The Master Mummer E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Arnold (a writer), Allan (an artist) and Arthur (works in finance) all live together. Once their attention is caught by a middle age man and a young girl about sixteen who seems frightened. They overhear where they are eating and continue to watch the couple and Arnold even goes over to offer her assistance. Then a surprising thing happens, his acquaintance shoots the man she’s with and disappears. Amid all the confusion and hospital and police, Arnold stays with the young woman and brings her home. The three men become her guardians for the next couple of years. The mysterious man comes to see them and asks them to take care of her and not let her go to anyone. Why do so many people want her? Does Arnold get his real story?

Leseprobe

Contents

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

Sheets of virgin manuscript paper littered my desk, the smoke of much uselessly consumed tobacco hung about the room in a little cloud. Many a time I had dipped my pen in the ink, only to find myself a few minutes later scrawling ridiculous little figures upon the margin of my blotting-pad. It was not at all an auspicious start for one who sought immortality.

There came a growl presently from the other side of the room, where Mabane, attired in a disreputable smock, with a short black pipe in the corner of his mouth, was industriously defacing a small canvas. Mabane was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness which would otherwise have been its lot. He also was in search of immortality.

“Make a start for Heaven’s sake, Arnold,” he implored. “To look at you is an incitement to laziness. The world’s full of things to write about. Make a choice and have done with it. Write something, even if you have to tear it up afterwards.”

I turned round in my chair and regarded Mabane reproachfully.

“Get on with your pot-boiler, and leave me alone, Allan,” I said. “You do not understand my difficulties in the least. It is simply a matter of selection. My brain is full of ideas–brimming over. I want to be sure that I am choosing the best.”

There came to me from across the room a grunt of contempt.

“Pot-boiler indeed! What about short stories at ten guineas a time, must begin in the middle, scented and padded to order, Anthony Hopeish, with the sugar of Austin Dobson and the pepper of Kipling shaken on ad lib.? Man alive, do you know what pot-boilers are? It’s a perfect conservatory you’re living in. Got any tobacco, Arnold?”

I jerked my pouch across the room, and it was caught with a deft little backward swing of the hand. Allan Mabane was an M.C.C. man, and a favourite point with his captain.

“You’ve got me on the hip, Allan,” I answered, rising suddenly from my chair and walking restlessly up and down the large bare room. “The devil himself might have put those words into your mouth. They are pot-boilers, every one of them, and I am sick of it. I want to do something altogether different. I am sure that I can, but I have got into the way of writing those other things, and I can’t get out of it. That is why I am sitting here like an owl.”

Mabane refilled his pipe and smoked contentedly.

“I know exactly how you’re feeling, old chap,” he said sympathetically. “I get a dash of the same thing sometimes–generally in the springtime. It begins with a sort of wistfulness, a sense of expansion follows, you go about all the time with your head in the clouds. You want to collect all the beautiful things in life and express them. Oh, I know all about it. It generally means a girl. Where were you last night?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Where I shall be to-night, to-morrow night–where I was a year ago. That is the trouble of it all. One is always in the same place.”

He shook his head.

“It is a very bad attack,” he said. “Your generalities may be all right, but they are not convincing.”

“I have not spoken a word to a woman, except to Mrs. Burdett, for a week or more,” I declared.

Mabane resumed his work. Such a discussion, his gesture seemed to indicate, was not worth continuing. But I continued, following out my train of thought, though I spoke as much to myself as to my friend.

“You are right about my stories,” I admitted. “I have painted rose-coloured pictures of an imaginary life, and publishers have bought them, and the public, I suppose, have read them. I have dressed up puppets of wood and stone, and set them moving like mechanical dolls–over-gilded, artificial, vulgar. And all the time the real thing knocks at our doors.”

Mabane stepped back from his canvas to examine critically the effect of an unexpected dash of colour.

“The public, my dear Greatson,” he said abstractedly, “do not want the real thing–from you. Every man to his mêtier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for the other writers.”

I was annoyed with Mabane. There was just sufficient truth in his words to make them sound brutal. I answered him with some heat.

“Not if I starve for it, Allan? The whole cycle of life goes humming around us, hour by hour. It is here, there, everywhere. I will bring a little of it into my work, or I will write no more.”

Mabane shook his head. He was busy again upon his canvas.

“It is always the humourist,” he murmured, “who is ambitious to write a tragedy–and vice versâ. The only sane man is he who is conscious of his limitations.”

“On the contrary,” I answered quickly, “the man who admits them is a fool. I have made up my mind. I will dress no more dolls in fine clothes, and set them strutting across a rose-garlanded stage. I will create, or I will leave alone. I will write of men and women, or not at all.”

“It will affect your income,” Mabane said. “It will cost you money in postage stamps, and your manuscripts will be declined with thanks.”

His gentle cynicism left me unmoved. I had almost forgotten his presence. I was standing over by the window, looking out across a wilderness of housetops. My own thoughts for the moment were sufficient. I spoke, it is true, but I spoke to myself.

“A beginning,” I murmured. “That is all one wants. It seems so hard, and yet–it ought to be so easy. If one could but lift the roofs–could but see for a moment underneath.”

“I can save you the trouble,” Mabane remarked cheerfully, strolling over to my side. “Where are you looking? Chertsey Street, eh? Well, in all probability mamma is cooking the dinner, Mary is scrubbing the floor, Miss Flora is dusting the drawing-room, and Miss Louisa is practising her scales. You have got a maggot in your brain, Greatson. Life such as you are thinking of is the most commonplace thing in the world. The middle-classes haven’t the capacity for passion–even the tragedy of existence never troubles them. Don’t try to stir up the muddy waters, Arnold. Write a pretty story about a Princess and her lovers, and draw your cheque.”

“There are times, Allan,” I remarked thoughtfully, “when you are an intolerable nuisance.”

Mabane shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work. Apparently he had reached a point in it which required his undivided attention, for he relapsed almost at once into silence. Following his example, I too returned to my desk and took up my pen. As a rule my work came to me easily. Even now there were shadowy ideas, well within my mental grasp–ideas, however, which I was in the humour to repel rather than to invite. For I knew very well whither they would lead me–back to the creation of those lighter and more fanciful figures flitting always across the canvas of a painted world. A certain facility for this sort of thing had brought me a reputation which I was already growing to hate. More than ever I was determined not to yield. Mabane’s words had come to me with a subtle note of mockery underlying their undoubted common-sense. I thrust the memory of them on one side. Certain gifts I knew that I possessed. I had a ready pen and a facile invention. Something had stirred in me a late-awakened but irresistible desire to apply them to a different purpose than ever before. As I sat there the creations of my fancy flitted before me one by one–delicate, perhaps, and graceful, thoughtfully conceived, adequately completed. Yet I knew very well that they were like ripples upon the water, creatures without lasting forms or shape, images passing as easily as they had come into the mists of oblivion. The human touch, the transforming fire of life was wholly wanting. These April creations of my brain–carnival figures, laughing and weeping with equal facility, lacked always and altogether the blood and muscle of human creatures. The mishaps of their lives struck never a tragic note; always the thrill and stir of actual existence were wanting. I would have no more of them. I felt myself capable of other things. I would wait until other things came.

The door was pushed open, and Arthur smiled in upon us. This third member of our bachelor household was younger than either Mabane or myself–a smooth-faced, handsome boy, resplendent to-day in frock-coat and silk hat.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “Hard at work, both of you!”

Mabane laid down his brush and surveyed the newcomer critically.

“Arthur,” he declared with slow emphasis, “you do us credit–you do indeed. I hope that you will show yourself to our worthy landlady, and that you will linger upon the doorstep as long as possible. This sort of thing is good for our waning credit. I am no judge, for I never possessed such a garment, but there is something about the skirts of your frock-coat which appeals to me. There is indeed, Arthur. And then your tie–the cunning arrangement of it––”

“Oh, rats!” the boy exclaimed, laughing. “Give me a couple of cigarettes, there’s a good chap, and do we feed at home to-night?”

Mabane produced the cigarettes and turned back to his work.

“We do!” he admitted with a sigh. “Always on Tuesdays, you know. By-the-bye, are you going to the works in that costume?”

“Not likely! It’s my day at the depôt, worse luck,” Arthur answered, pausing to strike a match. “What’s up with Arnold?”

“Got the blues, because his muse won’t work,” Mabane said. “He wants to strike out in a new line–something blood-curdling, you know–Tolstoi-like, or Hall Caineish–he doesn’t care which. He wants to do what nobody else ever will–take himself seriously. I put it down in charity to dyspepsia.”

“Mabane is an ass!” I grunted. “Be off, Arthur, there’s a good chap, and don’t listen to him. He hasn’t the least idea what he is talking about.”

Arthur, however, happened to be in no hurry. He tilted his hat on the back of his head, and leaned upon the table.

“I have always noticed,” he remarked affably, “that under Allan’s most asinine speeches there usually lurks a substratum of truth. Are you really going to write a serious novel, Arnold?”

I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair resignedly. Arthur was a most impenetrable person, and if he meant to stay, I knew very well that it was hopeless to attempt to hurry him.

“I had some idea of it,” I admitted. “By-the-bye, Arthur, you are a person with a deep insight into life. Can’t you give me a few hints? I haven’t even made a start.”

Arthur considered the matter in all seriousness.

“It is a bit difficult for you, I daresay,” he remarked. “You stop indoors so much, and when you do go out you mope off into the country by yourself. You want to knock about the restaurants and places to get ideas. That’s what Gorman always does. You see you get all your characters from life in them, and they seem so much more natural.”

“And who,” I asked, “is Mr. Gorman? I do not recognize the name.”

“Pal of mine,” Arthur answered easily. “I don’t bring him here because he’s a bit loud for you chaps. Writes stories for no end of papers. Illustrated Bits and the Cigarette Journal print anything he cares to send. I thought perhaps you’d know the name.”

Mabane went off into a peal of laughter behind his canvas. The boy remained imperturbable.

“Of course, I’m not comparing his work with Arnold’s,” he declared. “Arnold’s stuff is no end better, of course. But, after all, the chap’s got common-sense. If they want me to draw a motor I go and sit down in front of it. If Arnold wants to write of real things, real men and women, you know, he ought to go out and look for them. If he sits here and just imagines them, how can he be sure that they are the real thing? See what I mean?”

There was a short silence. Arthur was swinging his long legs backwards and forwards, and whistling softly to himself. I looked at him for a moment curiously. The words of an ancient proverb flitted through my brain.

“Arthur,” I declared solemnly, laying down my pen, “you are a prophet in disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes. Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon these tragic happenings? For Heaven’s sake direct me. Where, for instance, does Mr. Gorman go?”

Arthur swung himself off, laughing.

“Gorman goes everywhere,” he answered. “If I were you I should try one of the big railway stations. So long!”

I rose to my feet, and taking down my hat commenced to brush it. Mabane looked up from his work.

“Where are you off to, Arnold?” he asked.

Some curious instinct or power of divination might indeed have given me a passing glimpse of the things which lay beyond, through the portals of that day, for I answered him seriously enough–even gravely.

“The prophet has spoken,” I said. “I must obey! I shall start with Charing Cross.”

CHAPTER II

Why the man should have spoken to me at all I could not tell. Yet it is certain that I heard his simple and courteous inquiry with a thrill of pleasure, not unmixed with excitement. From the first moment of my arrival upon the platform I had singled him out, the only interesting figure in a crowd of nonentities. Perhaps I had lingered a little too closely by his side, had manifested more curiosity in him than was altogether seemly. At any rate, he spoke to me.

“Do you know if the Continental train is punctual?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I answered. “This guard would tell us, perhaps.”

“Signalled in, sir,” the man declared. “Two minutes late only.”

My new acquaintance thanked me and lit a cigarette. He seemed in no hurry to depart, and I was equally anxious to engage him in conversation. For although he was dressed with the trim and quiet precision of the foreigner or man of affairs, there was something about his beardless face, his broadly humorous mouth, and easy, nonchalant bearing which suggested the person who juggled always with the ball of life.

“Marvellous!” he murmured, looking after the guard. “Two minutes late from Paris–and perhaps beyond. It is a wonderful service. Now, if I had come to meet any one, and had a pressing appointment immediately afterwards, this train would have been an hour late. As it is–ah, well, one is foolish to grumble,” he added, with a little shrug of the shoulders.

“You, like me, then,” I remarked, “are a loiterer.”

He flashed a keen glance upon me.

“I see that I have met,” he said slowly, “with someone of similar tastes to my own. I will confess at once that you are right. For myself I feel that there is nothing more interesting in this great city of yours than to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must needs find amusement somewhere.”

“Yet,” I objected, “for a single face or personality which is suggestive, one sees a thousand of the type which only irritates–the great rank and file of the commonplace. I wonder, after all, whether the game is worth the candle.”

“One in a thousand,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Yet think what that one may mean–a walking drama, a tragedy, a comedy, an epitome of life or death. There is more to be read in the face of that one than in the three hundred pages of the novel over which we yawn ourselves to sleep. Here is the train! Now let us watch the people together–that is, if you really mean that you have no friends to look out for.”

“I really mean it,” I assured him. “I am here out of the idlest curiosity. I am by profession a scribbler, and I am in search of an idea.”

Once more he regarded me curiously.

“Your name is Greatson, is it not–Arnold Greatson? You were pointed out to me once at the Vagabonds’ Club, and I never forget a face. Here they come! Look! Look!”

The train had come to a standstill. People were streaming out upon the platform. My companion laid his fingers upon my arm. He talked rapidly but lightly.

“You see them, my young friend,” he exclaimed. “Those are returning tourists from Switzerland; the thin, sharp-featured girl there, with a plaid skirt and a satchel, is an American. Heavens! how she talks! She has lost a trunk. The whole system will be turned upside down until she has found it or been compensated. The two young men with her are silent. They are wise. Alone she will prevail. You see the man of commerce; he is off already. He has been to France, perhaps to Belgium also, to buy silks and laces. And the stout old gentleman? See how happy he looks to be back again where English is spoken, and he can pay his way in half-crowns and shillings. You see the milliner’s head-woman, dressed with obtrusive smartness, though everything seems a little awry. She has been over to Paris for the fashions; in a few days her firm will send out a little circular, and Hampstead or Balham will be much impressed. And–what do you make of those two, my young friend?”

It seemed to me that my companion’s tone was changed, that his whole appearance was different. I was suddenly conscious of an irresistible conviction. I did not believe any longer that he was, like me, an idle loiterer here. I felt that his presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness of youth, was past middle-age, and his mottled cheeks, his thin, watery eyes, and thick red neck were the unmistakeable hall-marks of years of self-indulgence. He was well dressed and groomed, and his demeanour towards his companion was one of deferential good humour. She, however, was a person of a very different order. She was a girl apparently between fifteen and sixteen, her figure as yet undeveloped, her dresses a little too short. Her face was small and white, her mouth had a most pathetic droop, and in her eyes–wonderful, deep blue eyes–there was a curious look of shrinking fear, beneath which flashed every now and then a gleam of positive terror. Her dark hair was arranged in a thick straight fringe upon her forehead, and in a long plait behind, after the schoolgirl fashion. Notwithstanding the gaucherie of her years and her apparent unhappiness, she carried herself with a certain dignity and grace of movement which were wonderfully impressive. I watched her admiringly.

“They are rather a puzzle,” I admitted. “I suppose they might very well be father and daughter. It is certain that she is fresh from some convent boarding-school. I don’t like the way she looks at the man, do you? It is as though she were terrified to death. I wonder if he is her father?”

My companion did not answer me. He was straining forward as though anxious to hear the instructions which the man was giving to a porter about the luggage; my presence seemed to be a thing which he had wholly forgotten. The girl stood for a moment alone. More than ever one seemed to perceive in her eyes the nameless fear of the hunted animal. She looked around her furtively, yet with a strange, half-veiled wildness in her dilated eyes. I should scarcely have been surprised to have seen her make a sudden dash for freedom. Presently, however, the man, having identified all his luggage, turned towards her.

“That’s all right,” he declared cheerfully. “Now I think that I shall take you straight away for lunch somewhere, and then we must go to the shops. Are you hungry, Isobel?”

“I–I do not know,” she answered, so tremulously that the words scarcely reached us, though we were standing only a few feet away.

“We will soon find out,” he said. “Hansom, there! Café Grand!”

The cab drove off, and I realized then how completely for the last few moments I had forgotten my companion. I turned to look for him, and found him standing close to my side. He was apparently absorbed in thought, and seemed to have lost all interest in our surroundings. His hands were thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, and his eyes were fixed upon the ground. The stream of people from the train had melted away now, and we were almost alone upon the platform. I hesitated for a moment, and then walked slowly off. I did not wish to seem discourteous to the man with whom I had exchanged a few remarks more intimate than those which usually pass between strangers, but he had distinctly the air of one wishing to be alone, and I was unwilling to seem intrusive. I had barely taken a dozen steps, however, before I was overtaken. My companion of a few minutes before was again by my side. All traces of his recent preoccupation seemed to have vanished. He was smoking a fresh cigarette, and his bright, deep-set eyes were lit with gentle mirth.

“Well, Mr. Novelist,” he exclaimed, “have you succeeded? Is your languid muse stirred? Have you seen a face, a look, a gesture–anything to prick your imagination?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I have seen one thing,” I answered, “which it is not easy to forget. I have seen fear, and very pathetic it was.”

“You mean––?”

“In the face of that child, or rather girl, with that coarse-looking brute of a man.”

The light seemed to die out from my companion’s face. Once more he became stern and thoughtful.

“Yes,” he agreed; “I too saw that. If one were looking for tragedy, one might perhaps find it there.”

We stood now together on the pavement outside the station. My companion glanced at his watch.

“Come,” he said; “I have a fancy that you and I might exchange a few ideas. I am a lonely man, and to-day I am not in the humour for solitude. Do me the favour to lunch with me!”

I did not hesitate for a moment. It was exactly the sort of invitation which I had coveted.

“I shall be delighted,” I answered.

“I myself,” my companion continued, “have no gift for writing. My talents, such as they are, lie in a different direction. But I have been in many countries, and adventures have come to me of various sorts. I may be able even to start you on your way–if, indeed, the author of The Lost Princess is ever short of an idea.”

I smiled.

“I can assure you,” I said, “that my pilgrimage this morning has no other object than to find one. I begin to fear that I have written too much lately. At any rate, the well of my inspiration, if I may use so grandiloquent a term, has run dry.”

He put up his stick and hailed a hansom.

“After all,” he said, “it is possible–yes, it is possible that you may succeed. Adventures wait for us everywhere, if only we go about in a proper frame of mind. We will lunch, I think, at the Café Grand.”

I followed my prospective host into the cab. Was it altogether a coincidence, I wondered, that we were bound for the same restaurant whither the man and the girl had preceded us a few minutes before?

CHAPTER III

Mr. Grooten, as my new acquaintance called himself, belied neither his appearance nor his modest reference to himself. He proved at once that he knew how to order a satisfactory luncheon, going through the menu with the quiet deliberation of a connoisseur, neither seeking nor accepting any advice from the dark-visaged waiter who stood by his side, and finally writing out his few carefully chosen dishes with a special postscript as to the coffee, which, by-the-bye, we were never to taste. He then leaned over the table and began to talk.

Apparently my host had been in every country of the world, and mixed with people of note in each. His anecdotes were always pungent, personal without being egotistical, and savoured always with a certain dry and perfectly natural humour. I found myself both interested and fascinated by his constant flow of reminiscences, and yet at times my attention wandered. For within a few yards of us were seated the man and the child.

Everything that was noticeable in their demeanour towards one another at the station was even more apparent here. A bottle of champagne stood upon the table. The man had ordered such a luncheon that the head-waiter was seldom far from his side, and the manager in person had come to pay his respects. He himself was apparently doing full justice to it. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes moist, and his little bursts of laughter as he persevered in his attentions to his companion grew louder and more frequent. But opposite to him, the child’s face was unchanged. Her glass was full of wine, but she seemed never to touch it. Her long white fingers played with her bread, but she seemed to eat little or nothing. Her face was pallid and drawn; there was terror–absolute, undiluted terror–in her unnaturally large eyes. Often when the man spoke to her she shivered. Her eyes seemed constantly trying to escape his gaze, wandering round the room, the terror of a hunted animal in their soft, luminous depths. Once they rested upon mine–I was seated in the corner facing her–and it seemed to me that there was appeal–desperate, frenzied appeal–in that long, tense look which thrilled all my pulses with passionate sympathy. Yet she held herself all the while stiff and erect. There was a certain sustaining pride in her close, firm-set mouth. There was never any sign of tears, though more than once her lips parted for a moment in a pitiful quiver.

The table at which we were sitting was just inside the door, in the left-hand corner. The man and the girl were upon the opposite side, and a few yards further in the room. My host, with his face to the door, could see neither of them, therefore, without turning round, and owing to our table being pushed far into the corner, only his back was visible to the people in the restaurant. I, sitting facing him, had an excellent view of the girl and her companion, and I was all the while a witness of the silent drama being played out between the two. There came a time when I felt that I could stand it no longer. I leaned over our small table, and interrupted my companion in the middle of a story.

“Forgive me,” I said, “but I wish you could see that child’s face. There is something wrong, I am sure. She is terrified to death. Look, that brute is trying to force her to drink her wine. I really can’t sit and watch it any longer.”

The man who was my host, and who had called himself Mr. Grooten, nodded his head slightly. I knew at once, however, that he was in close sympathy with me.

“I have been watching them,” he said. “There is a mirror over your head; I have seen everything. It is a hideous-looking affair, but what can one do?”

“I know what I am going to do, at any rate,” I said, laying my serviette deliberately upon the table. “I don’t care what happens, but I am going to speak to the child.”

Mr. Grooten raised his eyebrows. Beyond this faint expression of surprise his face betrayed neither approval nor disapproval.

“What will you gain?” he asked.

“Probably nothing,” I answered. “And yet I shall try all the same. I dare not go away with the memory of that child’s face haunting me. I must make an effort, even though it seems ridiculous. I can’t help it.”

My companion smiled softly.

“As you will, my impetuous young friend,” he said. “This promises to be interesting. I will await your return.”

I did not hesitate any longer. I rose to my feet, and crossed the space which lay between the two tables. As I drew nearer to her I watched the child’s face. At first a flash of desperate hope seemed suddenly to illumine it; then a fear more abject even than before took its place as she glanced at her companion. She watched me come, reading without a doubt the purpose in my mind with a sort of fascinated wonder. Her eyes were still fastened upon mine when at last I paused before her. I leaned over the table, keeping my shoulder turned upon the man.

“You will forgive me,” I said to her in a low tone, “but I believe that you are in trouble. Can I help you? Don’t be afraid to tell me if I can.”

“You–you are very kind, sir,” she began, breathlessly; “I––”

Her companion intervened. Astonishment and anger combined to render his voice unsteady.

“Eh? What’s this? Who the devil are you, sir, and what do you mean by speaking to my ward?”

I disregarded his interruption altogether. I still addressed myself only to the child, and I spoke as encouragingly as I could.

“Don’t be afraid to tell me,” I said. “Think that I am your brother. I want to help you if I can.”

“Oh, if you only could!” she moaned.

Her companion seized me by the arm and forced me to turn round. His face was red almost to suffocation, and two thick blue veins stood out upon his forehead in ugly fashion. His voice was scarcely articulate by reason of his attempt to keep it low.

“Of all the infernal impertinence! What do you mean by it, sir? Who are you? How dare you force yourself upon strangers in this fashion?”

“I am quite aware that I am doing an unusual thing,” I answered, “and I perhaps deserve all that you can say to me. At the same time, I am here to have my question answered. You have a child with you who is apparently terrified to death. I insist upon hearing from her own lips whether she is in need of friends.”

White and mute, she looked from one to the other. It was the man who answered.

“If this were not a public place,” he said, still struggling with his anger, “I’d punish you as you deserve, you impudent young cub. This young lady is my ward, and I have just brought her from a convent, where she has lived since she was three years old. She is strange and shy, of course, and I was perhaps wrong to bring her to a public place. I did it, however, out of kindness. I wanted her to enjoy herself, but I perhaps did not appreciate her sensitiveness and the fact that only a few days ago she parted with the friends with whom she has lived all her life. Now, sir,” he added, with a sneer upon his coarse lips, “I have been compelled to answer your questions to avoid a disturbance in a public place; but I promise you that if you do not make yourself scarce in thirty seconds I will send for the manager.”

I looked once more at the child, from whose white, set face every gleam of hope seemed to have fled.

“I can do nothing for you, then?” I asked.

Her eyes met mine helplessly. She shook her head. She did not speak at all.

“Is it true–what he has told me?” I asked.

She murmured an assent so faint, that though I was bending over her, it scarcely did more than reach my ears. I could do no more. I turned away and resumed my seat. Grooten smiled at me.

“Well, Sir Knight Errant,” he said lightly; “so you could not free the maiden?”

“I was made to feel and look like a fool, of course,” I answered, “but I don’t mind about that. To tell you the truth, I am not satisfied now. The man says that he is her guardian, and that he has just brought her from a convent, where she has lived all her life. He vouchsafed to explain things to me to avoid a row, but he was desperately angry. She has never been out of the convent since she was three years old, and she is very nervous and shy. That was his story, and he told it plausibly enough. I could not get anything out of her, except an admission that what he said was the truth.”

Mr. Grooten nodded thoughtfully.

“After all,” he said, “she is only a child, fourteen or fifteen at the most, I should suppose. I have paid the bill, and, as you see, I have my coat on. Are you ready?”

“Directly I have finished my coffee,” I answered. “It looks too good to leave.”

“Finish it, by all means,” he answered. “I am in no particular hurry. By-the-bye, I forget whether I showed you this.”

He drew a small shining weapon, with rather a long barrel, from his pocket, but though he invited me to inspect it, he retained it in his own hand.

“I bought it in New York a few months ago,” he remarked; “it is the latest weapon of destruction invented.”

“Is it a revolver?” I asked, a little puzzled by its shape.

“Not exactly,” he answered, fingering it carelessly; “it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now,” he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, “if only one dared–“ he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, “one could free the child quite easily–quite easily.”

It was all over in a moment–a wonderful, tense moment, during which I sat frozen to my chair, stricken dumb and motionless with the tragedy which it seemed that I alone had witnessed. For there had been a little puff of sound, so slight that no other ears had noticed it. The seat in front of me was empty, and the man on my right had fallen forwards, his hand pressed to his side, his face curiously livid, patchy with streaks of dark colour, his eyes bulbous. Waiters still hurried to and fro, the hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came–a cry of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony–a cry, it seemed, of death. The waiters stopped in their places to gaze breathlessly at the spot from which the cry had come, a silver dish fell clattering from the fingers of one, and its contents rolled unnoticed about the floor. The murmur of voices, the rise and fall of laughter and speech, ceased as though an unseen finger had been pressed upon the lips of everyone in the room. Men rose in their places, women craned their necks. For a second or two the whole place was like a tableau of arrested motion. Then there was a rush towards the table across which the man had fallen, a doubled-up heap. A few feet away, with only that narrow margin of table-cloth between them, the girl sat and stared at him, still white and panic-stricken, yet with a curious change in her face from which all the dumb terror which had first attracted my attention seemed to have passed away.