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CHINESE

PUZZLE
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LIT
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By
MARIAN BOWER
and LEON M.LION





فر
/
دور





THE CHINESE PUZZLE
BY
MARIAN BOWER
AND
LEON M. LION

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1919


(RECAP)
3635
75
:
(Chinese
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. v.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
CHAPTER I
ROGER DE LA HAYE walked slowly out of the open door
and down the steps of a certain club in Piccadilly, and
then pulled up to look at the scene before him. He was
conscious of the stream of human beings who jostled
him—of the men who stepped out of his way—of the
women who lifted their eyes and let their glances tell such
a variety of tales.
Here and there he returned the look, but without receiv-
ing or conveying any individual impression, for his mind
was so taken up with the scene that in one sense was so
familiar, and in another so new.
It was London in mid June; London before the War
was anything more than a possibility half believed in, half
regarded as a guy to frighten the timorous.
In the next house along the street, the window boxes
were filled with pink geraniums, their color bleached from
them by the summer night and the blaze of electricity,
until they wore a transparent, intangible air.
Across the road were the railings of the park, sticking
up as if they were a series of lances, held by hands that
were strong and yet not visible, and beyond them were
clumps of trees, their leaves leaves no longer, but the pat-
tern in a veil of mingled mist and light; after that there
was the undulating stretch of grass, which had lost its
green, and was now neutral-tinted and woolly with the
moisture overlaying it, while everywhere were lights and
again lights, until the farthest row merged themselves in
the dip of the sky, of that British sky, which was soberly
& 9
3


4
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
purple and indigo, and had none of the garish effects of
the Eastern one that Roger had left behind him.
To Roger de la Haye there was nothing ordinary in
these lights, in these atmospheric effects. On the con-
trary, they held for him both the delight of rediscovery
and of contrast.
Every man has a chord in his being that vibrates to one
particular message sent through the perceptions. With
some, it is the sight of a drop of dew on a flower, with
others, the scent of a rose; again the glimmer of moon-
light on water will make the lip of the hardest soldier
twist. Napoleon, it was said, could never see a woman in
white, walking between the trees in a green avenue, with-
out feeling the throb of his remarkably steady pulse.
Women go less by phenomena than by association. The
beauty of even the most glorious sunset is enhanced by
proximity; the memory of a flower is less a thought for
its color than of the hand which offered it. As for Roger,
it was just that homely scent of moist earth that set his
mind rejoicing now.
The smell carried him out of London to the quaint white
house at Zouche de la Haye. It reminded him of all his
boyish excitements, of going out to shoot a rabbit, of the
tramp down the plow, of the misty October days, of the
brown leaves curled up on the spikes of a hedgerow.
Latterly, since he had made up his mind to follow the
same career as his father, and had set himself to under-
stand the little a European may of the Oriental mind, he
had been very rarely at Zouche. But he knew exactly
how things were there. The next day he proposed to go
home. The next evening, if the weather were kind, he
and his mother would walk out of the long French win-
dows across the terrace, down the steps into the garden.
Lady de la Haye loved flowers. There were whole beds
full of roses, red roses with a fragrance that scented a
whole room, new since he was there. But the border
under the Elizabethan brick wall round the bowling-green
was quite unchanged, and at night the clumps of white


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
5
pinks would look like cushions for fairies to lay their
heads on, just as they had done when he was seven
years old and fairies were as real to him as Fido the
retriever.
At this point Roger, coming back to the practical mat-
ters of the moment, began to think of what was immedi-
ately before him. It was something greater which had
caused him to promise to put in an appearance at this
particular dance than the mere desire of a man newly
returned from distant lands for any amusement. Indeed,
so little did the invitation concern him, as an invitation,
that while he recollected the number of the house in
Grosvenor Square, the name of his hostess had slipped
from his mind.
The previous day when he had hurried to see his best
friend, Paul Marketel, Paul, rather to his amusement had
mentioned, with a twist about his strong mouth, that he
was going to display his big person in this particular ball-
room. Roger had started with the idea that he would like
to go because Paul would be there, and then, as events,
especially diplomatic events, have a way of doing, they
took an unexpected turn, and Roger found that there
would be convenience, as well as pleasure, in thus having
an opportunity of seeing Paul, for he wanted to say a
word or two to him on a weighty matter, under the dis-
guise of frivolity.
Roger had returned from Pekin in a leisurely fashion.
He had spent as much time as he pleased at any place
which interested him, and so when he eventually found
himself in London, and reported himself to the Foreign
Office, he learned that China had made one of those spas-
modic moves which give indications from time to time
of what she might be capable, should it ever seem good
to her to modernize herself, in the Western acceptance of
the term.
This particular move was the proposal for a loan for
the purpose of building the nucleus of a Chinese navy.
The British Government was approached, and timorous, as


6
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
usual, about hurting foreign susceptibilities was inclined to
temporize. At this juncture Paul Marketel stepped in. He
offered to take up the loan himself, provided the British
Government would participate to the extent of a benevolent
interest. The proposal was accepted, and it became evi-
dent at once that not only speed was necessary to carry
through the affair, but secrecy as well. The German
Intelligence Service has always been particularly well
served in England, and Wilhelmstrasse immediately got a
hint of what was in the wind. The Far East has always
been a pressing concern of the German diplomatic mind,
its unavowed aim to make the vast Chinese Empire into
an exclusively Teutonic sphere of influence. Therefore
this navy loan was doubly disconcerting. First, because
Germany resented any display whatever of Chinese initia-
tive, and secondly, because Chinese initiative backed by
British support was especially distasteful.
A note was received by the Court of St. James suggest-
ing an international conference, and Paul knew that the
only way to circumvent that move was to oppose it with
the fait accompli of a private loan, privately arranged.
It was at this point that Roger came in. There were
reasons why it was particularly suitable that he should
represent the British Government in the matter. He was
to play that rôle as unobtrusively as possible, and with no
official standing, but the arrangements for meeting and
discussion were left in his hands, and it was his intention
to settle these with Paul in as casual a fashion as possible,
in the interval between one dance and the next.
He crossed the road before St. George's Hospital,
skirting in and out of the buses and traffic congregated
there; and then, as an unwished-for reminder, there came
to him the remembrance of the acrid Chinese smell; of
that evil odor which every Celestial city–Pekin perhaps
less than most-seems to gather up and blow in whiffs,
in and out, between all the holes and corners of the native
houses and their compounds, and then on through those
straight streets of the European Settlement which, with


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
7
their order and regularity, are a perpetual marvel and an
equal irritation to the Chinese.
The Far East came to Roger by inheritance. His father,
Sir Arthur de la Haye, was so pre-eminently the authority
on Celestial matters, that the whole of British diplomacy
in China seemed to hang on his shoulders. England never
lends her representatives one ounce of unnecessary strength.
They have to impress out of their own personality. If
they make bricks without straw when their confrères of
Russia, or Germany, are provided with substantial sheaves,
then they have done no more than their duty; if they fail,
the difficulty of their situation provides no extenuating
circumstance. Another man is sent, and then another,
until one turns up with such a combination of the essen-
tial qualities, that he effects marvels as if they were
commonplaces.
Sir Arthur de la Haye was such a man. The Chinese
not only feared him, but they respected him, and the
respect of a Chinaman means greater things than the
casual Westerner is given to supposing.
He was
friendly to a limited extent with many of the Chinese
officials. One man, Chi Lung, the mandarin and viceroy,
whom the Dowager Empress disgraced twice, and twice
recalled, because no one else was so acceptable to the
Western Powers, made no secret of both friendship and
affection for Sir Arthur de la Haye.
Roger never had any other thought than to follow his
father. The East runs in families. India has its soldiers
who, generation after generation, look to the frontier as
the most inspiriting thing in life. The Chinese tradition is
younger, but it is there, all the same.
Roger recalled these things with a curious sense of tak-
ing stock, as a man does before a life and death operation,
or as a woman does before her baby is born, and later he
was to remember this walk as the circumstance that
marked the ending of the impersonal phase of his manhood.
Men go to their development by various ways. With
some, ambition pushes to the front and dwarfs everything
even


8
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
else, for overweening ambition is a Juggernaut, which only
arrives at its goal by rolling under its car not only senti-
ments but personalities. With other men it is a woman-
and then everything depends on the lady. She either
uplifts him or drags him down. Only one thing is certain.
Love and a woman never leave a man where they found
him. Ambition had so overtopped Roger's development,
that hitherto women had played but a very secondary part
in it. Chi Lung (who had watched over him since his
father's death, displaying an interest and affection that had
something paternal in them) never hesitated to say that
this was the triumph of the Oriental education over the
Western inheritance. The Celestial imagined-or chose to
make himself think—that his teaching had relegated women
in Roger's mind to the position of "honorable baggage," —
the accepted Chinese attitude.
Anyway, fancy-free, Roger turned out of Grosvenor
Place, through the connecting streets and on to the great
square. There the bustle, the lights, the music, the group,
either side of the awning, of those poor souls who gather
to catch what glimpse they may of a feast to which they
will never be bidden, pointed out his destination.
He
pulled up a moment. The name of his hostess floated, hov-
ered, near to his consciousness.
Hip _” he murmured. " Hippeley-" Then he
had it.
Tippley-Smith.”
He walked up the felt-carpeted steps, received the num-
ber for his hat, and began that work of time and difficulty
-getting up the staircase in a crush.
The Tippley-Smiths had but lately arrived, by transla-
tion from Balham, to Grosvenor Square. An only child,
and a successful patent for compressed turpentine, were
responsible for the ascension, and now, since an income in
five figures and judicious effacement could do most things,
when humanity was filling up that measure of vulgarity
which was to receive the purification of self-sacrifice only
a year or two later, they were so far established in Society


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
9
that their guests for the most part looked at the girl,
looked at the house, and forgot the father and mother. It
was a bargain, and all bargains necessarily require one side
to propose terms and the other to accept them.
Roger had just attained to the bend of the staircase,
when he happened to look ahead. Already he had been
greeted by several people who knew him, by more who
made the “I knew your father, I knew your mother” their
medium of introduction. He replied to them genially, and
was not in the least taken in. Without actually formulat-
ing the thought in so many words, he was perfectly aware
that Sir Roger de la Haye, young, rich, and a rising dip-
lomat, was not an acquaintance to be neglected.
But as Roger lifted his eyes he forgot all social possi-
bilities, noble or ignoble. A face arrested him. He looked
again. He was still more interested. He saw a girl, who
had yet something womanish in her finished pose, in the
air of quiet but certain self-possession. The next moment
one of those high head feathers, the fashion of the hour,
got between him and the girl's face. He could only catch
glimpses of a knot of golden hair, of the outline of an
exceedingly white shoulder.
Impatiently Roger waited his turn to make his bow to
his hostess, who stood just without the door of the ball-
room. As impatiently, once within the long room, empty
of furniture save for that row of benches close to the
wall where the chaperons sat, looking for all the world
(as a keen critic of human nature once said) like the vul-
tures watching on the Towers of Silence-he gazed about
for the one face he wished to study.
He found it, and noticed that the girl was accompanied
by an exceedingly well-preserved woman, presumably her
mother. His training, which had taught him that a trifle is
often the surest indication of a wide-sweeping truth, caused
him to remark the expression on that woman's face. It
wore that eager, alert look of one who has not so many
acquaintances that they can afford to let a single friendly
individual go by. “New to London "-he said to himself.


ΙΟ
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
None the less, though the mother and daughter might
be just outside this particular ring—(factions herd, each
in their own flock, as if they were sheep, expecting to be
rounded up by a collie)—Roger knew that they were no
strangers to Society.
The situation interested him less than the girl. He
looked about for someone to introduce him. Several times
he drifted away, more than once he came back to find only
the mother there. At last his perseverance was rewarded,
he found a mutual acquaintance, made his bow, and learned
that this girl, who already intrigued him more than all the
other girls in the room put together, was a certain Miss
Melsham, Miss Naomi Melsham.
“I suppose,” remarked Mrs. Melsham, as Roger lingered
by her while another man claimed Naomi for a waltz,
" that you are tired of hearing that people knew your
father or mother."
Roger looked up with a half-laugh. This was the note
of the evening, and it amused him to see that Mrs. Mel-
sham was quick enough not to strike it, even by implica-
tion, without letting him know that she was aware he
might think it was being played too often.
Roger murmured that he was only too pleased when peo-
ple talked to him of his parents.
“Then,” went on Mrs. Melsham, “you won't mind if I
tell you that long ago my husband knew your father. He
was in Pekin, in the consular service.
He didn't stay
long, out in China. You know the climate there. I have
often heard him talk of Sir Arthur de la Haye. Of
course," and now the eyes looked up quickly, “that was
before I married. My husband left the service and settled
in Nice. We lived there until he died. Then my girl and I
thought we would like to travel. I am afraid to say for
how many years we have been vagabonds. This is the
first time we have been in London for a season.
suddenly borne in on me what a neglectful mother I was.
Naomi has not even been presented."
Roger considered Mrs. Melsham more carefully. With
It was


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
II
her regular features, she might be any age from forty to
fifty. Her complexion was carefully but not blatantly im-
proved. Her hair was dressed with an attention to detail
that nine out of ten Englishwomen forget. To omit her
diamonds would disturb the average British matron to the
point of discomfort: purposeless wisps down the back of
her neck leave her quite complacent.
Roger looked impatiently down the room. The women's
dresses were making shifting, changing combinations of
color, the breeze was coming in from the open window,
and the hum of voices followed it from the balcony, yet, all
at once, he became conscious of a feeling of hurry. It
was as if he had been running hard and was out of breath.
There followed a sharp recoil, a sense of danger. He
looked towards the door. There was an instant when he
meditated leaving then and there.
“Here is my daughter,” quickly remarked Mrs. Mel-
sham at his elbow.
Roger started, he watched Naomi coming down the
room, and his look was so earnest that Mrs. Melsham sup-
pressed a peculiarly fine smile. Bending down, as if to
put straight a fold of her gown, she edged away a pace.
It was Roger, not she, who should receive Naomi from
her last partner.
The girl came up. She looked sharply past Roger to her
mother, and as she did that her face seemed to freeze, to
grow old, with that age which is due, not to the passing of
time, but to experience.
“Our dance, Miss Melsham,” said Roger.
The music had begun, the room was filling anew. Naomi
looked up. Roger understood that she was pleased to
dance with him, and was filled with the marvel of it. There
came to him that sense of wonder which is the first sign
that the door of the heart is about to swing back. He felt
that he had nothing to say, that the small talk, ordinarily
appropriate to such occasions, was not only futile but
ridiculous. There seemed to be great issues in the back of
his consciousness, but when he asked himself what these


12
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
issues might be, a turn of his mind assured him that there
were none there at all.
Naomi and he walked a few steps down the room. He
was just about to put his arm round her waist, when a tall
man came up to him.
“Hullo!” said Roger.
The big man nodded casually, but Roger asked Naomi's
permission and stepped a pace away.
The two men said only a very few words to each other.
Naomi did not intend to listen, and yet she was so inter-
ested she had to look that way.
“Better make it next Saturday,” said Roger ; " I've fixed
up the other."
“Then I'll appear as the unexpected guest," the big man
said.
Capital," Roger returned, as this big man, with bulk
as well as height, and a face which arrested attention by
its air of strength and command, passed along.
It was evident that in some way he was a personage. An
old woman, with three strings of diamonds on a lean neck,
put out her hand and touched his arm with her fan.
Who is he?” asked Naomi, as Roger came back to her.
That's Paul Marketel. Don't you know him?”
Naomi shook her head.
“ Most people know Paul, or know of him," continued
Roger. “He is a great financier."
Where money is there will the grabbing fingers be
gathered together," said Naomi suddenly, sharply.
Roger answered quite seriously. It is perhaps inevitable
that a diplomat who was at once so young and so suc-
cessful should lose his lightness of touch. Only maturity
can take cleverness with a shrug of the shoulders.
"No," Roger demurred, “ Paul isn't that kind. His
honesty is proverbial."
“And yet he is a financier,” insisted Naomi.
“Because he is a financier," corrected Roger. “I once
heard him say that honesty isn't only good policy, it's con-
fidence lent out at compound interest."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
13
Naomi's lips curled disdainfully.
“ It's so easy to be honest on an income of five figures,"
she said.
Roger looked up sharply. He was unpleasantly conscious
of some unexpressed implication. But, since that supposed
disagreeable things, as he would have phrased it, he shut
his mind to the impression. He forgot that if you want
to arrive at the truth-cultivate a memory for trifles. It
is the first article of a diplomat's creed.
Paul was not always rich," he went on—" he has quite
a history-and,” he added, with that everlasting resentment
of the male for a woman who does less than her duty to
the young and defenseless—"a stepmother."
"A stepmother!” Naomi returned. That rather
sounds as if he had suffered at her hands."
“He did," answered Roger briefly.
And
now, when the tables are turned ?” the girl
went on.
“Paul is always kind—but he pleads a previous engage-
ment as often as the dear lady wishes to see him.”
Roger finished the sentence abruptly. He wondered
what had made him so expansive about his friend's
affairs.
“I think,” exclaimed Naomi, breaking in on the misgiv-
ing of the man before her, “that I could bear anything
better than contemptuous generosity. It would force one
to be silent, and suffering for one's sins in silence must be
almost as bad as being asked to kiss the rod with a smile.
She spoke hotly. Her voice vibrated. Afterwards—not
once, but many times afterwards—she recollected what she
had said: how she had defined the penalty of silence and
marked out the torture of it.
As for Roger, the effect on him was immediate but
evanescent.
He perceived that Naomi Melsham was evidently capable
of thinking out certain problems--of facing certain even-
tualities. But again, he had noticed that her touch was
curiously variable. Sometimes she betrayed all the sure-


14
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
ness of participation—sometimes a thing might have been
remote from her—a theory, and the odd part was that it
was just the meaner, less lovely aspects of Life which she
approached as though she had a more complete knowledge
of them.
1


CHAPTER II
we
“You know," protested Roger, as he came out on to the
steps of the Tippley-Smiths' house, “it is ever so early. We
have hardly got halfway through the program and you
promised me another dance at least."
“ Mama thinks must go,
murmured Naomi
vaguely.
We must be going on,” amended Mrs. Melsham. “I
especially promised we would put in an appearance at an
old friend's house."
She spoke both explicitly and with decision. But the
truth was the other engagement was a creation of her own
brain, and her early departure a sudden resolution born of
the events of the evening. Roger was so evidently at-
tracted, he had hovered so persistently round Naomi, that
Mrs. Melsham deemed it wise to take her daughter away
while the impression was both vivid and compelling. Over-
emphasis, she held, especially in attraction, tends to a final
blur.
She came out and stood at the head of the long flight
of white steps, looking down in a leisurely fashion. Naomi
and Roger were behind her, and she saw no reason either
to curtail their leave-taking or to watch it with an openly
observant eye.
A striped awning descended from the door to the pave-
ment, and within that awning was a powerful electric bulb;
therefore, as she moved well forward along the step, her
face was very visible to that fringe of sad humanity still
keeping vigil, one or two deep, on either side of the pave-
ment.
“Please ask a policeman to call a taxi,” she said over
her shoulder.
Roger was a moment before he answered; then he came
15


18
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
He had a feeling of being cut short; it was as if a
shutter had come down and blocked out the sun, so that
what, a moment before, had been a brilliantly lighted
room was now a gloomy dungeon. He went up the steps,
glancing at his watch. It was a little past one now; at the
earliest he could not present himself at the Cleveland Hotel
much before noon next day. The eleven hours between
seemed endless, and then, as he reached the entrance, and
so far recollected himself as to put his hand into his
pocket for the ticket for his coat, Paul Marketel crossed
him on the step.
It was perfectly natural that while Paul Marketel lighted
his cigarette Roger should exchange a word with him.
They did not say a single syllable the whole world might
not have heard. They both of them knew their business
too well to risk as much as a reference to Zouche in such
a situation, but the alien, who had retired to his first posi-
tion on the back fringe of the row, peered between two
shabby shoulders to have a better view.
“ There's two toffs for you if you like," he remarked.
“That's Marketel,” his neighbor informed him in a
grudging voice. “He could buy up half London they say,
could Marketel.”
“I haf seen him before," answered the alien dryly, and
after that as if he had finished something, or accomplished
something, he swung round and walked with an alert step,
quite out of keeping with his ragged appearance, on the
shadowy side of the square, until he came to the first turn-
ing out of it.
As for Mrs. Melsham, she only waited until they were
safely out of the range of observation.
My dear,” she gasped, and she clutched Naomi's arm,
did
you see that man?
“What man?” inquired Naomi indifferently.
“ The man of course who fetched the taxi."
No," answered the girl, and pointedly she turned her
face and looked out of the window. She wanted to be
left alone with her thoughts. She wanted to look out on to
66


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
19
the streets and drink in the mysterious spirit of the night;
to look at silent house after silent house, and to imagine
all the warmth, all the glow of a romance that possibly
was being lived in one if not in all of those high uniform
dwellings. The very street lamps, casting their wedges of
light across the road, had a beauty in her eyes which she
had never seen before. The face of Roger de la Haye
came flashing into her mind, then disappearing and flash-
ing again, just as a revolving lantern turns facet after
facet of brightness on to an expanse of ocean.
Naomi's experience of admiration had been by no means
happy. Until she was nearly seventeen she had lived with
an old aunt, her father's sister, in Lausanne. When this
aunt died, Mrs. Melsham had no alternative but to take
her daughter to live with her. This particular winter she
rented a villa in Nice, and kept Naomi as much as she
could in the background, until to her mingled dismay and
satisfaction she found that there were certain possibilities
of usefulness about a beautiful girl just passing from
childhood to womanhood.
Naomi herself was bewildered. Everything was so ut-
terly unlike the ordered life in Lausanne, then, for she
was naturally quick, and Mrs. Melsham did not think it
worth while to be guarded, she began to understand and
to resent. But the outcome of her first revolt was a bitter
sense of defeat. Mrs. Melsham told her she was both
green and a fool, and openly parodied Naomi's scruples,
for the entertainment of a group of her own best friends.
The girl heard, and sat still, tingling in every vein. It
seemed easier to acquiesce than to resent: besides, resent-
ment was obviously so useless, so she drifted down the
line of least resistance, until, one afternoon, an individual
of nondescript nationality called Hermann Strum, and a
very young Frenchman, who believed, when he entered the
room, that Mrs. Melsham was a much maligned woman,
came to play cards at the Villa.
What followed left an indelible impression on Naomi's
mind. There had been an altercation at cards, and not


20
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
even Mrs. Melsham's aplomb could explain away certain
discrepancies. Hermann Strum saw in the occasion an op-
portunity too good to be lost; he rose indignantly, and
declared that he was out of pocket by at least a thousand
francs.
Mrs. Melsham, shrill for once, denied that there was
anything wrong at all, or if there had been giving her-
self away—it was a matter of a single deal, and therefore
of fifty francs at the most.
But Strum, banging his thick fist on the table (for a
German always must be physically brutal), swore that if
there were any haggling as to the figures, he would settle
the whole question at the bar of local opinion. Or, since
he was not what he himself would call an unreasonable
man, and he said this with a cold sneer -if the cash were
short, he was prepared to recollect that there was a daugh-
ter-a charming daughter.
He got no farther than that; the leer on his face—the
white misery on Naomi's, forced Armand de Rochecorbon's
chivalry.
At first he had been inclined to withdraw, to disassociate
himself ostentatiously, from the whole unsavory atmos-
phere. Now, he pushed himself to the table; he flung his
note case before Strum.
"I am satisfied that the mistake has nothing to do with
Mademoiselle," he declared. There are three thousand
francs there," pointing to the case, you shall have the
other two tomorrow morning.” And, in face of this diver-
sion, Mrs. Melsham-alone equal to the occasion—thanked
the little Frenchman for what she called “ so opportune an
advance"-and spoke airily of repayment.
Hermann Strum disappeared as suddenly as he came.
Since then, Naomi Melsham had never touched quite so
low a depth, but again and again she had since realized
that admiration, in the men she met, lacked the very
quality which, secretly, she most longed for it to
possess.
Now, the one thing her thoughts insisted on was that


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
21
there was no leer in Roger de la Haye's ardent glance, no
reservation in his estimate of her.
Naomi Melsham made up her mind that there should
be this one white flower in her garden of remembrance.
If she and Roger met again a few times, if they danced
together a few times more, he should take his leave believ-
ing the best of her. That was the utmost for which she
hoped.
As for Mrs. Melsham, she contemplated the outline of
Naomi's neck and the round of the well-dressed hair, with
an enigmatical smile. Once she seemed about to speak,
and then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she checked her-
self. What she had to say would not become less unwel-
come if she blurted it out at once. On the other hand,
Naomi might be more amenable if she was given time to
estimate present possibilities and was then confronted with
the sequel to past facts.
Mrs. Melsham waited until the taxi was halfway down
Piccadilly, and then she let down the window. She put
out her head.
“ Drive to the Cleveland Hotel,” she told the man; “ I've
changed my mind. It's too late to go on to Parchester
Terrace tonight."
“ I'll come into your room. I want to speak to you,”
said Mrs. Melsham, as she and her daughter stood on the
narrow top landing of the big hotel.
Naomi held open the door, and her mother entered with-
out taking any notice of the obvious unwillingness, sat
down on the one cane chair with a careful thought to her
dress, removed her gloves and smoothed them out finger
by finger.
“I suppose they only put people's maids as a rule into
such a room as this,” she observed.
“We asked for the cheapest,” Naomi murmured.
“And we have to go without lunch three days a week,
and to pretend we are dining out two more, to live here
at all,” Mrs. Melsham amended.


22
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
6
Naomi sat down on her bed and turned her face away.
She had an inkling of what was coming, and so distasteful
was it, that she put up her hand to extinguish the electric
light. Then she desisted. Mere darkness would never
make her mother hold her tongue.
“I really think, my dear,” Mrs. Melsham began, moving
round to look squarely at Naomi, “that you have made a
conquest-and quite a useful one too. Not before we need
it, but then the Lord does provide,' as your old aunt
would have said."
Naomi sprang up.
This was none the less horrible
because she had expected it. She drew herself up, and
her golden hair caught and held all the light, but there was
something repellent in the hostility of her whole form.
Please understand, Mama,” she began—“ tonight is
not to lead to any of your commercial speculations.”
“My dear Naomi," retorted Mrs. Melsham, for the
mother and daughter were given to very plain speech when
they were by themselves—“there are times when you are
such a fool that I wonder how you came to be my
daughter."
“And I, Mama," flung back Naomi, “wonder if you
know how ashamed you sometimes make me.”
Mrs. Melsham laughed contemptuously; none the less
she looked up warily. She wanted an understudy, not a
critic. There would be months together when Naomi ap-
peared as if she accepted the rôle, and then all at once
she would set herself stonily recalcitrant. Not that Mrs.
Melsham habitually indulged in practices that would bring
her under the social law, but, being one of those people
who desire to live at the rate of a thousand a year on two
hundred, she was driven to expedients. Now, expedients
with a woman usually mean the sale, direct or indirect, of
her charms, as long as she has any to offer--and of
someone else's when her own are things of the past.
“I think,” she went on now," that you had better hear
what I have to say before you mount such a very high
horse of disinterested virtue."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
23
was
66
“What can you have to say?" demanded the girl.
Mrs. Melsham rose and faced her daughter.
"Merely this," she said, “ that if I had not known that
Hermann Strum was dead, I would have sworn that he was
the ragamuffin who fetched that taxi for us."
Hermann Strum!” cried out Naomi. “It's like every-
thing that has happened to me all my life, that he should
reappear tonight."
“I don't suppose,” suggested Mrs. Melsham tranquilly,
that whenever he turned up he'd be particularly wel-
come.
“Mama," said Naomi, with a catch in her voice, “tell
me—what made us think that Hermann Strum
dead?”
“ It was said all over Nice that he had been arrested as
a spy, and you know what happens to spies."
Then it was only a rumor that he was dead?” the
girl asked.
Everyone seemed sure that he was a spy,” Mrs. Mel-
sham went on. “Of course," she continued, blandly ig-
noring inconvenient facts, “had I known his métier, I
should never have had him at the Villa."
Then,” summed up Naomi, “there was no real foun-
dation for what you told me. When you assured me you
knew Hermann Strum was dead-you were merely in-
venting."
“Not at all," retorted Mrs. Melsham, “I was repeating
what people said. Besides, don't you think if he'd been
alive he'd have tracked us down before now to see what
he could get out of us?”
“Yes," said Naomi, amazed as she still was to find that
her mother could make the most damaging admission with
an air of injured tranquillity. “I suppose he would have
come to blackmail.”
My dear," remonstrated Mrs. Melsham, “what a way
to put it! Don't you think your habit of using big words
about small occasions is a mistake? It might give people
a false impression. A little altercation at cards does not


24
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
quite imply that an unprincipled man has the whip-hand
of one."
“A little altercation at cards !” cried back Naomi.
“ You know what Hermann Strum called it. You know
what Armand de Rochecorbon knew it to be. You know
what Hermann Strum demanded as the price of his
silence.”
The girl covered her face with her hands. The humilia-
tion, the pain, the very fear, had left one clear thing
behind, and that was a great longing for the ordered, the
open, in life.
Mrs. Melsham watched the shudder.
You see,” she said—“I was right. You will be wise
if you take the good things which come your way. If the
worst comes to the worst, and it is Hermann Strum, he is
more likely to be reasonable if he sees we have some useful
acquaintances."
Mama,” declared the girl, “ if you say another word,
I'll never see Roger de la Haye again."
“It would be rather like cutting off your nose to spite
your own face,” Mrs. Melsham retorted.
“Understand," said Naomi, “that if Sir Roger does
ome to call, if he does wish to pursue the acquaintance,
you are to get nothing out of him."
Hermann Strum is just the kind of man to be extor-
tionate," Mrs. Melsham murmured.
“I don't care!” the girl cried back. “ Neither Hermann
Strum nor anyone else shall force me to be a cat's-paw
again.”
Mrs. Melsham always knew when she was worsted. She
gave up the argument now, and abruptly said good-night.
The morning, she thought, might bring Naomi to a more
pliable frame of mind.
The girl passed a wretched night. She expected a visit
from Hermann Strum before breakfast, then as the morn-
ing passed she began to wonder how much of the story
Mrs. Melsham had invented. After all, when she came to
examine the statements, her mother merely said that she


26
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
and me.
You are a good sort. I'm a fine girl. But they
say we are on the make. Oh! it's intolerable to be treated
so lightly."
“And why are we treated so lightly, as you call it?”
Mrs. Melsham asked, then answering her own question, she
added, “ Because we are poor.”
“No!” protested Naomi,“ because we are mercenary.”
Mrs. Melsham shrugged her shoulders and let the argu-
ment go by default. She played the charming mother all
through lunch, and breathed more freely when the day
went by and there was no sign of Hermann Strum.
As for Roger the negotiations for the Chinese loan pro-
vided him with a very good excuse for not leaving town,
but he knew that had there been no Chinese pourparlers
he would still have lingered. As it was, this very business
set a term to his stay in London.
It was arranged that certain individuals should meet at
Zouche, and continue their negotiations under the disguise
of a week-end visit. But, as a precaution to insure secrecy,
and the passing of the visitors as mere units in a social
function, one or two friends were to be added to the party.
There, Roger determined, was his opportunity. He
intended Naomi Melsham to be of that party. He knew
he ought to include her mother, but even his prepossession
could not blind him to the fact that his mother and Naomi's
had nothing in common.
Mrs. Melsham played her part
skilfully, for Roger concluded she was rather silly, when,
in truth, she was over-clever.
Love can be strangely blind. One hour of great passion
is worth a procession of dull days, but the outcome of it
is always a conspicuous success or an equally great failure.
There's no middle term with anything that has so nearly
touched the skies.
It was Mrs. Melsham herself who settled the difficulty.
She hinted that the Tippley-Smiths had asked her to help
them through their first country house parties, but that
she was hesitating on Naomi's account.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
27
“My daughter is fastidious,” she said softly. “These
Tippley-Smiths are rather blatantly new.”
Roger sighed with relief, not at the Tippley-Smiths' lack
of generation but because Mrs. Melsham was engaged, and
she, who caught most side winds, probably heard him and
understood.
He went to the telegraph office the moment he left the
hotel. He had already told his mother about Naomi: when
she received his telegram, she would send an invitation at
once.
The invitation to Zouche was perhaps the last thing
Naomi Melsham anticipated. For the first time she allowed
herself really to think of the possibility of enduring rela-
tions. She had been conscious for days of a certain new
warmth about her heart, but she had feared that if not
tomorrow, then the day after, the glow would be extin-
guished. But, above all, she was grateful to Roger de la
Haye. We like supremely the people who show us our
best self, how much more did Naomi feel about the man
who told her twenty times a day, by direct statement as well
as by implication, that he took it for granted she could not
have an unworthy side?
Mrs. Melsham's jubilation, of course, provided the
recoil.
There is sure to be a house party,” she remarked. “I
hope there'll be some 'names' among them. My people
like 'names,' and it will do me good to include my daugh-
ter in the list.”
Included among Mrs. Melsham's various expedients for
adding to her income was what she called a certain amount
of journalism. In reality it meant that she retailed gossip.
At Nice, in the winter, certain people liked to see them-
selves in the “Doings of Our Compatriots"-so, for “con-
siderations”-of varying kinds—Mrs. Melsham supplied
the editor with descriptions of what these dear souls had
on their backs, and at whose parties they were “remarked.”
As a rule she went on to some summer resort and repeated


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
29
“I hope
The girl came very near to being softened by all this
solicitude displayed for her, and then, just when nine
mothers out of ten would have been reticent, Mrs. Mel-
sham's levity overcame her.
“This looks like business," she remarked.
you will remember, my dear, that where a man is con-
cerned, it's pace that pays. Rush him and he'll adore you
-at least, until after the wedding day,-give him time to
think and he'll recollect another woman whose gowns fit
better than yours do.”
Naomi heard. She was in the taxi, her boxes were up
before. She sat back white and cold, until she was out of
sight, and then with a sob she put both her hands over her
face.
“Give me a chance," she whispered, “and I'll play
straight. Dear God!” she went on. “I ask nothing so
much as to play straight."


CHAPTER III
The De la Hayes had been at Zouche for more than two
hundred years.
There is a little ring of country in East Anglia which
has twice received a distinct impression from France. Once,
after the Edict of Nantes, when the Huguenots poured
across the Channel, once when colonies of Royalist exiles
lived in and about the little town of Bury St. Edmunds.
There was a Flemish occupation too, then farther back a
Danish, but it is the Gallic that remains an influencing fac-
tor even to this day.
The De la Hayes were Huguenots. They owed it to
Madame de Maintenon and her proselytizing zeal that they
became English.
A fortunate marriage with the last child of the old
Zouche family brought the house and the surrounding
estate into the hands of the exiles. There they held from
father to son, always prudent, always astute, always care-
ful to keep up the French tradition, until, when Sir Arthur
was a young man, one of the beams in the wide hall chimney
of the old oak and plaster house caught fire, and it was
burnt to the ground.
Sir Arthur immediately set to work to build it up
again, but in a fashion which local opinion decided to be
wonderful queer.” He took for his model that château
on the Loire from which his family sprang. So now the
house consisted of a long white body, with a row of
French windows opening on to a terrace, finished off at
either end with round towers, each topped with a circular
pointed roof. To either end was added a one-storied
wing, and at the opposite side to the terrace was
entrance, led up to by a double flight of steps, protected
by railings of wrought iron, of workmanship fine enough
for le Roi Soleil himself.
an
30


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
31
Hardly a thing had been saved from the old house, so
Sir Arthur brought over his collection of chinoiserie, and
added to it as long as he lived. His was a many-sided
nature. He was a fine musician; he had a considerable
talent for sketching in water colors; his reputation as a
judge of Chinese art was world-wide. It is only medi-
ocrity that must concentrate to exclusion, since it has not
strength enough to be at the same time pre-eminent and
diffuse.
It was not until Zouche was habitable again that Sir
Arthur married Amabelle Meddleton. Lady de la Haye
was many years younger than her husband. She thought
him the cleverest man in the world, and had no hesitation
in saying so. Happily she could worship with a dimple on
her cheek and a twinkle in her eye. Admiration without
a sense of humor is provocative; admiration leavened
with wit is infectious. She became hardly less of a power
than her husband. Her fine touch soothed many an irri-
table diplomatic nerve. It was tacitly understood that cer-
tain people were to be turned over to her just because her
hand was so light. Success never came near to spoiling
her, because she never got over the wonder of it. It is
only when one begins to take the praise of men as one's
due that the world thinks of withholding it.
When Sir Arthur died, Amabelle returned to England.
Hers was not a fashionable grief, so it did not require
distraction. She did not even try to assemble those house
parties which had been one of the brilliant features of Sir
Arthur's rare holidays. Neither he nor his wife had ever
thought themselves obliged to comply with the Pauline
injunction to suffer fools gladly, but their guests had often
been more than so many pleasant men and women come to
eat and sleep and talk from Friday until Tuesday. They
were often diplomats, glad of a friendly discussion on neu-
tral ground.
A wit (cynical, perhaps, because he was not included)
once said that at Zouche the first article of an interna-
tional agreement came into being between two mouthfuls


32
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
of marmalade at breakfast. It was discussed in all its
bearings, as Lady de la Haye called her guests' attention
to her latest rose in the walled-in garden, and finally set-
tled before midnight over a cigar in the Chinese writing-
room.
But all this was in the former times, and Lady de la
Haye had never been more sensible of that gulf fixed be-
tween the old and the new than she was on the day fol-
lowing Roger's return to Zouche. He had been in
London rather more than a week. His mother had
hurried up to greet him on his actual arrival, and as she
waited to see him step out of the boat train at Victoria
(for he had come overland from Marseilles), and caught
a glimpse of his eager face, she told herself with a feeling
of very great gladness that her boy was still her boy. The
hours which followed were peculiarly impressed on
Amabelle de la Haye's mind. The mother and son had
been apart for five years, and manhood ripens and crystal-
lizes between twenty-seven and thirty-three. But though
she had schooled herself to accept it if it were there, there
had been no reservation in his affection towards her. They
talked of most things, of Zouche, of his work, of the East,
even of their prejudices and their likings, but there had
been no mention of a woman as a woman. Lady de la
Haye understood Roger had come back, as he went, heart-
whole.
The next morning she returned to Zouche, expecting
Roger to join her the following day, and instead she re-
ceived a telegram saying he was detained. At first, as she
fluttered the pink sheet, she was so elated that she had
hardly time for her own disappointment.
“The Foreign Office is keeping him," she said half
aloud. “ It shows he's indispensable. When a diplomat
is indispensable, then his career is made.”
All the rest of that day she had barricaded her heart
against any feeling of loneliness with dreams of Roger's
future, of his importance. She wanted no gratification of
the man as an individual, she wished for appreciation as a


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
33
hall mark of competence. Sir Arthur had served his coun-
try selfishly, he had asked for abnegation from his wife
where his official work was concerned, and Amabelle had
learned her lesson well, for she had willingly, and with
outward cheerfulness at least, sent her only child back to
the compelling East, in the first devastation of her widow-
hood.
But when one day lengthened into two, and the days
into a week, Amabelle had the feeling that something was
hanging over her. She studied Roger's letters more for
what they did not say than for what they said. They
were brief, they were noncommittal. “He is holding
something back,” she said. Then following a brief tele-
gram came one which was revealing. Roger begged his
mother to ask the Miss Melsham whom he had mentioned
more than once down to Zouche. She had done what he
asked at once. It was elementary prudence to acquiesce,
and when Roger arrived in person she had only said:
“I have asked this Miss Melsham, and as I didn't think
she'd care to be the only girl in the party, I have wired
for Victoria Cresswell."
Roger nodded, he made no reference to Victoria, but
suddenly he crossed to his mother's side.
“Miss Melsham is the most beautiful woman I have
ever seen," he said simply-he waited a few moments and
then he added, “I hope you'll like her, Mother.”
It was these few words, so bald, so restrained, yet so
full of significance, that had been in Amabelle's mind ever
since she heard them. None the less, she knew a little
more about Naomi Melsham than these words revealed.
All women can make judicious inquiries. Amabelle had
put out feelers, and she had learned at least such outlines
as that Naomi and her mother generally lived on the Con-
tinent, that they were not rich, and, a circumstance which
weighed considerably with her, that the girl's father had
been in the consular service in the East.
She had spent
the morning in a kind of feverish restlessness, and now,
in the early afternoon, when Victoria was expected any


34
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
minute, and Naomi by a train only a very little later, she
was so possessed with suspense, that it was impossible for
her to sit still in the garden or in the house. Old wives
say that when the birth of a man-child who will go far is
imminent, the expectant mother walks from room to room,
and that each peregrination foreshadows the upward inci-
dents of her man-child's career.
Amabelle had been restless in just this way, and, after
all, was it not a birth which was about to be accomplished?
If what she feared-no, surmised; she did not allow her-
self to say feared—was correct, then was not something
that had not been there before, coming into her life?
She paced up and down the big salon, looking at the
familiar objects, with a spot in either cheek. Her hus-
band seemed so near to her.
“If only you had been here to tell me what to do," she
whispered.
She walked towards the window, listening for the first
sound of a coming automobile, and, the better to hear, she
drew aside one of the yellow silk curtains lightly worked
with a flight of soft butterflies. As she stood there, the
fold began to shake, until it seemed as if each butterfly
was on the wing, yet, with that touch of humor which
never deserted her, she said to herself, “Destiny comes in
a Panhard nowadays, the chariot of Fate has lost its
free wheel.”
She had heard the car. It was coming up the drive-
before she had time to get from the window to the fire-
place it would have driven up to the entrance.
Yet the necessity to get to the fireplace presented itself
as such an urgency that she almost ran across the room.
She put out her hand, and grasped hard at the bow-shaped
curve of the black marble mantelpiece.
She looked up at the window, placed above it French
fashion, and her eyes stared through the glass, as if she
must find help and strength on the other side of it.
Sir Arthur had copied this fireplace from a similar ar-
rangement in the old château on the Loire. He had set


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
35
just that jubilant store by it that only a big man can afford
to bestow on a small thing. He had so often drawn atten-
tion to it, that now Amabelle turned to it as the one
thing which pre-eminently reminded her of him.
“The long view—that is the great thing," Sir Arthur
had said to terre à terre neighbors who demurred about
privacy.
Amabelle repeated his words now, and applied them to
herself in quite another connection.
She must think of the long view, she reminded herself
-of the ultimate gain, and not of the present dismay. She
must school herself to fix her eyes on the future-on
Roger's future-not her own.
The day had passed away from her—from her genera-
tion—it was with those coming on. “ Le roi est mort-
vive le roi,” she summed up for herself.
She drew herself up. She was again herself, with that
air of exquisite perfection that neither time nor sorrow
had been able to dim.
She had caught the sound of steps. Littleport had thrown
open the double doors. A guest was entering. Which
guest ?
Amabelle glanced down the long room, and then, with
a sigh of relief, she hurried to meet the newcomer.
You said you wanted me, and so I came at once," began
Victoria Cresswell.
Amabelle nodded, and there was something in the way
in which she drew up to this girl's side which seemed
to intimate that here she knew she was close to a sym-
pathetic personality.
Victoria looked at her hostess critically. She was about
to say that Billy Hirst, the man to whom she had been
engaged for years in a desultory fashion, had found him-
self unable to accompany her, but was assuredly going to
join the party the following day, and then she said
instead :
“Did you want me for anything very special?”
There were people who denied that Victoria Cresswell
66


36
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
had any claims to good looks, but most of them were ready
enough to admit that hers was an unusually interesting
face. Now, even in the midst of her perturbation, Lady de
la Haye was conscious of an over-alert expression in the
gray eyes.
What is passing with Victoria ?” she asked herself.
The next moment she was inclined to take her own mind
to task. “I am so overwrought,” she murmured, "that I
expect everyone else to be abnormal.”
She motioned Victoria to one of the wide divans cov-
ered with a glorious stretch of Eastern embroidery, and
taking the girl's hand she went straight to the point.
“My dear,” she began, “the worst of being an inde-
pendent woman is that one is always driven to depending
on someone else when things go wrong."
“Has something gone wrong?" asked Victoria.
Amabelle considered a moment. She had sent for Vic-
toria, and yet she did not know if she had the right to
discuss Roger's affairs with her. She thought of the very
little that had been said between her and her son, but if
Roger revealed himself as freely to his friends as he had
done to his mother, each member of the house party would
have a suspicion of the trend of circumstances before he
or she had been in his company five minutes.
Therefore, it seemed better, fairer, more loyal, to let the
situation dawn on Victoria.
But if she could not mention Naomi, there were other
developments she felt quite at liberty to reveal.
“ You see,” she began, with a wave of her hand towards
the uncovered window over the mantelshelf.
“Have you opened the Chinese Room?" asked Victoria.
For the first time since my husband's death.”
“ Then it is to be a diplomatic party?”
“ Old Chi Lung is coming," Lady de la Haye went on.
“Your great China friend?”
“My husband's great friend,” Amabelle added, “and
Armand de Rochecorbon--you remember hearing of him?”
“He went out to Pekin to shoot with Roger ? "
>


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
37
“ Yes.
I knew his mother in the old days. He is
Aimée's cousin, you know.”
Victoria nodded.
“ It will be quite like old times.”
'My dear,” remonstrated Lady de la Haye, and her tone
was reproachful—" that's just what it will not be, nothing
ever does come over again precisely as it was.”
“That's the skeleton at the feast for most of us,” sug-
gested Victoria reflectively.
For most of us who are not as young as we once were.
Regret is so middle-aged--that, and finding one's self sup-
planted," amended Lady de la Haye.
She had struck a note which compelled Victoria's atten-
tion. The girl looked up with a question on her face, but
Amabelle would not meet her eyes.
“We are growing quite dreary,” she evaded, with a jerky
manner unusual to her. “ And, I'm forgetting I have not
told you about Miss Melsham yet. You know, my dear,”
Amabelle went on, “I want you with me so often that I
can afford to tell you that in this instance you were espe-
cially asked to balance Miss Melsham.”
“Who is she?” asked Victoria slowly. She was begin-
ning to see that there had been not only a point, but a
special point, in her sudden invitation.
“Miss Melsham is very beautiful, I hear.”
“ Then you have not seen her?”
"No," said Amabelle-"it's—it's Roger who is enthu-
siastic about her.”
" You are asking her on Roger's account-is she an old
acquaintance of Pekin?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Lady de la Haye. “Roger met her
at a ball since he came home. But,” she went on bravely,
" it seems that her father was in the consular service. He
knew my husband when they were both young men. I
don't fancy this girl is well off. You know what struggles
official people have, with practically no private means.”
“I know," said Victoria warmly, “how your heart goes
out to anything connected with the old China days,-and,


38
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
if they are poor in addition, there's no help for it, you
have to befriend them.”
Amabelle laughed almost guiltily. In this instance did
poverty weigh? Did antecedents weigh? Did anything but
Roger's words—“Mother, I hope you will like her"?
But at any rate she had been loyal. She had established
a sympathetic atmosphere for this golden-haired girl, though
not without an inner reservation of which she had given
not the faintest hint.
Victoria sat back, waiting and quiet. She was so little
at ease herself, there was such a tangle in her private
affairs, that, in her turn, she asked herself if she was
imagining a knot here, and then, a high voice broke on
the stillness, and a slip of a girl with her thin shoulder-
blades working her long arms, danced in at the window.
“You, Aimée !” exclaimed Victoria, springing up to meet
her.
The girl laughed joyously.
Yes, I!” she cried out. “Look at me,I'm a betwixt
and between. I've banished schoolbooks, and I haven't
put up my hair yet. I have said good-by to Paris, my
sainted nuns and the convent, and I'm not out yet. I'm
a kind of making the best of both worlds. But," she ran
' I'm coming down to dinner tonight. My first real
party.”
She paused for sheer lack of breath, and slipped down
by Lady de la Haye's side, curling herself up in a kittenish
fashion.
She put up her cheek against Lady de la Haye's sleeve.
It was as soft and as ripe-colored as a peach that had
caught all the warmth from an old wall.
Aimée was never known to be still for ten minutes at
a time. Once Roger offered her a penny for every five
minutes she kept in one position. She worked out one
copper, and then declared that the bargain would be dear
if it were a case of guineas: so now, she had hardly
nestled up to Lady de la Haye's side, than she sprang up
again.
66
on,


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
39
99
“Do you know, I'm excitement all through me," she
began, and she clapped one hand against her chest and the
other against her back.
“Is there any special cause for effervescence ?" Victoria
asked tolerantly.
“I should think there is—ask Auntie."
Victoria looked from the girl to Lady de la Haye. Then
she had not fancied, she had felt the tension in the air.
But she said nothing. If Amabelle wished her to know
things, she would tell her of them. Victoria was very
observant, and observant people, if they are of the nice
kind, make it a rule not to force a confidence. It's only
the inept and the blundering who are forever a-crying,
Tell me! Tell me!”
Yet, just because she would rather have avoided it,
Amabelle de la Haye played to the child's cue.
Where is Roger ? Have you seen him?” she asked.
“I saw him go to the stable yard quite half an hour
ago,” Aimée rattled out. “He was fidgeting about there,
as if no one had ever taken a car out to the station before,
and now,” she added, with a toss of her head and a flash
of her eyes, “ you can both of you guess the rest.”
“I don't know that I can,” answered Amabelle, in a
reluctant voice.
" Auntie," retorted Aimée, “don't be diplomatic and
know nothing. You know, and I know, that Roger him-
self has gone to meet someone, and that someone is the
delectable she.”
“My dear," reproved Amabelle, “what a way to put it!
Moreover, it's never wise to jump to conclusions."
Aimée sighed drolly. “I didn't jump at conclusions,
they jumped at me," she protested. “Has Roger ever
wanted you to ask a girl before? Not just suggested her,
as he'd say, 'Oh, ask Victoria'; or ' Ask Aimée,' if I didn't
live here: but kept on at it, in a 'get-to-the-Equator-by-
the-North-Pole' fashion."
Victoria looked at her hostess. This, then, accounted for
that something suppressed in her dear friend's manner.


40
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Amabelle had the quality of exciting not only friendship,
but warm partisanship. Victoria's first thought, notwith-
standing the everlasting attraction of youth to love, was for
Amabelle's suffering.
“Men are so inconsiderate to their womenkind when they
are in love," she said to herself. “I hope Roger hasn't
hurt her more than necessary."
And then, as she formulated this thought to herself,
there was heard the swift rush of an upcoming motor.
“It's she!” cried out Aimée. “Roger's she!”
Victoria saw Lady de la Haye's face.
“Be quiet, Aimée,” she exclaimed, “and come with
me." She put her arm through the girl's, and pulled her
out of the window, and then, with a very tender look on
her face, she stepped back, and softly drew the silk cur-
tains together.
Amabelle heard Victoria go. She knew exactly why the
girl had withdrawn herself, and yet so critical did the
moment seem to her, that she all but called her back again.
With a quivering lip she suppressed the inclination. Some
women (and a woman only knows how it hurts) are
doomed to face the crisis of life alone. One hopes the
guardian angel hovers very close to them, yet, if it does,
one wonders why the mercy of hearing the flutter of the
white wings is denied to them.
As Amabelle had done before, so she would do again-
it took her but a moment to master her weakness. She
walked into the middle of the room, she drew herself to
her full height, she faced the doors. Her heart was beat-
ing until the throb of it hurt in her throat. She saw those
doors open, she waited it seemed an appreciable time for
someone to pass through, and then she caught her first
glimpse of Naomi Melsham.
To the last day of her life Amabelle remembered the
breathlessness of that moment. The girl entered with a
kind of shy elation, Roger was following her and she
knew it. He was drawn after her, not because her hair
was golden, not because her eyes were blue, not because of


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
41
certain graces, certain charms, but for the reason that went
the deepest down into the heart of humanity, because she
was the complement to his manhood, and he knew it.
Roger had said a good deal about his mother, he had
made it plain how much they had been to each other, and
Naomi knew that when Roger took to himself a wife, his
mother would cease to be the mistress at Zouche and be-
come a guest; therefore the gravity of Lady de la Haye's
greeting amazed her. One does not examine carefully
unless one admits that there is a possibility of acceptance.
“Why should she give me a chance?” Naomi asked
herself quickly.
She had heard of mothers who put the happiness of their
children before their ambition and their purse. It occurred
to her that she might be face to face with such a one.
Insensibly she was softened, for she would always take
the good and leave the bad when an unfettered choice was
offered to her. She put out her hand with an appealing
gesture. She asked mutely for a suspension of judgment,
for, as she would have put it herself, “her chance," she
waited for the introduction with a mist overspreading her
blue eyes.
“Mother, this is Miss Melsham," began Roger in the
triumphant male voice.
“My son has told me a great deal about you," said
Amabelle. “I am very glad to see you."
" It was kind of you to ask me to come," murmured
Naomi.
“And I am very glad you could accept the invitation,”
said Lady de la Haye.
Then the two women looked at each other. The trivial
sentences had just been to gain time on either side. An
examination, an appraisement was bound to follow-and
they both knew that, for good or for evil, their first con-
clusion would color their relationship to each other as
long as not they themselves, but Roger, walked on this
earth.


CHAPTER IV
“If you please, my Lady.”
It was Littleport who spoke, and the old servant's ap-
pearance, just within the double doors, broke in on a
hesitation so momentous, that not only Naomi, but Lady
de la Haye as well, gave a sigh-futtering on the one
hand, relieved on the other—at the postponement of what
they both knew to be a great decision.
Both motors have come back, Sir," said the old man,
turning to Roger.
“ Yes?" returned Roger apprehensively.
Empty, Sir,” went on Littleport, as he looked down
with that fine 'I told you so' smile of the confidential
servant.
They must go to meet all the remaining trains," de-
cided Lady de la Haye.
“That's what I told the men,” Littleport answered. “I
felt sure that his Excellency, being his Excellency, would
have his old little ways.”
Roger and his mother acquiesced, with no more than a
simple assent.
It was Naomi who looked hard at the old man. Her
first impulse had been to inquire as to the identity of this
guest who was so important that two cars were kept run-
ning to look for him: the next moment, it was swept aside
by another question.
The possessive note, the possessive air, were something
new to her. Mrs. Melsham's series of bonnes à tout-faire,
varied by an experiment who called herself “dame à tout
faire," received as small a wage as they would put up with,
and gave a grudging service, sometimes pointed by pertinent
observations, in return. Here was a servant who took
wages, but both gave and received precisely that which no
99
42


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
43
wage could buy. Naomi looked eagerly at the clean-
shaven face and the light, benevolent eyes. Littleport
seemed to furnish the clue to the whole position at Zouche,
and she saw that he was glancing at her, with quite as
questioning a look as she gave him. So, she not only came
into the horizon of Roger and his mother, but into that of
Littleport too. As she thought that, the old servant per-
mitted himself to smile, that delightful smile of a fond
nurse for a child.
“Oh!” breathed Naomi, and if she had obeyed her im-
pulse, she would have hurried up to the old man, and then
from him to Lady de la Haye, since he had done so much
to explain Roger's mother to her.
But it was not her place to advance. She must wait until
she was called. She looked across with an appeal in her
eyes.
Mrs. Melsham once remarked disagreeably, that Naomi
was capable of asking for the mustard with as much en-
treaty in her expression, as if she were begging for a ten
pound note. Mrs. Melsham had complained, not of the
gesture, but about wasting it on anything so unproductive
as table condiments.
Now, the plaintiveness carried over to Lady de la Haye
and arrested her. Amabelle was eminently a just woman,
and it requires some imagination to be that. It is the indi-
viduals who pride themselves on their level dispositions
who perpetrate more cruelties than a Spanish inquisitor.
Roger's mother did not quite realize what had touched the
golden-haired girl, but she was sure of the appeal.
“I like her, I know I shall like her," Amabelle said in
her heart; and even though the words were but framed
interiorly, there was a break in them, so great were the
issues involved in the decision.
In common with most people who have lived a life where
the just estimate of a fellow-creature may make all the
difference, Lady de la Haye was never content merely to
think a thing, she must always act on her reflections.
She walked across to Naomi, she stood before her, and


44
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
since she was a few inches the taller she smiled down on
her. Naomi raised her eyes, and again Roger's mother
translated their expression into words. “The girl cares
for Roger," she told herself. “But there is some doubt
troubling her. Is it that she thinks I shall make things
unpleasant for her?”
The peculiar temptation of one who loves much swept
down on Amabelle de la Haye. Could she kill her son's
new interest? Could she turn Roger from this girl? Not
of course by opposition,-crude denial always breeds
obstinacy,—but by more subtle methods. Naomi had
shown that her armor of assurance, the assurance of youth
and beauty with its man to worship, had its weak joints.
Should she discover where that weakness lay, make sure
if it were merely shyness, or if there were a cause for it,
if, for example, there was a mother not quite up to the
Zouche standard-Roger had been so evasive about Mrs.
Melsham-and then play to undo the girl?
The train of thought flashed point after point into Ama-
belle's mind, it stayed there but time enough to take shape.
“I am a horrid, jealous old woman,” she told herself.
“Haven't I said in my heart that I like the girl?”
She felt that it lay with her to make amends; and then
Roger, seeing perhaps the touch of hesitation, put in a
word.
“Mother," he began, "you know I have talked inter-
minably to Miss Melsham about you and Zouche.”
“But,” carried on Naomi, requiring no further prompt-
ing, “I had heard previously about the chinoiserie Sir
Arthur collected," she bent down and touched a scent
burner of green Canton enamel. “I was prepared for
wonderful things,” she added, “but not for such wonderful
things as these. I am very ignorant about them; will you
teach me something ?”
Lady de la Haye just glanced at Roger—and humor pre-
dominated in her look.
“My son knows my weakness," she said ; " he knows I
like to show my husband's treasures.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
45
“My mother is inexhaustible on the subject," Roger
amplified.
“And so," commented Amabelle inwardly, “ you think to
use that as the key to opening my heart," but aloud she
said, “ Look at this,” and she took a rabbit, carved out of
a single piece of amethyst, off the mantelshelf. “It is the
clou of the collection.”
“Tell Miss Melsham its history," put in Roger boyishly.
“My husband bought it, soon after he first went out to
the East," Lady de la Haye explained. One New Year's
Eve he watched a young mandarin hurrying from street
to street, offering a jewel to every passer-by, for sale.
“The treasure was apparently so valuable that, though
several of his countrymen spoke to this young man with
evident sympathy, none of them could spare the money.
.
“Happily, my husband had caught something of the spirit
of the East. He knew that it is a point of honor with a
high-minded Chinese to pay every penny he owes before
the New Year dawns, and he guessed that it must be a
matter of vital importance which would make this young
man, who was evidently of mandarin rank, peddle his
family possessions in the street.
Sir Arthur went up to him. He offered to buy the
amethyst rabbit, and then he found that the young man
was on the point of fainting from hunger and exhaustion.
“The poor fellow had literally starved himself, hoping to
scrape together a sum which would buy off an extortionate
official who was threatening to foreclose for debt, and to
seize the ground on which the family tombs were built-
and demolish them. The rabbit he had kept until the last
extremity, for it was a family treasure, and the Celestials
set great store on their artistic possessions.
“Sir Arthur then helped this young mandarin to lay his
cause before a powerful protector at Court. The rapacious
official was removed—and the family tombs saved."
“The family tombs ? " echoed Naomi.
“Each nationality has that which it supremely rever-
ences, and that which most nearly touches its honor," Lady


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
47
Roger answered, but his mother looked from one to the
other of them gravely.
She was always jealous for the honor of the Chinaman
who had been so firm a friend to her husband. She was
always careful that not even the shadow of disrespect
should be cast over him. An unthinking boy, new to the
East, had once referred, in her presence, to the old man
as Number One Heathen Chinee, but he never did it
again.
“The young mandarin whom my husband befriended was
Chi Lung,” she said now.
“And that was how they became such friends ?” Naomi
asked. “I don't wonder,” she went on, "but I thought
Chinamen never really liked us Westerners.”
It was just a moment before Amabelle answered. Chi
Lung was so coiled into her family circle, that she always
found the intimacy difficult to explain to the average stay-
at-home European. Besides, the old man had a strictly
Oriental view on certain matters, and Roger's absorption
in this golden-haired girl was by no means likely to please
him.
Amabelle was not a woman for nothing. When you
can't climb a wall, go round the field until you find a gap,
is a precept the sex has laid fully to heart-and perhaps
the mere acceptance of it tells how much woman has had
to endure.
Amabelle knew she had no hope of moving Chi Lung
directly, but it was possible she might do it through Naomi
herself.
She decided to do all she could to arouse the girl's inter-
est in the old man-her reverence for him.
Things in China mostly go the reverse way to things
European,” she went on. “It is the drops which make
the ocean, we say. They say, “All or not at all.' The
magnitude of the repayment must match the magnitude of
the service, or the debt of gratitude had better be left to
the next generation to discharge. So, because we have


48
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
She put
been prosperous, and always happy as far as worldly cir-
cumstances could make us, Roger, I, and my husband,
while he lived—Chi Lung hasn't mentioned the tombs for
years."
* But if things were to go wrong, he'd come to the
rescue at once," Naomi thrust in quickly.
Involuntarily Lady de la Haye made a movement of
withdrawal, though this was exactly the point she wished
to make. She recovered herself in a moment.
Forgive me,” she said, “but, you see, if Chi Lung
ever thinks the occasion big enough to intervene, then
either Roger or I will be in very serious trouble."
Naomi nodded silently. She stood a moment thinking
over this story. Viewed by the light of her mother's pur-
suit of the immediately advantageous, it seemed almost
fantastically far away and potential, and yet she had a
perception that it implied a morality far deeper than the
glibly convenient code of present-day manners.
the thought away in her mind, determined to go back to it
when she was alone, but she smiled happily. The higher
appealed to her, whereas up to now she had always been
dragged back to the lower. The good or the bad of a
nature is really implied by what, left to itself, it would take
or it would reject. Circumstances so often atrophy the
finest endeavor, and the world, blinking with short-sighted
eyes, never seems to realize that a losing fight against big
odds can be a finer thing than victory over an equal op-
ponent. Unbiased, Naomi would always rather climb than
descend.
Tell me,” she began again, wanting to improve this
hour when Roger's mother would be her friend, “may I see
the Chinese Room, I have heard so much about it? Wasn't
it there that
She stopped, warned by a glance from Roger.
Amabelle saw not only the look, but the understanding
it implied. She had been going to finish Naomi's sentence,
and say that in this Chinese Room, so celebrated for its
treasures, had been signed the first treaty by Chi Lung and


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
49
her husband wherein the East deigned to borrow of the
West: but, instead, she answered the inner spirit, and sub-
stituted: “I was going to keep a surprise for you, Roger,
until Chi Lung came.”
“For me?" Roger answered.
His mother nodded. There was such a lump in her
throat that for a moment she could not speak.
“I was going to tell you then,” she said, as she mastered
herself, " that the door of the Chinese Room is un-
locked.”
“Unlocked!” cried back Roger, yet even at that mo-
ment he drew in Naomi also.
“The room has never been used since my father died,”
he said to her.
Don't you see that I have just pulled back the cur-
tains ?” Amabelle asked, and she indicated the little green
blinds which, years ago, had been the subject of a banter-
ing difference of opinion between her and her husband.
Sir Arthur always declared that his wife made little
silken curtains for the window over the fireplace in obedi-
ence to the British spirit of compromise, since, really, she
resented the lack of privacy that window implied; while
she retorted that it was consideration for him. She knew
he would write a better dispatch if he were saved from the
possibility of inquisitive glances over his shoulder.
Roger hurried across, he put his arm round her.
“Mother," he said, "you always think of me before
yourself.”
She pushed him just a little away—and even yesterday
she would have clung to him.
“Yes," she answered tremulously. “You are going to
use the room now. When Chi Lung comes you must take
him in there-
She stopped abruptly in her turn. She had said more
than she meant. She was alluding to certain specific cir-
cumstances connected with the old Chinaman's visit, which
were concealed behind an ordinary week-end party at a
country house. Naomi only took it to mean that if one


50
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
has a friend, one sometimes talks alone with him. As for
Roger his thought was limited to the personal aspect.
Men, with many opportunities of the universal in action,
so often stay by the domestic hearth in thought, while
women, who in the flesh may never go twenty miles from
home, roam the continents in their dreams.
Now, Roger's eyes were already looking over his
mother's shoulder, and that mother knew it. The woman
came before the career; the new interest, before her who
had hitherto held his confidence and his love. Only those
who loving supremely are called on to abdicate—and are
expected to behave as if they would rejoice at being sup-
planted—can estimate the suffering of such a moment. It
is so easy to say youth goes to youth; but does that make
it any more pleasant for maturity left out in the cold?
Amabelle turned to Naomi.
There are various qualities in generosity; some of it is
so grudging that it almost ceases to be generosity and
becomes a provocation.
There was nothing so ungracious about Amabelle. She
had decided on her part, and she would play it with all the
grace at her command.
“You must see the Chinese Room," she said. “My
son must show it to you," and she went and opened the
double doors before either of them could answer her.
Amabelle de la Haye stood there, pushing back the
quaintly inlaid panels, for these doors and the other two
into the salon from the hall were pairs, and the four of
them represented the four seasons. Roger was still a
moment, and Naomi dropped her head, her face veiled with
a new soft shyness. To each of them it was so much
more than a mere passage of time—a mere gesture; Ama-
belle realized that she had given all she had, and could
never take back the gift. Roger was jubilant. He felt
exalted, physically, as well as mentally; with Naomi, the
first flush of happiness passed into retrospect, and the look-
ing back was bitter.
Love may be Lord of the human heart, but Cupid is both


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
51
the judge and the taskmaster. This girl, who had been
touched by pitch, rather than had touched it herself, who
had sometimes succumbed to unworthy shifts, but the next
moment had always drawn herself up in protest against
them, would have given several years of her life, now,
never to have known how her mother eked out a precarious
income, or some of the people she eked it out among.
She looked away from Roger's eager face, from Lady
de la Haye's expectant attitude, and in her heart she was
registering the resolve to walk as Roger would have her
tread, and then, as he had done once before that day,
Littleport entered, and the old man's arrival brought back
the situation to the small happenings of everyday life.
“Tea is on the terrace, my Lady,” he said.
Lady de la Haye moved from the door.
“Thank you,” she said, and she went to the window.
She looked back at Roger, but he had gone over to Naomi.
Never mind about tea, come and see the Chinese
Room first,” he said, eagerly, to her. “You must see it
now. I haven't been in it myself for five years." He made
a step along. “Come,” he said, “just think of seeing it
for the first time with you."
Roger hurried Naomi Melsham through the door. It
swung back until it was all but closed, but the eager voices
floated into the salon.
What is that?” Amabelle heard her son's voice say.
“Why, that is my father's desk. Look.”
She knew he was bending down to show all the quaint-
ness of an Eastern design adapted to European purposes.
Perhaps he would explain to Naomi how the spring of
what Sir Arthur called the confidential dispatch drawer
worked.
It had been a whim of Sir Arthur to keep the secret
of this drawer. Besides him, only Amabelle herself and
Chi Lung knew that it existed.
She made a hasty step towards the Chinese Room. Her
first idea was that Roger must not tell Naomi, then she
checked herself.


52
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
A man's wife must not only walk by his side, she must
share his life-and his career, unless the marriage is to be
a failure.
With a sigh and a little lifting of her graceful shoulders
Amabelle pushed aside the yellow silk blinds and went out
on to the terrace.


CHAPTER V
TEA on the terrace at Zouche, if there were guests there,
was one of those delightful breathing spaces when a num-
ber of pleasant people met together and felt that they had
leisure to enjoy each other's society. But on this particular
afternoon, as Lady de la Haye came through the window
of the salon, she found no one there before her.
The terrace ran the whole length of the garden side of
the house; it caught the afternoon sun aslant, so that
there was always a shady corner as well as a warm one,
and from either end two flights of steps led down, one
on to the bowling-green, the other to a path which ended
in an old gate-house (perhaps the marriage house of
medieval days) looking on to the park.
The round table was pushed aside to avoid the glare.
Littleport had seen to it that a hooded bench shut out the
eye of the sun, an armchair, of what our fathers would
have scoffed at as of the common Windsor variety, was
drawn up before the tea tray. Lady de la Haye generally
sat in it when she was on the terrace. She said it was
a whim-and it was only those who knew her well who
heard that it had been left to her by an old woman in the
village.
Amabelle walked slowly up to the table. Somewhere in
the garden she could hear Aimée laughing. She felt very
much alone. She was possessed by that tired-in-every-
limb feeling which so often follows a strain that apparently
has been lived through triumphantly. But after a moment,
impelled by the feeling that the daily round must go on,
even if the skies threatened to fall, she took up the old
tea caddy.
“One, two, three,” she began counting the cups, and yet
53


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
55
room,” Littleport answered. “ He said he was hot and
dusty and wanted to change.'
The second west room,” exclaimed Amabelle. “Why?"
Littleport answered with another of his fine smiles.
"His Excellency will have the first, and the dressing-
room for his study. If Mr. Marketel is next-door, they
may find it convenient to have a word here and there.
Monsieur de Rochecorbon was to have had that room, but
he can go one further down the corridor, though Diplomacy
does go in to dinner before Finance.”
Amabelle suppressed a smile of another kind this time.
The old man's foible was etiquette.
“What I don't know about precedence Burke himself
doesn't know," she had once heard him say as he tutored
a raw footman.
"I meant to tell you later," Lady de la Haye went on,
" that we should want you to help us.”
Littleport bowed with his best air and waited.
"His Excellency and Mr. Marketel will meet in the
Chinese Room," she said. “Sir Roger must join them
unobserved-and secretly. You will order his little motor
to come round, and then come and tell Sir Roger that it
is at the door. He will get up, saying he has to go to
Chipley Magna on business.”
"Will he be driving himself ?” Littleport asked. ·
“As far as the gate-house. He will leave the car there,
come up the path, and go into the Chinese Room”
By the garden door at the side," finished Littleport.
"Just so," said Lady de la Haye.
“Then I'd better go and put the key in my pocket for
him now," the old man remarked.
Amabelle lifted her hand. She was about to stop him-
to say who was in the Chinese Room at that moment-
and then a sudden shyness prevented her. Doubtless Little-
port had already observed which way the stream was
flowing. She watched the old man going to the open win-
dow, and her throat refused to make a sound, but suddenly
he swerved and looked back at her.


56
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Mr. Marketel, I think, my Lady,” he remarked.
He went along, and as he walked down the terrace Paul
came on to it.
“I thought,” Marketel began, advancing with his hand
held out, "that I should find you here." "
Amabelle turned to meet him, and it was possibly because
he was in light flannels that it occurred to her that he had
never looked so big. She said to herself, “He's like a
colossus-he would override anybody or anything, if he
thought it worth while." And then, with a touch of malice,
she remarked aloud:
“It is delightful of you to chance in upon us in this
way.”
“I am come to throw myself on your kindness," he
answered, in the same strain. The next moment he glanced
quickly about him.
“Has Chi Lung come?” he demanded abruptly.
“Not yet.”
I thought he would have been here by now.”
“He originally proposed himself for yesterday," Lady
de la Haye answered, " then he put off his arrival until
today, and even now he hasn't vouchsafed to tell us which
train he is coming by, or if he means to come by road or
by rail."
“Do you think that unpromising ?” Paul asked, suddenly
grave-anxious—for even to him, accustomed as he was to
undertakings on a large scale, this loan from Britain for
a Chinese navy was a very big thing.
“No,” Amabelle assured him, “merely Celestial.”
She waited a moment, and then looked up with that
ingenuous manner which made her seem almost girlish.
“This is a great opportunity for Roger," she said softly.
“He deserves it,” answered Paul. “He's done splendid
work in the East. The Foreign Office think no end of
him, that's why they have appointed him to watch these
negotiations. It's the seal of his success. It has come
young to him. I shouldn't wonder if he's a Plenipo. before he
is forty, and has Paris before he retires. A great career."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
57
“Yes," said Lady de la Haye, and then she added, "if
nothing comes to spoil it," and the words slipped out as
if someone else, not she herself, had said them.
Many men would have fenced. Paul faced the reserva-
tion squarely.
"Is something wrong?” he asked.
“I fancied you
looked troubled when I first saw you."
Amabelle held out both her hands.
'Help me, Paul,” she besought.
“Help you," he returned, and there was a world
of feeling in his tone. “Tell me exactly what is
wrong."
“But I don't know that anything is,” she answered, half
laughing and half crying.
“Then,” he retorted, "the trouble is connected with
people, not things.
She nodded.
“But how did you guess it?”
Things are expressed by facts,” he answered, “and
facts are definite people are expressed by opinion, and
there is nothing certain about opinion, excepting that it is
mutable.”
She looked at him and smiled wanly. There was some-
thing in her face which gave him a clue.
"Is it about Roger?" he asked.
“ You have heard?” she blurted out.
Nothing,” he answered—“ only, when a man's best
friend is in Town and never at his club about one-thirty,
one begins to wonder what woman he is taking out to
lunch. Besides,” he said, “I was at that dance."
“At the Tippley-Smiths ?"
“ Yes."
" They have moved into Grosvenor Gardens since I gave
up going out."
Paul took a turn down the terrace.
“An unsuitable wife has been the grave of more than
one diplomatic career," he said fiercely.
Amabelle followed him quickly.


58
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Don't,” she cried out. "I'm giving you a wrong im-
pression. Miss Melsham is here now. She is with Roger
in there."
“In the Chinese Room?” Paul asked.
“ Yes.”
66
He gave a subdued breath through his teeth.
“I like her, Paul, I like her," Amabelle went on, "I
know I do"
• Well then?” he asked.
" It's the unexpectedness of it,” she said. " It put me
into a panic for fear she might not be quite-quite
She looked down and blushed hotly.
“When I heard she was coming," she confessed, "I did
a mean thing-I sent for Victoria Cresswell."
The announcement had an effect that Lady de la Haye
by no means anticipated.
“ Victoria," echoed Paul, and he flung round with an
abrupt movement. Amabelle caught a glimpse of his face,
of its sudden lightening, and then its lowered brows.
“ What is it?” she exclaimed.
'Tell me why you sent for Victoria,” he asked curtly.
“ You see,” Roger's mother admitted tremulously, “I
was afraid this girl might be one of those garish young
women one does see going round Europe. The most fas-
tidious men are the most unaccountably taken in at times.
My experience of the Continental mothers and daughters
led me to dread anything of the kind for Roger. Victoria
represented the standard he had been used to. There is
nothing more illuminating than contrast. If that contrast
were to tell against-against-
"I see," put in Paul.
" It was better he should observe it now than later."
“And how did the beautiful lady stand the test ?” asked
Paul, half amused, half dismayed at so feminine
maneuver.
Amabelle drew herself up, both dignified and loyal, if
not exactly consistent.
"If you have seen Miss Melsham," she said, "you
a


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
59
must know that no one could take the smallest exception
to her.”
What is it, then?” said Paul, still probing to get to
the root of the trouble.
'Roger is so reticent about the mother," Amabelle re-
turned. “I can't help thinking she must be rather foolish
-or undignified.”
“ Isn't that better than being interfering?” said Paul
lightly, but speaking out of a certain personal experience.
Amabelle began on a laugh, but it ended in a break.
“I have lost my bearings,” she said piteously. “I feel
as if all my old landmarks had gone. That's the worst of
being an independent woman by nature. I always want to
lean on a strong man when I find one."
But her weakness was over in a moment.
The wise submit with a smile, even if it is a little
awry,” she summed up, "the foolish become mothers-in-
law."
She rose as she said that, and looked at the tea table.
“ Make tea, Paul,” she said, with one of those confes-
sions of femininity that she could make so delightful.
“I've been so near to weeping that I'm sure my eyes are
red. I'm going to powder my nose--and I'll tell you a
secret. A woman's heart may be chipped, but it isn't abso-
lutely broken as long as she can give a thought to her com-
plexion.”
Paul just laughed, and pulled aside the curtain into the
salon for her, but he looked after her gravely.
"She's a brave woman," he told himself, as he took up
the tea caddy. He made sure that the kettle was boiling,
with that nice attention to detail a bachelor man does dis-
play in domestic matters, and then his quick ear caught
the sound of voices talking together in the salon.
“Roger and” he said to himself, and he smiled
grimly.
The silence fell again. Roger and Naomi Melsham must
both have gone into the hall.
Paul felt sure it was Naomi. He went on with the tea-


60
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
making. The meal was delightfully informal at Zouche,
and so, for the benefit of any late comers, the tea was
always made in one of the two big teapots, and then poured
off into the other. Paul went on with what he called the
decanting business, and when that was finished he took out
a cigarette.
He glanced over the terrace, on to the bowling-green, he
changed his position that he might look down the walk, and
varied it yet again to watch for anyone coming through
the door of the walled garden. Victoria was somewhere
near. He checked the impulse to go and look for her.
She must know it is tea time," he told himself.
He took out his watch, glanced at it, and shut its case
with an impatient snap, and then he heard the door from
the hall on to the terrace, the one he had used himself,
open.
Paul Marketel knew that someone feminine was coming
towards him, but even before he looked he didn't make
the mistake of thinking it was Victoria. Once at least in a
lifetime, most men differentiate, where one woman is con-
cerned, to the nicest degree.
He faced round, and before the figure in soft pink, with
the touch of green round the slim waist, was halfway up
the terrace he knew who it was.
He took a couple of quick strides forward and held out
his hand.
“ You must be Miss Melsham," he began.
“And I see you are Mr. Marketel," Naomi answered.
That is nice of you to remember me," he went on
heartily.
Naomi smiled at him with a kind of timid friendliness, as
if feeling her way.
"I didn't know you were coming,” she went on, “but
then, of course, excepting the great Chinaman-I have just
heard all about him and I do so want to see him I don't
know who is coming.”
"I'm the unexpected pleasure,” Paul answered, " or the
bad penny always turning up."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
61
“The former, of course," said Naomi. A noted finan-
cier must not suggest anything commercially unsound.”
She smiled appealingly at the big man as she made her
little point. She wanted a favorable verdict, not for any
ulterior reason, but just because Paul Marketel was Roger
de la Haye's best friend. A woman always takes a definite
line towards a man's friends from the very first moment
that she admits her own interest in him. She either seeks
to draw them nearer to her, or plays to antagonize them.
The one is the outcome of a large outlook, the other of a
narrow jealousy. Nine times out of ten they meet with their
appropriate reward. The tenth, the man pays—and curses
himself for a poor thing.
“Did you expect to find Lady de la Haye here?” Paul
began. She will be back in a moment."
Naomi nodded. In reality she had been shy about coming
to meet Lady de la Haye with Roger behind her. So she
made an excuse. The sun was hot. She would put on a
garden hat.
She had seen Littleport stop Roger as she went up the
stairs, and she had stolen down so cautiously, her cheeks a
little the pinker for the precaution, just that she might get to
Lady de la Haye alone.
She and Paul moved back to the tea table, but when he
offered her a seat she shook her head.
“I want to look about me," she said, and her eagerness
was almost childish. “I want to see everything."
Paul pointed out the gate-house, and told her its supposed
history; he showed her the high wall of old red brick,
inclosing a wonderful rose garden, he drew her attention to
the sundial, set up on the ledge of the bowling-green, and
told her how Sir Arthur had brought it from Pekin.
"The Chinese," he said, “began to use astronomical in-
struments before the Europeans got farther than realizing
that there was a sun and a moon. This dial is a copy of
a primitive one which stood for ages on the great wall. The
Germans carried off the original after the Boxer Riots.”
“How interesting," Naomi murmured. She raised her


62
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
blue eyes.
" I'm lost in admiration wherever I go," she
said softly," and yet there is nothing of the show place
about Zouche. Tell me! how does it manage to be so
wonderful and yet so homelike?”
“Isn't that the effect of individual temperament?” Paul
rejoined. “I mean," he went on, feeling that it would be
well to make this point very clear, “that Lady de la Haye
would radiate happiness, and therefore warmth, wherever
she went.”
“Sir Roger evidently thinks there is no one like his
mother," Naomi answered quickly.
“Do you wonder at that?” asked Paul. “I never knew
my mother," he went on gravely. “I always feel that I
have missed one of the greatest things in life.”
There was no answering consent in Naomi's mind. Her
mother represented a drawback, not an advantage. She
looked up and met Paul Marketel's glance. It was so
grave, yet so kindly, that it was possible she might have
blurted out a part of the truth, if not the whole truth, and
thereby altered the whole course of her life's history,—
people so often did confide in Paul Marketel. But at that
moment Roger came hurriedly on to the terrace.
“I thought I was never going to get away,” he began.
Littleport got hold of me-he's full of arrangements." He
pulled up.
“You here, Paul," he said. “That's splen-
did.”
“ "Come to throw myself on your mercy," Marketel
answered.
Roger nodded. He didn't want to enlarge on the decep-
tion before Naomi. He looked ahead. 'Why!” he ex-
claimed," where is my mother?"
Amabelle might have heard the impatient voice, for at
that very moment she came through the window of the
salon.
Ah!” she said lightly, “you here.” She turned to the
girl.
“Have you seen all the treasures?" she asked.
“I think," began Naomi eagerly," that the Chinese Room


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
63
is the most beautiful room I have ever seen. Even I should
write good letters at that wonderful old desk."
“Mother,” said Roger, " do you know the spring of the
secret drawer failed to act? I opened the drawer, and then
shut it in the usual way, but the spring hadn't caught. It
would open again before I turned the key in the lock.”
"It did that once before," Lady de la Haye answered.
“In my father's time?”
“ Yes." said Amabelle.
"And how did he get it put right?" Roger asked.
“There's a master spring at the back-I'll show it to you,"
Amabelle said. She waited a momert.
' It seems foolish,” she went on, “but don't mention this
to Chi Lung. Chinamen go by omens more than one would
think
“ And the last time the drawer didn't catch-
Roger.
“ The negotiations fell through.”
“Then,” announced Paul,“ we must certainly none of us
mention it now."
A glance from Lady de la Haye stopped him. She began
to make the tea. She was just wondering aloud whether
Aimée could have taken Victoria to the Rectory—did she
see Paul Marketel's face suddenly go blank?-and then the
girl herself ran up the steps from the bowling-green.
“ Ursa Major,” began Aimée, as Paul went along to meet
her. She put her arm in his. “ Victoria is coming pres-
ently," she remarked. “She suddenly turned tail and
put in
said"
“What?" asked Paul sharply.
He was never answered. He and Aimée had reached the
round table, Roger had risen.
Aimée, I don't think you have met Miss Melsham,” he
began, and his tone was almost severe. It seemed to him
odd at least-if not well on the way to being wrong—that
anyone should claim attention before Naomi had been duly
honored.


64
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“I have always lived at Zouche," began Aimée, as she
offered her hand. “Auntie says I might as well be her own
daughter. Don't you, dear?" appealing to Lady de la Haye.
“You will always be my child to me,” she said.
She understood. Aimée was being visited by a tinge of
jealousy. Naomi heard the intonation too. She might not
quite grasp the cause, but she was sure of the antagonism.
It was the first warning of disapproval.
She moved her chair, so that Aimée must take the one
by her. She looked down, and was just wondering which
was the nearest road to the girl's heart, when a cynical
comment of her mother's came into her mind.
"Never neglect the flapper,” Mrs. Melsham once ob-
served. “One day she may be a duchess."
Naomi returned hastily to her tea-silenced. Even from
afar, Mrs. Melsham had the power to spoil things, to sug-
gest sordid views and interested motives.
Yet, even as she made the bitter comment, this new soften-
ing that was wrapping itself, like a beautiful veil, around
her mind, stopped her.
Here at least she would banish such thoughts.
She looked over to the heads of a row of poplars visible
above the garden wall, as if their very uprightness and
beauty were a protection. She bid herself take heed of the
summer day, of the warmth and the light, as if telling her-
self that dark thoughts were an incongruity not to be
admitted in such an environment, and so it fell out that
she, alone, was looking straight down the terrace. She gave
a start, uttered an exclamation of surprise.
A little old man appeared at the head of the steps, he
pattered along with shuffling feet, as if he habitually wore
loose soft boots, and then, when he saw the group by the
tea table, he pulled up, as if it were for those there before
him to come to him, and for him to wait to receive them.
Naomi but glanced at the quaint figure, at a curious
mingling of the East and the West in the costume—and
she knew before Roger whispered the name to her that it
must be the little great man of China.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
65
Lady de la Haye rose instantly.
“Your Excellency," she began as she hurried towards
him. * You have walked, and we sent two cars to meet
you."
The old man stood before her smiling blandly. There
was something of the impish child in his expression. Chi
Lung, the greatest power of his day in the East, the far-
seeing diplomat, who linked his country to the West, with
a foresight that may yet turn out to be one of the great
features of the world's progress, wore exactly the smile of
a clever child who knows that it has done something tire-
some, but who is sure of commendation rather than of
blame, because it has been tiresome in such an original
manner.
“I bore myself on the vehicles of nature," the old man
began, as he patted Lady de la Haye's hand. “The green
and the refreshing shade remind me of the lotus and the
bamboo of my own poor dwelling in the Ever Blessed
Middle Kingdom.”
Lady de la Haye laughed indulgently, but not quite easily,
for she was not unmindful of the indications. The Marquis
Chi Lung had various sides to his nature, and a manner
appropriate to each one. When it pleased him he could turn
himself into a very fair imitation of a European; when it
pleased him he could be as Celestial as the most stay-at-
home mandarin, and there were occasions when, of set pur-
pose, he could be unpardonably rude. Just now, when she
wished, for a particular reason, that he should view the sit-
uation from a Western standpoint, his freakish arrival
pointed exactly the opposite way.
She glanced apprehensively at him. The long, oval face
was impassive to stolidity, the oblique eyes blinked as if the
mere act of vision irked them-Chi Lung seemed mostly
occupied in stroking his beard.
“Why doesn't Roger come at once?” Amabelle asked
herself. Roger knew all about Chinese standards. He knew
exactly what Chi Lung would deem his due, and what the
old man would resentfully consider less than his due, and


66
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
there was he, pausing but a moment it is true, yet still
pausing, to turn the hooded bench, since the sun came
straight into Naomi Melsham's face.
Roger!” she called. “Roger!”
He came on the very sound of her voice, but Amabelle
had no hope that the incident had escaped his Excellency,
or that the old man, with his jealous affection, would fail
to resent being kept waiting, even for a moment, for a
woman, and, worse still, for a young and pretty one.
If Chi Lung did consider himself slighted, there was
nothing to show it. He put one of his yellowed old hands,
with every bony articulation showing through the skin, on
either of Roger's shoulders.
“Behold!” his Excellency began, “the pear is off the
same tree.”
He looked long at the young clean-shaven face. “The
look is the same as his father's, but the expression is
different,” he went on, noting a certain shy oversensitive-
ness in the young man's eyes. “It is as if both the gadily
and the housefly had power to sting him. My son," he
continued, “it is written in our wisdom that the man who
sees all white is as deceived as he who sees all yellow. The
one gone to rest made few mistakes-he knew that gray was
but white dust mixed with a handful of black mud, and
orange but yellow clay mixed with a little red earth.”
Roger laughed—but constrainedly. For one thing, he
wondered how so florid a greeting would strike Naomi
Melsham; for another, the old Chinaman had put his finger
on a weak spot. Sir Arthur de la Haye possessed a mind
of almost perfect balance. Amabelle's was so innately a
sunny nature that it took a great deal to disturb her. By
some odd turn of heredity Roger's disposition was inclined
to oversensitiveness. It was only his frank acceptance
of the fact which saved him from a meticulous con-
science.
Then abruptly his Excellency pushed Roger away and
pointed to Naomi.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
67
"Behold, the hornet leaves the pumpkin aside and fastens
on the golden plum,” he exclaimed, and his tone was abrupt
-fierce, even.
Lady de la Haye had no word for the sudden outburst.
Her worst fears had been realized. Chi Lung had observed
Roger's interest in this golden-haired girl, and evidently
resented it.
It was Paul Marketel who saved the situation.
“ You remember me, your Excellency?” he interposed
quickly.
The Celestial put both his hands into his sleeves, and
hunched his body over them.
“ Behold!” he exclaimed, “it is the man of so much
money that he lends of his superfluity to Princes and
Powers. But money comes not of itself—it must be gath-
ered—will he want to take from this inconsiderable one even
the little that he has?”
He looked from face to face and laughed slyly at his own
witticism.
“ Your Excellency,” put in Amabelle anxiously, for evi-
dently her old friend was in a perverse mood, “ you recall
Monsieur de Villeseptier. He was with us in the days gone
by at Pekin. He was as a right hand to my husband, and
you yourself accorded him the gift of friendship."
The old man nodded.
“He went to walk in the Eternal Shades before his time,”
he said gravely.
“He and his wife too," answered Lady de la Haye. She
repressed a shudder. It was nearly eighteen years ago, and
yet she could not think of that awful time when an outbreak
of plague, laying low its thousands, robbed her of her two
best friends in less than twelve hours.
“I have written him in the tablets of my memory," Chi
Lung answered, and characteristically while he remembered
the man he ignored the lovely girl, his wife.
“This is his child," Amabelle went on, drawing up Aimée.
“ She has lived with me ever since. She was called Ama-
99


68
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
belle after me, but we always call her Aimée. She is as
dear as my own daughter to me."
“So," remarked his Excellency. “How old are you?”
he asked, turning to Aimée, for he bestowed a certain
amount of interest on her, seeing she was, as he would have
put it, part of Roger's house.
Seventeen," answered the girl, in quite a meek little
voice,
His Excellency took out his snuff bottle, and carefully
poured a little of the brown powder into his hand. Amabelle
quailed inwardly. Her old friend was indeed minded to be
aggressively Oriental this afternoon. She had not seen him
take snuff in public since he put an insolent German in his
place, quite ten years ago.
“ It is time the rings were in her ears. You should buy
a husband for her," he went on, after he had scooped the
snuff into his nostrils with the tiny spoon attached to the
stopper of his bottle and he nodded towards Aimée. “She
will make a useful help to Roger. Offer her to one that has
the ear of the Yamen, but arrange quickly; the sweeter the
perfume the uglier the flies which gather round the bottle."
There might have been an embarrassed pause after that
candid appraisement, but Aimée broke in on it.
“ Aunt Amabelle has told me," she said, “how your
Excellency helped her that time when I was a tiny baby,
and people were afraid of going into my father's because
of the infection. I often think of it--and all you did for
my father too."
Artlessly she had struck the right note.
“Gratitude is the lotus flower of the spirit," Chi Lung
observed. “I will send you a roll of silk, Mademoiselle."
For me!” Aimée exclaimed. She knew no greater com-
pliment could have been paid her. “Oh, thank you,” she
ran on, “but I knew you were nice before you said that."
“I will send you two rolls of silk," Chi Lung announced.
“You have inculcated the seven virtues, I see," he said,
turning to Lady de la Haye. “That is well! The woman
greeted with favor who refrains from importunity is as rare


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
69
as twin pearls in one oyster shell. None the less," added his
Excellency, dry again in a flash," when a woman's lips say
it is enough she looks at you with her eyes and they say
again,” then he put out his hand, and caught Lady de la
Haye by her sleeve.
“There is a jay chattering to the Hope of the House,”
he said.
“That is Miss Melsham," was all Amabelle could say.
“I was waiting until your Excellency had finished talking
to Aimée," put in Roger. He passed the matter over to his
mother with a wave of his hand.
“ His Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung, Miss Melsham,"
Amabelle said.
The girl came smilingly forward. She had watched the
old man with Aimée. She had come to the conclusion that
under a somewhat redoubtable exterior, the Celestial had
a very human heart. But there was nothing benevolent in
the look bestowed on her. Naomi felt she must not fail
where a schoolgirl had sùcceeded.
“Your Excellency," she began, “I have heard so much
about you."
“Who has gossiped about old Chi Lung to a woman?"
the old man demanded.
“Sir Roger," Naomi answered.
“So!” remarked his Excellency. “The son of my old
friend makes stories for the house at the expense of this
poor one."
66
No! no!” expostulated Naomi-feeling that the inter-
view was going all wrong. "He was only saying nice
things.”
Nice?” asked the Celestial.
“He was telling me about the tombs of your ancestors."
And what of my poor belongings?” the old man asked.
That
you
cared so much for them."
“Cared," repeated his Excellency. “What is that?"
“Well," stammered the girl, "it-it is so wonderful-"
She began to flounder in her embarrassment.
Chi Lung watched her malevolently. Roger made a step


70
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Who ..
between them, and Amabelle felt so sure that she must
intervene that she came out with the first thing she
remembered.
“ Another friend, but of Roger's days at Pekin, this time,
is coming,” she said hurriedly. “Monsieur de Rochecorbon.
Do you remember him?"
Armand," exclaimed Marketel. " What's his latest
craze this time? Last time I saw him
He was stopped by Naomi Melsham, her voice was so
urgent.
who did you say ? ” she asked.
“Armand de Rochecorbon," Paul answered.
“My cousin," put in Aimée.
Naomi let her hands fall to her side with a helpless ges-
ture—she stepped back, out of the circle, out of the sun-
light.
“Do you know Monsieur de Rochecorbon?” Amabelle
asked her.
The girl seemed to consider a moment. It flashed into
Amabelle's mind that this might be a case of expediency, not
of truth. The next instant a frank statement seemed to
reprove her.
“We have met so many people," Naomi explained, “that
it is difficult to say. Mama wanders so, that I can never
be quite sure about anyone. We did meet a Monsieur de
Rochecorbon-but that was years ago at Nice”-she raised
her eyes and looked hard at Roger—“ that was the year I
went to live with mama," she told him. The
year," she insisted.
very first


CHAPTER VI
“ Your Excellency,” began Paul Marketel, about ten min-
utes later—that is as soon as he could disturb the party
round the tea table and draw the old Chinaman aside—“we
are to meet in the Chinese Room; I will join you there in
half an hour."
“The sun is hot without,” Chi Lung demurred, “but the
blinds are drawn, and there is shade within the four walls
of the house.”
Paul shook his head.
“In half an hour, your Excellency," he maintained, and
he had two reasons for his firmness. One was, the con-
sideration that when you have something to sell it is never
wise to appear too eager to meet the buyer, how much less
if that buyer be an Oriental. The other, that he had a
pressing personal affair to dispose of.
Victoria Cresswell had not appeared. It was possible that
she was purposely going without tea to avoid him, and
that seemed to him so intolerable that he determined to go
in search of her.
"I want to find Miss Cresswell," he said to Lady de la
Haye. “I must see her before I begin my letters." He
paused and smiled dubiously. “It's about some business,"
he went on, with the awkwardness of an honest man telling
but a part of the truth. “I have prevailed on Miss Cress-
well to let me go into her affairs. Her investments were
-er-unsuitable. She saw that herself as soon as I pointed
it out. She has quite a gift for finance.”
He turned away without waiting for a reply. People
who have to fight for their own hand—and do it success-
fully—can usually dispense with the stimulus of approval.
Perhaps, however, even he might have paused, had he caught
71


72
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
the look on Lady de la Haye's face. She was dismayed,
but enlightened. Here was the clue to the something strange
in Victoria, to the something unusual in Paul himself.
“Do you think I have forgotten when I began to find
diplomacy interesting?" Amabelle murmured to herself.
“Don't you understand,” her mind ran on, with the pity of
the perspicacious feminine for the masculine bat," that
there is no subject, from rag-picking to the differential cal-
culus, a woman won't find absorbing, if the right man only
explains it to her in the right way?”
She looked after the powerful frame going down towards
the rose garden.
“Has he forgotten that Victoria has been engaged to
Billy Hirst since she was eighteen?" she protested in-
wardly.
Perhaps her unspoken dismay communicated itself to
Paul. He paused, with his hand on the latch of the old
wooden door. For one moment he put this straight ques-
tion to himself, “ Have I the right to supplant?” No honest
man can step into another man's shoes and not be visited by
doubts. But, having weighed them, may it not be a finer
virtue to go on than to go back?-for, recollect, such a de-
cision affects two lives, not one ;-only one must be very
sure where the virtue comes in, and where the vice.
Paul rattled the handle of the door impatiently—and
turned it.
He was right. Victoria was there. There was a fountain
in the midst of the square, with four grass paths converging
on it, and roses everywhere. He walked up to her, and as
he approached, Victoria's face, which never had very much
color in it, went a shade whiter. Her hands began to work
nervously. She plucked a flower, and began to pull it to
pieces.
Victoria was in that odd stage in feminine development
when the more one longs for a thing the greater the pre-
cautions to turn from it.
Besides, she was, in a way, very like a boat without a
rudder. Until she saw Paul, Victoria had lived singularly


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
73
Aloof from men. Some girls are women before they leave
off being children. Now and then a woman is totally unin-
fluenced by the masculine element until she meets the man
who, whether it ever comes to fulfilment or not, is essen-
tially her man. Everything about her had conspired to
retard Victoria's development, just as everything had con-
spired to force Naomi Melsham's. Victoria's youth was
passed in a remote village with a certain Aunt Martha, and
this Aunt Martha had a talent for doing harm in the cause
of righteousness. The old lady held that the rising genera-
tion stood in need of perpetual suppression, and that
originality was rather more heinous than sin. It said much
for the firmness of Victoria's fiber that she had any initia-
tive left. As it was, no sooner was she released from Aunt
Martha's tyranny than her whole being expanded with a
bound. Aunt Martha, who had never allowed Victoria the
smallest insight into her affairs, never troubled about the
inconsistency of leaving, what the obituary notice called “the
unsettled property," to Victoria absolutely. The girl was as
bewildered as she was ignorant, and naturally she put her
faith in the man who made Aunt Martha's will—Edward
Buzby. He managed Billy Hirst's affairs too-and Victoria
was engaged to Billy. That was another of Aunt Martha's
arrangements, and, unfortunately, when the pious woman
arranges the affairs of others in the way that is best for
them-(or so it pleases her to think)-the harm she does
has a way of persisting.
The landed estate devolved on Billy, so the old lady, who
always quoted that money was the root of evil, juggled with
two lives to keep the property together.
As for Victoria, while Aunt Martha lived, Billy was for
her the only soul who pulled up, for even half an inch, the
blind of the window looking on to the world.
Essentially, Billy Hirst was a very fine gentleman-Aunt
Martha treated him shamelessly--and no one ever knew of
his dismay when he realized that he was caught. He played
his part so well that, even when Victoria came to see that
Billy was grateful each time she relegated the wedding day


74
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
66
SO
unex-
to a future occasion—she never realized that he would have
been more grateful still, had she given him back the engage-
ment ring.
Then, with Aunt Martha's death, came Victoria's eman-
cipation, her eager look out on to the world—and Paul
Marketel.
Paul came right up to her with a grim smile. Neither
of them uttered a word of conventional greeting, but not a
single symptom of her distress escaped him. It hurt him
and yet it hardened him.
“I want my answer,” he began. 'I must have it. I never
wanted anyone until-
Just because Victoria knew how the abrupt, unadorned
sentence would end, just because there was nothing she
wanted more to hear, she interrupted hastily.
“Please, Paul. You-you have arrived
pectedly-
She looked down. She clasped her hands nervously to-
gether, and that showed the ring, still on her third finger.
Paul muttered a hard word.
“ Look here,” he began, “we can't go on like this. I'm
not so young as I was, and at my age, when one gets things
for the first time, one gets 'em badly. Have you told
Billy?"
Victoria rose. She lifted her head and looked the big man
in the face. It was these moments of swift resolution that
particularly appealed to Paul.
I have not told Billy," she answered. “I cannot tell him."
“But you promised."
“I know," Victoria answered—“ but you must release me
from that promise.”
“Release you! Why?”
Billy is in trouble."
In trouble," reiterated Marketel.
“In serious trouble," Victoria answered.
Paul motioned her authoritively to the seat. “ Sit down,"
he said quietly, “and tell me exactly what has happened.”
9)


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
75
“You know Edward Buzby did Billy's business as well
as mine," Victoria began.
“A pretentious fool,” Marketel interpolated.
“Aunt Martha liked him," Victoria murmured.
“She would,” Paul answered, and he laughed shortly.
Then they were both suddenly silent. Without visible ap-
proach, they had never been closer, and the proximity made
both of them breathless.
It was Victoria who recovered first.
“But for you,” she said, looking steadily before her,
“ I should be where Billy is now.”
And then, since she was not one of those irritating people
who hover round an announcement, she went on—“Edward
Buzby disappeared last Wednesday. He left his affairs in
hopeless confusion. Billy is quite poor now, he's coming
here this afternoon, just for a last fling, as he calls it.
After that, he'll have to do something. He hasn't as many
hundreds left as he had thousands."
Paul was silent for quite a long time. He looked up at a
fussy little cloud racing over an expanse of blue. Ap-
parently, his whole interest was taken up with its rate of
progress, but in reality he was reflecting on the tricks and
quips of Fate. Edward Buzby had impressed him so un-
favorably the one time he had had an interview with him,
that he had once thought of giving Billy a hint, but the “not-
my-business " frame of mind prevailed—and now, the ques-
tion of Buzby's honesty-or dishonesty—had coiled itself
around the very framework of his own life.
The next moment, he left the question of correlative
causes and came back to the practical aspect.
“I'm sorry for Billy," he said, “but how does his loss
affect you and me?”
Can't you see?” Victoria returned. “ This has made all
the difference. Billy is poor now."
' It is a question of affection, not of finance," muttered
Paul.
“I know," the girl answered, “but look at it for your-
66


76
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
self. You ask me to break off my engagement, to go and
tell Billy that-that-"
“I love you, and he doesn't, and that you don't love
him
“I can't-I can't," the girl faltered.
“ Billy does not want you; I do,” Paul protested.
Victoria stood with her head cast down, but, as Paul knew
all too well, unconvinced.
He walked to the edge of the stone basin, and stood with
his hands in his pockets, his lower lip thrust out. He
watched the drops from the fountain pattering on to a lily
leaf, and as he watched, he debated. The very master-
fulness of his own will handicapped him. He knew that he
could rush Victoria, carry her off her feet perhaps, and
force the conclusion he desired, before she had time to help
herself. But there was afterwards—all the long years of
afterwards.
Women weigh, as inevitably as men pursue. That's why
it is unwise to treat them to evasions. They may look as if
they accept them, but they are marked down, and recorded
for ever against the offender.
It was some perception of this, or perhaps his own initial
honesty, which made Paul fall back on bald statement again.
“I want you, my dear,” he said. “ That's all I can think
of. I wanted you the first moment I saw you. Every hour
before I get you is an hour wasted. You have come into
my life, and you will stop there. I'll make you happy, if
anything I can do will bring happiness-
He broke off, threw out one of his great arms—“Lord!
Victoria,” he said, “and you think I'm going to stand aside
for a man who might have married you any time these last
eight years, and hasn't?”
He laughed shortly.
The color came up on to Victoria Cresswell's face. The
uncompromising statement hurt her, and hurt her all the
more for being true.
No woman, even if she isn't in love with a man, can hear
with equanimity that she is a negligible quantity to him.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
77
With many a one, it would have served as a justification for
taking the more enticing way, but Victoria shook her
head.
No, Paul,” she said, “ don't put it that way. Billy may
be a casual soul, but that doesn't affect either you or me
I mean it doesn't affect what I should do."
She began to smile, and came a little nearer to him. “Let
matters stay where they are," she entreated. “I shall go
away. I shall not see you again until -
“ Until when?” thrust in Paul.
“Until Billy has got something to do," the girl answered.
"Wait until he is busy, and happy in his own way. You
know how his wanderings absorb him. When his mind is
occupied—and his life is full of interest—then I can ask
him to release me."
Paul smiled very grimly.
“Then my happiness," he remarked, “is contingent on
Billy finding a congenial job?"
Victoria was not daunted. A big man hardly terrifies a
woman-a little one sometimes does.
How good you are," she murmured, with a typically
feminine taking and leaving. “It's just like you to under-
stand. We'll settle it so. Things go on as they are, and I'll
go away.
I can't leave Zouche tonight, everyone would
wonder why I had broken up the party. But when I can
get away, I'll travel. It's time I did. Why!” she said, “I
have never seen Switzerland and all those places everyone
has been to."
She turned from the fountain, and went along the grass
path towards the garden door. “And now,” she said, with
that sweet decision of a woman who means to get her own
way, “I think I'll stay here for a little."
“ Which means you want me to go,” Paul said quizzically.
The girl looked at him.
"All right,” the big man answered. "I have letters to
write. You have won this time, but recollect, it will be my
turn next."
Paul Marketel pushed open the door. He walked down


78
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
the bowling-green and mounted the steps on to the terrace-
(it was his quickest way to the Chinese Room), but, once
there, he pulled up abruptly.
Lady de la Haye was still sitting by the tea table, though
Roger and Naomi Melsham had disappeared, but with her
was someone new. A single glance showed Paul that it
was Billy Hirst, or rather, to give him his due title, the
Honorable William Hirst.
As Paul approached, Billy's laugh rang out, and anything
less like a man ruined suddenly can hardly be imagined.
Billy was one thing dominantly—and that thing was, an
adventurer-in the Elizabethan sense of the word. A
fighter, an explorer, a gentleman, he was born out of due
time.
His skin was bronzed a permanent brown by many varie-
ties of temperature, an overflowing eagerness quivered in
every muscle. He was never really happy until he was hot
and dirty, or cold and dirty, in one of the more inaccessible
quarters of the globe.
“How did you get here?” asked Paul, as Billy sprang up
with the information that it was ripping to see him.
“Motor-bike!” Billy explained-he laughed whimsically.
That's economy, you know,” he ran on, “I shall have to
sell my motor. The only wonder is it's left to me to sell.
Oh!” he broke off, “but of course you don't know. I've
just been telling Cousin Amabelle.”
“Yes," said Lady de la Haye, but she looked at Paul-
“I do know," Marketel answered.
“You!" Billy exclaimed.
“ Victoria has just been telling me.”
“ Victoria,” Billy repeated.
“Yes," answered Paul Marketel.
Amabelle saw the big man's face. It was darkened, vin-
dictive even. Billy's misfortune, then, touched him nearly.
But how? Suddenly she saw down the range of this pros-
perous man's vision. The money aspect was as nothing. He
had seen men shoeless today, and riding a thoroughbred on
the morrow. It was something nearer-more personal. It


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
79
was something that he could influence--perhaps even
change.
“I shall have to sing for my dinner, before I eat it, now,”
Billy went on. He looked into his cup, and leisurely drank
off the tea remaining in it.
“I say,” he asked, as he opened his cigarette case and
offered it to Marketel,“ is it true that you are going to send
out an expedition to Thibet, to explore that ruby bearing
district?”
" It is true,” Paul admitted. “Why do you ask?”
He looked at the eager face, for even as he asked the
question he knew what the answer would be, and he laughed
with a note which made Amabelle shiver.
“What's up?” inquired Billy, for even he saw that things
were not quite normal.
Marketel did not reply at once: when he did, he turned to
his hostess.
“Do you know,” he said, “ there is a good deal of the
primitive savage in us all. Veneer does nicely enough for
the undisturbed conditions of life, but when it goes down
to essentials, man is very much what he was when he lived
in trees, and bit the end off the other primitive man's tail
because it hung on to the particular bough he'd selected for
himself."
He pulled up.
“I didn't know the Thibetan proposition was public prop-
erty,” he said to Billy.
“I am sorry I mentioned it,” Billy answered.
No! No!” Marketel returned, “I might have known
that one never can keep that kind of thing to one's self.”
“ Then,” said Billy, “ when you fix your crowd, think of
me. It's just my style of thing.”
“ It will be a beastly dangerous job," said Paul roughly.
What of that?” returned Billy. I'm not a mother's
precious darling."
Marketel was perhaps going to say something that would
have made clear the grudge in his mind, and then a motor
hooted, as if it were going down by the side entrance.


80
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Who's coming now?" asked Billy.
Marketel and Lady de la Haye exchanged a glance of
intelligence.
“I think,” she said, “ it must be Roger. He did say some-
thing about going to Chipley Magna, to see our man of
business."
“What, as late as this?" said Billy.
“Late!” said Paul, and he glanced at his watch.
nearly five," he went on, “and I must write my letters.”
He turned and went towards the window of the salon, but,
as he heard voices in the room, he went along down the
terrace. If Roger could return to the place of meeting by
the garden door-so could he.
“ It's
1


CHAPTER VII
THERE are certain unmistakable milestones on the way to
the pays du tendre.
One of the most explicit is the photograph. When a man
asks a woman for her picture, then you may know that it is
only a matter of time—and his feet will stray over the
border into the delectable country.
The voices that Paul Marketel heard in the salon were
those of Roger and Naomi.
Roger had arrived at exactly this development. He had
mentioned the pictures of the room merely as a starting-
point. His real objective was the girl herself.
“I know you are ever so clever with your camera,” he
said. “ Didn't your mother show me those photographs you
took at Aix?”
The words brought a shadow of doubt, of hesitation, into
Naomi's face. Mrs. Melsham had insisted that her daugh-
ter's accomplishments should go farther than the com-
plaisant snapshot of the amateur. Proficiency in this line
was of a certain advantage in her own form of journalism,
and it had flashed into the girl's mind that if she took these
pictures, Mrs. Melsham, who scented out any sort of gain,
as unerringly as a pursuing animal scents out its quarry-
might get them from her and work up “pars" about them.
But Roger was insistent. She refused the offer to send a
servant upstairs for the camera. Genteel poverty hides
many a secret, odd or sorry, as you look at it, within a
woman's trunk. Instead, she had gone herself, and when
she returned, Roger met her with the information that
Littleport had just been in to remind him that the car was
round, waiting to take him to Chipley Magna.
I must go,” Roger told her, with genuine vexation," but
I shall not be any longer than I can help. I suppose," he
81


82
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
said reluctantly, “ that we shall have to put off these photo-
graphs until tomorrow.”
Well, does it matter if we do? ” she asked.
“ I wanted to do them now,” returned Roger impatiently.
"I don't think anything will have changed," the girl
answered gaily-for how little we know what Fate has in
store, “if we do wait twenty-four hours."
"Nothing?" he repeated meaningly, with the lover's
facility for making something out of a trifle.
The girl
evaded his glance. She slipped a little way down the room
and stood before the table, apparently quite absorbed in
admiring a row of Chinese snuff bottles laid out on it.
In reality, she was putting up a screen between herself and
her heart's desire. She wanted time-time, not for herself,
but for Roger. She wanted him to plumb his own depths.
She wanted him to be sure, not from anything her beauty
might suggest, but from that inner necessity which, let it
be driven off time and again, returns as often to the simple
demand “ I want you."
If Naomi had pushed Roger by as much as a look, let
alone a word-he would have passed this point days ago.
It was because of her own somber background that she hurt
herself to deny him.
If only chemin de fer had never been played at the
Villa Paul et Virginie, or she had cared a little less !
When Roger left, after another word or two about busi-
ness which would admit of no delay, she stood silent in the
big room.
It was the drowsiest hour of the day. The summer sun
came in through the yellow curtains slantwise and hot, so
that it bathed the whole room in a golden glow. Naomi
stood with her head down, with her hands clasped. The
beautiful things around her had no auction-room value for
her, at this moment she neither appreciated their rarity nor
their beauty. They presented themselves as symbols of the
one thing her life had always lacked-stability. “This will
never have to be sold because the tradesmen will not wait
any longer,” she murmured, as she put out a finger and ran


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
83
66
it round the rim of a little cup in Canton enamel. These
stay here always, no shop has sent them, on the sale or
return system,” she went on, counting the row of snuff
bottles.
She walked on again. Silk that a Parisian dressmaker
would have bought-as cheap as she could-and yet at two
louis or more the yard, was used for curtains. It wasn't
ostentation. Naomi had the sense to see that. It was the
befitting thing in the appropriate place. “How good it all
is," she was telling herself, “—how peaceful-how assured."
An excited voice, speaking rapidly in the hall, broke up
her meditations. Naomi lifted her head, and a wave of red
dyed her face right up to her temples, and then, receding,
left her very white. There is a quality in a Gallic voice
which is unmistakable.
Armand de Rochecorbon had arrived. A crisis was at
hand-perhaps the crisis that might change everything. In
two, three, four minutes, she would learn whether she would
have to reckon with an enemy-or at least, a critic-capable
of, and willing to do her much harm: or whether the same
chivalry that had been meted out to her, when she was
hardly more than a slip of a girl, was to be extended to
In other words, had Armand de Rochecorbon
been infinitely kind to seventeen, or to Naomi Melsham be-
cause he really believed that she was innocent of any par-
ticipation in her mother's ways? Since she had heard that
Fate-as Fate has a way of doing—was about to cast up
against her the one person she would prefer not to see, she
had been asking herself, not what she would do, but what
Armand de Rochecorbon would do. The first glance would
decide it.
The double doors opened. She could not, she would not
look round. Armand de Rochecorbon was talking in his
voluble way to Littleport about his car. He was sure no
other was so wonderful, or could run so many miles on the
same amount of
essence," and then, as he bustled past
Littleport, declaring that he was too old a friend to need
announcement, there darted into Naomi's mind the certainty
her now.


84
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
that their first interview would take place without witnesses
-a mercy for which she had never hoped.
He was halfway down the room before he saw her.
“Ah, pardon!” he began, thinking that he had a stranger
before him, but on the second look he recognized her, her
blue eyes, the willowy grace of her figure, and yet he could
scarcely believe his own glance.
“ Mademoiselle!” he exclaimed. “Mademoiselle-Miss
Naomi Melsham. It is Mademoiselle?”
“Yes, Monsieur," the girl answered. “You—you recog-
nize me after all these years?"
“I could not forget you! Impossible! Ah! Si j'étais
libre-" the young man began, and then something on the
face turned to look up to him made him stop.
"Voyons!” he said to himself. He waited-he gave her
back a look as searching as hers had been pleading. He had
evidently come on something unexpected-he was as evi-
dently wishful to take his bearings.
“Monsieur de Rochecorbon," began the girl, for the same
humorous twinkle in the sharp brown eyes she had seen in
the old days, and a smile, as kind as it was quizzical, gave
her a certain hope, “this is my first visit to Zouche.”
And mine," said the Frenchman, “since I married my-
self with my wife.”
Madame has not accompanied you?” asked the girl.
Madame," returned Armand,“ does not care for travel.”
Naomi heard a certain aloofness in the quick voice. It
might mean either of two things. Armand de Rochecorbon
might have one of Mrs. Melsham's sayings in mind. “A
man,” she was wont to observe, “ with a wife by his side is
a masculine possibility spoiled.” Or, Armand's thoughts
might be turned in on himself. Naomi knew that a good
many things had happened since she had seen him last. She
had heard of a matrimonial arrangement of convenience,
rather than of predilection: she had a woman's quickness
for guessing that the little man had had his dream. French-
men so often take their dream as the prelude to the book,
not as the first chapter of it. She wondered - for when one


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
85
loves, love is the first concern—if he was happy with the
unimaginative woman who had been chosen for him.
“I hope Madame is well,” was all she could think of
saying.
The Frenchman thanked her suitably, but Naomi's quick-
ness made another point. De Rochecorbon might not be
enthusiastic about his wife, but he was at least cordial, and
a man who has a foundation of esteem for the woman
nearest to him is rarely cynical to other women. It is the
unhappily married man who says the whole sex was made
for undoing. Women on the contrary seldom lump men
into a bunch.
Suddenly she swept aside the search for an effective
phrase, for a single sentence in which she could put her
case in its best light.
"I did not know Lady de la Haye before I came here,”
she blurted out, “I had never seen her before."
Armand made a step of recoil. An Englishman might
have murmured that he had forgotten his cigarette case, or
that he had not seen his hostess-Armand was not Gallic for
nothing. There was a snap about his mind, as well as about
his speech. Besides, his Latin temperament found zest
rather than embarrassment in what is called, dramatically,
a situation.
“Mademoiselle,” he asked, "you are telling me some-
thing?”
Yes,” said Naomi, almost breathlessly, “Sir Roger-he
is an old friend of yours--
“Bien sûr," admitted Armand, “we were together shoot-
ing the quail in Pekin-but I have not seen him since-
He paused.
“He has only just left me,” broke in Naomi quickly.
“We were going to photograph this room together," and she
indicated the camera she was twisting nervously in her
hands.
“ Hélas !” exclaimed Armand, snatching tactfully at the
change of subject. “ Could I not help—I am, with the
camera, du première force."


86
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
But the girl threw out both her hands. She came straight
to her point. “Monsieur de Rochecorbon," she began, “ you
remember our last meeting—you remember the Villa Paul et
Virginie? You remember that my mother had parties there
to play chemin de fer—you remember - No!” she pro-
tested, as Armand de Rochecorbon put up a hand as if to
stop her. “I must speak. You have not forgotten. No
man could forget. I must ask—what are you going to do?”
I am going to stay at Zouche with our good Roger for-
is it not three days ? ” evaded De Rochecorbon.
“Please-please," Naomi cried out, “don't try to put me
off. You were very kind once to my mother-to me too.
Will you listen to me now? Did my mother ever pay you
back that money?”
“ It was so long ago.”
“Then she did not," concluded the girl.
Her look was bitter-terribly bitter--for so young a face.
The little Frenchman gave a sympathetic shrug. Made-
moiselle, I am foolish perhaps," he protested, “but I have
that fine memory for forgetting.”
You are very kind," Naomi faltered, “but I feel so
ashamed. Monsieur de Rochecorbon,” she went on, “I
know how badly you must think of my mother, and—and of
me. Can you believe-I beg you to believe-I have no evi-
dence to offer but my word, but indeed it is true—that that
terrible evening was a revelation. It was the first time I
understood my mother's—difficulties.”
If Armand had hestitated, if he had doubted, he was con-
quered. He was a man of more acumen, of finer intellect
than either his manner or his occupations might suggest. In
reality what a Frenchman would call his “ tic”—and he had
a fresh one every two years—first porcelain, then idols, now
motors-was energy searching for an outlet. In common
with so many men belonging to the old families of France,
his connections, political and religious, prevented his partici-
pating in the business of his country.
Écoutez, Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, “ have I not said


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
87
it is forgotten? Your mother, she is well?” Armand went
on quickly.
“Yes," said Naomi. “We are not much together now.
Ever since that night I have had such a horror of cards,
and-
Mais, grand ciel!” retorted Armand stoutly; "it was
only the word of Hermann Strum, and who would believe
him?"
She caught her breath-repressed a sob. Many people
would have believed his story," she retorted, “they are not
all as generous as you, Monsieur de Rochecorbon. Think,"
she went on with an appealing helplessness, “think if it were
known here—what would become of me?"
Armand drew back a step. He realized that in some way
he was being asked for a pledge—a pledge which could
surely be counted on without asking.
“ Mademoiselle," he protested," you give yourself an un-
happiness. Why?"
"Because you do not yet understand, Monsieur," Naomi
went on hastily. “You were surprised to meet me here-
you know you were?”
Oh, Mademoiselle!”
Would
you
be more surprised if you were to hear that
Roger wished to marry me?"
Surprised?” ejaculated Armand, and indeed the news
came to him with such a shock that he covered it diplo-
matically, and proceeded to lie with that aplomb which the
male invariably enjoys when the said lie is concerned with
the opposite sex. “Mademoiselle is very beautiful,” he
protested, and then with a humorous smile he tacked on his
inevitable, “Si j'étais libre-"
Naomi interrupted his flow of evasions. “Oh, please,
Monsieur de Rochecorbon, I am serious. I tried to take
life as it came—but I reckoned without my heart.” She
gave a little bitter laugh. “And in every woman's life there
comes a point where her heart comes in and wrecks the best
calculated schemes."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
89
chance, not that she might attain to worldly advantage, but
that she might reach up to a finer mental atmosphere.
As soon as he was sure of that-and Armand de Roche-
corbon was swift to make a decision-he took an impulsive
step nearer.
“Mademoiselle,” he went on quickly, “I have not told
you yet. I have a little son. It is three years since I marry
myself with my wife, and last year Monsieur Bébé he make
his appearance, and papa-when papa has been très sage-
veri good—and mama is content with him, papa wheels the
perambulator-so,” and the little man made a gesture to
match. “And ze Engleesh Miss," he went on, “ma foi!-
so severe, so hygienic, she permit me sometimes, this foolish
papa, to hold the sunshade over ze tout petit bald head so
pink and so tender-”
Naomi looked up at him in wonder. “I don't quite under-
stand,” she said very softly.
Écoutez," went on Armand gently, “a man with so
sweet an interior himself-how can he be hard on those
who are without?"
There was an instant's pause. The girl's look was elo-
quent-for that one moment she realized all that the little
Frenchman implied. Not only pity, not only a desire to
help, but that far greater thing-confidence in her-confi-
dence that, given her chance, she would take the gold and
reject the dross. But as this certainty came to her, words
failed her, her attempt to speak ended in a gasping sob
and she had to turn away.
Calmez vous, Mademoiselle,” Armand repeated, as he
followed her, “ calmez vous. That papa he has so much in
his mind that he can forget, how do you say it—altogether.
And chatterbox as he is, there are some things his lips will
refuse ever to say."
Naomi heard the promise of silence. The tears came into
her eyes. Her heart was beating. It seemed to her that the
wheel of Destiny had begun to spin in a new direction. Until
Roger came into her life, both people and events had con-
spired to drag her down, now they seemed to be helping to


90
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
fortify her, to strengthen her. She bent her head, her being
filled with gratitude.
Armand was as silent as she was, but he was wondering
if he dare risk a word of advice.
“You permit one tout petit mot?” he queried gently.
The girl nodded.
“Roger-he know nothing?" inquired Armand.
“How could he?” Naomi replied, “ he has been seven
years away from Europe-we have known each other less
than a month."
“Then tell him-everything," urged Armand.
“ Everything?” gasped Naomi," that is impossible. You
know Roger. He is an idealist—he has a fixed standard.
He thinks a woman can't go beyond a certain point-can't
touch life at its seamy edge, and yet be the woman he loves.
He loves me now as he thinks I am n-I love him just as he
is-whatever he may be, and so I must wait until—until it is
me he loves—the real me. Just Naomi, no matter what she
is, no matter what she may have been.”
Armand looked at her dubiously." And then-"
“Then, I'll tell him everything and he will understand.
Do you think I shan't long for that day? Do you think I
shan't hasten it? Love isn't love until it understands as
well as forgives—"
Armand nodded his head. “Alors ! C'est fini !” he
muttered. And then in a lighter tone, “Voyons! Let us
now to the photographs. Hein!”
He took up the camera again, but Naomi stopped him with
a little gesture of dismay. She had no mind that her engage-
ment with Roger should be carried through by any
proxy.
“Oh, not now," she protested, “besides," she added with
an uncertain laugh as she saw the little man already moving
over towards the fireplace, "you cannot start there, you
know, you are in the wrong light."
Armand de Rochecorbon protested, and he bowed with a
flourish-“Mademoiselle, a man is always in the wrong light
when a pretty woman puts him there."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
91
Naomi started. The Frenchman's happy jeu d'esprit was
too apropos to the subject they had just left.
“Don't we all, sometimes, get into the wrong light, Mon-
sieur de Rochecorbon?" she said wryly. But this time the
Frenchman refused to follow her.
“De light! Bah! It is but a bagatelle," he retorted
gaily, “it depends always on how you make your blinds.
With a sweeping gesture he took in the windows of the
room, but pulled round sharply as his eye caught the window
over the fireplace. “Teneg!” he exclaimed. “ What is
going on there?”
Naomi followed his glance.
From the inner room, across the glass of the closed
window, a man's hand and arm were distinctly to be seen
drawing together the curtains that would shut in the Chinese
Room. The rough gray Harris tweed was unmistakably the
sleeve of Paul Marketel's coat, but even as he pulled to
the blinds, Naomi caught a glimpse of another hand, long,
lean and yellow, which drew the curtains together at the
bottom in a claw-like grasp.
“Sapristi!” exclaimed Armand excitedly, “there is some-
one in the Chinese Room, then? Dites-moi! Who can it
be?” for like every habitué at Zouche, he knew the history
of the room and the significance of the meetings there.
“Is it ce cher Roger, and whom has he for bon camarade ? ”
“No," said Naomi impulsively, “Roger has gone to Chip-
ley Magna-I told you-he will be back directly. Wasn't
that Mr. Marketel—and his Excellency?”
“Ciel!” ejaculated the little man, now on tiptoe with
excitement, for a habit of diplomatic observation once
acquired sticks to one all one's life-that's why the career
holds a place apart for seventy odd—“Old Chi Lung and
Marketel-together-in the Chinese Room? Oh! La, la,
la! Quelle affaire!”
Naomi could not help smiling at him. “ An affaire-
here?” she laughed.
The little Frenchman nodded emphatically—“But yes-
Zouche is old ground for affaires diplomatiques. In the


92
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
days of Sir Arthur I have known in that room _” he
broke off sharply as a sudden illumination burst on him.
Armand had never been within the inner ring of diplomacy.
France's fatal habit of thrusting out her best-born, because
they are her best-born, had prevented that also, but his
interest in national affairs was none the less as keen as any
outsider's could be. Therefore he had heard whispers-
just that hint dropped by one expert to another—that China
was making one of her periodical turns in her sleep-it
required but Naomi's chance words to show him which way
the Celestial eyes were blinking.
“Voyons!” he continued, “ Chi Lung and Paul Marketel !
It is not for nothing they meet here! Is it possible that we
are—how do you say it-in the pie? The lion and the
lamb,” he ran on, mixing up his metaphors in his eagerness,
“they do not lie down together for soft sleeping. Tiens!
If I could only have ears long enough to hear what they
are saying now."
“Would it be so very interesting?” the girl smiled.
"All that is of the most interesting,” declared the French-
man. He came closer, and in his excitement ran both his
hands through his hair, cropped à la brosse, until it stood
up like a thatch of stiff bristles. “Écoutez, Mademoiselle,"
he went on, “even now in there, perhaps—the East and the
West, il s'arrangent. It is an intrigue!”
Naomi drew back-"I am tired of intrigues," she said
passionately,—“I wish there were no such things as mys-
teries and concealments in the whole world."
“But, dear lady,” Armand retorted, “what would the
poor diplomats do then?” He waved an approving hand
towards the Chinese Room. 'Allons! Let them talk!” he
ran on, “ Mille blessings on them! As often as the Chinese
and the British agree—the German goes to the wall. Allez
toujours," he muttered fiercely, “ be first in the field for once
if you can," and then, as he saw Naomi staring at him he
turned with a laugh again. “But come now-to the photo-
graphs !” he said, and he took up the camera again.
Enfin!—but it is small—will it make good pictures ? ”
99


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
93
he inquired, as he moved across to the specimen table and
took up a vase of priceless Canton enamel, with a repre-
sentation of a mandarin and his suite, exquisite in design
and execution, upon it.
“Oh, yes," said Naomi quickly, and she little thought the
deep significance her careless words were to have later.
“These No. 3 Kodaks are so good that even those little
mountains on that enamel will come out quite distinctly."
Then she turned sharply to find that Littleport was waiting
by her side.
The old man was carrying a large round silver tray, and
on it were arranged piles of letters. Lady de la Haye's
were always placed above Sir Arthur's name (for it was
a presentation piece of plate),-Roger's at the foot, those
for the guests in order of precedence. Not for worlds
would the old man have varied the details of the ceremony.
He had already pointed out her single envelope to Naomi
and now he edged Armand's correspondence to him and was
just leaving the room when a wedge of sunlight darted into
his eyes. Now sunlight, in relation to upholstery, was an
enemy against whom Littleport waged a ceaseless war, so
he turned back abruptly and proceeded carefully and pre-
cisely to draw to the yellow silk curtains.
You will excuse me, M'am,” he said, “but the sun does
fade our carpets so.”
“Vous permettez?" began the Frenchman, after he had
looked up to smile at Littleport's precaution, and he tore
open an envelope directed in that spidery hand of the con-
vent-educated Frenchwoman.
He glanced down the lines of close pale writing and then
he flung up his head, his face working with excitement.
Ze bébé !” he cried out, “ze excellent bébé-'e have a
tooth. Ah! le brave bon homme! I must send a dépêche
-a telegram. Ze congratulations of papa! Littleport!
Littleport! Mon vieux! A telegram!”
He rushed out of the room, looking over his shoulder at
Littleport following on, and repeated his demand for a
telegraph form.


94
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Naomi looked after him. Perhaps once this effusiveness
would have amused her—now it touched her.
“You see,” she told herself, “ he cares too, now that he
has someone to open out his heart.”
It was a moment before she went back to her own letter.
She had left it lying on the table and now she frowned on
it distastefully. She knew the writing, as exaggerated as the
unduly large cover.
She tore open the envelope. It was what she expected-a
bill from the dressmaker.
To account rendered .....
Lavender Lawn Dress
Hat to match
£97 - 11 -2 she read-
11-11-0
5 - 15-6


CHAPTER VIII
remove
NAOMI MELSHAM stood with Madame Émilie's bill in her
hand, and the further she read the more aghast she became.
Mrs. Melsham was a past master in turning the screw at
the appropriate moment, so Naomi instantly suspected that
the bill had followed her to Zouche by her mother's orders,
but that was not all. Her three new dresses were each put
down at far more than she had been led to believe. As
for the account rendered—that was for Mrs. Melsham's own
dresses, and was supposed to have been liquidated by an
article in a fashion paper, but Naomi knew, since the whole
bill had come to her, that sooner or later she would have
to pay it. But how?
She began to breathe hard. It was as if she had been
climbing up to Heaven, and had been ruthlessly pulled back
to Earth.
Good resolutions," she whispered bitterly,
none of the difficulties of the straight path.”
This beginning on other lines, which had seemed possible,
easy even, an hour ago, a case of good will and pure inten-
tions, was not to be, merely because, honestly, sincerely, she
wished it. The past is the octopus of human experience,
and where it does not strangle, it is always capable of drag-
ging under.
For the first time, that hardest question that a woman can
ask herself clamored for an answer.
“Would it be the surest proof of her love for Roger to
leave him?"
The question with all it implied was still in her mind,
when the double doors opened with the flourish that Naomi
had already learned to connect with Littleport's announce-
ment of a guest.
95


96
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
The girl heard the beginning of a name; she sprang to
her feet, her whole being tingling with consternation.
Mrs. Melsham to see Miss Melsham," announced
Littleport.
“Mama," breathed Naomi.
The mother and daughter waited, one looking hard at the
other, until they were alone. Naomi spoke first.
“Mama, what have you come for? Why are you here?”
She looked fearfully at the faultlessly dressed woman. It
was often possible to gauge Mrs. Melsham's frame of mind
by her attire-more especially by the supply of carmine on
her cheeks. Mrs. Melsham had evidently come in a discreet
mood, for the coloring was so skilfully applied that it was
all but possible to put it down to the careful preservation
of a good complexion. Her manner, too (for Naomi's
mother could be indefinably light at times), bore out the
same note.
“My love," she began, and she never prefaced her speech
with an endearment unless there was something to be gained
by it, “ you don't seem pleased to see me.”
Mechanically Naomi pulled up a chair. Mrs. Melsham
took it, she looked at the tip of her neat suède shoe with
a downcast air, and hoped, if she gave Naomi time, the girl
would think she had been unfeeling.
Exactly that thought came into the girl's mind.
Forgive me,” she said penitently, “I didn't expect you.
I was afraid
“Of what?" asked Mrs. Melsham.
“You see," said Naomi, “everything is so different
here."
" You don't think I should fit in," mocked her mother.
“Things are so different here," answered Naomi, falling
back on a lame repetition.
Mrs. Melsham looked up with a cold smile. She realized
that Naomi was possessed with what she called one of her
goody-goody" fits, and for such a mood she had no tolera-
tion at all.
“I never knew a girl in love, who didn't compare her
1


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
97
futurc's' family, to the disadvantage of her own," she
observed. “After she is married, she generally learns that
she has found a number of new relations who either snub
her for not being as smart as themselves or detest her for
being smarter."
'After that trenchant epitome, she sat up straight and in-
quired, with her most business-like air, if Naomi had any
interesting news for her.
No,” returned the girl shortly.
I suppose Roger de la Haye is in love with you,” Mrs.
Melsham went on.
The girl colored a furious red.
“You stood the test of the home environment all right,"
the cold voice continued.
Naomi threw out her hands. Not a week ago she would
have played off contempt against cynicism, and a battle of
furious words would have ensued. Now she seemed as if
she would push the stinging comments from her.
“Don't, Mama,” she protested. “Don't say bitter things.
I have learned such a lot since I came here. Let's begin
again, you and I-we are always saying horrid things to
each other-
Mrs. Melsham laughed harshly.
“Do you want to reform me?” she asked. “My good
child, you are making yourself ridiculous. I'm old enough
to prefer caviare to ice pudding.”
She rose, and frankly began to appraise the room: she
observed that there were several things, to her mind, requir-
ing modification.
Keep your boudoir in your own hands," she suggested,
“ don't take it as a legacy, and insist from the first that it
has a key to its lock. Above all, strike your own note. If
I were you, I'd go in for yellows, just because everyone
will expect purples from your hair and skin.”
Naomi broke in on this pertinent advice with a sharp
question.
“How did you get here? Where did you come from?”
she asked.


98
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“The Tippley-Smiths have taken a house at Coboldisham,
only fifteen miles from here.”
“Lady de la Haye has not called upon them.”
Mrs. Melsham did not answer immediately. During the
last two or three sentences, she had been wandering down
the room, fingering the curios, now she pulled up before the
little table and paused to examine the row of Chinese scent
bottles upon it.
“Three, four, five a whole dozen-no, thirteen!” she
counted aloud. “How absurd! And how unlucky! What
does one want with thirteen Chinese scent bottles ? "
“I know,” she remarked in another tone, taking up the
conversation over her shoulder, while she picked up a tiny
flat bottle, with a heavy inlay of gold—“I had rather a
difficulty in reminding Ada Tippley-Smith that she couldn't
make the first advance. I meant to come alone, and here
I am.”
She opened the black vanity bag, which hung by a large
ring over her wrist, and took out her handkerchief.
Naomi looked up. There was an instant while à great
horror kept the girl still, and then she sprang to her mother's
side.
“Every item of this collection is catalogued and known
to collectors all over the world. Not even the little dealers
in the Quai Montmorency would buy a single thing, for they
couldn't sell it again without being accused of theft,” she
exclaimed breathlessly.
Mrs. Melsham deliberately replaced the scent bottle in
the middle of the long row.
“Isn't that rather conceited of the De la Hayes ?" she
remarked—“making such a fuss, as if no one else collected
chinoiserie. I don't know that I admire Oriental art my-
self.”
The mother and daughter faced each other. Once again
Mrs. Melsham's airy disregard for the accepted honesties
of existence baffled Naomi.
“What have you come for, Mama ?” she demanded
insistently.


100
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
99
“Do people who know too much about one ever die?”
Mrs. Melsham inquired.
Naomi nodded dumbly. She was coming to the value of
the announcement slowly, but she would get to it in time
—and get to it all the more certainly for not being hurried.
Suddenly the girl's arms fell to her sides.
“How do you know ? ” she whispered.
“He called on me yesterday,” Mrs. Melsham explained.
“Half an hour later and I should have started for the
station and missed him."
“ What has he come for? What did he want?” cried out
Naomi.
“The truth is," answered Mrs. Melsham," that he hasn't
forgotten my little accident at chemin de fer."
Accident," echoed Naomi passionately.
“Well," answered Mrs. Melsham, quite unreproved, “I
shall always say that if I had been allowed to explain in my
own way-
“One can't explain five aces," Naomi flung back.
Mrs. Melsham shrugged her shoulders.
“I made the mistake of thinking I was playing with
gentlemen,” she remarked with an injured air.
Naomi had no answer. It never was any good to argue
with Mrs. Melsham, but it was not the futility only that was
keeping her silent. The scene was so indelibly impressed on
her consciousness, that as often as she thought of it, every
detail rose up as freshly before her as on the day of its
happening. She saw the little room in the tiny Villa, all
the tawdry furnishings of the “appartement garni”: the
table covered with a green cloth, the shoe, the tiny rake, the
little heaps of money: and she saw, too, not only her mother,
as beautifully dressed as usual, not only Armand de Roche-
corbon, so many years younger, nor only herself, a slip of
a girl, bewildered and timid, but a big loose-limbed man
with large hands, and with what struck her particularly,
mounds of soft flesh, with long hairs sticking out of them,
between each knuckle. This individual had pendulous
cheeks, which hung down in flaps as he leaned over the


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
IOI
table and first gesticulated insolently at her mother, and
then, as he turned on her, Naomi herself. The thick-lipped
mouth leered with a look so evil that the child died in Naomi
Melsham, and out of very fear-that instinctive fear of a
male at his most predatory—the woman was born.
"You cheated at cards, Mama,” Naomi went on. “Her-
mann Strum found you out. He threatened to expose you,
and Armand de Rochecorbon took pity on us. He bought
off Strum, and now," the girl ended with a wail,“ Strum has
come back again.”
Obviously," answered Mrs. Melsham with a shrug. She
heard this recapitulation of damning facts without so much
as a change of color. She neither denied nor evaded-she
merely passed on to something else.
“Tell me," she asked, “who is staying here now?"
Naomi looked quickly round.
Why do you want to know?”
“Strum has gone into journalism,” Mrs. Melsham ex-
plained. “It seems he is starting a new paper-Versions and
Animadversions I think it is to be called: inconveniently
apropos,
don't
you
think? But then, Strum never had
any
sense of humor."
“ That man! Editing a newspaper?” Naomi ex-
claimed.
“Why not?” demanded her mother. “I'm sure he's
smart enough. He has offered me two hundred a year to
collect society news for him.”
“And you'll take money from-him?" the girl demanded
breathlessly.
Mrs. Melsham smiled finely.
“Not money, my dear,” she corrected. “It's a fee, or is
it an honorarium ?—besides, it's hardly thought déclassé
nowadays to be earning one's living."
Naomi let her hands fall to her sides with a hopeless
gesture.
Mrs. Melsham rose. She came up to her daughter and
slid her hand under the girl's arm.
"Listen, dear,” she murmured, using what she rarely


102
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
66
“Ah,
did to her own child—her most insinuating voice—“I am
really in a fix this time."
"You!" the girl gasped.
Mrs. Melsham nodded. She opened her bag again and
dabbed her nose carefully with her powder puff.
“I didn't want to spoil your pretty illusions about the
World well lost for Love, but-we are at the far end,”
summed up Mrs. Melsham. “Besides”
Besides chimed in Naomi bitterly.
you are only trading on our difficulties to frighten me.
What do you want? It must be something you know
I should hate to do, or you wouldn't play the poverty
card.”
“ You didn't like that time we had to leave Marienbad in
the middle of the night, without our boxes, any more than
I did,” Mrs. Melsham reminded her.
Naomi shrank in upon herself.
“Well, then," pursued Mrs. Melsham, as she noted the
movement, " help me to prevent a similar thing happening
in London.”
“ How?”
Tell me, for one thing, who is here now."
No one who would interest Strum,” Naomi retorted.
Besides all the names are in the Morning Post: he can
read them there for himself."
“All?" asked Mrs. Melsham, insistently.
All," answered Naomi—“Oh,-excepting Mr. Marketel.
He happened to turn up unexpectedly.”
Mrs. Melsham clicked her teeth sharply together.
“Paul Marketel,” she exclaimed.
“ Strum was
of it.”
Of what?”
That Paul Marketel would be here. My dear,” she went
on triumphantly, “ Paul Marketel's arrival is no chance, it's
part of a prearranged plan. Strum was sure of it-it's
wonderful how he gets his information."
“I don't understand," Naomi muttered lamely.
“My dear,” Mrs. Melsham continued, “Strum says that
sure


104
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
It was a moment before either of the two women spoke
again. Naomi looked steadily at her mother; for once Mrs.
Melsham was fidgety.
“Well, my dear," she began, "you know old men like
you. Couldn't you get round this old Chinaman?”
“And tell you what he says, that you may tell Strum,"
Naomi flashed out. She turned on her mother and caught
her by the arm, her whole being aroused, every nerve
tingling with repulsion.
“How dare you," she began incoherently, “how dare you
suggest that I should lower myself to cajole that old man,
how dare you hint at underhand methods here? I know
you, Mama. When you are most plausible, you are most
unscrupulous."
“Is that quite the language a daughter should use to a
mother?” Mrs. Melsham put in.
“Mama," Naomi protested, “it isn't my fault if there
are times when I am not able to remember that you are my
mother."
She drew herself up.
“Understand, please,” she said, “I refuse to help Strum,
in any way, and I refuse to fall in with any suggestions you
may make about scheming in this house."
“Then," retorted Mrs. Melsham, in a very even voice,
you had better go upstairs and pack your box.”
My box," gasped the girl. “Why?”
Because," answered her mother, “ Strum made no secret
of his intentions. I must either satisfy him, or he will come
down and tell Lady de la Haye-of-of my bad arith-
metic.”
Tell Lady de la Haye about that chemin de fer?”
“That was what he said. I was always sure he wasn't
quite what one would call a gentleman."
“But,” muttered Naomi," he can't. He mustn't."
"I know," said Mrs. Melsham, “and with Armand de
Rochecorbon here too. Of course there's no real evidence
-and it happened so long ago. Things always seem so
much less credible if they happened a few years back-but


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
105
appearances are against us, my dear. It may take facts
to damn a man, you know, but appearances are enough to
send a woman to blazes."
Naomi let most of the speech go without comment. She
fastened on Strum's threat. She realized that if Hermann
Strum once entered Zouche, the doors of it would close be-
hind her for ever.
What was the thing to do now? To leave at once and
defy this bully? But that meant giving up Roger-it meant
giving up the one ray of real sunshine that had ever crept
into her life. Let no one who has not experienced what it
means to be shivering, while one goes on pretending one is
warm, judge her.
Yet she still kept to her point.
“I can't do it, Mama," she whispered. “There must be
some other way. Can't we buy Strum off?”
“When you buy a man off today, you invite him to
return for more tomorrow," Naomi's mother answered.
“At least, that's been my usual experience.”
The girl walked away. She stood with her head bent.
She still felt that there must be some middle course. Even
life, which can be so infinitely cruel, couldn't be cruel enough
to shut her out here.
There is one little thing more,” Mrs. Melsham went on.
“More," repeated Naomi, turning on her.
“You know that week-end we spent on Dartmoor with
those rather common people from Ilfracombe-well, Strum
suggests that I may be domiciled there for a certain stated
period -” (for humor with Mrs. Melsham was apt to
have a very substantial sting in its tail).
Naomi looked up apprehensively.
“ Domiciled on Dartmoor!” She caught her breath-a
sudden recollection of Princetown and its convicts flashed
upon her.
“My child," cooed Mrs. Melsham, seeing that her jibe
had gone home, "you are really growing quite-quite acute.
Didn't those dear Ilfracombeites of ours call it doing
time'?"


106
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
It said volumes for Naomi's past experiences, that there
was horror on her face, but no amazement.
* You mean to say—" she began.
Mrs. Melsham shrugged one of her slim shoulders.
“The name on a certain check was not-er-baptismally
-mine,” she said, laughing as if, after all, forgery was a
trifle—and a rather amusing one at that—“but my fingers
happened to guide the pen.'
* And the check is in Strum's possession?”
“So he informed me yesterday.”
“ How did he get it?” the girl cried out.
Mrs. Melsham looked tolerantly at her daughter.
“Does that really matter?” she observed. “The inter-
esting question is—what's he going to do with it?”
“Do with it?" Naomi repeated.
“Yes," said Mrs. Melsham. “Of course you'd be merely
the innocent victim of a guilty mother, but would the
De la Hayes look on it in that light? People are so narrow-
minded still, aren't they?”
She paused and watched her daughter's face. Two lines
had come upon it already. There was the hollow shadow
of anxiety on either temple.
“Yesterday,” Mrs. Melsham resumed, “Strum promised
to give me back that check in exchange for-
"For what-"Naomi gasped.
For authentic details of this Chinese navy loan.”
Naomi sank into the nearest chair. She put ner elbows
on her knees, and held her chin in her two palms. Even
leaving Zouche, even letting Roger believe that she had gone
because she was indifferent to him, would not recover that
check. It never once entered her mind to doubt that Her-
mann Strum would act on his threat. She knew the man
too well.
Be sensible,” Mrs. Melsham went on, common-sense
may be dull, but it is a serviceable bridge over many a
difficult situation."
Naomi looked up hopelessly. She shook her head.
“Remember," said Mrs. Melsham, “the alternative is


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
107
prison for me, and with my heart in the condition it is, you
know what that would mean."
Naomi put up both hands as if she expected to be struck.
“Oh! Mama," she wailed. "Don't, don't put it like
that.” She got up with difficulty, as if she were already old
and stiff. She walked unsteadily to her mother's side, and
stood there, her eyes wide with horror. She was still trying
to rally her mind, she was still trying to find the right thing
and the strength to do it, and then, before a single ray of
clear thought, much less the words in which to formulate it,
would come to her, Mrs. Melsham lifted a warning finger.
Her quick ears—all the senses must be trained to a fine
point for a life like hers—had caught the murmur of voices
in the room beyond.
“ What room is that?” she asked.
The Chinese writing-room,” Naomi faltered.
“The Chinese writing-room,” repeated Mrs. Melsham,
in an injured tone. “ You might have told me that before.
Hermann Strum assured me that the Chinese writing-room
hatched diplomatic agreements as if it were an incubator
hatching chickens : but I never dreamed it would lead out
of the drawing-room-I thought of it up in a turret, all by
itself. Who," a sharper note coming into her voice, “is
in it now v ?
“ The Chinaman and Paul Marketel, I believe," the girl
answered.
“ Naomi ! ” Mrs. Melsham protested, “and you never men-
tioned that either. Secretiveness is one of your worst faults.
I might have made such good use of the time—and saved
you all those scruples.”
She hurried to the door as she spoke, and deliberately put
her ear to the keyhole.
Mama!” protested Naomi. She darted across the
room, and was about to drag her mother away when Mrs.
Melsham anticipated her.
They are coming out. I hear them. Quick,” she
whispered, “where can we hide?”
There was a great screen of Chinese lacquer and gold


108
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
down one side of the room. Mrs. Melsham darted to it,
pulling her daughter after her. She pushed the girl be-
hind the folds before Naomi could protest, and then
almost as soon as they were hidden, the two doors from
the Chinese Room opened. Chi Lung came out first, Paul
Marketel followed.
“Lo!” observed the old Celestial, and he was evidently
well pleased, for there was quite a chuckle in his voice, “at
last the Babe is born. The man of much money has ac-
quired yet another child for the family of his bank book."
The old man motioned for Paul to pass along. He
turned and carefully locked the door, taking out the big
bronze key.
One more lock, one less watch-dog, we say in the Land
of Enlightenment,” he told Paul. Marketel answered with
a general assent. The old man went shuffling along, the
key still in his hand. He drew aside the blind, just as he
would have done one of his own sun mats at home within
the Imperial City. Paul Marketel followed him, the blind
flapped to again. The room was empty once more.
“ Impertinence!' whispered Mrs. Melsham as she came
out of her hiding-place. “To walk off with the key in
another person's house!”
She turned to her daughter. There was something
indefinably cat-like about her.
“Well!” she rapped out, will you go in and make a
copy of that agreement, or shall I?"
"I-I-I won't steal," protested Naomi.
Mrs. Melsham laughed as if she really were amused.
“Don't forget the alternative," she cooed.
“ The door is locked," Naomi blurted out," you saw
that for yourself.”
Mrs. Melsham carefully suppressed a smile. She knew
that the plea of the impossible is so often the last entrench-
ment of the wavering mind.
“Prison underclothes, ugh!” she muttered, “and you
know that I have so fine a skin that it always chafes under
anything less than real Valenciennes.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
109
66
Suddenly she swung round and looked at the doors into
the hall.
* They are pairs,” she exclaimed. “ I'll lay two to one
the same key fits both.”
She was across the room in a moment. In as short a
space of time, she had changed the key from one lock to
the other. It turned the moment she laid her hand on it.
"There !” she cried out triumphantly. “The quality of
imagination! Your father never had a spark of it.”
Naomi backed away.
“No! No! No! I won't," she clamored.
Her mother turned about. Her lips were in a very
sharp line. She wanted to shake her daughter, and looked
as if she were about to do it. But, as she swept past the
sofa, a falling cushion brought down Naomi's camera with
it. Mrs. Melsham saw it as it fell, and it didn't take her
more than a couple of moments to see what use it might
be to her.
She picked it up and brought it to her daughter.
“My dear," she said, " isn't this your kodak?”
“Yes," said Naomi.
“You were taking photographs of this room?"
“I was going to, only you came in and prevented it.”
For whom?"
Sir Roger wanted them.”
Then! My dear!” said Mrs. Melsham, tucking her
hand under Naomi's arm" we will do them together, only
the series shall include one of the desk in the Chinese
writing-room, and on that desk shall chance to be lying
the agreement for the navy loan.”
“Mama!” Naomi protested. “Mama!”
She broke away from her mother. She hastened to the
furthest corner.
“ Such a small thing to do,” purred Mrs. Melsham,
“and so safe. Not a single word in writing-I always
warned you against that. I believe ink was the devil's
revenge on woman, when he found Eve making such a
fuss about the apple."


110
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“No! No! No!” Naomi interjected, catching her
breath, tripping over her words in her agitation. “I won't;
I-won't
The door from the hall opened and Lady de la Haye
entered. Littleport had sought her out to tell her that
Miss Melsham's mother was in the salon, and the old man's
dry manner had not reassured her. The drawing-room
may be taken in by spurious gentility—the servants' hall
never.
Lady de la Haye began with a courteous word of regret.
She had been in the garden: the servants had had a diffi-
culty in finding her: but as she spoke, she was telling her-
self that she did not like this woman.
There was nothing in Mrs. Melsham's outward appear-
ance of which she could disapprove, but some inner instinct
warned her, and while it warned her it both enlightened
and misled her. This, she concluded, accounted for the
hesitation she had remarked in Naomi's manner. Her
mother was not personally amiable.
As for Mrs. Melsham she knew as quickly that she
was found wanting. As a rule when old-fashioned peo-
ple gave themselves airs she knew how to get even
with them, as she herself would have said, but on
this occasion she wished to propitiate, not to antago-
nize.
“I am so glad to have the opportunity of meeting you,"
she said to Lady de la Haye.
She looked at her daughter, and the breath of a sad
little sigh fluttered into the room.
“I wished very much to know you myself,” she added
softly.
Lady de la Haye saw the subtlety of the manœuver. She
had not included Mrs. Melsham in the invitation. She
was to be put in the wrong.
Mrs. Melsham just gave her time enough to make the
deduction, but not time enough to dwell on it.
'I came over to see my daughter about our future
plans," she said. “I had received a pressing invitation to


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
III
pay a lengthy visit in Devonshire-on Dartmoor. I wanted
to consult Naomi.”
And
you have come to a decision together?” asked
Lady de la Haye.
“I think I have left it to her,” Mrs. Melsham answered.
She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “I am afraid
I must be going,” she said. “Ada Tippley-Smith dines at
eight. She sent me over in her motor. She is a dear good
soul-but punctual, even to a fault.”
“At least let me give you a cup of tea first,” Amabelle
suggested, for she felt that she could not let Naomi's
mother go without some show of hospitality.
Mrs. Melsham smiled playfully.
“I confess to a love of tea," she answered, “but today,
may I not mention the dust, and say motoring is thirsty
work?"
“ Then come,” said Lady de la Haye, “tea is on the
terrace.”
She was going towards the window when Mrs. Melsham
stopped her.
My sunshade," she said "I left it in the hall, and,"
plaintively, “I do rather dread the glare for my eyes.”
“ Then,” said Lady de la Haye, “we will go out that
way."
Mrs. Melsham turned to her daughter.
You do advise me to refuse that invitation to Dart-
moor?” she asked aloud-she looked ahead. Naomi was
mumbling incoherently. Lady de la Haye, thinking that
the mother and daughter might like a word apart, was pass-
ing out of the room.
'I have prevented her drawing up the blinds," Mrs.
Melsham insisted.
have a clear course. Hurry,
go in and make the photograph. Then do up the kodak
in a parcel. Leave the cover—that makes it too large-
just wrap up the camera and bring it to me. Say it's lace
for the dressmaker or something."
Mrs Melsham turned as she said that. She heard Naomi
muttering after her, “ Mama! Mama!”
Now you


'II2
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
She knew the faltering sounds were coming through dry
lips: she knew that Naomi was trembling from head to
foot-but she never looked round.
The time for discussion was past. It was better to leave
the girl to herself.


CHAPTER IX
It was eleven o'clock on the following morning that his
Excellency, the special envoy from China, left Zouche to
return to London. Both Roger and Paul were waiting to
receive him as he came downstairs. He came up to them,
and without once glancing towards the door began to talk
as if the whole day were before him.
It was Roger who looked at his watch.
It isn't time yet, the car won't be round for five min-
utes," he said, as he repressed a smile, for he knew that
Chi Lung had never got over his Oriental predilection for
going to a station without any reference to a time-table,
and staying there until the engine happened to get up steam.
The
eyes of the venerable have nobler work than to
weary themselves with the figures in the book of hurry,"
declared his Excellency testily, and ostentatiously he
walked back towards the stairs.
The hall was long. It was somewhat narrow for the
size of the house. The double doors leading to the salon
were on one side, opposite them a similar pair opened into
the dining-room. Further along were two recesses. One
was the entrance to a corridor giving access to Lady de la
Haye's sitting-room, the billiard room, and various other
small rooms. From out of the other went up the great
circular staircase, with the ribs of each step set into a cen-
tral column, as one sees in the steps at Amboise. Even
in the hall there were evidences of Sir Arthur's love of
Chinese art. A few fine bronzes topped a lacquer cabinet:
more were on a low table, but the K'osse, or, as they were
more generally known, mosaïques de soie, on the walls
were the principal attraction. Savants, curiosity hunters
from all over the world, came to look at these great panels
of embroidery in silk, which, starting in tones of maize,
113


114
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
mounted up to a vivid orange-red, harmonized here and
there with touches of tender green. Each panel represented
a typically Chinese scene, and as Paul Marketel asked a
question about the one nearest to him, Naomi Melsham
appeared within the arch from the staircase.
It was Roger who saw her first.
“At last,” he began eagerly. “I thought you were never
coming.”
“Am I so very late?” asked Naomi, and she laughed
uncertainly.
Roger looked at her intently. Carefully as he had marked
the variations of her mood, with a view to a more perfect
understanding, he knew now that there was an aspect before
him which he had not hitherto seen.
“You are tired,” he declared. “You look as if you had
been in pain."
“I had neuralgia. I didn't sleep particularly well,” the
girl answered briefly.
She walked on towards Paul and the Chinaman. Roger
looked after her. He experienced that sensation of a door
shut in his face. Just as it had disconcerted him before,
it did so now: and then, being a man and being in love, he
found a solution to please himself. Naomi evidently
shrank from the mention of her physical ills. So many of
the nicest women did.
“She is splendid," he said to himself.
He followed her with admiring eyes. He thought he saw
a touch of deprecation in her greeting both of Chi Lung
and of Paul, and of course told himself that it must be
fancy: but there was no possibility of fancy about Chi
Lung's manner. The old man was so gruff, so abrupt, that
for the first time in his life Roger thought of his father's
old friend as a barbarian: as someone outside the niceties
of civilization, for whom an allowance must be made.
Have
you seen this, Miss Melsham? he hastened to
say, and he indicated the mosaïque. “ This represents
Shou,' the character for long life.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
115
Naomi was at his elbow before he finished speaking, and
she came there as if she needed a refuge.
“ Shou?" she repeated.
“With the Chinese, long life is practically synonymous
with happiness," Roger explained.
The girl glanced at the eight embroidered genii (and to
her they seemed very grim to have anything to do with
happiness), seated among a typical Chinese scene of
foliage and steep conventional rock work, and as she looked
at the stiff attitudes, at the caricatures of human features,
she saw in them not a symbol, but a mockery.
“I hate it," she said vehemently.
You hate what?" asked Roger concernedly.
“Don't you understand ?” Naomi answered, and there
was a ring of supplication in her voice. “Long life isn't
worth anything, as long life. Without happiness, it would
be a curse not a blessing. Fancy knowing one had to live to
eighty, if regret or misery, or even the consequences of
some great mistake, went with one all the way.”
There was such a ring in the voice, that Paul looked
round quickly, and Chi Lung gazed fixedly over his spec-
tacles. Already the old Chinaman hated this golden-haired
girl. She had upset a delusion-she came between him
and Roger. As a rule, Chi Lung lumped European women
together, and declared that he never knew one from the
other. As for their garments, they were, in his mind, but
so many yards of indecencies.
In this instance he so far individualized as to remark not
only that Naomi was very good-looking-good-looking, that
is, according to the canons of a barbarian taste, but that
her lavender frock accentuated her glorious coloring and
the best lines of her figure. Not that he approved: on the
contrary, if any "little old woman" of his ever-blessed
Middle Kingdom had showed such a disposition to coquetry
(Chi Lung gave it a harder name), then that tyrant of the
household, the mother-in-law, might be trusted to deal with
her. But here, in this barbarous land, there were no salu-


116
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
»
tary ways of enforcing propriety. Even a husband was
denied the power of the stick.
“How can a woman know what constitutes happiness?
he asked rudely. Happiness without stability is like a
melon without sun, and a woman will be of the same mind
two days together, when the waters of the Yellow River
run clear.”
Naomi drew herself up. She half turned to Roger as if
she were about to ask him to take up her defense, and then
she walked along to the smaller door, which faced the big
entrance and opened on to the terrace.
It was ajar already, but Naomi threw it back as if she
had an urgent need for air. She was trembling and her
lip quivered.
“That old Chinaman hates me already," she exclaimed,
and then to Roger as he followed her, “Why does he dis-
like me so much?” she asked.
Roger smiled slowly. In his opinion the answer would
involve another explanation, and one concerned with a
much greater thing. He was half inclined to speak then
and there, to pour out his desires, his hopes. But a feel-
ing, so light as to be a sentiment rather than a resolution,
restrained him. It was the lover's susceptibility to an atmos-
phere. The hostility generated within the hall floated out
into the exquisite summer morning.
“ Chi Lung does not dislike you," he temporized. “He
is afraid of you."
“Afraid of me!" cried out Naomi.
She bit her lip. For an instant it was she who
was filled with fear. Had the old Chinaman the faculty
of picking out evil, of seeing through the wall of per-
sonality, of watching the workings of a soul? She had
heard strange things about the occult powers of the Celes-
tial.
This time, naturally, Roger failed to follow her. He
read the hesitation very differently, and laughed as a man
does laugh when he thinks he sees the wine in his cup of
happiness mounting to the brim.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
117
-
“Never mind Chi Lung," he cried out, “I want to talk
to you about something else.”
Naomi looked up, her face was aglow with that light
which beautifies the plainest woman and enhances the most
lovely. Paul Marketel, coming out of the door, happened
to catch a glimpse of the transfiguration. He always re-
membered it, and in the time to come, it grew to be, if not
the key to the great enigma, at least a clue to many a
puzzling circumstance.
“Roger, his Excellency is by himself, he doesn't look
overpleased," he began, for he felt that however provoking
the envoy from Pekin must be, so important a person as
the Marquis Chi Lung must not feel himself reproved. But
as he got so far, Lady de la Haye mounted the steps from
the bowling-green.
Naomi went swiftly to meet her, and the two women
came back together. Lady de la Haye had a single flower
in her hand-one large red rose about to burst into bloom.
The Oriental offers a flower, the Occidental a bouquet.
The difference is not without its significance.
Lady de la Haye just took in the fact that the young
people were outside, the old man within, then she entered
quickly and hastened up to Chi Lung.
“ From Zouche,” she said, as she held out the rose, and
there was an appeal in her low tone.
His Excellency took the flower. There followed a pause.
It was not a mere waiting for inspiration. It was obvi-
ously something deeper, much farther reaching. It was,
probably, that the old man's mind had gone back to far-
away days, that he was reaffirming certain vows. He held
up his thin, claw-like hand.
May the house wax and increase," he began, “even as
this blossom has still petals to unfold. May the incense
of happiness rise up from this house, even as the perfume
rises up from this flower, and may the house continue, when
the rose has cast its leaves on the floor, for as long as the
lantern bearer lights the sky and the orb of gold rises to
renew the morning."


118
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
He looked round, he saw that Roger had joined his
mother. He touched the young man's sleeve.
“Hope of the house," he said. “Your father was my
friend. I am your friend."
Then, with that shuffling, soft-soled walk, he moved to
the entrance. He would have gone there equally if there
had been no car waiting, since he had uttered his last greet-
ing, and when a Chinaman comes to finality, generally by
a long route, he leaves.
But the car happened to have anticipated him. He seated
himself carefully, arranged the skirts of his coat about his
thin knees, and recollecting where he was, so far unbent as
to put his hand up to his hat.
To remove it was impossible. A Chinaman who will go
bareheaded is a Chinaman conscious of disgrace, or a
Chinaman lost to the strongest instincts of his race.
Roger stood at the door. The car disappeared down the
long straight white drive, it mounted the narrow bridge
with the stone balustrade which led on to the high road.
The big gates of beaten iron were open, and so it had not
to slacken speed, but swinging round to the left, it was
lost behind a belt of trees.
When not a sound, not so much as a hint of the dust
cloud remained, Roger still stood looking out. He knew
that Naomi had come out to his side, that the others had
gone in. It was kind of his mother to take Paul off, just
like her understanding mind. A man in love is selfishness
incarnate. Roger never recollected that this effacement
could not be without its cost to Lady de la Haye.
proximity of the woman whom he knew he loved with all
his heart was such a joy that he delayed to go on to any.
thing further. Presently he would look down, and so pro-
vide himself with two separate occasions of delight.
It was a little space of time which Roger cherished in his
memory to the last day of his life.
Before him was the sloping stretch of grass, and, dotted
about in it were great upstanding oak trees, oaks which had
been there hundreds of years, and which, if left to them-
The very


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
119
selves, would be there yet as many years again: sycamores,
with their smooth trunks peeling in patches, with that fan-
like movement of their fluttering leaves. And then, on
down the slope, by a winding band of water, which glittered
in the sun, was a fringe of gray tinted willows, and, stand-
ing out on a little hillock of green, as if flaunting its unique
coloring, was a copper-beech, with its foliage of burnished
brown.
It seemed to Roger that love had set a term to irrespon-
sibility. Up till now, he had accepted the accessories of
his life, without any deeper feeling than that of being glad
they were there. Even Zouche had been no more than a
house which he loved because it was his. Now, it became
the setting for the great fact of human existence. Pos-
session as possession, became a new thing to him. His
father had been here before him; after he was gone, there
might be his son, his own son, living in this house, just as
he lived there now.
It was the first time that Roger in his own person clearly
perceived himself to be a link in the endless chain of evolu-
tion. The idea seemed to point so distinctly to one uni-
versal whole that it gave him a feeling of kinship with the
trees before him, with the very blades of grass at his feet:
and then, as he gazed, the sight of Paul Marketel's crossing
over from the garden to the park dropped back his imagina-
tion from the universal to the particular.
Where are you going?” Roger called to him.
“To exercise my bulky person,” Paul returned.
“In this sun," expostulated Roger.
“Why not?” asked Marketel obstinately.
That was precisely the question Roger could not answer.
He was pretty well certain that Paul was in trouble—he
didn't know how deep things had gone, but he was sure that
this big man would never poach lightly or willingly, and so
he concluded that probably the exercise was more for the
good of the mind than for the body.
“Any letters to post?" asked Paul abruptly. His tone
was almost aggressive. No barometer is as sensitive to


120
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
atmospheric pressure as is the perturbed lover to opinion-
or comment. Paul felt that he could not expose his wound,
much less allow Roger to probe it.
"I took my letters before breakfast," answered Roger,
making his assertion as casual as possible.
“ You did!” Paul exclaimed—“why didn't you let me
know and I would have come with you."
“I thought of coming to your room, but I wasn't sure
that you would bless my enthusiasm for early rising,” said
Roger, in a relieved tone, for he wanted to laugh away any
impression in Paul's mind that he had been inquisitive.
The big man nodded. Men hate an explanation-
women cling to one-and it has been the pit digged for
more than one happiness in this world.
“A pity," Paul observed. “I wasn't asleep.”
“ I'm sorry too,” Roger answered.
With that he dismissed the matter, but afterwards he
realized how portentous was this checked impulse, how
many things might have run a different course, if he had
taken Paul down the village road with him-above all, if
Paul had seen with his own eyes exactly how many letters
were posted, and, possibly, caught a glimpse of the ad-
dresses on them.
But not even the cloud no bigger than a man's hand was
upon his sky yet. He turned to Naomi.
“Come into the garden," he suggested, "the borders
always look their best in the morning; besides, all the blue
delphiniums ought to be out by now, and they," he went on
so softly that the words were said to himself rather than
to her—“ must be first cousins to your eyes."
Naomi looked down. Women always appreciate compli-
ments according to their intention. Roger's was prompted
by admiration, and she knew what it carried with it.
Naomi," he implored again.
The girl shut her eyes. She swayed. It had come—the
thing so supremely desired that she had sinned to obtain
it. Yet, with life at its apogee, she turned cold. She was
cast down, not uplifted.


CHAPTER X
Paul MARKETEL plodded along on his way to the village,
for, whenever it is an affair of the emotions with a man,
he craves to exercise his limbs: just as when it is an affair
of finance, his instinct prompts him to dine to repletion.
He had said he was going to Zouche, so there he would
go, otherwise he had no more reason for taking the road
to the left than that to the right. He told himself grimly
- he who had seen all the great cities of the world in their
splendor—that it would give him something to look at. The
time before, when he stayed with the De la Hayes, it was
for pheasant shooting, and there had been no time and
perhaps no inclination for solitary explorations.
The village, Zouche St. Margaret, to distinguish it from
other hamlets on the estate, known respectively as Water
Zouche and Little Zouche, with that straggling habit dear
to East Anglia, began with four cottages in a row, not a
hundred yards from the big gates. They were whitewashed
and thatched: they were built of mud and laths, and the
longevity and heartiness of the occupants would have been
disconcerting to any of those windy enthusiasts who seem
to think that the one qualification for holding forth on agri-
cultural affairs is to live in a town.
About three times as far along again, down the powdery
road which dipped deeper and deeper between its banks as
it neared the hollow in which the village, like all the other
long-settled villages of the district, was built,-began "the
Street," as it was locally called. More white cottages,
more sloping gardens with great white lilies standing up in
the sunshine, and with honeysuckle bursting through the
hedge all set on the south side of the road, and totaling
some twenty-five dwellings, some of them detached, some
of them in pairs, with the village shop and post-office com-
122


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
123
bined, where soap elbowed butter, and postal orders were
now and again disinterred from under lollipop bottles,
breaking the line in the middle. At the farther end, the
street was finished off by an ancient inn, white and
thatched also, with heavy, overhanging eaves, and a way-
farers' bench of oak, polished with time, under its parlor
window, while before it swung the creaking sign of “The
Fading Flower" from the top of a high pole.
Beyond the inn was the church, disproportionately large,
which had looked down on the comings and goings in
Zouche since the early years of the thirteenth century.
Paul's appearance in the street made a certain stir, there
was a proprietary interest in visitors from the great house,
and not a little reflected prestige from their varied national-
ties. Not that Zouche would have owned to any sentiment
so universal. It kept itself to itself and, theoretically,
looked down on anyone who had the misfortune to be born
out of the parish.
Paul had heard about this and it amused him to see the
children running along to herald him as "that one from
foreign parts.'
The women came out of their doors. They leaned over
their gates, frankly eager to detect something abnormal,
while Martha Sillister, the acknowledged gossip, loudly
lamented him ba'int a mite different from we.”
Paul was on the point of asking if the good lady expected
two heads, or a pair of noses, when he was anticipated
by another woman, younger, and with all the superiority
born of Council education and the bicycle, whom Paul
heard say, “they had 'em all manner of kinds up there at
the Great House."
“I'm sorry to disappoint you," he called out this time,
and the two women laughed back at him, not in the least
disconcerted, for the ways in this backwater of life were
still patriarchal. Lady de la Haye was the friend of the
village, its court of appeal, and sometimes its judge, but,
through it all, acknowledged to be a woman, just as any
other woman, but with a more extended motherdom.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
125
could imagine him, Billy, with a little precious coming down
to Sunday lunch-and, as Paul turned his big shoulder to
look between the ribs of the porch, which were crossed with
that cheerful disregard to precision which makes the works
of the medieval builder a perpetual delight, he saw, not the
possibilities of tenderness or the promise of a very human
heart, but the astonishing ease with which this young man
helped himself to the feast of life.
‘D-n the beggar," muttered Paul.
Billy disposed of the small boy clinging round his knees.
The little girl was more difficult. One small fist was drum-
ming on his head (Billy always averred it was the hardest
part of his anatomy), the other white arm encircled his
neck, and the small person resolutely refused to be dis-
lodged from her perch on his shoulder. Finally, and after
some further argument, he bent and tipped the little feet
on to the ground, then, with another of his infectious
laughs, he kissed the little discontented face, and pulled
the long hair.
“I say,” he assured both children, “I must be off now,
but I'll come back tomorrow, and then just see if we don't
have a game of hide and seek.”
He ran down the path, waving to the two, singing a
snatch of a very gay ditty.
Perhaps nothing irritates those to whom life is a stern
parent so much as seeing those to whom she is an indulgent
one. Every step of Paul's career had been a transition
from one hardness to another. His mother died before he
was six. His father made as if to throw himself into the
grave upon his wife's coffin, and married again within the
year. There was no place in the second Mrs. Marketel's
scheme of existence for Paul. From the first day she saw
the bullet-headed little boy, with his unruly crop of hair
and his stiff jaw, with eyes that stared at her disconcert-
ingly, and a power of silence, her one wish was to get him
out of the way.
In time, as her own children were born, and proved to
be a string of seven daughters, her dislike grew into some-


126
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
thing not far from positive hatred. Her husband, always
a weak man, lapsed into valetudinarian ways, and fell more
into the "anything for peace” habits. That involved sac-
rificing Paul, and so Paul was barely sixteen when he
found himself an outcast, dependent on his own exertions
for the very first necessities of life. Now, when he was
amazingly rich, Paul rarely referred to these lean years.
He had taken much of the rough and little enough of the
smooth in Mexico, in Australia, in various places in South
America, but one thing he had always done, he had always
kept his hands clean.
Paul's honesty was not an affair of expediency or good
form, it went down to the very foundation of his being.
The hard life brought out all the strenuousness of his char-
acter, and also it accentuated his loneliness. He had al-
ways possessed a distaste for the tawdry, the second-rate,
the blatant. Many of the men, and practically all the
women who would have come near to him in these rough
times, made him shut down his finer self under a case of
cold reserve.
Fate had so arranged it that he had missed the school
link, the college link, the link of a profession or of a pur-
suit. Of course, when he came back to London, with a
reputation as an international financier at his back, and
established himself in one of those spacious houses, with
paneled walls and molded ceilings, which are to be found
in the older London squares, his stepmother made ad-
vances to him and whined about the expense of seven plain
daughters.
Paul arranged an allowance for her, signified his inten-
tion of dowering each half-sister, and resolutely refused to
see her.
Slowly, shyly, tentatively, he began to go out,
Very
little at first, and then, as one invitation brought many
more, with a kind of amused aloofness. Just as no unciv-
ilized beauty had been able to upset his equilibrium, so now
no net more skilfully spread could catch him. He derived
immense amusement from his detached estimate of all the


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
127
pretty girls, the dangerous widows, and the scheming
mamas. The one thing which gave him active pleasure
was intercourse with such men as Roger de la Haye, but
he always took it for granted that his real life-the life,
that is, of the soul, as apart from intellectual appraisement
or the workings of his acute brain,—would be lived alone,
until he met Victoria Cresswell.
The very steps, or rather bounds, by which her indi-
viduality impinged on his consciousness, were entirely char-
acteristic of the man.
He had been taken to call at her little house in Egglestone
Place. He went unwillingly. He only stayed a few mo-
ments, and at the time he hardly knew what impression he
carried
away. It was not until some six hours later, when
he was going up the easy, spacious stairs of his big house,
and stood on the gallery which ran round to the various
rooms, looking down into the bare hall below, that, in a
flash, Victoria came back to his mind, and he saw her so
distinctly that it was hard to convince himself that it was
a trick of his imagination, and not she herself, walking
towards him up the stately stairs.
The fantasy set Paul's heart beating. Love has such
unforeseen ways. It awoke in Roger de la Haye's heart
through his eyes. It awoke in Paul Marketel's through his
imagination. Yet one man was a diplomat (and intuition
is a diplomat's most valued possession), and the other was
a hard-headed financier, whose chief attribute might cer-
tainly be put down as common-sense.
Paul Marketel stood motionless while all the clocks in
the great city tolled the hour, and with that stillness about
him, which in these fine old houses defied the rattle of
modern life; with the shadows below him and the shadows
above him, he watched in his mind's eye till Victoria came
up to the last step. Then he turned quickly and walked
up to a pair of double doors. He threw them back as if
he were announcing a guest so honored that the mere fact
of appearance was a condescension, and turned up all the
lights.


128
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
The great long room was bare of furniture. Its newly-
painted walls were long lengths of cold whiteness. The
blaze of light, glittering out of three great crystal chan-
deliers, reflected itself on to one of the Adam's finest ceil-
ings. Paul had always meant to set about the furnishing
of this room, and as often had put it off. What did a
bachelor want with a great drawing-room? he once asked
one lady who, with more zeal than discretion, offered to
pick up suitable things for him. Now, all in a twinkling,
he saw that room not only furnished, but occupied. Vic-
toria was seated by the fireplace. She was in some descrip-
tion of high-backed chair: her white hands were lying on
its arms of dark carved wood, but her face was looking
down the room. She had come up the stairs to him, as his
guest. Here she was seated with a welcoming smile, wait-
ing for him as if his house was as much hers as
his.
Paul looked on the vision of his own making and knew
what it meant. He recognized what had come to him.
This was love. He had seen his woman, the one woman
in all the world to him. The conclusion was instantaneous
and final.
Now, with his worship-for it was a worship, not a mere
outburst of desire on the one hand, with all the hardness
of his lot and the tantalizing certainty that he possessed
and was yet denied, on the other, Paul looked out and saw
that Billy Hirst was running over the Rectory lawn, instead
of walking out by the drive as a caller should have done.
In another moment Billy would open the Rector's own
gate into the churchyard, and must certainly pass by the
porch. Paul rose at once. He would rather come out than
be discovered.
My hat," cried Billy as soon as he saw the big form,
now if this isn't luck. You are just the very man I want
to speak to."
“Am I?" returned Paul stiffly.
“You bet," answered Billy, with all that gay confidence
of his, “I hope I shan't bore you."


130
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
>>
“Yes," returned Billy, “straight out, one way or the
other, am I or am I not good enough?”
Good Lord!” ejaculated Paul. He moved aside and
switched off a head of sheep's-beard that had raised up its
crown of delicate, scarcely tinted flowers from the prevail-
ing green of the bank. Then he poked his stick into the
soft grass, and rammed down a leaf that had dropped
before its time from the horse-chestnut above.
“Everyone knows what you can do,” Paul announced, as
he swung back; “if it comes to fitness I don't know of a
better man.”
“ What's in the way, then?”
Again Paul looked away. His face, with its unremark-
able features, grew grim, stern, and that obstinate jaw of
his stuck out as if it meant defiance, as if it would enjoy
to defy.
There was quite a long pause. Even Billy, who was as
dense about human mental conditions as he was acute
about physical signs, such as tracks of game in the wilds,
or the neighborhood of water in a desert, felt that some-
thing was passing. He looked up, wondering, and when
Paul saw that there was not even the most distant appre-
hension on the face before him: that whatever cloud there
might be on the other's horizon, it was assuredly not the
particular one obscuring his own sky, he blurted out one
word.
“ Victoria," he said.
“ Victoria?” ejaculated Billy, “what do you mean?”
“What will she think if I let you go?”
“She'll be only too pleased. Why shouldn't she be?”
“ There's bound to be some danger.”
“What of that?" answered Billy.
“ Victoria must know that it won't be exactly a picnic.”
“ You don't understand," answered Billy. Victoria is
sensible. She is used to it. It's the kind of thing I al-
ways do. The only thing I'm good at."
Paul brought down his stick with a thump-on the road
this time.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
131
“What I want to know,” he cried out roughly, “is: Do
you think Victoria will marry you one day?”
Yes," returned Billy, “I suppose so, some day," and
then, because he was a real man at heart he added, “ I'm
not good enough for her, of course.”
Paul shut his lips tight. If he opened them to say as
much as a word, he would break out into a vehement pro-
test. He would demand Victoria from this man who
looked on his possession in so easy a light: he would go
further, he would give notice that he would fight for her,
take her by force, if there were no other way.
A bird rose up with a sudden sweet thrill. A breath of
wind stirred the leaves of the overhanging chestnut, and
then the sun suddenly shot through its heavily leaved
branches, and, dropping its light on to the white road, the
shadows from the trees patterned it until it looked more
like finest damask than just a stretch of heat-scorched
country dust.
That gave Paul time to collect himself. The wave of
interior savageness shocked him. He wasn't a primitive
man dealing with a primitive woman. He was thinking of
the most exquisite feminine personality the world held, in
juxtaposition to coarse notions. He was lowering to earth
that which should be placed as high as the stars them-
selves by his own unrestraint.
All the man's reverence, all his feeling for the exquisite,
rebuked him.
“Lord,” he muttered under his breath, "what a deal of
the brute there is in me!”
Paul Marketel had never had time for nice tempera-
mental deductions, or he might have comforted himself by
remembering that a solitary outburst is in no way the
measure of a man. It is repetition that points to a fun-
damental trait, just as one aberration is in no sense the
indication of a man's moral outlook, while the type of
women to which he instinctively gravitates is its surest
criterion.
Another prompting came into Paul Marketel's mind.


132
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
This one made him breathe in gasps. It was an insidious
idea, it was as tempting as it was easy, and as practicable
as easy. It was fathered on the “let a man's blood be on
his own head” deduction. It was presented to the accom-
paniment of “if a man knows what risks he is about to
run, whose fault is it if he breaks his neck?” Billy had
pointed the way, not to a hunting expedition, but to his
own superseding-on exactly those ancient lines of King
David and Uriah the Hittite. A dozen things were pos-
sible with an expedition to such an undiscovered country
as Thibet. Billy would be constantly taking his life into
his hands, and he, Paul, would be sending him there to do
it. It was true, as he had already told himself, that Billy
was going with his eyes open, but it was not what Billy
was going to do, it was what he, Paul, would be waiting
for-actually hoping, or all but hoping for—which counted.
It was that possibility of an open door to Victoria which
would be for ever in his mind.
He pushed a hand deeper into his pocket and set his
jaw firmly. He knew then and there that there was one
thing he could not do—he could not send Billy out to
Thibet.
He half turned to say so, and then, strong as he was, a
last impulse of temptation assailed him. Here was he
refusing the ideal man for his expedition. Why? For a
whim-for a refinement of conscience? If Billy had come
to him, standing by himself, he would have said, “You
are my man, go at once," but because the situation was
weighted with the most intensely personal element which
two men can find set between them, it had been trans-
formed from an ordinary business agreement into an act
of personal treachery--and he, Paul, knew this.
He stumped along ahead with such a set face that Billy
could do nothing but follow on behind, telling himself rue-
fully that somehow he hadn't got the hang of things, and
then, as abruptly as he had hurried ahead, Paul pulled
up
“ Look here, Billy," he said, “I may as well tell you


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
133
straight out, there's no personal reflection on you, but I
can't offer you the Thibet billet."
Billy could only stammer, “ Lord! Why not?”
A sudden wry smile crept up on Marketel's face.
“I've thought of a fellow called David,” he said," he
seems to have had a prior right to this situation, and"
“Oh, never heard of him," returned Billy," but of
course that don't matter. I wish you luck.”
“ Thank you,” said Marketel grimly.


CHAPTER XI
Even the most wonderful day has but sixty minutes to its
hour, and twelve hours between midnight and noonday.
Roger walked through this summer day, from the time
that Chi Lung's car passed out of sight to the hour when
the men returned to the salon after dinner, in a kind of
bewilderment of happiness.
Neither he nor Naomi had taken anyone into their
confidence. The silence was Roger's suggestion—the out-
come of that masculine exclusiveness which, pushed to its
farthest limits, suggests the veil and the purdah—but which
he translated to himself as just one day before congratula-
tions, settlements, and all the material business of matri-
mony began.
Naomi was content to let him have his
way.
The ac-
quiescence came from her heart, not from her head: she
had all to gain by publicity. Even the least charitable
hesitate to make damaging comments to a man about the
near relations of his future wife.
Yet, she was ill at ease. Her interior misgivings grew
more insistent. They were intensified by certain awkward
events of the previous night.
The fact was, Naomi Melsham had walked in her sleep.
She had only done it twice before, as far as she knew, and
each time it had followed distressful happenings. The first
occasion was after that terrible game of chemin de fer,
and her mother found her dealing cards and muttering
about aces.
The second time had followed a crisis when
the girl had passionately refused to be pushed into a
repugnant marriage.
This time, she had awakened to find herself in Victoria
Cresswell's room, with the cover of her kodak in her
hand, and Victoria by her.
134


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
135
At the time, she had been too dismayed, too fearful, to
find out if she had revealed anything. Then the morning
had been passed with Roger, and after lunch Lady de la
Haye had carried off Victoria, so that it was not until din-
ner was ended that Naomi found her opportunity.
“I want to thank you for being so good to me last
night," she began.
Victoria brushed the suggestion aside. Helpfulness had
been so much the predominant feature in her life that she
did not even say it was lucky that Naomi had chanced on
her door. She merely remarked that she happened not to
be asleep—she gave no explanation of her wakefulness.
She had seen Naomi walk in, and that was all.
“All," faltered the golden-haired girl," didn't I say any-
thing?"
Just some rubbish—one always talks nonsense on such
occasions, doesn't one?" returned Victoria. “You kept on
repeating ‘Two keys will fit one lock, or something like
that."
There was no time for more. The men entered.
Roger made no pretense-he took no devious course-
he went straight to Naomi.
" It is a glorious night, and ever so warm outside," he
pleaded.
Billy had slipped through the open window already (four
walls always oppressed him), and he was inviting anyone
to whom it might appeal, to camp out for the night.
Aimée had so far responded to the invitation, that she
had followed him out on to the terrace, so there was ample
excuse for Naomi to go too, but she only shook her head.
She knew what passionate words would be whispered into
her ear-all the protestations the darkness would cover.
She didn't feel fit to listen. Every syllable would be uttered
under a misconception. What she had done, she had done
because of the greatness of her love, and, already, that
action was shattering the lovers of the city of her
dreams.
Armand de Rochecorbon went to his hostess, and pres-


136
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
ently the conversation—for Lady de la Haye possessed the
gift of making others talk-drifted away from interna-
tional difficulties; from the movements foreshadowed for
the future, and the tendencies of modern development; to
fasten itself on such a purely domestic theme as the re-
markable precocity of Armand's little son.
“Voyons, chère Madame," the Frenchman declared. “A
child of such intelligence! Tiens! The little bonhomme
will pluck the handkerchief out of the coat of papa, and
he has but ten months."
Paul straightened his powerful back-the back of a man
who has carried heavy weights for long hours—and his
eyes, screwed up under thick eyebrows, grew misty.
A domestic picture will leave a man totally untouched,
up to the very moment that it becomes a possibility-or, at
least, an aspiration-for himself, and then no detail can
be too homely. Goethe knew that when he pictured Char-
lotte cutting bread and butter.
Involuntarily, Paul looked down the room again.
Naomi Melsham, in a white gown which shimmered with
a suggestion of moonlight, would have been the first attrac-
tion to most men, but Paul Marketel had eyes only for one
woman.
Victoria was in black. Paul liked the women he esteemed
to appear in black. Not that he was naive enough to
imagine that sable raiment was any guarantee of disinter-
estedness, but because those who had tried to make money
out of him, or who had offered him certain things at their
own valuation, were associated in his mind with glitter and
show.
Like most people possessed of much wealth, experience
had forced one observation upon him. He had learned
that the woman who will accept the least, is the woman to
be trusted the most. He was innately generous, but it never
occurred to him to buy favor with gewgaws. The man
who does that, and who takes a pride in seeing his bank-
notes pinned on to pretty shoulders, is generally ready to
repeat his experiment elsewhere on the morrow, and he


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
137
leaves, too, under the impression that cash down has
liquidated the whole of his debt.
Then, because Marketel was staring harder than he knew,
Victoria looked up.
Their eyes met, and the involuntary communion in their
glance made the girl color.
Paul wrenched himself round. It was unbearable that
Victoria should be shamed because he loved her. The
thought of Billy and that ruby mine sprang up in his
memory—yet even here he was just, for justice is a habit,
and what we do habitually in placid times, we do almost
automatically in the stressful occasions of life. Billy had
asked for the command of the expedition on his merits.
There was grit then, after all, in this intolerable pro-
crastinator where the holy state of matrimony was con-
cerned.
De Rochecorbon broke up his angry train of thought to
ask if by any chance the man whose usual preoccupation
was the financing of the kingdoms of this world had an
opinion on the relative merits of two patent foods for
infants.
"No," said Paul, “I am afraid I never gave either of
them a thought," and then, as he was telling himself that
only a Latin, with his acceptance of the things of nature
as natural, could have asked that question with just that
good faith-Littleport threw open the double doors, and
standing back against the right one, he announced, “His
Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung."
The arrival was so unlooked for that as she heard it
Lady de la Haye knew it must portend something out of
the ordinary. It was certainly a reversal of settled plans,
for Chi Lung had expressly stated that he intended to
leave England the next day, and the Celestial, though he
can lie, when he decides that the occasion is worthy of it,
with an aplomb which no man of European blood can
match, is yet too finished an artist in tergiversation to
fritter an untruth away unnecessarily.
There followed a brief delay.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
139
came into the very middle of the room. There he pulled
up, directly under a lantern of old Chinese lacquer with
pierced ivory sides, and the glimmering light came through
to show the bent figure and the face, set as impassively as
if it were of alabaster, yellowed with age.
Though his Excellency was usually sufficiently careful
of the petty conventions beneath which the “barbarians
of the West hid their inferiority, he was still in morning
costume. He had not even taken off the long rusty-brown
cape which he preferred to a coat. His hat was still on
his head, and as he stood he dropped his oblique eyes down-
wards and made no attempt either at an explanation or a
greeting.
In their turn neither Lady de la Haye nor Roger ap-
proached him. They knew too much about the Far East
for that.
Presently the old Chinaman straightened himself-he
turned, and deliberately marked who was in the room.
The little, dulled, but still so-farseeing eyes, came as
far as Paul and then stopped. The old man raised both
hands to his head-he removed his hat, and deliberately,
as if it were a ceremony, he set it down on the carpet in
front of him.
Lady de la Haye shivered. When a mandarin casts his
head covering before him, then he knows he is disgraced,
and that the invitation to "eat the leaf of gold," i.e., take
his own life, will not be long delayed.
“O man of money," Chi Lung began, for when, at last,
he found his voice, he had put off all cover of European
ways and gone back to the spirit, the methods, the imagery,
of the land of his birth.
“ What is this that has befallen me? What is this that
has come to you? Are the spirits of evil angry? Have
you provoked them with your success, or is it I who have
forgotten that I am of as little merit as a cracked vessel ?
Are the souls of my fathers and of yours turned from us
and insulted, or has some debtor slain himself at your
doorstep?”


140
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Paul Marketel walked up to the old man. He faced him,
and that silk hat was still between them.
“ Your Excellency,” said Paul very quietly, “I do not
understand. Tell me what has happened.”
Chi Lung looked up. The two pairs of eyes demanded
an explanation, each from the other.
“Lo!” continued the Celestial, “I will speak plain
words. The terms of the navy loan, which you, O man
of the West, offered to me, a man of the East, for my
august Master—the Son of Heaven,-are known in Lon-
don. Our lips were to be silent: our tongue was not to
move in our mouths, and yet the sheets of intelligence
already have them written out in their unlearned charac-
ters, and what was meant but for your eyes and for my
half-blinded ones is read by the coolie carrying water-
by the loafer reeling to his poppy pipe."
“ Are you sure?” shot out Paul.
“I am not behind a lattice! I am not a woman! I do
not cry out that I have heard a giant when a mouse scut-
ters over the floor!” the little man answered contemptu-
ously.
Paul bowed ceremoniously.
"Read, O man of money,” went on Chi Lung, and he
brought a newspaper out of his pocket and thrust it before
him.
Paul took the sheet. There it was plainly enough:
“ Terms of a New Navy Loan for China. The Well-known
Financier, Mr. Paul Marketel, Takes up the Whole
Issue.”
The news was a “scoop” (to use a journalistic phrase),
at the last moment before going to press, for it was hastily
blocked in, and the letters blurred and askew. But it was
evidently the outcome of exact knowledge, not of supposi-
tion or hearsay. The facts and the figures were correct,
and as Paul read he thrust out his chin and into his eyes
came sharp points of light.
He crumpled the paper as if he would include some
traitor in his grasp. He looked back at Chi Lung.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
141
Someone has had access to our memorandum," he
exclaimed
It was Lady de la Haye who spoke first.
Someone from here!” she cried out.
“Someone who was in this house yesterday," returned
Paul.
This matter must be gone into—and at once," she de-
clared, with a decision which would have matched that of
her late husband.
She drew herself up, and moved back her long train
with a steady hand.
It was then that Victoria slipped from the room. She
had either to leave or to walk up to Paul and take her
stand by his side.
Women generally pay as they go along. As Victoria
stepped through the window, she paid the price for any-
thing that might be underhand in her relations with Paul.
Naomi Melsham was the one person who saw her go,
and she knew-for desperation lends a fine instinct to
deception that her safest move would be to follow, and
so dissociate herself from anything there might be to come.
Yet she hesitated. The very physical strength to carry her
away was lacking.
Paul heard the swish of a woman's gown. Roger heard
it too. To both men the sound came as a signal that,
metaphorically speaking, the decks were being cleared for
action.
“Your Excellency," began Paul, “ will you tell me why
you have come back yourself to be the first to announce
this evil news?"
The old man pushed his hands into his sleeves. He
could have given his answer in four words—but he did not
mean to do it.
“There were but two copies of the agreement,” he mur-
mured blandly.
“ Well?” Paul's tone was short, he was staring hard
at the unsmiling eyes. Chi Lung gave him back stare for
stare.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
143
your memorandum has not chattered as if it had a woman's
tongue. I came like a fool—and I have found but my own
foolishness—I go forth to trail my gray head in the dust.”
He pulled himself up, made a curious movement which
reminded Lady de la Haye of the Celestial's homage of
casting incense on the shrine of the honored dead, and then,
turning aside, his Excellency prepared to leave Zouche as
abruptly as he had arrived.
“But, your Excellency," protested Roger's mother, "I
do not understand.”
“Mais c'est épatant,” declared Armand.
It was Paul Marketel who intervened.
Your Excellency," he announced, you cannot come
here and accuse me of being a thief, and then, because I
have shown you the absurdity of the charge, say you are
satisfied and take your leave--that settles nothing. If I
did not sell the memorandum to the press, someone else
did. Who did? We have got to find that out.”
“Barbarian," retorted Chi Lung, “why will you meddle?
Your stream runs clear, what is it to you if filth wells out
from another fountain?”
Paul moved right up till he all but touched the little man.
“Your Excellency,” he demanded, “will you give me
your word that your copy was never out of your posses-
sion?"
“My word?” retorted Chi Lung. “Man of no father,
and the son of who knows whom for a mother, learn that
Chi Lung is answerable to no one but his own Master--the
glorious Son of Heaven."
Lady de la Haye sank into a chair. She was trembling
from head to foot. The old Chinaman, instead of acced-
ing to this most natural request, had retorted with a phrase
which, from a Chinaman, amounted to a calculated and
deadly insult.
She looked at Paul, and Paul had put on that impassive
face which made him seem as if he were a man of stone.
“ Your Excellency," he said slowly and very quietly,
you have gone out of your way to insult me. I do not


144
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
resent your uncalled-for expressions. I am only sorry
for you, for I can assure you that whether you wish to or
no, there are certain questions which I intend you to
answer.”
The old man heard the challenge. He was being rated
as if he, the Special Envoy of the Son of Heaven, could
be commanded, coerced, and, rarely as any light came into
his old, eyes, they blazed now. None the less, he merely
bowed and made another attempt to turn away, but Paul
Marketel followed. He was holding on to his point as
tenaciously as a bulldog holds on to its prey.
Suddenly Roger anticipated him.
“Mother-Paul-" he cried out, “don't you see his
Excellency is trying to shield me?”
You?” cried out a new voice, almost as quickly, and
the tone was shrill in its evident dismay. “You? What
have you to do with this?”
It was Naomi Melsham who spoke. She hurried out
from the shadow of the curtain and there was urgency in
her face—in her voice—in her jerking, swift walk.
Roger went to her at once.
"I was with his Excellency and Paul yesterday," he
explained. “I was watching the negotiations on behalf of
the British Government."
“ You?" Naomi repeated,
you were in the Chinese
Room too
“Yes," answered Roger, “his Excellency knows-I left
again by the garden door, after-”
He broke off. He looked at his mother with a trapped
air. He looked at Marketel.
“ Paul,” he went on, “have you forgotten—his Excel-
lency's copy was left in my keeping?"
The momentous admission rang into the room. Amabelle
was too versed in diplomatic procedure to have the least
doubt as to what this would imply.
Paul stood still. Armand was motionless for once. Only
the old Chinaman shuffled softly towards Roger as Naomi
spoke again.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
145
Roger,” she gasped, and she swayed as she stood there
-"but you-you told me you were going to Chipley
Magna.”
“A diplomatic fiction,” Roger answered, and already his
tone was weary—“I was present all the while.”
He disengaged her fingers and stepped aside. He saw
where all this was leading. The Foreign Office had selected
him to watch the negotiations: they had made an urgent
point of secrecy: yet not only had the terms of the loan
been made public, but the betrayal had obviously been
effected while the memorandum was confided to his care.
In that very first moment he knew what consequences
would follow. There would be an inquiry. He would be
held guilty of gross carelessness even if he were exonerated
from the actual theft. Moreover, he would not be given
a second chance-the rising diplomat of the morning was
a young man ruined now—condemned to deponabilité
because he had let down his Government, had diminished
its prestige and given the enemy cause to jeer.
He waited a moment, with all these bitter certainties
surging through his mind-then he bit his lip as if he were
stabbed by a sudden pain. He had caught again a glimpse
of Naomi, and to him, her drawn face, her staring eyes,
could have but one meaning-she was realizing how the
evidence was going against him—perhaps she was condemn-
ing him-perhaps she was wondering how she could have
been so deceived in him.
He wanted to cry out to her. He wanted to ask her to
suspend her judgment, but he shut his lips without per-
mitting a sound to pass them. He turned resolutely to the
others. He looked at each face in turn as if to intimate
that if he were in the last ditch, he would at least die there
like a man.
It was Chi Lung who answered the defiance.
“Son of the Venerable and Beloved," the old man im-
plored, “could not the strings of your tongue have been
still? Son of him with a heart as flawless as a crystal from
the Great Mountains, could not you have recollected that


146
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
speech is for all the world—that silence is for your own
heart?”
The wailing tones ceased. Each one present in the room
felt that the old Chinaman had expressed something which
lay unvoiced, unaccepted, in each of their minds—but still
there.
Suddenly Roger hastened to the center of the room. The
light from the lantern fell on him, it showed that hunted
look already drawing down his mouth, already changing
the expression of his eyes.
"Mother," he began, and he spoke in a low, tense tone,
not as a hurried assertion, but as a reasoned statement-
“I must tell you what his Excellency has not—his copy
of the memorandum was left in my desk all the evening-
I gave it back to him about midnight."
“But why?” gasped Lady de la Haye, and she looked
at the old Celestial—“why did your Excellency leave it
there?”
This time the old man would take no further part in the
discussion. He had done his utmost-for the present-and
it had been of no avail. As an exhibition of Western
plain speaking—unnecessary plain speaking his Excellency
held-Roger's behavior was so exasperating to him, that
tacitly he withdrew, and passed the question over to him
who would play a losing game with all the cards on the
table. Roger required no further prompting.
“ The memorandum was left for me to translate for the
Foreign Office. You see," he explained in a dull voice,
being in Chinese characters, it seemed perfectly safe to
leave it in my desk.”
“ Tiens !” cried out Armand impulsively, “then any-
any other one who copied it-he, too_must read the
Chinese."
“ Yes! Yes!” thrust in Naomi breathlessly, “it was
written in Chinese-and-” She broke off sharply as the
swift realization came to her of what these words implied.
But there was such an urgency in her voice that the old
Chinaman moved round. He deliberately examined the
,


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
147
beautiful girl—and from this point onwards, he was always
careful to keep her in view. Her exclamation had passed
without notice from everyone else, but then, Chi Lung
alone disliked her, and there is no searchlight more power-
ful than aversion.
* But," objected Marketel, keeping steadily to the point
under examination, "let's get this clear, Roger. Do any
of us here understand Chinese?”
There was a moment's deathly pause.
“Ma foi,” remarked Armand, with a stillness that was
ominous in itself—“I do not understand it.”
“Nor I," contributed Marketel shortly.
“Persian's my limit," Billy announced.
It was Amabelle de la Haye who clutched her son's
sleeve.
“Roger!" she cried out, and the word seemed to be
pressed through her lips by something stronger than her
own will.
Roger drew himself up and stepped a pace forward. His
friends were waiting for a word from him. Their faces
showed what they expected that word to be.
“Yes," he said, “no one could deal with his Excellency's
copy who does not understand the language--and I-I
alone in the house can read Chinese."
Lady de la Haye must have known that this was the only
truthful answer her son could give : each of his men friends
must have known it too, but his mother sank aside and
his friends looked at each other with that dumb consterna-
tion which a man does betray when he is up against hope-
lessness of a certain kind.
Suddenly Naomi began to sway. Her knees shook under
her. She had caught Chi Lung's eyes fixed on her, and
the look was so malignant that she retreated down the
room, right back towards the windows. What the old man
deduced-what that keen mind had guessed in its moment
of illumination, no one was ever to know. But suddenly
he startled them all by giving vent to a low, prolonged
chuckle.


148
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Lady de la Haye made a movement to go over to the old
man-as if she feared the stroke had been too heavy for
him, but with her first glimpse of his face she stopped
short.
“ Your Excellency!" she exclaimed," you see some light
in the darkness?”
Chi Lung waved her away. He shook his head. “I
grow old," he muttered. When the teeth fall out the
tongue wags loose."
He turned about-shuffled aside.
No one had seen Naomi Melsham but himself, and he
was fixing her face in his mind. Not a line on it-not the
circles that had suddenly come up under the eyes, nor the
eyes themselves-rounds of staring, starting dismay-
escaped him. He saw the graceful figure, with its shim-
mering draperies, blot itself out, as it were, behind the
curtain, and then he drew up his head.
“Behold!” he announced, "the wrath of honest men
gives the thief time to arrange his face”
And having made that cryptic comment, his Excellency
marched determinedly from the room.


CHAPTER XII
ALMOST every woman, at any rate every woman whose
days have been lived among the alarms and perils of
empire making, as she grows older and looks back, can
give definite dates for the distinct epochs of her life. Here,
irresponsibility fled and responsibility took its place: there,
youth was quenched and maturity began.
Lady de la Haye was no exception to this rule, she could
look back on several transformations. The first distinct
one was the terrible time just before Roger was born,
when Sir Arthur was offered a mission of great danger.
As a servant of his country, it seemed to him that he could
not shrink from it, and his young wife sat hour after hour
in a foreign house, in a foreign land, waiting for the
birth of her child, striving for composure, for calmness,
while by day, by night, was always in the background of
lier mind the certainty of the perils her husband had to
face, the dread, the hideous dread that not only might he
be made a prisoner by barbarians, but that once in their
hands he might be done to death inch by inch.
There had been other times of stress, of familiar walking
with death and disaster, but no anguish of mind had ever
seemed to the beautiful woman with the white hair at all
comparable to that she endured in the hours that followed
Chi Lung's return to Zouche de la Haye. Whatever there
had been previously, there had at least never been even a
suspicion of dishonor. It was this dishonor that appalled
Roger's mother.
Her guests had left her as soon as they could after the
moment when Roger admitted that he alone knew Chinese.
Chi Lung had glided out through the windows on to the
terrace, and afier that he seemed to vanish. The other
149


150
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
men had taken themselves off-Billy with an almost
sheepish air, De Rochecorbon lost in a wealth of interjec-
tions. Only Paul Marketel, the next sufferer after herself,
had stayed behind in the salon.
It was quite a long time after they were left alone before
he spoke. Then he came up to Lady de la Haye's side.
“Take courage,” he advised, a soft note in his big voice,
“Roger will be cleared somehow."
He stood thinking, while Lady de la Haye with tears in
her eyes tried to smile at him.
“Chi Lung has something up his sleeve,” Paul went on.
“I did not understand what he was driving at, but an
Oriental does not let his suavity go and hurl insults for
the mere pleasure of relieving his feelings.”
“I know it was part of the repayment of the debt we
spoke about," answered Sir Arthur's widow.
“ Directly
Chi Lung saw that events seemed to be incriminating
Roger, he endeavored to take the blame on himself. In
China, justice is always more or less vicarious. Any head
will do as long as there is a head forthcoming Chi Lung
proposed himself as a scapegoat, and you, with your Eu-
ropean notion of making the punishment fit the crime,
insisted on finding the real culprit, instead of being satis-
fied with any expiation.”
Lady de la Haye broke off with a dreary laugh.
“It is the everlasting difference between East and West,"
she added with a catch in her voice.
Paul Marketel smiled gravely. He took a turn up the
room another down again.
“ The man who could offer up himself,” he said, “is
not the man to let Sir Arthur's son labor under an unjust
suspicion. We know that Roger was incapable of selling
the memorandum, and therefore Chi Lung will set about
seeing that he is cleared."
Lady de la Haye returned his glance.
“Chi Lung will never rest until he knows everything,"
she answered.
"I shall go to him tomorrow," Marketel said. "I shall


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
151
put myself under him, I shall work under him. We shall
clear Roger, you will see."
Lady de la Haye thanked the big man for his determina-
tion. Paul lighted a cigarette and stepped out on to the
terrace. The white-haired woman went up to the room
she had always used since Zouche was rebuilt. It com-
prised the half-circle of the western turret.
The curve
was set with five little windows so arranged that the sun
came in first through one, and then through the other,
almost from the first moment to the last that it was up in
the heavens.
And, as Lady de la Haye dismissed her maid, Paul
Marketel's words echoed in her mind. He had spoken
them to comfort her. Sooner or later, he affirmed, Roger
must be cleared. But he had forgotten one thing. There
must be an interval, longer or shorter, while Roger lay
under suspicion. If his mother knew anything of such
thefts, and she had heard of others analogous, it would be
longer, not sooner, before the matter would be cleared up.
The thief must have been as astute as those of his or her
class are bound to be. It might, therefore, be years while
Roger was forced to idle without an occupation, with his
ambitions thwarted, with his career cut short. For, of
course, with this suspicion hanging over him, it was almost
a question of hours until Sir Arthur's son was called on to
resign-if even he was allowed that mercy, and not pub-
licly dismissed.
Lady de la Haye sank into her chair, as the picture of
what was bound to ensue rose up in her mind. She had
lived too long among the limited world of diplomacy not
to know how the story would be bandied from chancellory
to chancellory, how one confrère would pity, another de-
ride, a third sneeringly remark that there was bound to be
a woman in it somewhere. She could fancy how it would
be whispered about over the teacups, referred to-dis-
creetly-as the champagne went round. The mere
thought of all this and so much more smirching her
boy's fair fame, sullying his youth, and searing his soul,


152
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
was
seemed to Amabelle de la Haye more than she could bear.
She started up. She did not know where she was going
or what she was intending to do. It was a blind impulse
to take action, no matter of what kind, and then she sud-
denly stopped short. She listened. Overhead in the room
above, a room shaped just as hers was, someone
tramping across the floor. It was no mere passage from
one point to another, it was a steady pacing to and fro.
Lady de la Haye understood. Roger was suffering as
she was, even more than she was. He was young, and
youth will have it that life has not only endless potentiali-
ties, but that it has a right to happiness as well. He had
hitherto been so successful that this must have come as a
stinging blow on him.
Suddenly the tears came up in Lady de la Haye's eyes.
She was old-middle-aged at least-she knew that few
things survive their illusions but love and integrity.
The impulse was to go up to her only child. But Ama-
belle de la Haye owed almost all the influence of her life
to her power of putting herself in other people's places.
She understood that if Roger had wanted her, he would
have come to her. She understood that to intrude on him,
to offer sympathy, would not be a consolation but an in-
discretion.
She stopped short. Yet another thought struck her.
How would this affect Roger's relations with Naomi Mel-
sham? Not two hours ago she had been very near to
deploring her boy's choice, now, if Naomi withdrew, she
felt that it would be a base thing.
She stood still quite a long time. Above, the tramping
to and fro never paused, within the room was a heavy
dull silence.
Lady de la Haye shivered. In common with all people
who have lived in earthquake countries, she took particular
notice of atmospheric changes. Now, even in the midst of
her sorrow, she was sensible of the heaviness of the air.
The weather was evidently about to justify the American
jibe as to three days' sunshine and then a storm.


154
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
the angle of the turret, the one which looked along the
front of the house, she stood, with the sash in her hand.
If she was keeping watch, if Roger was keeping watch,
there was yet a third person keeping vigil.
There was an answering gleam of light from the turret
facing her own. Across the way, but one blind was up-
raised, and from the space it left, struck out a shaft that
seemed to glow against the heavens, with a scarlet bright-
ness that fell out, in a long straight wedge of light, until
it struck on the pavement of the terrace and lit it up with
great splashes of whiteness.
Lady de la Haye knew who occupied the other turret
room. Roger had stipulated that it should be apportioned
to Miss Melsham. Therefore Naomi, in this the hardest
hour in the life of the man who was so plainly attracted
to her, was keeping watch too.
Amabelle de la Haye turned abruptly away. For one
moment self and a dull anger intervened. Not even in his
misery was her boy exclusively hers any longer, she shared
him with another.
Sir Arthur's widow bowed her head. She had never
been so unutterably alone.
She drew down her own blind abruptly. The light from
her window must not challenge the light from the opposite
window.
She went to the dressing table, pulled off her rings. She
turned up the electricity over the mirror. She looked at
herself. The sight of her own face seemed to drive herself
into the background. What had she to do with anger,
with resentment, and Roger still pacing above?
She leaned forward, looking at her own image in the glass.
All at once she cried out to it.
“Even if my boy is cleared,” she bewailed," who will give
him back the years that the locusts have eaten?”
The very next morning exactly what Lady de la Haye
had feared came to pass. Sir Aylmer Brent telegraphed
that he would be at Zouche before lunch.


156
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
"Is Mr. Marketel still with you?” he inquired.
“I requested all my guests to stay until this afternoon
after your visit," answered Lady de la Haye.
The man before her heard the desperation in her tone.
It was as if he were missing something, and an official of
the Foreign Office does not like to miss things.
“I do not quite follow," murmured Sir Aylmer Brent,
very blandly.
Amabelle de la Haye drew up her head.
“Surely!” she protested, “ you are not going to spoil my
boy's life without taking the trouble to make at least a few
inquiries."
Sir Aylmer looked at her. Not a muscle of his jaw
relaxed, there was not so much as a flicker of the scantily
fringed eyelids, and yet somewhere about him was that
which suggested sympathy, and moreover, a sympathy that
was not born of the inconvenience of the moment, but which
would be enduring.
He drew forward a large armchair, and set it where the
warmth of the sun fell on it.
“Won't you sit down,” he said, “and let us talk things
over?”
He seated himself opposite, and yet, for a very long time,
he had nothing to say.
The woman, with her hands grasping the supports of the
chair, with her head erect, with her mind strained until her
eyes remarked and her memory registered the merest trifles
-how a fly buzzed behind the window panes: how the
Chelsea figure on the stand to her right was an inch or so
out of its place-waited too. She had herself in hand now,
and as she kept silence she began to see what was to come.
She knew that Roger's superiors had already held a con-
sultation, for Sir Aylmer had begun his telegram with “I
am directed to," and at that consultation, hasty, informal,
as it must have been, they had made up their minds that
her son was guilty.
“Sir Aylmer," she faltered, when she could no longer
bear this waiting.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
157
“Your son had no money difficulties? he demanded,
almost under his breath.
“I can answer for that,” Roger's mother returned.
The man by her side cleared his throat.
“There are expenses,” he began, his manner as indefinite
as his words, “expenses, I mean, that—"
Lady de la Haye broke in on him. She was so driven that
she answered the halting insinuation with the plainest of
speech.
“ You mean," she returned, breathlessly, “ that my son
might be entangled in some way. You may not believe me,
but I can answer for that also. Besides-
“Ah!" thrust in Sir Aylmer. “Besides,
Lady de la Haye colored. After all, though she was
certain, Roger had said nothing in actual words to
her.
“Sir Aylmer," she began again, “I seem perhaps to
contradict myself. I implied just now that I was in my
son's confidence. Now, I am going to tell you what is only
surmise on my part. I am certain, had it not been for this
trouble, that my son would have told me before now of his
attachment to a lady who is now staying in the house.”
The middle-aged man rose. He looked out of the
window.
“I am afraid I must ask the lady's name," he murmured.
Lady de la Haye gave it promptly.
Miss Melsham,” repeated Sir Aylmer, as though im-
pressing the words on his mind. “Miss Naomi Melsham!”
and as he said that, the door opened, and Roger himself
walked into the room.
The young man came along with his head in the air. His
face was pale, his mouth set, there were blue lines already
about his nostrils. He walked straight up to the man by
the window.
“Sir Aylmer," he began,“ had I known you were here, I
should have asked you to come first to my room.”
“I came down,” answered Sir Aylmer, as he turned and
looked steadily at Roger de la Haye, "prepared to receive


158
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
your resignation. That seemed the best way—taking your
father's eminent services into consideration.
But now, I
should like to ask you one thing. The answer may not
affect my instructions, but I would not fail to repeat it, if
it were satisfactory, in the place where it might serve
you. You, alone, know Chinese? You admitted that your-
self?”
66
“Yes," returned Roger.
* The memorandum in Chinese must have been the one
copied : can you suggest anything yourself ?”
Roger glanced for a moment at his mother before he
answered. He realized that once again the magnetism of
her presence, her indefinable persuasiveness had prevailed,
and that he was being given this chance because Sir Aylmer
had been received first by Lady de la Haye.
He had gone over every point in the case so often, that
he could refer at once to the one possible opportunity for
theft.
“ There was but one chance of the memorandum being
stolen to copy,” he said. “It was left in a certain drawer
in my writing-table when his Excellency the Marquis Chi
Lung and Paul Marketel went out into the salon."
“ Did you see Chi Lung place it there?” put in Sir
Alymer.
Roger shook his head.
“I let myself out by the garden door a moment before,"
he answered.
“Had you agreed that the memorandum was to be placed
in this particular drawer?” went on Sir Aylmer, and his
voice never rose and his manner never quickened.
“ Yes," answered Roger.
Why?" inquired the low, deliberate tones.
Because,” answered Roger, “ that particular drawer
closes with a spring, and can only be unfastened with a key."
“ Which key you had” rounded off Sir Aylmer.
Roger colored.
Yes,” he cried out. It was on my watch chain. It
had never left my watch chain, but-"


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
159
9)
" But
Sir Aylmer, still in his silky manner, took up that “but.”
he echoed.
Once, recently, that spring has failed to lock the
drawer,” Roger explained. “I pulled it open by the
handle."
Sir Aylmer passed his hand over his white-skinned crown.
“And,” he said, reflectively, "you wish to infer that it
might have done so again."
It was Lady de la Haye who replied to that.
· My son mentioned the incident of the spring's failing to
work to me,” she said hurriedly. She looked at Roger, she
looked again at Sir Aylmer. “Miss Melsham was with me
at the time,” she went on, a ring of agony in her voice. “I
am sure she will remember Roger's speaking about it if
you ask her.”
Roger put his hand on to his mother's arm. The man in
the blue serge looked up at last.
There remains the Chinese," was all he said.
Roger caught his meaning.
“And on my part, Sir Aylmer,” he cried out, there
remains my word. I give it you on my honor. I am
innocent.”
The stout man bowed. He kept his eyes down. He
walked into the center of the room. He almost turned his
back to Lady de la Haye.
“I must return to town by the 12.40 train,” he observed.
Roger walked after him: came up: stood level with him.
“You wish to take my resignation with you?” he de-
manded.
Sir Aylmer did not look up.
Those were my instructions,” he murmured.
Roger's lips went white. He had expected this, but when
he heard the fact put into words, it hurt like a blow. He
looked over his shoulder, past his mother, out on to the
terrace. There was a strange silence about Zouche de la
Haye. Even the animal life seemed to be stilled.
The clock in the pretty room ticked on. No one moved.
At length Roger spoke.
66


162
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Aimée into the park. As for Naomi Melsham, no one had
seen her. She had breakfasted upstairs-and there was
neither a word nor a sign from her.
But Marketel had betaken himself to the stretch of green
before the terrace. He was pacing to and fro, with Billy
Hirst, keeping an anxious eye on the house, and so it fell
out that no sooner was Chi Lung seated in his chair than
Paul nudged his companion.
Look,” he said.
“ The old duffer might be asleep," Billy observed.
“As much asleep as a cat when it blinks on the top of a
wall with a terrier prancing just below," answered Marketel.
“That's about it," the other agreed.
“I wonder,” Paul went on," what his Excellency wants."
“Why should he want anything?” Billy asked.
“You know," answered Marketel, " that the ways of the
Celestials are their own, and generally as devious as incal-
culable. You may be sure that our friend there did not drag
out his old bones to shiver in that wind for the mere
pleasure of taking the air."
“ Can it be to keep an eye on either of us?” Billy sug-
gested.
Marketel shook his head.
“ It's something farther fetched than that,” he said.
“I tell you what,” he went on, “ I'm going to give the old
fellow a chance. If he wants to say anything to me, I'm
going to make it easy for him.”
He turned again, neither hurriedly nor determinedly, but
with a desultory movement, that would have matched the
Chinaman's own gait under similar circumstances. When
he was close up to the steps, he took out his cigarette case,
and with it open, remarked, in a vexed tone, that it was
empty.
Billy grunted. However astute the healthy young Eng-
lishman may be, there is rarely one who does not cherish
contempt for a manæuver. Billy would have gone up those
steps two at a time, and dropped into the chair next to his
Excellency, with such a thud that it groaned.


164
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Ah!” cried out Paul," then your Excellency was
troubled with some new thoughts on this mystery?”
He turned in his eagerness. He set his two hands on his
knees, bent forward, but the thin old man opposite merely
put up his fingers (the little one with the nail left so long
that it looked like a claw) and laid them flat together against
his mouth for a moment, then, very leisurely, he began to
stroke his straggling beard.
Paul was more impatient than he cared to confess.
“ Your Excellency," he expostulated. But all the answer
he received to this renewed appeal was a tilting of that large
umbrella.
“I am as sure as I know you are,” Paul persisted, “ that
Roger had nothing to do with the betrayal of that memo-
randum. What his friends must do, what those who pro-
fess to care for Roger must do, is to clear him and find
the real thief."
The old man's hands went out with a movement of mock
deprecation. “Behold!” he blinked, “from the lips of the
unlearned comes wisdom. Disinterested service is one of
the benevolent acts enjoined by our great Masters."
Paul pushed back his chair with a grating sound, he rose
abruptly.
“If your Excellency has formed any conclusion, if your
Excellency can suggest any course of action or inquiry, I
put myself at your disposal. I shall be happy to work under
your directions," Paul announced.
The old man looked over the railing. He looked down
the terrace. He spread out his hands again, and seemed to
examine each nail separately.
“It is well to use zeal,” he remarked at last, when Paul
was all but driven to exasperation by this play of indiffer-
ence, none the less, if a man runs his head with force
against a spiked bamboo it hurts more than if he only lays
his cheek against its leaves."
“I mean to leave no stone unturned," maintained Paul
stoutly, and looked defiantly into the oblique smiling eyes
of his Excellency.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
165
Though a woman has borne you seven sons, do not trust
her," was the Chinaman's next most unexpected contribution
to the discussion.
Paul revolved that rapidly in his own mind. What could
be the purpose of dragging in a discrediting allusion to the
opposite sex? Of course, theoretically, to the Celestial, a
woman per se is always a damaging quantity. Practically
Eve is Eve, certain mutations notwithstanding, pretty well
as much in Pekin as in London. But a mandarin of Chi
Lung's standing would have thought it unseemly to intro-
duce the feminine subject into a serious conversation by way
of the relief of a light touch, as a Westerner might have
done. There must, somehow, be a reason-some cogent
reason-to justify this remark about the “ little old woman
of the domestic hearth.
Paul's mind naturally flew to the woman he imagined
to be most affected by Roger's trouble.
“I would stake my life on Lady de la Haye's integrity,”
he declared hotly.
There followed a pause.
His Excellency did not move a muscle, and yet Paul some-
how felt that he was being told he had just said something
particularly foolish. When next he ventured a remark, he
was more wary. Chi Lung was pleased to be genial again,
but vague, and as they talked on, each fencing carefully
under cover of what looked like a string of aimless plati-
tudes, Paul noticed that the conversation still seemed to be
edging round to the woman of the party.
Then Paul awoke to another unexpected circumstance-
the Chinaman was pumping him about Naomi Melsham-
was asking his opinion.
Paul answered evasively. He had a feeling that it would
be disloyal to Roger to discuss Naomi Melsham with that
old man of another race who so evidently disliked her, and
then, as he hesitated, the girl herself lifted the blind of the
salon and stepped out.
As Paul rose, he saw that she was very distressed. Her
eyes were large, strained. The peculiarly blue quality of the


166
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
iris seemed to be dimmed. The hand, which held her sun-
shade, trembled. The white collar, laid back on a dress of
black and white blended with a curious shade of green,
futtered with her uncertain breathing.
Paul offered her his chair with a touch of genuine friend-
liness. Looking back on things, he always dated his par-
ticipation in Naomi's life from this moment.
You look tired,” he said, “I don't suppose you slept
much.”
The girl nodded her head silently. She looked at the
quaint figure backing against the wall. There was no sym-
pathy there. There was such hostility, that, unnerved as
she was, she swung round her head and let her eyes, with
the tears so very near to them, look over the bowling-
green.
His Excellency rarely addressed a woman-he considered
it tax enough to reply when they spoke to him—but now
he looked across at Naomi Melsham.
* You look as if your lips had tasted bitter aloes,” he
began maliciously.
But, before she could answer, the sound of doors opening
in the salon came out distinctly on to the terrace. Both
men heard, but Naomi heard also, and hers was the quicker
perception.
She lifted her head, evidently listening with all her might.
It was obvious that she was awaiting some great decision,
and that she imagined it was on the point of being given.
To anyone who has waited for some great doctor's ver-
dict, who has listened for the opening of a door, or for the
approach of a footfall, this agony will be perfectly intel-
ligible.
But at least, Naomi was to hear the verdict in plain,
unmistakable terms, which is more than can be said of most
medical pronouncements. Generally, they seem to be framed
for the express purpose of adding the torture of indefinite-
ness to the anguish of apprehension.
Next followed a word in Roger's voice, and the girl's
whole frame grew rigid.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
167
Does she love him so much that it hurts her like that?'
Paul said to himself.
He read her apprehension one way. The old Chinaman
read it another. Paul had never arrived at anything ap-
proaching a suspicion, but if he had, this would have ban-
ished it. "It is impossible that she could have had a hand
in the copying of the paper, she loves him too much," he
would have said to himself. It never once occurred to him
that just because she did love so much, she had been
driven.
Within the salon, Roger was evidently crossing the room.
Sir Aylmer must have been by his side. They were talking
courteously, distinctly, with that precise choice of terms
which pointed to an underlying embarrassment.
Naomi looked at Paul. Her eyes asked what this fencing
between the two men might portend. Did it mean that the
scale had turned for Roger or against him?
Then the three watchers without heard Roger speak
again. He had evidently taken up the amethyst rabbit-he
was showing it to Sir Aylmer.
That,” Naomi heard him say, “is the clou of the col-
lection. But if you care for such things, there are one or
two other nice pieces. Will you look at them while I write
out--what you require from me?"
“ Thank you," returned Sir Aylmer, "I will wait here.
I am sorry to hurry you, but you realize my instructions
were definite."
“Yes,” said Roger, “I understand. Believe me, I realize
that, adopting the point of view the office evidently does, I
am being treated with great consideration.”
Naomi started to her feet. It was Paul who pulled her
down.
“ Keep still,” he said, and he laid his hand on hers, “ you
can do nothing to help now."
Next, a door closed, the door with one panel for Autumn,
and the other for Winter, leading into the Chinese Room,
as the three watchers on the terrace knew. Paul made no
effort to hide his agitation. He thrust his hands into his


168
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
pockets, and began to tramp the length of the terrace.
Naomi could sit still no longer, she rose and leaned against
the railings, her face as white as if some wound had drained
it of every drop of blood.
As for the old Chinaman, he looked elated rather than
cast down. For no Oriental has defeat the permanence it
has for the Westerner. He who is abased today may very
well be up tomorrow. Besides, life and all things in it are
at the caprice of Fate. But what does appeal to nim is the
enduring of these caprices with equanimity. Roger was
evidently conducting himself in a way worthy of a Chinese
himself.
It seemed such a little while, or was it a lifetime, and then
Roger himself came through the window of the salon.
It was the first time he had seen Naomi that morning, and
yet, after one quick glance, he neither looked at her nor
spoke to her.
The sun had struggled out a little more fully. It was
past midday and the breeze was changing to a lusty wind
which swept up the terrace and promised rain itself in an
hour or two.
Roger came up to Chi Lung. He stood up very straight,
very tall before him.
" Your Excellency," he began, “Sir Aylmer Brent has
just left Zouche. He has taken my resignation with him.”
He laughed harshly and swung a glance over his shoulder
at Paul-not at Naomi.
“I am a free man," he added.
The old Chinaman sat as immovable as if he were a
Buddha carved out of stone.
“I am entirely my own master, now," Roger continued.
It was Paul who cried out his name, and cried it with
an accent of entreaty.
"I am afraid I shall not be able to ask you to come and
stay with me in Pekin again,” Roger went on, addressing
Marketel directly, “but I have the world before me, I can
at least go where I please."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
169
Then he moved along, and at last he looked down at
Naomi.
"Perhaps you do not understand, Miss Melsham," he
said, “my being allowed to resign is a consideration for my
mother—and for my father's memory. All the same, I am
disgraced: I am ruined, both as regards my reputation and
my career.”
“No! No!” protested Naomi, and she made a piteous
movement with her hands.
“I ought to be thankful," continued Roger, as if he
wished to lay every possible stripe on himself, “ that I am
not publicly turned out of the Service."
Naomi winced as though she had been struck. He saw,
he must have seen the movement, and yet he went on.
“I did not expect mercy, and you may be sure I shall not
ask for it. If I had been guilty I should have deserved
none. I am innocent, but not one person in a hundred will
believe that; appearances being so against me, I shall not
resent it if my oldest friend-or my dearest friend-passes
me by, until I can prove my innocence."
He turned about as he said that. He had marked out
his own position. He had released them all-even the
woman he loved from any obligation. He began to go
down the terrace. Paul looked after him.
“Where are you going, Roger ?” he cried.
His voice rose and fell in the air. It spent itself use-
lessly. It was then Marketel turned to Naomi, but she did
not require his prompting.
“Roger,” she breathed, “Roger."
He heard her, though her tone had hardly been more
than a whisper. He turned on her as if her pity lowered
him.
“Don't pity me,” he groaned out, “I will not be pitied,
I cannot bear to be pitied."
Marketel sprang after him, but Roger shook him off.
“ Are you afraid that I shall blow my brains out? he
demanded brutally.
Naomi moved away from the railings this time. She


170
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
threw up her head. The light came back to her eyes, the
color to her cheeks. Her face lost its pinched look, and
Marketel, watching, thought he had not believed that even
her beauty could be so beautiful.
“ Stop," she cried, and for very amazement at the author-
ity in her tone, Roger stood still.
“Come back," she ordered, with the same imperative ring.
Roger hesitated, he looked before him, he swayed, he
moved round, and then he began to stumble back as if
drawn by that which was stronger than his will or his
determination.
Naomi went to meet him, she advanced swiftly, and held
out her hands.
Roger, have you forgotten that I am to count with you
now?” she demanded.
Paul heard the words, and a lump came into his throat.
There was but one woman in the world for him, and would
she ever identify herself with his life in such a tone?
“ You don't understand, you can't understand,” Roger
began unsteadily.
Not understand," cried back Naomi, “it is you who do
not understand. It is you who will not see: who do not
hear.”
She held out her hands again. It is doubtful if she so
much as remembered that there were spectators. Anyway,
they did not count. This was between her and the man
looking at her with a drawn face and darkened eyes.
The wind scurried noisily along the terrace. The poplars
in the park drove their agitated heads first to left and then
to right. The noise of countless branches, of every leaf on
every tree swaying this way and that, came up like the roar
of a mighty sea beating on a sandy shore.
“You must speak,” Naomi decreed. “Roger, don't you
see that you must speak now: that you must tell his Excel-
lency and Mr. Marketel what you said to me yesterday-
what I answered you?"
Roger shook his head.
Yesterday was different,” he muttered dully.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
171
“ There is no difference between yesterday and today as
far as you and I are concerned,” the girl cried back. “You
and I have nothing to do with times and seasons. What I
said to you yesterday holds good today: what I was yes-
terday, I am today.”
“ Your Excellency,” she hurried on, appealing to the man
who she knew was the most hostile to her, forcing him,
just because he did dislike her, to range himself on her side,
“if Roger will not tell you, I will. If Roger hesitates, I
glory in it. Hear me, and you, too, Mr. Marketel. Yes-
terday Roger asked me to be his wife. Today, I claim that
right. I claim the right to give myself to him, to be called
by his name, to stand by him, to love him as he loves
me.”
She fell back trembling, and then her weakness, for she
choked and stumbled, did what even her appeal had failed
to do, it broke down Roger's stony aloofness. He darted
forward, threw out his arms, and caught Naomi.
My ... my wife," he stuttered.
“Your wife, Roger,” answered Naomi Melsham.
Paul Marketel walked over to the old Chinaman and quite
peremptorily he rapped the lean old shoulder.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “neither you nor I are
wanted here."
He turned and hurried to the steps down to the bowling-
green. He heard the shuffling tread behind him, but, just
before he reached the steps, the small door from the house
opened and Lady de la Haye came out.
A less brave woman would have pleaded that everlasting
feminine help in trouble—a headache-and retired to a
darkened room with a bottle of smelling salts. Courage had
always been one of Amabelle's most consistent qualities.
The burden was to be borne, so she would shoulder it at
once. Besides, there was Roger to think of, perhaps to
help in a double trouble.
Lady de la Haye had by no means determined in her own
mind what Naomi would do. For all she knew, Roger might
find himself abandoned, as well as disgraced.


172
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Naomi Melsham saw the tall, white-haired woman coming
along. She hastened to meet her.
* Your Excellency-Mr. Marketel,” she said, “ don't go
for a minute.” Then she turned to Roger's mother. “ Lady
de la Haye," she said, “Roger and I are going to be married
immediately."


CHAPTER XIV
Naomi's announcement was so decisive, it closed one phase
of the question with such an unarguable assertion, that for
quite a few moments not only was there no further word
to say, but equally no movement was possible.
Then Paul touched the old Chinaman on the shoulder.
“ Your Excellency,” he said, “we are not wanted here."
His tone was so imperative that Chi Lung followed him
through the window of the salon, with nothing more aggres-
sive than a throwing back of the old chin, and an additional
strut of the slow walk.
As for Amabelle, she looked dumbly at her son, and then
at the girl who had so courageously identified herself with
him. If either of them had so much as glanced at her, she
must have held out her arms, but they were each absorbed
in the other. There was no joyousness in their eyes, none
of the rapture of a great abandonment. Roger's head was
hanging down as if he were stunned. Naomi was waiting
for his next words. The one thing which marked how the
man felt was the twitching fingers entwined within the girl's
fingers.
So, standing thus, Amabelle left them.
She went back into the house, back to the everyday duties
of a hostess, for the week-end party was breaking up-in
a very different spirit, alas, from the cheerful one in which
they had gathered at Zouche only four days previously.
There were the constrained adieux of her guests to receive,
and their discomfiture and uneasiness to be tactfully ignored
or softened, as each individual case required.
Victoria was taking Aimée with her,-an inspiration
which Amabelle recognized gratefully but mutely - Victoria
could always be relied on to do the helpful, kindly things
of life in such a delicate whispered way, that to give them
173


174
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
recognition in mere words would seem to impair their fra-
grance. She attempted no awkwardly phrased words of
comfort to her hostess, but her look and manner were a
soothing balm to the aching heart of the mother.
Armand de Rochecorbon was motoring up to Scotland on
a round of country house visits, so no one could take advan-
tage of his offer to accommodate all or any in his Panhard.
He was singularly terse as he took leave of Amabelle, but
she knew that he was among the most loyal and steadfast
of Roger's friends.
Any time—anywhere-even from Pekin to Timbuctoo
-Roger has but to lift the little finger for me and I come.
These were his final words, which could but leave her wanly
smiling, though she was fully assured of their sincerity.
Billy Hirst was the next to come to say good-by. There
was nothing he could do to help Roger if he lingered, as
he explained ruefully. He had received a letter that morn-
ing about a new expedition on business lines, with a paid
personnel, which was being organized in London. Being
poor now, he felt it was an opportunity not to be neglected.
Then as he saw the endurance on Amabelle's face, he was
moved to say the first thing which came into his head.
“It's all nonsense,” he told her, “you'll see—everything
will be found out before the week is up. The thief will be
in custody and Roger cleared."
The sanguine forecast cheered her, though she knew too
much about international intricacies to hope that it would
turn out to be more than a forecast.
But, when Chi Lung came to say farewell, he left her
disturbed and dismayed. His mask of impassivity was
at its most impregnable. He seemed to counsel delay,
procrastination, and when she protested that every moment
lived under the disgrace was a moment filched from Roger's
happiness, the old man merely replied with one of his
Celestial proverbs.
Much gold,” he muttered, “ many bolts. Many peacocks
-more jays. Yet, when youth takes the scorpion for a bed-
fellow, the aged go out on the roof.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
175
Lady de la Haye was still pondering that cryptic saying
when Paul sought her out.
'I am taking Roger up to Town with me," he said. She
looked up with a sharp surprise, but he went on quickly
“I want to tell you before I leave that what a man can do
to discover the real thief, I will."
Amabelle looked sadly at him. Everyone was so zealous
to help, but zeal without knowledge would avail nothing.
Stay—was everyone eager to help? She thought of her
old friend of the Celestial counsel of inertia-and she
was perhaps going to say a word about this to Paul when
Littleport entered.
"I think, sir," the old man said, " that you ought to have
this at once.” He held out a thin strip of red paper on
the big presentation salver.
What is it?” Paul asked quickly.
"From his Excellency, sir," Littleport returned.
"From his Excellency," Lady de la Haye echoed.
She turned with a sudden swift motion of gladness to
Paul. Marketel had the strip of thin red paper in his hand.
Only his Excellency's visiting card,” he said, as if an-
noyed that such a toy of ceremony should be obtruded on
him at such a moment.
Amabelle was quicker than he was. She guessed instantly
that it was one of the queer, devious modes of communi-
cation dear to a Celestial.
She took the card from Paul. The two symbols of his
Excellency's name and rank were printed in proper Celestial
fashion one above the other, but at the very foot was added,
in the thin writing which Chi Lung affected when he con-
descended to European penmanship, the address of the old
man's house in London.
“No. 19 Portarlington Place,” she exclaimed, showing
the addition to Paul. Don't you understand, he means you
to go and see him. Oh, Paul, what if he should be inviting
you to help him to clear Roger!" She waited a moment,
turning that over in her mind. Paul watched her-silent-
puzzled.


176
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Why couldn't the old man have said straight out if he
wanted me?” he asked.
“Because he is a Celestial," Amabelle answered.
“Of course you understand them and their
queer
circum-
locutory ways,” Paul grunted irritably—“you had fourteen
years of their oddities with Sir Arthur at Pekin.”
Lady de la Haye nodded with a subdued sigh. “Yes, it
needs patience, Paul, I know," she said. “ The Chinese
mind often appears to proceed backwards because it works
from motives unexpected by our Western mind, and is
directed to an end equally unforeseen by us; it's a sort of
mental jiu-jitsu!”
Paul shook his head—“I call it procrastination,” he re-
joined stubbornly. “I very nearly lost my temper with the
old man this morning—he was so confoundedly Oriental-
and yet,” he paused and a smile crept round the corners
of his mouth—“I like the old boy-and I'm sure you're
right about his devotion to Roger. But then, why doesn't
he move to help us?” Paul's irritation was coming upper-
most again. “He can,” he continued emphatically, “ I'm
sure of that-he knows a lot more than he confides to us-
but why? It's a puzzle. Ha!” Paul's face lighted up
humorously-" that's it,” he went on—"A Chinese Puz-
zle '—and we've got to discover the master spring for
ourselves, I suppose."
Amabelle looked up at him curiously.
“Don't you remember," he hastened to explain, “ those
irritating toys we used to have when we were children?
There was a box they called “The Chinese Puzzle '--per-
fectly square, perfectly smooth-to all outward appearances
perfectly solid—you could hammer it or batter it, and it
wouldn't open in a month of Sundays, but, put your finger
by chance on the right spring—hey, presto!-all the sides
in that blessed box revolved at once, showing daylight
through."
He paused-Amabelle was watching him intently-a
curious wonder growing in her eyes.
“And you think she said slowly.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
177
“Old Chi Lung's the same sort of Chinese Puzzle,'
Paul retorted, "solid, stolid, all sharp corners, smooth as
paint and dark as wood, but somewhere there's a hidden
spring, and if we can only put our finger on it-we shall
come to daylight over this business of Roger's.”
Lady de la Haye smiled gently—“You may be right,
Paul,” she agreed,“ but if Chi Lung really holds the spring
to this mystery, only patience to the infinite degree will serve
with him.”
“I'll be a very monument of patience to the old man,”
Paul declared resolutely, “ I'll out-Job Job at the business-
trust to me!" He carefully deposited the old Chinaman's
red visiting card in his note case. “This is the winning
suit,” he concluded confidently, “I see that now, and some
day the old man will draw the trump card from that long
sleeve of his."
Paul left her cheered somewhat-stimulated to think that
her old friend had but appeared lukewarm while all the
time he was meditating a movement to help. And then
Roger sought her out, and with her first glance at his face
she was plunged back into the stress of the actual situation.
“I am going away,” he began abruptly, “up to London
with Paul-I am leaving in an hour.”
Most women would have asked why. Amabelle did noth-
ing of the kind. She sat still and waited. All her life that
power of silence had brought her revelation. The woman
who leaves a man free to tell her nothing, invariably ends
by hearing all.
“Don't you see,” Roger blurted out," that I have no right
to take advantage of Naomi's generosity? She was so moved
by my trouble that she thought of nothing but helping me,
but it isn't fair to her-I must go away. I must leave her
to reflect, to weigh things, to add them up. A man damned
as I am has no right to drag a woman down with him."
Almost timidly his mother spoke of rehabilitation, of
restitution. Roger was not in a condition which admitted
of argument. He held on to one point. He must go away
to give Naomi a chance to repent of her generosity.


178
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
"I have left her a letter," he said, " telling her that what
was said this morning counts for nothing. I shall stay with
Paul for a day or two till I can decide on my next move-
ments. I'll wire you tomorrow, dearest."
Amabelle de la Haye assented without even a murmur of
protest. As she reviewed the circumstances, she realized
that Roger was doing the only thing possible to a man with
as fine a sense of honor, with as delicate a set of scruples,
as his. All his life she had come to his rescue, not when
he called, but before he called, and now her first impulse
was to set about thinking what she could do to help. But
another moment's reflection pointed out that the initiative
had passed from her-Naomi was Roger's first considera-
tion, and his stumbling-block. It was for her to protest
or acquiesce. She must prove whether her passionate dec-
laration of the morning was a resolution, a principle, or
whether it was but an outburst of overwrought feeling.
Yet, Amabelle would still be at hand if she were wanted.
She was too fine a woman to refuse a rôle because it did
not happen to be the “lead.”
She retired to the Queen Anne room and told Littleport
that she was not at home, but if anyone wanted her she
was to be found there-a hint which she could trust the old
man to interpret with discretion.
Meantime the car, with Paul driving and Roger sitting
beside him, was racing up to London. At first the two men
sat side by side in silence: nothing had been arranged be-
yond the bare fact that Roger would go back to stay with
Paul. There had been no mention as yet of plans or pur-
pose, but when Paul's big car had been covering the ground
for some half-hour at a pace which would have routed the
hero of a police-trap, Roger suddenly turned on him.
" It was the Olympic News Service who issued our
memorandum to the papers," he said tersely.
Paul nodded. Roger's mind had passed from Naomi to
the theft. As long as Roger had been absorbed in the in-
timately personal matter, Marketel had felt that the greatest
service he could do his friend was to keep still. Now, he


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
179
felt that he could at least contribute his comment to other
comments.
“ The Olympic News Service is Lionel Vancrest,” he said,
"a hustler, but straight."
“He must have got it direct from the thief?” Roger
went on.
· Bought it,” corrected Paul, “and for a pretty stiff figure
too, I imagine.”
“At any rate,” replied Roger testily, “ he would know
who the fellow was.'
Paul nodded. He was upon an awkward piece of road
and for the moment the wheel absorbed him.
“Look here,” said Roger, “why shouldn't we go straight
to the Olympic people and see what we can find out from
them?"
“Just what I'd suggest myself," Paul answered.
Do you know where they are ?"
“Oh, yes,” said Paul, “I know.”
Roger nodded and lapsed into silence again. His
brow was wrinkled, his lips were shut in a firm, obtruded
line.
Paul drove on with even less regard to the speed limit
than before, but man proposes and machinery disposes. The
car, which had carried Paul hundreds of miles when noth-
ing more momentous than a dinner engagement was at stake,
suddenly grunted, groaned, slowed down, and then refused
to move a yard. In vain Paul got out, opened the bonnet,
and inspected first one item of the machinery and then the
other-nothing would make the motor move, and it was not
until a farm cart passed and was hired to tow them to the
nearest town that Paul and Roger saw any chance of get-
ting to London that night. As it was, they did not reach
Liverpool Street Station until after nine and the Olympic
News Agency was closed. There was nothing for it but to
possess their souls with what patience they could until the
morrow.
The Olympic Press Agency was an international concern,
perhaps that was why it housed itself with comparative


180
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
modesty. The next morning before eleven, Paul pulled up
at the dingy door of the old house, and with only a wave
of his hand to indicate that Roger was to follow him,
mounted the steps.
Diplomats-officially anyway-are not supposed to have
anything to do with press bureaus-financiers admittedly
have. Paul pushed his way into the outer office.
“Is Mr. Vancrest upstairs ?” he asked.
A young man looked at him superciliously, debating
whether to say that his principal was out, or that he would
go and see if Mr. Vancrest were at home, but Paul pushed
his card over the table.
“Take that up, please,” he said, “and say that my busi-
ness is immediate."
The youth only glanced once at the card and then his
whole manner changed.
· Yes, sir-certainly, sir,” he said, as deferential as he
had been previously offhand.
Paul watched the youth out of the room.
“Lucky to catch him so early," he murmured, but Roger
only gave him back a glance. So much hung on this inter-
view, or he hoped it might, that he could not trust himself
to speak.
The two men had only time for another glance and then
the clerk came back. He was as deferential as before, but
somewhat less eager. Paul marked the difference at once-
“ Vancrest doesn't want to see us,” he concluded,“ he'd have
said he was out if he had dared.”
But Roger was already out of the room, he was already
going up the narrow stairs. Paul followed him, thinking as
deeply as quickly.
The clerk pushed open the door.
“Mr. Marketel," he announced, "and," put in Roger,
Sir Roger de la Haye.”
Paul heard the announcement and great as was his par-
tiality for straight dealing, he was dismayed, not to say
vexed. Roger had unmasked the purpose of their visit, had
flung down his gauntlet with a vengeance.


182
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“ But," objected Roger, "this Chinese loan was a con-
fidential negotiation."
“And therefore of particular value to the world at large."
This time the mouth under the fair mustache curved in a
cynical smile. “That is what my Agency exists for—to
diffuse such exclusive information-in the public interest."
Roger made a weary gesture. He had no time to fence-
no patience with subtleties.
“Mr. Vancrest,” he said, “ this matter is vitally serious.
The name, please, of the man from whom you bought the
Chinese memorandum."
“My dear sir,” rejoined Vancrest, with a deprecating
movement. He turned to Paul.
“ You know,” he said, as if he could still hope for reason-
ableness from him, though he despaired of finding it with
Roger, " that the essence of my business is confidence-
whatever news comes to me is given on a basis of con-
fidence.”
“Do you mean," thrust in Roger, “ that you refuse to tell
us the fellow's name?”
"I mean," returned Vancrest blandly, “that it is im-
possible for me to do so." He looked at Paul again. “The
success of my Agency depends on the amount of confidence
I inspire. I have established a reputation for loyalty to my
agents.”
"But,” said Paul, “in this instance
Mr. Vancrest shook his head.
“There can be no exceptions, Mr. Marketel,” he said.
“Good God, man," thrust in Roger passionately," don't
you understand what this means to me? I am being saddled
with the responsibility of this betrayal-until I can clear
myself by exposing the real thief, my career is ruined, my
reputation tainted. Can you sit there calmly and see an
innocent man bear the culpability for another's crime?”
Vancrest leaned forward seriously. There was a touch
of genuine sympathy in his voice as he spoke.
“I am sorry, Sir Roger," he said, “I had no idea that
the matter affected you so badly-none the less" He


184
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
he asked, and Paul might have retorted that he had stated no
supposition at all, but he had too keen a perception of how
Roger was suffering to say anything so thoughtless, and all
he returned was that if Roger had any lead to suggest, he
asked nothing better than to follow.
For a moment that threw Roger back on himself.
“You must know of something, you must be able to do
something," he muttered peevishly, and then, almost as he
spoke, he clutched Paul's arm.
“There's Carson,” he declared.
“Who is Carson?” asked Marketel.
Roger rapidly explained. Harold Carson was a man
sometimes employed by the Foreign Office, at other times
he worked for private individuals—if he considered the case
worthy of his time and attention. He had set what might
be called a high standard in espionage, he would give no
help to mere intrigue, still less to anything remotely con-
nected with blackmail. He was a man to be trusted, a man
of acumen and of delicate touch.
“I should think he is the very man for us,” Paul con-
cluded when he had heard Roger's description. “Where
does he live?”
For a moment Roger was in doubt, then he recollected
that Harold Carson's address was in the telephone book, and
the mention of the telephone suggested the ringing up of
the detective and the asking of him if he could see them
at once.
Roger and Marketel drove to Paul's club—but once at
the door, Roger would not get out. He fancied that a man
whom he knew slightly had seen who was in the car and
had hurried up the steps to avoid him. No doubt the affair
was already club gossip. “Go in and telephone,” he said
grimly to Paul, “ I'll wait here."
He drew further back in the car and peeped out sideways.
He looked at the wide steps-into the fine hall. He saw the
members coming and going: the little knots form and dis-
perse: he could see the emphatic gestures, could imagine
the decisive words clothing decisive opinions which they


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
185
accompanied. He saw more than one head turn to look
after Paul. Was opinion pitying Paul and saying hard
things of him too?
Before Paul returned, Roger had worked himself up to
a pitch of misery
Carson won't be at home until three,” Paul said as he
put his hand on to the door.
Then we'll go at three,” Roger said shortly.
Right," answered Paul. He stood hesitating a moment.
If he were in doubt as to what was to come next, Roger
solved the problem.
“I shall go to my lawyer," he said. “May I take the car
on? I shall be leaving England almost immediately and I
must leave my mother a power of attorney.”
Paul nodded quickly with a relieved smile. “ Just suit
me," he said, “I feel like a walk to pull my wits together.
Be at my house for lunch and we'll go together to see
Carson.”
From the quiet club in St. James's Square to Paul's house,
it was almost a direct way to go by Egglestone Place, in
which particular street Victoria rented a little house with a
white painted door and flowers in the window-boxes. Paul
would have liked to maintain that to go past that little house
was the most direct way for him, but he was too honest to
juggle with himself.
He was as much a man as a devoted friend, and now,
having done all for his friend, the thought of Victoria took
precedence, for the moment, of that perplexity.
When Victoria left Zouche the previous day, she had
taken Aimée with her. She had referred vaguely to
remaining in London for a few days and then going “ some-
where.” In reality she intended to put the Channel between
herself and this masterful man.
Perhaps when Paul set forth he had only meant to go
past Victoria's dwelling, to imagine her within and pass by,
but when he reached the point where Egglestone Gardens
turned into Egglestone Place, he pulled up.


186
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
The attraction of gravitation is a feeble thing compared
with the attraction of desire. Paul looked down the street
toward No. 19, much as Moses must have looked down on
the Promised Land, and then he saw a taxicab come along
from the opposite end of the street. That cab drew up
before Victoria's door, and Paul could see it was Billy
Hirst who got out and ran up the steps to the house.
The whole of. Paul's frame stiffened—and with anger.
It was quite unreasonable, of course, but it set every fiber of
his being protesting, tingling, to think that Billy could claim
admittance as a matter of course, while he was casting about
for an excuse to pull the bell.
The next moment the plain strong face relaxed into an
ironical smile. After all Billy's luck was not so very much
better than his own, for Victoria's Emily, as she was always
known to the intimate friends of the house, was shaking her
head with an evident denial.
He started off down the street to accost Billy.
“Well, I never," began the young man. “I never thought
I'd run across you."
The two turned side by side.
“I say,” ran on Billy, “ this is luck my seeing you. I
suppose you can tell me no end.”
What about?”
" About prospecting in the Andes. It was just coming
into my head to ring you up."
What do you want to know about it?” inquired Paul
shortly.
" I've got the definite offer of a job there."
“ With whom?” asked Paul.
Oh,” answered Billy vaguely, “under some Brazilian
fellows.”
Paul turned and faced the gay light-hearted boy almost
angrily. “I suppose you know what a business expedition
into the Andes under a half-breed may mean?” he asked.
“Worry, fever, risk-but pay," retorted Billy.
“ I've worked in such company,” Paul went on, and he
spoke slowly. "I've tried it in Mexico, I've tried it else-


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
187
where. I know these exploring expeditions, and it isn't a
life fit for a dog."
“Beggars can't be choosers," answered Billy, and for once
he came very near to being sulky.
Surely," cried out Paul, “you can find something
better?"
At that very moment, as if Dame Fate herself would
answer the question, a newsboy raced past them. “Perilous
position of the Antarctic Expedition," he was crying-
“Relief ship to sail.”
Marketel pointed towards the flaming poster. “Didn't
Victoria tell me you were going to have a hand in that?”
he said, “ surely that's more in your line."
It was -I'd never done the Arctics, and of course that's
just a Sunday picnic-but I can't raise the needful.”
"It's a question of money ?”
Billy shuffled uncomfortably. “ You see,” he said, “a
month
ago I offered to put two thousand into the job, but
I can't now. Anyhow, that Andes job will bring me in a
bit whatever else is to be said against it."
After that the two men walked along silently side by side.
Paul told himself that this expedition to the Andes was
not his affair, either to encourage or withhold. He had done
his duty in refusing Billy the command of his ruby expedi-
tion. The remembrance of David and Uriah the Hittite had
made him search his mind to its depths. We are none of
us so good or so bad as we think we are," remarked that
wise old cynic, La Rochefoucauld, and Paul's sensitiveness
probably exaggerated the savagery of his desire. Now he
had fought out the fight with himself and he had won. No
act or aid of his should send his rival into a possible danger
from which he might never return. Surely there his duty
finished? And now if this madman chose to go to the
Andes, what earthly concern was it of his?
Paul smiled grimly under his mustache. That qualifying
adjective "earthly" restored the balance of his perspective.
There is so much that is earthly about this process of reason-
ing which, be it marked, men only employ when there is


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189
He hesitated a moment. It seemed as if he were about to
say something further, to add some word of advice, but
instead, with a short laugh, he swung on his heel and walked
rapidly away.
Billy stared after him curiously, with a kind of feeling
that the really important thing had been left unsaid.
Queer old bird, Marketel," he commented and sauntered
off to fill in the couple of hours to lunch time, after which
he proposed to again present himself at Egglestone Place.
As Paul Marketel walked rapidly away, he was revolving
a host of possibilities in his mind. He looked at his watch
-it was not yet twelve o'clock. He hailed a passing taxi
and directed the man to drive at once to his bank. His
business was of the briefest, for by the time the bank
manager had hurried round to see personally what he could
do for so distinguished a client, Paul had turned over a
hastily written check to the cashier and had received in
exchange two large new bank notes of the unusual value of
one thousand pounds each.
In less than ten minutes he was back in the library of his
own big lonely house inscribing a few typewritten words on
a blank half-sheet of paper. An envelope was duly ad-
dressed in the same fashion, and an express messenger boy
waiting at the door was given particular instructions as to
when and where he was to deliver it.
The business completed, Paul lighted a big cigar, dropped
his bulky frame into a chair, and resolutely devoted himself
to a fresh review of the mystery of the Chinese memo-
randum.


CHAPTER XV
It was nearly three o'clock when Billy Hirst knocked
again at the door of 19 Egglestone Place.
“No, Sir," answered Emily, “Miss Cresswell has not
yet come back, but she may return at any moment. Won't
you come in?"
Billy said he would, and as he was putting down his
hat and stick, Emily told him that Aimée was in the
drawing-room. Billy grunted discontentedly. He was
fond enough of Aimée in his way, but at that moment he
wanted to see Victoria by herself.
As a rule, Billy had not a great deal to say to the woman
he was going to marry—some time--but Paul's questions
as to what Victoria would think had struck home. It
was right she should know what this Brazilian expedition
implied: it was right too she should say her yea or nay.
Hitherto she had always met his wandering fits cheerfully
and with acquiescence, but this was rather different, inso-
much as if he made any money out of it-a thing about
which he had been quite indifferent before-he wanted
to put it into a farm or a ranch. He must earn his own
living, and the colonies, not an office stool, seemed to him
the only way.
He walked up the stairs soberly for him, and pushed
open the door of Victoria's pretty drawing-room. He was
too much an habitué for Emily to announce him, and as
he sank on to a big easy chair and stretched out his legs
—for to elongate his lower limbs always seems to con-
sole a man when he is perturbed-he thought he had the
room all to himself, and then the window curtains were
pushed aside and he saw Aimée.
“ You?” she began.
190


192
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“I suppose,” remarked the girl, “minding your own
business is a virtue?”
“ I should say so, just,” returned the young man.
“ And Victoria's business could not be mine?”
“Don't see how it could be."
“You think she can manage her own affairs?”
“No one better."
“She did take her money away from that Mr. Buzby,"
pursued Aimée reflectively.
"No," cried out Billy, falling into the particular trap
prepared for him, "she didn't-Paul Marketel took it for
her."
“Oh!” murmured Aimée.
Billy turned on her.
“I say,” he cried out irritably, “what do you mean by
saying 'oh’ like that?”
The girl's lips were skimmed with a smile. It was tender
and amused at the same time. A very little smile—such
a one, in fact, as even the youngest girl permits herself
when faced by a display of masculine denseness.
“I'm no good at beating about the bush,” declared Billy,
as he caught the fleeting expression, “but I don't like being
made a fool of.".
Aimée rose too. It was wonderful how a certain large-
ness of purpose pushed the childishness out of her face.
“Don't you see,” she cried out, “ I'm taking no end on
myself. Perhaps I'm saying what I ought not, but you
are making such a mistake."
"What mistake?” asked Billy, "let's have it out plain.”
Aimée straightened her slip of a body. She put her
hands demurely down to her sides. She felt as if she
were back in the convent. She almost expected to hear
the Mother Superior's weighty "ma fille," and then she
raised her head. Whatever scrapes she got into she had
never been frightened when it came to the exaction of the
penalty—she was not going to be frightened now.
"Billy," she said, "you are not in love with Victoria.”
The young man stiffened. It was pretty much what he


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
193
had been coming to ever since he knew that his money had
gone, but to whisper a thing like that in his own heart was
a very different thing from hearing it proclaimed in the
open by another person.
“You have no right to say that,” he retorted.
"Have you ever asked yourself,” Aimée went on so
quickly that Billy had no time to interrupt her, “if Vic-
toria is in love with you?”
“ Victoria ?” exclaimed Billy. His first notion was to
say that of course she must be—were they not going to
be married—some day—had they not been engaged for
years? Instead, he stopped with his mouth half open.
“ Have you ever noticed her with Paul Marketel?”
Aimée said softly.
“ Paul? What on earth has he got to do with us?”
asked Billy.
“Everything," was the astonishing response.
Billy Hirst turned slowly round. The easy-going expres-
sion had left his face, and its place had been taken by
that look of fixed determination which explained how
he came to be an efficient leader under trying circum-
stances.
“I say, Aimée," he said, "you have said either too much
or too little. Please tell me exactly what you mean."
"I mean," returned Aimée, “that Paul Marketel is in
love with Victoria, and Victoria with him.”
“My hat !” ejaculated Billy.
He stood still, staring straight before him, then he whis-
tled a long low note.
Some statements strike one as possibly correct-others
as possibly incorrect, they require time for examination,
time to determine what value to attach to them. Here and
there an assertion comes home with a rush of conviction.
As Billy heard Aimée's bald announcement, there was
that, somewhere in the background of his mind, which
answered “this is true.”
He stood still, thinking backwards, and out of a con-
fusion of thought Marketel's attitude detached itself.


194
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
"I see," he muttered, "why Paul wouldn't let me go on
that ruby hunt."
“ Tell me all about it,” Aimée demanded.
In a very few words Billy sketched the position, and
then Aimée put Paul's exact conclusion into her own
words.
'I suppose,” she said, “ that since you were so badly in
his way, it wasn't playing the game to let you run a chance
of getting out of it.”
And then just as matters had got to this point, Victoria
herself pushed open the door.
She had evidently only just come in, but in her hand
she held a letter.
This came round from your rooms,” she said, holding
the envelope out to Billy. “It was marked ‘immediate,'
and seemed so important that the messenger was sent on
here."
“Right,” said Billy. He took the long business-looking
envelope into his hand and glanced at Victoria. He was
quite sure it was some further word about the Brazilian
business. He had expected it and had told his landlady
to send it on to Victoria's house. He wished he had had
a chance of saying a word before it came, but as it was
here, he broke the seal. He pushed up the flap, took out
a large sheet and unfolded it.
"Oh!” he began blankly, and then he gave vent to such
a peculiar sound-a gasp—a smothered exclamation—that
both the women looked up quickly.
“ What is it?” Aimée asked.
Money,” gasped Billy, “two thousand pounds."
He let the envelope flutter out of his grasp. The sheet
of notepaper followed, but in his hand he kept two Bank
of England notes.
He thrust out his arm and pushed the money closer to
Victoria.
“Do you see?” he demanded hoarsely, Auttering first
one note and then the other, “one thousand pounds-one
thousand pounds. What the deuce does it mean?”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
195
Victoria picked up the paper which had fallen on the
hearthrug. “Surely," she said, "the letter will ex-
plain.”
He took it from her quickly and unfolded the single
sheet. Five words were written on it and he read them
hastily—“A reparation and a restitution," he repeated.
For one moment he looked completely mystified, then
his face lighted up with a very boyish glee. “By Jove,”
he exclaimed, “good old Buzby!”
“Buzby?” echoed Victoria. “Edward Buzby-what has
Edward Buzby to do with this?"
“He must have sent it,” Billy ran on impetuously. He
looked from her to Aimée.
“Don't you see," he explained. “It's as clear as day-
light. This restitution is from Buzby. He's sent me back
£2,000—first instalment of my own money. It's as I said,”
Billy went on, and he threw back his head as though defy-
ing anyone to disagree with him. “The poor chap wasn't
a wrong 'un. It's only that he was overdriven and some-
thing gave way a bit. I suppose now, when he's steadied
down and had time to remember what's what, he's started
to set things right again.”
“I wonder,” returned Victoria, "if you are right.”
“Who'd send it if Buzby didn't?” Billy demanded.
“ Folks don't put £2,000 into an envelope for the pleasure
of licking up the flap. Now do they ?” he concluded
aggressively.
Victoria could only shake her head, and Billy went on
joyfully to say that “Brazil might take care of itself-
he'd go on the Antarctic.” That, of course, entailed an
explanation, but it didn't take Victoria long to learn the
details of the Brazilian scheme and how Paul Marketel
had opposed it.
“Paul," she said, fastening on that, “Paul advised you
against it?"
“ Yes,” answered Billy. He looked significantly at
Aimée and the girl required no further hint. She left
him with Victoria, and Billy looked at the door for quite


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
197
“ Lord!” summed up Billy Hirst, women do seem to
be a heap of trouble to some men!”
He came back and held out his hand to Victoria.
"I'm going straight to Paul,” he said, "I shall make
things all right with him."
Victoria colored until all her face, her neck, her very
ears, were dyed scarlet, but she uttered no protest. She
was not only a brave woman-she was a fine-minded one.
She loved Paul, and she was sufficiently true to her
woman's nature not to throw in his way any petty ob-
stacles, born of the timidity which burkes Nature in
favor of a narrow conventionality.
But Billy Hirst was not fated to see Paul Marketel
that day, for he arrived at the big house just an hour after
Paul and Roger had started off in the car for their ap-
pointment with the detective.
Harold Carson occupied a flat on the top story of one
of those residential rabbit-warrens overlooking the park.
There was nothing in the locality, still less in the look of
the flat, with its lights subdued under green shades and a
few bits of fine statuary showing in the tiny square hall,
to suggest the man who made his daily bread by unearth-
ing precisely those secrets which those most concerned
hoped they had buried or put behind them for ever.
Roger and Marketel reached the detective's house only
two or three minutes after the appointed time.
A middle-aged man-servant showed them into a small
library, and Harold Carson himself rose as they entered.
He had been reading when they were announced, and
Paul was curious enough to glance at the title of the book
-it was an early edition of the “Romance de la Rose.”
Somehow the mere suggestion of such literary proclivities
seemed hopeful to Paul.
Carson had met Roger before. He held out a firm white
hand as Marketel was mentioned to him, and looked from
one man to the other with a smile of inquiry.
For a moment none of the three present spoke. They


198
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
66
were all men of action, and they who make history, public
or private, are well aware that on all momentous occasions
he who listens has the advantage over him who speaks.
At last Carson gave a lead.
“You wanted to consult me professionally?” he in-
quired.
“I expect you can guess what about?" answered Roger,
plunging into the matter in that abrupt manner which had
only come to him in the last forty-eight hours.
“I never anticipate,” answered Harold Carson with a
careful smile.
It was here that Paul took up the argument.
“Mr. Carson," he said—“I take it that you read the
daily papers ?”
Generally,” admitted the little man mildly.
Then you are conversant with the theft of the Chinese
memorandum ?”
“ You take it to be a theft?” the detective asked.
“In the name of goodness, what else could it be?” Paul
asked.
“My dear sir,” Mr. Carson said, “ so many things are
not what they seem.”
“The thief must be found,” Paul continued grimly, “no
stone must be left unturned, no expense must be spared.”
a moment before Harold Carson spoke. He
looked from one face to the other. Paul asked himself
if this man too, on the first blush, had accepted the easy
solution of Roger's guilt.
“Tell me exactly what you both know," he said, " but one
at a time, please. Will you tell me the whole of the cir-
cumstances as they appear to you, Sir Roger, and then
I shall ask Mr. Marketel to give me his version. In the
meantime," he went on, addressing Paul, “ will you sit in
that chair there?” indicating one a little apart, "and please
don't speak. If you think that Sir Roger omits anything,
or makes any mistake, you can correct it when you come
to give your version."
Paul stepped aside. He had been under cross-examina-
It was


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
199
tion more than once, and he knew that many a barrister
holds that a man allowed to tell his own story in his own
way, proves or disproves his innocence in the process.
Roger began at once. He carefully recapitulated the
events of the week-end at Zouche as he remembered
them.
When he had finished, Carson asked but one question.
“ Have you any new servants at Zouche ?” he said.
“ They have all been with my mother for years," Roger
answered.
“And you can answer for them?”
For
every one of them leave them out of
your
mind.”
The detective merely nodded and turned to Marketel.
“Please,” he said, “will you give me your version. Be-
gin as if you did not know that Sir Roger had told me
anything, and never mind how much repetition there is in
what you say."
Paul went as carefully through the incidents from his
angle as Roger had done from his.
When he finished, Carson made no comment at all. The
detective sat back in his chair and smoked one cigarette
after the other. At last he rose and walked to the mantel-
piece. He put his back against the shelf and arranged
his position carefully so that he could keep both men under
his eye.
There seems only one possible conclusion,” he began.
“And that is?” broke in Roger impatiently.
That the Chinese memorandum was stolen from
within.”
“From within ?" repeated Roger. "I don't understand."
“I should say it was stolen by someone staying in the
house: by someone who knew the ways of the house,”
the detective went on. “ That is why I asked if you had
recently engaged a new servant. Such a servant might
have been an accomplice introduced for that express pur-
pose."
“But I tell you,” Roger protested, "there was no new
servant."


200
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
99
66
Then,” returned Harold Carson, "that narrows it
down
He stopped and looked from one man to the other.
“To one of us?” Paul exclaimed, understanding him
first, and he threw back his head with a gesture of denial.
“To one of my friends—to one of the house party-
impossible," decided Roger vehemently.
The detective smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“The people who were staying in the house that day
are all old friends, I can answer for them as for myself,"
Roger went on.
“For all of them?” asked Carson.
Roger made a step forward.
" Mr. Carson,” he said indignantly, "are you venturing
to suggest anything against any particular guest ?”
One can never be sure of an Oriental,” the little man
answered. That was what was in my mind-their
standard is not ours-
“His Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung was one of my
father's most trusted friends," Roger explained. Since
my father's death, he has transferred a large part of his
affection to me and my mother. You may dismiss from
your mind any thought that he would do anything detri-
mental to my interests.”
“I am sorry,” returned Carson, but with a very im-
penitent air, “I merely put forward a racial possibility, it
was no reflection on the Marquis himself."
Roger merely nodded. Paul was watching him nar-
rowly. He could see how the fastidious nature was fretted
by the mere mention of treachery among those around him.
But what was to follow was destined to irk Roger far
more.
"I take it," Carson went on," that you want something
more than my opinion, you wish me to arrive at facts?”
“Yes,” said Roger, but doubtfully, for Mr. Carson's
comments had not helped him on the contrary, they irri-
tated him, we asked you to see us for that."
“I never undertake work unless I am allowed a free


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
201
hand," Carson said next. “In this instance, I should wish
to come down to Zouche to see the scene of the theft,
to make investigations on the spot."
“I see no objections, at present, to that," Roger an-
swered cautiously.
“But to attain to any useful end," Carson announced,
“I must see each person who was present in your house
that day-men and women-guests and servants. I must
be permitted to put what questions I think fit to them.”
To the women as well as the men?" exclaimed Roger.
“Precisely," answered Mr. Carson.
Roger fell back. He looked at Paul. How did such a
proposition as this strike Paul? Would Paul care to see,
nay, would he tolerate any inquisitorial inquiries as to
Victoria Cresswell's movements ? Roger felt confident that
Paul would resent such a proceeding as emphatically as
he himself would resent it in the case of Naomi Melsham.
“Mr. Carson,” he said, “ you must see that I could not
propose such an indignity to my guests."
" It would be distasteful, I know," Carson answered
tolerantly, “but it is the only way if I am to make a com-
plete investigation.”
“Then,” shot back Roger, “the investigation must re-
main incomplete.”
The next moment he realized that he could not afford
to say that. Only a free unveiling of facts and circum-
stances could clear him. He fell back on one of the oldest
of compromises.
“There must be some other way,” he said.
“What other way?" asked Carson, with more than a
trifle of obstinacy.
It was here that Paul came to Roger's help.
"Suppose you begin with the tail instead of the head,"
he said. “I suggest, Mr. Carson, that you begin by dis-
covering who sold the memorandum to the Olympic
people."
Exactly,” Roger interposed. “Once we unmask him,
we shall have the key to the whole mystery.”


CHAPTER XVI
NAOMI MELSHAM could never quite remember what fol-
lowed on that fateful morning immediately after her
announcement that she intended to marry Roger. She had
a confused notion that she found herself alone with him,
that he held her close protesting his love, his gratitude,
and then he suddenly pulled up and made so decided a
movement of withdrawal that the exaltation was dashed
with dismay. It was, she repeated to herself when she
came to think of it later, but a momentary movement,
indeed she tried to persuade herself that she was mistaken
in its import, but all the same, it had a most decided effect
on her. Without it, she might not have withdrawn her-
self, might not have hurried away to her own room.
She sat there up in the turret, her low chair drawn close
to the fire, and she waited anxiously. She had offered
herself once, the second time Roger must send for her.
She heard a certain coming and going without. She sup-
posed the other guests were leaving, but she would not so
much as appear at the window-not by a movement, not
by a sign would she recall herself to any member of the
De la Haye household. All the same, her whole being was
alert, waiting for the approach of a messenger with a note
from Roger-waiting, possibly, for the appearance of
Lady de la Haye herself.
More than once she heard the coming of footsteps—they
came down the corridor-nearer—then they went on.
Someone had passed her door, not knocked upon it, and each
time a revulsion which made her heart beat quicker told
her how eagerly she was awaiting the message.
At last it came. Someone stopped before her door,
knocked, and demanded admittance.
It was a maid with a note. At a glance Naomi saw
203


204
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
that the direction was in Roger's writing. She took the
envelope and let it lie in her lap until she was alone again.
Even then she lingered. What, she asked herself, had
he found to say to her? He evidently expected her to
answer in person, since the maid had received no orders
to wait.
She broke the seal. Whatever Roger had said he had
said it in a few words, since not even the back of the
sheet was written on. She unfolded it and glanced
down.
“Oh!” she exclaimed aloud in her involuntary dismay.
This letter that she had watched for, that she had longed
for, began with a formal “Dear Miss Melsham."
For one moment, every vein in Naomi's body tingled
with shame. Had she offered herself merely to be re-
jected? The next instant, she knew that there must be
some further explanation. She read down the few lines
of hard, difficult words. Roger told her, almost as briefly
as he had told his mother, that he would not take advan-
tage of her generosity, that he was going away.
Her first impulse was to rise—to pull the bell, to send
anyone everyone, to stop him—then her hand fell to her
side. One of the motors that she heard setting out from
the entrance probably had him among its passengers.
Besides, could she stop him? Could she cry to him to
return?
She rose.
The four walls of her room had
suddenly become intolerable to her. She wanted move-
ment. She wanted space—the cold wind of the gray day
to strike her face-if it were to rain, and the drizzle were
to wet her, all the better.
As a matter of duty, she habitually took a daily walk.
Not that exercise was a pleasure, it was a toll paid to the
fact that her face was her fortune. She walked so much
every day, to keep her complexion clear, just as she did
gymnastics every morning after her bath, to keep a slim
figure and supple limbs. But this time, the exercise was
a prescription for her mind, not for her body. She stole
downstairs. She stayed peeping into the hall until she


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205
was sure that no one was about. She slipped through the
door on to the terrace, and then hurried down from the
terrace into the park. Even that was not enough. She
hastened down the drive, eager to get away from the
vicinity of Roger's house. She wanted not only to think,
but to make quite sure of what she must do. She saw that
taking “Life” into one's own hands and attempting to
mold it, as a sculptor turns that which a moment before
had been but a lump of clay, into a beautiful statue, was
not quite so easy a process as she imagined. She went
back mentally to the beginning of her day. She lived
again the horror of the moment when she heard that Roger
was to be held accountable for the loss of the memo-
randum. She went through the interview with him. All
the time she had been near him, while she had been plead-
ing with him, her feeling for him had not merely dwarfed
her remorse, it had obliterated it. She had offered herself
to him with an entire singleness of motive,—wholly and
solely because she loved him. Now, a juster estimate of
the case would intrude itself. Nothing could alter the
cardinal fact that she, Naomi, was responsible for the posi-
tion in which Roger found himself. There were extenuat-
ing circumstances, she held on tight to that. She had
been driven, enmeshed, but no extenuation did anything
to alter the vital point of the situation. The blame of
what she had done was falling on Roger. She walked .
rapidly down the park. She turned into a track along
the side of the plantation. The rain that she had wished
for had come. It was driving along towards the belt of
trees, and a breeze which got up among the beech leaves
sent sprays of moisture over her as she went along.
Naomi was usually, like the most part of those who live
most of their lives in Continental resorts, exceedingly sen-
sitive to atmospheric discomforts—today, wet, damp mud,
the grass-fringed path, with each spiky blade ready to
pour its drops of water on to her skirt or into her boots,
seemed part of the unreasonable whole. For as she
walked, her mood was in a state of flow and flux. She


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
207
could bring back things to what they had been when the
old Chinaman entered Zouche de la Haye, nothing could
restore to Roger the confidence of the Foreign Office.
What could not be changed must be made endurable.
Naomi Melsham rose quickly to her feet, lifted her chin,
and threw back her head. She knew now what she must
do—nay, so little did she estimate that she told herself
confidently—that at last she had come to the solution.
She must so wind herself into the procession of Roger's
days, so identify herself with him, so interpose her person-
ality between him and disappointment, so fill his life, that
frustrated ambition would have no chance to goad or irk
him, that disgrace would hardly cast a shadow over his days.
There, she told herself, she had discovered how to
recompense Roger for the wrong she had unwittingly
done him. There lay not only his happiness, but her ex-
piation. The more she reflected, the more the offering of
herself seemed to take the scarlet out of her sin: until, at
last, she all but reduced her mind to an acceptance of the
notion-a typically feminine one, maybe, since the conse-
quence is usually the rod laid heaviest on a woman's shoul-
ders—that a sin is hardly a sin if the perpetrator but
makes it up to the victim in sufficiently ample measure.
In other words, she contrived to so separate her affec-
tion from her failings that they seemed to her as much
apart as if they were the north and south aspect of a
house--both parts of one whole and both entirely inde-
pendent of each other.
When Naomi Melsham had impressed that on her will-
ing mind, she hurried back to Zouche and as she pulled
up a moment in the hall, it was to send a message to
Roger's mother asking when she might see her.
Word came back that Lady de la Haye was in the
Queen Anne sitting-room and would see her about four
o'clock. The girl glanced at the watch on her wrist. She
had hardly more than time to change her gown and dress
her hair. The wind had blown her about, it is true, but
whatever the weather might have been, her instinct would


208
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
have prompted her to make a careful toilette. She had
been so taught the art of enhancing nature, by an effective
setting, that it had grown to be second nature.
She went up swiftly to the large room, with its semi-
circle of windows, and stood before the open doors of the
wardrobe. She rejected a black dress. It might be set
down as theatrical. She passed by a purple, though it
especially showed off her coloring: it might be called
garish. Finally, she settled on a very soft gray, and then
she sat down, watch in hand, until the hands pointed to
five minutes to four.
It took her only a very few minutes to reach the Queen
Anne room.
Her fingers did not even tremble as she
turned the handle. She had never approached Lady de
la Haye with more confidence. Up till now, she had al-
ways been a little afraid of those discovering eyes: of that
mind, quick to piece inconvenient admissions into an
equally inconvenient whole.
“I am glad you asked to see me," began Lady de la
Haye, “I felt that we must have a little talk together
before you left me tomorrow.”
You do not want to see me more than I want to see
you," the girl answered, and with that air of self-possession
which was peculiarly one of her attractions, she selected
a chair, pulled it away from the light, and sat down.
But when Naomi began her moving appeal, she found
that Roger's mother was by no means prepared to go
whole-heartedly with her.
“Surely you understand that I think of Roger before
anyone or anything else in the world," she cried out in
her dismay.
Amabelle waited a little before she answered. She
wished not only to be just, but generous.
“My dear," she began at length, “I am afraid your
heart has carried you away. You are young and, evi-
dently, very generous. But, wait, try to realize what the
dead level of your life as Roger's wife under the new
circumstances would be."


210
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
understand. You did not really mean what you said.
You were rebelling against the injustice to Roger."
Naomi made herself nod an acquiescence. She per-
ceived that today there was but one link, and that the
placing of Roger first, between herself and this fine-
minded woman.
“ Thank you,” she said, “I am glad you realize how very
much Roger is to me.”
Amabelle looked round the room so intimately impressed
with her individuality. For the second time in twelve
hours, her boy's future hung in the balance and yet she
told herself everything was going on as if it were an
ordinary day at Zouche. She felt as if even inanimate
nature should have turned out of its course and it seemed
almost purposefully inconsiderate on their part that the
chairs should stand on their four legs and the tables go
on fulfilling their functions as tables, just as they had
done when everything was peaceful and serene.
It was Naomi who broke the silence.
“Lady de la Haye,” she said, “why do you say all this
to me?”
“For the same reason," answered Amabelle, “that
makes Roger leave you today. Neither my son nor I
would take advantage of your generosity.”
It isn't generosity,” Naomi protested, for she was re-
duced to very plain speaking, “it's love."
“Then,” said Roger's mother, “I will put it in another
way. Do you think your love will be strong enough to
stand the daily round of your life with Roger? Is your
love strong enough,” she emphasized as Naomi made a pro-
testing gesture, "to make you think first, to make you
think always, of a man who will be broken by dis-
grace, bruised by no fault of his own? Are you strong
enough to make allowance—an allowance large enough,
ample enough, for a man soured by an unjust accusation?
I foresee that Roger will not be easy to live with, that
there will be many thorns and few roses along the path of
anyone who walks by his side now. Think of all that-and,


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
211
if you can't depend on yourself, take advantage of his letter
and go away now.”
" It would half kill me,” gasped Naomi.
It is better to die by one blow, than to gasp out one's
life by inches," maintained Lady de la Haye stubbornly.
Naomi bowed her head. She understood. Lady de la
Haye had given her the chance to retreat. If she stayed,
Roger's mother would never spare her.
She sat still for quite a long time, and Lady de la Haye
was so determined not to hurry the answer by so much as
a gesture, that, agitated as she was, she took up some knit-
ting. She kept the needles moving rapidly, clicking evenly
as they worked off row after row.
She had made the position clear and she was too wise to
obscure it with a multitude of words. She glanced at the
clock. Time, she had observed, generally took a hand in
the crises of human existence.
Littleport always brought tea into this room when there
were no men guests in the house. But, first, he would come
in with the afternoon letters.
While Sir Arthur lived, he and his wife had made quite a
festival of the tête-à-tête meals. It had been a moment of
deep intimacy. A time when their feelings for each other
were strong enough to banish any worry, small or great, that
might arrive under the cover of a postage stamp.
All
through Roger's life this hour, too, had been a time apart.
Amabelle as she lifted her eyes from the old clock, with its
moon face topping its long body of walnut and Dutch inlay,
glanced once at Naomi, then she went carefully back to the
knitting
At length the tall girl rose. Slowly she put her chair
aside. She walked round it and stood against the white
mantelpiece, with its inlaid medallions of Adam design,
with its dignity of design, of line, which showed off her own
beauty; she put up one arm on the narrow shelf.
“ You are quite right to think it will take me all my time
to live up to Roger,” she returned, “ but not for the reason
you give, but because I myself-


212
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
She stopped-she could not dissect her own heart-
equally, she could not expose her own motive. She fell
back on crude assertion.
“I do not fear anything,” she announced, “neither un-
pleasantness nor worse as long as Roger looks to me for
happiness: as long as I make the happiest part of his life.”
She moved a pace away from the support of the marble
shelf. She stood up straight, assertive.
" Please believe that,” she added.
And,” she continued, “I mean to try to make him
happy."
Lady de la Haye heard the decision.
“I think only of Roger," she returned.
Naomi looked at the graceful white-haired woman
oddly.
It suddenly occurred to her that Lady de la Haye never
could know, quite, what made her love so deep a thing.
This beautiful white-haired woman had no contrast to go by.
She had never known a daily round of makeshift, one in
which the finer feelings of existence were so conspicuously
absent.
“ You can't even dimly realize what Roger is to me," she
cried out.
If the girl expected a reply, some reminder that she was
not the only woman in the world who loved a man, she was
mistaken.
Roger's mother was wholly occupied with one point. She
saw that the decision was made, and she did not propose to
comment on it.
“Littleport will be here in five minutes," she said. “If
you want to write to Roger by this post, you must finish
your letter before Littleport comes in.”
But,” cried out Naomi, “I will not write."
“You will not write," repeated Lady de la Haye.
"I have told him all there was to say."
Then,” asked the white-haired woman, “what do you
propose to do?"
Naomi half smiled. She looked at the clock again.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
213
The older woman followed her glance, and it was Roger's
mother who always remembered that the face of the man
on the dial, half-turned over to denote the waning of the
moon, seemed to grin at her.
“When I leave here tomorrow," Naomi went on, “ Roger
will come back to you, he will talk to you. You must make
him see that the greatest wrong of all would be to deny me
the place that his love and mine give me.”
Lady de la Haye smiled very grimly. They were fencing
without foils now, and, after all, it takes another woman to
be really cruel to a woman.
“ You think I can send Roger to you," she cried out.
“I know you can," Naomi answered.
She walked across the room and stood up by the window.
“Don't you see,” she answered as she flung around, "no
one else can do it but you. No one else can convince him
that it is for his happiness and mine."
Amabelle de la Haye let her knitting slip on to her lap,
and as she sat still, it traveled over her silk skirt and dropped
on to the floor. She used quaint old tortoiseshell pins and
they struck together as they fell. The sharp click was the
only noise in the room and it seemed to draw itself out with
a disproportionate echo.
At last Roger's mother rose slowly to her feet.
She walked to the writing-table. She took up the photo-
graph of her husband. She was so often very lonely, but
she had never felt the need for support as she did at this
moment. She looked across to the tall golden-haired girl
waiting for her to speak.
“I know your standing by Roger will make things easier
for him now," she began, “but, as I have said before, there
is the time to come. If you are reckoning on his being
cleared, on his honor being vindicated—I must tell you, I
am not sanguine. My boy is innocent, but who copied the
memorandum ? I ask you," and now the low voice rang full
with passion—“I ask you, who copied the memorandum?
That is what you will have to help to find out. This is what
Roger will never rest until he has found out."


214
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Naomi put up her hand as if to ward off a blow.
“Don't,” she faltered, “it-it-it is so dreadful.”
Lady de la Haye came a step nearer. She put her hand
on the gray sleeve.
There,” she said dully, “ that is the situation you will
have to face."
“Never mind,” cried back Naomi, “what I have to face.
Never mind what I have to endure, what I suffer, only tell
yourself until you believe it, that I love Roger. Only
realize somehow, that if cutting me into mincemeat would
make Roger happy, I'd smile while the knife went in, as long
as he went on loving me, being happy with me.”
The girl's voice had but just died down when Littleport
entered, bringing in the afternoon post.
Lady de la Haye took the bundle of letters addressed to
her and laid them aside. They had been written to another
Lady de la Haye, and she would answer them presently as
those left behind answer letters to the dead.
Littleport went round by the writing-table, and, as he was
a methodical soul, he put two long-backed walnut chairs in
their places as he went.
“This is for you, Ma'am,” he said to Naomi.
It was addressed in Mrs. Melsham's writing, and as the
girl turned it over she saw imprinted across the flap of the
envelope the name of a hotel in Enghien.
Naomi's face stiffened, hardened. Instantly she guessed
that something had happened. Mrs. Melsham had an-
nounced her intention of waiting in London until her daugh-
ter jointed her, but Naomi knew that no maternal con-
sideration would keep her mother away for an hour from
anything that seemed to promise more amusement. What
would restrain Mrs. Melsham was the money. A week ago
their funds had been at the lowest ebb. Naomi wondered,
and yet she dared not ask herself, who had supplied the
necessary cash.
With a quick word to ask permission, the girl broke the
flap. She glanced down the scrawled sheet. She looked
at Lady de la Haye.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
215
“Mama has gone away," she gasped. “She has left our
hotel. She has gone to Enghien."
Lady de la Haye looked up slowly. Nothing about
Naomi's mother had pleased her, but she had not been pre-
pared for this.
“What does she propose you should do?” she asked.
“Mama seems to think I shall stay here for a few days
longer.”
“Why should she do that?" asked Roger's mother.
“ Did I not say definitely from Friday to Wednesday'?”
“ Yes," faltered Naomi.
She picked up the letter. It was as frank as Mrs.
Melsham could be when she saw no advantage in being
circumspect. She said in exactly so many words that she
considered her daughter's presence undesirable and coun-
seled her to get herself invited to stay longer at Zouche.
Naomi had been served in the same way before, and,
before, she had met the situation as part of the routine of
her life. Now, she could not intrigue for further free board
and lodging, neither could she just disappear. There were
places where she could hide, and lead a tea and sardine
existence. She had done that before, but at this instant
she must be somewhere where Roger could come to her.
She longed, and longed passionately, to be protected,
chaperoned as other girls in her place would be.
It was quite a little time while the two women remained
silent. At length Naomi began nervously to tear her letter
into strips. She was as homeless as a street arab, and when
that pressed home into her mind her strength came to an
end. She had borne up under hours of misery. She had
showed a proud front to the most penetrating of all inquisi-
tions, but her mother's defection broke her down.
She began to cry, standing up there, facing Lady de la
Haye. Her grief was not noisy. It was that painful emo-
tion which puckers the face, which wrings the lips thin,
which forces the tears out of the eyes that they dull as they
leave them.
Roger's mother looked up. The girl's abandonment de-


216
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
prived her of all power of movement. She looked on,
watching, and as she watched, her mind formed one phrase,
and having formed it, went on repeating it.
“I wish she would sit down to cry,” Amabelle de la Haye
kept on repeating to herself. “It is not the way to cry
standing—she should sit down.”
At length Naomi put up her hands. She rubbed the backs
of them across her eyes. Her handkerchief was tucked into
her sleeve, but she did not think of using it. She put up her
hands and she brushed the tears aside with them, as the
most primitive among her sisters might have done.
“Don't," murmured Lady de la Haye, at last.
Naomi caught the one halting word.
She walked across. She let her arms fall on either side
of her.
“I must tell you," she began brokenly, “there has never
been any real sympathy between mama and myself. I
always knew that she found me in her way when she
wanted to enjoy herself. I have been left behind often
before. I-I never minded before, but today it hurt so-
because-
She broke off. She had excused her breakdown, but
'Amabelle felt that more was to come.
Lady de la Haye looked up. There were plenty of giddy
mothers who found grown-up daughters in the way. She
was beginning to ask herself what was the something more
at the bottom of the girl's distress. But at that very moment
a tapping came at the French window leading on to the
terrace.
Both the women within the Queen Anne room turned
abruptly. Outside, was a woman's figure, and the hand that
had tapped a moment ago was fumbling now to unlatch the
casement.
Lady de la Haye glanced at Naomi. Whoever this in-
truder might be, she must not see Naomi Melsham with the
tears running down her cheeks. The same thought came to
the girl even more quickly. The white-haired woman
watched the struggle for self-possession, and she saw a
»


218
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
ence, was wanting in savoir vivre, and that “the wife of a
diplomat ought to have good manners at least."
She determined to take the matter into her own hands,
and incidentally to hint to her old friend where she was
lacking
"I think we have met before," she began, as she walked
up to Naomi.
Miss Melsham—Mrs. Tune,” Lady de la Haye was com-
pelled to add.
The unbidden visitor stood with her hand half extended.
“Melsham!” she remarked, “ I seem to know that name.”
She sat down. She pushed a glove on to her lean wrist
and half peeled it off. It was obvious that she was searching
in her memory as one searches for a particular snippet in
a ragbag.
Lady de la Haye interrupted the process.
“ Did you want to see me about something important,
Annie?” she began.
“My dear,” Mrs. Tune exclaimed, as she looked up, “I
read the news in the paper this morning. Directly I realized
that there had been a theft in your house—such an odd one,
too—I made up my mind to come over and hear all about it.
Everyone will want to know, of course, and they are sure
to come to me since I am so reliable. So queer of you, dear,
I must say, to let curious people, who really may not wash
themselves every day, come and pay each other money in
your house."
The two women heard this version of an international
agreement, and let it pass without comment.
But Mrs. Tune had yet more to say.
"I think it is a pity that Roger should be away from
Zouche now," she resumed.
“How did you know that he was not here?” gasped
Amabelle.
Annie Tune smiled with superiority. Like many mediocre
people, nothing gave her such joy as to believe that she pos-
sessed exclusive information.
"I have the knack of knowing things," she announced


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
219
complacently, and then, condescending to particulars, she
added, “I was in the village when a big yellow car raced
past. I managed to see that Roger was in it. I suppose
that was a friend driving him? They were going well
over twenty miles an hour."
She looked round as she vindicated the speed limit, and
included Naomi in a wide tepid smile.
The girl moved up a pace. She did not take a chair, but
she surveyed the untidy figure attentively, curiously certain
that this foolish old woman's interruption would somehow
influence her private concerns.
Mrs. Tune answered the look with a sudden cry of
triumph.
There,” she ejaculated. “I have it now.
There was a
Mrs. Melsham that year I went to Nice after the mumps."
Lady de la Haye answered with a question. We do some-
times turn aside from information. One wonders why. Is
it just nerves—or some latent sense of fair play to the being
whose private concerns are about to be discussed?
Do
you mean to go abroad this year? ” she asked.
Mrs. Tune shook her head.
“So many people miss me," she affirmed.
She turned back to Naomi.
Of course,” she persisted, “ Melsham is not a common
name, but the Mrs. Melsham at Nice—what was it about
her? Was it she was so good-looking ? She was that
woman who used to gamble at the Casino.”
Naomi came a step nearer. She clasped her hands to-
gether. She waited for what might be coming next. But
the particular snippet that Mrs. Tune had detached from
her mental rubbish heap led her no farther.
“You keep your room very hot, Amabelle,” she began.
She put up her hands to unfasten the straggling feathers
round her neck, but the boa entangled itself in her floating
veil, and then the veil hooked on to the fastening of her
pince-nez. Naomi solicitously offered her help, and as she
disentangled the muddle, she looked across at Lady de la
Haye.
66


220
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Amabelle understood. Fate was driving her again, had
driven her indeed, right on to the rocks.
With the next words, Mrs. Tune, mumbling round a
bunch of feathers, completed the shipwreck.
“I thought all your house party were sure to have left
you,” she went on. “I made sure I should find you alone,
and that it would be a relief to you to tell me all about it.”
A curious light touched Lady de la Haye's face. She rose
slowly. In the stressful moments of life, humanity seems to
find a certain consolation in the knowledge that it is standing
planted on its own two feet.
“ My house party has gone,” she said slowly, “Naomi is
different."
Mrs. Tune wagged her head sideways with a jerk.
“Eh,” she articulated, ungracefully.
Naomi stepped back. She left the veil clinging to the
hook, and Annie Tune, with her face half covered, squinted
round a roll of net.
“Eh?” she repeated, when she saw that Lady de la Haye
was looking very straight at her.
The white-haired woman glanced aside now, glanced to
where Naomi was standing, one hand resting on the writing-
table.
“You know, Annie," resumed Amabelle," that there has
been a theft from this house. The papers told you so much,
but they did not tell you that Roger would be in despair but
for one thing
She stopped. Mrs. Tune looked up quickly.
“I thought," she muttered tactfully, “that Roger would
be too much upset to think of anything but the consequences
of what he had done.”
For a moment Lady de la Haye's composure all but de-
serted her. The next instant she had herself in hand.
“You know my boy, Annie,” she said quietly," therefore
I need not defend him to you."
“He hurt me very much dashing past and not even lifting
his hat,” the dear lady interposed.
The white-haired woman smiled grimly.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
221
“ I think," she said, "that perhaps he was a little pre-
occupied.”
Mrs. Tune said “Oh” to that, and the next instant sug-
gested that Roger would have done well to stop and tell
her all about it.
“ You will be the first to hear one thing, at least, Annie,”
went on Lady de la Haye. “Naomi-
Mrs. Tune looked from the speaker to the girl by the
table. She scented a love story.
“What now?" she asked curtly. Mrs. Tune among other
things was a matchmaker, and she always was affronted if
her
preserves were invaded.
Lady de la Haye walked across the room. She stood up
by Naomi. She put her hand on the girl's arm.
“Naomi is going to stay with me," she went on," for
some time. In fact, I think Roger will persuade her to
remain at Zouche always.”
Mrs. Tune heard, and her lower jaw dropped.
“Indeed,” she said, and she gave her veil a final wrench
and tore a hole through which her nose poked.
It was a full minute before she recollected, not so much
what custom demanded of her, but what was advisable, if
she were to maintain a footing, the footing she wished to be
on at Zouche.
“How nice of you both to tell me first,” she began.
Lady de la Haye looked once more at Naomi, then she
went to the writing-table. She found a telegraph form and
took up her pen. Littleport, followed by another man-
servant, brought in tea and she asked him to wait a moment.
The old man stood back. Mrs. Tune's attention was
momentarily diverted to the footman's trousers. She was
sure they were getting worn, and nothing, she was telling
herself, showed such bad taste as shabby finery.
Amabelle rose. She crossed to Naomi. She laid the sheet
before her.: “ Will that do?” she said.
Naomi looked down.
“Return immediately. Naomi remains with us. We both
want you. Your Mother”-the girl read.


CHAPTER XVII
In the big battles of life, there are some victories which
seem only given us by the grimly smiling gods in order to
intensify the bitterness of our subsequent defeat. Surely
the Fates are malicious—or worse. Such are the conclu-
sions common to weak and routed spirits when the ambi-
tious edifice they have built on foundations of self-deceit
suddenly tumbles into dust.
It was such thoughts which played unintentionally-hope-
lessly-through the mind of Naomi de la Haye as she stood
at the window of the hotel in Venice on an afternoon of a
late September day—some months after the affaire of
the Chinese memorandum had ceased to be a nine days'
wonder. She had been married to Roger de la Haye barely
three months, and already the iron heel of reality was
trampling down the illusion under which she had married
him. “ Nothing can make up to a man for the loss of his
honor--that's what I didn't understand "—the phrase spoken
unconsciously summed up the whole position, and beat itself
into her brain. Her lip quivered ever so slightly but not in
self-pity. After all-she had known happiness—all-absorb-
ing happiness—for two whole months, nine weeks, sixty
irrevocable days and nights. Until ten days ago she had
even been flushed with victory,—“Love had conquered.
She had been right,” she had told herself triumphantly.
She was Roger's world, her love a nepenthe so deep that
the whispering of the outside adverse forces could never
break their dream. Well! that was illusion. It had gone
like the others, but nothing could rob her of the memories
of those days of perfect joy-no suffering in store for her
could mar or dim them. They had been cloudless—almost,
--they had been a time of real companionship of heart, of
mind, of spirit.
222


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
223
Swiftly she went back over that golden time-back to that
June day at Zouche, when at the very moment when the
crime seemed to overwhelm her-Amabelle de la Haye had
put out a saving hand. All that was fine and strong and
true in Amabelle's nature had been drawn-almost against
prudence and judgment and suchlike of the meaner virtues
—towards this mother-deserted girl-and, deep calling unto
deep, the potential strength and beauty of Naomi's char-
acter had throbbed responsive to it. Between the older and
the younger woman there grew up a silent understanding-
a mute confidence. It had no quality of deceit—there were
things in the girl's life of which Naomi could not speak-
Amabelle de la Haye recognized that, -and she had no wish
that they should be paraded for her inspection, for being
herself of fine sensitiveness, she realized instinctively that
whatever the aspect of these untold experiences, their effect
on the girl had been ennobling, not besmirching, and she had
no wish that they should be dragged from proper burial.
Amabelle was still to know many qualms for her son's
happiness, but, despite them all, she never doubted the
rightness of that impulse which compelled her to send that
telegram to Roger and so sealed finally her choice of Naomi
as her daughter-in-law.
After his mother's message Roger had, of course, no
alternative but to return to Zouche. He came, if not exult-
antly, at least gladly. One part of him was thankful for
the decision in the same way as a hungry man is grateful
for bread, and the other part of him still asked if he ought
not to have cleared himself first and married afterwards.
But once at Zouche, back amid the soothing influence of his
mother's tact (and Amabelle's sympathetic perceptions never
served her better than during the weeks following) and the
tender, half-shy, half-eager way in which Naomi marked
out her love for him, Roger could but drift with the stream.
It seemed expedient from every point of view that the
marriage should take place as speedily as possible. The
ceremony was performed in a quiet little church in London,
with only Marketel and Victoria, in addition to Lady de la


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THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Haye, to look on. Even Mrs. Melsham was not present.
Up to twelve hours before the marriage day she had been
expected, then a telegram was received from her saying she
had sprained her ankle and was unable to move, but by the
last post that same evening Naomi received a letter from
her mother. It was written from a hotel in Aix. It was
filled with good wishes and the expressions correct for the
occasion. The very smugness of such protestations filled
Naomi with repulsion. She knew that each word had been
written with the possibility in view that it might be read
by Lady de la Haye or Roger.
The girl rose and was about to strike a match. She
would not tear up anything so artificial, she would burn it;
and then she saw that there was an additional slip of paper
still within the cover. She took it out. “Do not be uneasy
about my sprained ankle,” she read, “it will prevent my
traveling, but it does not interfere with my bien-être here."
As she read the strange message, as she guessed all it
implied, Naomi's face softened. She understood-her
mother was staying away purposely—it was the kindest
thing she could do, and the girl found it in her heart to be
grateful for such an unusual mark of consideration.
After they were married, Roger and Naomi left for Italy.
The suggestion had come from Amabelle, and Naomi was
only too glad to leave England;-away from the sights, the
sounds, the atmosphere which perpetually reminded Roger
of his trouble, she hoped to gain such an ascendancy over
his mind, that it would make her love the fence between
him and the censorious world of which she had dreamed.
At first, she succeeded even beyond her hopes. They went
to a little place high up in the mountains, above Lake Garda,
for the August heat. Roger walked with her there, sketched
with her, painted her portrait against this background,
against that. He read to her—but what mattered most to
her, his whole face lighted up when she returned to him
after even a brief interval. In truth-Roger was happy.
Love had thrust aside recollection. He did not refuse to
think, but the hours were so filled by this beautiful woman


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
225
who knew how to provide him with a stimulus for each
waking moment, that his days had no time for retrospection,
and his nights were dreamless.
But when the sunshine went off the lake, when the
autumn rains came, when out of doors it was dreary and
their little rooms in the quaint hotel which had been so
picturesque in the warmth, began to feel draughty and cold,
Roger's spirits flagged. One afternoon Naomi came on him
looking disconsolately out of the window.
" I've been drifting," he said to her, “it's been pleasant,
but one can't go on drifting for a lifetime."
Naomi drew back for a moment in dismay. All these
weeks she had made Roger happy-she had been stronger
than regret-stronger even than his recollection—she could
not have everything spoiled now. She rallied herself and
smiled back at him.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, "you call it drifting. I call it
living. One day of sunshine is worth ten years of gray
skies. Don't let our summer end one hour before it needs.
If it's growing dismal here, why should we not try some
other place?"
Roger turned quickly.
"I think you are right,” he said. “Where shall we go?
Venice-there is a good train from here, we might be off
tomorrow?"
Naomi opened her lips to assent. She had never been to
Venice. The color, the whole individuality of the Queen of
the Adriatic was a thing she had always longed to see, but
she checked herself. Venice was cosmopolitan. Venice be-
longed to the great world. She purposed that Roger should
return to the bustle among which henceforth he must live
and yet in which he must not participate, one step at a
time, not with a sudden plunge from solitude into the
vortex.
I have always wanted to see Venice,” she began.
"Well then?” he asked, wondering why she hesitated.
But couldn't we go there by stages ? ” she asked. "There
are all these old towns, Verona, Bologna, Padua-We have


226
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
read so much about them—couldn't we go and see some of
them?”
Roger laughed-gay again. How good a thing was his
married life. Each day he discovered new channels of sym-
pathy, new communities of taste. How wonderful that he
and Naomi should ever have found each other. What if
he had not gone to the Tippley-Smiths' dance? What if
twenty small details had been other than they were?
“Isn't it lucky," he said aloud, taking her arm," that you
and I have so many likings in common? Now, since you
won't have Venice, where will you go?”
Anywhere,” she replied promptly. “I don't mind where
we begin, each place is so interesting. Fancy, every town
with a story of its own. All Italy is full of life.”
“Of emotion you mean,” he said to tease her.
“What if I do," she retorted. “Isn't emotion the main-
stay of life?”
“I rather thought action was,” he answered banteringly.
That's a parochial idea,” she went on out of her new-
found wisdom. “ Action is a diminishing power, emotion is
an increasing one."
He laughed again and let the argument go, but she had
chased away his moodiness. Till now, she had always been
able to do this, and it sometimes surprised her to find what
leaps her own mind, urged by her love, could take. Not
that her ideas were profound or her premises by any means
correct. But, she had ideas and could offer them for his
consideration. He might agree; he might contradict. That
was a point of small importance, what counted was that her
mind could act on his mind and that out of the contrast
came sympathy and interest, an increasing nearness, a blend-
ing of their dual individualities into one well-balanced whole.
But a little more-but so little more-she told herself, and
Roger would be so entirely hers that she must succeed in
keeping him happy always.
Roger found that their best way was to go to Verona.
It was a junction and a good train stopped there, so to
Verona they went the following afternoon. They arrived


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227
as the night was falling, and Naomi saw the amphitheater,
with the moon in the sky, with the cypress trees, each clad
in its own shadow, ringed about it.
She turned to Roger after the first look. Their eyes met.
He bent and kissed, not her face but her hand. She under-
stood. She was the perfect woman to him, and before her
rose the thing she had almost succeeded in putting behind
her—the sinister memory of how she came to be by his
side at all.
"Are you tired ? " Roger asked, seeing that her face was
suddenly overcast.
“I think,” she answered, “I am overcome.”
He nodded contentedly. It was pleasant to him to feel
that his wife was thus moved by beauty not made by human
hands. “Thank goodness," he murmured inwardly, " that
her enjoyment isn't bounded by dress and dancing."
He let her remain silent a little longer. Naomi could not
look at him, for she felt what was passing in his mind. She
had quieted him with a lie. This evening that fact hurt
her. A month ago she would have accepted the solace and
ignored the means. So even her best endeavor was to be
her scourge.
“ I'm growing away from the things I used to accept and
find good enough,” she told herself. “Roger is teaching me,
his standard is so much higher than mine."
“Let us go back," she said suddenly, and Roger, after
one more lingering look, took her to the hotel, and seeing she
still looked tired, read to her until he himself grew ab-
sorbed in the volume of Bourget's “ Sensations d'Italie.”
The next morning the sun was out, and the market in
the Piazza d'Erbi was in full swing. Naomi stood looking
at the animated groups of peasant women, each eager to sell
her own particular basket of vegetables.
“You ought to make a sketch of this,” she began to
Roger, and then she saw him glance eagerly along the square
of rugged pavement.
“Look," he said, “I believe that's Helmside." He
pointed to a man, an Englishman, who was coming towards


228
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
them. “I was in Vienna with him," Roger went on. The
man (he was evidently some ten years older than Roger)
was almost up to them. Roger's glance compelled his
glance. Naomi saw his face break into a look of recog-
nition. A few steps more and he and Roger must meet.
Then the Englishman looked carefully into the square, he
made a step aside and disappeared through the door of the
Signiory.
Roger clutched at Naomi's arm.
“Did you see that?” he muttered. “He didn't want to
meet me. He deliberately avoided me."
Naomi shivered as if the cold wind from the snow-topped
mountains had caught her. It would be futile to attempt a
denial. She slid her fingers into his.
“We have each other," she said.
Good God,” he murmured, “and this is the life I have
dragged you into."
This time she answered with spirit.
“You dragged me into nothing,” she declared. “What I
did, I did of my own free will, I was proud to do it-it
was my right."
Her vehemence made Roger drop the subject, but the joy
had gone out of Verona for him. Once he murmured some-
thing about wondering if Helmside had put up at the same
hotel as themselves.
“Does it matter if he has?” Naomi asked, striving to
speak lightly. “I think have about exhausted
Verona.”
“Why, last night you said you could stay here for weeks,”
he answered.
She kept her face from him. He must not see that she
was afraid, he must not read on it that she felt trapped.
“ Last night,” she said, “ the moonlight tended to enthusi-
asm, the daylight has brought wisdom. The amphitheater
was so exquisite; let us keep our one perfect impression and
not run any risk by staying to visit it again."
Roger made no further demur. He did not believe in
Naomi's explanation, he realized suddenly that she was play-
we


230
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
and so
"It is not that, Mother,” he answered, for he was a fine
Italian scholar, “it is that two are better than one."
“Aye,” acquiesced the disheveled old creature,
the aged find out when they are left alone.”
She led the way down into the horrible holes into which
human beings were cast to gasp out their days of misery.
She looked from the fine man to the lovely woman as she
recounted the stories incident to each dungeon. It was
evident that she felt a certain friendliness to her listeners
just because they were good to look upon, just because the
feast of life appeared to be spread before them. There
was nothing of the perfunctory manner of the ordinary
guide about her. The legends she spoke of were magnifi-
cent, outstanding, to her, and she expected her listeners to
be thrilled for precisely the same reason as she was.
At length they came to an oubliette, the deepest, the most
unwholesome of all.
“ The prison of Parisiana,” she said.
Roger knew the story. Byron has made it into a poem.
It was a typical story of those full-blooded days—the oft-
told theme of a woman who loved, who defied fate, who was
pulled up, cut short. But when he finished describing how,
when Parisiana was led out to be beheaded by the orders
of her outraged husband, even the guards drew back in
dismay--she was so young, so lovely, so brave-the old
woman set down her lantern with its wedge of guttering
candle, she drew up her crooked body, threw back her head,
while into her old eyes there came a light which betrayed
how she had looked when she was young.
" The Signor forgets what the Lady Parisiana said," she
protested.
“What did she say?” Roger asked.
“She told the guards not to pity her," the old woman
answered," she said the present mattered nothing, not even
that she was to die in an hour, because she had known
transcendent love—the flowering time of the heart--nothing
could take from her the happiness that she had enjoyed."
Involuntarily Roger looked at Naomi. His glance met


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
231
“ It's
hers. Silently they walked up the narrow steps, still speech-
less they stood without in the old courtyard. Roger thrust
a coin into the old woman's hand, and when she went off,
invoking the miscellaneous collection of saints to see to it
that those who knew how to be generous to the poor were
suitably rewarded, and Roger was sure that he and Naomi
were alone, he pulled her close to him.
“Did you hear what the old woman said ?” he asked
huskily.
Naomi clung to him and nodded silently.
“She has got hold of the right end of life," he went on,
“there is nothing which really counts as love does. It's
strange,” he mused, “ that a poor old creature such as she
should perceive the essential, and so many others, with far
more opportunities, miss it."
“But,” breathed Naomi, we have not missed it."
No,” said Roger, "what was it Parisiana called it?”
“The flowering time of the heart," Naomi told him.
“We have had our flowering time," Roger went on.
been a veritable garden of blossoms. We must always
remember that whatever may come-like Parisiana, we
have had our day, and nothing can take the memory of
that from us."
“But," she protested, our happiness is not over.
Surely," she went on, “if these weeks have meant anything,
they have taught us that we are enough for each other. Let
us always cling to that just you and I together--a charmed
circle within, and the world without, nothing."
“Will that content you?” he asked.
Will that content you ? " she cried back.
“Yes," he answered tenderly, almost reverently, and if
she fancied there was a shade of reservation in his tone, yet
the assurance meant so much to her that she would not hear
it. “He is happy,” she told herself, “ he is perfectly happy.”
The rapt look remained in her eyes as they went through
the gate which led out of the town, as they went down
the strip of dusty road to the station. They were going on
to Padua that evening. The few days spent in Padua were


232
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
not quite a success. Roger was still interested, still acqui-
escent, but certain signs of restlessness manifested them-
selves.
One evening he told Naomi that he had given orders that
his letters from England were to be sent to Venice. The
next day he referred to these letters again. The next
evening when the landscape out of their window was neu-
tral-tinted, and the country as they could see it, brown, he
turned to her with a suppressed longing.
“The partridges will want shooting at Zouche,” he said.
Then she knew that they must go on at once. Venice
was larger, more in the movement of the world. She hoped
that there, with more comfortable quarters, with so much
to see, she could capture Roger's spirit again.
“ You must show me the real Venice,” she said, as they
came out of the ugly modern station and stepped into a
gondola. She hoped he would order the boatman to take
them up the Grand Canal, but instead he said, “Hôtel de
l'Univers," and turning back to his wife he added, “ Letters
may be waiting for us there . . . perhaps some news ..."
The sentence trailed away unfinished. There was no need
for words, Naomi knew of what he was thinking.
Once at the hotel, Roger's first demand again was for
letters.
“I didn't know you were so eager for them,” Naomi
ventured.
“I don't think I was while we were in outlandish places,"
he answered, “it's different now.”
He went directly to the bureau and gave his name sharply.
“Sir Roger de la Haye,” he said, and the concierge assured
him, with his most obsequious bow, that the letters for “ Sir
Haye and Milady were upstairs in the salon especially
reserved for them on the first floor.”
"Let us go up and see what there is at once,” he said.
Nothing in an Italian hotel gets itself accomplished quite
as quickly as that. It was necessary to ring for the floor
waiter, and the floor waiter, when he did appear in the hall,
had to ring for the lift, but at length, Naomi and Roger


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
233
found themselves in that long apartment—“The Noble
Room," as it is known-facing the canal, which is a feature
of every old palace in Venice.
It was still early. The gray mist flushed with lemon, still
lingered on the water, on the great church across the canal.
Naomi's first impulse was to go to the windows, to open
them, to step out on to the balcony, to draw Roger after
her, but an exclamation from her husband stopped her.
“Here are my letters—and yours," he said.
He sank on to the nearest chair. The written word was
the paramount thing to him; the mere chance of a hint from
home was his first concern.
Naomi muttered something about being hot and dusty and
the allurement of a bath, and slipped through the double
doors to her own room. She threw off her hat and let down
her hair before she glanced at the envelopes addressed to
her. She told herself that she had no heart for them, and
then she saw that the topmost one had been directed by Vic-
toria Cresswell. The two girls had drawn very close to-
gether notwithstanding their brief acquaintance. Victoria
had been at Naomi's wedding. She had shown a deep
understanding of Naomi's great love. Now, Naomi found,
Victoria was writing to announce her own marriage to Paul
Marketel. Naomi looked at the date. The letter was nearly
a month old. Victoria was Paul's wife by now. Naomi was
just going to call to Roger to come and hear the good news,
when she heard him calling her.
Come at once,” she heard him say. “Be quick! Do
please come quickly! .. Paul has written to me to tell
me
“I know," answered Naomi, breaking in on Roger's
eagerness with a laugh. “You didn't expect me to be
surprised, did you?”
“Not surprised," repeated Roger as he pushed open one
of the communicating doors and stood within it. “Not
surprised."
She saw at once that they were at cross purposes.
“ I'm alluding to Paul's marriage,” she said.
66
.


234
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Oh, that!” answered Roger, brushing aside the matri-
monial aspect as if of negligible importance. . “I
mean
“What?” questioned Naomi apprehensively, for as she
advanced into the salon she saw, in the bright light after
the semi-darkness of her bedroom, where, Italian fashion,
the green shutters were fastened before the window, that
Roger's face was drawn with agitation. “What is it?" she
asked again breathlessly.
Roger pushed Marketel's letter into her hand.
Carson has found out,” she read, “ that the man who
sold the Chinese memorandum to the Olympic Press was a
scoundrel called Hermann Strum. Where this man is now,
or how he obtained his information, we haven't yet dis-
covered, but Carson is pursuing his investigations with
every confidence."
Paul went on to give the details of the extraordinary and
mysterious way in which he came by the discovery. “It
was," he wrote, “just as though I was intended to hear
precisely so much and no more--for this channel of infor-
mation appears to have dried up completely."
But, for the moment, neither Roger nor Naomi had time
for the latest aspect of entanglement, they both fastened on
the cardinal fact of a discovery. Each of them viewed it
from a personal point of view.
'You see," exclaimed Roger excitedly, “ that is the first
ray of sunlight."
But," murmured Naomi with a gasp," he says he can
hear no more.”
“That must be only a temporary check," pursued Roger
excitedly. “Give Carson but the merest lead, and I know
he'll end in success. You can see,”-tapping the letter-
“ from what Paul says, Carson is confident now."
He threw up his arms, and stretched out his frame as if
it must suddenly expand in every muscle under this good
news. “I feel that we are at the beginning of the end,” he
went on. “ Think! in a month, perhaps, we shall have
ſound out everything! Everything!” he repeated, mouthing


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
235
the word, as if the mere sound of it revived him, animated
him. He turned back to the writing-table, and seated him-
self. It was evident that he would not lose a moment in
writing back to Paul, and then, pen in hand, he stopped, lost
in conjecture. “Strum," he muttered. "Hermann Strum!
Where have I heard that name before?”
That was the very question Naomi had been expecting,
that she had been dreading to hear her husband ask; and
therefore, with the crude idea of removing herself from his
proximity, she hastened through the window into the loggia.
Venice lay spread before her, and she had never seen
Venice before, but her eyes took in none of the details,
neither the sweep of the most wonderful waterway in all
the world, nor the riot of color where the sea reflected the
sky and the atmosphere clothed all that was merely built
with man's hands, with a thousand lights and shades.
She only saw Strum's face, she only saw those leering
wolflike eyes, she only saw again this horrible man and the
snarl with which he had brought home to her what being
in the power of an unscrupulous man might mean.
The last thing she had dreamed of had come to pass.
She had taken it for granted that Strum was too expert a
thief not to effectively cover up his tracks, and here was
his participation set down in black and white.
From that hour, Venice, as Naomi viewed Venice, was a
failure. Roger was restless, excited. He sent long cable-
grams to Paul and Carson, and was proportionately dejected
at their disappointing replies. Nothing fresh had transpired
--but they were still working. Roger grew moody-either
he speculated on the unknown personality of Strum, whose
name, every time it was mentioned, seemed to stab Naomi's
brain-or else he would try to envisage his own life as it
must be when he got home. “Look," he said, going back
to the incident for the twentieth time, you saw Helmside
for yourself. Wherever I go, it will be the same. I shall
be avoided, shunned-treated as he treated me, unless I
am cleared-until I can clear myself."
For two, three, four days, Naomi tried to replace these


236
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
impressions with the scenes about them. She hurried
breathlessly from St. Mark's to the Doges' Palace, down
the Canal past the Rialto, from this church to that, and
then, when the more obvious sight-seeing was done super-
ficially, with scrambling haste, she suggested a boat
over to Chiogga. Then she wanted to see a glass manu-
factory, not one of the huge cosmopolitan establishments
laid out to entrap foreigners, but one of the little hand
furnaces which have existed since the Middle Ages, on
the scattered little isles past St. Mariette. But it was all
to no purpose. Roger's spirit eluded her. The time had
come when no sweetness would soothe his irritability. Tire-
less, he rang the changes on his ostracism, on Paul's
discovery.
At last in very desperation, Naomi asked, “Would you
like to go home?”
He turned on her eagerly—but stopped as he saw no
answering enthusiasm in her eyes.
“Our plans—we were to winter in Italy," he evaded, but
Naomi had seen his face. With an effort, she forced her-
self to laugh. “Are not plans made to be broken?" she
returned, striving to speak lightly.
For a moment or two Roger was all animation. Home!
Home! That was what he wanted. He would see Carson
in London, Paul too. . . . He would be on the spot, in
the midst of things. He could hear what was passing as
soon as Carson knew it himself. If anything new did tran-
spire, his knowledge of it would not depend on a three days'
post. They could be back by the first of October, if Naomi
was willing to start as soon as they could get sleeping berths.
Bravely she responded to his suggestion-hiding her mis-
givings—burying her fears under a gaiety half-hysterical.
“The first of October,” she repeated," the first of October,"
and then, just to keep him away once more—from the
detective whom she dreaded the most of all, she threw out
the reminder that they would arrive in England just in
time for the pheasant shooting.
The mention of shooting fired Roger. To walk again


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
237
over the plow, to stumble through the turnips, to feel the
slap of the wind after many autumns in the East, to hear
the rousing cry of "mark over," to wait for the whirring
of twenty pairs of wings scudding over his head. All the
sportsman that made up so large a part of one aspect of his
character awoke in Roger, but as suddenly the excitement
died down. The memory of Helmside recurred again.
“Who'll want to shoot with me?” he muttered.
“Everyone you ask, of course," Naomi protested.
Roger shook his head. “Not they,” he muttered.
Of course they will,” she persisted, “ you'll see. Try.
Write the invitations now and the answers will be waiting
when we get back to Zouche. When all these old friends
of yours are delighted to welcome you back, then that will
convince you that no one really believes you had a hand in
-in-the disappearance of the memorandum."
She spoke vehemently. She could always so completely
identify herself with the moment, that what she said rela-
tive to it rang absolutely true.
It was not until Roger was at the writing-table, not until
he was telling her about old friends who had not missed
the opening pheasant drive for years, that she realized what
she had done. It was she who was plunging him in among
former associations, among old recollections.
She all but cried out to him to desist, to come away some-
where else, anywhere: but she knew that no wandering
would help now. The permanency of her power over Roger
was at stake, that permanency was to be put to the test.
"In a week,” she told herself anxiously, “I shall know
how much I really am to him.”
“Surely," she told herself, “love is enough-his for me
-mine for him. Has he not told me so?”


CHAPTER XVIII
Roger had counted on leaving Venice within forty-eight
hours after his sudden decision to go home, but, when he
went to secure sleeping berths, he heard that as it was the
time when all the rich Germans, who seemed to appropriate
Italy as a holiday ground, just as they exploited her com-
mercially, were hurrying back to the Fatherland, he must
await his turn, so that it was not until nearly a week later
that he and Naomi found themselves at Basle.
The delay had so fretted Roger that they had hurried
along by the St. Gothard route, though Naomi had mur-
mured something about a wish to stop at Lausanne that
she might visit again the little town where so much of her
childhood had been spent. Roger was under the impression
that this was why she suggested the Swiss route in prefer-
ence to the Mont Cenis, but though he apologized for de-
priving her of the little pleasure, he kept on.
In reality, quite another idea was at the back of Naomi's
mind. If they journeyed through France, they must pass
Aix, and she did not want to stop there. She had no wish
to see her mother herself, still less did she wish Roger
to see his mother-in-law amid the particular set which Mrs.
Melsham would be sure to cultivate, or at the Casino, where
the hazards of gambling always brought out her worst
traits.
But at Basle they found a letter from Aimée to Roger.
She and her aunt had been wandering in their turn. They
had been passing from one to another of the less over-
crowded Swiss mountain resorts, and now they had rented
a solitary little châlet at Filisburg, just above Lucerne.
Filisburg was only a few hours from Basle, and to Naomi
it immediately presented itself as a respite, for her dread
of Zouche, and the effect of life there on Roger, had grown
238


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
239
daily, so eagerly suggested that the least Roger could do
would be to go and see his mother.
At first Roger demurred.. .. He wanted to see his
letters at Zouche, he wanted to see Paul, he wanted to see
Carson, but this time Naomi persisted.
“Of course, we must go,” she declared. “Besides," she
added, blushing softly, "you forget this will be my first
visit as a daughter-in-law.”
“ Are mothers-in-law then so popular? ” Roger scoffed;
but one of the rare gleams of pleasure came over his face.
For few things gratify a man more than cordiality between
his wife and his own relatives. It makes what he vaguely
lumps together as "things” more pleasant for him, and he
never realizes the strain or the give and take it entails to
adjust a middle way between two sets of feminine inter-
ests which in their very essence must needs be utterly
opposed.
She was so good to me at Zouche,” Naomi maintained.
"Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut," Roger declared, and
then he added, “I suppose I had better go and see if I can
get a motor to take us up to Filisburg."
It would save time in the long run if you did,” Naomi
retorted, gay because Roger was gay, and at the same
time," she advised, “send a telegram to say that we are
coming, and I will be ready in an hour."
They left Naomi's maid and the heavy luggage at Basle,
they reached Filisburg just when the shadows were begin-
ning to sweep up over the lake, lying in the valley below
the little village, and they found Amabelle sitting on the
veranda, watching for them, and tea, with Swiss honey,
and biscuit de Berne awaiting them. Aimée was at the tea
table, and as Naomi saw the girl a shade of uncertainty
came into her manner.
She had not forgotten that at Zouche Aimée had been the
only member of the family to display any open hostility,
besides, the girl was fully grown up now, as she would have
described it herself, and her bright clear eyes looked from
Roger's face to Naomi's as if asking the newly married wife


240
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
why gray hairs were already showing about her husband's
temples.
" You will stay a few days while you are here?” asked
Amabelle almost wistfully.
But Roger was decided. He and Naomi must leave on
the morrow in time to catch the “rapide" for Boulogne at
Basle, and then, to explain his haste, he began to tell his
mother once more of his urgent need to see Paul.
The eagerness, the anticipation had its usual effect on
Naomi. It frightened her, dismayed her, and just to push
it away, as one does interpose the first remark which comes
into one's head between one's self and that which is un-
pleasant to hear, she asked a question about Paul's mar-
riage.
“I consider I made that marriage," broke in Aimée, sud-
denly sitting up very straight and endeavoring to look vastly
important.
“You! Pray, why you?” asked Roger lightly.
“ Because if it had not been for me, Victoria would still
be buried up to her neck in scruples, and Billy would be still
tied down to that I have done it and must stick to it'
engagement,” the girl answered, and she rattled off a
sketch of her interview with Billy and its final results.
Naomi laughed heartily. She was young enough, she was
feminine enough, for any real woman is eternally a match-
maker at sight, to sympathize with Aimée, and for a minute
or two she asked questions, and Aimée answered them,
exceedingly pleased to find herself accepted as the deus ex
machina of the Marketel marriage.
Then all at once Naomi looked over to Roger.
“What is it?" she faltered, seeing his gloomy face.
“How did Billy afford to go on that expedition if he
had to put £2,000 into it ? ” Roger muttered.
"Don't you know?” Aimée exclaimed. “Billy had
£2,000 sent to him.”
“ Sent?” repeated Roger.
“Yes, in two Bank of England notes, of £1,000 each.
They were left at his rooms .. the very sum he wanted.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
241
“ Curious!” commented Roger curtly. “Did Billy say
who sent them?”
“That Mr. Buzby of his, of course!”
Buzby," repeated Roger. “Aimée," and his voice rang
with an imperative note, “are you sure Billy said Buzby
sent them?"
'Quite,” the girl answered.
You mean Edward Buzby, the absconding trustee,”
Roger persisted.
“ The same," Aimée answered, “only Billy put it dif-
ferently. He spoke of him as the man who borrowed his
money, and was in a hurry to pay it back.”
Roger laughed disagreeably, he rose and went abruptly
along the veranda, down the little steps, across the strip of
pebble-strewn ground, which Swiss notions labeled a
garden,-and plunged into the pine woods beyond.
“What is wrong with his Highness?” asked Aimée pertly.
Naomi turned to her mother-in-law. The action was
involuntary, and into both their minds came the remem-
brance of the hour in the Queen Anne room when Amabelle
had warned her that Roger would be difficult to live with.
But neither of them was a woman to cry out easily. They
sat on, side by side, until Naomi felt she could get up and
suggest that she would like to have a good view of the lake
by the evening lights.
Aimée half rose to accompany her, but a look from Ama-
belle checked the girl, and Naomi went down into the pine
woods alone. There was a little path, and she followed it,
until she saw that it ended in a gap at the brow of the
mountain.
That gap was carefully railed across, and leaning against
the rails was Roger. Naomi hurried to him, she slid her
hand through his arm.
“You," he said, hardly turning his head, and then, after
a pause, he added grimly, “ It's a good long drop down
there."
That was what he saw. Neither the beauty of one of the
most incomparable views in Europe, nor the gilding and


242
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
softening of the sunset glow, but just the height of his
elevation, the drop into the lake below.
“Oh! Roger,” protested Naomi, aghast.
“I'm not a coward, generally," Roger muttered, “but now
I can understand the temptation of that,” and he stabbed his
forefinger downwards. “I think if I were certain nothing
would come of Paul's discovery, I might almost be
driven"
“But something will come of it, something must,” Naomi
cried out. She pulled up as abruptly as she had spoken.
She, wishing for discovery! Prophesying it! Again she
was caught between the upper and the under millstones and
ground between them.
“Naomi,” Roger began, turning so abruptly that he jerked
her hand out of his arm—"you heard what Aimée said ?”
“ What about?”
“Billy and his £2,000.”
Well?”
“Well! His statement that Buzby returned that money
was a lie.”
"A lie,” she faltered. “How do you know?”
“Buzby was dead then."
“ Dead!”
• Yes.”
Are—are you sure?”
Perfectly sure!” Roger went on. “I know, because
when Paul took over Victoria's affairs, for some reason or
other he insisted on my being her trustee. I had to go into
things to the very foundation, of course, and so I had to
inquire about Buzby's whereabouts. He sailed on a tramp
steamer for the Argentine, heard somehow he would be
arrested at La Plata, and threw himself overboard five days
before they got into port.”
“Then he is dead!” Naomi exclaimed, her mind going
back involuntarily to that other scoundrel who was reported
to have passed away and was still alive.
"You see,” Roger went on," he couldn't have sent Billy
that money."


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
243
Then, where did Billy get it?" Naomi asked.
That is exactly what I want to know,” Roger retorted.
“What do you mean?" his wife gasped.
Truth can be inconvenient."
You don't think that Billy was deliberately telling a
lie?"
“I was thinking that whoever stole the Chinese memo-
randum would be well paid for it," Roger answered de-
fiantly.
Naomi drew back a pace. It was the first time that Roger
had said in so many words that the thief might be one of
his personal friends. But Naomi knew that ever since he
had indignantly scouted the notion, when Carson first made
it, the suggestion had been working in his mind, and spread-
ing amid his thoughts, just as the virus of a disease spreads
through the human frame.
She put up both her hands with a supplicating gesture.
'Don't suspect Billy,” she implored,“ don't! . . . It's so
awful—so unlike you.
Then let Billy explain," Roger retorted hardly.
“ Billy can explain!” she persisted.
“ Can he?” mocked Roger. I'm not so sure.”
“ You don't mean you really think Billy took that
money?" Naomi protested. “Impossible. It is impossible,
Roger!” she clamored. “Why, even to think of him in
such a connection is monstrous, unjust."
“Unjust," Roger echoed angrily.
He stepped back from his wife, and looked at her, as if
she had suddenly arrayed herself amid his foes.
"Don't you want me to be cleared ?” he asked roughly.
'I had noticed before that you sometimes seem as if you
don't really go with me. You might not want me to be
cleared.”
Naomi shrank away. They had gone on another step
down the fatal incline. He was beginning to wonder at her
attitude-next he would-what would he think next?
The possibility made her turn pale. Roger saw the ebb
of color from her cheeks and construed it very differently.


244
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Dearest,” he exclaimed, “have I been such a brute as
that! I didn't mean to hurt you. But someone must have
stolen that memorandum, somewhere the actual thief must
be living, smiling, going along untroubled, while I
I... I am living in purgatory. Listen, dear," he hurried
along, “suppose in my anxiety I do alight on the wrong
man. He can clear himself in a couple of minutes and
what is two minutes' disagreeableness compared to my
weeks of hell? You,” he went on, his indignation rising
again, "you think of the injustice to my friends. What
of the injustice to me? Do you never take that into con-
sideration?"
“Roger," Naomi protested, “I think of it always. I
think of it continually."
They had come to the deadlock where their conversation
so often had recently led them. They stood silent, each of
them feeling that this brooding hung as a black curtain
between them, and then the tinkle of a little gong, coming
with its trivial thin sound through the still night air, sug-
gested to Naomi that she must go back to the châlet and
dress.
1


CHAPTER XIX
Early next morning Naomi and Roger left Filisburg. The
parting between the two women was affectionate. Though
Naomi had made a determined effort to be cheerful, gay
eves from the time she came down to dinner until she was
safe within the solitude of her own room, Amabelle was
not deceived. Naomi was paying as big a price as Roger,
she told herself, although she had seen that though it was
the first time they had met after months of separation, the
cloud had never once lifted from her son's face, that, even
after her most determined efforts to recapture some of that
intimate gaiety which used to characterize their meetings,
Roger had stood out on the balcony of his room, staring
into the darkness almost until the first flush of dawn lit up
the snow-topped peaks around the châlet.
Once on their way, Roger's feverishness seemed to in-
crease. It took an unexpected turn, for it fastened on the
invitations he had sent as his first objective. By the answer
to them, he would know how he stood in his neighbors'
estimation, so without so much as waiting to catch a glimpse
of Paul Marketel, who they heard was out of town until
the following day, he and Naomi drove from Victoria
straight to Liverpool Street Station and reached Zouche in
the afternoon.
The day seemed to have adapted itself especially to the
homecoming of the bridal pair. The beech trees-and in
East Anglia the beeches take on themselves a feast of color
-were all ablaze, the little wreaths of blue mist softened
the distance, and yet hardly veiled it.
Littleport, with his best smile, was at the door awaiting
them, and, since he felt that the homecoming should not be
without its celebration, he had ordered the second footman
to set every bell in the house ajingle.
245


246
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Roger did not seem to hear the welcoming jangle, he had
hardly a word to say to Littleport. He walked hastily
through the hall towards the Chinese Room.
Naomi followed him. She never entered the Chinese
Room if she could help it, since her mother's visit to Zouche,
but she told herself that henceforth she must not shun it.
Littleport had given her a lead there.
“I have just put the tea in the Chinese Room, my Lady,”
he said aside to her. For one moment Naomi did not under-
stand, then she turned gratefully to the old man. That
was just like you,” she said, “thank you."
She saw what he had meant to convey. The guilty avoid
the locality of their crime—not so the innocent. It was the
old man's understanding which had made him force them
to begin their home life there.
Littleport had made all possible arrangements for their
comfort; the tea table was drawn up to the fire, Roger's
chair was on one side, and what Littleport himself would
have described as "a nice chair for a lady" on the other.
The picture spoke of intimacy, of repose, but Naomi
looked past it to the letters on the desk.
Roger went straight to them. Under normal conditions
he would have had something to say to his wife about their
homecoming, but now he had no thought for anything but
these letters; they represented the touchstone of his Fate.
That this was their first hour together in their home was
not even present to his mind. He sorted out quickly the
business envelopes and the circulars. Then he opened the
others . . . one, two ... three, four, five .. they
were all regrets—excuses, refusals. Naomi stood on the
other side of the desk watching him; his lips set themselves
with a thinner line, and she saw the hard look in his eyes.
He pushed two notes over to her with a cynical laugh.
Admiral Mainby regrets he cannot accept my invitation,”
he said. “He doesn't even trouble to invent an excuse; and
he has never missed the opening day here since my mother
came back to live at Zouche.” He dropped the curt note on
the floor as though it burned his fingers and went on, point-
.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
247
ing to another: “ This is from Victor Hempsworth, he and
I were at Eton together. He's shot with me and I've shot
with him ever since we had a gun apiece-he' regrets that
he has a previous engagement.'
Naomi came up to her husband and laid her hand on his
shoulder. He might be engaged really,” she faltered.
“You didn't give them much time. You know shooting
engagements are made so far ahead."
Roger shook his head, walked away, and went to the tea
table.
“Come here,” he called out savagely. “Sit down, let us
have tea-at least we can eat and drink. You see what life
with me will be like!”
That night, while they were having dinner, a messenger
brought over a note from Annie Tune. Mrs. Tune, of
course, had heard of the return to Zouche, and took the
earliest opportunity of inviting Roger and his wife to a
garden party she happened to be giving on the morrow.
The De la Hayes were at dessert when the invitation came.
Naomi opened it and passed it quickly across to Roger.
“ Look at that,” she began joyously, for her first thought
was to set this off against the rebuffs of the afternoon.
Roger just glanced at the note, written on expensive paper
of the newest color, and his lips curled.
“What is it?" Naomi asked quickly.
"Don't you understand?” he returned irritably. “It is
very good of Annie Tune to ask us. I'll be bound she is
thinking so herself, but I happen to know she'd sit down to
lunch with a murderer if she thought all the countryside
would talk about her doing it.”
Naomi had never heard this bitter accent before the dis-
graced man was speaking—the man wounded to the quick
by what he knew (or imagined) other people might be
thinking of him.
“Couldn't Mrs. Tune really want to see you?" she
faltered.
“Want to see me," he exclaimed, and then he laughed.
Naomi rose. She had special trouble with her dress for


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
249
commanded herself sufficiently to ask in a very quiet voice.
“Please do," said Roger briefly.
He pushed back his chair. He left untouched the fruit
on his plate, but he drank the wine in his glass and though
he was always abstemious, he filled the glass once again.
The next afternoon, Naomi went up early to get ready
for Annie Tune's garden party. She carefully reviewed her
dresses before she decided on the particular one she would
wear-it was important that she should strike exactly the
right note. When she was quite ready, she found that she
had a few minutes to wait. She dropped into a chair, and
sat with her hands in her lap, thinking. She put the truth
before herself without evasion. On her side, her love for
Roger had grown, and so also had grown her perception of
the enormity of the thing that she had done. This percep-
tion had begun to haunt her in Venice, but since the return
to Zouche, it had been hardly out of her mind, and as a
result of this persistency, there grew up a new fear. Would
the truth overmaster her? Would her inward upbraiding
force her to convict herself out of her own mouth? Such
things had happened before. For all she knew, having once
walked in her sleep, she might do so again, might speak next
time, and blurt out all the truth.
“Not that, not that,” she murmured to herself.
With some temperaments, after confession there might
follow that convenient makeshift known as “ beginning all
over again,” but Roger would never be able to pass a sponge
over the slate in that way. If his idol fell off the pedestal
-it would stay on the ground—the pieces, to his mind,
would not be worth the trouble of putting together.
Naomi knew this. She had often been dismayed by a
certain quality of finality in Roger. “A thing either is or
is not,” he had once told her, and when she pleaded the
extenuating circumstances, he had asked her almost fiercely
if extenuating circumstances in any way made up for the
lost ideal.
Naomi's dismal reflections had reached this point when
her maid came in to tell her that the car was waiting.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
251
Towards Roger, feeling was less kindly. His guilt seemed
so certain, and his theft particularly treacherous.
There had been an informal conclave (at which, by the
way, Annie Tune was not present) of the leaders of the
county.
The local marchioness—a plump old lady with a lisp and
such pretty blue eyes that for all her sixty years many a
young girl envied them-called the tune.
“You see Amabelle de la Haye is a dear friend of mine,"
she had said with her undecided decision. And now, as
Roger and his wife stepped on to Annie Tune's conven-
tionally cropped lawn, the little old lady, with a scarf of
ivory-tinted lace floating behind her, bustled forward.
“My dear," she began breathlessly to Naomi, a spot of
pink in either soft cheek, “I am coming t-to call on you
t-to-morrow."
Roger heard the eager greeting. He frowned. He under-
stood. He was sure that even the cold civility of leaving
cards had been debated. He stiffened for very pain. Up
till now, Roger had been genial-gay; children went readily
to him, and old people called him a "nice boy."
The little flurried lady put out her hand.
Roger, ” she said, very deliberately, “have you heard
f-from your mother lately? L-l-l-love your mother, Roger.”
The tall man interpreted that again and read it to mean:
“I consider you guilty, but I am going to tolerate you for
your mother's sake.”
He replied with yet more restraint and the plump-par-
tridge little peeress tried another advance.
“What a b-beautiful woman your wife is,” she said.
Roger half smiled at that, but the next moment the bitter
thought flashed through his mind of what his beautiful
Naomi would have to endure.
Meanwhile, with such a lead to guide them, the lesser
lights were paying eager court to Naomi. She exerted her.
self to please—she must make a favorable impression on the
people among whom Roger moved.
Someone invited her to explore the garden. Someone


252
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
else brought her a cup of wushy-looking tea: Annie Tune's
tea always seemed to bear a resemblance to herself. It was
never warm enough—there was generally too much milk
in it, and nine times out of ten there was a pool in the
saucer.
Naomi took the tepid tea cheerfully enough. Just as
she replied generally to any remark which might be made to
her, she saw Roger would never put out a finger to help
himself—the more he was hurt the less he would propitiate.
If anyone were to sway opinion it must be herself
and
she hoped to make good progress this afternoon.
Before long, Mrs. Tune came breathlessly into view; and
it was well that Roger did not hear her explain, as she
hurried towards his wife, “I must see how that poor girl is
getting along."
“Entertaining is so exhausting,” she began as she pulled
up and gave a wrench to the “creation ” which sat so un-
certainly on her head—“Don't you think,” she went on,
that people are so much easier to entertain abroad?”
Naomi looked uneasily at the flurried woman.
evident that Mrs. Tune's mind had at least looked up the
fact that there was some connection between the new Lady
de la Haye and what local phraseology called “ them foreign
parts."
“What a pretty garden you have,” the girl began, and
still to switch off her hostess's volatile mind, “What a
pretty old path that is,” she added, as she hastily glanced
over a low box hedge.
“ It is never damp—not even on the worst day,” Mrs.
Tune returned. Come and see my fountain,” she con-
tinued, and put her arm through Naomi's and walked her
off without even waiting for an assent, and then the good
lady went on to say that the fountain was her own taste,
and she had chosen the design of three storks, each one
standing on its left leg, to replace an old moss-grown
basin.
“ "I hate old things just because they are old," she went on,
airing another of her oft-repeated observations, and then, as
It was


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
253
“ Let me see,
Naomi carefully dissented, just to provoke further asser-
tions, Roger joined them.
That switched back Mrs. Tune's mind to its original
connection.
“Do you know," she began to Naomi, “I have been
thinking a great deal of that winter I was in Nice.”
“Were you in Nice?” said Roger. “My wife passed
some time there."
“Yes, I know; she told me she had," began Mrs. Tune.
What
year were you there?” Naomi had to ask.
,” Mrs. Tune debated, “it was—it was the
year that big fat man was there-
Naomi turned as if she would hurry out of the little
inclosure back on to the lawn. Mrs. Tune was coming un-
mistakably to Strum. A little more, Naomi told herself, and
she might be forced to admit that she had known the man.
She might have recollected, had she time to think, - but
then, when one is in a panic it is exactly the time to think
that is denied one,-that the Strum episode belonged to her
first winter in Nice, when it pleased Mrs. Melsham to pro-
claim that her daughter was too young to go out, and
therefore though Naomi might be known to the habitués of
the Villa, she was unknown to the casual stranger on the
Promenade des Anglais.
“ Don't you remember him?” Mrs. Tune went on.
What was his name—something to do with water–or was
it steam? I have it,” she went on, and she looked up
triumphantly.
“ Hermann Strum.”
“Hermann Strum!" exclaimed Roger.
Yes," said Mrs. Tune. 'I remember now, I saw him
ever so often-twice at least, with that Frenchman who was
staying with you in the summer.”
“Armand de Rochecorbon and Hermann Strum to-
gether,” Roger exclaimed, “ you must be mistaken.”
"No," said Mrs. Tune decisively, “ I'm not, I'm sure it
was that French friend of yours with Strum.”
Naomi listened so petrified with fear that she was tongue-


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
255
"I have told you before,” he said, “ that Carson is con-
vinced that the memorandum was copied by someone in the
house. Here is possibility number two."
Surely," cried out Naomi, aghast,“ you are not going to
suspect Armand next?"
"I'll suspect anyone, everyone as I told you before,”
declared Roger roughly. “I don't care what I do to get at
the truth. This afternoon must have shown you what people
think of me. I can't sit still under such suspicion. I'll—I'll
leave no stone unturned to clear myself. Carson nearly
threw up the whole thing because I wouldn't let him come
down and begin at Zouche. I was a fool. Why shouldn't
he come?
Naomi had not a word to answer.
Another stone had been pulled out of the defense she had
built up about herself.
She looked miserably before her-however was it all
going to end? Or rather could there be but one ending?
"Carson was right," Roger went on vehemently, “I must
stick at nothing."
Naomi looked at him in dismay. He was escaping further
and further from her. She was quiet for a few moments,
and then almost timidly she laid her hand on his arm.
“Don't do anything hastily," she faltered.
Roger did not answer. Was the suggestion to dally not
even worth a contradiction-or had he not even heard her
plea? Naomi slipped back farther into the corner of the
She looked at the swiftly passing hedgerows-they
seemed to dip and bow mockingly, as if they said, “You see,
you see, what a fool you were. A little more and the car
swept through the gates and up the drive. When it pulled
up, Naomi got out. She went up the steps into the house
(her house at what a price!) and stopped in the hall to find
out what Roger meant to do.
“I am going to telephone to Carson,” he announced.
“No, no," she faltered.
“Why not?” he asked sharply.
“Because," she began-she was going to say, “Because ii


256
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
would be of no use ”—and stopped. What could she say?
“There," struck in Roger, irritably. “You see, you have
no real reason. Why are you prejudiced against my going
to Carson?"
“Did you not hesitate yourself?" she asked.
“That was when it seemed impossible that one of my
friends could have a hand in the business. Now, when one
hears what charming company Armand frequented—and
when Billy gets £2,000 from people who could not have
sent it.
“Don't, Roger, don't be bitter," Naomi implored.
“Bitter," he commented harshly.
“ Armand may have only met the—the man by accident.”
" Then Carson will find out, and I shall feel reassured.”
“Roger-" Naomi began.
He turned on her.
“Why do you want to stop me again?” he demanded
fiercely.
She said nothing more, but looked at him piteously.
There," he said, his sensitiveness touched at once.
“You see, I am behaving like a brute again.”
She slipped her hand into his. He held it a moment and
then took his fingers away.
“You are going to telephone?” she asked.
“ Yes,” he said, "it seems the best thing to do, the only
thing, in fact, that I can do."
He left her with that. She saw him go to the salon and
then into the Chinese Room. He must have left the door
open, for the next minute she could hear him calling up
Carson's number on the telephone.
It was a long-distance call, so when Roger had asked for
the number he wanted, he put back the receiver with such a
click that the mere. act betrayed his impatience and his
nervous tension. It was evident that not only did he con-
sider Annie Tune's chance observation of importance, but
that, the more he thought of it, the deeper he was pene-
trated by its possible significance.
Naomi tried to think what would happen when Carson


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
257
was set on to Strum's trail. She recollected a clause in
Paul's letter-an added word-which she had read at the
time with a gasp of relief. Paul had mentioned that Strum
seemed to have disappeared from the moment he left the
office of the Olympic. At any rate, all inquiries so far
had been fruitless. She had repeated that again and again
to herself. “Strum has disappeared," she would mutter
when she was alone. It had seemed such a safeguard-
now, she saw that present conditions were not the immediate
concern: it was things as they had been which primarily
mattered.
Any detective put on the track with so definite a clue,
would soon find out that in Nice, Strum lived by his wits,
and there might be some record somewhere of money pass-
ing between him and Armand. Then, if Armand were
called on to explain—what would he say? Or, proceeding
in the other direction, the detectives might find out that
Strum had been received at the Villa Paul et Virginie, and
that Armand was a fellow-guest; then how could she
explain to her husband why she had been silent? For a
moment, in her extremity, she thought she might say that
she had been shielding her mother, but that ray of hope
only upheld her for an instant, and then at this point
Littleport appeared. He carried a telegram on his salver.
For me?” said Naomi, as the old man came up.
“ Yes, my Lady."
She took up the envelope listlessly. She felt tired, as
if she had been working hard. They were expecting Vic-
toria and Paul, and the message might be to announce their
arrival sooner than originally arranged. It takes a really
unhappy woman either to fully rejoice at the happiness of
a more fortunate sister or to fully resent it. Naomi caught
pathetically at any vicarious piece of good fortune, and
Victoria's well-being was particularly precious to her.
“Wait a moment, please, Littleport,” she said, “there
may be some new order about the car.”
The old man murmured "very well.” He drew back and
watched her solicitously.


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THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Naomi pulled the sheet out of the envelope. She glanced
at it at once, and then let it drop.
“Not more bad news, my Lady?” cried out the old man,
as he saw the color leave her face and a kind of ashen gray
tint come up on it.
“Yes," she answered dully, and then she went on as if
the mere act of speaking was difficult—“My mother is
dead."
Littleport looked at her, and any words of sympathy he
might be about to utter, froze on his lips. There was some-
thing so stony here that he blurted out instead—“ Shall I
fetch Sir Roger, my Lady?”
Naomi did not reply for a moment. She twisted the pink
form into a tight roll, and then untwisted it. Within the
house all was still, only through the doors leading to the
Chinese Room came the steady tramping of Roger's foot-
falls. Something-perhaps the very monotony of the pacing
-prompted her. She looked dully at Littleport.
“No," she said, “ don't fetch him, I will go to him.”
Littleport looked at her again. He had not been greatly
impressed by Mrs. Melsham on the one occasion he had seen
her, but now he was inclined to think she must have been a
better mother than he would have supposed, since her only
daughter seemed pretty well stunned at hearing the news
of her death.
He gave Naomi another look of compassion and went out.
When she was alone, she went through into the salon. She
walked slowly, uncertainly, across the room. Her mother's
death was a blow, but it was not grief that was making
her falter, it was another-a new—uncertainty. How would
this news affect the secret she was carrying? Would it
facilitate discovery, or retard it? A less fundamentally
honest woman than Naomi would have tried to conjure up
some feeling of sorrow. Naomi had lost nothing, and she
would not pretend she had.
She straightened out the telegram and began to read it
again. It was from the hotel proprietor and was cold, not
to say aggrieved, for there is nothing the management of


260
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
intervals, and then the little girl looked at the fashionable
woman who occasionally came to the tiny house at Lausanne,
as a fresh variety of school-mistress who concerned herself
with questions of deportment and complexion, instead of
with sums and English history.
Naomi walked on and on until she found herself on the
outskirts of the park. There was a plank laid over the
surrounding ditch there, and a woodman's hand-gate lead-
ing into what was known locally as a green lane.
Naomi walked across the plank. She could not go back
yet.
As Littleport said, Roger must know, and yet she shrank
from telling him. The news did not wholly surprise her.
Mrs. Melsham had been threatened more than once with a
heart attack. She had been warned to be careful, and
responded by living more recklessly.
Naomi kept on her way down the lane. It came out close
to the village, but just before it ceased to be a grass track
and took on the dignity of a properly made road, two little
white cottages stood out to catch the eye of the sun.
Amabelle de la Haye had built them. Each one was
endowed with a little income. Each one was inhabited by
an old woman who had been born in the village, and had
passed the whole of her life there.
Naomi left alone, would have passed by silently. She
did her duty by the village as far as she was able, but she
had not yet come to the point of doing it easily. Her
mother-in-law, when she was at Zouche, never thought of
passing by a single cottage without a friendly word.
But now there was a bent old form standing by the little
gate, waiting for her.
Step in a moment, my Lady-do, love,” suggested
Grannie Sharp.
Naomi smiled one of those rare smiles which warmed her
whole face. She was cheered to think that this old woman
wished for her company.
She pushed open the gate—waited for Grannie to hobble
back into her kitchen, and sat down on the chair assigned


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
261
to her. Naomi began with a cautious inquiry about the old
woman's health. Mrs. Sharp suffered from an internal com-
plaint—“My little old muck of a trouble," as she called it,
and she dealt faithfully with the details of it. But when in
the midst of a description as plain-spoken as it was voluble,
she suddenly broke off, and leaning forward, put her
knotted old hand on Naomi's shoulder.
Why, my dear,” she said, “ you look almighty bad your-
self. Don't take on so, my Lady. It's mortal bad to bear,
but I have been through it myself. It always took me here,"
and she patted her lean bosom. “I knows what you feels
like. Cold shoulder ain't easy to put up with whether it's
turned on gentle or simple.”
“My mother's dead," faltered Naomi, “ I've just heard."
“That, too," cried out Mrs. Sharp. She reached out for
her stick and turned sharply on it. “Go back home, love,"
she advised, "and see to your black. The Lord made
mourning to give women something to think of, for fear
if they hadn't it to keep their mind busy they would break
their little old varmints of hearts.”
Naomi rose. ' I'll take your advice, Mrs. Sharp," she
said. Once out of the door some memory of the old
woman's story came back to her.
Roger must have told her. It was long ago—perhaps as
much as fifteen years ago—that young Ted Sharp, the old
woman's grandson, employed as an errand boy in the vil-
lage shop, was caught helping himself from the till.
No prosecution followed-Amabelle saw to that. Ted
was given another chance in Canada, but his grandmother
drank her cup of shame to the last drop. She remembered
that now, and remembered sympathetically how bitter it
had been.
But what concerned Naomi was not sympathy, but the
point of view. She had been told in so many words that
there were people who pitied her at Roger's expense-pitied
her—and she was guilty-at the expense of Roger who was
innocent. She had just arrived as far as that when she saw
Roger himself hastening to her.


262
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
" Naomi,” he began, “I have been looking everywhere
for you. Littleport has told me."
“ Yes,” she said, for she saw by his face what the old
man-servant had said to him.
Roger slipped his arm within hers.
My dear," he began, “what a brute I am. I've been
thinking only of myself, and here you have been facing this
blow all alone. Tell me exactly what has happened.”
Very briefly, in difficult broken phrases, Naomi told him.
Someone must go to Aix at once,” she ended. “I
should like to go myself.”
“We will go together," he answered. “We can start
early tomorrow—as early as you please, it is not too late
tonight-we might get to London tonight-and then, of
course, there's the midnight train. I'll telephone to Paul
as soon as I get in."
His solicitude did what no trouble had been able to do
it broke her calm. She buried her head on his shoulder and
broke into a passion of tears.
Roger held her silently. He thought a certain relief
would follow, and at last, when she was quiet again, he
gently persuaded her back to Zouche. But as she went,
already a new difficulty was presenting itself. She knew
but the barest outline of her mother's end-would there be
anything to conceal about it? A kind of fear took posses-
sion of her, a dread, which was partly a trick of overtaxed
nerves, partly the certainty that Mrs. Melsham, left without
the restraining influence of her daughter, might have been
making up for lost time, as she would have expressed it
herself.
Anyway, Naomi knew that she wanted to go to Aix by
herself-that her one endeavor would be to get there with-
out Roger.


CHAPTER XX
Paul let himself into the quiet hall of his own house, and
just looked up the stately staircase.
He meant to go up to the drawing-room and see if his
wife was there, for to get to Victoria was always the first
thought of his homecoming, and yet he paused because he
had never lost the sense of Victoria's presence at the bend
of the stairs, or forgotten the future his imagination once
pictured to him there. But before he could do more than
glance upwards, Samuel came up to him.
“I have been watching for you, Sir," he began, “Monsieur
de Rochecorbon is here, he's in the library."
“De Rochecorbon?” exclaimed Paul.
. “Why, hasn't he
started for Pekin yet?”
“I think he wants to see you particularly, Sir. He
wouldn't go upstairs; he said he'd wait until you came in."
Paul turned at once. Samuel evidently thought that
Armand had come for more than a friendly chat, and
Samuel was a man of perception.
“What can it be?” Paul asked himself, as he pushed open
the white door of his own particular room.
It was, perhaps, illustrative of one aspect of the man that
the dominant note in this room should be white, it was
still more illustrative to those who would penetrate deep
down into Paul's being that before a portrait of Victoria
there should always be a bunch of red roses.
When Paul entered, Armand was contemplating these
very red roses with the tolerant smile of the practical Gaul
for the sentimental Anglo-Saxon.
“ You ought to be a lover, mon cher, not a husband,” the
little man began as he shook hands with his host.
“Not at all," retorted Paul," the lover only stands within
the vestibule, the husband worships at the shrine itself. All
263


264
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
men make offerings when they go to the temple, or the gods
veil their faces and are angry. Besides—what so appro-
priate as a rose—and a red rose? A rose in itself is the
symbol of beauty-a red rose, of love for that beauty."
“Mai foi,” scoffed the Frenchman, “all this fantasy in
spite of being a money-grubber."
“Or because I am one," contradicted Paul. “Finance,"
he went on, with a happy little laugh, “needs imagination.
Imagination means seeing a little more than other people,
and clear sight points out that, when all is said and done,
it is the heart, not the hand, which rules this world."
For one moment a look-the look of those who perceive
the Promised Land and may never enter it-came into
Armand's face. The next moment he shrugged his shoul-
ders; had he not his motor car, and for the most part his
freedom? The rather featureless wife his family and hers
had chosen for him, and to whom he was always scrupu-
lously polite, would never prompt him to put roses before
her picture-but, at least, she was a splendid mother-and
for the rest, he had had his dream.
Voyons," he began, as if he were glad to change the
conversation, “I wait especially for you.'
“For me?" answered Paul. “What is it-has the trip
to Pekin gone wrong?"
“No," said Armand, "there were a few difficulties, but
they have all been adjusted. I made the crossing yesterday
and would like very much to have one final word with
Roger if I could see him."
“He is at Zouche,” Paul explained.
“So the thing I came for especially was to see if I
couldn't get at old Chi Lung," wound up Armand, after
he had put a few questions relative to Roger and heard
Paul's answer. “ I find that there are all kinds of formalities
when one gets well away from Pekin, and that when the
powers that be don't fancy the look of a stranger, if he
does not possess a permit, they lock him up in a cage until
some lazy old mandarin makes up his mind whether the rest-
cure is to go on indefinitely or no. That is not an idea qui


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
265
une sunte aux jeux and as his Excellency can level all the
rough places, and make all things Celestial smooth if he
will, I came to town especially to see him.”
“He is away!” Paul answered.
"How do you know that?" asked Armand sharply.
Because I wanted to see him tomorrow myself,” Paul
said. “I wrote to Portarlington Square and asked for an
interview on urgent business-and I heard by return that the
old man wouldn't be back this week.”
“I heard the same when I called on him myself, an hour
ago," Armand answered, " that is why I came on here as
quickly as I could.”
Came on here?” repeated Paul, for he saw there was
something more behind, “as quickly as you could—what do
you mean?”
“ This,” said the little Frenchman, and for once he was
not the mercurial individual of ordinary occasions, but an
astute man of the world, putting several trifles together to
make one important whole, “ that you said the last time
when you and I talked together, that the ways of le cher
Chi Lung troubled you.”
“Yes,” said Paul, “ you mean about the Chinese memo-
randum. He has always seemed to draw back, rather than
to hasten, to help Roger."
“I have had such thoughts myself," Armand went on.
“The Celestial moves by devious ways, it is well always to
remember that. I remembered that, and so I came here."
He waited a moment and looked up at Paul. The big
man had hardly said a word. He had not put a single ques-
tion as to what had happened when Armand called at Chi
Lung's house. It was inconvenient to one who loved a
dramatic flourish, as De Rochecorbon did, but the more
things looked as if they might grow serious, the fewer,
always, became Paul's words.
"Eh bien," continued Armand, when he saw that if a cres-
cendo there were to be, he must mount to it all by himself,
“as I tell you I presented myself at his Excellency's house,
and I heard the same fairy story about not being at home.”


266
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
"Fairy story! How do you know that?” Paul asked.
“Because with my own two eyes I see the Marquis Chi
Lung drive up in a taxi.”
“ The old man himself,” Paul exclaimed incredulously.
“ Himself and no other,” Armand affirmed.
“Are you sure?” Paul went on.
“Sure," repeated Armand, “as certain as I am here."
“You think he denied himself purposely, first to me and
then to you?” Paul asked. “Why should he do that?
Is there any connection between the two denials, or is it
just a mere coincidence and the old man didn't want to be
bothered to receive any foreign barbarians at all?”
“Do you think that Chi Lung ever forgets we are both
Roger's friends ?” Armand answered.
“ Then you would put it down to a further development
of procrastination?" said Paul.
“ Precisely."
“Phew," whistled Marketel," that means, if you are
right, that he is not working to help us, but to hinder
us."
“Parfaitement,” declared the little Frenchman.
Paul reflected a moment. On the one hand was the old
Chinaman's silence, his withdrawal; on the other was his
affection for Roger, his veneration for Roger's father. Paul
had a long experience of the world and so he was loath to
impute the less estimable motive. It is only the narrow
who for ever hurry to put the worst construction on a
circumstance: those who live the larger life, and live that
life generously, are always ready to give the benefit of the
doubt because they know that in nine cases out of ten there
is no doubt at all, only a shadow which might be mistaken
99
for one.
Paul applied this observation now. He came back to a
point he had made before.
“The old man might really be seeing no one,” he
reiterated.
“Not at all," contradicted Armand. "Voyons, mon
cher," he went on, "why can his Excellency receive a


268
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Will it surprise you to hear," he said, “ that this Her-
mann Strum was the thief who sold the Chinese memo-
randum to the Olympic?” Paul answered.
The effect on Armand was electrical.
“He sold it—this Strum?" the little man gasped, “and
I see him myself driving up to the door of our Chi Lung.
I saw his Excellency look out to make sure that he
arrives.”
Armand took a quick turn down the room.
“The plot thickens, mon cher," he began excitedly, and
perhaps his instinct for piecing facts together might have
led him very near to the truth, but that at that very moment
Victoria entered precipitately.
Paul,” she began, and even when she saw Armand, she
hardly paused to greet him, “ Roger has just rung up. They
are in trouble again. Mrs. Melsham is dead—she died sud-
denly at Aix,—Roger and Naomi are coming to town to-
night.”
Paul gave vent to an exclamation of dismay. Armand did
a curious thing—he made a quick movement as if he were
wiping out something—and then, after the three of them
had talked a little longer about Roger, and he had heard
something about the admiration that both Paul and Victoria
felt for Naomi, Armand rose to go. He made his fare-
wells and decided that in the matter of local introductions
a letter to the British and French Ministers at Pekin asking
them to obtain certain permits there, was at least a good
second best to Chi Lung's personal introduction. The little
man bowed himself out of the room and out of the house.
He was glad he hadn't mentioned Mrs. Melsham's name,
just because she was dead, and the generous are silent when
they cannot speak well of those who are gone.
But no
thought of Mrs. Melsham in connection with the theft ever
came into his mind; indeed, it was established later that he
did not so much as know of her call at Zouche. Armand
had rushed off to the smoke room to write to his wife about
the baby and his wonderful tooth, and neither Naomi nor
Lady de la Haye had felt inclined to enlarge on the visit.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
269
“ You mean
But as soon as Armand had gone, and as soon as Paul had
ascertained that Roger and Naomi were coming by train, not
by motor, Marketel turned to his wife—“It's five o'clock
now," he said, “Roger does not arrive until eight-
thirty."
Victoria turned to her husband with a smile.
you are going to try to see old Chi Lung,” she said.
“I mean," answered Marketel, “ that I intend to see him.
If they tell me that he is not at home, I shall insist on
going in and waiting until he sees fit to say that he has
returned. The process may take time, but if I wait until
midnight I'll have this Strum business out with Chi
Lung."
“ It is all very strange,” said Victoria slowly.
It's more than strange. The old man is playing a deep
game—what game? that is what I intend to find out." He
walked to the door, paused there, and looked back at his
wife.
“If I'm not back in time, you'll go to the train, won't you,
dear? And tell Roger what is delaying me?”
Victoria answered readily and Paul set off to Portarling-
ton Square in a passing taxi-he wouldn't even wait for his
own car.
Paul devoted the few minutes occupied by the drive to
thinking over the situation. Three points were clear. The
Chinese memorandum had been copied at Zouche, it had
been sold to the Olympic by Hermann Strum, and lastly,
there evidently must be some form of communication be-
tween Chi Lung and Strum. Paul fastened on this. He
was asking himself what connection there could be, and then
a thought came into his mind, an idea which was often to
come back to him during the next few weeks. Had Strum
a hold over his Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung? Had he
been able to put some pressure on the special envoy from
China (Paul knew that Chi Lung's career had not been with-
out its vicissitudes—twice he had been disgraced, and twice
reinstated) and had Strum thus obtained a sight of the
Chinese memorandum? Then, suddenly, he let down the


270
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
window and told the taxi man to pull up. It had occurred
to him that it was inadvisable to herald his coming and so
he entered the Square on foot. It was long and narrow.
A strip of grass and the regulation shrubs took up the
center space; at the far end, stretching across the head of
the Square, the houses were the largest, and the one in the
very middle was the residence of the special envoy from
China.
He had taken it over just as it was, and as Paul walked
towards it he was wondering what the Celestials, with their
love of the primary colors, would think of the dingy shade
of chocolate with which its front was painted—when he saw
the door open.
Chi Lung's secretary came out on to the steps and behind
him followed a big, fat, loose-limbed individual.
“Hermann Strum departing," said Paul to himself.
He could see that the Chinaman was behaving with
studied incivility, he waited until the secretary shut the door,
then arranged his pace so that Strum—he was sure it was
Strum—and he must cross each other.
The big man came along uncertainly-furtively. Had
the Square not ended in a cul-de-sac it looked as if he would
have taken any turning rather than face so much as one
fellow wayfarer. As it was, there was nothing for it but
to keep on, unless he turned directly about, and a man of
doubtful character rarely ventures to do that. To turn one's
back without a qualm means a clean record, otherwise it
might occur to some onlooker to cry “Stop thief,” and a
policeman on the scene implies an investigation into ante-
cedents.
Therefore, this loose-limbed, fleshy man decided that he
must face Paul Marketel, even when his perfect memory
for a face once seen assured him that it was the well-
known financier. When they were all but abreast, Paul
swerved, so that for an instant they directly faced each
other. The meeting lasted but a matter of seconds but it
gave Marketel time to see that Strum was only keeping con-
trol of himself by a strong effort of will.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
271
“Whatever took place in there, hasn't been over pleasant
for you, my friend," he thought.
The next moment he decided that “pleasant
was too
mild a term altogether.
“You are absolutely piebald, Strum," he said grimly to
himself. “I wonder what screw his Excellency has been
turning."
Strum called himself by a German name and claimed the
Fatherland for his birthplace, but there was evidently a
mixed stream in him—a half-caste always goes white all
over when he is angry-white in streaks and patches when
terrified-Paul knew this.
He
rang the bell sharply and anticipated the English man-
servant by saying that he knew his Excellency was within,
and that he did not mean to leave until he had seen the
Marquis Chi Lung himself.
“Will you step in here, Sir?" said the man, neither deny-
ing nor affirming, as he opened the door of one of the ante-
rooms. But Paul was not going to be side-tracked into any
back-parlor as he called it.
“I will stay here,” he returned, and his glance intimated
that he could thus keep most of the doors and the staircase
in view.
“Very good, Sir," said the man-servant, who evidently
knew when to argue and when to refrain.
Paul, standing up very straight, very stiff, watched him
go through the folding doors at the back of the house.
Marketel was pretty confident that though he might be kept
waiting, he would see Chi Lung in the end.
It is the Celestial habit to meet resolution with a con-
cession more apparent than real, so, remembering that, Paul
felt that his difficulties would be by no means over even if
he did reach his Excellency's presence. None the less it
a surprise when he suddenly saw the old man in
person coming towards him.
Paul put his hands together, and inclined his body in the
correct Oriental fashion. Chi Lung did the same. Then
the slanting eyes looked up ironically.
was


272
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Oh, Man of Money,” the old Chinaman began, “is it to
guard treasure so grown into your bones that you must
needs play watch-dog on my doorstep?”
“ It is not to guard your Excellency,” Paul retorted
bluntly, “ it was to circumvent a second evasion.”
“There are times and seasons for deaths as well as
births," retorted Chi Lung.
He led the way down the hall and then opened the door
into what had been the dining-room. It was hung now with
crimson curtains-crimson is the Chinese color for good
fortune-otherwise the room was bare of furniture save for
a couch of Empire design and a round table, but the folding
doors were half open and they gave a glimpse of a back
room, draped in the same way, but rendered homelike—that
is, homelike from a Celestial point of view—by a big
Chinese stand, with sheets of red paper, little slabs of India
ink, and other Oriental writing materials on it, and by little
squat cushions tucked against the wainscoting all round the
walls.
His Excellency shut the communicating doors with so
decisive a bang that he seemed to be thrusting out any possi-
bility of an intimate conversation between himself and this
big masterful Englishman.
“Be seated, Honorable Guest,” Chi Lung began, and he
waved his hand to the sofa, placed—as Paul did not fail
to remark—so that the light from the two windows must
fall on anyone occupying it.
“But, your Excellency, won't you take the sofa your-
self?” Paul objected.
“You think these aged limbs tremble already?” Chi Lung
returned. “Truly, they are but shrunken skins covering
weary bones, but they will still bear the weight of this
declining frame."
Paul could only bow. The Celestial had out-manceuvered
him—to protest further would be to indorse the suggestion
of decrepitude. So he had to take the sofa and thereby
expose his face to the light, while Chi Lung carefully backed
into the shadow. There followed a silence. The old China-


274
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Paul began to think that whatever the habitual relations
between Strum and the old man might be, the Chinaman
had at least been the master on this occasion, but he never
guessed that the old Celestial, with those wonderful under-
ground ways of gaining information which are developed to
a fine point by those of his race, had his finger on the key
to one of those international mysteries which are hushed
up precisely because they are so significant. The undoing
of Marie Antoinette, whether she was innocent or guilty,
was connected with a pearl necklace. There had lately been
a modern equivalent, known to the secret police of two
great empires as the theft of the Princess Goeristadt's
diamonds. The case had a lady in it of course, and a near
relative of a crowned head. There was also a more humble
individual who played the part of a go-between and, when
the moment seemed propitious, endeavored to extort large
sums by way of blackmail. But the tool had reckoned with-
out a certain German organization which, though it was
installed in a single house in a quiet by-street, had tentacles
as long as the strands of a spider's web. A careful bait
lured him out of Germany, and, once in Russia, he was
pounced upon, tried on a manufactured charge under care-
fully manipulated conditions, and sentenced to lifelong im-
prisonment in a certain snowbound fortress. Eventually he
escaped, and perhaps he was so infatuated by his own clever-
ness in getting free that he was foolish enough to think he
had covered up his tracks and might return to his old trade.
But he forgot one particular enemy, and the one individual
left out of a serious calculation is apt to be the one person
who counts.
When Chi Lung was sent to Europe on his first mission,
he had never been out of his own country before, and as
soon as he reached Berlin a certain big burly nab, with
loose limb and pale eyes, was introduced to him, nominally
to serve as his European secretary, really, as a species of
bear-leader on ceremonious occasions.
Strum-less fat in those days-was masquerading as a
cavalry officer, and expected to exploit the Celestial under


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
275
the pretense of helping him, and when he saw that it wasn't
as easy as he supposed, endeavored to implicate the Chinese
envoy in what might have turned out to be a most damaging
business. Chi Lung extricated himself—and never forgot.
If it had been necessary to expend his last penny he would
have done it to keep his enemy in sight. When the Goeri-
stadt diamonds affair was whispered about discreetly he
could have proclaimed the identity of the go-between, yet
it was characteristic of the Celestial that though he had
waited a dozen years for his opportunity, he was satisfied
that a Russian fortress would see to his revenge
better than
he could see to it himself. Then came the evasion, after
something like five years of imprisonment, and Chi Lung
knew that Strum had got out of Russia before it was known
to anyone but the officials concerned.
Such criminals always make for London.
When Chi Lung returned from Zouche, he heard that not
only was his enemy in England, but that he had suddenly
become possessed of money, and that he had been seen
visiting the offices of the Olympic Press Agency. A less
astute man than the Marquis would have denounced the
international blackmailer at once-the old Chinaman played
a cat and mouse game. Though Paul never knew it, it was
thanks to one of his arrangements that Marketel got on the
tracks of Strum and his Olympic business. It was equally
like him and his methods that instead of trying to find out
what Paul had discovered, he waited to be told, and there-
fore declared that he was out of town. The information
came in a letter from Roger himself-a verbatim copy of
what Roger had heard from Paul, and the old man had
received it that very morning. He did not lose a minute-
he sent for Strum, and made it plain that if the blackmailer
delayed his confession for even an hour he would put the
police on his track.
His Excellency had previously established several im-
portant things with regard to the theft of the Chinese memo-
randum. He knew where it had been stolen, who sold it
to the press: he had a vague idea that Naomi knew more


276
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
than she had revealed, but the link he wanted to join up
was the precise manner in which Strum got the copy of the
memorandum from Zouche to London. Then his Excel-
lency heard of Mrs. Melsham-she was his agent, Strum
affirmed-he and she together had engineered the whole
affair. Whether he did not know that Naomi had done
the actual photographing or whether it was that at last
some faint spark of chivalry glimmered in the dark places of
this bully's mind, who knows, but at any rate he said nothing
of her share in the matter. It is even possible that he
thought she might be more useful to him exonerated than
compromised. There is such a thing as killing the goose
which lays the golden eggs, and Strum was not the man to
forget that. However, he speedily learnt that he was to
have no further opportunity of pursuing his peculiar trade
in England. Chi Lung offered him a choice of alternatives:
Strum must leave London that very night, or he should be
denounced to the authorities on the common law charge of
stealing the Goeristadt diamonds, which would mean extra-
dition to Germany, but if he elected to leave England he
must go to the place Chi Lung designated, and his Excel-
lency, for reasons best known to himself, chose Teheran.
All this was unknown to Marketel, and Chi Lung men-
tally glanced at it with the double satisfaction of having
done an adroit thing, and having outwitted the Englishman.
“Your Excellency,” Paul observed, “your own book says
the virtuous must not consort with the wicked lest vice go
out of the one and virtue flow from the other. Strum is an
evil man, I tremble lest such an overflow of wickedness
might splash dark blots even on to your Excellency's stain-
less tablet."
"Your solicitude comforts me,” retorted Chi Lung, turn-
ing the shaft aside. “But I am not the first who started out
to find a diamond and picked up a splinter of glass."
In this case, so long as the glass did not lacerate your
Excellency's hand-or his foot-surely all is well," answered
Paul.
“There are other hands than mine, O Learned,” the


278
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“We want a vindication, not a scandal,” said Paul. “But
I have more than half a mind to take your advice.”
He stood frowning and thinking. At the first glance, it
seemed the obvious thing to do. Of course it had occurred
to him before, yet though to copy a confidential paper
might be low and dishonorable, it could not be ranked as a
case of common thieving, and a bungling investigation might
defeat his object for years.
“This is a case for the zeal of Roger's friends,” he said
after a pause.
The old man made no effort to combat the statement.
Perhaps he meant to imply that the confidential part of the
conversation was at an end, for he went to the door and,
opening it, clapped his hands smartly.
A native servant entered with a tray of glasses and a
bottle of cordial—it was a customary Eastern courtesy, and
Paul poured a little of the syrup into a glass, and then
motioned the man away.
“Has Roger drunk of the honey dew until he is sick?”
Chi Lung inquired abruptly.
“Roger is sick at heart-but not with happiness,” Paul
answered, “it is with hope delayed." ”
"And the lily-flower-has he found that the hours do not
go faster for her presence?" the old man asked next.
“No one can help Roger as his wife can,” Paul
returned.
Then Roger's eyes still but see the peach-blossom as
the dawn sees the budding flower in the first flush of the
morning?" the old man asked.
Paul gave up metaphor—it had been no slight effort to
his directness to keep it up so long.
“ Lady de la Haye is as fine a woman as a man can hope
to have for a wife," he said bluntly.
“ Lo,” retorted Chi Lung, “is it indeed friendship which
sets the price so high on the possession of another," he
returned abruptly and let his suavity go. “Roger turned
to the pink and white face,” said his Excellency malevo-
lently, “Roger ignored the friend of long years, Roger laid


280
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
Chi Lung came round the table and again the yellowed old
hand fastened on his big muscular arm.
The Great Master," he said, “oftentimes spoke of
Faith, but oftener still he discoursed of Patience-recollect,
they are the twin children of Wisdom, and forget not that
their elder brother is Truth."
"I don't follow, your Excellency,” retorted Paul ob-
stinately.
“Then,” said Chi Lung, “take this for your counsel, --Chi
Lung has not forgotten-Chi Lung has not slumbered when
he should have pursued, he is but cautious, for his many
years have taught him that to pluck an unripe fig is to taste
but its harsh skin: and recollect, О man with a mind that
would hurry as the fire engine hurries along the road—that
when the hour is propitious, when the sun is high in the
heavens—then much shall be revealed that will astonish
your barbarian ears."
The old man drew back as he finished speaking. He
inclined his old back until it bent well towards the ground,
and then raising himself, he faced Paul Marketel with a
bland smile.
Paul understood. His Excellency had marked out his
position. When Chi Lung considered that the time had
come, he would speak,-but not before.
Paul looked at his watch. Roger's train was due in half
an hour. He explained that he must hurry away if he was
to be in time to meet Roger on the platform, and the old
Chinaman let him go without so much as making a pretense
of detaining him.


CHAPTER XXI
PAUL MARKETEL hastened from Portarlington Square down
to Liverpool Street Station, and arrived at the platform just
as the Colchester express was due. Victoria was there be-
fore them and they had no difficulty in finding Roger and
his wife. Victoria no sooner saw Naomi than she drew her
aside. The girl looked something more than ill. She looked
as if she were overweighted to the breaking-point and in
addition the blue eyes were furtive, and now and again a
hunted expression came into them. This, Victoria could not
help telling herself, was fear, not grief, and then she recol-
lected having heard a whisper of Mrs. Melsham's gambling
propensities.
"Is she not afraid that something worse has happened
at Aix than she has been informed of?” Victoria asked
herself. Though she did not know much, she did know a
little about the sequences which sometimes followed unre-
strained gambling on the Continent.
The idea remained in Victoria's mind all through the
hurried meal which followed at a certain hotel near Charing
Cross. They had all four of them driven there to be close
to the station, and so that Naomi might rest until the last
moment. Though it was in Paul's mind, though it was
hardly ever absent from Roger's mind, for five minutes to-
gether, no mention was made of the Chinese memorandum,
as long as a waiter remained in the overfurnished little
private sitting room, but when the coffee was on the table,
and Naomi had moved aside to open the window, saying she
felt oppressed-Roger put down his cigarette.
Any news?” he said insistently, but in a low tone, to
Paul.
“Yes! I saw Chi Luing just before I came to meet you,”
Paul answered. “I can't make out the old man. I suppose
281


282
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
you really believe, like your mother, that he is a devoted
friend of the family?”
“ Absolutely,” said Roger.
“H’m! According to his own account, he owes you both
an undying debt of gratitude. Well, doesn't it strike you as
curious,” went on Paul, “ that he seems so little anxious
to help? Look at the facts. Ever since the theft of the
memorandum Chi Lung has opposed objections, scruples,
and delays to every investigation Carson and I have
started.”
“But why should he want to hinder us?” asked Roger
meditatively.
“ Ah! If I could answer that, we might be able to
explain many other things. It's like one of those irritating
toys we used to have when we were children. Do you
remember? That box they called a Chinese Puzzle. Ham-
mer it how you liked and where you liked, it wouldn't
open for all your battering; but put your finger by chance
on the right spring, and round would go the hinge and every
side of that blessed box revolved showing daylight through.
This business of yours is like that,” Paul added, bending
forward and touching Roger's arm. “A Chinese Puzzle !
And we sha'n't see daylight through it till we have touched
that spring."
“And you think Chi Lung could help us to put our finger
on it ? ” queried Roger.
“No, I believe Chi Lung has had his finger on it all the
time, and is determined that no one shall come near it,"
answered Paul.
“But, Paul, that's impossible," exclaimed Victoria, who
had been listening silently but intently. “You know he is
in disgrace in Pekin, what has he to gain from any conceal-
ment?”
“ There you beat me," admitted Marketel. “It is difficult
to reconcile his motives and his interests with his conduct,
but," appealing to Roger, "your mother has often spoken
to me of the Oriental peculiar aptitude for-what she called
-mental jiu-jitsu.”


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
283
“Yes, that's true; still—I can't believe that Chi Lung
really has a hand in the business.”
Well, it has taken me weeks to get at him, and even
then I managed it only through an accident,” Paul retorted,
and he thereupon proceeded to give a detailed account of his
interview with the old Chinaman. “There are lots of things
which want explaining," he finished up. How does Chi
Lung happen to know a man like Strum? What did he
mean by his metaphorical allusions to ‘glass strewed in the
path of the virtuous' and to 'other hands and feet bleeding
through a splinter of glass which they had mistaken for a
diamond'?” And as he finished, Paul looked first at Roger,
then at his wife, finally at that figure in black gazing not
at him, but out into the glimmering street as if to emphasize
its detachment. But if an accusation of seeming indifference
might have been brought against Naomi, Roger was eager
enough. His eyes never left Paul's face, his cigarette went
out, yet before Marketel ended, his training showed him
the practical result of the interview.
“We are not one step farther along,” he declared bit-
terly.
Naomi turned suddenly about, and for one moment Vic-
toria was utterly puzzled—there was relief on the face of
Roger's wife, joy, anything but disappointment.
How did you manage to corner Chi Lung after all?”
questioned Roger.
“Ah! that was really a piece of unexpected good for-
tune,” Marketel answered. Armand came to see me this
afternoon. It appears he, too, had been trying unsuccess-
fully to see Chi Lung in order to get certain information
from him, and was just leaving Portarlington Square-after
having been told that his Excellency was out of town,
when he saw two taxis, closely following one another, drive
up to the old man's house. Chi Lung stepped out of the
first and Fu Yang marshaled Strum out of the other. When
Armand had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment,
he came to tell me what he had seen."
"Did Armand explain how he came to know Strum by
66


284
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
99
sight?” There was a curious hardness in Roger's voice as
he asked the question.
Paul noticed nothing, but Naomi understood. Her hus-
band still suspected one of his most intimate friends. Mrs.
Tune's chance remark had fallen on fruitful ground. She
came back towards the table, in her eagerness to hear Paul's
reply.
“Oh,
yes,
he met him in Nice at one of the villas there,"
Marketel explained. “It seems Armand took part in a
scene of some sort in which Strum tried to blackmail a
woman.”
“Did he mention the lady's name?” said Roger.
Naomi stood stock still, one hand half outstretched, her
lips parted. She felt unable to breathe, half suffocated, rigid,
and then, as suddenly, her whole frame relaxed. She rea-
lized that Armand must have kept his word. If Paul had
known the answer to that particular question, he would not
be sitting there with that deliberate impartially judicial air.
Once more circumstance had spared her. She dropped into
the nearest chair, she listened to Paul's answer as if, now,
it hardly concerned her.
"No," came exactly the answer she had expected,
· Armand felt it was not fair to bring up this woman's
name again.”
“Of course," murmured Victoria.
But Roger had yet one more question to ask.
“Did Armand seem embarrassed when you questioned
him about his acquaintance with Strum?
“Embarrassed!” Paul exclaimed. “Armand! Why
should he be? It's merely that long arm of coincidence as
far as we are concerned-besides,” he added, dimly perceiv-
ing that there was a reservation in Roger's mind,“ one does
run up against anybody and everybody in a place like Nice."
There was a look of mingled relief and disappointment in
Roger's face; he was glad that Armand seemed to be inno-
cent, but on the other hand, once more it made the solution
of the mystery as far off as ever.
“If I were to see Chi Lung myself," he ruminated, “I


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
285
wonder . . . should I be able to make out what he was
driving at."
“He might be more explicit with you,” Paul answered.
“ But when am I to see him?” Roger asked.
As the Oriental is a person of moods, the sooner the
better,” Paul suggested.
Roger glanced down at his watch. “ If there were time
I'd go now," he said.
But," put in Naomi eagerly, “why not stay now and see
him tomorrow?"
Stay!” repeated Roger, “I can't let you go alone.”
“Why not? I have Parker," answered Naomi with a
wan little smile. “Besides, you forget, I have lived in
France so much. I know all the formalities."
But,” muttered Roger, “French officials can be trouble-
some.”
“It won't be the first time I have had to deal with them,”
said his wife. She pulled up. She asked herself why she
was pushing Roger into staying. She reminded herself that
she did not know how much Chi Lung really knew, and yet
for some reason, was it a woman's intuition, she was sure
that she wished Roger to remain behind.
Roger hesitated, he disliked the idea of letting Naomi go
alone. But, on the other hand, the issues were tremendous.
His remaining might mean the discovery of the culprit; his
going an indefinite delay. There was another consideration,
too, unconfessed, but potent. He shrank from the thought
of an encounter with French officials. They might have
heard the story of the Chinese memorandum, and with their
established attitude of accepting each man as guilty until he
was proved innocent, they might let him see that, in their
opinion, he was no better than a criminal at large.
Are you perfectly certain you could manage alone?
said as he moved over and sat by his wife.
“Perfectly sure," Naomi answered. “Besides," she
added, knowing Roger's confidence in the maid who had
been with his mother for years before Naomi was married,
“Parker will look after me." She turned to Victoria, and
" he


286
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
for the first time a gleam of joyfulness touched her face.
Roger has a profound respect for Parker,” she said.
“Not even the custom house officials can stand up against
her.”
Victoria felt that she was meant to second the change of
plans, and still with the idea that there might be some-
thing in the background concerning Mrs. Melsham, she lent
her weight to the scale.
Roger only required a little persuading. He wished to
stay, he felt so much depended on his staying.
Then, if you really don't mind,” he told Naomi, and
before she could answer, he had started to map out a plan
of campaign.
“As soon as we have seen off Naomi," he told Paul,
" we'll drive straight back to Chi Lung's house. I'll appeal
to him, and when I have heard what he was doing with
Strum at Portarlington Square, we will go on to Carson.”
He was so eager that he hardly saw the boat train leave
the platform, before he turned to Paul.
Now for it!” he exclaimed.
But man proposes--and a very different end ensues; when
Paul and Roger stood together facing that chocolate fronted
house, they were both struck by the darkened windows, they
rang twice, and heard the bell vibrate as if through empty
space, then, just as they were looking at each other in
consternation, a footman out of livery opened the doors.
His Excellency is not at home. He left an hour ago,"
the man said.
“How?” exclaimed Paul.
“By motor."
“Where was he going?” Roger asked.
The man-servant shook his head. He had not heard-all
he knew was that the Marquis Chi Lung had taken his secre-
tary with him.
Then he means to be away some time," Roger exclaimed
dejectedly.
Paul shrugged his shoulders. The bird had flown. They
were baffled again. They could only turn away feeling very


288
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
99
And once again he described Chi Lung's attitude as it
had struck him, and repeated his cryptic sayings.
The detective listened in silence. When Paul had finished,
he looked up with a sharp question:
“You say he seemed to take a special interest in the
success of Sir Roger's marriage?”
“Yes," assented Marketel, “and if it is ever possible for
a European to tell by look or word what an Oriental really
feels, I should say he was moved in some way when I men-
tioned that Lady de la Haye was in trouble because of
Mrs. Melsham's death."
“ Mrs. Melsham is dead?”
Roger nodded. 'Yes; she died suddenly at Aix, where
she has been living since my wife's marriage.”
“But I understood that his Excellency somewhat resented
your marriage, Sir Roger?”
“ In a way he did,” Roger admitted, “but I think it was
merely because a Celestial can never understand our attitude
about marriage. The old man thought I ought to have
consulted him before making my choice. He once said to
Marketel: 'In the choice of his bride old Chi Lung was
forgotten. My counsel is a weariness to him.' Also my
wife declares that he dislikes her intensely, but probably she
exaggerates somewhat."
The detective nodded and said no more. He had his own
ideas about his Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung.
“There's another thing I think you ought to know, Mr.
Carson," Roger said presently, and his face hardened. “I
accidentally found out that Mr. Hirst, who was one of our
house party at Zouche during that week-end, came into the
possession of £2,000 very shortly after. The explanation he
gave to account for having unexpectedly found the means of
joining the Arctic expedition which until then had been
beyond his reach, I happen to know is false and impossible."
“What did Mr. Hirst say?" asked Carson.
“He said that Edward Buzby, the absconding trustee, had
sent the money to him, presumably as conscience money;
now, it happens to be a fact that when the money reached


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
289
Billy Hirst, Buzby had been dead five days. Mr. Marketel,
whose wife was one of the scoundrel's victims, can confirm
what I say."
Paul sprang up. Up till now, even he, for once, was so
taken about that he could not utter a single word.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed;“ what are you driving at,
Roger?”
"I want to know where Billy got that money," Roger
persisted determinedly.
“I can tell you,” answered Paul, and he laughed awk-
wardly, “since you must know. I sent Billy that money."
“You? Why on earth ?”
“Well
, you see,” the big man spoke shamefacedly, “ Billy
had practically not a shilling in the world and was on the
point of going out with an expedition under some Brazilian
half-breed. I knew what that meant, I too knew his heart
was really set on the Arctic expedition, and that it was
merely a question of £2,000."
The detective could not help smiling, the man of money
spoke of £2,000 as if it were a mere bagatelle. So," went
on Paul simply, “I sent him the money anonymously by
special messenger, and the boy, loath to think evil of any-
one, jumped to the conclusion that Buzby had repented and
was trying to make reparation."
Roger sat back in his chair with something very nearly
resembling a movement of vexation. The next moment the
man's innate generosity asserted itself.
“Naomi was right," he exclaimed," she said she knew
Billy was innocent.'
Carson looked up sharply, but said nothing for a few
minutes, then he turned to De la Haye.
Lady de la Haye said that,” he said.
"She was positive," answered Roger warmly.
“Why? I wonder," insinuated the detective softly.
“A woman's intuition, of course,” Roger returned.
“The unknown quantity," supplemented the detective.
He sat still for the next five minutes, thinking hard.
“Sir Roger," he began, when he raised his head, "I have


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
291
the Naomi he loved had never existed. Confession was out
of the question. She must go on temporizing, deviating,
fighting until she sank worsted or discovery intervened.
The short crossing was rough and stormy, and physical
discomfort prevented Naomi thinking of anything else, but
when she was once again in the train, hastening across
France at sixty miles an hour, her thoughts went back to
the same topic.
Chi Lung hated her-of that she was sure.
Chi Lung
knew Hermann Strum-Paul was as determined as Roger
to find the thief.
They had a detective at work. She especially dreaded
Carson.
Last but not least, Armand de Rochecorbon was possessed
of the key to the mystery. Whether he knew it or not, he
had but to mention the Villa Paul et Virginie, to say what
had passed there—and the whole matter became as clear as
daylight.
Naomi sat looking out into the night. Parker was nod-
ding beside her, but she could not rest. She watched the
moonlight flooding the landscape, and the silver glow re-
called the first night she met Roger. She had vowed then to
keep her friendship with him free from her mother's evil
influence, and unwittingly she had exploited him, as she had
exploited no one else, in her mother's interests. Now, that
mother was dead, “ And," said Roger's wife to herself, “I
am not sorry as I ought to be. I cannot grieve as a
daughter should for a mother."
Naomi was delayed most of a day in Paris attending to
formalities at Mrs. Melsham's bank, so she reached Aix
when the pink and gold of the dawn had hardly faded out
of the sky. She drove through the streets she knew so
well, and asked for rooms at a quiet little hotel beyond the
établissement des bains called Le Pavillon des Ruines. She
recollected that the proprietor was a benevolent soul, and
that in the old days madame, his wife, had looked on her
with a kindly eye. At first it seemed almost impossible to
the worthy couple that the English girl they recollected


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
293
down on her knees. Even now she wished her heart would
go out in love, in mourning.
"I wonder," she said, “if the dead know what happens
to those they leave behind them?”
She hoped not in this case. If death had enlarged Mrs.
Melsham's vision, then surely she must recognize all the
sorrow she had bequeathed to her only child. Naomi rose.
She was tired, she was hopeless, but the mere wish that her
mother might be kept from remorse had brought a certain
quietness.
“Perhaps,” she said softly, “mama never had a chance."
She turned to leave the grave, and as she did so a gasp,
a moan of fear escaped her lips. She saw—she really did
see? it was not a trick of her imagination ?—she saw his
Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung coming towards her.
She watched the shuffling gait, she heard the padding of
the soft boots, she watched the old man come nearer and
nearer. His pace was so deliberate that it seemed to her
that he never would get round the bend and on to the little
level strip freshly cut out of the hillside for the grave; but,
when he was only a few inches from her, his Excellency
the Marquis Chi Lung stopped, he cast down his slanting
eyes, he tucked a hand into either sleeve.
“Your Excellency here?” Naomi stammered.
“Even so," the old man answered smoothly, but he darted
a glance at her, and the malignity in his eyes terrified
her.
“I-I-1-” she began. Her voice failed her, her
mind refused to go on with the sequence of the sentence.
“So," observed Chi Lung," silence is golden. Yet the
voice of the peach blossom is as soft as the murmur of
running water. Why are these old ears denied its music?
Has the white lily no greeting for him held in esteem by
her strong partner?”
“Your Excellency,” Naomi forced herself to ask, “you
followed me here?”
“Even so."
“Why?”


294
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
"Is it not well to watch with filial grief?”
“ You would see for yourself that my mother is
dead?”
“ The fresh earth, the mourning robe, are they not wit-
nesses?" the Chinaman answered. Naomi locked her hands
together. So, for some purpose of his own, this old man
had traveled all the way from London to Aix to satisfy
himself that the report of Mrs. Melsham's death was
true.
Naomi had not to ask herself twice what that purpose
might be. It could only be connected with the Chinese
memorandum, and therefore his Excellency must know or
must suspect that her mother was in some way concerned
in the theft.
“ Your-your Excellency,” she stammered, “why-why
have you come? Tell me, what brought you here?”
The wrinkled old face, as malignant as an idol in an old
Thibetan temple, looked pitilessly at the starting blue eyes,
at the twitching lips, and then all at once Naomi's control
failed her.
“ Tell me," she clamored, why have you come here?
For God's sake, your Excellency, don't play with me any
longer. Why do you hate me? Why do you like to tor-
ture me?”
“Peace!” began the old man in his easiest tone, and then
his Excellency suddenly seemed to change his mind. “Let
plain words speak, then,” he decided. “Let dust know it is
no better than dirt. To Roger the peach blossom is a price-
less flower, to Chi Lung it is no better than a shriveled husk,
for he knows the secret that the woman thinks she is
hiding."
“What secret?” gasped Naomi.
“Is there more than one?" demanded his Excellency, and
he put out his hand and clutched her sleeve. “The reptile
Hermann Strum sold the memorandum to the sheets of
intelligence, but was there not another who carried the
writing to the hands of Hermann Strum?"
Naomi looked wildly at the old Celestial. All her com-


298
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“He who rejects the stout oak, and would lean on a split
bamboo, must expect a wound in the palm," the old man
muttered.
Then, just as a hunter examines each strand of the net,
when a fine quarry is in question, Chi Lung carefully
marshaled, once again, the facts of the case. He went back
to that hour at Zouche, when the first suspicion of Naomi
had entered his mind, he reviewed the careful steps by
which he had come to find that his ancient enemy Strum
was implicated in this theft also, and then, for during the
weeks of seeming inertia the old man had spared neither
time, money nor labor, he had run Strum to earth, had
extricated from him what he had to reveal, and had pro-
vided that Paul Marketel should learn exactly so much that
he wanted above all things to know more.
“The best wine takes the longest to mellow," the old man
chuckled; and then his face darkened.
Paul Marketel had mentioned Mrs. Melsham's death, and
his Excellency still felt that she deserved a special punish-
ment for departing this life several days-no more than that
—too soon to be convenient for his plans.
Perhaps, before even Paul had taken his leave, the old
man had determined to go to France. “ The door of Death
opens but rarely when the undertaker is at leisure," his
Excellency summed up.
So he and his secretary took the boat over to Paris via
Dieppe, while Naomi went via Boulogne. The Chinaman
chose the less-frequented route, as he wished no one to
know of his departure. In Aix he found few difficulties.
Mrs. Melsham's body was lying at the local morgue, there
had been an inquiry as to her death, and, as the Oriental
diplomat knew exactly how to go about such things, it was
easy for him to obtain a glimpse of the dead woman's
dossier, besides, the hotelkeeper, still smarting under the
wrong Mrs. Melsham had done him by dying in such a
conspicuous fashion, and judiciously encouraged by Fu
Yang, who posed as a Celestial enamored of French com-
mercial methods, told more than he perhaps meant of the


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
299
shifts and evasions by which his client paid for her rooms.
Chi Lung had convinced himself that Mrs. Melsham was
implicated in the theft.
It only remained for him to find out who had actually
taken the photographs. He determined to see Naomi be-
fore she left Aix. He had a careful watch set on her move-
ments. He heard that she grew paler and more listless, and
he was informed of her setting out for the cemetery as soon
as she began to mount the hill. Instantly the old man, with
that calculated cruelty of the Oriental, determined to follow
her. The time, the place, the reminiscences the situation
were sure to evoke, would all tell against her, and in addition
there would be the shock of seeing him. Judiciously in-
timidated, Roger's wife would be sure to blurt out all she
knew. Chi Lung's calculations proved as correct as they
were apt to be when he was dealing with human weakness.
He learned that Naomi's participation in the theft had been
active and positive. Then he left her without as much as
a twinge of pity. What did it matter if she lived or died ?
As a matter of fact he knew that she had survived, for
unknown to them he had actually traveled as far as Paris
in the same train as Naomi and her maid. When Naomi
opened her eyes on that sun-flecked hillside, it was to find
Parker anxiously bending over her.
Parker had been in the service of Roger's mother before
Naomi's marriage. She had accompanied the girl on her
honeymoon at Amabelle's suggestion, she looked after
Naomi's well-being, and incidentally after Roger's too—
with precisely that devotion which no wage can buy; so
now, all the trunks corded, and the hotel bills settled, she
set out to find her mistress. She tracked her out of the
Parc, heard from the concierge at the gate that he had seen
“his ladi” walking up the hill, and concluded, at once, that
the cemetery had been the girl's destination.
Once there, Parker made straight to Mrs. Melsham's
grave; Naomi was just returning to consciousness as she
hurried up. The beautiful Lady de la Haye was squatting
on the ground, she was cowering as if she expected a blow.


300
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“ You," she babbled unsteadily, when she saw her maid,
you-who-who else-have you seen-
Her words trailed away again. Parker concluded that her
mistress was half-dazed, and just as she supposed to quiet
a groundless fear she assured Naomi that there was no one
about but herself, that she had not seen another soul in the
cemetery but a beggar as she came up the hill.
“ Most folks would have more sense than to walk up
hills with the sun as hot as it is this time of day,” Parker
concluded severely.
Naomi began to cry weakly. She implored Parker not to
leave her, to help her up, to take her away from the ceme-
tery, away from Aix, and Parker, sure that at all times
home, especially an English home, was the best place, was
only too willing to do her utmost.
She put her arm round Naomi's waist and guided her
along With each step Naomi's courage, her determination
asserted themselves. She must, she would be well enough
to leave Aix by the evening train.
Her determination justified itself. She and Parker jour-
neyed straight through to London, but Roger, when he met
the travelers at Victoria, was shocked by his wife's appear-
ance.
“I ought not to have let you go alone!” he said to her;
as soon as they were in the motor, “ still" and he looked
out of the window. Naomi noticed the break in the sen-
tence, she saw his preoccupied air, she was back again amid
the dismal round of reservation, suspicion, brooding.
Then Roger all at once sat back with a jerk.
“My poor darling," he exclaimed penitently, “to think
of my letting you go all alone! What a selfish brute I am
becoming, but you did know, dear"
She stopped him. The revolving wheel was coming back
to the same point. She smiled at him, closed her eyes, and
pretended to be asleep. Leaving him to his thoughts, think-
ing her thoughts, was better than saying certain things aloud.
But the car was hardly clear of the London suburbs and
speeding down that long stretch of level road, which runs


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
301
eastward right through Essex, before Roger touched his
wife's arm.
Dear,” he asked, “are you too tired to listen to me?"
"No," she answered. She sat up, alert, disturbed. She
had heard the excitement in Roger's voice. She looked side-
ways and saw the uneasy expression in his eyes. What is
it?” she asked fearfully.
“ This,” began Roger, and quickly, tersely, giving her no
time to dissent, for he knew how little his wife would
welcome an investigation at Zouche itself, he told her of
the latest plan, and described the chart and its purpose. A
new fear clutched at Naomi's heart. Even if Chi Lung kept
to his announced intention of saying nothing, and if he
spared her, she was well aware it would not be to ease her,
it seemed as if the truth must come out. She would never
be strong enough, adroit enough to evade Carson's cross-
examination.
“Shall I have to fill up a column too?" she gasped.
Of course. It must be everyone or no one. It wouldn't
be fair otherwise.”
“I shall never be able to remember exactly what I did,"
began Naomi.
She leaned away from her husband, right into the corner
of the car.
“That is another lie! I am always lying,” she told her-
self, for every minute of that day was mapped out on her
brain as if it had been drawn there by a pencil pointed with
fire, and she knew that there was quite a quarter of an hour
to account for between her mother's leaving the salon with
Lady de la Haye and her own rejoining them on the terrace.
Roger put out his arm and drew her back towards
him.
“Oh, yes ! you will remember, dear, if you try, and you
must try; it means so much to me now. Begin now. Think
as we go along. You have a good memory, make it work
now,” he persisted.
“Yes,” she said feebly. She knitted her brow, and Roger
was silent. Probably he thought she was going back to the


304
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
poring over the chart. He hardly looked up when she
entered.
Naomi came straight up to him.
“Roger,” she began,“ do you know Billy is coming?”
He understood all that she did not say.
“Dear,” he said, “ I was mistaken. Paul sent that money
to Billy."
“ Paul !” echoed Naomi.
She sat down and looked at her husband with such wild
eyes that he hastened to explain.
" It requires a hard-headed man to be really sentimental,"
he began with one of his rare touches of geniality. “Paul
was in trouble with his conscience. He'd won, and Billy
had lost-Victoria.”
“What wonderful things some men will do for love!”
Naomi exclaimed.
“What wonderful things most men might do if all wives
were like you!" Roger returned.
She almost shrank from him, and yet it was so rarely now
that she had the first place in his mind. She wanted to stay
there if only for a minute-for half a minute. She tried to
smile.
But Roger put out his disengaged hand. He drew the
chart forward.
Now," he said, “ if you can only remember one thing at
a time, let us put that down. You came downstairs?”
He looked up, waiting for her to reply. She broke from
him. “No! no! no!” she protested.
I'm
tired”—and then Roger lost his temper and his patience.
“Tired! You are not trying to remember," he exclaimed.
“I don't believe you want to try.”
Roger!” Naomi gasped, and at that very moment Little-
port came in to say that Mr. Hirst had arrived and had gone
straight to the Queen Anne room.
“Not now.
The next day Chi Lung was due to arrive at Zouche.
Roger was so impatient that he went off too soon, driving
his own car, to meet the old Chinaman.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
305
Naomi watched him go, and then she looked round to find
Victoria beside her.
“ He has gone at least half an hour too soon,” Naomi
began with a hopeless gesture.
We are all restless," Victoria admitted—“I don't be-
lieve one of us slept soundly last night."
Naomi turned from the hall door. She went along the
passage and looked out on to the terrace. She said she must
go out, but first she must have a hat, she would go upstairs
to get it herself, and then once downstairs she threw it
aside, said the wind was too cold, and suggested that Vic-
toria come with her into the salon.
"I believe there are shelves of beautiful things inside the
cabinets," she began feverishly. “Let us go and explore.
You know," and she laughed drearily, “I have never had
time to look round in my own home.”
Victoria encouraged the idea. It would give Naomi some-
thing to do. It might even occupy her mind, for it was
evident that suspense or excitement were working on her
until she could hardly control herself.
"If Roger isn't cleared soon the poor thing will collapse,"
Paul's wife told herself, as she pushed open the doors into
the salon.
"Try the big cabinet first,” she advised, for as
it happened she knew a good deal about the treasures
there.
Naomi rodded. She went swiftly towards the tall cabinet,
with its black doors heavily inlaid with golden designs, she
turned the key and looked within. There were several
covers on the first shelf and she pulled out the first one and
opened it. It contained a set of really fine old paintings
on rice paper. For a little the beauty, the quaintness, the
wealth of color, really arrested Naomi, and then she
paused, with one of the thin sheets fluttering in her
hand.
“Do you hear—anything?" she asked.
Instead of answering, Victoria went to the one window
from where she could see a glimpse of the drive. She


308
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
debtor, And if it please you, pay what you owe? Reflect,
O wise among unwise, even as the old Buddha is exalted
above her sex-on whose head is the obligation to repay?"
and then answering his own question, the old man added,
“ Chi Lung has a debt to pay, and you ask him for a
gift.”
A gift!” echoed Amabelle, her face flushed. “Then
you can help us—you will," she exclaimed.
She turned as she spoke, the indication of a frown on her
forehead. Roger was entering the room, he had Naomi
with him, and advisable as Amabelle knew it to be that
Roger's wife should welcome the old Celestial, she wished
their arrival had been delayed a few minutes. The white-
haired woman felt that she had been on the point of hearing
something. Chi Lung had been receptive, benign, and now,
as Naomi came forward, pale, cold and distant, with an air
which might be construed to betoken resentment, but which
was really the paralysis of fear, Amabelle saw the mask
drawn once again over the wrinkled yellow face.
“ Your Excellency," Roger began, “my wife is as de-
lighted to welcome you as I am. It was concern for me
that drove her into the garden, but she returns as soon as
she learns that your Excellency's foot has stepped over our
threshold.”
“So," murmured the old man, and though he was gen-
erally chary about shaking hands with a woman, he put out
his hand now. Naomi could but put her white fingers into
the yellow claw-like ones. She made an attempt to speak,
but not a sound would pass her blue lips.
“ The warmth of her welcome does too much honor to
this worthless one,” the old man announced. He laid his
other hand over hers. “It is strange,” he said. “This that
I hold is as a ball of ice from the Great Mountains."
He looked up and caught Naomi's glanced fixed on him.
“ The hand of the weak partner of Roger makes snow in
my palm," his Excellency went on. “ It reminds me of a
courteous punishment of my country. When a mandarin
is invited to confess and his tongue is obstinately still in


312
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“ Bueno!” he exclaimed, more than once has the Lord
of Wisdom deigned to speak by the mouth of a woman.”
Amabelle caught her breath, she had won. She had ac-
complished this great thing for Roger. She had made his
Excellency see that Naomi was essential to her son's happi-
ness.
It took her a moment to recover her self-possession, and
when she looked again at her old friend she was struck by
his attitude.
The Marquis Chi Lung was still standing in the same
place, but for once the yellowed old face had lost all its
impassivity. The old Chinaman looked frankly perplexed.
“What is it?" demanded Amabelle.
Chi Lung did not move. He probably did not even hear
the question. A new thought had just struck him. He
remembered that kindness is never fully acceptable save
when it comes in the precise form the recipient would
choose it. What profit would there be to Roger in clearing
him but to plunge him into deeper grief?
Amabelle watched him intently.
The old man seemed to pause again, to consider. There
was silence in the room, until the throbbing of another
motor engine came in to them.
"It must be Armand bringing Billy," Amabelle mur-
mured.
She meant that now the assembly was complete, that now
there only remained the actual comparison of the chart, the
facts it might elicit, above all the information his Excellency
must have to give.
To Chi Lung it meant such a very different thing.
He came up to her, looked fixedly at her.
' Behold!” he said, we say we will turn the river to
the north, and lo! One wiser than we says it must flow to
the south.”


CHAPTER XXIII
Half an hour later Roger sent Littleport to tell each guest
individually that his or her presence was requested in the
Chinese writing-room.
Roger and Naomi were there already. There was sup-
pressed excitement in the whole of Roger's bearing. Fever-
ishly he moved about the room, he said the sun came in and
pulled down the blind, only to run it up again impatiently
the next moment. He went to the desk, he pushed aside
the sheet of scribbling paper he himself had laid on the top
of the chart, with a testy word, and then he bent over the
chart and studied it anew.
Naomi watched him in silence. She shivered and her
fingers worked nervously. Should she tell Roger herself,
now-quickly-before the others came, before the old China-
man denounced her? Suppose when it came to it Roger
cared more for his vindication than for her. She must make
quite sure. She went up to him quickly, put her hand on
his shoulder. “Roger!" she murmured. He did not look
up, though he answered, “ Yes, dear?”
Roger, do
you
still ... love.
Something in her tone roused him. He turned quickly
and looked at her.
Naomi !! Of course I do." He took her hands and
drew her to him. “Dear, why do you ask?”
“ Because I.. I feel that today is going to be one
of the test days of our lives,” she faltered.
“Naomi, I feel that too,” he exclaimed. “Perhaps .
it is the lifting of this shadow-my vindication! I shall
never know a moment's happiness until I am cleared."
“ Then!” faltered Naomi, "I-I-don't make up in any
way. I don't count."
“You do count," Roger protested. He took her hands,
me?"
.
313


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
315
66
66
Naomi's love was as necessary to Roger's happiness as his
vindication.
“Each gambler backs his own dice," declared his Excel-
lency aloud, “ each priest upholds his own shrine,” and when
Naomi and Roger turned, not a little startled, the old man
looked from one to the other of them, tucked his hands into
his sleeves, and remarked, “He who learns unawares, di-
gests facts, not compliments."
"I never heard your Excellency come in,” Roger pro-
tested, not a little annoyed to think that his moment of
expansiveness had had its witness; as for Naomi she slipped
aside and backed down by the fireplace. For the moment
Chi Lung seemed to have forgotten her.
My son," said the old man, I looked for the crows,
the owl, and maybe the cuckoo, and lo! I found but the
dove and her mate.”
The others will be here directly," Roger answered.
" Littleport has gone to tell them all.”
He had hardly said that before Billy Hirst came in. He
and Roger had had a few words apart, and the result of an
embarrassed explanation on Roger's part was that no one
was more eager to help him than Billy. It seemed to that
erratic wanderer, who was at heart one of the most generous
of men, that if Roger could imagine such a possibility of a
friend then, indeed, he must be so driven that he required
all the help that friend in particular could give him.
The others followed quickly, and with them came Carson
the detective. Naomi heard the door open and shut, but she
hardly realized who entered. Her eyes, her mind were fixed
on the old Chinaman. He had settled himself in a big arm-
chair, his hands were clasped, his eyes were blinking, but
she felt that he was waiting, watching—for what?
The girl rocked and clutched on to the mantelpiece. Was
her enemy going to speak now, before the inquisition began,
or would he let the farce go on and speak in his own good
time? She swayed slightly, gasped. She must, she would
keep still, yet a touch on her arm so startled her, that she
sprang aside as if she expected a blow.


316
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Naomi dear, what is it?" Amabelle asked anxiously, but
Roger's wife looked not at Roger's mother, but to that little
neutral-tinted man, who had seated himself by the table, and
she knew, for her wits were sharpened by terror, that her
start, her exclamation had not gone unmarked by the
detective.
All the same, when someone indicated that she should
move up nearer the table, she walked quietly, firmly to the
appointed seat.
The guests were all arranged in a semicircle, save Chi
Lung, and he sat in the great armchair at the end of the
desk, as if, when it came to it, he, and he alone, had the
right to the place of a judge. Carson was at the writing-
table, Roger was standing up beside him. Naomi had
Amabelle on the one hand, Victoria at the other side.
Then there followed a moment's silence. Everyone re-
mained stock-still, as if they were all marionettes who had
simultaneously lost their strings. There was not a cough,
not so much as the rustle of a woman's skirts. It was not
until the silence was growing almost unbearable that Roger
began to speak.
“My friends," he said, “I believe that not one of you
would do or lend your help to such a piece of dishonor,
of treachery” (Naomi winced at his words). “But because
you are innocent, I know you will help me as much as you
can. As you all know, the facts of the case as far as we have
learned them are this :- The contents of the memorandum
were stolen somehow, and sold to the press by a scoundrel
called Hermann Strum. The terms of the agreement were
made public twelve hours after the document had been
signed in this very room. Mr. Carson here has made care-
ful investigations and is convinced that the accomplice, he
who copied the memorandum, was someone inside the house.
Now, the object of this chart is to ascertain the exact move-
ments of each person during the whole of that afternoon
and evening, and we hope by doing this to light upon some
clue which will eventually help us to discover the culprit.
Mr. Carson and his men have already filled in all the


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
317
66
columns relating to the servants and other inmates of the
house.”
“I take it that narrows it to one of us," said Billy
drily.
' No, no,” said Roger, “I wouldn't suggest-
"Oh, don't apologize. You can't afford to be polite at
this stage," commented Billy. “I don't mind personally
being among the suspects '-" He looked up and passed
on his assertion with a gesture.
“Ma foi! non—non—non plus. My horrible past is
open to all,” declared Armand.
Exactly what I think,” said Paul. “We're all of us
here for one thing only—to see you cleared, Roger."
Roger thanked them briefly. So far so good. Carson's
eyes had slowly traveled from face to face while these pre-
liminaries had taken place, and he made a note of the fact
that Chi Lung had said nothing in answer to Roger's appeal
and apology
“Sir Roger," he said, “ will you please tell us exactly
what happened after the memorandum had been signed?"
“The memorandum in Chinese characters was put into
this drawer," Roger answered, and he pulled open a drawer
in the Chinese desk. “His Excellency can testify that he
laid it in there himself, and Mr. Marketel that he saw it
put there."
“That is correct," confirmed Paul.
The Oriental was not so direct, but equally affirmative.
This hand may be the hand of him with wearied veins
and tired sinews," he said; "none the less it can do its duty
yet, and it neither dropped the paper on the floor nor left
it lying on the table."
Carson turned again to Roger.
And then?”
“I turned the lock and put the key into my pocket, but
as I have told you already the spring may not have worked,
the drawer may have been unlocked all the while; but
thinking it was secured, I left the room by the garden door,"
and he pointed to the door in question as he spoke.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
321
a point of vital importance? You were taking photographs
- of what?"
“Of the room.
The chinoiserie."
“ Alone?”
“ Absolument."
A less experienced man would have been content with
the assertion and passed on to the next point. But Carson
knew that nineteen times out of twenty an excitable witness
amplifies out of sheer inability to keep still; and the amplifi-
cation is apt to be more enlightening than the state-
ment. Precisely what the detective had foreseen occurred
now.
“ Absolument! we two-alone,” repeated Armand.
“Two!”rapped out Harold Carson, pouncing on that one
word—“Two! Who was the other?
The moment the words had passed his lips, Armand saw
what he had done. He had implicated Naomi.
“I regret,” he began—“I can say no more.”
Naomi herself stepped forward. She knew the move-
ment directed all eyes on her, she heard the little stir as
each individual altered his or her position to have a better
view of her, but she only looked in one direction. She saw
that his Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung seemed as im-
passive as ever. The farce was to go on yet farther, then.
Perhaps the old man was waiting for her to incriminate
herself. She all but put up her hand and pointed to the
bent, huddled figure, she all but cried out, “ Ask him, he
knows everything." Then that instinct of self-preservation
intervened. Did the old Chinaman know as much as he
pretended? she asked herself. If she were adroit enough
could she not save herself both from him and from Harold
Carson?
She pressed one hand to her side, she began to walk
towards the table. She was going along quite steadily, she
told herself, and she almost laughed at that. She kept on
with her eyes carefully fixed before her. She did not wish
to look into any face; above all, if she were to give herself
a chance, she must not see Roger's eyes.


322
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“ You
She paused before the desk near enough to put out her
hand and touch it.
“I was in the second salon with Monsieur de Roche-
corbon," she announced. “We were taking photographs
together.”
“ You! you!” gasped Roger.
Carson passed his hand once, twice over his face. His
experience had taught him again and again that truth is
stranger than fiction, but surely here he was coming on a
well-nigh incredible thing—still, all along, ever since he had
heard of Mrs. Melsham, ever since he had seen Naomi, just
this possibility had insisted on presenting itself.
“But why were you taking photographs?” Roger
went on.
“For my book. We were using my kodak,” Naomi
answered, and she turned a little to her husband.
remember,” she jerked out, “you promised to help me to
take some of those Canton enamels."
“Yes!” Roger admitted. “I do recollect—something."
“Have you that kodak now, Lady de la Haye?” Carson
broke in.
“No," answered Naomi shortly.
What has become of it?”
I don't know."
"Let us go back to the photographs,” the detective sug-
gested suavely. “When you had finished taking them what
did
you do with the camera ?”
“I tell you I don't know,” Naomi reiterated.
Think,” insinuated the detective softly.
"I can't think,” Naomi protested.
She looked to right, to left as a hunted rabbit seeks for a
hole, and then Victoria rose.
"I can help Lady de la Haye, Mr. Carson," she said, and
her tone was a protest. She slipped her hand into Naomi's
arm. "Don't you remember, dear," she asked soothingly,
" that night you walked in your sleep? You had the cover
of a kodak in your hand.”
"Had I? Did I? Yes! I suppose so-yes," Naomi


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
323
mumbled. She jerked herself free from Victoria's hand;
she began to tremble, her lips twitched.
Carson saw all the signs of distress, and the odd man was
really moved by them. If it had depended on Harold
Carson, the individual, he would have terminated the in-
quiry then and there, but since it concerned Harold Carson,
the detective, he was prepared to pursue the investigation to
the bitter end.
“Did you print any of the photographs you took on this
occasion ?” he asked.
"No! No! They were never printed, the films were all
useless,” protested Naomi feverishly, and her clenched
hands emphasized her words.
Have you any of them now?”
“No, no, no."
How
many
did
you take?” went on the relentless voice.
Again the trembling hands went to her head and she
pushed back the heavy golden hair. “I-1-don't-remem-
ber,” she muttered.
Paul bent towards her persuasively.
“Try to think, Naomi," he said encouragingly. “Kodak
films are twelve on a roll. Did you finish the roll?”
“No, no—I think not."
What made you stop?”
“1-1-" Naomi stuttered, and everyone present was
conscious how she struggled for expression-or for repres-
sion.
Amabelle rose to move to her daughter-in-law.
Must this go on?” she was about to say to the detec-
tive, when old Chi Lung bent forward and touched her
arm.
“When the Yellow River is in flood, the strongest junk
is torn from its anchor," he warned her.
Lady de la Haye pulled up. Silently she turned to the
old man, but Naomi began to speak again.
“Littleport came in to say my mother was here," she
made herself explain.
“There!” broke in Roger, and in his excitement he


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
325
I get confused. Roger, don't question me any more. I
can't bear it.”
She broke away from him, but Roger followed as quickly
as she retreated.
“Naomi,” he demanded.“ You must know what you did
with that camera. You must remember. It is vital for us
to know. If we can trace that camera, if we can find who
used it, then we have the thief and I shall be cleared. Do
you hear?” he went on—“I shall be cleared. Naomi," and
regardless of her starting eyes, of her blanched face, he
shook her almost roughly-“Naomi, it's all in your hands.
For God's sake don't fail me! Think!
She lifted her head, looked once at the man she loved.
She began to whimper, to moan. Obviously she was at the
last gasp, incapable of clear speech, perhaps of connected
thought. Amabelle started forward.
“Ma foi! this is too much," Armand protested.
Billy laid hold on Roger and pulled him round. But
Carson did an odd thing. He pushed the chart aside, with
so decided a movement that it slid off the table on to the
floor. The detective let it lie there. Evidently he con-
sidered its use at an end. He sat back watching—and
waiting
Then a single authoritative word was flung into the
silence.
“Peace!" commanded his Excellency the Marquis Chi
Lung. Noble son of a blessed father gone to live in the
Happy Vale of Ancestral Longevity," he said, turning to
Roger, “it is well to be silent long, that when speech comes
all
may attend to it. Know then," and the old man threw
up his head proudly, “that Chi Lung sold the memo-
randum to the sheets of intelligence."
“ You !" came from everyone present save only Naomi.
“ You!” took up Roger—" you sold the memorandum to
Hermann Strum?
“Even I," affirmed the old man.
Lady de la Haye turned about; there was incredulity on
her face.


326
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
“Your Excellency," she protested, “I don't believe"
"Even I," declared the Chinaman again, and far from
being abashed he stared fixedly at the wife of his most
valued friend, as if bidding her accept something; or refrain
from something
For a moment the weary, oblique eyes held the widely
open gray ones. The very attitude of these two, the pivots
of the whole scene, silenced the others. Instinctively each
spectator realized that between these two was passing some-
thing they could neither weigh nor fathom.
Then Roger flung quickly round.
"You!” he began to Chi Lung. “ You! By Heaven!
you called yourself my father's friend. My father trusted
you. You—"
“When wrath speaks wisdom veils her face," the old man
remarked, and deliberately, all his air of detachment back
on him, he stroked his beard.
“Good God!” muttered Roger. This very calmness
exasperated him, this imperturbability drove him nearly
wild. He raised his right arm, and held it extended.
As long as I live I'll never trust a Chinaman again," he
swore.
Chi Lung looked hard back at him. He smiled; as one
smiles indulgently at a foolish child; then slowly, deliber-
ately, he began to shuffle to the door.
It was then that Naomi roused herself. The old China-
man had saved her at the expense of his own reputation.
Her greatest enemy had taken her sin on himself. She
knew this vaguely, but she could not grasp it in its full
scope. The revulsion was too sudden, too overpowering.
Yet, some instinct told her that before the old man left the
room she had something to do. She could not stand there
and just accept this sacrifice. She stretched out both her
hands. She tried to totter towards the old man. He saw
the movement, the appeal. He answered it with one quick,
significant look. Then, having expressed himself voice-
lessly, his Excellency passed on.
Naomi saw him go. It was true! true! true! that this


CHAPTER XXIV
His ExcELLENCY The MARQUIS Chi Lung found himself
alone in the Queen Anne parlor which was so intimately
connected with the one woman who (whether the old man
admitted it or not) he respected, took counsel with, and
sometimes deferred to.
It is doubtful if the Chinaman, helped by his national
habit of complacently demonstrating that a thing cannot be,
and then as complacently dealing with the same proposition
as one of the accepted facts of life, was even aware of his
equivocal position.
Had he been he would neither have troubled about it,
nor made excuses for it. The Celestials are always amused
by that rigidity of the West which goes under the name of
consistency. As often as they meet it, and it inconveniences
them, they oppose to it what a Sinalogue calls “flexible
inflexibility,” and they do it with a bland smile, firmly per-
suaded of their superiority.
So, on this particular afternoon, not half an hour after
his tremendous admission in Roger's study, the spare old
man sat stiff and upright in one of the shining, curved-
backed chairs, with his feet planted straight before him,
with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his coat, with his
face turned upon the portrait of Sir Arthur de la Haye
which stood on the top of the walnut writing-bureau.
To Chi Lung that portrait was the center of the room, as
an image is the center of a shrine.
The odd, stiff figure sat very still, staring with unblinking
eyes at the picture which showed the clever, alert European
face.
His Excellency sat in the same attitude for quite a long
time. Then he rose, stretched out his hand and waved it
in the air.
328


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
329
He went on with his pantomime. He made as if he were
burning joss sticks, as if he were setting alight the paper
substitutes which, by another odd turn of the Celestial mind,
are used to deceive the spirits of the departed into thinking
that real offerings have been consumed on the burial-ground,
and, having once again bowed himself down, his Excel-
lency the Marquis Chi Lung relapsed into his former atti-
tude.
The old man had just done one of those things which not
only break up a man's private life but wreck his official
career as well.
He had announced publicly that he was guilty of a par-
ticularly barefaced piece of double-dealing. He had, ac-
cording to his own confession, violated that code of diplo-
matic honor which Europe has laid down, and which the
East—willy-nilly-has been forced to accept. But more
than that, he had fallen below the standard of straight
dealing and commercial honesty which sets his own country
apart, among other nations of the East, and, as the China-
man's own government had been the losers by the pre-
mature publishing of the Chinese memorandum, the obvious
inference was that the old man had done it for personal
gain.
In China, that country of fruitful contradictions, the
private squeeze flourishes, side by side with the high stan-
dard of commercial integrity, so that it was not wholly out
of keeping with the habit of that blue-gowned race that Chi
Lung should have accepted a bribe-say to drop his memo-
randum out of his coat pocket or leave it on the table for
ten minutes.
But the thing that his Excellency-a mandarin with a
red button, the bearer of the peacock's feather and the
yellow jacket-would have to take into consideration was
that his usefulness in Europe was at an end. Chi Lung
had been a power in London, Paris, Rome, just because (as
they said in Pekin of a certain British administrator) "he
was a colossal honest devil." Now, just as Roger had re-
proached the old man, hotly casting off the esteem, the


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
331
“Even so," answered his Excellency. “Hermann Strum
spoke at my bidding."
At the mention of that name the girl started to tremble.
Ah. Suppose-suppose he comes back and tells
Roger-” she gasped and her eyes widened.
“ Peace-fool,” the old man interrupted. “Do I cut off
the tail of a dog and forget his head?”
Naomi gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Chi Lung
smiled sardonically, and fumbling in his sleeve he brought
out a cable which he thrust into the hand of Roger's
wife.
“Read," he commanded. Strum will not return.
Read.”
Naomi took the sheet with the lengths of blue tape pasted
on to it, as if she were afraid it might burn her. She
neither glanced at the direction nor the date, she only read
the message:
“Hermann Strum assassinated in German consulate,
Teheran. Assassin unknown.”
The sheet fluttered out of her hand, and the old China-
man bent and picked it up.
“ Assassin unknown," he repeated unctuously. “ In
Teheran; this poor worm sent him there. His neck was too
long for his head."
For one moment relief flooded her being; she was free,
Hermann Strum was dead; but the next minute she remem-
bered that now the fact of Hermann Strum's death changed
nothing. Her reason for seeking the old Chinaman was
still there.
* Your Excellency,” she began, “ you never liked me, you
were angry because Roger married me. I can at least
remove that cause of your displeasure—I mean to go away
-I do not intend ever to see Roger again. But I cannot
tell him myself what I have done, I cannot watch his face
while he learns that I, his wife, am to blame for all he
has suffered. I have written out a confession—I have
66


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
333
" Justice demands but one culprit,” the old man declared.
“ Chi Lung has provided."
“But,” Naomi stammered, “it is I who am guilty. I
must bear my own punishment. Why should you suffer for
me?"
“For you?” retorted Chi Lung. He folded his hands and
laughed slowly, contemptuously. Again he conveyed an
intimation of the gulf that, in his opinion, existed between
himself and this woman.
Naomi had once heard more of a scene between her
mother and a man driven to plain speaking than was good
for the ears of any daughter. Neither the anger nor the
contempt had been lost on her, but there was this difference
between that man's upbraiding and Chi Lung's laughter.
All through the stream of bitterness ran the implication
that Mrs. Melsham had fallen below the level expected of
her sex, whereas, here, the Chinaman seemed to be telling
Naomi that for once a white woman stripped of her trap-
pings, stripped of the protection and the glamor that the
cult of many centuries had wrapped about her, was but
reverting to type, was but behaving as he expected a mere
woman to behave.
“Do you think,” the old man demanded presently, “ that
my tongue would trouble itself to say weighty words for
such as you? Did you dream, in your foolish presumption,
that I would invent riddles to turn men's minds away from
you?”
Naomi shrank away from him-how he hated her!
“To me you are as worthless as a cracked pot on a
refuse heap, but to Roger you are a Pearl of Price. All
barbarians are mad; even Roger, whom I love as if he
were my own son, has not escaped this scourge of foolish-
In our land 'tis but a mad dog that runs after its
own tail; here, man in his folly runs after his lesser half-
a woman. It pleases Roger to call you by his honorable
name, therefore you must be spared to him. I came with
rejoicing (for my hour had come), to lay you low, but
behold, to lop off the head of the Lily Flower on the
ness.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
335
the many must of necessity be commonplace. Whatever
else it might or might not have been, Naomi's sin had come
out of something large, something overpowering, and the
consequences it entailed were of the same magnitude. The
payment for it (for wrongdoing is a debtor who exacts
cash down) must be on the same scale.
Something of this-not formulated, of course, in any
neat or cut terms—hurried through Naomi's mind. She
saw, if she accepted this decision, what was before her.
“To live a lie all my life," she whispered, "to take what
is not my due . to allow another to suffer for that
which I have done. ...I can't do it."
Again, it seemed to her she could not pay the price, and
then Roger's face rose before her and her love welled up
anew and her courage came back to her. She knew it
would not be a small thing she undertook, she foresaw the
daily, hourly crucifixion which she would be called upon to
endure for many years to come, perhaps for the rest of her
life. She raised her head to speak, but before she could
say anything Chi Lung's outstretched hand pointed to the
door. She was not even to give her decision in words—it
was taken for granted.
Humbled to the dust, suffering both physically and men-
tally, she groped her way to the door.
When she had gone Chi Lung went up to the table. He
took up Sir Arthur's picture, lifted it as though he were
performing a rite, then setting it back he bowed before it
once, until his lean old frame was almost bent double.
Amabelle had spent the last hour pacing up and down the
terrace. Her amazement had given way to conjecture. She
could not believe that any bribe would have made Chi Lung
sacrifice the fruits of a lifetime's work. Besides, she had
had such faith in him and his devotion for all the members
of her family—at least for all except Naomi; he had never
included her in the family and of late the enmity had be-
come more marked. That scene on his arrival at Zouche
came back to her; it had been strange; the girl had ob-


336
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
viously been afraid, and she was not nervous by nature.
The old man had been insolent, insulting. Had his veiled
allusions meant anything? Many little incidents unnoticed
at the time now came back to her with a new meaning.
Finally she came to the scene that had just taken place.
There had seemed no doubt to the onlookers that Naomi
knew more than she would say, everybody had felt it; the
tension had become almost unbearable when Chi Lung had
so unexpectedly stepped in with his avowal.
Was Naomi guilty ? and did he know it? Could she be?
And if so why should the old man save the girl whom he
hated? Why should he sacrifice himself?. The idea was
preposterous. Amabelle repeated to herself that it was fan-
tastic, absurd, that it was out of all keeping with the Celes-
tial habits of conduct; and yet—the doubt that had been
insinuating itself into her mind all this day was not removed.
It worked, enlarged, and persisted. It presented first this
trifle to her, and then that.
In her perplexity Amabelle stood still just outside the
French windows of the Queen Anne parlor, raised her head,
and unconsciously looked into the room. In a flash she had
her answer. She saw her old friend dismiss her daughter-
in-law. She saw the continuity of the action. Her hand
was on the latch of the window, her breath was coming
more quickly. She was so amazed, and then the old man
turned and bent low before her husband's picture. In a
flash Amabelle de la Haye understood. Chi Lung was inno-
Naomi was guilty, but the Chinaman had saved
Naomi for Roger's sake. At last, after all these years of
waiting, he had paid his debt of gratitude. She pushed open
the window and hurried into the room.
"Your Excellency!” she exclaimed. “What have you
done?”
The old man put up his hand.
“There is a time for speech—there is a time for silence,"
he told her. “But silence is of the gods, only monkeys
chatter."
Though she had been sure that it was so, Chi Lung's
cent.


THE CHINESE PUZZLE
337
direct avowal seemed to bring home to Amabelle all the
enormity of the offense. It was intolerable that anyone
connected with Roger, and indirectly with Roger's father,
could have done such a thing.
Chi Lung saw the sudden flush, the curve of the lips, the
flash in the eyes which habitually shone with such a gentle
light. He saw that his sacrifice might be rendered useless
unless he could succeed in making his dead friend's wife
see with his eyes.
“The mother spoke honey of the son's wife," he said
softly.
Amabelle was silent.
“ The mother-in-law pointed out to this worthless one that
Roger's wife was as dear to him as his own life.”
The white-haired woman raised her head. Her lips half
opened, it was evident she was about to dissent, perhaps to
protest, as Naomi had protested.
“ You and I spoke the same words," the old man went on
smoothly, evidently anticipating her. They came out of
your mouth and I said them again, but they had a twin
birth, for they were born in my heart as well as in yours.
Your honorable voice made protest that you would give
Roger all you had, and my poor tongue formed just the
same speech-all we had.'”
Amabelle stood motionless. She had but a moment in
which to determine what she must do. Chi Lung had evi-
dently secured Naomi's silence, he was asking her for hers
too. She had to determine whether she would acquiesce or
denounce, but if she chose the former she must do much
more than merely accept. Her conduct to Naomi must be
generous, not grudging. She must not only tolerate, she
must forgive. There must be no magnanimous superiority
in her mind, there must be that great understanding which
is a bond in itself.
A less large-minded woman would have chosen the ac-
cepted course and plumed herself on her righteous conduct,
for the narrow-minded always seem in such a hurry for the
Day of Judgment that they must needs anticipate it, but to


340
THE CHINESE PUZZLE
An hour later Paul Marketel, driving his own car, with
his Excellency the Marquis Chi Lung seated beside him,
passed along the road from Zouche to London. The finan-
cier had proposed that he should leave Victoria at Zouche
for a few days and drive the old man back, and Amabelle
had gratefully accepted his suggestion.
The day was ending with a glory which had been denied
to its hours of light, for the sky in the west was suffused
with a glow of vivid rose and carmine. The crimson
brightness seemed to struggle with the darkness and en-
deavor to drive it back. It mingled with the purple veil
of night and turned it into a haze shaded from red to
orange.
Every object, as the car raced along, was touched by this
light, was warmed by it. It was as if a great fire burned
below the horizon and its glow shot up high into the heavens,
save that here there was nothing fierce or cruel. It seemed
to speak of warmth without destruction, of a great bright-
ness that would not consume.'
To Paul, who, though a man of business, was intensely
sensitive to all things beautiful, the gorgeous sunset, the
dark patches between the trees through which the white
cottages--whose lighted windows made spots of brightness
in the gathering dusk-seemed havens of peace, and the
distant murmur of cheerful human voices conveyed a mes-
sage of hope and happiness.
They sat in silence, side by side, he and the disgraced
Chinese diplomat, until they came upon one of those bon-
fires that flame in the fields in autumn. The leaping tongues
of flame roused Chi Lung. He turned to Paul, and touched
him on the sleeve:
"May there be length of days in your honorable house,”
he said, apparently inconsequently.
Marketel looked round quickly, but the old man had
already resumed his original attitude. He was again sit-
ting upright, with his hands tucked into his sleeves.
The field fire had been left miles behind, the light had
faded in the west, the night had dropped its pall of dark-


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