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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-13 15:32:22 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-13 15:32:22 -0800 |
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| tree | 0ea491b69631caa820a8f73170f42fde7c69f6dc /30096-h | |
| parent | 65f260fb3b71977a08179b9e3396c24aa0c7613e (diff) | |
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diff --git a/30096-h/30096-h.htm b/30096-h/30096-h.htm index 13d73d9..ef6a9f4 100644 --- a/30096-h/30096-h.htm +++ b/30096-h/30096-h.htm @@ -1,10901 +1,10901 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
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-<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Camera Fiend, by E.W. Hornung</title>
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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 “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a
-case of chicken-pox, sir.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You could go up again to-morrow.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Who are the Knaggses?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And the lady you mentioned?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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 “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?”
-“Absolutely certain, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Rather, sir!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.”
-</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 “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 <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>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself
-coffee in the night, as you’ve done before.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’ 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>
-“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an
-attack!” he sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good
-night without smoking I should be thankful.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep
-until to-morrow?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“If you like.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from
-his bag.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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
-<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’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’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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</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’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’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.
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him
-from going into particulars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the
-house.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she
-can’t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your
-asthma.”
-</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’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>
-“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his
-hat to walk round with Pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Haven’t you got any?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Left your luggage there?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?”
-</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’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.
-</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’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.
-</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—as if he could not have borrowed the
-money from Dr. Bompas in the morning!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught
-up his bag in a passion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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—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’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?
-</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. “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.
-</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’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.
-</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—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.
-</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>
-“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon
-Pocket with inexorable tread.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual
-readiness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman,
-standing over him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why not?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The Park closes at twelve.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Closes?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even
-thought a lot of loafers used to sleep here all night!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The policeman chuckled aloud.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only
-chance,” said he.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You search the whole place so thoroughly?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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—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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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>
-“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said.
-“I think you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never
-agree.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt
-young man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly
-enough.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace.
-“He’s being absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of
-it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I didn’t give him asthma!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Don’t be childish, Letty.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it,
-either.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You think he enjoys his bad nights?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never
-even thinks of getting up to first school now.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with
-asthma?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you
-think.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay for
-two or three bad ones.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder brother. “I’m
-glad he didn’t buck to me about that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest brother.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened
-by a little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about
-him.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I know he’s casual.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry her sense
-of fairness had so misled her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he
-could. Think what he’d miss!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be
-said.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under
-this very doctor of yours?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He’s not my doctor.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I believe he is.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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’s library, and
-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the terrace.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton
-plainly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I
-sometimes wish there was more!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?”
-continued Mr. Upton, with severity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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 “a
-conscientious ass,” 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’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’s side, supporting her in
-bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him,
-dear?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you
-now. And I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!”
-</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’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’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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily;
-further explanations were cut very short.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“With that in it!”
-</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>
-“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket,
-horrified.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Feel the barrel.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. The
-barrel was still warm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m glad to hear it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I tell you it was!”
-</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’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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I had nowhere else to go.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Have you come up from the country?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these
-chairs.”
-</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>
-“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage
-it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I did last night.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket looked round and pointed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Behind that bush.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Have you left nothing there?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes; my bag and hat!”
-</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>
-“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?
-There—catching the sun.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Bring it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s empty.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Bring it!”
-</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>
-“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one
-myself.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What’s that?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I never heard of them.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I
-had.”
-</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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with
-breath and gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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, “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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
-“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.
-</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. “Sit down,” 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’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’s eyes with the faint cold smile that
-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in
-his unemotional voice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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. “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen
-one.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s
-half the fun.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of
-my father’s.”
-</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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I should imagine so,” 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>
-“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes; often.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In the body, I presume?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket looked nonplussed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You only take them in the flesh?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Of course.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s
-the difference.”
-</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’s Almanacke</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic
-photography.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I didn’t say so.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you looked and sounded it!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every
-syllable you have spoken.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,”
-concluded Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Certainly, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible
-as that sunbeam?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Rather!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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, “I knew I knew your name!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You do know it, do you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was discounted by
-the interruption it entailed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come
-across it somewhere.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You read the correspondence that followed the review?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Some of it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“My letter among others?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes! I remember every word of it now.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s
-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket
-somewhat tentatively, despite his boast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the
-little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” 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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do
-you mean to say I—you took me—walking——?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising.
-“Wait one minute.”
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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, “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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. “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”
-</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’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. “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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no
-good at real games.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The statement was too true, but not the preference.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was
-the doctor’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—the dry and the demure—to all he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr.
-Baumgartner when he got a chance.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”
-</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>
-“I suppose there are a number of young men at
-your—establishment?” said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss
-Platts.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little
-puzzled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And how many keepers do they require?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A grin apologised for the word.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if
-you like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those
-cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should
-prescribe for such an emergency.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that
-chair; nobody will come in.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket shook his head.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the
-door. That will give you a good two hours.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first
-bottle under the bush.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shall be in again.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then it is a promise?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”
-</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’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’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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question
-by taking out his watch.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No—six.”
-</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>
-“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless.
-“You’ve broken your word, sir!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied
-Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor,
-looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What about?”
-</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>
-“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in
-town about it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do tell me what, sir!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Can you face things, my young fellow?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at
-her funeral in a flash.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No—yourself.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then I can!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my
-dream.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying
-there in the wet grass?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I thought he was drunk.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He was dead!”
-</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>
-“What did he die of?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A bullet!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Suicide?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not murder?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“This paper says so.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Does it say who did it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It cannot.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Can you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tell me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it
-yourself?”
-</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’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.
-</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, “What about that
-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it
-all the worse.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You mean the delay?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run
-away, and then think better of it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Baumgartner smiled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said you saw I did!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly;
-“let us hope it will stop at that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dr. Baumgartner!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes, my young fellow?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They can’t do anything to me, can they?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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. “My mother!” he moaned.
-“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my
-mother too!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most
-people,” remarked Baumgartner sardonically.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a
-forbearing shrug.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But my part in it!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said it had got to come out.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you mean what you say?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Every syllable!” said Pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of
-now or never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then it’s never!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I have decided.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shouldn’t do that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now,
-“so long as my people never know!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he
-said; and in his exaltation he believed no less.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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!
-</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’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>
-“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent
-already; they may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my
-young fellow?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head
-wreathed in cool blue clouds.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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——”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</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’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: “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.
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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’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’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. “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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what
-he thought.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do
-what nobody else ever did.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But how could Spearman give him the chance?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“So I heard.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what
-can it be?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his
-doctor.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to
-school.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got
-back somehow.”
-</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>
-“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil
-couldn’t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked
-about?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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 “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.
-</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’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’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!
-</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—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!
-</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’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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master,
-with only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my
-boy. What did you say the name was?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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 <i>Times</i>, in which Mr. Thrush was
-described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate
-investigations” and “confidential negotiations.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I had no call, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So
-you’d only to describe the finding of the body?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That was all, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs
-you showed me yesterday?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly consternation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you
-four minutes, if that’s any good to you.”
-</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’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>
-“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other
-room.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Upton is my name, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry
-agent is all I presume to call myself.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you do inquire into mysteries?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ve dabbled in them.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“As an amateur?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A paid amateur, I fear.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to
-me!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The four minutes must be more than up.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor
-accident. One moment!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my
-head.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But do you think you can do anything?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing better, do you say?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a
-man’s asthma than to hide the man himself.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I never thought of that.”
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I certainly never thought of his heart!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It owes him something!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you know what he does for it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you mean tobacco?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No—some stuff for asthma.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In cigarettes?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you know the name?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I have it here.”
-</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>
-“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their
-glasses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I confess I don’t see why.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Some French rubbish.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It looks like it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“So he has the impudence to say.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the
-possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Who on earth is he?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A. V. M.?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton,
-“though there seems some method in the madness.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the
-ironmaster.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out
-of pure politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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>
-“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr.
-Thrush!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“When was the first?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!
-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not seriously.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles
-twinkling to colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you
-ask?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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 <i>may</i> have been other cases.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very time
-at which something terrible has happened to that child?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Any amount of those.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton
-hoarsely.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply.
-“That would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much
-agitated; for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t
-tell her he had disappeared.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why? What was the dream?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That she saw him—and heard a shot.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A shot!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had time to
-think.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she
-wasn’t dreaming at all.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But when was this?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally
-fanciful, I’m afraid.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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—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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon
-as ever he dared.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face still more
-strikingly illuminated.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne
-Cigarettes!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“So I perceive.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I didn’t smoke it, sir!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Who did?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Near the actual place?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the strongest of
-the electric lamps.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!”
-</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’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.
-</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>
-“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.
-</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’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’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.
-</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’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, “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.
-</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>
-“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just
-came in to say goodbye.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“To say goodbye!” she gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s
-out?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m afraid I can’t.”
-</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>
-“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and
-with a smile.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly,
-“if he finds you gone.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is.
-Do you mind giving him one other message?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“As many as you like.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is that all?”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“How did you get out?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“How do you suppose?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I never heard anything!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I took care you shouldn’t.”
-</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>
-“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Can’t let me?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.”
-</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—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him,
-because he felt she knew it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t
-let me out that way, I’ll go this!”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out
-bitterly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Never mind what I take you for!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’re treating me as though I were one!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in
-tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
-ON PAROLE</h2>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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
-<i>Seringapatam!</i> I should have been at sea by this time, and out of
-harm’s way for the next three months.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The <i>Seringapatam?</i>” repeated the doctor. “I never
-heard of her.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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>
-“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!”
-</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’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’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>
-“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about
-yourself the better.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But what can she think?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a
-wistful heaviness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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’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>
-“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run
-the risk of trusting your discretion.”
-</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’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’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.
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these
-remarks.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic
-smile; “but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it
-matter?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I
-did!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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?”
-</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—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’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’s mother’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>
-“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland
-Walk?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t agree.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins,
-sententiously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush looked at him for a moment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied
-Mullins, with some warmth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as
-neat.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A matter of life or death.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in
-New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Much demand in any of those quarters?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly
-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“How did you worm that out, Mullins?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only
-consumer?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on
-Thursday to a doctor.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Did you get the name?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I didn’t inquire.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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 <i>Who’s
-Who</i>, and read out what they say.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve.
-“But what about his address?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins,
-demoralised and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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 <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’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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a
-curiously gentle voice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Had he brought it from school?” 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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal
-one!”
-</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’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.
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly,
-“the very moment that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Meaning they’re the same person?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“To be sure.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in
-deferential derision.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope
-to get arrested within another hour!”
-</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>
-“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I am—with your permission, Mullins.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!”
-</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’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.
-</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’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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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>
-“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began
-it!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Began what?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Our row yesterday.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I haven’t.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t
-hurt you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Of course you didn’t.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you must have thought me mad!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a slight but most significant pause.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I never shall again.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!
-</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, “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.
-</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’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly seated
-when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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>
-“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil
-were you two talking about while my back was turned?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his
-heart beat fast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What about yesterday?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Our scuffle in the other room.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is that all?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What did you find out?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said she would think I was a patient.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Exactly! A mental case.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with
-dogged valour.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again
-put gently but clearly in the wrong.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her
-to think she’s associating with a lunatic?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve
-arrested somebody!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort
-was a precocious inspiration.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise
-pauses, “and what if it was?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He won’t lie long.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other
-room till you know your own mind again.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through
-his teeth, although they chattered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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 “occult” in their last bookseller’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’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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida.
-“Who can it be?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Hasn’t he any friends?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at
-table.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating
-now.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But I don’t understand the question.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is that true?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket looked up at last.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I know the truth.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“About the arrest?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d
-gone.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why not before?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered,
-looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask
-me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before,
-and his head lower.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You don’t mean——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She stopped aghast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’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’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’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’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’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.
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly
-wishing he would go that afternoon.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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’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—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.
-</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—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’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>
-“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired
-Baumgartner, solicitously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping
-his forehead and then his hand.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there
-first!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</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’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>
-“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I
-want to see him about something.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lettice flushed and shrank.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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—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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Did you leave the motor behind?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried
-Mr. Upton.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Alive?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”
-</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>
-“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What kind of interest?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes, a sailing ship—the <i>Seringapatam</i>— an old East
-Indiaman they’ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I
-wouldn’t hear of the beastly tub.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you know when she was to sail?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about
-now.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and
-where exactly did he see him?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!’”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”’”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed.
-“That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss
-Upton?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He might feel he had?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of
-you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal
-Lettice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner
-thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone
-of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that
-he had been keeping something all this time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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
-<i>Seringapatam</i>, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get
-aboard himself that night!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t believe it, Thrush.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it
-isn’t yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think
-of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Lettice shook hers quietly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet
-conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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, Ã 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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and
-Melbourne?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-“And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught before
-replying.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my
-job is to prove things one way or the other.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the
-train showed signs of life at last.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush
-said, after a contemplative pause.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ll take my chance of that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And losing the train?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take
-him with me, as well as you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d
-rather you didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not count on you”?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“One of us will be quite enough.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried
-the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush,
-gently.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Want him yourself do you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr.
-Upton.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why not? Where is he.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In prison.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In prison! Your man Mullins?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion
-of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”
-</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>
-“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see
-you yourself again by supper-time.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t
-force me, please”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing to eat.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Is there any book?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation.
-“There’s the book I was reading yesterday.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What was that?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than
-revolted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“If it is over,” murmured the boy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d
-got to say about somnambulism.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why?”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m glad you find it funny!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’s final
-visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost
-to the socket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a
-bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly
-midnight?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once.
-“I told you I wasn’t well.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can’t help that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</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’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>
-“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what
-he had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the beautiful town we live in,
-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out
-with you, when you see I can’t eat a bite?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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’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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</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’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!
-</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’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.
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his
-mouth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was
-thieves?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window
-visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it.
-Take it if you will!”
-</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>
-“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with
-considerable severity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’s eyes flashing hers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the
-act of what he said you were, if anything could be.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He may have been justified.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with
-his great grief and grievance.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?”
-</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>
-“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——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on
-your account, if not on his!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at
-last.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But I want you to,” 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’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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You never know!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited
-for his leave before printing his negative.”
-</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>
-“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland
-Walk, in Kensington.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He turned to her quickly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening
-print.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Did he take the photograph then?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The girl took a long look nearer the window.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it
-were falling off! He might be dying.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate
-was exposed!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and
-strained with formless terrors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He must have been there if he took the photograph.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But there they were agreed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But you must have known whether you fired or not?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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. “Then my uncle might have
-put in a fresh one while you were asleep.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why should he?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the
-more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train
-home.”
-</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>
-“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it
-from her side at last.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why not?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave
-you with a man like that!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I
-don’t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for
-waiting.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like
-you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“How do you know he took the negative?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t, but——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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——”
-</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’s answer was to go
-close up to her instead. “Will you come with me?” 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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She smiled very faintly at that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He would be as he’s always been to me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Because I can’t.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Because you won’t!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’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’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’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>
-“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I do now.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you hear what it is?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you
-hear? ‘Another awful murder!’ Now they’re saying something
-else.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I
-can’t hear what!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No more can I.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’ll open the door.”
-</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>
-“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known
-man!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“So he was the well-known man!”
-</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>
-“Did the doctor know him?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and
-gold-mines, and some financial paper. I never understood.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out his.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“There is!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I shall know it sooner or later.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what
-you like, and still be wrong!”
-</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 “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.
-</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’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.
-</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’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.
-</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’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>
-“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his
-set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead.
-“Here he comes!”
-</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’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>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Does he know I’m here?” he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again the break in her voice, and again the boyish sympathy in his. “I
-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t think so. What is it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas while
-you were upstairs.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Phillida turned it out again without comment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in
-these—mysteries?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant
-is in prison.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He isn’t!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You said he was?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read
-it for yourself.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.”
-</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—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.
-</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’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>
-“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?”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</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’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’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’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.
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and
-did not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough,
-still patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Only last night when I wired.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And where?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why, I never saw you before this minute!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or
-two.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,
-my dear boy?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Hiding, Tony?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</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>
-“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.
-</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’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>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully.
-“Sooicide in the usual stite o’ mind.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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>
-“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do
-it himself?”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and
-fell again. “Oh! what must you think?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“None anywhere that I know much about.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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’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.
-</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’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>
-“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered,
-impressed by her strange stare.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen
-him look for years. There are worse things than death!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</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—<i>he</i>
-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!”
-</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’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>
-“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two
-were closeted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Do you ever read your paper?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“<i>You</i> did, Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was
-up.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You say you provided him?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with
-his own consent.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up
-with it now.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Of course.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same
-thing?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not you, Thrush?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped
-to it from scratch!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“From the word ‘go.’ ”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s
-dream?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s flippancy. He looked at
-Thrush with a shining face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“And you never told me what was in your minds!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thrush emptied his glass at once.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of
-their own.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,”
-said Mr. Upton, sadly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I do <i>so</i>, God bless her!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his
-breath.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with
-characteristic absence of finesse.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It
-didn’t come off, you see.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But whatever could the object have been?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Tony?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You puzzle me more and more.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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>
-“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——”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his
-whole flushed face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Why?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he
-took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“That’s an idea.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it
-still, and you could develop it!”
-</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>
-“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything
-to develop; the slide’s been open all this time, you see.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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>
-“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her
-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It must be what he was writing all last night!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him
-closely as he read to himself:—
-</p>
-
-<p class="right">
-“<i>June</i> 20, 190—.”
-</p>
-
-<p class="letter">
-“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 ‘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——”.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read,
-and he was breathing hard.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she
-found a crumb of comfort in the thought.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I’m not so sure about that.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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——”
-</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:—.
-</p>
-
-<p class="p2">
-“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 <i>Light Human Nature</i>, <i>The Occult Review</i> and other
-periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight of the
-Soul,’ 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’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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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">
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p class="p2">
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p class="p2">
-“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.”
-</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’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:—
-</p>
-
-<p class="p2">
-“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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</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’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>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a
-word.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“The police! I never thought of them.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the
-girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“What do <i>you</i> mean to do with—the writing?” demanded
-Pocket in his turn.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away
-meanwhile.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do
-what you like with as well.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They wouldn’t think so!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“They’ll never know.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t
-keep it to yourself,” she said. “You would <i>have</i> to
-tell.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father,
-if you like!” he added, valiantly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a
-man’s secrets dying with him?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</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’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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“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!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her eyes had filled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve
-ever sworn anything in my life so far.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s
-worth, after this terrible week?”
-</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>
-“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he
-vowed, “except yourself.”
-</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>
-“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster
-Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</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:—
-</p>
-
-<p class="center">
-CHELSEA INQUEST<br />
-CAMERA CLUE!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’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 & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div>
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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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a +case of chicken-pox, sir.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You could go up again to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who are the Knaggses?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the lady you mentioned?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” +“Absolutely certain, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather, sir!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.” +</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 “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 <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> +“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!” +</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> +“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself +coffee in the night, as you’ve done before.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’ 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> +“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an +attack!” he sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good +night without smoking I should be thankful.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep +until to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you like.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from +his bag. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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 +<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’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’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’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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</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’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’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. +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him +from going into particulars. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the +house.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she +can’t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your +asthma.” +</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’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> +“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his +hat to walk round with Pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you got any?” +</p> + +<p> +“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!” +</p> + +<p> +“Left your luggage there?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?” +</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’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. +</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’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. +</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—as if he could not have borrowed the +money from Dr. Bompas in the morning! +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught +up his bag in a passion. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—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’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? +</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. “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. +</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’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. +</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—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. +</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> +“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon +Pocket with inexorable tread. +</p> + +<p> +“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual +readiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, +standing over him. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“The Park closes at twelve.” +</p> + +<p> +“Closes?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin. +</p> + +<p> +“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even +thought a lot of loafers used to sleep here all night!” +</p> + +<p> +The policeman chuckled aloud. +</p> + +<p> +“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only +chance,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“You search the whole place so thoroughly?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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> +“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. +“I think you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never +agree.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt +young man. +</p> + +<p> +“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly +enough. +</p> + +<p> +“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. +“He’s being absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t give him asthma!” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be childish, Letty.” +</p> + +<p> +“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, +either.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think he enjoys his bad nights?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never +even thinks of getting up to first school now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with +asthma?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you +think.” +</p> + +<p> +“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay for +two or three bad ones.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder brother. “I’m +glad he didn’t buck to me about that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest brother. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened +by a little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!” +</p> + +<p> +“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.” +</p> + +<p> +“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know he’s casual.” +</p> + +<p> +Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry her sense +of fairness had so misled her. +</p> + +<p> +“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he +could. Think what he’d miss!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be +said.” +</p> + +<p> +And the girl halted at the lighted windows. +</p> + +<p> +“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under +this very doctor of yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s not my doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he is.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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’s library, and +unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the terrace. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton +plainly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I +sometimes wish there was more!” +</p> + +<p> +“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” +continued Mr. Upton, with severity. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</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 “a +conscientious ass,” 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’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’s side, supporting her in +bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!” +</p> + +<p> +“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, +dear?” +</p> + +<p> +“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you +now. And I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!” +</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’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’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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; +further explanations were cut very short. +</p> + +<p> +“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief. +</p> + +<p> +Pocket felt his prime quality impugned. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“With that in it!” +</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> +“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, +horrified. +</p> + +<p> +“Feel the barrel.” +</p> + +<p> +The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. The +barrel was still warm. +</p> + +<p> +“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad to hear it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it was!” +</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’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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress. +</p> + +<p> +“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!” +</p> + +<p> +“I had nowhere else to go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you come up from the country?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these +chairs.” +</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> +“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did last night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket looked round and pointed. +</p> + +<p> +“Behind that bush.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you left nothing there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; my bag and hat!” +</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> +“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours? +There—catching the sun.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bring it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s empty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bring it!” +</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> +“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one +myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted. +</p> + +<p> +“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I +had.” +</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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with +breath and gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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, “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 +“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. +</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. “Sit down,” 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’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’s eyes with the faint cold smile that +scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in +his unemotional voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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. “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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen +one.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s +half the fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod. +</p> + +<p> +“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of +my father’s.” +</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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should imagine so,” 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> +“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; often.” +</p> + +<p> +“In the body, I presume?” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket looked nonplussed. +</p> + +<p> +“You only take them in the flesh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s +the difference.” +</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’s Almanacke</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic +photography.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t say so.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you looked and sounded it!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every +syllable you have spoken.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” +concluded Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible +as that sunbeam?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather!” +</p> + +<p> +“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?” +</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> +“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.” +</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, “I knew I knew your name!” +</p> + +<p> +“You do know it, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was discounted by +the interruption it entailed. +</p> + +<p> +“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come +across it somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“You read the correspondence that followed the review?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“My letter among others?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes! I remember every word of it now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s +co-operation in these spirit-photographs?” +</p> + +<p> +“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket +somewhat tentatively, despite his boast. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent. +</p> + +<p> +“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the +little old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” 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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do +you mean to say I—you took me—walking——?” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. +“Wait one minute.” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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, “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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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. “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. +</p> + +<p> +“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.” +</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’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. “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. +</p> + +<p> +“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no +good at real games.” +</p> + +<p> +The statement was too true, but not the preference. +</p> + +<p> +“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was +the doctor’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—the dry and the demure—to all he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. +Baumgartner when he got a chance. +</p> + +<p> +“But it wasn’t their fault that I——” +</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> +“I suppose there are a number of young men at +your—establishment?” said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss +Platts. +</p> + +<p> +“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little +puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“And how many keepers do they require?” +</p> + +<p> +A grin apologised for the word. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if +you like!” said Pocket, not without contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously. +</p> + +<p> +“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those +cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should +prescribe for such an emergency.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that +chair; nobody will come in.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the +door. That will give you a good two hours.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first +bottle under the bush. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be in again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it is a promise?” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket would have liked it in black and white. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?” +</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’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’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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question +by taking out his watch. +</p> + +<p> +“A quarter to twelve, you mean!” +</p> + +<p> +“No—six.” +</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> +“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. +“You’ve broken your word, sir!” +</p> + +<p> +“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied +Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, +looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“What about?” +</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> +“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in +town about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do tell me what, sir!” +</p> + +<p> +“Can you face things, my young fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at +her funeral in a flash. +</p> + +<p> +“No—yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I can!” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor overcame his final hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my +dream.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying +there in the wet grass?” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought he was drunk.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was dead!” +</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> +“What did he die of?” +</p> + +<p> +“A bullet!” +</p> + +<p> +“Suicide?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not murder?” +</p> + +<p> +“This paper says so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does it say who did it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It cannot.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it +yourself?” +</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’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. +</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, “What about that +negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it +all the worse.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean the delay?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run +away, and then think better of it?” +</p> + +<p> +Baumgartner smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +It was a terrifying one to Pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You said you saw I did!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; +“let us hope it will stop at that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Baumgartner!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, my young fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“They can’t do anything to me, can they?” +</p> + +<p> +Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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. “My mother!” he moaned. +“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my +mother too!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most +people,” remarked Baumgartner sardonically. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a +forbearing shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“But my part in it!” +</p> + +<p> +“You said it had got to come out.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean what you say?” +</p> + +<p> +Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention. +</p> + +<p> +“Every syllable!” said Pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of +now or never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it’s never!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have decided.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t do that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?” +</p> + +<p> +“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, +“so long as my people never know!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he +said; and in his exaltation he believed no less. +</p> + +<p> +“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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! +</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’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> +“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent +already; they may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my +young fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head +wreathed in cool blue clouds. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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!” +</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’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: “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. +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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’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’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. “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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what +he thought. +</p> + +<p> +“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do +what nobody else ever did.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how could Spearman give him the chance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“So I heard.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what +can it be?” +</p> + +<p> +“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his +doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.” +</p> + +<p> +“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to +school.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got +back somehow.” +</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> +“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil +couldn’t Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked +about?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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’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’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! +</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—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! +</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’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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, +with only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my +boy. What did you say the name was?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Times</i>, in which Mr. Thrush was +described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate +investigations” and “confidential negotiations.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I had no call, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So +you’d only to describe the finding of the body?” +</p> + +<p> +“That was all, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“And your description was really largely founded on fact?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs +you showed me yesterday?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly consternation. +</p> + +<p> +“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you +four minutes, if that’s any good to you.” +</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’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> +“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other +room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Upton is my name, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry +agent is all I presume to call myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you do inquire into mysteries?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve dabbled in them.” +</p> + +<p> +“As an amateur?” +</p> + +<p> +“A paid amateur, I fear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to +me!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush. +</p> + +<p> +“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?” +</p> + +<p> +“The four minutes must be more than up.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor +accident. One moment!” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my +head.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you think you can do anything?” +</p> + +<p> +The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing better, do you say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a +man’s asthma than to hide the man himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never thought of that.” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.” +</p> + +<p> +“I certainly never thought of his heart!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It owes him something!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know what he does for it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean tobacco?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—some stuff for asthma.” +</p> + +<p> +“In cigarettes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know the name?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have it here.” +</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> +“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their +glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“I confess I don’t see why.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!” +</p> + +<p> +“Some French rubbish.” +</p> + +<p> +“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?” +</p> + +<p> +“It looks like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?” +</p> + +<p> +“So he has the impudence to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the +possibility than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning. +</p> + +<p> +“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Who on earth is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.” +</p> + +<p> +“A. V. M.?” +</p> + +<p> +“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, +“though there seems some method in the madness.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the +ironmaster. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out +of pure politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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> +“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. +Thrush!” +</p> + +<p> +“When was the first?” +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me! +Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not seriously.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles +twinkling to colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you +ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>may</i> have been other cases.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very time +at which something terrible has happened to that child?” +</p> + +<p> +“Any amount of those.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton +hoarsely. +</p> + +<p> +“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. +“That would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!” +</p> + +<p> +“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much +agitated; for he could be as emotional as most irascible men. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t +tell her he had disappeared.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? What was the dream?” +</p> + +<p> +“That she saw him—and heard a shot.” +</p> + +<p> +“A shot!” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had time to +think. +</p> + +<p> +“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she +wasn’t dreaming at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“But when was this?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally +fanciful, I’m afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon +as ever he dared. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face still more +strikingly illuminated. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne +Cigarettes!” +</p> + +<p> +“So I perceive.” +</p> + +<p> +“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t smoke it, sir!” +</p> + +<p> +“Who did?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Near the actual place?” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the strongest of +the electric lamps. +</p> + +<p> +“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!” +</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’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. +</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> +“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. +</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’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’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. +</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’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, “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. +</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> +“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just +came in to say goodbye.” +</p> + +<p> +And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see. +</p> + +<p> +“To say goodbye!” she gasped. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s +out?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I can’t.” +</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> +“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and +with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, +“if he finds you gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. +Do you mind giving him one other message?” +</p> + +<p> +“As many as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all?” +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +She looked mystified at first, and then astounded. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you get out?” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard anything!” +</p> + +<p> +“I took care you shouldn’t.” +</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> +“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t let me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.” +</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—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him, +because he felt she knew it. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t +let me out that way, I’ll go this!” +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out +bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind what I take you for!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re treating me as though I were one!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in +tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br /> +ON PAROLE</h2> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>Seringapatam!</i> I should have been at sea by this time, and out of +harm’s way for the next three months.” +</p> + +<p> +“The <i>Seringapatam?</i>” repeated the doctor. “I never +heard of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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> +“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!” +</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’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’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> +“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about +yourself the better.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what can she think?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a +wistful heaviness. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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’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> +“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run +the risk of trusting your discretion.” +</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’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’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. +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these +remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic +smile; “but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it +matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I +did!” +</p> + +<p> +The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled. +</p> + +<p> +“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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?” +</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—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’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’s mother’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> +“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland +Walk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t agree.” +</p> + +<p> +“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, +sententiously. +</p> + +<p> +Thrush looked at him for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied +Mullins, with some warmth. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as +neat. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?” +</p> + +<p> +“A matter of life or death.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in +New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.” +</p> + +<p> +“Much demand in any of those quarters?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly +every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you worm that out, Mullins?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only +consumer?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on +Thursday to a doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you get the name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t inquire.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Who’s +Who</i>, and read out what they say.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. +“But what about his address?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, +demoralised and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <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’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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a +curiously gentle voice. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Had he brought it from school?” 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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal +one!” +</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’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. +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, +“the very moment that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.” +</p> + +<p> +“Meaning they’re the same person?” +</p> + +<p> +“To be sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles. +</p> + +<p> +“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in +deferential derision. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope +to get arrested within another hour!” +</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> +“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am—with your permission, Mullins.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!” +</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’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. +</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’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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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> +“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began +it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Began what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Our row yesterday.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t +hurt you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you didn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you must have thought me mad!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a slight but most significant pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I never shall again.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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! +</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, “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. +</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’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly seated +when the doctor entered—without any paper at all. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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> +“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil +were you two talking about while my back was turned?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his +heart beat fast. +</p> + +<p> +“What about yesterday?” +</p> + +<p> +“Our scuffle in the other room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did you find out?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“You said she would think I was a patient.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly! A mental case.” +</p> + +<p> +“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with +dogged valour. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again +put gently but clearly in the wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her +to think she’s associating with a lunatic?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve +arrested somebody!” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?” +</p> + +<p> +But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort +was a precocious inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise +pauses, “and what if it was?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.” +</p> + +<p> +“He won’t lie long.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other +room till you know your own mind again.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through +his teeth, although they chattered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “occult” in their last bookseller’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’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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. +“Who can it be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hasn’t he any friends?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at +table.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating +now. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t understand the question.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that true?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket looked up at last. +</p> + +<p> +“I know the truth.” +</p> + +<p> +“About the arrest?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d +gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not before?” +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, +looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought. +</p> + +<p> +“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, +and his head lower. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean——” +</p> + +<p> +She stopped aghast. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’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’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’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’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’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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly +wishing he would go that afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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’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—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. +</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—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’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> +“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired +Baumgartner, solicitously. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping +his forehead and then his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there +first!” +</p> + +<p> +But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +</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’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> +“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I +want to see him about something.” +</p> + +<p> +Lettice flushed and shrank. +</p> + +<p> +“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you leave the motor behind?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried +Mr. Upton. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!” +</p> + +<p> +“Alive?” +</p> + +<p> +“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.” +</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> +“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys. +</p> + +<p> +“What kind of interest?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.” +</p> + +<p> +“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.” +</p> + +<p> +Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied. +</p> + +<p> +“Did he recommend any particular vessel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, a sailing ship—the <i>Seringapatam</i>— an old East +Indiaman they’ve turned into a kind of floating hospital. I +wouldn’t hear of the beastly tub.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know when she was to sail?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and +where exactly did he see him?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face. +</p> + +<p> +“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!’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.”’” +</p> + +<p> +“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father. +</p> + +<p> +“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. +“That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss +Upton?” +</p> + +<p> +“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.” +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?” +</p> + +<p> +“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!” +</p> + +<p> +“He might feel he had?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of +you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal +Lettice. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner +thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone +of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that +he had been keeping something all this time. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>Seringapatam</i>, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get +aboard himself that night!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe it, Thrush.” +</p> + +<p> +“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it +isn’t yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think +of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!” +</p> + +<p> +But Lettice shook hers quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet +conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and +Melbourne?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +“And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught before +replying. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my +job is to prove things one way or the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the +train showed signs of life at last. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush +said, after a contemplative pause. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll take my chance of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And losing the train?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take +him with me, as well as you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d +rather you didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not count on you”? +</p> + +<p> +“One of us will be quite enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried +the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, +gently. +</p> + +<p> +“Want him yourself do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. +Upton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? Where is he.” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus. +</p> + +<p> +“In prison.” +</p> + +<p> +“In prison! Your man Mullins?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion +of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!” +</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> +“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see +you yourself again by supper-time.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t +force me, please” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness. +</p> + +<p> +And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing to eat.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there any book?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. +“There’s the book I was reading yesterday.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than +revolted. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it is over,” murmured the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d +got to say about somnambulism.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad you find it funny!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’s final +visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost +to the socket. +</p> + +<p> +“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a +bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly +midnight?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. +“I told you I wasn’t well.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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’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> +“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what +he had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the beautiful town we live in, +before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out +with you, when you see I can’t eat a bite?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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’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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</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’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! +</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’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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his +mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was +thieves?” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window +visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch. +</p> + +<p> +“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. +Take it if you will!” +</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> +“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with +considerable severity. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’s eyes flashing hers. +</p> + +<p> +“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the +act of what he said you were, if anything could be.” +</p> + +<p> +“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!” +</p> + +<p> +“He may have been justified.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with +his great grief and grievance. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?” +</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> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on +your account, if not on his!” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at +last. +</p> + +<p> +“But I want you to,” 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’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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.” +</p> + +<p> +“You never know!” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited +for his leave before printing his negative.” +</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> +“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland +Walk, in Kensington.” +</p> + +<p> +He turned to her quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?” +</p> + +<p> +“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening +print. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he take the photograph then?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +The girl took a long look nearer the window. +</p> + +<p> +“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it +were falling off! He might be dying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate +was exposed!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and +strained with formless terrors. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“He must have been there if he took the photograph.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +But there they were agreed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“But you must have known whether you fired or not?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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. “Then my uncle might have +put in a fresh one while you were asleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should he?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the +more reason you should go this minute, and catch the very first train +home.” +</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> +“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it +from her side at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave +you with a man like that!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I +don’t believe a word you say against my uncle behind his back?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for +waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know he took the negative?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t, but——” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</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’s answer was to go +close up to her instead. “Will you come with me?” 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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +She smiled very faintly at that. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He would be as he’s always been to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you won’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’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’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’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> +“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note. +</p> + +<p> +“I do now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you hear what it is?” +</p> + +<p> +Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss. +</p> + +<p> +“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly. +</p> + +<p> +“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you +hear? ‘Another awful murder!’ Now they’re saying something +else.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea. +</p> + +<p> +“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I +can’t hear what!” +</p> + +<p> +“No more can I.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll open the door.” +</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> +“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known +man!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously. +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he was the well-known man!” +</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> +“Did the doctor know him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and +gold-mines, and some financial paper. I never understood.” +</p> + +<p> +“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?” +</p> + +<p> +The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out his. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is!” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall know it sooner or later.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what +you like, and still be wrong!” +</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 “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. +</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’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. +</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’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. +</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’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> +“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his +set teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. +“Here he comes!” +</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’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> +“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!” +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he know I’m here?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Again the break in her voice, and again the boyish sympathy in his. “I +wonder if something would be any comfort to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so. What is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas while +you were upstairs.” +</p> + +<p> +Phillida turned it out again without comment. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in +these—mysteries?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant +is in prison.” +</p> + +<p> +“He isn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“You said he was?” +</p> + +<p> +“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read +it for yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</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—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. +</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’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> +“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?” +</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> +“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.” +</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’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. +</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’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’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’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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and +did not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms. +</p> + +<p> +“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, +still patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog. +</p> + +<p> +“Only last night when I wired.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.” +</p> + +<p> +The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, I never saw you before this minute!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or +two.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there, +my dear boy?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hiding, Tony?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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> +“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. +</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’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> + +<p> +“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. +</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> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. +“Sooicide in the usual stite o’ mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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> +“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do +it himself?” +</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> +“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.” +</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> +“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and +fell again. “Oh! what must you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“None anywhere that I know much about.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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. +</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’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> +“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered, +impressed by her strange stare. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen +him look for years. There are worse things than death!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—<i>he</i> +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!” +</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’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> +“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two +were closeted. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you ever read your paper?” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> did, Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was +up.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism. +</p> + +<p> +“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You say you provided him?” +</p> + +<p> +“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with +his own consent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up +with it now.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same +thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not you, Thrush?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped +to it from scratch!” +</p> + +<p> +“He connected Tony with the Park murder?” +</p> + +<p> +“From the word ‘go.’ ” +</p> + +<p> +“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s +dream?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s flippancy. He looked at +Thrush with a shining face. +</p> + +<p> +“And you never told me what was in your minds!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Thrush emptied his glass at once. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of +their own.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” +said Mr. Upton, sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do <i>so</i>, God bless her!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his +breath. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with +characteristic absence of finesse. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It +didn’t come off, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“But whatever could the object have been?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tony?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You puzzle me more and more.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his +whole flushed face. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he +took a last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s an idea.” +</p> + +<p> +“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it +still, and you could develop it!” +</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> +“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything +to develop; the slide’s been open all this time, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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> +“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her +excitement. She had dropped the document at once. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up. +</p> + +<p> +“It must be what he was writing all last night!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him +closely as he read to himself:— +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“<i>June</i> 20, 190—.” +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“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 ‘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——”. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, +and he was breathing hard. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she +found a crumb of comfort in the thought. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not so sure about that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</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:—. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“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 <i>Light Human Nature</i>, <i>The Occult Review</i> and other +periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight of the +Soul,’ 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’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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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"> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“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.” +</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’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:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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’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> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a +word. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“The police! I never thought of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the +girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term. +</p> + +<p> +“What do <i>you</i> mean to do with—the writing?” demanded +Pocket in his turn. +</p> + +<p> +“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away +meanwhile.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do +what you like with as well.” +</p> + +<p> +“They wouldn’t think so!” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll never know.” +</p> + +<p> +Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t +keep it to yourself,” she said. “You would <i>have</i> to +tell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, +if you like!” he added, valiantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a +man’s secrets dying with him?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes had filled. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve +ever sworn anything in my life so far.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s +worth, after this terrible week?” +</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> +“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he +vowed, “except yourself.” +</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> +“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster +Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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:— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +CHELSEA INQUEST<br /> +CAMERA CLUE! +</p> + +<p> +Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’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 & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + + |