The Mysterious Mr. Quin

"I am so glad you have that nice little Mr. Satterthwaite there. He is awfully clever and knows all the big-wig spook people. You must have them all down and investigate things thoroughly. I am sure you will have a perfectly marvellous time, and I only wish I could be there, but I have really been quite ill the last few days. The hotels are so careless about the

"Sweet of you to send me the chocolates, darling, but surely just a Well bit silly, wasn't it? I mean, there's such wonderful confectionery out here.

"Bye-bye, darling, and have a lovely time laying the family ghosts. Bimbo says my tennis is coming on marvellously. Oceans of love.

"Yours,

BARBARA."

"Mother always wants me to call her Barbara," said Margery. "Simply silly, I think."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled a little. He realised that the stolid conservatism of her daughter must on occasions be very trying to Lady Stranleigh. The contents of her letter struck him in a way in which obviously they did not strike Margery.

"Did you send your mother a box of chocolates?" he asked.

Margery shook her head. "No, I didn't, It must have been someone else."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked grave. Two things struck him as of significance. Lady Stranleigh had received a gift of a box of chocolates and she was suffering from a severe attack of poisoning. Apparently she had not connected these two things. Was there a connection? He himself was inclined to think there was.

A tall dark girl lounged out of the morning-room and joined them.

She was introduced to Mr. Satterthwaite as Marcia Keane. She smiled on the little man in an easy good-humoured fashion.

"Have you come down to hunt Margery's pet ghost?" she asked in a drawling voice. "We all rot her about that ghost. Hello, here's Roley."

A car had just drawn up at the front door. Out of it tumbled a tall young man with fair hair and an eager boyish manner.

"Hello, Margery," he cried, "hello, Marcia! I have brought down reinforcements." He turned to the two women who were just entering the hall. Mr. Satterthwaite recognised in the first one of the two the Mrs. Casson of whom Margery had spoken just now.

"You must forgive me, Margery, dear," she drawled, smiling broadly. "Mr. Vavasour told us that it would be quite all right. It was really his idea that I should bring down Mrs. Lloyd with me."

She indicated her companion with a slight gesture of the hand.

"This is Mrs. Lloyd," she said in a tone of triumph. "Simply the most wonderful medium that ever existed."

Mrs. Lloyd uttered no modest protest, she bowed and remained with her hands crossed in front of her. She was a highly-coloured young woman of commonplace appearance. Her clothes were unfashionable but rather ornate. She wore a chain of moonstones and several rings.

Margery Gale, as Mr. Satterthwaite could see, was not too pleased at this intrusion. She threw an angry look at Roley Vavasour, who seemed quite unconscious of the offence he had caused.

"Lunch is ready, I think," said Margery.

"Good," said Mrs. Casson." "We will hold a seance immediately afterwards. Have you got some fruit for Mrs. Lloyd? She never eats a solid meal before a seance"

They all went into the dining-room. The medium ate two bananas and an apple, and replied cautiously and briefly to the various polite remarks which Margery addressed to her from time to time. Just before they rose from the table, she flung back her head suddenly and sniffed the air.

"There is something very wrong in this house. I feel it." "Isn't she wonderful?" said Mrs. Casson in a low delighted voice.

"Oh! undoubtedly," said Mr. Satterthwaite dryly.

The seance was held in the library. The hostess was, as Mr. Satterthwaite could see, very unwilling, only the obvious delight of her guests in the proceedings reconciled her to the ordeal

The arrangements were made with a good deal of care by Mrs. Casson, who was evidently well up in those matters, the chairs were set round in a circle, the curtains were drawn, and presently the medium announced herself ready to begin. "Six people," she said, looking round the room." That is bad. We must have an uneven number. Seven is ideal. I get my best results out of a circle of seven."

"One of the servants," suggested Roley. He rose. "I will rout out the butler."

"Let's have Clayton," said Margery. Mr. Satterthwaite saw a look of annoyance pass over Roley Vavasour's good-looking face.

"But why Clayton?" he demanded.

"You don't like Clayton," said Margery slowly. Roley shrugged his shoulders.

"Clayton doesn't like me," he said whimsically. "In fact she hates me like poison." he waited a minute or two, but Margery did not give way.

"All right," he said, "have her down." The circle was formed.

There was a period of silence broken by the usual coughs and fidgetings. Presently a succession of raps were heard and then the voice of the medium's control, a Red Indian called Cherokee.

"Indian Brave says you Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Someone here very anxious speak. Someone here very anxious give message to young lady. I go now. The spirit say what she come to say."

A pause and then a new voice, that of a woman, said softly--

"Is Margery here?"

Roley Vavasour took it upon himself to answer.

"Yes," he said," she is. Who is that speaking?"

"I am Beatrice."

"Beatrice? Who is Beatrice?"

To everyone's annoyance the voice of the Red Indian Cherokee was heard once more.

"I have message for all of you people. Life here very bright and beautiful. We all work very hard. Help those who have not yet passed over."

Again a silence and then the woman's voice was heard once more.

"This is Beatrice speaking."

"Beatrice who?"

"Beatrice Barren."

Mr. Satterthwaite leant forward. He was very excited,

"Beatrice Barton who was drowned in the Uralia ?"

"Yes, that is right. I remember the Uralia. I have a message--for this house--Give back what is not yours."

"I don't understand," said Margery helplessly. "I--oh, are you really Aunt Beatrice?"

"Yes, I am your aunt."

"Of course she is," said Mrs. Casson reproachfully. " ow can you be so suspicious? The spirits don't like it."

And suddenly Mr. Satterthwaite thought of a very simple test. His voice quivered as he spoke.

"Do you remember Mr. Bottacetti?" he asked.

Immediately there came a ripple of laughter.

"Poor, old Boatsupsetty. Of course."

Mr. Satterthwaite was dumbfounded. The test had succeeded. It was an incident of over forty years ago which had happened when he and the Barren girls had found themselves at the same seaside resort. A young Italian acquaintance of theirs had gone out in a boat and capsized, and Beatrice Barren had jestingly named him Boatsupsetty. It seemed impossible that anyone in the room could know of this incident except himself. The medium stirred and groaned.

"She is coming out," said Mrs. Casson. "That is all we will get out of her to-day, I am afraid."

The daylight shone once more on the room full of people, two of whom at least were badly scared.

Mr. Satterthwaite saw by Margery's white face that she was deeply perturbed. When they had got rid of Mrs. Casson and the medium, he sought a private interview with his hostess. "I want to ask you one or two questions, Miss Margery. If you and your mother were to die who succeeds to the tide and estates?"

"Roley Vavasour, I suppose. His mother was Mother's first cousin."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.

" e seems to have been here a lot this winter," he said gently. "You will forgive me asking--but is he--fond of you?"

" he asked me to marry him three weeks ago," said Margery quietly. "I said No."

"Please forgive me, but are you engaged to anyone else? " he saw the colour sweep over her face. "I am," she said emphatically. "I am going to marry Noel Barton. Mother laughs and says it is absurd. She seems to think it is ridiculous to be engaged to a curate. Why, I should like to know! There are curates and curates! You should see Noel on a horse."

"Oh, quite so," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Oh, undoubtedly." A footman entered with a telegram on a salver. Margery tore it open. "Mother is arriving home tomorrow," she said. "Bother. I wish to goodness she would stay away."

Mr. Satterthwaite made no comment on this filial sentiment. Perhaps he thought it justified. "In that case," he murmured, "I think I am returning so London."

THE VOICE IN THE DARK

IV

Mr. Satterthwaite was not quite pleased with himself. He felt that he had left this particular problem in an unfinished state. True that, on Lady Stranleigh's return, his responsibility was ended, yet he felt assured that he had not heard the last of the Abbot's Mede mystery.

But the next development when it came was so serious in its character that it found him totally unprepared. He learnt of it in the pages of his morning paper. "Baroness Dies in her Bath," as the Daily Megaphone had it. The other papers were more restrained and delicate in their language, but the fact was the same. Lady Stranleigh had been found dead in her bath and her death was due to drowning. She had, it was assumed, lost consciousness, and whilst in that state her head had slipped below the water.

But Mr. Satterthwaite was not satisfied with that explanation. Calling for his valet, he made his toilet with less than his usual care, and ten minutes later his big Rolls-Royce was carrying him out of London as fast as it could travel.

But strangely enough it was not for Abbot's Mede he was bound, but for a small inn some fifteen miles distant which bore the rather unusual name of "The Bells and Motley." It was with great relief that he heard that Mr. Harley Quin was still staying there. In another minute he was face to face with his friend.

Mr. Satterthwaite clasped him by the hand and began to speak at once in an agitated manner.

"I am terribly upset. You must help me. Already I have a dreadful feeling that it may be too late--that that nice girl may be the next to go, for she is a nice girl, nice through and through."

"If you will tell me," said Mr. Quin, smiling, "what it is all about?"

Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully.

"You know. I am perfectly certain that you know. But I will tell you."

He poured out the story of his stay at Abbot's Mede and, as always with Mr. Quin, he found himself taking pleasure in his narrative. He was eloquent and subtle and meticulous as to detail.

"So you see," he ended, "there must be an explanation."

He looked hopefully at Mr. Quin as a dog looks at his master.

"But it is you who must solve the problem, not I," said Mr. Quin. "I do not know these people. You do."

"I knew the Barron girls forty years ago," said Mr. Satterthwaite with pride.

Mr. Quin nodded and looked sympathetic, so much so that the other went on dreamily.

"That time at Brighton now, Botticetti-Boatsupsetty, quite a silly joke but how we laughed. Dear, dear, I was young then. Did a lot of foolish things. I remember the maid they had with them. Alice, her name was, a little bit of a thing-- very ingenuous. I kissed her in the passage of the hotel, I remember, and one of the girls nearly caught me doing it. Dear, dear, how long ago that all was."

He shook his head again and sighed. Then he looked at Mr. Quin.

"So you can't help me? " he said wistfully. "On other occasions------"

"On other occasions you have proved successful owing entirely to your own efforts," said Mr. Quin gravely. "I think it will be the same this time. If I were you, I should go to Abbot's Mede now."

"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "as a matter of fact that is what I thought of doing. I can't persuade you to come with me?"

Mr. Quin shook his head.

"No," he said, "my work here is done. I am leaving almost immediately."

At Abbot's Mede, Mr. Satterthwaite was taken at once to Margery Gale. She was sitting dry-eyed at a desk in the morning-room on which was strewn various papers. Something in her greeting touched him. She seemed so very pleased to see him.

"Roley and Marcia have just left. Mr. Satterthwaite, it is not as the doctors think. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that Mother was pushed under the water and held there. She was murdered, and whoever murdered her wants to murder me too. I am sure of that. That is why------" she indicated the document in front of her.

"I have been making my will," she explained. "A lot of the money and some of the property does not go with the title, and there is my father's money as well. I am leaving everything I can to Noel. I know he will make a good use of it and I do not trust Roley, he has always been out for what he can get. Will you sign it as a witness?"

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "you should sign a will in the presence of two witnesses and they should then sign themselves at the same time." Margery brushed aside this legal pronouncement. "I don't see that it matters in the least," she declared. "Clayton saw me sign and then she signed her name. I was going to ring for the butler, but you will do instead."

Mr. Satterthwaite uttered no fresh protest, he unscrewed his fountain pen and then, as he was about to append his signature, he paused suddenly. The name, written just above his own, recalled a flow of memories. Alice Clayton.

Something seemed to be struggling very hard to get through to him. Alice Clayton, there was some significance about that Something to do with Mr. Quin was mixed up with it. Something he had said to Mr. Quin only a very short time ago.

Ah, he had it now. Alice Clayton, that was her name. The little bit of a thing. People changed--yes, bat not like that. And the Alice Clayton he knew had had brown eyes. The room seemed whirling round him. He felt for a chair and presently, as though from a great distance, he heard Margery's voice speaking to him anxiously." Are you ill? Oh, what is it? I am sure you are ill. " he was himself again. He took her hand.

"My dear, I see it all now. You must prepare yourself for a great shock. The woman upstairs whom you call Clayton is not Clayton at all. The real Alice Clayton was drowned on the Uralia. Margery was staring at him." Who--who is she then?"

"I am not mistaken, I cannot be mistaken. The woman you call Clayton is your mother's sister, Beatrice Barren. You remember telling me that she was struck on the head by a spar? I should imagine that that blow destroyed her memory, and that being the case, your mother saw the chance------"

"Of pinching the title, you mean?" asked Margery bitterly. "Yes, she would do that. It seems dreadful to say that now she is dead, but she was like that"

"Beatrice was the elder sister," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "By your uncle's death she would inherit everything and your mother would get nothing. Your mother claimed the wounded girl as her maid, not as her sister. The girl recovered from the blow and believed, of course, what was told her, that she was Alice Clayton, your mother's maid. I should imagine that just lately her memory had begun to return, but that the blow on the head, given all these years ago, has at last caused mischief on the brain."

Margery was looking at him with eyes of horror.

"She killed Mother and she wanted to kill me," she breathed.

"It seems so," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "In her brain there was just one muddled idea--that her inheritance had been stolen and was being kept from her by you and your mother."

"But--but Clayton is so old."

Mr. Satterthwaite was silent for a minute as a vision rose up before him--the faded old woman with grey hair, and the radiant golden-haired creature sitting in the sunshine at Cannes. Sisters! Could it really be so? He remembered the Barren girls and their likeness to each other. Just because two lives had developed on different tracks-----

He shook his head sharply, obsessed by the wonder and pity of life...

He turned to Margery and said gently--"We had better go upstairs and see her."

They found Clayton sitting in the little workroom where she sewed. She did not turn her head as they came in for a reason that Mr. Satterthwaite soon found out.

"heart failure," he murmured, as he touched the cold rigid shoulder." Perhaps it is best that way."

CHAPTER. EIGHT

THE FACE OF HELEN

MR. SATTERTHWAITE was at the Opera and sat alone in his big box on the first tier outside the door was a printed card bearing his name. An appreciator and a connoisseur of all the arts, Mr. Satterthwaite was especially fond of good music, and was a regular subscriber to Covent Garden every year, reserving a box for Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the season.

But it was not often that he sat in it alone. He was a gregarious little gentleman, and he liked filling his box with the elite of the great world to which he belonged, and also with the aristocracy of the artistic world in which he was equally at home. He was alone tonight because a Countess had disappointed him. The Countess, besides being a beautiful and celebrated woman, was also a good mother. Her children had been attacked by that common and distressing disease, the mumps, and the Countess remained at home in tearful confabulation with exquisitely starched nurses. Her husband, who had supplied her with the aforementioned children and a title, but who was otherwise a complete nonentity, had seized at the chance to escape. Nothing bored him more than music.

So Mr. Satterthwaite sat alone. Cavalier Rusticate and Pagliacci were being given that night, and since the first had never appealed to him, he arrived just after the curtain went down, on Santuzza's death agony, in time to glance round the house with practised eyes, before everyone streamed out, bent on paying visits or fighting for coffee or lemonade. Mr. Satterthwaite adjusted his opera glasses, looked round the house, marked down his prey and sallied forth with a well mapped out plan of campaign ahead of him. A plan, however, which he did not put into execution, for just outside his box he cannoned into a tall dark man, and recognised him with a pleasurable thrill of excitement.

"Mr. Quin," cried Mr. Satterthwaite.

He seized his friend warmly by the hand, clutching him as though he feared any minute to see him vanish into thin air.

"You must share my box," said Mr. Satterthwaite determinedly. "You are not with a party?"

"No, I am sitting by myself in the stalls," responded Mr. Quin with a smile.

"Then, that is settled," said Mr. Satterthwaite with a sigh of relief.

His manner was almost comic, had there been anyone to observe it.

"You are very kind," said Mr. Quin.

"Not at all. It is a pleasure. I didn't know you were fond of music?"

"There are reasons why I am attracted to--Pagliacci."

"Ah! Of course," said Mr. Satterthwaite, nodding sapiently, though, if put to it, he would have found it hard to explain just why he had used that expression. "Of course, you would be."

They went back to the box at the first summons of the bell, and leaning over the front of it, they watched the people returning to the stalls.

"That's a beautiful head," observed Mr. Satterthwaite suddenly.

He indicated with his glasses a spot immediately beneath them in the stalls circle. A girl sat there whose face they could not see--only the pure gold of her hair that fitted with the closeness of a cap till it merged into the white neck.

"A Greek head," said Mr. Satterthwaite reverently. "Pure Greek." He sighed happily. "It's a remarkable thing when you come to think of it--how very few people have hair that fits them. It's more noticeable now that everyone is shingled."

"You are so observant," said Mr. Quin. "I see things," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite. "I do see things. For instance, I picked out that head at once. We must have a look at her face sooner or later. But it won't match, I'm sure. That would be a chance in a thousand."

Almost as the words left his lips, the lights flickered and went down, the sharp rap of the conductor's baton was heard, and the opera began. A new tenor, said to be a second Caruso, was singing that night. He had been referred to by the newspapers as a Jugoslav, a Czech, an Albanian, a Magyar, and a Bulgarian, with a beautiful impartiality. He had given an extraordinary concert at the Albert Hall, a programme of the folk songs of his native hills, with a specially tuned orchestra. They were in strange half-tones and the would-be musical had pronounced them "too marvellous." Real musicians had reserved judgment, realising that the ear had to be specially trained and attuned before any criticism was possible. It was quite a relief to some people to find this evening that Yoaschbim could sing in ordinary Italian with all the traditional sobs and quivers.

The curtain went down on the first act and applause burst out vociferously. Mr. Satterthwaite turned to Mr. Quin. He realised that the latter was waiting for him to pronounce judgment, and plumed himself a little. After all, he knew. As a critic he was well-nigh infallible. Very slowly he nodded his head. "It is the real thing, " he said."You think so?" As fine a voice as Caruso's. People will not recognise that it is so at first, for his technique is not yet perfect. There are ragged edges, a lack of certainty in the attack. But the voice is there--magnificent."

"I went to his concert at the Albert Hall," said Mr. Quin.

"Did you? I could not go."

"He made a wonderful hit with a Shepherd's Song."

"I read about it," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "The refrain ends each time with a high note--a kind of cry. A note midway between A and B flat. Very curious."

Yoaschbim had taken three calls, bowing and smiling. The lights went up and the people began to file out. Mr. Satterthwaite leant over to watch the girl with the golden head. She rose, adjusted her scarf, and turned.

Mr. Satterthwaite caught his breath. There were, he knew, such faces in the world--faces that made history.

The girl moved to the gangway, her companion, a young man, beside her. And Mr. Satterthwaite noticed how every man in the vicinity looked--and continued to look covertly.

"Beauty!" said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself. "There is such a thing. Not charm, nor attraction, nor magnetism, nor any of the things we talk about so glibly--just sheer beauty. The shape of a face, the line of an eyebrow, the curve of a jaw. He quoted softly under his breath--"The face that launched a thousand ships." And for the first time he realised the meaning of those words.

He glanced across at Mr. Quin, who was watching him in what seemed such perfect comprehension that Mr. Satterthwaite felt there was no need for words.

"I've always wondered," he said simply, "what such women were really like."

"You mean?"

"The Helens, the Cleopatras, the Mary Stuarts."

Mr. Quin nodded thoughtfully.

"If we go out," he suggested, "we may--see."

They went out together, and their quest was successful. The pair they were in search of were seated on a lounge half-way up the staircase. For the first time, Mr. Satterthwaite noted the girl's companion, a dark young man, not handsome, but with a suggestion of restless fire about him. A face full of strange angles-- jutting cheek-bones, a forceful, slightly crooked jaw, deep-set eyes that were curiously light under the dark, overhanging brows.

"An interesting face," said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself. "A real face. It means something"

The young man was leaning forward talking earnestly. The girl was listening. Neither of them belonged to Mr. Satterthwaite's world. He took them to be of the "Arty" class. The girl wore a rather shapeless garment of cheap green silk. Her shoes were of soiled, white satin. The young man wore his evening clothes with an air of being uncomfortable in them.

The two men passed and re-passed several times. The fourth time they did so, the couple had been joined by a third--a fair young man with a suggestion of the clerk about him. With his coming a certain tension had set in. The newcomer was fidgetting with his tie and seemed ill at ease, the girl's beautiful face was turned gravely up towards him, and her companion was scowling furiously.

"The usual story," said Mr. Quin very softly, as they passed.

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite with a sigh. "It's inevitable, I suppose. The snarling of two dogs over a bone. It always has been, it always will be. And yet, one could wish for something different. Beauty------" he stopped. Beauty, to Mr. Satterthwaite, meant something very wonderful. He found it difficult to speak of it. He looked at Mr. Quin, who nodded his head gravely in understanding.

They went back to their seats for the second act.

At the close of the performance, Mr. Satterthwaite turned eagerly to his friend.

"It is a wet night. My car is here. You must allow me to drive you--er--somewhere."

The last word was Mr. Satterthwaite's delicacy coming into play. "To drive you home" would, he felt, have savoured of curiosity. Mr. Quin had always been singularly reticent. It was extraordinary how little Mi. Satterthwaite knew about him.

"But perhaps," continued the little man, "you have your own car waiting?"

"No," said Mr. Quin, "I have no car waiting."

"Then------"

But Mr. Quin shook his head.

"You are most kind," He said, "but I prefer to go my own way. Besides," he said with a rather curious smile, "if anything should--happen, it will be for you to act Goodnight, and thank you. Once again we have seen die drama together."

He had gone so quickly that Mr. Satterthwaite had no time to protest, but he was left with a faint uneasiness stirring in his mind. To what drama did Mr. Quin refer? Pagliacci or another?"

Masters, Mr. Satterthwaite's chauffeur, was in the habit of waiting in a side street His master disliked the long delay while the cars drew up in turn before the Opera house Now, as on previous occasions, he walked rapidly round the corner and along the street towards where he knew he should find Masters awaiting him. Just in front of him were a girl and a man, and even as he recognised them, another man joined them.

It all broke out in a minute. A man's voice, angrily uplifted. Another man's voice in injured protest And then the scuffle. Blows, angry breathing, more blows, the form of a policeman appearing majestically from nowhere--and in another minute Mr. Satterthwaite was beside the girl where she shrank back against the wall.

"Allow me," he said. "You must not stay here."

He took her by the arm and marshalled her swiftly down the street. Once she looked back.

"Oughtn't I------?" she began uncertainly.

Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head.

"It would be very unpleasant for you to be mixed up in it. You would probably be asked to go along to the police station with them. I am sure neither of your--friends would wish that."

He stopped.

"This is my car. If you will allow me to do so, I shall have much pleasure in driving you home."

The girl looked at him searchingly. The staid respectability of Mr. Satterthwaite impressed her favourably. She bent her head.

"Thank you," she said, and got into the car, the door of which Masters was holding open.

In reply to a question from Mr. Satterthwaite, she gave an address in Chelsea, and he got in beside her.

The girl was upset and not in the mood for talking, and Mr. Satterthwaite was COQ tactful to intrude upon her thoughts. Presently, however, she turned to him and spoke of her own accord.

"I wish," she said pettishly, "people wouldn't be so silly."

"It is a nuisance," agreed Mr. Satterthwaite.

His matter-of-fact manner put her at her ease, and she went on as though feeling the need of confiding in someone.

"It wasn't as though--I mean, well, it was like this Mr. Eastney and I have been friends for a long time--ever since I came to London. He's taken no end of trouble about my voice, and got me some very good introductions, and he's been more kind to me than I can say. He's absolutely music mad. It was very good of him to take me tonight. I'm sure he can't really afford it. And then Mr. Burns came up and spoke to us--quite nicely, I'm sure, and Phil (Mr. Eastney) got sulky about it. I don't know why he should. It's a free country, I'm sure. And Mr. Burns is always pleasant, and good-tempered. Then just as we were walking to the Tube, he came up and joined us, and he hadn't so much as said two words before Philip flew out at him like a madman. And--Oh! I don't like it."

"Don't you?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite very softly.

She blushed, but very little. There was none of the conscious siren about her. A certain measure of pleasurable excitement in being fought for there must be--that was only nature, but Mr. Satterthwaite decided that a worried perplexity lay uppermost, and he had the clue to it in another moment when she observed inconsequently--"I do hope he hasn't hurt him."

"Now which is 'him'?" thought Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling to himself in the darkness. He backed his own judgment and said--"You hope Mr.--er--Eastney hasn't hurt Mr. Burns?" She nodded.

"Yes, that's what I said. It seems so dreadful. I wish I knew.''

The car was drawing up. "Are you on the telephone?" he asked. "Yes."

"If you like, I will find out exactly what has happened, and then telephone to you." The girl's face brightened.

"Oh, that would be very kind of you. Are you sure it's not too much bother?"

"Not in the least."

She thanked him again and gave him her telephone number, adding with a touch of shyness--"My name is Gillian West."

As he was driven through the night, bound on his errand, a curious smile came to Mr. Satterthwaite's lips.

He thought--"So that is all it is... "The shape of a face, the curve of a jaw!" But he fulfilled his promise.

II

The following Sunday afternoon Mr. Satterthwaite went to Kew Gardens to admire the rhododendrons. Very long ago (incredibly long ago, it seemed to Mr. Satterthwaite) he had driven down to Kew Gardens with a certain young lady to see the bluebells. Mr. Satterthwaite had arranged very carefully beforehand in his own mind exactly what he was going to say, and the precise words he would use in asking the young lady for her hand in marriage. He was just conning them over in his mind, and responding to her raptures about the bluebells a little absent-mindedly, when the shock came. The young lady stopped exclaiming at the bluebells and suddenly confided in Mr. Satterthwaite (as a true friend) her love for another. Mr. Satterthwaite put away the little set speech he had prepared, and hastily rummaged for sympathy and friendship in the bottom drawer of his mind.

Such was Mr. Satterthwaite's romance--a rather tepid early Victorian one, but it had left him with a romantic attachment to Kew Gardens, and he would often go there to see the bluebells, or, if he had been abroad later than usual, the rhododendrons, and would sigh to himself, and feel rather sentimental, and really enjoy himself very much indeed in an old-fashioned, romantic way.

This particular afternoon he was strolling back past the tea houses when he recognised a couple sitting at one of the small tables on the grass. They were Gillian West and the fair young man, and at that same moment they recognised him. He saw the girl flush and speak eagerly to her companion. In another minute he was shaking hands with them both in his correct, rather prim fashion, and had accepted the shy invitation proffered him to have tea with them. "I can't tell you, sir," said Mr. Burns, "how grateful I am to you for looking after Gillian the other night. She told me all about it."

"Yes, indeed," said the girl. "It was ever so kind of you." Mr. Satterthwaite felt pleased and interested in the pair.

Their naivete and sincerity touched him. Also, it was to him a peep into a world with which he was not well acquainted.

These people were of a class unknown to him.

In his little dried-up way, Mr. Satterthwaite could be very sympathetic. Very soon he was hearing all about his new friends. He noted that Mr. Burns had become Charlie, and he was not unprepared for the statement that the two were engaged.

"As a matter of fact," said Mr. Burns with refreshing candour, "it just happened this afternoon, didn't it, Gil?"

Burns was a clerk in a shipping firm. He was making a fair salary, had a little money of his own, and the two proposed to be married quite soon.

Mr. Satterthwaite listened, and nodded, and congratulated.

"An ordinary young man," he thought to himself, "a very ordinary young man. Nice, straightforward young chap, plenty to say for himself, good opinion of himself without being conceited, nice-looking without being unduly handsome. Nothing remarkable about him and will never set the Thames on fire. And the girl loves him..."

Aloud he said--"And Mr. Eastney------"

He purposely broke off, but he had said enough to produce an effect for which he was not unprepared. Charlie Burns's face darkened, and Gillian looked troubled. More than troubled, he thought. She looked afraid.

"I don't like it," she said in a low voice. Her words were addressed to Mr. Satterthwaite, as though she knew by instinct that he would understand a feeling incomprehensible to her lover. "You see--he's done a lot for me. He's encouraged me to take up singing, and--and helped me with it. But I've known all the time that my voice wasn't really good--not first-class. Of course, I've had engagements------"

She stopped.

"You've had a bit of trouble too," said Burns. "A girl wants someone to look after her. Gillian's had a lot of unpleasantness, Mr. Satterthwaite. Altogether she's had a lot of unpleasantness. She's a good-looker, as you can see, and-- well, that often leads to trouble for a girl."

Between them, Mr. Satterthwaite became enlightened as to various happenings which were vaguely classed by Burns under the heading of unpleasantness. "A young man who had shot himself, the extraordinary conduct of a Bank Manager (who was a married man!) a violent stranger (who must have been balmy!) the wild behaviour of an elderly artist. A trail of violence and tragedy that Gillian West had left in her wake, recited in the commonplace tones of Charles

Burns. "And it's my opinion," he ended, "that this fellow Eastney is a bit cracked. Gillian would have had trouble with him if I hadn't turned up to look after her."'

His laugh sounded a little fatuous to Mr. Satterthwaite, and no responsive smile came to the girl's face. She was looking earnestly at Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Phil's all right," she said slowly. "He cares for me, I know, and I care for him like a friend--but--but not anything more. I don't know how he'll take the news about Charlie, I'm sure. He--I'm so afraid he'll be------"

She stopped, inarticulate in face of the dangers she vaguely sensed.

"If I can help you in any way," said Mr. Satterthwaite warmly, "pray command me."

He fancied Charlie Burns looked vaguely resentful, but Gillian said at once--"Thank you."

Mr. Satterthwaite left his new friends after having promised to take tea with Gillian on the following Thursday.

When Thursday came, Mr. Satterthwaite felt a little thrill of pleasurable anticipation. He thought--"I'm an old man--but not too old to be thrilled by a face A face-" Then he shook his head with a sense of foreboding.

Gillian was alone. Charlie Burns was to come in later. She looked much happier, Mr. Satterthwaite thought, as though a load had been lifted from her mind. Indeed, she frankly admitted as much.

"I dreaded telling Phil about Charles. It was silly of me. I ought to have known Phil better. He was upset, of course, but no one could have been sweeter. Really sweet he was. Look what he sent me this morning--a wedding present. Isn't it magnificent?"

It was indeed rather magnificent for a young man in Philip Eastney's circumstances. A four-valve wireless set, of the latest type.

"We both love music so much, you see," he explained the girl. "Phil said that when I was listening to a concert on this, I should always think of him a little. And I'm sure I shall. Because we have been such friends."

"You must be proud of your friend," said Mr. Satterthwaite gently. " e seems to have taken the blow like a true sportsman."

Gillian nodded. He saw the quick tears come into her eyes.

" he asked me to do one thing for him. Tonight is the anniversary of the day we first met. He asked me if I would stay at home quietly this evening and listen to the wireless programme--not to go out with Charlie anywhere. I said, of course I would, and that I was very touched, and that I would think of him with a lot of gratitude and affection."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, but he was puzzled. He was seldom at fault in his delineation of character, and he would have judged Philip Eastney quite incapable of such a sentimental request. The young man must be of a more banal order than he supposed. Gillian evidently thought the idea quite in keeping with her rejected lover's character. Mr. Satterthwaite was a little--just a little--disappointed. He was sentimental himself, and knew it, but he expected better things of the rest of the world. Besides sentiment belonged to his age. It had no part to play in the modern world.

He asked Gillian to sing and she complied. He told her her voice was charming, but he knew quite well in his own mind that it was distinctly second class. Any success that could have come to her in the profession she had adopted would have been won by her face, not her voice.

He was not particularly anxious to see young Burns again, so presently he rose to go. It was at that moment that his attention was attracted by an ornament on the mantelpiece which stood out among the other rather gimcrack objects like a jewel on a dust heap.

It was a curving beaker of thin green glass, long-stemmed and graceful, and poised on the edge of it was what looked like a gigantic soap-bubble, a ball of iridescent glass. Gillian noticed his absorption.

"That's an extra wedding present from Phil. It's rather pretty, I think. He works in a sort of glass factory."

"It is a beautiful thing," said Mr. Satterthwaite reverently.

"The glass blowers of Murano might have been proud of that."

He went away with his interest in Philip Eastney strangely stimulated. An extraordinarily interesting young man. And yet the girl with the wonderful face preferred Charlie Burns. What a strange and inscrutable universe!

It had just occurred to Mr. Satterthwaite that, owing to the remarkable beauty of Gillian West, his evening with Mr. Quin had somehow missed fire. As a rule, every meeting with that mysterious individual had resulted in some strange and unforeseen happening. It was with the hope of perhaps running against the man of mystery that Mr. Satterthwaite bent his steps towards the Arlecchino Restaurant where once, in the days gone by, he had met Mr. Quin, and which Mr. Quin had said he often frequented.

Mr. Satterthwaite went from room to room at the Arlecchino, looking hopefully about him, but there was no sign of Mr. Quin's dark, smiling face. There was, however, somebody else. Sitting at a small table alone was Philip Eastney.

The place was crowded and Mr. Satterthwaite took his seat opposite the young man. He felt a sudden strange sense of exultation, as though he were caught up and made part of a shimmering pattern of events. He was in this thing-- whatever it was. He knew now what Mr. Quin had meant that evening at the Opera. There was a drama going on, and in it was a part, an important part, for Mr. Satterthwaite. He must not fail to take his cue and speak his lines.

He sat down opposite Philip Eastney with the sense of accomplishing the inevitable. It was easy enough to get into conversation. Eastney seemed anxious to talk Mr. Satterthwaite was, as always, an encouraging and sympathetic listener. They talked of the war, of explosives, of poison gases. Eastney had a lot to say about these last, for during the greater part of the war he had been engaged in their j manufacture. Mr. Satterthwaite found him really interesting. I There was one gas, Eastney said, that had never been tried. The Armistice had come too soon. Great things had been hoped for it. One whiff of it was deadly. He warmed to animation as he spoke.

Having broken the ice, Mr. Satterthwaite gently turned the conversation to music. Eastney's thin face lit up. He spoke with the passion and abandon of the real music lover. They discussed Yoaschbim, and the young man was enthusiastic. Both he and Mr. Satterthwaite agreed that nothing on earth could surpass a really fine tenor voice. Eastney as a boy had heard Caruso and he had never forgotten it.

"Do you know that he could sing to a wine-glass and shatter it?" he demanded.

"I always thought that was a fable," said Mr. Satterthwaite smiling.

"No, it's gospel truth, I believe. The thing's quite possible. It's a question of resonance."

He went off into technical details. His face was flushed and his eyes shone. The subject seemed to fascinate him, and Mr. Satterthwaite noted that he seemed to have a thorough grasp of what he was talking about. The elder man realised that he was talking to an exceptional brain, a brain that might almost be described as that of a genius. Brilliant, erratic, undecided as yet as to the true channel to give it outlet, but undoubtedly genius.

And he thought of Charlie Burns and wondered at Gillian West.

It was with quite a start that he realised how late it was getting, and he called for his bill. Eastney looked slightly apologetic.

"I'm ashamed of myself--running on so," he said. "But it was a lucky chance sent you along here tonight. I--I needed someone to talk to this evening."

He ended his speech with a curious little laugh. His eyes were still blazing with some subdued excitement. Yet there was something tragic about him.

"It has been quite a pleasure," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Our conversation has been most interesting and instructive to me."

He then made his funny, courteous little bow and passed out of the restaurant. The night was a warm one and as he walked slowly down the street a very odd fancy came to him. He had the feeling that he was not alone--that someone was walking by his side. In vain he told himself that the idea was a delusion--it persisted. Someone was walking beside him down that dark, quiet street, someone whom he could not see. He wondered what it was that brought the figure of Mr. Quin so clearly before his mind. He felt exactly as though Mr. Quin were there walking beside him, and yet he had only to use his eyes to assure himself that it was not so, that he was alone.

But the thought of Mr. Quin persisted, and with it came something else-- a need, an urgency of some kind, an oppressive foreboding of calamity. There was something he must do--and do quickly. There was something very wrong, and it lay in his hands to put it right.

So strong was the feeling that Mr. Satterthwaite forebore to fight against it. Instead, he shut his eyes and tried to bring that mental image of Mr. Quin nearer. If he could only have asked Mr. Quin--but even as the thought flashed through his mind he knew it was wrong. It was never any use asking Mr. Quin anything. "The threads are all in your hands"--that was the kind of thing Mr. Quin would say.

The threads. Threads of what? He analysed his own feeling and impressions carefully. That presentiment of danger, now. Whom did it threaten?

At once a picture rose up before his eyes, the picture of Gillian West sitting alone listening to the wireless.

Mr. Satterthwaite flung a penny to a passing newspaper boy, and snatched at a paper. He turned at once to the London Radio programme. Yoaschbim was broadcasting Tonight, he noted with interest. He was singing "Salve Dimora," from Faust and, afterwards, a selection of his folk songs, "The Shepherd's Song," "The Fish," "The Little Deer," etc.

Mr. Satterthwaite crumpled the paper together. The knowledge of what Gillian was listening to seemed to make the picture of her clearer. Sitting there alone... ,

An odd request, that, of Philip Eastney's. Not like the man, not like him at all. There was no sentimentality in Eastney. He was a man of violent feeling, a dangerous man, perhaps-----

Again his thought brought up with a jerk. A dangerous man--that meant something." The threads are all in your hands. "That meeting with Philip Eastney Tonight--rather odd. A lucky chance, Eastney had said. Was it chance? Or was it part of that interwoven design of which Mr. Satterthwaite had once or twice been conscious this evening?

He cast his mind back. There must be something in Eastney's conversation, some clue there. There must, or else why this strange feeling of urgency? What had he talked about? Singing, war work, Caruso.

Caruso--Mr. Satterthwaite's thoughts went off at a tangent. Yoaschbim's voice was very nearly equal to that of Caruso. Gillian would be sitting listening to it now as it rang out true and powerful, echoing round the room, setting glasses ringing-----

He caught his breath. Glasses ringing! Caruso, singing to a wine-glass and the wine-glass breaking. Yoaschbim singing in the London studio and in a room over a mile away the crash and tinkle of glass--not a wine glass, a thin, green, glass beaker. A crystal soap bubble falling, a soap bubble that perhaps was not empty...

It was at that moment that Mr. Satterthwaite, as judged by passers-by, suddenly went mad. He tore open the newspaper once more, took a brief glance at the wireless announcements and then began to run for his life down the quiet street. At the end of it he found a crawling taxi, and jumping into it, he yelled an address to the driver and the information that it was life or death to get there quickly. The driver, judging him, mentally afflicted but rich, did his utmost.

Mr. Satterthwaite lay back, his head a jumble of fragmentary thoughts, forgotten bits of science learned at school, phrases used by Eastney that night. Resonance--natural periods--if the period of the force coincides with the natural period--there was something about a suspension bridge, soldiers marching over it and the swing of their stride being the same as the period of the bridge. Eastney had studied the subject. Eastney knew. And Eastney was a genius.

At 10.45 Yoaschbim was to broadcast. It was that now. Yes, but the Faust had to come first. It was the "Shepherd's Song," with the great shout after the refrain that would-- that would--do what?

His mind went whirling round again. Tones, overtones, half-tones. He didn't know much about these things--but Eastney knew. Pray heaven he would be in time!

The taxi stopped. Mr. Satterthwaite flung himself out and, raced up the stone stairs to a second floor like a young athlete. The door of the flat was ajar. He pushed it open and the great tenor voice welcomed him The words of the "Shepherd's Song" were familiar to him in a less unconventional setting.

"Shepherd, see thy horse's flowing main------"

He was in time then. He burst open the sitting-room door. Gillian was sitting there in a tall chair by the fireplace

"Bayra Mischa's daughter is to wed today--To the wedding I must haste away."

She must have thought him mad. He clutched at her," crying out something incomprehensible, and half pulled, half dragged her out till they stood upon the stairway.

"To the wedding I must haste away-----Yaha!"

A wonderful high note, full-throated, powerful, hit full in, the middle, a note any singer might be proud of. And with it another sound, the faint tinkle of broken glass.

A stray cat darted past them and in through the flat door--

Gillian made a movement, but Mr. Satterthwaite held her back, speaking incoherently.

"No, no--it's deadly-- no smell, nothing to warn you. A mere whiff, and it's all over. Nobody knows quite how deadly it would be. It's unlike anything that's ever been tried before."

He was repeating the things that Philip Easter had told him over the table at dinner.

Gillian stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Ill

Philip Eastney drew out his watch and looked at It. It was just half-past eleven. For the past three-quarters of an hour he had been pacing up and down the Embankment. He looked out over the Thames and then turned--to look into the face of his dinner companion.

"That's odd," he said, and laughed. "We seem fated to run into each other tonight."

"If you call it Fate." said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Philip Eastney looked at him more attentively and his own expression changed.

"Yes?" he said quietly.

Mr. Satterthwaite went straight to the point

"I have just come from Miss West's flat."

"Yes?"

The same voice, with the same deadly quiet. ,'"We have--taken a dead cat out of it."

There was silence, then Eastney said--

"Who are you?"

Mr. Satterthwaite spoke for some time. He recited the whole history of events.

"So you see, I was in time," he ended up. He paused and added quite gently--

"Have you anything--to say?"

He expected something, some outburst, some wild justification. But nothing came".

"No," said Philip Eastney quietly, and turned on his heel and walked away.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked after him till his figure was swallowed up in the gloom. In spite of himself, he had a strange fellow-feeling for Eastney, the feeling of an artist for another artist, of a sentimentalist for a real lover, of a plain man for a genius.

At last he roused himself with a start and began to walk in the same direction as Eastney. A fog was beginning to come up. Presently he met a policeman who looked at him suspiciously.

"Did you hear a kind of splash just now?" asked the policeman.

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

The policeman was peering out over the river. ,"Another of these suicides, I expect," he grunted disconsolately." They will do it."

"I suppose," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "that they have their reasons."

"Money, mostly," said the policeman." Sometimes it's a woman," he said, as he prepared to move away." It's not always their fault, but some women cause a lot of trouble."

"Some women," agreed Mr. Satterthwaite softly.

When the policeman had gone on, he sat down on a seat with the fog coming up all around him, and thought about Helen of Troy, and wondered if she were a nice, ordinary woman, blessed or cursed with a wonderful face.

CHAPTER NINE

THE DEAD HARLEQUIN

MR. SATTERTHWAITE walked slowly up Bond Street enjoying the sunshine. He was, as usual, carefully and beautifully [ dressed, and was bound for the Harchester Galleries where | there was an exhibition of the paintings of one Frank Bristow, a new and hitherto unknown artist who showed signs of suddenly becoming the rage. Mr. Satterthwaite was a patron of the arts.

As Mr. Satterthwaite entered the Harchester Galleries, he was greeted at once with a smile of pleased recognition.

"Good morning, Mr. Satterthwaite, I thought we should see you before long. You know Bristow's work? Fine--very fine indeed. Quite unique of its kind"

Mr. Satterthwaite purchased a catalogue and stepped through the open archway into the long room where the artist's works were displayed. They were water colours, executed with such extraordinary technique and finish that they resembled coloured etchings. Mr. Satterthwaite walked slowly round the walls scrutinising and, on the whole, approving. He thought that this young man deserved to arrive. Here was originality, vision, and a most severe and exacting technique. There were crudities, of course. That was only to be expected--but there was also something closely allied to genius. Mr. Satterthwaite paused before a little masterpiece representing Westminster Bridge with its crowd of buses, trams and hurrying pedestrians. A tiny thing and wonderfully perfect. It was called, he noted, The Ant Heap. He passed on and quite suddenly drew in his breath with a gasp, his imagination held and riveted.

The picture was called the Dead Harlequin. The forefront of it represented a floor of inlaid squares of black and white marble. In the middle of the floor lay Harlequin on his back with his arms outstretched, in his motley of black and red. Behind him was a window and outside that window, gazing in at the figure on the floor, was what appeared to be the same man silhouetted against the red glow of the setting sun.

The picture excited Mr. Satterthwaite for two reasons, the first was that he recognised, or thought that he recognised, the face of the man in the picture. It bore a distinct resemblance to a certain Mr. Quin, an acquaintance whom Mr. Satterthwaite had encountered once or twice under somewhat mystifying circumstances.

"Surely I can't be mistaken," he murmured. "If it is so-- what does it mean?"

For it had been Mr. Satterthwaite's experience that every appearance of Mr. Quin had some distinct significance attaching to it.

There was, as already mentioned, a second reason for Mr. Satterthwaite's interest. He recognised the scene of the picture.

"The Terrace Room at Charnley," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Curious--and very interesting."

He looked with more attention at the picture, wondering what exactly had been in the artist's mind. One Harlequin dead on the floor, another Harlequin looking through the window--or was it the same Harlequin? He moved slowly along the walls gazing at other pictures with unseeing eyes, with his mind always busy on the same subject. He was excited Life, which had seemed a little drab this morning, was drab no longer. He knew quite certainly that he was on the threshold of exciting and interesting events. He crossed to the table where sat Mr. Cobb, a dignitary of the Harchester Galleries, whom he had known for many years.

"I have a fancy for buying no. 39," he said, "if it is not already sold."

Mr. Cobb consulted a ledger.

"The pick of the bunch," he murmured, "quite a little gem, isn't It? No, it is not sold." he quoted a price. "It is a good investment, Mr. Satterthwaite. You will have to pay three times as much for it this time next year."

"That is always said on these occasions," said Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling.

"Well, and haven't I been right?" demanded Mr. Cobb." I don't believe if you were to sell your collection, Mr. Satterthwaite, that a single picture would fetch less than you gave for it."

"I will buy this picture," said Mr. Satterthwaite." I will give you a cheque now."

"You won't regret it. We believe in Bristow."

'He is a young man?"

"Twenty-seven or eight, I should say."

"I should like to meet him," said Mr. Satterthwaite." Perhaps he will come and dine with me one night?"

"I can give you his address. I am sure he would leap at the chance. Your name stands for a good deal in the artistic world."

"You flatter me," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and was going on when Mr. Cobb interrupted--

"here he is now. I will introduce you to him right away." He rose from behind his table. Mr. Satterthwaite accompanied him to where a big, clumsy young man was leaning against the wall surveying the world at large from behind the barricade of a ferocious scowl.

Mr. Cobb made the necessary introductions and Mr. Satterthwaite made a formal and gracious little speech.

"I have just had the pleasure of acquiring one of your pictures--The Dead Harlequin."

"Oh! Well, you won't lose by It," said Mr. Bristow ungraciously. "It's a bit of damned good work, although I say it."

"I can see that," said Mr. Satterthwaite." Your work interests me very much, Mr. Bristow. It is extraordinarily mature for so young a man. I wonder if you would give me the pleasure of dining with me one night? Are you engaged this evening?"

"As a matter of fact, I am not," said Mr. Bristow, still with no overdone appearance of graciousness.

"Then shall we say eight o'clock?" said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Here is my card with the address on it."

"Oh, all right," said Mr. Bristow. "Thanks," he added as a somewhat obvious afterthought.

"A young man who has a poor opinion of himself and is afraid that the world should share it."

Such was Mr. Satterthwaite's summing up as he stepped out into the sunshine of Bond Street, and Mr. Satterthwaite's judgment of his fellow men was seldom far astray.

Frank Bristow arrived about five minutes past eight to find his host and a third guest awaiting him. The other guest was introduced as a Colonel Monckton They went in to dinner almost immediately. There was a fourth place laid at the oval mahogany table and Mr. Satterthwaite uttered a word of explanation.

"I half expected my friend, Mr. Quin, might drop in," he said. "I wonder if you have ever met him. Mr. Harley '

Quin?"

"I never meet people," growled Bristow. Colonel Monckton stared at the artist with the detached interest he might have accorded to a new species of jelly fish Mr. Satterthwaite exerted himself to keep the ball of conversation rolling amicably.

"I took a special interest in that picture of yours because I thought I recognised the scene of it as being the Terrace Room at Charnley. Was I right?" As the artist nodded, he went on." That is very interesting. I have stayed at Charnley several times myself in the past. Perhaps you know some of the family?"

"No, I don't!" said Bristow. "That sort of family wouldn't care to know me. I went there in a charabanc."

"Dear me," said Colonel Monckton for the sake of saying something. "In a charabanc!" Dear me."'

Frank Bristow scowled at him. "Why not?" he demanded ferociously. Poor Colonel Monckton was taken aback He looked reproachfully at Mr. Satterthwaite as though to say--

"These primitive forms of life may be interesting to you as a naturalist, but why drag me in?"

"Oh, beastly things, charabancs!" he said. "They jolt you so going over the bumps."

"If you can't afford a Rolls Royce you have got to go in charabancs," said Bristow fiercely.

Colonel Monckton stared at him. Mr. Satterthwaite thought--

"Unless I can manage to put this young man at his ease we are going to have a very distressing evening."

"Charnley always fascinated me," he said. "I have been there only once since the tragedy. A grim house--and a ghostly one."

"That's true," said Bristow.

"There are actually two authentic ghosts," said Monckton. "They say that Charles I walks up and down the terrace with his head under his arm--I have forgotten why, I'm sure. Then there is the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer, who is always seen after one of the Charnleys dies." "Tosh," said Bristow scornfully.

"They have certainly been a very ill-fated family," said Mr. Satterthwaite hurriedly." Four holders of the title have died a violent death and the late Lord Charnley committed suicide."

"A ghastly business," said Monckton gravely." I was there when it happened."

"Let me see, that must be fourteen years ago," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "the house has been shut up ever since."

"I don't wonder at that," said Monckton." It must have been a terrible shock for a young girl. They had been married a month, just home from their honeymoon. Big fancy dress ball to celebrate their home-coming. Just as the guests were starting to arrive Charnley locked himself into the Oak Parlour and shot himself. That sort of thing isn't done. I beg your pardon?"

He turned his head sharply to the left and looked across at Mr. Satterthwaite with an apologetic laugh.

"I am beginning to get the jimjams, Satterthwaite. I thought for a moment there was someone sitting in that empty chair and that he said something to me.

"Yes," he went on after a minute or two, "it was a pretty ghastly shock to Alix Charnley. She was one of the prettiest girls you could see anywhere and cram full of what people call the joy of living, and now they say she is like a ghost herself. Not that I have seen her for years. I believe she lives abroad most of the time."

"And the boy?"

"The boy is at Eton. What he will do when he comes of age I don't know. I don't think, somehow, that he will reopen the old place."

"It would make a good People's Pleasure Park," said Bristow.

Colonel Monckton looked at him with cold abhorrence.

"No, no, you don't really mean that," said Mr. Satter-thwaite." You wouldn't have painted that picture if you did. , Tradition and atmosphere are intangible things. They take centuries to build up and if you destroyed them you couldn't rebuild them again in twenty-four hours."

He rose. "Let us go into the smoking-room. I have some photographs there of Charnley which I should like to show you."

One of Mr. Satterthwaite's hobbies was amateur photography. He was also the proud author of a book, "Homes of My Friends." The friends in question were all rather exalted and the book itself showed Mr. Satterthwaite forth in rather a more snobbish light than was really fair to him.

"That is a photograph I took of the Terrace Room last year," he said. He handed it to Bristow. "You see it is taken at almost the same angle as is shown in your picture. That is rather a wonderful rug--it is a pity that photographs can't show colouring."

"I remember it," said Bristow, "a marvellous bit of colour. It glowed like a flame. All the same it looked a bit incongruous there. The wrong size for that big room with its black and white squares. There is no rug anywhere else in the room. It spoils the whole effect--it was like a gigantic blood stain."

"Perhaps that gave you your idea for your picture?" said

Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Perhaps it did," said Bristow thoughtfully. "On the face, of it, one would naturally stage a tragedy in the little panelled room leading out of it."

"The Oak Parlour," said Monckton. "Yes, that is the haunted room right enough. There is a Priests hiding hole there--a movable panel by the fireplace. Tradition has it that Charles I was concealed there once. There were two deaths from duelling in that room. And it was there, as I say, that Reggie Charnley shot himself."

He took the photograph from Bristow's hand. "Why, that is the Bokhara rug," he said, "worth a couple of thousand pounds, I believe. When I was there it was in the Oak Parlour--the right place for it. It looks silly on that great expanse of marble flags."

Mr. Satterthwaite was looking at the empty chair which he had drawn up beside his. Then he said thoughtfully--"I wonder when it was moved?"

"It must have been recently. Why, I remember having a conversation about it on the very day of the tragedy. Charnley was saying it really ought to be kept under glass." Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head." The house was shut up immediately after the tragedy and everything was left exactly as it was."

Bristow broke in with a question. He had laid aside his aggressive manner,

"Why did Lord Charnley shoot himself?" he asked. Colonel Monckton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "No one ever knew," he said vaguely. "I suppose," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly, "that it was suicide."

The Colonel looked at him in blank astonishment. "Suicide," he said, "why, of course it was suicide. My dear fellow, I was there in the house myself."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked towards the empty chair at his side and, smiling to himself as though at some hidden joke the others could not see, he said quietly--

"Sometimes one sees things more clearly years afterwards than one could possibly at the time."

"Nonsense," spluttered Monckton, "arrant nonsense! How can you possibly see things better when they are vague in your memory instead of clear and sharp?"

But Mr. Satterthwaite was reinforced from an unexpected quarter.

"I know what you mean," said the artist. "I should say that possibly you were right. It is a question of proportion, isn't it? And more than proportion probably. Relativity and all that sort of thing."

"If you ask me," said the Colonel, "all this Einstein business is a lot of dashed nonsense. So are spiritualists and the spook of one's grandmother!" He glared round fiercely. "Of course it was suicide," he went on. "Didn't I practically see the thing happen with my own eyes?"

"Tell us about it," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "so that we shall see it with our eyes also."

With a somewhat mollified grunt the Colonel settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

"The whole thing was extraordinarily unexpected," he began. "Charnley had been his usual normal self. There was a big party staying in the house for this ball. No one could ever have guessed he would go and shoot himself just as the guests began arriving."

"It would have been better taste if he had waited until they had gone," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Of course it would. Damned bad taste--to do a thing like that."

"Uncharacteristic," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Yes," admitted Monckton, "it wasn't like Charnley."

"And yet it was suicide?"

"Of course it was suicide. Why, there were three or four of us there at the top of the stairs. Myself, the Ostrander girl, Algie Darcy--oh, and one or two others. Charnley passed along the hall below and went into the Oak Parlour., The Ostrander girl said there was a ghastly look on his face and his eyes were staring--but, of course, that is nonsense-- she couldn't even see his face from where we were--but he did walk in a hunched way, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. One of the girls called to him--she1 was somebody's governess, I think, whom Lady Charnley had included in the party out of kindness. She was looking for him with a message. She called out Lord Charnley,

Lady Charnley wants to know------" he paid no attention and went into the Oak Parlour and slammed the door and we heard the key turn in the lock. Then, one minute after, we heard the shot.

"We rushed down to the hall. There is another door from the Oak Parlour leading into the Terrace Room. We tried that but it was locked, too. In the end we had to break the door down. Charnley was lying on the floor--dead-- with a pistol close beside his right hand. Now, what could that have been but suicide? Accident? Don't tell me. There is only one other possibility--murder--and you can't have murder without a murderer. You admit that, I suppose."

"The murderer might have escaped," suggested Mr. Satterthwaite.

"That is impossible. If you have a bit of paper and a pencil I will draw you a plan of the place. There are two doors into the Oak Parlour, one into the hall and one into the Terrace Room. Both these doors were locked in the inside and the keys were in the locks." "The window?"

"Shut, and the shutters fastened across it." There was a pause.

"So that is that," said Colonel Monckton triumphantly. "It certainly seems to be," said Mr. Satterthwaite sadly. ,"Mind you," said the Colonel, "although I was laughing just now at the spiritualists, I don't mind admitting that there was a deuced rummy atmosphere about the place-- about that room in particular. There are several bullet holes in the panels of the walls, the results of the duels that took place in that room, and there is a queer stain on the floor, that always comes back though they have replaced the wood several times. I suppose there will be another blood stain on the floor now--poor Charnley's blood." "Was there much blood?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite. "Very little--curiously little--so the doctor said." "Where did he shoot himself, through the head?" "No, through the heart."

"That is not the easy way to do it," said Bristow. "Frightfully difficult to know where one's heart is. I should never do it that way myself."

Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head. He was vaguely dissatisfied. He had hoped to get at something--he hardly knew what. Colonel Monckton went on.

"It is a spooky place, Charnley. Of course, I didn't see anything."

"You didn't see the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer?"

"No, I did not, sir," said the Colonel emphatically. "But I expect every servant in the place swore they did."

"Superstition was the curse of the Middle Ages," said Bristow. "There are still traces of it here and there, but thank goodness, we axe getting free from it."

"Superstition," mused Mr. Satterthwaite, his eyes turned again to the empty chair. "Sometimes, don't you think-- it might be useful?"

Bristow stared at him.

"Useful, that's a queer word."

"Well, I hope you are convinced now, Satterthwaite," said the Colonel

"Oh, quite," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "On the face of it, it seems odd--so purposeless for a newly-married man, young, rich, happy, celebrating his home-coming--curious--but I agree there is no getting away from the facts." He repeated softly, "The facts," and frowned.

"I suppose the interesting thing is a thing we none of us will ever know," said Monckton, "the story behind it all. Of course there were rumours--all sorts of rumours. You know the kind of things people say."

"But no one knew anything," said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully.

"It's not a best seller mystery, is it?" remarked Bristow. "No one gained by the man's death."

"No one except an unborn child," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Monckton gave a sharp chuckle. "Rather a blow to poor Hugo Charnley," he observed. "As soon as it was known that there was going to be a child he had the graceful task of sitting tight and waiting to see if it would be a girl or boy. Rather an anxious wait for his creditors, too. In the end a boy it was and a disappointment for the lot of them."

"Was the widow very disconsolate?" asked Bristow.

"Poor child," said Monckton, "I shall never forget her. She didn't cry or break down or anything. She was like something--frozen. As I say, she shut up the house shortly afterwards and, as far as I know, it has never been reopened since."

"So we are left in the dark as to motive," said Bristow with a slight laugh. "Another man or another woman, it must have been one or the other, eh?"

"It seems like it," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"And the betting is strongly on another woman," continued Bristow, "since the fair widow has not married again. I hate women," he added dispassionately.

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled a little and Frank Bristow saw the smile and pounced upon it.

"You may smile," he said, "but I do. They upset everything. They interfere. They get between you and your work. They--I only once met a woman who was--well, interesting."

"I thought there would be one," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Not in the way you mean. I--I just met her casually. As a.matter of fact--it was in a train. After all," he added defiantly, "why shouldn't one meet people in trains?"

"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Satterthwaite soothingly, "a train is as good a place as anywhere else."

"It was coming down from the North. We had the carriage to ourselves. I don't know why, but we began to talk. I don't know her name and I don't suppose I shall ever meet her again. I don't know that I want to. It might be--a pity." he paused, struggling to express himself. "She wasn't quite real, you know. Shadowy. Like one of the people who come out of the hills in Gaelic fairy tales."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded gently. His imagination pictured the scene easily enough. The very positive and realistic Bristow and a figure that was silvery and ghostly--shadowy, as Bristow had said.

"I suppose if something very terrible had happened, so terrible as to be almost unbearable, one might get like that.

One might run away from reality into a half world of one's own and then, of course, after a time, one wouldn't be able to get back."

"Was that what had happened to her?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite curiously.

"I don't know," said Bristow. "She didn't tell me anything, I am only guessing. One has to guess if one is going to get anywhere"

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly, "One has to guess."

He looked up as the door opened. He looked up quickly and expectantly but the butler's words disappointed him.

"A lady, sir, has called to see you on very urgent business. Miss Aspasia Glen."

Mr. Satterthwaite rose in some astonishment. He knew the name of Aspasia Glen. Who in London did not? First I advertised as the Woman with the Scarf, she had given a series of matinees single-handed that had taken London by storm. With the aid of her scarf she had impersonated rapidly various characters. In turn the scarf had been the coif of a nun, the shawl of a mill-worker, the head-dress of a peasant and a hundred other things, and in each impersonation Aspasia Glen had been totally and utterly different. As an artist, Mr. Satterthwaite paid full reverence to her. As it happened, he had never made her acquaintance. A call upon him at this unusual hour intrigued him greatly. With a few words of apology to the others he left the room and crossed the hall to the drawing-room.

Miss Glen was sitting in the very centre of a large settee upholstered in gold brocade. So poised she dominated the room. Mr. Satterthwaite perceived at once that she meant to dominate the situation. Curiously enough, his first feeling was one of repulsion. He had been a sincere admirer of Aspasia Glen's art. Her personality, as conveyed to him over the footlights, had been appealing and sympathetic. Her effects there had been wistful and suggestive rather than commanding. But now, face to face with the woman herself, he received a totally different impression. There was some thing hard--bold--forceful about her. She was tall and dark, possibly about thirty-five years of age. She was undoubtedly very good-looking and she clearly relied upon the fact.

"You must forgive this unconventional call, Mr. Satterthwaite," she said. Her voice was full and rich and seductive. "I won't say that I have wanted to know you for a long time, but I am glad of the excuse. As for coming tonight"--she laughed--"well, when I want a thing, I simply can't wait. When I want a thing, I simply must have it."

"Any excuse that has brought me such a charming lady guest must be welcomed by me," said Mr. Satterthwaite in an old-fashioned gallant manner.

" ow nice you are to me," said Aspasia Glen. "My dear lady," said Mr. Satterthwaite," may I thank you here and now for the pleasure you have so often given me-- in my seat in the stalls." She smiled delightfully at him.

"I am coming straight to the point. I was at the Harchester Galleries to-day. I saw a picture there I simply couldn't live without. I wanted to buy it and I couldn't because you had already bought it. So"--she paused--"I do want it so," she went on. "Dear Mr. Satterthwaite, I simply must have it. I brought my cheque book." She looked at him hopefully." Everyone tells me you arc so frightfully kind. People are kind to me, you know. It is very bad for me--but there it is."

So these were Aspasia Glen's methods. Mr. Satterthwaite was inwardly coldly critical of this ultra-femininity and of this spoilt child pose. It ought to appeal to him, he supposed, but it didn't. Aspasia Glen had made a mistake. She had judged him as an elderly dilettante, easily flattered by a pretty woman. But Mr. Satterthwaite behind his gallant manner had a shrewd and critical mind. He saw people pretty well as they were, not as they wished to appear to him. He saw before him, not a charming woman pleading for a whim, but a ruthless egoist determined to get her own way for some reason which was obscure to him. And he knew quite certainly that Aspasia Glen was not going to get her own way. He was not going to give up the picture of the Dead Harlequin to her. He sought rapidly in his mind for the best way of circumventing her without overt rudeness.

"I am sure," he said, "that everyone gives you your own way as often as they can and is only too delighted to do so." "Then you are really going to let me have the picture?" Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head slowly and regretfully. "I am afraid that is impossible. You see"--he paused--"I bought that picture for a lady. It is a present."

"Oh! but surely------"

The telephone on the table rang sharply. With a murmured word of excuse Mr. Satterthwaite took up the receiver. A voice spoke to him, a small, cold voice that sounded very far away.

"Can I speak to Mr. Satterthwaite, please?" "It is Mr. Satterthwaite speaking"

"I am Lady Charnley, Alix Charnley. I daresay you don't remember me, Mr. Satterthwaite, it is a great many years since we met."

"My dear Alix. Of course, I remember you."

"There is something I wanted to ask you. I was at the Harchester Galleries at an exhibition of pictures today, there was one called The Dead Harlequin, perhaps you recognised it--it was the Terrace Room at Charnley. I--I want to have that picture. It was sold to you." She paused.

"Mr. Satterthwaite, for reasons of my own I want that picture. Will you resell it to me?"

Mr. Satterthwaite thought to himself--"Why, this is a miracle."

As he spoke into the receiver he was thankful that Aspasia Glen could only hear one side of the conversation.

"If you will accept my gift, dear lady, it will make me very happy." He heard a sharp exclamation behind him and hurried on.

"I bought it for you. I did indeed. But listen, | my dear Alix, I want to ask you to do me a great favour, if you will."

"Of course. Mr. Satterthwaite, I am so very grateful."

He went on. "I want you to come round now to my house, at once."

There was a slight pause and then she answered quietly--"I will come at once."

Mr. Satterthwaite put down the receiver and turned to Miss Glen.

She said quickly and angrily--"That was the picture you were talking about?"

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "the lady to whom I am presenting it is coming round to this house in a few minutes."

Suddenly Aspasia Glen's face broke once more into smiles.

"You will give me a chance of persuading her to turn the picture over to me?"

"I will give you a chance of persuading her." Inwardly he was strangely excited. He was in the midst of a drama that was shaping itself to some foredoomed end. He, the looker on, was playing a star part. He turned to Miss Glen.

"Will you come into the other room with me? I should like you to meet some friends of mine."

He held the door open for her and, crossing the hall, opened the door of the smoking-room.

"Miss Glen," he said, "let me introduce you to an old friend of mine, Colonel Monckton. Mr. Bristow, the painter of the picture you admire so much." Then he started as a third figure rose from the chair which he had left empty beside his own.

"I think you expected me this evening," said Mr. Quin. "During your absence I introduced myself to your friends. I am so glad I was able to drop in."

"My dear friend," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "I--I have been carrying on as well as I am able, but------" he stopped before the slightly sardonic glance of Mr. Quin's dark eyes.

"Let me introduce you. Mr. Harley Quin, Miss Aspasia Glen.

"Was it fancy--or did she shrink back slightly. A curious expression flitted over her face.

Suddenly Bristow broke in boisterously. "I have got it."

"Got what?"

"Got hold of what was puzzling me. There is a likeness, there is a distinct likeness." he was staring curiously at Mr. Quin. "You see it?"--he turned to Mr. Satterthwaite--"don't you see a distinct likeness to the Harlequin of my picture--the man looking in through the window?"

It was no fancy this time. He distinctly heard Miss Glen draw in her breath sharply and even saw that she stepped back one pace.

"I told you that I was expecting someone," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He spoke with an air of triumph. "I must tell you that my friend, Mr. Quin, is a most extraordinary person. He can unravel mysteries. He can make you see things."

"Are you a medium, sir?" demanded Colonel Monckton, eyeing Mr. Quin doubtfully.

The latter smiled and slowly shook his head.

"Mr. Satterthwaite exaggerates," he said quietly. "Once or twice when I have been with him he has done some extraordinary good deductive work. Why he puts the credit down to me I can't say. His modesty, I suppose."

"No, no," said Mr. Satterthwaite excitedly. "It isn't. You make me see things--things that I ought to have seen all along--that I actually have seen--but without knowing that I saw them."

"It sounds to me deuced complicated," said Colonel

Monckton.

"Not really," said Mr. Quin. "The trouble Is that we are not content just to see things--we will tack the wrong interpretation on to the things we see."

Aspasia Glen turned to Frank Bristow.

"I want to know," she said nervously, "what put the idea of painting that picture into your head?"

Bristow shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't quite know," he confessed. "Something about the place--about Charnley, I mean, took hold of my imagination The big empty room. The terrace outside, the idea of ghosts and things, I suppose.

I have just been hearing the tale of the last Lord Charnley, who shot himself. Supposing you are dead, and your spirit lives on? It must be odd, you know. You might stand outside on the terrace looking in at the window at your own dead body, and you would see everything."

"What do you mean?" said Aspasia Glen. "See everything?"

"Well, you would see what happened. You would see------"

The door opened and the butler announced Lady Charnley.

Mr. Satterthwaite went to meet her. He had not seen her for nearly thirteen years. He remembered her as she once was, an eager, glowing girl. And now he saw--a Frozen Lady. Very fair, very pale, with an air of drifting rather than walking, a snowflake driven at random by an icy breeze. Something unreal about her. So cold, so far away.

"It was very good of you to come," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

He led her forward. She made a half gesture of recognition towards Miss Glen and then paused as the other made no response.

"I am so sorry," she murmured, "but surely I have met you somewhere, haven't I?"

"Over the footlights, perhaps," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "This is Miss Aspasia Glen, Lady Charnley."

"I am very pleased to meet you, Lady Charnley," said Aspasia Glen.

Her voice had suddenly a slight trans-Atlantic tinge to it. Mr. Satterthwaite was reminded of one of her various stage impersonations.

"Colonel Monckton you know," continued Mr. Satterthwaite, "and this is Mr. Bristow."

He saw a sudden faint tinge of colour in her cheeks.

"Mr. Bristow and I have met too," she said, and smiled a little.

"In a train."

"And Mr. Harley Quin."

He watched her closely, but this time there was no flicker of recognition. He set a chair for her, and then, seating himself, he cleared his throat and spoke a little nervously.

"I--this Is rather an unusual little gathering. It centres round this picture. I--I think that if we liked we could-- clear things up."

"You are not going to hold a stance, Satterthwaite?" asked Colonel Monckton.

"You are very odd this evening."

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "not exactly a seance. But my friend, Mr. Quin, believes, and I agree, that one can, by looking back over the past, see things as they were and not as they appeared to be."

"The past?" said Lady Charnley.

"I am speaking of your husband's suicide, Alix. I know it hurts you------"

"No," said Alix Charnley," it doesn't hurt me. Nothing hurts me now."

Mr. Satterthwaite thought of Frank Bristow's words." She was not quite real you know. Shadowy, like one of those people who come out of hills in Gaelic fairy tales."

"Shadowy," he had called her. That described her exactly. A shadow, a reflection of something else. Where then was the real Alix, and his mind answered quickly--"In the past. Divided from us by fourteen years of time."

"My dear," he said, "you frighten me. You are like the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer."

Crash! The coffee cup on the table by Aspasia's elbow fell shattered to the floor. Mr. Satterthwaite waved aside her apologies. He thought--"We are getting nearer, we are getting nearer every minute--but nearer to what?"

"Let us take our minds back to that night fourteen years ago," he said." Lord Charnley killed himself. For what reason? No one knows."

Lady Charnley stirred slightly in her chair.

"Lady Charnley knows," said Frank Bristow abruptly.

"Nonsense," said Colonel Monckton, then stopped, frowning at her curiously.

She was looking across at the artist. It was as though he drew the words out of her. She spoke, nodding her head slowly, and her voice was like a snowflake, cold and soft. "Yes, you are quite right. I know. That is why as brig as I live I can never go back to Charnley. That is why when my boy Dick wants me to open the place up and live there again I tell him it can't be done."

"Will you tell us the reason, Lady Charnley?" said Mr. Quin.

She looked at him. Then, as though hypnotised, she spoke as quietly and naturally as a child.

"I will tell you if you like. Nothing seems to matter very much now. I found a letter among his papers and I destroyed it."

"What letter?" said Mr. Quin.

"The letter from the girl--from that poor child. She was the Merriam's nursery governess. He had--he had made love to her--yes, while he was engaged to me just before we were married. And she--she was going to have a child too. She wrote saying so, and that she was going to tell me about it. So, you see, he shot himself."

She looked round at them wearily and dreamily like a child who has repeated a lesson it knows too well.

Colonel Monckton blew his nose.

"My God," he said, "so that was it. Well, that explains things with a vengeance."

"Does it?" said Mr. Satterthwaite, "it doesn't explain one thing. It doesn't explain why Mr. Bristow painted that picture."

"What do you mean?"

Mr. Satterthwaite looked across at Mr. Quin as though for encouragement, and apparently got it, for he proceeded--

"Yes, I know I sound mad to all of you, but that picture is the focus of the whole thing. We are all here Tonight because, of that picture. That picture had to be painted-- that is what I mean."

"You mean the uncanny influence of the Oak Parlour?" began Colonel Monckton.

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Not the Oak Parlour. The Terrace Room. That is it! The spirit of the dead man standing outside the window and looking in and seeing his own dead body on the floor."

"Which he couldn't have done," said the Colonel, "because the body was in the Oak Parlour."

"Supposing it wasn't," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "supposing it was exactly where Mr. Bristow saw it, saw it imaginatively, I mean, on the black and white flags in front of the window."

"You are talking nonsense," said Colonel Monckton, "if it was there we shouldn't have found it in the Oak Parlour."

"Not unless someone carried it there," said Mr. Satterthwaite. I

"And in that case how could we have seen Charnley going in at the door of the Oak Parlour?" inquired Colonel

Monckton.

"Well, you didn't see his face, did you?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite. "What I mean is, you saw a man going into the Oak Parlour in fancy dress, I suppose."

"Brocade things and a wig," said Monckton. "Just so, and you thought it was Lord Charnley because the girl called out to him as Lord Charnley."

"And because when we broke in a few minutes later there was only Lord Charnley there dead. You can't get away from that, Satterthwaite."

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite, discouraged.

"No--unless there was a hiding-place of some kind."

"Weren't you saying something about there being a Priests hole in that room?" put in Frank Bristow.

"Oh!" cried Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Supposing------?"

He waved a hand for silence and sheltered his forehead with his other hand and then spoke slowly and hesitatingly.

"I have got an idea--it may be just an idea, but I think it hangs together. Supposing someone shot lord Charnley. Shot him in the Terrace Room Then he--and another person--dragged the body into the Oak Parlour. They laid it down there with the pistol by its right hand. Now we go on to the next step. It must seem absolutely certain Lord Charnley has committed suicide. I think that could be done very easily. The man in his brocade and wig passes along the hall by the Oak Parlour door and someone, to make sure of things, calls out to him as Lord Charnley from the top of the stairs. He goes in and locks both doors and fires a shot into the woodwork. There were bullet holes already in that room if you remember, one more wouldn't be noticed. He then hides quietly in the secret chamber. The doors are broken open and people rush in. It seems certain that Lord Charnley has committed suicide. No other hypothesis is even entertained."

"Well, I think that is balderdash," said Colonel Monckton.

"You forget that Charnley had a motive right enough for suicide."

"A letter found afterwards," said Mr. Satterthwaite."

A lying cruel letter written by a very clever and unscrupulous little actress who meant one day to be Lady Charnley herself."

"You mean?"

"I mean the girl in league with Hugo Charnley," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"You know, Monckton, everyone knows, that that man was a blackguard. He thought that he was certain to come into the title."

He turned sharply to Lady Charnley.

"What was the name of the girl who wrote that letter?"

"Monica Ford," said Lady Charnley.

"Was It Monica Ford, Monckton, who called out to Lord Charnley from the top of the stairs?"

"Yes, now you come to speak of it, I believe it was."

"Oh, that's impossible," said Lady Charnley. "I--I went to her about it. She told me it was all true. I only saw her once afterwards, but surely she couldn't have been acting the whole time."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked across the room at Aspasia Glen.

"I think she could," he said quietly.

"I think she had in her the makings of a very accomplished actress."

"There is one thing you haven't got over," said Frank Bristow, "there would be blood on the floor of the Terrace Room. Bound to be. They couldn't clear that up in a hurry.

"No," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite, "but there is one thing a second or the Bokhara rug. Nobody ever saw the Bokhara rug in the Terrace Room before that night."

"I believe you are right," said Monckton, "but all the same those blood-stains would have to be cleared up some time?"

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "in the middle of the night. A woman with a jug and basin could go down the stairs and clear up the blood-stains quite easily." "But supposing someone saw her?"

"It wouldn't matter," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"I am speaking now of things as they are. I said a woman with a jug and basin. But if I had said a Weeping Lady with a Silver Ewer that is what they would have appeared, to be."

He got up and went across to Aspasia Glen.

"That is what you did, wasn't it?" He said.

"They call you the 'Woman with the Scarf' now, but it was that night you played your first part, the 'Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer.' That is why you knocked the coffee cup off that table just now. You were afraid when you saw that picture. You thought someone knew."

Lady Charnley stretched out a white accusing hand. "Monica Ford," she breathed.

"I recognise you now."

Aspasia Glen sprang to her feet with a cry. She pushed little Mr. Satterthwaite aside with a shove of the hand and stood shaking in front of Mr. Quin.

"So I was right. Someone did know! Oh, I haven't been deceived by this tomfoolery. This pretence of working things out."

She pointed at Mr. Quin.

"You were there. You were there outside the window looking in. You saw what we did, Hugo and I. I knew there was someone looking in, I felt it all the time. And yet when I looked up, there was nobody there. I knew someone was watching us. I thought once I caught a glimpse of a face at the window. It has frightened me all these years. And then I saw that picture with you standing at the window and I recognised your face. You have known all these years. Why did you break silence now? That is what I want to know?"

"Perhaps so that the dead may rest in peace," said Mr. Quin.

Suddenly Aspasia Glen made a rush for the door and stood there flinging a few defiant words over her shoulder.

"Do what you like. God knows there are witnesses enough to what I have been saying. I don't care, I don't care. I loved Hugo and I helped him with the ghastly business and he chucked me afterwards. He died last year. You can set the police on my tracks if you like, but as that little dried-up fellow there said, I am a pretty good actress. They will find it hard to find me. "She crashed the door behind her, and a moment later they heard the slam of the front door also.

"Reggie," cried Lady Charnley, "Reggie." The tears were streaming down her face. "Oh, my dear, my dear, I can go back to Charnley now. I can live there with Dickie. I can tell him what his father was, the finest, the most splendid man in all the world."

"We must consult very seriously as to what must be done in the matter," said Colonel Monckton. "Alix, my dear, if you will let me take you home I shall be glad to have a few words with you on the subject."

Lady Charnley rose. She came across to Mr. Satterthwaite, and laying both hands on his shoulders, she kissed him very gently.

"It is so wonderful to be alive again after being so long dead," she said. "It was like being dead, you know. Thank you, dear Mr. Satterthwaite." She went out of the room with Colonel Monckton. Mr. Satterthwaite gazed after them. A grunt from Frank Bristow whom he had forgotten made him turn sharply round.

"She is a lovely creature," said Bristow moodily. "But she's not nearly so interesting as she was, " he said gloomily.

"There speaks the artist," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Well, she isn't," said Mr. Bristow. "I suppose I should only get the cold shoulder if I ever went butting in at Charnley. I don't want to go where I am not wanted."

"My dear young man," said Mr. Satterthwaite," if you will think a little less of the impression you are making on other people, you will, I think, be wiser and happier. You would also do well to disabuse your mind of some very old-fashioned notions, one of which is that birth has any significance at all in our modern conditions. You are one of those large proportioned young men whom women always consider good-looking, and you have possibly, if not certainly, genius. Just say that over to yourself ten times before you go to bed every night and in three months time go and call on Lady Charnley at Charnley. That is my advice to you, and I am an old man with considerable experience of the world."

A very charming smile suddenly spread over the artist's face.

"You have been thunderingly good to me, " he said suddenly. He seized Mr. Satterthwaite's hand and wrung it in a powerful grip.

"I am no end grateful. I must be off now. Thanks very much for one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever spent."

He looked round as though to say good-bye to someone else and then started.

"I say, sir, your friend has gone. I never saw him go. He is rather a queer bird, isn't he?"

"He goes and comes very suddenly," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "That is one of his characteristics. One doesn't I always see him come and go

"Like Harlequin," said Frank Bristow, "he is invisible," and laughed heartily at his own joke.

CHAPTER TEN

THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN WING

MR SATTERTHWAITE looked out of the window. It was raining steadily. He shivered. Very few country houses, he reflected, were really properly heated. It cheered him to think that in a few hours time he would be speeding towards London. Once one had passed sixty years of age, London was really much the best place.

He was feeling a little old and pathetic. Most of the members of the house party were so young. Four of them had just gone off into the library to do table turning. They had invited him to accompany them, but he had declined. He failed to derive any amusement from the monotonous counting of the letters of the alphabet and the usual meaningless jumble of letters that resulted.

Yes, London was the best place for him. He was glad that he had declined Madge Keeley's invitation when she had rung up to invite him over to Laidell half an hour ago. An adorable young person, certainly, but London was best.

Mr. Satterthwaite shivered again and remembered that the fire in the library was usually a good one. He opened the door and adventured cautiously into the darkened room.

"If I'm not in the way------"

"Was that N or M? We shall have to count again. No, of course not, Mr. Satterthwaite. Do you know, the most exciting things have been happening. The spirit says her name is Ada Spiers, and John here is going to marry someone called Gladys Bun almost immediately."

Mr. Satterthwaite sat down in a big easy chair in front of the fire. His eyelids drooped over his eyes and he dozed. From time to time he returned to consciousness, hearing fragments of speech.

"It can't be P A B Z L--not unless he's a Russian. John, you're shoving. I saw you. I believe it's a new spirit come."

Another interval of dozing. Then a name jerked him wide awake.

"Q-U-I-N. Is that right?" "Yes, it's rapped once for 'Yes.'" Quin. Have you a message for someone here? Yes. For me? For John? For Sarah? For Evelyn? No--but there's no one else. Oh! It's for Mr. Satterthwaite, perhaps? It says "Yes." Mr. Satterthwaite, it's a message for you."

"What does it say?"

Mr. Satterthwaite was broad awake now, sitting taut and erect in his chair, his eyes shining.

The table rocked and one of the girls counted.

"LAI--it can't be--that doesn't make sense. No word begins LAI."

"Go on," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and the command in his voice was so sharp that he was obeyed without question.

"LAIDEL and another L--Oh! that seems to be all."

"Go on."

"Tell us some more, please."

A pause.

"There doesn't seem to be any more. The table's gone quite dead. How silly."

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully. "I don't think it's silly."

He rose and left the room. He went straight to the telephone. Presently he was through.

"Can I speak to Miss Keeley? Is that you, Madge, my dear? I want to change my mind, if I may, and accept your kind invitation. It is not so urgent as I thought that I should get back to town. Yes--yes--I will arrive in time for dinner."

He hung up the receiver, a strange flush on his withered cheeks. Mr. Quin--the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin. Mr. Satterthwaite counted over on his fingers the times he had been brought into contact with that man of mystery Where Mr. Quin was concerned--things happened! What had happened or was going to happen--at Laidell?

Whatever it was, there was work for him, Mr. Satterthwaite, to do. In some way or other, he would have an active part to play. He was sure of that.

Laidell was a large house. Its owner, David Keeley, was one of those quiet men with indeterminate personalities who seem to count as part of the furniture. Their inconspicuous-ness has nothing to do with brain power--David Keeley was a most brilliant mathematician, and had written a book totally incomprehensible to ninety-nine hundreds of humanity. But like so many men of brilliant intellect, he radiated no bodily vigour or magnetism. It was a standing joke that David Keeley was a real "invisible man." Footmen passed him by with the vegetables, and guests forgot to say how do you do or good-bye.

His daughter Madge was very different. A fine upstanding young woman, bursting with energy and life. Thorough, healthy and normal, and extremely pretty.

It was she who received Mr. Satterthwaite when he arrived.

"How nice of you to come--after all."

"Very delightful of you to let me change my mind. Madge, my dear, you're looking very well."

"Oh! I'm always well."

"Yes, I know But it's more than that. You look--well, blooming is the word I have in mind. Has anything happened my dear? Anything--well--special?"

She laughed--blushed a little.

"It's too bad, Mr. Satterthwaite. You always guess things."

He took her hand.

"So it's that, is it? Mr. Right has come along?"

It was an old-fashioned term, but Madge did not object to it. She rather liked Mr. Satterthwaite's old-fashioned ways.

"I suppose so--yes. But nobody's supposed to know. It's a secret. But I don't really mind your knowing, Mr. Satterthwaite. You're always so nice and sympathetic."

Mr. Satterthwaite thoroughly enjoyed romance at second hand. He was sentimental and Victorian.

"I mustn't ask who the lucky man is? Well, then all I can say is that I hope he is worthy of the honour you are conferring on him."

Rather a duck, old Mr. Satterthwaite, thought Madge.

"Oh! we shall get on awfully well together, I think," she said. "You see, we like doing the same things, and that's so awfully important, isn't it? We've really got a lot in common--and we know all about each other and all that. It's really been coming on for a long time. That gives one such a nice safe feeling, doesn't it?"

"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "But in my experience one can never really know all about anyone else. That is part of the interest and charm of life."

Oh! I'll risk it, said Madge, laughing, and they went up to dress for dinner.

Mr. Satterthwaite was late. He had not brought a valet, and having his things unpacked for him by a stranger always flurried him a little. He came down to find everyone assembled, and in the modern style Madge merely said--"Oh! Here's Mr. Satterthwaite. I'm starving Let's go in."

She led the way with a tall grey-haired woman--a woman of striking personality. She had a very clear rather incisive voice, and her face was clear cut and rather beautiful

"How d'you do, Satterthwaite," said Mr. Keeley.

Mr. Satterthwaite jumped.

"How do you do," He said. "I'm afraid I didn't see you."

"Nobody does," said Mr. Keeley sadly.

They went in. The table was a low oval of mahogany. Mr. Satterthwaite was placed between his young hostess and a short dark girl--a very hearty girl with a loud voice and a ringing determined laugh that expressed more the determination to be cheerful at all costs than any real mirth. Her name seemed to be Doris, and she was the type of young woman Mr. Satterthwaite most disliked. She had, he considered, no artistic justification for existence.

On Madge's other side was a man of about thirty, whose likeness to the grey-haired woman proclaimed them mother and son.

Next to him-----

Mr. Satterthwaite caught his breath.

He didn't know what it was exactly. It was not beauty. It was something else--something much more elusive and intangible than beauty.

She was listening to Mr. Keeley's rather ponderous dinner-table conversation, her head bent a little sideways. She was there, it seemed to Mr. Satterthwaite--and yet she was not there! She was somehow a great deal less substantial than anyone else seated round the oval table Something in the droop of her body sideways was beautiful--was more than beautiful. She looked up--her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite's for a moment across the table--and the word he wanted leapt to his mind.

Enchantment--that was it. She had the quality of enchantment. She might have been one of those creatures who are only half-human--one of the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills. She made everyone else look rather too real...

But at the same time, in a queer way, she stirred his pity. It was as though semi-humanity handicapped her. He sought for a phrase and found it.

"A bird with a broken wing," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Satisfied, he turned his mind back to the subject of Girl Guides and hoped that the girl Doris had not noticed his abstraction. When she turned to the man on the other side of her--a man Mr. Satterthwaite had hardly noticed, he himself turned to Madge.

"Who is the lady sitting next to your father?" he asked in a low voice.

Mrs. Graham? Oh, no! You mean Mabello. Don't you know her? Mabelle Annesley. She was a Clydesley--one of the ill-fated Clydesleys."

He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an earthquake. A queer doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of them.

His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge's hand touched his under the table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her head to her left.

"That's him," she murmured ungrammatically.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young Graham was the man of Madge's choice. Well, she could hardly have done better as far as appearances went--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a shrewd observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow. They'd make a nice pair--no nonsense about either of them--good healthy sociable young folk.

Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the dining-room first. Mr. Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced the glass on the table.

"He's got something on his mind," thought Mr. Satterthwaite acutely. "Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I dare say. All the same, I wonder what it is."

Mr. Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he went up to his room to fetch them.

On his way down to the drawing-room, he passed along the long corridor on the ground floor. About half-way along it was a room known as the terrace room. As Mr. Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in passing, he stopped short

Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low window sill, drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the string of a ukelele--not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of fairy horses riding on fairy hills.

Mr. Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue chiffon, ruched and pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a bird. She bent over the instrument, crooning to it

He came into the room--slowly, step by step. He was close to her when she looked up and saw him. She didn't start, he noticed, or seem surprised.

"I hope I'm not intruding," he began.

"Please--sit down."

He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her breath.

"There's a lot of magic about tonight," she said.

"Don't you think so?"

"Yes, there was a lot of magic about."

"They wanted me to fetch my uke," she explained. "And as I passed here, I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here--in the dark and the moon."

"Then I------"Mr. Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.

"Don't go. You--you fit in, somehow. It's queer, but you do."

He sat down again.

"It's been a queer sort of evening," she said. "I was out In the woods late this afternoon, and I met a man--such a strange sort of man--tall and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin."

"Ah!" Mr. Satterthwaite leant forward--his interest quickened.

"I wanted to speak to him--he--he looked so like somebody I know. But I lost him in the trees."

"I think I know him," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Do you? He is--interesting, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is interesting."

There was a pause. Mr. Satterthwaite was perplexed. There was something, he felt, that he ought to do--and he didn't know what it was. But surely--surely, it had to do with this girl He said rather clumsily--

"Sometimes--when one is unhappy--one wants to get away------"

"Yes. That's true. "She broke off suddenly. "Oh! I see what you mean. But you're wrong. It's just the other-- way round. I wanted to be alone because I'm happy."

"Happy?"

"Terribly happy."

She spoke quite quietly, but Mr. Satterthwaite had a sudden sense of shock. What this strange girl meant by being happy wasn't the same as Madge Keeley would have meant by the same words. Happiness, for Mabelle Annesley, meant tome kind of intense and vivid ecstasy... something that was not only human, but more than human. He shrank back a little.

"I--didn't know, " he said clumsily.

"Of course you couldn't. And it's not--the actual thing--I'm not happy yet--but I'm going to be." She leaned forward. "Do you know what it's like to stand in a wood--a big wood with dark shadows and trees very close all round you--a wood you might never get out of--and then, suddenly--just in front of you, you see the country of your dreams--shining and beautiful--you've only got to step out from the trees and the darkness and you've found it..."

"So many things look beautiful," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "before we've reached them. Some of the ugliest things in the world look the most beautiful..."

There was a step on the floor. Mr. Satterthwaite turned his head. A fair man with a stupid, rather wooden face, stood there. He was the man Mr. Satterthwaite had hardly noticed at the dinner-table.

"They're waiting for you, Mabelle," he said.

She got up, the expression had gone out of her face, her voice was flat and calm.

"I'm coming, Gerard," she said. "I've been talking to Mr. Satterthwaite."

She went out of the room, Mr. Satterthwaite following. He turned his head over his shoulder as he went and caught the expression on her husband's face. A hungry despairing look.

"Enchantment," thought Mr. Satterthwaite. "He feels it right enough. Poor fellow--poor fellow."

The drawing-room was well lighted. Madge and Doris Coles were vociferous in reproaches.

"Mabelle, you little beast--you've been ages."

She sat on a low stool, tuned the ukelele and sang. They all joined in.

"Is it possible," thought Mr. Satterthwaite, "that so many idiotic songs could have been written about My Baby."

But he had to admit that the syncopated wailing tunes were stirring. Though, of course, they weren't a patch on the old-fashioned waltz.

The air got very smoky. The syncopated rhythm went on.

"No conversation," thought Mr. Satterthwaite.

"No good musk. No peace." He wished the world had not become definitely so noisy.

Suddenly Mabelle Annesley broke off, smiled across the room at him, and began to sing a song of Grieg's.

"My swan--my fair one..."

It was a favourite of Mr. Satterthwaite's. He liked the note of ingenuous surprise at the end.

"Wert only a swan then? A swan then?"

After that, the party broke up. Madge offered drinks whilst her father picked up the discarded ukelele and began twanging it absent-mindedly. The party exchanged good-nights, drifted nearer and nearer to the door. Everyone talked at once. Gerard Annesley slipped away unostentatiously, leaving the others.

Outside the drawing-room door, Mr. Satterthwaite bade Mrs. Graham a ceremonious good-night. There were two staircases, one close at hand, the other at the end of a long corridor. It was by the latter that Mr. Satterthwaite reached his room. Mrs. Graham and her son passed up the stairs near at hand whence the quiet Gerard Annesley had already preceded them.

"You'd better get your ukelele, Mabelle," said Madge. "You'll forget it in the morning if you don't. You've got to make such an early start."

"Come on, Mr. Satterthwaite," said Doris Coles, seizing him boisterously by one arm. "Early to bed--et cetera."

Madge took him by the other arm and all three ran down the corridor to peals of Doris's laughter. They paused at the end to wait for David Keeley, who was following at a much more sedate pace, turning out electric lights as he came. The four of them went upstairs together.

Mr. Satterthwaite was just preparing to descend to the dining-room for breakfast on the following morning, when there was a light tap on the door and Madge Keeley entered. Her face was dead white, and she was shivering all over.

"Oh, Mr. Satterthwaite."

"My dear child, what's happened?" he took her hand.

"Mabelle--Mabelle Annesley..."

"Yes?"'

What had happened? What? Something terrible--he knew that. Madge could hardly get the words out.

"She--she hanged herself last night... On the back of her door. Oh! It's too horrible." She broke down--sobbing.

Hanged herself. Impossible. Incomprehensible I

He said a few soothing old-fashioned words to Madge, and hurried downstairs. He found David Keeley looking perplexed and incompetent.

"I've telephoned to the police, Satterthwaite. Apparently that's got to be done. So the doctor said. He's just finished examining the--the--good lord, it's a beastly business. She must have been desperately unhappy--to do it that way-----

Queer that song last night. Swan song, eh? She looked rather like a swan--a black swan."

"Yes."

"Swan Song," repeated Keeley. "Shows it was in her mind, eh?"

"It would seem so--yes, certainly it would seem so."

He hesitated, then asked if he might see--if, that it...

His host comprehended the stammering request.

"If you want to--I'd forgotten you have a penchant for human tragedies."

He led the way up the broad staircase. Mr. Satterthwaite followed him. At the head of the stairs was the room occupied by Roger Graham and opposite it, on the other side of the passage, his mother's room. The latter door was ajar and a faint wisp of smoke floated through it.

A momentary surprise invaded Mr. Satterthwaite's mind. He had not judged Mrs. Graham to be a woman who smoked so early in die day. Indeed, he had had the idea that she did not smoke at all.

They went along the passage to the end door but one. David Keeley entered the room and Mr. Satterthwaite followed him.

The room was not a very large one and showed signs of a man's occupation. A door in the wall led into a second room. A bit of cut rope still dangled from a hook high up on the door. On the bed...

Mr. Satterthwaite stood for a minute looking down on the heap of huddled chiffon. He noticed that it was ruched and pleated like the plumage of a bird. At the face, after one glance, he did not look again.

He glanced from the door with its dangling rope to the communicating door through which they had come. "Was that open?"

"Yes. At least the maid says so."

"Annesley slept in there? Did he hear anything?"

"He says--nothing."

"Almost incredible," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. He looked back at the form on the bed. "Where is he?"

"Annesley? He's downstairs with the doctor." They went downstairs to find an Inspector of police had arrived. Mr. Satterthwaite was agreeably surprised to recognise in him an old acquaintance, Inspector Winkfield. The Inspector went upstairs with the doctor, and a few minutes later a request came that all members of the house party should assemble in the drawing-room.

The blinds had been drawn, and the whole room had a funereal aspect. Doris Coles looked frightened and subdued. Every now and then she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Madge was resolute and alert, her feelings fully under control by now. Mrs. Graham was composed, as always, her face grave and impassive. The tragedy seemed to have affected her son more keenly than anyone. He looked a positive wreck this morning. David Keeley, as usual, had subsided into the background.

The bereaved husband sat alone, a little apart from the others. There was a queer dazed look about him, as though he could hardly realise what had taken place.

Mr. Satterthwaite, outwardly composed, was inwardly seething with the importance of a duty shortly to be performed.

Inspector Winkfield, followed by Dr. Morris, came in and shut the door behind him. He cleared his throat and spoke.

"This is a very sad occurrence--very sad, I'm sure. It's necessary, under the circumstances, that I should ask everybody a few questions. You'll not object, I'm sure. I'll begin with Mr. Annesley. You'll forgive my asking, sir, but had your good lady ever threatened to take her life?"

Mr. Satterthwaite opened his lips impulsively, then closed them again. There was plenty of time. Better not speak too soon.

"I--no, I don't think so."

His voice was so hesitating, so peculiar, that everyone shot a covert glance at him. "You're not sure, sir?" "Yes--I'm--quite sure. She didn't." "Ah! Were you aware that she was unhappy in any way?"

"No. I--no, I wasn't."

"She said nothing to you. About feeling depressed, for instance?"

"I--no, nothing."

Whatever the Inspector thought, he said nothing. "Instead he proceeded to his next point.

"Will you describe to me briefly the events of last night?"

"We--all went up to bed. I fell asleep immediately and heard nothing. The housemaid's scream aroused me this morning. I rushed into the adjoining room and found my wife--and found her------"

His voice broke. The Inspector nodded. "Yes, yes, that's quite enough. We needn't go into that. When did you last see your wife the night before?"

"I--downstairs."

"Downstairs?"

"Yes, we all left the drawing-room together. I went straight up leaving the others talking in the hall."

"And you didn't see your wife again? Didn't she say good-night when she came up to bed?"

"I was asleep when she came up."

"But she only followed you a few minutes later. That's right, isn't it, sir?" He looked at David Keeley, who nodded.

"She hadn't come up half an hour later."

Annesley spoke stubbornly. The Inspector's eyes strayed gently to Mrs. Graham.

"She didn't stay in your room talking, Madam?"

Did Mr. Satterthwaite fancy It, or was there a slight pause before Mrs. Graham said with her customary quiet decision of manner --

"No, I went straight into my room and closed the door. I heard nothing."

"And you say, sir"--the Inspector had shifted his attention back to Annesley--"that you slept and heard nothing. The communicating door was open, was it not?"

"I--I believe so. But my wife would have entered her room by the other door from the corridor."

"Even so, sir, there would have been certain sounds--a choking noise, a drumming of heels on the door------"

"No."

It was Mr. Satterthwaite who spoke, impetuously, unable to stop himself. Every eye turned towards him in surprise. He himself became nervous, stammered, and turned pink.

"I--I beg your pardon, Inspector. But I must speak. You are on the wrong track--the wrong track altogether. Mrs. Annesley did not kill herself--I am sure of it. She was murdered."

There was a dead silence, then Inspector Winkfield said quietly--

"What leads you to say that, sir?"

"I--it is a feeling. A very strong feeling."

"But I think, sir, there must be more than that to it.

There must be some particular reason."

Well, of course there was a particular reason. There was the mysterious message from Mr. Quin. But you couldn't tell a police inspector that. Mr. Satterthwaite cast about desperately, and found something. "Last night--when we were talking together, she said she was very happy. Very happy--just that. That wasn't like a woman thinking of committing suicide."

He was triumphant. He added--

"She went back to the drawing-room to fetch her ukelele, so that she wouldn't forget it in the morning. That didn't look like suicide either."

"No," admitted the Inspector. "No, perhaps it didn't." He turned to David Keeley. "Did she take the ukelele upstairs with her?"

The mathematician tried to remember.

"I think--yes, she did. She went upstairs carrying it in her hand. I remember seeing it just as she turned the corner of the staircase before I turned off the light down here"

"Oh!" cried Madge. "But it's here now."

She pointed dramatically to where the ukelele lay on a table.

"That's curious," said the Inspector. He stepped swiftly across and rang the bell.

A brief order sent the butler in search of the housemaid whose business it was to do the rooms in the morning. She came, and was quite positive in her answer. The ukelele had been there first thing that morning when she had dusted.

Inspector Winkfield dismissed her and then said curtly--

"I would like to speak to Mr. Satterthwaite in private, please. Everyone may go. But no one is to leave the house."

Mr. Satterthwaite twittered into speech as soon as the door had closed behind the others.

"I--I am sure, Inspector, that you have the case excellently in hand. Excellently. I just felt that--having, as I say, a very strong feeling------"

The Inspector arrested further speech with an upraised hand.

"You're quite right, Mr. Satterthwaite. The lady was murdered."

"You knew it?" Mr. Satterthwaite was chagrined.

"There were certain things that puzzled Dr. Morris." he looked across at the doctor, who had remained, and the doctor assented to his statement with a nod of the head. "We made a thorough examination. The rope that was round her neck wasn't the rope that she was strangled with--it was something much thinner that did the job, something more like a wire. It had cut right into the flesh. The mark of the rope was superimposed on it. She was strangled and then hung up on the door afterwards to make it look like suicide."

"But who------?"

"Yes," said the inspector. "Who? That's the question. What about the husband sleeping next door, who never said good-night to his wife and who heard nothing? I should say we hadn't far to look. Must find out what terms they were on. That's where you can be useful to us, Mr. Satterthwaite. You've the ongtray here, and you can get the hang of things in a way we can't. Find out what relations there were between the two."

"I hardly like------" began Mr. Satterthwaite, stiffening.

"It won't be the first murder mystery you've helped us with I remember the case of Mrs. Strangeways You've got a flair for that sort of thing, sir. An absolute flair." Yes, it was true--he had a flair-- He said quietly--"I will do my best, Inspector."

Had Gerard Annesley killed his wife? Had he? Mr. Satterthwaite recalled that look of misery last night. He loved her--and he was suffering. Suffering will drive a man to strange deeds.

But there was something else--some other factor. Mabelle had spoken of herself as coming out of a wood--she was looking forward to happiness--not a quiet rational happiness--but a happiness that was irrational--a wild ecstasy... If Gerard Annesley had spoken the truth, Mabelle had not come to her room till at least half an hour later than he had done. Yet David Keeley had seen her going up those stairs There were two other rooms occupied in that wing. There was Mrs. Graham's, and there was her son's. Her son's But he and Madge... Surely Madge would have guessed... But Madge wasn't the guessing kind. All the same, no smoke without fire--

Smoke!

Ah! he remembered. A wisp of smoke curling out through Mrs. Graham's bedroom door.

He acted an impulse. Straight up the stairs and into her room. It was empty. He closed the door behind him and! locked it.

He went across to the grate. A heap of charred fragments. Very gingerly he raked them over with his finger. His luck was in. In the very centre were some unburnt fragments-- fragments of letters...

Very disjointed fragments, but they told him something of value.

"Life can be wonderful, Roger darling. I never knew..." "all my life has been a dream till I met you, Roger..."

"... Gerard knows, I think... I am sorry but what can I do? Nothing is real to me but you, Roger... We shall be together, soon.

"What are you going to tell him at Laidell, Roger? You write strangely--but I am not afraid..."

Very carefully, Mr. Satterthwaite put the fragments into an envelope from the writing-table. He went to the door, unlocked it and opened it to find himself face to face with

Mrs. Graham.

It was an awkward moment, and Mr. Satterthwaite was momentarily out of countenance. He did what was, perhaps, the best thing, attacked the situation with simplicity.

"I have been searching your room, Mrs. Graham. I have found something--a packet of letters imperfectly burnt."

A wave of alarm passed over her face. It was gone in a flash, but it had been there.

"Letters from Mrs. Annesley to your son."

She hesitated for a minute, then said quietly--"That is so. I thought they would be better burnt."

"For what reason?"

"My son is engaged to be married. These letters--if they had been brought into publicity through the poor girl's suicide--might have caused much pain and trouble."

"Your son could burn his own letters. "She had no answer ready for that. Mr. Satterthwaite pursued his advantage.

"You found these letters in his room, brought them into your room and burnt them. Why? You were afraid, Mrs. Graham."

"I am not in the habit of being afraid, Mr. Satterthwaite." "No--but this was a desperate case." "Desperate?"

"Your son might have been in danger of arrest--for murder." "Murder!"

He saw her face go white. He went on quickly--"You heard Mrs. Annesley go into your son's room last night. He had told her of his engagement? No, I see he hadn't. He told her then. They quarrelled, and he------"

"That's a lie!"

They had been so absorbed in their duel of words that they had not heard approaching footsteps. Roger Graham had come up behind them unperceived by either.

"It's all right, Mother. Don't--worry. Come into my room, Mr. Satterthwaite."

Mr. Satterthwaite followed him into his room. Mrs. Graham had turned away and did not attempt to follow them. Roger Graham shut the door.

"Listen, Mr. Satterthwaite, you think I killed Mabelle. You think I strangled her--here--and took her along and hung her up on that door--later--when everyone was asleep?"

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him. Then he said surprisingly --

"No, I do not think so."

"Thank God for that. I couldn't have killed Mabelle. I--I loved her. Or didn't I? I don't know It's a tangle that I can't explain. I'm fond of Madge--I always have been. And she's such a good sort. We suit each other. But Mabelle was different. It was--I can't explain it--a sort of enchantment I was, I think--afraid of her."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.

"It was madness--a kind of bewildering ecstasy... But it was impossible. It wouldn't have worked. That sort of thing--doesn't last. I know what it means now to have a spell cast over you."

"Yes, it must have been like that," said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully.

"I--I wanted to get out of it all. I was going to tell

Mabelle--last night."

'But you didn't?"

"No, I didn't," said Graham slowly. "I swear to you, Mr. Satterthwaite, that I never saw her after I said good-night downstairs."

"I believe you," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

He got up. It was not Roger Graham who had killed Mabelle Annesley. He could have fled from her, but he could not have killed her. He had been afraid of her, afraid of that wild intangible fairy-like quality of hers. He had known enchantment--and turned his back on it. He had gone for the safe sensible thing that he had known "would work" and had relinquished the intangible dream that might lead him he knew not where.

He was a sensible young man, and, as such, uninteresting to Mr. Satterthwaite, who was an artist and a connoisseur in life.

He left Roger Graham in his room and went downstairs. The drawing-room was empty. Mabelle's ukelele lay on a stool by the window. He took it up and twanged it absent-mindedly. He knew nothing of the instrument, but his ear told him that it was abominably out of tune. He turned a key experimentally.

Doris Coles came into the room. She looked at him reproachfully.

"Poor Mabelle's uke," she said.

Her clear condemnation made Mr. Satterthwaite feel obstinate.

"Tune it for me," he said, and added--"If you can."

"Of course I can," said Doris, wounded at the suggestion of incompetence in any direction.

She took it from him, twanged a string, turned a key briskly--and the string snapped.

"Well, I never. Oh! I see--but how extraordinary! It's the wrong string--a size too big. It's an A string. How stupid to put that on. Of course it snaps when you try to tune it up. How stupid people are."

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "They are--even when they try to be clever..."

His tone was so odd that she stared at him. He took the ukelele from her and removed the broken string. He went out of the room holding it in his hand. In the library he found David Keeley. "Here," he said.

He held out the string. Keeley took it.

"What's this?"

"A broken ukelele string." He paused and then went on--"What did you do with the other one?"

"The other one?"

"The one you strangled her with. You were very clever, weren't you? It was done very quickly--just in that moment we were all laughing and talking in the hall.

"Mabelle came back into this room for her ukelele. You had taken the string off as you fiddled with it just before. You caught her round the throat with it and strangled her. Then you came out and locked the door and joined us. Later, in the dead of night, you came down and--and disposed of the body by hanging it on the door of her room. And you put another string on the ukelele--but it was the wrong string, that's why you were stupid. "There was a pause.

"But why did you do it?" said Mr. Satterthwaite. "In God's name, why?"

Mr. Keeley laughed, a funny giggling little laugh that made Mr. Satterthwaite feel rather sick.

"It was so very simple," he said "That's why! And then--nobody ever noticed me. Nobody ever noticed what I was doing. I thought--I thought I'd have the laugh of them..."

And again he gave that furtive little giggle and looked at Mr. Satterthwaite with mad eyes.

Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that at that moment Inspector Winkfield came into the room.

It was twenty-four hours later, on his way to London, that Mr. Satterthwaite awoke from a doze to find a tall dark man sitting opposite to him in the railway carriage. He was not altogether surprised.

"My dear Mr. Quin!"

"Yes--I am here."

Mr. Satterthwaite said slowly--"I can hardly face you. I am ashamed--I failed."

"Are you so sure of that?"

"I did not save her."

"But you discovered the truth?"

"Yes--that is true. One or other of those young men might have been accused--might even have been found guilty. So, at any rate, I saved a man's life. But, she--she-- that strange enchanting creature..." is voice broke off.

Mr. Quin looked at him.

"Is death the greatest evil that can happen to anyone?"

"I--well--perhaps--No--"

Mr. Satterthwaite remembered... Madge and Roger Graham... Mabelle's face in the moonlight--its serene unearthly happiness..."

"No," he admitted. "No--perhaps death is not the greatest evil..."

He remembered the ruffled blue chiffon of her dress that had seemed to him like the plumage of a bird... A bird with a broken wing...

When he looked up, he found himself alone. Mr. Quin was no longer there.

But he had left something behind.

On the seat was a roughly carved bird fashioned out of some dim blue stone. It had, possibly, no great artistic merit. But it had something else.

It had the vague quality of enchantment.

So said Mr. Satterthwaite--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a connoisseur.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE WORLD'S END

MR. SATTERTHWAITE had come to Corsica because of the Duchess. It was out of his beat. On the Riviera he was sure of his comforts, and to be comfortable meant a lot to Mr. Satterthwaite. But though he liked his comfort, he also liked a Duchess. In his way, a harmless, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way, Mr. Satterthwaite was a snob. He liked the best people. And the Duchess of Leith was a very authentic Duchess. There were no Chicago pork butchers in her ancestry. She was the daughter of a Duke as well as the wife of one.

For the rest, she was rather a shabby-looking old lady, a good deal given to black bead trimmings on her clothes. She had quantities of diamonds in old-fashioned settings, and she wore them as her mother before her had worn them-- pinned all over her indiscriminately. Someone had suggested once that the Duchess stood in the middle of the room whilst her maid flung brooches at her haphazard. She subscribed generously to charities, and looked well after her tenants and dependents, but was extremely mean over small sums. She cadged lifts from her friends, and did her shopping in bargain basements.

The Duchess was seized with a whim for Corsica. Cannes bored her and she had a bitter argument with the hotel proprietor over the price of her rooms.

"And you shall go with me, Satterthwaite," she said firmly. "We needn't be afraid of scandal at our time of life."

Mr. Satterthwaite was delicately flattered. No one had ever mentioned scandal in connection with him before. He was far too insignificant. Scandal--and a Duchess--delicious!

"Picturesque you know," said the Duchess. "Brigands-- all that sort of thing. And extremely cheap, so I've heard. Manuel was positively impudent this morning. These hotel proprietors need putting in their place. They can't expect to get the best people if they go on like this. I told him so plainly."

"I believe," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "that one can fly over quite comfortably. From Antibes."

"They probably charge you a pretty penny for it," said the Duchess sharply. "Find out, will you?"

"Certainly, Duchess."

Mr. Satterthwaite was still in a flutter of gratification despite the fact that his role was clearly to be that of a glorified courier.

When she learned the price of a passage by Avion, the Duchess turned it down promptly.

"They needn't think I'm going to pay a ridiculous sum like that to go in one of their nasty dangerous things."

So they went by boat, and Mr. Satterthwaite endured ten hours of acute discomfort. To begin with, as the boat sailed at seven, he took it for granted that there would be dinner on board. But there was no dinner. The boat was small and the sea was rough. Mr. Satterthwaite was decanted at Ajaccio in the early hours of the morning more dead than alive.

The Duchess, on the contrary, was perfectly fresh. She never minded discomfort if she could feel she was saving money. She waxed enthusiastic over the scene on the quay, with the palm trees and the rising sun. The whole population seemed to have turned out to watch the arrival of the boat, and the launching of the gangway was attended with excited cries and directions.

"On dirait," said a stout Frenchman who stood beside them, "que jamais avant on a fait cette manoeuvre la!"

"That maid of mine has been sick all night," said the Duchess. "The girl's a perfect fool."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled in a pallid fashion.

"A waste of good food, I call it," continued the Duchess robustly.

"Did she get any food?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite enviously.

"I happened to bring some biscuits and a stick of chocolate on board with me," said the Duchess. "When I found there was no dinner to be got, I gave the lot to her. The lower classes always make such a fuss about going without their meals."

With a cry of triumph the launching of the gangway was accomplished. A Musical Comedy chorus of brigands rushed aboard and wrested hand-luggage from the passengers by main force.

"Come on, Satterthwaite," said the Duchess. "I want a hot bath and some coffee."

So did Mr. Satterthwaite. He was not wholly successful, however. They were received at the hotel by a bowing manager and were shown to their rooms. The Duchess's had a bathroom attached. Mr. Satterthwaite, however, was directed to a bath that appeared to be situated in somebody else's bedroom. To expect the water to be hot at that hour in the morning was, perhaps, unreasonable. Later he drank intensely black coffee, served in a pot without a lid. The shutters and the window of his room had been flung open, and the crisp morning air came in fragrantly. A day of dazzling blue and green.

The waiter waved his hand with a flourish to call attention to the view.

"Ajaccio," he said solemnly. "Le plus beau port du monde!"

And he departed abruptly.

Looking out over the deep blue of the bay, with the snow mountains beyond, Mr. Satterthwaite was almost inclined to agree with him. He finished his coffee, and lying down on the bed, fell fast asleep.

At dejeuner the Duchess was in great spirits. "This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite," she said. "Get you out of all those dusty little old-maidish ways of yours." She swept a lorgnette round the room. "Upon my word, there's Naomi Carlton Smith."

She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window. A round-shouldered girl, who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.

"An artist?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was always good at placing people.

"Quite right," said the Duchess. "Calls herself one anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin."

"She's one of the Knowlton lot then?"

The Duchess nodded.

"Been her own worst enemy," she volunteered. "Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took 'em, of course. Then he stole somebody's jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter."

"Last winter I was in Egypt," he explained Mr. Satterthwaite. "I had flu very badly the end of January, and the doctors insisted on Egypt afterwards. I missed a lot."

His voice rang with a note of real regret.

"That girl seems to me to be moping," said the Duchess, raising her lorgnette once more. "I can't allow that."

On her way out, she stopped by Miss Carlton Smith's table and tapped the girl on the shoulder.

"Well, Naomi, you don't seem to remember me?"

Naomi rose rather unwillingly to her feet.

"Yes, I do, Duchess. I saw you come in. I thought it was quite likely you mightn't recognise me."

She drawled the words lazily, with a complete indifference of manner.

"When you've finished your lunch, come and talk to me on the terrace," ordered the Duchess. "Very well." Naomi yawned.

"Shocking manners," said the Duchess, to Mr. Satterthwaite, as she resumed her progress. "All the Carlton Smiths have."

They had their coffee outside in the sunshine. They had been there about six minutes when Naomi Carlton Smith lounged out from the hotel and joined them. She let herself fall slackly on to a chair with her legs stretched out ungracefully in front of her.

An odd face, with its jutting chin and deep-set grey eyes. A clever, unhappy face--a face that only just missed being beautiful.

"Well, Naomi," said the Duchess briskly. "And what are you doing with yourself?"

"Oh, I dunno. Just marking time."

"Been painting?"

"A bit."

"Show me your things."

Naomi grinned. She was not cowed by the autocrat. She was amused. She went into the hotel and came out again with a portfolio.

"You won't like 'em, Duchess," she said warningly. "Say what you like. You won't hurt my feelings."

Mr. Satterthwaite moved his chair a little nearer. He was interested. In another minute he was more interested still The Duchess was frankly unsympathetic.

"I can't even see which way the things ought to be," she complained. "Good gracious, child, there was never a sky that colour--or a sea either."

"That's the way I see 'em," said Naomi placidly. "Ugh!" said the Duchess, inspecting another. "This gives me the creeps."

"It's meant to," said Naomi. "You're paying me a compliment without knowing it."

It was a queer vorticist study of a prickly pear--just recognisable as such. Grey-green with slodges of violent colour where the fruit glittered like jewels. A swirling mass of evil, fleshy--festering. Mr. Satterthwaite shuddered and turned his head aside.

He found Naomi looking at him and nodding her head in comprehension.

"I know," she said. "But it if beastly."

The Duchess cleared her throat.

"It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays, "she observed witheringly. "There's no attempt to copy things. You just shovel on some paint--I don't know what with, not a brush, I'm sure------"

"Palette knife," interposed Naomi, smiling broadly once more.

"A good deal at a time," continued the Duchess. "In lumps. And there you are! Everyone says--" How clever. "Well, I've no patience with that sort of thing. Give me a nice picture of a dog or a horse, by Edwin Landseer."

"And why not?" demanded the Duchess. "What's wrong with Landseer?"

"Nothing," said Naomi. "He's all right. And you're all right. The tops of things are always nice and shiny and smooth. I respect you, Duchess, you've got force. You've met life fair and square and you've come out on top. But the people who are underneath see the under side of things. And that's interesting in a way."

The Duchess stared at her.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she declared.

Mr., Satterthwaite was still examining the sketches. He realised, as the Duchess could not, the perfection of technique behind them. He was startled and delighted. He looked up at the girl.

"Will you sell me one of these, Miss Carlton Smith?" he asked.

"You can have any one you like for five guineas," said the girl indifferently.

Mr. Satterthwaite hesitated a minute or two and then he selected a study of prickly pear and aloe. In the foreground was a vivid blur of yellow mimosa, the scarlet of the aloe flower danced in and out of the picture, and inexorable, mathematically underlying the whole, was the oblong pattern of the prickly pear and the sword motif of the aloe.

He made a little bow to the girl.

"I am very happy to have secured this, and I think I have made a bargain. Some day Miss Carlton Smith, I shall be able to sell this sketch at a very good profit--if I want to!"

The girl leant forward to see which one he had taken. He saw a new look come into her eyes. For the first time she was really aware of his existence, and there was respect in the quick glance she gave him.

"You have chosen the best," she said. "I--I am glad."

"Well, I suppose you know what you're doing," said the Duchess. "And I daresay you're right. I've heard that you are quite a connoisseur. But you can't tell me that all this new stuff is art, because it isn't. Still, we needn't go into that. Now I'm only going to be here a few days and I want to see something of the island. You've got a car, I suppose, Naomi?"

The girl nodded.

"Excellent," said the Duchess. "We'll make a trip somewhere tomorrow."

"It's only a two-seater."

"Nonsense, there's a dickey, I suppose, that will do for Mr. Satterthwaite?"

A shuddering sigh went through Mr. Satterthwaite. He had observed the Corsican roads that morning. Naomi was regarding him thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid my car would be no good to you," she said. "It's a terribly battered old bus. I bought it second-hand for a mere song. It will just get me up the hills--with coaxing.

But I can't take passengers. There's quite a good garage, though, in the town. You can hire a car there."

" ire a car?" said the Duchess, scandalised. "What an idea. Who's that nice-looking man, rather yellow, who drove up in a four-seater just before lunch?"

"I expect you mean Mr. Tomlinson. He's a retired Indian judge."

"That accounts for the yellowness," said the Duchess." I was afraid it might be jaundice. He seems quite a decent sort of man. I shall talk to him."

That evening, on coming down to dinner, Mr. Satterthwaite found the Duchess resplendent in black velvet and diamonds, talking earnestly to the owner of the four-seater car. She beckoned authoritatively.

"Come here, Mr. Satterthwaite, Mr. Tomlinson is telling me the most interesting things, and what do you think? He is actually going to take us an expedition tomorrow in his car."

Mr. Satterthwaite regarded her with admiration.

"We must go in to dinner," said the Duchess. "Do come and sit at our table, Mr. Tomlinson, and then you can go on with what you were telling me."

"Quite a decent sort of man," the Duchess pronounced later.

"With quite a decent sort of car," retorted Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Naughty," said the Duchess, and gave him a resounding blow on the knuckles with the dingy black fan she always carried. Mr. Satterthwaite winced with pain.

"Naomi is coming too," said the Duchess. "In her car. That girl wants taking out of herself. She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centred, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?"

"I don't think that's possible," said Mr. Satterthwaite, slowly.

"I mean, everyone's interest must go somewhere. There are, of course, the people who revolve round themselves--but I agree with you, she's not one of that kind. She's totally uninterested in herself. And yet she's got a strong character--there must be something. I thought at first it was her art--but it isn't. I've never met anyone so detached from life. That's dangerous."

"Dangerous? What do you mean?"

"Well, you see--it must mean an obsession of some kind, and obsessions are always dangerous."

"Satterthwaite," said the Duchess, "don't be a fool. And listen to me. About tomorrow------"

Mr. Satterthwaite listened. It was very much his role in life.

They started early the following morning, taking their lunch with them. Naomi, who had been six months in the island, was to be the pioneer. Mr. Satterthwaite went over to her as she sat waiting to start.

"You are sure that--I can't come with you?" he said wistfully.

She shook her head.

"You'll be much more comfortable in the back of the other car. Nicely padded seats and all that. This is a regular old rattle trap. You'd leap in the air going over the bumps."

"And then, of course, the hills."

Naomi laughed.

"Oh, I only said that to rescue you from the dickey. The Duchess could perfectly well afford to have hired a car. She's the meanest woman in England. All the same, the old thing is rather a sport, and I can't help liking her"

"Then I could come with you after all?" said Mr. Satterthwaite eagerly.

She looked at him curiously.

"Why are you so anxious to come with me?"

"Can you ask?" Mr. Satterthwaite made his funny old-fashioned bow.

She smiled, but shook her head.

"That isn't the reason," she said thoughtfully. "It's odd... But you can't come with me--not to-day."

"Another day, perhaps," suggested Mr. Satterthwaite politely.

"Oh, another day!" she laughed suddenly, a very queer laugh, Mr. Satterthwaite thought, "Another day I Well, we'll see."

They started. They drove through the town, and the round the long curve of the bay, winding inland to cross a river and then back to the coast with its hundreds of little sandy coves. And then they began to climb. In and out, round nerve-shattering curves, upwards, ever upwards on the tortuous winding road. The blue bay was far below them, and on the other side of it Ajaccio sparkled in the sun, white, like a fairy city.

In and out, in and out, with a precipice first one side of them, then the other. Mr. Satterthwaite felt slightly giddy, he also felt slightly sick. The road was not very wide. And still they climbed.

It was cold now. The wind came to them straight off the snow peaks. Mr. Satterthwaite turned up his coat collar and buttoned it tightly under his chin.

It was very cold. Across the water, Ajaccio was still bathed in sunlight, but up here thick grey clouds came drifting across the face of the sun. Mr. Satterthwaite ceased to admire the view. He yearned for a steam-heated hotel and a comfortable arm-chair.

Ahead of them Naomi's little two-seater drove steadily forward. Up, still up. They were on top of the world now. On either side of them were lower hills, hills sloping down to valleys. They looked straight across to the snow peaks. And the wind come tearing over them, sharp, like a knife. Suddenly Naomi's car stopped, and she looked back.

"We've arrived," she said. "At the World's End. And I don't think it's an awfully good day for it."

They all got out. They had arrived in a tiny village, with half a dozen stone cottages. An imposing name was printed in letters a foot high.

"Cote Chiaveeri."

Naomi shrugged her shoulders.

"That's its official name, but I prefer to call it the World's End."

She walked on a few steps, and Mr. Satterthwaite joined her. They were beyond the houses now. The road stopped. As Naomi had said, this was the end, the back of beyond, the beginning of nowhere. Behind them the white ribbon of the road, in front of them--nothing. Only far, far below, the sea...

Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath.

"It's an extraordinary place. One feels that anything might happen here, that one might meet--anyone------"

He stopped, for just in front of them a man was sitting on a. boulder, his face turned to the sea. They had not seen him till this moment, and his appearance had the suddenness of a conjuring trick. He might have sprung from the surrounding landscape.

"I wonder------" began Mr. Satterthwaite.

But at that minute the stranger turned, and Mr. Satterthwaite saw his face.

"Why, Mr. Quin! How extraordinary! Miss Carlton Smith, I want to introduce my friend Mr. Quin to you. He's the most unusual fellow. You are, you know. You always turn up in the nick of time------"

He stopped, with the feeling that he had said something awkwardly significant, and yet for the life of him he could not think what it was.

Naomi had shaken hands with Mr. Quin in her usual abrupt style.

"We're here for a picnic," she said. "And it seems to me we shall be pretty well frozen to the bone."

Mr. Satterthwaite shivered.

"Perhaps," he said uncertainly, "we shall find a sheltered spot?"

"Which this isn't," agreed Naomi "Still, it's worth seeing, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed." Mr. Satterthwaite turned to Mr. Quin. "Miss Carlton Smith calls this place the world's end. Rather a good name, eh?"

Mr. Quin nodded his head slowly several times.

"Yes--a very suggestive name. I suppose one only comes once in one's life to a place like that--a place where one can't go on any longer."

"What do you mean?" asked Naomi sharply.

He turned to her.

"Well, usually, there's a choke, isn't there? To the right or to the left. Forward or back. Here--there's the road behind you and in front of you--nothing."

Naomi stared at him. Suddenly she shivered and began to retrace her steps towards the others. The two men fell in beside her. Mr. Quin continued to talk, but his tone was now easily conversational.

"Is the small car yours, Miss Carlton Smith?"

"Yes."

"You drive yourself? One needs, I think, a good deal of nerve to do that round here. The turns are rather appalling. A moment of inattention, a brake that failed to hold, and-- over the edge--down--down--down. It would be--very easily done."

They had now joined the others. Mr. Satterthwaite introduced his friend. He felt a tug at his arm. It was Naomi. She drew him apart from the others.

"Who is he?" she demanded fiercely.

Mr. Satterthwaite gazed at her in astonishment.

"Well, I hardly know. I mean, I have known him for some years now--we have run across each other from time to time, but in the sense of knowing actually------"

He stopped. These were futilities that he was uttering, and the girl by his side was not listening. She was standing with her head bent down, her hands clenched by her sides.

"He knows things," she said. "He knows things... How does he know?"

Mr. Satterthwaite had no answer. He could only look at her dumbly, unable to comprehend die storm that shook her.

"I'm afraid," she muttered.

"Afraid of Mr. Quin?"

"I'm afraid of his eyes. He sees things..."

Something cold and wet fell on Mr. Satterthwaite's cheek. He looked up.

"Why, it's snowing," he exclaimed, in great surprise.

"A nice day to have chosen for a picnic," said Naomi.

She had regained control of herself with an effort.

What was to be done? A babel of suggestions broke out. The snow came down thick and fast. Mr. Quin made a suggestion and everyone welcomed it. There was a little stone Cassecroute at the end of the row of houses. There was a stampede towards it.

"You have your provisions," said Mr. Quin, "and they will probably be able to make you some coffee."

It was a tiny place, rather dark, for the one little window did little towards lighting it, but from one end came a grateful glow of warmth. And old Corsican woman was just throwing a handful of branches on the fire. It blazed up, and by its light the newcomers realised that others were before them.

Three people were sitting at the end of a bare wooden table. There was something unreal about the scene to Mr. Satterthwaite's eye, there was something even more unreal about the people.

The woman who sat at the end of the table looked like a duchess--that Is, she looked more like a popular conception of a duchess. She was the Ideal stage grande dame. Her aristocratic head was held high, her exquisitely dressed hair was of a snowy white. She was dressed in grey--soft draperies that fell about her in artistic folds. One long white hand supported her chin, the other was holding a roll spread with pate de foie gras. On her right was a man with a very white face, very black hair, and horn-rimmed spectacles. He was marvellously and beautifully dressed. At the moment his head was thrown back, and his left arm was thrown out as though he were about to declaim something.

On the left of the white-haired lady was a jolly-looking little man with a bald head. After the first glance, nobody looked at him.

There was just a moment of uncertainty, and then the Duchess (the authentic Duchess) took charge.

"Isn't this storm too dreadful?" she said pleasantly, coming forward, and smiling a purposeful and efficient smile that she had found very useful when serving on Welfare and other committees. I suppose you've been caught in it just like we have? But Corsica is a marvellous place. I only arrived this morning."

The man with the black hair got up, and the Duchess with a gracious smile slipped into his seat.

The white-haired lady spoke.

"We have been here a week," she said.

Mr. Satterthwaite started. Could anyone who had once heard that voice ever forget it? It echoed round the stone room, charged with emotion--with exquisite melancholy. It seemed to him that she had said something wonderful, memorable, full of meaning. She had spoken from her heart.

He spoke in a hurried aside to Mr. Tomlinson,

"The man in spectacles is Mr. Vyse--the producer, you know."

The retired Indian judge was looking at Mr. Vyse with a good deal of dislike.

"What does he produce?" he asked. "Children?"

"Oh, dear me, no," said Mr. Satterthwaite, shocked by the mere mention of anything so crude in connection with Mr. Vyse. "Plays."

"I think," said Naomi, "I'll go out again. It's too hot in here." Her voice, strong and harsh, made Mr. Satterthwaite, jump. She made almost blindly, as it seemed, for the door, brushing Mr. Tomlinson aside. But in the doorway itself she came face to face with Mr. Quin, and he barred her way.

"Go back and sit down," he said.

His voice was authoritative. To Mr. Satterthwaite's surprise the girl hesitated a minute and then obeyed. She sat down at the foot of the table as far from the others as possible.

Mr. Satterthwaite bustled forward and button-holed the producer.

"You may not remember me," he began, "my name is Satterthwaite."

"Of course!" A long bony hand shot out and enveloped the other's in a painful grip. "My dear man. Fancy meeting you here. You know Miss Nunn, of course?"

Mr. Satterthwaite jumped. No wonder that voice had been familiar. Thousands, all over England, had thrilled to those wonderful emotion-laden tones. Rosina Nunn! England's greatest emotional actress. Mr. Satterthwaite too had lain under her spell. No one like her for interpreting a part--for bringing out the finer shades of meaning. He had thought of her always as an intellectual actress, one who comprehended and got inside the soul of her part.

He might be excused for not recognising her. Rosina Nunn was volatile in her tastes. For twenty-five years of her life she had been a blonde. After a tour in the States she had returned with the locks of the raven, and she had taken up tragedy in earnest. This "French Marquise" effect was her latest whim.

"Oh, by the way, Mr. Judd--Miss Nunn's husband," said Vyse, carelessly introducing the man with the bald head.

Rosina Nunn had had several husbands, Mr. Satterthwaite knew. Mr. Judd was evidently the latest.

Mr. Judd was busily unwrapping packages from a hamper at his side. He addressed his wife.

"Some more pate, dearest? That last wasn't as thick as you like it."

Rosina Nunn surrendered her roll to him, as she murmured simply--

"Henry thinks of the most enchanting meals. I always leave the commissariat to him."

"Feed the brute," said Mr. Judd, and laughed. He patted his wife on the shoulder.

"Treats her just as though she were a dog," murmured the melancholy voice of Mr. Vyse in Mr. Satterthwaite's car. "Cuts up her food for her. Odd creatures, women."

Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin between them unpacked lunch. Hard-boiled eggs, cold ham and gruyere cheese were distributed round the table. The Duchess and Miss Nunn appeared to be deep in murmured confidences. Fragments came along in the actress's deep contralto.

"The bread must be lightly toasted, you understand? Then just a very thin layer of marmalade. Rolled up and put in the oven for one minute--not more. Simply delicious."

"That woman lives for food," murmured Mr. Vyse. "Simply lives for it. She can't think of anything else. I remember in Riders to the Sea--you know and it's the fine quiet time I'll be having. I could not get the effect I wanted. At last I told her to think of peppermint creams-- she's very fond of peppermint creams. I got the effect at once--a sort of far-away look that went to your very soul."

Mr. Satterthwaite was silent. He was remembering.

Mr. Tomlinson opposite cleared his throat preparatory to entering into conversation.

"You produce plays, I hear, eh? I'm fond of a good play myself. "Jim the Penman, "now, that was a play."

"My God," said Mr. Vyse, and shivered down all the long length of him.

"A tiny clove of garlic," said Miss Nunn to the Duchess. "You tell your cook. It's wonderful."

She sighed happily and turned to her husband.

"Henry," she said plaintively, "I've never even seen the caviare."

"You're as near as nothing to sitting on it," returned Mr. Judd cheerfully. "You put it behind you on the chair."

Rosina Nunn retrieved it hurriedly, and beamed round the table.

"henry is too wonderful. I'm so terribly absent-minded. I never know where I've put anything."

"Like the day you packed your pears in your sponge bag," said Henry jocosely." And then left it behind at the hotel. My word, I did a bit of wiring and phoning that day."

"They were insured," said Miss Nunn dreamily. "Not like my opal."

A spasm of exquisite heartrending grief flitted across her face.

Several times, when in the company of Mr. Quin, Mr. Satterthwaite had had the feeling of taking part in a play. The illusion was with him very strongly now. This was a dream. Everyone had his part. The words "my opal" were his own cue. He leant forward.

"Your opal, Miss Nunn?"

"Have you got the butter, Henry? Thank you. Yes, my opal. It was stolen, you know. And I never got it back."

"Do tell us," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Well--I was born in October--so it was lucky for me to wear opals, and because of that I wanted a real beauty. I waited a long time for it. They said it was one of the most perfect ones known. Not very large--about the size of a two-shilling piece--but oh! the colour and the fire."

She sighed. Mr. Satterthwaite observed that the Duchess was fidgeting and seemed uncomfortable, but nothing could stop Miss Nunn now. She went on, and the exquisite inflections of her voice made the story sound like some mournful Saga of old.

"It was stolen by a young man called Alec Gerard. He wrote plays."

"Very good plays," put in Mr. Vyse professionally. "Why, I once kept one of his plays for six months."

"Did you produce it?" asked Mr. Tomlinson.

"Oh, no!" said Mr. Vyse, shocked at the idea. "But do you know, at one time I actually thought of doing so?"

"It had a wonderful part in it for me," said Miss Nunn. 'Rachel's Children,' it was called--though there wasn't anyone called Rachel in the play. He came to talk to me about it--at the theatre. I liked him. He was a nice-looking--and very shy, poor boy. I remember"--a beautiful faraway look stole over her face--" He bought me some peppermint creams. The opal was lying on the dressing-table. He'd been out in Australia, and he knew something about opals. He took it over to the light to look at it. I suppose he must have slipped it into his pocket then. I missed it as soon as he'd gone. There was a to-do. You remember?"

She turned to Mr. Vyse.

"Oh, I remember," said Mr. Vyse with a groan.

"They found the empty case in his rooms, " continued the actress "he'd been terribly hard up, but the very next day he was able to pay large sums into his bank. He pretended to account for it by saying that a friend of his had put some money on a horse for him, but he couldn't produce the friend. He said he must have put the case in his pocket by mistake. I think that was a terribly weak thing to say, don't you? He might have thought of something better than that... I had to go and give evidence. There were pictures of me in all the papers. My press agent said it was very good publicity--but I'd much rather have had my opal back."

She shook her head sadly.

"Have some preserved pineapple?" said Mr. Judd.

Miss Nunn brightened up.

"Where is it?"

"I gave it to you just now."

Miss Nunn looked behind her and in front of her, eyed her grey silk pochette, and then slowly drew up a large purple silk bag that was reposing on the ground beside her. She began to turn the contents out slowly on the table, much to Mr. Satterthwaite's interest.

There was a powder puff, a lip-stick, a small jewel case, a skein of wool, another powder puff, two handkerchiefs, a box of chocolate creams, an enamelled paper knife, a mirror, a little dark brown wooden box, five letters, a walnut, a small square of mauve crepe de chine, a piece of ribbon and the end of a croissant. Last of all came the preserved pineapple.

"Eureka-," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite softly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Satterthwaite hastily. "What a charming paper knife."

"Yes, isn't it? Somebody gave it to me. I can't remember who."

"That's an Indian box, "remarked Mr. Tomlinson. "Ingenious little things, aren't they?"

"Somebody gave me that too," said Miss Nunn. "I've had it a long time. It used always to stand on my dressing-table at the theatre. I don't think it's very pretty, though, do you?"

The box was of plain dark brown wood. It pushed open from the side. On the top of it were two plain flaps of wood that could be turned round and round.

"Not pretty, perhaps," said Mr. Tomlinson with a chuckle. "But I'll bet you've never seen one like it."

Mr. Satterthwaite leaned forward. He had an excited feeling.

"Why did you say it was ingenious?" he demanded.

"Well, isn't it?"

The judge appealed to Miss Nunn. She looked at him blankly.

"I suppose I mustn't show them the trick of it--eh? "Miss Nunn still looked blank.

"What trick?" asked Mr. Judd.

"God bless my soul, don't you know?"

He looked round the inquiring faces.

"Fancy that now. May I take the box a minute? Thank you."

He pushed it open.

"Now then, can anyone give me something to put in it-- not too big. Here's a small piece of gruyere cheese. That will do capitally. I place It inside, shut the box."

He fumbled for a minute or two with his hands.

"Now see------"

He opened the box again. It was empty.

"Well, I never," said Mr. Judd. " ow do you do it?"

"It's quite simple. Turn the box upside down, and move the left hand flap half-way round, then shut the right hand flap. Now to bring our piece of cheese back again we must reverse that. The right hand flap half-way round, and the left one closed, still keeping the box upside down. And now--Hey Presto!"

The box slid open. A gasp went round the table. The cheese was there--but so was something else. A round thing that blinked forth every colour of the rainbow.

"My God!"

It was a clarion note. Rosina Nunn stood upright, her hands clasped to her breast.

"My opal! How did it get there?"

Henry Judd cleared his throat.

"I--er--I rather think, Rosy, my girl, you must have put it there yourself."

Someone got up from the table and blundered out into the air. It was Naomi Carlton Smith. Mr. Quin followed her.

"But when? Do you mean------?"

Mr. Satterthwaite watched her while the truth dawned on her. It took over two minutes before she got it

"You mean last year--at the theatre."

"You know," said Henry apologetically. "You do fiddle with things, Rosy. Look at you with the caviare today."

Miss Nunn was painfully following out her mental processes.

"I just slipped it in without thinking, and then I suppose I turned the box about and did the thing by accident, but then---but then----"At last it came. "But then Alec Gerard didn't steal it after all. Oh!"--a full-throated cry, poignant, moving--" ow dreadful!"

"Well," said Mr. Vyse, "that can be put right now."

"Yes, but he's been in prison a year. "And then she startled them. She turned sharp on the Duchess. "Who is that girl--that girl who has just gone out?"

"Miss Carlton Smith," said the Duchess, "was engaged to Mr. Gerard. She--took the thing very hard."

Mr. Satterthwaite stole softly away. The snow had stopped, Naomi was sitting on the stone wall. She had a sketch book in her hand, some coloured crayons were scattered around. Mr. Quin was standing beside her.

She held out the sketch book to Mr. Satterthwaite. It was a very rough affair--but it had genius. A kaleidoscopic whirl of snowflakes with a figure in the centre.

"Very good," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Mr. Quin looked up at the sky.

"The storm is over," he said. "The roads will be slippery, but I do not think there will be any accident--now."

"There will be no accident," said Naomi. Her voice was charged with some meaning that Mr. Satterthwaite did not understand. She turned and smiled at him--a sudden dazzling smile. "Mr. Satterthwaite can drive back with me if he likes."

He knew then to what length desperation had driven her.

"Well," said Mr. Quin, "I must bid you good-bye."

He moved away.

"Where is he going?" said Mr. Satterthwaite, staring after him.

"Back where he came from, I suppose," said Naomi in an odd voice.

"But--but there isn't anything there," said Mr. Satterthwaite, for Mr. Quin was making for that spot on the edge of the cliff where they had first seen him. "You know you said yourself it was the World's End."

He handed back the sketchbook.

"It's very good," he said. "A very good likeness. But why--er--why did you put him in Fancy Dress?"

Her eyes met his for a brief second.

"I see him like that," said Naomi Carlton Smith.

CHAPTER TWELVE

HARLEQUIN'S LANE

MR. SATTERTHWAITE was never quite sure what took him to stay with the Denmans. They were not of his kind--that is to say, they belonged neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic circles. They were Philistines, and, dull Philistines at that. Mr. Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet strangely enough had come again and yet again.

Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June, as he sped out of London in his Rolls Royce.

John Denman was a man of forty, a solid well-established figure respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr. Satterthwaite's friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.

Why am I doing this thing? Mr. Satterthwaite asked himself once more--and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only reason that presented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the house (a comfortable, well-appointed house) stirred his curiosity. That room was Mrs. Denman's own sitting-room.

It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr. Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality He had never met a woman so completely expressionless She was, he knew, a Russian by birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European war, he had, fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped with his life on the outbreak of the revolution, and had brought this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong disapproval from his parents he had married her.

Mrs. Denman's room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture--a trifle more masculine than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item-- a Chinese lacquer screen--a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector's piece, rare and beautiful.

It was out of place against that solid English background It should have been the key-note of the room with everything arranged to harmonise subtly with it. And yet Mr. Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended accord. He shook his head. The thing--trivial though it was-- puzzled him. Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house. It was, perhaps, a woman's fantasy--but that solution did not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs. Denman--a quiet hard-featured woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have guessed her a foreigner.

The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denman's house was "Ashmead," and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath, which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred - feet above sea level and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample incomes.

The butler received Mr. Satterthwaite suavely. Mr. and Mrs. Denman were both out--at a rehearsal--they hoped Mr. Satterthwaite would make himself at home until they returned.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a narrow lane.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane, shady and green, with high hedges--a rural lane that twisted and turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address-- ASHMEAD, HARLEQUIN'S LANE--remembered too, a local name for it that Mrs. Denman had once told him.

"Harlequin's Lane," he murmured to himself softly.

"I wonder------"

He turned a corner.

Not at the time, but afterwards, he wondered why this time he felt no surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his-- Mr. Harley Quin. The two men clasped hands. "So your down here," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Yes," said Mr. Quin. "I'm staying in the same house as you are."

"Staying there?"

"Yes. Does it surprise you?"

"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. "Only--well, you never stay anywhere for long, do you?"

"Only as long as is necessary," said Mr. Quin gravely.

"I see," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

They walked on in silence for some minutes.

"This lane," began Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.

"Belongs to me," said Mr. Quin.

"I thought it did," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Somehow, I thought it must. There's the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the 'Lovers Lane.'" You know that?"

Mr. Quin nodded.

"But surely," he said gently, "there is a 'Lovers Lane' in every village?"

"I suppose so," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.

He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive,

"Where does this lane end, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.

"It ends--here," said Mr. Quin.

They came round the last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground, and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and ends that were no longer of account to anybody.

"A rubbish heap," exclaimed Mr. Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and indignantly.

"Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap," said Mr. Quin.

"I know, I know," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, and quoted with just a trace of self-consciousness--"Bring me the two most beautiful things in the city, said God. You know how it goes, eh?"

Mr. Quin nodded.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on the brink of the wall of the cliff.

"Hardly a pretty view for a house," he remarked.

"I fancy this wasn't a rubbish heap in those days," said Mr. Quin. "I believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here--'but nothing much was done, as you can see."

They turned and began retracing their steps.

"I suppose," said Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling, "that many couples come wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings."

"Probably."

"Lovers," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr. Quin had that effect upon him. "Lovers... You have done a lot for lovers, Mr. Quin."

The other bowed his head without replying.

"You have saved them from sorrow--from worse than sorrow, from death. You have been an advocate for the dead themselves."

"You are speaking of yourself--of what you have done-- not of me."

"It is the same thing," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "You know it is," he urged, as the other did not speak. "You have acted--through me. For some reason or other you do not act directly--yourself."

"Sometimes I do," said Mr. Quin.

His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr. Satterthwaite shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly. And yet the sun seemed as bright [as ever.

At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a pink cotton frock. Mr. Satterthwaite recognised her as Molly Stanwell, whom he had net down here before.

She waved a hand to welcome him.

"John and Anna have just gone back," she cried. "They thought you must have come, but they simply had to be at the rehearsal."

"Rehearsal of what?" inquired Mr. Satterthwaite.

"This masquerade thing--I don't quite know what you'll call it. There is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr. Manly, do you remember him down here? He had quite a good tenor voice, is to be pierrot, and I am pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for the dancing--Harlequin and Columbine, you know. And then there is a big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village girls to sing. She's really getting the thing up for that. The music is rather lovely--but very modern--next to no tune anywhere. Claude Wickam. Perhaps you know him?"

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his manner to know everybody. He knew all about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer who was a fat Jewess with a penchant for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir Leopold Roscheimer who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.

They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.

John Denman, upright, slightly florid, with the faintest possible tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the appearance of Mr. Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks to him. Anne Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless as usual.

Mr. Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over high cheek bones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weatherbeaten. An out of door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless--and yet...

He thought-- "There should be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn't That's what's all wrong. Yes, all wrong." And to Claude Wickam he said--"I beg your pardon? You were saying?"

Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. "Russia," he said, "that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. Magnificent!" He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate eclair he was waving about in the other. "Take," he said (with his mouth full),"the Russian Ballet." Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did she think of the Russian Ballet?

The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point--what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet, but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride. "I have never seen It." "What?" He gazed at her open-mouthed, "But-- surely------"

Her voice went on, level and emotionless.

"Before my marriage, I was a dancer So now------"

"A busman's holiday," said her husband. "Dancing." She shrugged her shoulders." I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me."

"Oh!"

It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb. His voice went on.

"Talking of lives," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "and experimenting in them. The Russian nation made one costly experiment."

Claude Wickam swung round on him. "I know what you are going to say," he cried. "Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?"

"Three times," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall--not forget it."

He spoke in an almost reverent voice.

"I saw her, too," said Claude Wickam. "I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it."

He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.

"There is a statuette of her in a Museum in Berlin," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is marvellous. That impression of fragility--as though you could break her with a flip of the thumb nail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph." He paused, shaking his head. "There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution."

"Fools! Madmen! Apes!" said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.

"I studied with Kharsanova," said Mrs. Denman. "I remember her well."

"She was wonderful?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Yes," said Mrs. Denman quietly. "She was wonderful."

Claude Wickam departed and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief at which his wife laughed.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. "I know what you think. But in spite of everything, the music that that boy writes is music."

"I suppose It is," said Denman.

"Oh, undoubtedly. How long it will be--well, that is different."

John Denman looked at him curiously.

"You mean?"

"I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous." he looked across at Mr. Quin. "You agree with me?"

"You are always right," said Mr. Quin.

"We will come upstairs to my room," said Mrs. Denman. "It is pleasant there."

She led the way, and they followed her. Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath as he caught sight of the Chinese screen. He looked up to find Mrs. Denman watching him.

"You are the man who is always right," she said, nodding her head slowly at him. "What do you make of my screen?"

He felt that in some way the words were a challenge to him, and he answered almost haltingly, stumbling over the words a little.

"Why, it's--it's beautiful. More, it's unique." "You're right." Denman had come up behind him. "We bought it early in our married life. Got it for about a tenth of its value, but even then--well, it crippled us for over a year. You remember, Anna?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Denman, "I remember." "In fact, we'd no business to buy it at all--not then. Now, of course, it's different. There was some very good lacquer going at Christie's the other day. Just what we need to make this room perfect. All Chinese together. Clear out the other stuff. Would you believe it, Satterthwaite, my wife wouldn't hear of it?"

"I like this room as it is," said Mrs. Denman. There was a curious look on her face. Again Mr. Satterthwaite felt challenged and defeated. He looked round him, and for the first time he noticed the absence of all personal touch. There were no photographs, no flowers, no knick-knacks. It was not like a woman's room at all. Save for that one incongruous factor of the Chinese screen, it might have been a sample room shown at some big furnishing house.

He found her smiling at him.

"Listen," she said. She bent forward, and for a moment she seemed less English, more definitely foreign. "I speak to you for you will understand. We bought that screen with more than money--with love. For love of it, because it was beautiful and unique, we went without other things, things we needed and missed. These other Chinese pieces my husband speaks of, those we should buy with money only, we should not pay away anything of ourselves."

Her husband laughed.

"Oh, have it your own way," he said, but with a trace of irritation in his voice. "But it's all wrong against this English background. This other stuff, it's good enough of its kind, genuine solid, no fake about it--but mediocre. Good plain late Hepplewhite."

She nodded.

"Good, solid, genuine English," she murmured softly.

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her. He caught a meaning behind these words. The English room--the flaming beauty of the Chinese screen... No, it was gone again.

"I met Miss Stanwell in the lane," he said conversationally. "She tells me she is going to be pierrette in this show Tonight."

"Yes," said Denman. "And she's awfully good, too."

"She has clumsy feet," said Anna.

"Nonsense," said her husband. "All women are alike, Satterthwaite. Can't bear to hear another woman praised. Molly is a very good-looking girl, and so of course every woman has to have their knife into her."

"I spoke of dancing," said Anna Denman. She sounded faintly surprised. "She is very pretty, yes, but her feet move clumsily. You cannot tell me anything else because I know about dancing."

Mr. Satterthwaite intervened tactfully.

"You have two professional dancers coming down, I understand?"

"Yes. For the ballet proper. Prince Oranoff is bringing them down in his car."

"Sergius Oranoff?"

The question came from Anna Denman. Her husband turned and looked at her.

"You know him?"

"I used to know him--In Russia."

Mr. Satterthwaite thought that John Denman looked disturbed. -"Will he know you?"

"Yes. He will know me."

She laughed--a low, almost triumphant laugh. There was nothing of the Dutch Doll about her face now. She nodded reassuringly at her husband.

"Sergius. So he is bringing down the two dancers. He was always interested in dancing."

"I remember."

John Denman spoke abruptly, then turned and left the room. Mr. Quin followed him. Anna Denman crossed to the telephone and asked for a number. She arrested Mr. Satterthwaite with a gesture as he was about to follow the example of the other two men.

"Can I speak to Lady Roscheimer. Oh! it is you. This is Anna Denman speaking. Has Prince Oranoff arrived yet? What? What? Oh, my dear! But how ghastly."

She listened for a few moments longer, then replaced the receiver. She turned to Mr. Satterthwaite.

"There has been an accident. There would be with Sergius Ivanovitch driving. Oh, he has not altered in all these years. The girl was not badly hurt, but bruised and shaken, too much to dance tonight. The man's arm is broken. Sergius Ivanovitch himself is unhurt. The devil looks after his own, perhaps."

"And what-about Tonight's performance?"

"Exactly, my friend. Something must be done about it."

She sat thinking. Presently she looked at him.

"I am a bad hostess, Mr. Satterthwaite. I do not entertain you."

"I assure you that it is not necessary. There's one thing though, Mrs. Denman, that I would very much like to know."

"Yes?"

"How did you come across Mr. Quin?"

"He is often down here," she said slowly. "I think he owns land in this part of the world."

"He does, he does. He told me so this afternoon," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

"He is---." She paused Her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite's. "I think you know what he is better than I do," she finished.

"I?"

"Is it not so?"

He was troubled. His neat little soul found her disturbing. He felt that she wished to force him further than he was prepared to go, that she wanted him to put into words that which he was not prepared to admit to himself.

"You know!" she said. "I think you know most things, Mr. Satterthwaite."

Here was incense, yet for once it failed to intoxicate him. He shook his head in unwonted humility.

"What can anyone know?" he asked. "So little--so very little."

She nodded in assent. Presently she spoke again, in a queer brooding voice, without looking at him.

"Supposing I were to tell you something--you would not laugh? No, I do not think you would laugh. Supposing, then, that to carry on one's"--she paused--"one's trade, one's profession, one were to make use of a phantasy--one were to pretend to oneself something that did not exist-- that one were to imagine a certain person... It is a pretence, you understand, a make believe--nothing more. But one day------"

"Yes?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was keenly interested.

"The phantasy came true! The thing one imagined--the impossible thing, the thing that could not be--was real! Is that madness? Tell me, Mr. Satterthwaite. Is that madness-- or do you believe it too?"

"I------"Queer how he could not get the words out.

How they seemed to stick somewhere at the back of his throat.

"Folly," said Anna Denman.

"Folly."

She swept out of the room and left Mr. Satterthwaite with his confession of faith unspoken.

He came down to dinner to find Mrs. Denman entertaining a guest, a tall dark man approaching middle age.

"Prince Oranoff--Mr. Satterthwaite."

The two men bowed. Mr. Satterthwaite had the feeling that some conversation had been broken off on his entry which would not be resumed. But there was no sense of strain. The Russian conversed easily and naturally on those objects which were nearest to Mr. Satterthwaite's heart. He was a man of very fine artistic taste, and they soon found that they had many friends in common. John Denman joined them, and the talk became localised. Oranoff expressed regret for the accident.

"It was not my fault. I like to drive fast--yes, but I am a good driver. It was Fate--chance"--he shrugged his shoulders--"the masters of all of us."

"There speaks the Russian in you, Sergius Ivanovitch," said Mrs. Denman.

"And finds an echo in you, Anna Mikalovna," he threw back quickly.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked from one to the other of the three of them. John Denman, fair, aloof, English, and the other two, dark, thin, strangely alike. Something rose in his mind--what was it? Ah! he had it now. The first Act of the Walkre. Siegmund and Sieglinde--so alike--and the alien Hunding. Conjectures began to stir in his brain. Was this the meaning of the presence of Mr. Quin? One thing he believed in firmly--wherever Mr. Quin showed himself--there lay drama. Was this it here--the old hackneyed three cornered tragedy?

He was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped for better things.

"What has been arranged, Anna?" asked Denman." The thing will have to be put off, I suppose. I heard you ringing the Roscheimers up."

She shook her head.

"No--there is no need to put it off."

"But you can't do it without the ballet?"

"You certainly couldn't have a Harlequinade without Harlequin and Columbine," agreed Anna Denman dryly. "I'm going to be Columbine, John."

"You?" he was astonished--disturbed, Mr. Satterthwaite thought.

She nodded composedly.

"You need not be afraid, John. I shall not disgrace you. You forget--it was my profession once."

Mr. Satterthwaite thought--"What an extraordinary thing a voice is. The things it says--and the things it leaves unsaid and means! I wish I knew..."

"Well," said John Denman grudgingly, "that solves one half of the problem. What about the other? Where will you find Harlequin?"

"I have found him--there!"

She gestured towards the open doorway where Mr. Quin had just appeared. He smiled back at her.

"Good lord, Quin," said John Denman. "Do you know anything of this- game? 1 should never have imagined it."

"Mr. Quin is vouched for by an expert," said his wife. "Mr. Satterthwaite will answer for him."

She smiled at Mr. Satterthwaite, and the little man found himself murmuring--

"Oh, yes--I answer for Mr. Quin."

Denman turned his attention elsewhere.

"You know there's to be a fancy dress dance business afterwards. Great nuisance. We'll have to rig you up, Satterthwaite."

Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head very decidedly.

"My years will excuse me. "A brilliant idea struck him. A table napkin under his arm. "There I am, an elderly waiter who has seen better days."

He laughed.

"An interesting profession," said Mr. Quin. "One sees so much."

"I've got to put on some fool pierrot thing," said Denman gloomily. "It's cool anyway, that's one thing. What about you?" he looked at Oranoff.

"I have a Harlequin costume," said the Russian. His eyes wandered for a minute to his hostess's face.

Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if he was mistaken in fancying that there was just a moment of constraint.

"There might have been three of us," said Denman, with a laugh. "I've got an old Harlequin costume my wife made me when we were first married for some show or other." He paused, looking down on his broad shirt front. "I don't suppose I could get into it now."

"No," said his wife, "you couldn't get into it now."

And again her voice said something more than mere words.

She glanced up at the clock

"If Molly doesn't turn up soon, we won't wait for her."

But at that moment the girl was announced. She was already wearing her Pierrette dress of white and green, and very charming she looked in it, so Mr. Satterthwaite reflected.

She was full of excitement and enthusiasm over the forthcoming performance.

"I'm getting awfully nervous, though," she announced, as they drank coffee after dinner. "I know my voice will wobble, and I shall forget the words."

"Your voice is very charming," said Anna. "I should not worry about it if I were you."

"Oh, but I do. The other I don't mind about--the dancing, I mean. That's sure to go all right. I mean, you can't go very far wrong with your feet, can you?"

She appealed to Anna, but the older woman did not respond. Instead she said--

"Sing something now to Mr. Satterthwaite. You will find that he will reassure you."

Molly went over to the piano. Her voice rang out, fresh and tuneful, in an old Irish ballad.

"Shiela, dark Shiela, what is it that you're seeing? What is it that you're seeing, that you're seeing in the fire?"

"I see a lad that loves me--and I see a lad that leaves me. And a third lad, a Shadow Lad--and he's the lad that grieves me."

The song went on. At the end, Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorous approval

"Mrs. Denman is right. Your voice is charming. Not, perhaps, very fully trained, but delightfully natural, and with that unstudied quality of youth in it."

"That's right," agreed John Denman. "You go ahead, Molly, and don't be downed by stage fright. We'd better be getting over to the Roscheimers now."

The party separated to don cloaks. It was a glorious night I and they proposed to walk over, the house being only a few hundred yards down the road.

Mr. Satterthwaite found himself by his friend.

"It's an odd thing," he said, "but that song made me think of you. A third lad,--a Shadow Lad--there's mystery there, and wherever there's mystery I--well, think of you."

"Am I so mysterious?" smiled Mr. Quin.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorously.

"Yes, indeed. Do you know, until Tonight, I had no idea that you were a professional dancer."

"Really?" said Mr. Quin.

"Listen," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the Walkre. "That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two."

"Which two?"

"Prince Oranoff and Mrs. Denman. Don't you see the difference in her Tonight? It's as though--as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within."

"Yes," said Mr. Quin. "Perhaps so."

"The same old drama," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams , One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now--what is he, after all? A good fellow--prosperous, successful--but--well, mediocre. Good honest English stuff--very much like that-- Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English--and as ordinary--as that pretty English girl with her fresh untrained voice. Oh, you may smile, Mr. Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying. I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet------"

"Yet what?"

Mr. Quin leaned forward. His dark melancholy eyes searched for those of Mr. Satterthwaite. "Have you learned so little of life?" He breathed. He left Mr. Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway he saw a couple enlaced in each other's arms.

For a moment he thought-----

And then he saw. John Denman and Molly Stanwell.

Denman's voice came to him, hoarse and anguished.

"I can't live without you. What are we to do?"

Mr. Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen.

Mr. Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been.

Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once.

"Please," she said, "don't leave me."

He found that oddly touching. He was, then, of use to someone. And he went on saying those things that meant nothing at all, but which were, somehow, better than silence.

They went that way to the Roscheimers. Now and then her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he understood that she was glad of his company. She only took it away when they finally came to their destination. She stood very erect, her head held high.

"Now," she said, "I shall dance! Do not be afraid for me, my friend. I shall dance."

She left him abruptly. He was seized upon by Lady Roscheimer, much bediamonded and very full of lamentations. By her he was passed on to Claude Wickam.

"Ruined! Completely ruined. The sort of thing that always happens to me. All these country bumpkins think they can dance. I was never even consulted------" is voice went on--went on interminably. He had found a sympathetic listener, a man who knew. He gave himself up to an orgy of self-pity. It only ended when the first strains of music began.

Mr. Satterthwaite came out of his dreams. He was alert once more the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music--delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web--yet with nothing of the pretty pretty about it.

The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protege's. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality.

Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face... A white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream...

Mr. Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely...

Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer's drawing-room. It was in a Berlin Museum at a statuette of an immortal Columbine.

Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in...

Moonlight--and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The Immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart

Pierrot wandering on through the wood... darkness. ,. his voice dies away in the distance...

The village green--dancing of village girls--pierrots and pierrettes. Molly as Pierrette. No dancer--Anna Denman -was right there--but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song "Pierrette dancing on the Green."

A good tune--Mr. Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickham wasn't above writing a tune when there was a need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realised that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical.

They press Pierrot to join the dance. He refuses. With white face he wanders on--the eternal lover seeking his ideal. Evening falls Harlequin and Columbine, invisible, dance in and out of the unconscious throng The place is deserted, only Pierrot, weary, falls asleep on a grassy bank Harlequin and Columbine dance round him. He wakes and sees Columbine. He woos her in vain, pleads, beseeches...

She stands uncertain. Harlequin beckons to her to begone. But she sees him no longer, She is listening to Pierrot, to his song of love outpoured once more. She falls into his arms, and the curtain comes down.

The second Act is Pierrot's cottage. Columbine sits on her hearth. She is pale, weary. She listens--for what? Pierrot sings to her--woos her back to thoughts of him once more. The evening darkens Thunder is heard... Columbine puts aside her spinning wheel. She is eager, stirred... She listens no longer to Pierrot. It is her own music that is in the air, the music of Harlequin and Columbine... She is awake She remembers.

A crash of thunder! Harlequin stands in the doorway. Pierrot cannot see him, but Columbine springs up with a glad laugh. Children come running, but she pushes them aside. With another crash of thunder the walls fall, and Columbine dances out into the wild night with Harlequin.

Darkness, and through it the tune that Pierrette has sung. Light comes slowly. The cottage once more. Pierrot and Pierrette grown old and grey sit in front of the fire in two arm-chairs. The music is happy, but subdued. Pierrette nods in her chair. Through the window comes a shaft of moonlight, and with it the motif of Pierrot's long-forgotten song. He stirs in his chair.

Faint music--fairy music... Harlequin and Columbine outside. The door swings open and Columbine dances in. She leans over the sleeping Pierrot, kisses him on the lips...

Crash! A peal of thunder. She is outside again. In the centre of the stage is the lighted window and through it are seen the two figures of Harlequin and Columbine dancing slowly away, growing fainter and fainter...

A log falls. Pierrette jumps up angrily, rushes across to the window and pulls the blind. So it ends, on a sudden discord...

Mr. Satterthwaite sat very still among the applause and vociferations. At last he got up and made his way outside. He came upon Molly Stanwell, flushed and eager, receiving compliments. He saw John Denman, pushing and elbowing his way through the throng, his eyes alight with a new flame. Molly came towards him, but, almost unconsciously, he put her aside. It was not her he was seeking.

"My wife? Where is she?"

"I think she went out in the garden."

It was, however, Mr. Satterthwaite who found her, sitting on a stone seat under a cypress tree. When he came up to her, he did an odd thing. He knelt down and raised her hand to his lips.

"Ah!" she said. "You think I danced well?"

"You danced--as you always danced, Madame Kharsanova."

She drew in her breath sharply.

"So--you have guessed."

"There is only one Kharsanova. No one could see you dance and forget. But why--why?"

"What else is possible?"

"You mean?"

She had spoken very simply. She was just as simple now.

"Oh! but you understand. You are of the world. A great dancer--she can have lovers, yes--but a husband, that is different. And he--he did not want the other. He wanted me to belong to him as--as Kharsanova could never have belonged."

"I see," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I see. So you gave it up?"

She nodded.

"You must have loved him very much," said Mr. Satterthwaite gently.

"To make such a sacrifice?" She laughed.

"Not quite that. To make it so light-heartedly."

"Ah, yes--perhaps--you are right."

"And now?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

Her face grew grave.

"Now?" She paused, then raised her voice and spoke into the shadows.

"Is that you, Sergius Ivanovitch?"

Prince Oranoff came out into the moonlight. He took her hand and smiled at Mr. Satterthwaite without self-consciousness.

"Ten years ago I mourned the death of Anna Kharsanova, " he said simply. "She was to me as my other self. Today I have found her again. We shall part no more."

"At the end of the lane in ten minutes," said Anna, "I shall not fail you."

Oranoff nodded and went off again. The dancer turned to Mr. Satterthwaite. A smile played about her lips.

"Well--you are not satisfied, my friend?"

"Do you know," said Mr. Satterthwaite abruptly, "that your husband is looking for you?"

He saw the tremor that passed over her face, but her voice was steady enough.

"Yes," she said gravely. "That may well be."

"I saw his eyes. They------" he stopped abruptly.

She was still calm.

"Yes, perhaps. For an hour. An hour's magic, born of past memories, of music, of moonlight -That is all"

"Then there is nothing that I can say?"

He felt old, dispirited.

"For ten years I have lived with the man I love," said Anna Kharsanova. "Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me."

Mr. Satterthwaite said nothing. He had no arguments left. Besides it really seemed the simplest solution. Only-- only, somehow, it was not the solution he wanted. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

"I know, my friend, I know. But there is no third way. Always one looks for one thing--the lover, the perfect, the eternal lover... It is the music of Harlequin one hears. No lover ever satisfies one, for all lovers are mortal. And Harlequin is only a myth, an invisible presence... unless------"

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Yes?"

"Unless--his name is--Death!"

Mr. Satterthwaite shivered. She moved away from him, was swallowed up in the shadows...

He never knew quite how long he sat on there, but suddenly he started up with the feeling that he had been wasting valuable time. He hurried away, impelled in a certain direction almost in spite of himself.

As he came out into the lane he had a strange feeling of unreality. Magic--magic and moonlight! And two figures coming towards him...

Oranoff in his Harlequin dress. So he thought at first. Then, as they passed him, he knew his mistake. That lithe swaying figure belonged to one person only--Mr. Quin...

They went on down the lane--their feet light as though they were treading on air. Mr. Quin turned his head and looked back, and Mr. Satterthwaite had a shock, for it was not the face of Mr. Quin as he had ever seen it before. It was the face of a stranger--no, not quite a stranger. Ah"! he had it now, it was the face of John Denman as it might have looked before life went too well with him. Eager, adventurous, the face at once of a boy and a lover...

Her laugh floated down to him, clear and happy..." he looked after them and saw in the distance the lights of a little cottage. He gazed after them like a man in a dream.

He was rudely awakened by a hand that fell on his shoulder and he was jerked round to face Sergius Oranoff. The man looked white and distracted.

"Where is she? Where is she? She promised--and she has not come."

"Madam has just gone up the lane--alone."

It was Mrs. Denman's maid who spoke from the shadow of the door behind them. She had been waiting with her mistress's wraps.

"I was standing here and saw her pass," she added.

Mr. Satterthwaite threw one harsh word at her.

"Alone? Alone, did you say?"

The maid's eyes widened in surprise.

"Yes, sir. Didn't you see her off?"

Mr. Satterthwaite clutched at Oranoff.

"Quickly," he muttered. "I'm--I'm afraid."

They hurried down the lane together, the Russian talking in quick disjointed sentences.

"She is a wonderful creature. Ah! how she danced tonight. And that friend of yours. Who is he? Ah! but he is wonderful--unique. In the old days, when she danced the Columbine of Rimsky Korsakoff, she never found the perfect Harlequin. Mordoff, Kassnine--none of them were quite perfect. She had her own little fancy. She told me of it once. Always she danced with a dream Harlequin--a man who was not really there. "It was Harlequin himself, she said, who came to dance with her. It was that fancy of hers that made her Columbine so wonderful"

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. There was only one thought in his head.

"Hurry," he said. "We must be in time. Oh! We must be in time."

They came round the last corner--came to the deep pit and to something lying in it that had not been there before, the body of a woman lying in a wonderful pose, arms flung wide and head thrown back. A dead face and body that were triumphant and beautiful in the moonlight.

Words came back to Mr. Satterthwaite dimly--Mr. Quin's words--"wonderful things on a rubbish heap"... H understood them now.

Oranoff was murmuring broken phrases. The tears were streaming down his face.

"I loved her. Always I loved her." He used almost the same words that had occurred to Mr. Satterthwaite earlier in the day. "We were of the same world, she and I. We had the same thoughts, the same dreams. I would have loved her always..."

"How do you know?"

The Russian stared at him--at the fretful peevishness < the tone.

"How do you know?" went on Mr. Satterthwaite. "It what all lovers think--what all lovers say... There is one! one lover------"

He turned and almost ran into Mr. Quin. In an agitated manner, Mr. Satterthwaite caught him by the arm and drew him aside.

"It was you," he said. "It was you who were with ht just now?"'

Mr. Quin waited a minute and then said gently--

"You can put it that way, if you like."

"And the maid didn't see you?"

"The maid didn't see me."

"But , I did. Why was that?"

"Perhaps, as a result of the price you have paid, you see things that other people--do not."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him uncomprehendingly for a minute or two. Then he began suddenly to quiver all over like an aspen leaf.

"What is this place?" he whispered. "What is this-- place?"

"I told you earlier to-day. It is my lane."

"A Lovers Lane," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. "And people pass along it."

"Most people, sooner or later."

"And at the end of it--what do they find?" Mr. Quin smiled. His voice was very gentle. He pointed at the ruined cottage above them.

"The house of their dreams--or a rubbish heap--who shall say?"

Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at him suddenly. A wild rebellion surged over him. He felt cheated, defrauded.

"But I---." is voice shook. "I have never passed down your lane..."

"And do you regret?"

Mr. Satterthwaite quailed. Mr. Quin seemed to have loomed to enormous proportions... Mr. Satterthwaite had a vista of. something at once menacing and terrifying... Joy, Sorrow, Despair.

And his comfortable little soul shrank back appalled.

"Do you regret?" Mr. Quin repeated his question. There was something terrible about him.

"No," Mr. Satterthwaite stammered. "N-no."

And then suddenly he rallied.

"But I see things," He cried. "I may have been only a looker-on at life--but I see things that other people do not. You said so yourself, Mr. Quin..."

But Mr. Quin had vanished.

The End

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