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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-The Camera Fiend

-

-by E.W. Hornung

-

-London

-T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.

-Adelphi Terrace

-1911

-

-

-Contents

-

- I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS

- II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN

- III. HIS PEOPLE

- IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN

- V. THE GLASS EYE

- VI. AN AWAKENING

- VII. BLOOD-GUILTY

- VIII. POINTS OF VIEW

- IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH

- X. SECOND THOUGHTS

- XI. ON PAROLE

- XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS

- XIII. BOY AND GIRL

- XIV. BEFORE THE STORM

- XV. A LIKELY STORY

- XVI. MALINGERING

- XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH

- XVIII. A THIRD CASE

- XIX. THE FOURTH CASE

- XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP

- XXI. AFTER THE FAIR

- XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS

-

-

-Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily

-exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken

-away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in

-open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion

-of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been

-bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For

-it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been

-called “a conscientious ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his

-house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he

-did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a

-blue pencil and a briar pipe.

-

-“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of

-chicken-pox, sir.”

-

- The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured

- but laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.

-

-“Then you must come back to-night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all

-nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor

-of yours.”

-

-“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on

-me, and then see what sort of night I have.”

-

-“You could go up again to-morrow.”

-

-“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate

-emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so

-acutely conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.

-

-“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.

-

-“Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the

-Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.”

-

-“Who are the Knaggses?”

-

-“The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley’s, sir; they go to Westminster

-now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St. John’s

-Wood Park.”

-

-“And the lady you mentioned?”

-

-“Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother’s; it was through her

-I went to Mr. Coverley’s, and I’ve often stayed there. She’s in the

-Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord’s.”

-

-Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that

-other lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no

-guile in any Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them

-resembled the great twin brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted

-a “pocket edition” on his arrival in the school. He had few of their

-other merits, though he took a morbid interest in the games they played

-by light of nature, as well as in things both beyond and beneath his

-brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit up half your nights with

-asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to Mr. Spearman,

-who was an average man. He had never disguised his own disappointment

-in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of outspoken and

-disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some sympathy

-with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning

-he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who

-was getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the

-two names and addresses.

-

-“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” “Absolutely certain,

-sir.”

-

-“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?”

-

-“Rather, sir!”

-

-“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.”

-

-Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to

-arrive very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished

-with more ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the

-best of them was framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its

-foreground was the nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down

-into the quad, where the fellows were preparing construes for second

-school in sunlit groups on garden seats. At that moment the bell began.

-And by the time Pocket had changed his black tie for a green one with

-red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the

-bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he

-would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.

-

-The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a

-world of buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel

-as good as anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in

-the corner seats did not dream of calling the youth an “old ass,” much

-less a young one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school

-were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there

-were still a few fellows  in Pocket’s house who made an insulting point

-of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was

-pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably

-unknown and unsuspected of one’s foibles in the train. It made Pocket

-feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in

-the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in bed. He

-took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him

-good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously

-at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was

-transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his

-paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him.

-Would the match hold out at Lord’s? If not, which was the best of the

-Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his

-expenses, so that these questions took an adventitious precedence over

-even such attractive topics as an execution and a murder that bade fair

-to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and having supped on

-the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in _Henry Dunbar_, the

-novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something like a

-murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying

-buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real

-crimes in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself

-there too soon.

-

-The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose

-professional standing is never quite on a par with their material

-success. The injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it

-may be that his temper was at the root of the prejudice against him. He

-was never very amiable with Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every

-sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had some call to complain.

-

-“You mean to tell me,” he expostulated, “that you’ve gone back to the

-cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you weren’t a stupid

-schoolboy I should throw up your case!”

-

-Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more

-days and nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible

-resentment.

-

-“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled.

-

-“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself coffee in

-the night, as you’ve done before.”

-

-“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.”

-

-“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first.

-Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea

-voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She

-sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.”

-

-The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the

-subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to

-his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following

-in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might

-have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he

-might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a

-tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken

-kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it

-at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had

-not the heart to discuss it now.

-

-“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he

-sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”

-

-“There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we

-want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative

-that does more harm than good in the long run.”

-

-“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good

-night without smoking I should be thankful.”

-

-“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep

-until to-morrow?”

-

-“If you like.”

-

-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard

-box from his bag.

-

-“Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you

-even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the

-temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this

-prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to

-bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in

-the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better

-give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you

-go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the

-morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.”

-

-They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering

-whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with

-friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been

-so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations;

-besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And

-the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the

-train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.

-

- The time-table of that boy’s day must speak for itself. It was already

- one o’clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his

- breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley’s card. At 1.15 he was munching

- a sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook’s in Oxford

- Street. The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed

- by another; and a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas

- would undoubtedly have disapproved.

-

-At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a

-placard with “Collapse of Middlesex” in appalling capitals. And at the

-station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord’s for

-nothing.

-

-The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the

-theatres, and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud’s

-thrust itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for

-years. He had often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered

-being taken by his sister when a little boy at Coverley’s, but she had

-refused to go into the Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at

-the time but sorry ever afterwards, because so many of the boys of

-those days had seen everything and seemed none the worse for the

-adventure. It was one of the things he had always wanted not so much to

- do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of Horrors had frozen

-his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a criminological

-governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the budding

-criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and

-_Henry Dunbar_ formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy

-had other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building,

-and enter eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.

-

-A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but

-Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band.

-And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the

-glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the

-great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their

-unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the

-extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed

-down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at

-work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his

-catalogue to bear on one of them.

-

-Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the

-schoolboy through a work on his father’s shelves called _Annals of Our

-Time_. He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept

-him awake long after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not

-scowling and ferocious as he had always pictured them, but far more

-horribly demure and plump. Here were immortal malefactors like the

-Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek by jowl, looking as though

-they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete raiment, looking

-anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes their quick

-bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death, rusty

-pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face

-smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the

-waxwork about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own

-clothes, and the veritable dock in which many of them had heard their

-doom, they looked hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat

-not in the dock but on the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of

-him; and the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for

-the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then

-he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace

-from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old

-ruffian’s revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with

-the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost

-as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of

-crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had

-hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet

-wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his

-mind again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid

-place to himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the

-heels of a whole family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning

-their sorrow in a sea of gore, their pilot through the catalogue a

-conscientious orphan with a monotonous voice and a genius for

-mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to see or hear him or any

-other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was trying to

-place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into a

-real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.

-

-Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the

-comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find

-that it was after four o’clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home

-from Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there

-before them, and he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub

-shoulders with flesh and blood once more, and to look in faces not made

-of wax in the devil’s image. His way, which he knew of old, would 

-naturally have led him past Miss Harbottle’s door; but, as she was only

-to be his second string for the night, he preferred not to be seen by

-that old lady yet. Such was the tiny spring of an important action; it

-led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite unforeseen temptation.

-

-In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable

-pawnbroker’s shop; in the pawnbroker’s window the chances are that you

-might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family

-Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses,

-opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery,

-all of which could not tempt you less than they did Pocket Upton the

-other June. There were only two things in the window that interested

-him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was an old rosewood

-camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but the thing

-that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what

-looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the

-price. A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked

-places on the slow walks with a slow companion which were all the

-exercise this unfortunate fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges

-complete, so that one could try it now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian

-at the end of their garden in  St. John’s Wood Park! And all very

-likely for five bob if one bargained a bit!

-

-Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any

-such sum would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life?

-Of coure it would have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared

-to take the consequences if found out; it need not involve his notion

-of dishonour. Still, it must be recorded that the young or old as was

-conscientious enough to hesitate before making his fatal plunge into

-the pawnbroker’s shop.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-A BOY ABOUT TOWN

-

-

-The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in

-St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the

-boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room.

-Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at

-all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed

-him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any

-improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in

-Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had spent a summer’s afternoon;

-indeed, she rather wondered at his being allowed alone in London at

-all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in conversation with his elders,

-at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own Westminster boys were allowed

-alone in London every day of their lives. But Mrs. Knaggs said that was

-a very different thing, and that she thought Pocket’s public school

-must be very different from Westminster. Pocket bridled, but behaved

-himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and got as far

-towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley’s misfortune

-and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him where

-he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring

-he had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs

-said of course he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked

-her as properly as though it were the invitation he made sure must

-follow. After all, Vivian Knaggs had stayed at Pocket’s three weeks one

-Christmas, and Guy a fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would

-think of that; it was not a matter to broach to them, or one to worry

-about, prematurely.

-

-Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than

-Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton

-jacket, the  other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an

-unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They

-seemed very glad to see him, however, and the stiffness was wearing off

-even before Pocket produced his revolver in the basement room where the

-two Westminsters prepared their lessons and had their evening meal.

-

-The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs

-pronounced it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a

-thousand pounds. This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he

-and his revolver were made of, then and there in the garden, and the

-more confident that it never would be heard in the house.

-

-“It would,” answered Vivian, “and seen as well. No, if you want to have

-a shot let’s stick up a target outside this window, and fire from just

-inside.”

-

-The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but,

-unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it

-also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room

-and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because

-she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a

-cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket

-examining the target, weapon in hand.

-

-There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition

-from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs,

-descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the

-matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with

-a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them

-to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs

-contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of

-Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very

-straight message by Vivian after supper.

-

-“The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission

-which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a

-spare bed in the house.”

-

-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented

-him from going into particulars.

-

-“A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost

-his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were

-boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook

-his head.

-

-“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.”

-

-“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.”

-

-“Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your

-sleep,” pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging the

-interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a

-window or set the house on fire.”

-

-“I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve

-not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.”

-

-And with further information on both points the son of the house went

-upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed

-gravity.

-

-“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake

-the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.”

-

-Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was

-not really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt

-he had made rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly

-cast adrift at sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor

-was this quite the case as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in

-Wellington Road. But to her he was not going until decency compelled

-him; he was going to have another game of bagatelle with Guy Knaggs

-first. It will be seen that with all his sensibilities the youngest

-Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took a great deal for

-granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry

-over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was

-obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the

-subject of his friend’s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been

-refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St.

-Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour

-to go to bed in; and that was neither the first nor the last of his

-erratic proceedings.

-

-“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his hat

-to walk round with Pocket.

-

-“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.

-

-“Haven’t you got any?”

-

-“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!”

-

-“Left your luggage there?”

-

-“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?”

-

-Young Knaggs looked in _Whitaker_ and said they closed at ten. There

-was still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it

-was not much use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss

-Cottage, and the adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.

-

-Old Miss Harbottle, his mother’s great friend, would have none of him

-either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden

-gate was one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated

-indoors. The downstairs lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a

-light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on

-the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and

-grey curls; but his mother’s friend’s mastiff was making night so

-hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother’s son, that it

-was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the

-brute’s mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange then, for Miss

-Harbottle at first flatly refused to believe that this was Tony Upton,

-whom she had not seen since his preparatory schooldays, and she seemed

-inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton, she could not take

-him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and the cook

-had just left. Miss Harbottle’s cook had always just left, except when

-she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant’s fun out of

-the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.

-

-His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his

-purse. The only thing to do was to put up at Shaw’s Hotel, Trafalgar

-Square; that was where his people always stayed, where every servant

-was supposed to know them all. He pushed on at once through the cool

-June night, and paid away three of his last shillings for the drive.

-Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw’s; it was the worst time of the year,

-they told him, and he  supposed they meant the best. He also supposed

-there had been changes in the staff, for nobody seemed to know his name

-as well as he had been led to expect at home.

-

-They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels

-opposite, and recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven

-Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the

-only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being

-requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room.

-Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him

-to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward

-respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr.

-Bompas in the morning!

-

-“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught up his bag

-in a passion.

-

-“All right, little man! I shouldn’t be rude about it,” said the dapper

-cashier. “If I couldn’t pay my shot I should sleep in the Park, on a

-nice fine night like this.”

-

-“I shall!” shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would

-prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it

-was his own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering

-what else he was to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have

-seen.

-

-He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which

-lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or

-heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast

-about; his brothers, and so many other fellows of his own age, had so

-much. It would make a great yarn some day, how he had come up from

-school to see a doctor—and slept in the Park!

-

-Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly

-anything of London except St. John’s Wood and his present landmark of

-the Nelson column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having

-stayed some time (under another doctor) as a child at Shaw’s Hotel.

-But, I say! What would Bompas say to his sleeping out, and what sort of

-night could he expect in the open air?

-

-He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in

-more than handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all

-the force of a forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges

-as well.

-

-That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of

-person to use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him

-feel doughty and even truculent to find the means of heroic defence all

-ready to his hand. He began to plume himself on his providential

-purchase. He would sell his young life dearly if he fell among London

-thieves;  in his death he would not be unhonoured at school or at home.

-Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang like tears to a mind still

-healthy enough to dash them away again, as though they had been real

-tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the unsuspected

-desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the

-corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.

-

-The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. “Yes,” said

-Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman

-looked as though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the

-motor omnibus through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at

-Albert Gate; but here there was quite a little stream of decent people

-to follow without further tremors into the indubitable Park.

-

-He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining

-confidence as he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were

-turned outward by all there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest

-some one or other of the several passers should stand in his path and

-ask what he was doing there. He was still afraid of speaking or being

-spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so. Detection as an escaped

-schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing something for

-which he might be expelled.

-

-But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to

-take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his

-surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that

-late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal

-were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he

-was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated

-soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with

-their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy’s heart beat

-at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One

-wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a

-remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman’s lips before. He turned

-away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in

-the act of crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.

-

-It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of

-the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and

-gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the

-darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks

-were muffled in a feather boa of trees, bedizened by a chain of many

-lights; the lights of a real bridge made a diadem in the distance; and

-between these sped  the lamps of invisible vehicles, like fretful

-fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer with its own

-brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a trace

-of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy

-had ever seen—a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen

-through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it.

-But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London’s

-light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her

-mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his

-ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck

-near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of

-water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost

-upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of

-eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his immediate needs. His

-great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in hand, to

-select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of

-cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad

-footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he

-was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with

-the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had

-come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to

-the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best thing now.

-

-It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was

-enough to deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical.

-Pocket Upton, however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and

-strong alike, who are more than loth to abandon a course of action once

-taken. It would have required a very severe attack to baulk him of his

-night out and its subsequent description to electrified ears. But when

-bad steering had brought him up at the bandstand, the deserted chairs

-seemed an ordained compromise between prudence and audacity, and he had

-climbed into the fenced enclosure when another enormous policeman rose

-up horribly in its midst.

-

-“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon

-Pocket with inexorable tread.

-

-“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual readiness.

-

-“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, standing over

-him.

-

-“I was only going to sit down,” protested Pocket, having satisfied his

-conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been

-going to do.

-

-“There are plenty of places to sit down,” rejoined the policeman.

-“You’re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it you

-won’t have time to sit down at all.”

-

-“Why not?”

-

-“The Park closes at twelve.”

-

-“Closes?”

-

-“At twelve o’clock, and it’s half-past eleven now.” The boy’s heart

-sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing plans. He

-was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he had

-looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only

-reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently

-entertained the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong.

-But he seemed quite clear about it.

-

-“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin.

-

-“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even thought a lot

-of loafers used to sleep here all night!”

-

-The policeman chuckled aloud.

-

-“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only chance,”

-said he.

-

-“You search the whole place so thoroughly?”

-

-“We keeps our eyes open,” said the policeman significantly, and Pocket

-asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off

-with the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out.

-Such was his then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn,

-to what seat on the Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his

-ignorance of London he had no idea.

-

-Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent

-on quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into

-its heart. He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and

-drifted before the wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one

-hand and a restricted open space upon the other. He could no longer see

-a single light; but the ground rose abruptly across the fence, and was

-thick with shrubs. Men might have been lying behind those shrubs, and

-Pocket could not possibly have seen them from the path. Did the

-policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going to climb

-every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?

-

-Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright

-fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as

-obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at

-twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw

-himself breaking the laws of the land as well as those of school, saw

-himself not only expelled but put in prison! Well, so much the better

-for his story so long as those  penalties were not incurred; even if

-they were, so much the greater hero he!

-

-No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living

-up to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But

-the will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way

-lay handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just

-passed against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the

-first chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the

-back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without

-rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So

-then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped

-the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a

-conscientious ass at school!

-

-But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and

-they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he

-had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras.

-They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush

-that I he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his

-prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver,

-nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in

-the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together

-in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it

-might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures

-to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he

-detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to

-strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber, to his wrist

-instead.

-

-That was the last but one of the silly boy’s proceedings under the

-bush; the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by

-Bompas in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet

-and sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful

-warmth at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was

-precisely then that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his

-breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still

-audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr.

-Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-HIS PEOPLE

-

-

-It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him.

-They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s

-inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it

-still.

-

-On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a

-butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down

-with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only

-to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at

-not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source of

-which was concealed by the garden foliage, became positively brilliant.

-The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and musk-roses and mown

-grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows. But for the lurid

-lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some mammoth

-forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.

-

-“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. “I think

-you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never agree.”

-

-“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt young

-man.

-

-“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly enough.

-

-“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. “He’s being

-absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of it.”

-

-“I didn’t give him asthma!”

-

-“Don’t be childish, Letty.”

-

-“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.”

-

-“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, either.”

-

-“You think he enjoys his bad nights?”

-

-“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never even

-thinks of getting up to first school now.”

-

-“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with asthma?”

-

-“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you think.”

-

-“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay

-for two or three bad ones.”

-

-“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.”

-

-“Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek

-Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his

-spare time, and got most marks in the exam.”

-

-“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder  brother. “I’m glad he didn’t

-buck to me about that.”

-

-“I don’t think there’s much danger of his bucking to you,” said

-Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her obvious

-reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite

-incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed

-that she meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his

-own, and a good heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt.

-“I looked after him all right,” said Horace, “the one term we were

-there together. So did Fred for the next year. But it’s rather rough on

-Fred and myself, who were both something in the school at his age, to

-hear and see for ourselves that Tony’s nobody even in the house!”

-

-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest

-brother.

-

-“But don’t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony that

-you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the

-standard you two set up; it’s natural enough, but it isn’t fair.”

-

-“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened by a

-little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!”

-

-“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.”

-

-“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.”

-

-“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!”

-

-“I wish he wasn’t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than Fred

-or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a

-player.”

-

-“I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it’s his

-nature, just as it’s Fred’s and yours to be men of action.”

-

-“Well, I’m glad he’s not allowed to cumber the crease this season,”

-said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a

-distinct swerve in the air. “To have him called our ‘pocket edition,’

-on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.”

-

-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.

-

-“He’s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,” she said warmly.

-“And I hope he may make you see it before this doctor’s done with him!”

-

-“This doctor!” jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as well.

-“You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on his

-own?”

-

-“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about him.”

-

-“No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of

-himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him

-go; but he’s the most casual young hound I ever struck.”

-

-“I know he’s casual.”

-

-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry

-her sense of fairness had so misled her.

-

-“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he could. Think what

-he’d miss!”

-

-“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be said.”

-

-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.

-

-“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under

-this very doctor of yours?”

-

-“He’s not my doctor.”

-

-“But you first heard about him; you’re the innovator of the family,

-Letty, so it’s no use trying to score off me. Isn’t Tony up in London

-to-night?”

-

-“I believe he is.”

-

-“Then I’ll tell you what he’s doing at this moment,” cried Horace, with

-egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows. “It’s after

-eleven; he’s in the act of struggling out of some theatre, where the

-atmosphere’s so good for asthma!” Lettice left the gibe unanswered. It

-was founded on recent fact which she had been the first to deplore when

-Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by no means

-blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more

-than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose

-unmeasured objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special

-pleading. She tried to believe that there was more in her younger

-brother than in any of them, and would often speak up for him as though

-she had succeeded. It may have been merely a woman’s weakness for the

-weak, but Lettice had taught herself to believe in Tony. And perhaps of

-all his people she was the only one who could have followed his

-vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.

-

-But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have

-gone indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily

-at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared

-with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her;

-otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk

-about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair

-before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck

-and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling

-days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a

-woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than her

-brother, but of other clay.

-

-That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father’s library, and

-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the

-terrace.

-

-“I said he wasn’t doing much good there,” he added, “and I don’t think

-he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always does.”

-

-“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton plainly.

-

-“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I

-sometimes wish there was more!”

-

-“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?”

-

-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.

-

-“More go about him,” said Horace. He could not say as much to his

-father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to

-bolt from his guns.

-

-“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” continued

-Mr. Upton, with severity.

-

-“I know,” said Horace hastily, “and of course that’s really why he’s

-doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his doesn’t seem to be

-doing him any either.”

-

-Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the

-downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had

-turned the wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite

-another quarter.

-

-“I agree with you there!” cried his father vehemently. “I don’t believe

-in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon who has done

-so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a

-trial? The lad wasn’t having a fair chance at school. This looked like

-one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the

-letters the man writes me about him. He’d have me take him away from

-school altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But

-what’s to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He’d

-be too old to go to another school, and too young for the University:

-no use at the works, and only another worry to us all.”

-

-Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with

-intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of

-sympathy which is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards

-the unsound. He hated sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it.

-His wife had taken ill the year before, had undergone a grave operation

-in the winter, and was still a great anxiety to him. But that was

-another and a far more serious matter; he had patience and sympathy

-enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a

-man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own

-qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent

-absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why

-should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr.

-Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard

-more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not

-down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad

-night; yet later in the day he would be as bright as anybody, at times

-indeed the brightest of the party. That, however, was usually when

-Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he was another

-creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the

-busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice

-overdid matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint,

-and was inclined to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his

-age, even if said to be cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile

-pose to the man who had never studied that disorder. The specialist in

-London seemed another mistake on the part of that managing Lettice, who

-had quite assumed the family lead of late. And altogether Mr. Upton,

-though he saw the matter from a different point of view, was not far

-from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.

-

-And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed,

-whose brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his

-schoolfellows “a conscientious ass,” while his sister spoilt him for

-_un enfant incompris?_ You may say it would have taken a miracle to

-make an ordinary decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange

-happenings to the boy and his people; perhaps it was the one authentic

-type of miracle that capped all in the morning.

-

-The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of

-whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a

-few hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning.

-The birds were singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The

-morning sun was slanting over town and country, and the father’s

-thoughts were with his tiresome son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came

-from the adjoining room.

-

-In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife’s side, supporting her

-in bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.

-

-“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!”

-

-“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, dear?”

-

-“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you now. And

-I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-A GRIM SAMARITAN

-

-

-Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the

-sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He

-opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The

-air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine

-curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle.

-

-Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy

-head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps.

-He was not in bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the

-shrub he now remembered in a mental flash which lit up all his

-adventures overnight. He was wandering ankle deep in the dew, towards a

-belt of poplars like birch-rods on the skyline, and a row of spiked

-palings right in front of his nose. He had walked in his sleep for the

-first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to wake him.

-

-Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in

-reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he

-who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A

-hand darted through them and caught Pocket’s  wrist as in a vice. And

-he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and

-fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some

-incomprehensible emotion.

-

-“Do you know what you did?” the man demanded in the end. The question

-seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be

-reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense,

-reminding Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy

-to account for the tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous

-with passion. And the man stood tall and dominant, with a silver

-stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird cloak and hat that helped to invest

-him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish inquisitor; no wonder his eyes

-were like cold steel in quivering flesh.

-

-“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; further

-explanations were cut very short.

-

-“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.

-

-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.

-

-“Well? I can’t help it! I’ve done it before to-day; you needn’t believe

-me if you don’t like! Do you mind letting go of my hand?”

-

-“With that in it!”

-

-The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he

-had strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but

-his finger actually on the trigger.

-

-“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, horrified.

-

-“Feel the barrel.”

-

-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand.

-The barrel was still warm.

-

-“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.

-

-“I’m glad to hear it.”

-

-“I tell you it was!”

-

-The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second

-impulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy,

-picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master’s

-eye had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very

-worst of him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful

-stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that

-protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor

-was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade

-was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a

-second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped

-down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.

-

-“And now,” said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his weapon,

-“I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right

-to spend the night in here at all?”

-

-The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,

-“I’m not the only one!” He had just espied a recumbent figure through

-the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a

-battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall

-man merely redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without

-so much as a glance behind.

-

-“That,” said he, “is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are

-open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that

-sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules.

-Who are you, and what’s the matter with you?”

-

-“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.

-

-“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!”

-

-“I had nowhere else to go.”

-

-“Have you come up from the country?”

-

-“To see a doctor about it!” cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole

-truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely

-lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and

-through; but the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked

-less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that

-uttered the next words.

-

-“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these

-chairs.”

-

-Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had

-climbed them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied

-him on the other side.

-

-“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage

-it?”

-

-“I did last night.”

-

-“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?”

-

-Pocket looked round and pointed.

-

-“Behind that bush.”

-

-“Have you left nothing there?”

-

-“Yes; my bag and hat!”

-

-In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly

-suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.

-

-“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?

-There—catching the sun.”

-

-“It was.”

-

-“Bring it.”

-

-“It’s empty.”

-

-“Bring it!”

-

-Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the

-palings, waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But

-no third creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the

-dew. Pocket surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost

-beside himself in the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must

-have been lifted down like a child; but this was when he was getting

-his breath upon a seat. They had come some little distance very slowly,

-and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an arm as to lend

-colour to his humiliating suspicion.

-

-His grim companion spoke first.

-

-“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one

-myself.”

-

-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.

-

-“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted.

-

-“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.”

-

-“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.”

-

-“What’s that?”

-

-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.”

-

-“I never heard of them.”

-

-“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had.”

-

-But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced

-from his bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He

-had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt

-for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the

-palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a

-cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends;

-the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down

-like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his

-eyes, and was comparatively cured.

-

-“And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!” said his companion. “I

-cannot understand him, and I’m a doctor myself.” His voice and look

-were deliberate even for him. “My name is Baumgartner,” he added, and

-made a pause. “I don’t suppose you know it?”

-

-“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with breath and

-gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.

-

-“A schoolboy in the country,” observed Dr. Baumgartner, “is scarcely

-likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will

-find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for

-breakfast, and a little rest. That is,” added the doctor, with his

-first smile, “if you will trust yourself to me first and make your

-inquiries later.”

-

-Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but

-even as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling

-it would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was

-thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he

-had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen

-such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a

-conspirator by limelight?

-

-But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as

-the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt

-grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought,

-“How the chaps would rag him at school!” because the dreadful old hat

-and cloak suggested a caricature of a master’s cap and gown. But there

-was no master at Pocket’s school whom he would not sooner have

-disobeyed than this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the

-wintry smile; there was no eye on the staff that had ever made him

-quail as he had quailed that morning before these penetrating eyes of

-steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back

-in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes

-on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.

-

-In the cab Baumgartner said, “Try sitting with your head between your

-knees.” Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man

-or so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar,

-an early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all

-until the hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which

-seemed to Pocket interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him

-from seeing anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to

-the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his

-head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him

-easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture

-did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven

-through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the

-streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman’s

-instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His

-ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough

-metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then

-more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the

-milkman’s queer cry; and finally, “Next to the right and the fifth

-house on your left,” in the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign

-accent.

-

-The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth

-from the little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled

-path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps

-had not been “done”; the door wore the nondescript complexion of

-prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One

-touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and

-shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees,

-sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side

-of the road, and effectually hid the other.

-

-Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The

-passage was dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right.

-Baumgartner led the way past a closed door on the left, into an

-unexpectedly bright and large room beyond it. “Sit down,” said he, and

-shut the door softly behind him.

-

-Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full

-of walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the

-sunshine that filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back

-of the house. Dr. Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a

-window, and he stood looking out in thought while Pocket hurriedly

-completed his optical round. A set of walnut chairs were dreadfully

-upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one looked comfortable

-enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the semi-grand piano.

-There were books, too, and in the far corner by the bow-window a glass

-door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket’s study at school,

-and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of battle

-engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in

-murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and

-villages.

-

-Baumgartner met his visitor’s eyes with the faint cold smile that

-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.

-

-“I was present at some of those engagements,” said he. “They were not

-worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his sleep!”

-

-He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the

-pistol inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was

-distracted before he had time to resent the forgotten fact of its

-forcible confiscation. Under his cloak the doctor had been carrying all

-this time, slung by a strap which the boy had noticed across his chest,

-a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket exclaimed upon it with the

-instructed interest of a keen photographer.

-

-“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in his

-unemotional voice.

-

-“Rather!” cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s the

-only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I haven’t got an

-instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!”

-

-And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and

-black morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which

-the doctor had set between them on one of the fussy little walnut

-tables.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-THE GLASS EYE

-

-

-Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness

-of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the

-turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like

-you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my

-own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a

-mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.

-

-“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.”

-

-“You don’t merely press the button and let  them do the rest?”

-suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of his

-pipe.

-

-“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s

-half the fun.”

-

-“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.

-

-“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of my

-father’s.”

-

-And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a

-gesture more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.

-

-“It’s none the worse for that,” said he. “So far we have much in

-common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our

-plates, there’s the difference, eh?”

-

-“I should imagine so,” said Pocket, smiling.

-

-Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but

-yet darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.

-

-“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?”

-

-“Yes; often.”

-

-“In the body, I presume?”

-

-Pocket looked nonplussed.

-

-“You only take them in the flesh?”

-

-“Of course.”

-

-“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s the difference.”

-

-Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner

-follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting

-cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was

-of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent

-photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read

-the photographic year-books, nearly as ravenously as _Wisden’s

-Almanacke_.

-

-“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic photography.”

-

-“Psychic,” said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets to

-report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor

-added, with more disdain: “And you don’t believe in it?”

-

-“I didn’t say so.”

-

-“But you looked and sounded it!”

-

-“I don’t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,” said the boy,

-always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. “But I do say I

-don’t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It

-was in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed

-to have said you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the

-plate at all; hide away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure

-up your spirit and see what happens. I’ll swear nothing ever happened

-like that! There may be ghosts, you may see them,  and so may the

-camera, but not without focusing and exposing like you’ve got to do

-with ordinary flesh and blood!”

-

-The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the

-stimulus of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the

-doctor had come to his feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey

-face beamed warmly; his eyes were lances tipped with fire.

-

-“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every syllable

-you have spoken.”

-

-“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” concluded

-Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.

-

-“I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it

-even at your age! But there’s much more in it than that; you must see

-the rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.” The boy blushed

-with pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. “You admit there

-may be such things as ghosts, as you call them?” he was asked as by an

-equal.

-

-“Certainly, sir.”

-

-“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible

-as that sunbeam?”

-

-“Rather!”

-

-“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?”

-

-Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the

-concession gave him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant

-leaps. He felt five years older in fewer minutes.

-

-“Then,” cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of triumph,

-“then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I may. I

-may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws

-already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses

-fail to throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the

-camera catches. Take two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the

-other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other,

-though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it,

-but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were

-pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble

-is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist’s, no

-money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the spirit

-which once was man.”

-

-His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it

-first an hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this

-was the passion of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at

-all, it was in this wild question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy 

-perceived this dimly. There was something else which had become clearer

-to him with each of these later remarks. Striking as they seemed to

-him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The ring of novelty was wanting

-to his ear.

-

-Suddenly he exclaimed, “I knew I knew your name!”

-

-“You do know it, do you?”

-

-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was

-discounted by the interruption it entailed.

-

-“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come

-across it somewhere.”

-

-“You read the correspondence that followed the review?”

-

-“Some of it.”

-

-“My letter among others?”

-

-“Yes! I remember every word of it now.”

-

-“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s

-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?”

-

-“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket somewhat

-tentatively, despite his boast.

-

-“It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two

-moments at which I hold that a man’s soul may be caught apart, may be

-cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a

-light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my

-letter.”

-

-“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.”

-

-“The moment of dissolution,” the doctor corrected him. “But there is a

-far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,

-whereas dissolution comes but once.”

-

-Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure

-about it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him

-as too fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not

-and dared not say; and he was not the less frightened of making a

-mistake with those inspired eyes burning fanatically into his.

-

-“The other moment,” the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile, “is

-when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which

-men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?” Baumgartner asked

-abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed

-unconvinced, for he went on didactically: “You visit far countries in

-your dreams; your soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the

-dead; it is your soul again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I

-fix the moment as that of the soul’s return because its departure on

-these errands is imperceptible, but with its return we awake. The

-theory is that in the moment of waking the whole experience happens

-like the flash of an electric spark.”

-

-The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled

-than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very

-eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s

-hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could

-not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of

-will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He

-began to wish the interview at an end—to be able to talk about it as

-the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure—yet he would not

-have cut it short at this point if he could.

-

-“I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul

-from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But

-how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits

-pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still

-to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain

-to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private

-admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons.

-My applications have been peremptorily refused.”

-

-Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.

-

-“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little

-old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.

-

-“Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,”

-he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot

-be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And

-now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to

-sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and

-then I take my chance.”

-

-“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket,

-looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.

-

-The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the

-brighter for their partial eclipse.

-

-“This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some

-confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this

-morning—thanks to you!”

-

-“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean

-to say I—you took me—walking——?”

-

-“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one

-minute.”

-

-He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double

-doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there.

-Running  water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his

-absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before

-leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket

-handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the

-noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was

-promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was

-within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in

-his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all

-was ready.

-

-Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would

-simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double

-doors within been is use; these being shut, the space behind made a

-separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that

-smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length.

-One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a

-window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets

-of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a

-crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot

-like Mephistopheles.

-

-“This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was

-shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred

-by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as

-the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives

-and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry

-copper.

-

-Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy

-felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of

-water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was

-here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work,

-he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the

-mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling

-now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes,

-would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator

-with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the

-light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were

-muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they

-trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket

-remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink

-surface.

-

-He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult

-to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort

-of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement

-and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket

-had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not

-to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in

-raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the

-sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular

-objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what

-these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how

-could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind

-him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?

-

-Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to

-see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as

-though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but

-not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass.

-“When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face

-paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with

-beads of blood.

-

-“There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket

-could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host—the one gentle

-thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,

-hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.”

-

-The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had

-choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between

-fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the

-hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the

-tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly

-incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath

-to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it.

-“And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again,

-aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held

-it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the

-schoolboy never forgot.

-

-“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”

-

-Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him

-momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again.

-Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it

-was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred

-fragments in the porcelain trough.

-

-Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back

-into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have

-been a minute before their eyes met again; the  doctor’s were calm and

-cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he

-said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go

-upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought

-as a physician it might do him good.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-AN AWAKENING

-

-

-It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no

-little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his

-breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with

-his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature

-of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like

-other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty

-forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands.

-There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature

-shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss

-Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

-

-Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable

-surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the

-one  to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he

-had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking

-of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and

-temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of

-the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all

-four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and

-uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table

-attentions to her uncle and his guest.

-

-Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing

-against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size

-table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that

-instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook

-his head and smiled.

-

-“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no

-good at real games.”

-

-The statement was too true, but not the preference.

-

-“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the

-doctor’s comment.

-

-Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma

-as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his

-breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve

-himself in lengthy explanations. He had  two types of listener—the dry

-and the demure—to all he said.

-

-“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner

-when he got a chance.

-

-“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”

-

-Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse

-particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again.

-Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.

-

-“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said

-the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.

-

-“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.

-

-“And how many keepers do they require?”

-

-A grin apologised for the word.

-

-“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly

-than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school

-from a mad German doctor.

-

-“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”

-

-“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you

-like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.

-

-“Do you?”

-

-“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.

-

-“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”

-

-Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little

-passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary

-kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that

-morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too

-independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His

-asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew

-when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the

-brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the

-boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for

-him to go to Welbeck Street.

-

-“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing

-over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big

-easy-chair.

-

-“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes.

-And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”

-

-“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for

-such an emergency.”

-

-“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use

-taking it now. It’s  meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep

-out.”

-

-And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done,

-when the other doctor cut him short once more.

-

-“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair;

-nobody will come in.”

-

-Pocket shook his head.

-

-“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”

-

-“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door.

-That will give you a good two hours.”

-

-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the

-first bottle under the bush.

-

-“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”

-

-“I shall be in again.”

-

-“Then it is a promise?”

-

-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

-

-“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”

-

-It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It

-tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The

-skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It

-was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his

-breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of

-Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open

-door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased

-deliciously in the cosy chair.

-

-Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of

-course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint

-in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it.

-No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood.

-Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body

-weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old

-photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned

-into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent

-remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting

-soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch

-that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing

-over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

-

-“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in

-a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”

-

-“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by

-taking out his watch.

-

-“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”

-

-“No—six.”

-

-And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had

-gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he

-bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little

-garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely

-in the shadow of the house.

-

-“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve

-broken your word, sir!”

-

-“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.

-

-“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some

-rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for

-the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only

-shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

-

-“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that

-sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for

-my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in

-Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch

-the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”

-

-“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner,

-scarcely looking up from his paper.

-

-“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket,

-reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of

-London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school.

-I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”

-

-“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking

-over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

-

-“What about?”

-

-Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner

-answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his

-grey face:

-

-“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here

-in town about it.”

-

-“Do tell me what, sir!”

-

-“Can you face things, my young fellow?”

-

-“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral

-in a flash.

-

-“No—yourself.”

-

-“Then I can!”

-

-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

-

-“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”

-

-“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”

-

-“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there

-in the wet grass?”

-

-“I thought he was drunk.”

-

-“He was dead!”

-

-Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never

-witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably

-mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another

-adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in

-reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He

-only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor

-suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very

-natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But

-then he had not even known the man was dead.

-

-Had the doctor?

-

-Yes.

-

-Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another

-question first.

-

-“What did he die of?”

-

-“A bullet!”

-

-“Suicide?”

-

-“No.”

-

-“Not murder?”

-

-“This paper says so.”

-

-“Does it say who did it?”

-

-“It cannot.”

-

-“Can you?”

-

-“Yes!”

-

-“Tell me.”

-

-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.

-

-“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it

-yourself?”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-BLOOD-GUILTY

-

-

-His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He

-marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The

-walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr.

-Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own

-unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any

-words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had

-known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was

-infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus

-wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very

-benefaction of a day’s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor

-defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism.

-Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He

-also might have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well

-believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to

-tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again

-the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection.

-To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with

-an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He

-acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put

-the living before the dead.

-

-How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question.

-He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at

-least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too

-many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but

-in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination

-while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket

-pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not

-gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed

-was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was

-Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading

-warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though

-any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling

-man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The

-poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through

-the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the

-levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face.

-

-The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now

-recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been

-so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he

-had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing

-else as he now remembered him, and that sent him off at a final

-tangent.

-

-He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, “What about that

-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!”

-

-“It was,” replied Baumgartner; “but it was never meant to be. I had you

-in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with

-time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the

-chance of a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that

-was another reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate

-consequences of an innocent act.”

-

-Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an

-instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young

-soul was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted

-by the inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure,

-and yet he could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had

-attempted to turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable

-account. It was the mistaken kindness to himself that he still found

-most difficult to forgive.

-

-“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it all the worse.”

-

-“You mean the delay?”

-

-“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run away, and

-then think better of it?”

-

-Baumgartner smiled.

-

-“Surely I am,” said he; but his smile went out with the words. “If only

-they believe me!” he added as though it was a new idea to him.

-

-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.

-

-“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation.

-

-“I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to,

-after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can’t swear you shot him

-in your sleep!”

-

-“You said you saw I did!”

-

-“So I did, my young fellow,” replied the doctor,  with a kinder smile;

-“at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I

-thought you were walking in your sleep. It’s not quite the same thing.

-It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court

-of justice.”

-

-“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.

-

-“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; “let

-us hope it will stop at that.”

-

-“But it must, it must!” cried Pocket wildly. “I’m absolutely innocent!

-You said so yourself a minute ago; you’ve only to swear it as a doctor?

-They can’t do anything to me—they can’t possibly!”

-

-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.

-

-“Dr. Baumgartner!”

-

-“Yes, my young fellow?”

-

-“They can’t do anything to me, can they?”

-

-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.

-

-“It depends what you call anything,” said he. “They cannot hang you;

-after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even

-detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case

-would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your

-family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you

-would find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In

-years to come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense!

-That is what they can do to you,” concluded the doctor, apologetically.

-“You asked me to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would

-bear it like a man.”

-

-Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself

-back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly.

-One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned.

-“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my

-mother too!”

-

-“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,”

-remarked Baumgartner sardonically.

-

-“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any

-kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this?

-She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming

-eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!”

-

-“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing

-shrug.

-

-“But my part in it!”

-

-“You said it had got to come out.”

-

-“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”

-

-“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”

-

-“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would

-give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve

-done—than drag them all through that!”

-

-“Do you mean what you say?”

-

-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.

-

-“Every syllable!” said Pocket.

-

-“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of now or

-never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.”

-

-“Then it’s never!”

-

-“I must put it plainly to you. It’s not too late to do whatever you

-decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland

-Yard, and the chances are that they would still accept the true story

-of to-day. I have told you what I believe to be the worst that can

-happen to you; it may be that rather more may happen to me for

-harbouring you all day as I have done. I hope not, but I took the law

-into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by the law if you so

-decide this minute.”

-

-“I have decided.”

-

-“Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at

-any rate for the  present,” said Baumgartner, impressively. “Better

-come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about

-the whole thing there!”

-

-“I shouldn’t do that.”

-

-“I’m not so sure,” replied the acute doctor. “I believe I know you

-better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an hour

-like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it

-very difficult not to tell somebody.”

-

-Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In

-truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner’s had inspired such

-confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a

-perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what

-he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his

-temperament would have done in theirs.

-

-“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to

-account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward

-questions to answer the moment you got back to school.”

-

-And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school

-conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of

-those  insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding

-only confirmed him in his resolve.

-

-“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make

-me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m

-grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!”

-

-“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”

-

-“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so

-long as my people never know!”

-

-“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was;

-but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie,

-and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.

-

-“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said;

-and in his exaltation he believed no less.

-

-“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”

-

-“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”

-

-And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and

-fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that

-resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the 

-matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less

-wisely, to brood on it alone.

-

-Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious

-ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a

-sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the

-best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and

-what his world will say about him as it is.

-

-This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary

-position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he

-pictured his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master’s

-hall; there was no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of

-himself on the scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork

-at Madame Tassaud’s! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling

-with his dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled

-honestly for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and

-now not less freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole

-matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now

-one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be

-darkened for ever after!

-

-It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far

-into the long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair,

-yet never leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once

-more battling for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had

-flown before that of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed

-them back again, for his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its

-capacity for suffering undimmed by a single physical preoccupation.

-Between seven and eight the young lady of the house came in with

-candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box of

-d’Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle

-thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl

-addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to

-seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was

-sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his

-eagerness to shut the door on her and see the news.

-

-It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man

-had been identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were

-reported as hopeful of obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue

-was the point that stuck like a burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a

-clue was one leading straight to himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to

-explain the true value of the identity clause, and bid the boy eat his

-meal.

-

-“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent already; they

-may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!”

-

-Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as

-reverentially of his victim as of a dead member of his own family. It

-appeared thus early, however, that in life the defunct had been by no

-means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses had been his only home, except

-when his undistinguished offences got him into gaol; the surreptitious

-practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means of livelihood.

-So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the stop-press

-column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to

-extract comfort from such items.

-

-“At all events,” said he, “you cannot reproach yourself with the

-destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless

-creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but

-here in England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It’s

-a public service to reduce their number.”

-

-This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the

-doctor had been working up to it all the evening, and this was the

-climax of his cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically

-undressed himself for bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of

-stairs, carrying  candles, and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast.

-Pocket felt a new chill through his veins, but he was not revolted as

-he would have been at first. This extraordinary man had shown him still

-more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall

-together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a

-confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not

-but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really

-were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy

-underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the

-doctor spoke as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to

-agree with him: his conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a

-series of incoherent expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave

-articulate shape in order to demolish them in the next breath.

-

-“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my

-young fellow?”

-

-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head

-wreathed in cool blue clouds.

-

-“You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!” cried

-the poetic doctor. “You have an honourable life before you; he had a

-disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of

-luxury; he finds it for the first time in his——”

-

-But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in

-his bed; the man sat down on the end of it.

-

-“You do such poor devils a service,” said he, “in sending them to a

-world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under

-the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!”

-

-“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.

-

-“Human life!” cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge shadow

-guying him on the ceiling. “What is this human life, and who are you

-and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never

-did; it’s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about

-human life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar;

-there are some of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock

-for modern decadence. So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought

-nothing of your human life. Von Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in

-Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my

-countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal

-value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through

-exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords;

-they’re on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of

-what I know. I’ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind,

-and I’ve felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at

-Gravelotte; as a public schoolboy you probably never heard the name

-before this minute. I fought in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking

-at the pictures downstairs. I was in that charge across those hellish

-ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in half an hour, but we

-gained the victory. More Germans were killed that day—that sweltering

-August afternoon—than English in your whole South African War that took

-you years! The flower of Germany fell at Gravelotte; that was human

-life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my comrades’ ashes.

-And that’s all it’s for, this human life of yours: for the

-master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward road.”

-

-The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange

-outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild

-bloodthirsty nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its

-irrelevancy, or rather it was the irrevelant features that flared up

-first in his brain. It was a childish question, but here was a very

-child, and he could not help asking the fierce old soldier whether he

-had escaped without a wound.

-

-“Without a scratch,” was the reply. “I come home. I leave the army. I

-ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck

-down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the

-veriest pawn in the game!”

-

-The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was

-not a single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or

-another word for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke

-from a waving pipe, a core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the

-Turk’s face glistening in its heat like that of the hard old man

-himself. He would hear the cynical and scornful voice softening in a

-breath to the simple, tender, and domestic humanity of his race. The

-voice and the face were with him throughout that night of his own

-manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy to

-realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been

-carried away like his listener.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-POINTS OF VIEW

-

-

-On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week,

-there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in

-Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds,

-because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at

-the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his

-stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your

-letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few

-there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it

-was on business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more

-impressive address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt

-the first blow.

-

-It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this

-made the letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following

-reason. Mrs. Upton had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the

-Thursday morning, that her husband had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat

-against his own judgment, to know how he found their son. The reply had

-been: “Better expecting him again to-day will write”—which prepared the

-family for still more reassuring accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt

-relieved as the original discoverer of Dr. Bompas. Horace found his

-views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration of a touch of asthma,

-and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely agreeing with

-Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs. Upton

-lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible

-to show her now that it had come.

-

-Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way

-to keep a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this

-occasion he triumphed over temperament with an extraordinary instinct

-for what was in the air.

-

-“The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!” was his only comment

-as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might

-have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not

-Horace promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young

-fellow’s face and the old one’s neck were redder before the last was

-heard of that remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually

-vouchsafed; the boy had made very little improvement, and was not

-likely to make more while he remained at a school where he was allowed

-to use any remedy he liked; in fact, until he was taken away from

-school, and placed under his own immediate control in town, Dr. Bompas

-declined to persevere with the case.

-

-“Blighter!” said Horace impartially, as though now there were two of

-them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when

-their father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was

-not “playing the game”; but then he never did play it to the expert

-satisfaction of Fred and Horace.

-

-Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and

-told a lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He

-had destroyed it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it

-to his wife. He said a happier thing by chance; he said that for two

-pins he would motor over to the school and see for himself how the boy

-really was; then perhaps he would be in a position to consider the

-entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the specialist’s demand, that his

-patient should be placed under his eye in town. Mr. Upton went so far,

-however, without much immediate intention of taking so strong a

-measure.

-

-He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite

-justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with

-his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself

-to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her

-mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however,

-had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.

-

-Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.

-

-It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed

-its owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few

-rolling meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June

-glory. The new red gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an

-eye which had never looked longer than necessary in the glass.

-Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily on a shaven lawn; the only

-eyesore the good man encountered was poor Pocket’s snob-wickets painted

-on a buttress in the back premises; his own belching blast-furnaces,

-corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few hundred yards of

-his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy Briton

-who had made them too.

-

-Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. “I

-was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,” his father said;

-“the fact is, I concealed half the fellow’s letter on account of

-Lettice. But it’s a man’s matter, and you ought to know.”

-

-Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to

-keep his appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the

-line of information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would

-have exercised so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife’s room.

-It now appeared that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas

-had gone far out of his way to play Mahomet to his patient’s mountain.

-Tony had told him where he hoped to stay in London, which Bompas

-particularly wished to know on account of some special prescription the

-boy was to try that night. On his failure to appear at the appointed

-time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in question, only to

-learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been given

-another address with the same result, except that from the second house

-he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace

-was left to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and

-asked for his own on the facts as a man of the world.

-

-“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what he

-thought.

-

-“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?”

-

-“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do what

-nobody else ever did.”

-

-“But how could Spearman give him the chance?”

-

-“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.”

-

-“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?”

-

-“So I heard.”

-

-“I don’t like it! It’s all wrong at his age,” said Mr. Upton. He had

-his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough with

-his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:

-“You don’t think there’s any question of bad company, do you?”

-

-And though Horace had “no use for” his so-called pocket edition, he

-answered without any hesitation at all: “Not for a moment, from what I

-know of Tony.”

-

-Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by

-mentioning his wife’s dream, now family property, which had been on his

-mind all this time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him

-that nobody nowadays believed in dreams.

-

-“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?”

-

-“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.”

-

-“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”

-

-“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to

-school.”

-

-“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”

-

-“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.”

-

-The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr.

-Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the

-day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing

-about him.

-

-“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t

-Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?”

-

-Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither

-he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends

-were by no means theirs.

-

-Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on

-the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its

-being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like

-a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that

-neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it

-before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s

-dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments

-besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when

-he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside

-herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply

-impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also

-waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good

-reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings;

-but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited

-dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his

-wife.

-

-It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as

-he had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr.

-Spearman, who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was

-done, however, and it was now a matter in which home and school

-authorities must act together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to

-the garage for the car to come straight to the works. And the

-ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of anxiety.

-

-The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and

-yet to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the

-brain that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and

-blackened faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand

-and the stout heart which had brought his conception into being. Those

-were his trucks bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his

-consequential little locomotive fussing in front of them. His men,

-dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was also his,

-happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was his

-pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric

-advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of

-possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the

-ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot

-bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture,

-had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would

-ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than

-the means of livelihood; and how had it repaid even him for a life’s

-devotion? With a house of sorrow in the next valley! With a stricken

-wife, and sons whose right hands kept their cunning for the

-cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a sudden

-madness!

-

-Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great

-green car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he

-did not drive himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the

-summer’s day was a mental stimulant that did its work only too well.

-Now it recalled the ailing infancy of the missing boy—bronchitis it had

-been in the early stages—and how his mother had taken him to Hastings

-three successive winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family

-jokes cropped up in a new light, dimming the eyes without an instant’s

-warning. On one of those flittings south the solicitous mother had

-placed the uncomplaining child on a footwarmer, and forgotten him until

-a cascade of perspiration apprised her of the effect: poor Mr. Upton

-had never thought of the incident without laughter, until to-day.

-Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she herself

-too ill to hear a word about it!

-

-His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no

-uncertainty. He thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first.

-There had been drama and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated

-of the neighbouring packs had run a fox to earth on his works, indeed

-in his very slag-heap! The author of cancerous furnaces in the green

-heart of a grass country had never been a popular personage with the

-hunting folk; but he was master of the situation that memorable day. It

-was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a ferret, and came

-out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore through the

-brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young

-lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants

-with their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag

-sticking out of the furnace mouth—the momentary contact of the

-industrial and the sporting world—it was that strange and yet

-significant scene which had first endeared its dingy setting to the

-ironmaster’s heart. But he had made the contact permanent by falling in

-love with the young lady of the brush and marrying her under all the

-guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she was a stricken

-invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!

-

-Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now

-distracted father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think

-about as he flew on to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very

-rude to Mr. Spearman; but then Spearman had been rash enough to

-repudiate his obvious responsibility in the matter. It was not his

-fault that the boy went up to town so often to see his doctor and stay

-the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but it had

-become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp

-thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of

-seventeen could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know

-who could! Tony had promised him faithfully to return that same night,

-failing friends whom he had mentioned as certain to put him up; their

-names Mr. Upton was able to demand at last as though they were so much

-blood; and he could not have cursed them more freely if Spearman had

-been a layman like himself. But that was all the information

-forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the head

-master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had

-still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked

-that he was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up

-and led him straight into the presence.

-

-Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an

-astute pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to

-Mr. Upton that the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master’s

-concern, but agreed it was time that he himself was made acquainted

-with the present case. He took it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could

-have wished, but quite as frankly from his own point of view as his two

-visitors did from each of theirs. He had no doubt the boy would turn

-up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to give a

-satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received

-back into the school.

-

-“Bother the school!” cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with

-difficulty. “Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what

-you like.”

-

-“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, with

-only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.

-

-“First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own

-showing, refused the boy a bed. I’ll give them a bit of my mind, I

-promise you! Then there’s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it

-may be the one we always stay at, or one they’ve recommended. If I

-can’t hear anything of him there, I suppose there’ll be nothing for it

-but to call in the police.”

-

-“My dear sir,” exclaimed the head master,  “you may as well call in the

-public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you are;

-and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our

-point of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.”

-

-“It’s more so from mine!” cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and

-indignation. “You think about your school. I think about my wife and

-boy; it might kill her to hear about this before he’s found. But if I

-don’t go to the police, who am I to go to?” The head master leant back

-in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.

-

-“There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case

-of dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal

-proceedings on behalf of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down

-and solved the mystery within twenty-four hours, and saved the school a

-public scandal.”

-

-“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my boy. What

-did you say the name was?”

-

-“Thrush—Eugene Thrush—quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a

-gentleman,” said the head master impressively. Further particulars,

-including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from

-an advertisement in that day’s _Times_, in which Mr. Thrush was

-described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate

-investigations” and “confidential negotiations.”

-

-That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he

-departed both on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final

-word for his own behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the

-head master on the importance of keeping it out of the papers.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-MR. EUGENE THRUSH

-

-

-The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never

-been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of

-events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was

-known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was

-talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody

-might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in

-connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally

-concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report that he drank,

-in the ordinary interpretation of the term.

-

-It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his

-dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful

-Friday. He was  dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His

-dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the

-original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led.

-There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and

-spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such

-stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.

-

-Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker’s mute (a calling he had

-followed in his day), was laying out his master’s clothes as mournfully

-as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he

-shaved.

-

-“I’m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into

-this case it’s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too

-soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they’d have wondered what the

-devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you

-were in my service.”

-

-“I had no call, sir.”

-

-“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d

-only to describe the finding of the body?”

-

-“That was all, sir.”

-

-“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”

-

-Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving

-elbow. “I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he,

-with sombre dignity.

-

-“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs

-you showed me yesterday?”

-

-“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must

-have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t

-on the actual scene of the murder.”

-

-“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have

-to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the

-one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re

-worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with

-a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the

-adjourned inquest?”

-

-“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite

-convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very

-stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal

-bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.”

-

-Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took

-as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being

-thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in

-shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the

-whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would

-have  delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest

-of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and

-yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness

-of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of

-inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great

-round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an

-aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in

-itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him

-any more seriously than he took himself.

-

-Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially

-superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being

-badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the

-landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth

-of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate

-abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his

-visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The

-library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the

-first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made

-business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only

-beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at

-his first entry.

-

-It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen

-from the motorist’s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced

-joviality with which Thrush exclaimed: “I’m sorry to have kept you

-waiting, sir, and the worst of it is that I can’t let you keep me!”

-

-This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception

-one had to come up to London to incur. “Then I’ll clear out!” said he,

-and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous

-effect.

-

-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly

-consternation.

-

-“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you four minutes,

-if that’s any good to you.”

-

-Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have

-said four hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would

-have been no good to him; but the precise term of minutes, together

-with a seemlier but not less decisive manner, had already quickened the

-business man’s respect for another whose time was valuable. This is by

-no means to say that Thrush had won him over in a breath. But the

-following interchange took place rapidly.

-

-“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other room.”

-

-“Upton is my name, sir.”

-

-“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry

-agent is all I presume to call myself.”

-

-“But you do inquire into mysteries?”

-

-“I’ve dabbled in them.”

-

-“As an amateur?”

-

-“A paid amateur, I fear.”

-

-“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to me!”

-

-“Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you

-catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none

-of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens

-to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private

-inquisitor. If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that’s my job

-and I should put it first.”

-

-“Mr. Thrush, that’s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for

-me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my

-youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or

-been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!”

-

-So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds

-which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up

-before he had concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts

-within his knowledge.

-

-“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush.

-

-“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?”

-

-“The four minutes must be more than up.”

-

-“Go on, my dear sir, and don’t throw good time after bad. I’m only

-dining with a man at his club. He can wait.”

-

-“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“More good time! How do you know the boy hasn’t turned up at school or

-at home while you’ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?”

-

-“I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there’s nothing

-there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a

-bed which they couldn’t give him the night before last. I did let them

-have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had

-recommended other hotels; they’ve just been telephoning to them all in

-turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then

-I’ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John’s

-Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I

-thought I’d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush,

-but that’s all I’ve done or know how to do. Something must have

-happened!”

-

-“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely.

-

-“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor

-accident. One moment!”

-

-And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins

-was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master

-said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of

-him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.

-

-“In less than an hour,” explained Thrush, “he will be back with a list

-of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight

-hours. I don’t say there’s much in it; your boy had probably some

-letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it’s

-worth trying.”

-

-“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

-

-“And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as

-with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a

-whisky-and-soda in the first place.”

-

-“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.”

-

-“But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the

-convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited

-with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant

-refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new acquaintance too

-well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.

-

-“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!”

-

-“Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man

-begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all.

-Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets

-back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.”

-

-“But do you think you can do anything?”

-

-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate

-thanks.

-

-“If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the

-needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will

-take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a

-sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!”

-

-At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and

-repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather

-reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.

-

-“I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because

-it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is

-there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?”

-

-“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.”

-

-“Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling

-down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing

-could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for

-games.”

-

-“Nothing better, do you say?”

-

-“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s

-asthma than to hide the man himself.”

-

-“I never thought of that.”

-

-It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that

-moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an

-inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them.

-

-“I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly;

-but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal

-perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.

-

-“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.”

-

-“I certainly never thought of his heart!”

-

-“Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said

-Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his

-asthma were to prove his best friend.”

-

-“It owes him something!”

-

-“Do you know what he does for it?”

-

-“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed

-to have received some weeks before. “He smokes, against his doctor’s

-orders.”

-

-“Do you mean tobacco?”

-

-“No—some stuff for asthma.”

-

-“In cigarettes?”

-

-“Yes.”

-

-“Do you know the name?”

-

-“I have it here.”

-

-The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection

-after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in

-outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk,

-but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last

-superfluous ounce.

-

-“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their

-glasses.

-

-“I confess I don’t see why.”

-

-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!”

-

-“Some French rubbish.”

-

-“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”

-

-“It looks like it.”

-

-“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”

-

-“So he has the impudence to say.”

-

-“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?”

-

-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.

-

-“I never heard of these cigarettes before; they’re an imported article;

-you can’t get them everywhere, I’ll swear! Your boy has got to rely on

-them; he’s out of reach of the doctor who’s forbidden them; he’ll try

-to get them somewhere! If he’s been trying in London, I’ll find out

-where before I’m twenty-four hours older!”

-

-“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility

-than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.

-

-“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.

-

-“Who on earth is he?”

-

-“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.”

-

-“A. V. M.?”

-

-“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”

-

-Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it

-all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.

-

-“You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, “and go on so dividing

-them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to

-the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or

-Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much

-longer ago than mine.”

-

-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.

-

-“In this case it’s Chemists Who Do Sell D’Auvergne Cigarettes and

-Chemists Who Don’t. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and

-Chemists Who Do but Didn’t! But we can probably improve on the old game

-by playing both rounds at once.”

-

-“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, “though there seems

-some method in the madness.”

-

-“It’s all the method I’ve got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. “But you shall

-see it working, for unless I’m much mistaken this is Mullins back

-sooner than I expected.”

-

-Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired,

-though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been

-the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid

-round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas’s, St. George’s, and the

-Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary’s and St.

-Bartholomew’s. At none of these institutions had a young gentleman of

-the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last

-forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically

-depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had

-one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his

-chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before.

-

-“Don’t go, Mullins! I’ve another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush.

-“Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you

-down at my desk. Look up ‘chemists’ under ‘trades’; there are pages of

-them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up

-every chemist who’s on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest

-in, to ask if he keeps d’Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of

-the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at

-nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of

-getting ’em elsewhere—say you wonder there’s so little demand—and with

-any luck you should find out whether and to whom they’ve sold any since

-Wednesday evening.”

-

-“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster.

-

-“It’s the next point,” said Thrush. “The first is to divide the

-chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the

-Vegetables who don’t. I should really like to play the next round

-myself, but Mullins must do something while we’re out.”

-

-“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“My dear Mr. Upton, you’re going to step across into the Café Royal

-with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!”

-

-“And what about your theatre?” asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance was

-a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins

-entrenched behind telephone and directories.

-

-“The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of

-tripe that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June;

-but I’m not going to chuck the drama that’s come to me!”

-

-The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good

-dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to

-his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or

-drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white

-waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes.

-It even escaped his observation that the obese Thrush was an unblushing

-gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy. The conscious repast of Mr.

-Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of Eugene Thrush, and of

-that conversation only such portions as exploited his professional

-theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand. He

-was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account

-of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his

-myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. What was the murder of

-some ragamuffin in Hyde Park to a man from the country who had lost his

-son?

-

-“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out of pure

-politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.

-

-“It should work all right,” returned Thrush. “You take an absolutely

-worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two motives:

-either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a

-menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he’s taken your

-wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price

-of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn’t anything to bless

-himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh?

-So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your

-blade into the root of the matter.”

-

-Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his

-boldest statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt

-with the one subject on the poor man’s mind. The cessation of his

-voice, however, caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he

-made a mental grab at the last phrase, and was astonished to find it

-germane to his own thoughts.

-

-“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. Thrush!”

-

-“When was the first?”

-

-“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!

-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?”

-

-“Not seriously.”

-

-“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?”

-

-“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles twinkling to

-colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you ask?”

-

-“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.”

-

-“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.”

-

-“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?”

-

-“I’ve heard of one,” said Thrush, with a significant stress upon the

-verb; “that’s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a hundred years

-ago. The victim’s mother dreamed three nights running that her missing

-daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the time.

-There _may_ have been other cases.”

-

-“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very

-time at which something terrible has happened to that child?”

-

-“Any amount of those.”

-

-The father’s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his

-glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves

-in a more attentive stare.

-

-“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton hoarsely.

-

-“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. “That

-would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!”

-

-“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much agitated;

-for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.

-

-“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?”

-

-“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t tell

-her he had disappeared.”

-

-“Why? What was the dream?”

-

-“That she saw him—and heard a shot.”

-

-“A shot!”

-

-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had

-time to think.

-

-“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she wasn’t

-dreaming at all.”

-

-“But when was this?”

-

-“Between six and seven yesterday morning.” This time Thrush did not

-move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and

-again he was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence

-was complete. Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M.

-system, neither was Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions

-on the strength of one. He asked whether the boy was very fond of

-shooting in the holidays, as though that might have accounted for the

-dream, but his father was not aware that he had ever smelt powder in

-his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The tone of

-subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton’s health (already mentioned

-as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a

-secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for

-compassion.

-

-“Then that accounts for it,” said Thrush, when he had heard the whole

-sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.

-“What do you mean?”

-

-“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally

-fanciful, I’m afraid.”

-

-“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?”

-

-“My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion

-either way. I only say, don’t think too much about that dream. And

-since you won’t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the

-faithful Mullins.”

-

-They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr.

-Upton for one would not have recognised him as the same being. His

-sepulchral face was alight with news—it was the transformation of the

-undertaker’s mute into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box

-of the d’Auvergne Cigarettes to show for his evening’s work, and that

-chemist had declared it was the first he had sold for weeks.

-

-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon

-as ever he dared.

-

-“You need a good night’s rest, my dear sir, and it’s no use climbing to

-my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you don’t mind

-leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing tomorrow morning

-I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be some

-progress to report.”

-

-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face

-still more strikingly illuminated.

-

-“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne Cigarettes!”

-

-“So I perceive.”

-

-“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.”

-

-“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.”

-

-“I didn’t smoke it, sir!”

-

-“Who did?”

-

-“That’s for you to say, sir; but it’s one of the little things I

-collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,

-yesterday morning in Hyde Park.”

-

-“Near the actual place?”

-

-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the

-strongest of the electric lamps.

-

-“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-SECOND THOUGHTS

-

-

-Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he

-felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the

-nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the

-engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the

-Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had

-seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt

-him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze.

-There was nothing nebulous about the vile place then; it was as light

-and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister figures in the

-panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read that they

-always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight. But

-that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman

-and terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their

-winding-sheets, from their  murderer’s graves. Better by far their

-beastly faces, that you knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and

-screwed up his courage, and laid hands on one of the shorter figures

-that he could reach. It rocked stiffly in its place, a most palpable

-and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements from the hollow and

-unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not been there the

-other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as ill-mounted on

-high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of intelligent

-eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical

-characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army

-of murderers was a faithful model of himself.

-

-There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that

-he had been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it

-had seemed in that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy

-shuddered till the bed shook under him. But after that he still lay on,

-facing himself as he had seen himself, and his deed as others must see

-it soon or late. Not the actual accident in the Park; but this hiding

-in the heart of London, this skulking among strangers, this leaving his

-own people to mourn him as the dead!

-

-The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear

-to him before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and

-Horace, how good they had been to him at school, and how proud he had

-been of them! What would they think of him if he went on skulking like

-this? What would they have done in his place? Anything but lie low like

-that, thought Pocket, and resolved forthwith to play the game as

-preached and practised by his brothers. It was strange that he should

-have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this morning he saw

-it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass screen…To

-think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude

-as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the

-situation as well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him

-if he gave himself up, but anything might if he waited till he was

-caught. As for the consequences to his poor mother, surely in the end

-suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper into the slender cord of her

-life than the shock of the truth would cut.

-

-Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy

-behaved characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in

-front of him, beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and

-ending in a blaze of wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face;

-meanwhile he lay in such peace and safety as it was only human to

-prolong  a little. That night, for all his moral innocence, he might

-lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed while he had one,

-especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The last

-consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little

-time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had

-suffered from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident

-in which he was nearly killed.

-

-“My accident may have done the same for me,” thought Pocket—and was

-bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking complacently of

-any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient punishment.

-

-To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the

-plain upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was

-to conjure uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his

-ferocious meerschaum, his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his

-arguments in favour of the course which Pocket had now determined to

-abandon. The boy fully realised that he had been given his chance, and

-had refused it. And of all the interviews before him, that with Dr.

-Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have given most

-to escape.

-

-Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did

-escape, and did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no

-reason why he should involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession.

-Suppose he hailed the first cab he saw, and drove over to St. John’s

-Wood to borrow money (they could scarcely refuse him that), and then

-took the first train home to tell his father everything in the first

-instance, that father would never hear of his incriminating a stranger

-who had befriended him according to his lights. He himself need never

-say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the tragedy, even if

-he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to the

-ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only

-suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to

-his breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that

-after a day and a night he should still be in total ignorance of his

-whereabouts.

-

-He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the

-sunny little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old

-discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of

-a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered

-above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was

-completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to

-the ear, and  there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of

-the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll’s

-perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded

-Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally trim

-lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the

-green spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the

-curiously countrified smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a

-still stronger reminiscence of his father’s garden, where his own old

-pony pulled the machine in leather shoes.

-

-Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to

-them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing

-almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket

-could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as

-quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word,

-whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never

-occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare

-to lock him in his room!

-

-Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek

-to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to

-himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told

-him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily

-strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or

-else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he

-always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant

-between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window,

-saw his way down at a glance.

-

-Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony

-over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the

-least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet

-till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a

-very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on

-finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?

-They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in

-which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman

-who said he might not sleep in the Park.

-

-The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously

-Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old

-campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which

-argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic

-service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase.

-Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and  so eloquent of Baumgartner

-himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more

-freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he

-had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs

-hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected

-by his host.

-

-Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to

-lose a moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had

-made an interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being

-played. He heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on

-the balcony up above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been.

-It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing

-something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though

-naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was

-Mendelssohn, or Chopin, “or something,” for his love of music was

-greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that

-detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him

-kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he

-went, and the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been

-locked in, and he had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet

-not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at  all events,

-and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile

-instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating

-moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might

-know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game

-to say goodbye.

-

-The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her

-large eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they

-blazed at the intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she

-already knew the truth.

-

-“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just came in to say

-goodbye.”

-

-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.

-

-“To say goodbye!” she gasped.

-

-“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s out?”

-

-“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?”

-

-“I’m afraid I can’t.”

-

-She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood

-aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn

-took her stand, back to the door.

-

-“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and with a

-smile.

-

-“And I’m very sorry to miss him,” said Pocket, unconscientiously enough

-for anybody. “He’s been most awfully good to me, and I wish you’d tell

-him how grateful I am.”

-

-“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, “if he finds you

-gone.”

-

-“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do

-you mind giving him one other message?”

-

-“As many as you like.”

-

-“Well, you might tell him from me that I’ll give myself away, but I’ll

-never give him! He’ll know what I mean.”

-

-“Is that all?”

-

-She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the

-last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the

-boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through

-an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio.

-

-“No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the

-worst way about it by locking me into my room!”

-

-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.

-

-“How did you get out?”

-

-“How do you suppose?”

-

-“I never heard anything!”

-

-“I took care you shouldn’t.”

-

-And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in

-the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl

-stood up to him like a little heroine.

-

-“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Can’t let me?”

-

-“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.”

-

-He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older

-than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his

-way past—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him,

-because he felt she knew it.

-

-“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t let me out that

-way, I’ll go this!”

-

-And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the

-garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she

-held him firmly by the hand.

-

-“If you do I’ll blow a police-whistle!” she said. “We have one—it won’t

-take an instant. You shan’t come out the front way, and you’ll be

-stopped if you climb the wall!”

-

-“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out

-bitterly.

-

-“Never mind what I take you for!”

-

-“You’re treating me as though I were one!”

-

-“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.”

-

-“I shan’t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your

-uncle, and you too!” But that was only half true, even then while he

-was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been

-another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he

-drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over

-went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than

-ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him

-say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose

-will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the

-door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was

-a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured

-or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt.

-It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear

-it only increased.

-

-“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears,

-and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.

-

-“Forgive me!” he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it

-after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-ON PAROLE

-

-

-“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you

-seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you

-break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young

-lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!”

-

-Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought

-the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater

-cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his

-honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to

-change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was

-precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as

-much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with

-their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin

-that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.

-

-“I daresay not!” said Baumgartner sardonically. “It would have been

-dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you

-agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never

-so far as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your

-eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were

-going to lie on it like a man.”

-

-“Then why did you lock me in?” cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point

-on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor

-flattered him with a slight delay before replying.

-

-“There were so many reasons,” he said, with a sigh; “you mustn’t forget

-that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you

-falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was

-more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken

-you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to

-yourself without my assistance, and that you would get brooding over

-what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the

-whole thing. I tell you it’s no good brooding or looking back; take one

-more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating

-notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family,

-certain punishment for me!”

-

-“The consequences at home,” groaned Pocket, “will be bad enough

-whatever we do. I can’t bear to think of them! If only they had taken

-Bompas’s advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam!_ I

-should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm’s way for the

-next three months.”

-

-“The _Seringapatam?_” repeated the doctor. “I never heard of her.”

-

-“You wouldn’t; she’s only a sailing vessel, but she carries passengers

-and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas’s, who wanted to send me with him

-for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn’t let me go. She

-sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If

-I could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I

-could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years

-and years!”

-

-It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had

-come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy’s

-brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it

-up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures,

-bearded like the pard, another “dead man come to life,” after about as

-many years as the dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked

-on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did

-not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was

-quite disappointed when he shook his head.

-

-“A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young

-fellow! Why, they’d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you’d gasp out

-your whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my

-fellow; you’ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with

-me till we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you

-say you won’t, I say I’ll make you—to save you from yourself—to save us

-both.”

-

-There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was

-fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor’s

-power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped

-already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to

-be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now

-dominating him more powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact

-that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have

-done. There was actually an element of relief in his discomfiture. He

-had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that

-responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour

-delayed. And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort

-in such delay, which was all the greater because unsought by him; it

-was a comfort that he had both ways, as the saying is, and from all

-points of view but that of his poor people wondering what had become of

-him.

-

-“If only they knew!” he cried; “then I shouldn’t care. Let me write to

-one of them! My mother needn’t know; but I must write to one of the

-others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would

-keep my secret; she’d play the game all right, I promise you! And I’d

-play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!”

-

-The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should

-have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin

-edge of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write

-what he liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and

-enclose it in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was

-a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from

-St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now

-refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for

-the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and

-sacred promise on the following points.

-

-He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to

-show himself for a moment at the windows back or front.

-

-On no account was he to confide in the doctor’s niece Phillida, to give

-her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London

-mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his

-first meeting with Baumgartner.

-

-“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about

-yourself the better.”

-

-“But what can she think?”

-

-“What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may

-bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise

-in the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to

-think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and

-she had your doctor’s orders not to let you out of the house in his

-absence.”

-

-“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a wistful

-heaviness.

-

-“She did what she was told; think no more about it,” said the doctor.

-“Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather

-than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play

-the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures

-played it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch.

-Look at this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where

-we come to bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian

-Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St.

-Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with

-no head to bind. That’s meant for our colonel on the white horse. See

-him hounding us on to hell! And there’s a drummer drumming as though we

-could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to ribbons, you

-see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young

-fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!” Baumgartner might

-have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of

-a responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and

-to wake the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the

-heart of a soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was

-only when he found himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless

-brought his innocent deed home to him as nothing had done before, that

-the artificial frost broke up, and real tears ran with his ink. He

-begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him, still less to be anxious

-about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret for him, he

-wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction. He

-was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But

-something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would

-bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from

-ever seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others

-to which it led, that were literally blotted with the writer’s tears.

-But just then he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who

-could never show himself at home or at school again. And it required

-the spell of Baumgartner’s presence to make the prospect such as could

-be borne with the least degree of visible manhood.

-

-Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways

-younger than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in

-some few. He was old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may

-be imaginative and still have a level head, but it is least likely in

-one’s teens. The particular temperament does not need a label; but none

-who know it when they see it, and who see it here, will be surprised to

-learn that this emotional writer for one was enormously relieved and

-lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off his mind and hands.

-

-True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a

-kindly gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over

-the second leaf.

-

-“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run the risk of

-trusting your discretion.”

-

-No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped

-the hand that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the

-address, all openly before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to

-the nearest messenger office to despatch the missive to the General

-Post Office, ostensibly to catch a particular post, his prisoner  would

-not have decamped for a hundred pounds, and the doctor knew it.

-

-Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket

-was only less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had

-caused, than when they were both at table and he unable to say another

-word to express his sorrow for the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She

-spoke to him once or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened,

-but he could scarcely look her in the face. Otherwise both meals

-interested him; they were German in their order, a light supper

-following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they

-both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much

-taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived

-smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of speculation when

-he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the house, and that

-the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor’s waste-paper basket

-as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed next morning. He

-had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young girl was clearing

-away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room after supper;

-and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the toy board,

-which they placed between them on the dining-table, both Phillida and

-the fragments had disappeared.

-

-The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out

-Baumgartner’s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy’s

-simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate

-one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his

-hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep

-between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate

-concentration; even the Turk’s head was only lit to be laid aside as an

-obstruction. Pocket’s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the

-fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy

-forgot everything when he actually succeeded in the last game. They had

-played very late for him, and he slept without stirring until

-Baumgartner came to his room about eight o’clock next morning.

-

-Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first

-thing he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one

-like a flag to wake him.

-

-“Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!” he

-cried, with fierce amusement; “it only remains to be seen whether they

-succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really,

-it’s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the

-smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!”

-

-“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these

-remarks.

-

-“Certainly,” replied Baumgartner; “here’s the journalistic wonder of

-the age, and there you are in its most important column. I brought it

-up for you to see.”

-

-The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded

-type and the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first

-place, that no arrest had yet been made; but it was confidently

-asserted (by the omniscient butt of Teutonic sallies) that the police,

-wisely guided by the hint in yesterday’s issue (which Pocket had not

-seen), were already in possession of a most important clue. In

-subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real homicide was

-informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally

-different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had

-been a certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in

-the previous month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had

-been found shot under circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide

-that a coroner’s jury had actually returned a verdict to that effect.

-There appeared, however, to have been an element of doubt in the case.

-This the scribe of the leaded type sought to remove by begging the

-question from beginning to end. It had not been a case of suicide at

-all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde Park, to

-which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been

-shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged

-to one neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the

-community. A pothouse acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but

-the suggestion was that the link lay a good deal deeper than that, and

-that the two dead men were known to the police, who were busy searching

-for a third party of equal notoriety in connection with both murders.

-

-“But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,” said the boy,

-looking up at last. “It wasn’t a murder, either; neither was the first,

-according to the coroner’s jury, who surely ought to know.”

-

-“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile;

-“but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.”

-

-“Do you suppose there’s a word of truth in what he says? I don’t mean

-about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway,” said Pocket, wincing over his

-victim’s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. “But do you

-think the police are really after anybody?”

-

-“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it matter?”

-

-“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I

-did!”

-

-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.

-

-“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly.

-

-“I don’t see it,” returned the doctor, with grim good-nature. “The

-little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed another

-mare’s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm can

-come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only

-two living souls who can’t account for their time at that of this

-unfortunate affair.”

-

-Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin

-under the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light,

-always encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his

-silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to

-keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against

-the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And

-once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by

-striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings of the boy.

-

-“Eight o’clock!” cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an

-ear towards the open  window. “The postman’s knock from door to door

-down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British

-Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered

-at this very moment—eh, my poor young fellow?”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS

-

-

-Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr.

-Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius

-for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which

-enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed,

-in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible

-appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper

-with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle

-between the sheets.

-

-That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the

-paper came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious

-matter. It said exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park

-murder: that the murderer would prove to be the author of a similar

-crime, committed in the previous month of March, when the Upton boy

-must have been safe at school. If that were so, it  was manifestly

-absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely happened to

-synchronise with that of his own disappearance—absurd, even if he were

-shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere

-about the time of its perpetration.

-

-That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established

-overnight. It was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile

-conviction of his class, had jumped on the slender evidence of the

-asthma cigarette alone; but before midnight Thrush himself had been

-forced to admit its extreme probability. There was a medicine cork as

-well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been found very much

-nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a shrub on the

-other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both discoveries,

-who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night, to ask

-if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with

-their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just

-as well but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens,

-rung up in their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the

-doctor’s prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and,

-within half an hour, had positively identified the cork found by

-Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was still sticky with the very stuff which

-had put poor Pocket asleep.

-

-Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection

-between a harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He

-resisted the idea on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in

-argument with his now strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide

-jump to a detestable conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the

-width of the jump. The cork and the cigarette might be stepping-stones,

-but at least one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion

-against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms

-on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on

-the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he

-made no mention of the boy’s mother’s dream.

-

-Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an

-enthusiastic convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist,

-and consequently an irritable observer of the saturnine countenance

-which darkened to a tinge of distinct amusement over the leaded type.

-

-“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?”

-

-“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.”

-

-“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland

-Walk?”

-

-“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.”

-

-“I don’t agree.”

-

-“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?”

-

-“The coroner’s jury did—in spite of the coroner—but it may come before

-another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical

-evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm’s length. That isn’t

-the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was

-nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price

-of one; he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before.

-The very same point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he

-ever had a revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he

-never had; I happened to ask the question,” added Thrush, without

-explaining in what connection.

-

-“Well, sir,” said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, “you talk

-about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman who write

-for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!”

-

-This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the

-very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his

-spectacles without one at all.

-

-“The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,

-however,” he remarked; “it  may be by fair means, or it may be by foul,

-but they have a way of getting there before the others start.”

-

-Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do

-it this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring

-himself to believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time

-and place, with no sort of connection between them.

-

-“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, sententiously.

-

-Thrush looked at him for a moment.

-

-“But life’s one long collection of coincidences! That’s what I’m always

-telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don’t you

-call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their

-death at the very hour of the morning when you’re on your way over here

-from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which

-you’ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the

-nerve to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other

-morning, and been mixed up in that affair because you are in this?”

-

-“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied Mullins, with some

-warmth.

-

-“I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to

-the absurd, Mullins; you didn’t take me literally, did you? It’s no use

-talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I’m always

-ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a

-pistol, Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must

-be roaring inside for yours. The man who’s been knocking up chemists

-all night is the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then

-mine, and after that you can tell me how you got on.”

-

-Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his

-best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however,

-for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the

-pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins

-went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was

-yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny

-background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the

-other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear

-whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was

-not a cloud.

-

-“To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,”

-resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; “how many have you done,

-and how many have we still to do between us?”

-

-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes

-as neat.

-

-“Rung up when you were out at dinner—seventeen. Kept Cigarettes

-d’Auvergne—one. That was Thornycroft’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I’d

-just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I

-knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of

-Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.”

-

-“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?”

-

-“A matter of life or death.”

-

-“Well?”

-

-“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one

-in New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.”

-

-“Much demand in any of those quarters?”

-

-“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly

-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.”

-

-“I know him; so he’s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?” murmured

-Thrush, to his buttered egg. “But has one of these apothecaries sold a

-box of d’Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?”

-

-“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.”

-

-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.

-

-“How did you worm that out, Mullins?”

-

-“By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody

-who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we

-were only trying them on hearsay.”

-

-“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only

-consumer?”

-

-“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on

-Thursday to a doctor.”

-

-“Did you get the name?”

-

-“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”

-

-“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry

-face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I

-can’t say when or where. What’s his address?”

-

-“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d

-be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.”

-

-“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”

-

-“I didn’t inquire.”

-

-“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the

-asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never

-had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But

-I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in _Who’s Who_, and

-read out what they say.”

-

-And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at

-barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr.

-Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities

-whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction

-of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which

-contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A

-copious contribution concluded with the information that photography

-and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a

-polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s

-which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.

-

-“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what

-about his address?”

-

-“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, demoralised

-and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.”

-

-“Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but

-I’m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of _Peripatetic

-Psychology_ deserves to have asthma all his nights, and _After this

-Life_ smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won’t build on

-Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we’ll go through the chemists of London

-with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.”

-

-Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away,

-when a stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton

-with  a panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but

-he denied that he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at

-Mullins, and fell to abusing London and the Londoners, but City men

-above all others, till Thrush and he should be alone together. The

-incidental diatribe was no mere padding, either; it was the sincere

-utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody in all London, he

-declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared a twopenny

-curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the present

-company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of

-the boy’s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But

-the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had

-been to see his boy’s friends’ father, “a swine called Knaggs,” that

-very morning at his house in St. John’s Wood.

-

-“Rather early, wasn’t it?” suggested Thrush, whose manner was more

-softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was

-slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.

-

-“Early!” cried Mr. Upton. “Haven’t I lost my boy, and wasn’t it these

-Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to have gone to

-them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your dinner;

-for I don’t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of your 

-hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me

-afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my

-own; but I’d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant

-then, so I thought I’d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting

-till this morning.”

-

-The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush

-seized the opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in

-the street.

-

-“I confess I showed indecent haste,” said he; “but Mullins and I had

-our night’s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his boots off

-since you saw him.”

-

-“Hasn’t he?” cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an

-unsuspected devotion; “then I’ll say what I’ve got to say in front of

-him, for you’re both my friends, and I’ll unsay all I said just now.

-Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself

-about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug

-little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his

-breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as

-himself, and saying ‘Rather early!’—just as you set me off by saying

-yourself a minute ago.”

-

-“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?”

-

-“Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him!

-I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but

-what could he do? London was a large place, and ‘we Londoners’ were

-busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too

-busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. He said

-London life was different; and I said so I could see. They never had

-spare beds at a moment’s notice, much less for boys who might set fire

-to the house or—or shoot themselves——”

-

-His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood

-glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad’s

-death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however,

-looked so genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the

-face of Mullins also attracted less attention.

-

-“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a

-curiously gentle voice.

-

-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.

-

-“He had, after all!” he croaked. “Little as I dreamt it yesterday, my

-unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in his life

-before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his pocket!”

-

-“Had he brought it from school?” asked Thrush, with a covert frown at

-the transfigured Mullins.

-

-Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters,

-with their father’s opinion of pawnbrokers’ shops as resorts for young

-schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and

-guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted

-without fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose

-only comment was that it behoved him all the more to do something to

-redeem the capital in the other’s eyes.

-

-“Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!” was the only rejoinder, in

-a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was the

-first he had heard about the dream.

-

-“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew before.

-Yet I will own now,” exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins’s bright eye,

-“that the coincidence will be tremendous if there’s nothing in it!”

-

-But only half the coincidence was present in the father’s mind; no

-thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy;

-and to hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his

-fretted nerves could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for

-a pessimist—apologised—and humbly entreated him to take a more hopeful

-view.

-

-“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal

-one!”

-

-An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public

-mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish

-grins and nods behind the poor father’s back. Thrush looked at both men

-with the troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being—looked and

-frowned again—frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant,

-the trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost

-blinding flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light;

-enough for Eugene Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit

-as brightly as it lit him onward to its solution.

-

-He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in

-his face, as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr.

-Upton about the missing boy. What was his character? what its chief

-points? Was he a boy with the moral courage of his acts? Would he face

-their consequences like a man?

-

-“I never knew him tell a lie in his life,” said Mr. Upton, “either to

-save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of their young

-skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most

-conscientious of them all, and I hear that’s what they say of him at

-school.”

-

-Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue,

-though a very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up

-himself; and this time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own

-accord, with a dejected undertaking to be at his hotel when he was

-wanted.

-

-“I don’t like the look of our friend,” remarked Thrush, looking hard at

-Mullins when at last they were alone. “He shapes none too well for the

-strain he’s got to bear; if he cracks up there’ll be a double tragedy,

-if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare quickly,

-Mullins, or we may catch him too late.”

-

-Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a

-few minutes before; he took no notice of it now.

-

-“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, “the very moment

-that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“Meaning they’re the same person?”

-

-“To be sure.”

-

-“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?”

-

-“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?”

-

-“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.”

-

-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.

-

-“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in

-deferential derision.

-

-“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope to

-get arrested within another hour!”

-

-Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw,

-black as a crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy

-collar.

-

-“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?”

-

-“I am—with your permission, Mullins.”

-

-“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!”

-

-And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled

-from his words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-BOY AND GIRL

-

-

-Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.

-Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the

-newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in

-quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of

-the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her

-boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several

-seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in

-what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but the

-penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the

-doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given

-time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he

-liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled

-when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the

-other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had

-convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences

-exchanged.

-

-The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning;

-for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up

-to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books

-in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the

-dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to

-include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion.

-Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time

-with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and

-girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,

-though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on

-him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was

-only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that

-Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word.

-

-“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida,

-in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the

-house.

-

-“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting

-about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until

-memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve

-o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only

-your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before

-you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday

-afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and

-watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and

-lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything

-you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at

-your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your

-name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was

-not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the

-whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows,

-that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal

-came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself

-again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this

-time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come

-right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home,

-instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them

-everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and

-Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to

-something now.

-

-What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she

-listened. Pocket did both in his turn.

-

-It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming

-nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and

-ran outside without his hat.

-

-His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the

-doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn

-to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed

-at once where they had left off before breakfast.

-

-“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!”

-

-“Began what?”

-

-“Our row yesterday.”

-

-Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket

-now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour,

-his ear still on the street.

-

-“I haven’t.”

-

-Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt

-you?”

-

-“Of course you didn’t.”

-

-“But you must have thought me mad!”

-

-There was a slight but most significant pause.

-

-“Well, I never shall again.”

-

-“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces

-were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no

-nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and

-indignant shame on hers.

-

-“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one

-seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had

-thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved

-school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!

-

-But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate

-with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park

-murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park

-murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that

-swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.

-

-The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and

-trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;

-but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was

-solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.

-

-“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained

-benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would

-hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely

-hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the

-scoundrel took his paper back!”

-

-He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors

-recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was

-wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English

-boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in

-some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous

-scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared

-there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and

-handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s

-sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth.

-He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should

-go instead; she was not past the ballad stage.

-

-And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not

-conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of

-her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off

-the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.

-

-“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you

-two talking about while my back was turned?”

-

-“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart

-beat fast.

-

-“What about yesterday?”

-

-“Our scuffle in the other room.”

-

-“Is that all?”

-

-“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”

-

-“What did you find out?”

-

-“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He

-might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful

-face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did

-not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.

-

-“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”

-

-“You said she would think I was a patient.”

-

-“Exactly! A mental case.”

-

-“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged

-valour.

-

-“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll

-continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when

-I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,”

-continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good

-young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some

-consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”

-

-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself

-being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.

-

-“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think

-she’s associating with a lunatic?”

-

-“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the

-suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of

-such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in

-your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the

-horrid term in all sobriety.”

-

-“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!”

-

-“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”

-

-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his

-retort was a precocious inspiration.

-

-“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”

-

-“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses,

-“and what if it was?”

-

-“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”

-

-“He won’t lie long.”

-

-“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”

-

-“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”

-

-“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”

-

-Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the

-same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him

-without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of

-sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of

-sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them;

-the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it

-was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion

-till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon

-the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete

-control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.

-

-“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other

-room till you know your own mind again.”

-

-“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his

-teeth, although they chattered.

-

-“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of

-clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more

-patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”

-

-If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire

-that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he

-meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for

-thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity

-was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel

-rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the

-concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate

-words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace,

-in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner

-smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house.

-The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually

-took the doctor at his word about a book.

-

-If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was

-certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His

-library  was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote

-himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no

-public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books

-many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were

-photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or

-yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had

-probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list.

-Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for

-Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on

-somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was

-something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature

-who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several

-cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet

-determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar

-in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of

-those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute

-fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had

-made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too,

-appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her

-concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her

- uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was

-himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world

-like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs,

-the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his

-sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the

-conversation.

-

-The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of

-their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still

-before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No

-letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard

-at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning

-recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people

-or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl

-got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.

-

-“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big

-room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.”

-

-“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he

-glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression

-whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once

-it must be done, and done  quickly—with both doors open and the

-visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor

-must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.

-

-The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised

-voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched

-too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the

-sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an

-outer and an inner door in quick succession.

-

-“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it

-be?”

-

-“Hasn’t he any friends?”

-

-“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her

-great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as

-a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she

-whispered.

-

-“What?”

-

-“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at

-table.”

-

-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely

-penetrating now.

-

-“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

-

-“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“But I don’t understand the question.”

-

-“Is that true?”

-

-“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”

-

-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

-

-“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both

-instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at

-first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could

-hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a

-mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but

-there’s something I can and must ask you.”

-

-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

-

-“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing

-happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the

-Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I

-say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything

-points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the

-truth when he came in!”

-

-Pocket looked up at last.

-

-“I know the truth.”

-

-“About the arrest?”

-

-“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.”

-

-“Why not before?”

-

-“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up

-and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.

-

-“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”

-

-“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.”

-

-“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”

-

-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she

-thought.

-

-“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and

-his head lower.

-

-“You don’t mean——”

-

-She stopped aghast.

-

-“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a

-bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an

-accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not

-to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.

-

-“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm

-in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or

-done!”

-

-Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the

-intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to

-hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear

-had heard of either boy or girl during his absence.  Yet the boy was

-not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was

-trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang.

-Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face,

-which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet

-the doctor’s.

-

-But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but

-stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done

-something very clever indeed.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-BEFORE THE STORM

-

-

-Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally

-spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the

-theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to

-distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the

-postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a

-normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns

-were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church

-bells came as well through the open windows; then the street-door shut,

-and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it opened and shut

-again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though

-they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!

-

-Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner

-pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had

-seen it first; the Turk’s head perspired from internal and external

-heat, but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather

-with a red geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole

-of his black alpaca jacket.

-

-It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew

-what she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature

-conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory

-interest in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to

-Pocket Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not

-without his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the

-difference in Baumgartner’s voice when he addressed his niece, the

-humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a

-reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been none to

-see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had

-seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning. 

-But now it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of

-kindness against these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her

-endure them with a better grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to

-him, she could not have made sweeter amends than she did by many an

-unobtrusive little office. And she exchanged no more confidences with

-poor Pocket.

-

-Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was

-a strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of

-life’s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed

-before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket

-certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since

-the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one

-before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which

-Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no

-longer lying about the room as he had left it. There was a gap in its

-place in the shelf. The book had been taken away from him; it made him

-feel as though he were back again at his very first dame’s school.

-

-And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They

-were more mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you

-down the hill at the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical;

-and Pocket saw and heard himself puffing up the opposite hill to take

-his place for chapel call-over in the school quad. The fellows would be

-forming in squads there now, all in their Sunday tails or Eton jackets

-as the case might be; of course Pocket was in tails, though still

-rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or their

-rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind’s eye. Then came the cool and

-spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and

-rows of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own,

-giving a swing to chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How

-real it all was to him, and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the

-sunny room with the battle engravings over the book-cases, and the

-walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr. Baumgartner in and out in his

-alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for a walk with Blundell

-minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and got it over.

-And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and apple-pie

-with cloves in it at Spearman’s.

-

-The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner’s meals certainly

-provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the

-portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor

-praised without a single patriotic reservation.

-

-“Italy is a country where one can live,” said he. “Not that you must

-understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young

-fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a

-Sunday. No organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German

-bands which we in Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman

-every hour of the day, and no gaolbirds crying false news down the

-streets.”

-

-Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker’s eye, but found it

-fixed on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to

-say something quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the

-actual remark.

-

-“That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,” explained the

-doctor. “I give out no other address; then you only get your letters

-when you want them.”

-

-“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly wishing

-he would go that afternoon.

-

-“Not when I have visitors,” replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow.

-“And I look upon my patients in that light,” he added, with benevolent

-but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so

-than if she had still believed it to be the truth.

-

-Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece

-took refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an

-hour or more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that

-Lettice played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the

-makings of a pianist. The boy’s enthusiasm for the things he knew made

-her play then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the

-doctor, dozing in the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut,

-murmured his approval more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and

-Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and others that the

-boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the

-same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been

-there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and

-once or twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be

-the boy who had killed a man, however innocently, three days before!

-Could it be he whom the police might come and carry off to prison at

-any moment? Was it true that he might never see his own people any

-more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he could neither answer

-them nor realise their full import. They turned the old man in the

-chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he had seemed

-at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement even

-to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.

-

-Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home.

-Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something

-would be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his

-for ever; but as for his present situation, there were moments when

-Pocket felt rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned,

-and already in communication with the mainland.

-

-He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had

-come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be

-within a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the

-known circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the

-papers? Pocket felt he would have red ears all his life if that were

-done; and yet it had hurt him a little to gather from Baumgartner that

-so far there was nothing in the papers to say he had so much as

-disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or Friday.

-Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would

-have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!

-

-He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her

-afternoon rest. If he were at home, he would be going about quietly.

-Lettice would be reading or writing in the morning-room,  most

-probably. Father would be gloating over his rhododendrons with a strong

-cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how beautiful they were.

-Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and Fred were not

-playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far ahead to

-see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own

-voice telling them of his own experience—of this very hour at Dr.

-Baumgartner’s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that!

-Pocket looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids

-never quite closed, and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister

-effect. He noted the drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash

-from the Turk’s head sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the

-very phrases of a graphic portrait almost to his lips.

-

-Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the

-silver lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not

-silver at all but one of the baser metals of the human heart, how

-indignantly he would have denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the

-end!

-

-When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and

-sponge, but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for

-going higher up to his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only

-make more work, in a tone precluding argument. It struck Pocket that

-the doctor really needed sleep, and was irritable after a continuous

-struggle against it. If so, it served him right for not trusting a

-fellow—and for putting Boismont in the waste-paper basket, by Jove!

-

-There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first

-things Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in

-the opposite corner; and the schoolboy’s strongest point, be it

-remembered, was a stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive

-at the waste-paper basket, meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor

-minded his reading that book. But the question never was asked; the

-book was still in the basket when the doctor had finished drying his

-face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had seen the

-dead.

-

-“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired Baumgartner,

-solicitously.

-

-“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping his forehead

-and then his hand.

-

-“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there first!”

-

-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.

-

-“I do feel seedy,” he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it,

-“but I’m not going to faint. I’m quite well able to go upstairs. I’d

-rather lie down on my own bed, if you don’t mind.”

-

-His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was

-none the less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first

-close examination of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had

-picked out of the basket in the doctor’s room instead of Boismont’s

-book on hallucinations. There had been no hallucination about those

-scraps of paper; they were fragments of the boy’s own letter to his

-sister, which Dr. Baumgartner had never posted at all.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-A LIKELY STORY

-

-

-At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before,

-when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not

-only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of

-warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had

-followed by the only Sunday train.

-

-A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town

-which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for

-the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its

-beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and

-leafy coverts,  with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a

-permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the

-hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it,

-abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and

-entered the grounds on foot.

-

-A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was

-encountered and accosted before he reached the house.

-

-“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I

-want to see him about something.”

-

-Lettice flushed and shrank.

-

-“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”

-

-“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath

-away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no

-longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of

-town without a word?”

-

-“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had

-ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and

-my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday

-unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and

-was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only

-for the night. So it’s all my  fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything

-but what you’ve come down to tell us!”

-

-“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But

-if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have

-found out.”

-

-In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight,

-without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of

-provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt

-as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the

-bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from

-that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little

-artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the

-rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the

-house.

-

-The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had

-rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram,

-leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes

-that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.

-

-“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve

-been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you

-were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by

-the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”

-

-“Did you leave the motor behind?”

-

-“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”

-

-“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full

-breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or

-how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it

-through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a

-dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for

-your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t

-have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of

-us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”

-

-“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.

-

-“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”

-

-“Alive?”

-

-“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”

-

-The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who

-calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were

-blinded by the first ray of light.

-

-“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.

-

-“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really

-was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”

-

-“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.

-

-“What kind of interest?”

-

-“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked

-at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?”

-

-“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”

-

-“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”

-

-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.

-

-“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”

-

-“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve

-turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly

-tub.”

-

-“Do you know when she was to sail?”

-

-“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”

-

-“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother,

-if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He

-told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton,

-and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have

-been the boy.”

-

-Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing

-question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.

-

-“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where

-exactly did he see him?”

-

-“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d

-better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for

-Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the

-first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his

-name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some

-distinction.”

-

-The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush

-continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for

-he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes

-since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four

-hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up

-to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I

-preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried

-his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know

-him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered

-being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning!

-That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself

-was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have

-known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”

-

-“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about

-Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false

-scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker,

-there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth

-place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner

-lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on

-the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer,

-having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the

-Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to

-me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was

-the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I

-was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor

-lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants

-and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the

-arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to

-complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on

-the Thursday night!”

-

-“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.

-

-“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but

-I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you.

-It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my

-leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards

-went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish

-I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for

-an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must

-say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said,

-‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for

-last Thursday!’”

-

-“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I’m an inquiry

-agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you’ll tell me it may

-solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is was

-treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there’s no

-shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”

-

-“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn’t

-blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in

-store. ‘I’d tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I

-don’t really know it myself. He said it was  John Green—but his

-handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.”’”

-

-“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father.

-

-“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That

-settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?”

-

-“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.”

-

-“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”

-

-“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!”

-

-“He might feel he had?”

-

-“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he’d done no such thing; in

-fact, he’s just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of

-some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the

-subject.

-

-“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy

-of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.

-

-“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal Lettice.

-

-“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.

-

-“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his

-story that you ought to hear.”

-

-And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully

-true version—up to a point—of poor Pocket’s condition and

-adventures—with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out—from the

-early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon

-of that day.

-

-Baumgartner had actually described the boy’s long sleep in his chair;

-it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began

-in earnest.

-

-“That’s a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I’d like

-to take him by the hand—and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of

-their dirty necks—and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”

-

-“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying

-out all night with asthma—it was enough to kill him—or to send him out

-of his mind.”

-

-“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of

-serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.

-

-“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he

-had been keeping something all this time.

-

-“Only something he’d kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a

-little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them

-after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr. Upton. You

-may not believe it. I’m not certain that I do myself. In the morning he

-had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you’d opposed it, but

-withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you don’t mind! In the evening

-he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the

-_Seringapatam_, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get

-aboard himself that night!”

-

-“I don’t believe it, Thrush.”

-

-“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”

-

-Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye.

-“I don’t say I altogether accept it myself; that’s why I kept it to the

-end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the

-improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that

-the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here’s a man, a well-known

-man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the

-Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to

-his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the

-doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily

-checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and

-disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about

-everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and

-never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are

-prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care

-to hear Dr. Baumgartner’s theory as to what has happened.”

-

-Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may

-as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to

-him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may

-have seen something that we shouldn’t guess.”

-

-“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now

-thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the

-foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn’t know the boy had come up

-to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood

-he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of

-mild spree—if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential

-lenses on the indignant girl.

-

-“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn’t yours, Mr.

-Thrush, so please go on.”

-

-“It’s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I

-was able to tell him, and we mustn’t forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he

-was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did

-meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been

-ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons;

-perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the

-conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I

-think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters,

-particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a

-thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to

-go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at

-home! What’s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship

-he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in

-her still—even if he has to stow away!”

-

-“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think of it. His head

-was full of those trashy adventure stories!”

-

-But Lettice shook hers quietly.

-

-“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction

-that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

-

-“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he

-actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself,

-but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many

-pounds of biscuit and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive

-into blue water. There’s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner

-the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he

-would be out of the world for three whole months.”

-

-“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to

-his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to

-sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?”

-

-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.

-

-“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of

-us will board her tomorrow if she’s up to time!”

-

-“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?”

-

-“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They

-don’t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have

-gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an

-old boatswain of the line who’s caretaker at the office, and the only

-man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I’ve since bearded one

-of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement

-confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at 

-Plymouth, so she certainly won’t sail again before to-morrow noon, even

-if she’s there by then. You will be in ample time to board her—and I’ve

-got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw—if you go down by

-the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.”

-

-The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him,

-he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the

-increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an

-uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and

-after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was

-pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene

-Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled

-him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared

-for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the

-man’s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the

-moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it

-fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the

-works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught

-before replying.

-

-“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my job

-is to prove things one way or the other.”

-

-“Then I’ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is

-absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.”

-

-Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or

-anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the

-window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy

-as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than

-usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train

-was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.

-

-“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it’s

-all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and

-it’ll just make the difference to me.”

-

-“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train

-showed signs of life at last.

-

-“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake

-that man’s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!”

-

-“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a

-contemplative pause.

-

-“I’ll take my chance of that.”

-

-“He said something about their both going out of town to-day—meaning

-niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left, and that

-seemed to remind him of it.”

-

-“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”

-

-“And losing the train?”

-

-“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him

-with me, as well as you?”

-

-“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you

-didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Not count on you”?

-

-“One of us will be quite enough.”

-

-“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the

-ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.

-

-“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at

-that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way

-in something.

-

-“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.

-

-“Want him yourself do you?”

-

-“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Why not? Where is he.”

-

-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.

-

-“In prison.”

-

-“In prison! Your man Mullins?”

-

-“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of

-complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-MALINGERING

-

-

-Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was

-still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were

-the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of

-tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back

-into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before

-Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray.

-

-“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see

-you yourself again by supper-time.”

-

-“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t force me, please”

-

-“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a

-tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your

-wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the

-window shut—so—and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it

-when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to

-disturb you.”

-

-And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling

-stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when

-an admirable doctor’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his

-forehead.

-

-“A little fever, I’m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were

-you. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have

-been through so much, my poor young fellow.”

-

-“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.

-

-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.

-

-“But there’s one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant

-whisper. “They’ve had that letter of yours at home quite a long time

-now—ever since yesterday morning, haven’t they?”

-

-The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut—he only hoped it was

-not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr.

-Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the

-discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed

-anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he

-could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of  the other’s

-trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the

-heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the

-wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth

-impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition!

-

-Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at

-first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner—a fear felt

-from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the

-sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a

-thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung

-in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such

-subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace

-of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he

-missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this

-sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.

-

-The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other

-side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the

-doctor’s stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was

-not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan

-had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His

-people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that

-was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even

-Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write

-than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have

-aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some

-fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond

-reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he

-could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible

-logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of

-a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken

-in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to

-betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already done so!

-

-His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner’s manner

-when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have

-been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the

-doctor’s behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very

-gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any

-supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite

-of that man’s bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It

-was against his reasoned policy to show  temper, and he was beginning

-to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You’ll think better of

-that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half

-an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle

-on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth,

-and Baumgartner eyed the boy.

-

-“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”

-

-“Nothing to eat.”

-

-“Is there any book?”

-

-“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. “There’s the book

-I was reading yesterday.”

-

-“What was that?”

-

-“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”

-

-“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable

-aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have

-destroyed it.”

-

-“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted.

-

-“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is

-no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is

-done and over.”

-

-“If it is over,” murmured the boy.

-

-“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.

-

-“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d got to say about

-somnambulism.”

-

-“Why?”

-

-Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite

-of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to

-know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their

-sleep.

-

-“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as

-well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot

-woke me and I found myself where you saw me.”

-

-“I’m glad you find it funny!”

-

-The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the

-increased asperity of Baumgartner’s manner, and his whole conduct about

-a harmless book, altogether inexplicable.

-

-“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.

-

-“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do

-your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human

-life less precious than the average dog’s!”

-

-And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human

-about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said

-since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the

-door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel

-exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated

-solicitude of the doctor’s final visit, with pipe and candle, when the

-one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket.

-

-“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten

-in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly midnight?”

-

-“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told

-you I wasn’t well.”

-

-“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.”

-

-“I can’t help that.”

-

-“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed

-to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the

-oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black

-nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more

-infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the

-boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless

-atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of

-looking on.

-

-“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it’s my own fault. I

-take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very

-first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law

-into my own hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or

-worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not

-strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it

-not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow—to trust me perhaps more

-than you have done?”

-

-It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue

-stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived

-from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this

-one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated

-Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take

-any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a

-brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed

-himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their

-own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy’s faith

-in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a

-symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.

-

-“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he

-had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”

-

-“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.

-

-“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,

-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”

-

-Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might

-have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came

-before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the

-way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer

-still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And

-Baumgartner’s had become a dreadful face in the boy’s eyes now; there

-was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual

-cruelty; and its smile—its new and strange smile it must have been that

-made him shudder and shake his head.

-

-“But, my young fellow,” urged the doctor, “it will do you so much good.

-And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!”

-

-Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself

-could have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was

-much to commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough

-as he moved it from side to side on the pillow.

-

-“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out with you, when

-you see I can’t eat a bite?”

-

-Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early,

-early lovely summer’s  morning; then they would see, would they not?

-Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from

-the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next

-morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself.

-Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about

-anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep

-revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to

-slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he

-was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.

-Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn

-up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead

-of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have

-that poor innocent man set free before the day was out.

-

-The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been

-secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price

-which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry

-boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one

-remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent

-him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was

-food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed 

-to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still

-untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of

-his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not

-used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not

-self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly

-tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament

-was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only

-shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a

-yard from his door.

-

-Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure

-lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath;

-and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to

-open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had

-done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene

-must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as

-free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the

-few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he

-could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of

-comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open

-eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last

-rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.

-

-Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised

-its note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds,

-which grew but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house.

-Somebody was knocking and ringing at the doctor’s door, not furiously,

-but with considerable pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow

-just at first, and flew from the open window to the landing outside his

-door. The house was in perfect darkness, and still as death in the

-patient intervals between each measured attempt to rouse the inmates

-without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must be

-Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the

-boy was about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the

-retreat of feet down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next

-landing as the doctor closed his bedroom door.

-

-Who could it have been? Baumgartner’s chuckle suggested the police; but

-in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last

-laugh, though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He

-could not close an eye for thinking of it, and listening for another

-knocking and ringing down below. But nothing happened  until the doctor

-returned between five and six, still with his meerschaum pipe, still in

-his alpaca jacket, but wearing also the goblin hat and cloak of their

-first meeting, to renew and intensify the animal fear that glued the

-boy to his bed.

-

-“It is a pity,” said Baumgartner, standing at the window which Pocket

-had left open. “The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a cloud

-in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who

-are making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose

-”—and his eyes blazed—“I’d feed you like a fowl!”

-

-“It’s so likely that I should do it on purpose,” muttered Pocket, with

-schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and they

-had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner’s.

-

-“You know best,” said the doctor. “But you are missing the morning of

-your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little

-garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your

-public school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more

-imagination, thank God!”

-

-Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he

-had the door open too, as the doctor’s step was creaking down the lower

-flight of stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not

-quite to the banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told

-him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only

-for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking

-back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was

-another sharp shutting. Food at last!

-

-It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that

-plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll

-to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he

-had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without

-plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at

-Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining

-all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early

-jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye

-properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second

-time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if

-that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end,

-by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the

-schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the

-discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes!

-

-Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it

-was a practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet

-such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked

-door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew

-where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using

-as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr.

-Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in

-the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no

-forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried

-both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room

-window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That

-mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and

-a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow.

-

-Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his

-hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window,

-and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his

-clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They

-were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there

-somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr.

-Baumgartner came back before his time.

-

-It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on

-the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was

-not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives

-beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs,

-among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had

-often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in

-the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little

-hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for

-breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.

-

-It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives;

-at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up

-like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He

-had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it,

-trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only

-partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind.

-

-At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside

-him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the

-whole lot crashing about his toes.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH

-

-

-The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and

-Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a

-mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn

-red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take

-the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in

-a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But

-it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with

-romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be

-still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature’s

-heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time

-to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the

-window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but

-determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark

-hair tumbling over her shoulders.

-

-“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.

-

-“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?”

-

-“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through

-the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.

-

-“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if

-you will!”

-

-And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But

-Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.

-

-“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with

-considerable severity.

-

-“I didn’t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning

-before he went out. They’re what I broke in for, and I’d a perfect

-right; you know I had! And while I’m about it I thought I might as well

-have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.

-And I’m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in

-the house of one of the greatest villains alive!”

-

-The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were

-all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his

-indignation, the girl’s eyes flashing hers.

-

-“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of

-what he said you were, if anything could be.”

-

-“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!”

-

-“He may have been justified.”

-

-“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver

-from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done

-with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if

-he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But

-that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my

-own poor people who may think me dead——”

-

-“Well?”

-

-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was

-breaking with his great grief and grievance.

-

-“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch

-the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday

-morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you

-don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I

-found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d

-never posted it at all!”

-

-Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes

-filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.

-

-“I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked,

-and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.

-

-“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so,  at any rate; it does to

-me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you,

-or why you let yourself be hidden.”

-

-“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?”

-

-The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she

-looked from it to him without recoiling.

-

-“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of

-horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an

-accident. And if it was an accident——”

-

-“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever

-happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours

-afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was

-frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should

-have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I

-lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I

-came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that

-morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my

-promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!”

-

-He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them

-know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But 

-now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was

-more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what

-he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s

-papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name.

-

-“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your

-account, if not on his!”

-

-Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last

-assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives

-and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and

-collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place,

-and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing

-much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his

-hands.

-

-“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time

-you’re ready to go, I’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.”

-

-They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open

-door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he

-was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto

-they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of

-appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown

-and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious or careless still, as

-with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise

-honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault of

-what he suddenly felt he simply must say.

-

-“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at last.

-

-“But I want you to,” she returned promptly and firmly, though not

-without a faint smile.

-

-It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get

-that out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as

-he had done when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man

-to his niece; all that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not

-think he was peculiar there; in fact, he thought romantically enough

-about the girl, with her dark hair all over her pink dressing-gown, and

-ivory insteps peeping out of those soft slippers especially when the

-vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making himself as presentable

-as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy in the same

-way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on the

-table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He

-could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner

-he went the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He

-hated the thought of deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such

-a girl! He could only face it with the fixed intention of coming back

-to the rescue of his heroine, he the hero of their joint romance. But

-for his own immediate freedom he was already unheroically eager. And

-yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives together, on the

-white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a boyish

-bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet

-been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it

-brandished by man or boy.

-

-The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier,

-because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives

-was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to

-atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees

-again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure

-sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he

-remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in

-the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in

-position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had

-done.

-

-“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical

-preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if

-my uncle came in now.”

-

-“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”

-

-“You never know!”

-

-Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited,

-but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.

-

-“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly

-what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give

-him leave to stop me if he can.”

-

-“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his

-leave before printing his negative.”

-

-Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny

-room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was

-a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and

-then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing

-the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative

-originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the

-carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood

-looking over his shoulder.

-

-“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in

-Kensington.”

-

-He turned to her quickly.

-

-“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”

-

-“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening

-print.

-

-“I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so

-interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as

-the one where it must have happened.”

-

-“Did he take the photograph then?”

-

-“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.”

-

-“Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!” cried Pocket, in

-uncontrollable excitement. “It’s not only the place; it’s the thing

-itself. Look at that man on the bench!”

-

-The girl took a long look nearer the window.

-

-“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it were

-falling off! He might be dying.”

-

-“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate was

-exposed!”

-

-She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent,

-but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner’s own confession of

-his attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to

-executions; he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly,

-clumsily, inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power

-which brought those incredible theories  home to his companion as

-forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was

-the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed

-his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was

-not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always

-felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now

-she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the

-broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was

-nothing to see; the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out

-the repulsive picture even as she held it in her hands.

-

-“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and

-strained with formless terrors.

-

-“I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human

-being I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether

-you like it yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this

-case in connection with—mine—and I see that one theory was that the man

-in this broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly

-believe that Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!”

-

-“He must have been there if he took the photograph.”

-

-“Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I’ve told you all

-he told me about it, but I haven’t told you all he said about the value

-of human life.”

-

-“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!”

-

-“Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these

-murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight

-from the flesh; that’s his own way of putting it, not mine.”

-

-“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?”

-

-“On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power

-over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my

-sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the

-chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s

-death, not after it.”

-

-“It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of

-one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he

-hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his

-charge.

-

-But there they were agreed.

-

-“He hadn’t one on him that morning; that I can swear,” said Pocket,

-impartially disposing of the idea. “Mine was the only one in that cape

-of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back

-into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or

-anywhere else about him, or I couldn’t have helped seeing it.” Phillida

-accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as

-if in recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy

-whom she could now understand his regarding in that light. If only he

-would go before the enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over

-him as he himself seemed to feel, then that was all the more reason for

-him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like

-that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and

-keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he

-insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression

-to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the

-brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,

-while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.

-

-He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost

-fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his

-small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand,

-and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder

-neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. His whole face  was

-altered; but so was his whole life. She could not understand his

-incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the chambers

-round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live

-cartridges in all six.

-

-“Don’t you see?” the words came pouring. “Not one of them’s been

-fired—it’s as I loaded it myself the other night! It can’t have been

-this revolver at all!”

-

-“But you must have known whether you fired or not?”

-

-“I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I’d only

-heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open

-air, though I do remember wondering I hadn’t felt any kick. But I was

-so dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it

-from me in such a rage that of course I believed I’d let it off. But

-now I can see I can’t have done. It wasn’t my revolver and it wasn’t

-me!”

-

-“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?”

-

-“I’ll swear he didn’t; but there’s another man in all this! There was

-the man they arrested on Saturday—the man I was so keen to set free!”

-

-The boy’s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What

-was it to him that his innocence implied another’s complicity? Only too

-characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point

-of view; but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed?

-There was the broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that

-was not enough for Phillida.

-

-She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose

-in his waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. “Then my uncle

-might have put in a fresh one while you were asleep.”

-

-“Why should he?”

-

-“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.”

-

-“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in

-the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away

-one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in

-the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s

-one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!”

-

-He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for

-herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He

-was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it

-meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that

-was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his 

-innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it.

-

-“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you

-should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.”

-

-And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping

-him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he

-followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back.

-

-“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her

-side at last.

-

-“Why not?”

-

-“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a

-man like that!”

-

-So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings

-or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious

-air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have

-flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it

-first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead.

-

-“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you

-say against my uncle behind his back?”

-

-“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for

-waiting.”

-

-“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?”

-

-“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”

-

-“How do you know he took the negative?”

-

-“I don’t, but——”

-

-“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick

-for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody

-like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he

-must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep

-with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all,

-simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days!

-Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought

-it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to

-another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as

-though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew

-him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years

-and years—and kind to you—far too kind——”

-

-The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it

-and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well

-of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not

-imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed

-her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her  instead. “Will you

-come with me?” he asked hoarsely.

-

-She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she

-could only shake her head.

-

-“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket

-extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida!

-You might live with us altogether!”

-

-She smiled very faintly at that.

-

-“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all

-we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do

-if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train

-about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come,

-Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!”

-

-He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or

-apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for

-indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once

-for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything

-was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out.

-

-“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only

-possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard

-all he said to me that first night, and been with  me in the dark-room

-when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how

-it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows

-he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad;

-but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.”

-

-“He would be as he’s always been to me.”

-

-“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.

-

-“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”

-

-“Because I can’t.”

-

-“Because you won’t!”

-

-“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be

-your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!”

-

-He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal

-obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He

-stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but

-he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the

-things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He

-might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to

-make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he

-thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that,

-for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the

-stairs.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVIII.

-A THIRD CASE

-

-

-In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of

-these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it

-was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one

-which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those

-endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an

-endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves

-up in his memory without a detail missing.

-

-There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida

-standing all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair

-about her shoulders, a picture that could never fade. Then there was

-the moment of the incriminating print, which the sun wiped out even as

-Phillida stood with it in her hands. That moment merged itself in the

-greater one of his discovery that the revolver was fully loaded, his

-inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal mischief in the

-Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him the time

-before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving way

-an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck

-together, and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of

-anger which dissolved his fears like snow in May.

-

-That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to

-be forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying

-absolutely on her account, and so far from giving him the slightest

-credit for it, or a single word of encouragement, she said all sorts of

-things and was off before he could answer one of them. It was not for

-Pocket to see the many ironies of that moment, and not for him to

-recognise the tonic property of his heroic grievance. He could only see

-himself at the foot of those stairs, first gnashing his teeth and not

-sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with his eye on the front

-door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the doctor’s key. Another

-click was to answer it; and at the point of the cocked revolver

-Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not only to

-the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to

-call to witness with her own ears.

-

-Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not

-incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he

-had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot

-forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen’s

-carts, boys  whistling past the house as though they were not in a

-wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his

-watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear

-shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though

-it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth)

-that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a

-state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the

-stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor

-over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle.

-

-So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon

-him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until

-Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.

-

-He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the

-quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly

-upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to

-provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys

-coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.

-

-“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.

-

-“I do now.”

-

-“Do you hear what it is?”

-

-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.

-

-“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.

-

-“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you hear? ‘Another awful

-murder!’ Now they’re saying something else.”

-

-“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.

-

-“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I can’t hear what!”

-

-“No more can I.”

-

-“I’ll open the door.”

-

-She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.

-The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away

-again in the distance.

-

-“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known man!”

-

-“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?”

-

-“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.”

-

-“But you’re worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling

-to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he

-had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever

-of impatience.

-

-Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o’clock in the morning;

-now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn,

-then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he

-might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not

-the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did

-not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally

-unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this

-criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes.

-Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of mind, as his elders

-and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more

-than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for

-the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida’s first words on

-returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were

-not the truth.

-

-“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.

-

-“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”

-

-“So he was the well-known man!”

-

-He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had

-seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by

-Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was

-not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida

-nodded with swimming eyes.

-

-“Did the doctor know him?”

-

-“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”

-

-“Why?”

-

-“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and gold-mines,

-and some financial paper. I never understood.”

-

-“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?”

-

-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out

-his.

-

-“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.

-

-“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.”

-

-“There is!”

-

-“I shall know it sooner or later.”

-

-“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what you

-like, and still be wrong!”

-

-There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found

-the paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it

-was so folded already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and

-more of it in the late corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P.,

-the well-known proprietor of the _Money-maker_, had been shot dead in

-front of his house in Park Lane. The murder had been committed in the

-early hours of the morning, before anybody was about except  Sir Joseph

-and his groom, and the person whom the groom described as the only

-possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the

-early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a

-photographer representing himself as concerned with the press, and

-desirous of obtaining an equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom

-thought it was to be taken in the Park, and was himself on his way back

-to the mews when the riderless horse overtook him. Mounting the animal,

-he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph dead in the road, and no trace

-of the “photographer” but a false beard and spectacles which he had

-evidently discarded in his flight, and which unfortunately precluded a

-close description of his appearance. But a hue and cry had been

-started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding in

-the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough

-search under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.

-

-Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her

-companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the

-next thing he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big

-chair in the back room.

-

-The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It

-was a period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each

-other through it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for

-his step no longer, but for more newsboys crying his capture to the

-world. And in the hours that they spent thus listening, and listening,

-the girl had much to say, that it did her good to say, about this Dr.

-Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved him in the past.

-

-Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to

-her for all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into

-hers, in the many years they had been more or less together. All she

-really knew of him was from her mother, whose elder sister he had

-married soon after the Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after

-marriage. He must have been settled in England many years before

-Phillida’s mother, herself an Englishman’s widow, came to keep house

-for him. The girl could not remember her father, but her mother had

-lived to see her in her teens, and in her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had

-seemed much as other men. It was only of late years that he had

-withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and buried

-himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His

-niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and

-she had always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he

-was going to send her  to college, he had only just given her six

-months in Switzerland. It was during those months that all his

-eccentricities had become pronounced; that he had given up servants,

-and taken to doing half the work of the house himself, with the casual

-aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals in from

-a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other

-matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in

-him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for

-her, whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own

-kinsfolk so much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could

-make her forget what he had done. She never could or would desert him;

-it was no use asking her again; but she took her callow champion’s

-hand, and wrung it with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by

-further prayers for his departure.

-

-And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale

-that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets,

-suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to

-make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so

-natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer.

-His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he

-been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a murderer would behave?

-Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with

-those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next

-room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary

-lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their

-dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living

-this ordinary life.

-

-The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of

-something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of

-her feeling for him, and of the schoolboy’s feeling for her. If he

-could have convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so

-cleared Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any

-other case, he would have done it for Phillida’s sake that afternoon.

-But with every hour of the doctor’s absence suspicions multiplied.

-Phillida herself was a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall

-symptoms of incipient insanity as instances of personal kindness; if

-one lost one’s reason, she broke a long silence to contend, there could

-be no question of regret and wrong. She was not so sure about crime and

-punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could be no question of that

-either; but in his heart he wondered how much method they must prove to

-hang a madman.

-

-The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy

-had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before;

-and strong excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting

-silently together in the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was

-deepening every minute. Suddenly there was a sound of small branches

-breaking in the garden. Pocket peeped out, standing back from the

-window at her entreaty.

-

-The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain

-into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure

-rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent

-double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long

-and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over

-his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under

-his arm.

-

-The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the

-door; but it was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have

-seen them; they were clasping hands as they shrank away from him with

-one accord. But he did not seem to see them at all. He stretched

-himself, as though he found it a relief to stand upright, and more

-mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took off the alpaca

-jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could have

-been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a

-hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out

-plainly enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper

-parcel; he had put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed

-the paper; it fell at Pocket’s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and

-nothing had come out of it but the stereoscopic camera, that either

-watcher could detect.

-

-And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of

-either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go

-upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead.

-

-“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set

-teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.

-

-“No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he

-mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at

-all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!”

-

-“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he

-comes!”

-

-He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again

-under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with

-the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in

-a hurry, as though he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed

-the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of

-keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room

-door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match

-struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow.

-The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark.

-

-Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered

-bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger

-photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there

-was a long period without a sound.

-

-“He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He

-caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it

-is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled

-ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the

-plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment;

-interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the

-wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!”

-

-One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as

-before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was

-being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the

-locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The

-red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door

-shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent

-figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no

-resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes

-before.

-

-“I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief

-communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the

-base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might

-think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he

-was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening

-breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length

-she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s

-head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a

-paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand.

-

-“Does he know I’m here?” he asked.

-

-“I don’t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he’s forgotten

-your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though he’d

-forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He

-seems so strange—so old!”

-

-Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. “I

-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?”

-

-“I don’t think so. What is it?”

-

-“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas

-while you were upstairs.”

-

-Phillida turned it out again without comment.

-

-“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed.

-

-“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in

-these—mysteries?”

-

-“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant

-is in prison.”

-

-“He isn’t!”

-

-“You said he was?”

-

-“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read

-it for yourself.”

-

-But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. “I doubt if there’s

-anything in that,” she said; “but what if there were? Does it make it

-any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If he’s guilty at

-all, it makes it all the worse.”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIX.

-THE FOURTH CASE

-

-

-The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of

-the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of

-moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the

-room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual

-cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to

-steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the

-shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds

-of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.

-

-It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs

-or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or

-less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a

-certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables,

-to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so

-that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as

-though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and

-every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in

-the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead.

-

-Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to

-their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was

-against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what

-he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was

-asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the

-longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a

-result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just

-went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near

-together as they would go.

-

-The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to

-wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some

-monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above

-and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night,

-and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the

-door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his

-lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney

-in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it.

-Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor

-was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew

-back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his

-nose, and crashed upon the path outside.

-

-The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was

-breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself;

-and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won.

-

-“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced

-solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when

-a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near

-my young fellow, I hope?”

-

-And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that

-the boy could have screamed with pain.

-

-“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket

-could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young

-lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have

-another word with you, young fellow.”

-

-The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest.

-They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was

-suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of

-mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by

-Baumgartner.

-

-Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the

-next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and

-his  own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an

-idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through

-the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down

-before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in

-the shadow of the far wall.

-

-The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it

-looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit

-the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly

-the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood

-out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the

-fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the

-revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that

-way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling

-watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in

-Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But

-on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe

-was well in blast.

-

-There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the

-right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the

-lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting

-out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not

-necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of

-sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up

-behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And

-Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap.

-

-The front door shut again.

-

-Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was

-a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side

-of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate,

-and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his

-stride and darted over into the open road.

-

-Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure

-stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy

-to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in

-gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a

-backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another

-glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the

-spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the

-distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once

-the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets

-were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of

-dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were

-dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day,

-because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to

-make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the

-cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was

-sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a

-motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road,

-which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a

-visible mile of asphalt to itself.

-

-Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car

-itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous

-mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles

-were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a

-second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from

-the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel.

-Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step

-fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in

-custody across the road.

-

-“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did

-not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.

-

-“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still

-patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.

-

-“Only last night when I wired.”

-

-“And where?”

-

-“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”

-

-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.

-

-“Why, I never saw you before this minute!”

-

-“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two.”

-

-“Then why didn’t you wire before?” demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to

-mask his own emotion with a little heat. “I didn’t get it till after

-nine o’clock—too late for the evening train—but I wasn’t going to waste

-three hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on

-my way to the address you gave.”

-

-“It was plumb opposite Baumgartner’s. I mounted guard there the very

-night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after

-him!”

-

-“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,

-my dear boy?”

-

-The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick

-succession; but the first was repeated on the boy’s hang-dog admission

-that he had been hiding.

-

-“Hiding, Tony?”

-

-Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. “But at all events

-we found you better employed,” he said to Pocket, “and the sooner we

-all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying

-this rascal by the heels.”

-

-“Take it up, then!” snapped Mr. Upton. “Jump into the motor, and bring

-the brute to me when you’ve got him! I want to speak to my boy.”

-

-He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that

-passed between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of

-his child who had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his

-head outside the story he extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket

-told it very volubly and ill; he would not confine himself to simple

-facts. He stated his suspicion of Baumgartner’s complicity in the Hyde

-Park affair as though he knew it for a fact; cited the murders in

-Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of the same handiwork, and

-yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was not Dr.

-Baumgartner’s at all.

-

-“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?”

-

-“He was unarmed the other morning. I’m quite positive of that. And his

-niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the

-house.”

-

-“Well, he’s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one! It’s time we

-laid hold of him. Where’s Mr. Thrush? I thought you’d taken him on in

-the car?”

-

-This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers

-about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like

-his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette

-and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts

-being that he had nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton

-had incontinently taken into his own less experienced hands.

-

-“The car won’t take anybody anywhere to-day,” explained the chauffeur,

-with his cigarette behind his back. “I shall have to get a lorry to

-take the car.” He held his head on one side suddenly. “There’s a bit o’

-tyre trouble for somebody!” he cried, grimly.

-

-Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not

-unlike the bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it

-was that. He caught his father’s arm, and whispered in his father’s

-ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the

-asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of

-drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves

-and a few who followed. The hog’s back of a still more deserted bridge

-arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing

-against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they ran a peculiarly

-shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.

-

-“P’lice!” screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily

-spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own

-infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket

-panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the

-suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle.

-It was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the

-bridge, and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to

-pass an intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it

-on a parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket

-panted after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into

-a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too

-dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with

-a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the

-Surrey shore.

-

-The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate

-opposite the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the

-Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose

-upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some

-nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a

-number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly

-lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to

-appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant,

-before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living

-people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing

-together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the

-policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who

-had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in

-dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring

-cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden

-object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round

-and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another

-murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of

-death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only

-the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the

-boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr.

-Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming the river or hiding

-among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the

-group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape?

-The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could

-see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living

-legs.

-

-“Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching

-himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of

-the fun.

-

-“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the

-usual stite o’ mind.”

-

-“Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot

-’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im

-in.”

-

-Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father

-was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles,

-who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his

-trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he

-had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination

-to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry

-escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the

-murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XX.

-WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP

-

-

-Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the

-gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy

-and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they

-brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and

-horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they

-replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and

-a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to

-express in words.

-

-“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do it

-himself?”

-

-Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief,

-to dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.

-

-“It’s the one thing they are sure about,” said he. “In the first place

-no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera either,

-though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.

-That’s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the

-spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn’t have been

-fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been

-instantaneous. So it’s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane

-yesterday or the one in Hyde Park last week; there’s evidently some

-maniac prowling about at dawn, and shooting down the first person he

-sees and then vanishing into thin air as maniacs seem to have a knack

-of doing more effectually than sane men. But the less we jump to

-conclusions about him—or anybody else—the better.”

-

-The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and

-yet it startled her as an index of what must have passed already

-between father and son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff

-man should know as much as the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as

-a comrade in calamity. Yet she could not expect it to be otherwise.

-

-“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and fell

-again. “Oh! what must you think?”

-

-“It’s no good thinking,” he rejoined, with almost a jovial kindness.

-“We’re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see each other

-through before we think. Not that I’ve had time to hear everything yet,

-but I own I can’t make head or tail of what I have heard. I’m not sure

-that I want to. I like a man’s secrets to die with him; it’s enough for

-me to have my boy back again, and to know that you stood by him as you

-did. It’s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says it wasn’t your

-fault he didn’t come away long ago; and it shan’t be mine if you stay

-another hour alone in this haunted house. You’ve got to come straight

-back with us to our hotel.”

-

-They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted

-chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the

-walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of

-latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the

-murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they

-had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path

-outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and

-vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and

-depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be

-that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his

-simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of

-reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already

-clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and

-Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she

-declared she never could.

-

-“But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a

-young girl like you alone  in the day of battle, murder and sudden

-death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay

-here. Have you no other relatives in London?”

-

-“None anywhere that I know much about.”

-

-“That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt

-them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but

-you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.”

-

-He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added

-supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had

-indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more

-warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return

-to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later

-in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and

-leave the deserted house in some semblance of order.

-

-But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end;

-most of the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation

-of the dead man’s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in

-the dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she

-had already seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another

-of a man lying in a heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put

-to dry openly  in the rack, the wood of which was still moist from the

-process. Phillida only held it up to the light an instant, and then not

-only smashed both these negatives, but poured boiling water on the

-films and floated them down the sink. The bits of glass she put in the

-dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly done so when the

-first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was succeeded by a

-very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number of

-questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that

-suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary

-made any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but

-another of the perfectly random series which had already thrilled the

-town, but on which no light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of

-the murdered men. A third official came to announce that the inquest

-was to be opened without delay, at two o’clock that afternoon, and to

-request Phillida to accompany him to the mortuary for the formal

-identification of the deceased.

-

-That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled

-herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she

-found it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing

-here, save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had

-given back the  look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the

-girl was just old enough to associate with the dead man’s prime. She

-was thankful to have seen him like this for the last time. She wished

-that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for

-then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find it

-easier to disbelieve from this hour.

-

-“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered,

-impressed by her strange stare.

-

-“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen him look for

-years. There are worse things than death!”

-

-She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private

-sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had

-no desire to know a dead man’s secrets. He had found his boy; that was

-quite enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more

-freely on the subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making

-up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he

-had found him without the aid of police or press, and so not more than

-a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr.

-Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from

-his wife’s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing

-to hush it up on the boy’s account  if only it were possible to do so;

-but would it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at

-the inquest all mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle’s house?

-Phillida promised to do her best, and it proved not only possible but

-easy. She was questioned as to the habits of the deceased so far as

-they explained his presence on the Embankment at such a very early

-hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a single person who could

-conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr. Baumgartner as to wish

-to take his life, the witness answered in the negative, and the coroner

-bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the character of

-the murder, but he had put the question for form’s sake. The only one

-which caused her a moment’s hesitation arose from a previous answer,

-which connected the doctor’s early ramblings with his hobby of

-instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning?

-Phillida thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it

-certainly was not in the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he

-knew that his boy’s name had been on the tip of the witness’s tongue.

-And there was a sensation in court as well; for here at last was a bone

-for the detectives, who obtained a minute description of the missing

-camera, but grumbled openly that they had not heard of it before.

-

-“They never told me they hadn’t got it,” explained Phillida to the

-coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the

-court on the conclusion of her evidence.

-

-On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as

-much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared

-with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the

-poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had

-been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in

-a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men

-had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster

-thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss

-Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and

-Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her

-at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her

-mourning.

-

-Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and

-order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive

-straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the

-murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while

-listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor  in

-the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had

-described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the

-scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It

-included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street

-and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the

-Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He

-had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning

-he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of

-the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned

-round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There

-might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the

-flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been

-invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere.

-Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up

-Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in

-time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all

-he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than

-the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had

-he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the

-river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering

-sign or trace of human being.

-

-Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she

-proceeded to the spot in order to go over the ground for her own

-satisfaction. This did not make it easier to understand. It had come on

-to rain heavily while she was in the shop; the shining Embankment was

-again practically deserted, and she was able to carry out her

-experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen steps up

-Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and quite

-realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,

-hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden

-by the long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man

-could have been seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran,

-and the murderer must have run like the wind to get away as he had

-done. The gates through the garden, back and front of the statue, had

-not been opened for the day when the murder took place, so Phillida in

-her turn made a half-circuit of the island to get to the spot where the

-body had been found, but without taking her eyes off the spot until she

-reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by nothing short

-of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the

-policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done.

-He might have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his

-furthest point distant, if the gates had been open as they were now;

-but they had been locked, and he could not have scaled them unobserved.

-Neither would it have been possible to take a header into the river

-with the foreshore as described by the same witness. Yet the murderer

-had either done one of these things, or the flags of the Embankment had

-opened and swallowed him.

-

-The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have

-fallen, and in her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but

-the problem which engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened;

-but how could it have happened? She raised her umbrella and peered

-through the rain at a red pile of many-windowed flats; had that Argus

-of the hundred eyes been sleeping without one of them open at the time?

-Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in the narrow garden,

-standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its granite base, as

-though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike the

-colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the

-fixed eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another

-character as the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that

-stony stare, to distract it from the river to herself, and to  her

-fevered fancy the grim lips smiled contemptuously on her and her

-quandary. He knew—_he_ knew—those grim old eyes had seen it all, and

-still they stared and smiled as much as to say: “You are looking the

-wrong way! Look where I am looking; that way lies the truth you are

-poor fool enough to want to know!”

-

-And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over

-the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming

-of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that

-early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry

-and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore,

-black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point

-that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine

-hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding

-wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large

-cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,

-finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.

-

-Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat

-sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was;

-but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing

-camera of the murdered man.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXI.

-AFTER THE FAIR

-

-

-Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street

-was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the

-sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had

-happened to him except a fairly recent shave.

-

-“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two

-were closeted.

-

-“Do you ever read your paper?”

-

-“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.”

-

-“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.”

-

-“_You_ did, Thrush?”

-

-“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.”

-

-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush

-mannerism.

-

-“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!”

-

-“If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the

-corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I

-provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again.

-Blessed be the song of the Thrush!”

-

-“You say you provided him?”

-

-“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only

-with his own consent.”

-

-“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up

-with it now.”

-

-“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his

-client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my

-career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense.

-Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d

-done?”

-

-“Of course.”

-

-“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same

-thing?”

-

-“Not you, Thrush?”

-

-“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He

-jumped to it from scratch!”

-

-“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”

-

-“From the word ‘go.’ ”

-

-“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”

-

-“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two

-independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities

-was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in

-his life.”

-

-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s  flippancy. He looked

-at Thrush with a shining face.

-

-“And you never told me what was in your minds!”

-

-“It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you,

-in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time

-we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.

-

-“You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr.

-Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe

-it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?”

-

-Thrush emptied his glass at once.

-

-“Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the

-other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him

-through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!”

-

-“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their

-own.”

-

-“I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown

-before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily

-interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your

-question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your

-boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping

-in the Park,  let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and

-that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.”

-

-“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr.

-Upton, sadly.

-

-“So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole

-thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his

-presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman

-of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it

-on me with excellent effect.”

-

-“Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you

-suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for

-that particular boy.”

-

-“It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to

-believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your

-boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better

-than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a

-moment?”

-

-“I do _so_, God bless her!”

-

-“That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never

-had quite accepted in my heart. That’s another story, and you’re only

-in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on

-Saturday, I thought I’d like to know a little more about him, not from

-outsiders but from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the

-British Museum to have a look at his books. It was after hours for

-getting books, but I made such representations that they cut their red

-tape for once; and I soon read enough to wonder whether my grave and

-reverend seignior was quite all there. Spiritualism one knows, but here

-was spiritualism with a difference; psychic photography one had heard

-about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad or bad! When a

-gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to snap-shoot

-the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at

-Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor.

-Will you believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the

-very thing I shall presently prove to have been the truth, and that I

-dismissed it from my mind as the wildest impossibility?”

-

-“I don’t see how you’re going to prove it now,” remarked Mr. Upton, who

-hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the girl who had

-been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which there

-was no necessity to express.

-

-“I shall want another chat with your lad when he’s had his sleep out,”

-replied Thrush, significantly; “he’s told me quite enough to make me

-eager for  more. But you haven’t told me anything about your own

-adventures?”

-

-And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the

-ironmaster was only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he

-was both brief and amiable.

-

-“What have I to tell compared with you?” he asked. “Those damned old

-wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they

-weren’t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium

-lot broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want

-to know is what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that

-great moment this morning.”

-

-“I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,” replied Thrush. “The

-merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always apartments

-of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in half

-the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner’s, and

-I’d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course I

-explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady’s son

-embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at

-the front window all night, for no better reasons than my strong

-feeling about the doctor’s writings, and your daughter’s disbelief in

-his yarn about her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird

-came out,  and I was after him like knife. I tracked him to

-Knightsbridge without much difficulty, excepting the one of avoiding

-being spotted, but there that happened by the merest accident. He was

-passing under the scaffolding outside the church they’re pulling down

-there, and he’s so tall he knocked his hat off. I admit I was too

-close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I shouldn’t have

-recognised him if I hadn’t seen him start out. He was wearing a false

-beard and spectacles!”

-

-“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his breath.

-

-“Well, I confess it’s something like it in this case; but it was a very

-awkward moment for me. I hadn’t to let him see I knew him, nor yet that

-I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as

-openly as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving

-poor old Mullins in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay.

-We went back to my new rooms together, which I needn’t tell you I liked

-so much that I brought a suit-case and took them for a week. Of course,

-as we had lost the run of Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch

-for his return. Mullins took that on while I got some sleep; when I

-awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest, and I won’t say I didn’t

-suspect who’d done it. Perhaps I didn’t tell you he had his camera with

-him as  well as beard and goggles, and all three figured in the first

-reports.”

-

-“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?”

-

-“None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I

-wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner’s return; but

-in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a

-room overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too

-much class for that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked

-going back to prison for the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both

-man and boy before I sent that wire.”

-

-“And you left my son in that murderer’s clutches a minute longer than

-you could help?” It was a previous incarnation of Pocket’s father that

-broke in with this.

-

-“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least

-sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended,

-murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the

-others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an

-actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the

-way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the

-show, was desperately against calling in the police under any

-circumstances.  He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the

-house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape.

-I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in

-the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.”

-

-Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence

-which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their

-case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance

-against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his

-curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified.

-

-“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with

-characteristic absence of finesse.

-

-“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you

-see.”

-

-“But whatever could the object have been?”

-

-“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the

-ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which

-he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting

-salt on the lad.”

-

-“Tony?”

-

-“Yes.”

-

-“You puzzle me more and more.”

-

-“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy,

-of fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by

-accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the

-news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick

-as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been

-within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed,

-the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It

-didn’t come off.”

-

-“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was

-going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally

-satisfied himself of his own innocence.”

-

-Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of

-fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes

-blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose

-underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the

-drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.

-

-“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of

-the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this

-thing, he’s got it; even if not——”

-

-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined

-his whole flushed face.

-

-“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious

-alacrity. “Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at

-London Bridge to-day!”

-

-He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office

-in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume

-all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already

-far advanced.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXII.

-THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA

-

-

-The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better

-preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked

-with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And

-Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her

-possession.

-

-“The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was

-an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It

-was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another

-creature out in it except myself. I don’t believe a single soul saw me

-run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first

-for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof,

-and carried it up to the King’s Road before I could get a cab. But I

-never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain

-that’s the best luck of all!”

-

-“Why?”

-

-“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he took a

-last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!”

-

-“That’s an idea.”

-

-“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it

-still, and you could develop it!”

-

-The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the

-boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.

-

-“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything to develop;

-the slide’s been open all this time, you see.”

-

-“I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the

-water. Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the

-light, oughtn’t it?”

-

-“I’m afraid there isn’t a dog’s chance,” he murmured, as he handled the

-camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was

-one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come

-through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely

-broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to

-shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and

-sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in

-his hand.

-

-“That settles it,” remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate

-stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was

-cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.

-

-“I am sorry!” exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of

-glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some

-infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. “I’m not sure

-that you weren’t right after all; what’s water-tight must be more or

-less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what’s all this?

-The other side oughtn’t to bulge like that!”

-

-He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and

-weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain

-another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which

-had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable

-convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded

-packet of MS. leapt out.

-

-“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her

-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.

-

-“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up.

-

-“It must be what he was writing all last night!”

-

-“It is.”

-

-“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him

-closely as he read to himself:—

-

-“_June_ 20, 190—.”

-

-

-“It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret

-of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the

-year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according

-to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my

-task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice

-to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the

-underlined word advisedly; some would substitute ‘monomania,’ but I

-protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that

-fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at

-my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should

-feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever

-deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly

-already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I

-shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death——”.

-

-

-“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and

-he was breathing hard.

-

-“He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He’s

-said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!”

-

-“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she found a

-crumb of comfort in the thought.

-

-“I’m not so sure about that.”

-

-“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.”

-

-“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!”

-

-“Then let us read it together. I’d rather face it with you than

-afterwards all by myself. We’ve seen each other through so much, surely

-we can—surely——”

-

-Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim

-eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab

-figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr.

-Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing

-distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could

-find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of

-appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked,

-and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her

-coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the

-rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that

-streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and

-poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the

-dreadful document.

-

-This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now

-the other whispering a few sentences aloud:—.

-

-“What I have called my life’s ambition demands but little explanation

-here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have

-given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are

-still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on

-spirit photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and

-other periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight

-of the Soul,’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last

-year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter

-which has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare

-and to write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme

-measures I have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious

-criticism by the scientific press, but more generally received with

-ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the Englishman’s attitude

-towards whatsoever is without his own contracted ken, my article, the

-work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days. I had

-essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new

-idea, and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore

-of unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin

-press from that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph

-about the psychic photographer which went the rounds about a year ago.

-Yet I was that photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer

-to whom the London hospitals refused admittance to their pauper

-deathbeds, thronged though those notoriously are by the raw material of

-the British medical profession. Begin at the bottom of the British

-medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and most frequent

-opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of human

-dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,

-without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the

-purity of his aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than

-mine. It is as high above that of your ordinary physician as heaven

-itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to

-lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that

-there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which

-we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent

-life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it

-is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the

-opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over

-knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion

-invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is

-deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to

-supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the

-senses that cannot deceive, rather than to the imagination which must

-and does? But I am trenching after all upon ground which I myself have

-covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to relate a personal

-narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it that to

-me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of

-so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that

-all who saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit

-photography. It is a path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks

-and charlatans, and by false guides who rival the religious fanatics in

-the impudence of their appeal to man’s credulity. Even those who bear

-the lamp I hold aloft are too often jugglers and rogues, to whose

-wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of photography lends itself

-all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the production of impossible

-pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if the spiritual

-apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing

-easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist

-has yet succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the

-whole problem of spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of

-communication with disembodied spirits at the single will of the

-embodied; hence the periodical exposure of the paid medium, the smug

-scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of genuine exploration

-beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment, and only one,

-at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a particle

-of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at

-which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human

-watcher sees merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a

-phenomenon invisible to the human eye has been detected and depicted by

-that of the camera, as everybody knows who has the slightest

-acquaintance with the branch of physics known as ‘fluorescence.’ The

-invisible spirit of man surely falls within this category. To the

-crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible as elusive and

-intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign opportunity is

-gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of the

-soul.”

-

-“I say no more than ‘often’ because there are special difficulties into

-which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at least be

-minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,

-instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would

-hurt nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present

-have only their Churches’ word for the existence of an eternal soul in

-their perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few

-experiments, than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen

-centuries. Yet how are my earnest applications received, in hospitals

-where men die daily, in prisons where they are still occasionally put

-to death? I am refused, rebuffed, gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I

-am driven ultimately to the extreme course of taking human life, on my

-own account, in order to prove the life eternal. Call it murder, call

-it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of a lethal

-chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the

-inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an

-individual as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him

-worse than this world. I can only say that I have not deprived the

-State of one conceivably profitable servant, or cut short a single life

-of promise or repute. I have picked my few victims with infinite care

-from  amid the moral or material wreckage of life; either they had

-nothing to live for, or they had no right to live. Charlton, the

-licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I ever knew; in

-the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he

-wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to

-which an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed.

-Charlton had just been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and

-refusing to leave without an extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was

-indeed saturated with alcohol and honeycombed with disease; repulsive

-in appearance, and cantankerous in character, his earnings were so

-slender that he was pitifully clad, and without a night’s lodging

-oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and was suffering

-from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I resolved

-to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to photograph

-the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present itself

-for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at

-last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not

-another being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had

-purchased second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on

-the seat. Yet the weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the 

-authenticity of the suicide, despite my final precaution of stuffing a

-number of cartridges into the dead man’s pocket; pot-house associates

-came forward to declare that he could never have possessed either the

-revolver or its price without their knowledge. Hence the coroner’s

-repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is to be feared that

-the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public interest in

-its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more than an

-academic interest in the case.”

-

-“To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very

-few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb

-of my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for

-this, and the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found

-among my negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a

-unique photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the

-super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it

-would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not

-only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal

-pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my

-elaborate attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The

-next case should be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the

-shot to be fired, and the photograph taken, at the same range and all

-but at the same instant. There would be no further point in leaving the

-weapon behind, so I was free to choose the one best suited to my

-purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually

-I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already explained

-itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer

-of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it

-will not be loaded when found.”

-

-There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand

-about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For

-Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless

-rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long

-ago have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and

-already it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to

-discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through

-the next passages.

-

-“The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many

-weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have

-described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in

-readiness for another attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul

-in consecutive fractions of a second. But the right man was never in

-the right place at the right time; one saw him by the dozen in a crowd,

-but the people one met all by themselves, in the early summer mornings,

-stayed one’s hand repeatedly by the eager brightness of their eyes or a

-happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at the Brompton Hospital,

-whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was cheated of a

-merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the dawn

-and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch

-whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday

-morning. I knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton

-circle, but it was quite by chance that I followed his uncertain

-footsteps through the Park, and saw him go deliberately to bed in the

-drenching dew. His face filled in his tale; it was another farrago of

-privation and excess. This was the type that caused me no compunction:

-having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my invention provides, I

-despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his hat over his

-eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may be

-reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter

-coincided with the last clutter in his throat.

-

-“I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before

-firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make

-another wary survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could

-see a considerable distance in three directions, and in none of these,

-neither right nor left along the path, nor yet straight ahead across

-the grass on the edge of which my victim lay, was a living creature to

-be seen. This was very reassuring, as I felt that I could see a good

-deal farther than the report of my small automatic pistol was likely to

-be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting cases,

-especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how

-seldom it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the

-fatal shot. In the fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery

-behind some iron palings, I looked last, for I was standing with my

-back that way. How shall I describe my sensations on turning round?

-There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on the other side of the

-palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in his right

-hand!

-

-“At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and

-frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a

-third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were

-dank with dew. His eyes were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had

-been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all

-probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this,

-however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was disastrously inspired

-to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never struck me that

-he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was with a

-wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if

-he knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I

-had the wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm

-enough to help me convince the child that he really had fired the shot;

-but, since he could not see it for myself, I was not going out of my

-way just then to tell him it was a fatal shot. Already I regretted that

-I had gone so far, and yet already I saw myself committed to a course

-of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The boy became convulsed

-with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his story when the

-body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot, at the

-latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me

-through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with

-all sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had

-to keep him there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and

-implicate  me more readily than ever after what he had seen of me at

-home? I had to keep him there—I repeat it—alive or dead. And I was not

-the kind of murderer (if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent

-life, if I could help it, to preserve my own; on the contrary, I had,

-and I hope I always should have had, humanity enough at least to do

-what I could for a fellow-creature battling with an attack which almost

-threatened to remove him from my path without my aid.”

-

-There followed a few remarks on Pocket’s character as the writer read

-it. They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they

-betrayed a profound disdain for the typically British institution of

-which Pocket was too readily accepted as a representative product. His

-general ignorance and credulity received a grim tribute; they were the

-very qualities the doctor would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he

-appeared to have enjoyed the youth’s society, his transparent honesty,

-his capacity for enthusiastic interest, whether in the delights of

-photography or in the horrors of war. Baumgartner seemed aware that he

-had been somewhat confidential on both subjects, and that either his

-contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the matter of psychic

-photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on the other

-hand,  he “greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two and two

-together, at these so-called public schools”; and, after all, it was

-not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.

-

-“The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the

-beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary,

-was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all

-along. He had regarded it from the first as ‘the certain beginning of

-the end’; from the first, he had been prepared with specious

-explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually

-arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation

-of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not

-been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It

-was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which

-could only have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted

-it, but which the boy himself had discovered never to have been posted

-at all. There was a sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood

-into which Baumgartner’s intuition of the boy’s discovery had thrown

-him on the Sunday night.”

-

-“It was then,” he wrote, “that I formed a  project which I should have

-been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so

-if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my

-second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great

-a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable

-(even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure.

-What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had

-no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and

-spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were

-the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer.

-I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities

-in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought of the

-saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my

-acquaintance, of a ‘light’ specialist I know of who is destroying

-himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the

-slums; but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are

-much too valuable for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a

-compensating benefit to mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought

-of the boy upstairs. I had not meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of

-some promise, is only less sacred to me than a mature life rich in

-beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was going to be my ruin.

-I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the letter; he

-would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the

-work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was

-not going to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter

-into here, and I intended to take more than his life while I was about

-it. But he never gave me the chance. I did my best to get him to go out

-with me this morning. But he refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a

-dog the water. He said he was ill; he looked ill. But I have no doubt

-he was well enough to make his escape soon after my back was turned. I

-see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes I took away from

-him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that; but, to

-tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my return.”

-

-The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy

-broke in with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the

-Sunday night and the Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the

-doctor’s house. He declared that nothing short of main force would have

-dragged him out-of-doors that morning, that he felt it in his bones

-that he would never come back alive. Then he would be sorry he had said

-so much. It only increased his companion’s anguish. She was reading

-every word religiously, with a most painful fascination; it was as

-though every word drew blood. There was a brief but terrible account of

-the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own house in Park

-Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the one

-occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and

-that only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so

-intensely that a “straight” interview was out of the question. As it

-was he had escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft,

-creeping into a carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong

-side when it drove round to its house. Baumgartner described the

-incident with a callous relish, as perhaps the most exciting in his

-long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent return, in

-propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of a

-sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as

-follows, in less careful language and a more flowing hand:—

-

-“I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day’s excitement must

-have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got

-back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his

-clothes. I didn’t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative

-to develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute

-failure from the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason

-as its predecessors. South African mines may produce gold and diamonds

-(licit and illicit!) but their yield in souls is probably the poorest

-to the square mile anywhere on earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his

-gross carcass. So there was an end of him, and a good riddance to

-rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all night. I have thought

-of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate statement that I

-have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me strange

-pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to

-attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I

-not conscious of a moment’s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only

-sometimes have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause,

-perhaps half an hour ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I

-heard a footstep in the hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all

-this writing; it might be my imagination. I stole to my door, and as I

-opened it the one below shut softly. I waited some time, heard nothing

-more, went down with my lamp, and threw open the drawing-room door.

-There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting in the dark

-with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to be

-misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that.

-But somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark

-without a word, afraid to go to bed—afraid of me—made the blood boil

-over in my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I

-had pictured overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I

-am glad it missed him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was

-seeing his companion safe upstairs. If I had found him where I left

-him, God knows what violence I might not have done him after all. The

-boy has good in him, and more courage than he knows himself; again I

-say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life was not safe, but

-now I shall only take my own.

-

-“Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the

-common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in

-enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse

-than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar

-quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at

-my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind me, and I should have

-rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now they are

-waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where already

-it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and

-enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million

-facets of living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there;

-and as I have served others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be

-with better fortune than they have brought me. Who knows? It would be

-in keeping with the poetic ironies of this existence. At all events,

-unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a chance. I shall place the

-camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have fitted the shutter with

-a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do its double work

-as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my mind. I

-have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by

-the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent

-person, the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to

-the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one’s last

-instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to

-read what I fear they will describe as my ‘full confession.’ Well, it

-is ‘full,’ and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the

-document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall

-lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide

-it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would never

-see the light at all.”

-

-There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away,

-and wept over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness,

-while Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the

-muddy newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment’s

-hesitation went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her

-return she stood petrified on the threshold.

-

-Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter

-between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud

-metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the

-shutter snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward

-with a cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box

-without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens

-and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an

-automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be

-lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the

-second lens of the stereoscopic camera.

-

-Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was

-preceded by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there

-had been another cartridge in the pistol.

-

-“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this

-sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in

-quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”

-

-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him

-without a word.

-

-“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied

-altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve

-been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the

-pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen

-feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen,

-but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one

-bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit

-confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.”

-

-“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.

-

-“The police! I never thought of them.”

-

-“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl

-asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

-

-“What do _you_ mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his

-turn.

-

-“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away

-meanwhile.”

-

-“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you

-like with as well.”

-

-“They wouldn’t think so!”

-

-“They’ll never know.”

-

-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep

-it to yourself,” she said. “You would _have_ to tell.”

-

-“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you

-like!” he added, valiantly.

-

-“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”

-

-“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets

-dying with him?”

-

-“He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the

-mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as

-yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”

-

-She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and

-confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human

-boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in

-his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing

-their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet

-it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even

-then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit

-nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their

-penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting

-about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to

-Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and

-Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its

-subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace

-himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And

-now he had none whatever.

-

-“Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to

-a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to

-me!”

-

-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

-

-“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”

-

-Her eyes had filled.

-

-“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn

-anything in my life so far.”

-

-“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this

-terrible week?”

-

-And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away

-and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof,

-so that he might not see her tears.

-

-“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except

-yourself.”

-

-She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it,

-always, as much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all

-their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he

-think of a reward or look beyond those days.

-

-But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an

-automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS.

-They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was

-getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it

-was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any

-minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell

-him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little

-as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together

-they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

-

-Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where

-she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng.

-He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself

-as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who

-looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at

-the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo

-Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating

-a sensation.

-

-“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the

-Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”

-

-There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge,

-the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she

-aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through

-her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only

-retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the

-deep.

-

-She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a

-loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the

-genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who

-thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy

-townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own

-affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed

-themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.

-

-And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing

-but four words in enormous black letters:—

-

-CHELSEA INQUEST

-CAMERA CLUE!

-

-

-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to

-press it to his side.

-

-THE END

-

-

-Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Camera Fiend
+
+by E.W. Hornung
+
+London
+T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.
+Adelphi Terrace
+1911
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
+ II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN
+ III. HIS PEOPLE
+ IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN
+ V. THE GLASS EYE
+ VI. AN AWAKENING
+ VII. BLOOD-GUILTY
+ VIII. POINTS OF VIEW
+ IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH
+ X. SECOND THOUGHTS
+ XI. ON PAROLE
+ XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
+ XIII. BOY AND GIRL
+ XIV. BEFORE THE STORM
+ XV. A LIKELY STORY
+ XVI. MALINGERING
+ XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
+ XVIII. A THIRD CASE
+ XIX. THE FOURTH CASE
+ XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
+ XXI. AFTER THE FAIR
+ XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
+
+
+Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily
+exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken
+away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in
+open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion
+of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been
+bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For
+it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been
+called “a conscientious ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his
+house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he
+did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a
+blue pencil and a briar pipe.
+
+“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of
+chicken-pox, sir.”
+
+ The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured
+ but laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.
+
+“Then you must come back to-night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all
+nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor
+of yours.”
+
+“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on
+me, and then see what sort of night I have.”
+
+“You could go up again to-morrow.”
+
+“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate
+emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so
+acutely conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.
+
+“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.
+
+“Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the
+Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.”
+
+“Who are the Knaggses?”
+
+“The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley’s, sir; they go to Westminster
+now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St. John’s
+Wood Park.”
+
+“And the lady you mentioned?”
+
+“Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother’s; it was through her
+I went to Mr. Coverley’s, and I’ve often stayed there. She’s in the
+Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord’s.”
+
+Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that
+other lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no
+guile in any Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them
+resembled the great twin brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted
+a “pocket edition” on his arrival in the school. He had few of their
+other merits, though he took a morbid interest in the games they played
+by light of nature, as well as in things both beyond and beneath his
+brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit up half your nights with
+asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to Mr. Spearman,
+who was an average man. He had never disguised his own disappointment
+in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of outspoken and
+disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some sympathy
+with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning
+he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who
+was getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the
+two names and addresses.
+
+“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” “Absolutely certain,
+sir.”
+
+“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?”
+
+“Rather, sir!”
+
+“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.”
+
+Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to
+arrive very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished
+with more ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the
+best of them was framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its
+foreground was the nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down
+into the quad, where the fellows were preparing construes for second
+school in sunlit groups on garden seats. At that moment the bell began.
+And by the time Pocket had changed his black tie for a green one with
+red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the
+bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he
+would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.
+
+The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a
+world of buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel
+as good as anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in
+the corner seats did not dream of calling the youth an “old ass,” much
+less a young one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school
+were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there
+were still a few fellows  in Pocket’s house who made an insulting point
+of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was
+pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably
+unknown and unsuspected of one’s foibles in the train. It made Pocket
+feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in
+the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in bed. He
+took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him
+good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously
+at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was
+transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his
+paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him.
+Would the match hold out at Lord’s? If not, which was the best of the
+Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his
+expenses, so that these questions took an adventitious precedence over
+even such attractive topics as an execution and a murder that bade fair
+to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and having supped on
+the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in _Henry Dunbar_, the
+novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something like a
+murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying
+buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real
+crimes in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself
+there too soon.
+
+The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose
+professional standing is never quite on a par with their material
+success. The injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it
+may be that his temper was at the root of the prejudice against him. He
+was never very amiable with Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every
+sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had some call to complain.
+
+“You mean to tell me,” he expostulated, “that you’ve gone back to the
+cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you weren’t a stupid
+schoolboy I should throw up your case!”
+
+Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more
+days and nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible
+resentment.
+
+“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled.
+
+“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself coffee in
+the night, as you’ve done before.”
+
+“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.”
+
+“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first.
+Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea
+voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She
+sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.”
+
+The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the
+subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to
+his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following
+in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might
+have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he
+might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a
+tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken
+kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it
+at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had
+not the heart to discuss it now.
+
+“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he
+sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”
+
+“There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we
+want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative
+that does more harm than good in the long run.”
+
+“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good
+night without smoking I should be thankful.”
+
+“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep
+until to-morrow?”
+
+“If you like.”
+
+The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard
+box from his bag.
+
+“Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you
+even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the
+temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this
+prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to
+bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in
+the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better
+give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you
+go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the
+morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.”
+
+They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering
+whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with
+friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been
+so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations;
+besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And
+the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the
+train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.
+
+ The time-table of that boy’s day must speak for itself. It was already
+ one o’clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his
+ breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley’s card. At 1.15 he was munching
+ a sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook’s in Oxford
+ Street. The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed
+ by another; and a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas
+ would undoubtedly have disapproved.
+
+At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a
+placard with “Collapse of Middlesex” in appalling capitals. And at the
+station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord’s for
+nothing.
+
+The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the
+theatres, and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud’s
+thrust itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for
+years. He had often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered
+being taken by his sister when a little boy at Coverley’s, but she had
+refused to go into the Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at
+the time but sorry ever afterwards, because so many of the boys of
+those days had seen everything and seemed none the worse for the
+adventure. It was one of the things he had always wanted not so much to
+ do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of Horrors had frozen
+his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a criminological
+governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the budding
+criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and
+_Henry Dunbar_ formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy
+had other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building,
+and enter eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.
+
+A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but
+Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band.
+And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the
+glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the
+great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their
+unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the
+extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed
+down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at
+work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his
+catalogue to bear on one of them.
+
+Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the
+schoolboy through a work on his father’s shelves called _Annals of Our
+Time_. He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept
+him awake long after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not
+scowling and ferocious as he had always pictured them, but far more
+horribly demure and plump. Here were immortal malefactors like the
+Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek by jowl, looking as though
+they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete raiment, looking
+anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes their quick
+bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death, rusty
+pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face
+smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the
+waxwork about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own
+clothes, and the veritable dock in which many of them had heard their
+doom, they looked hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat
+not in the dock but on the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of
+him; and the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for
+the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then
+he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace
+from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old
+ruffian’s revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with
+the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost
+as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of
+crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had
+hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet
+wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his
+mind again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid
+place to himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the
+heels of a whole family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning
+their sorrow in a sea of gore, their pilot through the catalogue a
+conscientious orphan with a monotonous voice and a genius for
+mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to see or hear him or any
+other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was trying to
+place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into a
+real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.
+
+Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the
+comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find
+that it was after four o’clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home
+from Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there
+before them, and he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub
+shoulders with flesh and blood once more, and to look in faces not made
+of wax in the devil’s image. His way, which he knew of old, would 
+naturally have led him past Miss Harbottle’s door; but, as she was only
+to be his second string for the night, he preferred not to be seen by
+that old lady yet. Such was the tiny spring of an important action; it
+led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite unforeseen temptation.
+
+In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable
+pawnbroker’s shop; in the pawnbroker’s window the chances are that you
+might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family
+Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses,
+opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery,
+all of which could not tempt you less than they did Pocket Upton the
+other June. There were only two things in the window that interested
+him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was an old rosewood
+camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but the thing
+that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what
+looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the
+price. A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked
+places on the slow walks with a slow companion which were all the
+exercise this unfortunate fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges
+complete, so that one could try it now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian
+at the end of their garden in  St. John’s Wood Park! And all very
+likely for five bob if one bargained a bit!
+
+Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any
+such sum would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life?
+Of coure it would have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared
+to take the consequences if found out; it need not involve his notion
+of dishonour. Still, it must be recorded that the young or old as was
+conscientious enough to hesitate before making his fatal plunge into
+the pawnbroker’s shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+A BOY ABOUT TOWN
+
+
+The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in
+St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the
+boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room.
+Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at
+all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed
+him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any
+improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in
+Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had spent a summer’s afternoon;
+indeed, she rather wondered at his being allowed alone in London at
+all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in conversation with his elders,
+at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own Westminster boys were allowed
+alone in London every day of their lives. But Mrs. Knaggs said that was
+a very different thing, and that she thought Pocket’s public school
+must be very different from Westminster. Pocket bridled, but behaved
+himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and got as far
+towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley’s misfortune
+and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him where
+he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring
+he had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs
+said of course he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked
+her as properly as though it were the invitation he made sure must
+follow. After all, Vivian Knaggs had stayed at Pocket’s three weeks one
+Christmas, and Guy a fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would
+think of that; it was not a matter to broach to them, or one to worry
+about, prematurely.
+
+Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than
+Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton
+jacket, the  other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an
+unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They
+seemed very glad to see him, however, and the stiffness was wearing off
+even before Pocket produced his revolver in the basement room where the
+two Westminsters prepared their lessons and had their evening meal.
+
+The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs
+pronounced it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a
+thousand pounds. This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he
+and his revolver were made of, then and there in the garden, and the
+more confident that it never would be heard in the house.
+
+“It would,” answered Vivian, “and seen as well. No, if you want to have
+a shot let’s stick up a target outside this window, and fire from just
+inside.”
+
+The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but,
+unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it
+also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room
+and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because
+she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a
+cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket
+examining the target, weapon in hand.
+
+There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition
+from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs,
+descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the
+matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with
+a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them
+to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs
+contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of
+Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very
+straight message by Vivian after supper.
+
+“The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission
+which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a
+spare bed in the house.”
+
+Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented
+him from going into particulars.
+
+“A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost
+his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were
+boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook
+his head.
+
+“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.”
+
+“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.”
+
+“Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your
+sleep,” pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging the
+interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a
+window or set the house on fire.”
+
+“I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve
+not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.”
+
+And with further information on both points the son of the house went
+upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed
+gravity.
+
+“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake
+the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.”
+
+Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was
+not really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt
+he had made rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly
+cast adrift at sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor
+was this quite the case as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in
+Wellington Road. But to her he was not going until decency compelled
+him; he was going to have another game of bagatelle with Guy Knaggs
+first. It will be seen that with all his sensibilities the youngest
+Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took a great deal for
+granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry
+over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was
+obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the
+subject of his friend’s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been
+refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St.
+Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour
+to go to bed in; and that was neither the first nor the last of his
+erratic proceedings.
+
+“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his hat
+to walk round with Pocket.
+
+“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.
+
+“Haven’t you got any?”
+
+“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!”
+
+“Left your luggage there?”
+
+“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?”
+
+Young Knaggs looked in _Whitaker_ and said they closed at ten. There
+was still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it
+was not much use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss
+Cottage, and the adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.
+
+Old Miss Harbottle, his mother’s great friend, would have none of him
+either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden
+gate was one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated
+indoors. The downstairs lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a
+light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on
+the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and
+grey curls; but his mother’s friend’s mastiff was making night so
+hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother’s son, that it
+was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the
+brute’s mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange then, for Miss
+Harbottle at first flatly refused to believe that this was Tony Upton,
+whom she had not seen since his preparatory schooldays, and she seemed
+inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton, she could not take
+him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and the cook
+had just left. Miss Harbottle’s cook had always just left, except when
+she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant’s fun out of
+the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.
+
+His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his
+purse. The only thing to do was to put up at Shaw’s Hotel, Trafalgar
+Square; that was where his people always stayed, where every servant
+was supposed to know them all. He pushed on at once through the cool
+June night, and paid away three of his last shillings for the drive.
+Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw’s; it was the worst time of the year,
+they told him, and he  supposed they meant the best. He also supposed
+there had been changes in the staff, for nobody seemed to know his name
+as well as he had been led to expect at home.
+
+They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels
+opposite, and recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven
+Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the
+only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being
+requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room.
+Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him
+to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward
+respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr.
+Bompas in the morning!
+
+“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught up his bag
+in a passion.
+
+“All right, little man! I shouldn’t be rude about it,” said the dapper
+cashier. “If I couldn’t pay my shot I should sleep in the Park, on a
+nice fine night like this.”
+
+“I shall!” shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would
+prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it
+was his own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering
+what else he was to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have
+seen.
+
+He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which
+lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or
+heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast
+about; his brothers, and so many other fellows of his own age, had so
+much. It would make a great yarn some day, how he had come up from
+school to see a doctor—and slept in the Park!
+
+Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly
+anything of London except St. John’s Wood and his present landmark of
+the Nelson column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having
+stayed some time (under another doctor) as a child at Shaw’s Hotel.
+But, I say! What would Bompas say to his sleeping out, and what sort of
+night could he expect in the open air?
+
+He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in
+more than handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all
+the force of a forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges
+as well.
+
+That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of
+person to use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him
+feel doughty and even truculent to find the means of heroic defence all
+ready to his hand. He began to plume himself on his providential
+purchase. He would sell his young life dearly if he fell among London
+thieves;  in his death he would not be unhonoured at school or at home.
+Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang like tears to a mind still
+healthy enough to dash them away again, as though they had been real
+tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the unsuspected
+desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the
+corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.
+
+The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. “Yes,” said
+Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman
+looked as though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the
+motor omnibus through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at
+Albert Gate; but here there was quite a little stream of decent people
+to follow without further tremors into the indubitable Park.
+
+He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining
+confidence as he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were
+turned outward by all there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest
+some one or other of the several passers should stand in his path and
+ask what he was doing there. He was still afraid of speaking or being
+spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so. Detection as an escaped
+schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing something for
+which he might be expelled.
+
+But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to
+take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his
+surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that
+late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal
+were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he
+was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated
+soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with
+their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy’s heart beat
+at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One
+wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a
+remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman’s lips before. He turned
+away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in
+the act of crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.
+
+It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of
+the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and
+gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the
+darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks
+were muffled in a feather boa of trees, bedizened by a chain of many
+lights; the lights of a real bridge made a diadem in the distance; and
+between these sped  the lamps of invisible vehicles, like fretful
+fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer with its own
+brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a trace
+of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy
+had ever seen—a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen
+through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it.
+But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London’s
+light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her
+mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his
+ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck
+near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of
+water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost
+upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of
+eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his immediate needs. His
+great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in hand, to
+select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of
+cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad
+footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he
+was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with
+the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had
+come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to
+the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best thing now.
+
+It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was
+enough to deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical.
+Pocket Upton, however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and
+strong alike, who are more than loth to abandon a course of action once
+taken. It would have required a very severe attack to baulk him of his
+night out and its subsequent description to electrified ears. But when
+bad steering had brought him up at the bandstand, the deserted chairs
+seemed an ordained compromise between prudence and audacity, and he had
+climbed into the fenced enclosure when another enormous policeman rose
+up horribly in its midst.
+
+“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon
+Pocket with inexorable tread.
+
+“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual readiness.
+
+“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, standing over
+him.
+
+“I was only going to sit down,” protested Pocket, having satisfied his
+conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been
+going to do.
+
+“There are plenty of places to sit down,” rejoined the policeman.
+“You’re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it you
+won’t have time to sit down at all.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“The Park closes at twelve.”
+
+“Closes?”
+
+“At twelve o’clock, and it’s half-past eleven now.” The boy’s heart
+sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing plans. He
+was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he had
+looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only
+reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently
+entertained the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong.
+But he seemed quite clear about it.
+
+“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin.
+
+“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even thought a lot
+of loafers used to sleep here all night!”
+
+The policeman chuckled aloud.
+
+“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only chance,”
+said he.
+
+“You search the whole place so thoroughly?”
+
+“We keeps our eyes open,” said the policeman significantly, and Pocket
+asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off
+with the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out.
+Such was his then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn,
+to what seat on the Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his
+ignorance of London he had no idea.
+
+Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent
+on quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into
+its heart. He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and
+drifted before the wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one
+hand and a restricted open space upon the other. He could no longer see
+a single light; but the ground rose abruptly across the fence, and was
+thick with shrubs. Men might have been lying behind those shrubs, and
+Pocket could not possibly have seen them from the path. Did the
+policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going to climb
+every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?
+
+Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright
+fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as
+obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at
+twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw
+himself breaking the laws of the land as well as those of school, saw
+himself not only expelled but put in prison! Well, so much the better
+for his story so long as those  penalties were not incurred; even if
+they were, so much the greater hero he!
+
+No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living
+up to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But
+the will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way
+lay handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just
+passed against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the
+first chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the
+back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without
+rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So
+then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped
+the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a
+conscientious ass at school!
+
+But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and
+they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he
+had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras.
+They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush
+that I he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his
+prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver,
+nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in
+the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together
+in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it
+might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures
+to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he
+detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to
+strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber, to his wrist
+instead.
+
+That was the last but one of the silly boy’s proceedings under the
+bush; the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by
+Bompas in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet
+and sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful
+warmth at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was
+precisely then that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his
+breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still
+audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr.
+Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+HIS PEOPLE
+
+
+It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him.
+They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s
+inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it
+still.
+
+On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a
+butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down
+with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only
+to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at
+not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source of
+which was concealed by the garden foliage, became positively brilliant.
+The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and musk-roses and mown
+grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows. But for the lurid
+lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some mammoth
+forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.
+
+“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. “I think
+you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never agree.”
+
+“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt young
+man.
+
+“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly enough.
+
+“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. “He’s being
+absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of it.”
+
+“I didn’t give him asthma!”
+
+“Don’t be childish, Letty.”
+
+“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.”
+
+“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, either.”
+
+“You think he enjoys his bad nights?”
+
+“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never even
+thinks of getting up to first school now.”
+
+“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with asthma?”
+
+“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you think.”
+
+“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay
+for two or three bad ones.”
+
+“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.”
+
+“Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek
+Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his
+spare time, and got most marks in the exam.”
+
+“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder  brother. “I’m glad he didn’t
+buck to me about that.”
+
+“I don’t think there’s much danger of his bucking to you,” said
+Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her obvious
+reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite
+incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed
+that she meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his
+own, and a good heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt.
+“I looked after him all right,” said Horace, “the one term we were
+there together. So did Fred for the next year. But it’s rather rough on
+Fred and myself, who were both something in the school at his age, to
+hear and see for ourselves that Tony’s nobody even in the house!”
+
+Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest
+brother.
+
+“But don’t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony that
+you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the
+standard you two set up; it’s natural enough, but it isn’t fair.”
+
+“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened by a
+little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!”
+
+“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.”
+
+“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.”
+
+“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!”
+
+“I wish he wasn’t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than Fred
+or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a
+player.”
+
+“I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it’s his
+nature, just as it’s Fred’s and yours to be men of action.”
+
+“Well, I’m glad he’s not allowed to cumber the crease this season,”
+said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a
+distinct swerve in the air. “To have him called our ‘pocket edition,’
+on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.”
+
+Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.
+
+“He’s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,” she said warmly.
+“And I hope he may make you see it before this doctor’s done with him!”
+
+“This doctor!” jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as well.
+“You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on his
+own?”
+
+“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about him.”
+
+“No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of
+himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him
+go; but he’s the most casual young hound I ever struck.”
+
+“I know he’s casual.”
+
+Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry
+her sense of fairness had so misled her.
+
+“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he could. Think what
+he’d miss!”
+
+“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be said.”
+
+And the girl halted at the lighted windows.
+
+“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under
+this very doctor of yours?”
+
+“He’s not my doctor.”
+
+“But you first heard about him; you’re the innovator of the family,
+Letty, so it’s no use trying to score off me. Isn’t Tony up in London
+to-night?”
+
+“I believe he is.”
+
+“Then I’ll tell you what he’s doing at this moment,” cried Horace, with
+egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows. “It’s after
+eleven; he’s in the act of struggling out of some theatre, where the
+atmosphere’s so good for asthma!” Lettice left the gibe unanswered. It
+was founded on recent fact which she had been the first to deplore when
+Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by no means
+blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more
+than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose
+unmeasured objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special
+pleading. She tried to believe that there was more in her younger
+brother than in any of them, and would often speak up for him as though
+she had succeeded. It may have been merely a woman’s weakness for the
+weak, but Lettice had taught herself to believe in Tony. And perhaps of
+all his people she was the only one who could have followed his
+vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.
+
+But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have
+gone indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily
+at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared
+with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her;
+otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk
+about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair
+before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck
+and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling
+days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a
+woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than her
+brother, but of other clay.
+
+That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father’s library, and
+unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the
+terrace.
+
+“I said he wasn’t doing much good there,” he added, “and I don’t think
+he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always does.”
+
+“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton plainly.
+
+“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I
+sometimes wish there was more!”
+
+“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?”
+
+Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.
+
+“More go about him,” said Horace. He could not say as much to his
+father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to
+bolt from his guns.
+
+“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” continued
+Mr. Upton, with severity.
+
+“I know,” said Horace hastily, “and of course that’s really why he’s
+doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his doesn’t seem to be
+doing him any either.”
+
+Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the
+downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had
+turned the wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite
+another quarter.
+
+“I agree with you there!” cried his father vehemently. “I don’t believe
+in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon who has done
+so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a
+trial? The lad wasn’t having a fair chance at school. This looked like
+one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the
+letters the man writes me about him. He’d have me take him away from
+school altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But
+what’s to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He’d
+be too old to go to another school, and too young for the University:
+no use at the works, and only another worry to us all.”
+
+Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with
+intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of
+sympathy which is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards
+the unsound. He hated sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it.
+His wife had taken ill the year before, had undergone a grave operation
+in the winter, and was still a great anxiety to him. But that was
+another and a far more serious matter; he had patience and sympathy
+enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a
+man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own
+qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent
+absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why
+should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr.
+Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard
+more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not
+down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad
+night; yet later in the day he would be as bright as anybody, at times
+indeed the brightest of the party. That, however, was usually when
+Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he was another
+creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the
+busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice
+overdid matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint,
+and was inclined to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his
+age, even if said to be cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile
+pose to the man who had never studied that disorder. The specialist in
+London seemed another mistake on the part of that managing Lettice, who
+had quite assumed the family lead of late. And altogether Mr. Upton,
+though he saw the matter from a different point of view, was not far
+from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.
+
+And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed,
+whose brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his
+schoolfellows “a conscientious ass,” while his sister spoilt him for
+_un enfant incompris?_ You may say it would have taken a miracle to
+make an ordinary decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange
+happenings to the boy and his people; perhaps it was the one authentic
+type of miracle that capped all in the morning.
+
+The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of
+whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a
+few hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning.
+The birds were singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The
+morning sun was slanting over town and country, and the father’s
+thoughts were with his tiresome son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came
+from the adjoining room.
+
+In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife’s side, supporting her
+in bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.
+
+“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!”
+
+“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, dear?”
+
+“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you now. And
+I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+A GRIM SAMARITAN
+
+
+Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the
+sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He
+opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The
+air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine
+curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle.
+
+Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy
+head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps.
+He was not in bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the
+shrub he now remembered in a mental flash which lit up all his
+adventures overnight. He was wandering ankle deep in the dew, towards a
+belt of poplars like birch-rods on the skyline, and a row of spiked
+palings right in front of his nose. He had walked in his sleep for the
+first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to wake him.
+
+Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in
+reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he
+who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A
+hand darted through them and caught Pocket’s  wrist as in a vice. And
+he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and
+fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some
+incomprehensible emotion.
+
+“Do you know what you did?” the man demanded in the end. The question
+seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be
+reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense,
+reminding Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy
+to account for the tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous
+with passion. And the man stood tall and dominant, with a silver
+stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird cloak and hat that helped to invest
+him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish inquisitor; no wonder his eyes
+were like cold steel in quivering flesh.
+
+“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; further
+explanations were cut very short.
+
+“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.
+
+Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.
+
+“Well? I can’t help it! I’ve done it before to-day; you needn’t believe
+me if you don’t like! Do you mind letting go of my hand?”
+
+“With that in it!”
+
+The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he
+had strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but
+his finger actually on the trigger.
+
+“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, horrified.
+
+“Feel the barrel.”
+
+The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand.
+The barrel was still warm.
+
+“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.
+
+“I’m glad to hear it.”
+
+“I tell you it was!”
+
+The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second
+impulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy,
+picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master’s
+eye had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very
+worst of him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful
+stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that
+protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor
+was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade
+was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a
+second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped
+down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.
+
+“And now,” said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his weapon,
+“I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right
+to spend the night in here at all?”
+
+The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,
+“I’m not the only one!” He had just espied a recumbent figure through
+the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a
+battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall
+man merely redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without
+so much as a glance behind.
+
+“That,” said he, “is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are
+open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that
+sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules.
+Who are you, and what’s the matter with you?”
+
+“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.
+
+“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!”
+
+“I had nowhere else to go.”
+
+“Have you come up from the country?”
+
+“To see a doctor about it!” cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole
+truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely
+lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and
+through; but the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked
+less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that
+uttered the next words.
+
+“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these
+chairs.”
+
+Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had
+climbed them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied
+him on the other side.
+
+“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage
+it?”
+
+“I did last night.”
+
+“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?”
+
+Pocket looked round and pointed.
+
+“Behind that bush.”
+
+“Have you left nothing there?”
+
+“Yes; my bag and hat!”
+
+In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly
+suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.
+
+“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?
+There—catching the sun.”
+
+“It was.”
+
+“Bring it.”
+
+“It’s empty.”
+
+“Bring it!”
+
+Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the
+palings, waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But
+no third creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the
+dew. Pocket surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost
+beside himself in the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must
+have been lifted down like a child; but this was when he was getting
+his breath upon a seat. They had come some little distance very slowly,
+and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an arm as to lend
+colour to his humiliating suspicion.
+
+His grim companion spoke first.
+
+“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one
+myself.”
+
+Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.
+
+“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted.
+
+“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.”
+
+“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.”
+
+“I never heard of them.”
+
+“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had.”
+
+But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced
+from his bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He
+had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt
+for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the
+palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a
+cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends;
+the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down
+like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his
+eyes, and was comparatively cured.
+
+“And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!” said his companion. “I
+cannot understand him, and I’m a doctor myself.” His voice and look
+were deliberate even for him. “My name is Baumgartner,” he added, and
+made a pause. “I don’t suppose you know it?”
+
+“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with breath and
+gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.
+
+“A schoolboy in the country,” observed Dr. Baumgartner, “is scarcely
+likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will
+find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for
+breakfast, and a little rest. That is,” added the doctor, with his
+first smile, “if you will trust yourself to me first and make your
+inquiries later.”
+
+Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but
+even as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling
+it would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was
+thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he
+had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen
+such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a
+conspirator by limelight?
+
+But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as
+the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt
+grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought,
+“How the chaps would rag him at school!” because the dreadful old hat
+and cloak suggested a caricature of a master’s cap and gown. But there
+was no master at Pocket’s school whom he would not sooner have
+disobeyed than this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the
+wintry smile; there was no eye on the staff that had ever made him
+quail as he had quailed that morning before these penetrating eyes of
+steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back
+in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes
+on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.
+
+In the cab Baumgartner said, “Try sitting with your head between your
+knees.” Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man
+or so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar,
+an early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all
+until the hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which
+seemed to Pocket interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him
+from seeing anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to
+the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his
+head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him
+easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture
+did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven
+through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the
+streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman’s
+instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His
+ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough
+metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then
+more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the
+milkman’s queer cry; and finally, “Next to the right and the fifth
+house on your left,” in the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign
+accent.
+
+The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth
+from the little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled
+path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps
+had not been “done”; the door wore the nondescript complexion of
+prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One
+touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and
+shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees,
+sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side
+of the road, and effectually hid the other.
+
+Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The
+passage was dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right.
+Baumgartner led the way past a closed door on the left, into an
+unexpectedly bright and large room beyond it. “Sit down,” said he, and
+shut the door softly behind him.
+
+Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full
+of walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the
+sunshine that filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back
+of the house. Dr. Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a
+window, and he stood looking out in thought while Pocket hurriedly
+completed his optical round. A set of walnut chairs were dreadfully
+upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one looked comfortable
+enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the semi-grand piano.
+There were books, too, and in the far corner by the bow-window a glass
+door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket’s study at school,
+and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of battle
+engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in
+murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and
+villages.
+
+Baumgartner met his visitor’s eyes with the faint cold smile that
+scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.
+
+“I was present at some of those engagements,” said he. “They were not
+worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his sleep!”
+
+He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the
+pistol inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was
+distracted before he had time to resent the forgotten fact of its
+forcible confiscation. Under his cloak the doctor had been carrying all
+this time, slung by a strap which the boy had noticed across his chest,
+a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket exclaimed upon it with the
+instructed interest of a keen photographer.
+
+“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in his
+unemotional voice.
+
+“Rather!” cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s the
+only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I haven’t got an
+instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!”
+
+And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and
+black morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which
+the doctor had set between them on one of the fussy little walnut
+tables.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+THE GLASS EYE
+
+
+Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness
+of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the
+turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like
+you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my
+own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a
+mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.
+
+“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.”
+
+“You don’t merely press the button and let  them do the rest?”
+suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of his
+pipe.
+
+“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s
+half the fun.”
+
+“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.
+
+“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of my
+father’s.”
+
+And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a
+gesture more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.
+
+“It’s none the worse for that,” said he. “So far we have much in
+common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our
+plates, there’s the difference, eh?”
+
+“I should imagine so,” said Pocket, smiling.
+
+Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but
+yet darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.
+
+“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?”
+
+“Yes; often.”
+
+“In the body, I presume?”
+
+Pocket looked nonplussed.
+
+“You only take them in the flesh?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s the difference.”
+
+Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner
+follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting
+cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was
+of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent
+photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read
+the photographic year-books, nearly as ravenously as _Wisden’s
+Almanacke_.
+
+“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic photography.”
+
+“Psychic,” said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets to
+report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor
+added, with more disdain: “And you don’t believe in it?”
+
+“I didn’t say so.”
+
+“But you looked and sounded it!”
+
+“I don’t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,” said the boy,
+always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. “But I do say I
+don’t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It
+was in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed
+to have said you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the
+plate at all; hide away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure
+up your spirit and see what happens. I’ll swear nothing ever happened
+like that! There may be ghosts, you may see them,  and so may the
+camera, but not without focusing and exposing like you’ve got to do
+with ordinary flesh and blood!”
+
+The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the
+stimulus of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the
+doctor had come to his feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey
+face beamed warmly; his eyes were lances tipped with fire.
+
+“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every syllable
+you have spoken.”
+
+“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” concluded
+Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.
+
+“I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it
+even at your age! But there’s much more in it than that; you must see
+the rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.” The boy blushed
+with pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. “You admit there
+may be such things as ghosts, as you call them?” he was asked as by an
+equal.
+
+“Certainly, sir.”
+
+“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible
+as that sunbeam?”
+
+“Rather!”
+
+“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?”
+
+Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the
+concession gave him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant
+leaps. He felt five years older in fewer minutes.
+
+“Then,” cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of triumph,
+“then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I may. I
+may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws
+already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses
+fail to throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the
+camera catches. Take two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the
+other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other,
+though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it,
+but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were
+pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble
+is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist’s, no
+money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the spirit
+which once was man.”
+
+His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it
+first an hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this
+was the passion of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at
+all, it was in this wild question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy 
+perceived this dimly. There was something else which had become clearer
+to him with each of these later remarks. Striking as they seemed to
+him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The ring of novelty was wanting
+to his ear.
+
+Suddenly he exclaimed, “I knew I knew your name!”
+
+“You do know it, do you?”
+
+Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was
+discounted by the interruption it entailed.
+
+“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come
+across it somewhere.”
+
+“You read the correspondence that followed the review?”
+
+“Some of it.”
+
+“My letter among others?”
+
+“Yes! I remember every word of it now.”
+
+“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s
+co-operation in these spirit-photographs?”
+
+“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket somewhat
+tentatively, despite his boast.
+
+“It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two
+moments at which I hold that a man’s soul may be caught apart, may be
+cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a
+light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my
+letter.”
+
+“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.”
+
+“The moment of dissolution,” the doctor corrected him. “But there is a
+far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,
+whereas dissolution comes but once.”
+
+Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure
+about it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him
+as too fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not
+and dared not say; and he was not the less frightened of making a
+mistake with those inspired eyes burning fanatically into his.
+
+“The other moment,” the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile, “is
+when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which
+men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?” Baumgartner asked
+abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed
+unconvinced, for he went on didactically: “You visit far countries in
+your dreams; your soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the
+dead; it is your soul again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I
+fix the moment as that of the soul’s return because its departure on
+these errands is imperceptible, but with its return we awake. The
+theory is that in the moment of waking the whole experience happens
+like the flash of an electric spark.”
+
+The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled
+than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very
+eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s
+hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could
+not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of
+will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He
+began to wish the interview at an end—to be able to talk about it as
+the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure—yet he would not
+have cut it short at this point if he could.
+
+“I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul
+from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But
+how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits
+pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still
+to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain
+to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private
+admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons.
+My applications have been peremptorily refused.”
+
+Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.
+
+“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little
+old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.
+
+“Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,”
+he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot
+be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And
+now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to
+sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and
+then I take my chance.”
+
+“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket,
+looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.
+
+The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the
+brighter for their partial eclipse.
+
+“This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some
+confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this
+morning—thanks to you!”
+
+“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean
+to say I—you took me—walking——?”
+
+“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one
+minute.”
+
+He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double
+doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there.
+Running  water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his
+absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before
+leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket
+handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the
+noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was
+promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was
+within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in
+his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all
+was ready.
+
+Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would
+simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double
+doors within been is use; these being shut, the space behind made a
+separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that
+smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length.
+One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a
+window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets
+of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a
+crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot
+like Mephistopheles.
+
+“This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was
+shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred
+by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as
+the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives
+and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry
+copper.
+
+Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy
+felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of
+water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was
+here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work,
+he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the
+mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling
+now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes,
+would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator
+with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the
+light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were
+muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they
+trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket
+remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink
+surface.
+
+He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult
+to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort
+of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement
+and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket
+had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not
+to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in
+raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the
+sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular
+objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what
+these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how
+could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind
+him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?
+
+Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to
+see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as
+though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but
+not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass.
+“When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face
+paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with
+beads of blood.
+
+“There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket
+could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host—the one gentle
+thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,
+hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.”
+
+The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had
+choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between
+fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the
+hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the
+tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly
+incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath
+to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it.
+“And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again,
+aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held
+it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the
+schoolboy never forgot.
+
+“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”
+
+Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him
+momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again.
+Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it
+was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred
+fragments in the porcelain trough.
+
+Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back
+into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have
+been a minute before their eyes met again; the  doctor’s were calm and
+cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he
+said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go
+upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought
+as a physician it might do him good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+AN AWAKENING
+
+
+It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no
+little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his
+breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with
+his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature
+of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like
+other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty
+forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands.
+There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature
+shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss
+Platts, and addressed as Phillida.
+
+Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable
+surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the
+one  to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he
+had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking
+of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and
+temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of
+the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all
+four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and
+uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table
+attentions to her uncle and his guest.
+
+Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing
+against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size
+table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that
+instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook
+his head and smiled.
+
+“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no
+good at real games.”
+
+The statement was too true, but not the preference.
+
+“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the
+doctor’s comment.
+
+Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma
+as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his
+breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve
+himself in lengthy explanations. He had  two types of listener—the dry
+and the demure—to all he said.
+
+“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner
+when he got a chance.
+
+“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”
+
+Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse
+particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again.
+Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.
+
+“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said
+the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.
+
+“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.
+
+“And how many keepers do they require?”
+
+A grin apologised for the word.
+
+“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly
+than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school
+from a mad German doctor.
+
+“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”
+
+“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you
+like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.
+
+“Do you?”
+
+“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.
+
+“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”
+
+Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little
+passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary
+kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that
+morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too
+independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His
+asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew
+when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the
+brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the
+boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for
+him to go to Welbeck Street.
+
+“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing
+over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big
+easy-chair.
+
+“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes.
+And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”
+
+“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for
+such an emergency.”
+
+“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use
+taking it now. It’s  meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep
+out.”
+
+And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done,
+when the other doctor cut him short once more.
+
+“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair;
+nobody will come in.”
+
+Pocket shook his head.
+
+“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”
+
+“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door.
+That will give you a good two hours.”
+
+Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the
+first bottle under the bush.
+
+“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”
+
+“I shall be in again.”
+
+“Then it is a promise?”
+
+Pocket would have liked it in black and white.
+
+“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”
+
+It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It
+tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The
+skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It
+was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his
+breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of
+Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open
+door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased
+deliciously in the cosy chair.
+
+Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of
+course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint
+in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it.
+No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood.
+Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body
+weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old
+photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned
+into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent
+remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting
+soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch
+that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing
+over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.
+
+“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in
+a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”
+
+“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by
+taking out his watch.
+
+“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”
+
+“No—six.”
+
+And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had
+gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he
+bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little
+garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely
+in the shadow of the house.
+
+“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve
+broken your word, sir!”
+
+“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.
+
+“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some
+rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for
+the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only
+shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.
+
+“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that
+sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for
+my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in
+Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch
+the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”
+
+“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner,
+scarcely looking up from his paper.
+
+“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket,
+reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of
+London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school.
+I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”
+
+“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking
+over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
+
+“What about?”
+
+Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner
+answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his
+grey face:
+
+“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here
+in town about it.”
+
+“Do tell me what, sir!”
+
+“Can you face things, my young fellow?”
+
+“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral
+in a flash.
+
+“No—yourself.”
+
+“Then I can!”
+
+The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
+
+“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”
+
+“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”
+
+“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there
+in the wet grass?”
+
+“I thought he was drunk.”
+
+“He was dead!”
+
+Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never
+witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably
+mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another
+adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in
+reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He
+only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor
+suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very
+natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But
+then he had not even known the man was dead.
+
+Had the doctor?
+
+Yes.
+
+Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another
+question first.
+
+“What did he die of?”
+
+“A bullet!”
+
+“Suicide?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Not murder?”
+
+“This paper says so.”
+
+“Does it say who did it?”
+
+“It cannot.”
+
+“Can you?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Tell me.”
+
+The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
+
+“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it
+yourself?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BLOOD-GUILTY
+
+
+His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He
+marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The
+walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr.
+Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own
+unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any
+words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had
+known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was
+infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus
+wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very
+benefaction of a day’s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor
+defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism.
+Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He
+also might have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well
+believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to
+tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again
+the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection.
+To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with
+an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He
+acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put
+the living before the dead.
+
+How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question.
+He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at
+least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too
+many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but
+in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination
+while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket
+pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not
+gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed
+was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was
+Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading
+warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though
+any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling
+man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The
+poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through
+the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the
+levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face.
+
+The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now
+recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been
+so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he
+had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing
+else as he now remembered him, and that sent him off at a final
+tangent.
+
+He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, “What about that
+negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!”
+
+“It was,” replied Baumgartner; “but it was never meant to be. I had you
+in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with
+time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the
+chance of a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that
+was another reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate
+consequences of an innocent act.”
+
+Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an
+instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young
+soul was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted
+by the inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure,
+and yet he could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had
+attempted to turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable
+account. It was the mistaken kindness to himself that he still found
+most difficult to forgive.
+
+“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it all the worse.”
+
+“You mean the delay?”
+
+“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run away, and
+then think better of it?”
+
+Baumgartner smiled.
+
+“Surely I am,” said he; but his smile went out with the words. “If only
+they believe me!” he added as though it was a new idea to him.
+
+It was a terrifying one to Pocket.
+
+“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation.
+
+“I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to,
+after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can’t swear you shot him
+in your sleep!”
+
+“You said you saw I did!”
+
+“So I did, my young fellow,” replied the doctor,  with a kinder smile;
+“at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I
+thought you were walking in your sleep. It’s not quite the same thing.
+It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court
+of justice.”
+
+“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.
+
+“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; “let
+us hope it will stop at that.”
+
+“But it must, it must!” cried Pocket wildly. “I’m absolutely innocent!
+You said so yourself a minute ago; you’ve only to swear it as a doctor?
+They can’t do anything to me—they can’t possibly!”
+
+The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.
+
+“Dr. Baumgartner!”
+
+“Yes, my young fellow?”
+
+“They can’t do anything to me, can they?”
+
+Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.
+
+“It depends what you call anything,” said he. “They cannot hang you;
+after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even
+detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case
+would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your
+family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you
+would find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In
+years to come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense!
+That is what they can do to you,” concluded the doctor, apologetically.
+“You asked me to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would
+bear it like a man.”
+
+Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself
+back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly.
+One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned.
+“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my
+mother too!”
+
+“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,”
+remarked Baumgartner sardonically.
+
+“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any
+kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this?
+She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming
+eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!”
+
+“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing
+shrug.
+
+“But my part in it!”
+
+“You said it had got to come out.”
+
+“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”
+
+“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”
+
+“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would
+give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve
+done—than drag them all through that!”
+
+“Do you mean what you say?”
+
+Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.
+
+“Every syllable!” said Pocket.
+
+“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of now or
+never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.”
+
+“Then it’s never!”
+
+“I must put it plainly to you. It’s not too late to do whatever you
+decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland
+Yard, and the chances are that they would still accept the true story
+of to-day. I have told you what I believe to be the worst that can
+happen to you; it may be that rather more may happen to me for
+harbouring you all day as I have done. I hope not, but I took the law
+into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by the law if you so
+decide this minute.”
+
+“I have decided.”
+
+“Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at
+any rate for the  present,” said Baumgartner, impressively. “Better
+come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about
+the whole thing there!”
+
+“I shouldn’t do that.”
+
+“I’m not so sure,” replied the acute doctor. “I believe I know you
+better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an hour
+like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it
+very difficult not to tell somebody.”
+
+Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In
+truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner’s had inspired such
+confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a
+perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what
+he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his
+temperament would have done in theirs.
+
+“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to
+account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward
+questions to answer the moment you got back to school.”
+
+And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school
+conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of
+those  insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding
+only confirmed him in his resolve.
+
+“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make
+me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m
+grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!”
+
+“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”
+
+“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so
+long as my people never know!”
+
+“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was;
+but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie,
+and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.
+
+“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said;
+and in his exaltation he believed no less.
+
+“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”
+
+“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”
+
+And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and
+fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that
+resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the 
+matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less
+wisely, to brood on it alone.
+
+Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious
+ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a
+sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the
+best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and
+what his world will say about him as it is.
+
+This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary
+position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he
+pictured his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master’s
+hall; there was no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of
+himself on the scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork
+at Madame Tassaud’s! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling
+with his dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled
+honestly for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and
+now not less freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole
+matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now
+one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be
+darkened for ever after!
+
+It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far
+into the long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair,
+yet never leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once
+more battling for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had
+flown before that of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed
+them back again, for his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its
+capacity for suffering undimmed by a single physical preoccupation.
+Between seven and eight the young lady of the house came in with
+candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box of
+d’Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle
+thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl
+addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to
+seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was
+sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his
+eagerness to shut the door on her and see the news.
+
+It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man
+had been identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were
+reported as hopeful of obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue
+was the point that stuck like a burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a
+clue was one leading straight to himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to
+explain the true value of the identity clause, and bid the boy eat his
+meal.
+
+“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent already; they
+may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!”
+
+Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as
+reverentially of his victim as of a dead member of his own family. It
+appeared thus early, however, that in life the defunct had been by no
+means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses had been his only home, except
+when his undistinguished offences got him into gaol; the surreptitious
+practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means of livelihood.
+So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the stop-press
+column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to
+extract comfort from such items.
+
+“At all events,” said he, “you cannot reproach yourself with the
+destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless
+creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but
+here in England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It’s
+a public service to reduce their number.”
+
+This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the
+doctor had been working up to it all the evening, and this was the
+climax of his cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically
+undressed himself for bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of
+stairs, carrying  candles, and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast.
+Pocket felt a new chill through his veins, but he was not revolted as
+he would have been at first. This extraordinary man had shown him still
+more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall
+together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a
+confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not
+but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really
+were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy
+underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the
+doctor spoke as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to
+agree with him: his conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a
+series of incoherent expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave
+articulate shape in order to demolish them in the next breath.
+
+“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my
+young fellow?”
+
+Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head
+wreathed in cool blue clouds.
+
+“You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!” cried
+the poetic doctor. “You have an honourable life before you; he had a
+disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of
+luxury; he finds it for the first time in his——”
+
+But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in
+his bed; the man sat down on the end of it.
+
+“You do such poor devils a service,” said he, “in sending them to a
+world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under
+the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!”
+
+“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.
+
+“Human life!” cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge shadow
+guying him on the ceiling. “What is this human life, and who are you
+and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never
+did; it’s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about
+human life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar;
+there are some of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock
+for modern decadence. So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought
+nothing of your human life. Von Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in
+Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my
+countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal
+value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through
+exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords;
+they’re on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of
+what I know. I’ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind,
+and I’ve felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at
+Gravelotte; as a public schoolboy you probably never heard the name
+before this minute. I fought in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking
+at the pictures downstairs. I was in that charge across those hellish
+ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in half an hour, but we
+gained the victory. More Germans were killed that day—that sweltering
+August afternoon—than English in your whole South African War that took
+you years! The flower of Germany fell at Gravelotte; that was human
+life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my comrades’ ashes.
+And that’s all it’s for, this human life of yours: for the
+master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward road.”
+
+The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange
+outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild
+bloodthirsty nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its
+irrelevancy, or rather it was the irrevelant features that flared up
+first in his brain. It was a childish question, but here was a very
+child, and he could not help asking the fierce old soldier whether he
+had escaped without a wound.
+
+“Without a scratch,” was the reply. “I come home. I leave the army. I
+ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck
+down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the
+veriest pawn in the game!”
+
+The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was
+not a single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or
+another word for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke
+from a waving pipe, a core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the
+Turk’s face glistening in its heat like that of the hard old man
+himself. He would hear the cynical and scornful voice softening in a
+breath to the simple, tender, and domestic humanity of his race. The
+voice and the face were with him throughout that night of his own
+manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy to
+realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been
+carried away like his listener.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week,
+there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in
+Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds,
+because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at
+the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his
+stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your
+letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few
+there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it
+was on business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more
+impressive address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt
+the first blow.
+
+It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this
+made the letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following
+reason. Mrs. Upton had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the
+Thursday morning, that her husband had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat
+against his own judgment, to know how he found their son. The reply had
+been: “Better expecting him again to-day will write”—which prepared the
+family for still more reassuring accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt
+relieved as the original discoverer of Dr. Bompas. Horace found his
+views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration of a touch of asthma,
+and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely agreeing with
+Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs. Upton
+lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible
+to show her now that it had come.
+
+Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way
+to keep a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this
+occasion he triumphed over temperament with an extraordinary instinct
+for what was in the air.
+
+“The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!” was his only comment
+as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might
+have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not
+Horace promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young
+fellow’s face and the old one’s neck were redder before the last was
+heard of that remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually
+vouchsafed; the boy had made very little improvement, and was not
+likely to make more while he remained at a school where he was allowed
+to use any remedy he liked; in fact, until he was taken away from
+school, and placed under his own immediate control in town, Dr. Bompas
+declined to persevere with the case.
+
+“Blighter!” said Horace impartially, as though now there were two of
+them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when
+their father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was
+not “playing the game”; but then he never did play it to the expert
+satisfaction of Fred and Horace.
+
+Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and
+told a lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He
+had destroyed it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it
+to his wife. He said a happier thing by chance; he said that for two
+pins he would motor over to the school and see for himself how the boy
+really was; then perhaps he would be in a position to consider the
+entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the specialist’s demand, that his
+patient should be placed under his eye in town. Mr. Upton went so far,
+however, without much immediate intention of taking so strong a
+measure.
+
+He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite
+justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with
+his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself
+to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her
+mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however,
+had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.
+
+Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.
+
+It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed
+its owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few
+rolling meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June
+glory. The new red gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an
+eye which had never looked longer than necessary in the glass.
+Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily on a shaven lawn; the only
+eyesore the good man encountered was poor Pocket’s snob-wickets painted
+on a buttress in the back premises; his own belching blast-furnaces,
+corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few hundred yards of
+his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy Briton
+who had made them too.
+
+Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. “I
+was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,” his father said;
+“the fact is, I concealed half the fellow’s letter on account of
+Lettice. But it’s a man’s matter, and you ought to know.”
+
+Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to
+keep his appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the
+line of information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would
+have exercised so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife’s room.
+It now appeared that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas
+had gone far out of his way to play Mahomet to his patient’s mountain.
+Tony had told him where he hoped to stay in London, which Bompas
+particularly wished to know on account of some special prescription the
+boy was to try that night. On his failure to appear at the appointed
+time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in question, only to
+learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been given
+another address with the same result, except that from the second house
+he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace
+was left to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and
+asked for his own on the facts as a man of the world.
+
+“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what he
+thought.
+
+“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?”
+
+“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do what
+nobody else ever did.”
+
+“But how could Spearman give him the chance?”
+
+“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.”
+
+“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?”
+
+“So I heard.”
+
+“I don’t like it! It’s all wrong at his age,” said Mr. Upton. He had
+his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough with
+his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:
+“You don’t think there’s any question of bad company, do you?”
+
+And though Horace had “no use for” his so-called pocket edition, he
+answered without any hesitation at all: “Not for a moment, from what I
+know of Tony.”
+
+Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by
+mentioning his wife’s dream, now family property, which had been on his
+mind all this time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him
+that nobody nowadays believed in dreams.
+
+“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?”
+
+“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.”
+
+“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”
+
+“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to
+school.”
+
+“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”
+
+“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.”
+
+The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr.
+Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the
+day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing
+about him.
+
+“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t
+Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?”
+
+Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither
+he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends
+were by no means theirs.
+
+Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on
+the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its
+being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like
+a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that
+neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it
+before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s
+dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments
+besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when
+he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside
+herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply
+impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also
+waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good
+reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings;
+but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited
+dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his
+wife.
+
+It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as
+he had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr.
+Spearman, who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was
+done, however, and it was now a matter in which home and school
+authorities must act together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to
+the garage for the car to come straight to the works. And the
+ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of anxiety.
+
+The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and
+yet to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the
+brain that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and
+blackened faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand
+and the stout heart which had brought his conception into being. Those
+were his trucks bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his
+consequential little locomotive fussing in front of them. His men,
+dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was also his,
+happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was his
+pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric
+advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of
+possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the
+ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot
+bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture,
+had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would
+ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than
+the means of livelihood; and how had it repaid even him for a life’s
+devotion? With a house of sorrow in the next valley! With a stricken
+wife, and sons whose right hands kept their cunning for the
+cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a sudden
+madness!
+
+Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great
+green car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he
+did not drive himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the
+summer’s day was a mental stimulant that did its work only too well.
+Now it recalled the ailing infancy of the missing boy—bronchitis it had
+been in the early stages—and how his mother had taken him to Hastings
+three successive winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family
+jokes cropped up in a new light, dimming the eyes without an instant’s
+warning. On one of those flittings south the solicitous mother had
+placed the uncomplaining child on a footwarmer, and forgotten him until
+a cascade of perspiration apprised her of the effect: poor Mr. Upton
+had never thought of the incident without laughter, until to-day.
+Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she herself
+too ill to hear a word about it!
+
+His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no
+uncertainty. He thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first.
+There had been drama and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated
+of the neighbouring packs had run a fox to earth on his works, indeed
+in his very slag-heap! The author of cancerous furnaces in the green
+heart of a grass country had never been a popular personage with the
+hunting folk; but he was master of the situation that memorable day. It
+was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a ferret, and came
+out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore through the
+brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young
+lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants
+with their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag
+sticking out of the furnace mouth—the momentary contact of the
+industrial and the sporting world—it was that strange and yet
+significant scene which had first endeared its dingy setting to the
+ironmaster’s heart. But he had made the contact permanent by falling in
+love with the young lady of the brush and marrying her under all the
+guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she was a stricken
+invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!
+
+Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now
+distracted father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think
+about as he flew on to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very
+rude to Mr. Spearman; but then Spearman had been rash enough to
+repudiate his obvious responsibility in the matter. It was not his
+fault that the boy went up to town so often to see his doctor and stay
+the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but it had
+become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp
+thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of
+seventeen could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know
+who could! Tony had promised him faithfully to return that same night,
+failing friends whom he had mentioned as certain to put him up; their
+names Mr. Upton was able to demand at last as though they were so much
+blood; and he could not have cursed them more freely if Spearman had
+been a layman like himself. But that was all the information
+forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the head
+master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had
+still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked
+that he was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up
+and led him straight into the presence.
+
+Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an
+astute pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to
+Mr. Upton that the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master’s
+concern, but agreed it was time that he himself was made acquainted
+with the present case. He took it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could
+have wished, but quite as frankly from his own point of view as his two
+visitors did from each of theirs. He had no doubt the boy would turn
+up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to give a
+satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received
+back into the school.
+
+“Bother the school!” cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with
+difficulty. “Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what
+you like.”
+
+“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, with
+only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.
+
+“First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own
+showing, refused the boy a bed. I’ll give them a bit of my mind, I
+promise you! Then there’s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it
+may be the one we always stay at, or one they’ve recommended. If I
+can’t hear anything of him there, I suppose there’ll be nothing for it
+but to call in the police.”
+
+“My dear sir,” exclaimed the head master,  “you may as well call in the
+public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you are;
+and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our
+point of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.”
+
+“It’s more so from mine!” cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and
+indignation. “You think about your school. I think about my wife and
+boy; it might kill her to hear about this before he’s found. But if I
+don’t go to the police, who am I to go to?” The head master leant back
+in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.
+
+“There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case
+of dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal
+proceedings on behalf of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down
+and solved the mystery within twenty-four hours, and saved the school a
+public scandal.”
+
+“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my boy. What
+did you say the name was?”
+
+“Thrush—Eugene Thrush—quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a
+gentleman,” said the head master impressively. Further particulars,
+including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from
+an advertisement in that day’s _Times_, in which Mr. Thrush was
+described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate
+investigations” and “confidential negotiations.”
+
+That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he
+departed both on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final
+word for his own behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the
+head master on the importance of keeping it out of the papers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+MR. EUGENE THRUSH
+
+
+The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never
+been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of
+events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was
+known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was
+talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody
+might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in
+connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally
+concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report that he drank,
+in the ordinary interpretation of the term.
+
+It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his
+dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful
+Friday. He was  dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His
+dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the
+original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led.
+There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and
+spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such
+stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.
+
+Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker’s mute (a calling he had
+followed in his day), was laying out his master’s clothes as mournfully
+as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he
+shaved.
+
+“I’m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into
+this case it’s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too
+soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they’d have wondered what the
+devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you
+were in my service.”
+
+“I had no call, sir.”
+
+“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d
+only to describe the finding of the body?”
+
+“That was all, sir.”
+
+“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”
+
+Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving
+elbow. “I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he,
+with sombre dignity.
+
+“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs
+you showed me yesterday?”
+
+“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must
+have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t
+on the actual scene of the murder.”
+
+“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have
+to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the
+one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re
+worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with
+a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the
+adjourned inquest?”
+
+“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite
+convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very
+stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal
+bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.”
+
+Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took
+as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being
+thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in
+shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the
+whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would
+have  delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest
+of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and
+yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness
+of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of
+inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great
+round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an
+aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in
+itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him
+any more seriously than he took himself.
+
+Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially
+superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being
+badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the
+landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth
+of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate
+abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his
+visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The
+library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the
+first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made
+business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only
+beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at
+his first entry.
+
+It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen
+from the motorist’s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced
+joviality with which Thrush exclaimed: “I’m sorry to have kept you
+waiting, sir, and the worst of it is that I can’t let you keep me!”
+
+This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception
+one had to come up to London to incur. “Then I’ll clear out!” said he,
+and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous
+effect.
+
+Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly
+consternation.
+
+“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you four minutes,
+if that’s any good to you.”
+
+Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have
+said four hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would
+have been no good to him; but the precise term of minutes, together
+with a seemlier but not less decisive manner, had already quickened the
+business man’s respect for another whose time was valuable. This is by
+no means to say that Thrush had won him over in a breath. But the
+following interchange took place rapidly.
+
+“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?”
+
+“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other room.”
+
+“Upton is my name, sir.”
+
+“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry
+agent is all I presume to call myself.”
+
+“But you do inquire into mysteries?”
+
+“I’ve dabbled in them.”
+
+“As an amateur?”
+
+“A paid amateur, I fear.”
+
+“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to me!”
+
+“Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you
+catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none
+of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens
+to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private
+inquisitor. If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that’s my job
+and I should put it first.”
+
+“Mr. Thrush, that’s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for
+me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my
+youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or
+been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!”
+
+So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds
+which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up
+before he had concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts
+within his knowledge.
+
+“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush.
+
+“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?”
+
+“The four minutes must be more than up.”
+
+“Go on, my dear sir, and don’t throw good time after bad. I’m only
+dining with a man at his club. He can wait.”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.”
+
+“More good time! How do you know the boy hasn’t turned up at school or
+at home while you’ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?”
+
+“I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there’s nothing
+there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a
+bed which they couldn’t give him the night before last. I did let them
+have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had
+recommended other hotels; they’ve just been telephoning to them all in
+turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then
+I’ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John’s
+Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I
+thought I’d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush,
+but that’s all I’ve done or know how to do. Something must have
+happened!”
+
+“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely.
+
+“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor
+accident. One moment!”
+
+And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins
+was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master
+said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of
+him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.
+
+“In less than an hour,” explained Thrush, “he will be back with a list
+of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight
+hours. I don’t say there’s much in it; your boy had probably some
+letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it’s
+worth trying.”
+
+“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.
+
+“And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as
+with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a
+whisky-and-soda in the first place.”
+
+“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.”
+
+“But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the
+convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited
+with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant
+refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new acquaintance too
+well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.
+
+“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!”
+
+“Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man
+begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all.
+Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets
+back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.”
+
+“But do you think you can do anything?”
+
+The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate
+thanks.
+
+“If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the
+needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will
+take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a
+sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!”
+
+At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and
+repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather
+reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.
+
+“I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because
+it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is
+there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?”
+
+“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.”
+
+“Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling
+down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing
+could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for
+games.”
+
+“Nothing better, do you say?”
+
+“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s
+asthma than to hide the man himself.”
+
+“I never thought of that.”
+
+It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that
+moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an
+inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them.
+
+“I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly;
+but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal
+perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.
+
+“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?”
+
+“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.”
+
+“I certainly never thought of his heart!”
+
+“Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said
+Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his
+asthma were to prove his best friend.”
+
+“It owes him something!”
+
+“Do you know what he does for it?”
+
+“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed
+to have received some weeks before. “He smokes, against his doctor’s
+orders.”
+
+“Do you mean tobacco?”
+
+“No—some stuff for asthma.”
+
+“In cigarettes?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Do you know the name?”
+
+“I have it here.”
+
+The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection
+after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in
+outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk,
+but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last
+superfluous ounce.
+
+“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their
+glasses.
+
+“I confess I don’t see why.”
+
+“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!”
+
+“Some French rubbish.”
+
+“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”
+
+“It looks like it.”
+
+“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”
+
+“So he has the impudence to say.”
+
+“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?”
+
+Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.
+
+“I never heard of these cigarettes before; they’re an imported article;
+you can’t get them everywhere, I’ll swear! Your boy has got to rely on
+them; he’s out of reach of the doctor who’s forbidden them; he’ll try
+to get them somewhere! If he’s been trying in London, I’ll find out
+where before I’m twenty-four hours older!”
+
+“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility
+than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.
+
+“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.
+
+“Who on earth is he?”
+
+“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.”
+
+“A. V. M.?”
+
+“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”
+
+Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it
+all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.
+
+“You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, “and go on so dividing
+them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to
+the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or
+Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much
+longer ago than mine.”
+
+Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.
+
+“In this case it’s Chemists Who Do Sell D’Auvergne Cigarettes and
+Chemists Who Don’t. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and
+Chemists Who Do but Didn’t! But we can probably improve on the old game
+by playing both rounds at once.”
+
+“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, “though there seems
+some method in the madness.”
+
+“It’s all the method I’ve got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. “But you shall
+see it working, for unless I’m much mistaken this is Mullins back
+sooner than I expected.”
+
+Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired,
+though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been
+the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid
+round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas’s, St. George’s, and the
+Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary’s and St.
+Bartholomew’s. At none of these institutions had a young gentleman of
+the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last
+forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically
+depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had
+one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his
+chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before.
+
+“Don’t go, Mullins! I’ve another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush.
+“Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you
+down at my desk. Look up ‘chemists’ under ‘trades’; there are pages of
+them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up
+every chemist who’s on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest
+in, to ask if he keeps d’Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of
+the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at
+nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of
+getting ’em elsewhere—say you wonder there’s so little demand—and with
+any luck you should find out whether and to whom they’ve sold any since
+Wednesday evening.”
+
+“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster.
+
+“It’s the next point,” said Thrush. “The first is to divide the
+chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the
+Vegetables who don’t. I should really like to play the next round
+myself, but Mullins must do something while we’re out.”
+
+“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?”
+
+“My dear Mr. Upton, you’re going to step across into the Café Royal
+with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!”
+
+“And what about your theatre?” asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance was
+a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins
+entrenched behind telephone and directories.
+
+“The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of
+tripe that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June;
+but I’m not going to chuck the drama that’s come to me!”
+
+The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good
+dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to
+his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or
+drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white
+waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes.
+It even escaped his observation that the obese Thrush was an unblushing
+gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy. The conscious repast of Mr.
+Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of Eugene Thrush, and of
+that conversation only such portions as exploited his professional
+theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand. He
+was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account
+of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his
+myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. What was the murder of
+some ragamuffin in Hyde Park to a man from the country who had lost his
+son?
+
+“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out of pure
+politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.
+
+“It should work all right,” returned Thrush. “You take an absolutely
+worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two motives:
+either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a
+menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he’s taken your
+wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price
+of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn’t anything to bless
+himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh?
+So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your
+blade into the root of the matter.”
+
+Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his
+boldest statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt
+with the one subject on the poor man’s mind. The cessation of his
+voice, however, caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he
+made a mental grab at the last phrase, and was astonished to find it
+germane to his own thoughts.
+
+“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. Thrush!”
+
+“When was the first?”
+
+“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!
+Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?”
+
+“Not seriously.”
+
+“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?”
+
+“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles twinkling to
+colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you ask?”
+
+“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.”
+
+“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.”
+
+“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?”
+
+“I’ve heard of one,” said Thrush, with a significant stress upon the
+verb; “that’s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a hundred years
+ago. The victim’s mother dreamed three nights running that her missing
+daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the time.
+There _may_ have been other cases.”
+
+“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very
+time at which something terrible has happened to that child?”
+
+“Any amount of those.”
+
+The father’s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his
+glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves
+in a more attentive stare.
+
+“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton hoarsely.
+
+“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. “That
+would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!”
+
+“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much agitated;
+for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.
+
+“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?”
+
+“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t tell
+her he had disappeared.”
+
+“Why? What was the dream?”
+
+“That she saw him—and heard a shot.”
+
+“A shot!”
+
+Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had
+time to think.
+
+“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she wasn’t
+dreaming at all.”
+
+“But when was this?”
+
+“Between six and seven yesterday morning.” This time Thrush did not
+move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and
+again he was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence
+was complete. Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M.
+system, neither was Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions
+on the strength of one. He asked whether the boy was very fond of
+shooting in the holidays, as though that might have accounted for the
+dream, but his father was not aware that he had ever smelt powder in
+his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The tone of
+subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton’s health (already mentioned
+as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a
+secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for
+compassion.
+
+“Then that accounts for it,” said Thrush, when he had heard the whole
+sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally
+fanciful, I’m afraid.”
+
+“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?”
+
+“My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion
+either way. I only say, don’t think too much about that dream. And
+since you won’t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the
+faithful Mullins.”
+
+They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr.
+Upton for one would not have recognised him as the same being. His
+sepulchral face was alight with news—it was the transformation of the
+undertaker’s mute into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box
+of the d’Auvergne Cigarettes to show for his evening’s work, and that
+chemist had declared it was the first he had sold for weeks.
+
+Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon
+as ever he dared.
+
+“You need a good night’s rest, my dear sir, and it’s no use climbing to
+my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you don’t mind
+leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing tomorrow morning
+I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be some
+progress to report.”
+
+Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face
+still more strikingly illuminated.
+
+“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne Cigarettes!”
+
+“So I perceive.”
+
+“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.”
+
+“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.”
+
+“I didn’t smoke it, sir!”
+
+“Who did?”
+
+“That’s for you to say, sir; but it’s one of the little things I
+collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,
+yesterday morning in Hyde Park.”
+
+“Near the actual place?”
+
+Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the
+strongest of the electric lamps.
+
+“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+SECOND THOUGHTS
+
+
+Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he
+felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the
+nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the
+engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the
+Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had
+seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt
+him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze.
+There was nothing nebulous about the vile place then; it was as light
+and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister figures in the
+panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read that they
+always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight. But
+that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman
+and terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their
+winding-sheets, from their  murderer’s graves. Better by far their
+beastly faces, that you knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and
+screwed up his courage, and laid hands on one of the shorter figures
+that he could reach. It rocked stiffly in its place, a most palpable
+and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements from the hollow and
+unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not been there the
+other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as ill-mounted on
+high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of intelligent
+eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical
+characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army
+of murderers was a faithful model of himself.
+
+There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that
+he had been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it
+had seemed in that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy
+shuddered till the bed shook under him. But after that he still lay on,
+facing himself as he had seen himself, and his deed as others must see
+it soon or late. Not the actual accident in the Park; but this hiding
+in the heart of London, this skulking among strangers, this leaving his
+own people to mourn him as the dead!
+
+The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear
+to him before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and
+Horace, how good they had been to him at school, and how proud he had
+been of them! What would they think of him if he went on skulking like
+this? What would they have done in his place? Anything but lie low like
+that, thought Pocket, and resolved forthwith to play the game as
+preached and practised by his brothers. It was strange that he should
+have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this morning he saw
+it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass screen…To
+think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude
+as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the
+situation as well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him
+if he gave himself up, but anything might if he waited till he was
+caught. As for the consequences to his poor mother, surely in the end
+suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper into the slender cord of her
+life than the shock of the truth would cut.
+
+Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy
+behaved characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in
+front of him, beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and
+ending in a blaze of wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face;
+meanwhile he lay in such peace and safety as it was only human to
+prolong  a little. That night, for all his moral innocence, he might
+lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed while he had one,
+especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The last
+consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little
+time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had
+suffered from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident
+in which he was nearly killed.
+
+“My accident may have done the same for me,” thought Pocket—and was
+bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking complacently of
+any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient punishment.
+
+To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the
+plain upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was
+to conjure uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his
+ferocious meerschaum, his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his
+arguments in favour of the course which Pocket had now determined to
+abandon. The boy fully realised that he had been given his chance, and
+had refused it. And of all the interviews before him, that with Dr.
+Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have given most
+to escape.
+
+Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did
+escape, and did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no
+reason why he should involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession.
+Suppose he hailed the first cab he saw, and drove over to St. John’s
+Wood to borrow money (they could scarcely refuse him that), and then
+took the first train home to tell his father everything in the first
+instance, that father would never hear of his incriminating a stranger
+who had befriended him according to his lights. He himself need never
+say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the tragedy, even if
+he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to the
+ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only
+suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to
+his breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that
+after a day and a night he should still be in total ignorance of his
+whereabouts.
+
+He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the
+sunny little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old
+discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of
+a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered
+above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was
+completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to
+the ear, and  there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of
+the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll’s
+perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded
+Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally trim
+lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the
+green spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the
+curiously countrified smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a
+still stronger reminiscence of his father’s garden, where his own old
+pony pulled the machine in leather shoes.
+
+Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to
+them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing
+almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket
+could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as
+quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word,
+whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never
+occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare
+to lock him in his room!
+
+Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek
+to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to
+himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told
+him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily
+strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or
+else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he
+always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant
+between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window,
+saw his way down at a glance.
+
+Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony
+over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the
+least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet
+till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a
+very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on
+finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?
+They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in
+which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman
+who said he might not sleep in the Park.
+
+The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously
+Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old
+campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which
+argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic
+service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase.
+Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and  so eloquent of Baumgartner
+himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more
+freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he
+had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs
+hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected
+by his host.
+
+Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to
+lose a moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had
+made an interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being
+played. He heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on
+the balcony up above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been.
+It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing
+something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though
+naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was
+Mendelssohn, or Chopin, “or something,” for his love of music was
+greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that
+detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him
+kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he
+went, and the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been
+locked in, and he had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet
+not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at  all events,
+and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile
+instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating
+moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might
+know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game
+to say goodbye.
+
+The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her
+large eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they
+blazed at the intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she
+already knew the truth.
+
+“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just came in to say
+goodbye.”
+
+And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.
+
+“To say goodbye!” she gasped.
+
+“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s out?”
+
+“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?”
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t.”
+
+She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood
+aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn
+took her stand, back to the door.
+
+“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and with a
+smile.
+
+“And I’m very sorry to miss him,” said Pocket, unconscientiously enough
+for anybody. “He’s been most awfully good to me, and I wish you’d tell
+him how grateful I am.”
+
+“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, “if he finds you
+gone.”
+
+“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do
+you mind giving him one other message?”
+
+“As many as you like.”
+
+“Well, you might tell him from me that I’ll give myself away, but I’ll
+never give him! He’ll know what I mean.”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the
+last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the
+boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through
+an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio.
+
+“No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the
+worst way about it by locking me into my room!”
+
+She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.
+
+“How did you get out?”
+
+“How do you suppose?”
+
+“I never heard anything!”
+
+“I took care you shouldn’t.”
+
+And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in
+the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl
+stood up to him like a little heroine.
+
+“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.”
+
+“Can’t let me?”
+
+“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.”
+
+He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older
+than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his
+way past—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him,
+because he felt she knew it.
+
+“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t let me out that
+way, I’ll go this!”
+
+And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the
+garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she
+held him firmly by the hand.
+
+“If you do I’ll blow a police-whistle!” she said. “We have one—it won’t
+take an instant. You shan’t come out the front way, and you’ll be
+stopped if you climb the wall!”
+
+“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out
+bitterly.
+
+“Never mind what I take you for!”
+
+“You’re treating me as though I were one!”
+
+“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.”
+
+“I shan’t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your
+uncle, and you too!” But that was only half true, even then while he
+was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been
+another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he
+drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over
+went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than
+ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him
+say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose
+will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the
+door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was
+a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured
+or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt.
+It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear
+it only increased.
+
+“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears,
+and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.
+
+“Forgive me!” he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it
+after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+ON PAROLE
+
+
+“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you
+seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you
+break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young
+lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!”
+
+Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought
+the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater
+cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his
+honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to
+change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was
+precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as
+much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with
+their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin
+that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.
+
+“I daresay not!” said Baumgartner sardonically. “It would have been
+dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you
+agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never
+so far as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your
+eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were
+going to lie on it like a man.”
+
+“Then why did you lock me in?” cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point
+on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor
+flattered him with a slight delay before replying.
+
+“There were so many reasons,” he said, with a sigh; “you mustn’t forget
+that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you
+falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was
+more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken
+you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to
+yourself without my assistance, and that you would get brooding over
+what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the
+whole thing. I tell you it’s no good brooding or looking back; take one
+more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating
+notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family,
+certain punishment for me!”
+
+“The consequences at home,” groaned Pocket, “will be bad enough
+whatever we do. I can’t bear to think of them! If only they had taken
+Bompas’s advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam!_ I
+should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm’s way for the
+next three months.”
+
+“The _Seringapatam?_” repeated the doctor. “I never heard of her.”
+
+“You wouldn’t; she’s only a sailing vessel, but she carries passengers
+and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas’s, who wanted to send me with him
+for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn’t let me go. She
+sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If
+I could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I
+could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years
+and years!”
+
+It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had
+come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy’s
+brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it
+up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures,
+bearded like the pard, another “dead man come to life,” after about as
+many years as the dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked
+on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did
+not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was
+quite disappointed when he shook his head.
+
+“A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young
+fellow! Why, they’d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you’d gasp out
+your whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my
+fellow; you’ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with
+me till we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you
+say you won’t, I say I’ll make you—to save you from yourself—to save us
+both.”
+
+There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was
+fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor’s
+power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped
+already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to
+be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now
+dominating him more powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact
+that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have
+done. There was actually an element of relief in his discomfiture. He
+had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that
+responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour
+delayed. And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort
+in such delay, which was all the greater because unsought by him; it
+was a comfort that he had both ways, as the saying is, and from all
+points of view but that of his poor people wondering what had become of
+him.
+
+“If only they knew!” he cried; “then I shouldn’t care. Let me write to
+one of them! My mother needn’t know; but I must write to one of the
+others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would
+keep my secret; she’d play the game all right, I promise you! And I’d
+play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!”
+
+The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should
+have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin
+edge of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write
+what he liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and
+enclose it in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was
+a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from
+St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now
+refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for
+the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and
+sacred promise on the following points.
+
+He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to
+show himself for a moment at the windows back or front.
+
+On no account was he to confide in the doctor’s niece Phillida, to give
+her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London
+mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his
+first meeting with Baumgartner.
+
+“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about
+yourself the better.”
+
+“But what can she think?”
+
+“What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may
+bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise
+in the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to
+think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and
+she had your doctor’s orders not to let you out of the house in his
+absence.”
+
+“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a wistful
+heaviness.
+
+“She did what she was told; think no more about it,” said the doctor.
+“Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather
+than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play
+the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures
+played it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch.
+Look at this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where
+we come to bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian
+Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St.
+Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with
+no head to bind. That’s meant for our colonel on the white horse. See
+him hounding us on to hell! And there’s a drummer drumming as though we
+could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to ribbons, you
+see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young
+fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!” Baumgartner might
+have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of
+a responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and
+to wake the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the
+heart of a soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was
+only when he found himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless
+brought his innocent deed home to him as nothing had done before, that
+the artificial frost broke up, and real tears ran with his ink. He
+begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him, still less to be anxious
+about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret for him, he
+wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction. He
+was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But
+something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would
+bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from
+ever seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others
+to which it led, that were literally blotted with the writer’s tears.
+But just then he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who
+could never show himself at home or at school again. And it required
+the spell of Baumgartner’s presence to make the prospect such as could
+be borne with the least degree of visible manhood.
+
+Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways
+younger than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in
+some few. He was old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may
+be imaginative and still have a level head, but it is least likely in
+one’s teens. The particular temperament does not need a label; but none
+who know it when they see it, and who see it here, will be surprised to
+learn that this emotional writer for one was enormously relieved and
+lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off his mind and hands.
+
+True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a
+kindly gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over
+the second leaf.
+
+“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run the risk of
+trusting your discretion.”
+
+No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped
+the hand that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the
+address, all openly before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to
+the nearest messenger office to despatch the missive to the General
+Post Office, ostensibly to catch a particular post, his prisoner  would
+not have decamped for a hundred pounds, and the doctor knew it.
+
+Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket
+was only less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had
+caused, than when they were both at table and he unable to say another
+word to express his sorrow for the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She
+spoke to him once or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened,
+but he could scarcely look her in the face. Otherwise both meals
+interested him; they were German in their order, a light supper
+following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they
+both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much
+taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived
+smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of speculation when
+he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the house, and that
+the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor’s waste-paper basket
+as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed next morning. He
+had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young girl was clearing
+away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room after supper;
+and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the toy board,
+which they placed between them on the dining-table, both Phillida and
+the fragments had disappeared.
+
+The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out
+Baumgartner’s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy’s
+simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate
+one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his
+hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep
+between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate
+concentration; even the Turk’s head was only lit to be laid aside as an
+obstruction. Pocket’s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the
+fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy
+forgot everything when he actually succeeded in the last game. They had
+played very late for him, and he slept without stirring until
+Baumgartner came to his room about eight o’clock next morning.
+
+Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first
+thing he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one
+like a flag to wake him.
+
+“Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!” he
+cried, with fierce amusement; “it only remains to be seen whether they
+succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really,
+it’s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the
+smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!”
+
+“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these
+remarks.
+
+“Certainly,” replied Baumgartner; “here’s the journalistic wonder of
+the age, and there you are in its most important column. I brought it
+up for you to see.”
+
+The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded
+type and the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first
+place, that no arrest had yet been made; but it was confidently
+asserted (by the omniscient butt of Teutonic sallies) that the police,
+wisely guided by the hint in yesterday’s issue (which Pocket had not
+seen), were already in possession of a most important clue. In
+subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real homicide was
+informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally
+different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had
+been a certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in
+the previous month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had
+been found shot under circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide
+that a coroner’s jury had actually returned a verdict to that effect.
+There appeared, however, to have been an element of doubt in the case.
+This the scribe of the leaded type sought to remove by begging the
+question from beginning to end. It had not been a case of suicide at
+all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde Park, to
+which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been
+shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged
+to one neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the
+community. A pothouse acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but
+the suggestion was that the link lay a good deal deeper than that, and
+that the two dead men were known to the police, who were busy searching
+for a third party of equal notoriety in connection with both murders.
+
+“But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,” said the boy,
+looking up at last. “It wasn’t a murder, either; neither was the first,
+according to the coroner’s jury, who surely ought to know.”
+
+“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile;
+“but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.”
+
+“Do you suppose there’s a word of truth in what he says? I don’t mean
+about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway,” said Pocket, wincing over his
+victim’s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. “But do you
+think the police are really after anybody?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it matter?”
+
+“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I
+did!”
+
+The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.
+
+“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly.
+
+“I don’t see it,” returned the doctor, with grim good-nature. “The
+little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed another
+mare’s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm can
+come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only
+two living souls who can’t account for their time at that of this
+unfortunate affair.”
+
+Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin
+under the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light,
+always encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his
+silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to
+keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against
+the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And
+once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by
+striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings of the boy.
+
+“Eight o’clock!” cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an
+ear towards the open  window. “The postman’s knock from door to door
+down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British
+Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered
+at this very moment—eh, my poor young fellow?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
+
+
+Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr.
+Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius
+for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which
+enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed,
+in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible
+appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper
+with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle
+between the sheets.
+
+That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the
+paper came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious
+matter. It said exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park
+murder: that the murderer would prove to be the author of a similar
+crime, committed in the previous month of March, when the Upton boy
+must have been safe at school. If that were so, it  was manifestly
+absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely happened to
+synchronise with that of his own disappearance—absurd, even if he were
+shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere
+about the time of its perpetration.
+
+That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established
+overnight. It was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile
+conviction of his class, had jumped on the slender evidence of the
+asthma cigarette alone; but before midnight Thrush himself had been
+forced to admit its extreme probability. There was a medicine cork as
+well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been found very much
+nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a shrub on the
+other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both discoveries,
+who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night, to ask
+if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with
+their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just
+as well but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens,
+rung up in their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the
+doctor’s prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and,
+within half an hour, had positively identified the cork found by
+Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was still sticky with the very stuff which
+had put poor Pocket asleep.
+
+Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection
+between a harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He
+resisted the idea on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in
+argument with his now strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide
+jump to a detestable conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the
+width of the jump. The cork and the cigarette might be stepping-stones,
+but at least one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion
+against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms
+on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on
+the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he
+made no mention of the boy’s mother’s dream.
+
+Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an
+enthusiastic convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist,
+and consequently an irritable observer of the saturnine countenance
+which darkened to a tinge of distinct amusement over the leaded type.
+
+“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?”
+
+“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.”
+
+“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland
+Walk?”
+
+“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.”
+
+“I don’t agree.”
+
+“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?”
+
+“The coroner’s jury did—in spite of the coroner—but it may come before
+another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical
+evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm’s length. That isn’t
+the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was
+nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price
+of one; he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before.
+The very same point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he
+ever had a revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he
+never had; I happened to ask the question,” added Thrush, without
+explaining in what connection.
+
+“Well, sir,” said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, “you talk
+about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman who write
+for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!”
+
+This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the
+very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his
+spectacles without one at all.
+
+“The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,
+however,” he remarked; “it  may be by fair means, or it may be by foul,
+but they have a way of getting there before the others start.”
+
+Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do
+it this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring
+himself to believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time
+and place, with no sort of connection between them.
+
+“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, sententiously.
+
+Thrush looked at him for a moment.
+
+“But life’s one long collection of coincidences! That’s what I’m always
+telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don’t you
+call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their
+death at the very hour of the morning when you’re on your way over here
+from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which
+you’ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the
+nerve to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other
+morning, and been mixed up in that affair because you are in this?”
+
+“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied Mullins, with some
+warmth.
+
+“I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to
+the absurd, Mullins; you didn’t take me literally, did you? It’s no use
+talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I’m always
+ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a
+pistol, Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must
+be roaring inside for yours. The man who’s been knocking up chemists
+all night is the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then
+mine, and after that you can tell me how you got on.”
+
+Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his
+best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however,
+for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the
+pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins
+went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was
+yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny
+background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the
+other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear
+whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was
+not a cloud.
+
+“To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,”
+resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; “how many have you done,
+and how many have we still to do between us?”
+
+Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes
+as neat.
+
+“Rung up when you were out at dinner—seventeen. Kept Cigarettes
+d’Auvergne—one. That was Thornycroft’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I’d
+just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I
+knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of
+Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.”
+
+“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?”
+
+“A matter of life or death.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one
+in New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.”
+
+“Much demand in any of those quarters?”
+
+“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly
+every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.”
+
+“I know him; so he’s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?” murmured
+Thrush, to his buttered egg. “But has one of these apothecaries sold a
+box of d’Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?”
+
+“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.”
+
+Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.
+
+“How did you worm that out, Mullins?”
+
+“By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody
+who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we
+were only trying them on hearsay.”
+
+“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only
+consumer?”
+
+“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on
+Thursday to a doctor.”
+
+“Did you get the name?”
+
+“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”
+
+“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry
+face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I
+can’t say when or where. What’s his address?”
+
+“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d
+be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.”
+
+“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”
+
+“I didn’t inquire.”
+
+“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the
+asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never
+had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But
+I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in _Who’s Who_, and
+read out what they say.”
+
+And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at
+barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr.
+Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities
+whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction
+of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which
+contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A
+copious contribution concluded with the information that photography
+and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a
+polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s
+which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.
+
+“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what
+about his address?”
+
+“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, demoralised
+and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.”
+
+“Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but
+I’m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of _Peripatetic
+Psychology_ deserves to have asthma all his nights, and _After this
+Life_ smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won’t build on
+Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we’ll go through the chemists of London
+with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.”
+
+Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away,
+when a stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton
+with  a panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but
+he denied that he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at
+Mullins, and fell to abusing London and the Londoners, but City men
+above all others, till Thrush and he should be alone together. The
+incidental diatribe was no mere padding, either; it was the sincere
+utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody in all London, he
+declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared a twopenny
+curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the present
+company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of
+the boy’s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But
+the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had
+been to see his boy’s friends’ father, “a swine called Knaggs,” that
+very morning at his house in St. John’s Wood.
+
+“Rather early, wasn’t it?” suggested Thrush, whose manner was more
+softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was
+slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.
+
+“Early!” cried Mr. Upton. “Haven’t I lost my boy, and wasn’t it these
+Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to have gone to
+them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your dinner;
+for I don’t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of your 
+hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me
+afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my
+own; but I’d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant
+then, so I thought I’d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting
+till this morning.”
+
+The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush
+seized the opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in
+the street.
+
+“I confess I showed indecent haste,” said he; “but Mullins and I had
+our night’s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his boots off
+since you saw him.”
+
+“Hasn’t he?” cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an
+unsuspected devotion; “then I’ll say what I’ve got to say in front of
+him, for you’re both my friends, and I’ll unsay all I said just now.
+Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself
+about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug
+little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his
+breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as
+himself, and saying ‘Rather early!’—just as you set me off by saying
+yourself a minute ago.”
+
+“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?”
+
+“Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him!
+I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but
+what could he do? London was a large place, and ‘we Londoners’ were
+busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too
+busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. He said
+London life was different; and I said so I could see. They never had
+spare beds at a moment’s notice, much less for boys who might set fire
+to the house or—or shoot themselves——”
+
+His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood
+glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad’s
+death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however,
+looked so genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the
+face of Mullins also attracted less attention.
+
+“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a
+curiously gentle voice.
+
+Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.
+
+“He had, after all!” he croaked. “Little as I dreamt it yesterday, my
+unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in his life
+before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his pocket!”
+
+“Had he brought it from school?” asked Thrush, with a covert frown at
+the transfigured Mullins.
+
+Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters,
+with their father’s opinion of pawnbrokers’ shops as resorts for young
+schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and
+guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted
+without fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose
+only comment was that it behoved him all the more to do something to
+redeem the capital in the other’s eyes.
+
+“Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!” was the only rejoinder, in
+a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was the
+first he had heard about the dream.
+
+“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew before.
+Yet I will own now,” exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins’s bright eye,
+“that the coincidence will be tremendous if there’s nothing in it!”
+
+But only half the coincidence was present in the father’s mind; no
+thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy;
+and to hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his
+fretted nerves could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for
+a pessimist—apologised—and humbly entreated him to take a more hopeful
+view.
+
+“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal
+one!”
+
+An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public
+mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish
+grins and nods behind the poor father’s back. Thrush looked at both men
+with the troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being—looked and
+frowned again—frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant,
+the trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost
+blinding flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light;
+enough for Eugene Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit
+as brightly as it lit him onward to its solution.
+
+He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in
+his face, as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr.
+Upton about the missing boy. What was his character? what its chief
+points? Was he a boy with the moral courage of his acts? Would he face
+their consequences like a man?
+
+“I never knew him tell a lie in his life,” said Mr. Upton, “either to
+save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of their young
+skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most
+conscientious of them all, and I hear that’s what they say of him at
+school.”
+
+Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue,
+though a very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up
+himself; and this time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own
+accord, with a dejected undertaking to be at his hotel when he was
+wanted.
+
+“I don’t like the look of our friend,” remarked Thrush, looking hard at
+Mullins when at last they were alone. “He shapes none too well for the
+strain he’s got to bear; if he cracks up there’ll be a double tragedy,
+if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare quickly,
+Mullins, or we may catch him too late.”
+
+Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a
+few minutes before; he took no notice of it now.
+
+“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, “the very moment
+that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.”
+
+“Meaning they’re the same person?”
+
+“To be sure.”
+
+“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?”
+
+“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?”
+
+“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.”
+
+Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.
+
+“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in
+deferential derision.
+
+“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope to
+get arrested within another hour!”
+
+Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw,
+black as a crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy
+collar.
+
+“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?”
+
+“I am—with your permission, Mullins.”
+
+“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!”
+
+And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled
+from his words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+BOY AND GIRL
+
+
+Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.
+Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the
+newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in
+quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of
+the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her
+boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several
+seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in
+what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but the
+penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the
+doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given
+time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he
+liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled
+when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the
+other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had
+convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences
+exchanged.
+
+The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning;
+for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up
+to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books
+in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the
+dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to
+include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion.
+Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time
+with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and
+girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,
+though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on
+him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was
+only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that
+Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word.
+
+“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida,
+in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the
+house.
+
+“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting
+about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until
+memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve
+o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only
+your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before
+you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday
+afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and
+watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and
+lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything
+you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at
+your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your
+name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was
+not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the
+whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows,
+that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal
+came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself
+again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this
+time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come
+right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home,
+instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them
+everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and
+Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to
+something now.
+
+What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she
+listened. Pocket did both in his turn.
+
+It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming
+nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and
+ran outside without his hat.
+
+His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the
+doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn
+to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed
+at once where they had left off before breakfast.
+
+“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!”
+
+“Began what?”
+
+“Our row yesterday.”
+
+Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket
+now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour,
+his ear still on the street.
+
+“I haven’t.”
+
+Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt
+you?”
+
+“Of course you didn’t.”
+
+“But you must have thought me mad!”
+
+There was a slight but most significant pause.
+
+“Well, I never shall again.”
+
+“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces
+were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no
+nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and
+indignant shame on hers.
+
+“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one
+seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had
+thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved
+school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!
+
+But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate
+with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park
+murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park
+murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that
+swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.
+
+The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and
+trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;
+but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was
+solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.
+
+“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained
+benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would
+hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely
+hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the
+scoundrel took his paper back!”
+
+He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors
+recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was
+wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English
+boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in
+some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous
+scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared
+there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and
+handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s
+sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth.
+He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should
+go instead; she was not past the ballad stage.
+
+And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not
+conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of
+her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off
+the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.
+
+“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you
+two talking about while my back was turned?”
+
+“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart
+beat fast.
+
+“What about yesterday?”
+
+“Our scuffle in the other room.”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”
+
+“What did you find out?”
+
+“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He
+might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful
+face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did
+not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.
+
+“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”
+
+“You said she would think I was a patient.”
+
+“Exactly! A mental case.”
+
+“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged
+valour.
+
+“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll
+continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when
+I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,”
+continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good
+young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some
+consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”
+
+Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself
+being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.
+
+“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think
+she’s associating with a lunatic?”
+
+“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the
+suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of
+such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in
+your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the
+horrid term in all sobriety.”
+
+“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!”
+
+“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”
+
+But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his
+retort was a precocious inspiration.
+
+“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”
+
+“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses,
+“and what if it was?”
+
+“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”
+
+“He won’t lie long.”
+
+“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”
+
+“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”
+
+“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”
+
+Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the
+same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him
+without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of
+sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of
+sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them;
+the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it
+was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion
+till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon
+the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete
+control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.
+
+“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other
+room till you know your own mind again.”
+
+“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his
+teeth, although they chattered.
+
+“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of
+clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more
+patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”
+
+If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire
+that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he
+meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for
+thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity
+was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel
+rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the
+concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate
+words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace,
+in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner
+smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house.
+The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually
+took the doctor at his word about a book.
+
+If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was
+certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His
+library  was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote
+himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no
+public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books
+many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were
+photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or
+yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had
+probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list.
+Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for
+Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on
+somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was
+something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature
+who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several
+cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet
+determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar
+in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of
+those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute
+fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had
+made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too,
+appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her
+concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her
+ uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was
+himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world
+like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs,
+the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his
+sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the
+conversation.
+
+The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of
+their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still
+before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No
+letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard
+at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning
+recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people
+or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl
+got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.
+
+“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big
+room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.”
+
+“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he
+glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression
+whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once
+it must be done, and done  quickly—with both doors open and the
+visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor
+must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.
+
+The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised
+voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched
+too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the
+sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an
+outer and an inner door in quick succession.
+
+“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it
+be?”
+
+“Hasn’t he any friends?”
+
+“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her
+great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as
+a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she
+whispered.
+
+“What?”
+
+“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at
+table.”
+
+There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely
+penetrating now.
+
+“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.
+
+“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”
+
+“But I don’t understand the question.”
+
+“Is that true?”
+
+“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”
+
+She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.
+
+“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both
+instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at
+first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could
+hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a
+mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but
+there’s something I can and must ask you.”
+
+Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.
+
+“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing
+happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the
+Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I
+say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything
+points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the
+truth when he came in!”
+
+Pocket looked up at last.
+
+“I know the truth.”
+
+“About the arrest?”
+
+“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.”
+
+“Why not before?”
+
+“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up
+and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.
+
+“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”
+
+“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.”
+
+“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”
+
+There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she
+thought.
+
+“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and
+his head lower.
+
+“You don’t mean——”
+
+She stopped aghast.
+
+“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a
+bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an
+accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not
+to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.
+
+“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm
+in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or
+done!”
+
+Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the
+intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to
+hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear
+had heard of either boy or girl during his absence.  Yet the boy was
+not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was
+trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang.
+Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face,
+which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet
+the doctor’s.
+
+But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but
+stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done
+something very clever indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+BEFORE THE STORM
+
+
+Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally
+spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the
+theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to
+distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the
+postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a
+normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns
+were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church
+bells came as well through the open windows; then the street-door shut,
+and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it opened and shut
+again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though
+they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!
+
+Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner
+pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had
+seen it first; the Turk’s head perspired from internal and external
+heat, but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather
+with a red geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole
+of his black alpaca jacket.
+
+It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew
+what she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature
+conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory
+interest in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to
+Pocket Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not
+without his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the
+difference in Baumgartner’s voice when he addressed his niece, the
+humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a
+reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been none to
+see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had
+seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning. 
+But now it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of
+kindness against these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her
+endure them with a better grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to
+him, she could not have made sweeter amends than she did by many an
+unobtrusive little office. And she exchanged no more confidences with
+poor Pocket.
+
+Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was
+a strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of
+life’s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed
+before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket
+certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since
+the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one
+before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which
+Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no
+longer lying about the room as he had left it. There was a gap in its
+place in the shelf. The book had been taken away from him; it made him
+feel as though he were back again at his very first dame’s school.
+
+And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They
+were more mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you
+down the hill at the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical;
+and Pocket saw and heard himself puffing up the opposite hill to take
+his place for chapel call-over in the school quad. The fellows would be
+forming in squads there now, all in their Sunday tails or Eton jackets
+as the case might be; of course Pocket was in tails, though still
+rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or their
+rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind’s eye. Then came the cool and
+spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and
+rows of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own,
+giving a swing to chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How
+real it all was to him, and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the
+sunny room with the battle engravings over the book-cases, and the
+walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr. Baumgartner in and out in his
+alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for a walk with Blundell
+minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and got it over.
+And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and apple-pie
+with cloves in it at Spearman’s.
+
+The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner’s meals certainly
+provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the
+portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor
+praised without a single patriotic reservation.
+
+“Italy is a country where one can live,” said he. “Not that you must
+understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young
+fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a
+Sunday. No organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German
+bands which we in Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman
+every hour of the day, and no gaolbirds crying false news down the
+streets.”
+
+Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker’s eye, but found it
+fixed on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to
+say something quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the
+actual remark.
+
+“That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,” explained the
+doctor. “I give out no other address; then you only get your letters
+when you want them.”
+
+“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly wishing
+he would go that afternoon.
+
+“Not when I have visitors,” replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow.
+“And I look upon my patients in that light,” he added, with benevolent
+but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so
+than if she had still believed it to be the truth.
+
+Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece
+took refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an
+hour or more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that
+Lettice played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the
+makings of a pianist. The boy’s enthusiasm for the things he knew made
+her play then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the
+doctor, dozing in the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut,
+murmured his approval more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and
+Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and others that the
+boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the
+same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been
+there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and
+once or twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be
+the boy who had killed a man, however innocently, three days before!
+Could it be he whom the police might come and carry off to prison at
+any moment? Was it true that he might never see his own people any
+more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he could neither answer
+them nor realise their full import. They turned the old man in the
+chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he had seemed
+at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement even
+to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.
+
+Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home.
+Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something
+would be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his
+for ever; but as for his present situation, there were moments when
+Pocket felt rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned,
+and already in communication with the mainland.
+
+He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had
+come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be
+within a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the
+known circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the
+papers? Pocket felt he would have red ears all his life if that were
+done; and yet it had hurt him a little to gather from Baumgartner that
+so far there was nothing in the papers to say he had so much as
+disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or Friday.
+Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would
+have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!
+
+He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her
+afternoon rest. If he were at home, he would be going about quietly.
+Lettice would be reading or writing in the morning-room,  most
+probably. Father would be gloating over his rhododendrons with a strong
+cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how beautiful they were.
+Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and Fred were not
+playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far ahead to
+see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own
+voice telling them of his own experience—of this very hour at Dr.
+Baumgartner’s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that!
+Pocket looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids
+never quite closed, and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister
+effect. He noted the drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash
+from the Turk’s head sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the
+very phrases of a graphic portrait almost to his lips.
+
+Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the
+silver lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not
+silver at all but one of the baser metals of the human heart, how
+indignantly he would have denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the
+end!
+
+When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and
+sponge, but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for
+going higher up to his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only
+make more work, in a tone precluding argument. It struck Pocket that
+the doctor really needed sleep, and was irritable after a continuous
+struggle against it. If so, it served him right for not trusting a
+fellow—and for putting Boismont in the waste-paper basket, by Jove!
+
+There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first
+things Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in
+the opposite corner; and the schoolboy’s strongest point, be it
+remembered, was a stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive
+at the waste-paper basket, meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor
+minded his reading that book. But the question never was asked; the
+book was still in the basket when the doctor had finished drying his
+face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had seen the
+dead.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired Baumgartner,
+solicitously.
+
+“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping his forehead
+and then his hand.
+
+“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there first!”
+
+But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.
+
+“I do feel seedy,” he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it,
+“but I’m not going to faint. I’m quite well able to go upstairs. I’d
+rather lie down on my own bed, if you don’t mind.”
+
+His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was
+none the less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first
+close examination of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had
+picked out of the basket in the doctor’s room instead of Boismont’s
+book on hallucinations. There had been no hallucination about those
+scraps of paper; they were fragments of the boy’s own letter to his
+sister, which Dr. Baumgartner had never posted at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+A LIKELY STORY
+
+
+At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before,
+when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not
+only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of
+warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had
+followed by the only Sunday train.
+
+A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town
+which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for
+the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its
+beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and
+leafy coverts,  with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a
+permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the
+hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it,
+abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and
+entered the grounds on foot.
+
+A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was
+encountered and accosted before he reached the house.
+
+“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I
+want to see him about something.”
+
+Lettice flushed and shrank.
+
+“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”
+
+“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath
+away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no
+longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of
+town without a word?”
+
+“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had
+ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and
+my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday
+unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and
+was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only
+for the night. So it’s all my  fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything
+but what you’ve come down to tell us!”
+
+“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But
+if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have
+found out.”
+
+In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight,
+without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of
+provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt
+as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the
+bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from
+that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little
+artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the
+rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the
+house.
+
+The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had
+rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram,
+leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes
+that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.
+
+“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve
+been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you
+were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by
+the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”
+
+“Did you leave the motor behind?”
+
+“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”
+
+“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full
+breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or
+how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it
+through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a
+dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for
+your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t
+have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of
+us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”
+
+“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.
+
+“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”
+
+“Alive?”
+
+“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”
+
+The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who
+calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were
+blinded by the first ray of light.
+
+“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.
+
+“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really
+was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”
+
+“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
+
+“What kind of interest?”
+
+“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked
+at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?”
+
+“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”
+
+“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”
+
+Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
+
+“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”
+
+“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve
+turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly
+tub.”
+
+“Do you know when she was to sail?”
+
+“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”
+
+“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother,
+if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He
+told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton,
+and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have
+been the boy.”
+
+Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing
+question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.
+
+“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where
+exactly did he see him?”
+
+“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d
+better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for
+Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the
+first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his
+name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some
+distinction.”
+
+The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush
+continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for
+he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes
+since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four
+hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up
+to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I
+preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried
+his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know
+him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered
+being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning!
+That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself
+was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have
+known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”
+
+“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about
+Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false
+scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker,
+there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth
+place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner
+lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on
+the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer,
+having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the
+Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to
+me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was
+the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I
+was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor
+lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants
+and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the
+arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to
+complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on
+the Thursday night!”
+
+“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
+
+“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but
+I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you.
+It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my
+leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards
+went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish
+I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for
+an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must
+say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said,
+‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for
+last Thursday!’”
+
+“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I’m an inquiry
+agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you’ll tell me it may
+solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is was
+treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there’s no
+shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”
+
+“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn’t
+blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in
+store. ‘I’d tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I
+don’t really know it myself. He said it was  John Green—but his
+handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.”’”
+
+“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father.
+
+“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That
+settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”
+
+“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?”
+
+“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.”
+
+“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”
+
+“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!”
+
+“He might feel he had?”
+
+“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he’d done no such thing; in
+fact, he’s just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of
+some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the
+subject.
+
+“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy
+of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.
+
+“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal Lettice.
+
+“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.
+
+“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his
+story that you ought to hear.”
+
+And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully
+true version—up to a point—of poor Pocket’s condition and
+adventures—with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out—from the
+early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon
+of that day.
+
+Baumgartner had actually described the boy’s long sleep in his chair;
+it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began
+in earnest.
+
+“That’s a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I’d like
+to take him by the hand—and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of
+their dirty necks—and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”
+
+“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying
+out all night with asthma—it was enough to kill him—or to send him out
+of his mind.”
+
+“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of
+serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.
+
+“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he
+had been keeping something all this time.
+
+“Only something he’d kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a
+little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them
+after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr. Upton. You
+may not believe it. I’m not certain that I do myself. In the morning he
+had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you’d opposed it, but
+withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you don’t mind! In the evening
+he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the
+_Seringapatam_, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get
+aboard himself that night!”
+
+“I don’t believe it, Thrush.”
+
+“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”
+
+Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye.
+“I don’t say I altogether accept it myself; that’s why I kept it to the
+end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the
+improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that
+the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here’s a man, a well-known
+man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the
+Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to
+his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the
+doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily
+checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and
+disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about
+everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and
+never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are
+prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care
+to hear Dr. Baumgartner’s theory as to what has happened.”
+
+Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may
+as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to
+him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may
+have seen something that we shouldn’t guess.”
+
+“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now
+thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the
+foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn’t know the boy had come up
+to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood
+he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of
+mild spree—if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential
+lenses on the indignant girl.
+
+“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn’t yours, Mr.
+Thrush, so please go on.”
+
+“It’s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I
+was able to tell him, and we mustn’t forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he
+was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did
+meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been
+ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons;
+perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the
+conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I
+think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters,
+particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a
+thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to
+go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at
+home! What’s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship
+he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in
+her still—even if he has to stow away!”
+
+“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think of it. His head
+was full of those trashy adventure stories!”
+
+But Lettice shook hers quietly.
+
+“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction
+that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.
+
+“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he
+actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself,
+but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many
+pounds of biscuit and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive
+into blue water. There’s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner
+the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he
+would be out of the world for three whole months.”
+
+“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to
+his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to
+sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?”
+
+Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.
+
+“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of
+us will board her tomorrow if she’s up to time!”
+
+“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?”
+
+“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They
+don’t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have
+gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an
+old boatswain of the line who’s caretaker at the office, and the only
+man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I’ve since bearded one
+of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement
+confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at 
+Plymouth, so she certainly won’t sail again before to-morrow noon, even
+if she’s there by then. You will be in ample time to board her—and I’ve
+got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw—if you go down by
+the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.”
+
+The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him,
+he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the
+increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an
+uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and
+after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was
+pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene
+Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled
+him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared
+for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the
+man’s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the
+moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it
+fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the
+works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”
+
+Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught
+before replying.
+
+“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my job
+is to prove things one way or the other.”
+
+“Then I’ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is
+absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.”
+
+Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or
+anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the
+window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy
+as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than
+usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train
+was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.
+
+“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it’s
+all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and
+it’ll just make the difference to me.”
+
+“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train
+showed signs of life at last.
+
+“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake
+that man’s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!”
+
+“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a
+contemplative pause.
+
+“I’ll take my chance of that.”
+
+“He said something about their both going out of town to-day—meaning
+niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left, and that
+seemed to remind him of it.”
+
+“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”
+
+“And losing the train?”
+
+“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him
+with me, as well as you?”
+
+“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you
+didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”
+
+“Not count on you”?
+
+“One of us will be quite enough.”
+
+“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the
+ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
+
+“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”
+
+“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at
+that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way
+in something.
+
+“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.
+
+“Want him yourself do you?”
+
+“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”
+
+“Why not? Where is he.”
+
+Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
+
+“In prison.”
+
+“In prison! Your man Mullins?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of
+complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+MALINGERING
+
+
+Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was
+still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were
+the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of
+tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back
+into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before
+Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray.
+
+“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see
+you yourself again by supper-time.”
+
+“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t force me, please”
+
+“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a
+tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your
+wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the
+window shut—so—and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it
+when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to
+disturb you.”
+
+And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling
+stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when
+an admirable doctor’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his
+forehead.
+
+“A little fever, I’m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were
+you. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have
+been through so much, my poor young fellow.”
+
+“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.
+
+And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.
+
+“But there’s one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant
+whisper. “They’ve had that letter of yours at home quite a long time
+now—ever since yesterday morning, haven’t they?”
+
+The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut—he only hoped it was
+not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr.
+Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the
+discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed
+anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he
+could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of  the other’s
+trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the
+heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the
+wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth
+impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition!
+
+Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at
+first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner—a fear felt
+from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the
+sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a
+thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung
+in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such
+subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace
+of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he
+missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this
+sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.
+
+The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other
+side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the
+doctor’s stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was
+not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan
+had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His
+people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that
+was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even
+Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write
+than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have
+aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some
+fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond
+reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he
+could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible
+logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of
+a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken
+in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to
+betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already done so!
+
+His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner’s manner
+when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have
+been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the
+doctor’s behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very
+gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any
+supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite
+of that man’s bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It
+was against his reasoned policy to show  temper, and he was beginning
+to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You’ll think better of
+that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half
+an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle
+on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth,
+and Baumgartner eyed the boy.
+
+“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”
+
+“Nothing to eat.”
+
+“Is there any book?”
+
+“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. “There’s the book
+I was reading yesterday.”
+
+“What was that?”
+
+“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”
+
+“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable
+aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have
+destroyed it.”
+
+“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted.
+
+“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is
+no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is
+done and over.”
+
+“If it is over,” murmured the boy.
+
+“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.
+
+“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d got to say about
+somnambulism.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite
+of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to
+know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their
+sleep.
+
+“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as
+well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot
+woke me and I found myself where you saw me.”
+
+“I’m glad you find it funny!”
+
+The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the
+increased asperity of Baumgartner’s manner, and his whole conduct about
+a harmless book, altogether inexplicable.
+
+“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.
+
+“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do
+your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human
+life less precious than the average dog’s!”
+
+And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human
+about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said
+since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the
+door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel
+exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated
+solicitude of the doctor’s final visit, with pipe and candle, when the
+one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket.
+
+“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten
+in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly midnight?”
+
+“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told
+you I wasn’t well.”
+
+“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.”
+
+“I can’t help that.”
+
+“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed
+to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the
+oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black
+nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more
+infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the
+boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless
+atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of
+looking on.
+
+“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it’s my own fault. I
+take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very
+first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law
+into my own hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or
+worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not
+strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it
+not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow—to trust me perhaps more
+than you have done?”
+
+It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue
+stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived
+from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this
+one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated
+Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take
+any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a
+brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed
+himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their
+own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy’s faith
+in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a
+symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.
+
+“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he
+had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”
+
+“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.
+
+“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,
+before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”
+
+Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might
+have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came
+before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the
+way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer
+still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And
+Baumgartner’s had become a dreadful face in the boy’s eyes now; there
+was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual
+cruelty; and its smile—its new and strange smile it must have been that
+made him shudder and shake his head.
+
+“But, my young fellow,” urged the doctor, “it will do you so much good.
+And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!”
+
+Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself
+could have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was
+much to commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough
+as he moved it from side to side on the pillow.
+
+“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out with you, when
+you see I can’t eat a bite?”
+
+Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early,
+early lovely summer’s  morning; then they would see, would they not?
+Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from
+the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next
+morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself.
+Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about
+anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep
+revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to
+slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he
+was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.
+Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn
+up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead
+of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have
+that poor innocent man set free before the day was out.
+
+The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been
+secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price
+which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry
+boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one
+remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent
+him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was
+food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed 
+to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still
+untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of
+his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not
+used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not
+self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly
+tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament
+was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only
+shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a
+yard from his door.
+
+Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure
+lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath;
+and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to
+open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had
+done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene
+must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as
+free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the
+few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he
+could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of
+comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open
+eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last
+rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.
+
+Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised
+its note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds,
+which grew but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house.
+Somebody was knocking and ringing at the doctor’s door, not furiously,
+but with considerable pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow
+just at first, and flew from the open window to the landing outside his
+door. The house was in perfect darkness, and still as death in the
+patient intervals between each measured attempt to rouse the inmates
+without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must be
+Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the
+boy was about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the
+retreat of feet down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next
+landing as the doctor closed his bedroom door.
+
+Who could it have been? Baumgartner’s chuckle suggested the police; but
+in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last
+laugh, though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He
+could not close an eye for thinking of it, and listening for another
+knocking and ringing down below. But nothing happened  until the doctor
+returned between five and six, still with his meerschaum pipe, still in
+his alpaca jacket, but wearing also the goblin hat and cloak of their
+first meeting, to renew and intensify the animal fear that glued the
+boy to his bed.
+
+“It is a pity,” said Baumgartner, standing at the window which Pocket
+had left open. “The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a cloud
+in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who
+are making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose
+”—and his eyes blazed—“I’d feed you like a fowl!”
+
+“It’s so likely that I should do it on purpose,” muttered Pocket, with
+schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and they
+had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner’s.
+
+“You know best,” said the doctor. “But you are missing the morning of
+your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little
+garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your
+public school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more
+imagination, thank God!”
+
+Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he
+had the door open too, as the doctor’s step was creaking down the lower
+flight of stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not
+quite to the banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told
+him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only
+for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking
+back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was
+another sharp shutting. Food at last!
+
+It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that
+plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll
+to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he
+had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without
+plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at
+Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining
+all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early
+jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye
+properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second
+time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if
+that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end,
+by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the
+schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the
+discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes!
+
+Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it
+was a practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet
+such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked
+door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew
+where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using
+as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr.
+Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in
+the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no
+forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried
+both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room
+window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That
+mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and
+a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow.
+
+Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his
+hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window,
+and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his
+clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They
+were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there
+somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr.
+Baumgartner came back before his time.
+
+It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on
+the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was
+not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives
+beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs,
+among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had
+often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in
+the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little
+hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for
+breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.
+
+It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives;
+at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up
+like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He
+had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it,
+trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only
+partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind.
+
+At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside
+him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the
+whole lot crashing about his toes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
+
+
+The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and
+Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a
+mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn
+red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take
+the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in
+a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But
+it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with
+romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be
+still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature’s
+heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time
+to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the
+window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but
+determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark
+hair tumbling over her shoulders.
+
+“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?”
+
+“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through
+the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.
+
+“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if
+you will!”
+
+And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But
+Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.
+
+“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with
+considerable severity.
+
+“I didn’t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning
+before he went out. They’re what I broke in for, and I’d a perfect
+right; you know I had! And while I’m about it I thought I might as well
+have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.
+And I’m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in
+the house of one of the greatest villains alive!”
+
+The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were
+all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his
+indignation, the girl’s eyes flashing hers.
+
+“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of
+what he said you were, if anything could be.”
+
+“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!”
+
+“He may have been justified.”
+
+“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver
+from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done
+with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if
+he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But
+that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my
+own poor people who may think me dead——”
+
+“Well?”
+
+There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was
+breaking with his great grief and grievance.
+
+“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch
+the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday
+morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you
+don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I
+found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d
+never posted it at all!”
+
+Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes
+filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.
+
+“I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked,
+and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.
+
+“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so,  at any rate; it does to
+me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you,
+or why you let yourself be hidden.”
+
+“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?”
+
+The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she
+looked from it to him without recoiling.
+
+“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of
+horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an
+accident. And if it was an accident——”
+
+“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever
+happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours
+afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was
+frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should
+have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I
+lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I
+came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that
+morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my
+promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!”
+
+He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them
+know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But 
+now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was
+more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what
+he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s
+papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name.
+
+“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your
+account, if not on his!”
+
+Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last
+assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives
+and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and
+collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place,
+and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing
+much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his
+hands.
+
+“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time
+you’re ready to go, I’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.”
+
+They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open
+door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he
+was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto
+they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of
+appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown
+and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious or careless still, as
+with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise
+honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault of
+what he suddenly felt he simply must say.
+
+“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at last.
+
+“But I want you to,” she returned promptly and firmly, though not
+without a faint smile.
+
+It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get
+that out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as
+he had done when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man
+to his niece; all that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not
+think he was peculiar there; in fact, he thought romantically enough
+about the girl, with her dark hair all over her pink dressing-gown, and
+ivory insteps peeping out of those soft slippers especially when the
+vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making himself as presentable
+as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy in the same
+way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on the
+table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He
+could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner
+he went the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He
+hated the thought of deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such
+a girl! He could only face it with the fixed intention of coming back
+to the rescue of his heroine, he the hero of their joint romance. But
+for his own immediate freedom he was already unheroically eager. And
+yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives together, on the
+white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a boyish
+bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet
+been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it
+brandished by man or boy.
+
+The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier,
+because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives
+was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to
+atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees
+again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure
+sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he
+remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in
+the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in
+position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had
+done.
+
+“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical
+preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if
+my uncle came in now.”
+
+“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”
+
+“You never know!”
+
+Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited,
+but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.
+
+“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly
+what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give
+him leave to stop me if he can.”
+
+“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his
+leave before printing his negative.”
+
+Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny
+room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was
+a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and
+then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing
+the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative
+originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the
+carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood
+looking over his shoulder.
+
+“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in
+Kensington.”
+
+He turned to her quickly.
+
+“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”
+
+“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening
+print.
+
+“I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so
+interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as
+the one where it must have happened.”
+
+“Did he take the photograph then?”
+
+“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.”
+
+“Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!” cried Pocket, in
+uncontrollable excitement. “It’s not only the place; it’s the thing
+itself. Look at that man on the bench!”
+
+The girl took a long look nearer the window.
+
+“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it were
+falling off! He might be dying.”
+
+“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate was
+exposed!”
+
+She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent,
+but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner’s own confession of
+his attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to
+executions; he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly,
+clumsily, inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power
+which brought those incredible theories  home to his companion as
+forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was
+the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed
+his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was
+not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always
+felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now
+she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the
+broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was
+nothing to see; the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out
+the repulsive picture even as she held it in her hands.
+
+“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and
+strained with formless terrors.
+
+“I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human
+being I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether
+you like it yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this
+case in connection with—mine—and I see that one theory was that the man
+in this broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly
+believe that Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!”
+
+“He must have been there if he took the photograph.”
+
+“Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I’ve told you all
+he told me about it, but I haven’t told you all he said about the value
+of human life.”
+
+“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!”
+
+“Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these
+murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight
+from the flesh; that’s his own way of putting it, not mine.”
+
+“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?”
+
+“On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power
+over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my
+sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the
+chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s
+death, not after it.”
+
+“It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of
+one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he
+hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his
+charge.
+
+But there they were agreed.
+
+“He hadn’t one on him that morning; that I can swear,” said Pocket,
+impartially disposing of the idea. “Mine was the only one in that cape
+of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back
+into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or
+anywhere else about him, or I couldn’t have helped seeing it.” Phillida
+accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as
+if in recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy
+whom she could now understand his regarding in that light. If only he
+would go before the enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over
+him as he himself seemed to feel, then that was all the more reason for
+him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like
+that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and
+keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he
+insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression
+to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the
+brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,
+while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.
+
+He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost
+fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his
+small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand,
+and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder
+neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. His whole face  was
+altered; but so was his whole life. She could not understand his
+incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the chambers
+round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live
+cartridges in all six.
+
+“Don’t you see?” the words came pouring. “Not one of them’s been
+fired—it’s as I loaded it myself the other night! It can’t have been
+this revolver at all!”
+
+“But you must have known whether you fired or not?”
+
+“I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I’d only
+heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open
+air, though I do remember wondering I hadn’t felt any kick. But I was
+so dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it
+from me in such a rage that of course I believed I’d let it off. But
+now I can see I can’t have done. It wasn’t my revolver and it wasn’t
+me!”
+
+“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?”
+
+“I’ll swear he didn’t; but there’s another man in all this! There was
+the man they arrested on Saturday—the man I was so keen to set free!”
+
+The boy’s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What
+was it to him that his innocence implied another’s complicity? Only too
+characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point
+of view; but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed?
+There was the broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that
+was not enough for Phillida.
+
+She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose
+in his waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. “Then my uncle
+might have put in a fresh one while you were asleep.”
+
+“Why should he?”
+
+“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.”
+
+“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in
+the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away
+one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in
+the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s
+one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!”
+
+He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for
+herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He
+was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it
+meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that
+was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his 
+innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it.
+
+“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you
+should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.”
+
+And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping
+him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he
+followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back.
+
+“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her
+side at last.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a
+man like that!”
+
+So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings
+or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious
+air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have
+flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it
+first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead.
+
+“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you
+say against my uncle behind his back?”
+
+“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for
+waiting.”
+
+“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?”
+
+“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”
+
+“How do you know he took the negative?”
+
+“I don’t, but——”
+
+“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick
+for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody
+like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he
+must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep
+with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all,
+simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days!
+Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought
+it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to
+another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as
+though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew
+him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years
+and years—and kind to you—far too kind——”
+
+The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it
+and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well
+of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not
+imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed
+her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her  instead. “Will you
+come with me?” he asked hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she
+could only shake her head.
+
+“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket
+extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida!
+You might live with us altogether!”
+
+She smiled very faintly at that.
+
+“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all
+we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do
+if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train
+about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come,
+Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!”
+
+He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or
+apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for
+indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once
+for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything
+was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out.
+
+“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only
+possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard
+all he said to me that first night, and been with  me in the dark-room
+when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how
+it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows
+he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad;
+but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.”
+
+“He would be as he’s always been to me.”
+
+“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.
+
+“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”
+
+“Because I can’t.”
+
+“Because you won’t!”
+
+“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be
+your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!”
+
+He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal
+obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He
+stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but
+he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the
+things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He
+might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to
+make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he
+thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that,
+for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the
+stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+A THIRD CASE
+
+
+In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of
+these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it
+was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one
+which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those
+endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an
+endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves
+up in his memory without a detail missing.
+
+There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida
+standing all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair
+about her shoulders, a picture that could never fade. Then there was
+the moment of the incriminating print, which the sun wiped out even as
+Phillida stood with it in her hands. That moment merged itself in the
+greater one of his discovery that the revolver was fully loaded, his
+inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal mischief in the
+Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him the time
+before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving way
+an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck
+together, and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of
+anger which dissolved his fears like snow in May.
+
+That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to
+be forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying
+absolutely on her account, and so far from giving him the slightest
+credit for it, or a single word of encouragement, she said all sorts of
+things and was off before he could answer one of them. It was not for
+Pocket to see the many ironies of that moment, and not for him to
+recognise the tonic property of his heroic grievance. He could only see
+himself at the foot of those stairs, first gnashing his teeth and not
+sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with his eye on the front
+door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the doctor’s key. Another
+click was to answer it; and at the point of the cocked revolver
+Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not only to
+the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to
+call to witness with her own ears.
+
+Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not
+incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he
+had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot
+forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen’s
+carts, boys  whistling past the house as though they were not in a
+wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his
+watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear
+shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though
+it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth)
+that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a
+state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the
+stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor
+over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle.
+
+So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon
+him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until
+Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.
+
+He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the
+quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly
+upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to
+provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys
+coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.
+
+“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.
+
+“I do now.”
+
+“Do you hear what it is?”
+
+Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.
+
+“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.
+
+“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you hear? ‘Another awful
+murder!’ Now they’re saying something else.”
+
+“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.
+
+“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I can’t hear what!”
+
+“No more can I.”
+
+“I’ll open the door.”
+
+She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.
+The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away
+again in the distance.
+
+“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known man!”
+
+“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?”
+
+“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.”
+
+“But you’re worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling
+to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he
+had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever
+of impatience.
+
+Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o’clock in the morning;
+now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn,
+then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he
+might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not
+the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did
+not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally
+unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this
+criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes.
+Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of mind, as his elders
+and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more
+than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for
+the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida’s first words on
+returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were
+not the truth.
+
+“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.
+
+“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”
+
+“So he was the well-known man!”
+
+He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had
+seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by
+Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was
+not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida
+nodded with swimming eyes.
+
+“Did the doctor know him?”
+
+“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and gold-mines,
+and some financial paper. I never understood.”
+
+“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?”
+
+The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out
+his.
+
+“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.
+
+“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.”
+
+“There is!”
+
+“I shall know it sooner or later.”
+
+“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what you
+like, and still be wrong!”
+
+There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found
+the paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it
+was so folded already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and
+more of it in the late corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P.,
+the well-known proprietor of the _Money-maker_, had been shot dead in
+front of his house in Park Lane. The murder had been committed in the
+early hours of the morning, before anybody was about except  Sir Joseph
+and his groom, and the person whom the groom described as the only
+possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the
+early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a
+photographer representing himself as concerned with the press, and
+desirous of obtaining an equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom
+thought it was to be taken in the Park, and was himself on his way back
+to the mews when the riderless horse overtook him. Mounting the animal,
+he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph dead in the road, and no trace
+of the “photographer” but a false beard and spectacles which he had
+evidently discarded in his flight, and which unfortunately precluded a
+close description of his appearance. But a hue and cry had been
+started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding in
+the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough
+search under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.
+
+Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her
+companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the
+next thing he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big
+chair in the back room.
+
+The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It
+was a period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each
+other through it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for
+his step no longer, but for more newsboys crying his capture to the
+world. And in the hours that they spent thus listening, and listening,
+the girl had much to say, that it did her good to say, about this Dr.
+Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved him in the past.
+
+Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to
+her for all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into
+hers, in the many years they had been more or less together. All she
+really knew of him was from her mother, whose elder sister he had
+married soon after the Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after
+marriage. He must have been settled in England many years before
+Phillida’s mother, herself an Englishman’s widow, came to keep house
+for him. The girl could not remember her father, but her mother had
+lived to see her in her teens, and in her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had
+seemed much as other men. It was only of late years that he had
+withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and buried
+himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His
+niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and
+she had always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he
+was going to send her  to college, he had only just given her six
+months in Switzerland. It was during those months that all his
+eccentricities had become pronounced; that he had given up servants,
+and taken to doing half the work of the house himself, with the casual
+aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals in from
+a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other
+matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in
+him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for
+her, whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own
+kinsfolk so much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could
+make her forget what he had done. She never could or would desert him;
+it was no use asking her again; but she took her callow champion’s
+hand, and wrung it with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by
+further prayers for his departure.
+
+And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale
+that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets,
+suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to
+make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so
+natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer.
+His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he
+been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a murderer would behave?
+Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with
+those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next
+room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary
+lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their
+dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living
+this ordinary life.
+
+The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of
+something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of
+her feeling for him, and of the schoolboy’s feeling for her. If he
+could have convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so
+cleared Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any
+other case, he would have done it for Phillida’s sake that afternoon.
+But with every hour of the doctor’s absence suspicions multiplied.
+Phillida herself was a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall
+symptoms of incipient insanity as instances of personal kindness; if
+one lost one’s reason, she broke a long silence to contend, there could
+be no question of regret and wrong. She was not so sure about crime and
+punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could be no question of that
+either; but in his heart he wondered how much method they must prove to
+hang a madman.
+
+The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy
+had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before;
+and strong excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting
+silently together in the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was
+deepening every minute. Suddenly there was a sound of small branches
+breaking in the garden. Pocket peeped out, standing back from the
+window at her entreaty.
+
+The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain
+into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure
+rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent
+double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long
+and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over
+his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under
+his arm.
+
+The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the
+door; but it was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have
+seen them; they were clasping hands as they shrank away from him with
+one accord. But he did not seem to see them at all. He stretched
+himself, as though he found it a relief to stand upright, and more
+mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took off the alpaca
+jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could have
+been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a
+hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out
+plainly enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper
+parcel; he had put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed
+the paper; it fell at Pocket’s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and
+nothing had come out of it but the stereoscopic camera, that either
+watcher could detect.
+
+And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of
+either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go
+upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead.
+
+“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set
+teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.
+
+“No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he
+mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at
+all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!”
+
+“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he
+comes!”
+
+He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again
+under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with
+the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in
+a hurry, as though he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed
+the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of
+keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room
+door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match
+struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow.
+The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark.
+
+Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered
+bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger
+photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there
+was a long period without a sound.
+
+“He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He
+caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it
+is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled
+ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the
+plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment;
+interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the
+wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!”
+
+One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as
+before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was
+being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the
+locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The
+red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door
+shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent
+figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no
+resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes
+before.
+
+“I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief
+communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the
+base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might
+think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he
+was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening
+breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length
+she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s
+head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a
+paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand.
+
+“Does he know I’m here?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he’s forgotten
+your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though he’d
+forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He
+seems so strange—so old!”
+
+Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. “I
+wonder if something would be any comfort to you?”
+
+“I don’t think so. What is it?”
+
+“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas
+while you were upstairs.”
+
+Phillida turned it out again without comment.
+
+“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed.
+
+“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in
+these—mysteries?”
+
+“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant
+is in prison.”
+
+“He isn’t!”
+
+“You said he was?”
+
+“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read
+it for yourself.”
+
+But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. “I doubt if there’s
+anything in that,” she said; “but what if there were? Does it make it
+any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If he’s guilty at
+all, it makes it all the worse.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+THE FOURTH CASE
+
+
+The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of
+the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of
+moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the
+room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual
+cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to
+steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the
+shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds
+of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.
+
+It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs
+or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or
+less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a
+certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables,
+to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so
+that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as
+though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and
+every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in
+the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead.
+
+Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to
+their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was
+against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what
+he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was
+asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the
+longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a
+result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just
+went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near
+together as they would go.
+
+The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to
+wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some
+monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above
+and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night,
+and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the
+door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his
+lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney
+in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it.
+Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor
+was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew
+back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his
+nose, and crashed upon the path outside.
+
+The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was
+breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself;
+and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won.
+
+“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced
+solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when
+a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near
+my young fellow, I hope?”
+
+And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that
+the boy could have screamed with pain.
+
+“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket
+could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young
+lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have
+another word with you, young fellow.”
+
+The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest.
+They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was
+suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of
+mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by
+Baumgartner.
+
+Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the
+next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and
+his  own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an
+idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through
+the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down
+before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in
+the shadow of the far wall.
+
+The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it
+looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit
+the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly
+the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood
+out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the
+fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the
+revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that
+way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling
+watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in
+Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But
+on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe
+was well in blast.
+
+There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the
+right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the
+lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting
+out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not
+necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of
+sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up
+behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And
+Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap.
+
+The front door shut again.
+
+Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was
+a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side
+of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate,
+and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his
+stride and darted over into the open road.
+
+Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure
+stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy
+to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in
+gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a
+backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another
+glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the
+spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the
+distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once
+the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets
+were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of
+dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were
+dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day,
+because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to
+make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the
+cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was
+sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a
+motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road,
+which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a
+visible mile of asphalt to itself.
+
+Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car
+itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous
+mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles
+were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a
+second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from
+the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel.
+Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step
+fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in
+custody across the road.
+
+“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did
+not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.
+
+“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still
+patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.
+
+“Only last night when I wired.”
+
+“And where?”
+
+“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”
+
+The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.
+
+“Why, I never saw you before this minute!”
+
+“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you wire before?” demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to
+mask his own emotion with a little heat. “I didn’t get it till after
+nine o’clock—too late for the evening train—but I wasn’t going to waste
+three hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on
+my way to the address you gave.”
+
+“It was plumb opposite Baumgartner’s. I mounted guard there the very
+night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after
+him!”
+
+“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,
+my dear boy?”
+
+The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick
+succession; but the first was repeated on the boy’s hang-dog admission
+that he had been hiding.
+
+“Hiding, Tony?”
+
+Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. “But at all events
+we found you better employed,” he said to Pocket, “and the sooner we
+all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying
+this rascal by the heels.”
+
+“Take it up, then!” snapped Mr. Upton. “Jump into the motor, and bring
+the brute to me when you’ve got him! I want to speak to my boy.”
+
+He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that
+passed between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of
+his child who had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his
+head outside the story he extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket
+told it very volubly and ill; he would not confine himself to simple
+facts. He stated his suspicion of Baumgartner’s complicity in the Hyde
+Park affair as though he knew it for a fact; cited the murders in
+Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of the same handiwork, and
+yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was not Dr.
+Baumgartner’s at all.
+
+“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?”
+
+“He was unarmed the other morning. I’m quite positive of that. And his
+niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the
+house.”
+
+“Well, he’s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one! It’s time we
+laid hold of him. Where’s Mr. Thrush? I thought you’d taken him on in
+the car?”
+
+This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers
+about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like
+his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette
+and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts
+being that he had nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton
+had incontinently taken into his own less experienced hands.
+
+“The car won’t take anybody anywhere to-day,” explained the chauffeur,
+with his cigarette behind his back. “I shall have to get a lorry to
+take the car.” He held his head on one side suddenly. “There’s a bit o’
+tyre trouble for somebody!” he cried, grimly.
+
+Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not
+unlike the bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it
+was that. He caught his father’s arm, and whispered in his father’s
+ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the
+asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of
+drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves
+and a few who followed. The hog’s back of a still more deserted bridge
+arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing
+against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they ran a peculiarly
+shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.
+
+“P’lice!” screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily
+spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own
+infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket
+panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the
+suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle.
+It was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the
+bridge, and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to
+pass an intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it
+on a parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket
+panted after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into
+a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too
+dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with
+a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the
+Surrey shore.
+
+The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate
+opposite the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the
+Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose
+upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some
+nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a
+number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly
+lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to
+appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant,
+before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living
+people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing
+together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the
+policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who
+had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in
+dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring
+cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden
+object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round
+and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another
+murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of
+death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only
+the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the
+boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr.
+Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming the river or hiding
+among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the
+group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape?
+The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could
+see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living
+legs.
+
+“Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching
+himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of
+the fun.
+
+“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the
+usual stite o’ mind.”
+
+“Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot
+’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im
+in.”
+
+Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father
+was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles,
+who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his
+trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he
+had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination
+to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry
+escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the
+murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
+
+
+Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the
+gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy
+and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they
+brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and
+horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they
+replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and
+a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to
+express in words.
+
+“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do it
+himself?”
+
+Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief,
+to dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.
+
+“It’s the one thing they are sure about,” said he. “In the first place
+no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera either,
+though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.
+That’s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the
+spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn’t have been
+fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been
+instantaneous. So it’s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane
+yesterday or the one in Hyde Park last week; there’s evidently some
+maniac prowling about at dawn, and shooting down the first person he
+sees and then vanishing into thin air as maniacs seem to have a knack
+of doing more effectually than sane men. But the less we jump to
+conclusions about him—or anybody else—the better.”
+
+The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and
+yet it startled her as an index of what must have passed already
+between father and son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff
+man should know as much as the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as
+a comrade in calamity. Yet she could not expect it to be otherwise.
+
+“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and fell
+again. “Oh! what must you think?”
+
+“It’s no good thinking,” he rejoined, with almost a jovial kindness.
+“We’re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see each other
+through before we think. Not that I’ve had time to hear everything yet,
+but I own I can’t make head or tail of what I have heard. I’m not sure
+that I want to. I like a man’s secrets to die with him; it’s enough for
+me to have my boy back again, and to know that you stood by him as you
+did. It’s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says it wasn’t your
+fault he didn’t come away long ago; and it shan’t be mine if you stay
+another hour alone in this haunted house. You’ve got to come straight
+back with us to our hotel.”
+
+They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted
+chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the
+walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of
+latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the
+murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they
+had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path
+outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and
+vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and
+depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be
+that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his
+simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of
+reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already
+clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and
+Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she
+declared she never could.
+
+“But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a
+young girl like you alone  in the day of battle, murder and sudden
+death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay
+here. Have you no other relatives in London?”
+
+“None anywhere that I know much about.”
+
+“That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt
+them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but
+you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.”
+
+He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added
+supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had
+indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more
+warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return
+to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later
+in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and
+leave the deserted house in some semblance of order.
+
+But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end;
+most of the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation
+of the dead man’s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in
+the dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she
+had already seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another
+of a man lying in a heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put
+to dry openly  in the rack, the wood of which was still moist from the
+process. Phillida only held it up to the light an instant, and then not
+only smashed both these negatives, but poured boiling water on the
+films and floated them down the sink. The bits of glass she put in the
+dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly done so when the
+first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was succeeded by a
+very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number of
+questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that
+suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary
+made any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but
+another of the perfectly random series which had already thrilled the
+town, but on which no light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of
+the murdered men. A third official came to announce that the inquest
+was to be opened without delay, at two o’clock that afternoon, and to
+request Phillida to accompany him to the mortuary for the formal
+identification of the deceased.
+
+That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled
+herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she
+found it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing
+here, save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had
+given back the  look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the
+girl was just old enough to associate with the dead man’s prime. She
+was thankful to have seen him like this for the last time. She wished
+that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for
+then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find it
+easier to disbelieve from this hour.
+
+“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered,
+impressed by her strange stare.
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen him look for
+years. There are worse things than death!”
+
+She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private
+sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had
+no desire to know a dead man’s secrets. He had found his boy; that was
+quite enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more
+freely on the subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making
+up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he
+had found him without the aid of police or press, and so not more than
+a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr.
+Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from
+his wife’s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing
+to hush it up on the boy’s account  if only it were possible to do so;
+but would it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at
+the inquest all mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle’s house?
+Phillida promised to do her best, and it proved not only possible but
+easy. She was questioned as to the habits of the deceased so far as
+they explained his presence on the Embankment at such a very early
+hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a single person who could
+conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr. Baumgartner as to wish
+to take his life, the witness answered in the negative, and the coroner
+bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the character of
+the murder, but he had put the question for form’s sake. The only one
+which caused her a moment’s hesitation arose from a previous answer,
+which connected the doctor’s early ramblings with his hobby of
+instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning?
+Phillida thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it
+certainly was not in the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he
+knew that his boy’s name had been on the tip of the witness’s tongue.
+And there was a sensation in court as well; for here at last was a bone
+for the detectives, who obtained a minute description of the missing
+camera, but grumbled openly that they had not heard of it before.
+
+“They never told me they hadn’t got it,” explained Phillida to the
+coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the
+court on the conclusion of her evidence.
+
+On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as
+much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared
+with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the
+poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had
+been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in
+a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men
+had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster
+thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss
+Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and
+Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her
+at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her
+mourning.
+
+Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and
+order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive
+straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the
+murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while
+listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor  in
+the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had
+described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the
+scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It
+included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street
+and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the
+Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He
+had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning
+he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of
+the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned
+round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There
+might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the
+flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been
+invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere.
+Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up
+Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in
+time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all
+he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than
+the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had
+he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the
+river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering
+sign or trace of human being.
+
+Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she
+proceeded to the spot in order to go over the ground for her own
+satisfaction. This did not make it easier to understand. It had come on
+to rain heavily while she was in the shop; the shining Embankment was
+again practically deserted, and she was able to carry out her
+experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen steps up
+Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and quite
+realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,
+hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden
+by the long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man
+could have been seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran,
+and the murderer must have run like the wind to get away as he had
+done. The gates through the garden, back and front of the statue, had
+not been opened for the day when the murder took place, so Phillida in
+her turn made a half-circuit of the island to get to the spot where the
+body had been found, but without taking her eyes off the spot until she
+reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by nothing short
+of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the
+policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done.
+He might have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his
+furthest point distant, if the gates had been open as they were now;
+but they had been locked, and he could not have scaled them unobserved.
+Neither would it have been possible to take a header into the river
+with the foreshore as described by the same witness. Yet the murderer
+had either done one of these things, or the flags of the Embankment had
+opened and swallowed him.
+
+The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have
+fallen, and in her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but
+the problem which engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened;
+but how could it have happened? She raised her umbrella and peered
+through the rain at a red pile of many-windowed flats; had that Argus
+of the hundred eyes been sleeping without one of them open at the time?
+Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in the narrow garden,
+standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its granite base, as
+though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike the
+colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the
+fixed eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another
+character as the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that
+stony stare, to distract it from the river to herself, and to  her
+fevered fancy the grim lips smiled contemptuously on her and her
+quandary. He knew—_he_ knew—those grim old eyes had seen it all, and
+still they stared and smiled as much as to say: “You are looking the
+wrong way! Look where I am looking; that way lies the truth you are
+poor fool enough to want to know!”
+
+And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over
+the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming
+of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that
+early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry
+and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore,
+black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point
+that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine
+hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding
+wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large
+cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,
+finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.
+
+Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat
+sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was;
+but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing
+camera of the murdered man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+AFTER THE FAIR
+
+
+Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street
+was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the
+sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had
+happened to him except a fairly recent shave.
+
+“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two
+were closeted.
+
+“Do you ever read your paper?”
+
+“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.”
+
+“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.”
+
+“_You_ did, Thrush?”
+
+“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.”
+
+Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush
+mannerism.
+
+“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!”
+
+“If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the
+corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I
+provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again.
+Blessed be the song of the Thrush!”
+
+“You say you provided him?”
+
+“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only
+with his own consent.”
+
+“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up
+with it now.”
+
+“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his
+client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my
+career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense.
+Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d
+done?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same
+thing?”
+
+“Not you, Thrush?”
+
+“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He
+jumped to it from scratch!”
+
+“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”
+
+“From the word ‘go.’ ”
+
+“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”
+
+“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two
+independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities
+was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in
+his life.”
+
+Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s  flippancy. He looked
+at Thrush with a shining face.
+
+“And you never told me what was in your minds!”
+
+“It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you,
+in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time
+we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.
+
+“You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr.
+Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe
+it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?”
+
+Thrush emptied his glass at once.
+
+“Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the
+other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him
+through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!”
+
+“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their
+own.”
+
+“I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown
+before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily
+interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your
+question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your
+boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping
+in the Park,  let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and
+that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.”
+
+“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr.
+Upton, sadly.
+
+“So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole
+thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his
+presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman
+of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it
+on me with excellent effect.”
+
+“Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you
+suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for
+that particular boy.”
+
+“It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to
+believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your
+boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better
+than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a
+moment?”
+
+“I do _so_, God bless her!”
+
+“That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never
+had quite accepted in my heart. That’s another story, and you’re only
+in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on
+Saturday, I thought I’d like to know a little more about him, not from
+outsiders but from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the
+British Museum to have a look at his books. It was after hours for
+getting books, but I made such representations that they cut their red
+tape for once; and I soon read enough to wonder whether my grave and
+reverend seignior was quite all there. Spiritualism one knows, but here
+was spiritualism with a difference; psychic photography one had heard
+about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad or bad! When a
+gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to snap-shoot
+the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at
+Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor.
+Will you believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the
+very thing I shall presently prove to have been the truth, and that I
+dismissed it from my mind as the wildest impossibility?”
+
+“I don’t see how you’re going to prove it now,” remarked Mr. Upton, who
+hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the girl who had
+been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which there
+was no necessity to express.
+
+“I shall want another chat with your lad when he’s had his sleep out,”
+replied Thrush, significantly; “he’s told me quite enough to make me
+eager for  more. But you haven’t told me anything about your own
+adventures?”
+
+And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the
+ironmaster was only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he
+was both brief and amiable.
+
+“What have I to tell compared with you?” he asked. “Those damned old
+wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they
+weren’t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium
+lot broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want
+to know is what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that
+great moment this morning.”
+
+“I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,” replied Thrush. “The
+merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always apartments
+of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in half
+the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner’s, and
+I’d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course I
+explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady’s son
+embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at
+the front window all night, for no better reasons than my strong
+feeling about the doctor’s writings, and your daughter’s disbelief in
+his yarn about her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird
+came out,  and I was after him like knife. I tracked him to
+Knightsbridge without much difficulty, excepting the one of avoiding
+being spotted, but there that happened by the merest accident. He was
+passing under the scaffolding outside the church they’re pulling down
+there, and he’s so tall he knocked his hat off. I admit I was too
+close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I shouldn’t have
+recognised him if I hadn’t seen him start out. He was wearing a false
+beard and spectacles!”
+
+“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his breath.
+
+“Well, I confess it’s something like it in this case; but it was a very
+awkward moment for me. I hadn’t to let him see I knew him, nor yet that
+I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as
+openly as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving
+poor old Mullins in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay.
+We went back to my new rooms together, which I needn’t tell you I liked
+so much that I brought a suit-case and took them for a week. Of course,
+as we had lost the run of Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch
+for his return. Mullins took that on while I got some sleep; when I
+awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest, and I won’t say I didn’t
+suspect who’d done it. Perhaps I didn’t tell you he had his camera with
+him as  well as beard and goggles, and all three figured in the first
+reports.”
+
+“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?”
+
+“None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I
+wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner’s return; but
+in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a
+room overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too
+much class for that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked
+going back to prison for the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both
+man and boy before I sent that wire.”
+
+“And you left my son in that murderer’s clutches a minute longer than
+you could help?” It was a previous incarnation of Pocket’s father that
+broke in with this.
+
+“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least
+sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended,
+murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the
+others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an
+actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the
+way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the
+show, was desperately against calling in the police under any
+circumstances.  He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the
+house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape.
+I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in
+the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.”
+
+Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence
+which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their
+case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance
+against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his
+curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified.
+
+“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with
+characteristic absence of finesse.
+
+“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you
+see.”
+
+“But whatever could the object have been?”
+
+“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the
+ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which
+he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting
+salt on the lad.”
+
+“Tony?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You puzzle me more and more.”
+
+“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy,
+of fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by
+accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the
+news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick
+as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been
+within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed,
+the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It
+didn’t come off.”
+
+“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was
+going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally
+satisfied himself of his own innocence.”
+
+Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of
+fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes
+blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose
+underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the
+drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.
+
+“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of
+the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this
+thing, he’s got it; even if not——”
+
+He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined
+his whole flushed face.
+
+“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious
+alacrity. “Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at
+London Bridge to-day!”
+
+He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office
+in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume
+all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already
+far advanced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
+
+
+The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better
+preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked
+with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And
+Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her
+possession.
+
+“The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was
+an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It
+was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another
+creature out in it except myself. I don’t believe a single soul saw me
+run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first
+for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof,
+and carried it up to the King’s Road before I could get a cab. But I
+never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain
+that’s the best luck of all!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he took a
+last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!”
+
+“That’s an idea.”
+
+“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it
+still, and you could develop it!”
+
+The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the
+boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.
+
+“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything to develop;
+the slide’s been open all this time, you see.”
+
+“I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the
+water. Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the
+light, oughtn’t it?”
+
+“I’m afraid there isn’t a dog’s chance,” he murmured, as he handled the
+camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was
+one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come
+through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely
+broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to
+shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and
+sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in
+his hand.
+
+“That settles it,” remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate
+stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was
+cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.
+
+“I am sorry!” exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of
+glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some
+infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. “I’m not sure
+that you weren’t right after all; what’s water-tight must be more or
+less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what’s all this?
+The other side oughtn’t to bulge like that!”
+
+He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and
+weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain
+another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which
+had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable
+convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded
+packet of MS. leapt out.
+
+“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her
+excitement. She had dropped the document at once.
+
+“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up.
+
+“It must be what he was writing all last night!”
+
+“It is.”
+
+“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him
+closely as he read to himself:—
+
+“_June_ 20, 190—.”
+
+
+“It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret
+of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the
+year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according
+to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my
+task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice
+to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the
+underlined word advisedly; some would substitute ‘monomania,’ but I
+protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that
+fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at
+my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should
+feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever
+deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly
+already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I
+shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death——”.
+
+
+“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and
+he was breathing hard.
+
+“He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He’s
+said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!”
+
+“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she found a
+crumb of comfort in the thought.
+
+“I’m not so sure about that.”
+
+“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.”
+
+“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!”
+
+“Then let us read it together. I’d rather face it with you than
+afterwards all by myself. We’ve seen each other through so much, surely
+we can—surely——”
+
+Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim
+eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab
+figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr.
+Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing
+distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could
+find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of
+appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked,
+and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her
+coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the
+rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that
+streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and
+poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the
+dreadful document.
+
+This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now
+the other whispering a few sentences aloud:—.
+
+“What I have called my life’s ambition demands but little explanation
+here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have
+given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are
+still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on
+spirit photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and
+other periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight
+of the Soul,’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last
+year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter
+which has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare
+and to write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme
+measures I have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious
+criticism by the scientific press, but more generally received with
+ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the Englishman’s attitude
+towards whatsoever is without his own contracted ken, my article, the
+work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days. I had
+essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new
+idea, and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore
+of unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin
+press from that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph
+about the psychic photographer which went the rounds about a year ago.
+Yet I was that photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer
+to whom the London hospitals refused admittance to their pauper
+deathbeds, thronged though those notoriously are by the raw material of
+the British medical profession. Begin at the bottom of the British
+medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and most frequent
+opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of human
+dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,
+without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the
+purity of his aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than
+mine. It is as high above that of your ordinary physician as heaven
+itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to
+lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that
+there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which
+we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent
+life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it
+is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the
+opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over
+knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion
+invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is
+deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to
+supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the
+senses that cannot deceive, rather than to the imagination which must
+and does? But I am trenching after all upon ground which I myself have
+covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to relate a personal
+narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it that to
+me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of
+so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that
+all who saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit
+photography. It is a path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks
+and charlatans, and by false guides who rival the religious fanatics in
+the impudence of their appeal to man’s credulity. Even those who bear
+the lamp I hold aloft are too often jugglers and rogues, to whose
+wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of photography lends itself
+all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the production of impossible
+pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if the spiritual
+apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing
+easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist
+has yet succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the
+whole problem of spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of
+communication with disembodied spirits at the single will of the
+embodied; hence the periodical exposure of the paid medium, the smug
+scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of genuine exploration
+beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment, and only one,
+at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a particle
+of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at
+which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human
+watcher sees merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a
+phenomenon invisible to the human eye has been detected and depicted by
+that of the camera, as everybody knows who has the slightest
+acquaintance with the branch of physics known as ‘fluorescence.’ The
+invisible spirit of man surely falls within this category. To the
+crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible as elusive and
+intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign opportunity is
+gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of the
+soul.”
+
+“I say no more than ‘often’ because there are special difficulties into
+which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at least be
+minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,
+instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would
+hurt nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present
+have only their Churches’ word for the existence of an eternal soul in
+their perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few
+experiments, than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen
+centuries. Yet how are my earnest applications received, in hospitals
+where men die daily, in prisons where they are still occasionally put
+to death? I am refused, rebuffed, gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I
+am driven ultimately to the extreme course of taking human life, on my
+own account, in order to prove the life eternal. Call it murder, call
+it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of a lethal
+chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the
+inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an
+individual as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him
+worse than this world. I can only say that I have not deprived the
+State of one conceivably profitable servant, or cut short a single life
+of promise or repute. I have picked my few victims with infinite care
+from  amid the moral or material wreckage of life; either they had
+nothing to live for, or they had no right to live. Charlton, the
+licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I ever knew; in
+the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he
+wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to
+which an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed.
+Charlton had just been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and
+refusing to leave without an extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was
+indeed saturated with alcohol and honeycombed with disease; repulsive
+in appearance, and cantankerous in character, his earnings were so
+slender that he was pitifully clad, and without a night’s lodging
+oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and was suffering
+from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I resolved
+to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to photograph
+the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present itself
+for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at
+last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not
+another being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had
+purchased second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on
+the seat. Yet the weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the 
+authenticity of the suicide, despite my final precaution of stuffing a
+number of cartridges into the dead man’s pocket; pot-house associates
+came forward to declare that he could never have possessed either the
+revolver or its price without their knowledge. Hence the coroner’s
+repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is to be feared that
+the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public interest in
+its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more than an
+academic interest in the case.”
+
+“To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very
+few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb
+of my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for
+this, and the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found
+among my negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a
+unique photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the
+super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it
+would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not
+only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal
+pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my
+elaborate attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The
+next case should be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the
+shot to be fired, and the photograph taken, at the same range and all
+but at the same instant. There would be no further point in leaving the
+weapon behind, so I was free to choose the one best suited to my
+purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually
+I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already explained
+itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer
+of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it
+will not be loaded when found.”
+
+There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand
+about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For
+Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless
+rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long
+ago have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and
+already it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to
+discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through
+the next passages.
+
+“The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many
+weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have
+described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in
+readiness for another attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul
+in consecutive fractions of a second. But the right man was never in
+the right place at the right time; one saw him by the dozen in a crowd,
+but the people one met all by themselves, in the early summer mornings,
+stayed one’s hand repeatedly by the eager brightness of their eyes or a
+happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at the Brompton Hospital,
+whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was cheated of a
+merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the dawn
+and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch
+whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday
+morning. I knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton
+circle, but it was quite by chance that I followed his uncertain
+footsteps through the Park, and saw him go deliberately to bed in the
+drenching dew. His face filled in his tale; it was another farrago of
+privation and excess. This was the type that caused me no compunction:
+having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my invention provides, I
+despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his hat over his
+eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may be
+reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter
+coincided with the last clutter in his throat.
+
+“I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before
+firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make
+another wary survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could
+see a considerable distance in three directions, and in none of these,
+neither right nor left along the path, nor yet straight ahead across
+the grass on the edge of which my victim lay, was a living creature to
+be seen. This was very reassuring, as I felt that I could see a good
+deal farther than the report of my small automatic pistol was likely to
+be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting cases,
+especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how
+seldom it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the
+fatal shot. In the fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery
+behind some iron palings, I looked last, for I was standing with my
+back that way. How shall I describe my sensations on turning round?
+There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on the other side of the
+palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in his right
+hand!
+
+“At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and
+frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a
+third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were
+dank with dew. His eyes were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had
+been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all
+probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this,
+however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was disastrously inspired
+to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never struck me that
+he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was with a
+wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if
+he knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I
+had the wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm
+enough to help me convince the child that he really had fired the shot;
+but, since he could not see it for myself, I was not going out of my
+way just then to tell him it was a fatal shot. Already I regretted that
+I had gone so far, and yet already I saw myself committed to a course
+of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The boy became convulsed
+with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his story when the
+body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot, at the
+latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me
+through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with
+all sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had
+to keep him there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and
+implicate  me more readily than ever after what he had seen of me at
+home? I had to keep him there—I repeat it—alive or dead. And I was not
+the kind of murderer (if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent
+life, if I could help it, to preserve my own; on the contrary, I had,
+and I hope I always should have had, humanity enough at least to do
+what I could for a fellow-creature battling with an attack which almost
+threatened to remove him from my path without my aid.”
+
+There followed a few remarks on Pocket’s character as the writer read
+it. They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they
+betrayed a profound disdain for the typically British institution of
+which Pocket was too readily accepted as a representative product. His
+general ignorance and credulity received a grim tribute; they were the
+very qualities the doctor would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he
+appeared to have enjoyed the youth’s society, his transparent honesty,
+his capacity for enthusiastic interest, whether in the delights of
+photography or in the horrors of war. Baumgartner seemed aware that he
+had been somewhat confidential on both subjects, and that either his
+contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the matter of psychic
+photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on the other
+hand,  he “greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two and two
+together, at these so-called public schools”; and, after all, it was
+not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.
+
+“The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the
+beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary,
+was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all
+along. He had regarded it from the first as ‘the certain beginning of
+the end’; from the first, he had been prepared with specious
+explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually
+arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation
+of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not
+been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It
+was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which
+could only have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted
+it, but which the boy himself had discovered never to have been posted
+at all. There was a sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood
+into which Baumgartner’s intuition of the boy’s discovery had thrown
+him on the Sunday night.”
+
+“It was then,” he wrote, “that I formed a  project which I should have
+been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so
+if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my
+second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great
+a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable
+(even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure.
+What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had
+no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and
+spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were
+the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer.
+I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities
+in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought of the
+saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my
+acquaintance, of a ‘light’ specialist I know of who is destroying
+himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the
+slums; but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are
+much too valuable for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a
+compensating benefit to mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought
+of the boy upstairs. I had not meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of
+some promise, is only less sacred to me than a mature life rich in
+beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was going to be my ruin.
+I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the letter; he
+would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the
+work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was
+not going to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter
+into here, and I intended to take more than his life while I was about
+it. But he never gave me the chance. I did my best to get him to go out
+with me this morning. But he refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a
+dog the water. He said he was ill; he looked ill. But I have no doubt
+he was well enough to make his escape soon after my back was turned. I
+see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes I took away from
+him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that; but, to
+tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my return.”
+
+The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy
+broke in with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the
+Sunday night and the Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the
+doctor’s house. He declared that nothing short of main force would have
+dragged him out-of-doors that morning, that he felt it in his bones
+that he would never come back alive. Then he would be sorry he had said
+so much. It only increased his companion’s anguish. She was reading
+every word religiously, with a most painful fascination; it was as
+though every word drew blood. There was a brief but terrible account of
+the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own house in Park
+Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the one
+occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and
+that only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so
+intensely that a “straight” interview was out of the question. As it
+was he had escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft,
+creeping into a carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong
+side when it drove round to its house. Baumgartner described the
+incident with a callous relish, as perhaps the most exciting in his
+long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent return, in
+propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of a
+sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as
+follows, in less careful language and a more flowing hand:—
+
+“I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day’s excitement must
+have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got
+back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his
+clothes. I didn’t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative
+to develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute
+failure from the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason
+as its predecessors. South African mines may produce gold and diamonds
+(licit and illicit!) but their yield in souls is probably the poorest
+to the square mile anywhere on earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his
+gross carcass. So there was an end of him, and a good riddance to
+rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all night. I have thought
+of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate statement that I
+have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me strange
+pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to
+attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I
+not conscious of a moment’s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only
+sometimes have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause,
+perhaps half an hour ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I
+heard a footstep in the hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all
+this writing; it might be my imagination. I stole to my door, and as I
+opened it the one below shut softly. I waited some time, heard nothing
+more, went down with my lamp, and threw open the drawing-room door.
+There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting in the dark
+with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to be
+misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that.
+But somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark
+without a word, afraid to go to bed—afraid of me—made the blood boil
+over in my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I
+had pictured overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I
+am glad it missed him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was
+seeing his companion safe upstairs. If I had found him where I left
+him, God knows what violence I might not have done him after all. The
+boy has good in him, and more courage than he knows himself; again I
+say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life was not safe, but
+now I shall only take my own.
+
+“Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the
+common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in
+enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse
+than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar
+quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at
+my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind me, and I should have
+rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now they are
+waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where already
+it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and
+enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million
+facets of living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there;
+and as I have served others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be
+with better fortune than they have brought me. Who knows? It would be
+in keeping with the poetic ironies of this existence. At all events,
+unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a chance. I shall place the
+camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have fitted the shutter with
+a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do its double work
+as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my mind. I
+have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by
+the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent
+person, the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to
+the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one’s last
+instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to
+read what I fear they will describe as my ‘full confession.’ Well, it
+is ‘full,’ and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the
+document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall
+lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide
+it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would never
+see the light at all.”
+
+There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away,
+and wept over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness,
+while Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the
+muddy newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment’s
+hesitation went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her
+return she stood petrified on the threshold.
+
+Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter
+between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud
+metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the
+shutter snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward
+with a cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box
+without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens
+and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an
+automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be
+lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the
+second lens of the stereoscopic camera.
+
+Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was
+preceded by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there
+had been another cartridge in the pistol.
+
+“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this
+sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in
+quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”
+
+He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him
+without a word.
+
+“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied
+altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve
+been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the
+pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen
+feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen,
+but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one
+bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit
+confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.”
+
+“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.
+
+“The police! I never thought of them.”
+
+“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl
+asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.
+
+“What do _you_ mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his
+turn.
+
+“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away
+meanwhile.”
+
+“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you
+like with as well.”
+
+“They wouldn’t think so!”
+
+“They’ll never know.”
+
+Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep
+it to yourself,” she said. “You would _have_ to tell.”
+
+“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you
+like!” he added, valiantly.
+
+“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”
+
+“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets
+dying with him?”
+
+“He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the
+mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as
+yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”
+
+She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and
+confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human
+boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in
+his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing
+their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet
+it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even
+then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit
+nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their
+penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting
+about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to
+Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and
+Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its
+subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace
+himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And
+now he had none whatever.
+
+“Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to
+a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to
+me!”
+
+He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.
+
+“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”
+
+Her eyes had filled.
+
+“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn
+anything in my life so far.”
+
+“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this
+terrible week?”
+
+And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away
+and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof,
+so that he might not see her tears.
+
+“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except
+yourself.”
+
+She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it,
+always, as much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all
+their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he
+think of a reward or look beyond those days.
+
+But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an
+automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS.
+They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was
+getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it
+was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any
+minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell
+him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little
+as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together
+they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.
+
+Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where
+she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng.
+He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself
+as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who
+looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at
+the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo
+Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating
+a sensation.
+
+“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the
+Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”
+
+There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge,
+the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she
+aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through
+her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only
+retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the
+deep.
+
+She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a
+loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the
+genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who
+thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy
+townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own
+affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed
+themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.
+
+And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing
+but four words in enormous black letters:—
+
+CHELSEA INQUEST
+CAMERA CLUE!
+
+
+Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to
+press it to his side.
+
+THE END
+
+
+Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***
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-<body>

-<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div>

-

-<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />

-</div>

-

-<h1>The Camera Fiend</h1>

-

-<h2 class="no-break">by E.W. Hornung</h2>

-

-<h4>

-London<br />

-T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.<br />

-Adelphi Terrace<br />

-1911

-</h4>

-

-<hr />

-

-<h2>Contents</h2>

-

-<table summary="" style="">

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap01">I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap02">II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap03">III. HIS PEOPLE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap05">V. THE GLASS EYE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. AN AWAKENING</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. BLOOD-GUILTY</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. POINTS OF VIEW</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap10">X. SECOND THOUGHTS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. ON PAROLE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. BOY AND GIRL</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. BEFORE THE STORM</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. A LIKELY STORY</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. MALINGERING</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. A THIRD CASE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. THE FOURTH CASE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. AFTER THE FAIR</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-</table>

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />

-A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily exemption

-from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away his remaining

-modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall, and would probably

-have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own study, had not an obvious

-way out of his difficulty been bothering him by that time almost as much as the

-difficulty itself. For it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket

-had been called &ldquo;a conscientious ass&rdquo; by some of the nicest fellows

-in his house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he

-did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a blue

-pencil and a briar pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can&rsquo;t have me, sir. He&rsquo;s got a

-case of chicken-pox, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

- The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured but

- laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you must come back to-night, and I&rsquo;m just as glad. It&rsquo;s

-all nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor of

-yours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on

-me, and then see what sort of night I have.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You could go up again to-morrow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I could, sir,&rdquo; replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate

-emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so acutely

-conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What else do you propose?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Spearman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the

-Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who are the Knaggses?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, sir; they go to

-Westminster now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And the lady you mentioned?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother&rsquo;s; it was through

-her I went to Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, and I&rsquo;ve often stayed there.

-She&rsquo;s in the Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord&rsquo;s.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that other

-lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no guile in any

-Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them resembled the great twin

-brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted a &ldquo;pocket edition&rdquo;

-on his arrival in the school. He had few of their other merits, though he took

-a morbid interest in the games they played by light of nature, as well as in

-things both beyond and beneath his brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit

-up half your nights with asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to

-Mr. Spearman, who was an average man. He had never disguised his own

-disappointment in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of

-outspoken and disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some

-sympathy with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning

-he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who was

-getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the two names and

-addresses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite sure they&rsquo;ll put you up, are you?&rdquo;

-&ldquo;Absolutely certain, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come straight back if they can&rsquo;t?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then run away, and don&rsquo;t miss your train.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to arrive

-very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished with more

-ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the best of them was

-framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its foreground was the

-nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down into the quad, where the

-fellows were preparing construes for second school in sunlit groups on garden

-seats. At that moment the bell began. And by the time Pocket had changed his

-black tie for a green one with red spots, in which he had come back after the

-Easter holidays, the bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled

-again he would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a world of

-buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel as good as

-anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in the corner seats

-did not dream of calling the youth an &ldquo;old ass,&rdquo; much less a young

-one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school were in the habit of

-employing the ameliorating adjective, but there were still a few fellows  in

-Pocket&rsquo;s house who made an insulting point of the other. All, however,

-seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was pleasant to cast off friend and foe

-for a change, to sit comfortably unknown and unsuspected of one&rsquo;s foibles

-in the train. It made Pocket feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost

-seventeen, and in the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in

-bed. He took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him

-good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously at the

-little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was transferred to a

-pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his paper, in which there were

-several items of immediate interest to him. Would the match hold out at

-Lord&rsquo;s? If not, which was the best of the Wednesday matinees? Pocket had

-received a pound from home for his expenses, so that these questions took an

-adventitious precedence over even such attractive topics as an execution and a

-murder that bade fair to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and

-having supped on the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in <i>Henry

-Dunbar</i>, the novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something

-like a murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying

-buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real crimes 

-in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself there too soon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose

-professional standing is never quite on a par with their material success. The

-injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it may be that his temper

-was at the root of the prejudice against him. He was never very amiable with

-Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had

-some call to complain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean to tell me,&rdquo; he expostulated, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;ve

-gone back to the cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you

-weren&rsquo;t a stupid schoolboy I should throw up your case!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more days and

-nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible resentment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only way I can stop an attack,&rdquo; he mumbled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; snapped the specialist. &ldquo;You can make yourself

-coffee in the night, as you&rsquo;ve done before.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t at school. They draw the line at that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then a public school is no place for you. I&rsquo;ve said so from the

-first. Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea

-voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She sails

-the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the subject

-of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to his

-undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following in his

-brothers&rsquo; steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might have had

-adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he might have been

-shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a tale beyond the dreams of

-envious athletes, if his people had but taken kindly to the scheme. But they

-had been so very far from taking to it at all, with the single exception of his

-only sister, that the boy had not the heart to discuss it now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an

-attack!&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;But there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be any.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are plenty of preventives,&rdquo; returned the doctor.

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is

-merely a palliative that does more harm than good in the long run.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good

-night without smoking I should be thankful.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep

-until to-morrow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from

-his bag.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Bompas, as they made an exchange. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t want you even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what

-the temptation must be when you can&rsquo;t get your breath. You will get this

-prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to bed

-to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in the morning.

-You say you are staying the night with friends; better give me the name and let

-me see if they&rsquo;re on the telephone before you go. I want you to go to bed

-early, tell them not to call you in the morning, and come back to me the moment

-you&rsquo;ve had your breakfast.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering whether he

-ought to have said positively that he was staying with friends when he might be

-going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been so short with him at first as to

-discourage unnecessary explanations; besides, there could be no question of his

-going back that night. And the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite

-forgotten in the train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.

-</p>

-

-<p>

- The time-table of that boy&rsquo;s day must speak for itself. It was already

- one o&rsquo;clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his

- breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley&rsquo;s card. At 1.15 he was munching a

- sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook&rsquo;s in Oxford Street.

- The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed by another; and

- a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas would undoubtedly have

- disapproved.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a placard

-with &ldquo;Collapse of Middlesex&rdquo; in appalling capitals. And at the

-station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord&rsquo;s for

-nothing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the theatres,

-and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s thrust

-itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for years. He had

-often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered being taken by his sister

-when a little boy at Coverley&rsquo;s, but she had refused to go into the

-Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at the time but sorry ever

-afterwards, because so many of the boys of those days had seen everything and

-seemed none the worse for the adventure. It was one of the things he had always

-wanted not so much to  do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of

-Horrors had frozen his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a

-criminological governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the

-budding criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and

-<i>Henry Dunbar</i> formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy had

-other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building, and enter

-eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but Pocket had

-no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band. And though history

-was one of his few strong points at school, the glittering galaxy of kings and

-queens appealed to him no more than the great writers at their little desks and

-the great cricketers in their unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and

-all. But when the extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he

-had passed down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was

-at work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his

-catalogue to bear on one of them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the schoolboy

-through a work on his father&rsquo;s shelves called <i>Annals of Our Time</i>.

-He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept him awake long

-after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not scowling and ferocious

-as he had always pictured them, but far more horribly demure and plump. Here

-were immortal malefactors like the Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek

-by jowl, looking as though they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete

-raiment, looking anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes

-their quick bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death,

-rusty pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face

-smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the waxwork

-about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own clothes, and the

-veritable dock in which many of them had heard their doom, they looked

-hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat not in the dock but on

-the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of him; and the schoolboy felt

-sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for the broad arrows on his poor legs,

-until he found out who it was. Then he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had

-first heard of Charles Peace from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under

-his nose were the old ruffian&rsquo;s revolver, and the strap that strapped it

-to his wrist, with the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy

-was almost as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale

-of crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had

-hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet

-wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his mind

-again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid place to

-himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the heels of a whole

-family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning their sorrow in a sea of

-gore, their pilot through the catalogue a conscientious orphan with a

-monotonous voice and a genius for mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to

-see or hear him or any other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was

-trying to place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into

-a real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the

-comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find that it

-was after four o&rsquo;clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home from

-Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there before them, and

-he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub shoulders with flesh and

-blood once more, and to look in faces not made of wax in the devil&rsquo;s

-image. His way, which he knew of old, would  naturally have led him past Miss

-Harbottle&rsquo;s door; but, as she was only to be his second string for the

-night, he preferred not to be seen by that old lady yet. Such was the tiny

-spring of an important action; it led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite

-unforeseen temptation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable pawnbroker&rsquo;s

-shop; in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s window the chances are that you might still

-find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family Bibles, ornaments and

-clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes,

-photograph frames and cheap jewellery, all of which could not tempt you less

-than they did Pocket Upton the other June. There were only two things in the

-window that interested him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was

-an old rosewood camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but

-the thing that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what

-looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the price.

-A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked places on the

-slow walks with a slow companion which were all the exercise this unfortunate

-fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges complete, so that one could try it

-now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian at the end of their garden in  St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park! And all very likely for five bob if one bargained a

-bit!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any such sum

-would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life? Of coure it would

-have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared to take the consequences

-if found out; it need not involve his notion of dishonour. Still, it must be

-recorded that the young or old as was conscientious enough to hesitate before

-making his fatal plunge into the pawnbroker&rsquo;s shop.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />

-A BOY ABOUT TOWN</h2>

-

-<p>

-The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the boy a

-cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room. Mrs. Knaggs was a

-large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at all events to the young.

-She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed him) had altered; but her tone

-left Pocket in doubt as to whether any improvement was implied. She for one did

-not approve of his luncheon in Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had

-spent a summer&rsquo;s afternoon; indeed, she rather wondered at his being

-allowed alone in London at all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in

-conversation with his elders, at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own

-Westminster boys were allowed alone in London every day of their lives. But

-Mrs. Knaggs said that was a very different thing, and that she thought

-Pocket&rsquo;s public school must be very different from Westminster. Pocket

-bridled, but behaved himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and

-got as far towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s

-misfortune and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him

-where he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring he

-had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs said of course

-he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked her as properly as

-though it were the invitation he made sure must follow. After all, Vivian

-Knaggs had stayed at Pocket&rsquo;s three weeks one Christmas, and Guy a

-fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would think of that; it was not a

-matter to broach to them, or one to worry about, prematurely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than Pocket,

-and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton jacket, the  other in

-tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an unworthy prejudice in the

-wearer of the green tie with red spots. They seemed very glad to see him,

-however, and the stiffness was wearing off even before Pocket produced his

-revolver in the basement room where the two Westminsters prepared their lessons

-and had their evening meal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs pronounced

-it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a thousand pounds.

-This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he and his revolver were made

-of, then and there in the garden, and the more confident that it never would be

-heard in the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would,&rdquo; answered Vivian, &ldquo;and seen as well. No, if you

-want to have a shot let&rsquo;s stick up a target outside this window, and fire

-from just inside.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but, unhappily, Mrs.

-Knaggs&rsquo;s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it also looked out on

-the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room and near her window when the

-report startled her, and not less because she little dreamt what it was until

-she looked out in time to see a cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom

-window, and Pocket examining the target, weapon in hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition from

-aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs, descended to

-extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the matter. Pocket was

-very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon&rsquo;s teeth with a promptitude that

-might have been his death, and offered it and them to be placed under lock and

-key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs contented herself with promoting a solemn

-promise into a Sacred Word of Honour&mdash;which rather hurt poor

-Pocket&mdash;and with sending him a very straight message by Vivian after

-supper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The mater&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; said Vivian, returning from a

-mission which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a spare bed in the house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him

-from going into particulars.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A sofa would do me all right,&rdquo; suggested Pocket, who had long ago

-lost his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were

-boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook his

-head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The mater says she couldn&rsquo;t sleep with firearms in the

-house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bury them in the garden if she likes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley&rsquo;s you once walked in

-your sleep,&rdquo; pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging

-the interloper&rsquo;s cause. &ldquo;And the mater&rsquo;s afraid you might

-walk out of a window or set the house on fire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do either to-night,&rdquo; protested Pocket, with a

-grin. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to

-keep me quiet.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with further information on both points the son of the house went upstairs

-again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed gravity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; he said unconvincingly, &ldquo;but she

-can&rsquo;t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your

-asthma.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was not

-really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt he had made

-rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly cast adrift at

-sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor was this quite the case

-as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in Wellington Road. But to her he

-was not going until decency compelled him; he was going to have another game of

-bagatelle with Guy Knaggs first. It will be seen that with all his

-sensibilities the youngest Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took

-a great deal for granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to

-worry over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was

-obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the subject of

-his friend&rsquo;s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been refused,

-rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St. Pancras. Yet he

-left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour to go to bed in; and

-that was neither the first nor the last of his erratic proceedings.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about your luggage?&rdquo; asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his

-hat to walk round with Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got any?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I left it at Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Left your luggage there?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was only a handbag. How long are they open?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Young Knaggs looked in <i>Whitaker</i> and said they closed at ten. There was

-still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it was not much

-use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss Cottage, and the

-adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Old Miss Harbottle, his mother&rsquo;s great friend, would have none of him

-either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden gate was

-one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated indoors. The downstairs

-lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a light shone through the front

-door, and the door opened a few inches on the chain. Pocket confronted a

-crevice of quilted dressing-gown and grey curls; but his mother&rsquo;s

-friend&rsquo;s mastiff was making night so hideous within, and trying so hard

-to get at his mother&rsquo;s son, that it was some time before he could

-exchange an intelligible word with the brute&rsquo;s mistress. It was not a

-satisfactory interchange then, for Miss Harbottle at first flatly refused to

-believe that this was Tony Upton, whom she had not seen since his preparatory

-schooldays, and she seemed inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton,

-she could not take him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and

-the cook had just left. Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s cook had always just left,

-except when she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant&rsquo;s

-fun out of the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his purse. The

-only thing to do was to put up at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel, Trafalgar Square; that

-was where his people always stayed, where every servant was supposed to know

-them all. He pushed on at once through the cool June night, and paid away three

-of his last shillings for the drive. Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw&rsquo;s;

-it was the worst time of the year, they told him, and he  supposed they meant

-the best. He also supposed there had been changes in the staff, for nobody

-seemed to know his name as well as he had been led to expect at home.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels opposite, and

-recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven Street. But the big

-hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the only little one he tried the

-boy lost his temper like a man on being requested to deposit six shillings

-before proceeding to his room. Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the

-galling reflection caused him to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection

-upon his outward respectability&mdash;as if he could not have borrowed the

-money from Dr. Bompas in the morning!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see you blowed,&rdquo; was his muttered reply, and he caught

-up his bag in a passion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;All right, little man! I shouldn&rsquo;t be rude about it,&rdquo; said

-the dapper cashier. &ldquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t pay my shot I should sleep in

-the Park, on a nice fine night like this.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall!&rdquo; shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would

-prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it was his

-own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering what else he was

-to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have seen.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which lends to

-adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or heroic things, if

-not to have to do them. He had so little to boast about; his brothers, and so

-many other fellows of his own age, had so much. It would make a great yarn some

-day, how he had come up from school to see a doctor&mdash;and slept in the

-Park!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly anything of

-London except St. John&rsquo;s Wood and his present landmark of the Nelson

-column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having stayed some time (under

-another doctor) as a child at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel. But, I say! What would Bompas

-say to his sleeping out, and what sort of night could he expect in the open

-air?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in more than

-handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all the force of a

-forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges as well.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of person to

-use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him feel doughty and even

-truculent to find the means of heroic defence all ready to his hand. He began

-to plume himself on his providential purchase. He would sell his young life

-dearly if he fell among London thieves;  in his death he would not be

-unhonoured at school or at home. Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang

-like tears to a mind still healthy enough to dash them away again, as though

-they had been real tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the

-unsuspected desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the

-corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said

-Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman looked as

-though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the motor omnibus

-through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at Albert Gate; but here

-there was quite a little stream of decent people to follow without further

-tremors into the indubitable Park.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining confidence as

-he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were turned outward by all

-there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest some one or other of the

-several passers should stand in his path and ask what he was doing there. He

-was still afraid of speaking or being spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so.

-Detection as an escaped schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing

-something for which he might be expelled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to take more

-notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his surprise, that the

-majority of those passing through the Park at that late hour were hardly of his

-own class. So much the more infinitesimal were the chances of his being

-recognised or even suspected for what he was. There were young men in straw

-hats, there were red-coated soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the

-schoolboy with their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy&rsquo;s

-heart beat at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined.

-One wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a remark as

-Pocket had never heard from a woman&rsquo;s lips before. He turned away,

-tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in the act of

-crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of the

-Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and gazed upon the

-artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the darkness, it might have

-been the noblest river in the world. Its banks were muffled in a feather boa of

-trees, bedizened by a chain of many lights; the lights of a real bridge made a

-diadem in the distance; and between these sped  the lamps of invisible

-vehicles, like fretful fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer

-with its own brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a

-trace of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy

-had ever seen&mdash;a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen

-through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it. But he

-did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London&rsquo;s light

-and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her mighty

-machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his ears; and yet

-between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck near at hand, the splash

-of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of water-fowl: altogether such a

-chorus of incongruities as was not lost upon our very impressionable young

-vagabond. The booming strokes of eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his

-immediate needs. His great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in

-hand, to select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of

-cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad footpaths

-from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he was approaching an

-exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with the Marble Arch at its

-apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had come right across the Park; back

-over the grass, keeping rather more to the right, in the direction of those

-trees, was the best thing now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was enough to

-deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical. Pocket Upton,

-however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and strong alike, who are

-more than loth to abandon a course of action once taken. It would have required

-a very severe attack to baulk him of his night out and its subsequent

-description to electrified ears. But when bad steering had brought him up at

-the bandstand, the deserted chairs seemed an ordained compromise between

-prudence and audacity, and he had climbed into the fenced enclosure when

-another enormous policeman rose up horribly in its midst.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; inquired this policeman, striding upon

-Pocket with inexorable tread.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No harm, I hope,&rdquo; replied our hero humbly, but with unusual

-readiness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor no good either, I&rsquo;ll be bound!&rdquo; said the policeman,

-standing over him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was only going to sit down,&rdquo; protested Pocket, having satisfied

-his conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been going to

-do.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are plenty of places to sit down,&rdquo; rejoined the policeman.

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it

-you won&rsquo;t have time to sit down at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The Park closes at twelve.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Closes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At twelve o&rsquo;clock, and it&rsquo;s half-past eleven now.&rdquo; The

-boy&rsquo;s heart sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing

-plans. He was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he

-had looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only

-reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently entertained

-the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong. But he seemed quite

-clear about it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you think we were open all night?&rdquo; he inquired with a grin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, &ldquo;I even

-thought a lot of loafers used to sleep here all night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The policeman chuckled aloud.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may if they get up the trees; that&rsquo;s about their only

-chance,&rdquo; said he.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You search the whole place so thoroughly?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;We keeps our eyes open,&rdquo; said the policeman significantly, and

-Pocket asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off with

-the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out. Such was his

-then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn, to what seat on the

-Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his ignorance of London he had no

-idea.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent on

-quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into its heart.

-He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and drifted before the

-wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one hand and a restricted open

-space upon the other. He could no longer see a single light; but the ground

-rose abruptly across the fence, and was thick with shrubs. Men might have been

-lying behind those shrubs, and Pocket could not possibly have seen them from

-the path. Did the policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going

-to climb every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright fence was

-not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as obvious and

-intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at twelve, did it? The

-flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw himself breaking the laws of

-the land as well as those of school, saw himself not only expelled but put in

-prison! Well, so much the better for his story so long as those  penalties were

-not incurred; even if they were, so much the greater hero he!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living up to

-the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But the will was

-on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way lay handy in the shape

-of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just passed against the iron palings.

-He went back to them, mounted on the first chair, wedged his bag between two of

-the spikes, set foot on the back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the

-other side without rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he

-hear. So then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and

-wiped the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a

-conscientious ass at school!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and they

-had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he had lost

-control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras. They did not

-prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush that I he could find,

-before curling up underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from

-thinking&mdash;even on his knees&mdash;of his revolver, nor yet&mdash;by the

-force of untimely association&mdash;of the other revolvers in the Chamber of

-Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but

-the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed;

-he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did

-come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap he wore as a

-watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber,

-to his wrist instead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the last but one of the silly boy&rsquo;s proceedings under the bush;

-the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by Bompas in the

-morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet and sticky in the

-mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful warmth at his extremities

-as he curled up in his overcoat. It was precisely then that he heard a measured

-tread approaching, and held his breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet

-the danger was still audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about

-it, but of Mr. Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in

-Leicestershire.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />

-HIS PEOPLE</h2>

-

-<p>

-It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him. They had

-been talking about him at the very time of the boy&rsquo;s inconceivable

-meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it still.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a butterfly

-collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down with a tall girl

-not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only to be seen in glimpses as

-they passed the drawing-room windows, and at not less regular intervals when a

-red light in the sky, the source of which was concealed by the garden foliage,

-became positively brilliant. The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle

-and musk-roses and mown grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows.

-But for the lurid lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some

-mammoth forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use our talking about Tony,&rdquo; the tall girl said.

-&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re frightfully down on him; we shall never

-agree.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,&rdquo; said the blunt

-young man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s no fool,&rdquo; remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly

-enough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; snapped her brother Horace.

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s being absolutely spoilt, and you&rsquo;re at the bottom of

-it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t give him asthma!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be childish, Letty.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s spoiling his life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t talking about his life. I don&rsquo;t believe it,

-either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You think he enjoys his bad nights?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think he scores by them. He&rsquo;d tell you himself that he never

-even thinks of getting up to first school now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would you if you&rsquo;d been sitting up half the night with

-asthma?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps not; but I don&rsquo;t believe that happens so often as you

-think.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay for

-two or three bad ones.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek

-Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his spare

-time, and got most marks in the exam.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Beastly young swot!&rdquo; quoth his elder  brother. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m

-glad he didn&rsquo;t buck to me about that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much danger of his bucking to

-you,&rdquo; said Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her

-obvious reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite

-incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed that she

-meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his own, and a good

-heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt. &ldquo;I looked after him

-all right,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;the one term we were there together. So

-did Fred for the next year. But it&rsquo;s rather rough on Fred and myself, who

-were both something in the school at his age, to hear and see for ourselves

-that Tony&rsquo;s nobody even in the house!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest brother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony

-that you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the

-standard you two set up; it&rsquo;s natural enough, but it isn&rsquo;t

-fair.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t be a flyer at games,&rdquo; said Horace, duly softened

-by a little flattery. &ldquo;But he might be a tryer!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A bag of oxygen wouldn&rsquo;t make him a cricketer.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet he&rsquo;s so keen on cricket!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wish he wasn&rsquo;t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than

-Fred or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a

-player.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it&rsquo;s his

-nature, just as it&rsquo;s Fred&rsquo;s and yours to be men of action.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad he&rsquo;s not allowed to cumber the crease this

-season,&rdquo; said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a

-distinct swerve in the air. &ldquo;To have him called our &lsquo;pocket

-edition,&rsquo; on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,&rdquo; she

-said warmly. &ldquo;And I hope he may make you see it before this

-doctor&rsquo;s done with him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This doctor!&rdquo; jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as

-well. &ldquo;You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on

-his own?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about

-him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of

-himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him go; but

-he&rsquo;s the most casual young hound I ever struck.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know he&rsquo;s casual.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry her sense

-of fairness had so misled her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;he wouldn&rsquo;t be cured if he

-could. Think what he&rsquo;d miss!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;re coming back to that, there&rsquo;s no more to be

-said.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I do come back to it. Isn&rsquo;t he up in town at this moment under

-this very doctor of yours?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not my doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you first heard about him; you&rsquo;re the innovator of the family,

-Letty, so it&rsquo;s no use trying to score off me. Isn&rsquo;t Tony up in

-London to-night?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe he is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you what he&rsquo;s doing at this moment,&rdquo;

-cried Horace, with egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s after eleven; he&rsquo;s in the act of struggling out of some

-theatre, where the atmosphere&rsquo;s so good for asthma!&rdquo; Lettice left

-the gibe unanswered. It was founded on recent fact which she had been the first

-to deplore when Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by

-no means blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more

-than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose unmeasured

-objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special pleading. She tried

-to believe that there was more in her younger brother than in any of them, and

-would often speak up for him as though she had succeeded. It may have been

-merely a woman&rsquo;s weakness for the weak, but Lettice had taught herself to

-believe in Tony. And perhaps of all his people she was the only one who could

-have followed his vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have gone

-indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily at that

-moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity.

-Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they

-were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than

-he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a

-heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy,

-too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she

-looked like a woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than

-her brother, but of other clay.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father&rsquo;s library, and

-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the terrace.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I said he wasn&rsquo;t doing much good there,&rdquo; he added,

-&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always

-does.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean that he&rsquo;s doing any harm?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton

-plainly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I&mdash;I

-sometimes wish there was more!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More manhood, I suppose you&rsquo;d call it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More go about him,&rdquo; said Horace. He could not say as much to his

-father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to bolt

-from his guns.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?&rdquo;

-continued Mr. Upton, with severity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Horace hastily, &ldquo;and of course that&rsquo;s

-really why he&rsquo;s doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his

-doesn&rsquo;t seem to be doing him any either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the

-downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had turned the

-wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite another quarter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I agree with you there!&rdquo; cried his father vehemently. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t believe in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon

-who has done so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a

-trial? The lad wasn&rsquo;t having a fair chance at school. This looked like

-one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the letters the

-man writes me about him. He&rsquo;d have me take him away from school

-altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But what&rsquo;s

-to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He&rsquo;d be too

-old to go to another school, and too young for the University: no use at the

-works, and only another worry to us all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with

-intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of sympathy which

-is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards the unsound. He hated

-sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it. His wife had taken ill the

-year before, had undergone a grave operation in the winter, and was still a

-great anxiety to him. But that was another and a far more serious matter; he

-had patience and sympathy enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very

-different. Himself a man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected

-his own qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent

-absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why should Tony

-be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr. Upton was often

-sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard more about the asthma than

-he had seen for himself. If the boy was not down to breakfast in the holidays,

-he was supposed to have had a bad night; yet later in the day he would be as

-bright as anybody, at times indeed the brightest of the party. That, however,

-was usually when Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he

-was another creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the

-busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice overdid

-matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint, and was inclined

-to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his age, even if said to be

-cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile pose to the man who had never

-studied that disorder. The specialist in London seemed another mistake on the

-part of that managing Lettice, who had quite assumed the family lead of late.

-And altogether Mr. Upton, though he saw the matter from a different point of

-view, was not far from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed, whose

-brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his schoolfellows &ldquo;a

-conscientious ass,&rdquo; while his sister spoilt him for <i>un enfant

-incompris?</i> You may say it would have taken a miracle to make an ordinary

-decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange happenings to the boy and

-his people; perhaps it was the one authentic type of miracle that capped all in

-the morning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of

-whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a few

-hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning. The birds were

-singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The morning sun was slanting

-over town and country, and the father&rsquo;s thoughts were with his tiresome

-son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came from the adjoining room.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife&rsquo;s side, supporting her in

-bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;My Tony!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was just thinking of him!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What about him,

-dear?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I saw him,&rdquo; she quavered. &ldquo;I saw him plainer than I see you

-now. And I&rsquo;m almost positive I heard&mdash;a shot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />

-A GRIM SAMARITAN</h2>

-

-<p>

-Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the sound of a

-shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He opened his eyes on a

-dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The air was strangely keen for

-the amount of sunshine, the sunshine curiously rarefied, and the grass swept

-grey where it did not sparkle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket&rsquo;s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy head

-into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps. He was not in

-bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the shrub he now remembered in

-a mental flash which lit up all his adventures overnight. He was wandering

-ankle deep in the dew, towards a belt of poplars like birch-rods on the

-skyline, and a row of spiked palings right in front of his nose. He had walked

-in his sleep for the first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to

-wake him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in reality so

-swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he who must have made

-it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A hand darted through them

-and caught Pocket&rsquo;s  wrist as in a vice. And he looked up over the spikes

-into a gnarled face tinged with fear and fury, and working spasmodically at the

-suppression of some incomprehensible emotion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know what you did?&rdquo; the man demanded in the end. The

-question seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be

-reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense, reminding

-Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy to account for the

-tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous with passion. And the man

-stood tall and dominant, with a silver stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird

-cloak and hat that helped to invest him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish

-inquisitor; no wonder his eyes were like cold steel in quivering flesh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must have been walking in my sleep,&rdquo; began Pocket, shakily;

-further explanations were cut very short.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well? I can&rsquo;t help it! I&rsquo;ve done it before to-day; you

-needn&rsquo;t believe me if you don&rsquo;t like! Do you mind letting go of my

-hand?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;With that in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he had

-strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but his finger

-actually on the trigger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say I let it off?&rdquo; cried Pocket,

-horrified.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Feel the barrel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. The

-barrel was still warm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was in my sleep,&rdquo; protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you it was!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second impulse.

-The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy, picking his

-brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master&rsquo;s eye had ever

-delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very worst of him at school

-was known in an instant to this dreadful stranger in the wilds of London. He

-writhed under the ordeal of that protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his

-imprisoned wrist. His captor was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his

-unoccupied hand. A blade was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced

-through in a second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man

-swooped down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his

-weapon, &ldquo;I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no

-right to spend the night in here at all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not the only one!&rdquo; He had just espied a recumbent figure

-through the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a

-battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall man merely

-redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without so much as a

-glance behind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is the sort that staggers in as soon as the

-gates are open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that

-sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules. Who are

-you, and what&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Asthma,&rdquo; wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I had nowhere else to go.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you come up from the country?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To see a doctor about it!&rdquo; cried Pocket bitterly, and told the

-whole truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely

-lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and through; but

-the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked less deeply slashed

-and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that uttered the next words.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these

-chairs.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had climbed them.

-His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied him on the other side.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage

-it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did last night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked round and pointed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Behind that bush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you left nothing there?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; my bag and hat!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly

-suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?

-There&mdash;catching the sun.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bring it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s empty.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bring it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the palings,

-waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But no third creature

-was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the dew. Pocket surmounted the

-obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost beside himself in the throes of his

-attack. Later, he feared he must have been lifted down like a child; but this

-was when he was getting his breath upon a seat. They had come some little

-distance very slowly, and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an

-arm as to lend colour to his humiliating suspicion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His grim companion spoke first.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one

-myself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never forgive the brute!&rdquo; he panted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Come, come! He didn&rsquo;t send you to sleep in the Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he took away the only thing that does me any good.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard of them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I

-had.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced from his

-bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He had slipped it

-into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt for it feverishly. He

-gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the palpable thing, and he drew

-forth a flattened cylinder the size of a cigarette and the colour of a cigar.

-The boy had to bite off both ends; the man was ready with the match. Pocket

-drank the crude smoke down like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed

-the tears into his eyes, and was comparatively cured.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!&rdquo; said his companion.

-&ldquo;I cannot understand him, and I&rsquo;m a doctor myself.&rdquo; His voice

-and look were deliberate even for him. &ldquo;My name is Baumgartner,&rdquo; he

-added, and made a pause. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose you know it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Pocket, swelling with

-breath and gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A schoolboy in the country,&rdquo; observed Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;is

-scarcely likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will

-find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for

-breakfast, and a little rest. That is,&rdquo; added the doctor, with his first

-smile, &ldquo;if you will trust yourself to me first and make your inquiries

-later.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but even as

-he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling it would have

-been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was thanking and must needs

-accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he had come across that name? And

-when and where had anybody ever seen such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow

-in the cloak and hat of a conspirator by limelight?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as the one

-human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt grey man stood

-up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought, &ldquo;How the chaps

-would rag him at school!&rdquo; because the dreadful old hat and cloak

-suggested a caricature of a master&rsquo;s cap and gown. But there was no

-master at Pocket&rsquo;s school whom he would not sooner have disobeyed than

-this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the wintry smile; there was no

-eye on the staff that had ever made him quail as he had quailed that morning

-before these penetrating eyes of steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and

-Pocket had his asthma back in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could

-buy more cigarettes on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the cab Baumgartner said, &ldquo;Try sitting with your head between your

-knees.&rdquo; Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man or

-so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar, an early

-cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all until the hansom had

-been hailed outside. During the drive, which seemed to Pocket interminable, his

-extraordinary attitude prevented him from seeing anything but his own boots,

-and those only dimly owing to the apron being shut and indeed pressing

-uncomfortably against his head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that

-did not make him easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the

-posture did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven

-through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the streets or

-a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman&rsquo;s instructions

-where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His ear was more alert

-now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough metal. Then more wood, and

-an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then more metal, in better repair;

-quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the milkman&rsquo;s queer cry; and

-finally, &ldquo;Next to the right and the fifth house on your left,&rdquo; in

-the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign accent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth from the

-little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too

-clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been

-&ldquo;done&rdquo;; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric

-paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the

-lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and shut upon him: he had already

-passed through a rank of pollard trees, sprouting emeralds in the morning sun,

-that seemed common to this side of the road, and effectually hid the other.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The passage was

-dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right. Baumgartner led the way

-past a closed door on the left, into an unexpectedly bright and large room

-beyond it. &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said he, and shut the door softly behind

-him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full of

-walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the sunshine that

-filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back of the house. Dr.

-Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a window, and he stood looking out

-in thought while Pocket hurriedly completed his optical round. A set of walnut

-chairs were dreadfully upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one

-looked comfortable enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the

-semi-grand piano. There were books, too, and in the far corner by the

-bow-window a glass door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket&rsquo;s

-study at school, and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of

-battle engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in

-murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and villages.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner met his visitor&rsquo;s eyes with the faint cold smile that

-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was present at some of those engagements,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They

-were not worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his

-sleep!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the pistol

-inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was distracted before he

-had time to resent the forgotten fact of its forcible confiscation. Under his

-cloak the doctor had been carrying all this time, slung by a strap which the

-boy had noticed across his chest, a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket

-exclaimed upon it with the instructed interest of a keen photographer.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you take photographs?&rdquo; asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in

-his unemotional voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I

-haven&rsquo;t got an instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and black

-morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which the doctor had

-set between them on one of the fussy little walnut tables.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />

-THE GLASS EYE</h2>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness of a

-most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the turban into

-the bowl. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I must have my smoke like you!

-I can&rsquo;t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my own

-fault. So you are also a photographer!&rdquo; he added, as the fumes of a

-mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am only a beginner,&rdquo; responded Pocket, &ldquo;but a very keen

-one.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t merely press the button and let  them do the

-rest?&rdquo; suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of

-his pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that&rsquo;s

-half the fun.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Plates or films?&rdquo; inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only plates, I&rsquo;m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of

-my father&rsquo;s.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a gesture

-more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none the worse for that,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;So far we

-have much in common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our

-plates, there&rsquo;s the difference, eh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should imagine so,&rdquo; said Pocket, smiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but yet

-darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; often.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In the body, I presume?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked nonplussed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You only take them in the flesh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly! I take the spirit,&rdquo; said the doctor; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s

-the difference.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner follow

-the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting cloud of smoke.

-The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was of briefer duration than

-might have been the case with a less ardent photographer; for he took a

-technical interest in his hobby, and read the photographic year-books, nearly

-as ravenously as <i>Wisden&rsquo;s Almanacke</i>.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said, lukewarmly. &ldquo;You go in for psychic

-photography.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Psychic,&rdquo; said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets

-to report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor added,

-with more disdain: &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t believe in it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t say so.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you looked and sounded it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,&rdquo; said the

-boy, always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. &ldquo;But I do say I

-don&rsquo;t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It was

-in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed to have said

-you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the plate at all; hide

-away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure up your spirit and see what

-happens. I&rsquo;ll swear nothing ever happened like that! There may be ghosts,

-you may see them,  and so may the camera, but not without focusing and exposing

-like you&rsquo;ve got to do with ordinary flesh and blood!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the stimulus

-of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the doctor had come to his

-feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey face beamed warmly; his eyes

-were lances tipped with fire.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well said, my young fellow!&rdquo; cried he. &ldquo;I agree with every

-syllable you have spoken.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,&rdquo;

-concluded Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it

-even at your age! But there&rsquo;s much more in it than that; you must see the

-rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.&rdquo; The boy blushed with

-pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. &ldquo;You admit there may be

-such things as ghosts, as you call them?&rdquo; he was asked as by an equal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible

-as that sunbeam?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You allow that the camera can see them if we can?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the concession gave

-him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant leaps. He felt five

-years older in fewer minutes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of

-triumph, &ldquo;then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I

-may. I may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws

-already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses fail to

-throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the camera catches. Take

-two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the other with another; one comes

-out like water as we see it; the other, though not less limpid in our sight,

-like ink. The eye sees through it, but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as

-though the acid itself were pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the

-plate. The trouble is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest

-chemist&rsquo;s, no money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will

-the spirit which once was man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it first an

-hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this was the passion

-of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at all, it was in this wild

-question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy  perceived this dimly. There was

-something else which had become clearer to him with each of these later

-remarks. Striking as they seemed to him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The

-ring of novelty was wanting to his ear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Suddenly he exclaimed, &ldquo;I knew I knew your name!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do know it, do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was discounted by

-the interruption it entailed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come

-across it somewhere.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You read the correspondence that followed the review?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some of it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My letter among others?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! I remember every word of it now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium&rsquo;s

-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said it wasn&rsquo;t necessary, if I remember,&rdquo; replied Pocket

-somewhat tentatively, despite his boast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two moments

-at which I hold that a man&rsquo;s soul may be caught apart, may be cut off 

-from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a light-tight

-camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my letter.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;was the moment of death.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The moment of dissolution,&rdquo; the doctor corrected him. &ldquo;But

-there is a far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,

-whereas dissolution comes but once.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure about

-it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him as too

-fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not and dared not

-say; and he was not the less frightened of making a mistake with those inspired

-eyes burning fanatically into his.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The other moment,&rdquo; the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile,

-&ldquo;is when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which

-men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?&rdquo; Baumgartner asked

-abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed unconvinced, for

-he went on didactically: &ldquo;You visit far countries in your dreams; your

-soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the dead; it is your soul

-again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I fix the moment as that of the

-soul&rsquo;s return because its departure on these errands is imperceptible, 

-but with its return we awake. The theory is that in the moment of waking the

-whole experience happens like the flash of an electric spark.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled than

-enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very eccentric

-acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man&rsquo;s hard face

-and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could not be lost upon

-an impressionable temperament, besides that force of will or character which

-had dominated the young mind from the first. He began to wish the interview at

-an end&mdash;to be able to talk about it as the extraordinary sequel of an

-extraordinary adventure&mdash;yet he would not have cut it short at this point

-if he could.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I grant you,&rdquo; continued the doctor, &ldquo;that the final flight

-of soul from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But

-how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits pass it

-would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still to be educated

-up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain to initiate such

-education. I have applied for perfectly private admission to hospital

-deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons. My applications have been

-peremptorily refused.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket&rsquo;s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You could see a man hanged!&rdquo; he shuddered, and himself saw the

-little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked the other in wide wonder. &ldquo;But as I am not

-allowed,&rdquo; he continued in lighter key, &ldquo;I have to do the best I

-can. If I cannot be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or

-two! And now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to

-sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and then I

-take my chance.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not all like that man this morning, then,&rdquo; remarked

-Pocket, looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the brighter for

-their partial eclipse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This morning,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;was like no other. I owe you

-some confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this

-morning&mdash;thanks to you!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thanks to me?&rdquo; repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. &ldquo;Do

-you mean to say I&mdash;you took me&mdash;walking&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You shall see my meaning,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, rising.

-&ldquo;Wait one minute.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double doors in

-an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there. Running  water

-and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his absence, but the boy

-was thinking of another sound. The doctor before leaving had discarded a black

-alpaca jacket, light as a pocket handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to

-recall by contrast the noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak.

-The lad was promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he

-was within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in his

-hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all was ready.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would simply

-have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double doors within been

-is use; these being shut, the space behind made a separate chamber which again

-reminded the schoolboy of his study, that smallest of small rooms. This one was

-as narrow, only twice the length. One end was monopolised by the door that

-admitted them, the other by a window from floor to ceiling. And this window was

-in two great sheets of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron

-steps into a crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to

-foot like Mephistopheles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This is something like a dark-room!&rdquo; exclaimed the lad as the door

-was shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred by

-shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as the

-doctor&rsquo;s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives and

-stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry copper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Everything was perfection from a photographer&rsquo;s standpoint; the boy felt

-instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of water. All he had

-ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was here in this little

-paradise of order and equipment. The actual work, he felt, would be a secondary

-consideration in such a workshop; the mere manipulation of such stoppered

-bottles as his host was handling now, the choice of graduated phials, the

-wealth of trays and dishes, would have been joy enough for him. He watched the

-favoured operator with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to

-reduce the light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were

-muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they trembled with

-excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket remembered how extravagant an

-image was expected on that plain pink surface.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult to

-believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort of man, who

-entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement and suspense were as

-infectious as everything else about him. Pocket had come into the dark-room

-wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not to be heard breathing as the plate

-was rocked to and fro as in raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp

-and black. But the sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by

-perpendicular objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know

-what these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how

-could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind him when

-they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket said to himself, &ldquo;Where am I, by the way?&rdquo; and bent lower to

-see. His ear touched the doctor&rsquo;s; it heard the doctor breathing as

-though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but not

-walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass. &ldquo;When

-did you get me?&rdquo; asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face paid no

-attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with beads of blood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There! there! there!&rdquo; croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato.

-Pocket could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host&mdash;the one gentle

-thing about him. &ldquo;You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,

-hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had choked out

-its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between fingers that most

-distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the hyposulphite, and pulled up

-the blind. The sun shone again through the tall window, blood-red as before;

-grass and sky were as richly incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited

-for the fixing-bath to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still

-pronounced it. &ldquo;And I owe it to you, my young fellow!&rdquo; This he said

-again and again, aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last

-and held it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the

-schoolboy never forgot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Open the window!&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;It opens like a door.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him momentarily

-blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again. Pocket thought him

-careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it was held up an instant to the

-naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred fragments in the porcelain trough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back into the

-drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have been a minute

-before their eyes met again; the  doctor&rsquo;s were calm and cold and

-critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he said, and

-nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go upstairs; and if his

-young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought as a physician it might do

-him good.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />

-AN AWAKENING</h2>

-

-<p>

-It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little

-distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The

-goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited

-empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr.

-Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully

-brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his

-well-kept hands. There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the

-immature shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss

-Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname.

-He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one  to flout a

-fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and

-then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her

-Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts will come

-of contact with young animals of the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong

-from time to time, but all four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as

-shy and uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table

-attentions to her uncle and his guest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against

-the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. &ldquo;We have a full-size table at

-home,&rdquo; he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant.

-&ldquo;I like a small one best,&rdquo; he assured the doctor, who shook his

-head and smiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I&rsquo;m no

-good at real games.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The statement was too true, but not the preference.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,&rdquo; was

-the doctor&rsquo;s comment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma as far as

-modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his breakfast-table talk, yet

-nervously egotistical, and apt to involve himself in lengthy explanations. He

-had  two types of listener&mdash;the dry and the demure&mdash;to all he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And they let you come up to London alone!&rdquo; remarked Dr.

-Baumgartner when he got a chance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t their fault that I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse particulars

-exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. Evidently the niece was

-not to know where he had spent the night.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I suppose there are a number of young men at

-your&mdash;establishment?&rdquo; said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss

-Platts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are over four hundred boys,&rdquo; replied Pocket, a little

-puzzled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And how many keepers do they require?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A grin apologised for the word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There must be over thirty masters,&rdquo; returned Pocket more pointedly

-than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school from a mad

-German doctor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not necessarily; there&rsquo;s a Modern Side. You can learn German if

-you like!&rdquo; said Pocket, not without contempt.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; said the boy gratuitously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then we must stick to your excellent King&rsquo;s English.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little passage.

-Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary kindness which had

-brought him to a decent breakfast-table that morning. That made him ashamed;

-nor could he have afforded to be too independent just yet, even had he been so

-disposed in his heart. His asthma was a beast that always growled in the

-background; he never knew when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast

-pacified the brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and

-the boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for him

-to go to Welbeck Street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there really nothing you can take?&rdquo; asked Dr. Baumgartner,

-standing over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big

-easy-chair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing now, I&rsquo;m afraid, unless I could get some of those

-cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s inhuman. I&rsquo;ll go and get them myself. He should

-prescribe for such an emergency.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He has,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some stuff in my bag;

-but it&rsquo;s no use taking it now. It&rsquo;s  meant to take in bed when you

-can have your sleep out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, when the

-other doctor cut him short once more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why not now? You can sleep to your heart&rsquo;s content in that

-chair; nobody will come in.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket shook his head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the

-door. That will give you a good two hours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first

-bottle under the bush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would you promise to wake me, sir? You&rsquo;re not going out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall be in again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then it is a promise?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted

-sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to

-tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an

-unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as

-if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly

-distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the

-morning&rsquo;s troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course

-he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his

-absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass

-was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red

-as beet-root, as wet and red and one&rsquo;s body weltering in it like the

-slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in

-cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making

-more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and

-the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and

-pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing

-over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a beast of a dream!&rdquo; said Pocket, waking

-thoroughly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold

-blood! What time is it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A quarter to six,&rdquo; said the doctor, who had invited the question

-by taking out his watch.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A quarter to twelve, you mean!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;six.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at

-his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his

-feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight

-as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You promised to wake me!&rdquo; gasped Pocket, almost speechless.

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve broken your word, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only in your own interest,&rdquo; replied the other calmly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe you were waiting for me to wake&mdash;to catch my soul, or

-some rot!&rdquo; cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for

-the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged

-his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I apologise for saying that,&rdquo; the boy resumed, with a dignity that

-sounded near to tears. &ldquo;I know you meant it for the best&mdash;to make up

-for my bad night&mdash;you&rsquo;ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due

-in Welbeck Street at twelve o&rsquo;clock, and now I shall have to bolt to

-catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,&rdquo; replied

-Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I will unless I&rsquo;m in some outlandish part of London!&rdquo; cried

-Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of

-London he was. &ldquo;I must catch it. It&rsquo;s the last train back to

-school. I&rsquo;ll get into an awful row if I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get into a worse one if you do,&rdquo; rejoined the doctor,

-looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered

-with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in

-town about it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do tell me what, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can you face things, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is it about my people&mdash;my mother?&rdquo; the boy cried wildly, at

-her funeral in a flash.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I can!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my

-dream.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly. Didn&rsquo;t it strike you as strange that he should be lying

-there in the wet grass?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was drunk.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was dead!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death

-before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view

-of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No

-doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none

-the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor

-suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural

-density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not

-even known the man was dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Had the doctor?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another

-question first.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What did he die of?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A bullet!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Suicide?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not murder?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This paper says so.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Does it say who did it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It cannot.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it

-yourself?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />

-BLOOD-GUILTY</h2>

-

-<p>

-His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment&rsquo;s doubt. He

-marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The walking in his

-sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. Baumgartner, his first

-swift action, and the warm pistol in his own unconscious hand: these burning

-memories spoke more eloquently than any words. They would have told their own

-tale at once, if only he had known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived?

-It was cruel, it was infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single

-instant. Thus wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for

-the very benefaction of a day&rsquo;s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor

-defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism. Pocket

-was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He also might

-have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well believe on looking back.

-Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to tell him the truth, but had checked

-himself in sheer humanity. Again the boy could confirm the outward detail out

-of his own recollection. To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went

-on to say, with an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone

-nothing. He acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had

-put the living before the dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question. He was

-not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at least of the

-bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too many men fall shot

-through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but in point of fact he had

-confirmed his conviction by brief examination while Pocket was fetching his

-things from behind the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid

-appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic

-interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude.

-It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading

-warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment

-he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined

-Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The poor man had raised a

-drunken shout and been shot pointblank through the heart. The doctor described

-him as leaping backward from the levelled barrel, then into the air and down in

-the dew upon his face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now recalled the

-shout before the shot. The enforced description had been so vivid in the end

-that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he had been wide awake. Then he

-dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing else as he now remembered him, and

-that sent him off at a final tangent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, &ldquo;What about that

-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;but it was never meant to be.

-I had you in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with

-time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the chance of

-a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that was another reason

-for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate consequences of an innocent

-act.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an

-instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young soul was

-torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted by the inevitable

-and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure, and yet he could dimly

-appreciate the candid declaration of one who had attempted to turn that tragedy

-to instantaneous and inconceivable account. It was the mistaken kindness to

-himself that he still found most difficult to forgive.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s got to come out,&rdquo; he groaned; &ldquo;this will make it

-all the worse.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean the delay?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! Who&rsquo;s to tell them I didn&rsquo;t do it on purpose, and run

-away, and then think better of it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner smiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Surely I am,&rdquo; said he; but his smile went out with the words.

-&ldquo;If only they believe me!&rdquo; he added as though it was a new idea to

-him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; was his broken exclamation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear

-to, after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can&rsquo;t swear you shot him

-in your sleep!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said you saw I did!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I did, my young fellow,&rdquo; replied the doctor,  with a kinder

-smile; &ldquo;at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut,

-and I thought you were walking in your sleep. It&rsquo;s not quite the same

-thing. It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court

-of justice.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Shall I be tried?&rdquo; asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps only by the magistrate,&rdquo; replied the other, soothingly;

-&ldquo;let us hope it will stop at that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it must, it must!&rdquo; cried Pocket wildly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m

-absolutely innocent! You said so yourself a minute ago; you&rsquo;ve only to

-swear it as a doctor? They can&rsquo;t do anything to me&mdash;they can&rsquo;t

-possibly!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They can&rsquo;t do anything to me, can they?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It depends what you call anything,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They cannot

-hang you; after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even

-detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case would

-be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your family could

-not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you would find it difficult

-to live down both at home and at school. In years to come it will mean at best

-a certain smile at your expense! That is what they can do to you,&rdquo;

-concluded the doctor, apologetically. &ldquo;You asked me to tell you. It is

-better to be candid. I hoped you would bear it like a man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself back into

-the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. One name became

-articulate through his sobs. &ldquo;My mother!&rdquo; he moaned.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my

-mother too!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most

-people,&rdquo; remarked Baumgartner sardonically.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of

-any kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this? She

-mustn&rsquo;t hear it!&rdquo; cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming

-eyes. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in the papers already,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a

-forbearing shrug.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But my part in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said it had got to come out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t realise all it meant&mdash;to her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I did; but now I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Pocket, vehemently.

-&ldquo;Now I would give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what

-I&rsquo;ve done&mdash;than drag them all through that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean what you say?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Every syllable!&rdquo; said Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because, you know,&rdquo; explained the doctor, &ldquo;it is a case of

-now or never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s never!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must put it plainly to you. It&rsquo;s not too late to do whatever you

-decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland Yard,

-and the chances are that they would still accept the true story of to-day. I

-have told you what I believe to be the worst that can happen to you; it may be

-that rather more may happen to me for harbouring you all day as I have done. I

-hope not, but I took the law into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by

-the law if you so decide this minute.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have decided.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at

-any rate for the  present,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, impressively. &ldquo;Better

-come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about the

-whole thing there!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure,&rdquo; replied the acute doctor. &ldquo;I believe

-I know you better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an

-hour like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it

-very difficult not to tell somebody.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In truth no

-previous act or word of Baumgartner&rsquo;s had inspired such confidence as

-this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a perfect miracle of

-discernment. He was not old enough to know that what he would have done, in his

-weakness, most grown-up men and women of his temperament would have done in

-theirs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; resumed the doctor, &ldquo;you would have the whole of

-to-day to account for; it&rsquo;s not as though you wouldn&rsquo;t have some

-very awkward questions to answer the moment you got back to school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school conditions on

-the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of those  insular

-institutions. But this fresh display of understanding only confirmed him in his

-resolve.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I trust you, sir,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you done enough

-for me to make me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and

-I&rsquo;m grateful to you for all you&rsquo;ve done and whatever you mean to

-do!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No matter what it comes to,&rdquo; cried Pocket, strangely exalted now,

-&ldquo;so long as my people never know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may think you dead.&rdquo; He thought of saying that he wished he

-was; but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie, and

-Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That would be better than knowing what I have done,&rdquo; was what he

-said; and in his exaltation he believed no less.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is final&mdash;absolutely&mdash;so far as I am concerned.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and fairness of the

-doctor&rsquo;s warnings served but to strengthen that resolve. But Baumgartner,

-as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the  matter with a clinching shrug; and

-presently he left his visitor, less wisely, to brood on it alone.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious ass; he

-takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a sportsman; but he

-cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the best, and what would have

-happened if he had decided otherwise, and what his world will say about him as

-it is.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary position.

-He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he pictured his form

-sitting down to private-work in his form-master&rsquo;s hall; there was no end

-to his mental pictures, for they included one of himself on the scaffold in the

-broad-arrows of the little old waxwork at Madame Tassaud&rsquo;s! He could not

-help himself; his mind was crumbling with his dreadful deed and its awful

-possibilities. Now his heart bled honestly for the poor dead man, now for his

-own mother and sister, and now not less freely for himself. He had been so

-innocent in the whole matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting

-fool. And now one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would

-be darkened for ever after!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far into the

-long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair, yet never leaning

-back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once more battling for breath,

-but curiously enough his bodily distress had flown before that of the mind.

-Pocket would thankfully have changed them back again, for his brain was as

-clear as his bronchial tubes, its capacity for suffering undimmed by a single

-physical preoccupation. Between seven and eight the young lady of the house

-came in with candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box

-of d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle

-thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl addressed the

-boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to seem, something of a man.

-But his present effort in that direction was sadly perfunctory: he almost

-ejected little Miss Platts in his eagerness to shut the door on her and see the

-news.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man had been

-identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were reported as hopeful of

-obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue was the point that stuck like a

-burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a clue was one leading straight to

-himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to explain the true value of the identity

-clause, and bid the boy eat his meal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Trust the police!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re on a false scent

-already; they may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as reverentially of his

-victim as of a dead member of his own family. It appeared thus early, however,

-that in life the defunct had been by no means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses

-had been his only home, except when his undistinguished offences got him into

-gaol; the surreptitious practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means

-of livelihood. So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the

-stop-press column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to

-extract comfort from such items.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At all events,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you cannot reproach yourself with

-the destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless

-creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but here in

-England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It&rsquo;s a public

-service to reduce their number.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the doctor had

-been working up to it all the evening, and this was the climax of his

-cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically undressed himself for

-bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of stairs, carrying  candles,

-and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast. Pocket felt a new chill through his

-veins, but he was not revolted as he would have been at first. This

-extraordinary man had shown him still more extraordinary kindness; the die was

-cast for them to stand or fall together; and there was something about the

-gaunt old visionary, a confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility,

-which could not but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they

-really were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy

-underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the doctor spoke

-as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to agree with him: his

-conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a series of incoherent

-expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave articulate shape in order to

-demolish them in the next breath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my

-young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk&rsquo;s head

-wreathed in cool blue clouds.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!&rdquo;

-cried the poetic doctor. &ldquo;You have an honourable life before you; he had

-a disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of

-luxury; he finds it for the first time in his&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in his bed;

-the man sat down on the end of it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do such poor devils a service,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;in sending

-them to a world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under

-the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was a human life,&rdquo; groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Human life!&rdquo; cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge

-shadow guying him on the ceiling. &ldquo;What is this human life, and who are

-you and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never did;

-it&rsquo;s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about human

-life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar; there are some

-of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock for modern decadence.

-So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought nothing of your human life. Von

-Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon;

-the Empire of my countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the

-infinitesimal value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through

-exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords; they&rsquo;re

-on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of what I know.

-I&rsquo;ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind, and I&rsquo;ve

-felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at Gravelotte; as a

-public schoolboy you probably never heard the name before this minute. I fought

-in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking at the pictures downstairs. I was in

-that charge across those hellish ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in

-half an hour, but we gained the victory. More Germans were killed that

-day&mdash;that sweltering August afternoon&mdash;than English in your whole

-South African War that took you years! The flower of Germany fell at

-Gravelotte; that was human life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my

-comrades&rsquo; ashes. And that&rsquo;s all it&rsquo;s for, this human life of

-yours: for the master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward

-road.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange

-outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild bloodthirsty

-nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its irrelevancy, or rather it was

-the irrevelant features that flared up first in his brain. It was a childish

-question, but here was a very child, and he could not help asking the fierce

-old soldier whether he had escaped without a wound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Without a scratch,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;I come home. I leave the

-army. I ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck

-down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the veriest pawn

-in the game!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was not a

-single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or another word

-for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke from a waving pipe, a

-core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the Turk&rsquo;s face glistening in

-its heat like that of the hard old man himself. He would hear the cynical and

-scornful voice softening in a breath to the simple, tender, and domestic

-humanity of his race. The voice and the face were with him throughout that

-night of his own manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy

-to realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been carried

-away like his listener.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />

-POINTS OF VIEW</h2>

-

-<p>

-On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week, there was

-a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in Leicestershire. This

-circumstance was not so usual as it sounds, because Mr. Upton conducted all his

-correspondence from his office at the works. If you simply put the name of the

-village, as he did on his stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to

-direct your letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few

-there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it was on

-business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more impressive

-address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt the first blow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this made the

-letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following reason. Mrs. Upton

-had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the Thursday morning, that her husband

-had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat against his own judgment, to know how he

-found their son. The reply had been: &ldquo;Better expecting him again to-day

-will write&rdquo;&mdash;which prepared the family for still more reassuring

-accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt relieved as the original discoverer of

-Dr. Bompas. Horace found his views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration

-of a touch of asthma, and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely

-agreeing with Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs.

-Upton lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible to

-show her now that it had come.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way to keep

-a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this occasion he triumphed

-over temperament with an extraordinary instinct for what was in the air.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!&rdquo; was his only

-comment as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might

-have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not Horace

-promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young fellow&rsquo;s

-face and the old one&rsquo;s neck were redder before the last was heard of that

-remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually vouchsafed; the boy

-had made very little improvement, and was not likely to make more while he

-remained at a school where he was allowed to use any remedy he liked; in fact,

-until he was taken away from school, and placed under his own immediate control

-in town, Dr. Bompas declined to persevere with the case.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Blighter!&rdquo; said Horace impartially, as though now there were two

-of them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when their

-father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was not

-&ldquo;playing the game&rdquo;; but then he never did play it to the expert

-satisfaction of Fred and Horace.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and told a

-lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He had destroyed

-it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it to his wife. He said a

-happier thing by chance; he said that for two pins he would motor over to the

-school and see for himself how the boy really was; then perhaps he would be in

-a position to consider the entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the

-specialist&rsquo;s demand, that his patient should be placed under his eye in

-town. Mr. Upton went so far, however, without much immediate intention of

-taking so strong a measure.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite justified in his

-fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with his eldest son. There

-were aspects of the case, as it presented itself to his mind, which he could

-hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her mother must not know of his anxiety on

-any account. Horace, however, had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed its

-owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few rolling

-meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June glory. The new red

-gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an eye which had never looked

-longer than necessary in the glass. Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily

-on a shaven lawn; the only eyesore the good man encountered was poor

-Pocket&rsquo;s snob-wickets painted on a buttress in the back premises; his own

-belching blast-furnaces, corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few

-hundred yards of his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy

-Briton who had made them too.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. &ldquo;I

-was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,&rdquo; his father said;

-&ldquo;the fact is, I concealed half the fellow&rsquo;s letter on account of

-Lettice. But it&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s matter, and you ought to know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to keep his

-appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the line of

-information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would have exercised

-so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife&rsquo;s room. It now appeared

-that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas had gone far out of his

-way to play Mahomet to his patient&rsquo;s mountain. Tony had told him where he

-hoped to stay in London, which Bompas particularly wished to know on account of

-some special prescription the boy was to try that night. On his failure to

-appear at the appointed time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in

-question, only to learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been

-given another address with the same result, except that from the second house

-he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace was left

-to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and asked for his own on

-the facts as a man of the world.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly like young Tony!&rdquo; quoth Horace, never afraid to say what

-he thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Like Tony,&rdquo; repeated Horace significantly. &ldquo;Trust him to do

-what nobody else ever did.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how could Spearman give him the chance?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was to stay at Coverley&rsquo;s?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I heard.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it! It&rsquo;s all wrong at his age,&rdquo; said Mr.

-Upton. He had his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough

-with his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any question of bad company, do

-you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And though Horace had &ldquo;no use for&rdquo; his so-called pocket edition, he

-answered without any hesitation at all: &ldquo;Not for a moment, from what I

-know of Tony.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by mentioning his

-wife&rsquo;s dream, now family property, which had been on his mind all this

-time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him that nobody nowadays

-believed in dreams.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I never have, certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton. &ldquo;But what

-can it be?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He probably went up to Lord&rsquo;s, and forgot all about his

-doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hope not! You&rsquo;re too down on him, Horace.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to

-school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s said to have gone to some hotel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose he did,&rdquo; said Horace. &ldquo;I expect he got

-back somehow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr. Spearman

-settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the day before, and

-his friends in London wired that they knew nothing about him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What friends?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. &ldquo;Why the devil

-couldn&rsquo;t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked

-about?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or &ldquo;that Knaggs crowd.&rdquo;

-Neither he nor Fred had been at Coverley&rsquo;s school, and young Tony&rsquo;s

-friends were by no means theirs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on the

-telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its being &ldquo;a

-man&rsquo;s matter&rdquo;; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like a

-serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that neither his

-mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it before it was

-absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother&rsquo;s dream as the devil

-did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments besides; he was speaking quite

-nicely of them both, for instance, when he declared that Lettice was wrapped up

-in Tony, and would be beside herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him.

-It would be simply impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on

-whom she also waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had

-good reason to believe in Lettice&rsquo;s power of suppressing her own

-feelings; but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited

-dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his wife.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as he had

-fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr. Spearman, who

-deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was done, however, and it

-was now a matter in which home and school authorities must act together. A

-clerk was instructed to telephone to the garage for the car to come straight to

-the works. And the ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of

-anxiety.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and yet to-day

-it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the brain that had

-conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and blackened faces lit by

-the light of molten metal; his the strong hand and the stout heart which had

-brought his conception into being. Those were his trucks bringing in his ore

-from his mines; that was his consequential little locomotive fussing in front

-of them. His men, dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was

-also his, happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was

-his pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric

-advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of

-possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the ironmaster

-almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot bars as his too. The

-whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture, had long been his to all

-intents and purposes, and no second soul would ever take his pride in it; to

-his children it would never be more than the means of livelihood; and how had

-it repaid even him for a life&rsquo;s devotion? With a house of sorrow in the

-next valley! With a stricken wife, and sons whose right hands kept their

-cunning for the cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a

-sudden madness!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great green

-car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he did not drive

-himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the summer&rsquo;s day was

-a mental stimulant that did its work only too well. Now it recalled the ailing

-infancy of the missing boy&mdash;bronchitis it had been in the early

-stages&mdash;and how his mother had taken him to Hastings three successive

-winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family jokes cropped up in a new

-light, dimming the eyes without an instant&rsquo;s warning. On one of those

-flittings south the solicitous mother had placed the uncomplaining child on a

-footwarmer, and forgotten him until a cascade of perspiration apprised her of

-the effect: poor Mr. Upton had never thought of the incident without laughter,

-until to-day. Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she

-herself too ill to hear a word about it!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no uncertainty. He

-thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first. There had been drama

-and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated of the neighbouring packs had

-run a fox to earth on his works, indeed in his very slag-heap! The author of

-cancerous furnaces in the green heart of a grass country had never been a

-popular personage with the hunting folk; but he was master of the situation

-that memorable day. It was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a

-ferret, and came out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore

-through the brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young

-lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants with

-their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag sticking out of

-the furnace mouth&mdash;the momentary contact of the industrial and the

-sporting world&mdash;it was that strange and yet significant scene which had

-first endeared its dingy setting to the ironmaster&rsquo;s heart. But he had

-made the contact permanent by falling in love with the young lady of the brush

-and marrying her under all the guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she

-was a stricken invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now distracted

-father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think about as he flew on

-to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very rude to Mr. Spearman; but

-then Spearman had been rash enough to repudiate his obvious responsibility in

-the matter. It was not his fault that the boy went up to town so often to see

-his doctor and stay the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but

-it had become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp

-thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of seventeen

-could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know who could! Tony

-had promised him faithfully to return that same night, failing friends whom he

-had mentioned as certain to put him up; their names Mr. Upton was able to

-demand at last as though they were so much blood; and he could not have cursed

-them more freely if Spearman had been a layman like himself. But that was all

-the information forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the

-head master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had

-still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked that he

-was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up and led him

-straight into the presence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an astute

-pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to Mr. Upton that

-the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master&rsquo;s concern, but agreed

-it was time that he himself was made acquainted with the present case. He took

-it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could have wished, but quite as frankly from

-his own point of view as his two visitors did from each of theirs. He had no

-doubt the boy would turn up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to

-give a satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received back

-into the school.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bother the school!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with

-difficulty. &ldquo;Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what you

-like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how do you propose to find him?&rdquo; inquired the head master,

-with only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own

-showing, refused the boy a bed. I&rsquo;ll give them a bit of my mind, I

-promise you! Then there&rsquo;s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it

-may be the one we always stay at, or one they&rsquo;ve recommended. If I

-can&rsquo;t hear anything of him there, I suppose there&rsquo;ll be nothing for

-it but to call in the police.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; exclaimed the head master,  &ldquo;you may as well

-call in the public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you

-are; and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our point

-of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more so from mine!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and

-indignation. &ldquo;You think about your school. I think about my wife and boy;

-it might kill her to hear about this before he&rsquo;s found. But if I

-don&rsquo;t go to the police, who am I to go to?&rdquo; The head master leant

-back in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case of

-dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal proceedings on behalf

-of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down and solved the mystery within

-twenty-four hours, and saved the school a public scandal.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He may save you another,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, &ldquo;if he can find my

-boy. What did you say the name was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thrush&mdash;Eugene Thrush&mdash;quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a

-gentleman,&rdquo; said the head master impressively. Further particulars,

-including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from an

-advertisement in that day&rsquo;s <i>Times</i>, in which Mr. Thrush was

-described as an &ldquo;inquiry agent,&rdquo; capable alike of &ldquo;delicate

-investigations&rdquo; and &ldquo;confidential negotiations.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he departed both

-on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final word for his own

-behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the head master on the

-importance of keeping it out of the papers.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />

-MR. EUGENE THRUSH</h2>

-

-<p>

-The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never been

-the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of events which

-had turned his talents into their present channel, was known to but few of his

-many boon companions, and much nonsense was talked about him and his first

-career. It was not the case (as anybody might have ascertained) that he had

-been struck off the rolls in connection with the first great scandal in which

-he was professionally concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report

-that he drank, in the ordinary interpretation of the term.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his dressing-table,

-to help him shave for the evening of that fateful Friday. He was  dressing for

-an early dinner before a first night. His dressing-room, in which he also slept

-in Spartan simplicity, was the original powder-closet of the panelled library

-out of which it led. There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared

-breakfast and spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top

-of such stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker&rsquo;s mute (a calling he had

-followed in his day), was laying out his master&rsquo;s clothes as mournfully

-as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he shaved.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into

-this case it&rsquo;s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too

-soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they&rsquo;d have wondered what the

-devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were in my

-service.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I had no call, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So

-you&rsquo;d only to describe the finding of the body?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That was all, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And your description was really largely founded on fact?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman&rsquo;s shaving elbow.

-&ldquo;I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,&rdquo; said he, with

-sombre dignity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs

-you showed me yesterday?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must have

-picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn&rsquo;t on the

-actual scene of the murder.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Mullins. I don&rsquo;t see what they could

-possibly have to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your

-being the one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what

-they&rsquo;re worth, it&rsquo;s the last kind of case that I should dream of

-touching with a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won&rsquo;t require

-you at the adjourned inquest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite

-convenient,&rdquo; replied Mullins deferentially. &ldquo;The police were very

-stingy with their evidence to-day; they&rsquo;ve still to produce the fatal

-bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took as

-little real interest as he professed in the case which was being thrust upon

-him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in shaving the corners of a

-delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the whole face emerging from the

-lather, as a cast from its clay, would have  delighted any eye but its own. It

-was fat and flabby as the rest of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection

-of chins to shave; and yet anybody but himself must have recognised the

-invincible freshness of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as

-an earnest of inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh.

-Great round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an

-aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in itself might

-have prevented the superficial observer from taking him any more seriously than

-he took himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially

-superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being badly

-impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the landing to

-sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth of his prejudices

-there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate abhorrence of London and all

-Londoners, which neither the cause of his visit nor the murky mien of Mullins

-was calculated to abate. The library of books in solid bindings, many of them

-legal tomes, was the first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made

-business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only

-beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at his first

-entry.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen from

-the motorist&rsquo;s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced joviality

-with which Thrush exclaimed: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have kept you waiting,

-sir, and the worst of it is that I can&rsquo;t let you keep me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception one had to

-come up to London to incur. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll clear out!&rdquo; said he,

-and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous effect.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly consternation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I really am rather rushed,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but I can give you

-four minutes, if that&rsquo;s any good to you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have said four

-hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would have been no good

-to him; but the precise term of minutes, together with a seemlier but not less

-decisive manner, had already quickened the business man&rsquo;s respect for

-another whose time was valuable. This is by no means to say that Thrush had won

-him over in a breath. But the following interchange took place rapidly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I understand you&rsquo;re a detective, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hardly that, Mr.&mdash;&mdash;I&rsquo;ve left your card in the other

-room.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Upton is my name, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry

-agent is all I presume to call myself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you do inquire into mysteries?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve dabbled in them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As an amateur?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A paid amateur, I fear.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush&mdash;a very serious matter to

-me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you catch

-me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none of my

-business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens to have come my

-way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private inquisitor. If you want

-anything or anybody ferreted out, that&rsquo;s my job and I should put it

-first.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Thrush, that&rsquo;s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it

-for me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my youngest

-child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or been decoyed

-away. And now there can be no doubt about it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds which

-Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up before he had

-concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts within his knowledge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When can I see you again?&rdquo; he asked abruptly of Thrush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The four minutes must be more than up.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go on, my dear sir, and don&rsquo;t throw good time after bad. I&rsquo;m

-only dining with a man at his club. He can wait.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More good time! How do you know the boy hasn&rsquo;t turned up at school

-or at home while you&rsquo;ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there&rsquo;s

-nothing there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a

-bed which they couldn&rsquo;t give him the night before last. I did let them

-have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had

-recommended other hotels; they&rsquo;ve just been telephoning to them all in

-turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then

-I&rsquo;ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John&rsquo;s

-Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I thought

-I&rsquo;d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, but

-that&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ve done or know how to do. Something must have

-happened!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It begins to sound like it,&rdquo; said Thrush gravely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor

-accident. One moment!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still

-pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in

-the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering

-down the evil stairs next minute.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In less than an hour,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;he will be back

-with a list of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last

-forty-eight hours. I don&rsquo;t say there&rsquo;s much in it; your boy had

-probably some letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but

-it&rsquo;s worth trying.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is, indeed!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And while he is trying it,&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up

-as with a really great idea, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll greatly oblige me by having a

-whisky-and-soda in the first place.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No, thank you! I haven&rsquo;t had a bite all day. It would fly to my

-head.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s its job; that&rsquo;s where it&rsquo;s meant to

-fly,&rdquo; explained the convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with

-practised hand. Baited with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a

-flagging giant refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new

-acquaintance too well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I&rsquo;ve got you, Mr. Upton! My

-man begins his round by going to tell my pal I can&rsquo;t dine with him at

-all. Not a word, I beg! I&rsquo;ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins

-gets back, and in a taxi that won&rsquo;t be long.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But do you think you can do anything?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you give me time, I hope so,&rdquo; was the measured answer.

-&ldquo;But the needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it

-will take time. I&rsquo;m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a

-sixpenny solution for soft problems, don&rsquo;t come to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and repeated

-that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather reproachfully at

-Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton,

-because it&rsquo;s not much good if we&rsquo;ve got to keep the matter to

-ourselves. But is there anything distinctive about him besides the

-asthma?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Come! I call that a distinction in itself,&rdquo; said Mr. Thrush,

-smiling down his own unathletic waistcoat. &ldquo;But as a matter of fact,

-nothing could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for

-games.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing better, do you say?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Emphatically, from my point of view. It&rsquo;s harder to hide a

-man&rsquo;s asthma than to hide the man himself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never thought of that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that moment.

-The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an inscrutable stare of the

-marine eyes behind them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I suppose it has never affected his heart?&rdquo; he inquired

-nonchalantly; but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal

-perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I certainly never thought of his heart!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,&rdquo; said

-Thrush earnestly. &ldquo;On the other hand, I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if

-his asthma were to prove his best friend.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It owes him something!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know what he does for it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he

-seemed to have received some weeks before. &ldquo;He smokes, against his

-doctor&rsquo;s orders.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean tobacco?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;some stuff for asthma.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In cigarettes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know the name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have it here.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection after a

-precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in outstretched

-hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk, but the reading of

-the letter left him alive and alert to the last superfluous ounce.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But this is magnificent!&rdquo; he cried, with eyes as round as their

-glasses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t see why.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some French rubbish.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The boy has evidently been dependent on them?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It looks like it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And this man Bompas made him give them all up?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he has the impudence to say.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is it possible you don&rsquo;t see the importance of all this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard of these cigarettes before; they&rsquo;re an imported

-article; you can&rsquo;t get them everywhere, I&rsquo;ll swear! Your boy has

-got to rely on them; he&rsquo;s out of reach of the doctor who&rsquo;s

-forbidden them; he&rsquo;ll try to get them somewhere! If he&rsquo;s been

-trying in London, I&rsquo;ll find out where before I&rsquo;m twenty-four hours

-older!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how can you?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the

-possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A. V. M.!&rdquo; replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who on earth is he?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nobody; it&rsquo;s the principle on which I work.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A. V. M.?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it all no

-laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You divide things into two,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;and go on so

-dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer

-to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or Southern

-Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much longer ago than

-mine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In this case it&rsquo;s Chemists Who Do Sell D&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes

-and Chemists Who Don&rsquo;t. Then&mdash;Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and

-Chemists Who Do but Didn&rsquo;t! But we can probably improve on the old game

-by playing both rounds at once.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t quite follow,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,

-&ldquo;though there seems some method in the madness.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the method I&rsquo;ve got,&rdquo; rejoined Thrush

-frankly. &ldquo;But you shall see it working, for unless I&rsquo;m much

-mistaken this is Mullins back sooner than I expected.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired, though

-the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been the precursor of

-the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid round had included Charing

-Cross, St. Thomas&rsquo;s, St. George&rsquo;s, and the Royal Free; but he had

-telephoned besides to St. Mary&rsquo;s and St. Bartholomew&rsquo;s. At none of

-these institutions had a young gentleman of the name of Upton, or of unknown

-name, been admitted in the last forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as 

-sympathetically depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and

-he had one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his chin

-being in perpetual mourning for the day before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go, Mullins! I&rsquo;ve another job for you,&rdquo; said

-Eugene Thrush. &ldquo;Take the telephone directory and the London directory,

-and sit you down at my desk. Look up &lsquo;chemists&rsquo; under

-&lsquo;trades&rsquo;; there are pages of them. Work through the list with the

-telephone directory, and ring up every chemist who&rsquo;s on the telephone,

-beginning with the ones nearest in, to ask if he keeps d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of the first few who do; go round to them

-all in turn, and be back here at nine with a box from each. Complain to each of

-the difficulty of getting &rsquo;em elsewhere&mdash;say you wonder

-there&rsquo;s so little demand&mdash;and with any luck you should find out

-whether and to whom they&rsquo;ve sold any since Wednesday evening.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But surely that&rsquo;s the whole point?&rdquo; suggested the

-ironmaster.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the next point,&rdquo; said Thrush. &ldquo;The first is to

-divide the chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the

-Vegetables who don&rsquo;t. I should really like to play the next round myself,

-but Mullins must do something while we&rsquo;re out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;While we&rsquo;re out, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, you&rsquo;re going to step across into the Café Royal

-with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And what about your theatre?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance

-was a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins entrenched

-behind telephone and directories.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of tripe

-that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June; but I&rsquo;m

-not going to chuck the drama that&rsquo;s come to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good dinner

-that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to his own weight.

-His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or drinking than he knew

-the names of the people in diamonds and white waistcoats who stared at the

-distraught figure in the country clothes. It even escaped his observation that

-the obese Thrush was an unblushing gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy.

-The conscious repast of Mr. Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of

-Eugene Thrush, and of that conversation only such portions as exploited his

-professional theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand.

-He was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account of the

-murder in which he himself was only interested because his myrmidon happened to

-have discovered the body. What was the murder of some ragamuffin in Hyde Park

-to a man from the country who had lost his son?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how your theory can work there,&rdquo; he sighed, out

-of pure politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It should work all right,&rdquo; returned Thrush. &ldquo;You take an

-absolutely worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two

-motives: either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a

-menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he&rsquo;s taken your

-wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price of a

-bed on his indescribable person? He hasn&rsquo;t anything to bless himself

-with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh? So you whittle it

-down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your blade into the root of the

-matter.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his boldest

-statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt with the one

-subject on the poor man&rsquo;s mind. The cessation of his voice, however,

-caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he made a mental grab at the

-last phrase, and was astonished to find it germane to his own thoughts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the second time you&rsquo;ve mentioned luck, Mr.

-Thrush!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When was the first?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!

-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not seriously.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t believe in dreams, for example?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another question,&rdquo; said Thrush, his spectacles

-twinkling to colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. &ldquo;Why do you

-ask?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re a disbeliever it&rsquo;s no use my telling you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;m neither one thing nor the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of one,&rdquo; said Thrush, with a significant stress

-upon the verb; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a

-hundred years ago. The victim&rsquo;s mother dreamed three nights running that

-her missing daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the

-time. There <i>may</i> have been other cases.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very time

-at which something terrible has happened to that child?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Any amount of those.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The father&rsquo;s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his

-glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves in a

-more attentive stare.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you think they&rsquo;re all coincidences?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton

-hoarsely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some of them may be, but certainly not all,&rdquo; was the reply.

-&ldquo;That would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hardly like to tell you why I ask,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, much

-agitated; for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been dreaming about the boy?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren&rsquo;t

-tell her he had disappeared.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why? What was the dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That she saw him&mdash;and heard a shot.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A shot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had time to

-think.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She says she did hear one,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, &ldquo;and that she

-wasn&rsquo;t dreaming at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But when was this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Between six and seven yesterday morning.&rdquo; This time Thrush did not

-move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and again he

-was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence was complete.

-Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M. system, neither was

-Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions on the strength of one. He

-asked whether the boy was very fond of shooting in the holidays, as though that

-might have accounted for the dream, but his father was not aware that he had

-ever smelt powder in his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The

-tone of subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton&rsquo;s health (already

-mentioned as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a

-secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for

-compassion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then that accounts for it,&rdquo; said Thrush, when he had heard the

-whole sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.

-&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally

-fanciful, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion either

-way. I only say, don&rsquo;t think too much about that dream. And since you

-won&rsquo;t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the faithful

-Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr. Upton for

-one would not have recognised him as the same being. His sepulchral face was

-alight with news&mdash;it was the transformation of the undertaker&rsquo;s mute

-into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box of the d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes to show for his evening&rsquo;s work, and that chemist had declared

-it was the first he had sold for weeks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest&rsquo;s hand as soon

-as ever he dared.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You need a good night&rsquo;s rest, my dear sir, and it&rsquo;s no use

-climbing to my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you

-don&rsquo;t mind leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing

-tomorrow morning I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be

-some progress to report.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face still more

-strikingly illuminated.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I perceive.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This stump is the stump of a d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarette.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t smoke it, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who did?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for you to say, sir; but it&rsquo;s one of the little

-things I collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,

-yesterday morning in Hyde Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Near the actual place?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the strongest of

-the electric lamps.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />

-SECOND THOUGHTS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he felt that

-he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the nightmare of

-battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the engravings downstairs,

-instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame

-Tussaud&rsquo;s. The trouble was that he had seen the one and not the other,

-and what he had seen continued to haunt him as he lay awake, but quite horribly

-when he fell back into a doze. There was nothing nebulous about the vile place

-then; it was as light and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister

-figures in the panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read

-that they always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight.

-But that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman and

-terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their winding-sheets, from

-their  murderer&rsquo;s graves. Better by far their beastly faces, that you

-knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and screwed up his courage, and

-laid hands on one of the shorter figures that he could reach. It rocked stiffly

-in its place, a most palpable and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements

-from the hollow and unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not

-been there the other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as

-ill-mounted on high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of

-intelligent eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical

-characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army of

-murderers was a faithful model of himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that he had

-been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it had seemed in

-that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy shuddered till the bed

-shook under him. But after that he still lay on, facing himself as he had seen

-himself, and his deed as others must see it soon or late. Not the actual

-accident in the Park; but this hiding in the heart of London, this skulking

-among strangers, this leaving his own people to mourn him as the dead!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear to him

-before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and Horace, how good

-they had been to him at school, and how proud he had been of them! What would

-they think of him if he went on skulking like this? What would they have done

-in his place? Anything but lie low like that, thought Pocket, and resolved

-forthwith to play the game as preached and practised by his brothers. It was

-strange that he should have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this

-morning he saw it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass

-screen…To think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude

-as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the situation as

-well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him if he gave himself up,

-but anything might if he waited till he was caught. As for the consequences to

-his poor mother, surely in the end suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper

-into the slender cord of her life than the shock of the truth would cut.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy behaved

-characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in front of him,

-beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and ending in a blaze of

-wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face; meanwhile he lay in such peace

-and safety as it was only human to prolong  a little. That night, for all his

-moral innocence, he might lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed

-while he had one, especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The

-last consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little

-time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had suffered

-from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident in which he was

-nearly killed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My accident may have done the same for me,&rdquo; thought

-Pocket&mdash;and was bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking

-complacently of any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient

-punishment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the plain

-upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was to conjure

-uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his ferocious meerschaum,

-his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his arguments in favour of the course

-which Pocket had now determined to abandon. The boy fully realised that he had

-been given his chance, and had refused it. And of all the interviews before

-him, that with Dr. Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have

-given most to escape.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did escape, and

-did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no reason why he should

-involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession. Suppose he hailed the first

-cab he saw, and drove over to St. John&rsquo;s Wood to borrow money (they could

-scarcely refuse him that), and then took the first train home to tell his

-father everything in the first instance, that father would never hear of his

-incriminating a stranger who had befriended him according to his lights. He

-himself need never say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the

-tragedy, even if he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to

-the ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only

-suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to his

-breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that after a day and

-a night he should still be in total ignorance of his whereabouts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the sunny

-little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old discoloured walls

-divided them from each other and from the gardens of a parallel block of bigger

-houses, whose slates and chimneys towered above the intervening trees. The

-street in front of those houses was completely hidden, but the hum of its

-traffic travelled pleasantly to the ear, and  there were other reassuring

-sights and sounds. In one of the contiguous gardens a very small boy was

-wheeling a doll&rsquo;s perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm

-gravel reminded Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally

-trim lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the green

-spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the curiously countrified

-smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a still stronger reminiscence of

-his father&rsquo;s garden, where his own old pony pulled the machine in leather

-shoes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to them.

-Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing almost as

-well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket could not bear to

-listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as quietly as he could. He had

-almost resolved to slip out without a word, whatever else he did, if the

-opportunity offered. It simply never occurred to him, until he made the

-discovery, that anybody would dare to lock him in his room!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek to do

-it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to himself, was

-rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told him he was on the wrong

-side of the door for applying mere bodily strength, that either he must raise

-an ignominious shout for freedom or else achieve it for himself by way of the

-window. Unathletic as he always had been, he was sportsman enough not to

-hesitate an instant between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of

-the window, saw his way down at a glance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony over the

-bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the least possible

-noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet till he had but a few

-feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a very few minutes to one as

-excitedly determined as Pocket had become on finding himself a prisoner.

-Thought they would lock him in, did they? They would just find out their

-mistake! It was exactly the same mood in which he had scaled the upright

-palings in defiance of the policeman who said he might not sleep in the Park.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old

-campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which argued either

-a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic service; it would have

-furnished scent for no short paper-chase. Otherwise the room was tidy enough,

-and  so eloquent of Baumgartner himself, in its uncompromising severity, that

-Pocket breathed more freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely

-safe, for he had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the

-pegs hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected by

-his host.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to lose a

-moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had made an

-interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being played. He

-heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on the balcony up

-above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been. It was that Phillida,

-with the large dark eyes, and she was playing something that Lettice sometimes

-played, and very nearly, though naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have

-said that it was Mendelssohn, or Chopin, &ldquo;or something,&rdquo; for his

-love of music was greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music

-that detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him

-kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he went, and

-the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been locked in, and he

-had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet not a sound&mdash;well, she

-would not think the less of him at  all events, and so they would part for

-ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile instinct for romance was not to be

-stifled at such a stimulating moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she

-knew all; she might know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it

-was the game to say goodbye.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her large

-eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they blazed at the

-intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she already knew the truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry for starting you,&rdquo; he apologised. &ldquo;I just

-came in to say goodbye.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To say goodbye!&rdquo; she gasped.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve got to go. I&rsquo;m afraid the doctor&rsquo;s

-out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, he is. Won&rsquo;t you wait?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood aside,

-to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn took her stand,

-back to the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be very sorry to miss you,&rdquo; she said more firmly, and

-with a smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m very sorry to miss him,&rdquo; said Pocket, 

-unconscientiously enough for anybody. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been most awfully good

-to me, and I wish you&rsquo;d tell him how grateful I am.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t believe me,&rdquo; the girl said dryly,

-&ldquo;if he finds you gone.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go&mdash;really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is.

-Do you mind giving him one other message?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As many as you like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, you might tell him from me that I&rsquo;ll give myself away, but

-I&rsquo;ll never give him! He&rsquo;ll know what I mean.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the last

-moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the boy who helped

-to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through an indefensible bit of

-boyish braggadocio.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the

-worst way about it by locking me into my room!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How did you get out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How do you suppose?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard anything!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I took care you shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in the end.

-After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl stood up to him

-like a little heroine.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sorry, but I can&rsquo;t let you go, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t let me?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I really am sorry&mdash;but you must wait to see my uncle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older than

-himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his way

-past&mdash;but he was not the fellow to do it&mdash;and that maddened him,

-because he felt she knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, very well!&rdquo; he cried, sarcastically. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t

-let me out that way, I&rsquo;ll go this!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the garden;

-but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she held him firmly

-by the hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you do I&rsquo;ll blow a police-whistle!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We

-have one&mdash;it won&rsquo;t take an instant. You shan&rsquo;t come out the

-front way, and you&rsquo;ll be stopped if you climb the wall!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?&rdquo; he gasped out

-bitterly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Never mind what I take you for!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re treating me as though I were one!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to stay and see my uncle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your

-uncle, and you too!&rdquo; But that was only half true, even then while he was

-struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been another boy. He

-could not strike her; but that was the only line he drew, for she would grapple

-with him, and release himself he must. Over went walnut whatnots, and out came

-mutterings that made him hotter than ever for very shame. But he did not hate

-her even for what she made him say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the

-dreadful doctor whose will she was obeying; and both were at their highest

-pitch when the door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But

-it was a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured

-or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt. It

-turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear it only

-increased.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Leave us, Phillida,&rdquo; said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in

-tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo; he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut

-it after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />

-ON PAROLE</h2>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So,&rdquo; said Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;you not only try to play me

-false, but you seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do

-you break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young lady

-who has shown you nothing but kindness!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought the

-violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater cad than

-ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his honour as best he

-could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to change his mind about what

-was after all his own affair. But that was precisely what Baumgartner would not

-allow for a moment; it was just as much his affair as accessory after the fact,

-and in accordance with their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could

-only rejoin that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I daresay not!&rdquo; said Baumgartner sardonically. &ldquo;It would

-have been dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you

-agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never so far

-as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your eyes open, and I

-left you last night under the impression that you were going to lie on it like

-a man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why did you lock me in?&rdquo; cried Pocket, pouncing on the one

-point on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor

-flattered him with a slight delay before replying.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There were so many reasons,&rdquo; he said, with a sigh; &ldquo;you

-mustn&rsquo;t forget that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might

-have had you falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I

-was more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken you.

-I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to yourself without

-my assistance, and that you would get brooding over what has happened until it

-drove you to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I tell you it&rsquo;s no

-good brooding or looking back; take one more look ahead, and what do you see if

-you have your way? Humiliating notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences

-in your own family, certain punishment for me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The consequences at home,&rdquo; groaned Pocket, &ldquo;will be bad

-enough whatever we do. I can&rsquo;t bear to think of them! If only they had

-taken Bompas&rsquo;s advice, and sent me round the world in the

-<i>Seringapatam!</i> I should have been at sea by this time, and out of

-harm&rsquo;s way for the next three months.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The <i>Seringapatam?</i>&rdquo; repeated the doctor. &ldquo;I never

-heard of her.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t; she&rsquo;s only a sailing vessel, but she carries

-passengers and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas&rsquo;s, who wanted to send me

-with him for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn&rsquo;t let me go.

-She sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If I

-could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I could go out

-in her still, and that would be the last of me for years and years!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had come,

-and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy&rsquo;s brain; and

-he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it up in a single

-nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures, bearded like the pard,

-another &ldquo;dead man come to life,&rdquo; after about as many years as the

-dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked on as though following

-the same wild train of thought, as though it did not seem so wild to him, but

-extremely interesting; so that Pocket was quite disappointed when he shook his

-head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young fellow!

-Why, they&rsquo;d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you&rsquo;d gasp out your

-whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my fellow;

-you&rsquo;ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with me till

-we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you say you

-won&rsquo;t, I say I&rsquo;ll make you&mdash;to save you from yourself&mdash;to

-save us both.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed and

-final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor&rsquo;s power to

-make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the nearer

-he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again. So reasoned

-Pocket from the face and voice now dominating him more powerfully than ever;

-but it is an interesting fact that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed

-him as it might have done. There was actually an element of relief in his

-discomfiture. He had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that

-responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour delayed.

-And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort in such delay,

-which was all the greater because unsought by him; it was a comfort that he had

-both ways, as the saying is, and from all points of view but that of his poor

-people wondering what had become of him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only they knew!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;then I shouldn&rsquo;t care.

-Let me write to one of them! My mother needn&rsquo;t know; but I must write to

-one of the others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister

-would keep my secret; she&rsquo;d play the game all right, I promise you! And

-I&rsquo;d play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should have to

-inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin edge of consent. In

-the end it was arranged that Pocket should write what he liked to his sister

-only, and that Baumgartner should read and enclose it in a covering letter, so

-that everybody need not know it was a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner

-was to have it posted from St. Martin&rsquo;s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of

-a locality which he now refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And

-in return for the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word

-and sacred promise on the following points.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to show

-himself for a moment at the windows back or front.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On no account was he to confide in the doctor&rsquo;s niece Phillida, to give

-her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London

-mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his first

-meeting with Baumgartner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about

-yourself the better.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But what can she think?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may

-bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise in the

-ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to think is no

-affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and she had your

-doctor&rsquo;s orders not to let you out of the house in his absence.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She obeyed them like a little brick!&rdquo; muttered Pocket, with a

-wistful heaviness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She did what she was told; think no more about it,&rdquo; said the

-doctor. &ldquo;Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet

-rather than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play

-the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures played it at

-Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch. Look at this one

-here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where we come to bayonets and

-the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian Guard! See the sheet-lightning

-pouring into us from the walls of St. Privat! Look at that fellow with his head

-bound up, and this one with no head to bind. That&rsquo;s meant for our colonel

-on the white horse. See him hounding us on to hell! And there&rsquo;s a drummer

-drumming as though we could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to

-ribbons, you see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my

-young fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!&rdquo; Baumgartner

-might have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of a

-responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and to wake

-the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the heart of a

-soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was only when he found

-himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless brought his innocent deed

-home to him as nothing had done before, that the artificial frost broke up, and

-real tears ran with his ink. He begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him,

-still less to be anxious about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret

-for him, he wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction.

-He was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But

-something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would

-bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from ever

-seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others to which it

-led, that were literally blotted with the writer&rsquo;s tears. But just then

-he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who could never show

-himself at home or at school again. And it required the spell of 

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s presence to make the prospect such as could be borne with

-the least degree of visible manhood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways younger

-than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in some few. He was

-old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may be imaginative and still

-have a level head, but it is least likely in one&rsquo;s teens. The particular

-temperament does not need a label; but none who know it when they see it, and

-who see it here, will be surprised to learn that this emotional writer for one

-was enormously relieved and lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off

-his mind and hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a kindly

-gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over the second

-leaf.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This is not for me to read!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather run

-the risk of trusting your discretion.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped the hand

-that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the address, all openly

-before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to the nearest messenger office

-to despatch the missive to the General Post Office, ostensibly to catch a

-particular post, his prisoner  would not have decamped for a hundred pounds,

-and the doctor knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket was only

-less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had caused, than when they

-were both at table and he unable to say another word to express his sorrow for

-the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She spoke to him once or twice as though

-nothing of the kind had happened, but he could scarcely look her in the face.

-Otherwise both meals interested him; they were German in their order, a light

-supper following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they

-both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much taken with

-the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived smoking hot in tiers. It

-provided a further train of speculation when he remembered that he had never

-seen a servant in the house, and that the steps had struck him as dirty, and

-the doctor&rsquo;s waste-paper basket as very full. Pocket determined to make

-his own bed next morning. He had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the

-young girl was clearing away, for the doctor took him back into the

-drawing-room after supper; and later, when they returned for a game of

-billiards on the toy board, which they placed between them on the dining-table,

-both Phillida and the fragments had disappeared.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy&rsquo;s

-simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate one; his

-brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his hand obey, as

-though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep between life and death.

-It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate concentration; even the

-Turk&rsquo;s head was only lit to be laid aside as an obstruction.

-Pocket&rsquo;s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the fortune that accrues

-on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy forgot everything when he

-actually succeeded in the last game. They had played very late for him, and he

-slept without stirring until Baumgartner came to his room about eight

-o&rsquo;clock next morning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first thing he

-did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one like a flag to

-wake him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the

-stick!&rdquo; he cried, with fierce amusement; &ldquo;it only remains to be

-seen whether they succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack

-too. Really, it&rsquo;s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery

-to watch the smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;May I see?&rdquo; asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these

-remarks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;here&rsquo;s the

-journalistic wonder of the age, and there you are in its most important column.

-I brought it up for you to see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded type and

-the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first place, that no arrest

-had yet been made; but it was confidently asserted (by the omniscient butt of

-Teutonic sallies) that the police, wisely guided by the hint in

-yesterday&rsquo;s issue (which Pocket had not seen), were already in possession

-of a most important clue. In subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real

-homicide was informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally

-different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had been a

-certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in the previous

-month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had been found shot under

-circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide that a coroner&rsquo;s jury had

-actually returned a verdict to that effect. There appeared, however, to have

-been an element of doubt in the case. This the scribe of the leaded type sought

-to remove by begging the question from beginning to end. It had not been a case

-of suicide at all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde

-Park, to which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been

-shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged to one

-neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the community. A pothouse

-acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but the suggestion was that the link

-lay a good deal deeper than that, and that the two dead men were known to the

-police, who were busy searching for a third party of equal notoriety in

-connection with both murders.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,&rdquo; said the

-boy, looking up at last. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a murder, either; neither was

-the first, according to the coroner&rsquo;s jury, who surely ought to

-know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One would have thought so,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, with his sardonic

-smile; &ldquo;but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you suppose there&rsquo;s a word of truth in what he says? I

-don&rsquo;t mean about Charlton or&mdash;or poor Holdaway,&rdquo; said Pocket,

-wincing over his victim&rsquo;s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper.

-&ldquo;But do you think the police are really after anybody?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Baumgartner. &ldquo;What does it

-matter?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I

-did!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would alter the whole thing,&rdquo; he mumbled significantly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rdquo; returned the doctor, with grim good-nature.

-&ldquo;The little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed

-another mare&rsquo;s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm

-can come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only two

-living souls who can&rsquo;t account for their time at that of this unfortunate

-affair.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin under

-the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light, always

-encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his silence, which

-had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to keep his feelings under

-control, to set his face and his teeth against the regular reactions of his

-coward conscience and his fickle will. And once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone

-for an unintentional minor by striking a rousing chord on the very

-heart-strings of the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Eight o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; cried the magician, with a glance at his

-watch and an ear towards the open  window. &ldquo;The postman&rsquo;s knock

-from door to door down every street in town&mdash;house to house from one end

-of your British Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being

-delivered at this very moment&mdash;eh, my poor young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />

-HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr. Baumgartner

-heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius for headlines, and

-the delicious expediency of all its views, which enabled its editorial column

-to face all ways and bow where it listed, in the universal joint of popularity,

-were points of irresistible appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour.

-He read the paper with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal

-chuckle between the sheets.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the paper

-came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious matter. It said

-exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park murder: that the murderer

-would prove to be the author of a similar crime, committed in the previous

-month of March, when the Upton boy must have been safe at school. If that were

-so, it  was manifestly absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely

-happened to synchronise with that of his own disappearance&mdash;absurd, even

-if he were shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere

-about the time of its perpetration.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established overnight. It

-was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile conviction of his class, had

-jumped on the slender evidence of the asthma cigarette alone; but before

-midnight Thrush himself had been forced to admit its extreme probability. There

-was a medicine cork as well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been

-found very much nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a

-shrub on the other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both

-discoveries, who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night,

-to ask if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with

-their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just as well

-but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens, rung up in

-their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the doctor&rsquo;s

-prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and, within half an

-hour, had positively identified the cork found by Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was

-still sticky with the very stuff which had put poor Pocket asleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection between a

-harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He resisted the idea

-on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in argument with his now

-strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide jump to a detestable

-conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the width of the jump. The cork

-and the cigarette might be stepping-stones, but at least one more was wanted to

-justify the slightest suspicion against the missing boy. Let it be shown that

-he had carried firearms on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join

-his satellite on the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the

-fact that he made no mention of the boy&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s dream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an enthusiastic

-convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist, and consequently an

-irritable observer of the saturnine countenance which darkened to a tinge of

-distinct amusement over the leaded type.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So you don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much in it, Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t say there was anything at all, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland

-Walk?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The coroner&rsquo;s jury did&mdash;in spite of the coroner&mdash;but it

-may come before another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the

-medical evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm&rsquo;s length. That

-isn&rsquo;t the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was

-nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price of one;

-he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before. The very same

-point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he ever had a revolver in

-his life? His father tells me explicitly that he never had; I happened to ask

-the question,&rdquo; added Thrush, without explaining in what connection.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone,

-&ldquo;you talk about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman

-who write for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the very

-faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his spectacles without one

-at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,

-however,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;it  may be by fair means, or it may be by

-foul, but they have a way of getting there before the others start.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do it this

-time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring himself to believe in

-two separate mysteries, at one and the same time and place, with no sort of

-connection between them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That would be too much of a coincidence,&rdquo; said Mullins,

-sententiously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked at him for a moment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But life&rsquo;s one long collection of coincidences! That&rsquo;s what

-I&rsquo;m always telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else.

-Don&rsquo;t you call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet

-their death at the very hour of the morning when you&rsquo;re on your way over

-here from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which

-you&rsquo;ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the nerve

-to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other morning, and been

-mixed up in that affair because you are in this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admit I&rsquo;m mixed up in anything,&rdquo; replied

-Mullins, with some warmth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to the

-absurd, Mullins; you didn&rsquo;t take me literally, did you? It&rsquo;s no 

-use talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I&rsquo;m always

-ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a pistol,

-Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must be roaring

-inside for yours. The man who&rsquo;s been knocking up chemists all night is

-the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then mine, and after that

-you can tell me how you got on.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his best,

-it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a few

-minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum should have

-swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins went about his business with

-his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was yet another man the moment he was

-alone. His face was a sunny background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed

-plans, one after the other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the

-sky was clear whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table

-there was not a cloud.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,&rdquo;

-resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; &ldquo;how many have you done,

-and how many have we still to do between us?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as

-neat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rung up when you were out at dinner&mdash;seventeen. Kept Cigarettes

-d&rsquo;Auvergne&mdash;one. That was Thornycroft&rsquo;s in Shaftesbury Avenue,

-where I&rsquo;d just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night

-I knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of

-Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A matter of life or death.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in

-New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Much demand in any of those quarters?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly

-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know him; so he&rsquo;s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?&rdquo;

-murmured Thrush, to his buttered egg. &ldquo;But has one of these apothecaries

-sold a box of d&rsquo;Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Two have,&rdquo; said Mullins, &ldquo;but one was to Mr. Pringle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How did you worm that out, Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody

-who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we were only

-trying them on hearsay.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only

-consumer?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on

-Thursday to a doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you get the name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Baumgartner, I expect you mean!&rdquo; cried Thrush, straightening a wry

-face to spell the name. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though

-I can&rsquo;t say when or where. What&rsquo;s his address?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn&rsquo;t. Suppose he

-thought I&rsquo;d be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he

-was.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;For d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t inquire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My good fellow, that&rsquo;s the whole point! I&rsquo;ll go myself and

-ask for the asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he

-never had them before, that&rsquo;ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well.

-But I&rsquo;m certain I know his name; you might look it up in <i>Who&rsquo;s

-Who</i>, and read out what they say.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at barbaric

-mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr. Baumgartner had fought

-in his martial youth; the various Universities whereat he had studied

-psychology and theology in an evident reaction of later life; even the titles

-of his subsequent publications, which contained some long English words, but

-were given in German too. A copious contribution concluded with the information

-that photography and billiards were the doctor&rsquo;s recreations, and that he

-belonged to a polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St.

-James&rsquo;s which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Parthenon!&rdquo; said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve.

-&ldquo;But what about his address?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no getting hold of that address,&rdquo; said Mullins,

-demoralised and perspiring. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not given here either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but

-I&rsquo;m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of <i>Peripatetic

-Psychology</i> deserves to have asthma all his nights, and <i>After this

-Life</i> smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won&rsquo;t build

-on Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we&rsquo;ll go through the chemists of London

-with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away, when a

-stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton with  a

-panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but he denied that

-he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at Mullins, and fell to

-abusing London and the Londoners, but City men above all others, till Thrush

-and he should be alone together. The incidental diatribe was no mere padding,

-either; it was the sincere utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody

-in all London, he declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared

-a twopenny curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the

-present company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of

-the boy&rsquo;s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But

-the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had been to

-see his boy&rsquo;s friends&rsquo; father, &ldquo;a swine called Knaggs,&rdquo;

-that very morning at his house in St. John&rsquo;s Wood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather early, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; suggested Thrush, whose manner was

-more softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was

-slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Early!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I lost my boy, and

-wasn&rsquo;t it these Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to

-have gone to them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your

-dinner; for I don&rsquo;t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of

-your  hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me

-afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my own; but

-I&rsquo;d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant then, so I

-thought I&rsquo;d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting till this

-morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush seized the

-opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in the street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I showed indecent haste,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but Mullins

-and I had our night&rsquo;s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his

-boots off since you saw him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an

-unsuspected devotion; &ldquo;then I&rsquo;ll say what I&rsquo;ve got to say in

-front of him, for you&rsquo;re both my friends, and I&rsquo;ll unsay all I said

-just now. Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside

-myself about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug

-little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his

-breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as himself, and

-saying &lsquo;Rather early!&rsquo;&mdash;just as you set me off by saying

-yourself a minute ago.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him! I

-could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but what could he

-do? London was a large place, and &lsquo;we Londoners&rsquo; were busy men. I

-told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too busy to keep an eye

-on boys who were friends of our boys. He said London life was different; and I

-said so I could see. They never had spare beds at a moment&rsquo;s notice, much

-less for boys who might set fire to the house or&mdash;or shoot

-themselves&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood

-glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad&rsquo;s

-death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however, looked so

-genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the face of Mullins

-also attracted less attention.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had he anything to shoot himself with?&rdquo; inquired Thrush, in a

-curiously gentle voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He had, after all!&rdquo; he croaked. &ldquo;Little as I dreamt it

-yesterday, my unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in

-his life before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his

-pocket!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had he brought it from school?&rdquo; asked Thrush, with a covert frown

-at the transfigured Mullins.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters, with their

-father&rsquo;s opinion of pawnbrokers&rsquo; shops as resorts for young

-schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and

-guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted without

-fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose only comment was

-that it behoved him all the more to do something to redeem the capital in the

-other&rsquo;s eyes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!&rdquo; was the only

-rejoinder, in a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was

-the first he had heard about the dream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew

-before. Yet I will own now,&rdquo; exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins&rsquo;s

-bright eye, &ldquo;that the coincidence will be tremendous if there&rsquo;s

-nothing in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But only half the coincidence was present in the father&rsquo;s mind; no

-thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy; and to

-hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his fretted nerves

-could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for a

-pessimist&mdash;apologised&mdash;and humbly entreated him to take a more

-hopeful view.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal

-one!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public

-mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish grins and

-nods behind the poor father&rsquo;s back. Thrush looked at both men with the

-troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being&mdash;looked and frowned

-again&mdash;frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant, the

-trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost blinding

-flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light; enough for Eugene

-Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit as brightly as it lit him

-onward to its solution.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in his face,

-as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr. Upton about the

-missing boy. What was his character? what its chief points? Was he a boy with

-the moral courage of his acts? Would he face their consequences like a man?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never knew him tell a lie in his life,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,

-&ldquo;either to save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of

-their young skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most

-conscientious of them all, and I hear that&rsquo;s what they say of him at

-school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue, though a

-very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up himself; and this

-time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own accord, with a dejected

-undertaking to be at his hotel when he was wanted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the look of our friend,&rdquo; remarked Thrush,

-looking hard at Mullins when at last they were alone. &ldquo;He shapes none too

-well for the strain he&rsquo;s got to bear; if he cracks up there&rsquo;ll be a

-double tragedy, if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare

-quickly, Mullins, or we may catch him too late.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a few

-minutes before; he took no notice of it now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find your man,&rdquo; said Mullins significantly,

-&ldquo;the very moment that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Meaning they&rsquo;re the same person?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To be sure.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Surely, sir, it&rsquo;s as plain as a pikestaff now?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not to me, Mullins&mdash;not to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then who do you think has done it, sir?&rdquo; inquired Mullins, in

-deferential derision.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope

-to get arrested within another hour!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw, black as a

-crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy collar.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re actually thinking of arresting some one else?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am&mdash;with your permission, Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled from his

-words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />

-BOY AND GIRL</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.

-Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the newspaper

-with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in quicker time than the

-other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of the house was all alone in

-the dining-room, where Pocket found her boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had

-her to himself for several seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither

-grace nor tact in what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but

-the penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the

-doctor&rsquo;s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given time

-to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he liked his egg

-boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled when he told her it was

-&ldquo;done to a shake.&rdquo; Dr. Baumgartner, on the other hand, scowled upon

-them both until observation or reflection had convinced him that no promises

-had been broken and no confidences exchanged.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; for Pocket

-hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up to the young girl

-under the doctor&rsquo;s nose. He talked to her about books in the other room.

-He had the impertinence to invite her into the dining-room for a game of

-billiards, but the sense next moment to include her uncle in an amended form of

-more becoming suggestion. Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent

-most of the time with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The

-boy and girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,

-though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on him. But

-she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was only when she 

-began to question him about his special vocabulary, that Baumgartner looked on

-for a little, and put in his word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You see he still believes in his public school,&rdquo; said he to

-Phillida, in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the

-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should think I did!&rdquo; cried Pocket, and did a little loyal

-boasting about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until

-memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve o&rsquo;clock,

-and a summer&rsquo;s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only your verses

-to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before you went up to

-dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday afternoon! A match on the

-Upper, where you could lie on your rug and watch the game you couldn&rsquo;t

-play; call-over at the match; ices and lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and

-for Saturday supper anything you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen

-and put piping hot at your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely

-by writing your name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside!

-It was not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the whole

-full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows, that he had

-lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal came in smoking from 

-the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself again, as a boy will be; after

-all, they knew about him at home by this time, their worst fears were allayed,

-and in the end it would all come right. In the end he would be sitting in his

-own old place at home, instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling

-them everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and

-Horace listening to every word&mdash;much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to

-something now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she

-listened. Pocket did both in his turn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming nearer with

-their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and ran outside without

-his hat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the doctor.

-He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn to a single

-raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed at once where they

-had left off before breakfast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I forgive you,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;It was I began

-it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Began what?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Our row yesterday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket now.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about it,&rdquo; he said with superfluous

-candour, his ear still on the street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her voice made him remember better. &ldquo;I hope to goodness I didn&rsquo;t

-hurt you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must have thought me mad!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a slight but most significant pause.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I never shall again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you did!&rdquo; he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young

-faces were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no

-nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and indignant

-shame on hers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You really are at school?&rdquo; she whispered, not increduously, but as

-one seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had

-thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved school

-was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate with one

-raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, &ldquo;Park

-murder&mdash;arrest! &rsquo;Rest o&rsquo; de Park murderer! Park

-murder&mdash;Park murder&mdash;arrest!&rdquo; And Pocket sprang up from the

-table in a state that swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and trembling, in

-pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep; but the

-doctor&rsquo;s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly seated

-when the doctor entered&mdash;without any paper at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s that murder the papers are all exploiting,&rdquo; he

-explained benignly. &ldquo;They were shouting out something about an arrest;

-you would hear them, I daresay. But it&rsquo;s the usual swindle; the police

-are merely hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the

-scoundrel took his paper back!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors

-recalled those of &ldquo;your vermin press itself&rdquo;; the association was

-wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English boy was

-either dense or indifferent, and Phillida&rsquo;s great eyes were in some other

-world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous scrutiny, and suddenly

-cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared there was a concert at the

-Albert Hall, where &ldquo;the most popular and handsome pair in England&rdquo;

-(the inverted commas were in the doctor&rsquo;s sneer) were being welcomed on

-their return from the ends of the earth. He had intended going to hear what

-they could do; but Phillida should go instead; she was not past the ballad

-stage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not conceal her

-recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of her; her uncle called a

-taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off the premises in the frock she

-had been wearing all day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, returning with a scowl, &ldquo;what the devil

-were you two talking about while my back was turned?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yesterday,&rdquo; replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his

-heart beat fast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about yesterday?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Our scuffle in the other room.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;I found out something; she didn&rsquo;t tell me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What did you find out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That you let her think me mad!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in monstrous

-earnest. He might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own

-reproachful face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it

-did not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said she would think I was a patient.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly! A mental case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You had no business to make me out mad,&rdquo; persisted Pocket, with

-dogged valour.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that

-you&rsquo;ll continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday

-when I was out. It&rsquo;s no good shaking your head at me; listen to

-reason,&rdquo; continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. &ldquo;And

-try, my good young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have

-some consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again

-put gently but clearly in the wrong.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And I should like to know,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;what good it does her

-to think she&rsquo;s associating with a lunatic?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,&rdquo; was the

-suave reply. &ldquo;I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of

-such an expression, even in jest. It&rsquo;s as ugly as it&rsquo;s ridiculous

-in your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the horrid

-term in all sobriety.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I heard more than that,&rdquo; returned Pocket. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve

-arrested somebody!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought I told you there was no truth in that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort

-was a precocious inspiration.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, my young fellow,&rdquo; said the doctor, after one of his wise

-pauses, &ldquo;and what if it was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t lie long.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the same

-measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him without a word for

-the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of sudden and implacable

-animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of sight, yet working as though the

-teeth were being ground behind them; the crow&rsquo;s footed face flushed up,

-and the crow&rsquo;s feet were no more; it was as though age was swallowed in

-that flood of speechless passion till the whole man was no older than the fiery

-eyes that blazed upon the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the

-complete control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other

-room till you know your own mind again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know it now, unless they release that man,&rdquo; said Pocket, through

-his teeth, although they chattered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of

-clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more patience!

-Think of your own friends, and give them time too.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If the last allusion was to the lad&rsquo;s letter, due in Leicestershire that

-morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner&rsquo;s last words. If he meant

-himself to be included among Pocket&rsquo;s friends, there was food for thought

-in the suggestion that a man of the doctor&rsquo;s obvious capacity was not

-idle in the boy&rsquo;s best interests. Pocket was made to feel rather ashamed

-of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the concentrated fury of the look

-which had not been weakened by infuriate words; and the recollection remained

-as an excuse, as well as a menace, in his mind. He had time enough to think it

-over. Dr. Baumgartner smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back

-of the house. The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but

-eventually took the doctor at his word about a book.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was certainly so to

-some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His library  was singularly

-small for an intellectual man who wrote himself, and a majority of the volumes

-were in languages which no public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of

-the English books many were on military subjects, some few anthropological;

-there were photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot

-or yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had

-probably been labelled &ldquo;occult&rdquo; in their last bookseller&rsquo;s

-list. Boismont on <i>Hallucinations</i> was one of these; it was the book for

-Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on

-somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was something to

-find that he was far from being the only harmless creature who had committed a

-diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several cases was one of another boy

-who had made an equally innocent and yet determined attempt on his own father.

-But there was something peculiar in poor Pocket&rsquo;s case, something that

-distinguished it from any of those cited in the book, and he was still

-ferreting for its absolute fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected

-her. Boismont had made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the

-girl, too, appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her

-concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her  uncle,

-who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was himself in

-mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world like any ordinary

-trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, the man quizzing them and

-her, and the boy standing up for one that his sister sang at home, when a

-metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the conversation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of their

-almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still before Pocket

-realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No letters were delivered

-at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard at the door before. Even in his

-excitement, however, with its stunning recrudescence of every reality, its

-instantaneous visions of his people or the police, there was room for a measure

-of disgust when the girl got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to

-the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a huge fat man,&rdquo; whispered Phillida, on her return to

-the big room at the back of the house. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s his card.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thrush!&rdquo; muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he

-glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression whatever. It was

-plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once it must be done, and

-done  quickly&mdash;with both doors open and the visitor&rsquo;s very movements

-audible on the steps. To the door the doctor must go, and went, shutting that

-one pointedly behind him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The young creatures, looking in each other&rsquo;s eyes, listened for raised

-voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too low to

-reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound of footsteps

-in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer and an inner door in

-quick succession.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taken him into the dining-room,&rdquo; murmured Phillida.

-&ldquo;Who can it be?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he any friends?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.&rdquo;

-Her great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a

-blank screen takes a shadow. &ldquo;I wonder if it&rsquo;s about that!&rdquo;

-she whispered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at

-table.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating

-now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why should it be?&rdquo; asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand the question.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that true?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Upton,&rdquo; she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were

-both instinctively adopting, &ldquo;you know now what I thought about you at

-first. I won&rsquo;t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could

-hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your

-being here. I can&rsquo;t ask my uncle&mdash;he tells me nothing&mdash;but

-there&rsquo;s something I can and must ask you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing

-happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the Park he

-goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say what I want

-to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything points to it;

-especially the way he ran out for that paper&mdash;and hid the truth when he

-came in!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked up at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know the truth.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;About the arrest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you&rsquo;d

-gone.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not before?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t tax him about it in front of you,&rdquo; he muttered,

-looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; the boy said hoarsely; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t ask

-me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you know who did it. I can see you do.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was nobody you care about,&rdquo; he mumbled, hoarser than before,

-and his head lower.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She stopped aghast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say another word&mdash;and you won&rsquo;t say another to

-me!&rdquo; he added, a bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her

-it had been an accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to

-Baumgartner not to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it

-yet.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know me,&rdquo; she whispered, and for a moment her hand

-lay warm in his; &ldquo;trust me! I&rsquo;m your friend in spite of all

-you&rsquo;ve said&mdash;or done!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the intruder; before

-that he had been first amazed and then relieved to hear the piano in the

-drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear had heard of either boy or girl

-during his absence.  Yet the boy was not standing over the piano, as he might

-have been, for Phillida was trying to recall one of the concert songs he said

-his sister sang. Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a

-troubled face, which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively

-to meet the doctor&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but stood

-beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done something

-very clever indeed.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />

-BEFORE THE STORM</h2>

-

-<p>

-Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally spend

-one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the theatre at night;

-but at Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s there was little to distinguish the seventh day

-from the other six. The passover of the postman, that boon to residents and

-grievance of the traveller, was a normal condition in the dingy house of no

-address. More motor-horns were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic;

-the sound of church bells came as well through the open windows; then the

-street-door shut, and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it

-opened and shut again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as

-though they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner pottered

-about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had seen it first;

-the Turk&rsquo;s head perspired from internal and external heat, but its rich

-yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather with a red geranium which

-the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole of his black alpaca jacket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew what she

-could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature conservatory were

-also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory interest in them, obviously on

-her account. It was obvious at least to Pocket Upton. He saw all these things,

-and what they meant. He was not without his little gifts of observation and

-deduction. He noticed the difference in Baumgartner&rsquo;s voice when he

-addressed his niece, the humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he

-thought he saw a reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been

-none to see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had

-seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning.  But now

-it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of kindness against

-these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her endure them with a better

-grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to him, she could not have made

-sweeter amends than she did by many an unobtrusive little office. And she

-exchanged no more confidences with poor Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was a

-strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of

-life&rsquo;s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before

-or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his

-spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe.

-There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the

-removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become interested on

-the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer lying about the room as he had left

-it. There was a gap in its place in the shelf. The book had been taken away

-from him; it made him feel as though he were back again at his very first

-dame&rsquo;s school.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They were more

-mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you down the hill at

-the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical; and Pocket saw and heard

-himself puffing up the opposite hill to take his place for chapel call-over in

-the school quad. The fellows would be forming in squads there now, all in their

-Sunday tails or Eton jackets as the case might be; of course Pocket was in

-tails, though still rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or

-their rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind&rsquo;s eye. Then came the cool

-and spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and rows

-of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own, giving a swing to

-chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How real it all was to him,

-and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the sunny room with the battle

-engravings over the book-cases, and the walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr.

-Baumgartner in and out in his alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for

-a walk with Blundell minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and

-got it over. And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and

-apple-pie with cloves in it at Spearman&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s meals certainly

-provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the portable

-contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor praised without a

-single patriotic reservation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Italy is a country where one can live,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Not that

-you must understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young

-fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a Sunday. No

-organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German bands which we in

-Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman every hour of the day, and

-no gaolbirds crying false news down the streets.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker&rsquo;s eye, but found it fixed

-on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to say something

-quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the actual remark.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,&rdquo; explained

-the doctor. &ldquo;I give out no other address; then you only get your letters

-when you want them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you often go there?&rdquo; the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly

-wishing he would go that afternoon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not when I have visitors,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a smiling

-bow. &ldquo;And I look upon my patients in that light,&rdquo; he added, with

-benevolent but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more

-so than if she had still believed it to be the truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece took

-refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an hour or more.

-He went through her music, and asked for everything that Lettice played or

-sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the makings of a pianist. The

-boy&rsquo;s enthusiasm for the things he knew made her play then as well as

-ever he had heard them played. Even the doctor, dozing in the big chair with

-eyes that were never quite shut, murmured his approval more than once; he loved

-his Mendelssohn and Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and

-others that the boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in

-the same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been

-there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and once or

-twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be the boy who had

-killed a man, however innocently, three days before! Could it be he whom the

-police might come and carry off to prison at any moment? Was it true that he

-might never see his own people any more? Such questions appalled and stunned

-him; he could neither answer them nor realise their full import. They turned

-the old man in the chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he

-had seemed at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement

-even to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home. Of

-course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something would be done

-at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his for ever; but as for

-his present situation, there were moments when Pocket felt rather like a

-story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned, and already in communication with

-the mainland.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had come

-straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be within a mile of

-that very room at that very moment. Would all the known circumstances of his

-disappearance be published broadcast in the papers? Pocket felt he would have

-red ears all his life if that were done; and yet it had hurt him a little to

-gather from Baumgartner that so far there was nothing in the papers to say he

-had so much as disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or

-Friday. Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would

-have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her afternoon rest.

-If he were at home, he would be going about quietly. Lettice would be reading

-or writing in the morning-room,  most probably. Father would be gloating over

-his rhododendrons with a strong cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how

-beautiful they were. Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and

-Fred were not playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far

-ahead to see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own

-voice telling them of his own experience&mdash;of this very hour at Dr.

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that! Pocket

-looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids never quite closed,

-and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister effect. He noted the

-drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash from the Turk&rsquo;s head

-sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the very phrases of a graphic

-portrait almost to his lips.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the silver

-lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not silver at all but

-one of the baser metals of the human heart, how indignantly he would have

-denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the end!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and sponge,

-but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for going higher up to

-his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only make more work, in a tone

-precluding argument. It struck Pocket that the doctor really needed sleep, and

-was irritable after a continuous struggle against it. If so, it served him

-right for not trusting a fellow&mdash;and for putting Boismont in the

-waste-paper basket, by Jove!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first things

-Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in the opposite

-corner; and the schoolboy&rsquo;s strongest point, be it remembered, was a

-stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive at the waste-paper basket,

-meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor minded his reading that book. But the

-question never was asked; the book was still in the basket when the doctor had

-finished drying his face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had

-seen the dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter with my young fellow?&rdquo; inquired

-Baumgartner, solicitously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing! I&rsquo;ll be all right soon,&rdquo; muttered Pocket, wiping

-his forehead and then his hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You look faint. Here&rsquo;s my sponge. No, lie flat down there

-first!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do feel seedy,&rdquo; he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in

-it, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m not going to faint. I&rsquo;m quite well able to go

-upstairs. I&rsquo;d rather lie down on my own bed, if you don&rsquo;t

-mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was none the

-less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first close examination

-of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had picked out of the basket in

-the doctor&rsquo;s room instead of Boismont&rsquo;s book on hallucinations.

-There had been no hallucination about those scraps of paper; they were

-fragments of the boy&rsquo;s own letter to his sister, which Dr. Baumgartner

-had never posted at all.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />

-A LIKELY STORY</h2>

-

-<p>

-At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, when

-Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor&rsquo;s dining-room; for not only had

-Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of warning to anybody, on

-the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had followed by the only Sunday

-train.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town which

-reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for the hunting

-season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its beauty-sleep, under a

-gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and leafy coverts,  with but one

-blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But

-the works lay hidden, and the hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained

-that this was it, abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station,

-and entered the grounds on foot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was encountered and

-accosted before he reached the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he&rsquo;s at home? I

-want to see him about something.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice flushed and shrank.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know who you are! Have you found my brother?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; not yet,&rdquo; said Thrush, after a pause. &ldquo;But you take my

-breath away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no

-longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of town

-without a word?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s still a secret,&rdquo; whispered Lettice, as though the

-shrubs had ears, &ldquo;only I&rsquo;m in it. Nobody else is&mdash;nobody

-fresh&mdash;but I guessed, and my mother was beginning to suspect. My father

-never stays away a Sunday unless he&rsquo;s out of England altogether; she

-couldn&rsquo;t understand it, and was worrying so about him that I wired

-begging him to come back if only for the night. So it&rsquo;s all my  fault,

-Mr. Thrush; and I know everything but what you&rsquo;ve come down to tell

-us!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s next to nothing,&rdquo; he shrugged. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s

-neither good nor bad. But if you can find your father I&rsquo;ll tell you both

-exactly what I have found out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without

-bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any warmer

-feeling. She was the perfect sister&mdash;that he felt as instinctively as

-everybody else&mdash;and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be cruel

-and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish face. So he

-let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and pungent with

-pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father

-quietly from the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed for

-the first train after getting his daughter&rsquo;s telegram, leaving but a line

-for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use it whether

-he had anything to report or not.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice,

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of

-course you were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by

-the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you leave the motor behind?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; it&rsquo;ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It may have to do more than that,&rdquo; said Thrush, spreading his full

-breadth on the pitch-pine seat. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found out something; how much

-or how little it&rsquo;s too soon to tell; but I wasn&rsquo;t going to discuss

-it through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead

-secret, Mr. Upton, and that&rsquo;s why I didn&rsquo;t ring you up. As for your

-last train, I&rsquo;d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn&rsquo;t

-have given me time to say what I&rsquo;ve got to say before one or other of us

-may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do for God&rsquo;s sake say what you&rsquo;ve got to say!&rdquo; cried

-Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Alive?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And perfectly well&mdash;but for his asthma&mdash;on Thursday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who calmed him,

-not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were blinded by the first ray

-of light.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Where was it?&rdquo; he asked, when he could ask anything.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it

-really was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What kind of interest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.&rdquo; She

-looked at her father. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t let him go,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I want to know just how it came to be talked about.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did he recommend any particular vessel?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, a sailing ship&mdash;the <i>Seringapatam</i>&mdash; an old East

-Indiaman they&rsquo;ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I

-wouldn&rsquo;t hear of the beastly tub.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know when she was to sail?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did know,&rdquo; said Lettice. &ldquo;I believe it was just about

-now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She sailed yesterday,&rdquo; said Thrush, impressively; &ldquo;and your

-brother, if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He

-told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton, and his

-father not. I&rsquo;m bound to say it sounds as though it may have been the

-boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing

-question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It must have been!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Who was the man, and

-where exactly did he see him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps

-I&rsquo;d better tell you about my informant, since we&rsquo;ve only his word

-for Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the

-first place he&rsquo;s a semi-public man, though I don&rsquo;t suppose you know

-his name. It&rsquo;s Baumgartner&mdash;Dr. Otto Baumgartner&mdash;a German

-scientist of some distinction.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush continued

-with some pride: &ldquo;There was some luck in it, of course, for he was the

-very first man I struck who&rsquo;d bought d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes since

-Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four hours of hearing

-that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up to A. V. M.! I might have

-been with him some hours sooner still, but I preferred to spend them getting to

-know something about my man. I tried his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was

-a chemist, who didn&rsquo;t know him by sight, and had never heard of the

-cigarettes, but remembered being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last

-Thursday morning! That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that

-Baumgartner himself was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist

-would have known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist

-first!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about Baumgartner

-that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false scent, Mr. Upton; not to

-mention the baker and the candlestick-maker, there&rsquo;s a little restaurant

-in the same row, which was about the fifth place where I began by asking if

-they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner lived in that neighbourhood. The little

-Italian boss was all over me on the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his

-most regular customer, having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in

-quite the Italian manner. I don&rsquo;t suppose you see how very valuable this

-was to me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was

-the one point on which I should never yield to Germany&mdash;and I thought I

-was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor lives alone

-with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants and never

-entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the arrangement was made,

-the old chap went to the restaurant himself to complain of short commons; there

-had not been enough for them to eat on the Thursday night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had they been alone?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were,

-but I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you. It

-was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my leisure (an

-excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards went round and saw the

-doctor himself. The niece opened the door&mdash;I wish I&rsquo;d seen more of

-her&mdash;but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for an interview on an

-urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must say, impressed me very

-favourably; and the moment we were alone I said, &lsquo;I want to know, Doctor,

-who you bought those asthma cigarettes for last Thursday!&rsquo;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m

-an inquiry agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you&rsquo;ll tell me

-it may solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I&rsquo;ve ever handled.&rsquo; Is

-was treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there&rsquo;s no

-shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn&rsquo;t

-blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in store.

-&lsquo;I&rsquo;d tell you his name with all my heart,&rsquo; he said,

-&lsquo;only I don&rsquo;t really know it myself. He said it was  John

-Green&mdash;but his handkerchiefs were marked &ldquo;A. A.

-U.&rdquo;&rsquo;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s initials!&rdquo; cried Tony&rsquo;s father.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it never was Tony under a false name,&rdquo; his sister vowed.

-&ldquo;That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not even if he&rsquo;d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss

-Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He would never give a name that wasn&rsquo;t his.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My brother Tony wouldn&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He might feel he had?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He might,&rdquo; the father agreed, &ldquo;even if he&rsquo;d done no

-such thing; in fact, he&rsquo;s just the kind of boy who would take an

-exaggerated view of some things.&rdquo; His mind went back to his last talk

-with Horace on the subject.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of

-you all?&rdquo; Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d do it,&rdquo; declared loyal

-Lettice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Let us hear what you think he did,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what I think; it&rsquo;s what this man Baumgartner

-thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully true

-version&mdash;up to a point&mdash;of poor Pocket&rsquo;s condition and

-adventures&mdash;with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out&mdash;from

-the early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon of

-that day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner had actually described the boy&rsquo;s long sleep in his chair; it

-was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began in

-earnest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good man!&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to take him by the hand&mdash;and those infernal Knaggses

-by the scruff of their dirty necks&mdash;and that old hag Harbottle by the

-hair!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think of dear darling Tony,&rdquo; said Lettice, in acute distress;

-&ldquo;lying out all night with asthma&mdash;it was enough to kill him&mdash;or

-to send him out of his mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wonder if it could have done that,&rdquo; remarked Thrush, in a tone

-of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What are you keeping back?&rdquo; cried Lettice, the first to see that

-he had been keeping something all this time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only something he&rsquo;d kept back from them,&rdquo; replied Thrush,

-with just a little less than his usual aplomb. &ldquo;It was a surprise he

-sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr.

-Upton. You may not believe it. I&rsquo;m not certain that I do myself. In the

-morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you&rsquo;d opposed

-it, but withdrawn your opposition&mdash;one moment, if you don&rsquo;t mind! In

-the evening he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the

-<i>Seringapatam</i>, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get

-aboard himself that night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it, Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t say I altogether accept it myself; that&rsquo;s why I kept it to

-the end,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;But we must balance the possibilities

-against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact

-that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here&rsquo;s a man, a well-known

-man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the Park,

-in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to his own

-house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the doctor tells me,

-than which no statement is more quickly and easily checked. Are we to believe

-this apparently unimpeachable and disinterested witness, or are we not? He was

-most explicit about everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the

-boy, and never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are

-prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care to hear

-Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s theory as to what has happened.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, &ldquo;Well, we may as

-well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to him for

-taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may have seen

-something that we shouldn&rsquo;t guess.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush; &ldquo;he saw, or at any rate

-he now thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the

-foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn&rsquo;t know the boy had come up to

-see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had

-come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild

-spree&mdash;if Miss Upton will forgive me!&rdquo; And he turned deferential

-lenses on the indignant girl.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t forgive the suggestion,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;but it

-isn&rsquo;t yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of

-all I was able to tell him, and we mustn&rsquo;t forget, as Mr. Upton says,

-that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did

-meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or

-intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with

-blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned

-against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very

-conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or

-somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid

-to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home!

-What&rsquo;s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped

-to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her

-still&mdash;even if he has to stow away!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My God!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s just the one to think

-of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Lettice shook hers quietly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To think of it, but not to do it,&rdquo; said she, with a quiet

-conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he

-actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, but of

-stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many pounds of biscuit

-and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive into blue water.

-There&rsquo;s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship touched

-nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be out of the

-world for three whole months.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And she only sailed yesterday?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously

-to his feet. &ldquo;And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to

-sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m letting her go as far as Plymouth,&rdquo; said he,

-&ldquo;where one or both of us will board her tomorrow if she&rsquo;s up to

-time!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said she didn&rsquo;t touch anywhere between the docks and

-Melbourne?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They

-don&rsquo;t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have gone

-round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an old

-boatswain of the line who&rsquo;s caretaker at the office, and the only man

-there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I&rsquo;ve since bearded one of the

-partners at his place down the river, and had the statement confirmed and

-amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at  Plymouth, so she

-certainly won&rsquo;t sail again before to-morrow noon, even if she&rsquo;s

-there by then. You will be in ample time to board her&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got

-a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw&mdash;if you go down by the

-12.15 from Paddington to-night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, he said,

-and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the increasing confidence of

-one gradually mastering the difficulties of an uncongenial game. He felt also

-that a happy issue was in sight, and after that he could tell the truth and

-liberate his soul. He was pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously

-propounded by Eugene Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would

-have filled him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously

-prepared for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the

-man&rsquo;s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the

-moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it fell to her

-to do certain honours <i>vice</i> Horace, luckily engaged at the works.

-&ldquo;And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler&rsquo;s rim, but completed his draught before

-replying.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my

-job is to prove things one way or the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is

-absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or anything,

-beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the window of the

-restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a

-train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also

-had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside

-Willesden, when he began to fume.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never knew such a thing on this line before,&rdquo; he complained;

-&ldquo;it&rsquo;s all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand

-before, and it&rsquo;ll just make the difference to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time,&rdquo; said Thrush, consulting his watch as the

-train showed signs of life at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not for what I want to do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton firmly. &ldquo;I want

-to shake that man&rsquo;s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my

-boy!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that you&rsquo;ll find him at home,&rdquo; Thrush

-said, after a contemplative pause.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take my chance of that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He said something about their both going out of town

-to-day&mdash;meaning niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left,

-and that seemed to remind him of it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And losing the train?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can motor down to Plymouth; there&rsquo;s plenty of time. I might take

-him with me, as well as you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Better,&rdquo; said Thrush, after another slight pause. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d

-rather you didn&rsquo;t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not count on you&rdquo;?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One of us will be quite enough.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?&rdquo; cried

-the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t put it like that, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;All right! I&rsquo;ll take your man Mullins instead; but I&rsquo;ll try

-my luck at that German doctor&rsquo;s first,&rdquo; he growled, determined to

-have his own way in something.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you can&rsquo;t have Mullins,&rdquo; said Thrush,

-gently.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Want him yourself do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do; but I&rsquo;m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr.

-Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not? Where is he.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In prison! Your man Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, Mr. Upton, he&rsquo;s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion

-of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />

-MALINGERING</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was still

-poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were the very ones

-his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of tea-things on the

-stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back into his pocket, and to

-fling himself at full length on the bed, before Dr. Baumgartner entered with a

-tray.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see

-you yourself again by supper-time.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not coming down again,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t

-force me, please&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Force you?&rdquo; Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window.

-&ldquo;What a tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show

-your wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the

-window shut&mdash;so&mdash;and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it

-when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to disturb

-you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling stealth

-that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when an admirable

-doctor&rsquo;s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A little fever, I&rsquo;m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were

-you. It&rsquo;s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have

-been through so much, my poor young fellow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have indeed!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one consolation for you,&rdquo; he said at length, in

-a sibilant whisper. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve had that letter of yours at home quite

-a long time now&mdash;ever since yesterday morning, haven&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut&mdash;he only hoped it was

-not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr. Baumgartner,

-suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the discovery downstairs behind

-his back. If he himself had betrayed anything it was in the last few seconds,

-when it had been all that he could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge

-of  the other&rsquo;s trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy!

-To have the heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand;

-the wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth impostor

-gratuitously revelling in his imposition!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at first they

-bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner&mdash;a fear felt from the

-beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the sharper tooth:

-his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a thing about him yet, his

-tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung in anxious conclave on his words!

-Not that he had recognised any such subtle consolations as factors in his

-temporary and comparative peace of mind; now that they were gone, he could not

-have said what it was he missed; he only knew that he could least forgive

-Baumgartner for this sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other side

-eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the doctor&rsquo;s

-stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was not malevolent; it

-was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan had succeeded perfectly,

-and nobody was really any the worse off. His people would have known he was

-alive and well on the Friday; but that was all, and they had no reason yet to

-assume his death. No; even Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of

-a relief to write than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only

-have aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some

-fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond reason or

-forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he could imagine

-Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible logic, with

-characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of a benevolent

-serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken in. It was not

-coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to betray his knowledge

-of the fraud&mdash;if only he had not already done so!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner when

-at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have been more

-considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the doctor&rsquo;s

-behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very gently chidden

-for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any supper either: it was

-true he did not want to want any, or another bite of that man&rsquo;s bread,

-but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It was against his reasoned

-policy to show  temper, and he was beginning to feel very hungry besides. The

-doctor said, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll think better of that, my young fellow,&rdquo;

-which turned a mere remark into more than half an absolute resolution. The

-second tray was set with a lighted candle on a chair by the bedside. The boy

-eyed it wistfully with set teeth, and Baumgartner eyed the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing to eat.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there any book?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s premeditation.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the book I was reading yesterday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What was that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some Frenchman on hallucinations.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So you were reading that book!&rdquo; remarked the doctor, with

-detestable aplomb. &ldquo;I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book.

-I have destroyed it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than

-revolted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am not,&rdquo; rejoined Baumgartner. &ldquo;Even if it were a good

-book, it is no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what

-is done and over.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If it is over,&rdquo; murmured the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is over!&rdquo; said Baumgartner, fiercely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I read what he&rsquo;d

-got to say about somnambulism.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite of such

-a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to know that others

-besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their sleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;they always seem to have dreamt the

-dreadful thing as well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until

-the shot woke me and I found myself where you saw me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you find it funny!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the increased

-asperity of Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner, and his whole conduct about a harmless

-book, altogether inexplicable.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; replied the boy, with spirit.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do

-your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human life

-less precious than the average dog&rsquo;s!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human about

-this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said since the scene

-between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the door behind him when he

-went. But Pocket preferred that novel exhibition, for its very heat and

-violence, to the sleek and calculated solicitude of the doctor&rsquo;s final

-visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost

-to the socket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My young fellow!&rdquo; he exclaimed in unctuous distress. &ldquo;Not a

-bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it&rsquo;s nearly

-midnight?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not hungry,&rdquo; replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once.

-&ldquo;I told you I wasn&rsquo;t well.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be worse if you don&rsquo;t force yourself to eat.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that

-seemed to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the oval

-hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black nicotine, and he

-puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more infuriate than ever,

-under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the boy it was all but a living

-face, and a vile one, capable of nameless atrocities; and the hard-frozen face

-of Baumgartner was capable of looking on.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it&rsquo;s my own fault.

-I take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very first

-moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law into my own

-hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or worse. You were worse

-then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not strange that your asthma has

-entirely left you under my roof? Does it not lead you to believe in me, my

-young fellow&mdash;to trust me perhaps more than you have done?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue

-stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived from one

-of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this one, of the sudden

-cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated Baumgartner for forgetting that,

-and pretending for a moment to take any credit to himself. That again was not

-worthy of so cool and keen a brain, much less of the candid character with

-which Pocket had supposed himself to be dealing. The very young are

-pathetically apt to see their own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but

-the schoolboy&rsquo;s faith in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base;

-and now (as sure a symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You must trust me again,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, as though he knew what

-he had forfeited. &ldquo;I know what will do you good.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,

-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might have been

-the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came before him in a

-scorching flash. But there was something also in the way the doctor was bending

-over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer still, so that the two dreadful faces

-seemed of equal size. And Baumgartner&rsquo;s had become a dreadful face in the

-boy&rsquo;s eyes now; there was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in

-cold intellectual cruelty; and its smile&mdash;its new and strange smile it

-must have been that made him shudder and shake his head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But, my young fellow,&rdquo; urged the doctor, &ldquo;it will do you so

-much good. And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself could

-have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was much to

-commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough as he moved it

-from side to side on the pillow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you I&rsquo;m ill,&rdquo; he whimpered. &ldquo;How can I go out

-with you, when you see I can&rsquo;t eat a bite?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early, early

-lovely summer&rsquo;s  morning; then they would see, would they not? Pocket had

-a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from the other. He was

-alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next morning when the doctor took

-his early walk; let him prowl by himself. Pocket was not going with him. He had

-never been more determined about anything than that. It was an animal instinct

-of fear and deep revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further

-determination to slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this

-course he was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.

-Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn up with

-the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead of his

-letter&mdash;going straight to his people to tell them all, and have that poor

-innocent man set free before the day was out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The night&rsquo;s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been

-secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price which he

-wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry boy, no longer

-ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one remaining ill; the rest

-was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent him from feeling ravenous after

-fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was food still within his reach, even at his

-side; but he felt committed  to his declaration that he could not eat. If the

-tray were still untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further

-question of his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an &ldquo;if.&rdquo;

-The boy was not used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was

-not self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly tussles

-for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament was

-self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only shows the power

-of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a yard from his door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure lying

-still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath; and he opened

-the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to open, by even slower

-and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had done that first morning, it

-might have been a month ago; and this scene must have challenged comparison

-with that, had his mind been even as free from dread and terror as it had been

-then. But all he saw was the few remaining lighted windows in the backs of

-those other houses; he could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured

-no beam of comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open

-eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last rumble in

-the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised its

-note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds, which grew

-but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house. Somebody was knocking

-and ringing at the doctor&rsquo;s door, not furiously, but with considerable

-pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow just at first, and flew from the

-open window to the landing outside his door. The house was in perfect darkness,

-and still as death in the patient intervals between each measured attempt to

-rouse the inmates without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must

-be Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the boy was

-about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the retreat of feet

-down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next landing as the doctor

-closed his bedroom door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Who could it have been? Baumgartner&rsquo;s chuckle suggested the police; but

-in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last laugh,

-though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He could not close an

-eye for thinking of it, and listening for another knocking and ringing down

-below. But nothing happened  until the doctor returned between five and six,

-still with his meerschaum pipe, still in his alpaca jacket, but wearing also

-the goblin hat and cloak of their first meeting, to renew and intensify the

-animal fear that glued the boy to his bed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is a pity,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, standing at the window which

-Pocket had left open. &ldquo;The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a

-cloud in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who are

-making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose

-&rdquo;&mdash;and his eyes blazed&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;d feed you like a

-fowl!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so likely that I should do it on purpose,&rdquo; muttered

-Pocket, with schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and

-they had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know best,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But you are missing the

-morning of your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little

-garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your public

-school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more imagination,

-thank God!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he had the

-door open too, as the doctor&rsquo;s step was creaking down the lower flight of

-stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not quite to the

-banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told him the doctor had gone

-into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only for a moment. The dark-room

-door shut sharply. The steps came creaking back along the hall, went grating

-out upon the doorstep. There was another sharp shutting. Food at last!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of

-cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out.

-But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and

-emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was

-only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida&rsquo;s door and shout goodbye, or

-to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he

-always was, on these early jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait

-and say goodbye properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a

-second time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if

-that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, by any

-means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the schoolboy&rsquo;s

-head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the discovery that Dr.

-Baumgartner had removed his clothes!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it was a

-practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet such a case. It

-was to be met by action, however, just as that locked door had been met, and

-the policeman&rsquo;s prohibition in the Park. He knew where his clothes must

-be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using as a dressing-gown, over his

-pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. Baumgartner had done not many minutes

-before him. His clothes were in the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a

-Yale lock; there was no forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his

-passion tried both. So round he went without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation to the

-dark-room window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That

-mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and a sheet

-of ruby glass with one vicious blow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his hands or

-feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, and let the blind

-down as he had found it, without looking twice at his clothes. There they were

-for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They were not his only property in

-that room either. His revolver was there somewhere under lock and key. He might

-want it, waking, if Dr. Baumgartner came back before his time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on the

-folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was not in the

-others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives beloved of

-schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, among other

-superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had often felt inclined

-to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in the way of the other tools.

-But he used it now with as little hesitation as he had done the other damage,

-with almost a lust for breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as

-his clothes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least,

-there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and

-there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own

-treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, as

-he stood in a ruby flood only partially diluted by the broken window behind the

-blind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside him

-that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the whole lot

-crashing about his toes.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />

-ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</h2>

-

-<p>

-The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket

-wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of

-the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that

-way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and

-overcoat, with the rest of one&rsquo;s clothes in a bundle under one&rsquo;s

-arm, it was before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. But it was not a course

-that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with romantic instincts and a

-revolver which he perceived at a glance to be still loaded in most of its

-chambers. Pocket was not one of nature&rsquo;s heroes, but he had an

-overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time to feel how he should despise

-himself all his life if he bolted by the window instead of opening the door. So

-he did open it, trembling but determined. And there stood Phillida in her

-dressing-gown, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you!&rdquo; she cried, taking the exclamation out of his

-mouth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a gust of relief; &ldquo;did you think it was

-thieves?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; she demanded, pointing to the broken window

-visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He took this from me,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I had a right to it.

-Take it if you will!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But Phillida was

-too angry to look at revolvers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You had no business to break in to get it,&rdquo; she told him, with

-considerable severity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this

-morning before he went out. They&rsquo;re what I broke in for, and I&rsquo;d a

-perfect right; you know I had! And while I&rsquo;m about it I thought I might

-as well have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.

-And I&rsquo;m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in the

-house of one of the greatest villains alive!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were all out

-in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his indignation, the

-girl&rsquo;s eyes flashing hers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I begin to think my uncle was right,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;This is the

-act of what he said you were, if anything could be.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He lied to you, and he&rsquo;s been lying to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He may have been justified.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You wait till you hear all he&rsquo;s done! I don&rsquo;t mean taking my

-revolver from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I&rsquo;d

-done with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he

-couldn&rsquo;t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that

-isn&rsquo;t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor

-people who may think me dead&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with

-his great grief and grievance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch

-the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday morning

-he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you don&rsquo;t know

-how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I found scraps of my

-letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he&rsquo;d never posted it at

-all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes filled

-with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a fool to blub about it&mdash;but&mdash;but that was the

-Limit!&rdquo; he croaked, and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was cruel,&rdquo; she allowed. &ldquo;It must seem so,  at any rate;

-it does to me; but then I understand so little. I can&rsquo;t think why

-he&rsquo;s hiding you, or why you let yourself be hidden.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must know what I&rsquo;ve done; you must guess?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she looked

-from it to him without recoiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I guessed on Saturday.&rdquo; There was a studious absence of

-horror in her tone. &ldquo;Yet I couldn&rsquo;t believe it, unless it was an

-accident. And if it was an accident&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was one!&rdquo; he choked. &ldquo;It was the most absolute accident

-that ever happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours

-afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was

-frightfully good to me, I&rsquo;m grateful enough for all that. But he should

-have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I lost my

-head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I came to my senses

-he wouldn&rsquo;t let me go. I needn&rsquo;t remind you of that morning! After

-that I promised to stay on, and I&rsquo;d have kept all my promises if only my

-letter had gone to my poor people!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them know he

-was alive, and that with the doctor&rsquo;s expressed approval. But  now he had

-learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was more than ever the

-game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what he had never done. And so

-the whole story would be in to-morrow&rsquo;s papers, with the single exception

-of Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s name.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing shall make me give that,&rdquo; said Pocket valiantly; &ldquo;on

-your account, if not on his!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last assurance.

-She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives and putting them

-back in the rack; he followed her example, and collected the broken bits, while

-she put the rack back in its place, and certain splinters in theirs, until the

-locker shut without showing much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary

-negatives on his hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should throw those away,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;And now, by the

-time you&rsquo;re ready to go, I&rsquo;ll have a cup of tea ready for

-you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open door,

-and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he was too shy

-to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto they had both been

-like young castaways, finely regardless of appearances, he of his bare feet and

-throat, she of her dressing-gown and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious

-or careless still, as with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of

-mauvaise honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault

-of what he suddenly felt he simply must say.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t want to leave you!&rdquo; he blurted out at

-last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I want you to,&rdquo; she returned promptly and firmly, though not

-without a faint smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get that

-out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as he had done

-when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man to his niece; all

-that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not think he was peculiar there;

-in fact, he thought romantically enough about the girl, with her dark hair all

-over her pink dressing-gown, and ivory insteps peeping out of those soft

-slippers especially when the vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making

-himself as presentable as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy

-in the same way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on

-the table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He

-could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner he went

-the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He hated the thought of

-deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such a girl! He could only face

-it with the fixed intention of coming back to the rescue of his heroine, he the

-hero of their joint romance. But for his own immediate freedom he was already

-unheroically eager. And yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives

-together, on the white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a

-boyish bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet been

-gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it brandished by

-man or boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The piecing of the plates was like a children&rsquo;s puzzle, only easier,

-because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives was of

-painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to atoms by

-Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees again, only

-leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure sprawling on a bench.

-Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he remembered having seen

-printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in the other room; and hardly had

-he filled his frame and placed it in position, than Phillida ran down stairs,

-and he told her what he had done.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wish you hadn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said nervously, as she made

-mechanical preparations with pot and kettle. &ldquo;It would only make matters

-worse if my uncle came in now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he wasn&rsquo;t back on Friday before ten or eleven.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You never know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but not

-he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care! I can&rsquo;t help it if he does come. I&rsquo;ll

-tell him exactly what I&rsquo;ve done, and why, and exactly what I&rsquo;m

-going to do next. I give him leave to stop me if he can.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t wait for that. But I wish you had waited

-for his leave before printing his negative.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny room at

-the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a rather dark

-print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then extracted from the

-frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the joins of the broken plate.

-But it had been an excellent negative originally. And it was still good enough

-to hold Pocket rooted to the carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in

-after him, and stood looking over his shoulder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know that place!&rdquo; said she at once. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Holland

-Walk, in Kensington.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He turned to her quickly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The very place!&rdquo; exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening

-print.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He&rsquo;s always

-so interested in mysteries. I&rsquo;m sure that&rsquo;s the very spot he showed

-me as the one where it must have happened.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did he take the photograph then?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; he hadn&rsquo;t his camera with him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in

-uncontrollable excitement. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not only the place; it&rsquo;s the

-thing itself. Look at that man on the bench!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl took a long look nearer the window.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How horrible!&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;His head looks as though it

-were falling off! He might be dying.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dying or dead,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;at the very second the plate

-was exposed!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent, but it

-was more understanding. He had Baumgartner&rsquo;s own confession of his

-attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to executions; he

-expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly, clumsily, inaccurately

-enough, and yet with a certain graphic power which brought those incredible

-theories  home to his companion as forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought

-them home to Pocket. It was the first she had ever heard of them. But then he

-had never discussed his photography with her, never showed her plate or print.

-That it was not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had

-always felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now she

-seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the broken

-negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was nothing to see;

-the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out the repulsive picture even

-as she held it in her hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then what do you think?&rdquo; she asked at last; her voice was thin and

-strained with formless terrors.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human being

-I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether you like it

-yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this case in connection

-with&mdash;mine&mdash;and I see that one theory was that the man in this broken

-negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly believe that Dr.

-Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He must have been there if he took the photograph.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I&rsquo;ve told you

-all he told me about it, but I haven&rsquo;t told you all he said about the

-value of human life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these

-murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight from the

-flesh; that&rsquo;s his own way of putting it, not mine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn&rsquo;t get more

-power over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my sleep

-with this wretched revolver. He said himself I&rsquo;d given him the chance of

-a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man&rsquo;s death, not

-after it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t possible,&rdquo; declared Phillida, as though she had

-laid hold of one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. &ldquo;And I

-know he hasn&rsquo;t a pistol of his own,&rdquo; she added, lest he should

-simplify his charge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But there they were agreed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He hadn&rsquo;t one on him that morning; that I can swear,&rdquo; said

-Pocket, impartially disposing of the idea. &ldquo;Mine was the only one in that

-cape of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back

-into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or anywhere

-else about him, or I couldn&rsquo;t have helped seeing it.&rdquo; Phillida

-accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as if in

-recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy whom she could

-now understand his regarding in that light. If only he would go before the

-enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over him as he himself seemed to

-feel, then that was all the more reason for him to go quickly. But Pocket was

-not the man to get up and run like that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his

-bravery on the point, and keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account;

-at any rate he insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free

-expression to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on

-the brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,

-while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost fondling it,

-though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his small possessions;

-suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand, and clattered on the table

-between the girl and boy. It was a wonder neither of them was shot dead in his

-excitement. His whole face  was altered; but so was his whole life. She could

-not understand his incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the

-chambers round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live

-cartridges in all six.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo; the words came pouring. &ldquo;Not one of

-them&rsquo;s been fired&mdash;it&rsquo;s as I loaded it myself the other night!

-It can&rsquo;t have been this revolver at all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must have known whether you fired or not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I&rsquo;d

-only heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open air,

-though I do remember wondering I hadn&rsquo;t felt any kick. But I was so

-dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it from me in

-such a rage that of course I believed I&rsquo;d let it off. But now I can see I

-can&rsquo;t have done. It wasn&rsquo;t my revolver and it wasn&rsquo;t

-me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet you say yourself my uncle didn&rsquo;t carry one?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll swear he didn&rsquo;t; but there&rsquo;s another man in all

-this! There was the man they arrested on Saturday&mdash;the man I was so keen

-to set free!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy&rsquo;s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What

-was it to him that his innocence implied another&rsquo;s complicity? Only too

-characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point of view;

-but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed? There was the

-broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that was not enough for

-Phillida.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose in his

-waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. &ldquo;Then my uncle might have

-put in a fresh one while you were asleep.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why should he?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll soon tell you if he did!&rdquo; cried Pocket. &ldquo;There

-were fourteen in the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only

-shot away one at the Knaggses&rsquo; before we were cobbed. That left

-thirteen&mdash;six in the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six,

-and here&rsquo;s one, two, three, four&mdash;and three&rsquo;s seven!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for herself,

-while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He was beginning to

-see what it all meant now, but still only what it meant to him and his. He

-could look his people in the face again; that was the burden of his loud

-thanksgiving. He was as sure of his  innocence as though the dead man had risen

-to prove it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Phillida, briskly; &ldquo;then it&rsquo;s all the

-more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train

-home.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping him on

-with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he followed her

-out slowly, and he would not turn his back.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave you now,&rdquo; he said; and she knew that he saw it

-from her side at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because the whole thing&rsquo;s altered! I&rsquo;m not going to leave

-you with a man like that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s thought either for her immediate feelings

-or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious air of

-sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have flung open the

-door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it first. So her big eyes

-blazed at him instead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very kind!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But suppose I

-don&rsquo;t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall wait and say it to his face. That&rsquo;s another reason for

-waiting.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;re the person to judge him&mdash;a boy like

-you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say I am. I only say that print&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How do you know he took the negative?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you jump to conclusions like a baby!&rdquo; cried the girl, too

-quick for him in following up a confusing advantage. &ldquo;I never heard

-anybody like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he

-must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep with a

-loaded revolver, and then you&rsquo;re sure you never fired at all, simply

-because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! Then you find a

-photograph that needn&rsquo;t necessarily be what we thought it, that my uncle

-needn&rsquo;t have taken even if it was; but you jump to another conclusion

-about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as though you knew every horrid

-thing you chose to think! As if you knew him and I didn&rsquo;t! As if he

-hasn&rsquo;t been kind and good to me for years and years&mdash;and kind to

-you&mdash;far too kind&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it and them

-there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well of those bitter

-tears. And it was in simple supplication, not imperiously any more, that she

-pointed to the door when speech failed her. The boy&rsquo;s answer was to go

-close up to her  instead. &ldquo;Will you come with me?&rdquo; he asked

-hoarsely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she could

-only shake her head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My people would be as good to you as ever he was,&rdquo; urged Pocket

-extravagantly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;d understand, and you&rsquo;d stay with us,

-Phillida! You might live with us altogether!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She smiled very faintly at that.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, Phillida, can&rsquo;t you see that they&rsquo;d do anything for you

-after all we&rsquo;ve been through together? And I, oh! there&rsquo;s nothing I

-wouldn&rsquo;t do if only you&rsquo;d come with me now this minute! I know

-there&rsquo;s a train about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on

-the way. Come, Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this

-horror!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or apathy which

-had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for indecision; but, whatever it

-was, she shook it off and declared once for all that she would never leave Dr.

-Baumgartner, even if everything was true about him, and he as mad as that would

-make him out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he is!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with most eager conviction.

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the only possible explanation, and you&rsquo;d believe it

-fast enough if you&rsquo;d heard all he said to me that first night, and been

-with  me in the dark-room when he developed his negative of the man he said I

-shot! You&rsquo;d see how it all fits in, and how this other negative this

-morning simply shows he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of

-course he&rsquo;s mad; but that&rsquo;s the very reason why I can&rsquo;t go

-and leave you with him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He would be as he&rsquo;s always been to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe he would,&rdquo; said honest Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t you go away and leave us?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because you won&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very well, because I won&rsquo;t and never will! But, mind you,

-it&rsquo;ll be your fault if anything happens to either of us after

-this!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal obstinacy,

-and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He stood chained in

-fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but he was prepared to stand

-there like a man, and he did not deserve the things she said to him in a fresh

-paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He might be a baby, but he was not a complete

-coward, or simply trying to make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on

-this occasion, was he thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to

-realise that, for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing

-up the stairs.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />

-A THIRD CASE</h2>

-

-<p>

-In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of these days,

-nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it was as a day of dark

-hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one which Phillida and he began

-alone together in her uncle&rsquo;s house. Those endless hours were either

-mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an endurable minimum; but the

-unforgettable moments would light themselves up in his memory without a detail

-missing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida standing

-all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair about her shoulders,

-a picture that could never fade. Then there was the moment of the incriminating

-print, which the sun wiped out even as Phillida stood with it in her hands.

-That moment merged itself in the greater one of his discovery that the revolver

-was fully loaded, his inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal

-mischief in the Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him

-the time before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving

-way an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck together,

-and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of anger which

-dissolved his fears like snow in May.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to be

-forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying absolutely on her

-account, and so far from giving him the slightest credit for it, or a single

-word of encouragement, she said all sorts of things and was off before he could

-answer one of them. It was not for Pocket to see the many ironies of that

-moment, and not for him to recognise the tonic property of his heroic

-grievance. He could only see himself at the foot of those stairs, first

-gnashing his teeth and not sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with

-his eye on the front door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the

-doctor&rsquo;s key. Another click was to answer it; and at the point of the

-cocked revolver Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not

-only to the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to

-call to witness with her own ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not incapable of

-desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he had more than an hour

-of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot forenoon of unmitigated suspense,

-of sickening alarms from tradesmen&rsquo;s carts, boys  whistling past the

-house as though they were not in a wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ

-that redoubled his watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once

-he did hear shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough,

-though it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth) that

-came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a state that he

-would not have backed himself to hit the door from the stairs; and he put the

-chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor over that, in the manner of old

-Miss Harbottle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon him,

-because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until Phillida ran

-downstairs and almost over him where he sat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the quarrel was

-over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly upon him, but with a

-distressing look which he had done nothing to provoke. Not before then was he

-aware of another duet between newsboys coming nearer and nearer, and shouting

-each other down as they came.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; she whispered, as if not to drown a note.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you hear what it is?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something fresh about the murder,&rdquo; said he grimly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s another one,&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you

-hear? &lsquo;Another awful murder!&rsquo; Now they&rsquo;re saying something

-else.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is something about the Park.&rdquo; Pocket stuck to his idea.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And something else about some &lsquo;well-known&rsquo;&mdash;I

-can&rsquo;t hear what!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No more can I.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll open the door.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them. The

-shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away again in the

-distance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go out and get one,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;Some well-known

-man!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not thinking of the doctor, surely?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know! I can&rsquo;t think where he is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re worse than I am, if you jump to that!&rdquo; said

-Pocket, smiling to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she

-was; he had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever

-of impatience.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o&rsquo;clock in the morning;

-now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, then

-there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he might meet

-with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not the death of a

-sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did not alter it. Unless

-his fears and his surmises were all equally unfounded, better for everybody,

-and best of all for Phillida, if this criminal maniac came to his end without

-public exposure of his crimes. Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of

-mind, as his elders and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own

-skin more than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for

-the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida&rsquo;s first words on

-returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were not the

-truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who was it, then?&rdquo; the schoolboy asked suspiciously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he was the well-known man!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had seen it in

-newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by Baumgartner himself in

-one of his little digs at England. Pocket was not sure about this, but he

-mentioned his impression, and Phillida nodded with swimming eyes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did the doctor know him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you. It was something to do with politics and

-gold-mines, and some financial paper. I never understood.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;May I see the paper you&rsquo;ve brought in?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out his.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s something you haven&rsquo;t told me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There is!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall know it sooner or later.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know you will, and I know what you&rsquo;ll think! You may think what

-you like, and still be wrong!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found the

-paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it was so folded

-already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and more of it in the late

-corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P., the well-known proprietor of the

-<i>Money-maker</i>, had been shot dead in front of his house in Park Lane. The

-murder had been committed in the early hours of the morning, before anybody was

-about except  Sir Joseph and his groom, and the person whom the groom described

-as the only possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the

-early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a photographer

-representing himself as concerned with the press, and desirous of obtaining an

-equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom thought it was to be taken in

-the Park, and was himself on his way back to the mews when the riderless horse

-overtook him. Mounting the animal, he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph

-dead in the road, and no trace of the &ldquo;photographer&rdquo; but a false

-beard and spectacles which he had evidently discarded in his flight, and which

-unfortunately precluded a close description of his appearance. But a hue and

-cry had been started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding

-in the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough search

-under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her

-companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the next thing

-he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big chair in the back

-room.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It was a

-period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each other through

-it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for his step no longer,

-but for more newsboys crying his capture to the world. And in the hours that

-they spent thus listening, and listening, the girl had much to say, that it did

-her good to say, about this Dr. Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved

-him in the past.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to her for

-all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into hers, in the

-many years they had been more or less together. All she really knew of him was

-from her mother, whose elder sister he had married soon after the

-Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after marriage. He must have been settled in

-England many years before Phillida&rsquo;s mother, herself an

-Englishman&rsquo;s widow, came to keep house for him. The girl could not

-remember her father, but her mother had lived to see her in her teens, and in

-her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had seemed much as other men. It was only of late

-years that he had withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and

-buried himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His

-niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and she had

-always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he was going to send

-her  to college, he had only just given her six months in Switzerland. It was

-during those months that all his eccentricities had become pronounced; that he

-had given up servants, and taken to doing half the work of the house himself,

-with the casual aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals

-in from a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other

-matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in him and

-done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for her, whatever

-madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own kinsfolk so much less, for

-all their opulent integrity. Nothing could make her forget what he had done.

-She never could or would desert him; it was no use asking her again; but she

-took her callow champion&rsquo;s hand, and wrung it with her final answer,

-which was unaccompanied by further prayers for his departure.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale that he

-heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets, suppositions, and

-not always revelant recollections, of which he had to make what he could in his

-own mind. What he made was a narrative so natural that he could not believe it

-was the life-story of a murderer. His own convictions became preposterous in

-his own eyes. What had he been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a

-murderer would behave? Was this the way a murderer would live, in these

-surroundings, with those books about him, with that little billiard-table in

-the next room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary

-lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their dreadful

-deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living this ordinary life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of something

-else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of her feeling for

-him, and of the schoolboy&rsquo;s feeling for her. If he could have convicted

-himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so cleared Baumgartner of all

-blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any other case, he would have done it

-for Phillida&rsquo;s sake that afternoon. But with every hour of the

-doctor&rsquo;s absence suspicions multiplied. Phillida herself was a prey to

-them. She was almost as ready to recall symptoms of incipient insanity as

-instances of personal kindness; if one lost one&rsquo;s reason, she broke a

-long silence to contend, there could be no question of regret and wrong. She

-was not so sure about crime and punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could

-be no question of that either; but in his heart he wondered how much method

-they must prove to hang a madman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy had no

-thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before; and strong

-excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting silently together in

-the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was deepening every minute.

-Suddenly there was a sound of small branches breaking in the garden. Pocket

-peeped out, standing back from the window at her entreaty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain into

-both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure rose out of

-it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent double, and

-brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long and stealthy

-strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over his eyes, and the

-old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under his arm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the door; but it

-was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have seen them; they were

-clasping hands as they shrank away from him with one accord. But he did not

-seem to see them at all. He stretched himself, as though he found it a relief

-to stand upright, and more mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took

-off the alpaca jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could

-have been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a

-hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out plainly

-enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper parcel; he had

-put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed the paper; it fell at

-Pocket&rsquo;s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and nothing had come out of

-it but the stereoscopic camera, that either watcher could detect.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of either of

-them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go upstairs, and shut the

-door, and then his footsteps overhead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go up and tackle him at once,&rdquo; said Pocket, through his

-set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No! I must go first and see if there&rsquo;s nothing I can get him; he

-mayn&rsquo;t have had anything all day. There&rsquo;s no need for you to come

-at all&mdash;I believe he&rsquo;s forgotten all about us both!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not he!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead.

-&ldquo;Here he comes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again under Dr.

-Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with the hand that was

-not holding Phillida&rsquo;s. The doctor was coming down in a hurry, as though

-he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed the open drawing-room door;

-they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of keys, and never so much as glancing in

-on the way. It was the dark-room door he opened. Now he would find out

-everything! They heard a match struck, and saw the faint light turn into a

-strong deep crimson glow. The door shut. The children stood listening in the

-dark.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered bottle; the

-opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger photographer followed as

-though he were again looking on. Then there was a long period without a sound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s developing now!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, close to the

-folding-doors. He caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side.

-&ldquo;There it is&mdash;there it is&mdash;there it is!&rdquo; cried the

-doctor&rsquo;s voice in mingled ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh

-announced the blackening of the plate at the conclusion of the first process. A

-tap ran for a moment; interminable minutes ensued. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s gone!

-It&rsquo;s gone again!&rdquo; cried the wild voice, with a sob;

-&ldquo;it&rsquo;s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as before; but

-that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was being put straight

-into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the locker had been discovered

-at last. He never knew. The door opened. The red glow showed for a moment in

-the passage, then went out. The door shut behind Baumgartner, and again he

-passed the drawing-room, a bent figure, without looking in. And the flagging

-step on the stairs bore no resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down

-not many minutes before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go to him!&rdquo; said Phillida in broken undertones, and her

-grief communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the base

-fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might think of it,

-was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he was of the type that

-thinks of everything. She left him listening breathless in the dark. And in the

-dark she found him when at length she returned to report the doctor busy

-writing at his desk; but a pin&rsquo;s head of blue gas glimmered where there

-had been none before, and a paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled

-in Pocket&rsquo;s hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Does he know I&rsquo;m here?&rdquo; he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he&rsquo;s

-forgotten your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though

-he&rsquo;d forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He

-seems so strange&mdash;so old!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. &ldquo;I

-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. What is it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas while

-you were upstairs.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida turned it out again without comment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,&rdquo; she sighed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you remember my saying there must be another man in

-these&mdash;mysteries?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant

-is in prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said he was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read

-it for yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. &ldquo;I doubt if

-there&rsquo;s anything in that,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but what if there were?

-Does it make it any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If

-he&rsquo;s guilty at all, it makes it all the worse.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br />

-THE FOURTH CASE</h2>

-

-<p>

-The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of the house.

-The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of moonlight pouring over

-them. The only light in the house was in the room above, and they only saw its

-glimmer on the garden when a casual cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had

-crept out into the garden to steal a look at the lighted window itself; and

-what he saw was the shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and

-dense clouds of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs or

-anywhere. There had been a brisk interval&mdash;and then an end&mdash;of more

-or less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a

-certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables, to which

-Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so that he noticed

-its absence more than the thing itself. It was as though the whole town was at

-rest, and the tunnels under the town, and every single soul above or below

-ground, but those two white faces in the moonlight, and perhaps one other

-overhead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to their

-ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was against it;

-perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what he did see so very

-vividly, in his mind&rsquo;s eye, that he shivered and was asked if he felt

-cold. The whispered debate that followed was the longest conversation they had

-that night. The window was not shut as a result of it, but Pocket fetched his

-overcoat on tiptoe, and it just went over both their shoulders, when the chairs

-were drawn as near together as they would go.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to wall.

-The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some monstrous

-wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above and below the moon,

-varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night, and Pocket did not think

-that he had broken the stillness, until the door burst open behind them, and

-Baumgartner stood there, holding his lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high,

-the flame ran up the chimney in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face

-flared up behind it. Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower,

-and the doctor was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy

-drew back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his

-nose, and crashed upon the path outside.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was breathing

-hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself; and at last he

-laughed sardonically as though he had won.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A lamp like that&rsquo;s a dangerous thing,&rdquo; said he, with a kind

-of forced solemnity and a shake of the head; &ldquo;you never know what may

-happen when a lamp does that! I&rsquo;m glad the window was open; it

-didn&rsquo;t go very near my young fellow, I hope?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that the boy

-could have screamed with pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would have served you right,&rdquo; continued the doctor, before

-Pocket could find his tongue, &ldquo;for sitting up so late, and keeping a

-young lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have

-another word with you, young fellow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest. They were

-tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was suavely sinister; it

-made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of mind to bid her a cheery

-good-night, and she went, closely followed by Baumgartner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the next

-flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and his  own

-surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an idea came. He opened

-the front door wide, and then stole back through the conservatory into the

-moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down before he gained the garden. He

-tore to the end of it, and cowered in the shadow of the far wall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it looked

-as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit the gas, and

-Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly the look of a seeker

-who expects to find. Some long moments he stood out horribly at the open

-window, gazing straight at the spot where the fugitive crouched a few inches

-out of the moonlight and hugged the revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see

-nothing to bring him out that way, for he closed that window and put out the

-gas. The trembling watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw

-another light in Baumgartner&rsquo;s room the minute after that, and the blind

-drawn down. But on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the

-doctor&rsquo;s pipe was well in blast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the right, and

-set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the lighted blind paler

-still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting out his light. Pocket was

-now too stiff to stir; but it was not necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked

-out. There was a twitter of sparrows all down the road, garden answering to

-garden. The sun came up behind Pocket&rsquo;s wall, behind the taller houses

-further back. And Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his

-cap.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The front door shut again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was a gravel

-passage between the tradesmen&rsquo;s entrance, on the detached side of the

-house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, and the gate was

-locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his stride and darted over

-into the open road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure stalking

-away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy to follow, but an

-equal dread of detection kept him cowering in gateways, until Baumgartner took

-the turning past the shops without a backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to

-that corner, and got another glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the

-next. So the spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn

-the distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once the

-boy&rsquo;s feet were actually on the man&rsquo;s shadow; for half the streets

-were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of dusk with

-rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and

-emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither one nor

-the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness.

-It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A

-dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a

-motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King&rsquo;s Road,

-which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a visible mile

-of asphalt to itself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself, which

-indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of many

-countries; but the red eyes behind the driver&rsquo;s goggles were not so slow.

-Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second&rsquo;s interval; round

-spun the car in a skid that tore studs from the tyres, and fetched her up

-against the kerb with a shivered wheel. Pocket started forward with a cry; but

-at that moment a ponderous step fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and

-he was dragged in custody across the road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Your boy, I think!&rdquo; cried one whom he had never seen before, and

-did not now, being locked already in the motorist&rsquo;s arms.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When did you find him?&rdquo; the father asked when he was man enough,

-still patting Pocket&rsquo;s shoulders as if he were a dog.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only last night when I wired.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And where?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In the house where you and I couldn&rsquo;t make ourselves heard.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, I never saw you before this minute!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or

-two.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why didn&rsquo;t you wire before?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton, quite

-ready to mask his own emotion with a little heat. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it

-till after nine o&rsquo;clock&mdash;too late for the evening train&mdash;but I

-wasn&rsquo;t going to waste three hours with a forty-horser eating its head

-off! So here I am, on my way to the address you gave.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was plumb opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s. I mounted guard there the

-very night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after

-him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,

-my dear boy?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick succession;

-but the first was repeated on the boy&rsquo;s hang-dog admission that he had

-been hiding.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hiding, Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. &ldquo;But at all events we

-found you better employed,&rdquo; he said to Pocket, &ldquo;and the sooner we

-all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying this rascal

-by the heels.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Take it up, then!&rdquo; snapped Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Jump into the motor,

-and bring the brute to me when you&rsquo;ve got him! I want to speak to my

-boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that passed

-between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of his child who

-had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his head outside the story he

-extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket told it very volubly and ill; he

-would not confine himself to simple facts. He stated his suspicion of

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s complicity in the Hyde Park affair as though he knew it for

-a fact; cited the murders in Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of

-the same handiwork, and yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was

-not Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was unarmed the other morning. I&rsquo;m quite positive of that. And

-his niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the

-house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one!

-It&rsquo;s time we laid hold of him. Where&rsquo;s Mr. Thrush? I thought

-you&rsquo;d taken him on in the car?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers about

-the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like his master,

-was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette and sardonic

-mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts being that he had

-nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton had incontinently taken into

-his own less experienced hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The car won&rsquo;t take anybody anywhere to-day,&rdquo; explained the

-chauffeur, with his cigarette behind his back. &ldquo;I shall have to get a

-lorry to take the car.&rdquo; He held his head on one side suddenly.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a bit o&rsquo; tyre trouble for somebody!&rdquo; he cried,

-grimly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not unlike the

-bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it was that. He caught

-his father&rsquo;s arm, and whispered in his father&rsquo;s ear, and they

-plunged together into a side street broader than the asphalt thoroughfare, but

-with scarcely a break in either phalanx of drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a

-creature stirring except themselves and a few who followed. The hog&rsquo;s

-back of a still more deserted bridge arched itself at the foot of the street,

-its suspension cables showing against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they

-ran a peculiarly shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;P&rsquo;lice!&rdquo; screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and

-they easily spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own

-infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket panting as

-he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the suspension bridge,

-to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle. It was evidently being

-blown on the Embankment to the right of the bridge, and already with

-considerable effect. As the pair were about to pass an intermediate turning on

-the right, a constable flew across it on a parallel course, and they altered

-theirs with one accord. Pocket panted after the constable, and his father

-thundered after Pocket, into a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of

-greenery, not too dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further

-side, with a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on

-the Surrey shore.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate opposite

-the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the Embankment opposite that.

-Between the two gates a grimy statue rose upon a granite pedestal, a meditative

-figure clad to the heels in some nondescript garment, and gazing across the

-river as he sat with a number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a

-peculiarly lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to

-appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant, before his

-attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living people on the

-Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing together on the far

-side of one of the fixed seats. There was the policeman who had blown the

-whistle, and a small but motley crew who had answered to the call. Conspicuous

-units were a gentleman in dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps,

-and a labouring cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some

-hidden object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round and

-join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another murdered man.

-He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of death, which he had

-seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only the other morning, it was

-the murderer and not his victim of whom the boy was thinking as he arrived last

-upon the scene. It was Dr. Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming

-the river or hiding among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one

-of the group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? The

-point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could see of the

-fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living legs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was

-detaching himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of

-the fun.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dead as an &rsquo;erring,&rdquo; replied the sweep cheerfully.

-&ldquo;Sooicide in the usual stite o&rsquo; mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rats!&rdquo; said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; &ldquo;unless

-&rsquo;e shot &rsquo;isself first an&rsquo; swallered the shooter afterwards!

-Some&rsquo;un&rsquo;s done &rsquo;im in.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father was

-already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles, who had

-risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his trouser-knees.

-Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he had taken into the

-Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination to look just once upon Dr.

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s latest victim. A loud cry escaped him when he did look; for

-the murdered man, and not the murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br />

-WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</h2>

-

-<p>

-Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the gate, and

-the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy and embarrassed

-aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they brought her. She was

-intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and horror were not the less

-overwhelming for the shame and fear which they replaced in her mind. Yet she

-remained instinctively on her guard, and a passionate curiosity was the only

-emotion she permitted herself to express in words.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn&rsquo;t do

-it himself?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief, to

-dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the one thing they are sure about,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;In

-the first place no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera

-either, though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.

-That&rsquo;s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the

-spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn&rsquo;t have been

-fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been instantaneous. So

-it&rsquo;s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane yesterday or the one in

-Hyde Park last week; there&rsquo;s evidently some maniac prowling about at

-dawn, and shooting down the first person he sees and then vanishing into thin

-air as maniacs seem to have a knack of doing more effectually than sane men.

-But the less we jump to conclusions about him&mdash;or anybody else&mdash;the

-better.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and yet it

-startled her as an index of what must have passed already between father and

-son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff man should know as much as

-the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as a comrade in calamity. Yet she

-could not expect it to be otherwise.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What must you think!&rdquo; she cried, and her great eyes filled and

-fell again. &ldquo;Oh! what must you think?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no good thinking,&rdquo; he rejoined, with almost a jovial

-kindness. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see

-each other through before we think. Not that I&rsquo;ve had time to hear

-everything yet, but I own I can&rsquo;t make head or tail of what I have heard.

-I&rsquo;m not sure that I want to. I like a man&rsquo;s secrets to die with

-him; it&rsquo;s enough for me to have my boy back again, and to know that you

-stood by him as you did. It&rsquo;s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says

-it wasn&rsquo;t your fault he didn&rsquo;t come away long ago; and it

-shan&rsquo;t be mine if you stay another hour alone in this haunted house.

-You&rsquo;ve got to come straight back with us to our hotel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted chamber

-if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the walls, his tin

-of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of latakia rising from the

-carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the murdered man; and the window

-still open, the two chairs near it as they had been overnight, and the lamp

-lying in fragments on the path outside, brought the last scene back to the

-boy&rsquo;s mind in full and vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself

-more desolate and depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It

-might be that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his

-simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of reassuring

-relief. But it was the case that the morning had already clouded over; the

-sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and Phillida looked only too

-eager to fly from the scene, until she declared she never could.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s absurd!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton bluntly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to leave a young girl like you alone  in the day of

-battle, murder and sudden death! You needn&rsquo;t necessarily come with us, as

-long as you don&rsquo;t stay here. Have you no other relatives in

-London?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None anywhere that I know much about.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter. It&rsquo;s time they knew more about you.

-I&rsquo;ll hunt them up in the motor, if they&rsquo;re anywhere within a

-hundred miles, but you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy&rsquo;s added

-supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had indeed been

-Pocket&rsquo;s originally, but his father had taken it up more warmly than he

-could have hoped. It was decided that they should return to their hotel without

-Phillida, but to send the car back for her later in the morning, as it would

-take her some time to pack her things and leave the deserted house in some

-semblance of order.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end; most of

-the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation of the dead

-man&rsquo;s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in the

-dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she had already

-seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another of a man lying in a

-heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put to dry openly  in the rack,

-the wood of which was still moist from the process. Phillida only held it up to

-the light an instant, and then not only smashed both these negatives, but

-poured boiling water on the films and floated them down the sink. The bits of

-glass she put in the dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly

-done so when the first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was

-succeeded by a very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number

-of questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that

-suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary made

-any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but another of the

-perfectly random series which had already thrilled the town, but on which no

-light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of the murdered men. A third

-official came to announce that the inquest was to be opened without delay, at

-two o&rsquo;clock that afternoon, and to request Phillida to accompany him to

-the mortuary for the formal identification of the deceased.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled herself

-to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she found it startlingly

-ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing here, save the furrows of

-age and the fires of madness, and it had given back the  look of fine courage

-and of sane integrity which the girl was just old enough to associate with the

-dead man&rsquo;s prime. She was thankful to have seen him like this for the

-last time. She wished that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and

-so calm, for then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find

-it easier to disbelieve from this hour.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do identify him, I suppose, miss?&rdquo; the officer whispered,

-impressed by her strange stare.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;But he looks as I have not seen

-him look for years. There are worse things than death!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private sitting-room at

-the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had no desire to know a dead

-man&rsquo;s secrets. He had found his boy; that was quite enough for him, and

-he was able to deliver himself the more freely on the subject since Pocket was

-not at table, but in bed making up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in

-finding his son, but he had found him without the aid of police or press, and

-so not more than a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared.

-Mr. Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from his

-wife&rsquo;s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing to hush

-it up on the boy&rsquo;s account  if only it were possible to do so; but would

-it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at the inquest all

-mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle&rsquo;s house? Phillida promised to

-do her best, and it proved not only possible but easy. She was questioned as to

-the habits of the deceased so far as they explained his presence on the

-Embankment at such a very early hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a

-single person who could conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr.

-Baumgartner as to wish to take his life, the witness answered in the negative,

-and the coroner bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the

-character of the murder, but he had put the question for form&rsquo;s sake. The

-only one which caused her a moment&rsquo;s hesitation arose from a previous

-answer, which connected the doctor&rsquo;s early ramblings with his hobby of

-instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning? Phillida

-thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it certainly was not in

-the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he knew that his boy&rsquo;s name

-had been on the tip of the witness&rsquo;s tongue. And there was a sensation in

-court as well; for here at last was a bone for the detectives, who obtained a

-minute description of the missing camera, but grumbled openly that they had not

-heard of it before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They never told me they hadn&rsquo;t got it,&rdquo; explained Phillida

-to the coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the

-court on the conclusion of her evidence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as much as the

-crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared with his friend Mr.

-Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the poor girl there and then

-with far more searching questions than she had been required to answer upon

-oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in a way that secured his peppery

-intervention in a moment. The two men had scarcely seen each other since the

-morning, and the ironmaster thought they had enough to say to each other

-without bothering Miss Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to

-Glasshouse Street, and Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made

-them drop her at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her

-mourning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and order tea

-for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive straight back. She

-had a curious desire to see the place where the murder had been committed. It

-had come upon her at the inquest, while listening to the constable who had

-found the body, her predecessor  in the witness-box. She had failed to follow

-his evidence. He had described that portion of his beat which had brought him

-almost on the scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It

-included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street and Cheyne

-Row. The houses at this point are divided from the Embankment by the narrow

-garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He had turned up Cheyne Row, at the

-back of the statue, but before turning he had noticed a man on the seat facing

-the river on the far side of the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was

-said to have turned round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne

-Walk. There might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on

-the flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been invisible

-from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere. Yet the policeman

-swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up Cheyne Row before the shot was

-fired. He had turned round actually in time to see the puff of smoke dispersing

-over the parapet. It was all he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap,

-nearer the seat than the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he

-see, or had he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the

-river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering sign or

-trace of human being.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she proceeded to

-the spot in order to go over the ground for her own satisfaction. This did not

-make it easier to understand. It had come on to rain heavily while she was in

-the shop; the shining Embankment was again practically deserted, and she was

-able to carry out her experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen

-steps up Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and

-quite realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,

-hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden by the

-long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man could have been

-seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran, and the murderer must

-have run like the wind to get away as he had done. The gates through the

-garden, back and front of the statue, had not been opened for the day when the

-murder took place, so Phillida in her turn made a half-circuit of the island to

-get to the spot where the body had been found, but without taking her eyes off

-the spot until she reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by

-nothing short of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the

-policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done. He might

-have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his furthest point

-distant, if the gates had been open as they were now; but they had been locked,

-and he could not have scaled them unobserved. Neither would it have been

-possible to take a header into the river with the foreshore as described by the

-same witness. Yet the murderer had either done one of these things, or the

-flags of the Embankment had opened and swallowed him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have fallen, and in

-her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but the problem which

-engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened; but how could it have

-happened? She raised her umbrella and peered through the rain at a red pile of

-many-windowed flats; had that Argus of the hundred eyes been sleeping without

-one of them open at the time? Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in

-the narrow garden, standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its

-granite base, as though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike

-the colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the fixed

-eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another character as

-the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that stony stare, to

-distract it from the river to herself, and to  her fevered fancy the grim lips

-smiled contemptuously on her and her quandary. He knew&mdash;<i>he</i>

-knew&mdash;those grim old eyes had seen it all, and still they stared and

-smiled as much as to say: &ldquo;You are looking the wrong way! Look where I am

-looking; that way lies the truth you are poor fool enough to want to

-know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over the wet

-parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming of what she

-actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that early morning, was

-now going out, and between the Embankment masonry and the river there was again

-a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore, black as on some volcanic coast; and

-between land and water, at a point that would necessarily have been submerged

-for the last eight or nine hours, a small object was being laid more bare by

-every receding wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large

-cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,

-finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat sleeves as

-she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was; but indeed she had

-not a moment&rsquo;s doubt but that it was the missing camera of the murdered

-man.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br />

-AFTER THE FAIR</h2>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street was

-opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the sombre Mullins

-who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had happened to him except a

-fairly recent shave.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was in prison?&rdquo; exclaimed the ironmaster when the two

-were closeted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you ever read your paper?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t looked at one since Plymouth.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;<i>You</i> did, Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was

-up.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My good fellow, I wish to goodness you&rsquo;d explain yourself!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I cared to be profane,&rdquo; returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the

-corner, &ldquo;I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I

-provided the prisoner, and I&rsquo;d a perfect right to take him away again.

-Blessed be the song of the Thrush!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say you provided him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with

-his own consent.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up

-with it now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t meant as a joke,&rdquo; returned Thrush, and drank deep

-while his client sipped. &ldquo;If it had come off it would have been the coup

-of my career; as it didn&rsquo;t&mdash;quite&mdash;one must laugh it off at

-one&rsquo;s own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made

-him think he&rsquo;d done?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same

-thing?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not you, Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped

-to it from scratch!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He connected Tony with the Park murder?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;From the word &lsquo;go.&rsquo; &rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife&rsquo;s

-dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; he didn&rsquo;t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in

-two independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities was

-too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of &rsquo;em in his

-life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other&rsquo;s  flippancy. He looked at

-Thrush with a shining face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And you never told me what was in your minds!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you, in

-the state you were in. I say! I&rsquo;ll wear batting-gloves the next time we

-shake hands!&rdquo; and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You believed he&rsquo;d done it, and you kept it to yourself,&rdquo;

-murmured Mr. Upton, still much impressed. &ldquo;Tell me, my dear

-fellow&mdash;did you believe it after that interview with Baumgartner in his

-house?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush emptied his glass at once.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on

-the other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn&rsquo;t scent him

-through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of

-their own.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown

-before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily interesting and

-circumstantial effort. And to come back to your question, it did fit in with

-the theory of a fatal accident on your boy&rsquo;s part; he was frightened to

-show his face at school after sleeping in the Park,  let alone what he was

-supposed to have done there; and that, he believed, would break his

-mother&rsquo;s heart in any case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn&rsquo;t take much just now,&rdquo;

-said Mr. Upton, sadly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he thought of the ship you wouldn&rsquo;t let him go out in&mdash;and

-the whole thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian&mdash;saving

-his presence elsewhere&mdash;all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman

-of genius had it ready for immediate use. I&rsquo;m bound to say he used it on

-me with excellent effect.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Same here,&rdquo; said the ironmaster&mdash;&ldquo;though I&rsquo;d no

-idea what you suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape,

-for that particular boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It imposed upon us all,&rdquo; said Thrush, &ldquo;but one. I was

-prepared to believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn&rsquo;t

-know your boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him

-better than anybody else&mdash;do you remember how she wouldn&rsquo;t hear of

-it for a moment?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do <i>so</i>, God bless her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never had

-quite accepted in my heart. That&rsquo;s another story, and you&rsquo;re only

-in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on Saturday, I

-thought I&rsquo;d like to know a little more about him, not from outsiders but

-from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the British Museum to have a

-look at his books. It was after hours for getting books, but I made such

-representations that they cut their red tape for once; and I soon read enough

-to wonder whether my grave and reverend seignior was quite all there.

-Spiritualism one knows, but here was spiritualism with a difference; psychic

-photography one had heard about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad

-or bad! When a gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to

-snap-shoot the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at

-Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor. Will you

-believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the very thing I shall

-presently prove to have been the truth, and that I dismissed it from my mind as

-the wildest impossibility?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how you&rsquo;re going to prove it now,&rdquo;

-remarked Mr. Upton, who hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the

-girl who had been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which

-there was no necessity to express.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall want another chat with your lad when he&rsquo;s had his sleep

-out,&rdquo; replied Thrush, significantly; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s told me quite

-enough to make me eager for  more. But you haven&rsquo;t told me anything about

-your own adventures?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the ironmaster was

-only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he was both brief and

-amiable.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What have I to tell compared with you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Those

-damned old wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they

-weren&rsquo;t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium lot

-broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want to know is

-what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that great moment this

-morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,&rdquo; replied Thrush.

-&ldquo;The merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always

-apartments of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in

-half the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s,

-and I&rsquo;d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course

-I explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady&rsquo;s son

-embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at the front

-window all night, for no better reasons than my strong feeling about the

-doctor&rsquo;s writings, and your daughter&rsquo;s disbelief in his yarn about

-her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird came out,  and I was

-after him like knife. I tracked him to Knightsbridge without much difficulty,

-excepting the one of avoiding being spotted, but there that happened by the

-merest accident. He was passing under the scaffolding outside the church

-they&rsquo;re pulling down there, and he&rsquo;s so tall he knocked his hat

-off. I admit I was too close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I

-shouldn&rsquo;t have recognised him if I hadn&rsquo;t seen him start out. He

-was wearing a false beard and spectacles!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s proof positive,&rdquo; said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his

-breath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I confess it&rsquo;s something like it in this case; but it was a

-very awkward moment for me. I hadn&rsquo;t to let him see I knew him, nor yet

-that I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as openly

-as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving poor old Mullins

-in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay. We went back to my new

-rooms together, which I needn&rsquo;t tell you I liked so much that I brought a

-suit-case and took them for a week. Of course, as we had lost the run of

-Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch for his return. Mullins took that

-on while I got some sleep; when I awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest,

-and I won&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t suspect who&rsquo;d done it. Perhaps I

-didn&rsquo;t tell you he had his camera with him as  well as beard and goggles,

-and all three figured in the first reports.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I

-wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner&rsquo;s return; but

-in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a room

-overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too much class for

-that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked going back to prison for

-the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both man and boy before I sent that

-wire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And you left my son in that murderer&rsquo;s clutches a minute longer

-than you could help?&rdquo; It was a previous incarnation of Pocket&rsquo;s

-father that broke in with this.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You must remember in the first place that I couldn&rsquo;t be in the

-least sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, murder

-would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the others;

-thirdly, that we&rsquo;ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an actual

-murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the way to make him

-one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately

-against calling in the police under any circumstances.  He assured me there was

-no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then he saw

-your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the lad, but he

-lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor

-desperate doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence which

-most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their case. But Mr.

-Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance against anybody. And the

-name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity on a very different point had

-not been gratified.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?&rdquo; he inquired, with

-characteristic absence of finesse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very proud of it,&rdquo; replied Thrush. &ldquo;It

-didn&rsquo;t come off, you see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But whatever could the object have been?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must have a damn-it if I&rsquo;m to tell you that,&rdquo; said Thrush;

-and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which

-he suited to the oath. &ldquo;It was one way that occurred to me of putting

-salt on the lad.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You puzzle me more and more.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of

-fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident

-and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an

-innocent man&rsquo;s arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything.

-Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred

-miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary.

-But what&rsquo;s the good of talking about it? It didn&rsquo;t come off.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going

-to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn&rsquo;t accidentally satisfied

-himself of his own innocence.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that

-alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly

-behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath twitched as

-though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name

-was suddenly put down unfinished.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only I could find that camera!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the

-touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it&rsquo;s an accomplice who

-did this thing, he&rsquo;s got it; even if not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his

-whole flushed face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mullins!&rdquo; he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat

-suspicious alacrity. &ldquo;Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High

-Water at London Bridge to-day!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office in

-Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume all but

-three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already far advanced.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br />

-THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</h2>

-

-<p>

-The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better preservation

-of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked with mud; beads of

-slime kept breaking out along the joints. And Phillida was still explaining to

-Pocket how the thing had come into her possession.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was an

-iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It was coming

-down so hard at the time that I couldn&rsquo;t see another creature out in it

-except myself. I don&rsquo;t believe a single soul saw me run down that gangway

-and up again; but I dropped my purse over first for an excuse if anybody did. I

-popped the camera under my waterproof, and carried it up to the King&rsquo;s

-Road before I could get a cab. But I never expected to find you awake and about

-again; next to the rain that&rsquo;s the best luck of all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because you know all about photography and I don&rsquo;t. Suppose he

-took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s an idea.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it

-still, and you could develop it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the boy; but at

-the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there&rsquo;s not much chance of there being anything

-to develop; the slide&rsquo;s been open all this time, you see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the water.

-Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the light,

-oughtn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there isn&rsquo;t a dog&rsquo;s chance,&rdquo; he

-murmured, as he handled the camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows

-variety, but was one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had

-come through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely

-broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to shut it

-by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and sent it flying

-to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in his hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That settles it,&rdquo; remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate

-stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was cracked

-across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am sorry!&rdquo; exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet

-of glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some

-infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure

-that you weren&rsquo;t right after all; what&rsquo;s water-tight must be more

-or less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what&rsquo;s all

-this? The other side oughtn&rsquo;t to bulge like that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and weighed

-the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain another plate, he

-declared with expert conviction; yet the side which had not been opened was a

-slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable convexity. Pocket opened it at a

-word from Phillida, and an over-folded packet of MS. leapt out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s his writing!&rdquo; cried the girl, with pain and awe in her

-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in English,&rdquo; said Pocket, picking it up.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It must be what he was writing all last night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You see what it is!&rdquo; urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him

-closely as he read to himself:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-&ldquo;<i>June</i> 20, 190&mdash;.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="letter">

-&ldquo;It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret of

-my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the year; for

-they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according to the almanac,

-and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my task till four I shall have

-less than six hours in which to do justice to the great <i>ambition</i> and the

-crowning folly of my life. I used the underlined word advisedly; some would

-substitute &lsquo;monomania,&rsquo; but I protest I am as sane as they are,

-fail as I may to demonstrate that fact among so many others to be dealt with in

-the very limited time at my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier

-writer, I should feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have

-been ever deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly

-already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I shall

-ever write, as in my final preparations for death&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read,

-and he was breathing hard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak!

-He&rsquo;s said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, we know he didn&rsquo;t do it,&rdquo; said Phillida, as though she

-found a crumb of comfort in the thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that&rsquo;s the worst.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t, Phillida. I can see it isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then let us read it together. I&rsquo;d rather face it with you than

-afterwards all by myself. We&rsquo;ve seen each other through so much, surely

-we can&mdash;surely&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim eyes but a

-palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab figure of the slip

-of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. Upton, she had taken no

-thought for her mourning, that unfailing distraction to the normally bereaved,

-but had put on anything she could find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just

-her dear disdain of appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes,

-unchecked, and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her

-coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the rain had

-stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that streamed in through

-the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and poured its warm blessing on the

-two young heads bent as one over the dreadful document.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now the other

-whispering a few sentences aloud:&mdash;.

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;What I have called my life&rsquo;s ambition demands but little

-explanation here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I

-have given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are

-still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on spirit

-photography in <i>Light Human Nature</i>, <i>The Occult Review</i> and other

-periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled &lsquo;The Flight of the

-Soul,&rsquo; in <i>The Nineteenth Century and After</i> for January of last

-year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter which

-has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare and to write,

-and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme measures I have since

-employed. Treated to a modicum of serious criticism by the scientific press,

-but more generally received with ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the

-Englishman&rsquo;s attitude towards whatsoever is without his own contracted

-ken, my article, the work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days.

-I had essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new idea,

-and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore of

-unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin press from

-that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph about the psychic

-photographer which went the rounds about a year ago. Yet I was that

-photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer to whom the London

-hospitals refused admittance to their pauper deathbeds, thronged though those

-notoriously are by the raw material of the British medical profession. Begin at

-the bottom of the British medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and

-most frequent opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of

-human dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,

-without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the purity of his

-aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than mine. It is as high above

-that of your ordinary physician as heaven itself is high above this earth. Your

-physician wrestles with death to lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a

-million lives to prove that there is no such thing as death; that this human

-life of ours, by which we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of

-the permanent life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a

-truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the

-opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over

-knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion invites us

-to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is deserving of material

-proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to supply. Surely it is a higher

-aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the senses that cannot deceive, rather than

-to the imagination which must and does? But I am trenching after all upon

-ground which I myself have covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to

-relate a personal narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it

-that to me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of

-so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that all who

-saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit photography. It is a

-path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks and charlatans, and by false

-guides who rival the religious fanatics in the impudence of their appeal to

-man&rsquo;s credulity. Even those who bear the lamp I hold aloft are too often

-jugglers and rogues, to whose wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of

-photography lends itself all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the

-production of impossible pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if

-the spiritual apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing

-easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist has yet

-succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the whole problem of

-spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of communication with disembodied

-spirits at the single will of the embodied; hence the periodical exposure of

-the paid medium, the smug scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of

-genuine exploration beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment,

-and only one, at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a

-particle of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at

-which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human watcher sees

-merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a phenomenon invisible to

-the human eye has been detected and depicted by that of the camera, as

-everybody knows who has the slightest acquaintance with the branch of physics

-known as &lsquo;fluorescence.&rsquo; The invisible spirit of man surely falls

-within this category. To the crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible

-as elusive and intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign

-opportunity is gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of

-the soul.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I say no more than &lsquo;often&rsquo; because there are special

-difficulties into which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at

-least be minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,

-instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would hurt

-nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present have only

-their Churches&rsquo; word for the existence of an eternal soul in their

-perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few experiments,

-than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen centuries. Yet how

-are my earnest applications received, in hospitals where men die daily, in

-prisons where they are still occasionally put to death? I am refused, rebuffed,

-gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I am driven ultimately to the extreme course

-of taking human life, on my own account, in order to prove the life eternal.

-Call it murder, call it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of

-a lethal chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the

-inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an individual

-as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him worse than this

-world. I can only say that I have not deprived the State of one conceivably

-profitable servant, or cut short a single life of promise or repute. I have

-picked my few victims with infinite care from  amid the moral or material

-wreckage of life; either they had nothing to live for, or they had no right to

-live. Charlton, the licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I

-ever knew; in the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he

-wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to which

-an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed. Charlton had just

-been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and refusing to leave without an

-extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was indeed saturated with alcohol and

-honeycombed with disease; repulsive in appearance, and cantankerous in

-character, his earnings were so slender that he was pitifully clad, and without

-a night&rsquo;s lodging oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and

-was suffering from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I

-resolved to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to

-photograph the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present

-itself for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at

-last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not another

-being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had purchased

-second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on the seat. Yet the

-weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the  authenticity of the suicide, despite

-my final precaution of stuffing a number of cartridges into the dead

-man&rsquo;s pocket; pot-house associates came forward to declare that he could

-never have possessed either the revolver or its price without their knowledge.

-Hence the coroner&rsquo;s repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is

-to be feared that the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public

-interest in its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more

-than an academic interest in the case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very

-few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb of my

-pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for this, and the fact

-remains that I was too late. The result may be found among my negatives. It is

-dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a unique photograph of actual death;

-but it lacks the least trace of the super-normal. The flight of the soul had

-been too quick for me; it would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new

-method. I had not only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the

-fatal pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my elaborate

-attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The next case should

-be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the shot to be fired, and

-the photograph taken, at the same range and all but at the same instant. There

-would be no further point in leaving the weapon behind, so I was free to choose

-the one best suited to my purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar

-needs. Eventually I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already

-explained itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the

-discoverer of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it

-will not be loaded when found.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand about the

-pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For Phillida it was

-enough to know that the writer of this shameless rigmarole, with its pompous

-periods and its callous gusto, must long ago have lost his reason. She had no

-doubt whatever about that, and already it had brought a new light into her

-eyes. She would pause to discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed

-the way through the next passages.

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many

-weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have described

-as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in readiness for another

-attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul in consecutive fractions of a

-second. But the right man was never in the right place at the right time; one

-saw him by the dozen in a crowd, but the people one met all by themselves, in

-the early summer mornings, stayed one&rsquo;s hand repeatedly by the eager

-brightness of their eyes or a happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at

-the Brompton Hospital, whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was

-cheated of a merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the

-dawn and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch

-whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday morning. I

-knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton circle, but it was

-quite by chance that I followed his uncertain footsteps through the Park, and

-saw him go deliberately to bed in the drenching dew. His face filled in his

-tale; it was another farrago of privation and excess. This was the type that

-caused me no compunction: having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my

-invention provides, I despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his

-hat over his eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may

-be reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter

-coincided with the last clutter in his throat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before

-firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make another wary

-survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could see a considerable

-distance in three directions, and in none of these, neither right nor left

-along the path, nor yet straight ahead across the grass on the edge of which my

-victim lay, was a living creature to be seen. This was very reassuring, as I

-felt that I could see a good deal farther than the report of my small automatic

-pistol was likely to be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting

-cases, especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how seldom

-it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the fatal shot. In the

-fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery behind some iron palings, I

-looked last, for I was standing with my back that way. How shall I describe my

-sensations on turning round? There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on

-the other side of the palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in

-his right hand!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and frank

-bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a third I guessed

-what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were dank with dew. His eyes

-were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had been sleeping in the Park, and

-walking in his sleep, and in all probability it was my shot which had brought

-him to himself; of this, however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was

-disastrously inspired to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never

-struck me that he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was

-with a wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if he

-knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I had the

-wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm enough to help me

-convince the child that he really had fired the shot; but, since he could not

-see it for myself, I was not going out of my way just then to tell him it was a

-fatal shot. Already I regretted that I had gone so far, and yet already I saw

-myself committed to a course of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The

-boy became convulsed with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his

-story when the body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot,

-at the latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me

-through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with all

-sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had to keep him

-there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and implicate  me more

-readily than ever after what he had seen of me at home? I had to keep him

-there&mdash;I repeat it&mdash;alive or dead. And I was not the kind of murderer

-(if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent life, if I could help it, to

-preserve my own; on the contrary, I had, and I hope I always should have had,

-humanity enough at least to do what I could for a fellow-creature battling with

-an attack which almost threatened to remove him from my path without my

-aid.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There followed a few remarks on Pocket&rsquo;s character as the writer read it.

-They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they betrayed a

-profound disdain for the typically British institution of which Pocket was too

-readily accepted as a representative product. His general ignorance and

-credulity received a grim tribute; they were the very qualities the doctor

-would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he appeared to have enjoyed the

-youth&rsquo;s society, his transparent honesty, his capacity for enthusiastic

-interest, whether in the delights of photography or in the horrors of war.

-Baumgartner seemed aware that he had been somewhat confidential on both

-subjects, and that either his contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the

-matter of psychic photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on

-the other hand,  he &ldquo;greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two

-and two together, at these so-called public schools&rdquo;; and, after all, it

-was not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the beginning,

-in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary, was another thing to

-which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all along. He had regarded it from

-the first as &lsquo;the certain beginning of the end&rsquo;; from the first,

-he had been prepared with specious explanations for any such inquisitor as the

-one who had actually arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote

-without elation of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor

-had not been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It

-was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which could only

-have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted it, but which the

-boy himself had discovered never to have been posted at all. There was a

-sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood into which

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s intuition of the boy&rsquo;s discovery had thrown him on

-the Sunday night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;It was then,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;that I formed a  project which I

-should have been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done

-so if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my second

-attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great a fiasco as

-the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable (even though it seem a

-wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. What if the human derelicts I

-had so far chosen for my experiments had no souls to photograph? Sodden with

-drink, debauched, degraded, and spiritually blurred or blunted to the last

-degree, these after all were the least likely subjects to yield results to the

-spirit photographer. I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as

-these, entities in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought

-of the saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my

-acquaintance, of a &lsquo;light&rsquo; specialist I know of who is destroying

-himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the slums;

-but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are much too valuable

-for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a compensating benefit to

-mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought of the boy upstairs. I had not

-meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of some promise, is only less sacred to

-me than a mature life rich in beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was

-going to be my ruin. I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the

-letter; he would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the

-work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was not going

-to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter into here, and I

-intended to take more than his life while I was about it. But he never gave me

-the chance. I did my best to get him to go out with me this morning. But he

-refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a dog the water. He said he was ill; he

-looked ill. But I have no doubt he was well enough to make his escape soon

-after my back was turned. I see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes

-I took away from him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that;

-but, to tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my

-return.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy broke in

-with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the Sunday night and the

-Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the doctor&rsquo;s house. He

-declared that nothing short of main force would have dragged him out-of-doors

-that morning, that he felt it in his bones that he would never come back alive.

-Then he would be sorry he had said so much. It only increased his

-companion&rsquo;s anguish. She was reading every word religiously, with a most

-painful fascination; it was as though every word drew blood. There was a brief

-but terrible account of the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own

-house in Park Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the

-one occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and that

-only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so intensely that a

-&ldquo;straight&rdquo; interview was out of the question. As it was he had

-escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft, creeping into a

-carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong side when it drove round to

-its house. Baumgartner described the incident with a callous relish, as perhaps

-the most exciting in his long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent

-return, in propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of

-a sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as follows, in

-less careful language and a more flowing hand:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day&rsquo;s excitement

-must have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got

-back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his

-clothes. I didn&rsquo;t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative to

-develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute failure from

-the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason as its predecessors.

-South African mines may produce gold and diamonds (licit and illicit!) but

-their yield in souls is probably the poorest to the square mile anywhere on

-earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his gross carcass. So there was an end of

-him, and a good riddance to rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all

-night. I have thought of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate

-statement that I have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me

-strange pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to

-attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I not

-conscious of a moment&rsquo;s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only sometimes

-have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause, perhaps half an hour

-ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I heard a footstep in the

-hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all this writing; it might be my

-imagination. I stole to my door, and as I opened it the one below shut softly.

-I waited some time, heard nothing more, went down with my lamp, and threw open

-the drawing-room door. There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting

-in the dark with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to

-be misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that. But

-somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark without a

-word, afraid to go to bed&mdash;afraid of me&mdash;made the blood boil over in

-my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I had pictured

-overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I am glad it missed

-him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was seeing his companion safe

-upstairs. If I had found him where I left him, God knows what violence I might

-not have done him after all. The boy has good in him, and more courage than he

-knows himself; again I say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life

-was not safe, but now I shall only take my own.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common

-hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England:

-either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal

-lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all

-night long, ready and pointed at my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind

-me, and I should have rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now

-they are waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where

-already it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and

-enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million facets of

-living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there; and as I have served

-others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be with better fortune than

-they have brought me. Who knows? It would be in keeping with the poetic ironies

-of this existence. At all events, unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a

-chance. I shall place the camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have

-fitted the shutter with a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do

-its double work as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my

-mind. I have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by

-the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent person,

-the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to the police. They,

-I think, may be trusted to honour one&rsquo;s last instructions, if only out of

-curiosity; their eyes will be the first to read what I fear they will describe

-as my &lsquo;full confession.&rsquo; Well, it is &lsquo;full,&rsquo; and the

-substantive must be left to them. So long as the document does not fall into

-one little pair of gentle hands, I shall lie easy in whatever ignominious grave

-they lay me. That is why I hide it where I do: since, if it fell first into

-those hands, it would never see the light at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away, and wept

-over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness, while Pocket

-picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the muddy newspaper.

-Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation went away

-with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her return she stood petrified on

-the threshold.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter between

-his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud metallic snap

-inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the shutter snapped like a

-shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward with a cry. Pocket had taken

-the top off the camera; it was like a box without the lid, and on the one side

-there was nothing between the lens and the grooved carrier for the slide, but

-on the other there was an automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild

-beast might be lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for

-the second lens of the stereoscopic camera.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was preceded by

-the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there had been another

-cartridge in the pistol.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And we never guessed it!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why he went

-in for this sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot

-in quick succession. It&rsquo;s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my

-life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a

-word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether

-on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I&rsquo;ve been trying

-it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol&rsquo;s pointing

-every time. It&rsquo;s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and

-the spot isn&rsquo;t quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the

-left to allow. I don&rsquo;t quite see how the one bulb works everything, but

-these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan&rsquo;t understand

-everything till we take it to pieces.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean the police won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Phillida, bitterly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The police! I never thought of them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What do you mean to do with this&mdash;this infernal machine?&rdquo; the

-girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What do <i>you</i> mean to do with&mdash;the writing?&rdquo; demanded

-Pocket in his turn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Burn it! I&rsquo;ve asked for a fire in my room; it&rsquo;s locked away

-meanwhile.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, this is yours, too,&rdquo; said Pocket, deliberately, &ldquo;to do

-what you like with as well.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They wouldn&rsquo;t think so!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll never know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t

-keep it to yourself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You would <i>have</i> to

-tell.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, but not everybody,&rdquo; said poor Pocket. &ldquo;Only my father,

-if you like!&rdquo; he added, valiantly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that. Didn&rsquo;t you hear what he said about a

-man&rsquo;s secrets dying with him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is

-the mystery of the day. It&rsquo;ll be the talk for months, if not years. And

-as yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially, that

-he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had failed to see

-her heart&rsquo;s desire, and how it was still in his power to save her the

-supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with the world. He

-made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that looked both ways at

-every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and

-Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would

-probably back their penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no

-boasting about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to

-Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket

-was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its subsequent

-recital. But he could &ldquo;play the game&rdquo; as well as Horace himself,

-when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And now he had none

-whatever.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Phillida, if you wish it, I&rsquo;ll never breathe a syllable of all

-this to a single soul on earth, I don&rsquo;t care who they are, or what they

-do to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, Tony, do you mean it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her eyes had filled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I mean it! I&rsquo;ll swear it more solemnly than I&rsquo;ve

-ever sworn anything in my life so far.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No, no! Your word&rsquo;s enough. Don&rsquo;t I know what that&rsquo;s

-worth, after this terrible week?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away and put

-the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so that he

-might not see her tears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,&rdquo; he

-vowed, &ldquo;except yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, always, as

-much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all their lives. And

-not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he think of a reward or look

-beyond those days.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an automatic

-pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. They thought

-about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was getting on towards

-evening now, though the sun was out again, and it was lighter than the early

-afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any minute. It was Phillida who at last

-said she knew. She would not tell him what she meant to do; but she put on her

-waterproof again, little as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as

-before; and together they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where she was

-going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. He felt a

-frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself as to her, with

-that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who looked at them was a

-detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at the corners he wanted to run.

-But they gained the middle of Waterloo Bridge undetected and ensconced

-themselves in a recess without creating a sensation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; said Phillida, &ldquo;will you focus Westminster

-Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, the

-stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida&rsquo;s drift until she aimed

-herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through her fingers

-into the depths of the river from which she had only retrieved it a couple of

-hours before, as a body is committed to the deep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a loud

-voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the genuine

-severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who thought it worth

-while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy townsfolk hastening past

-were all too much engrossed in their own affairs to take any interest in those

-of the boy and girl who seemed themselves in something of a hurry to get back

-to the Strand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing but four

-words in enormous black letters:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">

-CHELSEA INQUEST<br />

-CAMERA CLUE!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket&rsquo;s arm. Pocket was man enough to

-press it to his side.

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">

-THE END

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Printed in Great Britain by Wyman &amp; Sons, Ltd., London and Reading

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div>

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+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Camera Fiend</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by E.W. Hornung</h2>
+
+<h4>
+London<br />
+T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.<br />
+Adelphi Terrace<br />
+1911
+</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III. HIS PEOPLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V. THE GLASS EYE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. AN AWAKENING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. BLOOD-GUILTY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. POINTS OF VIEW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">X. SECOND THOUGHTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. ON PAROLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. BOY AND GIRL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. BEFORE THE STORM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. A LIKELY STORY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. MALINGERING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. A THIRD CASE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. THE FOURTH CASE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. AFTER THE FAIR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
+A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily exemption
+from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away his remaining
+modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall, and would probably
+have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own study, had not an obvious
+way out of his difficulty been bothering him by that time almost as much as the
+difficulty itself. For it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket
+had been called &ldquo;a conscientious ass&rdquo; by some of the nicest fellows
+in his house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he
+did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a blue
+pencil and a briar pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can&rsquo;t have me, sir. He&rsquo;s got a
+case of chicken-pox, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured but
+ laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you must come back to-night, and I&rsquo;m just as glad. It&rsquo;s
+all nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor of
+yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on
+me, and then see what sort of night I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You could go up again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I could, sir,&rdquo; replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate
+emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so acutely
+conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else do you propose?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Spearman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the
+Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are the Knaggses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, sir; they go to
+Westminster now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St.
+John&rsquo;s Wood Park.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the lady you mentioned?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother&rsquo;s; it was through
+her I went to Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, and I&rsquo;ve often stayed there.
+She&rsquo;s in the Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that other
+lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no guile in any
+Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them resembled the great twin
+brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted a &ldquo;pocket edition&rdquo;
+on his arrival in the school. He had few of their other merits, though he took
+a morbid interest in the games they played by light of nature, as well as in
+things both beyond and beneath his brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit
+up half your nights with asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to
+Mr. Spearman, who was an average man. He had never disguised his own
+disappointment in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of
+outspoken and disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some
+sympathy with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning
+he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who was
+getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the two names and
+addresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite sure they&rsquo;ll put you up, are you?&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Absolutely certain, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come straight back if they can&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then run away, and don&rsquo;t miss your train.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to arrive
+very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished with more
+ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the best of them was
+framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its foreground was the
+nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down into the quad, where the
+fellows were preparing construes for second school in sunlit groups on garden
+seats. At that moment the bell began. And by the time Pocket had changed his
+black tie for a green one with red spots, in which he had come back after the
+Easter holidays, the bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled
+again he would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a world of
+buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel as good as
+anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in the corner seats
+did not dream of calling the youth an &ldquo;old ass,&rdquo; much less a young
+one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school were in the habit of
+employing the ameliorating adjective, but there were still a few fellows  in
+Pocket&rsquo;s house who made an insulting point of the other. All, however,
+seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was pleasant to cast off friend and foe
+for a change, to sit comfortably unknown and unsuspected of one&rsquo;s foibles
+in the train. It made Pocket feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost
+seventeen, and in the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in
+bed. He took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him
+good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously at the
+little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was transferred to a
+pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his paper, in which there were
+several items of immediate interest to him. Would the match hold out at
+Lord&rsquo;s? If not, which was the best of the Wednesday matinees? Pocket had
+received a pound from home for his expenses, so that these questions took an
+adventitious precedence over even such attractive topics as an execution and a
+murder that bade fair to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and
+having supped on the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in <i>Henry
+Dunbar</i>, the novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something
+like a murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying
+buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real crimes 
+in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself there too soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose
+professional standing is never quite on a par with their material success. The
+injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it may be that his temper
+was at the root of the prejudice against him. He was never very amiable with
+Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had
+some call to complain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean to tell me,&rdquo; he expostulated, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;ve
+gone back to the cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you
+weren&rsquo;t a stupid schoolboy I should throw up your case!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more days and
+nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible resentment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only way I can stop an attack,&rdquo; he mumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; snapped the specialist. &ldquo;You can make yourself
+coffee in the night, as you&rsquo;ve done before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t at school. They draw the line at that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then a public school is no place for you. I&rsquo;ve said so from the
+first. Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea
+voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She sails
+the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the subject
+of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to his
+undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following in his
+brothers&rsquo; steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might have had
+adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he might have been
+shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a tale beyond the dreams of
+envious athletes, if his people had but taken kindly to the scheme. But they
+had been so very far from taking to it at all, with the single exception of his
+only sister, that the boy had not the heart to discuss it now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an
+attack!&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;But there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be any.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are plenty of preventives,&rdquo; returned the doctor.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is
+merely a palliative that does more harm than good in the long run.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good
+night without smoking I should be thankful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep
+until to-morrow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from
+his bag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Bompas, as they made an exchange. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t want you even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what
+the temptation must be when you can&rsquo;t get your breath. You will get this
+prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to bed
+to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in the morning.
+You say you are staying the night with friends; better give me the name and let
+me see if they&rsquo;re on the telephone before you go. I want you to go to bed
+early, tell them not to call you in the morning, and come back to me the moment
+you&rsquo;ve had your breakfast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering whether he
+ought to have said positively that he was staying with friends when he might be
+going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been so short with him at first as to
+discourage unnecessary explanations; besides, there could be no question of his
+going back that night. And the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite
+forgotten in the train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ The time-table of that boy&rsquo;s day must speak for itself. It was already
+ one o&rsquo;clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his
+ breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley&rsquo;s card. At 1.15 he was munching a
+ sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook&rsquo;s in Oxford Street.
+ The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed by another; and
+ a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas would undoubtedly have
+ disapproved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a placard
+with &ldquo;Collapse of Middlesex&rdquo; in appalling capitals. And at the
+station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord&rsquo;s for
+nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the theatres,
+and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s thrust
+itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for years. He had
+often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered being taken by his sister
+when a little boy at Coverley&rsquo;s, but she had refused to go into the
+Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at the time but sorry ever
+afterwards, because so many of the boys of those days had seen everything and
+seemed none the worse for the adventure. It was one of the things he had always
+wanted not so much to  do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of
+Horrors had frozen his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a
+criminological governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the
+budding criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and
+<i>Henry Dunbar</i> formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy had
+other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building, and enter
+eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but Pocket had
+no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band. And though history
+was one of his few strong points at school, the glittering galaxy of kings and
+queens appealed to him no more than the great writers at their little desks and
+the great cricketers in their unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and
+all. But when the extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he
+had passed down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was
+at work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his
+catalogue to bear on one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the schoolboy
+through a work on his father&rsquo;s shelves called <i>Annals of Our Time</i>.
+He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept him awake long
+after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not scowling and ferocious
+as he had always pictured them, but far more horribly demure and plump. Here
+were immortal malefactors like the Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek
+by jowl, looking as though they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete
+raiment, looking anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes
+their quick bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death,
+rusty pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face
+smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the waxwork
+about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own clothes, and the
+veritable dock in which many of them had heard their doom, they looked
+hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat not in the dock but on
+the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of him; and the schoolboy felt
+sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for the broad arrows on his poor legs,
+until he found out who it was. Then he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had
+first heard of Charles Peace from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under
+his nose were the old ruffian&rsquo;s revolver, and the strap that strapped it
+to his wrist, with the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy
+was almost as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale
+of crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had
+hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet
+wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his mind
+again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid place to
+himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the heels of a whole
+family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning their sorrow in a sea of
+gore, their pilot through the catalogue a conscientious orphan with a
+monotonous voice and a genius for mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to
+see or hear him or any other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was
+trying to place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into
+a real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the
+comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find that it
+was after four o&rsquo;clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home from
+Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there before them, and
+he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub shoulders with flesh and
+blood once more, and to look in faces not made of wax in the devil&rsquo;s
+image. His way, which he knew of old, would  naturally have led him past Miss
+Harbottle&rsquo;s door; but, as she was only to be his second string for the
+night, he preferred not to be seen by that old lady yet. Such was the tiny
+spring of an important action; it led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite
+unforeseen temptation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable pawnbroker&rsquo;s
+shop; in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s window the chances are that you might still
+find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family Bibles, ornaments and
+clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes,
+photograph frames and cheap jewellery, all of which could not tempt you less
+than they did Pocket Upton the other June. There were only two things in the
+window that interested him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was
+an old rosewood camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but
+the thing that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what
+looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the price.
+A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked places on the
+slow walks with a slow companion which were all the exercise this unfortunate
+fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges complete, so that one could try it
+now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian at the end of their garden in  St.
+John&rsquo;s Wood Park! And all very likely for five bob if one bargained a
+bit!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any such sum
+would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life? Of coure it would
+have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared to take the consequences
+if found out; it need not involve his notion of dishonour. Still, it must be
+recorded that the young or old as was conscientious enough to hesitate before
+making his fatal plunge into the pawnbroker&rsquo;s shop.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+A BOY ABOUT TOWN</h2>
+
+<p>
+The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in St.
+John&rsquo;s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the boy a
+cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room. Mrs. Knaggs was a
+large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at all events to the young.
+She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed him) had altered; but her tone
+left Pocket in doubt as to whether any improvement was implied. She for one did
+not approve of his luncheon in Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had
+spent a summer&rsquo;s afternoon; indeed, she rather wondered at his being
+allowed alone in London at all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in
+conversation with his elders, at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own
+Westminster boys were allowed alone in London every day of their lives. But
+Mrs. Knaggs said that was a very different thing, and that she thought
+Pocket&rsquo;s public school must be very different from Westminster. Pocket
+bridled, but behaved himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and
+got as far towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s
+misfortune and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him
+where he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring he
+had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs said of course
+he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked her as properly as
+though it were the invitation he made sure must follow. After all, Vivian
+Knaggs had stayed at Pocket&rsquo;s three weeks one Christmas, and Guy a
+fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would think of that; it was not a
+matter to broach to them, or one to worry about, prematurely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than Pocket,
+and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton jacket, the  other in
+tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an unworthy prejudice in the
+wearer of the green tie with red spots. They seemed very glad to see him,
+however, and the stiffness was wearing off even before Pocket produced his
+revolver in the basement room where the two Westminsters prepared their lessons
+and had their evening meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs pronounced
+it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a thousand pounds.
+This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he and his revolver were made
+of, then and there in the garden, and the more confident that it never would be
+heard in the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would,&rdquo; answered Vivian, &ldquo;and seen as well. No, if you
+want to have a shot let&rsquo;s stick up a target outside this window, and fire
+from just inside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but, unhappily, Mrs.
+Knaggs&rsquo;s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it also looked out on
+the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room and near her window when the
+report startled her, and not less because she little dreamt what it was until
+she looked out in time to see a cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom
+window, and Pocket examining the target, weapon in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition from
+aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs, descended to
+extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the matter. Pocket was
+very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon&rsquo;s teeth with a promptitude that
+might have been his death, and offered it and them to be placed under lock and
+key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs contented herself with promoting a solemn
+promise into a Sacred Word of Honour&mdash;which rather hurt poor
+Pocket&mdash;and with sending him a very straight message by Vivian after
+supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The mater&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; said Vivian, returning from a
+mission which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a spare bed in the house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him
+from going into particulars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A sofa would do me all right,&rdquo; suggested Pocket, who had long ago
+lost his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were
+boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook his
+head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The mater says she couldn&rsquo;t sleep with firearms in the
+house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bury them in the garden if she likes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley&rsquo;s you once walked in
+your sleep,&rdquo; pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging
+the interloper&rsquo;s cause. &ldquo;And the mater&rsquo;s afraid you might
+walk out of a window or set the house on fire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do either to-night,&rdquo; protested Pocket, with a
+grin. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to
+keep me quiet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with further information on both points the son of the house went upstairs
+again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed gravity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; he said unconvincingly, &ldquo;but she
+can&rsquo;t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your
+asthma.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was not
+really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt he had made
+rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly cast adrift at
+sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor was this quite the case
+as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in Wellington Road. But to her he
+was not going until decency compelled him; he was going to have another game of
+bagatelle with Guy Knaggs first. It will be seen that with all his
+sensibilities the youngest Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took
+a great deal for granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to
+worry over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was
+obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the subject of
+his friend&rsquo;s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been refused,
+rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St. Pancras. Yet he
+left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour to go to bed in; and
+that was neither the first nor the last of his erratic proceedings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about your luggage?&rdquo; asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his
+hat to walk round with Pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got any?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I left it at Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Left your luggage there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was only a handbag. How long are they open?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Knaggs looked in <i>Whitaker</i> and said they closed at ten. There was
+still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it was not much
+use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss Cottage, and the
+adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Miss Harbottle, his mother&rsquo;s great friend, would have none of him
+either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden gate was
+one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated indoors. The downstairs
+lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a light shone through the front
+door, and the door opened a few inches on the chain. Pocket confronted a
+crevice of quilted dressing-gown and grey curls; but his mother&rsquo;s
+friend&rsquo;s mastiff was making night so hideous within, and trying so hard
+to get at his mother&rsquo;s son, that it was some time before he could
+exchange an intelligible word with the brute&rsquo;s mistress. It was not a
+satisfactory interchange then, for Miss Harbottle at first flatly refused to
+believe that this was Tony Upton, whom she had not seen since his preparatory
+schooldays, and she seemed inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton,
+she could not take him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and
+the cook had just left. Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s cook had always just left,
+except when she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant&rsquo;s
+fun out of the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his purse. The
+only thing to do was to put up at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel, Trafalgar Square; that
+was where his people always stayed, where every servant was supposed to know
+them all. He pushed on at once through the cool June night, and paid away three
+of his last shillings for the drive. Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw&rsquo;s;
+it was the worst time of the year, they told him, and he  supposed they meant
+the best. He also supposed there had been changes in the staff, for nobody
+seemed to know his name as well as he had been led to expect at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels opposite, and
+recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven Street. But the big
+hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the only little one he tried the
+boy lost his temper like a man on being requested to deposit six shillings
+before proceeding to his room. Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the
+galling reflection caused him to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection
+upon his outward respectability&mdash;as if he could not have borrowed the
+money from Dr. Bompas in the morning!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see you blowed,&rdquo; was his muttered reply, and he caught
+up his bag in a passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right, little man! I shouldn&rsquo;t be rude about it,&rdquo; said
+the dapper cashier. &ldquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t pay my shot I should sleep in
+the Park, on a nice fine night like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall!&rdquo; shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would
+prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it was his
+own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering what else he was
+to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which lends to
+adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or heroic things, if
+not to have to do them. He had so little to boast about; his brothers, and so
+many other fellows of his own age, had so much. It would make a great yarn some
+day, how he had come up from school to see a doctor&mdash;and slept in the
+Park!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly anything of
+London except St. John&rsquo;s Wood and his present landmark of the Nelson
+column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having stayed some time (under
+another doctor) as a child at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel. But, I say! What would Bompas
+say to his sleeping out, and what sort of night could he expect in the open
+air?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in more than
+handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all the force of a
+forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of person to
+use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him feel doughty and even
+truculent to find the means of heroic defence all ready to his hand. He began
+to plume himself on his providential purchase. He would sell his young life
+dearly if he fell among London thieves;  in his death he would not be
+unhonoured at school or at home. Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang
+like tears to a mind still healthy enough to dash them away again, as though
+they had been real tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the
+unsuspected desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the
+corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said
+Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman looked as
+though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the motor omnibus
+through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at Albert Gate; but here
+there was quite a little stream of decent people to follow without further
+tremors into the indubitable Park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining confidence as
+he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were turned outward by all
+there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest some one or other of the
+several passers should stand in his path and ask what he was doing there. He
+was still afraid of speaking or being spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so.
+Detection as an escaped schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing
+something for which he might be expelled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to take more
+notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his surprise, that the
+majority of those passing through the Park at that late hour were hardly of his
+own class. So much the more infinitesimal were the chances of his being
+recognised or even suspected for what he was. There were young men in straw
+hats, there were red-coated soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the
+schoolboy with their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy&rsquo;s
+heart beat at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined.
+One wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a remark as
+Pocket had never heard from a woman&rsquo;s lips before. He turned away,
+tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in the act of
+crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of the
+Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and gazed upon the
+artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the darkness, it might have
+been the noblest river in the world. Its banks were muffled in a feather boa of
+trees, bedizened by a chain of many lights; the lights of a real bridge made a
+diadem in the distance; and between these sped  the lamps of invisible
+vehicles, like fretful fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer
+with its own brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a
+trace of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy
+had ever seen&mdash;a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen
+through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it. But he
+did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London&rsquo;s light
+and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her mighty
+machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his ears; and yet
+between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck near at hand, the splash
+of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of water-fowl: altogether such a
+chorus of incongruities as was not lost upon our very impressionable young
+vagabond. The booming strokes of eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his
+immediate needs. His great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in
+hand, to select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of
+cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad footpaths
+from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he was approaching an
+exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with the Marble Arch at its
+apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had come right across the Park; back
+over the grass, keeping rather more to the right, in the direction of those
+trees, was the best thing now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was enough to
+deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical. Pocket Upton,
+however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and strong alike, who are
+more than loth to abandon a course of action once taken. It would have required
+a very severe attack to baulk him of his night out and its subsequent
+description to electrified ears. But when bad steering had brought him up at
+the bandstand, the deserted chairs seemed an ordained compromise between
+prudence and audacity, and he had climbed into the fenced enclosure when
+another enormous policeman rose up horribly in its midst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; inquired this policeman, striding upon
+Pocket with inexorable tread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No harm, I hope,&rdquo; replied our hero humbly, but with unusual
+readiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor no good either, I&rsquo;ll be bound!&rdquo; said the policeman,
+standing over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was only going to sit down,&rdquo; protested Pocket, having satisfied
+his conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been going to
+do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are plenty of places to sit down,&rdquo; rejoined the policeman.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it
+you won&rsquo;t have time to sit down at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Park closes at twelve.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Closes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At twelve o&rsquo;clock, and it&rsquo;s half-past eleven now.&rdquo; The
+boy&rsquo;s heart sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing
+plans. He was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he
+had looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only
+reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently entertained
+the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong. But he seemed quite
+clear about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you think we were open all night?&rdquo; he inquired with a grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, &ldquo;I even
+thought a lot of loafers used to sleep here all night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The policeman chuckled aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They may if they get up the trees; that&rsquo;s about their only
+chance,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You search the whole place so thoroughly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We keeps our eyes open,&rdquo; said the policeman significantly, and
+Pocket asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off with
+the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out. Such was his
+then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn, to what seat on the
+Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his ignorance of London he had no
+idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent on
+quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into its heart.
+He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and drifted before the
+wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one hand and a restricted open
+space upon the other. He could no longer see a single light; but the ground
+rose abruptly across the fence, and was thick with shrubs. Men might have been
+lying behind those shrubs, and Pocket could not possibly have seen them from
+the path. Did the policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going
+to climb every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright fence was
+not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as obvious and
+intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at twelve, did it? The
+flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw himself breaking the laws of
+the land as well as those of school, saw himself not only expelled but put in
+prison! Well, so much the better for his story so long as those  penalties were
+not incurred; even if they were, so much the greater hero he!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living up to
+the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But the will was
+on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way lay handy in the shape
+of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just passed against the iron palings.
+He went back to them, mounted on the first chair, wedged his bag between two of
+the spikes, set foot on the back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the
+other side without rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he
+hear. So then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and
+wiped the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a
+conscientious ass at school!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and they
+had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he had lost
+control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras. They did not
+prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush that I he could find,
+before curling up underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from
+thinking&mdash;even on his knees&mdash;of his revolver, nor yet&mdash;by the
+force of untimely association&mdash;of the other revolvers in the Chamber of
+Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but
+the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed;
+he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did
+come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap he wore as a
+watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber,
+to his wrist instead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the last but one of the silly boy&rsquo;s proceedings under the bush;
+the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by Bompas in the
+morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet and sticky in the
+mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful warmth at his extremities
+as he curled up in his overcoat. It was precisely then that he heard a measured
+tread approaching, and held his breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet
+the danger was still audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about
+it, but of Mr. Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in
+Leicestershire.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+HIS PEOPLE</h2>
+
+<p>
+It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him. They had
+been talking about him at the very time of the boy&rsquo;s inconceivable
+meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a butterfly
+collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down with a tall girl
+not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only to be seen in glimpses as
+they passed the drawing-room windows, and at not less regular intervals when a
+red light in the sky, the source of which was concealed by the garden foliage,
+became positively brilliant. The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle
+and musk-roses and mown grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows.
+But for the lurid lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some
+mammoth forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use our talking about Tony,&rdquo; the tall girl said.
+&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re frightfully down on him; we shall never
+agree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,&rdquo; said the blunt
+young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s no fool,&rdquo; remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly
+enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; snapped her brother Horace.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s being absolutely spoilt, and you&rsquo;re at the bottom of
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t give him asthma!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be childish, Letty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s spoiling his life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t talking about his life. I don&rsquo;t believe it,
+either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think he enjoys his bad nights?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think he scores by them. He&rsquo;d tell you himself that he never
+even thinks of getting up to first school now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you if you&rsquo;d been sitting up half the night with
+asthma?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps not; but I don&rsquo;t believe that happens so often as you
+think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay for
+two or three bad ones.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek
+Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his spare
+time, and got most marks in the exam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beastly young swot!&rdquo; quoth his elder  brother. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+glad he didn&rsquo;t buck to me about that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much danger of his bucking to
+you,&rdquo; said Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her
+obvious reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite
+incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed that she
+meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his own, and a good
+heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt. &ldquo;I looked after him
+all right,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;the one term we were there together. So
+did Fred for the next year. But it&rsquo;s rather rough on Fred and myself, who
+were both something in the school at his age, to hear and see for ourselves
+that Tony&rsquo;s nobody even in the house!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony
+that you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the
+standard you two set up; it&rsquo;s natural enough, but it isn&rsquo;t
+fair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t be a flyer at games,&rdquo; said Horace, duly softened
+by a little flattery. &ldquo;But he might be a tryer!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A bag of oxygen wouldn&rsquo;t make him a cricketer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet he&rsquo;s so keen on cricket!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish he wasn&rsquo;t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than
+Fred or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a
+player.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it&rsquo;s his
+nature, just as it&rsquo;s Fred&rsquo;s and yours to be men of action.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad he&rsquo;s not allowed to cumber the crease this
+season,&rdquo; said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a
+distinct swerve in the air. &ldquo;To have him called our &lsquo;pocket
+edition,&rsquo; on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,&rdquo; she
+said warmly. &ldquo;And I hope he may make you see it before this
+doctor&rsquo;s done with him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This doctor!&rdquo; jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as
+well. &ldquo;You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on
+his own?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of
+himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him go; but
+he&rsquo;s the most casual young hound I ever struck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know he&rsquo;s casual.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry her sense
+of fairness had so misled her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;he wouldn&rsquo;t be cured if he
+could. Think what he&rsquo;d miss!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;re coming back to that, there&rsquo;s no more to be
+said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the girl halted at the lighted windows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I do come back to it. Isn&rsquo;t he up in town at this moment under
+this very doctor of yours?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not my doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you first heard about him; you&rsquo;re the innovator of the family,
+Letty, so it&rsquo;s no use trying to score off me. Isn&rsquo;t Tony up in
+London to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you what he&rsquo;s doing at this moment,&rdquo;
+cried Horace, with egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s after eleven; he&rsquo;s in the act of struggling out of some
+theatre, where the atmosphere&rsquo;s so good for asthma!&rdquo; Lettice left
+the gibe unanswered. It was founded on recent fact which she had been the first
+to deplore when Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by
+no means blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more
+than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose unmeasured
+objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special pleading. She tried
+to believe that there was more in her younger brother than in any of them, and
+would often speak up for him as though she had succeeded. It may have been
+merely a woman&rsquo;s weakness for the weak, but Lettice had taught herself to
+believe in Tony. And perhaps of all his people she was the only one who could
+have followed his vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have gone
+indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily at that
+moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity.
+Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they
+were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than
+he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a
+heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy,
+too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she
+looked like a woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than
+her brother, but of other clay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father&rsquo;s library, and
+unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the terrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said he wasn&rsquo;t doing much good there,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always
+does.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean that he&rsquo;s doing any harm?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton
+plainly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I&mdash;I
+sometimes wish there was more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More manhood, I suppose you&rsquo;d call it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More go about him,&rdquo; said Horace. He could not say as much to his
+father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to bolt
+from his guns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?&rdquo;
+continued Mr. Upton, with severity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Horace hastily, &ldquo;and of course that&rsquo;s
+really why he&rsquo;s doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his
+doesn&rsquo;t seem to be doing him any either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the
+downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had turned the
+wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite another quarter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree with you there!&rdquo; cried his father vehemently. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon
+who has done so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a
+trial? The lad wasn&rsquo;t having a fair chance at school. This looked like
+one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the letters the
+man writes me about him. He&rsquo;d have me take him away from school
+altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But what&rsquo;s
+to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He&rsquo;d be too
+old to go to another school, and too young for the University: no use at the
+works, and only another worry to us all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with
+intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of sympathy which
+is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards the unsound. He hated
+sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it. His wife had taken ill the
+year before, had undergone a grave operation in the winter, and was still a
+great anxiety to him. But that was another and a far more serious matter; he
+had patience and sympathy enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very
+different. Himself a man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected
+his own qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent
+absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why should Tony
+be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr. Upton was often
+sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard more about the asthma than
+he had seen for himself. If the boy was not down to breakfast in the holidays,
+he was supposed to have had a bad night; yet later in the day he would be as
+bright as anybody, at times indeed the brightest of the party. That, however,
+was usually when Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he
+was another creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the
+busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice overdid
+matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint, and was inclined
+to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his age, even if said to be
+cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile pose to the man who had never
+studied that disorder. The specialist in London seemed another mistake on the
+part of that managing Lettice, who had quite assumed the family lead of late.
+And altogether Mr. Upton, though he saw the matter from a different point of
+view, was not far from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed, whose
+brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his schoolfellows &ldquo;a
+conscientious ass,&rdquo; while his sister spoilt him for <i>un enfant
+incompris?</i> You may say it would have taken a miracle to make an ordinary
+decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange happenings to the boy and
+his people; perhaps it was the one authentic type of miracle that capped all in
+the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of
+whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a few
+hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning. The birds were
+singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The morning sun was slanting
+over town and country, and the father&rsquo;s thoughts were with his tiresome
+son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came from the adjoining room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife&rsquo;s side, supporting her in
+bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tony!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;My Tony!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was just thinking of him!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What about him,
+dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw him,&rdquo; she quavered. &ldquo;I saw him plainer than I see you
+now. And I&rsquo;m almost positive I heard&mdash;a shot!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+A GRIM SAMARITAN</h2>
+
+<p>
+Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the sound of a
+shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He opened his eyes on a
+dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The air was strangely keen for
+the amount of sunshine, the sunshine curiously rarefied, and the grass swept
+grey where it did not sparkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket&rsquo;s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy head
+into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps. He was not in
+bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the shrub he now remembered in
+a mental flash which lit up all his adventures overnight. He was wandering
+ankle deep in the dew, towards a belt of poplars like birch-rods on the
+skyline, and a row of spiked palings right in front of his nose. He had walked
+in his sleep for the first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to
+wake him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in reality so
+swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he who must have made
+it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A hand darted through them
+and caught Pocket&rsquo;s  wrist as in a vice. And he looked up over the spikes
+into a gnarled face tinged with fear and fury, and working spasmodically at the
+suppression of some incomprehensible emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know what you did?&rdquo; the man demanded in the end. The
+question seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be
+reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense, reminding
+Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy to account for the
+tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous with passion. And the man
+stood tall and dominant, with a silver stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird
+cloak and hat that helped to invest him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish
+inquisitor; no wonder his eyes were like cold steel in quivering flesh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must have been walking in my sleep,&rdquo; began Pocket, shakily;
+further explanations were cut very short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well? I can&rsquo;t help it! I&rsquo;ve done it before to-day; you
+needn&rsquo;t believe me if you don&rsquo;t like! Do you mind letting go of my
+hand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With that in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he had
+strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but his finger
+actually on the trigger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say I let it off?&rdquo; cried Pocket,
+horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Feel the barrel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. The
+barrel was still warm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was in my sleep,&rdquo; protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you it was!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second impulse.
+The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy, picking his
+brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master&rsquo;s eye had ever
+delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very worst of him at school
+was known in an instant to this dreadful stranger in the wilds of London. He
+writhed under the ordeal of that protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his
+imprisoned wrist. His captor was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his
+unoccupied hand. A blade was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced
+through in a second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man
+swooped down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his
+weapon, &ldquo;I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no
+right to spend the night in here at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not the only one!&rdquo; He had just espied a recumbent figure
+through the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a
+battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall man merely
+redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without so much as a
+glance behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is the sort that staggers in as soon as the
+gates are open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that
+sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules. Who are
+you, and what&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Asthma,&rdquo; wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had nowhere else to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you come up from the country?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To see a doctor about it!&rdquo; cried Pocket bitterly, and told the
+whole truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely
+lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and through; but
+the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked less deeply slashed
+and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that uttered the next words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these
+chairs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had climbed them.
+His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied him on the other side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket looked round and pointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind that bush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you left nothing there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; my bag and hat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly
+suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?
+There&mdash;catching the sun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s empty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the palings,
+waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But no third creature
+was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the dew. Pocket surmounted the
+obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost beside himself in the throes of his
+attack. Later, he feared he must have been lifted down like a child; but this
+was when he was getting his breath upon a seat. They had come some little
+distance very slowly, and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an
+arm as to lend colour to his humiliating suspicion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His grim companion spoke first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never forgive the brute!&rdquo; he panted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, come! He didn&rsquo;t send you to sleep in the Park.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he took away the only thing that does me any good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I
+had.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced from his
+bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He had slipped it
+into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt for it feverishly. He
+gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the palpable thing, and he drew
+forth a flattened cylinder the size of a cigarette and the colour of a cigar.
+The boy had to bite off both ends; the man was ready with the match. Pocket
+drank the crude smoke down like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed
+the tears into his eyes, and was comparatively cured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!&rdquo; said his companion.
+&ldquo;I cannot understand him, and I&rsquo;m a doctor myself.&rdquo; His voice
+and look were deliberate even for him. &ldquo;My name is Baumgartner,&rdquo; he
+added, and made a pause. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose you know it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Pocket, swelling with
+breath and gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A schoolboy in the country,&rdquo; observed Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;is
+scarcely likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will
+find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for
+breakfast, and a little rest. That is,&rdquo; added the doctor, with his first
+smile, &ldquo;if you will trust yourself to me first and make your inquiries
+later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but even as
+he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling it would have
+been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was thanking and must needs
+accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he had come across that name? And
+when and where had anybody ever seen such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow
+in the cloak and hat of a conspirator by limelight?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as the one
+human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt grey man stood
+up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought, &ldquo;How the chaps
+would rag him at school!&rdquo; because the dreadful old hat and cloak
+suggested a caricature of a master&rsquo;s cap and gown. But there was no
+master at Pocket&rsquo;s school whom he would not sooner have disobeyed than
+this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the wintry smile; there was no
+eye on the staff that had ever made him quail as he had quailed that morning
+before these penetrating eyes of steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and
+Pocket had his asthma back in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could
+buy more cigarettes on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the cab Baumgartner said, &ldquo;Try sitting with your head between your
+knees.&rdquo; Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man or
+so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar, an early
+cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all until the hansom had
+been hailed outside. During the drive, which seemed to Pocket interminable, his
+extraordinary attitude prevented him from seeing anything but his own boots,
+and those only dimly owing to the apron being shut and indeed pressing
+uncomfortably against his head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that
+did not make him easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the
+posture did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven
+through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the streets or
+a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman&rsquo;s instructions
+where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His ear was more alert
+now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough metal. Then more wood, and
+an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then more metal, in better repair;
+quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the milkman&rsquo;s queer cry; and
+finally, &ldquo;Next to the right and the fifth house on your left,&rdquo; in
+the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth from the
+little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too
+clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been
+&ldquo;done&rdquo;; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric
+paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the
+lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and shut upon him: he had already
+passed through a rank of pollard trees, sprouting emeralds in the morning sun,
+that seemed common to this side of the road, and effectually hid the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The passage was
+dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right. Baumgartner led the way
+past a closed door on the left, into an unexpectedly bright and large room
+beyond it. &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said he, and shut the door softly behind
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full of
+walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the sunshine that
+filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back of the house. Dr.
+Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a window, and he stood looking out
+in thought while Pocket hurriedly completed his optical round. A set of walnut
+chairs were dreadfully upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one
+looked comfortable enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the
+semi-grand piano. There were books, too, and in the far corner by the
+bow-window a glass door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket&rsquo;s
+study at school, and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of
+battle engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in
+murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and villages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner met his visitor&rsquo;s eyes with the faint cold smile that
+scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was present at some of those engagements,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They
+were not worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his
+sleep!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the pistol
+inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was distracted before he
+had time to resent the forgotten fact of its forcible confiscation. Under his
+cloak the doctor had been carrying all this time, slung by a strap which the
+boy had noticed across his chest, a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket
+exclaimed upon it with the instructed interest of a keen photographer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you take photographs?&rdquo; asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in
+his unemotional voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I
+haven&rsquo;t got an instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and black
+morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which the doctor had
+set between them on one of the fussy little walnut tables.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
+THE GLASS EYE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness of a
+most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the turban into
+the bowl. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I must have my smoke like you!
+I can&rsquo;t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my own
+fault. So you are also a photographer!&rdquo; he added, as the fumes of a
+mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am only a beginner,&rdquo; responded Pocket, &ldquo;but a very keen
+one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t merely press the button and let  them do the
+rest?&rdquo; suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of
+his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that&rsquo;s
+half the fun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Plates or films?&rdquo; inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only plates, I&rsquo;m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of
+my father&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a gesture
+more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none the worse for that,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;So far we
+have much in common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our
+plates, there&rsquo;s the difference, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should imagine so,&rdquo; said Pocket, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but yet
+darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; often.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the body, I presume?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket looked nonplussed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You only take them in the flesh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly! I take the spirit,&rdquo; said the doctor; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s
+the difference.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner follow
+the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting cloud of smoke.
+The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was of briefer duration than
+might have been the case with a less ardent photographer; for he took a
+technical interest in his hobby, and read the photographic year-books, nearly
+as ravenously as <i>Wisden&rsquo;s Almanacke</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said, lukewarmly. &ldquo;You go in for psychic
+photography.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Psychic,&rdquo; said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets
+to report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor added,
+with more disdain: &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t believe in it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t say so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you looked and sounded it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,&rdquo; said the
+boy, always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. &ldquo;But I do say I
+don&rsquo;t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It was
+in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed to have said
+you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the plate at all; hide
+away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure up your spirit and see what
+happens. I&rsquo;ll swear nothing ever happened like that! There may be ghosts,
+you may see them,  and so may the camera, but not without focusing and exposing
+like you&rsquo;ve got to do with ordinary flesh and blood!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the stimulus
+of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the doctor had come to his
+feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey face beamed warmly; his eyes
+were lances tipped with fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well said, my young fellow!&rdquo; cried he. &ldquo;I agree with every
+syllable you have spoken.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,&rdquo;
+concluded Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it
+even at your age! But there&rsquo;s much more in it than that; you must see the
+rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.&rdquo; The boy blushed with
+pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. &ldquo;You admit there may be
+such things as ghosts, as you call them?&rdquo; he was asked as by an equal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible
+as that sunbeam?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You allow that the camera can see them if we can?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the concession gave
+him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant leaps. He felt five
+years older in fewer minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of
+triumph, &ldquo;then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I
+may. I may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws
+already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses fail to
+throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the camera catches. Take
+two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the other with another; one comes
+out like water as we see it; the other, though not less limpid in our sight,
+like ink. The eye sees through it, but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as
+though the acid itself were pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the
+plate. The trouble is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest
+chemist&rsquo;s, no money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will
+the spirit which once was man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it first an
+hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this was the passion
+of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at all, it was in this wild
+question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy  perceived this dimly. There was
+something else which had become clearer to him with each of these later
+remarks. Striking as they seemed to him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The
+ring of novelty was wanting to his ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he exclaimed, &ldquo;I knew I knew your name!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do know it, do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was discounted by
+the interruption it entailed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come
+across it somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You read the correspondence that followed the review?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My letter among others?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! I remember every word of it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium&rsquo;s
+co-operation in these spirit-photographs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said it wasn&rsquo;t necessary, if I remember,&rdquo; replied Pocket
+somewhat tentatively, despite his boast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two moments
+at which I hold that a man&rsquo;s soul may be caught apart, may be cut off 
+from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a light-tight
+camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;was the moment of death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The moment of dissolution,&rdquo; the doctor corrected him. &ldquo;But
+there is a far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,
+whereas dissolution comes but once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure about
+it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him as too
+fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not and dared not
+say; and he was not the less frightened of making a mistake with those inspired
+eyes burning fanatically into his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The other moment,&rdquo; the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile,
+&ldquo;is when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which
+men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?&rdquo; Baumgartner asked
+abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed unconvinced, for
+he went on didactically: &ldquo;You visit far countries in your dreams; your
+soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the dead; it is your soul
+again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I fix the moment as that of the
+soul&rsquo;s return because its departure on these errands is imperceptible, 
+but with its return we awake. The theory is that in the moment of waking the
+whole experience happens like the flash of an electric spark.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled than
+enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very eccentric
+acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man&rsquo;s hard face
+and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could not be lost upon
+an impressionable temperament, besides that force of will or character which
+had dominated the young mind from the first. He began to wish the interview at
+an end&mdash;to be able to talk about it as the extraordinary sequel of an
+extraordinary adventure&mdash;yet he would not have cut it short at this point
+if he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I grant you,&rdquo; continued the doctor, &ldquo;that the final flight
+of soul from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But
+how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits pass it
+would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still to be educated
+up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain to initiate such
+education. I have applied for perfectly private admission to hospital
+deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons. My applications have been
+peremptorily refused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket&rsquo;s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You could see a man hanged!&rdquo; he shuddered, and himself saw the
+little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked the other in wide wonder. &ldquo;But as I am not
+allowed,&rdquo; he continued in lighter key, &ldquo;I have to do the best I
+can. If I cannot be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or
+two! And now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to
+sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and then I
+take my chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not all like that man this morning, then,&rdquo; remarked
+Pocket, looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the brighter for
+their partial eclipse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This morning,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;was like no other. I owe you
+some confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this
+morning&mdash;thanks to you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks to me?&rdquo; repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. &ldquo;Do
+you mean to say I&mdash;you took me&mdash;walking&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall see my meaning,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, rising.
+&ldquo;Wait one minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double doors in
+an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there. Running  water
+and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his absence, but the boy
+was thinking of another sound. The doctor before leaving had discarded a black
+alpaca jacket, light as a pocket handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to
+recall by contrast the noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak.
+The lad was promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he
+was within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in his
+hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all was ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would simply
+have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double doors within been
+is use; these being shut, the space behind made a separate chamber which again
+reminded the schoolboy of his study, that smallest of small rooms. This one was
+as narrow, only twice the length. One end was monopolised by the door that
+admitted them, the other by a window from floor to ceiling. And this window was
+in two great sheets of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron
+steps into a crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to
+foot like Mephistopheles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is something like a dark-room!&rdquo; exclaimed the lad as the door
+was shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred by
+shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as the
+doctor&rsquo;s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives and
+stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry copper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything was perfection from a photographer&rsquo;s standpoint; the boy felt
+instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of water. All he had
+ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was here in this little
+paradise of order and equipment. The actual work, he felt, would be a secondary
+consideration in such a workshop; the mere manipulation of such stoppered
+bottles as his host was handling now, the choice of graduated phials, the
+wealth of trays and dishes, would have been joy enough for him. He watched the
+favoured operator with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to
+reduce the light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were
+muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they trembled with
+excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket remembered how extravagant an
+image was expected on that plain pink surface.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult to
+believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort of man, who
+entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement and suspense were as
+infectious as everything else about him. Pocket had come into the dark-room
+wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not to be heard breathing as the plate
+was rocked to and fro as in raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp
+and black. But the sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by
+perpendicular objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know
+what these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how
+could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind him when
+they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket said to himself, &ldquo;Where am I, by the way?&rdquo; and bent lower to
+see. His ear touched the doctor&rsquo;s; it heard the doctor breathing as
+though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but not
+walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass. &ldquo;When
+did you get me?&rdquo; asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face paid no
+attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with beads of blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There! there! there!&rdquo; croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato.
+Pocket could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host&mdash;the one gentle
+thing about him. &ldquo;You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,
+hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had choked out
+its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between fingers that most
+distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the hyposulphite, and pulled up
+the blind. The sun shone again through the tall window, blood-red as before;
+grass and sky were as richly incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited
+for the fixing-bath to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still
+pronounced it. &ldquo;And I owe it to you, my young fellow!&rdquo; This he said
+again and again, aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last
+and held it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the
+schoolboy never forgot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Open the window!&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;It opens like a door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him momentarily
+blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again. Pocket thought him
+careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it was held up an instant to the
+naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred fragments in the porcelain trough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back into the
+drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have been a minute
+before their eyes met again; the  doctor&rsquo;s were calm and cold and
+critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he said, and
+nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go upstairs; and if his
+young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought as a physician it might do
+him good.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+AN AWAKENING</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little
+distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The
+goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited
+empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr.
+Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully
+brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his
+well-kept hands. There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the
+immature shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss
+Platts, and addressed as Phillida.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname.
+He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one  to flout a
+fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and
+then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her
+Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts will come
+of contact with young animals of the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong
+from time to time, but all four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as
+shy and uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table
+attentions to her uncle and his guest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against
+the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. &ldquo;We have a full-size table at
+home,&rdquo; he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant.
+&ldquo;I like a small one best,&rdquo; he assured the doctor, who shook his
+head and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I&rsquo;m no
+good at real games.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The statement was too true, but not the preference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,&rdquo; was
+the doctor&rsquo;s comment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma as far as
+modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his breakfast-table talk, yet
+nervously egotistical, and apt to involve himself in lengthy explanations. He
+had  two types of listener&mdash;the dry and the demure&mdash;to all he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they let you come up to London alone!&rdquo; remarked Dr.
+Baumgartner when he got a chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t their fault that I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse particulars
+exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. Evidently the niece was
+not to know where he had spent the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose there are a number of young men at
+your&mdash;establishment?&rdquo; said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss
+Platts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are over four hundred boys,&rdquo; replied Pocket, a little
+puzzled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how many keepers do they require?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A grin apologised for the word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must be over thirty masters,&rdquo; returned Pocket more pointedly
+than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school from a mad
+German doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not necessarily; there&rsquo;s a Modern Side. You can learn German if
+you like!&rdquo; said Pocket, not without contempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; said the boy gratuitously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we must stick to your excellent King&rsquo;s English.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little passage.
+Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary kindness which had
+brought him to a decent breakfast-table that morning. That made him ashamed;
+nor could he have afforded to be too independent just yet, even had he been so
+disposed in his heart. His asthma was a beast that always growled in the
+background; he never knew when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast
+pacified the brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and
+the boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for him
+to go to Welbeck Street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there really nothing you can take?&rdquo; asked Dr. Baumgartner,
+standing over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big
+easy-chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing now, I&rsquo;m afraid, unless I could get some of those
+cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s inhuman. I&rsquo;ll go and get them myself. He should
+prescribe for such an emergency.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some stuff in my bag;
+but it&rsquo;s no use taking it now. It&rsquo;s  meant to take in bed when you
+can have your sleep out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, when the
+other doctor cut him short once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why not now? You can sleep to your heart&rsquo;s content in that
+chair; nobody will come in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the
+door. That will give you a good two hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first
+bottle under the bush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you promise to wake me, sir? You&rsquo;re not going out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be in again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it is a promise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket would have liked it in black and white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted
+sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to
+tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an
+unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as
+if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly
+distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the
+morning&rsquo;s troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course
+he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his
+absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass
+was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red
+as beet-root, as wet and red and one&rsquo;s body weltering in it like the
+slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in
+cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making
+more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and
+the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and
+pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing
+over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a beast of a dream!&rdquo; said Pocket, waking
+thoroughly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold
+blood! What time is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A quarter to six,&rdquo; said the doctor, who had invited the question
+by taking out his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A quarter to twelve, you mean!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;six.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at
+his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his
+feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight
+as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You promised to wake me!&rdquo; gasped Pocket, almost speechless.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve broken your word, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only in your own interest,&rdquo; replied the other calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe you were waiting for me to wake&mdash;to catch my soul, or
+some rot!&rdquo; cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for
+the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged
+his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I apologise for saying that,&rdquo; the boy resumed, with a dignity that
+sounded near to tears. &ldquo;I know you meant it for the best&mdash;to make up
+for my bad night&mdash;you&rsquo;ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due
+in Welbeck Street at twelve o&rsquo;clock, and now I shall have to bolt to
+catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,&rdquo; replied
+Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will unless I&rsquo;m in some outlandish part of London!&rdquo; cried
+Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of
+London he was. &ldquo;I must catch it. It&rsquo;s the last train back to
+school. I&rsquo;ll get into an awful row if I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get into a worse one if you do,&rdquo; rejoined the doctor,
+looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered
+with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in
+town about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do tell me what, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you face things, my young fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it about my people&mdash;my mother?&rdquo; the boy cried wildly, at
+her funeral in a flash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I can!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my
+dream.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly. Didn&rsquo;t it strike you as strange that he should be lying
+there in the wet grass?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought he was drunk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was dead!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death
+before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view
+of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No
+doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none
+the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor
+suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural
+density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not
+even known the man was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the doctor?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another
+question first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he die of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A bullet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suicide?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not murder?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This paper says so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does it say who did it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It cannot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it
+yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+BLOOD-GUILTY</h2>
+
+<p>
+His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment&rsquo;s doubt. He
+marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The walking in his
+sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. Baumgartner, his first
+swift action, and the warm pistol in his own unconscious hand: these burning
+memories spoke more eloquently than any words. They would have told their own
+tale at once, if only he had known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived?
+It was cruel, it was infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single
+instant. Thus wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for
+the very benefaction of a day&rsquo;s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor
+defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism. Pocket
+was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He also might
+have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well believe on looking back.
+Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to tell him the truth, but had checked
+himself in sheer humanity. Again the boy could confirm the outward detail out
+of his own recollection. To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went
+on to say, with an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone
+nothing. He acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had
+put the living before the dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question. He was
+not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at least of the
+bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too many men fall shot
+through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but in point of fact he had
+confirmed his conviction by brief examination while Pocket was fetching his
+things from behind the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid
+appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic
+interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude.
+It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading
+warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment
+he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined
+Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The poor man had raised a
+drunken shout and been shot pointblank through the heart. The doctor described
+him as leaping backward from the levelled barrel, then into the air and down in
+the dew upon his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now recalled the
+shout before the shot. The enforced description had been so vivid in the end
+that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he had been wide awake. Then he
+dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing else as he now remembered him, and
+that sent him off at a final tangent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, &ldquo;What about that
+negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;but it was never meant to be.
+I had you in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with
+time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the chance of
+a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that was another reason
+for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate consequences of an innocent
+act.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an
+instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young soul was
+torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted by the inevitable
+and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure, and yet he could dimly
+appreciate the candid declaration of one who had attempted to turn that tragedy
+to instantaneous and inconceivable account. It was the mistaken kindness to
+himself that he still found most difficult to forgive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s got to come out,&rdquo; he groaned; &ldquo;this will make it
+all the worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean the delay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! Who&rsquo;s to tell them I didn&rsquo;t do it on purpose, and run
+away, and then think better of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely I am,&rdquo; said he; but his smile went out with the words.
+&ldquo;If only they believe me!&rdquo; he added as though it was a new idea to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a terrifying one to Pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; was his broken exclamation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear
+to, after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can&rsquo;t swear you shot him
+in your sleep!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said you saw I did!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I did, my young fellow,&rdquo; replied the doctor,  with a kinder
+smile; &ldquo;at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut,
+and I thought you were walking in your sleep. It&rsquo;s not quite the same
+thing. It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court
+of justice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall I be tried?&rdquo; asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps only by the magistrate,&rdquo; replied the other, soothingly;
+&ldquo;let us hope it will stop at that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it must, it must!&rdquo; cried Pocket wildly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+absolutely innocent! You said so yourself a minute ago; you&rsquo;ve only to
+swear it as a doctor? They can&rsquo;t do anything to me&mdash;they can&rsquo;t
+possibly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, my young fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They can&rsquo;t do anything to me, can they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It depends what you call anything,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They cannot
+hang you; after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even
+detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case would
+be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your family could
+not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you would find it difficult
+to live down both at home and at school. In years to come it will mean at best
+a certain smile at your expense! That is what they can do to you,&rdquo;
+concluded the doctor, apologetically. &ldquo;You asked me to tell you. It is
+better to be candid. I hoped you would bear it like a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself back into
+the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. One name became
+articulate through his sobs. &ldquo;My mother!&rdquo; he moaned.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my
+mother too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most
+people,&rdquo; remarked Baumgartner sardonically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of
+any kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this? She
+mustn&rsquo;t hear it!&rdquo; cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming
+eyes. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in the papers already,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a
+forbearing shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But my part in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said it had got to come out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t realise all it meant&mdash;to her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I did; but now I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Pocket, vehemently.
+&ldquo;Now I would give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what
+I&rsquo;ve done&mdash;than drag them all through that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean what you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every syllable!&rdquo; said Pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because, you know,&rdquo; explained the doctor, &ldquo;it is a case of
+now or never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s never!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must put it plainly to you. It&rsquo;s not too late to do whatever you
+decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland Yard,
+and the chances are that they would still accept the true story of to-day. I
+have told you what I believe to be the worst that can happen to you; it may be
+that rather more may happen to me for harbouring you all day as I have done. I
+hope not, but I took the law into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by
+the law if you so decide this minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have decided.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at
+any rate for the  present,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, impressively. &ldquo;Better
+come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about the
+whole thing there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure,&rdquo; replied the acute doctor. &ldquo;I believe
+I know you better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an
+hour like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it
+very difficult not to tell somebody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In truth no
+previous act or word of Baumgartner&rsquo;s had inspired such confidence as
+this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a perfect miracle of
+discernment. He was not old enough to know that what he would have done, in his
+weakness, most grown-up men and women of his temperament would have done in
+theirs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; resumed the doctor, &ldquo;you would have the whole of
+to-day to account for; it&rsquo;s not as though you wouldn&rsquo;t have some
+very awkward questions to answer the moment you got back to school.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school conditions on
+the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of those  insular
+institutions. But this fresh display of understanding only confirmed him in his
+resolve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I trust you, sir,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you done enough
+for me to make me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and
+I&rsquo;m grateful to you for all you&rsquo;ve done and whatever you mean to
+do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No matter what it comes to,&rdquo; cried Pocket, strangely exalted now,
+&ldquo;so long as my people never know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They may think you dead.&rdquo; He thought of saying that he wished he
+was; but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie, and
+Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That would be better than knowing what I have done,&rdquo; was what he
+said; and in his exaltation he believed no less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is final&mdash;absolutely&mdash;so far as I am concerned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and fairness of the
+doctor&rsquo;s warnings served but to strengthen that resolve. But Baumgartner,
+as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the  matter with a clinching shrug; and
+presently he left his visitor, less wisely, to brood on it alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious ass; he
+takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a sportsman; but he
+cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the best, and what would have
+happened if he had decided otherwise, and what his world will say about him as
+it is.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary position.
+He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he pictured his form
+sitting down to private-work in his form-master&rsquo;s hall; there was no end
+to his mental pictures, for they included one of himself on the scaffold in the
+broad-arrows of the little old waxwork at Madame Tassaud&rsquo;s! He could not
+help himself; his mind was crumbling with his dreadful deed and its awful
+possibilities. Now his heart bled honestly for the poor dead man, now for his
+own mother and sister, and now not less freely for himself. He had been so
+innocent in the whole matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting
+fool. And now one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would
+be darkened for ever after!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far into the
+long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair, yet never leaning
+back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once more battling for breath,
+but curiously enough his bodily distress had flown before that of the mind.
+Pocket would thankfully have changed them back again, for his brain was as
+clear as his bronchial tubes, its capacity for suffering undimmed by a single
+physical preoccupation. Between seven and eight the young lady of the house
+came in with candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box
+of d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle
+thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl addressed the
+boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to seem, something of a man.
+But his present effort in that direction was sadly perfunctory: he almost
+ejected little Miss Platts in his eagerness to shut the door on her and see the
+news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man had been
+identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were reported as hopeful of
+obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue was the point that stuck like a
+burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a clue was one leading straight to
+himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to explain the true value of the identity
+clause, and bid the boy eat his meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Trust the police!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re on a false scent
+already; they may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as reverentially of his
+victim as of a dead member of his own family. It appeared thus early, however,
+that in life the defunct had been by no means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses
+had been his only home, except when his undistinguished offences got him into
+gaol; the surreptitious practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means
+of livelihood. So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the
+stop-press column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to
+extract comfort from such items.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At all events,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you cannot reproach yourself with
+the destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless
+creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but here in
+England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It&rsquo;s a public
+service to reduce their number.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the doctor had
+been working up to it all the evening, and this was the climax of his
+cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically undressed himself for
+bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of stairs, carrying  candles,
+and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast. Pocket felt a new chill through his
+veins, but he was not revolted as he would have been at first. This
+extraordinary man had shown him still more extraordinary kindness; the die was
+cast for them to stand or fall together; and there was something about the
+gaunt old visionary, a confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility,
+which could not but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they
+really were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy
+underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the doctor spoke
+as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to agree with him: his
+conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a series of incoherent
+expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave articulate shape in order to
+demolish them in the next breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my
+young fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk&rsquo;s head
+wreathed in cool blue clouds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!&rdquo;
+cried the poetic doctor. &ldquo;You have an honourable life before you; he had
+a disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of
+luxury; he finds it for the first time in his&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in his bed;
+the man sat down on the end of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do such poor devils a service,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;in sending
+them to a world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under
+the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a human life,&rdquo; groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Human life!&rdquo; cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge
+shadow guying him on the ceiling. &ldquo;What is this human life, and who are
+you and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never did;
+it&rsquo;s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about human
+life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar; there are some
+of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock for modern decadence.
+So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought nothing of your human life. Von
+Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon;
+the Empire of my countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the
+infinitesimal value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through
+exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords; they&rsquo;re
+on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of what I know.
+I&rsquo;ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind, and I&rsquo;ve
+felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at Gravelotte; as a
+public schoolboy you probably never heard the name before this minute. I fought
+in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking at the pictures downstairs. I was in
+that charge across those hellish ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in
+half an hour, but we gained the victory. More Germans were killed that
+day&mdash;that sweltering August afternoon&mdash;than English in your whole
+South African War that took you years! The flower of Germany fell at
+Gravelotte; that was human life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my
+comrades&rsquo; ashes. And that&rsquo;s all it&rsquo;s for, this human life of
+yours: for the master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward
+road.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange
+outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild bloodthirsty
+nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its irrelevancy, or rather it was
+the irrevelant features that flared up first in his brain. It was a childish
+question, but here was a very child, and he could not help asking the fierce
+old soldier whether he had escaped without a wound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Without a scratch,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;I come home. I leave the
+army. I ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck
+down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the veriest pawn
+in the game!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was not a
+single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or another word
+for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke from a waving pipe, a
+core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the Turk&rsquo;s face glistening in
+its heat like that of the hard old man himself. He would hear the cynical and
+scornful voice softening in a breath to the simple, tender, and domestic
+humanity of his race. The voice and the face were with him throughout that
+night of his own manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy
+to realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been carried
+away like his listener.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+POINTS OF VIEW</h2>
+
+<p>
+On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week, there was
+a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in Leicestershire. This
+circumstance was not so usual as it sounds, because Mr. Upton conducted all his
+correspondence from his office at the works. If you simply put the name of the
+village, as he did on his stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to
+direct your letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few
+there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it was on
+business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more impressive
+address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt the first blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this made the
+letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following reason. Mrs. Upton
+had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the Thursday morning, that her husband
+had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat against his own judgment, to know how he
+found their son. The reply had been: &ldquo;Better expecting him again to-day
+will write&rdquo;&mdash;which prepared the family for still more reassuring
+accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt relieved as the original discoverer of
+Dr. Bompas. Horace found his views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration
+of a touch of asthma, and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely
+agreeing with Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs.
+Upton lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible to
+show her now that it had come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way to keep
+a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this occasion he triumphed
+over temperament with an extraordinary instinct for what was in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!&rdquo; was his only
+comment as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might
+have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not Horace
+promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young fellow&rsquo;s
+face and the old one&rsquo;s neck were redder before the last was heard of that
+remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually vouchsafed; the boy
+had made very little improvement, and was not likely to make more while he
+remained at a school where he was allowed to use any remedy he liked; in fact,
+until he was taken away from school, and placed under his own immediate control
+in town, Dr. Bompas declined to persevere with the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blighter!&rdquo; said Horace impartially, as though now there were two
+of them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when their
+father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was not
+&ldquo;playing the game&rdquo;; but then he never did play it to the expert
+satisfaction of Fred and Horace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and told a
+lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He had destroyed
+it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it to his wife. He said a
+happier thing by chance; he said that for two pins he would motor over to the
+school and see for himself how the boy really was; then perhaps he would be in
+a position to consider the entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the
+specialist&rsquo;s demand, that his patient should be placed under his eye in
+town. Mr. Upton went so far, however, without much immediate intention of
+taking so strong a measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite justified in his
+fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with his eldest son. There
+were aspects of the case, as it presented itself to his mind, which he could
+hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her mother must not know of his anxiety on
+any account. Horace, however, had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed its
+owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few rolling
+meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June glory. The new red
+gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an eye which had never looked
+longer than necessary in the glass. Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily
+on a shaven lawn; the only eyesore the good man encountered was poor
+Pocket&rsquo;s snob-wickets painted on a buttress in the back premises; his own
+belching blast-furnaces, corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few
+hundred yards of his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy
+Briton who had made them too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. &ldquo;I
+was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,&rdquo; his father said;
+&ldquo;the fact is, I concealed half the fellow&rsquo;s letter on account of
+Lettice. But it&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s matter, and you ought to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to keep his
+appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the line of
+information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would have exercised
+so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife&rsquo;s room. It now appeared
+that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas had gone far out of his
+way to play Mahomet to his patient&rsquo;s mountain. Tony had told him where he
+hoped to stay in London, which Bompas particularly wished to know on account of
+some special prescription the boy was to try that night. On his failure to
+appear at the appointed time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in
+question, only to learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been
+given another address with the same result, except that from the second house
+he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace was left
+to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and asked for his own on
+the facts as a man of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly like young Tony!&rdquo; quoth Horace, never afraid to say what
+he thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Like Tony,&rdquo; repeated Horace significantly. &ldquo;Trust him to do
+what nobody else ever did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how could Spearman give him the chance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought he was to stay at Coverley&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it! It&rsquo;s all wrong at his age,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Upton. He had his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough
+with his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any question of bad company, do
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And though Horace had &ldquo;no use for&rdquo; his so-called pocket edition, he
+answered without any hesitation at all: &ldquo;Not for a moment, from what I
+know of Tony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by mentioning his
+wife&rsquo;s dream, now family property, which had been on his mind all this
+time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him that nobody nowadays
+believed in dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I never have, certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton. &ldquo;But what
+can it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He probably went up to Lord&rsquo;s, and forgot all about his
+doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope not! You&rsquo;re too down on him, Horace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to
+school.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s said to have gone to some hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose he did,&rdquo; said Horace. &ldquo;I expect he got
+back somehow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr. Spearman
+settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the day before, and
+his friends in London wired that they knew nothing about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What friends?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. &ldquo;Why the devil
+couldn&rsquo;t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked
+about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or &ldquo;that Knaggs crowd.&rdquo;
+Neither he nor Fred had been at Coverley&rsquo;s school, and young Tony&rsquo;s
+friends were by no means theirs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on the
+telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its being &ldquo;a
+man&rsquo;s matter&rdquo;; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like a
+serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that neither his
+mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it before it was
+absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother&rsquo;s dream as the devil
+did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments besides; he was speaking quite
+nicely of them both, for instance, when he declared that Lettice was wrapped up
+in Tony, and would be beside herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him.
+It would be simply impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on
+whom she also waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had
+good reason to believe in Lettice&rsquo;s power of suppressing her own
+feelings; but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited
+dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as he had
+fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr. Spearman, who
+deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was done, however, and it
+was now a matter in which home and school authorities must act together. A
+clerk was instructed to telephone to the garage for the car to come straight to
+the works. And the ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of
+anxiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and yet to-day
+it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the brain that had
+conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and blackened faces lit by
+the light of molten metal; his the strong hand and the stout heart which had
+brought his conception into being. Those were his trucks bringing in his ore
+from his mines; that was his consequential little locomotive fussing in front
+of them. His men, dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was
+also his, happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was
+his pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric
+advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of
+possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the ironmaster
+almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot bars as his too. The
+whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture, had long been his to all
+intents and purposes, and no second soul would ever take his pride in it; to
+his children it would never be more than the means of livelihood; and how had
+it repaid even him for a life&rsquo;s devotion? With a house of sorrow in the
+next valley! With a stricken wife, and sons whose right hands kept their
+cunning for the cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a
+sudden madness!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great green
+car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he did not drive
+himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the summer&rsquo;s day was
+a mental stimulant that did its work only too well. Now it recalled the ailing
+infancy of the missing boy&mdash;bronchitis it had been in the early
+stages&mdash;and how his mother had taken him to Hastings three successive
+winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family jokes cropped up in a new
+light, dimming the eyes without an instant&rsquo;s warning. On one of those
+flittings south the solicitous mother had placed the uncomplaining child on a
+footwarmer, and forgotten him until a cascade of perspiration apprised her of
+the effect: poor Mr. Upton had never thought of the incident without laughter,
+until to-day. Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she
+herself too ill to hear a word about it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no uncertainty. He
+thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first. There had been drama
+and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated of the neighbouring packs had
+run a fox to earth on his works, indeed in his very slag-heap! The author of
+cancerous furnaces in the green heart of a grass country had never been a
+popular personage with the hunting folk; but he was master of the situation
+that memorable day. It was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a
+ferret, and came out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore
+through the brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young
+lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants with
+their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag sticking out of
+the furnace mouth&mdash;the momentary contact of the industrial and the
+sporting world&mdash;it was that strange and yet significant scene which had
+first endeared its dingy setting to the ironmaster&rsquo;s heart. But he had
+made the contact permanent by falling in love with the young lady of the brush
+and marrying her under all the guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she
+was a stricken invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now distracted
+father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think about as he flew on
+to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very rude to Mr. Spearman; but
+then Spearman had been rash enough to repudiate his obvious responsibility in
+the matter. It was not his fault that the boy went up to town so often to see
+his doctor and stay the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but
+it had become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp
+thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of seventeen
+could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know who could! Tony
+had promised him faithfully to return that same night, failing friends whom he
+had mentioned as certain to put him up; their names Mr. Upton was able to
+demand at last as though they were so much blood; and he could not have cursed
+them more freely if Spearman had been a layman like himself. But that was all
+the information forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the
+head master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had
+still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked that he
+was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up and led him
+straight into the presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an astute
+pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to Mr. Upton that
+the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master&rsquo;s concern, but agreed
+it was time that he himself was made acquainted with the present case. He took
+it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could have wished, but quite as frankly from
+his own point of view as his two visitors did from each of theirs. He had no
+doubt the boy would turn up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to
+give a satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received back
+into the school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bother the school!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with
+difficulty. &ldquo;Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what you
+like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how do you propose to find him?&rdquo; inquired the head master,
+with only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own
+showing, refused the boy a bed. I&rsquo;ll give them a bit of my mind, I
+promise you! Then there&rsquo;s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it
+may be the one we always stay at, or one they&rsquo;ve recommended. If I
+can&rsquo;t hear anything of him there, I suppose there&rsquo;ll be nothing for
+it but to call in the police.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; exclaimed the head master,  &ldquo;you may as well
+call in the public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you
+are; and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our point
+of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more so from mine!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and
+indignation. &ldquo;You think about your school. I think about my wife and boy;
+it might kill her to hear about this before he&rsquo;s found. But if I
+don&rsquo;t go to the police, who am I to go to?&rdquo; The head master leant
+back in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case of
+dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal proceedings on behalf
+of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down and solved the mystery within
+twenty-four hours, and saved the school a public scandal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He may save you another,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, &ldquo;if he can find my
+boy. What did you say the name was?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thrush&mdash;Eugene Thrush&mdash;quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a
+gentleman,&rdquo; said the head master impressively. Further particulars,
+including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from an
+advertisement in that day&rsquo;s <i>Times</i>, in which Mr. Thrush was
+described as an &ldquo;inquiry agent,&rdquo; capable alike of &ldquo;delicate
+investigations&rdquo; and &ldquo;confidential negotiations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he departed both
+on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final word for his own
+behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the head master on the
+importance of keeping it out of the papers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+MR. EUGENE THRUSH</h2>
+
+<p>
+The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never been
+the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of events which
+had turned his talents into their present channel, was known to but few of his
+many boon companions, and much nonsense was talked about him and his first
+career. It was not the case (as anybody might have ascertained) that he had
+been struck off the rolls in connection with the first great scandal in which
+he was professionally concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report
+that he drank, in the ordinary interpretation of the term.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his dressing-table,
+to help him shave for the evening of that fateful Friday. He was  dressing for
+an early dinner before a first night. His dressing-room, in which he also slept
+in Spartan simplicity, was the original powder-closet of the panelled library
+out of which it led. There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared
+breakfast and spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top
+of such stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker&rsquo;s mute (a calling he had
+followed in his day), was laying out his master&rsquo;s clothes as mournfully
+as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he shaved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into
+this case it&rsquo;s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too
+soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they&rsquo;d have wondered what the
+devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were in my
+service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had no call, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So
+you&rsquo;d only to describe the finding of the body?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was all, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And your description was really largely founded on fact?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman&rsquo;s shaving elbow.
+&ldquo;I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,&rdquo; said he, with
+sombre dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs
+you showed me yesterday?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must have
+picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn&rsquo;t on the
+actual scene of the murder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Mullins. I don&rsquo;t see what they could
+possibly have to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your
+being the one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what
+they&rsquo;re worth, it&rsquo;s the last kind of case that I should dream of
+touching with a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won&rsquo;t require
+you at the adjourned inquest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite
+convenient,&rdquo; replied Mullins deferentially. &ldquo;The police were very
+stingy with their evidence to-day; they&rsquo;ve still to produce the fatal
+bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took as
+little real interest as he professed in the case which was being thrust upon
+him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in shaving the corners of a
+delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the whole face emerging from the
+lather, as a cast from its clay, would have  delighted any eye but its own. It
+was fat and flabby as the rest of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection
+of chins to shave; and yet anybody but himself must have recognised the
+invincible freshness of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as
+an earnest of inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh.
+Great round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an
+aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in itself might
+have prevented the superficial observer from taking him any more seriously than
+he took himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially
+superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being badly
+impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the landing to
+sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth of his prejudices
+there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate abhorrence of London and all
+Londoners, which neither the cause of his visit nor the murky mien of Mullins
+was calculated to abate. The library of books in solid bindings, many of them
+legal tomes, was the first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made
+business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only
+beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at his first
+entry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen from
+the motorist&rsquo;s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced joviality
+with which Thrush exclaimed: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have kept you waiting,
+sir, and the worst of it is that I can&rsquo;t let you keep me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception one had to
+come up to London to incur. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll clear out!&rdquo; said he,
+and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really am rather rushed,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but I can give you
+four minutes, if that&rsquo;s any good to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have said four
+hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would have been no good
+to him; but the precise term of minutes, together with a seemlier but not less
+decisive manner, had already quickened the business man&rsquo;s respect for
+another whose time was valuable. This is by no means to say that Thrush had won
+him over in a breath. But the following interchange took place rapidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand you&rsquo;re a detective, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hardly that, Mr.&mdash;&mdash;I&rsquo;ve left your card in the other
+room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upton is my name, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry
+agent is all I presume to call myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you do inquire into mysteries?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve dabbled in them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As an amateur?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A paid amateur, I fear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush&mdash;a very serious matter to
+me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you catch
+me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none of my
+business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens to have come my
+way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private inquisitor. If you want
+anything or anybody ferreted out, that&rsquo;s my job and I should put it
+first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Thrush, that&rsquo;s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it
+for me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my youngest
+child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or been decoyed
+away. And now there can be no doubt about it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds which
+Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up before he had
+concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts within his knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When can I see you again?&rdquo; he asked abruptly of Thrush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The four minutes must be more than up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on, my dear sir, and don&rsquo;t throw good time after bad. I&rsquo;m
+only dining with a man at his club. He can wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More good time! How do you know the boy hasn&rsquo;t turned up at school
+or at home while you&rsquo;ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there&rsquo;s
+nothing there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a
+bed which they couldn&rsquo;t give him the night before last. I did let them
+have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had
+recommended other hotels; they&rsquo;ve just been telephoning to them all in
+turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then
+I&rsquo;ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John&rsquo;s
+Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I thought
+I&rsquo;d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, but
+that&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ve done or know how to do. Something must have
+happened!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It begins to sound like it,&rdquo; said Thrush gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor
+accident. One moment!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still
+pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in
+the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering
+down the evil stairs next minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In less than an hour,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;he will be back
+with a list of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last
+forty-eight hours. I don&rsquo;t say there&rsquo;s much in it; your boy had
+probably some letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but
+it&rsquo;s worth trying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is, indeed!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And while he is trying it,&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up
+as with a really great idea, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll greatly oblige me by having a
+whisky-and-soda in the first place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, thank you! I haven&rsquo;t had a bite all day. It would fly to my
+head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s its job; that&rsquo;s where it&rsquo;s meant to
+fly,&rdquo; explained the convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with
+practised hand. Baited with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a
+flagging giant refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new
+acquaintance too well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I&rsquo;ve got you, Mr. Upton! My
+man begins his round by going to tell my pal I can&rsquo;t dine with him at
+all. Not a word, I beg! I&rsquo;ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins
+gets back, and in a taxi that won&rsquo;t be long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But do you think you can do anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you give me time, I hope so,&rdquo; was the measured answer.
+&ldquo;But the needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it
+will take time. I&rsquo;m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a
+sixpenny solution for soft problems, don&rsquo;t come to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and repeated
+that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather reproachfully at
+Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton,
+because it&rsquo;s not much good if we&rsquo;ve got to keep the matter to
+ourselves. But is there anything distinctive about him besides the
+asthma?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come! I call that a distinction in itself,&rdquo; said Mr. Thrush,
+smiling down his own unathletic waistcoat. &ldquo;But as a matter of fact,
+nothing could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for
+games.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing better, do you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Emphatically, from my point of view. It&rsquo;s harder to hide a
+man&rsquo;s asthma than to hide the man himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never thought of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that moment.
+The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an inscrutable stare of the
+marine eyes behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it has never affected his heart?&rdquo; he inquired
+nonchalantly; but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal
+perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I certainly never thought of his heart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,&rdquo; said
+Thrush earnestly. &ldquo;On the other hand, I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if
+his asthma were to prove his best friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It owes him something!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know what he does for it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he
+seemed to have received some weeks before. &ldquo;He smokes, against his
+doctor&rsquo;s orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean tobacco?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;some stuff for asthma.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In cigarettes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know the name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have it here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection after a
+precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in outstretched
+hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk, but the reading of
+the letter left him alive and alert to the last superfluous ounce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But this is magnificent!&rdquo; he cried, with eyes as round as their
+glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t see why.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some French rubbish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The boy has evidently been dependent on them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks like it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this man Bompas made him give them all up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he has the impudence to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it possible you don&rsquo;t see the importance of all this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard of these cigarettes before; they&rsquo;re an imported
+article; you can&rsquo;t get them everywhere, I&rsquo;ll swear! Your boy has
+got to rely on them; he&rsquo;s out of reach of the doctor who&rsquo;s
+forbidden them; he&rsquo;ll try to get them somewhere! If he&rsquo;s been
+trying in London, I&rsquo;ll find out where before I&rsquo;m twenty-four hours
+older!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how can you?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the
+possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A. V. M.!&rdquo; replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who on earth is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobody; it&rsquo;s the principle on which I work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A. V. M.?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it all no
+laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You divide things into two,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;and go on so
+dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer
+to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or Southern
+Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much longer ago than
+mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In this case it&rsquo;s Chemists Who Do Sell D&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes
+and Chemists Who Don&rsquo;t. Then&mdash;Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and
+Chemists Who Do but Didn&rsquo;t! But we can probably improve on the old game
+by playing both rounds at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t quite follow,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,
+&ldquo;though there seems some method in the madness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the method I&rsquo;ve got,&rdquo; rejoined Thrush
+frankly. &ldquo;But you shall see it working, for unless I&rsquo;m much
+mistaken this is Mullins back sooner than I expected.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired, though
+the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been the precursor of
+the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid round had included Charing
+Cross, St. Thomas&rsquo;s, St. George&rsquo;s, and the Royal Free; but he had
+telephoned besides to St. Mary&rsquo;s and St. Bartholomew&rsquo;s. At none of
+these institutions had a young gentleman of the name of Upton, or of unknown
+name, been admitted in the last forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as 
+sympathetically depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and
+he had one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his chin
+being in perpetual mourning for the day before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go, Mullins! I&rsquo;ve another job for you,&rdquo; said
+Eugene Thrush. &ldquo;Take the telephone directory and the London directory,
+and sit you down at my desk. Look up &lsquo;chemists&rsquo; under
+&lsquo;trades&rsquo;; there are pages of them. Work through the list with the
+telephone directory, and ring up every chemist who&rsquo;s on the telephone,
+beginning with the ones nearest in, to ask if he keeps d&rsquo;Auvergne
+Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of the first few who do; go round to them
+all in turn, and be back here at nine with a box from each. Complain to each of
+the difficulty of getting &rsquo;em elsewhere&mdash;say you wonder
+there&rsquo;s so little demand&mdash;and with any luck you should find out
+whether and to whom they&rsquo;ve sold any since Wednesday evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely that&rsquo;s the whole point?&rdquo; suggested the
+ironmaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the next point,&rdquo; said Thrush. &ldquo;The first is to
+divide the chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the
+Vegetables who don&rsquo;t. I should really like to play the next round myself,
+but Mullins must do something while we&rsquo;re out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;While we&rsquo;re out, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, you&rsquo;re going to step across into the Café Royal
+with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what about your theatre?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance
+was a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins entrenched
+behind telephone and directories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of tripe
+that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June; but I&rsquo;m
+not going to chuck the drama that&rsquo;s come to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good dinner
+that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to his own weight.
+His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or drinking than he knew
+the names of the people in diamonds and white waistcoats who stared at the
+distraught figure in the country clothes. It even escaped his observation that
+the obese Thrush was an unblushing gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy.
+The conscious repast of Mr. Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of
+Eugene Thrush, and of that conversation only such portions as exploited his
+professional theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand.
+He was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account of the
+murder in which he himself was only interested because his myrmidon happened to
+have discovered the body. What was the murder of some ragamuffin in Hyde Park
+to a man from the country who had lost his son?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how your theory can work there,&rdquo; he sighed, out
+of pure politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It should work all right,&rdquo; returned Thrush. &ldquo;You take an
+absolutely worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two
+motives: either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a
+menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he&rsquo;s taken your
+wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price of a
+bed on his indescribable person? He hasn&rsquo;t anything to bless himself
+with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh? So you whittle it
+down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your blade into the root of the
+matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his boldest
+statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt with the one
+subject on the poor man&rsquo;s mind. The cessation of his voice, however,
+caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he made a mental grab at the
+last phrase, and was astonished to find it germane to his own thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the second time you&rsquo;ve mentioned luck, Mr.
+Thrush!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When was the first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!
+Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not seriously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t believe in dreams, for example?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another question,&rdquo; said Thrush, his spectacles
+twinkling to colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. &ldquo;Why do you
+ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re a disbeliever it&rsquo;s no use my telling you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;m neither one thing nor the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of one,&rdquo; said Thrush, with a significant stress
+upon the verb; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a
+hundred years ago. The victim&rsquo;s mother dreamed three nights running that
+her missing daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the
+time. There <i>may</i> have been other cases.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very time
+at which something terrible has happened to that child?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any amount of those.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The father&rsquo;s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his
+glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves in a
+more attentive stare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think they&rsquo;re all coincidences?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton
+hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some of them may be, but certainly not all,&rdquo; was the reply.
+&ldquo;That would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hardly like to tell you why I ask,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, much
+agitated; for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been dreaming about the boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren&rsquo;t
+tell her he had disappeared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? What was the dream?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That she saw him&mdash;and heard a shot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A shot!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had time to
+think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She says she did hear one,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, &ldquo;and that she
+wasn&rsquo;t dreaming at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But when was this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Between six and seven yesterday morning.&rdquo; This time Thrush did not
+move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and again he
+was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence was complete.
+Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M. system, neither was
+Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions on the strength of one. He
+asked whether the boy was very fond of shooting in the holidays, as though that
+might have accounted for the dream, but his father was not aware that he had
+ever smelt powder in his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The
+tone of subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton&rsquo;s health (already
+mentioned as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a
+secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for
+compassion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then that accounts for it,&rdquo; said Thrush, when he had heard the
+whole sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.
+&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally
+fanciful, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion either
+way. I only say, don&rsquo;t think too much about that dream. And since you
+won&rsquo;t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the faithful
+Mullins.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr. Upton for
+one would not have recognised him as the same being. His sepulchral face was
+alight with news&mdash;it was the transformation of the undertaker&rsquo;s mute
+into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box of the d&rsquo;Auvergne
+Cigarettes to show for his evening&rsquo;s work, and that chemist had declared
+it was the first he had sold for weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest&rsquo;s hand as soon
+as ever he dared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You need a good night&rsquo;s rest, my dear sir, and it&rsquo;s no use
+climbing to my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you
+don&rsquo;t mind leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing
+tomorrow morning I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be
+some progress to report.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face still more
+strikingly illuminated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d&rsquo;Auvergne
+Cigarettes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I perceive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This stump is the stump of a d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarette.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t smoke it, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who did?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for you to say, sir; but it&rsquo;s one of the little
+things I collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,
+yesterday morning in Hyde Park.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Near the actual place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the strongest of
+the electric lamps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
+SECOND THOUGHTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he felt that
+he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the nightmare of
+battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the engravings downstairs,
+instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame
+Tussaud&rsquo;s. The trouble was that he had seen the one and not the other,
+and what he had seen continued to haunt him as he lay awake, but quite horribly
+when he fell back into a doze. There was nothing nebulous about the vile place
+then; it was as light and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister
+figures in the panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read
+that they always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight.
+But that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman and
+terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their winding-sheets, from
+their  murderer&rsquo;s graves. Better by far their beastly faces, that you
+knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and screwed up his courage, and
+laid hands on one of the shorter figures that he could reach. It rocked stiffly
+in its place, a most palpable and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements
+from the hollow and unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not
+been there the other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as
+ill-mounted on high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of
+intelligent eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical
+characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army of
+murderers was a faithful model of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that he had
+been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it had seemed in
+that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy shuddered till the bed
+shook under him. But after that he still lay on, facing himself as he had seen
+himself, and his deed as others must see it soon or late. Not the actual
+accident in the Park; but this hiding in the heart of London, this skulking
+among strangers, this leaving his own people to mourn him as the dead!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear to him
+before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and Horace, how good
+they had been to him at school, and how proud he had been of them! What would
+they think of him if he went on skulking like this? What would they have done
+in his place? Anything but lie low like that, thought Pocket, and resolved
+forthwith to play the game as preached and practised by his brothers. It was
+strange that he should have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this
+morning he saw it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass
+screen…To think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude
+as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the situation as
+well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him if he gave himself up,
+but anything might if he waited till he was caught. As for the consequences to
+his poor mother, surely in the end suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper
+into the slender cord of her life than the shock of the truth would cut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy behaved
+characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in front of him,
+beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and ending in a blaze of
+wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face; meanwhile he lay in such peace
+and safety as it was only human to prolong  a little. That night, for all his
+moral innocence, he might lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed
+while he had one, especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The
+last consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little
+time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had suffered
+from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident in which he was
+nearly killed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My accident may have done the same for me,&rdquo; thought
+Pocket&mdash;and was bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking
+complacently of any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient
+punishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the plain
+upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was to conjure
+uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his ferocious meerschaum,
+his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his arguments in favour of the course
+which Pocket had now determined to abandon. The boy fully realised that he had
+been given his chance, and had refused it. And of all the interviews before
+him, that with Dr. Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have
+given most to escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did escape, and
+did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no reason why he should
+involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession. Suppose he hailed the first
+cab he saw, and drove over to St. John&rsquo;s Wood to borrow money (they could
+scarcely refuse him that), and then took the first train home to tell his
+father everything in the first instance, that father would never hear of his
+incriminating a stranger who had befriended him according to his lights. He
+himself need never say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the
+tragedy, even if he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to
+the ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only
+suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to his
+breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that after a day and
+a night he should still be in total ignorance of his whereabouts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the sunny
+little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old discoloured walls
+divided them from each other and from the gardens of a parallel block of bigger
+houses, whose slates and chimneys towered above the intervening trees. The
+street in front of those houses was completely hidden, but the hum of its
+traffic travelled pleasantly to the ear, and  there were other reassuring
+sights and sounds. In one of the contiguous gardens a very small boy was
+wheeling a doll&rsquo;s perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm
+gravel reminded Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally
+trim lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the green
+spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the curiously countrified
+smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a still stronger reminiscence of
+his father&rsquo;s garden, where his own old pony pulled the machine in leather
+shoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to them.
+Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing almost as
+well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket could not bear to
+listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as quietly as he could. He had
+almost resolved to slip out without a word, whatever else he did, if the
+opportunity offered. It simply never occurred to him, until he made the
+discovery, that anybody would dare to lock him in his room!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek to do
+it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to himself, was
+rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told him he was on the wrong
+side of the door for applying mere bodily strength, that either he must raise
+an ignominious shout for freedom or else achieve it for himself by way of the
+window. Unathletic as he always had been, he was sportsman enough not to
+hesitate an instant between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of
+the window, saw his way down at a glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony over the
+bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the least possible
+noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet till he had but a few
+feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a very few minutes to one as
+excitedly determined as Pocket had become on finding himself a prisoner.
+Thought they would lock him in, did they? They would just find out their
+mistake! It was exactly the same mood in which he had scaled the upright
+palings in defiance of the policeman who said he might not sleep in the Park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old
+campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which argued either
+a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic service; it would have
+furnished scent for no short paper-chase. Otherwise the room was tidy enough,
+and  so eloquent of Baumgartner himself, in its uncompromising severity, that
+Pocket breathed more freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely
+safe, for he had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the
+pegs hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected by
+his host.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to lose a
+moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had made an
+interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being played. He
+heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on the balcony up
+above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been. It was that Phillida,
+with the large dark eyes, and she was playing something that Lettice sometimes
+played, and very nearly, though naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have
+said that it was Mendelssohn, or Chopin, &ldquo;or something,&rdquo; for his
+love of music was greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music
+that detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him
+kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he went, and
+the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been locked in, and he
+had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet not a sound&mdash;well, she
+would not think the less of him at  all events, and so they would part for
+ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile instinct for romance was not to be
+stifled at such a stimulating moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she
+knew all; she might know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it
+was the game to say goodbye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her large
+eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they blazed at the
+intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she already knew the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry for starting you,&rdquo; he apologised. &ldquo;I just
+came in to say goodbye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To say goodbye!&rdquo; she gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve got to go. I&rsquo;m afraid the doctor&rsquo;s
+out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, he is. Won&rsquo;t you wait?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood aside,
+to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn took her stand,
+back to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be very sorry to miss you,&rdquo; she said more firmly, and
+with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m very sorry to miss him,&rdquo; said Pocket, 
+unconscientiously enough for anybody. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been most awfully good
+to me, and I wish you&rsquo;d tell him how grateful I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t believe me,&rdquo; the girl said dryly,
+&ldquo;if he finds you gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go&mdash;really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is.
+Do you mind giving him one other message?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As many as you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you might tell him from me that I&rsquo;ll give myself away, but
+I&rsquo;ll never give him! He&rsquo;ll know what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the last
+moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the boy who helped
+to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through an indefensible bit of
+boyish braggadocio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the
+worst way about it by locking me into my room!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you get out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you suppose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard anything!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took care you shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in the end.
+After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl stood up to him
+like a little heroine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sorry, but I can&rsquo;t let you go, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t let me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really am sorry&mdash;but you must wait to see my uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older than
+himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his way
+past&mdash;but he was not the fellow to do it&mdash;and that maddened him,
+because he felt she knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, very well!&rdquo; he cried, sarcastically. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t
+let me out that way, I&rsquo;ll go this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the garden;
+but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she held him firmly
+by the hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you do I&rsquo;ll blow a police-whistle!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We
+have one&mdash;it won&rsquo;t take an instant. You shan&rsquo;t come out the
+front way, and you&rsquo;ll be stopped if you climb the wall!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?&rdquo; he gasped out
+bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind what I take you for!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re treating me as though I were one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to stay and see my uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your
+uncle, and you too!&rdquo; But that was only half true, even then while he was
+struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been another boy. He
+could not strike her; but that was the only line he drew, for she would grapple
+with him, and release himself he must. Over went walnut whatnots, and out came
+mutterings that made him hotter than ever for very shame. But he did not hate
+her even for what she made him say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the
+dreadful doctor whose will she was obeying; and both were at their highest
+pitch when the door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But
+it was a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured
+or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt. It
+turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear it only
+increased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave us, Phillida,&rdquo; said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in
+tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo; he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut
+it after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+ON PAROLE</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So,&rdquo; said Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;you not only try to play me
+false, but you seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do
+you break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young lady
+who has shown you nothing but kindness!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought the
+violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater cad than
+ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his honour as best he
+could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to change his mind about what
+was after all his own affair. But that was precisely what Baumgartner would not
+allow for a moment; it was just as much his affair as accessory after the fact,
+and in accordance with their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could
+only rejoin that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I daresay not!&rdquo; said Baumgartner sardonically. &ldquo;It would
+have been dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you
+agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never so far
+as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your eyes open, and I
+left you last night under the impression that you were going to lie on it like
+a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why did you lock me in?&rdquo; cried Pocket, pouncing on the one
+point on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor
+flattered him with a slight delay before replying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There were so many reasons,&rdquo; he said, with a sigh; &ldquo;you
+mustn&rsquo;t forget that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might
+have had you falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I
+was more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken you.
+I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to yourself without
+my assistance, and that you would get brooding over what has happened until it
+drove you to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I tell you it&rsquo;s no
+good brooding or looking back; take one more look ahead, and what do you see if
+you have your way? Humiliating notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences
+in your own family, certain punishment for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The consequences at home,&rdquo; groaned Pocket, &ldquo;will be bad
+enough whatever we do. I can&rsquo;t bear to think of them! If only they had
+taken Bompas&rsquo;s advice, and sent me round the world in the
+<i>Seringapatam!</i> I should have been at sea by this time, and out of
+harm&rsquo;s way for the next three months.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The <i>Seringapatam?</i>&rdquo; repeated the doctor. &ldquo;I never
+heard of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t; she&rsquo;s only a sailing vessel, but she carries
+passengers and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas&rsquo;s, who wanted to send me
+with him for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn&rsquo;t let me go.
+She sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If I
+could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I could go out
+in her still, and that would be the last of me for years and years!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had come,
+and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy&rsquo;s brain; and
+he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it up in a single
+nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures, bearded like the pard,
+another &ldquo;dead man come to life,&rdquo; after about as many years as the
+dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked on as though following
+the same wild train of thought, as though it did not seem so wild to him, but
+extremely interesting; so that Pocket was quite disappointed when he shook his
+head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young fellow!
+Why, they&rsquo;d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you&rsquo;d gasp out your
+whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my fellow;
+you&rsquo;ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with me till
+we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you say you
+won&rsquo;t, I say I&rsquo;ll make you&mdash;to save you from yourself&mdash;to
+save us both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed and
+final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor&rsquo;s power to
+make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the nearer
+he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again. So reasoned
+Pocket from the face and voice now dominating him more powerfully than ever;
+but it is an interesting fact that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed
+him as it might have done. There was actually an element of relief in his
+discomfiture. He had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that
+responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour delayed.
+And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort in such delay,
+which was all the greater because unsought by him; it was a comfort that he had
+both ways, as the saying is, and from all points of view but that of his poor
+people wondering what had become of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If only they knew!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;then I shouldn&rsquo;t care.
+Let me write to one of them! My mother needn&rsquo;t know; but I must write to
+one of the others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister
+would keep my secret; she&rsquo;d play the game all right, I promise you! And
+I&rsquo;d play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should have to
+inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin edge of consent. In
+the end it was arranged that Pocket should write what he liked to his sister
+only, and that Baumgartner should read and enclose it in a covering letter, so
+that everybody need not know it was a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner
+was to have it posted from St. Martin&rsquo;s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of
+a locality which he now refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And
+in return for the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word
+and sacred promise on the following points.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to show
+himself for a moment at the windows back or front.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On no account was he to confide in the doctor&rsquo;s niece Phillida, to give
+her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London
+mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his first
+meeting with Baumgartner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about
+yourself the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what can she think?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may
+bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise in the
+ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to think is no
+affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and she had your
+doctor&rsquo;s orders not to let you out of the house in his absence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She obeyed them like a little brick!&rdquo; muttered Pocket, with a
+wistful heaviness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did what she was told; think no more about it,&rdquo; said the
+doctor. &ldquo;Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet
+rather than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play
+the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures played it at
+Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch. Look at this one
+here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where we come to bayonets and
+the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian Guard! See the sheet-lightning
+pouring into us from the walls of St. Privat! Look at that fellow with his head
+bound up, and this one with no head to bind. That&rsquo;s meant for our colonel
+on the white horse. See him hounding us on to hell! And there&rsquo;s a drummer
+drumming as though we could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to
+ribbons, you see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my
+young fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!&rdquo; Baumgartner
+might have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of a
+responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and to wake
+the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the heart of a
+soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was only when he found
+himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless brought his innocent deed
+home to him as nothing had done before, that the artificial frost broke up, and
+real tears ran with his ink. He begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him,
+still less to be anxious about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret
+for him, he wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction.
+He was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But
+something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would
+bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from ever
+seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others to which it
+led, that were literally blotted with the writer&rsquo;s tears. But just then
+he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who could never show
+himself at home or at school again. And it required the spell of 
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s presence to make the prospect such as could be borne with
+the least degree of visible manhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways younger
+than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in some few. He was
+old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may be imaginative and still
+have a level head, but it is least likely in one&rsquo;s teens. The particular
+temperament does not need a label; but none who know it when they see it, and
+who see it here, will be surprised to learn that this emotional writer for one
+was enormously relieved and lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off
+his mind and hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a kindly
+gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over the second
+leaf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is not for me to read!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather run
+the risk of trusting your discretion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped the hand
+that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the address, all openly
+before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to the nearest messenger office
+to despatch the missive to the General Post Office, ostensibly to catch a
+particular post, his prisoner  would not have decamped for a hundred pounds,
+and the doctor knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket was only
+less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had caused, than when they
+were both at table and he unable to say another word to express his sorrow for
+the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She spoke to him once or twice as though
+nothing of the kind had happened, but he could scarcely look her in the face.
+Otherwise both meals interested him; they were German in their order, a light
+supper following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they
+both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much taken with
+the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived smoking hot in tiers. It
+provided a further train of speculation when he remembered that he had never
+seen a servant in the house, and that the steps had struck him as dirty, and
+the doctor&rsquo;s waste-paper basket as very full. Pocket determined to make
+his own bed next morning. He had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the
+young girl was clearing away, for the doctor took him back into the
+drawing-room after supper; and later, when they returned for a game of
+billiards on the toy board, which they placed between them on the dining-table,
+both Phillida and the fragments had disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy&rsquo;s
+simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate one; his
+brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his hand obey, as
+though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep between life and death.
+It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate concentration; even the
+Turk&rsquo;s head was only lit to be laid aside as an obstruction.
+Pocket&rsquo;s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the fortune that accrues
+on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy forgot everything when he
+actually succeeded in the last game. They had played very late for him, and he
+slept without stirring until Baumgartner came to his room about eight
+o&rsquo;clock next morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first thing he
+did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one like a flag to
+wake him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the
+stick!&rdquo; he cried, with fierce amusement; &ldquo;it only remains to be
+seen whether they succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack
+too. Really, it&rsquo;s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery
+to watch the smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I see?&rdquo; asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these
+remarks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;here&rsquo;s the
+journalistic wonder of the age, and there you are in its most important column.
+I brought it up for you to see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded type and
+the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first place, that no arrest
+had yet been made; but it was confidently asserted (by the omniscient butt of
+Teutonic sallies) that the police, wisely guided by the hint in
+yesterday&rsquo;s issue (which Pocket had not seen), were already in possession
+of a most important clue. In subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real
+homicide was informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally
+different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had been a
+certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in the previous
+month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had been found shot under
+circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide that a coroner&rsquo;s jury had
+actually returned a verdict to that effect. There appeared, however, to have
+been an element of doubt in the case. This the scribe of the leaded type sought
+to remove by begging the question from beginning to end. It had not been a case
+of suicide at all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde
+Park, to which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been
+shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged to one
+neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the community. A pothouse
+acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but the suggestion was that the link
+lay a good deal deeper than that, and that the two dead men were known to the
+police, who were busy searching for a third party of equal notoriety in
+connection with both murders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,&rdquo; said the
+boy, looking up at last. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a murder, either; neither was
+the first, according to the coroner&rsquo;s jury, who surely ought to
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One would have thought so,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, with his sardonic
+smile; &ldquo;but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you suppose there&rsquo;s a word of truth in what he says? I
+don&rsquo;t mean about Charlton or&mdash;or poor Holdaway,&rdquo; said Pocket,
+wincing over his victim&rsquo;s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper.
+&ldquo;But do you think the police are really after anybody?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Baumgartner. &ldquo;What does it
+matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I
+did!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would alter the whole thing,&rdquo; he mumbled significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rdquo; returned the doctor, with grim good-nature.
+&ldquo;The little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed
+another mare&rsquo;s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm
+can come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only two
+living souls who can&rsquo;t account for their time at that of this unfortunate
+affair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin under
+the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light, always
+encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his silence, which
+had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to keep his feelings under
+control, to set his face and his teeth against the regular reactions of his
+coward conscience and his fickle will. And once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone
+for an unintentional minor by striking a rousing chord on the very
+heart-strings of the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eight o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; cried the magician, with a glance at his
+watch and an ear towards the open  window. &ldquo;The postman&rsquo;s knock
+from door to door down every street in town&mdash;house to house from one end
+of your British Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being
+delivered at this very moment&mdash;eh, my poor young fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr. Baumgartner
+heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius for headlines, and
+the delicious expediency of all its views, which enabled its editorial column
+to face all ways and bow where it listed, in the universal joint of popularity,
+were points of irresistible appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour.
+He read the paper with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal
+chuckle between the sheets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the paper
+came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious matter. It said
+exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park murder: that the murderer
+would prove to be the author of a similar crime, committed in the previous
+month of March, when the Upton boy must have been safe at school. If that were
+so, it  was manifestly absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely
+happened to synchronise with that of his own disappearance&mdash;absurd, even
+if he were shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere
+about the time of its perpetration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established overnight. It
+was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile conviction of his class, had
+jumped on the slender evidence of the asthma cigarette alone; but before
+midnight Thrush himself had been forced to admit its extreme probability. There
+was a medicine cork as well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been
+found very much nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a
+shrub on the other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both
+discoveries, who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night,
+to ask if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with
+their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just as well
+but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens, rung up in
+their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the doctor&rsquo;s
+prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and, within half an
+hour, had positively identified the cork found by Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was
+still sticky with the very stuff which had put poor Pocket asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection between a
+harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He resisted the idea
+on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in argument with his now
+strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide jump to a detestable
+conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the width of the jump. The cork
+and the cigarette might be stepping-stones, but at least one more was wanted to
+justify the slightest suspicion against the missing boy. Let it be shown that
+he had carried firearms on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join
+his satellite on the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the
+fact that he made no mention of the boy&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an enthusiastic
+convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist, and consequently an
+irritable observer of the saturnine countenance which darkened to a tinge of
+distinct amusement over the leaded type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much in it, Mullins?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t say there was anything at all, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland
+Walk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The coroner&rsquo;s jury did&mdash;in spite of the coroner&mdash;but it
+may come before another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the
+medical evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm&rsquo;s length. That
+isn&rsquo;t the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was
+nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price of one;
+he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before. The very same
+point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he ever had a revolver in
+his life? His father tells me explicitly that he never had; I happened to ask
+the question,&rdquo; added Thrush, without explaining in what connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone,
+&ldquo;you talk about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman
+who write for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the very
+faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his spectacles without one
+at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,
+however,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;it  may be by fair means, or it may be by
+foul, but they have a way of getting there before the others start.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do it this
+time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring himself to believe in
+two separate mysteries, at one and the same time and place, with no sort of
+connection between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That would be too much of a coincidence,&rdquo; said Mullins,
+sententiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush looked at him for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But life&rsquo;s one long collection of coincidences! That&rsquo;s what
+I&rsquo;m always telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else.
+Don&rsquo;t you call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet
+their death at the very hour of the morning when you&rsquo;re on your way over
+here from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which
+you&rsquo;ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the nerve
+to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other morning, and been
+mixed up in that affair because you are in this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admit I&rsquo;m mixed up in anything,&rdquo; replied
+Mullins, with some warmth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to the
+absurd, Mullins; you didn&rsquo;t take me literally, did you? It&rsquo;s no 
+use talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I&rsquo;m always
+ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a pistol,
+Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must be roaring
+inside for yours. The man who&rsquo;s been knocking up chemists all night is
+the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then mine, and after that
+you can tell me how you got on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his best,
+it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a few
+minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum should have
+swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins went about his business with
+his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was yet another man the moment he was
+alone. His face was a sunny background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed
+plans, one after the other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the
+sky was clear whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table
+there was not a cloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,&rdquo;
+resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; &ldquo;how many have you done,
+and how many have we still to do between us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as
+neat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rung up when you were out at dinner&mdash;seventeen. Kept Cigarettes
+d&rsquo;Auvergne&mdash;one. That was Thornycroft&rsquo;s in Shaftesbury Avenue,
+where I&rsquo;d just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night
+I knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of
+Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A matter of life or death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in
+New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Much demand in any of those quarters?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly
+every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know him; so he&rsquo;s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?&rdquo;
+murmured Thrush, to his buttered egg. &ldquo;But has one of these apothecaries
+sold a box of d&rsquo;Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two have,&rdquo; said Mullins, &ldquo;but one was to Mr. Pringle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you worm that out, Mullins?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody
+who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we were only
+trying them on hearsay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only
+consumer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on
+Thursday to a doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you get the name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Baumgartner, I expect you mean!&rdquo; cried Thrush, straightening a wry
+face to spell the name. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though
+I can&rsquo;t say when or where. What&rsquo;s his address?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn&rsquo;t. Suppose he
+thought I&rsquo;d be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he
+was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t inquire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My good fellow, that&rsquo;s the whole point! I&rsquo;ll go myself and
+ask for the asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he
+never had them before, that&rsquo;ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well.
+But I&rsquo;m certain I know his name; you might look it up in <i>Who&rsquo;s
+Who</i>, and read out what they say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at barbaric
+mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr. Baumgartner had fought
+in his martial youth; the various Universities whereat he had studied
+psychology and theology in an evident reaction of later life; even the titles
+of his subsequent publications, which contained some long English words, but
+were given in German too. A copious contribution concluded with the information
+that photography and billiards were the doctor&rsquo;s recreations, and that he
+belonged to a polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St.
+James&rsquo;s which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Parthenon!&rdquo; said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve.
+&ldquo;But what about his address?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no getting hold of that address,&rdquo; said Mullins,
+demoralised and perspiring. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not given here either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but
+I&rsquo;m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of <i>Peripatetic
+Psychology</i> deserves to have asthma all his nights, and <i>After this
+Life</i> smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won&rsquo;t build
+on Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we&rsquo;ll go through the chemists of London
+with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away, when a
+stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton with  a
+panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but he denied that
+he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at Mullins, and fell to
+abusing London and the Londoners, but City men above all others, till Thrush
+and he should be alone together. The incidental diatribe was no mere padding,
+either; it was the sincere utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody
+in all London, he declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared
+a twopenny curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the
+present company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of
+the boy&rsquo;s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But
+the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had been to
+see his boy&rsquo;s friends&rsquo; father, &ldquo;a swine called Knaggs,&rdquo;
+that very morning at his house in St. John&rsquo;s Wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather early, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; suggested Thrush, whose manner was
+more softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was
+slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Early!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I lost my boy, and
+wasn&rsquo;t it these Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to
+have gone to them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your
+dinner; for I don&rsquo;t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of
+your  hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me
+afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my own; but
+I&rsquo;d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant then, so I
+thought I&rsquo;d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting till this
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush seized the
+opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess I showed indecent haste,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but Mullins
+and I had our night&rsquo;s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his
+boots off since you saw him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an
+unsuspected devotion; &ldquo;then I&rsquo;ll say what I&rsquo;ve got to say in
+front of him, for you&rsquo;re both my friends, and I&rsquo;ll unsay all I said
+just now. Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside
+myself about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug
+little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his
+breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as himself, and
+saying &lsquo;Rather early!&rsquo;&mdash;just as you set me off by saying
+yourself a minute ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him! I
+could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but what could he
+do? London was a large place, and &lsquo;we Londoners&rsquo; were busy men. I
+told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too busy to keep an eye
+on boys who were friends of our boys. He said London life was different; and I
+said so I could see. They never had spare beds at a moment&rsquo;s notice, much
+less for boys who might set fire to the house or&mdash;or shoot
+themselves&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood
+glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad&rsquo;s
+death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however, looked so
+genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the face of Mullins
+also attracted less attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had he anything to shoot himself with?&rdquo; inquired Thrush, in a
+curiously gentle voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He had, after all!&rdquo; he croaked. &ldquo;Little as I dreamt it
+yesterday, my unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in
+his life before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his
+pocket!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had he brought it from school?&rdquo; asked Thrush, with a covert frown
+at the transfigured Mullins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters, with their
+father&rsquo;s opinion of pawnbrokers&rsquo; shops as resorts for young
+schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and
+guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted without
+fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose only comment was
+that it behoved him all the more to do something to redeem the capital in the
+other&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!&rdquo; was the only
+rejoinder, in a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was
+the first he had heard about the dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew
+before. Yet I will own now,&rdquo; exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins&rsquo;s
+bright eye, &ldquo;that the coincidence will be tremendous if there&rsquo;s
+nothing in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But only half the coincidence was present in the father&rsquo;s mind; no
+thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy; and to
+hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his fretted nerves
+could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for a
+pessimist&mdash;apologised&mdash;and humbly entreated him to take a more
+hopeful view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal
+one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public
+mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish grins and
+nods behind the poor father&rsquo;s back. Thrush looked at both men with the
+troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being&mdash;looked and frowned
+again&mdash;frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant, the
+trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost blinding
+flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light; enough for Eugene
+Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit as brightly as it lit him
+onward to its solution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in his face,
+as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr. Upton about the
+missing boy. What was his character? what its chief points? Was he a boy with
+the moral courage of his acts? Would he face their consequences like a man?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never knew him tell a lie in his life,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,
+&ldquo;either to save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of
+their young skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most
+conscientious of them all, and I hear that&rsquo;s what they say of him at
+school.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue, though a
+very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up himself; and this
+time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own accord, with a dejected
+undertaking to be at his hotel when he was wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the look of our friend,&rdquo; remarked Thrush,
+looking hard at Mullins when at last they were alone. &ldquo;He shapes none too
+well for the strain he&rsquo;s got to bear; if he cracks up there&rsquo;ll be a
+double tragedy, if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare
+quickly, Mullins, or we may catch him too late.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a few
+minutes before; he took no notice of it now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find your man,&rdquo; said Mullins significantly,
+&ldquo;the very moment that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meaning they&rsquo;re the same person?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely, sir, it&rsquo;s as plain as a pikestaff now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to me, Mullins&mdash;not to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then who do you think has done it, sir?&rdquo; inquired Mullins, in
+deferential derision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope
+to get arrested within another hour!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw, black as a
+crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy collar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re actually thinking of arresting some one else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am&mdash;with your permission, Mullins.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled from his
+words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+BOY AND GIRL</h2>
+
+<p>
+Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.
+Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the newspaper
+with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in quicker time than the
+other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of the house was all alone in
+the dining-room, where Pocket found her boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had
+her to himself for several seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither
+grace nor tact in what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but
+the penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the
+doctor&rsquo;s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given time
+to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he liked his egg
+boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled when he told her it was
+&ldquo;done to a shake.&rdquo; Dr. Baumgartner, on the other hand, scowled upon
+them both until observation or reflection had convinced him that no promises
+had been broken and no confidences exchanged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; for Pocket
+hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up to the young girl
+under the doctor&rsquo;s nose. He talked to her about books in the other room.
+He had the impertinence to invite her into the dining-room for a game of
+billiards, but the sense next moment to include her uncle in an amended form of
+more becoming suggestion. Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent
+most of the time with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The
+boy and girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,
+though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on him. But
+she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was only when she 
+began to question him about his special vocabulary, that Baumgartner looked on
+for a little, and put in his word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see he still believes in his public school,&rdquo; said he to
+Phillida, in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should think I did!&rdquo; cried Pocket, and did a little loyal
+boasting about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until
+memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve o&rsquo;clock,
+and a summer&rsquo;s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only your verses
+to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before you went up to
+dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday afternoon! A match on the
+Upper, where you could lie on your rug and watch the game you couldn&rsquo;t
+play; call-over at the match; ices and lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and
+for Saturday supper anything you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen
+and put piping hot at your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely
+by writing your name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside!
+It was not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the whole
+full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows, that he had
+lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal came in smoking from 
+the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself again, as a boy will be; after
+all, they knew about him at home by this time, their worst fears were allayed,
+and in the end it would all come right. In the end he would be sitting in his
+own old place at home, instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling
+them everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and
+Horace listening to every word&mdash;much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to
+something now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she
+listened. Pocket did both in his turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming nearer with
+their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and ran outside without
+his hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the doctor.
+He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn to a single
+raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed at once where they
+had left off before breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I forgive you,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;It was I began
+it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Began what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our row yesterday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket now.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about it,&rdquo; he said with superfluous
+candour, his ear still on the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice made him remember better. &ldquo;I hope to goodness I didn&rsquo;t
+hurt you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must have thought me mad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a slight but most significant pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I never shall again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you did!&rdquo; he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young
+faces were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no
+nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and indignant
+shame on hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You really are at school?&rdquo; she whispered, not increduously, but as
+one seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had
+thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved school
+was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate with one
+raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, &ldquo;Park
+murder&mdash;arrest! &rsquo;Rest o&rsquo; de Park murderer! Park
+murder&mdash;Park murder&mdash;arrest!&rdquo; And Pocket sprang up from the
+table in a state that swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and trembling, in
+pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep; but the
+doctor&rsquo;s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly seated
+when the doctor entered&mdash;without any paper at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s that murder the papers are all exploiting,&rdquo; he
+explained benignly. &ldquo;They were shouting out something about an arrest;
+you would hear them, I daresay. But it&rsquo;s the usual swindle; the police
+are merely hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the
+scoundrel took his paper back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors
+recalled those of &ldquo;your vermin press itself&rdquo;; the association was
+wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English boy was
+either dense or indifferent, and Phillida&rsquo;s great eyes were in some other
+world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous scrutiny, and suddenly
+cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared there was a concert at the
+Albert Hall, where &ldquo;the most popular and handsome pair in England&rdquo;
+(the inverted commas were in the doctor&rsquo;s sneer) were being welcomed on
+their return from the ends of the earth. He had intended going to hear what
+they could do; but Phillida should go instead; she was not past the ballad
+stage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not conceal her
+recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of her; her uncle called a
+taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off the premises in the frock she
+had been wearing all day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, returning with a scowl, &ldquo;what the devil
+were you two talking about while my back was turned?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday,&rdquo; replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his
+heart beat fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about yesterday?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our scuffle in the other room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I found out something; she didn&rsquo;t tell me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you find out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you let her think me mad!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in monstrous
+earnest. He might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own
+reproachful face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it
+did not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said she would think I was a patient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly! A mental case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had no business to make me out mad,&rdquo; persisted Pocket, with
+dogged valour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that
+you&rsquo;ll continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday
+when I was out. It&rsquo;s no good shaking your head at me; listen to
+reason,&rdquo; continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. &ldquo;And
+try, my good young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have
+some consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again
+put gently but clearly in the wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I should like to know,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;what good it does her
+to think she&rsquo;s associating with a lunatic?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,&rdquo; was the
+suave reply. &ldquo;I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of
+such an expression, even in jest. It&rsquo;s as ugly as it&rsquo;s ridiculous
+in your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the horrid
+term in all sobriety.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard more than that,&rdquo; returned Pocket. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve
+arrested somebody!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought I told you there was no truth in that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort
+was a precocious inspiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my young fellow,&rdquo; said the doctor, after one of his wise
+pauses, &ldquo;and what if it was?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t lie long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the same
+measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him without a word for
+the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of sudden and implacable
+animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of sight, yet working as though the
+teeth were being ground behind them; the crow&rsquo;s footed face flushed up,
+and the crow&rsquo;s feet were no more; it was as though age was swallowed in
+that flood of speechless passion till the whole man was no older than the fiery
+eyes that blazed upon the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the
+complete control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other
+room till you know your own mind again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it now, unless they release that man,&rdquo; said Pocket, through
+his teeth, although they chattered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of
+clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more patience!
+Think of your own friends, and give them time too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the last allusion was to the lad&rsquo;s letter, due in Leicestershire that
+morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner&rsquo;s last words. If he meant
+himself to be included among Pocket&rsquo;s friends, there was food for thought
+in the suggestion that a man of the doctor&rsquo;s obvious capacity was not
+idle in the boy&rsquo;s best interests. Pocket was made to feel rather ashamed
+of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the concentrated fury of the look
+which had not been weakened by infuriate words; and the recollection remained
+as an excuse, as well as a menace, in his mind. He had time enough to think it
+over. Dr. Baumgartner smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back
+of the house. The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but
+eventually took the doctor at his word about a book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was certainly so to
+some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His library  was singularly
+small for an intellectual man who wrote himself, and a majority of the volumes
+were in languages which no public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of
+the English books many were on military subjects, some few anthropological;
+there were photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot
+or yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had
+probably been labelled &ldquo;occult&rdquo; in their last bookseller&rsquo;s
+list. Boismont on <i>Hallucinations</i> was one of these; it was the book for
+Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on
+somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was something to
+find that he was far from being the only harmless creature who had committed a
+diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several cases was one of another boy
+who had made an equally innocent and yet determined attempt on his own father.
+But there was something peculiar in poor Pocket&rsquo;s case, something that
+distinguished it from any of those cited in the book, and he was still
+ferreting for its absolute fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected
+her. Boismont had made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the
+girl, too, appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her
+concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her  uncle,
+who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was himself in
+mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world like any ordinary
+trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, the man quizzing them and
+her, and the boy standing up for one that his sister sang at home, when a
+metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of their
+almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still before Pocket
+realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No letters were delivered
+at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard at the door before. Even in his
+excitement, however, with its stunning recrudescence of every reality, its
+instantaneous visions of his people or the police, there was room for a measure
+of disgust when the girl got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to
+the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a huge fat man,&rdquo; whispered Phillida, on her return to
+the big room at the back of the house. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s his card.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thrush!&rdquo; muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he
+glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression whatever. It was
+plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once it must be done, and
+done  quickly&mdash;with both doors open and the visitor&rsquo;s very movements
+audible on the steps. To the door the doctor must go, and went, shutting that
+one pointedly behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young creatures, looking in each other&rsquo;s eyes, listened for raised
+voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too low to
+reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound of footsteps
+in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer and an inner door in
+quick succession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taken him into the dining-room,&rdquo; murmured Phillida.
+&ldquo;Who can it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he any friends?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.&rdquo;
+Her great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a
+blank screen takes a shadow. &ldquo;I wonder if it&rsquo;s about that!&rdquo;
+she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at
+table.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating
+now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should it be?&rdquo; asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand the question.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that true?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Upton,&rdquo; she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were
+both instinctively adopting, &ldquo;you know now what I thought about you at
+first. I won&rsquo;t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could
+hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your
+being here. I can&rsquo;t ask my uncle&mdash;he tells me nothing&mdash;but
+there&rsquo;s something I can and must ask you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing
+happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the Park he
+goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say what I want
+to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything points to it;
+especially the way he ran out for that paper&mdash;and hid the truth when he
+came in!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket looked up at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know the truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About the arrest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you&rsquo;d
+gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t tax him about it in front of you,&rdquo; he muttered,
+looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; the boy said hoarsely; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t ask
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you know who did it. I can see you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was nobody you care about,&rdquo; he mumbled, hoarser than before,
+and his head lower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say another word&mdash;and you won&rsquo;t say another to
+me!&rdquo; he added, a bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her
+it had been an accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to
+Baumgartner not to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it
+yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know me,&rdquo; she whispered, and for a moment her hand
+lay warm in his; &ldquo;trust me! I&rsquo;m your friend in spite of all
+you&rsquo;ve said&mdash;or done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the intruder; before
+that he had been first amazed and then relieved to hear the piano in the
+drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear had heard of either boy or girl
+during his absence.  Yet the boy was not standing over the piano, as he might
+have been, for Phillida was trying to recall one of the concert songs he said
+his sister sang. Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a
+troubled face, which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively
+to meet the doctor&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but stood
+beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done something
+very clever indeed.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+BEFORE THE STORM</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally spend
+one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the theatre at night;
+but at Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s there was little to distinguish the seventh day
+from the other six. The passover of the postman, that boon to residents and
+grievance of the traveller, was a normal condition in the dingy house of no
+address. More motor-horns were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic;
+the sound of church bells came as well through the open windows; then the
+street-door shut, and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it
+opened and shut again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as
+though they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner pottered
+about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had seen it first;
+the Turk&rsquo;s head perspired from internal and external heat, but its rich
+yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather with a red geranium which
+the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole of his black alpaca jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew what she
+could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature conservatory were
+also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory interest in them, obviously on
+her account. It was obvious at least to Pocket Upton. He saw all these things,
+and what they meant. He was not without his little gifts of observation and
+deduction. He noticed the difference in Baumgartner&rsquo;s voice when he
+addressed his niece, the humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he
+thought he saw a reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been
+none to see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had
+seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning.  But now
+it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of kindness against
+these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her endure them with a better
+grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to him, she could not have made
+sweeter amends than she did by many an unobtrusive little office. And she
+exchanged no more confidences with poor Pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was a
+strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of
+life&rsquo;s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before
+or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his
+spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe.
+There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the
+removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become interested on
+the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer lying about the room as he had left
+it. There was a gap in its place in the shelf. The book had been taken away
+from him; it made him feel as though he were back again at his very first
+dame&rsquo;s school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They were more
+mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you down the hill at
+the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical; and Pocket saw and heard
+himself puffing up the opposite hill to take his place for chapel call-over in
+the school quad. The fellows would be forming in squads there now, all in their
+Sunday tails or Eton jackets as the case might be; of course Pocket was in
+tails, though still rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or
+their rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind&rsquo;s eye. Then came the cool
+and spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and rows
+of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own, giving a swing to
+chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How real it all was to him,
+and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the sunny room with the battle
+engravings over the book-cases, and the walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr.
+Baumgartner in and out in his alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for
+a walk with Blundell minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and
+got it over. And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and
+apple-pie with cloves in it at Spearman&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s meals certainly
+provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the portable
+contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor praised without a
+single patriotic reservation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Italy is a country where one can live,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Not that
+you must understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young
+fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a Sunday. No
+organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German bands which we in
+Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman every hour of the day, and
+no gaolbirds crying false news down the streets.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker&rsquo;s eye, but found it fixed
+on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to say something
+quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the actual remark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,&rdquo; explained
+the doctor. &ldquo;I give out no other address; then you only get your letters
+when you want them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you often go there?&rdquo; the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly
+wishing he would go that afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not when I have visitors,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a smiling
+bow. &ldquo;And I look upon my patients in that light,&rdquo; he added, with
+benevolent but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more
+so than if she had still believed it to be the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece took
+refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an hour or more.
+He went through her music, and asked for everything that Lettice played or
+sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the makings of a pianist. The
+boy&rsquo;s enthusiasm for the things he knew made her play then as well as
+ever he had heard them played. Even the doctor, dozing in the big chair with
+eyes that were never quite shut, murmured his approval more than once; he loved
+his Mendelssohn and Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and
+others that the boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in
+the same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been
+there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and once or
+twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be the boy who had
+killed a man, however innocently, three days before! Could it be he whom the
+police might come and carry off to prison at any moment? Was it true that he
+might never see his own people any more? Such questions appalled and stunned
+him; he could neither answer them nor realise their full import. They turned
+the old man in the chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he
+had seemed at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement
+even to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home. Of
+course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something would be done
+at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his for ever; but as for
+his present situation, there were moments when Pocket felt rather like a
+story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned, and already in communication with
+the mainland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had come
+straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be within a mile of
+that very room at that very moment. Would all the known circumstances of his
+disappearance be published broadcast in the papers? Pocket felt he would have
+red ears all his life if that were done; and yet it had hurt him a little to
+gather from Baumgartner that so far there was nothing in the papers to say he
+had so much as disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or
+Friday. Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would
+have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her afternoon rest.
+If he were at home, he would be going about quietly. Lettice would be reading
+or writing in the morning-room,  most probably. Father would be gloating over
+his rhododendrons with a strong cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how
+beautiful they were. Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and
+Fred were not playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far
+ahead to see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own
+voice telling them of his own experience&mdash;of this very hour at Dr.
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that! Pocket
+looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids never quite closed,
+and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister effect. He noted the
+drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash from the Turk&rsquo;s head
+sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the very phrases of a graphic
+portrait almost to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the silver
+lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not silver at all but
+one of the baser metals of the human heart, how indignantly he would have
+denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the end!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and sponge,
+but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for going higher up to
+his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only make more work, in a tone
+precluding argument. It struck Pocket that the doctor really needed sleep, and
+was irritable after a continuous struggle against it. If so, it served him
+right for not trusting a fellow&mdash;and for putting Boismont in the
+waste-paper basket, by Jove!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first things
+Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in the opposite
+corner; and the schoolboy&rsquo;s strongest point, be it remembered, was a
+stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive at the waste-paper basket,
+meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor minded his reading that book. But the
+question never was asked; the book was still in the basket when the doctor had
+finished drying his face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had
+seen the dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter with my young fellow?&rdquo; inquired
+Baumgartner, solicitously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing! I&rsquo;ll be all right soon,&rdquo; muttered Pocket, wiping
+his forehead and then his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look faint. Here&rsquo;s my sponge. No, lie flat down there
+first!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do feel seedy,&rdquo; he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in
+it, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m not going to faint. I&rsquo;m quite well able to go
+upstairs. I&rsquo;d rather lie down on my own bed, if you don&rsquo;t
+mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was none the
+less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first close examination
+of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had picked out of the basket in
+the doctor&rsquo;s room instead of Boismont&rsquo;s book on hallucinations.
+There had been no hallucination about those scraps of paper; they were
+fragments of the boy&rsquo;s own letter to his sister, which Dr. Baumgartner
+had never posted at all.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+A LIKELY STORY</h2>
+
+<p>
+At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, when
+Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor&rsquo;s dining-room; for not only had
+Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of warning to anybody, on
+the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had followed by the only Sunday
+train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town which
+reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for the hunting
+season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its beauty-sleep, under a
+gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and leafy coverts,  with but one
+blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But
+the works lay hidden, and the hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained
+that this was it, abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station,
+and entered the grounds on foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was encountered and
+accosted before he reached the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he&rsquo;s at home? I
+want to see him about something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice flushed and shrank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know who you are! Have you found my brother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; not yet,&rdquo; said Thrush, after a pause. &ldquo;But you take my
+breath away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no
+longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of town
+without a word?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s still a secret,&rdquo; whispered Lettice, as though the
+shrubs had ears, &ldquo;only I&rsquo;m in it. Nobody else is&mdash;nobody
+fresh&mdash;but I guessed, and my mother was beginning to suspect. My father
+never stays away a Sunday unless he&rsquo;s out of England altogether; she
+couldn&rsquo;t understand it, and was worrying so about him that I wired
+begging him to come back if only for the night. So it&rsquo;s all my  fault,
+Mr. Thrush; and I know everything but what you&rsquo;ve come down to tell
+us!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s next to nothing,&rdquo; he shrugged. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+neither good nor bad. But if you can find your father I&rsquo;ll tell you both
+exactly what I have found out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without
+bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any warmer
+feeling. She was the perfect sister&mdash;that he felt as instinctively as
+everybody else&mdash;and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be cruel
+and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish face. So he
+let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and pungent with
+pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father
+quietly from the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed for
+the first train after getting his daughter&rsquo;s telegram, leaving but a line
+for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use it whether
+he had anything to report or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of
+course you were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by
+the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you leave the motor behind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; it&rsquo;ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It may have to do more than that,&rdquo; said Thrush, spreading his full
+breadth on the pitch-pine seat. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found out something; how much
+or how little it&rsquo;s too soon to tell; but I wasn&rsquo;t going to discuss
+it through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead
+secret, Mr. Upton, and that&rsquo;s why I didn&rsquo;t ring you up. As for your
+last train, I&rsquo;d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn&rsquo;t
+have given me time to say what I&rsquo;ve got to say before one or other of us
+may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do for God&rsquo;s sake say what you&rsquo;ve got to say!&rdquo; cried
+Mr. Upton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alive?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And perfectly well&mdash;but for his asthma&mdash;on Thursday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who calmed him,
+not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were blinded by the first ray
+of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where was it?&rdquo; he asked, when he could ask anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it
+really was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What kind of interest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.&rdquo; She
+looked at her father. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t let him go,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to know just how it came to be talked about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he recommend any particular vessel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, a sailing ship&mdash;the <i>Seringapatam</i>&mdash; an old East
+Indiaman they&rsquo;ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I
+wouldn&rsquo;t hear of the beastly tub.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know when she was to sail?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did know,&rdquo; said Lettice. &ldquo;I believe it was just about
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She sailed yesterday,&rdquo; said Thrush, impressively; &ldquo;and your
+brother, if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He
+told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton, and his
+father not. I&rsquo;m bound to say it sounds as though it may have been the
+boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing
+question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must have been!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Who was the man, and
+where exactly did he see him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps
+I&rsquo;d better tell you about my informant, since we&rsquo;ve only his word
+for Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the
+first place he&rsquo;s a semi-public man, though I don&rsquo;t suppose you know
+his name. It&rsquo;s Baumgartner&mdash;Dr. Otto Baumgartner&mdash;a German
+scientist of some distinction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush continued
+with some pride: &ldquo;There was some luck in it, of course, for he was the
+very first man I struck who&rsquo;d bought d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes since
+Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four hours of hearing
+that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up to A. V. M.! I might have
+been with him some hours sooner still, but I preferred to spend them getting to
+know something about my man. I tried his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was
+a chemist, who didn&rsquo;t know him by sight, and had never heard of the
+cigarettes, but remembered being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last
+Thursday morning! That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that
+Baumgartner himself was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist
+would have known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist
+first!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about Baumgartner
+that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false scent, Mr. Upton; not to
+mention the baker and the candlestick-maker, there&rsquo;s a little restaurant
+in the same row, which was about the fifth place where I began by asking if
+they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner lived in that neighbourhood. The little
+Italian boss was all over me on the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his
+most regular customer, having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in
+quite the Italian manner. I don&rsquo;t suppose you see how very valuable this
+was to me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was
+the one point on which I should never yield to Germany&mdash;and I thought I
+was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor lives alone
+with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants and never
+entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the arrangement was made,
+the old chap went to the restaurant himself to complain of short commons; there
+had not been enough for them to eat on the Thursday night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had they been alone?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were,
+but I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you. It
+was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my leisure (an
+excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards went round and saw the
+doctor himself. The niece opened the door&mdash;I wish I&rsquo;d seen more of
+her&mdash;but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for an interview on an
+urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must say, impressed me very
+favourably; and the moment we were alone I said, &lsquo;I want to know, Doctor,
+who you bought those asthma cigarettes for last Thursday!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m
+an inquiry agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you&rsquo;ll tell me
+it may solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I&rsquo;ve ever handled.&rsquo; Is
+was treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there&rsquo;s no
+shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn&rsquo;t
+blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in store.
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;d tell you his name with all my heart,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;only I don&rsquo;t really know it myself. He said it was  John
+Green&mdash;but his handkerchiefs were marked &ldquo;A. A.
+U.&rdquo;&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s initials!&rdquo; cried Tony&rsquo;s father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it never was Tony under a false name,&rdquo; his sister vowed.
+&ldquo;That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not even if he&rsquo;d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss
+Upton?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would never give a name that wasn&rsquo;t his.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother Tony wouldn&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He might feel he had?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He might,&rdquo; the father agreed, &ldquo;even if he&rsquo;d done no
+such thing; in fact, he&rsquo;s just the kind of boy who would take an
+exaggerated view of some things.&rdquo; His mind went back to his last talk
+with Horace on the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of
+you all?&rdquo; Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d do it,&rdquo; declared loyal
+Lettice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us hear what you think he did,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what I think; it&rsquo;s what this man Baumgartner
+thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully true
+version&mdash;up to a point&mdash;of poor Pocket&rsquo;s condition and
+adventures&mdash;with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out&mdash;from
+the early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon of
+that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner had actually described the boy&rsquo;s long sleep in his chair; it
+was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began in
+earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good man!&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to take him by the hand&mdash;and those infernal Knaggses
+by the scruff of their dirty necks&mdash;and that old hag Harbottle by the
+hair!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think of dear darling Tony,&rdquo; said Lettice, in acute distress;
+&ldquo;lying out all night with asthma&mdash;it was enough to kill him&mdash;or
+to send him out of his mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if it could have done that,&rdquo; remarked Thrush, in a tone
+of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you keeping back?&rdquo; cried Lettice, the first to see that
+he had been keeping something all this time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only something he&rsquo;d kept back from them,&rdquo; replied Thrush,
+with just a little less than his usual aplomb. &ldquo;It was a surprise he
+sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr.
+Upton. You may not believe it. I&rsquo;m not certain that I do myself. In the
+morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you&rsquo;d opposed
+it, but withdrawn your opposition&mdash;one moment, if you don&rsquo;t mind! In
+the evening he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the
+<i>Seringapatam</i>, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get
+aboard himself that night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it, Thrush.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t say I altogether accept it myself; that&rsquo;s why I kept it to
+the end,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;But we must balance the possibilities
+against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact
+that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here&rsquo;s a man, a well-known
+man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the Park,
+in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to his own
+house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the doctor tells me,
+than which no statement is more quickly and easily checked. Are we to believe
+this apparently unimpeachable and disinterested witness, or are we not? He was
+most explicit about everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the
+boy, and never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are
+prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care to hear
+Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s theory as to what has happened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, &ldquo;Well, we may as
+well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to him for
+taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may have seen
+something that we shouldn&rsquo;t guess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush; &ldquo;he saw, or at any rate
+he now thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the
+foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn&rsquo;t know the boy had come up to
+see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had
+come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild
+spree&mdash;if Miss Upton will forgive me!&rdquo; And he turned deferential
+lenses on the indignant girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t forgive the suggestion,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;but it
+isn&rsquo;t yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of
+all I was able to tell him, and we mustn&rsquo;t forget, as Mr. Upton says,
+that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did
+meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or
+intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with
+blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned
+against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very
+conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or
+somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid
+to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home!
+What&rsquo;s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped
+to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her
+still&mdash;even if he has to stow away!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s just the one to think
+of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Lettice shook hers quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To think of it, but not to do it,&rdquo; said she, with a quiet
+conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he
+actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, but of
+stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many pounds of biscuit
+and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive into blue water.
+There&rsquo;s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship touched
+nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be out of the
+world for three whole months.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she only sailed yesterday?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously
+to his feet. &ldquo;And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to
+sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m letting her go as far as Plymouth,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;where one or both of us will board her tomorrow if she&rsquo;s up to
+time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said she didn&rsquo;t touch anywhere between the docks and
+Melbourne?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They
+don&rsquo;t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have gone
+round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an old
+boatswain of the line who&rsquo;s caretaker at the office, and the only man
+there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I&rsquo;ve since bearded one of the
+partners at his place down the river, and had the statement confirmed and
+amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at  Plymouth, so she
+certainly won&rsquo;t sail again before to-morrow noon, even if she&rsquo;s
+there by then. You will be in ample time to board her&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got
+a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw&mdash;if you go down by the
+12.15 from Paddington to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, he said,
+and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the increasing confidence of
+one gradually mastering the difficulties of an uncongenial game. He felt also
+that a happy issue was in sight, and after that he could tell the truth and
+liberate his soul. He was pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously
+propounded by Eugene Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would
+have filled him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously
+prepared for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the
+man&rsquo;s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the
+moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it fell to her
+to do certain honours <i>vice</i> Horace, luckily engaged at the works.
+&ldquo;And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush eyed her over his tumbler&rsquo;s rim, but completed his draught before
+replying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my
+job is to prove things one way or the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is
+absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or anything,
+beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the window of the
+restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a
+train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also
+had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside
+Willesden, when he began to fume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never knew such a thing on this line before,&rdquo; he complained;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand
+before, and it&rsquo;ll just make the difference to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time,&rdquo; said Thrush, consulting his watch as the
+train showed signs of life at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for what I want to do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton firmly. &ldquo;I want
+to shake that man&rsquo;s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my
+boy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that you&rsquo;ll find him at home,&rdquo; Thrush
+said, after a contemplative pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take my chance of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said something about their both going out of town
+to-day&mdash;meaning niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left,
+and that seemed to remind him of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And losing the train?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can motor down to Plymouth; there&rsquo;s plenty of time. I might take
+him with me, as well as you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better,&rdquo; said Thrush, after another slight pause. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d
+rather you didn&rsquo;t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not count on you&rdquo;?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of us will be quite enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?&rdquo; cried
+the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t put it like that, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right! I&rsquo;ll take your man Mullins instead; but I&rsquo;ll try
+my luck at that German doctor&rsquo;s first,&rdquo; he growled, determined to
+have his own way in something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you can&rsquo;t have Mullins,&rdquo; said Thrush,
+gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Want him yourself do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do; but I&rsquo;m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr.
+Upton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not? Where is he.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison! Your man Mullins?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Mr. Upton, he&rsquo;s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion
+of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+MALINGERING</h2>
+
+<p>
+Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was still
+poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were the very ones
+his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of tea-things on the
+stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back into his pocket, and to
+fling himself at full length on the bed, before Dr. Baumgartner entered with a
+tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see
+you yourself again by supper-time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not coming down again,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+force me, please&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Force you?&rdquo; Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window.
+&ldquo;What a tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show
+your wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the
+window shut&mdash;so&mdash;and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it
+when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to disturb
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling stealth
+that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when an admirable
+doctor&rsquo;s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little fever, I&rsquo;m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were
+you. It&rsquo;s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have
+been through so much, my poor young fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have indeed!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one consolation for you,&rdquo; he said at length, in
+a sibilant whisper. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve had that letter of yours at home quite
+a long time now&mdash;ever since yesterday morning, haven&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut&mdash;he only hoped it was
+not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr. Baumgartner,
+suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the discovery downstairs behind
+his back. If he himself had betrayed anything it was in the last few seconds,
+when it had been all that he could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge
+of  the other&rsquo;s trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy!
+To have the heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand;
+the wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth impostor
+gratuitously revelling in his imposition!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at first they
+bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner&mdash;a fear felt from the
+beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the sharper tooth:
+his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a thing about him yet, his
+tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung in anxious conclave on his words!
+Not that he had recognised any such subtle consolations as factors in his
+temporary and comparative peace of mind; now that they were gone, he could not
+have said what it was he missed; he only knew that he could least forgive
+Baumgartner for this sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other side
+eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the doctor&rsquo;s
+stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was not malevolent; it
+was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan had succeeded perfectly,
+and nobody was really any the worse off. His people would have known he was
+alive and well on the Friday; but that was all, and they had no reason yet to
+assume his death. No; even Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of
+a relief to write than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only
+have aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some
+fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond reason or
+forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he could imagine
+Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible logic, with
+characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of a benevolent
+serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken in. It was not
+coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to betray his knowledge
+of the fraud&mdash;if only he had not already done so!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner when
+at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have been more
+considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the doctor&rsquo;s
+behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very gently chidden
+for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any supper either: it was
+true he did not want to want any, or another bite of that man&rsquo;s bread,
+but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It was against his reasoned
+policy to show  temper, and he was beginning to feel very hungry besides. The
+doctor said, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll think better of that, my young fellow,&rdquo;
+which turned a mere remark into more than half an absolute resolution. The
+second tray was set with a lighted candle on a chair by the bedside. The boy
+eyed it wistfully with set teeth, and Baumgartner eyed the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing to eat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there any book?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s premeditation.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the book I was reading yesterday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some Frenchman on hallucinations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you were reading that book!&rdquo; remarked the doctor, with
+detestable aplomb. &ldquo;I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book.
+I have destroyed it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than
+revolted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not,&rdquo; rejoined Baumgartner. &ldquo;Even if it were a good
+book, it is no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what
+is done and over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is over,&rdquo; murmured the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is over!&rdquo; said Baumgartner, fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I read what he&rsquo;d
+got to say about somnambulism.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite of such
+a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to know that others
+besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;they always seem to have dreamt the
+dreadful thing as well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until
+the shot woke me and I found myself where you saw me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you find it funny!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the increased
+asperity of Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner, and his whole conduct about a harmless
+book, altogether inexplicable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; replied the boy, with spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do
+your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human life
+less precious than the average dog&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human about
+this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said since the scene
+between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the door behind him when he
+went. But Pocket preferred that novel exhibition, for its very heat and
+violence, to the sleek and calculated solicitude of the doctor&rsquo;s final
+visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost
+to the socket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My young fellow!&rdquo; he exclaimed in unctuous distress. &ldquo;Not a
+bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it&rsquo;s nearly
+midnight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not hungry,&rdquo; replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once.
+&ldquo;I told you I wasn&rsquo;t well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be worse if you don&rsquo;t force yourself to eat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that
+seemed to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the oval
+hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black nicotine, and he
+puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more infuriate than ever,
+under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the boy it was all but a living
+face, and a vile one, capable of nameless atrocities; and the hard-frozen face
+of Baumgartner was capable of looking on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it&rsquo;s my own fault.
+I take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very first
+moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law into my own
+hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or worse. You were worse
+then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not strange that your asthma has
+entirely left you under my roof? Does it not lead you to believe in me, my
+young fellow&mdash;to trust me perhaps more than you have done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue
+stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived from one
+of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this one, of the sudden
+cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated Baumgartner for forgetting that,
+and pretending for a moment to take any credit to himself. That again was not
+worthy of so cool and keen a brain, much less of the candid character with
+which Pocket had supposed himself to be dealing. The very young are
+pathetically apt to see their own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but
+the schoolboy&rsquo;s faith in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base;
+and now (as sure a symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must trust me again,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, as though he knew what
+he had forfeited. &ldquo;I know what will do you good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,
+before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might have been
+the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came before him in a
+scorching flash. But there was something also in the way the doctor was bending
+over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer still, so that the two dreadful faces
+seemed of equal size. And Baumgartner&rsquo;s had become a dreadful face in the
+boy&rsquo;s eyes now; there was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in
+cold intellectual cruelty; and its smile&mdash;its new and strange smile it
+must have been that made him shudder and shake his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my young fellow,&rdquo; urged the doctor, &ldquo;it will do you so
+much good. And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself could
+have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was much to
+commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough as he moved it
+from side to side on the pillow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you I&rsquo;m ill,&rdquo; he whimpered. &ldquo;How can I go out
+with you, when you see I can&rsquo;t eat a bite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early, early
+lovely summer&rsquo;s  morning; then they would see, would they not? Pocket had
+a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from the other. He was
+alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next morning when the doctor took
+his early walk; let him prowl by himself. Pocket was not going with him. He had
+never been more determined about anything than that. It was an animal instinct
+of fear and deep revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further
+determination to slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this
+course he was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.
+Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn up with
+the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead of his
+letter&mdash;going straight to his people to tell them all, and have that poor
+innocent man set free before the day was out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night&rsquo;s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been
+secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price which he
+wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry boy, no longer
+ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one remaining ill; the rest
+was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent him from feeling ravenous after
+fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was food still within his reach, even at his
+side; but he felt committed  to his declaration that he could not eat. If the
+tray were still untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further
+question of his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an &ldquo;if.&rdquo;
+The boy was not used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was
+not self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly tussles
+for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament was
+self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only shows the power
+of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a yard from his door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure lying
+still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath; and he opened
+the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to open, by even slower
+and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had done that first morning, it
+might have been a month ago; and this scene must have challenged comparison
+with that, had his mind been even as free from dread and terror as it had been
+then. But all he saw was the few remaining lighted windows in the backs of
+those other houses; he could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured
+no beam of comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open
+eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last rumble in
+the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised its
+note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds, which grew
+but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house. Somebody was knocking
+and ringing at the doctor&rsquo;s door, not furiously, but with considerable
+pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow just at first, and flew from the
+open window to the landing outside his door. The house was in perfect darkness,
+and still as death in the patient intervals between each measured attempt to
+rouse the inmates without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must
+be Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the boy was
+about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the retreat of feet
+down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next landing as the doctor
+closed his bedroom door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Who could it have been? Baumgartner&rsquo;s chuckle suggested the police; but
+in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last laugh,
+though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He could not close an
+eye for thinking of it, and listening for another knocking and ringing down
+below. But nothing happened  until the doctor returned between five and six,
+still with his meerschaum pipe, still in his alpaca jacket, but wearing also
+the goblin hat and cloak of their first meeting, to renew and intensify the
+animal fear that glued the boy to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a pity,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, standing at the window which
+Pocket had left open. &ldquo;The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a
+cloud in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who are
+making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose
+&rdquo;&mdash;and his eyes blazed&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;d feed you like a
+fowl!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so likely that I should do it on purpose,&rdquo; muttered
+Pocket, with schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and
+they had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know best,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But you are missing the
+morning of your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little
+garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your public
+school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more imagination,
+thank God!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he had the
+door open too, as the doctor&rsquo;s step was creaking down the lower flight of
+stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not quite to the
+banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told him the doctor had gone
+into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only for a moment. The dark-room
+door shut sharply. The steps came creaking back along the hall, went grating
+out upon the doorstep. There was another sharp shutting. Food at last!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of
+cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out.
+But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and
+emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was
+only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida&rsquo;s door and shout goodbye, or
+to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he
+always was, on these early jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait
+and say goodbye properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a
+second time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if
+that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, by any
+means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the schoolboy&rsquo;s
+head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the discovery that Dr.
+Baumgartner had removed his clothes!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it was a
+practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet such a case. It
+was to be met by action, however, just as that locked door had been met, and
+the policeman&rsquo;s prohibition in the Park. He knew where his clothes must
+be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using as a dressing-gown, over his
+pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. Baumgartner had done not many minutes
+before him. His clothes were in the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a
+Yale lock; there was no forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his
+passion tried both. So round he went without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation to the
+dark-room window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That
+mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and a sheet
+of ruby glass with one vicious blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his hands or
+feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, and let the blind
+down as he had found it, without looking twice at his clothes. There they were
+for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They were not his only property in
+that room either. His revolver was there somewhere under lock and key. He might
+want it, waking, if Dr. Baumgartner came back before his time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on the
+folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was not in the
+others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives beloved of
+schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, among other
+superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had often felt inclined
+to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in the way of the other tools.
+But he used it now with as little hesitation as he had done the other damage,
+with almost a lust for breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as
+his clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least,
+there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and
+there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own
+treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, as
+he stood in a ruby flood only partially diluted by the broken window behind the
+blind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside him
+that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the whole lot
+crashing about his toes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</h2>
+
+<p>
+The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket
+wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of
+the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that
+way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and
+overcoat, with the rest of one&rsquo;s clothes in a bundle under one&rsquo;s
+arm, it was before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. But it was not a course
+that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with romantic instincts and a
+revolver which he perceived at a glance to be still loaded in most of its
+chambers. Pocket was not one of nature&rsquo;s heroes, but he had an
+overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time to feel how he should despise
+himself all his life if he bolted by the window instead of opening the door. So
+he did open it, trembling but determined. And there stood Phillida in her
+dressing-gown, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you!&rdquo; she cried, taking the exclamation out of his
+mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a gust of relief; &ldquo;did you think it was
+thieves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; she demanded, pointing to the broken window
+visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He took this from me,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I had a right to it.
+Take it if you will!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But Phillida was
+too angry to look at revolvers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had no business to break in to get it,&rdquo; she told him, with
+considerable severity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this
+morning before he went out. They&rsquo;re what I broke in for, and I&rsquo;d a
+perfect right; you know I had! And while I&rsquo;m about it I thought I might
+as well have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.
+And I&rsquo;m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in the
+house of one of the greatest villains alive!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were all out
+in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his indignation, the
+girl&rsquo;s eyes flashing hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I begin to think my uncle was right,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;This is the
+act of what he said you were, if anything could be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He lied to you, and he&rsquo;s been lying to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He may have been justified.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wait till you hear all he&rsquo;s done! I don&rsquo;t mean taking my
+revolver from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I&rsquo;d
+done with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he
+couldn&rsquo;t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that
+isn&rsquo;t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor
+people who may think me dead&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with
+his great grief and grievance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch
+the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday morning
+he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you don&rsquo;t know
+how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I found scraps of my
+letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he&rsquo;d never posted it at
+all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes filled
+with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a fool to blub about it&mdash;but&mdash;but that was the
+Limit!&rdquo; he croaked, and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was cruel,&rdquo; she allowed. &ldquo;It must seem so,  at any rate;
+it does to me; but then I understand so little. I can&rsquo;t think why
+he&rsquo;s hiding you, or why you let yourself be hidden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must know what I&rsquo;ve done; you must guess?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she looked
+from it to him without recoiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I guessed on Saturday.&rdquo; There was a studious absence of
+horror in her tone. &ldquo;Yet I couldn&rsquo;t believe it, unless it was an
+accident. And if it was an accident&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was one!&rdquo; he choked. &ldquo;It was the most absolute accident
+that ever happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours
+afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was
+frightfully good to me, I&rsquo;m grateful enough for all that. But he should
+have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I lost my
+head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I came to my senses
+he wouldn&rsquo;t let me go. I needn&rsquo;t remind you of that morning! After
+that I promised to stay on, and I&rsquo;d have kept all my promises if only my
+letter had gone to my poor people!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them know he
+was alive, and that with the doctor&rsquo;s expressed approval. But  now he had
+learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was more than ever the
+game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what he had never done. And so
+the whole story would be in to-morrow&rsquo;s papers, with the single exception
+of Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing shall make me give that,&rdquo; said Pocket valiantly; &ldquo;on
+your account, if not on his!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last assurance.
+She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives and putting them
+back in the rack; he followed her example, and collected the broken bits, while
+she put the rack back in its place, and certain splinters in theirs, until the
+locker shut without showing much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary
+negatives on his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should throw those away,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;And now, by the
+time you&rsquo;re ready to go, I&rsquo;ll have a cup of tea ready for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open door,
+and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he was too shy
+to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto they had both been
+like young castaways, finely regardless of appearances, he of his bare feet and
+throat, she of her dressing-gown and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious
+or careless still, as with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of
+mauvaise honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault
+of what he suddenly felt he simply must say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t want to leave you!&rdquo; he blurted out at
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I want you to,&rdquo; she returned promptly and firmly, though not
+without a faint smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get that
+out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as he had done
+when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man to his niece; all
+that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not think he was peculiar there;
+in fact, he thought romantically enough about the girl, with her dark hair all
+over her pink dressing-gown, and ivory insteps peeping out of those soft
+slippers especially when the vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making
+himself as presentable as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy
+in the same way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on
+the table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He
+could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner he went
+the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He hated the thought of
+deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such a girl! He could only face
+it with the fixed intention of coming back to the rescue of his heroine, he the
+hero of their joint romance. But for his own immediate freedom he was already
+unheroically eager. And yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives
+together, on the white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a
+boyish bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet been
+gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it brandished by
+man or boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The piecing of the plates was like a children&rsquo;s puzzle, only easier,
+because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives was of
+painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to atoms by
+Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees again, only
+leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure sprawling on a bench.
+Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he remembered having seen
+printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in the other room; and hardly had
+he filled his frame and placed it in position, than Phillida ran down stairs,
+and he told her what he had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you hadn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said nervously, as she made
+mechanical preparations with pot and kettle. &ldquo;It would only make matters
+worse if my uncle came in now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he wasn&rsquo;t back on Friday before ten or eleven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but not
+he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care! I can&rsquo;t help it if he does come. I&rsquo;ll
+tell him exactly what I&rsquo;ve done, and why, and exactly what I&rsquo;m
+going to do next. I give him leave to stop me if he can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t wait for that. But I wish you had waited
+for his leave before printing his negative.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny room at
+the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a rather dark
+print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then extracted from the
+frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the joins of the broken plate.
+But it had been an excellent negative originally. And it was still good enough
+to hold Pocket rooted to the carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in
+after him, and stood looking over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that place!&rdquo; said she at once. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Holland
+Walk, in Kensington.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned to her quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The very place!&rdquo; exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening
+print.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He&rsquo;s always
+so interested in mysteries. I&rsquo;m sure that&rsquo;s the very spot he showed
+me as the one where it must have happened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he take the photograph then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; he hadn&rsquo;t his camera with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in
+uncontrollable excitement. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not only the place; it&rsquo;s the
+thing itself. Look at that man on the bench!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl took a long look nearer the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How horrible!&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;His head looks as though it
+were falling off! He might be dying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dying or dead,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;at the very second the plate
+was exposed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent, but it
+was more understanding. He had Baumgartner&rsquo;s own confession of his
+attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to executions; he
+expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly, clumsily, inaccurately
+enough, and yet with a certain graphic power which brought those incredible
+theories  home to his companion as forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought
+them home to Pocket. It was the first she had ever heard of them. But then he
+had never discussed his photography with her, never showed her plate or print.
+That it was not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had
+always felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now she
+seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the broken
+negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was nothing to see;
+the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out the repulsive picture even
+as she held it in her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what do you think?&rdquo; she asked at last; her voice was thin and
+strained with formless terrors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human being
+I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether you like it
+yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this case in connection
+with&mdash;mine&mdash;and I see that one theory was that the man in this broken
+negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly believe that Dr.
+Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must have been there if he took the photograph.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I&rsquo;ve told you
+all he told me about it, but I haven&rsquo;t told you all he said about the
+value of human life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these
+murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight from the
+flesh; that&rsquo;s his own way of putting it, not mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn&rsquo;t get more
+power over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my sleep
+with this wretched revolver. He said himself I&rsquo;d given him the chance of
+a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man&rsquo;s death, not
+after it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t possible,&rdquo; declared Phillida, as though she had
+laid hold of one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. &ldquo;And I
+know he hasn&rsquo;t a pistol of his own,&rdquo; she added, lest he should
+simplify his charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there they were agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He hadn&rsquo;t one on him that morning; that I can swear,&rdquo; said
+Pocket, impartially disposing of the idea. &ldquo;Mine was the only one in that
+cape of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back
+into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or anywhere
+else about him, or I couldn&rsquo;t have helped seeing it.&rdquo; Phillida
+accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as if in
+recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy whom she could
+now understand his regarding in that light. If only he would go before the
+enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over him as he himself seemed to
+feel, then that was all the more reason for him to go quickly. But Pocket was
+not the man to get up and run like that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his
+bravery on the point, and keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account;
+at any rate he insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free
+expression to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on
+the brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,
+while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost fondling it,
+though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his small possessions;
+suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand, and clattered on the table
+between the girl and boy. It was a wonder neither of them was shot dead in his
+excitement. His whole face  was altered; but so was his whole life. She could
+not understand his incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the
+chambers round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live
+cartridges in all six.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo; the words came pouring. &ldquo;Not one of
+them&rsquo;s been fired&mdash;it&rsquo;s as I loaded it myself the other night!
+It can&rsquo;t have been this revolver at all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must have known whether you fired or not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I&rsquo;d
+only heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open air,
+though I do remember wondering I hadn&rsquo;t felt any kick. But I was so
+dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it from me in
+such a rage that of course I believed I&rsquo;d let it off. But now I can see I
+can&rsquo;t have done. It wasn&rsquo;t my revolver and it wasn&rsquo;t
+me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you say yourself my uncle didn&rsquo;t carry one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll swear he didn&rsquo;t; but there&rsquo;s another man in all
+this! There was the man they arrested on Saturday&mdash;the man I was so keen
+to set free!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy&rsquo;s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What
+was it to him that his innocence implied another&rsquo;s complicity? Only too
+characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point of view;
+but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed? There was the
+broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that was not enough for
+Phillida.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose in his
+waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. &ldquo;Then my uncle might have
+put in a fresh one while you were asleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll soon tell you if he did!&rdquo; cried Pocket. &ldquo;There
+were fourteen in the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only
+shot away one at the Knaggses&rsquo; before we were cobbed. That left
+thirteen&mdash;six in the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six,
+and here&rsquo;s one, two, three, four&mdash;and three&rsquo;s seven!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for herself,
+while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He was beginning to
+see what it all meant now, but still only what it meant to him and his. He
+could look his people in the face again; that was the burden of his loud
+thanksgiving. He was as sure of his  innocence as though the dead man had risen
+to prove it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Phillida, briskly; &ldquo;then it&rsquo;s all the
+more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping him on
+with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he followed her
+out slowly, and he would not turn his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave you now,&rdquo; he said; and she knew that he saw it
+from her side at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because the whole thing&rsquo;s altered! I&rsquo;m not going to leave
+you with a man like that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s thought either for her immediate feelings
+or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious air of
+sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have flung open the
+door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it first. So her big eyes
+blazed at him instead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very kind!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But suppose I
+don&rsquo;t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall wait and say it to his face. That&rsquo;s another reason for
+waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;re the person to judge him&mdash;a boy like
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say I am. I only say that print&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know he took the negative?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you jump to conclusions like a baby!&rdquo; cried the girl, too
+quick for him in following up a confusing advantage. &ldquo;I never heard
+anybody like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he
+must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep with a
+loaded revolver, and then you&rsquo;re sure you never fired at all, simply
+because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! Then you find a
+photograph that needn&rsquo;t necessarily be what we thought it, that my uncle
+needn&rsquo;t have taken even if it was; but you jump to another conclusion
+about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as though you knew every horrid
+thing you chose to think! As if you knew him and I didn&rsquo;t! As if he
+hasn&rsquo;t been kind and good to me for years and years&mdash;and kind to
+you&mdash;far too kind&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it and them
+there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well of those bitter
+tears. And it was in simple supplication, not imperiously any more, that she
+pointed to the door when speech failed her. The boy&rsquo;s answer was to go
+close up to her  instead. &ldquo;Will you come with me?&rdquo; he asked
+hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she could
+only shake her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My people would be as good to you as ever he was,&rdquo; urged Pocket
+extravagantly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;d understand, and you&rsquo;d stay with us,
+Phillida! You might live with us altogether!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled very faintly at that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Phillida, can&rsquo;t you see that they&rsquo;d do anything for you
+after all we&rsquo;ve been through together? And I, oh! there&rsquo;s nothing I
+wouldn&rsquo;t do if only you&rsquo;d come with me now this minute! I know
+there&rsquo;s a train about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on
+the way. Come, Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this
+horror!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or apathy which
+had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for indecision; but, whatever it
+was, she shook it off and declared once for all that she would never leave Dr.
+Baumgartner, even if everything was true about him, and he as mad as that would
+make him out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he is!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with most eager conviction.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the only possible explanation, and you&rsquo;d believe it
+fast enough if you&rsquo;d heard all he said to me that first night, and been
+with  me in the dark-room when he developed his negative of the man he said I
+shot! You&rsquo;d see how it all fits in, and how this other negative this
+morning simply shows he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of
+course he&rsquo;s mad; but that&rsquo;s the very reason why I can&rsquo;t go
+and leave you with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would be as he&rsquo;s always been to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe he would,&rdquo; said honest Pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t you go away and leave us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you won&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, because I won&rsquo;t and never will! But, mind you,
+it&rsquo;ll be your fault if anything happens to either of us after
+this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal obstinacy,
+and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He stood chained in
+fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but he was prepared to stand
+there like a man, and he did not deserve the things she said to him in a fresh
+paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He might be a baby, but he was not a complete
+coward, or simply trying to make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on
+this occasion, was he thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to
+realise that, for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing
+up the stairs.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+A THIRD CASE</h2>
+
+<p>
+In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of these days,
+nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it was as a day of dark
+hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one which Phillida and he began
+alone together in her uncle&rsquo;s house. Those endless hours were either
+mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an endurable minimum; but the
+unforgettable moments would light themselves up in his memory without a detail
+missing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida standing
+all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair about her shoulders,
+a picture that could never fade. Then there was the moment of the incriminating
+print, which the sun wiped out even as Phillida stood with it in her hands.
+That moment merged itself in the greater one of his discovery that the revolver
+was fully loaded, his inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal
+mischief in the Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him
+the time before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving
+way an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck together,
+and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of anger which
+dissolved his fears like snow in May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to be
+forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying absolutely on her
+account, and so far from giving him the slightest credit for it, or a single
+word of encouragement, she said all sorts of things and was off before he could
+answer one of them. It was not for Pocket to see the many ironies of that
+moment, and not for him to recognise the tonic property of his heroic
+grievance. He could only see himself at the foot of those stairs, first
+gnashing his teeth and not sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with
+his eye on the front door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the
+doctor&rsquo;s key. Another click was to answer it; and at the point of the
+cocked revolver Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not
+only to the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to
+call to witness with her own ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not incapable of
+desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he had more than an hour
+of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot forenoon of unmitigated suspense,
+of sickening alarms from tradesmen&rsquo;s carts, boys  whistling past the
+house as though they were not in a wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ
+that redoubled his watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once
+he did hear shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough,
+though it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth) that
+came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a state that he
+would not have backed himself to hit the door from the stairs; and he put the
+chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor over that, in the manner of old
+Miss Harbottle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon him,
+because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until Phillida ran
+downstairs and almost over him where he sat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the quarrel was
+over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly upon him, but with a
+distressing look which he had done nothing to provoke. Not before then was he
+aware of another duet between newsboys coming nearer and nearer, and shouting
+each other down as they came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; she whispered, as if not to drown a note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you hear what it is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something fresh about the murder,&rdquo; said he grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s another one,&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you
+hear? &lsquo;Another awful murder!&rsquo; Now they&rsquo;re saying something
+else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is something about the Park.&rdquo; Pocket stuck to his idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And something else about some &lsquo;well-known&rsquo;&mdash;I
+can&rsquo;t hear what!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No more can I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll open the door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them. The
+shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away again in the
+distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go out and get one,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;Some well-known
+man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not thinking of the doctor, surely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know! I can&rsquo;t think where he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re worse than I am, if you jump to that!&rdquo; said
+Pocket, smiling to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she
+was; he had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever
+of impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o&rsquo;clock in the morning;
+now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, then
+there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he might meet
+with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not the death of a
+sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did not alter it. Unless
+his fears and his surmises were all equally unfounded, better for everybody,
+and best of all for Phillida, if this criminal maniac came to his end without
+public exposure of his crimes. Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of
+mind, as his elders and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own
+skin more than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for
+the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida&rsquo;s first words on
+returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were not the
+truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was it, then?&rdquo; the schoolboy asked suspiciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he was the well-known man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had seen it in
+newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by Baumgartner himself in
+one of his little digs at England. Pocket was not sure about this, but he
+mentioned his impression, and Phillida nodded with swimming eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did the doctor know him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you. It was something to do with politics and
+gold-mines, and some financial paper. I never understood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I see the paper you&rsquo;ve brought in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s something you haven&rsquo;t told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall know it sooner or later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know you will, and I know what you&rsquo;ll think! You may think what
+you like, and still be wrong!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found the
+paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it was so folded
+already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and more of it in the late
+corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P., the well-known proprietor of the
+<i>Money-maker</i>, had been shot dead in front of his house in Park Lane. The
+murder had been committed in the early hours of the morning, before anybody was
+about except  Sir Joseph and his groom, and the person whom the groom described
+as the only possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the
+early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a photographer
+representing himself as concerned with the press, and desirous of obtaining an
+equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom thought it was to be taken in
+the Park, and was himself on his way back to the mews when the riderless horse
+overtook him. Mounting the animal, he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph
+dead in the road, and no trace of the &ldquo;photographer&rdquo; but a false
+beard and spectacles which he had evidently discarded in his flight, and which
+unfortunately precluded a close description of his appearance. But a hue and
+cry had been started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding
+in the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough search
+under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her
+companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the next thing
+he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big chair in the back
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It was a
+period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each other through
+it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for his step no longer,
+but for more newsboys crying his capture to the world. And in the hours that
+they spent thus listening, and listening, the girl had much to say, that it did
+her good to say, about this Dr. Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved
+him in the past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to her for
+all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into hers, in the
+many years they had been more or less together. All she really knew of him was
+from her mother, whose elder sister he had married soon after the
+Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after marriage. He must have been settled in
+England many years before Phillida&rsquo;s mother, herself an
+Englishman&rsquo;s widow, came to keep house for him. The girl could not
+remember her father, but her mother had lived to see her in her teens, and in
+her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had seemed much as other men. It was only of late
+years that he had withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and
+buried himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His
+niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and she had
+always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he was going to send
+her  to college, he had only just given her six months in Switzerland. It was
+during those months that all his eccentricities had become pronounced; that he
+had given up servants, and taken to doing half the work of the house himself,
+with the casual aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals
+in from a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other
+matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in him and
+done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for her, whatever
+madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own kinsfolk so much less, for
+all their opulent integrity. Nothing could make her forget what he had done.
+She never could or would desert him; it was no use asking her again; but she
+took her callow champion&rsquo;s hand, and wrung it with her final answer,
+which was unaccompanied by further prayers for his departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale that he
+heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets, suppositions, and
+not always revelant recollections, of which he had to make what he could in his
+own mind. What he made was a narrative so natural that he could not believe it
+was the life-story of a murderer. His own convictions became preposterous in
+his own eyes. What had he been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a
+murderer would behave? Was this the way a murderer would live, in these
+surroundings, with those books about him, with that little billiard-table in
+the next room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary
+lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their dreadful
+deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living this ordinary life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of something
+else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of her feeling for
+him, and of the schoolboy&rsquo;s feeling for her. If he could have convicted
+himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so cleared Baumgartner of all
+blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any other case, he would have done it
+for Phillida&rsquo;s sake that afternoon. But with every hour of the
+doctor&rsquo;s absence suspicions multiplied. Phillida herself was a prey to
+them. She was almost as ready to recall symptoms of incipient insanity as
+instances of personal kindness; if one lost one&rsquo;s reason, she broke a
+long silence to contend, there could be no question of regret and wrong. She
+was not so sure about crime and punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could
+be no question of that either; but in his heart he wondered how much method
+they must prove to hang a madman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy had no
+thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before; and strong
+excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting silently together in
+the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was deepening every minute.
+Suddenly there was a sound of small branches breaking in the garden. Pocket
+peeped out, standing back from the window at her entreaty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain into
+both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure rose out of
+it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent double, and
+brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long and stealthy
+strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over his eyes, and the
+old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the door; but it
+was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have seen them; they were
+clasping hands as they shrank away from him with one accord. But he did not
+seem to see them at all. He stretched himself, as though he found it a relief
+to stand upright, and more mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took
+off the alpaca jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could
+have been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a
+hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out plainly
+enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper parcel; he had
+put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed the paper; it fell at
+Pocket&rsquo;s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and nothing had come out of
+it but the stereoscopic camera, that either watcher could detect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of either of
+them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go upstairs, and shut the
+door, and then his footsteps overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go up and tackle him at once,&rdquo; said Pocket, through his
+set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No! I must go first and see if there&rsquo;s nothing I can get him; he
+mayn&rsquo;t have had anything all day. There&rsquo;s no need for you to come
+at all&mdash;I believe he&rsquo;s forgotten all about us both!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not he!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead.
+&ldquo;Here he comes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again under Dr.
+Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with the hand that was
+not holding Phillida&rsquo;s. The doctor was coming down in a hurry, as though
+he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed the open drawing-room door;
+they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of keys, and never so much as glancing in
+on the way. It was the dark-room door he opened. Now he would find out
+everything! They heard a match struck, and saw the faint light turn into a
+strong deep crimson glow. The door shut. The children stood listening in the
+dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered bottle; the
+opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger photographer followed as
+though he were again looking on. Then there was a long period without a sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s developing now!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, close to the
+folding-doors. He caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side.
+&ldquo;There it is&mdash;there it is&mdash;there it is!&rdquo; cried the
+doctor&rsquo;s voice in mingled ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh
+announced the blackening of the plate at the conclusion of the first process. A
+tap ran for a moment; interminable minutes ensued. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s gone!
+It&rsquo;s gone again!&rdquo; cried the wild voice, with a sob;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as before; but
+that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was being put straight
+into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the locker had been discovered
+at last. He never knew. The door opened. The red glow showed for a moment in
+the passage, then went out. The door shut behind Baumgartner, and again he
+passed the drawing-room, a bent figure, without looking in. And the flagging
+step on the stairs bore no resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down
+not many minutes before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go to him!&rdquo; said Phillida in broken undertones, and her
+grief communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the base
+fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might think of it,
+was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he was of the type that
+thinks of everything. She left him listening breathless in the dark. And in the
+dark she found him when at length she returned to report the doctor busy
+writing at his desk; but a pin&rsquo;s head of blue gas glimmered where there
+had been none before, and a paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled
+in Pocket&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does he know I&rsquo;m here?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he&rsquo;s
+forgotten your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though
+he&rsquo;d forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He
+seems so strange&mdash;so old!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. &ldquo;I
+wonder if something would be any comfort to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas while
+you were upstairs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida turned it out again without comment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,&rdquo; she sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember my saying there must be another man in
+these&mdash;mysteries?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant
+is in prison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You said he was?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read
+it for yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. &ldquo;I doubt if
+there&rsquo;s anything in that,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but what if there were?
+Does it make it any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If
+he&rsquo;s guilty at all, it makes it all the worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+THE FOURTH CASE</h2>
+
+<p>
+The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of the house.
+The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of moonlight pouring over
+them. The only light in the house was in the room above, and they only saw its
+glimmer on the garden when a casual cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had
+crept out into the garden to steal a look at the lighted window itself; and
+what he saw was the shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and
+dense clouds of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs or
+anywhere. There had been a brisk interval&mdash;and then an end&mdash;of more
+or less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a
+certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables, to which
+Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so that he noticed
+its absence more than the thing itself. It was as though the whole town was at
+rest, and the tunnels under the town, and every single soul above or below
+ground, but those two white faces in the moonlight, and perhaps one other
+overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to their
+ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was against it;
+perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what he did see so very
+vividly, in his mind&rsquo;s eye, that he shivered and was asked if he felt
+cold. The whispered debate that followed was the longest conversation they had
+that night. The window was not shut as a result of it, but Pocket fetched his
+overcoat on tiptoe, and it just went over both their shoulders, when the chairs
+were drawn as near together as they would go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to wall.
+The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some monstrous
+wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above and below the moon,
+varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night, and Pocket did not think
+that he had broken the stillness, until the door burst open behind them, and
+Baumgartner stood there, holding his lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high,
+the flame ran up the chimney in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face
+flared up behind it. Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower,
+and the doctor was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy
+drew back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his
+nose, and crashed upon the path outside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was breathing
+hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself; and at last he
+laughed sardonically as though he had won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lamp like that&rsquo;s a dangerous thing,&rdquo; said he, with a kind
+of forced solemnity and a shake of the head; &ldquo;you never know what may
+happen when a lamp does that! I&rsquo;m glad the window was open; it
+didn&rsquo;t go very near my young fellow, I hope?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that the boy
+could have screamed with pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would have served you right,&rdquo; continued the doctor, before
+Pocket could find his tongue, &ldquo;for sitting up so late, and keeping a
+young lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have
+another word with you, young fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest. They were
+tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was suavely sinister; it
+made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of mind to bid her a cheery
+good-night, and she went, closely followed by Baumgartner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the next
+flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and his  own
+surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an idea came. He opened
+the front door wide, and then stole back through the conservatory into the
+moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down before he gained the garden. He
+tore to the end of it, and cowered in the shadow of the far wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it looked
+as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit the gas, and
+Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly the look of a seeker
+who expects to find. Some long moments he stood out horribly at the open
+window, gazing straight at the spot where the fugitive crouched a few inches
+out of the moonlight and hugged the revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see
+nothing to bring him out that way, for he closed that window and put out the
+gas. The trembling watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw
+another light in Baumgartner&rsquo;s room the minute after that, and the blind
+drawn down. But on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the
+doctor&rsquo;s pipe was well in blast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the right, and
+set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the lighted blind paler
+still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting out his light. Pocket was
+now too stiff to stir; but it was not necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked
+out. There was a twitter of sparrows all down the road, garden answering to
+garden. The sun came up behind Pocket&rsquo;s wall, behind the taller houses
+further back. And Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his
+cap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The front door shut again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was a gravel
+passage between the tradesmen&rsquo;s entrance, on the detached side of the
+house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, and the gate was
+locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his stride and darted over
+into the open road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure stalking
+away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy to follow, but an
+equal dread of detection kept him cowering in gateways, until Baumgartner took
+the turning past the shops without a backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to
+that corner, and got another glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the
+next. So the spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn
+the distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once the
+boy&rsquo;s feet were actually on the man&rsquo;s shadow; for half the streets
+were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of dusk with
+rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and
+emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither one nor
+the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness.
+It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A
+dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a
+motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King&rsquo;s Road,
+which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a visible mile
+of asphalt to itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself, which
+indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of many
+countries; but the red eyes behind the driver&rsquo;s goggles were not so slow.
+Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second&rsquo;s interval; round
+spun the car in a skid that tore studs from the tyres, and fetched her up
+against the kerb with a shivered wheel. Pocket started forward with a cry; but
+at that moment a ponderous step fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and
+he was dragged in custody across the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your boy, I think!&rdquo; cried one whom he had never seen before, and
+did not now, being locked already in the motorist&rsquo;s arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When did you find him?&rdquo; the father asked when he was man enough,
+still patting Pocket&rsquo;s shoulders as if he were a dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only last night when I wired.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the house where you and I couldn&rsquo;t make ourselves heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I never saw you before this minute!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or
+two.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why didn&rsquo;t you wire before?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton, quite
+ready to mask his own emotion with a little heat. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it
+till after nine o&rsquo;clock&mdash;too late for the evening train&mdash;but I
+wasn&rsquo;t going to waste three hours with a forty-horser eating its head
+off! So here I am, on my way to the address you gave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was plumb opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s. I mounted guard there the
+very night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after
+him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,
+my dear boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick succession;
+but the first was repeated on the boy&rsquo;s hang-dog admission that he had
+been hiding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hiding, Tony?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. &ldquo;But at all events we
+found you better employed,&rdquo; he said to Pocket, &ldquo;and the sooner we
+all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying this rascal
+by the heels.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take it up, then!&rdquo; snapped Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Jump into the motor,
+and bring the brute to me when you&rsquo;ve got him! I want to speak to my
+boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that passed
+between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of his child who
+had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his head outside the story he
+extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket told it very volubly and ill; he
+would not confine himself to simple facts. He stated his suspicion of
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s complicity in the Hyde Park affair as though he knew it for
+a fact; cited the murders in Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of
+the same handiwork, and yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was
+not Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was unarmed the other morning. I&rsquo;m quite positive of that. And
+his niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the
+house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one!
+It&rsquo;s time we laid hold of him. Where&rsquo;s Mr. Thrush? I thought
+you&rsquo;d taken him on in the car?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers about
+the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like his master,
+was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette and sardonic
+mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts being that he had
+nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton had incontinently taken into
+his own less experienced hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The car won&rsquo;t take anybody anywhere to-day,&rdquo; explained the
+chauffeur, with his cigarette behind his back. &ldquo;I shall have to get a
+lorry to take the car.&rdquo; He held his head on one side suddenly.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a bit o&rsquo; tyre trouble for somebody!&rdquo; he cried,
+grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not unlike the
+bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it was that. He caught
+his father&rsquo;s arm, and whispered in his father&rsquo;s ear, and they
+plunged together into a side street broader than the asphalt thoroughfare, but
+with scarcely a break in either phalanx of drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a
+creature stirring except themselves and a few who followed. The hog&rsquo;s
+back of a still more deserted bridge arched itself at the foot of the street,
+its suspension cables showing against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they
+ran a peculiarly shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;P&rsquo;lice!&rdquo; screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and
+they easily spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own
+infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket panting as
+he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the suspension bridge,
+to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle. It was evidently being
+blown on the Embankment to the right of the bridge, and already with
+considerable effect. As the pair were about to pass an intermediate turning on
+the right, a constable flew across it on a parallel course, and they altered
+theirs with one accord. Pocket panted after the constable, and his father
+thundered after Pocket, into a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of
+greenery, not too dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further
+side, with a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on
+the Surrey shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate opposite
+the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the Embankment opposite that.
+Between the two gates a grimy statue rose upon a granite pedestal, a meditative
+figure clad to the heels in some nondescript garment, and gazing across the
+river as he sat with a number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a
+peculiarly lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to
+appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant, before his
+attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living people on the
+Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing together on the far
+side of one of the fixed seats. There was the policeman who had blown the
+whistle, and a small but motley crew who had answered to the call. Conspicuous
+units were a gentleman in dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps,
+and a labouring cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some
+hidden object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round and
+join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another murdered man.
+He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of death, which he had
+seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only the other morning, it was
+the murderer and not his victim of whom the boy was thinking as he arrived last
+upon the scene. It was Dr. Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming
+the river or hiding among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one
+of the group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? The
+point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could see of the
+fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was
+detaching himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of
+the fun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dead as an &rsquo;erring,&rdquo; replied the sweep cheerfully.
+&ldquo;Sooicide in the usual stite o&rsquo; mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rats!&rdquo; said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; &ldquo;unless
+&rsquo;e shot &rsquo;isself first an&rsquo; swallered the shooter afterwards!
+Some&rsquo;un&rsquo;s done &rsquo;im in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father was
+already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles, who had
+risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his trouser-knees.
+Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he had taken into the
+Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination to look just once upon Dr.
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s latest victim. A loud cry escaped him when he did look; for
+the murdered man, and not the murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</h2>
+
+<p>
+Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the gate, and
+the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy and embarrassed
+aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they brought her. She was
+intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and horror were not the less
+overwhelming for the shame and fear which they replaced in her mind. Yet she
+remained instinctively on her guard, and a passionate curiosity was the only
+emotion she permitted herself to express in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn&rsquo;t do
+it himself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief, to
+dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the one thing they are sure about,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;In
+the first place no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera
+either, though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.
+That&rsquo;s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the
+spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn&rsquo;t have been
+fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been instantaneous. So
+it&rsquo;s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane yesterday or the one in
+Hyde Park last week; there&rsquo;s evidently some maniac prowling about at
+dawn, and shooting down the first person he sees and then vanishing into thin
+air as maniacs seem to have a knack of doing more effectually than sane men.
+But the less we jump to conclusions about him&mdash;or anybody else&mdash;the
+better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and yet it
+startled her as an index of what must have passed already between father and
+son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff man should know as much as
+the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as a comrade in calamity. Yet she
+could not expect it to be otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What must you think!&rdquo; she cried, and her great eyes filled and
+fell again. &ldquo;Oh! what must you think?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no good thinking,&rdquo; he rejoined, with almost a jovial
+kindness. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see
+each other through before we think. Not that I&rsquo;ve had time to hear
+everything yet, but I own I can&rsquo;t make head or tail of what I have heard.
+I&rsquo;m not sure that I want to. I like a man&rsquo;s secrets to die with
+him; it&rsquo;s enough for me to have my boy back again, and to know that you
+stood by him as you did. It&rsquo;s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says
+it wasn&rsquo;t your fault he didn&rsquo;t come away long ago; and it
+shan&rsquo;t be mine if you stay another hour alone in this haunted house.
+You&rsquo;ve got to come straight back with us to our hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted chamber
+if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the walls, his tin
+of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of latakia rising from the
+carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the murdered man; and the window
+still open, the two chairs near it as they had been overnight, and the lamp
+lying in fragments on the path outside, brought the last scene back to the
+boy&rsquo;s mind in full and vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself
+more desolate and depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It
+might be that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his
+simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of reassuring
+relief. But it was the case that the morning had already clouded over; the
+sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and Phillida looked only too
+eager to fly from the scene, until she declared she never could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s absurd!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton bluntly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to leave a young girl like you alone  in the day of
+battle, murder and sudden death! You needn&rsquo;t necessarily come with us, as
+long as you don&rsquo;t stay here. Have you no other relatives in
+London?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None anywhere that I know much about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter. It&rsquo;s time they knew more about you.
+I&rsquo;ll hunt them up in the motor, if they&rsquo;re anywhere within a
+hundred miles, but you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy&rsquo;s added
+supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had indeed been
+Pocket&rsquo;s originally, but his father had taken it up more warmly than he
+could have hoped. It was decided that they should return to their hotel without
+Phillida, but to send the car back for her later in the morning, as it would
+take her some time to pack her things and leave the deserted house in some
+semblance of order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end; most of
+the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation of the dead
+man&rsquo;s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in the
+dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she had already
+seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another of a man lying in a
+heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put to dry openly  in the rack,
+the wood of which was still moist from the process. Phillida only held it up to
+the light an instant, and then not only smashed both these negatives, but
+poured boiling water on the films and floated them down the sink. The bits of
+glass she put in the dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly
+done so when the first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was
+succeeded by a very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number
+of questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that
+suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary made
+any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but another of the
+perfectly random series which had already thrilled the town, but on which no
+light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of the murdered men. A third
+official came to announce that the inquest was to be opened without delay, at
+two o&rsquo;clock that afternoon, and to request Phillida to accompany him to
+the mortuary for the formal identification of the deceased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled herself
+to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she found it startlingly
+ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing here, save the furrows of
+age and the fires of madness, and it had given back the  look of fine courage
+and of sane integrity which the girl was just old enough to associate with the
+dead man&rsquo;s prime. She was thankful to have seen him like this for the
+last time. She wished that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and
+so calm, for then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find
+it easier to disbelieve from this hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do identify him, I suppose, miss?&rdquo; the officer whispered,
+impressed by her strange stare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;But he looks as I have not seen
+him look for years. There are worse things than death!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private sitting-room at
+the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had no desire to know a dead
+man&rsquo;s secrets. He had found his boy; that was quite enough for him, and
+he was able to deliver himself the more freely on the subject since Pocket was
+not at table, but in bed making up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in
+finding his son, but he had found him without the aid of police or press, and
+so not more than a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared.
+Mr. Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from his
+wife&rsquo;s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing to hush
+it up on the boy&rsquo;s account  if only it were possible to do so; but would
+it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at the inquest all
+mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle&rsquo;s house? Phillida promised to
+do her best, and it proved not only possible but easy. She was questioned as to
+the habits of the deceased so far as they explained his presence on the
+Embankment at such a very early hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a
+single person who could conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr.
+Baumgartner as to wish to take his life, the witness answered in the negative,
+and the coroner bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the
+character of the murder, but he had put the question for form&rsquo;s sake. The
+only one which caused her a moment&rsquo;s hesitation arose from a previous
+answer, which connected the doctor&rsquo;s early ramblings with his hobby of
+instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning? Phillida
+thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it certainly was not in
+the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he knew that his boy&rsquo;s name
+had been on the tip of the witness&rsquo;s tongue. And there was a sensation in
+court as well; for here at last was a bone for the detectives, who obtained a
+minute description of the missing camera, but grumbled openly that they had not
+heard of it before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They never told me they hadn&rsquo;t got it,&rdquo; explained Phillida
+to the coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the
+court on the conclusion of her evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as much as the
+crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared with his friend Mr.
+Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the poor girl there and then
+with far more searching questions than she had been required to answer upon
+oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in a way that secured his peppery
+intervention in a moment. The two men had scarcely seen each other since the
+morning, and the ironmaster thought they had enough to say to each other
+without bothering Miss Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to
+Glasshouse Street, and Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made
+them drop her at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her
+mourning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and order tea
+for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive straight back. She
+had a curious desire to see the place where the murder had been committed. It
+had come upon her at the inquest, while listening to the constable who had
+found the body, her predecessor  in the witness-box. She had failed to follow
+his evidence. He had described that portion of his beat which had brought him
+almost on the scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It
+included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street and Cheyne
+Row. The houses at this point are divided from the Embankment by the narrow
+garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He had turned up Cheyne Row, at the
+back of the statue, but before turning he had noticed a man on the seat facing
+the river on the far side of the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was
+said to have turned round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne
+Walk. There might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on
+the flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been invisible
+from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere. Yet the policeman
+swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up Cheyne Row before the shot was
+fired. He had turned round actually in time to see the puff of smoke dispersing
+over the parapet. It was all he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap,
+nearer the seat than the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he
+see, or had he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the
+river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering sign or
+trace of human being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she proceeded to
+the spot in order to go over the ground for her own satisfaction. This did not
+make it easier to understand. It had come on to rain heavily while she was in
+the shop; the shining Embankment was again practically deserted, and she was
+able to carry out her experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen
+steps up Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and
+quite realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,
+hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden by the
+long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man could have been
+seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran, and the murderer must
+have run like the wind to get away as he had done. The gates through the
+garden, back and front of the statue, had not been opened for the day when the
+murder took place, so Phillida in her turn made a half-circuit of the island to
+get to the spot where the body had been found, but without taking her eyes off
+the spot until she reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by
+nothing short of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the
+policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done. He might
+have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his furthest point
+distant, if the gates had been open as they were now; but they had been locked,
+and he could not have scaled them unobserved. Neither would it have been
+possible to take a header into the river with the foreshore as described by the
+same witness. Yet the murderer had either done one of these things, or the
+flags of the Embankment had opened and swallowed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have fallen, and in
+her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but the problem which
+engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened; but how could it have
+happened? She raised her umbrella and peered through the rain at a red pile of
+many-windowed flats; had that Argus of the hundred eyes been sleeping without
+one of them open at the time? Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in
+the narrow garden, standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its
+granite base, as though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike
+the colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the fixed
+eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another character as
+the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that stony stare, to
+distract it from the river to herself, and to  her fevered fancy the grim lips
+smiled contemptuously on her and her quandary. He knew&mdash;<i>he</i>
+knew&mdash;those grim old eyes had seen it all, and still they stared and
+smiled as much as to say: &ldquo;You are looking the wrong way! Look where I am
+looking; that way lies the truth you are poor fool enough to want to
+know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over the wet
+parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming of what she
+actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that early morning, was
+now going out, and between the Embankment masonry and the river there was again
+a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore, black as on some volcanic coast; and
+between land and water, at a point that would necessarily have been submerged
+for the last eight or nine hours, a small object was being laid more bare by
+every receding wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large
+cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,
+finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat sleeves as
+she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was; but indeed she had
+not a moment&rsquo;s doubt but that it was the missing camera of the murdered
+man.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+AFTER THE FAIR</h2>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street was
+opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the sombre Mullins
+who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had happened to him except a
+fairly recent shave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought he was in prison?&rdquo; exclaimed the ironmaster when the two
+were closeted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you ever read your paper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t looked at one since Plymouth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> did, Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My good fellow, I wish to goodness you&rsquo;d explain yourself!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I cared to be profane,&rdquo; returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the
+corner, &ldquo;I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I
+provided the prisoner, and I&rsquo;d a perfect right to take him away again.
+Blessed be the song of the Thrush!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You say you provided him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with
+his own consent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up
+with it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t meant as a joke,&rdquo; returned Thrush, and drank deep
+while his client sipped. &ldquo;If it had come off it would have been the coup
+of my career; as it didn&rsquo;t&mdash;quite&mdash;one must laugh it off at
+one&rsquo;s own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made
+him think he&rsquo;d done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same
+thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not you, Thrush?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped
+to it from scratch!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He connected Tony with the Park murder?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From the word &lsquo;go.&rsquo; &rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife&rsquo;s
+dream?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; he didn&rsquo;t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in
+two independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities was
+too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of &rsquo;em in his
+life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other&rsquo;s  flippancy. He looked at
+Thrush with a shining face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you never told me what was in your minds!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you, in
+the state you were in. I say! I&rsquo;ll wear batting-gloves the next time we
+shake hands!&rdquo; and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You believed he&rsquo;d done it, and you kept it to yourself,&rdquo;
+murmured Mr. Upton, still much impressed. &ldquo;Tell me, my dear
+fellow&mdash;did you believe it after that interview with Baumgartner in his
+house?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush emptied his glass at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on
+the other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn&rsquo;t scent him
+through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of
+their own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown
+before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily interesting and
+circumstantial effort. And to come back to your question, it did fit in with
+the theory of a fatal accident on your boy&rsquo;s part; he was frightened to
+show his face at school after sleeping in the Park,  let alone what he was
+supposed to have done there; and that, he believed, would break his
+mother&rsquo;s heart in any case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn&rsquo;t take much just now,&rdquo;
+said Mr. Upton, sadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he thought of the ship you wouldn&rsquo;t let him go out in&mdash;and
+the whole thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian&mdash;saving
+his presence elsewhere&mdash;all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman
+of genius had it ready for immediate use. I&rsquo;m bound to say he used it on
+me with excellent effect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Same here,&rdquo; said the ironmaster&mdash;&ldquo;though I&rsquo;d no
+idea what you suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape,
+for that particular boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It imposed upon us all,&rdquo; said Thrush, &ldquo;but one. I was
+prepared to believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn&rsquo;t
+know your boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him
+better than anybody else&mdash;do you remember how she wouldn&rsquo;t hear of
+it for a moment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do <i>so</i>, God bless her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never had
+quite accepted in my heart. That&rsquo;s another story, and you&rsquo;re only
+in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on Saturday, I
+thought I&rsquo;d like to know a little more about him, not from outsiders but
+from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the British Museum to have a
+look at his books. It was after hours for getting books, but I made such
+representations that they cut their red tape for once; and I soon read enough
+to wonder whether my grave and reverend seignior was quite all there.
+Spiritualism one knows, but here was spiritualism with a difference; psychic
+photography one had heard about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad
+or bad! When a gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to
+snap-shoot the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at
+Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor. Will you
+believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the very thing I shall
+presently prove to have been the truth, and that I dismissed it from my mind as
+the wildest impossibility?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how you&rsquo;re going to prove it now,&rdquo;
+remarked Mr. Upton, who hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the
+girl who had been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which
+there was no necessity to express.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall want another chat with your lad when he&rsquo;s had his sleep
+out,&rdquo; replied Thrush, significantly; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s told me quite
+enough to make me eager for  more. But you haven&rsquo;t told me anything about
+your own adventures?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the ironmaster was
+only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he was both brief and
+amiable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What have I to tell compared with you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Those
+damned old wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they
+weren&rsquo;t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium lot
+broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want to know is
+what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that great moment this
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,&rdquo; replied Thrush.
+&ldquo;The merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always
+apartments of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in
+half the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s,
+and I&rsquo;d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course
+I explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady&rsquo;s son
+embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at the front
+window all night, for no better reasons than my strong feeling about the
+doctor&rsquo;s writings, and your daughter&rsquo;s disbelief in his yarn about
+her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird came out,  and I was
+after him like knife. I tracked him to Knightsbridge without much difficulty,
+excepting the one of avoiding being spotted, but there that happened by the
+merest accident. He was passing under the scaffolding outside the church
+they&rsquo;re pulling down there, and he&rsquo;s so tall he knocked his hat
+off. I admit I was too close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I
+shouldn&rsquo;t have recognised him if I hadn&rsquo;t seen him start out. He
+was wearing a false beard and spectacles!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s proof positive,&rdquo; said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his
+breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I confess it&rsquo;s something like it in this case; but it was a
+very awkward moment for me. I hadn&rsquo;t to let him see I knew him, nor yet
+that I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as openly
+as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving poor old Mullins
+in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay. We went back to my new
+rooms together, which I needn&rsquo;t tell you I liked so much that I brought a
+suit-case and took them for a week. Of course, as we had lost the run of
+Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch for his return. Mullins took that
+on while I got some sleep; when I awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest,
+and I won&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t suspect who&rsquo;d done it. Perhaps I
+didn&rsquo;t tell you he had his camera with him as  well as beard and goggles,
+and all three figured in the first reports.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I
+wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner&rsquo;s return; but
+in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a room
+overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too much class for
+that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked going back to prison for
+the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both man and boy before I sent that
+wire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you left my son in that murderer&rsquo;s clutches a minute longer
+than you could help?&rdquo; It was a previous incarnation of Pocket&rsquo;s
+father that broke in with this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must remember in the first place that I couldn&rsquo;t be in the
+least sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, murder
+would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the others;
+thirdly, that we&rsquo;ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an actual
+murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the way to make him
+one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately
+against calling in the police under any circumstances.  He assured me there was
+no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then he saw
+your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the lad, but he
+lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor
+desperate doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence which
+most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their case. But Mr.
+Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance against anybody. And the
+name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity on a very different point had
+not been gratified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?&rdquo; he inquired, with
+characteristic absence of finesse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very proud of it,&rdquo; replied Thrush. &ldquo;It
+didn&rsquo;t come off, you see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But whatever could the object have been?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must have a damn-it if I&rsquo;m to tell you that,&rdquo; said Thrush;
+and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which
+he suited to the oath. &ldquo;It was one way that occurred to me of putting
+salt on the lad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tony?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You puzzle me more and more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of
+fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident
+and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an
+innocent man&rsquo;s arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything.
+Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred
+miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary.
+But what&rsquo;s the good of talking about it? It didn&rsquo;t come off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going
+to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn&rsquo;t accidentally satisfied
+himself of his own innocence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that
+alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly
+behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath twitched as
+though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name
+was suddenly put down unfinished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If only I could find that camera!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the
+touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it&rsquo;s an accomplice who
+did this thing, he&rsquo;s got it; even if not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his
+whole flushed face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mullins!&rdquo; he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat
+suspicious alacrity. &ldquo;Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High
+Water at London Bridge to-day!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office in
+Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume all but
+three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already far advanced.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br />
+THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</h2>
+
+<p>
+The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better preservation
+of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked with mud; beads of
+slime kept breaking out along the joints. And Phillida was still explaining to
+Pocket how the thing had come into her possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was an
+iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It was coming
+down so hard at the time that I couldn&rsquo;t see another creature out in it
+except myself. I don&rsquo;t believe a single soul saw me run down that gangway
+and up again; but I dropped my purse over first for an excuse if anybody did. I
+popped the camera under my waterproof, and carried it up to the King&rsquo;s
+Road before I could get a cab. But I never expected to find you awake and about
+again; next to the rain that&rsquo;s the best luck of all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you know all about photography and I don&rsquo;t. Suppose he
+took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s an idea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it
+still, and you could develop it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the boy; but at
+the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there&rsquo;s not much chance of there being anything
+to develop; the slide&rsquo;s been open all this time, you see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the water.
+Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the light,
+oughtn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there isn&rsquo;t a dog&rsquo;s chance,&rdquo; he
+murmured, as he handled the camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows
+variety, but was one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had
+come through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely
+broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to shut it
+by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and sent it flying
+to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That settles it,&rdquo; remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate
+stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was cracked
+across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry!&rdquo; exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet
+of glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some
+infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure
+that you weren&rsquo;t right after all; what&rsquo;s water-tight must be more
+or less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what&rsquo;s all
+this? The other side oughtn&rsquo;t to bulge like that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and weighed
+the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain another plate, he
+declared with expert conviction; yet the side which had not been opened was a
+slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable convexity. Pocket opened it at a
+word from Phillida, and an over-folded packet of MS. leapt out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s his writing!&rdquo; cried the girl, with pain and awe in her
+excitement. She had dropped the document at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in English,&rdquo; said Pocket, picking it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be what he was writing all last night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see what it is!&rdquo; urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him
+closely as he read to himself:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;<i>June</i> 20, 190&mdash;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret of
+my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the year; for
+they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according to the almanac,
+and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my task till four I shall have
+less than six hours in which to do justice to the great <i>ambition</i> and the
+crowning folly of my life. I used the underlined word advisedly; some would
+substitute &lsquo;monomania,&rsquo; but I protest I am as sane as they are,
+fail as I may to demonstrate that fact among so many others to be dealt with in
+the very limited time at my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier
+writer, I should feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have
+been ever deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly
+already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I shall
+ever write, as in my final preparations for death&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read,
+and he was breathing hard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak!
+He&rsquo;s said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we know he didn&rsquo;t do it,&rdquo; said Phillida, as though she
+found a crumb of comfort in the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that&rsquo;s the worst.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t, Phillida. I can see it isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then let us read it together. I&rsquo;d rather face it with you than
+afterwards all by myself. We&rsquo;ve seen each other through so much, surely
+we can&mdash;surely&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim eyes but a
+palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab figure of the slip
+of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. Upton, she had taken no
+thought for her mourning, that unfailing distraction to the normally bereaved,
+but had put on anything she could find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just
+her dear disdain of appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes,
+unchecked, and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her
+coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the rain had
+stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that streamed in through
+the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and poured its warm blessing on the
+two young heads bent as one over the dreadful document.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now the other
+whispering a few sentences aloud:&mdash;.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;What I have called my life&rsquo;s ambition demands but little
+explanation here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I
+have given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are
+still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on spirit
+photography in <i>Light Human Nature</i>, <i>The Occult Review</i> and other
+periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled &lsquo;The Flight of the
+Soul,&rsquo; in <i>The Nineteenth Century and After</i> for January of last
+year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter which
+has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare and to write,
+and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme measures I have since
+employed. Treated to a modicum of serious criticism by the scientific press,
+but more generally received with ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the
+Englishman&rsquo;s attitude towards whatsoever is without his own contracted
+ken, my article, the work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days.
+I had essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new idea,
+and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore of
+unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin press from
+that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph about the psychic
+photographer which went the rounds about a year ago. Yet I was that
+photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer to whom the London
+hospitals refused admittance to their pauper deathbeds, thronged though those
+notoriously are by the raw material of the British medical profession. Begin at
+the bottom of the British medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and
+most frequent opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of
+human dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,
+without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the purity of his
+aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than mine. It is as high above
+that of your ordinary physician as heaven itself is high above this earth. Your
+physician wrestles with death to lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a
+million lives to prove that there is no such thing as death; that this human
+life of ours, by which we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of
+the permanent life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a
+truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the
+opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over
+knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion invites us
+to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is deserving of material
+proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to supply. Surely it is a higher
+aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the senses that cannot deceive, rather than
+to the imagination which must and does? But I am trenching after all upon
+ground which I myself have covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to
+relate a personal narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it
+that to me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of
+so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that all who
+saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit photography. It is a
+path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks and charlatans, and by false
+guides who rival the religious fanatics in the impudence of their appeal to
+man&rsquo;s credulity. Even those who bear the lamp I hold aloft are too often
+jugglers and rogues, to whose wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of
+photography lends itself all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the
+production of impossible pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if
+the spiritual apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing
+easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist has yet
+succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the whole problem of
+spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of communication with disembodied
+spirits at the single will of the embodied; hence the periodical exposure of
+the paid medium, the smug scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of
+genuine exploration beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment,
+and only one, at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a
+particle of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at
+which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human watcher sees
+merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a phenomenon invisible to
+the human eye has been detected and depicted by that of the camera, as
+everybody knows who has the slightest acquaintance with the branch of physics
+known as &lsquo;fluorescence.&rsquo; The invisible spirit of man surely falls
+within this category. To the crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible
+as elusive and intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign
+opportunity is gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of
+the soul.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say no more than &lsquo;often&rsquo; because there are special
+difficulties into which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at
+least be minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,
+instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would hurt
+nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present have only
+their Churches&rsquo; word for the existence of an eternal soul in their
+perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few experiments,
+than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen centuries. Yet how
+are my earnest applications received, in hospitals where men die daily, in
+prisons where they are still occasionally put to death? I am refused, rebuffed,
+gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I am driven ultimately to the extreme course
+of taking human life, on my own account, in order to prove the life eternal.
+Call it murder, call it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of
+a lethal chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the
+inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an individual
+as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him worse than this
+world. I can only say that I have not deprived the State of one conceivably
+profitable servant, or cut short a single life of promise or repute. I have
+picked my few victims with infinite care from  amid the moral or material
+wreckage of life; either they had nothing to live for, or they had no right to
+live. Charlton, the licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I
+ever knew; in the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he
+wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to which
+an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed. Charlton had just
+been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and refusing to leave without an
+extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was indeed saturated with alcohol and
+honeycombed with disease; repulsive in appearance, and cantankerous in
+character, his earnings were so slender that he was pitifully clad, and without
+a night&rsquo;s lodging oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and
+was suffering from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I
+resolved to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to
+photograph the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present
+itself for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at
+last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not another
+being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had purchased
+second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on the seat. Yet the
+weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the  authenticity of the suicide, despite
+my final precaution of stuffing a number of cartridges into the dead
+man&rsquo;s pocket; pot-house associates came forward to declare that he could
+never have possessed either the revolver or its price without their knowledge.
+Hence the coroner&rsquo;s repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is
+to be feared that the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public
+interest in its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more
+than an academic interest in the case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very
+few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb of my
+pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for this, and the fact
+remains that I was too late. The result may be found among my negatives. It is
+dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a unique photograph of actual death;
+but it lacks the least trace of the super-normal. The flight of the soul had
+been too quick for me; it would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new
+method. I had not only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the
+fatal pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my elaborate
+attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The next case should
+be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the shot to be fired, and
+the photograph taken, at the same range and all but at the same instant. There
+would be no further point in leaving the weapon behind, so I was free to choose
+the one best suited to my purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar
+needs. Eventually I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already
+explained itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the
+discoverer of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it
+will not be loaded when found.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand about the
+pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For Phillida it was
+enough to know that the writer of this shameless rigmarole, with its pompous
+periods and its callous gusto, must long ago have lost his reason. She had no
+doubt whatever about that, and already it had brought a new light into her
+eyes. She would pause to discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed
+the way through the next passages.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many
+weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have described
+as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in readiness for another
+attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul in consecutive fractions of a
+second. But the right man was never in the right place at the right time; one
+saw him by the dozen in a crowd, but the people one met all by themselves, in
+the early summer mornings, stayed one&rsquo;s hand repeatedly by the eager
+brightness of their eyes or a happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at
+the Brompton Hospital, whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was
+cheated of a merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the
+dawn and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch
+whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday morning. I
+knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton circle, but it was
+quite by chance that I followed his uncertain footsteps through the Park, and
+saw him go deliberately to bed in the drenching dew. His face filled in his
+tale; it was another farrago of privation and excess. This was the type that
+caused me no compunction: having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my
+invention provides, I despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his
+hat over his eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may
+be reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter
+coincided with the last clutter in his throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before
+firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make another wary
+survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could see a considerable
+distance in three directions, and in none of these, neither right nor left
+along the path, nor yet straight ahead across the grass on the edge of which my
+victim lay, was a living creature to be seen. This was very reassuring, as I
+felt that I could see a good deal farther than the report of my small automatic
+pistol was likely to be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting
+cases, especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how seldom
+it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the fatal shot. In the
+fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery behind some iron palings, I
+looked last, for I was standing with my back that way. How shall I describe my
+sensations on turning round? There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on
+the other side of the palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in
+his right hand!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and frank
+bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a third I guessed
+what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were dank with dew. His eyes
+were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had been sleeping in the Park, and
+walking in his sleep, and in all probability it was my shot which had brought
+him to himself; of this, however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was
+disastrously inspired to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never
+struck me that he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was
+with a wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if he
+knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I had the
+wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm enough to help me
+convince the child that he really had fired the shot; but, since he could not
+see it for myself, I was not going out of my way just then to tell him it was a
+fatal shot. Already I regretted that I had gone so far, and yet already I saw
+myself committed to a course of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The
+boy became convulsed with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his
+story when the body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot,
+at the latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me
+through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with all
+sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had to keep him
+there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and implicate  me more
+readily than ever after what he had seen of me at home? I had to keep him
+there&mdash;I repeat it&mdash;alive or dead. And I was not the kind of murderer
+(if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent life, if I could help it, to
+preserve my own; on the contrary, I had, and I hope I always should have had,
+humanity enough at least to do what I could for a fellow-creature battling with
+an attack which almost threatened to remove him from my path without my
+aid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+There followed a few remarks on Pocket&rsquo;s character as the writer read it.
+They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they betrayed a
+profound disdain for the typically British institution of which Pocket was too
+readily accepted as a representative product. His general ignorance and
+credulity received a grim tribute; they were the very qualities the doctor
+would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he appeared to have enjoyed the
+youth&rsquo;s society, his transparent honesty, his capacity for enthusiastic
+interest, whether in the delights of photography or in the horrors of war.
+Baumgartner seemed aware that he had been somewhat confidential on both
+subjects, and that either his contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the
+matter of psychic photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on
+the other hand,  he &ldquo;greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two
+and two together, at these so-called public schools&rdquo;; and, after all, it
+was not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the beginning,
+in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary, was another thing to
+which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all along. He had regarded it from
+the first as &lsquo;the certain beginning of the end&rsquo;; from the first,
+he had been prepared with specious explanations for any such inquisitor as the
+one who had actually arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote
+without elation of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor
+had not been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It
+was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which could only
+have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted it, but which the
+boy himself had discovered never to have been posted at all. There was a
+sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood into which
+Baumgartner&rsquo;s intuition of the boy&rsquo;s discovery had thrown him on
+the Sunday night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;It was then,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;that I formed a  project which I
+should have been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done
+so if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my second
+attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great a fiasco as
+the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable (even though it seem a
+wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. What if the human derelicts I
+had so far chosen for my experiments had no souls to photograph? Sodden with
+drink, debauched, degraded, and spiritually blurred or blunted to the last
+degree, these after all were the least likely subjects to yield results to the
+spirit photographer. I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as
+these, entities in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought
+of the saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my
+acquaintance, of a &lsquo;light&rsquo; specialist I know of who is destroying
+himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the slums;
+but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are much too valuable
+for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a compensating benefit to
+mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought of the boy upstairs. I had not
+meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of some promise, is only less sacred to
+me than a mature life rich in beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was
+going to be my ruin. I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the
+letter; he would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the
+work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was not going
+to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter into here, and I
+intended to take more than his life while I was about it. But he never gave me
+the chance. I did my best to get him to go out with me this morning. But he
+refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a dog the water. He said he was ill; he
+looked ill. But I have no doubt he was well enough to make his escape soon
+after my back was turned. I see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes
+I took away from him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that;
+but, to tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my
+return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy broke in
+with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the Sunday night and the
+Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the doctor&rsquo;s house. He
+declared that nothing short of main force would have dragged him out-of-doors
+that morning, that he felt it in his bones that he would never come back alive.
+Then he would be sorry he had said so much. It only increased his
+companion&rsquo;s anguish. She was reading every word religiously, with a most
+painful fascination; it was as though every word drew blood. There was a brief
+but terrible account of the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own
+house in Park Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the
+one occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and that
+only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so intensely that a
+&ldquo;straight&rdquo; interview was out of the question. As it was he had
+escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft, creeping into a
+carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong side when it drove round to
+its house. Baumgartner described the incident with a callous relish, as perhaps
+the most exciting in his long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent
+return, in propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of
+a sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as follows, in
+less careful language and a more flowing hand:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day&rsquo;s excitement
+must have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got
+back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his
+clothes. I didn&rsquo;t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative to
+develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute failure from
+the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason as its predecessors.
+South African mines may produce gold and diamonds (licit and illicit!) but
+their yield in souls is probably the poorest to the square mile anywhere on
+earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his gross carcass. So there was an end of
+him, and a good riddance to rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all
+night. I have thought of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate
+statement that I have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me
+strange pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to
+attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I not
+conscious of a moment&rsquo;s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only sometimes
+have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause, perhaps half an hour
+ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I heard a footstep in the
+hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all this writing; it might be my
+imagination. I stole to my door, and as I opened it the one below shut softly.
+I waited some time, heard nothing more, went down with my lamp, and threw open
+the drawing-room door. There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting
+in the dark with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to
+be misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that. But
+somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark without a
+word, afraid to go to bed&mdash;afraid of me&mdash;made the blood boil over in
+my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I had pictured
+overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I am glad it missed
+him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was seeing his companion safe
+upstairs. If I had found him where I left him, God knows what violence I might
+not have done him after all. The boy has good in him, and more courage than he
+knows himself; again I say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life
+was not safe, but now I shall only take my own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common
+hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England:
+either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal
+lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all
+night long, ready and pointed at my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind
+me, and I should have rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now
+they are waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where
+already it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and
+enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million facets of
+living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there; and as I have served
+others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be with better fortune than
+they have brought me. Who knows? It would be in keeping with the poetic ironies
+of this existence. At all events, unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a
+chance. I shall place the camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have
+fitted the shutter with a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do
+its double work as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my
+mind. I have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by
+the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent person,
+the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to the police. They,
+I think, may be trusted to honour one&rsquo;s last instructions, if only out of
+curiosity; their eyes will be the first to read what I fear they will describe
+as my &lsquo;full confession.&rsquo; Well, it is &lsquo;full,&rsquo; and the
+substantive must be left to them. So long as the document does not fall into
+one little pair of gentle hands, I shall lie easy in whatever ignominious grave
+they lay me. That is why I hide it where I do: since, if it fell first into
+those hands, it would never see the light at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away, and wept
+over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness, while Pocket
+picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the muddy newspaper.
+Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation went away
+with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her return she stood petrified on
+the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter between
+his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud metallic snap
+inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the shutter snapped like a
+shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward with a cry. Pocket had taken
+the top off the camera; it was like a box without the lid, and on the one side
+there was nothing between the lens and the grooved carrier for the slide, but
+on the other there was an automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild
+beast might be lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for
+the second lens of the stereoscopic camera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was preceded by
+the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there had been another
+cartridge in the pistol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we never guessed it!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why he went
+in for this sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot
+in quick succession. It&rsquo;s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my
+life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a
+word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether
+on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I&rsquo;ve been trying
+it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol&rsquo;s pointing
+every time. It&rsquo;s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and
+the spot isn&rsquo;t quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the
+left to allow. I don&rsquo;t quite see how the one bulb works everything, but
+these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan&rsquo;t understand
+everything till we take it to pieces.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean the police won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Phillida, bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The police! I never thought of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean to do with this&mdash;this infernal machine?&rdquo; the
+girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do <i>you</i> mean to do with&mdash;the writing?&rdquo; demanded
+Pocket in his turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burn it! I&rsquo;ve asked for a fire in my room; it&rsquo;s locked away
+meanwhile.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, this is yours, too,&rdquo; said Pocket, deliberately, &ldquo;to do
+what you like with as well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They wouldn&rsquo;t think so!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll never know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t
+keep it to yourself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You would <i>have</i> to
+tell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, but not everybody,&rdquo; said poor Pocket. &ldquo;Only my father,
+if you like!&rdquo; he added, valiantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that. Didn&rsquo;t you hear what he said about a
+man&rsquo;s secrets dying with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is
+the mystery of the day. It&rsquo;ll be the talk for months, if not years. And
+as yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially, that
+he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had failed to see
+her heart&rsquo;s desire, and how it was still in his power to save her the
+supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with the world. He
+made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that looked both ways at
+every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and
+Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would
+probably back their penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no
+boasting about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to
+Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket
+was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its subsequent
+recital. But he could &ldquo;play the game&rdquo; as well as Horace himself,
+when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And now he had none
+whatever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Phillida, if you wish it, I&rsquo;ll never breathe a syllable of all
+this to a single soul on earth, I don&rsquo;t care who they are, or what they
+do to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Tony, do you mean it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes had filled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I mean it! I&rsquo;ll swear it more solemnly than I&rsquo;ve
+ever sworn anything in my life so far.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! Your word&rsquo;s enough. Don&rsquo;t I know what that&rsquo;s
+worth, after this terrible week?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away and put
+the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so that he
+might not see her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,&rdquo; he
+vowed, &ldquo;except yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, always, as
+much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all their lives. And
+not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he think of a reward or look
+beyond those days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an automatic
+pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. They thought
+about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was getting on towards
+evening now, though the sun was out again, and it was lighter than the early
+afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any minute. It was Phillida who at last
+said she knew. She would not tell him what she meant to do; but she put on her
+waterproof again, little as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as
+before; and together they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where she was
+going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. He felt a
+frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself as to her, with
+that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who looked at them was a
+detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at the corners he wanted to run.
+But they gained the middle of Waterloo Bridge undetected and ensconced
+themselves in a recess without creating a sensation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; said Phillida, &ldquo;will you focus Westminster
+Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, the
+stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida&rsquo;s drift until she aimed
+herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through her fingers
+into the depths of the river from which she had only retrieved it a couple of
+hours before, as a body is committed to the deep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a loud
+voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the genuine
+severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who thought it worth
+while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy townsfolk hastening past
+were all too much engrossed in their own affairs to take any interest in those
+of the boy and girl who seemed themselves in something of a hurry to get back
+to the Strand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing but four
+words in enormous black letters:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+CHELSEA INQUEST<br />
+CAMERA CLUE!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket&rsquo;s arm. Pocket was man enough to
+press it to his side.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Printed in Great Britain by Wyman &amp; Sons, Ltd., London and Reading
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
+
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30096 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30096)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Camera Fiend by E.W. Hornung

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

-using this eBook.

-

-Title: The Camera Fiend

-

-Author: E.W. Hornung

-

-Release Date: September 26, 2009 [eBook #30096]

-[Most recently updated: January 30, 2021]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMERA FIEND ***

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-The Camera Fiend

-

-by E.W. Hornung

-

-London

-T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.

-Adelphi Terrace

-1911

-

-

-Contents

-

- I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS

- II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN

- III. HIS PEOPLE

- IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN

- V. THE GLASS EYE

- VI. AN AWAKENING

- VII. BLOOD-GUILTY

- VIII. POINTS OF VIEW

- IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH

- X. SECOND THOUGHTS

- XI. ON PAROLE

- XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS

- XIII. BOY AND GIRL

- XIV. BEFORE THE STORM

- XV. A LIKELY STORY

- XVI. MALINGERING

- XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH

- XVIII. A THIRD CASE

- XIX. THE FOURTH CASE

- XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP

- XXI. AFTER THE FAIR

- XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS

-

-

-Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily

-exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken

-away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in

-open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion

-of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been

-bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For

-it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been

-called “a conscientious ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his

-house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he

-did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a

-blue pencil and a briar pipe.

-

-“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of

-chicken-pox, sir.”

-

- The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured

- but laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.

-

-“Then you must come back to-night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all

-nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor

-of yours.”

-

-“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on

-me, and then see what sort of night I have.”

-

-“You could go up again to-morrow.”

-

-“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate

-emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so

-acutely conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.

-

-“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.

-

-“Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the

-Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.”

-

-“Who are the Knaggses?”

-

-“The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley’s, sir; they go to Westminster

-now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St. John’s

-Wood Park.”

-

-“And the lady you mentioned?”

-

-“Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother’s; it was through her

-I went to Mr. Coverley’s, and I’ve often stayed there. She’s in the

-Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord’s.”

-

-Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that

-other lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no

-guile in any Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them

-resembled the great twin brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted

-a “pocket edition” on his arrival in the school. He had few of their

-other merits, though he took a morbid interest in the games they played

-by light of nature, as well as in things both beyond and beneath his

-brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit up half your nights with

-asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to Mr. Spearman,

-who was an average man. He had never disguised his own disappointment

-in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of outspoken and

-disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some sympathy

-with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning

-he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who

-was getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the

-two names and addresses.

-

-“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” “Absolutely certain,

-sir.”

-

-“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?”

-

-“Rather, sir!”

-

-“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.”

-

-Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to

-arrive very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished

-with more ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the

-best of them was framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its

-foreground was the nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down

-into the quad, where the fellows were preparing construes for second

-school in sunlit groups on garden seats. At that moment the bell began.

-And by the time Pocket had changed his black tie for a green one with

-red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the

-bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he

-would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.

-

-The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a

-world of buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel

-as good as anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in

-the corner seats did not dream of calling the youth an “old ass,” much

-less a young one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school

-were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there

-were still a few fellows  in Pocket’s house who made an insulting point

-of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was

-pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably

-unknown and unsuspected of one’s foibles in the train. It made Pocket

-feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in

-the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in bed. He

-took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him

-good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously

-at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was

-transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his

-paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him.

-Would the match hold out at Lord’s? If not, which was the best of the

-Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his

-expenses, so that these questions took an adventitious precedence over

-even such attractive topics as an execution and a murder that bade fair

-to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and having supped on

-the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in _Henry Dunbar_, the

-novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something like a

-murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying

-buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real

-crimes in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself

-there too soon.

-

-The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose

-professional standing is never quite on a par with their material

-success. The injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it

-may be that his temper was at the root of the prejudice against him. He

-was never very amiable with Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every

-sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had some call to complain.

-

-“You mean to tell me,” he expostulated, “that you’ve gone back to the

-cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you weren’t a stupid

-schoolboy I should throw up your case!”

-

-Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more

-days and nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible

-resentment.

-

-“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled.

-

-“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself coffee in

-the night, as you’ve done before.”

-

-“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.”

-

-“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first.

-Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea

-voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She

-sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.”

-

-The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the

-subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to

-his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following

-in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might

-have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he

-might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a

-tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken

-kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it

-at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had

-not the heart to discuss it now.

-

-“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he

-sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”

-

-“There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we

-want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative

-that does more harm than good in the long run.”

-

-“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good

-night without smoking I should be thankful.”

-

-“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep

-until to-morrow?”

-

-“If you like.”

-

-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard

-box from his bag.

-

-“Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you

-even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the

-temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this

-prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to

-bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in

-the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better

-give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you

-go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the

-morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.”

-

-They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering

-whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with

-friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been

-so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations;

-besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And

-the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the

-train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.

-

- The time-table of that boy’s day must speak for itself. It was already

- one o’clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his

- breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley’s card. At 1.15 he was munching

- a sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook’s in Oxford

- Street. The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed

- by another; and a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas

- would undoubtedly have disapproved.

-

-At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a

-placard with “Collapse of Middlesex” in appalling capitals. And at the

-station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord’s for

-nothing.

-

-The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the

-theatres, and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud’s

-thrust itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for

-years. He had often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered

-being taken by his sister when a little boy at Coverley’s, but she had

-refused to go into the Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at

-the time but sorry ever afterwards, because so many of the boys of

-those days had seen everything and seemed none the worse for the

-adventure. It was one of the things he had always wanted not so much to

- do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of Horrors had frozen

-his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a criminological

-governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the budding

-criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and

-_Henry Dunbar_ formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy

-had other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building,

-and enter eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.

-

-A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but

-Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band.

-And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the

-glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the

-great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their

-unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the

-extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed

-down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at

-work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his

-catalogue to bear on one of them.

-

-Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the

-schoolboy through a work on his father’s shelves called _Annals of Our

-Time_. He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept

-him awake long after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not

-scowling and ferocious as he had always pictured them, but far more

-horribly demure and plump. Here were immortal malefactors like the

-Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek by jowl, looking as though

-they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete raiment, looking

-anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes their quick

-bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death, rusty

-pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face

-smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the

-waxwork about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own

-clothes, and the veritable dock in which many of them had heard their

-doom, they looked hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat

-not in the dock but on the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of

-him; and the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for

-the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then

-he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace

-from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old

-ruffian’s revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with

-the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost

-as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of

-crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had

-hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet

-wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his

-mind again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid

-place to himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the

-heels of a whole family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning

-their sorrow in a sea of gore, their pilot through the catalogue a

-conscientious orphan with a monotonous voice and a genius for

-mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to see or hear him or any

-other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was trying to

-place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into a

-real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.

-

-Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the

-comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find

-that it was after four o’clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home

-from Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there

-before them, and he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub

-shoulders with flesh and blood once more, and to look in faces not made

-of wax in the devil’s image. His way, which he knew of old, would 

-naturally have led him past Miss Harbottle’s door; but, as she was only

-to be his second string for the night, he preferred not to be seen by

-that old lady yet. Such was the tiny spring of an important action; it

-led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite unforeseen temptation.

-

-In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable

-pawnbroker’s shop; in the pawnbroker’s window the chances are that you

-might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family

-Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses,

-opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery,

-all of which could not tempt you less than they did Pocket Upton the

-other June. There were only two things in the window that interested

-him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was an old rosewood

-camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but the thing

-that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what

-looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the

-price. A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked

-places on the slow walks with a slow companion which were all the

-exercise this unfortunate fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges

-complete, so that one could try it now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian

-at the end of their garden in  St. John’s Wood Park! And all very

-likely for five bob if one bargained a bit!

-

-Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any

-such sum would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life?

-Of coure it would have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared

-to take the consequences if found out; it need not involve his notion

-of dishonour. Still, it must be recorded that the young or old as was

-conscientious enough to hesitate before making his fatal plunge into

-the pawnbroker’s shop.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-A BOY ABOUT TOWN

-

-

-The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in

-St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the

-boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room.

-Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at

-all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed

-him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any

-improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in

-Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had spent a summer’s afternoon;

-indeed, she rather wondered at his being allowed alone in London at

-all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in conversation with his elders,

-at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own Westminster boys were allowed

-alone in London every day of their lives. But Mrs. Knaggs said that was

-a very different thing, and that she thought Pocket’s public school

-must be very different from Westminster. Pocket bridled, but behaved

-himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and got as far

-towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley’s misfortune

-and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him where

-he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring

-he had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs

-said of course he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked

-her as properly as though it were the invitation he made sure must

-follow. After all, Vivian Knaggs had stayed at Pocket’s three weeks one

-Christmas, and Guy a fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would

-think of that; it was not a matter to broach to them, or one to worry

-about, prematurely.

-

-Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than

-Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton

-jacket, the  other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an

-unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They

-seemed very glad to see him, however, and the stiffness was wearing off

-even before Pocket produced his revolver in the basement room where the

-two Westminsters prepared their lessons and had their evening meal.

-

-The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs

-pronounced it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a

-thousand pounds. This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he

-and his revolver were made of, then and there in the garden, and the

-more confident that it never would be heard in the house.

-

-“It would,” answered Vivian, “and seen as well. No, if you want to have

-a shot let’s stick up a target outside this window, and fire from just

-inside.”

-

-The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but,

-unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it

-also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room

-and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because

-she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a

-cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket

-examining the target, weapon in hand.

-

-There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition

-from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs,

-descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the

-matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with

-a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them

-to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs

-contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of

-Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very

-straight message by Vivian after supper.

-

-“The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission

-which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a

-spare bed in the house.”

-

-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented

-him from going into particulars.

-

-“A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost

-his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were

-boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook

-his head.

-

-“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.”

-

-“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.”

-

-“Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your

-sleep,” pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging the

-interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a

-window or set the house on fire.”

-

-“I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve

-not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.”

-

-And with further information on both points the son of the house went

-upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed

-gravity.

-

-“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake

-the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.”

-

-Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was

-not really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt

-he had made rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly

-cast adrift at sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor

-was this quite the case as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in

-Wellington Road. But to her he was not going until decency compelled

-him; he was going to have another game of bagatelle with Guy Knaggs

-first. It will be seen that with all his sensibilities the youngest

-Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took a great deal for

-granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry

-over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was

-obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the

-subject of his friend’s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been

-refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St.

-Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour

-to go to bed in; and that was neither the first nor the last of his

-erratic proceedings.

-

-“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his hat

-to walk round with Pocket.

-

-“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.

-

-“Haven’t you got any?”

-

-“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!”

-

-“Left your luggage there?”

-

-“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?”

-

-Young Knaggs looked in _Whitaker_ and said they closed at ten. There

-was still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it

-was not much use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss

-Cottage, and the adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.

-

-Old Miss Harbottle, his mother’s great friend, would have none of him

-either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden

-gate was one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated

-indoors. The downstairs lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a

-light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on

-the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and

-grey curls; but his mother’s friend’s mastiff was making night so

-hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother’s son, that it

-was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the

-brute’s mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange then, for Miss

-Harbottle at first flatly refused to believe that this was Tony Upton,

-whom she had not seen since his preparatory schooldays, and she seemed

-inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton, she could not take

-him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and the cook

-had just left. Miss Harbottle’s cook had always just left, except when

-she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant’s fun out of

-the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.

-

-His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his

-purse. The only thing to do was to put up at Shaw’s Hotel, Trafalgar

-Square; that was where his people always stayed, where every servant

-was supposed to know them all. He pushed on at once through the cool

-June night, and paid away three of his last shillings for the drive.

-Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw’s; it was the worst time of the year,

-they told him, and he  supposed they meant the best. He also supposed

-there had been changes in the staff, for nobody seemed to know his name

-as well as he had been led to expect at home.

-

-They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels

-opposite, and recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven

-Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the

-only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being

-requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room.

-Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him

-to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward

-respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr.

-Bompas in the morning!

-

-“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught up his bag

-in a passion.

-

-“All right, little man! I shouldn’t be rude about it,” said the dapper

-cashier. “If I couldn’t pay my shot I should sleep in the Park, on a

-nice fine night like this.”

-

-“I shall!” shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would

-prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it

-was his own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering

-what else he was to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have

-seen.

-

-He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which

-lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or

-heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast

-about; his brothers, and so many other fellows of his own age, had so

-much. It would make a great yarn some day, how he had come up from

-school to see a doctor—and slept in the Park!

-

-Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly

-anything of London except St. John’s Wood and his present landmark of

-the Nelson column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having

-stayed some time (under another doctor) as a child at Shaw’s Hotel.

-But, I say! What would Bompas say to his sleeping out, and what sort of

-night could he expect in the open air?

-

-He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in

-more than handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all

-the force of a forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges

-as well.

-

-That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of

-person to use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him

-feel doughty and even truculent to find the means of heroic defence all

-ready to his hand. He began to plume himself on his providential

-purchase. He would sell his young life dearly if he fell among London

-thieves;  in his death he would not be unhonoured at school or at home.

-Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang like tears to a mind still

-healthy enough to dash them away again, as though they had been real

-tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the unsuspected

-desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the

-corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.

-

-The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. “Yes,” said

-Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman

-looked as though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the

-motor omnibus through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at

-Albert Gate; but here there was quite a little stream of decent people

-to follow without further tremors into the indubitable Park.

-

-He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining

-confidence as he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were

-turned outward by all there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest

-some one or other of the several passers should stand in his path and

-ask what he was doing there. He was still afraid of speaking or being

-spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so. Detection as an escaped

-schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing something for

-which he might be expelled.

-

-But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to

-take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his

-surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that

-late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal

-were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he

-was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated

-soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with

-their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy’s heart beat

-at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One

-wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a

-remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman’s lips before. He turned

-away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in

-the act of crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.

-

-It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of

-the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and

-gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the

-darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks

-were muffled in a feather boa of trees, bedizened by a chain of many

-lights; the lights of a real bridge made a diadem in the distance; and

-between these sped  the lamps of invisible vehicles, like fretful

-fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer with its own

-brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a trace

-of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy

-had ever seen—a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen

-through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it.

-But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London’s

-light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her

-mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his

-ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck

-near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of

-water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost

-upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of

-eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his immediate needs. His

-great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in hand, to

-select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of

-cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad

-footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he

-was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with

-the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had

-come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to

-the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best thing now.

-

-It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was

-enough to deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical.

-Pocket Upton, however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and

-strong alike, who are more than loth to abandon a course of action once

-taken. It would have required a very severe attack to baulk him of his

-night out and its subsequent description to electrified ears. But when

-bad steering had brought him up at the bandstand, the deserted chairs

-seemed an ordained compromise between prudence and audacity, and he had

-climbed into the fenced enclosure when another enormous policeman rose

-up horribly in its midst.

-

-“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon

-Pocket with inexorable tread.

-

-“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual readiness.

-

-“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, standing over

-him.

-

-“I was only going to sit down,” protested Pocket, having satisfied his

-conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been

-going to do.

-

-“There are plenty of places to sit down,” rejoined the policeman.

-“You’re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it you

-won’t have time to sit down at all.”

-

-“Why not?”

-

-“The Park closes at twelve.”

-

-“Closes?”

-

-“At twelve o’clock, and it’s half-past eleven now.” The boy’s heart

-sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing plans. He

-was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he had

-looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only

-reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently

-entertained the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong.

-But he seemed quite clear about it.

-

-“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin.

-

-“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even thought a lot

-of loafers used to sleep here all night!”

-

-The policeman chuckled aloud.

-

-“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only chance,”

-said he.

-

-“You search the whole place so thoroughly?”

-

-“We keeps our eyes open,” said the policeman significantly, and Pocket

-asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off

-with the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out.

-Such was his then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn,

-to what seat on the Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his

-ignorance of London he had no idea.

-

-Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent

-on quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into

-its heart. He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and

-drifted before the wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one

-hand and a restricted open space upon the other. He could no longer see

-a single light; but the ground rose abruptly across the fence, and was

-thick with shrubs. Men might have been lying behind those shrubs, and

-Pocket could not possibly have seen them from the path. Did the

-policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going to climb

-every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?

-

-Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright

-fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as

-obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at

-twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw

-himself breaking the laws of the land as well as those of school, saw

-himself not only expelled but put in prison! Well, so much the better

-for his story so long as those  penalties were not incurred; even if

-they were, so much the greater hero he!

-

-No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living

-up to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But

-the will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way

-lay handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just

-passed against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the

-first chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the

-back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without

-rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So

-then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped

-the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a

-conscientious ass at school!

-

-But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and

-they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he

-had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras.

-They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush

-that I he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his

-prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver,

-nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in

-the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together

-in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it

-might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures

-to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he

-detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to

-strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber, to his wrist

-instead.

-

-That was the last but one of the silly boy’s proceedings under the

-bush; the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by

-Bompas in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet

-and sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful

-warmth at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was

-precisely then that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his

-breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still

-audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr.

-Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-HIS PEOPLE

-

-

-It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him.

-They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s

-inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it

-still.

-

-On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a

-butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down

-with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only

-to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at

-not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source of

-which was concealed by the garden foliage, became positively brilliant.

-The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and musk-roses and mown

-grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows. But for the lurid

-lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some mammoth

-forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.

-

-“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. “I think

-you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never agree.”

-

-“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt young

-man.

-

-“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly enough.

-

-“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. “He’s being

-absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of it.”

-

-“I didn’t give him asthma!”

-

-“Don’t be childish, Letty.”

-

-“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.”

-

-“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, either.”

-

-“You think he enjoys his bad nights?”

-

-“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never even

-thinks of getting up to first school now.”

-

-“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with asthma?”

-

-“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you think.”

-

-“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay

-for two or three bad ones.”

-

-“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.”

-

-“Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek

-Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his

-spare time, and got most marks in the exam.”

-

-“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder  brother. “I’m glad he didn’t

-buck to me about that.”

-

-“I don’t think there’s much danger of his bucking to you,” said

-Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her obvious

-reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite

-incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed

-that she meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his

-own, and a good heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt.

-“I looked after him all right,” said Horace, “the one term we were

-there together. So did Fred for the next year. But it’s rather rough on

-Fred and myself, who were both something in the school at his age, to

-hear and see for ourselves that Tony’s nobody even in the house!”

-

-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest

-brother.

-

-“But don’t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony that

-you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the

-standard you two set up; it’s natural enough, but it isn’t fair.”

-

-“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened by a

-little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!”

-

-“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.”

-

-“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.”

-

-“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!”

-

-“I wish he wasn’t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than Fred

-or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a

-player.”

-

-“I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it’s his

-nature, just as it’s Fred’s and yours to be men of action.”

-

-“Well, I’m glad he’s not allowed to cumber the crease this season,”

-said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a

-distinct swerve in the air. “To have him called our ‘pocket edition,’

-on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.”

-

-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.

-

-“He’s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,” she said warmly.

-“And I hope he may make you see it before this doctor’s done with him!”

-

-“This doctor!” jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as well.

-“You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on his

-own?”

-

-“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about him.”

-

-“No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of

-himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him

-go; but he’s the most casual young hound I ever struck.”

-

-“I know he’s casual.”

-

-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry

-her sense of fairness had so misled her.

-

-“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he could. Think what

-he’d miss!”

-

-“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be said.”

-

-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.

-

-“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under

-this very doctor of yours?”

-

-“He’s not my doctor.”

-

-“But you first heard about him; you’re the innovator of the family,

-Letty, so it’s no use trying to score off me. Isn’t Tony up in London

-to-night?”

-

-“I believe he is.”

-

-“Then I’ll tell you what he’s doing at this moment,” cried Horace, with

-egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows. “It’s after

-eleven; he’s in the act of struggling out of some theatre, where the

-atmosphere’s so good for asthma!” Lettice left the gibe unanswered. It

-was founded on recent fact which she had been the first to deplore when

-Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by no means

-blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more

-than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose

-unmeasured objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special

-pleading. She tried to believe that there was more in her younger

-brother than in any of them, and would often speak up for him as though

-she had succeeded. It may have been merely a woman’s weakness for the

-weak, but Lettice had taught herself to believe in Tony. And perhaps of

-all his people she was the only one who could have followed his

-vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.

-

-But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have

-gone indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily

-at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared

-with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her;

-otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk

-about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair

-before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck

-and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling

-days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a

-woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than her

-brother, but of other clay.

-

-That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father’s library, and

-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the

-terrace.

-

-“I said he wasn’t doing much good there,” he added, “and I don’t think

-he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always does.”

-

-“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton plainly.

-

-“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I

-sometimes wish there was more!”

-

-“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?”

-

-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.

-

-“More go about him,” said Horace. He could not say as much to his

-father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to

-bolt from his guns.

-

-“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” continued

-Mr. Upton, with severity.

-

-“I know,” said Horace hastily, “and of course that’s really why he’s

-doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his doesn’t seem to be

-doing him any either.”

-

-Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the

-downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had

-turned the wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite

-another quarter.

-

-“I agree with you there!” cried his father vehemently. “I don’t believe

-in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon who has done

-so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a

-trial? The lad wasn’t having a fair chance at school. This looked like

-one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the

-letters the man writes me about him. He’d have me take him away from

-school altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But

-what’s to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He’d

-be too old to go to another school, and too young for the University:

-no use at the works, and only another worry to us all.”

-

-Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with

-intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of

-sympathy which is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards

-the unsound. He hated sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it.

-His wife had taken ill the year before, had undergone a grave operation

-in the winter, and was still a great anxiety to him. But that was

-another and a far more serious matter; he had patience and sympathy

-enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a

-man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own

-qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent

-absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why

-should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr.

-Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard

-more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not

-down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad

-night; yet later in the day he would be as bright as anybody, at times

-indeed the brightest of the party. That, however, was usually when

-Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he was another

-creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the

-busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice

-overdid matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint,

-and was inclined to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his

-age, even if said to be cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile

-pose to the man who had never studied that disorder. The specialist in

-London seemed another mistake on the part of that managing Lettice, who

-had quite assumed the family lead of late. And altogether Mr. Upton,

-though he saw the matter from a different point of view, was not far

-from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.

-

-And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed,

-whose brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his

-schoolfellows “a conscientious ass,” while his sister spoilt him for

-_un enfant incompris?_ You may say it would have taken a miracle to

-make an ordinary decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange

-happenings to the boy and his people; perhaps it was the one authentic

-type of miracle that capped all in the morning.

-

-The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of

-whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a

-few hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning.

-The birds were singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The

-morning sun was slanting over town and country, and the father’s

-thoughts were with his tiresome son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came

-from the adjoining room.

-

-In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife’s side, supporting her

-in bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.

-

-“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!”

-

-“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, dear?”

-

-“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you now. And

-I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-A GRIM SAMARITAN

-

-

-Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the

-sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He

-opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The

-air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine

-curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle.

-

-Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy

-head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps.

-He was not in bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the

-shrub he now remembered in a mental flash which lit up all his

-adventures overnight. He was wandering ankle deep in the dew, towards a

-belt of poplars like birch-rods on the skyline, and a row of spiked

-palings right in front of his nose. He had walked in his sleep for the

-first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to wake him.

-

-Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in

-reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he

-who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A

-hand darted through them and caught Pocket’s  wrist as in a vice. And

-he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and

-fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some

-incomprehensible emotion.

-

-“Do you know what you did?” the man demanded in the end. The question

-seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be

-reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense,

-reminding Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy

-to account for the tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous

-with passion. And the man stood tall and dominant, with a silver

-stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird cloak and hat that helped to invest

-him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish inquisitor; no wonder his eyes

-were like cold steel in quivering flesh.

-

-“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; further

-explanations were cut very short.

-

-“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.

-

-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.

-

-“Well? I can’t help it! I’ve done it before to-day; you needn’t believe

-me if you don’t like! Do you mind letting go of my hand?”

-

-“With that in it!”

-

-The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he

-had strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but

-his finger actually on the trigger.

-

-“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, horrified.

-

-“Feel the barrel.”

-

-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand.

-The barrel was still warm.

-

-“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.

-

-“I’m glad to hear it.”

-

-“I tell you it was!”

-

-The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second

-impulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy,

-picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master’s

-eye had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very

-worst of him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful

-stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that

-protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor

-was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade

-was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a

-second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped

-down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.

-

-“And now,” said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his weapon,

-“I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right

-to spend the night in here at all?”

-

-The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,

-“I’m not the only one!” He had just espied a recumbent figure through

-the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a

-battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall

-man merely redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without

-so much as a glance behind.

-

-“That,” said he, “is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are

-open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that

-sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules.

-Who are you, and what’s the matter with you?”

-

-“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.

-

-“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!”

-

-“I had nowhere else to go.”

-

-“Have you come up from the country?”

-

-“To see a doctor about it!” cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole

-truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely

-lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and

-through; but the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked

-less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that

-uttered the next words.

-

-“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these

-chairs.”

-

-Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had

-climbed them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied

-him on the other side.

-

-“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage

-it?”

-

-“I did last night.”

-

-“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?”

-

-Pocket looked round and pointed.

-

-“Behind that bush.”

-

-“Have you left nothing there?”

-

-“Yes; my bag and hat!”

-

-In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly

-suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.

-

-“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?

-There—catching the sun.”

-

-“It was.”

-

-“Bring it.”

-

-“It’s empty.”

-

-“Bring it!”

-

-Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the

-palings, waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But

-no third creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the

-dew. Pocket surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost

-beside himself in the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must

-have been lifted down like a child; but this was when he was getting

-his breath upon a seat. They had come some little distance very slowly,

-and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an arm as to lend

-colour to his humiliating suspicion.

-

-His grim companion spoke first.

-

-“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one

-myself.”

-

-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.

-

-“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted.

-

-“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.”

-

-“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.”

-

-“What’s that?”

-

-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.”

-

-“I never heard of them.”

-

-“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had.”

-

-But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced

-from his bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He

-had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt

-for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the

-palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a

-cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends;

-the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down

-like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his

-eyes, and was comparatively cured.

-

-“And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!” said his companion. “I

-cannot understand him, and I’m a doctor myself.” His voice and look

-were deliberate even for him. “My name is Baumgartner,” he added, and

-made a pause. “I don’t suppose you know it?”

-

-“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with breath and

-gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.

-

-“A schoolboy in the country,” observed Dr. Baumgartner, “is scarcely

-likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will

-find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for

-breakfast, and a little rest. That is,” added the doctor, with his

-first smile, “if you will trust yourself to me first and make your

-inquiries later.”

-

-Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but

-even as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling

-it would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was

-thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he

-had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen

-such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a

-conspirator by limelight?

-

-But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as

-the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt

-grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought,

-“How the chaps would rag him at school!” because the dreadful old hat

-and cloak suggested a caricature of a master’s cap and gown. But there

-was no master at Pocket’s school whom he would not sooner have

-disobeyed than this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the

-wintry smile; there was no eye on the staff that had ever made him

-quail as he had quailed that morning before these penetrating eyes of

-steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back

-in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes

-on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.

-

-In the cab Baumgartner said, “Try sitting with your head between your

-knees.” Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man

-or so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar,

-an early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all

-until the hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which

-seemed to Pocket interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him

-from seeing anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to

-the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his

-head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him

-easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture

-did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven

-through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the

-streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman’s

-instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His

-ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough

-metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then

-more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the

-milkman’s queer cry; and finally, “Next to the right and the fifth

-house on your left,” in the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign

-accent.

-

-The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth

-from the little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled

-path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps

-had not been “done”; the door wore the nondescript complexion of

-prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One

-touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and

-shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees,

-sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side

-of the road, and effectually hid the other.

-

-Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The

-passage was dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right.

-Baumgartner led the way past a closed door on the left, into an

-unexpectedly bright and large room beyond it. “Sit down,” said he, and

-shut the door softly behind him.

-

-Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full

-of walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the

-sunshine that filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back

-of the house. Dr. Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a

-window, and he stood looking out in thought while Pocket hurriedly

-completed his optical round. A set of walnut chairs were dreadfully

-upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one looked comfortable

-enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the semi-grand piano.

-There were books, too, and in the far corner by the bow-window a glass

-door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket’s study at school,

-and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of battle

-engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in

-murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and

-villages.

-

-Baumgartner met his visitor’s eyes with the faint cold smile that

-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.

-

-“I was present at some of those engagements,” said he. “They were not

-worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his sleep!”

-

-He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the

-pistol inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was

-distracted before he had time to resent the forgotten fact of its

-forcible confiscation. Under his cloak the doctor had been carrying all

-this time, slung by a strap which the boy had noticed across his chest,

-a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket exclaimed upon it with the

-instructed interest of a keen photographer.

-

-“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in his

-unemotional voice.

-

-“Rather!” cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s the

-only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I haven’t got an

-instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!”

-

-And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and

-black morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which

-the doctor had set between them on one of the fussy little walnut

-tables.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-THE GLASS EYE

-

-

-Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness

-of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the

-turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like

-you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my

-own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a

-mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.

-

-“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.”

-

-“You don’t merely press the button and let  them do the rest?”

-suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of his

-pipe.

-

-“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s

-half the fun.”

-

-“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.

-

-“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of my

-father’s.”

-

-And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a

-gesture more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.

-

-“It’s none the worse for that,” said he. “So far we have much in

-common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our

-plates, there’s the difference, eh?”

-

-“I should imagine so,” said Pocket, smiling.

-

-Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but

-yet darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.

-

-“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?”

-

-“Yes; often.”

-

-“In the body, I presume?”

-

-Pocket looked nonplussed.

-

-“You only take them in the flesh?”

-

-“Of course.”

-

-“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s the difference.”

-

-Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner

-follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting

-cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was

-of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent

-photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read

-the photographic year-books, nearly as ravenously as _Wisden’s

-Almanacke_.

-

-“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic photography.”

-

-“Psychic,” said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets to

-report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor

-added, with more disdain: “And you don’t believe in it?”

-

-“I didn’t say so.”

-

-“But you looked and sounded it!”

-

-“I don’t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,” said the boy,

-always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. “But I do say I

-don’t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It

-was in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed

-to have said you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the

-plate at all; hide away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure

-up your spirit and see what happens. I’ll swear nothing ever happened

-like that! There may be ghosts, you may see them,  and so may the

-camera, but not without focusing and exposing like you’ve got to do

-with ordinary flesh and blood!”

-

-The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the

-stimulus of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the

-doctor had come to his feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey

-face beamed warmly; his eyes were lances tipped with fire.

-

-“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every syllable

-you have spoken.”

-

-“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” concluded

-Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.

-

-“I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it

-even at your age! But there’s much more in it than that; you must see

-the rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.” The boy blushed

-with pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. “You admit there

-may be such things as ghosts, as you call them?” he was asked as by an

-equal.

-

-“Certainly, sir.”

-

-“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible

-as that sunbeam?”

-

-“Rather!”

-

-“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?”

-

-Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the

-concession gave him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant

-leaps. He felt five years older in fewer minutes.

-

-“Then,” cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of triumph,

-“then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I may. I

-may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws

-already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses

-fail to throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the

-camera catches. Take two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the

-other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other,

-though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it,

-but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were

-pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble

-is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist’s, no

-money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the spirit

-which once was man.”

-

-His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it

-first an hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this

-was the passion of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at

-all, it was in this wild question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy 

-perceived this dimly. There was something else which had become clearer

-to him with each of these later remarks. Striking as they seemed to

-him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The ring of novelty was wanting

-to his ear.

-

-Suddenly he exclaimed, “I knew I knew your name!”

-

-“You do know it, do you?”

-

-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was

-discounted by the interruption it entailed.

-

-“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come

-across it somewhere.”

-

-“You read the correspondence that followed the review?”

-

-“Some of it.”

-

-“My letter among others?”

-

-“Yes! I remember every word of it now.”

-

-“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s

-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?”

-

-“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket somewhat

-tentatively, despite his boast.

-

-“It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two

-moments at which I hold that a man’s soul may be caught apart, may be

-cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a

-light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my

-letter.”

-

-“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.”

-

-“The moment of dissolution,” the doctor corrected him. “But there is a

-far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,

-whereas dissolution comes but once.”

-

-Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure

-about it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him

-as too fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not

-and dared not say; and he was not the less frightened of making a

-mistake with those inspired eyes burning fanatically into his.

-

-“The other moment,” the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile, “is

-when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which

-men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?” Baumgartner asked

-abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed

-unconvinced, for he went on didactically: “You visit far countries in

-your dreams; your soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the

-dead; it is your soul again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I

-fix the moment as that of the soul’s return because its departure on

-these errands is imperceptible, but with its return we awake. The

-theory is that in the moment of waking the whole experience happens

-like the flash of an electric spark.”

-

-The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled

-than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very

-eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s

-hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could

-not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of

-will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He

-began to wish the interview at an end—to be able to talk about it as

-the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure—yet he would not

-have cut it short at this point if he could.

-

-“I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul

-from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But

-how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits

-pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still

-to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain

-to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private

-admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons.

-My applications have been peremptorily refused.”

-

-Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.

-

-“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little

-old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.

-

-“Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,”

-he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot

-be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And

-now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to

-sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and

-then I take my chance.”

-

-“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket,

-looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.

-

-The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the

-brighter for their partial eclipse.

-

-“This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some

-confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this

-morning—thanks to you!”

-

-“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean

-to say I—you took me—walking——?”

-

-“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one

-minute.”

-

-He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double

-doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there.

-Running  water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his

-absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before

-leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket

-handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the

-noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was

-promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was

-within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in

-his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all

-was ready.

-

-Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would

-simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double

-doors within been is use; these being shut, the space behind made a

-separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that

-smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length.

-One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a

-window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets

-of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a

-crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot

-like Mephistopheles.

-

-“This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was

-shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred

-by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as

-the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives

-and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry

-copper.

-

-Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy

-felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of

-water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was

-here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work,

-he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the

-mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling

-now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes,

-would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator

-with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the

-light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were

-muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they

-trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket

-remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink

-surface.

-

-He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult

-to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort

-of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement

-and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket

-had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not

-to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in

-raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the

-sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular

-objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what

-these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how

-could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind

-him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?

-

-Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to

-see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as

-though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but

-not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass.

-“When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face

-paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with

-beads of blood.

-

-“There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket

-could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host—the one gentle

-thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,

-hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.”

-

-The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had

-choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between

-fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the

-hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the

-tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly

-incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath

-to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it.

-“And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again,

-aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held

-it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the

-schoolboy never forgot.

-

-“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”

-

-Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him

-momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again.

-Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it

-was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred

-fragments in the porcelain trough.

-

-Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back

-into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have

-been a minute before their eyes met again; the  doctor’s were calm and

-cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he

-said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go

-upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought

-as a physician it might do him good.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-AN AWAKENING

-

-

-It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no

-little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his

-breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with

-his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature

-of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like

-other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty

-forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands.

-There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature

-shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss

-Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

-

-Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable

-surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the

-one  to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he

-had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking

-of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and

-temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of

-the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all

-four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and

-uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table

-attentions to her uncle and his guest.

-

-Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing

-against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size

-table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that

-instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook

-his head and smiled.

-

-“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no

-good at real games.”

-

-The statement was too true, but not the preference.

-

-“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the

-doctor’s comment.

-

-Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma

-as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his

-breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve

-himself in lengthy explanations. He had  two types of listener—the dry

-and the demure—to all he said.

-

-“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner

-when he got a chance.

-

-“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”

-

-Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse

-particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again.

-Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.

-

-“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said

-the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.

-

-“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.

-

-“And how many keepers do they require?”

-

-A grin apologised for the word.

-

-“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly

-than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school

-from a mad German doctor.

-

-“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”

-

-“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you

-like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.

-

-“Do you?”

-

-“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.

-

-“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”

-

-Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little

-passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary

-kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that

-morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too

-independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His

-asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew

-when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the

-brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the

-boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for

-him to go to Welbeck Street.

-

-“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing

-over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big

-easy-chair.

-

-“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes.

-And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”

-

-“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for

-such an emergency.”

-

-“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use

-taking it now. It’s  meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep

-out.”

-

-And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done,

-when the other doctor cut him short once more.

-

-“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair;

-nobody will come in.”

-

-Pocket shook his head.

-

-“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”

-

-“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door.

-That will give you a good two hours.”

-

-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the

-first bottle under the bush.

-

-“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”

-

-“I shall be in again.”

-

-“Then it is a promise?”

-

-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

-

-“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”

-

-It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It

-tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The

-skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It

-was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his

-breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of

-Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open

-door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased

-deliciously in the cosy chair.

-

-Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of

-course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint

-in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it.

-No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood.

-Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body

-weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old

-photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned

-into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent

-remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting

-soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch

-that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing

-over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

-

-“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in

-a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”

-

-“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by

-taking out his watch.

-

-“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”

-

-“No—six.”

-

-And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had

-gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he

-bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little

-garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely

-in the shadow of the house.

-

-“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve

-broken your word, sir!”

-

-“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.

-

-“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some

-rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for

-the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only

-shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

-

-“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that

-sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for

-my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in

-Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch

-the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”

-

-“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner,

-scarcely looking up from his paper.

-

-“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket,

-reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of

-London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school.

-I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”

-

-“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking

-over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

-

-“What about?”

-

-Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner

-answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his

-grey face:

-

-“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here

-in town about it.”

-

-“Do tell me what, sir!”

-

-“Can you face things, my young fellow?”

-

-“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral

-in a flash.

-

-“No—yourself.”

-

-“Then I can!”

-

-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

-

-“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”

-

-“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”

-

-“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there

-in the wet grass?”

-

-“I thought he was drunk.”

-

-“He was dead!”

-

-Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never

-witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably

-mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another

-adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in

-reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He

-only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor

-suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very

-natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But

-then he had not even known the man was dead.

-

-Had the doctor?

-

-Yes.

-

-Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another

-question first.

-

-“What did he die of?”

-

-“A bullet!”

-

-“Suicide?”

-

-“No.”

-

-“Not murder?”

-

-“This paper says so.”

-

-“Does it say who did it?”

-

-“It cannot.”

-

-“Can you?”

-

-“Yes!”

-

-“Tell me.”

-

-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.

-

-“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it

-yourself?”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-BLOOD-GUILTY

-

-

-His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He

-marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The

-walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr.

-Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own

-unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any

-words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had

-known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was

-infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus

-wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very

-benefaction of a day’s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor

-defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism.

-Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He

-also might have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well

-believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to

-tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again

-the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection.

-To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with

-an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He

-acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put

-the living before the dead.

-

-How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question.

-He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at

-least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too

-many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but

-in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination

-while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket

-pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not

-gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed

-was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was

-Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading

-warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though

-any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling

-man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The

-poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through

-the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the

-levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face.

-

-The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now

-recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been

-so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he

-had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing

-else as he now remembered him, and that sent him off at a final

-tangent.

-

-He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, “What about that

-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!”

-

-“It was,” replied Baumgartner; “but it was never meant to be. I had you

-in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with

-time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the

-chance of a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that

-was another reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate

-consequences of an innocent act.”

-

-Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an

-instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young

-soul was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted

-by the inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure,

-and yet he could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had

-attempted to turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable

-account. It was the mistaken kindness to himself that he still found

-most difficult to forgive.

-

-“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it all the worse.”

-

-“You mean the delay?”

-

-“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run away, and

-then think better of it?”

-

-Baumgartner smiled.

-

-“Surely I am,” said he; but his smile went out with the words. “If only

-they believe me!” he added as though it was a new idea to him.

-

-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.

-

-“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation.

-

-“I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to,

-after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can’t swear you shot him

-in your sleep!”

-

-“You said you saw I did!”

-

-“So I did, my young fellow,” replied the doctor,  with a kinder smile;

-“at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I

-thought you were walking in your sleep. It’s not quite the same thing.

-It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court

-of justice.”

-

-“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.

-

-“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; “let

-us hope it will stop at that.”

-

-“But it must, it must!” cried Pocket wildly. “I’m absolutely innocent!

-You said so yourself a minute ago; you’ve only to swear it as a doctor?

-They can’t do anything to me—they can’t possibly!”

-

-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.

-

-“Dr. Baumgartner!”

-

-“Yes, my young fellow?”

-

-“They can’t do anything to me, can they?”

-

-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.

-

-“It depends what you call anything,” said he. “They cannot hang you;

-after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even

-detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case

-would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your

-family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you

-would find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In

-years to come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense!

-That is what they can do to you,” concluded the doctor, apologetically.

-“You asked me to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would

-bear it like a man.”

-

-Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself

-back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly.

-One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned.

-“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my

-mother too!”

-

-“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,”

-remarked Baumgartner sardonically.

-

-“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any

-kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this?

-She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming

-eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!”

-

-“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing

-shrug.

-

-“But my part in it!”

-

-“You said it had got to come out.”

-

-“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”

-

-“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”

-

-“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would

-give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve

-done—than drag them all through that!”

-

-“Do you mean what you say?”

-

-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.

-

-“Every syllable!” said Pocket.

-

-“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of now or

-never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.”

-

-“Then it’s never!”

-

-“I must put it plainly to you. It’s not too late to do whatever you

-decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland

-Yard, and the chances are that they would still accept the true story

-of to-day. I have told you what I believe to be the worst that can

-happen to you; it may be that rather more may happen to me for

-harbouring you all day as I have done. I hope not, but I took the law

-into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by the law if you so

-decide this minute.”

-

-“I have decided.”

-

-“Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at

-any rate for the  present,” said Baumgartner, impressively. “Better

-come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about

-the whole thing there!”

-

-“I shouldn’t do that.”

-

-“I’m not so sure,” replied the acute doctor. “I believe I know you

-better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an hour

-like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it

-very difficult not to tell somebody.”

-

-Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In

-truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner’s had inspired such

-confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a

-perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what

-he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his

-temperament would have done in theirs.

-

-“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to

-account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward

-questions to answer the moment you got back to school.”

-

-And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school

-conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of

-those  insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding

-only confirmed him in his resolve.

-

-“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make

-me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m

-grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!”

-

-“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”

-

-“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so

-long as my people never know!”

-

-“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was;

-but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie,

-and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.

-

-“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said;

-and in his exaltation he believed no less.

-

-“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”

-

-“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”

-

-And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and

-fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that

-resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the 

-matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less

-wisely, to brood on it alone.

-

-Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious

-ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a

-sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the

-best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and

-what his world will say about him as it is.

-

-This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary

-position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he

-pictured his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master’s

-hall; there was no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of

-himself on the scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork

-at Madame Tassaud’s! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling

-with his dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled

-honestly for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and

-now not less freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole

-matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now

-one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be

-darkened for ever after!

-

-It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far

-into the long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair,

-yet never leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once

-more battling for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had

-flown before that of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed

-them back again, for his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its

-capacity for suffering undimmed by a single physical preoccupation.

-Between seven and eight the young lady of the house came in with

-candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box of

-d’Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle

-thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl

-addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to

-seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was

-sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his

-eagerness to shut the door on her and see the news.

-

-It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man

-had been identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were

-reported as hopeful of obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue

-was the point that stuck like a burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a

-clue was one leading straight to himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to

-explain the true value of the identity clause, and bid the boy eat his

-meal.

-

-“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent already; they

-may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!”

-

-Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as

-reverentially of his victim as of a dead member of his own family. It

-appeared thus early, however, that in life the defunct had been by no

-means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses had been his only home, except

-when his undistinguished offences got him into gaol; the surreptitious

-practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means of livelihood.

-So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the stop-press

-column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to

-extract comfort from such items.

-

-“At all events,” said he, “you cannot reproach yourself with the

-destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless

-creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but

-here in England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It’s

-a public service to reduce their number.”

-

-This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the

-doctor had been working up to it all the evening, and this was the

-climax of his cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically

-undressed himself for bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of

-stairs, carrying  candles, and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast.

-Pocket felt a new chill through his veins, but he was not revolted as

-he would have been at first. This extraordinary man had shown him still

-more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall

-together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a

-confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not

-but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really

-were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy

-underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the

-doctor spoke as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to

-agree with him: his conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a

-series of incoherent expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave

-articulate shape in order to demolish them in the next breath.

-

-“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my

-young fellow?”

-

-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head

-wreathed in cool blue clouds.

-

-“You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!” cried

-the poetic doctor. “You have an honourable life before you; he had a

-disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of

-luxury; he finds it for the first time in his——”

-

-But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in

-his bed; the man sat down on the end of it.

-

-“You do such poor devils a service,” said he, “in sending them to a

-world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under

-the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!”

-

-“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.

-

-“Human life!” cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge shadow

-guying him on the ceiling. “What is this human life, and who are you

-and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never

-did; it’s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about

-human life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar;

-there are some of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock

-for modern decadence. So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought

-nothing of your human life. Von Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in

-Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my

-countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal

-value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through

-exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords;

-they’re on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of

-what I know. I’ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind,

-and I’ve felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at

-Gravelotte; as a public schoolboy you probably never heard the name

-before this minute. I fought in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking

-at the pictures downstairs. I was in that charge across those hellish

-ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in half an hour, but we

-gained the victory. More Germans were killed that day—that sweltering

-August afternoon—than English in your whole South African War that took

-you years! The flower of Germany fell at Gravelotte; that was human

-life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my comrades’ ashes.

-And that’s all it’s for, this human life of yours: for the

-master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward road.”

-

-The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange

-outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild

-bloodthirsty nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its

-irrelevancy, or rather it was the irrevelant features that flared up

-first in his brain. It was a childish question, but here was a very

-child, and he could not help asking the fierce old soldier whether he

-had escaped without a wound.

-

-“Without a scratch,” was the reply. “I come home. I leave the army. I

-ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck

-down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the

-veriest pawn in the game!”

-

-The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was

-not a single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or

-another word for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke

-from a waving pipe, a core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the

-Turk’s face glistening in its heat like that of the hard old man

-himself. He would hear the cynical and scornful voice softening in a

-breath to the simple, tender, and domestic humanity of his race. The

-voice and the face were with him throughout that night of his own

-manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy to

-realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been

-carried away like his listener.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-POINTS OF VIEW

-

-

-On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week,

-there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in

-Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds,

-because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at

-the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his

-stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your

-letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few

-there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it

-was on business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more

-impressive address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt

-the first blow.

-

-It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this

-made the letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following

-reason. Mrs. Upton had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the

-Thursday morning, that her husband had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat

-against his own judgment, to know how he found their son. The reply had

-been: “Better expecting him again to-day will write”—which prepared the

-family for still more reassuring accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt

-relieved as the original discoverer of Dr. Bompas. Horace found his

-views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration of a touch of asthma,

-and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely agreeing with

-Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs. Upton

-lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible

-to show her now that it had come.

-

-Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way

-to keep a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this

-occasion he triumphed over temperament with an extraordinary instinct

-for what was in the air.

-

-“The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!” was his only comment

-as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might

-have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not

-Horace promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young

-fellow’s face and the old one’s neck were redder before the last was

-heard of that remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually

-vouchsafed; the boy had made very little improvement, and was not

-likely to make more while he remained at a school where he was allowed

-to use any remedy he liked; in fact, until he was taken away from

-school, and placed under his own immediate control in town, Dr. Bompas

-declined to persevere with the case.

-

-“Blighter!” said Horace impartially, as though now there were two of

-them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when

-their father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was

-not “playing the game”; but then he never did play it to the expert

-satisfaction of Fred and Horace.

-

-Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and

-told a lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He

-had destroyed it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it

-to his wife. He said a happier thing by chance; he said that for two

-pins he would motor over to the school and see for himself how the boy

-really was; then perhaps he would be in a position to consider the

-entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the specialist’s demand, that his

-patient should be placed under his eye in town. Mr. Upton went so far,

-however, without much immediate intention of taking so strong a

-measure.

-

-He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite

-justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with

-his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself

-to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her

-mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however,

-had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.

-

-Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.

-

-It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed

-its owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few

-rolling meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June

-glory. The new red gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an

-eye which had never looked longer than necessary in the glass.

-Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily on a shaven lawn; the only

-eyesore the good man encountered was poor Pocket’s snob-wickets painted

-on a buttress in the back premises; his own belching blast-furnaces,

-corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few hundred yards of

-his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy Briton

-who had made them too.

-

-Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. “I

-was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,” his father said;

-“the fact is, I concealed half the fellow’s letter on account of

-Lettice. But it’s a man’s matter, and you ought to know.”

-

-Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to

-keep his appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the

-line of information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would

-have exercised so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife’s room.

-It now appeared that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas

-had gone far out of his way to play Mahomet to his patient’s mountain.

-Tony had told him where he hoped to stay in London, which Bompas

-particularly wished to know on account of some special prescription the

-boy was to try that night. On his failure to appear at the appointed

-time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in question, only to

-learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been given

-another address with the same result, except that from the second house

-he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace

-was left to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and

-asked for his own on the facts as a man of the world.

-

-“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what he

-thought.

-

-“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?”

-

-“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do what

-nobody else ever did.”

-

-“But how could Spearman give him the chance?”

-

-“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.”

-

-“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?”

-

-“So I heard.”

-

-“I don’t like it! It’s all wrong at his age,” said Mr. Upton. He had

-his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough with

-his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:

-“You don’t think there’s any question of bad company, do you?”

-

-And though Horace had “no use for” his so-called pocket edition, he

-answered without any hesitation at all: “Not for a moment, from what I

-know of Tony.”

-

-Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by

-mentioning his wife’s dream, now family property, which had been on his

-mind all this time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him

-that nobody nowadays believed in dreams.

-

-“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?”

-

-“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.”

-

-“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”

-

-“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to

-school.”

-

-“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”

-

-“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.”

-

-The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr.

-Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the

-day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing

-about him.

-

-“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t

-Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?”

-

-Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither

-he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends

-were by no means theirs.

-

-Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on

-the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its

-being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like

-a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that

-neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it

-before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s

-dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments

-besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when

-he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside

-herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply

-impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also

-waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good

-reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings;

-but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited

-dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his

-wife.

-

-It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as

-he had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr.

-Spearman, who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was

-done, however, and it was now a matter in which home and school

-authorities must act together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to

-the garage for the car to come straight to the works. And the

-ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of anxiety.

-

-The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and

-yet to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the

-brain that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and

-blackened faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand

-and the stout heart which had brought his conception into being. Those

-were his trucks bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his

-consequential little locomotive fussing in front of them. His men,

-dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was also his,

-happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was his

-pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric

-advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of

-possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the

-ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot

-bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture,

-had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would

-ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than

-the means of livelihood; and how had it repaid even him for a life’s

-devotion? With a house of sorrow in the next valley! With a stricken

-wife, and sons whose right hands kept their cunning for the

-cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a sudden

-madness!

-

-Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great

-green car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he

-did not drive himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the

-summer’s day was a mental stimulant that did its work only too well.

-Now it recalled the ailing infancy of the missing boy—bronchitis it had

-been in the early stages—and how his mother had taken him to Hastings

-three successive winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family

-jokes cropped up in a new light, dimming the eyes without an instant’s

-warning. On one of those flittings south the solicitous mother had

-placed the uncomplaining child on a footwarmer, and forgotten him until

-a cascade of perspiration apprised her of the effect: poor Mr. Upton

-had never thought of the incident without laughter, until to-day.

-Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she herself

-too ill to hear a word about it!

-

-His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no

-uncertainty. He thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first.

-There had been drama and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated

-of the neighbouring packs had run a fox to earth on his works, indeed

-in his very slag-heap! The author of cancerous furnaces in the green

-heart of a grass country had never been a popular personage with the

-hunting folk; but he was master of the situation that memorable day. It

-was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a ferret, and came

-out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore through the

-brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young

-lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants

-with their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag

-sticking out of the furnace mouth—the momentary contact of the

-industrial and the sporting world—it was that strange and yet

-significant scene which had first endeared its dingy setting to the

-ironmaster’s heart. But he had made the contact permanent by falling in

-love with the young lady of the brush and marrying her under all the

-guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she was a stricken

-invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!

-

-Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now

-distracted father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think

-about as he flew on to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very

-rude to Mr. Spearman; but then Spearman had been rash enough to

-repudiate his obvious responsibility in the matter. It was not his

-fault that the boy went up to town so often to see his doctor and stay

-the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but it had

-become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp

-thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of

-seventeen could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know

-who could! Tony had promised him faithfully to return that same night,

-failing friends whom he had mentioned as certain to put him up; their

-names Mr. Upton was able to demand at last as though they were so much

-blood; and he could not have cursed them more freely if Spearman had

-been a layman like himself. But that was all the information

-forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the head

-master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had

-still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked

-that he was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up

-and led him straight into the presence.

-

-Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an

-astute pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to

-Mr. Upton that the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master’s

-concern, but agreed it was time that he himself was made acquainted

-with the present case. He took it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could

-have wished, but quite as frankly from his own point of view as his two

-visitors did from each of theirs. He had no doubt the boy would turn

-up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to give a

-satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received

-back into the school.

-

-“Bother the school!” cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with

-difficulty. “Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what

-you like.”

-

-“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, with

-only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.

-

-“First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own

-showing, refused the boy a bed. I’ll give them a bit of my mind, I

-promise you! Then there’s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it

-may be the one we always stay at, or one they’ve recommended. If I

-can’t hear anything of him there, I suppose there’ll be nothing for it

-but to call in the police.”

-

-“My dear sir,” exclaimed the head master,  “you may as well call in the

-public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you are;

-and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our

-point of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.”

-

-“It’s more so from mine!” cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and

-indignation. “You think about your school. I think about my wife and

-boy; it might kill her to hear about this before he’s found. But if I

-don’t go to the police, who am I to go to?” The head master leant back

-in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.

-

-“There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case

-of dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal

-proceedings on behalf of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down

-and solved the mystery within twenty-four hours, and saved the school a

-public scandal.”

-

-“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my boy. What

-did you say the name was?”

-

-“Thrush—Eugene Thrush—quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a

-gentleman,” said the head master impressively. Further particulars,

-including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from

-an advertisement in that day’s _Times_, in which Mr. Thrush was

-described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate

-investigations” and “confidential negotiations.”

-

-That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he

-departed both on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final

-word for his own behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the

-head master on the importance of keeping it out of the papers.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-MR. EUGENE THRUSH

-

-

-The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never

-been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of

-events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was

-known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was

-talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody

-might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in

-connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally

-concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report that he drank,

-in the ordinary interpretation of the term.

-

-It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his

-dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful

-Friday. He was  dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His

-dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the

-original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led.

-There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and

-spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such

-stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.

-

-Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker’s mute (a calling he had

-followed in his day), was laying out his master’s clothes as mournfully

-as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he

-shaved.

-

-“I’m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into

-this case it’s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too

-soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they’d have wondered what the

-devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you

-were in my service.”

-

-“I had no call, sir.”

-

-“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d

-only to describe the finding of the body?”

-

-“That was all, sir.”

-

-“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”

-

-Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving

-elbow. “I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he,

-with sombre dignity.

-

-“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs

-you showed me yesterday?”

-

-“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must

-have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t

-on the actual scene of the murder.”

-

-“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have

-to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the

-one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re

-worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with

-a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the

-adjourned inquest?”

-

-“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite

-convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very

-stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal

-bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.”

-

-Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took

-as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being

-thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in

-shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the

-whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would

-have  delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest

-of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and

-yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness

-of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of

-inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great

-round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an

-aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in

-itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him

-any more seriously than he took himself.

-

-Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially

-superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being

-badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the

-landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth

-of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate

-abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his

-visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The

-library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the

-first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made

-business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only

-beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at

-his first entry.

-

-It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen

-from the motorist’s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced

-joviality with which Thrush exclaimed: “I’m sorry to have kept you

-waiting, sir, and the worst of it is that I can’t let you keep me!”

-

-This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception

-one had to come up to London to incur. “Then I’ll clear out!” said he,

-and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous

-effect.

-

-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly

-consternation.

-

-“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you four minutes,

-if that’s any good to you.”

-

-Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have

-said four hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would

-have been no good to him; but the precise term of minutes, together

-with a seemlier but not less decisive manner, had already quickened the

-business man’s respect for another whose time was valuable. This is by

-no means to say that Thrush had won him over in a breath. But the

-following interchange took place rapidly.

-

-“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other room.”

-

-“Upton is my name, sir.”

-

-“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry

-agent is all I presume to call myself.”

-

-“But you do inquire into mysteries?”

-

-“I’ve dabbled in them.”

-

-“As an amateur?”

-

-“A paid amateur, I fear.”

-

-“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to me!”

-

-“Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you

-catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none

-of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens

-to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private

-inquisitor. If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that’s my job

-and I should put it first.”

-

-“Mr. Thrush, that’s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for

-me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my

-youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or

-been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!”

-

-So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds

-which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up

-before he had concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts

-within his knowledge.

-

-“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush.

-

-“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?”

-

-“The four minutes must be more than up.”

-

-“Go on, my dear sir, and don’t throw good time after bad. I’m only

-dining with a man at his club. He can wait.”

-

-“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“More good time! How do you know the boy hasn’t turned up at school or

-at home while you’ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?”

-

-“I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there’s nothing

-there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a

-bed which they couldn’t give him the night before last. I did let them

-have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had

-recommended other hotels; they’ve just been telephoning to them all in

-turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then

-I’ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John’s

-Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I

-thought I’d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush,

-but that’s all I’ve done or know how to do. Something must have

-happened!”

-

-“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely.

-

-“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor

-accident. One moment!”

-

-And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins

-was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master

-said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of

-him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.

-

-“In less than an hour,” explained Thrush, “he will be back with a list

-of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight

-hours. I don’t say there’s much in it; your boy had probably some

-letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it’s

-worth trying.”

-

-“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

-

-“And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as

-with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a

-whisky-and-soda in the first place.”

-

-“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.”

-

-“But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the

-convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited

-with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant

-refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new acquaintance too

-well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.

-

-“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!”

-

-“Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man

-begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all.

-Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets

-back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.”

-

-“But do you think you can do anything?”

-

-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate

-thanks.

-

-“If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the

-needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will

-take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a

-sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!”

-

-At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and

-repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather

-reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.

-

-“I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because

-it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is

-there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?”

-

-“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.”

-

-“Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling

-down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing

-could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for

-games.”

-

-“Nothing better, do you say?”

-

-“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s

-asthma than to hide the man himself.”

-

-“I never thought of that.”

-

-It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that

-moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an

-inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them.

-

-“I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly;

-but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal

-perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.

-

-“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.”

-

-“I certainly never thought of his heart!”

-

-“Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said

-Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his

-asthma were to prove his best friend.”

-

-“It owes him something!”

-

-“Do you know what he does for it?”

-

-“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed

-to have received some weeks before. “He smokes, against his doctor’s

-orders.”

-

-“Do you mean tobacco?”

-

-“No—some stuff for asthma.”

-

-“In cigarettes?”

-

-“Yes.”

-

-“Do you know the name?”

-

-“I have it here.”

-

-The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection

-after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in

-outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk,

-but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last

-superfluous ounce.

-

-“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their

-glasses.

-

-“I confess I don’t see why.”

-

-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!”

-

-“Some French rubbish.”

-

-“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”

-

-“It looks like it.”

-

-“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”

-

-“So he has the impudence to say.”

-

-“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?”

-

-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.

-

-“I never heard of these cigarettes before; they’re an imported article;

-you can’t get them everywhere, I’ll swear! Your boy has got to rely on

-them; he’s out of reach of the doctor who’s forbidden them; he’ll try

-to get them somewhere! If he’s been trying in London, I’ll find out

-where before I’m twenty-four hours older!”

-

-“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility

-than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.

-

-“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.

-

-“Who on earth is he?”

-

-“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.”

-

-“A. V. M.?”

-

-“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”

-

-Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it

-all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.

-

-“You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, “and go on so dividing

-them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to

-the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or

-Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much

-longer ago than mine.”

-

-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.

-

-“In this case it’s Chemists Who Do Sell D’Auvergne Cigarettes and

-Chemists Who Don’t. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and

-Chemists Who Do but Didn’t! But we can probably improve on the old game

-by playing both rounds at once.”

-

-“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, “though there seems

-some method in the madness.”

-

-“It’s all the method I’ve got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. “But you shall

-see it working, for unless I’m much mistaken this is Mullins back

-sooner than I expected.”

-

-Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired,

-though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been

-the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid

-round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas’s, St. George’s, and the

-Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary’s and St.

-Bartholomew’s. At none of these institutions had a young gentleman of

-the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last

-forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically

-depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had

-one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his

-chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before.

-

-“Don’t go, Mullins! I’ve another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush.

-“Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you

-down at my desk. Look up ‘chemists’ under ‘trades’; there are pages of

-them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up

-every chemist who’s on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest

-in, to ask if he keeps d’Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of

-the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at

-nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of

-getting ’em elsewhere—say you wonder there’s so little demand—and with

-any luck you should find out whether and to whom they’ve sold any since

-Wednesday evening.”

-

-“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster.

-

-“It’s the next point,” said Thrush. “The first is to divide the

-chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the

-Vegetables who don’t. I should really like to play the next round

-myself, but Mullins must do something while we’re out.”

-

-“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-“My dear Mr. Upton, you’re going to step across into the Café Royal

-with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!”

-

-“And what about your theatre?” asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance was

-a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins

-entrenched behind telephone and directories.

-

-“The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of

-tripe that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June;

-but I’m not going to chuck the drama that’s come to me!”

-

-The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good

-dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to

-his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or

-drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white

-waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes.

-It even escaped his observation that the obese Thrush was an unblushing

-gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy. The conscious repast of Mr.

-Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of Eugene Thrush, and of

-that conversation only such portions as exploited his professional

-theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand. He

-was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account

-of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his

-myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. What was the murder of

-some ragamuffin in Hyde Park to a man from the country who had lost his

-son?

-

-“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out of pure

-politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.

-

-“It should work all right,” returned Thrush. “You take an absolutely

-worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two motives:

-either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a

-menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he’s taken your

-wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price

-of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn’t anything to bless

-himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh?

-So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your

-blade into the root of the matter.”

-

-Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his

-boldest statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt

-with the one subject on the poor man’s mind. The cessation of his

-voice, however, caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he

-made a mental grab at the last phrase, and was astonished to find it

-germane to his own thoughts.

-

-“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. Thrush!”

-

-“When was the first?”

-

-“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!

-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?”

-

-“Not seriously.”

-

-“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?”

-

-“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles twinkling to

-colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you ask?”

-

-“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.”

-

-“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.”

-

-“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?”

-

-“I’ve heard of one,” said Thrush, with a significant stress upon the

-verb; “that’s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a hundred years

-ago. The victim’s mother dreamed three nights running that her missing

-daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the time.

-There _may_ have been other cases.”

-

-“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very

-time at which something terrible has happened to that child?”

-

-“Any amount of those.”

-

-The father’s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his

-glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves

-in a more attentive stare.

-

-“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton hoarsely.

-

-“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. “That

-would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!”

-

-“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much agitated;

-for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.

-

-“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?”

-

-“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t tell

-her he had disappeared.”

-

-“Why? What was the dream?”

-

-“That she saw him—and heard a shot.”

-

-“A shot!”

-

-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had

-time to think.

-

-“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she wasn’t

-dreaming at all.”

-

-“But when was this?”

-

-“Between six and seven yesterday morning.” This time Thrush did not

-move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and

-again he was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence

-was complete. Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M.

-system, neither was Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions

-on the strength of one. He asked whether the boy was very fond of

-shooting in the holidays, as though that might have accounted for the

-dream, but his father was not aware that he had ever smelt powder in

-his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The tone of

-subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton’s health (already mentioned

-as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a

-secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for

-compassion.

-

-“Then that accounts for it,” said Thrush, when he had heard the whole

-sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.

-“What do you mean?”

-

-“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally

-fanciful, I’m afraid.”

-

-“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?”

-

-“My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion

-either way. I only say, don’t think too much about that dream. And

-since you won’t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the

-faithful Mullins.”

-

-They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr.

-Upton for one would not have recognised him as the same being. His

-sepulchral face was alight with news—it was the transformation of the

-undertaker’s mute into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box

-of the d’Auvergne Cigarettes to show for his evening’s work, and that

-chemist had declared it was the first he had sold for weeks.

-

-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon

-as ever he dared.

-

-“You need a good night’s rest, my dear sir, and it’s no use climbing to

-my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you don’t mind

-leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing tomorrow morning

-I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be some

-progress to report.”

-

-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face

-still more strikingly illuminated.

-

-“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne Cigarettes!”

-

-“So I perceive.”

-

-“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.”

-

-“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.”

-

-“I didn’t smoke it, sir!”

-

-“Who did?”

-

-“That’s for you to say, sir; but it’s one of the little things I

-collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,

-yesterday morning in Hyde Park.”

-

-“Near the actual place?”

-

-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the

-strongest of the electric lamps.

-

-“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-SECOND THOUGHTS

-

-

-Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he

-felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the

-nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the

-engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the

-Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had

-seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt

-him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze.

-There was nothing nebulous about the vile place then; it was as light

-and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister figures in the

-panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read that they

-always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight. But

-that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman

-and terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their

-winding-sheets, from their  murderer’s graves. Better by far their

-beastly faces, that you knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and

-screwed up his courage, and laid hands on one of the shorter figures

-that he could reach. It rocked stiffly in its place, a most palpable

-and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements from the hollow and

-unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not been there the

-other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as ill-mounted on

-high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of intelligent

-eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical

-characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army

-of murderers was a faithful model of himself.

-

-There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that

-he had been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it

-had seemed in that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy

-shuddered till the bed shook under him. But after that he still lay on,

-facing himself as he had seen himself, and his deed as others must see

-it soon or late. Not the actual accident in the Park; but this hiding

-in the heart of London, this skulking among strangers, this leaving his

-own people to mourn him as the dead!

-

-The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear

-to him before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and

-Horace, how good they had been to him at school, and how proud he had

-been of them! What would they think of him if he went on skulking like

-this? What would they have done in his place? Anything but lie low like

-that, thought Pocket, and resolved forthwith to play the game as

-preached and practised by his brothers. It was strange that he should

-have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this morning he saw

-it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass screen…To

-think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude

-as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the

-situation as well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him

-if he gave himself up, but anything might if he waited till he was

-caught. As for the consequences to his poor mother, surely in the end

-suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper into the slender cord of her

-life than the shock of the truth would cut.

-

-Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy

-behaved characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in

-front of him, beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and

-ending in a blaze of wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face;

-meanwhile he lay in such peace and safety as it was only human to

-prolong  a little. That night, for all his moral innocence, he might

-lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed while he had one,

-especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The last

-consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little

-time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had

-suffered from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident

-in which he was nearly killed.

-

-“My accident may have done the same for me,” thought Pocket—and was

-bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking complacently of

-any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient punishment.

-

-To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the

-plain upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was

-to conjure uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his

-ferocious meerschaum, his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his

-arguments in favour of the course which Pocket had now determined to

-abandon. The boy fully realised that he had been given his chance, and

-had refused it. And of all the interviews before him, that with Dr.

-Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have given most

-to escape.

-

-Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did

-escape, and did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no

-reason why he should involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession.

-Suppose he hailed the first cab he saw, and drove over to St. John’s

-Wood to borrow money (they could scarcely refuse him that), and then

-took the first train home to tell his father everything in the first

-instance, that father would never hear of his incriminating a stranger

-who had befriended him according to his lights. He himself need never

-say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the tragedy, even if

-he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to the

-ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only

-suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to

-his breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that

-after a day and a night he should still be in total ignorance of his

-whereabouts.

-

-He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the

-sunny little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old

-discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of

-a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered

-above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was

-completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to

-the ear, and  there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of

-the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll’s

-perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded

-Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally trim

-lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the

-green spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the

-curiously countrified smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a

-still stronger reminiscence of his father’s garden, where his own old

-pony pulled the machine in leather shoes.

-

-Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to

-them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing

-almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket

-could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as

-quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word,

-whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never

-occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare

-to lock him in his room!

-

-Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek

-to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to

-himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told

-him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily

-strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or

-else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he

-always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant

-between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window,

-saw his way down at a glance.

-

-Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony

-over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the

-least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet

-till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a

-very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on

-finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?

-They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in

-which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman

-who said he might not sleep in the Park.

-

-The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously

-Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old

-campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which

-argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic

-service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase.

-Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and  so eloquent of Baumgartner

-himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more

-freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he

-had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs

-hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected

-by his host.

-

-Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to

-lose a moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had

-made an interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being

-played. He heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on

-the balcony up above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been.

-It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing

-something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though

-naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was

-Mendelssohn, or Chopin, “or something,” for his love of music was

-greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that

-detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him

-kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he

-went, and the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been

-locked in, and he had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet

-not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at  all events,

-and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile

-instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating

-moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might

-know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game

-to say goodbye.

-

-The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her

-large eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they

-blazed at the intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she

-already knew the truth.

-

-“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just came in to say

-goodbye.”

-

-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.

-

-“To say goodbye!” she gasped.

-

-“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s out?”

-

-“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?”

-

-“I’m afraid I can’t.”

-

-She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood

-aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn

-took her stand, back to the door.

-

-“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and with a

-smile.

-

-“And I’m very sorry to miss him,” said Pocket, unconscientiously enough

-for anybody. “He’s been most awfully good to me, and I wish you’d tell

-him how grateful I am.”

-

-“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, “if he finds you

-gone.”

-

-“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do

-you mind giving him one other message?”

-

-“As many as you like.”

-

-“Well, you might tell him from me that I’ll give myself away, but I’ll

-never give him! He’ll know what I mean.”

-

-“Is that all?”

-

-She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the

-last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the

-boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through

-an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio.

-

-“No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the

-worst way about it by locking me into my room!”

-

-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.

-

-“How did you get out?”

-

-“How do you suppose?”

-

-“I never heard anything!”

-

-“I took care you shouldn’t.”

-

-And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in

-the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl

-stood up to him like a little heroine.

-

-“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Can’t let me?”

-

-“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.”

-

-He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older

-than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his

-way past—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him,

-because he felt she knew it.

-

-“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t let me out that

-way, I’ll go this!”

-

-And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the

-garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she

-held him firmly by the hand.

-

-“If you do I’ll blow a police-whistle!” she said. “We have one—it won’t

-take an instant. You shan’t come out the front way, and you’ll be

-stopped if you climb the wall!”

-

-“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out

-bitterly.

-

-“Never mind what I take you for!”

-

-“You’re treating me as though I were one!”

-

-“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.”

-

-“I shan’t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your

-uncle, and you too!” But that was only half true, even then while he

-was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been

-another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he

-drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over

-went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than

-ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him

-say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose

-will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the

-door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was

-a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured

-or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt.

-It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear

-it only increased.

-

-“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears,

-and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.

-

-“Forgive me!” he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it

-after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-ON PAROLE

-

-

-“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you

-seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you

-break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young

-lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!”

-

-Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought

-the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater

-cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his

-honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to

-change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was

-precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as

-much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with

-their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin

-that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.

-

-“I daresay not!” said Baumgartner sardonically. “It would have been

-dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you

-agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never

-so far as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your

-eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were

-going to lie on it like a man.”

-

-“Then why did you lock me in?” cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point

-on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor

-flattered him with a slight delay before replying.

-

-“There were so many reasons,” he said, with a sigh; “you mustn’t forget

-that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you

-falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was

-more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken

-you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to

-yourself without my assistance, and that you would get brooding over

-what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the

-whole thing. I tell you it’s no good brooding or looking back; take one

-more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating

-notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family,

-certain punishment for me!”

-

-“The consequences at home,” groaned Pocket, “will be bad enough

-whatever we do. I can’t bear to think of them! If only they had taken

-Bompas’s advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam!_ I

-should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm’s way for the

-next three months.”

-

-“The _Seringapatam?_” repeated the doctor. “I never heard of her.”

-

-“You wouldn’t; she’s only a sailing vessel, but she carries passengers

-and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas’s, who wanted to send me with him

-for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn’t let me go. She

-sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If

-I could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I

-could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years

-and years!”

-

-It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had

-come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy’s

-brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it

-up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures,

-bearded like the pard, another “dead man come to life,” after about as

-many years as the dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked

-on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did

-not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was

-quite disappointed when he shook his head.

-

-“A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young

-fellow! Why, they’d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you’d gasp out

-your whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my

-fellow; you’ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with

-me till we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you

-say you won’t, I say I’ll make you—to save you from yourself—to save us

-both.”

-

-There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was

-fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor’s

-power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped

-already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to

-be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now

-dominating him more powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact

-that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have

-done. There was actually an element of relief in his discomfiture. He

-had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that

-responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour

-delayed. And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort

-in such delay, which was all the greater because unsought by him; it

-was a comfort that he had both ways, as the saying is, and from all

-points of view but that of his poor people wondering what had become of

-him.

-

-“If only they knew!” he cried; “then I shouldn’t care. Let me write to

-one of them! My mother needn’t know; but I must write to one of the

-others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would

-keep my secret; she’d play the game all right, I promise you! And I’d

-play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!”

-

-The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should

-have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin

-edge of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write

-what he liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and

-enclose it in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was

-a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from

-St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now

-refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for

-the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and

-sacred promise on the following points.

-

-He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to

-show himself for a moment at the windows back or front.

-

-On no account was he to confide in the doctor’s niece Phillida, to give

-her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London

-mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his

-first meeting with Baumgartner.

-

-“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about

-yourself the better.”

-

-“But what can she think?”

-

-“What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may

-bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise

-in the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to

-think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and

-she had your doctor’s orders not to let you out of the house in his

-absence.”

-

-“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a wistful

-heaviness.

-

-“She did what she was told; think no more about it,” said the doctor.

-“Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather

-than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play

-the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures

-played it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch.

-Look at this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where

-we come to bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian

-Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St.

-Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with

-no head to bind. That’s meant for our colonel on the white horse. See

-him hounding us on to hell! And there’s a drummer drumming as though we

-could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to ribbons, you

-see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young

-fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!” Baumgartner might

-have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of

-a responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and

-to wake the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the

-heart of a soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was

-only when he found himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless

-brought his innocent deed home to him as nothing had done before, that

-the artificial frost broke up, and real tears ran with his ink. He

-begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him, still less to be anxious

-about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret for him, he

-wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction. He

-was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But

-something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would

-bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from

-ever seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others

-to which it led, that were literally blotted with the writer’s tears.

-But just then he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who

-could never show himself at home or at school again. And it required

-the spell of Baumgartner’s presence to make the prospect such as could

-be borne with the least degree of visible manhood.

-

-Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways

-younger than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in

-some few. He was old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may

-be imaginative and still have a level head, but it is least likely in

-one’s teens. The particular temperament does not need a label; but none

-who know it when they see it, and who see it here, will be surprised to

-learn that this emotional writer for one was enormously relieved and

-lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off his mind and hands.

-

-True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a

-kindly gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over

-the second leaf.

-

-“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run the risk of

-trusting your discretion.”

-

-No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped

-the hand that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the

-address, all openly before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to

-the nearest messenger office to despatch the missive to the General

-Post Office, ostensibly to catch a particular post, his prisoner  would

-not have decamped for a hundred pounds, and the doctor knew it.

-

-Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket

-was only less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had

-caused, than when they were both at table and he unable to say another

-word to express his sorrow for the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She

-spoke to him once or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened,

-but he could scarcely look her in the face. Otherwise both meals

-interested him; they were German in their order, a light supper

-following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they

-both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much

-taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived

-smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of speculation when

-he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the house, and that

-the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor’s waste-paper basket

-as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed next morning. He

-had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young girl was clearing

-away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room after supper;

-and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the toy board,

-which they placed between them on the dining-table, both Phillida and

-the fragments had disappeared.

-

-The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out

-Baumgartner’s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy’s

-simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate

-one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his

-hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep

-between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate

-concentration; even the Turk’s head was only lit to be laid aside as an

-obstruction. Pocket’s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the

-fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy

-forgot everything when he actually succeeded in the last game. They had

-played very late for him, and he slept without stirring until

-Baumgartner came to his room about eight o’clock next morning.

-

-Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first

-thing he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one

-like a flag to wake him.

-

-“Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!” he

-cried, with fierce amusement; “it only remains to be seen whether they

-succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really,

-it’s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the

-smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!”

-

-“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these

-remarks.

-

-“Certainly,” replied Baumgartner; “here’s the journalistic wonder of

-the age, and there you are in its most important column. I brought it

-up for you to see.”

-

-The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded

-type and the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first

-place, that no arrest had yet been made; but it was confidently

-asserted (by the omniscient butt of Teutonic sallies) that the police,

-wisely guided by the hint in yesterday’s issue (which Pocket had not

-seen), were already in possession of a most important clue. In

-subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real homicide was

-informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally

-different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had

-been a certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in

-the previous month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had

-been found shot under circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide

-that a coroner’s jury had actually returned a verdict to that effect.

-There appeared, however, to have been an element of doubt in the case.

-This the scribe of the leaded type sought to remove by begging the

-question from beginning to end. It had not been a case of suicide at

-all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde Park, to

-which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been

-shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged

-to one neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the

-community. A pothouse acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but

-the suggestion was that the link lay a good deal deeper than that, and

-that the two dead men were known to the police, who were busy searching

-for a third party of equal notoriety in connection with both murders.

-

-“But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,” said the boy,

-looking up at last. “It wasn’t a murder, either; neither was the first,

-according to the coroner’s jury, who surely ought to know.”

-

-“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile;

-“but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.”

-

-“Do you suppose there’s a word of truth in what he says? I don’t mean

-about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway,” said Pocket, wincing over his

-victim’s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. “But do you

-think the police are really after anybody?”

-

-“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it matter?”

-

-“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I

-did!”

-

-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.

-

-“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly.

-

-“I don’t see it,” returned the doctor, with grim good-nature. “The

-little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed another

-mare’s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm can

-come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only

-two living souls who can’t account for their time at that of this

-unfortunate affair.”

-

-Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin

-under the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light,

-always encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his

-silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to

-keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against

-the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And

-once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by

-striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings of the boy.

-

-“Eight o’clock!” cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an

-ear towards the open  window. “The postman’s knock from door to door

-down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British

-Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered

-at this very moment—eh, my poor young fellow?”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS

-

-

-Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr.

-Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius

-for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which

-enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed,

-in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible

-appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper

-with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle

-between the sheets.

-

-That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the

-paper came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious

-matter. It said exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park

-murder: that the murderer would prove to be the author of a similar

-crime, committed in the previous month of March, when the Upton boy

-must have been safe at school. If that were so, it  was manifestly

-absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely happened to

-synchronise with that of his own disappearance—absurd, even if he were

-shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere

-about the time of its perpetration.

-

-That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established

-overnight. It was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile

-conviction of his class, had jumped on the slender evidence of the

-asthma cigarette alone; but before midnight Thrush himself had been

-forced to admit its extreme probability. There was a medicine cork as

-well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been found very much

-nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a shrub on the

-other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both discoveries,

-who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night, to ask

-if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with

-their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just

-as well but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens,

-rung up in their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the

-doctor’s prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and,

-within half an hour, had positively identified the cork found by

-Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was still sticky with the very stuff which

-had put poor Pocket asleep.

-

-Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection

-between a harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He

-resisted the idea on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in

-argument with his now strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide

-jump to a detestable conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the

-width of the jump. The cork and the cigarette might be stepping-stones,

-but at least one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion

-against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms

-on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on

-the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he

-made no mention of the boy’s mother’s dream.

-

-Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an

-enthusiastic convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist,

-and consequently an irritable observer of the saturnine countenance

-which darkened to a tinge of distinct amusement over the leaded type.

-

-“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?”

-

-“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.”

-

-“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland

-Walk?”

-

-“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.”

-

-“I don’t agree.”

-

-“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?”

-

-“The coroner’s jury did—in spite of the coroner—but it may come before

-another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical

-evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm’s length. That isn’t

-the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was

-nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price

-of one; he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before.

-The very same point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he

-ever had a revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he

-never had; I happened to ask the question,” added Thrush, without

-explaining in what connection.

-

-“Well, sir,” said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, “you talk

-about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman who write

-for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!”

-

-This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the

-very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his

-spectacles without one at all.

-

-“The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,

-however,” he remarked; “it  may be by fair means, or it may be by foul,

-but they have a way of getting there before the others start.”

-

-Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do

-it this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring

-himself to believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time

-and place, with no sort of connection between them.

-

-“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, sententiously.

-

-Thrush looked at him for a moment.

-

-“But life’s one long collection of coincidences! That’s what I’m always

-telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don’t you

-call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their

-death at the very hour of the morning when you’re on your way over here

-from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which

-you’ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the

-nerve to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other

-morning, and been mixed up in that affair because you are in this?”

-

-“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied Mullins, with some

-warmth.

-

-“I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to

-the absurd, Mullins; you didn’t take me literally, did you? It’s no use

-talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I’m always

-ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a

-pistol, Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must

-be roaring inside for yours. The man who’s been knocking up chemists

-all night is the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then

-mine, and after that you can tell me how you got on.”

-

-Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his

-best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however,

-for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the

-pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins

-went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was

-yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny

-background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the

-other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear

-whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was

-not a cloud.

-

-“To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,”

-resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; “how many have you done,

-and how many have we still to do between us?”

-

-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes

-as neat.

-

-“Rung up when you were out at dinner—seventeen. Kept Cigarettes

-d’Auvergne—one. That was Thornycroft’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I’d

-just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I

-knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of

-Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.”

-

-“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?”

-

-“A matter of life or death.”

-

-“Well?”

-

-“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one

-in New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.”

-

-“Much demand in any of those quarters?”

-

-“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly

-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.”

-

-“I know him; so he’s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?” murmured

-Thrush, to his buttered egg. “But has one of these apothecaries sold a

-box of d’Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?”

-

-“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.”

-

-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.

-

-“How did you worm that out, Mullins?”

-

-“By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody

-who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we

-were only trying them on hearsay.”

-

-“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only

-consumer?”

-

-“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on

-Thursday to a doctor.”

-

-“Did you get the name?”

-

-“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”

-

-“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry

-face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I

-can’t say when or where. What’s his address?”

-

-“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d

-be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.”

-

-“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”

-

-“I didn’t inquire.”

-

-“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the

-asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never

-had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But

-I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in _Who’s Who_, and

-read out what they say.”

-

-And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at

-barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr.

-Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities

-whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction

-of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which

-contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A

-copious contribution concluded with the information that photography

-and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a

-polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s

-which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.

-

-“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what

-about his address?”

-

-“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, demoralised

-and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.”

-

-“Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but

-I’m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of _Peripatetic

-Psychology_ deserves to have asthma all his nights, and _After this

-Life_ smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won’t build on

-Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we’ll go through the chemists of London

-with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.”

-

-Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away,

-when a stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton

-with  a panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but

-he denied that he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at

-Mullins, and fell to abusing London and the Londoners, but City men

-above all others, till Thrush and he should be alone together. The

-incidental diatribe was no mere padding, either; it was the sincere

-utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody in all London, he

-declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared a twopenny

-curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the present

-company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of

-the boy’s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But

-the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had

-been to see his boy’s friends’ father, “a swine called Knaggs,” that

-very morning at his house in St. John’s Wood.

-

-“Rather early, wasn’t it?” suggested Thrush, whose manner was more

-softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was

-slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.

-

-“Early!” cried Mr. Upton. “Haven’t I lost my boy, and wasn’t it these

-Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to have gone to

-them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your dinner;

-for I don’t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of your 

-hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me

-afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my

-own; but I’d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant

-then, so I thought I’d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting

-till this morning.”

-

-The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush

-seized the opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in

-the street.

-

-“I confess I showed indecent haste,” said he; “but Mullins and I had

-our night’s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his boots off

-since you saw him.”

-

-“Hasn’t he?” cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an

-unsuspected devotion; “then I’ll say what I’ve got to say in front of

-him, for you’re both my friends, and I’ll unsay all I said just now.

-Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself

-about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug

-little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his

-breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as

-himself, and saying ‘Rather early!’—just as you set me off by saying

-yourself a minute ago.”

-

-“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?”

-

-“Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him!

-I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but

-what could he do? London was a large place, and ‘we Londoners’ were

-busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too

-busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. He said

-London life was different; and I said so I could see. They never had

-spare beds at a moment’s notice, much less for boys who might set fire

-to the house or—or shoot themselves——”

-

-His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood

-glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad’s

-death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however,

-looked so genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the

-face of Mullins also attracted less attention.

-

-“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a

-curiously gentle voice.

-

-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.

-

-“He had, after all!” he croaked. “Little as I dreamt it yesterday, my

-unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in his life

-before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his pocket!”

-

-“Had he brought it from school?” asked Thrush, with a covert frown at

-the transfigured Mullins.

-

-Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters,

-with their father’s opinion of pawnbrokers’ shops as resorts for young

-schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and

-guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted

-without fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose

-only comment was that it behoved him all the more to do something to

-redeem the capital in the other’s eyes.

-

-“Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!” was the only rejoinder, in

-a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was the

-first he had heard about the dream.

-

-“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew before.

-Yet I will own now,” exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins’s bright eye,

-“that the coincidence will be tremendous if there’s nothing in it!”

-

-But only half the coincidence was present in the father’s mind; no

-thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy;

-and to hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his

-fretted nerves could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for

-a pessimist—apologised—and humbly entreated him to take a more hopeful

-view.

-

-“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal

-one!”

-

-An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public

-mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish

-grins and nods behind the poor father’s back. Thrush looked at both men

-with the troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being—looked and

-frowned again—frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant,

-the trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost

-blinding flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light;

-enough for Eugene Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit

-as brightly as it lit him onward to its solution.

-

-He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in

-his face, as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr.

-Upton about the missing boy. What was his character? what its chief

-points? Was he a boy with the moral courage of his acts? Would he face

-their consequences like a man?

-

-“I never knew him tell a lie in his life,” said Mr. Upton, “either to

-save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of their young

-skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most

-conscientious of them all, and I hear that’s what they say of him at

-school.”

-

-Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue,

-though a very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up

-himself; and this time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own

-accord, with a dejected undertaking to be at his hotel when he was

-wanted.

-

-“I don’t like the look of our friend,” remarked Thrush, looking hard at

-Mullins when at last they were alone. “He shapes none too well for the

-strain he’s got to bear; if he cracks up there’ll be a double tragedy,

-if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare quickly,

-Mullins, or we may catch him too late.”

-

-Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a

-few minutes before; he took no notice of it now.

-

-“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, “the very moment

-that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“Meaning they’re the same person?”

-

-“To be sure.”

-

-“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?”

-

-“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?”

-

-“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.”

-

-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.

-

-“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in

-deferential derision.

-

-“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope to

-get arrested within another hour!”

-

-Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw,

-black as a crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy

-collar.

-

-“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?”

-

-“I am—with your permission, Mullins.”

-

-“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!”

-

-And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled

-from his words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-BOY AND GIRL

-

-

-Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.

-Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the

-newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in

-quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of

-the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her

-boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several

-seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in

-what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but the

-penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the

-doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given

-time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he

-liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled

-when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the

-other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had

-convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences

-exchanged.

-

-The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning;

-for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up

-to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books

-in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the

-dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to

-include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion.

-Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time

-with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and

-girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,

-though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on

-him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was

-only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that

-Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word.

-

-“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida,

-in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the

-house.

-

-“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting

-about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until

-memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve

-o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only

-your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before

-you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday

-afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and

-watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and

-lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything

-you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at

-your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your

-name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was

-not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the

-whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows,

-that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal

-came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself

-again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this

-time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come

-right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home,

-instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them

-everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and

-Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to

-something now.

-

-What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she

-listened. Pocket did both in his turn.

-

-It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming

-nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and

-ran outside without his hat.

-

-His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the

-doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn

-to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed

-at once where they had left off before breakfast.

-

-“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!”

-

-“Began what?”

-

-“Our row yesterday.”

-

-Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket

-now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour,

-his ear still on the street.

-

-“I haven’t.”

-

-Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt

-you?”

-

-“Of course you didn’t.”

-

-“But you must have thought me mad!”

-

-There was a slight but most significant pause.

-

-“Well, I never shall again.”

-

-“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces

-were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no

-nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and

-indignant shame on hers.

-

-“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one

-seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had

-thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved

-school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!

-

-But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate

-with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park

-murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park

-murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that

-swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.

-

-The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and

-trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;

-but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was

-solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.

-

-“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained

-benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would

-hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely

-hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the

-scoundrel took his paper back!”

-

-He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors

-recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was

-wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English

-boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in

-some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous

-scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared

-there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and

-handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s

-sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth.

-He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should

-go instead; she was not past the ballad stage.

-

-And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not

-conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of

-her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off

-the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.

-

-“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you

-two talking about while my back was turned?”

-

-“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart

-beat fast.

-

-“What about yesterday?”

-

-“Our scuffle in the other room.”

-

-“Is that all?”

-

-“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”

-

-“What did you find out?”

-

-“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He

-might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful

-face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did

-not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.

-

-“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”

-

-“You said she would think I was a patient.”

-

-“Exactly! A mental case.”

-

-“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged

-valour.

-

-“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll

-continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when

-I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,”

-continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good

-young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some

-consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”

-

-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself

-being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.

-

-“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think

-she’s associating with a lunatic?”

-

-“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the

-suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of

-such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in

-your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the

-horrid term in all sobriety.”

-

-“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!”

-

-“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”

-

-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his

-retort was a precocious inspiration.

-

-“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”

-

-“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses,

-“and what if it was?”

-

-“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”

-

-“He won’t lie long.”

-

-“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”

-

-“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”

-

-“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”

-

-Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the

-same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him

-without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of

-sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of

-sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them;

-the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it

-was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion

-till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon

-the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete

-control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.

-

-“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other

-room till you know your own mind again.”

-

-“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his

-teeth, although they chattered.

-

-“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of

-clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more

-patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”

-

-If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire

-that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he

-meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for

-thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity

-was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel

-rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the

-concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate

-words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace,

-in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner

-smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house.

-The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually

-took the doctor at his word about a book.

-

-If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was

-certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His

-library  was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote

-himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no

-public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books

-many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were

-photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or

-yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had

-probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list.

-Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for

-Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on

-somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was

-something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature

-who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several

-cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet

-determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar

-in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of

-those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute

-fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had

-made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too,

-appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her

-concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her

- uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was

-himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world

-like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs,

-the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his

-sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the

-conversation.

-

-The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of

-their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still

-before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No

-letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard

-at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning

-recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people

-or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl

-got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.

-

-“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big

-room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.”

-

-“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he

-glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression

-whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once

-it must be done, and done  quickly—with both doors open and the

-visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor

-must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.

-

-The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised

-voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched

-too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the

-sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an

-outer and an inner door in quick succession.

-

-“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it

-be?”

-

-“Hasn’t he any friends?”

-

-“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her

-great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as

-a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she

-whispered.

-

-“What?”

-

-“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at

-table.”

-

-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely

-penetrating now.

-

-“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

-

-“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“But I don’t understand the question.”

-

-“Is that true?”

-

-“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”

-

-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

-

-“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both

-instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at

-first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could

-hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a

-mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but

-there’s something I can and must ask you.”

-

-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

-

-“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing

-happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the

-Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I

-say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything

-points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the

-truth when he came in!”

-

-Pocket looked up at last.

-

-“I know the truth.”

-

-“About the arrest?”

-

-“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.”

-

-“Why not before?”

-

-“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up

-and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.

-

-“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”

-

-“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.”

-

-“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”

-

-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she

-thought.

-

-“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and

-his head lower.

-

-“You don’t mean——”

-

-She stopped aghast.

-

-“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a

-bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an

-accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not

-to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.

-

-“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm

-in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or

-done!”

-

-Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the

-intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to

-hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear

-had heard of either boy or girl during his absence.  Yet the boy was

-not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was

-trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang.

-Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face,

-which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet

-the doctor’s.

-

-But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but

-stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done

-something very clever indeed.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-BEFORE THE STORM

-

-

-Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally

-spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the

-theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to

-distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the

-postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a

-normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns

-were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church

-bells came as well through the open windows; then the street-door shut,

-and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it opened and shut

-again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though

-they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!

-

-Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner

-pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had

-seen it first; the Turk’s head perspired from internal and external

-heat, but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather

-with a red geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole

-of his black alpaca jacket.

-

-It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew

-what she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature

-conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory

-interest in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to

-Pocket Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not

-without his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the

-difference in Baumgartner’s voice when he addressed his niece, the

-humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a

-reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been none to

-see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had

-seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning. 

-But now it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of

-kindness against these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her

-endure them with a better grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to

-him, she could not have made sweeter amends than she did by many an

-unobtrusive little office. And she exchanged no more confidences with

-poor Pocket.

-

-Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was

-a strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of

-life’s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed

-before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket

-certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since

-the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one

-before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which

-Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no

-longer lying about the room as he had left it. There was a gap in its

-place in the shelf. The book had been taken away from him; it made him

-feel as though he were back again at his very first dame’s school.

-

-And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They

-were more mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you

-down the hill at the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical;

-and Pocket saw and heard himself puffing up the opposite hill to take

-his place for chapel call-over in the school quad. The fellows would be

-forming in squads there now, all in their Sunday tails or Eton jackets

-as the case might be; of course Pocket was in tails, though still

-rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or their

-rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind’s eye. Then came the cool and

-spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and

-rows of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own,

-giving a swing to chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How

-real it all was to him, and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the

-sunny room with the battle engravings over the book-cases, and the

-walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr. Baumgartner in and out in his

-alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for a walk with Blundell

-minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and got it over.

-And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and apple-pie

-with cloves in it at Spearman’s.

-

-The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner’s meals certainly

-provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the

-portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor

-praised without a single patriotic reservation.

-

-“Italy is a country where one can live,” said he. “Not that you must

-understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young

-fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a

-Sunday. No organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German

-bands which we in Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman

-every hour of the day, and no gaolbirds crying false news down the

-streets.”

-

-Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker’s eye, but found it

-fixed on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to

-say something quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the

-actual remark.

-

-“That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,” explained the

-doctor. “I give out no other address; then you only get your letters

-when you want them.”

-

-“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly wishing

-he would go that afternoon.

-

-“Not when I have visitors,” replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow.

-“And I look upon my patients in that light,” he added, with benevolent

-but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so

-than if she had still believed it to be the truth.

-

-Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece

-took refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an

-hour or more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that

-Lettice played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the

-makings of a pianist. The boy’s enthusiasm for the things he knew made

-her play then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the

-doctor, dozing in the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut,

-murmured his approval more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and

-Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and others that the

-boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the

-same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been

-there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and

-once or twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be

-the boy who had killed a man, however innocently, three days before!

-Could it be he whom the police might come and carry off to prison at

-any moment? Was it true that he might never see his own people any

-more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he could neither answer

-them nor realise their full import. They turned the old man in the

-chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he had seemed

-at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement even

-to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.

-

-Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home.

-Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something

-would be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his

-for ever; but as for his present situation, there were moments when

-Pocket felt rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned,

-and already in communication with the mainland.

-

-He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had

-come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be

-within a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the

-known circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the

-papers? Pocket felt he would have red ears all his life if that were

-done; and yet it had hurt him a little to gather from Baumgartner that

-so far there was nothing in the papers to say he had so much as

-disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or Friday.

-Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would

-have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!

-

-He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her

-afternoon rest. If he were at home, he would be going about quietly.

-Lettice would be reading or writing in the morning-room,  most

-probably. Father would be gloating over his rhododendrons with a strong

-cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how beautiful they were.

-Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and Fred were not

-playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far ahead to

-see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own

-voice telling them of his own experience—of this very hour at Dr.

-Baumgartner’s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that!

-Pocket looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids

-never quite closed, and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister

-effect. He noted the drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash

-from the Turk’s head sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the

-very phrases of a graphic portrait almost to his lips.

-

-Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the

-silver lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not

-silver at all but one of the baser metals of the human heart, how

-indignantly he would have denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the

-end!

-

-When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and

-sponge, but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for

-going higher up to his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only

-make more work, in a tone precluding argument. It struck Pocket that

-the doctor really needed sleep, and was irritable after a continuous

-struggle against it. If so, it served him right for not trusting a

-fellow—and for putting Boismont in the waste-paper basket, by Jove!

-

-There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first

-things Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in

-the opposite corner; and the schoolboy’s strongest point, be it

-remembered, was a stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive

-at the waste-paper basket, meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor

-minded his reading that book. But the question never was asked; the

-book was still in the basket when the doctor had finished drying his

-face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had seen the

-dead.

-

-“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired Baumgartner,

-solicitously.

-

-“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping his forehead

-and then his hand.

-

-“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there first!”

-

-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.

-

-“I do feel seedy,” he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it,

-“but I’m not going to faint. I’m quite well able to go upstairs. I’d

-rather lie down on my own bed, if you don’t mind.”

-

-His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was

-none the less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first

-close examination of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had

-picked out of the basket in the doctor’s room instead of Boismont’s

-book on hallucinations. There had been no hallucination about those

-scraps of paper; they were fragments of the boy’s own letter to his

-sister, which Dr. Baumgartner had never posted at all.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-A LIKELY STORY

-

-

-At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before,

-when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not

-only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of

-warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had

-followed by the only Sunday train.

-

-A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town

-which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for

-the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its

-beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and

-leafy coverts,  with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a

-permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the

-hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it,

-abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and

-entered the grounds on foot.

-

-A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was

-encountered and accosted before he reached the house.

-

-“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I

-want to see him about something.”

-

-Lettice flushed and shrank.

-

-“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”

-

-“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath

-away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no

-longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of

-town without a word?”

-

-“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had

-ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and

-my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday

-unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and

-was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only

-for the night. So it’s all my  fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything

-but what you’ve come down to tell us!”

-

-“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But

-if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have

-found out.”

-

-In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight,

-without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of

-provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt

-as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the

-bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from

-that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little

-artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the

-rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the

-house.

-

-The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had

-rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram,

-leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes

-that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.

-

-“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve

-been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you

-were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by

-the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”

-

-“Did you leave the motor behind?”

-

-“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”

-

-“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full

-breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or

-how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it

-through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a

-dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for

-your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t

-have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of

-us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”

-

-“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.

-

-“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”

-

-“Alive?”

-

-“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”

-

-The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who

-calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were

-blinded by the first ray of light.

-

-“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.

-

-“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really

-was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”

-

-“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.

-

-“What kind of interest?”

-

-“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked

-at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?”

-

-“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”

-

-“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”

-

-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.

-

-“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”

-

-“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve

-turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly

-tub.”

-

-“Do you know when she was to sail?”

-

-“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”

-

-“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother,

-if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He

-told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton,

-and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have

-been the boy.”

-

-Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing

-question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.

-

-“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where

-exactly did he see him?”

-

-“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d

-better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for

-Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the

-first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his

-name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some

-distinction.”

-

-The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush

-continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for

-he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes

-since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four

-hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up

-to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I

-preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried

-his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know

-him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered

-being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning!

-That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself

-was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have

-known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”

-

-“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about

-Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false

-scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker,

-there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth

-place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner

-lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on

-the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer,

-having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the

-Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to

-me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was

-the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I

-was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor

-lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants

-and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the

-arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to

-complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on

-the Thursday night!”

-

-“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.

-

-“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but

-I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you.

-It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my

-leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards

-went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish

-I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for

-an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must

-say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said,

-‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for

-last Thursday!’”

-

-“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I’m an inquiry

-agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you’ll tell me it may

-solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is was

-treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there’s no

-shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”

-

-“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn’t

-blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in

-store. ‘I’d tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I

-don’t really know it myself. He said it was  John Green—but his

-handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.”’”

-

-“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father.

-

-“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That

-settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”

-

-“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?”

-

-“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.”

-

-“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”

-

-“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!”

-

-“He might feel he had?”

-

-“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he’d done no such thing; in

-fact, he’s just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of

-some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the

-subject.

-

-“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy

-of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.

-

-“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal Lettice.

-

-“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.

-

-“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his

-story that you ought to hear.”

-

-And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully

-true version—up to a point—of poor Pocket’s condition and

-adventures—with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out—from the

-early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon

-of that day.

-

-Baumgartner had actually described the boy’s long sleep in his chair;

-it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began

-in earnest.

-

-“That’s a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I’d like

-to take him by the hand—and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of

-their dirty necks—and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”

-

-“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying

-out all night with asthma—it was enough to kill him—or to send him out

-of his mind.”

-

-“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of

-serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.

-

-“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he

-had been keeping something all this time.

-

-“Only something he’d kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a

-little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them

-after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr. Upton. You

-may not believe it. I’m not certain that I do myself. In the morning he

-had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you’d opposed it, but

-withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you don’t mind! In the evening

-he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the

-_Seringapatam_, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get

-aboard himself that night!”

-

-“I don’t believe it, Thrush.”

-

-“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”

-

-Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye.

-“I don’t say I altogether accept it myself; that’s why I kept it to the

-end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the

-improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that

-the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here’s a man, a well-known

-man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the

-Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to

-his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the

-doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily

-checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and

-disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about

-everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and

-never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are

-prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care

-to hear Dr. Baumgartner’s theory as to what has happened.”

-

-Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may

-as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to

-him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may

-have seen something that we shouldn’t guess.”

-

-“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now

-thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the

-foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn’t know the boy had come up

-to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood

-he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of

-mild spree—if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential

-lenses on the indignant girl.

-

-“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn’t yours, Mr.

-Thrush, so please go on.”

-

-“It’s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I

-was able to tell him, and we mustn’t forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he

-was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did

-meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been

-ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons;

-perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the

-conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I

-think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters,

-particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a

-thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to

-go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at

-home! What’s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship

-he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in

-her still—even if he has to stow away!”

-

-“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think of it. His head

-was full of those trashy adventure stories!”

-

-But Lettice shook hers quietly.

-

-“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction

-that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

-

-“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he

-actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself,

-but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many

-pounds of biscuit and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive

-into blue water. There’s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner

-the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he

-would be out of the world for three whole months.”

-

-“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to

-his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to

-sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?”

-

-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.

-

-“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of

-us will board her tomorrow if she’s up to time!”

-

-“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?”

-

-“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They

-don’t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have

-gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an

-old boatswain of the line who’s caretaker at the office, and the only

-man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I’ve since bearded one

-of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement

-confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at 

-Plymouth, so she certainly won’t sail again before to-morrow noon, even

-if she’s there by then. You will be in ample time to board her—and I’ve

-got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw—if you go down by

-the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.”

-

-The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him,

-he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the

-increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an

-uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and

-after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was

-pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene

-Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled

-him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared

-for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the

-man’s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the

-moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it

-fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the

-works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”

-

-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught

-before replying.

-

-“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my job

-is to prove things one way or the other.”

-

-“Then I’ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is

-absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.”

-

-Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or

-anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the

-window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy

-as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than

-usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train

-was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.

-

-“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it’s

-all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and

-it’ll just make the difference to me.”

-

-“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train

-showed signs of life at last.

-

-“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake

-that man’s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!”

-

-“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a

-contemplative pause.

-

-“I’ll take my chance of that.”

-

-“He said something about their both going out of town to-day—meaning

-niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left, and that

-seemed to remind him of it.”

-

-“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”

-

-“And losing the train?”

-

-“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him

-with me, as well as you?”

-

-“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you

-didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Not count on you”?

-

-“One of us will be quite enough.”

-

-“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the

-ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.

-

-“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at

-that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way

-in something.

-

-“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.

-

-“Want him yourself do you?”

-

-“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”

-

-“Why not? Where is he.”

-

-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.

-

-“In prison.”

-

-“In prison! Your man Mullins?”

-

-“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of

-complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-MALINGERING

-

-

-Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was

-still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were

-the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of

-tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back

-into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before

-Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray.

-

-“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see

-you yourself again by supper-time.”

-

-“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t force me, please”

-

-“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a

-tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your

-wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the

-window shut—so—and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it

-when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to

-disturb you.”

-

-And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling

-stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when

-an admirable doctor’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his

-forehead.

-

-“A little fever, I’m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were

-you. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have

-been through so much, my poor young fellow.”

-

-“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.

-

-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.

-

-“But there’s one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant

-whisper. “They’ve had that letter of yours at home quite a long time

-now—ever since yesterday morning, haven’t they?”

-

-The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut—he only hoped it was

-not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr.

-Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the

-discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed

-anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he

-could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of  the other’s

-trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the

-heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the

-wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth

-impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition!

-

-Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at

-first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner—a fear felt

-from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the

-sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a

-thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung

-in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such

-subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace

-of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he

-missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this

-sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.

-

-The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other

-side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the

-doctor’s stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was

-not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan

-had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His

-people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that

-was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even

-Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write

-than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have

-aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some

-fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond

-reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he

-could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible

-logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of

-a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken

-in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to

-betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already done so!

-

-His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner’s manner

-when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have

-been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the

-doctor’s behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very

-gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any

-supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite

-of that man’s bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It

-was against his reasoned policy to show  temper, and he was beginning

-to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You’ll think better of

-that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half

-an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle

-on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth,

-and Baumgartner eyed the boy.

-

-“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”

-

-“Nothing to eat.”

-

-“Is there any book?”

-

-“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. “There’s the book

-I was reading yesterday.”

-

-“What was that?”

-

-“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”

-

-“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable

-aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have

-destroyed it.”

-

-“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted.

-

-“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is

-no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is

-done and over.”

-

-“If it is over,” murmured the boy.

-

-“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.

-

-“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d got to say about

-somnambulism.”

-

-“Why?”

-

-Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite

-of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to

-know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their

-sleep.

-

-“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as

-well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot

-woke me and I found myself where you saw me.”

-

-“I’m glad you find it funny!”

-

-The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the

-increased asperity of Baumgartner’s manner, and his whole conduct about

-a harmless book, altogether inexplicable.

-

-“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.

-

-“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do

-your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human

-life less precious than the average dog’s!”

-

-And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human

-about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said

-since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the

-door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel

-exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated

-solicitude of the doctor’s final visit, with pipe and candle, when the

-one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket.

-

-“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten

-in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly midnight?”

-

-“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told

-you I wasn’t well.”

-

-“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.”

-

-“I can’t help that.”

-

-“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed

-to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the

-oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black

-nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more

-infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the

-boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless

-atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of

-looking on.

-

-“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it’s my own fault. I

-take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very

-first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law

-into my own hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or

-worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not

-strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it

-not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow—to trust me perhaps more

-than you have done?”

-

-It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue

-stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived

-from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this

-one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated

-Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take

-any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a

-brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed

-himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their

-own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy’s faith

-in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a

-symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.

-

-“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he

-had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”

-

-“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.

-

-“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,

-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”

-

-Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might

-have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came

-before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the

-way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer

-still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And

-Baumgartner’s had become a dreadful face in the boy’s eyes now; there

-was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual

-cruelty; and its smile—its new and strange smile it must have been that

-made him shudder and shake his head.

-

-“But, my young fellow,” urged the doctor, “it will do you so much good.

-And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!”

-

-Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself

-could have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was

-much to commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough

-as he moved it from side to side on the pillow.

-

-“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out with you, when

-you see I can’t eat a bite?”

-

-Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early,

-early lovely summer’s  morning; then they would see, would they not?

-Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from

-the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next

-morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself.

-Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about

-anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep

-revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to

-slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he

-was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.

-Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn

-up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead

-of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have

-that poor innocent man set free before the day was out.

-

-The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been

-secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price

-which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry

-boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one

-remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent

-him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was

-food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed 

-to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still

-untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of

-his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not

-used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not

-self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly

-tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament

-was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only

-shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a

-yard from his door.

-

-Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure

-lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath;

-and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to

-open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had

-done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene

-must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as

-free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the

-few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he

-could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of

-comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open

-eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last

-rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.

-

-Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised

-its note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds,

-which grew but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house.

-Somebody was knocking and ringing at the doctor’s door, not furiously,

-but with considerable pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow

-just at first, and flew from the open window to the landing outside his

-door. The house was in perfect darkness, and still as death in the

-patient intervals between each measured attempt to rouse the inmates

-without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must be

-Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the

-boy was about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the

-retreat of feet down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next

-landing as the doctor closed his bedroom door.

-

-Who could it have been? Baumgartner’s chuckle suggested the police; but

-in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last

-laugh, though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He

-could not close an eye for thinking of it, and listening for another

-knocking and ringing down below. But nothing happened  until the doctor

-returned between five and six, still with his meerschaum pipe, still in

-his alpaca jacket, but wearing also the goblin hat and cloak of their

-first meeting, to renew and intensify the animal fear that glued the

-boy to his bed.

-

-“It is a pity,” said Baumgartner, standing at the window which Pocket

-had left open. “The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a cloud

-in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who

-are making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose

-”—and his eyes blazed—“I’d feed you like a fowl!”

-

-“It’s so likely that I should do it on purpose,” muttered Pocket, with

-schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and they

-had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner’s.

-

-“You know best,” said the doctor. “But you are missing the morning of

-your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little

-garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your

-public school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more

-imagination, thank God!”

-

-Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he

-had the door open too, as the doctor’s step was creaking down the lower

-flight of stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not

-quite to the banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told

-him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only

-for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking

-back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was

-another sharp shutting. Food at last!

-

-It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that

-plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll

-to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he

-had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without

-plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at

-Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining

-all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early

-jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye

-properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second

-time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if

-that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end,

-by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the

-schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the

-discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes!

-

-Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it

-was a practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet

-such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked

-door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew

-where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using

-as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr.

-Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in

-the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no

-forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried

-both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room

-window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That

-mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and

-a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow.

-

-Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his

-hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window,

-and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his

-clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They

-were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there

-somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr.

-Baumgartner came back before his time.

-

-It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on

-the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was

-not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives

-beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs,

-among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had

-often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in

-the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little

-hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for

-breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.

-

-It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives;

-at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up

-like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He

-had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it,

-trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only

-partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind.

-

-At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside

-him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the

-whole lot crashing about his toes.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH

-

-

-The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and

-Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a

-mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn

-red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take

-the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in

-a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But

-it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with

-romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be

-still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature’s

-heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time

-to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the

-window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but

-determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark

-hair tumbling over her shoulders.

-

-“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.

-

-“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?”

-

-“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through

-the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.

-

-“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if

-you will!”

-

-And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But

-Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.

-

-“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with

-considerable severity.

-

-“I didn’t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning

-before he went out. They’re what I broke in for, and I’d a perfect

-right; you know I had! And while I’m about it I thought I might as well

-have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.

-And I’m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in

-the house of one of the greatest villains alive!”

-

-The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were

-all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his

-indignation, the girl’s eyes flashing hers.

-

-“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of

-what he said you were, if anything could be.”

-

-“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!”

-

-“He may have been justified.”

-

-“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver

-from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done

-with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if

-he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But

-that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my

-own poor people who may think me dead——”

-

-“Well?”

-

-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was

-breaking with his great grief and grievance.

-

-“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch

-the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday

-morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you

-don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I

-found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d

-never posted it at all!”

-

-Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes

-filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.

-

-“I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked,

-and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.

-

-“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so,  at any rate; it does to

-me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you,

-or why you let yourself be hidden.”

-

-“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?”

-

-The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she

-looked from it to him without recoiling.

-

-“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of

-horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an

-accident. And if it was an accident——”

-

-“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever

-happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours

-afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was

-frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should

-have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I

-lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I

-came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that

-morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my

-promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!”

-

-He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them

-know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But 

-now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was

-more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what

-he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s

-papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name.

-

-“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your

-account, if not on his!”

-

-Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last

-assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives

-and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and

-collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place,

-and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing

-much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his

-hands.

-

-“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time

-you’re ready to go, I’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.”

-

-They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open

-door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he

-was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto

-they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of

-appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown

-and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious or careless still, as

-with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise

-honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault of

-what he suddenly felt he simply must say.

-

-“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at last.

-

-“But I want you to,” she returned promptly and firmly, though not

-without a faint smile.

-

-It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get

-that out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as

-he had done when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man

-to his niece; all that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not

-think he was peculiar there; in fact, he thought romantically enough

-about the girl, with her dark hair all over her pink dressing-gown, and

-ivory insteps peeping out of those soft slippers especially when the

-vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making himself as presentable

-as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy in the same

-way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on the

-table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He

-could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner

-he went the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He

-hated the thought of deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such

-a girl! He could only face it with the fixed intention of coming back

-to the rescue of his heroine, he the hero of their joint romance. But

-for his own immediate freedom he was already unheroically eager. And

-yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives together, on the

-white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a boyish

-bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet

-been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it

-brandished by man or boy.

-

-The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier,

-because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives

-was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to

-atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees

-again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure

-sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he

-remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in

-the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in

-position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had

-done.

-

-“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical

-preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if

-my uncle came in now.”

-

-“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”

-

-“You never know!”

-

-Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited,

-but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.

-

-“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly

-what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give

-him leave to stop me if he can.”

-

-“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his

-leave before printing his negative.”

-

-Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny

-room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was

-a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and

-then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing

-the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative

-originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the

-carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood

-looking over his shoulder.

-

-“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in

-Kensington.”

-

-He turned to her quickly.

-

-“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”

-

-“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening

-print.

-

-“I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so

-interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as

-the one where it must have happened.”

-

-“Did he take the photograph then?”

-

-“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.”

-

-“Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!” cried Pocket, in

-uncontrollable excitement. “It’s not only the place; it’s the thing

-itself. Look at that man on the bench!”

-

-The girl took a long look nearer the window.

-

-“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it were

-falling off! He might be dying.”

-

-“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate was

-exposed!”

-

-She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent,

-but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner’s own confession of

-his attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to

-executions; he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly,

-clumsily, inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power

-which brought those incredible theories  home to his companion as

-forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was

-the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed

-his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was

-not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always

-felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now

-she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the

-broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was

-nothing to see; the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out

-the repulsive picture even as she held it in her hands.

-

-“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and

-strained with formless terrors.

-

-“I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human

-being I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether

-you like it yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this

-case in connection with—mine—and I see that one theory was that the man

-in this broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly

-believe that Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!”

-

-“He must have been there if he took the photograph.”

-

-“Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I’ve told you all

-he told me about it, but I haven’t told you all he said about the value

-of human life.”

-

-“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!”

-

-“Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these

-murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight

-from the flesh; that’s his own way of putting it, not mine.”

-

-“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?”

-

-“On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power

-over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my

-sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the

-chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s

-death, not after it.”

-

-“It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of

-one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he

-hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his

-charge.

-

-But there they were agreed.

-

-“He hadn’t one on him that morning; that I can swear,” said Pocket,

-impartially disposing of the idea. “Mine was the only one in that cape

-of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back

-into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or

-anywhere else about him, or I couldn’t have helped seeing it.” Phillida

-accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as

-if in recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy

-whom she could now understand his regarding in that light. If only he

-would go before the enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over

-him as he himself seemed to feel, then that was all the more reason for

-him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like

-that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and

-keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he

-insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression

-to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the

-brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,

-while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.

-

-He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost

-fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his

-small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand,

-and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder

-neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. His whole face  was

-altered; but so was his whole life. She could not understand his

-incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the chambers

-round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live

-cartridges in all six.

-

-“Don’t you see?” the words came pouring. “Not one of them’s been

-fired—it’s as I loaded it myself the other night! It can’t have been

-this revolver at all!”

-

-“But you must have known whether you fired or not?”

-

-“I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I’d only

-heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open

-air, though I do remember wondering I hadn’t felt any kick. But I was

-so dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it

-from me in such a rage that of course I believed I’d let it off. But

-now I can see I can’t have done. It wasn’t my revolver and it wasn’t

-me!”

-

-“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?”

-

-“I’ll swear he didn’t; but there’s another man in all this! There was

-the man they arrested on Saturday—the man I was so keen to set free!”

-

-The boy’s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What

-was it to him that his innocence implied another’s complicity? Only too

-characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point

-of view; but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed?

-There was the broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that

-was not enough for Phillida.

-

-She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose

-in his waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. “Then my uncle

-might have put in a fresh one while you were asleep.”

-

-“Why should he?”

-

-“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.”

-

-“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in

-the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away

-one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in

-the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s

-one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!”

-

-He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for

-herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He

-was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it

-meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that

-was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his 

-innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it.

-

-“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you

-should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.”

-

-And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping

-him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he

-followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back.

-

-“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her

-side at last.

-

-“Why not?”

-

-“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a

-man like that!”

-

-So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings

-or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious

-air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have

-flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it

-first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead.

-

-“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you

-say against my uncle behind his back?”

-

-“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for

-waiting.”

-

-“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?”

-

-“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”

-

-“How do you know he took the negative?”

-

-“I don’t, but——”

-

-“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick

-for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody

-like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he

-must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep

-with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all,

-simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days!

-Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought

-it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to

-another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as

-though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew

-him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years

-and years—and kind to you—far too kind——”

-

-The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it

-and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well

-of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not

-imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed

-her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her  instead. “Will you

-come with me?” he asked hoarsely.

-

-She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she

-could only shake her head.

-

-“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket

-extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida!

-You might live with us altogether!”

-

-She smiled very faintly at that.

-

-“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all

-we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do

-if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train

-about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come,

-Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!”

-

-He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or

-apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for

-indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once

-for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything

-was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out.

-

-“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only

-possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard

-all he said to me that first night, and been with  me in the dark-room

-when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how

-it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows

-he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad;

-but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.”

-

-“He would be as he’s always been to me.”

-

-“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.

-

-“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”

-

-“Because I can’t.”

-

-“Because you won’t!”

-

-“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be

-your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!”

-

-He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal

-obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He

-stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but

-he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the

-things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He

-might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to

-make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he

-thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that,

-for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the

-stairs.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVIII.

-A THIRD CASE

-

-

-In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of

-these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it

-was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one

-which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those

-endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an

-endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves

-up in his memory without a detail missing.

-

-There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida

-standing all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair

-about her shoulders, a picture that could never fade. Then there was

-the moment of the incriminating print, which the sun wiped out even as

-Phillida stood with it in her hands. That moment merged itself in the

-greater one of his discovery that the revolver was fully loaded, his

-inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal mischief in the

-Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him the time

-before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving way

-an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck

-together, and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of

-anger which dissolved his fears like snow in May.

-

-That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to

-be forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying

-absolutely on her account, and so far from giving him the slightest

-credit for it, or a single word of encouragement, she said all sorts of

-things and was off before he could answer one of them. It was not for

-Pocket to see the many ironies of that moment, and not for him to

-recognise the tonic property of his heroic grievance. He could only see

-himself at the foot of those stairs, first gnashing his teeth and not

-sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with his eye on the front

-door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the doctor’s key. Another

-click was to answer it; and at the point of the cocked revolver

-Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not only to

-the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to

-call to witness with her own ears.

-

-Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not

-incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he

-had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot

-forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen’s

-carts, boys  whistling past the house as though they were not in a

-wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his

-watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear

-shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though

-it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth)

-that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a

-state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the

-stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor

-over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle.

-

-So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon

-him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until

-Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.

-

-He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the

-quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly

-upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to

-provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys

-coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.

-

-“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.

-

-“I do now.”

-

-“Do you hear what it is?”

-

-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.

-

-“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.

-

-“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you hear? ‘Another awful

-murder!’ Now they’re saying something else.”

-

-“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.

-

-“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I can’t hear what!”

-

-“No more can I.”

-

-“I’ll open the door.”

-

-She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.

-The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away

-again in the distance.

-

-“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known man!”

-

-“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?”

-

-“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.”

-

-“But you’re worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling

-to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he

-had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever

-of impatience.

-

-Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o’clock in the morning;

-now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn,

-then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he

-might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not

-the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did

-not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally

-unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this

-criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes.

-Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of mind, as his elders

-and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more

-than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for

-the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida’s first words on

-returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were

-not the truth.

-

-“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.

-

-“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”

-

-“So he was the well-known man!”

-

-He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had

-seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by

-Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was

-not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida

-nodded with swimming eyes.

-

-“Did the doctor know him?”

-

-“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”

-

-“Why?”

-

-“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and gold-mines,

-and some financial paper. I never understood.”

-

-“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?”

-

-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out

-his.

-

-“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.

-

-“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.”

-

-“There is!”

-

-“I shall know it sooner or later.”

-

-“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what you

-like, and still be wrong!”

-

-There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found

-the paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it

-was so folded already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and

-more of it in the late corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P.,

-the well-known proprietor of the _Money-maker_, had been shot dead in

-front of his house in Park Lane. The murder had been committed in the

-early hours of the morning, before anybody was about except  Sir Joseph

-and his groom, and the person whom the groom described as the only

-possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the

-early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a

-photographer representing himself as concerned with the press, and

-desirous of obtaining an equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom

-thought it was to be taken in the Park, and was himself on his way back

-to the mews when the riderless horse overtook him. Mounting the animal,

-he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph dead in the road, and no trace

-of the “photographer” but a false beard and spectacles which he had

-evidently discarded in his flight, and which unfortunately precluded a

-close description of his appearance. But a hue and cry had been

-started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding in

-the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough

-search under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.

-

-Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her

-companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the

-next thing he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big

-chair in the back room.

-

-The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It

-was a period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each

-other through it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for

-his step no longer, but for more newsboys crying his capture to the

-world. And in the hours that they spent thus listening, and listening,

-the girl had much to say, that it did her good to say, about this Dr.

-Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved him in the past.

-

-Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to

-her for all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into

-hers, in the many years they had been more or less together. All she

-really knew of him was from her mother, whose elder sister he had

-married soon after the Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after

-marriage. He must have been settled in England many years before

-Phillida’s mother, herself an Englishman’s widow, came to keep house

-for him. The girl could not remember her father, but her mother had

-lived to see her in her teens, and in her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had

-seemed much as other men. It was only of late years that he had

-withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and buried

-himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His

-niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and

-she had always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he

-was going to send her  to college, he had only just given her six

-months in Switzerland. It was during those months that all his

-eccentricities had become pronounced; that he had given up servants,

-and taken to doing half the work of the house himself, with the casual

-aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals in from

-a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other

-matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in

-him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for

-her, whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own

-kinsfolk so much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could

-make her forget what he had done. She never could or would desert him;

-it was no use asking her again; but she took her callow champion’s

-hand, and wrung it with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by

-further prayers for his departure.

-

-And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale

-that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets,

-suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to

-make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so

-natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer.

-His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he

-been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a murderer would behave?

-Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with

-those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next

-room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary

-lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their

-dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living

-this ordinary life.

-

-The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of

-something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of

-her feeling for him, and of the schoolboy’s feeling for her. If he

-could have convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so

-cleared Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any

-other case, he would have done it for Phillida’s sake that afternoon.

-But with every hour of the doctor’s absence suspicions multiplied.

-Phillida herself was a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall

-symptoms of incipient insanity as instances of personal kindness; if

-one lost one’s reason, she broke a long silence to contend, there could

-be no question of regret and wrong. She was not so sure about crime and

-punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could be no question of that

-either; but in his heart he wondered how much method they must prove to

-hang a madman.

-

-The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy

-had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before;

-and strong excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting

-silently together in the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was

-deepening every minute. Suddenly there was a sound of small branches

-breaking in the garden. Pocket peeped out, standing back from the

-window at her entreaty.

-

-The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain

-into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure

-rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent

-double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long

-and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over

-his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under

-his arm.

-

-The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the

-door; but it was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have

-seen them; they were clasping hands as they shrank away from him with

-one accord. But he did not seem to see them at all. He stretched

-himself, as though he found it a relief to stand upright, and more

-mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took off the alpaca

-jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could have

-been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a

-hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out

-plainly enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper

-parcel; he had put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed

-the paper; it fell at Pocket’s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and

-nothing had come out of it but the stereoscopic camera, that either

-watcher could detect.

-

-And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of

-either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go

-upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead.

-

-“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set

-teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.

-

-“No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he

-mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at

-all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!”

-

-“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he

-comes!”

-

-He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again

-under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with

-the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in

-a hurry, as though he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed

-the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of

-keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room

-door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match

-struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow.

-The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark.

-

-Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered

-bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger

-photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there

-was a long period without a sound.

-

-“He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He

-caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it

-is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled

-ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the

-plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment;

-interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the

-wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!”

-

-One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as

-before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was

-being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the

-locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The

-red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door

-shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent

-figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no

-resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes

-before.

-

-“I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief

-communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the

-base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might

-think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he

-was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening

-breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length

-she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s

-head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a

-paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand.

-

-“Does he know I’m here?” he asked.

-

-“I don’t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he’s forgotten

-your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though he’d

-forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He

-seems so strange—so old!”

-

-Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. “I

-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?”

-

-“I don’t think so. What is it?”

-

-“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas

-while you were upstairs.”

-

-Phillida turned it out again without comment.

-

-“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed.

-

-“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in

-these—mysteries?”

-

-“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant

-is in prison.”

-

-“He isn’t!”

-

-“You said he was?”

-

-“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read

-it for yourself.”

-

-But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. “I doubt if there’s

-anything in that,” she said; “but what if there were? Does it make it

-any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If he’s guilty at

-all, it makes it all the worse.”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIX.

-THE FOURTH CASE

-

-

-The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of

-the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of

-moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the

-room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual

-cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to

-steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the

-shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds

-of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.

-

-It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs

-or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or

-less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a

-certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables,

-to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so

-that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as

-though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and

-every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in

-the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead.

-

-Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to

-their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was

-against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what

-he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was

-asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the

-longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a

-result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just

-went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near

-together as they would go.

-

-The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to

-wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some

-monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above

-and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night,

-and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the

-door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his

-lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney

-in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it.

-Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor

-was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew

-back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his

-nose, and crashed upon the path outside.

-

-The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was

-breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself;

-and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won.

-

-“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced

-solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when

-a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near

-my young fellow, I hope?”

-

-And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that

-the boy could have screamed with pain.

-

-“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket

-could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young

-lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have

-another word with you, young fellow.”

-

-The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest.

-They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was

-suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of

-mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by

-Baumgartner.

-

-Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the

-next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and

-his  own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an

-idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through

-the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down

-before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in

-the shadow of the far wall.

-

-The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it

-looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit

-the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly

-the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood

-out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the

-fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the

-revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that

-way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling

-watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in

-Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But

-on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe

-was well in blast.

-

-There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the

-right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the

-lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting

-out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not

-necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of

-sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up

-behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And

-Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap.

-

-The front door shut again.

-

-Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was

-a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side

-of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate,

-and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his

-stride and darted over into the open road.

-

-Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure

-stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy

-to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in

-gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a

-backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another

-glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the

-spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the

-distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once

-the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets

-were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of

-dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were

-dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day,

-because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to

-make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the

-cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was

-sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a

-motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road,

-which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a

-visible mile of asphalt to itself.

-

-Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car

-itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous

-mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles

-were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a

-second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from

-the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel.

-Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step

-fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in

-custody across the road.

-

-“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did

-not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.

-

-“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still

-patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.

-

-“Only last night when I wired.”

-

-“And where?”

-

-“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”

-

-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.

-

-“Why, I never saw you before this minute!”

-

-“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two.”

-

-“Then why didn’t you wire before?” demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to

-mask his own emotion with a little heat. “I didn’t get it till after

-nine o’clock—too late for the evening train—but I wasn’t going to waste

-three hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on

-my way to the address you gave.”

-

-“It was plumb opposite Baumgartner’s. I mounted guard there the very

-night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after

-him!”

-

-“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,

-my dear boy?”

-

-The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick

-succession; but the first was repeated on the boy’s hang-dog admission

-that he had been hiding.

-

-“Hiding, Tony?”

-

-Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. “But at all events

-we found you better employed,” he said to Pocket, “and the sooner we

-all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying

-this rascal by the heels.”

-

-“Take it up, then!” snapped Mr. Upton. “Jump into the motor, and bring

-the brute to me when you’ve got him! I want to speak to my boy.”

-

-He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that

-passed between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of

-his child who had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his

-head outside the story he extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket

-told it very volubly and ill; he would not confine himself to simple

-facts. He stated his suspicion of Baumgartner’s complicity in the Hyde

-Park affair as though he knew it for a fact; cited the murders in

-Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of the same handiwork, and

-yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was not Dr.

-Baumgartner’s at all.

-

-“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?”

-

-“He was unarmed the other morning. I’m quite positive of that. And his

-niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the

-house.”

-

-“Well, he’s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one! It’s time we

-laid hold of him. Where’s Mr. Thrush? I thought you’d taken him on in

-the car?”

-

-This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers

-about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like

-his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette

-and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts

-being that he had nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton

-had incontinently taken into his own less experienced hands.

-

-“The car won’t take anybody anywhere to-day,” explained the chauffeur,

-with his cigarette behind his back. “I shall have to get a lorry to

-take the car.” He held his head on one side suddenly. “There’s a bit o’

-tyre trouble for somebody!” he cried, grimly.

-

-Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not

-unlike the bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it

-was that. He caught his father’s arm, and whispered in his father’s

-ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the

-asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of

-drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves

-and a few who followed. The hog’s back of a still more deserted bridge

-arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing

-against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they ran a peculiarly

-shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.

-

-“P’lice!” screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily

-spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own

-infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket

-panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the

-suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle.

-It was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the

-bridge, and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to

-pass an intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it

-on a parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket

-panted after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into

-a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too

-dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with

-a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the

-Surrey shore.

-

-The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate

-opposite the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the

-Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose

-upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some

-nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a

-number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly

-lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to

-appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant,

-before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living

-people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing

-together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the

-policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who

-had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in

-dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring

-cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden

-object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round

-and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another

-murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of

-death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only

-the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the

-boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr.

-Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming the river or hiding

-among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the

-group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape?

-The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could

-see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living

-legs.

-

-“Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching

-himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of

-the fun.

-

-“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the

-usual stite o’ mind.”

-

-“Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot

-’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im

-in.”

-

-Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father

-was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles,

-who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his

-trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he

-had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination

-to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry

-escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the

-murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XX.

-WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP

-

-

-Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the

-gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy

-and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they

-brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and

-horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they

-replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and

-a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to

-express in words.

-

-“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do it

-himself?”

-

-Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief,

-to dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.

-

-“It’s the one thing they are sure about,” said he. “In the first place

-no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera either,

-though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.

-That’s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the

-spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn’t have been

-fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been

-instantaneous. So it’s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane

-yesterday or the one in Hyde Park last week; there’s evidently some

-maniac prowling about at dawn, and shooting down the first person he

-sees and then vanishing into thin air as maniacs seem to have a knack

-of doing more effectually than sane men. But the less we jump to

-conclusions about him—or anybody else—the better.”

-

-The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and

-yet it startled her as an index of what must have passed already

-between father and son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff

-man should know as much as the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as

-a comrade in calamity. Yet she could not expect it to be otherwise.

-

-“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and fell

-again. “Oh! what must you think?”

-

-“It’s no good thinking,” he rejoined, with almost a jovial kindness.

-“We’re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see each other

-through before we think. Not that I’ve had time to hear everything yet,

-but I own I can’t make head or tail of what I have heard. I’m not sure

-that I want to. I like a man’s secrets to die with him; it’s enough for

-me to have my boy back again, and to know that you stood by him as you

-did. It’s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says it wasn’t your

-fault he didn’t come away long ago; and it shan’t be mine if you stay

-another hour alone in this haunted house. You’ve got to come straight

-back with us to our hotel.”

-

-They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted

-chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the

-walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of

-latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the

-murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they

-had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path

-outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and

-vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and

-depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be

-that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his

-simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of

-reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already

-clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and

-Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she

-declared she never could.

-

-“But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a

-young girl like you alone  in the day of battle, murder and sudden

-death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay

-here. Have you no other relatives in London?”

-

-“None anywhere that I know much about.”

-

-“That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt

-them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but

-you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.”

-

-He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added

-supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had

-indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more

-warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return

-to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later

-in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and

-leave the deserted house in some semblance of order.

-

-But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end;

-most of the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation

-of the dead man’s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in

-the dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she

-had already seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another

-of a man lying in a heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put

-to dry openly  in the rack, the wood of which was still moist from the

-process. Phillida only held it up to the light an instant, and then not

-only smashed both these negatives, but poured boiling water on the

-films and floated them down the sink. The bits of glass she put in the

-dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly done so when the

-first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was succeeded by a

-very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number of

-questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that

-suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary

-made any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but

-another of the perfectly random series which had already thrilled the

-town, but on which no light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of

-the murdered men. A third official came to announce that the inquest

-was to be opened without delay, at two o’clock that afternoon, and to

-request Phillida to accompany him to the mortuary for the formal

-identification of the deceased.

-

-That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled

-herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she

-found it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing

-here, save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had

-given back the  look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the

-girl was just old enough to associate with the dead man’s prime. She

-was thankful to have seen him like this for the last time. She wished

-that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for

-then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find it

-easier to disbelieve from this hour.

-

-“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered,

-impressed by her strange stare.

-

-“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen him look for

-years. There are worse things than death!”

-

-She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private

-sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had

-no desire to know a dead man’s secrets. He had found his boy; that was

-quite enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more

-freely on the subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making

-up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he

-had found him without the aid of police or press, and so not more than

-a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr.

-Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from

-his wife’s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing

-to hush it up on the boy’s account  if only it were possible to do so;

-but would it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at

-the inquest all mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle’s house?

-Phillida promised to do her best, and it proved not only possible but

-easy. She was questioned as to the habits of the deceased so far as

-they explained his presence on the Embankment at such a very early

-hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a single person who could

-conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr. Baumgartner as to wish

-to take his life, the witness answered in the negative, and the coroner

-bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the character of

-the murder, but he had put the question for form’s sake. The only one

-which caused her a moment’s hesitation arose from a previous answer,

-which connected the doctor’s early ramblings with his hobby of

-instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning?

-Phillida thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it

-certainly was not in the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he

-knew that his boy’s name had been on the tip of the witness’s tongue.

-And there was a sensation in court as well; for here at last was a bone

-for the detectives, who obtained a minute description of the missing

-camera, but grumbled openly that they had not heard of it before.

-

-“They never told me they hadn’t got it,” explained Phillida to the

-coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the

-court on the conclusion of her evidence.

-

-On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as

-much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared

-with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the

-poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had

-been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in

-a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men

-had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster

-thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss

-Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and

-Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her

-at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her

-mourning.

-

-Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and

-order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive

-straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the

-murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while

-listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor  in

-the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had

-described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the

-scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It

-included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street

-and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the

-Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He

-had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning

-he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of

-the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned

-round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There

-might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the

-flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been

-invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere.

-Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up

-Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in

-time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all

-he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than

-the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had

-he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the

-river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering

-sign or trace of human being.

-

-Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she

-proceeded to the spot in order to go over the ground for her own

-satisfaction. This did not make it easier to understand. It had come on

-to rain heavily while she was in the shop; the shining Embankment was

-again practically deserted, and she was able to carry out her

-experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen steps up

-Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and quite

-realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,

-hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden

-by the long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man

-could have been seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran,

-and the murderer must have run like the wind to get away as he had

-done. The gates through the garden, back and front of the statue, had

-not been opened for the day when the murder took place, so Phillida in

-her turn made a half-circuit of the island to get to the spot where the

-body had been found, but without taking her eyes off the spot until she

-reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by nothing short

-of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the

-policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done.

-He might have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his

-furthest point distant, if the gates had been open as they were now;

-but they had been locked, and he could not have scaled them unobserved.

-Neither would it have been possible to take a header into the river

-with the foreshore as described by the same witness. Yet the murderer

-had either done one of these things, or the flags of the Embankment had

-opened and swallowed him.

-

-The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have

-fallen, and in her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but

-the problem which engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened;

-but how could it have happened? She raised her umbrella and peered

-through the rain at a red pile of many-windowed flats; had that Argus

-of the hundred eyes been sleeping without one of them open at the time?

-Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in the narrow garden,

-standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its granite base, as

-though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike the

-colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the

-fixed eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another

-character as the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that

-stony stare, to distract it from the river to herself, and to  her

-fevered fancy the grim lips smiled contemptuously on her and her

-quandary. He knew—_he_ knew—those grim old eyes had seen it all, and

-still they stared and smiled as much as to say: “You are looking the

-wrong way! Look where I am looking; that way lies the truth you are

-poor fool enough to want to know!”

-

-And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over

-the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming

-of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that

-early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry

-and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore,

-black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point

-that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine

-hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding

-wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large

-cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,

-finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.

-

-Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat

-sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was;

-but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing

-camera of the murdered man.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXI.

-AFTER THE FAIR

-

-

-Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street

-was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the

-sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had

-happened to him except a fairly recent shave.

-

-“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two

-were closeted.

-

-“Do you ever read your paper?”

-

-“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.”

-

-“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.”

-

-“_You_ did, Thrush?”

-

-“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.”

-

-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush

-mannerism.

-

-“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!”

-

-“If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the

-corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I

-provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again.

-Blessed be the song of the Thrush!”

-

-“You say you provided him?”

-

-“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only

-with his own consent.”

-

-“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up

-with it now.”

-

-“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his

-client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my

-career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense.

-Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d

-done?”

-

-“Of course.”

-

-“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same

-thing?”

-

-“Not you, Thrush?”

-

-“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He

-jumped to it from scratch!”

-

-“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”

-

-“From the word ‘go.’ ”

-

-“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”

-

-“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two

-independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities

-was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in

-his life.”

-

-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s  flippancy. He looked

-at Thrush with a shining face.

-

-“And you never told me what was in your minds!”

-

-“It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you,

-in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time

-we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.

-

-“You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr.

-Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe

-it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?”

-

-Thrush emptied his glass at once.

-

-“Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the

-other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him

-through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!”

-

-“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their

-own.”

-

-“I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown

-before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily

-interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your

-question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your

-boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping

-in the Park,  let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and

-that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.”

-

-“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr.

-Upton, sadly.

-

-“So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole

-thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his

-presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman

-of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it

-on me with excellent effect.”

-

-“Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you

-suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for

-that particular boy.”

-

-“It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to

-believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your

-boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better

-than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a

-moment?”

-

-“I do _so_, God bless her!”

-

-“That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never

-had quite accepted in my heart. That’s another story, and you’re only

-in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on

-Saturday, I thought I’d like to know a little more about him, not from

-outsiders but from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the

-British Museum to have a look at his books. It was after hours for

-getting books, but I made such representations that they cut their red

-tape for once; and I soon read enough to wonder whether my grave and

-reverend seignior was quite all there. Spiritualism one knows, but here

-was spiritualism with a difference; psychic photography one had heard

-about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad or bad! When a

-gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to snap-shoot

-the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at

-Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor.

-Will you believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the

-very thing I shall presently prove to have been the truth, and that I

-dismissed it from my mind as the wildest impossibility?”

-

-“I don’t see how you’re going to prove it now,” remarked Mr. Upton, who

-hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the girl who had

-been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which there

-was no necessity to express.

-

-“I shall want another chat with your lad when he’s had his sleep out,”

-replied Thrush, significantly; “he’s told me quite enough to make me

-eager for  more. But you haven’t told me anything about your own

-adventures?”

-

-And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the

-ironmaster was only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he

-was both brief and amiable.

-

-“What have I to tell compared with you?” he asked. “Those damned old

-wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they

-weren’t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium

-lot broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want

-to know is what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that

-great moment this morning.”

-

-“I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,” replied Thrush. “The

-merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always apartments

-of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in half

-the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner’s, and

-I’d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course I

-explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady’s son

-embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at

-the front window all night, for no better reasons than my strong

-feeling about the doctor’s writings, and your daughter’s disbelief in

-his yarn about her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird

-came out,  and I was after him like knife. I tracked him to

-Knightsbridge without much difficulty, excepting the one of avoiding

-being spotted, but there that happened by the merest accident. He was

-passing under the scaffolding outside the church they’re pulling down

-there, and he’s so tall he knocked his hat off. I admit I was too

-close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I shouldn’t have

-recognised him if I hadn’t seen him start out. He was wearing a false

-beard and spectacles!”

-

-“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his breath.

-

-“Well, I confess it’s something like it in this case; but it was a very

-awkward moment for me. I hadn’t to let him see I knew him, nor yet that

-I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as

-openly as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving

-poor old Mullins in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay.

-We went back to my new rooms together, which I needn’t tell you I liked

-so much that I brought a suit-case and took them for a week. Of course,

-as we had lost the run of Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch

-for his return. Mullins took that on while I got some sleep; when I

-awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest, and I won’t say I didn’t

-suspect who’d done it. Perhaps I didn’t tell you he had his camera with

-him as  well as beard and goggles, and all three figured in the first

-reports.”

-

-“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?”

-

-“None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I

-wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner’s return; but

-in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a

-room overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too

-much class for that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked

-going back to prison for the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both

-man and boy before I sent that wire.”

-

-“And you left my son in that murderer’s clutches a minute longer than

-you could help?” It was a previous incarnation of Pocket’s father that

-broke in with this.

-

-“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least

-sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended,

-murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the

-others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an

-actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the

-way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the

-show, was desperately against calling in the police under any

-circumstances.  He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the

-house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape.

-I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in

-the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.”

-

-Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence

-which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their

-case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance

-against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his

-curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified.

-

-“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with

-characteristic absence of finesse.

-

-“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you

-see.”

-

-“But whatever could the object have been?”

-

-“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the

-ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which

-he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting

-salt on the lad.”

-

-“Tony?”

-

-“Yes.”

-

-“You puzzle me more and more.”

-

-“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy,

-of fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by

-accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the

-news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick

-as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been

-within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed,

-the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It

-didn’t come off.”

-

-“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was

-going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally

-satisfied himself of his own innocence.”

-

-Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of

-fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes

-blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose

-underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the

-drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.

-

-“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of

-the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this

-thing, he’s got it; even if not——”

-

-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined

-his whole flushed face.

-

-“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious

-alacrity. “Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at

-London Bridge to-day!”

-

-He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office

-in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume

-all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already

-far advanced.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXII.

-THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA

-

-

-The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better

-preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked

-with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And

-Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her

-possession.

-

-“The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was

-an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It

-was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another

-creature out in it except myself. I don’t believe a single soul saw me

-run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first

-for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof,

-and carried it up to the King’s Road before I could get a cab. But I

-never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain

-that’s the best luck of all!”

-

-“Why?”

-

-“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he took a

-last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!”

-

-“That’s an idea.”

-

-“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it

-still, and you could develop it!”

-

-The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the

-boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.

-

-“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything to develop;

-the slide’s been open all this time, you see.”

-

-“I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the

-water. Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the

-light, oughtn’t it?”

-

-“I’m afraid there isn’t a dog’s chance,” he murmured, as he handled the

-camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was

-one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come

-through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely

-broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to

-shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and

-sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in

-his hand.

-

-“That settles it,” remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate

-stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was

-cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.

-

-“I am sorry!” exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of

-glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some

-infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. “I’m not sure

-that you weren’t right after all; what’s water-tight must be more or

-less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what’s all this?

-The other side oughtn’t to bulge like that!”

-

-He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and

-weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain

-another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which

-had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable

-convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded

-packet of MS. leapt out.

-

-“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her

-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.

-

-“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up.

-

-“It must be what he was writing all last night!”

-

-“It is.”

-

-“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him

-closely as he read to himself:—

-

-“_June_ 20, 190—.”

-

-

-“It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret

-of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the

-year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according

-to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my

-task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice

-to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the

-underlined word advisedly; some would substitute ‘monomania,’ but I

-protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that

-fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at

-my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should

-feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever

-deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly

-already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I

-shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death——”.

-

-

-“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and

-he was breathing hard.

-

-“He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He’s

-said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!”

-

-“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she found a

-crumb of comfort in the thought.

-

-“I’m not so sure about that.”

-

-“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.”

-

-“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!”

-

-“Then let us read it together. I’d rather face it with you than

-afterwards all by myself. We’ve seen each other through so much, surely

-we can—surely——”

-

-Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim

-eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab

-figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr.

-Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing

-distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could

-find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of

-appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked,

-and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her

-coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the

-rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that

-streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and

-poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the

-dreadful document.

-

-This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now

-the other whispering a few sentences aloud:—.

-

-“What I have called my life’s ambition demands but little explanation

-here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have

-given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are

-still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on

-spirit photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and

-other periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight

-of the Soul,’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last

-year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter

-which has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare

-and to write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme

-measures I have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious

-criticism by the scientific press, but more generally received with

-ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the Englishman’s attitude

-towards whatsoever is without his own contracted ken, my article, the

-work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days. I had

-essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new

-idea, and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore

-of unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin

-press from that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph

-about the psychic photographer which went the rounds about a year ago.

-Yet I was that photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer

-to whom the London hospitals refused admittance to their pauper

-deathbeds, thronged though those notoriously are by the raw material of

-the British medical profession. Begin at the bottom of the British

-medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and most frequent

-opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of human

-dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,

-without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the

-purity of his aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than

-mine. It is as high above that of your ordinary physician as heaven

-itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to

-lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that

-there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which

-we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent

-life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it

-is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the

-opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over

-knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion

-invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is

-deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to

-supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the

-senses that cannot deceive, rather than to the imagination which must

-and does? But I am trenching after all upon ground which I myself have

-covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to relate a personal

-narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it that to

-me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of

-so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that

-all who saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit

-photography. It is a path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks

-and charlatans, and by false guides who rival the religious fanatics in

-the impudence of their appeal to man’s credulity. Even those who bear

-the lamp I hold aloft are too often jugglers and rogues, to whose

-wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of photography lends itself

-all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the production of impossible

-pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if the spiritual

-apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing

-easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist

-has yet succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the

-whole problem of spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of

-communication with disembodied spirits at the single will of the

-embodied; hence the periodical exposure of the paid medium, the smug

-scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of genuine exploration

-beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment, and only one,

-at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a particle

-of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at

-which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human

-watcher sees merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a

-phenomenon invisible to the human eye has been detected and depicted by

-that of the camera, as everybody knows who has the slightest

-acquaintance with the branch of physics known as ‘fluorescence.’ The

-invisible spirit of man surely falls within this category. To the

-crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible as elusive and

-intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign opportunity is

-gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of the

-soul.”

-

-“I say no more than ‘often’ because there are special difficulties into

-which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at least be

-minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,

-instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would

-hurt nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present

-have only their Churches’ word for the existence of an eternal soul in

-their perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few

-experiments, than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen

-centuries. Yet how are my earnest applications received, in hospitals

-where men die daily, in prisons where they are still occasionally put

-to death? I am refused, rebuffed, gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I

-am driven ultimately to the extreme course of taking human life, on my

-own account, in order to prove the life eternal. Call it murder, call

-it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of a lethal

-chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the

-inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an

-individual as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him

-worse than this world. I can only say that I have not deprived the

-State of one conceivably profitable servant, or cut short a single life

-of promise or repute. I have picked my few victims with infinite care

-from  amid the moral or material wreckage of life; either they had

-nothing to live for, or they had no right to live. Charlton, the

-licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I ever knew; in

-the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he

-wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to

-which an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed.

-Charlton had just been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and

-refusing to leave without an extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was

-indeed saturated with alcohol and honeycombed with disease; repulsive

-in appearance, and cantankerous in character, his earnings were so

-slender that he was pitifully clad, and without a night’s lodging

-oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and was suffering

-from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I resolved

-to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to photograph

-the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present itself

-for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at

-last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not

-another being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had

-purchased second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on

-the seat. Yet the weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the 

-authenticity of the suicide, despite my final precaution of stuffing a

-number of cartridges into the dead man’s pocket; pot-house associates

-came forward to declare that he could never have possessed either the

-revolver or its price without their knowledge. Hence the coroner’s

-repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is to be feared that

-the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public interest in

-its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more than an

-academic interest in the case.”

-

-“To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very

-few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb

-of my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for

-this, and the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found

-among my negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a

-unique photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the

-super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it

-would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not

-only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal

-pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my

-elaborate attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The

-next case should be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the

-shot to be fired, and the photograph taken, at the same range and all

-but at the same instant. There would be no further point in leaving the

-weapon behind, so I was free to choose the one best suited to my

-purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually

-I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already explained

-itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer

-of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it

-will not be loaded when found.”

-

-There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand

-about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For

-Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless

-rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long

-ago have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and

-already it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to

-discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through

-the next passages.

-

-“The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many

-weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have

-described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in

-readiness for another attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul

-in consecutive fractions of a second. But the right man was never in

-the right place at the right time; one saw him by the dozen in a crowd,

-but the people one met all by themselves, in the early summer mornings,

-stayed one’s hand repeatedly by the eager brightness of their eyes or a

-happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at the Brompton Hospital,

-whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was cheated of a

-merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the dawn

-and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch

-whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday

-morning. I knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton

-circle, but it was quite by chance that I followed his uncertain

-footsteps through the Park, and saw him go deliberately to bed in the

-drenching dew. His face filled in his tale; it was another farrago of

-privation and excess. This was the type that caused me no compunction:

-having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my invention provides, I

-despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his hat over his

-eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may be

-reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter

-coincided with the last clutter in his throat.

-

-“I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before

-firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make

-another wary survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could

-see a considerable distance in three directions, and in none of these,

-neither right nor left along the path, nor yet straight ahead across

-the grass on the edge of which my victim lay, was a living creature to

-be seen. This was very reassuring, as I felt that I could see a good

-deal farther than the report of my small automatic pistol was likely to

-be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting cases,

-especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how

-seldom it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the

-fatal shot. In the fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery

-behind some iron palings, I looked last, for I was standing with my

-back that way. How shall I describe my sensations on turning round?

-There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on the other side of the

-palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in his right

-hand!

-

-“At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and

-frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a

-third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were

-dank with dew. His eyes were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had

-been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all

-probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this,

-however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was disastrously inspired

-to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never struck me that

-he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was with a

-wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if

-he knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I

-had the wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm

-enough to help me convince the child that he really had fired the shot;

-but, since he could not see it for myself, I was not going out of my

-way just then to tell him it was a fatal shot. Already I regretted that

-I had gone so far, and yet already I saw myself committed to a course

-of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The boy became convulsed

-with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his story when the

-body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot, at the

-latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me

-through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with

-all sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had

-to keep him there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and

-implicate  me more readily than ever after what he had seen of me at

-home? I had to keep him there—I repeat it—alive or dead. And I was not

-the kind of murderer (if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent

-life, if I could help it, to preserve my own; on the contrary, I had,

-and I hope I always should have had, humanity enough at least to do

-what I could for a fellow-creature battling with an attack which almost

-threatened to remove him from my path without my aid.”

-

-There followed a few remarks on Pocket’s character as the writer read

-it. They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they

-betrayed a profound disdain for the typically British institution of

-which Pocket was too readily accepted as a representative product. His

-general ignorance and credulity received a grim tribute; they were the

-very qualities the doctor would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he

-appeared to have enjoyed the youth’s society, his transparent honesty,

-his capacity for enthusiastic interest, whether in the delights of

-photography or in the horrors of war. Baumgartner seemed aware that he

-had been somewhat confidential on both subjects, and that either his

-contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the matter of psychic

-photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on the other

-hand,  he “greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two and two

-together, at these so-called public schools”; and, after all, it was

-not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.

-

-“The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the

-beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary,

-was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all

-along. He had regarded it from the first as ‘the certain beginning of

-the end’; from the first, he had been prepared with specious

-explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually

-arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation

-of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not

-been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It

-was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which

-could only have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted

-it, but which the boy himself had discovered never to have been posted

-at all. There was a sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood

-into which Baumgartner’s intuition of the boy’s discovery had thrown

-him on the Sunday night.”

-

-“It was then,” he wrote, “that I formed a  project which I should have

-been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so

-if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my

-second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great

-a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable

-(even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure.

-What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had

-no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and

-spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were

-the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer.

-I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities

-in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought of the

-saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my

-acquaintance, of a ‘light’ specialist I know of who is destroying

-himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the

-slums; but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are

-much too valuable for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a

-compensating benefit to mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought

-of the boy upstairs. I had not meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of

-some promise, is only less sacred to me than a mature life rich in

-beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was going to be my ruin.

-I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the letter; he

-would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the

-work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was

-not going to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter

-into here, and I intended to take more than his life while I was about

-it. But he never gave me the chance. I did my best to get him to go out

-with me this morning. But he refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a

-dog the water. He said he was ill; he looked ill. But I have no doubt

-he was well enough to make his escape soon after my back was turned. I

-see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes I took away from

-him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that; but, to

-tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my return.”

-

-The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy

-broke in with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the

-Sunday night and the Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the

-doctor’s house. He declared that nothing short of main force would have

-dragged him out-of-doors that morning, that he felt it in his bones

-that he would never come back alive. Then he would be sorry he had said

-so much. It only increased his companion’s anguish. She was reading

-every word religiously, with a most painful fascination; it was as

-though every word drew blood. There was a brief but terrible account of

-the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own house in Park

-Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the one

-occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and

-that only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so

-intensely that a “straight” interview was out of the question. As it

-was he had escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft,

-creeping into a carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong

-side when it drove round to its house. Baumgartner described the

-incident with a callous relish, as perhaps the most exciting in his

-long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent return, in

-propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of a

-sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as

-follows, in less careful language and a more flowing hand:—

-

-“I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day’s excitement must

-have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got

-back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his

-clothes. I didn’t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative

-to develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute

-failure from the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason

-as its predecessors. South African mines may produce gold and diamonds

-(licit and illicit!) but their yield in souls is probably the poorest

-to the square mile anywhere on earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his

-gross carcass. So there was an end of him, and a good riddance to

-rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all night. I have thought

-of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate statement that I

-have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me strange

-pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to

-attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I

-not conscious of a moment’s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only

-sometimes have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause,

-perhaps half an hour ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I

-heard a footstep in the hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all

-this writing; it might be my imagination. I stole to my door, and as I

-opened it the one below shut softly. I waited some time, heard nothing

-more, went down with my lamp, and threw open the drawing-room door.

-There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting in the dark

-with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to be

-misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that.

-But somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark

-without a word, afraid to go to bed—afraid of me—made the blood boil

-over in my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I

-had pictured overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I

-am glad it missed him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was

-seeing his companion safe upstairs. If I had found him where I left

-him, God knows what violence I might not have done him after all. The

-boy has good in him, and more courage than he knows himself; again I

-say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life was not safe, but

-now I shall only take my own.

-

-“Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the

-common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in

-enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse

-than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar

-quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at

-my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind me, and I should have

-rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now they are

-waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where already

-it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and

-enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million

-facets of living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there;

-and as I have served others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be

-with better fortune than they have brought me. Who knows? It would be

-in keeping with the poetic ironies of this existence. At all events,

-unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a chance. I shall place the

-camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have fitted the shutter with

-a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do its double work

-as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my mind. I

-have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by

-the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent

-person, the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to

-the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one’s last

-instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to

-read what I fear they will describe as my ‘full confession.’ Well, it

-is ‘full,’ and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the

-document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall

-lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide

-it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would never

-see the light at all.”

-

-There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away,

-and wept over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness,

-while Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the

-muddy newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment’s

-hesitation went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her

-return she stood petrified on the threshold.

-

-Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter

-between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud

-metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the

-shutter snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward

-with a cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box

-without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens

-and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an

-automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be

-lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the

-second lens of the stereoscopic camera.

-

-Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was

-preceded by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there

-had been another cartridge in the pistol.

-

-“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this

-sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in

-quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”

-

-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him

-without a word.

-

-“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied

-altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve

-been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the

-pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen

-feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen,

-but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one

-bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit

-confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.”

-

-“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.

-

-“The police! I never thought of them.”

-

-“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl

-asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

-

-“What do _you_ mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his

-turn.

-

-“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away

-meanwhile.”

-

-“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you

-like with as well.”

-

-“They wouldn’t think so!”

-

-“They’ll never know.”

-

-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep

-it to yourself,” she said. “You would _have_ to tell.”

-

-“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you

-like!” he added, valiantly.

-

-“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”

-

-“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets

-dying with him?”

-

-“He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the

-mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as

-yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”

-

-She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and

-confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human

-boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in

-his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing

-their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet

-it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even

-then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit

-nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their

-penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting

-about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to

-Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and

-Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its

-subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace

-himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And

-now he had none whatever.

-

-“Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to

-a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to

-me!”

-

-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

-

-“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”

-

-Her eyes had filled.

-

-“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn

-anything in my life so far.”

-

-“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this

-terrible week?”

-

-And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away

-and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof,

-so that he might not see her tears.

-

-“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except

-yourself.”

-

-She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it,

-always, as much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all

-their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he

-think of a reward or look beyond those days.

-

-But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an

-automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS.

-They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was

-getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it

-was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any

-minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell

-him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little

-as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together

-they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

-

-Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where

-she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng.

-He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself

-as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who

-looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at

-the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo

-Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating

-a sensation.

-

-“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the

-Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”

-

-There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge,

-the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she

-aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through

-her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only

-retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the

-deep.

-

-She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a

-loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the

-genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who

-thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy

-townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own

-affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed

-themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.

-

-And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing

-but four words in enormous black letters:—

-

-CHELSEA INQUEST

-CAMERA CLUE!

-

-

-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to

-press it to his side.

-

-THE END

-

-

-Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading

-

-

-

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMERA FIEND ***

-

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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Camera Fiend by E.W. Hornung</div>

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online

-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you

-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the

-country where you are located before using this eBook.

-</div>

-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Camera Fiend</div>

-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: E.W. Hornung</div>

-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September 26, 2009 [eBook #30096]<br />

-[Most recently updated: January 30, 2021]</div>

-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>

-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>

-<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMERA FIEND ***</div>

-

-<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />

-</div>

-

-<h1>The Camera Fiend</h1>

-

-<h2 class="no-break">by E.W. Hornung</h2>

-

-<h4>

-London<br />

-T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.<br />

-Adelphi Terrace<br />

-1911

-</h4>

-

-<hr />

-

-<h2>Contents</h2>

-

-<table summary="" style="">

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap01">I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap02">II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap03">III. HIS PEOPLE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap05">V. THE GLASS EYE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. AN AWAKENING</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. BLOOD-GUILTY</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. POINTS OF VIEW</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap10">X. SECOND THOUGHTS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. ON PAROLE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. BOY AND GIRL</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. BEFORE THE STORM</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. A LIKELY STORY</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. MALINGERING</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. A THIRD CASE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. THE FOURTH CASE</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. AFTER THE FAIR</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-<tr>

-<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</a></td>

-</tr>

-

-</table>

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />

-A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily exemption

-from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away his remaining

-modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall, and would probably

-have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own study, had not an obvious

-way out of his difficulty been bothering him by that time almost as much as the

-difficulty itself. For it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket

-had been called &ldquo;a conscientious ass&rdquo; by some of the nicest fellows

-in his house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he

-did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a blue

-pencil and a briar pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can&rsquo;t have me, sir. He&rsquo;s got a

-case of chicken-pox, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

- The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured but

- laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you must come back to-night, and I&rsquo;m just as glad. It&rsquo;s

-all nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor of

-yours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on

-me, and then see what sort of night I have.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You could go up again to-morrow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I could, sir,&rdquo; replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate

-emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so acutely

-conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What else do you propose?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Spearman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the

-Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who are the Knaggses?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, sir; they go to

-Westminster now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And the lady you mentioned?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my  mother&rsquo;s; it was through

-her I went to Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s, and I&rsquo;ve often stayed there.

-She&rsquo;s in the Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord&rsquo;s.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that other

-lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no guile in any

-Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them resembled the great twin

-brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted a &ldquo;pocket edition&rdquo;

-on his arrival in the school. He had few of their other merits, though he took

-a morbid interest in the games they played by light of nature, as well as in

-things both beyond and beneath his brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit

-up half your nights with asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to

-Mr. Spearman, who was an average man. He had never disguised his own

-disappointment in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of

-outspoken and disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some

-sympathy with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning

-he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who was

-getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the two names and

-addresses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite sure they&rsquo;ll put you up, are you?&rdquo;

-&ldquo;Absolutely certain, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come straight back if they can&rsquo;t?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then run away, and don&rsquo;t miss your train.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to arrive

-very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished with more

-ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the best of them was

-framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its foreground was the

-nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down into the quad, where the

-fellows were preparing construes for second school in sunlit groups on garden

-seats. At that moment the bell began. And by the time Pocket had changed his

-black tie for a green one with red spots, in which he had come back after the

-Easter holidays, the bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled

-again he would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a world of

-buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel as good as

-anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in the corner seats

-did not dream of calling the youth an &ldquo;old ass,&rdquo; much less a young

-one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school were in the habit of

-employing the ameliorating adjective, but there were still a few fellows  in

-Pocket&rsquo;s house who made an insulting point of the other. All, however,

-seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was pleasant to cast off friend and foe

-for a change, to sit comfortably unknown and unsuspected of one&rsquo;s foibles

-in the train. It made Pocket feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost

-seventeen, and in the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in

-bed. He took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him

-good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously at the

-little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was transferred to a

-pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his paper, in which there were

-several items of immediate interest to him. Would the match hold out at

-Lord&rsquo;s? If not, which was the best of the Wednesday matinees? Pocket had

-received a pound from home for his expenses, so that these questions took an

-adventitious precedence over even such attractive topics as an execution and a

-murder that bade fair to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and

-having supped on the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in <i>Henry

-Dunbar</i>, the novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something

-like a murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying

-buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real crimes 

-in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself there too soon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose

-professional standing is never quite on a par with their material success. The

-injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it may be that his temper

-was at the root of the prejudice against him. He was never very amiable with

-Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had

-some call to complain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean to tell me,&rdquo; he expostulated, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;ve

-gone back to the cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you

-weren&rsquo;t a stupid schoolboy I should throw up your case!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more days and

-nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible resentment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only way I can stop an attack,&rdquo; he mumbled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; snapped the specialist. &ldquo;You can make yourself

-coffee in the night, as you&rsquo;ve done before.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t at school. They draw the line at that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then a public school is no place for you. I&rsquo;ve said so from the

-first. Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea

-voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She sails

-the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the subject

-of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to his

-undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following in his

-brothers&rsquo; steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might have had

-adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he might have been

-shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a tale beyond the dreams of

-envious athletes, if his people had but taken kindly to the scheme. But they

-had been so very far from taking to it at all, with the single exception of his

-only sister, that the boy had not the heart to discuss it now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an

-attack!&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;But there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be any.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are plenty of preventives,&rdquo; returned the doctor.

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is

-merely a palliative that does more harm than good in the long run.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good

-night without smoking I should be thankful.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep

-until to-morrow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from

-his bag.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Bompas, as they made an exchange. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t want you even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what

-the temptation must be when you can&rsquo;t get your breath. You will get this

-prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to bed

-to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in the morning.

-You say you are staying the night with friends; better give me the name and let

-me see if they&rsquo;re on the telephone before you go. I want you to go to bed

-early, tell them not to call you in the morning, and come back to me the moment

-you&rsquo;ve had your breakfast.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering whether he

-ought to have said positively that he was staying with friends when he might be

-going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been so short with him at first as to

-discourage unnecessary explanations; besides, there could be no question of his

-going back that night. And the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite

-forgotten in the train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.

-</p>

-

-<p>

- The time-table of that boy&rsquo;s day must speak for itself. It was already

- one o&rsquo;clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his

- breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley&rsquo;s card. At 1.15 he was munching a

- sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook&rsquo;s in Oxford Street.

- The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed by another; and

- a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas would undoubtedly have

- disapproved.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a placard

-with &ldquo;Collapse of Middlesex&rdquo; in appalling capitals. And at the

-station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord&rsquo;s for

-nothing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the theatres,

-and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s thrust

-itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for years. He had

-often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered being taken by his sister

-when a little boy at Coverley&rsquo;s, but she had refused to go into the

-Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at the time but sorry ever

-afterwards, because so many of the boys of those days had seen everything and

-seemed none the worse for the adventure. It was one of the things he had always

-wanted not so much to  do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of

-Horrors had frozen his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a

-criminological governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the

-budding criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and

-<i>Henry Dunbar</i> formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy had

-other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building, and enter

-eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but Pocket had

-no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band. And though history

-was one of his few strong points at school, the glittering galaxy of kings and

-queens appealed to him no more than the great writers at their little desks and

-the great cricketers in their unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and

-all. But when the extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he

-had passed down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was

-at work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his

-catalogue to bear on one of them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the schoolboy

-through a work on his father&rsquo;s shelves called <i>Annals of Our Time</i>.

-He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals  had kept him awake long

-after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not scowling and ferocious

-as he had always pictured them, but far more horribly demure and plump. Here

-were immortal malefactors like the Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek

-by jowl, looking as though they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete

-raiment, looking anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes

-their quick bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death,

-rusty pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face

-smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the waxwork

-about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own clothes, and the

-veritable dock in which many of them had heard their doom, they looked

-hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat not in the dock but on

-the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of him; and the schoolboy felt

-sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for the broad arrows on his poor legs,

-until he found out who it was. Then he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had

-first heard of Charles Peace from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under

-his nose were the old ruffian&rsquo;s revolver, and the strap that strapped it

-to his wrist, with the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy

-was almost as timorously  entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale

-of crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had

-hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet

-wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his mind

-again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid place to

-himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the heels of a whole

-family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning their sorrow in a sea of

-gore, their pilot through the catalogue a conscientious orphan with a

-monotonous voice and a genius for mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to

-see or hear him or any other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was

-trying to place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into

-a real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the

-comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find that it

-was after four o&rsquo;clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home from

-Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there before them, and

-he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub shoulders with flesh and

-blood once more, and to look in faces not made of wax in the devil&rsquo;s

-image. His way, which he knew of old, would  naturally have led him past Miss

-Harbottle&rsquo;s door; but, as she was only to be his second string for the

-night, he preferred not to be seen by that old lady yet. Such was the tiny

-spring of an important action; it led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite

-unforeseen temptation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable pawnbroker&rsquo;s

-shop; in the pawnbroker&rsquo;s window the chances are that you might still

-find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family Bibles, ornaments and

-clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes,

-photograph frames and cheap jewellery, all of which could not tempt you less

-than they did Pocket Upton the other June. There were only two things in the

-window that interested him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was

-an old rosewood camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but

-the thing that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what

-looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the price.

-A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked places on the

-slow walks with a slow companion which were all the exercise this unfortunate

-fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges complete, so that one could try it

-now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian at the end of their garden in  St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park! And all very likely for five bob if one bargained a

-bit!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any such sum

-would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life? Of coure it would

-have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared to take the consequences

-if found out; it need not involve his notion of dishonour. Still, it must be

-recorded that the young or old as was conscientious enough to hesitate before

-making his fatal plunge into the pawnbroker&rsquo;s shop.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />

-A BOY ABOUT TOWN</h2>

-

-<p>

-The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in St.

-John&rsquo;s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the boy a

-cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room. Mrs. Knaggs was a

-large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at all events to the young.

-She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed him) had altered; but her tone

-left Pocket in doubt as to whether any improvement was implied. She for one did

-not approve of his luncheon in Oxford Street, much less of the way  he had

-spent a summer&rsquo;s afternoon; indeed, she rather wondered at his being

-allowed alone in London at all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in

-conversation with his elders, at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own

-Westminster boys were allowed alone in London every day of their lives. But

-Mrs. Knaggs said that was a very different thing, and that she thought

-Pocket&rsquo;s public school must be very different from Westminster. Pocket

-bridled, but behaved himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and

-got as far towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley&rsquo;s

-misfortune and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him

-where he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring he

-had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs said of course

-he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked her as properly as

-though it were the invitation he made sure must follow. After all, Vivian

-Knaggs had stayed at Pocket&rsquo;s three weeks one Christmas, and Guy a

-fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would think of that; it was not a

-matter to broach to them, or one to worry about, prematurely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than Pocket,

-and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton jacket, the  other in

-tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an unworthy prejudice in the

-wearer of the green tie with red spots. They seemed very glad to see him,

-however, and the stiffness was wearing off even before Pocket produced his

-revolver in the basement room where the two Westminsters prepared their lessons

-and had their evening meal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs pronounced

-it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a thousand pounds.

-This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he and his revolver were made

-of, then and there in the garden, and the more confident that it never would be

-heard in the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would,&rdquo; answered Vivian, &ldquo;and seen as well. No, if you

-want to have a shot let&rsquo;s stick up a target outside this window, and fire

-from just inside.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but, unhappily, Mrs.

-Knaggs&rsquo;s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it also looked out on

-the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room and near her window when the

-report startled her, and not less because she little dreamt what it was until

-she looked out in time to see a cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom

-window, and Pocket examining the target, weapon in hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs  shrieked a prohibition from

-aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs, descended to

-extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the matter. Pocket was

-very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon&rsquo;s teeth with a promptitude that

-might have been his death, and offered it and them to be placed under lock and

-key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs contented herself with promoting a solemn

-promise into a Sacred Word of Honour&mdash;which rather hurt poor

-Pocket&mdash;and with sending him a very straight message by Vivian after

-supper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The mater&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; said Vivian, returning from a

-mission which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a spare bed in the house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him

-from going into particulars.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A sofa would do me all right,&rdquo; suggested Pocket, who had long ago

-lost his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were

-boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook his

-head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The mater says she couldn&rsquo;t sleep with firearms in the

-house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bury them in the garden if she likes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley&rsquo;s you once walked in

-your sleep,&rdquo; pursued Vivian,  who certainly seemed to have been urging

-the interloper&rsquo;s cause. &ldquo;And the mater&rsquo;s afraid you might

-walk out of a window or set the house on fire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do either to-night,&rdquo; protested Pocket, with a

-grin. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to

-keep me quiet.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with further information on both points the son of the house went upstairs

-again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed gravity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s awfully sorry,&rdquo; he said unconvincingly, &ldquo;but she

-can&rsquo;t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your

-asthma.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was not

-really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt he had made

-rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly cast adrift at

-sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor was this quite the case

-as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in Wellington Road. But to her he

-was not going until decency compelled him; he was going to have another game of

-bagatelle with Guy Knaggs first. It will be seen that with all his

-sensibilities the youngest Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took

-a great deal for granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to

-worry over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was

-obliged. He was sorry he had been so  positive with Spearman on the subject of

-his friend&rsquo;s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been refused,

-rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St. Pancras. Yet he

-left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour to go to bed in; and

-that was neither the first nor the last of his erratic proceedings.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about your luggage?&rdquo; asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his

-hat to walk round with Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got any?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I left it at Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Left your luggage there?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was only a handbag. How long are they open?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Young Knaggs looked in <i>Whitaker</i> and said they closed at ten. There was

-still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it was not much

-use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss Cottage, and the

-adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Old Miss Harbottle, his mother&rsquo;s great friend, would have none of him

-either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden gate was

-one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated indoors. The downstairs

-lights  were out. The gate opened at last, a light shone through the front

-door, and the door opened a few inches on the chain. Pocket confronted a

-crevice of quilted dressing-gown and grey curls; but his mother&rsquo;s

-friend&rsquo;s mastiff was making night so hideous within, and trying so hard

-to get at his mother&rsquo;s son, that it was some time before he could

-exchange an intelligible word with the brute&rsquo;s mistress. It was not a

-satisfactory interchange then, for Miss Harbottle at first flatly refused to

-believe that this was Tony Upton, whom she had not seen since his preparatory

-schooldays, and she seemed inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton,

-she could not take him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and

-the cook had just left. Miss Harbottle&rsquo;s cook had always just left,

-except when she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant&rsquo;s

-fun out of the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his purse. The

-only thing to do was to put up at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel, Trafalgar Square; that

-was where his people always stayed, where every servant was supposed to know

-them all. He pushed on at once through the cool June night, and paid away three

-of his last shillings for the drive. Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw&rsquo;s;

-it was the worst time of the year, they told him, and he  supposed they meant

-the best. He also supposed there had been changes in the staff, for nobody

-seemed to know his name as well as he had been led to expect at home.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels opposite, and

-recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven Street. But the big

-hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the only little one he tried the

-boy lost his temper like a man on being requested to deposit six shillings

-before proceeding to his room. Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the

-galling reflection caused him to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection

-upon his outward respectability&mdash;as if he could not have borrowed the

-money from Dr. Bompas in the morning!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see you blowed,&rdquo; was his muttered reply, and he caught

-up his bag in a passion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;All right, little man! I shouldn&rsquo;t be rude about it,&rdquo; said

-the dapper cashier. &ldquo;If I couldn&rsquo;t pay my shot I should sleep in

-the Park, on a nice fine night like this.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall!&rdquo; shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would

-prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it was his

-own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering what else he was

-to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have seen.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which lends to

-adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or heroic things, if

-not to have to do them. He had so little to boast about; his brothers, and so

-many other fellows of his own age, had so much. It would make a great yarn some

-day, how he had come up from school to see a doctor&mdash;and slept in the

-Park!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly anything of

-London except St. John&rsquo;s Wood and his present landmark of the Nelson

-column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having stayed some time (under

-another doctor) as a child at Shaw&rsquo;s Hotel. But, I say! What would Bompas

-say to his sleeping out, and what sort of night could he expect in the open

-air?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in more than

-handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all the force of a

-forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges as well.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of person to

-use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him feel doughty and even

-truculent to find the means of heroic defence all ready to his hand. He began

-to plume himself on his providential purchase. He would sell his young life

-dearly if he fell among London thieves;  in his death he would not be

-unhonoured at school or at home. Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang

-like tears to a mind still healthy enough to dash them away again, as though

-they had been real tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the

-unsuspected desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the

-corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said

-Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman looked as

-though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the motor omnibus

-through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at Albert Gate; but here

-there was quite a little stream of decent people to follow without further

-tremors into the indubitable Park.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining confidence as

-he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were turned outward by all

-there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest some one or other of the

-several passers should stand in his path and ask what he was doing there. He

-was still afraid of speaking or being spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so.

-Detection as an escaped schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing

-something for which he might be expelled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to take more

-notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his surprise, that the

-majority of those passing through the Park at that late hour were hardly of his

-own class. So much the more infinitesimal were the chances of his being

-recognised or even suspected for what he was. There were young men in straw

-hats, there were red-coated soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the

-schoolboy with their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy&rsquo;s

-heart beat at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined.

-One wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a remark as

-Pocket had never heard from a woman&rsquo;s lips before. He turned away,

-tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in the act of

-crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of the

-Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and gazed upon the

-artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the darkness, it might have

-been the noblest river in the world. Its banks were muffled in a feather boa of

-trees, bedizened by a chain of many lights; the lights of a real bridge made a

-diadem in the distance; and between these sped  the lamps of invisible

-vehicles, like fretful fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer

-with its own brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a

-trace of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy

-had ever seen&mdash;a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen

-through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it. But he

-did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London&rsquo;s light

-and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her mighty

-machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his ears; and yet

-between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck near at hand, the splash

-of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of water-fowl: altogether such a

-chorus of incongruities as was not lost upon our very impressionable young

-vagabond. The booming strokes of eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his

-immediate needs. His great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in

-hand, to select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of

-cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad footpaths

-from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he was approaching an

-exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with the Marble Arch at its

-apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had come right across the Park; back

-over the grass, keeping rather more to the right, in the direction of those

-trees, was the best thing now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was enough to

-deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical. Pocket Upton,

-however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and strong alike, who are

-more than loth to abandon a course of action once taken. It would have required

-a very severe attack to baulk him of his night out and its subsequent

-description to electrified ears. But when bad steering had brought him up at

-the bandstand, the deserted chairs seemed an ordained compromise between

-prudence and audacity, and he had climbed into the fenced enclosure when

-another enormous policeman rose up horribly in its midst.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; inquired this policeman, striding upon

-Pocket with inexorable tread.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No harm, I hope,&rdquo; replied our hero humbly, but with unusual

-readiness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor no good either, I&rsquo;ll be bound!&rdquo; said the policeman,

-standing over him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was only going to sit down,&rdquo; protested Pocket, having satisfied

-his conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been going to

-do.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are plenty of places to sit down,&rdquo; rejoined the policeman.

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not allowed in here.  And unless you look sharp about it

-you won&rsquo;t have time to sit down at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The Park closes at twelve.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Closes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At twelve o&rsquo;clock, and it&rsquo;s half-past eleven now.&rdquo; The

-boy&rsquo;s heart sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing

-plans. He was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he

-had looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only

-reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently entertained

-the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong. But he seemed quite

-clear about it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you think we were open all night?&rdquo; he inquired with a grin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, &ldquo;I even

-thought a lot of loafers used to sleep here all night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The policeman chuckled aloud.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may if they get up the trees; that&rsquo;s about their only

-chance,&rdquo; said he.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You search the whole place so thoroughly?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;We keeps our eyes open,&rdquo; said the policeman significantly, and

-Pocket asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off with

-the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was  put out. Such was his

-then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn, to what seat on the

-Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his ignorance of London he had no

-idea.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent on

-quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into its heart.

-He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and drifted before the

-wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one hand and a restricted open

-space upon the other. He could no longer see a single light; but the ground

-rose abruptly across the fence, and was thick with shrubs. Men might have been

-lying behind those shrubs, and Pocket could not possibly have seen them from

-the path. Did the policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going

-to climb every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright fence was

-not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as obvious and

-intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at twelve, did it? The

-flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw himself breaking the laws of

-the land as well as those of school, saw himself not only expelled but put in

-prison! Well, so much the better for his story so long as those  penalties were

-not incurred; even if they were, so much the greater hero he!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living up to

-the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But the will was

-on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way lay handy in the shape

-of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just passed against the iron palings.

-He went back to them, mounted on the first chair, wedged his bag between two of

-the spikes, set foot on the back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the

-other side without rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he

-hear. So then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and

-wiped the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a

-conscientious ass at school!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and they

-had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he had lost

-control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras. They did not

-prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush that I he could find,

-before curling up underneath it; neither did his prayers prevent him from

-thinking&mdash;even on his knees&mdash;of his revolver, nor yet&mdash;by the

-force of untimely association&mdash;of the other revolvers in the Chamber of

-Horrors. He saw those waxen  wretches huddled together in ghastly groups, but

-the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a feather bed;

-he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One thing, however, did

-come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap he wore as a

-watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber,

-to his wrist instead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the last but one of the silly boy&rsquo;s proceedings under the bush;

-the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by Bompas in the

-morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet and sticky in the

-mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful warmth at his extremities

-as he curled up in his overcoat. It was precisely then that he heard a measured

-tread approaching, and held his breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet

-the danger was still audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about

-it, but of Mr. Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in

-Leicestershire.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />

-HIS PEOPLE</h2>

-

-<p>

-It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him. They had

-been talking about him at the very time of the boy&rsquo;s inconceivable

-meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it still.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a butterfly

-collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down with a tall girl

-not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only to be seen in glimpses as

-they passed the drawing-room windows, and at not less regular intervals when a

-red light in the sky, the source of which was concealed by the garden foliage,

-became positively brilliant. The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle

-and musk-roses and mown grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows.

-But for the lurid lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some

-mammoth forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use our talking about Tony,&rdquo; the tall girl said.

-&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re frightfully down on him; we shall never

-agree.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,&rdquo; said the blunt

-young man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s no fool,&rdquo; remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly

-enough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; snapped her brother Horace.

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s being absolutely spoilt, and you&rsquo;re at the bottom of

-it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t give him asthma!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be childish, Letty.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s spoiling his life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t talking about his life. I don&rsquo;t believe it,

-either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You think he enjoys his bad nights?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think he scores by them. He&rsquo;d tell you himself that he never

-even thinks of getting up to first school now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would you if you&rsquo;d been sitting up half the night with

-asthma?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps not; but I don&rsquo;t believe that happens so often as you

-think.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay for

-two or three bad ones.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek

-Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his spare

-time, and got most marks in the exam.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Beastly young swot!&rdquo; quoth his elder  brother. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m

-glad he didn&rsquo;t buck to me about that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much danger of his bucking to

-you,&rdquo; said Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her

-obvious reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite

-incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed that she

-meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his own, and a good

-heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt. &ldquo;I looked after him

-all right,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;the one term we were there together. So

-did Fred for the next year. But it&rsquo;s rather rough on Fred and myself, who

-were both something in the school at his age, to hear and see for ourselves

-that Tony&rsquo;s nobody even in the house!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest brother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony

-that you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the

-standard you two set up; it&rsquo;s natural enough, but it isn&rsquo;t

-fair.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t be a flyer at games,&rdquo; said Horace, duly softened

-by a little flattery. &ldquo;But he might be a tryer!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A bag of oxygen wouldn&rsquo;t make him a cricketer.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet he&rsquo;s so keen on cricket!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wish he wasn&rsquo;t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than

-Fred or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a

-player.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it&rsquo;s his

-nature, just as it&rsquo;s Fred&rsquo;s and yours to be men of action.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad he&rsquo;s not allowed to cumber the crease this

-season,&rdquo; said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a

-distinct swerve in the air. &ldquo;To have him called our &lsquo;pocket

-edition,&rsquo; on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,&rdquo; she

-said warmly. &ldquo;And I hope he may make you see it before this

-doctor&rsquo;s done with him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This doctor!&rdquo; jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as

-well. &ldquo;You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on

-his own?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about

-him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of

-himself at home, there  might be something to be said for letting him go; but

-he&rsquo;s the most casual young hound I ever struck.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know he&rsquo;s casual.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry her sense

-of fairness had so misled her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Horace, &ldquo;he wouldn&rsquo;t be cured if he

-could. Think what he&rsquo;d miss!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;re coming back to that, there&rsquo;s no more to be

-said.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I do come back to it. Isn&rsquo;t he up in town at this moment under

-this very doctor of yours?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not my doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you first heard about him; you&rsquo;re the innovator of the family,

-Letty, so it&rsquo;s no use trying to score off me. Isn&rsquo;t Tony up in

-London to-night?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe he is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you what he&rsquo;s doing at this moment,&rdquo;

-cried Horace, with egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s after eleven; he&rsquo;s in the act of struggling out of some

-theatre, where the atmosphere&rsquo;s so good for asthma!&rdquo; Lettice left

-the gibe unanswered. It was founded on recent fact which she had been the first

-to deplore when Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by

-no means blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested  her more

-than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose unmeasured

-objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special pleading. She tried

-to believe that there was more in her younger brother than in any of them, and

-would often speak up for him as though she had succeeded. It may have been

-merely a woman&rsquo;s weakness for the weak, but Lettice had taught herself to

-believe in Tony. And perhaps of all his people she was the only one who could

-have followed his vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have gone

-indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily at that

-moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity.

-Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they

-were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than

-he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a

-heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy,

-too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she

-looked like a woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than

-her brother, but of other clay.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That young man smoked a last cigarette in his  father&rsquo;s library, and

-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the terrace.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I said he wasn&rsquo;t doing much good there,&rdquo; he added,

-&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always

-does.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean that he&rsquo;s doing any harm?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton

-plainly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I&mdash;I

-sometimes wish there was more!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More manhood, I suppose you&rsquo;d call it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More go about him,&rdquo; said Horace. He could not say as much to his

-father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to bolt

-from his guns.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?&rdquo;

-continued Mr. Upton, with severity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Horace hastily, &ldquo;and of course that&rsquo;s

-really why he&rsquo;s doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his

-doesn&rsquo;t seem to be doing him any either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the

-downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had turned the

-wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite another quarter.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I agree with you there!&rdquo; cried his father vehemently. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t believe in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon

-who has done so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a

-trial? The lad wasn&rsquo;t having a fair chance at school. This looked like

-one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the letters the

-man writes me about him. He&rsquo;d have me take him away from school

-altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But what&rsquo;s

-to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He&rsquo;d be too

-old to go to another school, and too young for the University: no use at the

-works, and only another worry to us all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with

-intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of sympathy which

-is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards the unsound. He hated

-sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it. His wife had taken ill the

-year before, had undergone a grave operation in the winter, and was still a

-great anxiety to him. But that was another and a far more serious matter; he

-had patience and sympathy enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very

-different. Himself a man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected

-his own qualities of his own children;  he had always resented their apparent

-absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why should Tony

-be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr. Upton was often

-sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard more about the asthma than

-he had seen for himself. If the boy was not down to breakfast in the holidays,

-he was supposed to have had a bad night; yet later in the day he would be as

-bright as anybody, at times indeed the brightest of the party. That, however,

-was usually when Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he

-was another creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the

-busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice overdid

-matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint, and was inclined

-to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his age, even if said to be

-cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile pose to the man who had never

-studied that disorder. The specialist in London seemed another mistake on the

-part of that managing Lettice, who had quite assumed the family lead of late.

-And altogether Mr. Upton, though he saw the matter from a different point of

-view, was not far from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed, whose

-brothers considered  him a bit of a malingerer, and his schoolfellows &ldquo;a

-conscientious ass,&rdquo; while his sister spoilt him for <i>un enfant

-incompris?</i> You may say it would have taken a miracle to make an ordinary

-decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange happenings to the boy and

-his people; perhaps it was the one authentic type of miracle that capped all in

-the morning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of

-whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a few

-hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning. The birds were

-singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The morning sun was slanting

-over town and country, and the father&rsquo;s thoughts were with his tiresome

-son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came from the adjoining room.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife&rsquo;s side, supporting her in

-bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;My Tony!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was just thinking of him!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What about him,

-dear?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I saw him,&rdquo; she quavered. &ldquo;I saw him plainer than I see you

-now. And I&rsquo;m almost positive I heard&mdash;a shot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />

-A GRIM SAMARITAN</h2>

-

-<p>

-Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the sound of a

-shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He opened his eyes on a

-dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The air was strangely keen for

-the amount of sunshine, the sunshine curiously rarefied, and the grass swept

-grey where it did not sparkle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket&rsquo;s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy head

-into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps. He was not in

-bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the shrub he now remembered in

-a mental flash which lit up all his adventures overnight. He was wandering

-ankle deep in the dew, towards a belt of poplars like birch-rods on the

-skyline, and a row of spiked palings right in front of his nose. He had walked

-in his sleep for the first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to

-wake him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in reality so

-swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he who must have made

-it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A hand darted through them

-and caught Pocket&rsquo;s  wrist as in a vice. And he looked up over the spikes

-into a gnarled face tinged with fear and fury, and working spasmodically at the

-suppression of some incomprehensible emotion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know what you did?&rdquo; the man demanded in the end. The

-question seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be

-reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense, reminding

-Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy to account for the

-tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous with passion. And the man

-stood tall and dominant, with a silver stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird

-cloak and hat that helped to invest him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish

-inquisitor; no wonder his eyes were like cold steel in quivering flesh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must have been walking in my sleep,&rdquo; began Pocket, shakily;

-further explanations were cut very short.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well? I can&rsquo;t help it! I&rsquo;ve done it before to-day; you

-needn&rsquo;t believe me if you don&rsquo;t like! Do you mind letting go of my

-hand?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;With that in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he had

-strapped to his wrist,  not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but his finger

-actually on the trigger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say I let it off?&rdquo; cried Pocket,

-horrified.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Feel the barrel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. The

-barrel was still warm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was in my sleep,&rdquo; protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you it was!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second impulse.

-The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy, picking his

-brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master&rsquo;s eye had ever

-delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very worst of him at school

-was known in an instant to this dreadful stranger in the wilds of London. He

-writhed under the ordeal of that protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his

-imprisoned wrist. His captor was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his

-unoccupied hand. A blade was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced

-through in a second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man

-swooped down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, releasing Pocket, but  standing by with his

-weapon, &ldquo;I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no

-right to spend the night in here at all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not the only one!&rdquo; He had just espied a recumbent figure

-through the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a

-battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall man merely

-redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without so much as a

-glance behind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is the sort that staggers in as soon as the

-gates are open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that

-sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules. Who are

-you, and what&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Asthma,&rdquo; wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I had nowhere else to go.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you come up from the country?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To see a doctor about it!&rdquo; cried Pocket bitterly, and told the

-whole truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely

-lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and through; but

-the hard mouth did relax  a little; the lined face looked less deeply slashed

-and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that uttered the next words.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these

-chairs.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had climbed them.

-His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied him on the other side.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage

-it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did last night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked round and pointed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Behind that bush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you left nothing there?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; my bag and hat!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly

-suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?

-There&mdash;catching the sun.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bring it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s empty.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bring it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing  on a chair behind the palings,

-waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But no third creature

-was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the dew. Pocket surmounted the

-obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost beside himself in the throes of his

-attack. Later, he feared he must have been lifted down like a child; but this

-was when he was getting his breath upon a seat. They had come some little

-distance very slowly, and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an

-arm as to lend colour to his humiliating suspicion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His grim companion spoke first.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one

-myself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never forgive the brute!&rdquo; he panted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Come, come! He didn&rsquo;t send you to sleep in the Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he took away the only thing that does me any good.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard of them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I

-had.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced from his

-bag, but lacked  the moral courage to light, in the train. He had slipped it

-into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt for it feverishly. He

-gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the palpable thing, and he drew

-forth a flattened cylinder the size of a cigarette and the colour of a cigar.

-The boy had to bite off both ends; the man was ready with the match. Pocket

-drank the crude smoke down like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed

-the tears into his eyes, and was comparatively cured.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!&rdquo; said his companion.

-&ldquo;I cannot understand him, and I&rsquo;m a doctor myself.&rdquo; His voice

-and look were deliberate even for him. &ldquo;My name is Baumgartner,&rdquo; he

-added, and made a pause. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose you know it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied Pocket, swelling with

-breath and gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A schoolboy in the country,&rdquo; observed Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;is

-scarcely likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will

-find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for

-breakfast, and a little rest. That is,&rdquo; added the doctor, with his first

-smile, &ldquo;if you will trust yourself to me first and make your inquiries

-later.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an  impulsive outburst; but even as

-he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling it would have

-been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was thanking and must needs

-accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he had come across that name? And

-when and where had anybody ever seen such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow

-in the cloak and hat of a conspirator by limelight?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as the one

-human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt grey man stood

-up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought, &ldquo;How the chaps

-would rag him at school!&rdquo; because the dreadful old hat and cloak

-suggested a caricature of a master&rsquo;s cap and gown. But there was no

-master at Pocket&rsquo;s school whom he would not sooner have disobeyed than

-this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the wintry smile; there was no

-eye on the staff that had ever made him quail as he had quailed that morning

-before these penetrating eyes of steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and

-Pocket had his asthma back in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could

-buy more cigarettes on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the cab Baumgartner said, &ldquo;Try sitting with your head between your

-knees.&rdquo; Pocket tried it  like a lamb. They had encountered a young man or

-so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar, an early

-cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all until the hansom had

-been hailed outside. During the drive, which seemed to Pocket interminable, his

-extraordinary attitude prevented him from seeing anything but his own boots,

-and those only dimly owing to the apron being shut and indeed pressing

-uncomfortably against his head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that

-did not make him easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the

-posture did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven

-through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the streets or

-a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman&rsquo;s instructions

-where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His ear was more alert

-now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough metal. Then more wood, and

-an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then more metal, in better repair;

-quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the milkman&rsquo;s queer cry; and

-finally, &ldquo;Next to the right and the fifth house on your left,&rdquo; in

-the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign accent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth from the

-little Pocket saw  of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled path, none too

-clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps had not been

-&ldquo;done&rdquo;; the door wore the nondescript complexion of prehistoric

-paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One touch of colour the

-lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and shut upon him: he had already

-passed through a rank of pollard trees, sprouting emeralds in the morning sun,

-that seemed common to this side of the road, and effectually hid the other.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The passage was

-dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right. Baumgartner led the way

-past a closed door on the left, into an unexpectedly bright and large room

-beyond it. &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said he, and shut the door softly behind

-him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full of

-walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the sunshine that

-filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back of the house. Dr.

-Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a window, and he stood looking out

-in thought while Pocket hurriedly completed his optical round. A set of walnut

-chairs were dreadfully upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one

-looked comfortable enough,  and a still more redeeming feature was the

-semi-grand piano. There were books, too, and in the far corner by the

-bow-window a glass door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket&rsquo;s

-study at school, and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of

-battle engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in

-murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and villages.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner met his visitor&rsquo;s eyes with the faint cold smile that

-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was present at some of those engagements,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They

-were not worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his

-sleep!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the pistol

-inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was distracted before he

-had time to resent the forgotten fact of its forcible confiscation. Under his

-cloak the doctor had been carrying all this time, slung by a strap which the

-boy had noticed across his chest, a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket

-exclaimed upon it with the instructed interest of a keen photographer.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you take photographs?&rdquo; asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in

-his unemotional voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I

-haven&rsquo;t got an instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and black

-morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which the doctor had

-set between them on one of the fussy little walnut tables.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />

-THE GLASS EYE</h2>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness of a

-most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the turban into

-the bowl. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I must have my smoke like you!

-I can&rsquo;t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my own

-fault. So you are also a photographer!&rdquo; he added, as the fumes of a

-mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am only a beginner,&rdquo; responded Pocket, &ldquo;but a very keen

-one.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t merely press the button and let  them do the

-rest?&rdquo; suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of

-his pipe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that&rsquo;s

-half the fun.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Plates or films?&rdquo; inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only plates, I&rsquo;m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of

-my father&rsquo;s.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a gesture

-more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none the worse for that,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;So far we

-have much in common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our

-plates, there&rsquo;s the difference, eh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should imagine so,&rdquo; said Pocket, smiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but yet

-darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; often.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In the body, I presume?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked nonplussed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You only take them in the flesh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly! I take the spirit,&rdquo; said the doctor; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s

-the difference.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial  countenance of Baumgartner follow

-the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting cloud of smoke.

-The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was of briefer duration than

-might have been the case with a less ardent photographer; for he took a

-technical interest in his hobby, and read the photographic year-books, nearly

-as ravenously as <i>Wisden&rsquo;s Almanacke</i>.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said, lukewarmly. &ldquo;You go in for psychic

-photography.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Psychic,&rdquo; said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets

-to report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor added,

-with more disdain: &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t believe in it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t say so.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you looked and sounded it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,&rdquo; said the

-boy, always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. &ldquo;But I do say I

-don&rsquo;t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It was

-in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed to have said

-you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the plate at all; hide

-away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure up your spirit and see what

-happens. I&rsquo;ll swear nothing ever happened like that! There may be ghosts,

-you may see them,  and so may the camera, but not without focusing and exposing

-like you&rsquo;ve got to do with ordinary flesh and blood!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the stimulus

-of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the doctor had come to his

-feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey face beamed warmly; his eyes

-were lances tipped with fire.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well said, my young fellow!&rdquo; cried he. &ldquo;I agree with every

-syllable you have spoken.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,&rdquo;

-concluded Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it

-even at your age! But there&rsquo;s much more in it than that; you must see the

-rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.&rdquo; The boy blushed with

-pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. &ldquo;You admit there may be

-such things as ghosts, as you call them?&rdquo; he was asked as by an equal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible

-as that sunbeam?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You allow that the camera can see them if we can?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the concession gave

-him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant leaps. He felt five

-years older in fewer minutes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of

-triumph, &ldquo;then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I

-may. I may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws

-already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses fail to

-throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the camera catches. Take

-two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the other with another; one comes

-out like water as we see it; the other, though not less limpid in our sight,

-like ink. The eye sees through it, but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as

-though the acid itself were pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the

-plate. The trouble is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest

-chemist&rsquo;s, no money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will

-the spirit which once was man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it first an

-hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this was the passion

-of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at all, it was in this wild

-question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy  perceived this dimly. There was

-something else which had become clearer to him with each of these later

-remarks. Striking as they seemed to him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The

-ring of novelty was wanting to his ear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Suddenly he exclaimed, &ldquo;I knew I knew your name!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do know it, do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was discounted by

-the interruption it entailed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come

-across it somewhere.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You read the correspondence that followed the review?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some of it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My letter among others?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! I remember every word of it now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium&rsquo;s

-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said it wasn&rsquo;t necessary, if I remember,&rdquo; replied Pocket

-somewhat tentatively, despite his boast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two moments

-at which I hold that a man&rsquo;s soul may be caught apart, may be cut off 

-from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a light-tight

-camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my letter.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;was the moment of death.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The moment of dissolution,&rdquo; the doctor corrected him. &ldquo;But

-there is a far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,

-whereas dissolution comes but once.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure about

-it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him as too

-fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not and dared not

-say; and he was not the less frightened of making a mistake with those inspired

-eyes burning fanatically into his.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The other moment,&rdquo; the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile,

-&ldquo;is when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which

-men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?&rdquo; Baumgartner asked

-abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed unconvinced, for

-he went on didactically: &ldquo;You visit far countries in your dreams; your

-soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the dead; it is your soul

-again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I fix the moment as that of the

-soul&rsquo;s return because its departure on these errands is imperceptible, 

-but with its return we awake. The theory is that in the moment of waking the

-whole experience happens like the flash of an electric spark.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled than

-enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very eccentric

-acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man&rsquo;s hard face

-and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could not be lost upon

-an impressionable temperament, besides that force of will or character which

-had dominated the young mind from the first. He began to wish the interview at

-an end&mdash;to be able to talk about it as the extraordinary sequel of an

-extraordinary adventure&mdash;yet he would not have cut it short at this point

-if he could.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I grant you,&rdquo; continued the doctor, &ldquo;that the final flight

-of soul from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But

-how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits pass it

-would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still to be educated

-up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain to initiate such

-education. I have applied for perfectly private admission to hospital

-deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons. My applications have been

-peremptorily refused.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket&rsquo;s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You could see a man hanged!&rdquo; he shuddered, and himself saw the

-little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked the other in wide wonder. &ldquo;But as I am not

-allowed,&rdquo; he continued in lighter key, &ldquo;I have to do the best I

-can. If I cannot be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or

-two! And now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to

-sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and then I

-take my chance.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not all like that man this morning, then,&rdquo; remarked

-Pocket, looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the brighter for

-their partial eclipse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This morning,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;was like no other. I owe you

-some confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this

-morning&mdash;thanks to you!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thanks to me?&rdquo; repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. &ldquo;Do

-you mean to say I&mdash;you took me&mdash;walking&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You shall see my meaning,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, rising.

-&ldquo;Wait one minute.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double doors in

-an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there. Running  water

-and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his absence, but the boy

-was thinking of another sound. The doctor before leaving had discarded a black

-alpaca jacket, light as a pocket handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to

-recall by contrast the noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak.

-The lad was promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he

-was within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in his

-hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all was ready.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would simply

-have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double doors within been

-is use; these being shut, the space behind made a separate chamber which again

-reminded the schoolboy of his study, that smallest of small rooms. This one was

-as narrow, only twice the length. One end was monopolised by the door that

-admitted them, the other by a window from floor to ceiling. And this window was

-in two great sheets of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron

-steps into a crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to

-foot like Mephistopheles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This is something like a dark-room!&rdquo; exclaimed the lad as the door

-was shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred by

-shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as the

-doctor&rsquo;s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives and

-stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry copper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Everything was perfection from a photographer&rsquo;s standpoint; the boy felt

-instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of water. All he had

-ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was here in this little

-paradise of order and equipment. The actual work, he felt, would be a secondary

-consideration in such a workshop; the mere manipulation of such stoppered

-bottles as his host was handling now, the choice of graduated phials, the

-wealth of trays and dishes, would have been joy enough for him. He watched the

-favoured operator with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to

-reduce the light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were

-muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they trembled with

-excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket remembered how extravagant an

-image was expected on that plain pink surface.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult to

-believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort of man, who

-entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose  excitement and suspense were as

-infectious as everything else about him. Pocket had come into the dark-room

-wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not to be heard breathing as the plate

-was rocked to and fro as in raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp

-and black. But the sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by

-perpendicular objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know

-what these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how

-could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind him when

-they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket said to himself, &ldquo;Where am I, by the way?&rdquo; and bent lower to

-see. His ear touched the doctor&rsquo;s; it heard the doctor breathing as

-though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but not

-walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass. &ldquo;When

-did you get me?&rdquo; asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face paid no

-attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with beads of blood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There! there! there!&rdquo; croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato.

-Pocket could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host&mdash;the one gentle

-thing about him. &ldquo;You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,

-hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had choked out

-its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between fingers that most

-distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the hyposulphite, and pulled up

-the blind. The sun shone again through the tall window, blood-red as before;

-grass and sky were as richly incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited

-for the fixing-bath to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still

-pronounced it. &ldquo;And I owe it to you, my young fellow!&rdquo; This he said

-again and again, aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last

-and held it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the

-schoolboy never forgot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Open the window!&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;It opens like a door.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him momentarily

-blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again. Pocket thought him

-careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it was held up an instant to the

-naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred fragments in the porcelain trough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back into the

-drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have been a minute

-before their eyes met again; the  doctor&rsquo;s were calm and cold and

-critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he said, and

-nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go upstairs; and if his

-young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought as a physician it might do

-him good.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />

-AN AWAKENING</h2>

-

-<p>

-It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little

-distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The

-goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited

-empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr.

-Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully

-brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his

-well-kept hands. There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the

-immature shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss

-Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname.

-He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one  to flout a

-fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and

-then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her

-Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts will come

-of contact with young animals of the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong

-from time to time, but all four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as

-shy and uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table

-attentions to her uncle and his guest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against

-the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. &ldquo;We have a full-size table at

-home,&rdquo; he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant.

-&ldquo;I like a small one best,&rdquo; he assured the doctor, who shook his

-head and smiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I&rsquo;m no

-good at real games.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The statement was too true, but not the preference.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,&rdquo; was

-the doctor&rsquo;s comment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma as far as

-modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his breakfast-table talk, yet

-nervously egotistical, and apt to involve himself in lengthy explanations. He

-had  two types of listener&mdash;the dry and the demure&mdash;to all he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And they let you come up to London alone!&rdquo; remarked Dr.

-Baumgartner when he got a chance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t their fault that I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse particulars

-exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. Evidently the niece was

-not to know where he had spent the night.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I suppose there are a number of young men at

-your&mdash;establishment?&rdquo; said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss

-Platts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There are over four hundred boys,&rdquo; replied Pocket, a little

-puzzled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And how many keepers do they require?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A grin apologised for the word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There must be over thirty masters,&rdquo; returned Pocket more pointedly

-than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school from a mad

-German doctor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not necessarily; there&rsquo;s a Modern Side. You can learn German if

-you like!&rdquo; said Pocket, not without contempt.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; said the boy gratuitously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then we must stick to your excellent King&rsquo;s English.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little passage.

-Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary kindness which had

-brought him to a decent breakfast-table that morning. That made him ashamed;

-nor could he have afforded to be too independent just yet, even had he been so

-disposed in his heart. His asthma was a beast that always growled in the

-background; he never knew when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast

-pacified the brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and

-the boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for him

-to go to Welbeck Street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there really nothing you can take?&rdquo; asked Dr. Baumgartner,

-standing over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big

-easy-chair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing now, I&rsquo;m afraid, unless I could get some of those

-cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s inhuman. I&rsquo;ll go and get them myself. He should

-prescribe for such an emergency.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He has,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some stuff in my bag;

-but it&rsquo;s no use taking it now. It&rsquo;s  meant to take in bed when you

-can have your sleep out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, when the

-other doctor cut him short once more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why not now? You can sleep to your heart&rsquo;s content in that

-chair; nobody will come in.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket shook his head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the

-door. That will give you a good two hours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first

-bottle under the bush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would you promise to wake me, sir? You&rsquo;re not going out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall be in again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then it is a promise?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted

-sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to

-tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an

-unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as

-if by magic. The faintly foreign  accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly

-distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the

-morning&rsquo;s troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course

-he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his

-absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass

-was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red

-as beet-root, as wet and red and one&rsquo;s body weltering in it like the

-slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in

-cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making

-more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and

-the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and

-pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing

-over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a beast of a dream!&rdquo; said Pocket, waking

-thoroughly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold

-blood! What time is it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A quarter to six,&rdquo; said the doctor, who had invited the question

-by taking out his watch.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A quarter to twelve, you mean!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;six.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at

-his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his

-feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight

-as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You promised to wake me!&rdquo; gasped Pocket, almost speechless.

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve broken your word, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only in your own interest,&rdquo; replied the other calmly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe you were waiting for me to wake&mdash;to catch my soul, or

-some rot!&rdquo; cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for

-the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged

-his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I apologise for saying that,&rdquo; the boy resumed, with a dignity that

-sounded near to tears. &ldquo;I know you meant it for the best&mdash;to make up

-for my bad night&mdash;you&rsquo;ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due

-in Welbeck Street at twelve o&rsquo;clock, and now I shall have to bolt to

-catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,&rdquo; replied

-Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I will unless I&rsquo;m in some outlandish part of London!&rdquo; cried

-Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of

-London he was. &ldquo;I must catch it. It&rsquo;s the last train back to

-school. I&rsquo;ll get into an awful row if I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get into a worse one if you do,&rdquo; rejoined the doctor,

-looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered

-with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in

-town about it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do tell me what, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can you face things, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is it about my people&mdash;my mother?&rdquo; the boy cried wildly, at

-her funeral in a flash.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I can!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my

-dream.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly. Didn&rsquo;t it strike you as strange that he should be lying

-there in the wet grass?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was drunk.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was dead!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death

-before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view

-of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No

-doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none

-the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor

-suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural

-density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not

-even known the man was dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Had the doctor?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another

-question first.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What did he die of?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A bullet!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Suicide?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not murder?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This paper says so.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Does it say who did it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It cannot.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it

-yourself?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />

-BLOOD-GUILTY</h2>

-

-<p>

-His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment&rsquo;s doubt. He

-marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The walking in his

-sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. Baumgartner, his first

-swift action, and the warm pistol in his own unconscious hand: these burning

-memories spoke more eloquently than any words. They would have told their own

-tale at once, if only he had known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived?

-It was cruel, it was infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single

-instant. Thus wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for

-the very benefaction of a day&rsquo;s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor

-defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism. Pocket

-was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He also might

-have been a dying  man, he was assured, and could well believe on looking back.

-Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to tell him the truth, but had checked

-himself in sheer humanity. Again the boy could confirm the outward detail out

-of his own recollection. To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went

-on to say, with an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone

-nothing. He acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had

-put the living before the dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question. He was

-not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at least of the

-bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too many men fall shot

-through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but in point of fact he had

-confirmed his conviction by brief examination while Pocket was fetching his

-things from behind the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid

-appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic

-interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude.

-It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading

-warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment

-he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined

-Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The poor man had raised a

-drunken shout and been shot pointblank through the heart. The doctor described

-him as leaping backward from the levelled barrel, then into the air and down in

-the dew upon his face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now recalled the

-shout before the shot. The enforced description had been so vivid in the end

-that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he had been wide awake. Then he

-dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing else as he now remembered him, and

-that sent him off at a final tangent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, &ldquo;What about that

-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;but it was never meant to be.

-I had you in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with

-time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the chance of

-a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that was another reason

-for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate consequences of an innocent

-act.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an

-instinctive admiration  for downright honesty in another. His young soul was

-torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted by the inevitable

-and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure, and yet he could dimly

-appreciate the candid declaration of one who had attempted to turn that tragedy

-to instantaneous and inconceivable account. It was the mistaken kindness to

-himself that he still found most difficult to forgive.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s got to come out,&rdquo; he groaned; &ldquo;this will make it

-all the worse.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean the delay?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! Who&rsquo;s to tell them I didn&rsquo;t do it on purpose, and run

-away, and then think better of it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner smiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Surely I am,&rdquo; said he; but his smile went out with the words.

-&ldquo;If only they believe me!&rdquo; he added as though it was a new idea to

-him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; was his broken exclamation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear

-to, after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can&rsquo;t swear you shot him

-in your sleep!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said you saw I did!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I did, my young fellow,&rdquo; replied the doctor,  with a kinder

-smile; &ldquo;at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut,

-and I thought you were walking in your sleep. It&rsquo;s not quite the same

-thing. It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court

-of justice.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Shall I be tried?&rdquo; asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps only by the magistrate,&rdquo; replied the other, soothingly;

-&ldquo;let us hope it will stop at that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it must, it must!&rdquo; cried Pocket wildly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m

-absolutely innocent! You said so yourself a minute ago; you&rsquo;ve only to

-swear it as a doctor? They can&rsquo;t do anything to me&mdash;they can&rsquo;t

-possibly!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They can&rsquo;t do anything to me, can they?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It depends what you call anything,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They cannot

-hang you; after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even

-detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case would

-be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your family could

-not stop it, your schoolfellows would  devour it, you would find it difficult

-to live down both at home and at school. In years to come it will mean at best

-a certain smile at your expense! That is what they can do to you,&rdquo;

-concluded the doctor, apologetically. &ldquo;You asked me to tell you. It is

-better to be candid. I hoped you would bear it like a man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself back into

-the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. One name became

-articulate through his sobs. &ldquo;My mother!&rdquo; he moaned.

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my

-mother too!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most

-people,&rdquo; remarked Baumgartner sardonically.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of

-any kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this? She

-mustn&rsquo;t hear it!&rdquo; cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming

-eyes. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in the papers already,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a

-forbearing shrug.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But my part in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said it had got to come out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t realise all it meant&mdash;to her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I did; but now I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Pocket, vehemently.

-&ldquo;Now I would give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what

-I&rsquo;ve done&mdash;than drag them all through that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean what you say?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Every syllable!&rdquo; said Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because, you know,&rdquo; explained the doctor, &ldquo;it is a case of

-now or never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s never!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must put it plainly to you. It&rsquo;s not too late to do whatever you

-decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland Yard,

-and the chances are that they would still accept the true story of to-day. I

-have told you what I believe to be the worst that can happen to you; it may be

-that rather more may happen to me for harbouring you all day as I have done. I

-hope not, but I took the law into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by

-the law if you so decide this minute.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have decided.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at

-any rate for the  present,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, impressively. &ldquo;Better

-come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about the

-whole thing there!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t do that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure,&rdquo; replied the acute doctor. &ldquo;I believe

-I know you better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an

-hour like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it

-very difficult not to tell somebody.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In truth no

-previous act or word of Baumgartner&rsquo;s had inspired such confidence as

-this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a perfect miracle of

-discernment. He was not old enough to know that what he would have done, in his

-weakness, most grown-up men and women of his temperament would have done in

-theirs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; resumed the doctor, &ldquo;you would have the whole of

-to-day to account for; it&rsquo;s not as though you wouldn&rsquo;t have some

-very awkward questions to answer the moment you got back to school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school conditions on

-the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of those  insular

-institutions. But this fresh display of understanding only confirmed him in his

-resolve.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I trust you, sir,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you done enough

-for me to make me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and

-I&rsquo;m grateful to you for all you&rsquo;ve done and whatever you mean to

-do!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No matter what it comes to,&rdquo; cried Pocket, strangely exalted now,

-&ldquo;so long as my people never know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may think you dead.&rdquo; He thought of saying that he wished he

-was; but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie, and

-Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That would be better than knowing what I have done,&rdquo; was what he

-said; and in his exaltation he believed no less.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is final&mdash;absolutely&mdash;so far as I am concerned.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and fairness of the

-doctor&rsquo;s warnings served but to strengthen that resolve. But Baumgartner,

-as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the  matter with a clinching shrug; and

-presently he left his visitor, less wisely, to brood on it alone.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious ass; he

-takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a sportsman; but he

-cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the best, and what would have

-happened if he had decided otherwise, and what his world will say about him as

-it is.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary position.

-He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he pictured his form

-sitting down to private-work in his form-master&rsquo;s hall; there was no end

-to his mental pictures, for they included one of himself on the scaffold in the

-broad-arrows of the little old waxwork at Madame Tassaud&rsquo;s! He could not

-help himself; his mind was crumbling with his dreadful deed and its awful

-possibilities. Now his heart bled honestly for the poor dead man, now for his

-own mother and sister, and now not less freely for himself. He had been so

-innocent in the whole matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting

-fool. And now one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would

-be darkened for ever after!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far into the

-long June twilight,  scarcely stirring in the big soft chair, yet never leaning

-back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once more battling for breath,

-but curiously enough his bodily distress had flown before that of the mind.

-Pocket would thankfully have changed them back again, for his brain was as

-clear as his bronchial tubes, its capacity for suffering undimmed by a single

-physical preoccupation. Between seven and eight the young lady of the house

-came in with candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box

-of d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle

-thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl addressed the

-boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to seem, something of a man.

-But his present effort in that direction was sadly perfunctory: he almost

-ejected little Miss Platts in his eagerness to shut the door on her and see the

-news.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man had been

-identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were reported as hopeful of

-obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue was the point that stuck like a

-burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a clue was one leading straight to

-himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to explain the true value of the identity

-clause, and bid the boy eat his meal.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Trust the police!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re on a false scent

-already; they may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as reverentially of his

-victim as of a dead member of his own family. It appeared thus early, however,

-that in life the defunct had been by no means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses

-had been his only home, except when his undistinguished offences got him into

-gaol; the surreptitious practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means

-of livelihood. So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the

-stop-press column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to

-extract comfort from such items.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At all events,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you cannot reproach yourself with

-the destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless

-creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but here in

-England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It&rsquo;s a public

-service to reduce their number.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the doctor had

-been working up to it all the evening, and this was the climax of his

-cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically undressed himself for

-bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of stairs, carrying  candles,

-and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast. Pocket felt a new chill through his

-veins, but he was not revolted as he would have been at first. This

-extraordinary man had shown him still more extraordinary kindness; the die was

-cast for them to stand or fall together; and there was something about the

-gaunt old visionary, a confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility,

-which could not but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they

-really were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy

-underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the doctor spoke

-as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to agree with him: his

-conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a series of incoherent

-expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave articulate shape in order to

-demolish them in the next breath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my

-young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk&rsquo;s head

-wreathed in cool blue clouds.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!&rdquo;

-cried the poetic doctor. &ldquo;You have an honourable life before you; he had

-a disreputable one behind him. You were bred and  nurtured in the lap of

-luxury; he finds it for the first time in his&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in his bed;

-the man sat down on the end of it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do such poor devils a service,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;in sending

-them to a world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under

-the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was a human life,&rdquo; groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Human life!&rdquo; cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge

-shadow guying him on the ceiling. &ldquo;What is this human life, and who are

-you and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never did;

-it&rsquo;s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about human

-life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar; there are some

-of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock for modern decadence.

-So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought nothing of your human life. Von

-Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon;

-the Empire of my countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the

-infinitesimal value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through

-exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our  watchwords; they&rsquo;re

-on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of what I know.

-I&rsquo;ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind, and I&rsquo;ve

-felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at Gravelotte; as a

-public schoolboy you probably never heard the name before this minute. I fought

-in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking at the pictures downstairs. I was in

-that charge across those hellish ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in

-half an hour, but we gained the victory. More Germans were killed that

-day&mdash;that sweltering August afternoon&mdash;than English in your whole

-South African War that took you years! The flower of Germany fell at

-Gravelotte; that was human life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my

-comrades&rsquo; ashes. And that&rsquo;s all it&rsquo;s for, this human life of

-yours: for the master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward

-road.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange

-outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild bloodthirsty

-nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its irrelevancy, or rather it was

-the irrevelant features that flared up first in his brain. It was a childish

-question, but here was a very child, and he could not help asking the fierce

-old soldier whether he had escaped without a wound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Without a scratch,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;I come home. I leave the

-army. I ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck

-down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the veriest pawn

-in the game!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was not a

-single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or another word

-for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke from a waving pipe, a

-core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the Turk&rsquo;s face glistening in

-its heat like that of the hard old man himself. He would hear the cynical and

-scornful voice softening in a breath to the simple, tender, and domestic

-humanity of his race. The voice and the face were with him throughout that

-night of his own manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy

-to realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been carried

-away like his listener.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />

-POINTS OF VIEW</h2>

-

-<p>

-On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week, there was

-a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in Leicestershire. This

-circumstance was not so usual as it sounds, because Mr. Upton conducted all his

-correspondence from his office at the works. If you simply put the name of the

-village, as he did on his stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to

-direct your letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few

-there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it was on

-business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more impressive

-address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt the first blow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this made the

-letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following reason. Mrs. Upton

-had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the Thursday morning, that her husband

-had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat against his own judgment, to know how he

-found their son. The reply had been: &ldquo;Better expecting him again to-day

-will write&rdquo;&mdash;which prepared the family for still more reassuring

-accounts in the morning. Lettice  felt relieved as the original discoverer of

-Dr. Bompas. Horace found his views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration

-of a touch of asthma, and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely

-agreeing with Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs.

-Upton lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible to

-show her now that it had come.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way to keep

-a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this occasion he triumphed

-over temperament with an extraordinary instinct for what was in the air.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!&rdquo; was his only

-comment as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might

-have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not Horace

-promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young fellow&rsquo;s

-face and the old one&rsquo;s neck were redder before the last was heard of that

-remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually vouchsafed; the boy

-had made very little improvement, and was not likely to make more while he

-remained at a school where he was allowed to use any remedy he liked; in fact,

-until he was taken away from school, and placed under his own immediate control

-in town, Dr. Bompas declined to persevere with the case.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Blighter!&rdquo; said Horace impartially, as though now there were two

-of them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when their

-father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was not

-&ldquo;playing the game&rdquo;; but then he never did play it to the expert

-satisfaction of Fred and Horace.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and told a

-lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He had destroyed

-it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it to his wife. He said a

-happier thing by chance; he said that for two pins he would motor over to the

-school and see for himself how the boy really was; then perhaps he would be in

-a position to consider the entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the

-specialist&rsquo;s demand, that his patient should be placed under his eye in

-town. Mr. Upton went so far, however, without much immediate intention of

-taking so strong a measure.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite justified in his

-fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with his eldest son. There

-were aspects of the case, as it presented itself to his mind, which he could

-hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her mother must not know of his anxiety on

-any account. Horace, however, had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed its

-owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few rolling

-meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June glory. The new red

-gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an eye which had never looked

-longer than necessary in the glass. Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily

-on a shaven lawn; the only eyesore the good man encountered was poor

-Pocket&rsquo;s snob-wickets painted on a buttress in the back premises; his own

-belching blast-furnaces, corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few

-hundred yards of his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy

-Briton who had made them too.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. &ldquo;I

-was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,&rdquo; his father said;

-&ldquo;the fact is, I concealed half the fellow&rsquo;s letter on account of

-Lettice. But it&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s matter, and you ought to know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to keep his

-appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the line of

-information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would have exercised

-so wise a discretion  at table and in his wife&rsquo;s room. It now appeared

-that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas had gone far out of his

-way to play Mahomet to his patient&rsquo;s mountain. Tony had told him where he

-hoped to stay in London, which Bompas particularly wished to know on account of

-some special prescription the boy was to try that night. On his failure to

-appear at the appointed time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in

-question, only to learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been

-given another address with the same result, except that from the second house

-he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace was left

-to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and asked for his own on

-the facts as a man of the world.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly like young Tony!&rdquo; quoth Horace, never afraid to say what

-he thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Like Tony,&rdquo; repeated Horace significantly. &ldquo;Trust him to do

-what nobody else ever did.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how could Spearman give him the chance?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was to stay at Coverley&rsquo;s?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I heard.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it! It&rsquo;s all wrong at his age,&rdquo; said Mr.

-Upton. He had his notions of life and its  temptations, and he was blunt enough

-with his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any question of bad company, do

-you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And though Horace had &ldquo;no use for&rdquo; his so-called pocket edition, he

-answered without any hesitation at all: &ldquo;Not for a moment, from what I

-know of Tony.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by mentioning his

-wife&rsquo;s dream, now family property, which had been on his mind all this

-time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him that nobody nowadays

-believed in dreams.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I never have, certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton. &ldquo;But what

-can it be?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He probably went up to Lord&rsquo;s, and forgot all about his

-doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hope not! You&rsquo;re too down on him, Horace.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to

-school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s said to have gone to some hotel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose he did,&rdquo; said Horace. &ldquo;I expect he got

-back somehow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr. Spearman

-settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the day before, and

-his friends in London wired that they knew nothing about him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What friends?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. &ldquo;Why the devil

-couldn&rsquo;t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked

-about?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or &ldquo;that Knaggs crowd.&rdquo;

-Neither he nor Fred had been at Coverley&rsquo;s school, and young Tony&rsquo;s

-friends were by no means theirs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on the

-telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its being &ldquo;a

-man&rsquo;s matter&rdquo;; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like a

-serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that neither his

-mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it before it was

-absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother&rsquo;s dream as the devil

-did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments besides; he was speaking quite

-nicely of them both, for instance, when he declared that Lettice was wrapped up

-in Tony, and would be beside herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him.

-It would be simply impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on

-whom she also waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had

-good reason to believe in Lettice&rsquo;s power of suppressing her own

-feelings; but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited

-dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his wife.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as he had

-fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr. Spearman, who

-deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was done, however, and it

-was now a matter in which home and school authorities must act together. A

-clerk was instructed to telephone to the garage for the car to come straight to

-the works. And the ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of

-anxiety.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and yet to-day

-it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the brain that had

-conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and blackened faces lit by

-the light of molten metal; his the strong hand and the stout heart which had

-brought his conception into being. Those were his trucks bringing in his ore

-from his mines; that was his consequential little locomotive fussing in front

-of them. His men, dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was

-also his, happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was

-his pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric

-advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of

-possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the ironmaster

-almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the  white-hot bars as his too. The

-whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture, had long been his to all

-intents and purposes, and no second soul would ever take his pride in it; to

-his children it would never be more than the means of livelihood; and how had

-it repaid even him for a life&rsquo;s devotion? With a house of sorrow in the

-next valley! With a stricken wife, and sons whose right hands kept their

-cunning for the cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a

-sudden madness!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great green

-car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he did not drive

-himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the summer&rsquo;s day was

-a mental stimulant that did its work only too well. Now it recalled the ailing

-infancy of the missing boy&mdash;bronchitis it had been in the early

-stages&mdash;and how his mother had taken him to Hastings three successive

-winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family jokes cropped up in a new

-light, dimming the eyes without an instant&rsquo;s warning. On one of those

-flittings south the solicitous mother had placed the uncomplaining child on a

-footwarmer, and forgotten him until a cascade of perspiration apprised her of

-the effect: poor Mr. Upton had never thought of the incident without laughter,

-until to-day. Without  doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she

-herself too ill to hear a word about it!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no uncertainty. He

-thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first. There had been drama

-and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated of the neighbouring packs had

-run a fox to earth on his works, indeed in his very slag-heap! The author of

-cancerous furnaces in the green heart of a grass country had never been a

-popular personage with the hunting folk; but he was master of the situation

-that memorable day. It was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a

-ferret, and came out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore

-through the brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young

-lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants with

-their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag sticking out of

-the furnace mouth&mdash;the momentary contact of the industrial and the

-sporting world&mdash;it was that strange and yet significant scene which had

-first endeared its dingy setting to the ironmaster&rsquo;s heart. But he had

-made the contact permanent by falling in love with the young lady of the brush

-and marrying her under all the guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she

-was a stricken invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now distracted

-father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think about as he flew on

-to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very rude to Mr. Spearman; but

-then Spearman had been rash enough to repudiate his obvious responsibility in

-the matter. It was not his fault that the boy went up to town so often to see

-his doctor and stay the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but

-it had become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp

-thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of seventeen

-could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know who could! Tony

-had promised him faithfully to return that same night, failing friends whom he

-had mentioned as certain to put him up; their names Mr. Upton was able to

-demand at last as though they were so much blood; and he could not have cursed

-them more freely if Spearman had been a layman like himself. But that was all

-the information forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the

-head master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had

-still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked that he

-was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up and led him

-straight into the presence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an astute

-pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to Mr. Upton that

-the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master&rsquo;s concern, but agreed

-it was time that he himself was made acquainted with the present case. He took

-it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could have wished, but quite as frankly from

-his own point of view as his two visitors did from each of theirs. He had no

-doubt the boy would turn up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to

-give a satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received back

-into the school.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bother the school!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with

-difficulty. &ldquo;Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what you

-like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how do you propose to find him?&rdquo; inquired the head master,

-with only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own

-showing, refused the boy a bed. I&rsquo;ll give them a bit of my mind, I

-promise you! Then there&rsquo;s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it

-may be the one we always stay at, or one they&rsquo;ve recommended. If I

-can&rsquo;t hear anything of him there, I suppose there&rsquo;ll be nothing for

-it but to call in the police.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; exclaimed the head master,  &ldquo;you may as well

-call in the public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you

-are; and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our point

-of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more so from mine!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and

-indignation. &ldquo;You think about your school. I think about my wife and boy;

-it might kill her to hear about this before he&rsquo;s found. But if I

-don&rsquo;t go to the police, who am I to go to?&rdquo; The head master leant

-back in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case of

-dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal proceedings on behalf

-of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down and solved the mystery within

-twenty-four hours, and saved the school a public scandal.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He may save you another,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, &ldquo;if he can find my

-boy. What did you say the name was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thrush&mdash;Eugene Thrush&mdash;quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a

-gentleman,&rdquo; said the head master impressively. Further particulars,

-including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from an

-advertisement in that day&rsquo;s <i>Times</i>, in which Mr. Thrush was

-described as an &ldquo;inquiry agent,&rdquo; capable alike of &ldquo;delicate

-investigations&rdquo; and &ldquo;confidential negotiations.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he departed both

-on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final word for his own

-behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the head master on the

-importance of keeping it out of the papers.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />

-MR. EUGENE THRUSH</h2>

-

-<p>

-The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never been

-the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of events which

-had turned his talents into their present channel, was known to but few of his

-many boon companions, and much nonsense was talked about him and his first

-career. It was not the case (as anybody might have ascertained) that he had

-been struck off the rolls in connection with the first great scandal in which

-he was professionally concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report

-that he drank, in the ordinary interpretation of the term.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his dressing-table,

-to help him shave for the evening of that fateful Friday. He was  dressing for

-an early dinner before a first night. His dressing-room, in which he also slept

-in Spartan simplicity, was the original powder-closet of the panelled library

-out of which it led. There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared

-breakfast and spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top

-of such stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker&rsquo;s mute (a calling he had

-followed in his day), was laying out his master&rsquo;s clothes as mournfully

-as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he shaved.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into

-this case it&rsquo;s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too

-soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they&rsquo;d have wondered what the

-devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you were in my

-service.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I had no call, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So

-you&rsquo;d only to describe the finding of the body?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That was all, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And your description was really largely founded on fact?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman&rsquo;s shaving elbow.

-&ldquo;I told the truth,  sir, and nothing but the truth,&rdquo; said he, with

-sombre dignity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs

-you showed me yesterday?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must have

-picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn&rsquo;t on the

-actual scene of the murder.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Mullins. I don&rsquo;t see what they could

-possibly have to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your

-being the one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what

-they&rsquo;re worth, it&rsquo;s the last kind of case that I should dream of

-touching with a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won&rsquo;t require

-you at the adjourned inquest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite

-convenient,&rdquo; replied Mullins deferentially. &ldquo;The police were very

-stingy with their evidence to-day; they&rsquo;ve still to produce the fatal

-bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took as

-little real interest as he professed in the case which was being thrust upon

-him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in shaving the corners of a

-delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the whole face emerging from the

-lather, as a cast from its clay, would have  delighted any eye but its own. It

-was fat and flabby as the rest of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection

-of chins to shave; and yet anybody but himself must have recognised the

-invincible freshness of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as

-an earnest of inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh.

-Great round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an

-aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in itself might

-have prevented the superficial observer from taking him any more seriously than

-he took himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially

-superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being badly

-impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the landing to

-sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth of his prejudices

-there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate abhorrence of London and all

-Londoners, which neither the cause of his visit nor the murky mien of Mullins

-was calculated to abate. The library of books in solid bindings, many of them

-legal tomes, was the first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made

-business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only

-beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at his first

-entry.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen from

-the motorist&rsquo;s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced joviality

-with which Thrush exclaimed: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to have kept you waiting,

-sir, and the worst of it is that I can&rsquo;t let you keep me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception one had to

-come up to London to incur. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll clear out!&rdquo; said he,

-and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous effect.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly consternation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I really am rather rushed,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but I can give you

-four minutes, if that&rsquo;s any good to you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have said four

-hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would have been no good

-to him; but the precise term of minutes, together with a seemlier but not less

-decisive manner, had already quickened the business man&rsquo;s respect for

-another whose time was valuable. This is by no means to say that Thrush had won

-him over in a breath. But the following interchange took place rapidly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I understand you&rsquo;re a detective, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hardly that, Mr.&mdash;&mdash;I&rsquo;ve left your card in the other

-room.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Upton is my name, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry

-agent is all I presume to call myself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you do inquire into mysteries?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve dabbled in them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As an amateur?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A paid amateur, I fear.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush&mdash;a very serious matter to

-me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you catch

-me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none of my

-business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens to have come my

-way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private inquisitor. If you want

-anything or anybody ferreted out, that&rsquo;s my job and I should put it

-first.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Thrush, that&rsquo;s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it

-for me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my youngest

-child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or been decoyed

-away. And now there can be no doubt about it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds which

-Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up before he had

-concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts within his knowledge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When can I see you again?&rdquo; he asked abruptly of Thrush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The four minutes must be more than up.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go on, my dear sir, and don&rsquo;t throw good time after bad. I&rsquo;m

-only dining with a man at his club. He can wait.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;More good time! How do you know the boy hasn&rsquo;t turned up at school

-or at home while you&rsquo;ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there&rsquo;s

-nothing there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a

-bed which they couldn&rsquo;t give him the night before last. I did let them

-have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had

-recommended other hotels; they&rsquo;ve just been telephoning to them all in

-turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then

-I&rsquo;ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John&rsquo;s

-Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I thought

-I&rsquo;d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, but

-that&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ve done or know how to do. Something must have

-happened!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It begins to sound like it,&rdquo; said Thrush gravely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor

-accident. One moment!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still

-pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in

-the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering

-down the evil stairs next minute.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In less than an hour,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;he will be back

-with a list of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last

-forty-eight hours. I don&rsquo;t say there&rsquo;s much in it; your boy had

-probably some letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but

-it&rsquo;s worth trying.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is, indeed!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And while he is trying it,&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up

-as with a really great idea, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll greatly oblige me by having a

-whisky-and-soda in the first place.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No, thank you! I haven&rsquo;t had a bite all day. It would fly to my

-head.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s its job; that&rsquo;s where it&rsquo;s meant to

-fly,&rdquo; explained the convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with

-practised hand. Baited with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a

-flagging giant refreshed by his surrender. It made  him like his new

-acquaintance too well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I&rsquo;ve got you, Mr. Upton! My

-man begins his round by going to tell my pal I can&rsquo;t dine with him at

-all. Not a word, I beg! I&rsquo;ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins

-gets back, and in a taxi that won&rsquo;t be long.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But do you think you can do anything?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you give me time, I hope so,&rdquo; was the measured answer.

-&ldquo;But the needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it

-will take time. I&rsquo;m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a

-sixpenny solution for soft problems, don&rsquo;t come to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and repeated

-that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather reproachfully at

-Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton,

-because it&rsquo;s not much good if we&rsquo;ve got to keep the matter to

-ourselves. But is there anything distinctive about him besides the

-asthma?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Come! I call that a distinction in itself,&rdquo; said Mr. Thrush,

-smiling down his own unathletic waistcoat. &ldquo;But as a matter of fact,

-nothing could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for

-games.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing better, do you say?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Emphatically, from my point of view. It&rsquo;s harder to hide a

-man&rsquo;s asthma than to hide the man himself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never thought of that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that moment.

-The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an inscrutable stare of the

-marine eyes behind them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I suppose it has never affected his heart?&rdquo; he inquired

-nonchalantly; but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal

-perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I certainly never thought of his heart!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,&rdquo; said

-Thrush earnestly. &ldquo;On the other hand, I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if

-his asthma were to prove his best friend.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It owes him something!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know what he does for it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he

-seemed to have received some weeks before. &ldquo;He smokes, against his

-doctor&rsquo;s orders.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you mean tobacco?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;some stuff for asthma.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In cigarettes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know the name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have it here.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection after a

-precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in outstretched

-hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk, but the reading of

-the letter left him alive and alert to the last superfluous ounce.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But this is magnificent!&rdquo; he cried, with eyes as round as their

-glasses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t see why.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cigarettes d&rsquo;Auvergne!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some French rubbish.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The boy has evidently been dependent on them?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It looks like it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And this man Bompas made him give them all up?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he has the impudence to say.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is it possible you don&rsquo;t see the importance of all this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard of these cigarettes before; they&rsquo;re an imported

-article; you can&rsquo;t get them everywhere, I&rsquo;ll swear! Your boy has

-got to rely on them; he&rsquo;s out of reach of the doctor who&rsquo;s

-forbidden them; he&rsquo;ll try to get them somewhere! If he&rsquo;s been

-trying in London, I&rsquo;ll find out where before I&rsquo;m twenty-four hours

-older!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But how can you?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the

-possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A. V. M.!&rdquo; replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who on earth is he?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nobody; it&rsquo;s the principle on which I work.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A. V. M.?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it all no

-laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You divide things into two,&rdquo; explained Thrush, &ldquo;and go on so

-dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer

-to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or  Mineral? Northern or Southern

-Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much longer ago than

-mine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In this case it&rsquo;s Chemists Who Do Sell D&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes

-and Chemists Who Don&rsquo;t. Then&mdash;Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and

-Chemists Who Do but Didn&rsquo;t! But we can probably improve on the old game

-by playing both rounds at once.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I don&rsquo;t quite follow,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,

-&ldquo;though there seems some method in the madness.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the method I&rsquo;ve got,&rdquo; rejoined Thrush

-frankly. &ldquo;But you shall see it working, for unless I&rsquo;m much

-mistaken this is Mullins back sooner than I expected.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired, though

-the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been the precursor of

-the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid round had included Charing

-Cross, St. Thomas&rsquo;s, St. George&rsquo;s, and the Royal Free; but he had

-telephoned besides to St. Mary&rsquo;s and St. Bartholomew&rsquo;s. At none of

-these institutions had a young gentleman of the name of Upton, or of unknown

-name, been admitted in the last forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as 

-sympathetically depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and

-he had one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his chin

-being in perpetual mourning for the day before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go, Mullins! I&rsquo;ve another job for you,&rdquo; said

-Eugene Thrush. &ldquo;Take the telephone directory and the London directory,

-and sit you down at my desk. Look up &lsquo;chemists&rsquo; under

-&lsquo;trades&rsquo;; there are pages of them. Work through the list with the

-telephone directory, and ring up every chemist who&rsquo;s on the telephone,

-beginning with the ones nearest in, to ask if he keeps d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of the first few who do; go round to them

-all in turn, and be back here at nine with a box from each. Complain to each of

-the difficulty of getting &rsquo;em elsewhere&mdash;say you wonder

-there&rsquo;s so little demand&mdash;and with any luck you should find out

-whether and to whom they&rsquo;ve sold any since Wednesday evening.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But surely that&rsquo;s the whole point?&rdquo; suggested the

-ironmaster.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the next point,&rdquo; said Thrush. &ldquo;The first is to

-divide the chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the

-Vegetables who don&rsquo;t. I should really like to play the next round myself,

-but Mullins must do something while we&rsquo;re out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;While we&rsquo;re out, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, you&rsquo;re going to step across into the Café Royal

-with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And what about your theatre?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance

-was a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins entrenched

-behind telephone and directories.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of tripe

-that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June; but I&rsquo;m

-not going to chuck the drama that&rsquo;s come to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good dinner

-that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to his own weight.

-His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or drinking than he knew

-the names of the people in diamonds and white waistcoats who stared at the

-distraught figure in the country clothes. It even escaped his observation that

-the obese Thrush was an unblushing gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy.

-The conscious repast of Mr. Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of

-Eugene Thrush, and of that conversation only such portions as exploited his

-professional theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand.

-He was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract  him with some account of the

-murder in which he himself was only interested because his myrmidon happened to

-have discovered the body. What was the murder of some ragamuffin in Hyde Park

-to a man from the country who had lost his son?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how your theory can work there,&rdquo; he sighed, out

-of pure politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It should work all right,&rdquo; returned Thrush. &ldquo;You take an

-absolutely worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two

-motives: either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a

-menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he&rsquo;s taken your

-wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price of a

-bed on his indescribable person? He hasn&rsquo;t anything to bless himself

-with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh? So you whittle it

-down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your blade into the root of the

-matter.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his boldest

-statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt with the one

-subject on the poor man&rsquo;s mind. The cessation of his voice, however,

-caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he made a mental grab at the

-last phrase, and was astonished to find it germane to his own thoughts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the second time you&rsquo;ve mentioned luck, Mr.

-Thrush!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When was the first?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!

-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not seriously.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t believe in dreams, for example?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another question,&rdquo; said Thrush, his spectacles

-twinkling to colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. &ldquo;Why do you

-ask?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re a disbeliever it&rsquo;s no use my telling you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;m neither one thing nor the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of one,&rdquo; said Thrush, with a significant stress

-upon the verb; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a

-hundred years ago. The victim&rsquo;s mother dreamed three nights running that

-her missing daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the

-time. There <i>may</i> have been other cases.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very time

-at which something terrible has happened to that child?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Any amount of those.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The father&rsquo;s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his

-glass as he gave his answer,  and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves in a

-more attentive stare.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you think they&rsquo;re all coincidences?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton

-hoarsely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some of them may be, but certainly not all,&rdquo; was the reply.

-&ldquo;That would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hardly like to tell you why I ask,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, much

-agitated; for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been dreaming about the boy?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren&rsquo;t

-tell her he had disappeared.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why? What was the dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That she saw him&mdash;and heard a shot.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A shot!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had time to

-think.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She says she did hear one,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, &ldquo;and that she

-wasn&rsquo;t dreaming at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But when was this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Between six and seven yesterday morning.&rdquo; This time Thrush did not

-move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and again he

-was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence was complete.

-Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M. system, neither was

-Eugene Thrush the man to jump to  wild conclusions on the strength of one. He

-asked whether the boy was very fond of shooting in the holidays, as though that

-might have accounted for the dream, but his father was not aware that he had

-ever smelt powder in his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The

-tone of subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton&rsquo;s health (already

-mentioned as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a

-secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for

-compassion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then that accounts for it,&rdquo; said Thrush, when he had heard the

-whole sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.

-&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally

-fanciful, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion either

-way. I only say, don&rsquo;t think too much about that dream. And since you

-won&rsquo;t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the faithful

-Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr. Upton for

-one would not have recognised him as the same being. His sepulchral face was

-alight with news&mdash;it was the transformation of the undertaker&rsquo;s mute

-into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box of the d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes to show for his evening&rsquo;s work, and that chemist had declared

-it was the first he had sold for weeks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest&rsquo;s hand as soon

-as ever he dared.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You need a good night&rsquo;s rest, my dear sir, and it&rsquo;s no use

-climbing to my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you

-don&rsquo;t mind leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing

-tomorrow morning I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be

-some progress to report.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face still more

-strikingly illuminated.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d&rsquo;Auvergne

-Cigarettes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So I perceive.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This stump is the stump of a d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarette.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t smoke it, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who did?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for you to say, sir; but it&rsquo;s one of the little

-things I collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,

-yesterday morning in Hyde Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Near the actual place?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the strongest of

-the electric lamps.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />

-SECOND THOUGHTS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he felt that

-he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the nightmare of

-battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the engravings downstairs,

-instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame

-Tussaud&rsquo;s. The trouble was that he had seen the one and not the other,

-and what he had seen continued to haunt him as he lay awake, but quite horribly

-when he fell back into a doze. There was nothing nebulous about the vile place

-then; it was as light and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister

-figures in the panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read

-that they always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight.

-But that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman and

-terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their winding-sheets, from

-their  murderer&rsquo;s graves. Better by far their beastly faces, that you

-knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and screwed up his courage, and

-laid hands on one of the shorter figures that he could reach. It rocked stiffly

-in its place, a most palpable and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements

-from the hollow and unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not

-been there the other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as

-ill-mounted on high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of

-intelligent eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical

-characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army of

-murderers was a faithful model of himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that he had

-been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it had seemed in

-that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy shuddered till the bed

-shook under him. But after that he still lay on, facing himself as he had seen

-himself, and his deed as others must see it soon or late. Not the actual

-accident in the Park; but this hiding in the heart of London, this skulking

-among strangers, this leaving his own people to mourn him as the dead!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear to him

-before. It was not  only Lettice and their parents. Fred and Horace, how good

-they had been to him at school, and how proud he had been of them! What would

-they think of him if he went on skulking like this? What would they have done

-in his place? Anything but lie low like that, thought Pocket, and resolved

-forthwith to play the game as preached and practised by his brothers. It was

-strange that he should have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this

-morning he saw it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass

-screen…To think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude

-as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the situation as

-well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him if he gave himself up,

-but anything might if he waited till he was caught. As for the consequences to

-his poor mother, surely in the end suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper

-into the slender cord of her life than the shock of the truth would cut.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy behaved

-characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in front of him,

-beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and ending in a blaze of

-wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face; meanwhile he lay in such peace

-and safety as it was only human to prolong  a little. That night, for all his

-moral innocence, he might lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed

-while he had one, especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The

-last consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little

-time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had suffered

-from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident in which he was

-nearly killed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My accident may have done the same for me,&rdquo; thought

-Pocket&mdash;and was bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking

-complacently of any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient

-punishment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the plain

-upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was to conjure

-uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his ferocious meerschaum,

-his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his arguments in favour of the course

-which Pocket had now determined to abandon. The boy fully realised that he had

-been given his chance, and had refused it. And of all the interviews before

-him, that with Dr. Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have

-given most to escape.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did escape, and

-did give himself  up for what he had done, there was no reason why he should

-involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession. Suppose he hailed the first

-cab he saw, and drove over to St. John&rsquo;s Wood to borrow money (they could

-scarcely refuse him that), and then took the first train home to tell his

-father everything in the first instance, that father would never hear of his

-incriminating a stranger who had befriended him according to his lights. He

-himself need never say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the

-tragedy, even if he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to

-the ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only

-suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to his

-breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that after a day and

-a night he should still be in total ignorance of his whereabouts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the sunny

-little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old discoloured walls

-divided them from each other and from the gardens of a parallel block of bigger

-houses, whose slates and chimneys towered above the intervening trees. The

-street in front of those houses was completely hidden, but the hum of its

-traffic travelled pleasantly to the ear, and  there were other reassuring

-sights and sounds. In one of the contiguous gardens a very small boy was

-wheeling a doll&rsquo;s perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm

-gravel reminded Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally

-trim lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the green

-spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the curiously countrified

-smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a still stronger reminiscence of

-his father&rsquo;s garden, where his own old pony pulled the machine in leather

-shoes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to them.

-Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing almost as

-well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket could not bear to

-listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as quietly as he could. He had

-almost resolved to slip out without a word, whatever else he did, if the

-opportunity offered. It simply never occurred to him, until he made the

-discovery, that anybody would dare to lock him in his room!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek to do

-it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to himself, was

-rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told him he was on the wrong

-side of the door for applying mere bodily strength, that either he must raise

-an ignominious shout for freedom or else achieve it for himself by way of the

-window. Unathletic as he always had been, he was sportsman enough not to

-hesitate an instant between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of

-the window, saw his way down at a glance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony over the

-bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the least possible

-noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet till he had but a few

-feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a very few minutes to one as

-excitedly determined as Pocket had become on finding himself a prisoner.

-Thought they would lock him in, did they? They would just find out their

-mistake! It was exactly the same mood in which he had scaled the upright

-palings in defiance of the policeman who said he might not sleep in the Park.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old

-campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which argued either

-a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic service; it would have

-furnished scent for no short paper-chase. Otherwise the room was tidy enough,

-and  so eloquent of Baumgartner himself, in its uncompromising severity, that

-Pocket breathed more freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely

-safe, for he had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the

-pegs hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected by

-his host.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to lose a

-moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had made an

-interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being played. He

-heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on the balcony up

-above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been. It was that Phillida,

-with the large dark eyes, and she was playing something that Lettice sometimes

-played, and very nearly, though naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have

-said that it was Mendelssohn, or Chopin, &ldquo;or something,&rdquo; for his

-love of music was greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music

-that detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him

-kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he went, and

-the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been locked in, and he

-had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet not a sound&mdash;well, she

-would not think the less of him at  all events, and so they would part for

-ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile instinct for romance was not to be

-stifled at such a stimulating moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she

-knew all; she might know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it

-was the game to say goodbye.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her large

-eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they blazed at the

-intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she already knew the truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry for starting you,&rdquo; he apologised. &ldquo;I just

-came in to say goodbye.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To say goodbye!&rdquo; she gasped.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve got to go. I&rsquo;m afraid the doctor&rsquo;s

-out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, he is. Won&rsquo;t you wait?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood aside,

-to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn took her stand,

-back to the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be very sorry to miss you,&rdquo; she said more firmly, and

-with a smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m very sorry to miss him,&rdquo; said Pocket, 

-unconscientiously enough for anybody. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been most awfully good

-to me, and I wish you&rsquo;d tell him how grateful I am.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t believe me,&rdquo; the girl said dryly,

-&ldquo;if he finds you gone.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go&mdash;really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is.

-Do you mind giving him one other message?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As many as you like.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, you might tell him from me that I&rsquo;ll give myself away, but

-I&rsquo;ll never give him! He&rsquo;ll know what I mean.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the last

-moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the boy who helped

-to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through an indefensible bit of

-boyish braggadocio.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the

-worst way about it by locking me into my room!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How did you get out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How do you suppose?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never heard anything!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I took care you shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he described the successful adventure with  pardonable unction in the end.

-After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl stood up to him

-like a little heroine.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sorry, but I can&rsquo;t let you go, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t let me?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I really am sorry&mdash;but you must wait to see my uncle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older than

-himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his way

-past&mdash;but he was not the fellow to do it&mdash;and that maddened him,

-because he felt she knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, very well!&rdquo; he cried, sarcastically. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t

-let me out that way, I&rsquo;ll go this!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the garden;

-but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she held him firmly

-by the hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If you do I&rsquo;ll blow a police-whistle!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We

-have one&mdash;it won&rsquo;t take an instant. You shan&rsquo;t come out the

-front way, and you&rsquo;ll be stopped if you climb the wall!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?&rdquo; he gasped out

-bitterly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Never mind what I take you for!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re treating me as though I were one!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to stay and see my uncle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your

-uncle, and you too!&rdquo; But that was only half true, even then while he was

-struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been another boy. He

-could not strike her; but that was the only line he drew, for she would grapple

-with him, and release himself he must. Over went walnut whatnots, and out came

-mutterings that made him hotter than ever for very shame. But he did not hate

-her even for what she made him say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the

-dreadful doctor whose will she was obeying; and both were at their highest

-pitch when the door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But

-it was a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured

-or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt. It

-turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear it only

-increased.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Leave us, Phillida,&rdquo; said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in

-tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo; he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut

-it after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />

-ON PAROLE</h2>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So,&rdquo; said Dr. Baumgartner, &ldquo;you not only try to play me

-false, but you seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do

-you break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young lady

-who has shown you nothing but kindness!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought the

-violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater cad than

-ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his honour as best he

-could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to change his mind about what

-was after all his own affair. But that was precisely what Baumgartner would not

-allow for a moment; it was just as much his affair as accessory after the fact,

-and in accordance with their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could

-only rejoin that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I daresay not!&rdquo; said Baumgartner sardonically. &ldquo;It would

-have been dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you

-agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never so far

-as owning up was concerned.  You made your own bed with your eyes open, and I

-left you last night under the impression that you were going to lie on it like

-a man.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why did you lock me in?&rdquo; cried Pocket, pouncing on the one

-point on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor

-flattered him with a slight delay before replying.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There were so many reasons,&rdquo; he said, with a sigh; &ldquo;you

-mustn&rsquo;t forget that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might

-have had you falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I

-was more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken you.

-I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to yourself without

-my assistance, and that you would get brooding over what has happened until it

-drove you to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I tell you it&rsquo;s no

-good brooding or looking back; take one more look ahead, and what do you see if

-you have your way? Humiliating notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences

-in your own family, certain punishment for me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The consequences at home,&rdquo; groaned Pocket, &ldquo;will be bad

-enough whatever we do. I can&rsquo;t bear to think of them! If only they had

-taken Bompas&rsquo;s advice, and sent me round the world in the

-<i>Seringapatam!</i> I should have been at sea by this time, and out of

-harm&rsquo;s way for the next three months.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The <i>Seringapatam?</i>&rdquo; repeated the doctor. &ldquo;I never

-heard of her.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t; she&rsquo;s only a sailing vessel, but she carries

-passengers and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas&rsquo;s, who wanted to send me

-with him for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn&rsquo;t let me go.

-She sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If I

-could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I could go out

-in her still, and that would be the last of me for years and years!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had come,

-and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy&rsquo;s brain; and

-he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it up in a single

-nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures, bearded like the pard,

-another &ldquo;dead man come to life,&rdquo; after about as many years as the

-dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked on as though following

-the same wild train of thought, as though it did not seem so wild to him, but

-extremely interesting; so that Pocket was quite disappointed when he shook his

-head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young fellow!

-Why, they&rsquo;d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you&rsquo;d gasp out your

-whole story before you were in the Bay of  Biscay! No, no, my fellow;

-you&rsquo;ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with me till

-we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you say you

-won&rsquo;t, I say I&rsquo;ll make you&mdash;to save you from yourself&mdash;to

-save us both.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed and

-final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor&rsquo;s power to

-make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the nearer

-he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again. So reasoned

-Pocket from the face and voice now dominating him more powerfully than ever;

-but it is an interesting fact that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed

-him as it might have done. There was actually an element of relief in his

-discomfiture. He had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that

-responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour delayed.

-And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort in such delay,

-which was all the greater because unsought by him; it was a comfort that he had

-both ways, as the saying is, and from all points of view but that of his poor

-people wondering what had become of him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only they knew!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;then I shouldn&rsquo;t care.

-Let me write to one of them! My mother needn&rsquo;t know; but I must write to

-one of the others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister

-would keep my secret; she&rsquo;d play the game all right, I promise you! And

-I&rsquo;d play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should have to

-inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin edge of consent. In

-the end it was arranged that Pocket should write what he liked to his sister

-only, and that Baumgartner should read and enclose it in a covering letter, so

-that everybody need not know it was a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner

-was to have it posted from St. Martin&rsquo;s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of

-a locality which he now refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And

-in return for the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word

-and sacred promise on the following points.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to show

-himself for a moment at the windows back or front.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On no account was he to confide in the doctor&rsquo;s niece Phillida, to give

-her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London

-mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his first

-meeting with Baumgartner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about

-yourself the better.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But what can she think?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may

-bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise in the

-ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to think is no

-affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and she had your

-doctor&rsquo;s orders not to let you out of the house in his absence.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She obeyed them like a little brick!&rdquo; muttered Pocket, with a

-wistful heaviness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She did what she was told; think no more about it,&rdquo; said the

-doctor. &ldquo;Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet

-rather than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play

-the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures played it at

-Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch. Look at this one

-here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where we come to bayonets and

-the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian Guard! See the sheet-lightning

-pouring into us from the walls of St. Privat! Look at that fellow with his head

-bound up, and this one with no head to bind. That&rsquo;s meant for our colonel

-on the white horse. See him hounding us on to hell! And there&rsquo;s a drummer

-drumming as though we could hear a single beat! Our very colours  were blown to

-ribbons, you see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my

-young fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!&rdquo; Baumgartner

-might have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of a

-responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and to wake

-the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the heart of a

-soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was only when he found

-himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless brought his innocent deed

-home to him as nothing had done before, that the artificial frost broke up, and

-real tears ran with his ink. He begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him,

-still less to be anxious about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret

-for him, he wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction.

-He was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But

-something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would

-bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from ever

-seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others to which it

-led, that were literally blotted with the writer&rsquo;s tears. But just then

-he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who could never show

-himself at home or at school again. And it required the spell of 

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s presence to make the prospect such as could be borne with

-the least degree of visible manhood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways younger

-than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in some few. He was

-old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may be imaginative and still

-have a level head, but it is least likely in one&rsquo;s teens. The particular

-temperament does not need a label; but none who know it when they see it, and

-who see it here, will be surprised to learn that this emotional writer for one

-was enormously relieved and lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off

-his mind and hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a kindly

-gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over the second

-leaf.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;This is not for me to read!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather run

-the risk of trusting your discretion.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped the hand

-that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the address, all openly

-before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to the nearest messenger office

-to despatch the missive to the General Post Office, ostensibly to catch a

-particular post, his prisoner  would not have decamped for a hundred pounds,

-and the doctor knew it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket was only

-less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had caused, than when they

-were both at table and he unable to say another word to express his sorrow for

-the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She spoke to him once or twice as though

-nothing of the kind had happened, but he could scarcely look her in the face.

-Otherwise both meals interested him; they were German in their order, a light

-supper following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they

-both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much taken with

-the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived smoking hot in tiers. It

-provided a further train of speculation when he remembered that he had never

-seen a servant in the house, and that the steps had struck him as dirty, and

-the doctor&rsquo;s waste-paper basket as very full. Pocket determined to make

-his own bed next morning. He had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the

-young girl was clearing away, for the doctor took him back into the

-drawing-room after supper; and later, when they returned for a game of

-billiards on the toy board, which they placed between them on the dining-table,

-both Phillida and the fragments had disappeared.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy&rsquo;s

-simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate one; his

-brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his hand obey, as

-though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep between life and death.

-It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate concentration; even the

-Turk&rsquo;s head was only lit to be laid aside as an obstruction.

-Pocket&rsquo;s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the fortune that accrues

-on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy forgot everything when he

-actually succeeded in the last game. They had played very late for him, and he

-slept without stirring until Baumgartner came to his room about eight

-o&rsquo;clock next morning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first thing he

-did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one like a flag to

-wake him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the

-stick!&rdquo; he cried, with fierce amusement; &ldquo;it only remains to be

-seen whether they succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack

-too. Really, it&rsquo;s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery

-to watch the smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;May I see?&rdquo; asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these

-remarks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner; &ldquo;here&rsquo;s the

-journalistic wonder of the age, and there you are in its most important column.

-I brought it up for you to see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded type and

-the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first place, that no arrest

-had yet been made; but it was confidently asserted (by the omniscient butt of

-Teutonic sallies) that the police, wisely guided by the hint in

-yesterday&rsquo;s issue (which Pocket had not seen), were already in possession

-of a most important clue. In subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real

-homicide was informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally

-different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had been a

-certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in the previous

-month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had been found shot under

-circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide that a coroner&rsquo;s jury had

-actually returned a verdict to that effect. There appeared, however, to have

-been an element of doubt in the case. This the scribe of the leaded type sought

-to remove by begging the question from beginning to end. It had not been a case

-of suicide at all, he declared,  but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde

-Park, to which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been

-shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged to one

-neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the community. A pothouse

-acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but the suggestion was that the link

-lay a good deal deeper than that, and that the two dead men were known to the

-police, who were busy searching for a third party of equal notoriety in

-connection with both murders.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,&rdquo; said the

-boy, looking up at last. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a murder, either; neither was

-the first, according to the coroner&rsquo;s jury, who surely ought to

-know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One would have thought so,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, with his sardonic

-smile; &ldquo;but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you suppose there&rsquo;s a word of truth in what he says? I

-don&rsquo;t mean about Charlton or&mdash;or poor Holdaway,&rdquo; said Pocket,

-wincing over his victim&rsquo;s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper.

-&ldquo;But do you think the police are really after anybody?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Baumgartner. &ldquo;What does it

-matter?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I

-did!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would alter the whole thing,&rdquo; he mumbled significantly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rdquo; returned the doctor, with grim good-nature.

-&ldquo;The little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed

-another mare&rsquo;s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm

-can come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only two

-living souls who can&rsquo;t account for their time at that of this unfortunate

-affair.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin under

-the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light, always

-encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his silence, which

-had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to keep his feelings under

-control, to set his face and his teeth against the regular reactions of his

-coward conscience and his fickle will. And once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone

-for an unintentional minor by striking a rousing chord on the very

-heart-strings of the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Eight o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; cried the magician, with a glance at his

-watch and an ear towards the open  window. &ldquo;The postman&rsquo;s knock

-from door to door down every street in town&mdash;house to house from one end

-of your British Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being

-delivered at this very moment&mdash;eh, my poor young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />

-HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS</h2>

-

-<p>

-Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr. Baumgartner

-heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius for headlines, and

-the delicious expediency of all its views, which enabled its editorial column

-to face all ways and bow where it listed, in the universal joint of popularity,

-were points of irresistible appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour.

-He read the paper with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal

-chuckle between the sheets.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the paper

-came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious matter. It said

-exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park murder: that the murderer

-would prove to be the author of a similar crime, committed in the previous

-month of March, when the Upton boy must have been safe at school. If that were

-so, it  was manifestly absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely

-happened to synchronise with that of his own disappearance&mdash;absurd, even

-if he were shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere

-about the time of its perpetration.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established overnight. It

-was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile conviction of his class, had

-jumped on the slender evidence of the asthma cigarette alone; but before

-midnight Thrush himself had been forced to admit its extreme probability. There

-was a medicine cork as well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been

-found very much nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a

-shrub on the other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both

-discoveries, who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night,

-to ask if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with

-their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just as well

-but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens, rung up in

-their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the doctor&rsquo;s

-prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and, within half an

-hour, had positively identified the cork found by Mullins in Hyde Park.  It was

-still sticky with the very stuff which had put poor Pocket asleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection between a

-harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He resisted the idea

-on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in argument with his now

-strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide jump to a detestable

-conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the width of the jump. The cork

-and the cigarette might be stepping-stones, but at least one more was wanted to

-justify the slightest suspicion against the missing boy. Let it be shown that

-he had carried firearms on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join

-his satellite on the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the

-fact that he made no mention of the boy&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s dream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an enthusiastic

-convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist, and consequently an

-irritable observer of the saturnine countenance which darkened to a tinge of

-distinct amusement over the leaded type.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So you don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much in it, Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t say there was anything at all, sir.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland

-Walk?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The coroner&rsquo;s jury did&mdash;in spite of the coroner&mdash;but it

-may come before another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the

-medical evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm&rsquo;s length. That

-isn&rsquo;t the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was

-nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price of one;

-he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before. The very same

-point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he ever had a revolver in

-his life? His father tells me explicitly that he never had; I happened to ask

-the question,&rdquo; added Thrush, without explaining in what connection.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone,

-&ldquo;you talk about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman

-who write for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the very

-faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his spectacles without one

-at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,

-however,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;it  may be by fair means, or it may be by

-foul, but they have a way of getting there before the others start.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do it this

-time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring himself to believe in

-two separate mysteries, at one and the same time and place, with no sort of

-connection between them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That would be too much of a coincidence,&rdquo; said Mullins,

-sententiously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked at him for a moment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But life&rsquo;s one long collection of coincidences! That&rsquo;s what

-I&rsquo;m always telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else.

-Don&rsquo;t you call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet

-their death at the very hour of the morning when you&rsquo;re on your way over

-here from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which

-you&rsquo;ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the nerve

-to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other morning, and been

-mixed up in that affair because you are in this?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admit I&rsquo;m mixed up in anything,&rdquo; replied

-Mullins, with some warmth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to the

-absurd, Mullins; you didn&rsquo;t take me literally, did you? It&rsquo;s no 

-use talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I&rsquo;m always

-ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a pistol,

-Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must be roaring

-inside for yours. The man who&rsquo;s been knocking up chemists all night is

-the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then mine, and after that

-you can tell me how you got on.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his best,

-it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a few

-minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum should have

-swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins went about his business with

-his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was yet another man the moment he was

-alone. His face was a sunny background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed

-plans, one after the other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the

-sky was clear whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table

-there was not a cloud.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,&rdquo;

-resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; &ldquo;how many have you done,

-and how many have we still to do between us?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as

-neat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rung up when you were out at dinner&mdash;seventeen. Kept Cigarettes

-d&rsquo;Auvergne&mdash;one. That was Thornycroft&rsquo;s in Shaftesbury Avenue,

-where I&rsquo;d just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night

-I knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of

-Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A matter of life or death.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in

-New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Much demand in any of those quarters?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly

-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know him; so he&rsquo;s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?&rdquo;

-murmured Thrush, to his buttered egg. &ldquo;But has one of these apothecaries

-sold a box of d&rsquo;Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Two have,&rdquo; said Mullins, &ldquo;but one was to Mr. Pringle.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How did you worm that out, Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody

-who could recommend  the cigarettes from personal experience, as we were only

-trying them on hearsay.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only

-consumer?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on

-Thursday to a doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you get the name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Baumgartner, I expect you mean!&rdquo; cried Thrush, straightening a wry

-face to spell the name. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though

-I can&rsquo;t say when or where. What&rsquo;s his address?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn&rsquo;t. Suppose he

-thought I&rsquo;d be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he

-was.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;For d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t inquire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My good fellow, that&rsquo;s the whole point! I&rsquo;ll go myself and

-ask for the asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he

-never had them before, that&rsquo;ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well.

-But I&rsquo;m certain I know his name; you might look it up in <i>Who&rsquo;s

-Who</i>, and read out what they say.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at barbaric

-mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr. Baumgartner had fought

-in his martial youth; the various Universities whereat he had studied

-psychology and theology in an evident reaction of later life; even the titles

-of his subsequent publications, which contained some long English words, but

-were given in German too. A copious contribution concluded with the information

-that photography and billiards were the doctor&rsquo;s recreations, and that he

-belonged to a polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St.

-James&rsquo;s which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Parthenon!&rdquo; said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve.

-&ldquo;But what about his address?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no getting hold of that address,&rdquo; said Mullins,

-demoralised and perspiring. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not given here either.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but

-I&rsquo;m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of <i>Peripatetic

-Psychology</i> deserves to have asthma all his nights, and <i>After this

-Life</i> smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won&rsquo;t build

-on Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we&rsquo;ll go through the chemists of London

-with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away, when a

-stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton with  a

-panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but he denied that

-he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at Mullins, and fell to

-abusing London and the Londoners, but City men above all others, till Thrush

-and he should be alone together. The incidental diatribe was no mere padding,

-either; it was the sincere utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody

-in all London, he declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared

-a twopenny curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the

-present company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of

-the boy&rsquo;s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But

-the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had been to

-see his boy&rsquo;s friends&rsquo; father, &ldquo;a swine called Knaggs,&rdquo;

-that very morning at his house in St. John&rsquo;s Wood.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather early, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; suggested Thrush, whose manner was

-more softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was

-slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Early!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I lost my boy, and

-wasn&rsquo;t it these Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to

-have gone to them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your

-dinner; for I don&rsquo;t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of

-your  hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me

-afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my own; but

-I&rsquo;d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant then, so I

-thought I&rsquo;d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting till this

-morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush seized the

-opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in the street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I confess I showed indecent haste,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but Mullins

-and I had our night&rsquo;s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his

-boots off since you saw him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an

-unsuspected devotion; &ldquo;then I&rsquo;ll say what I&rsquo;ve got to say in

-front of him, for you&rsquo;re both my friends, and I&rsquo;ll unsay all I said

-just now. Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside

-myself about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug

-little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his

-breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as himself, and

-saying &lsquo;Rather early!&rsquo;&mdash;just as you set me off by saying

-yourself a minute ago.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him! I

-could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but what could he

-do? London was a large place, and &lsquo;we Londoners&rsquo; were busy men. I

-told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too busy to keep an eye

-on boys who were friends of our boys. He said London life was different; and I

-said so I could see. They never had spare beds at a moment&rsquo;s notice, much

-less for boys who might set fire to the house or&mdash;or shoot

-themselves&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood

-glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad&rsquo;s

-death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however, looked so

-genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the face of Mullins

-also attracted less attention.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had he anything to shoot himself with?&rdquo; inquired Thrush, in a

-curiously gentle voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He had, after all!&rdquo; he croaked. &ldquo;Little as I dreamt it

-yesterday, my unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in

-his life before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his

-pocket!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had he brought it from school?&rdquo; asked Thrush, with a covert frown

-at the transfigured Mullins.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters, with their

-father&rsquo;s opinion of pawnbrokers&rsquo; shops as resorts for young

-schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and

-guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted without

-fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose only comment was

-that it behoved him all the more to do something to redeem the capital in the

-other&rsquo;s eyes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!&rdquo; was the only

-rejoinder, in a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was

-the first he had heard about the dream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew

-before. Yet I will own now,&rdquo; exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins&rsquo;s

-bright eye, &ldquo;that the coincidence will be tremendous if there&rsquo;s

-nothing in it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But only half the coincidence was present in the father&rsquo;s mind; no

-thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy; and to

-hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his fretted nerves

-could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for a

-pessimist&mdash;apologised&mdash;and humbly entreated him to take a more

-hopeful view.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal

-one!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public

-mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish grins and

-nods behind the poor father&rsquo;s back. Thrush looked at both men with the

-troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being&mdash;looked and frowned

-again&mdash;frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant, the

-trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost blinding

-flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light; enough for Eugene

-Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit as brightly as it lit him

-onward to its solution.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in his face,

-as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr. Upton about the

-missing boy. What was his character? what its chief points? Was he a boy with

-the moral courage of his acts? Would he face their consequences like a man?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never knew him tell a lie in his life,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton,

-&ldquo;either to save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of

-their young skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most

-conscientious of them all, and I hear that&rsquo;s what they say of him at

-school.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue, though a

-very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up himself; and this

-time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own accord, with a dejected

-undertaking to be at his hotel when he was wanted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the look of our friend,&rdquo; remarked Thrush,

-looking hard at Mullins when at last they were alone. &ldquo;He shapes none too

-well for the strain he&rsquo;s got to bear; if he cracks up there&rsquo;ll be a

-double tragedy, if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare

-quickly, Mullins, or we may catch him too late.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a few

-minutes before; he took no notice of it now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find your man,&rdquo; said Mullins significantly,

-&ldquo;the very moment that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Meaning they&rsquo;re the same person?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To be sure.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Surely, sir, it&rsquo;s as plain as a pikestaff now?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not to me, Mullins&mdash;not to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then who do you think has done it, sir?&rdquo; inquired Mullins, in

-deferential derision.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope

-to get arrested within another hour!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw, black as a

-crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy collar.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re actually thinking of arresting some one else?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am&mdash;with your permission, Mullins.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled from his

-words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />

-BOY AND GIRL</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.

-Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the newspaper

-with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in quicker time than the

-other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of the house was all alone in

-the dining-room, where Pocket found her boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had

-her to himself for several seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither

-grace nor tact in what he said, and his  manner was naturally at its worst, but

-the penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the

-doctor&rsquo;s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given time

-to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he liked his egg

-boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled when he told her it was

-&ldquo;done to a shake.&rdquo; Dr. Baumgartner, on the other hand, scowled upon

-them both until observation or reflection had convinced him that no promises

-had been broken and no confidences exchanged.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; for Pocket

-hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up to the young girl

-under the doctor&rsquo;s nose. He talked to her about books in the other room.

-He had the impertinence to invite her into the dining-room for a game of

-billiards, but the sense next moment to include her uncle in an amended form of

-more becoming suggestion. Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent

-most of the time with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The

-boy and girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,

-though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on him. But

-she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was only when she 

-began to question him about his special vocabulary, that Baumgartner looked on

-for a little, and put in his word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You see he still believes in his public school,&rdquo; said he to

-Phillida, in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the

-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should think I did!&rdquo; cried Pocket, and did a little loyal

-boasting about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until

-memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve o&rsquo;clock,

-and a summer&rsquo;s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only your verses

-to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before you went up to

-dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday afternoon! A match on the

-Upper, where you could lie on your rug and watch the game you couldn&rsquo;t

-play; call-over at the match; ices and lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and

-for Saturday supper anything you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen

-and put piping hot at your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely

-by writing your name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside!

-It was not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the whole

-full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows, that he had

-lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal came in smoking from 

-the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself again, as a boy will be; after

-all, they knew about him at home by this time, their worst fears were allayed,

-and in the end it would all come right. In the end he would be sitting in his

-own old place at home, instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling

-them everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and

-Horace listening to every word&mdash;much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to

-something now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she

-listened. Pocket did both in his turn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming nearer with

-their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and ran outside without

-his hat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the doctor.

-He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn to a single

-raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed at once where they

-had left off before breakfast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I forgive you,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;It was I began

-it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Began what?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Our row yesterday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it  was lost on Pocket now.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about it,&rdquo; he said with superfluous

-candour, his ear still on the street.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her voice made him remember better. &ldquo;I hope to goodness I didn&rsquo;t

-hurt you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must have thought me mad!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a slight but most significant pause.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I never shall again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you did!&rdquo; he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young

-faces were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no

-nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and indignant

-shame on hers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You really are at school?&rdquo; she whispered, not increduously, but as

-one seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had

-thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved school

-was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate with one

-raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, &ldquo;Park

-murder&mdash;arrest! &rsquo;Rest o&rsquo; de Park murderer! Park

-murder&mdash;Park murder&mdash;arrest!&rdquo; And Pocket sprang up from the

-table in a state that swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and trembling, in

-pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep; but the

-doctor&rsquo;s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly seated

-when the doctor entered&mdash;without any paper at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s that murder the papers are all exploiting,&rdquo; he

-explained benignly. &ldquo;They were shouting out something about an arrest;

-you would hear them, I daresay. But it&rsquo;s the usual swindle; the police

-are merely hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the

-scoundrel took his paper back!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors

-recalled those of &ldquo;your vermin press itself&rdquo;; the association was

-wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English boy was

-either dense or indifferent, and Phillida&rsquo;s great eyes were in some other

-world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous scrutiny, and suddenly

-cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared there was a concert at the

-Albert Hall, where &ldquo;the most popular and handsome pair in England&rdquo;

-(the inverted commas were in the doctor&rsquo;s sneer) were being welcomed on

-their return from the ends of the earth. He had intended going to hear what

-they could do; but Phillida should go instead; she was not past the ballad

-stage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not conceal her

-recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of her; her uncle called a

-taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off the premises in the frock she

-had been wearing all day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said he, returning with a scowl, &ldquo;what the devil

-were you two talking about while my back was turned?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yesterday,&rdquo; replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his

-heart beat fast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What about yesterday?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Our scuffle in the other room.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No&mdash;I found out something; she didn&rsquo;t tell me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What did you find out?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That you let her think me mad!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in monstrous

-earnest. He might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own

-reproachful face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it

-did not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said she would think I was a patient.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly! A mental case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You had no business to make me out mad,&rdquo; persisted Pocket, with

-dogged valour.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that

-you&rsquo;ll continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday

-when I was out. It&rsquo;s no good shaking your head at me; listen to

-reason,&rdquo; continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. &ldquo;And

-try, my good young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have

-some consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again

-put gently but clearly in the wrong.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And I should like to know,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;what good it does her

-to think she&rsquo;s associating with a lunatic?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,&rdquo; was the

-suave reply. &ldquo;I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of

-such an expression, even in jest. It&rsquo;s as ugly as it&rsquo;s ridiculous

-in your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the horrid

-term in all sobriety.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I heard more than that,&rdquo; returned Pocket. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve

-arrested somebody!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought I told you there was no truth in that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort

-was a precocious inspiration.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, my young fellow,&rdquo; said the doctor, after one of his wise

-pauses, &ldquo;and what if it was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t lie long.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the same

-measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him without a word for

-the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of sudden and implacable

-animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of sight, yet working as though the

-teeth were being ground behind them; the crow&rsquo;s footed face flushed up,

-and the crow&rsquo;s feet were no more; it was as though age was swallowed in

-that flood of speechless passion till the whole man was no older than the fiery

-eyes that blazed upon the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the

-complete control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other

-room till you know your own mind again.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know it now, unless they release that man,&rdquo; said Pocket, through

-his teeth, although they chattered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of

-clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more patience!

-Think of your own friends, and give them time too.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If the last allusion was to the lad&rsquo;s letter, due in Leicestershire that

-morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner&rsquo;s last words. If he meant

-himself to be included among Pocket&rsquo;s friends, there was food for thought

-in the suggestion that a man of the doctor&rsquo;s obvious capacity was not

-idle in the boy&rsquo;s best interests. Pocket was made to feel rather ashamed

-of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the concentrated fury of the look

-which had not been weakened by infuriate words; and the recollection remained

-as an excuse, as well as a menace, in his mind. He had time enough to think it

-over. Dr. Baumgartner smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back

-of the house. The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but

-eventually took the doctor at his word about a book.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was certainly so to

-some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His library  was singularly

-small for an intellectual man who wrote himself, and a majority of the volumes

-were in languages which no public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of

-the English books many were on military subjects, some few anthropological;

-there were photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot

-or yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had

-probably been labelled &ldquo;occult&rdquo; in their last bookseller&rsquo;s

-list. Boismont on <i>Hallucinations</i> was one of these; it was the book for

-Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on

-somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was something to

-find that he was far from being the only harmless creature who had committed a

-diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several cases was one of another boy

-who had made an equally innocent and yet determined attempt on his own father.

-But there was something peculiar in poor Pocket&rsquo;s case, something that

-distinguished it from any of those cited in the book, and he was still

-ferreting for its absolute fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected

-her. Boismont had made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the

-girl, too, appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her

-concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her  uncle,

-who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was himself in

-mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world like any ordinary

-trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, the man quizzing them and

-her, and the boy standing up for one that his sister sang at home, when a

-metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the conversation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of their

-almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still before Pocket

-realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No letters were delivered

-at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard at the door before. Even in his

-excitement, however, with its stunning recrudescence of every reality, its

-instantaneous visions of his people or the police, there was room for a measure

-of disgust when the girl got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to

-the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a huge fat man,&rdquo; whispered Phillida, on her return to

-the big room at the back of the house. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s his card.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Thrush!&rdquo; muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he

-glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression whatever. It was

-plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once it must be done, and

-done  quickly&mdash;with both doors open and the visitor&rsquo;s very movements

-audible on the steps. To the door the doctor must go, and went, shutting that

-one pointedly behind him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The young creatures, looking in each other&rsquo;s eyes, listened for raised

-voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too low to

-reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound of footsteps

-in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer and an inner door in

-quick succession.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taken him into the dining-room,&rdquo; murmured Phillida.

-&ldquo;Who can it be?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he any friends?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.&rdquo;

-Her great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a

-blank screen takes a shadow. &ldquo;I wonder if it&rsquo;s about that!&rdquo;

-she whispered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at

-table.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating

-now.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why should it be?&rdquo; asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand the question.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is that true?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Upton,&rdquo; she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were

-both instinctively adopting, &ldquo;you know now what I thought about you at

-first. I won&rsquo;t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could

-hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your

-being here. I can&rsquo;t ask my uncle&mdash;he tells me nothing&mdash;but

-there&rsquo;s something I can and must ask you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing

-happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the Park he

-goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say what I want

-to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything points to it;

-especially the way he ran out for that paper&mdash;and hid the truth when he

-came in!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked up at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know the truth.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;About the arrest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you&rsquo;d

-gone.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not before?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t tax him about it in front of you,&rdquo; he muttered,

-looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; the boy said hoarsely; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t ask

-me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then you know who did it. I can see you do.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was nobody you care about,&rdquo; he mumbled, hoarser than before,

-and his head lower.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She stopped aghast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say another word&mdash;and you won&rsquo;t say another to

-me!&rdquo; he added, a bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her

-it had been an accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to

-Baumgartner not to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it

-yet.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know me,&rdquo; she whispered, and for a moment her hand

-lay warm in his; &ldquo;trust me! I&rsquo;m your friend in spite of all

-you&rsquo;ve said&mdash;or done!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the intruder; before

-that he had been first amazed and then relieved to hear the piano in the

-drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear had heard of either boy or girl

-during his absence.  Yet the boy was not standing over the piano, as he might

-have been, for Phillida was trying to recall one of the concert songs he said

-his sister sang. Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a

-troubled face, which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively

-to meet the doctor&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but stood

-beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done something

-very clever indeed.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />

-BEFORE THE STORM</h2>

-

-<p>

-Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally spend

-one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the theatre at night;

-but at Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s there was little to distinguish the seventh day

-from the other six. The passover of the postman, that boon to residents and

-grievance of the traveller, was a normal condition in the dingy house of no

-address. More motor-horns were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic;

-the sound of church bells came as well through the open windows; then the

-street-door shut, and there was a long period  without Phillida, until it

-opened and shut again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as

-though they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner pottered

-about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had seen it first;

-the Turk&rsquo;s head perspired from internal and external heat, but its rich

-yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather with a red geranium which

-the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole of his black alpaca jacket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew what she

-could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature conservatory were

-also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory interest in them, obviously on

-her account. It was obvious at least to Pocket Upton. He saw all these things,

-and what they meant. He was not without his little gifts of observation and

-deduction. He noticed the difference in Baumgartner&rsquo;s voice when he

-addressed his niece, the humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he

-thought he saw a reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been

-none to see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had

-seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning.  But now

-it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of kindness against

-these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her endure them with a better

-grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to him, she could not have made

-sweeter amends than she did by many an unobtrusive little office. And she

-exchanged no more confidences with poor Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was a

-strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of

-life&rsquo;s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before

-or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his

-spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe.

-There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the

-removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become interested on

-the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer lying about the room as he had left

-it. There was a gap in its place in the shelf. The book had been taken away

-from him; it made him feel as though he were back again at his very first

-dame&rsquo;s school.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They were more

-mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you down the hill at

-the double if you were late and not too  asthmatical; and Pocket saw and heard

-himself puffing up the opposite hill to take his place for chapel call-over in

-the school quad. The fellows would be forming in squads there now, all in their

-Sunday tails or Eton jackets as the case might be; of course Pocket was in

-tails, though still rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or

-their rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind&rsquo;s eye. Then came the cool

-and spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and rows

-of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own, giving a swing to

-chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How real it all was to him,

-and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the sunny room with the battle

-engravings over the book-cases, and the walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr.

-Baumgartner in and out in his alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for

-a walk with Blundell minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and

-got it over. And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and

-apple-pie with cloves in it at Spearman&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s meals certainly

-provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the portable

-contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor praised without a

-single patriotic reservation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Italy is a country where one can live,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Not that

-you must understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young

-fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a Sunday. No

-organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German bands which we in

-Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman every hour of the day, and

-no gaolbirds crying false news down the streets.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker&rsquo;s eye, but found it fixed

-on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to say something

-quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the actual remark.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,&rdquo; explained

-the doctor. &ldquo;I give out no other address; then you only get your letters

-when you want them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you often go there?&rdquo; the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly

-wishing he would go that afternoon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not when I have visitors,&rdquo; replied Baumgartner, with a smiling

-bow. &ldquo;And I look upon my patients in that light,&rdquo; he added, with

-benevolent but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more

-so than if she had still believed it to be the truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece took

-refuge at her piano,  and this time Pocket hung over her for an hour or more.

-He went through her music, and asked for everything that Lettice played or

-sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the makings of a pianist. The

-boy&rsquo;s enthusiasm for the things he knew made her play then as well as

-ever he had heard them played. Even the doctor, dozing in the big chair with

-eyes that were never quite shut, murmured his approval more than once; he loved

-his Mendelssohn and Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and

-others that the boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in

-the same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been

-there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and once or

-twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be the boy who had

-killed a man, however innocently, three days before! Could it be he whom the

-police might come and carry off to prison at any moment? Was it true that he

-might never see his own people any more? Such questions appalled and stunned

-him; he could neither answer them nor realise their full import. They turned

-the old man in the chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he

-had seemed at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement

-even to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home. Of

-course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something would be done

-at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his for ever; but as for

-his present situation, there were moments when Pocket felt rather like a

-story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned, and already in communication with

-the mainland.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had come

-straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be within a mile of

-that very room at that very moment. Would all the known circumstances of his

-disappearance be published broadcast in the papers? Pocket felt he would have

-red ears all his life if that were done; and yet it had hurt him a little to

-gather from Baumgartner that so far there was nothing in the papers to say he

-had so much as disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or

-Friday. Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would

-have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her afternoon rest.

-If he were at home, he would be going about quietly. Lettice would be reading

-or writing in the morning-room,  most probably. Father would be gloating over

-his rhododendrons with a strong cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how

-beautiful they were. Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and

-Fred were not playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far

-ahead to see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own

-voice telling them of his own experience&mdash;of this very hour at Dr.

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that! Pocket

-looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids never quite closed,

-and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister effect. He noted the

-drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash from the Turk&rsquo;s head

-sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the very phrases of a graphic

-portrait almost to his lips.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the silver

-lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not silver at all but

-one of the baser metals of the human heart, how indignantly he would have

-denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the end!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and sponge,

-but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for going higher up to

-his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only make more work, in a tone

-precluding argument. It struck Pocket that the doctor really needed sleep, and

-was irritable after a continuous struggle against it. If so, it served him

-right for not trusting a fellow&mdash;and for putting Boismont in the

-waste-paper basket, by Jove!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first things

-Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in the opposite

-corner; and the schoolboy&rsquo;s strongest point, be it remembered, was a

-stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive at the waste-paper basket,

-meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor minded his reading that book. But the

-question never was asked; the book was still in the basket when the doctor had

-finished drying his face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had

-seen the dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter with my young fellow?&rdquo; inquired

-Baumgartner, solicitously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing! I&rsquo;ll be all right soon,&rdquo; muttered Pocket, wiping

-his forehead and then his hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You look faint. Here&rsquo;s my sponge. No, lie flat down there

-first!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do feel seedy,&rdquo; he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in

-it, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m not going to faint. I&rsquo;m quite well able to go

-upstairs. I&rsquo;d rather lie down on my own bed, if you don&rsquo;t

-mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was none the

-less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first close examination

-of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had picked out of the basket in

-the doctor&rsquo;s room instead of Boismont&rsquo;s book on hallucinations.

-There had been no hallucination about those scraps of paper; they were

-fragments of the boy&rsquo;s own letter to his sister, which Dr. Baumgartner

-had never posted at all.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />

-A LIKELY STORY</h2>

-

-<p>

-At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, when

-Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor&rsquo;s dining-room; for not only had

-Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of warning to anybody, on

-the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had followed by the only Sunday

-train.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town which

-reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for the hunting

-season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its beauty-sleep, under a

-gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and leafy coverts,  with but one

-blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But

-the works lay hidden, and the hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained

-that this was it, abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station,

-and entered the grounds on foot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was encountered and

-accosted before he reached the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he&rsquo;s at home? I

-want to see him about something.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice flushed and shrank.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know who you are! Have you found my brother?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; not yet,&rdquo; said Thrush, after a pause. &ldquo;But you take my

-breath away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no

-longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of town

-without a word?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s still a secret,&rdquo; whispered Lettice, as though the

-shrubs had ears, &ldquo;only I&rsquo;m in it. Nobody else is&mdash;nobody

-fresh&mdash;but I guessed, and my mother was beginning to suspect. My father

-never stays away a Sunday unless he&rsquo;s out of England altogether; she

-couldn&rsquo;t understand it, and was worrying so about him that I wired

-begging him to come back if only for the night. So it&rsquo;s all my  fault,

-Mr. Thrush; and I know everything but what you&rsquo;ve come down to tell

-us!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s next to nothing,&rdquo; he shrugged. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s

-neither good nor bad. But if you can find your father I&rsquo;ll tell you both

-exactly what I have found out.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without

-bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any warmer

-feeling. She was the perfect sister&mdash;that he felt as instinctively as

-everybody else&mdash;and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be cruel

-and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish face. So he

-let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and pungent with

-pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father

-quietly from the house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed for

-the first train after getting his daughter&rsquo;s telegram, leaving but a line

-for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use it whether

-he had anything to report or not.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;As you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice,

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of

-course you were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was  coming back by

-the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did you leave the motor behind?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes; it&rsquo;ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It may have to do more than that,&rdquo; said Thrush, spreading his full

-breadth on the pitch-pine seat. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found out something; how much

-or how little it&rsquo;s too soon to tell; but I wasn&rsquo;t going to discuss

-it through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead

-secret, Mr. Upton, and that&rsquo;s why I didn&rsquo;t ring you up. As for your

-last train, I&rsquo;d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn&rsquo;t

-have given me time to say what I&rsquo;ve got to say before one or other of us

-may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do for God&rsquo;s sake say what you&rsquo;ve got to say!&rdquo; cried

-Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Alive?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And perfectly well&mdash;but for his asthma&mdash;on Thursday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who calmed him,

-not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were blinded by the first ray

-of light.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Where was it?&rdquo; he asked, when he could ask anything.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it

-really was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What kind of interest?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.&rdquo; She

-looked at her father. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t let him go,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I want to know just how it came to be talked about.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did he recommend any particular vessel?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, a sailing ship&mdash;the <i>Seringapatam</i>&mdash; an old East

-Indiaman they&rsquo;ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I

-wouldn&rsquo;t hear of the beastly tub.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you know when she was to sail?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I did know,&rdquo; said Lettice. &ldquo;I believe it was just about

-now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;She sailed yesterday,&rdquo; said Thrush, impressively; &ldquo;and your

-brother, if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He

-told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton, and his

-father not. I&rsquo;m bound to say it sounds as though it may have been the

-boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing

-question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It must have been!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Who was the man, and

-where exactly did he see him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps

-I&rsquo;d better tell you about my informant, since we&rsquo;ve only his word

-for Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the

-first place he&rsquo;s a semi-public man, though I don&rsquo;t suppose you know

-his name. It&rsquo;s Baumgartner&mdash;Dr. Otto Baumgartner&mdash;a German

-scientist of some distinction.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush continued

-with some pride: &ldquo;There was some luck in it, of course, for he was the

-very first man I struck who&rsquo;d bought d&rsquo;Auvergne Cigarettes since

-Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four hours of hearing

-that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up to A. V. M.! I might have

-been with him some hours sooner still, but I preferred to spend them getting to

-know something about my man. I tried his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was

-a chemist, who didn&rsquo;t know him by sight, and had never heard of the

-cigarettes, but remembered being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last

-Thursday morning! That absolutely confirmed  my first suspicion that

-Baumgartner himself was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist

-would have known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist

-first!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about Baumgartner

-that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false scent, Mr. Upton; not to

-mention the baker and the candlestick-maker, there&rsquo;s a little restaurant

-in the same row, which was about the fifth place where I began by asking if

-they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner lived in that neighbourhood. The little

-Italian boss was all over me on the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his

-most regular customer, having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in

-quite the Italian manner. I don&rsquo;t suppose you see how very valuable this

-was to me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was

-the one point on which I should never yield to Germany&mdash;and I thought I

-was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor lives alone

-with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants and never

-entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the arrangement was made,

-the old chap went to the restaurant himself to complain of short commons; there

-had not been enough for them to eat on the Thursday night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Had they been alone?&rdquo; asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were,

-but I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you. It

-was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my leisure (an

-excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards went round and saw the

-doctor himself. The niece opened the door&mdash;I wish I&rsquo;d seen more of

-her&mdash;but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for an interview on an

-urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must say, impressed me very

-favourably; and the moment we were alone I said, &lsquo;I want to know, Doctor,

-who you bought those asthma cigarettes for last Thursday!&rsquo;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m

-an inquiry agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you&rsquo;ll tell me

-it may solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I&rsquo;ve ever handled.&rsquo; Is

-was treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there&rsquo;s no

-shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn&rsquo;t

-blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in store.

-&lsquo;I&rsquo;d tell you his name with all my heart,&rsquo; he said,

-&lsquo;only I don&rsquo;t really know it myself. He said it was  John

-Green&mdash;but his handkerchiefs were marked &ldquo;A. A.

-U.&rdquo;&rsquo;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s initials!&rdquo; cried Tony&rsquo;s father.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it never was Tony under a false name,&rdquo; his sister vowed.

-&ldquo;That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not even if he&rsquo;d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss

-Upton?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He would never give a name that wasn&rsquo;t his.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My brother Tony wouldn&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He might feel he had?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He might,&rdquo; the father agreed, &ldquo;even if he&rsquo;d done no

-such thing; in fact, he&rsquo;s just the kind of boy who would take an

-exaggerated view of some things.&rdquo; His mind went back to his last talk

-with Horace on the subject.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of

-you all?&rdquo; Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d do it,&rdquo; declared loyal

-Lettice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Let us hear what you think he did,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what I think; it&rsquo;s what this man Baumgartner

-thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And that which they now heard at second-hand  was in fact a wonderfully true

-version&mdash;up to a point&mdash;of poor Pocket&rsquo;s condition and

-adventures&mdash;with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out&mdash;from

-the early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon of

-that day.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner had actually described the boy&rsquo;s long sleep in his chair; it

-was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began in

-earnest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good man!&rdquo; said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to take him by the hand&mdash;and those infernal Knaggses

-by the scruff of their dirty necks&mdash;and that old hag Harbottle by the

-hair!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think of dear darling Tony,&rdquo; said Lettice, in acute distress;

-&ldquo;lying out all night with asthma&mdash;it was enough to kill him&mdash;or

-to send him out of his mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wonder if it could have done that,&rdquo; remarked Thrush, in a tone

-of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What are you keeping back?&rdquo; cried Lettice, the first to see that

-he had been keeping something all this time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only something he&rsquo;d kept back from them,&rdquo; replied Thrush,

-with just a little less than his usual aplomb. &ldquo;It was a surprise he

-sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still  more, Mr.

-Upton. You may not believe it. I&rsquo;m not certain that I do myself. In the

-morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you&rsquo;d opposed

-it, but withdrawn your opposition&mdash;one moment, if you don&rsquo;t mind! In

-the evening he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the

-<i>Seringapatam</i>, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get

-aboard himself that night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it, Thrush.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t say I altogether accept it myself; that&rsquo;s why I kept it to

-the end,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;But we must balance the possibilities

-against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact

-that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here&rsquo;s a man, a well-known

-man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the Park,

-in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to his own

-house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the doctor tells me,

-than which no statement is more quickly and easily checked. Are we to believe

-this apparently unimpeachable and disinterested witness, or are we not? He was

-most explicit about everything,  offering to show me exactly where he found the

-boy, and never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are

-prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care to hear

-Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s theory as to what has happened.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, &ldquo;Well, we may as

-well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to him for

-taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may have seen

-something that we shouldn&rsquo;t guess.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; exclaimed Eugene Thrush; &ldquo;he saw, or at any rate

-he now thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the

-foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn&rsquo;t know the boy had come up to

-see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had

-come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild

-spree&mdash;if Miss Upton will forgive me!&rdquo; And he turned deferential

-lenses on the indignant girl.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t forgive the suggestion,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;but it

-isn&rsquo;t yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of

-all I was able to tell him, and we mustn&rsquo;t forget, as Mr. Upton says,

-that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes  the boy did

-meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or

-intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with

-blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned

-against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very

-conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or

-somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid

-to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home!

-What&rsquo;s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped

-to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her

-still&mdash;even if he has to stow away!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My God!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s just the one to think

-of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Lettice shook hers quietly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To think of it, but not to do it,&rdquo; said she, with a quiet

-conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he

-actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, but of

-stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many pounds of biscuit

-and how many  ounces of water would carry one alive into blue water.

-There&rsquo;s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship touched

-nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be out of the

-world for three whole months.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And she only sailed yesterday?&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously

-to his feet. &ldquo;And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to

-sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m letting her go as far as Plymouth,&rdquo; said he,

-&ldquo;where one or both of us will board her tomorrow if she&rsquo;s up to

-time!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said she didn&rsquo;t touch anywhere between the docks and

-Melbourne?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They

-don&rsquo;t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have gone

-round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an old

-boatswain of the line who&rsquo;s caretaker at the office, and the only man

-there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I&rsquo;ve since bearded one of the

-partners at his place down the river, and had the statement confirmed and

-amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at  Plymouth, so she

-certainly won&rsquo;t sail again before to-morrow noon, even if she&rsquo;s

-there by then. You will be in ample time to board her&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got

-a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw&mdash;if you go down by the

-12.15 from Paddington to-night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, he said,

-and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the increasing confidence of

-one gradually mastering the difficulties of an uncongenial game. He felt also

-that a happy issue was in sight, and after that he could tell the truth and

-liberate his soul. He was pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously

-propounded by Eugene Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would

-have filled him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously

-prepared for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the

-man&rsquo;s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the

-moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it fell to her

-to do certain honours <i>vice</i> Horace, luckily engaged at the works.

-&ldquo;And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler&rsquo;s rim, but completed his draught before

-replying.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my province to believe or to disbelieve,  Miss Upton; my

-job is to prove things one way or the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is

-absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or anything,

-beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the window of the

-restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a

-train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also

-had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside

-Willesden, when he began to fume.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I never knew such a thing on this line before,&rdquo; he complained;

-&ldquo;it&rsquo;s all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand

-before, and it&rsquo;ll just make the difference to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time,&rdquo; said Thrush, consulting his watch as the

-train showed signs of life at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not for what I want to do,&rdquo; said Mr. Upton firmly. &ldquo;I want

-to shake that man&rsquo;s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my

-boy!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that you&rsquo;ll find him at home,&rdquo; Thrush

-said, after a contemplative pause.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take my chance of that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He said something about their both going out of town

-to-day&mdash;meaning niece and self. I heard  her playing just before I left,

-and that seemed to remind him of it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And losing the train?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can motor down to Plymouth; there&rsquo;s plenty of time. I might take

-him with me, as well as you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Better,&rdquo; said Thrush, after another slight pause. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d

-rather you didn&rsquo;t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not count on you&rdquo;?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;One of us will be quite enough.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?&rdquo; cried

-the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t put it like that, Mr. Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;All right! I&rsquo;ll take your man Mullins instead; but I&rsquo;ll try

-my luck at that German doctor&rsquo;s first,&rdquo; he growled, determined to

-have his own way in something.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you can&rsquo;t have Mullins,&rdquo; said Thrush,

-gently.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Want him yourself do you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do; but I&rsquo;m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr.

-Upton.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not? Where is he.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In prison! Your man Mullins?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, Mr. Upton, he&rsquo;s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion

-of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />

-MALINGERING</h2>

-

-<p>

-Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was still

-poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were the very ones

-his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of tea-things on the

-stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back into his pocket, and to

-fling himself at full length on the bed, before Dr. Baumgartner entered with a

-tray.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see

-you yourself again by supper-time.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not coming down again,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t

-force me, please&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Force you?&rdquo; Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window.

-&ldquo;What a tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show

-your wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the

-window shut&mdash;so&mdash;and  fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it

-when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to disturb

-you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling stealth

-that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when an admirable

-doctor&rsquo;s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A little fever, I&rsquo;m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were

-you. It&rsquo;s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have

-been through so much, my poor young fellow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I have indeed!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one consolation for you,&rdquo; he said at length, in

-a sibilant whisper. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve had that letter of yours at home quite

-a long time now&mdash;ever since yesterday morning, haven&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut&mdash;he only hoped it was

-not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr. Baumgartner,

-suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the discovery downstairs behind

-his back. If he himself had betrayed anything it was in the last few seconds,

-when it had been all that he could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge

-of  the other&rsquo;s trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy!

-To have the heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand;

-the wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth impostor

-gratuitously revelling in his imposition!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at first they

-bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner&mdash;a fear felt from the

-beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the sharper tooth:

-his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a thing about him yet, his

-tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung in anxious conclave on his words!

-Not that he had recognised any such subtle consolations as factors in his

-temporary and comparative peace of mind; now that they were gone, he could not

-have said what it was he missed; he only knew that he could least forgive

-Baumgartner for this sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other side

-eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the doctor&rsquo;s

-stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was not malevolent; it

-was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan had succeeded perfectly,

-and nobody was really any the worse off. His people would have known he was

-alive and well on the Friday; but that was all, and they had no reason yet to

-assume his death. No; even Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of

-a relief to write than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only

-have aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some

-fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond reason or

-forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he could imagine

-Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible logic, with

-characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of a benevolent

-serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken in. It was not

-coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to betray his knowledge

-of the fraud&mdash;if only he had not already done so!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner when

-at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have been more

-considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the doctor&rsquo;s

-behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very gently chidden

-for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any supper either: it was

-true he did not want to want any, or another bite of that man&rsquo;s bread,

-but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It was against his reasoned

-policy to show  temper, and he was beginning to feel very hungry besides. The

-doctor said, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll think better of that, my young fellow,&rdquo;

-which turned a mere remark into more than half an absolute resolution. The

-second tray was set with a lighted candle on a chair by the bedside. The boy

-eyed it wistfully with set teeth, and Baumgartner eyed the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing to eat.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there any book?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s premeditation.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the book I was reading yesterday.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What was that?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Some Frenchman on hallucinations.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So you were reading that book!&rdquo; remarked the doctor, with

-detestable aplomb. &ldquo;I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book.

-I have destroyed it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than

-revolted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am not,&rdquo; rejoined Baumgartner. &ldquo;Even if it were a good

-book, it is no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what

-is done and over.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If it is over,&rdquo; murmured the boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is over!&rdquo; said Baumgartner, fiercely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I read what he&rsquo;d

-got to say about somnambulism.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite of such

-a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to know that others

-besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their sleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;they always seem to have dreamt the

-dreadful thing as well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until

-the shot woke me and I found myself where you saw me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you find it funny!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the increased

-asperity of Baumgartner&rsquo;s manner, and his whole conduct about a harmless

-book, altogether inexplicable.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; replied the boy, with spirit.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do

-your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human life

-less precious than the average dog&rsquo;s!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human about

-this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said since the scene

-between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the door behind him when he

-went. But Pocket preferred that novel exhibition, for its very heat and

-violence, to the sleek and calculated solicitude of the doctor&rsquo;s final

-visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost

-to the socket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My young fellow!&rdquo; he exclaimed in unctuous distress. &ldquo;Not a

-bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it&rsquo;s nearly

-midnight?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not hungry,&rdquo; replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once.

-&ldquo;I told you I wasn&rsquo;t well.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be worse if you don&rsquo;t force yourself to eat.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that

-seemed to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the oval

-hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black nicotine, and he

-puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more infuriate than ever,

-under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the boy it was all but a living

-face, and a vile one, capable of nameless atrocities; and the hard-frozen face

-of Baumgartner was capable of looking on.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it&rsquo;s my own fault.

-I take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very first

-moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law into my own

-hands, and  you I took into my own house for better or worse. You were worse

-then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not strange that your asthma has

-entirely left you under my roof? Does it not lead you to believe in me, my

-young fellow&mdash;to trust me perhaps more than you have done?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue

-stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived from one

-of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this one, of the sudden

-cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated Baumgartner for forgetting that,

-and pretending for a moment to take any credit to himself. That again was not

-worthy of so cool and keen a brain, much less of the candid character with

-which Pocket had supposed himself to be dealing. The very young are

-pathetically apt to see their own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but

-the schoolboy&rsquo;s faith in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base;

-and now (as sure a symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You must trust me again,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, as though he knew what

-he had forfeited. &ldquo;I know what will do you good.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the  beautiful town we live in,

-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might have been

-the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came before him in a

-scorching flash. But there was something also in the way the doctor was bending

-over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer still, so that the two dreadful faces

-seemed of equal size. And Baumgartner&rsquo;s had become a dreadful face in the

-boy&rsquo;s eyes now; there was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in

-cold intellectual cruelty; and its smile&mdash;its new and strange smile it

-must have been that made him shudder and shake his head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But, my young fellow,&rdquo; urged the doctor, &ldquo;it will do you so

-much good. And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself could

-have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was much to

-commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough as he moved it

-from side to side on the pillow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you I&rsquo;m ill,&rdquo; he whimpered. &ldquo;How can I go out

-with you, when you see I can&rsquo;t eat a bite?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early, early

-lovely summer&rsquo;s  morning; then they would see, would they not? Pocket had

-a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from the other. He was

-alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next morning when the doctor took

-his early walk; let him prowl by himself. Pocket was not going with him. He had

-never been more determined about anything than that. It was an animal instinct

-of fear and deep revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further

-determination to slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this

-course he was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.

-Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn up with

-the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead of his

-letter&mdash;going straight to his people to tell them all, and have that poor

-innocent man set free before the day was out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The night&rsquo;s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been

-secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price which he

-wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry boy, no longer

-ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one remaining ill; the rest

-was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent him from feeling ravenous after

-fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was food still within his reach, even at his

-side; but he felt committed  to his declaration that he could not eat. If the

-tray were still untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further

-question of his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an &ldquo;if.&rdquo;

-The boy was not used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was

-not self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly tussles

-for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament was

-self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only shows the power

-of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a yard from his door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure lying

-still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath; and he opened

-the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to open, by even slower

-and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had done that first morning, it

-might have been a month ago; and this scene must have challenged comparison

-with that, had his mind been even as free from dread and terror as it had been

-then. But all he saw was the few remaining lighted windows in the backs of

-those other houses; he could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured

-no beam of comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open

-eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and  the last rumble in

-the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised its

-note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds, which grew

-but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house. Somebody was knocking

-and ringing at the doctor&rsquo;s door, not furiously, but with considerable

-pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow just at first, and flew from the

-open window to the landing outside his door. The house was in perfect darkness,

-and still as death in the patient intervals between each measured attempt to

-rouse the inmates without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must

-be Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the boy was

-about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the retreat of feet

-down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next landing as the doctor

-closed his bedroom door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Who could it have been? Baumgartner&rsquo;s chuckle suggested the police; but

-in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last laugh,

-though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He could not close an

-eye for thinking of it, and listening for another knocking and ringing down

-below. But nothing happened  until the doctor returned between five and six,

-still with his meerschaum pipe, still in his alpaca jacket, but wearing also

-the goblin hat and cloak of their first meeting, to renew and intensify the

-animal fear that glued the boy to his bed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is a pity,&rdquo; said Baumgartner, standing at the window which

-Pocket had left open. &ldquo;The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a

-cloud in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who are

-making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose

-&rdquo;&mdash;and his eyes blazed&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;d feed you like a

-fowl!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so likely that I should do it on purpose,&rdquo; muttered

-Pocket, with schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and

-they had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner&rsquo;s.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You know best,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But you are missing the

-morning of your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little

-garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your public

-school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more imagination,

-thank God!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he had the

-door open too, as the doctor&rsquo;s step was creaking down the lower flight of

-stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not quite to the

-banisters; he trusted to  his ears as before. They told him the doctor had gone

-into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only for a moment. The dark-room

-door shut sharply. The steps came creaking back along the hall, went grating

-out upon the doorstep. There was another sharp shutting. Food at last!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of

-cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out.

-But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and

-emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was

-only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida&rsquo;s door and shout goodbye, or

-to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he

-always was, on these early jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait

-and say goodbye properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a

-second time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if

-that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, by any

-means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the schoolboy&rsquo;s

-head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the discovery that Dr.

-Baumgartner had removed his clothes!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it was a

-practice he indeed  abhorred, but decent words would not meet such a case. It

-was to be met by action, however, just as that locked door had been met, and

-the policeman&rsquo;s prohibition in the Park. He knew where his clothes must

-be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using as a dressing-gown, over his

-pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. Baumgartner had done not many minutes

-before him. His clothes were in the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a

-Yale lock; there was no forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his

-passion tried both. So round he went without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation to the

-dark-room window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That

-mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and a sheet

-of ruby glass with one vicious blow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his hands or

-feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, and let the blind

-down as he had found it, without looking twice at his clothes. There they were

-for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They were not his only property in

-that room either. His revolver was there somewhere under lock and key. He might

-want it, waking, if Dr. Baumgartner came back before his time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was easily located; of the lockers, built in  with the shelves on the

-folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was not in the

-others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives beloved of

-schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, among other

-superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had often felt inclined

-to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in the way of the other tools.

-But he used it now with as little hesitation as he had done the other damage,

-with almost a lust for breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as

-his clothes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least,

-there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and

-there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own

-treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, as

-he stood in a ruby flood only partially diluted by the broken window behind the

-blind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside him

-that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the whole lot

-crashing about his toes.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />

-ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH</h2>

-

-<p>

-The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket

-wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of

-the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that

-way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and

-overcoat, with the rest of one&rsquo;s clothes in a bundle under one&rsquo;s

-arm, it was before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. But it was not a course

-that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with romantic instincts and a

-revolver which he perceived at a glance to be still loaded in most of its

-chambers. Pocket was not one of nature&rsquo;s heroes, but he had an

-overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time to feel how he should despise

-himself all his life if he bolted by the window instead of opening the door. So

-he did open it, trembling but determined. And there stood Phillida in her

-dressing-gown, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you!&rdquo; she cried, taking the exclamation out of his

-mouth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a gust of relief; &ldquo;did you think it was

-thieves?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; she demanded, pointing to the broken window

-visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He took this from me,&rdquo; said Pocket. &ldquo;I had a right to it.

-Take it if you will!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But Phillida was

-too angry to look at revolvers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You had no business to break in to get it,&rdquo; she told him, with

-considerable severity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this

-morning before he went out. They&rsquo;re what I broke in for, and I&rsquo;d a

-perfect right; you know I had! And while I&rsquo;m about it I thought I might

-as well have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.

-And I&rsquo;m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in the

-house of one of the greatest villains alive!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were all out

-in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his indignation, the

-girl&rsquo;s eyes flashing hers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I begin to think my uncle was right,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;This is the

-act of what he said you were, if anything could be.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He lied to you, and he&rsquo;s been lying to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He may have been justified.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You wait till you hear all he&rsquo;s done! I don&rsquo;t mean taking my

-revolver from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I&rsquo;d

-done with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he

-couldn&rsquo;t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that

-isn&rsquo;t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor

-people who may think me dead&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with

-his great grief and grievance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch

-the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday morning

-he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you don&rsquo;t know

-how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I found scraps of my

-letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he&rsquo;d never posted it at

-all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes filled

-with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a fool to blub about it&mdash;but&mdash;but that was the

-Limit!&rdquo; he croaked, and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was cruel,&rdquo; she allowed. &ldquo;It must seem so,  at any rate;

-it does to me; but then I understand so little. I can&rsquo;t think why

-he&rsquo;s hiding you, or why you let yourself be hidden.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must know what I&rsquo;ve done; you must guess?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she looked

-from it to him without recoiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I guessed on Saturday.&rdquo; There was a studious absence of

-horror in her tone. &ldquo;Yet I couldn&rsquo;t believe it, unless it was an

-accident. And if it was an accident&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was one!&rdquo; he choked. &ldquo;It was the most absolute accident

-that ever happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours

-afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was

-frightfully good to me, I&rsquo;m grateful enough for all that. But he should

-have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I lost my

-head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I came to my senses

-he wouldn&rsquo;t let me go. I needn&rsquo;t remind you of that morning! After

-that I promised to stay on, and I&rsquo;d have kept all my promises if only my

-letter had gone to my poor people!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them know he

-was alive, and that with the doctor&rsquo;s expressed approval. But  now he had

-learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was more than ever the

-game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what he had never done. And so

-the whole story would be in to-morrow&rsquo;s papers, with the single exception

-of Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s name.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing shall make me give that,&rdquo; said Pocket valiantly; &ldquo;on

-your account, if not on his!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last assurance.

-She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives and putting them

-back in the rack; he followed her example, and collected the broken bits, while

-she put the rack back in its place, and certain splinters in theirs, until the

-locker shut without showing much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary

-negatives on his hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I should throw those away,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;And now, by the

-time you&rsquo;re ready to go, I&rsquo;ll have a cup of tea ready for

-you.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open door,

-and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he was too shy

-to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto they had both been

-like young castaways, finely regardless of appearances, he of his bare feet and

-throat, she of her dressing-gown and her bedroom slippers. She was  unconscious

-or careless still, as with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of

-mauvaise honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault

-of what he suddenly felt he simply must say.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t want to leave you!&rdquo; he blurted out at

-last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I want you to,&rdquo; she returned promptly and firmly, though not

-without a faint smile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get that

-out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as he had done

-when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man to his niece; all

-that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not think he was peculiar there;

-in fact, he thought romantically enough about the girl, with her dark hair all

-over her pink dressing-gown, and ivory insteps peeping out of those soft

-slippers especially when the vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making

-himself as presentable as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy

-in the same way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on

-the table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He

-could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner he went

-the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He hated the thought of

-deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such a girl! He could only face

-it with the fixed intention of coming back to the rescue of his heroine, he the

-hero of their joint romance. But for his own immediate freedom he was already

-unheroically eager. And yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives

-together, on the white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a

-boyish bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet been

-gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it brandished by

-man or boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The piecing of the plates was like a children&rsquo;s puzzle, only easier,

-because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives was of

-painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to atoms by

-Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees again, only

-leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure sprawling on a bench.

-Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he remembered having seen

-printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in the other room; and hardly had

-he filled his frame and placed it in position, than Phillida ran down stairs,

-and he told her what he had done.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I wish you hadn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said nervously, as she made

-mechanical preparations with pot and kettle. &ldquo;It would only make matters

-worse if my uncle came in now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he wasn&rsquo;t back on Friday before ten or eleven.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You never know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, but not

-he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care! I can&rsquo;t help it if he does come. I&rsquo;ll

-tell him exactly what I&rsquo;ve done, and why, and exactly what I&rsquo;m

-going to do next. I give him leave to stop me if he can.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid he won&rsquo;t wait for that. But I wish you had waited

-for his leave before printing his negative.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny room at

-the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was a rather dark

-print that he first examined, one half at a time, and then extracted from the

-frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing the joins of the broken plate.

-But it had been an excellent negative originally. And it was still good enough

-to hold Pocket rooted to the carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in

-after him, and stood looking over his shoulder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know that place!&rdquo; said she at once. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Holland

-Walk, in Kensington.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He turned to her quickly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The very place!&rdquo; exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening

-print.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He&rsquo;s always

-so interested in mysteries. I&rsquo;m sure that&rsquo;s the very spot he showed

-me as the one where it must have happened.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did he take the photograph then?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; he hadn&rsquo;t his camera with him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!&rdquo; cried Pocket, in

-uncontrollable excitement. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not only the place; it&rsquo;s the

-thing itself. Look at that man on the bench!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl took a long look nearer the window.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How horrible!&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;His head looks as though it

-were falling off! He might be dying.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dying or dead,&rdquo; said Pocket, &ldquo;at the very second the plate

-was exposed!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent, but it

-was more understanding. He had Baumgartner&rsquo;s own confession of his

-attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to executions; he

-expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly, clumsily, inaccurately

-enough, and yet with a certain graphic power which brought those incredible

-theories  home to his companion as forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought

-them home to Pocket. It was the first she had ever heard of them. But then he

-had never discussed his photography with her, never showed her plate or print.

-That it was not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had

-always felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now she

-seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the broken

-negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was nothing to see;

-the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out the repulsive picture even

-as she held it in her hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then what do you think?&rdquo; she asked at last; her voice was thin and

-strained with formless terrors.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human being

-I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether you like it

-yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this case in connection

-with&mdash;mine&mdash;and I see that one theory was that the man in this broken

-negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly believe that Dr.

-Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He must have been there if he took the photograph.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is there another man alive who tries these  things? I&rsquo;ve told you

-all he told me about it, but I haven&rsquo;t told you all he said about the

-value of human life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these

-murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight from the

-flesh; that&rsquo;s his own way of putting it, not mine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn&rsquo;t get more

-power over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my sleep

-with this wretched revolver. He said himself I&rsquo;d given him the chance of

-a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man&rsquo;s death, not

-after it.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t possible,&rdquo; declared Phillida, as though she had

-laid hold of one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. &ldquo;And I

-know he hasn&rsquo;t a pistol of his own,&rdquo; she added, lest he should

-simplify his charge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But there they were agreed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He hadn&rsquo;t one on him that morning; that I can swear,&rdquo; said

-Pocket, impartially disposing of the idea. &ldquo;Mine was the only one in that

-cape of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back

-into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or anywhere

-else about him, or I couldn&rsquo;t have helped seeing it.&rdquo; Phillida

-accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as if in

-recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy whom she could

-now understand his regarding in that light. If only he would go before the

-enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over him as he himself seemed to

-feel, then that was all the more reason for him to go quickly. But Pocket was

-not the man to get up and run like that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his

-bravery on the point, and keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account;

-at any rate he insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free

-expression to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on

-the brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,

-while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost fondling it,

-though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his small possessions;

-suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand, and clattered on the table

-between the girl and boy. It was a wonder neither of them was shot dead in his

-excitement. His whole face  was altered; but so was his whole life. She could

-not understand his incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the

-chambers round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live

-cartridges in all six.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo; the words came pouring. &ldquo;Not one of

-them&rsquo;s been fired&mdash;it&rsquo;s as I loaded it myself the other night!

-It can&rsquo;t have been this revolver at all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you must have known whether you fired or not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I&rsquo;d

-only heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open air,

-though I do remember wondering I hadn&rsquo;t felt any kick. But I was so

-dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it from me in

-such a rage that of course I believed I&rsquo;d let it off. But now I can see I

-can&rsquo;t have done. It wasn&rsquo;t my revolver and it wasn&rsquo;t

-me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yet you say yourself my uncle didn&rsquo;t carry one?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll swear he didn&rsquo;t; but there&rsquo;s another man in all

-this! There was the man they arrested on Saturday&mdash;the man I was so keen

-to set free!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy&rsquo;s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What

-was it to him that his innocence implied another&rsquo;s complicity? Only too

-characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point of view;

-but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed? There was the

-broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that was not enough for

-Phillida.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose in his

-waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. &ldquo;Then my uncle might have

-put in a fresh one while you were asleep.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why should he?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll soon tell you if he did!&rdquo; cried Pocket. &ldquo;There

-were fourteen in the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only

-shot away one at the Knaggses&rsquo; before we were cobbed. That left

-thirteen&mdash;six in the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six,

-and here&rsquo;s one, two, three, four&mdash;and three&rsquo;s seven!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for herself,

-while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He was beginning to

-see what it all meant now, but still only what it meant to him and his. He

-could look his people in the face again; that was the burden of his loud

-thanksgiving. He was as sure of his  innocence as though the dead man had risen

-to prove it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Phillida, briskly; &ldquo;then it&rsquo;s all the

-more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train

-home.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping him on

-with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he followed her

-out slowly, and he would not turn his back.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave you now,&rdquo; he said; and she knew that he saw it

-from her side at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because the whole thing&rsquo;s altered! I&rsquo;m not going to leave

-you with a man like that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So Pocket, without a moment&rsquo;s thought either for her immediate feelings

-or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious air of

-sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have flung open the

-door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it first. So her big eyes

-blazed at him instead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very kind!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But suppose I

-don&rsquo;t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall wait and say it to his face. That&rsquo;s another reason for

-waiting.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;re the person to judge him&mdash;a boy like

-you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say I am. I only say that print&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;How do you know he took the negative?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you jump to conclusions like a baby!&rdquo; cried the girl, too

-quick for him in following up a confusing advantage. &ldquo;I never heard

-anybody like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he

-must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep with a

-loaded revolver, and then you&rsquo;re sure you never fired at all, simply

-because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! Then you find a

-photograph that needn&rsquo;t necessarily be what we thought it, that my uncle

-needn&rsquo;t have taken even if it was; but you jump to another conclusion

-about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as though you knew every horrid

-thing you chose to think! As if you knew him and I didn&rsquo;t! As if he

-hasn&rsquo;t been kind and good to me for years and years&mdash;and kind to

-you&mdash;far too kind&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it and them

-there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well of those bitter

-tears. And it was in simple supplication, not imperiously any more, that she

-pointed to the door when speech failed her. The boy&rsquo;s answer was to go

-close up to her  instead. &ldquo;Will you come with me?&rdquo; he asked

-hoarsely.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she could

-only shake her head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My people would be as good to you as ever he was,&rdquo; urged Pocket

-extravagantly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;d understand, and you&rsquo;d stay with us,

-Phillida! You might live with us altogether!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She smiled very faintly at that.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, Phillida, can&rsquo;t you see that they&rsquo;d do anything for you

-after all we&rsquo;ve been through together? And I, oh! there&rsquo;s nothing I

-wouldn&rsquo;t do if only you&rsquo;d come with me now this minute! I know

-there&rsquo;s a train about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on

-the way. Come, Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this

-horror!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or apathy which

-had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for indecision; but, whatever it

-was, she shook it off and declared once for all that she would never leave Dr.

-Baumgartner, even if everything was true about him, and he as mad as that would

-make him out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But he is!&rdquo; cried Pocket, with most eager conviction.

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the only possible explanation, and you&rsquo;d believe it

-fast enough if you&rsquo;d heard all he said to me that first night, and been

-with  me in the dark-room when he developed his negative of the man he said I

-shot! You&rsquo;d see how it all fits in, and how this other negative this

-morning simply shows he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of

-course he&rsquo;s mad; but that&rsquo;s the very reason why I can&rsquo;t go

-and leave you with him.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He would be as he&rsquo;s always been to me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I believe he would,&rdquo; said honest Pocket.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t you go away and leave us?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because you won&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Very well, because I won&rsquo;t and never will! But, mind you,

-it&rsquo;ll be your fault if anything happens to either of us after

-this!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal obstinacy,

-and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He stood chained in

-fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but he was prepared to stand

-there like a man, and he did not deserve the things she said to him in a fresh

-paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He might be a baby, but he was not a complete

-coward, or simply trying to make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on

-this occasion, was he thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to

-realise that, for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing

-up the stairs.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />

-A THIRD CASE</h2>

-

-<p>

-In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of these days,

-nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it was as a day of dark

-hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one which Phillida and he began

-alone together in her uncle&rsquo;s house. Those endless hours were either

-mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an endurable minimum; but the

-unforgettable moments would light themselves up in his memory without a detail

-missing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida standing

-all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair about her shoulders,

-a picture that could never fade. Then there was the moment of the incriminating

-print, which the sun wiped out even as Phillida stood with it in her hands.

-That moment merged itself in the greater one of his discovery that the revolver

-was fully loaded, his inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal

-mischief in the Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him

-the time before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving

-way an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck together,

-and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of anger which

-dissolved his fears like snow in May.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to be

-forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying absolutely on her

-account, and so far from giving him the slightest credit for it, or a single

-word of encouragement, she said all sorts of things and was off before he could

-answer one of them. It was not for Pocket to see the many ironies of that

-moment, and not for him to recognise the tonic property of his heroic

-grievance. He could only see himself at the foot of those stairs, first

-gnashing his teeth and not sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with

-his eye on the front door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the

-doctor&rsquo;s key. Another click was to answer it; and at the point of the

-cocked revolver Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not

-only to the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to

-call to witness with her own ears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not incapable of

-desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he had more than an hour

-of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot forenoon of unmitigated suspense,

-of sickening alarms from tradesmen&rsquo;s carts, boys  whistling past the

-house as though they were not in a wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ

-that redoubled his watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once

-he did hear shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough,

-though it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth) that

-came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a state that he

-would not have backed himself to hit the door from the stairs; and he put the

-chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor over that, in the manner of old

-Miss Harbottle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon him,

-because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until Phillida ran

-downstairs and almost over him where he sat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the quarrel was

-over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly upon him, but with a

-distressing look which he had done nothing to provoke. Not before then was he

-aware of another duet between newsboys coming nearer and nearer, and shouting

-each other down as they came.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; she whispered, as if not to drown a note.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you hear what it is?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something fresh about the murder,&rdquo; said he grimly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s another one,&rdquo; she shuddered. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you

-hear? &lsquo;Another awful murder!&rsquo; Now they&rsquo;re saying something

-else.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is something about the Park.&rdquo; Pocket stuck to his idea.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And something else about some &lsquo;well-known&rsquo;&mdash;I

-can&rsquo;t hear what!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No more can I.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll open the door.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them. The

-shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away again in the

-distance.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go out and get one,&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;Some well-known

-man!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not thinking of the doctor, surely?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know! I can&rsquo;t think where he is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re worse than I am, if you jump to that!&rdquo; said

-Pocket, smiling to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she

-was; he had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever

-of impatience.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six  o&rsquo;clock in the morning;

-now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, then

-there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he might meet

-with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not the death of a

-sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did not alter it. Unless

-his fears and his surmises were all equally unfounded, better for everybody,

-and best of all for Phillida, if this criminal maniac came to his end without

-public exposure of his crimes. Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of

-mind, as his elders and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own

-skin more than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for

-the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida&rsquo;s first words on

-returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were not the

-truth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Who was it, then?&rdquo; the schoolboy asked suspiciously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he was the well-known man!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had seen it in

-newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by Baumgartner himself in

-one of his little digs at England. Pocket was not sure about this, but he

-mentioned his impression, and Phillida nodded with swimming eyes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Did the doctor know him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you. It was something to do with politics and

-gold-mines, and some financial paper. I never understood.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;May I see the paper you&rsquo;ve brought in?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out his.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s something you haven&rsquo;t told me.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;There is!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall know it sooner or later.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know you will, and I know what you&rsquo;ll think! You may think what

-you like, and still be wrong!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found the

-paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it was so folded

-already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and more of it in the late

-corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P., the well-known proprietor of the

-<i>Money-maker</i>, had been shot dead in front of his house in Park Lane. The

-murder had been committed in the early hours of the morning, before anybody was

-about except  Sir Joseph and his groom, and the person whom the groom described

-as the only possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the

-early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a photographer

-representing himself as concerned with the press, and desirous of obtaining an

-equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom thought it was to be taken in

-the Park, and was himself on his way back to the mews when the riderless horse

-overtook him. Mounting the animal, he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph

-dead in the road, and no trace of the &ldquo;photographer&rdquo; but a false

-beard and spectacles which he had evidently discarded in his flight, and which

-unfortunately precluded a close description of his appearance. But a hue and

-cry had been started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding

-in the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough search

-under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her

-companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the next thing

-he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big chair in the back

-room.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It was a

-period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw  each other through

-it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for his step no longer,

-but for more newsboys crying his capture to the world. And in the hours that

-they spent thus listening, and listening, the girl had much to say, that it did

-her good to say, about this Dr. Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved

-him in the past.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to her for

-all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into hers, in the

-many years they had been more or less together. All she really knew of him was

-from her mother, whose elder sister he had married soon after the

-Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after marriage. He must have been settled in

-England many years before Phillida&rsquo;s mother, herself an

-Englishman&rsquo;s widow, came to keep house for him. The girl could not

-remember her father, but her mother had lived to see her in her teens, and in

-her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had seemed much as other men. It was only of late

-years that he had withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and

-buried himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His

-niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and she had

-always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he was going to send

-her  to college, he had only just given her six months in Switzerland. It was

-during those months that all his eccentricities had become pronounced; that he

-had given up servants, and taken to doing half the work of the house himself,

-with the casual aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals

-in from a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other

-matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in him and

-done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for her, whatever

-madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own kinsfolk so much less, for

-all their opulent integrity. Nothing could make her forget what he had done.

-She never could or would desert him; it was no use asking her again; but she

-took her callow champion&rsquo;s hand, and wrung it with her final answer,

-which was unaccompanied by further prayers for his departure.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale that he

-heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets, suppositions, and

-not always revelant recollections, of which he had to make what he could in his

-own mind. What he made was a narrative so natural that he could not believe it

-was the life-story of a murderer. His own convictions became preposterous in

-his own eyes. What had he been thinking about all  day? Was that the way a

-murderer would behave? Was this the way a murderer would live, in these

-surroundings, with those books about him, with that little billiard-table in

-the next room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary

-lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their dreadful

-deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living this ordinary life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of something

-else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of her feeling for

-him, and of the schoolboy&rsquo;s feeling for her. If he could have convicted

-himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so cleared Baumgartner of all

-blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any other case, he would have done it

-for Phillida&rsquo;s sake that afternoon. But with every hour of the

-doctor&rsquo;s absence suspicions multiplied. Phillida herself was a prey to

-them. She was almost as ready to recall symptoms of incipient insanity as

-instances of personal kindness; if one lost one&rsquo;s reason, she broke a

-long silence to contend, there could be no question of regret and wrong. She

-was not so sure about crime and punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could

-be no question of that either; but in his heart he wondered how much method

-they must prove to hang a madman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy had no

-thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before; and strong

-excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting silently together in

-the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was deepening every minute.

-Suddenly there was a sound of small branches breaking in the garden. Pocket

-peeped out, standing back from the window at her entreaty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain into

-both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure rose out of

-it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent double, and

-brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long and stealthy

-strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over his eyes, and the

-old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under his arm.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the door; but it

-was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have seen them; they were

-clasping hands as they shrank away from him with one accord. But he did not

-seem to see them at all. He stretched himself, as though he found it a relief

-to stand upright, and more mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took

-off the alpaca jacket, and shook it as one shakes  a handkerchief. There could

-have been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a

-hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out plainly

-enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper parcel; he had

-put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed the paper; it fell at

-Pocket&rsquo;s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and nothing had come out of

-it but the stereoscopic camera, that either watcher could detect.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of either of

-them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go upstairs, and shut the

-door, and then his footsteps overhead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go up and tackle him at once,&rdquo; said Pocket, through his

-set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No! I must go first and see if there&rsquo;s nothing I can get him; he

-mayn&rsquo;t have had anything all day. There&rsquo;s no need for you to come

-at all&mdash;I believe he&rsquo;s forgotten all about us both!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not he!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead.

-&ldquo;Here he comes!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again under Dr.

-Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with the hand that was

-not holding Phillida&rsquo;s. The doctor was coming down in a hurry, as though

-he had indeed  forgotten something. But he passed the open drawing-room door;

-they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of keys, and never so much as glancing in

-on the way. It was the dark-room door he opened. Now he would find out

-everything! They heard a match struck, and saw the faint light turn into a

-strong deep crimson glow. The door shut. The children stood listening in the

-dark.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered bottle; the

-opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger photographer followed as

-though he were again looking on. Then there was a long period without a sound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s developing now!&rdquo; whispered Pocket, close to the

-folding-doors. He caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side.

-&ldquo;There it is&mdash;there it is&mdash;there it is!&rdquo; cried the

-doctor&rsquo;s voice in mingled ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh

-announced the blackening of the plate at the conclusion of the first process. A

-tap ran for a moment; interminable minutes ensued. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s gone!

-It&rsquo;s gone again!&rdquo; cried the wild voice, with a sob;

-&ldquo;it&rsquo;s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as before; but

-that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was being put straight

-into the rack with the others, if the damage  to the locker had been discovered

-at last. He never knew. The door opened. The red glow showed for a moment in

-the passage, then went out. The door shut behind Baumgartner, and again he

-passed the drawing-room, a bent figure, without looking in. And the flagging

-step on the stairs bore no resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down

-not many minutes before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must go to him!&rdquo; said Phillida in broken undertones, and her

-grief communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the base

-fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might think of it,

-was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he was of the type that

-thinks of everything. She left him listening breathless in the dark. And in the

-dark she found him when at length she returned to report the doctor busy

-writing at his desk; but a pin&rsquo;s head of blue gas glimmered where there

-had been none before, and a paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled

-in Pocket&rsquo;s hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Does he know I&rsquo;m here?&rdquo; he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he&rsquo;s

-forgotten your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though

-he&rsquo;d forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He

-seems so strange&mdash;so old!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Again the break in her voice, and again the  boyish sympathy in his. &ldquo;I

-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. What is it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas while

-you were upstairs.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida turned it out again without comment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,&rdquo; she sighed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you remember my saying there must be another man in

-these&mdash;mysteries?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant

-is in prison.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You said he was?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read

-it for yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. &ldquo;I doubt if

-there&rsquo;s anything in that,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but what if there were?

-Does it make it any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If

-he&rsquo;s guilty at all, it makes it all the worse.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br />

-THE FOURTH CASE</h2>

-

-<p>

-The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of the house.

-The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of moonlight pouring over

-them. The only light in the house was in the room above, and they only saw its

-glimmer on the garden when a casual cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had

-crept out into the garden to steal a look at the lighted window itself; and

-what he saw was the shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and

-dense clouds of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs or

-anywhere. There had been a brisk interval&mdash;and then an end&mdash;of more

-or less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a

-certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables, to which

-Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so that he noticed

-its absence more than the thing itself. It was as though the whole town was at

-rest, and the tunnels under the town, and every single soul above or below

-ground, but those two white faces in the moonlight, and perhaps one other

-overhead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to their

-ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was against it;

-perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what he did see so very

-vividly, in his mind&rsquo;s eye, that he shivered and was asked if he felt

-cold. The whispered debate that followed was the longest conversation they had

-that night. The window was not shut as a result of it, but Pocket fetched his

-overcoat on tiptoe, and it just went over both their shoulders, when the chairs

-were drawn as near together as they would go.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to wall.

-The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some monstrous

-wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above and below the moon,

-varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night, and Pocket did not think

-that he had broken the stillness, until the door burst open behind them, and

-Baumgartner stood there, holding his lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high,

-the flame ran up the chimney in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face

-flared up behind it. Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower,

-and the doctor was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy

-drew back as the lamp flew through the open window, within  an inch of his

-nose, and crashed upon the path outside.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was breathing

-hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself; and at last he

-laughed sardonically as though he had won.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;A lamp like that&rsquo;s a dangerous thing,&rdquo; said he, with a kind

-of forced solemnity and a shake of the head; &ldquo;you never know what may

-happen when a lamp does that! I&rsquo;m glad the window was open; it

-didn&rsquo;t go very near my young fellow, I hope?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that the boy

-could have screamed with pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It would have served you right,&rdquo; continued the doctor, before

-Pocket could find his tongue, &ldquo;for sitting up so late, and keeping a

-young lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have

-another word with you, young fellow.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest. They were

-tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was suavely sinister; it

-made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of mind to bid her a cheery

-good-night, and she went, closely followed by Baumgartner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the next

-flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and his  own

-surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an idea came. He opened

-the front door wide, and then stole back through the conservatory into the

-moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down before he gained the garden. He

-tore to the end of it, and cowered in the shadow of the far wall.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it looked

-as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit the gas, and

-Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly the look of a seeker

-who expects to find. Some long moments he stood out horribly at the open

-window, gazing straight at the spot where the fugitive crouched a few inches

-out of the moonlight and hugged the revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see

-nothing to bring him out that way, for he closed that window and put out the

-gas. The trembling watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw

-another light in Baumgartner&rsquo;s room the minute after that, and the blind

-drawn down. But on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the

-doctor&rsquo;s pipe was well in blast.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the right, and

-set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the lighted blind paler

-still, until Baumgartner drew it up  before putting out his light. Pocket was

-now too stiff to stir; but it was not necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked

-out. There was a twitter of sparrows all down the road, garden answering to

-garden. The sun came up behind Pocket&rsquo;s wall, behind the taller houses

-further back. And Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his

-cap.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The front door shut again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was a gravel

-passage between the tradesmen&rsquo;s entrance, on the detached side of the

-house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, and the gate was

-locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his stride and darted over

-into the open road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure stalking

-away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy to follow, but an

-equal dread of detection kept him cowering in gateways, until Baumgartner took

-the turning past the shops without a backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to

-that corner, and got another glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the

-next. So the spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn

-the distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once the

-boy&rsquo;s feet were actually on the man&rsquo;s shadow; for half the streets

-were raked with  level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of dusk with

-rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and

-emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither one nor

-the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness.

-It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A

-dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a

-motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King&rsquo;s Road,

-which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a visible mile

-of asphalt to itself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself, which

-indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of many

-countries; but the red eyes behind the driver&rsquo;s goggles were not so slow.

-Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second&rsquo;s interval; round

-spun the car in a skid that tore studs from the tyres, and fetched her up

-against the kerb with a shivered wheel. Pocket started forward with a cry; but

-at that moment a ponderous step fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and

-he was dragged in custody across the road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Your boy, I think!&rdquo; cried one whom he had never seen before, and

-did not now, being locked already in the motorist&rsquo;s arms.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;When did you find him?&rdquo; the father asked when he was man enough,

-still patting Pocket&rsquo;s shoulders as if he were a dog.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Only last night when I wired.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And where?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In the house where you and I couldn&rsquo;t make ourselves heard.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why, I never saw you before this minute!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or

-two.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then why didn&rsquo;t you wire before?&rdquo; demanded Mr. Upton, quite

-ready to mask his own emotion with a little heat. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it

-till after nine o&rsquo;clock&mdash;too late for the evening train&mdash;but I

-wasn&rsquo;t going to waste three hours with a forty-horser eating its head

-off! So here I am, on my way to the address you gave.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was plumb opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s. I mounted guard there the

-very night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after

-him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,

-my dear boy?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick succession;

-but the first was repeated on the boy&rsquo;s hang-dog admission that he had

-been hiding.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Hiding, Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. &ldquo;But at all events we

-found you better employed,&rdquo; he said to Pocket, &ldquo;and the sooner we

-all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying this rascal

-by the heels.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Take it up, then!&rdquo; snapped Mr. Upton. &ldquo;Jump into the motor,

-and bring the brute to me when you&rsquo;ve got him! I want to speak to my

-boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that passed

-between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of his child who

-had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his head outside the story he

-extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket told it very volubly and ill; he

-would not confine himself to simple facts. He stated his suspicion of

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s complicity in the Hyde Park affair as though he knew it for

-a fact; cited the murders in Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of

-the same handiwork, and yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was

-not Dr. Baumgartner&rsquo;s at all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He was unarmed the other morning. I&rsquo;m quite positive of that. And

-his niece, who lives  with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the

-house.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one!

-It&rsquo;s time we laid hold of him. Where&rsquo;s Mr. Thrush? I thought

-you&rsquo;d taken him on in the car?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers about

-the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like his master,

-was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette and sardonic

-mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts being that he had

-nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton had incontinently taken into

-his own less experienced hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The car won&rsquo;t take anybody anywhere to-day,&rdquo; explained the

-chauffeur, with his cigarette behind his back. &ldquo;I shall have to get a

-lorry to take the car.&rdquo; He held his head on one side suddenly.

-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a bit o&rsquo; tyre trouble for somebody!&rdquo; he cried,

-grimly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not unlike the

-bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it was that. He caught

-his father&rsquo;s arm, and whispered in his father&rsquo;s ear, and they

-plunged together into a side street broader than the asphalt thoroughfare, but

-with scarcely a break in either phalanx of drab  mediocre dwellings, and not a

-creature stirring except themselves and a few who followed. The hog&rsquo;s

-back of a still more deserted bridge arched itself at the foot of the street,

-its suspension cables showing against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they

-ran a peculiarly shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;P&rsquo;lice!&rdquo; screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and

-they easily spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own

-infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket panting as

-he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the suspension bridge,

-to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle. It was evidently being

-blown on the Embankment to the right of the bridge, and already with

-considerable effect. As the pair were about to pass an intermediate turning on

-the right, a constable flew across it on a parallel course, and they altered

-theirs with one accord. Pocket panted after the constable, and his father

-thundered after Pocket, into a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of

-greenery, not too dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further

-side, with a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on

-the Surrey shore.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate opposite

-the end of the road,  another gate leading out on the Embankment opposite that.

-Between the two gates a grimy statue rose upon a granite pedestal, a meditative

-figure clad to the heels in some nondescript garment, and gazing across the

-river as he sat with a number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a

-peculiarly lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to

-appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant, before his

-attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living people on the

-Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing together on the far

-side of one of the fixed seats. There was the policeman who had blown the

-whistle, and a small but motley crew who had answered to the call. Conspicuous

-units were a gentleman in dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps,

-and a labouring cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some

-hidden object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round and

-join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another murdered man.

-He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of death, which he had

-seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only the other morning, it was

-the murderer and not his victim of whom the boy was thinking as he arrived last

-upon the scene. It was Dr. Baumgartner whom he half expected to  see swimming

-the river or hiding among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one

-of the group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? The

-point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could see of the

-fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living legs.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was

-detaching himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of

-the fun.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Dead as an &rsquo;erring,&rdquo; replied the sweep cheerfully.

-&ldquo;Sooicide in the usual stite o&rsquo; mind.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Rats!&rdquo; said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; &ldquo;unless

-&rsquo;e shot &rsquo;isself first an&rsquo; swallered the shooter afterwards!

-Some&rsquo;un&rsquo;s done &rsquo;im in.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father was

-already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles, who had

-risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his trouser-knees.

-Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he had taken into the

-Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination to look just once upon Dr.

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s latest victim. A loud cry escaped him when he did look; for

-the murdered man, and not the murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br />

-WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP</h2>

-

-<p>

-Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the gate, and

-the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy and embarrassed

-aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they brought her. She was

-intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and horror were not the less

-overwhelming for the shame and fear which they replaced in her mind. Yet she

-remained instinctively on her guard, and a passionate curiosity was the only

-emotion she permitted herself to express in words.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn&rsquo;t do

-it himself?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief, to

-dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the one thing they are sure about,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;In

-the first place no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera

-either, though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.

-That&rsquo;s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the

-spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn&rsquo;t have been

-fired at very close quarters, and that death must have  been instantaneous. So

-it&rsquo;s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane yesterday or the one in

-Hyde Park last week; there&rsquo;s evidently some maniac prowling about at

-dawn, and shooting down the first person he sees and then vanishing into thin

-air as maniacs seem to have a knack of doing more effectually than sane men.

-But the less we jump to conclusions about him&mdash;or anybody else&mdash;the

-better.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and yet it

-startled her as an index of what must have passed already between father and

-son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff man should know as much as

-the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as a comrade in calamity. Yet she

-could not expect it to be otherwise.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What must you think!&rdquo; she cried, and her great eyes filled and

-fell again. &ldquo;Oh! what must you think?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no good thinking,&rdquo; he rejoined, with almost a jovial

-kindness. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see

-each other through before we think. Not that I&rsquo;ve had time to hear

-everything yet, but I own I can&rsquo;t make head or tail of what I have heard.

-I&rsquo;m not sure that I want to. I like a man&rsquo;s secrets to die with

-him; it&rsquo;s enough for me to have my boy back again, and to know that you

-stood by him as you did. It&rsquo;s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says

-it wasn&rsquo;t your fault he didn&rsquo;t come away long ago; and it

-shan&rsquo;t be mine if you stay another hour alone in this haunted house.

-You&rsquo;ve got to come straight back with us to our hotel.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted chamber

-if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the walls, his tin

-of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of latakia rising from the

-carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the murdered man; and the window

-still open, the two chairs near it as they had been overnight, and the lamp

-lying in fragments on the path outside, brought the last scene back to the

-boy&rsquo;s mind in full and vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself

-more desolate and depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It

-might be that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his

-simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of reassuring

-relief. But it was the case that the morning had already clouded over; the

-sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and Phillida looked only too

-eager to fly from the scene, until she declared she never could.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s absurd!&rdquo; cried Mr. Upton bluntly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to leave a young girl like you alone  in the day of

-battle, murder and sudden death! You needn&rsquo;t necessarily come with us, as

-long as you don&rsquo;t stay here. Have you no other relatives in

-London?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None anywhere that I know much about.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter. It&rsquo;s time they knew more about you.

-I&rsquo;ll hunt them up in the motor, if they&rsquo;re anywhere within a

-hundred miles, but you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy&rsquo;s added

-supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had indeed been

-Pocket&rsquo;s originally, but his father had taken it up more warmly than he

-could have hoped. It was decided that they should return to their hotel without

-Phillida, but to send the car back for her later in the morning, as it would

-take her some time to pack her things and leave the deserted house in some

-semblance of order.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end; most of

-the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation of the dead

-man&rsquo;s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in the

-dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she had already

-seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another of a man lying in a

-heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put to dry openly  in the rack,

-the wood of which was still moist from the process. Phillida only held it up to

-the light an instant, and then not only smashed both these negatives, but

-poured boiling water on the films and floated them down the sink. The bits of

-glass she put in the dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly

-done so when the first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was

-succeeded by a very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number

-of questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that

-suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary made

-any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but another of the

-perfectly random series which had already thrilled the town, but on which no

-light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of the murdered men. A third

-official came to announce that the inquest was to be opened without delay, at

-two o&rsquo;clock that afternoon, and to request Phillida to accompany him to

-the mortuary for the formal identification of the deceased.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled herself

-to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she found it startlingly

-ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing here, save the furrows of

-age and the fires of madness, and it had given back the  look of fine courage

-and of sane integrity which the girl was just old enough to associate with the

-dead man&rsquo;s prime. She was thankful to have seen him like this for the

-last time. She wished that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and

-so calm, for then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find

-it easier to disbelieve from this hour.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You do identify him, I suppose, miss?&rdquo; the officer whispered,

-impressed by her strange stare.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; said Phillida. &ldquo;But he looks as I have not seen

-him look for years. There are worse things than death!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private sitting-room at

-the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had no desire to know a dead

-man&rsquo;s secrets. He had found his boy; that was quite enough for him, and

-he was able to deliver himself the more freely on the subject since Pocket was

-not at table, but in bed making up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in

-finding his son, but he had found him without the aid of police or press, and

-so not more than a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared.

-Mr. Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from his

-wife&rsquo;s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing to hush

-it up on the boy&rsquo;s account  if only it were possible to do so; but would

-it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at the inquest all

-mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle&rsquo;s house? Phillida promised to

-do her best, and it proved not only possible but easy. She was questioned as to

-the habits of the deceased so far as they explained his presence on the

-Embankment at such a very early hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a

-single person who could conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr.

-Baumgartner as to wish to take his life, the witness answered in the negative,

-and the coroner bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the

-character of the murder, but he had put the question for form&rsquo;s sake. The

-only one which caused her a moment&rsquo;s hesitation arose from a previous

-answer, which connected the doctor&rsquo;s early ramblings with his hobby of

-instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning? Phillida

-thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it certainly was not in

-the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he knew that his boy&rsquo;s name

-had been on the tip of the witness&rsquo;s tongue. And there was a sensation in

-court as well; for here at last was a bone for the detectives, who obtained a

-minute description of the missing camera, but grumbled openly that they had not

-heard of it before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They never told me they hadn&rsquo;t got it,&rdquo; explained Phillida

-to the coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the

-court on the conclusion of her evidence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as much as the

-crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared with his friend Mr.

-Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the poor girl there and then

-with far more searching questions than she had been required to answer upon

-oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in a way that secured his peppery

-intervention in a moment. The two men had scarcely seen each other since the

-morning, and the ironmaster thought they had enough to say to each other

-without bothering Miss Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to

-Glasshouse Street, and Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made

-them drop her at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her

-mourning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and order tea

-for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive straight back. She

-had a curious desire to see the place where the murder had been committed. It

-had come upon her at the inquest, while listening to the constable who had

-found the body, her predecessor  in the witness-box. She had failed to follow

-his evidence. He had described that portion of his beat which had brought him

-almost on the scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It

-included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street and Cheyne

-Row. The houses at this point are divided from the Embankment by the narrow

-garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He had turned up Cheyne Row, at the

-back of the statue, but before turning he had noticed a man on the seat facing

-the river on the far side of the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was

-said to have turned round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne

-Walk. There might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on

-the flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been invisible

-from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere. Yet the policeman

-swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up Cheyne Row before the shot was

-fired. He had turned round actually in time to see the puff of smoke dispersing

-over the parapet. It was all he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap,

-nearer the seat than the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he

-see, or had he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the

-river, and along the foreshore in both  directions, without discovering sign or

-trace of human being.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she proceeded to

-the spot in order to go over the ground for her own satisfaction. This did not

-make it easier to understand. It had come on to rain heavily while she was in

-the shop; the shining Embankment was again practically deserted, and she was

-able to carry out her experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen

-steps up Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and

-quite realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,

-hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden by the

-long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man could have been

-seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran, and the murderer must

-have run like the wind to get away as he had done. The gates through the

-garden, back and front of the statue, had not been opened for the day when the

-murder took place, so Phillida in her turn made a half-circuit of the island to

-get to the spot where the body had been found, but without taking her eyes off

-the spot until she reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by

-nothing short of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the

-policeman had eyes in his head and had acted  as he swore he had done. He might

-have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his furthest point

-distant, if the gates had been open as they were now; but they had been locked,

-and he could not have scaled them unobserved. Neither would it have been

-possible to take a header into the river with the foreshore as described by the

-same witness. Yet the murderer had either done one of these things, or the

-flags of the Embankment had opened and swallowed him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have fallen, and in

-her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but the problem which

-engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened; but how could it have

-happened? She raised her umbrella and peered through the rain at a red pile of

-many-windowed flats; had that Argus of the hundred eyes been sleeping without

-one of them open at the time? Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in

-the narrow garden, standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its

-granite base, as though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike

-the colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the fixed

-eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another character as

-the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that stony stare, to

-distract it from the river to herself, and to  her fevered fancy the grim lips

-smiled contemptuously on her and her quandary. He knew&mdash;<i>he</i>

-knew&mdash;those grim old eyes had seen it all, and still they stared and

-smiled as much as to say: &ldquo;You are looking the wrong way! Look where I am

-looking; that way lies the truth you are poor fool enough to want to

-know!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over the wet

-parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming of what she

-actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that early morning, was

-now going out, and between the Embankment masonry and the river there was again

-a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore, black as on some volcanic coast; and

-between land and water, at a point that would necessarily have been submerged

-for the last eight or nine hours, a small object was being laid more bare by

-every receding wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large

-cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,

-finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat sleeves as

-she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was; but indeed she had

-not a moment&rsquo;s doubt but that it was the missing camera of the murdered

-man.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br />

-AFTER THE FAIR</h2>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street was

-opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the sombre Mullins

-who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had happened to him except a

-fairly recent shave.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I thought he was in prison?&rdquo; exclaimed the ironmaster when the two

-were closeted.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Do you ever read your paper?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t looked at one since Plymouth.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;<i>You</i> did, Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was

-up.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;My good fellow, I wish to goodness you&rsquo;d explain yourself!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If I cared to be profane,&rdquo; returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the

-corner, &ldquo;I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I

-provided the prisoner, and I&rsquo;d a perfect right to take him away again.

-Blessed be the song of the Thrush!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You say you provided him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with

-his own consent.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up

-with it now.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t meant as a joke,&rdquo; returned Thrush, and drank deep

-while his client sipped. &ldquo;If it had come off it would have been the coup

-of my career; as it didn&rsquo;t&mdash;quite&mdash;one must laugh it off at

-one&rsquo;s own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made

-him think he&rsquo;d done?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same

-thing?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not you, Thrush?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped

-to it from scratch!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He connected Tony with the Park murder?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;From the word &lsquo;go.&rsquo; &rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife&rsquo;s

-dream?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No; he didn&rsquo;t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in

-two independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities was

-too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of &rsquo;em in his

-life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other&rsquo;s  flippancy. He looked at

-Thrush with a shining face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And you never told me what was in your minds!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you, in

-the state you were in. I say! I&rsquo;ll wear batting-gloves the next time we

-shake hands!&rdquo; and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You believed he&rsquo;d done it, and you kept it to yourself,&rdquo;

-murmured Mr. Upton, still much impressed. &ldquo;Tell me, my dear

-fellow&mdash;did you believe it after that interview with Baumgartner in his

-house?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush emptied his glass at once.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on

-the other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn&rsquo;t scent him

-through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony&rsquo;s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of

-their own.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown

-before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily interesting and

-circumstantial effort. And to come back to your question, it did fit in with

-the theory of a fatal accident on your boy&rsquo;s part; he was frightened to

-show his face at school after sleeping in the Park,  let alone what he was

-supposed to have done there; and that, he believed, would break his

-mother&rsquo;s heart in any case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn&rsquo;t take much just now,&rdquo;

-said Mr. Upton, sadly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;So he thought of the ship you wouldn&rsquo;t let him go out in&mdash;and

-the whole thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian&mdash;saving

-his presence elsewhere&mdash;all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman

-of genius had it ready for immediate use. I&rsquo;m bound to say he used it on

-me with excellent effect.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Same here,&rdquo; said the ironmaster&mdash;&ldquo;though I&rsquo;d no

-idea what you suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape,

-for that particular boy.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It imposed upon us all,&rdquo; said Thrush, &ldquo;but one. I was

-prepared to believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn&rsquo;t

-know your boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him

-better than anybody else&mdash;do you remember how she wouldn&rsquo;t hear of

-it for a moment?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I do <i>so</i>, God bless her!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never had

-quite accepted in my heart. That&rsquo;s another story, and you&rsquo;re only

-in the mood for one at present; but after seeing  Baumgartner on Saturday, I

-thought I&rsquo;d like to know a little more about him, not from outsiders but

-from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the British Museum to have a

-look at his books. It was after hours for getting books, but I made such

-representations that they cut their red tape for once; and I soon read enough

-to wonder whether my grave and reverend seignior was quite all there.

-Spiritualism one knows, but here was spiritualism with a difference; psychic

-photography one had heard about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad

-or bad! When a gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to

-snap-shoot the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at

-Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor. Will you

-believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the very thing I shall

-presently prove to have been the truth, and that I dismissed it from my mind as

-the wildest impossibility?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how you&rsquo;re going to prove it now,&rdquo;

-remarked Mr. Upton, who hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the

-girl who had been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which

-there was no necessity to express.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I shall want another chat with your lad when he&rsquo;s had his sleep

-out,&rdquo; replied Thrush, significantly; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s told me quite

-enough to make me eager for  more. But you haven&rsquo;t told me anything about

-your own adventures?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the ironmaster was

-only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he was both brief and

-amiable.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What have I to tell compared with you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Those

-damned old wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they

-weren&rsquo;t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium lot

-broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want to know is

-what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that great moment this

-morning.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,&rdquo; replied Thrush.

-&ldquo;The merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always

-apartments of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in

-half the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner&rsquo;s,

-and I&rsquo;d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course

-I explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady&rsquo;s son

-embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at the front

-window all night, for no better reasons than my strong feeling about the

-doctor&rsquo;s writings, and your daughter&rsquo;s disbelief in his yarn about

-her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird came out,  and I was

-after him like knife. I tracked him to Knightsbridge without much difficulty,

-excepting the one of avoiding being spotted, but there that happened by the

-merest accident. He was passing under the scaffolding outside the church

-they&rsquo;re pulling down there, and he&rsquo;s so tall he knocked his hat

-off. I admit I was too close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I

-shouldn&rsquo;t have recognised him if I hadn&rsquo;t seen him start out. He

-was wearing a false beard and spectacles!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s proof positive,&rdquo; said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his

-breath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, I confess it&rsquo;s something like it in this case; but it was a

-very awkward moment for me. I hadn&rsquo;t to let him see I knew him, nor yet

-that I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as openly

-as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving poor old Mullins

-in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay. We went back to my new

-rooms together, which I needn&rsquo;t tell you I liked so much that I brought a

-suit-case and took them for a week. Of course, as we had lost the run of

-Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch for his return. Mullins took that

-on while I got some sleep; when I awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest,

-and I won&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t suspect who&rsquo;d done it. Perhaps I

-didn&rsquo;t tell you he had his camera with him as  well as beard and goggles,

-and all three figured in the first reports.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I

-wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner&rsquo;s return; but

-in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a room

-overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too much class for

-that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked going back to prison for

-the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both man and boy before I sent that

-wire.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And you left my son in that murderer&rsquo;s clutches a minute longer

-than you could help?&rdquo; It was a previous incarnation of Pocket&rsquo;s

-father that broke in with this.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You must remember in the first place that I couldn&rsquo;t be in the

-least sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, murder

-would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the others;

-thirdly, that we&rsquo;ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an actual

-murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the way to make him

-one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately

-against calling in the police under any circumstances.  He assured me there was

-no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then he saw

-your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the lad, but he

-lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor

-desperate doctor.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence which

-most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their case. But Mr.

-Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance against anybody. And the

-name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity on a very different point had

-not been gratified.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?&rdquo; he inquired, with

-characteristic absence of finesse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very proud of it,&rdquo; replied Thrush. &ldquo;It

-didn&rsquo;t come off, you see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But whatever could the object have been?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I must have a damn-it if I&rsquo;m to tell you that,&rdquo; said Thrush;

-and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which

-he suited to the oath. &ldquo;It was one way that occurred to me of putting

-salt on the lad.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Tony?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You puzzle me more and more.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of

-fine sensibilities, and  yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident

-and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an

-innocent man&rsquo;s arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything.

-Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred

-miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary.

-But what&rsquo;s the good of talking about it? It didn&rsquo;t come off.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going

-to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn&rsquo;t accidentally satisfied

-himself of his own innocence.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that

-alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly

-behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath twitched as

-though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name

-was suddenly put down unfinished.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;If only I could find that camera!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the

-touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it&rsquo;s an accomplice who

-did this thing, he&rsquo;s got it; even if not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his

-whole flushed face.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mullins!&rdquo; he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat

-suspicious alacrity. &ldquo;Get the  almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High

-Water at London Bridge to-day!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office in

-Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume all but

-three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already far advanced.

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br />

-THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA</h2>

-

-<p>

-The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better preservation

-of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked with mud; beads of

-slime kept breaking out along the joints. And Phillida was still explaining to

-Pocket how the thing had come into her possession.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was an

-iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It was coming

-down so hard at the time that I couldn&rsquo;t see another creature out in it

-except myself. I don&rsquo;t believe a single soul saw me run down that gangway

-and up again; but I dropped my purse over first for an excuse if anybody did. I

-popped the camera under my waterproof, and carried it up to the King&rsquo;s

-Road before I could get a cab. But I never expected to find you awake and about

-again; next to the rain that&rsquo;s the best luck of all!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Because you know all about photography and I don&rsquo;t. Suppose he

-took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s an idea.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it

-still, and you could develop it!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the boy; but at

-the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there&rsquo;s not much chance of there being anything

-to develop; the slide&rsquo;s been open all this time, you see.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the water.

-Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the light,

-oughtn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there isn&rsquo;t a dog&rsquo;s chance,&rdquo; he

-murmured, as he handled the camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows

-variety, but was one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had

-come through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely

-broken; but  the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to shut it

-by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and sent it flying

-to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in his hand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;That settles it,&rdquo; remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate

-stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was cracked

-across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I am sorry!&rdquo; exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet

-of glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some

-infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure

-that you weren&rsquo;t right after all; what&rsquo;s water-tight must be more

-or less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what&rsquo;s all

-this? The other side oughtn&rsquo;t to bulge like that!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and weighed

-the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain another plate, he

-declared with expert conviction; yet the side which had not been opened was a

-slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable convexity. Pocket opened it at a

-word from Phillida, and an over-folded packet of MS. leapt out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s his writing!&rdquo; cried the girl, with pain and awe in her

-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in English,&rdquo; said Pocket, picking it up.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It must be what he was writing all last night!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;It is.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You see what it is!&rdquo; urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him

-closely as he read to himself:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="right">

-&ldquo;<i>June</i> 20, 190&mdash;.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="letter">

-&ldquo;It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret of

-my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the year; for

-they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according to the almanac,

-and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my task till four I shall have

-less than six hours in which to do justice to the great <i>ambition</i> and the

-crowning folly of my life. I used the underlined word advisedly; some would

-substitute &lsquo;monomania,&rsquo; but I protest I am as sane as they are,

-fail as I may to demonstrate that fact among so many others to be dealt with in

-the very limited time at my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier

-writer, I should feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have

-been ever deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly

-already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I shall

-ever write, as in my final preparations for death&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read,

-and he was breathing hard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak!

-He&rsquo;s said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, we know he didn&rsquo;t do it,&rdquo; said Phillida, as though she

-found a crumb of comfort in the thought.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about that.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that&rsquo;s the worst.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t, Phillida. I can see it isn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Then let us read it together. I&rsquo;d rather face it with you than

-afterwards all by myself. We&rsquo;ve seen each other through so much, surely

-we can&mdash;surely&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim eyes but a

-palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab figure of the slip

-of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. Upton, she had taken no

-thought for her mourning, that unfailing distraction to the normally bereaved,

-but had put on anything she could find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just

-her dear disdain of appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes,

-unchecked, and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her

-coat and skirt, that made her what she was  in his sight. Outside, the rain had

-stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that streamed in through

-the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and poured its warm blessing on the

-two young heads bent as one over the dreadful document.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now the other

-whispering a few sentences aloud:&mdash;.

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;What I have called my life&rsquo;s ambition demands but little

-explanation here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I

-have given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are

-still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on spirit

-photography in <i>Light Human Nature</i>, <i>The Occult Review</i> and other

-periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled &lsquo;The Flight of the

-Soul,&rsquo; in <i>The Nineteenth Century and After</i> for January of last

-year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter which

-has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare and to write,

-and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme measures I have since

-employed. Treated to a modicum of serious criticism by the scientific press,

-but more generally received with ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the

-Englishman&rsquo;s attitude towards whatsoever is without his own contracted

-ken, my article, the work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days.

-I had essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new idea,

-and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore of

-unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin press from

-that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph about the psychic

-photographer which went the rounds about a year ago. Yet I was that

-photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer to whom the London

-hospitals refused admittance to their pauper deathbeds, thronged though those

-notoriously are by the raw material of the British medical profession. Begin at

-the bottom of the British medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and

-most frequent opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of

-human dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,

-without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the purity of his

-aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than mine. It is as high above

-that of your ordinary physician as heaven itself is high above this earth. Your

-physician wrestles with death to lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a

-million lives to prove that there is no such thing as death; that this human

-life of ours, by which we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of

-the permanent life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a

-truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the

-opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over

-knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion invites us

-to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is deserving of material

-proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to supply. Surely it is a higher

-aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the senses that cannot deceive, rather than

-to the imagination which must and does? But I am trenching after all upon

-ground which I myself have covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to

-relate a personal narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it

-that to me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of

-so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that all who

-saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit photography. It is a

-path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks and charlatans, and by false

-guides who rival the religious fanatics in the impudence of their appeal to

-man&rsquo;s credulity. Even those who bear the lamp I hold aloft are too often

-jugglers and rogues, to whose wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of

-photography lends itself all too readily. Nothing is  easier than the

-production of impossible pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if

-the spiritual apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing

-easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist has yet

-succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the whole problem of

-spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of communication with disembodied

-spirits at the single will of the embodied; hence the periodical exposure of

-the paid medium, the smug scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of

-genuine exploration beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment,

-and only one, at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a

-particle of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at

-which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human watcher sees

-merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a phenomenon invisible to

-the human eye has been detected and depicted by that of the camera, as

-everybody knows who has the slightest acquaintance with the branch of physics

-known as &lsquo;fluorescence.&rsquo; The invisible spirit of man surely falls

-within this category. To the crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible

-as elusive and intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign

-opportunity is gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of

-the soul.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I say no more than &lsquo;often&rsquo; because there are special

-difficulties into which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at

-least be minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,

-instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would hurt

-nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present have only

-their Churches&rsquo; word for the existence of an eternal soul in their

-perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few experiments,

-than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen centuries. Yet how

-are my earnest applications received, in hospitals where men die daily, in

-prisons where they are still occasionally put to death? I am refused, rebuffed,

-gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I am driven ultimately to the extreme course

-of taking human life, on my own account, in order to prove the life eternal.

-Call it murder, call it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of

-a lethal chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the

-inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an individual

-as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him worse than this

-world. I can only say that I have not deprived the State of one conceivably

-profitable servant, or cut short a single life of promise or repute. I have

-picked my few victims with infinite care from  amid the moral or material

-wreckage of life; either they had nothing to live for, or they had no right to

-live. Charlton, the licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I

-ever knew; in the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he

-wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to which

-an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed. Charlton had just

-been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and refusing to leave without an

-extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was indeed saturated with alcohol and

-honeycombed with disease; repulsive in appearance, and cantankerous in

-character, his earnings were so slender that he was pitifully clad, and without

-a night&rsquo;s lodging oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and

-was suffering from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I

-resolved to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to

-photograph the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present

-itself for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at

-last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not another

-being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had purchased

-second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on the seat. Yet the

-weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the  authenticity of the suicide, despite

-my final precaution of stuffing a number of cartridges into the dead

-man&rsquo;s pocket; pot-house associates came forward to declare that he could

-never have possessed either the revolver or its price without their knowledge.

-Hence the coroner&rsquo;s repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is

-to be feared that the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public

-interest in its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more

-than an academic interest in the case.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very

-few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb of my

-pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for this, and the fact

-remains that I was too late. The result may be found among my negatives. It is

-dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a unique photograph of actual death;

-but it lacks the least trace of the super-normal. The flight of the soul had

-been too quick for me; it would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new

-method. I had not only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the

-fatal pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my elaborate

-attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The next case should

-be a more honest breach of the Sixth  Commandment; the shot to be fired, and

-the photograph taken, at the same range and all but at the same instant. There

-would be no further point in leaving the weapon behind, so I was free to choose

-the one best suited to my purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar

-needs. Eventually I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already

-explained itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the

-discoverer of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it

-will not be loaded when found.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand about the

-pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For Phillida it was

-enough to know that the writer of this shameless rigmarole, with its pompous

-periods and its callous gusto, must long ago have lost his reason. She had no

-doubt whatever about that, and already it had brought a new light into her

-eyes. She would pause to discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed

-the way through the next passages.

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many

-weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have described

-as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in readiness for another

-attempt to  liberate and photograph a human soul in consecutive fractions of a

-second. But the right man was never in the right place at the right time; one

-saw him by the dozen in a crowd, but the people one met all by themselves, in

-the early summer mornings, stayed one&rsquo;s hand repeatedly by the eager

-brightness of their eyes or a happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at

-the Brompton Hospital, whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was

-cheated of a merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the

-dawn and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch

-whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday morning. I

-knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton circle, but it was

-quite by chance that I followed his uncertain footsteps through the Park, and

-saw him go deliberately to bed in the drenching dew. His face filled in his

-tale; it was another farrago of privation and excess. This was the type that

-caused me no compunction: having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my

-invention provides, I despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his

-hat over his eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may

-be reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter

-coincided with the last clutter in his throat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before

-firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make another wary

-survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could see a considerable

-distance in three directions, and in none of these, neither right nor left

-along the path, nor yet straight ahead across the grass on the edge of which my

-victim lay, was a living creature to be seen. This was very reassuring, as I

-felt that I could see a good deal farther than the report of my small automatic

-pistol was likely to be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting

-cases, especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how seldom

-it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the fatal shot. In the

-fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery behind some iron palings, I

-looked last, for I was standing with my back that way. How shall I describe my

-sensations on turning round? There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on

-the other side of the palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in

-his right hand!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and frank

-bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a third I guessed

-what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were dank with dew. His eyes

-were puddles  of utter stupefaction. He had been sleeping in the Park, and

-walking in his sleep, and in all probability it was my shot which had brought

-him to himself; of this, however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was

-disastrously inspired to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never

-struck me that he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was

-with a wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if he

-knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I had the

-wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm enough to help me

-convince the child that he really had fired the shot; but, since he could not

-see it for myself, I was not going out of my way just then to tell him it was a

-fatal shot. Already I regretted that I had gone so far, and yet already I saw

-myself committed to a course of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The

-boy became convulsed with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his

-story when the body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot,

-at the latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me

-through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with all

-sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had to keep him

-there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and implicate  me more

-readily than ever after what he had seen of me at home? I had to keep him

-there&mdash;I repeat it&mdash;alive or dead. And I was not the kind of murderer

-(if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent life, if I could help it, to

-preserve my own; on the contrary, I had, and I hope I always should have had,

-humanity enough at least to do what I could for a fellow-creature battling with

-an attack which almost threatened to remove him from my path without my

-aid.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There followed a few remarks on Pocket&rsquo;s character as the writer read it.

-They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they betrayed a

-profound disdain for the typically British institution of which Pocket was too

-readily accepted as a representative product. His general ignorance and

-credulity received a grim tribute; they were the very qualities the doctor

-would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he appeared to have enjoyed the

-youth&rsquo;s society, his transparent honesty, his capacity for enthusiastic

-interest, whether in the delights of photography or in the horrors of war.

-Baumgartner seemed aware that he had been somewhat confidential on both

-subjects, and that either his contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the

-matter of psychic photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on

-the other hand,  he &ldquo;greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two

-and two together, at these so-called public schools&rdquo;; and, after all, it

-was not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the beginning,

-in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary, was another thing to

-which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all along. He had regarded it from

-the first as &lsquo;the certain beginning of the end&rsquo;; from the first,

-he had been prepared with specious explanations for any such inquisitor as the

-one who had actually arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote

-without elation of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor

-had not been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It

-was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which could only

-have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted it, but which the

-boy himself had discovered never to have been posted at all. There was a

-sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood into which

-Baumgartner&rsquo;s intuition of the boy&rsquo;s discovery had thrown him on

-the Sunday night.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;It was then,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;that I formed a  project which I

-should have been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done

-so if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my second

-attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great a fiasco as

-the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable (even though it seem a

-wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. What if the human derelicts I

-had so far chosen for my experiments had no souls to photograph? Sodden with

-drink, debauched, degraded, and spiritually blurred or blunted to the last

-degree, these after all were the least likely subjects to yield results to the

-spirit photographer. I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as

-these, entities in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought

-of the saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my

-acquaintance, of a &lsquo;light&rsquo; specialist I know of who is destroying

-himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the slums;

-but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are much too valuable

-for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a compensating benefit to

-mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought of the boy upstairs. I had not

-meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of some promise, is only less sacred to

-me than a mature life rich in beneficent activities. But this young  fellow was

-going to be my ruin. I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the

-letter; he would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the

-work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was not going

-to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter into here, and I

-intended to take more than his life while I was about it. But he never gave me

-the chance. I did my best to get him to go out with me this morning. But he

-refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a dog the water. He said he was ill; he

-looked ill. But I have no doubt he was well enough to make his escape soon

-after my back was turned. I see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes

-I took away from him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that;

-but, to tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my

-return.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy broke in

-with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the Sunday night and the

-Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the doctor&rsquo;s house. He

-declared that nothing short of main force would have dragged him out-of-doors

-that morning, that he felt it in his bones that he would never come back alive.

-Then he would be sorry he had said so much. It only increased his

-companion&rsquo;s anguish. She was reading every word religiously, with a most

-painful fascination; it was as though every word drew blood. There was a brief

-but terrible account of the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own

-house in Park Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the

-one occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and that

-only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so intensely that a

-&ldquo;straight&rdquo; interview was out of the question. As it was he had

-escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft, creeping into a

-carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong side when it drove round to

-its house. Baumgartner described the incident with a callous relish, as perhaps

-the most exciting in his long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent

-return, in propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of

-a sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as follows, in

-less careful language and a more flowing hand:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-&ldquo;I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day&rsquo;s excitement

-must have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got

-back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his

-clothes. I didn&rsquo;t  waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative to

-develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute failure from

-the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason as its predecessors.

-South African mines may produce gold and diamonds (licit and illicit!) but

-their yield in souls is probably the poorest to the square mile anywhere on

-earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his gross carcass. So there was an end of

-him, and a good riddance to rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all

-night. I have thought of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate

-statement that I have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me

-strange pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to

-attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I not

-conscious of a moment&rsquo;s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only sometimes

-have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause, perhaps half an hour

-ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I heard a footstep in the

-hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all this writing; it might be my

-imagination. I stole to my door, and as I opened it the one below shut softly.

-I waited some time, heard nothing more, went down with my lamp, and threw open

-the drawing-room door. There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but  sitting

-in the dark with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to

-be misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that. But

-somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark without a

-word, afraid to go to bed&mdash;afraid of me&mdash;made the blood boil over in

-my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I had pictured

-overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I am glad it missed

-him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was seeing his companion safe

-upstairs. If I had found him where I left him, God knows what violence I might

-not have done him after all. The boy has good in him, and more courage than he

-knows himself; again I say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life

-was not safe, but now I shall only take my own.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common

-hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England:

-either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal

-lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all

-night long, ready and pointed at my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind

-me, and I should have rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now

-they are waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go,  where

-already it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and

-enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million facets of

-living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there; and as I have served

-others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be with better fortune than

-they have brought me. Who knows? It would be in keeping with the poetic ironies

-of this existence. At all events, unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a

-chance. I shall place the camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have

-fitted the shutter with a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do

-its double work as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my

-mind. I have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by

-the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent person,

-the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to the police. They,

-I think, may be trusted to honour one&rsquo;s last instructions, if only out of

-curiosity; their eyes will be the first to read what I fear they will describe

-as my &lsquo;full confession.&rsquo; Well, it is &lsquo;full,&rsquo; and the

-substantive must be left to them. So long as the document does not fall into

-one little pair of gentle hands, I shall lie easy in whatever ignominious grave

-they lay me. That is why I hide it where I do: since, if it fell first into

-those hands, it would never see the light at all.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p class="p2">

-There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away, and wept

-over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness, while Pocket

-picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the muddy newspaper.

-Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation went away

-with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her return she stood petrified on

-the threshold.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter between

-his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud metallic snap

-inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the shutter snapped like a

-shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward with a cry. Pocket had taken

-the top off the camera; it was like a box without the lid, and on the one side

-there was nothing between the lens and the grooved carrier for the slide, but

-on the other there was an automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild

-beast might be lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for

-the second lens of the stereoscopic camera.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was preceded by

-the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there had been another

-cartridge in the pistol.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;And we never guessed it!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why he went

-in for this sort of double camera,  and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot

-in quick succession. It&rsquo;s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my

-life.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a

-word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether

-on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I&rsquo;ve been trying

-it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol&rsquo;s pointing

-every time. It&rsquo;s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and

-the spot isn&rsquo;t quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the

-left to allow. I don&rsquo;t quite see how the one bulb works everything, but

-these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan&rsquo;t understand

-everything till we take it to pieces.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;You mean the police won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Phillida, bitterly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;The police! I never thought of them.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What do you mean to do with this&mdash;this infernal machine?&rdquo; the

-girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;What do <i>you</i> mean to do with&mdash;the writing?&rdquo; demanded

-Pocket in his turn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Burn it! I&rsquo;ve asked for a fire in my room; it&rsquo;s locked away

-meanwhile.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, this is yours, too,&rdquo; said Pocket, deliberately, &ldquo;to do

-what you like with as well.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They wouldn&rsquo;t think so!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll never know.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t

-keep it to yourself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You would <i>have</i> to

-tell.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Well, but not everybody,&rdquo; said poor Pocket. &ldquo;Only my father,

-if you like!&rdquo; he added, valiantly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that. Didn&rsquo;t you hear what he said about a

-man&rsquo;s secrets dying with him?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is

-the mystery of the day. It&rsquo;ll be the talk for months, if not years. And

-as yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially, that

-he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had failed to see

-her heart&rsquo;s desire, and how it was still in his power to save her the

-supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with the world. He

-made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that looked both ways at

-every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and

-Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would

-probably back their penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no

-boasting about it in front of the  hall fire at school, no breathing it even to

-Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket

-was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its subsequent

-recital. But he could &ldquo;play the game&rdquo; as well as Horace himself,

-when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And now he had none

-whatever.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Phillida, if you wish it, I&rsquo;ll never breathe a syllable of all

-this to a single soul on earth, I don&rsquo;t care who they are, or what they

-do to me!&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Oh, Tony, do you mean it?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Her eyes had filled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Of course I mean it! I&rsquo;ll swear it more solemnly than I&rsquo;ve

-ever sworn anything in my life so far.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;No, no! Your word&rsquo;s enough. Don&rsquo;t I know what that&rsquo;s

-worth, after this terrible week?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away and put

-the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so that he

-might not see her tears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,&rdquo; he

-vowed, &ldquo;except yourself.&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, always, as

-much as ever he  liked; it would be a bond between them all their lives. And

-not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he think of a reward or look

-beyond those days.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an automatic

-pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. They thought

-about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was getting on towards

-evening now, though the sun was out again, and it was lighter than the early

-afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any minute. It was Phillida who at last

-said she knew. She would not tell him what she meant to do; but she put on her

-waterproof again, little as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as

-before; and together they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where she was

-going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. He felt a

-frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself as to her, with

-that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who looked at them was a

-detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at the corners he wanted to run.

-But they gained the middle of Waterloo Bridge undetected and ensconced

-themselves in a recess without creating a sensation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-&ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; said Phillida, &ldquo;will you focus Westminster

-Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?&rdquo;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, the

-stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida&rsquo;s drift until she aimed

-herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through her fingers

-into the depths of the river from which she had only retrieved it a couple of

-hours before, as a body is committed to the deep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a loud

-voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the genuine

-severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who thought it worth

-while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy townsfolk hastening past

-were all too much engrossed in their own affairs to take any interest in those

-of the boy and girl who seemed themselves in something of a hurry to get back

-to the Strand.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing but four

-words in enormous black letters:&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">

-CHELSEA INQUEST<br />

-CAMERA CLUE!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket&rsquo;s arm. Pocket was man enough to

-press it to his side.

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">

-THE END

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Printed in Great Britain by Wyman &amp; Sons, Ltd., London and Reading

-</p>

-

-</div><!--end chapter-->

-

-<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMERA FIEND ***</div>

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