"Then you'll come? It's awfully good of you——"

"Not at all, sir. You forget I'm an interested party," said Anstice quickly. "It is as much to my interest to clear the matter up as to yours, now. Well, what about details? Where—and how—shall we meet, and how do we get into the house without anyone knowing?"

"Ah, yes. That requires thought."

Major Carstairs rubbed his hands together gaily, and Chloe burst out laughing.

"You two are nothing but schoolboys," she said joyously. "I believe you are both looking forward to this midnight adventure! You'd be quite disappointed if there were no need for your masterly plot after all!"

Anstice and Major Carstairs looked rather shamefacedly at one another; but Chloe was merciful and restrained further mockery for the time.

"Well, now I will make my suggestion," she said. "Leave the house in the usual way, by the front door; and come back, at whatever hour you agree upon, to the window here. I will let you in myself, and not a soul need know you have re-entered the house."

"Very well," Carstairs nodded. "One suggestion though. Leave the window open—no one will see behind those curtains, and go to bed as usual yourself. Depend upon it, if Tochatti is really the culprit, she will take all means of satisfying herself that you are safely in bed before she begins her work, and it would not do for her to find your room empty at midnight."

Chloe paled a little, and when she spoke her voice was uneasy.

"Leo, do you really think Tochatti is so—so malicious? I can't bear to think of her being with Cherry—she is with her almost night and day, you know—if she is so dreadful, so dangerous a character——"

"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Carstairs." It was Anstice who spoke, reassuringly. "The little one is quite safe with her, I am sure of that. If it really does turn out that Tochatti has been to blame, I feel convinced that we shall find she is not altogether responsible for her actions——"

"But that's worse still!" Chloe's voice was really alarmed. "If she is mad—a lunatic——"

"I did not mean quite that," said Anstice. "I meant—well, it is rather a difficult subject to enter into at a moment's notice; but—have you ever heard of a dual personality?"

"A dual personality?" She repeated the words, her white brow wrinkling with the effort of concentration. "I think I know what you mean—a person with two sides to his character, so to speak—of which first one is in the ascendant and then the other?"

"Kind of Jekyll and Hyde business, what?" Major Carstairs knew his Stevenson, and Anstice nodded.

"Well, something like that, though not so pronounced. There really are such people, you know—it is not only a fantastic tale that a man may lead a kind of double life, speaking in a spiritual and not a physical sense. You don't call such people lunatics, nor are they, save in extreme cases, criminals. But it is quite possible for a woman like Tochatti to devote one half of herself to your service—and serve you admirably!—and lead what seems in all respects an open and above-board existence; and yet, through some kink in her character, stoop to an action one would expect to find only in a woman of a thoroughly debased nature."

He paused, but neither of his hearers spoke.

"It is as if a lower spirit entered into these people at times, driving them to do things which in a normal state they would be quite incapable of doing. You know the old Biblical theory of possession? Well, the same thing, under another name, is to be met with to-day; and for my part, when I come across the case of a person whose present behaviour contradicts all the actions of his previous life, upsets all the data, so to speak, which I have been able to gather of his conduct in the past, well, I put it down, mentally, to that peculiar theory of 'possession' with which the Easterns in the time of Christ were apparently perfectly familiar."

"As they are to-day," said Major Carstairs unexpectedly; and Anstice looked gratified at the corroboration. "It is a strange theory, I own, but after what I have seen in India I confess I find it perfectly feasible."

"And you think my poor Tochatti may be a victim to this old form of demonism?" Chloe addressed the question to Anstice, and he answered it after a momentary hesitation.

"Well, it is too soon to make any sweeping statement of that kind, Mrs. Carstairs, but I must acknowledge it is hard to reconcile the woman's general behaviour with an action of this kind without some such theory. However"—he glanced at the clock—"if you will excuse me I must really get home. There will be all sorts of complaints from my surgery patients if they are kept waiting!"

"One moment, Anstice! I take it you will come back to-night? Though really it is a jolly big thing to ask...." Major Carstairs tone was apologetic.

"Of course, and we must settle where we meet. But first, shouldn't we let Tochatti know that you are not staying here to-night?"

"Why, yes." Chloe moved towards the boll. "I'll send for Cherry—that will bring Tochatti—and you can allude to your departure then."

Three minutes later Tochatti appeared, in charge of the excited Cherry, who flew at Anstice, and, quite regardless of her immaculately frilled muslin dress, flung herself into his arms and kissed him demonstratively.

"Oh, my dear, what ages since I've seen you!" Her tone was a faithful copy of the parlourmaid's greeting to a recent visitor to the kitchen. "Are you going to stay to dinner? I do hope so, 'cos I'm going to sit up and there's lovely things—lots of roasted pheasants and meringues all filled with squelchy cream!"

"Alas, Cherry, I can't stop!" Anstice's comically regretful tone made Chloe smile. "I shall have to go home and see my patients. And if I get a chop——"

"And a chipped potato, my dear," prompted Cherry.

"And a chipped potato," concurred Anstice obediently, "I shall think myself lucky! But I wish you hadn't told me there were to be lots of pheasants!"

"They're for Daddy, speshully," said Cherry, "'cos he's got sick of chickens in Injia—but I like the bready sauce and the little brown crumbs best!"

"And that reminds me," said Major Carstairs, looking at his watch rather ostentatiously, "I should be glad if you could put forward dinner a little, Chloe. I must catch the nine-thirty to town."

"Oh, Daddy, you're not going to-night!" Cherry forsook Anstice for the moment and clambered on to her father's knee. "You said you were going to stop and you'd come and tell me stories in bed!"

"I did, and I don't like breaking my word to a lady," said Major Carstairs seriously, "but I really must go back to town to-night, and I'll come down to-morrow or the next day, and stay a long, long time!"

"You might tell Hagyard Major Carstairs will not be staying to-night, Tochatti," said Chloe, turning to the woman, and Anstice's quick eyes caught the look of relief compounded with something like surprise which flashed across Tochatti's swarthy countenance.

"Bene, Signora." With a strange look at Anstice, a look which did not escape the notice of the person at whom it was levelled, Tochatti withdrew, and since further conversation was impossible in Cherry's presence, Anstice made his farewells and went out to the car, escorted by his host, who seized the opportunity to fix the details of the evening's later meeting.

"You will leave the house about a quarter to nine, I suppose?" asked Anstice. "Well, look here, why not come round to my place to fill in the time until we can go back? We shall be alone, and unless I'm called out—which I trust won't happen—we can have a quiet chat and a smoke."

"Right. I'll be at your place about nine, and if you're busy I can read the paper, you know. Till then, au revoir!"

Anstice nodded and mounted to the steering seat, and Major Carstairs went back into the house, wondering why the younger man's face wore so sad an expression in repose.

"Of course that Indian affair was rather a facer, but the story's some years old by now and one would think he'd have got over it. As decent a fellow as I've ever met. But he seems altogether too old for his age, and even when he smiles or jokes with the child he doesn't look happy. I wonder if Chloe knows any reason for his melancholy air?"

And with the question still uppermost in his mind he went back to the drawing-room in search of his wife and child.



CHAPTER VII

It was very dark in the window-recess, shut off from the room by the heavy blue curtains which fell to the floor in thick folds. The room itself was not in complete darkness, for the fire, built up by Chloe with assumed extravagance before she went to bed, had burned down to a steady red glow, now and then illumined by a dancing gleam of light as a tiny flame of gas sputtered from some specially charged coal; and as Anstice peeped cautiously through a carefully arranged chink in the curtains he could see the pretty room with fair distinctness. The chairs were standing about with the peculiarly uncanny effect known to all who enter a room after it has been finally deserted for the night—an effect as of waiting for some ghostly visitors to fill their pathetic emptiness and hold high revel or stately converse in the place lately peopled by mere human beings.

On a little table by the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the board Anstice had a queer fancy that if he and Major Carstairs were not present two ghostly chess-players would issue softly from the shadows and rearrange the pieces for another and perhaps more strenuously-contested duel.

As the fantastic thought crossed his mind Anstice sat up decisively, telling himself he was growing imaginative; and Major Carstairs turned to him with a whispered word.

"Getting fidgety, eh? I know the feeling—used to get it when I was sitting in a straw hut in the marshes waiting for the duck to appear——"

He broke off suddenly; for a sound had shattered the silence; but though he and Anstice pulled themselves together in readiness for anything which might happen, both realized at the same moment that it was only the whirr of the grandfather clock which always prefaced the striking of the hour; and in another second the hour itself struck, with one deep, sonorous note which reverberated through the quiet room.

"One o'clock, and no result," Major Carstairs stretched himself cautiously. "How long is the sitting to continue, eh? It's all right for me, but I'm afraid if you have a heavy day's work in prospect——"

"Oh, I don't mind," said Anstice indifferently. "I'm used to having my sleep cut short—one's patients seem to think one can exist quite comfortably without it, though they make a tremendous fuss if they lose a night's sleep for any reason!"

"Well, if nothing happens shortly—and I'm inclined to think nothing will——" began Major Carstairs, but he got no further, for with the extraordinary aptness of conjunction which we are wont to call coincidence, though another word might more fitly be employed, the door opened almost noiselessly and a hooded figure crept on soundless feet into the room.

Anstice and his companion fairly held their breath as the shrouded form glided softly forward, the light of the dying fire doing little, now, to illumine the scene; and neither of the men could have sworn with any certainty to the identity of the person who shared their occupation of the silent room.

In the middle of the floor the figure halted suddenly; and for one wild moment Anstice fancied that some sixth sense had warned the new-comer of their presence; but realizing the danger of attracting that new-comer's thought towards him by any intensity of his own mind—for one thought will draw another as a magnet the steel—Anstice switched off the current of his thoughts, so to speak, and waited with as blank a mind as he could compass for the thing which must surely happen soon.

After that involuntary halt the figure moved slowly forward in the direction of the writing-table; and Anstice would have given a great deal to have been able to see the face of this midnight scribe; but as yet the firelit gloom remained undisturbed; and it was impossible to do more than hazard a guess as to this strange visitor's personality.

There were candles on the writing-table, and for a moment Anstice fancied that the mysterious figure would seek their aid to carry through the task confronting her—he was convinced it was a woman who sat at the table—but he was wrong, for no match was struck, no candle-flame lighted the soft dusk. Instead a small beam of light shot suddenly across the table; and Anstice and Major Carstairs both grasped at the same moment the significance of the ray.

It was a pocket electric torch, of a kind familiar to thousands nowadays, whose aid the letter-writer had evoked; and since this particular one was fitted with a bulb which enabled it to cast a continuous light without finger-pressure, it was quite effective for the purpose to which it was now being put.

Having placed the torch on the table in such a position that the ray of light fell directly across the blotting-pad, the figure made search for a sheet of paper which suited its mind; and after a moment, a sheet having been chosen, a pen was selected, dipped into Chloe's own silver inkstand and a few lines of writing inscribed slowly, and with many pauses, upon the otherwise unsullied paper.

His heart throbbing wildly, with an excitement quite foreign to his nature, Anstice watched the performance eagerly through the just-parted curtains; and so sure was he now of the identity of his quarry that he was ready to leap from his hiding-place and confront the anonymous letter-writer without further loss of time, had not a gentle pressure on his arm restrained him at the critical moment.

It was not safe to speak, since even a whisper might betray their presence; but Anstice realized Major Carstairs' intention and held himself in check, though he quivered like a greyhound straining at the leash, who fears his quarry may escape him if he be not slipped forthwith.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably five minutes, the letter, whatever its nature, was judged complete; and with the same stealthy but unhurried movements the writer sought and obtained an envelope from the many which lay ready to hand and slipped the missive in with deft fingers. An address added, the abominable thing was complete; and having quietly put everything in order, so that even the most acute eyes could discover nothing amiss, the writer rose softly from the chair, and taking up the electric torch extinguished its beam preparatory to making her exit from the room, which was now in almost complete darkness.

This was the moment for which Major Carstairs had been waiting.

With a whispered word in Anstice's ear: "The light—quick!" he dashed aside the curtains and darted out into the room, while Anstice, hastily obeying orders, rushed to the wall and turned on the electric switch to such good purpose that the room sprang instantly into brilliant light.

There was a scream from the hooded figure in the middle of the floor—a scream of mingled anger, defiance and terror which rang in Anstice's ears for hours afterwards, and following the scream a mad, wild rush for the door—a blundering, stumbling rush in which the very garment, the long, loose cloak which was intended for a disguise, proved itself a handicap and effectually prevented its wearer making good her escape. By the time she had torn herself free of the encumbering folds which threatened to trip her up at every step Anstice had reached the door; and now he stood before it with something in his face which warned the panting creature in front of him that the way of escape was effectually barred.

Still hiding her face in the folds of her garment she turned round as though to rush towards the window and seek egress thereby; but facing her stood Major Carstairs, and the wretched culprit realized, too late, that she was trapped.

Yet as a cornered hare will turn and give battle, desperately, to her eager foes, the woman made a frantic rush as though to pass the avenging figure which stood in her path; and as she did so Major Carstairs moved forward and plucked the black hood with no gentle hand from the face it had so far partially concealed.

And as with wildly beating pulses Anstice bent forward to catch a glimpse of the mysterious visitor he knew that his surmise, unlikely as it had seemed, had been correct; that by a stroke of luck the expert, Clive, had been able to point unerringly to the clue which was to solve the mystery of those vile letters and restore to an innocent woman the fair name which had been so unjustly smirched.

For the hooded figure was none other than Tochatti.

* * * * *

"My God! Then it was you!" Major Carstairs' tone was so full of disgust, of loathing, of the just indignation of a righteously angry man that even Tochatti cowered in his grip; and as Anstice came forward the other man turned to him with an expression of wrath which quite transfigured his face. "Look at her, Anstice, the miserable, degraded creature! To think that she has been with my wife all these years—hanging over Cherry night and day—and all the time plotting this infamous thing ... by the way, where is that letter?"

He broke off suddenly and Anstice came a step nearer the two.

"I see it, sir!" He had caught sight of it in the woman's clenched hand, and with a smart and unexpected blow on her wrist forced her fingers to open and release that which they held. "Here it is—will you take it? I can look after her all right."

"No—but just see what the address is, will you?" Major Carstairs had regained his self-control, and now stood quiet, alert, cool, as though on parade. "May as well know who was her chosen victim this time."

"Oh, my old friend Carey—you know, the Vicar of Littlefield." Anstice tossed the envelope on to a chair out of reach. "He was the first one honoured, I believe, and possibly was to have been the last!"

All this time the woman had stood silent, her black eyes snapping, her breast heaving stormily. Now she turned on Anstice fiercely and poured out a stream of vituperative Italian which conveyed little or nothing to his mind. Seeing that she made no impression she redoubled her efforts, and finally her voice rose to a scream.

"I say, better shut her up, sir, or Mrs. Carstairs will hear!" Anstice glanced anxiously towards the door and Major Carstairs nodded.

"Yes. We don't want the whole house about our ears." He turned to the woman who now stood sullenly silent in his grasp; though if looks could kill there would certainly have been a practice for sale in Littlefield on the morrow. "Now see here, Tochatti, you've been fairly cornered—caught—and you will have to pay the penalty. In the meantime I shall lock you in your room until the morning, and I warn you it is useless trying to escape."

A noise in the doorway cut him short; and turning hastily round Anstice beheld Chloe Carstairs standing there, the light of the candle she carried casting queer flickering shadows across her pale face, in which the blue eyes gleamed more brightly than ever before.

"Chloe!" In his surprise Major Carstairs released the woman; and with a bound she was across the room, pouring out another wild flood of protestations, in which the words "il dottore" and "la bambina" occurred over and over again. Higher and higher rose her voice, more shrill and hysterical her outpourings, and Anstice's professional instinct warned him that such abnormal excitement must end in disaster—though of the nature of that ending he had at the moment no conception.

Seeing, however, that the woman, while exhausting herself, was also distressing her mistress, he moved forward with the intention of warning Tochatti she was endangering her own health; but his word of caution was never uttered, for as he approached her she spun round with a last fierce torrent of words, and, stooping down, with incredible swiftness plucked a sharp dagger from some secret hiding-place, and lunged at Anstice with all her maddened might.

Luckily for him her excitement impeded her aim; and while she doubtless intended stabbing him to the heart she merely inflicted a flesh wound on the upper part of the arm which he had raised to defend himself.

The next moment Chloe, with a quite unlooked-for strength, had wrested the weapon from the woman's grasp; and then ensued a scene which even Anstice could hardly bear to look back upon in after days.

Whether or no his theory of possession were justified, the woman was for the time being beside herself. Seeing the dagger in Chloe's hand she threw herself upon her mistress and struggled wildly to regain her property, inflicting a series of cuts on her own hand before Chloe could get free to hurl the deadly thing into a corner of the room; and even when Anstice and Carstairs had overpowered her with their superior might she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering a sharp cry fell to the floor in a state of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

Half an hour later Anstice came downstairs and re-entered the room where Major Carstairs sat alone over the now brightly burning fire.

"Well!" The soldier's voice was anxious. "How is the woman? Oh, and what about your arm? Was it badly hurt?"

"No—only a very slight flesh wound, and Mrs. Carstairs has kindly bound it up for me." He relinquished the subject of his own injury abruptly. "The woman is asleep now—she grew excited again, so I've given her some bromide, and she will be quiet enough for the rest of the night."

"My wife is with her?"

"Yes. Mrs. Carstairs insists on staying there for the present."

Anstice took a cigarette from the case his host held out, and Major Carstairs made a gesture towards the tantalus on the table.

"Have a peg—I'm sure you want it!"

"Well, I think I do," returned Anstice with a smile. "We had rather a tough time of it upstairs just now." He mixed himself a drink as he spoke. "Once a Southerner lets herself go the result is apt to be disastrous."

"Will she be quieter in the morning?"

"I expect so." He stood by the mantelpiece, glass in hand; and in spite of his evident fatigue it was easy to see he was quietly jubilant over the events of the night. "The Latin races have a peculiar elasticity, you know. An Englishwoman who had passed through this sort of violent brain-storm would be absolutely exhausted, worn out for days after it; but an Italian doesn't seem to feel things in the same way. They are so naturally excitable, I suppose, that a scene like this is merely an episode in the day's work; and they recover their mental poise much more rapidly than persons of a more phlegmatic temperament would be likely to do."

"Then you think she may be—more or less—normal in the morning?"

"I daresay—a bit dazed, perhaps, but I don't think you need fear a repetition of to-night's scene. Of course she ought not to be left alone—in case she tries to scoot; but if you are staying in the house——" He paused interrogatively.

"I am staying," returned Major Carstairs quietly. "Thanks to you the cloud has lifted from our home; and since my wife is generous enough to forgive me for my unwarrantable doubt of her——"

He broke off, for Anstice was moving forward with outstretched hand; and he guessed that the younger man was rendered uncomfortable by the turn the conversation had taken.

"You're going?" He wrung Anstice's hand with fervent gratitude. "Well, it's late, of course—but won't you stay here for the rest of the night? We can give you a bed in five minutes, and I'm sure my wife will be distressed if you turn out now."

"Thanks very much, but I must go." The decision in his tone was unmistakable.

"Well, I'll get out the car and run you over——"

"No, thanks. I'd really rather walk." He picked up hat and coat from the window-seat and turned to the door with an air of finality. "It's a fine night and I shall enjoy it. I'll be round early in the morning—but I don't think Tochatti will give you any trouble for a good many hours yet."

"As soon as she is able to explain matters there will be a good deal to be done," said Major Carstairs rather grimly, as they went through the hall together. "Thank God, we have that last letter as a proof of her duplicity, and by its aid we can doubtless get a full confession out of her."

"Yes." Anstice paused a second on the doorstep before plunging into the darkness of the night. "It will be interesting to hear the whole story. The events are plain enough—but the question of motive is still a puzzling one."

"Quite so. And yet the affair will probably turn out simple, after all. Well, I mustn't keep you if you want to be off. Good night again—and"—the sincerity in his voice was pleasant to hear—"a thousand thanks for the part you have played in the unravelling of this tangle."

"Good-night. Don't let Mrs. Carstairs exhaust herself looking after the woman, will you? She is splendid, I know, but——"

"I'll go and join her in a moment," returned Carstairs quietly. "I'm an old campaigner, you know, and I'll see to it that she is properly fortified for the vigil—if she insists upon it."

And as he looked into the soldier's square-featured face, the honest eyes agleam with love for the woman he had been fool enough to doubt, Anstice felt instinctively that Chloe Carstairs' ship had come at last to a safe anchorage, that the barque which had so narrowly escaped complete shipwreck on the rock of a terrible catastrophe was now safely at rest in the haven where it would be.



CHAPTER VIII

"Well, Chloe, you have discovered the truth at last?"

It was evening again—early evening this time; and Major Carstairs and Anstice were sitting in Chloe's black-and-white room eagerly waiting for the promised elucidation of the mystery which had so nearly ruined two lives.

Chloe herself, sitting in a corner of the chintz-covered couch, looked, in spite of the strenuous hours through which she had passed, the embodiment of youth and radiant happiness.

In all his life Anstice had never seen so striking a testimony to the power of soul over body as in this rejuvenation, this new birth, as it were, which had taken place under his eyes.

The whole woman was transformed. The classic features had lost their slight austerity of outline, the sapphire-blue eyes were no longer cold and indifferent, but danced bewitchingly in the softly-tinted face. The lips whose corners had been prone to droop were now curved into the tenderest, gayest smiles; and as Anstice looked at her he was reminded of the old story of the marble statue, whose frozen rigidity was warmed into life by the magic of the sculptor's kiss.

And as he gazed, secretly, on this miracle which had been performed before his eyes Anstice realized a truth which hitherto he had not suspected. Although her manner in speaking of her husband had never held the faintest tinge of resentment, nor the least hint of rancour, neither had it betrayed any touch of a warmer feeling than a half-compassionate friendliness; and Anstice had never suspected the world of feeling which apparently lay locked in her heart. He had thought her cold, self-contained, genuinely cynical. He saw her now, impulsive, gay, radiant; and he knew to what this striking, this indescribably happy change was due.

Chloe Carstairs was in love, overwhelmingly, irresistibly in love with her husband; and now Anstice was able to gauge something of the bitterness of the life she had led for the last few months. Where he had thought her cold she had been indeed suffering. Her assumed cynicism, her weary indifference had been the cloak of a sharp and almost hopeless misery; and at the thought of her heroic acceptance of her husband's unbelief, an unbelief which must have been almost unbearably galling, Anstice paid her in his heart a higher tribute than he had hitherto bestowed on any woman.

That the cloud of which Major Carstairs had spoken had indeed lifted was evident in the glances which passed shyly between the two; and as Chloe answered her husband's eager question her blue eyes rested almost tenderly on his face.

"Yes. I think the truth has come to light at last."

"You mean the woman has confessed?" It was Anstice who spoke, and she turned to him at once with an animation of look and manner very different from her former languor.

"Well, as to confession I hardly know. But she has told me the whole story; and if you are both prepared to listen I will pass it on to you at once."

Sitting a little forward, her hands locked on the knee of her white gown, her blue eyes extraordinarily vivid in her softly-coloured face, she began her tale; and both men listened to her with rapt attention as her deep voice rang through the quiet room.

"It seems that years ago when Tochatti was a girl, living in a village close to Naples, she was betrothed to a handsome young Sicilian, a fisherman from Palermo. The story, as Tochatti told it, is a long and rather involved affair; but it is sufficient to say that there was another girl enamoured of Tochatti's lover; and matters were complicated still further by the fact that this girl was engaged to someone else. Well, Luigi, Tochatti's sweetheart, had evidently encouraged the second girl behind Tochatti's back; and when Tochatti found out she was so inflamed with rage and jealousy that, overhearing of an appointment between Bella and Luigi, she wrote a note in a handwriting roughly resembling that of Bella to the latter's sweetheart, a certain Jose, bidding him meet her at the same time and place as that arranged by the other two. Well, Jose went, expecting to meet his beloved—and found her in Luigi's arms. Tragedy followed, of course. Jose first tore the girl away and then stabbed her to the heart, afterwards turning on Luigi. They struggled—on the edge of the cliff; and Luigi proving the stronger, Jose was hurled over the edge into the sea below."

"A tragedy indeed," commented Major Carstairs as the speaker paused. "What was the next act? Did Luigi and Tochatti become reconciled and walk off arm-in-arm?"

"No." Chloe's voice sank a little. "It seems that when Tochatti, horror-struck by the result of her interference, rushed on to the scene, Luigi turned upon her, guessing somehow that she was responsible, and taxed her with having lured Jose to the spot that night. She owned up to it, and instead of imploring forgiveness appeared to glory in her treachery, whereupon Luigi, throwing the fatal letter into her face, burst into a torrent of rage, telling her he had never cared for her, that Bella was the only girl he had ever loved, and finished up by stabbing himself before her eyes rather than endure a life from which his adored one had vanished for ever."

"I say! What a tale—quite a Shakespearean ending, stage fairly littered with corpses," struck in Major Carstairs. "I wonder Tochatti didn't put the finishing touch by stabbing herself as well!"

"She did think of it, I believe," owned Chloe, "but the sound of quarrelling had brought other people on the scene, and Tochatti was of course arrested and the whole story investigated with more or less thoroughness. Being a pretty common story, however—for the Sicilians are a hot-blooded race—it was quite easy for the authorities to reconstruct the scene; and since Tochatti was innocent of any actual crime she was eventually released; only to fall ill with some affection of the brain which finally landed her in an asylum."

"An asylum!" Anstice whistled. "Yet one would have hesitated to call her insane——"

"Yes, now, but you must remember this is very many years ago. She recovered at length, and the only reminiscence of the tragedy was a marked aversion to using pen or pencil. She seemed to think that having wrought so much harm by her one attempt at letter-writing she would be wiser to avoid such things in future."

"Pity she didn't keep her resolve," commented Major Carstairs dryly; and Chloe nodded.

"Yes. We should all have been spared a good deal of trouble. Well, as you know, she entered my mother's service during her honeymoon in Italy, and was my nurse as a child. Now I come to the second half of the story. Tochatti chose to adore me from my early youth"—she smiled faintly—"and she always bore a grudge against anyone who did not fall down and worship me too. And this peculiar attitude of hers has a bearing on the affair of the letters. When Mrs. Ogden chose to quarrel with me, or at least evince a decided coldness, Tochatti's ready hatred flared up; and after the unlucky day when Mrs. Ogden cut me dead before half the county at a Flower Show, she determined to show the woman she could not be allowed to insult me with impunity."

"It certainly was a piece of unpardonable rudeness," said Major Carstairs warmly; and Chloe smiled.

"Yes—and at the moment I resented it very bitterly. But if Tochatti herself had not been there, in charge of Cherry, the matter would have dropped—and it was really unfortunate she should have seen the 'cut.' Well, it seems that Tochatti brooded over the affair, wondering how best to get even with the person who dared to act insolently towards me." Chloe's voice held just a tinge of mockery. "Twenty odd years of residence in England had taught her that one can't use daggers and knives with impunity, and I believe at first she was genuinely puzzled to know how to act. I suppose the thought of weapons turned her mind back to that Sicilian affair; and suddenly it flashed upon her that letters, after all, could be trusted to do a good deal of injury."

"So she wrote an anonymous letter calculated to do harm to the unlucky subject thereof?"

"Yes, and sent it to Sir Richard Wayne. Well, once having started she apparently couldn't leave off. Her venom grew, so to speak, by being fed in this manner; and she wrote one letter after another—you know her mother was English, and she was well versed in our tongue—until practically everyone in the parish knew a garbled version of Mrs. Ogden's sordid little story."

"One moment, Chloe." Major Carstairs had a soldier's mind for detail. "How did the woman know that story? I thought no one ever owned to having heard it?"

"No one ever did," said Chloe rather bitterly. "But the explanation is simple after all. Mrs. Ogden had, before I made my appearance on the scene, repeated the tale to another woman in the parish—the young wife of a solicitor whom she had 'taken up' with great fervour on her first arrival in Littlefield; and this woman had repeated the story to her French maid. The latter, being a stranger in England was pleased to make Tochatti's acquaintance; and one day told her the story, of course in strictest confidence. Well, the woman, the solicitor's wife, died, almost immediately after that, as the result of a motor accident; and her maid returned to her home somewhere in the valley of the Loire, without having, so far as one can conjecture, passed on the tale to anyone else."

"Yes," said Anstice thoughtfully, as Chloe came to a stop. "Quite a simple explanation, as you say, yet one which might never have come to light."

"There is still a point puzzling me," said Carstairs meditatively. "I can understand Tochatti writing the letters, and thus seeking to injure a woman whom she considered to be the enemy of her mistress. But how did she ever bring herself to allow you to be suspected, Chloe?"

"Ah, that is where the mystery really comes in, and where, possibly, Dr. Anstice's theory of the double personality may be considered." Chloe looked at them both rather dubiously. "I confess I can't understand that part of the story myself. Tochatti has assured me that she never for an instant dreamed I should be suspected—the slight similarity in some of the writing to some of mine was more or less accidental, though she admits she had tried to model her script on mine because she admired it ... as she admired all my poor faculties," said Chloe, with a little shrug of her shoulders. "I really believe she used my pens and paper without any idea of the harm she was doing me—in fact, if such a supposition could be entertained for a moment, I don't believe she had any very clear idea what she was doing beyond a fixed intention to work harm to the woman she detested."

"You mean that the idea of this Mrs. Ogden filled her mental horizon to the exclusion of any other thought?" It was Anstice who put the question.

"Yes. Honestly I believe she was incapable of looking, as one might say, all round the subject. You see"—Chloe hesitated, not sure how far the suggestion was permissible—"she had once been in an asylum, and possibly her brain had never worked quite normally since that tragedy on the cliffs."

"No, it is possible she was the victim of a sort of monomania," conceded Anstice. "In which case no other person would be connected in her mind with the affair save the one against whom the campaign was directed. It is a pretty lame explanation, I own, but then the workings of the human mind are so extraordinarily incomprehensible sometimes that I, for my part, have very nearly ceased being surprised at anything a man or woman may be disposed to do!"

"Tochatti tells me she grew very uneasy when things began to look really black," continued Chloe. "She had not understood when she started that letters of this kind rendered one liable to imprisonment sometimes; and she was horrified when she discovered that fact. I believe she would willingly have undone the harm she had done if it had been possible; for she couldn't help seeing, as the days went on, that I was in grave danger of incurring the penalty of her fault. Once, at least, I am sure she nerved herself to tell the whole truth——"

"Her good intentions evidently went to pave a place which shall be nameless," said Major Carstairs dryly. "After all, her affection for you seems to have been a very pinchbeck affair, Chloe, if she could calmly stand by and see you suffer for her wickedness. And for my part I don't see how you can be expected to forgive her."

For a second Chloe sat silently in her corner of the couch; and in her face were the traces of the conflicting emotions which made for a moment a battlefield of her soul.

After all Chloe Carstairs was a very human woman; and it is not in human nature to suffer a great wrong and feel no resentment against those who have inflicted that wrong. Had she been able to forgive Tochatti immediately, to condone her wickedness, to restore the woman to her old place in her esteem, Chloe had been something less—or more—than human; and that she was after all only mortal was proved by her answer to Carstairs' last speech.

"I don't think I have forgiven her—yet——" she said very quietly. "At the same time I don't care to doubt the genuineness of her affection for me. I would rather think that she turned coward at the notion of suffering punishment, and let me endure it in her place through a selfish terror which forbade her to own up and take the blame herself."

"Well—if you look at it like that——" Major Carstairs was evidently not satisfied; and Chloe, possibly feeling unable, or reluctant, to make any further excuse for Tochatti, hurried on with her tale.

"Another factor in Tochatti's determination not to suffer herself is to be found in her dread of a prison as a sort of asylum like that in which she had been confined abroad. I don't know what kind of institution that had been, but she evidently retains to this day a very vivid recollection of the horrors she then endured; and her heart failed her at the bare thought of returning to such a frightful existence as she had then experienced. At any rate"—she suddenly abandoned her apologia—"she could not face it; and so she allowed me to take the blame; and by reiterating the fact that she could not write—a theory which the other servants held, in common with me——"

"But had you never seen her write? It seems odd, all the years she had been in your service!"

"No, I had never seen her write, for the simple reason that she never did write. It seems that the result of that fatal letter of hers had imprinted a horror of writing on her mind; and I really believe that until the day on which she penned the first anonymous letter she had never taken a pen or pencil in her hand...."

"Well, it's admitted she wrote those letters, and hoodwinked the world," said Carstairs briskly. "And though I confess I don't understand how she could reconcile her actions with her affection for you we will let that point pass. But now—what about those last letters? Is Dr. Anstice's supposition that she was jealous of him correct?"

"Quite." Chloe looked at Anstice rather apologetically. "You know Tochatti is of a horribly jealous disposition; and she could not bear to see Cherry growing fonder of you day by day. That unlucky accident was the crowning point, of course; and the fact that you appeared to slight her powers of looking after the child—you must forgive me for putting it like that—was too much for her. With the arrival of Nurse Trevor Tochatti seemed to lose all sense of decent behaviour; and her idea was to repeat her former experience and circularize the neighbourhood with a scandalous story which she hoped, as she has since owned to me, might succeed in driving you away."

"A very pretty plot," said Anstice quietly, "and one which deserved to succeed. But, Mrs. Carstairs, if you will allow me to repeat your husband's question—how did she learn my unhappy story?"

"I expected you to ask that," returned Chloe steadily, "and I made it my business to find out for you. Well, like the other explanation, it is very simple. While I was away"—in her new-born happiness Chloe would not distress her husband by speaking more plainly—"Tochatti took Cherry down to my old home, where my mother still lives, and of course it was only natural that she should there hear some version of the story as it affected my brother Bruce. She acknowledges she would never have connected you with the affair save for the unlucky fact that on the night you and Bruce met here he came to my room afterwards to tell me how and in what circumstances you had met before; and most unfortunately Tochatti, who was in an adjoining room, heard his explanation. She didn't think much of it at the time, but stored it up in her mind; and when, later, she wished to injure you, there was the means ready to hand."

"Like the proverbial Corsican who will carry a stone in his pocket for seven years, turn it, and carry it for another seven on the chance of being able to sling it at his enemy in the end," commented Carstairs. "Well, thank God, the whole story is cleared up now; and the next thing to do is to set about making the matter public and seeing justice done at last."

"Quite so—and it should be easy now," concurred Anstice heartily. "With the letter you hold as evidence and the woman's full confession you should not have much trouble with the case."

Looking at Chloe as he spoke he saw a strange expression flit across her face. The next instant she rose and going across to her husband's chair stood looking down upon him with unfathomable blue eyes.

"Leo"—her voice was very low—"is it really necessary that the matter should be made public? So long as you know the truth—and Dr. Anstice—and my dear friends Sir Richard and Iris, can't we let the subject drop? You know I don't care in the least for the opinion of the world, and it would mean so much trouble, so much raking up of things best forgotten. Couldn't we"—she hesitated—"couldn't we leave things alone, and just be thankful that we know the truth at last?"

Major Carstairs looked up at his wife as she stood before him; and his voice was very gentle as he answered her.

"But, Chloe, what of Tochatti herself? She must not be allowed to go unpunished. Besides, there is another aspect of the case. You know these abominable letters have been scattered broadcast in the land, and it is only fair to Dr. Anstice that their authorship should be published and their lies refuted."

"Yes. I had forgotten that." She turned to Anstice, who had risen and was standing leaning against the mantelpiece, looking desperately uncomfortable. "Forgive me, please, Dr. Anstice! For the second time I had forgotten that you were the victim of this latest outrage of Tochatti's——"

"Mrs. Carstairs—please!" In his haste to explain himself Anstice spoke rather incoherently. "If you are willing to let this matter drop—why, so am I. For your own sake I think, while you are behaving nobly, you are making a mistake—a most generous, chivalrous mistake—in not proving your entire innocence before all the world, but if you are really resolved on it, do let me make you understand that personally I am only too ready to let the whole thing slide into the oblivion it deserves!"

"My dear fellow"—Major Carstairs spoke warmly—"this is all very well, very Quixotic, very—well, what you call noble, chivalrous—but what about the moral side of the affair? Justice should be tempered with mercy, certainly; but it doesn't do to defraud justice altogether of her dues. The woman has committed a crime—I repeat it, a crime against society, against you, against my wife; and to let her go unpunished is to put a premium on wickedness; and leave both you and my wife to lie under a most undeserved, most cruel stigma."

For a moment Anstice hesitated; and before he could frame a reply Chloe spoke very quietly, yet with a decision there was no mistaking.

"Leo, I see your point of view plainly—a good deal more plainly, I think, than you see mine. Of course as a man you want your wife's name cleared; and if you insist on making the affair public, why then"—said Chloe with a little smile—"I suppose I must submit as a good wife should. But"—she was serious now—"if you knew how I dread the publicity of it all—the reports in the papers, the gossip, the talk—oh, it makes me shudder even to think of it! And if you imagine me revengeful enough to find satisfaction in the idea of Tochatti's punishment—well, I think you must have a quite mistaken notion of me after all!"

Major Carstairs hesitated, looking from his wife to Anstice in manifest perplexity.

"Well, really, Chloe, I don't know what to say. Of course you and Dr. Anstice are the people chiefly concerned; and if you are both of you sufficiently superhuman to forego your legitimate revenge—well, I suppose it is not for me to interfere!"

"Suppose you think it over, sir." Anstice felt a sudden desire to get away, to be alone, to think over the revelation of the past half-hour. "For my part I really must go about my work—I'd no idea it was so late. By the way, who will take charge of Tochatti to-night? She is asleep now"—he had seen to that—"but later on she will want a little looking after. She has not borne out my theory," he added, turning to the soldier. "I thought that last night's excitement would have vanished entirely to-day; but I'm bound to admit she is in a queer state; and if she is no better to-morrow you will have to let me send someone to look after her."

"The housekeeper and I will be able to do that at present," said Chloe quietly. "You know poor Tochatti's hatred of professional nurses was directly responsible for that last burst of letter-writing, so we had better not try her too far!"

"By the way, where's the dagger she produced with such lightning sleight-of-hand last night?" Anstice put the question casually as he turned towards the door. "It would not be wise to leave it about, in case she felt like using it again!"

"It is hidden, at present, in my dressing-case," said Chloe. "I picked it up last night and flung it in there lest anyone should see it. But I agree it would be safer locked up; and I will give it to you, Leo, when I go upstairs."

"Yes, it will be better in my keeping," said Carstairs briskly. "Though I hope the madness which induced her to try to use it will have passed before long."

"We'll see how she is in the morning," said Anstice as he shook hands with Chloe. "I'll come round directly after breakfast, shall I? Quite possibly she will be herself again after a long sleep."

"Dr. Anstice"—Chloe retained his hand for a moment—"are you quite sure you don't regret agreeing with me over the possible hushing up of the affair? I'm afraid, after all, I made it rather hard for you to do anything but acquiesce just now. But if, after thinking it over, you decide that the story should be made public, well, I am quite ready to abide by your decision."

"No, Mrs. Carstairs." Anstice's tone was too sincere for her to doubt his genuineness. "For my own part I am more than ready to stand by my former verdict; and the final decision rests entirely with you. Only—perhaps I may be permitted to express my thankfulness that the problem has been solved—and my hope that you—and your husband—may find the future sufficiently bright to atone for the darkness of the past."

"Thank you," she said gently, and her eyes looked very soft. "At least my husband and I will never forget that we owe our happiness to you."

And with the words, cordially endorsed by Major Carstairs, ringing in his ears Anstice left Cherry Orchard and fared forth once more into the gloomy November night.

As he drove away he told himself that he was truly glad the mystery was elucidated at last. Yet even as he did so he knew that his own share in the matter gave him little satisfaction. He felt no elation at the turn of events. He told himself impatiently that he ought by rights to be jubilant, since it was owing to his efforts that Tochatti had been unmasked; but in spite of his honest endeavour to spur his flagging emotions his heart felt heavy in his breast, and there was no elation in his soul.

After all, he told himself wearily, the discovery of the truth meant very little to him. With Mrs. Carstairs the case was widely different; and he did rejoice, sincerely, in her happiness; but for himself, having lost Iris Wayne, all lesser events were of very little importance after all.

"I wonder how Mrs. Carstairs will decide," he said to himself as he drove homewards. "Whatever her decision I suppose I must abide by it; but for myself I sincerely hope she will stick to her first view of the matter."

And then he dismissed the subject from his thoughts for the moment, little dreaming of the awful and tragic manner in which the decision was to be taken out of Chloe Carstairs' hands in the course of the next few hours.

* * * * *

He was just thinking of going to bed that night when the telephone bell rang sharply; and with one of those strange premonitions to which all highly-strung people are at times liable, he connected the call instantly with the affair at Cherry Orchard.

"Yes ... I'm Dr. Anstice ... who is it?"

"Carstairs," came the answer over the wire. "I say, Anstice, can you come at once? Something appalling has happened—Tochatti—she—she's——"

"She has killed herself." The words were more of an assertion than a question.

"Yes ... with that beastly dagger ... found it somehow and stabbed herself ... what? ... yes ... quite dead ... I'm sure of it...."

"I'll come round at once. Does Mrs. Carstairs know?"

"Yes ... what? ... yes, a dreadful shock, but she's quite calm ... you'll come ... the sooner the better ... many thanks...."

Anstice hung up the receiver and turned away, feeling almost stunned by the news he had received. The woman's death, coming on the top of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours, was in itself sufficient to shake even his nerve; but he lost no time in obeying the summons and arrived at Cherry Orchard just as the clock struck twelve.

He found the entire household up, the tragic news having circulated with the rapidity peculiar to such catastrophic tidings; and preceded by Major Carstairs, who met him in the hall, he hurried upstairs to the room where Tochatti lay in her last sleep.

It was quite true, as Major Carstairs had said, that she was dead. She had only too evidently been aware of the dagger's hiding-place, probably through familiarity with Chloe's movements in normal times; and had seized a moment when the housekeeper, thinking her asleep, had left her to procure a fresh stock of candles for the night's vigil, to slip into Chloe's room in search of the weapon.

Once in possession of the dagger the rest was easy; and whatever might be the nature of the emotions which drove her to the deed, whether remorse, dread of punishment, or some half-crazed fear of what the future might hold, the result was certain—and fatal.

She had made no mistake this time. The dagger had been plunged squarely in her breast; and when the housekeeper stole in again, expecting to find her charge still asleep, her horrified eyes were met by the sight of Tochatti's life-blood ebbing over the white sheets, her ears assailed by the choking gurgle with which the misguided woman yielded up her life....

* * * * *

"Yes, she is quite dead, poor thing." Anstice replaced the bedclothes and stood looking down on the dead woman with a steady gaze. "Perhaps, knowing her former brain weakness, I ought to have expected this. But in any case, Mrs. Carstairs"—he turned to Chloe, who stood, white and rigid, by his side—"the decision has been taken out of your—of our hands now. The matter is bound to come to light, after all."

"You mean there must be an inquest—an inquiry into this affair?" It was Major Carstairs who spoke.

"I'm afraid so—you see a thing like this can't very well be hushed up," said Anstice rather reluctantly. "And though I can't help feeling thankful that Mrs. Carstairs will have justice done to her at last, I'm sure we all feel we would have borne a good deal sooner than let this dreadful thing happen."

"Dr. Anstice"—Chloe turned to him almost appealingly—"are we really to blame? If we hadn't plotted, set a trap to catch my poor Tochatti, this would not have come to pass; and I shall always feel that by leaving the dagger in my dressing-case I was the means of bringing this dreadful tragedy about."

"Come, Mrs. Carstairs, you mustn't talk nonsense of that kind!" His tone was bracing. "You were not in the least to blame. If anyone was, I should be the person, seeing I did not warn you of this possibility. But you know the poor soul was a very determined woman; and if she had set her mind on self-destruction she would have carried out her intention somehow."

"Well, at least there will be no object in keeping the authorship of those confounded letters a secret now," said Major Carstairs, putting his hand kindly on his wife's arm. "After all poor Tochatti has done us a service by her death which will go far towards wiping out the injury of her life. And now it is one o'clock, and we none of us had much sleep last night——"

"You're right," said Anstice quickly, "and Mrs. Carstairs looks worn out. Can't you persuade her to go to bed, Major Carstairs? There is really no need for her to stay here harrowing her feelings another moment."

"I'll go," she said at once. "Good-night again, Dr. Anstice. It will comfort me to know that you don't think me entirely to blame—for this."

"I think you are as innocent in this matter as in that other one we discussed to-night," he said quietly. "And this poor woman here, if, as we may surely believe, she has regained by now the sanity she may have temporarily lost, would be the last to think any but kindly thoughts of you in the light of her fuller humanity."

"Thank you," she said again, as she had said it earlier in the evening; and once more they exchanged the firm and cordial handshake by which those who are truly friends seal their parting.

When he had closed the door behind her he came back to the bedside where Major Carstairs still stood, looking down on the dead woman with an unfathomable expression in his eyes.

"Anstice, from the bottom of my heart I regret the manner of this poor soul's passing," he said, and his voice was genuinely moved. "But even so I can't altogether regret that she took this way of cutting the knot. For now my wife and I may at least hope for the ordinary happiness which other human beings know. We have been in the shadow a long time, Chloe and I"—he spoke half to himself—"but now we may surely pray for sunshine for the rest of our earthly pilgrimage together."

"Amen to that," said Anstice solemnly; and as the two men shook hands silently each rejoiced, in his individual fashion, that Chloe Carstairs had come into her own at last.



BOOK III



CHAPTER I

Anstice stood on the deck of the P. and O. boat Moldavia, looking out over the blue seas to where Port Said lay white and shining in the rays of the March sun.

He had seen the port before, on his way to and from India, but he had never landed there, and looked forward with some keenness of anticipation to setting foot in the place which enjoys, rightly or wrongly, one of the most unsavoury reputations in the world.

Not that his stay would be long—a night at most—for he purposed journeying on to Cairo without loss of time, and as the boat drew nearer and nearer to the quay, whereon a crowd of gesticulating natives raised the unholy din which every traveller associates with this particular landing, Anstice turned about and swung down the companion to take a last look round his dismantled cabin.

It was now nearly eight weeks since he had quitted Littlefield. Having disposed of his practice in the nick of time to a college friend who wished to settle in the country, and having also received an unexpected windfall in the shape of a small legacy from a distant relation, he had decided, after a short stay in London, to take a holiday before starting to work once more.

His choice of a destination had not been unaffected by the fact of Iris Cheniston's residence in the land of Egypt. Although he had no expectation of meeting her—for she and her husband were still somewhere in the desert, a couple of days' journey from Cairo—there was an odd fascination in the bare idea of inhabiting, even for a few weeks, the land which held the girl he still loved. For although he had long since determined that he must avoid Bruce Cheniston's wife if he wished to keep his secret inviolate, and incidentally attempt, by starving his passion of its natural food, to keep his love unsullied by any hint of envy, any emotion of desire—well, all men are sophists at heart, and in spite of all his self-assurances that he could visit Egypt without seeking to gain even a glimpse of Iris, ever in the background of his thoughts lay a delicious, barely formulated hope that possibly Fate might vouchsafe to him one fleeting vision on which his hungry heart might feed in the empty days which must needs ensue.

There had been changes in Littlefield since that November evening on which the truth concerning the anonymous letters had come to light. After Tochatti's death it had naturally proved impossible altogether to hush up the tragedy and its immediate results, and although Anstice had done his best to mitigate the position for Major Carstairs and his wife, the inquest had proved a trying affair for all of them.

Since the woman was dead there was no need to keep the authorship of those letters a secret, and before he left Littlefield Anstice had the satisfaction of knowing that Mrs. Carstairs' name had been effectually cleared from the slur placed upon it by a censorious and ignorant world.

When once this was accomplished Major Carstairs insisted on carrying off his wife and Cherry for a long holiday in the south of France, and although Cherry wept bitterly at the thought of parting from her beloved Anstice, he was able to console her by a recital of the wonderful things she would behold by the shores of the azure Mediterranean.

He was surprised to find, when the real parting came, how hard it was to say good-bye to his friends. Although he considered himself unsociable, independent of the claims of friendship, forced, so to speak, into misanthropy by the circumstances of his life, he had grown to have a real esteem for Chloe Carstairs, and the spectacle of her new-born vitality, her radiant happiness, was one which gave him a very deep and genuine pleasure. As for Cherry, that quaint child had long since twined herself round his heart-strings, and although Major Carstairs was, comparatively speaking, a new acquaintance, Anstice respected the soldier as an honest man and a gentleman.

A week after their departure another blow befell Anstice in the sudden death of his friend Fraser Carey, and when at last he was summoned in haste to Carey's aid he found that the latter had suffered for years from a painful internal disease.

"But why not have submitted to an operation years ago?" Anstice asked him gently as he sat, impotent to help, by his friend's side in the light of the dying day. "It might have been successful"—he dare not say more—"and you would have been spared years of agonizing suffering."

The other man smiled, and his eyes for a moment lost their look of pain.

"Quite so," he said gently, "but at the same time I might—probably should—have died. I took the best advice, nearly ruined myself with visiting specialists"—he smiled very faintly—"and none could give me any assurance that I should live through it. And I could not afford—then—to die."

"Not afford?" Anstice stared at him in amazement.

"No. You see"—his voice was a mere thread—"you see I had a wife, Anstice—oh, no one knows, and my secret is safe with you—and although I could not live with her ... she was not what the world calls a good woman, and her ideal of life was not one which I, as a clergyman, could assist her to realize—well, I could not let her sink altogether for want of money to keep some sort of home together."

"You sent her money?"

"Yes. I sent what I could from my stipend—it wasn't much—God's ministers are supposed to be content with the promises of treasure in heaven," said Carey, with a hint of humour in his weak tone. "I made a little, too, by writing for the reviews. But it was precarious, Anstice, precarious; and I dared not risk dying, and leaving her in want."

"And now?" Anstice had noted the tense in which he spoke of his wife, and he guessed the answer before the other spoke.

"She is dead—she died three weeks ago," said Carey quietly. "And now I can give up the struggle myself——"

"I wish to God you had told me earlier," said Anstice vehemently. "At least I might have done something for you——"

"Oh, I had alleviations," said Carey slowly. "When the pain grew unendurable I had remedies which gave me some relief. But I knew that if I told you you would seek to persuade me to a course I really could not have adopted. You mustn't mind me saying it, Anstice. Perhaps I have been wrong all through." His voice was wistful. "But I did what I thought was right—and luckily for us poor men God judges us by our intentions, so to speak, and not by the results."

The words returned to Anstice's mind three days later as he stood by the graveside of his friend, and in his heart he wondered whether it were indeed true that what men called failure might, in the eyes of God, spell a great and glorious success.

* * * * *

The next person to leave Littlefield was Sir Richard Wayne. For since his daughter's wedding he had been finding life without her almost unbearable, and at length he avowed that the English climate in winter was altogether more than any sensible man could be expected to endure—a somewhat surprising statement from a former M.F.H.—and declared his intention of paying a visit to Iris and her husband in Egypt forthwith.

It was of Sir Richard Wayne that Anstice was thinking half an hour later when the Moldavia had come to her berth at the quay and he was about to leave the ship on which the short and prosperous voyage had been made.

However much the theory of the astral body of man may be denied or ridiculed, there is no doubt that an unusually vivid thought-presentment of a friend frequently precedes the appearance of that friend in the flesh, and it is certain that the mental image of Sir Richard Wayne had been, for some reason, so strongly before Anstice's mind that in a tall, grey-clad figure pushing his way vigorously through the crowd of natives he was inclined to see a striking resemblance to the object of his thoughts.

He told himself, rather impatiently, that the notion was absurd. He had been dwelling for so long on the vision of Sir Richard's daughter that he had lost, for the moment, his sense of reality, and he turned aside to reclaim his baggage from the vociferous Arabs who wished, so it appeared, to appropriate both it and him, without casting another glance in the direction of Sir Richard's double.

Yet the hallucination persisted. He could have sworn he heard Sir Richard's voice raised in protest as the crowding natives impeded his progress towards the gangway of the boat; and at last Anstice turned fully round, with half-ashamed curiosity, to see what manner of man this was who wore the semblance and spoke in the tongue of Sir Richard Wayne.

As his black eyes roved over the intervening faces they were caught and held by another pair of eyes—grey eyes these, in whose clear and frank depths was a strong resemblance to those other wide grey eyes he loved, and in the next moment Anstice realized that a miracle had happened, and that the first person to give him greeting in this land of mystery was none other than Sir Richard Wayne himself.

About the gladness of the other's greeting there could be no two opinions. Utterly disregarding the touts and porters who swarmed round him Sir Richard came forward with outstretched hand, and his eyes fairly shone with joy and with something that looked like relief.

"Anstice! By all that's wonderful!" He wrung the younger man's hand heartily as he spoke. "How came you here—and are you landing for good, or just taking a look round this God-forsaken old iniquity of a town?"

"I'm leaving the ship for good. Want to have a look at Cairo ... interesting place, I've always heard." For a second Anstice faltered, feeling as though his friend must see through his pretence, and guess that it was because this land enshrined the one woman in the world that he was here. But Sir Richard gave no sign of disbelief, and Anstice was emboldened to proceed. "But you—what are you doing here? I thought you were somewhere in the desert with—your daughter."

"So I was, so I was." Sir Richard hesitated, then spoke rapidly. "Anstice, are you alone—and disengaged? I mean—could your stay in Cairo be postponed for a few days? I want—I came down here to look for a doctor—never thinking I'd have the luck to find you——"

"A doctor?" Beneath the spur of his quick mind Anstice grew pale. "Is someone ill? Not—not your daughter?"

"No, not Iris." Unconsciously Anstice breathed a sigh of relief and the older man glanced at him curiously. "It is Bruce—my son-in-law—who's ill; and I've come down here to find a doctor. Couldn't get one in Cairo—it seems the pilgrims have just returned from Mecca bringing their pet cholera along with them, and the city's got a scare—so I came down here to meet the boat, meaning to bribe the ship's surgeon to come back into the desert with me. If he wouldn't respond to bakshish I should have tried kidnapping," finished Sir Richard grimly, and Anstice smiled.

"No need to do that, sir. I'm here, and I'm ready and willing to do all you require. But first, hadn't I better put in a claim to my belongings? It seems to me these rascals would think precious little of making off with all the lot!"

"Yes—better let me see to it for you," said Sir Richard quickly. "We've not too much time for the train to Cairo as it is. If you will go and bespeak an arabeah I'll get your baggage."

And as Anstice moved to obey, a very tumult in his heart, Sir Richard turned back to the wildly-shouting crowd and succeeded in reclaiming Anstice's portmanteau and Gladstone bag from the clutches of the blue-robed fiends who fought one another for its possession.

When they were clear of the quay, driving behind the two long-tailed little horses along the glaring streets, beneath the thinly-leaved and dusty trees, Anstice turned to Sir Richard interrogatively.

"Now, sir, can you tell me what's wrong? Mr. Cheniston is ill, you say. Do you know the nature of his illness?"

"Enteric, I'm afraid," Sir Richard informed him gravely. "He went on a shooting expedition a week or two ago with the rich Egyptian for whom he has been carrying through a big irrigation job, and one day, when, through a miscalculation, the wine and provisions did not turn up, the party lunched at a mud-village on eggs and coffee. Being particularly thirsty Bruce indulged in a small glass of water with slices of citron, and although the host's servants swore by the Beard of the Prophet and so on through all their most sacred oaths that they had boiled the water first, the odds are that they had not, and that it came straight from the river or some indescribably polluted well. It seems that the pilgrims had passed that way, and owing to their pleasing habit of dropping a little of their precious 'holy' water into the wells they meet, some of those wells are absolute hotbeds of infection, so to speak."

"Whew!" Anstice whistled to express his consternation. "And then, of course, Mr. Cheniston came home and sickened for this illness."

"Yes. At first he made light of it, said the expedition had been fatiguing, he had a touch of the sun, and so on. But at last the disease manifested itself unmistakably, and three days ago I set out for Cairo to try to get some medical help."

"There is no doctor out there?"

"No. You see it is only a tiny village—hardly that—a settlement in the midst of a little colony of Bedouins. Iris was first persuaded to go there by a woman she met in Cairo, a Padre's wife who had gone out—at least the Padre had—to try the effect of the climate on weak lungs. They have one kiddie, a child of seven or eight, and they were so pleased with the place that they stayed on, and were the only white people in the village, with the exception of a young Australian who had lost his money and went out there to try to grow vegetables, and a rather eccentric French artist who set up his studio in a sort of disused fort built on a high rocky plateau about a mile above the little settlement. He has gone back to France now, taking with him some really marvellous studies of the desert, so they say."

"How far is the place from Cairo?"

"About a day and a half's journey on horseback. Of course, if it had been possible to bring Bruce in to Cairo that would have been the best thing. But we daren't take the risk. Mrs. Wood, the Padre's wife, is a first-class nurse, and she and Iris are doing their very best for the poor fellow. But still"—Sir Richard shook his head—"there's no doubt the illness has got a fast grip of him, and I'm afraid of the result, Anstice, I confess I am afraid."

He broke off for a moment, then resumed in a brisker tone:

"Well, here is the station, and now we may expect another uproar over your precious baggage. The best thing to do is to single out one fellow and promise him good bakshish if he gets rid of the others; and here is Mahomed, who is a first-class fellow for the job!"

He beckoned to a tall, pock-marked Arab in a dusty fez and faded blue djibbeh, and by dint of lavish promises secured his noisy but efficient services, with the result that in an incredibly short space of time the luggage was safely tumbled into the train and Anstice and Sir Richard faced each other, exhausted but triumphant, in an otherwise empty carriage.

"By Jove, but those beggars make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to have quicksilver in their veins, not blood."

"Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing to a recumbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there—he doesn't care in the least what goes on around him—and many times in the street one has to move off the pavement to avoid stepping on some idle beggar who's drawn the hood of his garment over his head and gone to sleep, literally among the feet of the passers-by!"

As the train proceeded on its way Sir Richard outlined the situation a little more fully to his keenly-interested companion.

"When I left, Mrs. Wood had pretty well taken up her abode with Iris," he said. "Their servants—native, of course—behaved badly, as those mongrel Arabs often do, and promptly deserted us soon as they found there was likely to be trouble ahead. All but one, a very decent chap called Hassan, who is really fond of Iris and would do a lot for her."

"The other people in the village—Bedouins, I think you said?—how do they get on with their white neighbours?"

Sir Richard's forehead suddenly puckered into a worried frown.

"Not too well," he said slowly. "The fact is, I believe they resented the European people settling there at all. As I told you, it is a tiny settlement—just thirty or so Bedouins who cultivate the land and grow vegetables, which they hawk to other villages a day's march away. They daren't openly complain, of course, but I believe they would like to drive the white folks out; especially young Garnett, who is really beating them at their own game as a clever agriculturist."

"There is never any trouble, I suppose?" Somehow Anstice felt a vague uneasiness at the thought of Iris Cheniston shut up in a desert colony among sullenly hostile neighbours.

"Oh, no, the Bedouins know the English Government won't allow any hanky-panky." Sir Richard voiced the assertion so emphatically that a tiny seed of doubt sprang up in his hearer's heart. "I confess I should rather like to see Iris and Bruce settle down to civilized life again, but this is only a holiday, and they won't be there long. Unless——" He paused and Anstice guessed only too surely the ominous nature of the pause.

With an instinctive desire to reassure the other man he spoke quickly.

"Perhaps when Cheniston is better they will fall in with your advice. No doubt he will require a change after this illness, and very often, you know, a man who has been ill takes a dislike to his surroundings, and is only too ready to exchange them for others."

"Quite so." Sir Richard spoke absently, looking out of the window the while, and since he was apparently disinclined for conversation, Anstice followed his example, seeing plenty to interest him in the panorama spread before his eyes in this strange and fascinating land, this living frieze of pictures which might have been transplanted bodily from the pages of the Old Testament itself.

Once, when the train came to a standstill at Ismailia, Sir Richard roused himself to speech.

"Of course, should the Bedouins ever rise against the strangers in their midst," he said, repelling with a gesture the attentions of a tall water-seller who thrust a brass saucer containing a doubtful-looking liquid through the carriage window, "things might be serious. True, there are not more than a couple of score of them, and so far, with the exception of a fracas with Garnett over some vegetables they stole from him, they have been peaceable enough."

"I see. And, as you say, they know quite well that the British Government is behind this handful of English people, and knowing that reprisals would be certain to follow any lawlessness, I should say they are too wise to put themselves in the wrong. After all, too, these people are not doing them any harm by living in their midst."

"You are right, Anstice, and I'm a silly old fool for letting my imagination run riot in this way." Sir Richard sat upright and gazed out at the world of sun and sand through which they were passing. "As you say, they would not dare—and in any case as soon as Bruce can travel we will bring them back to civilization."

"By the way, how soon can we start?" The bare thought of meeting Iris sent the blood humming wildly through Anstice's veins; and he awaited Sir Richard's reply with barely-concealed impatience.

"Well, we shall reach Cairo—if this confounded train doesn't break down en route—about dinner-time. It would be no use attempting to start to-night—the horses must be ordered for to-morrow morning, as early as you like. And no doubt you will want to take one or two things with you."

Anstice nodded.

"Yes—but they won't take long to procure. As for baggage—we travel light?"

"Yes—just what we can carry. I have plenty of things out there—can give you all you need," said Sir Richard more briskly. "And if all goes well we need not anticipate a long stay. Now, how about a cup of tea? This beastly sand has gone down my throat in bushels."

He called the Soudanese attendant and gave him an order, and over the indifferent tea and Huntley and Palmer biscuits which were presently brought to them, he and Anstice discussed Littlefield and other matters widely removed from the subject of their former conversation.

It was seven o'clock when the train finally ran into the station at Cairo, humming like a beehive with its crowded native life, and ten minutes later the two men were driving through the busy streets beneath the clear green evening sky on the way to the hotel chosen by Sir Richard.

"The Angleterre—it's quieter than Shepheard's," he said, "and anyhow it is only for one night. After dinner we'll go and make arrangements for an early start. That will suit you all right?"

"The earlier the better," returned Anstice promptly, and as their carriage drew up before the hotel he sprang out with an eagerness which seemed to betoken a readiness to start forthwith.

By ten o'clock that night all arrangements were made, horses bespoken, baggage packed, and all necessaries purchased, and shortly afterwards the two men exchanged cordial good-nights and retired to their respective rooms to seek the refreshment of sleep in preparation for the morrow's early start.

But though Sir Richard, his mind relieved by his meeting with Anstice, fell into a sound slumber ten minutes after he laid his head down on his pillow, Anstice lay awake all night between the white walls of his mosquito curtains.

For there was that in his thoughts which effectually banished sleep.



CHAPTER II

Anstice never forgot that first day's ride over the desert sand. They had started early, very shortly, indeed, after daybreak, and by the time the sun was fully risen they were already some miles on their way.

It was a heavenly morning, the dry and glittering air full of that peculiar, crisp sparkle which mounts to one's head like champagne. The sand shone and twinkled in the yellow sunshine with an almost dazzling effect, and the pale blue sky had not yet taken on the pitiless ultramarine hue which comes with the brazen noon.

The horses, too, seemed alive to the exhilarating quality of the air. They curvetted and danced over the sand, tossing their arched necks and lifting their feet daintily as though they were conscious of the beauty and fitness of their own motion.

"By Jove, Sir Richard, life is worth living on a morning like this!" Anstice threw back his head and inhaled large draughts of the intoxicating, sun-warmed air. "Why on earth do we herd in cities when there are glorious tracts of desert land where one might pitch one's tent! I declare I wish I were a nomad myself!"

"You feel like that?" Sir Richard looked a trifle wistfully at the younger man, envying him his superior youth and more robust physique. "For my part I confess to a distrust of the desert. It seems to me as though there were a blight on these huge tracts of sand, as though the Creator had regretted their creation, yet was too perfect a Worker to try, by altering the original purpose of His handiwork, to turn them into something for which they were not intended."

He paused, pulling up his horse and turning in his saddle to survey the yellow and brown waste over which they had come.

"I suppose, as an Englishman whose forbears have always clung to the soil, I find more pleasure in beholding an English landscape," he said, with a smile which was half apologetic. "The ideal of making two blades of grass spring where there was but one before may not be a very exalted one, but I confess I see more beauty in a field of grain waving under the August sun, than in these acres of yellow sand, and the thought of a perpetual summer, with never the soft grey tones of an autumn sky or the crisp frostiness of a winter's morning—well, it doesn't appeal to my John Bull soul!"

He laughed, ashamed of his vehemence, and the horses sprang gaily forward, glad to be moving again after even so brief a halt.

All through the morning they rode, resting for an hour or two at noon; and in the late afternoon they remounted their horses and fared forth once more in search of the camping-place Sir Richard had in mind.

By dint of compasses and an unusually accurate sense of location, the older man had staked their course with admirable directness, and as the moon rose they drew rein at the appointed destination, a wild and rocky valley whose caves offered a natural protection from the chill night breeze which blew with disconcerting freshness over the loose, salt-impregnated sand.

Here, thanks to the ever-useful thermos flask, they enjoyed a sufficient meal of hot soup, followed by a multitude of sandwiches of divers kinds; and when, after a pull at their respective flasks, the two lit their pipes and stretched their limbs, cramped by the day's exertions, Anstice, at least, felt more at peace with the world than he had felt for years.

To be hastening towards Iris Cheniston, to be sure of meeting her within twenty-four hours, sure of seeing the kind friendliness of her wide grey eyes, of hearing the soft cooing notes of her voice, was enough to make a man content with his lot; and the fact that he was journeying towards her in order to do his best to save the life of the one human being who stood between him and his happiness lost all its irony when he remembered that it was in reality Iris herself for whom this service was undertaken.

The next morning found them early astir; and as their horses danced over the sand, literally throwing the miles behind them, Sir Richard's spirits, which had been somewhat fluctuating, rose with a bound. He whistled gaily as they rode, ever and anon breaking off to conjecture on the nature of the welcome they might reasonably expect to receive; and when he spoke, as he did frequently, of his son-in-law, his prognostications, in striking contrast with his former pessimism, were couched in the most hopeful language.

Strange to say, as his spirits rose, so did those of Anstice sink. An odd foreboding, a premonition for which he could not account, displaced the gladness from his heart; and as they rode on and ever onwards he told himself that they were surely riding towards tragedy.

Possibly it was the Celtic strain in him which rendered him liable to these strange and perverse forebodings of evil. On sundry other occasions in his earlier youth he had fallen with appalling swiftness from the heights of glad anticipation to the depths of a certain and most unwelcome gloom; and now, quite suddenly, he found himself involved in a black and rayless melancholy which seemed to fortell some catastrophic happening at hand.

It was with more and more difficulty that he replied to Sir Richard's hopeful prophecies; and so strong upon him was the premonition of disaster that when he learned at last that they were within an hour or two's ride of their destination he spurred on his still willing steed in a sudden desire to know the worst which was to befall.

As he stared ahead of him, his eyes beginning to adjust themselves now to the peculiar conditions of the desert atmosphere, he caught sight of a speck upon the sand which, unlike the majority of desert objects, the scanty tamarisk bushes, the low humpbacked hills which here and there formed an apparently endless chain, appeared to move, to grow almost imperceptibly larger as the distance between them diminished.

During their ride over the desert they had met no other human beings. Once or twice they had seen, to right or left of their track, a collection of mud huts, overshadowed by the plumy tufts of tall date-palms, betokening the presence of a handful of fellaheen scratching a livelihood from the unfriendly sand. Again they had twice beheld in the far distance a caravan winding its leisurely way upon some mysterious errand to an unknown destination; but these last had been too far away for their component parts of horses, camels, merchandise, to be distinguished; and after a brief glance towards the long snaky lines as they wound their way through the sand, Sir Richard and Anstice had wisely refused to strain their eyesight further.

But this solitary unit on the vast face of the desert was a different matter; and Anstice gazed steadily ahead in an as yet fruitless attempt to make out what this thing which appeared to move towards them might be.

At first he said nothing, thinking that his eyes might quite conceivably be playing him tricks, that this apparently moving figure might possibly be a figment of his brain, or one of those delusive sprites which are said to haunt the unwary traveller in the desert; but at length, as the distance between the object and himself diminished more and more rapidly, until he could have sworn he caught the flutter of a blue robe, Anstice felt it time to point out the vision or whatever it might be to his as yet unseeing companion.

"Sir Richard," he said, so suddenly that Sir Richard, who had been jogging along sunk in reverie, started in surprise. "Do you see anyone coming towards us over the sand?"

Sir Richard, thus appealed to, sat up more erectly in his saddle; and gazed with his keen old eyes in the direction of Anstice's pointing hand; and Anstice watched him with an anxiety which was surely out of place.

After a moment's fruitless search Sir Richard unslung the field-glasses which he carried, and applied them to his eyes; and in another moment, having adjusted the focus, he uttered an exclamation.

"By Gad, Anstice, you're right! It's a native of sorts, and he is coming directly towards us. He is too far off for me to distinguish his features—you look and see what you can make of him."

He handed the glasses to Anstice, who raised them to his eyes; and after adjusting the lenses to suit his younger, keener sight, he swept them round in an attempt to focus the distant object.

First an apparently illimitable expanse of sky and sand swam slowly into view, each insignificant landmark in the desert magnified almost incredibly by the powerful glasses; and at last the blue-robed native appeared suddenly as though only a stone's throw away from the man who searched for him.

The glass revealed him as an Arab of an ordinary type clad in a faded blue djibbeh, over which he wore the short grey coat so inexplicably beloved of the native. On his head was a scarlet fez; and his blue robe was gathered up in such a way as to leave bare his brown and sinewy legs as he paddled ruthlessly and unhesitatingly over the burning sand.

As he lowered the glasses Anstice gave a short description of the advancing native to Sir Richard, adding:

"He seems to be in something of a hurry—he's covering the ground in a most energetic fashion—and he really does appear to be making straight for us!"

All at once Sir Richard's lately-born optimism fell from him like an ill-fitting garment. Taking the glasses back he adjusted them once more with fingers that absolutely trembled; and when after a long and steady stare he lowered them and turned to his companion his face was very serious.

"Anstice, I hope to God I'm mistaken, but that fellow looks uncommonly like Hassan—and from the haste he's making I should say he had been sent out to meet us. And that can only mean disaster—either Bruce is worse, or——" He broke off suddenly, his fine old face suddenly grey.

"Oh, it won't be so bad as that, sir!" Unconsciously Anstice replied to the unspoken suggestion. "Possibly your daughter has sent this chap to relieve your mind—Cheniston may have taken a turn for the better—heaps of things may have happened."

"Quite so." Sir Richard was replacing his glasses in their case with oddly fumbling movements. "But I wish to God we were safely back ... we can't even see the village for these confounded palm trees!"

As though the horses understood and sympathized with the mental tension of their riders they sprang forward with renewed energy; and some hard riding brought the two men within hailing distance of the approaching native.

"It is Hassan all right," said Sir Richard with a rather painful attempt at composure. "Let us hurry on and find out what is amiss at the village."

As the native drew nearer it was easy to see that he was the bearer of important news. His coffee-coloured face was shining with drops of perspiration, and his breath came in pitiful gasps as he hurried up to Sir Richard and began pouring out his story in a flood of mixed Arabic and English which was quite unintelligible to Anstice.