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BOOKS BY ARTAUR MACA EN
THE HOUSE OF SOULS
THE SECRET GLORY
FAR OFF THINGS
THE HILL OF DREAMS
THINGS NEAR AND FAR
THE THREE IMPOSTORS
HIEROGLYPHICS
In Preparation
THE LONDON ADVENTURE
NEW YORK: ALFRED · A · KNOPF


The Three
Impostors


The
Three Impostors
By Arthur Machen

New York
Alfred · A · Knopf
• Mcmxxiii


COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Published August, 1913
Bet up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. P. Eiherington A Co., New York.
Bound by H. Woll Estate, Hem Yort.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


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CONTENTS
THE THREE IMPOSTERS
PROLOGUE
ADVENTURE OF GOLD TIBERIUS
THE ENCOUNTER OF THE PAVEMENT
NOVEL OF THE DARK VALLEY
WHOLESALE LYNCHING
ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING BROTHER
NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL
INCIDENT OF THE PRIVATE BAR
THE RECLUSE OF BAYSWATER
NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER
STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN CLERKENWELL
HISTORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH SPEC-
TACLES
ADVENTURE OF THE DESERTED RESIDENCE
137
155
163
195
204
227
237
THE RED HAND
The PROBLEM OF THE FISH HOOKS
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
SEARCH FOR THE VANISHED HEAVEN
THE ARTIST OF THE PAVEMENT
STORY OF THE TREASURE HOUSE
248
256
265
271





Introduction
In the course of a quarter of a century—and a
little more—/ have received a good many letters
of serious enquiry about "The Three Impostors."
]My correspondents ask me in various terms and
turns of phrase whether there is any foundation
for the strange circumstances and tales narrated
in the book. Only the other day an American
clergyman wrote to me as follows: "There are
few priests," he says, "that have not stumbled
upon the unknown as dramatically as you depict
it, not as realistically. Of course a thousand
reasons prevent their publication. I know that
most of these stories are very much coloured; but
there are truths, stranger than even the most vivid
fiction. Is it possible that these stories have, as
we say, a fundamentum in re? I would be
pleased indeed to know from you if I am not
making too bold?"
The letter is typical of many others. I began
to get them pretty soon after "The Three
Impostors" was published in 1895. Then, on
the whole, I was rather displeased than pleased
vii


Introduction
-at the question. We have our funny little ways,
our amusing little points of pride and dignity, all
of us,'authors as well as the rest, and I was
strongly inclined to resent the implication that I
had embroidered rather than invented. I re-
member when "The Great God Pan" was issued,
a friend of mine said, "I suppose it is just an old
legend that was going down in your part of the
country when you were a boy?" I was quite
cross. I said to myself, and I daresay to others,
"These barbarians can't bear to acknowledge that
anybody can 'make up' anything. They know
they couldn't do anything of the kind themselves
and the suggestion that, for all that, the thing is
done now and again annoys them." I was proud
of having invented "The Great God Pan": I was
not going to have the credit of that fact taken
away on the strength of a legend which never
existed. And so with "The Three Impostors."
I wanted to impress on all enquirers that the
whole thing came out of my head—/ forgot to
add "and Stevenson's"—and that I had taken a
great deal of trouble over the tales, and that
there was no foundation in fact for anything be-
tween the two covers of the book. So far, from
the point of view of the touchy author; but if this
had been put out of the case and I had been asked
whether I thought that anything like the ex-
viii


Introduction
perience of Professor Gregg—see the "Novel Of
The Black Seal"—had occurred in actuality, I
should have said, "Of course not!" And if a
similar question had been put as to the "Novel Of
The White Powder," I am afraid I should have
replied, "Don't talk such damned nonsense!"
And farther, if I had been asked about the gen-
eral atmosphere of the book, the Arabian Night-
ish aspect of London, the strange encounters,
the stranger disappearances, I should certainly
have stated with some firmness that I had never
come across anything of the sort, that no queer
characters had ever crossed my track, that my
walks about Soho and Islington, Barnsbury and
Clerkenwell were void of all adventures. I
would have said, I think, that London streets, like
most things, were dull and grey and uninteresting.
"And so,'f I might likely enough have added, "we
pretend they are wonderful and enchanting, just
because it's delightful to do so, just as children
are always pretending and making believe."
That then, was my general attitude on these
points in 1895 and for some years afterwards. I
was quite sure that there was not and could not
be the faintest foundation in fact for any of my
tales, and I was quite sure too that London was
not a bit like an Arabian Night. I hardly think
ix ,:


Introduction
that I should be quite so positive today, if I were
asked these old questions all over again. So
many things have happened since the mid-nineties
of the last century.
As to the "Arabian" atmosphere of London,
for example, I must admit modifications in my
point of view. I think it was in the June of 1900
that I was sitting in the New Lyric Club in
Coventry street, taking tea with a young friend of
mine. He was telling me of some singular
adventures in which he was then involved. It
seemed that he had made a deadly enemy and
that, furthermore, this enemy was a notorious
Black Magician. This personage—who is, I may
say, an actual personage—was guilty of the most
hideous misdeeds. In the pursuit, doubtless, of
his favourite art of Black Magic he had entrapped
women into his house and had suspended them
naked in cupboards, hanging in the air by hooks
run through the flesh of their arms. There were
other tales of strange horror which I forget.
But not this. My friend had of ended the
magician; I do not think I heard what the offence
had been. But he went in dread of his life.
"He has hired a gang down Lambeth way to 1
smash me up and kill me if possible, and he is pay-
ing each of them eight-and-six-a day."
I listened stupefied; more stupefied still when
x


Introduction
/ heard of the threatening letters sealed with a
"Rosicrucian Seal" that had been received. I
can't say whether I believed or disbelieved, or
how much I believed and how much I disbelieved.
I don't know to this day what relation this queer
tale bore to the hard solid facts; though I must
say that some years later I myself received a
minatory epistle, sealed with a "Rosicrucian Seal"
which I have always put down to the credit of the
Adept of the Black Art. But I was not bothering
about the possible truth or possible falsity of the
tale that I had been told; I was thinking of its
queerness, of its incongruity with the comfortable
chairs of the New Lyric Club, and the view of
Coventry Street as seen from the window. I do
not think that I realized with whom I had been
talking till I got home to my chambers in Veru-
lam Buildings, Gray's Inn. Then I recalled my
friend's face and aspect as he told his story;
certain phrases came into my mind: "youngish
looking man with dark whiskers and spectacles
. . . of somewhat timid bearing he is pale, has
small black whiskers and wears spectacles. He
has rather a timid, almost a frightened expres-
sion and looks about him nervously from side to
side." And so on, and so on; and it was with a
shock that I realized that I had been talking with
The Young Man in Spectacles, and that he came
xi


Introduction
out of "The Three Impostors." I must add that
I had first met him in a secret Assembly, more
harmless than the gatherings of the terrible Lip-
sins, but quite as queer. The Young Man in
Spectacles! It was astounding, but it was unde-
niable; and the discovery opened my eyes to the
fact that Miss Lally had also come up out of the
book into my life and was involving me daily in
strange adventures, in meetings and encounters
that would have charmed the ear of the Caliph
Haroun-al-Raschid, relating as she went on her
incalculable way the most wonderful and unex-
pected tales. Miss Lally and The Young M>an
in Spectacles met more than once in my rooms.
Naturally, they did not recognize each other since
neither had read my book. But I shall never for-
get the gravity with which Miss Lally related to
the Young Man in Spectacles the "Novel Of My
Aunt, The Enchantress." The aunt, I remem-
ber, burned curious gums obtained from the East
before rising into the air; and when this operation
was to be performed, the room had to be hung
round with curtains distant one foot from the
walls, and nine inches from the ground. It was,
indeed, a sumptuous fable. And, to resume the
old manner for a moment: "The Young Man in
Spectacles listened with the gravest attention to
the history of the Enchanting Aunt, asking many
xii


Introduction
questions of a highly pertinent character, and ex-
pressing himself as more particularly satisfied
with the singular circumstance of the draperies
before the walls of the magic chamber. He took
notes on many points, and went away with a
countenance which fully expressed the serious
nature of the communication which he had
received."
Indeed, the tale had been told with such grave
earnestness, with such an attention to the smallest
minutia of detail, that I myself could not help
thinking that it was a tale about something, that
it was an illumination of some sort of a text. I,
therefore questioned Miss Lolly pretty closely
after the departure of the Young Man, where-
upon she informed me with happy laughter that
all was quite devoid of truth. I think she had
an aunt; but that was all the fact; the rest was
fiction.
And the insurgence of Miss Lolly and the
spectacled one from the pages of the printed book
was only one, amongst many, extraordinary cir-
cumstances that now gathered thick about me.
One day, for example, I got a letter from my pub-
lisher asking me to call upon him. I went at.
once, thinking that he wished to commission a
new masterpiece. He did not quite want to do
that. He explained to me that he had an ac-
xiii


Introduction
quaintance; a distant cousin, if I remember, whose
existence annoyed him. I forget what poor Run-
die had done, so far as I know nothing in partic-
ular, beyond being there, but, anyhow, he offended
the publisher and could I help? I was not asked
to murder Rundle; I was simply to found a secret
society. Into this the poor fellow was to be en-
trapped, and from the moment of his capture his
life was to be a burden to him. The agents of
the Society were to beset all his ways; he was to
be accosted suddenly in the street and sent on im-
possible errands; he was to keep appointments
with mysterious persons, and these appointments
were to end in nothing but annoyance and deep
confusion; he was to be terrified by dark threats;
doom was to hover like a fiery cloud above his
devoted head. Cheerfully, I undertook the busi-
ness; when in an Arabian Night behave like the
Arabian Nighters. But, somehow, the Secret So-
ciety was never founded; there must have been
some strange intrusion of cool reason into the
wild world which I inhabited, that London which
I had once thought so commonplace.
It is just possible, it strikes me, that many
people have found the odd encounters related in
"The Three Impostors," to be of a highly im-
probable nature. Indeed as I have confessed, I
thought so myself as I was writing of them. But
xiv


Introduction
experience, the experiences of 1899-1900, thor-
oughly convinced me that I was wrong. I be-
came subject at this time to the oddest encounters
at every turning, in every quarter of London.
Total strangers would accost me on one excuse or
another. I have counted ten such unexpected
meetings in a day. They would babble confused
things, narrate odd adventures, things, I would
say, without head or tail or reason, and then sink
back into the great deep of the London multitude
from which they had emerged. These were utter
strangers and remained such; but there were
others whom I knew, who were equally enter-
taining and extravagant; but were so only for a
certain appointed season. Thus, a gentleman,
who is now one of the most serious of men, used
to meet me at the Cafe de I'Europe in Leicester
Square and come home with me to my rooms in
Verulam Buildings, and there discourse amazing
fables, with such eloquence, weightiness, humour,
vivacity, that I was convinced of the truth of
every word that was uttered. What added to
the charm was the fact that after ten o'clock at
night my friend seldom spoke English. He ad-
dressed me in French, and I may say that, having
lived a good deal in Touraine, I have heard few
Frenchmen who could speak their native tongue
with so pure and winning and perfect an intona-
tion. And I heard from men familiar with
XV


Introduction
German and Italian that he excelled in these
tongues also; and a Spaniard could have taught
him nothing of Spanish. Well, infinitely to my
delight, this personage would come home with me
as I say, and tell tales till far into the night. I re-
member a few scraps of one of these fables. It
related to a well known London restaurant which
we may call Pergolesi's. My friend, as he puts
it, had been one of the fondatori, the earliest cus-
tomers of the establishment. There were others
with him, many of them well known, even famous
men, in later years.
"We noticed," the story went on, "night after
night, a very beautiful woman who sat in a cor-
ner, apart by herself. There was something
entrancing, something almost mystic about her
beauty. No one knew who she was. Somehow
I succeeded—/ need not trouble you with an
account of the little stratagems that I may have
employed—/ succeeded in making her acquaint-
ance. We became, shall I say, friends? After
a few months I had reason to suppose that she1,
was a secret agent of the Russian Government.
I found myself beset with hints, with half-ex-
pressed questions. I parried them as well as I
could. At last I discovered that the continuance
of the lady's favour depended on my willingness
to betray the secrets of my country. I refused;
in spite of tears, prayers, endearments; I refused.
xvi


Introduction
"That night I was sitting in our drawing-room.
I was in an armchair, facing a mirror, and in this
mirror I could see reflected the curtains hanging
across the entrance to an inner room. Suddenly,
the lady appeared, parting the curtains. Her
feet were bare. I could not hear her, but I saw
her slowly advancing into the room. One hand
was raised; in it there was a revolver, levelled at
my head. I hardly knew what I did, but I cried
out, 'Au moins, madame, tirez juste!'
"She burst into tears and the revolver fell
from her hand. I never saw her from that night.
She fled!"
I think it was some years before I began to
hesitate to myself about this adventure. Indeed,
for all I know, every word of it may be true*
But: I have no reason for supposing that my
friend was ever acquainted with the secrets of the
British Government; so . . . what could he have
betrayed, if he had been willing to betray?
Still; that doesn't matter.' The point is that
for many months my life was more Three-Impos-
tory than "The Three Impostors." I relished
all the queer atmosphere of "Arabian" in conse-
quence which I had enjoyed describing, though I
didn't believe there ever was or would be any-
thing like it in actuality. I was and am convinced
of my error. London will turn into Bagdad in
xvii


Introduction
an instant: if you have the true wand of trans-
mutation.
So much for the atmosphere of the framework
of "The Three Impostors"; now as to the "foun-
dation in fact" question, where the stories are
concerned. This is a much more doubtful and
difficult matter. I have attempted to deal with it
in a book called "Things Near and Far." Does
the impossible ever happen? Well, the utmost
I would say is this; that I have had experiences
which debar me from returning the absolute
negative of earlier years; the years in which I
was writing the book and the years afterwards.
These experiences of mine were trifling enough
but they suggest the possibility of far greater
things and far more extraordinary things for
those with the necessary qualifications. For, if
you think of it, from the scratched pictures of
primitive man, the images he drew on the rein-
deer horn, you may infer all the majesty of pic-
torial art, all the mighty names and the magis-
tral achievements of the ages. There are, I be-
lieve, savage tribes who cannot count beyond ten;
yet all the science of numbers is latent in that
decad of theirs. The savage scratches, the sav-
age numberings at least prove the possibility of
great art and high mathematics; and so I am in-
I
xviii


Introduction
dined to urge that the things which I have known
may suggest the probable existence of a world
very far and remote from the world of common
. experience.
It may turn out after all that the weavers of
fantasy are the veritable realists.
xix





The Three
Impostors





Prologue
ND Mr. Joseph Walters is going to stay
the night?' said the smooth, clean-shaven
man to his companion, an individual not
of the most charming appearance, who had
chosen to make his ginger-coloured moustache
merge into a pair of short chin-whiskers.
The two stood at the hall door, grinning evilly
at each other; and presently a girl ran quickly
down the stairs and joined them. She was quite
young, with a quaint and piquant rather than a
beautiful face, and her eyes were of a shining
hazel. She held a neat paper parcel in one hand,
and laughed with her friends.
'Leave the door open,' said the smooth man to
the other, as they were going out. 'Yes, by ,
he went on with an ugly oath, 'we'll leave the
front door on the jar. He may like to see com-
pany, you know.'
The other man looked doubtfully about him.
'Is it quite prudent, do you think, Davies,' he
said, pausing with his hand on the mouldering
knocker. 'I don't think Lipsius would like it.
What do you say, Helen?'


The Three Impostors .
'I agree with Davies. Davies is an artist, and 2
you are commonplace, Richmond, and a bit of a
coward. Let the door stand open, of course.
But what a pity Lipsius had to go away! He
would have enjoyed himself.'
'Yes,' replied the smooth Mr. Davies, 'that
summons to the west was very hard on the
doctor.'
The three passed out, leaving the hall door,
cracked and riven with frost and wet, half open,
and they stood silent for a moment under the
ruinous shelter of the porch.
'Well,' said the girl, “it is done at last. We
shall hurry no more on the track of the young
man with spectacles.'
'We owe a great deal to you,' said Mr. Davies
politely; 'the doctor said so before he left. But
have we not all three some farewells to make?
I, for my part, propose to say good-bye here,
before this picturesque but mouldy residence, to
my friend, Mr. Burton, dealer in the antique and
curious,' and the man lifted his hat with an ex-
aggerated bow.
'And I,' said Richmond, 'bid adieu to Mr. Wil-
kins, the private secretary, whose company has,
I confess, become a little tedious.'
'Farewell to Miss Lally, and to Miss Leicester
also,' said the girl, making as she spoke a deli-


The Three Impostors
cious curtsy. 'Farewell to all occult adventure;
the farce is played.'
Mr. Davies and the lady seemed full of grim
enjoyment, but Richmond tugged at his whiskers
nervously.
'I feel a bit shaken up,' he said. 'I've seen
rougher things in the States, but that crying noise
he made gave me a sickish feeling.'
The three friends moved away from the door,
and began to walk slowly up and down what had
been a gravel path, but now lay green and pulpy
with damp mosses. It was a fine autumn even-
ing, and a faint sunlight shone on the yellow walls
of the old deserted house, and showed the
patches of gangrenous decay, the black drift of
rain from the broken pipes, the scabrous blots
where the bare bricks were exposed, the green
weeping of a gaunt laburnum that stood beside
the porch, and ragged marks near the ground
where the reeking clay was gaining on the worn
foundations. It was a queer, rambling old place,
the centre perhaps two hundred years old, with
dormer windows sloping from the tiled roof, and
on each side there were Georgian wings; bow
windows had been carried up to the first floor,
and two dome-like cupolas that had once been
painted a bright green were now grey and neutral.
s


The Three Impostors
Broken urns lay upon the path, and a heavy mist
seemed to rise from the unctuous clay; the neg-
lected shrubberies, grown all tangled and un-
shapen, smelt dank and evil, and there was an
atmosphere all about the deserted mansion that
proposed thoughts of an open grave. The three
friends looked dismally at the rough grasses and
the nettles that grew thick over lawn and flower-
beds; and at the sad water-pool in the midst of
the weeds. There, above green and oily scum in-
stead of lilies, stood a rusting Triton on the
rocks, sounding a dirge through a shattered horn;
and beyond, beyond the sunk fence and the far
meadows, the sun slid down and shone red
through the bars of the elm trees.
Richmond shivered and stamped his foot.
"We had better be going soon,' he said; 'there
is nothing else to be done here.
'No,' said Davies; 'it is finished at last. I
thought for some time we should never get hold
of the gentleman with the spectacles. He was a
clever fellow, but, Lord! he broke up badly at
last. I can tell you, he looked white at me when
I touched him on the arm in the bar. But where
could he have hidden the thing? We can all
swear it was not on him.'
The girl laughed, and they turned away, when
Richmond gave a violent start.


The Three Impostors
e
'Ah!' he cried, turning to the girl, 'what have
you got there? Look, Davies, look; it's all ooz-
ing and dripping.'
The young woman glanced down at the little
parcel she was carrying, and partially unfolded
the paper.
'Yes, look, both of you,' she said; 'it's my own
idea. Don't you think it will do nicely for the
doctor's museum ? It comes from the right hand,
the hand that took the Gold Tiberius.
Mr. Davies nodded with a good deal of ap-
probation, and Richmond lifted his ugly high-
crowned bowler, and wiped his forehead with a
dingy handkerchief.
'I'm going,' he said, 'you two can stay if you
like.
The three went round by the stable-path, past
the withered wilderness of the old kitchen-garden,
and struck off by a hedge at the back, making for
a particular point in the road. About five
minutes later two gentlemen, whom idleness had
led to explore these forgotten outskirts of Lon-
don, came sauntering up the shadowy carriage-
drive. They had spied the deserted house from
the road, and as they observed all the heavy deso-
lation of the place, they began to moralize in the
great style, with considerable debts to Jeremy
Taylor.


The Three Impostors
'Look, Dyson,' said the one, as they drew
nearer; 'look at those upper windows; the sun is
setting, and, though the panes are dusty, yet-
“The grimy sash an oriel burns." '
'Phillipps,' replied the elder and (it must be
said) the more pompous of the two, 'I yield to
fantasy; I cannot withstand the influence of the
grotesque. Here, where all is falling into dim-
ness and dissolution, and we walk in cedarn
gloom, and the very air of heaven goes moulder-
ing to the lungs, I cannot remain cor
I look at that deep glow on the panes, and the
house lies all enchanted; that very room, I tell
you, is within all blood and fire.'
Adventure of the Gold
Tiberius
NYHE acquaintance between Mr. Dyson and
Mr. Charles Phillipps arose from one
of those myriad chances which are every
day doing their work in the streets of London.
Mr. Dyson was a man of letters, and an unhappy
instance of talents misapplied. With gifts that
might have placed him in the flower of his youth
among the most favoured of Bentley's favourite


The Three Impostors
novelists, he had chosen to be perverse; he was,
it is true, familiar with scholastic logic, but he
knew nothing of the logic of life, and he flattered
himself with the title of artist, when he was in
fact but an idle and curious spectator of other
men's endeavours. Amongst many delusions, he
cherished one most fondly, that he was a strenu-
ous worker; and it was with a gesture of supreme
weariness that he would enter his favourite resort,
a small tobacco-shop in Great Queen Street, and
proclaim to any one who cared to listen that he
had seen the rising and setting of two successive
suns. The proprietor of the shop, a middle-
aged man of singular civility, tolerated Dyson
partly out of good nature, and partly because he
was a regular customer. He was allowed to sit
on an empty cask, and to express his sentiments
on literary and artistic matters till he was tired,
or the time for closing came; and if no fresh cus-
tomers were attracted, it is believed that none
was turned away by his eloquence. Dyson was
addicted to wild experiments in tobacco; he never
wearied of trying new combinations; and one
evening he had just entered the shop, and given
utterance to his last preposterous formula, when
a young fellow of about his own age, who had
come in a moment later, asked the shopman to
duplicate the order on his account, smiling
politely, as he spoke, to Mr. Dyson's address.
9


The Three Impostors
Dyson felt profoundly flattered, and after a few
phrases the two entered into conversation, and in
an hour's time the tobacconist saw the new
friends sitting side by side on a couple of casks,
deep in talk.
My dear sir,' said Dyson, I will give you the
task of the literary man in a phrase. He has
got to do simply this—to invent a wonderful
story, and to tell it in a wonderful manner.'
'I will grant you that,' said Mr. Phillipps, 'but
you will allow me to insist that in the hands of
the true artist in words all stories are marvellous
and every circumstance has its peculiar wonder.
The matter is of little consequence; the manner
is everything. Indeed, the highest skill is shown
in taking matter apparently commonplace and
transmuting it by the high alchemy of style into
the pure gold of art.'
'That is indeed a proof of great skill, but it is
great skill exerted foolishly, or at least unad-
visedly. It is as if a great violinist were to show
us what marvellous harmonies he could draw
from a child's banjo.
'No, no, you are really wrong. I see you take
a radically mistaken view of life. But we must
thresh this out. Come to my rooms; I live not
far from here.
It was thus that Mr. Dyson became the as-
sociate of Mr. Charles Phillipps, who lived in a
IO


The Three Impostors
quiet square not far from Holborn. Thenceforth
they haunted each other's rooms at intervals,
sometimes regular, and occasionally the reverse,
and made appointments to meet at the shop in
Queen Street, where their talk robbed the tobacco-
nist's profit of half its charm. There was a con-
stant jarring of literary formulas, Dyson exalt-
ing the claims of the pure imagination; while
Phillipps, who was a student of physical science
and something of an ethnologist, insisted that all
literature ought to have a scientific basis. By the
mistaken benevolence of deceased relatives both
young men were placed out of- reach of hunger,
and so, meditating high achievements, idled their
time pleasantly away, and revelled in the careless
joys of a Bohemianism devoid of the sharp
seasoning of adversity.
One night in June Mr. Phillipps was sitting in
his room in the calm retirement of Red Lion
Square. He had opened the window, and was
smoking placidly, while he watched the movement
of life below. The sky was clear, and the after-
glow of sunset had lingered long about it. The
flushing twilight of a summer evening vied with
the gas-lamps in the square, and fashioned a
chiaroscuro that had in it something unearthly;
and the children, racing to and fro upon the pave-
ment, the lounging idlers by the public-house,
and the casual passers-by rather flickered and
II


The Three Impostors
hovered in the play of lights than stood out sub-
stantial things. By degrees in the houses opposite
one window after another leapt out a square of
light; now and again a figure would shape itself
against a blind and vanish, and to all this semi-
theatrical magic the runs and flourishes of brave
Italian opera played a little distance off on a
piano-organ seemed an appropriate accompani-
ment, while the deep-muttered bass of the traffic
of Holborn never ceased. Phillipps enjoyed the
scene and its effects; the light in the sky faded
and turned to darkness, and the square gradually
grew silent, and still he sat dreaming at the win-
dow, till the sharp peal of the house-bell roused
him, and looking at his watch, he found that it
was past ten o'clock. There was a* knock at the
door, and his friend Mr. Dyson entered, and, ac-
cording to his custom, sat down in an arm-chair
and began to smoke in silence.
'You know Phillipps,' he said at length, 'that
I have always battled for the marvellous. I re-
member your maintaining in that chair that one
has no business to make use of the wonderful, the
improbable, the odd coincidence in literature, and
you took the ground that it was wrong to do so,
because as a matter of fact the wonderful and the
improbable don't happen, and men's lives are not
really shaped by odd coincidence. Now, mind
you, if that were so, I would not grant your con-


The Three Impostors
ciusion, because I think the "criticism-of-life"
theory is all nonsense; but I deny your premiss.
A most singular thing has happened to me to-
night.'
'Really, Dyson, I am very glad to hear it. Of
course, I oppose your argument, whatever it may
be; but if you would be good enough to tell me
of your adventure, I should be delighted.'
'Well, it came about like this. I have had a
very hard day's work; indeed I have scarcely
moved from my old bureau since seven o'clock
last night. I wanted to work out that idea we
discussed last Tuesday, you know, the notion of
the fetish-worshipper?'
'Yes, I remember. Have you been able to do
anything with it?'
'Yes; it came out better than I expected; but
there were great difficulties, the usual agonies be-
tween the conception and the execution. Anyhow,
I got it done about seven o'clock to-night, and I
thought I should like a little of the fresh air. I
went out and wandered rather aimlessly about
the streets; my head was full of my tale, and I
didn't much notice where I was going. I got in-
to those quiet places to the north of Oxford Street
as you go west, the genteel residential neighbour-
hood of stucco and prosperity. I turned east
again without knowing it, and it was quite dark
when I passed along a sombre little by-street, ill—
13


The Three Impostors
lighted and empty. I did not know at the time in
the least where I was, but I found out afterwards
that it was not very far from Tottenham Court
Road. I strolled idly along, enjoying the still-
ness; on one side there seemed to be the back
premises of some great shop; tier after tier of
dusty windows lifted up into the night, with gib-
bet-like contrivances for raising heavy goods, and
below large doors, fast closed and bolted, all dark
and desolate. Then there came a huge pantech-
nicon warehouse; and over the way a grim blank
wall, as forbidding as the wall of a gaol, and then
the headquarters of some volunteer regiment, and
afterwards a passage leading to a court where
waggons were standing to be hired; it was, one
might almost say, a street devoid of inhabitants,
and scarce a window showed the glimmer of a
light. I was wondering at the strange peace and
dimness there, where it must be close to some roar-
ing main artery of London life, when suddenly I
heard the noise of dashing feet tearing along the
pavement at full speed, and from a narrow pas-
sage, a mews or something of that kind, a man
was discharged as from a catapult under my very
nose, and rushed past me, flinging something
from him as he ran. He was gone, and down an-
other street in an instant, almost before I knew
what had happened; but I didn't much bother
about him, I was watching something else. I told


The Three Impostors
you he had thrown something away; well, I
watched what seemed a line of flame flash through
the air and fly quivering over the pavement, and
in spite of myself I could not help tearing after it.
The impetus lessened, and I saw something like a
bright half penny . a/i slower and slower, and then
deflect towards the gutter, hover for a moment
on the edge, and dance down into a drain. I be-
lieve I cried out in positive despair, though I
hadn't the least notion what I was hunting; and
then, to my joy, I saw that, instead of dropping
into a sewer, it had fallen flat across two bars.
I stooped down and picked it up and whipped it
into my pocket, and I was just about to walk on
when I heard again that sound of dashing foot-
steps. I don't know why I did it, but as a matter
of fact I dived down into the mews, or whatever
it was, and stood as much in the shadow as pos-
sible. A man went by with a rush a few paces
from where I was standing, and I felt uncom-
monly pleased that I was hiding. I couldn't
make out much feature, but I saw his eyes gleam-
ing and his teeth showing, and he had an ugly-
looking knife in one hand, and I thought things
would be very unpleasant for gentleman number
one if the second robber, or robbed, or what you
like, caught him up. I can tell you, Phillipps, a
fox-hunt is exciting enough, when the horn blows
clear on a winter morning, and the hounds give
*5


The Three Impostors
tongue, and the red-coats charge away, but it's
nothing to a man-hunt, and that's what I had a
slight glimpse of to-night. There was murder
in the fellow's eyes as he went by, and I don't
think there was much more than fifty seconds be-
tween the two. I only hope it was enough.'
Dyson leant back in his arm-chair, relit his pipe,
and puffed thoughtfully. Phillipps began to walk
up and down the room, musing over the story of
violent death fleeting in chase along the pavement,
the knife shining in the lamplight, the fury of the
pursuer, and the terror of the pursued.
'Well,' he said at last, 'and what was it, after
all, that you rescued from the gutter?'
Dyson jumped up, evidently quite startled. 'I
really haven't a notion. I didn't think of look-
ing. But we shall see.'
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a
small and shining object, and laid it on the table.
It glowed there beneath the lamp with the ra-
diant glory of rare old gold; and the image and
the letters stood out in high relief, clear and
sharp, as if it had but left the mint a month be-
fore. The two men bent over it, and Phillipps
took it up and examined it closely.
'Imp. Tiberius Caesar Augustus,' he read the
legend, and then looking at the reverse of the
coin, he stared in amazement, and at last turned
to Dyson with a look of exultation.
16


The Three Impostors
'Do you know what you have found?' he said.
'Apparently a gold coin of some antiquity,'
said Dyson coolly.
'Quite so, a gold Tiberius. No, that is wrong.
You have found the gold Tiberius. Look at the
reverse.'
Dyson looked and saw the coin was stamped
with the figure of a faun standing amidst reeds
and flowing water. The features, minute as they
were, stood out in delicate outline; it was a face
lovely and yet terrible, and Dyson thought of the
well-known passage of the lad's playmate, gradu-
ally growing with his growth and increasing with
his stature till the air was filled with the rank
fume of the goat.
'Yes,' he said; 'it it a curious coin. Do you
know it?'
'I know about it. It is one of the compara-
tively few historical objects in existence; it is all
storied like those jewels we have read of. A
whole cycle of legend has gathered round the
thing; the tale goes that it formed part of an
• issue struck by Tiberius to commemorate an in-
famous excess. You see the legend on the re-
verse: "Victoria." It is said that by an extra-
ordinary accident the whole issue was thrown in-
to the melting-pot, and that only this one coin es-
caped. It glints through history and legend, ap-
pearing and disappearing, with intervals of a
17


The Three Impostors
hundred years in time, and continents in place.
It was “discovered” by an Italian humanist, ond
lost and rediscovered. It has not been heard of
since 1727, when Sir Joshua Byrde, a Turkey
merchant, brought it home from Aleppo, and
vanished with it a month after he had shown it
to the virtuosi, no man knew or knows where.
And here it is !!
'Put it in your pocket, Dyson,' he said, after a
pause. 'I would not let any one have a glimpse
of the thing if I were you. I would not talk
about it. Did either of the men you saw see
you?
'Well, I think not. I don't think the first man,
the man who was vomited out of the dark passage,
saw anything at all; and I am sure that he could
not have seen me.'
'And you didn't really see them. You couldn't
recognize either the one or the other if you met
him in the street to-morrow?'
'No, I don't think I could. The street, as I
said, was dimly lighted, and they ran like mad-
men.'
The two men sat silent for some time, each
weaving his own fancies of the story; but the lust
of the marvellous was slowly overpowering Dy-
son's more sober thoughts.
'It is all more strange than I fancied,' he said
at last. 'It is queer enough what I saw; a man
18


The Three Impostors
is sauntering along a quiet, sober, everyday Lon-
don street, a street of grey houses and blank walls,
and there, for a moment, a veil seems drawn aside,
and the very fume of the pit steams up through
the flagstones, the ground glows, red-hot, beneath
his feet, and he seems to hear the hiss of the in-
fernal caldron. A man flying in mad terror for
his life, and furious hate pressing hot on his steps
with knife drawn ready; here, indeed, is horror;
but what is all that to what you have told me? I
tell you, Phillipps, I see the plot thicken; our steps
will henceforth be dogged with mystery, and the
most ordinary incidents will teem with signifi-
cance. You may stand out against it, and shut
your eyes, but they will be forced open; mark my
words, you will have to yield to the inevitable.
A clue, tangled if you like, has been placed by
chance in our hands; it will be our business to fol-
low it up. As for the guilty person or persons
in this strange case, they will be unable to escape
us, our nets will be spread far and wide over this
great city, and suddenly, in the streets and places
of public resort, we shall in some way or other be
made aware that we are in touch with the unknown
criminal. Indeed I almost fancy I see him slowly
approaching this quiet square of yours; he is
loitering at street corners, wandering, apparently
without aim, down far-reaching thoroughfares,
but all the while coming nearer and nearer, drawn
19


The Three Impostors
by an irresistible magnetism, as ships were drawn
to the Loadstone Rock in the Eastern tale.'
'I certainly think,' replied Phillipps, 'that if
you pull out that coin and flourish it under people's
noses as you are doing at the present moment,
you will very probably find yourself in touch with
the criminal, or a criminal. You will undoubt-
edly be robbed with violence. Otherwise, I see
no reason why either of us should be troubled.
No one saw you secure the coin, and no one knows
you have it. I, for my part, shall sleep peace-
fully, and go about my business with a sense of
security and a firm dependence on the natural or-
der of things. The events of the evening, the
adventure in the street, have been odd, I grant
you, but I resolutely decline to have any more to
do with the matter, and, if necessary, I shall con-
sult the police. I will not be enslaved by a gold
Tiberius, even though it swims into my ken in a
manner which is somewhat melodramatic'
'And I, for my part,' said Dyson, 'go forth
like a knight-errant in search of adventure. Not
that I shall need to seek; rather adventure will
seek me; I shall be like a spider in the midst of
his web, responsive to every movement, and ever
on the alert.'
Shortly afterwards Dyson took his leave, and
Mr. Phillipps spent the rest of the night in exam-
ining some flint arrow-heads which he had pur-
20


The Three Impostors
chased. He had every reason to believe that they
were the work of a modern and not a palaeolithic
man; still he was far from gratified when a close
scrutiny showed him that his suspicions were well
founded. In his anger at the turpitude which
would impose on an ethnologist, he completely
forgot Dyson and the gold Tiberius; and when he
went to bed at first sunlight, the whole tale had
faded utterly from his thoughts.
The Encounter of the
Pavement
MR. DYSON, walking leisurely along Ox-
ford Street, and staring with bland in-
quiry at whatever caught his attention,
enjoyed in all its rare flavours the sensation that
he was really very hard at work. His observa-
tion of mankind, the traffic, and the shop windows
tickled his faculties with an exquisite bouquet; he
looked serious, as one looks on whom charges of
weight and moment are laid; and he was attentive
in his glances to right and left, for fear lest he
should miss some circumstance of more acute sig-
nificance. He had narrowly escaped being run
over at a crossing by a charging van, for he hated
to hurry his steps, and indeed the afternoon was
warm; and he had just halted by a place of popu-
21


The Three Impostors
lar refreshment, when the astounding gestures of
a well-dressed individual on the opposite pave-
ment held him enchanted and gasping like a fish.
A treble line of hansoms, carriages, vans, cabs,
and omnibuses was tearing east and west, and not
the most daring adventurer of the crossings would
have cared to try his fortune; but the person who
had attracted Dyson's attention seemed to rage
on the very edge of the pavement, now and then
darting forward at the hazard of instant death,
and at each repulse absolutely dancing with ex-
citement, to the rich amusement of the passers-
by. At last a gap that would have tried the
courage of a street-boy appeared between the
serried lines of vehicles, and the man rushed
across in a frenzy, and escaping by a hair's-
breadth, pounced upon Dyson as a tiger pounces
on her prey. “I saw you looking about you,' he
said, sputtering out his words in his intense eager-
ness; 'would you mind telling me this! Was the
man who came out of the Aerated Bread Shop
and jumped into the hansom three minutes ago a
youngish-looking man with dark whiskers' and
spectacles? Can't you speak, man? For heav-
en's sake, can't you speak? Answer me; it's a
matter of life and death.'
The words bubbled and boiled out of the man's
mouth in the fury of his emotion, his face went
from red to white, and the beads of sweat stood
22


The Three Impostors
out on his forehead; he stamped his feet as he
spoke, and tore with his hand at his coat, as if
something swelled and choked him, stopping the
passage of his breath. '
'My dear sir,' said Dyson, 'I always like to be
accurate. Your observation was perfectly cor-
rect. As you say, a youngish man-a man, I
should say, of somewhat timid bearing-ran
rapidly out of the shop here, and bounced into a
hansom that must have been waiting for him, as
it went eastwards at once. Your friend also wore
spectacles, as you say. Perhaps you would like
me to call a hansom for you to follow the gentle-
man?'
'No, thank you; it would be a waste of time.'
The man gulped down something which appeared
to rise in his throat, and Dyson was alarmed to
see him shaking with hysterical laughter; he clung
hard to a lamp-post, and swayed and staggered
like a ship in a heavy gale.
'How shall I face the doctor?' he murmured
to himself. 'It is too hard to fail at the last mo-
ment.' Then he seemed to recollect himself; he
stood straight again, and looked quietly at Dyson.
'I owe you an apology for my violence,' he said
at last. "Many men would not be so patient as
you have been. Would you mind adding to your
kindness by walking with me a little way? I feel
a little sick; I think it's the sun.'
23


The Three Impostors
Dyson nodded assent, and devoted himself to
a quiet scrutiny of this strange personage as they
moved on together. The man was dressed in
quiet taste, and the most scrupulous observer could
find nothing amiss with the fashion or make of
his clothes; yet, from his hat to his boots, every-
thing seemed inappropriate. His silk hat, Dyson
thought, should have been a high bowler of odious
pattern, worn with a baggy morning-coat, and an
instinct told him that the fellow did not commonly
carry a clean pocket-handkerchief. The face was
not of the most agreeable pattern, and was in no
way improved by a pair of bulbous chin-whiskers
of a ginger hue, into which moustaches of like
colour merged imperceptibly. Yet, in spite of
these signals hung out by nature, Dyson felt that
the individual beside him was something more
than compact of vulgarity. He was struggling
with himself, holding his feelings in check; but
now and again passion would mount black to his
face, and it was evidently by a supreme effort that
he kept himself from raging like a madman.
Dyson found something curious, and a little terri-
ble, in the spectacle of an occult emotion thus
striving for the mastery, and threatening to break
out at every instant with violence; and they had
gone some distance before the person whom he
had met by so odd a hazard was able to speak
quietly.
24


The Three Impostors
'You are really very good,' he said. “I apolo-
gize again; my rudeness was really most unjusti-
fiable. I feel my conduct demands an explanation,
and I shall be happy to give it to you. Do you
happen to know of any place near here where one
could sit down? I should really be very glad.'
'My dear sir,' said Dyson solemnly, 'the only
café in London is close by. Pray do not consider
yourself as bound to offer me any explanation, but
at the same time I should be most happy to listen
to you. Let us turn down here.'
They walked down a sober street and turned
into what seemed a narrow passage past an iron-
barred gate thrown back. The passage was
paved with flagstones, and decorated with hand-
some shrubs in pots on either side, and the shadow
of the high walls made a coolness which was very
agreeable after the hot breath of the sunny street.
Presently the passage opened out into a tiny
square, a charming place, a morsel of France
transplanted into the heart of London. High
walls rose on either side, covered with glossy
creepers, flower-beds beneath were gay with
nasturtiums, and marigolds, and odorous mignon-
ette, and in the centre of the square a fountain,
hidden by greenery, sent a cool shower continually
plashing into the basin beneath. Chairs and
tables were disposed at convenient intervals, and
at the other end of the court broad doors had
25


The Three Impostors
been thrown back; beyond was a long, dark room,
and the turmoil of traffic had become a distant
murmur. Within the room one or two men were
sitting at the tables, writing and sipping, but the
courtyard was empty.
'You see, we shall be quiet,' said Dyson.
‘Pray sit down here, Mr.- ?
'Wilkins. My name is Henry Wilkins.'
'Sit here, Mr. Wilkins. I think you will find
that a comfortable seat. I suppose you have not
been here before? This is the quiet time; the
place will be like a hive at six o'clock, and the
chairs and tables will overflow into that little alley
there.'
A waiter came in response to the bell; and after
Dyson had politely inquired after the health of
M. Annibault, the proprietor, he ordered a bottle
of the wine of Champigny.
'The wine of Champigny,' he observed to Mr.
Wilkins, who was evidently a good deal composed
by the influence of the place, 'is a Tourainian
wine of great merit. Ah, here it is; let me fill
your glass. How do you find it?'
'Indeed,' said Mr. Wilkins, 'I should have pro-
nounced it fine Burgundy. The bouquet is very
exquisite. I am fortunate in lighting upon such
a good Samaritan as yourself: I wonder you did
not think me mad. But if you knew the terrors
that assailed me, I am sure you would no longer
26


The Three Impostors
be surprised at conduct which was certainly most
unjustifiable.'
He sipped his wine, and leant back in his chair,
relishing the drip and trickle of the fountain, and
the cool greenness that hedged in this little port
of refuge.
'Yes,' he said at last, 'that is indeed an admir-
able wine. Thank you; you will allow me to offer
you another bottle ?'
The waiter was summoned, and descended
through a trap-door in the floor of the dark apart-
ment and brought up the wine. Mr. Wilkins lit
a cigarette, and Dyson pulled out his pipe.
'Now,' said Mr. Wilkins, 'I promised to give
you an explanation of my strange behaviour. It
is rather a long story, but I see, sir, that you are
no mere cold observer of the ebb and flow of life.
You take, I think, a warm and an intelligent inter-
est in the chances of your fellow-creatures, and I
believe you will find what I have to tell not devoid
of interest.'
Mr. Dyson signified his assent to these proposi-
tions; and though he thought Mr. Wilkins's dic-
tion a little pompous, prepared to interest himself
in his tale. The other, who had so raged with
passion half an hour before, was now perfectly
cool, and when he had smoked out his cigarette,
he began in an even voice to relate the
27


The Three Impostors
NOVEL OF THE DARK VALLEY
I am the son of a poor but learned clergyman
in the west of England—but I am forgetting,
these details are not of special interest. I will
briefly state, then, that my father, who was, as
I have said, a learned man, had never learnt
the specious arts by which the great are flattered,
and would never condescend to the despicable pur-
suit of self-advertisement. Though his fondness'
for ancient ceremonies and quaint customs, com-
bined with a kindness of heart that was unequalled
and a primitive and fervent piety, endeared him
to his moorland parishioners, such were not the
steps by which clergy then rose in the Church, and
at sixty my father was still incumbent of the little
benefice he had accepted in his thirtieth year.
The income of the living was barely sufficient to
support life in the decencies which are expected
of the Anglican parson; and when my father died
a few years ago, I, his only child, found myself
thrown upon the world with a slender capital of
less than a hundred pounds, and all the problem of
existence before me. I felt that there was nothing
for me to do in the country, and as usually hap-
pens in such cases, London drew me like a magnet.
One day in August, in the early morning, while
the dew still glittered on the turf, and on the high
28


The Three Impostors
green banks of the lane, a neighbour drove me to
the railway station, and I bade good-bye to the
land of the broad moors and unearthly battle-
ments of the wild tors. It was six o'clock as we
neared London; the faint, sickly fume of the brick-
fields about Acton came in puffs through the open
window, and a mist was rising from the ground.
Presently the brief view of successive. streets,
prim and uniform, struck me with a sense of mon-
otony; the hot air seemed to grow hotter; and
when we had rolled beneath the dismal and
squalid houses, whose dirty and neglected back-
yards border the line near Paddington, I felt as
if I should be stifled in this fainting breath of
London. I got a hansom and drove off, and
every street increased my gloom; grey houses with
blinds drawn down, whole thoroughfares almost
desolate, and the foot-passengers who seemed to
stagger wearily along rather than walk, all made
me feel a sinking at heart. I put up for the night
at a small hotel in a street leading from the
Strand, where my father had stayed on his few
brief visits to the town; and when I went out after
dinner, the real gaiety and bustle of the Strand
and Fleet Street could cheer me but little, for in
all this great city there was no single human being
whom I could claim even as an acquaintance. I
will not weary you with the history of the next
year, for the adventures of a man who sinks are
29


The Three Impostors
too trite to be worth recalling. My money did
not last me long; I found that I must be neady
dressed, or no one to whom I applied would so
much as listen to me; and I must live in a street
of decent reputation if I wished to be treated with
common civility. I applied for various posts, for
which, as I now see, I.was completely devoid of
qualification; 1 tried to become a clerk without
having the smallest notion of business habits; and
I found, to my cost, that a general knowledge of
literature and an execrable style of penmanship
are far from being looked upon with favour in
commercial circles. I had read one of the most
charming of the works of a famous novelist of the
present day, and I frequented the Fleet Street
taverns in the hope of making literary friends,
and so getting the introductions which I under-
stood were indispensable in the career of letters.
I was disappointed; I once or twice ventured to
address gentlemen who were sitting in adjoining
boxes, and I was answered, politely indeed, but
in a manner that told me my advances were un-
usual. Pound by pound, my small resources
melted; I could no longer think of appearances;
I migrated to a shy quarter, and my meals became
mere observances. I went out at one and re-
turned to my*room at two, but nothing but a mere
milk-cake had occurred in the interval. In short,
I became acquainted with misfortune; and as I
30


The Three Impostors
sat amidst slush and ice on a seat in Hyde Park,
munching a piece of bread, I realized the bitter-
ness of poverty, and the feelings of a gentleman
reduced to something far below the condition of a
vagrant. In spite of all discouragement I did
not desist in my efforts to earn a living. I con-
sulted advertisement columns, I kept my eyes
open for a chance, I looked in at the windows of
stationers' shops, but all in vain. One evening
I was sitting in a Free Library, and I saw an
advertisement in one of the papers.. It was
something like this: 'Wanted by a gentleman a
person of literary tastes and abilities as secretary
and amanuensis. Must not object to travel.'
Of course I knew that such an advertisement
would have answers by the hundred, and I
thought my own chances of securing the post ex-
tremely small; however I applied at the address
given, and wrote to Mr. Smith, who was staying
at the West End. I must confess that my heart
gave a jump when I received a note a couple of
days later, asking me to call at the Cosmopole at
my earliest convenience. I do not know, sir,
what your experiences of life may have been, and
so I cannot tell you whether you have known such
moments. A slight sickness, my heart beating
rather more rapidly than usual, a choking in the
throat„and a difficulty of utterance; such were my
sensations as I walked to the Cosmopole; I had
31


The Three Impostors
to mention the name twice before the hall porter
could understand me, and as I went upstairs my
hands were wet. I was a good deal struck by
Mr. Smith's appearance; he looked younger than
I did, and there was something mild and hesitat-
ing about his expression. He was reading when
I came in, and he looked up when I gave my name.
'My dear sir,' he said, 'I am really delighted to
see you. I have read very carefully the letter
you were good enough to send me. Am I to
understand that this document is in your own
handwriting?' He showed me the letter I had
written, and I told him I was not so fortunate as
to be able to keep a secretary myself. 'Then,
sir,' he went on, 'the post I advertised is at your
service. You have no objection to travel, I pre-
sume?' As you may imagine, I closed pretty
eagerly with the offer he made, and thus I entered
the service of Mr. Smith. For the first few weeks
I had no special duties; I had received a quarter's
salary, and a handsome allowance was made me
in lieu of board and lodging. One morning, how-
ever, when I called at the hotel according to in-
structions, my master informed me that I must
hold myself in readiness for a sea-voyage, and, to
spare unnecessary detail, in the course of a fort-
night we had landed at New York. Mr. Smith
told me that he was engaged on a work of a
special nature, in the compilation of which some
32


The Three Impostors
peculiar researches had to be made; in short, I
was given to undestand that we were to travel to
the far West.
After about a week had been spent in New York
we took our seats in the cars, and began a journey
tedious beyond all conception. Day after day,
and night after night, the great train rolled on,
threading its way through cities the very names
of which were strange to me, passing at slow
speed over perilous viaducts, skirting mountain
ranges and pine forests, and plunging into dense
tracts of wood, where mile after mile and hour
after hour the same monotonous growth of brush-
wood met the eye, and all along the continual
clatter and rattle of the wheels upon the ill-laid
lines made it difficult to hear the voices of our
fellow-passengers. We were a heterogeneous
and ever-changing company; often I woke up in
the dead of night with a sudden grinding jar of
the breaks, and looking out found that we had
stopped in the shabby street of some frame-built
town, lighted chiefly by the flaring windows of the
saloon. A few rough-looking fellows would often
come out to stare at the cars, and sometimes pas-
sengers got down, and sometimes there was a
party of two or three waiting on the wooden side-
walk to get on board. Many of the passengers
were English; humble households torn up from
the moorings of a thousand years, and bound for
33


The Three Impostors
some problematical paradise in the alkali desert
or the Rockies. I heard the men talking to one
another of the great profits to be made on the
virgin soil of America, and two or three, who
were mechanics, expatiated on the wonderful
wages given to skilled labour on the railways and
in the factories of the States. This- talk usually
fell dead after a few minutes, and I could see a
sickness and dismay in the faces of these men as
they looked at the ugly brush or at the desolate ex-
panse of the prairie, dotted here and there with
frame houses, devoid of garden or flowers or
trees, standing all alone in what might have been
a great sea frozen into stillness. Day after day
the waving sky-line, and the desolation of a
land without form or coloifr or variety, appalled
the hearts of such of us as were English-
men, and once in the night as I lay awake I heard
a woman sobbing and asking what she had done
to come to such a place. Her husband tried to
comfort her in the broad speech of Gloucester-
shire, telling her the ground was so rich that one
had only to plough it up and it would grow sun-
flowers of itself, but she cried for her mother
and their old cottage and the beehives like a little
child. The sadness of it all overwhelmed me,
and I had no heart to think of other matters; the
question of what Mr. Smith could have to do in
such a country, and of what manner of literary
34


The Three Impostors
research could be carried on in the wilderness,
hardly troubled me. Now and again my situa-
tion struck me as peculiar; I had been engaged as
a literary assistant at a handsome salary, and yet
my master was still almost a stranger to me;
sometimes he would come to where I was sitting
in the cars and make a few banal remarks about
the country, but for the most part of the journey
he sat by himself, not speaking to any one, and so
far as I could judge, deep in his thoughts. It
was, I think, on the fifth day from New York
when I received the intimation that we should
shortly leave the cars; I had been watching some
distant mountains which rose wild and savage
before us, and I was wondering if there were hu-
man beings so unhappy as to speak of home in
connection with those piles of lumbered rock,
when Mr. Smith touched me lightly on the
shoulder. 'You will be glad to be done with the
cars, I have no doubt, Mr. Wilkins,' he said.
'You were looking at the mountains, I think?
Well, I hope we shall be there to-night. The
train stops at Reading, and I dare say we shall
manage to find our way.'
A few hours later the breaksman brought the
train to a standstill at the Reading depot, and we
got out. I noticed that the town, though of
course built almost entirely of frame-houses, was
larger and busier than any we had passed for the
35


The Three Impostors
last two days. The depot was crowded; and as
the bell and whistle sounded, I saw that a number
of persons were preparing to leave the cars, while
an even greater number were waiting to get on
board. Besides the passengers, there was a pretty
dense crowd of people, some of whom had come
to meet or to see off their friends and relatives,
while others were merely loafers. Several of our
English fellow-passengers got down at Reading,
but. the confusion was so great that they were
lost to my sight almost immediately. Mr. Smith
beckoned me to follow him, and we were soon in
the thick of the mass; and the continual ringing
of bells, the hubbub of voices, the shrieking of
whistles, and the hiss of escaping steam, confused
my senses, and I wondered dimly, as I struggled
after my employer, where we were going, and
how we should be able to find our way through
an unknown country. Mr. Smith had put on a
wide-brimmed hat, which he had sloped over his
eyes, and as all the men wore hats of the same
pattern, it was with some difficulty that I distin-
guished him in the crowd. We got free at last,
and he struck' down a side street, and made one
or two sharp turns to right and left. It was get-
ting dusk, and we seemed to be passing through
a shy portion of the town; there were few people
about in the ill-lighted streets, and these few were
men of the unprepossessing pattern. Suddenly
36


The Three Impostors
we stopped before a corner house. A man was
standing at the door, apparently on the look-out
for some one, and I noticed that he and Smith
gave sharp glances one to the other.
'From New York City, I expect, mister?'
'From New York.'
'AH right; they're ready, and you can have
'em when you choose. I know my orders, you see,
and I mean to run this business through.'
'Very well, Mr. Evans, that is what we want.
Our money is good, you know. Bring them
round.'
I had stood silent, listening to this dialogue
and wondering what it meant. Smith began to
walk impatiently up and down the street, and the
man Evans was still standing at his door. He
had given a sharp whistle, and I saw him look-
ing me over in a quiet, leisurely way, as if to make
sure of my face for another time. I was think-
ing what all this could mean, when an ugly slouch-
ing lad came up a side passage, leading two raw-
boned horses.
'Get up, Mr. Wilkins, and be quick about it,'
said Smith; 'we ought to be on our way.'
We rode off together into the gathering dark-
ness, and before long J looked back and saw the
far plain behind us, with the lights of the town
glimmering faintly; and in front rose the moun-
tains. Smith guided his horse on the rough track
37


The Three Impostors
as surely as if he had been riding along Piccadilly,
and I followed as well as I could. I was weary
and exhausted, and scarcely took note of anything;
I felt that the track was a gradual ascent, and
here and there I saw great boulders by the road.
The ride made but little impression on me. I
have a faint recollection of passing through a
dense black pine forest, where our horses had to
pick their way among the rocks, and I remember
the peculiar effect of the rarefied air as we kept
still mounting higher and higher. I think I must
have been half asleep for the latter half of the
ride, and it was with a shock that I heard Smith
saying—
'Here we are Wilkins. This is Blue Rock
Park. You will enjoy the view to-morrow. To-
night we will have something to eat, and then go
to bed.'
A man came out of a rough-looking house and
took the horses, and we found some fried steak
and coarse whiskey awaiting us inside. I had
come to a strange place. There were three rooms
—the room in which we had supper, Smith's
room, and my own. The deaf old man who did
the work slept in a sort of shed, and when I woke
up the next morning and walked out I found that
the house stood in a sort of hollow amongst the
mountains; the clumps of pines and some enor-
mous bluish-grey rocks that stood here and there
38


The Three Impostors
between the trees had given the place the name
of Blue Rock Park. On every side the snow-
covered mountains surrounded us, the breath of
the air was as wine, and when I climbed the slope
and looked down, I could see that, so far as any
human fellowship was concerned, I might as well
have been wrecked on some small island in mid-
Pacific. The only trace of man I could see was
the rough log-house where I had slept, and in my
ignorance I did not know that there were similar
houses within comparatively easy distance, as dis-
tance is reckoned in the Rockies. But at the mo-
ment, the utter, dreadful loneliness rushed upon
me, and the thought of the great plain and the
great sea that parted me from the world I knew
caught me by the throat, and I wondered if I
should die there in that mountain hollow. It was
a terrible instant, and I have not yet forgotten it.
Of course, I managed to conquer my horror; I
said I should be all the stronger for the ex-
perience, and I made up my mind to make the best
of everything. It was a rough life enough, and
rough enough board and lodging. I was left
entirely to myself. Smith I scarcely ever saw, nor
did I know when he was in the house. I have
often thought he was far away, and have been sur-
prised to see him walking out of his room, locking
the door behind him, and putting the key in his
pocket; and on several occasions, when I fancied
39


The Three Impostors
he was busy in his room, I have seen him come
in with his boots covered with dust and dirt. So
far as work went I enjoyed a complete sinecure;
I had nothing to do but to walk about the valley,
to eat and to sleep. With one thing and another
I grew accustomed to the life, and managed to
make myself pretty comfortable, and by degrees
I began to venture farther away from the house,
and to explore the country. One day I had con-
trived to get into the neighbouring valley, and sud-
denly I came upon a group of men sawing timber.
I went up to them, hoping that perhaps some of
them might be Englishmen; at all events, they
were human beings, and I should hear articulate
speech; for the old man I have mentioned, besides
being half blind and stone deaf, was wholly dumb
so far as I was concerned. I was prepared to be
welcomed in rough and ready fashion, without
much of the forms of politeness, but the grim
glances and the short, gruff answers I received
astonished me. I saw the men glance oddly at
each other; and one of them, who had stopped
work, began fingering a gun, and I was obliged
to return on my path uttering curses on the fate
which had brought me into a land where men
were more brutish than the very brutes. The
solitude of the life began to oppress me as with
a nightmare, and a few days later I determined
40


The Three Impostors
to walk to a kind of station some miles distant,
where a rough inn was kept for the accommoda-
tion of hunters and tourists. English gentlemen
occasionally stopped there for the night, and I
thought I might perhaps fall in with some one
of better manners than the inhabitants of the
country. I found, as I had expected, a group of
men lounging about the door of the log-house that
served as a hotel, and as I came nearer I could
see that heads were put together and looks inter-
changed, and when I walked up the six or seven
trappers stared at me in stony ferocity, and with
something of the disgust that one eyes a loath-
some and venomous snake. I felt that I could
bear it no longer, and I called out—
'Is there such a thing as an Englishman here,
or any one with a little civilization?'
One of the men put his hand to his belt, but
his neighbour checked him, and answered me—
'You'll find we've got some of the resources of
civilization before very long, mister, and I ex-
pect you'll not fancy them extremely. But, any-
way, there's an Englishman tarrying here, and
I've no doubt he'll be glad to see you. There
you are; that's Mr. D'Aubernoun.'
A young man, dressed like an English country
squire, came and stood at the door, and looked
at me. One of the men pointed to me and said—
p
41


The Three Impostors
'That's the individual we were talking about
last night. Thought you might like to have a
look at him, squire, and here he is.' .
The young fellow's good-natured English face
clouded over, and he glanced sternly at me, and
turned away with a gesture of contempt and aver-
sion.
'Sir,' I cried, 'I do not know what I have done
to be treated in this manner. You are my fellow-
countryman, and I expected some courtesy.'
He gave me a black look and made as if he
would go in, but he changed his mind and faced
me.
You are rather imprudent, I think, to behave
in this manner. You must be counting on a for-
bearance which cannot last very long, which may
last a very short time indeed. And let me tell
you this, sir, you may call yourself an Englishman,
and drag the name of England through the dirt,
but you need not count on any English influence
to help you. If I were you, I would not stay here
much longer.'
He went into the inn, and the men quietly
watched my face as I stood there, wondering
whether I was going mad. The woman of the
house came out and stared at me as if I were a
wild beast or a savage, and I turned to her, and
spoke quietly-
'I am very hungry and thirsty. I have walked
42


The Three Impostors
a long way. I have plenty of money. Will you
give me something to eat and drink?'
'No, I won't,' she said. 'You had better quit
this.'
I crawled home like a wounded beast, and lay
down on my bed. It was all a hopeless puzzle
to me; I knew nothing but rage, and shame, and
terror, and I suffered little more when I passed
by a house in an adjacent valley, and some chil-
dren who were playing outside ran from me
shrieking. I was forced to walk to find some oc-
cupation; I should have died if I had sat down
quietly in Blue Rock Park and looked all day at
the mountains; but wherever I saw a human be-
ing I saw the same glance of hatred and aversion,
and once as I was crossing a thick brake I heard
a shot and the venomous hiss of a bullet close
to my ear.
One day I heard a conversation which as-
tounded me; I was sitting behind a rock resting,
and two men came along the track and halted.
One of them had got his feet entangled in some
wild vines, and swore fiercely, but the other
laughed, and said they were useful things some-
times.
'What the hell do you mean?'
'Oh, nothing much. But they're uncommon
tough, these here vines, and sometimes rope is
skerse and dear.'
43


The Three Impostors
The man who had sworn chuckled at this, and
I heard them sit down and light their pipes.
'Have you seen him lately?' asked the humorist.
'I sighted him the other day, but the darned
bullet went high. He's got his master's luck, I
expect, sir, but it can't last much longer. You
heard about him going to Jinks's and trying his
brass, but the young Britisher downed him pretty
considerable, I can tell you.'
'What the devil is the meaning of it?'
'I don't know, but I believe it'll have to be
finished, and done in the old style too. You know
how they fix the niggers?'
'Yes, sir, I've seen a little of that. A couple
of gallons of kerosene '11 cost a dollar at Brown's
store, but I should say it's cheap anyway.'
They moved off after this, and I lay still be-
hind the rock, the sweat pouring down my face.
I was so sick that I could barely stand, and I
walked home as slowly as an old man, leaning on
my stick. I knew that the two men had been talk-
ing about me, and I knew that some terrible death
was in store for me. That night I could not
sleep; I tossed on the rough bed and tortured my-
self to find out the meaning of it all. At last,
in the very dead of night, I rose from the bed
and put on my clothes, and went out. I did not
care where I went, but I felt that I must walk till
I had tired myself out. It was a clear moonlight
44


The Three Impostors
night, and in a couple of hours I found I was ap-
proaching a place of dismal reputation in the
mountains, a deep cleft in the rocks, known as
Black Gulf Canon. Many years before an un-
fortunate party of Englishmen and English
women had camped here and had been surrounded
by Indians. They were captured, outraged, and
put to death with almost inconceivable tortures,
and the roughest of the trappers or woodsmen
gave the canon a wide berth even in the daytime.
As I crushed through the dense brushwood which
grew above the canon I heard voices; and wonder-
ing who could be in such a place at such a time,
I went on, walking more carefully, and making
as litde noise as possible. There was a great
tree growing on the very edge of the rocks, and
I lay down and looked out from behind the trunk.
Black Gulf Canon was below me, the moonlight
shining bright into its very depths from mid-
heaven, and casting shadows as black as death
from the pointed rock, and all the sheer rock on
the other side, overhanging the canon, was in
darkness. At intervals a light veil obscured the
moonlight, as a filmy cloud fleeted across the
moon, and a bitter wind blew shrill across the
gulf. I looked down, as I have said, and saw
twenty men standing in a semicircle round a rock;
I counted them one by one, and knew most of
them. They were the vilest of the vile, more vile
45


The Three Impostors
than any den in London could show, and there
was murder, worse than murder, on the heads of
not a few. Facing them and me stood "Mr. Smith,
with the rock before him, and on the rock was a
great pair of scales, such as are used in the stores.
I heard his voice ringing down the canon as I lay
beside the tree, and my heart turned cold as I
heard it.
'Life for gold,' he cried, 'a life for gold. The
blood and the life of an enemy for every pound
of gold.'
A man stepped and raised one hand, and with
the other flung a bright lump of something into
the pan of the scales, which clanged down, and
Smith muttered something in his ear. Then he
cried again—
'Blood for gold, for a pound of gold, the life
of an enemy. For every pound of gold upon the
scales, a life.'
One by one the men came forward, each lift-
ing up his right hand; and the gold was weighed
in the scales, and each time Smith leant forward
and spoke to each man in his ear. Then he cried
again—
'Desire and lust for gold on the scales. For
every pound of gold enjoyment of desire.'
I saw the same thing happen as before; the up-
lifted hand and the metal weighed, and the mouth
46


The Three Impostors
1
whispering, and black passion on every face.
Then, one by one, I saw the men again step
up to Smith. A muttered conversation seemed
to take place. I could see that Smith was explain-
ing and directing, and I noticed that he gestic-
ulated a little as one who points out the way, and
once or twice he moved his hands quickly as if he
would show that the path was clear and could
not be missed. I kept my eyes so intently on his
figure that I noted little else, and at last it was
with a start that I realized the canon was empty.
A moment before I thought I had seen the group
of villainous faces, and the two standing, a little
apart, by the rock; I had looked down a moment,
and when I glanced again into the canon there
was no one there. In dumb terror I made my
way home, and I fell asleep in an instant from ex-
haustion. No doubt I should have slept on for
many hours, but when I woke up the sun was only
rising, and the light shone in on my bed. I had
started up from sleep with the sensation of hav-
ing received a violent shock; and as I looked in
confusion about me, I saw, to my amazement,
that there were three men in the room. One of
them had his hand on my shoulder and spoke to
me—
'Come, mister, wake up. Your time's up now,
I reckon, and the boys are waiting for you out-
47


The Three Impostors
side, and they're in a big hurry. Come on; you
can put on your clothes; it's kind of chilly this
morning.'
I saw the other two men smiling sourly at each
other, but I understood nothing. I simply pulled
on my clothes and said I was ready.
'All right; come on, then. You go first,
Nichols, and Jim and I will give the gentleman
an arm.'
They took me out into the sunlight, and then
I understood the meaning of the dull murmur
that had vaguely perplexed me while I was dress-
ing. There were about two hundred men wait-
ing outside, and some women too, and when they
saw me there was a low muttering growl. I did
not know what I had done, but that noise made
my heart beat and the sweat come out on my face.
I saw confusedly, as through a veil, the tumult
and tossing of the crowd, discordant voices were
speaking, and amongst all those faces there was
not one glance of mercy, but a fury of lust that
I did not understand. I found myself presently
walking in a sort of procession up the slope of the
valley, and on every side of me there were men
with revolvers in their hands. Now and then a
voice struck me, and I heard words as sentences
of which I could form no connected story. But
I understood that there was one sentence of ex-
ecration; I heard scraps of stories that seemed
48


The Three Impostors
strange and improbable. Some one was talking
of men, lured by cunning devices from their homes
and murdered with hideous tortures, found writh-
ing like wounded snakes in dark and lonely places,
only crying for some one to stab them to the
heart, and so end their anguish; and I heard an-
other voice speaking of innocent girls who had
vanished for a day or two, and then come back
and died, blushing red with shame even in the
agonies of death. I wondered what it all meant,
and what was to happen; but I was so weary that
I walked on in a dream, scarcely longing for any-
thing but sleep. At last we stopped. We had
reached the summit of the hill overlooking Blue
Rock Valley, and I saw that I was standing be-
neath a clump of trees where I had often sat. I
was in the midst of a ring of armed men, and I
saw that two or three men were very busy with
piles of wood, while others were fingering a rope.
Then there was a stir in the crowd, and a man was
pushed forward. His hands and feet were
tightly bound with cord; and though his face was
unutterably villainous, I pitied him for the agony
that worked his features and twisted his lips. I
knew him; he was amongst those that had
gathered round Smith in Black Gulf Canon. In
an instant he was unbound and stripped naked,
borne beneath one of the trees, and his neck en-
circled by a noose that went around the trunk.
49


The Three Impostors
A hoarse voice gave some kind of order; there
was a rush of feet, and the rope tightened; and
there before me I saw the blackened face and the
writhing limbs and the shameful agony of death.
One after another half a dozen men, all of whom
I had seen in the canon the night before, were
strangled before me, and their bodies were flung
forth on the ground. Then there was a pause,
and the man who had roused me a short while
before came up to me, and said—
'Now, mister, it's your turn. We give you five
minutes to cast up your accounts, and when that's
clocked, by the living God, we will burn you alive
at that tree.'
It was then I awoke and understood. I cried
out—
'Why, what have I done? Why should you
hurt me? I am a harmless man; I never did you
any wrong.' I covered my face with my hands;
it seemed so pitiful, and it was such a terrible
death.
'What have I done?' I cried again. 'You must
take me for some other man. You cannot know
me.'
'You black-hearted devil,' said the man at my
side, 'we know you well enough. There's not a
man within thirty miles of this that won't curse
Jack Smith when you are burning in hell.'
'My name is not Smith,' I said, with some hope
50


The Three Impostors
left in me. 'My name is Wilkins. I was Mr.
Smith's secretary, but I knew nothing of him.'
'Hark at the black liar,' said the man. 'Secre-
tary be damned! You were clever enough, I
dare say, to slink out at night and keep your face
in the dark, but we've tracked you out at last.
But your time's up. Come along.'
I was dragged to the tree and bound to it with
chains; I saw the piles of wood heaped all about
me, and shut my eyes. Then I felt myself
drenched all over with some liquid, and looked
again, and a woman grinned at me. She had just
emptied a great can of petroleum over me and
over the wood. A voice shouted, 'Fire away!'
and I fainted, and knew nothing more.
When I opened my eyes I was lying on a bed in
a bare, comfortless room. A doctor was holding
some strong salts to my nostrils, and a gentle-
man standing by the bed, whom I afterwards
found to be the sheriff, addressed me.
'Say, mister,' he began, 'you've had an uncom-
mon narrow squeak for it. The boys were just
about lighting up when I came along with the
posse, and I had as much as I could do to bring
you off, I can tell you. And, mind you, I don't
blame them; they had made up their minds, you
see, that you were the head of the Black Gulf
gang, and at first nothing I could say would per-
suade them you weren't Jack Smith. Luckily, a
51


The Three Impostors
man from here named Evans, that came along
with us, allowed he had seen you with Jack Smith,
and that you were yourself. So we brought you
along and gaoled you, but you can go if you like
when you're through with this faint turn.'
I got on the cars next day, and in three weeks
I was in London; again almost penniless. But
from that time my fortune seemed to change; I
made influential friends in all directions; bank
directors courted my company, and editors posi-
tively flung themselves into my arms. I had only
to choose my career, and after a while I deter-
mined that I was meant by nature for a life of
comparative leisure. With an ease that seemed
almost ridiculous, I obtained a well-paid position
in connection with a prosperous political club. I
have charming chambers in a central neighbour-
hood, close to the parks, the club chef exerts him-
self when I lunch or dine, and the rarest vintages
in the cellar are always at my disposal. Yet,
since my return to London, I have never known
a day's security or peace; I tremble when I awake
lest Smith should be standing at my bed, and every
step I take seems to bring me nearer to the edge
of the precipice. Smith, I knew, had escaped free
from the raid of the Vigilantes, and I grew faint
at the thought that he would in all probability
return-to London, and that suddenly and unpre-
pared I should meet him face to face. Every
52


The Three Impostors
morning as I left my house I would peer up and
down the street, expecting to see that dreaded
figure awaiting me; I have delayed at street-
corners, my heart in my mouth, sickening at the
thought that a few quick steps might bring us to-
gether; I could not bear to frequent the theatres
or music-halls, lest by some bizarre chance he
should prove to be my neighbour. Sometimes I
have been forced, against my will, to walk out at
night, and then in silent squares the shadows have
made me shudder, and in the medley of meetings
in the crowded thoroughfares I have said to my-
self, 'It must come sooner or later; he will surely
return to London, and I shall see him when I feel
most secure.' I scanned the newspapers for hint
or intimation of approaching danger, and no small
type nor report of trivial interest was allowed to
pass unread. Especially I read and re-read the
advertisement columns, but without result; months
passed by, and I was undisturbed till, though I
felt far from safe, L no longer suffered from the
intolerable oppression of instant and ever-present
terror. This afternoon, as I was walking quietly
along Oxford Street, I raised my eyes and looked
across the road, and then at last I saw the man
who had so long haunted my thoughts.'
Mr. Wilkins finished his wine, and leant back
in his chair, looking sadly at Dyson; and then, as
S3


The Three Impostors
if a thought struck him, fished out of an inner
pocket a leather letter-case, and handed a news-
paper cutting across the table.
Dyson glanced closely at the slip, and saw that
it had been extracted from the columns of an
evening paper. In ran as follows:—
WHOLESALE LYNCHING
SHOCKING STORY
'A Dalziel telegram from'Reading (Colorado)
states that advices received there from Blue Rock
Park report a frightful instance of popular venge-
ance. For some time the neighbourhood has
been terrorized by the crimes of a gang of des-
peradoes, who, under the cover of a carefully
planned organization, have perpetrated the most
infamous cruelties on men and women. A Vigi-
lance Committee was formed, and it was found
that the leader of the gang was a person named
Smith, living in Blue Rock Park. Action was
taken, and six of the worst in the band were sum-
marily strangled in the presence of two or three
hundred men and women. Smith is said to have
escaped.'
'This is a terrible story,' said Dyson; 'I can well
believe that your days and nights are haunted by
such fearful scenes as you have described. But
surely you have no need to fear Smith? He has
much more cause to fear you. Consider: you
54


The Three Impostors
have only to lay your information before the
police, and a warrant would be immediately is-
sued for his arrest. Besides, you will, I am sure,
excuse me for what I am going to say.'
'My dear sir,' said Mr. Wilkins, 'I hope you
will speak to me with perfect freedom.'
'Well, then, I must confess that my impression
was that you were rather disappointed at not be-
ing able to stop the man before he drove off. I
thought you seemed annoyed that you could not
get across the street.'
'Sir, I did not know what I was about. I
caught sight of the man, but it was only for a
moment, and the agony you witnessed was the
agony of suspense. I was not perfectly certain
of the face, and the horrible thought that Smith
was again in London overwhelmed me. I shud-
dered at the idea of this incarnate fiend, whose
soul is black with shocking crimes, mingling free
and unobserved amongst the harmless crowds,
meditating perhaps a new and more fearful cycle
of infamies. I tell you, sir, that an awful being
stalks through the streets, a being before whom
the sunlight itself should blacken, and the summer
air grow chill and dank. Such thoughts as these
rushed upon me with the force of a whirlwind;
I lost my senses.'
'I see. I partly understand your feelings, but
I would impress on you that you have nothing
55


The Three Impostors
than any den in London could show, and there
was murder, worse than murder, on the heads of
not a few. Facing them and me stood Mr. Smith,
with the rock before him, and on the rock was a
great pair of scales, such as are used in the stores.
I heard his voice ringing down the cañon as I lay
beside the tree, and my heart turned cold as I
heard it.
'Life for gold,' he cried, 'a life for gold. The
blood and the life of an enemy for every pound
of gold.'
A man stepped and raised one hand, and with
the other flung a bright lump of something into
the pan of the scales, which clanged down, and
Smith muttered something in his ear. Then he
cried again-
'Blood for gold, for a pound of gold, the life
of an enemy. For every pound of gold upon the
scales, a life.'
One by one the men came forward, each lift-
ing up his right hand; and the gold was weighed
in the scales, and each time Smith leant forward
and spoke to each man in his ear. Then he cried
again-
'Desire and lust for gold on the scales. For
every pound of gold enjoyment of desire.'
I saw the same thing happen as before; the up-
lifted hand and the metal weighed, and the mouth
46


The Three Impostors
whispering, and black passion on every face.
Then, one by one, I saw the men again step
up to Smith. A muttered conversation seemed
to take place. I could see that Smith was explain-
ing and directing, and I noticed that he gestic-
ulated a little as one who points out the way, and
once or twice he moved his hands quickly as if he
would show that the path was clear and could
not be missed. I kept my eyes so intently on his
figure that I noted little else, and at last it was
with a start that I realized the cañon was empty.
A moment before I thought I had seen the group
of villainous faces, and the two standing, a little
apart, by the rock; I had looked down a moment,
and when I glanced again into the cañon there
was no one there. In dumb terror I made my
way home, and I fell asleep in an instant from ex-
haustion. No doubt I should have slept on for
many hours, but when I woke up the sun was only
rising, and the light shone in on my bed. I had
started up from sleep with the sensation of hav-
ing received a violent shock; and as I looked in
confusion about me, I saw, to my amazement,
that there were three men in the room. One of
them had his hand on my shoulder and spoke to
mer
'Come, mister, wake up. Your time's up now,
I reckon, and the boys are waiting for you out-
47


The Three Impostors
really to fear. Depend upon it, Smith will not
molest you in any way. You must remember he
himself has had a warning; and indeed, from the
brief glance I had of him, he seemed to me to be
a frightened-looking man. However, I see it is
getting late, and if you will excuse me, Mr. Wil-
kins, I think I will be going. I dare say we shall
often meet here.'
Dyson walked off smartly, pondering the
strange story chance had brought him, and find-
ing on cool reflection that there was something a
little strange in Mr. Wilkins's manner, for which
not even so weird a catalogue of experiences could
altogether account.
Adventure of the Missing
Brother
MR. CHARLES PHILLIPPS was, as has
been hinted, a gentleman of pronounced
scientific tastes. In his early days he
had devoted himself with fond enthusiasm to the
agreeable study of biology, and a brief mono-
graph on the Embryology of the Microscopic
Holothuria had formed his first contribution to
the belles lettres. Later he had somewhat re-
laxed the severity of his pursuits, and had dabbled
in the more frivolous subjects of palaeontology
56


The Three Impostors
and ethnology; he had a cabinet in his sitting-
room whose drawers were stuffed with rude flint
implements, and a charming fetish from the South
Seas was the dominant note in the decorative
scheme of the apartment. Flattering himself with
the title of materialist, he was in truth one of the
most credulous of men, but he required a marvel
to be neatly draped in the robes of Science before
he would give it any credit, and the wildest
dreams took solid shape to him if only the nomen-
clature were severe and irreproachable. He
laughed at the witch, but quailed before the
powers of the hypnotist, lifting his eyebrows when
Christianity was mentioned, but adoring protyle
and the ether. For the rest, he prided himself
on a boundless scepticism; the average tale of
wonder he heard with nothing but contempt, and
he would certainly not have credited a word or
syllable of Dyson's story of the pursuer and pur-
sued, unless the gold coin had been produced as
visible and tangible evidence. As it was, he half
suspected that Dyson had imposed upon him; he
knew his friend's disordered fancies, and his habit
of conjuring up the marvellous to account for the
entirely commonplace; and, on the whole, he was
inclined to think that the so-called facts in the odd
adventure had been gravely distorted in the tell-
ing. Since the evening on which he had listened
to the tale he paid Dyson a visit, and had de-
57


The Three Impostors
really to fear. Depend upon it, Smith will not
molest you in any way. You must remember hi
himself has had a warning; and indeed, from th
brief glance I had of him, he seemed to me to 11
a frightened-looking man. However, I see it
getting late, and if you will excuse me, Mr. W:
kins, I think I will be going. I dare say we sh;
often meet here.'
Dyson walked off smartly, pondering t"
strange story chance had brought him, and fir
ing on cool reflection that there was somethin
little strange in Mr. Wilkins's manner, for wl
not even so weird a catalogue of experiences c
altogether account.

Adventure of the Missir
Brother
MR. CHARLES
been hinted, a gentleman of
scientific tastes. In his <
had devoted himself with fond enth
agreeable study of biology, and
graph on the Embryology of
Holothuria had formed his fi
Later he
pi



s
research,
iken of as
lis hearing
.;e and evil
Bt was four
vork of res-
ours of de-
that he must
; the evening
, with his eyes
thoughts, and
d he could not
assed, when he
>und himself in
J flowers pleased
rtunity of resting
* round, he saw a
Rpant, a lady, and
*Phillipps took up a
*Vy, and began to pass
f the afternoon. He
i the bench that the
neatly dressed, and to
- face he could not see,
i apparent contemplation
rreover, shielded with her
doing wrong to Mr. Phi-
his choice of seat was dic-
an affair of the heart, he
i
59


The Three Impostors
livered himself of some serious talk on the neces-
sity of accurate observation, and the folly, as he
put it, of using a kaleidoscope instead of a tele-
scope in the view of things, to which remarks his
friend had listened with a smile that was ex-
tremely sardonic. 'My dear fellow,' Dyson had
remarked at last, 'you will allow me to tell you
that I see your drift perfectly. However, you will
be astonished to hear that I consider you to be
the visionary, while I am the sober and serious
spectator of human life. You have gone round
the circle; and while you fancy yourself far in the
golden land of new philosophies, you are in reality
a dweller in a metaphorical Clapham; your scepti-
cism has defeated itself and become a monstrous
credulity; you are, in fact, in the position of the
bat or owl, I forget which it was, who denied the
existence of the sun at noonday, and I shall be
astonished if you do not one day come to me full
of contrition for your manifold intellectual errors,
with a humble resolution to see things in their
true light for the future.' This tirade had left
Mr. Phillipps unimpressed; he considered Dyson
as hopeless, and he went home to gloat over some
primitive stone implements that a friend had sent
him from India. He found that his landlady,
seeing them displayed in all their rude formless-
ness upon the table, had removed the collection
to the dustbin, and had replaced it by lunch; and
5*


The Three Impostors
the afternoon was spent in malodorous research.
Mrs. Brown, hearing these stones spoken of as
very valuable knives, had called him in his hearing
'poor Mr. Phillipps,' and between rage and evil
odours he spent a sorry afternoon. It was four
o'clock before he had completed his work of res-
cue; and overpowered with the flavours of de-
caying cabbage leaves, Phillipps felt that he must
have a walk to gain an appetite for the evening
meal. Unlike Dyson he walked fast, with his eyes
on the pavement, absorbed in his thoughts, and
oblivious of the life around him; and he could not
have told by what streets he had passed, when he
suddenly lifted up his eyes and found himself in
Leicester Square. The grass and flowers pleased
him, and he welcomed the opportunity of resting
for a few minutes, and glancing round, he saw a
bench which had only one occupant, a lady, and
as she was seated at one end, Phillipps took up a
position at the other extremity, and began to pass
in angry review the events of the afternoon. He
had noticed as he came up to the bench that the
person already there was neatly dressed, and to
all appearance young; her face he could not see,
as it was turned away in apparent contemplation
of the shrubs, and, moreover, shielded with her
hand; but it would be doing wrong to Mr. Phi-
lipps to imagine that his choice of seat was dic-
tated by any hopes of an affair of the heart, he
59


The Three Impostors
had simply preferred the company of one lady to
that of five dirty children, and having seated him-
self, was immersed directly in thoughts of his mis-
fortunes. He had meditated changing his lodg-
ings; but now, on a judicial review of the case in
all its bearings, his calmer judgment told him that
the race of landladies is like to the race of the
leaves, and that there was but little to choose be-
tween them. He resolved, however, to talk to
Mrs. Brown, the offender, very coolly and yet
severely, to point out the extreme indiscretion of
her conduct, and to express a hope for better
things in the future. With this decision reg-
istered in his mind, Phillipps was about to get
up from the seat and move off, when he was in-
tensely annoyed to hear a stifled sob, evidently
from the lady, who still continued her contempla-
tion of the shrubs and flower-beds. He clutched
his stick desperately, and in a moment would have
been in full retreat, when the lady turned her face
towards him, and with mute entreaty bespoke his
attention. She was a young girl with a quaint
and piquant rather than a beautiful face, and she
was evidently in the bitterest distress. Mr. Phil-
lipps sat down again, and cursed his chances
heartily. The young lady looked at him with a
pair of charming eyes of a shining hazel, which
showed no trace of tears, though a handkerchief
was in her hand; she bit her lip, and seemed to
60


The Three Impostors
struggle with some overpowering grief, and her
whole attitude was all-beseeching and imploring.
Phillipps sat on the edge of the bench gazing awk-
wardly at her, and wondering what was to come
next, and she looked at him still without speak-
ing.
'Well, madam,' he said at last, 'I understood
from your gesture that you wished to speak to
me. Is there anything I can do for you?
Though, if you will pardon me, I cannot help say-
ing that that seems highly improbable.
'Ah, sir,' she said in a low, murmuring voice,
'do not speak harshly to me. I am in sore straits,
and I thought from your face that I could safely
ask your sympathy, if not your help.'
'Would you kindly tell me what is the matter?'
said Phillipps. 'Perhaps you would like some
tea ?
'I knew I could not be mistaken,' the lady re-
plied. 'That offer of refreshment bespeaks a
generous mind. But tea, alas! is powerless to
console me. If you will let me, I shall endeavour
to explain my trouble.
'I should be glad if you would.
'I shall do so, and I shall try to be brief, in
spite of the numerous complications which have
made me, young as I am, tremble before what
seems the profound and terrible mystery of exis-
tence. Yet the grief which now racks my very
6,


The Three Impostors
soul is but too simple; I have lost my brother.'
'Lost your brother! How on earth can that
be?'
'I see I must trouble you with a few particu-
lars. My brother, then, who is by some years
my elder, is a tutor in a private school in the ex-
treme north of London. The want of means de-
prived him of the advantages of a University
education; and lacking the stamp of a degree, he
could not hope for that position which his scholar-
ship and his talents entitled him to claim. He
was thus forced to accept the post of classical
master at Dr. Saunderson's Highgate Academy
for the Sons of Gentlemen, and he has performed
his duties with perfect satisfaction to his princi-
pal for some years. My personal history need
not trouble you; it will be enough if I tell you
that for the last month I have been governess in a
family residing at Tooting. My brother and I
have always cherished the warmest mutual affec-
tion; and though circumstances into which I need
not enter have kept us apart for some time, yet we
have never lost sight of one another. We made
up our minds that unless one of us was absolutely
unable to rise from a bed of sickness, we should
never let a week pass by without meeting, and
some time ago we chose this square as our rendez-
vous on account of its central position and its con-
venience of access. And indeed, after a week of
62


The Three Impostors
distasteful toil, my brother felt little inclination
for much walking, and we have often spent two
or three hours on this bench, speaking of our pros-
pects and of happier days, when we were children.
In the early spring it was cold and chilly; still we
enjoyed the short respite, and I think that we
were often taken for a pair of lovers as we sat
close together, eagerly talking. Saturday after
Saturday we have met each other here; and
though the doctor told him it was madness, my
brother would not allow the influenza to break the
appointment. That was some time ago; last
Saturday we had a long and happy afternoon, and
separated more cheerfully than usual, feeling that
the coming week would be bearable, and resolv-
ing that our next meeting should be if possible
still more pleasant. I arrived here at the time
agreed upon, four o'clock, and sat down and
watched for my brother, expecting every moment
to see him advancing towards me from the gate
at the north side of the square. Five minutes
passed by, and he had not arrived; I thought he
must have missed his train, and the idea that our
interview would be cut short by twenty minutes,
or perhaps half an hour, saddened me; I had
hoped we should be so happy together to-day.
Suddenly, moved by I know not what impulse, I
turned abruptly round, and how can I describe to
you my astonishment when I saw my brother ad-
63


The Three Impostors
vancing slowly towards me from the southern side
of the square, accompanied by another person?
My first thought, I remember, had in it something
of resentment that this man, whoever he was,
should intrude himself into our meeting; I won-
dered who it could possibly be, for my brother
had, I may say, no intimate friends. Then as I
looked still at the advancing figures, another feel-
ing took possession of me; it was a sensation of
bristling fear, the fear of the child in the dark,
unreasonable and unreasoning, but terrible, clutch-
ing at my heart as with the cold grip of a dead
man's hands. Yet I overcame the feeling, and
looked steadily at my brother, waiting for him
to speak, and more closely at his companion.
Then I noticed that this man was leading my
brother rather than walking arm-in-arm with
him; he was a tall man, dressed in quite ordinary
fashion. He wore a high bowler hat, and, in
spite of the warmth of the day, a plain black
overcoat, tightly buttoned, and I noticed his
trousers, of a quiet black and grey stripe. The
face was commonplace too, and indeed I cannot
recall any special features, or any trick of expres-
sion; for though I looked at him as he came near,
curiously enough his face made no impression on
me—it was as though I had seen a well-made
mask. They passed in front of me, and to my
unutterable astonishment, I heard my brother's
64


The Three Impostors
voice speaking to me, though his lips did not move,
nor his eyes look into mine. It was a voice I
cannot describe, though I knew it, but the words
came to my ears as if mingled with splashing
water and the sound of a shallow brook flowing
amidst stones. I heard, then, the words, "I can-
not stay," and for a moment the heavens and the
earth seemed to rush together with the sound of
thunder, and I was thrust forth from the world
into a black void without beginning and without
end. For, as my brother passed me, I saw the
hand that held him by the arm, and seemed to
guide him, and in one moment of horror I real-
ized that it was a formless thing that has moul-
dered for many years in the grave. The flesh
was peeled in strips from the bones, and hung
apart dry and granulated, and the fingers that
encircled my brother's arm were all unshapen,
claw-like things, and one was but a stump from
which the end had rotted off. When I recovered
my senses I saw the two passing out by the gate.
I paused for a moment, and then with a rush of
fire to my heart I knew that no horror could stay
me, but that I must follow my brother and save
him, even though all hell rose up against me. I
ran out, and looked up the pavement, and saw the
two figures walking amidst the crowd. I ran
across the road, and saw them turn up that side
street, and I reached the corner a moment later.
65


The Three Impostors
· In vain I looked to right and left, for neither my
brother nor his strange guardian was in sight;
two elderly men were coming down arm-in-arm,
and a telegraph boy was walking lustily along
whistling. I remained there a moment horror-
struck, and then I bowed my head and returned
to this seat, where you found me. Now, sir, do
you wonder at my grief? Oh, tell me what has
happened to my brother, or I feel I shall go mad!
Mr. Phillipps, who had listened with exemplary
patience to this tale, hesitated a moment before
he spoke.
'My dear madam,' he said at length, 'you have
known how to engage me in your service, not only
as a man, but as a student of science. As a fel-
low-creature I pity you most profoundly; you must
have suffered extremely from what you saw, or
rather from what you fancied you saw. For, as
a scientific observer, it is my duty to tell you the
plain truth, which, indeed, besides being true,
must also console you. Allow me to ask you then
to describe your brother.
'Certainly,' said the lady eagerly; 'I can de-
scribe him accurately. My brother is a somewhat
young-looking man; he is pale, has small black
whiskers, and wears spectacles. He has rather
a timid, almost a frightened expression, and looks
about him nervously from side to side. Think,
think! Surely you must have seen him. Per.
66


The Three Impostors
haps you are an habitue of this engaging quarter;
you may have met him on some previous Satur-
day. I may have been mistaken in supposing
that he turned up that side street; he may have
gone on, and you may have passed each other.
Oh, tell me, sir, whether you have not seen him!'
'I am afraid I do not keep a very sharp look-
out when I am walking,' said Phillipps, who would
have passed his mother unnoticed; 'but I am sure
your description is admirable. And now will you
describe the person who, you say, held your
brother by the arm?'
'I cannot do so. I told you his face seemed
devoid of expression or salient feature. It was
like a mask.'
'Exactly; you cannot describe what you have
never seen. I need hardly point out to you the
conclusion to be drawn; you have been the victim
of an hallucination. You expected to see your
brother, you were alarmed because you did not see
him, and unconsciously, no doubt, your brain went
to work, and finally you saw a mere projection
of your own morbid thoughts—a vision of your
absent brother, and a mere confusion of terrors
incorporated in a figure which you can't describe.
Of course your brother has been in some way pre-
vented from coming to meet you as usual. I ex-
pect you will hear from him in a day or two.'
The lady looked seriously at Mr. Phillipps, and
67


The Three Impostors
then for a second there seemed almost a twin-
kling as of mirth about her eyes, but her face
clouded sadly at the dogmatic conclusions to
which the scientist was led so irresistibly.
'Ah!' she said, 'you do not know. I cannot
doubt the evidence of my waking senses. Be-
sides, perhaps I have had experiences even more
terrible. I acknowledge the force of your argu-
ments, but a woman has intuitions which never
deceive her. Believe me, I am not hysterical;
feel my pulse, it is quite regular.'
She stretched out her hand with a dainty ges-
ture, and a glance that enraptured Phillipps in
spite of himself. The hand held out to him was
soft and white and warm, and as, in some confu-
sion, he placed his fingers on the purple vein, he
felt profoundly touched by the spectacle of love
and grief before him.
'No,' he said, as he released her wrist, 'as you
say, you are evidently quite yourself. Still, you
must be aware that living men do not possess
dead hands. That sort of thing doesn't happen.
It is, of course, barely possible that you did see
your brother with another gentleman, and that
important business prevented him from stopping.
As for the wonderful hand, there may have been
some deformity, a finger shot off by accident, or
something of that sort.'
The lady shook her head mournfully.
68


The Three Impostors
'I see you are a determined rationalist,' she
said. “Did you not hear me say that I have had
experiences even more terrible? I too was once
a sceptic, but after what I have known I' can no
longer doubt.'
'Madam,' replied Mr. Phillipps, 'no one shall
make me deny my faith. I will never believe, nor
will pretend to believe that two and two make
five, nor will I on any pretences admit the exis-
tence of two-sided triangles.'
'You are a little hasty,' rejoined the lady. “But
may I ask you if you ever heard the name of Pro-
fessor Gregg, the authority on ethnology and kin-
dred subjects ?
'I have done much more than merely hear of
Professor Gregg,' said Phillipps. 'I always re-
garded him as one of our most acute and clear.
headed observers; and his last publication, the
"Textbook of Ethnology," struck me as being
admirable in its kind. Indeed, the book had but
come into my hands when I heard of the terrible
accident which cut short Gregg's career. He had,
I think, taken a country house in the West of
England for the summer, and is supposed to have
fallen into a river. So far as I remember, his
body was never recovered.
'Sir, I am sure that you are discreet. Your
conversation seems to declare as much, and the
very title of that little work of yours which you


The Three Impostors
mentioned assures me that you are no empty
trifler. In a word, I feel that I may depend on
you. You appear to be under the impression
that Professor Gregg is dead; I have no reason
to believe that that is the case.'
'What?' cried Phillipps, astonished and per-
turbed. 'You do not hint that there was any-
thing disgraceful? I cannot believe it. Gregg
was a man of the clearest character; his private
life was one of great benevolence; and though
I myself am free from delusions, I believe him to
-*» have been a sincere and devout Christian. Surely
you cannot mean to insinuate that some disreput-
able history forced him to flee the country?'
'Again you are in a hurry,' replied the lady.
'I said nothing of all this. Briefly, then, I must
tell you that Professor Gregg left his house one
morning in full health both of mind and body.
He never returned, but his watch and chain, a
purse containing three sovereigns in gold, and
some loose silver, with a ring that he wore habit-
ually, were found three days later on a wild and
savage hillside, many miles from the river.
These articles were placed beside a limestone
rock of fantastic form; they had been wrapped
into a parcel with a kind of rough parchment
which was secured with gut. The parcel was
opened, and the inner side of the parchment bore
an inscription done with some red substance; the
70


The Three Impostors
characters were undecipherable, but seemed to be
a corrupt cuneiform.'
'You interest me intensely,' said Phillipps.
'Would you mind continuing your story? The
circumstance you have mentioned seems to me of
the most inexplicable character, and I thirst for
elucidation.'
The young lady seemed to meditate for a mo-
ment, and she then proceeded to relate the
NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL
I must now give you some fuller particulars of
my history. I am the daughter of a civil en-
gineer, Steven Lally by name, who was so
unfortunate as to die suddenly at the outset of
his career, and before he had accumulated suffi-
cient means to support his wife and her two chil-
dren.
My mother contrived to keep the small house-
hold going on resources which must have been
incredibly small; we lived in a remote country vil-
lage, because most of the necessaries of life were
cheaper than in a town, but even so we were
brought up with the severest economy. My
father was a clever and well-read man, and left
behind him a small but select collection of books,
containing the best Greek, Latin, and English
4
71


The Three Impostors
classics, and these books were the only amusement
we possessed. My brother, I remember, learnt
Latin out of Descartes' 'Meditationes,' and I, in
place of the little tales which children are usually
told to read, had nothing more charming than a
translation of the 'Gesta Romanorum.' We grew
up thus, quiet, and studious children, and in course
of time my brother provided for himself in the
manner I have mentioned. I continued to live
at home; my poor mother had become an invalid,
and demanded my continual care, and about two
years ago she died after many months of painful
illness. My situation was a terrible one; the
shabby furniture barely sufficed to pay the debts
I had been forced to contract, and the books I
dispatched to my brother, knowing how he would
value them. I was absolutely alone; I was aware
how poorly my brother was paid; and though I
came up to London in the hope of finding employ-
ment, with the understanding that he would de-
fray my expenses, I swore it should only be for a
month, and that if I could not in that time find
some work, I would starve rather than deprive
him of the few miserable pounds he had laid by
for his day of trouble. I took a little room in a
distant suburb, the cheapest that I could find; I
lived on bread and tea, and I spent my time in
vain answering of advertisements, and vainer
walks to -addresses I had noted. Day followed
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The Three Impostors
on day, and week'on week, and still I was unsuc-
cessful, till at last the term I had appointed drew
to a close, and I saw before me the grim prospect
of slowly dying of starvation. My landlady was
good-natured in her way; she knew the slender-
ness of my means, and I am sure that she would
not have turned me out of doors; it remained for
me then to go away, and to try to die in some
quiet place. It was winter then and a thick white
fog gathered in the early part of the afternoon,
becoming more dense as the day wore on; it was
a Sunday, I remember, and the people of the
house were at chapel. At about three o'clock I
crept out and walked away as quickly as I could,
for I was weak from abstinence. The white mist
wrapped all the streets in silence, a hard frost had
gathered thick upon the bare branches of the
trees, and frost crystals glittered on the wooden
fences, and on the cold, cruel ground beneath my
feet. I walked on, turning to right and left in
utter haphazard, without caring to look up at the
names of the streets, and all that I remember of
my walk on that Sunday afternoon seems but the
broken fragments of an evil dream. In a con-
fused vision I stumbled on, through roads half
town and half country, grey fields melting into the
cloudy world of mist on one side of me, and on
the other comfortable villas with a glow of fire-
light flickering on the walls, but all unreal; red
73


The Three Impostors
brick walls and lighted windows, vague trees, and
glimmering country, gas-lamps beginning to star
the white shadows, the vanishing perspectives of
the railway line beneath high embankments, the
green and red of the signal lamps,—all these were
but momentary pictures flashed on my tired brain
and senses numbed by hunger. Now and then I
would hear a quick step ringing on the iron road,
and men would pass me well wrapped up, walking
fast for the sake of warmth, and no doubt eagerly
foretasting the pleasures of a glowing hearth,
with curtains tightly drawn about the frosted
panes, and the welcomes of their friends; but as
the early evening darkened and night approached,
foot-passengers got fewer and fewer, and I passed
through street after street alone. In the white
silence I stumbled on, as desolate as if I trod the
streets of a buried city; and as I grew more weak
and exhausted, something of the horror of death
was folding thickly round my heart. Suddenly,
as I turned a corner, some one accosted me cour-
teously beneath the lamp-post, and I heard a voice
asking if I could kindly point the way to Avon
Road. At the sudden shock of human accents I
was prostrated, and my strength gave way; I fell
all huddled on the sidewalk, and wept and sobbed
and laughed in violent hysteria. I had gone out
prepared to die, and as I stepped across the
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The Three Impostors
threshold that had sheltered me, I consciously
bade adieu to all hopes and all remembrances;
the door clanged behind me with the noise of
thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen
on the brief passages of my life, that henceforth
I was to walk a little way in a world of gloom and
shadow; I entered on the stage of the first act of
death. Then came my wandering in the mist,
the whiteness wrapping all things, the void streets,
and muffled silence, till when that voice spoke to
me it was as if I had died and life returned to me.
In a few minutes I was able to compose my feel-
ings, and as I rose I saw that I was confronted
by a middle-aged gentleman of pleasing appear-
ance, neatly and correctly dressed. He looked
at me with an expression of great pity, but before
I could stammer out my ignorance of the neigh-
bourhood, for indeed I had not the slightest no-
tion of where I had wandered, he spoke.
'My dear madam,' he said, 'you seem in some
terrible distress. You cannot think how you
alarmed me. But may I inquire the nature of
your trouble? I assure you that you can safely
confide in me.'
'You are very kind,' I replied, 'but I fear there
is nothing to be done. My condition seems a
hopeless one.'
'Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You are too young
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The Three Impostors
to talk like that. Come, let us walk down here,
and you must tell me your difficulty. Perhaps I
may be able to help you.'
There was something very soothing and per-
suasive in his manner, and as we walked together
I gave him an outline of my story, and told of the
despair that had oppressed me almost to death.
'You were wrong to give in so completely,' he
said, when I was silent. 'A month is too short a
time in which to feel one's way in London. Lon-
don, let me tell you, Miss Lally, does not lie open
and undefended; it is a fortified place, fossed and
double-moated with curious intricacies. As must
always happen in large towns, the conditions of
life have become hugely artificial; no mere simple
palisade is run up to oppose the man or woman
who would take the place by storm, but serried
lines of subtle contrivances, mines, and pitfalls
which it needs a strange skill to overcome. You,
in your simplicity, fancied you had only to shout
for these walls to sink into nothingness, but the
time is gone for such startling victories as these.
Take courage; you will learn the secret of success
before long.'
Alas! sir,' I replied, 'I have no doubt your con-
clusions are correct, but at the present moment I
seem to be in a fair way to die of starvation.
You spoke of a secret; for heaven's sake tell it
me, if you have any pity for my distress.'
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The Three Impostors
He laughed genially. 'There lies the strange-
ness of it all. Those who know the secret can-
not tell it if they would; it is positively as inef-
fable as the central doctrine of Freemasonry.
But I may say this, that you yourself have pene-
trated at least the outer husk of the mystery,' and
he laughed again.
'Pray do not jest with me,' I said. 'What have
I done, que scais-jef I am so far ignorant that
I have not the slightest idea of how my next meal
is to be provided.'
'Excuse me. You ask what you have done.
You have met me. Come, we will fence no
longer. I see you have self-education, the only
education which is not infinitely pernicious, and I
am in want of a governess for my two children.
I have been a widower for some years; my name
is Gregg. I offer you the post I have named,
and shall we say a salary of a hundred a year?'
I could only stutter out my thanks, and slip-
ping a card with his address, and a banknote by
way of earnest into my hand, Mr Gregg bade me
good-bye, asking me to call in a day or two.
Such was my introduction to Professor Gregg,
and can you wonder that the remembrance of de-
spair and the cold blast that had blown from the
gates of death upon me made me regard him as a
second father? Before the close of the week I
was installed in my new duties. The professor
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The Three Impostors
had leased an old brick manor-house in a western
suburb of London, and here, surrounded by
pleasant lawns and orchards, and soothed with the
murmur of ancient elms that rocked their boughs
above the roof, the new chapter of my life began.
Knowing as you do the nature of the professor's
occupations, you will not be surprised to hear that
the house teemed with books, and cabinets full of
strange, and even hideous, objects filled every
available nook in the vast low rooms. Gregg was
a man whose one thought was for knowledge, and
I too before long caught something of his en-
thusiasm, and strove to enter into his passion for
research. In a few months I was perhaps more
his secretary than the governess of the two chil-
dren, and many a night I have sat at the desk in
the glow of the shaded lamp while he, pacing up
and down in the rich gloom of the firelight, dic-
tated to me the substance of his 'Textbook of Eth-
nology.' But amidst these more sober and accu-
rate studies I always detected a something hidden,
a longing and desire for some object to which he
did not allude; and now and then he would break
short in what he was saying and lapse into reverie,
entranced, as it seemed to- me, by some distant
prospect of adventurous discovery. The text-
book was at last finished, and we began to receive
proofs from the printers, which were entrusted
to me for a first reading, and then underwent
78


The Three Impostors
the final revision of the professor. All
the while his weariness of the actual business he
was engaged on increased, and it was with the
joyous laugh of a schoolboy when term is over
that he one day handed me a copy of the book.
'There,' he said, 'I have kept my word; I
promised to write it, and it is done with. Now I
shall be free to live for stranger things; I confess
it, Miss Lally, I covet the renown of Columbus;
you will, I hope, see me play the part of an ex-
plorer.'
'Surely,' I said, 'there is little left to explore.
You have been born a few hundred years too late
for that.'
'I think you are wrong,' he replied; 'there are
still, depend upon it, quaint, undiscovered coun-
tries and continents of strange extent. Ah, Miss
Lally! believe me, we stand amidst sacraments
and mysteries full of awe, and it doth not yet ap-
pear what we shall be. Life, believe me, is no
simple thing, no mass of grey matter and con-
geries of veins and muscles to be laid naked by
the surgeon's knife; man is the secret which I am
about to explore, and before I can discover him
I must cross over weltering seas indeed, and
oceans and the mists of many thousand years.
You know the myth of the lost Atlantis; what if
it be true, and I am destined to be called the dis-
coverer of that wonderful land?'
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The Three Impostors
I could see the excitement boiling beneath his
words, and in his face was the heat of the hunter;
before me stood a man who believed himself sum-
moned to tourney with the unknown. A pang of
joy possessed me when I reflected that I was to
be in a way associated with him in the adventure,
and I too burned with the lust of the chase, not
pausing to consider that I knew not what we were
to unshadow.
The next morning Professor "Gregg took me in-
to his inner study, where, ranged against the wall,
stood a nest of pigeon-holes, every drawer neatly „
labelled, and the results of years of toil classified
in a few feet of space.
'Here,' he said, 'is my life; here are all the
facts which I have gathered together with so much
pains, and yet it is all nothing. No, nothing to
what I am about to attempt. Look at this'; and
he took me to an old bureau, a piece fantastic and
faded, which stood in a corner of the room. He
unlocked the front and opened one of the drawers.
'A few scraps of paper,' he went on, pointing
to the drawer, 'and a lump of black stone, rudely
annotated with queer marks and scratches—that
is all that drawer holds. Here you see is an old
envelope with the dark red stamp of twenty years
ago, but I have pencilled a few lines at the back;
here is a sheet of manuscript, and here some cut-
tings from obscure local journals. And if you
80


The Three Impostors
ask me the subject-matter of the collection, it will
not seem extraordinary—a servant-girl at a farm-
house, who disappeared from her place and has
never been heard of, a child supposed to have
slipped down some old working on the mountains,
some queer scribbling on a limestone rock, a man'
murdered with a blow from a strange weapon;
such is the scent I have to go upon. Yes, as you
say, there is a ready explanation for all this; the
girl may have run away to London, or Liverpool,
or New York; the child may be at the bottom of
the disused shaft; and the letters on the rock may
be the idle whims of some vagrant. Yes, yes, I
admit all that; but I know I hold the true key.
Look!' and he held out a slip of yellow paper.
Characters found inscribed on a limestone rock
on the Grey Hills, I read, and then there was a
word erased, presumably the name of a county,
and a date some fifteen years back. Beneath was
traced a number of uncouth characters, shaped
somewhat like wedges or daggers, as strange and
outlandish as the Hebrew alphabet.
'Now the seal,' said Professor Gregg, and he
handed me the black stone, a thing about two
inches long, and something like an old-fashioned
tobacco-stopper, much enlarged.
I held it up to the light, and saw to my sur-
prise the characters on the paper repeated on the
seal.
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The Three Impostors
'Yes,' said the professor, 'they are the same.
And the marks on the limestone rock were made
fifteen years ago, with some red substance. And
the characters on the seal are four thousand years
old at least. Perhaps much more.'
'Is it a hoax?' I said.
'No, I anticipated that. I was not to be led
to give my life to a practical joke. I have tested
the matter very carefully. Only one person be-
sides myself knows of the mere existence of that
black seal. Besides, there are other reasons
which I cannot enter into now.'
'But what does it all mean?' I said. 'I cannot
understand to what conclusion all this leads.'
'My dear Miss Lally, that is a question I would
rather leave unanswered for some little time.
Perhaps I shall never be able to say what secrets
are held here in solution; a few vague hints, the
outlines of village tragedies, a few marks done
with red earth upon a rock, and an ancient seal.
A queer set of data to go upon? Half a
dozen pieces of evidence, and twenty years before
even so much could be got together; and who
knows what mirage or terra incognita may be be-
yond all this? I look across deep waters, Miss
Lally, and the land beyond may be but a haze
after all. But still I believe it is not so, and a few
months will show whether I am right or wrong.'
He left me, and alone I endeavoured to fathom
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The Three Impostors
the mystery, wondering to what goal such eccen-
tric odds and ends of evidence could lead. I my-
self am not wholly devoid of imagination, and I
had reason to respect the professor's solidity of
intellect; yet I saw in the contents of the drawer
but the materials of fantasy, and vainly tried to
conceive what theory could be founded on the
fragments that had been placed before me. In-
deed, I could discover in what I had heard and
seen but the first chapter of an extravagant ro-
mance; and yet deep in my heart I burned with
curiosity, and day after day I looked eagerly in
Professor Gregg's face for some hint of what was
to happen.
It was one evening after dinner that the word
came.
'I hope you can make your preparations without
much trouble,' he said suddenly to me. 'We shall
be leaving here in a week's time.'
'Really!' I said in astonishment. 'Where are
we going?'
'I have taken a country house in the west of
England, not far from Caermaen, a quiet little
town, once a city, and the headquarters of a Ro-
man legion. It is very dull there, but the coun-
try is pretty, and the air is wholesome.'
I detected a glint in his eyes, and guessed that
this sudden move had some relation to our con-
versation of a few days before.
83


The Three Impostors
'I shall just take a few books with me,' said Pro-
fessor Gregg, 'that is all. Everything else will
remain here for our return. I have got a holi-
day,' he went on, smiling at me, 'and I shan't be
sorry to be quit for a time of my old bones and
stones and rubbish. Do you know,' he went on,
'I have been grinding away at facts for thirty
years; it is time for fancies.'
The days passed quickly; I could see that the
professor was all quivering with suppressed ex-
citement, and I could scarce credit the eager ap-
petence of his glance as we left the old manor-
house behind us and began our journey. We set
out at midday, and it was in the dusk of the even-
ing that we arrived at a little county station. I
was tired and excited, and the drive through the
lanes seems all a dream. First the deserted
streets of a forgotten village, while I heard Pro-
fessor Gregg's voice talking of the Augustan
Legion and the clash of arms, and all the tremen-
dous pomp that followed the eagles; then the
broad river swimming to full tide with the last
afterglow glimmering duskily in the yellow water,
the wide meadows, the cornfields whitening, and
the deep lane windng on the slope between the
hills and the water. At last we began to ascend,
and the air grew rarer. I looked down and saw
the pure white mist tracking the outline of the
river like a shroud, and a vague and shadowy
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The Three Impostors
country; imaginations and fantasy of swelling
hills and hanging woods, and half-shaped outlines
of hills beyond, and in the distance the glare of
the furnace fire on the mountain, growing by turns
a pillar of shining flame and fading to a dull point
of red. We were slowly mounting a carriage
drive, and then there came to me the cool breath
and the secret of the great wood that was above
us; I seemed to wander in its deepest depths, and
there was the sound of trickling water, the scent
of the green leaves, and the breath of the summer
night. The carriage stopped at last, and I could
scarcely distinguish the form of the house as I
waited a moment at the pillared porch. The rest
of the evening seemed a dream of strange things
bounded by the great silence of the wood and the
valley and the river.
The next morning, when I awoke and looked
out of the bow window of the big, old-fashioned
bedroom, I saw under a grey sky a country that
was still all mystery. The long, lovely valley,
with the river winding in and out below, crossed
in mid-vision by a mediaeval bridge of vaulted and
buttressed stone, the clear presence of the rising
ground beyond, and the woods that I had only
seen in shadow the night before, seemed tinged
with enchantment, and the soft breath of air that
sighed in at the opened pane was like no other
wind. I looked across the valley, and beyond,
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The Three Impostors
hill followed on hill as wave on wave, and here
a faint blue pillar of smoke rose still in the morn-
ing air from the'chimney of an ancient grey farm-
house, there was a rugged height crowned with
dark firs, and in the distance I saw the white
streak of a road that climbed and vanished into
some unimagined country. But the boundary of
all was a great wall of mountain, vast in the west,
and ending like a fortress with a steep ascent and
a domed tumulus clear against the sky.
I saw Professor Gregg walking up and down
the terrace path below the windows, and it was
evident that he was revelling in the sense of
liberty, and the thought that he had for a while
bidden good-bye to task-work. When I joined
him there was exultation in his voice as he pointed
out the sweep of valley and the river that wound
beneath the lovely hills.
'Yes,' he said, 'it is a strangely beautiful
country; and to me, at least, it seems full of
mystery. You have not forgotten the drawer I
showed you, Miss Lally? No; and you guessed
that I have come here not merely for the sake of
the children and the fresji air?'
'I think I have guessed as much as that,' I re-
plied; 'but you must remember I do not know the
mere nature of your investigations; and as for the
connection between the search and this wonderful
valley, it is past my guessing.'
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The Three Impostors
He smiled queerly at me. 'You must not think
I am making a mystery for the sake of a mystery,'
he said. 'I do not speak out because, so far,
there is nothing to be spoken, nothing definite, I
mean, nothing that can be set down in hard black
and white, as dull and sure and irreproachable as
any blue-book. And then I have another reason:
Many years ago a chance paragraph in a news-
paper caught my attention, and focussed in an in-
stant the vagrant thoughts and half-formed
fancies of many idle and speculative hours into a
certain hypothesis. I saw at once that I was
treading on a thin crust; my theory was wild and
fantastic in the extreme, and I would not for any
consideration have written a hint of it for pub-
lication. But I thought that in the company of
scientific men like myself, men who knew the
course of discovery, and were aware that the gas
that blazes and flares in the gin-palace was once
a wild hypothesis—I thought that with such men
as these I might hazard my dream—let us say
Atlantis, or the philosopher's stone, or what you
like—without danger of ridicule. I found I was
grossly mistaken; my friends looked blankly at
me and at one another, and I could see something
of pity, and something also of insolent contempt,
in the glances they exchanged. One of them called
on me next day, and hinted that I must be suffering
from overwork and brain exhaustion. "In plain
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The Three Impostois
terras," I said, "you think I am going mad. I
think not"; and I showed him out with some little
appearance of heat. Since that day I vowed that
I would never whisper the nature of my theory
to any living soul; to no one but yourself have I
ever shown the contents of that drawer. After
all, I may be following a rainbow; I may have
been misled by the play of coincidence; but as I
stand here in this mystic hush and silence amidst
the woods and the wild hills, I am more than ever
sure that I am hot on the scent. Come, it is
time we went in.'
To me in all this there was something both of
wonder and excitement; I knew how in his ordi-
nary work Professor Gregg moved step by step,
testing every inch of the way, and never ventur-
ing on assertion without proof that was impreg-
nable. Yet I divined more from his glance and
the vehemence of his tone than from the spoken
word, that he had in his every thought the vision
of the almost incredible continually with him; and
I, who was with some share of imagination no
little of a sceptic, offended at a hint of the marvel-
lous, could not help asking myself whether he
were cherishing a monomania, and barring out
from this one subject all the scientific method of
his other life.
Yet, with this image of mystery haunting my
thoughts, I surrendered wholly to the charm of
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The Three Impostors
the country. Above the faded house on the hill-
side began the great forest—a long, dark line seen
from the opposing hills, stretching above the river
for many a mile from north to south, and yield1
ing in- the north to even wilder country, barren
and savage hills, and ragged common-land, a terri-
tory all strange and unvisited, and more unknown
to Englishmen than the very heart of Africa.
The space of a couple of steep fields alone sepa-
rated the house from the wood, and the children
were delighted to follow me up the long alleys of
undergrowth, between smooth pleached walls of
shining beech, to the highest point in the wood,
whence one looked on one side across the river
and the rise and fall of the country to the great
western mountain wall, and on the other over the
surge and dip of the myriad trees of the forest,
over level meadows and the shining yellow sea to
the faint coast beyond. I used to sit at this point
on the warm sunlit turf which marked the track of
the Roman Road, while the two children raced
about hunting for the whinberries that grew here
and there on the banks. Here beneath the deep
blue sky and the great clouds rolling, like olden
galleons with sails full-bellied, from the sea to the
hills, as I listened to the whispered charm of the
great and ancient wood, I lived solely for delight,
and only remembered strange things when we
would return to the house and find Professor
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The Three Impostors
Gregg either shut up in the little room he had
made his study, or else pacing the terrace with
the look, patient and enthusiastic, of the deter-
mined seeker.
One morning, some eight or nine days after
our arrival, I looked out of my window and saw
the whole landscape transmuted before me. The
clouds had dipped low and hidden the mountain
in the west; a southern wind was driving the rain
in shifting pillars up the valley, and the little
brooklet that burst the hill below the house now
raged, a red torrent, down the river. We were
perforce obliged to keep snug within-doors; and
when I had attended to my pupils, I sat down in
the morning-room where the ruins of a library
still encumbered an old-fashioned bookcase. I
had inspected the shelves once or twice, but their
contents had failed to attract me; volumes of
eighteenth-century sermons, an old book on far-
riery, a collection of Poems by 'persons of quality,'
Prideaux's Connection, and an odd volume of
Pope, were the boundaries of the library, and
there seemed little doubt that everything of in-
terest or value had been removed. Now how-
ever, in desperation, I began to re-examine the
musty sheepskin and calf bindings, and found,
much to my delight, a fine old quarto printed by
the Stephani, containing the three books of Pom-
ponius Mela, De Situ Orbis, and other of the an-
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The Three Impostors
cient geographers. I knew enough of Latin to
steer my way through an ordinary sentence, and
I soon became absorbed in the odd mixture of fact
and fancy_light shining on a little space of the
world, and beyond, mist and shadow and awful
forms. Glancing over the clear-printed pages,
my attention was caught by the heading of a
chapter in Solinus, and I read the words :-
'MIRA DE INTIMIS GENTIBUS LIBYAE, DE LAPIDE
HexecONTALITHO,
-The wonders of the people that inhabit the
inner parts of Libya, and of the stone called Sixty-
stone.'
The odd title attracted me, and I read on:-
'Gens ista avia et secreta habitat, in montibus
horrendis fæda mysteria celebrat. De hominibus
nihil aliud illi praeferunt quam figuram, ab hu-
mano ritu prorsus exulant, oderunt deum lucis.
Stridunt potius quam loquuntur; vox absona nec
sine horrore auditur. Lapide quodam glorian-
tur, quem Hexecontalithon vocant; dicunt enim
hunc lapidem sexaginta notas ostendere. Cujus
lapidis nomen secretum ineffabile colunt: quod
Ixaxar.'
'This folk,' I translated to myself, 'dwells in
remote and secret places, and celebrates foul
mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have they in
common with men save the face, and the customs
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The Three Impostors
of humanity are wholly strange to them; and they
hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak; their
voices are harsh, and not to be heard without
fear. They boast of a certain stone, which they
call Sixtystone; for they say that it displays sixty
characters. And this stone has a secret unspeak-
able name; which is Ixaxar.'
I laughed at the queer inconsequence of all
this, and thought it fit for 'Sinbad the Sailor,' or
other of the supplementary Nights. When I saw
Professor Gregg in the course of the day, I told
him of my find in the bookcase, and the fantastic
rubbish I had been reading. To my surprise he
looked up at me with an expression of great in-
terest.
'That is really very curious,' he said. 'I have
never thought it worth while to look into the old
geographers, and I dare say I have missed a good
deal. Ah, that is the passage, is it? It seems
a «shame to rob you of your entertainment, but I
really think I must carry off the book.'
The next day the professor called me to come
to the study. I found him sitting at a table in
the full light of the window, scrutinizing some-
thing very attentively with a magnifying glass.
'Ah, Miss Lally,' he began, 'I want to use
your eyes. This glass is pretty good, but not like
my old one that I left in town. Would you mind
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The Three Impostors
examining the thing yourself, and telling me how
many characters are cut on it?'
He handed me the object in his hand. I saw
that it was the black seal he had shown me in
London, and my heart began to beat with the
thought that I was presently to know something.
I took the seal, and, holding it up to the light,
checked off the grotesque dagger-shaped charac-
ters one by one.
'I make sixty-two,' I said at last.
'Sixty-two? Nonsense; it's impossible. Ah, I
see what you have done, you have counted that
and that,' and he pointed to two marks which I
had certainly taken as letters with the rest.
'Yes, yes,' Professor Gregg went oh, 'but those
are obvious scratches, done accidentally; I saw
that at once. Yes, then that's quite right.
Thank you very much, Miss Lally.'
I was going away, rather disappointed at my
having been called in merely to count the number
of marks on the black seal, when suddenly there
flashed into my mind what I had read in the morn-
ing.
'But, Professor Gregg,' I cried, breathless,
'the seal, the seal. Why, it is the stone Hexecon-
talithos that Solinus writes of; it is Ixaxar.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I suppose it is. Or it may be
a mere coincidence. It never does to be too sure,
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The Three Impostors
you know, in these matters. Coincidence killed
the professor.'
I went away puzzled at what I had heard, and
as much as ever at a loss to find the ruling clue
in this maze of strange evidence. For three days
the bad weather lasted, changing from driving
rain to a dense mist, fine and dripping, and we
seemed to be shut up in a white cloud that veiled
all the world away from us. All the while Pro-
fessor Gregg was darkling in his room, unwilling,
it appeared, to dispense confidences or talk of any
kind, and I heard him walking to and fro with a
quick, impatient step, as if he were in some way
wearied of inaction. The fourth morning was
fine, and at breakfast the professor said briskly—
'We want some extra help around the house;
a boy of fifteen or sixteen, you know. There are
a lot of little odd jobs that take up the maids'
time which a boy could do much better.'
'The girls have not complained to me in any
way,' I replied. 'Indeed, Anne said there was
much less work than in London, owing to there
being so little- dust.'
'Ah, yes, they are very good girls. ^JBut I think
we shall do much better with a boy. In faxt, that
is what has been bothering me for the last two
days.'
'Bothering you?' I said in astonishment, for as
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The Three Impostors
a matter of fact the professor never took the
slightest interest in the affairs of he house.
'Yes,' he said, 'the weather, you know. I really
couldn't go out in that Scotch mist; I don't know
the country very well, and I should have lost my
way. But I am going to get the boy this morn-
ing.'
'But how do you know there is such a boy as
you want anywhere about?'
'Oh, I have no doubt as to that. I may have
to walk a mile or two at the most, but I am sure
to find just the boy I require.'
I thought the professor was joking, but though
his tone was airy enough there was something
grim and set about his features that puzzled me.
He got his stick, and stood at the door looking
meditatively before him, and as I passed through
the hall he called to me.
'By the way, Miss Lally, there was one thing
I wanted to say to you. I dare say you may have
heard that some of these country lads are not
over bright; idiotic would be a harsh word to use,
and they are usually called "naturals," or some-
thing of the kind. I hope you won't mind if the
boy I am after should turn out not too keen-
fitted; he will be perfectly harmless, of course,
and blacking boots doesn't need much mental
effort.
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The Three Impostors
With that he was gone, striding up the road
that led to the wood, and I remained stupified;
and then for the first time my astonishment was
mingled with a sudden note of terror, arising I
knew not whence, and all unexplained even to my-
self, and yet I felt about my heart for an instant
something of the chill of death, and that shape-
less, formless dread of the unknown that is worse
than death itself. I tried to find courage in the
sweet air that blew up from the sea, and in the
sunlight after rain, but the mystic woods seemed
to darken around me; and the vision of the river
coiling between the reeds, and the silver grey
of the ancient bridge, fashioned in my mind sym-
bols of vague dread, as the mind of a child
fashions terror from things harmless and famil-
iar.
Two hours later Professor Gregg returned. I
met him as he came down the road, and asked
quietly if he had been able to find a boy.
'Oh, yes,' he answered; 'I found one easily
enough. His name is Jervase Cradock, and I
expect he will make himself very useful. His
father has been dead for many years, and the
mother, whom I saw, seemed very glad at the
prospect of a few shillings extra coming in on
Saturday nights. As I expected, he is not too
sharp, has fits at times, the mother said; but as
he will not be trusted with the china, that doesn't
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The Three Impostors
much matter, does it? And he is not in any way
dangerous, you know, merely a little weak.'
'When is he coming ?
‘To-morrow morning at eight o'clock. Anne
will show him what he has to do, and how to do
it. At first he will go home every night, but per-
haps it may ultimately turn out more convenient
for him to sleep here, and only go home for Sun-
days.
I found nothing to say to all this; Professor
Gregg spoke in a quiet tone of matter-of-fact, as
indeed was warranted by the circumstance; and
yet I could not quell my sensation of astonishment
at the whole affair. I knew that in reality no
assistance was wanted in the housework, and the
professor's prediction that the boy he was to en-
gage might prove a little ‘simple,' followed by so
exact a fulfilment, struck me as bizarre in the ex-
treme. The next morning I heard from the
house-maid that the boy Cradock had come at
eight, and that she had been trying to make him
useful. 'He doesn't seem quite all there, I don't
think, miss,' was her comment, and later in the
day I saw him helping the old man who worked
in the garden. He was a youth of about four-
teen, with black hair and black eyes and an olive
skin, and I saw at once from the curious vacancy
of his expression that he was mentally weak. He
touched his forehead awkwardly as I went by, and
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The Three Impostors
I heard him answering the gardener in a queer,
harsh voice that caught my attention; it gave me
the impression of some one speaking deep below
under the earth, and there was a strange sibilance,
like the hissing of the phonograph as the pointer
travels over the cylinder. I heard that he seemed
anxious to do what he could, and was quite docile
and obedient, and Morgan the gardener, who
knew his mother, assured me he was perfectly
harmless. 'He's always been a bit queer,' he
said, 'and no wonder, after what his mother went
through before he was born. I did know his
father, Thomas Cradock, well, and a very fine
workman he was too, indeed. He got something
wrong with his lungs owing to working in the wet
woods, and never got over it, and went off quite
sudden like. And they do say as how Mrs. Crad-
ock was quite off her head; anyhow, she was found
by Mr. Hillyer, Ty Coch, all crouched up on the
Grey Hills, over there, crying and weeping like
a lost soul. And Jervase, he was born about
eight months afterwards, and as I was saying, he
was a bit queer always; and they do say when he
could scarcely walk he would frighten the other
children into fits with the noises he would make.'
A word in the story had stirred up some remem-
brance within me, and, vaguely curious, I asked
the old man where the Grey Hills were.
'Up there,' he said, with the same gesture he
98


The Three Impostors
had used before; 'you go past the "Fox and
Hounds," and through the forest, by the old ruins.
It's a good five mile from here, and a strange sort
of a place. The poorest soil between this and
Monmouth, they do say, though it's good feed
for sheep. Yes, it was a sad thing for poor Mrs.
Cradock.'
The old man turned to his work, and I strolled
on down the path between the espaliers, gnarled
and gouty with age, thinking of the story I had
heard, and groping for the point in it that had
some key to my memory. In an instant it came
before me; I had seen the phrase 'Grey Hills' on
the slip of yellowed paper that Professor Gregg
had taken from the drawer in his cabinet. Again
I was seized with pangs of mingled curiosity and
fear; I remembered the strange characters copied
from the limestone rock, and then again their
identity with the inscription on the age-old seal,
and the fantastic fables of the Latin geographer.
I saw beyond doubt that, unless coincidence had
set all the scene and disposed all these bizarre
events with curious art, I was to be a spectator of
things far removed from the usual and customary
traffic and jostle of life. Professor Gregg I noted
day by day; he was hot on his trail, growing lean
with eagerness; and in the evenings, when the sun
was swimming on the verge of the mountain, he
would pace the terrace to and fro with his eyes
99


The Three Impostors
on the ground, while the mist grew white in the
valley, and the stillness of the evening brought
far voices near, and the blue smoke rose a straight
column from the diamond-shaped chimney of the
grey farm-house, just as I had seen it on the first
morning. I have told you I was of sceptical
habit; but though I understood little or nothing, I
began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the
iterated dogmas of science that all life is material,
and that in the system of things there is no un-
discovered land, even beyond the remotest stars,
where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet
there struck in on this the thought that matter is
as really awful and unknown as spirit, that science
itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining
more than a glimpse of the wonders of the inner
place.
There is one day that stands up from amidst
the others as a grim red beacon, betokening evil to
come. I was sitting on a bench in the garden,
watching the boy Cradock weeding, when I was
suddenly alarmed by a harsh and choking sound,
like the cry of a wild beast in anguish, and I was
unspeakably shocked to see the unfortunate lad
standing in full view before me, his whole body
quivering and shaking at short intervals as though
shocks of electricity were passing through him,
his teeth grinding, foam gathering on his lips, and
his face all swollen and blackened to a hideous
IOO


The Three Impostors
mask of humanity. I shrieked with terror, and
Professor Gregg came running; and as I pointed
to Cradock, the boy with one convulsive shudder
fell face forward, and lay on the wet earth, his
body writhing like a wounded blind worm, and an
inconceivable babble of sounds bursting and rat-
tling and hissing from his lips. He seemed to
pour forth an infamous jargon, with words, or
what seemed words, that might have belonged to
a tongue dead since untold ages, and buried deep
beneath Nilotic mud, or in the inmost recesses of
the Mexican forest. For a moment the thought
passed through my mind, as my ears were still
revolted with that infernal clamour, 'Surely this
is the very speech of hell,' and then I cried out
again and again, and ran away shuddering to my
inmost soul. I had seen Professor Gregg's face
as he stooped over the wretched boy and raised
him, and I was appalled by the glow of exultation
that shone on every lineament and feature. As I
sat in my room with drawn blinds, and my eyes
hidden in my hands, I heard heavy steps beneath,
and I was told afterwards that Professor Gregg
had carried Cradock to his study, and had locked
the door. I heard voices murmur indistinctly,
and I trembled to think of what might be passing
within a few feet of where I sat; I longed to
escape to the woods and sunshine, and yet I
dreaded the sights that might confront me on the
IOI


The Three Impostors
way; and at last, as I held the handle of the door
nervously, I heard Professor Gregg's voice calling
to me with a cheerful ring. 'It's all right now,
Miss Lally,' he said. 'The poor fellow has got
over it, and I have been arranging for him to
sleep here after to-morrow. Perhaps I may be
able to do something for him.'
'Yes,' he said later, 'it was a very painful sight,
and I don't wonder you were alarmed. We may
hope that good food will build him up a little,
but I am afraid he will never be really cured,' and
he affected the dismal and conventional air with
which one speaks of hopeless illness; and yet be-
neath it I detected the delight that leapt up ram-
pant within him, and fought and struggled to find
utterance. It was as if one glanced down on the
even surface of the sea, clear and immobile, and
saw beneath raging depths and a storm of con-
tending billows. It was indeed to me a torturing
and offensive problem that this man, who had so
bounteously rescued me from the sharpness of
death, and showed himself in all the relations of
life full of benevolence, and pity, and kindly fore-
thought, should so manifestly be for once on the
side of the demons, and take a ghastly pleasure
in the torments of an afflicted fellow-creature.
Apart, I struggled with the horned difficulty, and
strove to find the solution; but without the hint
of a clue, beset by mystery and contradiction. I
102


The Three Impostors
saw nothing that might help me, and began to
wonder whether, after all, I had not escaped from
the white mist of the suburb at too dear a rate.
I hinted something of my thought to the pro-
fessor; I said enough to let him know that I was
in the most acute perplexity, but the moment after
regretted what I had done when I saw his face
contort with a spasm of pain.
'My dear Miss Lally,' he said, 'you surely do
not wish to leave us? No, no, you would not do
it. You do not know how I rely on you; how
confidently I go forward, assured that you are
here to watch over my children. You, Miss
Lally, are my rearguard; for let me tell you the
business in which I am engaged is not wholly de-
void of peril. You have not forgotten what I
said the first morning here; my lips are shut by an
old and firm resolve till they can open to utter no
ingenious hypothesis or vague surmise but irre-
fragable fact, as certain as a demonstration in
mathematics. Think over it, Miss Lally: not for
a moment would I endeavour to keep you here
against your own instincts, and yet I tell you
frankly that I am persuaded it is here, here amidst
the woods, that your duty lies.'
I was touched by the eloquence of his tone, and
by the remembrance that the man, after all, had
been my salvation, and I gave him my hand on a
promise to serve him loyally and without question.
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The Three Impostors
A few days later the rector of our church—a little
church, grey and severe and quaint, that hovered
on the very banks of the river and watched the
tides swim and return—came to see us, and Pro-
fessor Gregg easily persuaded him to stay and
share our dinner. Mr. Meyrick was a member
of an antique family of squires, whose old manor-
house stood amongst the hills some seven miles
away, and thus rooted in the soil, the rector was
a living store of all the old fading customs and
lore of the country. His manner, genial, with a
deal of retired oddity, won on Professor Gregg;
and towards the cheese, when a curious Burgundy
had begun its incantations, the two men glowed
like the wine, and talked of philology with the en-
thusiasm of a burgess over the peerage. The
parson was expounding the pronunciation of the
Welsh //, and producing sounds like the gurgle of
his native brooks, when Professor Gregg struck
in.
'By the way,' he said, 'that was a very odd
word I met the other day. You know my
boy, poor Jervase Cradock? Well, he has got
the bad habit of talking to himself, and the day
before yesterday I was walking in the garden here
and heard him; he was evidently quite unconscious
of my presence. A lot of what he said I couldn't
make out, but one word struck me distinctly. It
was such an odd sound, half sibilant, half guttural,
104


The Three Impostors
and as quaint as those double Is you have been
demonstrating. I do not know whether I can
give you an idea of the sound; "Ishakshar" is
perhaps as near as I can get. But the k ought
to be a Greek chi or a Spanish Now what does
it mean in Welsh?'
'In Welsh?' said the parson. 'There is no
such word in Welsh, nor any word remotely re-
sembling it. I know the book-Welsh, as they call
it, and the colloquial dialects as well as any man,
but there's no word like that from Anglesea to
Usk. Besides, none of the Cradocks speaks a
word of Welsh; it's dying out about here.'
'Really. You interest me extremely, Mr.
Meyrick. I confess the word didn't strike me
as having the Welsh ring. But I thought it might
be some local corruption.'
'No, I never heard such a word, or anything
like it. Indeed,' he added, smiling whimsically,
'if it belongs to any language, I should say it must
be that of the fairies—the Tylwydd Teg, as we
call them.'
The talk went on to the discovery of a Roman
villa in the neighbourhood; and soon after I left
the room, and sat down apart to wonder at the
drawing together of such strange clues of evi-
dence. As the professor had spoken of the
curious word, I had caught the glint of his eye
upon me; and though the pronunciation he gave
105


The Three Impostors
was grotesque in the extreme, I recognized the
name of the stone of sixty characters mentioned
by Solinus, the black seal shut up in some secret
drawer of the study, stamped for ever by a van-
ished race with signs that no man could read, signs
that might, for all I knew, be the veils of awful
things done long ago, and forgotten before the
hills were moulded into form.
When the next morning I came down, I found
Professor Gregg pacing the terrace in his eternal
walk.
'Look at that bridge,' he said, when he saw
me; 'observe the quaint and Gothic design, the
angles between the arches, and the silvery grey
of the stone in the awe of the morning light. I
confess it seems to me symbolic; it should illus-
trate a mystical allegory of the passage from one
world to another.'
'Professor Gregg,' I said quietly, 'it is time that
I knew something of what has happened, and of
what is to happen.'
For the moment he put me off, but I returned
again with the same question in the evening, and
then Professor Gregg flamed with excitement.
'Don't you understand yet?' he cried. 'But I
have told you a good deal; yes, and shown you
a good deal; you have heard pretty nearly all
that I have heard, and seen what I have seen;
or at least,' and his voice chilled as he spoke,
106


The Three Impostors
'enough to make a good deal clear as noonday.
The servants told you, I have no doubt, that the
wretched boy Cradock had another seizure the
night before last; he awoke me with cries in that
voice you heard in the garden, and I went to
him, and God forbid you should see what I saw
that night. But all this is useless; my time here
is drawing to a close; I must be back in town in
three weeks, as I have a course of lectures to pre-
pare, and need all my books about me. In a
very few days it will all be over, and I shall no
longer hint, and no longer be liable to ridicule as
a madman and a quack. No, I shall speak
plainly, and I shall be heard with such emotions
as perhaps no other man has ever drawn from
the breasts of his fellows.'
He paused, and seemed to grow radiant with
the joy of great and wonderful discovery.
'But all that is for the future, the near future
certainly, but still the future,' he went on at
length. 'There is something to be done yet; you
will remember my telling you that my researches
were not altogether devoid of peril? Yes, there
is a certain amount of danger to be faced; I did
not know how much when I spoke on the subject
before, and to a certain extent I am still in the
dark. But it will be a strange adventure, the last
of all, the last demonstration in the chain.'
He was walking up and down the room as he
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The Three Impostors
spoke, and I could hear in his voice the contend-
ing tones of exultation and despondence, or per-
haps I should say awe, the awe of a man who
goes forth on unknown waters, and I thought of
his allusion to Columbus on the night he had laid
his book before me. The evening was a little
chilly, and a fire of logs had been lighted in the
study where we were; the remittent flame and the
glow on the walls reminded me of the old days.
I was sitting silent in an arm-chair by the fire,
wondering over all I had heard, and still vainly
speculating as to the secret springs concealed from
me under all the phantasmagoria I had witnessed,
when I became suddenly aware of a sensation
that change of some sort had been at work in
the room, and that there was something unfamil-
iar in its aspect. For some time I looked about
me, trying in vain to localize the alteration that
I knew had been made; the table by the window,
the chairs, the faded settee were all as I had
known them. Suddenly, as a sought-for recol-
lection flashes into mind, I knew what was amiss.
I was facing the professor's desk, which stood
on the other side of the fire, and above the desk
was a grimy-looking bust of Pitt, that I had never
seen there before. And then I remembered the
true position of this work of art; in the furthest
corner by the door was an old cupboard, pro-
jecting into the room, and on the top of the cup-
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The Three Impostors
board, fifteen feet from the floor, the bust had
been, and there, no doubt, it had delayed, ac-
cumulating dirt, since the early years of the cen-
tury.
I was utterly amazed, and sat silent still, in
a confusion of thought. There was, so far as I
knew, no such thing as a step-ladder in the house,
for I had asked for one to make some alterations
in the curtains of my room, and a tall man stand-
ing on a chair would have found it impossible
to take down the bust. It had been placed, not
on the edge of the cupboard, but far back against
the wall; and Professor Gregg was, if anything,
under the average height.
'How on earth did you manage to get down
Pitt?' I said at last.
The professor looked curiously at me, and
seemed to hesitate a little.
'They must have found you a step-ladder, or
perhaps the gardener brought in a short ladder
from outside?'
'No, I have had no ladder of any kind. Now,
Miss Lally,' he went on with an awkward sim-
ulation of jest, 'there is a little puzzle for you;
a problem in the manner of the inimitable
Holmes; there are the facts, plain and patent;
summon your acuteness to the solution of the
puzzle. For Heaven's sake,' he cried with a.
breaking voice, 'say no more about it! I tell you,.
109


The Three Impostors
I never touched the thing,' and he went out of the
room with horror manifest on his face, and his
hand shook and jarred the door behind him.
I looked round the room in vague surprise, not
at all realizing what had happened, making vain
and idle surmises by way of explanation, and
wondering at the stirring of black waters by an
idle word and the trivial change of an ornament.
"This is some petty business, some whim on which
I have jarred,' I reflected; 'the professor is per-
haps scrupulous and superstitious over trifles, and
my question may have outraged unacknowledged
fears, as though one killed a spider or spilled the
salt before the very eyes of a practical Scotch-
woman.' I was immersed in these fond suspi-
cions, and began to plume myself a little on my im-
munity from such empty fears, when the truth fell
heavily as lead upon my heart, and I recognized
with cold terror that some awful influence had
been at work. The bust was simply inaccessible;
without a ladder no one could have touched it.
I went out to the kitchen and spoke as quietly
as I could to the housemaid.
'Who moved that bust from the top of the cup-
board, Anne?' I said to her. 'Professor Gregg
says he has not touched it. Did you find an old
step-ladder in one of the outhouses?'
The girl looked at me blankly.
'I never touched it,' she said. 'I found it
no


The Three Impostors
where it is now the other morning when I dusted
the room. I remember now, it was Wednesday
morning, because it was the morning after Crad-
ock was taken bad in the night. My room is next
to his, you know, miss,' the girl went on piteously,
'and it was awful to hear how he cried and
called out names that I couldn't understand. It
made me feel all afraid; and then master came,
and I heard him speak, and he took down Crad-
ock to the study and gave him something.'
'And you found that bust moved the next morn-
ing?'
'Yes, miss. There was a queer sort of smell in
the study when I came down and opened the
windows; a bad smell it was, and I wondered
what it could be. Do you know, miss, I went a
long time ago to the Zoo in London with my
cousin Thomas Barker, one afternoon that I had
off, when I was at Mrs. Prince's in Stanhope
Gate, and we went into the snake-house to see
the snakes, and it was just the same sort of smell;
very sick it made me feel, I remember, and I
got Barker to take me out. And it was just the
same kind of a smell in the study, as I was saying,
and I was wondering what it could be from, when
I see that bust with Pitt cut in it, standing on
the master's desk, and I thought to myself, Now
who has done that, and how have they done it?
And when I came to dust the things, I looked
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The Three Impostors
at the bust, and I saw a great mark on it where
the dust was gone, for I don't think it can have
been touched with a duster for years and years,
and it wasn't like finger-marks, but a large patch
like, broad and spread out. So I passed my
hand over it, without thinking what I was doing,
and where that patch was it was all sticky and
slimy, as if a snail had crawled over it. Very
strange, isn't it, miss? and I wonder who can
have done it, and how that mess was made.'
The well-meant gabble of the servant touched
me to the quick; I lay down upon my bed, and bit
my lip that I should not cry out loud in the sharp
anguish of my terror and bewilderment. Indeed,
I was almost mad with dread; I believe that if
it had been daylight I should have fled hot foot,
forgetting all courage and all the debt of grati-
tude that was due to Professor Gregg, not caring
whether my fate were that I must starve slowly,
so long as I might escape from the net of blind
and panic fear that every day seemed to draw
a little closer round me. If I knew, I thought,
if I knew what there were to dread, I could guard
against it; but here, in this lonely house, shut in
on all sides by the olden woods and the vaulted
hills, terror seems to spring inconsequent from
every covert, and the flesh is aghast at the half-
heard murmurs of horrible things. All in vain


The Three Impostors
I strove to summon scepticism to my aid, and en-
deavoured by cool common sense to buttress my
belief in a world of natural order, for the air
that blew in at the open window was a mystic
breath, and in the darkness I felt the silence go
heavy and sorrowful as a mass of requiem, and I
conjured images of strange shapes gathering fast
amidst the reeds, beside the wash of the river.
In the morning from the moment that I set
foot in the breakfast-room, I felt that the un-
known plot was drawing to a crisis; the pro-
fessor's face was firm and set, and he seemed
hardly to hear our voices when we spoke.
'I am going out for a rather long walk,' he
said when the meal was over. 'You mustn't be
expecting me, now, or thinking anything has hap-
pened if I don't turn up to dinner. I have been
getting stupid lately, and I dare say a miniature
walking tour will do me good. Perhaps I may
even spend the night in some little inn, if I find
any place that looks clean and comfortable.'
I heard this and knew by my experience of
Professor Gregg's manner that it was no ordin-
ary business or pleasure that impelled him. I
knew not, nor even remotely guessed, where he
was bound, nor had I the vaguest notion of his
errand, but all the fear of the night before re-
turned; and as he stood, smiling, on the terrace,.
"3


The Three Impostors
ready to set out, I implored him to stay, and to
forget all his dreams of the undiscovered contin-
ent.
'No, no, Miss Lally,' he replied still smiling,
'it's too late now. Vestigia nulla retrorsum, you
know, is the device of all true explorers, though
I hope it won't be literally true in my case. But,
indeed, you are wrong to alarm yourself so; I
look upon my little expedition as quite common-
place; no more exciting than a day with the geo-
logical hammers. There is a risk, of course, but
so there is on the commonest excursion. I can:
afford to be jaunty; I am doing nothing so hazar-
dous as 'Arry does a hundred times over in the
course of every Bank Holiday. Well, then, you
must look more cheerfully; and so good-bye till
to-morrow at latest.'
He walked briskly up the road, and I saw him
open the gate that marks the entrance of the
wood, and then he vanished in the gloom of the
trees.
All the day passed heavily with a strange dark-
ness in the air, and again I felt as if imprisoned
amidst the ancient woods, shut in an olden land
of mystery and dread, and as if all was long
ago and forgotten by the living outside. I hoped
and dreaded; and when the dinner-hour came I
waited, expecting to hear the professor's step in
the hall, and his voice exulting at I knew not what
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The Three Impostors
triumph. I composed my face to welcome him
gladly, but the night descended dark, and he did
not come.
In the morning, when the maid knocked at my
door, I called out to her, and asked if her master
had returned; and when she replied that his bed-
room stood open and empty, I felt the cold clasp
of despair. Still, I fancied he might have dis-
covered genial company, and would return for
luncheon, or perhaps in the afternoon, and I took
the children for a walk in the forest, and tried my
best to play and laugh with them, and to shut
out the thoughts of mystery and veiled terror.
Hour after hour I waited, and my thoughts grew
darker; again the night came and found me watch-
ing, and at last, as I was making much ado to
finish my dinner, I heard steps outside and the
sound of a man's voice.
The maid came in and looked oddly at me.
'Please, miss,' she began, 'Mr. Morgan the gar-
dener wants to speak to you for a minute, if you
didn't mind.'
'Show him in, please,' I answered, and set my
lips tight.
The old man came slowly into the room, and
the servant shut the door behind him.
'Sit down, Mr. Morgan,' I said; 'what is it that
you want to say to me?'
'Well, miss, Mr. Gregg he gave me something
.
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The Three Impostors
for you yesterday morning, just before he went
off; and he told me particular not to hand it up
before eight o'clock this evening exactly, if so
be as he wasn't back home again before, and if he
should come home before I was just to return it
to him in his own hands. So, you see, as Mr.
Gregg isn't here yet, I suppose I'd better give you
the parcel directly.'
He pulled out something from his pocket, and
gave it to me, half rising. I took it silently, and
seeing that Morgan seemed doubtful as to what
he was to do next, I thanked him and bade him
good-night, and he went out. I was left alone
in the room with the parcel in my hand—a paper
parcel neatly sealed and directed to me, with
the instructions Morgan had quoted, all written
in the professor's large loose hand. I broke the
seals with a choking at my heart, and found an
envelope inside, addressed also, but open, and
I took the letter out.
'My dear M1ss Lally,' it began,—'To quote
the old logic manual, the case of your reading this
note is a case of my having made a blunder of
some sort, and, I am afraid, a blunder that turns
these lines into a farewell. It is practically cer-
tain that neither you nor any one else will ever
see me again. I have made my will with pro-
vision for this eventuality, and I hope you will
consent to accept the small remembrance ad-
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The Three Impostors
dressed to you, and my sincere thanks for the
way in which you joined your fortunes to mine.
The fate which has come upon me is desperate and
terrible beyond the remotest dreams of man; but
this fate you have a right to know—if you please.
If you look in the left-hand drawer of my dress-
ing-table, you will find the key of the escritoire,
properly labelled. In the well of the escritoire
is a large envelope sealed and addressed to your
name. I advise you to throw it forthwith into
the fire; you will sleep better of nights if you do
so. But if you must know the history of what has
happened, it is all written down for you to read.'
The signature was firmly written below, and
again I turned the page and read out the words
one by one, aghast and white to the lips, my
hands cold as ice, and sickness choking me. The
dead silence of the room, and the thought of the
dark woods and hills closing me in on every side,
oppressed me, helpless and without capacity, and
not knowing where to turn for counsel. At last
I resolved that though knowledge should haunt
my whole life and all the days to come, I must
know the meaning of the strange terrors that
had so long tormented me, rising grey, dim, and
awful, like the shadows in the wood at dusk. I
carefully carried out Professor Gregg's direc-
tions, and not without reluctance broke the seal
of the envelope, and spread out his manuscript
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The Three Impostors
before me. That manuscript I always carry with
me, and I see that I cannot deny your unspoken
request to read it. This, then, was what I read
that night, sitting at the desk, with a shaded lamp
beside me.
The young lady who called herself Miss Lally
then proceeded to recite
The Statement of William Gregg, F. R. S., etc.
It is many years since the first glimmer of the
theory which is now almost, if not quite, reduced
to fact dawned on my mind. A somewhat ex-
tensive course of miscellaneous and obsolete read-
ing had done a good deal to prepare the way, and,
later, when I became somewhat of a specialist,
and immersed myself in the studies known as
ethnological, I was now and then startled by facts
that would not square with orthodox scientific
opinion, and by discoveries that seemed to hint
at something still hidden for all our research.
More particularly I became convinced that much
of the folk-lore of the world is but an exaggerated
account of events that really happened, and I
was especially drawn to consider the stories of
the fairies, the good folk of the Celtic races.
Here I thought I could detect the fringe of em-
broidery and exaggeration, the fantastic guise, the
little people dressed in green and gold sporting in
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The Three Impostors
the flowers, and I thought I saw a distinct analogy
between the name given to this race (supposed
to be imaginary) and the description of their ap-
pearance and manners. Just as our remote an-
cestors called the dreadful beings 'fair' and 'good'
precisely because they dreaded them, so they had
dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the
truth to be the very reverse. Literature, too, had
gone early to work, and had lent a powerful hand
in the transformation, so that the playful elves
of Shakespeare are already far removed from the
true original, and the real horror is disguised in
a form of prankish mischief. But in the older
tales, the stories that used to make men cross
themselves as they sat round the burning logs,
we tread a different stage; I saw a widely opposed
spirit in certain histories of children and of men
and women who vanished strangely from the
earth. They would be seen by a peasant in the
fields walking towards some green and rounded
hillock, and seen no more on earth; and there
are stories of mothers who have left a child
quietly sleeping, with the cottage door rudely
barred with a piece of wood, and have returned,
not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon, but
a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin
and black, piercing eyes, the child of another race.
Then, again, there were myths darker still; the
dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the
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The Three Impostors
Sabbath, and the hint of demons who mingled
with the daughters of men. And just as we have
turned the terrible *fair folk' into a company of
benignant, if freakish, elves, so we have hidden
from us the black foulness of the witch and her
companions under a popular diablerie of old
women and broomsticks and a comic cat with
tail on end. So the Greeks called the hideous
furies benevolent ladies, and thus the northern
nations have followed their example. I pur-
sued my investigations, stealing odd hours from
other and more imperative labours, and I asked
myself the question: Supposing these traditions
to be true, who were the demons who are re-
ported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need
not say that I laid aside what I may call the super-
natural hypothesis of the Middle Ages, and came
to the conclusion that fairies and devils were of
one and the stme race and origin; invention, no
doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days, had done
much in the way of exaggeration and distortion;
yet I firmly believe that beneath all this imagery
there was a black background of truth. As for
some of the alleged wonders, I hesitated. While
I should be very loath to receive any one specific
instance of modern spiritualism as containing even
a grain of the genuine, yet I was not wholly pre-
pared to deny that human flesh may now and
then, once perhaps in ten million cases, be the
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The Three Impostors
veil of powers which seem magical to us—powers
which, so far from proceeding from the heights
and leading men thither, are in reality survivals
from the depth of being. The amoeba and the
snail have powers which we do not possess; and
I thought it possible that the theory of reversion
might explain many things which seem wholly in-
explicable. Thus stood my position; I saw good
reason to believe that much of the tradition, a
vast deal of the earliest and uncorrupted tradition
of the so-called fairies, represented solid fact, and
I thought that the purely supernatural element
in these traditions was to be accounted for on the
hypothesis that a race which had fallen out of the
grand march of evolution might have retained, as
a survival, certain powers which would be to us
wholly miraculous. Such was my theory as it
stood conceived in my mind; and wqrking with this
in view, I seemed to gather confirmation from
every side, from the spoils of a tumulus or a
barrow, from a local paper reporting an antiquar-
ian meeting in the country, and from general lit-
erature of all kinds. Amongst other instances,
I remember being struck by the phrase 'articulate-
speaking men' in Homer, as if the writer knew or
had heard of men whose speech was so rude that
it could hardly be termed articulate; and on my
hypothesis of a race who had lagged far behind
the rest, I could easily conceive that such a folk


The Three Impostors
would speak a jargon but little removed from the
inarticulate noises of brute beasts.
Thus I stood, satisfied that my conjecture was
at all events not far removed from fact, when a
chance paragraph in a small country print one
day arrested my attention. It was a short ac-
count of what was to all appearance the usual
sordid tragedy of the village—a young girl un-
accountably missing, and evil rumour blatant and
busy with her reputation. Yet, I could read be-
tween the lines that all this scandal was purely
hypocritical, and in all probability invented to ac-
count for what was in any other manner un-
accountable. A flight to London or Liverpool,
or an undiscovered body lying with a weight about
its neck in the foul depths of a woodland pool, or
perhaps murder—such were the theories of the
wretched girl's neighbours. But as I idly scanned
the paragraph, a flash of thought passed through
me with the violence of an electric shock: what if
the obscure and horrible race of the hills still
survived, still remained haunting the wild places
and barren hills, and now and then repeating the
evil of Gothic legend, unchanged and unchange-
able as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of
Spain? I have said that the thought came with
violence; and indeed I drew in my breath sharply,
and clung with both hands to my elbow-chair, in a
strange confusion of horror and elation. It was
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The Three Impostors
as if one of my confreres of physical science,
roaming in a quiet English wood, had been sud-
denly stricken aghast by the presence of the slimy
and loathsome terror of the ichthyosaurus, the
original of the stories of the awful worms killed
by valorous knights, or had seen the sun darkened
by the pterodactyl, the dragon of tradition. Yet
as a resolute explorer of knowledge, the thought
of such a discovery threw me into a passion of
joy, and I cut out the slip from the paper and
put it in a drawer in my old bureau, resolved that
it should be but the first piece in a collection of
the strangest significance. I sat long that even-
ing dreaming of the conclusions I should establish,
nor did cooler reflection at first dash my con-
fidence. Yet as I began to put the case fairly, I
saw that I might be building on an unstable foun-
dation; the facts might possibly be in accordance
with local opinion, and I regarded the affair with
a mood of some reserve. Yet I resolved to re-
main perched on the look-out, and I hugged to
myself the thought that I alone was watching and
wakeful, while the great crowd of thinkers and
searchers stood heedless and indifferent, perhaps
letting the most prerogative facts pass by un-
noticed.
Several years elapsed before I was enabled to
add to the contents of the drawer; and the second
find was in reality not a valuable one, for it was a
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The Three Impostors
mere repetition of the first, with only the varia-
tion of another and distant locality. Yet I gained
something; for in the second case, as in the first,
the tragedy took place in a desolate and lonely
country, and so far my theory seemed justified.
But the third piece was to me far more decisive.
Again, amongst outland hills, far even from a
main road of traffic, an old man was found done
to death, and the instrument of execution was
left beside him. Here, indeed, there were rumour
and conjecture, for the deadly tool was a primitive
stone axe, bound by gut to the wooden handle, and
surmises the most extravagant and improbable
were indulged in. Yet, as I thought with a kind
of glee, the wildest conjectures went far astray;
and I took the pains to enter into correspondence
with the local doctor, who was called at the in-
quest. He, a man of some acuteness, was dumb-
foundered. 'It will not do to speak of these
things in country places,' he wrote to me; 'but
frankly, there is some hideous mystery here. I
have obtained possession of the stone axe, and
have been so curious as to test its powers. I
took it into the back-garden of my house one Sun-
day afternoon when my family and the servants
were all out, and there, sheltered by the poplar
hedges, I made my experiments. I found the
thing utterly unmanageable; whether there is
some peculiar balance, some nice adjustment of
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The Three Impostors
weights, which require incessant practice, or
whether an effectual blow can be struck only by a
certain trick of the muscles, I do not know; but I
can assure you that I went into the house with but
a sorry opinion of my athletic capacities. It was
like an inexperienced man trying "putting the
hammer"; the force exerted seemed to return on
oneself, and I found myself hurled backwards
with violence, while the axe fell harmless to the
ground. On another occasion I tried the ex-
periment with a clever woodman of the place;
but this man, who had handled his axe for
forty years, could do nothing with the stone
implement, and missed every stroke most ludi-
crously. In short, if it were not so supremely
absurd, I should say that for four thousand years
no one on earth could have struck an effective
blow with the tool that undoubtedly was used to
murder the old man.' This, as may be imagined,
was to me rare news; and afterwards, when I
heard the whole story, and learned that the un-
fortunate old man had babbled tales of what
might be seen at night on a certain wild hillside,
hinting at unheard-of wonders, and that he had
been found cold one morning on the very hill in
question, my exultation was extreme, for I felt
I was leaving conjecture far behind me. But the
next step was of still greater importance. I had
possessed for many years an extraordinary stone
125


The Three Impostors
seal—a piece of dull black stone, two inches long
from the handle to the stamp, and the stamping
end a rough hexagon an inch and a quarter in
diameter. Altogether, it presented the appear-
ance of an enlarged tobacco stopper of an old-
fashioned make. It had been sent to me by an
agent in the East, who informed me that it had
been found near the site of the ancient Babylon.
But the characters engraved on the seal were to
me an intolerable puzzle. Somewhat of the cunei-
form pattern, there were yet striking differences,
which I detected at the first glance, and all efforts
to read the inscription on the hypothesis that the
rules for deciphering the arrow-headed writing
would apply proved futile. A riddle such as this
stung my pride, and at odd moments I would take
the Black Seal out of the cabinet, and scrutinize
it with so much idle perseverence that every letter
was familiar to my mind, and I could have drawn
the inscription from memory without the slight-
est error. Judge, then, of my surprise when I
one day received from a correspondent in the
west of England a letter and an enclosure that
positively left me thunderstruck. I saw care-
fully traced on a large piece of paper the very
characters of the Black Seal, without alteration
of any kind, and above the inscription my friend
had written: Inscription found on a limestone
rock on the Grey Hills, Monmouthshire. Done
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The Three Impostors
in some red earth, and quite recent. I turned
to the letter. My friend wrote: 'I sent you the
enclosed inscription with all due reserve. A shep-
herd who passed by the stone a week ago swears
that there was then no mark of any kind. The
characters, as I have noted, are formed by draw-
ing some red earth over the stone, and are of an
average height of one inch. They look to me
like a kind of cuneiform character, a good deal
altered, but this, of course, is impossible. It may
be either a hoax, or more probably some scribble
of the gipsies, who are plentiful enough in this
wild country. They have, as you are aware,
many hieroglyphics which they use in communicat-
ing with one another. I happened to visit the
stone in question two days ago in connection with
a rather painful incident which has occurred
here.'
As may be supposed, I wrote immediately to
my friend, thanking him for the copy of the in-
scription, and asking him in a casual manner the
history of the incident he mentioned. To be brief,
I heard that a woman named Cradock, who had
lost her husband a day before, had set out to
communicate the sad news to a cousin who lived
some five miles away. She took a short cut which
led by the Grey Hills. Mrs. Cradock, who was
then quite a young woman, never arrived at her
relative's house. Late that night a farmer who
127


The Three Impostors
had lost a couple of sheep, supposed to have
wandered from the flock, was walking over the
Grey Hills, with a lantern and his dog. His
attention was attracted by a noise, which he de-
scribed as a kind of wailing, mournful and pitiable
to hear; and, guided by the sound, he found the
unfortunate Mrs. Cradock crouched on the
ground by the limestone rock, swaying her body
to and fro, and lamenting and crying in so heart-
rending a manner that the farmer was, as he says,
at first obliged to stop his ears, or he would have
run away. The woman allowed herself to be
taken home, and a neighbour came to see to her
necessities. All the night she never ceased her
crying, mixing her lament with words of some
unintelligible jargon, and when the doctor arrived
he pronounced her insane. She lay on her bed
for a week, now wailing, as people said, like one
lost and damned for eternity, and now sunk in a
heavy coma; it was thought that grief at the loss
of her husband had unsettled her mind, and the
medical man did not at one time expect her to
live. I need not say that I was deeply interested
in this story, and I made my friend write to me
at intervals with all the particulars of the case.
I heard then that in the course of six weeks the
woman gradually recovered the use of her fac-
ulties, and some months later she gave birth to
a son, christened Jervase, who unhappily proved
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The Three Impostors
to be of weak intellect. Such were the facts
known to the village; but to me, while I whitened
at the suggested thought of the hideous enor-
mities that had doubtless been committed, all this
was nothing short of conviction, and I incauti-
ously hazarded a hint of something like the truth
to some scientific friends. The moment the
words had left my lips I bitterly regretted hav-
ing spoken, and thus given way the great secret
of my life, but with a good deal of relief mixed
with indignation I found my fears altogether
misplaced, for my friends ridiculed me to my
face, and I was regarded as a madman; and be-
neath a natural anger I chuckled to myself, feel-
ing as secure amidst these blockheads as if I had
confided what I knew to the desert sands.
But now, knowing so much, I resolved I would
know all, and I concentrated my efforts on the
task of deciphering the inscription on the Black
Seal. For many years I made this puzzle the
sole object of my leisure moments; for the greater
portion of my time was, of course, devoted to
other duties, and it was only now and then that
I could snatch a week of clear research. If I
were to tell the full history of this curious inves-
tigation, this statement would be wearisome in
the extreme, for it would contain simply the ac-
count of long and tedious failure. By what I
knew already of ancient scripts I was well equip-
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The Three Impostors
ped for the chase, as I always termed it to my-
self. I had correspondents amongst all the scien-
tific men in Europe, and indeed, in the world,
and I could not believe that in these days any
character, however ancient and however per-
plexed, could long resist the search-light I should
bring to bear upon it. Yet, in point of fact, it
was fully fourteen years before I succeeded.
With every year my professional duties increased,
and my leisure became smaller. This no doubt
retarded me a good deal; and yet, when I look
back on those years, I am astonished at the vast
scope of my investigation of the Black Seal. I
made my bureau a centre, and from all the
world and from all the ages I gathered tran-
scripts of ancient writing. Nothing, I resolved,
should pass me unawares, and the faintest hint
should be welcomed and followed up. But as one
covert after another was tried and proved empty
of result, I began in the course of years to de-
spair, and to wonder whether the Black Seal were
the sole relic of some race that had vanished
from the world and left no other trace of its ex-
istence—had perished, in fine, as Atlantis is said
to have done, in some great cataclysm, its secrets
perhaps drowned beneath the ocean or moulded
into the heart of the hills. The thought chilled
my warmth a little, and though I still persevered,
it was no longer with the same certainty of faith.
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The Three Impostors
A chance came to the rescue. I was staying in
a considerable town in the north of England, and
took the opportunity of going over the very cred-
itable museum that had for some time been es-
tablished in the place. The curator was one of
my correspondents; and, as we were looking
through one of the mineral cases, my attention
was struck by a specimen, a piece of black stone
some four inches square, the appearance of
which reminded me in a measure of the Black
Seal. I took it up carelessly, and was turning
it over in my hand, when I saw, to my astonish-
ment, that the under side was inscribed. I said,
quietly enough, to my friend the curator that
the specimen interested me, and that I should be
much obliged if he would allow me to take it with
me to my hotel for a couple of days. He, of
course, made no objection, and I hurried to my
rooms and found that my first glance had not de-
ceived me. There were two inscriptions; one in
the regular cuneiform character, another in the
character of the Black Seal, and I realized that
my task was accomplished. I made an exact copy
of the two inscriptions; and when I got to my
London study, and had the Seal before me, I was
able seriously to grapple with the great problem.
The interpreting inscription on the museum speci-
men, though in itself curious enough, did not bear
on my quest, but the transliteration made me
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The Three Impostors
master of the secret of the Black Seal. Conjec-
ture, of course, had to enter into my calculations;
there was here and there uncertainty about a par-
ticular ideograph, and one sign recurring again
and again on the seal baffled me for many suc-
cessive nights. But at last the secret stood open
before me in plain English, and I read the key
of the awful transmutation of the hills. The
last word was hardly written, when with fingers
all trembling and unsteady I tore the scrap of
paper into the minutest fragments, and saw them
flame and blacken in the red hollow of the fire,
and then I crushed the grey films that remained
into finest powder. Never since then have I
written those words; never will I write the phrases
which tell how man can be reduced to the slime
from which he came, and be forced to put on the
flesh of the reptile and the snake. There was
now but one thing remaining. I knew, but I de-
sired to see, and I was after some time able to
take a house in the neighbourhood of the Grey
Hills, and not far from the cottage where Mrs.
Craddock and her son Jervase resided. I need
not go into a full and detailed account of the
apparently inexplicable events which have oc-
curred here, where I am writing this. I knew
that I should find in Jervase Craddock some-
thing of the blood of the 'Little People,' and
I found later that he had more than once en-
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The Three Impostors
countered his kinsmen in lonely places in that
lonely land. When I was summoned one day
to the garden, and found him in a seizure
speaking or hissing the ghastly jargon of the
Black Seal, I am afraid that exultation pre-
vailed over pity. I heard bursting from his lips
the secrets of the underworld, and the word of
dread, 'Ishakshar,' signification of which I must
be excused from giving.
But there is one incident I cannot pass over
unnoticed. In the waste hollow of the night I
awoke at the sound of those hissing syllables I
knew so well; and on going to the wretched boy's
room, I found him convulsed and foaming at the
mouth, struggling on the bed as if he strove to
escape the grasp of writhing demons. I took
him down to my room and lit the lamp, while he
lay twisting on the floor, calling on the power
within his flesh to leave him. I saw his body
swell and become distended as a bladder, while
the face blackened before my eyes; and then at the
crisis I did what was necessary according to the
directions on the Seal, and putting all scruple on
one side, I became a man of science, observant
of what was passing. Yet the sight I had to wit-
ness was horrible, almost beyond the power of
human conception and the most fearful fantasy.
Something pushed out from the body there on
the floor, and stretched forth, a slimy, wavering
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The Three Impostors
tentacle, across the room, grasped the bust upon
the cupboard, and laid it down on my desk.
When it was over, and I was left to walk up
and down all the rest of the night, white and
shuddering, with sweat pouring from my flesh,
I vainly tried to reason with myself: I said, truly
enough, that I had seen nothing really super-
natural, that a snail pushing out his horns and
drawing them in was but an instance on a smaller
scale of what I had witnessed; and yet horror
broke through all such reasonings and left me
shattered and loathing myself for the share I had
taken in the night's work.
There is little more to be said. I am going
now to the final trial and encounter; for I have
determined that there shall be nothing wanting,
and I shall meet the 'Little People' face to face.
I shall have the Black Seal and the knowledge of
its secrets to help me, and if I unhappily do not
return from my journey, there is no need to con-
jure up here a picture of the awfulness of my
fate.
Pausing a little at the end of Professor Gregg's
statement, Miss Lally continued her tale in the
following words:—
Such was the almost incredible story that the
professor had left behind him. When I had
finished reading it, it was late at night, but the
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The Three Impostors
next morning I took Morgan with me, and we
proceeded to search the Grey Hills for some trace
of the lost professor. I will not weary you with
a description of the savage desolation of that
tract of country, a* tract of utterest loneliness, of
bare green hills dotted over with grey limestone
boulders, worn by the ravages of time into fan-
tastic semblances of men and beasts. Finally,
after many hours of weary searching, we found
what I told you—the watch and chain, the purse,
and the ring—wrapped in a piece of coarse parch-
ment. When Morgan cut the gut that bound the
parcel together, and-1 saw the professor's prop-
erty, I burst into tears, but the sight of the
dreaded characters of the Black Seal repeated on
the parchment froze me to silent horror, and I
think I understood for the first time the awful
fate that had come upon my late employer.
I haver only to add that Professor Gregg's
lawyer treated my account of what had happened
as a fairy tale, and refused even to glance at the
documents I laid before him. It was he who was
responsible for the statement that appeared in the
public press, to the effect that Professor Gregg
had been drowned, and that his body must have
been swept into the open sea.
Miss Lally stopped speaking, and looked at
Mr. Phillipps, with a glance of some inquiry.
He, for his part, was sunken in a deep reverie of
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The Three Impostors
thought; and when he looked up and saw the bus-
tle of the evening gathering in the square, men
and women hurrying to partake of dinner, and
crowds already besetting the music-halls, all the
hum and press of actual life seemed unreal and
visionary, a dream in the morning after an awak-
ening.
'I thank you,' he said at last, 'for your most
interesting story; interesting to me, because I feel
fully convinced of its exact truth.'
'Sir,' said the lady, with some energy of indig-
nation, 'you grieve and offend me. Do you think
I should waste my time and yours by concocting
fictions on a bench in Leicester Square?'
'Pardon me, Miss Lally, you have a little mis-
understood me. Before you began I knew that
whatever you told would be told in good faith,
but your experiences have a far higher value than
that of bona fides. The most extraordinary cir-
cumstances in your account are in perfect har-
mony with the very latest scientific theories.
Professor Lodge would, I am sure, value a com-
munication from you extremely; I was charmed
from the first by his daring hypothesis in explan-
ation of the wonders of spiritualism (so called),
but your narrative puts the whole matter out of
the range of mere hypothesis.'
'Alas! sir, all this will not help me. You for-
get, I have lost my brother under the most start-
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The Three Impostors
ling and dreadful circumstances. Again, I ask
you, did you not see him as you came here? His
black whiskers, his spectacles, his timid glance to
right and left; think, do not these particulars re-
call his face to your memory?'
'I am sorry to say I have never seen any one
of the kind,' said Phillipps, who had forgotten
all about the missing brother. 'But let me ask
you a few questions. Did you notice whether
Professor Gregg'
'Pardon me, sir, I have stayed too long. My
employers will be expecting me. I thank you
for your sympathy. Good-bye.'
Before Mr. Phillipps had recovered from his
amazement at this abrupt departure Miss Lally
had disappeared from his gaze, passing into the
crowd that now thronged the approaches to the
Empire. He walked home in a pensive frame
of mind, and drank too much tea. At ten o'clock
he had made his third brew, and had sketched
out the outlines of a little work to be called 'Pro-
toplasmic Reversion.'
Incident of the Private Bar
MR. DYSON often meditated at odd mo-
ments over the singular tale he' had
listened to at the cafe de la Touraine.
In the first place, he cherished a profound con-
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The Three Impostors
viction that the words of truth were scattered
with a too niggardly and sparing hand over the
agreeable history of Mr. Smith and the Black
Gulf Canon; and secondly, there was the unde-
niable fact of the profound agitation of the nar-
rator, and his gestures on the pavement, too
violent to be simulated. The idea of a man
going about London haunted by the fear of meet-
ing a young man with spectacles struck Dyson as
supremely ridiculous; he searched his memory for
some precedent in romance, but without success;
he paid visits at odd times to the little cafe,
hoping to find Mr. Wilkins there; and he kept a
sharp watch on the great generation of the spec-
tacled men, without much doubt that he would
remember the face of the individual whom he
had seen dart out of the aerated bread shop. All
his peregrinations and researches, however,
seemed to lead to nothing of value, and Dyson
needed all his warm conviction of his innate de-
tective powers and his strong scent for mystery
to sustain him in his endeavours. In fact, he had'
two affairs on hand; and every day, as he passed
through streets crowded or deserted, lurked in
the obscure districts and watched at corners, he
was more than surprised to find that the affair of
the gold coin persistently avoided him, while the
ingenious Wilkins, and the young man with spec-
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The Three Impostors
tacles, whom he dreaded, seemed to have vanished
from the pavements.
He was pondering these problems one evening
in a house of call in the Strand, and the obstinacy
with which the persons he so ardently desired to
meet hung back gave the modest tankard before
him an additional touch of bitter. As it hap-
pened, he was alone in his compartment, and,
without thinking, he uttered aloud the burden of
his meditations. 'How bizarre it all is!' he said,
‘a man walking the pavement with the dread of
a timid-looking young man with spectacles contin-
ually hovering before his eyes. And there was
some tremendous feeling at work, I could swear to
that.' Quick as thought, before he had finished
the sentence, a head popped round the barrier,
and was withdrawn again; and while Dyson was
wondering what this could mean, the door of the
compartment was swung open, and a smooth,
clean-shaven, and smiling gentleman entered.
'You will excuse me, sir,' he said politely, 'for
intruding on your thoughts, but you made a re-
mark a minute ago.'
'I did,' said Dyson; 'I have been puzzling over a
foolish matter, and I thought aloud. As you
heard what I said, and seem interested, perhaps
you may be able to relieve my perplexity ?
'Indeed, I scarcely know; it is an odd coinci-
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The Three Impostors
dence. One has to be cautious. I suppose, sir,
that you would be glad to assist the ends of jus-
tice.'
'Justice,' replied Dyson, 'is a term of such wide
meaning, that I too feel doubtful about giving
an answer. But this place is not altogether fit
for such a discussion; perhaps you would come
to my rooms?'
'You are very kind; my name is Burton, but I
am sorry to say I have not a card with me. Do
you live near here?'
'Within ten minutes' walk.'
Mr. Burton took out his watch, and seemed to
be making a rapid calculation.
'I have a train to catch,' he said; 'but after
all, it is a late one. So if you don't mind, I think
I will come with you. I am sure we should have
a little talk together. We turn up here?'
The theatres were filling as they crossed the
Strand; the street seemed alive, and Dyson looked
fondly about him. The glittering lines of gas-
lamps, with here and there the blinding radiance
of an electric light, the hansoms that flashed to
and fro with ringing bells, the laden 'buses, and
the eager hurrying east and west of the foot pas-
sengers, made his most enchanting picture; and
the graceful spire of St. Mary le Strand on the
one hand, and the last flush of sunset on the other,
were to him a cause of thanksgiving, as the gorse
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The Three Impostors
blossom to Linnaeus. Mr. Burton caught his
look of fondness as they crossed the street.
'I see you can find the picturesque in London,'
he said. 'To me this great town is as I see it is
to you—the study and the love of life. Yet how
few there are that can pierce the veils of apparent
monotony and meanness! I have read in a
paper, which is said to have the largest circulation
in the world, a comparison between the aspects of
London and Paris, a comparison which should be
positively laureate as the great masterpiece of
fatuous stupidity. Conceive if you can a human
being of ordinary intelligence preferring the
Boulevards to our London streets; imagine a man
calling for the wholesale destruction of our most
charming city, in order that the dull uniformity
of that whited sepulchre called Paris should be
reproduced here in London. Is it not positively
incredible?'
'My dear sir,' said Dyson, regarding Burton
with a good deal of interest, 'I agree most heart-
ily with your opinions, but I .really can't share
your wonder. Have you heard how much George
Eliot received for "Romola"? Do you know
what the circulation of "Robert Elsmere" was?
Do you read "Tit-Bits" regularly? To me, on
the contrary, it is constant matter for wonder
and thanksgiving that London was not boulevard-
ized twenty years ago. I praise that exquisite
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The Three Impostors
jagged skyline that stands up against the pale
greens and fading blues and flushing clouds of
sunset, but I wonder even more than I praise.
As for St. Mary le Strand, its preservation is a
miracle, nothing more or less. A thing of ex-
quisite beauty versus four 'buses abreast! Really,
the conclusion is too obvious. Didn't you read
the letter of the man who proposed that the whole
mysterious system, the immemorial plan of com-
puting Easter, should be abolished off-hand, be-
cause he doesn't like his son having his holidays
as early as March 25th? But shall we be going
on?
They had lingered at the corner of a street on
the north side of the Strand, enjoying the con-
trasts and the glamour of the scene. Dyson
pointed the way with a gesture, and they strolled
up the comparatively deserted streets, slanting a
little to the right, and thus arriving at Dyson's
lodging on the verge of Bloomsbury. Mr. Bur-
ton took a comfortable arm-chair by the open
window, while Dyson lit the candles and produced
the whisky and soda and cigarettes.
'They tell me these cigarettes are very good,'
he said; 'but I know nothing about it myself. I
hold at last that there is only one tobacco, and
that is shag. I suppose I could not tempt you to
try a pipeful?'
Mr. Burton smilingly refused the offer, and
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The Three Impostors
picked out a cigarette from the box. When he
had smoked it half through, he said with some
hesitation—
'It is really kind of you- to have me here, Mr.
Dyson; the fact is that the interests at issue are
far too serious to be discussed in a bar, where,
as you found for yourself, there may be listeners,
voluntary or involuntary, on each side. I think
the remark I heard you make was something about
the oddity of an individual going about London
in deadly fear of a young man with spectacles?'
'Yes; that was it.'
'Well, would you mind confiding to me the cir-
cumstances that gave rise to the reflection?'
'Not in the least. It was like this.' And he
ran over in brief outline the adventure in Oxford
Street, dwelling on the violence of Mr. Wilkins's
gestures', but wholly suppressing the tale told in
the cafe. 'He told me he lived in constant terror
of meeting this man; and I left him when I
thought he was cool enough to look after him-
self,' said Dyson, ending his narrative.
'Really,' said Mr. Burton. 'And you actually
saw this mysterious person?'
'Yes.'
'And could you describe him?'
'Well, he looked to me a youngish man, pale
and nervous. He had small black side-whiskers,
and wore rather large spectacles.'
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The Three Impostors
told you what I have seen turned up by the plough.
I lived in the country in those days, and I used to
buy anything the men on the farms brought me;
and I had the queerest set of rubbish, as my
friends called my collection. But that's how I
got the scent of the business, which means every-
thing; and, later on, it struck me that I might
very well turn my knowledge to account and add
to my income. Since those early days I have
been in most quarters of the world, and some very
valuable things have passed through my hands,
and I have had to engage in difficult and delicate
negotiations. You have possibly heard of the
Khan opal—called in the East "The Stone of a
Thousand andOne Colours"? Well, perhaps the
conquest of that stone was my greatest achieve-
ment. I call it myself the stone of the thousand
and one lies, for I assure you that I had to invent
a cycle of folk-lore before the Rajah who owned
it would consent to sell the thing. I subsidized
wandering story-tellers, who told tales in which
the opal played a frightful part; I hired a holy
man-—a great ascetic—to prophesy against the
thing in the language of Eastern symbolism; in
short, I frightened the Rajah out of his wits. So,
you see, there is room for diplomacy in the traffic
I am engaged in. I have to be ever on my guard,
and I have often been sensible that unless I
watched every step and weighed every word, my
H5
i


The Three Impostors
life would not last me much longer. Last April
I became aware of the existence of a highly valu-
able antique gem; it was in southern Italy, and in
the possession of persons who were ignorant of
its real value. It has always been my experience
that it is precisely the ignorant who are most diffi-
cult to deal with. I have met farmers who were
under the impression that a shilling of George
the First was a find of almost incalculable value;
and all the defeats I have sustained have been at
the hands of people of this description. Reflect-
ing on these facts, I saw that the acquisition of
the gem would be an affair demanding the nicest
diplomacy; I might possibly have got it by offer-
ing a sum approaching its real value, but I need
not point out to you that such a proceeding would
be most unbusinesslike. Indeed, I doubt whether
it would have been successful; for the cupidity of
such persons is aroused by a sum which seems
enormous, and the low cunning which serves them
in place of intelligence immediately suggests that
the object for which such an amount is offered
must be worth at least double. Of course, when
it is a matter of an ordinary curiosity—an old
jug, a carved chest, or a queer brass lantern—one
does not much care; the cupidity of the owner de-
feats its object; the collector laughs and goes
away, for he is aware that' such things are by no
means unique. But this gem I fervently desired
146


The Three Impostors
to possess; and as I did not see my way to giving
more than a hundredth part of its value, I was
conscious that all my, let us say, imaginative and
diplomatic powers would have to be exerted. I
am sorry to say that I came to the conclusion that
I could not undertake to carry the matter through
single-handed, and I determined to confide in my
assistant, a young man named William Robbins,
whom I judged to be by no means devoid of
capacity. My idea was that Robbins should get
himself up as a low-class dealer in precious stones;
he could patter a little Italian, and would go to
the town in question and manage to see the gem
we were after, possibly by offering some trifling
articles of jewellery for sale, but that I left to be
decided. Then my work was to begin, but I will
not trouble you with a tale told twice over. In
due course, then, Robbins went off to Italy with
an assortment of uncut stones and a few rings,
and some jewellery I bought in Birmingham on
purpose for hjs expedition. A week later I fol-
lowed him, travelling leisurely, so that I was a
fortnight later in arriving at our common destina-
tion. There was a decent hotel in the town, and
on my inquiring of the landlord whether there
were many strangers in the place, he told me very
few; he had heard there was an Englishman stay-
ing in a small tavern, a pedlar, he said, who sold
beautiful trinkets very cheaply, and wanted to buy
147


The Three Impostors
old rubbish. For five or six days I took life leis-
urely, and I must say I enjoyed myself. It was
part of my plan to make the people think I was
an enormously rich man; and I knew that such
items as the extravagance of my meals, and the
price of every bottle of wine I drank, would not
be suffered, as Sancho Panza puts it, to rot in the
landlord's breast. At the end of the week I was
fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of
Signor Melini, the owner of the gem I coveted,
at the cafe, and with his ready hospitality, and my
geniality, I was soon established as a friend of the
house. On my third or fourth visit I managed
to make the Italians talk about the English pedlar,
who, they said, spoke a most detestable Italian.
"But that does not matter," said the Signora
Melini, "for he has beautiful things, which he sells
very, very cheap." "I hope you may not find he
has cheated you," I said, "for I must tell you that
English people give these fellows a very wide
berth. They usually make a great parade of the
cheapness of their goods, which often turn out to
be double the price of better articles in the shops."
They would not hear of this, and Signora Melini
insisted on showing me the three rings and the
bracelet she had bought of the pedlar. She told
me the price she had paid; and after scrutinizing
the articles carefully, I had to confess that she
had made a bargain, and indeed Robbins had sold
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The Three Impostors
her the things at about fifty per cent below market
value. I admired the trinkets as I gave them
back to the lady, and I hinted that the pedlar must
be a somewhat foolish specimen of his class.
Two days later, as I was taking my vermouth at
the cafe with Signor Melini, he led the conversa-
tion back to the pedlar, and mentioned casually
that he had shown the man a little curiosity, for
which he had made rather a handsome offer.
"My dear sir," I said, "I hope you will be careful.
I told you that the travelling tradesman does not
bear a very high reputation in England; and not-
withstanding his apparent simplicity, this fellow
may turn out to be an arrant cheat. May I ask
you what is the nature of the curiosity you have
shown him?" He told me it was a little thing,
a pretty little stone with some figures cut on it:
people said it was old. "I should like to examine
it;" I replied, "as it happens I have seen a good
deal of these gems. We have a fine collection
of them in our Museum at London." In due
course I was shown the article, and I held the gem
I so coveted between my fingers. I looked at it
coolly, and put it down carelessly on the table.
"Would you mind telling me, Signor," I said,
"how much my fellow-countryman offered you for
this?" "Well," he said, "my wife says the man
must be mad; he said he would give me twenty
lire for it."
149


The Three Impostors
'I looked at him quietly, and took up the gem
and pretended to examine it in the light more
carefully; I turned it over and over, and finally
pulled out a magnifying glass from my pocket,
and seemed to search every line in the cutting with
minutest scrutiny. "My dear sir," I said at last,
"I am inclined to agree with Signora Melini. If
this gem were genuine, it would be worth some
money; but as it happens to be a rather bad
forgery, it is not worth twenty centesimi. It was
sophisticated, I should imagine, some time in the
last century, and by a very unskilful hand."
"Then we had better get rid of it," said Melini.
"I never thought it was worth anything myself.
Of course, I am sorry for the pedlar, but one must
let a man know his own trade. I shall tell him
we will take the twenty lire." "Excuse me," I
said, "the man wants a lesson. It would be a
charity to give him one. Tell him that you will
not take anything under eighty lire, and I shall be
much surprised if he does not close with you at
once."
'A day or two later I heard that the English
pedlar had gone away, after debasing the minds
of the country people with Birmingham art
jewellery; for I admit that the gold sleeve-links
like kidney beans, the silver chains made appar-
ently after the pattern of a dog-chain, and the
initial brooches, have always been heavy on my
I50


The Three Impostors
conscience. I cannot acquit myself of having in-
directly contributed to debauch the taste of a
simple folk; but I hope that the end I had in view
may finally outbalance this heavy charge. Soon
afterwards I paid a farewell visit at the Melinis',
and the signor informed me with an oily chuckle
that the plan I had suggested had been completely
successful. I congratulated him on his bargain,
and went away after expressing a wish that
Heaven might send many such pedlars in his path.
'Nothing of interest occurred on my return
journey. I had arranged that Robbins was to
meet me at a certain place on a certain day, and I
went to th«e appointment full of the coolest confi-
dence; the gem had been conquered, and I had
only to reap the fruits of victory. I am sorry to
shake that trust in our common human nature
which I am sure you possess, but I am compelled
to tell you that up to the present date I have never
set eyes on my man Robbins, or on the antique gem
in his custody. I have found out that he actually
arrived in London, for he was seen three days
before my arrival in England by a pawnbroker
of my acquaintance, consuming his favourite bev-
erage—four ale—in the tavern where we met to-
night. Since then he has not been heard of. I
hope you will now pardon my curiosity as to the
history and adventures of dark young men with
spectacles. You will, I am sure, feel for me in
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The Three Impostors
my position; the savour of life has disappeared
for me; it is a bitter thought that I have rescued
one of the most perfect and exquisite specimens
of antique art from the hands of ignorant, and
indeed unscrupulous persons, only to deliver it in-
to the keeping of a man who is evidently utterly
devoid of the very elements of commercial moral-
ity.'
'My dear sir,' said Dyson, 'you will allow me
to compliment you on your style; your adventures
have interested me exceedingly. But, forgive me,
you just now used the word morality; would not
some persons take exception to your own
methods of business? I can conceive, myself,
flaws of a moral kind being found in the very
original conception you have just described to
me; I can imagine the Puritan shrinking in dis-
may from your scheme, pronouncing it unscru-
pulous—nay, dishonest.'
Mr. Burton helped himself very frankly to
some more whisky.
'Your scruples entertain me,' he said. 'Per-
haps you have not gone very deeply into these
questions of ethics. I have been compelled to do
so myself, just as I was forced to master a system
of book-keeping. Without book-keeping, and still
more without a system of ethics, it is impossible
to conduct a business such as mine. But I assure
you that I am often profoundly saddened, as I
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The Three Impostors
pass through the crowded streets and watch the
world at work, by the thought of how few
amongst all these hurrying individuals, black-
hatted, well-dressed, educated we may presume
sufficiently,—how few amongst them have any
reasoned system of morality. Even you have not
weighed the question; although you study life and
affairs, and to a certain extent penetrate the veils
and masks of the comedy of man, even you judge
by empty conventions, and the false money which
is allowed to pass current as sterling coin. Allow
me to play the part of Socrates; I shall teach you
nothing that you do not know. I shall merely
lay aside the wrappings of prejudice and bad logic,
and show you the real image which you possess
in your soul. Come, then. Do you allow that
happiness is anything?'
''Certainly,' said Dyson.
'And happiness is desirable or undesirable?'
'Desirable, of course.'
'And what shall we call the man who gives
happiness? Is he not a philanthropist?'
'I think so.'
'And such a person is praiseworthy, and the
more praiseworthy in the proportion of the per-
sons whom he makes happy?'
'By all means.'
'So that he who makes a whole nation happy
is praiseworthy in the extreme, and the action by
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The Three Impostors
which he gives happiness is the highest virtue?'
'It appears so, O Burton," said Dyson, who
found something very exquisite in the character
of his visitor.
'Quite so; you find the several conclusions in-
evitable. Well, apply them to the story I have
told you. I conferred happiness on myself by ob-
taining (as I thought) possession of the gem; I
conferred happiness on the Melinis by getting
them eighty lire instead of an object for which
they had not the slightest value, and I intended to
confer happiness on the whole British nation by
selling the thing to the British Museum, to say
nothing of the happiness a profit of about nine
thousand per cent would have conferred on me.
I assure you, I regard Robbins as an interferer
with the cosmos and fair order of things. But
that is nothing; you perceive that I am an apos-
tle of the very highest morality; you have been
forced to yield to argument.'
'There certainly seems a great deal in what you
advance,' said Dyson. 'I admit that I am a mere
amateur of ethics, while you, as you say, have
brought the most acute scrutiny to bear on these
perplexed and doubtful questions. I can well
understand your anxiety to meet the fallacious
Robbins, and I congratulate myself on the chance
which has made us acquainted. But you will
pardon my seeming inhospitality; I see it is half-
154 /"


The Three Impostors
past eleven, and I think you mentioned a train.'
'A thousand thanks, Mr. Dyson. I have just
time, I see. I will look you up some evening, if
I may. Good-night.'
The Recluse of Bayswater
AMONGST the many friends who were
favoured with the occasional pleasure of
Mr. Dyson's society was Mr. Edgar Rus-
sell, realist and obscure struggler, who occupied a
small back room on the second floor of a house in
Abingdon Grove, Notting Hill. Turning off
from the main street, and walking a few paces
onward, one was conscious of a certain calm, a
drowsy peace, which made the feet inclined to
loiter, and this was ever the atmosphere of Abing-
don Grove. The houses stood a little back, with
gardens where the lilac, and laburnum, and
blood-red may blossomed gaily in their seasons,
and there was a corner where an older house in
another street had managed to keep a back gar-
den of real extent, a walled-in garden, whence
there came a pleasant scent of greenness after
the rains of early summer, where old elms held
memories of the open fields, where there was yet
sweet grass to walk on. The houses in Abing-
don Grove belonged chiefly to the nondescript
155


The Three Impostors
stucco period of thirty-five years ago, tolerably
built, with passable accommodation for moderate
incomes; they had largely passed into the state
of lodgings, and cards bearing the inscription
'Furnished Apartments' were not infrequent over
the doors. Here, then, in a house of sufficiently
good appearance, Mr. Russell had established
himself; for he looked upon the traditional dirt
and squalor of Grub Street as a false and obso-
lete convention, and preferred, as he said, to live
within sight of green leaves. Indeed, from his
room one had a magnificent view of a long line of
gardens, and a screen of poplars shut out the mel-
ancholy back premises of Wilton Street during the
summer months. Mr. Russell lived chiefly on
bread and tea, for his means were of the smallest;
but when Dyson came to see him, he would send
out the slavey for six ale, and Dyson was always at
liberty to smoke as much of his tobacco as he
pleased. The landlady had been so unfortunate
as to have her drawing-room floor vacant for
many months; a card had long proclaimed the
void within; and Dyson, when he walked up the
steps one evening in early autumn, had a sense
that something was missing, and, looking at the
fanlight, saw the appealing card had disappeared.
'You have let your first floor, have you?' he
said, as he greeted Mr. Russell.
l56


The Three Impostors
'Yes; it was taken about a fortnight ago by a
lady."
'Indeed,' said Dyson, always curious; 'a young
lady?'
'Yes; I believe so. She is a widow, and wears
a thick crape veil. I have met her once or twice
on the stairs and in the street; but I should not
know her face.'
'Well,' said Dyson, when the beer had arrived,
and the pipes were in full blast, 'and what have
you been doing? Do you find the work getting
any easier?'
'Alas!' said the young man, with an expression
of great gloom, 'the life is a purgatory, and all
but a hell. I write, picking out my words, weigh-
ing and balancing the force o«f every syllable, cal-
culating the minutest effects that language can
produce, erasing and rewriting, and spending a
whole evening over a page of manuscript. And
then, in the morning, when I read what I have
written Well, there is nothing to be done
but to throw it in the waste-paper basket, if the
verso has been already written on, or to put it in
the drawer if the other side happens to be clean.
When I have written a phrase which undoubtedly
embodies a happy turn of thought, I find it
dressed up in feeble commonplace; and when the
style is good, it serves only to conceal the baldness
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The Three Impostors
of superannuated fancies. I sweat over my work,
Dyson-every finished line means so much agony.
I envy the lot of the carpenter in the side street
who has a craft which he understands. When
he gets an order for a table he does not writhe
with anguish; but if I were so unlucky as to get
an order for a book, I think I should go mad.'
'My dear fellow, you take it all too seriously.
You should let the ink flow more readily. Above
all, firmly believe, when you sit down to write,
that you are an artist, and that whatever you are
about is a masterpiece. Suppose ideas fail you,
say, as I heard one of our most exquisite artists
say, "It's of no consequence; the ideas are all
there, at the bottom of that box of cigarettes !"
You, indeed, smoke a pipe, but the application is
the same. Besides, you must have some happy
moments; and these should be ample consolation.'
'Perhaps you are right. But such moments are
so few; and then there is the torture of a glorious
conception matched with execution beneath the
standard of the “Family Story Paper." For in-
stance, I was happy for two hours a night or two
ago; I lay awake and saw visions. But then the
morning!
'What was your idea ?'
'It seemed to me a splendid one: I thought of
Balzac and the “Comédie Humaine," of Zola and
the Rougon-Macquart family. It dawned on me
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The Three Impostors
that I would write the history of a street. Every
* house should form a volume. I fixed upon the
street, I saw each house, and read as clearly as in
letters the physiology and psychology of each; the
little byway stretched before me in its actual shape
—a street that I know and have passed down a
hundred times, with some twenty houses, pros-
perous and mean, and lilac bushes in purple
blossom. And yet it was, at the same time, a
symbol, a via dolorosa of hopes cherished and
disappointed, of years of monotonous existence
without content or discontent, of tragedies and
obscure sorrows; and on the door of one of those
houses I saw the red stain of blood, and behind
a window two shadows, blackened and faded on
the blind, as they swayed on tightened cords—
the shadows of a man and a woman hanging in
a vulgar gaslit parlour. These were my fancies;
but when pen touched paper they shrivelled and
vanished away.'
'Yes,' said Dyson, 'there is a lot in that. I
envy you the pains of transmuting vision into
reality, and, still more, I envy you the day when
you will look at your bookshelf and see twenty
goodly books upon the shelves—the series com-
plete and done for ever. Let me entreat you to
have them bound in solid parchment, with gold
lettering. It is the only real cover for a valiant
book. When I look in at the windows of some
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The Three Impostors
choice shop, and see the bindings of levant mor-
occo, with pretty tools and panellings, and your
sweet contrasts of red and green, I say to myself,
"These are not books, but bibelots." A book
bound soma true book, mind you—is like a Gothic
statue draped in brocade of Lyons.'
'Alas!' said Russell, 'we need not discuss the
binding—the books are not begun.'
The talk went on as usual till eleven o'clock,
when Dyson bader his friend good-night. He
knew the way downstairs, and walked down by
himself; but, greatly to his surprise, as he crossed
the first-floor landing the door opened slightly,
and a hand was stretched out, beckoning.
Dyson was not the man to hesitate under such
circumstances. In a moment he saw himself in-
volved in adventure; and, as he told himself, the
Dysons had never disobeyed a lady's summons.
Softly, then, with due regard for the lady's hon-
our, he would have entered the room, when a low
but clear voice spoke to him
'Go downstairs and open the door and shut it
again rather loudly. Then come up to me; and
for Heaven's sake, walk softly.'
Dyson obeyed her commands, not without some
hesitation, for he was afraid of meeting the land-
lady or the maid on his return journey. But,
walking like a cat, and making each step he trod
on crack loudly, he flattered himself that he had
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The Three Impostors
escaped observation; and as he gained the top of
the stairs the door opened wide before him, and
he found himself in the lady's drawing-room, bow-
ing awkwardly.
'Pray be seated, sir. Perhaps this chair will
be the best; it was the favoured chair of my land-
lady's deceased husband. I would ask you to
smoke, but the odour would betray me. I know
my proceedings must seem to you unconventional;
but I saw you arrive this evening, and I do not
think you would refuse to help a woman who is so
unfortunate as I am.'
Mr. Dyson looked shyly at the young lady
before him. She was dressed in deep mourning,
but the piquant smiling face and charming hazel
eyes ill accorded with the heavy garments and the
mouldering surface of the crape.
'Madam,' he said gallantly, 'your instinct has
served you well. We will not trouble, if you
please, about the question of social conventions;
the chivalrous gentleman knows nothing of such
matters. 1 hope I may be privileged to serve
you.'
'You are very kind to me, but I knew it would
be so. Alas! sir, I have had experience of life,
and I am rarely mistaken. Yet man is too often
so vile and so misjudging that I trembled even as
I resolved to take this step, which, for all I knew,
might prove to be both desperate and ruinous.'
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The Three Impostors
'With me you have nothing to fear,' said Dy-
son. 'I was nurtured in the faith of chivalry,
and I have always endeavoured to remember the
proud traditions of my race. Confide in me, then,
and count upon my secrecy, and if it prove pos-
sible, you may rely on my help.'
'Sir, I will not waste your time, which I am
sure is valuable, by idle parleyings. Learn, then,
that I am a fugitive, and in hiding here; I place
myself in your power; you have but to describe my
features, and I fall into the hands of my relent-
less enemy.'
Mr. Dyson wondered for a passing instant how
this could be, but he only renewed his promise of
silence, repeating that he would be the embodied
spirit of dark concealment.
'Good,' said the lady, 'the Oriental fervour of
your style is delightful. In the first place, I must
disabuse your mind of the conviction that I am a
widow. These gloomy vestments have been
forced on me by strange circumstance; in plain
language, I have deemed it expedient to go dis-
guised. You have a friend, I think, in the house,
Mr. Russell? He seems of a coy and retiring
nature.'
'Excuse me, madam,' said Dyson, 'he is not coy,
but he is a realist; and perhaps you are aware
that no Carthusian monk can emulate the cloistral
seclusion in which a realistic novelist loves to
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The Three Impostors
shroud himself. It is his way of observing human
nature.'
'Well, well,' said the lady; 'all this, though
deeply interesting, is not germane to our affair.
I must tell you my history.'
With these words the young lady proceeded to
relate the
NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER
My name is Leicester; my father, Major-
General Wyn Leicester, a distinguished officer
of artillery, succumbed five years ago to a
complicated liver complaint acquired in the
deadly climate of India. A year later my only
brother, Francis, came home after an exception-
ally brilliant career at the University, and settled
down with the resolution of a hermit to master
what has been well called the great legend of the
law. He was a man who seemed to live in utter
indifference to everything that is called pleasure;
and though he was handsomer than most men,
and could talk as merrily and wittily as if he were
a mere vagabond, he avoided society, and shut
himself up in a large room at the top of the house
to make himself a lawyer. Ten hours a day of
hard reading was at first his allotted portion;
from the first light in the east to the late after-
noon he remained shut up with his books, taking
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The Three Impostors
a hasty half-hour's lunch with me as if he grudged
the wasting of the moments, and going out for a
short walk when it began to grow dusk. I thought
that such relentless application must be injurious,
and tried to cajole him from the crabbed text-
books, but his ardour seemed to grow rather than
diminish, and his daily tale of hours increased. I
spoke to him seriously, suggesting" some occasional
relaxation, if it were but an idle afternoon with a
harmless novel; but he laughed, and said that he
read about feudal tenures when he felt in need of
amusement, and scoffed at the notions of theatres,
or a month's fresh air. I confessed that he
looked well, and seemed not to suffer from his
labours, but I knew that such unnatural toil would
take revenge at last, and I was not mistaken. A
look of anxiety began to lurk about his eyes, and
he seemed languid, and at last he avowed that he
was no longer in perfect health; he was troubled,
he said, with a sensation of dizziness, and awoke
now and then of nights from fearful dreams, ter-
rified and cold with icy sweats. 'I am taking care
of myself,' he said, 'so you must not trouble; I
passed the whole of yesterday afternoon in idle-
ness, leaning back in that comfortable chair you
gave me, and scribbling nonsense on a sheet of
paper. No, no; I will not overdo my work; I
shall be well enough in a week or two depend up-
on it.'
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The Three Impostors
Yet in spite of his assurances I could see that
he grew no better, but rather worse; he would
enter the drawing-room with a face all miserably
wrinkled and despondent, and endeavour to look
gaily when my eyes fell on him, and I thought
such symptoms of evil omen, and was frightened
sometimes at the nervous irritation of his move-
ments, and at glances which I could not decipher.
Much against his will, I prevailed on him to have
medical advice, and with an ill grace he called in
our old doctor.
Dr. Haberden cheered me after examination of
his patient.
'There is nothing really much amiss,' he said to
me. 'No doubt he reads too hard and eats
hastily, and then goes back again to his books in
too great a hurry, and the natural sequence is
some digestive trouble and a little mischief in the
nervous system. But I think—I do indeed, Miss
Leicester—that we shall be able to set this all
right. I have written him a prescription which
ought to do great things. So you have no cause
for anxiety.'
My brother insisted on having the prescrip-
tion made up by a chemist in the neighbourhood.
It was an odd, old-fashioned shop, devoid of the
studied coquetry and calculated glitter that make
so gay a show on the counters and shelves of the
modern apothecary; but Francis liked the old
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The Three Impostors
chemist, and believed in the scrupulous purity of
his drugs. The medicine was sent in due course,
and I saw that my brother took it regularly after
lunch and dinner. It was an innocent-looking
white powder, of which a little was dissolved in
a glass of cold water; I stirred it in, and it seemed
to disappear, leaving the water clear and color-
less. At first Francis seemed to benefit greatly;
the weariness vanished from his face, and he be-
came more cheerful than he had ever been since
the time when he left school; he talked gaily of re-
forming himself, and avowed to me that he had
wasted his time.
'I have given too many hours to law,' he said,
laughing; 'I think you have saved me in the nick
of time. Come, I shall be Lord Chancellor yet,
but I must not forget life. You and I will have
a holiday together before long; we will go to Paris
and enjoy ourselves, and keep away from the
Bibliotheque Nationale.'
I confessed myself delighted with the prospect.
'When shall we go?' I said. 'I can start the
day after to-morrow if you like.'
'Ah! that is perhaps a little too soon; after all,
I do not know London yet, and I suppose a man
ought to give the pleasures of his own country
the first choice. But we will go off together in a
week or two, so try and furbish up your French.
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The Three Impostors
I only know law French myself, and I am afraid
that wouldn't do.'
We were just finishing dinner, and he quaffed
off his medicine with a parade of carousal as if
it had been wine from some choicest bin.
'Has it any particular taste?' I said.
'No; I should not know I was not drinking
water, and he got up from his chair and began
to pace up and down the room as if he were un-
decided as to what he should do next.
'Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room?' I
said; ‘or would you like to smoke?'
'No, I think I will take a turn; it seems a
pleasant evening. Look at the afterglow; why,
it is as if a great city were burning in flames, and
down there between the dark houses it is raining
blood fast. Yes, I will go out; I may be in soon,
but I shall take my key; so good-night, dear, if I
don't see you again.'
The door slammed behind him, and I saw him
walk lightly down the street, swinging his malacca
cane, and I felt grateful to Dr. Haberden for
such an improvement.
I believe my brother came home very late that
night, but he was in a merry mood the next morn-
ing.
'I walked on without thinking where I was go-
ing,' he said, “enjoying the freshness of the air,
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The Three Impostors
words short. I went weeping out of the room;
for though I knew nothing, yet I knew all, and by
some odd play of thought I remembered the even-
ing when he first went abroad, and the picture of
the sunset sky glowed before me; the clouds like
a city in burning flames, and the rain of blood.
Yet I did battle with such thoughts, resolving that
perhaps, after all, no great harm had been done,
and in the evening at dinner I resolved to press
him to fix a day for our holiday in Paris. We
had talked easily enough, and my brother had
just taken his medicine, which he continued all the
while. I was about to begin my topic when the
words forming in my mind vanished, and I won-
dered for a second what icy and intolerable weight
oppressed my heart and suffocated me as with the
unutterable horror of the coffin-lid nailed down
on the living.
We had dined without candles; the room had
slowly grown from twilight to gloom, and the
walls and corners were indistinct in the shadow.
But from where I sat I looked out into the street;
and as I thought of what I would say to Francis,
the sky began to flush and shine, as it had done
on a well-remembered evening, and in the gap
between two dark masses that were houses an aw-
ful pageantry of flame appeared—lurid whorls of
writhed cloud, and utter depths burning, grey
masses like the fume blown from a smoking city,
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The Three Impostors
and an evil glory blazing far above shot with
tongues of more ardent fire, and below as if there
were a deep pool of blood. I looked down to
where my brother sat facing me, and the words
were shaped on my lips, when I saw his hand
resting on the table. Between the thumb and
forefinger of the closed hand there was a mark,
a small patch about the size of a sixpence, and
somewhat of the colour of a bad bruise. Yet,
by some sense I cannot define, I knew that what
I saw was no bruise at all; oh! if human flesh
could burn with flame, and if flame could be black
as pitch, such was that before me. Without
thought or fashioning of words grey horror
shaped within me at the sight, and in an inner cell
it was known to be a brand. For the moment the
stained sky became dark as midnight, and when
the light returned to me I was alone in the silent
room, and soon after I heard my brother go out.
Late as it was, I put on my hat and went to Dr.
Haberden, and in his great consulting room, ill
lighted by a candle which the doctor brought in
with him, with stammering lips, and a voice that
would break in spite of my resolve, I told him
all, from the day on which my brother began to
take the medicine down to the dreadful thing I
had seen scarcely half an hour before.
When I had done, the doctor looked at me for
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The Three Impostors
a minute with an expression of great pity on his
face.
'My dear Miss Leicester,' he said, 'you have
evidently been anxious about your brother; you
have been worrying over him, I am sure. Come,
now, is it not so?'
'I have certainly been anxious,' I said. 'For
the last week or, two I have not felt at ease.'
'Quite so; you know, of course, what a queer
thing the brain is?'
'I understand what you mean; but I was hot
deceived. I saw what I have told you with my
own eyes.'
'Yes, yes, of course. But your eyes had been
staring at that very curious sunset we had to-
night. That is the only explanation. You will
see it in the proper light to-morrow, I am sure.
But, remember, I am always ready to give any
help that is in my power; do not scruple to come
to me, or to send for me if you are in any dis-
tress.'
I went away but little comforted, all confusion
and terror and sorrow, not knowing where to
turn. When my brother and I met the next day,
I looked quickly at him, and noticed, with a sicken-
ing at heart, that the right hand, the hand on
which I had clearly seen the patch as of a black
fire, was wrapped up with a handkerchief.
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The Three Impostors
'What is the matter with your hand, Francis?'
I said in a steady voice.
'Nothing of consequence. I cut a finger last
night, and it bled rather awkwardly. So I did.
it up roughly to the best of my ability.'
'I will do it neatly for you, if you like.'
'No, thank you, dear; this will answer very
well. Suppose we have breakfast; I am quite
hungry.'
We sat down and I watched him. He
scarcely ate or drank at all, but tossed his meat
to the dog when he thought my eyes were turned
away; there was a look in his eyes that I had never
yet seen, and the thought flashed across my mind
that it was a look that was scarcely human. I
was firmly convinced that awful and incredible as
was the thing I had seen the night before, yet it
was no illusion, no glamour of bewildered sense,
and in the course of the evening I went again to
the doctor's house.
He shook his head with an air puzzled and in-
credulous, and seemed to reflect for a few
minutes.
'And you say he still keeps up the medicine?
But why? As I understand, all the symptoms
he complained of have disappeared long ago;
why should he go on taking the stuff when he is
quite well? And by the by, where did he get it
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The Three Impostors
made up? At Sayce's? I never send any one
there; the old man is getting careless. Suppose
you come with me to the chemist's; I should like
to have some talk with him.'
We walked together to the shop; old Sayce
knew Dr. Haberden, and was quite ready to give
any information.
'You have been sending that in to Mr. Leicester
for some weeks, I think, on my prescription,' said
the doctor, giving the old man a pencilled scrap
of paper.
The chemist put on his great spectacles with
trembling uncertainty, and held up the paper with
a shaking hand.
'Oh, yes,' he said, 'I have very little of it left;
it is rather an uncommon drug, and I have had
it in stock some time. I must get in some more,
if Mr. Leicester goes on with it.'
'Kindly let me have a look at the stuff,' said
Haberden, and the chemist gave him a glass
bottle. He took out the stopper and smelt the
contents, and looked strangely at the old man.
'Where did you get this?' he said, 'and what
is it? For one thing, Mr. Sayce, it is not what I
prescribed. Yes, yes, I see the label is right
enough, but I tell you this is not the drug.'
'I have had it a long time,' said the old man in
feeble terror; 'I got it from Burbage's in the
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The Three Impostors
usual way. It is not prescribed often, and I have
had it on the shelf for some years. You see there
is very little left.'
'You had better give it to me,' said Haberden.
'I am afraid something wrong has happened.'
We went out of the shop in silence, the doctor
carrying the bottle neatly wrapped in paper under
his arm.
'Dr. Haberden,' I said, when we had walked a
little way—'Dr. Haberden.'
'Yes,' he said, looking at me gloomily enough.
'I should like you to tell me what my brother
has been taking twice a day for the last month
or so.'
'Frankly, Miss Leicester, I don't know. We
will speak of this when we get to my house.'
We walked on quickly without another word
till we reached Dr. Haberden's. He asked me to
sit down, and began pacing up and down the room,
his face clouded over, as I could see, with no
common fears.
'Well,' he said at length, 'this is all very
strange; it is only natural that you should feel
alarmed, and I must confess that my mind is far
from easy. We will put aside, if you please,
what you told me last night and this morning, but
the fact remains that for the last few weeks Mr.
Leicester has been impregnating his system with
a drug which is completely unknown to me. I
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The Three Impostors
tell you, it is not what I ordered; and what
the stuff in the bottle really is remains to be
seen.'
He undid the wrapper, and cautiously tilted a
few grains of the white powder on to a piece of
paper, and peered curiously at it.
'Yes,' he said, “it is like the sulphate of quinine,
as you say; it is flaky. But smell it.'
He held the bottle to me, and I bent over it.
It was a strange, sickly smell, vaporous and over-
powering, like some strong anæsthetic.
'I shall have it analysed,' said Haberden; 'I
have a friend who has devoted his whole life to
chemistry as a science. Then we shall have some-
thing to go upon. No, no; say no more about
that other matter; I cannot listen to that; and
take my advice and think no more about it your-
self.'
That evening my brother did not go out as
usual after dinner.
'I have had my fing,' he said with a queer
laugh, "and I must go back to my old ways. A
little law will be quite a relaxation after so sharp
a dose of pleasure,' and he grinned to himself, and
soon after went up to his room. His hand was
still all bandaged.
Dr. Haberden called a few days later.
'I have no special news to give you,' he said.
'Chambers is out of town, so I know no more
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about that stuff than you do. But I should like
to see Mr. Leicester, if he is in.'
'He is in his room,' I said; 'I will tell him you
are here.'
'No, no, I will go up to him; we will have a
little quiet talk together. I dare say that we have
made a good deal of fuss about a very little; for,
after all, whatever the powder may be, it seems
to have done him good.'
The doctor went upstairs, and standing in the
hall I heard his knock, and the opening and shut-
ting of the door; and then I waited in the silent
house for an hour, and the stillness grew more
and more intense as the hands of the clock crept
round. Then there sounded from above the
noise of a door shut sharply, and the doctor was
coming down the stairs. His footsteps crossed
the hall, and there was a pause at the door; I
drew a long, sick breath with difficulty, and saw
my face white in a little mirror, and he came in
and stood at the door. There was an unutterable
horror shining in his eyes; he steadied himself by
holding the back of a chair with one hand, his
lower lip trembled like a horse's, and he gulped
and stammered unintelligible sounds before he
spoke.
'I have seen that man,' he began in a dry
whisper. 'I have been sitting in his presence for
the last hour. My God! And I am alive and
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The Three Impostors
in my senses! I, who have dealt with death all
my life, and have dabbled with the melting ruins
of the earthly tabernacle. But not this, oh! not
this,' and he covered his face with his hands as if
to shut out the sight of something before him.
'Do not send for me again, Miss Leicester,' he
said with more composure. 'I can do nothing in
this house. Good-bye.'
As I watched him totter, down the steps, and
along the pavement towards his house, it seemed
to me that he had aged by ten years since the
morning.
My brother remained in his room. He called
out to me in a voice I hardly recognized that he
was very busy, and would like his meals brought
to his door and left there, and I gave the order
to the servants. From that day it seemed as if
the arbitrary conception we call time had been an-
nihilated for me; I lived in an ever-present sense
of horror, going through the routine of the house
mechanically, and only speaking a few necessary
words to the servants. Now and then I went
out and paced the streets for an hour or two and
came home again; but whether I were without or
within, my spirit delayed before the closed door
of the upper room, and, shuddering, waited for
it to open. I have said that I scarcely reckoned
time; but I suppose it must have been a fortnight
after Dr. Haberden's visit that I came home from
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The Three Impostors
my stroll a little refreshed and lightened. The
air was sweet and pleasant, and the hazy form of
green leaves, floating cloud-like in the square, and
the smell of blossoms, had charmed my senses, and
I felt happier and walked more briskly. As I
delayed a moment at the verge of the pavement,
waiting for a van to pass by before crossing over
to the house, I happened to look up at the win-
dows, and instantly there was the rush and swirl
of deep cold waters in my ears, my heart leapt
up and fell down, down as into a deep hollow, and
I was amazed with a dread and terror without
form or shape. I stretched out a hand blindly
through the folds of thick darkness, from the
black and shadowy valley, and held myself from
falling, while the stones beneath my feet rocked
and swayed and tilted, and the sense of solid
things sdemed to sink away from under me. I
had glanced up at the window of my brother's
study, and at that moment the blind was drawn
aside, and something that had life stared out into
the world. Nay, I cannot say I saw a face or
any human likeness; a living thing, two eyes of
burning flame glared at me, and they were in the
midst of something as formless as my fear, the
symbol and presence of all evil and all hideous
corruption. I stood shuddering and quaking as
with the grip of ague, sick with unspeakable
agonies of fear and loathing, and for five minutes
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The Three Impostors
I could not summon force or motion to my limbs.
When I was within the door, I ran up the stairs
to my brother's room and knocked.
'Francis, Francis,' I cried, 'for Heaven's sake,
answer me. What is the horrible thing in your
room? Cast it out, Francis; cast it from you.'
I heard a noise as of feet shuffling slowly and
awkwardly, and a choking, gurgling sound, as if
some one was struggling to find utterance, and
then the noise of a voice, broken and stifled, and
words that I could scarcely understand.
'There is nothing here,' the voice said. "Pray
do not disturb me. I am not very well to-day.'
I turned away, horrified, and yet helpless. I
could do nothing, and I wondered why Francis.
had lied to me, for I had seen the appearance
beyond the glass too plainly to be deceived,
though it was but the sight of a moment. And
I sat still, conscious that there had been some-
thing else, something I had seen in the first flash
of terror, before those burning eyes had looked
at me. Suddenly I remembered; as I lifted my
face the blind was being drawn back, and I had
had an instant's glance of the thing that was moy-
ing it, and in my recollection I knew that a hideous
image was engraved forever on my brain. It
was not a hand; there were no fingers that held
the blind, but a black stump pushed it aside, the
mouldering outline and the clumsy movement as
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The Three Impostors
of a beast's paw had glowed into my senses be-
fore the darkling waves of terror had over-
whelmed me as I went down quick into the pit.
My mind was aghast at the thought of this, and
of the awful presence that dwelt with my brother
in his room; I went to his door and cried to him
again, but no answer came. That night one of
the servants came up to me and told me in a
whisper that for three days food had been regu-
larly placed at the door and left untouched; the
maid had knocked but had received no answer;
she had heard the noise of shuffling feet that I had
noticed. Day after day went by, and still my
brother's meals were brought to his door and left
untouched; and though I knocked and called
again and again, I could get no answer. The
servants began to talk to me; it appeared they
were as alarmed as I; the cook said that when my
brother first shut himself up in his room she
used to hear him come out at night and go about
the house; and once, she said, the hall door had
opened and closed again, but for several nights
she had heard no sound. The climax came at
last; it was in the dusk of the evening, and I was
sitting in the darkening dreary room when a ter-
rible shriek jarred and rang harshly out of the
silence, and I heard a frightened scurry of feet
dashing down the stairs. I waited, and the
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The Three Impostors
tating, but nothing else, and I called louder, but
no answer came.
In spite of what Dr. Haberden had said, I went
to him; with tears streaming down my cheeks I
told him all that had happened, and he listened to
me with a face set hard and grim.
'For your father's sake,' he said at last, 'I will
go with you, though I can do nothing.'
We went out together; the streets were dark
and silent, and heavy with heat and a drought of
many weeks. I saw the doctor's face white under
the gas-lamps, and when we reached the house
his hand was shaking.
We did not hesitate, but went upstairs directly.
I held the lamp, and he called out in a loud, deter-
mined voice—
'Mr. Leicester, do you hear me? I insist on
seeing you. Answer me at once.'
There was no answer, but we both heard that
choking niose I have mentioned.
'Mr. Leicester, I am waiting for you. Open
the door this instant, or I shall break it down.'
And he called a third time in a voice that rang
and echoed from the walls—
'Mr. Leicester 1 For the last time I order you
to open the door.'
'Ah!' he said, after a pause of heavy silence,
'we are wasting time here. Will you be so kind
as to get me a poker, or something of the kind?'
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The Three Impostors
I ran into a little room at the back where odd
articles were kept, and found a he-avy adze-like
tool that I thought might serve the doctor's pur-
pose.
'Very good,' he said, 'that will do, I dare say.
I give you notice, Mr. Leicester,' he cried loudly
at the keyhole, 'that I am now about to break
into your room.'
Then I heard the wrench of the adze, and the
wood-work split and cracked under it; with a loud
crash the door suddenly burst open, and for a
moment we started back aghast at a fearful
screaming cry, no human voice, but as the roar
of a monster, that burst forth inarticulate and
struck at us out of the darkness.
'Hold the lamp,' said the doctor, and we went
in and glanced quickly round the room.
'There it is,' said Dr. Haberden, drawing a
quick breath; 'look, in that corner.'
I looked, and a pang of horror seized my heart
as with a white-hot iron. There upon the floor
was a dark and putrid mass, seething with corrup-
tion and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor
solid, but melting and changing before our eyes,
and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boil-
ing pitch. And out of the midst of it shone two
burning points like eyes, and I saw a writhing and
stirring as of limbs, and something moved and
lifted up what might have been an arm. The
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The Three Impostors
doctor took a step forward, raised the iron bar
and struck at the burning points; he drove in the
weapon, and struck again and again in the fury
of loathing.
A week or two later, when I had recovered
to some extent from the terrible shock, Dr.
Haberden came to see me.
'I have sold my practice,' he began, 'and to-
morrow I am sailing on a long voyage. I do not
know whether I shall ever return to England; in
all probability I shall buy a little land in Cali-
fornia, and settle there for the remainder of my
life. I have brought you this packet, which you
may open and read when you feel able to do so.
It contains the report of D"r. Chambers on what
I submitted to him. Good-bye, Miss Leicester,
good-bye.'
When he was gone I opened the envelope; I
could not wait, and proceeded to read the papers
within. HeVe is the manuscript, and if you will
allow me, I will read you the astounding story it
contains.
'My dear Haberden,' the letter ibegan,' I have
delayed inexcusably in answering your questions
as to the white substance you sent me. To tell
you the truth, I have hesitated for some time as
to what course I should adopt, for there is a
bigotry and orthodox standard in physical science
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The Three Impostors
as in theology, and I knew that if I told you the
truth I should offend rooted prejudices which I
once held dea-r myself. However, I have deter-
mined to be plain with you, and first I must enter
into a short personal explanation.
'You have known me, Haberden, for many
years as a scientific man; you and I have often
talked of our profession together, and discussed
the hopeless gulf that opens before the feet of
those who think to attain to truth by any means
whatsoever except the beaten way of experiment
and observation in the sphere of material things.
I remember the scorn with which you have spoken
to me of men of science who have dabbled a little
in the unseen, and have timidly hinted that per-
haps the senses are not, after all, the eternal, im-
penetrable bounds of all knowledge, the everlast-
ing walls beyond which no human being has ever
passed. We have laughed together heartily, and
I think justly, at the "occult follies of the day,
disguised under various names—the mesmerisms,
spiritualisms, materializations, theosophies, all
the rabble rout of imposture, with their machinery
of poor tricks and feeble conjuring, the true back-
parlour of shabby London streets. Yet, in spite
of what I have said, I must confess to you that I
am no materialist, taking the word of course in
its usual signification. It is now many years since I
have convinced myself—convinced myself, a seep-
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The Three Impostors
tic, remember—that the old ironbound theory is
utterly and entirely false. Perhaps this confession
will not wound you so sharply as it would have
done twenty years ago; for I think you cannot
have failed to notice that for some time hypoth-
eses have been advanced by men of pure science
which are nothing less than transcendental, and I
suspect that most modern chemists and biologists
of repute would not hesitate to subscribe the dic-
tum of the old Schoolman, Omnia exeunt in myste-
rium, which means, I take it, that every branch of
human knowledge if traced up to its source and
final principles vanishes into mystery. I need not
trouble you now with a detailed account of the
painful steps which led me to my conclusions; a
few simple experiments suggested a doubt as to
my then standpoint, and a train of thought that
rose from circumstances comparatively trifling
brought me far; my old conception of the uni-
verse has been swept away, and I stand in a world
that seems as strange and awful to me as the end-
less waves of the ocean seen for the first time,
shining, from a peak in Darien. Now I know
that the walls of sense that seemed so impene-
trable, that seemed to loom up above the heavens
and to be founded below the depths, and to shut
us in for evermore, are no such everlasting im-
passable barriers as we fancied, but thinnest and
most airy veils that melt away before the seeker,
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The Three Impostors
and dissolve as the early mist of the morning
about the brooks. I know that you never
adopted the extreme materialistic position; you
did not go about trying to prove a universal nega-
tive, for your logical sense withheld you from that
crowning absurdity; but I am sure that you will
find all that I am saying strange and repellent to
your habits of thought. Yet, Haberden, what I
tell you is the truth, nay, to adopt our common
language, the sole and scientific truth, verified by
experience; and the universe is verily more splen-
did and more awful than we used to dream. The
whole universe, my friend, is a tremendous sacra-
ment; a mystic, ineffable force and energy, veiled
by an outward form of matter; and man, and the
sun and the other stars, and the flower of the
grass, and the crystal in the test-tube, are each
and every one as spiritual, as material, and sub-
ject to an inner working.
'You will perhaps wonder, Haberden, whence
all this tends; but I think a little thought will
make it clear. You will understand that from
such a standpoint the whole view of things is
changed, and what we thought incredible and ab-
surd may be possible enough. In short, we must
look at legend and belief with other eyes, and be
prepared to accept tales that had become mere
fables. Indeed this is no such great demand.
After all, modern science will concede as much, in
187


The Three Impostors
a hypocritical manner; you must not, it is true, be-
lieve in witchcraft, but you may credit hypnotism;
ghosts are out of date, but there is a good deal
to be said for the theory of telepathy. Give
superstition a Greek name, and believe in it,
should almost be a proverb.
'So much for my personal explanation. You
sent me, Haberden, a phial, stoppered and sealed,
containing a small quantity of flaky white powder,
obtained from a chemist who has been dispens-
ing it to one of your patients. I am not sur-
prised to hear that this powder refused to yield
any results to your analysis. It is a substance
which was known to a few many hundred years
ago, but which I never expected to have submitted
to me from the shop of a modern apothecary.
There seems no reason to doubt the truth of the
man's tale; he no doubt got, as he says, the rather
uncommon salt you prescribed from the whole-
sale chemist's; and it has probably remained on
his shelf for twenty years, or perhaps longer.
Here what we call chance and coincidence begin
to work; during all these years the salt in the
bottle was exposed to certain recurring variations
of temperature, variations probably ranging from
400 to 8o°. And, as it happens, such changes, re-
curring year after year at irregular intervals, and
with varying degrees of intensity and duration,
have constituted a process, and a process so com-
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The Three Impostors
plicated and so delicate, that I question whether
modern scientific apparatus directed with the ut-
most precision could produce the same result.
The white powder you sent me is something very
different from the drug you prescribed; it is the
powder from which the wine of the Sabbath, the
Vinum Sabbati, was prepared. No doubt you
have read of the Witches' Sabbath, and have
laughed at the tales which terrified our ancestors;
the black cats, and the broomsticks, and dooms
pronounced against some old woman's cow.
Since I have known the truth I have often re-
flected that it is on the whole a happy thing that
such burlesque as this is believed, for it serves to
conceal much that it is better should not be known
generally. However, if you care to read the ap-
pendix to Payne Knight's monograph, you will
find that the true Sabbath was something very dif-
ferent, though the writer has very nicely refrained
from printing all he knew. The secrets of the
true Sabbath were the secrets of remote times sur-
viving into the Middle Ages, secrets of an evil
science which existed long before Aryan man en-
tered Europe. Men and women, seduced from
their homes on specious pretences, were met by
beings well qualified to assume, as they did as-
sume, the part of devils, and taken by their guides
to some desolate and lonely place, known to the
initiate by long tradition, and unknown to all else.
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The Three Impostors
Perhaps it was a cave in some bare and wind-
swept hill, perhaps some inmost recess of a great
forest, and there the Sabbath was held. There,
in the blackest hour of night, the Vinum Sabbati
was prepared, and this evil graal was poured forth
and offered to the neophytes, and they partook of
an infernal sacrament; sumentes calicem principis
inferorum, as an old author well expresses it.
And suddenly, each one that had drunk found
himself attended by a companion, a shape of
glamour and unearthly allurement, beckoning him
apart, to share in joys more exquisite, more pierc-
ing than the thrill of any dream, to the consum-
mation of the marriage of the Sabbath. It is
hard to write of such things as these, and chiefly
because that shape that allured with loveliness
was no hallucination, but, awful as it is to express,
the man himself. By the power of that Sabbath
wine, a few grains of white powder thrown into
a glass of water, the house of life was riven asun-
der and the human trinity dissolved, and the
worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping
within us all, was made tangible and an external
thing, and clothed with a garment of flesh. And
then, in the hour of midnight, the primal fall
was repeated and re-presented, and the awful
thing veiled in the mythos of the Tree in the
Garden was done anew. Such was the nuptice
Sabbati.
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The Three Impostors
'I prefer to say no more; you, Haberden, know
as well as I do that the most trivial Taws of life
are not to be broken with impunity; and for so
terrible an act as this, in which the very inmost
place of the temple was broken open and defiled,
a terrible vengeance followed. What began with
corruption ended also with corruption.4
Underneath is the following in Dr. Haberden's
writing:—
'The whole of the above is unfortunately
strictly and entirely true. Your brother confessed
all to me on that morning when I saw him in his
room. My attention was first attracted to the
bandaged hand, and I forced him to show it me.
What I saw made me, a medical man of many
years' standing, grow sick with loathing, and the
story I was forced to listen to was infinitely more
frightful than I could have believed possible. It
has tempted me to doubt the Eternal Goodness
which can permit nature to offer such hideous pos-
sibilities; and if you had not with your own eyes
seen the end, I should have said to you—disbe-
lieve it all. I have not, I think, many more
weeks to live, but you are young, and may for-
get all this.
'Joseph Haberden, m. d.'
In the course of two or three months I heard
191


The Three Impostors
that Dr. Haberden had died at sea shortly after
the ship left England.
Miss Leicester ceased speaking, and looked
pathetically at Dyson, who could not refrain
from exhibiting some symptoms of uneasiness.
He stuttered out some broken phrases expres-
sive of his deep interest in her extraodinary his-
tory, and then said with a better grace—
'But pardon me, Miss Leicester, I understood
you were in some difficulty. You were kind
enough to ask me to assist you in some way.'
'Ah,' she said, 'I had forgotten that; my own
present trouble seems of such little consequence
in comparison with what I have told you. But
as you are so good to me, I will go on. You will
scarcely believe it, but I found that certain persons
suspected, or rather pretended to suspect, that I
had murdered my brother. These persons were
relatives of mine, and their motives were ex-
tremely sordid ones; but I actually found myself
subject to the shameful indignity of being
watched. Yes, sir, my steps were dogged when
I went abroad, and at home I found myself ex-
posed to constant if artful observation. With
my high spirit this was more than I could brook,
and I resolved to set my wits to work and elude
the persons who were shadowing me. I was so
fortunate as to succeed; I assumed this disguise,
192


The Three Impostors
and for some time have lain snug and unsus-
pected. But of late I have reason to believe that
the pursuer is on my track; unless I am greatly
deceived, I saw yesterday the detective who is
charged with the odious duty of observing my
movements. You, sir, are watchful and keen-
sighted; tell me, did you see any one lurking
about this evening?
'I hardly think so,' said Dyson, but perhaps
you would give me some description of the
detective in question.'
'Certainly; he is a youngish man, dark, with
dark whiskers. He has adopted spectacles of
large size in the hope of disguising himself effect-
ually, but he cannot disguise his uneasy manner,
and the quick, nervous glances he casts to right
and left.'
This piece of description was the last straw for
the unhappy Dyson, who was foaming with im-
patience to get out of the house, and would gladly
have sworn eighteenth-century oaths, if pro-
priety had not frowned on such a course.
'Excuse me, Miss Leicester,' he said with cool
politeness, 'I cannot assist you.'
“Ah,' she said sadly, 'I have offended you in
some way. Tell me what I have done, and I will
ask you to forgive me.'
'You are mistaken,' said Dyson, grabbing his
hat, but speaking with some difficulty; 'you have
193


The Three Impostors
done nothing. But, as I say, I cannot help you.
Perhaps,' he added, with some tinge of sarcasm,
'my friend Russell might be of service.'
'Thank you,' she replied; ‘I will try him,' and
the lady went off into a shriek of laughter, which
filled up Mr. Dyson's cup of scandal and con-
fusion.
He left the house shortly afterwards, and had
the peculiar delight of a five-mile walk, through
streets which slowly changed from black to grey,
and from grey to shining passages of glory for
the sun to brighten. Here and there he met or
overtook strayed revellers, but he reflected that
no one could have spent the night in a more futile
fashion than himself; and when he reached his
home he had made resolves for reformation.
He decided that he would abjure all Milesian and
Arabian methods of entertainment, and subscribe
to Mudie's for a regular supply of mild and in-
nocuous romance.
194


Strange Occurrence in
Clerkenwell

R. DYSON had inhabited for some
years a couple of rooms in a moderately
quiet street in Bloomsbury, where, as
he somewhat pompously expressed it, he held his
finger on the pulse, of life without being deafened
with the thousand rumours of the main arteries
of London. It was to him a source of peculiar,
if esoteric, gratification that from the adjacent
corner of Tottenham Court Road a hundred lines
of omnibuses went to the four quarters of the
town; he would dilate on the facilities for visit-
ing Dalston, and dwell on the admirable line that
knew extremest Ealing and the streets beyond
Whitechapel. His rooms, which had been orig-
inally 'furnished apartments,' he had gradually
purged of their more peccant parts; and though
one would not find here the glowing splendour
of his old chambers in the street off the Strand,
there was something of severe grace about the
appointments which did credit to his taste. The
rugs were old, and of the true faded beauty; the
etchings, nearly all of them proofs printed by the
195


The Three Impostors
artist, made a good show with broad white mar-
gins and black frames, and there was no spurious
black oak. Indeed, there was but little furniture
of any kind: a plain and honest table, square and
sturdy, stood in one corner; a seventeenth-century
settle fronted the hearth; and two wooden elbow-
chairs and a bookshelf of the Empire made up the
equipment, with an exception worthy of note.
For Dyson cared for none of these things; his
place was at his own bureau, a quaint old piece of
lacquered-work, at which he would sit for hour
after hour, with his back to the room, engaged in
the desperate pursuit of literature, or, as he
termed his profession, the chase of the phrase.
The neat array of pigeon-holes and drawers
teemed and overflowed with manuscripts and
notebooks, the experiments and efforts of many
years; and the inner well, a vast and cavernous
receptacle, was stuffed with accumulated ideas.
Dyson was -a craftman who loved all the detail
and the technique of his work intensely; and if,
as has been hinted, he deluded himself a little
with the name of artist, yet his amusements were
eminently harmless, and, so far as can be ascer-
tained, he (or the publishers) "had chosen the
good part of not tiring the world with printed
matter.
Here, then, Dyson would shut himself up with
his fancies, experimenting with words, and striv-
196


The Three Impostors
ing, as his friend the recluse of Bayswater strove,
with the almost invincible problem of style, but
always with a fine confidence, extremely different
from the chronic depression df the realist. He
had been almost continuously at work on some
scheme that struck him as well-nigh magical in its
possibilities since the night of his adventure with
the ingenious tenant of the first floor in Abingdon
Grove; and as he laid down the pen with a glow
of triumph, he reflected that he had not viewed
the streets for five days in succession. With all
the enthusiasm of his accomplished labour still
working in his brain, he put away his papers and
went out, pacing the pavement at first in that rare
mood of exultation which finds in every stone up-
on the way the possibilities of a masterpiece. It
was growing late, and the autumn evening was
drawing to a close amidst veils of haze and mist,
and in the stilled air the voices, and the roaring
traffic, and incessant feet seemed to Dyson like
the noise upon the stage when all the house is
silent. In the square the leaves rippled down as
quick as summer rain, and the street beyond was
beginning to flare with the lights in the butchers'
shops and the vivid illumination of the green-
grocer. It was a Saturday night, and the swarm-
ing populations of the slums were turning out in
force; the battered women in rusty black had be-
gun to paw the lumps of cagmag, and others
197


The Three Impostors
gloated over unwholesome cabbages, and there
was a brisk demand for four ale. Dyson passed
through these night-fires with some relief; he
loved to meditate, but his thoughts were not as
De Quincey's after his dose; he cared not two
straws whether onions were dear or cheap, and
would not have exulted if meat had fallen to two-
pence a pound. Absorbed in the wilderness of
the tale he had been writing, weighing nicely the
points of plot and construction, relishing the recol-
lection of this and that happy phrase, and
dreading failure here and there, he left the rush
and whistle of the gas-flares behind him, and be-
gan to touch upon pavements more deserted.
He had turned, without taking note, to the
northward, and was passing through an ancient
fallen street, where now notices of floors and of-
fices to let hung out, but still about it lingered the
grace and the stiffness of the Age of Wigs—a
broad roadway, a broad pavement, and on each
side a grave line of houses with long and narrow
windows flush with the walls, all of mellowed
brick-work. Dyson walked with quick steps, as
he resolved that short work must be made of a
certain episode; but he was in that happy humour
of invention, and another chapter rose in the in-
ner chamber of his brain, and he dwelt on the cir-
cumstances he was to write down with curious
pleasure. It was charming to have the quiej
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The Three Impostors
streets to walk in, and in his thought he made a
whole district the cabinet of his studies, and vowed
he would come again. Heedless of his course,
he struck off to the east again, and soon found
himself involved in a squalid network of grey two-
storied houses, and then in the waste void and
elements of brick-work, the passages and unmade
roads behind great factory walls, encumbered
with the refuse of the neighbourhood, forlorn,
ill-lighted, and desperate. A brief turn, and
there rose before him the unexpected, a hill sud-
denly lifted from the level ground, its steep as-
cent marked by the lighted lamps, and eager as
an explorer, Dyson found his way to the place,
wondering where his crooked paths had brought
him. Here all was again decorous, but hideous
in the extreme. The builder, some one lost in
the deep gloom of the early 'twenties, had con-
ceived the idea of twin villas in grey brick, shaped
in a manner to recall the outlines of the Parthe-
non, each with its classic form broadly marked
with raised bands of stucco. The name of the
street was all strange, and for a further surprise
the top of the hill was crowned with an irregular
plot of grass and fading trees, called a square,
and here again the Parthenon-motive had per-
sisted. Beyond, the streets were curious, wild in
their irregularities, here a row of sordid, dingy
dwellings, dirty and disreputable in appearance,
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The Three Impostors
and there, without warning, stood a house, gen-
teel and prim, with wire blinds and brazen
knocker, as clean and trim as if it had been the
doctor's house in some benighted little country
town. These surprises and discoveries began to
exhaust Dyson, and he hailed with delight the
blazing windows of a public-house, and went in
with the intention of testing the beverage pro-
vided for the dwellers in this region, as remote
as Libya and Pamphylia and the parts about
Mesopotamia. The babble of voices from within
warned him that he was about to assist at the
true parliament of the London workman, and he
looked about him for that more retired entrance
called private. When he had settled himself on
an exiguous bench, and had ordered some beer,
he began to listen to the jangling talk in the pub-
lic bar beyond; it was a senseless argument, alter-
nately furious and maudlin, with appeals to Bill
and Tom, and mediasval survivals of speech,
words that Chaucer wrote belched out with zeal
and relish, and the din of pots jerked down and
coppers rapped smartly -on the zinc counter
made a thorough bass for it all. Dyson was
calmly smoking his pipe between the sips of beer,
when an indefinite-looking figure slid rather than
walked into the compartment. The man started
violently when he saw Dyson placidly sitting in
the corner, and glanced keenly about him. He
-
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The Three Impostors
'Mr. Davies! For God's sake, have pity on
me, Mr. Davies! On my oath, I say 'and
his voice sank to silence as he heard the message,
and strove in vain to bite his lips, and summon
up to his aid some tinge of manhood. He stood
there a moment, wavering as the leaves of an
aspen, and then he was gone out into the street,
as Dyson thought silently, with his doom upon
his head. He had not been gone a minute when
it suddenly flashed into Dyson's mind that he
knew the man; it was undoubtedly the young man
with spectacles for whom so many ingenious per-
sons were searching; the spectacles indeed were
missing, but the pale face, the dark whiskers,
and the timid glances were enough to identify
him. Dyson saw at once that by a succession of
hazards he had unawares hit upon the scent of
some desperate conspiracy, wavering as the track
of a loathsome snake in and out of the highways
and byways of the London cosmos; the truth was
instantly pictured before him, and he divined
that all unconscious and unheeding he had been
privileged to see the shadows of hidden forms,
chasing and hurrying, and grasping and vanish-
ing across the bright curtain of common life,
soundless and silent, or only babbling fables and
pretences. For him in an instant the jargoning
of voices, the garish splendour, and all the vulgar
tumult of the public-house became part of magic;
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The Three Impostors
for here before his eyes a scene in this grim
mystery play had been enacted, and he had seen
human flesh grow cold with a palsy of fear; the
very hell of cowardice and terror had gaped wide
within an arm's-breadth. In the midst of these
reflections the barman came up and stared at him
as if to hint that he had exhausted his right to
take his ease, and Dyson bought another lease of
the seat by an order for more beer. As he pon-
dered the brief glimpse of tragedy, he recollected
that with his first start of haunted fear the young
man with whiskers had drawn his hand swiftly
from his greatcoat pocket, and that he had heard
something fall to the ground; and pretending to
have dropped his pipe, Dyson began to grope in
the corner, searching with his fingers. He
touched something and drew it gently to him,
and with one brief glance, as he put it quietly in
his pocket, he saw it was a little old-fashioned
notebook, bound in faded green morocco.
He drank down his beer at a gulp, and left the
place, overjoyed at his fortunate discovery, and
busy with conjecture as to the possible importance
of the find. By turns he dreaded to find perhaps
mere blank leaves, or the laboured follies of a
betting-book, but the faded morocco cover seemed
to promise better things, and to hint at mysteries.
He piloted himself with no little difficulty out of
the sour and squalid quarter he had entered with
203


The Three Impostors
a light heart, and emerging at Gray's Inn Road,
struck off down Guilford Street and hastened
home, only anxious for a lighted candle and soli-
tude.
Dyson sat down at his bureau, and placed the
little book before him; it was an effort to open
the leaves and dare disappointment. But in des-
peration at last he laid his fingers between the
pages at haphazard, and rejoiced to see a com-
pact range of writing with a margin, and as it
chanced, three words caught his glance and stood
out apart from the mass. Dyson read—
'the Gold Tiberius'
and his face flushed with fortune and the lust of
the hunter.
He turned at once to the first leaf of the
pocket-book, and proceeded to read with rapt
interest the
HISTORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH
SPECTACLES
From the filthy and obscure lodging, situated,
I verily believe, in one of the foulest slums of
Clerkenwell, I indite this history of a life which,
daily threatened, cannot last very much longer.
Every day—nay, every hour, I know too well
my enemies are drawing their nets closer about
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The Three Impostors
me; even now I am condemned to be a close pris-
oner in my squalid room, and I know that when
I go out I shall go to my destruction. This his-
tory, if it chance to fall into good hands, may,
perhaps, be of service in warning young men of
the dangers and pitfalls that most surely must
accompany any deviation from the ways of rec-
titude.
My name is Joseph Walters. When I came
of age I found myself in possession of a small
but sufficient income, and I determined that I
would devote my life to scholarship. I do not
mean the scholarship of these days; I had no in-
tention of associating myself with men whose
lives are spent in the unspeakably degrading oc-
ciipation of 'editing' classics, befouling the fair
margins of the fairest books with idle and super-
fluous annotation, and doing their utmost to give
a lasting disgust of all that is beautiful. An ab-
bey church turned to the base use of a stable or
bakehouse is a sorry sight; but more pitiable still
is a masterpiece spluttered over with the com-
mentator's pen, and his hideous mark 'cf.'
For my part, I chose the glorious career of
scholar in its ancient sense; I longed to possess
encyclopaedic learning, to grow old amongst
books, to distil day by day, and year after year,
the inmost sweetness of all worthy writings. I
was not rich enough to collect a library, and I was
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The Three Impostors
therefore forced to betake myself to the reading-
room of the British Museum.
O dim, far-lifted, and mighty dome, Mecca of
many minds, mausoleum of many hopes, sad house
where all desires fail! For there men enter in
with hearts uplifted, and dreaming minds, seeing
in those exalted stairs a ladder to fame, in that
pompous portico the gate of knowledge, and go-
ing in, find but vain vanity, and all but in vain.
There, when the long streets are ringing, is
silence, there eternal twilight, and the odour of
heaviness. But there the blood flows thin and
cold, and the brain burns adust; there is the hunt
of shadows, and the chase of embattled phan-
toms; a striving against ghosts, and a war that
has no victory. O dome, tomb of the quick!
surely in thy galleries, where no reverberant
voice can call, sighs whisper ever, and mutterings
of dead hopes; and there men's souls mount like
moths towards the flame, and fall scorched and
blackened beneath thee, O dim, far-lifted, and
mighty dome!
Bitterly do I now regret the day when I took
my place at a desk for the first time, and began
my studies. I had not been an habitue of the
place for many months, when I became ac-
quainted with a serene and benevolent gentleman,
a man somewhat past middle age, who nearly al-
ways occupied a desk next to mine. In the read-
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The Three Impostors
ing-room it takes little to make an acquaintance
—a casual offer of assistance, a hint as to the
search in the catalogue, and the ordinary polite-
ness of men who constantly sit near each other;
it was thus I came to know the man calling him-
self Dr. Lipsius. By degrees I grew to look for
his presence, and to miss him when he was away,
as was sometimes the case, and so a friendship
sprang up between us. His immense range of
learning was placed freely at my service; he
would often astonish me by the way in which he
would sketch out in a few minutes the biblio-
graphy of a given subject, and before long I had
confided to him my ambitions.
'Ah,' he said, 'you should have been a-German.
I was like that myself when I was a boy. It is
a wonderful resolve, an infinite career. I will
know all things; yes, it is a device indeed. But
it means this—a life of labour without end, and a
desire unsatisfied at last. The scholar has to die,
and die saying, "I know very little !"'
Gradually, by speeches such as these, Lipsius
seduced me: he would praise the career, and at
the same time hint that it was as hopeless as the
search for the philosopher's stone, and so by art-
ful suggestions, insinuated with infinite address,
he by degrees succeeded in undermining all my
principles. 'After all,' he used to say, 'the great-
est of all sciences, the key to all knowledge, is the
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The Three Impostors
science and art of pleasure. Rabelais was per-
haps the greatest of all the encyclopaedic scholars;
and he, as you know, wrote' the most remarkable
book that has ever been written. And what does
he teach men in this book? Surely the joy of liv-
ing. I need not remind you of the words, sup-
pressed in most of the editions, the key of all the
Rabelaisian mythology, of all the enigmas of his
grand philosophy, Vivez joyeux. There you
have all his learning; his work is the institutes
of pleasure as the fine art; the finest art there is;
the art of all arts. Rabelais had all science, but
he had all life too. And we have gone a long
way since his time. You are enlightened, I think;
you do not consider all the petty rules and by-
laws that a corrupt society has made for its own
selfish convenience as the immutable decrees of
the Eternal.'
Such were the doctrines that he preached;
and it was by such insidious arguments, line upon
line, here a little and there a little, that he at last
succeeded in making me a man at war with the
whole social system. I used to long for some
opportunity to break the chains and to live a free
life, to be my own rule and measure. I viewed
existence with the eyes of a pagan, and Lipsius
understood to perfection the art of stimulating
the natural inclinations of a young man hitherto
a hermit. As I gazed up at the great dome I
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The Three Impostors
saw it flushed with the flames and colours of a
world of enticement unknown to me, my imag-
ination played me a thousand wanton tricks, and
the forbidden drew me as surely as a loadstone
draws on iron. At last my resolution was taken,
and I boldly asked Lipsius to be my guide.
He told me to leave the "Museum at my usual
hour, haft-past four, to walk slowly along the
northern pavement of Great Russell Street, and
to wait at the corner of the street till I was ad-
dressed, and then to obey in all things the instruc-
tions of the person who came up to me. I carried
out these directions, and stood at the corner look-
ing about me anxiously, my heart beating fast,
and my breath coming in gasps. I waited there
for some time, and had begun to fear I had been
made the object of a joke, when I suddenly be-
came conscious of a gentleman who was looking
at me with evident amusement from the opposite
pavement of Tottenham Court Road. He came
over, and raising his hat, politely begged me to
follow him, and I did so without a word, wonder-
ing where we were going, and what was to hap-
pen. I was taken to a house of quiet and respec-
table aspect in a street lying to the north of Ox-
ford Street, and my guide rang the bell. A ser-
vant showed us into a large room, quietly fur-
nished, on the ground floor. We sat there in si-
lence for some time, and I noticed that the furni-
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The Three Impostors
ture, though unpretending, was extremely valu-
able. There were large oak presses, two book-
cases of extreme elegance, and in one corner a
carved chest which must have been mediaeval.
Presently Dr. Lipsius came in and welcomed me
with his usual manner, and after some desultory
conversation my guide left the room. Then an
elderly man dropped in and began talking to Lip-
sius, and from their conversation I understood
that my friend was a dealer in antiques; they
spoke of the Hittite seal, and of the prospects of
further discoveries, and later, when two or three
more persons joined us, there was an argument as
to the possibility of a systematic exploration of
the pre-Celtic monuments in England. I was, in
fact, present at an archaeological reception of an
informal kind; and at nine o'clock, when the anti-
quaries were gone, I stared at Lipsius in a man-
ner that showed I was puzzled, and sought an ex-
planation.
'Now,' he said, 'we will go upstairs.'
As we passed up the stairs, Lipsius lighting the
way with a hand-lamp, I heard the sound of a
jarring lock and bolts and bars shot on at the
front door. My guide drew back a baize door
and we went down a passage, and I began to hear
odd sounds, a noise of curious mirth; then he
pushed me through a second door, and my initia-
tion began. I cannot write down what I wit-
2IO


The Three Impostors
nessed that night; I cannot bear to recall what
went on in those secret rooms fast shuttered and
curtained so that no light should escape into the
quiet street; they gave me red wine to drink, and
a woman told me as I sipped it that it was wine
of the Red Jar that Avallaunius had made. An-
other asked me how I liked the wine of the Fauns,
and I heard a dozen fantastic names, while the
stuff boiled in my veins, and stirred, I think, some-
thing that had slept within me from the moment
I was born. It seemed as if my self-conscious-
ness deserted me; I was no longer a thinking
agent, but at once subject and object; I mingled
in the horrible sport, and watched the mystery of
the Greek groves and founta1ns enacted before
me, saw the reeling dance and heard the music
calling as I sat beside my mate, and yet I was out-
side it all, and viewed my own part an idle spec-
tator. Thus with strange rites they made me
drink the cup, and when I woke up in the morn-
ing I was one of them, and had sworn to be faith-
ful. At first I was shown the enticing side of
things; I was bidden enjoy myself and care for
nothing but pleasure, and Lipsius himself indi-
cated to me as the acutest enjoyment the spectacle
of the terrors of the unfortunate persons who
were from time to time decoyed into the evil
house. But after a time it was pointed out to me
that I must take my share in the work, and so I


The Three Impostors
you know—or rather, how can this correspondent
of yours know—that a coin has been despatched
from Armenia to Mr. Headley? And how is it
possible to fix the period in which Mr. Headley
will take it into his head to come up to town? It
seems to me a lot guesswork.'
'My dear Mr. Walters,' he replied, 'we do not
deal in guesswork here. It would bore you if I
went into all these little details, the cogs and
wheels, if I may say so, which move the machine.
Don't you think it is much more amusing to sit in
front of the house and be astonished than to be
behind the scenes and see the mechanism? Better
tremble at the thunder, believe me, than see the
man rolling the cannon-ball. But, after all, you
needn't bother about the how and why; you have
your share to do. Of course I shall give you full
instructions, but a great deal depends on the way
the thing is carried out. I have often heard very
young men maintain that style is everything in
literature, and I can assure you that the same
maxim holds good in our far more delicate pro-
fession. With us style is absolutely everything,
and that is why we have friends like yourself.'
I went away in some perturbation: he had no
doubt designedly left everything in mystery, and
I did not know what part I should have to play.
Though I had assisted at scenes of hideous rev-
elry, I was not yet dead to all echo of human feel-
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The Three Impostors
ing, and I trembled lest I should receive the order
to be Mr. Headley's executioner.
A week later, it was on the sixteenth of the
month, Dr. Lipsius made me a sign to come into
his room.
'It is for to-night,' he began. 'Please to
attend carefully to what I am going to say, Mr.
Walters, and on peril of your life, for it is a
dangerous matter,—on peril of your life, I say,
follow these instructions to the letter. You un-
derstand? Well, to-night at about half-past
seven, you will stroll quietly up the Hampstead
Road till you come to Vincent Street. Turn
down here and walk along, taking the third turn-
ing to your right, which is Lambert Terrace.
Then follow the terrace, cross the road, and go
along Hertford Street, and so into Lillington
Square. The second turning you will come to in
the square is called Sheen Street; but in reality it
is more a passage between blank walls than a
street. Whatever you do, take care to be at the
corner of this street at eight o'clock precisely.
You will walk along it, and just at the bend where
you lose sight of the square you will find an old
gentleman with white beard and whiskers. He
will in all probability be abusing a cabman for
having brought him to Sheen Street instead of
Chenies Street. You will go up to him quietly
and offer your services; he will tell you where he
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The Three Impostors
observed, and every chance foot-passenger who
gave me a second glance seemed to me an officer
of police. My time was running out, the sky had
darkened, and I hesitated, half resolved to go no
farther, but to abandon Lipsius and his friends
for ever. I had almost determined to take this
course, when the conviction suddenly came to me
that the whole thing was a gigantic joke, a fabri-
cation of rank improbability. Who could have
procured the information about the Armenian
agent? I asked myself. By what means could
Lipsius have known the particular day and the
very train that Mr. Headley was to take? how
engage him to enter one special cab amongst the
dozens waiting at Paddington? I vowed it a
mere Milesian tale, and went forward merrily,
turned down Vincent Street, and threaded out the
route that Lipsius had so carefully impressed up-
on me. The various streets he had named were
all places of silence and an oppressive cheap gen-
tility; it was dark, and I felt alone in the musty
squares and crescents, where people pattered by
at intervals, and the shadows were growing
blacker. I entered Sheen street, and found it as
Lipsius had said, more a passage than a street;
it was a byway, on one side a low wall and neg-
lected gardens, and grim backs of a line of houses,
and on the other a timber-yard. I turned the
corner, and lost sight of the square, and then, to
216


The Three Impostors
my astonishment, I saw the scene of which I had
been told. A hansom cab had come to a stop
beside the pavement, and an old man, carrying
a handbag, was fiercely abusing the cabman, who
sat on his perch the image of bewilderment.
'Yes, but I'm sure you said Sheen Street, and
that's where I brought you,' I heard him saying
as I came up, and the old gentleman boiled in
a fury, and threatened police and suits at law.
The sight gave me a shock, and in an instant I
resolved to go through with it. I strolled on,
and without noticing the cabman, lifted my hat
politely to old Mr. Headley.
"Pardon me, sir,' I said, but is there any dif-
ficulty? I see you are a traveller; perhaps the
cabman has made a mistake. Can I direct you?'
The old fellow turned to me, and I noticed
that he snarled and showed his teeth like an ill-
tempered cur as he spoke.
'This drunken fool has brought me here,' he
said. “I told him to drive to Chenies Street, and
he brings me to this infernal place. I won't pay
him a farthing, and I meant to have given him
a handsome sum. I am going to call for the
police and give him in charge.'
At this threat the cabman seemed to take
alarm; he glanced round, as if to make sure that
no policeman was in sight, and drove off grum-
bling loudly, and Mr. Headley grinned savagely
217


The Three Impostors
with satisfaction at having saved his fare, and
put back one and sixpence into his pocket, the
'handsome sum' the cabman had lost.
'My dear sir,' I said, 'I am afraid this piece of
stupidity has annoyed you a great deal. It is
a long way to Chenies Street, and you will have
some difficulty in finding the place unless you know
London pretty well.'
'I know it very little,' he replied. 'I never
come up except on important business, and I've
never been to Chenies Street in my life.'
'Really? I should be happy to show you the
way. I have been for a stroll, and it will not at
all inconvenience me to take you to your destina-
tion.'
'I want to go to Professor Memys, at Number
15. It's most annoying to me; I'm short-sighted,
and I can never make out the numbers on the
doors.'
'This way if you please,' I said, and we set out.
I did not find Mr. Headley an agreeable man;
indeed, he grumbled the whole way. He in-
formed me of his name, and I took care to say,
'The well-known antiquary?' and thenceforth I
was compelled to listen to the history of his com-
plicated squabbles with publishers, who treated
him, as he said, disgracefully; the man was a
chapter in the Irritability of Authors. He told
me that he had been on the point of making the
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The Three Impostors
fortune of several firms, but had been compelled
to abandon the design owing to their rank ingrati-
tude. Besides these ancient histories of wrong,
and the more recent misadventure of the cabman,
he had another grievous complaint to make. As
he came along in the train, he had been sharpen-
ing a pencil, and the sudden jolt of the engine as
it drew up at a station had driven the penknife
against his face, inflicting a small triangular
wound just on the cheek-bone, which he showed
me. He denounced the railway company, heaped
imprecations on the head of the driver, and talked
of claiming damages. Thus he grumbled all the
way, not noticing in the least where he was going;
and so unamiable did his conduct appear to me,
that I began to enjoy the trick I was playing on
him.
Nevertheless, my heart beat a little faster as
we turned into the street where Lipsius was wait-
ing. A thousand accidents, I thought, might
happen; some chance might bring one of Head-
ley's friends to meet us; perhaps, though he
knew not Chenies Street, he might know the
street where I was taking him; in spite of his
short sight, he might possibly make out the num-
ber, or, in a sudden fit of suspicion, he might
make an inquiry of the policeman at the corner.
Thus every step upon the pavement, as we drew
nearer to the goal, was to me a pang and a ter-
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The Three Impostors
ror, and every approaching passenger carried a
certain threat of danger. I gulped down my
excitement with an effort, and made shift to say
pretty quietly—
'Number 15, I think you said? That is the
third house from this. If you will allow me, I
will leave you now; I have been delayed a little,
and my way lies on the other side of Tottenham
Court Road.'
He snarled out some kind of thanks, and I
turned my back and walked swiftly in the opposite
direction. A minute or two later I looked round
and saw Mr. Headley standing on the doorstep,
and then the door opened and he went in. For
my part, I gave a sigh of relief; I hastened to get
away from the neighbourhood, and endeavoured
to enjoy myself in merry company.
The whole of the next day I kept away from
Lipsius. I felt anxious, but I did not know what
had happened, or what was happening, and a
reasonable regard for my own safety told me
that I should do well to remain quietly at home.
My curiosity, however, to learn the end of the
odd drama in which I had played a part stung me
to the quick, and late in the evening I made up
my mind to see how events had turned out.
Lipsius nodded when I came in, and asked if I
could give him five minutes' talk. We went to
220


The Three Impostors
his room, and he began to walk up and down,
while I sat waiting for him to speak.
'My dear Mr. Walters,' he said at length, 'I
congratulate you warmly; your work was done in
the most thorough and artistic manner. You
will go far. Look.'
He went to his escritoire and pressed a secret
spring; a drawer flew out, and he laid something
on the table. It was a gold coin; I took it up
and examined it eagerly, and read the legend
about the figure of the faun.
‘Victoria,' I said, smiling.
“Yes; it was a great capture, which we owe to
you. I had great difficulty in persuading Mr,
Headley that a little mistake had been made; that
was how I put it. He was very disagreeable,
and indeed ungentlemanly, about it; didn't he
strike you as a very cross old man?'
I held the coin, admiring the choice and rare
design, clear cut as if from the mint; and I
thought the fine gold glowed and burnt like a
lamp.
'And what finally became of Mr. Headley ?' I
said at last.
Lipsius smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
'What on earth does it matter?' he said. "He
might be here, or there, or anywhere; but what
possible consequence could it be? Besides, your
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The Three Impostors
question rather surprises me; you are an intelli-
gent man, Mr. Walters. Just think it over, and
I'm sure you won't repeat the question.'
'My dear sir,' I said, 'I hardly think you are
treating me fairly. You have paid me some
handsome compliments on my share in the cap-
ture, and I naturally wish to know how the matter
ended. From what I saw of Mr. Headley I
should think you must have had some difficulty
with him.'
He gave me no answer for the moment, but
began again to walk up and down the room, ap-
parently absorbed in thought.
'Well,' he said at last, 'I suppose there is some- «
thing in what you say. We are certainly in-
debted to you. I have said that I have a high
opinion of your intelligence, Mr. Walters. Just
look here, will you?'
He opened a door communicating with another
room, and pointed.
There was a great box lying on the floor, a
queer, coffin-shaped thing. I looked at it, and
saw it was a mummy case, like those in the Bri-
tish Museum, vividly painted in the brilliant
Egyptian colours, with I knew not what procla-
mation of dignity or hopes of life immortal.
The mummy swathed about in the robes of death
was lying within, and the face had been uncov-
ered.
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The Three Impostors
'You are going to send this away?' I said, for-
getting the question I had put.
'Yes; I have an order from a local museum.
Look a little more closely, Mr. Walters.'
Puzzled by his manner, I peered into the face,
while he held the lamp. The flesh was black with
the passing of the centuries; but as I looked I
saw upon the right cheek bone a small triangular
scar, and the secret of the mummy flashed upon
me: I was looking at the dead body of the man
whom I had decoyed into that house.
There was no thought or design of action in
my mind. I held the accursed coin in my hand,
burning me with a foretaste of hell, and I fled as
I would have fled from pestilence and death, and
dashed into the street in blind horror, not know-
ing where I went. I felt the gold coin grasped
in my clenched fist, and throwing it away, I knew
not where, I ran on and on through by-streets
and dark ways, till at last I issued out into a
crowded thoroughfare and checked myself.
Then as consciousness returned I realized my in-
stant peril, and undertood what would happen if
I fell into the hands of Lipsius. I knew that I
had put forth my finger to thwart a relentless
mechanism rather than a man. My recent ad-
venture with the unfortunate Mr. Headley had
taught me that Lipsius had agents in all quarters;
and I foresaw that if I fell into his hands, he
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The Three Impostors
would remain true to his doctrine of style, and
cause me to die a death of some horrible and in-
genious torture. I bent my whole mind to the
task of outwitting him and his emissaries, three
of whom I knew to have proved their ability for
tracking down persons who for various reasons
preferred to remain obscure. These servants of
Lipsius were two men and a woman, and the
woman was incomparably the most subtle and the
most deadly. Yet I considered that I too had
some portion of craft, and I took my resolve.
Since then I have matched myself day by day and
hour by hour against the ingenuity of Lipsius and
his myrmidons. For a time I was successful;
though they beat furiously after me in the covert
of London, I remained perdu, and watched with
some amusement their frantic efforts to recover
the scent lost in two or three minutes. Every
lure and wile was put forth to entice me from my
hiding-place; I was informed by the medium of
the public prints that what I had taken had been
recovered, and meetings were proposed in which
I might hope to gain a great deal without the
slightest risk. I laughed at their endeavours,
and began a little to despise the organization I ,
had so dreaded, and ventured more abroad. Not
once or twice, but several times, I recognized the
two men who were charged with my capture, and
I succeeded in eluding them at close quarters; and
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The Three Impostors
a little too hastily I decided that I had nothing to
dread, and that my craft was greater than theirs.
But in the meanwhile, while I congratulated my-
self on my cunning, the third of Lipsius's emis-
saries was weaving her nets; and in an evil hour
I paid a visit to an old friend, a literary man
named Russell, who lived in a quiet street in Bays-
water. The woman, as I found out too late, a
day or two ago occupied rooms in the same house,
and I was followed and tracked down. Too late,
as I have said I recognized that I had made a
fatal mistake, and that I was beseiged. Sooner
or later I shall find myself in the power of an
enemy without pity; and so surely as I leave this
house I shall go to receive doom. I hardly dare
to guess how it will at last fall upon me; my im-
agination, always a vivid one, paints to me appal-
ling pictures of the unspeakable torture which I
shall probably endure; and I know that I shall
die with Lipsius standing near and gloating over
the refinements of my suffering and my shame.
Hours, nay minutes, have become precious to
me. I sometimes pause in the midst of anticipat-
ing my tortures, to wonder whether even now I
cannot hit upon some supreme stroke, some de-
sign of infinite subtlety, to free myself from the
toils. But I find that the faculty of combination
has left me; I am as the scholar in the old myth,
deserted by the power which has helped me
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The Three Impostors
hitherto. I do not know when the supreme mo-
ment will come, but sooner or later it is inevit-
able; before long I shall receive sentence, and
from the sentence to execution will not be long.
I cannot remain here a prisoner any longer. I
shall go out to-night when the streets are full of
crowds and clamours, and make a last effort to
escape.
It was with profound astonishment that Dyson
closed the little book, and thought of the strange
series of incidents which had brought him into
touch with the plots and counterplots connected
with the Gold Tiberius. He had bestowed the
coin carefully away, and he shuddered at the bare
possibility of its place of deposit becoming known
to the evil band who seemed to possess such ex-
traordinary sources of information.
It had grown late while he read, and he put the
pocket-book away, hoping with all his heart that
the unhappy Walters might even at the eleventh
hour escape the doom he dreaded.
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The Three Impostors
distance of the suburban street now filtered down
through the boughs of the trees and shone on the
glowing carpet of fallen leaves, and the pools of
rain glittered and shot back the gleam of light.
Over all the broad pastures there was peace and
the happy rest of autumn before the great winds
begin, and afar off London lay all vague and im-
mense amidst the veiling mist; here and there a
distant window catching the sun and kindling with
fire, and a spire gleaming high, and below the
streets in shadow, and the turmoil of life. Dy-
son and Phillipps walked on in silence beneath
the high hedges, till at a turn of the lane they
saw a mouldering and ancient gate standing open,
and the prospect of a house at the end of a moss-
grown carriage drive.
'There is a survival for you,' said Dyson; 'it
has come to its last days, I imagine. Look how
the laurels have grown gaunt and weedy, and
black and bare beneath; look at the house, cov-
ered with yellow wash, and patched with green
damp. Why, the very notice-board, which in-
forms all and singular that the place is to be let,
has cracked and half fallen.'
'Suppose we go in and see it,' said Phillipps;
'I don't think there is anybody about.'
They turned up the drive, and walked slowly
towards this remnant of old days. It was a
large, straggling house, with curved wings at
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The Three Impostors
either end, and behind a series of irregular roofs
and projections, showing that the place had been
added to at divers dates; the two wings were
roofed in cupola fashion, and at one side, as they
came nearer, they could see a stableyard, and a
clock turret with a bell, and the dark masses of
gloomy cedars. Amidst all the lineaments of dis-
solution there was but one note of contrast: the
sun was setting beyond the elm trees; and all the
west and south were in flames; on the upper win-
dows of the house the glow shone reflected, and
it seemed as if blood and fire were mingled. Be-
fore the yellow front of the mansion, stained, as
Dyson had remarked, with gangrenous patches,
green and blackening, stretched what had once
been, no doubt, a well-kept lawn, but it was now
rough and ragged, and nettles and great docks,
and all manner of coarse weeds, struggled in the
places of the flower-beds. The urns had fallen
from their pillars beside the walk, and lay broken
in shards upon the ground, and everywhere from
grass-plot and path a fungoid growth had sprung
up and multiplied, and lay dank and slimy like a
festering sore upon the earth. In the middle of
the rank grass of the lawn was a desolate foun-
tain; the rim of the basin was crumbling and pul-
verized with decay, and within the water stood
stagnant, with green scum for the lilies that had
once bloomed there; rust had eaten into the
229


The Three Impostors
bronze flesh of the Triton that stood in the
middle, and the conch-shell he held was broken.
'Here,' said Dyson, 'one might moralize over
decay and death. Here all the stage is decked
out with the symbols of dissolution; the cedarn
gloom and twilight hang heavy around us, and
everywhere within the pale dankness has found
a harbour, and the very air is changed and
brought to accord with the scene. To me, I con-
fess, this deserted house is as moral as a grave-
yard, and I find something sublime in that lonely
Triton, deserted in the midst of his water-pool.
He is the last of the gods; they have left him,
and he remembers the sound of water falling on
water, and the days that were sweet.'
'I like your reflections extremely,' said Phil-
lipps; 'but I may mention that the door of the
house is open.'
'Let us go in, then.'
The door was just ajar, and they passed into
the mouldy hall and looked in at a room on one
side. It was a large room, going far back, and
the rich, old, red flock paper was peeling from
the walls in long strips, and blackened with vague
patches of rising damp; the ancient clay, the dank
reeking earth rising up again, and subduing all
the work of men's hands after the conquest of
many years. The floor was thick with the dust
of decay, and the painted ceiling fading from all
230


The Three Impostors
gay colours and light fancies of cupids in a career,
and disfigured with sores of dampness, seemed
transmuted into other work. No longer the am-
orini chased one another pleasantly, with limbs
that sought not to advance, and hands that
merely simulated the act of grasping at the
wreathed flowers; but it appeared some savage
burlesque of the old careless world and of its
cherished conventions, and the dance of the
Loves had become a Dance of Death; black pus-
tules and festering sores swelled and clustered
on fair limbs and smiling faces showed corrup-
tion, and the fairy blood had boiled with the
germs of foul disease; it was a parable of the
leaven working, and worms devouring for a ban-
quet the heart of the rose.
Strangely, under the painted ceiling, against
the decaying walls, two old chairs still stood alone,
the sole furniture of the empty place. High-
backed, with curving arms and twisted legs, cov-
ered with faded gold leaf, and upholstered in tat-
tered damask, they too were a part of the sym-
bolism, and struck Dyson with surprise. 'What
have we here?' he said. 'Who has sat in these
chairs? Who, clad in peach-bloom satin, with
lace ruffles and diamond buckles, all golden, a
conte fleurettes to his companion? Phillipps, we
are in another age. I wish I had some snuff to
offer you, but failing that I beg to offer you a seat,
231


The Three Impostors
and we will sit and smoke tobacco. A horrid
practice, but I am no pedant.'
They sat down on the queer old chairs, and
looked out of the dim and grimy panes to the
ruined lawn, and the fallen urns, and the deserted
Triton.
Presently Dyson ceased his imitation of eight-
eenth-century airs; he no longer pulled forward
imaginary ruffles, or tapped a ghostly snuff-box.
'It's a foolish fancy,' he said at last; 'but I
keep thinking I hear a noise like some one groan-
ing. Listen; no, I can't hear it now. There it
is again! Did you notice it, Phillipps?'
'No, I can't say I heard anything. But I be-
lieve that old places like this are like shells from
the shore, ever echoing with noises. The old
beams, mouldering piece-meal, yield a little and
groan; and such a house as this I can fancy all
resonant at night with voices, the voices of mat-
ter so slowly and so surely transformed into
other shapes, the voice of the worm that gnaws
at last the very heart of the oak, the voice of
stone grinding on stone, and the voice of the con-
quest of Time.'
They sat still in the old arm-chairs, and grew
graver in the musty ancient air, the air of a hun-
dred years ago.
'I don't like the place,' said Phillipps, after a
long pause. 'To me it seems as if there were a
232


The Three Impostors
cyes.
sickly, unwholesome smell about it, a smell of
something burning.'
'You are right; there is an evil odour here. I
wonder what it is. Hark! Did you hear that?'
A hollow sound, a noise of infinite sadness and
infinite pain, broke in upon the silence, and the
two men looked fearfully at one another, hor-
ror, and the sense of unknown things, glimmer-
ing in their eyes.
'Come,' said Dyson, 'we must see into this,'
and they went into the hall and listened in the
silence.
'Do you know,' said Phillipps, 'it seems absurd,
but I could almost fancy that the smell is that of
burning flesh.
They went up the hollow-sounding stairs, and
the odour became thick and noisome, stifling the
breath, and a vapour, sickening as the smell of
the chamber of death, choked them. A door
was open, and they entered the large upper room,
and clung hard to one another, shuddering at the
sight they saw.
A naked man was lying on the floor, his arms
and legs stretched wide apart, and bound to pegs
that had been hammered into the boards. The
body was torn and mutilated in the most hideous
fashion, scarred with the marks of red-hot irons,
a shameful ruin of the human shape. But upon
the middle of the body a fire of coals was
233


The Red Hand


The Problem of the Fish-
Hooks
*A | AHERE can be no doubt whatever,' said
I Mr. Phillipps, 'that my theory is the
true one; these flints are prehistoric fish-
hooks.'
'I dare say; but you know that in all proba-
bility the things were forged the other day with
a door-key.'
'Stuff!' said Phillipps; 'I have some respect,
Dyson, for your literary abilities, but your knowl-
edge of ethnology is insignificant, or rather non-
existent. These fish-hooks satisfy every test;
they are perfectly genuine.'
'Possibly, but as I said just now, you go to
work at the wrong end. You neglect the oppor-
tunities that confront you and await you, obvious,
at every corner; you positively shrink from the
chance of encountering primitive man in this
whirling and mysterious city, and you pass the
weary hours in your agreeable retirement of Red
Lion Square fumbling with bits of flint, which are,,
as I said, in all probability, rank forgeries.'
237


The Red Hand
'I wish, Phillipps, you would not rationalize
my remarks. If I recollect the phrase correctly,
I hinted that you shrank from the chance of en-
countering primitive man in this whirling and
mysterious city, and I meant exactly what I said.
Who can limit the age of survival? The trog-
lodyte and the lake-dweller, perhaps representa-
tives of yet darker races, may very probably be
lurking in our midst, rubbing shoulders with
frock-coated and finely-draped humanity, raven-
ing like wolves at heart and boiling with the foul
passions of the swamp and the black cave. Now
and then as I walk in Holborn or Fleet Street I
see a face which I pronounce abhorred, and yet
I could not give a reason for the thrill of loath-
ing that stirs within me.'
'My dear Dyson, I refuse to enter myself in
your literary "trying-on" department. I know
that survivals do exist, but all things have a
limit, and your speculations are absurd. You
must catch me your troglodyte before I will
believe in him.'
'I agree to that with all my heart,' said Dyson,
chuckling at the ease with which he had succeeded
in 'drawing' Phillips. 'Nothing could be better.
It's a fine night for a walk,' he added, taking up
his hat.
'What nonsense you are talking, Dyson!' said
239


The Red Hand
thoroughfare running east and west, and now the
quarter seemed all amorphous, without character;
here a decent house with sufficient garden, here
a faded square, and here factories surrounded by
high, blank walls, with blind passages and dark
corners; but all ill-lighted and unfrequented and
heavy with silence.
Presently, as they paced down a forlorn street
of two-story houses, Dyson caught sight of a dark
and obscure turning.
'I like the look of th at,' he said; 'it seems to
me promising. There was a street lamp at the
entrance, and another, a mere glimmer, at the
further end. Beneath the lamp, on the pave-
ment, an artist had evidently established his
academy in the daytime, for the stones were all a
blur of crude colours rubbed into each other, and
a few broken fragments of chalk lay in a little
heap beneath the wall.
'You see people do occasionally pass this way,'
said Dyson, pointing to the ruins of the screever's
work. 'I confess I should not have thought it
possible. Come, let us explore.'
On one side of this by-way of communication
was a great timber-yard, with vague piles of
wood looming shapeless above the enclosing wall;
and on the other side of the road a wall still
higher seemed to enclose a garden, for there
were shadows like trees, and a faint murmur of
241


The Three Impostors
was
rustling leaves broke the silence. It was a
moonless night, and clouds that had gathered
after sunset had blackened, and midway be-
tween the feeble lamps the passage lay all dark
and formless, and when one stopped and listened,
and the sharp echo of reverberant footsteps
ceased, there came from far away, as from be-
yond the hills, a faint roll of the noise of Lon-
don. Phillipps was bolstering up his courage to
declare that he had had enough of the excursion,
when a loud cry from Dyson broke in upon his
thoughts.
'Stop, stop for Heaven's sake, or you will tread
on it! There! almost under your feet!' Phil-
lipps looked down, and saw a vague shape, dark,
and framed in surrounding darkness, dropped
strangely on the pavement, and then a white cuff
glimmered for a moment as Dyson lit a match,
which went out directly.
'It's a drunken man,' said Phillipps very coolly.
'It's a murdered man,' said Dyson, and he be-
gan to call for police with all his might, and soon
from the distance running footsteps echoed and
grew louder, and cries sounded.
A policeman was the first to come up.
'What's the matter?' he said, as he drew to a
stand, panting. 'Anything amiss here?' for he
had not seen what was on the pavement.
'Look !' said Dyson, speaking out of the gloom.
242


The Red Hand
'Look there! My friend and I came down this
place three minutes ago, and that is what we
found.'
The man flashed his light on the dark shape
and cried out.
'Why, it's murder,' he said; 'there's blood all
about him, and a puddle of it in the gutter there.
He's not dead long, either. Ah! there's the
wound! It's in the neck.'
Dyson bent over what was lying there. He
saw a prosperous gentleman, dressed in smooth,
well-cut clothes. The neat whiskers were begin-
ning to grizzle a little; he might have been forty-
five an hour before; and a handsome gold watch
had half slipped out of his waistcoat pocket. And
there in the flesh of the neck, between chin and
ear, gaped a great wound, clean cut, but all clot-
ted with dry blood, and the white of the cheeks
shone like a lighted lamp above the red.
Dyson turned, and looked curiously about him;
the dead man lay across the path with his head
inclined towards the wall, and the blood from the
wound streamed away across the pavement, and
lay a dark puddle, as the policeman had said, in
the gutter. Two more policemen had come up,
the crowd gathered, humming from all quarters,
and the officers had as much as they could do to
keep the curious at a distance. The three lan-
terns were flashing here and there, searching for
243


The Three Impostors
more evidence, and in the gleam of one of them
Dyson caught sight of an object in the road, to
which he called the attention of the policeman
nearest to him.
'Look, Phillipps,' he said, when the man had
secured it and held it up. “Look, that should
be something in your way!
It was a dark flinty stone, gleaming like ob-
sidian, and shaped to a broad edge something
after the manner of an adze. One end was
rough, and easily grasped in the hand, and the
whole thing was hardly five inches long. The
edge was thick with blood.
'What is that, Phillipps?' said Dyson; and Phil-
lipps looked hard at it.
'It's a primitive flint knife,' he said. “It was
made about ten thousand years ago. One exactly
like this was found near Aubury, in Wiltshire,
and all the authorities gave it that age.'
The policeman stared astonished at such a de-
velopment of the case; and Phillipps himself was
all aghast at his own words. But Mr. Dyson
did not notice him. An inspector who had just
come up and was listening to the outlines of the
case, was holding a lantern to the dead man's
head. Dyson, for his part, was staring with a
white heat of-curiosity at something he saw on
the wall, just above where the man was lying;
there were a few rude marks done in red chalk.
244


The Red Hand
'This is a black business,' said the inspector at
length; 'does anybody know who it is ?'
A man stepped forward from the crowd. 'I
do, governor,' he said, 'he's a big doctor, his
name's Sir Thomas Vivian; I was in the 'orspital
abart six months ago, and he used to come round;
he was a very kind man.'
'Lord,' cried the inspector, 'this is a bad job
indeed. Why, Sir Thomas Vivian goes to the
Royal Family. And there's a watch worth a hun-
dred guineas in his pocket, so it isn't robbery.'
Dyson and Phillipps gave their cards to the
authorities, and moved off, pushing with difficulty
through the crowd that was still gathering,
gathering fast; and the alley that had been lonely
and desolate now swarmed with white staring
faces and hummed with the buzz of rumour and
horror, and rang with the commands of the of-
ficers of police. The two men, once free from
this swarming curiosity, stepped out briskly, but
for twenty minutes neither spoke a word.
‘Phillipps,' said Dyson, as they came into a
small but cheerful street, clean and brightly lit,
‘Phillipps, I owe you an apology. I was wrong
to have spoken as I did to-night. Such infernal
jesting,' he went on, with heat, 'as if there were
no wholesome subjects for a joke. I feel as if I
had raised an evil spirit.'
'For Heaven's sake say nothing more,' said
245


The Three Impostors
Phillipps, choking down horror with visible effort.
'You told the truth to me in my room; the trog-
lodyte, as you said, is still lurking about the
earth, and in these very streets around us, slay-
ing for mere lust of blood.'
'I will come up for a moment,' said Dyson when
they reached Red Lion Square, 'I have some-
thing to ask you. I think there should be noth-
ing hidden between us at all events.'
Phillipps nodded gloomily, and they went up
to the room, where everything hovered indistinct
in the uncertain glimmer of the light from with-
out. When the candle was lighted and the two
men sat facing each other, Dyson spoke.
'Perhaps,' he began, 'you dift not notice me
peering at the wall just above the place where
the head lay. The light from the inspector's lan-
tern was shining full on it, and I saw something
that looked queer to me, and I examined it
closely. I found that some one had drawn in red
chalk a rough outline of a hand—a human hand
—upon the wall. But it was the curious position
of the fingers that struck me; it was like this';
and he took a pencil and a piece of paper and
drew rapidly, and then handed what he had done
to Phillipps. It was a rough sketch of a hand
seen from the back, with the fingers clenched, and
the top of the thumb protruded between the first
246


The Red Hand
and second fingers, and pointed downwards, as if
to something below.
'It was just like that,' said Dyson, as he saw
Phillipps's face grow still whiter. 'The thumb
pointed down as if to the body; it seemed almost
a live hand in ghastly gesture. And just beneath
there was a small mark with the powder of the
chalk lying on it—as if some one had commenced
a stroke and had broken the chalk in his hand.
I saw the bit of chalk lying on the ground. But
what do you make of it?'
'It's a horrible old sign,' said Phillipps—'one
of the most horrible signs connected with the
theory of the evil eye. It is used still in Italy,
but there can be no doubt that it has been known
for ages. It is one of the survivals; you must
look for the origin of it in the black swamp
whence man first came.'
Dyson took up his hat to go.
'I think, jesting apart,' said he, 'that I kept my
promise, and that we were and are hot on the
scent, as I said. It seems as if I had really shown
you primitive man, or his handiwork at all events.'
247


The Three Impostors
Incident of the Letter
BOUT a month after the extraordinary
and mysterious murder of Sir Thomas
Vivian, the well-known and universally
respected specialist in heart disease, Mr. Dyson
called again on his friend Mr. Phillipps, whom he
found, not, as usual, sunk deep in painful study,
but reclining in his easy-chair in an attitude of re-
laxation. He welcomed Dyson with cordiality.
'I am very glad you have come,' he began; 'I
was thinking of looking you up. There is no
longer the shadow of doubt about the matter.'
'You mean the case of Sir Thomas Vivian?'
'Oh, no, not at all. I was referring to the
problem of the fish-hooks. Between ourselves, I
was a little too confident when you were here last,
but since then other facts have turned up; and
only yesterday I had a letter from a distinguished
F. R. S. which quite settles the affair. I have
been thinking what I should tackle next; and I
am inclined to believe that there is a good deal
to be done in the way of so-called undecipherable
inscriptions.'
'Your line of study pleases me,' said Dyson.
'I think it may prove useful. But in the mean-
time, there was surely something extremely mys-

248


The Red Hand ,*y
terious about the case of Sir ThomoS Vivian.'
'Hardly, I think. I allowed myself to be
frightened that night; but there can be no doubt
that the facts are patient of a comparatively com-
monplace explanation.'
'Really! What is your theory then?'
'Well, I imagine that Vivian must have been
mixed up at some period of his life in an adven-
ture of a not very creditable description, and that
he was murdered out of revenge by some Italian
whom he had wronged.'
'Why Italian?'
'Because of the hand, the sign of the mano in
fica. That gesture is now only used by Italians.
So you see that what appeared the most obscure
feature in the case turns out to be illuminant.'
'Yes, quite so. And the flint knife?'
'That is very simple. The man found the thing
in Italy, or possibly stole it from some museum.
Follow the line of least resistance, my dear fellow,
and you will see there is no need to bring up prim-
itive man from his secular grave beneath the hills.'
'There is some justice in what you say,' said
Dyson. 'As I understand you, then, you think
that your Italian, having murdered Vivian, kindly
chalked up that hand as a guide to Scotland
Yard?'
'Why not? Remember a murderer is always
a madman. He may plot and contrive nine-
249


The Three Impostors
tenths of his scheme with the acuteness and the
grasp of a chess-player or a pure mathematician;
but somewhere or other his wits leave him and
he behaves like a fool. Then you must take into
account the insane pride or vanity of the crim-
inal; he likes to leave his mark, as it were, upon
his handiwork.'
'Yes, it is all very ingenious; but have you read
the reports of the inquest?'
'No, not a word. I simply gave my evidence,
left the court, and dismissed the subject from my
mind.'
'Quite so. Then if you don't object I should
like to give you an account of the case. I have
studied it rather deeply, and I confess it inter-
ests me extremely.'
'Very good. But I warn you I have done with
mystery. We are to deal with facts now.'
'Yes, it is fact that I wish to put before you.
And this is fact the first. When the police moved
Sir Thomas Vivian's body they found an open
knife beneath him. It was an ugly-looking thing
such as sailors carry, with a blade that the mere
opening rendered rigid, and there the blade
was all ready, bare and gleaming, but without a
trace of blood on it, and the knife was found to
be quite new; it had never been used. Now, at
the first glance it looks as if your imaginary
Italian were just the man to have such a tool.
250


The Red Hand
But consider a moment. Would he be likely to
buy a new knife expressly to commit murder?
And, secondly, if he had such a knife, why didn^t
he use it, instead of that very odd flint instru-
ment?
'And I want to put this to you. You think the
murderer chalked up the hand after the murder
as a sort of "melodramatic Italian assassin his
mark" touch. Passing over the question as to
whether the real criminal ever does such a thing,
I would point out that, on the medical evidence,
Sir Thomas Vivian hadn't been dead for more
than an hour. That would place the stroke at
about a quarter to ten, and you know it was per-
fectly dark when we went out at 9.30. And that
passage was singularly gloomy and ill-lighted,
and the hand was drawn roughly, it is true, but
correctly and without the bungling of strokes and
the bad shots that are inevitable when one tries
to draw in the dark or with shut eyes. Just try
to draw such a simple figure as a square without
looking at the paper, and then ask me to conceive
that your Italian, with the rope waiting for his
neck, could draw the hand on the wall so firmly
and truly, in the black shadow of that alley. It
is absurd. By consequence, then, the hand was
drawn early in the evening, long before any mur-
der was committed; or else—mark this, Phillipps
—it was drawn by some one to whom darkness
251


The Red Hand
pert to swear that the two were not written by
the same person. I will just read you so much
of Lady Vivian's evidence as bears on this point
of the writing; I have the printed slip with me.
Here you see she says: "I was married to my
late husband seven years ago; I never saw any
letter addressed him in a hand at all resembling
that on the envelope produced, nor have I ever
seen writing like that in the letter before me. I
never saw my late husband using the memoran-
dum book, but I am sure he did write everything
in it; I am certain of that because we stayed last
May at the Hotel du Faisan, Rue Royale, Tours,
the address of which is given in the book; I re-
member his getting the novel 'A Sentinel' about
six weeks ago. Sir Thomas Vivian never liked
to miss the first-nights at the theatres. His
usual hand was perfectly different from that used
in the notebook."
'And now, last of all, we come back to the note
itself. Here it is in facsimile. My possession
of it is due to the kindness of Inspector Cleeve,
who is pleased to be amused at my amateur inquisi-
tiveness. Read it, Phillipps; you tell me you are
interested in obscure inscriptions; here is some-
thing for you to decipher.'
Mr. Phillipps, absorbed in spite of himself in
the strange circumstances Dyson had related, took
the piece of paper, and scrutinized it closely.
253


The Three Impostors
The handwriting was indeed bizarre in the ex-
treme, and, as Dyson had noted, not unlike the
Persian character in its general effect, but it was
perfectly legible.
'Read it aloud,' said Dyson, and Phillipps
obeyed.
'"Hand did not point in vain. The meaning
of the stars is no longer obscure. Strangely
enough, the black heaven vanished, or was stolen
yesterday, but that does not matter in the least, as
I have a celestial globe. Our old orbit remains
unchanged; you have not forgotten the number of
my sign, of will you appoint some other house? I
have been on the other side of the moon, and can
bring something to show you."'
'And what do you make of that?' said Dyson.
'It seems to me mere gibberish,' said Phillipps;
'you suppose it has a meaning?'
'Oh, surely; it was posted three days before the
murder; it was found in the murdered man's
pocket; it is written in a fantastic hand which the
murdered man himself used for his private memo-
randa. There must be purpose under all this, and
to my mind there is something ugly enough hidden
under the circumstances of this case of Sir Thomas
Vivian.'
'But what theory have you formed?'
'Oh, as to theories, I am still in a very early
stage; it is too soon to state conclusions. But I
254


The Red Hand
think I have demolished your Italian. I tell you,
Phillipps, again, the whole thing has an ugly look
to my eyes. I cannot do as you do, and fortify
myself with cast-iron propositions to the effect
that this or that doesn't happen, and never has
happened. You note that the first word in the
letter is "hand." That seems to me, taken with
what we know about the hand on the wall, signifi-
cant enough, and what you yourself told me of the
history and meaning of the symbol, its connection
with a world-old belief and faiths of dim far-off
years, all this speaks of mischief, for me at all
events. No; I stand pretty well to what I said to
you half in joke that night before we went out.
There are sacraments of evil as well as of good
about us, and we live and move to my belief in an
unknown world, a place where there are caves and
shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible
that man may sometimes return on the track of
evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore
is not yet dead.'
'I cannot follow you in all this,' said Phillipps;
'it seems to interest you strangely. What do you
propose to do?'
'My dear Phillipps," replied Dyson, speaking
in a lighter tone, 'I am afraid I shall have to go
down a little in the world. I have a prospect of
visits to the pawnbrokers before me, and the publi-
cans must not be neglected. I must cultivate a
255


The Three Impostors
taste for four ale; shag tobacco I already love and
esteem with all my heart.'
Search for the Vanished
Heaven
FOR many days after the discussion with Phil-
lipps, Mr. Dyson was resolute in the line
of research he had marked out for himself.
A fervent curiosity and an innate liking for the
obscure were great incentives, but especially in this
case of Sir Thomas Vivian's death (for Dyson be-
gan to boggle a little at the word 'murder') there
seemed to him an element that was more than
curious. The sign of the red hand upon the wall,
the tool of flint that had given death, the almost
identity between the handwriting of the note and
the fantastic script reserved religiously, as it ap-
peared, by the doctor for trifling jottings, all these
diverse and variegated threads joined to weave in
his mind a strange and shadowy picture, with
ghastly shapes dominant and deadly, and yet ill-
defined, like the giant figures wavering in an
ancient tapestry. He thought he had a clue to the
meaning of the note, and in his resolute search
for the 'black heaven,' which had vanished, he
beat furiously about the alleys and obscure streets
256


The Red Hand
of central London, making himself a familiar
figure to the pawnbroker, and a frequent guest
at the more squalid pot-houses.
For a long time he was unsuccessful, and he
trembled at the thought that the 'black heaven'
might be hid in the coy retirements of Peckham,
or lurk perchance in distant Willesden, but finally,
improbability, in which he put his trust, came to
the rescue. It was a dark and rainy night, with
something in the unquiet and stirring gusts that
savoured of approaching winter, and Dyson, beat-
ing up a narrow street not far from the Gray's
Inn Road, took shelter in an extremely dirty
'public,' and called for beer, forgetting for the
moment his preoccupations, and only thinking of
the sweep of the wind about the tiles and the hiss-
ing of the rain through the black and troubled
air. At the bar there gathered the usual com-
pany: the frowsy women and the men in shiny
black, those who appeared to mumble secretly to-
gether, others who wrangled in interminable
argument, and a few shy drinkers who stood
apart, each relishing his dose, and the rank and
biting flavour of cheap spirit. Dyson was won-
dering at the enjoyment of it all, when suddenly
there came a sharper accent. The folding-doors
swayed open, and a middle-aged woman staggered
towards the bar, and clutched the pewter rim as
if she stepped a deck in a roaring gale. Dyson
257


The Three Impostors
glanced at her attentively as a pleasing specimen
of her class; she was decently dressed in black,
and carried a black bag of somewhat rusty
leather, and her intoxication was apparent and
far advanced. As she swayed at the bar, it was
evidently all she could do to stand upright, and
the barman, who had looked at her with dis-
favour, shook his head in reply to her thick-voiced
demand for a drink. The woman glared at him,
transformed in a moment to a fury, with blood-
shot eyes, and poured forth a torrent of execra-
tion, a stream of blasphemies and early English
phraseology.
'Get out of this,' said the man; 'shut up and be
off, or I'll send for the police.'
'Police, you ,' bawled the woman, 'I'll
well give you something to fetch the police
for!" and with a rapid dive into her bag she
pulled out some object which she hurled furiously
at the bar-man's head.
The man ducked down, and the missile flew
over his head and smashed a bottle to fragments,
while the woman with a peal of horrible laugh-
ter rushed to the door, and they could hear her
steps pattering fast over the wet stones.
The barman looked ruefully about him.
'Not much good going after her,' he said, 'and
I'm afraid what she's left won't pay for that
bottle of whisky.' He fumbled amongst the
258


The Red Hand
fragments of broken glass, and drew out some-
thing dark, a kind of square stone it seemed, which
he held up.
‘Valuable cur'osity,' he said, “any gent like to
bid?
The habitués had scarcely turned from their
pots and glasses during these exciting incidents;
they gazed a moment, fishily, when the bottle
smashed, and that was all, and the mumble of
the confidential was resumed and the jangle of
the quarrelsome, and the shy and solitary sucked
in their lips and relished again the rank flavour
of the spirit.
Dyson looked quickly at what the barman held
before him.
'Would you mind letting me see it?' he said;
it's a queer-looking thing, isn't it?'
It was a small black tablet, apparently of stone,
about four inches long by two and a half broad,
and as Dyson took it he felt rather than saw that
he touched the secular with his flesh. There was
some kind of carving on the surface, and, most
conspicuous, a sign that made Dyson's heart leap.
'I don't mind taking it,' he said quietly.
'Would two shillings be enough?
'Say half a dollar,' said the man, and the bar-
gain was concluded. Dyson drained his pot of
beer, finding it delicious, and lit his pipe, and went
out deliberately soon after. When he reached
SOI
259


The Three Impostors
his apartment he locked the door, and placed the
tablet on his desk, and then fixed himself in his
chair, as resolute as an army in its trenches before
a beleaguered city. The tablet was full under
the light of the shaded candle, and scrutinizing
it closely, Dyson saw first the sign of the hand
with the thumb protruding between the fingers; it
was cut finely and firmly on the dull black surface
of the stone, and the thumb pointed downward
to what was beneath.
'It is a mere ornament,' said Dyson to himself,
'perhaps symbolical ornament, but surely not an
inscription, or the signs of any words ever
spoken.'
The hand pointed to a series of fantastic fig-
ures, spirals and whorls of the finest, most deli-
cate lines, spaced at intervals over the remaining
surface of the tablet. The marks were as intri-
cate and seemed almost as much as without de-
sign as the pattern of a thumb impressed on a
pane of glass.
'Is it some natural marking?' thought Dyson;
'there have been queer designs, likenesses of beasts
and flowers, in stones with which man's hand had
nothing to do;' and he bent over the stone with a
magnifier, only to be convinced that no hazard of
nature could have delineated those varied laby-
rinths of line. The whorls were different sizes;
some were less than the twelfth of an inch in di-
260


The Red Hand
ameter, and the largest was a little smaller than a
sixpence, and under the glass the regularity and
accuracy of the cutting were evident, and in the
smaller spirals the lines were graduated at inter-
vals of a hundredth of an inch. The whole thing
had a marvellous and fantastic look, and gazing
at the mystic whorls beneath the hand, Dyson be-
came subdued with an impression of vast and far-
off ages, and of a living being that had touched
the stone with enigmas before the hills were
formed, when the hard rocks still boiled with fer-
vent heat.
'The "black heaven" is found again,' he said,
'but the meaning of the stars is likely to be ob-
scure for everlasting so far as I am concerned.'
London stilled without, and a chill breath came
into the room as Dyson sat gazing at the tablet
shining duskily under the candle-light; and at
last, as he closed the desk over the ancient stone,
all his wonder at the case of Sir Thomas Vivian
increased tenfold, and he thought of the well-
dressed prosperous gentleman lying dead mysti-
cally beneath the sign of the hand, and the in-
supportable conviction seized him that between the
death of this fashionable West-end doctor and the
weird spirals of the tablet there were most secret
and unimaginable links.
For days he sat before his desk gazing at the
tablet, unable to resist its loadstone fascination,
261


The Three Impostors
and yet quite helpless, without ever the hope of
solving the symbols so secretly inscribed. At
last, desperate, he called in Mr. Phillipps in con-
sultation, and told in brief the story of the find-
ing the stone.
'Dear me!' said Phillipps, 'this is extremely
curious; you have had a find indeed. Why it
looks to me even more ancient than the Hittite
seal. I confess the character, if it is a character,
is entirely strange to me. These whorls are
really very quaint.'
'Yes, but I want to know what they mean.
You must remember this tablet is the "black
heaven" of the letter found in Sir Thomas
Vivian's pocket; it bears directly on his death.'
'Oh, no, that is nonsense! This is, no doubt,
an extremely ancient tablet, which has been stolen
from some collection. Yes, the hand makes an
odd coincidence, but only a coincidence after all.'
'My dear Phillipps, you are a living example
of the truth of the axiom that extreme scepticism
is mere credulity. But can you decipher the in-
scription?'
'I undertake to decipher anything,' said Phil-
lipps. 'I do not believe in the insoluble. These
characters are curious, but I cannot fancy them
to be inscrutable.'
'Then take the thing away with you and make
what you can of it. It has begun to haunt me;
262


The Red Hand
dents of side streets, perched on a tower of ob-
servation.'
He glanced triumphantly out of the window
across the street to the gate of the British Mu-
seum. Sheltered by the boundary wall of that
agreeable institution, a 'screever,' or artist in
chalks, displayed his brilliant impressions on the
pavement, soliciting the approval and the coppers
of the gay and serious.
'This,' said Dyson, 'is more than delightful!
An artist is provided to my harid.'
The Artist of the Pavement
MR. PHILLIPPS, in spite of all dis-
avowals—in spite of the wall of sense
of whose enclosure and limit he was
wont to make his boast—yet felt in his heart
profoundly curious as to the case of Sir Thomas
Vivian. Though he kept a brave face for his
friend, his reason could not decently resist the
conclusion that Dyson had enunciated, namely,
that the whole affair had a look both ugly and
mysterious. There was the weapon of a van-
ished race that had pierced the great arteries;
the red hand, the symbol of a hideous faith, that
pointed to the slain man; and then the tablet
which Dyson declared he had expected to find,
265


The Red Hand
strong. But what on earth is all this? What
are you looking at?'
'I am on my watch-tower. I assure you that
the time seems short while I contemplate this
agreeable street and the classic grace of the
Museum portico.'
'Your capacity for nonsense is amazing,' re-
plied Phillipps, but have you succeeded in de-
ciphering the tablet? It interests me.'
'I have not paid much attention to the tablet
recently,' said Dyson. 'I believe the spiral char-
acter may wait.'
'Really! And how about the Vivian murder?'
‘Ah, you do take an interest in that case?
Well, after all, we cannot deny that it was a queer
business. But is not "murder” rather a coarse
word? It smacks a little, surely, of the police
poster. Perhaps I am a trifle decadent, but I
cannot help believing in the splendid word;
“sacrifice," for example, is surely far finer than
"murder."!
'I am all in the dark,' said Phillipps. 'I can-
not even imagine by what track you are moving
in this labyrinth.
'I think that before very long the whole matter
will be a good deal clearer for us both, but I
doubt whether you will like hearing the story.'
Dyson lit his pipe afresh and leant back, not
relaxing, however, in his scrutiny of the street.
267


The Three Impostors
After a somewhat lengthy pause, he startled Phil-
lipps by a loud breath of relief as he rose from
the chair by the window and began to pace the
floor.
'It's over for the day,' he said, 'and, after all,
one gets a little tired.'
Phillipps looked with inquiry into the street.
The evening was darkening, and the pile of the
Museum was beginning to loom indistinct before
the lighting of the lamps, but the pavements were
thronged and busy. The artist in chalks across
the way was gathering together his materials, and
blurring all the brilliance of his designs, and a
little lower down there was the clang of shutters
being placed in position. Phillipps could see
nothing to justify Mr. Dyson's sudden abandon-
ment of his attitude of surveillance, and grew a
little irritated by all these thorny enigmas.
'Do you know, Phillipps,' said Dyson, as he
strolled at ease up and down the room, 'I will
tell you how I work. I go upon the theory of
improbability. The theory is unknown to you?
I will explain. Suppose I stand on the steps of
St. Paul's and look out for a blind man lame of
the left leg to pass me, it is evidently highly
improbable that I shall see such a person by wait-
ing for an hour. If I wait two hcHirs the im-
probability is diminished, but is still enormous,
and a watch of a whole day would give little ex-
268


The Three Impostors
he persisted in his survey throughout the day,
and only at dusk, when the shutters were put up
and the 'screever' ruthlessly deleted all his labour
of the day, just before the gas-lamps began to
star the shadows, did he feel at liberty to quit his
post. Day after day this ceaseless glance upon
the street continued, till the landlady grew puz-
zled and aghast at such a profitless pertinacity.
But at last, one evening, when the play of lights
and shadows was scarce beginning, and the clear
cloudless air left all distinct and shining, there
came the moment. A man of middle age, bearded
and bowed, with a touch of grey about the
ears, was strolling slowly along the northern
pavement of Great Russell Street from the east-
ern end. He looked up at the Museum as he
went by, and then glanced involuntarily at the art
of the 'screever,' and at the artist himself, who
sat beside his pictures, hat in hand. The man
with the beard stood still an instant, swaying
slightly to and fro as if in thought, and Dyson
saw his fists shut tight, and his back quivering,
and the one side of his face in view twitched and
grew contorted with the indescribable torment of
approaching epilepsy. Dyson drew a soft hat
from his pocket, and dashed the door open, tak-
ing the stair with a run.
When he reached the street the person he had
seen so agitated had turned about, and, regard-
270


The Red Hand
less of observation, was racing wildly towards
Bloomsbury Square, with his back to his former
course.
Mr. Dyson went up to the artist of the pave-
ment, and gave him some money, observing
quietly, 'You needn't trouble to draw that thing
again. Then he too turned about, and strolled
idly down the street in the opposite direction to
that taken by the fugitive. So the distance be-
tween Dyson and the man with the bowed head
grew steadily greater.
Story of the Treasure
House
T HERE are many reasons why I chose
your rooms for the meeting in prefer-
ence to my own. Chiefly, perhaps, be-
cause I thought the man would be more at his
ease on neutral ground.'
'I confess, Dyson,' said Phillipps, 'that I feel
both impatient and uneasy. You know my stand-
point: hard matter of fact, materialism if you
like, in its crudest form. But there is something
about all this affair of Vivian that makes me a
little restless. And how did you induce the man
to come?'
'He has an exaggerated opinion of my powers.
271


The Red Hand
and rounded hills, certain depths of hanging
wood, and secret valleys bastioned round on every
side that filled me with fancies beyond the bourne
of rational expression, and as I grew older and
began to dip into my father's books, I went by
instinct, like the bee, to all that would nourish
fantasy. Thus, from a course of obsolete and
occult reading, and from listening to certain wild
legends in which the older people still secretly
believe, I grew firmly convinced of the existence of
treasure, the hoard of a race extinct for ages, still
hidden beneath the hills, and my every thought
was directed to the discovery of the golden
heaps that lay, as I fancied, within a few feet
of the green turf. To one spot, in especial, I
was drawn as if by enchantment; it was a tumulus,
the doomed memorial of some forgotten
people, crowning the crest of a vast mountain
range; and I have often lingered there on sum-
mer evenings, sitting on the great block of lime-
stone at the summit, and looking out far over the
yellow sea towards the Devonshire coast. One
day as I dug heedlessly with the ferrule of my
stick at the mosses and lichens which grew rank
over the stone, my eye was caught by what seemed
a pattern beneath the growth of green; there was
a curving line, and marks that did not look al-
together the work of nature. At first I thought
I had bared some rare fossil, and I took out my
273


The Red Hand
the toy for a couple of shillings; the woman of
the house told me it had been lying about for
years; she thought her husband had found it one
day in the brook which ran in front of the cot-
tage; it was a very hot summer, and the stream
was almost dry, and he saw it amongst the stones.
That day I tracked the brook to a well of water
gushing up cold and clear at the head of a lonely
glen in the mountains. That was twenty years
ago, and I only succeeded in deciphering the mys-
terious inscription last August. I must not
trouble you with irrelevant details of my life; it
is enough for me to say that I was forced, like
many another man, to leave my old home and
come to London. Of money I had very little,
and I was glad to find a cheap room in a squalid
street off the Gray's Inn Road. The late Sir
Thomas Vivian, then far poorer and more
wretched than myself, had a garret in the same
house, and before many months we became inti-
mate friends, and I had confided to him the object
of my life. I had at first great difficulty in per-
suading him that I was not giving my days and
my nights to an inquiry altogether hopeless and
chimerical; but when he was convinced he grew
keener than myself, and glowed at the thought
of the riches which were to be the prize of some
ingenuity and patience. I liked the man intensely,
and pitied his case; he had a strong desire to enter
275


The Three Impostors
the medical profession, but he lacked the means
to pay the smallest fees, and indeed he was, not
once or twice, but often reduced to the very verge
of starvation. I freely and solemnly promised
that, under whatever chances, he should share
in my heaped fortune when it came, and this prom-
ise to one who had always been poor, and yet
thirsted for wealth and pleasure in a manner un-
known to me, was the strongest incentive. He
threw himself into the task with eager interest,
and applied a very acute intellect ancj unwearied
patience to the solution of the characters on the
tablet. I, like other ingenious young men, was
curious in the matter of handwriting, and I had
invented or adapted a fantastic script which I
used occasionally, and which took Vivian so
strongly that he was at the pains to imitate it.
It was arranged between us that if we were ever
parted, and had occasion to write on the affair
that was so close to our hearts, this queer hand
of my invention was to be used, and we also con-
trived a semi-cypher for the same purpose.
Meanwhile we exhausted ourselves in efforts to
get at the heart of the mystery, and after a
couple of years had gone by I could see that Viv-
ian began to sicken a little of the adventure,
and one night he told me with some emotion that
he feared both our lives were being passed away
in idle and hopeless endeavor. Not many months
276


The Red Hand
afterwards he was so happy as to receive
a considerable legacy from an aged and
distant relative whose very existence had been al-
most forgotten by him; and with money at the
bank, he became at once a stranger to me. He
had passed his preliminary examination many
years before, and he forthwith decided to enter
at St. Thomas's Hospital, and he told me that
he must look out for a more convenient lodging.
As we said good-bye, I reminded him of the prom-
ise I had given, and solemnly renewed it; but
Vivian laughed with something between pity and
contempt in his voice and expression as he thanked
me. I need not dwell on the long struggle and
misery of my existence, now doubly lonely; I never
wearied or despaired of final success, and every
day saw me at work, the tablet before me, and
only at dusk would I go out and take my daily
walk along Oxford Street, which attracted me I
think by the noise and motion and glitter of
lamps.
This walk grew with me to a habit; every
night, and in all weathers, I crossed the Gray's
Inn Road and struck westward, sometimes choos-
ing a northern track, by the Euston Road and
Tottenham Court Road, sometimes I went by
Holborn, and sometimes by the way of Great
Russell Street. Every night I walked for an hour
to and fro on the northern pavement of Oxford
277


The Three Impostors
Street, and the tale of De Quincey and his name
for the Street, "Stony-hearted step-mother," often
recurred to my memory. Then I would return
to my grimy den and spend hours more in endless
analysis of the riddle before me.
'The answer came to me one night a few
weeks ago; it flashed into my brain in a moment,
and I read the inscription, and saw that after all
I had not wasted my days. "The place of the
treasure house of them that dwell below," were
the first words, I read, and then followed minute
indications of the spot in my own country where
the great works of gold were to be kept for ever.
Such a track was to be followed, such a pitfall
avoided; here the way narrowed almost to a fox's
hole, and there it broadened, and so at last the
chamber would be reached. I determined to lose
no time in verifying my discovery—not that I
doubted at that great moment, but I would not
risk even the smallest chance of disappointing my
old friend Vivian, now a rich and prosperous man.
I took the train for the West, and one night,
with chart in hand, traced out the passage of the
hills, and went so far that I saw the gleam of
gold before me. I would not go on; I resolved
that Vivian must be with me; and I only brought
away a strange knife of flint which lay on the
path, as confirmation of what I had to tell. I
returned to London, and was a good deal vexed
278


The Three Impostors
was walking to and fro, I noticed the blurred pic-
tures of some street artist, and.I picked up a piece
of chalk he had left behind him, not much think-
ing what I was doing. I paced up and down
the passage, wondering a good deal, as you
may imagine, as to what manner of man I was to
meet after so many years of parting, and the
thoughts of the buried time coming thick upon
me, I walked mechanically without raising my
eyes from the ground. I was startled out of my
reverie by an angry voice and a rough inquiry
why I didn't keep to the right side of the pave-
ment, and looking up I found I had confronted a
prosperous and important gentleman, who eyed
my poor appearance with a look of great dislike
and contempt. I knew directly it was my old
comrade, and when I recalled myself to him, he
apologized with some show of regret, and began
to thank me for my kindness, doubtfully, as if he
hesitated to commit himself, and, as I could see,
with the hint of a suspicion as to my sanity. I
would have engaged him at first in reminiscences
of our friendship, but I found Sir Thomas viewed
those days with a good deal of distaste, and re-
plying politely to my remarks, continually edged
in "business matters," as he called them. I
changed my topics, and told him in greater detail
what I have told you. Then I saw his manner
suddenly change; as I pulled out the flint knife
280


The Red Hand
to prove my journey "to the other side of the
moon," as we called it in our jargon, there came
over him a kind of choking eagerness, his fea-
tures were somewhat discomposed, and I thought
I detected a shuddering horror, a clenched res-
olution, and the efforts to keep quiet succeed
one another in a manner that puzzled me.
I had occasion to be a little precise in my
particulars, and it being still light enough,
I remembered the red chalk in my pocket, and
drew the hand on the wall. "Here, you see, is
the hand," I said, as I explained its true mean-
ing, "note where the thumb issues from between
the first and second fingers," and I would have
gone on, and had applied the chalk to the wall to
continue my diagram, when he struck my hand
down, much to my surprise. "No, no," he said,
"I do not want all that. And this place is not
retired enough; let us walk on, and do you ex-
plain everything to me minutely." I complied
readily enough, and he led me away, choosing
the most unfrequented by-ways, while I drove in
the plan of the hidden house word by word.
Once or twice as I raised my eyes I caught Viv-
ian looking strangely about him; he seemed to
give a quick glint up and down, and glance at the
houses; and there was a furtive and anxious air
about him that displeased me. "Let us walk on
to the north," he said at length, "we shall come
281


The Red Hand
fright you would return for the walk down Ox-
ford Street. You did, by way of New Oxford
Street, and I was waiting at the corner.'
'Your conclusions are admirable,' said Mr.
Selby. 'I may tell you that I had my stroll down
Oxford Street the night Sir Thomas Vivian died.
And I think that is all I have to say.'
'Scarcely,' said Dyson. 'How about the treas-
ure?
'I had rather we did not speak of that,' said
Mr. Selby, with a whitening of the skin about
the temples.
‘Oh, nonsense, sir, we are not blackmailers.
Besides, you know you are in our power.'
'Then, as you put it like that, Mr. Dyson, I
must tell you I returned to the place. I went
on a little farther than before.'
The man stopped short; his mouth began to
twitch, his lips moved apart, and he drew in quick
breaths, sobbing.
'Well, well,' said Dyson, 'I dare say you have
done comfortably.' .
'Comfortably,' Selby went on, constraining
himself with an effort, 'yes, so comfortably that
hell burns hot within me for ever. I only
brought one thing away from that awful house
within the hills; it was lying just beyond the spot
where I found the flint knife.'
- 'Why did you not bring more?'
ve
285


The Three Impostors
The whole bodily frame of the wretched man
visibly shrank and wasted; his face grew yellow
as tallow, and the sweat dropped from his brows.
The spectacle was both revolting and terrible,
and when the voice came, it sounded like the his-
sing of a snake.
'Because the keepers are still there, and I saw
them, and because of this,' and he pulled out a
small piece of curious gold-work and held it up.
'There,' he said, 'that is the pain of the Goat.'
Phillipps and Dyson cried out together in hor-
ror at the revolting obscenity of the thing.
'Put it away, man; hide it, for Heaven's sake,
hide it!
'I brought that with me; that is all,' he said.
'You do not wonder that I did not stay long in
a place where those who live are a little higher
than the beasts, and where what you have seen
is surpassed a thousandfold?'
“Take this,' said Dyson, 'I brought it with me
in case it might be useful'; and he drew out the
black tablet, and handed it to the shaking, hor-
rible man.
'And now,' said Dyson, 'Will you go out?'
The two friends sat silent a little while, facing
one another with restless eyes and lips that quiv-
ered.
'I wish to say that I believe him,' said Phillipps.
286


The Red Hand
'My dear Phillipps,' said Dyson as he threw
the windows wide open, 'I do not know that,
after all, my blunders in this queer case were so
very absurd.'
287












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