The Man from Brodney's

THE CHÂTEAU

The road to the château took its devious way through the little town—out into the green foothill beyond. Two lumbering, wooden wheeled carts, none too clean, each drawn by four perspiring men, served as conveyances by which the arrivals were to make the journey to their new home. Mr. Bowles informed his lordship that horses were not submitted to the indignity of drawing carts. The lamented Mr. Skaggs had driven his own Arab steeds to certain fashionable traps, but the natives never thought of doing such a thing.

Lady Deppingham's pert little nose lifted itself in disgust as she was joggled through the town behind the grunting substitutes for horseflesh. She sat beside her husband in the foremost cart. Mr. Bowles, very tired, but quite resplendent, walked dutifully beside one wheel; Mr. Saunders took his post at the other. It might have been noticed that the latter cut a very different figure from that which he displayed on his first invasion of the street earlier in the day. The servants came along behind in the second cart. Far ahead, like hounds in full cry, toiled the unwilling luggage bearers. From the windows and doorways of every house, from the bazaars and cafés, from the side streets and mosque-approaches, the gaze of the sullen populace fastened itself upon the little procession. The town seemed ominously silent. Deppingham looked again and again at the red coat on the sloping shoulders of their guardian, and marvelled not a little at the vastness of the British dominion. He recalled his red hunting coat in one of the bags ahead, and mentally resolved to wear it on all occasions—perhaps going so far as to cut off its tails if necessary.

At last they came to the end of the sunlit street and plunged into the shady road that ascended the slope through what seemed to be an absolutely unbroken though gorgeous jungle. The cool green depths looked most alluring to the sun-baked travellers; they could almost imagine that they heard the dripping of fountains, the gurgling of rivulets, so like paradise was the prospect ahead. Lady Agnes could not restrain her cries of delighted amazement.

"It's like this all over the island, your ladyship," volunteered Mr. Bowles, mopping his brow in a most unmilitary way. "Except at the mines and back there in the town."

"Where are the mines?" asked Deppingham.

"The company's biggest mines are seven or eight miles eastward, as the crow flies, quite at the other side of the island. It's very rocky over there and there's no place for a landing from the sea. Everything is brought overland to Aratat and placed in the vaults of the bank. Four times a year the rubies and sapphires are shipped to the brokers in London and Paris and Vienna. It's quite a neat and regular arrangement, sir."

"But I should think the confounded natives would steal everything they got their hands on."

"What would be the use, sir? They couldn't dispose of a single gem on the island, and nothing is taken away from here except in the company's chests. Besides, my lord, these people are not thieves. They are absolutely honest. Smugglers have tried to bribe them, and the smugglers have never lived to tell of it. They may kill people occasionally, but they are quite honest, believe me. And, in any event, are they not a part of the great corporation? They have their share in the working of the mines and in the profits. Mr. Wyckholme and Mr. Skaggs were honest with them and they have been just as honest in return."

"Sounds very attractive," muttered Deppingham sceptically.

"I should think they'd be terribly tempted," said Lady Agnes. "They look so wretchedly poor."

"They are a bit out at the knees," said her husband, with a great laugh.

"My lady," said Bowles, "there are but four poor men on the island: myself and the three Englishmen who operate the bank. There isn't a poor man, woman or child among the natives. This is truly a land of rich men. The superintendent of the mines is a white man—a German—and the three foremen are Boers. They work on shares just as the natives do and save even more, I think. The clerical force is entirely native. There were but ten white men here before you came, including two Greeks. There are no beggars. Perhaps you noticed that no one was asking for alms as you came up."

"'Gad, I should say we did," exclaimed Deppingham ruefully. "There wasn't even a finger held out to us. But is this a holiday on the island?"

"A holiday, my lord?"

"Yes. No one seems to be at work."

"Oh? I see. Being part owners the natives have decided that four hours constitutes a day's work. They pay themselves accordingly, as it were. No one works after midday, sir."

"I say, wouldn't this be a paradise for the English workingman?" said Deppingham. "That's the kind of a day's labor they'd like. Do you mean to say that these fellows trudge eight miles to work every morning and back again at noon?"

"Certainly not, sir. They ride their thoroughbred horses to work and ride them back again. It's much better than omnibuses or horse cars, I'd say, sir—as I remember them."

"You take my breath away," said the other, lapsing into a stunned silence.

The road had become so steep and laborious by this time that Bowles was very glad to forego the pleasure of talking. He fell back, with Mr. Saunders, and ultimately both of them climbed into the already overloaded second cart, adding much to the brown man's burden. After regaining his breath to some extent, the obliging Mr. Bowles, now being among what he called the lower classes, surreptitiously removed the tight-fitting red jacket, and proceeded to give the inquisitive lawyer's clerk all the late news of the island.

The inhabitants of Japat, standing upon their rights as part owners of the mines and as prospective heirs to the entire fortune of Messrs. Skaggs and Wyckholme, had been prompt to protect themselves in a legal sense. They had leagued themselves together as one interest and had engaged the services of eminent solicitors in London, who were to represent them in the final settlement of the estate. London was to be the battle ground in the coming conflict. A committee of three had journeyed to England to put the matter in the hands of these lawyers and were now returning to the island with a representative of the firm, who was coming out to stand guard, so to speak. Von Blitz, the German superintendent, was the master mind in the native contingent. It was he who planned and developed the course of action. The absent committee was composed of Ben Adi, Abdallah Ben Sabbat and Rasula, the Aratat lawyer. They were truly wise men from the East—old, shrewd, crafty and begotten of Mahomet.

The mines continued to be operated as usual, pending the arrival of the executors' representative, who, as we know, was now on the ground in the person of Thomas Saunders. The fact that he also served as legal adviser to Lady Deppingham was not of sufficient moment to disturb the arrangements on either side. Every one realised that he could have no opportunity to exercise a prejudice, if he dared to have one. Saunders blinked his eyes nervously when Bowles made this pointed observation.

As for the American heir, Robert Browne, he had not yet arrived. He was coming by steamer from the west, according to report, and was probably on the Boswell, Sumatra to Madagascar, due off Aratat in two or three days. Mr. Bowles jocosely inferred that it should be a very happy family at the château, with the English and American heirs ever ready to heave things at one another, regardless of propriety or the glassware.

"The islanders," said Mr. Bowles, lighting a cigarette, "it looks to me, have all the best of the situation. They get the property whether they marry or not, while the original beneficiaries have to marry each other or get off the island at the end of the year. Most of the islanders have got three or four wives already. I daresay the legators took that into consideration when they devised the will. Von Blitz, the German, has three and is talking of another."

"You mean to say that they can have as many wives as they choose?" demanded Saunders, wrinkling his brow.

"Yes, just so long as they don't choose anybody else's."

Saunders was buried in thought for a long time, then he exclaimed, unconsciously aloud:

"My word!"

"Eh?" queried Bowles, arousing himself.

"I didn't say anything," retorted Saunders, looking up into the tree tops.

In the course of an hour—a soft, sleepy hour, too, despite the wondrous novelty of the scene and the situation—the travellers came into view of the now famous château.

Standing out against the sky, fully a mile ahead, was the home to which they were coming. The château, beautiful as a picture, lifted itself like a dream castle above all that was earthly and sordid; it smiled down from its lofty terrace and glistened in the sunset glow, like the jewel that had been its godmother. Long and low, scolloped by its gables, parapets and budding towers, the vast building gleamed red against the blue sky from one point of view and still redder against the green mountain from another. Soft, rich reds—not the red of blood, but of the unpolished ruby—seemed to melt softly in the eye as one gazed upward in simple wonder. The dream house of two lonely old men who had no place where they could spend their money!

According to its own records, the château, fashioned quite closely after a famous structure in France, was designed and built by La Marche, the ill-fated French architect who was lost at sea in the wreck of the Vendome. Three years and more than seven hundred thousand pounds sterling, or to make it seem more prodigious, nearly eighteen million francs, were consumed in its building. An army of skilled artisans had come out from France and Austria to make this quixotic dream a reality before the two old men should go into their dreamless sleep; to say nothing of the slaving, faithful islanders who laboured for love in the great undertaking. Specially chartered ships had carried material and men to the island—and had carried the men away again, for not one of them remained behind after the completion of the job.

There was not a contrivance or a convenience known to modern architecture that was not included in the construction of this latter-day shadow of antiquity.

It was, to step on ahead of the story as politely as possible, fully a week before Lord and Lady Deppingham realised all that their new home meant in the way of scientific improvement and, one might say, research. It was so spacious, so comprehensive of domain, so elaborate, that one must have been weeks in becoming acquainted with its fastnesses, if that word may be employed. To what uses Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme could have put this vast, though splendid waste, the imagination cannot grasp. Apartments fit for a king abounded; suites which took one back to the luxuries of Marie Antoinette were common; banquet halls, ball rooms, reception halls, a chapel, and even a crypt were to be found if one undertook a voyage of discovery. Perhaps it is safe to say that none of these was ever used by the original owners, with the exception of the crypt; John Wyckholme reposed there, alone in his dignity, undisturbed by so little as the ghost of a tradition.

The terrace, wide and beautiful, was the work of a famous landscape gardener. Engineers had come out from England to install the most complete water and power plant imaginable. Not only did they bring water up from the sea, but they turned the course of a clear mountain stream so that it virtually ran through the pipes and faucets of the vast establishment. The fountains rivalled in beauty those at Versailles, though not so extensive; the artificial lake, while not built in a night, as one other that history mentions, was quite as attractive. Water mains ran through miles of the tropical forest and, no matter how great the drouth, the natives kept the verdure green and fresh with a constancy that no real wage-earner could have exercised. As to the stables, they might have aroused envy in the soul of any sporting monarch.

It was a palace, but they had called it a château, because Skaggs stubbornly professed to be democratic. The word palace meant more to him than château, although opinions could not have mattered much on the island of Japat. Inasmuch as he had not, to his dying day, solved the manifold mysteries of the structure, it is not surprising that he never developed sufficient confidence to call it other than "the place."

Now and then, officers from some British man-of-war stopped off for entertainment in the château, and it was only on such occasions that Skaggs realised what a gorgeously beautiful home it was that he lived in. He had seen Windsor Castle in his youth, but never had he seen anything so magnificent as the crystal chandelier in his own hallway when it was fully lighted for the benefit of the rarely present guests. On the occasion of his first view of the chandelier in its complete glory, it is said that he walked blindly against an Italian table of solid marble and was in bed for eleven days with a bruised hip. The polished floors grew to be a horror to him. He could not enumerate the times their priceless rugs had slipped aimlessly away from him, leaving him floundering in profane wrath upon the glazed surface. The bare thought of crossing the great ballroom was enough to send him into a perspiration. He became so used to walking stiff-legged on the hardwood floors that it grew to be a habit which would not relax. The servants were authority for the report, that no earlier than the day before his death, he slipped and fell in the dining-room, and thereupon swore that he would have Portland cement floors put in before Christmas.

Lord and Lady Deppingham, being first in the field, at once proceeded to settle themselves in the choicest rooms—a Henry the Sixth suite which looked out on the sea and the town as well. It is said that Wyckholme slept there twice, while Skaggs looked in perhaps half a dozen times—when he was lost in the building, and trying to find his way back to familiar haunts.

There was not a sign of a servant about the house or grounds. The men whom Bowles had engaged, carried the luggage to the rooms which Lady Deppingham selected, and then vanished as if into space. They escaped while the new tenants were gorging their astonished, bewildered eyes with the splendors of the apartment.

"We'll have to make the best of it," sighed Deppingham in response to his wife's lamentations. "I daresay, Antoine and the maids can get our things into some sort of shape, my dear. What say to a little stroll about the grounds while they are doing it? By Jove, it would be exciting if we were to find a ruby or two. Saunders says they are as common as strawberries in July."

Mr. Bowles, who had resumed his coat of red, joined them in the stroll about the gardens, pointing out objects of certain interest and telling the cost of each to the penny.

"I can't conduct you through the château," he apologised as they were returning after the short tour. "They can't close the bank until I set the balance sheet, sir, and it's now two hours past closing time. It doesn't matter, however, my lord," he added hastily, "we enjoy anything in the shape of a diversion."

"See here, Mr.—er—old chap, what are we to do about servants? We can't get on without them, you know."

"Oh, the horses are being well cared for in the valley, sir. You needn't worry a bit—"

"Horses! What we want, is to be cared for ourselves. Damn the horses," roared his lordship.

"They say these Americans are a wonderful people, my lord," ventured Mr. Bowles. "I daresay when Mr. and Mrs. Browne arrive, they'll have some way of—"

"Browne!" cried her ladyship. "This very evening I shall give orders concerning the rooms they are to occupy. And that reminds me: I must look the place over thoroughly before they arrive. I suppose, however, that the rooms we have taken are the best?"

"The choicest, my lady," said Bowles, bowing.

"See here, Mr.—er—old chap, don't you think you can induce the servants to come back to us? By Jove, I'll make it worth your while. The place surely must need cleaning up a bit. It's some months since the old—since Mr. Skaggs died." He always said "Skaggs" after a scornful pause and in a tone as disdainfully nasal as it was possible for him to produce.

"Not at all, my lord. The servants did not leave the place until your steamer was sighted this morning. It's as clean as a pin."

"This morning?"

"Yes, my lord. They would not desert the château until they were sure you were on board. They were extraordinarily faithful."

"I don't see it that way, leaving us like this. What's to become of the place? Can't I get an injunction, or whatever you call it?"

"What are we to do?" wailed Lady Agnes, sitting down suddenly upon the edge of a fountain.

"You see, my lady, they take the position that you have no right here," volunteered Bowles.

"How absurd! I am heir to every foot of this island—"

"They are very foolish about it I'm sure. They've got the ridiculous idea into their noddles that you can't be the heiress unless Lord Deppingham passes away inside of a year, and—"

"I'm damned if I do!" roared the perspiring obstacle. "I'm not so obliging as that, let me tell you. If it comes to that, what sort of an ass do they think I'd be to come away out here to pass away? London's good enough for any man to die in."

"You are not going to die, Deppy," said his wife consolingly. "Unless you starve to death," she supplemented with an expressive moue.

"I daresay you'll find a quantity of tinned meats and vegetables in the storehouse, my lady. You can't starve until the supply gives out. American tinned meats," vouchsafed Mr. Bowles with his best English grimace.

"Come along, Aggy," said her liege lord resignedly. "Let's have a look about the place."

Mr. Saunders met them at the grand entrance. He announced that four of the native servants had been found, dead drunk, in the wine cellar.

"They can't move, sir. We thought they were dead."

"Keep 'em in that condition, for the good Lord's sake," exclaimed Deppingham. "We'll make sure of four servants, even if we have to keep 'em drunk for six months."

"Good day, your lordship—my lady," said Bowles, edging away. "Perhaps I can intercede for you when their solicitor comes on. He's due to-morrow, I hear. It is possible that he may advise at least a score of the servants to return."

"Send him up to me as soon as he lands," commanded Deppingham calmly.

"Very good, sir," said Mr. Bowles.

THE BROWNES ARRIVE

Contrary to all expectations, the Brownes arrived the next morning. The Deppinghams and their miserably frightened servants were scarcely out of bed when Saunders came in with the news that a steamer was standing off the shallow harbour. Bowles had telephoned up that the American claimant was on board.

Lady Agnes and her husband had not slept well. They heard noises from one end of the night to the other, and they were most unusual noises at that. The maids had flatly refused to sleep in the servants' wing, fully a block away, so they were given the next best suite of rooms on the floor, quite cutting off every chance the Brownes may have had for choice of apartments. Pong howled all night long, but his howls were as nothing compared to the screams of night birds in the trees close by.

The deepest gloom pervaded the household when Lady Deppingham discovered that not one of their retinue knew how to make coffee or broil bacon. Not that she cared for bacon, but that his lordship always asked for it when they did not have it. The evening before they had philosophically dined on tinned food. She brewed a delightful tea, and Antoine opened three or four kinds of wine. Altogether it was not so bad. But in the morning! Everything looked different in the morning. Everything always does, one way or another.

Bromley upset the last peg of endurance by hoping that the Americans were bringing a cook and a housemaid with them.

"The Americans always travel like lords," she concluded, forgetting that she served a lord, and not in the least intending to be ironical.

"That will do, Bromley," said her mistress sharply. "If they're like most Americans I've seen they'll have nothing but wet nurses and chauffeurs. I can't eat this vile stuff." She had already burned her fingers and dropped a slice of beechnut bacon on her sweet little morning gown. "Come on, Deppy; let's go up and watch the approach of the enemy."

Dolefully they passed out of the culinary realm; it is of record that they never looked into it from that hour forth. On the broad, vine-covered gallery they sat in dour silence and in silence took turns with Deppy's binoculars in the trying effort to make out what was going on in the offing. The company's tug seemed unusually active. It bustled about the big steamer with an industriousness that seemed almost frantic. The laziness that had marked its efforts of the day before was amazingly absent. At last they saw it turn for the shore, racing inward with a great churning of waves and a vast ado in its smokestack.

From their elevated position, the occupants of the gallery could see the distant pier. When the tug drew up to its moorings, the same motionless horde of white-robed natives lined up along the dock building. Trunks, boxes and huge crated objects were hustled off the boat with astonishing rapidity. Deppingham stared hard and unbelieving at this evidence of haste.

Five or six strangers stood upon the pier, very much as their party had stood the day before. There were four women and—yes, two men. The men seemed to be haranguing the natives, although no gesticulations were visible. Suddenly there was a rush for the trunks and boxes and crates, and, almost before the Lady Agnes could catch the breath she had lost, the whole troupe was hurrying up the narrow street, luggage and all. The once-sullen natives seemed to be fighting for the privilege of carrying something. A half dozen of them dashed hither and thither and returned with great umbrellas, which they hoisted above the heads of the newcomers. Lady Agnes sank back, faint with wonder, as the concourse lost itself among the houses of the agitated town.

Scarcely half an hour passed before the advance guard of the Browne company came into view at the park gates below. Deppingham recalled the fact that an hour and a half had been consumed in the accomplishment yesterday. He was keeping a sharp lookout for the magic red jacket and the Tommy Atkins lid. Quite secure from observation, he and his wife watched the forerunners with the hand bags; then came the sweating trunk bearers and then the crated objects in—what? Yes, by the Lord Harry, in the very carts that had been their private chariots the day before!

Deppingham's wrath did not really explode until the two were gazing open-mouthed upon Robert Browne and his wife and his maidservants and his ass—for that was the name which his lordship subsequently applied, with no moderation, to the unfortunate gentleman who served as Mr. Browne's attorney. The Americans were being swiftly, cozily carried to their new home in litters of oriental comfort and elegance, fanned vigorously from both sides by eager boys. First came the Brownes, eager-faced, bright-eyed, alert young people, far better looking than their new enemies could conscientiously admit under the circumstances; then the lawyer from the States; then a pert young lady in a pink shirt waist and a sailor hat; then two giggling, utterly un-English maids—and all of them lolling in luxurious ease. The red jacket was conspicuously absent.

It is not to be wondered at that his lordship looked at his wife, gulped in sympathy, and then said something memorable.

Almost before they could realise what had happened the newcomers were chattering in the spacious halls below, tramping about the rooms, and giving orders in high, though apparently efficacious voices. Trunks rattled about the place, barefooted natives shuffled up and down the corridors and across the galleries, quick American heels clattered on the marble stairways; and all this time the English occupants sat in cold silence, despising the earth and all that therein dwelt.

Mr. and Mrs. Browne evidently believed in the democratic first principles of their native land: they did not put themselves above their fellow-man. Close at their heels trooped the servants, all of whom took part in the discussion incident to fresh discoveries. At last they came upon the great balcony, pausing just outside the French windows to exclaim anew in their delight.

"Great!" said the lawyer man, after a full minute. He was not at all like Mr. Saunders, who looked on from an obscure window in the distant left. "Finest I've ever seen. Isn't it a picture, Browne?"

"Glorious," said young Mr. Browne, taking a long breath. The Deppinghams, sitting unobserved, saw that he was a tall, good-looking fellow. They were unconscionably amused when he suddenly reached out and took his wife's hand in his big fingers. Her face was flushed with excitement, her eyes were wide and sparkling. She was very trim and cool-looking in her white duck; moreover, she was of the type that looks exceedingly attractive in evening dress—at least, that was Deppingham's innermost reflection. It was not until after many weeks had passed, however, that Lady Agnes admitted that Brasilia Browne was a very pretty young woman.

"Most American women are, after a fashion," she then confessed to Deppingham, and not grudgingly.

"What does Baedeker say about it, Bobby?" asked Mrs. Browne. Her voice was very soft and full—the quiet, well-modulated Boston voice and manner.

"Baedeker?" whispered Deppingham, passing his hand over his brow in bewilderment. His wife was looking serenely in the opposite direction.

The pert girl in the pink waist opened a small portfolio while the others gathered around her. She read therefrom. The lawyer, when she had concluded, drew a compass from his pocket, and, walking over to the stone balustrade, set it down for observation. Then he pointed vaguely into what proved to be the southwest.

"We must tell Lady Deppingham not to take the rooms at this end," was the next thing that the listeners heard from Mrs. Browne's lips. Her ladyship turned upon her husband with a triumphant sniff and a knowing smile.

"What did I tell you?" she whispered. "I knew they'd want the best of everything. Isn't it lucky I pounced upon those rooms? They shan't turn us out. You won't let 'em, will you, Deppy?"

"The impudence of 'em!" was all that Deppy could sputter.

At that moment, the American party caught sight of the pair in the corner. For a brief space of time the two parties stared at each other, very much as the hunter and the hunted look when they come face to face without previous warning. Then a friendly, half-abashed smile lighted Browne's face. He came toward the Deppinghams, his straw hat in his hand. His lordship retained his seat and met the smile with a cold stare of superiority.

"I beg your pardon," said Browne. "This is Lord Deppingham?"

"Ya-as," drawled Deppy, with a look which was meant to convey the impression that he did not know who the deuce he was addressing.

"Permit me to introduce myself. I am Robert Browne."

"Oh," said Deppy, as if that did not convey anything to him. Then as an afterthought: "Glad to know you, I'm sure." Still he did not rise, nor did he extend his hand. For a moment young Browne waited, a dull red growing in his temples.

"Don't you intend to present me to Lady Deppingham?" he demanded bluntly, without taking his eyes from Deppy's face.

"Oh—er—is that necess—"

"Lady Deppingham," interrupted Browne, turning abruptly from the man in the chair and addressing the lady in azure blue who sat on the balustrade, "I am Robert Browne, the man you are expected to marry. Please don't be alarmed. You won't have to marry me. Our grandfathers did not observe much ceremony in mating us, so I don't see why we should stand upon it in trying to convince them of their error. We are here for the same purpose, I suspect. We can't be married to each other. That's out of the question. But we can live together as if we—"

"Good Lord!" roared Deppy, coming to his feet in a towering rage. Browne smiled apologetically and lifted his hand.

"—as if we were serving out the prescribed period of courtship set down in the will. Believe me, I am very happily married, as I hope you are. The courtship, you will perceive, is neither here nor there. Please bear with me, Lord Deppingham. It's the silly will that brings us together, not an affinity. Our every issue is identical, Lady Deppingham. Doesn't it strike you that we will be very foolish if we stand alone and against each other?"

"My solicitor—" began Lady Deppingham, and then stopped. She was smiling in spite of herself. This frank, breezy way of putting it had not offended her, after all, much to her surprise.

"Your solicitor and mine can get together and talk it over," said Browne blandly. "We'll leave it to them. I simply want you to know that I am not here for the purpose of living at swords' points with you. I am quite ready to be a friendly ally, not a foe."

"Let me understand you," began Deppingham, cooling off suddenly. "Do you mean to say that you are not going to fight us in this matter?"

"Not at all, your lordship," said Browne coolly. "I am here to fight Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, deceased. I imagine, if you'll have a talk with your solicitor, that that is precisely what you are here for, too. As next nearest of kin, I think both of us will run no risk if we smash the will. If we don't smash it, the islanders will cheerfully take the legacy off our hands."

"By Jove," muttered Deppy, looking at his wife.

"Thank you, Mr. Browne, for being so frank with us," she said coolly. "If you don't mind, I will consult my solicitor." She bowed ever so slightly, indicating that the interview was at an end, and, moreover, that it had not been of her choosing.

"Any time, your ladyship," said Browne, also bowing. "I think Mrs. Browne wants to speak to you about the rooms."

"We are quite settled, Mr. Browne, and very well satisfied," she said pointedly, turning red with a fresh touch of anger.

"I trust you have not taken the rooms at this end."

"We have. We are occupying them." She arose and started away, Deppingham hesitating between his duty to her and the personal longing to pull Browne's nose.

"I'm sorry," said Browne. "We were warned not to take them. They are said to be unbearable when the hot winds come in October."

"What's that?" demanded Deppingham.

"The book of instruction and description which we have secured sets all that out," said the other. "Mr. Britt, my attorney, had his stenographer take it all down in Bombay. It's our private Baedeker, you see. We called on the Bombay agent for the Skaggs-Wyckholme Company. He lived with them in this house for ten months. No one ever slept in this end of the building. It's strange that the servants didn't warn you."

"The da—the confounded servants left us yesterday before we came—every mother's son of 'em. There isn't a servant on the place."

"What? You don't mean it?"

"Are you coming?" called Lady Deppingham from the doorway.

"At once, my dear," replied Deppingham, shuffling uneasily. "By Jove, we're in a pretty mess, don't you know. No servants, no food, no----"

"Wait a minute, please," interrupted Browne. "I say, Britt, come here a moment, will you? Lord Deppingham says the servants have struck."

The American lawyer, a chubby, red-faced man of forty, with clear grey eyes and a stubby mustache, whistled soulfully.

"What's the trouble? Cut their wages?" he asked.

"Wages? My good man, we've never laid eyes on 'em," said Deppingham, drawing himself up.

"I'll see what I can do, Mr. Browne. Got to have cooks, eh, Lord Deppingham?" Without waiting for an answer he dashed off. His lordship observing that his wife had disappeared, followed Browne to the balustrade, overlooking the upper terrace. The native carriers were leaving the grounds, when Britt's shrill whistle brought them to a standstill. No word of the ensuing conversation reached the ears of the two white men on the balcony, but the pantomime was most entertaining.

Britt's stocky figure advanced to the very heart of the group. It was quite evident that his opening sentences were listened to impassively. Then, all at once, the natives began to gesticulate furiously and to shake their heads. Whereupon Britt pounded the palm of his left hand with an emphatic right fist, occasionally pointing over his shoulder with a stubborn thumb. At last, the argument dwindled down to a force of two—Britt and a tall, sallow Mohammedan. For two minutes they harangued each other and then the native gave up in despair. The lawyer waved a triumphant hand to his friends and then climbed into one of the litters, to be borne off in the direction of the town.

"He'll have the servants back at work before two o'clock," said Browne calmly. Deppingham was transfixed with astonishment.

"How—how the devil do you—does he bring 'em to time like that?" he murmured. He afterward said that if he had had Saunders there at that humiliating moment he would have kicked him.

"They're afraid of the American battleship," said Browne.

"But where is the American battleship?" demanded Deppingham, looking wildly to sea.

"They understand that there will be one here in a day or two if we need it," said Browne with a sly grin. "That's the bluff we've worked." He looked around for his wife, and, finding that she had gone inside, politely waved his hand to the Englishman and followed.

At three o'clock, Britt returned with the recalcitrant servants—or at least the "pick" of them, as he termed the score he had chosen from the hundred or more. He seemed to have an Aladdin-like effect over the horde. It did not appear to depress him in the least that from among the personal effects of more than one peeped the ominous blade of a kris, or the clutch of a great revolver. He waved his hand and snapped his fingers and they herded into the servants' wing, from which in a twinkling they emerged ready to take up their old duties. They were not a liveried lot, but they were swift and capable.

Calmly taking Lord Deppingham and his following into his confidence, he said, in reply to their indignant remonstrances, later on in the day:

"I know that an American man-o'-war hasn't any right to fire upon British possessions, but you just keep quiet and let well enough alone. These fellows believe that the Americans can shoot straighter and with less pity than any other set of people on earth. If they ever find out the truth, we won't be able to control 'em a minute. It won't hurt you to let 'em believe that we can blow the Island off the map in half a day, and they won't believe you if you tell 'em anything to the contrary. They just simply know that I can send wireless messages and that a cruiser would be out there to-morrow if necessary, pegging away at these green hills with cannon balls so big that there wouldn't be anything left but the horizon in an hour or two. You let me do the talking. I've got 'em bluffed and I'll keep 'em that way. Look at that! See those fellows getting ready to wash the front windows? They don't need it, I'll confess, but it makes conversation in the servants' hall."

Over in the gorgeous west wing, Lord Deppingham later on tried to convince his sulky little wife that the Americans were an amazing lot, after all. Bromley tapped at the door.

"Tea is served in the hanging garden, my lady," she announced. Her mistress looked up in surprise, red-eyed and a bit dishevelled.

"The—the what?"

"It's a very pretty place just outside the rooms of the American lady and gentleman, my lady. It's on the shady side and quite under the shelf of the mountain. There's a very cool breeze all the time, they say, from the caverns."

Deppingham glanced at the sun-baked window ledges of their own rooms and swore softly.

"Ask some one to bring the tea things in here, Bromley," she said sternly, her piquant face as hard and set as it could possibly be—which, as a matter of fact, was not noticeably adamantine. "Besides, I want to give some orders. We must have system here, not Americanisms."

"Very well, my lady."

After she had retired Deppingham was so unwise as to run his finger around the inside of his collar and utter the lamentation:

"By Jove, Aggie, it is hot in these rooms." She transfixed him with a stare.

"I find it delightfully cool, George." She called him George only when it was impossible to call him just what she wanted to.

The tea things did not come in; in their stead came pretty Mrs. Browne. She stood in the doorway, a pleading sincere smile on her face.

"Won't you please join Mr. Browne and me in that dear little garden? It's so cool up there and it must be dreadfully warm here. Really, you should move at once into Mr. Wyckholme's old apartments across the court from ours. They are splendid. But, now do come and have tea with us."

Whether it was the English love of tea or the American girl's method of making it, I do not know, but I am able to record the fact that Lord and Lady Deppingham hesitated ever so briefly and—fell.

"Extraordinary, Browne," said Deppingham, half an hour later. "What wonders you chaps can perform."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Browne. "We only strive to land on our feet, that's all. Another cigarette, Lady Deppingham?"

"Thank you. They are delicious. Where do you get them, Mr. Browne?"

"From the housekeeper. Your grandfather brought them over from London. My grandfather stored them away."

THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S

It was quite forty-eight hours before the Deppinghams surrendered to the Brownes. They were obliged to humbly admit, in the seclusion of their own councils, that it was to the obnoxious but energetic Britt that they owed their present and ever-growing comfort.

It is said that Mr. Saunders learned more law of a useful and purposeful character during his first week of consultation with Britt than he could have dreamed that the statutes of England contained. Britt's brain was a whirlpool of suggestions, tricks, subterfuges and—yes, witticisms—that Saunders never even pretended to appreciate, although he was obliging enough to laugh at the right time quite as often as at the wrong. "He talks about what Dan Webster said, how Dan Voorhees could handle a jury, why Abe Lincoln and Andy Jackson were so—" Saunders would begin in a dazzled sort of way.

"Mr. Saunders, will you be good enough to ask Bromley to take Pong out for a walk?" her ladyship would interrupt languidly, and Saunders would descend to the requirements of his position.

Late in the afternoon of the day following the advent of the Brownes, Lord and Lady Deppingham were laboriously fanning themselves in the midst of their stifling Marie Antoinette elegance.

"By Jove, Aggie, it's too beastly hot here for words," growled he for the hundredth time. "I think we'd better move into your grandfather's rooms."

"Now, Deppy, don't let the Brownes talk you into everything they suggest," she complained, determined to be stubborn to the end. "They know entirely too much about the place already; please don't let them know you as intimately."

"That's all very good, my dear, but you know quite as well as I that we made a frightful mistake in choosing these rooms. It is cooler on that side of the house. I'm not too proud to be comfortable, don't you know. Have you had a look at your grandfather's rooms?"

She was silent for a long time, pondering. "No, I haven't, Deppy, but I don't mind going over there now with you—just for a look. We can do it without letting them see us, you know."

Just as they were ready to depart stealthily for the distant wing, a servant came up to their rooms with a note from Mrs. Browne. It was an invitation to join the Americans at dinner that evening in the grand banquet hall. Across the bottom of Mrs. Browne's formal little note, her husband had jauntily scrawled: "Just to see how small we'll feel in a ninety by seventy dining-room" Lady Deppingham flushed and her eyes glittered as she handed the note to her husband.

"Rubbish!" she exclaimed. Paying no heed to the wistful look in his eyes or to the appealing shuffle of his foot, she sent back a dignified little reply to the effect that "A previous engagement would prevent, etc." The polite lie made it necessary for them to venture forth at dinner time to eat their solitary meal of sardines and wafers in the grove below. The menu was limited to almost nothing because Deppy refused to fill his pockets with "tinned things and biscuit."

The next day they moved into the west wing, and that evening they had the Brownes to dine with them in the banquet hall. Deppingham awoke in the middle of the night with violent cramps in his stomach. He suffered in silence for a long time, but, the pain growing steadily worse, his stoicism gave way to alarm. A sudden thought broke in upon him, and with a shout that was almost a shriek he called for Antoine. The valet found him groaning and in a cold perspiration.

"Don't say a word to Lady Deppingham," he grunted, sitting up in bed and gazing wildly at the ceiling, "but I've been poisoned. The demmed servants—ouch!—don't you know! Might have known. Silly ass! See what I mean? Get something for me—quick!"

For two hours Antoine applied hot water bags and soothing syrups, and his master, far from dying as he continually prophesied, dropped off into a peaceful sleep.

The next morning Deppingham, fully convinced that the native servants had tried to poison him, inquired of his wife if she had felt the alarming symptoms. She confessed to a violent headache, but laid it to the champagne. Later on, the rather haggard victim approached Browne with subtle inquiries. Browne also had a headache, but said he wasn't surprised. Fifteen minutes later, Deppingham, taking the bit in his quivering mouth, unconditionally discharged the entire force of native servants. He was still in a cold perspiration when he sent Saunders to tell his wife what he had done and what a narrow escape all of them had had from the treacherous Moslems.

Of course, there was a great upheaval. Lady Agnes came tearing down to the servants' hall, followed directly by the Brownes and Mr. Britt. The natives were ready to depart, considerably nonplussed, but not a little relieved.

"Stop!" she cried. "Deppy, what are you doing? Discharging them after we've had such a time getting them? Are you crazy?"

"They're a pack of snakes—I mean sneaks. They're assassins. They tried to poison every one of us last—"

"Nonsense! You ate too much. Besides, what's the odds between being poisoned and being starved to death? Where is Mr. Britt?" She gave a sharp cry of relief as Britt came dashing down the corridor. "We must engage them all over again," she lamented, after explaining the situation. "Stand in the door, Deppy, and don't let them out until Mr. Britt has talked with them," she called to the disgraced nobleman.

"They won't stop for me," he muttered, looking at the half-dozen krises that were visible.

Britt smoothed the troubled waters with astonishing ease; the servants returned to their duties, but not without grumbling and no end of savage glances, all of which were levelled at the luckless Deppingham.

"By Jove, you'll see, sooner or later," he protested, like the schoolboy, almost ready to hope that the servants would bear him out by doling out ample quantities of strychnine that very night.

"Why poison?" demanded Britt. "They've got knives and guns, haven't they?"

"My dear man, that would put them to no end of trouble, cleaning up after us," said Deppingham, loftily.

The next day the horses were brought in from the valley, and the traps were put to immediate use. A half-dozen excursions were planned by the now friendly beneficiaries; life on the island, aside from certain legal restraints, began to take on the colour of a real holiday.

Two lawyers, each clever in his own way, were watching every move with the faithfulness of brooding hens. Both realised, of course, that the great fight would take place in England; they were simply active as outposts in the battle of wits. They posed amiably as common allies in the fight to keep the islanders from securing a single point of vantage during the year.

"If they hadn't been in such a hurry to get married," Britt would lament.

"Do you know, I don't believe a man should marry before he's thirty, a woman twenty-six," Saunders would observe in return.

"You're right, Saunders. I agree with you. I was married twice before I was thirty," reflected Britt on one occasion.

"Ah," sympathised Saunders. "You left a wife at home, then?"

"Two of 'em," said Britt, puffing dreamily. "But they are other men's wives now." Saunders was half an hour grasping the fact that Britt had been twice divorced.

Meanwhile, it may be well to depict the situation from the enemy's point of view—the enemy being the islanders as a unit. They were prepared to abide by the terms of the will so long as it remained clear to them that fair treatment came from the opposing interests. Rasula, the Aratat lawyer, in mass meeting, had discussed the document. They understood its requirements and its restrictions; they knew, by this time, that there was small chance of the original beneficiaries coming into the property under the provisions. Moreover, they knew that a bitter effort would be made to break this remarkable instrument in the English courts. Their attitude, in consequence, toward the grandchildren of their former lords was inimical, to say the least.

"We can afford to wait a year," Rasula had said in another mass meeting after the two months of suspense which preceded the discovery that grandchildren really existed. "There is the bare possibility that they may never marry each other," he added sententiously. Later came the news that marriage between the heirs was out of the question. Then the islanders laughed as they toiled. But they were not to be caught napping. Jacob von Blitz, the superintendent, stolid German that he was, saw far into the future. It was he who set the native lawyer unceremoniously aside and urged competent representation in London. The great law firm headed by Sir John Brodney was chosen; a wide-awake representative of the distinguished solicitors was now on his way to the island with the swarthy committee which had created so much interest in the metropolis during its brief stay.

Jacob von Blitz came to the island when he was twenty years old. That was twenty years before the death of Taswell Skaggs. He had worked in the South African diamond fields and had no difficulty in securing employment with Skaggs and Wyckholme. Those were the days when the two Englishmen slaved night and day in the mines; they needed white men to stand beside them, for they looked ahead and saw what the growing discontent among the islanders was sure to mean in the end.

Von Blitz gradually lifted labour and responsibility from their shoulders; he became a valued man, not alone because of his ability as an overseer, but on account of the influence he had gained over the natives. It was he who acted as intermediary at the time of the revolt, many years before the opening of this tale. Through him the two issues were pooled; the present co-operative plan was the result. For this he was promptly accepted by both sides as deserving of a share corresponding to that of each native. From that day, he cast his lot with the islanders; it was to him that they turned in every hour of difficulty.

Von Blitz was shrewd enough to see that the grandchildren were not coming to the island for the mere pleasure of sojourning there; their motive was plain. It was he who advised—even commanded—the horde of servants to desert the château. If they had been able to follow his advice, the new residents would have been without "help" to the end of their stay. The end of their stay, he figured, would not be many weeks from its beginning if they were compelled to dwell there without the luxury of servants. Bowles often related the story of Von Blitz's rage when he found that the recalcitrants had been persuaded to resume work by the American lawyer.

He lived, with his three wives, in the hills just above and south of the town itself. The Englishmen who worked in the bank, and the three Boer foremen also, had houses up there where it was cooler, but Von Blitz was the only one who practised polygamy. His wives were Persian women and handsome after the Persian fashion.

There were many Persian, Turkish and Arabian women on the island, wives of the more potential men. It was no secret that they had been purchased from avaricious masters on the mainland, in Bagdad and Damascus and the Persian gulf ports—sapphires passing in exchange. Marriages were performed by the local priests. There were no divorces. Perhaps there may have been a few more wife murders than necessary, but, if one assumes to call wife murder a crime, he must be reminded that the natives of Japat were fatalists. In contradiction to this belief, however, it is related that one night a wife took it upon herself to reverse the lever of destiny: she slew her husband. That, of course, was a phase of fatalism that was not to be tolerated. The populace burned her at a stake before morning.

One hot, dry afternoon about a week after the reopening of the château, the siesta of a swarthy population was disturbed by the shouts of those who kept impatient watch of the sea. Five minutes later the whole town of Aratat knew that the smoke of a steamer lay low on the horizon. No one doubted that it came from the stack of the boat that was bringing Rasula and the English solicitor. Joy turned to exultation when the word came down from Von Blitz that it was the long-looked-for steamship, the Sir Joshua.

Just before dusk the steamer, flying the British colours, hove to off the town of Aratat and signalled for the company's tug. There was no one in Aratat too old, too young or too ill to stay away from the pier and its vicinity. Bowles telephoned the news to the château, and the occupants, in no little excitement, had their tea served on the grand colonnade overlooking the town.

Von Blitz stood at the landing place to welcome Rasula and his comrades, and to be the first to clasp the hand of the man from London. For the first time in his life his stolidity gave way to something resembling exhilaration. He cast more than one meaning glance at the château, and those near by him heard him chuckle from time to time. The horde of natives seethed back and forth as the tug came running in; every eye was strained to catch the first glimpse of—Rasula? No! Of the man from Brodney's!

At last his figure could be made out on the forward deck. His straw hat was at least a head higher than the turban of Rasula, who was indicating to him the interesting spots in the hills.

"He's big," commented Von Blitz, comfortably, more to himself than to his neighbour. "And young," he added a few minutes later. Bowles, standing at his side, offered the single comment:

"Good-looking."

As the tall stranger stepped from the boat to the pier, Von Blitz suddenly started back, a look of wonder in his soggy eyes. Then, a thrill of satisfaction shot through his brain. He turned a look of triumph upon Britt, who had elbowed through the crowd a moment before and was standing close by.

The newcomer was an American!