THE MAN BETWEEN
 
 
 She was looking up into Ids face, the violet 
 eyes raining tears "
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 BY 
 WALTER ARCHER FROST 
 
 Illustrations by 
 Howard McCormick 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1913
 
 Copyright, 1913, by 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scandinavian
 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 
 DEDICATED TO MY 
 
 FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 2135448
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Two Aliens in Durban .... 3 
 
 II. Exiles ... .... 11 
 
 III. South Africa 31 
 
 IV. Stranded 39 
 
 V. Thokolosi, the Evil One, the Poisoner 48 
 
 VI. Strangers to South Africa ... 65 
 
 VII. Staying On 75 
 
 VIII. That Night at the Regent ... 84 
 
 IX. It Is Not Good for Man to Be Alone 99 
 
 X. Morning 105 
 
 XL The Fruit of Seven Hours ... .115 
 
 XII. The Wisdom of Hammerstone . .124 
 
 XIII. The World Went On Again . . 128 
 
 XIV. Whom Chadwell Left Behind . . 134 
 XV. Flight 144 
 
 XVI. The Singer s Rooms . . . .151 
 XVII. On the Rennie Dock at Eleven-Forty- 
 Five 159 
 
 XVIII. The One Thing Left to Do . . .165 
 
 XIX. In Recognition of the Truth . . 169 
 
 XX. Importers and Exporters of Australian 
 
 Wools 175 
 
 XXI. Where the Truth Had No Place . 182 
 
 XXII. The Victor and the Spoils . . .189 
 
 XXIII. In the Direction of the Truth 197
 
 Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XXIV. 
 XXV. 
 
 Greg s Malady .... 
 Fear 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 201 
 210 
 
 XXVI. 
 XXVII. 
 
 The English Violet 
 Alone 
 
 . 216 
 
 . 224 
 
 XXVIII. 
 XXIX. 
 XXX. 
 
 Waiting . . . . 
 Kimberley 
 Durban 
 
 . 232 
 . 240 
 . 249 
 
 XXXI. 
 XXXII. 
 
 Adrift 
 With the Current .... 
 
 . 260 
 267 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 America 
 
 . 273 
 
 XXXIV. 
 XXXV. 
 
 Victoria 
 The Man Between . 
 
 . 279 
 
 284
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "She was looking up into his face, the violet eyes 
 raining tears " Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 " Death shall come fast to those who have 
 earned the nGaka s curse " 90 
 
 " Tell Greg and Ormsby I ve gone after Fraser 
 andChadwell " 156 
 
 "The big man stared on at him" .... 282
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN
 
 CHAPTER I 
 TWO ALIENS IN DURBAN 
 
 FOR one thing, he s terribly well off," said Anne 
 Netherby. "And that makes him a novelty in 
 Durban." 
 
 The girl to whom she spoke did not answer. She would 
 have been more than human if she had not taken one 
 more glance into the pier-glass. But it was only a very 
 brief glance one which almost timidly approved 
 the general effect of her rose-coloured gown, cut only so 
 low as to show the tips of her soft shoulders, then coming, 
 with but a slight dip, across her breast. 
 
 She was nervous and she knew it; and the emotion 
 was the more disturbing because she was powerless to 
 identify its source. In an effort to distract her thoughts, 
 she straightened her tall young body and looked full 
 into the pier-glass, raising her brows, to discipline a 
 mutinous curl which framed, though she had neither 
 guessed nor been told it, the famed "widow s peak." She 
 had heard only a little of what Anne had been saying, 
 but she assembled the fragments, and answered: 
 
 "Yes, but that s only as far as you got before. Can t 
 you be nice, and really tell me something about him? 
 Not what he s worth, but what he is besides being just 
 another well-to-do American?" 
 
 "Well-to-do?" Miss Netherby sent her hands away.
 
 4 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "I imagine it s because you re just out here from England, 
 but you won t be twenty-four hours more in Durban 
 without finding we don t speak of money that way here! 
 Not in South Africa ! And, even if we did, your * well-to- 
 do wouldn t describe John Tyler Ormsby." 
 
 "Yes, I know. He s been trying out Kimberley, hasn t 
 he?" 
 
 "He s been torturing it! He s treated it the same way 
 he did what do they call it? Wall Street? in New 
 York. Greg says the man descended on Kimberley six 
 weeks ago, from there, with no one knows how many 
 millions, and, in that time, has actually doubled them. 
 Everything he touches turns into money! He " 
 
 Still the girl frowned, her level brows coming slightly 
 together over her violet eyes: 
 
 "But, don t you see, Anne, dear, you haven t yet given 
 
 me any real picture of him. I want to know " She 
 
 hesitated an instant. "Anne, is he young or old, small or 
 large, athletic or stupid, blond or dark? Is he a sportsman, 
 a reader, or just an idler, when he s not demoralizing the 
 market? I mean is he anything in the world besides 
 a money-making machine? " 
 
 Miss Netherby shook her head, smiling. " How direct 
 we are! The penalty of associating with four strenuous 
 brothers!" She patted the girl s rounded arm. "But 
 Mr. Ormsby s a lot besides what I ve told you: for one 
 
 thing, Greg says Oh, mother dear, do come and see 
 
 Marian: it s the first time I ve ever seen her with her hair 
 up, and in an evening gown!" She caught the resisting 
 girl in her arms. "There, mother, you and dad say I m 
 pretty, sometimes; but just see her!"
 
 TWO ALIENS IN DURBAN 5 
 
 Lady Netherby took the young girl in her arms ten 
 derly. There was a caress in that gentle pressure more 
 marked for the suggestion of repression which the older 
 woman s thin face habitually bore. She touched the 
 girl s soft cheek, smiled, and sighed. 
 
 "Lady Bam and Sir Roger will take care of you," 
 she said; "and" with a backward glance from one fair 
 blushing face to the other "as an older sister, Anne, 
 you must be very watchful. This is her first evening in 
 South Africa." 
 
 The girl turned more fully toward her. "Why, Lady 
 
 Netherby, you surely don t fancy " She breathed 
 
 deeply and squared her slim shoulders boyishly: "With 
 you and Lord Netherby and Anne, I m really back in 
 England. Africa s fascinating, from what little I ve 
 seen of it. I m sure 
 
 "That we shall keep you quite safe, Roland, myself, 
 and Anne." 
 
 "And Greg," Anne laughed. "Don t forget Greg," 
 she warned. 
 
 "Yes," Lady Netherby smiled, "and Greg." 
 
 "Though he won t be needed for that" Anne boasted, 
 " for I m really old now, mother. I m engaged" 
 
 "But that must not make you heedless," said her 
 mother. "Greg I know and trust, as I ve showed you 
 both. And his friends are Englishmen. But Lady Bam 
 has included, this evening, an American, and" she 
 
 frowned slightly " so many Americans are But 
 
 we will trust Lady Barn s discernment. He s undoubtedly 
 all that she believes." 
 
 "Oh, do tell me something of what she believes, Lady
 
 6 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Netherby. Anne says he s to take me in, and it s such 
 a help to know something in advance about the man 
 who s going to take you in." 
 
 By Jove! you two are visions," a man s voice broke 
 in. "But come: rickshaw s ready. Got it for your 
 benefit, Miss Langmaid. A rickshaw s South African, 
 and more suitable for your first evening than a taxi- 
 cab." 
 
 "It s Greg," Anne laughed. "Come in, eavesdropper, 
 who s punished, by over-hearing us talking about Mr. 
 Ormsby and not yourself." 
 
 "Right O," Bradbroke laughed, gallantly raising his 
 fiancee s hand to his lips. "About Ormsby now: he s 
 quite in a class by himself. That s all I m going to tell 
 you of him that he s very much all right, and that 
 he s undoubtedly standing on the club steps, wondering 
 what s become of us, provided no one s told him that 
 people I take anywhere are always late. Oh, I say, 
 Lady Netherby, you mustn t, you know; it s perfectly 
 proper for the girls to come with me without a maid. In 
 England, I know. But this is South Africa. Come, 
 Anne! Miss Langmaid, look lively!" He nodded his 
 closely cropped head in mock severity, and, gathering 
 up what little was to be carried, led the way. 
 
 Anne smiled as she looked after his long, slender, 
 square-shouldered figure, the trim waist, the dark head 
 held well back, the lithe, elastic step, the "cavalry swing," 
 which always harked back, in her thoughts, to the days 
 when he had served his country so dashingly in the Kaffir 
 Rebellion and the Boer war, in evidence of which 
 hung the stars upon his breast. Handsome and debon-
 
 TWO ALIENS IN DURBAN 7 
 
 aire was Gregory Bradbroke. Whatever his inner self 
 might pronounce in the way of verdict on him, it de 
 tracted nothing from the charm of his lean face, or his 
 fine eyes of the colour of burnt wood, which told as 
 little of inner secrets as his clean-cut, smiling lips. What 
 he suffered, he suffered bravely. Anne might well 
 have been excused for the light which shone in her 
 dark eyes, for Bradbroke had been, and still was, the 
 source of more than one head full of vain and girlish 
 dreams. 
 
 "Isn t he a dear?" she smiled to Marian, as they fol 
 lowed him down the path to the waiting rickshaw. 
 "We ll imagine it s a taxicab, dear, and that this is 
 Piccadilly Circus instead of Essenwood Road, London 
 instead of Durban, England instead of South Africa. 
 Something s got to bring it about for us, Marian!" 
 Then, with a sudden bitterness which knew no reserve, 
 though it proffered no explanation, "We ve got to have it: 
 we can t go on this way much longer!" Her hand had 
 found the young girl s with a sudden, fierce strength, 
 then relaxed as suddenly. Greg had reached the rick 
 shaw, and they had come up with him. In another 
 instant they had entered it, with Anne laughing some 
 comment a little too brilliantly; and they were on their 
 way. 
 
 It was one of those matchless nights in February: the 
 air as soft as an American or an English June, the African 
 moon a bare, golden horn flung high on a cloudless, star- 
 gemmed sky. There was hardly a breath of wind, and 
 what there was, welled in from the Indian Ocean, which 
 slept at the foot of the already sleeping street. It was
 
 8 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Durban, the city of apparently endless, almost oppressively 
 prosaic peace. 
 
 Anne leaned wistfully against Greg s shoulder, and 
 he pressed her hand as if reading her mood from her 
 silence and her averted eyes. 
 
 And Marian, watching until she became aware of her 
 scrutiny, saw that wistfulness and the man s response 
 to it. Suddenly, then, she felt very much alone: no, this 
 was not England. Instead, it was a land of enigmas, of 
 unreality: or, rather, it was a land of realities too subtle 
 to be held or even to be detected, fully, by the Occidental 
 mind. Just before she had sailed from England to 
 become Anne Netherby s guest for a month, at Durban, 
 she had heard one of her father s friends say: 
 
 "In Buluwayo, in Matabeleland, there s a statue of 
 Cecil Rhodes staring into the northward over Africa. 
 I ve seen it, and always thought he ought to have looked 
 south: there s more to see" She had heard him say that, 
 and it had puzzled her. But she understood better now: 
 already had come to her the first touch of the unceasing, 
 never-to-be-answered riddle of South Africa. Nothing 
 had voiced it to her through the unbroken silence. 
 Indeed and she half felt it the very silence had 
 spoken it to her well-nigh aloud. She had heard it, and 
 it was still addressing her. And she wondered what it 
 would say to her, what it had already said to Anne. 
 Beyond question, Anne had changed much since coming 
 to South Africa. That was patent. Marian had seen 
 it at once. This was not the Anne of England, or the 
 Anne who had written those happy letters from Durban. 
 That Anne had been carefree. This Anne was desperate,
 
 TWO ALIENS IN DURBAN 9 
 
 And what was to flow from her desperation? Nothing 
 outre, the girl told herself, for Anne would never lend 
 
 herself to that. But desperation and South Africa ? 
 
 Covertly, as the rickshaw slid by each street-lamp, the 
 girl fell to studying Bradbroke s profile: if worse came to 
 worst, what could be expected definitely from Gregory 
 Bradbroke? She compared his graceful slenderness with 
 her brothers bulk, and remembered their agreeing, 
 with youthful sageness, that in a street-fight, "nothing 
 counted so much as a chap s weighing fourteen stone." 
 She was young enough to remember that without smiling, 
 and sufficiently a judge of physique to set Bradbroke s 
 weight at two stone, and probably three, under that. 
 And, back of the estimate and through it, she was asking 
 herself if Bradbroke could take the right care of Anne. 
 
 And the silence, which had seemed to release her for 
 a moment, pressed down again. There was no relief 
 from it now: no sound behind them or before; even the 
 "boy," bending low before the following rickshaw, 
 seemed to slide, incapable of sound. Silence, deep and 
 unending. What did it presage? What lay within it? 
 Again, the girl was aware of a strange, fateful loneliness, 
 that and something else, suddenly uppermost an un- 
 nameable fear for Anne, who seemed, as suddenly, very 
 far from her. To whom could she turn, in this ill-boding 
 isolation? To some one she must turn! But to whom? 
 She was utterly alone, an alien in Durban ! And the fact 
 and the weight of her need pressed so heavily that she 
 hardly heard Bradbroke s laughing whisper: 
 
 "Here we are, Miss Langmaid, and there he is, waiting 
 just as I said!"
 
 10 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Who?" she asked, automatically, her eyes held by 
 the figure of a man who was swiftly descending to them. 
 
 "Who?" Bradbroke s whisper demanded derisively. 
 "Why, the fourteen-stone Human Mint, of course! 
 John Ormsby, that big chap just coming down the steps!"
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 EXILES 
 
 IN THE half-light, and under cover of the introduc 
 tions, she saw, at first, only a towering outline, beside 
 which Greg s grace gained a still more significant 
 slenderness. Yet the American stood as easily as the 
 slighter Englishman. Used as she was to splendidly fit 
 human animals, the girl approved the American s poise, 
 the width and the lines of his shoulder, and their depth, 
 and the swell of his sleeve, which she divined rather 
 than saw, just below the tip of his shoulder, when he gave 
 her his hand. She wondered if his eyes went well with 
 that wonderful physique of his. So many times, in this 
 way, men had disappointed her. 
 
 She little realized the detail of her scrutiny, and that 
 she was promising herself still further examination, when 
 they should come into the light and he talked with her. 
 What would be choose to talk about, she next asked 
 herself. Himself, probably. She felt less tense, now, 
 less nervous, less fearful singularly enough even for 
 Anne. She could philosophize a little on the probable 
 conceit of a man, who, at such an early age she con 
 ceived that he might be in his late twenties had won a 
 title so vulgar yet so eloquent as the "Human Mint." 
 
 She had met few American men, only hah* a dozen 
 whom she could remember; and they had been scholars, 
 
 11
 
 12 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 thin, narrow-chested, and nervous, as she had been led 
 to believe all Americans were. But this American 
 
 She looked up at him again. . . . They were 
 
 ascending the steps, and he was cautioning her, quite 
 needlessly, she thought, about the turn. Yes, he was 
 not at all like the scholars. Her heel caught in the 
 broken cement of the first landing, and she found herself 
 steadied by an arm suddenly as solid as the preparation 
 on which they stood. 
 
 "Fourteen stone," she remembered. "Did you row at 
 college?" she heard herself asking, to her own amazed 
 surprise. 
 
 "Yes, by Jove, and loved it!" 
 
 His voice was astonishingly deep. It rolled to her, upon 
 her, and over her, one of those all-pervading voices 
 which, no matter how called upon, suggest an inexhaust 
 ible reserve. 
 
 Before either could speak again, the veranda was 
 before them. 
 
 "This way, Ormsby," Greg said lightly. "Lady Bam 
 and Sir Roger, forgive me for making them all late this 
 way. This is Miss Langmaid." 
 
 Then, after a little, quick, frank, friendly bow from the 
 silvery-haired woman, who stood by the soldierly Sir 
 Roger, Anne led the way to the dressing-room. 
 
 When they emerged, it was to find the others waiting: 
 Hazel EUicombe, stately and tall, her white throat a 
 pillar, her breast a bank of snow; beside her, Catherine 
 Hetheridge smiled indolently toward Shirley Framleigh, 
 in deserved admiration, for the less statuesque beauty had 
 the features of the Greek and the magnificent hair and
 
 EXILES 13 
 
 eyes of the highest type of Jew. Anne nodded all round 
 to them, but held Marian for a moment: 
 
 "Just a word of warning," she whispered laughingly. 
 "Hazel and Shirley are what they look like, but let 
 Catherine Hetheridge talk until you think you ve gauged 
 her. That s Shirley over there giggling to Sir Roger," 
 Anne raced on; "pretty soon, she ll tell you how pale 
 you look; and she ll really be anxious about it and ask 
 you to play tennis. Beat her, as you value my friendship. 
 I ve lost to her every time. Eh, Shirley, haven t I? I 
 was just telling Marian that you teach me tennis every 
 time I play with you." 
 
 The giggling changed to absolutely frank and genuine 
 laughter. "Sorry, Anne, dear; but you really don t 
 play enough to play. Do you play, Miss Langmaid? 
 How delightful! To-morrow? At five? How dear of 
 you! No doubt your racquet s here. Or shall I bring an 
 extra one?" 
 
 "If you will," said Marian, amused and eager. She 
 had the wrist of a boy, and she knew it. Loring and 
 Roger, her brothers, had seen to that. She was safe, 
 she felt, even when facing such an enthusiast as Miss 
 Framleigh clearly was. 
 
 "Hugh," Anne was bowing to a tall, bronzed, grave man 
 who had been waiting "Marian, this is Hugh Chadwell, 
 who ll let you ride his worst pony, if you will." 
 
 Chadwell bowed. "Delighted. No, beg pardon, Miss 
 Langmaid, I ll give you my favourite, and ride the other 
 beast myself." 
 
 He bowed again from his waist, and made way for 
 Carstairs and Jem Fraser, who, with Brett Paxton, was
 
 14 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 introduced by Lady Bam, the girl receiving three more 
 bows, simultaneously given, from three more waists, and 
 very trim waists they were, too. In fact, the young 
 girl was struck by the general presentability of these 
 three, and Chadwell, who had preceded them. Man for 
 man, they were well set-up, as Greg was, and like him, even 
 distinguished in feature and manner. She might have 
 met them at any one of the houses on her mother s list 
 at home. She would have met them. There would have 
 been no doubt of it. Mammas, she told herself, would 
 have been kind to them. And the daughters of these 
 mammas Yes, Messrs. Chadwell, Bradbroke, Car- 
 stairs, Paxton, and Fraser would undoubtedly be spoiled, 
 
 if set down in England. Yet, here in South Africa 
 
 The girl looked from one face to the other, to find them 
 all at ease, frank, interesting, and brown. Attractive, 
 certainly. Paxton and Carstairs seemed the more brilliant ; 
 but, on the other hand, Chadwell, apparently the oldest, 
 offered her the more marked deference; and Jem Fraser, 
 blue-eyed and with lips tilting in ready laughter, had his 
 attraction too. They were distinctive, these Englishmen 
 of South Africa. Yet each, as in the case of Gregory 
 Bradbroke, lacked 
 
 "You ll disconcert them, Marian, if you look at them 
 so frankly," Anne whispered swiftly, smiling, "for they re 
 not used to it. Moreover, since they so evidently take 
 to it, you ll have Shirley and Hazel Ellicombe up in arms." 
 
 "What nonsense!" the girl whispered back. "I was 
 simply comparing them with " 
 
 "Greg. Yes, I know. They re not nearly up to him, 
 are they! There, Lady Barn s allotting us. She s coming
 
 EXILES 15 
 
 over with Mr. Ormsby. Now, you ll have a chance to 
 find what he s like. He s only The Human Mint, so 
 far." 
 
 The girl did not answer, for the big man was standing 
 before her. He seemed to have forgotten that he was 
 among people who knew each other very well and himself 
 scarcely at all. He stood restfully at ease, one straight line 
 from head to heel. She saw that he was taller even than 
 Chadwell. His eyes were brown or a very dark gray, 
 with a frankness of glance which robbed their address of 
 anything not pleasurable. His dark hair curled a little. 
 His face was big-boned, the features strongly marked. He 
 seemed lean, as if in magnificent condition. He was 
 deliberate without being in the least "heavy." She 
 wanted to hear his voice again, and she wondered if it 
 would be as deep and full as when Greg had presented 
 him to them, at the sidewalk. She forgot and forgave 
 him his money, except to resent, in a way which sent 
 the blood to her soft temples, his having been nicknamed 
 so distastefully : he was not at all what those appellations 
 
 suggested. She could not imagine ! She waited for 
 
 him to speak. 
 
 He did not do so at once. He was not ready. He was 
 mutely thanking the woman who had attired her in 
 the modest gown sweet, modest, and simple, like her 
 youth. He was thinking that, if he could just stand and 
 
 look down at her Her hair was very full and soft. 
 
 It flowed away from what tried to restrain it. It was not 
 merely yellow: it had the rare, glinting red of gold. Her 
 face was a perfect oval. Her low forehead was broad. 
 Her carriage both appealed and commanded. She had
 
 16 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 a thoroughly distinctive little chin. A dimple danced 
 just beyond where the marvel of her lips ended. There 
 was no describing the colour which bathed her soft cheeks. 
 But her eyes were deep, deep, deep, shy and gentle, like 
 English violets. That was it! It had come to him with 
 so sudden an inspiration that he felt he must tell her about 
 it. Her colour rose, and she lifted slender fingers to her 
 widow s peak as if the flood frightened her and she wished 
 to hide its radiance from his eyes. Instantly, he knew the 
 remorse of one who, unwittingly, has committed a felony. 
 Lady Bam saved them both by leading the way with 
 Jem Fraser into the dining-room. 
 
 There, under the softer but more adjacent illumination 
 of the candles, the girl realized that^he was even less than 
 she had thought like her earlier American acquaint 
 ances. For his face was brown and red at once. 
 But he seemed, suddenly, to have become old and severe. 
 She said to herself: 
 
 "He must be nearly thirty-five." Then, for he had 
 smiled quickly and his every feature had shared it, she 
 corrected, "I mean thirty, or twenty-eight." 
 
 He thought, "She s not over eighteen!" He meant 
 that he was glad that one of his antiquity had been 
 chosen to take care of her. "Thank God, she s so fem 
 inine!" Aloud he said, "I wonder how many find what 
 they come for, in South Africa. " He looked around the 
 table, with his free, unhurried glance, and waited. 
 
 His poise had its effect on her, and she smiled 
 quietly. 
 
 "I was thinking the same thing I mean asking myself 
 the same question. I m afraid that many find only
 
 EXILES 17 
 
 sorrow and disappointment if what one hears is true. 
 But these men have evidently " 
 
 He nodded. "Yes, how happy they look! We re 
 strangers, almost, to them, so far, and that gives us a 
 little latitude in comparing opinions, particularly since 
 our gossip is complimentary. So, we can go ahead! 
 See that fellow, for example. I don t remember his name, 
 but " 
 
 His almost invisible gesture indicated young Jem 
 Fraser, who was dilating on some shooting he d just 
 done "up country"; and both, watching the glow in the 
 boy s fine eyes, smiled. 
 
 "Not bad. Not at all bad, old chap," Carstairs broke 
 in. "I admit birds are all well enough in their way; 
 but come north with me not very far either, mind, 
 and we ll do the antelope. Take you off with me, next 
 week, you and Paxton." 
 
 "And miss the best of the cricket?" Paxton demanded. 
 He was in his late twenties, but his laugh lightened his 
 moody eyes, and relaxed his teeming nerves. "Give 
 up cricket for hunting? No, indeed!" 
 
 Chadwell turned to Lady Bam at his left: "Dissuade 
 them, please; we need em too bad for the club theatricals. 
 I ll look after Paxton myself. He s writing the lyrics, 
 and I m on the lines, and he knows I won t let him out 
 of my sight." 
 
 "I surrender," laughed Fraser. "It s not often one s 
 so appreciated during life. Must be acknowledged. 
 Succumb, Carstairs. Hugh s adamant. But" with a 
 smile which included the entire table "when you see 
 us on the boards, you ll wish Hugh d let us go."
 
 18 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Miss Ellicombe had waited. "The races, remember, 
 come a week earlier this year. The track s absolutely 
 perfect. And Gerald Trennery s bringing his string up 
 from the Cape entire. You know what I mean," she 
 remonstrated; "you men will, anyway, so don t be so 
 giggly, Shirley. I mean he s going to bring all his string." 
 
 "Of course we understand, Hazel," soothed Catherine 
 
 Hetheridge. "We were merely Do we strike you 
 
 as terribly good-for-nothing, Mr. Ormsby!" she asked 
 suddenly. She was tall and willowy, a little past her first 
 beauty and relying, now, on a blase leisureliness of manner 
 for her charm. She ignored Marian Langmaid, and, as 
 far as letting her eyes rest on him, the big man, too. "Yes, 
 I know we do," she went on. "You are so what shall 
 I say? superiorly energetic, in the States." Still, she 
 did not look at him. She seemed to be speaking uncon 
 sciously, to be, in fact, merely thinking aloud, as if she 
 had happened to find the American a tenant of her idle 
 mind for an idle moment; the whole matter, the most 
 inconsequential of incidents. So that there was not the 
 least flattery in her address, as little, in fact, as in what 
 she had said. 
 
 And, while the girl at his side, catching the little 
 fling in the words and knowing that the taunt was meant 
 to allure, waited, the big man smiled, and said with his 
 singular directness: 
 
 "I don t know whether we re energetic or not. We 
 get things done, and have a good time doing it. That s 
 our National Game. I don t know much about yours 
 down here, so far; but I judge it makes all of you just as 
 comfortable."
 
 EXILES 19 
 
 It was not what Catherine had expected. And she 
 had expected, as little, that he should give her only the 
 briefest of glances while delivering it. She leaned forward 
 a little, resting her elbow on the cloth of the table, and 
 though she knew that the device would be patent to every 
 one of the women, raised a beautifully rounded arm until 
 it formed a wondrous support for her delicately pointed 
 chin. 
 
 "Really, now, do you think so? Down here, we 
 
 well " She looked away from him again. "We 
 
 hear so much of what the Times calls your restless 
 energy. She sent her blue eyes idly back to him. She 
 knew that they were unusual eyes. The superintendent 
 of the Crown Deep Mine, after trying to read his heaven 
 in them, had told her that they were just the colour of 
 the blue soil about Kimberley; but, since that scientific 
 and technical young man had added the word "diamond- 
 iferous," his assay had not helped him, for other gazers 
 into those limpid crystals had called them hard. 
 
 But she had forgotten the superintendent s double 
 entendu, and now devoted her oddly blue eyes as she 
 rarely did. "I m sure that you are all frightfully ener 
 getic, " she confided to the swell of her arm as it flowed 
 into her elbow. "The Times is always right." 
 
 The American smiled on the table generally. "I 
 wrote a letter to its editor once: he had run an editorial 
 which described Harvard as a university ruled by frater 
 nities." 
 
 "And," Catherine interrupted satirically, "you in 
 structed him. It must have been a pleasure that!" 
 
 "It was: all I did was to tell him that there were no
 
 20 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 fraternities there, with the exception of a few strays no 
 one ever heard of, and hadn t been for probably a good 
 thirty years." 
 
 "Meaning ?" she asked without interest. 
 
 "That I think the Times may be just as mistaken when 
 it describes our Energy as our National Calamity." 
 
 She shook her head. "I m afraid you re terribly 
 brainy as well as energetic, for I can t follow you. Hugh," 
 turning to Chad well, "get him to try to explain what he 
 means to you, some time, then tell me what you make 
 of it. Lady Bam, why don t we form a woman s club, 
 and have a room like this in it? It s really exquisite." 
 
 She had addressed the older woman with the same, 
 lazily uninterested manner which she had employed on 
 the American; then, as if she had forgotten that she had 
 addressed either, smiled. 
 
 During the talk which followed Chadwell had rallied 
 with a promise to get an explanation from Ormsby, and 
 Lady Bam had seconded Catherine s recognition of the 
 room the American turned to the girl beside him : 
 "You ve not been down here long, Miss Langmaid. I 
 guess that, at once." 
 
 She smiled at his use of the word "guess," finding it so 
 proverbially American. But she won a question from his 
 frank statement. 
 
 "Why do you fancy that I have come recently?" 
 
 "Because all this is as novel to you as it is to me. 
 By Jove! it s not like anything either of us expected to 
 find here, so far away from any big centre, in fact any 
 where in South Africa! That s straightaway evident. I 
 know it was provincial of me, but I expected to find
 
 Durban like well, like any other little town of its size; 
 whereas" he swung his alert eyes over the table "it s 
 much like what you ve seen in London, and I ve seen 
 there and in Boston and New York." 
 
 He waited. Then, since she did not answer at once, " I 
 wonder how long they ve been down here I mean in 
 South Africa. Of course I don t mean Miss Netherby. 
 The others. Lady Bam, I should say she and her 
 husband for a long time, though it s only because I 
 know Sir Roger s the big man in the local government. 
 But the others, I wonder what started them here from 
 England, and what keeps them here. Why," his 
 lowered voice suddenly intense, "how they must long for 
 home and I know that means England. How these 
 men and these girls must downright hunger for it! Yet, 
 South Africa seems to have fascinated every one of them. 
 You see, they haven t said a word about England. It s 
 all South Africa. " 
 
 "Yes," she said, thoughtfully, "I ve noticed that. I 
 wonder " 
 
 Lady Bam rose and the others followed to the veranda, 
 first, then drifted idly into the lounge, the largest of the 
 club s private rooms. 
 
 The Regent Club was built, after the manner of South 
 African clubs, all on one floor, like a bungalow. Its 
 western windows looked toward the barrier of the veldt, 
 on which they gave without a single skyscraper breaking 
 the vista now one pile of dark, foreboding gloom. The 
 stars hung low, then were blotted out by the embanking 
 horizon. The American thought that by day it would 
 be much like the skyline about Kimberley, the only place
 
 22 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 he knew, so far, in South Africa. In fact, there was 
 little to be gained, in the way of natural reward of glance, 
 from those wide-thrown, western windows; and he led 
 the girl to the opposite side of the long room, and pointed 
 to where the lights of the harbour twinkled, for the club 
 was on an elevation, the lights on the swinging vessels, 
 Durban Bay. 
 
 She stood silent beside him. He knew, or thought he 
 knew, how her thoughts must have winged north and east 
 to where England lay, far hidden as an unknown world s 
 remotest rim. Was she lonely? Had the strange, almost 
 tangible intensity, which pervaded the atmosphere about 
 them, weighed down this gentle, English girl? He feared 
 it, and came closer to her. 
 
 "It s a wonderful night, Miss Langmaid, and, if you ll 
 let me say it, we must take its peace and not try too 
 seriously to plumb South Africa and what it stands for 
 to these people who have chosen it. See how proud they 
 are of it: they re looking from these windows as if for the 
 first time, though every one of them, women and men, 
 must know the view by heart!" 
 
 "Yes," she said. "And undoubtedly we d accept it as 
 they do, if we stayed here as they have. But why don t 
 they speak of England, Mr. Ormsby? I d like " 
 
 She hesitated, then went on: "I d like to talk of England 
 with them. I d like them to ask me about it. These 
 girls must have seen just what I have, there. I mean 
 gone to the same school, my school, though that was in 
 Switzerland. The shops. Why don t they ask me about 
 the shops?" She smiled, perhaps at her own simplicity. 
 But her smile faded, before the thought which followed
 
 EXILES 23 
 
 it. "Why don t they speak about home? I m prepared 
 to love, at least to like, South Africa, as long as Anne is 
 willing to keep me; but they make me feel that I am from 
 a different part of the world from them; as if we had noth 
 ing in common; as if the same things did not interest us, 
 as if we had not the same heritage." 
 
 The big man nodded, "I know," he said slowly, as he 
 placed a chair for her, grateful that she sank into it. "I 
 know." He was wondering again at her perfect beauty, 
 her youth, her utter genuineness and naturalness; the joy 
 her colouring was to him; the tribute which, though un- 
 guessed by her, she had yielded him with her confidence. 
 "I know," he said again, though unaware that he was 
 repeating himself. "I crossed the continent to a newly 
 opened country, my first year out of college. I thought 
 the opportunities lay there. Maybe they did," he added, 
 with an ingenuousness which matched her own; "but I 
 found the people didn t hark back to what I did. We 
 didn t like the same things. I didn t care for what they 
 did, and they didn t care for what was food and drink 
 to me: the little things, the things life s made up of. 
 Why, I got so homesick to have some one tell me what 
 a wonderful thing it was to take a run through the Berk- 
 shires, or give some detail I d missed, or heard before 
 (I wouldn t have cared which), of the intercollegiate 
 track-meet, or the race with Yale, or who seemed on top 
 at the tournament at Longwood!" He smiled quickly. 
 "You see how empty thirty years have kept me, of the 
 big things! But, by George! I missed it, wanted it! 
 And they didn t like the books I did, out there in that 
 little town. I don t mean I m a great reader; but you
 
 24 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 know how jealous, or zealous, one is for his favourites! 
 I remember I d just found Leonard Merrick, when I went 
 out there; and got every Tauchnitz he was in, took all of 
 em along with me, in my bag. They didn t like Merrick. 
 Or Conrad. No, not even Conrad! You know his 
 Lord Jim, and isn t it wonderful? Well, maybe I was 
 young or wrong or something; but the crowd out there 
 didn t even like Lord Jim. And I was homesick. 
 I ve said that before, I know. Homesick? Gad, the salt 
 water. It s the lake there, and fresh. I wanted the 
 salt water! I remember, when I started back east again, 
 and saw the tidewater on the Hudson, I cried Thalatta 
 to myself, pretty much as the Greeks did, you remember, 
 when, after they d been so long inland, in Persia, they 
 came at last again to the sea! I was homesick for the 
 things I liked, the people I knew, the things I wanted 
 to talk about." In his earnestness, he leaned a little 
 toward her, and she kept her position, following his short, 
 strong gestures with her eyes. "I beg your pardon," 
 he said quickly, " I didn t mean to tell you so much about 
 myself. I m afraid I ve sounded preposterous." 
 
 "Not at all," the girl answered seriously, "for that s 
 just the way / feel, and it relieves me to know that you 
 understand." Then, thinking it might, in another, be 
 taken for criticism of Anne, she added quickly: "But my 
 homesickness will go quickly, Mr. Ormsby. You ve been 
 in England," she went on, frankly changing the subject, 
 as she seemed to feel, "don t you love every inch of it?" 
 
 "Yes, I do. In a way, I feel three thirds English, for 
 there s a letter in the British Museum, written by John 
 Milton, I mean Cromwell wrote it, and John Milton and
 
 EXILES 25 
 
 one of my ancestors witnessed it. So, I say, I feel English; 
 I mean, of course, in blood." 
 
 "Really," she laughed. And it was supreme evidence 
 of his faith in her honesty that he did not misunderstand 
 her mirth, but kept on, in the same tone: 
 
 "Yes. He was a Colonel in Cromwell s army. That 
 branch of the family s living in Bimsted, in Hampshire. 
 I visit them for a little, every time I go over. I ve told 
 them, if they ever want to sell me the county, I ll give 
 them their price for it and go over and live there part 
 of every year." 
 
 "Oh, my fan!" a voice said woefully, just behind them. 
 It was Catherine Hetheridge. "There it is, right in the 
 way of the next foot, on the sidewalk. Hugh? Why, 
 yes," more languidly, "if you care to, Mr. Ormsby." She 
 dropped into the chair the big man had left. "Really," 
 she smiled to the girl, "he s very presentable, isn t he, 
 for an American? Money makes them so but then," 
 plucking her gown, and sinking still lower in the chair, 
 "I should be careful, I fancy, for you may have fared 
 better than I, in your acquaintance with Americans." 
 
 She turned wearily to study Marian with heavy -lidded 
 eyes, which the girl met quietly. "I haven t met many 
 Americans," Marian said, "but Mr. Ormsby seems very 
 English to me. Doesn t he to you?" 
 
 Miss Hetheridge smiled satirically, "That s the Har 
 vard manner, taught them most painstakingly, be sure. 
 They re given it as far back as their prep schools. Eng 
 lishmen as instructors there and in the colleges; or Ameri 
 cans, who ve taken graduate work at Oxford in order 
 to become very English. Imitation s the sincerest form
 
 26 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 of flattery, of course; but how ridiculous! I m forgetting, 
 though: probably you fancy Mr. Ormsby. Thanks very 
 much, Mr. Ormsby. I can t think how I managed it, 
 with all this netting. I was just telling Miss Langmaid 
 that you have the Harvard manner, which you like so 
 because you believe it s English. Oh, don t mind me. 
 I say whatever comes into my head, and both of you 
 might as well become used to it now as later. Did you 
 agree on your views of us? I got down to where you 
 both wondered why we came here in the first place and 
 why we stay. Did either of you make that out? " 
 
 "No," said the big man, with a directness which 
 matched her own. "We re still wondering." 
 
 Catherine Hetheridge smiled, really smiled, for the first 
 time that evening. "There, that s very clear-cut and 
 satisfactory. I believe you really are English, though I 
 never cared greatly for Hampshire, between the two of 
 us. Oh, dear, I m forgetting you for a third time, dear 
 Miss Langmaid. Forgive me." She patted the girl s 
 soft arm. "What is it about you," studying Marian 
 deliberately. "You have the faculty of making people 
 overlook you. I wonder how you achieve it, I mean do 
 it. How angry you are, Mr. Ormsby ! If I were a man, 
 you d fling me over the railing, I m sure; but, as it is, 
 you won t so much as touch my fingers, will you? But, 
 I m forgetting again. Hugh," she called lazily, "give me 
 a cigarette, there s a dear chap." Without turning, she 
 carried her hand, palm upward, over her right shoulder. 
 Chadwell found the cigarette and held the match for her 
 silently. In the illumination, her arms, shoulders, face, 
 neck and breast flashed from the dead black of her gown
 
 EXILES 27 
 
 like dull ivory. "There, Hugh," she smiled, "now run 
 away like a good boy, for I ve just made Mr. Ormsby 
 furious, and he s too big for you to be brought into it. 
 I was just going to tell you two why we do stay on here," 
 she resumed to the girl and the American. " It s because, 
 
 well " She stopped to send a swift shaft of smoke 
 
 upward from her thrown-back head. "See here," she 
 broke out, intensely, "in a year or two, I shall marry a 
 man whose father was a Jewish transport-rider. Do you 
 get that? Now, why should I marry such a person? 
 Doesn t that throw some light on the subject?" She 
 held them a further moment then relaxed and laughed 
 softly. "You don t see it yet? What a pair of children! 
 Hugh," she laughed indolently to Chadwell, who, stand 
 ing, the burnt-out match in his hand, watched her som 
 brely, "they don t see it s just simply because " 
 
 Some one struck a chord on the piano. " Mandalay ! 
 Mandalay, old chap. Mandalay! " came in chorus. 
 
 "A pleasure deferred," said Catherine wearily. "Brett 
 Paxton s going to sing." 
 
 With the first note, the English girl and the American 
 were sent back to their inquiry, which still lacked an 
 answer. For Paxton s voice had never been given him 
 to waste in a lost corner of the earth like Durban. Sweet, 
 rich, mellow, thrilling, it came to them, a great, natural 
 gift, perfected by study which could not have been found 
 south of the equatorial belt. Indeed, the song was being 
 rendered so rarely that the two might never have heard 
 it before. The fifth verse! What was it? His voice, 
 rare as it was? Or was it something in the singer, some 
 thing greater, more intimate even than temperament!
 
 28 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 They hung on it, as did the others, as it came to them with 
 articulation so perfect that they seemed to see the written 
 words: 
 
 "I m sick o wastin leather 
 
 On these gritty pavin -stones, 
 An the blawsted Henglish drizzle 
 
 Wykes th fever in me bones . . ." 
 
 The singer breathed. 
 
 "Blawsted? o syes so?" came a hoarse roar from the 
 street. "Not me! Ner you neither! You an me s all 
 one: you styes ere fer w at keeps me ere, th passage 
 money, an wot it costs to keep us after we ve got ome. 
 That an naught else ! Hengli sh drizzle ?" The intruding 
 voice cried fiercely. " * Blawsted! you sye? An you 
 wild for it, just as 7 am! Caren t you taiste it? An 
 aren t it sweeter than the dust an dirt down ere?" 
 
 Paxton gasped, and leaned across the piano. Carstairs, 
 on the stool, stared down, motionless, as the loose leaves 
 of the music twisted, uninterrupted, to the floor. 
 
 In the corner, to which Bradbroke and Anne Netherby 
 had followed Shirley Framleigh, Hazel Ellicombe, and 
 Jem Fraser, hands went to ears, as if to shut out the 
 sound. 
 
 Bradbroke had sprung up, white as the boy, Fraser, 
 who glared with him into the shattered gloom. Chad well 
 had swung to Catherine s side, only to be thrust back 
 as she sprang up fiercely, all her languor gone. 
 
 Only the big man and Marian Langmaid seemed 
 impervious to the strange tension which had settled upon 
 the room. And, as if he realized this, the American went 
 to the piano, a panacea, the girl thought, in the long-
 
 EXILES 29 
 
 strong lines of his body and the confident deliberateness 
 with which he moved. 
 
 He bent over the silenced singer. "If you want, I ll 
 go down to the street, and prevent any more interruption. 
 Please sing again: you ve got such a bully voice!" 
 
 But the white-faced singer said nothing. To the big 
 man, he seemed to have petrified all in an instant; and 
 Carstairs, who held the stool so immovable that it seemed 
 a part of his rigid body, encouraged the impression. What 
 was wrong what was the trouble with all of them? 
 
 He turned to Lady Bam, but her set face told nothing. 
 Then, to silent Lord Bam. The old man s eyes were sad. 
 
 The American turned back to the piano, and Paxton. 
 "I ll give you a bass on that, if you ll let me," he said 
 with a smile. "I ve sung it a lot at home. It s one of 
 my favourites. Come!" Leaning over Carstairs lifeless 
 
 shoulder, the big man struck the chord. "Now " 
 
 He waited. . . . 
 
 And, from the street, mercilessly clear, though from far 
 away now, came the voice again, this time in a crazy lilt, 
 yet in a baritone which matched Paxton s tenor in quality : 
 
 "I wants to go ome to my country. 
 
 This ole, it s no fit plaice for me. 
 I wants Grosvenor Square, Piccadilly, 
 
 The Strand, the Embankment, the Sea. 
 I wants the fresh green o old England, 
 
 To rest there, an never to roam. 
 My Gawd, I m that omesick for England 
 
 It urts me! I wants to go ome/" 
 
 Paxton s head went down. He caught himself, and 
 staggered away from the piano. Carstairs followed him 
 into the nearest darkness.
 
 30 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 There was a fall. 
 
 "It s Miss Netherby," said some one. "Don t crowd 
 up!" 
 
 And Catherine, with a shrill laugh, threw herself back 
 into the chair from which she had risen. "I fancy you 
 won t need my explanation now, my children," she jeered to 
 Ormsby and the girl he had come back to. "For you see, 
 that man in the street s told it: we stay on here because 
 not one of us has the money to go home and live on. 
 We re exiles! Lady Bam," she went on, in the same mock 
 ing tone, "y ur dinner s been exquisite. Now, Hugh, 
 won t you ring for my rickshaw. I want to go ome 
 myself."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 CONTRARY to all Marian s expectations, Anne 
 joined her in the morning-room, just before 
 breakfast, on the day following, with a smile. 
 "For it will be easier now, dear," she said. "I mean 
 that one always relaxes after he s found out. Now that 
 you know us, we shan t have to act a part with you, and 
 you ll see our best side." She smiled, but her eyes held 
 their look of weariness. "Try to imagine what it was to 
 us, last night, when that man in the street began. Greg 
 said, on the way home, that they ought to find the chap 
 and make him a member of the Regent, he s so one of 
 them ! Hard, hard it s harder than hard, dear. But 
 it was as hard to act our role as it was to have our pretence 
 detected. You didn t of course you couldn t notice 
 how those poor boys were trying. That song, which I 
 hate even the name of, poor Brett always has to sing when 
 visitors are about. We have to parade him as our one 
 accomplishment; but it s rough on him. It s not his fault 
 that he has those vocal chords and that, just before his 
 father went under, Brett was completing a long course of 
 study under the best teachers that money could inspire. 
 That was before he had any idea of anything but life in 
 nice, fit lodgings, somewhere about town, marrying some 
 nice girl and, when the property came to him, go into the 
 
 31
 
 32 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 big house. Poor Brett, it didn t work out that way: his 
 father got the title, and a mania for investing. Every 
 thing went. Brett got five thousand out of the mael 
 strom, somehow, and came off here. He d got engaged 
 by that time and told the girl it wouldn t take him more 
 than a year at most to quadruple the five thousand by 
 investing here. That was five years ago, and Brett was 
 sanguine. And she was then. Well, Brett didn t make 
 a go of it. His five thousand went, and he stayed on in 
 South Africa. The girl got less and less sanguine, and 
 finally married some one else. It was just as well Brett 
 didn t marry her, though, for what do you think? she 
 actually had the hard-heartedness to send him a picture 
 of herself and her oldest boy, last year! Can you imag 
 ine any one doing that? And poor Brett down here, work 
 ing and trying to forget!" Anne swung around sharply, 
 with a bitter energy almost masculine. "You d better 
 take breakfast, Marian, if you want any." She led the 
 way. 
 
 But, in the breakfast-room, she began again. She had 
 beefc wan at the beginning, but now her eyes flashed and 
 her soft cheeks flamed. "It was a wonderful picture. 
 He showed us it. One of those geniuses of photographers ! 
 But he wasn t to blame: he didn t know what she was 
 going to do with it. She was perfectly lovely, that girl was, 
 and he d taken her looking straight at you, the baby too. 
 The boy was a cherub. And the way Brett mourned over 
 them! He told me once that they didn t understand. 
 Evidently she didn t! And how could she have been 
 expected to understand South Africa, any more than we 
 understood it ourselves, before we came out here," she
 
 SOUTH AFRICA 33 
 
 laughed with unreserved bitterness. "Not precisely, for 
 we did come! But, about Brett and the girl and the 
 picture: I m only trying to let you in, so that you ll be 
 nice to him and make a lot of the picture, when he shows 
 it to you, as he will. And Brett s only one instance of 
 why a good chap comes out here and stays. Hugh Chad- 
 well s the same way: nice regiment. You see the way he 
 carries himself. Then something wrong with the busi 
 ness his father got his money from. The girl Hugh left is 
 still waiting, so he s better off than Brett is, though not a 
 great deal, for of course both of em know by this time that 
 nothing can ever come of it. Carstairs, too. Prospects: 
 A girl! Bankruptcy! South Africa! Jem Fraser got it 
 younger than they did, and he s some hope left. We know 
 
 that, for he s indigo blue half the time. And Greg " 
 
 She stopped, breathed, then went on: "I might just as 
 well go through the list: you don t know, and you can t, 
 and I m glad of it, too, what it is to be engaged to the 
 dearest lad in the world and yet neither of you see the least 
 prospect in the world of your ever marrying." 
 
 "But, dearest," the younger girl interrupted, tenderly, 
 "I thought it was to be six months after the engagement 
 was announced? " 
 
 "It is" came the hysterically laughed answer; "but, 
 don t you see we don t know when it ever can be an 
 nounced," The laugh broke, then began again, bringing 
 Marian s arm about Anne s neck. "Don t you see now? 
 Don t, Marian, don t kiss me, for I ll break down, if you 
 do, and I ve got to talk! Don t you see, Greg s working 
 his heart out at the consulate? It makes me cry, he 
 comes back so done. If he had money, even a fraction
 
 34 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 of what Mr. Osmsby has, for example, he d speculate, 
 and make just as much as Mr. Ormsby does. But,*as it 
 
 is " Her voice caught, for a moment, then she went 
 
 on: "He expected we all did that his uncle would 
 leave him his money; but the uncle died and nothing came 
 of it; poor Greg!" She caught her face in her hands, as 
 if trying to force her grief back. " I m going to cry any 
 way, and I shall be a fright now, all the rest of the day." 
 
 "Anne, Anne, dearest, don t " 
 
 "Oh, I know it s wrong of me to tell you all this. 
 Rotten bad hospitality, Greg would tell me, if he knew, 
 and he d be right. Poor, dear boy, it s not his fault he s 
 as poor as I am, and can t make money any faster than 
 dad can! Why, when we were there, you remember, 
 Marian, how it was, in Kent? You know how we lived, 
 what we had . . . ? Greg s family, and dad s? You 
 remember how it was then, how we talked of all that was 
 to be? Greg was going into the Guards. God meant him 
 for a soldier. What a one he d made! What a soldier 
 he did make, though it could be only against these hor 
 rible natives and mussy Boers! Then the crash came; 
 something about some properties Greg s father and dad 
 were both in; and Greg s father died, and Greg sold out 
 what little was left; and, when father came out here to 
 South Africa, Greg came along. I m not sparing us, 
 Marian, and I own I m telling you now not so much for 
 the sake of showing you how we all failed here, as for your 
 sympathy. There s not a girl out here I can talk to about 
 home, the home we had. They re well, just as you see 
 them, a great deal braver than I am; but they never knew 
 us at home, never saw us as we were. Not that we re
 
 SOUTH AFRICA 35 
 
 not about all alike. I don t mean that: we are; 
 but " She made a gesture with her hands. 
 
 Marian held her close. "Don t, dearie! And don t 
 tell me any more; anyway, not now." 
 
 "If you ll let me, I d rather go through with it, though 
 I m making it very hard for you, Marian, and I know 
 what it is to receive confidences that hurt." 
 
 "Only because I feel so powerless to help you," the girl 
 said, with touching earnestness. "If you want, Anne, tell 
 me the rest, though I wish you d not." 
 
 "There s not so much more. But this next will sound 
 very vulgar and not nice to you, for you re just out from 
 home, and, what s more even than that, you can t fancy 
 what it is not to have loads of money. But, when we got 
 here mamma, and dad, and Greg, and I I tried to 
 deceive people: we were tourists, you know. It was, 
 What a delightful country you have here! So odd and 
 interesting, such a change from England. Stay-at-homes 
 are so provincial! I told these girls of our place, back in 
 Kent, of our dogs and horses, this and that, everything. 
 And they were quite snippy, and didn t ask us about much, 
 no, not even here, in this dirty, disgusting, little place. 
 Greg would come back from his work at the consulate, and 
 tell how the chaps there made up their tennis parties and 
 cricket and hunting, and left him out, just as their fathers 
 left dad out, and their mothers and sisters left out mamma 
 and me. 
 
 " For a bit, we didn t mind it rather liked it. Then it 
 got monotonous. No, that s not the word, but you know 
 what I mean. People have to know some one, even here 
 in South Africa. And I began to unbend a bit, told them
 
 36 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 we weren t going home quite so soon as we d thought to. 
 We liked Durban. But, if we thought that would mol 
 lify them, we were mistaken, for their tennis and cricket 
 and races and dinners and hunting and club theatricals 
 went on without us, just the same. 
 
 "Then, one afternoon, Catherine Hetheridge came to 
 call on me. You ve seen her, and can fancy how she 
 looked. I imagine she used to be very handsome. The 
 men must have swarmed after her! She sat down, and 
 said, in that odd way of hers, just as if she didn t care at 
 all, anyway, Be honest, why don t you? Own up you re 
 way down on your luck, and have come here to make 
 money enough to live on at home. Oh, I know per 
 fectly. And, as I gasped and tried to freeze her, don t 
 bother so much telling us of that big place in Kent. It ll 
 be there when you go back; and, if the horses and dogs 
 are a bit old, by then, you can get others. I tell you / 
 know how it is. We all do : all of us, out here, had places 
 once at home; and do you fancy that any of us thought 
 we d be two years out of England, when we came here? 
 She threw back her head and laughed ; and the worst of it 
 was, she did it perfectly openly, with a bald naturalness 
 that would have been fine, following anything else in this 
 world. Then, her lips straightened again: she came on 
 with: So, I say, be honest about it. Come in with us: 
 you might as well now as later. You ll do it anyway. Of 
 course, you ve seen this place and know what it will be 
 like; but we do things to make the time pass. And you 
 can help us. She looked me over with maddening cool 
 ness. We can use you and your looks in the club the 
 atricals, probably. Marian, I could have killed her for
 
 SOUTH AFRICA 37 
 
 that probably. But instead I did just what you ve 
 fancied: I went into the club theatricals. So did Greg 
 he showed he could teach them all, from the start 
 and into the other clubs. The fees are nothing. All 
 the men in them know none of the other men could come 
 in, otherwise; they couldn t come in themselves. And 
 mamma and dad went in. It was the only way. We 
 made the best of it. And now," Anne said quietly, though 
 her hands clenched, "we re still making the best of it. 
 Write you? How could I write you anything except what 
 should make you think that I was mad over South Africa? 
 I know. But I say again, in my place you d have done 
 the same." 
 
 At the close of the unhappy story, the young girl s eyes 
 remained downcast. Something not their difference 
 in years had made her show the greater emotion at 
 Anne s confession. Something? South Africa! And its 
 influence went deep, for Anne s eyes were dry; no tremor 
 shook her whitened face. Marian s cheeks were wet with 
 tears. For the confession had been too sharp and sudden. 
 Not even the revelation, at the Regent Club, had prepared 
 her for this; not even Catherine s crude directness had 
 led her to expect such an attitude on the part of Anne. 
 
 "How long must it last?" she asked slowly. "I mean 
 this exile?" 
 
 Anne shook her head wearily. "We ve stopped asking 
 each other. All we know is that nineteen out of every 
 twenty people who come here, as we did, live out the rest 
 of their lives in South Africa. That s our only prospect 
 and we re facing it. What else is there for us? Dad s 
 making only the shamefulest little; mamma s fast get-
 
 38 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 ting an invalid from sheer homesickness and sorrow; and 
 Greg, poor lad, is advanced only the smallest bit every year, 
 just nothing to match his own needs, to say nothing of 
 his and mine. Why" her voice, naturally low and sweet, 
 came almost harshly " leaving out our ever getting 
 to England, there s not the vaguest prospect of our ever 
 marrying even here in South Africa! We re all alike, as 
 Catherine Hetheridge told me, that day: Greg s like 
 Chadwell and Fraser and Paxton and Hilary Carstairs; 
 and I m like the other girls, those here and those still 
 waiting in England, the girls that were left behind." 
 
 In her chair, which faced the breakfast neither had 
 thought of, Anne leaned back. Not even South Africa 
 had given her power to endure her own terrible avowal. 
 Or, perhaps, it was that in all her sad thinking, she had 
 never before chanced on such an accurate statement of her 
 hopelessness. Her head, with its beautiful, soft hair, 
 which, for its duskiness, Marian so envied, went down 
 into her hands. "I can t stand it! I can t take it as the 
 rest do! I can t! I can t! Sometimes," and her breath 
 ing was pitiable, "I feel that / don t care how the money s 
 got, so long as Greg gets enough of it for us to marry and go 
 home" 
 
 "Anne, Anne," a voice said. Unnoticed, Greg had 
 come in. 
 
 She ran to him, in a convulsion of feeling so abandoned 
 that the girl, whom she had forgotten, knew not what to 
 do. "Greg," Anne cried, as she clung to him, "why 
 did we go there last night? Why did that man in the 
 street sing to set his words haunting me? Greg, Greg, 
 marry me, and take me home!"
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 STRANDED 
 
 WHEN Greg walked down the drive to the 
 street, an hour later, he wondered at the 
 effective malice of the fate which had so sud 
 denly and so marvellously sharpened his sensibilities 
 and multiplied his objectivity to suffering. Or was 
 it, he wondered, only that he was realizing his fate 
 better now? Yes, it was that. How blind and weak 
 he had been though those disabilities had been a 
 kindness not to see himself this way before ! For 
 nothing new had come to undeceive him; nothing 
 faced him now which had not faced him before, it seemed 
 for centuries. Even Anne s hysterical weeping, her wild 
 despair, her relinquishment of even the shallow pretence 
 of hope with which they had tried to deceive themselves, 
 though so fresh and terrible to him, formed no revelation. 
 Always it seemed from the very instant of their arrival 
 he and Anne had known that they were stranded for 
 ever in South Africa! The folly of thinking that from 
 such a centre they could work out their return! They 
 had simply crippled themselves. They had selected the 
 last, instead of the first, of all corners of the world. With 
 better hope of success, they could have gone north, south, 
 east or west, yes, better have stayed in England itself. 
 Any land would have been surer of yielding the delivering 
 
 39
 
 40 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 dollar than South Africa! So, why, he asked himself 
 over and over, should his brain now seem bursting, since 
 he had known all this before? Why should he involun 
 tarily hold out his hands, as he walked, as if suddenly he 
 were a child again, and walking were an experiment of the 
 result of which he felt not quite sure? It bothered him 
 and unnerved him still further, that he should see himself 
 so instantly inadequate. He put his hand to his head, 
 as if to aid, by that means, the essential solution of this 
 riddle which had sprung on him. What was the matter 
 with him? What had happened? Was he mad? Were 
 they all mad? Every one? What else could it be? That 
 or the whole world had turned upside down under some 
 cataclysm of nature, as utter as would be required to 
 restore what had so astoundingly gone, leaving him, a half- 
 hobbled fool, feet bound and wits wandering ! 
 
 Quite at a loss, and by now trembling from his self- 
 discovery, he stopped, and looked back, as if he half- 
 expected to see people following him. But there was no 
 one. He stood uncertain, for a long moment. The best 
 thing for him would be to go back to the Netherbys , 
 providing he could last that far, for Anne and Lady Neth- 
 erby would manage. He meant take care of him. But 
 he shook his head: he could not endure the sight of 
 Anne s grief. It had killed him to see her crying and not 
 have the means of comforting. Yes, that was it he 
 was a failure : he couldn t comfort her, he detailed to him 
 self, shaking his head again, and swaying, and beginning 
 to look about warily. Then, too, if he returned to the 
 Netherbys he would be pretty sure to see Miss Lang- 
 maid. She had said something to him as he went out.
 
 STRANDED 41 
 
 He wasn t sure what. It wasn t very clear to him. 
 Nothing was very clear, except the suddenly realized fact 
 of his utter powerlessness. But he thought and be 
 came sure of it, as he revolved it laboriously in his mind 
 that she had said something which she meant to be 
 comforting. Her eyes had looked that way: she was 
 young, he reflected, with a perspicacity of which he was 
 conscious, and she had let her sympathy come out. She 
 had been sorry for Anne and perhaps even for him. She 
 knew, now, just how it was with them. Why, yes, of 
 course, she knew, for she d been at the club last night 
 could it have been only last night? and heard that man 
 in the street singing! Then, with the terrific suddenness 
 and clarity with which all of his conclusions had all at 
 once begun to come to him, he knew what his trouble 
 was : because he hadn t any money and couldn t earn any, 
 he and Anne couldn t marry and go home and forget, for 
 all time, that they d ever known South Africa. That was 
 what Anne had just told him, what he d heard her telling 
 Miss Langmaid, there in the breakfast-room, as he came 
 in. She d said she couldn t stand it any longer; it had 
 gotten so now she didn t care how he got the money if it 
 would let them marry and go back to England. And she 
 was right. Anne was right! That was the way he felt 
 himself. He didn t care how he got this money any 
 more than she did. And now he had to manage it, for 
 Anne couldn t stand it any longer, any more than he 
 could himself ! 
 
 Standing quite still, in the glittering sunlight, he nodded 
 to himself, with the safe air of a man who had emerged 
 from an enshrouding mystery which had been puzzling
 
 42 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 him, and now saw his next step clear. How simple it 
 was, now that he saw it ! He was not thinking yet of the 
 means : he was reflecting only on the profound and inevit 
 able infallability of the decision upon which he had ceme 
 so suddenly: He d get the money somehow. He turned 
 quickly, and began to walk on. What a tangle he d been 
 in, back there! He shook his head and even shrugged his 
 shoulders a little. He d been pretty near going amanzi 
 isi-quekweni that is to say, having his brain tip then 
 lie smiled, amazed that he should have recalled the Zulu 
 idiom at such a moment, even to the click in the "q." Yes, 
 it was amazing. But he put his achievement aside mod 
 estly, in order the better to dwell on the close shave he d 
 had and how his sensations, before he had gained his 
 present, unassailable sanity, had alarmed him. Well, the 
 danger was past now! Now, all was clear-sailing! He 
 felt unaccountably free and unrestrained, a liberty he 
 hadn t experienced for he didn t know how long. And he 
 drew a deep breath, and swung along with a springy stride. 
 As he did so, he saw, to his surprise, that he had de 
 scended into the lowest parts of the city, in his reverie.. He 
 knew the place that is, he had heard of it he was off 
 behind Berea Road, where white men and native women 
 lived and died in unspeakable familiarity and even equal 
 ity. Pine Street was no sanctuary; that was where the 
 coolies and Kaffirs lived, they and the Arabs, the Sulimen. 
 
 But this Catching the direction which gave the 
 
 earliest exit from these degraded and criminal how 
 under heaven had he gotten down there? he walked still 
 more swiftly, stepping over, and working his way, out 
 raged, through group after group of children of every
 
 STRANDED 43 
 
 shade, some mature enough to offer him insult, and others 
 so small as hardly to be aware of him, engrossed as they 
 were in moulding, from clay, dolls portraying, with shock 
 ing candour, the human form. Young and old what 
 beasts these creatures were! The Government ought to 
 prevent it. Gad! He heaved a long sigh as he emerged 
 into Berea Road, from there, came out upon Essenwood 
 Road, passed the Government Buildings, "Kings House," 
 and faced off for the club. 
 
 He felt almost a thrill of pleasure as he approached it: 
 the morning was fine, and the officers, who were human 
 enough at times, to distinguish the difference between the 
 military and the laymen, would be at the race track at the 
 foot of Berea Hill, off on Stamford Hill Road. They d 
 be out of the way. They were good chaps, and probably 
 didn t bet any more than they could afford. Not even 
 in the sudden, lofty point of view which was now his, did 
 he hold them less highly for betting. The sin was not in 
 betting. It was in not having money with which to bet. 
 But he d remedy that. He d get the money ! 
 
 He walked fast again. He hoped Chadwell and Car- 
 stairs and Paxton and Jem Eraser would be at the club as 
 usual: he wanted to tell them about his discovery that 
 he was going to get the money somehow. By a course of 
 reasoning so devious that even he could hardly follow it, 
 Greg had reached the conviction that his secret was not 
 his alone, his discovery not his to monopolize. It was not 
 only that Chadwell and Paxton and Carstairs and Eraser 
 were all in the same boat, needed money as badly, almost, 
 as he did; it went deeper than that. So he d tell them 
 about his decision. And he wouldn t wait!
 
 44 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Looking ahead, he saw a man glance at him once, then 
 cross the street. Greg recognized him: it was Willouby, 
 the superintendent of the new company that had just 
 taken over the Crown Deep Mine. Disinterestedly, Greg 
 remembered going to him and asking to be kept in mind for 
 a position; and Willouby, who had seemed a very decent 
 chap for one so exaggeratedly lucky, had promised to do 
 anything he could and let him know next time he saw him, 
 just as he d promised Chadwell and Paxton and Carstairs 
 and Fraser, when they d applied. Well, Willouby had seen 
 him and had crossed the street. It was a decent way 
 of letting him know there was nothing for him to hope for 
 with the new company. Probably, W illouby d crossed 
 the street from Chadwell and Paxton and Carstairs and 
 Fraser the same way. They d kept him busy dodging. 
 Gad ! they d coursed him like a hare ! That didn t matter 
 either. They d be at the club having regard to the 
 nicety of his new power to calculate all things unerringly, 
 Greg established their presence with the inevitableness of 
 Destiny and he d tell them about Willouby and then 
 well, he d something real to tell them : that he was going to 
 get the money anyway. 
 
 He entered the club. He was right: They were there, 
 all four of them, sitting in silence, as if expecting him. 
 Ormsby was there, too. Greg had not included this in 
 his calculation, and, for a moment, he forgot that the big 
 American was his guest, put up, by him, at the club. 
 
 "Confound the chap," Greg reflected, as he recognized 
 the long, broad, flat back he generally admired so. "Any 
 one d fancy he d have realized how in the way he d be!" 
 
 "How de do, Ormsby?" he said aloud, with the best
 
 STRANDED 45 
 
 counterfeit of his usual manner he could manage. Never 
 mind: he d go out soon! But how confoundedly big the 
 man was : looked even more fit in white drill than he had, 
 last night, in his evening clothes! Some men had every 
 thing ! 
 
 Then, another error in his calculation revealed itself: 
 Colonel Hackluytt, an old and, for his long years of effec 
 tive service, a privileged member of the Regent, came in, 
 looked frankly about him, corrected his white moustache 
 and imperial, smiled at the preoccupation of five of the 
 six younger men, and sat slowly down. 
 
 "One drink, all round," he said, and smiled again. 
 
 The silence deepened: the five knew a story was 
 coming. Was a man ever so obtuse? 
 
 "Right O! Colonel," encouraged Greg and Carstairs 
 with an earnestness which recalled their repeated hits in 
 the club theatricals. 
 
 With unimpaired geniality, the old warrior summoned a 
 waiter. "One all round," he laughed. Clearly, he was 
 good for an hour at the shortest, and Greg could have 
 groaned aloud. But he said, "You know what, sir." 
 And Paxton and Chadwell and young Jem Fraser echoed 
 from the corner they d retreated to. "Right O!" follow 
 ing a "Fine for you, sir," from the big American. 
 
 "Chuck it out, the confounded thing, but crush it 
 first," came sharply from Chadwell. "Teach these beg 
 gars a lesson! You re nearest, Greg." And Bradbroke 
 leaned, lithely, toward a small, earthenware cup of native 
 workmanship, which a dark hand had suddenly thrust 
 in through the open door. 
 
 But before Greg s upraised stick could obey Chadwell s
 
 46 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 monition, Colonel Hackluytt, youthfully active, caught 
 the cup. "Pardon me, my boy, but I ve a better way," 
 he said. And he stuffed a silver piece and a larger, of 
 copper, into the little cup, then restored it to its owner, 
 and slowly closed the door. "I know," he said, as he 
 turned back to them, "it s only a witch-doctor, only a 
 Zulu beggar; but," as he seated himself again, "it s been 
 some little time, now, since I ve willingly done anything 
 that could get those chaps down on me." He fixed him 
 self solidly in his rattan chair, without a glance at the men 
 about him. When the glasses were brought, he bowed, 
 and after the short toast, touched his to his lips, then low 
 ered it, setting it carefully, almost painstakingly, on the 
 little table which the waiter had placed near. Then, rais 
 ing his strong old eyes, he said slowly, "I m going to tell 
 you young chaps now why I m so careful, not to get a 
 witch-doctor s enmity. What s the difference? you re 
 thinking, for they re only niggers? Witch-doctors? 
 Natal s full of em. They re always running about, com 
 ing in on a man, and all he ever does is to have his "boy" 
 give em the right-about! Yes, but when a man s lived 
 on the veldt, when he s seen these witch-men weave their 
 
 influence He stopped, as if the current of his 
 
 recollections had suddenly set so strongly that speech was 
 impossible. He nodded, as if to himself. "Yes," he said 
 deliberately, "and, after I ve told you, you ll know." 
 With the unhurried manner of a soldier of severest 
 service, with the self-belief in the supernatural which 
 characterizes the old officer of generation-long experience 
 in South Africa, he spoke to himself, as the old-timer al 
 ways speaks. He was an old-timer. He had stood still,
 
 STRANDED 47 
 
 with the code and memories, taught him unforgettably, 
 by the soulless, never-embodied Spirit of the Veldt. That 
 was why Hackluytt stood still; that was why he remem 
 bered that lesson so eternally; that was why he held to his 
 old pokit-of-view, his old ways. For one of them, he con 
 tinued to smoke and was always urging men to try 
 Boer tobacco, " McHollisburg Range." "I like it," he 
 would say, "for it s strong and loose and dry." For an 
 other, his drink was always Boer brandy, "Cape Smoke," 
 in the English idiom; "dop," in the language of the 
 Boers. Yes, Hackluytt clung to his "Cape Smoke"; 
 "it s like the best whiskey you ever drank." he would 
 say, "with just a little taste of raisins in it: it s so sweet." 
 And, sitting there, firm and straight in his chair, for all 
 his snow-white moustache and imperial, he looked about 
 him, covering each of the six faces confidently. Still 
 muzzled by the tide of his code and his memories, he sat 
 silent. Then, he raised his glass once again to his lips 
 and, having again tended his moustache and imperial, he 
 began.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THOKOLOSI, THE EVIL ONE, THE POISONER 
 
 I SHALL give it exactly as it was," he said gravely, 
 "even to my own share in it. And I give it here, 
 with truth in its every detail, so that those of you 
 who have never been so far south before, or, having been 
 here even to the point of residence, have not learned, 
 shall know something of what lies in wait beneath the 
 apparently prosaic surface of South Africa. That, then, 
 is my own excuse and my story s prologue. The story 
 itself is this." He waited, leaned slightly forward, and 
 the story came: 
 
 "The Corinthian, as everybody knows, stands well 
 back in Piccadilly, and the centre-pole which holds up 
 its roof is, or rather was, Sir Gordon Ralfe. There is 
 neither time nor occasion here to go into the reasons 
 which led him to cease his patronage of the ring and track, 
 and become our first and most radical scientist. Suffice 
 it to say that, at the time with which I deal, he had not 
 for years had on the gloves, and had got too heavy for 
 the jumps, weighed down, it may be, by his honorary 
 degrees from admiring American, as well as European 
 and English, universities. He continued, however, to be 
 the keystone of the Corinthian, and might have been, 
 
 48
 
 THE EVIL ONE 49 
 
 even to this time, had not the strange incident of which 
 I am about to speak occurred : 
 
 " I had found the usual crowd there, that night : Stem 
 ming, of the Ministry, in between the acts, Keith Teilston, 
 Captain Wainwright, unconscious of his immediately 
 impending colonelcy; Fraser Bell, Sir Henry Carrisbrook, 
 half a dozen retired, and as many or more actives, 
 of the line, Lee Stronnock, Brice-Bellingham, and young 
 Roger Bam. Sir Gordon was absent; and this was, in 
 itself, so out of the ordinary that I spoke of it to Carris 
 brook, learning then, for the first time, of the sudden 
 disappearance, a fortnight before, of Sir Gordon s only 
 son, a disappearance the more unaccountable from the 
 singularly gentle and home-loving nature of the boy. 
 All of us had known him, and recalled his rather ascetic 
 temperament, his diminutive figure, which went so oddly 
 with his father s bulk and his own nineteen years, his 
 almost gypsy skin, and his great black eyes, so passionless 
 and yet so receptive of impression, their spirit always 
 received from others, and never from within. A good bit 
 of a dreamer, we had thought him. He had never known 
 his mother; and, though idolized by his father, who had 
 married late in life, had been, it was said, very fairly 
 much alone. 
 
 " And you say he left nothing to tell where he was 
 going? I asked Teilston, who had joined us, full of 
 what I found still to be the one subject tolerated at the 
 club. 
 
 " No, he left nothing ! Not a syllable ! 
 
 Or any kind of a lead to follow, struck in Carris 
 brook, I believe there were the imprints of the bare
 
 50 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 feet of a child, leading from the house to the highroad, 
 through the mud it had rained heavily in the night; 
 but there they left off suddenly. Imagine it! And this 
 in England ! He shook his head. 
 
 "I was not less incredulous, and should have asked 
 more, had not Stronnock, at that moment, interrupted 
 us. 
 
 " I say, Hackluytt," he called across to me, just 
 take a look at this picture. Rather good, he resumed, as 
 I went to him: something they ve put up since we ve 
 been here! Then, lowering his voice, If you ve nothing 
 on, meet me, in half an hour, in the third smoking-room ! 
 And he strolled off, leaving me before the picture which had 
 attracted him. 
 
 "As he d said, it had been hung since he and I had last 
 been at the Corinthian ; and there had been ample 
 time, for we were just up from Natal, where we d been 
 in the legation for the past four years. It was good to 
 be home again; but, though England s England, and 
 London s the best of it, I was already longing for the 
 up-country and the veldt; and Stronnock s swift aside, 
 smacking somehow of 30 degrees south, came gratefully. 
 And I was glad when the half hour was up, and I could 
 turn the knob in the door of the third smoking-room. 
 
 "And there, with Stronnock, I found Sir Gordon 
 Ralfe. His eyes met mine, as I entered; but he gave 
 me only the most formal bow. I fancy he barely rec 
 ognized me. I know that his emotion left him scarcely 
 recognizable. 
 
 ; I ve asked Hackluytt to come into this with me,* 
 Lee explained briefly. You were saying, he resumed,
 
 THE EVIL ONE 51 
 
 that your men have found no trace of him. Why have 
 you not called in Scotland Yard? 
 
 "Sir Gordon turned on us: Because they would think 
 me mad, if I told them what I shall tell you: the cursed 
 obsession, the damnable doggrel, which came on me the 
 night he left, and now is crazing me! I cannot pro 
 nounce it, but as Stronnock pushed ink and paper 
 toward him, yes, it may be that I can write it down. 
 
 "With laboured effort, he did so, then bent over it 
 fascinatedly: What do you make of it? he demanded. 
 Translate the hellish thing, if you can, for God s sake, and 
 tell me what it is, and how I came by it, and what, if 
 anything, it has to do with Esmonde and me! 
 
 "For one speechless second, Stronnock and I looked 
 down at what he had written, then we sent our eyes 
 away from each other. Indeed, I believe that it was only 
 to give us time to adjust ourselves, that Lee rang for wine 
 and fresh cigars. And, when he spoke, it was to put 
 a question: 
 
 " Did you come to me with this, Sir Gordon, because 
 you knew of my familiarity with the native tongues and 
 dialects of South Africa? If so, why did you fancy that 
 this might be South African? 
 
 "Sir Gordon looked absently about him, If I could 
 express it, he said dully, but it is too vague, too indefi 
 nite, too indefinable: only the remotest, most elusive 
 of suggestions, yet with a reminder of South Africa, 
 he added, slowly, if of anything. 
 
 A reminder? Then you have been there? 
 
 It was six years ago. I went for scientific research. 
 I was there, as I recall it, a little beyond a year.
 
 52 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 " You went well accompanied? 
 
 " My son and I were the only white men. Of course, 
 we had the usual guides, bearers, and interpreters. We 
 went from Natal northward through Zululand into 
 Swaziland, for the hunting; then up into Uganda to study 
 the sleeping sickness, there so prevalent. 
 
 " And, from there? Lee asked quietly. 
 
 " We dropped downward, and passed through to 
 Cape Colony, where I made an examination of the 
 "blue" soil around Kimberley, before visiting Durban, 
 then turning northwest again into the Orange River 
 Colony. 
 
 Crossing the Drackenbergs, after that? 
 1 No; we went into Basutoland. 
 
 To study the fossils, the Bushman cave-pictures 
 in the Quthing, and the animal impressions at Tsikoani, 
 supplied Stronnock. They are remarkable. 
 
 On the contrary, corrected Sir Gordon, I went to 
 observe the natives, to see if they were as described by 
 my friend, Callamore, in his very interesting book! 
 
 "Lee inclined his head. You found the Basutos dis 
 tinctive, did you not? They are less perfectly built than 
 the Zulus and quite natural, too, for the latter are 
 warriors, and the former tillers of the soil, yet they 
 preserve more of their ancient powers. I wonder if, in 
 your short time among them, you became aware of their 
 use of telepathy? 
 
 "The zeal of the investigator glowed for a moment, 
 in Sir Gordon s eyes. You refer to their witch-doctors! 
 Yes, they have mastered it. At first they were reticent; 
 but, later, they displayed it frankly, so convincing me
 
 THE EVIL ONE 53 
 
 that I placed my mind in the required receptive state and 
 invited them to employ their skill on me. 
 
 " And they did so? Lee asked, his eyes on the slowly 
 dying ash of his cigar. 
 
 " Repeatedly, upon both of us. Their communications 
 through Esmonde were well-nigh incredible. 
 
 So that you became convinced that they could effect 
 your will through distance? 
 
 Beyond all question. In Esmonde s case but I 
 shall not even attempt to describe it to you. They found 
 him the better subject of the two. 
 
 "Again Lee inclined his head. But, he asked thought 
 fully, were they not afraid that you would learn too 
 much? It would have been expected for they are in 
 sanely jealous of their art. 
 
 That did not come until later, replied Sir Gordon. 
 I have said that one had to accept the strange fact of 
 their mental influence. But even that was dwarfed by 
 something I came on, unexpectedly: one day, one of my 
 chief interpreters, whom I had had bribe his way into 
 familiarity with some of their oldest men, told me that 
 something had sprung out upon him from behind the 
 juala pots in a witch-doctor s hut, and that, as a result, 
 he had not an hour to live. The man looked in perfect 
 condition, and I ordered him back to his work. But, as 
 he turned to obey me, he fell dead at my very feet. I 
 had put no faith in his story, and still did not; but, out 
 of curiosity, I looked behind the juala pots he had said 
 the Thing came from; and, there in the dust, were the 
 imprints of diminutive human feet. You will hardly accept 
 it, yet I affirm it, and you have already visualized my next
 
 54 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 step: I taxed the witch-doctors with the crime, telling 
 them that, though I should leave their punishing to the 
 proper authorities, I regarded their mysterious agent as 
 only a clever bit of trickery, which I held it my duty to 
 expose. And 
 
 " Yes, Lee s voice came, almost impatiently. And 
 they? 
 
 " Turned sullen, sullen as bated dogs, and told me I 
 had best desist. I redoubled my efforts, I omitted nothing. 
 And I believe, still, that I should have solved the riddle, 
 had not Esmonde begun to give me anxiety. He had 
 maintained friendly relations with the witch-doctors, and 
 had become so rare a telepathic subject that he was 
 sensitive to their lightest wish; and this seemed to prey 
 on him he was not, he never has been, strong, Sir 
 Gordon said grudgingly; and I abandoned my study and 
 brought him home to a more natural atmosphere where 
 there were no witch-doctors to dominate him with their 
 powers. His eyes fired, his breast heaved, I took him 
 
 from them. I 
 
 You should have done that before, said Stronnock 
 unwillingly. As he spoke, he turned toward Sir Gordon 
 the small square of paper, hardly dry from the pen. Thoko- 
 losi, ha-e-na a bolkue, is what you have written. The 
 last three words mean, "Come down and help us," and 
 the language, Lee completed slowly, is that of the people 
 of Basutoland. 
 
 " And the first word, "Thokolosi." At last Sir 
 Gordon had caught the drift of Stronnock s questioning, 
 and his hoarse whisper barely reached our ears 
 
 That is the secret which they were afraid you might
 
 THE EVIL ONE 55 
 
 find out: the fact of the Thokolosi, the strange, small, 
 unclassified people whom the witch-doctors call in to aid 
 them in their most unhallowed work. I wish to God I 
 could construe this otherwise, but it has only one mean 
 ing: six years ago, your son came under the witch-doctors 
 influence; and this has lasted until now, from Basutoland, 
 they have reincarnated him into one of those creatures whose 
 existence you doubted, have summoned him for service, and 
 he has gone ! 
 
 Hackluytt bent his eyes on one after another of the 
 men who stared at him, motionless. "I wish," he said 
 gravely, "y es > I beg of the Almighty, that some day I 
 may be permitted to forget the face turned toward us 
 then by old Sir Gordon Ralfe ! They say that Science is 
 merciless ; and in this case she was : in her behalf, he had 
 sought to plumb the pit of native mystery, and, though he 
 had not succeeded, it had left him without the balm of in 
 credulity : he heard Stronnock s grim verdict and believed. 
 For a time there was silence, so dead that I heard the 
 weightless sounds of the invisible life around us, so 
 faint as hardly to produce the idlest vibration upon the 
 ear. 
 
 Yet one more question, said Sir Gordon; and even 
 his lifeless voice was a relief: how came I to receive a 
 message, or a command, as you now call it, sent to my 
 son and not to me? 
 
 " Secondary reception, which you learned from the 
 witch-doctors without being aware of it, said Lee. 
 
 "Then again silence, deeper even than before. 
 
 "At last, Stronnock swung toward him, You have 
 heard, And now?
 
 56 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Aged suddenly by years, the other rose up. I am 
 going to Basutoland, to him, said old Sir Gordon Ralfe. 
 
 "But Lee s square hand went to the shrunken shoulder. 
 No, for it would mean your death, and his. Besides, 
 and I nodded, as our eyes met, there s another way: 
 we will go in your stead! 
 
 " And that is why, a week later, we took passage on 
 the Rennie liner Inanda for Natal. 
 
 "You know what the trip is," Hackluytt went on: 
 "one never becomes used to it, run it as many times as 
 he will. I say it, and I was old in South African things, 
 even at that day! I say it, and truly. For who can tire 
 of the Indian Ocean, who think to measure the tales of 
 horror it has heard? I say to you that this cursed 
 
 ocean " His hand set, but he caught himself back 
 
 obstinately, with a resentful growl: "No matter. At 
 last we swung into Durban Bay ; the Government railway 
 dropped us at Ladysmith, where we got our outfit of a 
 dozen trusted boys ; then we were off, due west, across 
 the Drackenbergs, across the southeast corner of the 
 Orange River Colony, and, four days later, came out upon 
 the border of Basutoland. And there another traveller 
 overtook us with swift Madagascar oxen. It was Sir 
 Gordon; on the day after we d sailed, he had followed, 
 at once taking passage on the Castle Avondale. 
 
 "At seeing him, regret and baffled anger showed in 
 Stronnock s eyes. 
 
 I told you what it would mean, if you came, he 
 cried out. 
 
 But I have made my choice, the old man said. 
 
 Sir Gordon, Lee said again, you cannot realize the
 
 THE EVIL ONE 57 
 
 choice you ve made: remember that the nGaka, the witch 
 doctors, summoned Esmonde because they hated you 
 and wished to punish you; and your presence here will 
 only assist their ends. Go back with your oxen, and let 
 Hackluytt and me go on. We re immune to their in 
 fluence, for they never caught our wills; and we ll take 
 them by their necks, as we did another, back behind us 
 at Natal, and they ll bare their souls to us, as that other 
 did! 
 
 " Yet I must go on, said Sir Gordon, absently. 
 
 "A dog had trotted over to us from the bearers, no 
 native cur, but one of our bulldogs, built like a Channel 
 tug. 
 
 From the coast, as part of your equipment? asked 
 Stronnock, as he stroked the great beast s breast. 
 
 " No, it was Esmonde s. 
 
 " That, said Lee thoughtfully, is well. But he 
 spoke half-heartedly, his eyes on the indefatigable dis 
 tance dividing us from our quest. 
 
 "Not so Sir Gordon s: they had gone back over the 
 long trek up-country from the coast, and from there to 
 where England lay hidden well behind four oceans and 
 eight thousand tortuous miles of fog and sea. 
 
 "Then he turned toward us. I am ready. 
 
 "And at four that day we breasted the first rough hills 
 of wild Basutoland. 
 
 "As you enter, from the Orange River Colony," Hack 
 luytt resumed, with telling intimacy, "enormous rocks 
 and kopjes face you, jutting up here and there. In the 
 near distance, you see the Malutis, a spur of the Dracken- 
 bergs, looking toward the east, and, in between, the waving
 
 58 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 plumes of the amabele, the vigorous Kaffir corn. Every 
 now and then, as you proceed inward, you come on villages 
 of conical, thatched huts, the cattle-kraal, in which is 
 the local cemetery, invariably in the centre of the town. 
 And, at each of these sprawling villages, we were greeted 
 deferentially. 
 
 " May your feet go softly all your days, or You have 
 taken the wedge from between my teeth, they told us, 
 for, so far, the Basutos had shown us only friendliness. 
 
 "Then, as we passed farther in, their temper changed: 
 there was no overt act of animosity; but it was harder 
 to get oxen; corn was scarce; and we had the greatest 
 difficulty in securing guides, which last Lee and I had 
 considered it policy to employ, though both of us knew 
 the country perfectly. 
 
 " From time to time we met raw natives, come upon in 
 former wanderings; and these received us with immature 
 cordiality. But they left us as soon as they found our 
 party s personnel, for we were now come to that part of 
 the land which Sir Gordon had visited those six years 
 back, and they remembered him. 
 
 "Then one of our Kaffirs sickened and died horribly. 
 There was no wound or sign of local druggery; but some 
 of the poor chap s symptoms were those of one bitten 
 by the tsetse fly, and that, in itself, was singular, for 
 the insect is never found south of Delagoa Bay. The 
 witch-doctors had scented us. And we were soon to 
 have a better demonstration: our oxen, this time, for 
 in one night they died. 
 
 "Then, our boys/ reading the signs, took fright. 
 
 Baas, said big umZablodi, our ax-man, my brother
 
 THE EVIL ONE 59 
 
 is sick in Zululand. * And, do what we could, he left us. 
 I doubt if he ever reached the hut on the umHlatizi s 
 bank. . 
 
 " The Moloi, umFundize, said our driver, singing the 
 term of extreme deference between his chattering teeth. 
 And, with three others, he left us, in the night. 
 
 " I d expected this, said Stronnock, after the last 
 had gone: they felt the witch-doctors long before we 
 did, and their sticking on this far ought to get them the 
 V.C. But not even they dared to come farther, for this, 
 Sir Gordon, indicating the ragged outline of the kraals 
 we were approaching, is the fateful village in which all 
 your troubles were begun; and here the nGaka will 
 send their Thokolosi against you. They have waited 
 six years to do it, and they will be waiting for you 
 now. 
 
 " How long would they have waited, Sir Gordon asked 
 wonderingly. Suppose that I had stayed on in England 
 had, I mean, not come? 
 
 " You had to come. The witch-doctors had willed 
 it, Lee went on evenly. I have not told you this before, 
 for it would have made you only more susceptible. But 
 their control of you has been the hardest thing I have 
 had to reckon with. I was testing it that night in Lon 
 don, when I asked you to let us go in your place; and, 
 though your consenting showed me that their control 
 of you was not yet perfected, I knew that it would be. 
 
 * I see that I have used the words Kaffir and Zulu interchangeably, 
 and this is error: the Kaffirs come from Kaffiria, down around the 
 Cape, and are, I believe, half Hottentot and half Pondo. Whereas, the 
 Zulus are a distinct and different race, vastly superior to the Kaffirs, 
 will not marry into them, and, in fact, hold them to be beneath 
 contempt. THE AUTHOR.
 
 60 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 In short, I counted on your overtaking us about where 
 you did. 
 
 "Though Sir Gordon gave no sign, it brought home 
 to him, for the first time, the palpability of the force 
 with which we had to deal. 
 
 " Yes, he said slowly, I see it now: they were calling 
 me, as they had already called Esmonde; and I would 
 not be warned. Well, I have obeyed them and they can 
 do their will on me, for I don t want life, with Esmonde 
 worse than dead. Yet, with something of his old spirit, 
 which we had missed so, it does come ill to me that I 
 should have made their victory so complete! If they 
 could have been overcome if it were not yet too 
 late ! 
 
 "Lee turned on him. It is not yet too late, he cried 
 out: we ll turn back now, and, if you ll keep close to us and 
 not for one moment leave us until we release you, before 
 God, we ll bring you safe out to the coast in spite of all 
 the witch-doctors that ever wore the iguana s skin! The 
 temper of our mission had wearied even him; but now he 
 was as a horse whose head is turned toward home; and 
 it was good to hear the old, deep vibrance in his voice 
 again. Remember: close to us, and not for one moment be 
 alone! 
 
 "We sprang, like hurrying thieves, to snatch up what 
 we needed most, and of these only the most easily packed 
 and portable, not speaking, frankly glad, and hot for the 
 start down the back track. And then I can see 
 now the white moonlight of the still Afric night, hear 
 the who-who of the baboons, the unrest of the monkeys as 
 they rattled in the leaves, the whee of the Bush-baby, the
 
 THE EVIL ONE 61 
 
 lizard which pleads as a nursing child, all coming eerily 
 to us from the surrounding, spirit-haunted wastes. And 
 then another sound, long-drawn, plaintive, pitiable 
 a dog s sad howling-out of his distress. 
 
 " Fools that we were not to watch him, Lee cried out; 
 and his tense arm, pointing, told the tale, for there was 
 Sir Gordon, walking slowly from us toward the Bush, 
 his eyes staring straight before him at Something God 
 knows what he saw ! And then we saw It come shuffling 
 to him from the deepest shade, a strange, small figure, 
 Its head moving oddly from side to side as it came; 
 on at him, It came running, was ten yards away, then 
 five; before we could reach him, our warning cry drowned 
 in Sir Gordon s dull groan of despair, as the Thing sprang 
 on him and struck the life from out his breast, at the 
 crack of our Enfields shuffling back into the blackness of 
 the Bush. 
 
 "And so it was," Hackluytt concluded, "that they 
 worsted us. Whether Sir Gordon died from another cause 
 than the thrust of that small hand, whether that Thoko- 
 losi were Esmonde, whether our shots sped true, are 
 questions which must wait their answer on another day 
 than this. We buried him there among the cold rocks 
 of bleak Basutoland, and, with him, our one opinion as 
 to whose hand had brought him down. Yet, calling it 
 Esmonde s, he was guiltless, being only the actor of the 
 will of some nGaka, some witch-doctor, who, remembering 
 well, called, when he would, his unforgiven enemy, to 
 set upon him the direst of all the dire spirits of this un 
 hallowed land, Thokolosi, the Evil One, the Poisoner ! " 
 
 There was absolute silence when Hackluytt finished.
 
 62 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Still, as if mummified, his hearers stared at him. And he 
 himself, old-timer that he was, sat motionless, hypnotized 
 equally by his bitterness and his terrible narrative. Told 
 quietly and without emphasis, yet with an unstudied 
 earnestness which sustained its dramatic properties to 
 their very top, the story had held his hearers, and its 
 spell was on them yet. 
 
 At last, he moved, pouring down, it seemed without a 
 swallow, the rest of his glass of "Cape Smoke." And 
 there was little triumph in his fierce, old eyes when he 
 looked about him. Rather, he seemed regretful, for he 
 tugged, almost self-reproachfully, at his white imperial. 
 
 "Nasty idea, ain t it!" he said ruefully. "Sorry; but 
 the thing came up, in my memory, like a thunderstorm, 
 and I couldn t make it an April shower." He smiled 
 grimly. "No, by Gad! not an April shower! Try some 
 of my tobacco," he said suddenly to Ormsby, holding 
 his pouch out. "I d be glad to have you knock out what 
 you ve got in there now, and try mine, before I go along." 
 
 "Mighty glad to," said the big man, "and I ll walk 
 along with you." He nodded to the other men, held the 
 door open for Colonel Hackluytt, and the two passed out 
 through the main living-room, and on into the street, 
 leaving abruptly, a thing which men are always privileged 
 to do with men. 
 
 The door swung in and out lazily across the sill of the 
 small, inner room which they had left, each swing more 
 deliberate, like the stride of the pendulum of a clock, 
 which, the instant before, has run dow r n; then the door 
 came to rest on a dead centre, a little off the sill, for the 
 breeze blew strong. And the five men who watched it
 
 THE EVIL ONE 63 
 
 seemed held from speech by its subsiding motion, and it 
 was not until the motion died that Chadwell began: 
 
 " Pretty middh ng nasty rot, I say, if you ask me! And 
 the old chap was right in feeling it was depressing, rot 
 though it was." 
 
 "Mustn t blame him, though," Paxton joined in, 
 "for it wasn t the story. We were that way already, 
 heaven knows, and with cause enough!" He stopped 
 short, and looked across to where Bradbroke stood by the 
 window, apparently still hearing Hackluytt, his eyes 
 aglow with sudden fire. " Greg, old chap," Paxton began, 
 then stopped. " You give it to him, Hugh. You can 
 break it a lot decenter than I!" 
 
 Chadwell nodded irresolutely but with resignation. 
 "Anyway, I can get it out quicker." He turned toward 
 the window. "Greg, you remember how all of us went to 
 Willouby of the new Crown Deep Company, said it was 
 the best look we d any of us had since we d got here, the 
 only thing in sight that could possibly amount to any 
 thing? Well," without waiting Greg s answer, "it s all 
 off. I saw Willouby just now on the street, and they re 
 bringing their own men. We re cooked." 
 
 There was a long silence through which they stared at 
 Bradbroke, who, though he must have heard, had not 
 turned. 
 
 Chadwell got to his feet. " I say, Greg, you know what 
 it means?" 
 
 "Don t stand there like a ! Greg," Carstairs 
 
 broke out, "can t you see? " 
 
 Eraser rose slowly and cautiously touched Paxton s 
 sleeve.
 
 64 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Try him, for God s sake, Brett! Hugh s messed it, 
 somehow, and Greg doesn t understand." 
 
 Then Bradbroke turned deliberately to them. "You re 
 wrong, all of you. I get it. But let Willouby go. I ve 
 got something real to tell you." 
 
 For one breathless moment incredulity held them. 
 The next for he had he not always led them? they 
 pressed closely around him, noting his strange, wild glad 
 ness. 
 
 "Sit down!" he commanded with a swift glance at 
 the door. And, when they obeyed him, he began, in a 
 low, tense whisper, and with still glad and glowing eyes.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 STRANGERS TO SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 AS THE two men emerged from the club, the Ameri- 
 
 / % can filled his pipe and returned Hackluytt s 
 
 JL m pouch to him. "Thanks," he said, as he 
 
 stopped to light a match and draw the flame well 
 
 down into the tobacco, which he had crammed into the 
 
 bowl. 
 
 The Colonel watched him. "Have another match," 
 he urged, after a moment; "it s not fairly lighted. Odd, 
 too, for one of the best things about it, after its taste and 
 strength, is its being so easy fired. Fingers damp, 
 maybe." 
 
 The American s fingers were damp. But instead of 
 owning it, he used the second match, puffing until the 
 cloud of smoke hid his big-boned face. The truth of it 
 was, for the first time in his life, Ormsby felt not wholly 
 at his ease. And his next words showed it 
 
 "Your story was terrible, Colonel. I take it you 
 don t tell it to many." 
 
 "Not many women, anyway. Sets em thinking all 
 sorts of things! Would, I mean. That is, I fancy it 
 would. Besides old-timers, and chaps with nerves I m 
 sure of, I ve never given it to a living soul, or ever will, 
 for, as you say, it s terrible. Of course, no matter how 
 much I swear it s truth, there re a stack won t believe 
 
 65
 
 66 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 it. I don t mean you," he added hastily. "No, I don t 
 mean you, sir. I can see you believe me. But, just as 
 I said, there re some who d only laugh." He shook his 
 head resentfully, then guardedly studied the American. 
 "You do believe it, don t you? I swear it s gospel 
 truth!" 
 
 "You needn t swear to it, Colonel," said the big man, 
 "though I don t know whether it s just because, or, in 
 spite of, the fact I m a stranger to South Africa. No 
 matter which, I believe it, and it s a wonderful story. 
 It ll be an amazing one to take home with me, when I 
 go back." 
 
 "Good!" Hackluytt cried. "That s good. I m glad 
 you say that. By the way, when are you going? Hope 
 not very soon. Like to have you along on here. Not a 
 bad little city, y know. Of course, I ve been in South 
 Africa so long I couldn t stand leaving it now. Nothing 
 could cut me loose, sir ! I tell you, after a man s been 
 
 here the way I have Well, I ve got so out of England 
 
 I ve got by wanting to go back. Didn t always feel so. 
 
 These younger men ! Then, too, they came down for 
 
 a different reason than I did: I came down to fight that 
 was 79, mind! and they came down to go back. But," 
 with sudden feeling, "South Africa s no place for a woman 
 girl, I mean unless her heart s here. You know 
 what I mean: she s always looking home; and South 
 Africa and England keep everlastingly far apart. Oh, 
 I know; I ve seen em. Bad enough for a man, s I ve 
 said, when he s trying to see London from Durban; but 
 
 for a girl ?" He jerked his head once toward his 
 
 left shoulder, "I ve seen em, an it s rotten bad seeing!"
 
 STRANGERS TO SOUTH AFRICA 67 
 
 He shot a hand toward a pile at the right. "You can 
 always find me there, day or night, on the top floor, when 
 I ain t at the club. Come in an see me, sir. Glad to have 
 you. And I ll have the tobacco ready, some of this, 
 McHollisburg Range. I like it, even if it is Boer stuff, 
 for it s strong and loose and dry." 
 
 "I ll come and be glad to," the big man promised. 
 Then he smiled quickly. For, just ahead of him, he 
 saw another stranger to South Africa: Marian Langmaid 
 had just emerged from a shop, and now was walking 
 ahead of him up West Street. 
 
 Though she walked freely, almost rapidly somehow, 
 he had known she would walk that way he at once 
 overtook her. 
 
 "I ve wanted to see you," he said frankly, not trying to 
 hide the pleasure her presence gave him. "May I walk 
 with you? " 
 
 "Yes," she said, with equal directness, allowing him 
 to fall into step with her. 
 
 Though she had smiled, he saw that her face was very 
 thoughtful. They were both very simple and honest 
 about it, for she affected nothing, and he was unconscious 
 of the significance of her letting him see that something 
 troubled her. 
 
 For a moment he watched her profile. But admiration 
 is not the deepest of the emotions, and he said quickly: 
 
 "I wish you d tell me." 
 
 She looked up into eyes whose message would have 
 been clear to her if she had been less in need of a strong 
 man s strength. More than that, while another, and 
 weaker, man would have urged, the big man waited. It
 
 68 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 went well with the dependability of his big-boned face, 
 and his wonderful vitality; and she came closer to him. 
 
 "Yes," she said, in a low voice, "there is something 
 Anne." 
 
 He schooled his features to hide his relief that her 
 anxiety did not arise from herself. 
 
 " Miss Netherby." He inclined his head, as they turned, 
 and walked on. "You mean last night? Yes, I know." 
 
 She corrected him with the frankness of youth or of 
 mature acquaintance. "No, Mr. Ormsby, I don t mean 
 that. At least, that s not all. I saw her this morning, 
 and she Oh, it is too terrible!" Her gesture con 
 fessed her sense of impotency. "And I am so free. We, 
 you and I, are. While Anne The right word 
 
 tarried, and she expressed it by sending out her slender 
 hands. 
 
 He understood her it was wonderful, how they 
 understood each other: it was the rebellion of girlhood 
 that girlhood should encounter pain. 
 
 "There must be something we can do for her! She 
 
 can t be allowed She s very desperate ! One can t 
 
 think how long she s been fighting off such a surrender 
 to self as this! You mustn t think she s not brave!" 
 She looked up at him quickly, to search his face. "She s 
 tried so hard. I m sure any one myself. Yes, indeed ! 
 For it s so unbearable, even when we can t begin to 
 imagine the worst of it!" She meant that he must be 
 quite sure of Anne s courage. 
 
 And again he caught her meaning at once. "Of course." 
 He spoke as of a fact too familiar to require comment. 
 "I saw that," he said, "at once."
 
 STRANGERS TO SOUTH AFRICA 69 
 
 She nodded, gratefully. "And I ve been with her, of 
 course, most of the morning. All of it, except when Mr. 
 Bradbroke was there." 
 
 "That s good," he said quickly. "I m glad he went. 
 He s all right, Bradbroke. Wish they were married. 
 But, anyway, they re engaged." 
 
 He looked at her for corroboration, and was half- 
 perturbed at her not turning. "It would be very dif 
 ferent, if they weren t I mean, if she had to stand this 
 exile here, without him, alone." 
 
 This time she did turn. "I don t know. I know that 
 it ought to be. Last night, I felt just as you do now, 
 and I was very glad for her. But, this morning, it seems 
 to me that, instead of making it easier for her, Mr. 
 Bradbroke is " She broke off abruptly. 
 
 "You don t mean," he burst out, "that Bradbroke s 
 gone and acted like a cad? I m sorry. I d not once 
 thought he d be that sort. In fact, I took to him no 
 end. I don t know," he appealed to her, "you strike so 
 many men who seem unlucky, not meant for the rough 
 and tumble. And, once you get thinking a man s that 
 way, it doesn t make any difference how clever and bril 
 liant he is, you He shook his head, conscious 
 
 of his failure to state it well. "I wish I could tell you 
 just what I mean." 
 
 Unconsciously, he had verified her opinion, born in the 
 first moment of their meeting, that he had this side. 
 And she flashed at him a little glance of admiration which 
 shook him. Perhaps, she was afraid of having made an 
 admission, for she retreated instantly from the personal. 
 
 "Of course," she said, though, with a little, friendly
 
 70 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 nod, "of course. But," going suddenly on again, "you 
 mustn t think that Mr. Bradbroke that he didn t 
 that he fell short. I didn t stay, of course, but, from what 
 Anne said after he d gone," she coloured suddenly 
 "he must have been very nice to her." She had turned 
 altogether from him, and he looked straight ahead, away 
 from her. 
 
 "I m awfully glad," he said deliberately. "But," after 
 a moment, "you said 
 
 "I meant that their being engaged makes it harder, 
 because they want so to be married, and it seems there s 
 no chance of their ever doing it." She hesitated. "Anne 
 says they can t even announce their engagement yet. 
 That must be terrible." Again she looked precipi 
 tately away from him. 
 
 Then, because her little, sudden fits of shyness seemed 
 to him the most utterly wonderful things he had ever 
 
 seen, he laughed outright. "You poor little " He 
 
 stiffened, and became, as suddenly, very grave indeed, 
 
 very severe, even forbidding. "I was just thinking " 
 
 What had he been thinking except of the happiness it 
 would be to be the man himself, of course who 
 would come to the aid of this shy-eyed girl at his side, 
 in such a crisis as she had ascribed to Anne? He said to 
 himself, "I must be very careful indeed." And he meant 
 it, and would be, though his next thought was "I wish 
 she d turn this way again, for I ve got her eyes now" 
 evidently, he had forgotten his identification of them on 
 the preceding evening, and they had been puzzling him; 
 "they re like English violets. She is herself: she s an 
 English violet."
 
 STRANGERS TO SOUTH AFRICA 71 
 
 But she did not turn, and he went on, aloud: "Please, 
 don t worry about them : they ve got each other, and that s 
 the whole thing, when all s said and done. They re hard 
 up, just now; but what does that matter, what does 
 anything matter, when they re got each other, when 
 they re engaged?" He became aware that he was repeat 
 ing himself again. Her profile, her gentleness, and her 
 recurring shyness, and the curve of her cheek, and the 
 blue of her eyes, made him repeat himself. He broke 
 out again, trying to speak naturally in spite of the madness 
 of his thoughts. "I mean every one s hard up, at one 
 tune or another. I ve known a lot that way. My 
 brother married one of the dearest girls in the world" 
 suddenly, he realized that he had never fully appreciated 
 Tom s wife before; and he hurried on, loyally "they 
 were everlastingly hard up. Tom was writing. He s 
 landed now, making all sorts of money. But he wasn t 
 then, and they had some bad times. He had to look 
 around for something else to live on, until the editors 
 and publishers could see what good stuff he was doing. 
 He had to write at night, and do something else by day. 
 He got a berth in New York, as a settlement worker, 
 at one hundred dollars a month. And Tom and Janet 
 and the baby got along on that and what Tom took in 
 from his stories. Tom hated social work, but he suffered 
 trying to help those people and being held back by red- 
 tape and a lot of other mechanical nonsense. And every 
 thing in him cried out for work which was world-wide 
 different. Tom s heart was all in his writing, and he d 
 keep getting those inspirations of his, even while walking 
 there in those dirty alleys, the people drinking and fighting,
 
 72 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 the babies crying, and the whole thing one dissolute, 
 diseased, sordid, wretched reek. I say, while he was 
 working there, investigating a family, he d think of 
 something that was just what he wanted in one of his 
 chapters, something about one of his book people; no, 
 not that either, for his characters were real people to 
 him, and they d follow him like dogs about those howling 
 streets; and he d dash into a court or a doorway, and 
 stick it down in his notebook, then go on again, trying 
 to get a crazy woman or a madman into some sort of 
 sanity and gentleness. 
 
 "It hurt him, that work did. I don t know whether 
 I m making it clear or not, but I m trying. I say, his 
 heart was in his writing. He was made and meant to 
 write. Probably, his seeing that side of the world made 
 him write better. He says so. But he got all he needed 
 of it, yet couldn t get himself out of it, for the editors 
 hadn t decided on him yet. He used to get discouraged 
 almost, though never quite. He d say to us : 
 
 If only I could put all my time on writing 
 
 For his characters, his own people, those he d created, 
 haunted him, alluring, fascinating, almost dominating. 
 They clung to him. But it had to be social work, and 
 the slums and the shames and the shams of it! And 
 Tom would rage, and Janet would comfort him. It s 
 all years back, now, and Tom s one of the big ones, back 
 there in America. But he and Janet did have hard 
 times, just as Bradbroke and Miss Netherby are having 
 now. And they got through them, just as these two will. 
 Everybody gets hit, one way or another, Miss Langmaid. 
 Have I tired you out, by running along so?"
 
 STRANGERS TO SOUTH AFRICA 73 
 
 She looked up at him this time. "Not at all," she said 
 gratefully. "It s taken my mind off I mean lifted it 
 out of the drift it had gotten in. You ve helped me, 
 and I m very thankful. Only," and she kept her eyes on 
 him, "I hope that Anne and Mr. Bradbroke can stand 
 it as well as your brother and his wife did. That s all 
 I m afraid of: something I can t express it; but some 
 thing makes me afraid. I don t understand South 
 Africa." 
 
 His mood changed with hers. "Don t let anything 
 frighten you," he urged gravely. " Don t be anxious about 
 them. I ll tell you what: you see what you can do cheer 
 ing up Miss Netherby, and I ll look out for Bradbroke. 
 We ll manage something." 
 
 She was smiling again, for he was irresistibly enthusias 
 tic and confident. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "we ll see what we can do for them. 
 Are you going to be on in Durban a while, Mr. Ormsby? 
 I hope so. Have you any idea," she asked, "what you 
 can do with Mr. Bradbroke?" 
 
 He smiled, then laughed frankly. "I should say I 
 have ! This : I always have cracking good luck speculating 
 the market, you know ; and never better even in Wall 
 Street, back home, than right down here in Kimberley. 
 I m going to cultivate Bradbroke. Of course, I m putting 
 up with him, down here, and that s something for inti 
 macy, but I m going to bring him a lot closer, then get 
 him investing." He laughed. 
 
 "But," she discouraged, "if he hasn t anything to 
 invest Anne said " 
 
 He brushed aside her objection. "I don t care what
 
 74 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 she said. I ll see to the money part, and get him invest 
 ing, then control his investments, and, before he knows it, 
 he ll be hauling in money so fast that, even after he and 
 Miss Netherby have married, he won t know what to do 
 with it! Stay on in Durban?" he demanded, his eyes 
 shining. "I should rather think I am!" 
 
 She was staring at him, incredulously. "Do you mean 
 that you think you can make Mr. Bradbroke make 
 money, enough money?" Her hands had gone out. 
 She was breathing uncertainly. 
 
 "That s just what I mean," he promised. "You ll 
 see."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 STAYING ON 
 
 HE LEFT her at the gate, watched her turn 
 swiftly up the long drive, was rewarded by a 
 little unconscious, friendly wave of her hand 
 as she turned the first bend and then swung behind the 
 banking trees. 
 
 Simultaneously he faced off to his rooms or the club. 
 He didn t care which; but, for some occult reason, decided 
 on the former. He was wondering, marvelling. Then, 
 deflecting his thoughts to Bradbroke, he asked himself 
 again why men came to South Africa. And he did not 
 once realize that it was such men as himself, or, rather, 
 such extraordinary success as he had won there, which 
 drew other men from the four corners of the globe to 
 Kimberley. He did not realize that, in a way, he himself 
 had boomed Kimberley, when he put in hundreds and 
 drew out thousands, then put in those thousands and drew 
 out millions in exchange for them. For a man of so rarely 
 keen a mind, he was very simple and free from self-interest, 
 so that he left himself wholly out of the riddle he was 
 trying to solve. What he thought was : 
 
 "I ll stay on here and be near her" He seemed to be 
 mixing his pronouns at least the girl herself would 
 have thought so. "I ll get a private line in, and watch 
 Kimberley from here, that way; and I ll put this man 
 
 75
 
 76 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Bradbroke on his feet in spite of himself. Gad ! it s not a 
 bad thing I m fixed as I am!" He was admitting that 
 his luck might change a thing he kept himself always 
 prepared for; but he would tend to Bradbroke, whether 
 it changed or not. 
 
 He was perfectly genuine and frankly happy about it. 
 It was almost the first time in his life that he had con 
 gratulated himself on having won, before he was thirty, 
 such an amazing stake in the world of finance. He could 
 see it working out nicely : it could be nothing in the nature 
 of a loan, to Bradbroke; much less a gift outright. He 
 could not put the money in Bradbroke s hands until the 
 moment when Greg, whetted into envy, had begun to 
 come back to the game of investments and speculation, 
 and would accept the tender as the most ordinary transfer 
 in the world. Then, the casual suggestion that a little 
 money placed here, just here, in Kimberley, would mul 
 tiply itself to an unbeatable certainty. People said there 
 was no such thing in any market. The big man laughed 
 to himself contentedly. He d tend to that for Bradbroke, 
 as he had tended to it for himself, without one slip in the 
 past eight years. He d convince Bradbroke; and, once 
 started, the young Englishman would leap toward the 
 flood of gold. Then he d need watching and controlling. 
 The big man knew the game. And, after Bradbroke had 
 won enough, he d be "burnt" once, just enough to scare 
 the life out of him; and Bradbroke would quit and stand 
 pat: he d be safe. The market would know him no 
 more. 
 
 "It ll be sure as summer," said the big man to himself. 
 "It can t go wrong!"
 
 STAYING ON 77 
 
 In the safe seclusion of the crowded streets, he smiled 
 lazily. He was everlastingly glad he d come to South 
 Africa, which now meant Durban to him. He told him 
 self that he liked the little dark city crouched there at 
 the foot of the high veldt. He liked the people. He was 
 
 going to help two of them. One of them, he would 
 
 He did not smile, now. It was uncertain, that was. His 
 face changed, for he knew that, if he lost her, the world 
 would not hold one thing for him. He had forgotten the 
 club, and was at the rooms, now, revolving the thought 
 intimately. 
 
 Soon he rose to his feet and caught up his sun-topi. 
 
 "First, Bradbroke and Miss Netherby," he said to 
 himself. He would start working at once, working for 
 them. He meant for Her; but he did not say it. What 
 he did say was utterly lacking in romance or sentiment: 
 
 "I wonder where I can find Bradbroke." 
 
 Greg would be at the club, he guessed, the next instant. 
 He had suddenly gotten into the way of thinking of him 
 as " Greg." The four would be there with him : Chadwell, 
 Carstairs, Fraser, and that chap with the voice Paxton. 
 He d go there. 
 
 He went, and found them, as he had felt he should. 
 
 They seemed much more collected now than when he d 
 left them an hour before and gone out with Hackluytt. 
 Could that have been only an hour ago? 
 
 Yet, though more collected, they could not have been 
 said to meet the big man halfway: They stared at him 
 for a long moment in silence. Then they spoke indif 
 ferently. Finally, Chadwell suggested tennis. "If," 
 he amended, "it were forty degrees under what it is in
 
 78 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 the shade, if there were such a thing as shade." He 
 seemed obstinately to doubt it, though he "hoped so; 
 somewhere" Chadwell began, suddenly, to smoke hard. 
 Fraser followed his example, a natural act: the youngest 
 to follow the lead of the oldest man in the room. Paxton 
 nodded vaguely. Carstairs said he felt "done. The 
 heat, probably." It was hot; but the American, charged 
 with all the dynamic force with which Catherine Heth- 
 eridge had taunted him so baldly, felt none of it. 
 
 Bradbroke seemed to read this. "I envy you," he said 
 languidly. "Have a drink? Sorry." Then he relapsed 
 into silence as the others had. And finally he shelved 
 conversation by saying: 
 
 "Ormsby, you ve come to the last place in town for 
 decent treatment; but, really, old chap, we re not fit. 
 I don t know what the rest of you chaps are off for, but 
 I m going to see if there s such a thing as cool water in 
 the shower-bath." 
 
 "Never mind," said the big man good-naturedly, 
 after Greg had taken leave of them. "Go ahead, the 
 rest of you, and get cool, if you can." To himself he 
 said as he went out: "After that thing, last night, the 
 only wonder is they re not downright rude." 
 
 He meant their poverty and his money, and wished, 
 for their sakes, that they thought him as bankrupt as 
 themselves. Oh, well, he d get them over thinking about 
 that unequal distribution. That was another thing for 
 him to do. And still another was: he d make them forget 
 that he now knew them as they were. 
 
 He turned up Berea Road, and strolled along through 
 heat which seemed to shake the very street. It was one
 
 STAYING ON 79 
 
 hundred and twenty in the shade, if, as Chadwell had 
 doubted, there were any such thing as shade. After a few 
 moments of it, his pith helmet became penetrable: he 
 might as well have been bareheaded: and he made for 
 Greg s lodgings, filling his pipe with what remained of the 
 Boer tobacco Hackluytt had given him. It was good 
 tobacco. He decided to get some more of it, next time 
 he went out. Happening on a tobacconist s at that 
 instant, he reeled in and bought a pound. 
 
 As he emerged, he came face to face with Catherine 
 Hetheridge. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "walk along with me. It s not far, 
 and of course it wouldn t make any difference to you, any 
 way. I don t mean myself, but your energy. Why is 
 that always taken as such an insult by Americans? " She 
 addressed him as if she herself were a man, and her topic 
 as disconnected with John Ormsby as the moon. "I ve 
 never known one of your countrymen to like it," she went 
 on; "at least, they never seem to, and so I keep on asking 
 until some one of you tells me why it stings." 
 
 "We don t take it as an insult," he said, speaking as 
 idly as she did. "What we don t like is your implication, 
 that work is all we re meant for." 
 
 She bowed with mock respect. "If you stay here long 
 enough, I shall become educated," she began again, in 
 her odd, absent way. "You re really instructive, and I 
 believe you re genuine. Of course you re giving it to me 
 so straight, every time we talk, is a pose with you, just 
 as my way of talking is with me. But neither of us mind 
 that. Don t feel flattered! I m this way with every 
 one! Besides, I know I m going to marry my Jew, in the
 
 80 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 end and that ll be the end, for me. No joking ! And 
 
 you I know that you " She waited the merest 
 
 instant, then went on: "It s really quite romantic is 
 there such a word? I mean now? " Her finely drawn brows 
 came together. " Well, you know what I mean, anyway ! 
 What was I saying? Oh, yes: that your coming away off 
 out of civilization, down here, was romantic. Don t look 
 so self-conscious : by you I mean one, not two. I 
 say, your coming off down here, with all your money and 
 youth and strength and confidence, and meeting such a 
 riddle as we all present. Yes, present still, for, though you 
 think, now, that you ve found out all about us, you never 
 know what any one of us is going to start on next. We 
 don t know, ourselves; and, that s the one bracing thing 
 about South Africa. Not that there aren t a lot of people 
 who re happy here! For there are. A lot who ve come, 
 and seen, and accepted it. I mean just our partic 
 ularly congenial little set here, who ve found they can t 
 accept South Africa. Can t. Never can and we ve 
 found that out. You find out a lot in South Africa! 
 Take my own case: my mother brought me down here 
 ten years ago. I don t know, to this day, what we came 
 for; but there was a little money left; and I imagine I was 
 to marry, then the three of us go back. We thought this 
 land was gold and diamonds, and the men. Well, the 
 money lasted my mother through eighteen months of 
 incurable sickness, and unrelievable pain, at the best 
 hospital at Cape Town. After it was all over, I got a 
 berth, the one I m holding still: I read to Madame 
 Zelig. Get that? The combination? Madame Zelig! 
 Every morning. She s a Jewess. I m the first well-born
 
 STAYING ON 81 
 
 woman she s ever been able to buy, and she keeps our 
 relationship quiet. You re the only one who knows of it, 
 outside of ourselves, in Durban, or even South Africa! 
 But, halfway through our first quarrel, he ll fling it at me. 
 Who? Why, the son, Beaconsfield. Beaconsfield Zelig. 
 Get that, too? How slowly your mind moves! Yes, of 
 course: now you have it? He s the man I told you, last 
 night, I m going to marry Madame Zelig s son!" 
 
 The American turned on her harshly. " W by don t you 
 go home to England? I ll give you the money. Go 
 home and get married! Go home anyway!" Suddenly, 
 he hated Durban, Kimberley, South Africa all of it. 
 He hated it, and he d take Marian Langmaid and Brad- 
 broke and Anne Netherby out of it. His eyes blazed. " Go 
 home!" he commanded the girl at his side. "Go back 
 to England and marry some one ! How much money will 
 it take? I ve got a lot of it." 
 
 It was not the almost insupportable heat which made 
 her reel against him, then away so violently that he caught 
 her wrist. She stared at him. Her lips moved. 
 
 But he would not listen. "You ve no right to talk to a 
 man that way," he broke out again. "You ve no right to 
 feel that way. Nothing s got a right to make any woman 
 feel that way. It s this crazy country. Yes, that s it! 
 But what it is doesn t matter. I ve got more than enough 
 to go round. I ve got more than enough to pack every 
 man and woman I ve met here off to where he or she wants 
 to go, and set them up there and let them live. And I m 
 going to do it. I thought you were all of you wrong about 
 South Africa. But you re not wrong. You re right. 
 It shell!"
 
 82 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 She had recovered herself. But her colour, the soft, 
 even colour, which not even ten years of African sun had 
 succeeded in bleaching, had left her; and she walked by 
 his side without a word. 
 
 "Well, what do you say? " he broke out again. He was 
 still full of rage at this Africa which could make a gentle 
 woman feel what this girl did. He loathed South Africa. 
 More than that, it filled him with a vague, and, therefore, 
 singularly intimate dread for the girl who had walked by 
 his side so recently. He seemed to be seeing South Africa 
 for the first time, and his dread mounted. Well, thank 
 God, he was able to carry through what he d just decided 
 on ! He was able, and he d do it : get them out of it! 
 
 "Come," he went on, aloud; "I ll never see you again, 
 and you ll never even hear of me, after you ve gone back. 
 What do you say? " he demanded impatiently. 
 
 She stopped. They had reached a gate which divided 
 the sidewalk from the little drive, which led up to a trim, 
 cement cottage. She stood, still mute, looking down at 
 her slender slipper, and tracing its delicate contour with 
 the end of her folded sunshade. And, when she lifted 
 her eyes, he saw that they were very tired. 
 
 "I won t ask you in, though I might, for I live here, 
 
 with my mother s maid. But, about that " She 
 
 hesitated. "They won t let you do it. I hope you stay 
 here as long as she does. I hope it for her sake. For 
 yours, I wish that you d leave to-night. And, about me," 
 she tried to smile, found that she could not, and gave up 
 the attempt, with her old frankness, "I believe you. I 
 believe you d like doing what you said you would. I 
 never expected to hear any one say apything like that.
 
 STAYING ON 83 
 
 I never hoped " She shut her lips hard. "I didn t 
 
 think any man could feel like that. I ve jeered all my 
 life at America. Now, I d like to see it. There must be 
 something very fine, and strong, and chivalrous, and 
 clean about it. But not even you can help me." Her 
 eyes, of the colour of the blue soil of Kimberley, brimmed 
 slowly over, and she watched him as if looking for the 
 last time on something that she could not spare. Sud 
 denly, her hand went out, taking his with a passionate 
 strength. Then she turned and walked slowly up the path. 
 
 And, because he knew that she was right: that his 
 money could not insure safety in South Africa for the girl 
 his every thought dwelt on, and that her anxiety for Anne 
 would hold her in the path of danger, the big man swung 
 dully back into the street, which now seemed to quake 
 and shiver like a melting-pot. 
 
 Subconsciously, he found his way back to the lodgings 
 he shared with Greg. What was it this dread which 
 possessed him? In all his normal and vigorous life, he had 
 not glimpsed the least even of its counterpart. He shook 
 his head slowly. He could not solve it. He thought of 
 Marian, her youth, her utter unconsciousness, her gentle 
 ness, her tender sympathy. Catherine Hetheridge had 
 said: "For her sake, I hope that you stay here as long as 
 she does. For your sake, I wish you d leave to-night." 
 What could she mean? What could his dread mean? He 
 tried to scorn his dread away, to tell himself that it was 
 merely a by-product of Hackluytt s terrible story, a foolish, 
 nerve-born by-product, and that Catherine s words were 
 hysteria. But he wired his agent, Falk, at Kimberley : 
 
 "Don t expect me until you see me: I m staying on."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 
 
 HE STAYED on. At first he was confident that, 
 after two or three days, a week possibly, he and 
 Greg should have resumed the old footing they 
 had achieved on Greg s first visit to the shack at Kimber- 
 ley . How informal it had been : the meeting, and the 
 life they had taken up, as a result of it! A storm had 
 driven the young Englishman into what the big man 
 called his "estate," the quarter of an acre bit of wilder 
 ness on which he had stuck up the little, one-roomed, 
 sheet-iron house where he lived, with his one servant, a 
 Zulu boy, who worshipped the big man as a god. 
 
 It had been very simple and pleasant, there in the shack 
 of sheet iron. Infernally hot, the American knew it 
 would be, when the dry season came; but proportionately 
 snug and dry through the wet. He had had his favourite 
 books there; and had received his month-old magazines 
 regularly; had smoked his pipe, written his letters, and, 
 night and day, had tended his assault on Kimberley. He 
 had come to South Africa on a vacation; and, stepping off 
 the boat at the Cape, brown and brawny, had headed at 
 once for the "fields." The first night at Kimberley he 
 had slept four hours. He had slept three the second, 
 and none the third. For the opportunities which lay 
 open, before eyes like his, amazed and dazzled him, prom- 
 
 84
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 85 
 
 ising such returns as not even he had ever dreamed. So 
 he had eliminated such a non-essential as sleep. He 
 would make it up later. Just now, he was on a vacation, 
 and must get things moving! He got things moving. 
 After that, he made money as boxes are made in a box 
 factory. 
 
 That was when Greg had "blown in." And they had 
 taken potluck together. 
 
 The young Englishman had found the American inter 
 esting, first, from his ridiculous idea that service through 
 the Boer war was no greater test than service for a similar 
 period in the Philippines. At that stage of their associa 
 tion, Gregory Bradbroke had known nothing of the big 
 man s singular grip on the market, and the wealth which 
 grew in those clever hands. For there had been no indica 
 tion of any superabundance of money in the pipe and the 
 suit of white drill and the one-roomed shack of sheet iron. 
 
 Then, some one had told Bradbroke what the American 
 was quietly doing to Kimberley, and it had nearly fin 
 ished their acquaintance, then and there, for the English 
 man, as far as success, or hope of success, in the "fields" 
 went, was the American s antithesis. 
 
 But he could not hold out against the frank, good- 
 fellowship of the big man, and, little by little, the two had 
 done away with the barrier which the American s tre 
 mendous fortune had set up. Little by little, they had 
 discovered admirable points in each other. Little by 
 little, it had become natural for the younger man to camp 
 with the other in the sheet-iron shack. And, from that 
 hospitality, it had resulted naturally that Greg had soon 
 asked the big man to visit him at Durban. It had come
 
 86 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 about that way. And now the American was the Eng 
 lishman s guest in Durban, put up at his clubs the 
 friend of his friends, the guest of a host whom he saw 
 hardly once from dawn to dawn. 
 
 In any other situation, Ormsby would have known 
 what to do. The sheet-iron shack waited him, back at 
 Kimberley. But now, all he said was: 
 
 "Never mind." He meant, " Bradbroke ll get over it 
 just as he did the same sort of thing at Kimberley." And 
 again he was right : Greg came back to him saying frankly, 
 " All sorts of sack-cloth and ashes ! I ve been a cad ! For 
 give me, and come over to the club and have a drink." 
 
 "That s the ticket," laughed the American. "As a 
 matter of fact, you have been rather an unsociable owl. 
 Now, that drink! Then, some smoke!" 
 
 It was ten o clock, on a wonderful evening, the air 
 cooled by the south wind; and, as the two swung down 
 Berea Road, the big man told himself that their state was 
 more normal than for many a long day. The old cam 
 araderie of the life in the shack had come back again ! 
 
 If Greg s satisfaction at the resumption were less close 
 to the surface; if he were more reserved, it was less his 
 fault than his temperament. At least, the big man did 
 not measure him by what he showed. It was enough for 
 him that the younger man s stride had recovered its 
 bounding elasticity; that his voice had won back its 
 resonant clarity which, when heard with his soft, crisp 
 enunciation, made one take it for granted that Gregory 
 Bradbroke sang. Yes, he was all right on the inside, 
 and the big man smiled: he could get at this Bradbroke. 
 This Greg he could help, and would help. The hour was
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 87 
 
 coming, when he could lift from Anne, and therefore from 
 Marian, the now low-hanging cloud of Anne s despair. 
 
 The big man laughed as he thought of it. He knew that 
 Greg, striding along beside him, probably took it as a 
 reward for some preposterous, unheard sally. It was 
 all perfectly preposterous. Never mind. He would do 
 it! Nothing could stop him! Half a million and more 
 swung into the hands of an hitherto inveterate loser, 
 just as Standish had done, in the case of Pollard on Wall 
 Street. By Gad, the thing was done already! Not even 
 in his most fantastic dreams, had he dared to hope for 
 such immediate success with Greg ! 
 
 "I ll tell her, in the morning," he said to himself, as 
 Greg swung in the door of the Regent Club, and they 
 entered the living-room, to pass on from there into one of 
 the smaller, private lounging-rooms. Paxton, Fraser, 
 Chadwell, and Carstairs were there, Paxton humming 
 something, at the piano. It was "Mandalay," again, 
 and, this time, nothing trammelled the splendid voice. 
 
 "Good sand," said the big man, to himself. "Ever 
 lastingly good nerve!" 
 
 They nodded as he and Greg came in, though no one 
 spoke until after the verse was done. And then it was 
 only a quiet welcome, very friendly and cordial, which 
 seemed to say: "Yes, we just won t say anything about 
 it at all; but you know, old chap, that that bally ass 
 didn t sing, that night, in the street. So you ll do as we 
 kave: just put it out of your memory." 
 
 Frank talk, then, of this and that, kept up comfort 
 ably for free and easy hours, over whiskey-and-sodas. 
 Then, some good songs.
 
 88 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Not much about, to-night," Carstairs smiled at last, 
 with a lazy shake of his handsome head. "Jem, I say, 
 got a match? You ll be in on the races, Ormsby, next 
 month, of course?" 
 
 "I ll answer that," Greg said. "He ll not leave before. 
 You remember, Ormsby, you as good as promised 
 that." 
 
 The big man nodded. "Don t remember, but I m 
 content to leave it that I did." 
 
 "For, you see," Greg resumed, "you ve got " 
 
 : What s that?" Chadwell broke in. "I thought 
 
 Oh, I say, you chaps, this is too much!" He indicated a 
 long, brown arm, which had crept through, between the 
 swinging doors, a little, earthenware cup, waiting, up 
 right, on its palm. 
 
 "Knock up the steward, or one of the boys, " Fraser 
 broke out. "Confounded imposition!" 
 
 "Right O," from Carstairs. "So, we ll sweeten his 
 cup for him." Carstairs got up, with a burnt match 
 loosening the ashes in his pipe. 
 
 But Paxton, the singer, stopped him: "Not much we 
 won t that way!" He thrust back Chadwell and Carstairs, 
 and clinked a coin into the cup. 
 
 His reward was unlocked for, for the door swung slowly 
 inward, admitting the wildest figure in the world, a witch 
 doctor of the Zulus, the nGaka of the old, barbaric school. 
 He wore a mutsha of reeds and a shirt. He had a bag at 
 his waist, another at his neck, and a third and fourth on 
 his shoulders, the bags he kept his "devils" in. He was 
 not black, the American saw. He was the colour of 
 chocolate with just enough cream in it to make it right
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 89 
 
 to drink. He was incredibly tall, self-scarred and mar 
 vellously thin. His purpose to reveal some of the 
 occult and unknown. 
 
 The Englishmen were familiar with such promises, for, 
 as Hackluytt had said a fortnight earlier, witch-doctors 
 were a commodity with which Durban was overrun. And 
 the American, though less used to the class, had had long 
 confabs with a Burmese fanatic, and delved among the 
 wizards at Bombay. But this magician s procedure 
 was new to him. The nGaka began at once, telling them 
 of things they had lost and where the articles would be 
 found, inviting verification by the sending out of mes 
 sengers, which was done. He affirmed knowledge of the 
 men themselves, and rehearsed it until, in one voice, they 
 silenced him. Next, he distributed mental messages, 
 which, though less clear to the big man than to some of the 
 others, showed telepathic power to an almost inconceivable 
 degree. Then, drawing a circle on the floor, the witch 
 doctor grew a basket from nothing, and, from the basket, 
 a child, who presented the earthenware cup to receive 
 their coins. 
 
 "Always the tax at the end," Eraser s laugh broke in. 
 "Gad," with a look toward the stately magician, "you 
 niggers never forget the most important part!" 
 
 "Not much," Carstairs followed. "Wish / could 
 dig up a fake that worked as well. Don t give him 
 much, you chaps: the beggar 11 haunt the club, if we 
 do!" 
 
 At the words, the magician stepped back. 
 
 Bradbroke swung round. "Oh, I say, don t begin again. 
 We ve had all we can stand. Our acting so dazed was
 
 90 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 for your benefit, Ormsby. The stunts he got off were only 
 their regular menu!" 
 
 The big man smiled. "I must say you fellows pulled 
 it off well. But," suddenly, "how under heaven did he 
 know where I d lost this jade seal?" 
 
 "Dirty beast sneaked it out of your rooms," Fraser 
 accounted instantly, "just as he did our stuff out of ours, 
 then planted it. After that, his finding it was easy as 
 ABC! They re very nice thieves!" He turned back to 
 the nGaka. "Time you were off to your mud hut. 
 What? Oh, I say," as the witch-doctor offered his earthen 
 ware cup again, "this is too much!" In an instant his 
 foot had sent the cup to the ceiling in fragments, to fall, 
 with a jingle of coins, to the floor. 
 
 In one bound, the magician had gained the doorway, 
 his face a fury, his features alive with rage. 
 
 "The nGaka s curse on you!" he screamed, through 
 their laughter. 
 
 "Curse and be damned, you gibbering fool!" Fraser 
 cried. "The funny-house is where you belong! Curse 
 away!" 
 
 For answer, the towering ghost in the doorway stif 
 fened, then writhed toward them as a snake writhes, and, 
 his long, emaciated fingers almost on the American, said: 
 
 "Death shall come fast to those who have earned the 
 nGaka s curse. But you, umFundize, who have offended 
 the least, shall be the last claimed. You will be the last 
 to die," he repeated forebodingly, from the doorway, "of 
 those now sitting within this room." Then, while they 
 waited, wondering if they had indeed heard him, he melted 
 into the blackness of the night.
 
 Death shall come fast to those who have earned 
 the nGakas curse "
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 91 
 
 For a moment they stared into the gloom, as if expect 
 ing his reincarnation; but the small, little used door, 
 through which he had passed to the shadows, did not 
 move. There was no sign of life or light or motion: only 
 a small pyramid of dust, as if a mummy had been un 
 rolled before them, then returned whence it had come. 
 
 "Death fast and soon" the words came back in an 
 haunting echo. Then, even the echo died. Silence, 
 then as of a world struck mute. 
 
 "That is a new one," said Carstairs at last, slowly, but 
 with a laugh. 
 
 "Yes, it s a new one," said Chadwell, the oldest man 
 present. But he did not laugh. 
 
 The big man felt for his pipe. " I imagine they have to 
 vary their programme, like other artists," he said lightly. 
 But he found lightness difficult. Indeed, it was from an odd 
 nervousness, that he had taken refuge in artificiality. The 
 nGaka s words held him, and, in an effort to break their 
 spell, he went to the piano and knocked out a song they 
 had all sung earlier. He sang it through as a solo, then 
 swung round on the stool, surprised or was he sur 
 prised? that the others had not joined in. They were 
 sitting exactly as when he had turned his back on them. 
 They had not sung. They had not spoken. And they 
 said nothing now. 
 
 It was too much. Suddenly, and out of a clear sky, the 
 burden of South Africa had come back on him. What was 
 it? The old, hated question from which he had thought 
 with such joy that he was free! He looked from one to 
 the other of the men before him. They felt it. The 
 evening how much more, he wondered vaguely was
 
 92 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 over. He got to his feet. Once, he had tried and failed 
 to wake them from just such dead-eyed dreaming. He 
 would not try again. He thanked them for the pleasure 
 of the evening, ignoring the latest incident, and said 
 good-night. 
 
 "Oh, I say," Greg began, with a visible effort. 
 
 Four of them got to their feet then, attempting some 
 explanation. The fifth man, Fraser, did not rise. 
 
 Something in the boy s inertia struck the big man. 
 
 Greg read his eyes, followed them. 
 
 "Jem?" he began. 
 
 The boy did not answer. 
 
 "Jem, I say, Jem!" Paxton demanded. "Jem!" He 
 turned his insistent questioning upon Bradbroke, who, 
 dumb, was loosening Fraser s clothes. "Hammerstone," 
 Greg said swiftly to Chadwell. "He s in the living-room, 
 or was, when I came in!" 
 
 "Quick, Chadwell," whispered the big man guardedly. 
 "All right, Paxton," he steadied the singer, "it s just a 
 faint!" . 
 
 "Carstairs, take Brett off me," Greg commanded irri 
 tably. " Here, Hammerstone ! " 
 
 They stepped back, surrendering Fraser to the doctor, 
 who had followed Chadwell in; watched his practised 
 hand find the boy s wrist; caught his resulting frown; saw 
 him bend to the opened shirt, then straighten up swiftly. 
 
 " Get him out of here ! I ll take him myself. The next 
 room. More air ! " Hammerstone swung the body gently 
 up in his big arms. "Wait," he said. Then went 
 through the door, which Greg and Chadwell held back 
 for him.
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 93 
 
 "I say, Hammerstone, he s just fainted, you know," 
 Paxton begged, from the window to which the American 
 had dragged him. 
 
 "That s all it is, I tell you." the singer insisted, breaking 
 away from the big man, and following Hammerstone. 
 
 "Go back!" they heard the doctor s sharp order, 
 
 followed by the singer s entreaty, and then The big 
 
 man knew that he should see, to his dying day, the look 
 in the singer s eyes, as at last he came haltingly back to 
 them, saying: 
 
 "Fraser s dead." 
 
 Paxton looked uncertainly around. "He can t be, you 
 know, though. Hammerstone ll be in in a moment. Go 
 get him, Hugh." He turned toward the big man as if 
 for seconding. "You leave me alone, Carstairs. I m 
 going to - 
 
 Hammerstone s coming silenced him. 
 
 An army surgeon, of long experience, Doctor Hammer- 
 stone heard them out patiently, then nodded. Told 
 next of the witch-doctor s prophecy, with the additional 
 fact that the nGaka had not come within ten feet of 
 Fraser, and couldn t possibly have touched or wounded 
 or given him anything, Hammerstone nodded again. He 
 had encountered similar cases. 
 
 "Not frequently," he admitted, "but more than once." 
 His face was the colour and appeared to have the texture 
 of old leather, tanned with successful perseverance by the 
 torrid sun. He looked at them reflectively, as if he were 
 very old, instead of not yet forty-five. "Don t let this 
 get on your nerves," he concluded. "Remember this is 
 South Africa."
 
 94 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "But the prophecy," Paxton went off. 
 
 Hammerstone nodded again. "Only a coincidence." 
 
 The big man turned to his partners in the hideous thing. 
 
 "Coincidence," he heard Greg demanding of Chadwell. 
 He wheeled back to the doctor. "But, good God, 
 Hammerstone, he s dead!" 
 
 Hammerstone, of the old face and the young body, 
 nodded again : the professional calm, which the American 
 found so obnoxious. "I say," the doctor went on, "you 
 mustn t get brooding over this. I know it looks bad: 
 on the face of it, you can t any of you live any great while, 
 for one s been taken at the start-off, and the Thing s 
 progressive. But I warn you, you mustn t look at it that 
 way. Call it what I do a coincidence. That s 
 going to be hard, maybe at first; but take my word for it, 
 and remember I know this country better or worse than 
 any of you do; and every day or two, even I have to build 
 additions to my power of credulity." He stopped to 
 nod his head, as if to himself. "Yes, after all I ve seen 
 here ! So, I say, if I were in your place, I d" he breathed 
 and swallowed "I d call it South Africa and a coin 
 cidence. As a matter of fact, it is that, and, moreover, 
 any other theory stops every one of you just where you 
 are." He looked away from them, toward the door. 
 "I ll go back in there." 
 
 Again, the musician intercepted him. "But the body, 
 
 Hammerstone. You know, we don t want " He 
 
 hesitated, then turned to Chadwell. "Tell him what I 
 mean, Hugh ! " 
 
 Chadwell raised moody eyes to Doctor Hammerstone. 
 
 "What are we going to do with his body with poor
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 95 
 
 Jem? You can t oh, I say, can t you do something 
 with you know what I mean, Hammerstone. Why 
 don t you help me out, instead of making me say it? 
 There s got to be a burial. I suppose there has. If only" 
 he caught himself "if only he d bolted the country! 
 You know how rotten bad this is, happening here, at the 
 club, Hammerstone?" 
 
 "Yes." Hammerstone kept his eyes fixed on the bare 
 floor, then looked up. "See here: I ve got the hospital, 
 and men dying off every day or so. We ll I mean you 
 mustn t any of you say Eraser s dead. Let it be he did 
 bolt the country! I ll tend to the body. I say, you re 
 making a scapegoat of me. But never mind. I ll fix it. 
 I ll have it buried with the unclaimed* ones! I ll have 
 the ambulance pick it up in the street. By heaven!" 
 after a glance at his watch, "you know, it s near two 
 o clock in the morning? I ll have the ambulance get 
 around here now. By the time it gets back to the hospital 
 with it, I ll be the only, man on duty there, and I ll see 
 to it." 
 
 Carstairs caught his arm. "Of course, you know you re 
 
 acting no end fine in this! And you ll tell us " He 
 
 turned back to Chadwell. " Tell him, Hugh." 
 
 "Hil means about the interment, Hammerstone," 
 Chadwell said. He looked across to Carstairs. "That s 
 what you mean, isn t it? " 
 
 Carstairs nodded. 
 
 Bradbroke stood by, his lips pressing hard together, 
 " The poor, young, little chap. Not three years, hardly, 
 down here!" He moved over to the window. "You ll 
 remember, Hammerstone," he warned, his clean-cut
 
 96 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 figure outlined in startling white, against the black back 
 ground of the glass. 
 
 "I ll let you know when," Hammerstone promised. 
 He turned to the doorway, then came back, to stand look 
 ing from one to another. "It s odd, you know," he 
 began, in a lowered voice. " You chaps tell me I m acting 
 no end fine, and you re this and that grateful. You don t 
 know what you d have done if I hadn t. You try to make 
 me think it s for the good name of this club we re all 
 members of. But all the time you know you re thinking 
 of yourselves; and I know, all the time, that, once I ve 
 gone out of here, you ll say to each other, think, any 
 way: 
 
 " What a cold-blooded devil that Hammerstone is! In 
 
 his place, now " He nodded his head again. "You ll 
 
 think that and say it, and I know it. But I m going 
 through with it. Good-night and don t worry. Let 
 Eraser s bolting the country come out through other 
 people. All the hospital 11 know is that another wan 
 derer s passed out of South Africa. Likely the News 11 get 
 hold of it first of the papers. Let em! They ll come 
 about, asking; but sit tight, and they ll set our reticence 
 down to the friends we all were with him. Then, they ll 
 run a story about Debts and High Living, ending with: 
 
 " We are informed that the young man was last seen entering an 
 N. G. R. carriage at Pieter Maritzburg. But this is probably only an 
 effort to deflect suspicion from his real destination the Cape, and a 
 steamer to the States or to England, ultimately. 
 
 That will add it to the long list of unfortunate young men 
 who should never have come to South Africa, and it ll be 
 forgotten in a fortnight!"
 
 THAT NIGHT AT THE REGENT 97 
 
 He went to the door again, and, this time, opened it. 
 "Good-night, you chaps, and don t think too hardly of 
 me for helping you." 
 
 "Good-night, Hammerstone," from Carstairs and 
 Bradbroke. Followed quickly, by a "Good-night, Ham 
 merstone, old chap." 
 
 "I say, you re acting any amount fine," Carstairs said 
 again. 
 
 The musician could manage not one word. Standing 
 beside the American s great figure, he did not make even 
 the trial. 
 
 The door swung idly, with an arc which slowly dim 
 inished. No one moved until it had found its dead-centre 
 a little off the sill; as at that other visitation, it hung 
 heavily off, measuring the steady thrust of the draft. 
 And the five men studied it as if it were an engrossing 
 novelty. 
 
 At last, Greg turned round until he faced Ormsby. 
 " I ll be in and see you about this in the morning. I don t 
 know what more we can do about it to-night." He looked 
 from the big man to the others, his lips moving uncer 
 tainly, his eyes terrible. 
 
 The big man looked down into Greg s white face. 
 "Just right. And I ll stay in until you come," he said, 
 moistening his lips. 
 
 Chadwell and Carstairs and the singer had begun 
 moving toward the door. The five reached the street 
 together. 
 
 "I say," Paxton came up for an instant to say, "it 
 was just a bally coincidence. But wasn t it raw of 
 Hammerstone!"
 
 98 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Hammerstone s a cold-blooded beast," agreed Car- 
 stairs. " Perfect swine ! And he called it a * coincidence. " 
 
 The three left Ormsby and Greg saying something about 
 Chadwell s rooms. 
 
 Looking after them, the big man saw, without surprise, 
 that each walked uncertainly, and that Greg, at his side, 
 instead of being refreshed by the salt wind which blew in 
 their faces, was staggering like a drunken man. And he 
 knew that he had never so fully realized his own strength 
 as now : a sudden chill had come on him ; but he saw by his 
 shadow, which loomed like a ghost ahead of him when he 
 passed each street-lamp, that he himself was walking 
 straight. "Hackluytt," he thought. "If only we d 
 remembered!" He meant if only they had heeded the 
 warning of the white-haired, strong, old man! He knew 
 that Greg and Carstairs and Paxton and Chadwell had 
 remembered as tardily as he himself had. For they had 
 not once spoken of Hackluytt. To all, the big man 
 realized, it had seemed better not to confess having for 
 gotten words recalled now too late. A tremor shook 
 him as he walked.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 YES, he was walking straight. One light after 
 another, as he passed beneath, confirmed it. 
 He was walking straight. But into what? And 
 the ghostly shadow which preceded him, always aiming 
 at that unguessable destination, suggested another ghost 
 the one which loomed behind. No shadow, this. He 
 did not know what it was; but, even though averring his 
 ignorance of it, he confessed its palpability. 
 
 Or was it palpable? Back in that quiet room, he had 
 just left, had he in truth encountered this haunting 
 horror? He was in Durban, his brain told him; but was 
 there any such thing as Durban? He was in South 
 Africa; but was there any such thing as South Africa? 
 In spite of the automatic obedience of his strong muscles, 
 to his will, he was uncertain almost to the point of in 
 credulity. So that he could still hope not very con 
 fidently, it is true, but in a way he found steadying 
 that it was all a dream which the morning would dispel. 
 By a grim effort of will, he shot his thoughts back to a 
 known and certain anchorage: he had left America for 
 a vacation somewhere. He had stopped off for a bit in 
 London, and a man he d run into there had set him 
 thinking he might as well see South Africa. Then, the 
 steamer. Cape Town, then. Next, the N. G. R. That 
 
 99
 
 100 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 meant the Natal Government Railway. Then, Kim- 
 berley. He had done amazingly well, even for him, at 
 Kimberley, and had a great time of it in a sheet-iron 
 shack with a servant, who loved him, to take care of the 
 place and cook for him. An Englishman named Gregory 
 Bradbroke had run in on him there, and they d seen a 
 lot of each other. Then, the Englishman had carried 
 him down for a month in Durban. This was Durban. 
 Up there, on Berea Road, this street he was walking on 
 now, lived the Netherbys. There was an English girl 
 there, with them. Her name was Marian Langmaid. 
 She had wonderful hair and colouring, and eyes like 
 English violets. Anne Netherby was engaged to Brad- 
 broke. They were wild to marry and go back to England, 
 but they hadn t the money. The English violet was 
 sorry for Anne. How gentle she was! He had never 
 seen any one like her, no, or any thing, except an English 
 violet. 
 
 He nodded his head in acknowledgment of his absolute 
 security in seeing her an English violet! It afforded him 
 satisfaction that there had been no delay in his recognition. 
 He should have fallen short, if there had been: all that 
 she was, made it her right that he should identify her 
 instantly. 
 
 His thoughts flowed on. He had told her that he would 
 help Bradbroke and Anne Netherby, by putting Greg 
 in the way of making effective investments. He had 
 promised her that he should begin the instant Greg 
 gave him an opportunity; and, after holding away from 
 him for two weeks, Greg had come back into their old 
 relationship, and the chance had started coming. Then,
 
 NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE 101 
 
 he had gone to the Regent Club with Bradbroke that 
 was the name of the club and the chance would have 
 
 come straight to him, if That was it, the thing he 
 
 came back and back to. And, now, the chance to help 
 Greg and Anne, and to relieve Her, could never come. 
 
 He shook his head, putting his hand to his forehead. 
 He felt something almost approaching amazement that 
 his chance to do what he now knew that he could never 
 do, had passed with such finality. And his amazement 
 brought him back to his earlier question: after all wasn t 
 the evening there, and the nGaka s coming, and the 
 rest, only a dream? He strove to believe it. He longed 
 for the morning, the morning which should bring him 
 back to himself, the morning which, broken free by the 
 swing of the sun up out of the Indian Ocean, should restore 
 the hope which had been so gloriously dear to him. 
 
 It would come. Yes, it would come. But, until it 
 came? He fell back on the question again. He could 
 not get past it! Trying, his thoughts steeple-chased 
 into each other, and he could not stop them. So again he 
 swung them back to America, the land that was real, the 
 land of sound realities: back there, there were a lot of 
 men he knew well and could rely on every time. His 
 classmates, many of them. He was young yet; he d 
 been graduated only eight years ago; and he thought, 
 with a sudden, relieving warmth, of his undergraduate 
 life, its freedom, its irresponsibility: he remembered a 
 club-dinner, the latest (he would not admit it could be 
 that last) he d been at; how, in the middle of the singing, 
 a dyed-in-the-wool Easterner had turned to him to 
 say:
 
 102 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Peoria, Illinois, is my ideal town! Does any one here 
 know the Michigan song? We don t know how to sing 
 any more at Harvard. To get really good harmony, 
 now, a man has to go to one of the Western colleges!" 
 
 Yes, Scattergood had been as tight as that ! 
 
 He remembered, and smiled again, at what another 
 man had told the room of having gone out to buy a water- 
 power. A club-dinner, in junior year, yet holding up 
 the crowd about a water-power! "I wanted to buy it," 
 the man had detailed, irrepressibly, "and how much do 
 you think they wanted for ten days of fifteen hours each? 
 What? Six hundred hours a week. Make a guess! Make 
 a guess!" He had insisted that the room should "make 
 a guess." And, by the time they had gotten their voices, 
 and begun to "guess" for him, the would-have-been buyer 
 of water-power had fallen asleep, while telling them that 
 "Stepping-stones were but the Failures of Success." 
 
 How crazy it had all been! How senseless! But the 
 men were all right: they were rarely that way. Now, 
 they were all eight years out of college, and working hard, 
 took up more space in cars and taxis and busses, and had 
 less hair. They were serious-minded enough now. He 
 remembered them as he had run on them later in offices of 
 all sorts, and, representing an hundred professions and 
 occupations on the streets. They were working hard, 
 getting over-serious, some of them, most of them; some of 
 them had struck him as having forgotten what relaxation 
 was ! But they had been irresponsible then that 
 evening when Scattergood had preached of Peoria, and 
 Harding had drowned them with his water-power. How 
 typical of that time had been that Irresponsibility!
 
 NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE 103 
 
 These and a thousand other unrelated, distracted, dis 
 organized thoughts telescoped into each other through 
 his runaway brain as if flung there by a jeering imbecile. 
 Jeering, for that Irresponsibility was gone, now with 
 such desperate speed and irrevocability that he could 
 already look back on it as on a thing which had not been 
 his in a century. They were as far behind him, those 
 happy, idle, careless, care-free days, as if they had never 
 
 been his even momentarily. Some time He caught 
 
 himself. What had he been going off on then? On, his 
 thoughts flew, automatically, and he was as far as ever 
 from being able to intercept or catch up with them. 
 It was as if he were just on the point of falling asleep, 
 had, that is, that easing contentment which, already 
 merging into restful oblivion, abandons thought, and 
 even self, in sleep. 
 
 But he knew it was not that. He knew that he was 
 fighting to get back his point-of-view of two hours before, 
 one hour, half. He was trying to get back behind the 
 instant when the witch-doctor had gone and Fraser had 
 died; he was struggling to get back to the moment when, 
 so full of hope and confidence in the ability of himself 
 and his money to keep his promise to Her, he had said, 
 in his heart : 
 
 "Greg s come back, and brought me the chance to 
 help him. In the morning, I ll have something to tell 
 Her!" He was trying to get back to that. 
 
 But he couldn t. For this was in truth South Africa, 
 Durban; and the witch-doctor had really said that; and 
 Jem Fraser, the English boy, had died. That was what 
 had to be faced now. It was what was before him. He
 
 104 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 was walking into it, and it was following him. It was a 
 terrible misfortune, and he had earned it in no way. But 
 it was his! Death, fast and soon! 
 
 Moreover, he knew that the Thing must always be 
 with him, no matter where he went or how long It let 
 him live. It would always be on the tip of his tongue 
 to tell people about It, precisely as the man with a physi 
 cal affliction always tells people about that, as if his fear 
 that they wouldn t discover his loss, otherwise, were his 
 closest, most lively thought. The only difference between 
 himself and the physically disabled man was that, whereas 
 the physically disabled man could tell people, he himself 
 must go through the world without the relief of confessing 
 speech. 
 
 But he would not leave South Africa. He should 
 stay on in Durban. Though his power to help Anne and 
 Greg for Her had been so mercilessly taken away from 
 
 him, he should stay on because The truth flashed 
 
 before his eyes, then : it was so that he should be near her, 
 close to her; her gentleness was what his stricken strength 
 needed. He could not do anything, now; but he had 
 seen her sympathy. Her softness and her girlish fragility 
 would support him. How he needed them, needed all 
 that he knew she was! He would like to go to her now, 
 and kneel down beside her and feel, on his face, the 
 touch of her small, soft hands. 
 
 Somehow, he had found his way to his rooms, and 
 staggered up the stairs to them. If only he could feel 
 her hands on his temples! His face went down. The 
 sun swung up out of the Indian Ocean. Morning! But 
 the hands which pressed his temples were his own.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 MORNING 
 
 MORNING! And, on the instant, the air was a 
 glitter. The cool air of the night was stolen. 
 His rooms seemed a vacuum. He knew that 
 the wind had changed, and now flowed down out of the 
 equator 30 degrees to the north. He realized that he was 
 fully dressed. A fresh riddle. He was cramped. Why? 
 Before he was conscious of the gamut his thoughts had 
 raced through, they had circled back, like a hover of 
 pigeons, and he knew that he must see Bradbroke, look 
 him up, for Bradbroke might delay, and even the bare 
 thought of delay was insupportable. For so much hung 
 on the answer to the first question he should ask Brad- 
 broke : if Fraser were really dead. 
 
 He threw off his clothes, and shaved, and splashed him 
 self with cold water. Ordinarily, he would have done his 
 setting-up exercises, as any anatomist would have known 
 from the muscles of his arms, legs, and back, or from the 
 way he moved. But now, iron-bound as the habit was, 
 the big man did not once think of his setting-up exercises. 
 Breakfast somewhere to fill in the time. Then, Brad- 
 broke. Then? 
 
 In what seemed a very long time to him, yet was a 
 matter of only a few moments, he was standing in the 
 street. Then, he realized that it was not six o clock yet. 
 
 105
 
 106 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Most of the city slept. Bradbroke, asleep or awake, 
 would ill-receive him before nine. And he turned back, 
 up his two flights of stairs, glad that he had removed 
 his stuff from Greg s rooms, and got rooms of his own a 
 week before. But of one thing he was sure : that he could 
 not wait for Bradbroke until nine. 
 
 Unconsciously, he had gained the habit of asking him 
 self questions, and the fact recurred to him. The fact, 
 and its predecessor his old, unthinking habit of the 
 affirmative: before, he had always said things straight 
 out; things had always been so or not. He had claimed 
 the right of decision. In the old, irresponsible days, 
 which, he realized now, had lasted up to the hour of 
 Eraser s dying, he had rarely asked questions, least of 
 all of himself. He had never been very analytical. 
 There had been no need. But now 
 
 He threw the curtain back, let the light in, and stared 
 at himself in his mirror. Then, he leaned closer, though 
 his first emotion had been amazed aversion: did he look 
 like that? More questions! He d got to stop asking 
 himself questions. The habit led a man nowhere, or it 
 depressed him. Either must be avoided. He didn t 
 know which was worse. Realizing that he was talking 
 aloud for companionship, he felt very much alone and 
 shook his head. 
 
 "This sort of thing is all wrong," he said aloud. "I ve 
 got to get hold of myself." 
 
 And he fell back on his habit of exercise as a means of 
 getting hold of himself. He went through all his con 
 tractions, and twists and turns and swings, until his 
 blood ran free and his muscles gave friendly, pleasantly
 
 MORNING 107 
 
 reminiscent cracks. Then, the best imitation of a shower- 
 bath his equipment could manage, and he dressed, won 
 dering how he could have gotten into his clothes before, 
 without first having those eighteen exercises and the 
 rub-down. 
 
 Then, he descended the stairs again; and, this time, 
 making the sidewalk, swung off down the street, his 
 pipe, charged with the strong, dry, Boer tobacco, lighted, 
 the smoke, another friendly thing, tasting as good as 
 the carbonite stem, between his lips. 
 
 As he knew that he should, he walked the length of 
 Berea Road and came to the Netherbys . There was no 
 sign of life or motion there, and he was anxious until 
 he looked at his watch again. It was going somehow, 
 
 somewhere, he had wound it but He looked at 
 
 the clock in the square: it was only half -past six. Two 
 hours and a half until nine and Bradbroke. 
 
 He turned up Essenwood Road. Seven. Then, Pine 
 Street. Half-past. Next, West Street, where the coolies 
 and Kaffirs lived no, he remembered that was Pine 
 Street, he hadn t noticed; but now seemed to remember 
 that some of them had stared at him stupidly. He hated 
 them, and wished that he could find excuse for using 
 his fists on them, the desire so strong that he walked 
 back to Pine Street. But no chance offered. Still, he 
 had gained by the detour, for it was eight o clock, when 
 he swung into Berea Road again. Half-past eight, by 
 the time he made his lodgings again. It would be nine, 
 in an half hour. Then yes, and there was Bradbroke, 
 waiting for him on the steps. 
 
 The big man s mirror had showed him a face which
 
 108 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 reduced his pulse, then raised it. But not even his mem 
 ory of his own face had prepared him for the face of Greg : 
 the Englishman had the look of a young man turned 
 suddenly old; he was unkempt, who had always been so 
 immaculate; he was unbrushed, and unshaven; he could 
 not have washed in a fortnight. He must have gone 
 crazy ! 
 
 In another moment he had Bradbroke up the stairs 
 with the door fast. 
 
 "Look here," he broke out, "you can t go on this way! 
 You remember what what s his name? Hammerstone 
 said: we re not to tell people. And you will, if you keep 
 this up. Go in there and fix yourself. My clothes won t 
 do. They re too big; but you can manage with my 
 razors and brushes and the rest ! " 
 
 In his anxiety, the American had asked the younger 
 man nothing. But after Greg had obeyed him and 
 emerged from the dressing-room, the question came back 
 dominatingly, and he shot it; 
 
 "Brad have I got it right: did the witch-doctor say 
 that, last night, and did Fraser die, Bradbroke?" 
 
 "Yes," Greg said with an effort. "You . . . 
 you ve got it right." 
 
 The big man stood motionless. After all, he had known 
 it all along. He looked slowly about the room. How 
 quiet everything was ! He went to the window. Clearly, 
 the city still lacked their secret, theirs and Chadwell s 
 and Paxton s and Carstairs , for the low-lying hive blinked 
 negatively, its aspect all unchanged. Then, he went 
 back to Bradbroke, at once to wonder again at that gray, 
 set face.
 
 MORNING 109 
 
 "Bradbroke, I tell you again," the big man said, 
 "you ve got to go about it differently; once you re seen 
 like this, the first man you meet, after it s out, will start 
 
 an inquiry. I tell you " He leaned closer to the 
 
 younger man, placing a big hand steadingly upon his 
 arm. 
 
 At the touch, Bradbroke started, then sank back again. 
 
 "Oh, it s all right for you" he broke out. 
 
 "All right, you say," the American breathed, in a low 
 whisper. "You say it s all right with me?" It was 
 hardly a question. He was remembering his first thought, 
 on the sight of Bradbroke, half an hour back: that Greg 
 had gone imbecile. 
 
 The younger man read his eyes. " No, I m not that, any 
 way not yet. I mean you re all right in comparison." 
 He watched the big man for a long moment, then shook 
 himself free : "Yes, and you are, too, I say, in comparison, 
 for you know It s not going to hit you until It s finished us. 
 And you do know that, don t you? Of course, you do!" 
 He was affirming and demanding with equal resentment. 
 "You can sit tight, and watch It pick us off like birds on 
 
 a branch! I say, ain t that so? While we " His 
 
 voice trailed off into an unintelligible whisper of black 
 brooding and weakness. "All we can do is wait. How 
 many of us are there in it? Four left, and you. Two, 
 three, four. Then, the one that s left of us. Then, you. 
 But how about us? Is it going to be me next, then 
 Chadwell, then Paxton, then Carstairs; or Chadwell 
 
 first, or Carstairs, or Brett Paxton, then " He sent 
 
 his arms out, and lay back in his chair. "That s what 
 I mean," he said. "In comparison!"
 
 110 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 And the big man heard himself saying, "I beg your 
 pardon, Bradbroke. I hadn t thought of that" 
 
 He had not thought of it. This side of the misfortune, 
 which had wrecked their lives, had not occurred to him. 
 It had been so personal, had so suddenly and wholly 
 incapacitated him from even attempting the thing he 
 had set his heart on, that, in the daze of his own misery, 
 he had not once considered the more immediate fate of 
 the other men. The thing had seemed his alone, a cursed 
 monopoly. But he knew now; and, knowing, saw that 
 Bradbroke s portrayal of their position had been not 
 more terrible than accurate; and he tried to think of the 
 sensations of Bradbroke and the other three, Chadwell, 
 and Paxton, and Carstairs. 
 
 Yes, "in comparison," he was "all right," for, as Greg 
 had said, they must go before he did. Must? The word 
 had come automatically; but he did not retract it or 
 qualify it. He could not. No one could, who had 
 heard that grim prophecy; and even the sheerest skeptic 
 must have been converted to faith by Eraser s death. 
 Must? Yes, that was it: they must go before he did. 
 For him well, on the face of it, he could still call him 
 self "a good risk," though he felt his flesh creep at the 
 expression, for the "risk," however good, was only an 
 absolute, though uncertainly delayed certainty. 
 
 He tried to rouse himself, to tell himself that his state 
 was not so alarming; the four would go first. But Brad- 
 broke By Heaven ! the thing seemed on him even 
 
 now: he was only a boy, with a boy s eyes, the wist 
 ful eyes of one who looked into the world with a hope 
 half-hoped for, instead of a steady confidence. The
 
 MORNING 111 
 
 big man knew the type well. He had thought they were 
 pretty much their own fault. He had thanked heaven tha t 
 personally But he had come to realize, later, that 
 people were pretty much as they were born, or marred, 
 or made. 
 
 The American looked at Bradbroke guardedly, then with 
 frank pity. For the boy was sitting just as Ormsby 
 had placed him, in the chair. He was facing the wide- 
 thrown window, looking out on The big man won 
 dered what Bradbroke saw. Not the Netherbys roof, he 
 hoped, though he feared it. Yet, better that than the 
 stark, half-nude figure of the barbaric prophet of only 
 ill; and even that, better than the body of Fraser, settled 
 low, white, inert, and drooping, across Hammerstone s 
 sustaining arms. 
 
 "Bradbroke, old man," he said. "Greg!" As if 
 Greg had been a younger brother, the big man steadied 
 him with his arm. 
 
 The other shivered. "Don t," he begged. "Don t 
 look at me like that. Am I so Instead of finish 
 ing, he got to his feet, and turned his slender back to 
 the window. "I tell you, we ve got to do something. 
 I mean Hammerstone s been at me. I remember what he 
 said we d say of him, but Carstairs is right: the man s 
 a perfect swine. They get that way, I suppose doctors ! 
 He came in, just as I was leaving to come here. Says 
 it will be this afternoon at three. In the hospital plot. 
 He says we can come, you and Chadwell and Paxton and 
 Carstairs and I as if we just wanted to look about the 
 hospital. He s going to show some of what he calls his 
 pet cases. Horrible, isn t it! They get that way!"
 
 112 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 He nodded sagely as if what he knew about doctors 
 enabled him to read them like an open book. "Where 
 was I? Saying we re to go through the hospital. 
 Hammerstone s to be surprised to see us come in: it s 
 to be: 
 
 " My word, this is the last thing! You chaps here?* 
 Good-fellowship, you know. Then, he ll say : 
 
 * Nothing much on, this afternoon! No operation 
 that amounts to anything. Putting a chap underground 
 though. Care to see how it s done here? He stopped 
 short. "Horrible, isn t it? Worst kind! Couldn t have 
 believed it!" He stopped again, shaking his head, 
 drearily. "I ve seen the others, and they re promised. 
 We all ought to go. No more than right. I say, you ll 
 meet us there at three?" 
 
 "Of course," said the big man. "Meet you there at 
 three." 
 
 He knew that he should not go, that he had not the least 
 intention of going. By a miracle of will, he had heard 
 Bradbroke out, and deceived him into gratitude for the 
 promise. But he knew that he should not go, that 
 Bradbroke himself would not go, or Chadwell, or Paxton, 
 or Carstairs. He knew that they, like himself, would 
 hide themselves the deepest they could at three; that 
 not that afternoon, or ever, live as long as they might 
 in South Africa, would they go, or allow themselves, 
 consciously, to be carried, to that hospital ! 
 
 Greg was speaking again. "Some one had to tell you. 
 I mean one of us. I didn t want to be the one. Tried 
 to make Chadwell: he s always but he said this was 
 different: said I was the best. Said I d gotten you into
 
 MORNING 113 
 
 this and played skittles with your life, by bringing you 
 down here from Kimberley." 
 
 "Greg!" Just the one word. But to the big man, at 
 least, it answered Chadwell. Then, the American s 
 strong hands went to the slender shoulders. "You said 
 I was all right, Greg, in comparison, and I understand 
 what you mean, now. But I m going to ask a difficult 
 thing of you: I m going to ask you to believe that you 
 yourself won t go until after the others that you ll 
 be next to me. It s best, really. And, after all, though 
 this has knocked us all down, we won t stay down. We ll 
 just suppose that, whoever s the next, will have good, 
 long years before he goes. I say it s the best way to 
 think of it, Greg. It s the only way. And all this as 
 suming that Fraser wouldn t have died last night if it 
 hadn t been for that fiend s prophecy." 
 
 Greg looked the American over with perfectly open 
 curiosity. "You mean you ve forgotten what Hackluytt 
 said, and can think Jem would have died there, then, 
 anyway? " He drew back from the big man as one might 
 from proximity to a powerful animal whose malady 
 might at any moment become dangerous. "I say, do 
 you mean that? No rot, mind," he warned. 
 
 The big man met his eyes miserably. "Greg, I m 
 making the best I can of it. God knows, I remember how 
 Hackluytt warned us. But, equally, I know that even 
 a man as sound-looking as Fraser may drop any minute. 
 For anything beyond that, I go by Hammerstone." 
 He told himself that Greg must be gotten out of his 
 present mental state in some way, and truth had failed. 
 "So, I say, make the best of it. We ve all got to. And
 
 114 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 I say again we re alive still, and probably will live a stack 
 of years yet. I admit I d feel differently, if Carstairs 
 came in, now, and told us that Paxton or Chadwell had 
 
 gone; but so far " He saw that Greg had forgotten 
 
 him. "You re going to tell her? You ll feel you must. " 
 
 It jerked Bradbroke round, like a hand on his collar. 
 
 " Tell her! " he cried out. " Tell her? " 
 
 "I should think," the big man began. "Her 
 right " 
 
 Greg turned away blindly: 
 
 "You don t know what she s been through already. 
 She musn t have this, too. No, she mustn t have this, 
 too!" His lips broke. He made a groping gesture with 
 his hands, and walked, without a word, from the room. 
 
 And the man he had left looked after him, seeing as 
 little. Mechanically, he had taken his watch from his 
 pocket; and, as he held it without looking toward it, he 
 remembered that he was due, at five, that afternoon, at 
 a garden party. Lady Barn s invitation: a big man, 
 a friend of her husband, was up from the Cape. There 
 would be people. He slipped his watch back. Five 
 o clock. There would be a great many people. Strangers. 
 He should meet many of them and have to talk with 
 them. Five o clock. It was not yet ten. He had seven 
 hours in which to fight to get his poise back. When had 
 he begun to realize that he had a "poise"? But seven 
 hours! Seven centuries! Could he hide from any one of 
 them, even the dullest, what an effort of will it had been 
 for him to come?
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE FRUIT OF SEVEN HOURS 
 
 HE WENT. He had told himself and at last 
 come to believe that it was best that he should 
 go. The decision had not come all at once: at 
 eleven, after an hour s analysis, the feat seemed to him 
 more than ever impossible. At twelve, he felt that his 
 brain must have tilted, if he had even once seriously con 
 sidered going. One o clock. He had eaten, and, since 
 then, smoked continuously, beginning to feel something 
 half resembling self-confidence. But he had remembered 
 three then; and, though three was two hours away yet, 
 he had been able to see Hammerstone, the man of neither 
 blood nor nerves, and the body, which lay each instant 
 more clear and dead before their eyes. He could hear Ham 
 merstone say, providing the others did go to the hospital : 
 
 "My word! You chaps here?" And their scheduled 
 answer: 
 
 "Nothing else to do." Then the rest of the rigmarole. 
 Gad, his brain had turned! Two: Three. He lay in his 
 rooms. Four. Somehow, he had stood the hours out. 
 Then, perhaps to escape visualizing Hammerstone s un 
 feeling faithfulness to his promise by heaven! he had 
 seen Hammerstone doing it with his very hands! he 
 had girded himself, and gone firmly down to the street at 
 five. 
 
 115
 
 116 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 He said to himself, as he entered Lady Barn s garden: 
 "I shall see no one I shall have to say ten words to. I ll 
 be passed along from one to another of a crowd I ll never 
 see again," and was immediately captured by Lady Bam, 
 and presented to her cousin, Lady Haseltine-Clegge, who, 
 with her husband, had accompanied the Duke and the 
 Duchess from the Cape. 
 
 The American, who had nerved himself to endure con 
 versation, found it a relief. Yes, it was distinctly a 
 relief to talk with Haseltine-Clegge. It was distinctly 
 a relief to talk with any man who could not possibly 
 suspect, and therefore could not possibly suggest, what 
 the big man was fighting to absent from his mind. From 
 time to time, Haseltine-Clegge brought other men up 
 men, for the most part called to Durban from Jo burg, 
 Maritzburg, and Pretoria, by the presence of the Duke; 
 and a good half dozen from Kimberley, who had 
 watched the American s stupendous gains there, and 
 were glad to meet the man himself. He met their wives 
 and daughters. He was beseiged with invitations. Not 
 yet realizing that the trivialities of life, the external, 
 commonplace things always come in mercifully to dull 
 the edge of tragedy, he marvelled at the power of these 
 Africanders so to steady him by their banalities. In 
 anticipation, he had held meeting these strangers an ordeal, 
 but, when at last he took leave of Haseltine-Clegge and 
 the rest, he confessed lasting gratitude; and he even 
 smiled as he worked his way toward the gate. 
 
 Yes, he was glad he had come. How happy and un 
 conscious all these people were the crowd coming and 
 going! Nearby was a pavilion, tented for dancing. He
 
 THE FRUIT OF SEVEN HOURS 117 
 
 could hear the orchestra drum mostly; and, looking 
 over the shoulder-high railing, could see the dancers 
 apparently merely bouncing up and down. From time 
 to time a young fellow would come out saying, to this 
 one and that, that he was looking for his sister: he had just 
 left her "here," he said, each time; "just here." He would 
 look about nervously. And each time, some one of the 
 boys he appealed to would ask: 
 
 "What colour was she? I ll help you, old chap. What 
 did she have on her head?" 
 
 They were coming and going all around, now, for the 
 afternoon was fading. Some of them nodded frankly 
 to him, setting him wondering where they thought they 
 had seen him before. He knew none of them; but the 
 large proportion were English, their faces familiar in all but 
 identity. And he smiled, and nodded back to them. 
 His poise was coming back, his youth. He lived again. 
 He was young still; still not yet thirty. Not even the pres 
 ence of Chadwell and Paxton and Carstairs, though he 
 discovered them quite unexpectedly, tilted his regained 
 equilibrium. He was sorry for them, but not one with 
 them. They were Exiles, as Catherine Hetheridge had 
 said. He moved toward them, was about to speak to 
 them, when he came suddenly upon Catherine her 
 self. 
 
 He wished that he might have avoided her, but won 
 dered how she would be, this time: in the spirit in which 
 he had last seen her, or wearing her earlier manner her 
 strange, oddly absent bravado? 
 
 She was neither. "Glad to find you," she said, holding 
 out her hand, which caught his with the grasp almost of a
 
 118 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 man. " I didn t know whether you d remembered, or for 
 gotten and gone back to Kimberley." 
 
 He waited. If she were acting, her achievement was 
 magnificent. On the other hand, holding such multifold 
 contradictions, she might for the moment mean to be 
 genuine. He was quite at a loss. Only the fact that her 
 eyes rested on him, recalled their talk at her gate; yet, 
 even in this, an observer would have read no concession 
 or recognition, by her, of any attribute; for her manner, 
 despite the frank hand-clasp, was impersonal such as 
 she might have accorded a tolerated, married, middle- 
 aged, male relative. 
 
 She puzzled him. Perhaps, she saw this, and was 
 pleased to preserve it, for she spoke again, before he could: 
 "I said I thought you might have gone back." Then she 
 changed, "I mean I hoped you had. No," as he looked 
 down at her, " don t think I m going back to that. Only, 
 I want you to know that I remember, shall always 
 remember. And well, it s just as I said : you can t 
 do it. You re the most direct and and best-equipped 
 man I ve ever known, but not even you can do it. They ve 
 got to go on as they are, and I " 
 
 He held up a warning hand. 
 
 She inclined her head, and said in a perfectly matter-of- 
 fact tone: "I won t, then. But it s all mapped out 
 and laid down for us. It s the beds our fathers ill luck or 
 ours have made for us, that and South Africa!" She 
 turned half from him as calmly as Haseltine-Clegge had 
 done a quarter of an hour earlier. "What a world it is! 
 What liars we all are ! See that tall, absolutely dressed 
 woman? No, that doesn t identify her to you. That.
 
 THE FRUIT OF SEVEN HOURS 119 
 
 woman in gray, with the profile? That oh, can t you 
 see her! Well, the fifth woman toward me from the table 
 with the gray sunshade? Now, you see her, and I can go 
 on: I interested that woman. She s the Countess of 
 Carrick. It s away up somewhere in Scotland. She s 
 asked me to stop there, this winter, when I go back. She 
 thinks I m going. She believed me. I said what liars 
 we all are, and I m merely defining ! Witness what I told 
 my Countess about this winter and home. Even gave 
 her the month! Why not," she demanded, though with 
 out looking up at him, "when everything about me is 
 untruth face, figure, manner, clothes even? My gown 
 impressed my Countess. Right, too, for (I m going to 
 tell you, for I want you to know, and you wouldn t, 
 otherwise) this coat is Irish lace, mind, over a gown of 
 French handwork. The hat s not much, maybe: only 
 cream straw, pink roses and green leaves; but the green 
 matches what holds the coat across, here," she raised her 
 hands to her breast; "and it s a good green: as every 
 woman knows, it brings out the gold in your hair and the 
 pink in your face, if you ve got em, and I have. Just 
 as these pearls," her hands went to her round throat, 
 "show off my skin." 
 
 Not once had she looked at him. 
 
 "They re the last of my relics. My grandfather s. I ll 
 tell you about him : he lived the life of a recluse at Hyde 
 Park Gardens. By parsimony and safe investment he 
 ran up the 100,000 his father had left him to three quar 
 ters of a million. He quarrelled with every one ! He shut 
 himself up in his house and saw none of his relatives for 
 fifty years ! We ransacked his house at his death for his
 
 120 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 will; but none was found. Every book in the place 
 was separately examined, but to no purpose. In fact, 
 we never found that will. In the end, the fortune was 
 divided among all of us. Then, there was much litigation. 
 My father s solicitors named their sons after him t . 
 and retired and opened town houses, when the courts 
 finally heard the last of it. I ve told you the rest: my 
 father died, and we came to South Africa. Strikes you 
 as beside the point, maybe; but I m telling you where my 
 pearls come from. Are you clever enough to see I m 
 putting my best foot foremost in telling it? Try to make 
 it out, and, if you can t, take my word for it! They re 
 mine, and they came to me from my grandfather, though 
 you know I m trying to make a Mrs. Turvydrop out of 
 Madame Zelig at 30 a month and nothing found ! 
 Come over and give me some tea I mean let me give 
 you some, some time. I m in always. How we ve 
 rambled! If these people heard us! Do you ever think 
 how one would electrify people if he spoke his thoughts? 
 Probably not. You re an exception, and your closet 
 is empty; but the rest of us " 
 
 Again, and still without glancing at him, she sent her 
 slender hands out. Her throat swelled, lifting the rope 
 of pearls. "If, now, I should shout what I m thinking, 
 my Countess I liked so " 
 
 She raised her head, for one instant letting him meet 
 the eyes which were the colour of the blue soil about Kim- 
 berley. "You ve set me confessing again. You ll al 
 ways have people doing that. I m not complimenting 
 you. I m stating your function. I suppose part of it s 
 your not talking, and " She cut the words off.
 
 THE FRUIT OF SEVEN HOURS 121 
 
 There was nothing diamondiferous about her strange eyes 
 now. She turned from him, then back to him. " In ten 
 years, five, how much of this shall we remember? Little, 
 I hope; and pray, not one thing. Don t look about so 
 industriously, for she s not here. She s reading aloud 
 to Anne Netherby. Isn t she, Hugh?" 
 
 Turning with her, the big man saw that Chadwell had 
 come up and was watching, moodily. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "That is, I ve not seen her. I ll ask 
 Paxton and Carstairs, if you like? " 
 
 She allowed him to believe that the interest had been 
 hers. "Thanks, no. It s no matter. I ll run over, 
 directly." 
 
 It was almost a dismissal, but Chadwell stayed. 
 
 "There s something " He hesitated, then swung to 
 
 the big man. " Seen the News? " 
 
 As he spoke, he passed the folded newspaper to Cath 
 erine. 
 
 "It s about Jem," he explained, slowly. "It says 
 he s gone." 
 
 "Gone? You mean " 
 
 With a control at which the American marvelled, Chad- 
 well reassured her. "Not that, or I d have prepared you. 
 Just bolted the country. Says he was seen, this morning, 
 about noon, boarding the N. G. R. at Ladysmith. Must 
 have ridden all night to do it. We saw him, you remem 
 ber, Ormsby, at the club, last night. Seemed all fine then." 
 
 The American nodded. He was grateful that the girl s 
 eyes were on the paper, which shook in her fingers. 
 "Can t something be done? I should think he could be 
 traced."
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Not much hope in that, I m afraid," Chadwell dis 
 couraged. "Not out here!" 
 
 "But " Catherine began. Then, "Poor little Jem! 
 
 Poor, little Jem ! I wonder what 
 
 Chadwell nodded slowly. "I ve just seen Paxton and 
 Carstairs. We re looking for Bradbroke. Have either 
 of you seen him? He ought to know." 
 
 Looking here and there, Chadwell turned away from 
 them. But, after a step or two, he came back. "I 
 say," he began, "we d best be as light as we can in judging 
 him." It was very well done, for he looked at the Ameri 
 can. "He s probably left a fair bit in the way of debts 
 behind. . . . Probably, that was it. Then, too," 
 he was still addressing the big man, "he d had the worst 
 
 sort of a facer from home. A girl. So you won t " 
 
 The man was wonderful: the absolute embodiment of one 
 loyally shielding the reputation of a friend." 
 
 Indeed, Chadwell s characterization was so shade- 
 perfect that the American found his role ready and wait 
 ing, when played up to in so rare a way. He said: 
 
 "No need, Chadwell. There s no need in the world! 
 Then, too, you remember I knew him myself, a little, and 
 that counts with a man like him." 
 
 "Beg your pardon," Chadwell said gravely, "only all 
 of us had known him so well, and you know a chap " 
 
 "I know." 
 
 Paxton and Carstairs came up. "Seen Greg?" the 
 singer asked, in little more than a whisper. 
 
 While he answered in the negative, the big man studied 
 them: they had themselves not quite so well in hand as 
 Chadwell had; just, even then, they were admirable.
 
 THE FRUIT OF SEVEN HOURS 123 
 
 "Horrible!" Paxton went on. "I can t simply bring 
 
 myself to believe he s Come along, Carstairs : 
 
 Greg s probably at the Netherbys ." 
 
 "I ll go with you," said Chadwell. 
 
 The girl looked after them, then sighed. "I think I ll 
 go home, Mr. Ormsby," she said, in the odd, detached 
 way which he knew he should always associate with her. 
 "And I ll take this." She indicated the green pages of 
 the cheaply gotten out newspaper. "Poor little Jem, 
 I wonder" she stopped, then went on, "I wonder what 
 he I hope he finds what he went for," she said. "He d 
 never have found it here! " 
 
 Then, she turned absently from him, hesitated, half- 
 turned back, then walked away slowly, leaving the big 
 man standing silent and alone.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE WISDOM OF HAMMERSTONE 
 
 A)NE ! And yet, as he walked to his rooms, after 
 leaving Lady Bam and the others, he felt mar 
 vellously less lonely than he had nine hours, or 
 even three, before. Moreover, now that the News had 
 spun its "explanation" of Eraser s exit, the big man s 
 position oppressed him decreasingly. 
 
 He was able to look ahead, now; able, too, to look 
 back even to three o clock, to Hammerstone, and the 
 hospital plot, the last resting-place of the "unclaimed." 
 Indeed, looking thither from his present security, he 
 was amazed that, among so many hysterical men 
 himself, Bradbroke, Chadwell, the singer, and Car- 
 stairs even a doctor could have preserved his sanity. 
 Sanity? Yes, by Jove! Hammerstone had been the only 
 sane one! He himself, who had always prided himself 
 so on his nervelessness, had gone off, like a girl, because a 
 crazed nigger fakir had mumbled, and a boy, whose heart 
 was probably bad anyway, had died. Of course, the 
 witch-doctor had been a hard-looking ticket. Never 
 before had been such a Death s head on such a Devil s 
 body! To imagine the Pit preceptored by similar fiends 
 was enough to turn any man s thoughts toward rectitude ! 
 And Eraser s dying had been staggering. Let the thing 
 have happened in any club even in New York or in Boston, 
 
 124
 
 WISDOM OF HAMMERSTONE 125 
 
 in broad daylight, with the prophet a white man, and it 
 would have been staggering! But Hammerstone had 
 been right: it was only a coincidence! Of course, he 
 couldn t tell Her anything about it, but it would be good 
 to see her. ... In another moment, he was on his 
 way to the Netherbys . 
 
 He reached the house, even before he was aware that 
 he had begun to climb the drive, and his heart leaped, as 
 he thought of what it meant to him. By heaven! how 
 much he had forgotten, through the dark hours from which 
 he had come! Well, he d make up for lost time, now! 
 There d be tennis and cricket and hunting and the races. 
 Gad! he d forgotten race- week, too. It was waiting! 
 
 So was a slender, girlish figure, distinct in the half-light 
 on the top step toward which he was rising. And, in his 
 joy at her, the big man hardly heard Greg s: 
 
 " There you are, Ormsby ! Just going to send for you ! " 
 And Anne s, "Really, we were, Mr. Ormsby. We ve 
 been talking of that terrible story in the News of Jem. 
 Hugh says he showed it to you and Catherine. Or did 
 you tell us, Catherine?" 
 
 Without waiting for Miss Hetheridge, whom the big 
 man now saw for the first time, Anne raced on: "Isn t 
 it the most horrible thing you ever heard of? Greg s told 
 me everything. Do you think there can be any truth in 
 it?" 
 
 They had crowded up around the American. But 
 Greg interfered. 
 
 "Oh, I say, Anne, and the rest of you, don t drive him 
 off this way ! As a matter of fact, he knows less about it 
 than any of us do, for he s not seen Fraser above half a
 
 126 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 dozen times. If you want any details, ask me, and I ll 
 go over all I ve said again." 
 
 There were corroborating "That s so s " from the 
 men; and the big man went to Lady Netherby for a 
 moment, then almost at once, had regained his place at 
 the side of the English violet, and even led her a little 
 way from the rest. 
 
 He had planned to talk at first of Eraser, though only 
 for her relieving; and he was grateful that the subject 
 had been so thoroughly reviewed, and so adroitly, by 
 Greg and Paxton and Chadwell and Carstairs. 
 
 It was a welcome change of thought to turn to what he 
 planned for Greg, to affirm, again, to her, that the specula 
 tions into which he should be led could not go awry, to 
 remind her, again, all that it would bring to Greg and to 
 Anne marriage and England. He laughed. 
 
 "The hardest part s going to be our having to go so 
 slowly until we ve actually gotten him speculating." 
 
 She smiled, and nodded. "But then!" Her hands 
 came together. "I can hardly wait for it!" 
 
 He thrilled at her tribute her unquestioning faith 
 in him. "I think it s very fine and wonderful of you." 
 she said, shyly, in his hesitation. "I m very glad that 
 you felt willing to tell me; and I ll be very careful not to 
 let Anne suspect." 
 
 "Suspect what," Anne demanded, accusingly. With 
 Greg, she had come up behind. 
 
 "Something that s very nice but mustn t even be 
 guessed at," the girl laughed back. 
 
 Greg s eyes, which had been studying the big man, 
 brightened.
 
 WISDOM OF HAMMERSTONE 127 
 
 "Then," he said, "we mustn t even attempt to attempt 
 to guess." 
 
 Carstairs joined them then. The tete-a-tete was over. 
 Still, though the big man had hardly an uninter 
 rupted moment with her, during what remained of the 
 evening, he was smiling happily when he went, at last, to 
 his rooms. 
 
 "For the world s going on again, and we re in it," he 
 said aloud. He ran through his exercises jubilantly, and, 
 in the same room in which he had sat, with his face in his 
 hands, through the preceding night, he now went quietly 
 to sleep.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE WORLD WENT ON AGAIN 
 
 THE world went on, and they with it. Each 
 day, the air seemed brighter to him, the universe 
 fairer. The world went on, and they with it. A 
 thousand things flowed in, little, meaningless, pleasant 
 things, which filled his time and insured his thoughts. 
 Tennis, drives, dinners. Though the races would not 
 be on for a long week yet, some of the best of the visitors 
 had already come up from the Cape and down from Piet- 
 ermaritzburg, and still others from Pretoria. They 
 were getting used to the track, getting ready. He was 
 much at the Netherbys . Others demanded him. He 
 was impressed, American though he was, into the 
 English service for the club theatricals. 
 
 He took ah 1 of it gladly. At times, the face of Fraser 
 rose pallid before him; at these unsought glimpses back 
 ward the big man pitied the boy for his early fate as he 
 had not pitied him, or any of the rest, in life. But, 
 except at these visitations, decreasingly recurrent, he 
 forgot Eraser. Indeed, the boy was recalled less and 
 less even by those who had known him best, and, of neces 
 sity, must have missed him most. Of all these, Catherine 
 Hetheridge was the least callous another unguessed 
 element in her various complexity for she was rarely 
 alone with the American without harking back to 
 
 128
 
 THE WORLD WENT ON AGAIN 129 
 
 what, in another, might have seemed a personal de- 
 prival. 
 
 "For he was only a boy," she would say, over and over. 
 "And he d been out here so short a time!" She spoke 
 of what the world might have held for Fraser, what the 
 world should have given him. . . . Catherine 
 cherished Jem s every attribute and capability increas 
 ingly. To the big man, Catherine seemed almost to 
 have loved Fraser. It was unlikely, though. Chadwell, 
 perhaps. Easily ! But not poor, boyish Jem. Still, what 
 was ascertainable in Catherine Hetheridge; what im 
 possible? He could not have yielded her his sympathy 
 more if she had realized, as he did, the permanency of her 
 loss. And this new side of Catherine raised her high in 
 his regard. As he pitied Fraser, he pitied the girl who 
 mourned him. For his own peace of mind, the big man 
 tried to forget and so nourished the memory of what 
 she had told him of her relations with Madame Zelig and 
 the son, Beaconsfield. 
 
 The world went on. He saw Greg and Chadwell and 
 the singer and Carstairs continuously. By now, they had 
 come into the closest association. All sportsmen, they 
 had that strong bond in common, the big man found. 
 Then, too, he was a great reader, which caught Chadwell. 
 He loved music, which drew Paxton. Carstairs generally 
 beat him at tennis, but had to work to his top to do it, 
 which made the victor hold the game of the vanquished, 
 admirable. And he liked Greg so much for Her sake 
 she loved Anne that he did not try to identify the 
 strange, singularly hard streak, which, from time to time, 
 he encountered in the younger man. Sometimes, he
 
 130 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 wondered about Bradbroke; that hard streak sometimes 
 gave the big man anxiety. But Greg s charm of manner, 
 and his brilliancy, and the rest, made him discount it. 
 
 Unquestionably, Greg was brilliant. The big man 
 watched him at the rehearsals for the play, and marvelled 
 at his mastery of the art which had been denied the older 
 man. Yes, on that little stage, as on the larger, the stage 
 of their lives, Greg led his fellows. Chadwell was far 
 more intellectual; Carstairs far more of a force; Paxton 
 infinitely more of an artist. But it was Greg who led. 
 A professional, imported for the purpose from London, 
 could not have drilled them, women and men, more ably 
 or more rigidly. He schooled Anne as rigorously as he 
 did the others. Only Catherine Hetheridge dared openly 
 to rebel; but her acerbities failed to pierce his impassivity. 
 
 "I never saw two people fall in love with each other so 
 fast in my life. Did you? " Anne laughed to her fiance, one 
 late afternoon, as the big man and Marian went together 
 from the rehearsal. 
 
 Greg did not hear her. He was deep in rewriting some of 
 Carstairs lines. But, an hour later, when Anne returned 
 to the subject, he started back: 
 
 "In love? He mustn t fall in love with her!" 
 
 "Why, Greg, dear! Why not? Dad and mother feel 
 just as I do, that it s eminently suitable." Then, since 
 his eyes were still clouded, "Probably, we re borrowing 
 trouble, I mean you are, for her father will never let her 
 marry an American." 
 
 "Right, too," he said, his eyes clearing. "I like him 
 no end; but it ought to be an Englishman, for you can 
 never tell just what they ll think is all right Americans ! "
 
 THE WORLD WENT ON AGAIN 131 
 
 She kissed him, and he patted her hand. " See what you 
 can do, and I will, since you want it. He can t hurt me, 
 though he is a rather terrifying personality." 
 
 He laughed with her. "Just don t do anything or say 
 anything that could make her think of marrying him! 
 I don t ask anything more than that," he said, with 
 almost perfect naturalness. 
 
 "They ve got a secret between them, and it s about 
 us," she remembered, "and this shall be ours, about 
 them! And," she laughed again, "I ll be very careful 
 not to let her suspect. You remember she said that? 
 There, on the porch, the evening we went down the har 
 bour in the Duke s yacht. The night after poor Jem 
 went." 
 
 "Yes," he said slowly, "I know." 
 
 Like him, she had turned graver. "What a cold 
 blooded, heartless lot we are! A garden party, then a 
 dance and a dinner . . . right after he d dropped 
 out. It s as if we d forgotten him over night." 
 
 He shook his head. "Not at all: leading our own 
 lives isn t forgetting him. We ll always remember 
 Jem! But I can t see the good in making a fuss about 
 him, when all of us know he couldn t have been worse 
 off than he was here. I say," he broke off suddenly, 
 "remember the rehearsal to-morrow afternoon at five! 
 ChadwelPs in Pretoria, on the company s business, and 
 won t be back in time, so I ll have to take both parts; 
 but we ll make the best of it." 
 
 "Pretoria," repeated the girl, glancing at the rain- 
 sluiced windows. "Imagine Pretoria on such a day as 
 this!"
 
 132 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Don t try to. He wasn t keen on going, either. 
 Washout, somewhere in the mines. Remember: five 
 sharp, and see the others come! 
 
 "Yes, mister," she mocked. Then, her arms went 
 about his neck, and she was whispering almost fiercely: 
 "Greg, Greg, think how it will be when we re through 
 with all this, when you ve managed the money, and 
 we re married. Home!" She looked up into his face 
 tensely. "Do you ever try to imagine it?" 
 
 " Yea," he said uncertainly; then, with sudden defiance, 
 "Yes, God knows!" 
 
 She caught the strange look, which had leaped into 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Greg! "she cried. "Greg!" 
 
 "Don t," he half -pleaded. " I m doing all I can. I ve 
 done- 
 
 "You don t mean already?" She was so lost 
 in her own emotion that she failed to read his own. 
 "Tell me! Don t you see, I can t wait? " 
 
 "It s . . . coming!" Suddenly, the fear she had 
 been too blinded to see in his eyes, left them; he laughed 
 wildly down into her awestruck face. "Don t worry," 
 he flung out. "It s all right!" Then he kissed her, 
 held her a moment hard to him, then was off down the 
 drive. 
 
 But his mood changed instantly: he turned, in his 
 rickshaw, and waved his hand to her boyishly; then, 
 having seen her, for one swift second, between the trees, 
 which the curving drive drew together, he faced ahead 
 and stared silently into the beginning night, made almost 
 phosphorescent by the blazing moon.
 
 "Macho!" he cried to the Kaffir boy, who toiled be 
 tween the shafts of the rickshaw. "Faster!" he cried 
 again, at the bending, brown shoulders. He was tense, 
 restless rather than eager. Anne had disturbed him, 
 her own tenseness and her insistent questioning; and, 
 God knows, he had enough that was disturbing as it was! 
 If only he could have know^n! He d got to find Paxton 
 
 and Chadwell and Carstairs and He leaned far 
 
 forward, on the rickshaw seat, and almost instantly 
 became aware of a big body in white drill, standing, as 
 if waiting for him, at the gate. 
 
 "Chadwell," he said to himself, forgetting, for the 
 moment, that Chadwell was north in Pretoria. He looked 
 again. It was Ormsby, the American, but such an 
 Ormsby as he had never seen. The big man stopped 
 him with a short, hard gesture, laid his hand on the 
 wheel, and, leaning over, whispered dully: 
 
 "ChadwelVs gone." 
 
 "What!" Bradbroke demanded. "You say . . . 
 speak out, in God s name! my boy won t understand!" 
 
 But the American shook his head, his hand closing cold 
 as steel on Greg s shoulder. 
 
 "Paxton and Carstairs 11 tell you. Come!" 
 
 "Where are they?" Greg began, mechanically "But 
 it can t ... I tell you he can t have 
 Where?" 
 
 "My rooms." 
 
 "Get in," said Bradbroke He lurched to the farther 
 end of the narrow seat, started the "boy" with a single 
 word, a groan more than a whisper; then sagged against 
 the big man s shoulder, and closed his eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A THEY encountered the half-light of the street 
 lamps, the big man looked closely at Greg; 
 then, realizing that he might do this with 
 impunity, studied him profile, attitude, carriage of 
 the head and droop of the slender shoulders, his lamen 
 table lack of anything approaching ruggedness. 
 
 The rickshaw came to rest. "Here we are," said the 
 big man. "They re up there." 
 
 Neither spoke, while climbing the stairs. At their top, 
 the American stepped back so that the younger man 
 should enter before him, followed him in, and closed the 
 door. 
 
 Carstairs and the singer were standing just where he 
 had left them, when he had gone for Greg. He knew 
 that he should do most of the talking, having, in a 
 strange, unexpected way, taken Chadwell s place, and 
 he began at once: "Carstairs, tell Greg where and how 
 Chadwell died." 
 
 "You know where he went, Greg," Carstairs began 
 slowly; "it was three days ago. I was at the club with 
 him, when he got his note of instructions. It said that 
 seven inches of rain had fallen in the past twenty-four 
 hours up there, and the Pretoria and the Witwatersrand 
 areas were fast flooding. The May Consolidated dam 
 
 134
 
 WHOM CHAD WELL LEFT BEHIND 135 
 
 had been the first to burst, washing away the embank 
 ment of the Glencairn slimes dam; then, the Witwaters- 
 rand, lower down the valley, had gone. That was Hugh s 
 company s, and they had got word of it soon after the 
 slimes dam of the Simmer and Jack Mine had gone. 
 They d hunted him up right off then, and located him 
 with me, at the Regent, the little smoking-room just 
 off the main one. You know, of course. I " 
 
 The American nodded, his big voice interrupting 
 Carstairs first lapse into irrelevancy. "Yes, Carstairs, 
 we know. The point is, Greg, that Chadwell appears 
 to have gone up there as fast as anything could carry him. 
 He found fifteen feet of water over the railroad; houses 
 collapsing, and a lot of natives one hundred and thirty- 
 nine, it was known later imprisoned in the Witwaters- 
 rand. He went down after them. There were six other 
 white men, locked in by that water. I hope I should have 
 had the same pluck, if I d been there." 
 
 That was all. There was no statement by Carstairs 
 or the American as to the fate which had waited the one 
 hundred and forty-six men in those flooded, subterranean, 
 corridors of the Witwatersrand. And Bradbroke asked for 
 none. 
 
 "How I mean, when, did you hear?" he asked at 
 last. 
 
 The big man looked across to Carstairs. But Carstairs 
 had done. The musician, meeting the American s eyes, 
 jerked his head convulsively a gesture ridiculous, in 
 such a man, at any other time; but now eloquent of 
 anything! The American turned back to Bradbroke : 
 
 "Reuter telegram to the News, The editor knew that
 
 136 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Chadwell had lived with Carstairs, and got it right across 
 to him. Carstairs got me, and I went to the News office 
 at once, and saw the editor himself and the telegram. 
 While I was there, another telegram came in; but it was 
 only a repetition of the first one for the paper to transmit 
 to Chadwell s company. I went to the company with it, 
 and asked for any details they could give. They were 
 very good about it, considering they had only my word 
 I d been a friend of Chadwell, to go by. They d already 
 heard over their private wire. You d all have liked to 
 hear what they said of Chadwell. Do you know, he was 
 the only white man who d volunteer to go down? He 
 knew it was touch and go, but there were all those fellows 
 trapped down there, and he didn t waste any time. He d 
 been down the Witwatersrand a good many times, and 
 thought he knew a way out for them. He got into a 
 bucket and told them to lower him. The last thing he 
 did was to scribble a note, which he left with the super 
 intendent at the surface. That note is to us: you, Greg, 
 you, Carstairs and Paxton, and to me. It says: 
 " // 1 don t come up, forgive me, and good-bye. 
 "That was last night," the big man went on, after a 
 moment. "The super waited, there at the mouth, with 
 the rest. They waited all night. Waited hours, after 
 that, when all of them knew it was over. Then the 
 superintendent wired the note to Chadwell s company, 
 and the local manager gave the wire to me." 
 
 The big man s voice fell. He was trying to picture 
 Chadwell, the long, moody, lean man, writing that short 
 note, to those whom, in obedience to duty, he was, per 
 haps in the next minute, forever to .leave behind., Qbedi-
 
 ence? Or had it not been Fate, which had dispatched 
 him in the long reach of the sagging bucket, down into 
 the bowels of the drowning mine. Yes, Fate! The 
 big man affirmed it, just as he knew that Chadwell must 
 have affirmed it, as he stepped into the bucket, and gave 
 the word to the shivering Kaffir boy to lower. With a 
 shrewdness all its own, Fate had made Duty its scape 
 goat, and sent Hugh Chadwell down ! 
 
 The American turned back to the others. "I ve given 
 it to you just as his firm told me. Don t think I ve left 
 anything out. I haven t. It seems old to me already. 
 I don t try to account for the feeling, but, at the back of my 
 head, I knew it was coming!" 
 
 Through the abruptly dropped silence, he studied them 
 gaugingly, then began again: "We remember well 
 enough what Hammerstone called Fraser s death." 
 
 "Yes," Carstairs interrupted, "the swine! The cold 
 blooded, calloused, professional-hearted 
 
 Again, the big man controlled him. "No matter about 
 that, Carstairs. We all know!" He looked back to the 
 others, nodding as if to their unspoken thoughts. "There 
 were six of us, that night. There are four now. The 
 question is: what are we going to do?" 
 
 Carstairs leaned forward. "Do?" he asked. "You 
 want to know what we re going to do?" 
 
 "That s right," the musician broke in: "it s bad enough 
 to have you talk on, in your cursed, quiet way, as if 
 you d read it in a story somewhere. But, when you ask us 
 
 what we re going to " His face changed. " Ormsby , 
 
 can t you manage something, anything?" Like a 
 prisoner, he ran his eyes over the American s great body
 
 138 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 enviously. "I say," he trailed off, "what are we going to 
 do? We d got over Jem s going. Almost believed 
 Hammerstone. Know I did. Things seemed all right 
 
 again. But this, with Hugh " He went back, 
 
 "Remember how we said we d been off our heads that 
 night that devil came in? How we said It had hypno 
 tized us; that was why we d made such a mountain out 
 of it? End of the world for us? Nothing to hope for 
 after it? Laughed, you remember?" his haggard face 
 seeking their corroboration, "Got the play going? Never 
 got on so well at the rehearsals? All sorts of confidence? 
 Almost believed the News had it right, and Jem had only 
 run away from his debts? All truck! Sane, when we 
 thought we d been mad, and mad, when we thought we 
 were sane. Sane now!" The singer s voice, the rare 
 timbre frayed out, finished without interruption. There 
 was a long silence. 
 
 And the big man, looking from one to another of the 
 three men who seemed absolutely to have forgotten him, 
 understood : he knew that their silence cost them nothing, 
 for they could not have desired to say anything. There 
 was nothing to say. Not even he, the safest of the four 
 since the other three must go before he did could 
 suggest anything; and how much less must there be for 
 them! He knew that they would pass from the room, 
 presently, and, singly or together, realize, as they went 
 out, that they might have looked into each other s faces 
 for the last time. It could be no other way. Nothing 
 could save them from that realization. They might 
 never see each other again! Each parting, now, at the 
 club, or at the rooms of any one of them, or at any one
 
 WHOM CHAD WELL LEFT BEHIND 139 
 
 of the houses they met, might be the last. A good 
 night must now have the significance of a good-bye. The 
 world would see them as nearly themselves as their wills 
 could muster; but the three would know, just as he did. 
 They must think of it without relief. And each meeting, 
 after however brief a separation, would be a victory, 
 a staving off, still, of the definite Fate which now bayed 
 in full cry after them. 
 
 He knew that he should see at least two of the three 
 again. It was probable, rather, for it was conceivable 
 that the three would go at once. But he expected that 
 one by one would be the way of it. First, one taken, 
 and two left; then another off, leaving one. Then, 
 that one. And then ! 
 
 For the first time, his strong face set, and his body 
 sagged with something of the others inertia. But he 
 straightened his shoulders until his back took on its old 
 flatness. "We ve got to look this thing in the face now 
 for it s become an absolute certainty. We ve got to 
 watch ourselves, let others take risks. I just said I 
 hoped I d have done what Chad well did, if I d been in 
 his place, but I take that back, for our first duty, from 
 now on, is to protect each other and in no way hasten 
 the Thing s development. We ve got to stick together, 
 here in Durban." 
 
 "I don t know," Greg said, speaking for the first time, 
 and looking about him in an absent way which suggested 
 Catherine Hetheridge to the big man. " I ve been thinking 
 ever since you met me, there at the gate, and right through 
 your cursed sermon, that you d go back to America. 
 Why under Heaven don t you? You ve got money. Why
 
 140 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 do you hang on here, telling us what we ve got to do? 
 Oh, I know you re right," going back to his dead mono 
 tone again. " I know all that, but He broke 
 
 off abruptly, studying the American as one might a curi 
 osity, and saying, under his breath, to no one in particu 
 lar, "If the Thing were reversed, I mean our places, 
 I d . . . Again, he broke off, only again to come 
 
 back with, "If the chance were mine, I d ... I 
 say," with a perfectly transparent effort toward casual- 
 ness, "got any whiskey about the shop, Ormsby? Con 
 foundedly hot, I think. The one thing I ve against 
 South Africa is the climate. It s so confoundedly hot. 
 Just like this, most of the time, Ormsby. You d be 
 surprised." He shook his head, frowning. "Otherwise, 
 it s not half a bad spot, South Africa, just except for the 
 climate! And that s the one thing I have against the 
 country : it s too confoundedly 
 
 Carstairs whirled on him. "If you go through that 
 again, Greg, I ll Then, as Bradbroke stared at 
 him, round-eyed, " I ve stood all I can 
 
 Paxton cut him short with a flash of long hands, tense- 
 fingered. "I know / have. I ve stood more than I can," 
 he was buttoning his jacket hit or miss, and trying to 
 work back his limp shoulders. "I m going back to my 
 rooms. I ll do anything you say, after I ve gone home, to 
 my rooms, I mean as I ve just said. I ll do anything 
 you agree to, I mean agree to anything you do. You tell 
 me, one of you, if you can, in the morning. The trouble 
 
 with this climate " He choked back a laugh which 
 
 would have ended in a scream. "The trouble with us 
 is that we aren t taking this quietly. But, you know, I
 
 WHOM CHADWELL LEFT BEHIND 141 
 
 can t, somehow: all I can think of is who s going to be 
 the next one to go. The next one, see? That s all I 
 can think of, now, and I don t know what to 
 do with it." 
 
 He bobbed his head, half extended his long, slender 
 hand, the hand of a musician, recalled it, hesitated, then 
 went without a look or word from the room. 
 
 Carstairs turned, as if liberated to speech by the singer s 
 tread on the landing below. " That chap s got a no end 
 good voice. It s a pity. But," glancing at the pith 
 helmet Paxton had left behind him, "he ought not to 
 go out in this glare bareheaded: I think it s bad for 
 the eyes. Wouldn t matter so much," he explained to 
 the big man, "in a cool climate; but this place is so con 
 foundedly 
 
 "Hot," Bradbroke supplied earnestly. "It s the one 
 thing. . . ." 
 
 The big man separated them with a single effort of 
 his great strength, "Cut that out," he warned roughly, 
 "or you ll run things off ahead of time. Calm down! 
 Wy ve all got to. It s all we can do. Come in in the 
 morning, and I ll try to have something worked out, 
 though I admit I don t know what. Now, both of you 
 go out and overtake Paxton. He s got a wonderful 
 voice, as you ve said, Carstairs; and he s got just as won 
 derful a lot of nerves. Don t worry about his getting 
 a sunstroke: it s night, nearly! But get hold of him 
 and quiet him. About me, I m going to stay on here 
 and see this through." 
 
 The two younger men looked at the American silently. 
 Then G reg went across to where he stood by the window :
 
 142 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Much obliged for that, just now," Bradbroke said, 
 unconsciously standing more erect and attempting to 
 straighten his collar. 
 
 Carstairs joined them. "Beastly ass, I was! Thanks. 
 Me, too." 
 
 Greg took it up again. "And, I say, I m glad you re 
 going to stay along and see us through with it, I mean 
 up to the last. And Carstairs is. I can t see anything 
 about it, but your being in makes it easier. Come along, 
 Carstairs, or Brett 11 do something." 
 
 Both turned toward the door; then, as if in obedience to 
 a common impulse, stopped, half-turned back, hands out, 
 toward the big body which towered, facing them, broad 
 back to the window. Then the hands fell almost guilt 
 ily, and the two men went, side-by-side, down the stairs. 
 
 As they did so, the big man turned slowly, until his 
 tired eyes had found their direction. Having found it, 
 they brightened for one short instant. Then, as it had 
 done once before, the strong, quiet face went forward 
 and down until it rested in his hands. 
 
 And, from him, went those whom he had dismissed, 
 he knew, to imagine his reflections and to envy him. 
 For neither had his secret, no, nor ever should ! 
 
 Then the big man started back from the window on 
 whose sill his hands had rested, for a gharry had stopped 
 at the gate, and he could see, in the pale light, Anne 
 Netherby, smiling and lovely, and the graver, dearer, 
 fairer young face of the English violet then the gharry 
 moved away. His door opened. 
 
 "Excuse me, Mr. Ormsby, but " The maid was 
 
 holding out a note.
 
 WHOM CHAD WELL LEFT BEHIND 143 
 
 " Back in fifteen minutes, to carry Greg and you home 
 to dinner," it said, and he could hear Anne s laugh in it. 
 
 He glanced at his watch. There was time. He meant 
 time in which to secure his secret from her who had been, 
 and should ever be, its glory to hide it for all time from 
 her, and from those three, whom, with himself, Chadwell 
 had left behind.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FLIGHT 
 
 EVEN after he had boarded the train, and knew 
 that he was on his way to Kimberley, he told 
 himself that he was not fleeing from what had 
 already struck Fraser and Chadwell down. It was not 
 that, he said, over and over. And the man was right. 
 He was in flight. With his brave words barely off his 
 lips, he was doing precisely what he had counselled 
 Carstairs and Bradbroke and the singer not to do. Yet 
 he knew that flight had been the only fair course for him 
 since it meant Her safety from his love. 
 
 He had left her and lost her. He knew there was 
 unforgivable conceit in pairing the two verbs, that it was 
 sacrilege to affirm that he could have won her love if he 
 had not gone! And yet there was comfort in it, and so 
 absolutely none elsewhere. That she would never know 
 that he had been so unworthy and so arrogant, did not 
 lessen his offence. But what he thought did was his belief 
 that she would have understood even this, if his incred 
 ible calamity could have been known to her. He had 
 left her and lost her. He had gone out of her life. He 
 
 wondered who, in the years that would come He 
 
 clutched his thoughts driving them from a course un 
 endurable ! 
 
 Drearily, he stared on town after town, one wide 
 
 144
 
 FLIGHT 145 
 
 stretch after another, as the track climbed west and 
 north. It was the same waste he had looked out on when 
 he had come down from Kimberley a month before. A 
 month? Barely that. But it seemed immeasurably 
 longer. A very lifetime gaped between that then and 
 now. 
 
 Then, he had been careless, care-free, tracing a thought 
 less and empty life. When Bradbroke had suggested a 
 month in Durban, how the prospect had bored him! 
 How much more desirable the one-roomed, sheet-iron 
 shack, and his work had seemed! He d tried to be 
 decent about it, and appreciative but he had told 
 Greg that he ought not to take the time. He had said: 
 
 "I ll be going back to America, shortly!" 
 
 How preposterous it sounded now! Preposterous even 
 then to have so much as thought of ever going back! For 
 it had presupposed that things would continue to jog 
 on as uneventfully, he meant unobstructingly, as they 
 had done before; that he should continue to be a free 
 agent, his own master; that he should continue to have 
 the right to go and come as he would. But Greg had 
 insisted. And he had humoured him. He had gone to 
 Durban to waste two weeks. Two weeks. A month. 
 And now? 
 
 He leaned back in his seat, tearing his eyes from the 
 racing horizon, whose speed set his brain tipping. What 
 was he going to do? W T here was he going? Home? 
 What was home to him? Not America, certainly. 
 What then? Durban, the home of the Doom he could 
 never escape from? Hardly! And yet, as he framed the 
 denial, he knew that it should have been an affirmative.
 
 146 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 For a Fate, stronger even than that which had already 
 claimed Fraser and Chadwell, had found him there, and 
 he knew it. ... Love. But at what a cost: Denial 
 of it, Flight from it, so swift and sure that his love, instead 
 of being his boast, must remain a secret which he could 
 never entrust to her! 
 
 What now! He d go off to Kimberley. The place did 
 not matter, but, by going away from her, he had insured 
 her safety from becoming involved in the Curse which had 
 ruined him. 
 
 He believed, by now, that he had come to be absolutely 
 frank with himself. Now, he knew that she had never 
 cared for him. He had never been sufficiently crazed to 
 think otherwise. He understood, now. And, under 
 standing, he looked ahead, not for himself, but for her, 
 into the future which should be hers: he tried to see the 
 man she would marry his self-abnegation attained 
 even that. She would marry some one, some one else. 
 The thought was new and terrible to him. Until Chad- 
 well had died, he had not conceived such an imagining 
 possible. And not even then had he so flayed himself 
 as to consider it connectedly. That had not begun until 
 he had looked from his window in the last lingering, sky- 
 reflected day, and had seen her send upward to him, from 
 the gharry, that little, greeting smile. Unseen he had 
 seen it less than he had divined it. He could see it now. 
 It would never escape from his vision. Be the days many 
 or few, which Fate should mete out to him, he should never 
 see anything else half so clear ! 
 
 She had told him, then, that he must go away from her. 
 How little she had realized the message! She had not
 
 FLIGHT 147 
 
 once thought of his going. He had told her that he should 
 stay on in Durban. He wondered if she had believed 
 the "boy" who, by this, must have told her that he "had 
 gone, for a few days, to the Cape." A few days . . . ! 
 He turned his weary eyes to the landscape which, crowd 
 ing close to the carriage, fled back toward Durban as he 
 himself would have fled, a penitent burning to confess to 
 her an everlasting truth. 
 
 What would she think of him? He tried not to answer 
 the question, then tried to forget that he had asked it of 
 himself. She would set him down as another adventurer, 
 a boor, a cad, masquerading under the cleverly aped mein 
 of a man ! And better that way, since it would facilitate 
 her marrying the one whom it was destined she should 
 bless ! 
 
 Anne? Catherine Hetheridge? Carstairs, Greg, the 
 singer? He passed them lightly. In the scope of his 
 renunciation, there was not room for thoughts of them. 
 Children of Fate, they were, just as he was, the men facing 
 a fate grim even as his own. 
 
 How strangely it had all come on ! How unreal it was, 
 still ! Closing his eyes he was suddenly very tired 
 he could almost believe that he was back in America : the 
 swaying carriage of the Natal Government Railway was 
 carrying him through placid, peaceful New England, 
 which could never have fathered such a tragedy as his; 
 and the people he knew, in this safe land, could not credit 
 his story though he reiterate it to them to the last, uncer 
 tain day of his ruined life. Of course, he could not tell 
 them : he had been assuming merely, in order the better to 
 define, for no purpose he could conceive of, the impassable
 
 148 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 limits of their credulity. Then, in the half -dream to 
 which his hopelessness had reduced him, it seemed to him 
 that he had told them his story. Not of the English 
 violet, for that had been too sacredly his, too intimate! 
 Never, to any one, ever, could he open the inner shrine of 
 his broken heart ! But he had told them of Fraser, Chad- 
 well, Carstairs, and the tense-nerved singer, and of Greg. 
 He had told them, as well, of Catherine Hetheridge and 
 Anne. And, as he talked, he had seemed to see Anne 
 Netherby as he never before had. For he had realized 
 for the first time that she had given Greg his dissatisfied 
 longings, the seeds of which it would have been both safer 
 and kinder, in her, not to sow; she had brought Greg to 
 the point where he could never settle down happily out 
 side of England, and his example had infected the other 
 men of their particular set, just as her eager and bitter 
 restlessness had touched the girls. It was Anne s product. 
 Indubitable as a revelation, he read it: Anne was an 
 uneasy factor in South Africa. 
 
 "No, I m going to Jo burg," a voice behind him said 
 suddenly. 
 
 The dreamer s lids opened: he was still in Africa. 
 Durban lay only a short hour behind. Then he stiffened, 
 for, standing at the farther end of the corridor of the 
 carriage, their backs toward him, yet instantly recog 
 nizable, were Greg and Carstairs. 
 
 For a long moment he achieved the belief that it was 
 only an apparition. One had so many, and a fresh one 
 was no more than natural. But, as the car swung again, 
 he caught Greg s profile, and the quarter of Carstairs 
 fixed features; and he knew that his eyes had told the
 
 FLIGHT 149 
 
 truth. He leaned forward, back, forward: it could not 
 be, must not be; but was. He rose to his feet, aware but 
 heedless of the long stares he was earning from his fellow 
 passengers, for he was past minding anything he might 
 seem or they might think of him. Not once did he try to 
 guess what those he reeled by thought of him; or what he 
 should say, when once he should have made the door, 
 which now seemed miles distant, and had offered himself 
 to those he sought. He had not once thought of what he 
 should say to them. But he swore to himself that it 
 should be no confession. He would make them do the 
 talking, this time. They would undoubtedly be prepared 
 to, and could say what they would. For they could not 
 realize that he had 
 
 He was through the door then, saying : 
 
 " Carstairs? Bradbroke? " 
 
 There was something for the observers to see now: the 
 three men faced each other. 
 
 Greg spoke thickly: "In the name of " 
 
 Carstairs caught his arm, "No, Greg! No need of 
 saying anything," he flung at the big man. " We couldn t 
 stand it out." He thrust Greg back. "It s all up now, 
 but why couldn t you have let us go?" He sank slowly 
 down in the nearest seat, snatched something of his old, 
 erect carriage, lost it, and fixed the intruder with accusing 
 eyes. 
 
 Only the big man remained standing. " If you had this 
 all planned," he said deliberately, "why didn t you let 
 Paxton in on it?" 
 
 Greg s lips moved. 
 
 Carstairs made an uncertain gesture. "Would have.
 
 150 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 But he was all to pieces, and got on our 
 nerves." 
 
 And Bradbroke bowed slightly. "Beastly," he said, 
 with his perfect enunciation and manner, "beastly 
 swine!" 
 
 The big man straightened himself. How little, he 
 thought, Greg could know that, in showing his racked 
 nerves by that icy allusion, he had called back another s 
 strength! The American himself marvelled at it, aware 
 of an answering and almost overmastering gratitude. He 
 bent, until his broad hands fell on the two shoulders. 
 
 "Then, it s time we chucked this foolery!" And his 
 eyes held theirs, as he added, " Next thing s to get out at 
 the first stop, and get the first train back." 
 
 "Back?" Greg leaned away from him, trying to 
 escape the kindly, relentless hand. 
 
 "Back," the big man repeated. "We re going back to 
 take care of Paxton. Come," as the train slowly halted. 
 "I think this is Pietermaritzburg." 
 
 And, half an hour later, the three who had faced north 
 west away from what lay behind them, in Durban, entered 
 the train which returned to it. But, through the two 
 hours and a half which followed, they neither stirred nor 
 spoke. And they observed the same silence, as, after 
 abandoning the train at the little station at Durban, 
 they turned, by common consent, in the direction of the 
 singer s rooms.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE SINGER S ROOMS 
 
 BUT at the first corner, Greg stopped. "Not there," 
 he corrected. "He wouldn t go there. Don t 
 you see he wouldn t want to be alone. He d 
 want companionship, look us up, after a bit of wandering, 
 
 think we were somewhere, the He had been about 
 
 to say the Netherbys , but cut the words off. " The club," 
 he said. "Best go there." 
 
 "Don t think it," Carstairs objected. "May have gone 
 there first, but wouldn t have stayed this while. What 
 do you think, Ormsby?" 
 
 The big man shook his head. It seemed to him that 
 they were wasting precious time; but, after all, Carstairs, 
 he knew, would do as Greg said. "Might as well try the 
 club, on the way." 
 
 They turned back half a block, crossed through an 
 alley, coming out, in the velvety gloom, between an hotel 
 and an outbuilding, crossed diagonally into Essenwood 
 Road, Greg leading, Carstairs next, the big man following 
 a few steps in the rear. 
 
 When they emerged, he found that Carstairs had 
 dropped back closer to him. "Didn t care for that, back 
 there. Too dark! Chap never knows." He caught 
 himself, and stepped a little from the big man, "Prob- 
 
 151
 
 152 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 ably, you never think of it, but with me " He 
 
 hesitated, looking back, narrowly. 
 
 Then, they were in the half-light of a feeble street- 
 lamp, which brightened, as they passed on, and upper 
 Essenwood welcomed them with a pale, white, artificial 
 glare. Lights everywhere, now, in hotels, and club 
 windows, rickshaws, gharrys, taxi-cabs, and carriages. 
 And Carstairs, walking more briskly, caught up with 
 Bradbroke, so that the two climbed the steps to the 
 Regent s rooms together, one of them throwing back, over 
 his shoulder, to the American: 
 
 "Come on. Of course, he s here!" 
 
 But the musician was not. The boy at the door told 
 them. 
 
 "But he s been here this afternoon," Carstairs insisted. 
 
 "Since five, anyway," Greg s tone was that of one who 
 knew. 
 
 "No, sir," the boy answered. "Not since noon." 
 
 Greg swung in past him. " Best ask some of the men, 
 and then the steward. This fool wouldn t know, any 
 way!" 
 
 But the steward verified the words of the fool at the 
 door. So did Colonel Hackluytt, and a dozen other men, 
 drowsing out the tag end of a dull evening. 
 
 "Not since you and he had lunch here, about two! 
 Didn t you?" Meredith, the last one they asked, wasn t 
 clear on the point. Maybe he had seen Paxton. Thought 
 now, he probably had, somewhere. With himself and 
 the three of them, they could kill the rest of the evening 
 double-quick! Meredith signalled an attendant for a 
 pack of cards.
 
 THE SINGER S ROOMS 153 
 
 Carstairs sank into the nearest chair. "I say, Greg," 
 he began, "y u don t need me. You go along with 
 
 Ormsby, like a good chap. I don t feel " He 
 
 turned away. "Let me stick here with Meredith. 
 I ll be here when you come back. Honest to God, 
 I will!" 
 
 But Greg s only answer was a dull negative, and Car- 
 stairs went with them from the room. 
 
 Greg repented, when they had reached the sidewalk. 
 "Had to have you, Carstairs, for Paxton 11 be all up in 
 the air! You remember how he was, this afternoon. 
 You re the one: you ve been with him a lot more than 
 any of the rest of us." 
 
 "Yes," Carstairs said, obediently, "I ve been with him 
 a lot. I always had." Realizing that he had dropped 
 into the pluperfect, he raced on: "In fact, I fancy I m 
 the only chap down here who understands him properly. 
 Then, too, I always play his accompaniments." 
 
 "Here," said Greg after the long silence, during which 
 they had walked quickly, "he lives here." 
 
 They let themselves in with a key which Carstairs 
 brought from his pocket; and filed, one by one, up the 
 narrow stairs. The stairs were narrow, bare almost. In 
 themselves, they told Paxton s poverty. The big man 
 understood, now, why the singer had never invited him 
 to his rooms. 
 
 "Brett," Greg called, at the first landing. "I say, 
 Brett, old chap!" 
 
 They waited. 
 
 "Just so," Carstairs nodded in relief. "Not here." 
 
 "Let s try the club again," Greg began. "Unless, of
 
 154 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 course," he looked at the big man, "you think we might 
 better go on up and make sure?" 
 
 "Yes, we d better go on up and make sure." 
 
 "Then go ahead first, will you?" Carstairs voice denied 
 its lighter tone of the past moment. "Of course, he s 
 probably " 
 
 "Club," supplied Greg, with an effort. "But " 
 
 His voice trailed off, and he indicated the next flight to 
 the American. " Way to the top," he warned. "Too 
 bad he had to live in such a place." It was the pluper 
 fect again, but, this time, left as it was. 
 
 Two flights, three, climbed in deepening silence. 
 
 "There. In there," Carstairs said, at the big man s 
 back. 
 
 The American knocked, waited, then swung the door in. 
 
 If the stairs were bare, the room was barer: only a roll 
 of music, protruding from the half-open door of a cabinet, 
 which stood just to the right of a battered piano, which 
 must have been gotten up there in sections, told them that 
 Brett Paxton had ever lived there. For the room sug 
 gested nothing of Paxton, the artist, the exquisite. The 
 American could almost have spanned it with his arms. 
 There was a bed in one corner. It almost prevented the 
 door closing. A book or two, some papers, all with an 
 English imprint; a closet, with neatly-hung clothing in 
 various stages of disrepair; these going oddly with the 
 dim outline of a pig-skin hat-box, half a dozen decent 
 sticks, a riding-crop, breeches, a jacket, pistols in a heavy 
 case with a crest, and a suit of evening clothes protected 
 by a silk outing shirt. 
 
 These, the big man s quick eyes took in instantly.
 
 THE SINGER S ROOMS 155 
 
 Then, he stepped to the table, over which Carstairs and 
 Greg leaned. And their aspect told him what held them 
 motionless. For on that felt-covered table there was an 
 envelope, sealed, and addressed to Carstairs. 
 
 Taking it nearer to the lamp, which the big man had 
 lighted, and which now tilted crazily on its worn support, 
 Carstairs broke the envelope. 
 
 "I ll read it through first; then But he did not 
 
 finish, for the single sheet fluttered heavily down from his 
 hands to the table, and all of them could read: 
 
 "Carstairs, tell Greg and Onnsby I ve gone after Fraser and Chad- 
 well. Forgive me, all of you, for bringing it a peg closer. But I couldn t 
 stand it any longer and I ve gone to It." 
 
 "He s gone," Carstairs breathed at last. "I knew it." 
 
 No evidence of surprise. It had not been that to any 
 of them. 
 
 "Easier for him, that way, of course," Bradbroke com 
 mented. "He might have stood it out!" 
 
 "I don t know," Carstairs took him up critically: "I 
 think he wasn t so far wrong. It was his own affair. I 
 mean we could hardly have expected him to stay on just 
 for our sakes, when he felt that way." He nodded, and 
 then shook his head a little. "I wonder where he is now; 
 and if the spirit has to fly, alone, through infinity, until 
 it lands up where it belongs. Or I wonder if he s 
 caught up with Fraser and Chadwell as soon as this; if 
 
 they re talking it over. By Heaven He broke 
 
 off abruptly. "I say, do either of you chaps believe in 
 Hell?" He nodded again, following that with the same, 
 odd inclination of his head. "I don t know, personally,"
 
 156 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 he explained, "I don t know, myself. But then," he 
 supplemented, "how in hell could I? That s the point!" 
 He was imputing his ignorance solely to his total lack of 
 opportunity to learn. He nodded again, " That s the 
 point!" He leaned over the bit of paper on which the 
 singer had set down his confession of surrender. "I don t 
 know how you chaps feel about this, but, personally, I 
 believe he acted within his rights. For," his eyes sym 
 pathetic and sane again, " what had he to live for, I mean 
 even before that cursed prophecy? What had he, after 
 that girl sent him that picture? He hadn t even heard 
 she was married, yet! What had he, then? What had 
 any of us? Greg," almost appealingly, "you know! Bad 
 enough before, it was. But now! A month ago, there 
 were six of us, counting you in, Ormsby. Then, Jem out. 
 Next Hugh Chadwell. Then, Brett, here. And now 
 
 The big man had gotten in the way of obstructing these 
 pauses. He went slowly across to the speaker. "Yes, 
 that s the way of it, old man; but what s the use of dwell 
 ing on it? None!" Taking the singer s note from the 
 table, he held it down the lamp chimney until it burned, 
 then dropped it into the single ash-receiver. No one 
 spoke, as it writhed, and wrung itself into a blackened, 
 decipherable crisp. 
 
 Then, he turned back to them : " There was no need of 
 keeping it. We shan t forget what he said. And now, 
 what we all need s some sort of a vacation, something to 
 get this latest taste of this out of our mouths. Can t we 
 catch a boat, off somewhere?" He looked from one to 
 the other. "I ve got it," he said, not letting them realize 
 that they could suggest nothing, "we ll run down to the
 
 " Tell Greg and Ormsby I ve gone after 
 Fraser and Chadwell "
 
 THE SINGER S ROOMS 157 
 
 Cape for a little change of scene, some new people, hit a 
 theatre, and loaf a bit out-of-school, generally. Then, 
 after a few days we ll come back here and take what s 
 measured out for us." 
 
 Greg looked up at him almost insolently. "You speak 
 as if there were some doubt of what we ll get?" 
 
 "I don t mean to," returned the big man. "I believe 
 I feel as sure as you do. I ll even add that I don t feel any 
 security in being alive another hour." He went to the 
 door. "I m going to telephone for the reservations and 
 tickets for the boat, to-night. It s the best thing left I 
 can think of. I ll have all the stuff ready; all either of 
 you ll have to do is to pick up what you ll want for three 
 days, and that won t be much. Then, get yourselves 
 down to the Rennie dock at eleven forty-five. It s the 
 Inanda, sails at midnight. I know, for I looked her up, 
 expecting to take a run down there, before." 
 
 Greg nodded. "A vacation s what we need." 
 
 "If it ll do anything for us," said Carstairs. 
 
 "That s the point," Greg appended. 
 
 The big man turned back to them almost angrily: 
 they were beginning to repeat themselves again, slipping 
 off from what little steadiness he d been able to inspire. 
 Greg seemed the leader in this, too. Up to now, he had 
 appeared stronger than Carstairs, less overpowered by the 
 singer s leap into the ultimate. But now Greg s eyes 
 were wistful; not wild; instead, infinitely sad. "Come, 
 Greg, old man, and you, Carstairs," said the American, 
 "we re going to stand this out side by side, wait till our 
 time comes, do, with all that lies in us, what we know to 
 be the best for every one."
 
 158 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Greg started at the unlooked-for conclusion. "Yes," 
 he said, with new intensity, "the best for every one!" 
 
 "And, one thing more," warned the big man: "let s 
 not talk any more, for a while, about Paxton, or about 
 this afternoon, there on the train. That s past and gone." 
 
 He walked to the doorway. "At the Rennie dock, 
 remember," he Galled back over his big shoulder. He had 
 reached his limit, and he knew it. And he kept his set 
 face turned from them, as he repeated, "eleven forty -five."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ON THE RENNIE DOCK AT ELEVEN 
 FORTY-FIVE 
 
 HE KNEW that he could rely on their keeping 
 this promise. And he knew more : that neither 
 of them suspected that he, too, had attempted 
 flight; that, if they thought of it at all, it would be only 
 to agree that he had seen them board the train, just as 
 it had pulled out of Durban, and had come after them. 
 
 "And best that way," he said to himself, though without 
 elation, almost without interest. In fact, it seemed very 
 far back behind now. Everything, even Chadwell s death, 
 seemed to have been thrust ages back by the singer s 
 suicide. 
 
 And now what? The big man stopped his slow stride, 
 to look about him in the thick darkness. He felt the sea 
 air on his cheeks, the night wind sweeping in from the 
 Indian Ocean. Yes, that was one answer: the ocean was 
 there, waiting. Had the impatient singer gone to it, 
 with the picture of the girl who had found she couldn t 
 wait? The irony of it struck through him: neither of 
 them had been able to wait; but, with the girl, it had been 
 impatience of a sort how apart from that which had driven 
 Paxton to his death! 
 
 The ocean, the ocean! Probably, the singer had gone 
 that way, the surest as it was the simplest. And now, 
 
 159
 
 160 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 where the tide had carried him, gently, he was sleeping 
 his endless sleep. 
 
 He had walked blindly on, keeping the path he knew 
 not how; and, suddenly, he stopped short, for the sound of 
 a song, with the note of a subdued accompaniment, had 
 awakened him. He breathed, staring about him, then 
 caught his throat with his hands: He had not stopped 
 too soon. An open gate was before him: It was the 
 Netherbys . Through the darkness, his heart had guided 
 him to her ! 
 
 He turned instantly. But too late. A white figure 
 was approaching, and, his own drill snow white, his bulk 
 loomed easily recognizable. 
 
 At least, so it was to her, and she came directly toward 
 him. 
 
 "Mr. Ormsby!" Now, she was closer. And still 
 approaching him. 
 
 He heard her only with difficulty, though he had kept 
 his position, yes, gone a step toward her. 
 
 Then, his hand had gone out to her, for his will had 
 surrendered to his heart. 
 
 "I had to see you," he heard himself saying. Should 
 he never win back his self-control? "I had to come to 
 you." His voice went from him. He felt her hand 
 tighten, and realized, then, for the first time, what must 
 have been her anguish at his clutch. 
 
 She made no effort to free herself; but she had fallen 
 as silent as himself. 
 
 Their hands parted, his senses blind to all the world 
 but her. 
 
 "What is it?" The voice, sudden, and full of fear,
 
 ON THE RENNIE DOCK 161 
 
 was not hers but Anne s. "You don t mean ? Not 
 
 Greg?" 
 
 It recalled the sanity he fought for. "No," he achieved 
 "not Greg." He hesitated, then turned half away from 
 them; "but another terrible thing has come: Paxton has 
 gone." How grateful he was for remembering, even 
 in that moment, to sustain the lie! He had almost said 
 that the singer had killed himself. He went on: "Greg 
 
 and Carstairs and I He d left a note for us. It 
 
 we just found it. He d been despondent " He 
 
 remembered again, by a miracle. "His debts! And now 
 he s gone." 
 
 "Oh the poor fellow! The poor " It was the 
 
 English violet, ending uncertainly. "I " She turned 
 
 to Anne. " If only " 
 
 "Gone?" Anne demanded. "You don t mean he s 
 committed " 
 
 He was glad of the protecting darkness. "He said 
 nothing of where he was going. It was the way he was 
 fixed here. And ChadwelFs death, and Eraser s leaving! 
 He " 
 
 "Chadwell?" That was all, the one word. 
 
 How could he have supposed that they had heard? He 
 struggled to hold himself to naturalness or to something 
 approaching that. 
 
 "We ve just got the word: he was drowned while try 
 ing to rescue men imprisoned, by the water, in the Wit- 
 watersrand." He gave them no time for questions. 
 "I m we re doing what we can. It hasn t been much. 
 Greg and Carstairs and I ve agreed to " 
 
 "What?" Anne demanded fiercely, What?"
 
 162 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "They ve got to be gotten away, for a little, from the 
 scene of this, both of them. I m taking them to-night 
 to the Cape," he kept on, through Anne s sudden cry of 
 negation. " Only two days. Then, I ll bring them back. 
 Nothing can come to either of them while they re with 
 me." 
 
 A hand caught his arm. "But you?" A voice said, 
 close to his face. It was not Anne, who spoke now. 
 "Buti/ow/" 
 
 A wave of gladness and grief swept over him. Auto 
 matically, his hand covered the small, true one which he 
 loved. "I ll come back," he promised dully. "Good 
 bye." Then, though he heard her voice calling to him, 
 above Anne s convulsive sobbing, he broke through the 
 gate to the silent street. 
 
 "The dock," he heard himself saying aloud. "I ve 
 still time!" 
 
 Like a madman, he raced through the deserted dark 
 ness, a vast, white figure, with the face of a lost one, and 
 sad, set eyes. On, through streets which the varied crowd 
 of the day had left vacant; on and down, into the soft 
 wind, the breath of the summoning, not distant sea. 
 Until, after what had seemed interminable time to him, he 
 reached the water-front and the place he sought. 
 
 Instantly, he won tickets and staterooms, one for 
 Greg and Carstairs he knew they would want to be 
 together and the other for himself. Then, out again 
 to the dock-head, where he should be found the moment 
 they should come. He glanced at his watch. It was 
 eleven-fifty. 
 
 One minute, two, three, four. Then, a tall,
 
 ON THE RENNIE DOCK 163 
 
 figure in white drill emerged from the path leading out 
 from the warehouse, and he knew that Greg had come. 
 
 "Where s Carstairs?" the big man breathed, as Greg 
 came up with him. "I thought he d be with you." 
 
 Greg was looking about, through the darkness. "He 
 said he d get what he wanted, from his rooms, then come 
 back for me, or, if he hadn t time, come straight here 
 by himself. Where s your stuff? On board? Here s 
 mine." 
 
 It was not much, but enough, and, in another moment, 
 it had been given to a boy, with the number of the state 
 room into which it should be stowed. 
 
 "Good," said the big man, his eyes glued again to the 
 entrance through which Carstairs must come. "He s 
 probably on the way now. He knows the time." He 
 glanced again at his watch. 
 
 "How much?" Greg asked, fearfully. 
 
 "Four minutes." 
 
 Greg swung toward the plank. "We d best be getting 
 on. Sure he s not somewhere on the boat? He knew 
 the time." 
 
 "No, he s not here. I ve looked over her. But he s 
 got to come." 
 
 "Yes, he s got to," Greg echoed. 
 
 The American knew why Greg had repeated that 
 "got to." 
 
 "You think" Greg came closer "y u think he ll 
 come?" 
 
 The words were drowned, with the big man s answer, 
 by the splash of one of the stern lines. Then ,a bowline 
 fell off; and the air was rent with whistles, warning ashore
 
 164 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 those who had come on board to take leave of outbound 
 passengers. 
 
 Two minutes gone. Three of the four. . . . And 
 still no sign of Carstairs. 
 
 Greg caught the big man by the wrist. "I say, is it 
 only because I want it so, or is there something moving, 
 over there? " His voice ended in a nervous grasp. " Car- 
 stairs!" he called shrilly. "Carstairs!" He started 
 violently as the very dock seemed to give before the im 
 pact of a vast body. He whirled, holding the other with 
 both hands now. "In the name of God! what s that? " 
 
 And the big man steadied the boy, as he answered 
 quietly : 
 
 "That was the Inanda, Greg. She s gone." He 
 gave him no time, and his groan no answer or recogni 
 tion. "Come on back to my rooms," he said very dis 
 tinctly and deliberately, looking away from him, for he 
 knew what his words meant: that the steamer had sailed 
 without them that Carstairs had not come.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 THE ONE THING LEFT TO DO 
 
 A THEY left the dock, and came out upon the 
 narrow boardwalk which connected the warehouse 
 yard with the street sidewalk, it seemed to the 
 big man that he had walked there, alone with Greg, be 
 fore. He wondered, then stopped wondering. He gave 
 up the riddle. There were so many, he had found, and 
 not one with an answer, in South Africa. 
 
 "Just a moment, Greg," he warned as a motor whizzed 
 by, giving him barely time to drag the other back. 
 
 "What," came Bradbroke s surprised question. "I say, 
 Ormsby, what did you do that for? " 
 
 "Nothing," said the big man steadily. 
 
 They walked along without speaking. Under the first 
 street-lamp, Greg pulled himself free from the American s 
 guiding hand. " No need of that, you know," he objected, 
 petulantly. "It s not as if I couldn t make it alone. I 
 say, where s Carstairs?" 
 
 "He didn t come," said the American slowly. 
 
 Greg s stare was that almost of an inebriate. "You 
 say he didn t ?" 
 
 "He didn t come to the boat, didn t meet us. Come on. 
 We re going to my rooms." 
 
 "Good!" Greg said, quite naturally. It was fairly late, 
 his manner suggested, and they d been off for a walk, 
 
 165
 
 166 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 somewhere. "I m dead-beat. That s the truth of it. 
 I say, got an extra bed?" 
 
 "No, but the couch will muster with rugs and cush 
 ions." 
 
 "Right O! I m dropping." Then, without warning, 
 it came to him. The big man knew from the grip on his 
 arm. "Ormsby, it means Carstairs He could 
 
 not say it yet. "Ormsby, what are we going to do now?" 
 
 "We re going to my rooms, first," the American said. 
 "No, his first, though I don t expect he s left any word." 
 
 It was but a dozen short blocks, and they made it, 
 walking as men who felt, in their errand, only an idle 
 interest. Greg had gathered himself, and now moved 
 labouredly but without need of the big man s arm. Both 
 were thinking of what they should agree to, of what would 
 be the only thing to agree to, in the w r ay of explanation, 
 after they had found Carstairs rooms void of him. 
 
 So that they were not surprised, after they had swung 
 Carstairs door in. He had left no word, no note, as 
 Chadwell and Paxton had. But there was a trunk, locked, 
 with a key on the top of it; some small things, hurriedly 
 done up, as if Carstairs had been afraid they might come 
 before he had finished: a small package of books, ad 
 dressed to Bradbroke; some hunting prints, good ones, 
 stacked in a corner, addressed to the American. There 
 was no telling or guessing when Carstairs had stripped 
 his walls; but it must have been some time back, for the 
 writing on the tag was in ink, and the words, "For 
 Ormsby," had been written in a steady hand. 
 
 Greg stared at it. "Gad, he kept it to himself well! 
 He must have expected to go any time, even before he
 
 THE ONE THING LEFT TO DO 167 
 
 knew about Paxton. Good nerve, I say, not to show it! 
 And, next to poor Brett, I d thought him the shakiest of 
 the six!" He looked suddenly over his shoulder into the 
 darkness, as if awaiting the listening wraith of Carstairs. 
 
 And the big man nodded. "Yes, he had good stuff in 
 him. Now, Greg, let s get out of here. No," as Brad- 
 broke lifted the lamp and looked again about him, "we ve 
 seen all there is, and waiting around won t help. He 
 felt that he had a right to go. You remember what 
 he said of Paxton? That he d acted only within his 
 rights?" He spoke very simply, watching Bradbroke 
 guardedly. Expecting the other s collapse now at any 
 moment, he steadied him in every way he could. "Come, 
 old man. We ll go to my rooms, for they re handy, and 
 they ll do for us both, to-night." If he could once get 
 Greg there . . . 
 
 He succeeded. But once there, Greg threw himself 
 face downward on the couch, all his resistance gone. And 
 the big man, realizing this, said nothing, but filled his 
 pipe with the Boer tobacco, which Hackluytt had never 
 designed for such an hour as this, and clothed his strong 
 face with a mask of smoke. 
 
 Through the drift of the smoke-cloud, he scanned 
 Greg s spent, graceful figure. He had done right to 
 bring Greg here. He knotted his hands. They were 
 big-boned and resolute. He might be able to stand the 
 waiting, to fight it through till the End came; but Greg 
 could not have endured by himself. Greg had to be 
 helped out. Had it not been Decreed, the big man asked 
 himself, that he should supplant Greg s weakness out of 
 his physical plenitude? Impossible? Yes, of course.
 
 168 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 But why heed that, since everything about him, now, was 
 impossible? Everything near and dear to him, all that 
 would have fed his heart ! On the other hand, there were 
 no longer such things as impossibilities: he could credit 
 am/thing now anything short of his escape from the 
 curse which was working its way so effectively. Yes, it 
 had been Decreed that he should help Greg s lack with 
 his own plenitude. This Impossible, like all the rest, 
 had become Inevitable. He was destined to give, and 
 Greg was destined to receive from him. And what a 
 return Greg had made ! Greg had found him safe, happy, 
 and care-free; if Greg had kept out of his life, he would 
 never have known Durban; long before this, he would 
 have sickened of those golden geysers at Kimberley and 
 taken the first boat home. Greg had stepped in and 
 spoiled everything in the world for him, ruined him, 
 wrecked him, killed him by bringing him to Durban; 
 however unable Greg had been to read the future. . . . 
 
 Then, in the last fraction of a second before his strong 
 hands had completed their journey, habit saved the 
 American: his eyes had gone to the window, found their 
 direction, told him that she was there. Cautiously, he 
 interposed a rug between Greg and the night wind, turned 
 the lamp slowly down, then extinguished it. Then, with 
 a tread so light that it could not disturb the sleeper, the 
 big man found his bed.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 IN RECOGNITION OF THE TRUTH 
 
 MORNING had flared up out of the Indian 
 Ocean. The American lay motionless but 
 unsleeping, as he had lain through the night, 
 unable to divorce, from his restless brain, what had 
 prostrated the younger and weaker man. Seeing Greg 
 rouse, the big man nodded. 
 
 "Glad you re awake. I thought you never would." 
 
 "I wish " Bradbroke began, then broke off sud 
 denly. "Is it true, Ormsby? Has Carstairs gone out, 
 too?" 
 
 " Yes, it s still true, Greg. He went out of this 
 world last night. You and I are all that s left, and 
 we ve got to face it." He stopped, and turned his eyes 
 from the younger man, rose, walked slowly to the 
 window, and stood looking out dully. He was giving 
 Greg time to gather what was left of his sanity and 
 strength; he was asking himself how best to begin what 
 he knew he must now make clear: this plan of his, 
 which Greg would first revolt from, yet must inevitably 
 accept. He turned back, for the thing had to be 
 done, and he d best be doing it. 
 
 " There s no good in asking ourselves why this thing 
 had to come to us. All we shall ever know is that it 
 was laid out for us, scheduled. Of course Jem Fraser 
 
 169
 
 170 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 went so quick he didn t get the first hint of it; but 
 it was clear enough to Chad well; they said, up there 
 at the mine, that he seemed downright anxious to be 
 down where the water was; as if, and I m quoting the 
 superintendent s own words, Chadwell knew it was 
 going to give him relief! You ll agree with me there s 
 something significent and terrible about that: I mean, 
 he felt what was coming. Even then, though he wasn t 
 imaginative like Brett or even poor Carstairs, he d looked 
 ahead and It had caught his eyes to the point of fascina 
 tion, obsession, derangement, call it what you will. He 
 was intellectual, self-sufficient; over thirty years of 
 individual experience had toughened his power of re 
 sistance; he was one of the most doggedly self-controlled 
 men that I have ever known; yet It caught him, made 
 him fast, and drew him; left him not a free agent, did Its 
 will on him! Its claiming Brett Paxton and Carstairs 
 was only a bagatelle for It, after It had taken him! 
 Furthermore, there was the psyschological effect, of his 
 taking, on Paxton and Carstairs! That clinched It, 
 stopped any doubt they had left, took their hope. Al 
 ready lacking Chadwell s power of resistance, they straight 
 way lost power to try. All the worst sides of their 
 life here haunted them; their memory of their knocks 
 put them still lower; they d no ties to resort to; owed 
 every one; could never get back; might be called by It 
 any moment; asked themselves what they had to live 
 for; what the use was of struggling. I say, they must 
 have figured it out so!" 
 
 "What if they did?" Greg broke in bitterly impatient. 
 "It would have got them anyway !"
 
 IN RECOGNITION OF TRUTH 171 
 
 "I know that," the big man admitted; "but what I m 
 coming to 
 
 "For God s sake reach it! What are you coming 
 to?" 
 
 "To the fact that, though It would have hit them 
 anyway, they made It come sooner by doing what 
 they did." 
 
 Greg laughed in reckless derision. "How much longer 
 do you fancy they d have lived? And, even supposing 
 you re right in your crazy theory, what has it to do with 
 us?" 
 
 "This," said the big man: "There s going to be 
 no morbid wooing of Death in your case: you re going to 
 stay here with me." 
 
 "Live with you?" 
 
 "Exactly that. Not as a prisoner. Don t glare so, 
 or misunderstand my motive. It s for our common 
 safety: I m going to take care of you so that you ll take 
 care of me" 
 
 "But my work! I mean at the consulate. Every 
 pound I get comes from there!" 
 
 "I know that, and I ve taken measures to meet 
 it." 
 
 Greg wheeled on him, as if struck. "By heaven, 
 Ormsby, this is too much! I know we re both doomed. 
 
 But this " His face had set. He had half risen, as 
 
 if, in his wild rage, he were about to hurl himself at the 
 other vast and powerful as he was. Then, his shoulders 
 slumped, his strength sapped, instead of built up, by his 
 passion. He sank weakly back, though his eyes did not 
 waver.
 
 172 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "You can t think ?" 
 
 "Yet I do think," the big man went on implacably, 
 "for I know it s the only thing to do. Don t glare at 
 me, I tell you. There s nothing else for us. Call it 
 your safety and Miss Netherby s. Yes, I know I ought 
 not to have said that, but you made me. It s this way: 
 if you go on, as you did in the old life, your poverty 
 and powerlessness ll be close to you as your skin, 
 and you ll be as morbid and black-melancholy as Car- 
 stairs and Paxton were. You ll not be giving yourself a 
 chance!" 
 
 "Chance?" Bradbroke echoed. "Can you still speak 
 of the thing as chance ? " 
 
 "Yes, because, for my own sanity, I must," said the 
 big man. "Call it a delusion, if you will, and I won t 
 contradict you. But, having said that, hear me out. 
 I m going to have you here with me. I m going to look 
 after you. You ll never go to the consulate again, except, 
 perhaps, as a guest at a dinner. I ll double what salary 
 you d ever have got there in a thousand years. For 
 God s sake, get that look off your face: all any one ll 
 ever know is that you and I are partners!" 
 
 "Partners!" Greg broke in; "partners in the most 
 cursed partnership that was ever held!" 
 
 "Right," the big man admitted; "but I mean the busi 
 ness I ll open in Durban to-day: you and I are going to 
 speculate in Australian wools. Don t look so incredulous, 
 or think it won t look all right! It will. I ll be ample 
 protection. Durban 11 expect you to make money, for 
 you ll be associated with me, the Human Mint, the 
 Money Making Machine. " He spun the nicknames off
 
 IN RECOGNITION OF TRUTH 173 
 
 without bitterness, for he was past bitterness for such 
 trivialities. 
 
 "About the salary: it ll be, in your money, 50 a 
 month." 
 
 "A month?" The words came in spite of him. 
 
 "Only that at first, for you won t be worth more, not 
 knowing the business. But you ll catch on in no time. 
 I ll coach you, for I ll need your help just as soon as you 
 can help. Then, I ll pay you more and more. Now 
 you d better go over and tell the Netherbys." 
 
 At the words, Bradbroke turned on him. "You think 
 I can lie to " 
 
 " Lie? " the big man interrupted ! " Haven t we passed 
 that, Greg?" 
 
 "Not to her," Bradbroke broke out. "I d rather go 
 to Jem and Brett Paxton and Chadwell and Carstairs. 
 Yes, and she d rather I would than have us both in pay 
 to you!" 
 
 "Ask her, and see what she says. No, Greg," as the 
 boy turned away, "don t take it like this. It s the only 
 thing left for us. Tell her the lie of our partnership, 
 if it s a lie to you, and don t be hurt by her happiness. 
 She s only a girl, and you know how much happiness 
 anything in this world can give her after It has come to 
 you?" He waited, then went on: "Tell her, and let 
 her be glad while she can be. You ve told me what these 
 years have been to both of you." 
 
 For a long moment Bradbroke leaned back on the 
 table, seemingly lifeless. Then he slowly inclined his 
 head. "We ll tell them, then. As you say they ll 
 be glad to know."
 
 174 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 But the big man shook his head absently. Suddenly a 
 great weariness had come on him. 
 
 "No, Greg, I m not going." 
 
 Greg hesitated, then went to the doorway. "I ll be 
 back when I get through." 
 
 Then he went slowly down the stairs.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IMPORTERS AND EXPORTERS OF AUSTRA 
 LIAN WOOLS 
 
 OVERCOME as he was with that sudden weariness, 
 he felt that it must be bedtime; yet his watch, 
 which he found himself staring at, gave him 
 swift denial. But his limbs were lead, and, for the 
 first time in his life, he undressed by daylight and 
 went to bed. He must sleep! Madness lay in wake- 
 fulness ! 
 
 For what seemed a very long time to him, he lay wide- 
 eyed in the darkness, induced by his exclusion of the 
 day and his sealing of his lids. Sleep seemed world-wide 
 from him. He could hear Greg saying to the Netherbys, 
 "I ve got something big to tell you: something s hap 
 pened!" 
 
 And they would beg him to tell it. Then, Greg would 
 tell. . 
 
 That was the way it was going to be. To the big man, 
 picturing it out, it seemed very simple, almost childish. 
 But his hands locked. Could Greg make his deception 
 plausible? Yes, for it required but poor acting to de 
 ceive, with a lie of good news, people so hungry for good 
 news. And Greg could act. Greg could act! He had 
 never seen Greg s equal in private theatricals. That 
 was one piece of good luck, anyway: Greg could make 
 
 175
 
 176 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 it look like the real thing. Greg would get it over. But 
 if only he could sleep! 
 
 He moved on the bed. How tense he was! He felt 
 his arms and legs, doing it cautiously in order not to 
 surprise them into hiding their real and blameworthy 
 condition. And his caution served: he had surprised 
 them : they were as hard as wood. He sat up, and shook 
 his head: this wouldn t do! It wouldn t do at all! He 
 must relax them. No one could sleep like that! He 
 remembered how Sterret, the old Varsity coach, had 
 come into their rooms in freshman year, at Red Top, and 
 warned them, one night, to relax, and showed them how. 
 Good, old, big-hearted, cranky Sterret! What blessed 
 days those had been, and what a dear old chap Sterret 
 was! He d seen him, not six months back, not three, 
 by heaven ! in Boston. Sterret had been in 84, may even 
 have been before that, but he was such a corker and had 
 kept himself so fit he didn t look half as old as that! 
 
 He d relax, let his muscles go flabby. That was better. 
 Even if Greg never showed up again, didn t come back 
 at all, and the Thing hit him right off, it didn t matter 
 much. Probably, Greg would not come back. He 
 thought he could see Greg telling about the partnership 
 until the crack of Doom, to the Netherbys. Greg would 
 keep on, and never get through, never come back, and 
 the Thing would hit him before it crashed on Greg. 
 But that didn t matter either. For he d found her, and 
 loved her, and lost her. She was an English violet. He d 
 seen that at once! Sweet, shy, gentle, and innocent! 
 There had been a song, where a man had boasted that 
 the girl he loved was like a red, red rose. How could a
 
 IMPORTERS AND EXPORTERS 177 
 
 man do that? She was like an English violet. And he 
 was very grateful for it. There was such a world of 
 difference! He had been afraid of frightening her, and 
 the fear had been to him a glory all his own. That 
 first evening, and the next time he had seen her; and the 
 next, and every one of them. How wonderful she was! 
 
 If only once he could have told her He must never 
 
 see her again, but he had touched her hand. . . . 
 
 A hand fell on his shoulder. Greg was bending over 
 him, with a white and frightened face. 
 
 "Ormsby!" he cried out. "Ormsby, forgive me?" 
 he begged. "I swear you were smiling as you slept." 
 
 "Slept?" The big man was looking about him. 
 
 "Yes," Greg said. "It s four o clock." 
 
 The American heard, then let his head fall back. 
 "Why did you wake me? For I ve dreamed as no man 
 has ever dreamed." 
 
 "Dreamed?" The boy, sitting on the side of the bed, 
 waited, wondering. 
 
 For the big-boned face had lost the lines which had 
 aged it; its steady tones had come back; the cheeks had 
 filled again; the deep eyes were marvellously, incredibly 
 clear in their glance. So might a man look, who never 
 in his life had once been tired. 
 
 Greg nodded, unconvinced, yet believing. "I suppose 
 it s your condition, always exercising," he said slowly, 
 
 trying to square his thin shoulders; "but " His 
 
 shoulders sagged again. "I don t know." 
 
 And the big man turned half away from him, to hide 
 his lasting gratitude for the blessed, healing glory of his 
 Dream.
 
 178 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "You d best dress," Bradbroke said at last. However 
 altered the other was, Greg s face was still white and 
 haggard. "You d best get up, I think." 
 
 "Yes, I ve got to get downtown, and set them working 
 on the offices." The big man was clear of the bed while 
 he spoke. 
 
 " It s not that," Bradbroke replied, absently. " They re 
 coming for us, in half an hour, with the gharry." He 
 glanced at his watch. "In twenty-five minutes. Anne 
 made me," he said. He had parted the curtains, but kept 
 oddly away from the light. "Said she d got to see you. 
 So did Miss Langmaid. She was the first to talk of it. 
 
 I What could I do, Ormsby? Anne all of them. 
 
 They think the world s made over new. Don t you see?" 
 
 The big man stopped his towel in mid swing. "The 
 partnership, you mean?" 
 
 "No, the fifty a month." The boy let himself slowly 
 down on the bed. 
 
 Fifty pounds a month! Had Greg been so in need 
 that they meant that to him? Fifty pounds a month! 
 Their prospect told what their lack had been, the in 
 effectiveness of his struggles; only South Africa for him, 
 never again England; and, through all, and in all, the 
 building bitterness of her who should have been his com 
 forter, but was to him and to those others, whose lives 
 touched hers, ever and only what the big man had seen 
 her . . . an uneasy factor in South Africa! 
 
 "Greg," said the big man, when at last he stood 
 dressed, "can t you let me out of this?" 
 
 Bradbroke hauled himself to his feet. "No," he said. 
 "Come! There s the carriage now."
 
 IMPORTERS AND EXPORTERS 179 
 
 He was right. Anne s laughter came clearly, musi 
 cally. 
 
 "Come down, you truants! We re not in the least 
 patient!" 
 
 "Coming," Greg called from the window. "Ormsby," 
 he whispered so sibillantly that the big man warned with 
 a gesture, "you ve got to do the talking, remember. I 
 was awake when you put that rug over me last night. 
 I ve been awake for forty hours, and you ve slept and 
 dreamed for six." 
 
 Then they went down the stairs to the carriage, which 
 waited them in the reeling street. 
 
 He had told himself that he must not so much as think 
 of her, and, as for seeing her he hoped that he d some 
 honour left! Yet, he entered the carriage, and took 
 the seat by her as if the gharry had been theirs alone. 
 More than that, he seemed to have gone back from the 
 world of the Unreal to the Real. It was as it had been 
 on that first evening. All was safe and sane again. For 
 the sight of her, her brief handclasp, the kindliness in her 
 eyes she had watched him as he turned to Anne for 
 a moment blest and steadied him. She did more even 
 than that : her dearness endeared the whole world to him 
 healed his soul. 
 
 And that was only the beginning. For, as he talked 
 with her, it was with a new and very sacred confidence. 
 From time to time, he even turned from her, as if revelling 
 in the strange peace which had come to him. It was as 
 if his old fear that she might, after all, prove evanescent, 
 had forever gone. She was here with him. She would 
 be here always. The world might wag as it would. It
 
 180 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 could not effect them, could not take her away from 
 him: she was his. Yes, she was his. For his dream had 
 come back, that glorious, marvellous dream, in which Heaven 
 had showed him their marriage, her his wife! Was this 
 only a new form of madness. He wondered, but idly. 
 After all, why should he try, or care, to plumb it? Was 
 it not enough that it had been vouchsafed to him? 
 For it had been. This peace, which passed all under 
 standing, this soul-stirring rapture, could have been 
 brought by nothing else! He had heard a very few men, 
 the best and happiest he knew, tell of it reverently: let 
 come what might, death itself the next instant, they 
 had been married! So each had spoken, whose marriage 
 had brought utter happiness. 
 
 Yes, she was his. The restlessness of his bachelor 
 days, days begun with such elation of independence, 
 were over. Suddenly, all had changed. The world was 
 very good to him. Before, he had thought it good; but, 
 then, he had not known. Before, he had driven time, 
 had tried to catch up with it. Now, the days should be 
 held back. Together, they d hold them back. That 
 was it: they d do it together. Always together. That 
 was all of everything! He smiled through the mist his 
 joy brought to his eyes. In his rapture, his hand covered 
 hers, and he said : 
 
 "Thank God for it all!" His hand brought hers to 
 his lips. Then, he buried his face in shaking hands, 
 for she was saying: 
 
 "You have done what you promised: you have given 
 them their happiness!" 
 
 She had turned toward him, and the violet eyes held
 
 IMPORTERS AND EXPORTERS 181 
 
 him, blinded him with their utter absence of reserve. 
 She allowed him the perfect vision: the violet eyes were 
 wet. " They will be married and go back in a few months, 
 Anne says 
 
 He felt the universe tilting. 
 
 "And now, if you two have quite gotten through, per 
 haps you ll begin, Mr. Ormsby?" laughed Anne.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 WHERE THE TRUTH HAD NO PLACE 
 
 YES?" he asked, grateful that what he should say 
 could be in reply to Anne. 
 "I want to know about it, all about it," 
 explained Miss Netherby. "Tell me everything you ve 
 been telling Marian. It means that, to be happy, you ve 
 got to work?" 
 
 "Yes," he said with an effort, though she was help 
 ing him, and he knew it. "Frankly stated, it means 
 that." 
 
 "And you re not content to let Greg idle, either!" 
 She shook her head in mock martyrdom. "Poor Greg, 
 I can see just what you ll make of him! But, do please 
 transform him gradually, and then only part way, for 
 I like him so much as he is." 
 
 It was the girlish not the bitter Anne, now, and 
 the big man smiled, "I promise," praying that he 
 achieved verisimilitude. 
 
 "But you re not telling me any more than he did," 
 she objected. "When are you going to begin?" 
 
 "At once. I ve practically decided on the offices. It 
 will take a little time getting them up, but not long. As 
 far as I have been able to find, Australian wools have never 
 been tried here on anything but a very small scale. We ll 
 make a go of it." He had kept on automatically, after 
 
 182
 
 TRUTH HAD NO PLACE 183 
 
 one glance had told him that Bradbroke could not be 
 looked to for any sort of assistance. 
 
 "You ll buy and sell?" Evidently, that was as far 
 as Greg had gone, or been able to go, with the story. 
 Miss Netherby hesitated. 
 
 "Where we can get the best market," the American 
 came to her rescue. "England, France, Canada, Ger 
 many, America. Anywhere. As a matter of fact, I 
 don t know a thing about this market yet, myself." 
 
 "Oh, but you will," Anne assured him. "And you re 
 going to have Greg live with you?" 
 
 He nodded. "We ve talked of it, ever since we lived 
 together in my sheet-iron shack at Kimberley. And, 
 now I ve so much more space than I need in my rooms 
 here, he s going to take pity on my loneliness." 
 
 He knew that her happiness blinded her, but he felt 
 that even she must see what heavy work he was making 
 of her simple question, and he shut his lips doggedly. 
 
 "But you must have decided all this very suddenly?" 
 
 "Yes. Yes. I imagine that we did." Wouldn t she 
 ever be satisfied, he asked himself. And wouldn t Greg 
 ever help him? 
 
 He saw that she was smiling, and welcomed it as an 
 answer to his prayer. Then, her smile faded. "Last 
 night" she remembered suddenly "why, only last 
 night, you two and Carstairs were going off for a vacation 
 to the Cape." Her face whitened to a shade ghastly in 
 comparison to her former radiance. "Greg," she de 
 manded hoarsely, "did Brett really ? " 
 
 Greg braced himself. The big man saw him, but 
 could not avoid Anne s harassing eyes. "Yes, Miss
 
 184 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Netherby, he s gone. I he left a note. It seems he d 
 had it in mind for a long time. Got away down, discour 
 aged, you know. Greg will tell you." He d force Greg 
 to speak! 
 
 "I wish you wouldn t, Anne," Bradbroke said desper 
 ately. "It s as Ormsby says: there was a note left. 
 Ormsby burned it afterward; but we all saw it, Ormsby 
 and Carstairs and I. I don t know what means he took, 
 of course. Wasn t a trace. But he undoubtedly made 
 sure." 
 
 "The poor fellow! The poor, poor boy!" 
 
 The same words she had used in the darkness, last 
 night, at the gate. The same deep, simply-confessed 
 sorrow, so much more telling than Anne s verbal grief. 
 "There s no way we could find him? It seems so ter 
 rible to think of his being found by any one but his 
 friends" 
 
 The big man looked straight before him, "Yes, it is 
 terrible," he said. 
 
 "But, Greg," Anne was saying, half -hysterically, 
 "what can be done? This is the third in why, hardly 
 a month! First, poor little Jem, then Hugh, and now 
 
 Brett! It s too " She tensed her fingers on Greg s, 
 
 as she went on, to the big man: "Right here in this little 
 
 set of us, almost as if they You don t think each 
 
 knew the other was going?" Her words piled on each 
 other. "You don t think that?" Her hand tightened 
 almost to the point of pain. 
 
 "No," the American reassured her. "Not the least 
 chance of that! If they had, they d have told me. I d 
 have known."
 
 TRUTH HAD NO PLACE 185 
 
 "And, anyway, 7 would," Greg hurried in with. "You 
 know how close we were? Then, too, Eraser s was 
 something about his heart. I don t know just what; 
 but I m practically sure of it. I didn t say so, not even 
 to Hammerstone." 
 
 "Doctor Hammerstone?" Anne demanded wildly. "I 
 didn t know that Hammerstone 
 
 The American set his teeth. 
 
 Greg breathed audibly. "I don t mean that. I 
 mean Hammerstone had looked Jem over, when he first 
 came out. This isn t known, generally. I have your 
 word?" He swept them with stern, hard eyes. "Beg 
 your pardon, all round, of course, but had to make sure. 
 Not a word of it must get out. But Jem did have a 
 weak heart, and probably that 
 
 "Of course," interposed the big man. If Greg would 
 not stop of his own choice, he must be ridden off from his 
 topic for he was heaping one bit of damaging evidence 
 on another. 
 
 " Of course. I supposed, though, that that was gener 
 ally known. It took his courage, drove him away from 
 here, from the people who knew him, made him a wan 
 derer. Heaven help the poor, mistaken lad. Chadwell s 
 case was different, and much clearer, in a way: sheer, 
 fatal heroism." 
 
 Greg was still looking straight before him, as he had 
 been doing when the American had cut him off in mid- 
 spring. But his face showed his relief. "Fatal heroism," 
 he said. "Just that!" 
 
 "But Brett," Anne began again; "you haven t said 
 about him."
 
 186 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Ormsby leaned swiftly closer to the girl at his side: 
 
 "Speak to her, please. Anything you can to distract 
 her or reassure her. If she could be persuaded to go 
 home, I mean her own home, here " 
 
 He was doing his best at naturalness; but fear held 
 him, his fear that, in the next breath, Anne would ask 
 about Carstairs! 
 
 The eyes into which he looked did not waver, though 
 the violet deepened, and the rare colour failed in the 
 perfect face. Then, she laid her hand on one of Anne s 
 bent shoulders. 
 
 "Anne," she said, gently, "I m quite tired out. Will 
 you let Greg drive us home?" 
 
 At her words, Greg threw the horses about. "By 
 Jove!" he said, with a laugh at which the big man mar 
 velled and blest him, "we ve all of us earned a vacation, 
 and, if not that, tea. And, remember, Anne, I m no 
 longer an idler. From now on, I m a money-making 
 machine." 
 
 After that beginning, Greg did not falter. Through the 
 drive back, he allowed hardly a word from any one of 
 them. Something, genius, almost, the big man thought, 
 inspired his rapid sallies. The talk ran away and away 
 and still farther away from Jem and Chadwell and the 
 singer and Carstairs. 
 
 Nor did he once mention England. It was all South 
 Africa, as on that first evening. So that, before they 
 had entered the long drive, which wound in and out among 
 the amatingula hedges, the big man s fear had gone. Of 
 course, he could not undeceive the girl at his side: he 
 must let her go on drawing all the joy she could from her
 
 TRUTH HAD NO PLACE 187 
 
 thought of Anne s nearing marriage. But Anne and 
 Greg could never marry, now. Not after this, not after 
 the proven effectiveness of the prophecy! It was not to 
 be thought of. And Greg would know it. He was too 
 loyal to Anne, loved her too much, to marry after this. It 
 would be woe to him to hear what, in the natural course 
 of events, Anne would soon begin to say of their marriage. 
 But the boy would stand firm. 
 
 The conviction clung to him, as they entered the house, 
 and his eyes followed Greg, who, acting under habit, was 
 preparing the tea himself. Again and again, he applauded 
 Bradbroke s courage, his nerve-control, his power of 
 dissimulation. At the moment, Greg was arguing a 
 triviality with Anne, and the girl s smile she was 
 quite restored now was not more radiant than the 
 man s. And the big man, studying them, wondered how 
 many men, out of all that he knew, could smile that way, 
 in that presence, faced by one one-hundredth part of 
 what confronted Greg. 
 
 "Not one," said the big man to himself. "Not one!" 
 
 He rose from his chair, to join them, wondering if she 
 
 were not soon coming down again, and still praying that 
 
 no one remembered to ask, or to suggest sending, for 
 
 Carstairs. 
 
 She came. The Netherbys had not too many servants. 
 She had been making coffee. He wondered how she had 
 realized, or, realizing, remembered at such a time that, 
 American that he was, he preferred it to the English tea. 
 He set it down as another of her wonders. 
 
 "Mr. Ormsby," her voice was saying, "you look as 
 you did there, last night, at the gate. Won t you let
 
 188 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 me ? " Unconsciously her hand had gone out. How 
 
 frank and true she was! That he was deceiving her, 
 must continue to cut him with a keenness all its own. 
 He rose to his feet, his eyes on that small, soft hand. 
 
 "If I could tell you " Her wonderful eyes held 
 
 him. "If ever I can " he said dully. Then, "If 
 
 I stay here, I shall do what I must not do." 
 
 "When you can, you will tell me?" Her voice was the 
 lowest whisper. 
 
 "When I can." He took her hand for one moment. 
 For one moment, looked down at her. Then, after a 
 word with Greg and Anne, he went down the steps. 
 
 "To the offices," he had thrown back over his shoulder. 
 But, though he had spoken to Greg, his eyes had gone 
 to Her, to the hand which she raised to him the hand 
 which he had kissed.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS 
 
 IT WAS done. Right or wrong, it was done, he told 
 himself as he descended the drive and came out 
 upon the street. Having owned the partnership, 
 neither he nor Greg could draw back. They were com 
 mitted to it and to its results. The offices, now, and to 
 buy up the best buyer in Natal! The engagement of 
 the market would not be difficult for him. Markets were 
 old friends of his. 
 
 He got the offices and the buyer. Money would do 
 much in Durban, and an abundance worked miracles. 
 Buyer and offices were ready for the big man by the 
 middle of the week. And, by Thursday morning, he 
 was at his desk, cabling, and sending telegrams. He was 
 busy again, and that meant rest to him, since occupa 
 tion was always rest to his restless yet unhurried mind. 
 He was back in the harness. As much as he ever could 
 have, again, he had his old point-of-view back. And 
 sometimes yes, for as much as half an hour at a 
 stretch he could keep his thoughts excludingly 
 on his work. And if, at the end of that half hour, 
 an oval face, rare, and wonderful to him, smiled up 
 at him from the pages or papers he studied, it was 
 only to smile her approval of the course which he had 
 made his own. 
 
 189
 
 190 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 He marvelled at the clearness with which he visualized 
 her. Sometimes, in these moments of hallowed, unin- 
 fringed communion, he felt her so near that he dared 
 hardly admit his earlier thoughts. Then, he would seize 
 his pen, or bend lower over his tables and lists, waiting 
 for the time when she should come again. She would 
 come. No matter where the Fates drove him as Its 
 plaything, she would come to him, up to, yes, and through, 
 the last moment that he should live. 
 
 And if, at other times, his eyes saw the* white face of 
 young Jem Fraser, his limp body swung in the strong 
 arms of impassive Hammerstone, Hugh Chadwell, grave, 
 self-contained and sombre, as on the evening of that 
 last rehearsal, the last evening that any of them had 
 seen him alive, their faces, and that of the rag-nerved 
 singer, and Carstairs , with desperation hidden with 
 greater skill, he met their stares calmly, for, already, he 
 held himself one with them. 
 
 Only one of the spirits which visited him seemed un 
 aware of him, and that the dark Fiend who had pro 
 nounced his doom. The half -human face and form of 
 the barbaric prophet! Where was he now? Had he 
 gone back, for a period, to the Shades which had sired 
 him? Did he still live? Had he ever lived? Had not 
 his deadly prophecy been the dictum of the dead? The 
 big man faced him, but felt his blood chill at that aspect. 
 Yes, the cloud had not lifted; the curse was on him, more 
 heavily with every hour. Now, he expected no peace from 
 it, just as, long ago, he had abandoned hope that it 
 might pass from him. And he was very glad that, since 
 it was unescapable, it was omnipresent. He required
 
 THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS 191 
 
 that continuous reminder for the controlling of his heart 
 and the leashing of his tongue. 
 
 And so it was with him. Day in, day out, he went to 
 his offices on West Street. Day in, day out, he com 
 muned with Her there, and faced the others manfully. 
 Each night Greg went with him to the rooms which now 
 seemed to have been theirs always. But, though soon 
 adapted again to the Regent, they never stayed long 
 there: the quiet rooms of the big man, where Hackluytt 
 and Hammerstone came not, were more acceptable. 
 
 More often, they went to the Netherbys , Greg always 
 to talk with his fiancee, and the big man as naturally 
 to go to the girl whom he held barred from him as by 
 a barrier aged a thousand years. 
 
 She comprehended his muteness at least sufficiently 
 to accept his long silences. And he marvelled at this. 
 It was well that she could do this, for he could do nothing 
 in the way of either explanation or apology. He told 
 himself that she understood him, and that he understood 
 her. Undoubtedly, he meant by that that they were 
 congenial, and that he was finding her more than ever 
 perfect. It is probable that she confessed to herself 
 the same thoughts of him at least, touching their 
 congeniality. Neither knew how much closer together 
 they were coming. Neither, before, had known what it 
 was to love. 
 
 At times, he would tell her of his new business, of the 
 progress Greg was making. He spoke, with all the 
 enthusiasm of which he was capable, of the work of Greg. 
 The truth of it was, he was trying to disabuse himself 
 of a growing conviction that he had ill-read Bradbroke
 
 192 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 and he was having very hard work with it. He was trying 
 to persuade himself that he found Greg as tractable as 
 ever; that Greg was doing his best; that Greg was meeting 
 him halfway! And, for all his trying, he had begun to 
 see that Greg was conceited, petulant, no longer boyish, 
 but childish; that Greg was not a magnetic man, the least 
 likable of the five. Greg came less and less to the offices. 
 . . . He had been but a silent partner at best. Now, 
 he was fast becoming an absent one. Moreover, the fact 
 of the fifty pounds a month had begun to rankle not 
 the amount: it still loomed huge to him, but the fact 
 of it. 
 
 "You re just keeping me on, Ormsby," he would fling 
 out, after the big man had patiently rectified some one 
 of his glaring errors. "I m no help to you, worse than 
 none!" Then, he would brood by the hour, after the 
 manner learned from Anne, by his gloomy silences draw 
 ing closer the spectres which already haunted the high- 
 walled rooms. 
 
 And, though not denying what Bradbroke said of his 
 business blindness, the big man would remind him that, 
 after all, the partnership was only a means, a trick. 
 
 "So what do we care whether or not we make money 
 by it? And, even so, we re making it. I admit it s 
 sheer luck" he really believed it "but we re scoring 
 steadily. This," holding out a cable which had just 
 come, "means fifty thousand if it means a cent. Hooper 
 & Sons, London. You know: biggest importers of them 
 all! And this is only a feeler: they re trying us out. 
 If we hit them right with this, they ll double this 
 order inside another month. Gad, Greg, our filling
 
 THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS 193 
 
 with the only grade they were short on, was sheer 
 Providence!" 
 
 " Providence ! " Greg burst out. " We favoured by Provi 
 dence ! I tell you, it s all right for you: you ve a right to 
 the money. You earn it ! All I do is cash your checks ! 
 How would you feel in my place? You re all they talk 
 of, now: how you re teaching me your ways; how sure 
 you are, and how sure I ll be! All of em, even Miss 
 Langmaid, are pleased as if I were their baby and you 
 were teaching me to read or walk ! By Heaven ! I wish 
 I were back at the consulate!" 
 
 He had cried that out before, but never with such appeal 
 as now. And the American saw rebellion forming in the 
 handsome eyes. 
 
 "Back at the consulate!" No, he wouldn t allow that! 
 They were sitting alone in the big man s private office 
 and he turned slowly round. "I don t know, after all, 
 that your position s so unreasonable. I see what you 
 mean, Greg, and I guess I d feel the same way, if our 
 positions were reversed. Yes, it would sting me to cash 
 your checks." 
 
 Greg leaned toward him, across the corner of the desk 
 on which he d been resting his laxed arms. "Then let 
 me out of this! Let me go, get back!" 
 
 "And the Netherbys? Have you thought of them? 
 They know you ve got the first real chance you ever had 
 in your life and they ll wonder. Of course, it s your 
 own affair, but it ll be one thing more that can t be ex 
 plained." 
 
 Greg s lips opened, then closed. Perhaps it was the 
 big man s impassiveness, his square-built, impervious
 
 194 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 bulk, his tremendous reach and spread, which checked 
 Bradbroke. 
 
 "Stick along with me," the big man went on. "We ve 
 been going only a month with the business, but that s 
 as long as the Thing took to dispose of Fraser and Chad- 
 well and Brett Paxton and Carstairs, and It hasn t got 
 us yet. So stick along, I say! Since the checks hurt you, 
 I m going to cut them off. I m not drawing any salary 
 myself, and I don t see why you should. From now on, 
 we ll stand on the partnership division alone. Here s 
 your half of what we cleaned up on that deal with Hooper 
 & Sons." He shoved the amount across to Greg. 
 
 Greg glared at it. It was twenty-five thousand pounds. 
 
 "And now," the big man went on, "instead of coming 
 down here any old time, and mooning around like a wild 
 man, try to learn this business. In plain English, get 
 down to work! All you ve done so far is lie down. 
 You ve not even tried!"" 
 
 Greg sprang up. This was rage. No longer that 
 strange look of remorse. 
 
 "Oh, stop acting, and get down to work! For one 
 thing keep office hours!" 
 
 "Acting? You say I ve been acting?" Greg was livid. 
 
 "Of course! Acting the part of the young man who 
 had nothing to live for, doing it unconsciously. But you 
 have got something to live for: as long as this Thing holds 
 off, you ve got a partnership half of a business that has 
 just brought you in twenty-five thousand pounds, and 
 will bring you a lot more, if you ll tend the shop." The 
 big man spoke more quietly now: he had won his point; 
 stunned Greg with the amount of his winnings, taken
 
 THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS 195 
 
 from his mind all thought of retreating into the consulate. 
 He went on, 
 
 "Now, you acrobat, pick up that stuff and come over 
 to the bank with me, and deposit yours while I stick mine 
 in. Then, having had our row, and made peace, we ll 
 have a drink and a smoke." He stuck his pipe into 
 his pocket, as he got up, filling it there, with the Boer 
 tobacco, "strong and loose and dry." 
 
 It swung Greg. The bank. Then, the drink and the 
 smoke. 
 
 "Now, run over to the Netherbys , and tell them, and 
 let them fill you up with tea so you won t be worth any 
 thing for the rest of the day. Take the afternoon off. 
 I d like to, but I ve got a dozen things here to do." 
 
 Greg shook his head obstinately. "No, I ll stay here 
 and help. I say, Ormsby, do you really think I ve got 
 it in me to amount to anything in this? " His arm took in 
 the offices. 
 
 "You bet I do," lied the big man instantly. "All you 
 need is experience." 
 
 And it was not until an hour later, that they both set 
 out for the Netherbys , Greg buoyant it was always one 
 extreme or the other, with him and the big man quiet, 
 saying over and over to himself: "It was the only way to 
 cheer him up, and I don t really believe he has any idea 
 of marrying her." 
 
 But he kept his eyes straight before him. The point 
 had been gotten by, but for how long? How long could 
 he keep Greg alive, how long hold him back from what 
 had already taken the other four? He had a tremendous 
 fortune, by this time: Falk kept reporting the same
 
 196 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 phenomenal winnings from Kimberley; Cheever, back 
 in New York, cabled the same of the Street there, and 
 Boyden & Lawrence did the same thing from the Boston 
 end. How he d like to see Dave Lawrence now ! There d 
 never been another lad like him: the same old Dave! 
 What a second tenor he d sung on their quartette, and 
 what a seven he d been in the crew! Gad, it would be 
 good to see him would have been if only things had 
 broken right. The thought of the Bostonian, the frank 
 est, most downright, thoroughly genuine man that he 
 could remember out of all his generation except, of 
 course, Tom had made him forget that he was scoring 
 on Australian wools, too. Yes, he was scoring on Aus 
 tralian wools, too! But the old question hung: what was 
 going to be the end of it? 
 
 "There they all are!" Greg cried out, as they climbed 
 the drive, and turned the last bend in it. " It ll be great 
 news for them!" 
 
 "Yes," said the big man, following the direction of 
 Greg s eyes, "there she is." 
 
 Then he locked his lips.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 IN THE DIRECTION OF THE TRUTH 
 
 SHE was waiting at the steps top, never before so 
 rarely lovely, never so utter a blessing to his weary 
 brain and eyes. So that his bow to Anne was 
 even more brief than usual, a thing which Anne realized, 
 for a smile danced to the edge of her curving lips. In 
 truth, the big man s attitude toward her guest delighted 
 Anne now even more than before. Then, she turned to 
 Greg again, leaving the big man and the girl to them 
 selves. 
 
 She looked accusingly at him. " Something is the matter, 
 but you don t tell me what it is just let me see its effect 
 on you! And," she went on, with her characteristic 
 honesty and direct friendliness, "I don t think it s very 
 nice of you." 
 
 Suddenly, his eyes had caught hers. For only an 
 instant, then he looked away. 
 
 Without knowing why, she coloured to the soft curls 
 which framed the "widow s peak." Then, "I m sorry I 
 said that," she faltered: "I didn t mean it to sound that 
 
 way. Please believe that. You have always been " 
 
 Her eyes, deep and wonderfully clear, did not waver. A 
 moment before, she had coloured hotly. Now, she as 
 slowly paled. "And so it hurts me to see you troubled." 
 
 He looked down at her. "For all the world and the 
 
 197
 
 198 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 hereafter, I wouldn t have you hurt, or know what being 
 hurt is. But, without having merited it, or earned it, I 
 believe, I have met with great trouble." 
 
 "With Greg? I m so sorry, so deeply sorry." Her 
 eyes were full of pain. 
 
 He sank back into the chair from which he had half- 
 risen. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "with Greg." 
 
 All unconsciously, she had saved him an open confession 
 of what she had come to be to him. And he knew that, 
 to continue in the direction she had given, was the one safe 
 thing for him to do, for the pauses which he so longed to 
 fill with the fact of that love for her, were breaking him. 
 "I mean," he forced out, "Greg will soon stop coming to 
 the office at this rate. I mean that he s morbid, melan 
 choly; he gets down. 
 
 She told him. " Why of course: with all this I mean 
 these terrible things : Jem Fraser, and Mr. Chadwell, and 
 Mr. Paxton, and now Mr. Carstairs!" 
 
 So she knew of Carstairs, had heard the rumour, that 
 is, that Carstairs had "bolted the country," as Fraser 
 did. The simplicity and control with which she showed 
 him her knowledge, showed him how used she was be 
 coming to South Africa. He marvelled at it, and it hurt 
 him. It was another thing which he should hold against 
 South Africa. He knew that she could never be like 
 Anne, and he thanked God that she was too gentle ever 
 to approach, by so much as a hair s breadth, the point-of- 
 view of Catherine Hetheridge, even Catherine Hetheridge, 
 before she had first begun to respond to South Africa, that 
 younger Catherine, who then had not ceased hoping,
 
 IN DIRECTION OF TRUTH 199 
 
 who had not so much as dreamed of the coming service 
 with Madame Zelig, the Jewess, or of marriage with 
 Beaconsfield Zelig, the Jew. But he was glad of what 
 ever kept Catherine from cultivating any intimacy with 
 her. They never met, now. The rehearsals had stopped : 
 all idea of offering the play had been abandoned at Chad- 
 well s death. All in two months! Could it still be only 
 two months since Greg had led him southward into 
 Natal? Only two months since that night he had met 
 her, at the Regent, and poor Brett had tried to sing 
 "Mandalay," and that vagabond in the street had 
 claimed them as brothers and sisters in exile? Only two 
 months since he and this slender goddess had planned 
 the release of Anne and Greg, outlining their plot in 
 such unsuspecting joyousness? Two months? Two 
 centuries! 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn t mean 
 
 "No," she said, earnestly, "for I have been thinking, 
 too." 
 
 It was wonderful that, even yet, they failed to realize 
 that these silences were bringing them closer than any 
 confidences could have. Strange that, at least, the girl 
 could indulge the peace which their proximity gave her, 
 and emerge from it without consciousness. Or was it, 
 perhaps, that, without becoming aware of it, she had 
 passed, as the man had, into that oneness of heart which 
 marriage itself could hardly have added to? With him, 
 it had been his joy in her and the joy of that never-to-be- 
 forgotten dream. With her, though without the dream, 
 it had been the same, simple, sacred growth of an ever 
 lasting and perfect love. Like him, she knew that the
 
 200 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 world had changed for her; though, unlike his revelation, 
 the transfiguration had been so untrammelled that she 
 had not once divined its cause. If she had been older, 
 or if she had been less perfectly protected through her 
 eighteen years, if her beauty had brought her worldli- 
 ness But none of these things had been: she typi 
 fied the divinest gift in this world save motherhood 
 a young girl s innocent faith, and tender gentleness. 
 
 And the man was fit for marriage, yes, even for marriage 
 with such as she. 
 
 For all her unconsciousness and the man s muteness, 
 he had sought her, and she had received him. They 
 were far more betrothed than Greg and Anne, who pres 
 ently summoned them to tea.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 GREG S MALADY 
 
 HE HAD told himself that Greg s fever for work 
 would be shortlived, and, before the end of the 
 week, he saw his opinion verified. Unquestion 
 ably, Greg made the effort; but his endeavour could not 
 alter his heritage. Years of inertness, legacy of a long 
 line of safely conservative ancestors, were showing their 
 effect. The offices were a prison to him; regular atten 
 dance a fruitless penance; and the whole project hostile, 
 unsolvable, and too late. He bent over his desk by 
 the hour, his eyes set, his whole body actionless. Then, 
 he would walk the floor, stare from one after another 
 of the windows; then go to the private office of the big 
 man, and, after gloomily studying his absorption, ask 
 information on trivialities explained already an hundred 
 times. Day after day, he would do this, each day more 
 dissatisfied and valueless. Until the American would try 
 again the exposition which he knew, in advance, would 
 result only in new boredom. 
 
 Then, from being merely sullen, Greg became openly 
 cynical: it was clear now that nothing could be done 
 with him or for him! What was the use of trying? 
 This farce with Australian wools ! He didn t know whether 
 the fault was most his or his teacher s, but he did know 
 he couldn t get past the infant class. Better do the whole 
 
 201
 
 202 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 thing, and get him a blackboard. Perhaps, then, he 
 could make something out of these schedules and per 
 centages! Best thing he could do was to go back to work 
 he could manage. He d never fallen down so at the con 
 sulate! The twenty -five thousand from Hooper or Cooper 
 & Sons he couldn t be sure which, but he d give it 
 back. 
 
 " For God s sake, brace up ! " growled the American. " A 
 sick dog would give me more stimulus and companion 
 ship!" 
 
 "Then get one," came the impersonal answer, "and let 
 me go after them!" 
 
 The big man found this strange acceptance more 
 ominous than the wildest outburst. So had Paxton, the 
 singer, talked, and Carstairs, the last time he had seen 
 them. How many times he and Greg had agreed that 
 they should have been warned into greater watchful 
 ness by that quietude! It was warning, now, to the 
 American. 
 
 "By Gad!" he cried, as naturally as he could affect, "I 
 was trying you out, to see how far you would go! And 
 now I m going to give you some straight news: we ve just 
 cleaned up another contract, and your share ll be a bit 
 over ten thousand. Not so much as Hooper & Son s, but 
 it helps! I ve stuck it in the bank for you. Now, go out 
 and buy something, and remember you re getting rich." 
 
 "Rich? I guess I am. I d forgotten. But, I say, old 
 man, it s too late, now. Money or no money : what s the 
 use of it?" He shook his head. "I say, Ormsby, don t 
 you envy them?" 
 
 The big man did not raise his eyes from the schedule
 
 GREG S MALADY 203 
 
 he was studying. "Oh, go to the devil," he said 
 deliberately, "and let me work!" 
 
 "Yes, it s just as they said: it s all right for you, for 
 you know you re to be the last." 
 
 Ormsby pushed back his papers, and leaned across the 
 desk. 
 
 "I ve tried to convince you, and now I m going to do 
 it, for all time: you remember the afternoon we got the 
 word Chadwell had gone? You remember I had said 
 we must stick together, in Durban, not any of us try to 
 get away? . . . You and Carstairs went out, then, 
 to overhaul Paxton, you d said. But, instead, you got 
 the first train you could." 
 
 "And," Greg broke in, "you saw us and. ... In 
 God s name, why didn t you let us go, instead of coming 
 after us?" 
 
 "I m coming to that," said the big man slowly: 
 "my meeting you, there, was accident, the last thing 
 I looked for: I didn t know you and Carstairs were on 
 the train 
 
 "Didn t come after us? You don t mean ? 
 
 "Just that: after all I d said about fighting the thing 
 out here, and keeping together, I was trying flight myself. 
 I saw you, for the first, just before the train began to slow 
 down for Pietermaritzburg. I knew you d discover me, 
 in another moment, so I moved first: 7 discovered you. 
 If you hadn t taken that train, I d have gone through to 
 Kimberley, closed things up there, then struck overland 
 for the coast." 
 
 "And," Greg took up the narrative, "by this time, 
 you d have been
 
 204 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Dead," completed the big man, "or out of South 
 Africa." 
 
 Bradbroke nodded. "I seem to be your evil genius, 
 for first I get you into this, then keep you from getting 
 out of it." 
 
 " On the contrary, you have given me what I can never 
 make up to you." 
 
 " / have? " Greg stared at him. " What, in God s name? 
 You re mad as / am, but I d like to know what you 
 mean, just the same!" 
 
 The big-boned face had gone suddenly bloodless. 
 "Never mind, now, Greg." His lips set, for suddenly he 
 had realized the joy it would be to him to tell his secret 
 even to Greg. But the realization made him only the 
 more self -watchful. He prayed that he had bred no 
 suspicion in the other s mind. And, to sterilize it, if 
 there were such, he employed the instant for what it 
 served as a natural opening. "I ve just had a tip on 
 Kimberley to risk almost your honour on. I m going to 
 put something up on it, and I suggest you stick on every 
 thing you ve got." 
 
 Greg flew for his check-book. "Here!" He dashed 
 the check off. "But you ll have to manage it." 
 
 "I will, this time. With this private wire, we ought 
 to know for sure in forty hours. Maybe sooner. I ll get 
 at it now." 
 
 "If only it takes hold of him as I ve seen it take others," 
 he thought. "And the best way to get him started is to 
 have him win something pretty fair, then lose, then double 
 and win again." 
 
 It proved so. That first venture, " managed" by the big
 
 GREG S MALADY 205 
 
 man, brought Greg a little harvest. The second cost 
 him about what he had won on the first one. But, from 
 the third, he reaped a grand and golden store. And it 
 was a new Greg now. He d have risked all he had, on 
 the next venture, if the American had not interposed. 
 
 "Don t crowd your luck," he warned. "You ll prob 
 ably get cleaned, if you do. Best thing is to pull out, 
 now, for a little, and buy some more things. You ve told 
 everlastingly about what you used to have." 
 
 Greg bought. First, dogs and horses. Then, charac 
 teristically, whf t he referred to as "the bills." And these 
 must have been far heavier than he had owned to, for he 
 announced that his pockets were empty of winnings, in a 
 week. And with the emptiness of his pockets came a 
 return of the depression which lately had spared him. 
 
 The big man took it to his counsellor, who took it to 
 Anne. But Greg s cloud did not lift. 
 
 "But, by Heaven, there s the market," the American 
 told himself. As before, he sold some of his own 
 "Kimberley"to Greg. 
 
 And, again as before, the sun shone with the younger 
 man. Again, Anne was radiant. And why not? The 
 big man had not spared his own holdings: he had swung 
 to Greg this time, a good seventy-five thousand pounds! 
 
 On the day that the papers found Greg s new winnings 
 almost before he himself did he seemed almost 
 mad with elation. He couldn t really credit it even yet, 
 he said. But it was not from any lack of being told it by 
 his friends and those who envied him. The city had al 
 ways admired him. He was coming into his own, it said. 
 
 Greg came to the office half an hour late.
 
 206 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "We re getting on! And, I say, I gave that first 
 twenty-five thousand to Anne, you know. You thought 
 I d blow it on bills? Not I? No spendthrift now! No 
 end of credit, you know. You d be surprised!" He 
 laughed jubilantly. "Eh, what?" 
 
 "What did you say about Miss Netherby?" 
 
 Greg shook his head warningly at the speaker. "Get 
 
 on a smile, can t you? Imagine something agreeable, for a 
 
 bit, or I say, what is it Shakespeare, wasn t it? says 
 
 about Brutus? That day, he overcame the Nerveii. 
 
 No, that s not it at all. Shakespeare said He was 
 
 pointing to Brutus, that is Cassius I ve got it: he 
 
 said: 
 
 Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. 
 He thinks too much. Such men are are 
 
 I say, you know, old chap, I don t know what the deuce 
 he did say, now! Fowtry! Got it?" he cried, before the 
 big man could speak. "He said: are dangerous. It 
 took Shakespeare ! He knew em. Awful gift to have 
 such a memory! Calls up all sorts of things! You d be 
 surprised." 
 
 The big man nodded deliberately. "Must be almost a 
 burden. But about Miss Netherby?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, to be sure. She wants you to put the twenty- 
 five thousand I gave her right back in Kimberley. For 
 her, you know. You ll do it, I say, old chap? " 
 
 The American whirled him around. "You can t mean 
 you re willing to let her risk it?" 
 
 "Don t I? Don t we, the three of us, Anne and I and 
 Miss Langmaid? Well, rawther! No risk, you know: 
 not with you running it ! Here it is."
 
 GREG S MALADY 207 
 
 And he left the big man standing motionless, Anne 
 Netherby s check for twenty-five thousand pounds in his 
 hand. 
 
 For what could he do? The money was Anne s, and 
 to refuse to act for her was impossible. It was equally 
 impossible for him to do what he longed to : teach Greg a 
 lesson, and, at the same stroke, lower Anne s potentiality 
 by having every pound of the twenty-five thousand swept 
 away. No, there was only one thing to do: study the 
 market as he had never done before, even when speculating 
 for himself and trying to make it sure, without impairing 
 his own holdings a sacrifice he would not make for her, 
 though he had done it willingly for Greg ! Yes, though if 
 he saw anything slipping, he d back it up, he d have to! 
 with his own "Kimberley," for, f it lost he could see 
 Greg s face, when the news came: it would mean such 
 consciousness of disgrace to him that he d dash, headlong, 
 for the ultimate, which, at moments far less burdensome, 
 he so envied having been gained by the other four. For, 
 though lifted now out of reach of that tiger of gloom, Greg 
 was never safe from it: let him sink ever so little, and its 
 exaction would be sure. And once that The big man 
 knew. Cost what he might, Bradbroke stood between It 
 and him. Bradbroke was The Man Between, and he d 
 got to keep him on! 
 
 It was after such revery, followed by seemingly 
 endless hours of scrutiny of the market, that the big 
 man placed Anne Netherby s twenty-five thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 "Where? Where?" Greg had demanded. 
 
 The big man told him, and Greg bolted away.
 
 208 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 "Promised I d keep em posted," he threw back. "I 
 won t be long!" 
 
 Then they waited. 
 
 The word came. It was a victory, amazing even to the 
 American; another one of those unexpectedly golden smiles 
 which the presiding Deity of the Market seemed pleased 
 to reserve for him. He received it mutely, hardly hear 
 ing Greg s half-incoherent cries. It was true, verified at 
 once past all doubting. Anne had won very heavily. 
 For the rest of her life, she would never know money-need 
 again. 
 
 Her delirious joy almost frightened the big man. The 
 hands which crushed his, the instant she saw him, scorched. 
 He could hardly endure her eyes. The avalanche of her 
 gratitude, and her flood of hysteric tears! How much 
 more acceptable he found the reserved, quietly told happi 
 ness of her father and Lady Netherby! And, richer by 
 far than all, the look She received him with. The English 
 violet s eyes were wet, and no words measured her mean 
 ing, but she gave him her soft, true hand. 
 
 Greg had stood back, watching their joy with mocking 
 eyes. Then, he went across to the American. 
 
 "Now my secret, old chap: I m a winner myself: 
 when you told me where you d put Anne s, I went in on it 
 myself: stuck on every bally pound!" 
 
 For a moment the big man stood like a statue, then 
 he caught Bradbroke s hand. 
 
 "I congratulate you," he said. His smile would have 
 amazed them if they could have seen its ingredients : it was 
 & surrender, the first that he had ever made. "I believe 
 I m tired," he said slowly. Anne and Greg and Lord
 
 GREG S MALADY 209 
 
 and Lady Netherby had instantly gone together; the 
 only one who heard him was the one to whom, of all, 
 he spoke. 
 
 She was standing beside him, looking up anxiously into 
 the big-boned face. 
 
 " God help me, I ve done too much, for they ll marry 
 now," he breathed, before he could check himself. 
 
 Something made them both turn. Greg and Anne were 
 approaching, followed by the others in a chorus of ex 
 clamations : " You people think you ve got the real news, 
 but you haven t," Greg laughed. "Miss Langmaid, 
 Ormsby, old chap, let me present you to my wife: Anne 
 and I were married this afternoon at four o clock!"
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 FEAR 
 
 IT WAS done. He had given his stumbling congrat 
 ulations. Only once, while going through the crazy 
 questions and answers, had he met her eyes, as she 
 held Anne in her arms. Then, he had gone. 
 
 For he had had to go. Not that he might steady him 
 self from the revelation of Greg s deceit; sudden as that 
 had been, it was not what had driven the American. It 
 was the confession he had read in the violet eyes, their 
 message the pinnacle of his despair! He tried to tell him 
 self that he had seen nothing. He reiterated that it had 
 been only his own love s reflection. He had deluded him 
 self, lied to himself: he had seen nothing! But he knew 
 that his lie was truth. He must see her. He must 
 never see her again. The oath he had taken, the self- 
 control he had vaunted, the power of will he had boasted, 
 the manhood he had affirmed his all had deserted him. 
 Where could he take this Fear of his? He felt no 
 strength, only blank, dull, dumbing weakness. Where 
 should he go? Wherever he went, he knew that this would 
 go with him. Already, though but so recent a possession, 
 it had become a part of him. He knew that he should 
 stay on in Durban. He could consider being nowhere 
 else, now. Now, even more than before, Durban spelled 
 the world for him. He should stay on. He should keep 
 
 210
 
 FEAR 211 
 
 on as he had been doing. He should keep up the busi 
 ness. He should keep Greg with him. Though married, 
 Greg would require him, for the cloud would settle down 
 again. On the other hand, Greg s position toward him 
 now seemed altered, no longer to be an affair of his. It 
 startled the big man to realize how distant Greg and his 
 fate seemed when compared with this which, for one short 
 moment, he had surprised in her eyes! How dared he! 
 What right had he! None, and he knew it. But he 
 knew what he had seen in her eyes. 
 
 He came back to this, let his thoughts diverge, however 
 obediently. He came back and back to it. And, with 
 it, other things came to him: that he was young, and fit 
 for marriage, even this marriage no man ever could be 
 fit for this! and he had sought it as Esau his father s 
 blessing, penitently and with tears. Now it awaited 
 him ... a reality diviner than his dreams! He 
 
 would go to her and tell her, ask her ! It meant 
 
 that he was going mad. 
 
 Yet, from his madness, he was winning a great under 
 standing. Of Greg, among others: while Greg s words 
 were falling, he had sworn to paint his act to him, reveal to 
 him what he had meted out to Anne widowhood instead 
 of wifehood; had told himself that he should listen to no 
 attempt at extenuation, no excuse. But now, though he 
 realized that he should never feel otherwise toward him, 
 the big man knew that he should never loose his lips to 
 Greg. 
 
 Now that Greg and Anne had married past any recall 
 ing, he should accept it. Greg would probably buy a 
 place outside of town, somewhere. That would free him
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 from the hated supervision. That freedom would mean 
 open danger, but Greg would not realize it. Or it might 
 be that he did realize it, and had decided to face it, take 
 his happiness while it lasted, live for the present. Greg 
 had decided that. He showed it by his frank defiance. 
 
 Well, let it be so. Living for the present might not be 
 so wholly beyond Greg s rights. It was no more than 
 many others did ! The big man was gaining a clearer view 
 of many things. 
 
 Greg, then, had decided to live while he could; in some 
 manner, had been able to absent the fact of his fate up to 
 the latest moment of its arrival. He had decided to take 
 all that the Gods had given him, and marriage with Anne 
 had been a part of it. So viewed, his act seemed less mon 
 strous. It dwindled still more when the big man realized 
 that not even Greg s own happiness in the marriage 
 equalled Anne s. While he lived, Greg would give her all 
 she could wish for. The thousands and hundreds of thou 
 sands, almost, which the big man had given him outright 
 had multiplied into an unexpectedly vast aggregate. Greg 
 was a rich man now; and, at his death, all of it would pass 
 to Anne. They could not go back to England, of course. 
 But they could live happily as they would in Durban, 
 
 until Greg went. So why not ? There lay the 
 
 thought again, the fear and the danger; why not do as 
 Greg had done? The danger of understanding Greg s 
 point of -view, as the big man knew that he must not do, 
 for the argument found an irresistible ally in his love. 
 
 He had been wandering on, heedless of streets and 
 squares; and, looking about him, now for the first time, 
 he swung heavily in the direction in which his offices lay,
 
 FEAR 213 
 
 for work, which had aided him in lesser crises, might 
 relieve him now. 
 
 He made the way slowly. How far he had wandered, 
 in his self-questioning! It was nearly six, a good hour, 
 a terrible hour! since he had gone from the Netherbys . 
 
 "Has any one called anything come in?" he asked a 
 clerk as he entered. He knew that his hope, vague as it 
 was, was part of his fear and of his new cowardice. 
 
 "No, sir. Mr. Bradbroke " 
 
 "Here," Greg s voice called from the big man s private 
 room. He turned there. Greg was waiting by the desk. 
 
 " Come in and shut the door," he said, musically. And, 
 as the American did so, " Now, if you say so, we ll go over 
 it. Give it to me straight, and get it through ! " 
 
 The big man met the languidly defiant eyes quietly. 
 
 "I ve said all I have to say, Greg, except just one thing: 
 in a moment, I m going out to buy the Grainton bungalow, 
 just back of the Bluff, and have it put in order double 
 quick. The deed will be made out at once, in your name. 
 If you ve no objections, you may consider it my present 
 to the bride." 
 
 What was there in that to trouble Greg? Yet the 
 boy s eyes hurt the man who met them. What was it? 
 " Greg," he said, " don t ! I thought " 
 
 Greg was leaning against him. " I say, you know, you 
 
 mustn t. It s I can t let " He had shrunk away. 
 
 "Not after what I ve told you I ve done you the 
 
 worst wrong ever done a man." 
 
 The big man laughed quietly. "You re only a kid, 
 Greg. Get your hat and we ll get tiie deed. In a minute 
 you ll be asking me to come and live with you, I mean
 
 214 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 would have; and I d have accepted and bored you both 
 to death, and been sent home in disgrace. Wouldn t 
 have minded the disgrace as much as the being sent 
 home." 
 
 Something, probably the last word, threw them both 
 back. 
 
 Greg paled. "Ormsby," he said, self-reproachfully, 
 "Ormsby, I ought to have 
 
 The broad hand went out to him, " As long as you 
 
 He began again, hastily: "You ll never be able to speak 
 for just yourself again. From now on, it ll be Anne first, 
 last, and all the time, with you. So," with an effort at his 
 banter of the moment before, "don t get out the invita 
 tion until you ve asked your wife." 
 
 He knew that Greg had not meant that; but it was 
 better to treat it that way, for it was too late now for 
 Greg to look behind. "I say," he said, when the deed 
 was drawn, signed, and in Greg s hands, "I ll come in 
 often to see you. My rooms ll be pretty lonely now." 
 Lonely? Suddenly he realized how lonely they would be, 
 and he changed the subject. "Tell Anne I hope she ll 
 like the place. When shall you move in?" He nodded. 
 "I m forgetting: it s not ready yet; but the renovating 
 and the rest of it can t take long." 
 
 "What I want to know is, how you knew just the place 
 for us?" Greg spoke mechanically. 
 
 "Don t know," said the big man; then, unguardedly, 
 "Probably because it would have been the one place I d 
 have picked out for myself." 
 
 "Would have?" Greg came a step nearer. "That 
 means it shows what you think of me."
 
 FEAR 215 
 
 " If I d been in your place, I d have done just what you 
 have. But, you see, I m not in your place in any 
 way." 
 
 " Glad you said that. I thought, at first 
 
 "Don t think, Greg. Instead, run and tell Mrs. Brad- 
 broke! I m impatient to see you settled there." 
 
 "You re not half so impatient as I am," Greg called 
 back, as he closed the office door, to which they had gone 
 to put the deed in the big man s safe. "Come along, 
 soon!" he cried, as he turned in the direction of the 
 Netherbys . 
 
 "And I will go there and see them," the big man was 
 saying aloud in his loneliness, "for She ll be with Lady 
 Netherby, and Greg and Anne will be at the bungalow 
 alone." He had remembered that he must never see her 
 again.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE ENGLISH VIOLET 
 
 BUT, as if to sap the big man s decision not to see 
 her and not to live for the present, came to him 
 a realization immediate and indubitable: that 
 marriage with Anne seemed the best thing in the world 
 for Greg. Renovating and finishing and furnishing had 
 hardly been crowded through before the two moved in. 
 And house and grounds bloomed as if magic lay in the 
 touch of the bride s pretty fingers. The bungalow had 
 been admirable before; now, it was the very home of 
 happiness. It was as if she had poured into its possi 
 bilities all the instinct for charm and domestic allurement 
 which she had accumulated, without hope of fruition, 
 through the long and hopeless years; and her pride in her 
 handiwork, the glory it was to her, spoke in each room and 
 nook as an actual presence, called instantly into fullest 
 life. 
 
 Encouraged by the big man s example, Greg filled it 
 with all that they had ever longed for. Durban s shops 
 at last confessed limitations, and recourse was had to the 
 Cape. Still other orders were sent to England. 
 
 It was at the end of the second week of its new occu 
 pancy that the big man first went to the bungalow. To 
 the Netherbys he could not go; and his own rooms had 
 become intolerable! When he gave up his rickshaw, and 
 
 216
 
 THE ENGLISH VIOLET 
 
 climbed the low flight of steps to where Greg and Anne 
 waited him, he felt what others had detailed to him : that 
 he was entering not only a charmingly equipped house, 
 but a home. And Anne! For a moment his wonder at 
 her was so absolute that he forgot the tragedy beneath: 
 charming as a girl, she was exquisite as a bride and hos 
 tess. She did not once speak of his gift to Greg and her 
 self. Hardly once except at that one moment of her 
 discovery of her sudden wealth had she recognized his 
 effective services. But now she welcomed him with an 
 earnestness which confessed all, yet did not embarrass 
 him. She showed the homeless man what a home could 
 be to him. 
 
 In her happiness with Greg she did not realize her 
 cruelty in the disclosure: that he visualized a home in 
 which the English violet would welcome him when the 
 day s work was done. 
 
 For he was very domestic. Like most men who have 
 gone the world over in bachelorhood, he had come to 
 loathe clubs, except for an evening now and then. The 
 freedom to come and go soon had come to possess a prison 
 quality, revealing the monotonous round of which it was 
 made up. Early he had come to feel that life could not 
 be meant to give only that. He had longed for that utter 
 and blessed companionship. And now it was revealed 
 to him, made infinitely the more vivid and precious in 
 such a setting as he had assured to Anne and Greg. 
 
 He asked himself, over and over, what would be the 
 end of it. He had acquired the power, now, to put the 
 question quite calmly, for it seemed to him that the 
 accumulation of his bitterness had robbed him of ca-
 
 218 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 pacity further to be hurt. What, after he had endured the 
 rest, would be the end of it? Sometimes, for brief, stolen 
 moments, he told himself that Greg s deception of Anne 
 had been just and right. But he put this temptation be 
 hind him quickly, for disloyalty to his own love followed 
 fast in the wake of it. At other times he would find him 
 self dreaming of a return to America. But this dream 
 was even shorter than the other, and even less frequently 
 indulged, immeasurably less pleasurable. For he knew 
 that he should never return, that he had nothing to re 
 turn to now. Here, where he had seen his Heaven, he 
 should find his end. 
 
 He wondered if she ever thought of him. He assured 
 himself that she had sensed at least a part of his fear for 
 her. Not once had he met her at the bungalow. She had 
 been there; he knew that from Anne; but they had 
 not met there. By some rare and characteristic divina 
 tion, she had found this way of helping him. 
 
 It was after such a revery that he accepted Greg s next 
 invitation to dinner; the next one, and the next. He was 
 increasingly welcome at the bungalow. His "room" was 
 there. 
 
 "No one else 11 ever sleep in it," Greg had proclaimed. 
 And, if he added, "so long as I m here," it was with a 
 laugh which was almost natural. There was no question 
 about it, the marriage had made him over: from the 
 taut-nerved, brooding boy, who had leaned on the big 
 man with almost the dependence of a woman, Bradbroke 
 had become a man, not yet one with sturdiest virility, 
 but alert, nevertheless, and seemingly confident. That 
 was it: seemingly. The big man never overlooked that
 
 THE ENGLISH VIOLET 219 
 
 limitation, the slight, yet to him always visible, unwill 
 ingness with which Greg spoke of the future to his other 
 guests. He wondered by what alchemy Greg had induced 
 Anne so to alter that, despite their new, financial ability, 
 she said no word of returning to England. But, whatever 
 the explanation and it continued to remain remote 
 to the American Durban seemed to be all in all to them : 
 it was as if they had gone back, genuinely, to the first 
 aspect they had offered him of South Africa; but he knew, 
 now, that their attitude could be taken at its face value. 
 It was not the masterly deception which it had required 
 the merciless interloper in the street, with his crazy song, 
 to disclose. Something had altered them. The money, 
 probably. And the big man was grateful, hoping only 
 for its sufficient continuance. He still swung this and 
 that revenue to Greg out of the partnership, for he still 
 saw, grinning closer and closer, the day when Greg, after 
 having gone to the office as usual, would not return. 
 And, in the safe seclusion of the big man s private office, 
 Greg would say, as the pounds added and multiplied: 
 
 "Yes, I know, Ormsby, but what s the use? We ve 
 got enough to keep us on, and she ll be safe, afterward. 
 So, what s the good in any more of it? What s the use? " 
 
 And, as he met the steady eyes, set in the lean, big- 
 boned, grave face, "For it s just as if a doctor had said 
 to us, after he d looked us over, You ve got a few months 
 more to live, probably! Meaning," Greg would un 
 varyingly conclude, " Take no thought to the morrow ; 
 and that s what I m doing. Only there s this difference: 
 the shrewdest diagnosticians go wrong, sometimes; but 
 we re sure"
 
 220 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 They rarely spoke of it now, in further detail. The 
 Greg at the office would have been unrecognizable to 
 Anne Bradbroke. She would have understood as little 
 his comment on the ever-increasing income, "What s 
 the use?" as little dreamed that the expression was 
 now habitual to Greg. Only by that one act the 
 marriage had Greg seemed, to the big man, to have 
 found "the use." 
 
 "And you ve not written a word home about it?" he 
 would ask Greg. 
 
 "No," was the unvarying answer. "Have you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Greg would shake his head. "When you re alone, 
 
 there in the rooms Gad! Ormsby, don t you find 
 
 it intolerable?" 
 
 "Yes." Only the monosyllable. 
 
 Time after time, following this exchange of interrog 
 atories, Greg would consult Anne, and then take the 
 American home with him. 
 
 In this way, and quite without any appearance of un- 
 naturalness, he maintained his quiet espionage of Greg. 
 
 Though he continued to avoid the Netherbys, he led 
 the talk again and again to them, when at the bungalow. 
 Lord and Lady Netherby were taking Marian about the 
 country, Anne said, at last: they had spent a couple of 
 days at the Cape, and were now doing Johannesburg and 
 Pretoria; and might even keep on up into the Transvaal. 
 She quoted the latest letter. Wouldn t he come up to 
 dinner at seven, Thursday night? Greg joined in, and 
 the big man promised. This was on a Saturday after 
 noon.
 
 THE ENGLISH VIOLET 
 
 But, on Wednesday morning, Anne called him up at 
 the office : her mother had wired from Pietermaritzburg 
 Africander as she now boasted she was, Anne had not yet 
 learned to abbreviate the word to the colloquial " Maritz- 
 burg" that the Rivett-Coltons were about to descend 
 with innumerable nurses and children. They might arrive 
 Thursday morning. Wouldn t he come to-night at half- 
 past six? 
 
 Yes, of course. 
 
 It had been one of his worst days : Greg had dawdled, 
 and finally gone away early, his face white and drawn. 
 The big man knew the signs; and, because, in his resulting 
 anxiety, he had forgotten, said nothing of the morning 
 talk with Anne. But six-fifteen found him walking up 
 the drive to the bungalow. 
 
 "If I can manage a moment with Anne," he said, 
 as he made the steps, " I ll warn her that Greg s over 
 working." He looked from the veranda, hoping that 
 she might be in the rose-garden. But she was not, and 
 only its own, subdued jangle resulted when he pressed 
 the bell. 
 
 Waiting, he wondered why Nervousness ! He 
 
 upbraided himself. Then rang again. At least, the 
 servants would be about somewhere! 
 
 A step on the gravel at his left made him turn. " Anne," 
 he thought. 
 
 " You?" he said. 
 
 Their violet never before so deep, she raised her eyes to 
 his. 
 
 "Yes," she said, slowly, hesitatingly. "Anne told 
 me "
 
 222 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 That told him: Anne s handiwork this, turned traitor 
 by her gratitude. 
 
 But this thought was only subconscious. He descended 
 to her. She ascended to him. So it happened that 
 after one instant, in which neither spoke, they turned, and 
 as if to their own home, went up the steps side by side. 
 
 "She told me that you were at Pietermaritzburg." 
 
 "She told me that you were at Kimberley." 
 
 He looked wretchedly away from her. "I meant 
 I was coming 
 
 "Yes," she said. "Yes, I know." 
 
 He looked down into her eyes. How wonderful she 
 was! There was nothing in the whole world like her 
 gentleness! Then he turned his eyes from her. It 
 would be easier, that way, and he must take advantage 
 of everything that he could. But Fate, which he had 
 thought must be through with his torture, was not 
 through: for it showed him the softly lighted, peaceful, 
 domestic inner room : the rattan and w r icker cool, com 
 fortable, restful, again his taste and choice; from where 
 he stood he could see two chairs at the table, waiting, 
 as if they, too, were in the universal conspiracy which must 
 end in overpowering him. And between them and this 
 glimpse of the home all his soul cried out for, waited 
 the English violet. 
 
 It was too much ! The soft light on the big-boned face 
 was merciless to him, as his love was. For one moment, 
 she read it. Then, his face went down into her out 
 stretched hands. In another, reason came back to him, 
 and he pressed her away from him. 
 
 "Forgive me," he whispered, "for what you can never
 
 THE ENGLISH VIOLET 223 
 
 forgive. Go to England! For, because I have not the 
 right to love you, to see you is more than I can bear." 
 
 "Not the right?" she begged. She revealed herself 
 anew to him in that her voice held only grief and in 
 credulity. 
 
 "No, not the right, though I believe heaven itself 
 pities me. I am held by a curse that I have not earned. 
 I am doomed, without hope. There can be no escape 
 for me." 
 
 She had crossed the distance between them. " Instead 
 of going back to England " her voice broke, "let me 
 stay. No, no! Not go! Don t you see, it can never 
 be now," she cried, with the utter sorrow of a child. 
 
 "Go back to England. God bless and protect you so 
 tenderly always." For one never-to-be-forgotten mo 
 ment, he held her close in his arms and kissed her lips, 
 her hair, and her soft temples. Then, he was down the 
 steps. And she knew that he had gone.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 ALONE 
 
 HE HAD asked her to go, and he knew that 
 she would go. But, fast on the heels of his 
 entreaty the realization of what her obedience 
 would mean to him had come so poignantly that, while 
 he walked, night-long, through the voiceless streets of 
 the sleeping city, he had been coward enough to hope 
 that she would not go. But morning brought him 
 sanity. And Greg, coming into the office an hour after 
 the other had reached it, brought the word : 
 
 "The devil s to pay, Ormsby: Miss Langmaid s sail 
 ing to-day for home, and Anne s getting out mourning. 
 Blames me, blames you! Angry and teary together! I 
 say, old chap, why didn t you wait, last night? I d just 
 gone over to tell Lady Bam the Rivett-Coltons were 
 coming. Expected to be back before you came. Knew 
 Miss Langmaid was there and you wouldn t be lonely." 
 He looked up into the big-boned face. "Nothing wrong, 
 I hope, old chap?" 
 
 Greg nodded slowly, then walked to the window, look 
 ing out for slow, long moments. Then, he turned back, 
 "I know," he cried with sudden passion. "If it weren t 
 for your knowing, and your being here, I d have given 
 in long ago, and sent my ghost off into the ether after 
 Hugh and Brett and Carstairs and Jem. Sometimes," he 
 
 224
 
 ALONE 225 
 
 went on, after a long pause, "I can almost believe that 
 they re not dead. I know they are; but I find myself 
 looking on ahead, in the old way, I used before It began : 
 the old life here comes back to me; the old drudgery at the 
 consulate; Brett wearing his heart out for a girl who d 
 forgotten him and never cared for him and sent him a 
 picture of her and her baby I swear there never was 
 such cruelty before! how he ever supported himself, I 
 used to wonder; wish he d cleared that up, first! Used 
 to think it was secret gambling, but it couldn t have been, 
 for he d neither the skill nor luck; Jem basting about, 
 always looking for something, and never finding it; Hugh 
 grinding himself down for his gold company, no pay, no 
 present, no future how he used to talk to me of it ! 
 Gad! Carstairs getting that little of his from home, just 
 a shade more than Jem got, but not coming so regularly, 
 so they broke about even; always telling about his mythi 
 cal trust company. Tried to pin him down to locating 
 it once, but saw I d hurt him, and cut it out! Wasn t 
 any such thing as that trust company! And the girls: 
 most of em worse fixed by a lot than we men were, but 
 standing it a lot better, the way a woman always does. 
 Gad, I d seen em change from girls to women the first 
 year after we got here! Poor little Shirley Framleigh 
 tried once to get a place in a shop in a shop, by Gad, 
 as a model, a thing they hang gowns on, yes, by the Lord, 
 a manikin ! Got the place, and stood it somehow. None 
 of us knew she was doing it. Then, one day, Anne 
 had to go to the shop for something, finally got in the 
 cloak department, didn t dream of it! Of course, they 
 didn t show they knew each other, But one of the sales-
 
 226 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 women, one of the head ones, whatever you call em, 
 caught Shirley up for something, went after her no end, 
 all kinds of things, and Anne took Shirley and kissed her 
 and patted her and floored the floorwalker and took 
 Shirley home with her. Shirley d had some trouble with 
 the aunt she d been living with. No question, the old 
 lady s no end disagreeable, but anyway, it was too 
 bad!" 
 
 "Yes, it s too bad," said the big man absently. He 
 wished Greg had not told him how bad it was. 
 
 "Hazel Ellicombe, too. Well, the Almighty knows, 
 maybe, what the Ellicombes live on. A shot different, if 
 you ask me, from what they had at home. Hazel never 
 complains, though, not even when she gets these clothes, 
 to make over herself, from some of the connection at 
 home. Got used to it by now, likely. Anyway, never 
 complains. Neither did Anne. But Catherine Heth- 
 eridge" he hurried on, "Gad! when Catherine turns on 
 that that Jewish woman, what s her name? Zelig, 
 they say she daren t call her soul her own! Catherine s 
 the only thing in the world a woman with a moustache like 
 that could be afraid of. Odd business, if you ask me! 
 Suppose Catherine had to, but I say, ever hear ?" 
 
 The big man got up from his chair. "More than I 
 want to again!" He shook his head. 
 
 "Oh, come now," Greg objected, "what s the harm? 
 We re all in the same boat, ain t we? Same boat? Fancy 
 that s not much wrong, only you and I are the worst fixed 
 of the lot." He shot the words out savagely, as if, by 
 some devious and infinitely detached reasoning, he had 
 succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in fastening liability
 
 ALONE 227 
 
 for their fate on the big man. "I say," he broke out 
 again, after a moment, "Miss Langmaid s leaving to 
 day, going home, back to England. I was to tell you. 
 Between us, I m no end glad. Can t tell what ll come to 
 any one, off, out of everything, down here, and she s 
 a no end fine girl. Now, she ll go back there and marry 
 some one. No one she could marry here! She s going 
 back to England, I say. And why don t you go back to 
 America? Oh, I know," bitterly, "it can t hinder the 
 Thing coming; but, for the matter of that, it can t prob 
 ably hurry It. Why don t you go, and anyway be in a 
 spot you like, while you do live? You used to be such a 
 live chap, had more energy than I d ever seen! But now, 
 all you do is sit here, working, working! Heaven," he 
 sent his thin arms out, "in your place !" 
 
 "In my place," said the big man thoughtfully. "Tell 
 me what you would do, in my place." 
 
 Greg met his eyes for a moment, then turned 
 away. 
 
 "Yes," he said moodily, "I suppose so. As well wait 
 for It here as anywhere. That s what I m doing. But 
 
 still " He shook his head, in the dull, baffled way 
 
 which had now come to be such a part of him. Then he 
 turned back to the big man: "Why did it have to come to 
 us? We hadn t done anything, I mean been any worse 
 than the rest, yet there they go," he swung his arm toward 
 the crowds which sifted along before the window, "poor 
 prisoners to poverty all of em, but free, while you and 
 
 I " Again he broke off abruptly, his eyes, of the 
 
 colour of burnt wood, seeming to find a fascination 
 so strong was their envy in those polyglot free-agents,
 
 228 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 who encumbered the Durban sidewalks, yes, in even the 
 Zulus and Kaffirs who, not being allowed the courtesy and 
 convenience of the narrow sidewalks, flowed along slug 
 gishly in the gutters, hung, for a time, in the eddies at 
 the street corners, then drifted on again. "I know," he 
 came out again with, having regained his starting-point, 
 "but wouldn t even the waiting be easier in a place you 
 know and love? With people you ve known and liked 
 for a long time, people who d known your people 
 there s a lot in that wouldn t waiting, even though it s 
 only just waiting, be better there? Of course, you 
 couldn t tell them anything; but just the same. Why, 
 I think of England, and if we could only go back to it, 
 Anne and I. Seems to me, sometimes, I ve got to see 
 England once more before!" His shoulders set, as if to 
 resist a shudder which had gone through them. "When 
 I hadn t a pound saved, it was to go back with Anne and 
 live there. And now, when we ve got all this money, all 
 I d hope for from going would be to see it once more, and 
 
 then " His face turned away sharply. No need 
 
 for him to define. 
 
 "When," asked the big man, after a time, "does she 
 sail?" 
 
 "Miss Langmaid? At noon. It seems to me, if I got 
 down to that dock and knew that boat would take me 
 
 to I say," he swung round to the big man, "you ll 
 
 come down, of course?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then I ll go up now and tell Anne I ve told you. 
 She s been helping her with the packing and stuff since 
 breakfast." He opened the door. "The Rennie dock,
 
 ALONE 229 
 
 you know. Same one you and Carstairs, I mean you 
 and I, went to. At twelve." 
 
 The door slowly opened. He looked back. Then the 
 door slowly closed. 
 
 He went to the boat. Because it might have meant 
 seeing her alone, he had not gone, in the interval, to the 
 Netherbys . And, there at the dock, he was glad of the 
 crowd and the tumult, glad, too, that of all those who 
 had heard and come to see her leave them, he alone had 
 sought out a florist s. While the rest encircled her, he 
 stood back. How he wished, now that she was so nearly 
 away, that he had gone to the Netherbys ! But, when 
 the whistle ashore sounded, he found himself suddenly 
 beside her, the porters thrust aside, and his own hands 
 lifting her luggage. 
 
 "No, you must let me," he heard himself saying. "I 
 got these for you." This was while he was giving her the 
 roses which he had been so glad to find. They had been 
 the next best to English violets. Then, in the same daze 
 which had suddenly come on everything, he realized that 
 he was following her down a corridor, after a white- 
 jacketed steward, to her very stateroom. For a wild 
 moment, he said to himself: 
 
 "I will go with her to England." And, even for an 
 other, saner moment, he held the impossible thought to 
 his breast. For she was looking up into his face, the violet 
 eyes raining tears. 
 
 "Dearest, let me stay with you," she was crying, her 
 young arms about him, as he held her; "let me stay and 
 have whatever comes to you!" 
 
 It was heaven. For one heartbeat, he held her and
 
 230 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 kissed her even while crying: "Because I love you so, 
 you must go!" Then he tore himself from her, and 
 somehow found the corridor and the plank. From the 
 dock, he looked back once to where she stood at the rail, 
 seeing him only. Then his arms went out. The steamer 
 receded. And he knew that she had gone. 
 
 "What did you say?" some one asked, beside him. It 
 was Bradbroke. And the big man knew that he was an 
 swering something. He was dividing the crowd, suddenly, 
 to be halted by a woman crying, in a voice hard to him : 
 
 "You ve driven her away. I hope, now, you suffer. 
 I m glad! I m glad!" 
 
 "Anne, for God s sake! The others!" 
 
 That was Greg, of course. But could the woman 
 really have been Anne? 
 
 It was; and, beside herself almost, she raced on. "She 
 didn t tell me. But I know. You made her love you, 
 
 then Oh, Greg, I can t even think of it ! Take me 
 
 home!" 
 
 His eyes met Greg s for an instant. "At the office," 
 Greg s lips said, over Anne s head. "Yes, home now," 
 he said to Anne. 
 
 The big man had stood passive under her mad denun 
 ciation. Unjust? Yes, but what did that matter? It 
 was just another injustice in an unjust world! But it 
 was done now, and he could go. He sent his bulk against 
 the coolies who cowered away from him terror-struck; 
 and, in another moment, was in the sun-seared street, his 
 heart dead, his eyes seeing only what he knew that he 
 should see even through the hereafter a brave, beauti 
 ful face, the most wonderful face in the world to him,
 
 ALONE 231 
 
 soft, sweet lips, dropping with a child s utter sorrow, 
 violet eyes, deep, true, and faithful, their tears wetting his 
 roses, which she pressed to her lips, her heart and breast. 
 Back, back, through streets grown suddenly strange to 
 him, the streets of a city which he seemed never to have 
 known earlier. On back, after what gropings he knew 
 not. Back, into that dark and dreadful loneliness which 
 now must be his forevermore!
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 WAITING 
 
 AT THE office," Greg had signalled, as he led 
 Anne away. But the big man had no intention 
 of keeping that appointment. He should not be 
 in Durban, when Greg looked for him at their offices. 
 
 Half an hour later, after seeing his trunk packed, 
 locked, and swung into the rickshaw, he turned his 
 back on the rooms in which he had lived, it seemed to 
 him, for a thousand days. 
 
 "To Kimberley," he told the agent in the ticket-window 
 at the little station. 
 
 "One way?" asked the official. 
 
 "One way." 
 
 He remembered, idly, that it was six hundred and eight 
 miles from Durban to Kimberley by the Natal Govern 
 ment Railway, which went by way of Van Reenen Mod- 
 derpoort, and that the journey required forty-two hours. 
 4, lls., he recalled, sub-consciously, was the fare, first- 
 class. He paid the amount, found a seat in a carriage, 
 and closed his eyes. He felt no interest in the transit. 
 He wanted to get to Kimberley. For Kimberley repre 
 sented to him a place where he could be alone, and, as 
 long as he had to, could wait. 
 
 He had selected it by instant decision. And it did 
 not come over him, until the train had started and Dur- 
 
 232
 
 WAITING 233 
 
 ban was slipping behind him, that he had left no word for 
 Greg. He reflected impersonally that he would write 
 to him, some time, just say that he had gone to Kimberley 
 to wait. 
 
 Even now, while half -admitting that he should have 
 told Greg, he felt no stroke of conscience. For the man 
 had gone through what had dulled his every sense. Greg 
 would go to the offices, then, not finding him there, would 
 telephone, or go to the club, probably; then to his rooms, 
 the ones that had been his, and look about just as he 
 and Greg and Carstairs had done at Paxton s; and as he 
 and Greg had done, later not much later at Car- 
 stairs. Then, Greg would understand. How simple it 
 all was: Greg would understand. 
 
 If he had once stopped to think of it, he would have 
 realized that he was crediting Bradbroke with such powers 
 of understanding as the boy had never had. And yet, it 
 was not so much that : Greg had not altered. It was the 
 big man who had altered, having come, quite suddenly, 
 not to care whether Greg understood or not. He did not 
 care. That was it: he didn t care, now; and it came over 
 him with almost a comforting power, that he had now let 
 everything go, that he was openly defying what had al 
 ready claimed Fraser and the three others, and would 
 soon claim Greg and himself. It could come when It 
 would. He didn t care, now. Though he accepted the 
 facts as fully as ever, even more fully, he felt no fear. He 
 had given up too much, been robbed of too much, been 
 robbed of everything ! Greg was nothing to him any 
 longer, afforded him not the least responsibility. 
 
 It gave him a strange, infinitely relaxed sense of free-
 
 234 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 dom to realize that he could feel like this, and he leaned 
 idly back in his seat, scanning the other passengers. Yes, 
 they were just like the rest, just like the crowd which 
 peopled the better streets in Durban: each of them going, 
 placidly and acceptingly, or tensely and bitterly, about 
 his appointed way. Everything was appointed for every 
 one, in this world! It didn t matter how much any one 
 had, in the way of ostensible power of resistance; he got 
 what was laid out for him. It was the same way with 
 these people here, the seven beside himself for the 
 compartment was full. He didn t care about them either ! 
 There was a German, a Jew, two Dutchmen, and three 
 Englishmen. 
 
 He realized that his thoughts were about to retreat, 
 and so he despatched them on ahead to Kimberley, won 
 dering if the sheet-iron shack were still there. Then, he 
 smiled in the utter abstraction of his despair, he could 
 smile almost lazily remembering that the two months, 
 since he had left it, could hardly be expected to bring it 
 down. Two months? His hands clenched: he must 
 accept the fact that it was only two months ! But was it 
 really possible? 
 
 Automatically he leaned back, and glanced over his 
 shoulder from the window. Yes, he was still in Natal, 
 hardly an hour out of Durban, yet. The time again! 
 It was incredible. He raised his hand to his forehead, 
 and the touch started his memory again. It was only an 
 hour and only two months, let the latter seem, as they did, 
 endless centuries. God in Heaven, could he never believe 
 what he knew to be the truth? 
 
 He threw himself back in his seat. Was there nothing
 
 WAITING 235 
 
 that he could do, no fruit of his strength, his powers of 
 resistance? No means of escaping It and regaining Her? 
 He was John Ormsby, an American, a free man and a 
 strong man, and this was the twentieth century! He 
 sprang to his feet, his capable shoulders back! Then, he 
 saw again that fateful room at the Regent, the fiend, 
 hell-sent with the blight of his prophecy; Jem Fraser, 
 the four others, and himself; then, Hammerstone sub 
 tracting Jem s inert body; then Chadwell out; then the 
 singer lopped off; then Carstairs; and then only himself 
 and Bradbroke, The Man Between. And, seeing, the 
 big man sank low in his seat again. The twentieth cen 
 tury, yes. And he was still John Ormsby, an American. 
 But this was South Africa, and his life had gone out, just 
 now, when she had obeyed him, and gone away from him. 
 
 "What s the use? " he asked himself. Even if he could 
 hold out a little longer, what was the use of resisting, 
 now? It was just as Greg had kept saying of the money: 
 
 "What s the use?" 
 
 He nodded to himself, his eyes closed, his isolation so 
 absolute that he felt himself alone in the swaying carriage. 
 He was alone! 
 
 Somehow, he slept that night. The succeeding day 
 passed at last, its passage a miracle. At last Kimberley; 
 and he stood at the station, his eyes following the train 
 which had slid along again. After watching it, as one 
 might have a phenomenon, he turned and ascended the 
 staggering street. That night he stretched himself again 
 on the bed in the one-roomed, sheet-iron shack. 
 
 It was a triumph of his will and his youth and his powers 
 of endurance, or as shrewd a demonstration of his abject
 
 236 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 weariness, that he slept soundly through the long night, 
 to wake amazed at finding himself where he was. For 
 the place had not varied a particle: the bed still stood in 
 the alcove he had set off by the partition; there was the 
 square section of window he had "cut in" by sawing three 
 boards out; the box he had put shelves in for his clothes; 
 the other box end-up, which he had christened his 
 "tobacco table"- he could see along its edge a scatter of 
 dark ashes, the bottom of a smoked-out pipe. Not one 
 thing had changed. The room looked as much as ever 
 like the interior of a big, dry, solidly built packing-box! 
 Leaning on his elbow, he studied it, his eyes every now 
 and then going from where he was, on the bed in the 
 alcove, around as far as they could past the rim of the 
 partition into what he had laughingly told Greg was 
 "the living-room." How happy he had been in it 
 then ! He had spent his days in the Fields, studying the 
 blue, diamondiferous soil, then the shiftings in the 
 market; who was buying and who was selling what; and 
 had come back, each evening, comfortably tired, rolled 
 in the tub his "boy" always had filled and alluring; then 
 a dinner somewhere; then back to the shack, and into his 
 loafing-clothes a habit preserved from his Harvard days; 
 then to stretch his big length and breadth comfortably out, 
 for a long evening with his books and pipe. 
 
 That was all he had had, but he had been very happy in 
 it. It seemed, now, a very small total for the utter satis 
 fying of any one; and he saw in that, what, in those 
 thoughtless days, he had only half suspected: how little 
 since his maturity he had known a home. Nothing 
 approaching it! Nothing in the wide world! Tom, of
 
 WAITING 237 
 
 course, and Tom s wife. They had been very good to 
 him, asked him to come and live with them, had made him 
 know that a room in their little house was his. That 
 had been after Tom had first begun to win the editors, 
 when Tom had first entered the long line of victories 
 which now meant that he had won. He could remember 
 his father and his mother with a clarity which, he recog 
 nized, was a blessing in itself. He was glad that he had 
 realized that, in time. And what he had seen of many 
 other parents had made him more than ever proud of his 
 own: their nobility in each other s eyes, their reverence 
 for each other, his father s strength and his mother s 
 gentleness their love. Never had they had much 
 money. His father had been a teacher, almost from the 
 hour of his leaving college, the best-read, the most rarely 
 educated man, the man of the highest literary attainments, 
 that he had ever known. He should have been at the 
 head of a great university. What a power and an in 
 fluence he would have been there! How the greatest 
 university of them all had needed him! He had been 
 offered a professorship in one of the small colleges, but the 
 college was only an infant, however vigorous, and the 
 opportunity, which would have been only the first in a 
 long list of advancements, had passed: he had retained 
 the headship of his own boarding-school. Then, Tom s 
 college days; then the younger brother s. Then, suddenly, 
 only Tom and the younger brother, Tom writing con 
 fidently along in his poverty, and the younger a clerk in a 
 bond house, neither one dreaming, however confident, of 
 what returns their energy was to bring to them. Yes, 
 Tom and Janet had really wanted him. It had not been
 
 238 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 mere pity for his loneliness. But he was just beginning to 
 succeed then, and had felt unable to settle down any. 
 where. He had not wanted a home then. He would 
 move the world ! Then, little by little, his clubs had begun 
 to show their lacks to him: they were his own, but they 
 were only clubs. And, suddenly, very unwarningly 
 suddenly, he had found that only one thing in the world 
 made a man s home his own; and he had begun his search 
 for Her. Sometimes, it would seem for a brief time that 
 he had found her; but he had always seen the error in time; 
 and he had gone on and on, always keeping himself, always 
 searching America, England, France, Spain, Germany, 
 north, south, east, and west, until he had half-begun to 
 fear that She was not. And then 
 
 He would leave a letter for Tom. By the way, he d 
 better get writing it. You couldn t tell! It should give 
 just the bare facts, with a request that Tom should 
 not attempt to find any explanation of the unexplainable. 
 And Tom and Janet and the baby would remember him. 
 The little baby! How dear it suddenly was to him: little 
 Janet! How she had crowed from his shoulder! Tom s 
 shoulder was not so wide or so high as his. Once he had 
 told Her of little Janet, and she had said : 
 
 "The dear little thing! The dear little baby!" He 
 wished He sent his thoughts back again. It was a 
 good thing for the world that there lived three such happy 
 and lovable people as Tom and Janet and the little baby. 
 He ought to have written them a good deal more regu 
 larly, to have showed them a good deal more what they 
 meant to him. Now, all he could do, he had done. He 
 meant what should come to them from his w T ill. Yes,
 
 WAITING 239 
 
 that was all he could do now. It was too close, this 
 Doom of his, for him to do any one of the thousand things 
 he would have done if he could have lived half as long as 
 he had felt so sure to live! Already, his life was over. 
 All that he could do now was wait. 
 
 Splash! Splash! There was the "boy" filling the tub 
 with water, the same, silent "boy," silent, yet immaturely 
 cordial as ever. Had he really found umjacobi, last 
 night, and told him to come back into his old service, or 
 had he as seemed far more probable not been away 
 at all? 
 
 He rose from the bed, shaved, and went through his 
 exercises, then to his tub. 
 
 "It has been long, umFundize," said the Zulu boy. 
 "By coming again, you have taken the wedge from be 
 tween my teeth." It was one of the formal salutations of 
 the Zulu, common to all the countless dialects of the 
 ancient Bantu stock. Though formal, it left no doubt of 
 the speaker s relief and gladness. Each morning, in those 
 days that were gone, the Zulu had pronounced it to the 
 big man, and it was not lacking now. 
 
 "Thank you, umjacobi," he said listlessly, as he seated 
 himself before the breakfast the other had waiting. "Yes, 
 I ve been a long time gone." 
 
 To himself, he said, "I m the only thing that has 
 changed here, but I ve been gone so long and so far that I 
 never can get back."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 KIMBERLEY 
 
 HE had fled not from Durban alone, but from all 
 that could remind him of what was lost to him. 
 And, because he knew that it would serve to 
 revive what he had severed himself from, he put off, day 
 after day, the letter which he knew he must write to Greg. 
 By plunging again into speculation, he tried to take his 
 old life up where he had dropped it, seeking, in this way, 
 to banish the obligation of the letter from his consciousness. 
 And, in a way, he succeeded; the Fields were as un 
 changed as umJacobi and the shack of sheet-iron. There 
 was the same mechanically perfect production; the same, 
 hopeless losers; the same mad joy on the part of those who 
 won. Little by little, he allowed himself to make new 
 acquaintances. He could have made many with ease, for 
 his name had gone out, and his return. He was still the 
 amazingly lucky American, still "The Human Mint, The 
 Money-Making Machine." Men came to see him. 
 Through the long, quiet evenings, more than one man 
 smoked with him in the sheet-iron shack. There were 
 invitations to clubs and to houses in the little, teeming 
 city. But the gravity of the big-boned face leant strength 
 and obstinacy to his refusals, coupled, though they un 
 varyingly were, with his frank appreciation of the kind 
 ness of the offered hospitality. 
 
 240
 
 KIMBERLEY 241 
 
 So, they set him down as a disappointment, just "an 
 other American who cared only for money, after all." He 
 was "not half the chap he d been before," they decided: 
 "the American of it" was "coming out." 
 
 However achieved, the result was inevitable: he was 
 neither clubable for he d joined only one club, 
 and that the quietest of all nor sociable, for he didn t 
 go to a house in Kimberley. Gradually, the men got 
 out of the way of visiting him. By the end of the 
 second week, his solitude was as perfect as evenjie could 
 wish. 
 
 If he thought of America, it was only when reviewing 
 the world which he had left. He wrote methodically to 
 Tom and Janet, though. He sent toys of native struct 
 ure to the baby. He wished he could have seen the 
 baby and Tom and Janet again. "Could have." It 
 was always that now. He wished that they could have 
 seen Her. He felt that they would have appreciated her. 
 With a sense of proprietorship, woeful in its tenderness, he 
 could still thrill with pride in her. Then, do what he 
 could, he would visualize her to send his face down into 
 his hard-pressing hands. If only he could forget what 
 alone now sustained him her eyes, wet with her un 
 checked tears! He must hear of her! Some one must 
 tell him, even the least word! He would write to 
 Greg! 
 
 He wrote that evening the shortest of letters, for he 
 wrote only to induce a reply: 
 
 "I am at Kimberley, Greg. I could not stay in Durban. If you need 
 me, wire me, and. I will come. Otherwise, I shall stay here until It 
 comes for me,
 
 242 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Then, because he was not sure that Greg would consider 
 that this demanded an answer, he added: 
 
 "Shall I close out our business there, or will you keep it along your 
 self?" 
 
 Then he signed his name, and mailed the letter with his 
 own hands immediately. 
 
 He knew the mails and the distance, and told himself 
 that he should have Greg s answer in five days, possibly 
 in four. 
 
 Ten days after he had mailed his own letter, he wrote 
 again: 
 
 "Over a week ago, I wrote, but have had no word from you. What s 
 the trouble, Greg? I said I d come down, if you needed me." 
 
 And to this he added : 
 
 "Letter must have reached you, for it has not come back to me." 
 
 Probably, this second letter would meet Greg s reply 
 to the first, en route. Four days, again, if it didn t. At 
 the longest, five. 
 
 He made no pretence of working, now. Day and night 
 he clung to the shack of sheet iron, where umJacobi would 
 find him the instant the letter came. But would it come? 
 The question, so often forced back, remained after the 
 long day, which marked the end of his fourth week at 
 Kimberley. And, the instant the interrogation had taken 
 root, he knew the answer: that Greg s letter would not 
 come. 
 
 For what could Greg write, beyond a mere acknowledg 
 ment of the letters? And how idle it had been to offer 
 to come, when the need came! The need would come
 
 KIMBERLEY 243 
 
 without so much as one warning word. And knowing 
 this, Greg had let the letters pass without comment or even 
 acknowledgement. That he could do this showed how, 
 since his marriage, Greg had moved apart from him. 
 
 The big man had not detected the divergence before; 
 but he saw it at last, and, with it, an hundred other evi 
 dences, all marking Bradbroke s graduation from his 
 oversight. He was keeping his word: he was living in 
 the present and for it. His recklessness revealed itself 
 still more to the big man now. Yes, that was it: Greg s 
 careless optimism was sheer, mad recklessness. He would 
 call Greg and Anne up by telephone. 
 
 He went to the club, and sat staring at the booth, in 
 which some one was standing. While he waited, several 
 men came in, strangers; and one, brown and lean, was 
 telling of the up-country : 
 
 "Nothing like it in the world," the lean, brown, young 
 fellow was saying; "been riding transport for two months. 
 Nothing like it ! Nothing in the world : I tell you, when 
 you re lying under your wagon-box, in your rubber sheets, 
 with a good man beside you and a good bit of tobacco in 
 your pipe, you wouldn t change places with the King, no, 
 not with the King, himself, by Gad!" He went on, 
 "Nothing to check you! No one to stand over you! No 
 one to tell you what! You re your own man! The high 
 veldt s all around you, and the night and the wind and the 
 deluge of water, thundering down on your wagon-top, 
 and may be even sluicing through the cracks! Nothing 
 like it, I tell you. Nothing in the world!" 
 
 The big man turned away. It was incredible, insup 
 portable that any man could find the world like that !
 
 244 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 The man in the telephone booth came out. The booth 
 was the American s if he wanted it. He did not want it. 
 What could he say to Greg, after that brown young fellow 
 had told of thinking the world like that? Nothing! 
 He d go back to the shack. And week followed week, and 
 month came on month. It was July, the beginning of the 
 African winter. He had been three months at Kim- 
 berley, without change in his situation, and without one 
 word from Greg. 
 
 Then, returning from the Fields, one late afternoon, 
 he went to the club for a glance at the periodicals. It 
 had been long since he had read so much as a newspaper, 
 and he walked slowly two thirds minded to keep straight 
 on home and go to bed. But he turned in at the club, 
 and, as he entered, through the crowd of men standing 
 and sitting, he was aware that one of them looked at him, 
 turned, and slowly walked away. It was crudely done: 
 one glance was enough to show him Hammerstone; and, 
 in another moment, the American s card was in the hands 
 of a "boy," with the affirmation that the writer would see 
 Doctor Hammerstone at once in the second smoking- 
 room. 
 
 It was a long moment, before Hammerstone came, and, 
 when he did, it was with obvious unwillingness: his face 
 lacked colour, his hands were gripless, his back was bent. 
 Cursed as the big man was, he looked twice the larger and 
 stronger, though Hammerstone himself was large. 
 
 "Nerves," the American said to himself, as their eyes 
 met. The layman was diagnosing the doctor. Aloud, 
 he said, "How long have you been up here, Hammer- 
 stone? "
 
 KIMBERLEY 245 
 
 "Only a few days." The voice was weak, too. What 
 had come over him? He was speaking again, still weakly. 
 "How long have you been here yourself?" 
 
 The American met his eyes. " I ve been here a bit over 
 three months," he said. 
 
 Hammerstone nodded. "Interesting." 
 
 They were not getting on at all, and the big man hauled 
 out a chair for him, beginning again. "How did you 
 leave ?" 
 
 But Hammerstone shook his head. "Thanks very 
 much, but I m off directly, and shan t sit down." He 
 glanced at his watch, then held out his hand with a 
 strange formality. "I m off north, now; but I ll make it a 
 point to stop off on the run back. I I I d no idea 
 you were here." 
 
 He turned to the door, and the crowd, but the American 
 crossed the space before he could reach either. "You 
 don t act like yourself ! What s wrong, Hammerstone? I 
 know it s odd for me to say this; but that s it: you don t 
 seem yourself. What s wrong?" 
 
 They were facing each other full now, and the big man 
 studied the doctor, less able, each instant, to understand 
 what could have come over him: he had never seen the 
 other so well-dressed as now, never so obviously pros 
 perous. Yes, that was it: Hammerstone had arrived 
 financially, he had landed very hard, somewhere. Every 
 thing but his face, voice, physique and eyes, spoke the 
 prosperous. So what was bothering him? 
 
 "Can t you speak?" demanded the big man. Uncon 
 sciously, his voice had become a command, which his eyes 
 backed up. "Did you come straight here from Durban?
 
 246 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 I m here until It hits me, the Thing that s already taken 
 Fraser and Chadwell and Paxton and Carstairs." The 
 doctor started back from him. "Why do you do that, 
 Hammerstone? You re familiar enough with the facts! 
 You almost got in on it yourself, but you re being 
 in the next room saved you. As it was, your nearest 
 knowing came when you tried to bring back Jem 
 Fraser. When did you see Greg, and how was he? Tell 
 me that!" 
 
 Hammerstone put his hand on his chin. Automati 
 cally, he had gone back to the professional attitude. But 
 the professional air stopped there. 
 
 "I I - Yes. I came here straight from Durban. 
 I saw Greg I 
 
 "When did you see him?" The American came a 
 step closer. "I tell you I m to be the next one after he s 
 taken! How was he? You can t wonder that I want to 
 know ! " 
 
 Hammerstone s hand still clung to his chin, his eyes 
 going round and round, then fixing like an imbecile s. 
 
 The big man caught his arm. " Come out of this dream ! 
 Tell me how he was!" 
 
 "He appeared normal when I saw him." But 
 that was the limit of Hammerstone s capacity: with the 
 last word, he tore himself from the big man and plunged 
 into the crowd which blocked the windows commanding 
 the suddenly dark street. 
 
 "When I saw him." The big man kept saying Ham 
 merstone s words over and over. Something had hap 
 pened. He knew or felt that he knew that Greg could 
 not already have been claimed for Anne or the Netherbys
 
 KIMBERLEY 247 
 
 would have wired immediately. So what ? As he 
 
 crossed the room and skirted the edge of the crowd to 
 make the doorway, a man was saying: 
 
 "Where s Clavering? Just leaving, you say? Tell 
 him he mustn t. There s a cracking storm blowing up, 
 and he d best stay inside!" 
 
 "He s started already," some one called. "Saw him 
 go. Gad! what a flash!" He was right: for an instant 
 the room seemed full of putty-faced images, and itself 
 on fire. The puff of a giant flashlight set for the taking 
 of some vast picture! A crash rocked the house. Then, 
 flash and sound were gone. 
 
 "Better not, if you ask me," some one said to the big 
 man, as he turned from the door: "it s nasty out there, 
 for even here!" 
 
 A second crash drowned the words and showed him the 
 door-knob, and the lightning, shimmery and unbelievably 
 bright, hung on the path ahead. Immediately before 
 him, he saw another figure, seemingly as heedless as him 
 self of the dazzle and incredible cannonade. "Clavering," 
 thought the big man. "Whoever that is," he supplied 
 in the next suspense between shattering crashes, " the man 
 those two were saying ought not to have started out." 
 In the black gloom and the descending almost-solid of 
 water, he could see nothing seemed blind; then the 
 eerie night would be turned into far more eerie day, and 
 he would see the tall, lean, erect, young figure stalking on 
 as before, resolute to the point of open defiance, grandly 
 arrogant. 
 
 The big man was gaining, but increased his stride: he 
 felt that he must overtake the other at once. He walked
 
 248 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 still faster, ran in upon him; at a rod s distance waited a 
 crash, then burst his voice through: 
 
 "Clavering!" 
 
 The man turned the brown face seen at the club. 
 
 Then, something broke in the sky and hit the man in his 
 brown face, to fasten forever that frank smile of greeting 
 on the memory of the big man who staggared up in time 
 to catch the rigid body in his arms. 
 
 Too late to save him, he knew, as the glare played on 
 him, and the brimstone suffocated him, and the volcanic 
 vibrations almost brought him down! And he thought 
 with sadness of that fine, brave, arrogant, young, gone 
 life: the pity it was that he himself, with his hell, could 
 not have been struck down, and Clavering, the man with 
 the happy world, allowed to live ! 
 
 He said that to the men he carried Clavering s body 
 back to, at the club, then left them, without reply, to 
 reenter the glittering tumult. 
 
 "The shack, first," he said to himself, "then the train 
 to Durban."
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 DURBAN 
 
 SUDDENLY, some time in the third night, he 
 reached it, and flung himself to the platform, for 
 which he had searched through the intervening 
 miles. Searched? Had he not watched, staring motion 
 less from the window, seeing nothing, all his senses turned 
 into the single one of striving to feel the approach to 
 Durban? He had come almost without luggage; and did 
 not wait for what he had. 
 
 With a thrill of pleasure which mocked his knowledge 
 he passed on upward through the familiar streets. He 
 had thought to try Greg at the Regent first. But 
 even the club was dark, when he reached it; and he 
 understood, as he stared at his watch: it was nearly 
 three. Too late to telephone Greg even from the public 
 booth! And he turned toward the rooms which he still 
 called his. 
 
 He was right in his denomination: the woman, who let 
 him in and welcomed him from her refuge in the darkness, 
 told him that he might go up at once. She had expected 
 him. 
 
 He turned, halfway up. Had Mr. Bradbroke asked for 
 him? 
 
 The woman was silent, reflecting. He could see her 
 dim outline behind the lamp. 
 
 249
 
 250 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Yes, Mr. Bradbroke had come once. The morning 
 afterward. 
 
 "After what?" 
 
 "After you went away, sir." 
 
 "But only once? Didn t he ask where I d gone and 
 when I d be back?" 
 
 No, he had not done either. He had come once, and 
 gone away. That was some time ago. She was sure he 
 had not come again. 
 
 "Good-night," he said, from the landing. And, as he 
 climbed the second flight, he thought, "I wonder who 
 told him where I d gone. He must have found out at once 
 to have gone away so satisfied. He must have known 
 even before I wrote him that first letter from Kimberley." 
 He still believed that Greg had not yet been taken, 
 "for," he said to himself as he had said before, "Anne 
 and the Netherbys would have wired me if anything 
 had happened to him. My letters to him of course told 
 them where I was." This reasoning satisfied him that 
 Greg had not died yet. But, as the big man felt for the 
 knob of hia door, in the dark hallway, he went back to 
 his first question who had told Greg before that first 
 letter from Kimberley. The rickshaw "boy," probably. 
 
 Well, the morning would tell. Once in the doorway, 
 he scatched a match, lifted it, and looked around. 
 
 If he had expected to find any communication from 
 Bradbroke, he was disappointed, for no envelope broke 
 the surface of the narrow, baize-covered table. He saw 
 the worn, comfortable furniture welcoming him, urging 
 peace . . . the pictures, the familiar hangings; the 
 crisp, cool rugs; the book-shelves; the steins on the mantel;
 
 DURBAN 251 
 
 the ash-trays and matches, waiting, ready as always, for 
 his hand. How good it was to be back! How familiar! 
 By heaven! he might have come in from the absence only 
 of an hour! And he sighed, as he turned the key in the 
 lock, making doubly sure his seclusion with these mute 
 things, which told him that they had not changed. 
 
 He went to the window, and the soundless swell of the 
 Indian Ocean welcomed him back. It, too, had been wait 
 ing; only last night, or, at longest the night before that, it 
 had breathed on him. Would nothing dispel the delusion 
 that he had not been away? Then, his eyes groped into 
 their old direction the Netherbys , and that told him. 
 With a groan, he turned from the window: yes, he had 
 been away. 
 
 "Morning!" he cried out, in his heart. "Morning!" 
 The bed groaned under the bulk so suddenly launched on 
 it. "Sleep," he begged. "Sleep!" And sleep, at last, 
 and, at last morning, came. 
 
 He was grateful for the blessing which had sealed his 
 lids until hours after sunrise: he had required that 
 oblivion. But, when he realized that he had slept seven 
 hours it lacked only a little of eleven he mourned 
 wasted time, rushed through his shaving and exercises, 
 then briefest breakfast at the little cafe unchanged and 
 thus another denial of his absence and was through 
 almost instantly, and paying the check at the door. 
 
 "No," the stout little proprietor said, rubbing his hair 
 back from his serene eyes, "Mr. Bradbroke has not been 
 there in three months." He appealed to his wife, as he 
 shot home the change drawer of the cash-register. 
 
 "Not in three months, Mr. Ormsby," she echoed regret-
 
 252 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 fully. She too, was fair-haired, a German. "Or," she 
 smiled, in her large, friendly way, "Mr. Paxton or Mr. 
 Chadwell. Or Mr. Fraser or Mr. Carstairs," she went on, 
 parading their names as an inducement for return of their 
 patronage. A little yard had been bought, now, behind, 
 and tables were put out, in fine weather. It was very 
 comfortable. He could see it, she said, from the window. 
 He did see it: the tables were already out, each set off into 
 squares with white stones. The woman went on: 
 
 " If you should see Mr. Bradbroke and Mr. 
 
 He swung through the door, followed a little space by 
 the guttural, friendly voices, as he faced away toward the 
 bungalow. 
 
 A thousand things crowded his thoughts, as he followed 
 the way, among them that he should make the best ex 
 planation he could to Greg and then propitiate Anne, 
 forgetting her injustice, and remembering that she held 
 him an unfeeling adventurer, whom she had rated much 
 too highly, or a monster of cruelty whom she could not 
 rate too low. . . . And Greg would help him in this. 
 If he could see Greg for a moment before having to face 
 Anne 
 
 He had walked very swiftly, and the crunch of gravel 
 under his feet interrupted him. He passed through the 
 gate, and still more swiftly up the drive. He raised his 
 eyes, and his heart leaped. He stood motionless on the 
 
 piazza. The last time that he had stood there Oh, 
 
 he knew that she had gone at his entreaty: he had stood 
 on the dock-head and seen her go. Yet, once, he had 
 stood here and told her his love for her and kissed her as 
 he held her in his arms. Great God in heaven
 
 DURBAN 253 
 
 The sound of a step sent him rigid. No need for his 
 heart to wait: it was a servant, whom he did not recognize. 
 
 "Mr. Ormsby," the man echoed, "to see Mr. Brad- 
 broke, sir?" 
 
 "Mr. Bradbroke or Mrs. Bradbroke. Either one of 
 them." 
 
 "Beg pardon, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Bradbroke went home 
 three months ago." 
 
 "England?" Just the one word. 
 
 "Three months, sir. The place is to be let, sir. Might 
 be you would care to see it: twenty acres, and the out 
 buildings, and 
 
 The big man turned, without a word, down the drive. 
 The thing for him to do was to see the Netherbys. The 
 demented mutterings which he had just listened to meant 
 nothing. He should tell Lady Netherby that he had 
 been at Kimberley and written Greg from there. Just 
 say that he "had written." There would be no need of 
 saying that he had written twice. And she would tell 
 him where Greg and Anne were and why they had given 
 up the bungalow. 
 
 There the house was now! 
 
 For an instant, at his first sight of it, he reflected that 
 the Netherbys too might have gone. But a second, and 
 closer, scrutiny reassured him: the lattices leaned; and the 
 note of a song fell softly on his ear. In another moment 
 he had mounted the steps to stand mute, for the name 
 ZELIG stared at him on a new, brass plate, on the door. 
 
 " Zelig? " he asked duUy. " Zelig ? " Was he as mad as 
 that? 
 
 " Madame Zelig," a voice said. "You don t remember? "
 
 254 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 The doorway had suddenly framed Catherine Heth- 
 eridge, smiling impersonally, with her old, characteristic 
 abstraction. And there was more curiosity than invita 
 tion in her, "Come in?" 
 
 "All the world s gone mad," he confided studying her 
 sullenly. 
 
 "And you ve only just discovered that?" she derided. 
 "The madame s out. You may as well come in." She 
 might have been a servant, and he an intimate, a relative, 
 or an enemy. "I ve expected you," she went on, as 
 remotely as ever. She came a step closer, no longer aloof. 
 "You didn t know they d gone?" He seemed hardly to 
 hear. "They ve all gone, Anne, Greg, and the Netherbys 
 all of them." 
 
 "When?" he demanded. 
 
 She reflected, or seemed to reflect, her handsome head 
 supported, as, on the first evening, by her beautifully 
 rounded arm. "I think it was the next day or two after 
 you left Durban." 
 
 He ignored her calculated pause, and said nothing. 
 There was nothing he could say. There was little enough 
 that he could think beyond the still unbelievable fact 
 that Greg could have gone without telling him, and, even 
 above that, gone to 
 
 Catherine followed his thoughts. "It s singular that 
 he didn t write you." Then, suddenly, "What made you 
 come back?" 
 
 "I saw Hammerstone. It was at Kimberley." He 
 nodded his head slowly to himself. "I went there from 
 here. I d been there ever since. Hammerstone acted 
 as if something had happened, down here." He kept his
 
 DURBAN 255 
 
 eyes on her because she chanced to be standing directly 
 in front of him. "Greg didn t tell me that he had gone, or 
 was going. He I had not word from him." Again, 
 he nodded to himself. Then as if suddenly becoming 
 aware of her. "I was back living where I was before, in 
 the sheet-iron shack at Kimberley." 
 
 It may have been his simplicity and strength. It may 
 have been his reference to the shack of sheet-iron. Or it 
 may have been his listlessness, which, in such a man, told, 
 as nothing else could have told, his suffering. But what 
 ever the cause, the tears welled to the lashes of her strange 
 eyes. 
 
 "Don t! oh, don t!" she pleaded. "Why don t you 
 tell me what it is? I know that you loved each other. 
 No," as his hand went out, "why shouldn t I say it? 
 It s the greatest glory of her life, though she went 
 away!" 
 
 He looked down at her: "She went because I asked her 
 to. There was no other way." 
 
 Eyes wide, she started back. "You don t mean, you 
 can t mean, that ?" 
 
 He shook his head wearily. "Not that or anything like 
 it, though I am barred as effectually." 
 
 Joy filled her eyes. 
 
 "I am glad, glad, glad!" Her hands pressed her face, 
 covering the strange eyes, now wonderously softened. 
 "Ah!" she cried again, "I am glad!" 
 
 Motionless as a statue, he inclined his head. 
 
 "Thanks," he said, in a monotone so lifeless that it 
 would have killed her, if she had cherished even the most 
 trifling illusion regarding him: "it s no end good of you."
 
 256 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 He turned toward the door. "Mighty glad to have seen 
 you," he began. 
 
 She dashed aside his abstraction. "Yes, let s go out: 
 I can t stand this, in here." She led the way to the hall, 
 and caught up a sunshade. "Come," she said, "off some 
 where, where we can talk!" 
 
 He had seen her like this only once before; and, as they 
 descended to the path, which followed the drive, he lifted 
 his thoughts to her laboriously from the dream into which 
 he had been settling. So that it was with something like 
 his old manner that he held the gate for her, stepping 
 back for her to pass. 
 
 "It hit me," he said; "I mean, when I found they d 
 gone. I wanted you know," he went on with an almost 
 boyish earnestness. "I ve been away so long, and I 
 wanted to hear them talk of Her. I wanted to ask them 
 about Her. You don t know what it would have meant 
 what it means to me to talk with you of Her," he 
 finished, still blindly, unwittingly merciless. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "of course." She loved him so much 
 that, if, to talk of the young, English girl helped him, she 
 stood ready to endure. "Yes," she said again, after a 
 little. And, again, after another interval, through which 
 his words flowed on, "Yes." She wondered, as she heard 
 him resume, what she had done to suffer so. Eyes down 
 cast, sad as his own, she carried her graceful height beside 
 him, walking, as, but a short time before, he had stood 
 in a dream. 
 
 Suddenly, she realized that the timbre of his voice had 
 altered. "I beg your pardon," he was saying quickly 
 and guardedly, "but that large woman, there, in the
 
 DURBAN 257 
 
 carriage!" He filled his pause in with a gesture. "I 
 think she wants to speak to you." 
 
 Catherine leaned as if something had struck her. 
 "Yes, yes," she repeated, after one look in the direction 
 he gave her. "Yes," she said still again. She was stand 
 ing uncertainly. 
 
 They waited. The large woman had stopped her car 
 riage and was leaning toward them. 
 
 "Miss Hetheridge!" That was all. But her heavy- 
 lidded, cloudy eyes were confident. And she was so 
 gross, so uncouth, so unimaginably vulgar. "Catherine," 
 she said, with intimacy. 
 
 The big man stepped closer to the girl. "Don t worry, 
 though of course I know who she is," his big shoulder at 
 Catherine s side seemed to say. 
 
 Perhaps she heard its promise of protection, for her face 
 flamed. She drew away from him. "Shall I drive you 
 home?" he heard her ask the bearded giantess in the 
 ornate carriage. "Now?" 
 
 Catherine was following her voice to the side of the 
 carriage, but the big hand, which went with the big 
 shoulder, deliberately swept her back. "Drive on," 
 the American told the coachman with crude, irresistible 
 directness. And the man drove on. 
 
 She wheeled on him. "That was Madame Zelig: It 
 means " Her eyes were wide. 
 
 He shook his head slowly. " It means that you ll never 
 see her again. Once I offered you enough money to take 
 you to England and let you live the rest of your life there, 
 and you wouldn t take it. This time, you re going to. 
 Cry, if you want to, for it won t make any difference how
 
 258 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 many of these people here see you: you ll be gone on the 
 steamer by midnight, and never ll see any of them again!" 
 
 His voice was very deep and kind, as kind as the strong 
 hand which patted her shoulder as if she had been a weep 
 ing child. "You go to the Barns , now," he went on. 
 "Lady Barn s all right and you ll never see much of her 
 either. Tell her you ve been left a pot of money. I ll 
 get it, and bring it in shape you can easily carry. The 
 Bams ll take you to the boat to-night." 
 
 She looked at him, her lips moving. 
 
 "You ll never see me again, after it," he went on, very 
 straight out and simple, " so you needn t feel any embar 
 rassment; or obligation either: I ll be done with this 
 world inside six months." 
 
 There was nothing to make him understand the tremor 
 which wrung her shoulders. 
 
 "Run along to the Barns now. Come! No, you d 
 better go alone. I ll be along, just to say good-bye to 
 them, and find you there. That ll be just half an hour 
 from now." 
 
 And he left her standing, tall, slight, and shaken, before 
 she could deny a word. 
 
 He judged rightly that she must be given no time to 
 recover herself; and he made the bank quickly, drawing 
 out, in the most easily portable form, what he designed 
 for her. So that it was not half an hour, but a quarter, 
 when he was received by Lady Bam, and, pleading an 
 immediate duty at Kimberley, completed his farewells. 
 As he rose to go, he shook hands, all round. 
 
 The girl s face was drawn, as he stood before her, saying 
 lightly:
 
 DURBAN 259 
 
 "By the way, this will give you a good idea of my house 
 up there: some reporter s got it in here. Just a cut, but 
 it shows it." He gave her a folded newspaper. . . . 
 "Look it over, when you ve time. Good-bye." 
 
 She drew back, for the first time understanding the 
 
 mode of transfer he had selected. "I " She shook 
 
 her head. 
 
 He almost laughed, as he caught her hand and forced 
 her slender fingers about the thick paper. "I told you 
 I d give it to you, and I always keep my word." 
 
 Then he was gone, after a last word to the amused Lady 
 Bam, who had always liked him, finding him, as she was 
 so fond of saying, " so simple and strong and picturesque." 
 
 And, in her room of Lady Barn s lending, the girl sat 
 dry-eyed. She saw not the fortune, which had come to her 
 from the one man in the world from whom she could have 
 accepted it, but a smudgy woodcut of a shack of sheet- 
 iron on the outskirts of Kimberley, and, from the smudgy 
 cut, to a note, which read: 
 
 "By taking this, and going back to England, you make happier the 
 few weeks or months of life which remain to me." 
 
 It was not signed. There was no need of signature. She 
 bent her head, and raised the note to her lips.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 ADRIFT 
 
 HE HAD written her that her acquiescence made 
 him happier. But he scanned the paper next 
 morning, with an uncertainty which amounted to 
 anxiety; and his relief tarried until he found her name in 
 the list of those who had sailed, the midnight before, for 
 home. 
 
 It was done, then. And he threw the paper from him 
 
 satisfied. 
 
 How strange it was, he thought, that he had kept his 
 word, now, all round: he had promised Her to help Greg 
 and Anne so that they could marry and go back to Eng 
 land; he had promised himself that he would secure Her 
 own escape from South Africa; and he had told Catherine 
 Hetheridge that he would give her money enough to take 
 her, too, back there and let her live instead of riveting her 
 bondage to the Jewess, Madame Zelig, by marriage with 
 Beaconsfield Zelig, the Jew. All these promises were now 
 facts accomplished: he had kept his word. 
 
 And, because there was some comfort, even to him, in 
 this, he could dwell on Greg s evacuation from a new, and, 
 he felt, a saner, viewpoint. ... At least, that re 
 turn, however unheralded to himself, now seemed far less 
 unaccountable. For, after all, why should not Greg have 
 gone. It was perfectly consistent with all that he had 
 
 260
 
 ADRIFT 261 
 
 done since his marriage, yes, with the fact of the marriage 
 itself: he was still living, and, while he lived, lived for the 
 present. The certainty of the Fate, which gaped for him, 
 and would soon attain him, had made him utterly des 
 perate; and this desperation had given his weak nature 
 almost the semblance of hardihood: 
 
 It was as if Greg had said: "I ll do as I like until 
 YOU come for me!" It was sheer madness, one with the 
 splendid arrogance of that fine, brown-faced, dead, young 
 Clavering, who, like another not more confident in his 
 strength, had dared, with the same result, the darts of 
 Jove. But it was Greg s way. And, as he reviewed it, the 
 big man saw that he himself had been hardly less defiant: 
 he had deserted and left open to danger Gregory Brad- 
 broke, The Man Between. Moreover, he could not blame 
 Greg for going without warning him, for, before that, he 
 himself had gone without warning, and, even had made 
 a secrefof his refuge. He had been two weeks at Ember- 
 ley before writing that letter which, with the one that had 
 followed it, had been forwarded, in Durban s slow course 
 of business, to Greg in England. That meant three 
 weeks more before Greg had received it; and another 
 three weeks or four before an answer could come, even if 
 sent at once. Yes, Greg s desertion and silence were 
 clearing up now. Probably a letter from Greg was wait 
 ing for him now, at Kimberley. 
 
 He started within the hour. It had taken only a small 
 part of that hour to find a purchaser for the Australian 
 wool business, at the price at which the big man offered it. 
 After that, he had seen his bankers, and given Kimberley 
 again, as the address to which his mail should be forwarded.
 
 262 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 But no letter waited him from Greg. Nothing. And 
 if he had counted on finding Kimberley endurable, one 
 glance showed him the truth! Not even the shack of 
 sheet iron now was within his power, he saw after nights 
 and days of denials. 
 
 What was the use of denying? 
 
 "None," he said to himself at last, "for me, none in this 
 world." 
 
 "Where now?" he asked of the stars which gemmed 
 the vault, arching limitless over him. Then, he turned 
 back into the sheet-iron shack, and closed the door. Far 
 into the night, by the flickering, paraffine lamp, he wrote 
 to Her, page on page, over which he traced the never-to- 
 be-told story of his love. Far on into the night, to the 
 morning, to be hardly aware that he had ceased writing, 
 when umJacobi came, timidly to wake him, bowed over 
 the story he had told. 
 
 " Letters, chief," said the Zulu to the big man. 
 
 "Letters?" Then, he caught them to him, held them 
 until his mad hope died: they were not from Her, but 
 Greg! 
 
 There were many of them. It seemed that, once Greg 
 had begun writing, his need of communicating with the 
 American had leaped, full-grown. And he arranged them 
 according to their dates of transmission, and read them 
 slowly through: 
 
 The first one was headed "Durban," and dated the 
 night Greg had found that the American had gone away. 
 It was as close to conversation as any letter could hope or 
 dread being, for it dwelt, in detail, on things immaterial. 
 Moreover, it came back and back and back to the fact
 
 ADRIFT 263 
 
 of the big man s desertion as a thing incredible. Then, 
 plunge after plunge into the inevitable result of the writer s 
 now being left alone. And, through all and in all, the 
 question, soon a desperate demand, to know where the 
 American was, and when he should return. 
 
 The next letter had been written next day, and was 
 even more incoherent than the first: the same mad reit 
 eration, now ending: 
 
 "I can t even mail these, for I don t know where you are!" 
 
 In the next letter, Greg wrote that they were going to 
 England. It might be that he could last long enough to 
 get there. He could form no opinion naturally. But 
 Durban, now, was not to be thought of. They were all 
 going, he and Anne and the Netherbys. 
 
 The next letter, written nearly a month later, told of 
 their arrival just the bare fact of it, then resuming: 
 
 "But still no word! In God s name, Ormsby, tell me where you 
 are! I can t think that the order s been changed, and that you ve 
 gone ahead of me." 
 
 This, in varying phraseology, had constituted the letter. 
 He said nothing of England, nothing of the Netherbys, 
 hardly a syllable of Anne. Nothing of any happiness 
 at their return to the land they had sighed for so long. 
 And the big man understood. Though back in England, 
 and living for the present with his genuine or marvellously 
 portrayed bravado, Greg was waiting, too. 
 
 The next letter had been written just after receiving 
 Ormsby s first letter, from Kimberley, and was full of 
 remorse and bitterness : what must he have seemed, when 
 his defection, was known! He had gone to England be-
 
 264 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 cause he could not stay longer in Durban, no, not one 
 hour longer! He knew, now, that he had been beside 
 himself. But England had seemed the only place left. 
 Couldn t he see that? 
 
 And the big man, as he read, inclined his head, mutely. 
 Yes, he understood: 
 
 "You will wait for it in Kimberley, then. And there as well as 
 anywhere. Certainly as well as in England! England? At times, I 
 wish to God I were back there in Durban, that I had never gone from 
 there! For even here I can see only that Fiend who has wrecked us, 
 Jem, Hugh, Brett Paxton, and Carstairs, picturing the inevitableness of 
 my Fate to me showing me all that I have lost!" 
 
 On, on, he had written, paragraph following paragraph, 
 each more over-wrought and wild, until the certainty of 
 his Doom seemed to have bred in him a very ecstasy, such 
 as was Fleeetwood s through his dreams of Everlasting 
 Fire. 
 
 "Write me whatever you can. When you have ceased to hear from 
 me, you may know that I have gone!" 
 
 He had indeed become an exhortor, for confession and 
 acceptance of his doom earned no relief for him: 
 
 "It is inexorable and sure. There is no escape," he 
 said in his next letter. "Nor are we granted the balm of 
 disbelief. For the four who have gone, who already know 
 peace, are sufficient answer even to us, who would bribe 
 ourselves, if we could, to doubt, that, in this year of 
 Grace Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen, a Curse has come! 
 Where is its Seat?" he had gone on, his very handwriting 
 a gesture in the tenseness of his arm." By heaven, I see 
 in this, sometimes, a Warning to our race, short from the 
 hateful, hating heart of Africa! Yet a warning to our-
 
 ADRIFT 265 
 
 selves only, more sinister from Its surety that our brothers 
 shall not profit by our suffering. For who would believe 
 us, Ormsby, if we shouted our secret to the skies? No 
 one. We should be known for the madmen we are, made 
 mad by a truth which the Sane cannot understand. We 
 should say, 
 
 Death is fast on us. And we should be answered : 
 
 " Death surely, since you are human and alive! 
 
 " No, we should deny then, not that death: one 
 leaping closer and faster! 
 
 "Then, when shall you die, they would ask us. And 
 we should define our delusion by replying: 
 
 "Now, to-day, to-morrow, a week, a month, a year! 
 And our narrative of those four who had preceded us, 
 instead of earning belief, would establish our complicity! " 
 
 So ended the letter, as if mankind s incredulity had 
 become the keenest disappointment, almost, of the writer s 
 life. And there was truth in that dementia-won conten 
 tion, the big man admitted to himself: their secret must be 
 kept theirs as surely as their fate was theirs. All else, 
 including the hour of Its coming, was uncertainty. 
 
 Be it so, then, he thought, as he restored the last of the 
 letters to its envelope. And of what use was it to him to 
 stay longer at Kimberley? To work? No for work 
 implied the upbuilding of that he worked on; and up 
 building presupposed a to-morrow definitely to be his, 
 and he had not that. Not work, but wandering, then! 
 There were lands that he had never visited, and he would 
 go to them. They could profit him nothing beyond the 
 wearing out of the uncertain days which remained to him. 
 But that would be infinite solace. For he felt very weary,
 
 266 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 old even. He seemed to be looking dimly back on his 
 reft youth and dead hopes from the viewpoint of dreary 
 centuries. 
 
 He would go out, now, go where he would in the world, 
 give himself to the current and let it carry him where it 
 might. And, in determining this, he told the change 
 which, by subtle and easy degrees, had metamorphosed 
 him; he had elected to do what, six months back, he had 
 scorned others for doing; he would now live only for the 
 present drift.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 WITH THE CURRENT 
 
 CHANGED though he was, he did not give himself 
 to the Current until he had emptied the shack of 
 sheet iron of what he wished to take with him, 
 and idly told to what next point, Durban, his mail should 
 be forwarded. He meant the letters from Tom and Janet. 
 Greg s letters, he felt, would follow him automatically. 
 
 Then he entered a carriage of the first train south and 
 east, his next stop and first real point of departure since 
 it was an extensive port Cape Town. 
 
 Arrived there, he looked up the various sailings. First. 
 the White Star: 
 
 "Natal to London Natal to Australia 
 
 via via 
 
 Cape Town and Cape Town. 
 
 Plymouth. 
 Durban to London about 
 
 Dec. 23rd. S. S. Africa, 11,984 tons March 3rd. 
 
 Jan. 20th April 1st. 
 
 Feb. 17th Dec. 8th." 
 
 and so on down to: 
 
 "THROUGH FARES TO NEW YORK. BOSTON, 
 PHILADELPHIA or BALTIMORE quoted on application." 
 
 And he wondered how he had been able to read it so 
 idly, as he went on: 
 
 " Accommodation for one class of Passengers only. Fares from Natal 
 to London or Plymouth, from eighteen to twenty-four Guineas; from 
 
 267
 
 268 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Cape Town to Australia, from fifteen Guineas. Accommodation is 
 Of superior description and unusually spacious, including Reading and 
 Smoking Rooms. Experienced Surgeon and Stewardess. 
 
 WM. COTTS & Co., Agents, 
 
 Natal Bank Buildings, Durban. 
 Or to Messrs . " 
 
 But he read no more: the single word, "Durban," had 
 settled the White Star Line for him: he was going to try 
 to forget, to live for the present, and that word of six 
 letters would remind him! 
 
 He turned to the Rennie Line, which promised, 
 
 "On or about 
 Jan. 2d. S. S. Inyoni (Inter 2,000 tons), Ca.pt. P. J. Jackman." 
 
 But he dropped it, for it concluded: 
 
 "MARCONI SYSTEM OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPH. Installed 
 on board Inanda and Inkosi. Passengers can thereby communicate 
 with friends on shore before arrival in England." 
 
 No, not that, for it would be only irresistible temptation 
 which he must not put himself in the way of: he would 
 not see Greg and Anne and the Netherbys if it could be 
 avoided, and to be so near to Her Then, too, it had 
 been the steamship Inanda that he and Greg had waited 
 by, the night when Carstairs, instead of coming to sail to 
 the Cape with them, had gone; and, still more unescap- 
 ably reminiscent he found the name of her sister ship, for 
 Inkosi was a synonym of umFundize, and that Fiend had 
 said, that night at the Regent: 
 
 "You, umFundize, will be the last to die of those now 
 sitting within this room!" 
 
 So he crumpled the folders of the White Star and the 
 Rennie, and sailed on the German East African Line, tak-
 
 WITH THE CURRENT 269 
 
 ing the Eastern route, which should carry him to Beira, 
 Chinde, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanga, 
 Mombasa (Kilindini), Aden, Suez, Port Said, Naples, 
 Marseilles, Tangiers, Lisbon, Southampton, Flushing, and 
 Hamburg. 
 
 He read each word of the long list lingeringly. Surely, 
 he thought, the release which now tarried so obstinately, 
 must lurk there in one of them ! 
 
 And yet Beira gave him only the friendship of a stranded 
 white man, who, for the fortnight the American hung 
 there, watched the strong, sympathetic face with the 
 adoration of a dog. And Chinde, though he lagged there 
 a month, between boats, bore nothing but horror for those 
 who stayed there voluntarily. Mozambique. Another 
 month he sought to strike from his memory. Zanzibar, 
 he could endure only for a fortnight. Dar-es-Salaam 
 was brighter and far more picturesque, yet it, together 
 with Tanga and Mombasa, revealed nothing, and totalled 
 only six weeks. He idled twice that at Aden. Suez spelled 
 a gainless fortnight. Port Said for the same period, and 
 void as the rest. Naples, Marseilles, Tangiers, Lisbon 
 he fled soon, smiling and lovely as they were. Southamp 
 ton and Flushing how he longed for the weakness to 
 abandon his oath and unfitness for her love and follow 
 her! He was grateful when the steamer resumed her 
 course and, at last, liberated him at Hamburg. 
 
 Here, at his hotel, his mail caught up with him: a long 
 letter from Tom, with Janet s writing on the envelope. 
 But he contented himself with a swift glance that read 
 they were well, for the other letters were from Greg. All, 
 too, in the same tenor: he had had only the Kimberley
 
 270 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 letters. Was he still there? Or had he gone back to 
 America? 
 
 "By the time you receive this," ended the second of the 
 four letters, "my turn will have come. Ormsby, Ormsby, 
 it will be harder than ever for me to go now, for, besides 
 leaving Anne, there will be " 
 
 And the big man lowered the page reverently. Greg 
 had written of a child. The letter went on : 
 
 "Through every medium except words, you urged me against mar 
 riage; and now, though a long year s gone since it, you say, as you read 
 this, that you were right. But you were wrong then, and you are wrong 
 now: for once your calm logic has gone awry! From the first, I believe 
 that I have envied you, deliberate, self-contained and strong. But, 
 though you are still powerless to realize it, or to understand me, your 
 very strength has misled you. Love, if you had ever known it, would 
 have enlightened you!" 
 
 "Love," said the big man to himself, slowly. But he 
 smiled, for he knew, now, that his secret and Hers was 
 safe from Greg, who, though he had heard Anne s denun 
 ciation that day, at the dock-head in Durban, had not 
 believed. Fears of the contrary had assailed him. He 
 had known that She and Anne must meet, that, long 
 before this, they had revived the association which they 
 too had treasured so. But now there would be conject 
 ures and questionings only on Anne s part. Marian would 
 be spared the anguish of Greg s congratulatory sympathy. 
 
 And, by this time Not even yet could he bring 
 
 himself to voice it; yet he told himself that his oath should 
 not falter, and that Youth was still hers and that even a 
 year, to Youth, was very long. And, even assuming 
 and his heart leaped, though he defined nothing his
 
 WITH THE CURRENT 271 
 
 time would come soon, heralded by a delayed and heart 
 broken letter from Anne, or, more probably, from Lady 
 Netherby, telling him that Greg had died. 
 
 Through the seemingly endless days and nights, which 
 rolled on over him, in the German city, he wondered 
 where that letter would find him, from whence come to 
 him. And, once that letter had come, where should he 
 go from it? Not that that mattered much! For his 
 doom would detect him, here, there, or elsewhere that he 
 might crawl to on the world, like a fly creeping on a 
 schoolroom globe! 
 
 What was the use of this endless pursuit of he knew not 
 what? That was it : " What was the use of it? " 
 
 He was essentially a solitary, by this time. Before, 
 he had been, in comparison, merely utterly lonely, meeting 
 no one a second time, abandoning his lodgings for another, 
 as soon as sympathy, or interest, or curiosity led others to 
 attempt to penetrate his solitude. 
 
 And, though he hardly realized it, those who came on 
 him pondered him: who he was; what he was; the big, fine- 
 faced, sad-eyed, evanescent American. And they would 
 have done what they could for him, if they had known 
 what came, one day, without warning, and struck him 
 down: Greg had written it: She had married. She was 
 very happy. He and Anne and the Netherby s were 
 delighted. Greg supposed he would write to her, and 
 so gave the place where they were going to spend the next 
 month or two. "One of his places," Greg commented. 
 This Heaven-on-Earth was somewhere in the north of 
 Scotland. Anne had seen it, and it was very beautiful. 
 
 "Tell her I wish her every happiness," the big man
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 wrote Greg. Then, he mailed the letter with his own 
 hands, and awaited Greg s answer with the devotion of 
 one who could hope for the denial of a thing irreparable. 
 
 He waited. Until now he had forgotten that Greg had 
 known no address since Kimberley; and that, since writ 
 ing this letter, which, like the rest, had been so succes 
 sively forwarded, Greg, like himself, might have altered 
 his address repeatedly. And, though he knew, the next 
 instant, that Anne s health would forbid this continuous 
 voyaging, he clung to the illusion with increasing ten 
 acity, as day followed day, and no letter came. 
 
 Then his letter was returned to him, a note with it. 
 Somehow, even before he opened it, he divined its 
 message and knew that it was from Lady Netherby. 
 
 Very suddenly, the day before, Greg had died. 
 
 That night, from quiet Hamburg, in which the big man 
 had drifted and found shelter for six months, he sailed for 
 America.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 AMERICA 
 
 IT HAD come very stealthily, his sudden realization 
 that America was the one place left for him. But 
 though a realization, he found it most difficult to 
 define. He ascertained this only after the steamer had 
 sailed, and he knew that he was going to what once had 
 been home to him, across that gray and soundless sea. 
 For it was soundless: the night was calm; only the serene 
 voices of the soft-breasted sea-wanderers, the tireless 
 undulations of water, swinging in to meet and lift smoothly 
 the bulk of the liner, then slide from under and pass on 
 behind her, offered any sound. 
 
 The seas soothed him with a thousand promises, until 
 he felt the call which had been and must ever be so 
 irresistible to many of the troubled ones of the world. 
 What was it, he asked himself, hour after hour. Did 
 the waters understand him and his need? Did they pity 
 him? And were they offering themselves as a means of 
 escape from his suffering? 
 
 He had much time in which to ponder this; but his 
 pondering won him no solution. At best, only a theory, 
 which he accepted impersonally: it was not the waves, 
 which spoke to him, but his own heart, telling him that 
 he should soon leave the world, and that this green, tran 
 quil ocean would afford a swift and painless death. And, 
 
 273
 
 274 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 though the thought of suicide had been hateful to him 
 before, he could consider the step, now, with a mind fair 
 and free from prejudice. He knew that he had gained 
 this viewpoint only upon the coming of those two letters, 
 which had told of Her marriage and of Bradbroke s 
 death. How little the writers had dreamed what those 
 letters would mean to him, make of him ! Well, Greg was 
 past knowing, and Lady Netherby would never know. 
 
 Then, his reverie changed: not even suicide was open 
 to him, for he had written his name clear and distinct on 
 the steamer s register, and She must hear of it if he gave 
 himself to the sea. And no death was so absolute, and 
 no ocean so deep, but that he should feel how far he had 
 fallen in her regard. 
 
 So he would not give himself to this cool, piling, rising, 
 receding water, which called to him. She must live on 
 untrammelled by thoughts of him in her safe, serene, 
 English home. Already dead to her, he must insure his 
 ceasing to be even a memory. 
 
 Obedient to the decree of this strange loyalty, he made 
 his way. It was an outre, abnormal way. Now that 
 she was another s and that Bradbroke was dead, his brief 
 future stretched a colourless waste ahead of him. It had 
 been that before, but Greg s letter had killed it all over 
 again. Somewhere, invisible, yet near, Fraser, Chadwell, 
 Paxton, the singer, Carstairs, and now Gregory Bradbroke, 
 waited his coming, the five who had gone before. 
 
 It seemed to him, sometimes, that he saw them, but he 
 knew that these intimate visions were only hallucinations, 
 the creatures of his harried brain. And yet they were 
 startlingly clear, as clear as that room, at the Regent Club,
 
 AMERICA 275 
 
 as clear, almost, as the face and the words of the Fiend 
 who had ruined him, converted him, distorted, and dis 
 organized him, whose lips seemed speaking, unceasingly, 
 in his very ear. Hammerstone, too, as he came back, after 
 caring for Frazer. Hammerstone bothered the big man: 
 he was so eternally coming back to say they must realize 
 that it was only a coincidence, and that the interment 
 would be at three o clock. At other times, Hammerstone, 
 without becoming less clear in his eternal entry into the 
 room at the Regent, was trying to hide himself in the 
 crowd in the club at Kimberley. Clavering, too, brown- 
 faced and eager, was telling the crowd of the frank, free, 
 open life on the high veldt: 
 
 "Nothing like it in the world! No, nothing like it in 
 the world!" Then, Clavering was always going out into 
 the storm, and being killed by lightning. It was too 
 bad. Clavering had had a good, straight pair of eyes, 
 and a brown face, and had seemed in the very top of 
 condition. Young, too. Yes, it was too bad. Yet 
 Clavering s going off that way had showed how uncertain 
 life was even when spared any irremediable curse. It 
 had served in that way! And through all and in all, and 
 closer immeasurably than all to the big man, Her words, 
 and the touch of her, that moment at the bungalow, when 
 they had spoken the truth to each other, there and on the 
 steamer, her love, her face, her tears, her longing to stay 
 and meet with him whatever his unspoken fate might be! 
 
 That was what he lived on, as the steamer told off the 
 miles, piling them up between him and the land which he 
 had left. He should never go back, never again see Eng 
 land. The end should find him somewhere in America!
 
 276 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 But he knew, for all that, that to the end he should see 
 only Her and South Africa. 
 
 And, while Durban stared, closer ever and closer, his 
 steamer climbed the harbour and made her dock at New 
 York! 
 
 Yes, it was New York. For past streamed the crowds 
 on both sidewalks, every now and then overflowing into 
 the gutters to meet in the middle of the street. A nervous 
 clang cleared the way temporarily for an ambulance, in 
 whose back lazed an impassive attendant, incongruously 
 immaculate in his white duck; then, the crowd closed in 
 again, the morbid trying to see what lay crumpled on the 
 stretcher at the attendant s farther side. Men, women, 
 children with Sphinx-like, far-peering faces which, not 
 even on the day of their birth, could have suggested joy or 
 youth! Cars slued in, solid with the same parodies on 
 humanity, native-born it might be, yet with the features 
 of their parent immigrants. By Heaven, he seemed look 
 ing into the steerage of a ship! A Jew, an auctioneer s 
 "puller-in," barked from a doorway: the watches being 
 offered for sale were stock unredeemed from pawnbrokers, 
 he lied. Two Italian pigmies kicked a box to pieces, to tie 
 and drag the fragments with their shrewd, small hands, 
 while their mother waited, a stolid statue, an hundred and 
 fifty pounds of stolen timber on her head! Newsboys 
 screamed like gulls over refuse! Every manner of vehicle, 
 electric, horse, and human, filed by with every manner of 
 prey for the maw of the multitude! The city roared! 
 Yes, it was his world, so plain and palpable that his Fate 
 seemed only a mirage, imaginary and non-existent, con 
 jured up by himself. His predicament? His bondage?
 
 AMERICA 277 
 
 His inevitable end? Had he not, after all, dreamed 
 them? And should he not find, in a moment, that only 
 their Unreality was Real? Then, he felt again the Jap 
 anese Netsuki the one thing he had bought at Dar-es- 
 Salaam wrought by patient, brown fingers with a skill 
 as old as Time; and he knew that, though he was walking 
 a familiar street, in the dear, old city, he was held by his 
 Doom and held hopelessly, for the evidence of it was 
 stamped on his very heart. 
 
 It was so : first in New York, and then in Boston, which 
 he soon fled to, the men who welcomed him, importuning 
 him back to his old life, were not so tangible to him as 
 Fraser and Chadwell and the singer and Carstairs and 
 Bradbroke! These old friends, this world he had con 
 fidently thought should be his his life through, were no 
 longer his. Or, rather, he saw them all over an impassible 
 barrier. Each day, he knew this more indubitably, and 
 soon began to withdraw from them, for they sought to 
 come between him and his dreams. Then, because they 
 became insistent, he left them. He was going away. 
 For how long? He made the best he could with that, for 
 how could he tell them that he should never meet any 
 one of them again! 
 
 "Across to that other ocean, to tne Pacific," he said to 
 himself, its sole recommendation its distance and the fact 
 that, beside it, he should know no one who might infringe 
 his solitude. 
 
 But he ran into the Boydens before he had been in
 
 278 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 Pasadena an hour. And Tom Kennerley and his wife 
 pinned him down to a dinner, a week after he had settled 
 himself in San Francisco. Portland for a month seemed 
 a safe haven, but then Greymouth Crew, hungry for news 
 of the East, seized on him gratefully. 
 
 It was enough: he would try the wilderness; and, heed 
 less of those who warned him that it was the -wrong season, 
 he went hopefully into the far distant North, where he 
 revelled, half-heartedly in the hunting, until Crandall, 
 1901, staggered, half-frozen, into his shack. Nome had 
 been no better than the others ! Even the wilderness had 
 failed! 
 
 "Still another country, then," he told himself list 
 lessly. And, with the red-brown of his three months of 
 Alaskan winter on his firm cheeks, he dropped down to 
 Victoria.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 VICTORIA 
 
 VERY neat, very quaint, very quiet, very English, 
 the little city appealed to him. Feeling its 
 peace, and noting its modest pretensions, he won 
 dered how he could have hesitated even as long as he 
 had between it and Seattle. Here, he could suffer no 
 interruption. He settled himself in easily gained lodgings, 
 and told himself that he had found the right place at 
 last: 
 
 "I ll stand it out here. Now that Greg s gone, it 
 can t be long." He said it confidently. And, accepting 
 Its imminence, he made the necessary preparations, with 
 his characteristic quietude and thoroughness. He had 
 given his New York and Boston addresses to the clerk of 
 the little, private hotel; and he now amplified these by 
 appending the names of his three living relatives, together 
 with indication where they might most readily be found. 
 He wrote such letters as he wished, each a farewell, and 
 each undated, "to be delivered in case of accident to 
 myself." Next, he wrote and mailed at once, letters of 
 more detail though in no way suggesting his approach 
 ing annihilation. These were to Tom and Janet; and even 
 to the little baby, he wrote with eyes gone wet. And, last 
 of all, he burned the letters which, at Durban, at Kim- 
 berley, and at every stop since, he had written to the Eng 
 
 279
 
 280 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 lish violet completing his task gray -faced. In effect 
 and sensation, he had now all but parted from the world 
 of those who lived. 
 
 His secret thus buried for all time, and all preparations 
 made for the care of his body, he looked on those about 
 him with an easy tolerance. By day, he kept his rooms 
 with almost stuporic lethargy. By night, he went out and 
 walked for great periods, in the darkness, or, as he soon 
 came to do, rode one of the horses which an adjacent hostler 
 kept in readiness for him. Great strength and rugged 
 health had been his, and should be kept his up to the very 
 end. Always, he had despised men who let themselves 
 get out of condition, just as he had pitied men, who, 
 through lack of ruggedness, had never known what con 
 dition was and, by "condition," the big man meant the 
 glorious vigour of the men on the crew squad his 
 Harvard days. 
 
 He met no one in anything approaching intimacy. 
 From time to time, he came on a face he had seen once or 
 twice before, but that was his nearest step toward acquaint 
 ance, to say nothing of anything affording companion 
 ship. If he excited interest, it was not gratified. If he 
 roused curiosity, it did not reach his ears. He had been 
 right in estimating that an American in Victoria could pre 
 serve his solitude if he would. 
 
 And he was accepting this as an unequivocal fact, 
 when, without prelude, it was disproven: far out of the 
 city, one evening, himself riding, he came on a rider 
 fighting for control of an ill-broken horse. One glance 
 showed the horse was winning; the second saw the horse 
 rear and fall backward, pinning the rider under him.
 
 VICTORIA 281 
 
 Instantly, the American had reached them, and was off his 
 own mount. 
 
 "Not much hurt, I hope," he asked, as he lifted the 
 other in his arms. 
 
 "No, just my leg, thanks. All right." The man 
 
 tested the leg as he spoke. "Jove, makes me feel " 
 
 By way of defining, he steadied himself still more against 
 the big shoulder which was little higher than his own. 
 "Just a moment, then I ll be fit! It s not that I m done, 
 or anything. The deuce of it is I m just quit of the 
 hospital. Got a bullet somewhere in this queer leg of 
 mine, and the surgeons have been trying for it again. 
 Ought not to have ridden this devil the first night!" 
 He forced a smile, but his lips were white and he breathed 
 irregularly. 
 
 The big man swung his horse around. "I ll put you 
 up, and take you wherever you say to," he said quickly. 
 "Yes," as the other formed a denial: "your beast s 
 bolted, and it s close on midnight. Ten to one no one 
 will be along!" 
 
 "But, I can t let you " 
 
 For answer, the American swung him from the ground 
 to the saddle. "Where?" he asked, beginning to walk 
 by the horse, which he had already turned in the direction 
 of the town. 
 
 The other made no answer at first. Clearly, he was 
 shaken more than he realized. But he was not thinking 
 of himself: "I say, this is no end fine of you, old man,* 
 he cried frankly, his accent neither wholly English nor en 
 tirely American. "And you re right: the leg s no possible 
 good now. Don t know what I d have done! Staying
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 on here? Odd I haven t seen you. I d have remem 
 bered, for," with a quick, downward glance of candid 
 
 admiration, "you re big enough and " He broke 
 
 off, ending, "So, I d have remembered you." 
 
 "Yes, I m staying on here, as you say," the big man 
 admitted; "but about yourself: Where do you want me 
 to take you to?" 
 
 "All right," said the mounted man, with a frank laugh. 
 "And I beg your pardon. If you ll deliver me at the 
 Victoria Club. ..." 
 
 "Where is it?" 
 
 "Straight ahead a bit. Hardly a mile, I think. I ll 
 say *when, when we come to it. Here," he said, after a 
 period, "this is it, and I guess my leg " 
 
 But he groaned as he tested it. "You know," as he 
 thrust out his hand for the big man s, "I m any amount 
 sorry; but " 
 
 "Better let me take you right in, if you don t mind being 
 thought crippled." And the American carried him up 
 the broad steps and through the door which an attendant 
 held back for them. 
 
 "Fine," commended the other gratefully. "Here," 
 to a waiter. "You ll have something? I ve got to! 
 This pain s the devil! Two club cocktails!" The waiter 
 dashed away. 
 
 The big man looked down. After all, it would be 
 only a moment. And he took the chair placed for him. 
 
 His host smiled across, nodding. "Didn t want to, but 
 was persuaded. Don t worry : I m not full of questions." 
 To prove it, he turned toward where the waiter had raced 
 to. "Can t imagine what s keeping the fellow: club
 
 lO 
 
 i} 
 
 r^ 
 
 EN
 
 VICTORIA 283 
 
 cocktails ought not to take half a Here they are!" 
 
 He pushed one across to the big man, and raised his own. 
 
 "To you, and " Then, he stopped, his untasted 
 
 glass halfway to his friendly, smiling lips. The smile 
 
 faded. "I say " Then his hand slowly went down 
 
 until the glass clicked on the smooth table s heavy wood. 
 
 But neither click nor exclamation moved the man who 
 had forgotten him: fixed as a statue, the American was 
 staring away from him at a man who sat alone at a table 
 on the other side of the wide room. The man was half- 
 turned away. Only his profile was visible. Apparently, 
 he was finishing an elaborate dinner. He seemed of an 
 easy, reflective turn of mind, too, for, though alone, his 
 lips moved, and, from time to time, he smiled. But not 
 once did he turn his head. 
 
 And the big man stared on at him, as rigid as the table 
 against which he pressed. 
 
 "Drink, for God s sake!" at last breathed his host. 
 "I thought 7 needed it, but you " 
 
 He was granted strange obedience: the big man, with 
 out lifting his eyes once from their anchorage, felt for the 
 glass he had set down, and, raising it, drank the strong 
 liquor in panting gulps. Then, his big hand closed on his 
 host s with a grip which bent the bones. 
 
 "One day," he said, with an effort, "I ll find you and 
 tell you what you ve done for me." 
 
 Then, he went across to the man, who still sat, alone 
 and unobservant, at the table on the other side of the room.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 THE chalk cliffs! But was it really England, he 
 asked himself, as he watched them, from the 
 steamer s bow? For, though he knew now, it 
 still seemed a mirage. The transition had been too sud 
 den, too utterly unhoped for, so soon to become credible. 
 He had been at Victoria, in British Columbia, and had 
 met a man in the night there. He had helped the man, 
 and had been at the Victoria Club with him, gone in, 
 and there . . . 
 
 An hour after the landing was made, he was saying to 
 Catherine Hetheridge, "I have broken my promise, but 
 forgive me. You will understand " 
 
 She looked up at him : memorable as he had been always 
 to her, she had not imagined that even he could be like 
 this. "You?" The marvel held her still. 
 
 "I must be received by the Earl of Leighton, as his 
 guest, unannounced, at once." 
 
 She said, simply, "Yes." Then the eyes, of the strange 
 blue of the soil about Kimberley, swept over him, en 
 folded him : for one daring moment, she had been able to 
 forget. But for only a moment. She turned from him, 
 thinking only of him. "Have you * alized what it will 
 mean? Yes," in the same breath, "I know that you 
 believe that your course is right." 
 
 284
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 285 
 
 "Right," he cried. "It is as right as that you are 
 here, as you are, instead of obeying the beck and call of an 
 inferior; it is as right as that, after a time, you will have 
 forgotten that any ever bore the name Zelig! Don t," 
 he said, with infinite gentleness touching the hands which 
 her face had gone trembling down to, "it s just that I 
 wanted you to know how glad I am! And now take me 
 to the Earl of Leighton!" 
 
 She checked him, her hands at her throat? "Is it a 
 coincidence which has led the Earl and the Countess to 
 entertain whom they do, to-night? " 
 
 "It is Fate," he said. "She could be nowhere else in 
 the world, to-night." 
 
 "Shall I ever see you again?" she asked while they 
 waited, one instant, before the Earl of Leighton s door. 
 
 "Yes," he told her. 
 
 Then they entered, she to go to the drawing-room and 
 the Countess, he to go where he knew, from the hour it 
 was, that he should find the Earl. 
 
 There were in that room, the Earl of Leighton, and 
 three other men, older, gray-haired, grave men with nobly 
 won orders on their breasts. And one was leaning slightly 
 toward his host and the two other guests, saying: 
 
 "And it does exist there. I have been there, and seen 
 it for myself. And, I tell you," his fine old eyes sweeping 
 the half circle, "in America, I have seen what, since it is 
 allowed by the authorities, we cannot blame the perpe 
 trators for; but it was a revelation to me. I 
 
 "That is it," the smaller, more nervous man next him 
 interrupted. "You define the explanation, Sir Harry: 
 it is yourself. Yes, pardon me, I mean exactly that: you
 
 286 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 have never known politics or anything whatever touching 
 the commercial. Since leaving the sea, you have known 
 only the quiet of one of the most beautiful spots in Eng 
 land; and, as a result, any shrewd and unprincipled out- 
 reaching for money is a revelation, as you just said. Now, 
 in spite of all you have told of America, I venture to say 
 
 that, right here, in Britain 
 
 But the old sailor was not to be put down. "You mis 
 take me," he corrected: "I am not speaking of ordinary 
 sharpness. In the one week I spent in America, I saw 
 what amounted to deliberate extortion. Under the British 
 
 flag, it would have been called " 
 
 "Crude" said a voice from the doorway. 
 At the words, the Earl, the old sailor, and the two other 
 men turned, so that, at the same instant, they saw him 
 standing straight and tall between the heavy portieres. 
 
 "Mr. Ormsby," tardily announced the butler, "of 
 America." 
 
 He stood very still and silent. At each side were 
 armoured figures, mailed ghosts of the past; but wide and 
 tall as they were, they were dwarfed by the reach and bulk 
 of the American. So that he might well have seemed, to 
 those who beheld him, as silent as he, a reincarnated 
 champion, come to confront them from a bygone world 
 the illusion so obstinate as to hold them even while he 
 came deliberately toward them, his big-boned face stand 
 ing out brown against the white front of his evening 
 clothes. 
 The Duke of Radford turned to the statesman who sat 
 
 at his right. "I say, Kayting, did you ?" Then 
 
 he stopped, for the intruder was now close, saying, as he
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 287 
 
 seated himself opposite them, "It is my right to tell you 
 why I have come." 
 
 Sir Harry Marlton looked from the Earl, who had gone 
 rigid, to the man who ignored the peer so grimly : 
 
 "I say, you can explain this, of course?" he asked the 
 man from America. 
 
 There was nothing hostile in the frank question. They 
 might have been sitting in a club, two big men by them 
 selves, two fighters, one old and the other young, one a 
 sailor and the other a landsman, yet tacitly admitting 
 their congeniality. And the old sailor smiled across to 
 the brown, big-boned face. His own was brown. "I 
 say, Radford," he nodded, "we d be glad if he d ex 
 plain?" 
 
 "If you will," said the Duke. "But, first, Leighton, 
 don t you I fancy he d best be offered us." 
 
 The Earl s lips moved. But the man from America 
 leaned forward. "Hear me through first," he said, "and 
 let what introductions are needed come afterward. Be 
 patient: every detail shall be cleared up. I am John 
 Ormsby, an American. Ten years ago I completed the 
 academic course at Harvard, my father s college and my 
 grandfather s. By residence, I am most familiar with Bos 
 ton and New York. I have crossed a continent and an 
 ocean to see the man whose guests you are." 
 
 "Very good," interrupted the sailor. "But you said 
 crude, a moment ago. What did you mean by that? 
 
 The American bowed. "I shall tell you." He waited 
 a moment, then began: 
 
 "I will take you back a little behind two years. I used 
 to speculate."
 
 288 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 The Duke suddenly nodded. "You are that John 
 Ormsby?" 
 
 "Yes. Wanting a change, a little more than two years 
 back, I went to South Africa that is to say, to Kim- 
 berley. I speculated there," he went on, with the same 
 strong, almost ominous calm, "and won heavily and 
 repeatedly. I had what, even to me, was amazing for 
 tune: I won continuously, never losing, though the prob 
 ability of loss was about ninety-nine to one. Then a 
 young Englishman, who had wandered into my shack 
 there, asked me to be his guest at Durban for race-week. 
 I had no desire to go, no curiosity about Durban, and I 
 hadn t yet had my fill of Kimberley. But Bradbroke 
 I believe that I liked him better than I had liked any man 
 whom I had known for so short a time: he was brilliant, 
 though I had not then even begun to suspect him of his 
 one certain attainment; moreover, he was younger than I, 
 by a year or two, and physically far weaker; add to that 
 appeal the glamour I felt in his incongruous poverty. I 
 say incongruous. In him, poverty was that; he would 
 have become wealth, I saw at the very first of our acquaint 
 ance, and he did not know what to do with poverty! 
 There to me lay the glamour of his position. He d prac 
 tically camped with me in my Kimberley shack for a 
 fortnight. I d come to feel almost an older brother to 
 him. And I became his guest at Durban. 
 
 "And there, his charm in those days he had that 
 beyond question matured quickly. I met those near 
 est him, and realized that he d marry, the instant he d the 
 money to do it, and go home. And I decided I d help 
 hun to. I meant to get him interested in speculating. I
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 289 
 
 was going to control his investments, and make him win 
 heavily. And I could have done it! Remember, I had 
 a tremendous fortune and Kimberley was swelling it. 
 Personally, I considered the thing as good as done. 
 
 "Then, one night, Bradbroke took me to the Regent 
 Club. I d been there repeatedly with him, and liked the 
 place. I had heard an old soldier tell a story there once. 
 He had told it to a crowd of us. The old chap had been 
 warning us not to run the risk of angering any of the local 
 witch-doctors, and his story had been of the punishment 
 measured out, by one of these nGaka, to a white man who 
 had defied him. The narrative had been truly horrible; 
 but I had forgiven the old man the horror, and forgotten 
 it. He wasn t there on this evening I m talking about. 
 But Carstairs and Chadwell and Fraser and Paxton were, 
 men I d come to know well as friends of Bradbroke. And 
 the place was as comfortable as ever (though it was a broil 
 ing night in February), for there was just our own little 
 crowd there, lots of champagne and ice, pipes, cigarettes, 
 black cigars and Irresponsibility. . . . 
 
 "Midnight, next. Only the six of us, still, in the low, 
 wide-walled room, when, without announcement, there 
 entered the wildest figure in the world, one of these witch 
 doctors of the Zulus. By heaven! I can see him now 
 as clearly as I see you! He broke in on us like a Death s 
 Head; and the obstinate brute began his tricks, ignoring 
 the fact we hardly paid any attention to what he did. 
 But, little by little, he made us watch him, for his work 
 was his own, and far from the usual. Some of his perform 
 ance was new to me; and, as he went on, he improved in 
 novelty until we d forgotten our impatience and watched
 
 290 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 him with all our eyes. If you ve seen any of his order, 
 there s no need of my describing; but, if you ve not, take 
 my word his powers were unimaginable. Then, the very 
 wonder of it began to pall on us. I d had enough. And 
 so it seemed with the others, for pretty soon they told 
 him to clear out. You should have seen him then ! Pride 
 of craft, contempt of our understanding call it what 
 you will he glared down at us, from his tremendous 
 height, like an outraged king. 
 
 "And it was probably that manner of his, and his egotism 
 that started the men off: Bradbroke laughed at him, and 
 told me the man was a fake. Then, some of the other 
 fellows, in particular Fraser, ridiculed the witch-doctor 
 and explained every trick he d worked. How he leaped 
 then! He threatened, and we laughed at him. We for 
 got what the old soldier had said to us. And Fraser al 
 most literally kicked the nGaka from the room. Then, 
 he sent his curse on us. It was to be death soon for us. 
 He said that I, because I had derided him the least, should 
 be the last man in the room to die. Then, his curse 
 launched, he went from us. Have you seen mist sift 
 through a hedge or a forest? That, and only that, can 
 describe his passage from the room. 
 
 "That s a new one to me, one of my hosts said, with a 
 laugh. 
 
 "It s a new one to me, too, said another, an older 
 man. But he did not laugh. 
 
 "I imagine they have to vary their programme, like 
 other artists, I said carelessly. And yet, the nGaka s 
 words had obtruded themselves on me to such an extent 
 that it was only from an odd nervousness, tha.t I had
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 291 
 
 taken refuge in artificiality. I am not a nervous man, 
 but I identified my sensations as at least nervousness, and, 
 angry at myself for so failing what my self-pride had said 
 I was, I employed another subterfuge : I went to the piano 
 and knocked out a song we d all sung earlier in the even 
 ing. I sang it through as a solo; then swung round on 
 the stool, little assisted by the fact that the rest had not 
 joined in. They were sitting exactly as when I had 
 turned my back on them. They had not spoken. And 
 they said nothing now. It was too much: I got to my 
 feet, thanked them none too warmly for the pleasure of 
 the evening, ignored the latest incident, as far as the 
 prophecy went, and said good-night to my hosts. 
 
 "At that, four of them sprang up, attempting some 
 explanation. The fifth man, Eraser, did not rise. When 
 we spoke to him, he did not answer. I believe we were 
 only surprised, at first; but it was not surprise after we 
 had looked more closely at him, and found that he was 
 inert as a bag. We called in a doctor, a man named 
 Hammerstone, Chadwell had remembered seeing, a couple 
 of hours back, in the main living-room; and he took 
 Eraser out. Ten minutes later, Paxton the man with 
 the voice came back from where he d gone with the 
 doctor; and I can see, now, the look in his eyes, when he 
 told us that Fraser had not regained consciousness 
 that he was dead. After what seemed an interminable 
 interval, Doctor Hammerstone came back to us; and we 
 told him of the witch- doctor, though agreeing that he 
 hadn t been closer than ten feet to Fraser, so couldn t 
 possibly have touched him or given him anything. 
 
 " Hammerstone heard us out, then said he didn t see
 
 292 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 any novelty in any part of it; told us not to let it get on 
 our nerves, and reminded us that we were in South Africa. 
 Told, in his turn, of the nGaka s prophecy, Hammerstone 
 called it a coincidence. A coincidence? We tried to 
 call it that. But the man was dead! Still, we left the 
 thing with the doctor, and agreed not to talk about it. 
 Chadwell, I mean Bradbroke, said he d come in and see 
 me, the first thing in the morning, and we separated. I 
 went back to my rooms, to sleep brokenly, when, at last, 
 I got to sleep. 
 
 "I waited as long as I could the next day for Brad- 
 broke; then, unable to keep in my rooms any longer, went 
 out and walked about the city, just using up the time. 
 When, I got back to the rooms, Bradbroke was waiting, 
 and his eyes and in fact every detail of his appearance 
 made me wonder how so tragic caricature of his former 
 self had managed to find his way about. No matter! 
 I did what I could for him, and finally got him soothed: 
 I reiterated that the thing of the night before was what 
 Hammerstone had called it a coincidence, and that 
 we d forget it in a week, or else believe, by then, the report 
 we had not contradicted that Fraser had skipped the 
 country, dodged his debts, a way-out conceived by the 
 doctor, who had promised to bury the body secretly. 
 
 " My first thought had been to leave South Africa and 
 the beginning tragedy. But I considered the idea only to 
 abandon it, for, if danger did threaten me, it was invisible 
 and inevitable, and flight would not mean escape from 
 it. Moreover but there s no need of going into that. 
 I wrote home I should remain where I was indefinitely 
 and I meant just that and settled myself in Durban.
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 293 
 
 " Little by little, we five who remained that is, 
 Carstairs, Paxton, Chad well, Bradbroke, and I fell into 
 the habit of doing things together. And this pretty soon 
 whittled down to our meeting, night after night, in one of 
 the less frequented rooms at the Regent Club. We spoke 
 irregularly; and yet there was little that we kept back. 
 We had been cast apart a bit I mean them from me, on 
 the first evening after my arrival in Durban, but had 
 caught up our association readily; and this, which we five 
 had now met with, made that association a veritable 
 brotherhood. Did I, for my own part, believe the witch 
 doctor s prophecy? I hardly know. We didn t compare 
 notes much. We were trying to go on as if nothing had 
 happened as if Fraser had not gone. Unquestionably, 
 our role was an effort. Our relationship was the strangest 
 that men have ever known! 
 
 " Then, Hugh Chadwell went from us. I put it that way. 
 There had come a flood in a mine his company worked 
 in the Transvaal. The superintendent up there described 
 Chadwell s death as heroic. But what those of us left 
 thought of it was that we d been mad to hope that 
 even Eraser s death had been a coincidence. I remem 
 ber saying I hadn t been able to follow the doctor at any 
 time, and they owned up to the same thing. But, even so, 
 Chadwell s exit struck us like an avalanche: we d gotten 
 pretty well back into our old way of looking at things, 
 taken up the old life you know what I mean: hunting, 
 tennis, and cricket; we d even begun, under Bradbroke s 
 coaching, rehearsing a play, the club theatricals. But 
 now ! 
 
 "If Paxton and Chadwell and Bradbroke and Car-
 
 294 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 stairs and I had been intimate, Paxton and Carstairs and 
 Bradbroke and I were inseparable: we dined together that 
 night, I mean locked ourselves in my rooms and agreed 
 never to get apart : we were going to keep right on through 
 It together. I urged this, and the other three agreed with 
 me. Then, Paxton, the singer, broke out, saying he was 
 off to his own rooms, couldn t stand talking about it any 
 longer. He was blue as indigo. I sent Bradbroke and 
 Carstairs after him, to overhaul him, and then, to escape 
 from something stronger even than my fear was, I took 
 the first train I could get for Kimberley. Not fear, but 
 Love drove me. Doomed as I was, I held myself barred 
 from it. I ve said I boarded the Kimberley train. Just 
 ahead of me, in the same carriage, I saw Bradbroke and 
 Carstairs. I went in on them, acted the part of the dis 
 coverer of their flight, and forced them to return with me 
 to Durban. 
 
 " We got there sometime in the night, and, by common 
 assent, went about looking for Paxton. He had been 
 terribly overwrought with all his musician s nerves 
 before we had gone off. I, personally, feared the worst. 
 And it seemed that Bradbroke and Carstairs had felt the 
 same dread, rather the same dread certainty, so that it was 
 corroboration more than surprise, when we went to his 
 rooms and found his note saying that he hadn t been able 
 to stand it out any longer, and had gone after Eraser and 
 ChadwelL After we d read that note, I burned it. There 
 was no need of keeping it: we remembered well enough 
 what he had said. Carstairs, I remember, commented 
 favourably on it, and wondered where Paxton d be found 
 and buried. But I didn t see the good in dwelling on it,
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 295 
 
 and evidently Bradbroke felt as I did, for he fell in with 
 me, after a little, and Carstairs cut it out. 
 
 "The two had been badly off before Chad well had 
 gone, but now they were past all words: they began to 
 make odd deductions from trifles, to look very oddly. It 
 was more than mere morbid hysteria; and at last the 
 Thing I don t know what better to call it got on 
 them so heavily that I suggested our going off for a little 
 vacation somewhere. After a while they agreed to it. 
 It was going to be a little run to the Cape. They were 
 going to meet me at the Rennie dock, from which the 
 Inanda sailed at midnight. . . . Bradbroke met me 
 there on time, and we wondered what was keeping Car- 
 stairs. Carstairs didn t show up at all. The Inanda sailed 
 with our luggage, and Bradbroke and I went to Carstairs 
 rooms. There was no note left, just his stuff packed and 
 tagged with Bradbroke s name and mine on it divided 
 up between us, each getting what he d thought we d like. 
 But the words, 
 
 " Gone after Paxton and Chadwell and Fraser 9 
 seemed to stare from every corner and cranny of that 
 silent room. 
 
 "That night Bradbroke came to live with me! I have 
 told you something of his manner, his plight, and his per 
 sonality, as I first found it, and, though, later, I was to 
 know him the least magnetic of them all, I still pitied him. 
 And, even if I had not, his coming to me, after Carstairs 
 exit, would have seemed to me the one natural thing in 
 all the distorted world. For, you see, it had about come 
 down to this: the witch-doctor had said that I was to 
 outlive the other five; on its face, not an alarming state-
 
 296 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 ment, since, even crediting it, the five who were to go 
 first, were young and in the pink of health; if anything, 
 that prophecy had meant good, old age to me I say 
 on the face of it. But four had gone in a trifle less than a 
 month, and that altered the situation very considerably. 
 Just as Paxton s leaving had pushed the prospect nearer 
 to those of us who, with him, had survived Fraser and 
 Chadwell, the exit of Carstairs brought It still closer to 
 me and Bradbroke, in a far more than proportionate de 
 gree. Another, and perhaps clearer, way of stating it is 
 that, while Carstairs lived, he had stood between It and 
 Bradbroke; and, now that Carstairs was out, only Brad- 
 broke stood between It and me. And so I decided to 
 see that nothing happened to Bradbroke, the man with 
 whom, as he came to be later, I should have had, under 
 anything like ordinary conditions, very little of anything 
 to do. 
 
 "I ve said that Bradbroke came to share my rooms 
 with me. He did more than that : he hardly left my sight. 
 This meant his giving up his under-secretaryship at the 
 consulate, and deprived him of even that small salary. 
 But I saw that he did not lose by that: I opened a busi 
 ness in Durban taking him in as my partner. I made 
 money as always, and gave him his half. And my Sia 
 mese twin became quite likable. Even then, though, he 
 would have his blue times, and the upshot of it was that I 
 got him speculating, under my guidance my earlier, 
 I should say, my first plan for him, the plan I had made 
 when I had first discovered his fix and determined to lift 
 him from his exile. But never mind about that! I saw 
 to his speculations, made him financially fit, taking from
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 297 
 
 my own holdings when I had to, for I wasn t going to have 
 him worrying his health down or doing anything like the 
 other four. And he responded at once: got a string of 
 ponies, some horses and dogs and the rest of it. And, ever 
 I shielded and guarded him. I had to, for he was my 
 protection, my safeguard, he was The Man Between! So, 
 cost me what he might, I kept him on! When he got 
 restive, I bought back his good humour. When, as not 
 infrequently happened, he grew downright reckless and 
 threatened to follow the others, I gave him another tip on 
 the market, and made it a heavy one; and I imagine that 
 Fortune saw my position and pitied me, for I never lost, 
 and Bradbroke got more and more and more. I ve never 
 figured up his winnings, but I must have turned him at 
 least one hundred thousand pounds, for the speculations 
 always won out, and we were doing admirably in our busi 
 ness the importing and exporting of Australian wools. 
 We were hauling in money, Bradbroke and I; and he was 
 standing between me and ! 
 
 "Then Bradbroke married. What would any one of 
 you have done in my place? I believe that they had 
 been engaged for some little time, even before he had come 
 out with her and her people from England to South Africa. 
 Without once speaking to him of it, I had done all in my 
 power to obstruct the marriage. I don t mean that there 
 was anything wrong with Bradbroke. It was just that 
 there was nothing between him and what had already 
 taken Fraser and Chadwell and the two others. Still, 
 when it was done, it was done I mean their marriage, 
 and I gave them a bungalow. 
 
 "Moreover, I had to admit that the marriage seemed
 
 298 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 almost justified by their happiness. It was good to see. 
 Then it became too good: it made me lonely. I d thought 
 I could imagine something of how it was, but the Brad- 
 brokes made me see it, see how out of it, how utterly 
 alone I was. That is what I mean when I say that it 
 became too good for me. 
 
 "Then," and, for the first time, the big man s voice 
 went, and he turned his eyes, for a moment from the 
 brown face of the sailor and the more colourless faces of 
 the other men, "she became so dear to me that, to see her 
 without telling her, was a thing impossible. She had come 
 to Durban from England, arriving the very evening that 
 I reached Durban, with Bradbroke, from Kimberley. 
 She had been what we should call, in America, a school- 
 friend of Bradbroke s wife. I had met her at once. 
 The first time I had seen her, I knew. I had blamed 
 Bradbroke for marrying, and knew that, in seeking mar 
 riage with Her, I should be only a degree less culpable. 
 I knew that the right was not mine. Yes, from what 
 it cost me to admit it, I knew that right was not 
 mine. I asked her to go back to her home in England. 
 We told the truth to each other, and she went home 
 immediately. 
 
 "For the sake of new scenes I was beyond, and thank 
 ful to be beyond, the power of forgetting I went to 
 Kimberley. It was not the first time that I had been out 
 of striking distance of Bradbroke. Indeed, since his 
 marriage, he had gotten on very well without my over 
 sight. And, even if he had not, I should not have been 
 able to endure Durban, after She had gone from it. I 
 had died, that moment that the steamer had carried her
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 299 
 
 from me, with the flowers I had brought for her held to 
 her lips and breast. I wanted only the corporeal release 
 now. I cared not what became of Bradbroke. His turn 
 might come when it would. I went to Kimberley to 
 wait for my turn to come to me. Yet, at last, sud 
 denly made fearful by something, I went back to Durban 
 only to find that the Bradbrokes had returned to Eng 
 land. 
 
 "For the first, it rocked me I mean I had not once 
 expected it. And yet there was no real reason why not: 
 except for our memories, and the doom, assured, but, in a 
 way, gotten used to, Bradbroke and I were free agents, 
 freed, until the last, fast approaching moment, by the 
 very certainty of our doom. We were both waiting, could 
 do only that, and it did not matter where. So I sold out 
 my holdings in Durban and Kimberley. I had no defi 
 nite idea of where I should go. You see, I had practically 
 cut loose from America. South Africa had come to be 
 home to me: I had met Her there, and it was my nearest 
 approach to at least, there was not one thing to deter 
 mine my choice of ports. I was waiting for death and 
 I gave myself to the current. By a force stronger and 
 more cruel than any you can conceive of, I had been cut 
 adrift. 
 
 "I wandered then, tried this place and that, a week, 
 a month, or longer until I had found the latest intoler 
 able. By this time, Bradbroke had replied to me, and 
 wrote steadily, not of England, but of the hour when his 
 Waiting would be done. Then, the last that I had from 
 him: She had married. I could not bring myself to write 
 to her, but I did my best at a letter to Bradbroke. It
 
 300 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 was returned to me with the word that, the day before, 
 very suddenly, he had died. 
 
 "My wandering was done then, I told myself. Death 
 now would soon take pity on me. And, because I wanted 
 to die in the land I d been born in, I sailed for America. 
 But my release tarried, and, to perfect my solitude, I 
 buried myself alive in the remotest North. Not there 
 either. I descended, and, quite at random, and wrought- 
 out by my waiting, I stopped at Victoria. And there, one 
 night, with some one against whom Chance had cast me, 
 I went to the Victoria Club. We had something, and I 
 was almost in the act of going, when I happened to look 
 across to where a man was sitting at a table, on the other 
 side of the room, alone. I excused myself to my host, 
 as I could, saying that, one day, I should find him and 
 tell him. Then, I went over to the man who sat alone : 
 
 " Fraser, I said, you let me think you died, two years 
 ago, in Durban. Now what was the truth of it? 
 
 "He looked once up at me, and his lips said, Good 
 God! 
 
 " Come where we can t be interrupted, I told him, 
 and he slowly led the way. 
 
 "The truth, he repeated, indistinctly, when we were 
 again seated. 
 
 "The truth, I said, and nothing but the truth. 
 Begin! And the truth was this : They were remittance- 
 men, back those two years in Durban, earning little, get 
 ting hardly more than that from their home people, and 
 living, without hope of recoupment, wholly beyond their 
 means. And, when they saw me, and heard, as all did, 
 of my amazing luck at Kimberley, they thought that I
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 301 
 
 represented a chance for their reimbursing. It was Brad- 
 broke s plan. He had not conceived it so early as our 
 first meeting, at my shack at Kimberley. It did not 
 come until later when, driven desperate by his poverty 
 and the hopelessness of another, he had slipped a step, 
 slid down a full degree in the moral strata, and realized, 
 suddenly, that he must have money, by whatever means. 
 And it was while he had groped about, unconscious of his 
 moral lesion and sped by his obsession, that he heard that 
 terrible story told at the club by that old, believing soldier. 
 That gave him his idea. I believe that, almost simul 
 taneously with it, he conceived his plan: the old soldier 
 had been]deceived by the verisimilitude of a witch-doctor, 
 and, Bradbroke reasoned, why might not another white 
 man be? Why might not I be? That, I say, must 
 have been how his thoughts ran. And, while I pitied 
 him and planned voluntarily to equip him with money, 
 he launched his plot to secure funds from me through 
 fraud : 
 
 "Having joined Fraser and Chadwell and Paxton and 
 Carstairs to himself as fellow-conspirators, he brought the 
 witch-doctor in on us, that night, at the Regent, first 
 posting him so that he could amaze me as he did; then, 
 when my mood was right, they advanced a step and had 
 him perform his telepathic trick; then they negotiated 
 his rage and his curse and his prophecy that I, as least 
 offending, should outlive the other five. To give this the 
 desired colour, Fraser had feigned, and Hammerstone, 
 a bribed physician, as desperate as they, had corroborated, 
 the fiction of Fraser s death. 
 
 "Further, then, to convince me into believing, Chad-
 
 302 THE MAN BET\YEEN 
 
 well and Paxton had vanished through the most con 
 summate of acting leaving only Carstairs, Bradbroke, 
 and myself. Then Carstairs had gone out, leaving only 
 Bradbroke and me, he, by his incredibly clever char 
 acterization, to appear as the only barrier between myself 
 and death, as such to be maintained by me and supplied 
 plentifully with money upon which not only he but Ham- 
 merstone and the rest of them should live. That was 
 what their every step had been aimed at! I was never 
 to know. If I so wished, I could commit suicide. I 
 could suit myself about the way out of it. Their concern 
 went only to my money. And their design worked out 
 even better than they had planned. Remorse? Oh, yes, 
 I believe so: Bradbroke had puzzled me with that, from 
 time to time. Fraser said that the horror of the thing got 
 on them so, at the way it worked on me, that they d 
 gladly have drawn back, if they could, after Chadwell 
 went; but they d got in too far, by that time. And that 
 and their fear that I might find them out any moment, 
 made them, in fact enabled them, to play the thing off 
 with the incredible plausibility and convincingness that 
 they did. Fraser said it wasn t long before their nerves 
 had all gone so that they almost believed the Thing them 
 selves. He said it was a hell on earth to them; that they 
 went almost mad with the horror of it - they were new 
 to crime. Horror? Yes. But, to theirs compare the 
 horror that was mine! Live through, for one moment, a 
 part of what / sustained for two years! What was, or 
 is or ever can be, their remorse which Fraser told 
 to me ? 
 
 "And now, I asked Fraser, when he had finished.
 
 THE MAN BETWEEN 303 
 
 " Bradbroke keeps his part of the contract. Fraser s 
 voice had gone; but he managed somehow to get out the 
 words. 
 
 You mean he still sends you your fifth of the money 
 I gave him and made for him? 
 
 "Yes, said Fraser, with a look in his eyes which told 
 me that he d been punished enough. And 
 
 " And? 
 
 " He s come into the title now, and has got me some 
 thing in the Government office here. 
 
 " Chadwell, I asked, taking you in the order in which 
 you died ?" 
 
 "The same thing, except he s in Washington. 
 
 " Paxton and Carstairs the same? 
 
 " At Vancouver and Ottawa!" 
 
 The American rose, and went across to the Earl of 
 Leighton, whom the three older men had forgotten. But 
 now, as they looked at him, it was almost in pity, for the 
 man seemed suddenly to have withered, and his pinched 
 face was blue and gray. 
 
 "Bradbroke" the man from America was saying, "they 
 know now what I meant when I said that, compared to 
 what I have seen under the British flag, our extortions in 
 America are crude. But enough of that. I know the 
 force which controlled you, and ask you only this: did 
 you lie to me about her wedding, too? " 
 
 The Earl s head moved: he was nodding. 
 
 For an instant the American s face was such that the 
 others sprang forward. But he had mastered himself 
 before they could have interposed. 
 
 "She is there!" The peer motioned through the open
 
 304 THE MAN BETWEEN 
 
 door into the drawing-room. "She has heard you, 
 and waits for you. Ormsby Ormsby!" The man 
 got to his feet. "Ormsby!" 
 
 But Ormsby did not hear him. Heaven had opened: 
 he held his English violet in his arms. 
 
 THE END
 
 A 000129635 9