The Bishop's purse

CHAPTER XVII

THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE

Long established usage on desert islands has ordered that the first duty of the shipwrecked, after locating the crystal spring and ascertaining that the cocoanuts are ripe and the mango (or bread fruit tree) abounds, is to signal for help. Accordingly, at this first meal after the desolation of Ipping House the sole topic of conversation concerned ways and means of obtaining new servants without delay. But the Merles took no part in the discussion.

From the outset the Reverend Horatio's domestic ministrations had been accepted, in the picnickian spirit of the occasion, as the whim of an eccentric parson and quickly forgotten by all but Harriet in the absorbing topic of the moment.

Harriet watched him now as he moved quietly to and fro, carrying the large silver platter, bending gravely as he held it in turn for each of the chatterers at the table. "Heathens" she reflected bitterly. "They are raging about menials, heedless that they are being served by an angel!"

A rare partisan was Harriet Merle. With her on his side, Horatio might well liken himself to a hero of old armed with an invincible spear. Harriet gloried in opposition, and it was only when opposing forces were equal that there was any doubt in her husband's mind which side she would take. At such times something totally unexpected, weighing with the infinitesimal preponderance of a hair, would sway the balance. So it had been this morning when Horatio had spoken of long ago days and the look of long ago had shone in Horatio's eyes.

An hour before, if the priestly Ezekiel himself had appeared to the curate's wife and prophesied that she would soon be abetting her husband in this, the maddest of his mad ideas, Harriet would in all probability have shown the presentient son of Buzi to the door. (Hiram Baxter would have told him he was talking through his halo.) Yet now that very thing was actually happening, and the strangest part of it was that it did not seem strange to her.

As Horatio stood, with his back to the room, occupied with things on the sideboard, there was to Harriet something solemnly familiar about his attitude, his quiet movements. Nor was the good churchwoman shocked when she realized what it recalled to her mind. It was but an added proof, if such were needed, that to Horatio this was indeed a ritual, and no common service he was performing.

At last, it seemed an age to Harriet, every one had been served. The Spanish omelette, a martyr to its own perfection was no more. Robert Baxter, after paying the highest compliment possible for a mere man to pay to a Spanish omelette, rose from the table and, deputing the countess to act with Mrs. Merle in the matter of engaging servants, excused himself on the plea of letters that must catch the afternoon post.

A moment later Horatio, steeling himself against Harriet's imploring glance and the appeal of his untouched plate, left the room. As one on the brink of a journey, the thought of food repelled him. Also he remembered that Martin Luther had not breakfasted. He would come back later and help Harriet clear away the things.

Kate had lighted a cigarette and was leaning back in her chair watching the sinuous veil dance of the dissolving vapor. Lionel's whole being was concentrated on the ordeal by fire of a perfecto bequeathed to him by the departing Robert.

"By Jove! Where's Mr. Merle?" he asked.

The countess, immediately alert, gave a quick glance round the table. "Go after him, Lionel. He's had nothing to eat!" she cried.

Lionel pushed back his chair and strode out of the room. Some minutes passed before he returned, entering by the French window from the conservatory. He looked flustered.

"I can't find him anywhere," he said quickly, in answer to exclamations from Harriet and Kate. "I've looked all over the beastly house and I'm blest if I know where he can have got to."

"He must have gone out," suggested the countess.

"That's the first thing I thought of. He hadn't two minutes' start of me, and I ran all round the house."

"Did you go to the lodge?" queried Harriet.

"Yes, I went there twice. No one has been through the gate since this morning. By the way," he added, "Mrs. Pottle says she'll come around and see what she can do to help, she and that girl she has there, jolly looking girl,—eyes like a—like a fox terrier——" He stopped abruptly. Kate and Harriet had not waited for particulars about the Storm girl's eyes—the one was speeding toward the kitchen, the other was already half way up stairs.

Search as they would, the Reverend Horatio was nowhere to be found and his black wideawake hat was missing!

"Horatio never went out like that without speaking to me," lamented Harriet.

The afternoon hours dragged by and when dinner time came Horatio was still absent. The long oak dining table had been reduced to the comparatively small circle of its primordial unit. The curtains had not been drawn and, through the tall windows at the end of the room, the ghost of the departed day stared solemnly at the candles that were usurping its place. But the candles only shrugged their flames superciliously—their silver candelabra had once belonged to Charles I. "Anyway," they reflected, "it's better to be a live candle than a dead sun!" A remark which, to be strictly truthful, was not original, having been handed down in the candle family for generations.

The continued absence of the beloved curate cast a damper on the spirits of the diners and made conversation a burden. Even the all important servant question was for the time being forgotten.

"I don't see why we're worrying so," said Kate, after a longer pause than usual. "He's probably lost his way in the woods and is trying to find his way home by that ridiculous compass on his watch chain; he showed it to me once." She smiled at the recollection. "It has no more sense of direction than poor, dear Mr. Merle himself has. I give you my word the wretched thing never pointed twice to the same place. The dear man likes nothing better than to get lost in the woods. He told me so himself," she added, but her voice belied the optimism of her words.

In the silence that followed Hester Storm entered bearing a chocolate blanc-mange, a dark, marble-like edifice of mortuary design imbedded in a snowdrift of whipped cream.

"By Jove, Kate!" cried Lionel, eager to change the subject, "is that the thing you were making when you chucked me out of the kitchen this afternoon?"

Kate was assaulting the quaking monument with a desperate spoon. "It's Mr. Merle's favorite pudding," she said shortly.

Lionel subsided. What was the use? No matter what topic was started, it invariably led to Merle.

The fate of the chocolate blanc-mange hung in the balance for a brief moment. If to eat it would seem to be a slight to the curate, to leave it would be a slight to the countess. The outcome was a compromise in which the honors and the blanc-mange were evenly divided.

Hester was glad when the meal drew to a close. Waiting on the table had been a nerve racking experience for her. Only the thought that she might pick up some chance clue as to the golf bag's whereabouts had nerved her to the undertaking.

Now it was over and nothing had come of it—not a single word about golf or golf bags. All the talk had been about the old parson who was late for dinner. Probably he had fallen into another mole trap or caught his whiskers in a bramble bush!

Hester was startled from these irreverent reflections by the utterance of the very word she had been listening for. The coffee cup she was in the act of handing to the countess shook perilously on its tiny saucer.

"A golf bag is a funny thing for a secretary to be carting about," Robert Baxter was saying, "but there it was, and the day Mother borrowed it——"

"By Jove!" interrupted Lionel, checking his half-raised arm. "That's where the old boy went!"

He drained his cup quickly and put it down. It was coming out in exasperating driblets like a magazine story and Hester, suddenly busy at the sideboard, waited breathlessly for the next instalment.

"I heard Miss Thompson call out to him from the motor," went on Lionel, "just as they were starting this morning, that if he cared to get her golf bag he could use the clubs all he wanted."

There was another maddening pause. Hester had reached the limit of her endurance; she couldn't go on rearranging the silver on the sideboard forever. She had an insane impulse to shriek. Then, suddenly, the suspense was over. Robert supplied the missing link.

"Cousin Horatio could hardly get lost on his way to the club house," he reflected, pushing back his chair as Kate started to rise, "but I'll run round in the car and inquire if he was there this afternoon. Why don't you have a look round the lake?" he turned to Lionel.

They passed into the hall and out through the front door. It was almost dark. Through the moist, warm air came the scent of pale night flowers dimly white against the dark ivy.

"I must be off," said Bob, "or the golf club will be shut. Any one want to go along?"

"I don't think Mrs. Merle should be left alone," said Kate. "I'll try to make her eat something."

Bob started toward the garage as the other two re-entered the dark house. None of the hall lamps had been lighted. In the dining room the candles were burning low, their impish flames casting jerky shadows on the disordered table. The empty chairs, pushed back, had the unquiet stillness of arrested movement. Kate shivered.

"Get some candles," she said. "Quick before these go out!"

On the table was the depressing litter of stained coffee cups, together with sundry plates and glasses overlooked by Hester. The countess began gathering the plates and cups together and piling them on the sideboard. Lionel watched her in silence. Now only the cloth remained.

"Take the other end," she commanded.

Lionel obeyed and together they folded it into its original creases.

"I say, Kate," he said presently. "What about servants—did you telephone?"

The countess was leaving the room to "rout out Mrs. Merle," as she expressed it. She stopped short and came back to Lionel. There was a look on her face that startled him.

"No," she said at length, "I haven't telephoned. I haven't done a thing about it, and what's more, Lionel, I don't believe I will."

"Kate! Do you mean that?"

It was her turn to be startled. She had expected consternation, at the very least disapproval. Lionel's tone was one of joyous relief.

"By Jove, Kate, if that's the way you feel, then I know I'm right. I've been turning it over in my mind ever since this morning," he went on eagerly, "and when I heard the servants had all bolted I said to myself: 'Now's the chance to show that old blighter Baxter that an English Johnny who dates back to the Conqueror—and all that rot—is just as good, when it comes to the scratch, as a self-made American who's only just invented himself and thinks he's the only Johnny on earth that ever did an honest day's work.'"

As he paused for breath his face became suddenly luminous with a new idea. "I say! This must be what the old boy calls 'chucking us into a pond.'"

"Lionel! You don't mean—you can't mean that he dismissed the servants himself?"

"Who? Old Baxter? Not he! He doesn't know a thing about it, that I'll swear to, but——"

"But what?"

Lionel hesitated, then went on quickly. "I got a tip yesterday, and if it wasn't straight from the horse's mouth it was jolly well the next thing to it."

"Well?"

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "If it hadn't been for us four relatives being here Cousin Hiram would have shut up the house when they went to Brighton."

For a moment there was dead silence. Then Lionel went on. "That means the old boy really is in a tight place, otherwise he'd never have thought of it—and, by Jove, Kate, I'd like to do something to help him if it's only picking cabbages or—blacking boots—there's something I can do." Lionel's face shone with a joyous recollection. "Once I blacked the boots of six people for two weeks."

"You did!" Kate laughed incredulously.

Lionel nodded. "A caravan party in Devonshire, two married women, one flapper just out of school, two husbands, another chap and me. The flapper was the hardest——"

"The hardest?"

"I mean her boots. I couldn't get my hand into them—had to hold 'em by the heel."

"That settles it!" decided the countess. "It's perfectly simple. We'll go on just as we are. I'm cook, you're kitchen boy and boots, and cousin Harriet can be upstairs girl." Kate laughed nervously, then, suddenly her whole manner changed. "Lionel," she said, "I want to tell you something. Ever since luncheon I have been haunted by the picture of that darling old man waiting on the table. There was something in his face that went right through me—I can't tell you what it was, but every time I looked at him I wanted to run and put my arms round his neck and have a good cry. I never felt like such a good for nothing rotter in my life. And when I looked up and found he'd gone——" She stopped speaking and got up quickly. "There! I must go to Mrs. Merle."

Lionel struck his repeater. "By Jove! It's nine o'clock! I must go to the lake."

CHAPTER XVIII

MARTIN LUTHER

All this time Harriet remained in her room, pacing up and down the floor, pausing at every sound to listen at the window. Perched on the window-sill, Martin Luther mewed insistently, his head pressed against the leaded glass. Why did he mew like that?

Suddenly it seemed to Harriet that Martin Luther had been mewing for an infinite period of time. She opened the window, and the cat, half way through, hesitated, as if considering whether it was really advisable to go out, after all. Then, sliding softly downward to the roof of the conservatory he disappeared round the angle of the house.

Where had the cat gone? Harriet had an inherent aversion to cats, her toleration of Martin Luther being a strong testimonial to her love for Horatio, but she had moments of believing, as he did, that cats possess a fearful knowledge not shared by men. Why had Martin Luther acted so strangely? Where had he gone?

It was terribly quiet now, and, as the curate's wife turned away from the window the darkness of the room, deepened by contrast, filled her with sudden panic. She hurried from the house, and her groping flight was like the progress of a nightmare.

Out of doors the dew-cooled air pressed Harriet's forehead like the hand of a nurse. The velvet blending of darkness and light, silence and sound, was infinitely soothing. To and fro she paced the darkening lawn, each time venturing a little further. Behind the lodge it was quite black under the cedars. Out in the lane the shadows were terrifying.

The hours passed.

Some one was coming. Harriet listened fearfully, leaning back against the steep bank among the pungent ferns, her heart beating painfully. As the steps came nearer and she recognized Lionel, her relief from the terror of a strange man turned to despair. Horatio was not with him.

"Lionel, is that you?"

At the sudden apparition of Harriet Lionel stopped short, and, turning at the same instant, almost lost his balance. A small, dark object fell to the ground, something he had been carrying under his arm. Harriet clutched his wrist.

"What's that?"

Without answering Lionel picked up from the ground what seemed like a piece of the darkness.

"You'd better take my arm, Mrs. Merle, the road's quite rough here." He offered his arm with an awkward movement.

"What is it? What have you got there?"

She snatched the thing from under his arm; she needed no one to tell her whose it was, this soft, black felt hat.

"Where did you get it? It's wet—it's dripping wet!"

He felt her nails in his wrist.

"I—I found it—I found it——"

"Where? Where did you find it?" she shrieked.

"By the lake," faltered Lionel.

The curate's wife neither fainted nor lost her head. Her fingers relaxed and she became strangely, terribly calm.

"A lantern—quick! There's one at the lodge."

Lionel had to run to keep pace with her.

They found the little gothic house quite dark and the door locked. Their knocking brought no response. The only sign of life was Martin Luther, whose plaintive cries, louder every second, indicated that he was running to meet them.

"Try the back door," said Harriet. "We must get a lantern."

Lionel plunged through the blackness of the rhododendrons, not stopping to find the path. Harriet, leaning against the door, kept up a ceaseless pounding on the iron knocker. Martin Luther continued to mew.

Never before had the curate's wife heard a cat mew in that way—short, sharp cries, changing to long, mournful wails as he pushed against her in the dark or clawed at her dress. Then his voice died away as with an incredible rushing noise he dashed down the steps and across the gravel, only to return the next moment with the same sound of scrambling feet and flying pebbles.

At last her ear caught the swish of parted bushes and the tread of human feet, and Lionel's voice came from close by.

"It's locked."

"Try the windows."

"They're all fastened. What's that?" he cried.

"It's the cat," gasped Harriet. "He's going mad—we can't wait." Her words seemed to force their way between heartbeats.

Lionel guided her down the scarcely visible steps, and together they started up the drive. Martin Luther trotted between, rubbing against one and the other in turn. His plaintive mew had given place to an excited, cooing tremolo. Suddenly from somewhere at the right came again the sharp, wailing cries they had heard at first.

They stood stock still, and as they harkened the same strange impulse came to them both. Without a word they turned sharply from the gravel, and, mounting the soft turf of the bank, scrambled through the laurel bushes and ran in the direction of the sound.

It was a forlorn hope, but they followed it, followed it desperately. Now the mewing sounded near, now faint and far off. At one time they lost it altogether, then, all at once, it seemed to come from somewhere below their feet.

"I say! Look out!" cried Lionel, catching Harriet's arm. "You nearly went over!"

They were standing close to the edge of a dark declivity, in reality not very steep, yet of sufficient depth to be dangerous to any one coming upon it unawares. This last remnant of the ancient moat, for such it was, lay only a few yards from the oldest wing of the house, yet so artfully was it screened on two sides by dense shrubbery and on the third by a crumbling, ivy-covered wall, once part of the old tower, that its presence was known to only two people at Ipping House—the curate and little An Petronia.

Harriet, straining her ears, became suddenly conscious that Martin Luther had stopped mewing! And, as she listened fearfully there came a faint, pulsating sound, vibrant, velvety, the most comfortable of nature's voices, whose very name is the synonym for curled contentment; Martin Luther was purring!

Whereupon there crept into Harriet's heart the dawn of hope she had thought gone forever. And presently there came, seemingly from the very center of the earth, a familiar voice, faint but lifelike:

"Poor pussy! Poor old puss! Good Martin Luther!"

"Horatio!" she screamed at the top of her voice.

Once more came the voice of Horatio, this time a little louder: "Is that you, my dear?"

"Of course it's me! How can you ask? Where are you, Horatio? What are you doing? Are you hurt? Why don't you speak?"

"I'm all right, my dear," was the faint yet cheerful response, "but I can't get out—the door's locked."

The door? What did he mean? A door out there in the open park?

Harriet was seized by a new terror. Horatio's mind was unhinged. He had always been eccentric, not a bit like other people—and now—now it had come!

In her sudden access of woe Harriet Merle did the nearest thing to fainting she knew. She sat down. That is to say, Harriet started to sit down. The invisible precipice at her feet and the law of gravitation did the rest.

As the curate's wife half slid, half rolled down the steep, grassy incline her ear, keyed to the highest pitch of dreadful expectancy, caught the sound of a scratching match. Lionel was striking a light.

"Wait, Lionel!" she screamed with all the breath she had to spare, and even as she did so her indecorous revolutions ceased gently on the level turf at the bottom of the incline.

In an instant she was on her feet and had shaken her disordered plumage into the hen-like seemliness befitting a curate's wife.

"Now strike a match, Lionel!" she called.

Then it was that Lionel performed a deed of heroism that only an Englishman can appreciate. Unopened in his pocket, just as it had come in that morning's mail, was the last number of a sporting journal known as The Pink Un, so called from the roseate tint of the paper, attributed by the fanciful to an inherent sense of shame in the pages themselves in no wise shared by their editors. This was the only thing in the way of paper Lionel could find in his pockets, and his match box was almost empty.

Without a moment's hesitation he unfolded the precious sheet, and, tearing page after page into remorseless strips, folded them quickly into long spills. Then, striking a match, with the utmost care, he lighted the first of his paper torches.

The flame leaped up, and Harriet saw that she stood in a grassy, bath-shaped hollow, at least two heads higher than herself, but how long it was impossible to say. Lionel quickly joined her, lighting a fresh torch as he came, and giving her the remainder of the precious paper to hold in reserve.

As they moved forward cautiously the darkness in front of them resolved itself into a glistening barrier of ivy extending straight upward into the immense blackness above. This, as Harriet afterward learned, was the other side of the ivy-covered ruin whose forgotten origin had been a perpetual source of speculation to Horatio and herself ever since they came to Ipping House.

"Horatio!" she cried, pressing her face against the damp leaves. She heard his familiar little cough.

"My dear Harriet, there must be a heavy dew. I hope you remembered your galoshes." His voice seemed to come from the depths of the ivy.

Reassuring as it was, the curate's calmness, his very solicitude was indescribably irritating to the overwrought nerves of his wife.

"How can you talk like that," she cried, "after all I've been through, Horatio, thinking you were drowned in the lake—and you sit there like a—like a mole and talk about galoshes!"

Suddenly her hand, pushing through a foot's thickness of ivy, encountered cold stone. Her anger turned instantly to fear.

"Where are you, Horatio? Why don't you come out? You must come out! Oh, I can't bear it!" she sobbed convulsively.

"My dear Harriet," began Horatio—but he got no further. Whatever consolation the gentle curate had to offer was cut short by a joyful shout from Lionel.

"By Jove! I've found the door!" His cry was accompanied by a sound of rustling leaves.

As Lionel forced his way through the ivy tangle his paper torch went out. Lighting a fresh one at the sacrifice of a precious match, he found himself in a low, chimney-like chamber about the width of his outspread arms, half buried in earth and smelling of decayed wood and fungus. The damp stone sides slanted sharply inward to where, scarcely a yard away, gray with mould and studded with rusty iron bolts, loomed the upper half of an ancient wooden door. Only one hinge, huge, rusty, and fantastically wrought, was visible above the earth. Curled close against the door, blinking yellowly and purring like an automobile, sat Martin Luther.

Again the torch went out, but Lionel had seen enough. The door opened inward, that is to say, away from him, and in the grotesque scrollwork of the great hinge were three empty nail holes, leaving only two entire nails.

He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

"Is the ground clear on your side, Mr. Merle? The beastly door opens inward, you know."

"You don't say," came from the curate. "It's pitch dark here. I have a candle, a perfectly splendid candle, but no matches."

"I have some perfectly splendid matches and no candle," laughed Lionel.

Merle joined in the laugh, and Harriet wondered, fearfully, if the two men had gone mad.

A minute later a crash of rending wood and cringing metal caused her heart to stand still. At the same instant came a triumphant shout from Lionel and a sound of Horatio's voice close by, and, before she fully realized what had happened, Harriet Merle was sobbing, laughing, and scolding in her husband's arms.

Lionel had kicked in the door.

Martin Luther led the way back, his tail at the proud perpendicular of conscious rectitude. He had done a good evening's work and that, too, under most trying conditions. Human beings, he reflected, were all very well in their way—unquestionably they had their uses, at times they were even necessary (when one falls into a canal, for instance), but their deplorable ignorance of mewing, beyond such elementary phrases as "Please give me some milk," or "Oblige me by opening this door," was excessively annoying.

Lionel had raced ahead to carry the joyful news to the countess. Tucked safely away in his pocket was a remnant, snatched from the burning of the sinful pink newspaper, not, it is to be feared, the portion least deserving of fiery punishment.

And now Horatio, arriving at the bank which Harriet had descended with such unpremeditated energy a short time before, placed the candle upon the ground to assist his wife up the steep incline. Here his eye fell upon an oblong piece of paper lying on the grass close to the candle-stick and glistening in the yellow light. As he picked it up the word "Reginal" caught his eye. It was a page of An Petronia's novel, the "Misforchins of Reginal." The curate put the paper in his pocket to return to the little girl, and, in another minute, he had forgotten all about it.

CHAPTER XIX

THE MISSING PAGE

Robert Baxter was the first to hear the good news, and, being a young man of few words, he lighted a candle and made straight for the wine cellar. In a few moments he returned empty handed.

"It's mighty funny," he said to Lionel. "There was a whole case last week—all but one quart, and it's disappeared, case and all! And what's more, that '66 brandy is gone, too. I'm certain there were at least half a dozen left. What do you make of it?"

Lionel tugged at his mustache.

"Well, if you ask me, old chap, I don't mind telling you I never did like the cut of Parker's sidewhiskers."

"Parker!" exclaimed Bob. "It doesn't seem possible. You never saw such references as he brought. There were two bishops and a prime minister. It's queer, though," he added, as he relocked the cellar door.

At the supper table, much to the Storm girl's relief, her services were not required. There were no more secrets to be learned and to-morrow she would offer to call at the club for the golf bag. No, that would look suspicious—well, she would think out a plan, she would manage it some way.

In a great chair at Horatio's side sat little An Petronia, who, at the curate's request, had been allowed to join the happy gathering. Clasped in her hand was a priceless nectarine (too marvelous for human food) and her watchful eyes were fixed on the door fearful each moment of the apparition of a beckoning grandmother and the End of Things.

And now every one was eager to hear the curate's story, all but Martin Luther, who showed not the slightest interest. It was enough for him that his dear friend was safe and sound. What more could anybody want? In recognition of his conspicuous services, Martin Luther had been awarded a special fish, which now existed only in a beautiful dream as Martin lay fast asleep in the lap of An Petronia.

The curate's story did not take long to tell. When he walked out of the dining room this morning to vanish so strangely, his only thought was to get out of doors and, snatching his hat from the antlers in the hall, he passed quickly through the open front door. Then, remembering that Martin Luther had not had any luncheon, he changed his mind and went straight to the kitchen, entering by the outside door instead of returning to the house, which accounted for Lionel's not seeing him.

As Horatio was about to enter the kitchen, he was startled by the sound of steps. He stood still with his hand on the knob and listened. Who could be in the kitchen? Every one was upstairs in the dining room, every one who had any right in the house.

He opened the door quietly. No one was there. Again he listened. There was somebody in the passage, the dark stone passage that led to the wine cellar and to the well room further on. Horatio tiptoed across the kitchen and peered through the archway. There was a faint yellow flicker in the gloom at the turn of the passage. The curate wondered what anybody could be doing in the well room. The servants never went near it. For one thing it had no window and there was something frightening about the black oblong of the well in the middle of the stone floor. It reminded Horatio of a picture by Doré in Dante's "Inferno," and, according to Parker (who claimed to have read it in a book) it was in that very well that the pious Lady Ysobel had been drowned. Once he had seen the Gray Lady sitting on the edge of the well wringing her hands and "weeping and wailing most orful." It had given him the "willys" for a week.

Keeping close to the wall, the curate crept cautiously along the passage. The well room door was almost closed. Fearful lest it should creak, he opened it slowly toward him, inch by inch. At this point in the story the curate paused to relieve his throat with a glass of water.

"Weren't you frightened, Daddy Merle?" squeaked An Petronia, thrilling with delicious terror.

"Yes, my dear," said Horatio. "When I opened that door and saw where that light came from I am compelled to admit that I was frightened."

Again the curate paused, this time to wipe his lips with the napkin. Martin Luther opened his eyes and yawned, stretching his fore paws straight out in front of him, the very image of a sleepy sphinx. "Isn't that story finished yet?" he mewed, then raising himself slowly to his feet he stepped over the arm of An Petronia's chair and curled up to sleep in the curate's lap.

"Well, my dear?" queried Harriet impatiently.

"I say!" cried Lionel, "what about the light?"

"The light came from the well," replied the curate.

Then he related how, as he stared at the well, half expecting to see the Gray Lady rise slowly out of its depths, there appeared, instead, a human hand holding—"What do you think it was holding?" he asked looking at each in turn.

"A dagger, of course," laughed Kate.

"A golden key," came timidly from An Petronia.

"If it wasn't an umbrella, I give it up," said Lionel.

"Go on! Tell us!" urged Harriet.

Robert Baxter had just achieved a perfect smoke ring. He watched it soar upward and melt away, then questioned quietly. "A bottle of champagne?"

"My dear Mr. Baxter, that's exactly what it was," said the curate.

Lionel slapped his knee vigorously. "Parker! By Jove! Five to one it was Parker!"

The curate's eyes blinked with amazement. "Bless my soul! How did you know that?"

"Oh, I just put two and two together," drawled Lionel, "and it made Parker."

"Fortunately Parker didn't see me," continued Horatio, "and as he reached down for another bottle I slipped back into the passage and behind the door. It was a dreadful moment. You may not believe it, I suppose I was a little unstrung, but I had an uncontrollable desire to laugh. I pressed my hands over my mouth, but I fear that only made it worse—it was like new wine in an old bottle—I simply exploded."

"Horatio! You didn't laugh?" exclaimed Harriet.

"My dear Harriet, it burst through my fingers. You have often complained of my laugh, Harriet, but this was much worse. It must have sounded like that strange cry of the American natives."

Bob looked up, puzzled. "American natives?"

"I take it so," replied Horatio. "I heard it once at Earl's Court at the Wild West Show. It is apparently produced by a rapid oscillation of the palm of the hand against the mouth while enunciating with great force the sound of the fifth vowel."

Bob laughed uproariously. "Oh, yes, of course! That's the sound the squaws make when they go shopping on Broadway."

"Dear me," exclaimed the curate, "what an interesting custom! Harriet, love," he turned to his wife, "remind me to make a note of what Mr. Baxter has just told us about the squaws going shopping on Broadway."

Bob's laugh took on a doubtful ring—he was never quite sure with Horatio whether the joke was on himself or on the curate.

"Whatever it sounded like," continued Merle, "the effect was most astonishing. I could see through the hinge-crack. Parker shot out of that well like a Jack-in-the-box and flew up the steps and along the passage as if Beelzebub himself were after him. I don't suppose he stopped this side of Ippingford."

"Except to pick up your hat," put in Lionel.

"Dear me! Perhaps he did, I left it on the kitchen dresser. Well I hope it will be a lesson to the man."

And now why on earth did he go back to that wretched cellar? Parker's candle would have burned itself out in the well and the wine was safe for the time being anyway. It seemed to Horatio, as if some irresistible force had dragged him down those steps against his will, right to the brink of the well. There at the bottom was the candle burning cheerfully among the bottles, at least a dozen of champagne and various others. The curate had no trouble in letting himself down and was already pondering on the best way to climb out again without soiling his clothes, when his attention was caught by a peculiarity in the construction of the well. Two sides and one end were built of small stones about six or eight inches square. The remaining end was quite different; there were small stones at the top and bottom and, in the middle, one large stone about three feet square.

Horatio picked up the candle and carefully examined this stone. In the lower right hand corner was a half obliterated Latin inscription:

He spelled it out slowly. The first word, allowing for the space, could only be Nihil. The missing "A" of Tange was also quite evident, so was the "M" of Omnia. He puzzled over the last word for some time till the light of the candle, held a little to one side and very close to the stone, showed that what he had taken for the letter "I" was really the letter "D". Then it was easy, and now Horatio had the motto complete: NIHIL TANGE OMNIA DISCE it now read: "Touch nothing, know everything."

When a thing sounds so utterly senseless as that, he reflected, it generally turns out to mean something very wise, especially if it is chiseled in stone.

He held the candle close to the date: Anno 1360. Here was something peculiar. The last figure, the zero, was cut very deep into the stone—much deeper than any other figure or letter in the whole inscription. The difference was too marked to be accidental. That figure "nought," he reasoned, must have some relation to the inscription. But what? What was there in the inscription about a zero? Then in a flash it came to him.

Touch nothing—Learn everything. Now it was plain. That figure "nought" was the key to the mystery. It must be touched, pressed with the finger. The candlestick shook in his hand, he set it down on the floor beside him. Then Horatio pressed one finger firmly on the center of the figure "nought" in the corner of the big stone.

Nothing happened.

He pressed harder, still harder, still with no effect. Then, as he relaxed the pressure, there came a sharp metallic twang from some hidden place, and, with a strangely animate whine, the stone swung slowly away from him revealing a dark aperture.

Carefully guarding the flame of the candle, the curate stepped through the opening and found himself at the top of a short flight of stone steps. Before going any further, he placed one of the champagne bottles on the top step in such a way that its neck prevented the door from closing.

At the foot of the steps Horatio found himself in a passage which, from its position, he judged must lead toward the ivy covered ruin that formed the outer end of the kitchen garden.

In another moment he knew he was right. Directly overhead, at the further end of the gallery, was an irregular fissure scarcely a foot in width. The crack continued upward for a little way, and through the opening Horatio could see far above him a mountain of jagged stones over which poured a torrent of ivy. Beyond this was a triangle of blue across which flashed the blackness of a bird's wing.

As the curate was about to return, a sudden draught extinguished his candle. Moving cautiously, he probed the treacherous blackness, with outstretched hands, trusting to his sense of direction. Suddenly he stumbled against the steps and plunged heavily forward with his whole weight upon the partly open stone door.

Through the crunch and gurgle of the decapitated champagne bottle and the thud of the door, Merle heard the sharp metallic twang of a hidden lock.

"Go on," said the curate's wife.

"My dear Harriet, I worked over that door in the pitch darkness for two blessed hours."

"I thought you had a candle, Daddy Merle," piped An Petronia sleepily.

"I had, my dear, but no matches, not a single match!"

He pushed back his chair.

"I say! Let's all go and kick the life out of that beastly door!" cried Lionel.

The curate smiled. "I believe I shall sleep better when I know how it works."

"I should think you'd excommunicate it," said Kate.

Whereupon Martin Luther jumped to the floor and walked stiffly out of the room. It was exactly as if he said: "I consider that remark in very bad taste," and everybody laughed. Harriet, however, refused to countenance such folly as going into the cellar at that time of the night, and as for An Petronia, the child ought to have been in bed hours ago!

Ten minutes later when the Reverend Horatio Merle was removing various articles from his coat pockets, preparatory to folding the garment for the night, he came across the forgotten page of An Petronia's novel. As he glanced at it he was astonished to find, instead of the large childish writing he had seen there, the small neat hand of a grown person. It was a piece of a torn letter, and An Petronia had made use of the blank side. Nothing very surprising in that.

He laid it down on the dressing table so that he would remember to give it to the little girl in the morning. As he did so, Horatio's eye caught a startling sentence written across the upper corner of the page.

"Remember, please, not to address me as Jenny Regan, but as Hester Storm."

"Jenny Regan! Hester Storm!" he reflected. "Strange! What can that girl be doing with two names?"

Then Horatio blew out the candle.

CHAPTER XX

THE REVEREND HORATIO TURNS DETECTIVE

The first thing in the curate's thoughts the next morning was this perplexing fragment of a letter. He examined it carefully, reading, first, the words in An Petronia's childish scrawl written on what had been the blank side of a castaway sheet:

chapter nine

reginals mother died six months before he was born and ever since Mr peabody had injoyed very dilicat health.

Horatio smiled at this tragically complicated picture of Reginald's entrance upon the scene of life. Then he turned the sheet and studied what was left of the original letter, a letter evidently written by his protégée, Hester Storm. Lengthwise and crosswise of this sheet ran sharp creases where the letter had been folded, and on either side the edges were torn symmetrically, leaving half-finished words and sentences. About half the letter was missing.

The letter began, "Dearest sist—" and five lines farther down the curate came upon "darling Rosalie." Then, after broken lines in which he made out "pull off something," there were six complete lines on what had been the last pages, that read:

"...so wonderful in the next few days that I can keep straight always after this the way you want me to, darling, and you and I can go out west where the air is fine or into the Adirondacks or anywhere you like, dearest sister, and you'll never have to work any..." Then there was a blot and a tear.

Most important of all was a postscript in the upper corner that read, "Remember, please, to address me as Hester Storm, not as Jenny Regan."

Horatio read and reread this with absorbed interest. He turned it this way and that, squinted at it, sniffed at it, rubbed his glasses, and tugged at his thin side whiskers, the total result being that his excitement and astonishment were presently at fever heat as he realized that he was on the verge of a momentous discovery. Ordinarily his conscience would have pricked the gentle curate at reading a letter not meant for his eyes, but this was an exceptional case, a matter to be immediately investigated for the common good. It was a critical moment. He was on the track of something serious, possibly a crime, and his mind buzzed with the possibilities held by this scrap of paper. What would a great detective do with such a clue? What would Horatio Merle do with it?

Tingling with a growing sense of his importance, the little man studied the paper again with a penetrating frown. An extraordinary document! A fascinating puzzle! To "pull off something" was, he knew, a locution familiar in the United States, and meaning to "make a coup" or to carry through a purpose; this he had gathered from his reading of adventure stories in the cheap magazines. So something was to be "pulled off!" Something involving "thousands of dollars!" Something that had delayed a sailing to America and brought to Ippingford this unfortunate girl, Jenny Regan, alias Hester Storm, on some desperate errand involving a rich reward. There was her plain statement, "You'll never have to work again!" How simple she must have thought him that day at the golf course! A gullible fool, believing every word she told him! It was pitiful!

And straightway Horatio resolved that in the present emergency, he would act a sterner part; he would be hard as adamant and would push this investigation through to a relentless finish. That was clearly his duty in view of the peril to which he had exposed the dwellers at Ipping House. This girl must be baffled in her wicked purpose, and, having sinned, she must now suffer.

But there was need of caution; he must have his facts well in hand before making any accusation or showing any suspicion; in short, he must dissemble—detectives invariably did dissemble, and already Horatio felt himself a detective. He had the analytical mind and intuitive insight, he knew it, always had known it, and, although these qualities had hitherto lain dormant, he would use them now, and by one supreme effort, he would not only make amends for past remissness and render a signal service to the Baxter household, but he would give himself the exhilarating joy of running down a real criminal.

His first step was evidently to learn from An Petronia where and when she had found this important fragment, so he went straight to the lodge and inquired for his little friend. Mrs. Pottle informed him, with a shrug of displeasure, that the child was playing somewhere about the grounds, and, after a careful search, the curate found her in the sunken gardens giving a spelling lesson to a forlorn wooden dolly sprawling on a marble bench. An Petronia was delighted to recover the missing page from her novel. Her memory about it was perfectly distinct. She had picked it out of the fireplace in the new lady's room at the lodge. The new lady being Hester Storm? Yes, Hester Storm. Was An Petronia accustomed to use scraps of paper out of fireplaces for her novel? Well, yes; because she had no other paper. Besides, this was such a pretty shade. Didn't Daddy Merle think so? Daddy Merle shrewdly agreed that it was a pretty shade, a beautiful shade. Did An Petronia think the new lady had any more paper like this? Oh, yes, a whole box full. Indeed! Was Hester at the lodge now? No, she was at the big house sewing. Oh! Well, would An Petronia mind, for a very particular reason, a secret—going to Hester's room and getting a sheet of this pretty paper, just one sheet?

At this suggestion the child opened her blue eyes and her sweet, red lips in wide astonishment, but being assured by Daddy Merle (who must know) that it was all right, she danced happily away, while the curate followed on, not quite reconciled to this necessity of setting his eager little friend to pilfering. Still he saw the value as evidence of a sheet of paper from the sewing girl's room, and when the youthful novelist presently returned with the desired article (the paper was obviously identical), the good man merely patted the golden red curls with a solemn warning that not a word of their secret be breathed to the new lady. And he borrowed overnight the incriminating page from An Petronia's romance.

The next thing was to have a talk with Hester Storm herself, and here Horatio saw the importance of clever management. An experienced detective would draw from the girl, without arousing her suspicion, as much damaging testimony as possible, and then, having involved her in a network of lies, he would turn suddenly and overwhelm her with the evidence of her own written words. That would be the method, the curate felt sure, of M. Lecoq or Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and, with a sigh of regret, he resigned himself to the painful necessity of following their example. He disliked exceedingly resorting to subterfuge and—er—dissimulation; but there was no choice, the thing must be done and—very well, he would do it. He would be firm, he would be relentless, he would immediately find out what it was that his unworthy protégée was trying to "pull off."

Merle's first move was to exercise his patience for an hour and a half, strolling about among the shrubs and beeches, watching for the appearance of Hester Storm. He knew the girl would come forth presently from the manor, after her task, and he planned to intercept her on her way to the lodge. A detective must always be ready to wait, so Horatio waited.

The chiming clock in the stable tower, with pompous deliberation, had just sounded the third quarter after four o'clock when the curate espied a familiar scarlet cloak coming down the graveled walk.

"Enfin!" he breathed in relief, and a moment later he was walking at Hester's side, marveling at the innocence and candor of her beautiful dark eyes.

"My dear child," he began kindly, "I have something important to say to you. Would you mind strolling over toward the lake? I know a quiet seat where we may talk—shall I say without interruption?"

The girl looked at him in surprise.

"I will do whatever you wish, sir," she said simply. "You have been so good to me! I hope I have done nothing to displease you."

"Of course not, my child, that is to say, why—er—of course not," he replied, remembering with difficulty that it was his duty to dissemble.

They came presently to Horatio's favorite retreat by the lake, a low, broad bench between two friendly fir trees, and here, looking out over the placid surface, with its heavy shade lines following the shores, they had a memorable interview. It was characteristic of Merle that he chose this spot of soothing beauty, where nature seemed to reveal her tenderest moods, for the hard business of criminal investigation.

"The point is, Hester," he began, "I have been thinking over the matter of your arrival at Ipping House and your establishment here, and, while I have the deepest sympathy for you, my friend, I feel that I should have shown a greater interest in your family and—er—antecedents; in short, I should have asked you to tell me a little more about yourself."

"I'll be glad to tell you anything you want to know," the girl said with an air of perfect truthfulness, while the curate continued to marvel.

"How did you happen to come to so small and unimportant a place as Ippingford? As I understand it, you knew no one here and—er—why did you buy a ticket to Ippingford?"

"I didn't," answered Hester with ready invention. "I bought a ticket to York and I—I got off here because," she hesitated, and her eyes, wandering over the lake, rested on a company of swans that were drifting down the cove in stately squadron. In an instant she had her explanation.

"Yes?" said Merle encouragingly.

"I got off here because it was so beautiful. I wanted to be in the country—away from noise and smoke and—you see I've always lived in cities, and I've been unhappy there; I've had no luck there, and when I saw this lake and the hills and green things it seemed like a voice calling me, and I—I just got off the train. I couldn't help it."

There was a quiver in her voice that stirred Horatio's sympathy, but he hardened his heart.

"Then you had no specific purpose in coming to Ippingford?"

"Oh, no! I did not even know the name of the town."

"And suppose you had found no friends here, no employment? What would you have done?"

"I should have gone on to some other place. And I should never have forgotten the flowers and hedges and that lovely walk I took the day I met you—when you were so kind to me."

Her sweet, low tones moved him strangely, but he kept to his task.

"That was only natural, my dear, after you had come to my assistance. But tell me, are you contented here? Do you plan to stay with us, now that we have made a place for you?"

Hester looked at him sharply. How came he to put that question? What was he driving at?

"Why, yes," she assured him. "I want to stay, if you are satisfied with me."

"You have no intention of going away? No thought of returning to America?"

"No," she said, disturbed by his persistence. "Why do you ask me that?"

"I thought perhaps your family in America—or your friends——"

She shook her head sadly. "I have no family. No friends. I am all alone."

"You have no father or mother? No brother? No sister?"

Again she shook her head. There was no particular reason why she should lie about Rosalie, except that her sister was too sacred a thing in Hester's life to be mentioned lightly. And she failed to see what difference it could possibly make to this queer little man whether she said that she had a sister or had no sister.

But it made a great difference to Horatio, for Hester's denial of Rosalie came as a crushing culmination to her other falsehoods. She had lied in declaring that she had no special purpose in visiting Ippingford. She had lied in saying she was not planning a return to America. And now she had lied about her sister. The moment had come for Merle to strike. His trap was ready, his victim helpless and defenseless; he had only to touch the spring, or, more precisely, to produce the accusing letter.

Horatio sat silent, looking out over the lake now bathed in its full summer splendor. What a glory of color! What a profusion of life and joy of life! The birds, the insects, the myriad creatures of field and wood and lake, all happy in their several ways! There were the thrushes calling!

Horatio sighed. Why should not men and women be as carefree as these songsters of the air? Why all this sadness in a world that God had made so beautiful? Why all this sorrow and sin?

Horatio turned to the girl beside him, and there was a wonderful light in his eyes, the light of humility and spiritual love. She lifted her eyes to his, then dropped them, then lifted them again, then dropped them again. A strange thing had happened. The curate's heart was so filled with the spirit of kindness and pity that there was no resisting it, either by him or by her. His well planned attack and her watchful defense were alike unavailing against the spirit of kindness and pity!

Tears came suddenly into Horatio's eyes, and when he tried to speak there was a catch in his voice. He looked at this young woman. God's fair creature, and it seemed as if he read into her soul and understood. Then he reached out impulsively and took her two hands in his.

"My poor child! My poor child!" he murmured.

The gentle curate was far off the track of approved detective procedure. He was neither master of himself nor of the situation. His analytical mind had failed him, his intuitive insight also, leaving only the treasure of his heart as an available asset. Quite forgotten was his carefully set trap! And the girl's letter! And her lies! Just one fact remained, that here was a soul in distress, a sister pilgrim on life's hard highway who needed succor.

"You have suffered! You have suffered! I—I am sorry!" he added.

In Hester's whole life this was a unique moment. For years she had broken the law and had grown skilful in defending herself, after the fashion of law breakers. Had Merle sprung his trap it is doubtful if he would have caught her. Had he challenged her with the letter it is more than likely she would have found some way of explaining it. Had he pointed out her lies she would have saved herself by other lies. That was the sort of thing she knew how to do, but she had never learned to defend herself against love; she didn't know the answering move to pity—and when he looked at her like that—as Rosalie had looked—and told her he was sorry, why—it got right through her guard, it was more than she could bear, and, before either of them knew it, that world-old miracle, the power of simple goodness, had been shown again, and one more starved soul had heard and answered the silent voice.

Hester's bosom began to heave, her breath came in quick, sharp gulps, she clenched her hands and tried to fight this thing that was happening, but it was too strong for her.

"Wh—what is it?" she gasped, her eyes on him in desperate pleading.

"It is God calling you, my child. It is God calling," the curate whispered.

Then the storm broke in convulsive, hysterical weeping. And Horatio waited, without speaking, without trying to stem the flood.

"I—I've told you what isn't true," she confessed in broken tones. "I have no right to be here. I—I'm no good," and the storm broke again.

"Listen to me, my dear," said Merle soothingly. "We are all of us weak and sinful. I'm sure I don't know why, but it seems to be our fate to——"

"Wait!" sobbed the girl. "You don't know—what I am. You don't know—what I have done."

"I know you are sorry," he answered gently.

"Sorry," she repeated. "Oh, yes, I'm sorry, but that isn't enough. I'm going to tell you everything, and——"

"Stop! I don't want to know what you have done. I can help you better if I only know that you are sorry. Whatever your sins, they will be forgiven—if you ask God for forgiveness. You understand, my child?"

"I—I understand."

"If you see any way to make amends for any wrong act you must take that way."

The girl's head was bowed as if in prayer. "I will," she said.

"And in the future you must try—with all your heart and soul—— Say those words, my child."

He laid his hand tenderly on her glossy black hair.

"I will try in the future—with all my heart and soul," she murmured.

"To be honest, to be kind," he continued.

"To be honest, to be kind," she repeated.

"I will ask God every day to give me strength against temptation."

"I will ask God every day—to give me strength against temptation."

"For Jesus' sake. Amen."

"For Jesus' sake. Amen."

CHAPTER XXI

THE QUARREL

In less than forty-eight hours after her arrival in Brighton, Mrs. Baxter had completely recovered from the shock of her midnight encounter with the Gray Lady. On the afternoon of the second day she sat in the window of her fifth floor suite at the Metropole watching the fluttering, swaying, glittering procession on the promenade below, a frolic of glad colors that might have sworn at each other in a ballroom the night before now mingling happily together in the golden urbanity of the sunshine. Some such thought must have formed itself in Eleanor's mind as she suddenly exclaimed. "You can really wear any color on a day like this!"

Mrs. Baxter called to the maid who was moving about in an adjoining bedroom, "Oh, Gibson, did I bring my sapphire voile with the duchesse lace? Thank you—I was afraid it had been left."

"And the cerise foulard?—Oh—good!"

On the lower promenade the people looked like colored beads, and still further away, on the dazzling white of the sands, they were minute dark specks. Low against the blue wall of sky hung the ocean like an indigo blackboard on which figures in white chalk wrote and rewrote and rubbed themselves out with magical monotony.

The wind blowing whither it listed raised an edge of the muslin curtain and drew it softly across Eleanor's cheek and in the ocean of femininity below her window a bright colored wave swelled and tossed and broke in lawny froth.

"What a windy place!" Eleanor drew a deep breath and inwardly exulted as she recalled the lavender scented contents of the largest and lightest of her trunks.

Meanwhile Betty was taking a lonely walk on the gayly crowded upper promenade. Her sense of desolation was intensified by the hubbub of voices about her, the laughter, the shrieks of distant bathers, the throb of a far off brass band, the cry of a man selling shrimps somewhere below.

It would have been hard to devise a program less pleasing to Mr. Baxter's secretary, than this trip to Brighton. Ipping House was, at this moment, the one and only place on earth where she wished to be. At Ipping House she could, at least, have kept an eye on Kate Clendennin. There was no mistaking the countess' designs on Bob. Betty's hatred of the countess was temperamental, the hatred of the tendril haired blonde for the straight haired blonde.

Elizabeth Thompson clenched her fingers as she thought of her old playmate helpless in the toils of that unscrupulous woman. There was no question in Betty's mind about Kate's power of attraction, yet at this moment the only thing she envied the countess was her unique gift for what is sometimes called "language." She was sorely tempted to borrow a few tonic words from Kate Clendennin's vocabulary.

There was a surprise in store for Betty on her return to the hotel.

"Read that," said Eleanor, full of elation, handing her an open telegram. "Read it aloud," she added laughing, "I can't hear it too often."

It was from Bob in London to say that his father was letting him off for two or three days and he would be with them in time for seven o'clock dinner.

Betty read it aloud, conscious, through her lowered eyelids, of Eleanor Baxter's searching gaze. If Mrs. Baxter expected any revelation from Betty, she was disappointed.

"I'm so glad, Mrs. Baxter; that's just the one thing you need," the girl said calmly and went on with exasperating inconsequence. "It must be nearly five. Do you want tea?"

"No, I don't want tea, I want Bob," pouted Eleanor with an imitation of baby petulance.

"I want Bob," echoed a still small voice from the inmost heart of Betty, but her face betrayed nothing.

"My dear child," said Eleanor after watching her in silence for a while, "I wish you would drop that nonsense about being a secretary. The only way I can keep from letting it out to Bob is by not speaking your name at all. If I did I should be certain to call you Betty and that would be the end of it."

Miss Thompson was sorely tempted, her resolution was breaking down, but pride came to her rescue.

"Please, please don't," she entreated so earnestly that once again Mrs. Baxter yielded.

Bob arrived early enough for a good half hour alone with his mother before dressing. Betty in her own room was taking an unprecedented time in the choice of a dinner toilet.