
imperturbably.  "More perhaps than you and I could overcome in the same
time--if at all."

"That's all right!" returned Runnells.  "I'm not saying it ain't, but
it's getting creepy standing here and staring your eyes out.  I'm
beginning to see the trees moving around and coming at you, and in
every bit of breeze the leaves are like a lot of bloody voices
whispering in your ears.  I wish to Gawd you hadn't said anything about
_that_ night!  It gives me the--"

"Look!" said the Frenchman suddenly.

From an upper window, out of the blackness of the building across the
lawn, there showed a faint spot of light that held for a few
seconds--and then, in quick succession, a series of little flashes came
from the room within.

The two men stood motionless, intent, staring at the window.

The flashes ceased.

The Frenchman reached out and laid his hand on Runnells' arm.

"No need for a repeat," he said quickly.  "You got it, didn't you?"

"My word!" exclaimed Runnells.  "Two guards--butler's pantry--all
clear!  Strike me pink!"

The Frenchman laughed purringly under his breath.

"Did I not say he was incomparable?  Come on, then, Runnells--quickly
now!"

And now it was as though two shadows moved, flitting swiftly across the
lawn, and along the edge of the building and around to the rear.  And
here they crouched before a doorway, and the Frenchman whispered:

"Don't be delicate about it, Runnells.  This isn't any _inside_ job!
Nick it up badly enough so's a blind man could see where we got in."

"That's what I'm doing," said Runnells mechanically.  His mind seemed
obsessed with other things.  "Two guards!" he muttered.  And again:
"Strike me pink!"

And after a moment, with both door and frame eloquent of the rough
surgery that had been practised upon them, the door opened.

The two men entered, and closed the door silently behind them.  An
electric torch stabbed suddenly through the blackness and played for a
moment inquisitively over its surroundings.

"'Tain't changed a bit, as I said when I saw the plan," commented
Runnells.

They went on quickly.  But where before there had been a steady play of
the electric torch it winked now through the darkness only at
intervals.  A door opened here and there noiselessly; the footsteps of
the men were cautious, wary, almost without sound.  And then, as they
halted finally, and the torch shot out its ray again, Runnells drew in
his breath with a low, catchy, whistling sound.

The torch disclosed a narrow serving pantry, and, on the floor at one
side, a great metal box or chest--obviously the object of their visit.
But Runnells for the moment was apparently not interested in the chest.

"Look at that!" he breathed hoarsely--and pointed to the farther end of
the pantry where a swinging door was ajar, and through which an
upturned foot protruded.

The Frenchman set his bags down beside the metal chest, moved swiftly
forward, pushed the swinging door open, and stepped silently through
into what was obviously the dining room.  And Runnells, beside him,
whispered hoarsely again, but this time with a sort of amazed
admiration in his voice.

"Gawd!" said Runnells.  "Neat, I calls that!  Neat!  What?"

Two men lay upon the floor, gagged, bound and apparently unconscious.
One, from his livery, was a servant in the house; the other was in
civilian clothes.

Paul Cremarre pointed to the latter.

"The man that came out from London with the box from the bank," he
observed complacently.  He pushed Runnells back through the swinging
door into the pantry.  "Well, my Runnells, you were grumbling over a
few minutes' delay, let us see if we can be equally as expeditious and
efficient with infinitely less to do."  He reached the chest and
examined it.  "Padlocks, eh?  Let me see if I can persuade them!"  He
bent over the chest, and from his pocket came a little kit of tools.

Runnells stood silently by.  There was no sound now save the breathing
of the two men, and, as the minutes passed, an occasional faint,
metallic rasp and click from Paul Cremarre at work.

And then the Frenchman flung back the lid, and straightened up.

"Quick now, Runnells--to work!" he said briskly.  "Père Mouche is
waiting for his _ragoût_!"

"My eye!" said Runnells with enthusiasm, as the electric torch bored
into the interior of the box.  "Pipe it!  I've served with the swells,
I have, and Lord Seeton was one of the biggest of 'em, but I never saw
the likes of this before.  Gold plate to eat off of!  My eye!"

"They are very beautiful," said the Frenchman judicially; "but it would
be a sacrilege against art to appraise them in haste and in a poor
light.  Work quickly, Runnells!  And do not fill any one of the bags
too full.  You will find it heavy.  The four will hold it all
comfortably."

"Gawd!" said Runnells eagerly, as he bent to his task.

The men worked swiftly now, without words, transferring the Earl of
Cloverley's priceless service of gold plate to the four travelling
bags.  The Frenchman, the quicker of the two, completed his task first,
and locked his two bags.  And then suddenly he touched Runnells on the
shoulder.

"Listen!" he whispered.  "What's that?"

Faintly, scarcely audible, there came a curiously padded, swishing
sound--like slippered feet.  It came from the direction, not of the
swing door where the two guards lay, but from beyond the door through
which Runnells and the Frenchman had entered the pantry.

"It's some one coming, all right," Runnells whispered back.

"But only _one_," said the Frenchman instantly.  "Quick!  Finish your
job--but don't make a sound."  There was a sudden, vicious snarl in his
whisper.  "Pull that hat of yours down over your eyes.  I'll answer the
door, as you English say!"

He moved back along the pantry with the noiseless tread of a cat, and
took up his position against the wall at the edge of the closed door.
From his pocket he drew a revolver.  It was quite black, quite silent
now--save for the approaching footsteps.

Perhaps a minute passed.

And then the door opened, and a light went on.  A grey-whiskered little
man in a dressing gown, with bare feet thrust into slippers, stood on
the threshold.  He cast startled eyes on a crouching figure in the
centre of the pantry, the tell-tale travelling bags, the gaping
treasure chest, and wrenched a revolver from the pocket of his dressing
gown.  But the Frenchman, reaching out, struck from the edge of the
doorway.  The revolver sailed ceilingwards from the other's hand, and
exploded in mid-air.  And coincidently the Frenchman struck again--with
the butt of his own weapon--and the man went limply to the floor.

Runnells came staggering forward under the load of the bags.

"Strike me dead!" he gasped, "if it ain't the nosey old bird himself!
Serves him proper--sneaking around to make sure he ain't paying money
for nothing, and hoping he'll catch 'em asleep on sentry-go!"

The Frenchman snatched up two of the bags.

"Quick!" he said tersely.

Captain Francis Newcombe raised his head from his pillow, and propped
himself up on his elbow.  A door nearby suddenly opened.  Other doors
were being rapped upon.  Voices came.

The ex-captain of territorials sprang from his bed, thrust his feet
into slippers, threw a bathrobe over his pajamas, opened his door and
stepped out into the hall.  Some one had already turned on a light.  He
found himself amongst a group of fellow guests, whose number was being
constantly augmented.  From other doorways, wary of their extreme
dishabille, women's faces peered out timidly--their voices, less
restrained, demanding to know what was the matter, added an hysterical
note to the scene.

"A shot was certainly fired somewhere in the house, though I couldn't
place where it came from," declared some one.  "I am quite sure of it."

"There is no question about it," corroborated another.  "It woke me up,
and I ran out here into the hall."

"The Earl is not in his room!" announced a third excitedly.  "I've just
been there."

"Ring for the servants!" screeched an elderly female voice.  "Some one
may be killed!"

"For God's sake!" snapped a man gruffly.  "I didn't hear it myself, but
if a shot was fired it's fairly obvious by now that it wasn't fired up
_here_!  What are you standing around like a pack of sheep for?"

"That's what I was wondering," said Captain Francis Newcombe softly to
himself--and joined the now concerted rush down the stairway.

Lights were going on all over the house now, and the men servants began
to appear.  The rush scurried from one room to another.  A cry went up
from some one ahead.  It turned the rush into the dining room, and
there, in their motley garbs, chorusing excited exclamations, the crowd
surrounded the two gagged and bound guards.

Then some one else shouted from the pantry that the metal chest had
been broken open, and that the gold service was gone.  There was
another rush in that direction.  Captain Francis Newcombe accompanied
this rush.  On the floor lay a revolver.  The ex-captain of
territorials picked it up.

"Hello!" he ejaculated.  "It's rather queer this has been left
behind--or perhaps it belongs to one of the two out there in the dining
room."

"No, sir," said one of the servants at his elbow.  "It's the Earl's,
sir.  I'd know it anywhere.  And, begging your pardon, sir, it's a bit
strange that _he_ hasn't been seen since--"

"Here he is!" cried a voice from beyond the farther pantry door.
"Here, lend a hand!  The Earl's been hurt."

Captain Francis Newcombe aiding, the Earl was carried back to the
dining room, and restoratives hastily applied.  Here, the man in
livery, released now, his voice weak and unsteady, was telling his
story; his companion was still unconscious.

"... Gawd knows," the man was saying.  "We was in the pantry, and Brown
there 'e thought 'e 'eard a sound out 'ere in the dining room.  And 'e
gets up and pushes the swinging door open and goes through, and a
minute later I 'ears what I thinks is 'im calling me.  ''Ere, quick,
Johnston!' 'e says.  And I goes through the door, and something bashes
me over the 'ead, and I goes out.  What 'appened though is as clear as
daylight now.  Brown goes through the door and gets hit on the 'ead,
and I goes through the door and gets hit on the 'ead.  And it wasn't
Brown as called to me, it was the blighter that did us in, and--"

The Earl's voice broke in suddenly.

"I'm all right, I tell you!" he insisted weakly.  "There were two of
them ... one behind the door knocked the revolver out of my hand as I
fired, and smashed me over the head with something ... bags, travelling
bags for the plate ... that's the way they're carrying it ... I--"

The Earl's voice trailed off.

"It can't have been more than five minutes ago then," said the man with
the gruff voice, "for they were therefore in the house when the shot
was fired.  They can't have got very far carrying that load.  Quick
now!  We'll search the park."

"But they wouldn't attempt to carry it very far anyway," objected some
one.  "They'd have a motor, of course."

"Exactly!" retorted the other.  "But not near enough to the house to be
heard.  Did any one hear a motor after that shot was fired?  Of course,
not!  We may get them before they get their motor.  Also, we'll use a
motor too!  Any one of the chauffeurs here?"

"Yes, sir," answered a man.

"Good!  Any one armed?"

"I've got the Earl's revolver," said Captain Francis Newcombe.

"Well, there's the gun room," said the man who had assumed command.
"And you servants get lanterns and things.  Look lively, now!  Sharp's
the word!"

And for some reason Captain Francis Newcombe smiled grimly to himself,
as he attached his person to the chauffeur, and, accompanied by three
other pajama-clad guests, raced from the house.

At the garage Captain Francis Newcombe appropriated the front seat
beside the chauffeur, his fellow guests scrambled into the tonneau, and
a moment later the big car shot around the end of the house and began
to sweep down the driveway.  The ex-captain of territorials screwed
around in his seat for a backward glance as they tore along.  Every
window in the great, rambling, castle-like edifice appeared to be
alight; this caused a filmy, lighted zone without, and through this
raced ghostly figures in bathrobes and dressing gowns that were almost
instantly swallowed up in the shadows of the trees; and from amongst
the trees, dancing in and out, like huge fireflies in their effect,
there showed in constantly increasing numbers the glint of lanterns.

But now the motor was at the lodge gates, nosing the main road, and the
chauffeur pulled up.

"Which way would you say, sir?" he asked anxiously.

"I'd vote for whichever is the shortest way to London--that's to the
left, isn't it?" Captain Francis Newcombe responded promptly.  He
turned to his fellow guests.  "I don't know what you think about it?"

"Yes," one of the others answered, "I'd say that's the way they'd most
likely take."

"Very good, sir!" said the chauffeur.  "Left, it is, and--"  He broke
short off.  "There they are!" he cried excitedly.  "Listen!  They're
coming out of that lane there, over to the right!"  He swung the motor
sharply into the straight of the main road.  "There they are!  See
'em!" he cried again, as the headlights brought the rear of a speeding
motor into view.  "The old general back there in the house was right.
They didn't bring their motor any nearer for fear it would be heard.
That's where it has been--up the lane there.  But we've got 'em now!
This old girl'll touch seventy and never turn a hair."

"Corking!" contributed Captain Francis Newcombe enthusiastically.
"You're sure of the seventy, are you?"

"Rather!" exclaimed the chauffeur.  "Look for yourself, sir.  We're
overhauling them now like one o'clock."

The ex-captain of territorials for a moment stared intently along the
headlights' rays to where, gradually, the other motor was coming more
and more into focus.

"By Jove, I believe you're right!" he agreed heartily--and from the
pocket of his dressing gown produced the Earl's revolver.

The motor was lurching now with the speed.  A hundred yards intervening
between the flying cars diminished to seventy-five--to fifty.  _Still
closer_!  The men in the tonneau clung to their seats.  Twenty-five
yards!

Captain Francis Newcombe shouted to his companions over the roar and
sweep of the wind.

"I'll take a pot at the beggars, and see if that'll stop 'em!" he
yelled.  "Better chance over the top of the windshield, what?"

Captain Francis Newcombe stood up, swayed with the car, fired twice in
quick succession and once after a short pause over the top of the
windshield--but the ex-captain of territorials' mark seemed curiously
comprehensive in expanse, for his eyes were at the same time searching
the side of the road ahead.  And now there showed at the end of the
headlight's path a hedgerow bordering close against the side of the
road.  Captain Francis Newcombe fired again, but as the car lurched now
the ex-captain of territorials seemed momentarily to lose his balance,
and with the lurch swayed heavily against the chauffeur's arm.

There was a startled yell from the chauffeur; a vicious swerve--and the
big motor leaped at the hedge.  Came a crash of splintering glass as
Captain Francis Newcombe was pitched head first against the windshield;
a rip and rend and tear as the motor bucked and plunged and twisted in
its conflict with the thick, heavy hedge; and then a terrific jolt that
in its train brought a full stop.

And Captain Francis Newcombe, flung back and half out of the car, put
his hands to his eyes and brought them away wet from a great gush of
blood.

"Carry on!  Carry on!" he cried weakly.  "You'll never have a better
chance to get them."

"My God!" screamed the chauffeur.  "Carry on?  We're a bally wreck!"

"What beastly luck!" murmured Captain Francis Newcombe--and lost
consciousness.

--V--

"DEAR GUARDY"

Captain Francis Newcombe, a bandage swathing his head from the tip of
his nose upward, groped out with his hand for a glass that stood on the
bedside table, succeeded only in upsetting it, and swore savagely under
his breath.  At the same moment, he heard the front door of his
apartment open and close.

"Runnells!" he shouted irritably.  "D'ye hear, Runnells?  Come here!"

A footstep came hurriedly along the hall, and the door of the bedroom
opened.

Paul Cremarre stood on the threshold.

"It is not Runnells," said the Frenchman, staring at the bed.  "I used
my key.  I saw Runnells and another man go out a few minutes ago."

"You, Paul!" exclaimed Captain Francis Newcombe quickly.  "I did not
expect you to return from France until to-morrow.  I thought Runnells
had forgotten something and come back.  That was the doctor with him.
Runnells has gone out for supplies.  They've only just brought me back
from Cloverley's this morning, and the place here was pretty well
cleaned out of necessities."

The Frenchman moved over to the bedside, and grasped Captain Francis
Newcombe's hand.

"Monsieur," he said earnestly, "I am desolated to see you like this.
How am I to tell you of my gratitude?  How am I to tell you what I owe
you?  We would have been caught.  In two or three more little minutes,
Runnells and I would have been _pouf_!"

"That seemed rather obvious," said Captain Francis Newcombe dryly.

"_Bon Dieu!_" ejaculated the Frenchman.  "Yes!  I heard from Runnells,
of course--the whole story in code.  There is only one man who would
have done that.  I, Paul Cremarre, will never forget it.  Never!  And I
say again that I am desolated to see you like this.  Runnells said your
eyes were very badly injured."

"That is Runnells' lack of balance in the use of English," said the
ex-captain of territorials.  "There is nothing whatever the matter with
my _eyes_.  If I am blind for the moment, it is because my eyelids are
kept shut by some damned medical method of torture, and because of this
bandage.  When I took a header into the broken windshield, I got a bit
of a cut that beginning with the bridge of my nose had a go straight
across on each side just under the eyebrows.  They've made a bit of a
fuss over it, wouldn't let me come home until now, and I must still be
tucked up in bed, but--"

"It is more than you make out," said the Frenchman gravely.  "I know
that.  But that your eyes are saved--that is luck!"

"Quite so!"  Captain Francis Newcombe shrugged his shoulders.  "And
you?--speaking of luck."

"The best!" replied the Frenchman in a low, quick tone.  "Père Mouche
has had his _ragoût_, and afterwards another that was so hot
that--would you believe it?--it melted the dishes.  And, besides, he
has had a stroke of good fortune in getting rid of some other stock, a
lot of it, on the continent.  There will be a nice bank account in a
day or so--to-morrow, if you want any."  His voice grew suddenly less
buoyant.  "But just the same, it is well that we are taking a holiday.
It has caused a furor.  The papers, the Earl, Scotland Yard--how they
buzz!  And the Prefecture more suspicious than ever!  Your English
journals are like spoiled children.  They will not stop crying, and
they are very bad tempered about it.  This morning, for instance.  I
have one here.  Shall I read to you what it says?"

"Good heavens--no!" expostulated Captain Francis Newcombe hastily.
"Everybody from the Earl down to Runnells has read that stuff to me for
a week!  If you want to do anything that smacks of intelligence you can
get me another drink in place of the one I knocked over when you came
in--you know where the Scotch is; and if you want to do any reading see
if there is any mail for me.  I mentioned letters but the doctor said
no.  However, the doctor is gone, so look on the desk in the living
room."

"All right," said the Frenchman, as he turned briskly away.  "_Un petit
coup_ is decidedly in order this morning.  I will have one with you."

He was back presently from his errand.  He filled the glasses, and
placed one in Captain Francis Newcombe's hand.

"_Salut, mon capitaine!_" he said.  "Here's to the cash the little Père
Mouche is getting ready for us--a fat, a very nice fat little dividend!"

"Good!" said the ex-captain of territorials.  "How about the mail?  Any
letters?"

"I've got them here," Paul Cremarre answered.  "There were only three."

"Well, what are they?" demanded Captain Francis Newcombe.

The Frenchman examined the first of the letters in his hand.

"A city letter from Hipplewaite, Jones & Simpkins, Solicitors--"

Captain Francis Newcombe chuckled.

"That's about a hen Runnells ran over a month or so ago.  Extremely
valuable fowl!  Poultry show stock, and all that, you know.  What has
the price risen to now?"

Paul Cremarre tore the letter open.

"Two pounds, ten and six," he said.

"Still much too cheap!" grinned Captain Francis Newcombe.  "The man is
simply robbing himself.  Chuck it away before Runnells sees it.  He
could have settled for a pound three weeks ago.  What's next?"

The Frenchman examined another envelope.

"City letter again," he said.  "From 'The Sabbath House.'"

"Ah, yes!" said Captain Francis Newcombe gravely.  "Most worthy object.
Gave 'em ten quid last month.  A mission down in Whitechapel, you know.
Elevation of the unelevated, and all that.  Shocking conditions!  I
must see that your name goes on that list."

"Shall I tear it up?" drawled the Frenchman.

"Yes," said Captain Newcombe.

The Frenchman remained silent for a moment.

"Well?" prompted the ex-captain of territorials.  "You said there were
three."

"I have put the other on the table beside you," said the Frenchman.
"It is _intime_.  The stamp from America.  The handwriting of a lady.
You will read it yourself when you are able."

"Able!" echoed Captain Francis Newcombe, with sudden asperity.  "I
won't be able to do anything for another week, let alone read.  Open
it!  You know damned well it's only from my ward in America.  And since
I'm going out there as soon as I'm fit again, I'm rather keen to know
what her immediate plans are.  She was going to a school friend's home
for the summer.  I've explained to you before that her mother did a
rather big thing for me once, and I'm trying to repay the debt.  Open
it, and read it to me.  There's nothing private about it."

"But, certainly!" agreed the Frenchman, as he opened the letter.  "It
is only that you are both young, and that the thought crossed my mind
you--"

"Read the letter!" snapped Captain Francis Newcombe.  "If there's any
enclosure for her mother, you can lay that aside."

"There is no enclosure," returned the Frenchman good-humouredly.
"Well, then, listen!  I read:

  The Corals,
  Manwa Island, Florida Keys,
  Tuesday, June 30th.

DEAR GUARDY:

You knew, of course, I was going to visit Dora Marlin and her father,
Mr. Jonathan P. Marlin, this summer, so you won't be altogether
surprised at the above address.  You see, we came here a little sooner
than I expected, so that your last letter, forwarded on from New York,
has just reached me.

I am wild with delight to know that you have decided to come out to
America for a visit.  I showed your letter at once to Dora and Mr.
Marlin, and they absolutely insist that you come here as their guest.
You will, won't you?  You old dear!  You'll have to, else you won't see
me--so there!  You see, we're on an island in the Florida Keys, and
it's ever so far from the mainland, and there's no other place on it to
stay except with us.  I wonder, I wonder if you'll know me?  I'm not
the little Polly I was, you know.

Oh, guardy, it's simply wonderful here!  The house is really a castle,
and it's built mostly of coral, and is so pretty; and the foliage is a
dream--the whole island, and it's really an awfully big one, is just
like a huge garden.  And, too, it's just like a little world all of
your own.  The servants are mostly negroes, with pickaninnies running
around, and they live in jolly little bungalows, ever and ever so many
of them, that peep out of the trees at you everywhere you go.  And then
there is the aquarium.  It's Mr. Marlin's hobby.  I couldn't begin to
describe it.  I never knew such beautiful and wonderful and queer
creatures existed in the sea.

Dora's a dear, of course.  I'm sure you'll lose your heart to her at
once.  And I've already grown so fond of Mr. Marlin, and the more so,
perhaps, because Dora is frightfully worried about him.  I am afraid
there is something very serious the matter with his mind, though a
great deal of the time he appears to be quite normal.  I don't
understand it, of course, because it is all about the financial
conditions in the world; but anyway--

Paul Cremarre stopped reading aloud abruptly.  There was a moment of
silence while his eyes swept swiftly on to the end of the paragraph.

"Well?" inquired Captain Francis Newcombe.  "What's the matter?  Have
you lost your place?"

The Frenchman drew in his breath sharply.

"_Bon Dieu!_" he exclaimed excitedly.  "Listen to this!  It is the lamp
of Aladdin!  It is the Isle of Croesus!  We are rich!  It is superb!
It is magnificent!  Listen!  I read again:

--he has a great sum of money in banknotes here; half a million
dollars, he said.  He showed it to me.  It was hard to believe there
was so much.  Why, you could just make a little bundle of it and put it
under your arm.  I asked him why he had it here, and he patted it and
smiled at me, and told me it was the only safe thing to do.  And then
he tried to explain a lot of things to me about money that I couldn't
understand at all.

Paul Cremarre looked up, and waved the letter about jubilantly.

"Yes, yes!" he cried.  "I am awake!  See!  I pinch myself!  It is
amazing!  In banknotes!  In American money!  _That_ is valuable, eh?
And a little bundle that one could put under one's arm!"

Captain Francis Newcombe's lips were a straight line under the bandages.

"I'm afraid I don't get the point," he said coldly.

"The point!"  Paul Cremarre's face was flushed now, his eyes burned
with excitement.  "But, sacre nom, the point is--a half million dollars
in cash.  And so easy!  It is ours for the taking.  The man is--ha,
ha!--yes, I learned something in the war from the Americans--he is what
they call a nut!"  He tapped his forehead.  "And from the nut we
extract the kernel!  Yes?"

"I think not!" said Captain Francis Newcombe evenly.

"Heh?"  The Frenchman stared incredulously.  "But it must be that you
joke--a little joke of exquisite irony.  Yes, of course; for what could
be better--or suit us better?  We were about to lay low for a while
because it was becoming too hot for us on this side of the water--and,
presto, like a gift of the gods, there immediately awaits us fortune on
the other side!"

Captain Francis Newcombe suddenly thrust out a clenched hand toward the
other.

"_No!_" he said in a low voice.

"_Bon Dieu!_" gasped the Frenchman helplessly.  "But I do not
understand."

"Then I'll try to make it plain," said Captain Francis Newcombe in
level tones.  "There are limits to what even I will do, and it is well
over that limit here.  To go there as a guest of--"

"Monsieur was a guest, I understand, of the Earl of Cloverley a few
days ago," interrupted the Frenchman quickly.

"Yes!" said Captain Francis Newcombe tersely.  "And the guest before
that of many others.  But I did not have a ward to consider upon whose
reputation I was to trade, and which I would wreck.  Do you understand
that?"

"Damn!" said the Frenchman.  "There is always a woman!  Damn all women,
I say!"

"You may damn them as much as you please," said Captain Francis
Newcombe, a grim savagery in his voice; "but there'll be none of that
sort of thing here.  And you keep your hands off!  Do you also
understand that?  There's going to be one decent thing in my life!"  He
stretched out his clenched hand again.  "Curse these bandages!  I wish
I could see your face!  But I tell you now that if any attempt is made
to get that money I'll crush you with as little compunction as I would
crush a snake.  Is _that_ plain?"

"But, monsieur--monsieur!" protested the Frenchman.  "That is enough!
Why should you say such things to me?  I am distressed.  And it is not
just.  You asked me to read a letter, and I read it.  That was not my
fault.  And surely it was but natural, what I said.  Has it not been
our business to do that sort of thing together?  I did not know how you
felt about this.  But now that I know it is at an end.  I have
forgotten it, my friend.  It is as though it had never been."

"All right, then!" said the ex-captain of territorials in a softer
tone.  "As you say, that ends it."

"Shall I go on with the letter?" asked the Frenchman pleasantly.

"No," said Captain Francis Newcombe.  "Give it to me.  I've had enough
of it for now."  He smiled suddenly, as the Frenchman placed the letter
in his hand.  "I'm afraid I'm a bit off colour this morning, Paul.
Sorry!  The trip down from Cloverley's has done me in a bit, and my
eyes hurt like hell.  I'd give a hundred pounds for a few good hours of
sleep."

"Try, then," suggested the Frenchman.  "I'll be where I can hear you if
you want anything.  I won't go out until Runnells gets back."

"Good enough!" agreed Captain Francis Newcombe; and then abruptly, as
the Frenchman rose from his chair: "Speaking of Runnells, Paul--you
will _oblige_ me by saying nothing to him of the contents of this
letter."

"I will say nothing to any one, let alone Runnells," replied the
Frenchman quietly.  "It is already forgotten.  Call, if you want
anything."

"I will," said Captain Francis Newcombe.

The Frenchman's footsteps died away in an outer room.

Captain Francis Newcombe's fingers tightened around the letter he held
in his hand, crushed it, and carefully smoothed it out again.  He lay
there motionless then, his face turned away from the door, his lips
thinned, his under jaw outthrust a little.

"Three years in the planting!" he muttered to himself.  "It has ripened
well!  Very well!  Paul--bah!  What does it matter, after all, that he
read the letter?  I am not sure but that he has already outlived his
usefulness--and Runnells too!"  He thrust the letter suddenly
underneath his pillow.  "Damn the infernal pain!" he gritted between
his teeth.  "If I could only sleep for a bit--sleep--sleep!"

And for a time he tossed restlessly from side to side, and then
presently he slept.

Runnells, in response to a demand from the bedroom, brought in the
luncheon tray.

"You've had a rare whack of sleep," he said, as he laid the tray down
on the table beside the bed.

"What time is it?" inquired Captain Francis Newcombe.

"Three o'clock," said Runnells.  "Here, sit up a bit, and I'll bolster
the pillows in behind you."

"Where's Paul?" asked the ex-captain of territorials.

Runnells did not answer immediately.  In arranging the pillows he had
found a letter.  He looked at it coolly.  It ought to be worth looking
at if Captain Francis Newcombe kept it under his pillow.

"Well?" snapped the ex-captain of territorials.

Runnells placed the letter on the table within easy reach beside the
tray, pulled the table a little closer, and sat down on the edge of the
bed.

"He went out after I got back," said Runnells.  "Said he'd sleep here
to-night, that's all I know.  This is a bit of stew."

Runnells, with one hand presented a forkful of meat to Captain Francis
Newcombe's lips, and with the other hand possessed himself of the
letter again.

Runnells read steadily now.  He conveyed food to Captain Francis
Newcombe's mouth mechanically.

"Damn it!" spluttered the ex-captain of territorials suddenly.  "Do you
take me for a boa constrictor?  I can't bolt food as fast as that!"

Runnells' eyes were curiously, feverishly alight.

"Yesterday you said I went too slow," he mumbled.

"In a great many respects, Runnells," said Captain Francis Newcombe
tartly, "you are an irritating, tactless ass.  But not to be too hard
on you, and especially in view of the last week, I have to admit you
possess one redeeming feature that I am bound to give you credit for."

"What's that?"  Runnells was at the end of the letter now.  He stared
at the bandaged face with eyes a little narrowed, and with lips that
twisted in a strange, speculative smile.

"A fidelity of the same uninitiative quality that a dog has," said
Captain Francis Newcombe, motioning for more to eat.  "And in that
sphere you're a success.  I hope you'll always stick to it."

Runnells made no answer.  His eyes were on the letter again--re-reading
it.

The lunch proceeded in silence.

At its conclusion, Runnells stood up, slipped the letter behind the
pillow again, and gathered the various dishes together on the tray.

"America, eh?" confided Runnells to himself, as he carried the tray
from the room.  "So _that's_ the bit of all right, is it?  And Paul
don't know anything about it!  And the captain don't know--I know!
Half a million dollars!  Strike me pink!"

--VI--

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

It was a night of storm.  The rain, wind driven, swept the decks in
gusty, stinging sheets; the big liner rolled and pitched, disgruntled,
in the heavy sea.

Within the smoking room at a table in the corner Captain Francis
Newcombe turned from a companion who sat opposite to him to face a
steward who had just arrived with a tray.

"How about this, steward?" he asked.  "Is this weather going to delay
our getting in?  I understand that if we don't pass quarantine early
enough they hold us up all night."

"So they do, sir," the steward answered.  "But this isn't holding us up
any, a bit nasty though it is.  We'll be docked at New York by two
o'clock to-morrow afternoon at the latest.  Thank you, sir!"  He
pocketed a generous tip as he departed.

The young man at the opposite side of the table, dark-eyed,
dark-haired, with fine, clean-cut features, a man of powerful physique,
whose great breadth of shoulder was encased in an immaculate dinner
jacket, lifted the glass the steward had just set before him.

"Here's how, captain!" he smiled.

"The same, Mr. Locke!" returned Captain Francis Newcombe cordially.

Howard Locke extracted a cigarette from his case, and lighted it.

"The end of as chummy a crossing as I've ever had," he said.  "Thanks
to you.  And I've been lucky all round.  Cleaned up well in London, and
'll get a pat on the back for it from dad--and a holiday, which,
without throwing any bouquets at myself, I'll say I've earned.  I think
I'll do a bit of coast cruising in that little old fifty-footer of mine
that I've filled your ear full of during the last few days.  Wow!  And
not least of all my luck was Joyce introducing me to you at lunch that
day in the club."

"It's very good of you to say so," said Captain Francis Newcombe.

"Good, nothing!" exclaimed the young American.  "I mean it!  You've
made the trip for me.  And now how about your plans?  I know you're
going on South somewhere, for you mentioned it the other day.  But what
about New York?  You'll be a little while there, and I feel pleasurably
responsible for the stranger in the strange land.  The house is barred,
for the family is away for the summer; but there are the clubs, and I'd
like to put you up and show you around a bit."

Captain Francis Newcombe studied the young man's face for a moment--he
smiled disarmingly as he did so.  Howard Locke was the son of a man of
great wealth, the head of a great financial house, and of a family
whose social status left nothing to be desired--and America was the
Land of Promise!  But one could be _too_ eager!

"I'd like to," he said heartily; "but I fancy I've still quite a little
trip ahead of me, and I'm afraid I'm a bit overdue already.  As you
say, I mentioned that I was going South.  To be precise, I'm going down
Florida way--or do you call it up?--as the guest of a Mr. Marlin."

Howard Locke removed the cigarette from his lips.

"Marlin?" he repeated.  "Not Jonathan P. Marlin, by any chance?"

Captain Francis Newcombe nodded.

"Whew!"  The young American whistled softly under his breath.

Captain Francis Newcombe lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

"You know him?" he asked.

"No," Locke answered.  "Not personally.  I know of him, of course.
Everybody does.  And I don't want to be nosey and butt in, and you can
heave that glass at me by way of reply if you like, but how in the
world do you happen to know him?"

Captain Francis Newcombe smiled.

"I don't," he said.  "My ward, who has been over here at school for the
past few years, has been a classmate of Miss Marlin, and she is
spending part of the summer with them."

"Oh, I see!"  Howard Locke tapped the end of his cigarette on the edge
of an ash tray once or twice, and glanced in evident indecision at his
companion.

"Go on!" invited Captain Francis Newcombe.  "What is it?"

Howard Locke laughed a little awkwardly.

"Well, I don't know," he said.  "Nothing very much.  And I'm afraid
it's not done, as you English put it, for me to say anything, since he
is your prospective host; still, as you say you are not personally
acquainted with him yourself, I think perhaps you ought to know just
the same.  I haven't anything definite to go on, no authoritative
source of information, but it is rather generally understood that old
Marlin's gone a bit queer in the head."

"Really!" ejaculated Captain Francis Newcombe.  "Good lord!  I had no
idea of any such thing!  And my ward's on this island of his in the
Florida Keys, and--"

"There's nothing whatever to be alarmed about," said the young American
hastily.  "It's nothing like that.  He's as harmless as you are, or as
I am.  It's only on one subject--money.  I suppose he was one of the
wealthiest men in America at the close of the war, and since then he's
been wiped out."

"Wiped out?" Captain Francis echoed incredulously.

"Comparatively, of course," said Howard Locke.  "I don't know how much
he has got left--nobody does.  It's been the talk of the financial
district.  There isn't a share of stock anywhere to be found standing
in his name.  He sold everything; and how much was used to cover
losses, and how much remained to himself no one knows.  You see, the
last few years, to put it mildly, have been hell in a financial and
business way.  The foreign exchange situation has been a big factor in
helping to play the devil with all sorts of holdings.  Values have
depreciated; the market has gone smash.  Industries that were big
dividend payers haven't been able to meet their overhead.  You may not
believe it, but hundreds and hundreds have taken their money out of the
banks, and, insisting on being paid in American gold certificates, when
they couldn't get the actual gold itself, have hoarded it in the safe
deposit vaults.  God knows why!  Just instances the general panicky
conditions everywhere, I suppose.  The aftermath of the war!  History
repeating itself, so the writers on economics tell us.  Small
consolation!  However!  Marlin met with crash after crash.  He lost
millions.  He's not a young man, you know, and it evidently got him
finally in the shape of a monomania.  Finance!  You understand?  He was
on a dozen big directorates and his trouble began to show itself in the
shape of an obsession that everything should be turned into cash,
buildings, plants, everything--into American cash.  Naturally he was
quietly and unostentatiously dropped.  Poor devil!  Certainly, his
losses were terrific.  I don't know whether he's got anything left or
not."

"By Jove!" said Captain Francis Newcombe gravely.  "I'm glad you told
me.  Pretty rough that, I call it."

"Yes," said Locke.  "It is!  Damned rough!  I think everybody was sorry
for him.  And so he's down there at this place of his now on an island
in the Florida Keys, eh?"

"Yes," said Captain Francis Newcombe.

The young American selected another cigarette from his case, rolled it
slowly between his fingers--and leaned suddenly across the table.

"Look here!" he said.  "I've an idea.  I'm going cruising
somewhere--why not there?  The Florida coast hits me down to the
ground.  How would you like to make the trip with me?"

Captain Francis Newcombe leaned back in his chair, and laughed a little.

"I'm afraid not," he said.  "I--"

"Oh, come on, be a sport!" urged Howard Locke enthusiastically.  "The
more I think of it, the better I like it.  I'll have good company on a
cruise, and you'll enjoy it.  And it's quite all right so far as my
showing up there is concerned.  It isn't as though I were foisting
myself on their hospitality.  The little old boat's my home; and, for
that matter, I can drop you and sail solemnly away.  You'll have the
time of your life.  What's the objection?"

"Time," said Captain Francis Newcombe.  "It would take a long while,
wouldn't it?"

"Well," said Howard Locke, "I wouldn't guarantee to get you there as
fast as a train would, but what difference does a few days make?  It
isn't as though it were a business engagement you had to keep."

"No; that's so," acknowledged Captain Francis Newcombe.  "And frankly I
must admit it appeals to me; but"--he looked at his watch--"I don't
know whether I can manage it or not.  Anyway, I promise to sleep on it.
It's after twelve, and time to turn in.  What do you say?"

"That suits me," said Howard Locke, "so long as you promise to say
'yes' in the morning."

"We'll see," said Captain Francis Newcombe.

The two men rose from their chairs, and, crossing the room where
several games of bridge were in progress, stepped out on the deck.  And
here, their respective cabins lying in different directions, they bade
each other good-night.

But now Captain Francis Newcombe, despite the pitching of the ship and
the general unpleasantness of the night, appeared to be in no hurry.
He walked slowly.  It was the lee side, and under the covered deck he
was protected from the rain.  He looked behind him.  The young
American, evidently in no mind for anything but the snugger shelter of
his cabin, had disappeared.  The deck was deserted.

The ex-captain of territorials stepped to the rail, and stared out into
the murk, through which there showed, like pencilled streaks on a black
background, the white, irregular shapes of the cresting waves.  The
howl of the wind, the boom and crash of the seas made thunderous
tumult, conflict, turmoil.  And he laughed.  And spume, flying, struck
his face.  And he laughed again because a sort of fierce exaltation was
upon him, and he found something akin in these wild, untramelled voices
of the elements--a challenge, far-flung and savage, and contemptuous of
all who would say them nay.

And then his eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and his fingers played a soft
tattoo upon the dripping rail.

"I wonder!" said Captain Francis Newcombe to himself.  "I wonder if it
suits my book?"

His mind began to moil over the problem in a cold, unprejudiced,
judicial way.  Was the balance for or against the acceptance of the
young American's offer?  To arrive at Marlin's place in the company of
a man of the standing of Howard Locke was an endorsation that spoke for
itself.  But he already had an unqualified endorsation.  Polly supplied
it.  Still, he could not have too much of that sort of thing.  Would,
then, the man be in the way, a hindrance, a complication?  He could not
answer that off-hand, but it did not seem to be a vital point.  What he
proposed to do on Manwa Island in a general way he knew well enough;
but just how he proposed to do it, and just how long he proposed to
stay there, a week, or a month, or longer, only local conditions as he
found them must decide.

He shrugged his shoulders suddenly.  Neither Howard Locke nor any other
man would make of himself a hindrance--hindrances were removed.  But
there was another point, an outstanding point.  After Manwa Island
there was--America.  True, he had brought Runnells with him, while he
had said good-bye to Paul Cremarre, who had departed for Paris, and
thereafter for such destination as his fancy prompted, for the period,
mutually agreed upon, of six months--but he, Captain Francis Newcombe,
was not prepared to say when, or where, if ever, he intended to
utilise, in the same manner as before, the services of either Runnells
or the Frenchman again.  Certainly not in America, if a lone hand
promised better there!  He proposed to play a lone hand at this Manwa
Island.  It might well be that he would continue to do so thereafter.
And in America an intimacy with Howard Locke, such as this projected
cruise offered, would help amazingly to spread and germinate the seed
already sown by Polly Wickes.  Polly Wickes was his private property!

Captain Francis Newcombe smiled confidentially at the angry waters.

"Yes," he said, "I think it is quite possible that he may be able to
_persuade_ me."

He turned abruptly away from the rail, making for his cabin, which was
on the deck above and on the opposite side of the ship.  And presently,
halting in the lighted alleyway before his door, he turned the key in
the lock and entered.

And then, just across the threshold, he stood for the fraction of a
second like a man dazed--and the door, torn from his hand by a fierce
gust of wind, slammed with a bang behind him.  The cabin was on the
windward side, the window was open, and outside the window, indistinct,
shadowy, as though almost it might be an hallucination of the mind, a
man's form suddenly loomed up.  There was a flash, the roar of a
revolver shot, muffled, almost drowned out in the thunder of the
storm--and Captain Francis Newcombe lay flat upon the cabin floor.

The next instant he flung himself over beside the settee, and protected
here from another shot, raised his head.  The form had vanished from
the window.

A cold fury seized upon the man.  From his pocket he drew his own
revolver, and covering the window as he backed swiftly for the door,
wrenched the door open and made for the first egress to the deck.  Too
late, of course!  The deck was deserted.  He stood there, grim-faced,
tight-lipped, straining his eyes up and down the length of the deck
through the darkness, the rain beating into his face.

And then he began to run again--like a dog seeking scent.  There were a
dozen places up here where a man might hide--the juts of the
superstructure, the great, grotesque, looming ventilators, the openings
through to the other side of the deck.  But he found nothing, no
one--there was only the deserted deck, the drenching rain.  And the
howl of the wind metamorphosed itself into ironical shrieks.

Captain Francis Newcombe returned along the deck, and halted outside
his cabin window.  He examined it critically.  It had been pried open
from the outside--the marks were distinctly indented on the sill, as
though a jimmy, or iron bar of some kind, had been used.

He stared at it, his jaws clamped.  It was unpleasant.  Some one on the
ship had deliberately, premeditatively, attempted to murder him.  There
was something of hideous malignancy in it.  To pry the window open, and
wait there patiently in the storm for the sole purpose of ending a
man's life!  It hadn't succeeded because intuition, or, perhaps,
better, an exaggerated instinct of self-preservation born of the years
in which he had flaunted defiance of every law in the face of his
fellow men, had prompted him, though taken unawares, to act even
quicker than his assailant who lay in wait, and to fling himself
instantly to the floor of the cabin.

Who was it?  Why was it?  Who, on board the ship, had any incentive,
any reason, any cause to murder him?  Save for Locke, the young
American, he knew no one on board, barring Runnells, of course, except
in the ordinary, casual way of shipboard acquaintanceship struck up
since the ship had left Liverpool.  It could not be any one of
these--at least, not logically.  And of them all, it certainly could
not be Locke.  The ship's company?  Absurd!  Runnells?  Still more
absurd!  And so he had eliminated _everybody_, and yet _somebody_ had
done it!

He began to work with the window.  Reaching inside he drew the curtains
carefully together, and then lowered the window itself.  When he
re-entered his room, even providing he were still being watched, he
would not be exposed in the same way as a target again!

He stood there now in the rain, his face hard, with savage, drooping
lines at the corners of his mouth.  Was he being watched now?  Was
there a cat-and-mouse game in play?  Well, two could play at that!  He,
too, could prowl about the ship.  His bed held little of invitation for
him!

He went to Runnells' room.  The man was in bed asleep.  That definitely
disposed of Runnells!

He returned and made another circuit of the upper deck; and then,
forward, by one of the open companionways, he descended to the deck
below.  His mind was in a strange state of turmoil.  It was not
physical fear.  It was as though a host of haunting shapes were being
marshalled against him, were rising up out of the past to disturb him,
jeering at him, mocking him, plaguing him with sinister possibilities.
The past was peopled with shapes, shapes that had lived in the world of
Shadow Varne; shapes which might well be accused of this attempt to do
away with him, could they but take tangible form, could their presence
but be reconciled with the here and now, with this ship, with these
damp, slippery decks, with the drive and sting of the rain, with the
scream and howl of the wind, with the plunge and roll of the great
liner, the buffeting of the waves--if they could but be reconciled with
_material_ things.  He clenched his hands.  He was not as a man who
could search his memory in vain for one who owed him such a debt as
this; it was, rather, that his memory became crowded and confused with
the _number_ that came thronging in upon it, each vying with the others
to shriek the loudest its boasted claim to the attempted retribution
to-night.

He set his teeth.  Where had he failed?  When had he left ajar behind
him the door of the past that allowed any one of these ghostly shapes
to slip through upon his heels?  Ghostly?  There was little of the
ghostly here!  He _must_ have been recognised by some one on board the
ship.  It seemed incredible, impossible--but it was equally
incontrovertible.  Who?  And what did it portend?  To-night he had won
the first hand, but--

_Locke_!  He was standing beside the smoking room window.  Locke was in
there, his back turned, standing beside one of the bridge tables,
watching a game.  It was a little strange!  He had parted with Locke
out here on the deck--and Locke was going to his cabin to turn in.

For an instant Captain Francis Newcombe held there, his brows knitted
in a perplexed frown.  Howard Locke!  It was preposterous; it would not
hold water; it was childish--unless the young American were some one
other than he pretended to be, and there wasn't a chance in a thousand
of that!  His mind worked swiftly now.  Locke had been introduced to
him at lunch in the club by a fellow member a few days before they had
sailed.  That certainly vouched for the man sufficiently, didn't it?
Locke had volunteered the information that he had booked passage on
this ship, and they had not met again until here on shipboard.  If
Locke was what he passed for, if he was of one of the best families of
America, the son of a millionaire, a clever, hard-working and ambitious
young business man, it was untenable to assume for an instant that he
was a potential murderer.  It was even laughable.  There wasn't even
that one chance in a thousand that he could be any other than he
seemed, not a chance in a million, and yet--

"Chance," said Captain Francis Newcombe, "is the playground of fools.
We will see!"

He turned and ran swiftly along the deck.  A minute later he was
standing before one of the two doors of the young American's suite.  A
little metal instrument was in his hand, but it went instantly back
into his pocket--the door was not locked.  He stepped inside and closed
the door behind him.  Locke had one of the best and most expensive
reservations on the ship--a suite of two rooms and a private bath, but
there was a separate door from each of these rooms to the passageway
without, since, naturally, they were not always booked en suite.  And
the room he stood in now was the one Locke used for his sitting room,
and always as the entrance to the suite itself.

Captain Francis Newcombe was quick in every movement now.  He ran
through to the other room--the bedroom--closing the connecting door
behind him.  He switched on the light, and turned at once to the door
that gave here on the passageway.  The key was in the lock, and the
door was locked.  He unlocked it.  The next instant he had a
portmanteau open and was delving into its contents.  It contained
nothing but clothing--shirts, collars, ties, underwear, and the like.
He opened another, and still another with the same result.  Papers!  It
was the man's papers that interested him.

He snarled a little savagely to himself.  There was nothing for it then
but the steamer trunk under the couch--and Locke might be back at any
moment.  He dragged out the trunk--and snarled again savagely.  It was
locked.  He began to work with it now, swiftly, deftly, with the little
steel picklock.  It yielded finally, and he flung back the lid.  Yes,
this was what he wanted!  On the top lay a leather despatch case.  But
this also was locked.  Again Captain Francis Newcombe set to work--and
presently was glancing through a mass of papers and documents that the
despatch case had contained: letters from the father's firm to the son,
signed by Locke senior; a letter of credit in substantial amount; an
underwriting agreement with a London house for the floating of a huge
issue of bonds, signed and sealed, the tangible evidence of young
Locke's successful trip, of which he had spoken.  Incontrovertible
evidence that Howard Locke was no other than he appeared to be, and--

Captain Francis Newcombe sprang for the electric-light switch, and
turned off the light.  There was Locke now!  The pound of the ship, the
noise of the storm, had of course deadened any sound in the passageway,
but he could hear the other at the sitting room door.  There was no
time to replace the despatch case and push the trunk back under the
couch, let alone attempt to lock either one.  The man was coming
now--across the other room.  Captain Francis Newcombe laid the despatch
case silently down on the floor, opened the door as silently, stepped
out into the passageway and ran noiselessly along it.

He reached the door of his own cabin.  His excursion to Locke's cabin
and the evidence of intrusion he had been forced to leave behind him