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THE SUMMONS


BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE BROKEN ROAD
THE FOUR FEATHERS
MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY
CLEMENTINA
THE TURNSTILE
THE TRUANTS
AT THE VILLA ROSE
RUNNING WATER
THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE
BUCKLER
THE PHILANDERERS
LAWRENCE CLAVERING
THE WATCHERS
A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE
THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE
THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW
THE WINDING STAIR
Short Stories
ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER TALIS
THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD
1


THE
SUMMONS
BY
A. E. W, MASON
TS
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED
LONDON


PR602.5
184958
192.0
TO THOSE WHO SERVED WITH ME
ABROAD THROUGH THE FOUR YEARS
Made and Printed in Great Britain by: Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Reading & Fakenham.


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I. THE OLYMPIC GAMES
1
7
II. AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
14
III. MARIO ESCOBAR
24
IV. THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL -
31
V. HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
44
1. THE HONORARY MEMBER
52
VII. IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
63
VIII. HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
68
IX. ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT
WHITE SATIN
79
X. THE SUMMONS
91
XI. STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
100
XII. IN BARCELONA
III
XIII. OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I22
XIV.
TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS" 138
XV. IN A SLEEPING-CAR
147
XVI. TRICKS OF THE TRADE
160
D
XVII. ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
- 168


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGR
XVIII. THE USES OF SCIENCE
178
XIX. UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
189
XX. LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
199
XXI. THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
215
XXII. JENNY PRASK
226
WH
XXIII. PLANS FOR THE EVENING
234
XXIV. JENNY PRASK IS INTERESTED
243
XXV. IN A LIBRARY
246
XXVI. A FATAL KINDNESS
256
XXVII. THE RANK AND FILE
266
XXVIII. ' THE LONG SLEEP
272
XXIX. JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
281
XXX. A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER
297
XXXI. JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY
308
XXXII.“ BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE
VINE,
317


1
CHAPTER I
THE OLYMPIC GAMES
" LUTTRELL ! Luttrell !"
Sir Charles Hardiman stood in the corridor of his
steam yacht and bawled the name through a closed
door. But no answer was returned from the other
side of the door. He turned the handle and went
in. The night was falling, but the cabin windows
looked towards the north and the room was full
of light and of a low and pleasant music. For
the tide tinkled and chattered against the ship's
planks and, in the gardens of the town across the
harbour, bands were playing. The town was Stock-
holm in the year nineteen hundred and twelve, and on
this afternoon, the Olympic games, that unfortunate
effort to promote goodwill amongst the nations, which
did little but increase rancours and disclose hatreds,
had ended, never, it is to be hoped, to be resumed.
“ Luttrell,” cried Hardiman again, but this time
with perplexity in his voice. For Luttrell was there
in the cabin in front of him, but sunk in so deep a
contemplation of memories and prospects that the
cabin might just as well have been empty. Sir Charles
Hardiman touched him on the shoulder.
Wake
up,
old man !”
" That's what I am doing-waking up,” said
Luttrell, turning without any start. He was seated
in front of the writing-desk, a young man, as the
world went before the war, a few months short of
twenty-eight.
" The launch is waiting and everybody's on deck,”
continued Hardiman. "We shall lose our table at
Hasselbacken if we don't get off.”


THE SUMMONS
30
14
Then he caught sight of a telegram lying upon the
writing-table.
Oh!” and the impatience died out of his voice.
“Is anything the matter ?”
Luttrell pushed the telegram towards his host.
“ Read it! I have got to make up my mind-and
now-before we start.'
Hardiman read the telegram. It was addressed to
Captain Harry Luttrell, Yacht The Dragonfly, Stock-
· holm, and it was sent from Cairo by the Adjutant-
General of the Egyptian Army.
“I can make room for you, but you must apply
immediately to be transferred.”
Hardiman sat down in a chair by the side of the
table against the wall, with his eyes on Luttrell's
face. He was a big, softish, overfed man of forty-five,
and the moment he began to relax from the upright
position, his body went with a run; he collapsed
rather than sat. The little veins were beginning to
show like tiny scarlet threads across his nose and on
the fullness of his cheeks; his face was the colour of
wine; and the pupils of his pale eyes were ringed
with so pronounced an arcus senilis that they com-
manded the attention like a disfigurement. But the
eyes were shrewd and kindly enough as they dwelt
upon the troubled face of his guest.
You have not answered this ?” he asked.
No. But I must send an answer to-night.”
“ You are in doubt ? ”
“Yes, I was quite sure when I cabled to Cairo
on the second day of the games. I was quite sure,
whilst I waited for the reply. Now that the reply
has come I don't know."
Let me hear,” said the older man. " The launch
must wait, the table at the Hasselbacken restaurant
inust be assigned, if need be, to other customers.'
Hardiman had not swamped all his kindliness in good
uving. Luttrell was face to face with one of the few


THE OLYMPIC GAMES
9
2)
grave decisions which each man has in the course of
his life to make; and Hardiman understood his need
better than he understood it himself. His need was
to formulate aloud the case for and against, to another
person, not so much that he might receive advice as,
that he might see for himself with truer eyes.
" The one side is clear enough," said Luttrell with
a trace of bitterness. There was a Major I once
heard of at Dover. He trained his company in
night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to
guide them and were ordered to shut their eyes. The
Major, you see, hated stirring out at night. He liked
his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me
another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall
become the worst kind-the slovenly soldier. I
mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even now I
come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch
the time to see if I can't catch an earlier train from
Gravesend to London."
“And when you do ? ” asked Hardiman.
Luttrell nodded.
“When I do," he agreed, " I get no thrill out of my
escape I assure you. I hate myself a little more-
that's all."
“Yes,” said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to
ask questions. He just sat and waited, inviting
Luttrell to spread out his troubles by his very quietude.
“ Then there are these games,” Luttrell cried in a
swift exasperation, "—these damned games! From
the first day when the Finns marched out with their
national flag and the Russians threatened to withdraw
if they did it again" he broke off suddenly. "Of
course you know soldiers have believed that trouble's
coming. I used to doubt, but by God I am sure of
it now. Just a froth of fine words at the opening
and afterwards-honest rivalry and let the best man
win ? Not a bit of it! Team-running-a vile busi-
ness--the nations parked together in different sections
of the Stadium like enemies--and ill-will running here


IO
THE SUMMONS
1
1
f
1
4
and there like an infection! Oh, there's trouble com-
ing, and if I don't go I shan't be fit for it. There,
that's the truth."
“The whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
Hardiman asked with a smile. He leaned across the
table and drew towards him a case of telegraph forms.
But whilst he was drawing them towards him, Luttrell
spoke again.
"Nothing but the truth-yes," he said. He was speak-
ing shyly, uncomfortably, and he stopped abruptly.
The whole truth-no.” Hardiman added slowly,
and gently. He wanted the complete story from
preface to conclusion, but he was not to get it. He
received no answer of any kind for a considerable
number of moments and Luttrell only broke the
silence in the end, to declare definitely.
“That, at all events, is all I have to say."
Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close
to him. There was something more then. There
always is something more, which isn't told, he reflected,
and the worst of it is, the something more which isn't
told is always the real reason. Men go to the con-
fessional with a reservation; the secret chamber where
they keep their sacred vessels, their real truths and
inspirations, as also their most scarlet sins--that shall
be opened to no one after early youth is past unless
it be- rarely-to one woman. There was another
reason at work in Harry Luttrell, but Sir Charles
Hardiman was never to know it. With a shrug of his
shoulders he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up
one of the forms and handed it to Luttrell.
“ That's what I should reply."
He had written:
'I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
transfer.---LUTTRELL.
Luttrell read the telegram with surprise. It was
not the answer which he had expected from the victim
of the flesh-pots in front of him.
IN


THE OLYMPIC GAMES
II
" You advise that?” he exclaimed.
“ Yes. My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a
guest very welcome to me. But you don't belong.
We-Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the rest of us
-even Mario Escobar-we are the Come-to-nothings.
We are the people of the stage door, we grow fat in
restaurants. From three to seven, you may find us in
the card-rooms of our clubs-we are jolly fine fellows
--and no good. You don't belong, and should get out
while you can."
Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.
That's all very well. But there's another side to
the question," he said, and from the deck above a
woman's voice called clearly down the stairway.
“ Aren't you two coming ?”
Both men looked towards the door.
“That side," said Hardiman.
“ Yes.”
Hardiman nodded his head,
"Stella Croyle doesn't belong either," he said.
“But she kicked over the traces. She flung out of the
rank and file. Oh, I know Croyle was a selfish, dull
beast and her footprints in her flight from him were
littered with excuses. I am not considering the
injustice of the world. I am looking at the cruel
facts, right in the face of them, as you have got to
do, my young friend. Here Stella Croyle is-with
us—and she can't get away. You can.”
Luttrell was not satisfied. His grey eyes and thin,
clean features were troubled like those of a man in
physical pain.
You don't know the strange, queer tie between
Stella Croyle and me,” he said. And I can't tell
you it."
Hardiman grew anxious. Luttrell had the look of
a man overtrained, and it was worry which had
overtrained him. His face was a trifle too delicate,
perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions
which must be made by the men who win carcers.


I2
THE SUMMONS
“I know that you can't go through the world
without hurting people,” cried Hardiman. “ Neither
you nor anyone else, except the limpets. And you
won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning
your chances. Your love-affair will end all of that
kind do. And yours will end in a bitter, irretrievable
quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and because
you have ruined yourself. You are already on the
rack-make no doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you
twitch and jump with irritation-how many times on
this yacht !-for trumpery, little, unimportant things
she has said and done, which you would never have
noticed six months ago; or only noticed to smile at
with a pleased indulgence.”
Luttrell's face coloured. Why, that's true
enough,” he said. He was remembering the afternoon
a week ago, when the yacht steamed between the
green islands with their bathing stations and châlets,
over a tranquil, sunlit sea of the deepest blue. Round-
ing a wooded corner towards sunset she came suddenly
upon the bridges and the palace and the gardens of
Stockholm. The women of the party were in the
saloon. A rush was made towards it. They were
summoned to this first wonderful view of the city of
beauty. Would they come ? No! Stella Croyle was
in the middle of a game of Russian patience. She
could play that game any day, every day, all day.
This exquisite vision was vouchsafed to her but the
once, and she had neglected it with the others. She
had not troubled, even to move so far as the saloon
door. For she had not finished her game.
Luttrell recalled his feeling of scorn; the scorn had
grown into indignation; in the end he had made a
grievance of her indifference to this first view of
the city of Stockholm, a foolish, exasperating griev-
ance, which would rankle, which would not be buried,
which sprang to fresh life at each fresh sight of
her. Yes, of a certainty, sooner or later Stella
Croyle and he would quarrel, so bitterly that all the
$


THE OLYMPIC GAMES
13
king's horses and all the king's men could never bring
them again together; and over some utterly unim-
portant matter like the first view of Stockholm.
“ Youth has many privileges over age," continued
Hardiman, “but none greater than the vision, the
half-interpreted recurring vision of wider spaces and
greater things, towards which you sail on the wind of
a great emotion. Sooner or later, a man loses that
vision and then only knows his loss. Stay here, and
you'll lose it before your time.”
Luttrell looked curiously at his companion, wonder-
ing what manner of man he had been in his twenties.
Hardiman answered the look with a laugh. “Oh,
I too, had my ambitions once.”
Luttrell folded the cablegram which Hardiman had
written out and placed it in the breast pocket of his
dinner-jacket.
“I will talk to Stella to-night at dinner. Then, if
I decide to send it, I can send it from the hotel over
there at the landing steps before we return to the yacht.”
Sir Charles Hardiman rose cumbrously with a shrug
of his shoulders. He had done his best, but since
Luttrell would talk the question over with Stella
Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the
lights and music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils
and the pleading of her eyes within his sight-he,
Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his tongue.
So very likely it would have been. But when great
matters are ripe for decisions one way or the other,
the little accident as often as not decides. There
was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a
swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The
same woman's voice called in rather a shrill note
through the panels ! Harry! Why don't you
come? We are waiting for you."
And in the sound of the voice there was not merely
impatience, but a note of ownership-very clear and
definite ; and hearing it Luttrell hardened. He stood
up straight. He had the aspect of a man in revolt.


AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
15
stare ? This party wasn't got up to separate people.
All the same-
The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety
of a bright thronged restaurant ! In either setting
Stella Croyle was a formidable antagonist. But com
bine the settings and she took to herself, at once by
nature, the seduction of both!
“Poor devil, he won't have a dog's chance !” the
baronet concluded; and he watched approvingly
what appeared to him to be Luttrell's endeavour to
avoid joining battle on this unfavourable field. He
could only trust feebly in that and in the strength of
the something else," the secret reason he was never
to know.
It was about half-way through dinner when Stella
Croyle, who had directed many a furtive, anxious
glance to the averted face of her companion, attacked
directly.
“ What is the matter with you to-night ? she
asked, interrupting him in the midst of a rattle of
futilities. “Why should you recite to me from the
guide-book about the University of Upsala ? '
" It appears to be most interesting, and quaint,"
replied Luttrell hastily.
Then we might hire a motor-car and run out there
to luncheon. To-morrow! Just you and I."
“ No.” Harry Luttrell exclaimed suddenly and
Stella Croyle drew back. Her face clouded. She
had won the first round, but victory brought her no
She knew now from the explosion of his “No'
and the swift alarm upon his face that something
threatened her.
“ You must tell me what has happened," she cried.
" You must! Oh, you turn away from me!”
From the dark steep garden at their feet rose a
clamour of cheers to Luttrell an intervention of
Providence.
“Listen," he said.
Here and there a man or a woman rose at the dinner
ease,


16
THE SUMMONS
over
E
1
1
tables and looked down. Upwards along a glimmering
riband of path, a group of students bore one of their
number shoulder-high. Luttrell leaned
the
balustrade. The group below halted; speeches were
made; cheers broke out anew.
" It is the Swedish javelin-thrower. He won the
championship of the world this afternoon."
“ Did he ?” asked Stella Croyle in a soft voice at
his side. “Does he throw javelins as well as you ?
You wound me every time.”
Luttrell raised his head. It was not fear of defeat
which had kept his looks averted from Stella's dark
and starry eyes. No thought of lists set and a contest
to be fought out had even entered his head. But he
did fear to see those eyes glisten with tears—for she
so seldom shed them ! And even more than the
evidence of her pain he feared the dreadful submission
with which women in the end receive the stroke of
fortune. He had to meet her gaze now, however.
I put off telling you,” he began lamely.
So that this evening of mine with you might not
be spoilt,” she returned. “ But, my dear, my evening
was already spoilt before the launch left the yacht
gangway. I am not so blind.”
Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old ;
and it was difficult to picture her any older. Partly
because of her vivid colouring and because she was
abrim with life ; partly because in her straightness of
limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
“What a pretty boy she would make !” was the first
thought until you noticed the slim delicacy of her
hands and feet, the burnish of gold on the dark wealth
of her hair, the fine chiselling of brow and nose and
chin. Then it was seen that she was all woman. She
was tall and yet never looked tall. It seemed that
you could pick her up with a finger, but try and she
warned you of the weakness of your arm.
She was
a baffling person. She ran and walked with the joyous
insolence of eighteen, yet at any moment some veil


AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
17
might be rolled up in her eyes and face to show you
for one tragic instant a Lady of Sorrows.
She leaned towards Luttrell, and as Hardiman had
foreseen the perfume of her hair stormed his senses.
"Tell me ” she breathed, and Luttrell, with his
arguments and reasons cut and dried and conned over
pat for delivery, began nevertheless to babble. There
were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen
how they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles
were coming-battles behind the troubles. All soldiers
knew! They knew this too-the phrase of a young
Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.
Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure
right, but by the one or the other of those two Powers
which has Discipline as its Chief of Staff."
He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly
that he was on the way to dwindling into an undis-
ciplined soldier. But it did not matter in the least.
For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was
totally unimportant. Men always went about and
about when they had difficult things to say to women.
Her eyes never left his face and she would know surely
enough when those words were rising to his lips which
it was necessary that she should mark and understand.
Meanwhile her perplexities and fears grew.
“ Of course it can't be that,” she assured herself
again and again, but with a dreadful catch at her
heart. “ Oh no, it can't be that.”
That,” was the separation which some day or
another-after a long and wondrous period—both
were agreed, must come. But, consoling herself with
the thought that she would be prepared, she had
always set the day on so distant an horizon that it had
no terrors for her. Now it suddenly dismayed her,
a terror close at hand. Here on this crowded balcony
joyous with lights and gay voices and invaded by all
the subtle invitations of a summer night above the
water! Oh no, it was not possible!
Luttrell put his hand to his breast pocket and Stella


AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
19
The answers she received were clear, unhesitating.
It was a voice from a rock speaking! So utterly
mistaken was she; and so completely Luttrell bent
every nerve to the service of shortening the hour of
misery. The appalling moment was then actually
upon her. She had foreseen it so she thought. But
it caught her nevertheless unprepared as death catches
a sinner on his bed.
She stared at the telegrams-not reading them.
His arguments and prefaces-the Olympic Games,
Discipline and the rest of it—what she had caught of
them, she blew away as so much froth. She dived to
the personal reason.
'You are tired of me."
No," Luttrell answered hotly. That's not true
-not even a half-truth. If I were tired of you, it
would all be so easy, so brutally easy."
“But you are!” Her voice rose shrill in its violence.
“You know you are, but you are too much of a coward
to say so-oh, like all men !" and as Luttrell turned
to her a face startled by her outcry and uttered a
remonstrant"Hush !”, she continued bitterly. “What
do I care if they all hear ? I am impossible ! You
know that, don't you? I am quite impossible! I
have gone my own way. I am one of the people you
hate-one of the Undisciplined.”
Stella Croyle hardly knew in her passion what she
was saying, and Luttrell could only wait in silence for
the storm to pass. It passed with a quickness which
caught him at loss; so quickly she swept from mood
to mood.
He heard her voice at his ear, remorseful and most
appealing. “Oh Wub, what have I done that you
should treat me so ?”
Sir Charles Hardiman, watchful of the duel, guessed
from the movement of her lips what she was saying,
These nicknames are the very devil,” he exclaimed,
apparently about nothing to his startled neighbour.
The first thing a woman does when she's fond of a


20
THE SUMMONS
.
C
1
9
4
man is to give him some ridiculous name, which doesn't
belong to him. She worries her wits trying this one
and that one, as a tailor tries on you a suit of clothes,
and when she has got your fit, she uses it-publicly.
So others use it too and so it no longer contents her.
Then she invents a variation, a nickname within a
nickname, and that she keeps to herself, for her own
private use. That's the nickname I am referring to,
my dear, when I say it's the very devil."
The lady to whom he spoke smiled vaguely and
surmised that he might be very right. For herself,
she said, she had invented no nicknames; which was
to assert that she had never been in love. For the
practice seems invariable, and probably Dido in times
long since gone by had one for Æneas, and Virgil
knew all about it. But since she was a woman, it
would be a name at once so absurd and so intimate
that it would never have gone with the dignified
rhythm of the hexameter. Wobbles" had been
the first name which Stella Croyle had invented for
Harry Luttrell, though by what devious process she
had lighted upon it, psychology could not have dis-
covered. Wub' was the nickname within the
nickname, the cherished sign that the two of them
lived apart in a little close-hedged garden of their own.
Luttrell's eyes were upon her as she spoke it. And
she spoke it with a curious little wistful pursing of soft
lips so that it came to him winged with the memory
of all her kisses.
“Oh Wub, must you leave me ? ” she pleaded in a
breaking whisper. What will be left to me if you
do ?”
Luttrell dropped his forehead in his hands. All the
character which he had in those untried days bade
him harden himself against the appeal. But his
resolution was melting like metal in a furnace. He
tried to realise the truth which Hardiman had uttered
three or four hours before. There would be sooner or
later a quarrel, a humiliating, hateful quarrel over some


AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
21
miserable trifle which neither Stella nor he would ever
afterwards forgive. But her voice was breaking with
a sob in a whisper at his ear and how could he look
forward so far?
"Stella !"
He turned impulsively towards her
The game's up,” reflected Sir Charles Hardiman
at the end of the table. “Calypso wins-no, by God!”
For before Luttrell could speak another word, the
music crashed and all that assemblage was on its feet.
The orchestra was playing the Swedish National
Anthem; and upon that, one after the other, followed
the hymns of the peoples who had taken part in the
Games. In turn the representatives of each people
stood and resumed their seat, the music underlining
their individuality and parking them in sections, even
as rivalry had parked them in the Stadium. The
majestic anthem of Russia, the pæan of the Marseillaise,
the livelier march of Italy, the song of Germany, the
Star-Spangled Banner; and long before the band
struck into the solemn rhythm of "God save the King,"
Stella Croyle at all events knew that Calypso had lost.
For she saw a flame illumine Luttrell's face and trans-
figure him. He had slipped out of her reach. The
doubts and perplexities which had so troubled him
during the last months were now resolved, As he
listened to the Hymns, he saw as in a vision the nations
advancing abreast over a vast plain like battalions in
line with their intervals for maneuvring spaced out
between them. In front of each nation rolled a grey
vapour, which gradually took shape before Luttrell's
eyes; and there was made visible to him a shadowy
legion of men marching in the van, the men who had
left ease and women and all the grace of life behind
them and had gone out to die in the harness of service
--one in this, one in that corner of the untravelled
world, and now all reunited in a strong fellowship.
The vision remained with him after the last strains of
music had died away, and faded slowly. He waked


AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
23
" What will you do, Stella ? " Luttrell asked gently.
“ I think I will go and live in the country," she
replied.
It will be lonely, child."
There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me com-
pany,” she answered with a wan smile. People like
me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway. I
shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to
play with," and the smile vanished from her lips. She
flung up her face towards the skies, letting her grief
have its way upon that empty deck.
“So we shall never be together-just you and I
alone again,” she said, forcing herself to realise that
unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran back over the
year--the year of their alliance and she saw all of
its events flickering vividly before her, as they say
drowning people do. “Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake
you made when you went out of your way to be kind,"
she cried, with the tears streaming down her face;
andLuttrell winced.
“Yes, that's true,” he admitted remorsefully. "I
never dreamed what would come of it."
“ You should have left me alone.
Amongst the flickering pictures of the year the first
was the clearest. A great railway station in the West
of England, a train drawn up at the departure plat-
form, herself with a veil drawn close over her face,
half running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards
the train ; and then a man at her elbow. Harry
Luttrell.
"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that
things were not going to turn out well. I thought the
long journey to London alone would be terrible. If
things had turned out right, you would not have seen
me.
She had let him place her in a carriage, look after
her wants as if she had been a child, hold her in his
arms, tend her with the magnificent sympathy of his
silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella
>>


24
THE SUMMONS
The
WOUVI
)
Thora
LUIT
!
al
had known him as the merest of friends before. She
had met him here and there at a supper party, at a
dancing club, at some Bohemian country house; and
then suddenly he had guessed what others had not,
and foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.
"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her,"
Luttrell argued silently. She would have thrown
herself out of the carriage, or when she reached home
she would have ” and his argument stopped, and
he glanced at her uneasily.
Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of her-
self. You never knew what crazy thing she might do.
There was daintiness but no order in her life; the only
law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.
“Of course, Wub, I have always known that you
never cared for me as I do for you. So it was bound
to end some time.” She caught his hand to her heart
for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.
"V
CHAPTER III
MARIO ESCOBAR
Late in the autumn of the following year a new play,
written by Martin Hillyard and named “The Dark
Tower," was produced at the Rubicon Theatre in
Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second
play. His first, produced in April of the same year,
had just managed to limp into July; and that small
world which concerns itself with the individualities
of playwrights was speculating with its usual diver-
gencies upon Hillyard's future development.
The Dark Tower" was a play of modern days, built
upon the ancient passions. The first act was played
to a hushed house, and while the applause which
greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about
the walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted
himself heavily out of his stall and made his way to a box
on the first tier, which he entered without knocking.


MARIO ESCOBAR
25
There was but one person in the box, a young man
hidden behind a side curtain Hardiman let himself
collapse into a chair by the side of the young man.
“ Seems all right," he said. “ You have a story to
tell. It's clear in every word, too, that you know
where you are going. That makes people comfortable
and inclined to go along with you."
Hillyard turned with a smile.
We haven't come to the water jump yet,” he said.
Hardiman remained in the box during the second
act. He watched the stage for a while, took note of
the laughter which welcomed this or that line, and of
the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene
from the rest of the play; and finally, with a certain
surprise, and a certain amusement he fixed his atten-
tion upon the play's author. The act ended in laughter
and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, without
pose or affectation, as heartily as any one in the
theatre.
“ You beat me altogether, my young friend,” said
Hardiman. “ You ought to be walking up and down
the pavement outside in the classical state of agitation.
But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you had
never seen it before."
“And I haven't,” Hillyard returned. “ This isn't
quite the play which we have been learning and re-
hearsing during the last month. Here's the audience
at work, adding a point there, discovering an interpre-
tation--yes, actually an interpretation-there, bring-
ing into importance one scene, slipping over the next
which we thought more important-altering it, in
fact.
Of course,
and he returned to his earlier
metaphor, " I know the big fences over which we may
come a cropper. I can see them ahead before we come
up to them and know the danger. We are over two
of them, by the way.
But on the whole I am more
interested than nervous. It's the first time I have
ever been to a first night, you see.'
Well, upon my word,” cried Hardiman, “ you are


26
THE SUMMONS
the coolest hand at it I ever saw.” But he could have
taken back his words the next moment.
In spite of Hillyard's aloof and disinterested air,
the night had brought its excitement and in a strength
of which he himself was unaware. It lifted now the
veils behind which a man will hide his secret thoughts!
He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light
upon his face.
Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to
me ! Not for a moment. If it's failure, it means that
I begin again to-morrow on something else; and again
after that, and again after that, until success does
come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are
a necessary part of it--just as much a part as the
successes But even if the great success were to come
now, it wouldn't mean quite so much to me perhaps
as it might to other people.” He paused, and a smile
broke upon his face.
his face." I live expecting a messenger.
There ! That's my secret delivered over to you under
the excitement of a first night."
And as he spoke the colour mounted into his face.
He turned away in confusion. His play was nearer
at his heart than he had thought; the enthusiasm
which seemed to be greeting it had stirred him un-
wisely.
“Tell me,” he said hurriedly, “who all these people
in the stalls are."
He peeped down between the edge of the curtain
and the side wall of the box whilst Hardiman stood up
behind him.
“Yes, I will be your man from Cook's," said Hardi-
man genially.
His heart warmed to the young man both on account
of his outburst and of the shame which had followed
upon the heels of it. Few beliefs had survived in
Hardiman after forty years of wandering up and down
the flowery places of the earth; but one—he had
lectured Harry Luttrell upon it on a night at Stock-
holm-continually gained strength in him. Youth


MARIO ESCOBAR
29
must beget visions and man must preserve them if
great work were to be done ; and so easily the visions
lost their splendour and their inspiration. Of all the
ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was the
most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard
was ashamed that he had spoken of them. Therefore
he had some chance of retaining them.
Yes, I will show you the celebrities." He pointed
out the leading critics and the blue stockings of the
day. His eyes roamed over the stalls. “Do you see
the man with the broad face and the short whiskers
in the fourth row? The man who looks just a little
too like a country gentleman to be one ? That is Sir
Chichester Splay. He made a fortune in a murky
town of Lancashire, and, thirsting for colour, came up
to London determined to back a musical comedy.
That is the way the craving for colour takes them in
the North. His wish was gratified. He backed 'The
Patchouli Girl,' and in that shining garden he got
stung. He is now what they call an amateur. No
first night is complete without him. He is the half-
guinea Mæcenas of our days.”
Hillyard looked down at Sir Chichester Splay and
smiled at his companion's description.
“You will meet him to-night at supper, and if your
play is a success not otherwise
you will stay with
him in Sussex.”
“No !” cried Hillyard; but Sir Charles was re-
lentless in his insistence.
You will. His wife will see to that. Who the
pretty girl beside him is I do not know. But the more
or less young man on the other side of her, talking to
her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a
public place, is Mario Escobar. He is a Spaniard,
and has the skin-deep politeness of his race. He is
engaged in some sort of business, frequents some sort
of society into which he is invited by the women, and
he is not very popular amongst men. He belongs,
however, to some sort of club. That is all I know


28
THE SUMMONS
17
1
1!
VE
about him. One would think he had guessed we were
speaking of him," Hardiman added.
For at that moment Mario Escobar raised his dark,
sleek head, and his big, soft eyes—the eyes of a beauti-
ful woman-looked upwards to the box. It seemed
to Hillyard for a moment that they actually exchanged
a glance, though he himself was out of sight behind
the curtain, so direct was Escobar's gaze. It was,
however, merely the emptiness of the box which had
drawn the Spaniard's attention.
attention. He was neatly
groomed, of a slight figure, tall, and with his eyes, his
thin olive face, his small black moustache and clean-cut
jaw he made without doubt an effective and arresting
figure.
“Now turn your head," said Hardiman," the other
way, and notice the big, fair man in the back row of
the stalls. He is a rival manager, and he is explaining
in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first rows of
the pit, the precise age of your leading lady. Now
look down! There is a young girl fitting about the
stalls. She is an actress, not very successful. But
to-night she is as busy as a bee. She is crabbing your
play. Yesterday her opinion on the subject was of
no value, and it will be again of no value to-morrow.
But as one of the limited audience on a first night,
she can do just a tiny bit of harm. But don't hold it
against her, Hillyard! She has no feeling against you.
This is her little moment of importance."
Sir Charles rattled on through the interval-all
good nature with just a slice of lemon-and it had
happened that he had pointed out one who was to
be the instrument of great trouble for Hillyard and
a few others, with whom this story is concerned.
Hillyard interrupted Hardiman.
Who is the girl at the end of the sixth row, who
scems to have stepped down from a china group on a
mantelpiece ?
That one ?.” said Hardiman, and all the raillery
faded from his face. “That is Mrs. Croyle. You will


MARIO ESCOBAR
29
meet her to-night at my supper party.” He hesitated
as to what further he should say. You might do
worse than be a friend to her. She is not, I am afraid,
very happy.”
Hillyard was surprised at the sudden gentleness of
his companion's voice, and looked quickly towards
him. Hardiman answered the look as he got heavily
up from his chair.
“ I sometimes fear that I have some responsibility for
her unhappiness. But there are things one cannot help.'
The light in the auditorium went down while
Hardiman was leaving the box, and the curtain rose
on the third act of “The Dark Tower.” Of that play,
however, you may read in the files of the various
newspapers, if you will. This story is concerned with
Martin Hillyard, not his work. It is sufficient to
echo the words of Sir Chichester Splay when Hillyard
was introduced to him an hour and a half later in the
private supper-room at the Semiramis Hotel.
A good play, Mr. Hillyard. Not a great play, of
course, but quite a good play,” said Sir Chichester with
just the necessary patronage to tickle Hillyard to an
appreciation of Hardiman's phrases--a ten and six-
penny Mæcenas.
“I am grateful that it has earned your good opinion,"
he replied.
'Oh, not at all !” cried Sir Chichester, and catching
a lady who passed by the arm. Stella, Mr. Hillyard
should know you. This is Mrs. Croyle. I hope you
will meet him some day at Rackham Park."
Sir Chichester trotted away to greet the manager
of the Daily Harpoon, who was at that moment shaking
hands with Hardiman.
“I congratulate you,” said Stella Croyle, as she
gave him her hand.
So you know Sir Chichester well ? ”
“ His wife has been a friend of mine for a long time.
Her eyes twinkled. “I wonder you have not been
seen at his house."
“ Thank you.
you. So
2


30
THE SUMMONS
il
Oh, I am only just hatched out,” said Hillyard.
They both laughed. “I hardly know a soul here
except my leading lady and our host."
They were summoned to the supper table. Hillyard
found himself with the leading lady on one side of
him and Stella Croyle opposite, and Mario Escobar a
couple of seats away. Supper was half through when
Escobar leaned suddenly forward.
“Mr. Hillyard, I have seen you before, somewhere
and not in England.”
That is possible.”
In Spain ?”
Yes,” answered Hillyard.
A certain curiosity in Escobar's voice, a certain
reticence in Hillyard's, arrested the attention of those
about.
Let me see !" continued Escobar. " It was in the
Opera House at Barcelona on the first performance of
Manon Lescaut."
“No,” replied Hillyard.
“Then I know it was under the palm-trees in
front of the sea at Alicante one night."
Hillyard nodded.
" That may well have been. I was up and down
the south coast of Spain for three years. Eighteen
months of it were spent at Alicante."
He turned to his neighbour, but Escobar persisted.
“It was for your health ? '
Hillyard did not answer directly.
My lungs have always been my trouble," he said.
Hardiman bent towards Stella Croyle.
“I think our new friend has had a curious life,
Stella. He should interest you."
Stella Croyle replied with a shrewd look towards
the Spaniard.
“At present he is interesting Escobar. One would
say Escobar was suspicious lest Mr. Hillyard should
know too much of him.'
Sir Charles laughed.


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 31
The Mario Escobars are always suspicious. Let
us see!” he said in a low voice, and leaning across the
table, he shot a question sharply at the Spaniard.
And what were you doing under the palm trees,
in front of the sea at Alicante, Señor Escobar ?"
Mario Escobar sat back. The challenge had startled
him. He reflected, and as the recollection came he
turned slowly very white.
"I?” he asked.
" Yes," said Hardiman, leaning forward. But it
was not at Hardiman that Escobar was looking. His
eyes were fixed warily on Hillyard. He answered the
question warily too, fragment by fragment, ready to
stop, ready to take the words back, if a sign of recol-
lection kindled in Hillyard's face.
“It is what we should call here the esplanade-the
sea and harbour on one side, the houses on the other.
The band plays under the palms in front of the Casino
on summer nights. I and he took the last words
at a rush—“I was sitting in a lounge chair in front
of the club, when I saw Mr. Hillyard pass. An
Englishman is noticeable in Alicante. There are so
few of them."
“Yes,” Hillyard agreed. No recollection was stirred
in him by Escobar's description. Escobarį turned
away, but he could not quite conceal the relief he felt.
“Yes, my friend,” said Hardiman to himself, “ you
have taken your water-jump too. And you're un-
commonly glad that you haven't come a cropper."
After that noticeable moment of tension, the talk
swept on into sprightlier channels.
CHAPTER IV
THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL
SHALL I take you home?”
“Oh, will you ? " cried Stella Croyle, with a little
burst of pleasure. After all, Hillyard was the great


32
THE SUMMONS
man of the evening, and that he should consider her out
of all that company was pleasant. “I will get my cloak.”
Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at
a loss to discover in Stella Croyle the woman whom
Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits were
high, but unforced. She chattered away with more
gaiety than wit, like the rest of Hardiman's guests,
but the gaiety was apt to the occasion. She had the
gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small delicate
face would wrinkle and pout into grimaces which gave
to her a rather attractive air of gaminerie-Hillyard
could find no word but the French one to express her
on that evening. He drove her to a small house in
the Bayswater Road, overlooking Kensington Gardens.
Will you come in for a moment ?" she asked.
Hillyard followed her up a paved pathway, through
a tiny garden enclosed in a high wall, to her door.
She led him into a room bright with flowers and
pictures. Curtains of purple brocade were drawn
across the window, a fire burned on the hearth, and
thick soft cushions on broad couches gave the room a
look of comfort.
“You live here alone ? ” Hillyard asked.
"Yes.”
She turned suddenly towards him as he gazed
about the room.
"I married a long while ago." She stood in front
of him like a slim child. It seemed impossible. “ Yes,
before I knew anything-to get away from home. Our
marriage did not go smoothly. After three years I
ran away-oh, not with anyone I cared for; he
happened to be there, that was all. After a month he
deserted me in Italy. I have fortunately some money
of my own and a few friends who did not turn me
down-Lady Splay, for instance. There !”
She moved to a table and poured out for Hillyard
a whisky-and-soda.
“My question was thoughtless," he said. “I did
not mean that you should answer it as you did.”
3


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 33
“I preferred you to know."
"I am honoured,” Hillyard replied.
Stella Croyle sat down upon a low stool in front of
the fire. Hiilyard sank into one of the deep-cushioned
chairs. The day of tension was over, and there was
no doubt about the success of “ The Dark Tower.”
Stella Croyle sat very quietly, with the firelight play-
ing upon her face and her delicate dress. Her vivacity
had dropped from her like the pretty cloak she had
thrown aside. Both became her well, but they were
for use out-of-doors, and Hillyard was grateful that
she had discarded them.
“ You are tired, no doubt,” he said, reluctantly.
“I ought to go."
No," she answered. “It is pleasant before the
fire here."
"
Thank you. I should like to stay for a little
while. I did not know until I came into this room
with how much anxiety I had been looking forward to
this night.”
He leaned forward with his hands clenched, and
saw pass in the bright coals glimpses of the long tale
of days when endeavour was fruitless and hopes were
disappointed. "Success! Lord, how I wanted it I"
he whispered.
Stella Croyle looked at him with a smile.
" It was sure to come to you, since you wanted it
enough," she said.
“Yes, but in time?” exclaimed Hillyard.
" In time for what?"
Hillyard broke into a laugh.
“I don't know," he answered. He was silent for
a little while, and the comfort of the room, the quiet
of the night, the pleasant sympathy of Stella Croyle,
all wrought upon him. “I don't know," he repeated
slowly. "I am waiting. But out of my queer life
something more has got to come-something more and
something different. I have always been sure of it,
but I used to be afraid that the opportunity would
B


34
THE SUMMONS
a
come while I was still chained to the handles of the
barrow."
Hillyard's life, though within a short time its
vicissitudes had been many and most divergent, had
probably not been as strange as he imagined it to be.
He looked back upon it with too intense an interest
to be its impartial judge. Certainly its distinctive
feature had escaped him altogether. At the age of
twenty-nine he was man absolutely without
tradition.
His father, a partner in a small firm of shipping
agents which had not the tradition of a solid, old-
fashioned business, had moved in Martin's boyhood
from a little semi-detached villa with its flight of
front steps in one suburb, to a house in a garden of
trees in another. The boy had been sent to a brand
new day-school of excessive size, which gathered its
pupils into its class-rooms at nine o'clock in the morn-
ing and dispersed them to their homes at four. No
boy was proud that he went to school at St. Eldred's,
or was deterred from any meanness by the thought
that it was a breach of the school's traditions. The
school meant so many lessons in so many class-rooms,
and no more.
Hillyard was the only child. Between himself and
his parents there was little sympathy and under-
standing. He saw them at meals, and fled from the
table to his own room, where he read voraciously.
You never heard of such a jumble of books,”
he said to Stella Croyle. "Matthew Arnold, Helps,
Paradise Lost, Ten Thousand a Year, The Revolt
of Islam, Tennyson. I knew the whole of In
Memoriam by heart-absolutely every line of it, and
pages of Browning. The little brown books ! I would
walk miles to pick one of them up. My people wouid
find the books lying about the house, and couldn't
make head or tail of why I wanted to read them.
There were two red-letter days : one when I first
bought the two volumes of Herrick, the second when
"
3


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 35
I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's the author to
bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Auto-
biography, the Confessions--I could never get tired
of them. I remember buying an ounce of laudanum
at a chemist's on London Bridge and taking it home,
with the intention of following in the steps of my hero
and qualifying to drink it out of a decanter."
Stella Croyle had swung round from the fireplace,
and was listening now with parted lips.
" And did you ? ” she exclaimed, in a kind of cager
suspense.
Hillyard shook his head.
“The taste was too unpleasant. I drank about
half an ounce and threw the rest away. I was saved
from that folly."
Stella Croyle turned again to the fire.
“ Yes,” she said rather listlessly.
Yet Hillyard might almost have become a consumer
of drugs, such queer and wayward fancies took him in
charge. It became a fine thing to him to stay up all
night just for the sake of staying up, and many a
night he passed at his open window, even in winter
time, doing nothing, not even dreaming, simply waiting
for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and wrong
that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfort-
abiy between sheets. And then came another twist
When all the house was quiet, he would slip out of a
ground-floor window and roam for hours about the
lonely roads, a solitary boy revelling even then in the
extraordinary conduct of his life. There was in the
neighbourhood a footpath through a thick grove of
trees which ran up a long, high hill, and, midway in
the ascent, crossed a railway cutting by a rustic bridge.
“That was my favourite walk, though I always
entered by the swing-gate in fear, and trembled at
every movement of the branches, and continually
expected an attack. I would hang over that railway
bridge, especially on moonlit nights, and com-
pose poems and thoughts-you know-great, short


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 37
“ I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia
in Spain. And I believed that saved my life. For
my lungs were beginning to be troublesome."
The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two
days when the fo'c'sle hands selected the lad, since
he had some education, to be their spokesman on a
deputation to the captain. Martin Hillyard went aft
with the men and put their case for better food and
less violence. He was not therefore popular with the
old man, and at Valencia he thought it prudent to
desert.
Stella Croyle had turned towards him again. There
was a vividness in his manner, an enjoyment, too,
which laid hold upon her. It was curious to her to
realise that this man talking to her here in the Bays-
water Road, had been so lately a ragged youth scouting
for his living on the quays of Southern Spain.
You were at that place-Alicante !” she cried.
“ Part of the time."
And there Mario Escobar saw you. I wonder why
he was frightened lest you too should have seen him,"
she added slowly.
Was he?”
“Yes. He was sitting on the same side of the
table as you, so you wouldn't have noticed. But he
was opposite to me, and he was afraid."
Hillyard was puzzled.
“ I can't think of a reason. I was a shipping clerk
of no importance. I can't remember that I ever
came across his name in all the eighteen months I
spent in Alicante.”
When Martin Hillyard was nineteen, Death inter-
vened in the family feud. His parents died within a
few weeks of each other.
“I was left with a thousand pounds."
" What did you do with them?
'I went to Oxford."
“ You? After those years of independence ? '
" It had been my one passionate dream for years.'


38
THE SUMMONS
1
“The Scholar Gipsy,” “Thyrsis,” the Preface to
the “Essays in Criticism," one or two glimpses of the
actual city, its grey spires and towers, caught from
the windows of a train, had long ago set the craving
in his heart. Oxford had grown dim in unattainable
mists, no longer a desire so much as a poignant regret,
yet now he actually walked its sacred streets.
“And you enjoyed it ? " asked Stella.
“I had the most wondrous time,” Hillyard replied
fervently. “ There was one bad evening, when I
realised that I couldn't write poetry. After that I
cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the
Torpid and rowed three in my College Eight. I had
friends for the first time. One above all.”
He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the
impression of a careless sentinel suddenly waked,
suddenly standing to attention at the door of a treasure-
house of memories. She was challenged. Very well.
It was her humour to take the challenge up just to
prove to herself that she could slip past a man's guard
if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard a
pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.
Tell me of your friend."
"Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the
same boat with me. He had just what I had not-
traditions. From his small old brown manor house
in a western county to his very choice of a career, he
was wrapped about in tradition. He went into the
army. He had to go."
What is his name?"
Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at
him anymore. She was staring into the fire, and her body
was very still. But there was excitement in her voice.
“Harry Luttrell," replied Hillyard, and Stella
Croyle did not move. "I don't know what has be-
come of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out
of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived.”
“But you have come up again now. You will re-
sume your friends at the point where you dived."


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL
39
"Not yet. I am going away in a week's time."
“For long?
“Eight months."
And fat?"
Very.”.
“I am sorry," said Stella.
It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first
months of real freedom in a great wandering amongst
wide spaces. The journey had been long since planned,
even details of camp outfit and equipment and the
calibre of rifles considered.
“I have been at my preparations for years," he said.
'I lived in a cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and
writing and writing, but when I thought of this journey
to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve, and I
would walk in magical places under the sun.”
"Now the New Year reviving old desires,
The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”
Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard,
lost in the anticipation of his journey, never noticed
that the gaiety rang false.
“And where are you going ?” she asked.
"To the Sudan.
It seemed that Stella expected just that answer and
no other. She gazed into the fire without moving,
seeking to piece together a picture in the coals of that
unknown country which held all for which she yearned.
“ I shall travel slowly up the White Nile to Renk,"
Hillyard continued, blissfully. He was delighted at
the interest which Mrs. Croyle was taking in his
itinerary. She was clearly a superior person. “ From
Renk, I shall cross to the Blue Nile at Rosaires, and
travel eastward again to the River Dinder-
" You are most fortunate,” Stella interrupted
wistfully.
“ Yes, am I not ? ” cried Hillyard. It looked as if
nothing would break through his obtuseness.
“ I should love to be going in your place."


40
THE SUMMONS
“ You?"
Hillyard smiled. She was for a mantelshelf in a
boudoir, not for a camp.
"Yes—I," and her voice suddenly broke.
Hillyard sprang up from his chair, but Stella held
up her hand to check him, and turned her face
stil further away. Hillyard resumed his seat un-
comfortably.
“ You may meet your friend Harry Luttrell in the
Sudan," she explained. "He is stationed somewhere in
that country-where exactly. I would give a great
deal to know.”
They sat without speaking for a little while, Stella
once more turning to the fire. Hillyard watching her
wistful face and the droop of her shoulders understood
at last the truth of Hardiman's description. The
mask was lain aside. Here indeed was a Lady of
Sorrows.
Stella Croyle was silent until she was quite sure that
she had once more the mastery of her voice.
important to her that her next words should not be
forgotten. But even so she did not dare to speak above
a whisper.
"I want you to do me a favour.
If you should
meet Harry, I should like him to have news of me. I
should like him also-oh, not so often-but just every
now and then to write me a little line."
There were tears glistening on her dark eyelashes.
Hillyard fell into a sort of panic as he reflected upon
his own vaunting taik. Compared with this woman's
poignant distress, all the vicissitudes of his life seemed
now quite trivial and small. Here were tears falling
and Hillyard was unused to tears. Nor had he ever
heard so poignant a longing in any human voice as that
on which Stella's prayer to him was breathed. He was
ashamed. He was also a little envious of Harry
Luttrell. He was also a little angry with Harry
Luttrell.
" You won't forget ? ”
It was


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 41
Stella clasped her hands together imploringly.
No," Hillyard replied. Be very sure of that,
Mrs. Croyle! If I meet Luttrell he shall have your
message.'
“ Thank you."
Stella Croyle dried the tears from her cheeks and
stood up.
"I have been foolish. You won't find me like that
again," she cried, and she helped Hillyard on with his
coat. She went to the door to see him out, but stopped
as she grasped the handle.
All Hillyard's talk about himself had passed in at one
ear and out at the other. But every word which he
had spoken about Harry Luttrell was written on her
heart. And one phrase had kindled a tiny spark of
hope. She had put it aside by itself, wanting more
knowledge about it, and meaning to have that know-
ledge before Hillyard departed. She put her question
now, with the door still closed and her back to it.
You said that Harry had to join the army. What
did you mean by that?"
Hillyard hesitated.
“Did he not tell you himself ? "
“ No.”
Hillyard stood between loyalty to his friend and the
recollection of Stella Croyle's tears. If Luttrell had
not told her--why then,
• Then I don't well see how I can," he said uncom-
fortably.
“But I want to know,” said Stella, bending her
brows at him in astonishment that he should refuse her
so small a thing. Then her manner changed. Oh,
I do want to know," she cried, and Hillyard's obstinacy
broke down.
Men have the strangest fancies which compel them
to do out of all reason, even the things which they hate
to do, and to put aside what they hold most dear.
Fancies unintelligible to practical people like women-
thus Stella Croyle's thoughts ran-but to be taken note
“


42
THE SUMMONS
of very carefully. High-flown motives from a world
of white angels, where no doubt they are very suitable
But men will use them as working motives here below,
with the result that they wreck women's hearts and
cause themselves a great deal of useless misery.
Stella's hopes and her self-esteem had for long
played with the thought that it might possibly be one
of those impracticable notions which had whipped
Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance ;
that after all, it was not that he was tired of a chain.
Yes, she wanted to know.
“ Luttrell only told me once, only spoke about it
once," said Hillyard shifting from one foot to the other,
“ The week after the eights. We rowed down to Ken-
nington Island in a racing pair, had supper there
"Yes, yes,” Stella Croyle interrupted. Oh, how
dense men could be to be sure ! What in the world did
it matter, how or when the secret was told ?
“I beg your pardon," said Hillyard.
it does matter a little. You see, it was on our way
back, when it was quite dark, so dark that really you
could see little but the line of sky above the trees, and
the flash of the water at the end of the stroke. I
doubt if Luttrell would have ever told me at all, if it
hadn't been for just that one fact, that we were alone
together in the darkness and out on the river."
“Yes, I was wrong," said Stella penitently.
impatient. I am sorry.”
More and more, just because of this detail, she was
ready to believe that Harry Luttrell had left her for
some reason quite outside themselves, for some other
reason than weariness and the swift end of passion.
“Luttrell's father, his grandfather and many others
of his name has served in the Clayford Regiment. It
was his home regiment and the tradition of the family
binding from father to son, was that there should
always be Luttrells amongst its officers."
And for that reason Harry Stella inter-
rupted impetuously.
“But really
“I was


THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL 43
No, there is more compulsion than that in Harry's
case, Hillyard took her up. “Much more! The
Clayfords ran in the South African War, and ran
badly. They returned to England a disgraced regi-
ment. Now do you see the compulsion ?
Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind.
Yes, I think I do,” she said, but still was rather
doubtful. Then she looked at tne problem through
Harry Luttrell's eyes.
“Yes, I understand. The regiment must recover
its good name in the next war. It was an obligation
of honour on Harry to take his commission in it, to
bear his part in the recovery."
“Yes. I told you, didn't I? Harry Luttrell was
cradled in tradition."
Hillyard saw Mrs. Croyle's face brighten. Now she
had the key to Harry Luttrell. He had joined the
Clayfords. And what was his fear at Stockholm?
The slovenly soldier ! Yes, he had given her the real
reason after all during that dinner on the balcony at
Hasselbacken. He feared to become the slovenly
soldier if he idled longer in England. It was not
because he was tired of her, that the separation had
come. Thus she reasoned, and she reasoned just in
one little respect wrong. She had the real secret
without a doubt, that “something else,” which Sir
Charles Hardiman divined but could not interpret.
But she did not understand that Harry Luttrell saw
in her, one of the factors, nay the chief of the factors
which were converting him into that thing of contempt,
the slovenly soldier.
“ Thank you,” she said to Hillyard with a smile.
She stood aside now from the door. “ It was kind of
you to bring me home and talk with me for a little
while."
But it seems that her recovery of spirits did not last
out the night. Doubts assailed her–Harry Luttrell
was beneath other skies with other preoccupations
and no message from him had ever come to her. Even


44
THE SUMMONS
if his love was unchanged at Stockholm, it might not
be so now. Hillyard rang her up on the telephone the
next morning and warm in his sympathy asked her to
lunch with him. But it was a pitiful little voice
which replied to him. Stella Croyle answered from
her bed. She was not well. She would stay in bed
for a day and then go to a little cottage which she
owned in the country. She would see Hillyard again
next year when he returned from the East.
Yes, that's her way," said Sir Charles Hardiman.
He met Hillyard the day before he sailed for Port
Said and questioned him about Stella Croyle dis-
creetly. “She runs to earth when she's unhappy.
We shall not see her for a couple of months. No one
will."
CHAPTER V
HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
HILLYARD turned his back upon the pools of the Khor
Galagu at the end of April and wandered slowly down
the River Dinder. From time to time his shikari
would lead his camels, and camp-servants out on to
an open clearing on the high river bank and announce
a name still marked
on
the
maps.
Once there had
been a village here, before the Kalifa sent his soldiers
and herded the tribes into the towns for his better
security. Now there was no sign anywhere of habita-
tion. The red boles of the mimosa trees, purple-
brown cracked earth, yellow stubble of burnt grass,
the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops
and shy wild animals gliding noiseless in the dark of
the forest-there was nothing more now. It seemed
that no human foot had ever trodden that region.
Hillyard's holiday was coming to an end, for in a
month the rainy season would begin and this great
park become a marsh. He went fluctuating between
an excited eagerness for a renewal of rivalry and the
interchange of ideas and the companionship of women:


HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
45
and a reluctance to leave a country which had so
restored him to physical well-being. Never had he
been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five
years of London confinement, the swift spring of the
muscles, the immediate response of the body to the
demand made upon it, and the glorious cessation of
fatigue when after arduous hours of heat and exertion
he stretched kimself upon his camp-chair in the shadow
of his tent. On the whole he travelled northwards
reluctantly ; until he same to a little open space ten
days away from the first village he would touch.
He camped there just before noon, and at three
o'clock on the following morning, in the company of his
shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy he was riding
along a narrow path high above the river. It was very
dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead,
Hillyard could hardly see the flutter of his shikari's
white robe a few paces ahead of him. They passed a
clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a
great shuffling and lapping of water below them.
The shikari stopped abruptly and seized the bridle of
Hillyard's donkey. The night was so still that the
noise at the water's edge below seemed to fill the world.
Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took
his rifle from his boy.
“ Gamus /” whispered the shikari.
Hillyard almost swore aloud. There was a creek,
three hours march away, where the reed buck came
down to drink in the morning. For that creek Hill-
yard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting
rifle--and he had tumbled suddenly upon buffalo 1
He was on the very edge of the buffalo country, he
would see no more between here and the houses of
Senga.
It was his last chance and he had nothing but a
popgun ! He was still reproaching himself when a
small but startling change took place. The snuffling
and lapping suddenly ceased ; and with the cessation
of all sound the night became sinister.


THE SUMMONS
" They
The shikari whispered again.
"Now they in their turn know that we are here."
He enveloped the donkey's head in a shawl that he was
carrying "Do not move," he continued.
are listening.”
Shikari, skinner, donkey-boy, donkey and Hillyard
stood together, motionless, silent. Hillyard had come
out to hunt. Down below the herd in its dumb
parliament was debating whether he should be the
hunted. There was little chance for any one of them
if the debate went against them. Hillyard might
bring down one-perhaps two, if by some miraculous
chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs. But it
would make no difference to the herd. Hillyard
pictured them below by the water's edge, their heads
lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the darkness.
Once the lone, earth-shaking roar of a lion spread
from far away, booming over the dark country. But
the herd below never stirred. It no more feared the
lion than it feared the four men on the river bank
above. An hour passed before at last the river water
plashed under the trampling hoofs.
Hillyard threw his rifle forward, but the shikari
touched him on the arm.
" They are going," he whispered, and again the four
men waited, until the shikari raised his hand.
“ It will be good for us to move! They are very
near.
He looked towards the east, but there was
no sign yet of the dawn.
"We will go very cautiously into the forest. We
shall not know where they are, but they will know
everything we are doing.”
In single file they moved from the bank amongst
the mimosas, the donkey with his head covered, still
led by the boy. Under the cavern of the branches it
was black as pitch--so black that Hillyard did not see
the hand which the shikari quietly laid upon his
shoulder.
" Listen."


HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
47
On his left a branch snapped, ahead of them a bush
that had been bent aside swished back on its release.
They are moving with us. They are all round
us, ” the shikari whispered. “They know everything
we do. Let us wait here. When the morning breaks
they will charge or they will go.”
So once again the little party came to a halt. Hill-
yard stood listening and wondering if the morning
would ever come; and even in that time of tension
the habit of his mind reasserted its sway. This long,
silent waiting for the dawn in the depths of an African
forest with death at his very elbowhere was another
sharp event of life in vivid contrast with all the others
which had gone before. The years in London, the
letter-box opposite the Abbey where he had posted
his manuscripts at three in the morning and bought
a cup of coffee at the stall by the kerb_times so very
close to him--the terms at Oxford, the strange hungry
days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings
on the footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill,
when he composed poems to the moon and pithy
short, great thoughts—here was something fresh to
add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under
the hoofs of the herd ! Here was yet a further token,
that out of the vicissitudes of his life something more,
something new, something altogether different and
unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate
reason of all that had gone before. Once more the
shikari's hand touched him and pointed eastwards.
The tree-trunks were emerging from the darkness.
Beyond them the black cup of the sky was thinning
to translucency. Very quickly the grey light widened
beyond this vast palisade of trees. Ever in here
below the high branches, it began to steal vaporous
and dim. About them on every side now the buffalo
were moving. The shikari's grip tightened on Hill-
yard's arm. The moment of danger had come. It
would be the smash of his breast-bone against the
forgbead of the beast, hoofs and knees kneading his


48
THE SUMMONS
broken body and the thrust and lunge of the short
curled horns until long after he was dead, or--the
new test and preparation to add to those which had
gone before !
Suddenly the shikari cried aloud.
" They are off”; and while he spoke came a loud
snapping of boughs, the sound of heavy bodies crashing
against trees and for a moment against the grey light
in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcasses of the
buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible. Then
silence came again for a few moments, till the boughs
above them shrilled with birds and the morning in a
splendour of gold and scarlet, like a roar of trumpets
stormed the stars.
Hillyard drew a breath.
Let us go on," he said.
They advanced perhaps fifty yards before the
second miracle of that morning smote upon his eyes.
A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen donkey, was
advancing towards him, his white robes flickering in
and out among the tree-boles.
Hillyard looked at his shikari. But the shikari
neither spoke nor altered the regularity of his face.
Hillyard put no question in consequence. The Arab
was ten days' journey from the nearest village and,
even so, his back was turned towards it. He was
moving from solitude into solitude still more silent
and remote. It was impossible. Hillyard's eyes were
playing him false.
He shut them for an instant and opened them again,
thinking that the vision would have gone. But there
was the Arab still nearer to them and moving with a
swift agility. A ray of sunlight struck through the
branches of a tree and burned suddenly like a dancing
flame on something the man carried
a carbine with
a brass hammer. And the next moment a sound
proved beyond all doubt to Hilyard that his eyes
did not deceive him. For he heard the slapping of
the Arab's loose slippers upon the hard-caked earth.


HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
49
Oh yes, the man was real enough. For the shikari
suddenly swerved from the head of the file towards
the stranger and stopped. The two men talked
together and meanwhile Hiilyard and the rest of his
party halted. Hillyard fit his pipe.
Who is it, Hamet?” he cried, and the shikari
turned with his companion and came back.
“It is the postman,” he said as though the delivery
of letters along the Dinder River were the most
commonplace of events.
“ The postman !” cried Hillyard. What in the
world do you mean?"
“Yes," Hamet explained. “He carries letters
between Abyssinia and Senga on the Blue Nile. He
is now on his way back to Abyssinia."
“But how long does it take him ? " Hillyard asked
in amazement.
“ He goes and returns once a year. The journey
takes him four months each way unless he meets with
a party shooting. Then it takes longer, for he goes
with the party to get meat.”
Hillvard stared at the Arab in amazement. He
was a lean slip of a man, almost as black as a negro,
with his hair running back above the temples, and
legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles
and nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to
Hillyard, with the emotions of the dark hour just
past still shivering about him, he seemed something
out of nature. Hillyard leaned from his donkey and
took the carbine from the postman's hand. It was
an ancient thing of Spanish manufacture, heavy as a
pig of lead.
But this can't be of any use," he cried.
“ Is the
man never attacked ?
Hamet talked with the Arab in a dialect Hillyard
did not understand at all; and interpreted the con-
versation.
"No. He has only once fired his rifle. One night
oh, a long way farther to the south-he waked up


50
THE SUMMONS
to see an elephant fighting his little donkey in the
moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran
away. You must know that all these little Korans
he carries on his arms and round his neck have been
specially blessed by a most holy man.”
The postman's shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck
were circled about by chaplets on which little wooden
Korans were strung. He fingered them and counted
them, smiling like a woman displaying her jewels to
her less fortunate friends.
So he is safe," continued Hamet. " Yes, he will
even have his picture taken. Yes, he can afford to
suffer that. He will stand in front of the great eye
and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him
any harm at all. He has a letter for you.” Hamet
dropped from his enthusiasm over the wonderful
immunity of the postman from the dangers of photo-
graphy into a most matter-of-fact voice.
A letter for me? That's impossible," cried
Hillyard.
But the Arab was thrusting his hand here and there
in the load on the donkey's back and finally drew out
a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other Englishmen, had
been brought up in a creed which included the in-
efficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell
upon such persons, withering their qualities and
shrivelling them into the meanest caricatures of
bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service
was now to reveal resource and become the servant
of romance. Yet the Arab drew forth a sealed en-
velope and handed it to Hillyard. And it bore the
inscription of his name.
Oh, but it bore much more than that! It was
written in a hand which Hillyard had not seen for
seven years, and the mere sight of it swept him back
in a glory of recollections to Oxford, its towers and tall
roofs, which mean so much more to the man who has
gone down than to the youth who is up. The forest,
with its patterns of golden sunlight and its colonnades


HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
51
of trees crowding away into darkness, was less visible
than those towers to Hillyard, as he stood with the
envelope in his hand. Once more he swung down the
High and across the Broad from a lecture with a
ragged gown across his arm. Merton and the House,
New College and Magdalen Tower-he saw the en-
chanted city across Christ Church meadows from the
river, he looked down upon it from Headington, and
again from those high fields where, at twilight, the
scholar-gipsy used to roam. For the letter was in the
hand of Harry Luttrell.
He tore it open and read :
Some one in London is asking for you. Who it
is I don't know. But the message came through in a
secret cipher and it might be important. I think you
should pack your affs. and hurry along to Senga, where
I shall expect you.
Martin Hillyard folded the letter and put it away
in his pocket.
“He will find food in our camp," he said to Hamet,
with a nod towards the postman.
We
may as well
go on.”
Even if he returned to camp at once, it would be
too late to start that day. The sun would be high
long before the baggage could be packed upon the
camels. The little party went on to the creek and
built a tiny house of reeds and boughs, in which
Hillyard sat down to wait for the deer to gather. He
had one of the green volumes of “The Vicomte de
Bragelonne" in his pocket, but this morning the splen-
did Four for once did not enchain him. Who was it
in London who wanted him--wanted him so much
that cipher telegrams must find him out on the banks
of the Dinder River ? Was this letter the summons
to the something more and something different?
Was the postman to Abyssinia the expected messen-
ger? The miracle of that morning predisposed him to
think so.


52
THE SUMMONS
He sat thus for an hour, and then stepping daintily,
with timid eyes alert, a tall reed-buck and his doe
came through the glade towards the water. But they
did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass.
Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered,
taway and yellow, and dappled-brown, and stood and
fed until--perhaps a signal was given, perhaps a known
moment had come all like soldiers at a command,
moved down to the water's edge.
Six nights later Hillyard camped at Lueisa, near to
that big tree under which it is not wise to spread
your bed. He took his bath at ten o'clock at night
under the moon, and the water from the river was
hot. He stretched himself out in his bed and waked
again that night after the moon had set, to fix indelibly
in his memory the blazing dome of stars above his
head, and the Southern Cross burning in a corner of
the sky. The long, wonderful holiday was ended.
To-morrow night he would sleep in a house. Would
he ever come this way again ?
In the dark of the morning he struck westwards
from the Dinder, across a most tedious neck of land,
for Senga and the Blue Nile.
CHAPTER VI
THE HONORARY MEMBER
AT six o'clock in the evening Colin Rayne, a young
civilian in the Sudan Service, heard, as he sat on the
balcony of the mess at Senga, the rhythmical thud of
camels swinging in to their rest in the freshness of the
night air.
" There's our man," he exclaimed, and running
downstairs, he reached the door just as Hillyard's
twelve camels and his donkeys trooped into the light.
Hillyard was riding bare-headed, with his helmet
looped to his saddle, a young man, worn thin by sun
and exercise, with fair burnt hair, and a brown clear-


THE HONORARY MEMBER
53
shaven face. Colin Rayne went up to him as he
dismounted.
“Captain Luttrell asked me to look after you. He
has got some work on hand for the moment. We'll
see after your affs.”.
“ Thank you."
“You might show me, by the way, where your
cartridges are.”
Hillyard selected the camel on which they were
packed and Rayne called a Sudanese sergeant to take
them into the mess.
“Now we will go upstairs. I expect that you can
do with a whisky-and-soda,” he said.
Hillyard was presented to a Doctor Mayle, who was
conducting a special research into the cause of an
obscure fever; and to the other officers of this head-
quarters of a Province. They were all young, Hill-
yard himself was older than any of them.
Oh, we have got some married ones, too,” said
Rayne, “but they live in houses of their own like
gentlefolk.”
“There are some Englishwomen here then ? " said
Hillyard, and for an appreciable moment there was
silence. Then a shortish, square man, with a heavy
moustache explained, if explanation it could be called.
No. They were sent off to Senaar this morning
--to be out of the way. Wiser."
Hillyard asked no questions but drank his whisky-
and-soda.
“ I haven't seen Luttrell since we were at Oxford
together," he said.
And it's by an accident that you see him now,'
said Rayne. “The Governor of Senga was thrown
from his horse and killed on the spot down by the
bridge there six weeks ago. The road gave way
suddenly under his horse's hoofs. Some one was
wanted here immediately."
“Yes, there's no doubt of that," said Mr. Blacker,
the short square man, with emphasis.


54
THE SUMMONS
Captain Luttrell had done very well in Kordofan,"
Rayne resumed." He was fetched up here in a
hurry as Acting-Governor. But no doubt the appoint-
ment will be confirmed."
Mr. Blacker added another croak.
"Oh, it'll be confirmed all right, if- and he left
his sentence in the air ; but his gesture finished it.
“If there is any Luttrell left to confirm," Martin
Hillyard interpreted, though he kept his interpretation
to himself.
There certainly was in that room with the big
balcony, a grim expectation of trouble. It was
apparent, not so much in words as in an attention to
distant noises, and a kind of strained silence. The
sound of a second caravan was heard. It was coming
from the north. Rayne ran to the rail of the balcony
and looked anxiously out. The street here was very
broad and the huts upon the opposite side already
dark except at one point, where an unshaded kerosene
lamp cast through an open door a panel of glaring
light upon the darkness. Rayne saw the caravan
emerge spectrally into the light and disappear again.
“They are our beasts," he said in a voice of relief,
and a minute later he called down to the soldier in
charge. He spoke in the Dinka language and the
soldier replied in the same tongue. Hillyard under-
stood enough of it now to learn that the women had
arrived safely at Senaar without any incident or
annoyance.
That's good," said Colin Rayne. He turned to
Hillyard. “Luttrell's a long time. Shall we go and
find him?
Both Blacker and Dr. Mayle looked up
with surprise,
but Hillyard had risen quickly, and they raised no
objection. Rayne walked down the stairs first and
led the way towards the rear of the building across an
open stretch of ground. The moon had not yet risen,
and it was pitch dark so that Hillyard had not an idea
whither he was being led. Colin Rayne stopped at a


THE HONORARY MEMBER
55
small, low door in a high big wall and knocked. A
heavy key grated in a lock and the door was opened
by a soldier. Hillyard found himself standing inside
a big compound, in the midst of which stood some
bulky, whitish erection, from which a light gleamed.
Colin Rayne led the way towards the light. It was
shining through the doorway of a chamber of new
wood planks with a flat roof and some strange, dimly-
seen superstructure. Hillyard looked through the door-
way and saw a curious scene. Two Sudanese soldiers
were present, one of whom carried the lantern. The other,
a gigantic creature with a skin like polished mahogany,
was stripped to the waist and held poised in his hands a
huge wooden mallet with along handle. Hestoodmeasur.
ing his distance from the stem of a young tree which was
wedged tightly between a small square of stone on the
ground and the flat roof above. Standing apart, and
watching everything with quiet eyes was Harry Luttrell.
Even at this first glance in the wavering light of the
lantern Hillyard realised that a change had come in
the aspect of his friend. It was not a look of age, but
authority clothed him as with a garment. Rayne and
Hillyard passed into the chamber. Luttrell turned
his head and welcomed Hillyard with a smile. But
he did not move and immediately afterwards he raised
his face to the roof.
" Are you ready up there ? "
An English voice replied through the planks.
“Yes, sir," and immediately afterwards a dull and
heavy weight like a full sack was dumped upon the
platform above their heads.
Good !"
Luttrell turned towards the giant.
Are you ready? And you know the signal ? '
The Sudanese soldier grinned in delighted anticipa-
tion, with a flash of big white teeth, and took a firmer
grip of his mallet and swung it over his shoulder.
Good. Now pay attention," said Luttrell,
that all may be well and seemly done."
SO


56
THE SUMMONS
4
The Sudanese fixed his eyes upon Luttrell's foot and
Luttrell began to talk, rapidly and rather to himself
than to his audience. Hillyard could make neither
head nor tail of the strange scene. It was evident
that Luttrell was rehearsing a speech, but why? And
what had the Sudanese with the mallet to do with it ?
A sudden and rapid sequence of events brought
the truth home to him with a shock. At a point of his
speech Luttrell stamped twice, and the Sudanese
soldier swung his mallet with all his force. The head
of it struck the great support full and square. The
beam jumped from its position, hopped once on its
end, and fell with a crash. And from above there
mingled with the crash a most horrid clang, for, with
the removal of the beam, two trap-doors swung down-
wards. Hillyard looked up; he saw the stars, and
something falling. Instinctively he stepped back and
shut his eyes. When he looked again, within the
chamber, midway between floor and roof, two sacks
dangling at the end of two ropes spun and jerkedmas
though they lived.
Rayne had stepped back and stood quivering from
head to foot by Hillyard's side; Hillyard himself
felt sick. He knew very well now what he was witness-
ing-the rehearsal of an execution. The Sudanese
soldiers were grinning from ear to ear with delight and
pride. The one person quite unmoved was Harry
Luttrell, whose ingenuity had invented the device.
“Let it be done just so," he said to the soldiers. “I
shall not forgive a mistake.'
They saluted, and he dismissed them and turned at
last to Martin Hillyard.
" It's good to see you again," he said, as he shook
hands; and then he looked sharply into Hillyard's
face and laughed. “ Shook you up a bit, that per-
formance, eh? Well, they bungled things in Khartum
a little while ago. I can't afford awkwardness here."
Senga was in the centre of that old Khalifa's tribe
which not so many years ago ruled in Omdurman. It


THE HONORARY MEMBER
57
was always restless, always on the look-out for a
Messiah.
“Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell,
especially when they don't come. The tribe began
sharpening its spearheads a few weeks ago. Then
two of them got excited and killed. That's the
consequence,” and he jerked his head towards the com-
pound, from which the two friends were walking away.
Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour
later as they all sat at dinner in the mess-room. There
were thousands of the tribe, all in a ferment, and just
half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's
command to keep them in order.
“ Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and
that we shall get scuppered," said Luttrell. He was
the one light-hearted man at that table, though he
was staking his career, his life, and the life of the
colony on the correctness of his judgment. Sir
Charles Hardiman would never have recognised in
the man who now sat at the head of the mess table
the young man who had been so torn by this and that
discrimination in the cabin of his yacht at Stock-
holm. There was something of the joyous savage
about him now-a type which England was to discover
shortly in some strength amongst the young men who
were to officer its armies.
“I don't agree.
I have invited the chiefs to see
justice done. I am going to pitch them a speech
myself from the scaffold-cautionary tales for children,
don't
you
know-and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the
mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, every-
thing will go like clockwork."
Hillyard wondered how in the world he was going
to deliver Stella Croyle's message-a flimsy thing of
delicate sentimentality to this man concerned with
life and death, and discharging his responsibilities
according to the just rules of his race, without fear and
without too much self-questioning. Indeed, the Lut-
trell, Acting-Governor of Senga, was a more familiar


58
THE SUMMONS
figure to Hillyard than he would have been to Stella
Croyle. For he had shaken off, under the pressure of
immediate work and immediate decisions, the thin
and subtle emotions which were having their way with
him two years before He had recaptured the high
spirit of Oxford days, and was lit along his path by
that clear flame.
But there were tact and discretion too, as Hillyard
was to learn. For Mr. Blacker still croaked at the
other end of the table.
It's right and just and all that of course. But you
are taking too high a risk, Luttrell."
The very silence at the table made it clear to Hill-
yard that Luttrell stood alone in his judgment. But
Luttrell only smiled and said:
"Well, old man, since I disagree, the only course
is to refer the whole problem to our honorary member.”
And at once every countenance lightened, and merri-
ment began to flick and dance from one to other of that
company like the beads on the surface of champagne.
Only Hillyard was mystified.
“Your honorary member!” he inquired.
Luttrell nodded solemnly, and raised his glass.
“Gentlemen, the Honorary Member of the Senga
Mess—Sir Chichester Splay."
The toast was drunk with enthusiasm by all but
Hillyard, who sat staring about him and wondering
what in the world the Mæcenas of the First Nights had
in common with these youthful administrators far-
flung to the Equator.
" You don't drink, Martin," cried Luttrell. A
Socialist at a Public Dinner who refused to honour the
Royal Toast could only have scandalised the chair-
man by a few degrees more than Hillyard's indifference
did now.
I beg your pardon,” said Hillyard with humility.
I repair my error now. It was due to amazement."
Amazement !” Colin Rayne repeated, as Hillyard
drained his glass.


THE HONORARY MEMBER
59
• Yes.
For I know the man.”
There was the silence that follows some stupendous
happening; eyes were riveted upon Hillyard in
admiration; and then the silence burst.
“ He knows him !
“It's incredible !"
“Actually knows him!"
And suddenly above the din Blacker's voice rose
warningly.
“Don't let's lose our heads! That's the great
thing! Let us keep as calm as we can and think out
our questions very carefully lest the Heaven-sent
Bearer of Great Tidings should depart without
revealing all he knows."
Chairs were hitched a little closer about Hillyard.
The care which had brooded in that room was quite
dispelled.
Have some more port, sir,” said the youngest of
that gathering, eagerly pushing across the bottle.
Hillyard filled his glass. Port was his, and prestige
too. He might write a successful play. That was all
very well. He might go shooting for eight months
alone by the two Niles and the Dinder. That was all
very well too. He was welcome at the Senga Mess.
But he knew Sir Chichester Splay! He acquired in
an instant the importance of a prodigy.
“ But, since he is an honorary member of your mess,
you must know him too,” cried Hillyard. “He must
have come this way."
My dear Martin!” Luttrell expostulated, as one
upbraiding a child. " Sir Chichester Splay out of
London! The thing's inconceivable!”
“ Inconceivable! Why, he lives in the country.”
A moment of consternation stilled all voices. Then
the Doctor spoke in a whisper.
Is it possible that we are all wrong ?
“ He lives at Rackham Park, in Sussex.”
Mr. Blacker fell back in relief.
" I know the house. He is a new resident. It le


60
THE SUMMONS
near to Chichester. He went there on the Homco-
pathic principle.”
The conjecture was actually true. Sir Chichester
Splay, spurred by his ambition to be a country gentle-
man with a foot in town, had chosen the neighbour-
hood on account of his name, so that it might come to
be believed that he had a territorial connection.
“Describe him to us,” they all cried, and, when
Hillyard had finished:
Well, he might be like that,” Luttrell conceded.
It was not our idea."
"No," said Colin Rayne. “ You will remember I
always differed from all of you, but it seems that I am
wrong too. I pictured him as a tall, melancholy man,
with a conical bald head and with a habit of plucking
at a black straggling beard-something like the
portraits of Tennyson.'
To me,” said Luttrell, "he was always fat and
fussy, with white spats.
But why are you interested in him at all ? ” cried
Hillyard.
“'We will explain the affair to you on the balcony,”
answered Luttrell, as he rose.
They moved into the dark and coolness of this
spacious place, and, stretching themselves in comfort
on the long cane chairs, they explained to Hillyard
this great mystery. Rayne began the tale.
You see, we don't get a mail here so very often.
Consequently we pay attention when it comes. We
read the Searchlight, for instance, with care.”
Mr. Blacker snatched the narrative away at this
point.
And Sir Chichester Splay occurs in most issues
and in many columns. At first we merely noticed
him. Some one would say, 'Oh, here's old Splay
again,' as if it seems incredible now—the matter was
of no importance. It needed Luttrell to discover the
real significance of Sir Chichester, the man's unique
and astounding quality."


THE HONORARY MEMBER
61
Harry Luttrell interrupted now.
“ Yes, it was I,” he said with pride. “Sir Chichester
one day was seen at a Flower Show in Chelsea. On
another he attended the first performance of a play.
On a third day he honoured the Private View of an
Exhibition of Pictures. On a fourth he sat amongst
the Distinguished Strangers in the Gallery of the
House of Commons. But that was all! This is what
I alone perceived. Always that was all !”
Luttrell leaned back and relit his cigar.
“When other people come to be mentioned in the
newspapers day after day, sooner or later some infor-
mation about them slips out, some characteristic thing.
If you don't get to know their appearance, you learn
at all events their professions, their opinions. But
of Sir Chichester Splay-never anything at all. Yet
he is there always, nothing can happen without his
presence, a man without a shadow, a being without
a history. To me, a simple soldier, he is admirable
beyond words. For he has achieved the inconceiv-
able. He combines absolute privacy of life with a
world-wide notoriety. He may be a stamp-collector.
Do I know that ? No. Al I know is that if there
were an Exhibition of Stamp Collections, he would be
the first to pass the door.' Luttrell rose from his
chair.
Therefore," he added in conclusion,“ Sir Chichester
is of great value to us at Senga. We elected him to
the mess with every formality, and some day, when we
have leisure, we shall send a deputation up the Nile
to shoot a Mrs. Grey's Antelope to decorate Rackham
Park." He turned to Killyard. We have a few
yards to walk, and it is time.
The two friends walked down the stairs and turned
along the road, Hillyard still debating what was, after
all, the value of Sir Chichester Splay to the Senga
mess. It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not
wished for further questions on the balcony, but, noe
that the two were alone, he asked :


62
THE SUMMONS
il
“I don't see it," he said ; and Luttrell stopped
abruptly and turned to him.
“Don't you, Martin ?” he asked gently. All the
merriment had gone from his face and voice. If
you
were with us for a week you would. It's just the
value of a little familiar joke always on tap. Here are
a handful of us. We eat together, morning, noon,
and night ; we work together; we play polo together
We can never get away from each other. And in
consequence we get on each other's nerves, especially
in the months of hot weather. Ill-temper comes to
the top. We quarrel. Irreparable things might be
said. That's where Sir Chichester Splay comes in.
When the quarrel's getting bitter, we refer it to his
arbitration. And since he has no opinions, we laugh
and are saved." Luttrell resumed his walk to the
Governor's house.
* Yes, I see now," said Hillyard.
" You had an instance to-night," Luttrell added, as
they went in at the door. It's a serious matter the
order of a Province and a great many lives, and the
cost of troops from Khartum, and the careers of all
of us are at stake. I think that I am right, and it is
for me to say. They disagree. Yes, Sir Chichester
Splay saved us to-night, and "-a smile suddenly
broke upon his serious face--" I really should like to
meet him.
I will arrange it when we are both in London,"
Hillyard returned.
He did not forget that promise. But he was often
afterwards to recall this moment when he made it
the silent hall, the door open upon the hot, still night,
the moon just beginning to gild the dark sky, and the
two men standing together, neither with a suspicion
of the life-long consequences which were to spring from
the casual suggestion and the careless assent.
You are over there," said Luttrell
, pointing to the
other side of the hall. He turned towards his own
quarters, but a question from Hillyard arrested him.
66


THE HONORARY MEMBER
63
" What about that message for me?”
“I know nothing about it," Luttrell answered,
" beyond what I wrote. The telegram came from
Khartum. No doubt they can tell you more at
Government House. Good night !"
CHAPTER VII
IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Just outside Senga to the north, in open country,
stands a great walled zareba, and the space enclosed
is the nearest approach to the Garden of Eden which
this wicked world can produce. The Zoological
Gardens of Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages
from Senga. But there are no cages at Senga, and
only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain
round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the
elephant, the wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and
feed and sleep together. Nor do they trouble, after
three days' residence in that pleasant sanctuary,
about man-except that specimen of man who brings
them food.
All day long you may see, towering above the wall
close to the little wooden door, the long necks and
slim heads of giraffes looking towards the city and
wondering what in the world is the matter with the
men to-day, and why they don't come along with the
buns and sugar.
Once within the zareba, once you
have pushed your way between the giraffes and got
their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have
really only to be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing
delicately around you with his little wicked red eye
blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-
assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close
behind you. If he succeeds he will land you one.
And one is enough.
Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hill-
yard on the next morning. Luttrell had an hour free,


64
THE SUMMONS
and the zareba was the one spectacle in Senga. He
kicked the honey-badger's tub in his little reed-house
and brought out that angry animal to the length of
his strong chain and to within an inch of his own
calves.
Charming little beast, isn't he ? See the buffalo
in the middle ? The little elephant came in a week
ago from just south of the Khor Galagu. You had
something private to say to me? Now's your time.
Mind the ostrich, that's all. He looks a little ruffled.'
They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes
had fallen in behind and were following them, and
level with them, on Hillyard's side, the ostrich stepped
like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found
it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella
Croyle's message. But he would have delivered it
awkwardly in any case. He had seen enough of Harry
Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now
rolled between those two.
“On the first night of my play,‘The Dark Tower,'
he began, and suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell
back.
“Yes !” said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich
indifferently. “That animal's a brute, isn't he?”
He took a threatening step towards it, and the
ostrich sidled away as if it really didn't matter to him
where he took his morning walk.
“ Yes ? " Luttrell repeated.
“I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles
Hardiman."
“Oh ? "
Luttrell's voice was careless enough. But his eyes
went watchfully to Hillyard's face, and he seemed to
shut suddenly all expression out of his own.
“ Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours."
Luttrell nodded.
“Mrs. Croyle ?
Yes."
She was well 2"


IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
65
66
" In health, yes!"
"I am very glad.” Unexpectedly some feeling of
relief had made itself audible in Luttrell's voice. It
would have troubled me if you had brought me any
other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled
me very much. I should not have been able to forget
it,” he said slowly.
"But she is unhappy.”
Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead con-
tracted, a look of trouble came into his face. Yet he
had an eye all the while for the movements of the
animals in the zareba. At last he halted, struck out
at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard
with a gesture of helplessness.
“But what can one do-except the single thing one
can't do ?”
She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet
you," answered Hillyard.
Luttrell's face hardened perceptibly.
"Let me hear it, Martin.
She said that she would like you to have news of
her, and that from time to time she would like to have
a little line from you."
That was all ?"
'Yes."
Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He
walked back with Hillyard to the door of the zareba,
and the ostrich bore them company, now on this side,
now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass
like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door
like beggars outside a restaurant. The two friends
walked back towards the town in an air shimmering
with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-
banks like so many ribands of molten steel. They
were close upon the house before Luttrell answered
Stella Croyle's message.
"All that," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a
man sweeping something behind him, "all that
happened in another age when I was another man."
с


66
THE SUMMONS
The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful.
He was not a man exasperated by a woman's unseason-
able importunity, but angry with the grim, hard, cruel
facts of life.
" It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile.
Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men-
Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever
go from Senga to the house in the Bayswater Road.
The traditions of his house and of his regiment had
Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages ? Martin
Hillyard might expect them, might indeed respond to
and obey them, and with advantage, just because they
came out of the blue. But the men of tradition, no!
The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their
fathers' houses before ever they were born.
At the door of the Governor's house Harry Luttrell
stopped
I expect you'll want to do some marketing, and I
shall be busy, and to-night we shall have the others
with us.
So I'll say now," and his face brightened
with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter
where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties,
"it has been really good to see you again."
Certain excellent memories were busy with them
both-Nuneham and Sandford Lasher and the Cherwell
under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell looked
out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous
days faded from his vision.
'I should like you to get away bukra bukra,
Martin," he said. Half-past one at the latest, to-
morrow morning. Can you manage it ?
Why, of course," answered Hillyard in surprise.
" You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you
were here. I think it'll go off all right, but since it's
no concern of yours, I would just as soon you were out
of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start at
half-past one you will be a good many miles away by
then."
He turned and went into the house and to his own


IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
67
work. Martin Hillyard walked down the road along
the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell had said
his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was
sure and was glad, though Stella's tear-stained face
would rise up between his eyes and the water of the
Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would come
home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry
amongst his own people; and a new generation of
Luttrells would hold their commissions in the Clay-
fords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.
But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the
morning, when he had bestridden his donkey and given
the order for his caravan to march, he was hailed by
Luttrell's voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down
in his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.
Good luck," he said, and he patted the donkey's
neck. " Good luck, old man. We'll meet in England
some time.”
“Yes,” said Hillyard.
It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell
had risen, after wishing him good-bye the night before.
So he waited.
Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey's neck.
“You'll remember me to our honorary member,
won't you?
“ Yes."
“ Don't forget.”
“I won't."
Nor was ,it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard
still waited, and at last the words came, jerkily.
"One thing you said yesterday. .
I was very
glad to hear it. That Stella was well—quite well.
You meant that, didn't you ? It's the truth?”
“Yes, it's the truth.'
Thank you ..
I was a little afraid ... thank
))
.
you!”
He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hül-
yard rode forward on the long and dreary stage to the
one camping ground between Senga and Senaar.


68
THE SUMMONS
For a little while he wondered at this insistence of
Harry Luttrell upon the physical health of Stella
Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But when the
dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs.
The message delivered to him in the forest of the River
Dinder! It might mean nothing. It was the part
of prudence to make light of his hopes and conjectures.
But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was
alone. This was the Summons, the great Summons
for which, without his knowledge, the experiences of
his life, detail by detail, had builded him.
CHAPTER VIII
HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
At Khartum, however, disappointment awaited him.
He was received without excitement by a young aide-
de-camp at the Palace.
“I heard that you had come in last night. A good
trip? Dine with me to-night and you shall show me
your heads. The Governor-General's in England.'
There's a telegram."
Oh
yes.
It came up
to us from Cairo. Some one
wanted to know where you were. They'll know about
it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you know," said
the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired
his heads, arranged for his sleeping compartment, and
assured him that the execution had gone off very
nicely” at Senga.
“ Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop
worked as well as anything in Pentonville, and every
one went home cheered up and comfortable. Luttrell's
a good man."
Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Halfa in a
chastened mood. Obviously the message was of very
little, if indeed of any, importance. A mari can hardly
swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to
sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity.


NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
69
He was not aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed
aside some pressing work to make sure that he did go
on the train; or that when the last carriage disappeared
towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried,
"Well, that's that,” like a man who has discharged
one task at all events of the many left to his super-
vision.
One consequence of Hillyard's new humility was
that he now loitered on his journey. He stayed a few
days at Assouan and yet another few in Luxor, in spite
of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June
when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the
Government had moved to Alexandria. Hillyard was
in two minds whether to go straight home, but in the
end he wandered down to the summer seat of govern-
ment.
If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast,
Alexandria was chillier. It was civil and polite to
Hillyard and made him a member of the Cluh. But it
was concerned with the government of Egypt, and
gently allowed Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had
at all events stated “There is a cablegram.” At
Alexandria the statement became a question; " Is
there a cablegram ? " In the end a weary and in-
different gentleman unearthed it. He did not show
it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over
the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.
“ Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking
about. It is for us, you know”-this with a patient
smile as Hillyard's impatient hand reached out for it.
Do you know a man called Bendish-Paul Bendish ?"
“ Bendish ?” cried Hillyard. “He was my tutor
at Oxford.”
Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish
has a friend who needs your help in London.”
Hillyard stared.
Do
you mean to say that I was sent for from the
borders of Abyssinia because Bendish has a friend in
London who wants my help?”
“


70
THE SUMMONS
The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.
It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? But I do
hope that you didn't cut your expedition short on that
account.” He looked remorsefully into Hillyard's
face. “In any case, the rainy season was coming on,
wasn't it?
“Yes, my expedition was really ended when the
message reached me," Hillyard was forced to admit.
“ That's good," said the indifferent gentleman,
brightening “You will see Bendish, of course, in
England. By what ship do you sail ? It's not very
pleasant here, is it?"
“I shall sail on the Himalaya in a week's time."
Right!" said the official, and he nodded farewell
and dipped his nose once more into his papers.
Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he
looked the fool he felt himself to be. But at the door
he turned in a sort of exasperation.
"Can't you tell me at all why Bendish's friend wants
my help?” he asked.
It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman
bad the inspiration of his life.
“I haven't an idea, Mr. Hillyard,” he replied.
Perhaps he has got into difficulties in the writing of
a revue.
The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room
without another word. He stood outside the door
purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard neither
overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged
away from the buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder
River in order to be told that he was a writer of revues.
No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.
Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards
the outer door, but not so fast but that a youth passed
him with a sheet of paper in his hand. The youth went
into the room where Government cablegrams were
coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand
was inscribed with a message that Martin Hillyard
would leave Alexandria in a week's time on the


NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
71
It was
5.5. Himalaya. And the message strangely enough
was not addressed to Paul Bendish at all.
headed, " For Commodore Graham. Admiralty.” The
great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard
knew it not.
He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He
started from Alexandria after half the month of June
had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of Biscay on that
historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia
Duchess of Hohenberg, were murdered in the streets
of Serajevo. London, when he reached it, was a choir
of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of
one. It was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often
over the port wine, should really be bursting at last.
Mediation will find a way. Not this time; the moment
has been chosen. And what will England do ? Ride
safe in the calm centre of the hurricane ? No ship
ever did, and England won't.
A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and
cried that all was over-they knew.
Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid
and two generations back a German, held forth in the
hall of Hillyard's club.
"German organisation, German thoroughness and
German brains-we are no match for them. The
country's thick with spies—wonderful men. Where
shall we find their equals ? "
A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a
chair by Hillyard's side.
“You take no part in these discussions ? The
crackling of thorns--what?"
"I have been a long time away."
Thought so,” continued the sailor. “A man was
inquiring for you yesterday—a man of the name of
Graham."
Hillyard shook his head.
“I don't know him."
No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours


72
THE SUMMONS
Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days
in London, and the engrossing menace of those days
had quite thrust from his recollections the telegram
which had, as he thought, befooled him.
" The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish," he
said stiffly.
Think that was the name. Graham's the man I
am speaking of," and the sailor paused. Commodore
Graham," he added.
Hillyard's indignation ebbed away. What if he had
not been fooled ? The quenched hopes kindled again
in him. There was all this talk of war---alarums and
excursions as the stage-directions had it. Service !
Suddenly he realised that ever since he had left Senga,
a vague envy of Harry Luttrell had been springing up
in his heart. The ordered life of service--authority
on the one hand, the due execution of details on the
other ! Was it to that glorious end in this crisis that
all his life's experience had slowly been gathering ?
He looked keenly at his companion. Was it just by
chance that he had crossed the hall in the midst of all
this thistle-down discussion and dropped in the chair
by his side ?
But what could I do?"
He spoke aloud, but ne was putting the question to
himself. The sailor, however, answered it.
“ Ask Graham.”
He wrote an address upon a sheet of notepaper and
handed it to Hillyard. Then he looked at the clock
which marked ten minutes past three.
“ You will find him there now.”
The sailor went after his cap and left the club.
Hillyard read the address. It was a number in a little
street of the Adelphi, and as he read it, suspicion again
seized upon Hillyard. After all, why should a Commo-
dore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi,
Perhaps, after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria
was right and the Commodore had ambitions in the
line of revues !
)


NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
73
"I had better go and have it out with him," he
decided, and, taking his hat and stick, he walked
eastwards to Charing Cross. He turned into a short
street. At the bottom a stone arch showed where
once the Thames had lapped. Now, beyond its grey-
white curve, were glimpses of green lawns and the
cries of children at their play. Hillyard stopped at
a house by the side of the arch. A row of brass plates
confronted him, but the name of Commodore Graham
was engraved on none of them. Hillyard rang the
housekeeper's bell and inquired.
“On the top floor on the left,” he was told.
He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top
of each his heart sank a little lower. When the stairs
ended he confronted a mean, brown-varnished door ;
and he almost turned and fled. After all, the monstrous
thing looked possible. He stood upon the threshold
of a set of chambers. Was he really to be asked to
collaborate in a revue ? He rang the bell, and a young
woman opened the door and barred the way.
“Whom do you wish to see ?" she asked.
“ Commodore Graham."
“Commodore Graham ? " she repeated with an air
of perplexity, as though this was the first time she had
ever heard the name.
Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad
room, where three other girls sat at desks, and against
one wall stood a great bureau with many tiny drawers
like pigeon-holes. Several of these drawers stood open
and disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed
against each other. Hillyard's hopes revived. Not
for nothing had he sat from seven to ten in the office
of a shipping agent at Alicante. Here was a card-
index, and of an amazing volume. But his inter-
locutor still barred the way.
"Have you an appointment with Commodore
Graham ? " she asked, still with that suggestion that
he had lunched too well and had lost his way.
“No. But he sent for me across half the world."


74
THE SUMMONS
The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.
" Will you write your name here ?"
She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips
of paper on a table in the middle of the room. Hill-
yard obeyed, and waited, and in a few moments she
returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-
room and knocked again. Hillyard entered a room
which surprised him, so greatly did its size and the
wide outlook from its windows contrast with the dingi-
ness of its approach. A thin man with the face of
a French abbé sat indolently twiddling his thumbs by
the side of a big bureau.
• You wanted to see me?'
“ Mr. Hillyard ?”
'Yes.”
Commodore Graham nodded to the girl, and Hillyard
heard the door close behind him.
“Won't you sit down ? There are cigarettes beside
you. A match ? Here is one. I hope that I didn't
bring you home before your time."
The season had ended,” replied Hillyard, who was
in no mood to commit himself. “In what way can I
help you ?”
10
“Spain
Bendish tells me that you know something of
Spain."
Spain?" cried Hillyard in surprise.
means Madrid, Bilbao, and a host of places, and a
host of people, politicians, merchants, farmers. What
should I know of them ?
“ You were in Spain for some years.
“Three," replied Hillyard, “and for most of the
three years picking up a living along the quays.
Oh,
it's not so difficult in Spain, especially in summer
time. Looking after a felucca while the crew drank
in a café, holding on to a dinghy from a yacht and
helping the ladies to step out, a little fishing here,
smuggling a box of cigars past the customs officer
there--oh, t wasn't so difficult. You can sleep out
in comfort. I used to enjoy it. There was a coil of


NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
75
rope on the quay at Tarragona ; it made a fine bed.
Lord, I can feel it now, all round me as I curled up in
it, and the stars overhead, seen out of a barrel, so to
speak!”
Hillyard's face changed. He had the spark of the
true wanderer within him. Even recollections of days
long gone could blow it into clear, red flame. All the
long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-
side, the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue
under the sun, the coming of night and the sudden
twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above Almeria
and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the
warm sea at midnight, the glorious evenings at water-
side cafés when he had half a dozen coppers in his
pocket; the good nature of the people! All these
recollections swept back on him in a rush. The actual
hardships, the hunger, the biting winds of January
under a steel-cold sky, these things were all forgotten.
He remembered the freedom.
“There weren't any hours to the day,” he cried,
and spoke the creed of all the wanderers in the
world. “I saw the finest bull-fights in the world,
and made money out of them by selling dulces and
membrilla and almond rock from Alicante. Oh, the
life wasn't so bad. But it came to an end. A shipping
agent at Alicante used me as a messenger, and finally,
since I knew English and no one else in his office did,
turned me into a shipping clerk.”
Hillyard had quite forgotten Commodore Graham,
who sat patiently twiddling his thumbs throughout
the autobiography, and now came with something of
a start to a recognition of where he sat. He sprang
up and reached for his hat.
So, you see, you might as well ask a Chinaman
at Stepney what he knows of England as ask me
what I know of Spain. I am just wasting your time.
But I have to thank you,” and he bowed with a winning
pleasantness, "for reviving in me some very happy
recollections which were growing dim.”


NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
77
Spain, and those eleven years not without their sharp
contrasts and full hours. Hillyard's act of memory
was the making of a picture. One by one he called
up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered.
Malaga, with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its
ancient castle and bright blue-painted houses glowing
against the brown and barren hills ; Aguilas, with its
islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms;
Valencia--and under the trees and on the quays, the
boatmen and the captains and the resplendent officials
whom he had known! They took shape before him
and assumed their names. He dived amongst them
for one José Medina.
“Yes,” he replied at last, “ there was a José Medina.
He was a young peasant of Mallorca. He always said
jo for yo.
Graham's eyes brightened and his lips twitched to
a smile. He glanced aside to his bureau, whereon lay
a letter written by Paul Bendish at Oxford.
"He probably has a larger acquaintance with the
queer birds of the Mediterranean ports than anyone
else in England. But he does not seem to be aware
of it. But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge
will trickle out."
Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning
José Medina began to trickle out. Jose's father had
left him, the result of a Spanish peasant's thrift, a
couple of thousand pesetas. With this José Medina
had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca,
with a native of Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so
that José Medina might fly the flag of Britain and
sleep more surely for its protection. At Gibraltar,
with what was left of his two thousand pesetas and
the credit which his manner gained him, he secured
a cargo of tobacco.
Gibraltar's a free port, you see," said Hillyard.
José ran the cargo along the coast to Benicassim, a
little watering-place with a good beach about thirty
kilometres east of Valencia. He ran the felucca


78
THE SUMMONS
now."
00
ashore one dark night.” Suddenly he stopped and
smiled to himself. I expect José Medina's in prison
“On the contrary," said Graham, “he's a mil-
lionaire."
Hillyard stared. Then he laughed.
Well, those were the two alternatives for José
Medina. But I am judging by one night's experience.
I never saw him again.'
Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell
by the leg of his bureau. The bell did not ring, but
displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk of his
secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly
ended when the girl was in the room and announced :
“ Admiral Carstairs."
Commodore Graham looked annoyed.
What a nuisance ! I am afraid that I must see
him, Mr. Hillyard.”
Of course,”
said Hillyard.
Admirals
admirals."
“And they know it!” said Commodore Graham
with a sigh.
Hillyard rose and took his hat.
“Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard,”
said Graham. “I can't say anything more to you
now. Things, as you know, are altogether very
doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On
the other hand," and he twiddled his thumbs serenely,
we may be at war in a month. If that were to be
the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will
you leave your address with Miss Chayne ?"
Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so
that he might not meet the impatient admiral. He
might have gone away disheartened from that inter-
view with its vague promises. But there are other
and often surer indications than words. When Miss
Chayne took down his address, her manner had quite
changed towards him. She had now a frank and
pleasant comradeship. The official had gone. Her
are


ENTER THE HEROINE
79
)
smile said as plainly as print could do :" You are with
us now.”
Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once
more the letter of Paul Bendish. He turned from that
to a cabled report from Khartum of the opinion which
various governors of districts had formed concerning
the ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then
once more he rang his bell.
“There was a list of suitable private yachts to be
made out," he said.
" It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought
it to him.
Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great
deal of time. In the end his finger rested on the name
of the steam-yacht Dragonfly, owned by Sir Charles
Hardiman, Baronet.
CHAPTER IX
ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN
GOODWOOD in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen!
There were some, throwers of stones, searchers after a
new thing on which to build a reputation, who have
been preaching these many years past that the temper
of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into
froth, and that a new race of neurotics was born on
Mafeking night. Just ninety-nine years before this
Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the veterans
of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of
Brussels, a famous ball was given, Goodwood of the
year nineteen-fourteen, mutatis mutandis, did but
repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment
of the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure
confidence under the great shadow, and the same
ending.
The whispered word went round so that there should
be no panic or alarm, and of a sudden every officer
was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen and a


80
THE SUMMONS
July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it
seemed some bird at last must break the silence of
the famed beech-grove! All the world went to it.
The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over
Duncton Hill and wound down the Midhurst road to
pleasant Charlton with its cottages and gardens of
flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.
As he walked away from Captain Graham's eyrie
he met Sir Chichester Splay in Pall Mall.
“ Where have you been these eight months ?"
inquired Sir Chichester. "The Dark Tower' is still
running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."
But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his
lips twitching to a smile.
“I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked
Sir Chichester. “You must stay with us for Good-
wood. My wife will never forgive me if I don't
secure you."
Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first
visit to the high racecourse on the downs--and-and
he might find Stella Croyle among the company. It
would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they
met this second time in a house of many visitors. He
had no comfortable news to give to her, and he had
shrunk from seeking her out in the Bayswater Road.
Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could
not but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear
of his return, and avoidance of her would but tell the
story more cruelly than his lips.
“Yes, I will gladly come," he said, “ if I may come
down on the first day.”
He was delayed in London until midday, and so
motored after luncheon through Guildford and Chid-
dingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The park
ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard
was shown into the drawing-room he walked across
to the window and looked out over a valley of fields
and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying
blue in the sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.


ENTER THE HEROINE
81
From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her
hand.
'Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am
Joan Whitworth, and make my home here with my
aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they
should be back at any moment."
She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere
Hillyard realised he had seen the girl before. She
was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very pretty,
with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark
blue eyes shaded with long dark lashes and a colour
of health abloom in her cheeks.
“ You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."
"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. “I have
been shooting for eight months."
Shooting !"
Joan Whitworth's eyes were turned on him in frank
disappointment. " The author of The Dark Tower
-shooting !”
There was more than disappointment in her voice.
There was a hint of disdain.
Hillyard did not pursue the argument.
“I knew that I had seen you before. I remember
where now. You were with Sir Chichester at the
first performance of “The Dark Tower.' I peeped
out behind the curtain of my box and saw you."
Joan's face relaxed.
"Oh, yes, I was there."
But-” Hillyard began, and caught himself up.
He had been on the point of saying that she had a very
different aspect in the stalls of the Rubicon Theatre.
But he looked her up and down and held his peace.
Yet what he did substitute left him in no better case.
“So you have not gone to the races,” he said, and
once more her lip curled in disdain. She drew herself
up to her full height-
she was not naturally small,
but a good honest piece of English maidenhood.
Do I look as if I were likely to go to the races ? "
she asked superbly.


82
THE SUMMONS
She was dressed in a sort of shapeless flowing gown,
saffron in colour, and of a material which, to Hillyard's
inexperienced eye, seemed canvas. It spread about
her on the ground, and it was high at the throat. A
broad starched white collar, like an Eton boy's, sur-
mounted it, and a little black tie was fastened in a
bow, and scarves floated untidily around her.
“ No, upon my word you do not," cried Hillyard,
nettled at last by her haughtiness, and with such a
fervour of agreement, that suddenly all her youth
rose into Joan Whitworth's face and got the better of
her pose. She laughed aloud, frankly, deliciously.
And her laugh was still rippling about the room when
motor-horns hooted upon the drive.
At once the laughter vanished.
“ We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she
observed with a sigh. “I can smell the stables
already," and she retired to her book in the embrasure
of the window.
A joyous and noisy company burst into the room.
Sir Chichester, with larger mother-of-pearl buttons on
his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever decorated even
a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard
up to Lady Splay.
“My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."
Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new
person had prepared Hillyard for a lady at once gush-
ing and talkative. He was surprised to find himself
shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of
distinct good looks. Hillyard was presented to
Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young couple two years
married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard's
age. Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with
a long, thin, brown face, and a straight, wide mouth
too close to a small pointed chin. Harold Jupp carried
about with him a very aura of horses. Horses were
his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and
perhaps, as a consequence, although he could give no
reasons for his judgments upon people those judg-


ENTER THE HEROINE
83
40
>>
ments as a rule were conspicuously sound. Jupp
shook hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student
at the window.
“ Well, Joan, how have you lived without us?
Aren't you bored with your large, beautiful self ?
Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance,
and crossed the room to Millie Splay.
Bored How could I be ? When I have so
many priceless wasted hours to make up for !"
Yes, yes, my dear," said Millie Splay soothingly.
" Come and have some tea.”
“ That's it, Joan,” cried Jupp, unrepressed by the
girl's contempt. Come and have tea with the
barbarians.”
Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one
condescending from Olympus.
“I hope you had a good day."
“Awful," Dennis Brown admitted. “ We ought to
have had five nice wins on form. But they weren't
trying, Joan. The way Camomile was pulled. I
expected to see his neck shut up like a concertina.”
Never mind, boys,” said Sir Chichester. “You'll
get it back before Friday."
Harold Jupp shook his head doubtfully.
Never sure about flat-racing. Jumping's the
only thing for the poor and honest backer.”
Joan Wentworth looked about her regretfully.
I understand now why you have all come back
so early.”
Miranda Brown ran impulsively to her. She was as
pretty as a picture, and spoke as a rule in a series of
charming explosions. At this moment she was deeply
wronged.
“Yes, Joan,” she cried. “They would go! And
I know that I have backed the winner for the last
race.”
Dennis Brown contemplated his wife with amaze-
ment.
"Miranda, you are crazy,” he cried. “He can't win.”


86
THE SUMMONS
1
NIC
QOL
A
Harold Jupp was sympathetic and consolatory.
Of course it's a mistake, Miranda. I am awfully
sorry! Chewing Gum ran nowhere to Earthly Para-
dise in the Newbury Stakes this year, and Earthly
Paradise, all out to win, was beaten a month ago by seven
lengths at Warwick, by Rollicking Lady. And Rol-
licking Lady was in this race too. So you see it's
impossible. Chewing Gum's a Plater."
Miranda wrung her hands.
..
“But, Harold, he did win; didn't he, Harper ?
There's no doubt about it, madam," replied the
butler with dignity. "I’av verified the hinformation
from other sources.”
He left the two experts blinking. Dennis was the
first to recover from the blow.
“What on earth made you back him, Miranda ?"
Miranda sailed to the side of Joan Whitworth.
" You are both of you so very unpleasant that I am
seriously inclined not to tell you. But I always back
horses with the names of things to eat.”
The two scientists were dumb. They stared open-
mouthed. Somewhere, it seemed, a religion tottered
upon its foundations. Sacrilege itself could hardly
have gone further than Miranda Brown had gone.
But-but,” Harold Jupp stammered feebly, “ you
don't eat chewing gum.
Miranda flattened him out with a question.
What becomes of it, then ? and there was no
But Miranda was not content with her
triumph. She must needs carry the war unwisely
into the enemy's camp.
After all, what in the world can have possessed
you, Dennis, to back a silly old mare like Barmaid?"
Dennis Brown saw his opportunity.
“ I always back horses with the names of things to
kiss,” he declared.
Jupp laughed aloud; Sir Chichester chuckled
Miranda looked as haughty as good-humour and a
dainty personality enabled her to do.
answer.


ENTER THE HEROINE
87
Vulgar, don't you think ? ” she asked of Joan.
' But racing men are vulgar. Oh, Joan! have you
thought out your book to-day? Can you now begin
to write it ? Will you write it in the window, with
the South Downs in front of your eyes ? Oh, it'll be
wonderful !”
“What ho!” cried Mr. Jupp. “ Miranda has
joined the highbrows."
Dennis Brown was too seriously occupied to waste
his time upon Miranda's enthusiasms.
“ It's a pity we can't get the evening papers," he
said gloomily. “I should dearly like to see the
London forecasts for to-morrow.'
“I brought some evening papers down with me,”
said Hillyard, and “ Did you ? » cried Sir Chichester,
and his eyes flashed with interest. But Harold Jupp
was already out of the room. He came back from the
hall with a bundle of newspapers in his hands, pink
and white and yellow and green. He carried them all
relentlessly past Sir Chichester to the table in the
window. Sir Chichester to a newspaper, was a needle
to a magnet ; and while Dennis Brown read out the
selections for the morrow's races of “ The Man of Iron
in the Evening Patriot, and “Hitchy Koo” in The
Lamppost, Sir Chichester edged nearer and nearer.
Lady Splay invited Hillyard to play croquet with
her in the garden ; and half-way through the game
Hillyard approached the question which troubled him.
“I was wondering whether I should meet Mrs.
Croyle here."
Millicent Splay drove her ball before she answered,
and missed her hoop.
" What a bore !" she cried. Now I shall have to
come back again. I didn't know that you had met
Stella.”
“ I met her only once. I liked her."
Millie Splay nodded.
“I am glad. There's always a room here for
Stella. I told her so immediately after I met her.


88
THE SUMMONS
!
wa
VA
and she took me at my word, as I meant her to do.
But she avoids Goodwood week and festivals generally,
and she is wise. For though I would take her any-
where myself, you know what long memories people
have for other people's sins.
There might be
humiliations."
“I understand that,” said Hillyard, and he added,
“I gathered from Mrs. Croyle that you had remained
a very staunch friend.”
Millie Splay shrugged her shoulders.
“I am a middle-aged woman with a middle-aged
woman's comprehension. There are heaps of things
I loathe more and more each day, meanness, for in-
stance, and an evil tongue. But, for the other sins,
more and more I see the case for compassion. Stella
was hungry of heart, and she let the hunger take her.
She had her blind, wild hour or two; she was a fool; she
was-well, everything the moralists choose to call her.
But she has been paying for her hour ever since, and
will go on paying. Now, if I can only hit your yellow
ball from here, I shall have rather a good game on."
Lady Splay succeeded and, carrying the four croquet
balls with her, went round the rest of the hoops and
pegged out.
I must go in and change," she said, and suddenly,
in a voice of melancholy, she cried, “Oh, I do wish-
and stopped.
What ?"
Oh, it doesn't matter," she answered. But her
eyes were upon the window, where Joan Whitworth
stood in full view in all her disfiguring panoply. Lady
Splay wrung her hands helplessly." Oh, dear, dear,
if she weren't so thorough!” she moaned.
When they returned into the drawing-room, Sir
Chichester was still standing near to Harold Jupp and
Dennis Brown, shifting from one foot to another, and
making little inarticulate sounds in his throat.
Haven't you two finished yet ? ” asked Millicent
Splay.


ENTER THE HEROINE
89
Just,” said Dennis Brown, rubbing his hands
together with a laugh, " and we ought to have four
nice wins to-morrow.”
“Good !” said Sir Chichester. “Then might I
have a newspaper ?”
But of course,” said Dennis Brown, and he handed
one over the table to him. “ You haven't been wait-
ing for it all this time, Sir Chichester ?”
" Oh no, no, no," exclaimed Sir Chichester, quickly.
He glanced with a swift and experienced eye down the
columns, and tossed the paper aside.
Might I have another ?
But of course, sir.”
The second paper was disposed of as rapidly as the
first, and the others followed in their turn.
Nothing in them,” said Sir Chichester with a re-
signed air. “Nothing in them at all."
Millie Splay laughed.
“ All that my husband means is that his name is
not to be found in any one of them.”
The occurrence seems so rare that he has no great
reason to complain," said Hillyard ; and, in order to
assuage any disappointment which might still be
rankling in the baronet's bosom, Hillyard related at
the dinner-table, with the necessary discretions, his
election to the mess at Senga.
Sir Chichester was elated. So far away my name
is known! Really, that is very pleasant hearing !”
There was no offence to him in the reason of his
honorary membership of the Senga mess, which,
however carefully Hillyard sought to hide it, could
not but peep out. Sir Chichester neither harboured
illusions himself as to his importance nor sought to
foster them in others. There was none of the How
do these things get into the papers ?" about him.
“I am not a public character. So I have to take
trouble to keep myself in print. And I do-a deuce
of a lot of trouble.".
“Now, why?” asked Harold Jupp, who possessed


go
THE SUMMONS
W
an inquiring mind and was never satisfied by anything
but the most definite statements.
“Because I like it," replied Sir Chichester. “I am
used to it, and I like it. Unless I see my name in
real print every morning, I have all day the uncom-
fortable sensation that I am not properly dressed."
Millie Splay and the others round the table, with
the exception of one person, laughed. To that one
person, Sir Chichester here turned good-humouredly :
"All right, you can turn your nose up, Joan. It
seems extraordinary to you that I should like to see
my name in print. I can tell you something more
extraordinary than that. The public likes it too.
Just because I am not a public character, every
reference to me must be of an exclusively personal
kind. And that's just the sort of reference which the
public eats. It is much more thrilled by the simple
announcement that a Sir Chichester Splay, of whom
it has never heard, has bought a new pair of purple
socks with white stripes than it would be by a full
account of a Cabinet crisis."
Once more the company laughed at Sir Chichester's
apology for his foible.
Lady Splay turned to Hillyard.
"And who is the ingenious man who discovered this
way of keeping the peace at Senga ?"
Hillyard suddenly hesitated.
"A great friend of mine," he answered with his
eyes on Millie Splay's face. “He was with me at
Oxford. A Captain Luttrell."
But it was clear almost at once that the name had
no associations in Lady Splay's mind. She preferred
to entertain her friends in the country than to live in
town She knew little of what gossip might run the
streets of London; and since Luttrell was, as yet,
like Sir Chichester, in that he was not a public charac-
ter, there had been no wide-run gossip about Stella
Croyle or himself which Millicent Splay was likely to
meet.


THE SUMMONS
gl
Hillyard thought at first, that with a woman's self-
control she turned a blank face to him of a set purpose.
But one little movement of hers reassured him. Her
eyes turned towards Joan Whitworth, as though
asking whether this Harry Luttrell was a match for
her, and she said :
“You must bring your friend down to see us, when
he comes back to England. We are almost acquainted
as it is."
No! Millicent Splay did not connect Harry Luttrell
with Stella Croyle. It would have been better if
Hillyard, that very night, had enlightened her. But
he was neither a gossip nor a meddler It was not
possible that he should.
CHAPTER X
THE SUMMONS
It is curious to recollect how smoothly the surface
water ran during that last week of peace. Debates
there were, of course, and much argument across the
table. It was recognised that great changes, social,
economic, military, would come and great adaptations
have to be made. But, meanwhile, to use the phrase
which was soon to be familiar in half a million mouths,
people carried on. The Brown couple, for instance.
Each morning they set out gaily, certain of three or
four nice wins; each evening they returned after a
day which was“ simply awful.” Harold Jupp was at
hand with his unfailing remedy.
“We'll go jumping in the winter and get it all back
easily. Flat racing's no good for the poor. The
Lords don't come jumping.
Joan Whitworth carried on too, in her sackcloth and
sashes. She was moved by the enthusiastic explosions
of Miranda Brown to reveal some details of the great
novel which was then in the process of incubation
“She insists on being married in a violet dress,"


92
THE SUMMONS
1
0.
I
4
12
said Joan, " with the organ playing the Funeral
March of a Marionette.'
"Oh, isn't that thrilling!” cried Miranda.
' But why does she insist upon these unusual
arrangements ? " asked Harold Jupp.
Joan brushed his question aside.
" It was symbolical of her."
“Yes. Linda would have done that,” said Miranda.
" I suppose her marriage turns out very unhappily ? ”
“ It had to,” said Joan, quite despondent over this
unalterable necessity.
“Now, why ? ” asked Jupp in a perplexity.
“ Her husband never understood her."
“ What ho !" cried Dennis Brown, looking up from
his scientific researches into “ Form at a Glance."
“I expect that he talked racing all day," said
Miranda.
Dennis Brown treated the rejoinder with contempt.
His eyes were fixed sympathetically on the young
writer-to-be.
"I hate crabbing any serious effort to elevate us,
Joan, but, honestly, doesn't it all sound a little con-
ventional ? "
He could have used no epithet more deplorable.
Joan shot at him one annihilating glance. Miranda
bubbled with indignation.
Don't notice them, Joan dear! They don't know
the meaning of words. They are ribald, uneducated
people. You call your heroine Linda ? Linda-
what?”
Mr. Jupp supplied a name.
* Linda Spavinsky," said he. She comes of the
ancient Scottish family of that name."
' Pig ! O pig !” cried Joan, routed at last from her
superior serenity; and a second afterwards her eyes
danced and with a flash of sound white teeth she
broke into honest laughter. She did her best to
suppress her sense of fun, but it would get the better
of her from time to time.


94
THE SUMMONS
Thus the little things of every day occupied the
foreground of Rackham Park. Millicent Splay had
her worries of which Joan Whitworth was the cause,
She loved Joan; she was annoyed with Joan; she
admired Joan; she was amused at Joan; and she
herself could never have told you which of these four
emotions had the upper hand. So inextricably were
they intermingled.
She poured them out to Martin Hillyard, as they
drove through the Park at Midhurst on the Thursday
morning.
" What do you think of Joan ?" she asked. She
is beautiful, isn't she, with that mass of golden hair
and her eyes ?”
“ Yes, she is," answered Hillyard.
"And what a fright she is making of herself! She
isn't dressed at all, is she? She is just-protected by
her clothes."
Hillyard laughed and Millicent Splay sighed. “And
I did hope she would have got over it all by Goodwood.
But no! Really I could slap her. But I might have
known! Joan never does things by halves.
“She seems thorough," said Hillyard, although he
remembered, with some doubts as to the truth of his
comment, moments now and again when more
primitive impulses had bubbled up in Joan Whitworth.
Thorough! Yes, that's the word. Oh, Mr. Hill-
yard, there was a time when she really dressed-dressed,
you understand. My word, she was thorough then,
too. I remember coming out of the Albert Hall on a
Melba afternoon, when we could get nothing but a
hansom cab, and a policeman actually had to lift her
up into it like a big baby because her skirt was so
tight. And look at her now!”
Millicent Splay thumped the side of the car in her
vexation.
“But you mustn't think she's a fool.” Lady Splay
turned menacingly on the silent Hillyard.
“But I don't," he protested.
66


THE SUMMONS
95
“That's the last thing to say about her."
“I never said it,” declared Martin Hillyard.
“I should have lost my faith in you, if you had,"
rejoined Millicent Splay, even now hardly mollified.
But she could not avoid the subject. Here was a
new-comer to Rackham Park. She could not bear that
he should carry away a wrong impression of her darling.
“I'll tell you the truth about Joan. She has lived
her sheltered life with us, and no real things have yet
come near her. No real troubles, no deep joys. Her
parents even died when she was too young to know
them. But she is eighteen and alive to her finger-tips.
Therefore she's-expectant."
“ Yes," Hillyard agreed.
" She is searching for the meaning, for the secrets of
life, sure that there is a meaning, sure that there are
secrets, if only she could get hold of them. But she
hasn't got hold of them. She runs here. She runs
there. She explores, she experiments. That's why
she's dressed like a tramp and thinking out a book
where the heroine gets married to the Funeral March
of a Marionette. Oh, my dear person, it just means,
as it always means with us poor creatures, that the
right man hasn't come along.'
Millie Splay leaned back in her seat.
" When he does!” she cried. “ When he does !
Did you see the magnolia this morning? It burst into
flower during the night. Joan! I thought once that
it might be Harold Jupp. But it isn't.
Lady Splay spoke with discouragement. She had
the match-making fever in her blood. Martin Hillyard
remembered her glance when he had casually spoken
of Harry Luttrell. Then she startled him with words
which he was never to forget, and in which he chose
to find a real profundity.
The right man has not come along. So Joan
mistakes anything odd for something great, and thinks
that to be unusual is to be strong. It's a mood of young
people who have not yet waked up."


96
THE SUMMONS
They drove to the private stand and walked through
into the paddock. Millie Splay looked round at the
gay and brilliant throng. She sighed.
There she is, moping in the drawing-room over
Prince Hohenstiel-whatever his name is. She won't
come to Goodwood. No, she just won't.”
Yet Joan Whitworth did come to Goodwood that
year, though not upon this day.
No one in that household had read the newspapers
so carefully each day as Martin Hillyard. As the
prospect darkened each morning, he was in a distress
lest a letter should not have been forwarded from his
flat in London, or should have been lost in the post.
Each evening when the party returned from the races
his first question asked whether there was no telegram
awaiting him. So regular and urgent were his in-
quiries that the house-party could not be ignorant of
his preoccupation. And on the afternoon of the
Thursday a telegram in its orange envelope was lying
upon the hall-table.
“ It's for you, Mr. Hillyard,” said Lady Splay.
Hillyard held it in his hands. So the summons had
come, the summons hoped for, despaired of, made so
often into a whip wherewith he lashed his arrogance,
the summons to serve.
" I shall have to go up to town this evening," he said.
Anxious faces gathered about him.
Oh, don't do that !” said Harold Jupp. We
have just got to like you."
“ Yes, wait until to-morrow, my dear boy," Sir
Chichester suggested. Even Joan Whitworth de-
scended to earth and requested that he should stay.
“ It's awfully kind of you," stammered Martin.
But I am afraid that this is very important."
Lady Splay was practical.
“ Hadn't you better see first ? ” she asked.
Hillyard, with his thoughts playing swiftly in the
future like a rapier, was still standing stock-still with
the unopened telegram in his hand.


THE SUMMONS
97
"Of course," he said. “But I know already what
it is."
The anxious little circle closed nearer as he tore open
the envelope. He read :
I have refused the Duke. Money is cash-I mean
trash. Little one I am yours.--LINDA SPAVINSKY."
The telegram had been sent that afternoon from
Chichester,
Hillyard gazed around at the serious faces which
hemmed him in. It became a contest as to whose
face should hold firm longest. Joan herself was the
first to flee, and she was found rocking to and fro in
silent laughter in a corner of the library. Then Hill-
yard himself burst into a roar.
“I bought that fairly,” he admitted, and he went
up several points in the estimation of them all.
The last day of the races came-all sunshine and hot
summer; lights and shadows chasing across the
downs, the biack slopes of Charlton Forest on the one
side, parks and green fields and old brown houses,
sloping to the silver Solent, upon the other ; and in
the centre of the plain, by Bosham water, the spire of
Chichester Cathedral piercing the golden air. Pad-
; dock and lawn and the stands were filled until about
two in the afternoon. Then the gaps began to show
to those who were concerned to watch. Especially
about the oval railings in the paddock, within which,
dainty as cats and with sleek shining skins, the race-
horses stepped, the crowd grew thin. And in a few
moments, the word had run round like fire, “The
officers had gone.”
Hillyard stood reflecting upon the stupendous fact.
Never had he so bitterly regretted that physical
disqualification which banned him from their company .
Never had he so envied Luttrell. He was in the
attermost depression when a small, brown-gloved hand
He turned and saw Joan Whitworth
touched his arm.
D


98
THE SUMMONS
at his side, her lovely face alive with excitement, her
eyes most friendly. It was hardly at all the Joan he
knew. Joan had courage, but to face Goodwood in
the clothes she affected at Rackham Park was beyond
it. From her grey silk stockings and suède shoes to
the little smart blue hat which sat so prettily on her
hair, she was, as Millicent Splay would have admitted,
really dressed.
“There is a real telegram for you,” she said. She
held it out to him enclosed in an envelope which had
been already opened.
“ Please come to see me-Graham," he read, and
the actual receipt of the message stirred within him
such a whirl of emotion that, for a moment or two,
Joan Whitworth spoke and he was not aware of it.
Suddenly, however, he understood that she was speak-
ing words of importance.
“I hope I did right to open it," she said. “ Colonel
Brockley rode over this morning to tell us that his
son had been recalled to his battalion by a telegram.
I knew you were expecting one. When this one came,
I thought that it might be important and that you
ought to have it at once. On the other hand it might
be another telegram," and her face dimpled into
smiles, "from Linda Spavinsky. I didn't know what
to do about it. But Mario Escobar was quite certain
that I ought to open it."
“Mario Escobar ?" cried Hillyard.
“Yes. He had just arrived. He was quite certain
that we ought to open it, so we did.”
We?" A note of regret in his voice made her
ask anxiously :
Was I wrong?
Hillyard hastened to reassure her.
“Not a bit. Of course you were quite right, and I
am very grateful.”
Joan's face cleared again.
“You see, I thought that if it was important J
could bring it over and drive you back again."


THE SUMMONS
99
“Will you ? ” Hillyard asked eagerly. "But now
you are here you ought to stay."
Joan would not hear of the proposal, and Hillyard
himself was in a fever to be off. They found Sir
Chichester and his wife in the paddock, and Hillyard
wished his hosts good-bye. Mario Escobar, who had
driven over with Joan Whitworth, was talking to
them. Escobar turned to Martin Hillyard.
We met at Sir Charles Hardiman's supper party.
You have not forgotten ? You are off? A new
play, I hope, to go into rehearsal."
He smiled and bowed, and waved his hands. Hill-
yard went away with Joan Whitworth and mounted
beside her into a little two-seated car which she had
been accustomed to drive in her unregenerate days.
She had not forgotten her skill, and she sent the little
car spinning up and down the road into the hills. It
was an afternoon of blue and gold, with the larks
singing out of sight in the sky. The road wound up
and down, dark hedges on one side, fields yellow with
young wheat upon the other, and the scent of the
briar-rose in the air. Joan said very little, and
Hillyard was content to watch her as she drove, the
curls blowing about her ears and her hands steady
and sure upon the wheel as she swung the car round
the corners and folds of the hills. Once she asked of
him :
“Are you glad to go ?”
He made no pretence of misunderstanding her.
Very,” he answered. If the great trial is com-
ing, I want to fall back into the rank and file. Pushing
and splashing is for peace times.”
“Oh, I understand that!” she cried.
These were the young days. The jealousies of
Departments, the intrigues to pull this man down and
put that man up, not because of his capacity or
failure, but because he fitted or did not fit the inner
politics of the Office, the capture of honours by the
stay-at-homes--all the little miseries and horrors that


100
THE SUMMONS
from time immemorial have disfigured the manage-
ment of wars—they lay in the future. With millions
of people, as with this couple speeding among the
uplands, the one thought was—the great test is at
hand.
"You go up to London to-night, and it may be a
long while before we see you,” said Joan. She brought
the car to a halt on the edge of Duncton Hill.
“Look
for luck and for memory at the Weald of Sussex," she
cried with a little catch in her throat.
Fields and great trees, and here and there the white
smoke of a passing train and beyond, the Blackdown
and the misty slopes of Leith Hill-Hillyard was never
to forget it, neither that scene nor the eager face and
shining eyes of Joan Whitworth against the blue and
gold of the summer afternoon.
You will remember that you have friends here,
who will be glad to hear news of you,” she said, and
she threw in the clutch and started the car down the
hill.
CHAPTER XI
STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
“You have been back in England long ?” asked
Stella Croyle.
“A little while," said Hillyard evasively.
It was the first week of September. But since his
return from Rackham Park to London his days had
been passed in the examination of files of documents;
and what little time he had enjoyed free from that
labour had been given to quiet preparations for his
departure.
You might have come to see me,” Stella Croyle
suggested. You knew that I wished to see you.”
Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered.
“I am going away."
Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.


STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
IOI
“ You too! You have joined up?"
Hillyard shook his head.
“No good,” he answered. “I told you my lungs
were my weak point. I am turned down--and I am
going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find oneself
staying on in London, going to a little dinner party
here and there where all the men are oldish, when all
of one's friends have gone.”
Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.
“Yes. I can understand that,” she said.
Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no
doubt that she was sincere. She had received him
with an air of grievance, and a hard accent in her
voice. But she was entering now into a compre-
hension of the regrets which must be troubling him.
“I am sorry," she continued. I never cared very
much for women. I have very few friends amongst
them. And so I am losing-every one." She held out
her hand to him in sympathy. “But if I were a man
and had been turned down by the doctors, I don't
think that I could stay. I should go like you and hide.”
She smiled and poured out two cups of tea.
“That is a habit of yours, even though you are not
a man," Hillyard replied.
What do you mean ? "
You run away and hide.”
Stella looked at her visitor in surprise.
“ Who told you that?"
“ Sir Charles Hardiman.”
Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.
“ Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly.
“When things go wrong, I become rather impossible.
I have often made up my mind to live entirely in the
country, but I never carry the plan out."
She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette
before she approached the question which was torturing
her.
“You had a good time in the Sudan !” she began.
Lots of heads ? "
<3


102
THE SUMMONS
“ Yes. I had a perfect time."
“And your friend ? Captain Luttrell. Did you
meet him ?
Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he
would give to her when she asked that question. If
he answered, “ Yes," --why, then he must go on, he
must tell her something of what passed between
Luttrell and himself, how he delivered his message
and what answer he received. Let him wrap that
answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she
would see straight to the answer. Her heart would
lead her there. To plead forgetfulness would be
merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she
would not believe him. So he lied.
No. I never met Luttrell. He was away down
in Khordofan when I was on the White Nile."
Stella Croyle had turned a little away from Hillyard
when she put the question; and she sat now with her
face averted for a long while. Nothing broke the
silence but the ticking of the clock.
“I am sorry," said Hillyard.
No doubt her disappointment was bitter. She had
counted very much, no doubt, on this chance of the
two men meeting ; on her message reaching her
lover, and a “ little word” now and again from him
coming to her hands. Some morning she would wake
up and find an envelope in the familiar writing waiting
upon the tray beside her tea--that, no doubt, had
been the hope which she had lived on this many a
day. Hillyard was not fool enough to hold that he
understood either the conclusions at which women
arrived, or the emotions by which they jumped to
them. But he attributed these hopes and thoughts
with some confidence to Stella Croyle-until she
turned and showed him her face. The sympathy and
gentleness had gone from it. She was white with
passion and her eyes blazed.
Why do you lie to me?" she cried. “I met
Harry this morning.”


STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
103
)
Hillyard was more startled by the news of Luttrell's
presence in London than confused by the detection of
his lie.
“ Harry Luttrell ! he exclaimed. You are sure ?
He is in England ?”
'Yes. I met him in Piccadilly outside Jerning-
ham's ”—she mentioned the great outfitters and
provision merchants," he told me that he had run
across you in the Sudan. What made you say that you
hadn't?”
Hillyard was taken at a loss.
“ Well ? ” she insisted.
Hillyard could see no escape except by the way of
absolute frankness.
“Because I gave him your message, Mrs. Croyle."
he replied slowly, “and I judged that he was not
going to answer it.'
Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world
was banded against her, to deceive her and to do her
harm. They had all been engaged, Hardiman and
the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from
her : in defending him, whether he wished it or not,
from the wiles of the enchantress. Stella Croyle was
quick enough in the up-take where her wounded heart
was not concerned, but she was never very clear in
any judgment which affected Harry Luttrell. Passion
and disappointment and hope drew veils between the
truth and her, and she dived below the plain reason
to this or that far-fetched notion for the springs of
his conduct. Almost she had persuaded herself that
Harry Luttrell, by the powerful influence of friends,
was being kept against his will from her side. Her
anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere
fact that he had lied to her, but from her fancy that
he had joined the imaginary band of her enemies. She
understood now that in this she had been wrong.
“I see,” she said gently. “It was to spare me
pain ?"
“ Yes."


104
THE SUMMONS
Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed-and with triumph.
She showed to Hillyard a face from which all the
anger had gone.
You need not have been so anxious to spare me.
Harry is coming here this afternoon."
She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes,
but she did not mind.
“ Yes,” she asserted. · He goes down this evening
to a camp in the New Forest where his battalion is
waiting to go to France. He starts at six from
Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."
Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already
half-past four. He had not the faintest hope that
Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed
him to come. She had probably been a little im-
portunate. Luttrell's promise was an excuse, just an
excuse to be rid of herm-nothing more.
Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last
afternoon," he suggested.
“Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella
Croyle agreed. “Still, five minutes are worth a good deal,
aren't they, if you have waited for them two years?
She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed
her about like armour. Not for a moment would she
doubt-she dared not! Harry was coming back to
the house that afternoon. Would he break some-
thing-some little china ornament upon the mantel-
shelf ? He generally knocked over something. What
would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding
head, or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she
had picked up at Christie's the day before ? Stella
smiled delightedly as she selected this and that of
her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry
Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket
she possessed into the grate-when once he had passed
through the doorway-when once again he stood
within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope
like a rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him
that she did not even watch the hands of her clock.


STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
105
But the hands moved on.
" I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably.
“ I will go, of course, when and he could not
bring himself to complete the sentence.
Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter
voice and with less triumph than she had used before.
“When he comes. Yes, do stay. I shall be glad.”
Slowly the day drew in. The sunlight died away
from the trees in the park. In the tiny garden great
shadows fell. The dusk gathered and Hillyard and
Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening
room. But Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On
the mantelpiece the clock struck the hour-six little
tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a guard
was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo
and a train beginning slowly to move.
“ He will have missed his train,” said Stella in an
unhappy whisper. "He will be here later."
"My dear," replied Hillyard, and leaning forward
he took and gently shook her hand. " Soldiers don't
miss their trains.'
Stella did not answer. She sat on until the lamps
were lit in the streets outside and in this room the
dusk had changed to black night.
“No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low
wail of anguish. She rose and turned to Hillyard.
Her face glimmered against the darkness deathly white
and her eyes shone with sorrow.
It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me,”
she said. Oh, I can picture to myself how coldly
he heard you. He never meant to come here this
afternoon."
Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been.
Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit
to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely
ever to come back, and understanding that he owed
her it. But an incident drove the whole matter from
his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to
show how wide a gulf now separated these two.


STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
107
him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last
unfair stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across
London, dwelling upon the qualities of individual
men in the company which was his command-how
this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that
other inclined to swank, and a fourth had a gift for
reading maps, and a fifth would make a real marks-
man; and so he woke up to find himself before the
bookstall in the station at Waterloo. Then he re-
membered the visit he had promised, but there was
no longer any time. He took the train to the New
Forest, and three days later went to France.
But of Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella
Croyle never knew. And, again, very likely it would
not have mattered if she had. They were parted too
widely for insight and clear vision.
Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella's
haunted and despairing face. It was over against
him as he dined at his club, gleaming palely from out
of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad with all
the sorrows of women. He could blame neither the
one nor the other-neither Stella Croyle nor Harry
Luttrell. One heart called to the other across too
wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was
listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her
cry for help. But Hillyard was on the road along which
Millicent Splay had already travelled. More and
more he felt the case for compassion. He carried the
picture of Stella's face home with him. It troubled
his sleep; by constant gazing upon it he became
afraid.
He waked with a start to hear a question whispered
at his ear. “ Where is she? How has she passed
this night?" The morning light was glimmering
between the curtains. The room was empty. Yet
surely those words had been spoken, actually spoken


108
THE SUMMONS
He gave
by a human voice. . . . He took his telephone instru-
ment in his hand and lifted the receiver. In a little
while--but a while too long for his impatience his
call was acknowledged at the exchange.
Stella Croyle's number and waited. Whilst he waited
he looked at his watch. The time was a quarter past
seven.
An unfamiliar and sleepy voice answered him from
her house.
Will you put me on to Mrs. Croyle ? " he requested,
and the reply came back :
“Mrs. Croyle went away with her maid last night."
Last night ?” cried Hillyard incredulously.
“But I did not leave the house myself until well after
six, and she had then no plans for leaving.”
Further details, however, were given to him. Mrs.
Croyle had called up a garage whence cars can be hired.
She had packed hurriedly. She had left at nine by
motor.
“Where for ?" asked Hillyard.
The name of an hotel in the pine country of Surrey
was given.
“Thank you,” said Hillyard, and he rang off.
She had run to earth in her usual way, when trouble
and grief broke through her woman's armour and
struck her down-that was all! Hillyard lighted a
cigarette and rang for his tea. Yes, that was all !
She was acting true to her type, as the jargon has it.
But against his will, her face took shape before him,
as he had seen it in the darkness of her room and
ever since
ever since !
He rang again, and more insistently. He possessed
a small, swift motor-car. Before the clocks of London
had struck eight he was travelling westwards along
the King's Road. Hillyard was afraid. He did not
formulate his fears. He was not sure of what he
feared. But he was afraid-terribly afraid; and for
the first time anger rose up in his heart against his
friend. Luttrell! Harry Luttrell! At this very
1


STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
109
moment he was changing direction in columns of fours
upon the drill ground, happy in the smooth execution
of the manoeuvre by his men and untroubled by any
thought of the distress of Stella Croyle. Well, little
things must give way to great-women to the exigencies
of drill!
Meanwhile, Hillyard grew more afraid, and yet more
afraid. He swept down the hill to Cobham, passed
between the Hut and the lake, and was through
Ripley before the shutters in the shops were down.
* The dew was heavy in the air; all the fresh, clean
smell of the earth was in that September morning.
And as yet the morning itself was only half awake.
At last the Hog's Back rose, and at a little inn, known
for its comfort-and its chef-Hillyard's car was
stopped.
Mrs. Croyle ? ” Hillyard asked at the office.
Her maid is here,” said the girl clerk, and pointed.
Hillyard turned to a girl, pretty and, by a few years,
younger than Stella Croyle.
“I have orders not to wake Mrs. Croyle until she
rings,” said the maid. Jenny Prask, she was called,
and she spoke with just a touch of pleasant Sussex
drawl. “Mrs. Croyle has not been sleeping well, and
she looked for a good night's rest in country air."
The maid was so healthful in her appearance, so
reasonable in her argument, that Hillyard's terrors,
fostered by solitude, began to lose their vivid colours.
“I understand that,"
that," he
he stammered. “ Yet,
Jenny-
Jenny Prask smiled.
You are Mr. Hillyard, I think ? "
“ Yes."
“I have heard my mistress speak of you." Hillyard
knew enough of maids to understand that “mistress
was an unusual word with them. Here, it seemed, was
a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be
publicly Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered
no offence by the recognition of a mistress.


ΙΙο
THE SUMMONS
“ If you wish, I will wake her.”
Jenny Prask went up the stairs, Hillyard at her
heels. She knocked upon the door. No answer was
returned. She opened it and entered.
Stella Croyle was up and dressed. She was sitting
at a table by the window with some sheets of note-
paper and some envelopes in front of her, and her
back was towards Hillyard and the open door. But
she was dressed as she had been dressed the evening
before when he had left her ; the curtains in the room
were drawn, and the electric lights on the writing-
table and the walls were still burning. The bed had
not been slept in.
Stella Croyle rose and turned towards her visitors.
She tottered a little as she stood up, and her eyes were
dazed.
Why have you come here ? ” she asked faintly,
and she fell rather than sat again in her chair.
Hillyard sprang forward and tore the curtains aside
so that the sunlight poured into the room, and Stella
opened and shut her eyes with a contraction of pain.
“I had so many letters to write," she explained,
“I thought that I would sit up and get through with
them."
Hillyard looked at the table. There were great
black dashes on the notepaper and lines, and here and
there a scribbled picture of a face, and perhaps now
and again half a word. She had sat at that table all
night and had not even begun a letter. Hillyard's
heart was torn with pity as he looked from her white,
tired face to the sheets of notepaper. What misery
and unhappiness did those broad, black dashes and
idle lines express ?
“ You must have some breakfast," he said. “I'll
order it and have it ready for you downstairs by the
time you are ready. Then I'll take you back to
London."
The blood suddenly mounted into her face.
“You will ? ” she cried wildly. “In a reserved


IN BARCELONA
III
compartment, so that I may do nothing rash and
foolish ? Are you going to be kind too?
She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter.
Then her head went down upon her hands, and she
gave herself up to such a passion of sobbing and tears
as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet
he would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed
shoulders shaking under the violence of them than
listen again to the dreadful laughter which had gone
before. He had not the knowledge which could
enable him to understand her sudden outburst, nor
did he acquire that knowledge until long afterwards.
But he understood that quite unwittingly he had
touched some painful chord in that wayward nature.
“I am going to take you back in my motor-car,
he said. “I'll be downstairs with the breakfast
ready."
She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since
tea-time the day before. Food was the steadying
thing she needed now. He went to the door which
Jenny Prask held open for him.
“Don't leave her!” he breathed in a whisper.
Jenny Prask smiled.
“Not me, sir,” she said fervently.
Hillyard remembered with comfort some words
which she had spoken in appreciation of the loving
devotion of her maid.
"In three-quarters of an hour,” said Jenny; and
later on that morning, with a great fear removed from
his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle back to London.
1
CHAPTER XII
IN BARCELONA
It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.
The restaurant of the Maison Dorée in the Plaza
Cataluña at Barcelona looks across the brilliantly-
lighted square from the south side. On the pavement


112
THE SUMMONS
in front of it and of its neighbour, the Café Continental,
the vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky
numbers they had for sale. Even in this wide space
the air was close and stale. Within, a few people left
over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables
placed against the walls under flamboyant decorations
in the style of Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was
sitting alone over his coffee. Across the room one
of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
overlooking a countryside bathed in orange light;
and on the terrace stood a sedan chair with drawn
curtains, and behind the chair stood a saddled white
horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during
the last few months at the Maison Dorée; and the
problem of that picture had always baffled him. A
lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange
light which never was on sea or land ? Or in the sedan
chair? Or were their faces to be discovered, as in
the puzzle pictures, in the dappling of the horse's
flanks, or the convolutions of the pillars which supported
the terrace roof, or the gilded ornamentations of the
chair itself? Hillyard was speculating for the twentieth
time on these important matters with a vague hope
that one day the door of the sedan chair would open,
when another door opened—the door of the restaurant.
A sharp-visaged man with a bald forehead, a clerk, one
would say, or a commercial traveller, looked round the
room and went forward to Hillyard's table. He went
quite openly.
The two men shook hands, and the new-comer
seated himself in front of Hillyard.
“You will take coffee and a cigar ? ” Hillyard asked
in Spanish, and gave the order to the waiter.
The two men talked of the heat, the cinematograph
theatres at the side of the Plaza, the sea-bathing at
Caldetas, and then the sharp-faced man leaned for-
ward.
"Ramon says there is no truth in the story, señor."


IN BARCELONA
113
Hillyard struck a match and held it to his companion's
cigar.
“And you trust Ramon, Señor Baeza?”
Lopez Baeza leaned back with a gesture of un-
qualified assent.
“ As often and often you can trust the peasant of
my country,” he said.
Hillyard agreed with a nod. He gazed about the room.
“There is no one interesting here to-night,” he said
idly.
“No," answered Lopez Baeza. "The theatres are
closed, the gay people have gone to St. Sebastian, the
families to the seaside. Ouf, but it is hot.”
“Yes."
Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and re-
turned to the subject of his thoughts.
“You see, my friend, it is of so much importance
that we should make no mistake here."
“Claro 1” returned Lopez Baeza. “But listen to
me, señor.
You know that our banks are behind
the times and our post offices not greatly trusted.
We have therefore a class of messengers."
Hillyard nodded.
“I know of them."
“Good. They are not educated. Most of them
can neither read nor write. They are simply peasants.
Yet they are trusted to carry the most important
letters and great sums of money in gold and silver
from place to place. And never do they betray their
trust. It is unknown. Why, señor, I know myself
of cases where rich men have entrusted their daughters
to the care of the messengers, sure that in this way
their daughters will arrive safely at their destination."
“Yes," said Hillyard. “I know of these men.”
Ramon Castillo is as honest as the best of them."
“Yes, but he is not one of them,” said Hillyard.
“ He is a stevedore with thirty years of the quay-
side and at the port of Barcelona, where there are
German ships with their officers and crews on board."
1
1


II4
THE SUMMONS
Hillyard was troubled. He drew from his pocket
creased letters and read them for the twentieth time
with a frowning countenance.
“ There is so much at stake. Two hundred feluccas
-two hundred motor-driven feluccas! And eighteen
thousand men, on shore and sea! See what it means !
On our side, the complete surveillance of the Western
Mediterranean ! On the other side against us--two
hundred travelling supply bases for submarines, two
hundred signal stations. I want to be sure! I want
neither to give the enemy the advantage by putting
him upon his guard, nor to miss the great opportunity
myself.
Lopez Baeza nodded.
Why not talk with Ramon Castillo yourself ?” he
asked.
· That is what I want to do."
"I will arrange for it. When?"
“To-night," said Hillyard.
Lopez Baeza lifted his hands in deprecation.
· Yes. I can take you to his house-now. But,
señor, Ramon is a poor man. He lives in a little
narrow street."
Hillyard looked quietly at Lopez Baeza. He had
found men on the Mediterranean littoral whom he
could trust with his life and everything that was his.
But a good working principle was to have not over-
much faith in anyone.
A noisome little street in
the lower quarters of Barcelona–who could tell what
might happen after one had plunged into it?
I will come with you," he said.
“Good," said Lopez. “I will go on ahead." And
once more Hillyard's quiet eyes rested upon Baeza's
face." It is not wise that we should walk out to-
gether. There is no one here, it is true, but in the
chairs outside the cafés—who shall say?"
“Yes. You go on ahead," Hillyard agreed. “That
is wise."
Lopez rose.


IN BARCELONA
115
“Give me five minutes, señor. Then down the
Rambla. The second turning to the right, beyond
the Opera House. You will see me at the corner.
When you see me, follow !"
Hillyard rose and shook hands cordially with Lopez
Baeza with the air of a man who might never see his
friend again for years. Baeza commended him to
God and went out of the restaurant on to the lighted
footway.
Hillyard read through the two creased letters again,
though he knew them by heart. They had reached
him from William Lloyd, an English merchant at
Barcelona, at two different dates. The first, written
six weeks ago, related how Pontiana Tabor, a servant
of the firm, had come into Lloyd's private office and
informed him that on the night of the 27th June
a German submarine had entered a deep cove at the
lonely north-east point of the island of Mallorca, and
had there been provisioned by José Medina's men,
with José Medina's supplies, and that José Medina
had driven out of Palma de Mallorca in his motor-car,
and travelling by little-known tracks, had been present
when the operation was in process. The name of a
shoemaker in a street of Palma was given as corro-
boration.
The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-
haste off the sea into Barcelona, was only three days
old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had been the bearer
of bad news. José Medina had been seen entering
the German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven
and twelve o'clock of the morning of August 22nd.
Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.
“We can put José Medina out of business, of
course," he reflected. For José Medina's tobacco
factories were built at a free port in French territory.
But I want the man for
my
friend."
He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his
bill. As he went out of the Maison Dorée, he felt
in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to make sure


116
THE SUMMONS
that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his
hand.
He did not distrust Lopez Baeza. All the work
which Baeza had done for him had, indeed, been
faithfully and discreetly done. But-but there was
always a certain amount of money for the man who
would work the double cross-not so very much, but
still, a certain amount. And Hillyard was always
upon his guard against the intrusion of a contempt
for the German effort. That contempt was easy
enough for a man, who, having read year after year
of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system
of espionage, had come fresh from his reading into
contact with the actual agents. Their habit of lining
their pockets at the expense of their Government,
their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and extrava-
gance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity
in their estimation of men-these things were apt in
the early years of the war to bewilder the man who
had been so often told to fall down before the great
idol of German efficiency.
The German agent works on the assumption that
the mind of every foreigner reasons on German lines,
but with inferior intelligence. But behind the agent
is the cunning of Berlin, with its long-deliberated plans
and its concocted ingenuity of method. And though
on the whole they are countered, as with amazement
they admit, by the amateurs from England, still every
now and then-not very often--they do bring some-
thing off.”
Thus Hillyard reasoned as he turned the corner of
the Plaza Cataluña into the wide Rambla. It might
be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor and the
denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one
little subsidiary plan in the German scheme which
was to reach its achievement by putting an incon-
venient Englishman out of the way for good in one
of the dark, narrow side streets of Barcelona.
After the hot day the Rambla, with its broad tree-


118
THE SUMMONS
small, steep and narrow steps succeeded it. When
Baeza's match went out there was no light anywhere ;
from a room somewhere above came a sound of quarrel-
ling, voices-a woman's voice high and shrill, a man's
voice hoarse and drunken, and, as an accompaniment,
the wailing of a child wakened from its sleep.
At the very top of the house Baeza rapped on a door.
The door was opened, and a heavy, elderly man, wearing
glasses on his nose, stood in the entrance with the
light of an unshaded lamp behind him.
“Ramon, it is the chief,” said Baeza.
Ramon Castillo crossed the room and closed an inner
door. Then he invited Hillyard to enter. The room
was bare but for a few pieces of necessary furniture,
but all was scrupulously clean. Ramon Castillo set
forward a couple of chairs and asked his visitors to be
seated. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he wore the
rope-soled sandals of the Spanish peasant, but he was
entirely at his ease. He made the customary little
speech of welcome with so simple a dignity and so
manifest a sincerity that Hillyard could hardly doubt
him afterwards.
“It is my honour to welcome you not merely as
my chief, but as an Englishman. I am poor, and I
take my pay, but Señor Baeza will assure you that
for twenty-five years I have been the friend of England.
And there are thousands and thousands of poor Spaniards
like myself, who love England, because its law-courts
are just, because there is a real freedom there, because
political power is not the opportunity of oppression."
The little speech was spoken with great rapidity
and with deep feeling; and, having delivered it,
Ramon seated himself on the side of the table opposite
to Hillyard and Baeza and waited.
" It is about Pontiana Tabor,” said Hillyard. “He
is making a mistake?”
“ No, señor; he is lying,” and he used the phrase
which has no exact equivalent in the English. “He
is a sin verguenza.'


IN BARCELONA
ΙΙ9
“Tell me, my friend,” said Hillyard.
“ Pontiana Tabor swears that José Medina was seen
to enter the German Consulate before noon on August
the 22nd. But on August the 21st Medina was in
Palma, Mallorca ; he was seen there by a captain of
the Islana Company, and a friend of mine spoke to
him on the quay. If, therefore, he was in the German
Consulate here on the 22nd, he must have crossed
that night by the steamer to Barcelona. But he did
not.
His name was not on the list of passengers, and
although he might have avoided that, he was not seen
on board or to come on board. I have spoken with
officers and crew. José Medina did not cross on the
21st. Moreover, Señor Baeza has seen a letter which
shows that he was certainly in Palma on the 23rd.”
“That is true," said Baeza. Medina was in Palma
on the 21st, and in Palma on the 23rd, and he did not
cross to Barcelona on the night of the 21st, nor back
again to Palma on the night of the 22nd. Therefore
he was not seen to visit the German Consulate on the
morning of the 22nd, and, as Ramon says, Pontiana
is lying.”
Why should Pontiana lie?” asked Hillyard.
Ramon took his pince-nez from the bridge of his
nose, and, holding them between his finger and thumb,
tapped with them upon his knee.
Because, señor, there are other contrabandists
besides José Medina; one little group at Tarragona
and another near Garucha-and they would all be
very glad to see José Medina get into trouble with the
British and the French. His feluccas fly the British
flag and his factories are on French soil. There would
be an end of José Medina."
The letters were put in front of Hillyard. He read
them over carefully, and at the end he said :
“ If Pontiana Tabor lied in this case of the Consulate
—and that seems clear—it is very likely that he lied
also in the other. Yes."
As a matter of fact, Hillyard had reasons of his own


I20
THE SUMMONS
to doubt the truth of the story which ascribed to
Medina the actual provisioning of a submarine-
reasons which had nothing whatever to do with José
Medina himself.
The destruction of shipping by German submarines
in this western section of the Mediterranean had an
intermittent regularity. There would be ten suc-
cessive days-hardly ever more than ten days-
during which ships were sunk. Thereafter for three
weeks, steamships and sailing ships would follow the
course upon which they were ordered, without hurt
or loss. After three weeks, the murderous business
would begin again. There was but one explanation
in Hillyard's opinion.
“The submarines come out of Pola. When they
reach the line between the Balearics and the Spanish
coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising, and then
return to their base," he argued.
Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by José
Medina in a creek of Mallorca, the ten days' cruise
would be extended to three weeks. This had never
happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana
Tabor happened to fall precisely in the middle of one
of those periods of three weeks during which the terror
did not haunt those seas. Pontiana Tabor had not
known enough. He had fixed his date at a venture.
Yes,” said Hillyard, rising from his chair. “I
agree with you, Señor Ramon. Tabor is a liar. What
troubled me was that I had no clue as to why he should
lie. You have given me it, and with all my heart I
thank you."
He shook the stevedore's hand and stood for a
moment talking and joking with him upon other
subjects. Hillyard knew the value of a smile and a
jest and a friendly manner. Your very enemy in
Spain will do you a good turn if you meet him thus.
Then he turned to Baeza.
“I shall be back, perhaps, in a week, but perhaps
not. I will let you know in the usual way.”


IN BARCELONA
I21
The two men went down the stairs and into the
street. It was empty now and black, but at the far
end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla blazed and
roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.
“It is best that we should separate here,
said
Lopez Baeza, “ if you have no further instructions.”
Touching the matter of those ships," Hillyard
suggested.
Señor Fairbairn has it in hand.”
“Good. Then, my friend, I have no further in-
structions," said Hillyard. I agree with you about
Ramon. I will go first.”
He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and
disappeared into the mouthway of an alley which ran
up the hill parallel to the Rambla. The alley led into
another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard
slipped out into the throng beneath the trees. He
sauntered, as idle and as curious as any in that broad
walk. He took a drink at a café, neither hiding him-
self unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair
at the edge of the awning. He sat there for half an
hour. But when he rose again he made sure that no
one was loitering to watch his movements. He
sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the
ice-cream kiosque. The great Plaza spread in front
of him, and at the corner across the road stood a double
line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting for
parties in the restaurants opposite. He walked across
the roadway and disappeared in between the motor-
cars as if he intended to cross the Plaza by the foot-
way to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second later a
motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to
Tarragona.
Hillyard was inside the car. The tall houses of the
city gave place to villas draped in bougainvillea behind
gardens of trees. Then the villas ceased and the car
sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the
finest coast-road in the world. It was a night for
lovers. A full moon, bright as silver, sailed in the


122
THE SUMMONS
sky; the broad, white road rose and dipped and
wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and
there a peasant mounted on his donkey and making
his journey by night to escape the burning day. Far
below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and
across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a
sailing-ship glided like a bird, now the black funnels
of a steamer showed. So light was the wind that
Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the
beating of some gigantic clock. He took his hat from
his head and threw wide open his thin coat. After
the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of heart
and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that
night. Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long
clustered about José Medina, and then had come the
two categorical statements, dates and hours, chapter
and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to
himself in warning. But he was sure enough to risk
the great move—the move which he alone could make !
He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan
Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that
August night. But he had not thought of her by one
o'clock in the morning ; and by one o'clock in the
morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the
deserted quay of Tarragona harbour under the stern
of an English yacht.
CHAPTER XIII
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
At six o'clock on the second morning after Hillyard's
visit to Barcelona, the steam-yacht Dragonfly swept
round the point of La Dragonera and changed her
course to the south-east. She steamed with a follow-
ing breeze over a sea of darkest sapphire which broke
in sparkling cascades of white and gold against the
rocky creeks and promontories on the ship's port
side. Peasants working on the green terraces above


OLD ACQUAINTANCE
125
to his consul, and thereafter sat in a café for an hour.
Then he strolled through the narrow streets, admired
this and that massive archway, with its glimpse of a
great stone staircase within, and mounted the hill.
Almost at the top, he turned sharply into a doorway
and ran up the stairs to the second floor. He knocked
upon the door, and a maid-servant answered.
Señor José Medina lives here?”
Yes, señor."
“ He is at home ?"
No, señor. He is in the country at his finca."
Hillyard thanked the girl, and went whistling down
the stairs. Standing in the archway, he looked up
and down the street with something of the air of a man
engaged upon a secret end. One or two people were
moving in the street ; one or two were idling on the
pavement. Hillyard smiled and walked down the
hill again. He took the advertisement card from his
pocket and, noting the address, walked into the garage.
" It will please me to see something of the island,'
he said. “I am not in Mallorca for long. I should
like a car after lunch.” He gave the name of a café
between the cathedral and the quay. “At half-past
two ? Thank you. And by which road shall I go for
all that is most of Mallorca ?
This was Spain. A small group of men had already
invaded the garage and gathered about Hillyard and
the proprietor. They proceeded at once to take a
hand in the conversation and offer their advice. They
suggested the expedition to Miramar, to Alcudia, to
Manacor, discussing the time each journey would take,
the money to be saved by the shorter course, the dust,
and even the gradients of the road. They had no
interest in the business in the garage, and they were
not at all concerned in the success of Hillyard's excur-
sion. That a stranger should carry away with him
pleasant recollections of the beauties of Mallorca, was
a matter of supreme indifference to them all. But
they were engaged in the favourite pursuit of the


126
THE SUMMONS
Spaniards of the towns. They were getting through a
certain small portion of the day, without doing any
work, and without spending any money. The majority
favoured the road past Valdemosa, over the Pass of
Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-
east side of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the
majority must. For there is no road like it for beauty
in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.
“I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he
strolled off to his luncheon.
He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves
of olive and almond trees with gnarled stems and
branches white with dust, mounted by the twisting
road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountain-
side upon his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass. The
great sweep of rock-bound coast and glittering sea,
burst upon his view, and the boom of water surging
into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears.
At a little gate upon the road the car was stopped at a
word from Hillyard.
“I am going in here,” he said. "I may be a little
while."
The chauffeur looked at Hillyard with surprise.
Hillyard had never been to the house before, but he
could not mistake it from the description which he
had been given. He passed through an orchard to
the door of an outrageous villa, built in the style of a
Swiss chalet and glaring with yellow paint. A man in
his shirt-sleeves came to the door.
Señor José Medina ?” Hillyard inquired.
He held out his card and was ushered into the room
of ceremony which went very well with the exterior of
the yellow chalet. A waxed floor, heavy white lace
curtains at the windows, a table of walnut-wood, chairs
without comfort, but with gold legs, all was new and
never to be used and hideous. Hillyard looked
around him with a nod of comprehension. This is
what its proprietor would wish for. With a hundred
old houses to select from for a model--no! This is the


128
THE SUMMONS
to cry
“As do your feluccas, señor, I believe."
A mere twitch of the lips showed that Medina
appreciated the point.
But I," continued Ilulyard, am an Englishman,
while you, señor
José Medina was not, if he could help it, to be forced
a hit” again.
Whereas I, señor, am a neutral," he answered.
The twitch of the lips became a smile. He invited
Hillyard to a chair, he drew up another himself, and
the two men sat down over against one another in
the middle of that bare and formal room.
That one word neutral, so delicately emphasised,
warned Hillyard that José Medina was quite alive to
the reason of his visit. He could, of course, have
blurted it out at once. He could have said in so many
words, “ Your tobacco factories are on French soil,
and your two hundred feluccas are nominally owned in
Gibraltar. Between French and English we shall close
you down unless you help.” But he knew very well that
he would have got no more than fair words if he had.
It is not thus that delicate questions are approached in
Spain. Even the blackmailer does not dream of bluntly de-
manding money, or exposing his knowledge that he will
get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family
and the long illness of his mother-in-law; and with the
same decency the blackmailed yields to compassion
and opens his purse. There is a centlemanly reticence
to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was
well aware of the rules. He struck quite a different
note.
“I shall speak frankly to you, Señor Medina, as
one caballero to another ; and José Medina bowed
and smiled.
“I put my cards upon the table. I ask you whether
your
heart you are for the Germans.or for us."
José Medina hitched his chair a little closer and,
holding up one hand with fingers spread ticked off
his points, as he spoke them, with the other.
in


130
THE SUMMONS
It was
felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then ! There
are eighteen thousand men at once without food or
work thrown adrift upon the coast of Spain. Will
not Germany find use for those eighteen thousand
men ? "
Hillyard agreed. The point was shrewd.
an open, unanswerable reply to the unuttered threat
which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted to use.
“I have spoken,” continued José Medina. “Now
it is for you, señor. Tell me what within the limits of
my neutrality I can do to prove to you the sincerity
of my respect for England ? "
Hillyard took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his
pocket. He drew a rough map.
"Here are the Balearic Islands; here, farther to the
west, the Columbretes ; here the African coast; here
the mainland of Spain. Now watch, I beg you, señor,
whilst I sketch in the routes of your feluccas. At
Oran in Africa your factories stand. From them,
then, we start. We draw a broad thick line from
Oran to the north-east coast of Mallorca, that coast
upon which we look down from these windows, a coast
honeycombed with caves and indented with creeks
like an edge of fine lace-a very storehouse of a coast.
Am I not right, Señor Don José ?” He laughed, in a
friendly good-humoured way, but the face of José
Medina did not lose one shade of its impassiveness.
He did not deny that the caves of this coast were the
storehouse of his tobacco; nor did he agree.
Let us see !” he said.
So I draw a thick line, since all your feluccas make
for this island and this part of the island first of all.
From here they diverge-you will correct me, I hope,
if I am wrong.
"I do not say that I shall correct you if you are
wrong," said José Medina,
Hillyard was now drawing other and finer lines
which radiated like the sticks of an outspread fan from
the north-east coast of Mallorca to the Spanish main-


OLD ACQUAINTANCE
131
land; and he went on drawing them, unperturbed
by José's refusal to assist in his map-making. Some of
the lines- a few-ended at the Islands of the Colum-
bretes, sixty miles off Valencia.
“Your secret storehouse, I believe, señor," he
remarked pleasantly.
“A cruiser of our Government examined these
islands most carefully a fortnight ago upon repre-
sentations from the Allies, and found nothing of any
kind to excite interest,” replied José Medina.
“ The cruiser was looking for submarine bases, I
understand, not tobacco," Martin Hillyard observed.
And since it was not the cruiser's commission to look
for tobacco, why should it discover it?"
José Medina shrugged his shoulders. José Medina's
purse was very long and reached very high. It would
be quite impolitic for that cruiser to discover José
Medina's tobacco stores, as 'Medina himself and
Martin Hillyard, and the captain of the cruiser, all
very well knew.
Martin Hillyard continued to draw fine straight
lines westwards from the northern coast of Mallorca
to the mainland of Spain, some touching the shore to
the north of Barcelona, some striking it as far south
as Almeria and Garrucha. When he had finished his
map-making he handed the result to José Medina.
"See, señor! Your feluccas cut across all the trade-
routes through the Mediterranean. Ships going east
or going west must pass between the Balearics and
Africa, or between the Balearics and Spain. We are
here in the middle, and, whichever course those ships
take, they must cross the lines on which your feluccas
continually come and go."
José Medina looked at the map. He did not com.
mit himself in any way. He contented himself with
a question : “And what then ? ”
So too with the German submarines. They also
must cross and cross again in their cruises, those lines
along which your feluccas continually come and go."


132
THE SUMMONS
>>
José Medina threw up his hands.
"The submarines ! Señor, if you listen to the
babblers on the quays, you would think that the seas
are stiff with them! Schools of them like whales
everywhere! Only yesterday Palma rang with the
account of one. It pursued a French steamer between
Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a fishing boat!
What did it not do ? Señor, there was no submarine
yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mal-
lorca. If there had been I must have known.'
And he sat back as though the subject were disposed
of.
“But submarines do visit these waters, Señor
Medina, and they do sink ships,” replied Hillyard.
José Medina shrugged his shoulders and spread out
his hands.
“ Claro! And it is said that I supply them with their
oil.” He turned swiftly to Hillyard.“ Perhaps you
have heard that story, señor?"
Hillyard nodded.
Yes. I did not believe it. It is because I did
not believe it that I am here, asking your help.”
“I thank you. It is the truth. I will tell you
something now. Not one of my captains has ever
seen one of those submarines, neither on this side nor
on that," and Medina touched the lines which Hillyard
had drawn on both sides of the Balearics on his chart.
Now, what can I do?”
One simple thing, and well within your scruples
as a neutral," replied Hillyard. “These submarines
doubly break the laws of nations. They violate your
territorial waters, and they sink merchant ships with-
out regard for the crews.'
“Yes,” said José Medina.
“You have agents along the coast. I have friends
too in every town, Englishmen who love both England
and Spain, Spaniards who love both Spain and Eng-
land. We will put, if you permit, your agents in
touch with my friends."


OLD ACQUAINTANCE
133
“ Yes," said José Medina innocently." How shall
we do that. We must have lists prepared.”
Hillyard smiled gently.
That is not necessary, señor. We know your
agents already. If you will secretly inform them that
those who speak in my name," and he took his card
from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, “are
men to be trusted, it will be enough.'
José Medina agreed.
“I will give them instructions."
“And yet another instruction if you will be so kind,
to all your captains."
Yes?'
“ That they shall report at the earliest possible
moment to your nearest agent ashore, the position of
any submarine they have seen.'
José Medina assented once more.
But it will take a little time, señor, for me to pass
that instruction round. It shall go from captain to
captain, but it will not be prudent to give it out more
widely. A week or two-no more—and every captain
in my fleet shall be informed. That is all ?"
Hillyard was already rising from his chair. He stood
straight up.
“All except that they will be forbidden too,” he
added with a smile, " to supply either food or drink or
oil to any enemy vessel."
José Medina raised his hands in protest.
That order was given months ago. But it shall
be repeated, and you can trust me, it shall be obeyed.”.
The two men went to the door of the villa, and
stood outside in the garden. It seemed the interview
was over, and the agreement made. But indeed the
interview as Hillyard had planned it had hardly begun.
He had a series of promises which might be kept or
broken, and the keeping or breaking of them could
not be checked. José Medina was very likely to be
holding the common belief along that coast that
Germany would surely win the war. He was in the


134
THE SUMMONS
perfect position to keep in with both sides were he so
minded. It was not to content himself with general
promises that Hillyard had brought the Dragonfly to
Palma.
He turned suddenly towards José Medina with a
broad laugh, and clapped him heartily upon the back.
“So you do not remember me, Señor José ?."
Medina was puzzled. He took a step nearer to
Hillyard. Then he shook his head, and apologised
with a smile.
"I am to blame, señor. As a rule, my memory is
not at fault. But on this occasion-yes.”
Through the apology ran a wariness, some fear of a
trick, some hint of an incredulity.
" Yet we have met.”
"Señor, it must be so."
"Do you remember, Señor José, your first venture?"
asked Hillyard.
'Surely."
“A single sailing-felucca beached at one o'clock in
the morning on the ilat sand close to Benicassim."
José Medina did not answer. But the doubt which
his politeness could not quite keep out of his face was
changing into perplexity. This history of his first
cargo so far was true.
That was more than thirteen years ago," Killyard
continued. Thirteen years last April."
José Medina nodded. Date, place, hour, all were
correct. His eyes were fixed curiously upon his visitor,
but there was no recognition in them.
“There were two carts waiting, to carry the tobacco
up to the hills.”
“ Two ? José Medina interrupted sharply. “Let
me thinkí That first cargo! It is so long ago.
Medina reflected carefully. Here was a detail of
real importance which would put this Señor Hillyard
to the testif only he could himself remember. It
was his first venture, yes! But there had been so
many like to it since. Still-the very first, He


OLD ACQUAINTANCE
135
ought to remember that! And as he concentrated
his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he
saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the
felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high
wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam
of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and
the carts—yes, the carts !
“There were two carts," he agreed, and a change
was just faintly audible in his voice-a change for
which up till now Hillyard had listened with both his
ears in vain. A ring of cordiality, a suggestion that
the barriers of reserve were breaking down.
Yes, señor, there were two carts.'
Medina was listening intently now.
Would his
visitor go on with the history of that night!
And Hillyard did go on.
The tobacco barrels were packed very quickly
into the carts, and the carts were driven up the beach
and across the Royal road, and into a track which led
back to the hills."
José Medina suddenly laughed. He could hear the
groaning and creaking of those thin-wheeled springless
carts which had carried all his fortunes on that night
thirteen years ago, the noise of them vibrating for
miles in the air of that still spring night! What
terror they had caused him! How his heart had
leaped when—and lo! Hillyard was carrying on the
tale.
"Two of the Guardia Civil stepped from behind a
tree, arrested your carts, and told the drivers to turn
back to the main road and the village.”
" Yes.”
You ran in front of the leading cart, and stood
there blocking the way. The Guardia told you to
move or he would fire. You stood your ground."
“Yes.”
Why the Guardia did not fire,” continued Hillyard,
" who shall say? But he did not."
'No, he did not.” José Medina repeated with a


OLD ACQUAINTANCE
137
"And José Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas
and employs eighteen thousand men,” answered
Hillyard.
José Medina held out his hand suddenly with a
great burst of cordial, intimate laughter.
Yes, we were companions in those days. You
helped me to drive my carts up into the mountains.
Good!” He patted Hillyard on the shoulder. “That
makes a difference, eh? Come, we will go in again.
Now I shall help you.”
That reserve, that intense reserve of the Spaniard
who so seldom admits another into real intimacy,
and makes him acquainted with his private life, was
down now. Hillyard had won. José Medina's house
and his chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's
disposal. The two men went back through the house
into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and
Cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit
at his ease.
José Medina fetched out a box of cigars.
“You can trust these. They are good.”
“Who should know if you do not ? ” answered
Hillyard as he took one; and again José Medina
patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a
gurgle of delight.
El pequeño Martin,” he said, and he clapped his
hands. From some recess of the house his wife ap-
peared with a bottle of champagne and two glasses on
a tray.
“Now we will talk," said José Medina, " or rather
I will talk and you shall listen."
Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the glass to
66
his lips.
“I have learnt in the last years that it is better to
listen than to talk," said he. Salut !"


CHAPTER XIV
TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS !!
It has been said that Hillyard joined a service with
its traditions to create. Indeed, it had everything to
create, its rules, its methods, its whole philosophy.
And it had to do this quickly during the war, and just
for the war ; since after the war it would cease to be.
Certain conclusions had now been forced by experi-
ence quite definitely on Hillyard's mind. Firstly,
that the service must be executive. Its servants
must take their responsibility and act if they were
going to cope with the intrigues and maneuvres of
the Germans. There was no time for discussions with
London, and London was overworked in any case.
The Post Office, except on rare occasions, could not
be used ; telegrams, however ingenious the cipher,
were dangerous; and even when London received
them, it had not the knowledge of the sender on the
spot, wherewith to fill them out. London, let it be
admitted, or rather that one particular small section
of London with which Hillyard dealt, was at one with
Hillyard. Having chosen its men it trusted them,
until such time as indiscretion or incapacity proved
the trust misplaced ; in which case the offender was
brought politely home upon some excuse, cordially
thanked, and with a friendly shake of the hand, shown
the door.
Hillyard's second conclusion was that of one hundred
trails, ten at the most would lead to any result : but
you must follow each one of the hundred up
reach proof that you are in a blind alley.
The third, was the sound and simple doctrine that
you can confidently look to Chance to bring you
results, probably your very best results, if you are
prepared and equipped to make all your profit out of
chance the moment she leans your way. Chance is
138
until you


" THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS"
141
youth in a grey suit and a pair of orange-coloured
buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over
about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette,
now he leaned against a tree and idly surveyed the
passers by. He apparently had nothing whatever to
do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of
his promenade. Consequently he had something to do.
“Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle," he is a
proof of our initiative. I thought as you do, three
days ago. For it is just three days since he took his
stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is
not concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker's
tout. In the house opposite to us a woman is lying
very ill. Our young friend is waiting for her to die,
so that he may rush into the house, offer his con-
dolences and present the undertaker's card.”
Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go
and turned back into the room. A man of fifty, with
a tawny moustache, a long and rather narrow face
and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with
some papers in front of him.
“How do you do, Fairbairn ? ” Hillyard asked.
Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of
England, with a knowledge of the Spanish tongue.
who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects,
everything, in October of 1914.
Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard,
sitting down opposite to Fairbairn.
Fairbairn grinned.
" It worked very well,” said he," so far."
Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to
“Let me hear everything," he said.
Spanish ships were running to England with the
products of Cataluña and returning full of coal, and
shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran high.
But not all of them were content. Here and there
the captains and the mates took with them in their
cabin to England lists of questions thoughtfully com-
piled by German officers; and from what they saw
a seat.


142
THE SUMMONS
in English harbours and on English seas and from
what secret news was brought to them, they filled up
answers to the questions and brought them back to
the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already
knew.
“A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships,
collected the answers, made a report and took it up
to the German head-quarters here. That Ramon
Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. Steps were
taken with the crew. The ships would be placed on
the black list. There would be no coal for them.
They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The
crew of the Saragossa grasped the position, and the
next time Juan de Maestre stepped on board he was
invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped overboard
into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't
go near the Germans any more. He is in a condition
of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's wonderfully
neutral just now."
“We might catch him perhaps on the rebound I”
Hillyard suggested.
Lopez thinks so," said Fairbairn, with a nod
towards Baeza.
“I can find him this evening," Baeza remarked.
The three men conferred for a little while, and as
a consequence of that conference Lopez Baeza walked
through the narrow streets of the old town to a
café near the railway station. In a corner a small,
wizened, square man was sitting over his beer, brood-
ing unhappily Baeza toek a seat by his side and
talked with Juan de Maestre. He went out after a
few minutes and hired a motor-car from the stand in
front of the station. In the car he drove to the park
and went once round it. At a junction of two paths
on the second round the car was stopped. A short,
small man stepped out from the shadow of a great
tree and swiftly stepped in.
“Drive towards Tibidabo," Baeza directed the


" THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS91
" 143
driver, and inside the dark, closed car Baeza and Juan
de Maestre debated, the one persuading, the other
refusing. It was long before any agreement was
reached, but when Baeza, with the perspiration stand-
ing in beads upon his face, returned to his flat in the
quiet, respectable street, he found Martin Hillyard
and Fairbairn waiting for him anxiously.
“ Hecho !” he cried. “It is done!
“It is done! Juan de
Maestre will continue to go on board the ships and
collect the information and write it out for the Germans.
But we shall receive an exact copy."
“ How?" asked Hillyard.
“Ramon will meet a messenger from Juan. At
eight in the morning of every second day Ramon is
to be waiting at a spot which from time to time we
will change. The first place will be the cinema
opposite to the old Bull Ring."
Good," said Hillyard." In a fortnight I will
return."
He departed once more for Gibraltar, cruised up
the coast, left his yacht once more in the harbour
of Tarragona and travelled by motor-car into Bar-
celona.
Fairbairn and Lopez Baeza received him. It was
night, and hot with a staleness of the air which was
stifling. The windows all stood open in the quiet,
dark street, but the blinds and curtains were closely
drawn before the lamps were lit.
“Now !” said Hillyard. “There are reports.”
Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and
unlocked it.
Pretty dangerous stuff,” he answered.
“Reliable ?" asked Hillyard.
Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined
paper written over with purple ink, and some rough
diagrams.
"I am sure," he replied. “Not because I trust
Juan de Maestre, but because he couldn't have in-
vented the information. He hasn't the knowledge.'


144
THE SUMMONS
Lopez Baeza agreed.
* Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said
shortly, and, to the judgment of Lopez Baeza
Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.
“This is the real thing, Hillyard,” said Fairbairn,
pulling at his moustache. “Look!”
He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the
compass were marked in a corner. Certain courses
and routes were given, and fixed lights indicated by
which the vessel might be guided. There was a
number of patches as if to warn the navigator of
shallows, and again a number of small black cubes
and squares which seemed to declare the position
of rocks. There was no rough work in this chart.
It was elaborately and skilfully drawn, the work of
an artist.
“This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre
left the original document with us for an hour," said
Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to speculate for
a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous
and reef-strewn sea. “It's not a chart of any bay or
water at all. It's a plan of Cardiff by night for the
guidance of German airships. Those patches are not
shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces.
The black spots are the munition factories. Here
are the docks,” he pointed with the tip of his pencil.
The Jesus-Maria brought that back a week ago.
Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh?
and a Zeppelin coming across England on a favourable
night could make things hum in Cardiff.”
Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another
which Fairbairn held out to him.
“Do you see this ?” Fairbairn continued.
gives the exact line of the nets between the English
and the Irish coasts, and the exact points of latitude
and longitude where they are broken for the passage
of ships, and the exact number and armament of the
trawlers which guard those points.”
Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the
" This


" THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS” 145
)
positions clearly enough, but it was a roughly-made
affair, smudged with dingy fingers and uneven in its
drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of
the map of Cardiff and compared one with the other.
“This,” he said, touching the roughly-drawn map
of a section of the Channel,“ this is the work of the
ship's captain ?”
Yes.'
But what of this ? " and Hillyard lifted again the
elaborate chart of Cardiff by night. Some other
hand drew this."
Fairbairn agreed.
“ Yes. Here is the report which goes with the
charts. The chart of Cardiff was handed to the
captain in an inn on shore. It came from an un-
known person, who is mentioned as B.45."
Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through,
and then the others upon the top of that. Cloth,
saddlery, equipment of various kinds were needed in
England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up
between the two countries, so that ships constantly
went to and fro. In more than one of these reports
the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint
which could lead to his detection-never anything
personal, not a clue to his age, his business, his appear-
ance, even his abode-nothing but this baffling
symbol B.45.
“ You have cabled all this home, of course,” Hillyard
observed to Fairbairn.
'Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They
are very anxious for any details.”
He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard,
a centre-point for the gathering in of information."
Fairbairn shook his head.
“He is more active than that," he returned, and he
pointed to a passage here and there, which bore him
out. It was the first time that Martin Hillyard had
come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss
to conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He


146
THE SUMMONS
might be quite obscure, the tenant of some suburban
shop, or, again, quite prominent in the public eye,
the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities;
he might be of any nationality. But there he was,
somewhere under the oak-trees of England, doing his
secret, mean work for the ruin of the country. Hill-
yard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his
dreams, an elusive figure without a face, moving
swiftly wherever people were gathered together,
travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the dinner-
tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor
tenements. Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly
pocket a letter which a passing stranger as deftly
handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
another who walked for a few paces without recogni-
tion by his side, but though he hurried round corners
to get in front of him and snatch a glance at his face,
he could never come up with him. He waked with
the sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his
shutters from the Plaza Cataluna, tired and unre-
freshed B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of
tins and sticks and endowed with malevolent life.
B.45.
London asked news of him, and he stalked
through London. Where should Hillyard find his
true image and counterpart ?
It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe
how one Christobal Quesada, first mate of the steamship
Mondragon, utterly overreached himself by sending in
a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave the
harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her
deck; how the report was proved to be a lie; how
it was used as the excuse for the barbarous sinking
of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze
from stem to stern with green lights, the red cross
glowing amidships like a wondrous jewel; how
Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a


IN A SLEEPING-CAR
147
French port, and after being duly arraigned for his
life, met his death against a prison wall. Fairbairn
wrote to Martin Hillyard :
The execution of Quesada has put an end to the
whole wicked question. So long as the offender was
only put in prison with the certainty of release at
the end of the war, whilst his family lived comfortably
on German money, the game went merrily on. But
the return of the Mondragon,' minus her executed
mate, has altered the whole position. Juan de
Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays.'
Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could under-
stand a German going to any lengths for Germany.
He was prepared to do the same himself for his country.
But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality
meddles in this stupendous conflict for cash, for his
thirty miserable pieces of silver, he could feel no
inclination of mercy.
“Let the neutrals keep out!” he murmured.
“ This is not their affair. Let them hold their tongues
and go about their own business!
He received Fairbairn's letter in the beginning of
the year 1916. He was still no nearer at that date
to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any better
informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon
Chance to slip a clue into his hand.
CHAPTER XV
IN A SLEEPING-CAR
The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the
Spanish frontier was due to leave the Quai d'Orsay
station at ten. But three-quarters of an hour before
that time the platform was already crowded, and
many of the seats occupied. Hillyard walked down
the steps a little before half-past nine with the latest
of the evening papers in his hand.


150
THE SUMMONS
" At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out
of the train for it.”
Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and
shrugged his shoulders. What a country!” the
gesture said as plainly as speech.
' But it is the war, monsieur ! the attendant
expostulated with indignation.
Oh, yes, I know! The war !” Hillyard retorted
with ill-b'amour. “Do I want a bath? I cannot
have it. It is the war.
If a waiter is rude to me, it
is the war.
If my steak is over-cooked it is the war.
The war! It is the excuse for everything."
He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper
berth, and, still grumbling, gave him some money.
He turned sharply on the attendant, who was smiling
in the doorway.
" Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should
be irritable, eh?” he cried. “I suppose it must
bem-damnably funny.”.
“Monsieur, there are very many men who would
like to-night to be invalids with a sleeping compart-
ment to themselves,” returned the attendant severely.
“Well, I don't want to talk about it any more,"
said Hillyard roughly, and he shouldered his way out
again on to the platform.
The attendant followed him. The smile upon his
face was sleeker than ever. He was very amused and
contented with his passenger in the compartment
numbers II and 12. He took the cap off his head
and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
"Ouf! It is hot to-night.” He looked after Hill-
yard with a chuckle, and remarked to the controller,
This is a customer who does not like his little com-
forts to be disarranged !”
The controller nodded contemptuously.
" They must travel the English! The tourism
that is sacred, even if all Europe burns."
Hillyard strolled towards the stairs, and as he drew
near to them his eyes brightened. A man about six


IN A SLEEPING-CAR
151
years older than himself, tall, broad-shouldered, slim
of waist, with a short, fair moustache, was descending
towards him.
The war has killed many foolish legends, but none
more foolish than the legend of the typical Frenchman,
conceived as a short, rotund, explosive person, with a
square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny
silk bat with a flat brim. There have been too many
young athletes of clean build on view whose nationality
language and the uniforms of powder-blue and khaki
could alone decide. The more curious might, perhaps,
if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at
the boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure
tell-tale they once used to be. This man descending
the stairs with a limp was the Commandant Marnier,
of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now
attached to the General Staff. He was in plain
clothes; he was looking for Martin Hillyard, and no
stranger but would have set him and the man for
whom he was looking in the same category of races.
The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard
clearly enough long before he reached the foot of the
stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an
appearance of surprise.
But what luck !” he said aloud. “You leave by
this train ?
“Yes. It may be that I shall find health."
“Yes, yes. So your friends will pray," returned the
Commandant, falling into Hillyard's pace.
"The telegram we sent for you—"Marnier began.
“ Yes !"
“There is an answer already. Your friend is un-
hurt. I have brought you a copy. I thought that
perhaps I might catch you before your train started."
He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hill
yard's hand.
That was most kind of you,” said Hillyard.


152
THE SUMMONS
“ You have removed a great anxiety. It would have
been many days before I should have received this
good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry
with it here."
Hillyard was moved, partly by the message, partly
by the consideration of Marnier, who now waved his
thanks aside.
Bah! We may not say 'comrade' as often as
the Boche, but perhaps we are it all the more. I will
not come further with you towards your carriage,
for I have still a few things to do."
He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed.
dillyard turned from him towards his sleeping-car,
but though his chief anxiety was dispelled, his re-
luctance to go was not. And he looked at the long,
brightly-lit train which was to carry him from this
busy and high-hearted city with a desire that it would
start before its time, and leave him a derelict upon
the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to
the work which was at his hand. The sapphire waters
of the South had quite lost their sparkle and enchant-
ment. Here, here, was the place of life! The exhilara-
tion of his task, its importance, the glow of thankful-
ness when some real advantage was won, a plot foiled,
a scheme carried to success-these matters were all
banished from his mind. Even the war-risk of it was
forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in
trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since
known to the Germans; the danger of the torpedo
was ever present on her voyages, and the certainty
that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means
would be taken to force him to speak before he was
shot, was altogether beyond dispute. Even at this
moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little
phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment
between himself and a forced confession of his aims
and knowledge. But he was not aware of it. How
many times had he seen the red light at Europa
Point on Gibraltar's edge change to white, sometimes


IN A SLEEPING-CAR
153
60
against the scarlet bars of dawn, sometimes in the
winter against a wall of black! But on the platform
of the Quai d'Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers
going on short leave to their homes, and rattling with
pannikins and iron helmets, he could remember none
of these consolations.
He reached his carriage.
“Messieurs les voyageurs, en route !” cried the
controller.
“What a crowd !” Hillyard grumbled. Really,
it almost disposes one to say that one will never travel
again until this war is over.”
He walked along the corridor to his compartment
and sat down as the train started with a jerk. The
door stood open, and in a few minutes the attendant
came to it.
“Who is in the next compartment on the other side
of the lavatory ?” Hillyard asked.
“A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife."
"Does he snore ? ” Hillyard asked. “If he snores
I shall not sleep. It should be an offence against your
bye-laws for a traveller to snore.
He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced
nis shoe.
The attendant came into the room.
“It is possible, monsieur, that I might hurry and
fetch you your coffee in the morning," he said.
“ It is worth five francs to you if you do," replied
Hillyard.
“Then monsieur will not move from his compart-
ment until luncheon. I will see to it. Monsieur will
bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock when
I bring the coffee."
Good,” returned Hillyard ungraciously.
The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door.
But the ventilating lattice in the lower part of the
door was open, and Hillyard could see the legs of the
attendant. He was waiting outside-waiting for
what? Hillyard smiled to himself and took down


154
THE SUMMONS
his bag from the upper berth. He had hardly opened
it when the attendant knocked and entered.
“You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door.
In these days it is not wise to leave it on the latch,"
“ I won't forget,” Hillyard replied surlily, and once
more the attendant retired ; and again he stood out-
side the door. He did not move until the bolt was shot.
The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a
tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities
should safely bolt the door of the compartments
numbers II and 12; and very pleased, too, to bring
to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in
the morning, so that he need not leave compartments
numbers II and 12 unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as
the attendant moved away.
"I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel ?
Very well! Come, let me deserve your confidence,
my friend.”
The train thundered out of the tunnel and through
the suburbs of Paris. Hillyard drew a letter from
Fairbairn out of his pocket and read it through.
Compartments numbers II and 12 on the night
train from the Quai d'Orsay station to Cerbère.
Good !” murmured Hillyard. Here I am in com-
partments numbers II and 12. Now we wait until
the married couple from Perpignan and the attendant
are comfortably asleep."
He undressed and went to bed, but he did not
sleep. He lay in the berth in the darkness, listening
intently as the train rushed out of Paris across the
plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed,
he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside,
and once the faintest possible little click told that the
latch of his door had been lifted to make sure that the
bolt was still shot home in its socket. Hillyard smiled.
“You are safe, my friend,” he breathed the words
towards the anxious one in the corridor. “No one
can get in. The door is locked. The door of the
dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace.”


150
THE SUMMONS
the level of a man's head, which once a diamond-
shaped piece of coloured glass had closed. . .
The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the
steps folded in their place, and Hillyard back again
in his bed before two minutes had passed. And once
more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns
which went backwards and forwards like a shuttle in
his brain. But there was no note of interrogation
now.
"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbère ... Barcelona
... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world”; and with a
thump the train set a firm full stop to the sequence.
Across the broad plain, meadowland and plough,
flower-garden and fruit the train thundered down to
the Pyrenees. Paris was far away now, and the sense
of desolation at quitting it quite gone from Hillyard's
breast.
“Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbère ... Barcelona
... Madrid.”
Here was one of the post-roads by which Germany
reached the outer world. Others there were beyond
doubt. Sweden and Rotterdam, Mexico and South
America—but here was one, and to-morrow, nay,
to-day, the communication would be cut, and Germany
so much the poorer.
The train steamed into Cerbère at one o'clock of
the afternoon.
“Every one must descend here, monsieur, for the
examination of luggage and passports," said the
attendant.
But I am leaving France !” cried Hillyard. “I
go on into Spain. Why should France, then, examine
my luggage ?"
It is the war, monsieur."
Hillyard lifted up his hands in indignation too deep
for words. He gathered together his bag and his
coat and stick, handed them to a porter and descended.
He passed into the waiting-room, and was directed by
a soldier with a fixed bayonet to take his place in the


IN A SLEEPING-CAR
157
16
queue of passengers. But he said quietly to the
soldier :
“I would like to see M. de Cassaud, the Com-
missaire of Police."
Hillyard was led apart; his card was taken from
him; he was ushered instantly into an office where
an elderly French officer sat in mufti before a table.
He shook Hillyard cordially by the hand.
You pass through ? I myself hope to visit
Barcelona again very soon. Jean, wait outside with
monsieur's baggage,' this to the porter who had
pushed in behind Hillyard. M. de Cassaud rose and
closed the door. He had looked at Hillyard's face
and acted quickly.
“ It is something more than compliments you want
from me, monsieur. Well, what can I do?”
“The second sleeping-car, compartments numbers
II and 12,” said Hillyard urgently. “ In the water-
tank of the lavatory there is a little metal case with
letters from Berlin for Barcelona and Madrid. But
wait, monsieur !”
M. de Cassaud was already at the door.
It is the attendant of the sleeping-car who hides
them there. If he can be called into an office quietly
on some matter of routine and held there whilst your
search is made, then those in Madrid and Barcelona
to whom these letters are addressed may never know
they have been sent at all !"
M. de Cassaud nodded and went out. Hillyard
waited nervously in the little whitewashed room. It
was impossible that the attendant should have taken
fright and bolted. Even if he bolted, it would be
impossible that he should escape across the frontier.
It was impossible that he should recover the metal
case from the water-tank, while the carriage stood
openly at the platform of Cerbère station. He would
be certain to wait until it was shunted into the cleaning
shed. But so many certainties had been disproved,
so many impossibilities had come to pass during the


IN A SLEEPING-CAR
159
M. de Cassaud was doubtful about the propriety of
such a procedure.
“After all I found them,” Martin urged.
" It would be unusual," said M. de Cassaud. “The
regulations, you know-
Martin Hillyard smiled.
“The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are
those we make ourselves.
M. de Cassaud would admit nothing so outrageous
to his trained and rather formal mind. But he made
a list of these letters and of their addresses as though
he was undecided. He had not finished when a
sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the
sleeping-car had been taken to the depot. He had
been searched and a pistol had been found upon him.
The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon
the table and retired. M. de Cassaud took up the
little weapon and examined it.
“Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard ?” he
asked.
“Yes. They are chiefly used against the mos-
quitoes.'
“Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued
the Commissaire ; and he looked quickly at Hillyard.
“I will tell you something. You ran some risk last
night when you explored that water-tank. Yes,
indeed! It would have been so easy. The attendant
had but to thrust the muzzle of this through the
opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm
that he had caught you hiding something, and there
was he a hero and you a traitor. Yes, that is why I
said to you the little opening in the window was
ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he
had caught you !"
Martin was quick to take advantage.
"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my
French colleagues informed of everything.”
Very well," said M. de Cassaud, and he suddenly
swept the letters across to Hillyard, who gathered


160
THE SUMMONS
them up hastily and buttoned them away in his
pocket before de Cassaud should change his mind.
“ It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire
reproachfully.
"Yes, but it is the war," replied Hillyard. “1
have the authority of the attendant of the sleeping-car
for saying so.”
CHAPTER XVI
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
“Now !" said Hillyard.
Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain
developing dishes to the table. Hillyard unlocked a
drawer in his bureau. They were in the deck-saloon
of the Dragonfly, steaming southwards from Valencia.
Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the
uplands of olive trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped
by in a magical clear light; and the hiss of the beaded
water against the ship's planks filled the cabin with
a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of
excitement as he took out from the drawer the letters
he had carried off from M. de Cassaud. He had
travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with
the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the
Estación de Francia on the way, and now, in the
sunlight and in the secrecy of the open sea, they were
to appraise the value of their catch.
They sat at the table and examined them, opening
the envelopes with the skill and the care which ex-
perience had taught them. For, even though this
post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be
worth while to send forward these letters. One or
two were apparently family letters for German soldiers,
interned at Pampluna ; one or two were business
communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in
Spain; and these seemed genuine enough.
They may be of value to the War Trade Board,”


TRICKS OF THE TRADE
161
said Fairbairn; and he put them aside for dispatch to
London. As he turned back Hillyard cried suddenly :
Here we are !"
He had come to the last letter of the little heap.
He was holding the envelope in front of him and he
read out the address :
" Mr. Jack Williams,
Alfredo Menandez, 6,
Madrid."
Fairbairn started up, and tugging at his moustache,
stared at the envelope over Hillyard's shoulder.
By Jove !” he said. We may have got some-
thing."
"Let us see ! ” returned Hillyard, and he opened
the envelope.
As he spread out the letter both men laughed,
The date of the month had been corrected by the
writer-thus :
8
“ July 27th, 1916.”
There was no doubt any longer in either of these
two men's minds that hidden away under the common-
places of a letter of affection was a message of grave
importance.
“They are full of clever tricks in Berlin," said
Hillyard cheerfully. He could afford to contemplate
that cleverness with complacency, for it was now to
serve his ends.
There was a German official of high importance
living in the Calle Alfredo Menandez, although not at
number 6 in that street. The street was a short one
with very few numbers in it; and it had occurred
to the German official to point out to the postman in
that street that if letters came to English names in
that street of which the owners could not be discovered,
they were probably for the governess of his children,
who had a number of English relations moving about
Spain, and was accustomed to receive their letters
F


162
THE SUMMONS
for them, and in any case, five pesetas would be paid
for each of them. Shortly after, letters had begun to
arrive addressed to English non-existent people in the
quiet little Calle Alfredo Menandez, sometimes from
Allied countries, sometimes from Holland, or from
Port-Bou over against Cerbère in Spain; and every
one of these found its natural way to the house of the
German official. The choice of English names had a
certain snal ingenuity in that, when passing through
the censorship of Allied countries, they were a little
more likely to be taken at their face value than letters
addressed to foreigners.
So far so good. But the German high official was
a very busy person; and letters might find their way
into his hands which were really intended for English
persons and not for him at all. Accordingly, to make
all clear, to warn him that here indeed was a letter
deserving his kind attention, that little trifling altera-
tion in the date was adopted; as though a man
writing on the 28th had mislaid the calendar or news-
paper and assigned the 27th to the day of writing,
and afterwards had discovered his mistake. It was
no wonder accordingly that hope ran high in both
Fairbairn and Hillyard as they read through this
letter ; although, upon the face of it, it was nothing
but a sentimental effusion from a sister to a brother.
We have got to clear all this nonsense away first,"
said Hillyard.
Fairbairn took the letter, and placing it on one of the
developing dishes, poured over it a liquid from a bottle.
“ That won't take very long," he said.
Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second
of the two white porcelain dishes. He brought out a
cruet stand from a cupboard at the side of the stove
and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added
water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the
rim, and rocked the dish that the dilution might be
complete. Next he took a new copying-pencil from
the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood


TRICKS OF THE TRADE
163
away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the
vinegar and water. This lead he carefully dissolved
with the help of a glass pestle.
“There ! It's ready," he said.
I, too,” added Fairbairn.
He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of
writing paper which was absolutely blank. Not one
drop of the black ink which had recorded those senti-
mental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of
notepaper which had accidentally fallen into a basin of
water.
"That's all right," said Hillyard ; and Fairbairn
gently slid the sheet into the dish in front of Hillyard.
And for a while nothing happened.
“It's a clever trick, isn't it?” Hillyard used the
words again, but now with a note of nervousness.
No unlikely paraphernalia needed. Just a copying
pencil and some vinegar, which you can get anywhere,
Yes, it's a clever trick!"
“If it works," Fairbairn added bluntly.
Both men watched the dish anxiously. The paper
remained blank. The solution did not seem to work.
It was the first time they had ever made use of it.
The coast slid by unnoticed.
“Lopez was certain,” said Fairbairn, " quite cer-
tain that this was the developing formula."
Hillyard nodded gloomily, but he did not remove
his eyes from that irresponsive sheet.
" There may be some other ingredient, something
kept quite secret--something known only to one man
or two.”
He sat down, hooking his chair with his foot nearer
to the table.
We must wait."
"That's all there is to be done," said Fairbairn, and
they waited ; and they waited. They had no idea, even
if the formula should work, whether the writing would
flash up suddenly like an over-exposed photographic
plate, or emerge shyly and reluctantly letter by letter,


164
THE SUMMONS
word by word. Then, without a word spoken, Fair-
bairn's finger pointed. A brown stain showed on the
whiteness of the paper just a stroke. It was followed
by a curve and another stroke. Hillyard swiftly
turned the oblong developing dish so that the side
of it, and not the end, was towards him now.
“ The writing is across the sheet," he said, and then
with a cry, “ Look!"
A word was coming out clear, writing itself unmis-
takably in the middle of the line, at the bottom of
the sheet-a signature. Zimmermann!
From the General Staff !” said Hillyard, in a
whisper of excitement. “My word !” He looked at
Fairbairn with an eager smile of gratitude. “It's your
doing that we have got this—yours and Lopez Baeza's!”
Miraculously the brown strokes and curves and dots
and flourishes trooped out of nothing, and fell in like
sections and platoons and companies with their due
space between them, some quick and trim, some rather
slovenly in their aspect, some loitering; but in the
end the battalion of words stood to attention, dressed
for inspection. The brown had turned black before
Hillyard lifted the letter from the solution and spread
it upon a sheet of blotting paper.
"Now let us see !” and they read the letter through.
One thousand pounds in English money were
offered for reliable information as to the number of
howitzers and tanks upon the British front.
A second sum of a thousand pounds for reliable
information as to the manufacture of howitzers and
tanks in England.
“So far, it's not very exciting,” Hillyard remarked
with disappointment, as he turned the leaf. But the
letter progressed in interest.
A third sum of a thousand pounds was offered for a
list of the postal sections on the British front, with
the name, initials and rank of a really good and reliable
British soldier in each section who was prepared to
receive and answer correspondence


TRICKS OF THE TRADE
165
11
Fairbairn chuckled and observed :
“I think Herr Zimmermann might be provided with
a number of such good and reliable soldiers selected
by our General Staff," and he added with a truculent
snort, “We could do with that sum of a thousand
pounds here. You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard.
Otherwise they'll snaffle it in London.”
Fairbairn, once a mild north-country schoolmaster,
of correct phraseology and respectable demeanour, had,
under the pressure of his service, developed like that
white sheet of notepaper. He had suffered
* A sea-change
Into something rich and strange"
and from a schoolmaster had become a buccaneer
with a truculent manner and a mind of violence.
London, under which name he classed all Government
officials, offices, departments, and administrations,
particularly roused his ire. London was ignorant,
London was stupid, London was always doing him
and the other buccaneers down, was always snaffling
something which he ought to have. Fairbairn, utter-
ing one snort of satisfaction, would have shot it with
his Browning
“Get it off your chest, old man," said Hillyard
soothingly, and we'll go on with this letter. It
looks to me as if He was glancing onwards and
checked himself with an exclamation. His face became
grave and set.
“ Listen to this," and he read aloud, translating as
he went along.
“Since the tubes have been successful in France,
the device should be extended to England. B45 is
obviously suitable for the work. A submarine will
sink letters for the Embassy in Madrid and a parcel
of the tubes between the twenty-seventh and the thirtieth
of July, within Spanish territorial waters off the Cabo
de Cabron. A green light will be shown in three short
flashes from the sea and it should be answered from
the shore by a red and a white and two reds.”


TRICKS OF THE TRADE
167
the Dragonfly was piloted into the harbour of Alicante.
Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some
hours to get through before they could take the
journey they intended. They sauntered accordingly
along the esplanade beneath the palm trees until they
came to the Casino. Both were temporary members
of that club, and they sat down upon the cane chairs
on the broad side-walk. A military band was playing
on the esplanade a little to their right, and in front
of them a throng of visitors and townspeople strolled
and sat in the evening air. Hillyard smiled as he
watched the kaleidoscopic grouping and re-grouping
of men and children and women. The revolutions of
his life, a subject which in the press of other and urgent
matters had fallen of late into the background of
his thoughts, struck him again as wondrous and
admirable. He began to laugh with enjoyment. He
looked at Fairbairn. How dull in comparison the
regular sequences of his career !
I wandered about here barefoot and penniless,"
he said, “not so very long ago. On this very pave-
ment! He struck it with his foot, commending to
Fairbairn the amazing fact. “I have cleaned boots,"
and he called to a boy who was lying in wait with a
boot-black's apparatus on his back for any dusty foot.
“Chico, come and clean my shoes.” He jested with
the boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave
him a shining peseta. Hillyard was revelling in the
romance of his life under the spur of the excitement
which the affair of the letter had fired in him.
I wandered here, passing up and down in front of this
“Yes,
very Casino."
And Fairbairn saw his face change and his eyes
widen as though he recognised some one in the throng
beneath the trees.
“What is it?" Fairbairn asked, and for a little
while Hillyard did not answer. His eyes were not
following any movements under the trees. They saw
no one present in Alicante that day. Slowly he


168
THE SUMMONS
turned to Fairbairn, and answered in a voice of sus-
pense :
“Nothing! I was just remembering and wonder-
ing!"
He remained sunk in abstraction for a long time,
“It can't be!" at grips with “If it could be l’and a rising
inspiration that " It was !” A man had once tried
him out with questions about Alicante, a man who
was afraid lest he should have seen too much. But
Hillyard had learnt to hold his tongue when he had
only inspirations to go upon, and he disclosed nothing
of this to Fairbairn.
Later on, when darkness had fallen, the two men
drove in a motor-car southwards round the bay and
through a shallow valley to the fishing village of
Torrevieja. When you came upon its broad beach
of shingle and sand, with its black-tarred boats hauled
up, and its market booths, you might dream that you
had been transported to Broadstairs except for one
fact. The houses are built in a single story, since
the village is afflicted with earthquakes. Two houses
rise higher than the rest, the hotel and the Casino.
In the Casino Hillyard found José Medina's agent for
those parts sitting over his great mug of beer; and
they talked together quietly for a long while.
Thus Martin Hillyard fared in those days. He
played with life and death, enjoying vividly the one and
ever on the brink of the other, but the deep, innermost
realities of either had as yet touched him not at all.
CHAPTER XVII
ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
THE great cape thrusts its knees far out into the
Mediterranean, and close down by the sea on the very
point a lighthouse stands out from the green mass
like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs
sharply back in heights of tangled undergrowths and
trees, overhangs a wide bay and drops at the end of


ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
169
the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty harbour.
Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle
with an undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the
plateau mountain walls. Two tiny fishing villages
cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge, and
high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small
rude settlement clings to the hillside. There are no
roads to the cape. From the east you may ride a
horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west
you must approach by boat. So remote and un-
visited is this region that the women in these high
villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown rock,
still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.
There are no roads, but José Medina was never
deterred by the lack of roads. His business, indeed,
was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild country. A
high police official in one great town said of him :
For endurance and activity there is no one like
José Medina between the sea and the Pyrenees. You
think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands one
morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car,
and in five minutes-whish !he is gone like the smoke
of my cigarette. He will drive his car through our
mountains by tracks, of which the Guardia Civil does
not even know the existence."
By devious tracks, then, now through narrow
gullies in brown and barren mountains, now striking
some village path amidst peach trees and marguerites,
José Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge
of the sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower,
with turf for a carpet, a camp had been prepared near
to one of the two tiny villages. José Medina was
king in this region. The party arrived in the after-
noon of the twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the
colour of saffron from the dust-clouds the car had
raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with the
intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he
could hardly climb down on to the ground. He slept
that night amidst such a music of birds as he had


670
THE SUMMONS
never believed possible one country could produce.
Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and José
Medina watched; their lanterns ready to their hands.
Lights there were in plenty on the sea, but they were
the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen
of those parts to attract the fish; and the morning
broke with the lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth
sea, pale as fine jade.
There are three more nights,” said Hillyard. He
was a little dispirited after the fatigue of the day
before and the long, empty vigil on the top of the day.
The next watch brought no better fortune. There
was no moon; the night was of a darkness so clear
that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths over
the surface of the water, and from far away the still
air vibrated from time to time with the throbbing
of propellers as the ships without lights passed along
the coast.
Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and
José Medina had been lying during the night. It had
been spread on a patch of turf in a break of the hill
some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold.
The blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a
frost on bush and grass.
It looks as if they had found out,” he said.
“This is only the second night," said José Medina.
It all means so much to me,” replied Hillyard,
shivering in the briskness of the morning.
Courage, the little Marteen!” cried José Medina.
“After breakfast and a few hours' sleep, we shall take
a rosier view."
Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to
those few hours. The dread lest the Germans should
have discovered the interception of their letters
weighed too heavily upon him. Even in the day-
light he needs must look out over that placid sunlit
sea and imagine here and there upon its surface the
low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine. Success
here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of
6


ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
171
lives, so dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day
slowly dragged its burning hours to sunset, the coolness
of the evening came, and the swift darkness upon its
heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the
vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morn-
ing, far away at sea, a green light, bright as an emerald,
flashed thrice and was gone.
“Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said
José Medina.
Quick! the lanterns ! ” replied Hillyard. “The
red first! Good! Now the white. So! And the
red again. Now we must wait!” and he sank down
again upon the blanket. All the impatience and
languor were gone from him. The moment had come.
He was at once steel to meet it.
“Yes," said José Medina, "we shall see nothing more
now for a long while."
They heard no sound in that still night; they saw
no gleam of lights. It seemed to Hillyard that æons
passed before José touched him on the elbow and
pointed downwards.
“Look !” he whispered excitedly.
Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay,
so near that Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch
a stone on to the conning tower. He now held his
breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then the
water splashed, and a moment afterwards the sub-
marine turned and moved to sea. They gave it five
minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny creek. A
rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at
the tiller and two at the oars.
“ You saw it, Manuel ? " said Medina as he and
Hillyard stepped in.
“Yes, Señor José. It was very close. Oh, they
know these waters !"
The oars churned the phosphorescent water into
green fire, and the foam from the stem of the boat
sparkled as though jewels were scattered into it by
the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside


172
THE SUMMONS
a little white buoy which floated on the water. The
buoy was attached to a rope; that again to a chain.
A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the
chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise.
Hillyard saw the two men who were hauling it in bend
suddenly at their work and heave with a greater
effort.
“ It is coming,” said one of them, and the man at
the tiller went forward to help them. Hillyard leaned
over the side of the heavy boat and stared down into
the water. But the night was too dark for him to
see anything but the swirl of green fire made by the
movement of the chain and the fire-drops falling from
the links. At last something heavy knocked against
the boat's flanks.
“Once more,” whispered the man from the tiller.
Now !”
And the load was perched upon the gunwale and
lowered into the boat. It consisted of three square
and bulky metal cases, bound together by the chain.
We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered José
Medina, with a laugh of sheer excitement. He was
indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard himself.
“Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse
across the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row
back quickly. We must be far away from here by
the time the world is stirring."
The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the
boat leaped upon the water. They had rowed for
fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon boomed.
The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained
his eyes seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard
held up his hand for silence. Thus they sat immobile
as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes. Then
Hillyard relaxed from his attention.
They must have got her plump with the first shot,"
he said; and, indeed, there was no other explanation
for that boom of a solitary cannon across the midnight
sea.


174
THE SUMMONS
of boughs and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so
high an elation possessed him that he was unconscious
both of the peril and the bruises. He could have sung
aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and
breakfasted by the side of the car in a high country
of wild flowers. The sun was hidden from them by a
barrier of hills.
" We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour,"
said José Medina, " and make good going.”
They came into a district of grey, weathered rock,
and, making a wide circuit all that day, crept towards
nightfall down to the road between Aguilas and
Cartagena ; and once more the sea lay before them.
“We are a little early," said Medina. " We will
wait here until it is dark. The carabineros are not at
all well disposed to me, and there are a number of them
patrolling the road.”
They were above the road and hidden from it by a
hedge of thick bushes. Between the leaves Hillyard
could see a large felucca moving westwards some miles
from the shore and a long way off on the road below
two tiny specks. The specks grew larger and became
two men on horses. They became larger still, and in
the failing light Hillyard was just able to distinguish
that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.
“Let us pray,” said Medina with a note of anxiety
in his voice," that they do not become curious about
our fishing-boat out there !"
As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look
out to sea. They conversed each with the other.
“ If I were near enough to hear them !” said José
Medina, and he suddenly turned in alarm upon Hill-
yard. " What are you doing?” he said.
Hillyard had taken a large :38 Colt automatic pistol
from his pocket. His face was drawn and white and
very set.
"I am doing nothing.--for the moment,” he
answered. “But those two men must ride on before
it is dark and too late for me to see them.”


176
THE SUMMONS
touched every fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard,
though his eye never left the sights of his Colt nor his
mind wavered from his purpose, was with a subordinate
consciousness stealing in the dark night up the foot-
path between the big, leafy trees over the rustic rail-
way bridge to the summit of the hill. He was tramp-
ing once more through lanes, between fields, and stood
again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the
morning break in beauty and in wonder over London.
The vision gained from the foolish and romantic days
of his boyhood, steadied his finger upon the trigger
after all these years.
Then to José's infinite relief the two horsemen rode
on. The long, black, shining barrel of the Colt fol-
lowed them as they dwindled on the road. They
turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in
his pocket, José Medina rolled over on his back, and
clapped his hands to his face.
You might have missed,” he gasped. One of
them at all events.”
Hillyard turned to him with a grin. The savage
was not yet exorcised.
Why ?” he asked. Why should I have missed
one of them ? It was my business not to.”
José Medina flung up his hands.
“ I will not argue with you. We are not made of
the same earth.”
Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.
“Pretty nearly, my friend,” he said, and he laid a
hand on José Medina's shoulder. For we are good
friends--such good friends that I do not scruple to
drag you into the same perils as myself."
Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three
years when he loafed and worked about the quays of
Southern Spain. He touched the right chord now with an
unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman,
the loco Inglés ! But to be reckoned by one of them as
one of them-here was an insidious flattery which no one
of José Medina's upbringing could possibly resist.


178
THE SUMMONS
What I am wondering about is why they troubled
to send the tubes at all ? said Fairbairn slowly.
“There's some reason, of course, something perhaps
in the make of the glass.”
He held one of the tubes up to the light. There was
nothing to distinguish it from any one of the tubes in
which small tabloids are sold by chemists.
Hillyard got out of his bureau the letter in which
these tubes were mentioned.
"They have been successful in France,” he said,
quoting from the letter. “The scientists may be able
to make something of them in Paris. This letter and
the tubes together may give a clue. I think that I
had better take one of the boxes to Paris.”
“ Yes,” said Fairbairn gloomily. "But and
he shrugged his shoulders.
" But it's one of the ninety per cent. which go wrong,
eh?” Hillyard finished the sentence with bitterness.
Disappointment was heavy upon both men. Hillyard,
too, was tired by the tension of these last sleepless days.
He had not understood how much he had counted
upon success.
Yes, it's damnably disheartening," he cried. "I
thought these tubes might lead us pretty straight to B45."
B45 !”
The exclamation came from José Medina, who was
leaning against the door post of the saloon, half in the
room, half out on the sunlit deck. He had placed
himself tactfully aloof. The examination of the cases
was none of his business. Now, however, his face lit up.
B45.” He shut the door and took a seat at the
table. “I can tell you about B45.'
CHAPTER XVIII
THE USES OF SCIENCE
It was Hillyard's creed that chance will serve a man
very capably, if he is equipped to take advantage of


180
THE SUMMONS
José Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridicu-
lous in this particular foible.
“ They make such charming pictures," he cried.
"And it is very useful for us, too,” remarked
Hillyard. “The photographer is a friend of mine.”
José was still gazing at the photograph.
Such a brain, my friend ! She never told a story
the second time differently, however emotional the
moment. She never gave away a secret."
“She probably didn't know any,” said Hillyard.
But José would not hear of such a reason.
“Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows
people in Berlin-great people. She is their friend,
and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence ! ”
Martin Hillyard laughed.
She seems to have fairly put it over you at any
rate," he said. He was not alarmed at José Medina's
fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's capacity
for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of
his temporary passions. But he took the photograph
away from Medina and locked it up again. The rap-
turous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn’s intelligencechecked
the flow of that story which was to lead him to B45.
“ So you know about her ? ” José said with an
envious eye upon the locked drawer.
“A little," said Martin Hillyard.
Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-
Amerika Line before the war, and in the Spanish
Department. She was sent to Spain in the last days
of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a con-
siderable salary: which she enjoyed. She seemed
indeed to have done little else, and Berlin, after a year,
began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion of
both her social position and her brains than José
Medina had formed. Berlin needed results, and failing
to obtain them, proceeded to hint more and more
definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's
stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been in-
telligent enough to make friends with one or two


THE USES OF SCIENCE
183
as he spoke he knew that the utterance of the name
awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard. Hillyard
filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it
before he spoke.
“Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar ?”
he asked, “ you who know every one ?”
José Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up
his hands.
There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at
Alicante," and José Medina saw Hillyard's eyes open
and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking
steadiness. Just so José Medina imagined might
some savage animal in a jungle survey the man who
had stumbled upon his lair.
“That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless per-
son, was in business with a German, the German
Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London.”
“ Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his
chair and went to the window. But he saw nothing
of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He saw a
man at a supper party in London a year before the
war began, betraying himself by foolish insistent
questions uttered in fear lest his close intimacy with
Germans in Alicante should be known.
“I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely
to England, long before the war, to spy,” said Hillyard
gravely. He returned to the table, and took up again
one of the empty glass tubes.
“ I wonder what he was to do with these."
José Medina had opened the door of the saloon
once more. A beam of sunlight shot through the
doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and hand.
The tiny slim phial glittered like silver ; and to all of
them in the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruc-
tion.
“That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said
José, and he shook hands with Hillyard and Fair-
bairn, and went out on to the deck. “ Hasta luego !"
Hasta ahora / ” returned Hillyard; and José


THE USES OF SCIENCE
185
Do come
Gatwick which is easily reached from here.
if you can and bring your friend with you, if he is in
London and has nothing better to do. We have all
been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester
is very proud of belonging to the same mess, and says
what a wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into
the papers like that, without trying to.”
Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay's
face as she wrote that sentence. Hillyard laughed as
he read it, but it was less in amusement as from plea-
sure at the particular information which this sentence
contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special
distinction in the hard fighting at Thiepval. There
was not a word in Harry's letter to suggest it. There
would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed
by the great fact that his battalion had increased its
good name.
There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay's letter
which brought another smile to his lips.
" Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever.
She was married last week, in violet, as you will
remember, to the Funeral March of a Marionette and
already she is in the throes of domestic unhappiness.
Her husband, fleshy, of course, red in the face, and
accustomed to sleep after dinner, simply won't
urderstand her.”
Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on
Millicent Splay's face, but it was a smile rather rueful
and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of annoyance. Hill-
yard himself was caught away to quite another scene.
He was once more in the small motor-car on the top
of Duncton Hill, and looked out over the Weald of
Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and the
slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the
summer haze. He saw Joan Whitworth's rapt face,
and heard her eager cry.
“ Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can
carry it away with you in your breast. Isn't it worth


186
THE SUMMONS
everything—banishment, suffering-everything ? Not
the people so much, but the earth itself and the jolly
homes upon it!"
A passage followed which disturbed him :
“There are other things too. My magnolia is still
in bud. I dread a blight before the flower opens.'
It was a cry of distress--nothing less than that,
uttered in some moment of intense depression. Else
it would never have been allowed to escape at all.
Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going
home in any case. There were those tubes. There
was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had left
England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park,
and take Harry Luttrell with him if he could.
Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to
see him at the Ritz Hotel. They dined together in a
corner of the restaurant.
“We have solved the problem of those tubes," said
Marnier. “They are nothing more nor less than
time-fuses.”
Time-fuses ! ” Hillyard repeated. “I don't under-
stand."
"Listen!"
Marnier looked around. There was no one near
enough to overhear him, if he did not raise his voice ;
and he was careful to speak in a whisper.
“Two things." He ticked them off upon his
fingers. “ First, hydrofluoric acid when brought into
contact with certain forms of explosive will create a
fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way
through glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the
time required to set the acid free. Do you follow ? "
* Yes," said Hillyard.
" Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that
it will take hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to
eat its way through. Then fill it with acid and seal
it up. You have a time-fuse which will act precisely
in four hours and a half.”


THE USES OF SCIENCE
187
"If it comes into contact with the necessary ex-
plosive,” Hillyard added.
“Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in
our munition factories, work three hours and a half.
Then they go to their luncheon.”
41 Munition factories !” said Hillyard with a start.
“Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are
short of labour as you know. Our men are in the
firing line. We must get labour from some other
source. And there is only one source.”
“ The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.
“Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who
are near to us, who can come without difficulty and
without much expense. We have a good many
Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three
of these factories have recently been burnt down. We
have the proof now, thanks to you, that those little
glass tubes so carefully manufactured in Berlin to last
four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going.”
“Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. It
is not probability or moral certainty ? It is actual
bed-rock proof?"
“Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how
these tubes could be used, we knew what to look for
when the workmen were searched on entering the
factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had
one of these little tubes in his mouth and in the lining
of his waistcoat, just a little high explosive, so little
was necessary that it must escape notice unless you
knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he,
the good fellow, the good honest neutral”-it would
be difficult to describe the bitterness and scorn which
rang through Marnier's words, “has been kind enough
to tell me how he earned his German pay as well as
his French wages."
Hillyard leaned forward.
Yes, tell me that !"
"On his way to the factory in the morning, ha
makes a call."


188
THE SUMMONS
“ Yes."
The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it
just filled and gives it to the workman. The time
fuse is set for four hours and a half. The workman
has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half
an hour after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher.
At his place he takes off his waistcoat and hangs it up
and in the pocket, just separated from the explosive
by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the
tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the
workman three and a half hours of work. When the
whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the workman
leaves his waistcoat still hanging up on the peg and
goes out in the stream. But half an hour afterwards,
half-way through the hour of luncheon, the acid
reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in
that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise,
but quite enough to start a big fire; and when the
workmen return, the building is ablaze. No lives are
lost, but the factory is burnt down.”
Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.
" Perhaps you can tell me,” he said at length. “I
hear nothing from England or very little; and natur-
ally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen, too, for our
munition factories?”
" Yes.”
It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable
for this work. B45 was Mario Escobar, a Spaniard
himself.
“And filling the tubes! That is simple ?"
“A child could do it," answered Marnier.
Thank you,” said Martin Hillyard.
The next evening he left Paris and travelling all
night to Boulogne, reached London in the early after-
noon of the following day. Twenty months had
passed since he had set foot there.


CHAPTER XIX
UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
HILLYARD landed in England athirst for grey skies.
Could he have chosen the season of the year which
should greet him, he would have named October.
For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set
him dreaming through many a month past, of still
grey mornings sweet with the smell of earth and thick
hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But there
were at all events the fields wondrously green after
the brown hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields
in the frames of their hedges, and the brown-roofed
houses and the woods splashing their emerald branches
in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent
rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and
leaving his luggage in his flat walked down to the
house in the quiet street behind the Strand whence
Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.
But even in this backwater the changes of the war
were evident. The brass plates had all gone from the
door post and girls ran up and down the staircases
in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on
Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They
were, however, as unaware as of old of any Commodore
Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted to see
Commodore Graham ? And why? And, after all,
was there a Commodore Graham ? Gracious damsels
looked blandly at one another, with every apparent
desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to
Hillyard that they would get for him immediately
anyone else in the world whom he chose to name. It
was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious that the
one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham.
Oh, couldn't he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?
Very well,” said Hillyard with a smile.
" There
was a pretty girl with grey eyes, and I'll see her.”
ida


190
THE SUMMONS
The description is vague,” said the young lady
demurely.
"She is Miss Chayne.”
Oh !” said one.
“Oh!” said another; and
Will you follow me, please ? " said a third, who
at once became business-like and brisk, and led him
up the stairs. The door was still unvarnished. Miss
Chayne opened it, wearing the composed expression of
attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when
he had sought admission first. But her face broke up
into friendliness and smiles, when she recognised him,
and she drew him into the room.
“The Commodore's away for a week,” she said.
He had come to the end : no sleep, nerves all jangled.
He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."
Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very
well, since it had waited already two years.
“And you ?” he asked.
“Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Chayne, her
eyes dancing at the recollection. It was her pleasure
to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out towards the
Island. Not a day of rain during the whole time.”
“I think that I might have a month then, don't
you ?” said Hillyard, and Miss Chayne opined that
there would be no objection.
“But you will come back in a week," she stipulated,
"won't you? The Commodore will be here on
Thursday, and there are things accumulating which
he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"
Friday morning,” Hillyard suggested.
Thursday was the day on which he should have
travelled down to Rackham Park, but if he could
finish his business on Friday morning, he would only
lose one day.
" Friday morning then," said Miss Chayne, and
made a note of it.
Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his
friendships, arrange to write, at some distant time, a


UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
191
was.
play, revisit his club and his tailor, and revel, as at a
pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the
white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English
girls. He went through, in a word, the first experiences
of most men returned from a long sojourn in other
climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the
week was made notable for him by one small incident.
It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the
afternoon. He was walking from the Charing Cross
Road towards Leicester Square, when, from a doorway
ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn
his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their
backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple
The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure,
the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite
obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful
prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda
Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her
identity, a glance at the door from which she had
emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the
entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves
having served their turn and gone, the rotundists
were having an innings. Everybody and everything
was in rounds, palaces and gardens and ships and
Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in
circles. The circle was the principle of life and art.
Joan Whitworth would be drawn to the exhibition
as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly Joan Whitworth
was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after
her. But he checked himself after a few paces. Or
rather the aspect of her companion checked him. His
appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was all.
It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the
all-sufficient reason that the Private View had long
gone by; since the very last week of the exhibition
was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in
front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.
The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square
Garden, and Hillyard saw the man in profile. He


192
THE SUMMONS
stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind him
banged heavily against his back. The man walked
on and turned round after he had passed to stare at
Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock still, he was
unaware that anyone had run into him, in all his
body his lips alone moved.
"Marlo," he whispered. “Mario Escobar ! ”
The man who had been so far the foremost in his
thoughts during the last weeks that he never thought
that he could have failed to recognise him. Mario
Escobar ! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent
Splay's letter flashed back into his memory: The
distress which he had seemed to hear loud behind
the written words - was this its meaning and
explanation ? Joan Whitworth and Mario Escobar!
Certainly Joan knew him ! He was sitting next to her
on the night when “The Dark Tower" was produced,
sitting next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles
Hardiman had used some phrase to describe that
conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to
recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her
with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public
place. Yes, that was the sentence.
Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.
“Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?” he asked of the
hall porter.
“He is in the card-room, sir."
Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of
relief. His position was becoming a little complicated.
Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend of Joan Whit-
worth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one
point upon which Martin Hillyard greatly needed
information
Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more
obese than when Hillyard had last seen him, was
sitting by a bridge table overlooking the players. He
never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the
game, but he took a curious pleasure in looking on,
and would sit in the card-room by the hour engrossed
22


UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
193
in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard, however,
plucked him out of his occupation.
So you're back!” he cried, heaving himself heavily
out of his chair and shaking hands with Martin.
“For a month."
“I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles con-,
tinued. Have a whisky-and-soda.”
“ Thanks.'
Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over
to a sofa.
“Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to
me! I met Luttrell in the Mall this morning, on his
way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just been
given his D.S.O.”
Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was
low, and though he began the movement lazily, it
went suddenly with a run, so that the springs of the
couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from
beneath him.
“Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin.
battalion too. That's what he cares about.'
Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had sat
down to recover his equipoise. He wiped his forehead
with his handkerchief.
Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham
Park this week for Gatwick."
That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday
afternoon,” said Hillyard.
The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his
side, and he took a drink from it.
“ Perhaps you are going too,” he suggested.
Hardiman shook his head.
Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked
another question.
Do you know who is going to be there beside
Luttrell and myself ?"
Sir Charles smiled.
“ I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him
amongst the guests
“ His
G


196
THE SUMMONS
He rang the bell, and on Miss Chayne's appearance
called for what information the office had concerning
Mario Escobar, Miss Chayne returned with a book
in which Escobar's dossier was included.
“Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving
across to the bureau, followed Graham's forefinger
across the written page. He was agent for the Com-
pania de Navigacion del Sur d'España—a German
firm on the black list, head-quarters at Alicante.
Escobar severed his connection with the company
on the outbreak of war.
Graham raised his head to comment on the action.
“That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked
suspicion for a time. Suspicion was first aroused,"
and he resumed reading again, “ by his change of
lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a
boarding-house in Clarence Street, off Westbourne
Grove, and concealed his address, having his letters
addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon which
date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street.
Nothing further, however, happened to strengthen
that suspicion until, in the autumn of that year, a
letter signed Mario was intercepted by the censor.
It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit
company at Murcia, for Emma Grutzner."
“ You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed
Hillyard, “ in November."
Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the
written lines and stopped at the number and dis-
tinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and received.
Yes," continued Graham. Here's your answer.
‘Emma Grutzner is the governess in a Spanish
family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally, once
a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'
“Yes, yes! I routed that out,” said Hillyard.
* But I hadn't an idea that Mario Escobar was con-
cerned in it."
'That wasn't mentioned ?" asked the Commodore.
“ No. I already knew, you see, of B.45. If just


UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
197
a word had been added that it was Mario who was
writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified
him months ago.”
“Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a
proper compunction. He was not unused to other
fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only
the reasons for his telegrams and the information on
which his questions were based, were sent out with
the questions themselves, better results in quicker
time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were
going out and coming in all day; a whole array of
cipherers and decipherers lived in different rookeries
in London. Commodore Graham's activities em-
braced the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals
and little tucked-away towns and desolate stretches
of coast where the trade-winds blew. No doubt full
explanations would have led in many cases to more
satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were
out of all possibility. Even with questions fined down
to the last succinct syllable the cables groaned. None
of the objections were raised, however, by Commodore
Graham. It was his business to keep men like Hillyard
who were serving him well to their own considerable
cost, in a good humour. Remorse was the line, not
argument.
“What a pity! I am sorry," protested the Com-
modore. “It's my fault! There's nothing else to
be said. I am to blame about it."
Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction
that he had ever suggested a fault in the composition
of the telegram. But then, it was his business not to
betray any such tenderness.
“ If we could have in the future a little more in-
formation from London, it would save us a good deal
of time," he said stonily. Sometimes a surname is
hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable
home all details ? "
Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed.
"We will have that changed." Then a bright idea


198
THE SUMMONS
)
appeared to occur to him. His face lighted up.
After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done
any real harm. For we have got our friend Mario
Escobar now, and without these tubes and this letter
from Berlin about the use of them and José Medina's
account of the conversation in the next room we
shouldn't have got him. The German governess
wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides
there was nothing definite in his letter. But now"
"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.
“ To be sure," replied the Commodore. We have
no proof here to put him on his trial. But we have
reasonable ground for believing him to be in com-
munication with our enemies for the purpose of
damaging us, and that's quite enough to lock him up
until the end of the war.'
He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked
for a number.
"I am ringing up Scotland Yard,” he said to Hill-
yard over the top of the instrument; and immediately
Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if summoned
from another planet.
" Hallo!” cried Graham. “Is that you, A. C. ?
You remember Mario Escobar ? Good. I have Hill-
yard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case.
I'll come over and see you."
Mr. “A. C.”, whose real name was Adrian Car-
ruthers, thereupon took up the conversation at the
other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the
Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned
to Hillyard, and swore softly and whole-heartedly.
“Mario Escobar has vanished.”
" But I saw him myself,” Hillyard exclaimed. “I
saw him in London."
" When?"
On Monday afternoon."
Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.
Wait a bit, A.C. Hillyard saw the man in London
on Monday afternoon."


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
199
Again A. C. spoke at the other end from an office
in Scotland Yard. Graham put down the instrument
with a bang and hung up the receiver.
He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen
you?"
)
Hillyard shook his head.
“I think not."
“ Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape
from the country. And we will get him pretty soon,"
Graham declared. He looked out of the window on
to the river. “I wonder what in the world alarmed
him, since it wasn't you ?” he speculated slowly.
But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham
were out of their reckoning for once. Mario Escobar
was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag, taken
the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone
off in a train. Only no one had noticed him go; and
that was all there was to it.
CHAPTER XX
LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
“It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis
Brown. But if you want to back something, I should
put a trifle on Kinky Jane."
“Thank you, Dennis,“ Miranda answered absently.
She was standing upon the lawn at Gatwick with her
face towards the line of bookmakers upon the far side
of the railings. These men were shouting at the full
frenzy of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust.
The ring was crowded, and even the enclosure more
than usually full.
“ But you won't get any price,” Harold Jupp con-
tinued, and he waved an indignant arm towards the
bookmakers. “I never saw such a crowd of pinchers
in my life."
" Thank you, Harold,” Miranda replied politely.
She was aware that he was advising her, but the


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
201
“Oh, how dull you both are !" she cried.
Well, you see,” Dennis rejoined, “ we've had rather
a bad day.”
“So have I," returned Miranda inaignantly. “Yet
I keep up my spirits.”
A look of blank amazement overspread the face of
Dennis Brown. He gazed around as one who should
say, “ Did you ever see anything so amazing outside
the Ark ?
Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.
Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should
have if I had backed winners." For she had really
mastered the science of the race-course. She knew
how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and
she kept her winnings.
Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.
“ You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he
advised. "You really ought. That little head was
never meant for all this weighty thought."
Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace
which looks down the course.
"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect
Colonel Luttrell if you can find him, whilst I see my
filly win," she said.
“Dennis has already gone to
find the car and we propose to start immediately this
race is over."
Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the
fillies canter down towards the starting post. From
the chatter about her she gathered that the odds on
Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that
a sum of money had been laid on her at the last
moment. She was favourite before the flag was
dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran
joyously down the slope.
What did I tell you, Harold ? Aren't I wonder-
ful? And have you found Colonel Luttrell ? You
know Millie told us to look out for him?" she cried
all in a breath.
Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he


202
THE SUMMONS
would try to motor to Gatwick in time for the last
races; and that he would look out for Jupp and
Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the
week at a dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.
“There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.
There were two more races, but the party from
Rackham Park did not wait for them. They drove
over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
and came to the wooded roads between high banks
where the foliage met overhead, and to the old stone
bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp was home
from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the
great downs, with their velvet forests, seen now over
a thick hedge, now in an opening of branches like the
frame of a locket, the marvel of the English country-
side in summer paid them in full for their peril and
endurance.
“ I have a fortnight, Miranda,” said Dennis, dropping
a hand upon his wife's. Think of it !”
“My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for
months,” she said softly. Terrors there had been,
nights and days of them, terrors there would be, but
she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in
the meeting of old friends upon familiar ground-a
miniature complete in beauty, like the glimpses of the
downs seen through the openings amongst the boughs.
“Yes, a whole fortnight,” she cried and laughed,
and just for a second turned her head away, since
just for a second the tears glistened in her eyes.
The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the
Petworth streets and mounted on to the Midhurst
road. The three indefatigable race-goers found Lady
Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of
Rackham Park.
You had a good day, I hope,” she said.
" It was wonderful,” exclaimed Dennis Brown.
" We didn't make any money except Miranda. But
that didn't matter."
All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp


204
THE SUMMONS
“ Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on
Monday afternoon?" he asked.
Joan met his gaze steadily.
Did you ? It was possible. I was in London on
Monday. Where did you think you saw me?"
“Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."
Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.
Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a
challenge in her voice she added distinctly, so that the
words reached, as they were meant to reach, every
one in that room. “I was with Mario Escobar."
The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago,
Martin Hillyard reflected, Harold Jupp or Dennis
would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest,
and she would have retorted with good humour.
Now, no one spoke, but a little sigh, a little move-
ment of uneasiness came from Millie Splay. Joan
did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the
blood inounted slowly over her throat and cheeks.
"Well ?" she asked, and the note of challenge was
a trifle more audible in her quiet voice. And since he
was challenged, Hillyard answered :
“He is a German spy."
The words smote upon all in the room like a blow.
Joan herself grew pale. Then she replied :
“People say that nowadays of every foreigner.”
The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a
full minute-during which no one spoke. Then to the
relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay entered the
hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench.
He had to attend the Flower Show in Chichester during
the next week. Really the life of a country notable
was a dog's life.
"You are going to make a speech at Chichester,
Sir Chichester ? ” Jupp inquired.
"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. Make
a speech indeed! And in this weather ! Nothing
would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our
cousins across the Atlantic would say."


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
205
1
He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification
as though Harold Jupp had asked him to dignify the
occasion with a speech.
“ Have the evening papers not arrived yet ? he
asked, looking with suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.
No, I am not sitting on them this time,” said
Dennis.
"And Colonel Luttrell ?"
After the evening papers, Sir Chichester thought
politely of his guests. Millie Splay replied with hesita-
tion. While the others of the company were shaking off
their embarrassment, she was sinking deeper into hers.
Colonel Luttrell has not come yet. Nor--nor-
the other guest who completes our party."
Her voice trailed off lamentably into a plea for
kind treatment and gentleness. Here was Millie
Splay's second preoccupation. As it was Sir Chiches-
ter's passion to see his name printed in the papers, so
it was Millie's to gather in the personages of the
moment under her roof. She had promised that this
party should be just a small one of old friends with
Luttrell as the only new-comer. But personages were
difficult to come by at this date, since they were either
deep in work or out of the country altogether. They
ad to be brought down by a snap shot, and very
often the bird brought down turned out to be a remark-
ably inferior specimen of his class. Millie Splay had
been tempted and had fallen; and she was not alto-
gether easy about the quality of her bird, now on its
descent to her feet.
“I didn't know anyone else was coming," said Sir
Chichester, who really didn't care how much Lady
Splay gratified her passion, so long as he got full
satisfaction for his.
"No, nor anyone else," said Dennis Brown severely.
“He is a stranger."
" To you,” replied Millie Splay, showing fight.
Harold Jupp advanced and planted himself firmly
before her.


208
THE SUMMONS
Sir Chichester returned with the evening papers.
Dennis and Miranda and Harold Jupp rose to go up-
stairs and change into flannels; and suddenly, a good
hour before his time, Harper, the butler, announced :
“Mr. Albany Todd."
Mr. Albany Todd was a stout, consequential person-
age, and ovoid in appearance. Thin legs broadened
out to very wide hips, and from the hips he curved
in again to a bald and shiny head, which in its turn
curved inwards to a high, narrow crown. Lady Splay
casting a look of appeal towards her refractory young
guests hurried forward to meet him.
"This is my husband." She presented him to the
others. “I was going to send the motor-car to meet
the seven o'clock train."
Oh, thank you, Lady Splay,” Mr. Albany Todd
returned in a booming voice. "I have been staying
not more than twenty miles from here, with a dear
old friend, a rare and inestimable being, Lord Bilberry,
and he was kind enough to send me in."
“What, old man Bilberry," cried Harold Jupp.
“Isn't he balmy?
"Balmy, sir?” Mr. Todd asked in surprise. “He
takes the air every morning, if that is what you mean.
He turned again to Lady Splay. He keeps the
most admirable table. You must know him, Lady
Splay. I will see to it."
“Thank you,” said Millie Splay humbly.
Ah, muffins !” said Mr. Albany Todd with glisten-
ing eyes. He ate one and took another. “These are
really as good as the muffins I ate at a wonderful
week-end party a fortnight ago.”
The chatter of the others ceased. The great con-
versationalist it seemed, was off. Miranda, Dennis,
Harold Jupp, Sir Chichester, even Joan looked up with
expectation.
Yes," said Lady Splay encouraging him. She
looked around at her guests. “Now you shall see,”
she seemed to say.


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS 209
"How we laughed! What sprightly talk! The fine
flavour of that party is quite incommunicable. Just
dear old friends, you see, intimate, congenial friends.
Mr. Albany Todd stopped. It appeared that he
needed a question to be put to him. Lady Splay
dutifully put it.
And where did this party take place, Mr. Albany
Todd ?”
Mr. Albany Todd smiled and dusted the crumbs
from his knees.
“At the Earl of Wimborough's little place in the
north. Do you know the Earl of Wimborough ? No?
You must, dear lady! I will see to it."
Thank you," said Millie Splay.
Harold Jupp looked eagerly at the personage, and
said, "I hope Wimborough won't go jumping this
winter."
"Jumping!” cried Mr. Albany Todd turning
indignantly. "I should think not indeed! Jump-
ing! Why, he is seventy-three !
He was utterly scandalised that anyone should
attribute the possibility of such wayward behaviour
to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate another
muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in
the winter why should this young and horsey man
presume to criticise him.
“Harold Jupp was drawing a distinction between
flat racing and steeple-chasing, Mr. Albany Toda,"
Sir Chichester suavely explained.
“Oh, I see.”. Mr. Albany Todd was appeased. He
turned a condescending face upon Joan Whitworth.
And what are you reading, Miss Whitworth ? "
What ho !” interposed Harold Jupp.
Joan shot at him a withering glance.
" It wouldn't interest you.” She smiled on Mr.
Albany Todd. “It's Browning."
“Well, that's just where you are wrong,” returned
Jupp. “ Browning's the
Browning's the only poet I can stick.
There's a ripping thing of his I learnt at school."
1)


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS 2II
"No," she answered.
“ And how's the little book going on? Do tell me!
I won't laugh, upon my word.”
Joan herself tried not to. “Oh pig, pig!” she
exclaimed, but she got no further in her anathema for
Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in admiration before
her.
“Yes, do tell us,” she pleaded. “It's all so wonderful."
Miranda, however, was never to hear. Mr.
Mr. Albany
Todd leaned forward with an upraised forefinger, and a
smile of keen discernment.
“You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth,” he said,
as if he had discovered the truth by his own intuition,
and expected her to deny the impeachment. Ah,
but you are ! And I see that you can write one."
Now, how ?” asked Harold Jupp.
Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside. “ The
moment I entered the hall, and saw Miss Whitworth,
I said to myself. 'There's a book there !' Yes, I
said that. I knew it! I know women.”
Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out
through the narrowest possible slits in the cunningest
fashion. "Some experience you know. I am the last
man to boast of it. A certain almost feminine sensi-
bility-and there you have my secret. I read the
character of women in their eyebrows. A woman's
eyebrows. Oh, how loud they speak! I looked at
Miss Whitworth's eyebrows, and I exclaimed, “There
is a book there and I will read it I'.
Joan flamed into life. She clasped her hands together.
Oh, will you ?" The question was half wonder,
half prayer.
No man could have shown a more charming con-
descension than did Mr. Albany Todd at this moment.
“ Indeed, I will. I read one book a year-never
more. A few sentences in bed in the morning, and a
few sentences in bed at night. Yours shall be my book
for 1923." He took a little notebook and a pencil from
his pocket. “Now what title will it have ?


LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
213
Luttrell was presented to Mr. Albany Todd, who was
most kind and condescending. Joan looked suddenly
down at her bilious frock, and the horror of her sandals
was something she could hardly bear. They would
turn to her next. Yes, they would turn to her! She
looked desperately towards the great staircase with its
broad, shallow steps which ran up round two sides of the
hall. Millie Splay was actually beginning to turn to her,
when Dennis Brown came unconsciously to her rescue.
“We looked out for you at Gatwick," he said.
“I only just reached the race course in time for the
last race," said Harry Luttrell. “Luckily for me.'
Why luckily ? ” asked Harold Jupp in surprise.
“Because I backed the winner," replied Luttrell.
The indefatigable race-goers gathered about him a
little closer; and Joan Whitworth rose noiselessly
from her chair.
“Which horse won ?” asked Harold Jupp.
“Loman!” Harold Jupp stared at Dennis Brown.
Incredulity held them as in bonds.
“But he couldn't win !” they both cried in a breath.
“ He did, you know, and at a long price."
“What on earth made you back him?" asked
Dennis Brown.
“Well," Luttrell answered," he was the only white
horse in the race.”
Miranda uttered a cry of pleasure. She recognised
a brother. “ That's an awfully good reason,' she
cried. But science fell with a crash. Dennis Brown
took his “ Form at a Glance" from his pocket, and
sadly began to tear the pages across. Harold Jupp
looked on at that act of sacrilege.
“It doesn't matter," he said, and offered his in-
variable consolation. Flat racing's no use. We'll
go jumping in the winter."
But Harold Jupp was never again to go jumping in
the winter. Long before steeple chasing began that
year, he was lying out on the flat land beyond the
Somme, with a bullet through his heart.


THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS 215
Luttrell, and Harry Luttrell's embarrassment, she said
to herself, for quite other reasons:
“If I had guessed why she wanted to come, nothing
would have persuaded me to have her.”
Millie Splay had more reason to repeat the words
before the week was out.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
“I HADN'T an idea that we should find her here," said
Hillyard. “Lady Splay told me so very clearly that
Mrs. Croyle always timed her visits to avoid a party."
Hillyard was a little troubled lest he should be
thought by his friend to have concurred in a plot to
bring about this meeting.
“I suppose that Hardiman told her you were coming
to Rackham Park. I haven't seen her until this
moment, since I returned."
“That's all right, Martin,” Luttrell answered.
The two men were alone in the hall. The tennis
players had changed, and were out upon the court.
Millie Splay had dragged Stella Croyle away with her
to play croquet. Luttrell moved to a writing-table.
You are going to join the tennis players,” he said.
Hillyard was already dressed for the game, and
carried a racket in his hand. “I must write a letter,
then I will come out and watch you."
"Right," said Martin, and he left his friend to his letter.
The hall was very still. A bee came buzzing in at
the open window, made a tour of the flower-vases, and
flew out again into the sunshine. From the lawn the
cries of the tennis players, the calls of thrush and
blackbird and dishwasher, were wafted in on waves
of perfume from the roses. It was very pleasant and
restful to Harry Luttrell after the sweat and labour of
France. He sighed as he folded his letter and addressed
it to a friend in the War Office


216
THE SUMMONS
A letter-box stood upon a table close to the staircase.
He was carrying his letter over to it, when a girl came
running lightly down the stairs and halted suddenly
a step or two from the bottom She stood very still
where Stella Croyle had stood a few minutes ago, and
like Stella, she looked over the balustrade at Harry
Luttrell. Harry Luttrell had reached the letter-box
when he caught sight of her, but he quite forgot to
drop his letter through the slit. He stood transfixed
with wonder and perplexity; wonder at her beauty;
perplexity as to who she was.
Martin Hillyard had spoken to him of Joan Whit-
worth. By the delicious oval of her face, the deep
blue of her eyes, the wealth of rippling bright hair,
the soft bloom of colour on her cheeks, and her slim,
boyish figure-the girl should rightly be she. But
it couldn't be! No, it couldn't ! This girl's lips
were parted in a whimsical friendly smile; her eyes
danced; she was buoyant with joy singing at her
heart. Besides besides! Luttrell looked at her
clothes. She wore a little white frock of chiffon and
lace, as simple as could be, but even to a man's eyes it
was that simplicity which is the last word of a good
dressmaker. A huge rose of blue and silver at her
waist was its only touch of colour. With it she wore
a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw with a great
blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon
floating jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-
gartered round her slender ankles with shining ribbons.
Was it she? Was it not ?
Was it not ? Was Martin Hillyard
crazy or the whole world upside down?
“ You must be Colonel Luttrell," his gracious vision
exclaimed, with every appearance of surprise.
“I am,” replied Luttrell
. He was playing with his
letter, half slipping it in, and then drawing it back
from the box, and quite unaware of what he was doing.
“We had better introduce ourselves, I think.
Joan Whitworth.”
She held out her hand to him over the balustrade.
I am


218
THE SUMMONS
pleasant follies which for long had borne her company
-and saying good-bye with a sort of doubt whether
that which was in store for her would bring a greater
happiness.
Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct
comprehension of her mood. But he was stirred by
it. For a little while they looked at one another
without any words. The air about them in that still
hall vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan
Whitworth was the first to break the dangerous silence.
“I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I
have liked tremendously, but I have not always liked
it for very long. You will remember that in pity,
won't you?" she said, lightly.
Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.
“I shall remember it with considerable apprehension
if I am fortunate enough ever to get into your good
books." His little speech ended with a gasp. The
letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had
almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.
Joan crossed to where he stood.
“That's all right," she said.
“ You can post your
letter there. The box is cleared regularly."
“No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. “But I
am no longer sure that I am going to post it.”
The letter to his friend at the War Office contained
an earnest prayer that a peremptory telegram should
be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an early hour on
the next morning, commanding his return to London.
He looked up at Joan.
" You despise racing, don't you ? "
"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."
“You are!” he cried eagerly.
“Of course.”
He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open
hand. The thought of Stella Croyle bade him post
it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he was so
conscious of her, paralysed his arm.
sense of the tumult within him passed out from him
Some vague


THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
219
to her. An intuition seized upon her that that letter
was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace
to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted
he might let it go. She drew a little sharp breath.
He was standing there, so still, so quiet and show in his
decision. It became necessary to her that words should
be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.
“You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball,
aren't you?
Harry Luttrell smiled.
But you despise dancing."
“I? I adore it !"
She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer
shyness which took him off his feet. He slowly tore
the letter across and again across and then into little
pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.
The action brought home to her with a shock that
there was a letter which she, in her turn, must write,
must write and post in that glass letter-box, oh,
without any hesitation or error, this very evening.
She thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be
written and done with. It was the consequence of her
own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell returned
to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.
When I left England," he said slowly, “people
were dancing the tango. That is one couple which
knew the dance, was dancing it in the ball-room, and
all the others were practising in the passage. That's
done with, I suppose ?"
“Quite,” said Joan.
Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.
"I should have liked to have practised with you in
the passage," he said ruefully.
“Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth
suggested." The one-step ?"
That's going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.
“ In an unusual attitude,” Joan added demurely.
“Do you know the fox-trot?"
“ A little."


220
THE SUMMONS
"The twinkle step?"
“Not at all.”
"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.
Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we'll dance it
in the passage.
“But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room,"
Joan objected.
"That's why,” said Harry Luttrell, and they both
laughed.
Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner
of the room. She was tempted, but she must have
that letter written first. She would dance with Harry
Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were
written and posted first.
“Will you put a record ready on the gramophone,
whilst I write a note," she suggested. Then I'll
teach you. It's quite a short note."
Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She
wrote the first lines easily and quickly enough. But
she came to explanations, and of explanations she had
none to offer.
She sat and framed a sentence and it
would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open
and ready, the record fitted on to the disc of green
baize and her cavalier in impatient attendance. She
must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be,
the more slowly her thoughts moved amongst
awkward sentences which she must write. She
dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such
emergencies. “I will write to you to-morrow,
addressed and stamped her letter and dropped it into
the letter box. The letter fell in the glass box with the
address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about
that, did not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.
“I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later
the music of "The Long Trail” was wafted to the
astonished ears of the tennis players in the garden.
They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown
crept to the window of the hall and looked cautiously
in. He stood transfixed; then turned and beckoned


THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
221
furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their
rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet
mallets. Dennis Brown led them by a back way up
to the head of the broad stairs. Here a gallery ran
along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them
from the floor above the music of the gramophone.
Joan's : “That's the twinkle."
Luttrell's: “It's pretty difficult."
“ Try it again,” said Joan. “Oh, that's ever so
much better."
“I shall never dare to dance it with anyone else,"
said Luttrell.
“I really don't mind very much about that," Joan
responded dryly.
Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cau-
tiously she and her party advanced on tiptoe to the
balustrade and looked down. Yes, there the pair of
them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest,
practising the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.
“Do I hold you right ? " asked Harry.
“ Well-I shan't break, you know," Joan answered
demurely, and then with a little sigh, “That's better."
Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passion-
ately, “Oh, you minx !'
As the record ran out a storm of applause burst
from the gallery.
Oh, Joan, Joan,” cried Harold Jupp, shaking his
head reproachfully. “There's the poet kicked right
across the room.'
“Where ? ” asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for
the book.
Oh, it doesn't matter," said Joan impatiently.
“It's only an old volume of Browning."
Cries of "Shame" brokeindignantly from therace-goers,
and Joan received them with imperturbable indifference.
Harry Luttrell, however, went on his knees and discover-
ing the book beneath a distant sofa, carefully dusted it.
* Did you ever read 'How they Brought the Good
News from Ghent to Aix'?” he asked.


222
THE SUMMONS
The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence
for Joan Whitworth's answer. It came unhesitatingly
clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.
“Isn't it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote ?"
The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and
protests against Joan's shameless recantation,
“ It's Browning, of course, but it's not Browning at
all, if you understand me," Dennis Brown exclaimed
with every show of indignation; and the whole party
trooped away again to their tennis and their croquet.
Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and
turned to Joan.
Now what would you like to do? he asked.
Joan shrugged her shoulders.
“We might cut into the next tennis set,” she said
doubtfully.
“ You could hardly play in those shoes," said
Harry Luttrell.
Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height.
Oh, where were the sandals of the higher Life ?
No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a-but it
wouldn't probably interest you.'
“ Wouldn't it?” cried Harry Luttrell.
Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of
it. The hedges are centuries old.” She turned
innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. “I don't know
whether you are interested in old hedges."
It is to be feared that“minx” was the only right word
for Joan Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell
expressed an intense enthusiasm for great box hedges.
But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan,
stopping at once.
Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however,
was even greater and more engrossing than his en-
thusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched upon a
bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path
led down into it between the hedges. Joan left it to
her soldier to find the way. There was a stone pedestal
with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it in


THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
223
the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell
took a deal of time in reaching it. If, however, their
progress was slow, with many false turnings and
sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not
so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path
brought them on by a new stage. They wandered in
the dawn of the world.
Suppose that I had never come to Rackham
Park ! " said Harry Luttrell, suddenly turning at the
end of a blind alley. “I almost didn't come. I might
have altogether missed knowing you.”
The terrible thought smote them both. What risks
people ran to be sure. They might never have met.
They might have never known what it was to meet.
They might have lived benighted, not knowing what
lovely spirit had passed them by. They looked at one
another with despairing eyes. Then a happy thought
occurred to Joan.
“But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.
Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of
a great oppression.
"Why, yes,” he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"
They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards
its late setting, by an innocent suggestion from Joan
here, a little question there, Harry Luttrell was
manæuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly
he stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached
to them from the innermost recess-a voice which
intoned, a voice which was oracular.
" What's that ? " he asked in a whisper.
Joan shook her head.
“I haven't an idea."
As yet they could hear no words. Words were
flung from wall to wall of the centre space and kept
imprisoned there. It seemed that the presiding
genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the
sun went down. Joan and Harry Luttrell crept
stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided by a light
touch upon his arm as the paths twisted. Words


THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS 225
destiny of women in ravaged lands. The soldier
was here to-day on leave, and God alone knew where
he would be to-morrow, and whether alive, or perhaps
a crippled thing like a child !
Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell had been
touched by the swift magic of those days; he, when
he had first seen her in the shining armour of her
youth upon the steps of the stairs ; she, when Harry
had first entered the hall and spoken his few common-
place words of greeting. This was the hour for them,
the hour at the well with the desert behind them and
the desert in front, the hour within the measure of
which was to be forced the essence of many days.
When they returned to the hall they found most of
the small party gathered there before going up to
dress for dinner ; and there was that in the faces of
the pair which betrayed them. Hillyard looked
quickly round the hall, as a qualm of pity for Stella
Croyle seized him. But he could not see her.
“ Thank
Heaven she has already gone up to dress," he said to
himself. A marriage between Joan Whitworth and
the Harry Luttrell of to-day, the man freed now from
the great obsession of his life and trained now to the
traditional paths, was a fitting thing, a thing to be
welcomed. Hillyard readily acknowledged it. But
he had more insight into the troubled soul of Stella
Croyle than anyone else in that company.
No one's bothering about her," he reflected.
" She came here to set up her last fight to win back
Harry. She is now putting on her armour for it. And
she hasn't a chance-no, not one!”
For Harry's sake he was glad. But he was a
creator of plays; and his training led him to seek to
understand, and to understand with the sympathy of
his emotions, the points of view of others who might
stand in a contrast or a relation. He walked
He walked up the
stairs with a heart full of pity when Millicent Splay
caught him up.
" What did I tell you ? ” she said, brimful with


226
THE SUMMONS
delight. Just look at Joan! Is there a girl any-
where who can match her ?”
Martin looked down over the balustrade at Joan in
the hall below.
“ No," he said slowly. “ Not one whom I have ever
seen.”
The little note of melancholy in his voice moved
Millie Splay. She was all kindness in that moment of
her triumph. She turned to Martin Hillyard in
commiseration. “Oh, don't tell me that you are in
love with her too! I should be so sorry."
“No, I am not,” Martin Hillyard hastened to
reassure her, “ not one bit."
The commiseration died on the instant in Millicent
Splay.
Well, really I don't see why you shouldn't be," she
said coldly.
• You will go a long way before you find
anyone to equal her,"
Her whole attitude demanded of him an explanation
of how he dared not to be in love with her darling.
A very long way," Martin Hillyard agreed humbly.
All the way probably."
Lady Splay was mollified, and went on to her room,
Down in the hall, Harry Luttrell turned to Joan.
This is going to be a wonderful week for me.
“ I am very glad," answered Joan, and they went up
the stairs side by side.
CHAPTER XXII
JENNY PRASK
“I HAVE put out the blue dress with the silver under-
skirt, madam,” said Jenny Prask, knowing well that
nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set off so well her
dark and fragile beauty.
" Very well, Jenny.
Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was dis-
couraged by her experience of that afternoon. She


228
THE SUMMONS
"Quite! The men in his company loved him-a
captain he was then. He always looked after their
dinner. A bit strict, too, but they don't mind that."
Jenny was busy with Stella Croyle's hair; and the
result satisfied her.
"Therewon't beanybodyelseto-night, madam,"shesaid,
“Won't there, Jenny?” said Mrs. Croyle, in-
credulously. “There'll be Miss Whitworth."
Jenny Prask sniffed disdainfully.
"Miss Whitworth! A fair sight I call her, madam,
if I may say so.
I never did see such clothes! And
how she keeps a maid for more than a week beats me
altogether. What I say, madam, is those who button in
front when they should hook behind are a fair washout."
Stella laughed.
“I'm afraid that you'll find, Jenny, that Miss
Whitworth will hook behind to-night.”
Jenny went on unaffected by the rejoinder.
She
had her little item of news to contribute to the con-
tentment of her mistress.
“Besides, Miss Whitworth is in love with the
foreign gentleman. Oh, madam, if you turn as sharp
as that, I can't but pull your hair.”
“Which foreigner?"
"That Mario Escobar." Jenny looked over Stella's
head and into the reflection of her eyes upon the
mirror. “I don't hold with foreigners myself, madam.
A little ridiculous they always seem to me, with their
chatter and what not.
And you believe Miss Whitworth's in love with him."
Outrageous, Mr. Harper says. Quite the talk of
the servants' hall, it is. Why, even this afternoon
she wrote him a letter. Mr. Harper showed it me after
he took it out of the letter-box to post it. 'That's
her 'and,' says he and there it was, Mario Escobar,
Esquire, the Golden Sun Hotel, Midhurst-
"Midhurst?"cried Stella with a start. She looked
eagerly at the reflection of Jenny Prask. “Mr.
Escobar is staying in an hotel at Midhurst?"


JENNY PRASK
229
Yes, madam."
“And Miss Whitworth wrote to him there this
afternoon?"
It's gospel truth, madam. May it be my last dying
word, if it isn't !” said Jenny Prask.
The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since
that was true-and she did not doubt Jenny Prask
for a moment-Jenny would have given anything she
had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it.
Since it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying
hidden away in a country hotel five miles off, and that
Joan was writing to him, why, after all, she had no rival.
Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a
whole week, in the company of Harry Luttrell; and
what might she not do in a week if she used her wits
and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the
stairs like a girl.
Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a ward-
robe, took from a high shelf Mrs. Croyle's dressing-
bag. She opened it, and from one of the fittings she
lifted out a bottle. The bottle was quite full of a white,
colourless liquid. Jenny Prask nodded to herself and
carefully put the bottle back. There was very little
she did not know about the proceedings of her mistress.
Then she went out of the room into the gallery, and
peeped down to watch the other guests assemble.
She saw Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay,
Dennis and Harry Luttrell come from their different
rooms and gather in the hall below. From a passage
behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and
danced joyously down the stairs. A new-comer,
thought Jenny, with a pang of alarm for her mistress i
But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard ber
spoken to. It was Joan Whitworth.
Oh!” Jenny Prask gasped.
Undoubtedly Joan "hooked behind" to-night.
What had come over her ? Jenny asked. Her quick
mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable
for the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at


230
THE SUMMONS
Midhurst. Besides, according to Mr. Harper, this flirta-
tion with Escobar had been going on a year and more.
Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell.
She saw them drawn to one another across the hall
and move into the dining-room side by side. She turned
back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella
Croyle's bedroom ; and whilst she tidied it, more than
once she stopped to wring her hands.
Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through
the evening For after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his
own will, came straight to her in the drawing-room.
Oh, Wub," she said in a whisper as she drew her
skirt aside to make room for him upon the couch.
“Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have seen you."
When the old nickname fell upon Harry's ears, he
looked quickly about him to see where Joan Whitworth
sat. But she was at the other end of the room.
“Yes, it is a long time."
“ Stockholm !” said Stella, dwelling upon the name.
She lowered her voice. “ Wub, I suffered terribly
after you went away. Oh, it wasn't a good time.
No, it wasn't!
"Stella, I am very sorry," he said gently. He
knew himself this day the glories and the pangs of
love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the
sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head
against the stars on the soaring billow of his pride.
He could not but feel for Stella, who had passed through
the same furnace. He could not but grieve that the
wondrous book of which he was racing through the
first pages had been closed for her by him. Might she
not open it again, some time, with another at her side ?
“Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these
years," she said.
He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant,
colloquial phrases which the English use to strip their
achievements of any romantic semblance until Millicent
Splay sailed across the room and claimed him for a
table of bridge.


JENNY PRASK
231
“ He will be safer there,” she said to herself.
“Yes, but she had to take him away,” Stella's
thoughts responded. She was dangerous then in
Millie Splay's judgment. The sweet flattery set Stella
smiling. She went up to her room rejoicing that she
had chosen that week to visit Rackham Park. She
was playing a losing game, but she did not know it.
Thus the very spirit of summer seemed to inform
the gathering. Saturday brought up no clouds to
darken the clear sky. Harold Jupp and Dennis
Brown actually scored four nice wins at Gatwick on
horses which, to celebrate the week, miraculously ran
to form. Miranda under these conditions would
have inevitably lost, but by another stroke of fortune
no horse running had any special blemish, name,
colour or trick calculated to inspire her. Sir Chichester
was happy too, for he saw a lady reporter write down
his name in her notebook. So was Mr. Albany Todd.
For he met the Earl of Eltringham, with whom he had
a passing acquaintance; and his lordship, being
complimented upon his gardens, of which Country
Life had published an account, was moved to say in
the friendīiest manner: “You must propose yourself
for a week-end, Mr. Todd, and see them.
As for Joan and Harry Luttrell, it mattered little
where they were, so that they were together. They
walked in their own magical garden.
It fell to Martin Hillyard to look after Stella Croyle,
and the task was not difficult. She kept her eyes
blindfold to what she did not wish to see. She had
a chance, she said to herself, recollecting her talk with
Harry last night, and the news of Joan which Jenny
Prask had given to her. She had a chance, if she
walked delicately.
“ Old associations—give them opportunity, and they
renew their strength,” she thought. “Harry is afraid
of them--that's all."
On the Monday evening Jenny Prask brought a
fresh piece of gossip which strengthened her hopes.


232
THE SUMMONS
"Miss Whitworth had a letter from him this morning,"
said Jenny. "She wouldn't open it at the breakfast-
table, Mr. Harper says. Quite upset she was, he says.
She took it upstairs to her room just as it was.
" It might have been from some one else," answered
Stella.
Oh, no, madam,” replied Jenny. It had the
Midhurst postmark, and Mr. Harper knows his hand-
writing besides, Mr. Harper's very observant."
“ He seems to be,” said Stella.
Miss Whitworth answered the letter at once, and
took it out to the village and posted it with her own
hands,” Jenny continued.
" Are you sure?" cried Mrs. Croyle.
"I saw her go with my own eyes, I did. She went
in her own little runabout, and was back in a jiffy,
with a sort of There-I've-done-it!' look about her.
Oh, there's something going on there, madam-take
my word for it! She's a deep one, Miss Whitworth is,
and no mistake. Will you wear the smoke-grey to-
night, madam? I am keeping the pink for the ball
on Thursday."
Stella allowed a moment or two to pass before she
answered
“I shan't go to the Willoughbys' ball, Jenny.”
Jenny Prask stared in dismay.
You won't, madam!
No, Jenny. But I want you to be careful not to
mention it to anyone. I shall dress as if I was going,
but at the last moment I shall plead a headache and
stay behind.”
“Very well, madam,” said Jenny. But it seemed
to her that Stella was throwing down her arms. Stella
however, had understood, upon hearing of the invita-
tion for Lady Splay's party, that she could do nothing
else. The Willoughbys were strict folk. Mrs. Croyle
could hardly hope to go without some rumour of her
history coming afterwards to the ears of that family;
and the family would hold her presence as a reproach


JENNY PRASK
233
against Millie Splay. Stella had herself proposed her
plan to Millie, and she noted the relief with which it
was received.
“You will be careful not to mention it to a soul,
Jenny.” Stella insisted.
“My goodness me, madam, I never talk,” replied
Jenny. “I keep my ears open and let the others do that."
“I know, Jenny,” said Stella, with a smile. “I
can't imagine what I should do without you."
“And you never will, madam, unless it's your own
wish and doin',” said Jenny heartily. “I have talked
it over with Brown"--Brown was Mrs. Croyle's
chauffeur—" and he's quite willin' that I should go
on with you after we are married.”
“Then, that's all right," said Stella.
Many a one looking backwards upon some terrible
and unexpected tragedy will have noticed with what
care the great dramaturgist so wove his play that every
little unheeded event in the days before helped directly
to create the final catastrophe. It happened on this
evening that Stella went downstairs earlier than the
other guests, and in going into the library in search
of an evening paper, found Sir Chichester standing by
the telephone instrument.
"Am I in your way ? ” she asked.
“Not a bit, Stella," he answered." In fact, you
might help me by looking up the number I want."
He raised the instrument, and playing with the re-
ceiver as he stood erect, remarked," Although I am
happy to think that I shall not be called upon to
deliver any observations on the occasion of the
Chichester flower show next Thursday, I may as well
ask one of the newspapers if their local correspondent
would give the ceremony some little attention.'
Stella Croyle took up the telephone book.
" Which newspaper is it to be, Sir Chichester ? "
"The Harpoon, I think. Yes, I am sure. The
Harpoon."
Stella Croyle looked up the number and read out:
)


234
THE SUMMONS
Gerrard, one, six, two, double three."
Sir Chichester accordingly called upon the trunk
line and gave the number
“ You will ring me up ? Thank you,” he said, and
replacing the receiver, stood in anxious expectancy.
“I thought that your favourite paper was the Daily
Flashlight? Stella observed.
That's quite true, Stella. It was," Sir Chichester
explained naively.
“But I have noticed lately a re-
grettable tendency to indifference on the part of the
Flashlight. The management is usually too occupied
to converse with me when I ring it up. On the
other hand, I am new to the Harpoon. Hallo!
Hallo! This is Sir Chichester Splay speaking,” and
he delivered his message. “ Thank you very much,"
said Sir Chichester as he hung up the receiver." Really
most courteous people. Yes, most courteous. What
is their number, Stella? I must remember it."
Stella read it out again.
Gerrard, one, six, two, double three," and thus
she, too, committed the number to memory.
CHAPTER XXIII
PLANS FOR THE EVENING
THE library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong
room, with a big window upon the garden. It opened
into the hall on the one side and into the dining-room
on the other, and in one corner the telephone was
installed. At half-past eight on the night of the
dance at Harrel, this room was empty and in darkness.
But a second afterwards the door from the hall was
opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light
shimmering upon her satin cloak and the silver em-
broidery of her frock. She cast an anxious look
behind her and up the staircase. It seemed as if
some movement at the angle made by the stairs and
the gallery caught her eye, for she stepped back for


PLANS FOR THE EVENING 237
“For the first time !" said Joan.
Can'. [-?"
No," Joan interrupted. “There's only the one
way, Miranda.'
She sat down upon a couch at Miranda's side and
feverishly caught her hand. Do help me! You
can't tell what it means to me!... And I should
hate telling you! Oh, I have been such a fool !”
Joan's face was quivering, and so deep a compunction
was audible in her voice, so earnest a prayer was to be
read in her troubled eyes, that Miranda's doubt and
anxiety were doubled.
“I don't know what I shall do, if you don't help me,”
Joan said miserably as she let go of Miranda. Her hands
fluttered helplessly in the air. “No, I don't know !"
Miranda was thoroughly disturbed. The contrast
between the Joan she had known until this week,
good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with herself
and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this
lovely girl, troubled to the heart's core, with her
beseeching eyes and trembling lips touched her
poignantly, meltingly.
Oh, Joan, I don't like it !” she whispered. What
mad thing have you done ? "
“Nothing that can't be put right ! Nothing !
Nothing !” Joan caught eagerly at the argument.
“Oh, I was a fool! But if you'll only help me to-night,
I am sure everything will be arranged.”
The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice
trailed off into a low, unsteady whisper, as terror at
the rash plan which she had made and must now carry
through caught at her heart. “Oh, Miranda, do be kind !"
When do you want the car ?" asked Miranda.
"Immediately after we get to Harrel.”
Joan!”
Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood
torn with indecision. Joan's distress pleaded on the
one side, dread of some tragic mystery upon the other.
For the first time in her life Joan was in some desperate
ed
1
Ds.
Ske,
e!"
aist


238
THE SUMMONS
crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as
though she were bound fast in the coils of a net she
could not break. What wisdom of experience could
she bring to help her to escape ? On what wild and
hopeless venture might she not be set ?
Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. “I have thought
it all out. I want you to tell your chauffeur privately
to return along the avenue after he has set you down.
There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he
will turn into that and wait behind the big clump of
rhododendrons I will join him immediately.
But it will be noticed that you have gone. People
will ask for you,” Miranda objected.
No, I shall be back again within the hour. There
will be a crowd of people. And lots won't imagine
that I should ever come to the dance at all.” Even at
that moment a little smile played about the lips.
“ And if the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't
have gone, should I? I should still be wearing
sandals,” she explained, as she looked down at the
buckles of her trim satin slippers, “and haughtily
wishing you all good night in the hall here. No, it
will be easy enough. I shall just shake hands with
Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party
into the ball-room and then slip out by the corridor
at the side of the park.
"It's dangerous, Joan !" said Miranda.
"Oh, I know, but" Joan rose suddenly with her
eyes upon the door. “The others are coming. Miranda,
will you help me? I would have driven over to Harrel in
my own little car. But it's open and I should have got
blown about until everybody would have begun asking
why in the world I used it. Oh, Miranda, quick !"
Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall,
Miranda heard them too. In a moment the door would
be thrown open. She must make up her mind now.
Very well. The first turning to the right down
the avenue and behind the rhododendrons. I'U tell
the chauffeur."


PLANS FOR THE EVENING
241
in his voice ? Joan, I have something to ask of you
to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when you
couldn't run away. But I am going to ask it now.
Joan drew back sharply.
“ No! Please wait !” and as she saw his face
cloud, she hurried on. “Oh, don't be hurt! You
misunderstand How you misunderstand! Take me
in to supper to-night, will you? And then you shall
talk to me, and I'll listen." Her voice rose like clear
sweet music in a lilt of joy. “I'll listen with all my
heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that
all may see and know my pride !!
' Joan!” he whispered.
But not now ! Not till then !"
Harry Luttrell did not consider what scruple in the
girl's conscience held him off. The delay did not
trouble him at all. She stood before him, radiant in
her beauty, her happiness like an aura about her.
Joan,” he whispered again, and-how it happened
who shall say ?-in a second she was within his arms,
her heart throbbing against his; her hands stole
about his shoulders; their lips were pressed together.
“Harry! Oh, Harry!" she murmured. Then very
gently she pushed him from her. She shook her head
with a wistful little smile.
“ I didn't mean you to do that,” she said in self-
reproach,“ until after supper."
In the hall Sir Chichester threw down the last of the
newspapers in a rage. “Not a word! Not one single
miserable little word! I don't ask much, goodness
knows, but," and his voice went up in an angry
incredulity. “Not one word ! And I thought the
Harpoon was such a good paper too ! "
Sir Chichester sprang to his feet. He glanced at his
guests. He turned upon his wife.
"God bless my soul, Millie, what are we waiting
for? I'll tell you girls what it is. Unless we get off
at once, we had better not go at all. Where's Joan ?
Where's Luttrell ? "
c
je


242
THE SUMMONS
“Here we are !" cried Luttrell from the library, and
in a lower tone to Joan, he observed, “What a bore
people are to be sure, aren't they?"
The guilty couple emerged into the hall. Sir
Chichester surveyed them with severity.
“I don't know whether you have heard about it.
Luttrell, but there's a ball to-night at Harrel, and we
all rather thought of going to it," he remarked with
crushing sarcasm.
“I am quite ready, sir," replied Harry humbly.
Sir Chichester was mollified.
Very well then. We'll go."
But Mrs. Croyle isn't down yet," said Miranda.
"Stella isn't going, dear," answered Millie Splay ;
and a cry of dismay burst from Joan.
“Not going!”
The consternation in the girl's voice was so pro-
nounced that every eye in that hall turned to her in
astonishment. There was consternation, too, most
legible in her widely-opened eyes. Her cheeks had
lost their colour. She stood for a fleeting moment
before them all, an image of terror. Then she caught
at an excuse.
* Stella's ill then-since she's not going."
" It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay
hastened to reassure her. "She complained of a
racking headache at dinner. She has gone to bed."
The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
“Oh, I see !” she observed slowly. “ That is why
her maid came to the library for a book!"
But she was very silent throughout the quarter of
an hour, which it took them to drive to Harrel. There
was somebody left behind at Rackham Park that night,
Joan had overlooked one possibility in contriving her
plan, and that possibility, now developed into fact,
threatened to ruin all. One guest remained behind in
the house, and that one Joan's rival.


244
THE SUMMONS
Stella Croyle's eyes were drawn when she was left
alone to that cupboard in which her dressing-bag was
stowed away. But she arrested them and covered
them with her hands.
“ This is my last chance," she said to herself aloud
in the anguish of her spirit. If it failed, there was
nothing in front of her but a loneliness which each
year must augment. Youth and high spirits or the
assumption of high spirits—these she must have if
she were to keep her place in her poor little circle-
and both were slipping from her fast. “This is my
last chance." She stood in front of her mirror in her
dancing frock, her dark hair exquisitely dressed, her
face hauntingly wistful. After all, she was beautiful.
Why shouldn't she win? Jenny thought that she could.
At that moment Jenny was slipping noiselessly
along a corridor to the northern side of the house. The
lights were all off; a pencil of moonlight here and
there from an interstice in the curtains alone touched
her as she passed. At one window she stopped, and softly
lifted the blind. She looked out and was satisfied.
“Thought so!” she murmured, with a little vindictive
smile. Just beneath her was that long window of the
library which Joan had been at such pains to arrange.
Jenny stationed herself by the window. The night
was very still. She could hear the voices of the servants
in the dining-room round the angle of the house, and
see the light from its windows lying in frames upon
the grass. Then the light went out, and silence feil.
From time to time the hum of a motor-car swelled
and diminished to its last faint vibrations on the
distant road; and as each car passed Jenny stiffened
at her post. She looked at her watch, turning the dial
to the moonlight. It was ten minutes past nine now.
The cars had left Rackham Park well before nine. She
would not have long to wait now! As she slipped her
watch again into her waistband she drew back with an
instinctive movement, although the window at which
she stood had been this last half-hour in shadow. For


CHAPTER XXV
IN A LIBRARY
" You insisted that I should see you. You have
something to say to me,” said Joan. She was breathing
more quickly than usual and the blood fluttered in her
cheeks, but she faced Mario Escobar with level eyes,
and spoke without a tremor in her voice. So far
everything had happened just as she had planned.
There were these few difficult minutes now to be
grappled with, and afterwards the ordeal would be
ended, that foolish chapter in her life altogether closed.
Will you please be quick ?” she pleaded.
But Mario Escobar was in no hurry to answer.
He
had never imagined that Joan Whitworth could look
so beautiful. He had never dreamed that she would
take so much trouble. Mario Escobar understood
women's clothes, and his eyes ran with a sensation of
pleasure over her delicate frock with its shining bands,
its embroidery of silver and flounces of fine lace,
down to her slim brocaded shoes. He had not, indeed,
thought very much of her in the days when Linda
Spavinsky was queen. She had been a sort of challenge
to him, because of her aloofness, her indifference.
Women were his profession, and here was a queer
outlandish one whom it would be amusing to parade
as his. So he had set to work; he had a sense of art,
he could talk with ingenuity on artistic matters, and
he had flattered Joan by doing so ; but always with a
certain definite laughter and contempt for her. Now her
beauty rather swept him off his feet. He looked at her
in amazement. Why this change ? And—the second
question for ever in his mind-how could he profit by it?
“I don't understand," he said slowly, feeling his
way. “We were good friends very good friends."
Joan neither denied nor agreed. “We had certain
things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of
246


IN A LIBRARY
247
life. I made enemies, of course, in consequence.
Your racing friends ” He paused. “Milly Splay,
who would have matched you with some dull, tiresome
squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner,
the sort of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your
wonderful book.” A movement of impatience on
Joan's part perplexed him. Authors ! You can
generally lay your praise on with a trowel. What in
the world was the matter with Joan ? He hurried on.
“I understood that I was making enemies. I under-
stood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham
Park. I was a foreigner. I would as soon visit a
picture gallery as shoot a pheasant. I would as soon
appreciate your old gates and houses in the country
as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs. Oh,
yes, I wasn't popular. That I understand. But
you!” and his voice softened to a gentle reproach.
“ You were different! And you had the courage of
your difference! Since I was not invited to Rackham
Park, I was to come down to the inn at Midhurst. I
was to drive over---publicly, most publicly--and ask
for you. We would
show them that there were finer
things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis.
Oh, yes. We arranged it all at that wonderful exhibi-
tion of the New School in Green Street."
Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the
pictures of the rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms
to which she had given utterance.
“I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens ?
You scribble me out a curt little letter. I am not to
come to Rackham Park. I am not to try to see you.
And you are writing to-morrow. But to-morrow
comes, and you don't write--no, not one line !"
" It was so difficult,” Joan answered. She spoke
diffidently. Some of her courage had gone from her ;
she was confronted with so direct, so unanswerable an
accusation. “I thought that you would understand
that I did not wish to see you again. I thought that
you would accept my wish.'
1)


250
THE SUMMONS
“I'll tell you,” Escobar flashed out at her angrily.
You wouldn't be seen with me any more! Suddenly,
you would not be seen with me no, not for the world!
That's the truth, isn't it? That's why you come secretly
back and bid me meet you in an empty house."
“ Hush!" pleaded Joan.
Mario Escobar's voice had risen as his own words
flogged him to a keener indignation.
Why should I care if all the world hears me?"
he replied roughly. “Why should I consider you, .
who turn me down the moment it suits you, without
a reason ? It's fairly galling to me, I assure you."
Joan nodded her head. Mario Escobar had some
right upon his side, she was ready to acknowledge.
“I beg your pardon,” she said simply. “Won't
you please be content with that and leave things as
they are ?
"When you are a little older you will know that
you can never leave things as they are," answered
Mario. “I was looking forward to a week of happiness
I have had a week of torment. For lesser insults than
yours, men kill in my country.”
There were other differences, too, between her
country and his. Joan did not cry out, or burst into
tears or flinch in any way. She was alone in this
room; there was no one, as far as she knew, within
the reach of her voice. She had chosen this meeting-
place, not altogether because the house would be
empty, but because in this first serious difficulty of
her life she would be amongst familiar things and
draw from them confidence and strength, and a sense
of security. With Mario Escobar in front of her, his
face ablaze with passion, the security vanished alto-
gether. Yet all the more she was raised to the top
of her courage.
"Then I shall tell you the truth," she answered
gently. “You speak to me of our friendship. It
was never anything serious to me. It was a taunt-
a foolish taunt to other people."


252
THE SUMMONS
Joan sat up straight and stiff. Escobar might have
laid a lash across her delicate shoulders.
“Yes," she said defiantly.
“Some one who was not here a week ago ?
" Yes.”
To Escobar's humiliation was now added a sudden
fire of jealousy. For the first time to-night, as woman,
as flesh and blood, she was adorable, and she owed
this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest
fraction of a degree to him, but to someone else, some
dull boor without niceties or deftness, who had stormed
into her life within the week. Who was it ? He had
got to know. But Joan was hardly thinking of
Escobar. Her eyes were turned from him.
“He has set me free from many vanities and follies.
If I am grieved and ashamed now, I owe it thankfully
to him. If my remorse is bitter, it is because through him
I have a gleam of light which helps me to understand."
And
you
have told him what you have told me ?
No, but I shall to-night when all this is over,
when I go back to Harrel."
Mario Escobar moved closer to her.
Are
you so sure that you are going back to Harrel
to-night?” he asked in a low voice.
Yes,” she replied, and only after she had spoken
did the menace of his voice force itself into her mind as
something which she must take into account. She
looked up at him startled, and as she looked her
wonderment turned into stark fear. The cry that
in his country men killed had left her unmoved. But
she was afraid now, desperately afraid, all the more
afraid because she thought of the man searching for
her through the reception-rooms at Harrel.
We are alone here in an empty quarter of the
house. So you arranged it,” he continued. “ Good !
Women do not amuse themselves at my expense with-
out being paid for it."
Joan started up in a panic, but Escobar seized her
shoulders and forced her down again.


IN A LIBRARY
253
"Sit still," he cried savagely. Then his face
changed. For the first time for many minutes his
lips parted in a smile of pleasure.
You are very lovely, Joan. I love to see you like that
-afraid-trembling. It is the beginning of recompense."
Joan had tumbled into a deeper pit than any she
had dreamed of. In desperation she cast about for
means to climb out of it. The secrecy of this meeting
--that must go. But, even so, was there escape ? The
bell ? Before she could be half-way across the room, he
would be holding her in his arms. A cry? Before it was
halt uttered, he would have stifled her mouth. No, she
must sit very still and provoke no movement by him.
Mario Escobar was a creature of unhealthy refine-
ments. He wanted to know, first, who was the man
who had touched this indifferent maiden into warm life.
The knowledge would be an extra spice to his pleasure.
“Who are staying in the house?” he asked. It
would be amusing to make his selection, and discover
if he were right.
“Dennis Brown, Harold Jupp”—Joan began, puzzled
by his question, yet welcoming it as so much delay.
“ I don't want to hear about them," Mario Escobar
replied. “Tell me of the new-comers !”
Martin Hillyard—” Joan began again, and was
aware that Mario Escobar made a quick startled
movement and gasped. Martin Hillyard's name was
a pail of cold water for Escobar.
" Does Hillyard know that I am at Midhurst ?” he
asked sharply.
"No," Joan answered.
There was something which Hillyard had told her
about Mario Escobar, something which she had re-
jected and dismissed altogether from her thoughts.
Then she remembered. Escobar was an enemy work-
ing in England against England. She had given the
statement no weight whatever. It was the sort of
thing people said of unconventional people they dis-
jiked in order to send them to Coventry. But Escobar's


IN A LIBRARY
255
You know that I represent a line of ships. You can
help me. We haverivals, with active agents. You shall
find out for me exactly what Martin Hillyard is doing in
the Mediterranean, and why he visits in a yacht the
ports of Spain. You will find this out for me, so that I
may know whether he is acting for my rivals. Yes."
He is not," answered Joan.
“ You will find this out for me, so that I may know,"
Escobar repeated smoothly. Exactly what he is
doing in the Mediterranean, what special plans, and
why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You
promise me that knowledge, and you can go straight
back to your dancing.”
I have no knowledge,” said Joan quietly.
“But you can obtain it," Escobar insisted. “He is a
friend of yours. Exactly what he is doing—is it not so?”
So Martin's accusation was true. Joan nodded her
head, and Escobar, with a smile of relief, took the
gesture as a consent to his proposal.
Good !” he said, rising from the couch. Then
all is forgiven! You will make some notes-
"I will do nothing of the kind,” said Joan quietly,
but she was white to the edge of her lips, and she
trembled from head to foot. But there was no room
any more for fear in her. She was in a heat of anger
which she had never known. “Oh, that you should
dare !” and her words choked her,
Mario Escobar stared at her.
“ You refuse ?"
With all my soul.”
Escobar took a step towards her, but she did not move,
You are alone with me, when you should be
dancing at the ball. You made the appointment,
chose the hour, the place ... even if you scream,
there will be a scandal, a disgrace.”
“ I don't care."
" And the man you are in love with, eh? That
makes a difference,” he said, as he saw the girl falter.
Do we think of him?"
"


256
THE SUMMONS
“No,” said Joan. “We incur the disgrace."
She saw his eyes open wide with terror. He drew a
step away from her.
Oh!” he exclaimed, in a long-
drawn whisper ; and he looked at Joan with incredulity
and hatred. “ You," he used some Spanish word
which Joan did not catch. It would have told her little
if she had caught it. It was “ Cabron," a harmless, in-
offensive word which has become in Spain the ultimate
low word of abuse. “You have laid a trap for me."
Joan answered him in a bewilderment. "I have laid no
trap for you," and there was so much scorn and contempt
in her voice that Escobar could hardly disbelieve her.
But he was shaken. He was in a panic. He was in
a haste to go. Money-yes But you must live in
order to enjoy it.
I will give you a day to think over my proposal,”
he said, stammering the words in his haste. And then,
“ Don't write to me! I will find a means," and, almost
before she was aware of his movements, he had snatched
up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain
was torn aside; the glass door stood open; beyond
it the garden lay white in the light of the moon.
" A trap? ” Joan repeated his accusation in a per-
plexity. She turned and she saw the door, the door
behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door into the
hall, slowly open. There had been no turning of the
handle, it was unlatched before. Yet Joan had seen
to it that it was shut before ever she beckoned Mario
Escobar into the room. Some one, then, had been
listening. Mario Escobar had seen the handle move,
the door drawn ajar. Joan saw it open now to its full
width, and in the entrance Stella Croyle.
60
CHAPTER XXVI
A FATAL KINDNESS
JOAN picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her
shoulders. She did not give one thought to Stella, or


A FATAL KINDNESS
257
even hear the words which Stella began nervously to
speak. Her secret appointment would come to light
now in any case. It would very likely cost her-oh,
all the gold and glamour of the world. It would be
bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in the
street, at the Clubs, in the Press. Sir Chichester ought
to be happy, at all events. The thought struck her
with a wry humour, and brought a smile to her lips.
He would accomplish his dream. Without effort, without
a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have
such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for.
“Who is that?" Joan made up a little scene. "That?
Oh, don't you know ? That's Sir Chichester Splay.
You must have heard of Sir Chichester! Why, it was
in his house that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty
but an awful fool, carried on with the spy-man.'
Joan was a little overstrung. All the while she was
powdering her nose in front of a mirror and removing
as best she could the traces of tears, and all the while
Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and
words behind her. Joan regretted that Stella was not
going to the Willoughbys' ball. If she had been, she
would probably be carrying some rouge in her little
hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.
“Well, since you haven't got any with you, I must
go,” said Joan, bursting suddenly into Stella's mono-
logue. But she had caught a name spoken just before
Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan's outbreak.
“ Harry Luttrell ! ” Joan repeated. What in the
world had Stella Croyle got to say to her about Harry
Luttrell ? But Stella resumed her faltering discourse
and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's
brain and amazed her.
Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.
“ You are quite young,” said Stella, "only twenty.
What does he matter to you? You have everything
in front of you with your looks and your twenty
years you can choose where you will. You have
lovers already
I


A FATAL KINDNESS
259
“Tell me," she said.
Once, long ago, upon the deck of the Dragonfly at
Stockholm, Stella had cried out to Harry Luttrell,
“Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when you went
out of your way to be kind !” Joan was now to hear
how that cry had come to be uttered by a woman
in the nethermost distress. She knew, of course, that
Stella was married at the age of seventeen and had
been divorced, but little more than that.
There was a little girl," said Stella, “my baby.
I lost her.'
She spoke very simply. She had come to the end
of efforts and schemes, and was very tired. Joan's
anger died away altogether in her heart.
Oh, I am very sorry," she replied. “I didn't
know that you had a little girl.”
“Yes. Look, here is her portrait.” Stella Croyle
drew out from her bosom a locket which hung night
and day against her heart, and showed it to Joan
across the table. “But I don't know whether she
is little any more.
She is thirteen now.”
Joan gazed at the painted miniature of a lovely
child with the eyes and the hair of Stella Croyle.
" And you lost her altogether ? ” she asked with a
rising pity.
“Not at first," answered Stella. “I was allowed
by the Court to have her with me for one month in
every year. And I lived the other eleven months for
the one, the wonderful one.”
Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory
of her child did for her what all her passion for Harry
Luttrell could not do. It restored her youth. Her
eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of con-
flict vanished altogether.
“We had good times together, my baby and I
I took her to the sea. It sounds foolish, but we were
more like a couple of children together than mother
and daughter"; and Joan, looking at the delicate,
porcelain-like figure in front of her, smiled in response.


260
THE SUMMONS
But you
Yes, I can understand that."
“She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle
resumed. “I watched her so, I gave her so much of
me that when I had seen her off at the station with
her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind as
weak and limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan,
believe that at all events in my favour! There was no
one else."
“I do believe it."
"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me.”
“ They kept her back!” cried Joan.
had the right to her."
'Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's
house, to fetch her away."
It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking
of her own distressful life, told her story with a quiet
simplicity of tone, as if she had bent her neck in
submission to the hammer strokes of her destiny ;
whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of
another, was stirred to a compassion which kindled
her face and made her voice shake.
Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting
for you," she cried eagerly.
She was waiting for me.
Yes ! But it was no
longer my baby who was waiting. They had worked
on her, Robert, my husband—and his sisters. They had
told her-oh, more than they need! That I was bad."
“Oh !” breathed Joan.
Yes, they were a little cruel. They had changed
baby altogether. She was just eight at that time."
Stella stopped for a moment or two. Her voice did
not falter but her eyes suddenly swam with tears.
She used to adore me-she really and truly did.
Now her little face and her eyes were like flint. And
what do you think she said to me? Just this !
'Mummy, I don't want to go with you. If you take
me with you, you'll spoil my holidays !''
Joan shot back in her chair.
“But they had taught her to say that?"
1


A FATAL KINDNESS
261
Stella Croyle shook her head.
“ They had taught her to dislike me. My little
girl has character. She wouldn't have repeated the
words because she had been taught them. No, she
meant them.”
“But a day or two with you and she would have
forgotten them. Oh, she did forget thein !"
In her great longing to comfort the woman, whose
deep anguish she divined beneath the quiet desolation
of her voice, Joan overleapt her own knowledge. She
was still young enough to will that past events
had not
occurred, and that things true were false.
"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle. "I
wouldn't take her. I knew baby-besides she had
struck me too hard.”
“ You came away alone i " whispered Joan.
“ In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door
to take us both away."
“That's terrible!” said Joan. The child with her
lovely face set like flint in the room, the mother
creeping out of the house and stumbling alone into
the fly at the door-the picture was vivid before her
eyes. Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless
gesture, and a moan upon her lips. Almost it seemed
that these sad things were actually happening to her ;
so poignantly she felt them.
Oh, and you had all that long journey back to
London, the journey you had dreamt of for eleven
months with your baby at your side--you had now to
take it alone.”
Stella Croyle shook her head.
“No! There was just one and only one of my
friends—and not at all a great friend who had the
imagination to understand, as you understand too,
Joan, just what that journey would have meant to
me, if anything had gone wrong, and the kindness to
put himself out to make its endurance a little easier."
Joan drew back quickly.
Harry Luttrell," she whispered.


262
THE SUMMONS
“ Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He
knew Robert Croyle and the sisters. He guessed what
might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it was
going to happen."
So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that
none might see her face, was stumbling along the
platform in search of an empty carriage, a hand was
very gently laid upon her arm and Harry Luttrell was
at her side. He had come all the way from London to
befriend her, should she need it. If he had seen her
with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
and himself have returned to London by a later train.
“That was fine," cried Joan.
Fine, yes!” answered Stella. “You realise that,
Joan, and you have never been in real trouble, or
known vhat men are when kindness interferes with
their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women
do get the worst of it, if they are fools enough-Wicked
enough if you like, to do as I did. I knew men-lots
of them. I was bound to. I was fair game you see.”
Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge
had been opening very rapidly for her during the last
few minutes. But she was still often at a loss.
“Fair game. Why? I don't understand."
I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't danger-
Complications couldn't follow from a little
affair with me,” Stella explained bitterly. “I had
men on my doorstep always. But not one of these
men who protested and made love to me, would have
put themselves out to do what Harry Luttrell did.
It was fine-yes. But for three years I have been
wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really
have been kinder if he had thought of his own comfort
too, and had never travelled to Exeter to befriend me."
" Why?" asked Joan.
“I should have thrown myself out of the carriage
and saved myself-oh, so much sorrow afterwards,"
Stella Croyle answered in so simple and natural a voice
that Joan could not disbelieve her.
ous.


A FATAL KINDNESS
263
)
Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then
gazed again at Stella sitting in front of her, with pity
and wonder. It was so hard for her to understand that
this pretty woman, who made it her business to be
gay, whom she had met from time to time in this
house and had chatted with and forgotten, had passed
through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and humilia-
tion. She was to look closer still into the mysteries
which were being revealed to her.
Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as
if she had been a child herself whilst the train rushed
through the bleak winter country. Stella had be-
haved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief,
now mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and
despairing under the weights that nothing, neither
sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.
“He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it
wasn't love," cried Stella. “ He was afraid.”
“Afraid !" asked Joan. She wished
She wished to know every
least detail of the story now.
“Afraid lest I should take-something ... as I
wished to do ... as during the trouble of the divorce
I learned to do."
She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan
listened to with a breaking heart. Stella could not
sleep at all after her return. She lived in a little house
with a big garden on the northern edge of London, and
all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain
on melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking.
Harry Luttrell kept her from the drugs in her dressing
She had no anodyne for her sorrows—but one.
“ You will laugh,” said Stella with a little wry smile
of her own, " when I tell you what it was.
It was a
gramophone. I got Harry to set it going, whilst I lay
in bed-to set it playing rag-time. While it was
playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time
in my
brain with the beat of the tune. And so, at
last, since I couldn't think, or remember, I fell asleep.
The gramophone saved me”; and again Joan was
case.


A FATAL KINDNESS
265
away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to
say so to one who was blind and deaf to all but her
hope, who would not listen, who would not see?
Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a
couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they
belonged, and her thoughts took another complexion.
Harry Luttrell! What share had she now in his life?
She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.
“Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are
to talk things over to-night. I shall say 'No.''
She had turned again to the window, but a startled
question from Stella Croyle stayed her feet.
“ Harry has asked you to marry him ? ”
“He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of
her own loss returned upon her, she felt utterly alone,
all the more alone because of the wondrous week
which had come to so desolate an end to-night. Here
in this little room, not two hours ago. But I asked
him to wait until supper time to-night. Here-it was
here we stood !
Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in
this very spot, the table here upon her left, that chair
upon her right, that trifolium in the pattern of the
carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken
her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle
saying now?
I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry
has spoken to you already I have lost-that's all. Í
didn't know,” she said. Her cheeks were white, her
eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them
which Joan could not understand.
'Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating
in a dreadful whisper, moistening her dry lips with her
tongue between her sentences.
"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of
pity," Joan answered her. “To-morrow I shall be
impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell.” The words
fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have
mattered if Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell


266
THE SUMMONS
was that night asking Joan to marry him, the hopes
upon which she had so long been building, which
Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage,
withered and crumbled in an instant.
“I must go back and dance,” said Joan with a shiver.
She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one
possessed with visions of terrible things. Her tragic
face and moving lips were to haunt Joan for many
a month afterwards. She went out by the window
and ran down the drive to the spot where she had left
Miranda's car half-way between the lodge and the
house. The gates had been set open that night against
the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back
again under the great over-arching trees of the road.
It was just ten o'clock when she slipped into the
ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a dance,
CHAPTER XXVII
THE RANK AND FILE
MARTIN HILLYARD crammed a year's enjoyment into
the early hours of that night. He danced a great deal
and had supper a good many times; and even the girl
who had passed the season of 1914 in London and
said languidly, “ Tell me more," before he had opened
his mouth, failed to ruffle his enjoyment.
“If I did, you would scream for your mother," he
replied, “and I should be turned out of the house and
Sir Chichester would lose his position in the county.
No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have
some supper.'
He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and
from that moment his enjoyment began to wane. For,
at a little table near to hand, sat Joan Whitworth and
Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress
upon their faces that their smooth courtship had en-
countered its obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed
to burn in Joan's cheeks. They hardly spoke at all.


THE RANK AND FILE
267
Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan
in a corridor.
I have been looking for you for a long while,” she
cried in a quick, agitated voice. " Are you free for
this dance ?"
" Yes."
Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.
“Then will you take me into the garden ? '
He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace
out of the hearing of the rest.
“We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that
she would disclose the difficulty which had arisen
between herself and Harry, and seek his counsel as
Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling
discords which love magnifies until they blot out the
skies and drape the earth in temporary mourning. But
Joan began a. once nervously upon a different topic.
“You made a charge against Mario Escobar the
other day. I did not believe it. But you spoke the
truth. I know that now."
She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her.
Then she hurried on.
"I can prove it. He demands news of your move-
ments in the Mediterranean. If it is necessary I must
come forward publicly and prove it. It will be
horrible, but of course I will."
Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes
averted from him. Her fingers plucked nervously at her
dress. There was an aspect of shame in her attitude.
“It will not be necessary, Joan,” he answered.
“I have quite enough evidence already to put him
away until the end of the war."
Joan turned to him with quivering lips.
“You are sure. It means so much to me to escape
what I have no right to escape, I can hardly believe it.'
“I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.
Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She
sat up as though a weight had been loosed from her
shoulders. The trouble lifted from her face.


268
THE SUMMONS
one,
“You need not call upon me at all ? "
No.”
"I don't want to shirkmany more," she insisted.
“I should not hesitate."
“I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She
looked out over the gardens to the great line of hills,
dim and pleasant as fairyland in the silver haze of
the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along
the ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring
which marks the crest of Duncton Hill, and the dark
fold below where the trees flow down to Graffham.
"You ask me no questions,” she said in a low,
warm voice. “I am very grateful."
"I ask you
Where is Mario Escobar
to-night?"
At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the
hotel.
Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were
inquiring here and searching there and watching the
ports for him, he was lying almost within reach of his
hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.
“But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now,"
Joan added, remembering his snarl of fear when the
door had opened behind her, and the haste with which
he had filed.
Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock
in the morning.
You are in a hurry? " she asked.
“I ought to send a message.” He turned to Joan.
You know this house, of course. Is there a telephone
in a quiet room, where I shall not be interrupted or
be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?
“Yes, Mrs.Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall
I ask her if you may use it ? "
“ If you please.
Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors
and rejoined him after a few minutes. “Come," she
said, and led the way upstairs to the room. Martin
called up the trunk line and gave a number.


THE RANK AND LIFE
269
" I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.
“ You want me to go," answered Joan, and she
moved towards the door reluctantly.
"No. But you will be missing your dances."
Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him,
but stood facing the door as she replied; so that he
could not see her face.
“I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I
am not in the way I would rather wait with you.”
Of course.”
He was careful to use the most commonplace tone
with the thought that it would steady her. The
trouble which this telephone message would finally
dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She
needed companionship; her voice broke, as though
her heart were breaking too. He saw her raise a wisp
of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the telephone
bell rang at his side.
at his side. He was calling at a venture upon
the number which Commodore Graham had rung up
in the office above the old waterway of the Thames.
"Is that Scotland Yard ?” he asked, and he gave
the address at which Mario Escobar was to be found.
But he may be gone to-morrow," he added, and
hearing a short " That's all right,” he rang off.
“Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back
into the garden.”
They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied
and sat for a while in silence. Hillyard recognised
that neither questions nor any conversation at all were
required from him, but simply the sympathy of his
companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan
sat by his side.
She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's
Ring, small as a button upon the great shoulder of the
Down.
“Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you
back from Goodwood ?"
Yes."
" You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I


270
THE SUMMONS
want to fall back into the rank and file." And I cried
out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"
'I remember.”
" What a fool I was!" said Joan. “I didn't under-
stand at all. I thought that it sounded fine, and that
was why I applauded. I am only beginning to under-
stand now.
Even after I had agreed with you, my
one ambition was to be different."
Her voice died remorsefully away. From the
window further down the terrace the yellow light
poured from the windows and fought with the moon-
light. The music of a waltz floated out upon the
yearning of many violins. There was a ripple of
distant voices.
"All this week," Joan began again, “I have found
myself standing unexpectedly in a strong light before
a mirror and utterly scared by the revelation of what
I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which
I had done. From one of the worst of them, you have
saved me to-night. You are very kind to me, Martin.”
It was the first time he had ever heard her use his
Christian name.
“I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me,” he
said. “I am not blind. I was in the supper-room
when you and Harry were there. It was for him that
you had kept all the last dances free. And you are
here, breaking your heart. Why?
Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her
against her will. But this matter was between her and
Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel from any other.
" Then I am very grieved for both of you,” said
Hillyard. Joan made a movement as if she were
about to rise. Will you wait just a moment ? ”
Martin asked.
He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story
had reached the girl's ears. He understood that she
would be hurt, and affronted; that she would feel
herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she
would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover,


THE LONG SLEEP
273
1
room.
deliberately showing you that you weren't indifferent
to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't
meant you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to
accept you.” She rose with a gesture of despair.
“I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!”
and with that unrealisable desire burning furiously in
her breast, Lady Splay marched into the breakfast-
Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their
white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into
the room a moment afterwards.
Joan's the lazy one,” she said, looking round the
table. She had got to bed at half-past four and looked
as fresh as if she had slept the clock round. What
are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell ?
Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and
as they inspected the dishes they were joined by Mr.
Albany Todd.
“You were going it last night,” Jupp called to him,
with a note of respect in his voice. “For a top-weight
you're the hottest thing I have seen in years. Stay
another week in our academic company, and we shall
discover so many excellent qualities in you that we
shall be calling you Toddles."
“ And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping
together," said Mr. Albany Todd.
Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany
Todd was an exceptionally smooth dancer. His first
dance on the night before he had owed to the considera-
tion of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the rest of
his programme ; and he sat down to breakfast now in
a high good humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the
room when the serious part of the meal was over, and
all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in
front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.
"Any news in The Times, Mr. Albany Todd ? "
“No! No!” replied Mr. Albany Todd in an ab-
stracted voice, with his head buried between the pages.
“Would you like it, Sir Chichester ?"
He showed no intention of handing it over ; and Sir


THE LONG SLEEP
275
!”
himself.
You are exaggerating no doubt, my dear.
The Harpoon is a good paper and quite friendly.”
But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a
voice as shrill as a scream.
"Oh, stop Chichester, and look! There, in the
third column! Just under your eyes
And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face
changed.
“ Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He
carried the newspaper back with him to his chair and
sat down again. He had the air of a man struck clean
out of his wits. “That won't do," he repeated, and
again, with a rush of angry blood into his face, “ No,
that won't do." It seemed that Sir Chichester's harm-
less little foible had suddenly received more than its
due punishment.
The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the
floor, whilst he sat staring at the white table-cloth in
front of him. But no sooner did Harold Jupp at his
side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir
Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.
“No!” he said. No!” and he began to fold it
up very carefully. “It's as Millie says, a rather
intolerable invention which has crept into the social
news. I must consider what steps we should take.”
There was another at that table who was as dis-
turbed as Sir Chichester and Lady Splay. Martin
Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had
caused this consternation in his hosts, and he had
asked no questions last night. But he remembered
every word that Joan had said. She had seen Mario
Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park-
that was certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded
information. 'Demanded' was the word which Joan
had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing
type. Martin's heart was in his mouth.
An invention about us here?” he asked.
About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and
Martin dared ask no more.


276
THE SUMMONS
Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's know-
ledge to restrain him.
“In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it
now, aloud ? ” he suggested. “It can't be suppressed
now. Sooner or later every one will hear of it.'
Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Lut-
trell seemed wilfully to be rushing towards catastrophe.
· Yes... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He
unfolded his newspaper again and read; and of all
those who listened no one was more amazed than Hill-
yard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this
abominable work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:
"A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at
Rackham Park, where Sir Chichester Splay, the well-
known Baronet-'"He broke off to observe,“ Really,
it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but
so far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put
really more considerately than I noticed at first."
Oh, please go on," cried Millie.
Very well, my dear,” and he resumed-' where Sir
Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet is entertain-
ing a small party. At an early hour this morning
Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under
strange circumstances.'
Miranda uttered a little scream.
“ Died !” she exclaimed.
“Yes, listen to this,” said Sir Chichester.
Croyle was discovered lying upon her side with her
face bent above a glass of chloroform. The glass was
supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's
fingers were still grasping it when she was discovered.”
A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that
breakfast table when Sir Chichester had finished.
It's so atrociously circumstantial,” said Mr. Albany
Todd.
“Yes.' Sir Chichester seized upon the point.
"That's the really damnable point about it. That's
real malice. This report will linger and live long
after the denial and apology are published.”
“ Mrs.


THE LONG SLEEP
277
Lady Splay raised her head.
"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a
cowardly lie. Enemies of us? Or enemies of Stella ?”
“ We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay,
said Harold Jupp. He was of a practical matter-of-
fact mind and every one turned to listen to his sugges-
tion. “The first thing to do is to get the report con-
tradicted in the evening papers.
“ Of course.”
There was something to be done. All grasped at
the doing of it in sheer relief-except one. For as the
men rose, saying ; one “I'll look after it"; and
another “No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's
voice broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful
fatality in the quiet sound of it.
" Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was
as white as the tablecloth in front of him.
There was no further movement towards the door.
Slowly the men resumed their seats. A silence followed
in which person after person looked at Stella's empty
place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise
her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break
through it.
“She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie
Splay seized upon the words.
No, she never comes down for breakfast-never
has all this week.”
Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an
attempt at cheerfulness.
Besides—what makes the idea-impossible," said
Sir Chichester, “ is the publication this morning. There
wouldn't have been time
It's clearly an
atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an
obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous
thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once
more discomfort and silence reigned in the room.
Stella's not well,” Millie Splay took up the tale.
That's why she is seldom seen before twelve. Those
headaches of hers" and suddenly she in her turn
0


278
THE SUMMONS
66
2
broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric
bell upon the table-cloth beside her. That small
trivial action brought its relief, lightened the vague
cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had spoken,
had settled upon all.
“You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.
Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a
picnic to-day and we should like to know if Mrs. Croyle
will join us.
Can
you
find out from her maid whether
she is awake ?"
It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady
Splay's voice, not a sign of agitation in her manner.
I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left
the room upon his errand.
One thing is certain,” Mr. Albany Todd broke in.
“I was watching Harper over your shoulder, Lady
Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's
nothing known of it in the servants' hall.'
Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed :
Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires
me with confidence. I feel that nothing out of the
way could really happen whilst he was in the house."
And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she
thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler.
A suggestion made by Martin Hillyard set them to
work whilst they waited.
“Let us see if the report is in any of the other
papers," and all immediately were busy with that
examination-except one again. And that one again,
Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his
eyes transfixed upon some vision of horror-as if he
knew, Martin said to himself, yes, as if all these ques-
tions were futile, as if he knew.
But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph.
They had hardly assured themselves of this fact, when
Harper ence more stood in the doorway.
“Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that
she was not to be disturbed until she rang, my lady,"
he said.
1)


THE LONG SLEEP
279
“And she has not rung ? ” Millie asked.
“No, my lady."
Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and
swayed in her chair.
“ Miranda !” Millie Splay brought her back to her
self-control with a sharp cry of rebuke. Then she
resurned to Harper.
“I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs.
Croyle. Will you please, ask her maid to rouse Mrs.
Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us this morn-
ing. We shall start at twelve."
Very well, my lady."
There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst
the people seated round the table. A queer panic
passed from one to the other. They were awed by
the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things.
They waited in silence, like people under a spell, and
from somewhere in the house above their heads, there
sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their
breath, straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock,
and the opening of that door. They heard only the
knocking repeated and repeated again. It was fol-
lowed by a sound of hurrying feet.
Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and
burst into the breakfast room, her face mottled with
terror, her hand spread above her heart to still its wild
beating.
“My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can
get no answer. I am afraid."
Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But
Jenny Prask had more to say.
“The key had been removed. My lady, I looked
through the keyhole. The lights are still burning in
the room.'
“Oh!"
Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He re-
membered another time when the lights had been
burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of a
summer morning. She was sitting at the writing,
>>


282
THE SUMMONS
Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at
Rackham Parkſ and yet in this very morning's issue
of the newspaper, her death with every circumstance
and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it
was even known by anybody in the house itself.
How can that be?” Sir Chichester exclaimed in
despair. “ How can it be?”
CHAPTER XXIX
0
JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
STELLA, the undisciplined ! She had flung out of the
rank and file, as long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had
put it, and to this end she had come, waywardness
exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, how-
ever, was not able to lull his conscience with any such
easy reflections. He walked with Martin Hillyard
apart in the garden.
“I am to blame," he cried. “I took on a responsi-
bility for Stella when I went out of my way to do one
kind, foolish thing. Yet, she would have killed
herself if I hadn't-as she has done five years after-
wards!... I couldn't leave her when I had brought
her home . . . she was in such misery! .. and it
couldn't have gone on. . . Old Hardiman was right
about that. ... It would have ended in a quarrel
when unforgivable words would have been used. .
Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have
killed herself. .. Oh, I don't know !”
Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so
moved or sunk in such remorse. He did not argue,
lest he should but add fuel to this high flame of self-
reproach. Life had become so much easier as a prob-
lem with him, so much inner probing and speculation
and worry about small vanities had been smoothed
away since he had been engaged day after day in a
definite service which was building up by a law de-
duced here, an inspired formula there, a tradition for


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT 283
its servants. The service, the tradition, would dissolve
and blow to nothing, when peace came again. Mean-
while there was the worth of traditional service made
clear to him, in an indifference to the little enmities
which before would have hurt and rankled, in a free-
dom from doubt when decision was needed, above all
in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his
life became more turbulently active.
“ It's a clear principle of life which makes the
difference," he said, hesitating, because to say even so
much made him feel a prig. "Stella just drifted from
unhappiness to unhappiness-
But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.
“I simply couldn't have gone on,” he cried. “It
wasn't a question of my ruin or not. ... It was simply
beyond me to go on. . . . There were other things
more powerful. . . You know! I once told you on
the river above Kennington Island. .. Oh, my God,
I am in such a tangle of argument--and there she is
up there-only thirty, and beautiful-such a queer,
wayward girl like a child sleeping.'
He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried
away from his friend.
“ I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His
bad hour was upon him, and he must wrestle with it alone.
Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir
Chichester with the doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman.
Dr. McKerrel was saying :
“ There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chich-
ester,” he said. The poor creature must have died
somewhere about one o'clock of the morning." He
saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to read-
ing the paragraph in the Harpoon, and continued with
a warmth of admiration, “ Eh, but those newspaper
fellows are quick! I saw the Harpoon this morning,
and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my rounds
otherwise when that young fellow called for me."
" It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir
Chichester.
>


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
285
that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's
suggestion at once.
"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester
importantly. Give him a little work which set him in
the limelight as the leader of the Chorus, and nothing
could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of fools-
cap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen-
Sir Chichester never used anything but a quill pen-
to the big table in the middle of the hall, and wrote in
a fair, round hand :
“ The case of Mrs. Croyle."
and looked at his work and thought it good.
“ It looks quite like a cause célèbre, doesn't it?" he
said buoyantly. But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye,
and recovered his more becoming despondency. Harry
Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to his
task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:
"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it
might be the key of Mrs. Croyle's room."
It was undoubtedly the key of a door. " We'll find
out,” said the baronet. Harper was sent for and com-
missioned to inquire. He returned in a few minutes.
Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room.” He
laid it upon the table and went out of the room.
“I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. But
I am a little puzzled.”
" Oh ?”
" It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as
one might have expected. But at the east side of the
house, below the corridor, and almost in front of the
glass door of the library."
Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester
took up the key, and twisted it this way and that, till
it flashed like a point of fire in the sunlight; as though
under such giddy work it would yield up its secret
for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again,
where it rattled and lay still.
“I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester
cried. Martin Hillyard opened his mouth to speak


286
THE SUMMONS
and thought better of it. He could not falter in his
belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture
of her that morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning
in her room and the bed untouched, was too vivid in
his memory. What she had tried to do two years ago,
she had found the courage to do to-day.
That was sure. But it was not all. There was
someone in the shadows who meant harm, more harm
than was already accomplished. There was male-
volence at work. The discovery of the key in that
position far from Stella's window assured him of it.
The aspect of the key itself as it lay upon the table
made the assurance still more sure. But whom was
this malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment
would the hand behind the curtain strike? And whose
hand would it be? These were questions which locked
his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover,
for he alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed,
God help his friends at Rackham Park. Mario Escobar?
Mario Escobar could at all events do no harm now.
Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr.
McKerrel's suggestion.
Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The
witnesses, and what each one knows and is ready te
depose. I shall put the statement before the coroner,
who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as
little scandal as possible. Now, let me see " Sir
Chichester put on his glasses. "The most important
witness, of course, will be Stella's maid.”
Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his
summons Jenny came down the stairs. Her eyes were
red with weeping and she was very pale. But she bore
herself steadily.
'You wanted me, sir ? " she asked. Her eyes
travelled from one to the other of the three men in the
hall. They rested for a little moment longer upon Harry
Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard
that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and
that the ghost of a smile flickered about her mouth.


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
287
27
Yes,” said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You
understand that there will have to be an inquiry into
the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one wants for
the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than
anyone, that there should be as little talk as possible.”
Jenny's voice cut in like ice.
Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear
the fullest inquiry.”
“Quite so ! Quite so!” returned Sir Chichester,
shifting his ground. “But it will save time if we get
the facts concisely together."
Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the
table opposite to the baronet.
I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, " to
answer any question now or at any time
; and
throughout the little interrogatory which followed
she never once changed from her attitude of respect.
“ Your name first.”
Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down
“You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."
“For three and a half years, sir.”
“Good !” said Sir Chichester, with the air of one
who by an artful question has elicited a most impor-
tant piece of evidence.
Now !” But now he fumbled. He had come to
the real examination, and was at a loss how to begin.
“Yes, now then, Jenny!” and again he came to a halt.
Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely
under their half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard
followed the direction of their gaze to the door-key
lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.
Jenny,” said Sir Chichester, who had at last
formulated a question. “You informed us that
Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call her
until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order
for her to give."
“No, sir."
Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.
« Oh, it wasn't ?"


288
THE SUMMONS
“No, sir."
Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about
for another line of examination
“You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mis-
tress was in the habit of taking drugs-chloroform
especially.”
"Never, sir," answered Jenny.
“ You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.
" She never took them.'
Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared
in perplexity at Jenny Prask, who did not once remove
her calm and respectful eyes from Sir Chichester
Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the
next question. But the question took a long time to
formulate. Sir Chichester had framed no interro-
gatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were
pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead
mistress lay, she had thought out the questions which
might be asked of her and got her answers ready.
Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every con-
jecture which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a
door in his face.
But you told me," he cried, turning to Harry
Luttrell and so broke off. “Are you speaking the
truth, Jenny?”
Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood
rushed into her face. She shouted violently:
“I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do!
Chloroform indeed!” She became sarcastic.
an idea! Just fancy !”
Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast
before the conclusion to which his examination was
leading him.
“But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform
between her pillows--herself of her own accord-
why then, whilst she was asleep." He would not
utter the inevitable induction. But it was clear
enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then,
whilst she was asleep, some one entered the room, placed
“ What


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT 289
2
UN
the chloroform where its deadly fumes would do their
work, locked her door upon her and tossed the key out
on to the lawn. A charge of murder-nothing less.
“Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny,”
Sir Chichester spluttered helplessly.
“I am suggesting nothing, sir,” the maid answered
stolidly. “I am answering questions.”
She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a
doubt of it. Jenny Prask was the malevolent force
of which he was in search. So much had, at all
events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings.
And some hint, too, of the plan which malevolence had
formed-not more than a hint! That Jenny Prask
intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did
not believe. She was of too strong a brain for that
folly. But she had some clear purpose to harm
somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he conjectured
who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile,
he thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning.
He got glimpses through that clouded medium into
Jenny Prask's mind.
“ You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position
into which your answers are leading you,” said Sir
Chichester with a trace of bluster.
Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise
exactly the drift and meaning of every word which
she uttered. Jenny was not at all perturbed by Sir
Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.
"I don't understand, sir."
“No ? Let me make it clear! If your mistress
never took drugs, if she did not place the glass of
chloroform in the particular position which would
ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were
alone in this part of the house with her and were the
last person to see her alive"
“No, sir,” Jenny Prask interrupted.
Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out
of his depth, and these were waters in which expert
swimming was required.
K


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
291
leaning forward over the table, shook his finger
threateningly at the girl.
"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss
Whitworth was at Harrel last night with the rest of us."
"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackhain Park
almost at once," said Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's
face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he hadn't
seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after
ten o'clock. “ I should have known that it was Miss
Whitworth even if I had not heard her voice," and
Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book,
she had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.
Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-
paper here and his pen there, and pished and tushed
like a refractory child.
And how did she get back ? I suppose she ran
all the way in her satin shoes and back again, eh?”
“No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car.
I saw it from my bedroom window waiting in the
drive."
Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny,"
cried Sir Chichester triumphantly. And we will
He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved towards the
door in order to summon Miranda from the garden.
Hillyard warned him with an almost imperceptible
shake of the head. “Yes, we will, in our own time,
he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again.
" Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this
sordid business, it's bad enough as it is. But Joan,
no! To suggest that Joan came straight back from
the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a
woman whom she was seeing every day here, and,
having quarrelled with her, afterwards-No, I won't
speak the word. It's preposterous !”
“ But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth
came back in order to quarrel with my mistress,”
Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir Chichester's
spate of words ran down. " I only give you the facts
I know. I am quite sure that Miss Whitworth can quite


292
THE SUMMONS
easily explain why she came back to Rackham Park
last night. There can't be any difficulty about that !”
Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice
under her control. There was no hint of irony or
triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid, frankly
answering questions about her dead mistress. But
she did not so successfully keep sentinel over her
looks. She could not but glance from time to time
at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety;
and when she expressed her conviction that Joan
could so easily clear up these mysteries, such a flame
of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that it lit Martin
Hiliyard straight to the heart of her purpose.
"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he
grasped its reach. An accusation of murder! Oh,
nothing so crude. But just enough suggestion of the
possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary
that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box
at the coroner's inquest and acknowledge before the
world that she had hurried secretly back from Harrel
to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario
Escobar too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny
Prask had builded better than she knew. That
telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much
relief but an hour ago taunted him now.
The scandal
would have been bad enough if Mario Escobar were
nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was
supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now
that Mario Escobar had been interned as a traitor
within twelve hours of the secret meeting !
Some escape must be discovered from the peril.
Else the mud of it would cling to Joan all her life.
She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If he
married her, if he did not. But Martin could not
think of a way out. The whole plan was an artful,
devilish piece of hard-headed cunning. Martin fell to
wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint.
She certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she
had not one at all.


294
THE SUMMONS
Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but
Sir Chichester was hot upon his report.
“Joan, my dear,” he said confidently. “There's
a little point-not in dispute really-but--well there's
a little point. It has been said that you came straight
back here last night from Harrel ?”
Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with
her great eyes fixed upon Sir Chichester, still as an
image, and she did not answer a word. Harry Luttrell
drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir
Chichester was selecting a new pen and noticed
nothing.
“ It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put
to you the formal question. Did you ? "
“Yes,” answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir
Chichester's hand.
“But-but-how did you come back ?"
“I borrowed Miranda's car."
Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down
with a moan in a chair.
“ But Miranda denies that she lent it,” said Sir
Chichester in exasperation.
“I asked her to deny it."
Why ?"
Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to
Harry Luttrell. She swayed. Then she answered :
“I can't tell you.
Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of
foolscap across.
“God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather
than to any of that company. "God bless my soul !"
He moved away from the table. “I think I'll go and
see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he
ascended the stairs heavily, a very downcast and
bewildered man. It seemed as though old age had
suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders
and taken the spring from his limbs. Something of
this he felt himself, for he was heard to mutter as he
passed along the landing to his wife's sitting-room :


JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
295
“ I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more" ;
and so he passed from sight.
Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.
“Miss Whitworth,” he began and got no further.
For the blood rushed up into the girl's face and she
exclaimed in a trembling voice :
Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to
ask me any questions."
Why? " he asked, taken aback by the little touch
of violence in her manner.
" Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you
the right to ask them.”
The words were not very generous. They were
meant to hurt and they did. They were meant to put
a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in that
too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head
in assent and went out into the garden. For a moment
afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan and Jenny Prask
stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's
eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth
had moved since the interrogatory had began and the
sunlight now played upon the key and transmuted it
into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward
and lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the
far end of a long tunnel began to glimmer in his mind,
“I must think it out," he whispered to himself ;
and at once the key filled all his thoughts. He turned
to Joan:
“Will you watch, please ?" He opened the drawer
in the table and laid the key inside it. Then he closed
the drawer and locked it and took the key of the
drawer out of the lock.
“ You see, Joan, what I have done ? That key is
locked in this drawer, and I hold the key of the drawer.
It may be important."
Joan nodded.
'I see what you have done. And now, will you
please leave me with Jenny Prask ? "
The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's


A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER 297
Jenny,” she cried sharply from the balustrade of
the landing.
Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.
· Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that
Miss Whitworth has fainted.”
CHAPTER XXX
A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER
UPON that house which had yesterday rung with
joyous life now fell gloom and sorrow and grave dis-
quiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown and
Harold Jupp aside.
"You three had better go," she said. “You have
such a little time for holidays now; and I can always
telegraph for you if you should be wanted.”
Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.
“Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can
go. But Joan will want some one."
Millie, however, would not hear of it.
“You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the
car for you all immediately after luncheon. Joan's in
bed, and wants to see no one. She seems heartbroken.
She will say nothing. I can't understand her."
There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and
to him Millie Splay turned instinctively.
“I should like you to stay, if you will put up with
us. I think Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you
very much."
Of course I'll stay,” replied Hillyard.
Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more con-
genial atmosphere of a dowager duchess's dower-
house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped that
his conversational qualities were more brilliantly dis-
played than in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham.
Millie Splay meant to keep Harry Luttrell too. She
hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan,


A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER 299
" God
He has gone, sir.”
“ Gone ? exclaimed Sir Chichester testily.
bless my soull Did he seem disappointed, Harper ? "
"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise
a vulgarism, struck of all a heap, sir.”
That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper
again retired.
" Struck all of a heap !” said Sir Chichester sadlyi
“Well he might be !” He looked up and caught
Harry's eye. They say, Luttrell, that breaking a habit
is only distressing during the first few days. With each
refusal of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes
in strength. I believe that to be so, Luttrell."
“ It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.
Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the
library that morning. For he appeared with a little
oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester did not
notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct
note of eager pleasure in his voice, he cried :
He has come back! Then I really think-"
'No, sir," Harper interrupted. “ These
cigarettes.'
"Oh, yes,” Hillyard stepped forward and took the
parcel from the table. "I had run out, so I sent to
Midhurst for a box."
“Oh, cigarettes !" Sir Chichester's voice sagged
again. He contemplated the little parcel swinging by
a loop of string from Martin's finger. His face became
a little stern. “That's a bad habit, Hillyard,” he
observed, shaking his head. “ It will grow on you
nicotine poisoning may supervene at any moment.
You had better begin to break yourself of it at once.
I think so."
“Chichester !” cried Millie Splay.
cried Millie Splay. “What in the
world are you doing?”
Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the
parcel from Martin's hands, whilst Martin himself
looked on, paralysed by the aggression.
" A little strength of character, Hillyard. You
are


302
THE SUMMONS
carry the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms
and dark woodlands and brown cottages away with
him as a treasure to which he could secretly turn like
a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever
before her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To
sink back into the rank and file-how fine she had
thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now she
had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her
face in her pillows and lay shivering.
Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie
Splay, Sir Chichester and Harry Luttrell gathered
about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold beef and
drank a pint of champagne.
“I went up to London to see someone on the editorial
staff of the Harpoon," Martin explained. “There
were two questions I wanted answers for, if I could
get them. You see, according to McKerrel--and you,
Sir Chichester, say that he is a capable man-Stella
Croyle died at one in the morning.'
“Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.
" About one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the
exactness of the soldierly mind.
"" About' will do," Martin rejoined. “For news-
papers go to press early nowadays. The Harpoon
would have been made up, and most of the editorial
staff would have gone home an hour-yes, actually
an hour--before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham
in Sussex. Yet the news is in that very issue. How
did that happen? How did the news reach the office
of the Harpoon an hour before the event occurred ?”
Yes, that is what has been bothering me,” added
Sir Chichester.
Well, that was one question," Martin resumed.
“ Here's the other. How, when the news had reached
the Harpoon office, did it get printed in the paper ? ”
Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an
explanation of that.
It's sensational,” she said disdainfully.
Martin shook his head.
66


A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER 305
again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes
of ten o'clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a
quarter before ten-that, at the latest."
Yes," Millie Splay agreed.
Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after
leaving here, within ten minutes under the two hours.
And that in the daytime. Stella had time enough for
her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the road.
She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage,
and the car reaches the Harpoon office by twelve."
But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.
Simpler still. Your gates were left open last
night, and we returned from Harrel at four in the
morning. Stella's chauffeur hands in his letter, comes
back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham
an hour and a half before we thought of saying good-
bye to Mrs. Willoughby. That.is the way it happened.
That is the way it must have happened,” Hillyard
concluded energetically. “For it's the only way it
could have happened.'
Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing
else throughout Martin's statement, had cherished a
hope that somehow it might be discovered that Stella
had died by an accident. That she should die by her
own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan,
and because of one year which had ended at Stock-
holm-oh, to him a generation back !--was an idea
of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some
sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that
day, discovering the most excellent contentions, but at
the end, not one of them had succeeded in weakening
in the least degree his inward conviction that he had his
share in Stella's death. Unless her death was an acci-
dent, unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted
unintentionally out of life! He still caught at that hope.
Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella's ? "
he asked.
Quite. I saw the letter."
“Did the editor give it to you?


312
THE SUMMONS
)
“The announcement of Mrs. Croyle's death appeared
in the Harpoon this morning. The news was left at
the Harpoon office by a chauffeur with a private car ·
at midnight-Mrs. Croyle's car."
It never left the garage last night,” said Jenny
fiercely.
“ You know that for certain ?
“I am engaged to the chauffeur," she replied with
a smile; and Millie Splay looked sharply up.
'Oh,' she murmured slowly, after a pause.
" Thank you, Jenny. Yes, thank you."
The quiet satisfaction of Millie Splay's voice puzzled
Jenny and troubled her security. She watched Lady
Splay warily. From that moment her assurance
faltered, and with the loss of her ease, she lost some-
thing, too, of her respectful manner. A note of
impertinence became audible.
Very happy, I'm sure,” she said.
The motor-car delivered the message at midnight,"
Lady Splay resumed, “and this is what I ask your
attention to, Jenny--the editor, in order to obtain
corroboration of the message before he inserted it in
his
paper, rang up Rackham Park."
Lady Splay paused for Jenny's comment, but none
was uttered then. Jenny was listening with a con-
centration of all her thoughts. Here was a new fact
of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair.
Whither did it lead? Did it strike her weapon from
her hand ? Upset her fine plan of avenging her dear
mistress's most unhappy life? She would not believe it.
"He rang up Rackham Park-mark the time
Jenny-at a few minutes after twelve," said Lady
Splay impressively, and Jenny's uneasiness
markedly increased.
Fancy that !” she returned flippantly. “But I
don't see, my lady, what that has to do with me.”
" You will see, Jenny,” Lady Splay continued with
gentleness. “He got an answer."
Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.
was


JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY
315
Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which
Lady Splay announced as a fact the opinion of the
small conclave about the table quite deceived her.
“So you know about the key ? ” she said sullenly.
And about the table ran a little quiver of relief. With
that question, Jenny Prask had delivered herself into
their hands,
“ Yes."
Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips.
Lady Splay had marshalled in their order the items
of the case which would be made against her, if she
persisted in her lie. How would she receive them ?
Persist, reckless of her own overthrow, so long as she
overthrew Joan Whitworth too ? Or surrender
angrily? The four people watched for her answer
with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they
least expected. For Jenny covered her face with her
hands, her shoulders began to heave and great tears
burst out between her fingers and trickled down the
backs of her hands.
“It's unbearable," she sobbed. “I would have
given my life for her--that's the truth. Oh, I know
that most maids serve their mistresses for what they
can get out of them. But she was so kind to me
wherever she went she was thoughtful of my comfort.
Oh, if I had guessed what she meant to do! And I
might have !
The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given
the letter to Jenny, and Jenny herself had taken it to
the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon his journey.
She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella
was in the habit of inhaling chloroform ; she carried
a bottle of it in her dressing-case-a bottle which
Jenny had taken secretly from the room and smashed
into atoms after Doctor McKerrel's departure. She
had already conceived her plan to involve Joan in
so much suspicion that she must needs openly confess
that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario
Escobar in the empty house.


"A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
317
He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to
the warning glances of his wife, plunged into an account
of the events which had follosved his departure.
“I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been
more concise, the coroner said. What's the matter,
Millie? Why don't you leave me alone ? Oh-ah-
yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little,
and then with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked,
" There are those plans for the new pig-sties, Millie,
which I am anxious to show you."
He was manoeuvred at last from the room. Harry
Luttrell and Joan Whitworth were left standing
opposite to one another in the room.
Joan," Harry Luttrell said, “in ten days I go
back to France."
With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering
out she went towards him blinded by a rush of tears.
CHAPTER XXXII
“ BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
BETWEEN the North and South Downs in the east of
Sussex lies a wide tract of pleasant homely country
which, during certain months of those years, was
subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still
day when the clouds were low, or at night when the
birds were all asleep, and you heard a faint, soft thud,
so very faint that it was rather a convulsion of the
air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as
the tap of an enormous muffled drum beaten at a
giant's funeral leagues and leagues away. It was not
the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however
distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact
with a suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and
an interval followed; and the blurred sound again.
The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and husbands
at the war, made up no fancies to explain it They