The Disappearing Eye E-Book

Fergus Hume

• Herausgeber: Blackmore Dennett
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Motoring about the countryside in search of inspiration, melodramatist Cyrus Vance runs out of gas at the door of a remote shop. Having filled his tank, he searches for the proprietor, only to discover her dead, himself locked in, and someone driving away with his car. Once he has convinced the excited townsfolk who release him of his innocence, Vance is inclined to pursue the mystery, if only because he has become enraptured by the photo of a young woman in the murdered woman's rooms and vows to meet and woo her.

Leseprobe

THE DISAPPEARING EYE

by Fergus Hume

Published 2018 by Blackmore Dennett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A WEIRD DISCOVERY

THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY

AFTER EVENTS

FACTS

AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

MY RIVAL

A FRIEND IN NEED

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD

GERTRUDE'S FATHER

A SURPRISE

MISS DESTINY SPEAKS

GERTRUDE'S DEFENCE

LOVE

THE UNFORESEEN HAPPENS

AN EXPLANATION

STRIVER'S THREAT

LADY MABEL'S VISIT

AN ALARMING MESSAGE

A DANGEROUS POSITION

THE CIPHER

THE AIRSHIP

THE WHOLE TRUTH

A WEIRD DISCOVERY

"Adventures are to the adventurous," said Cannington, with the air of a man who believes that he is saying something undeniably smart.

"Good Lord!" I retorted, twisting the motor car round a corner. "Since when has the British subaltern given up his leisure to reading Beaconsfield's novels?"

Cannington serenely puffed his cigarette into a brighter glow. "I don't know what you're talking about, old chap," said he indifferently.

"I talk of 'Ixion in Heaven,' or--if you prefer it--of 'Coningsby.' Beaconsfield was so enamoured of his apothegm that he inserted it in both tales."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Cannington again, and his puzzled look proved that he spoke the truth. "A chap called Marr wrote that in my sister's album, and told her it was his own."

"I daresay; more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs, according to Balzac. And, after all, Beaconsfield may have cribbed the saying."

"Oh! I see what you are driving at: Marr copied it out of a book."

"Undoubtedly, unless he lived before 'Coningsby' and 'Ixion' were written--somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century."

"Oh! Marr isn't so old as that," protested the boy, chuckling; "although he isn't a spring chicken, by any means. What Mabel sees in him, I can't for the life of me imagine."

"Humph! You were never renowned for imagination, Cannington," I said kindly, "and in your particular case it doesn't much matter. You're the man behind the gun, and all you have to do is to fire against the seen enemy."

"Huh! Why, half the firing is against the unseen enemy. If I haven't got your rotten imagination, Vance, I've got common-sense, and that's what you jolly well need."

"Rash youth, to speak thus to the man at the wheel. Don't you know that, with a little dexterity, I could shoot you into yonder ditch?"

"You'd travel with me," he sniggered.

"Why not? It would be an excellent advertisement for a popular playwright."

"Playwright be hanged! You only write beastly melodramas."

"Precisely; that is why I am popular. And if I'm not a playwright, what am I?"

"A carpenter. You collar other people's ideas----"

"Like your friend Marr," I interpolated.

"And knock them into weird shapes for second-rate theatres."

"Not at all," I rejoined tartly, for the criticism piqued me. "I scour the country in search of flesh and blood tragedies, and improve them into moral lessons for the British Public. But you're talking all round the shop, my lad. Who is this Marr, of whom your sister approves, and why does he write down other people's ideas in her album?"

"Wentworth Marr." Cannington lighted another cigarette, and explained: "He's a well-preserved old buck of--I should say--fifty, and looks forty. Unmarried, with heaps of tin and no family. Mabel likes him."

"And he likes Lady Mabel, or loves her. Which is it?"

"Well"--Cannington drawled this out reluctantly--"he's in love with her, sure enough. And, of course, Mabel is as poor as I am, and Marr having no end of shekels, you see----"

"What about Dick Weston?" I broke in abruptly.

"Oh, he's too much taken up with his inventions to bother about love. Poor Mab feels it," sighed Cannington, "so she flirts with Marr."

"To keep her hand in, I suppose. She'll burn her fingers. Tell me all about it, boy, if it will relieve your mind."

"I have told you all. Mabel wants to marry Dick Weston, and I think he wants to marry her, only he's too much taken up with his airship to trouble about proposing. Wentworth Marr is wealthy and a gentleman and all that, and wants to make Mabel his wife. She likes him, but she doesn't love him. Still there's the money, you see, Vance."

"Weston is also rich," I suggested.

"Well, I know that," snapped Cannington testily, "but he's an absent-minded beggar, who lives in the clouds along with his bally airship, and won't come up to the scratch. I say," he broke off, "don't secure a paragraph for your confounded transpontine plays by running over that child."

"Little beast!" The child in question was playing "Who's across first," and I had considerable difficulty in dodging him. However, I just managed to avoid a Coroner's Inquest and swung the machine along the straight Roman road, while the escaped infant shouted insultingly behind.

Cannington giggled, but I was too much taken up with steering the Rippler through a somewhat crowded village street to tell him that he was several kinds of ass. I had known the boy since he was a forward brat at Eton, and we were intimate friends, as can be judged from the way in which he confided in me. At the present moment I was conveying him from Gattlingsands to Murchester, as he had been stopping at the former place for some days and now sought his own Mess. Previously I had motored from London to remain the night at Tarhaven, which is four miles from Gattlingsands, and thus was enabled to save Cannington a train fare. Considering that he and Lady Mabel Watton had about sixpence between them, he was duly grateful, although pointedly saucy. I was always sorry for Cannington's poverty, as he was a thoroughly healthy-minded sporting boy, who keenly enjoyed such good things of this life as he could lay hands on. A pauper commoner is an object to be met with everywhere; but a pauper lord is a more unusual spectacle. Certainly the boy was not yet knocking at the workhouse door, but, for his position, he was assuredly desperately hard-up. And thinking of these things, I made a remark when clear of the village.

"You must marry a dollar heiress, Cannington."

"O Lord! what rot. Who'd marry a pauper with a tumbledown family mansion, next to nothing a year, and several hundred waste acres?"

"You have forgotten one asset," I said dryly; "your title."

"Huh! Who cares for that in these democratic days?"

"Heaps of rich spinsters, American, Colonial, and otherwise. Besides, you're not altogether as ugly as sin, though you might be better-looking."

"Thanks, awfully. But would you mind being less personal?"

I kicked his ankles. "If I am to advise you I must quote your looks, your title, your qualities, and all the rest of it. You've got precious little money, and as a gunner subaltern it will be ages before you get promotion. Why not use what advantages you have and exchange them for an income? A rich wife--"

"Not much," interrupted the boy, with a flush. "I fancy I see myself living on a woman. Besides, I'm having a jolly time now, and see no reason to tie myself up. When I do, it will be a girl I can love, no end."

"Didn't know you had got that far."

"Well, I haven't. But one never knows."

"I agree. At four and twenty one never knows."

"Oh, stop your rotting, Vance," said he crossly. "I haven't been through the Shop and out in the cold world for nothing. One would think I was an idiot, which I certainly am not. Don't you bother your silly head about me. It's Mab I'm thinking about. She wants money, as I do; but I should hate to see her marry a fellow old enough to be her grandfather, just because he's rich. I wish you'd see her and drop a hint," he ended hesitatingly.

"My dear Cannington, I know you better than I do your sister. She might resent my hints. If you really don't want her to marry this man Marr--I never heard of him, for my part--shake Dick Weston into a proposal and he can take his wife in his new airship for the honeymoon."

"It would end in a funeral," grinned Cannington cheerfully. "Dicky's always having smashes. I don't want him to experiment with Mabel, you know, old chap. Hi! Here's Murchester, and yonder's a policeman. Slow down, Vance, you can't romp up the High Street at thirty miles an hour."

"I don't see why not," I retorted, obeying orders, for the policeman really looked a suspicious character. "There! We're crawling along like a condemned snail, if that's what you want."

"I want my tea," said Cannington irrelevantly, "don't you?"

"No! I'll drop you at the Barracks and travel on to Clankton. There I put up for the night, and go up Norfolk way to-morrow."

"What's your objective?"

"I haven't got one. That is, I am simply looking round to see if I can poach on real life for a melodramatic plot. 'Adventures to the adventurous.'"

Cannington nodded. "I thought old Marr wasn't clever enough to have made that up out of his own blessed head. But, I say, how do you expect to find your plot in a motor car?"

"The latter-day vehicle of romance, my boy. Formerly your knight rode a horse, and went into the Unknown in search of the unexpected. Now he--that's me, you know--takes out his machine and looks for the expected in the Known. You understand?"

"No, confound you. What do you hope to run across?"

"An adventure."

"What sort of one?"

"How the Charles Dickens can I tell?"

"Yet you said that the Known--"

"Cannington, you wish me to spoil my epigrams by explanation. I decline to satisfy your morbid curiosity. All I know is, that the fountains of my imagination are dried up, and that I can't write a play which ought to be written if I am to earn enough to keep this car in petrol. I am, therefore--like Balzac--chasing my genius, and who knows upon what glorious adventure I may stumble."

Cannington laughed scornfully. "All the adventure you'll drop across will be in running over some old woman, or in exceeding the speed-limit."

"I care not," was my reckless reply. "I am prepared for anything."

"Don't be an ass," urged the boy politely, as we spun through the Barrack gates. "Stop here for the night, and I'll put you up. Then we can go to London to-morrow and have a ripping time. . . . What?"

"It's good of you, Cannington, and if I hadn't an income to earn I should accept with pleasure. As things are"--I stopped the car before the Mess door--"you can get down and send out a man to carry in your portmanteau."

"Have a cup of tea, anyhow," said Cannington, slipping to the ground.

I looked at my watch. "No, thanks. It's nearing six, and I have some distance to go. Don't delay me, boy."

"Oh, very well, confound you. Wait till I get my baggage and then you can buzz off. When am I to see you again?"

"The Fates will arrange that. I'll turn up sooner or later."

"If you aren't smashed up, or locked up, meanwhile," said the boy, swinging his portmanteau off the back of the car. "I'll keep an eye on the police news for the next few days. I daresay I'll have to bail you out. Well," he gave my hand a grip, "thanks awfully, old son, for bringing me over."

"Only too pleased," I muttered, beginning to move away. "Good-bye."

I had been to Murchester before, and knew the locality moderately well. Therefore, after leaving Cannington I spun through the Barrack grounds and emerged on to a somewhat suburban road, which led towards the outskirts of the town. A dampish August twilight filled the air with rapidly darkening shadows, and a marked chill in the warmth hinted at the coming night. The sun had already withdrawn behind a bank of western clouds, before vanishing over the verge of the world. I drove the machine at half speed, as there were many country carts about, and ran down a lengthy sloping hill towards a distant glimpse of green. Clankton, which is a fishing village rapidly rising into notoriety as a seaside resort, was over thirty miles away, so if I wished to be seated at my dinner by seven o'clock, it behooved me to use all the power of which the Rippler was capable. Hunger forced me to increase the pace.

Motoring was the one form of amusement which I truly enjoyed, and which a somewhat limited income earned by hard brain-work enabled me to indulge in. But the indulgence precluded my partaking in many other pleasures of this luxurious age, for the Rippler had cost much to buy and cost a considerable sum monthly to keep going. But motoring is less expensive than horse-racing and doctors' bills; and the fresh air, after enforced sedentary deskwork, swept away possible illness. As a moderately popular playwright I made a tolerably good income, although less than I was credited with earning. Still by devoting myself to two machines, a motor and a type-writer, one for play and the other for work, I managed to keep out of debt and keep my Rippler at the same time. But because the machine was a smart one, and because I was constantly on the move between whiles of manufacturing melodramas, people declared that I was a literary millionaire. As though any writer ever became a Crœsus.

I must say that I had greater ambitions than to write cheap sensational plays, and that I did write them at all was due--as it would seem--to mere chance. After I left Oxford my parents died, and--owing to their extravagances--everything was sold. I came to London with an income of fifty pounds a year. I could not exactly starve on one pound a week, but I had a sufficiently bad time, and tried to supplement my income by writing for the papers. An old actor, boarding at a house wherein I had taken up my abode, suggested that I should attempt a melodrama. I did so with his assistance, and between us we managed to get it staged at a small theatre in the East End. To my surprise, the play was a great success, being sufficiently lurid to capture the tastes of the somewhat rough audience. Since that time I had been committed to this particular form of entertainment, and try as I might I could not escape from the memory of my first hit.

But I did not surrender my earlier ambitions, as I have before stated. I worked hard at the cheap sensational plays, which were produced at second-class theatres, and saved all the money I could, in the hope of gathering together sufficient principal to give me an assured income of five hundred a year. When independent, I determined to devote myself to writing really good plays--high-class comedies and poetic dramas for choice--but meanwhile served my apprenticeship to the writing craft under the eye of the public. On the whole, I had very little to complain about, and my portion of the viands at Life's Banquet was moderately tempting, if not superlatively delicate.

I do not think there is anything more to explain about myself, save that I was not handsome, that I had never been in love, and that I occupied a tiny flat in West Kensington, where the rents are moderate. As a rule I wrote furiously every day until a play was completed, then attended to the rehearsing and saw the production. Afterwards I took to my motor, and scoured the country, partly to get fresh air, and partly because I had a chance of stumbling across incidents in real life which afforded me material for plots, situations, scenes, and characters.

At the present moment I was in search of the new and the real, intending to weave actual facts into the sort of melodrama for which Cyrus Vance was famous, or shall we say notorious, as the penny-dreadful success I had won could scarcely be dignified by an adjective applicable only to the career of Napoleon or Cæsar. But I little thought when leaving Murchester, that I was also leaving the long lane of petty success down which I had plodded so soberly, and that the new road opening out before me was one which led to--but I really cannot say just now what it led to. And in this last sentence you will see the cunning of the story-teller, who desires to keep the solution of his mystery until the last chapter. But I am a playwright and not a novelist--two very different beings. Destiny is writing this tale, and I am simply the amanuensis. Therefore you will see how infinitely more ingenious is the goddess than the mere mortal, in constructing an intricate scheme of life and in dealing with the puppets entangled therein.

So in this life-story, which starts in the middle, as it were, and travels both ways to beginning and end, blame Destiny for whatever does not please. I merely recount what happened--simply describe the various scenic backgrounds and rough out the characters. But Destiny weaves the happenings, brings about the unexpected, and solves the mystery, which is of her ingenious contrivance. And throughout I am only the clay which she, the potter, moulds at her will.

In a motor car it is much easier to go wrong on the outskirts of a town than amidst any other surroundings that I know of. When in the open, one can rise in the car and see one's way; but bewildered by streets and houses and traffic and wary policemen, and misled by those who do not know their own locality over-well, one finds a town somewhat perplexing. Making for the west, you get twisted round and emerge into open country towards the east. A single wrong road in the suburbs will lead the complete motorist astray, and will introduce him to a new country of whose geography he is entirely ignorant. Therefore some miles beyond perplexing Murchester I became aware, by questioning an intelligent rustic, that I was going away from Clankton. After some swearing and a close examination of the map, I lighted the lamps and turned on my tracks. Having gone so far out of my way, I had unnecessarily used up a lot of power, and then the inevitable happened--I discovered, to my dismay, that I was short of petrol in the tank. I had no further supply, worse luck! and unless I could obtain some, I began to see that I should have to camp in the fields, or at all events in the nearest village. But, thanks to motoring, petrol is fairly plentiful in unexpected places. If I could discover some village, I made sure of chancing upon a shop wherein to purchase petrol, and therefore was hopeful.

But as I drove the machine slowly on--for the motive power was dwindling rapidly--I found that the necessary village was conspicuous by its absence. I crawled up narrow lanes, the twists and turns of which necessitated careful steering; I dropped down the inclines of wide roads; I skirted stagnant ponds, weedy under dank boughs; and worked my slow way past mouldering brick walls, which shut in lordly parks. It grew darker every minute and was long after six o'clock, so I soon became unpleasantly aware that I needed food as much as the Rippler needed petrol. I seemed to be in for some kind of adventure, and as I had come out to look for one in the interests of the British Public, I had no reason to be dissatisfied. But I sincerely trusted that it would be a romantic one, out of which I could weave a sufficiently good plot to recompense me for the damnable circumstances in which I found myself.

The Rippler feeling hungry, as I did, groaned complainingly up a gentle ascent, topped the rise, and stopped dead after proceeding a few yards. And now mark the cunning of Destiny. If she had not brought me to my goal, she had at least led me to a place where I could obtain motive power, for in front of me I beheld a tiny old-fashioned house of weather-board walls shaded by a mellow red-tiled roof. It stood directly on the road, and was backed by a circle of high trees--elms, I fancy they were; a quaint, odd, dreary-looking cottage, which had been awkwardly converted into a shop. Taking one of the lamps I flashed the light on to a narrow door, which stood open, on to a small window to the left of the door, and on to a right-handed wider one, behind the glass of which were displayed the various goods which one usually finds in these village stores. But the sight amazed me, especially when I saw the name of Anne Caldershaw inscribed on a broad board over the window, for I could espy no village. Why did Anne Caldershaw set up her stall here, where there was no one to buy; and why was her shop not lighted up, seeing that the door was open for any chance customer? I could not answer these questions, and became aware that here was the start of a promising adventure. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, for such a shop in such a lonely woody locality was just such a thing as Alice would have chanced upon.

However I had no time to bother over the romance of things, for I wanted petrol, and luckily saw a red board on which it was announced in black lettering that petrol was for sale. Stepping into the dark shop with my brilliant lamp, I rapped on the mean little counter. No one came. Although I called out as loudly as I could, there was still an eerie silence, so I walked towards a small door set in the inside wall and knocked. As there was still no answer I tried to open the door, and found that it was locked. A flight of steps, narrow and rude, ran up the side of the wall to some upstairs rooms, and I sang up the stairs. As this final shout produced no better result than the others, I made up my mind to waste no further time, but to fill my tank with petrol and leave the money on the counter. But even as I searched for the liquid, I kept marvelling at the strange silence of Anne Caldershaw's shop. There was not only no one to buy, but there was not even anyone to sell. The circumstances were odd in the extreme, and I scented the unexpected in the damp air.

My part of the adventure--as it seemed--was to fill my tank and get the Rippler ready to start. Whether Destiny, who was arranging details, would permit her to get under way, or me to reach Clankton in time for dinner, was quite another matter. However I was actor and not author, so I fulfilled my part--my appointed part, I presumed--by searching for the petrol. I soon discovered the orthodox red case, and having unscrewed it with some difficulty, I walked back to the car, which stood, some little distance away, directly in front of Anne Caldershaw's shop. It took me some minutes to fill up, but during that time I did not hear a single sound. And yet, as I conjectured, while replacing the cap of the tank, there must be some house or houses about, since the shop argued customers. Perhaps when I turned the corner--for the shop stood just on the angle of the road--I would find a collection of cottages, not likely to be so deserted as Anne Caldershaw's emporium.

Shortly the tank was filled, and after seeing that all was ready to start, I took the empty can back to the dark house and placed the necessary money on the counter. I would have shouted again, but that it seemed useless, as apparently no one was about, for my former cries would have awakened the dead. For one or two minutes I stood in the darkness listening for some sound in the house, and stared through the open door at the streams of light from the acetylene lamps of the Rippler. There was something very weird about the situation.

Suddenly I heard a soft faint moan, which seemed to come from behind the locked door at the back of the shop. On the impulse of the moment and with rather a grue--as the Scotch call it, for the sound was sinister and unexpected--I sprang forward and gripped the handle of the door. To my surprise, the moment I twisted it the door opened at once, and yet I swear that it was locked when I had last tried it. I looked into a dark room, and could see faintly to the right a barred window, which showed against the fast darkening evening sky. No further moan could I hear, although I listened with all my ears. Wondering if I had been mistaken, and yet uneasy about the now unlocked door, I stepped into the back room, holding on to the inside handle. As it afterwards turned out the floor of the room was lower than that of the shop, and reached by three shallow steps. I therefore stumbled, and pulling the door after me with some violence, so that it clicked to, I fell sprawling, and bruised my elbow somewhat painfully.

Still I heard no sound, but seated on the floor to collect my senses--somewhat dazed by the unexpected fall--I put out my hand to explore the darkness. It fell on soft flesh, warm to the touch, and on rough tangled hair. Thoroughly startled, and with every excuse, I withdrew my hand, and fumbled in my pockets for a match, regretting that I had not brought one of the lamps. I had half a mind to go out and fetch it, but my curiosity was so great and--to be plain--my nerves were so unstrung, that I struck the lucifer, anxious to know the best or the worst at once.

As the pale tiny light grew stronger, I beheld the form of a woman lying on the stone floor, face uppermost. And that face--I shuddered as I looked, for it was distorted into an expression of pain, with a twisted mouth and glassy, expressionless eyes. Framed in loose masses of iron-grey hair, it glimmered milky white, and bore the stamp of death on every feature. The woman was dead, and judging from the moan I had heard and the still warm flesh, she had just died. While I stared the match-light went out, and I fancied that I heard a faint click. I lighted another match hastily looking towards the door leading to the shop. It was still closed, and I turned again to gaze at the dead woman, who was old, ill-favoured, and eminently plebeian.

At that moment I heard the buzz of the Rippler. At once, in astonishment and alarm, I sprang towards the door. It was locked, and I was a prisoner. While I was still trying to grasp this astounding fact, the drone of my motor car died away in the distance.

THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY

Here indeed was an adventure, less romantic than tragical. I was locked up in the back room of a village shop in company with the corpse of a dead woman, and some thief had gone off with my motor car. Undoubtedly the person who had stolen the Rippler, was the one who had locked the door. Indeed it would seem that the person had laid a trap, for in the first instance the door had been locked; in the second, it had been open; and in the third, it had been locked again. But the individual who had gone off with the car--as presumably was the case--had not lured me into the trap, since the moan of the now dead woman had led me on to exploring the back premises. But the unknown might have counted upon that. If such was the case, why, then--here in the darkness fumbling for the handle of the locked door a terrible thought flashed into my mind, a vague elusive thought, which I could not put into words. With a sudden terror knocking at my heart, I shook the door and cried for help.

"Hi! what's that?" asked a rough, uncultured voice in the shop; "what's wrong wi' ye, Mrs. Caldershaw?"

"Open the door!" I shook the flimsy boards again. "Open the door!"

There was a grunt of astonishment, and I heard the key turn in the lock. A moment later and the door opened, when at once I flung out past a burly man, who was blocking the way. He gripped me before I could pass him, and I heard hard breathing in the darkness. "Not so fast," said the man harshly. "What are you doing here in Mrs. Caldershaw's shop? and----"

"Don't stop me; don't, confound you!" I interrupted, and wrenching myself away I ran to the door of the shop, crying out explanations. "Someone's gone off with my motor car. There's a dead woman in there, and----"

This time it was the man who interrupted and with something more than words. As I dashed into the deserted road, looking up and down in the darkness for my Rippler, my liberator plunged after me and gripped me again. Before I could say a word or make a movement, he had borne me to the ground by sheer strength of muscle, and holding me down hard and fast, bellowed at the pitch of his voice an ominous word. "Murder! murder! murder!" shouted the man with surprising volume of tone.

Again the fear knocked at my heart, for now the elusive thought had been put into concrete form by this yokel, as I took him to be from his roughness and accent. Anne Caldershaw--I believed the body to be hers--had been murdered by the assassin, who had escaped with my motor car. He--I naturally thought of the assassin as a "he"--had waited until I was bending over the corpse of his victim, and then locking me in, had made use of the Rippler. By this time he would be beyond any chance of recapture, and here was I placed unexpectedly in a compromising situation, with the chance--and upon very good circumstantial evidence--of being accused of the crime. And yet, as even then I thought confusedly, there was nothing to show that the woman had really been murdered, as I had seen neither wound nor blood.

"Let me up!" I gasped, striving to throw off the dead weight of the big man.

But he only continued to roar for help, gripping my arms and pressing his knee into my chest. Had not the villagers arrived, I verily believe that there would have been a second, if unconscious murder, so brutally did the fellow bear on my prone body. But I heard distant cries, and shortly there came the flash of lanterns borne by men and women running round the corner of the road. As by magic, I was surrounded by an alarmed crowd all asking questions at once and turning their many lights on to my face. My captor gave a breathless explanation.

"Murder! murder!" he shouted, still dwelling on a top note. "I found the devil locked in the back room without a light, and the shop," he pointed across the way, "is without a light also. He comes out yelling that there was a dead woman left behind. It's Mrs. Caldershaw for sure, and he's done for her. Murder! murder! Where's the police?"

Almost before he finished his explanation, which was not quite a full one, since he gave no account of my motor car being stolen, the men and women were running into the shop. My captor jerked me roughly to my feet, on which I could scarcely stand, so roughly had he handled me, and so sore were my bones. "Come along," he shouted, much excited, and dragged me across the road and into the shop. "Look on her as you've done for."

"Don't be a fool," I protested; "I'm a gentleman."

"But a murderer none the less," he retorted, and pushed me furiously down the three steps into the back room, which was now filled with men and women.

Some of the latter were on their knees examining the body, which I now saw to be that of an elderly person, plainly clothed in a maroon-coloured wincey dress, with a belt round her waist, whence dangled a bunch of keys and a cheap lace collar fastened with a gaudy cairngorm brooch. What with the disconcerting way in which my captor handled me--it seemed vain to resist--and the restless light of the lanterns, I could not see much more. One of the men looked up.

"Why did you cry out murder, Giles?" he asked the rough-looking man who held me. "There isn't a wound on her body. It's a fit, I believe."

The man Giles loosened me. "If I've been mistaken," he began, when a cry from a little woman cut his speech short.

"Her eye's out; her eye's out--the left one. Look! look!" and she seized a bystander's arm in terror.

Sure enough the left eye was missing, and I wondered why I had not noticed that such was the case when I examined the body by the light of the lucifer-match. I remembered distinctly the glassy, expressionless eyes, and yet, now there was only one, as I now saw plainly enough. Doubtless in the flickering light of the match and in my agitation, I had omitted to see that there was but one eye. Even at so critical a moment I began to wonder how I could have overlooked so obvious a fact, and then recalled the story a friend had told me of a man he had met with in the States, and to whom he spoke for five minutes, thinking there was something odd about his appearance, before he saw that both ears were missing. So easily, as I considered, even when placid can we fail to notice what is plainly apparent, much less when unnerved as I was when examining that dead face in the match-light. It was an odd thought at the time, considering that I stood in such peril. Had this cottage been in America I daresay I should have been lynched by the rough crowd of villagers around me.

"It's not murder maybe," growled Giles, seizing me again. "But this devil has torn her eye out, so----"

"There's no blood," said another man wisely. "If the eye had been torn out----"

"It was a glass eye," breathed a stout, dark woman with a heavy face. "Anne told me as much when we had tea together. She didn't like it to be known, poor soul, being proud like, and took great pains to get the best eye she could. But it's gone, sure enough." She peered into the dead face and then at me. "Perhaps this gentleman will tell us why he took it."

By this time, since apparently Anne Caldershaw had not been murdered and the eye was merely glass, the current of popular feeling was running more in my favour. I might be a thief, with the eye in my pocket, but I was not a murderer, so the villagers gave me time for explanation.

"I quite understand that things look black against me," I said hastily, "but I know nothing about the matter. I arrived in front of this shop in my motor car and stopped to get petrol. After I filled up and left the money--you will find it on the counter, if you look--I heard a moan and stepped into this room to see what was wrong. While looking at the body, after lighting a match, someone locked me in and ran off with my motor car."

The villagers looked at one another, and apparently thought that my explanation was a lame one. But Giles, who had treated me so roughly, grudgingly admitted that he had seen the motor car.

"I came round the corner to get a pound of bacon for supper," said Giles reflectively, "and I saw the engine"--so he phrased it--"before the door. A lady was stepping in----"

"A lady!" I interrupted. "Are you certain?"

"Yes--sir," he said, giving me the polite address doubtfully. "I saw her plain enough in the light of them bright lamps. She had a long white sort of gown on, and a cap with a veil flying behind on her head. I just caught a glimpse of her, when she went off as hard as she could."

"In what direction?"

"Murchester way, if you want a good big town to go by," said Giles.

"Then send for the police and tell them to telegraph to Murchester to stop the car. It's a Rippler, No. 14539 Z, and belongs to me. The woman has stolen it, I tell you. Where are the police?"

"There's no policeman until we get one from Arkleigh, and the telegraph office is there also. Now you, sir, must wait until the police come."

"Of course," I assented readily. "I quite understand that you look upon me as a doubtful character. Lock up this house until the police arrive and take me to your inn if you have one. I want something to eat and drink."

"But the eye," said the heavy dark woman; "give back the eye."

"I haven't got the eye," I snapped, for with hunger and thirst and excitement, and the unpleasantness of being unjustly suspected, I was not in the best of tempers. "You can search me if you like."

The dark woman would have done so readily, being evidently of a meddlesome nature. But Giles interposed. "Let the gentleman alone, Mrs. Faith," he said gruffly; "I caught him, and I'll keep him till Warshaw comes. I daresay it's a mistake on my part, and I'm sorry if----"

"Oh, I don't blame you, Mr. Giles," I interposed easily, and lighted a cigarette to show my nonchalance. "I should have acted in the same way myself. So come along and take me to gaol."

A relieved smile made the man's rugged face quite pleasant to look at, as my exculpation of himself, and my ready offer to be searched, evidently reassured him greatly. In his eyes, at all events, I was not the desperate criminal he had taken me to be. But his fellow-villagers still looked dubious. "Mrs. Caldershaw had heaps of money hidden away," ventured one little rat of a man with a squeaky voice.

"Search my pockets then," I said again with open impatience. "All I have told you is correct. My name is Cyrus Vance, and if you send to the Artillery Barracks at Murchester, my friend Lord Cannington will have no difficulty in identifying me."

As I thought it would, the title acted like a charm, and the tension somewhat slackened. Giles, who appeared to be the most sensible of the lot, beckoned me into the dark shop, leaving his friends to guard the house and look after the corpse of the unfortunate woman. I walked beside him round the corner, and sure enough--as I expected--came upon the twinkling lights of quite a dozen houses. The late Mrs. Caldershaw had customers after all, it would seem.

"What's the name of this place?" I asked abruptly.

"Mootley," replied Giles, now less suspicious and more human. "It ain't a very large village, but we've more cottages than these here scattered along the road up yonder," and he jerked his thumb to the left where a lane ran from the high-road towards a woodland.

"It's too dark to see anything," I said idly, "but to-morrow you can show me round. I daresay I shall have to pass the night at your house, Mr. Giles, unless you think that I may rise in the night to kill you. By the way," I added with a bantering air, "you don't hold my arm. Aren't you afraid I'll bolt?"

"No, sir," said the man, now perfectly polite. "I see that I have made a mistake. I know your name, if you're the Mr. Vance who writes plays."

"I am; but that is odd knowledge for a villager in these out-of-the-way parts to possess."

"Oh, I haven't lived at Mootley all my life, sir, although I was born here forty years ago. I went to London, and stopped in Southwark for years. I'd a greengrocer's shop there, and did fairly well. But London didn't suit my wife's health, sir, so I sold up some time back, and bought a cottage and an acre of land here with my savings. I know your name, sir, because I've seen one or two plays of yours at The Elephant and Castle Theatre. And very good plays they were, sir, too."

"Humph! It seems to me, Mr. Giles, that I am now the wrongly suspected hero of a much more mysterious and lurid melodrama than any I have written."

"It is strange," admitted Giles, with a side glance. I saw the glance by the light which gleamed from a cottage window.

"My murdering Mrs. Caldershaw?" I inquired coolly.

"We don't know yet that she has been murdered," he replied quickly.

"Then my stealing that glass eye of hers?"

"No, sir. But your being locked up in the dark with the corpse."

"She wasn't a corpse when I entered, Mr. Giles. Her moans attracted me into the room. While I was seeing by match-light what was the matter, someone locked the door, and bolted with my motor."

"The lady I saw, sir."

"No doubt, since I did not bring a lady with me."

"I wonder if she got the eye," muttered Giles half to himself.

"She must have got something that wasn't hers, else she would not have made use of my car to escape."

"Then she must have taken the eye," Giles muttered again.

"What the deuce are you talking about? Why should she steal a glass eye?"

"That's what I'd like to know, sir. It's an odd thing to steal. And I never knew that Mrs. Caldershaw's left eye was a glass one, though she told Mrs. Faith about it. Well, it's gone----"

"And the lady who stole my motor car took it. At least it seems so. But I tell you what, Mr. Giles, I'm too hungry to discuss the matter just now. The whole business is a mystery to me, and Destiny has dragged me into it in a most unpleasant way."

Giles nodded. "It's easy seen you're innocent, sir," he said with an air of relief. "You wouldn't talk so, if you weren't."

"I don't know so much about that. Guilt can wear a mask of brazen innocence if necessary. How do you know I haven't murdered Mrs. Caldershaw, and at this moment may not have the celebrated glass eye in my trouser pocket?"

"We don't know yet that she's been murdered, Mr. Vance. There was no wound----"

"Pooh! She might have been poisoned."

"Why do you think so, sir?" asked Giles quickly.

"Because I write melodramas, and always look on the most dramatic side. Oh, this is your cottage, is it? Quite a stage cottage, with plenty of greenery about the porch."

Giles did not know what to make of my chatter.

"You're a funny gent, sir."

"A hungry one, at all events, my friend. Is this your wife? How are you, Mrs. Giles? I am your husband's prisoner, and for the time being your cottage is a gaol. Mrs. Caldershaw's dead, and I've stolen her glass eye."

"Mrs. Caldershaw dead!" gasped Mrs. Giles, a rosy-faced little woman, who turned pale at the sudden announcement. "What does the gentleman mean, Sam?"

"Sit down, sir," said Giles, pushing forward a chair, then turned towards his astonished and somewhat terrified wife to explain. In a few minutes Mrs. Giles was in full possession of the facts which had led me to her abode. She listened in silence, her face now quite white and drawn. "What does it all mean, Sam?" she asked under her breath.

"That's what we've got to find out, Sarah. Warshaw has been sent for from Arkleigh, and when he comes, we'll see what is to be done."

"Warshaw and Caldershaw," I murmured; "rather similar names. I hope your policeman friend will wire to Murchester about my car."

"There's no telegraph office hereabout, sir. I expect he'll send in a messenger to Murchester for the Inspector, and for your friend, sir."

"Lord Cannington? Oh, yes. He can identify me as Cyrus Vance."

"What!" said Mrs. Giles, who was recovering her colour, "the gentleman who wrote them lovely plays?"

"The same," I assented, "and the gentleman's very hungry."

"You shall have supper in a few minutes," cried Mrs. Giles, much impressed with the angel she had hitherto entertained unawares. "Sam, did you bring back that bacon?"

"Nor I didn't, my dear, 'cos there wasn't anyone to sell the bacon, Mrs. Caldershaw being dead."

"Ugh!" shuddered the little woman. "I'll never be able to eat another thing out of that shop. A murder----"

"We don't know that it's a murder," interposed her husband hastily.

I laughed. "You shouted murder lustily enough when you had me down, Giles."

The man looked sheepish. "I made a mistake and thought you was a robber, until I saw you were a gent."

"Well a gent can be a robber, you know. Many gents are."

"They steal something more valuable than glass eyes, sir."

I rather liked Giles, who was a burly, heavy-faced animal man, with, as I said before, a most engaging smile. His jaw was of the bull-dog order, but his eyes were extremely intelligent, so I judged that his native wits had been considerably sharpened by his sojourn in the Borough of Southwark. Such a man could easily master the less travelled villagers, and I found that such was the case. Giles acted as a kind of headman of Mootley, and his opinion carried great weight in the village councils. It was just as well that I had fallen into the hands of such a man, otherwise, unable to see that I was innocent of assault and robbery, I should have been less hospitably treated. As it was, I found myself extremely comfortable.

Mrs. Giles bustled about in a cheery way, although the news of Mrs. Caldershaw's death seemed to have somewhat scared her. While getting the supper and laying the cloth and attending to the kettle she would frequently pause to consider her husband's story. "I rather think she expected it," said Mrs. Giles, putting a pot of jam on the table.

"Expected what, Sarah?" asked her husband, guessing what she alluded to.

"Death, Sam, death. She told me once that she was sure she would not die in her bed."

"Then you think that she has been murdered?" I questioned.

"Yes, I do think so, sir; else why should she speak in that way? And in church she always said that part of the Litany about being saved from battle, murder, and sudden death louder than any."

"There was no blood and no wound," muttered Giles, turning this speech over in his mind. "Frampton said he thought it was a fit. But come and draw your chair, in, sir. We're humble folk, but what we have is at your service."

"You're very kind folk," I said, obeying the invitation. "Frampton and Mrs. Faith would have tied me up and starved me."

"Ignorant people, sir, who don't know any better. Bread, sir? jam, sir? yes, sir."

He was really most polite for a greengrocer, and I grew to like him more and more, as I did his busy, bright-faced little wife. The supper was homely but very nourishing, and I drank tea and devoured bread and jam, until my hunger was quite satisfied. During the meal the husband and wife told me that Mrs. Caldershaw had kept the corner shop--so they called it--for the last five years, and had never been popular amongst her neighbours. It was believed that she had miserly tendencies and had much money tucked away in a stocking. Her age was sixty, but she was an active woman for her years and lived entirely alone. It seemed that she had been born in Mootley, but had been absent for many years out at service--so she said, although she spoke very little about her past. With her savings--again this was the story of Mrs. Caldershaw--she had returned to die in her native village and, for the sake of something to do, had opened the corner shop.

"Did she have many callers?" I asked, mentally noting details.

"She never said so," remarked Mrs. Giles, who being somewhat of a gossip took the lead in the conversation. "She was a close one, she was. And the shop being round the corner, sir, we"--I presume she meant herself and the other gossips--"could never see who came or went. She lived quite outside our lives, sir, owing to the position of the shop and her own way of keeping to herself. Once she did say she'd never die in her bed, and that's what makes me think as she may have been done away with. But I never knew, Sam, that she'd a glass eye."

"I didn't know either," said Sam, who was devouring huge slices of bread and butter. "She told Mrs. Faith, though. I've seen her heaps of times, but I never spotted that one eye was living and the other dead. And why it should have been stolen by that lady who went off with your motor, Mr. Vance, sends me fair silly."

"What was the lady like, Sam?"

"I can't exactly tell you, Sarah, as it was growing so dark. She was tall, with a long white cloak, a cap, and a veil. That's all I know. Hullo!"

He started from his seat, as the sound of excited voices was heard. A moment later and the cottage door was violently flung open to admit the stout, dark-faced woman, whom Giles had addressed as Mrs. Faith. She was half leading, half supporting another woman, small and wizen and weak-looking. Behind came a disorderly crowd of women and men. Evidently Mootley, unused to sensational happenings, was making the most of this one.

"It's a lady as come in a cart, sir," began Mrs. Faith excitedly, when Frampton, looking over her shoulder, interrupted.

"A trap, sir; a trap driven by another woman."

"O dear me," moaned the little creature, who had now been deposited in a capacious chair. "Where am I now?"

"With friends, dear, with friends," said Mrs. Giles, stroking her hands. "Sam get the whisky; it's in the cupboard near the fire. And all you people clear out. She'll never get well if you stop here upsetting her."

"I'll see to it," cried Mrs. Faith, and forthwith in a most masterful way bundled the crowd out-of-doors. They would not have gone so easily, had not the magnet of the shop containing the corpse drawn them; but go they did, and Mrs. Faith closed the door.

"Warshaw has arrived," she explained dramatically, "and is examining all the place. He'll be along here soon, sir, to take you in charge. This lady," she waved her large hands towards the little half-unconscious woman, "came along in a cart with another one driving----"

"Another lady?" I asked curiously.

"Another woman," snorted Mrs. Faith contemptuously, "and only one horse the cart had; for cart it was, though Frampton called it a trap. But she came along, sir," she continued officiously, "and said as she saw your motor engine run into a field. It smashed a gate, it did, and----"

"Stop," cried the little lady, opening her eyes and half rising. "I'll tell the gentleman all about it. Miss Destiny; sir, Miss Destiny--my name," and she curtsied.

AFTER EVENTS

Here was a freakish thing. I had talked about Destiny as a dea ex machina, and the goddess personally had come to superintend the drama in which I was supposed--as I shrewdly suspected by this time--to take a leading part. However, as open confession is good for the soul, I may as well state, and at the eleventh hour, that this story was written when the mystery was solved and justice had been done--I threw it, as it were, into a fictional form. Thus, as I knew the odd name of the little lady when writing I played upon its oddity, and saw in her the incarnation of the goddess who maps out the future. You can take this explanation with or without the proverbial grain of salt, as you choose. Meanwhile, here we are on the threshold of a mystery, and a flesh and blood creature, with the significant name of Destiny appears on the scene.