The Project Gutenberg eBook of Swirling Waters, by Max Rittenberg

The Mind-Reader, being some pages from the life of Dr Xavier Wycherley, psychologist and mental healer.

SWIRLING WATERS

BY
MAX RITTENBERG

First Published	July 3rd 1913
Second Edition	August 1913

TO

MY DEAR MOTHER

WHOSE ADVICE AND CRITICISM HAVE HELPED SO
GREATLY IN MY WORK, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE
MAKING OF THIS BOOK; WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP
HAS BEEN A CONSTANT INSPIRATION TO ME
[Pg vii][Pg vi]

CHAP.		PAGE
I.	The Whirlpool	1
II.	A £5,000,000 Deal	7
III.	Shadowed	17
IV.	On the Scent of a Mystery	19
V.	The First Move in the Game	29
VI.	The Beginning of a New Life	42
VII.	A Seat by the Arena	50
VIII.	Who and where is Rivière?	61
IX.	At Monte Carlo	69
X.	Larssen turns another Corner	73
XI.	A Letter From Rivière	83
XII.	The Second Meeting	87
XIII.	At the Maison Carrée	100
XIV.	By the Druids' Tower	107
XV.	Waiting the Verdict	111
XVI.	Only Pity!	123
XVII.	Rivière is Called Back	127
XVIII.	Not Wanted!	138
XIX.	A Throne-Room	148
XX.	Beaten to Earth	153
XXI.	The Bolted Door	171
XXII.	The Chameleon Mind	184
XXIII.	Larssen's Man Once Again	197
XXIV.	Confession	205
XXV.	White Lilac	216
XXVI.	A Challenge	221
XXVII.	Women's Weapons	225
XXVIII.	The Counter-Move	235
XXIX.	The Parting	247
XXX.	Heir to a Throne	254
XXXI.	The Reins had Slipped	264
XXXII.	The New Scheme	273
XXXIII.	Larssen's Appeal	278
XXXIV.	On Board the "Starlight"	285
XXXV.	Intervention	297
XXXVI.	Finality	304
	Epilogue	311

SWIRLING WATERS

CHAPTER I
THE WHIRLPOOL

On the crucial night of his career, 14 March, 191-, Clifford Matheson, financier, was speeding in a taxi-cab to the Gare de Lyon.

He was a clean-limbed man of thirty-seven. There was usually a look of masterfulness in the firm lines of his face, the straight, direct glance, the stiff, close-cut moustache. But to-night his eyes were tired, very tired. He leant back in a corner of the cab with drooping shoulders as though utterly world-weary.

At the station his wife and father-in-law were looking impatiently for his arrival. They stood at the door of their wagon-lit in the Côte d'Azur Rapide, searching the crowded platform for him. It was now ten to eight, and the express was timed to pull out of the Gare de Lyon at eight o'clock sharp.

"Late again!" growled Sir Francis Letchmere. "Clifford makes a deuced casual sort of husband. Bad form, you know!"

Olive bit her lip. It galled her pride that Clifford[Pg 2] should not be early on the platform to see to her comforts. The attentions of her father and maid did not satisfy her; she wanted Clifford to be there to fetch and carry for her.

Pride was the keynote of her character. It was pride and not love that had decided her, five years before, to marry the financier. She had admired the way in which he had slashed out for himself his place in the world of London and Paris finance, from his humble beginning as a clerk in a Montreal broker's office. It ministered to her pride to be the wife of a man who had plucked success from the whirlpool of life. As to the methods by which he had amassed his money, with these she was not concerned. She knew, of course, that there were many who had bitter things to say about his methods.

"Probably it's his brother who's delayed him," said Olive, looking for an explanation which would salve her amour propre. "They both seem to be crazy over their rubbishy scientific experiments."

"I know scarcely anything about him. His name's Rivière—he's a half-brother. He turns up unexpectedly from the wilds of Canada, and lives like a hermit, so Clifford tells me, in some tumbledown villa outside Paris."

"Clifford told me something about it, but I forgot. I wasn't interested in the slightest. No money in it, I could see at once. I told Clifford so."[Pg 3]

Sir Francis tugged at his watch impatiently. "He'll miss this train for certain!"

Matheson was striding rapidly through the press of people on the platform. He quickly caught sight of his wife and father-in-law, and came up with a gesture of apology.

"Sorry I'm so late. Very sorry, too, I shan't be able to travel with you to-night."

"Experiment to finish?" queried Olive, with an unconcealed note of contempt in her voice.

"A very important business engagement for this evening. Will you excuse me? I can follow to-morrow."

"I have to come face to face with my man. Surely, Olive, you can spare me for a day? Have you everything you want for the journey?"

"Lars Larssen," answered Matheson. He lowered his voice slightly, though on the bustling railway platform there was no likelihood of anyone listening to the conversation.

Sir Francis nodded his head. He was heavily interested in company-promoting himself, as a means of swelling an inadequate property income, and Lars Larssen was a magic name.

Olive cut in with a question. "Have you finished your experiments with your brother?"

"Then bring him with you to-morrow. You can plan together whatever it is you have to plan at Monte. Besides, I want to see him."

"John is a busy man," protested Matheson. "I don't think he can leave his laboratory."

"Give him my invitation, and make it a pressing one," pursued Olive, careless of anything but her own whim. "Tell him—tell him I particularly want him to explain his experiments to me himself."

At this moment the little horn of departure sounded its quaint note from the end of the platform, and a porter hurried to lock the door of the wagon-lit.

"I have everything I want," replied his wife coldly. "My father has seen to that.... Good-bye."

She did not offer to kiss him, and he for his part drew back into a shell of reserve. Many thoughts were buzzing through his mind as they exchanged the commonplaces of a railway station good-bye from either side of a compartment window.

Olive's last words were: "Remember, I'm expecting you to bring your brother with you to-morrow."[Pg 5]

A very tired look was in Matheson's eyes, and a weary droop on his shoulders, as the train pulled out and he was left alone on the platform.

Two Frenchmen whispered to one another about him. "The milord Matheson, see you! The very rich milord Matheson."

"I should spend. How I should spend!" He licked his lips at the thought of the pleasures of body that money could buy him.

"I should save," said the other. "I should make myself the richest man in the world. That would be glorious!"

These last words reached the ears of Matheson, and set up a curious train of thought as he drove in his cab to his office in the Rue Laffitte. The words carried him back to a forest-clearing in the backwoods of Ontario, where he and his half-brother had made holiday camp some eighteen years before. They were comparing ambitions—two young men unusually alike in features but very different in temperament and will-power. John Rivière, the elder of the two, was dreaming of fame in the paths of science—he had worked his way through M'Gill University and was hoping for a demonstratorship to keep him in living expenses. Clifford Matheson, a clerk in a broker's office, planned his life in terms of cities and money. "To make big money—that's what I call success."

In the rapids of the stream by their feet was a swirl of waters covering a sunken rock, and Rivière had thrown on to it a chip of wood. The chip was[Pg 6] whirled round and round, nearer and nearer to the centre, until finally it was sucked under with a sudden extinguishment.

CHAPTER II
A £5,000,000 DEAL

When Matheson reached his office, he was told by a clerk that Mr Lars Larssen was already waiting to see him. He threw off his gloves and fur-lined coat and adjusted the lights before he answered that his visitor could be shown in. He added that the clerk could lock up his own rooms and leave, as he would not be wanted any longer that evening.

There was a quiet simplicity in Matheson's office that one would scarcely associate with the operations of high finance. One might have looked for costly furnishings and an atmosphere redolent of big money. Yet here was a simple rosewood desk with a bowl of mimosa on it, and around the walls were a few simple landscapes from recent salons.

If Lars Larssen were a magic name to Sir Francis Letchmere, it was a magic name also to many other men of affairs. From cabin-boy to millionaire shipowner was his story in brief. But that does not tell one quarter. The son of Scandinavian immigrants to the States, factory-workers, he had run away to sea at the age of fourteen, with the call of the ocean ringing in his ears from the Viking inheritance that was his. But on this was super[Pg 8]posed the fierce desire for success that formed the psychical atmosphere of the new American environment. As a boy in the smoke-blackened factory town, he had breathed in the longing to make money—big money—to use men to his own ends, to be a master of masters.

With precocious insight he quickly learnt that money is made not by those who go out upon the waters, but by those who stay on land and send them hither and thither. He soon gave up the seafaring life and entered a shipbroker's office. He starved himself in order to save money to speculate in shipping reinsurance. An uncanny insight had guided him to rush in when shrewdly prudent business men held aloof.

He had emphatically "made good." Each fresh success had given him new confidence in himself and his judgment and his powers. He would allow nothing to stand in his path. Scruples were to him the burden of fools.

A fair-haired giant in build, with inscrutable eyes and mouth set grim and straight—such was Lars Larssen.

Though Matheson was in no way a small man, yet he seemed somehow dwarfed when Larssen entered the room. The financier was a self-made master, but the shipowner was a born master of men—perhaps one's instinctive contrast lay there. The one had the strength of finished steel, but the other was rugged granite.

Lars Larssen said quietly: "Your letter brought me over to Paris. I don't usually waste time in railway trains myself when I have men I can pay[Pg 9] to do it for me. So you can judge that I consider your letter mighty important."

"I'm sorry if you have given yourself an unnecessary journey," returned Matheson. "I had intended my letter to make my attitude clear to you."

The shipowner surveyed the other man through half-closed lids, weighing up how far this declaration might be a genuine expression of opinion and how far a mere excuse to cover some hidden motive.

For reply Matheson drew out a large-scale map of Canada from a drawer and unfolded it with a decisive deliberation. He laid a finger on the south-western corner of Hudson Bay. "Here is Fanning trading station, the terminus of your five-hundred-mile railway. The land you run it over is mostly lakes, rivers, and frozen swamps for three-quarters of the year. The line is useless except for your own purpose—to carry wheat for the Hudson Bay steamship route to England. You agree?"

"Agreed." Larssen was not the man to waste argument over minor points when a vital matter was under discussion.

"Then the scheme centres on the practicability of making the arctic Hudson Bay passage a commercial highway. It means the creating of a[Pg 10] modern port at Fanning. It means the lighting of a whole coast-line"—his finger travelled to the north of Hudson Bay and the northern coast of Labrador—"before a cargo of wheat leaves Port Fanning."

"I'll build lighthouses myself by the dozen if the Canadian Government won't. I'll equip every one with long-range wireless."

"There will be a differential of sixpence a bushel on wheat over my route. That talks down fifty lighthouses."

"But it makes no allowance for rate-cutting by the big men on the present routes. Further, if the Canadian Government are not with you on this scheme, they'll be against you. There are a dozen ways in which you might be frozen out. In that case the Hudson Bay Route will be the biggest fiasco that ever happened."

"Nothing I've yet touched has been a fiasco," answered Lars Larssen with a grim tightening of jaw. "Leave that end to me.... Now your end is to get the money."

"You came to me because the English and Canadian public are prejudiced against 'Yankee propositions.' You yourself couldn't float it in England. On the other hand, I'm Canadian-born, and my name carries weight both in England and in Canada."

"With the public," added Larssen, and there was a subtle emphasis on the word "public," which carried a world of hidden meaning. Matheson[Pg 11] had been associated with other schemes which had a bad odour in the nostrils of City men.

"With the public who provide the capital," answered the financier, and his emphasis was on the word "capital." He continued. "With myself and Sir Francis Letchmere and a few titled dummies on the Board—which is what you want from me—the public will tumble over one another to take up stock."

"The capitalization you propose is £5,000,000 in Ordinary £1 Shares, which the public will mostly take up. Also £200,000 in Deferred Shares of the nominal value of one shilling each, which are to be allotted to yourself as vendor. That gives you four million votes out of a total of nine million, and for practical purposes means control."

"The Deferred Shares are not to get a cent of dividend until a fifteen per cent. dividend is paid on the Ordinary Shares. That's the squarest deal for the public that ever was," retorted Larssen.

Both men knew the tremendous import of that word. The fortunes of the world's financial giants have all been built up on "control." Dwarfing "capital" and "credit" it stands—that word "control." If the wild gamble of the Hudson Bay scheme were to rush through to commercial success—if the limitless wheat-lands of Canada were to pour their mighty torrent of life into Europe through the channel of Hudson Bay—it would be Lars Larssen who would hold the key of the sluice-gate. Directly, he would be master of the wheat[Pg 12] of Canada. Indirectly, he could turn his master-position to financial gain in scores of ways. The £200,000 to be allotted him as vendor was a bagatelle; but to hold four million votes out of nine million was to control an empire.

He replied evenly: "I keep control on any proposition I touch. That's creed with me. Creed."

"I want half the Deferred Shares in the hands of Lord ——." He named a Canadian statesman and empire-builder whose integrity was beyond all suspicion. "I want him to hold them as trustee for the ordinary shareholders. He will consent if I ask him."

"No doubt he will!" commented Larssen ironically. He drew up his chair closer to the other man. There was a dangerous gleam in his eye as he said: "Now see here. All the points you've put up were known to you months ago. What's happened to make you switch at the last moment?"

He had put his finger on the very core of the matter, but Matheson met his searching gaze without flinching. "What's happened is an entirely private matter. I've reasons for not wishing to be associated with your scheme unless you agree to half the Deferred Shares being held by Lord —— as trustee. These reasons of mine have only arisen during the last few weeks. Cir[Pg 13]cumstances are different with me from what they were when you first broached the plan. If you don't care to agree to my suggestion, I call the deal off. As regards the expenses you've incurred, I'll go halves."

"No, I'll do more," pursued Matheson. "I'll make you a more than fair offer—shoulder the whole expenses myself."

Larssen ignored the offer. "I went into the preliminaries of the scheme on the understanding that we were to pull together."

For a moment Matheson's eyes blazed black anger, but the anger died out of them and the tired look of the platform of the Gare de Lyon took its place. "You wouldn't understand," he answered. "The whirlpool."

"It would be useless to explain. I have private reasons.... I've made you a thoroughly fair offer, and I don't think there's anything more to be said." Matheson rose and walked to the window, pulling up the blind and gazing out on the sombre splendour of the big banking houses of the Rue Laffitte and the Rue Pillet-Will.

Larssen looked at the silhouette of his anta[Pg 14]gonist with a tense set of his jaws. Many plans were revolving in his mind. Moralists might have labelled them "blackmail," but Lars Larssen was utterly free from scruples where his own interests were concerned. Honesty with him was a mere matter of policy. To a man with the average sense of honour, such an attitude of mind is scarcely realisable, but Lars Larssen was no normal man. In him the Napoleonic madness—or genius—burned fiercely. He had ambitions colossal in scale—he regarded his present wealth and power as a mere stepping-stone to the realisation of his Great Idea.

That great ultimate purpose of his life he had never revealed to man or woman—save only to his dead wife. He aimed to be controlling owner of the world's carrying trade; to hold decision on peace and war between nation and nation because of that control of the vital food supply. To be Emperor of the Seven Seas.

He had one child only—his boy Olaf, now aged twelve, at school in the States. Olaf was to hold the seat of power after him and perpetuate his dynasty.

Any man or woman who stood between him and his great goal was to be thrust aside or used as a stepping-stone. Matheson, for instance—he was to be used. There must be something underlying Matheson's sudden access of scruples—what was it? A case of cherchez la femme? Or political ambitions, perhaps? If he could arrive at the motive, it might open up a new avenue for persuasion.[Pg 15]

He searched the silhouette of the man at the window for an answer to the riddle. But Matheson's face was set, and the answer to the riddle was such as Lars Larssen could never have guessed. It lay outside the shipowner's pale of thought—beyond the limitations of his mind.

For Matheson also had his big life-scheme, and it now filled his mind with a blaze of light as he stood by the window, silent.

Larssen resolved to play for time while he set to work to ferret out his antagonist's motive for the sudden change of plan. He did not dream for a moment of relinquishing control on the Hudson Bay scheme. As he had stated openly, control was creed to him.

He broke the long silence with a conciliatory remark. "Let's think matters over for a day or two. My scheme might be modified on the financial side. I'm prepared to make concessions to what you think is fair to the shareholders. We shall find some common ground of agreement."

The smooth words did not deceive Matheson. So his answer came with deliberate finality: "I've said my last word."

"Well, I'll consider it carefully. Meanwhile, doing anything to-night? I hear that Polaire is on at the Folies Bergères with her opium-den scene. A thriller, I'm told."

Theatres and music-halls were nothing to the shipowner; his idea was to keep Matheson under observation if possible, and try to solve the riddle.

"Thanks, but I've got to get away from Paris," answered Matheson with his tired droop of the[Pg 16] shoulders. "I have to join my wife and father-in-law at Monte Carlo."

When Larssen had left the office, he hurried into a taxi and was whirled to the Grand Hotel near at hand. Here he found his secretary turning over the illustrated papers in the hall lounge, and gave a few curt directions. "Drive round to the Rue Laffitte—a hurry case. On the second floor of No. 8 is the office of Clifford Matheson. He may be still there—you'll know by the light in the window. Wait till he comes out, and follow him. Find out where he goes. If it's to a woman's house—good. In any case shadow him to-night wherever he goes."[Pg 17]

CHAPTER III
SHADOWED

Matheson, alone in his office, thought deeply for a long while, pacing to and fro, grappling with a life-decision. To and fro, from door to windows, from windows to door, he paced, until the narrow confines of the office thrust at him subconsciously and drove him to the open streets.

At his desk he made out a cheque in favour of Lars Larssen to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, enclosed it with a brief note in an addressed envelope, and put it away in a drawer. It was shortly after eleven when he took up his hat, fur-lined coat and heavy gold-mounted stick, clicked out the lights, and made his way down to the Rue Laffitte.

At the corner of the Rue Laffitte he passed a young man lounging in the shadows, who presently turned and followed him at a sober distance. Matheson made up towards the heights of Montmartre, crowned by the white Basilique of the Sacred Heart. The great church stood out in cold white beauty—serene and pure—above the feverish glitter of Paris. Up there a man might attune himself to the message of the stars—might weigh duty against duty in the balance of the infinite.[Pg 18]

Beyond the clamorous glitter of the Place Pigalle, with its garish entertainment halls and all-night restaurants, there is a dark, narrow, winding lane ascending steeply to the great white sentinel church on the heights. Up this Matheson strode, still deep in thought, and his shadower followed. But, half-way up, a new factor cut sharply into the situation. Out of a ruelle crept two apaches with the stealthy glide of their class. One followed close behind Clifford Matheson, while the other stopped to watch the lane against the possible arrival of an agent de police.

The young man who had followed from the Rue Laffitte paused irresolute. On the one hand were his orders to shadow Matheson wherever he might go that night; on the other hand was his personal safety. He was keenly alive to the merciless ferocity of the Parisian apache, and he was unarmed. The wicked curved knife doubtless concealed under the belt of the apache turned the scale decisively in the mind of the shadower. He saw no call to risk his own life.

CHAPTER IV
ON THE SCENT OF A MYSTERY

The name of the young man who had shadowed Matheson was Arthur Dean, and his position in life was that of a clerk in the Leadenhall Street office of Lars Larssen. The latter had brought him over to Paris as temporary secretary because the confidential secretary had happened to be ill and away from business at the moment when Matheson's letter arrived.

Young Dean bitterly repented his cowardice before he was five minutes distant from the narrow lane on the heights of Montmartre.

Not only had he left a fellow-countryman to possible violence and robbery, but his action would inevitably recoil on himself. To be even a temporary secretary to the great shipowner was a chance, an opportunity that most young business men of twenty-four would eagerly grasp at. He was throwing away his chance by this cowardly disobedience to orders—Lars Larssen was not the man to forgive an offence of that kind.

Dean turned on his tracks and again crossed the Place Pigalle. The lane behind was deserted. He mounted it and searched eagerly. His search was fruitless. Matheson was nowhere visible—nor the two apaches. To what had happened[Pg 20] in that interval of ten minutes there was no clue.

The young fellow did not dare to go back to the Grand Hotel and report his failure. He wandered about aimlessly and miserably, until a flaunting poster outside an all-night café chantant caught his eye and decided him to enter and kill time until some plan for retrieving his failure might occur to him.

As he entered the swinging doors a cheery hand was laid on his shoulders. "Hullo, old man! Hail and thrice hail!"

"The same," confirmed Jimmy Martin. He was a tubby, clean-shaven, rosy-faced little fellow of thirty odd, with an inexhaustible fund of good spirits. Everyone called him "Jimmy." Dean had known him as a reporter on a London daily paper and a fellow-member of a local dramatic society in Streatham.

"Strictly on business, my gay young spark. My present owners, the Europe Chronicle, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle Ariola"—he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white draperies—"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to say secretive——"

"If four francs seventy will do it—my worldly possessions until next pay-day——"

"No, no, this is quite different." He drew Martin outside into the street and whispered. "To-night, as I happen to know, an Englishman walking along a back street by the Place Pigalle was followed by two apaches."

Martin nodded in full understanding. "Come along to the office about ten to-morrow morning, and I'll tell you if anything's been fired in from the gendarmeries or the hospitals. What did you say the man's name was?"

"Imitaciong oyster?" commented Martin cheerfully. "Very well, see you to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far as the bullyvards."

Arthur Dean went with him, but did not return to the Grand Hotel. He found a small hotel for the night, and next morning at ten o'clock he was at the office of the Europe Chronicle, an important daily paper published simultaneously in Paris, Frankfort, and Florence.

Martin came out from the news room into the adjoining ante-room with a slip of "flimsy" in his hand.[Pg 22]

"Then here's your bird." He read out from the slip of paper: "Last night, shortly after twelve, a certain Gaspard P—— was brought to the Hôpital Malesherbes suffering from a fractured skull. This morning, on recovering consciousness, he states that he was attacked without cause by a drunken Englishman, and struck over the head with a heavy stick. His state is grave."

Dean felt a warm wave of relief. He thanked the journalist cordially and was about to leave, when the telephone bell rang sharply in the adjoining news room. The sub-editor in charge took up the receiver.

"Ullo, ullo! C'est ici le Chronicle," said the sub-editor, and after listening for a moment signed imperatively to Martin to come in and shut the door.

Presently Martin came out from the news room bustling with energy and took Dean by the arm. "You specified two apaches, didn't you?" he asked, and hurried on without waiting for an answer. "One was probably the injured innocence now at the Malesherbes and cursing those sacrés Angliches, but the other lies low and says nuffink. That's the one that interests me. Come along in my taxi and watch me chase a story."

Stopping only to borrow fifty francs for expenses from the cashier's wicket, Martin hurried his friend into a taximeter cab and gave the brief direction: "Pont de Neuilly."[Pg 23]

Three-quarters of an hour later they had reached the bridge at the end of the long avenue of the suburb of Neuilly and had dismissed the cab.

"Now for our imitaciong Sherlock Holmes," said Martin. "The 'phone message was that a man had found a fur coat and a gold-mounted stick under some bushes by the left bank of the Seine four hundred metres down stream. He was apparently some sort of workman, and explained that he had no wish to be mixed up with the police. On the other hand, he felt he had to do his duty by the civilization that provides him with a blue blouse, bread, and bock, so he 'phoned the news to us.... Wish everyone was as sensible," he added, viewing the matter from a professional standpoint.

Three hundred yards down, they began to look very carefully amongst the bushes that line the water's edge. It was not long before they came to the object of their search. Under an alder-bush they found it—a heavy fur-lined coat sodden with the river water, and a gold-mounted stick.

Martin held it up. "Did this belong to your man?" he asked, as though sure of the answer.

The journalist whisked around in complete surprise and looked at him keenly. "Sure?"

"Positive. There was astrakhan on the collar and cuffs of the coat my man was wearing."

"It looks much the same kind, but then there are thousands of sticks like this in use."

The stout little journalist looked pathetically disappointed. For the moment he had no thought beyond the professional aspect of the matter—the unearthing of a "good story"—and the human significance of what he had found was entirely out of mind. He turned over the coat and stick in obvious perplexity, as though they ought somehow to contain the key to the puzzle if only he could see it. Then he examined the traces of footsteps on the damp earth by the water-side. There was another set of footprints beside their own—no doubt the footprints of the man who had first found the objects and 'phoned to the Chronicle.

Martin looked up and down the river bank. That part of the Seine is usually deserted except for nursemaids and children and an occasional workman. At the moment there was apparently no one in sight.

"You don't know the Paris police—that's evident," returned the journalist. "They would throw fits on the floor if I were so much as to carry off a coat-button. No, we must hide the coat and stick in the bushes again, and tell them to-morrow."

"Twenty-four hours' start is due to my owners, bless their sensational little hearts. If nothing further comes to light, then the press steps aside[Pg 25] and allows the law to take its course. Meanwhile to the Morgue and the Malesherbes. We'll pick up a cab on the Avenue de Neuilly. Newspaper life, my young friend, is one dam taxi after another."

The Morgue is, of course, no longer the public peep-show that it used to be, but Martin's card procured him instant admission. On the inclined marble slabs, down which ice water gently trickles, were two ghastly white figures of women which had been waiting identification for some days. The object of their search was not at the Morgue.

They proceeded across Paris to the Hôpital Malesherbes, but at the Place de l'Opera Dean asked to be put down. The journalist promised to 'phone to the Grand Hotel if anything of interest came to light, and Arthur Dean went to make his report to Lars Larssen. It was already past mid-day, and without doubt the shipowner would be impatient to hear news.

Only stopping at a telephone call office for a few minutes, Dean hurried to his employer's suite of rooms.

"To begin at the beginning, sir, I waited last night in the Rue Laffitte until Mr Matheson came out of his office. It was not long before he appeared, and then——"

"Of course I don't know for certain, sir; but[Pg 26] this morning I assisted at the finding of his coat and stick on the banks of the Seine."

"Yes, quite sure. I was with a journalist friend of mine, but I didn't let him know that I recognized the coat and stick. I thought perhaps you would like me to tell you before the matter was made public."

Arthur Dean summoned up his nerve to tell the connected tale he had thought out during the long cab rides that morning. It was essential that he should disguise his cowardice and his failure to carry out orders of the night before. With that exception, his account was a truthful and detailed story of all that had happened. He concluded with:—

"I 'phoned up Mr Matheson's office—without telling my name—and asked if he was in or had been to the office this morning. They said no. I got his hotel address from them and 'phoned the hotel. They also could tell me nothing about Mr Matheson."

Lars Larssen paced the room in silence for some time. Finally he shot out a question.

"Of course, sir. I intend to work hard and study the details of the business outside my own department, and learn Spanish as well as French——"

Lars Larssen flicked thumb and finger together contemptuously. "The men I pay real money to are not that kind of men."

"Now see here," pursued the shipowner, fixing his eyes deep into the young man's, "why did you lie to me just now?"

"Don't lie any further! Something happened last night that you haven't told me of. I know, because you brought in no report last night. Out with it!"

Under that merciless look the young clerk made a clean breast of the matter. His voice shook as he realized that it probably meant instant dismissal for him. Here was the end of all his hopes.

Lars Larssen made no comment until the last details had been faltered out. Then he said abruptly: "I propose to raise you £300 a year."

"£300 a year is good salary for a young man. If I pay it, I want it earned. Now understand this: what I want in my men is absolute loyalty, absolute obedience to orders, and absolute truthfulness to me. Lie to others if you like—that's no concern of mine—but not to me. Further, understand what orders mean. If I tell you to do a thing, I am wholly responsible for its outcome.[Pg 28] The responsibility is not yours—it's mine. Got that?"

"It's very generous of you to give me such a chance, sir. It's much more than I have the right to expect. You can count on my loyalty and obedience to the utmost—of course, provided that——"

"The men I want to raise in my employ, and the men I have raised, leave fine scruples to me. That's my end. Your end is to carry out orders. If you're going to set store on niceties of truthfulness when business interests demand otherwise, you'll remain a two-pound-a-week clerk all your life."

Dean's weakness of moral fibre had been shrewdly weighed up by Larssen. The young man was plastic clay to be moulded by a firm grasp. £300 a year opened out to him a vista of roseate possibilities. £300 a year was his price.

The colour came and went in his face as he thought out the meaning of what his employer had just said. At length he answered: "I owe you many thanks, sir. What do you want me to do?"

"Understand this: £300 a year is your starting salary. If I find you after trial to be the man I think you are, you can look forward to bigger money.... Now my point lies here; Mr Matheson was engaged with me in a large-scale enterprise. Alive, he would have been useful to me. I intend to keep him alive!"[Pg 29]

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST MOVE IN THE GAME

At the great Leadenhall Street office of the shipowner, an office which bore outside the simple sign—ostentatious in its simplicity—of "Lars Larssen—Shipping," Arthur Dean had looked upon his employer from afar as some demi-god raised above other business men by mysterious gifts from heaven. A modern Midas with the power of turning what he touched to gold.

Now he was granted an intimate glimpse into the workings of his employer's mind that came to him as a positive revelation. Larssen's were no mysterious powers, but the powers that every man possessed worked at white heat and with an extraordinary swiftness and exactitude. The revelation did not sweep away the glamour; on the contrary, it increased it. Lars Larssen was a craftsman taking up the commonest tools of his craft and using them to create a work of art of consummate build.

His present work was to keep alive the personality of Clifford Matheson until the Hudson Bay scheme should be launched. To use Matheson's name on the prospectus, and to use his influence with Sir Francis Letchmere and others.[Pg 30] Dead, Matheson was to serve him better than alive.

But the shipowner did not build his edifice on the foundation merely of what Arthur Dean had told him. He had to satisfy himself more accurately.

A string of rapid, apparently unconnected orders almost bewildered the young secretary:—

"First, get a list of the big hotels at Monte Carlo. Engage the trunk telephone and call up each hotel until you find where Sir Francis Letchmere is staying. Give no name.... Buy a pair of workman's boots to fit you. Get them in some side street shop. Bring them with you—don't ask them to send.... Take this typewriting"—he took a letter from his pocket and carefully clipped off a small portion—"and match it with a portable travelling machine. Can you recognize the make of machine off-hand?"

"You must train yourself to observe detail. Looks to me like the type on a 'Thor' machine. Try the Thor Co. first. If not there, go to every typewriter firm in Paris until it matches.... Go to the offices of the Compagnie Transatlantique and get a list of sailings on the Cherbourg-Quebec route. Give no name.... Meanwhile, 'phone your journalist friend and have him call on me."

"Anything that will pull him here. Tell him I'm willing to be interviewed on the proposed international agreement about maritime contra[Pg 31]band in time of war. Quite sure you remember all my orders?"

Lars Larssen smiled as he said: "Well, postpone lunch till to-night, or eat while you're hustling around in cabs. This is a hurry case. Here's an advance fifty pounds to keep you in expense money."

As the crisp notes were put into his hand, Arthur Dean felt that he was indeed on the ladder which led to business status and wealth. His thoughts went out to a little girl in Streatham who was waiting, he knew, till he could ask her to be his wife. If Daisy could see how he was being taken into his employer's confidence!

Lars Larssen startled him with a remark that savoured of thought-reading. "My three-hundred-a-year men," he said, "don't write home about business matters."

Later in the afternoon, Jimmy Martin of the Europe Chronicle sent in his card at the Grand Hotel, and Lars Larssen did not keep him waiting beyond a few moments.

The tubby little journalist was no hero-worshipper. Few journalists can be—they see too intimately the strings which work the affairs of[Pg 32] the world for the edification of a trustful public. Consequently, Martin's attitude in the presence of the millionaire shipowner was as free from constraint or subservience as it would be in the dressing-room of La Belle Ariola, who danced the bolero at a café chantant, or in the ward of the Malesherbes Hôpital, interviewing an apache with a cracked skull.

Lars Larssen summed him up with lightning rapidity of thought, and adjusted his own attitude to a friendly, confidential basis.

Said Martin: "You want to talk about contraband of war? I'd better tell you the Chronicle's red-hot against the olive-branch merchants, so I hope you're not one of them. Say you agree with us, and I can spread you over half a column."

The shipowner smiled. "That's the talk I like. Make a policy and set the buzzer going. Now see here...."

At the end of half an hour he had established a link of easy friendship, and had brought the conversation round without difficulty to the matter which was the real object of the interview.

"Dean was telling me about the help you gave him on his wild-goose chase to-day. Many thanks. He's a steady young fellow and will get on—but a little too ready to jump at conclusions. Of course you found nothing at the hospital?"

On the answer much depended, but no one could have guessed it from the shipowner's face, which was smilingly confident.

"Nothing doing!" answered Martin. "Our young friend with the cracked skull met the holy[Pg 33] Tartar last night. He's raving sore—wants to prosecute him for assault, if he can find out who he is."

"Exactly. But there's a disappointment in store for him. I met my friend to-day going off to Canada. What are you going to do about the coat and stick at Neuilly?"

"Hunt around for a few more clues before turning it over to the police." There was a tired disappointment in the journalist's voice that Lars Larssen noted with keen satisfaction. "I doubt if the police'll do much unless the relations kick up a shindy. Paris is the finest place in Europe to get murdered in peacefully and without a lot of silly fuss. You see, it might be a hoax. Your Parisian hoaxer likes a dash of Grand Guignol horrors in his jokelet. The police have been had several times, and they're very much hoax-shy. I could tell you some pretty tales about mysterious disappearances that never get into the papers."

A little later the journalist took his departure. As the great shipowner shook hands at the door, he said cordially: "If you want news from me when I'm in Paris any time, come straight to me. I like your paper; I like your methods."

Martin left without a suspicion that he had been "pumped" for vital information.

Now the shipowner had to wait patiently for nightfall before the first definite move of his game could be played. One of his secrets of success was that he never allowed his mind to worry him. He shut the matter completely out of his conscious thoughts; got a trunk telephone call to his[Pg 34] London office; sent off some cables to his New York office; and generally immersed himself on business matters quite unrelated to the Matheson case.

It was nearly ten o'clock that night before Arthur Dean returned from an errand on which he had been sent. In his arms was a bulky brown-paper parcel.

He opened it in the privacy of his employer's sitting-room, and remembering the advice given him that morning as to the way to present a business report, pointed silently to a small slit in the side of the fur-lined coat, where it would cover a man's ribs. On the inner lining of the coat there was a dark stain around the slit, though the immersion in the river had of course washed away any definite blood-clot.

Lars Larssen nodded appreciation of the young fellow's method of going straight to the heart of the subject. "Good!" said he. "Now for details."

"I carried out your orders exactly, sir. Took a cab to Neuilly, dismissed it, put on the pair of workman's boots when I was in the darkness of the river bank, and found the coat and stick just where Martin and I had hidden them in the bushes. The trees make it quite dark along that part of the Seine, and I am certain no one saw me taking them and wrapping them in my brown paper. The coat was nearly dry."

"No. I broke it in two so that it could be wrapped in the same parcel as the coat."[Pg 35]

"Yes. The only ones around the bushes were Martin's and mine made this morning, and the prints of the man who first discovered them. Of course my own prints this time were made by the boots you told me to buy and put on."

"I went along the river bank for a couple of miles with my parcel until I came to some other suburb, and then I caught a cab to the Arc de Triomphe, and there I took another cab to here."

"After I changed back to my ordinary boots, I threw them in the river, as you told me to."

"Nothing else worth reporting, I think.... Do you recognize this coat and stick as belonging to Mr Matheson, sir?"

Lars Larssen nodded non-committally, and ordered the young fellow to get a trunk telephone call through to Sir Francis Letchmere at Monte Carlo. Dean had already found out that he was staying at the Hotel des Hespérides.

But when the telephone connexion had been made, it was Olive who answered from the other end of the wire:—

"That's just like Clifford!" There was an angry sharpness in the voice over the wire.

"I reckon he was in too much of a hurry. It's in connexion with the Hudson Bay scheme—you know about that?"

"A new situation has arisen. Your husband suggested to me that he had better hurry across the pond and straighten up matters." Larssen lowered his voice. "Somebody in the Canadian Government wants oiling. Of course he will have to work the affair very quietly."

"It's too annoying! Clifford had promised me faithfully to come on to Monte by to-night's train. I wanted him here."

Again there was annoyance in her voice, and Lars Larssen made a quick resolution. He answered: "Certainly not, if you don't wish it. Rather than that, I'll come myself to Monte."

When the conversation had concluded, the shipowner called the young secretary and asked him to bring in the new "Thor" travelling typewriter he had purchased that afternoon. Larssen had proved right in his guess of the make of machine with which his scrap of typing had been done.

"Yes." The shipowner began to dictate. "Monsieur G. R. Coulter, Rue Laffitte, 8, Paris.... Now for the letter.... Cherbourg, March 15th."

"Not at present. 'Cherbourg, March 15th. Dear Coulter, I am called away to Canada on business. The matter is very private, and I want my trip kept very quiet. I leave affairs in your hands until my return. Get my luggage from my hotel and keep it in the office. If anything urgent arises, my name and address will be Arthur Dean, Hotel Ritz-Carlton, Montreal.'"

The young secretary went white, and his fingers dropped from the keys of the typewriter.

Lars Larssen allowed a moment of silence to give weight to his coming words. He drew out a cheque-[Pg 38]book from his breast-pocket and very deliberately said: "Make yourself out a cheque for a usual month's wages, and bring it to me to sign. That will be in lieu of notice."

Arthur Dean took the cheque-book with shaking fingers and went to the adjoining room.

When at length he came back, he found the shipowner making out a telegram. He stood in silence until the telegram was given into his hand, open, with an order to send it off to London. His glance fell involuntarily on the writing, and he could see that the wire was to call over somebody to replace him.

"I don't think this will be necessary, sir," said Dean, with a tremor in his voice which told of the mental struggle he had been through in the adjoining room, when his career lay staked on the issue of a single decision.

It was not without definite purpose that Lars Larssen had put the cheque-book into his hands. He knew well the power of suggestion, and used it with a master-hand. He could almost see the young secretary torn between the thoughts of a miserable £8 on the one hand, and the illimitable wealth suggested by a blank cheque-book on the other.

"Understand this," answered Larssen. "Whichever way you decide matters nothing to me from the business point of view. I can get a dozen, twenty men to replace you at a moment's notice. If you don't care to go to Canada, you're perfectly free to say so. Then we part, because you're useless to me. Aside from the purely business[Pg 39] point of view, I should be sorry. I like you; I see possibilities in you; I could help you up the business ladder."

"Wait. I want you to see this matter in the proper light. You have an idea that what that letter represents could get you into trouble with the law. That's it, isn't it?"

"Now see here. I stand behind that letter. My reputation is worth about ten thousand times yours in hard cash. Would I be mad enough to risk my reputation unless I had looked at every move on the board?"

"Exactly. Now you see the other side of the picture. If you want half an hour to make up your mind once and for all, take it. Consider carefully what you'd like to be in the future: clerk or business man. Two pound a week; or six, ten, twenty, fifty a week. That represents the difference between the clerk and the business man in cold cash."

"Good!" said Lars Larssen, and held out his hand to his young employee. "There's the right stuff in you!"

To have his hand shaken in friendship by the millionaire shipowner was as strong wine to Arthur Dean. He flushed with pleasure as he stammered out his thanks.

A couple of hours packed with feverish activity[Pg 40] followed. Lars Larssen knew that Clifford Matheson had the habit of carrying a small typewriter with him on his journeys, in order to get through correspondence while on trains and steamers. Many busy men carry them. This habit of Matheson's was exceedingly useful for his present purpose. The letter that Arthur Dean was to post off at Cherbourg—one to the Paris office of Clifford Matheson and one of similar purport to the London office—would only need the signature in holograph. Larssen had several of Matheson's signatures on various letters that had passed between them, and these he cut off and gave to his employee to copy.

He criticised the spacing and the general lay-out of the letter already typed, showed Dean how to imitate Matheson's little habits of typing, and arranged that the letters dictated should be retyped on hotel paper at Cherbourg and posted there. Dean was to catch a night train to Cherbourg, take steamer ticket there for Quebec, and proceed to Montreal. There were a host of directions as to his conduct while in Canada, and as Larssen poured out a stream of detailed orders, searching into every cranny and crevice of the situation, the young clerk felt once more the glamour of the master-mind.

Early next morning Dean was at grimy Cherbourg, and after posting off his letters he sent the following telegram to Mrs Matheson at Monte Carlo:—

"Sailing this morning for Canada on 'La Bre[Pg 41]tagne.' Urgent and very private business. Larssen, Grand Hotel, Paris, will explain. Sailing as Arthur Dean to avoid Canadian reporters. Good-bye. Much love."

As the liner lay by the quayside with smoke pouring from her funnels and the bustle of near departure on her decks, a telegram in reply was brought to Arthur Dean. He opened and read:—

"Most annoying. Cannot understand why business could not have been given to somebody else. However, expect nothing from you nowadays. Where is Rivière? Not arrived, and no line from him."

Rivière? Who was this man? Lars Larssen had made no mention of this name. It was the one facet of the situation of which the shipowner knew nothing—the one unknown link in the chain of circumstance.

Arthur Dean could only send a frantic wire to Lars Larssen, and the liner had cast off from her moorings before an answer came. This is what the shipowner found awaiting him at his hotel:—

CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

On the morning of March 15th, Clifford Matheson lit a blazing fire in the laboratory of a tumbledown villa in Neuilly in order to destroy the clothes and other identity marks of the financier.

For some months past he had been leading a double life—as Clifford Matheson the financier, and as John Rivière the recluse scientist. He had chosen to take up the name of his dead half-brother because he had been taking up the latter's life-work.

The motives that had urged him to this strange double life were such as a Lars Larssen could scarcely comprehend. Every man has his mental as well as his physical limitations. The keenest brain, if trained on some specialized line, will fail to understand what to the dabbler in many lines seems perfectly natural and reasonable. Larssen, a master-mind, had his peculiar limitations as well as smaller men. His brain had been trained to see the world as an ant-heap into which some Power External had stamped an iron heel. The ants fought blindly with one another to reach the surface—to live. That was the law of life as he saw it—to fight one's way to the open.

The world he looked upon breathed in money[Pg 43] through eager nostrils. Money was the oxygen of civilization. Without money a man slowly asphyxiated. It must be every man's ambition to own big money—to breathe it in himself with full-lunged, lustful, intoxicating gulps, and to dole it out as master to dependents pleading for their ration of life. That was the meaning of power: to give or withhold the essentials of life at one's pleasure.

Consequently he had failed to read the riddle of Matheson's motive at that crucial interview in the financier's office on the Rue Laffitte. He had failed to realize that a man might be as eager to give as to grasp. He had failed to reckon on altruism as a possible dominating factor in the decisions of a successful man of business.

Further than that, it lay entirely outside Lars Larssen's plane of thought that a man who had fought his way up to worldly success from a clerk's stool in a Montreal broker's office, who had made himself a power in the world of London and Paris finance, could voluntarily give up money and power and bury himself in obscurity.

Larssen judged that Matheson had been murdered and robbed by the apaches. It was possible, though extremely improbable, that he might have committed suicide. Which it was, mattered nothing to the shipowner. But he did not dream for one instant that Matheson might have thrown up place and power to disappear into voluntary exile.

Clifford Matheson had set himself from the age[Pg 44] of eighteen to achieve a money success. At thirty-seven, he had achieved it. He had slashed out for himself a path to power in the financial world. He was rich enough to satisfy the desires of most men.

Five years ago he had married into a well-known English family, and the doors of society had been opened wide to him. But his marriage had been a ghastly mistake. Olive, after marriage, had showed herself entirely out of sympathy with the idealism that formed so large a part of the complex character of her husband. She wanted money and power, and she drove spurs into her husband that he might obtain for her more and more money, more and more power. Any other ambition in Clifford she tried to sneer down with the ruthlessness of an utterly mercenary woman.

He had come to loathe the sensuous artificiality of his life. He had come to loathe the ruthless selfishness of finance. He was sick with the callousness of that stratum of the world in which he moved.

In the last couple of years he had found himself drawn powerfully towards the calm, passionless atmosphere of science in which his elder brother, John Rivière, had found his life-work. Rivière had made no worldly success for himself. The scientific researches he had undertaken made no stir when they found light in the pages of obscure quarterlies circulating amongst a few dozen other men engaged in similar research. Rivière had not the temperament to push himself or the children of his brain. He had settled into a solitary bachelor[Pg 45] life in a small Canadian college—an unknown, unrecognized man—and yet the calm, steady purpose and the calm, passionless happiness of the life had made a deep impression on Clifford Matheson.

Rivière had come to an accidental death on a holiday with his brother in the wilds of northern Canada. Few knew of it beyond Matheson.

The financier had been drawn towards one special problem of science, and on this he had studied deeply the last few years. From his studies, an idea had developed which could only be worked out by experiments. Many years of patient research would be needed, for this thought-child of Matheson's was a master-idea, an idea which meant the exploring of a practically uncharted sea of knowledge.

In brief, it was an attack of root-problem of human disease. Doctors and pathologists had hitherto been viewing disease from the aspect of its myriad effects on the highly complex human being. It was as though one were to attempt to understand the subtleties of some full-grown language without first learning its elementary grammar—the foundations on which its super-structure is reared.

Now Matheson, coming to the problem with a strong, fresh mind unhampered by the swaddling clothes of a college training, saw it from a view-point entirely different to that of the doctors. He wanted to know the elementary grammar of human disease. He found that no book dealt with it—nor attempted to deal with it. No recognized department of a medical course took as[Pg 46] its province the root-causes of disease. Pathology was a study of effects. Bacteriology—that again was merely a study of effects.

He had read widely amongst a variety of scientific research-matter, and had found that here and there an isolated attack was being made on the problem of causes. But nothing strong-planned—as any one of his financial schemes would be planned—nothing co-ordinated. The researches of the day were starting at points too complex, before the basic conditions of the problem were known.

Disease, as he viewed it, was primarily the result of abnormal conditions of living. His idea was to study it in its simplest possible form. To study the effects of abnormal conditions of life on the lowest living organisms—the microscopic blobs of life whose structure is elemental. From his wide reading of the last couple of years, he knew what little was already known and the vast field that was unexplored territory. He need not waste time over what others had already dealt with—the new territory offered sufficient field for a life-work.

Once he could get at the basic facts of disease as it related to the very simplest organisms, he could progress upwards to the higher organisms, and so eventually to man. What could be learnt from the pathological condition of an amœba might lay the foundations for the conquering of cancer in man, and a hundred other diseases as well.[Pg 47] Matheson's idea was a revolutionary one—a master-idea like a master-patent. It held limitless possibilities for the alleviation of human pain and suffering.

It was an idea to which a man might well devote his whole intellect and energies.

Some months before, the financier had bought, in the name of John Rivière, a tumbledown villa on the outskirts of Neuilly. In it he had fitted up a research laboratory in which to pursue the experimental end of the problem which had such vital interest for him.

A high wall surrounded a garden overgrown with weeds and a villa falling to decay. At one time, no doubt, the house had formed a nest for the petite amie of some rich Parisian, but now the owner of the property was only too glad to sell it at any price, and without asking any but the most perfunctory questions of the man who had offered to buy. In the solitude of the ruined villa, Matheson had been pursuing his scientific research at such times as he could snatch from his financial business. He had been leading a "double life"—from a motive far different to the double life of other married men. There was no woman in the case. There was no secret scheme of money-making. There was no solitary pandering to the senses with drink or drugs.

But the financier had been finding that the leading of a double life bristled with practical difficulties. Apart from the calls of his business, there were the insistent demands of his wife. The[Pg 48] position was becoming an intolerable one. He had to choose between the life of the money-maker or that of the creator of a new field of knowledge.

On the night of 14th March the conversation on the platform of the Gare de Lyon and the fight with Lars Larssen had brought the question of decision to a head. He had grappled with it in his office, pacing to and fro long after the shipowner had left. He had turned his steps towards the heights of Montmartre so that he might carry his problem up to the solitude of a high place, in the peace of the eternal stars.

He was deep in the question of decision when the two apaches had attacked him in the narrow lane leading to the Basilique of the Sacred Heart. Matheson was a man of considerable strength and alertness. He had felled one of the two apaches with his heavy gold-mounted stick; the other one had sent through the fur-lined coat a knife-thrust which had grazed his ribs. Matheson had beaten him off, and had then continued his path to the Basilique.

But the attack had brought a vivid inspiration for the solution of his personal problem.

He would slip off the personality of Clifford Matheson and take up completely that of John Rivière. He would leave his overcoat and stick by the riverside at Neuilly, and 'phone information about them to the police or to a newspaper. That knife-slit in his overcoat would be taken as evidence of murder. They would judge him murdered, with robbery as motive. The courts would give leave for Olive to presume death. She would be[Pg 49] freed; she would come into her husband's fortune; she could marry again if she chose to.

For his part he could live his life unshackled, and there was sufficient money already standing in the name of Rivière at a Paris bank to give him a modest income on which to keep himself and pay for the materials of research.

No one would be the worse for his disappearance; his wife would be the gainer; and mankind, he hoped, would be the gainer through the research to which he could henceforth devote his life.

CHAPTER VII
A SEAT BY THE ARENA

Rivière had bought fresh clothes and other necessities at the suburban shops of Neuilly. He had shaved off his moustache; arranged his hair differently; put on a new shape of collar. It is curious how the shape of a collar is associated in most minds with the impression of a man's features. To change into another shape is to make a very noticeable difference to one's appearance.

He had also bought travelling necessities. His intention was to wander for a couple of months. It would help him to clear his brain from the tangle of financial matters which still obsessed it against his will. He wanted to sweep out the Hudson Bay scheme, Lars Larssen, Olive, and many other matters from the living-room of his mind. He wanted a couple of months in which to settle himself in the new personality; plan out his future work in detail; set the mental fly-wheel turning, so as to concentrate his energies undividedly on the work to come.

In the afternoon, old Mme Dromet entered the villa to scrub and clean. She had a standing arrangement to come two or three afternoons a week.[Pg 51]

"Are you going away from Paris?" shouted old Mme Dromet to her employer, seeing the portmanteau and the other signs of departure. She was stone-deaf, and in the manner of deaf people always shouted what she had to say.

Rivière nodded assent, and produced a paper of written instructions. These he read through with her, so as to make sure that she thoroughly understood. Then he gave her a generous allowance to cover the next few months.

Later in the afternoon, he was seated with his modest travelling equipment in a cab, driving to No. 8, Rue Laffitte. He mounted to the offices of the financier and, in order to test the efficacy of his changed appearance, asked to see Mr Clifford Matheson.

For a moment the clerk stared at the visitor. The resemblance to his employer was certainly very striking. Yet there were differences. Mr Matheson wore a close-cut moustache, while this man was clean-shaven. The commanding look, the hard-set mask of the financier were softened away; there was joy of life, there was freedom of soul in the features and in the attitude of this visitor.

The clerk felt somehow relieved. That of course explained the striking resemblance. He replied: "Mr Matheson has not been at the office to-day, sir. I fancy he has left for Monte Carlo. I am not sure, but I believe that was his intention."

Presently the clerk returned. "I am sorry, sir, but there doesn't seem to be any message left for you."

"Tell him I called," said Rivière, and went back to his cab. In it he was driven to the Gare de Lyon. At the booking-office he asked for a ticket for Arles. His intention was to travel amongst the old cities of Provence, and then make his way to the Pyrenees and into Spain. There was no definite plan of journey; he wanted only some atmosphere which would help him to clear his mind for the work to come. In the Midi the early Spring would be breathing new life over the earth.

About midnight the southern express stopped at some big station. The rhythmic sway and clatter of a moving train had given place to a comparative stillness that awoke John Rivière from sleep. He murmured "Dijon," and composed himself to a fresh position for rest. Some hours later there was again a stoppage, and instinctively he murmured "Lyon-Perrache." The phases of the journey along the main P.L.M. route had been burnt into him from the visits with Olive to Monte Carlo.

In the morning the strange land of Provence opened out under mist which presently cleared away beneath the steady drive of the sun. The low hills that border the valley of the Rhone cantered past him—quaint, treeless hills here scarped and sun-scorched, there covered with low balsam shrubs. Now and again they passed[Pg 53] a straggling white village roofed with big, curved, sun-mellowed tiles. Around the village there would be a few trees, and on these the early Spring of the Midi had laid her fingers in tender caress.

The air was keen and yet strangely soft; to Rivière it was wine of life. He drew it in thirstily; let the wind of the train blow his hair as it listed; watched greedily the ever-changing landscape. The strange bare beauty of this land of sunshine and romance brought him a keen thrill of happiness.

It was as though he had loosed himself from prison chains and had emerged into a new life of freedom.

In full morning they reached Arles, the old Roman city in the delta of the Rhone. It clusters, huddles around the stately Roman arena on the hill in the centre of the town—a place of narrow, tortuous ruelles where every stone cries out a message from the past. In the lanes, going about the business of the day, were women and girls moulded in the strange dark beauty of the district—the "belles Arlésiennes" famous in prose and verse.

Yet chiefly it was the arena that fascinated him. All through the afternoon he wandered about the great stone tiers, flooded in sunlight, and reconstructed for himself a picture of the days when gladiators down below had striven with one another for success—or death. The arena was the archetype of civilized life.

Now he was a spectator, one of the multitude who look on. It was good to sit in the flooding sunlight and know that he was no longer a gladiator[Pg 54] in the arena. There was higher work for him to do, away from the merciless stabbing sword and the cunning of net and trident.

At intervals during the afternoon a few tourists—mostly Americans—rushed up in high-powered, panting cars to the gateway of the arena; gave a hurried ten minutes to the interior; and then whirled away across the white roads of the Rhone delta in a scurry of dust.

Only one visitor seemed to realize, like himself, the glamour of the past and to steep the mind in it. This was a woman. Her age was perhaps twenty-five, in her bearing was that subtle, scarcely definable, sureness of self which marks off womanhood from girlhood. She climbed from tier to tier of the amphitheatre with firm confident step; stood gazing down on her dream pictures of the scene in the arena; moved on to a fresh vantage-point. She wore a short tailored skirt which ignored the ugly, skin-tight convention of the current fashion. Her cheeks were fresh with a healthy English colour; her eyes were deep blue, toning almost to violet; her hair was burnished chestnut under the soft felt hat curled upwards in front; a faint odour of healthy womanhood formed as it were an aura around her.

All this John Rivière had noticed subconsciously as she passed close by him on the ledge where he sat, walking with her firm, confident step. Though he noted it appreciatively, yet it disturbed him. He did not want to notice any woman. He had big work to do, and on that he wanted to concentrate all his faculties. He had had no[Pg 55] thought of a woman in his life when he broke the chains that shackled him to the Clifford Matheson existence. He purposed to have no call of sex to divert him from the realization of his big idea.

Presently she had climbed to the topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, and stood out against the sky-line of the sunset-to-be, deep-chested, straight, clean-limbed, a very perfect figure of a modern Diana.

It is a dangerous place on which to stand, that topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, with no parapet and a sheer drop to the street below. Almost against his will, Rivière mounted there.

But there was no occasion for his help, and they two stood there, some yards apart, silent, watching the red ball of the sun sink down into the limitless flats of the Camargue, and the grey mist rising from the marshes to wrap its ghostly fingers round this city of the ghostly past.

Twice she looked towards him as though she must speak out the thoughts conjured up by this splendid scene. It wanted only some tiny excuse of convention to bridge over the silence between them, but Rivière on his side would not seek it, and the woman hesitated to ask him to take up the thread that lay waiting to his hand.

A cold wind sprang up, and she descended and made her way to her hotel on the Place du Forum.

At dinner in the deserted dining-room of his hotel, Rivière found himself seated at the next table to her. There are only two hotels worthy of the name in Arles, and the coincidence of meeting again was of the very slightest. Yet[Pg 56] somehow he felt subconsciously that the arm of Fate was bringing their two lives together, and he resented it.

In the evening he wrapped himself in a cloak against the bitter wind rushing down the valley of the Rhone and spreading itself as an invisible fan across the delta, and wandered about the dark alleys of the town, twisting like rabbit-burrows, lighted only here and there with a stray lamp socketed to a stone wall. Now he had left the big-thoughted age of the Romans, and was carried forward to the crafty, treacherous Middle Ages. In such an alley as this, bravos had lurked with daggers ready to thrust between the shoulder-blades of their victims. Now he was in a wider lane through which an army had swept pell-mell to slay and sack, while from the overhanging windows above desperate men and women shot wildly in fruitless resistance. Now he was in another of the lightless rabbit-burrows....

A sudden sharp cry of fear cut out like a whip-lash into the blackness. A woman's cry. There were sounds of angry struggle as Rivière made swiftly to the aid of that woman who cried out in fear.

Stumbling round a corner of the twisting alley, he came to where a gleam from a shuttered window showed a slatted glimpse of a woman struggling in the arms of a lean, wiry peasant of the Camargue. Rivière seized him by the collar and shook him off as one shakes a dog from the midst of a fray. The man loosed his grip of the woman, and snarl[Pg 57]ing like a dog, writhed himself free of Rivière. Then, whipping out a knife from his belt, he struck again and again. Rivière tried to ward with his left arm, but one blow of the knife went past the guard and ripped his cheek from forehead to jawbone.

At that moment a shutter thrown open shot as it were a search-light into the blackness of the alley, full on to the man with the knife, and Rivière, putting his whole strength into the blow, sent a smashing right-hander straight into the face of his adversary. Thrown back against the alley-wall, the man rebounded forward, and fell, a huddled, nerveless mass, on the ground.

From doorways near men came out with lights ... there was a hubbub of noise ... excited questions eddied around Rivière.

But the latter made no answer. He turned to find the woman who had been attacked.

It was the woman who had stood by him on the topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, drinking in that glorious fiery sunset over the grey Camargue. She was flushed, but very straight and erect.

"That brute was attacking me. Oh, if only I had had some weapon!" Then she noticed the blood dripping from the gash in his forehead, and cried out: "You're hurt! Take this."

Her handkerchief was pressed into his hand. He answered as he took it: "It's nothing. Fortunately it missed the eye. And you?"

"I'm not hurt, thanks. Oh, you were splendid! It makes one feel proud to be an Englishwoman."

"Come to the hotel," he said, and ignoring the[Pg 58] excited questioning of the knot of men, took her arm and led her rapidly to their hotel on the Place du Forum.

"I don't want a doctor," he replied coldly. A sudden aloofness had come into his voice.

Her eye sought his with a piqued curiosity. For a moment, forgetting that here was a man who had rescued her from insult at considerable bodily risk, she saw him only as a man of curious, almost boorish brusqueness. Why this sudden cold reserve?

Then, with a reddening of cheek at her momentary lapse from gratitude, she began to thank him for his timely help.

Rivière cut her short. "There is nothing to thank me for. I didn't even know it was you. I heard a woman's cry—that was all. You ought not to go about these dark ruelles alone at night-time."

"Can't I dress the wound for you?" she asked. "I've had practice in first aid, Mr Rivière."

He paused suddenly in the doorway and asked her abruptly: "How do you know my name?"

"I know more than your name. When your cut has been dressed, I'll explain in full."

"Thank you, but I can manage quite well myself. Let us meet again in the salon in, say, half an hour's time."

When they met again, he had his head bound up with swathes of linen. His face was white with the loss of blood, and she gave a little cry of alarm.

There was a quick change in her to a smiling gaiety. The man was human again—he had at all events a very human curiosity.

"The name was from the hotel register, naturally," she answered. "But I know also that you are on your way to Monte Carlo, which certainly can't come from the register."

Rivière's face became coldly impassive as he waited for her to explain further.

"You are a scientist," she continued slowly, watching him to note the effect of her words. "You are to meet a lady for the first time at Monte Carlo. Yet she knows you by your first name, John. You see that I know a good deal about you."

She waited for him to question her further, but he remained silent, deep in thought.

More than a little piqued that he would not question further, she gave him abruptly the solution of the riddle.

"Two nights ago I travelled here from Paris in the same train with an Englishwoman and her father. They took breakfast at the table near to mine in the restaurant car, and I could scarcely help overhearing what they were saying. They chatted about you. Then I found your name in the hotel register."[Pg 60]

She parried the question. "The name caught my eye by accident. Naturally I was interested by the coincidence."

Rivière turned the conversation to the impersonal subject of Arles and its Roman remains, and soon after they said good-night.

As she moved out of the room, a splendidly graceful figure radiating health and energy and life full-tide, Rivière could not help following her with his eyes. His innermost being thrilled despite himself to the magic of her splendid womanhood.

In his room that evening he took up the blood-drenched handkerchief. In the corner was the name "Elaine Verney." The name conveyed nothing to him. He threw the handkerchief away, and shut her from his thoughts. He wanted no woman in this new life of his.

With the morning came a resolution to avoid her altogether. He rose very early and took the first train out of Arles.

CHAPTER VIII
WHO AND WHERE IS RIVIÈRE?

Here was a new factor in the situation. Lars Larssen mentally docketed it as a matter to be dealt with immediately. After sending off a reply telegram to Cherbourg (which reached the quayside too late and was afterwards returned to him), the shipowner got a telephone call through to Olive at the Hotel des Hespérides.

"Good morning. I called you up to say that your husband has sailed for Canada on 'La Bretagne.' I had a line from Cherbourg this morning."

"No, he referred me to you for explanations. Just like Clifford!... What about Rivière—is he coming to Monte?"

Lars Larssen had to tread warily here. So he answered: "I didn't quite catch that name."

"John Rivière, my husband's half-brother. He lives in some suburb of Paris, I forget where, and Clifford was to bring him along to Monte."[Pg 62]

The shipowner decided that he must find this man and discover if he knew anything. The words of Jimmy Martin flashed through his brain: "I doubt if the police'll do much unless the relatives kick up a shindy." Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but tell the truth, which was his usual resource when in an unforeseen difficulty.

"Don't know anything about him. If you give me his Paris address I'll dig him out."

"Then I'll find it at the office. As soon as I get a line on him I'll wire you. Rivière? The name sounds French."

"French-Canadian. He's a couple of years older than Clifford, I believe.... When are you coming yourself?"

After the telephone conversation, Larssen went straight to No. 8, Rue Laffitte. He had wired the night before to London to have a secretary sent over—Sylvester, his usual confidential man, if the latter were back at business; if not, another subordinate he named. Catching the nine o'clock train from Charing Cross, the secretary would arrive in Paris about five in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Larssen, had to make his search for Rivière in person.

The business of a financier differs radically from[Pg 63] a mercantile business on the point of staff. The main work of negotiation can only be carried out by the head of the firm himself, as a rule, and the routine work for subordinates is small, except when a public company flotation is being made. Matheson had found that his Paris office needed only a manager, Coulter, and a couple of clerks, one English and one French. Coulter was a steady-going, reliable man of forty odd, extremely trustworthy and not too imaginative.

This came as a fresh surprise to Lars Larssen, and made him doubly anxious to discover the man. Why all this mystery surrounding him?

"I understand from Mrs Matheson that Mr Rivière is her husband's half-brother. Lives somewhere around Paris."

"Strange! I've never heard of him myself. I'll make enquiries if you'll wait a moment."

"It seems that Mr Rivière called here yesterday afternoon and enquired for Mr Matheson," explained Coulter.

Lars Larssen turned to the young clerk with a questioning look. "It was the first time I had ever seen him, sir," said the clerk. "He came in and[Pg 64] asked quite naturally for Mr Matheson. There was an astonishing likeness between them, but that was explained at once when he told me they were half-brothers."

"When I say a likeness, sir, I mean of course in a general way. Mr Rivière is younger and different in many ways."

The clerk could offer no clue to the whereabouts or intentions of John Rivière. Repeated questioning added little to the meagre information already given.

"Mr Matheson has not been at the office to-day or yesterday. Have you seen anything of him?" asked Coulter of the shipowner.

"Reckon you will to-day.... Say, couldn't you look in Mr Matheson's desk to find the address of this Mr Rivière?"

Coulter was the financier's confidential man. He had full power to go over his employer's desk except for certain drawers labelled "Private," and he did so now.[Pg 65]

When he came back from the search, he had an envelope in his hand addressed "Lars Larssen, Esq."

"All I could find was this envelope for you, sir. There seems to be no record of Mr Rivière's address."

The shipowner slit open the letter and read it with a countenance that gave no clue whatever to what was passing in his mind.

"My dear Larssen," it ran, "I estimate your expenses on the Hudson Bay scheme at roughly £20,000, and I enclose cheque for that amount. If this is right, please let me have a formal receipt and quittance. I want you to understand that my decision on the matter is final. I regret that I am obliged to back out at the last moment, but no doubt you will be able to proceed without my help."

The letter was in handwriting, and had not been press-copied. Larssen noted that point at once with satisfaction. But the letter itself gave him uneasiness. It explained nothing of Matheson's motives. From the 'phone conversation with Olive, it was clear that she had no suspicion that her husband wanted to withdraw from the Hudson Bay deal. In fact, she had asked anxiously if anything had gone wrong with the scheme. Sir Francis Letchmere might of course be closer in Matheson's business confidence, and that was one of the reasons for travelling to Monte Carlo and talking to him face to face.

But with his keen intuitive sense, Lars Larssen felt that the explanation was in some way connected with this mysterious John Rivière. It was imperative to get in touch with the man.[Pg 66]

Where was Rivière? Was there nobody who could throw light on his whereabouts? His jaw tightened as he began to chew on the problem. Paris is too big a city in which to hunt for a mere name.

After thanking the manager, Larssen withdrew from the room. Passing through the outer office, he was addressed by the other of the two clerks, a young Frenchman.

"Monsieur," said he in French, "here is a point which perhaps will be of service. I am at the window when Monsieur Rivière arrives en taxi-auto. On the impériale I see a portmanteau. Doubtless Monsieur Rivière journeys away from Paris."

The young Frenchman made a gesture of sympathetic negation. There had been no reason to look at the number, even if he could have read it from a window on the second story.

"Thanks," said Larssen, but the information seemed at first sight valueless. A man takes an unknown cab from an unknown house in an unknown suburb to an unknown terminus, when he buys a ticket for an unknown destination. Sheer waste of energy to hunt for a needle in that haystack!

Yet his bulldog mind would not let go of the problem. Presently he had found a new avenue of approach to it. If Rivière had travelled away from Paris on the evening of the 15th, probably he stayed that night or the next day at some hotel. There he would have to fill in his name, etc., in the hotel register according to the strict requirements of the French law.[Pg 67]

Advertise in the papers for one John Rivière from Paris, age thirty-seven, staying at a hotel in the provinces on the 15th or 16th. Offer a reward for information. The average Frenchman is very keen on money; without a doubt he would answer the advertisement if he knew anything of John Rivière. Advertise in Le Petit Journal, Le Petit Parisien and a few other dailies which cover France from end to end, as no English or American journals do in their respective countries.

Larssen did not pay the cheque for £20,000 into his bank. He was after big game, and a mere £20,000 was a jack-rabbit. It would be safer, he felt, to let it lie amongst his secret papers.

When Sylvester, his private secretary, arrived by the afternoon train from London, Lars Larssen placed him in touch with only so much of the situation as he considered desirable. This was little. Sylvester was to stay in Paris while the shipowner went on to Monte Carlo. If the various advertisements brought a reply, Sylvester was to hunt out John Rivière in whatever part of France he might be, and then communicate with Lars Larssen for further orders.

The secretary was a quiet, self-contained, silent man of thirty or thirty-one. A heavy dark moustache curtained expression from his lips. Not only could he carry out orders to the letter, but he was to be trusted to keep his head in any unforeseen emergency and act on his own responsibility in a sound, common-sense way. But Lars Larssen trusted no man beyond the essentials of[Pg 68] any situation. His was the brain to plan and direct. He preferred obedient tools to brilliant, independent helpers.

At the train-side, Larssen gave a final direction to his subordinate: "Keep me in touch with every move."

Back at his hotel, Sylvester occupied himself with the development of some films he had taken on the Channel passage. In his hours of leisure he was a devoted amateur photographer. At the present time there was nothing to be done but wait the possible answer to the advertisement.[Pg 69]

CHAPTER IX
AT MONTE CARLO

Next day, the wonderful panorama of the Riviera was unfolding itself before the eyes of the shipowner. The red rocks and the dwarf pines of the Esterel coves, against which an azure sea lapped in soft caress.... Cannes with its far-flung draperies of white villas.... The proud solemnity of the Alpes Maritimes thrusting up to the snow-line and glinting white against the sun.... Fairy bungalows nesting in tropic gardens and waving welcome with their palm-fronds to the rushing train.... The Baie des Anges laughing with sky and hills.... The many-tunnelled cliff-route from Villefranche to Cap D'Ail, where moments of darkness tease one to longing for the sight of the azure coves dotted with white-winged yachts and foam-slashed motor-boats.... Europe's silken, jewelled fringe!

But scenery made no appeal to Lars Larssen. Scenery would not help him to the attainment of his great ambitions. Scenery was no use to him. His delight lay in men and women and the using of them. Business—the turning of other men's energies to his own ends—was the very breath of his being.

He was glad to reach the hectic crowdedness of[Pg 70] the tiny principality of Monaco—that triple essence of civilization and sensuous luxury. He felt at home with the big idea that drew the whole world to the gaming tables to pay homage to the goddess Fortune. For a moment the suggestion came to him to buy up some beautiful islet and build a pleasure city on it which should be a wonder of the world. He was making a note of it for future consideration, when Olive and her father met him on the platform at Monte Carlo.

"I thought perhaps you would bring John Rivière with you," said Olive after they had exchanged greetings. A strong desire had sprung up to see this mysterious relation of Clifford's, and to be balked of any passing whim was keen annoyance to her.

"Can't you find him?" asked Sir Francis. Larssen shook his head. "Gad, that's curious. Why doesn't he write? Bad form, you know. But when a man's lived all his life in the backwoods of Canada, I suppose one can't expect him to know what's what."

Olive studied the shipowner keenly as they drove to their hotel. His massive strength of body and masterful purpose of mind, showing in every line of his face, attracted her strongly. Olive worshipped power, money, and all that breathed of them. Here was the living embodiment of money and power.

After dinner that evening all three went to the Casino. The order had been given to Sir Francis Letchmere's valet that he was to bring over to the[Pg 71] Salle de Jeux any telegram or 'phone message that might arrive.

Larssen was keenly interested in the throng of smart men and women clustered around the tables. Here was the raw material of his craft—human nature. Moths around a candle—well, he himself had lit many candles. The process of singeing their wings intrigued him vastly.

Olive explained the game to him with a flush of excitement on her cheeks. He noted that flush and made a mental note to use it for his own ends. She took a seat at a roulette table and asked him to advise her where to stake her money. Sir Francis preferred trente-et-quarante, and went off to another table.

"I'll try to share it with you," he answered, and suggested some numbers with firm, decisive confidence. Though he had keen pride in his intellect and his will, he had also firm reliance on his intuitive sense. With Lars Larssen, all three worked hand in hand.

Olive began to win. Her eyes sparkled, and she exchanged little gay pleasantries and compliments with the shipowner.

"We've made all the loose hay out of this sunshine," said Larssen after an hour or so, when a spell of losing set in. "Now we'll move to another table."

Olive obeyed him with alacrity. She liked his masterful orders. Here was a man to whom one could give confidence.[Pg 72]

"Five louis on carré 16-20," he advised suddenly when they had found place at another table.

Without hesitation she placed a gold hundred-franc piece on the intersecting point of the four squares 16, 17, 19, 20. The croupier flicked the white marble between thumb and second finger, and it whizzed round the roulette board like an echo round the whispering gallery of St Paul's. At length it slowed down, hit against a metal deflector, and dropped sharply into one of the thirty-seven compartments of the roulette board. A croupier silently touched the square of 16 with his rake to indicate that this number had won, and the other croupier proceeded to gather in the stakes.

At this moment Sir Francis' valet came up to Larssen with a telegram in his hand. The latter opened and scanned it quickly.

Olive placed nine louis, the limit stake, on number 14, and two minutes later a pile of bank-notes aggregating 6300 francs came to her from the croupier's metal box.

"Fourteen replies to hand. Fourteen J. Rivière's scattered about France."[Pg 73]

CHAPTER X
LARSSEN TURNS ANOTHER CORNER

"Clifford is a very shrewd man of business," remarked Larssen, drinking his third cognac at Ciro's at the end of a dinner which was a masterpiece even for Monte Carlo, where dining is taken au grand sérieux. He did not sip cognac, but took it neat in liqueur glassfuls at a time. There was a clean-cut forcefulness even in his drinking, typical of the human dynamo of will-power within.

Sir Francis puffed out a cloud of cigar-smoke with an air of reflected glory. He had helped to capture Matheson as a son-in-law, and a compliment of this kind was therefore an indirect compliment to himself.

The capture of Matheson was, in fact, the most notable achievement of his career. Beyond that, he had done little but ornament the Boards of companies with his name; manage his estate (through an agent) with a mixture of cross conservatism and despotic benevolence; and shoot, hunt and fish with impeccable "good form." He was typical of that very large class of leisured landowner in whose creed good form is next above godliness.

"Before he left for Canada," continued Larssen, "he managed to gouge me for a tidy extra in shares for you and for Mrs Matheson."

Olive had been markedly listless, heavy-eyed and abstracted during the course of the dinner, a point which Larssen had noted with some puzzlement. His mind had worked over the reasons for it without arriving at any definite conclusion. But now, at this unexpected announcement, her eyes lighted up greedily.

The shipowner reached to take out some papers from his breast-pocket, then stopped. "I was forgetting. I oughtn't to be talking shop over the dinner-table."

Sir Francis made an inarticulate noise which was a kind of tribute to the fetish of good form. He wanted to hear more, but did not want to ask to hear more.

"Please go on," said Olive. "Talk business now just as much as you like. Unless, of course, you'd rather not discuss details while I'm here."

"I'd sooner talk business with you present, Mrs Matheson. I think a wife has every right to be her husband's business partner. I think it's good for both sides. When my dear wife was with me, we were share-and-share partners." He paused for a moment, then continued: "Here's the draft scheme for the flotation."

He held out a paper between Sir Francis and Olive, and Sir Francis took it and read it over with[Pg 75] an air of concentrated, conscious wisdom—the air he carefully donned at Board meetings, together with a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez.

"Clifford will be Chairman," explained Larssen. "You and Lord St Aubyn and Carleton-Wingate are the men I want for the other Directors. I, as vendor, join the Board after allotment."

"That doesn't appear in the prospectus, of course. A private arrangement between Clifford and myself. Here's the memorandum."

This he handed to Olive, who nodded her head with pleasure as she read it through, her father looking over her shoulder.

"Keep it," said Larssen as she made to hand it back. "Keep it till your husband returns from Canada."

"It's very uncertain. He doesn't know himself. It's a delicate matter to handle—very delicate. That's why he went himself to Montreal."

Larssen did not answer, but Olive rejoined sharply: "What does it matter if it helps to get the flotation off and make money?"

"Can you fix up St Aubyn and Carleton-Wingate?" asked Larssen. "Quickly?"[Pg 76]

Sir Francis, without knowing it, had stumbled upon the crucial weakness of Larssen's daring scheme. But it would have taken a far shrewder man than he to realize the vital import of the point from Larssen's easy, almost causal answer:

"There's no signed agreement. We agreed the scheme in principle at the interview in Clifford's office, and he left details to you and me. His last words were: 'Tell my father-in-law to go ahead as quickly as he can manage.'"

"But when I put this before St Aubyn and Carleton-Wingate, they'll be expecting me to—I mean to say, isn't it deuced irregular, you know?"

Larssen did not answer this for a moment. He had a keen appreciation of the value of silence in business negotiations. He poured himself out another glass of cognac and drank it off. His attitude conveyed a contempt for Letchmere's cautiousness which he would be too polite to put into words.

"If you'd sooner write to Clifford and have his agreement to the scheme in black and white ..." was his studiously, chilly reply.

"Probably," agreed Larssen. "But in case he is not back in time, we're to go ahead just as if he were here. That's what he told me before he left Paris. Didn't he write you to that effect, Sir Francis?"

"But I showed you my telegram," answered Olive. "Clifford said to refer to Mr Larssen for all details."

Lars Larssen had been studying his man through half-closed eyelids, and he now summed him up with penetrating accuracy. It was not suspicion that made Sir Francis hesitate, but petty dignity. He had become huffed. He felt that his dignity had not been sufficiently studied in the transaction. Matters had been arranged over his head without formally consulting him. It was "not the thing"—"not good form."

And yet it was vital to Larssen's plan that Sir Francis should go ahead with the work of the flotation quickly—should go ahead with it in the full belief that Clifford Matheson had agreed to the scheme and to the use of his name. It was vital that Sir Francis should take the whole responsibility of the flotation on to his own shoulders. He was to make use of his son-in-law's name with the other prospective Directors and on the printed[Pg 78] prospectus just as though Matheson were personally sanctioning it.

Larssen himself planned to remain in the background and pull the wires unseen. When the revelation of Matheson's death came to light—as it inevitably must in the course of time—Letchmere would be so far involved that he would be forced to shoulder responsibility for the use of Matheson's name.

To try to rush matters with Sir Francis would perhaps wreck the whole delicate machinery of the scheme. Larssen quickly resolved to get at him in indirect fashion through Olive, and accordingly he answered evenly:

"Think it over by all means. There's plenty to consider. Take the draft scheme and look it through at your leisure.... Now what's the plan of amusement for to-night?"

Before going to the Casino, Olive made an excuse to return to her rooms at the Hespérides. Alone in her bedroom, she took out from a locked drawer a hypodermic syringe in silver and glass, and a phial of colourless liquid. She held the phial in her hands with a curious look of furtive tenderness, fondling it softly. For many months past this had been her cherished secret—the drug that unlocked for her new realms of fancy and exquisite sensation.

In the course of the evening's play at the tables, Larssen was struck with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had left her[Pg 79] eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino, there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very different from a couple of hours before.

A spirit of caustic, impish brilliance was in her. She turned it upon the people they had rubbed shoulders with at the tables; upon the people walking past them on the terraces; even upon her husband:

"Clifford is a 90 per cent. success. There are men who can never achieve full success in any field whatever. They climb up to 70, 80, 90 per cent., and then the grade is too steep for them."

"Or run backwards downhill. I'm a passenger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to walk on myself."

"Tell me this, Mr Larssen. Did you know you were a 100 per cent. man when you started your business life, or did you come to realize it gradually?"

"I knew it from the first," replied the shipowner steadily. "Knew it when I was a mere kiddy. Set myself apart from the other boys. Told myself I was to be their master. Made myself master. Fought for it. Fought every boy who wouldn't acknowledge it.... When I went to sea as cabin-boy on the "Mary R." of Gloucester, the men on the trawler tried to "lick me into shape," as they called it. They didn't know what they were up[Pg 80] against. I used those men as whet-stones—used them to kick fear out of myself. You notice that I limp a little? That's a legacy from the days of the 'Mary R.'"

Olive looked at him with open admiration. "That's epic!" she exclaimed. "How far are you going to climb?"

Larssen had never revealed to any man or woman—save only to his wife—the great ultimate purpose of his life. He did not tell it to Olive. She was to be used as a pawn in the great game, just as he was using Sir Francis and the dead Clifford Matheson. It came upon him that she was now a widow. He would fan her open admiration so as to make use of it when she awoke to the fact of her widowhood.

So he answered: "How far I climb depends on the help of my best friends. I don't hide that. When my dear wife was with me, she was an inspiration to me. No man can drive his car to the summit without a woman to spur him on."

"Strengthened me. Bolted me to my foundations.... But here I'm monopolizing the conversation with talk about myself. Let's switch. What are your ambitions?"

Olive laughed—a laugh with a bitter taste in it. "I wanted to help a man to drive his car to the summit, and the car has stuck. I could inspire, but my inspiring goes to waste. I'm an engine racing without a shaft to take up its energy. Clifford is developing scruples. I don't know where he[Pg 81] caught them. I can't stand sick people. That's my temperament—I must have energy and action around me."

Without apparent reason her thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near them at the roulette table. "Wasn't she the image of a disappointed vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women look to you like animals? They do to me. Monte Carlo's a Zoo, only the animals aren't caged."

Sir Francis Letchmere approached them beamingly from the direction of the Casino. He had won money at trente-et-quarante, and was feeling very pleased with his own judgment and powers of intellect generally.

"Leave him to me," whispered Olive to Larssen. "I'll see that my father gets busy on the Hudson Bay Scheme. But on one condition."

"That you stay on at Monte for a few days. I don't want to be left here alone. I hate being alone."

"Leave them for a few days. Leave them to your managers. Stay here and amuse me."[Pg 82]

Larssen knew when to give way—or seem to give way—and how to do so gracefully.

"I'll stay on without asking any conditions," he answered with flattering cordiality. "It's not often I get a command so pleasant to carry out!"[Pg 83]

CHAPTER XI
A LETTER FROM RIVIÈRE

Olive made good her promise at once. She packed her father back to England the very next day, to get to work on the Hudson Bay flotation, and Lars Larssen remained on at Monte Carlo.

Though he had led Olive to believe that he had given in merely to please her, yet his true motive was very different. His feelings towards her held no scrap of passion in them. He knew her as vain, shallow, feverishly pleasure-seeking—a glittering dragon-fly. As a woman she made no appeal to him. But as a tool to serve in the attaining of his ambitions, she might conceivably be highly useful.

His true motive in remaining at Monte Carlo was double-edged—to bring Olive into the orbit of his fascination, and to mark time until the mystery of John Rivière had been set at rest.

John Rivière worried him. Deep down in his being was a keen intuitive feeling that this mysterious half-brother of the dead man was in some way linked up with the attainment of his ambitions—to help or to hinder.

Why had he not come to Monte Carlo as arranged? Why had he sent no line to Olive to excuse himself? Why had he made no further inquiry about Clifford[Pg 84] Matheson—or had he indeed made some inquiry which might set him on the track of his brother's disappearance?

It was vital to know how matters stood with this John Rivière before he could march forward unhesitatingly with the Hudson Bay flotation.

The result of the advertisements in the Paris newspapers was annoying. Where the shipowner had hoped for one answer—or perhaps a couple pointing in the same direction—over a dozen had been received. This meant waste of precious time while Sylvester unravelled them. Over the 'phone Larssen and his secretary had discussed the various answers; rejected some of them; wired for confirmatory details in respect of others. Provincial hotel-keepers and railway guards were so keenly "on the make" that they were ready to swear to identity on the slenderest basis of fact.

In pursuit of two of the clues, Sylvester travelled as far north as Valognes in the Cotentin, and as far east as Gérardmer in the Hautes-Vosges. Both journeys were fruitless, and worse than fruitless—waste of precious time and energy.

While Larssen waited eagerly for definite news from his secretary with whom he kept constantly in touch by telegram, news came in unexpected fashion through Olive.

"I've just heard from Rivière," she announced. "He's at Arles—down with a touch of fever. That's the reason he hadn't written before. Those scientist people are terribly casual in social matters."

"May I see the letter?" asked Lars Larssen. His reason for asking was a desire to study the[Pg 85] man's handwriting and draw conclusions from it. He was a keen student of handwriting.

After he had read through the note he remarked drily: "I guess I can give you another reason."

"Yes it is. I'd stake big on that. Look at the long crossings to the t's. Look at the way the date is written. Look at the way words run into one another."

Olive examined the letter carefully, and laughed. "You're right," said she. "He's travelling with some woman. Those men who are supposed to be wrapped up in their scientific experiments—you can't trust them far!"

Then she added with a curious touch of conscious virtue: "But he'd no right to get that woman to send a letter to me."

Larssen had noted the printed heading to the letter, "Hotel du Forum, Arles," and he wired at once to Morris Sylvester to proceed to Arles and hunt out further details. It seemed an unnecessary precaution, but the shipowner never neglected the tiniest detail when he had a big scheme to engineer.

His relief at the letter proved short-lived. Late that night came a message from Sylvester:—

"Rivière not at Arles and not down with fever. Am following up further clues. Will wire again in the morning."

Larssen did not show this wire to Olive. He had[Pg 86] told her nothing of his search for Rivière—had not even appeared specially interested in him. But in point of fact his interest in the mysterious half-brother of the dead man was steadily growing with every fresh check to the search. The intuition on which he placed such firm faith told him insistently that John Rivière was a factor vital to the fulfilment of his ambitions.

All the morning he looked for the telegram his secretary was to send him. It came in the early afternoon:—

"Have found Rivière under extraordinary circumstances. Letter and photograph follow."[Pg 87]

CHAPTER XII
THE SECOND MEETING

Europe's beauty-spots of to-day were the beauty-spots of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. Wherever the traveller around Europe now reaches a place that makes instant appeal; where harsh winds are screened away and blazing sunshine filters through feathery foliage; where all Nature beckons one to halt and rest awhile—there he is practically certain to find Roman remains. The wealthy Romans wintered at Nice and Cannes and St Raphael; took the waters at Baden-Baden and Aix in Savoy; made sporting centres of Treves on the Moselle and Ronda in Andalusia; dallied by the marble baths of Nîmes.

Nîmes had captured Rivière at sight. His first day in that leisured, peaceful, fragrant town, nestling amongst the hills against the keen mistral, had decided him to settle there for some weeks. He had taken a couple of furnished rooms in a villa with a delightful old-world garden. For a lengthy stay he much preferred his own rooms to the transiency and restlessness of a hotel, and at the Villa Clémentine he had found exactly what he required. The living-room opened wide to the sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a little pebbly path led one wandering amongst[Pg 88] oleanders and dwarf oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun. Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Rivière took breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with the suddenness of the impetuousness Midi, and his evening meal was accordingly taken indoors.

Besides this little private preserve of his own, there was the beautiful public garden of Nîmes—called the Jardin de la Fontaine—draping a hillside that looks down upon the marble baths of the Romans, almost as freshly new to-day as two thousand years ago. A thick battalion of trees at the summit of the hillside makes stubborn insistence to the northern mistral, so that even when the wind tears over the plains of Provence like a wild fury, scourging and freezing, the Jardin de la Fontaine is serene and windless. The mistral goes always with a cloudless sky, as though the clouds were fleeing from its icy keenness, and the sun pours full upon the semi-circle of the Jardin de la Fontaine, turning it to a hothouse where the most delicate plants and shrubs can find a home.

Here men and women in toga and flowing draperies have whiled away leisure hours, spun day-dreams, made love, or schemed affairs of state and personal ambition. To-day, it is still the resort of Nîmes where everyone meets everyone else, either by design or by the chance intercourse of a small town.

On a morning of mistral, Rivière was seated in[Pg 89] the pleasant warmth of the Jardin, planning out a special piece of apparatus for his coming research-work. He was concentrating intently—so intently that he did not notice Miss Verney passing him with a very professional-looking campstool, easel and sketch-book.

This second encounter was pure accident. Elaine had no intentions whatever of following the man who had left Arles with such boorish brusqueness, without even the conventional good-bye at the breakfast-table. She had come to Nîmes because she was a worker, because this town contained special material necessary to her bread-winning.

She had guessed that Rivière's hurried departure from Arles was made in order to avoid meeting her. It hurt. Woman-like, she set more value on a few pleasant words of farewell over a breakfast-table and a warm handshake than on a defence from assault at the risk of a man's life. The seeming illogicality of woman is of course a mere surface illusion. It hides a train of reasoning very different to a man's. It is a mental short-cut like an Irishman's "bull," which condenses a whole chain of thought into a single link.

In this case Elaine knew that Rivière's rescue held no personal significance. He did not know at the time that it was she who was being attacked. He would have gone to the defence of any woman under similar circumstances. While altruism appealed to her strongly in a broad, general way, it did not appeal when it came home in such a specific, individual fashion.

On the other hand, a warm handshake at the[Pg 90] breakfast-table would have its personal significance. It would be a homage to herself, and not to women in general. Its value would lie in its personal meaning.

While she knew this thought was ungenerous, yet at the same time she knew that behind it there lay a sound basis of reason.

Her pride—that form of pride which is a very wholesome self-respect—made her flush at the thought that Rivière would see her and imagine, in a man's way, that she had followed him to Nîmes. She hurried on past him with a rapid side-glance. The situation was an awkward one. She had her work to do by the old Roman baths and the Druid's Tower on the hillside, and she could not leave Nîmes without doing it.

When he came face to face with her, perhaps it would be best to give a cold bow of formal recognition—the kind of bow that says "Good morning. I'm busy. You're not wanted."

And yet, there was news for him in her possession of which he ought to be informed. It was only fair to the man who had defended her at considerable personal risk that she should do him this small service in return. In her pocket was a cutting of an advertisement in a Parisian paper, several days old, asking for the whereabouts of John Rivière. Very possibly he had not seen it himself. It was only fair to let him know of it. The stitches in his forehead, which she had noted as she hurried past—these called mutely for the small service in return.

Elaine decided to wait until he recognized her, to give him the advertisement, and then to conclude[Pg 91] their acquaintanceship with a few formal words of which the meaning would be unmistakable. Accordingly she set her campstool not far away from him, and began her sketching in a vigorous, characteristic fashion.

It was an hour or more before her intuition warned her that Rivière was approaching from behind. As he passed, she raised her eyes quite naturally as though to look at the subject she was finishing. Their eyes met. Rivière raised his hat politely but without any special significance. His attitude conveyed no desire to renew their acquaintance. He did not stop to exchange a few words, as she expected.

Elaine was hurt. She felt that he should at least have given her the opportunity to refuse acquaintanceship. And a sudden resolve fired up within her to humble this man of ice—to melt him, and bring him to her feet, and then to dismiss him.

"I don't know which friends. But there's an advertisement in a Paris paper asking for your whereabouts."

She produced the cutting and handed it to him. He studied it in silence. There was no hint in its wording as to who was making inquiry—the advertisement merely asked for replies to be sent to a box number care of the journal. It struck Rivière that it must have been inserted by Olive.

"I'm going to ask something in return," said Elaine, and smiled at him frankly. "I want to know why you're running away from your Monte Carlo friends."

Most women of Rivière's world would have cloaked their curiosity under some conventional, indirect form of question. Her frank directness struck him as refreshing, and he answered readily: "The lady you saw in the Côte d'Azur Rapide was my sister-in-law, Mrs Matheson. Mrs Clifford Matheson."

"The wife of that man!" she interrupted. There was anger and contempt in her voice.

"My father lost the last remains of his money in one of that man's companies. It hastened his death."

"The Saskatchewan Land Development Co. My father bought during the early boom in the shares."

Rivière remembered that he himself had cleared £50,000 over the flotation, and the remembrance jarred on him. The company was a moderately successful one, but in its early days the shares had been "rigged" to an unreal figure. Still, he felt[Pg 93] compelled, almost against his will, to defend his past action.

"I'm very sorry to hear of the loss; but a man who speculates in the stock market must look out for himself. It's a risky game for the outsider to play."

Elaine silently recognized the truth of his words. Then it came to her suddenly that Rivière had, a few moments ago, used the word "sister-in-law," and she said: "I was forgetting that Mr Matheson must be a relative of yours."

She looked at him with a searching frankness that was in its way a tacit compliment. He was radically different to the mental picture she had formed of the financier.

He continued: "The lady you saw in the train was my sister-in-law. As you already know, she expects me to join her at Monte Carlo. I don't want to be drawn into that kind of life. I want to remain quiet. I have important work to do."

"Yes. And there's a big stretch of it in front of me. That's why I'm not travelling on to Monte[Pg 94] Carlo. You understand my position now, Miss Verney?"

"Yes." Then she added: "And you're wondering why an unmarried woman should be wandering alone amongst the by-ways of France?"

Rivière looked towards her almost finished sketch of the Roman baths. She removed it and passed him the rest of the book. He found the book filled with curiously formal sketches and paintings of scenery—woodland glades, open heaths, temples, arenas, and so on. These sketches caught boldly at the high-lights of what they pictured, and ignored detail. The colouring was also very noticeably simplified—"impressionistic" would better express it.

"They are. Sketches for stage scenes. I'm a scene painter. Just now I'm gathering material for the staging of a Roman drama with a setting in Roman Provence. Barrèze is to produce it at the Odéon. It's my first big chance."

Rivière pointed to one of her sketches. "Wasn't this worked into a scene for 'Ames Nues,' at the Chatelet?"

"I remember being very much impressed by it at the time.... Yours must be particularly interesting work?"

"The work one likes best is always peculiarly[Pg 95] interesting. That's happiness—to have the work one likes best."

Seeing that Rivière was genuinely interested, she began to dilate on her work, explaining something of its technique, telling of its peculiar difficulties. She showed him her sketches taken at Arles; mentioned Orange, for its Roman arch and theatre, as a stopping-place on her return journey to Paris. There was a glow in her voice that told clearly of her absorption in her chosen work.

Rivière was enjoying the frank camaraderie of their conversation. Suddenly the thought of the newspaper cutting came back to him sharply. If Olive had inserted that advertisement, she must have some special reason for it. Perhaps she wanted to communicate with him in reference to the "death" of Matheson. Some hotel-keeper or railway-guard would no doubt have seen the advertisement and answered it, letting her know of Rivière's stay at Arles.

It would be prudent to write and allay suspicion. But he could not pen the letter himself, because his handwriting would be recognized by Olive.

Rivière solved the difficulty in his usual decisive fashion. "Miss Verney," he said, "I wonder if you would do me a very big favour without asking for my reasons in detail? It's a most unusual request I'm going to make."

Elaine remembered her resolve to thaw this man of ice, and bring him to her feet, and then dismiss him. She had thawed him already. To do him some special favour would be a most excellent means of attaining the second end. She answered:[Pg 96]

"You know that I want to avoid Monte Carlo. I don't even want my sister-in-law to know that I'm at Nîmes."

"Will you write a letter for me to say that I'm unwell and can't travel away from Arles?"

Elaine looked at him searchingly. "It's certainly a most unusual request to make of a mere acquaintance," she remarked.

She worked on in silence for another quarter of an hour, completing her picture with rapid, vigorous brush-strokes. Then he took up her campstool and easel, and they walked together alongside the Roman aqueduct to the centre of the town, under an avenue of tall, spreading plane trees, yellow with the first delicate leaves of Spring like the feathers of a newborn chick.

The sunshine caressed the little garden of the Villa Clémentine, coquetting with the flaming cannas, twinkling amongst the pebbles of the paths, stroking the backs of the lazy goldfish. Seating Elaine in the arbour, Rivière brought out pen and ink and a sheet of paper headed "Hotel du Forum, Place du Forum, Arles," which he happened to have kept by accident from his visit to the town. Then he dictated a formal letter to Mrs Matheson, explaining that he was laid up with a touch of fever[Pg 97] and would not be able to join her at Monte Carlo. The illness was not serious, and there was no cause for anxiety. Nevertheless it kept him tied. He hoped she would excuse him.

"There will be a Nîmes postmark on the envelope," commented Elaine as she wrote the address.

"No; I shall go over to Arles this afternoon and post it there. As you know, it's scarcely an hour away by train." He glanced at his watch. "Past twelve o'clock already! Won't you stay and take lunch with me? Madame Giras is famous in Nîmes for her bouillabaisse."

She agreed readily, and a dainty lunch was soon served them in the covered arbour. Over the olives and bouillabaisse and the œufs provençals they chatted in easy, friendly fashion about impersonal matters—the strange charm of Provence, art, music, the theatre.

From that the conversation passed imperceptibly to more personal matters. Elaine, keeping to her resolve of the morning, led it in that direction. He learnt that she was an orphan; that her nearest relatives were entirely out of sympathy with her ideas and aspirations, and profoundly distasteful to her; that she took full pride in her independence and the position she was carving out for herself in the world of theatrical art.

"To be free; to be independent; to live your own life; to know that you buy your bread and bed with the money you've earned yourself—it's fine, it's splendid!" said Elaine, with flushed cheek. "I wonder if men ever have that feeling as strongly as we women do?"[Pg 98]

In the afternoon Rivière took train to Arles. The way lies by vineyards and olive orchards alternating with open, wind-swept heathland. The stunted olive trees, twisted and gnarled, pictured themselves to him as little old men worn and weary with their fight against the winds. Here the mistral was master and the olive trees his slaves.

At Arles Rivière posted his letter in a box on the platform of the station, and asked of a porter when the next train would take him back to Nîmes. Standing close by as he asked this question was a lean, wiry, crafty-looking peasant of the Camargue—a hard-bit youth toughened by his work on the soil. The most prominent feature of the face was the nose smashed out of shape. Rivière did not know that it was he himself who had left that life-mark on the young man only a few days before—he had almost forgotten the incident—but the latter recognized Rivière at once and went white with anger under the tanned skin.

Whilst he would have taken a blow from the knife as "all in the game," a smash from a bare fist that made a permanent disfigurement was completely outside his code of sportsmanship. He[Pg 99] resented it with the white-hot passion of the Midi.

The meeting was pure chance. Crau, the young Provençal, was on the station to take train back to his home village in the marshes. Now he made a sudden resolution, and going to the booking-office, asked for a ticket for Nîmes. He had relations in that town—small tradespeople—and he would pay a visit to them for a few days.

"Our game is not yet finished, Mr Englishman," he muttered to himself. "No, not yet finished!"

When the train reached Nîmes, Rivière alighted from a first-class compartment, quite unconscious of being followed by the young Provençal from a third-class compartment. Outside the station, in the broad Avenue de la Gare that leads to the heart of the town, Rivière hailed a cab and gave the address, Villa Clémentine.

"Villa Clémentine," he repeated to himself, and again "Villa Clémentine," to fit it securely in his memory. Then his lips worked with passionate revenge as he thought: "You have spoilt my looks, Mr Englishman; and now, sangredieu, to spoil yours!"

CHAPTER XIII
AT THE MAISON CARRÉE

The mystery of John Rivière intrigued Elaine. There was certainly a mysterious something about this man which she had not fathomed. His most open confidences held deep reserves. If he had not avowed himself a scientist, she would have classed him as a man of business. In those brief comments on Stock Exchange speculation, he had spoken in a tone of easy authority which goes only with intimate knowledge. He was no recluse, but a man of the world—a man who had clearly moved amongst men and women and held his place with ease.

The idea that he was a boor had been entirely shelved. But why that brusque, boorish disappearance from Arles?

Elaine, thinking matters over in the solitude of her room on the evening of the second encounter, was beginning to regret her resolve to humble John Rivière. It began to appear petty and unworthy. She had no doubt now that she could bring him to her feet if she wished, by skilful acting. Or even—in her thoughts she whispered it to herself—or even without acting a part.

But that thought she thrust aside. She had her work to do in the world—the work that she loved.[Pg 101] It called imperiously for all her energies. She was free, she was independent, her daily bread was of her own buying; and she wished circumstances to remain as they were.

Elaine decided to give up her petty resolve. She would avoid meeting him intentionally, and if they met, she would bring the plane of conversation down again to the superficiality of mere tourist acquaintanceship—"meet to-day and part to-morrow."

For his part, Rivière had found keen enjoyment in this frank camaraderie. They met as equals on the mental plane. Both were profoundly interested in their respective life-work. They held ideas in common on a score of impersonal topics. He told himself that he had behaved very boorishly in his abrupt departure from Arles. It had been unnecessary, as Chance had now pointed out to him by this second accidental encounter. This acquaintanceship was the merest passing of "ships that pass in the night"—in a day or two she would be away and back to Paris, and in all human probability they would never meet again.

It was generous of her to have greeted him as though she had not noticed the abruptness of his departure from Arles. It was generous of her to have clipped out the newspaper advertisement and to have called his attention to it. He mentally apologized to her for his curt behaviour.

The next morning, Rivière did not find Elaine at the Jardin de la Fontaine. He wanted to meet her. He wanted to let her know indirectly what he was feeling. And so, almost unconsciously, he[Pg 102] found himself walking away from the Jardin towards the centre of the town, towards the ruined arena and the Roman temple known as the Maison Carrée. Most probably she would be sketching at one or other of them.

He found her at the Maison Carrée—a square Roman temple on which Time has laid no rougher hand than on a white-haired mother still rosy of cheek and young of heart. Elaine was sketching it in her book with the bold lines of the scene-painter, ignoring detail and working only for the high-lights and deep shadows. Round her, peeking over her shoulders and chattering shrilly, were a group of children. In the background lounged a young Provençal peasant with a nose twisted out of shape.

"Shall I lure the children away?" asked Rivière as he raised his soft felt hat.

"Thanks—it would be a relief," answered Elaine, but with a coldness in her greeting that struck him as curious.

A few coppers scattered the children; the peasant slunk sullenly away. His eye and Rivière's met, but there was no recognition on the part of the latter.

"No, I'm learning." He nodded towards her sketch-book. "May I continue the lesson?"

Rivière groped mentally for the reason of this curious change of attitude. Yesterday she had[Pg 103] been frankly friendly; to-day she held herself distinctly aloof. Had he offended her in some way?

He continued soberly. "I'm not paying insincere compliments. It isn't your sketch which interests me so much as your method of sketching. The directness of it. The way you get to the heart of the subject without worrying over detail. The incisiveness. I'm mentally applying your method to the problems of my own work.... To stand here and watch you sketching is pure selfishness on my part."

"Like other men, you imagine that women can't get beyond detail." A flush had come into her voice. "All through the ages men have been learning from women and refusing to acknowledge it."

"Take novel-writing. Men sneer at the woman-novelist—say that she cannot draw a man to the life."

"What's the reason? Because one can't draw to any satisfaction without models to base on. Because a man never lets a woman into his innermost thoughts."

"It doesn't. Women give up their innermost secrets to men because——Well, because woman is the sex that gives and man the sex that takes. It's been bred in and in through the whole history of civilization."[Pg 104]

"You're thinking of the things that don't matter—money, jewels, dress, mansions, servants. Those are the cheap things that man gives in return for the gifts that are priceless."

Rivière shook his head. "You argue only from a limited knowledge of the world. There are plenty of women who take everything—everything—and give nothing in return. Perhaps you don't know such women. I do."

"No, I'm thinking of femmes du monde. There are plenty of virtuous married women who are as grasping as the most soulless underworlder. Probably you don't see them. You look at the world in a magic crystal that mirrors back your own thoughts and your own personality in different guises. You see a thousand YOU's, dressed up as other people."

Elaine had become very thoughtful. "My magic crystal—yes." she mused. "But surely everyone has his or her crystal to look into."

"Some can keep crystal-vision and reality apart. That's 'balance' ... And there lies the failure of the feminists—in 'balance.' They make up a bundle of all the iniquities of human nature, and try to dump it on man's side of the fence."

"I love argument, but art is long and my stay at Nîmes very brief. To-morrow I must move on to Orange."

"Then I'll not disturb you further. I expect you have a good deal to get through."[Pg 105]

Rivière felt uneasy over the matter. He did not wish to urge an undesired escort upon her, but he did not like to think of her working alone by the solitude of the Druids' Tower at night-time.

"If I can be of any service to you while you are here at Nîmes," he said, "you have only to send a note to the Villa Clémentine."

With that he said good-bye and left her. It seemed evident that he had offended her in some way. Possibly, he thought, it was by asking her to write that letter to Olive. Though she had agreed willingly enough at the time, it was possible that afterwards she had regretted it. It had offended against her sense of right. Rivière felt distressed.

Then the remembrance came to him that this was the merest tourist acquaintanceship. To-morrow she would be leaving Nîmes, and the episode would pass out of her thoughts. Probably they would never meet again. It was not worth further thought on either side.

Resolutely he banished all thoughts of Elaine[Pg 106] from his mind, and concentrated on his own work-problems.

From the corner of a lane near the Maison Carrée, Crau, the young Provençal, had been watching them keenly as they talked together.[Pg 107]

CHAPTER XIV
BY THE DRUIDS' TOWER

Mme Giras, the proprietress of the Villa Clémentine, was a rosy, smiling body, plumped and rounded in almost every aspect, and with a heart of gold. Yesterday it had been plain to her shrewd, twinkling eyes that monsieur and mademoiselle were soon to make a match of it. Of course it was very shocking that mademoiselle should be travelling about alone at her age, but much could be forgiven in so charming a young lady.

When Rivière returned to the villa for lunch, he found the table in the arbour laid for two, and by one plate a rose had been placed.

"After all my preparations! And the lunch that was to be my chef d'œuvre!" There was keen disappointment in her voice. "But perhaps mademoiselle will be coming to dine this evening?"

"No, nor this evening. Mademoiselle is very busy with her work. She is to leave Nîmes to-morrow."

"And monsieur also?" There was tragedy in[Pg 108] her tone. It must mean that monsieur would give up his rooms to follow the young lady.

"I shall probably remain here for a month or more," answered Rivière somewhat stiffly: and then to salve her feelings: "You are making me wonderfully comfortable. I shall always associate the Midi with Mme Giras."

"Monsieur est bien amiable!" replied the little old lady, much pleased. She hurried off to the kitchen to see that Marie was making no error of judgment in the mixing of the sauces.

Rivière felt glad that the acquaintanceship with Elaine had progressed no further. It was decidedly for the best that it had ended where it had. Both of them had their life-work to call for all their energies. Further companionship would only divert them from it. In his innermost being he knew that, and now he acknowledged it frankly to himself. From every point of view, it was best that their acquaintanceship should end.

But late that afternoon a brief note came from Elaine. "Dear Mr Rivière," it said, "I have considered your warning. If you will be so kind as to accompany me this evening while I am sketching the Druids' Tower, I shall be glad. I propose to leave the hotel about eight."

Rivière was at her hotel punctually at eight. He helped her into her warm travelling cloak, and taking up her campstool and easel they walked briskly, with healthy, swinging strides, out by the avenue of plane trees bordering the Roman aqueduct.

They ascended the now deserted garden on the hillside till they came to the ruined tower which[Pg 109] was grey with age when Roman legions first swept in triumph over the country of the barbarians of Gaul. A chill wind set the pines and the olives whispering mournfully together. The windowless tower brooded over its memories of the past, like an aged seer blind with years. The moonlight touched it tentatively as though it feared to disturb its dreaming.

It was a perfect stage scene for a secret meeting of conspirators. In the daylight, the tower was ugly with its rubble of fallen stones—unkempt like a ragged tramp—but in the moonlight there was a glamour of ages in its mournful brooding. Elaine was right to make her sketch at night-time. Rivière placed the campstool for her, and watched her in silence as she plied her pencil with swift, decisive lines.

With lithe, catlike softness, the youth Crau had followed them up the hillside, padding noiselessly in the shadows of the pines and olives. Crouching behind a tree, he felt in his breast-pocket and drew out a small package which he quietly unwrapped from its foldings. Then he waited his moment with every muscle tensed for action.

The night wind was chill. Rivière started to pace up and down a few steps away from Elaine. He approached nearer to the tree behind which Crau was crouching in shadow.

"Now you'll pay me what you owe!" he cried out in Provençal. "You cursed pig of an Englishman!"[Pg 110]

Rivière did not understand the words, but the menace in the voice left no doubt as to the meaning. And the voice brought back to him the narrow ruelle at Arles where he had defended Elaine from the insult of the half-drunken peasant.

He was about to step forward to grapple with him, when a warning cry from Elaine stopped him for one crucial instant.

"Look out! There's something in his hand!" she called, and rushed impetuously forward to make her warning clear.

As she came within range, Crau raised his arm to throw his vitriol into Rivière's face, but in a fraction of a second a sudden thought changed the direction of his aim.

"Your beautiful mistress! that will serve me better!" he hissed out venomously as he flung it full upon Elaine; then fled at top speed.

CHAPTER XV
WAITING THE VERDICT

Elaine lay in Rivière's room in the Villa Clémentine. The doctor was injecting morphine, and a sister of mercy, grave-eyed under her spotless white coif like a Madonna of Francia, spoke soft words of comfort to soothe the agony of the blinded girl.

In the adjoining room Rivière waited the decision of the doctor—waited in tense, straining anxiety.

From that moment by the Druids' Tower when the vitriol had been flung upon Elaine, he had lived through a nightmare. Up on the hillside he was impotent to relieve her agony. No house around to take her to. Without a moment's delay he must get her into the hands of a doctor.

At first he had tried to lead her down the hillside, along the winding paths of the gardens, his hands around her shoulders. It was too slow. Twice the moaning girl had tripped over unseen obstacles. Then he caught her up in his arms and ran with her, the shadows of the trees and the undergrowth clutching at him like mocking shapes in a Dantesque vision of the nether world.

Even when down below the hillside, by the aqueduct, they were still far from the Villa Clémen[Pg 112]tine and yet farther from Elaine's hotel by the station. Some conveyance was imperative. But in a quiet country town like Nîmes there are no cabs to be found wandering around at night-time. Nor was there carriage or motor-car in sight.

A peasant's cart drawn by a tiny donkey came providentially to solve the problem. Rivière laid Elaine on the straw of the cart; snatched the reins from the owner; drove home at frantic speed; had her put to bed in his own room by Mme Giras; 'phoned imperatively for a doctor and a nurse.

And now he waited in straining anxiety for the verdict. The waiting was more horrible than the nightmare flight through the shadows of the garden on the hillside. That at all events had been action; now he was being stretched in passive helplessness on the rack of Time.

After an æon of waiting, the doctor left the sick-room and closed the door noiselessly behind him. Rivière looked him square in the eye.

"I want the truth," he said in French. The words sounded as though his throat had closed in tight around them.

"We must wait until the morning before it will be possible that we may say definitely," replied the doctor.

"I greatly fear——" A slight gesture of his two hands completed the sentence.

"But you must not despair," continued the[Pg 113] doctor in an endeavour to be optimistic. "Madame is strong and healthy. She has a very sound constitution, and in such a case as this it is a most important factor in the recovery. You may rely on me to do my utmost. I have great hopes that we may save the right eye of madame, your wife."

"That would serve no useful purpose. I have injected a large dose of morphine, and mademoiselle is on the point of sleep. I have left full instructions with the Sister, and if anything unforeseen occurs, she will communicate with me by telephone."

"I have a further question to ask you, doctor. Mademoiselle Verney is alone in Nîmes. She has no friends here beyond myself, and she has been staying at the Hotel de Provence while passing through the town. Would it be better for her to be at the hotel, or at the town hospital, or here?"

"Here—decidedly!" answered the doctor. "Mme Giras is kindness itself—I know her well. I recommend that mademoiselle stay here."

Rivière could do nothing but wait the verdict of the morning, tortured by hopes and fears. The doctor had spoken of saving the right eye, but was this mere professional optimism?

Suppose Elaine were blinded for life—blinded on his account. What was she to do for her livelihood? He knew that she was an orphan; that her relations were repellant to her; and her pride could scarcely let her throw herself for long on the hospitality of[Pg 114] her friends in Paris. Her slender means would soon be exhausted—what was she to do then?

With overwhelming conviction Rivière saw the inevitable solution. She had been blinded while trying to save him. The debt, the overwhelming debt, lay on him. He must provide for her, guard over her.

In the cold grey of a mist-shrouded morning he woke with a new insistent thought hammering into his brain. For the first time since he had taken up the personality of John Rivière, doubt surged upon him in wave after wave of icy, sullen surf. Had he had the right to cut loose from the life of Clifford Matheson? Had one alone of a married couple the right to decide on such a separation? Had he violated some unwritten law of Fate, and was this the hand of Fate punishing him through the woman he cared for more deeply than he had yet confessed to himself?

He knew now that from the first moment of their meeting by the arena of Arles she had opened within him—against his volition—a whole realm of inner feelings which up till then had lain dormant. He had wanted no woman in this new life of his, and both at Arles and at Nîmes he had tried to shut and bolt the gate of the secret realm. Sincerely he had wanted to give his whole thoughts and energies to his future work, but here was something which persisted in his inner consciousness against his will. It was like curtaining the windows and shutting one's eyes against a storm—in spite of barriers the lightning slashes through to the retina of the eye.[Pg 115]

Rivière rose with determination and flung the thought aside. "Fate" was only a bogey to frighten children with. "Fate" was a coward's master. Every man had the right to rough-hew his own life. He, Rivière, had chosen his new life with eyes open, and, right or wrong, he would stick by his choice and hew out his life on his own lines. If "Fate" were indeed a reality, then he would fight it as he had fought Lars Larssen. He would unknot the tangled threads at whatever cost to himself.

The doctor looked very grave when he had left Elaine's bedside the next morning.

"The injuries are very serious," he told Rivière. "The cornea of the right eye has almost been destroyed by the acid. It will heal over, but the sight will not be as it was before."

"You mean blinded for life—in both eyes?" asked Rivière, ruthless for his own feelings.

"We must not hope for too much," hedged the doctor. "A great deal depends on the course of the recovery. I wish not to raise false hopes...."

"You must pardon what I am going to say, doctor. I have every confidence in your skill, but is it not possible that the help of an eye specialist from Paris or Lyons might be of service?"

The doctor put false dignity aside and answered sympathetically: "You are right, monsieur, a specialist is needed. As soon as mademoiselle can stand the long journey, I would advise that she be[Pg 116] taken to Wiesbaden, to the very greatest specialist in the world."

The doctor shook his head decisively. "Only for kings does he travel. He has too many patients in his surgical home at Wiesbaden who need him daily."

Information of the attack had of course been given to the police, who were hot on the trail of the youth Crau. Meanwhile the local papers sent their reporters to interview Rivière. He was too well accustomed to the ways of pressmen to refuse an interview. He received them and replied with the very briefest facts of the case, explaining that he wished to avoid publicity so far as it was possible. He asked them at all events to leave out names, as French journals will sometimes do, on request.

Amongst the callers was an Englishman who sent in word that he was a local correspondent for the Europe Chronicle. Rivière had him shown into the garden of the villa, to the arbour. The would-be interviewer was a man of thirty, quiet and secretive looking, with a heavy dark moustache curtaining the expression of his lips. "Morris Sylvester" was the name on his card.

He carried a hand-camera, which he placed on a seat beside him and pointed it towards the path[Pg 117] from the house. As Rivière approached, Sylvester's left hand was fingering the silent release of the instantaneous shutter. He had made a practice of working his camera surreptitiously while his eyes held the eyes of his subject.

"Mr Sylvester," began Rivière, "I want to ask you a favour, as one Englishman to another. Publicity is extremely distasteful to the lady who has been so terribly injured. To have her story spread broadcast for the satisfaction of idle curiosity would only add to her sufferings. Isn't it possible for you to suppress this story?"

Sylvester looked hesitant. "I am sincerely sorry for the lady," he said. "But of course I have my duty to my journal. I had intended to wire a full column, and take a picture of the scene of the attack by the Druids' Tower." He took up his camera from the seat beside him, as though to show his purpose.

After a moment of reflection he added: "Would it satisfy you if I were to suppress names?"

"I would much rather you wrote nothing at all," replied Rivière. "I know that I can't insist. I appeal to your generosity in the matter."

"Very well. Under the circumstances, in deference to the feelings of your friend, I'll take it on myself to suppress the story."

"That's very kind of you. Is there no form of quid pro quo...?" suggested Rivière tentatively.

Over the glasses Sylvester chatted pleasantly[Pg 118] about matter of no import, and then brought the conversation round to the real object of his visit—to get certain information for Lars Larssen.

"Your name seems familiar to me, somehow," he ventured. "Aren't you a scientist, Mr Rivière?"

"Ah, that's it.... A very remarkable man. I had the pleasure of interviewing him once, at his office in the Rue Lafitte."

Rivière knew that for a lie. He had never seen Sylvester before, to his knowledge, and he had a keen memory for faces. What was the man driving at? He must try and discover. With his long years of business training behind him, Rivière became suddenly expansive, talking with apparent frankness without in reality saying anything of import.

"As you say, a remarkable man. That is, as a financier. Personally I have no interests in that direction. My brother and I have very little in common. He is the man of affairs, and I am buried in my work. What was the subject of your interview with him?"

"Canada's future. He gave me a splendid interview—first-rate copy," lied Sylvester. "Have you seen your brother lately? Is he engaged on any big scheme just now? Perhaps you could put me on to a news story in that direction? I should be glad if you could."[Pg 119]

Rivière knew that Sylvester was fishing for information of some kind, but what it was puzzled him completely, unless the man were now speaking the truth in his statement that he was on the look-out for financial news. That seemed the only solution of the puzzle.

"I've seen nothing of my brother lately," answered Rivière. "He's at Monte Carlo, I believe. I'm sorry not to be able to help you in the matter, but, as I said before, I'm very little interested in my brother's movements or plans. His ways and mine lie apart. If I hear of anything that might be of service to you, I'll let you know. Will you give me your address?"

"Hotel de la Poste will find me. I travel about the Midi for the Chronicle. They'll send on any message for me at the hotel."

"Many thanks for your kindness in the matter of suppressing the story of the attack," said Rivière, and his tone intimated that it was now time for the visitor to leave.

Sylvester, having gained the objects of his visit, rose and took his departure. Inside half-an-hour he had developed an excellent snap-shot of Rivière walking along the garden path towards him. He wrote a long letter to Lars Larssen explaining that John Rivière apparently knew nothing of the disappearance of Clifford Matheson, and detailing the story of Elaine and the vitriol outrage.

Inside a room, closely shuttered to keep out the[Pg 120] light, Rivière was talking earnestly with Elaine a few days later. The agony of the first days had died down, but she was absolutely helpless. Her eyes were bandaged, and she was dependent on the sister of mercy and Mme Giras for everything.

"Crau is in prison," said he. "I've given formal evidence against him, and he is remanded for trial a month hence. When you are well again, they will take your evidence on commission. He will undoubtedly be sentenced to hard labour for some years."

"The doctor is very hopeful for you, if you will put yourself under Hegelmann's care."

"He can do nothing for me, I feel it. Only useless expense. No man can give me back the sight I want for my work."

"In time," said Rivière gently, but he could not force conviction into his voice. It went hard with him to lie to the woman he cared for most in the world, even to bring temporary comfort to her.

"My work. Barrèze and the Odéon," she murmured slowly, speaking to herself rather than to him. "My work was my life. I remember your saying to me in the garden, by the arbour, only a few days ago: 'If Fate were to deny you your freedom!' I shivered even at the words.... Do you believe in Fate?"

She was silent for a few moments. Then she asked: "Will you write a letter for me?"[Pg 121]

"My dear Barrèze," she dictated slowly, "you must find someone else to paint your scenes of Provence. I am blinded for life——"

"I am blinded for life," she continued with the clear tones of one whose mental vision sees the future unveiled. "They want me to go to Hegelmann at Wiesbaden. He is a great man, and will do for me all that surgical skill can do. There will be an operation—several, perhaps. It may perhaps give me a faint gleam of light—enough to tell light from darkness and to realize more keenly all that I have lost. I shall never see the theatre again—never paint again. I shall live on the memories of the past and the bitter thoughts of what might have been——"

"I can't write it!" he cried, torn with the pathos of the words she bade him put to paper.

"——of what might have been. My friends of the theatre must pass out of my life. They can have no use for a crippled, helpless woman, nor do I wish to cloud their happiness with my unwanted presence. Say good-bye to them for me. And you, my dear Barrèze, I would thank for the chance you gave me. Your encouragement would have had its reward if I had kept my sight. But it is gone—gone for always—and I am wreckage on the rocks...."

"Elaine, Elaine!" he cried. "You have me by your side! I ask you to let me devote my life to you!"

The answer came gently: "I must not accept[Pg 122] such a sacrifice. You offer it out of pity for me. Later, you would repent of it. You have your work to do and your life to live in the open sunshine.... Yet don't think me ungrateful. I am deeply grateful. I shall remember what you said out of pity for me, and treasure it amongst my dearest thoughts."

He stopped abruptly. The accusing hand of memory had touched him on the shoulder. He had no right to make any such offer—it had come from his heart in passionate sincerity, but it was not his to give. Olive was still his wife. Disguise it as he would, he was still Clifford Matheson.

He must leave Elaine to think that pity alone had moulded his words. To explain to her now the shackles of circumstance that bound him fast would be sheer cruelty, for if she knew the whole truth, she would send him away from her and refuse even the temporary help he could give her.

A pause of bitter reflection raised a barrier of stone between them. When he spoke again, it was from the other side of the barrier. "At least you will let me stay by you until you leave Hegelmann's charge? That I claim.... And I believe he will be able to do for you much more than you imagine. He has worked wonders before. He will do so again. He is the foremost specialist in the world. All that money can command shall be yours."

CHAPTER XVI
ONLY PITY!

In those weary days of the sick-room at Nîmes, and on the long railway journey through Lyons, Besançon and Strasburg to Wiesbaden, Elaine had turned over and over, in feverishly restless search for hope, the possibilities that lay before her.

Her total capital was comprised in a few hundred pounds and the furniture of the flat she shared in Paris with a girl friend—a student at the Conservatoire. The money would see her through the expenses of Dr Hegelmann's nursing home and for a few months afterwards—a year at the outside. After that she must inevitably be dependent on the charity of friends or on some charitable institution.

The thought of the time when her capital would be gone was like an icy hand gripping at her heart. "Money is terribly useless," she had said to Rivière, but there were times when she wished passionately that she had the money with which to buy comforts for a life of blindness. Those were craven moments, however—moments which she despised when they were past. Of what use to her would be the silken-padded cage she had longed to buy, when life held for her no work, no love?[Pg 124]

Rivière she had thought of a thousand times. His every action and word in the days of their first acquaintanceship came back to her with the wonderful inner clarity of sight and hearing that belongs to those who have no outer vision.

She saw him at the arena of Arles, standing on the topmost tier a few yards distant from her, watching the red ball of the sun sink down into the mists of the grey Camargue. He was aloof and cold—icy, unapproachable, masked in reserve.

She saw him in the ruelle of Arles, with the light from the shuttered window falling on him in bars of yellow and black, fighting with Berserk fury against the bare knife of the Provençal youth. Here he was primitive man unchained—a Rodin figure with muscles knotted in a riot of hot-blooded passion. He was battling for her.

No, not for her, but for the duty that a man owes to womankind. "I didn't even know it was you," he had said curtly. That had hurt her at the time, but now it seared into her. The rescue had meant nothing—it had brought him no nearer to her. He was still cold and aloof.

She saw him in the Jardin de la Fontaine, lifting his hat with formal politeness and making to move on. Still aloof, still encased in cold reserve.

With deliberate intent she had set herself to melt him, and she had succeeded. By the arbour of the Villa Clémentine she saw him, chatting animatedly in keen enjoyment of her frank camaraderie. But that was only casual friendship. Still aloof in what now mattered vitally to her.[Pg 125]

She saw him seeking her out by the Maison Carrée, standing to watch her sketch and passing to her the compliment of candid praise. Then he had come nearer, but by such a little!

She saw him silvered in the moonlight by the Druids' Tower, standing at her easel. Here he would surely have revealed himself if he had had thoughts to utter of inner feelings. But he had remained silent.

Then there rang in her ears his passionate declaration of the sick-room: "Elaine! Elaine! You have me by your side! I ask you to let me devote my life to you!"

She weighed it scrupulously in the balance of reason, and judged it Pity. It was the hasty word of a chivalrous man torn by the sight of her helplessness. If it had been love, he would not have been stopped by her refusal. Love is insistent, headstrong, ruthless of obstacles. Love would have forced his offer upon her again and again. Love would have divined the doubt in her mind. Love would have drowned it in kisses.

It was not Love but Pity that Rivière felt for her. And while she silently thanked him for it, it was not enough. She would not encumber the life of a man who felt merely Pity for her. That would be degradation worse than the acceptance of public charity.

Out of all the turmoil of her fevered thoughts there came this one conclusion: when her last money had been spent, when there only remained for her the bitter bread of charity, she would pass[Pg 126] quietly out of life to a world where the outer sight would matter nothing.

Meanwhile, every casual word of Rivière's was weighed and re-weighed, tested and assayed by her for the gold that might be hidden within.[Pg 127]

CHAPTER XVII
RIVIÈRE IS CALLED BACK

There are two sides to Wiesbaden. The one is with the gay, cosmopolitan life that saunters along the Wilhelmstrasse and dallies with the allurements of the most enticing shops in Germany; suns itself in the gardens of the Kursaal or on the wind-sheltered slopes of the Neroberg; listens to an orchestra of master-artists in the open or to a prima donna in the brilliance of the opera-house; dines, wines, gambles, dissipates, burns the lamp of life under forced draught.

The other side is with the life behind the curtains of the nursing homes, where dim flickers of life and health are jealously watched and tended. Wiesbaden is both a Bond Street and a Harley Street. Specialists in medicine and surgery have their consulting rooms a few doors away from those of specialists in jewellery, flowers or confectionery. Their names and their specialities are prominent on door-plates almost as though they were competing against the lures of the traders.

But Dr Hegelmann had no need to cry his services in the market-place. His consulting rooms and nursing home were hidden amongst the evergreens of a cool, restful garden well away from the flaunting life of the Wilhelmstrasse. By the door his name[Pg 128] and titles were inscribed in inconspicuous lettering on a small black marble tablet. His specialty needed no proclaiming.

Rivière found the great surgeon curiously uncouth in appearance. His brown, grey-streaked beard was longer than customary and ragged in outline; his eyebrows projected like a sea-captain's; his almost bald head seemed to be stretched tight over a framework of knobs and bumps; his clothes were baggy and shapeless. But all these unessentials faded away from sight when Dr Hegelmann spoke. His voice was wonderfully compelling—a voice tuned to a sympathy all-embracing. His voice could make even German sound musical. And his hands were the hands of a musician.

Before bringing Elaine into the consulting-room, Rivière explained the facts of the vitriol outrage, gave into his hands the letter of advice from the doctor at Nîmes, and then broached the subject of payment. They spoke in German, because Dr Hegelmann had steadfastly refused to learn any language beyond his own. All his energies of learning had been focused on his one specialty.

"I want to explain," said Rivière, "that Fraülein Verney is not well-to-do. She is, I believe, practically dependent on her profession."

"Then we shall adjust the scale of payment to whatever she can afford," answered the doctor readily. "I value my rich patients only because they can pay me for my poorer patients."

"Many thanks. But that was not quite my meaning. I want to ask you to charge her at the lowest rate, and allow me to make up the difference."[Pg 129]

"That shall be as you wish. I appreciate your motives." His voice was full of sympathy, giving a treble value to the most ordinary words. "That is the action of a true friend."

Rivière brought Elaine into the consulting-room, and left her in the great specialist's gentle hands. An assistant surgeon was there to act as interpreter.

The verdict came quickly. For a week Elaine was to be in the surgical home receiving preliminary treatment, and then Dr Hegelmann was to operate on her right eye. For the left eye there was no hope.

During the week of waiting, Rivière came twice a day to Elaine's bedside, to chat and read to her.

One day he told her that he had arranged for the use of a bench at a private biological laboratory at Wiesbaden belonging to one of the medical specialists.

"That will enable me to begin my research while you're recovering from the operation. You'll have no need to think that you might be keeping me here away from my work."

"I'm glad. It's very good to have a friend by one, but I should have worried at keeping you from your work. Now I'm relieved.... Is the laboratory here well equipped?"

"Quite sufficiently for my purposes. Of course I'm sending to Paris for my own microscope—it's a Zeiss, with a one-twelfth oil immersion—and I'll have my own rocker microtome sent over also.[Pg 130] There's a microtome in the laboratory here, but I might take weeks to get on terms with it. If you'd ever worked with the instrument, you'd know how curiously human it is in its moods and whims. If a microtome takes a liking to you, she'll work herself to the bone while you merely rest your hand on the lever. But if she has some secret objection to you, she'll pout and sulk, and jib and rear, and generally try to drive you distracted."

Elaine smiled. "I notice that man always applies the feminine gender to anything unreliable in the way of machinery. If it's sober and steady-going, you label it masculine, like Big Ben. But if it's uncertain in action, like a motor-boat, you call it Fifi or Lolo or Vivienne."

"That's a true bill," confessed Rivière. "Henceforth I'll keep to the strictly neutral 'it' when I mention a microtome."

"I want to know the nature of your research work. You've never yet told me except in vague, general terms."

Rivière hesitated. It seemed to him scarcely a subject to discuss with one who herself was in the hands of the surgeon.

Elaine appreciated the reason for his hesitation, and answered: "I want to hear of the spirit behind your technicalities. It won't depress me in the least. Please go on."

Rivière began to explain to her the big idea which he was hoping to develop in the coming years. He avoided any details that might seem to have[Pg 131] even a remote personal bearing. He spoke with enthusiasm—his voice became aglow with inner fire. And it was clear from her attitude and from the questions she interjected from time to time that she realized the value of his idea, appreciated his motives, and was whole-heartedly interested in what he was telling her.

As Elaine listened, a tiny voice within her was whispering: "Here is your rival." And she felt glad that her rival was one of high purpose. The call of science and a high, impersonal aim, touched her as something sacred.

Rivière had brought with him a daily paper—the Frankfort edition of the Europe Chronicle—in order to read it to her. Thinking that she might be getting wearied of his personal affairs, he broke off presently, and with her agreement, opened the paper at the news pages, calling out the headlines until she intimated a wish to hear a fuller reading.

He had finished the news pages for her, and was about to put the paper aside, when the instinct of long habit made him glance at the headlines of the financial page.

Elaine heard a sudden decisive rustle of the paper as he folded it quickly, and then came a minute of silence which carried to her sensitive brain a strange sensation of tenseness.

Rivière's voice had altered completely when he answered her. There was now a reserved, constrained note in it. "An item of news which touches me personally," he said.[Pg 132]

There was silence again. Rivière sat stiff with rigid muscles while he thought out the bearings of the news item he had just read. Then he asked her to excuse him on a matter of immediate urgency.

At the post office he managed after some waiting to get telephonic communication with the Frankfort office of the Europe Chronicle.

"Tell the financial editor that Mr John Rivière wants to speak to him," he said authoritatively. "Please put me through quickly. I'm on a trunk wire."

After a pause the stereotyped reply came that the financial editor was out. His assistant was now speaking, and would take any message. Clifford Matheson would not have had such an answer made to him, but Rivière was an unknown name. He realized that he must now cool his heels in anterooms, and communicate with chiefs through the medium of their subordinates.

"You have an item in to-day's paper regarding the forthcoming notation of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd. Mr Clifford Matheson's name is mentioned as Chairman. I should very much like to know if you have had confirmation of that item, and from where it was obtained."

"Mr Matheson is my half-brother, and though I'm in close touch with him, I've had no intimation of any such move on his part."[Pg 133]

Another pause ensued, followed by the formal statement. "The news came to us last night from our Paris office. We believe it to be correct. Do we understand that you wish to deny it?"

Then he asked the post-office for a trunk call to Paris, and after an hour's wait he was put in touch with the headquarters of the Europe Chronicle. The second 'phone conversation proved as unsatisfactory as the first. A financial editor of a responsible journal does not talk freely with any unknown man who rings him up on a hasty trunk call. The reply came that the information in question reached the paper from a perfectly reliable source. If Mr Rivière cared to call at the office, they would give him proof of the accuracy of their statement. They could not discuss such a matter over the 'phone.

They were sorry, but they did not care to discuss the matter over the 'phone. He must either take their word for it that the information was correct, or else call in person at the Paris office.

It was clear to Rivière that he must make the journey to Paris if he were to unravel the mystery of that astounding statement. The dead Clifford Matheson mentioned authoritatively as Chairman of the new company! Why should such an impossible story be set afloat, and what was the "reliable source" spoken of? He knew that the Europe[Pg 134] Chronicle though a sensational paper, would not print self-invented fiction on its financial page.

"I have an urgent call to Paris," he told Elaine. "I hope you will excuse my running away so brusquely? I'll be back before the day of your operation."

"Of course, I excuse you," she replied readily. "I know that something very important is calling you. And in any case, what right would I have to say yes or no to a private decision of your own?"

There leapt in her a sudden hope that he would answer from the heart. But his reply held nothing beyond a bare statement. "This matter is extremely urgent. I propose to catch a night train to Paris and be back by to-morrow evening. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?"

In Paris early the next morning, Rivière sought out the financial editor of the Europe Chronicle. At a face-to-face interview, Rivière's personality impressed, and the newspaper man showed himself quite willing to prove the bona fides of his journal.

"If you will step into the adjoining room," he said, "I'll send you the reporter who brought us the information. Ask him any questions you like. I've perfect confidence in him, and I stand by any statement of his we print. I don't think people realize how careful we are on financial matters—they seem to think that a popular paper will print any sort of canard offhand."

There followed Rivière into the next room a tubby rosy-faced little man, brisk and smiling. "Well,[Pg 135] sir, what can I do for you?" he rattled off cheerfully. "The financial editor tells me that I'm to preach to you the gospel of the infallibility of the Chronicle. What's the particular text you're heaving bricks at?"

Jimmy Martin's infectious good-humour brought an answering smile from Rivière. "I'm not casting doubts on the modern-day Bible," he replied. "I'm seeking information. I want to know who told you that Clifford Matheson, my half-brother, is to head the Board of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd."

"Larssen and I are old pals," continued Martin briskly. "So when he was passing through Paris the other day he 'phoned me to the effect of come and crack a bottle with me, come and let's reminisce together over the good old days. I went; and he gave me the juicy little piece of news you saw in yesterday's rag. We saved up some of it for to-day—have you seen? Clifford Matheson heads the festal board, and the other revellers at the guinea-feast are the Right Hon. Lord St Aubyn, Sir Francis Letchmere, Bart., and G. Lowndes Hawley Carleton-Wingate, M.P. Lars Larssen sits below the salt—to wit, joins the Board after allotment. The capital is to be a cool five million, and if I were a prophet I'd tell you whether they'll get it or not."

"Unreservedly.... By the way, do you know where my brother is at the moment?"[Pg 136]

"Vague idea he's in Canada. Don't know where I get it from. Those sort of things are floating in the air."

"He was going on to London—dear old foggy, fried-fishy London! Ever notice that London is ringed around with the smell of fried fish and naphtha of an evening? The City smells of caretakers; and Piccadilly of patchouli; and the West End of petrol; but the smell of fish fried in tenth-rate oil in little side-streets rings them around and bottles them up. In Paris it's wood-smoke and roast coffee, and I daresay heaps healthier, but I sigh me for the downright odours of old England! Imitaciong poetry—excuse this display of emotion."

When Rivière left the office of the journal on the Boulevard des Italiens, he made his way rapidly to No. 8 Rue Laffitte, second floor. There he inquired for Clifford Matheson, and was informed that the financier was in Winnipeg.

"Quite, sir!" answered the clerk in surprise. "We get cables from him giving addresses to send letters to. If you'd like anything forwarded, sir, leave it here and we shall attend to it."

It was now clear beyond doubt that Lars Larssen was playing a game of unparalleled audacity. He had somehow arranged to impersonate the "dead" Clifford Matheson, and was using the impersonation to float the Hudson Bay scheme on his own lines.

Rivière flushed with anger at the realization of how Lars Larssen was using his name.[Pg 137]

But that was a trifle compared with the main issue. When he had fought Lars Larssen, it was not a mere petty squabble over a division of loot. The Hudson Bay scheme was no mere commercial machine for grinding out a ten per cent. profit. If successful, it meant an entire re-organization of the wheat traffic between Canada and Great Britain. It meant, in kernel, the control of Britain's bread-supply. It affected directly fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.

For that reason Rivière had refused to lend his name to a scheme under which Lars Larssen would hold the reins of control. He knew the ruthlessness of the man and his overweening lust of power, which had passed the bounds of ordinary ambition and had become a Napoleonic egomania.

In refusing to act on the Board, Rivière had made an altruistic decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he would be betraying fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.

He had thought to strike out from the whirlpool into peaceful waters, but the whirlpool was sucking him back.

Weighing duty against duty, he saw clearly that he must at once confront Larssen and crumple up his daring scheme. And so he wired to Elaine:

"An urgent affair calls me to London. Shall return to you at the earliest possible moment. Address, Avon Hotel, Lincoln's Inn Fields."[Pg 138]

CHAPTER XVIII
NOT WANTED!

In the train Calaiswards, Rivière felt as though he had just plunged into an ice-cold lake fed by torrents from the snow-peaks, and had emerged tingling in every fibre with the glow of health.

The course before him was straight; the issue clean-cut. He had only to confront Lars Larssen to bring the latter to his knees. If there were opposition, the threat of a public prosecution would brush it aside.

He must resume the personality of Clifford Matheson; return to Olive; settle a generous income on Elaine. He must wind up his financial affairs and devote himself to the scientific research he had planned.

He looked forward eagerly to the moment when he would walk into Larssen's private office and smash a fist through his hoped-for control of Hudson Bay. Until that moment, he would keep outwardly to the identity of John Rivière. But already he was feeling himself back in the personality of Clifford Matheson—the hard, firm lines had set again around his mouth, the look of masterfulness was in his eye.

Overhead, skies were grey with ragged, shapeless cloud; below, the waters were the colour of slag and slapping angrily against the plates of the starboard bow under the drive of a wind from the north-east. The ashen cliffs of Dover came to meet the packet reluctant and inhospitable. By the harbour-entrance, a petulant squall of rain beat upon them as though to shoo them away. The landing-stage was slippery and slimy with rain, soot, and petrol drippings from the motor-cars shipped to and fro. Customs-house officers eyed them with tired suspicion; porters took their money and hastened away with the curtest of acknowledgments; an engine panted sullenly as it waited for never-ending mail-bags to be hauled up from the bowels of the packets and dumped into the mail-van.

Through the Weald of Kent, where spring comes early, this April afternoon showed the land still naked and cold. On the coppices, dispirited catkins drooped their tassels from the wet branches of the undergrowth, but the young leaves lurked within their brown coverings as though they shivered at the thought of venturing out into the bleak air. On the oaks, dead leaves from the past autumn clung obstinately to their mother-branches. The hop-lands were a dreary drab; hop-poles huddled against one another for warmth; streams ran swollen and muddy and rebellious.

They swerved through Tonbridge Junction, glistening sootily under a drizzle of rain, and dived into the yawning tunnel of River Hill as though into refuge from the bleakness of the open country. Two fellow-travellers with Rivière were discussing the gloomy outlook of a threatened railway strike which rumbled through the daily papers like distant thunder. Fragment of talk came to his ears:—

"Minimum wage.... Damned insolence.... Tie up the whole country.... Have them all flogged to work.... Not a statesman in the House.... Weak-kneed set of vote-snatchers.... If I had my way...."

The train ran them roof-high through endless vistas of the mean grey streets of south-east London, where the street-lamps were beginning to throw out a yellow haze against the murky drizzle of the late afternoon; slowed to a crawl in obedience to the raised arms of imperious signals; stopped over viaducts for long wearisome minutes while flaunting sky-signs drummed into the passengers the superabundant merits of Somebody's Whisky or Somebodyelse's Soap.

Half-an-hour late at the terminus, Rivière had his valise sent to the Avon Hotel, hailed a taxi, and told the man to drive as fast as possible to Leadenhall Street. In that narrow canon of commerce was a large, substantial building bearing the simple sign—a sign ostentatious in its simplicity—of "Lars Larssen—Shipping."

"Tell Mr Larssen that Mr John Rivière wishes to see him," he said to a clerk at the inquiry desk.[Pg 141]

"If you'll wait a moment, sir, I'll send up an inquiry to his secretary. What name did you say?"

Presently the answer came down the house 'phone that Mr Larssen had gone to his home in Hampstead.

Rivière re-entered the taxi and gave an address on the Heath. He wanted to thrash out the matter with Larssen with the least possible delay. He would have preferred to confront the shipowner in his office, but since that plan had miscarried, he would seek him out in his private house.

Near King's Cross another taxi coming out from a cross-street skidded as it swerved around the corner, and jolted into his own with a crash of glass and a crumple of mudguards. Delay followed while the two chauffeurs upbraided one another with crimson epithets, and gave rival versions of the incident to a gravely impartial policeman. When Rivière at length reached Hampstead Heath, it was to find that the shipowner had just left the house.

Rivière explained to the butler that it was very important he should reach Larssen without delay, and his personality impressed the servant as that of a visitor of standing. He therefore told Rivière what he knew.

"Mr Larssen changed into evening dress, sir, and went off in his small covered car. I don't know where he's gone, sir, but he told me if anything[Pg 142] important arose I was to ring him up at P. O. Richmond, 2882."

That telephone number happened to be quite familiar to Rivière. It was the number of his own house at Roehampton.

He jumped into the waiting taxi once again, and ordered the chauffeur to drive across London to Barnes Common and Roehampton. If he could not confront Larssen at office or house, he would run him to earth that evening in his own home. No doubt Larssen was going there to talk business with Sir Francis.

Roehampton is a country village held within the octopus arms of Greater London. Round it are a number of large houses with fine, spacious grounds—country estates they were when Queen Victoria ascended the throne of England. At Olive's special choice, her husband had purchased one of the mansions and had it re-decorated for her in modern style. She liked its nearness to London proper—it gave her touch with Bond Street and theatreland in half-an-hour by fast car. She liked its spacious lawns and its terraced Italian garden—they were so admirable for garden parties and open-air theatricals. She liked the useless size of the house—it ministered to her love of opulence.

The name of the estate was "Thornton Chase." The approach lay through a winding drive bordered by giant beeches, and passed one of the box-hedged lawns to curl before a front door on the further side of the house.[Pg 143]

When at the very gates another delay in that evening of delays occurred. This time it was a tyre-burst. Rivière, impatient of further waste of time, paid off the chauffeur and started on foot along the entrance drive. The drizzle of the afternoon had ceased, and a few stars shone halfheartedly through rents in the ragged curtain of cloud, as though performing a duty against their will.

When passing through the box-hedged lawn as a short cut to the front door, one of the curtains of the lighted drawing-room was suddenly thrown back, and the broad figure of man stood framed in a golden panel of light. It was Lars Larssen.

Rivière stopped involuntarily. It was as though his antagonist had divined his presence and had come boldly forward to meet him. And, indeed, that was not far from the fact. Larssen, waiting alone in the drawing-room, had had one of his strange intuitive impulses to throw wide the curtain and look out into the night. Such an impulse he never opposed. He had learnt by long experience that there were centres of perception within him, uncharted by science, which gathered impressions too vague to put a name to, and yet vitally real. He always gave rein to his intuition and let it lead him where it chose.

Looking out into the night, the shipowner could not see Rivière, who had stopped motionless in the shadow of a giant box clipped to the shape of a peacock standing on a broad pedestal.

Presently Larssen turned abruptly as though[Pg 144] someone had entered the room. A smile of welcome was on his lips. Olive swept in, close-gowned in black with silvery scales. She offered her hand with a radiant smile, and Larssen took it masterfully and raised it to his lips. Rivière noted that it was not the shipowner who had moved forward to meet Olive, but Olive who had come gladly to him.

They stood by the fireplace, and Olive chatted animatedly to her guest. Rivière scarcely recognized his wife in this transformation of spirit. With him she was cold and abrupt, and captious, eyes half-lidded and cheeks white and mask-like. Now her eyes flashed and sparkled, and there was warm colour in her cheeks.

Of what Olive and Larssen said to one another, no word came to Rivière. But attitude and gesture told him more than words could have done. It was as though he were a spectator of a bioscope drama, standing in darkness while a scene was being pictured for him in remorseless detail behind the lighted window. That Olive's feeling for Larssen had grown beyond mere friendship was plain beyond question. She was infatuated with the man; and he was playing with her infatuation.

For a moment Rivière's fist clenched; then his fingers loosened, and he watched without stirring. Larssen must, in view of his action on the Hudson Bay coup, believe Matheson to be dead. To him, Olive was now a widow. Therefore Rivière had no quarrel with the shipowner on the ground of what he was now witnessing. His desire to crumple Larssen in the hollow of his hand and fling him into the mud at his feet was based on very different grounds.[Pg 145]

On the other hand, Olive must believe Matheson to be alive. Larssen would have told her that her husband was away in Canada on business for a few weeks, and he would keep up the fiction until the Hudson Bay scheme were floated to a public issue.

That Rivière could watch the scene pictured before him without stirring—could watch in silence the spectacle of his wife's infatuation for another man—might seem superficially as the height of cynical cold-bloodedness. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Rivière was a man of very deep and very strong feelings held habitually under a rigid control. Self-control is very often mistaken superficially for cold-bloodedness, just as heartiness is mistaken for big-heartedness.

He was balanced enough to hold no blame for Olive. Within two years of marriage he had plumbed her to the depths. It was not in her to be more than a reckless spender of other people's money and other people's lives. She was born to waste just as another is born to create. The way in which she was throwing herself at Larssen during his absence for a few weeks was typical of her inborn character, which nothing could uproot.

It was clear beyond doubt that Olive did not want him back. She preferred him out of her way. If he could disappear for ever, leaving his fortune in her hands, she would unquestionably be glad of it. What he had in fact brought about by taking up the personality of John Rivière was what she seemed most to desire.

He was coming home as an intruder. Even in his[Pg 146] own house there would be no welcome for him. He was not wanted.

There was a sudden stiffening on the part of Olive, as though she heard someone about to enter the room. Sir Francis came in, shook hands cordially with Larssen, and all three made their way to dinner.

Rivière was left looking into an empty room. With sudden decision he made his way out of the grounds of Thornton Chase. He would see the shipowner to-morrow in his office at Leadenhall Street rather than thrash out the coming quarrel in front of Olive and Sir Francis.

His duty lay in taking up once more the role of Clifford Matheson and returning to Olive's side. Though what he had seen that evening made the duty trebly distasteful, he must carry it out to the end. Yet to himself he was glad of the short respite. For one night more he would breathe freedom as John Rivière.

For the moment, time was no object to him, and he proceeded on foot through Roehampton village and by the sodden coppices of Putney Heath to the Portsmouth high road and the railway station of East Putney.

He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in like a giant blindworm, and went with it to the Temple and so to the quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln's Inn Fields. On his way, he sent off a telegram to the shipowner stating that John Rivière would call at Leadenhall Street at eleven o'clock in the morning.[Pg 147]

In the coffee-room of the Avon Hotel he sat down to write a long letter to Elaine which would explain all that had been hidden from her. Without sparing himself one jot he told her of the circumstances of his life since the crucial night of March 14th, and of the deception he carried out with her as well as with the rest of the world. It was long past midnight before he put to the letter the signature of "Clifford Matheson."

And then with a stab of pain he remembered that Elaine could not read it. There were passages in the letter which must not be read to her by any outside person. It was evident that what he had to tell her would have to be said by word of mouth.

Rivière tore up his letter into small fragments and burnt them carefully in the grate.[Pg 148]

CHAPTER XIX
A THRONE-ROOM

Dinner was over at Thornton Chase, and the three were back in the drawing-room—Olive, Larssen, and Sir Francis. The men smoked at Olive's request; and she herself lighted one of a special brand of cigarettes which she had made for her by Antonides.

"I hate to have my drawing-room smelling of afternoon-tea and feminine chit-chat," she explained. "The two Carleton-Wingate frumps called on me this afternoon for a couple of solid hours' boring, which they dignify to themselves as a duty call. Please smoke away the remembrance of them."

"The Carleton-Wingates are a useful crowd," said Larssen. "There's an M.P., a major-general and a minister plenipotentiary amongst them."

"Give me those to deal with, and you entertain the twin frumps," answered Olive. "Twins are always hateful in a room, because they sit together and chorus their comments together, just as if they were one mind with two bodies. You feel as if you ought to split yourself in two and devote half to each, so as not to cause jealousy. But twin old maids are especially hateful."

"A very old family," was Letchmere's comment. "They go back to Henry VII."[Pg 149]

"But it doesn't start until ten-thirty. We've plenty of time. First, I want you to play to me."

Olive went over to the piano, and Larssen followed to light the candles and turn back the case of polished rosewood inlaid with ivory.

"Something lively," he ordered, and she rattled into the latest success of the musical comedy stage. Such as it was, she played it brilliantly. To-night she was in that morphia mood of the terrace of Monte Carlo when she had first told him of her contempt for her husband.

Under cover of the playing, while Sir Francis was reading a novel of turf life, Olive whispered: "Can't we have a few moments together by ourselves?"

"My staff work all night there—I have a night-shift as well as a day-shift. In fact, the offices are busier at night-time than in the day-time."

"Yes. It enables me to deal with routine-work[Pg 150] while the other fellow's asleep. That's always been one of my business principles: get to-morrow's work done to-day; get a twelve hours' start of the other man."

Larssen's pride in his office was fully justified. There was nothing in London, nothing in England to match it as a perfect business machine. And there was no private office in Europe which could compare in impressiveness with Larssen's own.

Things went as he arranged, and from the busy hive of industry on the ground and first floors he took Olive to his private room on the second. It was a room some thirty yards long and broad in proportion, with a central dome reaching above the roof. A few broad tables were almost lost in its immensity. Round the walls were maps dotted with flag-pins telling of the position of ships. At the further end was Larssen's own work-table—a horseshoe-shaped desk. Above and behind it hung a portrait of his little boy by Sargent.

Larssen smiled his pleasure. It was a throne-room. He had designed it as such. His private house at Hampstead mattered little to him. His house on Riverside Drive, New York, and his great forest estate in the Adirondacks mattered almost as little. His real home was at the office.

"In my New York office, and in every one of my other offices round the world, there's a room like[Pg 151] this. I alone use it. When I'm away, it stands for me. It's my sign."

"Above there," he continued, pointing to the central dome, "is the wireless apparatus which keeps me in touch with my ships. From ship to ship and office to office I can send my orders round the world. I'm independent of the wires and the cables."

"That's epic!" she said, using the word she had used before when he spoke to her of his early career. No other word fitted Lars Larssen so closely.

"I had a letter telling me things are going well, but not as quickly as he expected. That letter would be a week old by now. Every moment I'm expecting to hear that his work is put through and sealed up tight."

"I'm not anxious to have him back. If you only could realize how he bores me to extinction."

"You've borne with it very bravely," he said, knowing that to a woman like Olive no compliment is dearer than to be called "brave."

"Not that I want to say a word against Clifford," he added quickly. "He's a very clever man of business, and I admire him for it. But a woman wants more than cleverness."

"How well you understand!" said Olive. "So few know me as I really am. If only we had met before——"

She stopped abruptly as a door opened at the farther end of the room. Morris Sylvester entered briskly with a telegram in his hand. As confidential[Pg 152] secretary, it was his duty to open all telegrams and most of the letters addressed to his chief. Sylvester passed the open telegram to Larssen, saying:

"Excuse my interruption. This telegram just arrived seems important. I thought you would like to see it."

Olive reflected that Rivière might not want to see her, in view of the way he had avoided her so far. She answered: "Ring me up on the 'phone when he's in your office. I'll speak to him over the wire."

"Right—I'll remember.... By the way, about the Hudson Bay company, did I tell you that the underwriting negotiations are going through fine? Inside a week we ought to be ready for flotation."

Larssen proceeded to enlarge on the subject, and the broken thread of Olive's avowal was not taken up again. They left the offices, and drove back to the Cabaret to rejoin Sir Francis.[Pg 153]

CHAPTER XX
BEATEN TO EARTH

At eleven o'clock the next morning, the shipowner was at the horseshoe desk in his throne-room, fingering the snapshot of Rivière which Sylvester had secured at Nîmes. He had seen in it the picture of a man very like Clifford Matheson, but not for a moment had he thought of it as the portrait of the financier himself. The shaven lip, the scar across the forehead, the differences of hair and collar and tie and dress had combined to make a thorough disguise.

Yet when the visitor entered by the farther door of the throne-room and came striding resolutely down the thirty yards of carpet, Lars Larssen knew him. The carriage and walk were Matheson's.

For a moment hot rage possessed him. Not at Matheson, but at himself. He ought to have guessed before. This was the one possibility he had completely overlooked. Matheson had tricked him by shamming death. He ought not to have let himself be tricked. That was inexcusable.

A moment later he had regained mastery of himself, and a succession of plans flashed past his mental vision, to be considered with lightning speed. The financier held the whip-hand—and the whip must be torn from him ... somehow.[Pg 154]

"Sit down, Matheson," said the shipowner calmly, when his antagonist had reached the horseshoe desk.

"I knew you had disappeared for private reasons of your own. I discovered those reasons, and so I respected your privacy," was the calm reply.

"You had the cool intention of using my name in the Hudson Bay prospectus as though I had given you sanction for it."

"At our last interview at your Paris office. You passed your word—an Englishman's word—and I took it."

"When we last met," continued Matheson slowly, "I wanted you to assign half of your four million Deferred Shares to Lord ——, to be held in trust for the general body of shareholders. Well, now—now—I want the whole four million assigned."

"And you propose that I should give them up for nothing?" queried Larssen ironically.

"For £200,000 in ordinary shares. The monetary[Pg 155] value is the same. The difference would be that you'll have two hundred thousand with your own money, not the British public's."

There was silence while the two men eyed one another relentlessly. At the side of Larssen's forehead, under the temple, a tiny vein throbbed and jerked. That was the only outward sign of the feelings of murder which lay in his heart.

"Easy terms," repeated Matheson. "I could, if I chose, step from here to my lawyers' and have you indicted for conspiracy. I could get you seven to ten years. I could have you breaking stones at Portland."

Matheson ignored the retort. "You've told my wife and my father-in-law that I was alive."

"I'm not going to quibble over words. Believing me to be dead, you had me impersonated, planning to use my name on the Hudson Bay scheme."[Pg 156]

"If you're thinking to prove that, you merely waste your time. The negotiations were carried out by your father-in-law."

Larssen laughed harshly. "An out-of-elbows reporter on a sensational yellow journal! Do you dream for one instant that his word would stand against mine in a court of law? See here, Matheson, you'd better go back and read over your brief with the man who's instructing you. He's muddled up the facts."

Lars Larssen took a deep breath before he leaned forward across the horseshoe desk to answer. At the same time he moved a hidden lever under the desk. This was a device allowing any conversation of his to be heard telephonically in the adjoining room where his private secretary worked. It was useful occasionally when he needed an unseen listener to a business interview of his; and now he particularly wanted Sylvester to hear what he and Matheson were saying to one another. It would give Sylvester his cue if he were to be called in at any point.

"Matheson," said the shipowner, "the facts of your case don't make a very edifying story. If[Pg 157] you're sure you want to hear them as you'd hear them in a court of law, I'll spare another five minutes to tell you. You're quite certain you'd like to hear the outside view of your actions this past three weeks?"

With brutal directness Larssen proceeded: "On the night of March 14th, you decided you were tired of your wife. Thought you'd like a change of bedfellow. You left your coat and stick about a quarter-mile down the left bank of the Seine from Neuilly bridge, so that people would think you dead. You cut a knife-slit in the ribs of your coat to make a neater story of it. Then, as I guessed you would, you went honeymooning with the other woman. Away to the sunny South. I had you followed.

"You registered together at the Hotel du Forum at Arles, taking the names of John Rivière and Elaine Verney. A man doesn't change his name unless he's got some shady reason for it. Every court of law knows that. You dallied for a day or two at Arles, getting this woman to write a lying letter to your wife saying that you were down with fever. We have that letter."

"Yes, we. We have that letter. I advised your wife to let me keep it for possible emergencies. I have it in this office along with the other evidence. I don't bluff—shall I ring and have my secretary show it to you?"

"Then you moved to Nîmes, staying for shame's sake at different houses. Hers was the Hotel de[Pg 158] Provence, and yours was the Villa Clémentine. You went lovemaking with this woman in the moonlight, up to a quiet place on the hillside, and there you nearly got what was coming to you from a peasant called Crau. Then you had this Verney woman stay with you in your Villa Clémentine, and finally you took her off to Wiesbaden."

Morris Sylvester came in quietly from his room close by, a slow smile under his heavy dark moustache, and nodded greeting to Matheson. He had heard by the telephone device all of his chief's case against Matheson, and was quite ready to take up his cue.

Larssen turned to the financier. "Want to ask him any questions? Ask anything you like."

"Quite," answered Matheson. There was nothing to be gained at this stage by cross-examining the secretary.

Larssen leant forward across the desk once more and snarled: "There's the facts of the case as they'll go before the divorce court."

"Do you know that Miss Verney is blind?"[Pg 159] There was a hoarseness in Matheson's voice; he cleared his throat to relieve it.

"Blind and undergoing an operation this very morning? Do you know that it's doubtful if she will ever recover any of her sight?"

Larssen's mouth tightened a shade more. At last he found the heel of Achilles. He could get at Matheson through Elaine. Ruthlessly he answered: "That's no concern of mine. I'm stating facts to you. These facts are not all in your wife's possession. Do you want me to put them there?"

"Your facts are a chain of lies. There's one sound link: that I changed my name. The rest are poisonous lies—provable lies."

"Whatever they may be, do you want them put before your wife?" He reached for a swinging telephone by his desk and called to the house operator: "Get me P. O. Richmond, 2822. Name, Mrs Matheson."

While he was waiting for the connection to be made, Sylvester entered the room and silently showed a visiting-card to his chief. It was Olive's card. Acting on a sudden impulse, she had motored to the office to see this mysterious John Rivière before he should evade her. She knew that the interview was to be at eleven o'clock, and by thus calling in person, she would make certain of meeting him.

As the shipowner's hand hovered over the button of the electric bell, waiting for a yes or no from his antagonist, a great temptation lay before Matheson.

The recital of the events of the past three weeks, as given in the brutal wording of the shipowner, had torn at his nerves like the pincers of an inquisitor. He saw now how the world would judge the relations between Elaine and himself. The change of name, the meeting at the same hotel at Arles, the second meeting, the companionship of that fateful week at Nîmes—the world would put only one interpretation on it all. Elaine, lying helpless in her close-curtained room at the nursing home in Wiesbaden, would be fouled with the imaginings of the prurient. Not only had he brought blindness to her, but now he was to bring her to the pillory with the scarlet letter fixed upon her.

Yet he could avoid it if he chose. A choice lay open to him. Larssen would be ready to exchange silence for silence. If Matheson would stand aside and let the Hudson Bay scheme go through, no doubt Larssen would play fair in the matter of Elaine. That in effect was what he offered as his hand hovered over the electric bell.

The shipowner, though an easy smile of triumph masked his feelings as he lay back in his chair, knew that he was at the critical point of his career. If Matheson decided to let Olive be shown in, then Olive would have in her hands the judgment between the two men. To be dependent on a woman's mood, a woman's whim, would be Larssen's position. It galled him to the quick. The seconds that[Pg 161] slipped by while Matheson considered were minute-long to him.

Larssen uttered no word of persuasion one way or another. He knew that, if his desire could be attained, it would be attained through silence.

Larssen pressed the bell without a moment's hesitation. His bluff had to be carried through with absolute decisiveness. He could not gauge how far his threat of the divorce court had intimidated Matheson. Beyond that, he was not at all sure that Olive would side with him in the matter. She was unstable, unreliable.

But on the outside no trace of his doubts appeared. He was perfectly cool, entirely master of himself. As he waited for Sylvester to fetch Mrs Matheson, he took out a pocket-knife and began to trim his nails lightly.

Olive's appearance as she entered the throne-room was greatly changed from that of the evening before. The transient effect of the drug had worn off. Her features were now heavy and listless, and there were dark shadows under the eyes.

"I came along to catch Mr Rivière before he left you," she explained to Larssen, and turned with a set smile towards the visitor.

"Why, it's Clifford! What have you been doing to yourself? Why have you changed your appearance? Why are you here? What's the meaning of all this?"

"It's a long story," cut in Larssen, and "there are two versions to it. Which will you hear first, your husband's or mine?"

She hesitated to answer, her mind buzzing with surprise, resentment, and anger. She hated to be caught at a disadvantage, as in this case. She was uncertain as to what her attitude ought to be.

Had Clifford, suspecting her feelings towards Larssen, returned hurriedly in order to trap her? What did he know? What did he guess?

"Of course I will hear my husband first," she answered coldly, and Larssen took it as an ill omen. He offered her a chair again, and seated himself so as to command them both.

Matheson, who remained standing, waved his hand towards the shipowner. "Let him speak first."

"I hate all this mystery!" snapped Olive irritably. "Mr Larssen, you tell me what it all means."

"You don't mean to say that the letter I received from Arles was written by Clifford himself?"

Larssen turned to Matheson. "Do you wish me to explain who wrote it, or will you do it yourself?"

"It was written at my dictation by a Miss Verney—a lady whom I met for the first time on my visit to Arles. Her relation to myself is that of a mere tourist acquaintanceship."

"Miss Verney is—was—a professional scene-painter. She was making a brief tour in Provence to collect material for a Roman drama for which she was commissioned to design the scenery."

Matheson found it very difficult to frame his reasons under this remorseless cross-examination. He felt as though he were in the witness-box at a divorce trial, replying to hostile counsel.

"When I left Paris," he answered, "it was to take a quiet holiday for a couple of months before settling down to my new work."

Larssen scraped his chair scornfully. He would not comment with words at the present juncture.[Pg 164] Matheson was convicting himself out of his own mouth—the revelation was unfolding excellently.

"I meant to disappear and give you your freedom and the greater part of my property," answered Matheson steadily.

"On the night of March 14th, the night I said good-bye to you at the Gare de Lyon, I made a sudden decision to take up my brother's work and live his life. He has been dead a couple of years. I happened to be attacked by a couple of apaches, and that gave me the opportunity. I contrived evidence of a violent death, and then cut loose entirely from the name of Clifford Matheson. You would be given leave by the courts to presume death, on the evidence of my coat and stick left by the river-bank at Neuilly. You would come into my money and property, and you would be free to marry again if you chose."

Olive had become very thoughtful. Her chin was buried in her hand. When she spoke again after a few moments' pause, it was in a strangely altered tone.[Pg 165]

"Because Larssen was using my name in a way I won't countenance. I was forced to return in order to put a stop to it."

"Because I found that he was having me impersonated, and using my name illicitly."

Olive turned on the shipowner with a sudden wild fury, her eyes shooting fire and her lips quivering. "Why did you have Clifford impersonated?" she hissed out.

Larssen was taken aback at this utterly unexpected onslaught. "That's his version!" he retorted.

"You told me Clifford was in Canada, when all the time you knew he was at Arles. Didn't you tell me that?"

"Obviously because I knew he was dallying at Arles and Nîmes with this Verney woman. You haven't heard one-tenth of the facts yet. You haven't heard that he stayed in the same hotel with her at Arles. Went with her to Nîmes when the hotel people began to object. At Nîmes, for[Pg 166] decency's sake, they stayed at different houses, but he had her hanging around his villa. Went lovemaking with her in the moonlight up to a quiet place on the hillside. Then, had her live with him in the Villa Clémentine. Finally, took her to Wiesbaden. These are all facts for which I can bring you irrefutable evidence. I had my secretary shadowing him from the moment he left Paris."

"Is she so very beautiful, this enchantress of yours?" she queried with the velvety softness of a cat.

"She is blind," answered Matheson with a quiver in his words. "Blinded for life while trying to warn me of a vitriol attack. Olive, I want you to listen without interruption while I tell you on my word of honour what are the facts underneath that vile story of Larssen's. I want you to believe and have pity.

"We had never seen one another before Arles. There we met as casual tourists. It happened that I was able to defend her from the assault of a half-drunken peasant. After that we parted as the merest acquaintances. By pure chance we met again at Nîmes. She came to Nîmes to gather further material for her scene-painting. For scene purposes she had to make a sketch at night-time, and I went with her as escort as I would have done with any other woman. We were followed by the peasant Crau. He was about to throw vitriol on me when Miss Verney intervened. She received[Pg 167] the acid full in her eyes. She is, I believe, blinded for life. Even now, as I speak, she lies on the operating table.... Olive, there has been nothing between us!"

"I don't believe it! It's against human nature. You're in love with her—that's plain. You had opportunity enough. I know sufficient of human nature to put two and two together. I shall certainly sue for a divorce!"

And then, for the first time in all that long interview, Matheson blazed into open anger.

"You know human nature?" he cried. "By God, you know your own, and you measure every other woman by yourself! Behind my back you throw yourself at this damned scoundrel!" He flung out his hand toward Larssen.

There was no answering anger in Larssen. He knew too well the value of keeping cool. He merely put in a word to egg Matheson on to a further outburst.

"It's true as everything else I've said! Last night, at Thornton Chase, in the drawing-room before dinner, I saw through, the uncurtained window...."[Pg 168]

"And just for that you came back? What a reason!" Scorn lashed from her. "Yes, Mr Larssen is right! I owe it to my self-respect to be magnanimous. You can return to your mistress—I'll forego my divorce. Sign the papers he wants you to, and you can live out your life as John Rivière. Your money, of course, comes to me."

The shipowner, grimly triumphant, said nothing. Matheson, in his blaze of anger, had turned Olive definitely and finally against himself. There was[Pg 169] no call for Larssen to add to the command of her words.

Matheson's anger was spent. A great tiredness crept over his will. He could fight no more. Larssen and Olive had beaten him down—beaten him down through his anxiety to shield Elaine. Why should he sacrifice her for the sake of an altruistic ideal? The public he had striven to protect would not thank him for intervening in their interests. He would be merely a quixotic fool.

He felt will-tired, soul-tired, more tired even than on the night of March 14th. He could fight no more.

He sank down into a chair, and presently he said dully: "Show me the prospectus."

Larssen unhurriedly produced from a drawer in his desk a private draft prospectus such as is offered to the underwriters. On it was a list of names—the firms to whom it was being shown confidentially before public issue.

He reached for the electric bell to summon Sylvester as a witness to Matheson's signature, but at that very moment the secretary knocked and entered quickly with an open cablegram, which he passed to his chief.

Larssen's face grew white as he read it, but he said nothing beyond: "Wait to witness a signature."

Matheson took the prospectus and read it through mechanically. The shipowner, with an appearance of casualness, turned to a map on the wall behind him and studied the position of his Atlantic liners as indicated by the flag-pins.[Pg 170]

"Simply 'O.K., Clifford Matheson,'" answered the shipowner without turning round. "No date."

Matheson wrote across the printed document the formal letters "O.K.," and signed below.

Sylvester witnessed the signature, and passed the document to his chief.[Pg 171]

CHAPTER XXI
THE BOLTED DOOR

The moment he had that vital document safe in his breast-pocket, Lars Larssen was a changed man. His mask of cool indifference and his assumption of perfect leisure were thrown aside. His face was drawn with lines of anxiety as he snapped a rapid stream of orders at Sylvester:

"Send a wireless to the 'Aurelia' to put back at once to Plymouth. 'Phone Paddington to have a special ready for me in half-an-hour. 'Phone my house to pack me a portmanteau and send it to Paddington by fast car to catch the special. Get my office car round at once. Tell Bates and Carew and Grasemann I'd like them to travel with me to Plymouth to talk business. Let me know when all that's moving. Hurry!"

Larssen looked up at the portrait of his little boy, and the cablegram fluttered to the ground.

"If money can pull him through, I'll pour it out like water. I'm off to the States to look after those fool doctors. The 'Aurelia' is one of my fastest boats, and she'll take me across in five days. I'll give treble pay to every engineer and stoker."

"I can finish off the Hudson Bay deal by wireless. My ordinary business on this side will run on in the hands of Bates, Carew, and Grasemann, who form my executive committee for London."

They had both ignored Matheson through this conversation. He was squeezed dry and done with. Larssen had no further use for him at present, and Olive had no sympathy to waste on a beaten man.

He had been sitting brokenly in a chair at the desk where he had signed away his independence, gazing into a new-spilt ink-blot on the polished surface of the desk, seeing visions in its glistening, blue-black pool.

But now he pushed back his chair with a rasping noise and rose decisively to face Larssen.

"For a month from now neither you nor I will move further in the Hudson Bay scheme. For a month it'll be hung up."

"The issue is not yet underwritten." It was a sheer guess, but in Larssen's face Matheson could read that his guess was correct.

"Either you or I will tell the underwriters that the scheme goes no further until a month from date—until May 3rd. Which is it to be—you or I?"

Sylvester came in rapidly. "All your orders are being carried out, and the car's on the way here from the garage."

For a few tense moments Larssen hesitated. The underwriting of the five-million issue was an absolute essential to a successful flotation, and the negotiations were not yet completed. If Matheson were to interfere in them during his absence from London, big difficulties might develop. Before that cablegram arrived, the shipowner could have beaten down any such threat on Matheson's part, but now, with his little son calling for his presence, with the special train at Paddington coupling up to speed him to Plymouth, with the "Aurelia" turning back, against the protest of its thousand passengers, to take him on board, the situation was radically changed.

Matheson had realised the altered situation, and putting aside any over-fine scruples, had gripped advantage from it.

Larssen's eyes blazed anger at the financier. Then he held out his hand to Olive.

Larssen rushed back to his desk and scribbled on a sheet of paper: "Until May 3rd, I fix up nothing with the underwriters."

He scrawled his signature under it, and without further word hurried from the throne-room.

When Larssen had closed the door behind him, Olive felt as if a big strong arm of support had suddenly been taken away from her. Larssen's mere presence, even if he remained silent, gave her a fictitious sense of her own power, which now was crumbling away and leaving her with a feeling of insecurity and self-distrust.

"Why couldn't you have stayed away altogether?" she muttered fretfully. "Nobody wanted you back. Your scruples, indeed! I must say you have a pretty mixed set of them. If you had had any consideration for me, you'd have stayed away altogether, instead of coming back and making scenes of this kind. I hate scenes! And why did you force that month's wait at the last moment? Now things are complicated worse than ever!"

Matheson waited patiently for his wife to finish the recital of her complaints. He wondered if it were possible to appeal once more to her better feelings. At all events he would make the attempt.[Pg 175] The signature he had forced out of Larssen had given him back some of his self-respect, and he felt his brain as it were cleared for action once more.

"I suppose you found out afterwards that you'd made a mistake, and then blamed it on to me?"

"I'm not blaming you—I'm trying to get the right perspective on to our marriage. I'm wondering if the woman I loved was yourself, or merely my idealization of you."

"I can't help it if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet of paper.

"When I married you, I thought you were in sympathy with me over the big things of life—the things that matter. But you turned them aside with a laugh. That put a barrier between us."

"We seemed to be radically opposed in ideas. We drifted farther and farther away from one another. At the end of five years, our marriage was empty even of tepid affection. If there had been children, perhaps...."

Matheson let the flippancy pass. He continued[Pg 176] steadily: "I felt I could not do my big work under the constant friction of our married life, and my life in the financial world. I felt you longed for complete liberty."

"So, when opportunity came to me on the night of March 14th, I made the sudden decision you know of. I thought I had cut myself loose. If it had not been for that one unthought-of thread—Larssen's scheme to use me dead or alive—I should never have come back.... My sudden decision was wrong. I realise now that no man can cut himself utterly loose from the life he has woven for himself. He is part of the pattern of the great web of humanity. He is joined to the world around him by a thousand threads. If he tries to cut loose, there will always be some one unnoticed thread linking him to the old life."

"That sort of thing may be interesting to people who're interested in it. It merely bores me."

"Olive, I want to say this: I'm ready to try once more. I'm ready to take up our married life as we started it on our wedding day. I'll try to forget the past and start afresh. I'll make allowances for you—will you make allowances for me?"

Olive laughed mirthlessly. "In plain words, that means you want me to be somebody I've never pretended to be and never want to be. The idea is fatuous."

"Won't you believe me when I say that I'm genuinely anxious to do the right thing by you, and clear up the tangle I've made of your life and mine? I'm sorry for what I said in Larssen's[Pg 177] presence a little while ago. I was angry and carried beyond myself."

"I'll do my best to make amends.... You're not looking at all well. There's a big change in you. Monte Carlo does you no good—the reverse in fact. Why not see a doctor and get him to prescribe you a tonic and a quiet place to build up your health in? We'll go there together and start our married life afresh."

"You've had your say—now let me have mine!" flung out Olive. "When we married, I was mistaken too. I thought at the time you were a man who could do things. I judged on your previous career. After we were married, I found I was utterly misled. It isn't in you to climb to the top. You've too many sides to your nature. First one thing pulls you one way, and then another thing pulls you another way. To succeed, a man has to run in blinkers—straight on without minding the side issues. I imagined you a hundred per center, and I found you only a ninety per center. You can't climb to the top—it isn't in you!"

Olive looked around at the vast throne-room of the shipowner, and her meaning was conveyed in the glance.

"Larssen has that final ten per cent.," admitted Matheson. "But do you know what it means in plain language?"

"Utter unscrupulousness. Utter ruthlessness. Napoleon had that extra ten per cent. Bismarck[Pg 178] had it. You're right when you say I haven't it."

She dug her pen viciously into the polished surface of the desk, leaving the holder quivering at the outrage.

"Larssen has been merely playing with you," continued Matheson. "I don't want to blame, but to warn. I know the man far better than you do. He thinks you might be useful to him."

She looked him straight in the eye, her pupils narrowed with hate. "Go out of my life!"

"Larssen spoke glibly enough of disappearance, but the circumstances are very different now from what they were on the night of March 14th. Then,[Pg 179] not a soul outside myself knew of my intention. You'd have claimed leave from the Courts to presume death, and it would certainly have been granted you. You would legally have been a widow, and I—as Clifford Matheson—should legally have been dead.... But now, both you and Larssen, and his secretary as well, know that Clifford Matheson is alive."

"Larssen will certainly keep the secret. So will his secretary. So shall I. That's no difficulty."

"You mean to apply to the courts for a certificate of my death, knowing that it will be fraudulent."

"That, or divorce against you and Miss Verney." The lines of obstinacy were hard-set around her mouth.

Olive remained contemptuously silent. Her reason, as she saw it, should be obvious enough. If Clifford was so dense as not to see it, she was certainly not going to enlighten him.

Even in face of what had gone before, Matheson was still hoping to soften his wife towards Elaine. He tried again. "Her life is ruined. Her work was her happiness as well as her livelihood. Now, both are snatched away from her. She is an orphan; she has no relatives in sympathy with her; her means are very limited; she has heavy expenses to face over the operation and the convalescence. She is under Hegelmann's care at Wiesbaden. This very morning he is operating on her. I must go[Pg 180] back to Wiesbaden at once to hear how things are going."

Matheson, sick at heart, reached for his hat and stick preparatory to taking his leave.

A sudden thought struck Olive. "You swear to me that you've told no one you're Clifford Matheson?"

Olive flashed hate at him. Her hands were quivering when she answered, as though she could have torn him in pieces.

"Very well, then! I'll reserve my right of action too!" Her fingers reached for the electric bell and pressed it imperatively.

When Sylvester appeared, she said decisively: "Have a cab called for Mr Rivière."[Pg 181]

The financier took up hat and stick, and with a cold "good-bye" passed out of the open door, Sylvester following him.

Presently the secretary returned to confer with Olive. Larssen had told him to keep in touch with her.

Clifford Matheson was once more John Rivière. He picked up his valise at the Avon Hotel and caught the first boat train for Germany. It took him to the Continent via Queenboro'—Flushing.

His thoughts on the railway journey to Queenboro' were very different to those which had filled his mind when he sped Calaiswards on his way to England. Then, he had felt as if he had just plunged into an ice-cold lake, and emerged tingling in every limb with the vigour of health renewed. The course before him had seemed straight; the issue clean-cut.

Now, he felt as if he had been tripped up and pushed bodily into a pool of mire.

Circumstances seemed more tangled than ever. Finality had not been reached either in regard to his relations towards his wife, towards Elaine, or towards Larssen; in regard to the Hudson Bay scheme, or in his regard to his future freedom for work on the lines he so earnestly desired. The whirlpool had sucked him back, and he was once more battling with swirling waters.

Out of all the welter of his thoughts one course became clearer and clearer. He must tell Elaine. He must put her in possession of the main facts of the situation which had developed in Larssen's[Pg 182] office. That he could tell her without violating the spirit of his bargain with Olive was certain. He knew he could trust absolutely in Elaine's silence.

Till then—till he had told her—there was no definite line of action he could see as the one inevitable solution.

If the elements had seemed to bar his passage to London the day before, to-day they seemed to be calling welcome to him as train and boat sped him eastwards. The marshes of the Swale were almost a joyous emerald green under the sparkle of the sun in the early afternoon; the estuary of the Thames was alive with white and brown sail swelling full-bloodedly to the drive of a care-free, joyful breeze; torpedo-boats and destroyers sped in and out from Sheerness with the supple strength of greyhounds unleashed, tossing the blue waters in curling locks of foam from their bows; the open sea sparkled and glinted and danced with the joy of life in its veins.

At sundown, the sky behind the foaming wake of the packet was a blaze of glory. The sinking sun wove a cloth of gold on the halo of cloud about it, and circled the horizon with a belt of rose and opal. Gradually the gold faded into fiery purple, with arms of unbelievable green stretching out to clasp the round cup of ocean; the purple died away reluctantly like the drums of a triumphant march receding to a distance; night took sea and sky into her arms, and crooned to them a mother-song of rest.

On the railway station at Flushing a telegram was handed to Rivière—the reply to a telegram of inquiry[Pg 183] sent by him from London. It was from Elaine herself:

"Operation well over. Doctor hopeful. Little pain. Glad when you are back," it ran, and he had almost worn through its creases, by reason of folding and unfolding, before he fell asleep that night in the train for Wiesbaden.[Pg 184]

CHAPTER XXII
THE CHAMELEON MIND

Many men are chameleons. They take their mental colour from the surroundings of the moment. They are swayed by every fresh change of circumstance, influenced by every strong mind with whom they come in contact. If such a man goes on from year to year in the same even groove of work, the chameleon mind may not be apparent on the surface; but if by any chance he is suddenly jolted from his accustomed groove, the mental instability becomes plain to read.

When a clerk at £2 per week he had looked forward to promotion to £3 a week as something dazzling in its opulence, while £4 a week represented the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Now a sudden turn of Fortune's wheel had lifted him to a salary of £6 a week and all expenses paid, and the work he was required to do for his money was so trifling in amount as to be almost ludicrous. He had merely to read over a few letters and send off a few brief cablegrams saying nothing in particular.

As Lars Larssen had tersely phrased it, he was no longer a "clerk"—he was a "business man."[Pg 185]

And he knew that if he carried out orders faithfully and intelligently, his future with his employer was assured. Larssen had a strong reputation for loyalty to his employees. He exacted much, but he gave much in return. As his own fortunes grew, so did those of his right-hand men. If a man after faithful service was stricken down by illness, Larssen allowed him a liberal pension.

That was "business" as the shipowner viewed it in his broad, far-sighted way. He saw business not as the mere handling of goods, but as the handling of men. In the attainment of his ambitions he was dependent on faithful service from his employees, and accordingly he made it worth their while to be faithful. He was liberal to them because liberality paid him. His position in the world was somewhat like that of a robber baron in the Middle Ages, carving out a kingdom with the help of loyal followers. The people he plundered were the outsiders, and a certain share of the spoils went to his men.

So Dean knew that if he carried out thoroughly the work entrusted to him, Larssen would stand by his spoken promise. He resolved to obey orders as faithfully and as intelligently as he possibly could. He did not write home what form his new work was taking. In his letters to Daisy he explained simply that he was being sent to Canada on a confidential mission, at a big increase of salary, and that he was having a regal time of it. At Quebec and Montreal and Ottawa and Winnipeg he scoured the shops to find presents which would carry to her a realisation of his new position.[Pg 186]

Dean began to feel his importance growing rapidly as he journeyed across the Atlantic and around the principal cities of Canada. He thought he realised the meaning of "business" as it was viewed by the men up above, the men at the roll-top desks. He saw now that it was not hard, plugging work that earned them their big salaries. In a short fortnight he had begun to look a little contemptuously on the grinders and plodders. Why couldn't they realise how little their patient, plodding service could ever bring them? But some men, he reflected, were born to be merely clerks all their days. He was different—out of the common ruck. He could see largely, like Lars Larssen did. He was a man of importance.

Canada pressed a broad thumb on his plastic mind without his conscious knowledge. Canada with her young, red-blooded vigour swept into him like a tidal wave of open sea into a sluggish, marshy creek. Canada thrust her vastness and her limitless potentialities at him with a careless hand, as though to say: "Here's opportunity for the taking." Canada taught him in ten days what at home he would never have learnt in a lifetime: that London is not the British Empire.

The clerk who lives out his life in the rabbit-warren of the city of London by day, and in a cheap, pretentious, red-brick suburb by night, believes firmly that outside London not much matters. He lumps together the Canadian, the South African, the Australian, and the New Zealander under the slighting category of "colonials." He imagines them bowing themselves humbly before[Pg 187] the majesty of the Londoner, taking their cues from London and reverencing it as the fount of all wisdom and might and wealth.

After ten days of Canada, Dean with his chameleon mind felt himself almost a Canadian. He was beginning to pity the limitations of the Londoner. He considered himself raised above that level.

Winnipeg, the new "wheat pit" of North America, impressed him most strongly. He could feel the bursting strength of the young city—a David amongst cities. He could feel it growing under his feet to its kingdom of the granary of Britain. The epic of the wheat pulsed its stately poetry into him—thrilled him with the majestic chords of its mighty song.

He had a half-idea that Lars Larssen's big scheme was in some way connected with the epic of the wheat, and it gave him fresh importance to think that he was serving such a man in so confidential a position.

He tried a little gamble in "May wheat" with a Winnipeg bucket-shop, plunging what was to him the important sum of twenty dollars. Luck was with him full-tide. From the moment he bought, May wheat shot upwards, and in a few days he had closed the deal with fifty dollars to his credit.

That evening he wandered around the city with money jingling in his trouser-pockets. He bought himself a good seat at a music-hall, and at the bar boldly ordered cocktails with weird names of[Pg 188] which the contents were wonderful mysteries to him.

On his way home to his hotel about midnight, a flaming placard outside a tin-roofed chapel caught his eye and stopped him for a moment. The wording was crudely sensational:

THE WICKED FLOURISH!
BUT FOR HOW LONG?
A LIFETIME OF EASE FOR AN ETERNITY OF HELL-FIRE!
DO YOU CHOOSE HELL?
MAKE YOUR CHOICE TO-NIGHT!

The meeting inside the chapel was in full swing. A roar of voices raised in a marching hymn swept out to the deserted street. Dean's lips curved contemptuously for a moment. Then the whim came to him to finish his night's amusement by a sarcastic enjoyment of the revivalist service. He would go inside and watch other people making fools of themselves.

He entered the swinging doors of the chapel into a room hot with the odour of packed humanity, and found a place for himself at the rear.

Presently the hymn ended on a shout of triumph and a deep, solemn "Amen." There was a shuffling and scraping of feet as the congregation sat down and prepared itself to listen to the preacher.

He was a tall, lean man of fifty-five, with a thin grey beard and a hawk nose, and eyes that burnt with the intensity of inner fire. He was the ascetic, the fanatic, the man with a burning message to deliver. His eyes sought round his congregation[Pg 189] before he gave out his text, seeking for the souls that might be ready for the saving.

"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried. And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented."

The preacher read out the words with a slow, even intensity, making them carry the weight of the inevitable. He paused for them to sink in before he began the delivery of his own message.

"My friends," he said, "listen to this story from life. Many years ago there was a young man in this very city who had a great temptation placed before him. He was a clerk in an office, as many of you are. He was ambitious, as many of you are. He was hoping for riches and power, as many of you are.

"One day the devil tempted him. He could become rich if he chose to sacrifice his conscience. The devil promised him riches and power and all that his heart could desire. And he fell.

"My friends, the devil kept his literal promise. He always does. When he comes to you in the watches of the night, and offers you all that you[Pg 190] desire on earth in return for your soul, you can know that he will keep his promise.

"The young man is now rich and famous, and if I told you his name, you would say that he is a man to be envied. You see his portraits in the papers; you hear of his mansions and his motor-cars, his yachts and his splendid entertainments; and you would never dream that he is the most unhappy man in Canada.

"The devil has given him everything he lusted for. And yet, not ten days ago, he came to me in secret and begged for help and counsel. His riches and power have turned to wormwood in his mouth. His wife and children hate him. His friends are only friends because he has money. He is the most lonely, the most miserable of men."

The preacher leant forward over the pulpit and half whispered: "The wicked flourish like the green bay tree, but who knows what secret canker eats into their hearts? The devil stands beside them and whispers mockingly: 'I have given you everything your heart lusted for; does it taste sweet? Does it taste sweet?' So much for this world; and now, my friends, what of the next world?"

The preacher straightened himself and with passionate sincerity flung out a torrent of warning and exhortation to his congregation—a lava-stream of burning words that bit into their very souls. Dean, who had come to mock, listened with a clutch at his heart that made him first shiver and then turn burning hot and faint. He passed his handkerchief over his forehead nervously, gripped at the seat to steady himself.[Pg 191]

At length he could stand the strain no longer As he rose and stumbled his way towards the door, towards the fresh air, the preacher stopped in his discourse to send an individual message to him.

"Stay, my friend!" he cried. "To-night is the hour for you to choose. To-morrow I shall be gone. To-morrow will be too late. Choose now!"

At his hotel the porter handed him a telegram just arrived. It was from Lars Larssen—an order to proceed to New York and wait the shipowner's arrival there. It had been despatched by wireless from on board the s.s. "Aurelia."

That scrap of paper came as a bracing tonic to Arthur Dean. It was an order, and just now he ached to be ordered. The curt message out-weighed all the burning words of the preacher. Even from three thousand miles away Lars Larssen could grip hold of the mind of the young fellow and bend it to his purpose.

The next morning Dean was smiling scornfully at his weakness of the night before. He paid for a train ticket for New York via Toronto in a newly confident frame of mind. He was Larssen's man again.

At the beginning of the journey Dean read papers and magazines and smoked away the long hours. Tiring of that eventually, he sauntered to the observation platform at the rear of the train.

There was an embarrassing silence. The minister[Pg 192] knew him at once for the young man who had left his chapel the night before in the middle of the discourse. Dean knew that he was recognized, but did not wish to appear cognizant of it. He tried to look indifferent, but with poor success.

The minister broke the silence by offering his card and saying: "One day you may need my help. If it please the Lord that I am alive then, come to me and I will help you."

Dean took the card and read the name, the Rev. Enoch Stephen Way, and a Toronto address. He pocketed the card and murmured a conventional thanks.

The answer was curt, and the minister saw that the young man resented any cross-examination of his private affairs. He therefore turned the conversation at once to impersonal matters.

"It's not that, quite. I mean that people seem to think in a bigger way. I suppose it comes from having so much space around one."

The train was now passing through the endless miles of forest-land and tangled hills on the route to Fort William, with scarcely a sign of human habitation except by the occasional wayside stations.[Pg 193] Now and again the train would thunder over a high trestle bridge above a leaping torrent-river. Dean waved his hand vaguely to include the primeval vastnesses around them.

"That's right," answered the minister. "There's no cramping here. Room for everyone. Room for spiritual growth as well as material growth. I know the feeling you have. When I was a young man about your age I came to Canada from the slums of Liverpool. I had been twice in jail in Liverpool. It was for theft. In England I should probably have developed into a chronic thief. There's little chance for a man who has once been in prison.... But Canada gave me my chance. Canada didn't bother about my past. Canada only wanted to know what I could do in the future."

Dean's eyes widened at this frank avowal. He had never seen or heard of a man—and especially a man in the ministry—who would openly confess to a prison-brand upon him.

The minister looked steadily at him, and Dean flushed still further and fidgetted uncomfortably.

"The Lord has brought you to me a second time. There may never be a third time. The Lord has——"

A sudden jerk of the car threw them both off their feet. They were passing now over a high trestle bridge above a foaming torrent. There was a horrible grinding and jarring and crashing. The tail-car of the train flicked out sideways and hung half over the river, dragging with it the cars in front. For an age-long second it seemed as if the whole train would be precipitated into the water.

The end car, turning over and over, struck the river a hundred feet below and impaled itself on a jagged spur of rock hidden under the swirl of waters.

He awoke to consciousness through the agonized dream that fiends were staking him down under water and torturing him by letting the water rise higher and higher, until finally he would be drowned by inches.

Waters were swirling around him, and his legs were pinned fast in the wreckage of the car tilted up on end amongst the sunken rocks. Burning[Pg 195] pains shot through him. Far up above on the bridge men were shouting and rushing wildly.

He screamed out for help. A wave dashed at him and choked the scream on his lips. He struggled to free himself from the wreckage that pinned him fast, and blinding pain drove him to unconsciousness again.

As he awoke for the second time, a groan near by made him twist his head to see who it might come from. It was the minister, held fast amongst the splintered wreckage of the car, his face streaming red from a jagged gash in his grey head.

The minister answered very simply: "My friend, see to yourself. The Lord has called me to his side."

With a sudden jerk the car settled deeper in the torrent. Only by straining to the uttermost could Dean keep his mouth to the air above the swirl of waters.

The minister began to pray aloud: "Lord, Thou hast been pleased to call me, and I come. Receive my soul in pity, and forgive me my many sins. And, oh Lord God, grant that this my young friend may live to see the light and to worship Thee. Let this be his hour of repentance. Start him upon a new path, and keep his feet from straying. In thy mercy save him that he might live to Thy glory. Show him what Thou hast shown me, and——"

The minister's hand dropped suddenly forward, and the waters closed over him with a snarl.

From the bridge far above a man was being[Pg 196] lowered on a rope, like a spider hanging from a thread.

Dean watched him with paralyzed tongue. The strain to keep his head above the waters was racking him like a torment of the Inquisition. The horror of the situation grew with every second. Why did they lower so slowly? Would release ever come in time to save him?

His hour of repentance! Yes, the preacher was right. This was his punishment for the part he had taken in the fraudulent personation of Clifford Matheson. It came to Dean like a blinding flash of light that God was demanding of him whether he would repent or no—whether he would vow to run straight for the future.

The man on the rope was growing larger. His face held the solemnity of an Eternal Judge. In his two hands were scrolls marked Riches and Poverty. He held them out towards Dean, demanding his instant choice. The young man begged for a moment to consider. He shut his eyes against the decision thrust upon him. A voice thundered in his ears....[Pg 197]

CHAPTER XXIII
LARSSEN'S MAN ONCE AGAIN

Of the eleven passengers in the car that plunged over the bridge, Arthur Dean was the only one saved. Nine had been drowned in the interior of the car when it crashed amongst the rocks of the torrent. Only Dean and the minister, standing in the observation platform at the rear of the car, had had a chance of life, and the minister had died before help had reached him. The shock affected Dean more seriously than his injuries, which were nothing worse than severe bruises and cuts. He knew that he had had a miraculous escape, and the horror of the peril wove in and out of his thoughts as he lay in hospital at Fort William, haunting dreams and waking thoughts alike.

When he left the hospital he was a changed man—white and gaunt of face, and resolved in purpose to tell Lars Larssen at once that he would serve him no longer.

He made for New York, and went straight to the shipowner's offices. These were situated at the very beginning of Broadway, overlooking Battery Park, on the tip of the tongue of Manhattan Island. Inside, they were very much on the same lines of the London offices—in fact, the latter were[Pg 198] modelled on them. Above the dome of the building stretched the antennæ of Larssen's wireless.

To his intense disappointment, Dean was informed that the chief was away from New York, by the bedside of his little son at his school in Florida.

The young fellow had worked himself up to the point of handing in his resignation; he had fixed on just what he would say to his employer; and this check threw him back on his haunches. To travel down to Florida would cost money, and he did not feel justified in paying for the journey out of the expenses allowance given him by Larssen. To explain by letter was too difficult. After some thought he decided to take a return ticket by day coach, and to pay for it out of his own pocket.

Golden Beach, where the school was situated, was a fashionable winter resort on the Florida coast. In one of its several palatial hotels, Larssen had engaged a suite of rooms and had made himself a temporary office. Dean carried his modest portmanteau to the hotel, and waited in the piazza until Larssen should return from a visit to his boy.

It was late in the afternoon when the shipowner came striding along the white, palm-shaded road, purpose and masterfulness in every movement. When he caught sight of Dean waiting on the piazza, he came up with a hand outstretched in cordial greeting.

"Well, Dean, how are you feeling now? The accident must have given you a terrific shake-up."

"Looks to me you could do with a fortnight's complete holiday," said Larssen, surveying critically[Pg 199] the gaunt white face of the young man. "Say so, and it's yours."

Dean stammered some words of thanks. This cordial greeting threw him into confusion—made it so much more difficult to say what he had come to say. For a moment's respite, he asked after Larssen's little boy.

"He'll pull round. The crisis is over. His constitution's weak, but he'll pull round. Money saved him. On the 'Aurelia' I got hold of all the facts of the case by wireless, and took a grip of the situation. I sized up the doctors here as a couple of well-meaning fools. I wired to Chicago for a man who's made a speciality of opsonic treatment for pneumonia. His own invention—something the other doctors sneer at. I had him packed from Chicago to Golden Beach by special train, with full authority to boss the case.... Yes, it's money that saved my boy. Money, Dean, holds the power of life and death. Money is the mightiest thing in this world. I expect you've come to realise that lately, now you've left off being a clerk."

The shipowner shot a swift glance at him. "Come to my office," he said, and led the way.

When he had the young fellow seated with the light full on him, Larssen asked coldly: "What's your song? Looking for a raise already?"

"It's like this, sir. When I was in Winnipeg, I went one night to a music-hall, and on my way home I went by chance into a chapel meeting."

"Music-hall or chapel—it's all one to me, so long as you're not a drinker. You're free to spend your evenings as you like, provided it doesn't interfere with your work."

"There was a preacher there, a Mr Enoch Way, who impressed me very strongly, sir. So much so that I had to leave the meeting. When I got back to my hotel, I found a wire from you telling me to travel to New York. I caught the morning train, and on the train I met Mr Way again. We were on the observation platform together when the railway-car went over the bridge. He died not a yard away from me, down in the river! He was a fine man—a great man! and if I could die like he died, with a prayer on his lips for someone who was only a stranger——" Dean choked and stopped.

Presently he resumed: "And when I lay in hospital at Fort William, I thought things over and over. I began to see clearly that I ought never to have taken on the work you asked me to do."

"It's not right, sir! You know what you asked me to do wasn't right! It's fraud!" The words came clear and strong now.

If Larssen had been a man of ordinary passions, he would have kicked Dean out of the door and[Pg 201] told him to go to the devil. But the shipowner had not reached his present power by giving way to ordinary feelings.

He answered very quietly: "I should have liked to meet that Mr Way. He must have been a man of personality. What did you tell him?"

"I didn't tell him anything. I think he guessed. He was that kind of man—he could read right into you."

"He told me it was my hour for repentance. That was when we were in the observation platform together. The next moment we were thrown over the bridge."

"Of taking part in a fraud. Of pretending a dead man was still alive—going to Canada and sending letters in his name so that his friends would think he was still alive. I don't know how I could have brought myself to do such a thing! I was tempted, I suppose, and I fell. But temptation is nothing—it's falling to temptation that matters! That's what he said in his sermon."

"Nothing very much, sir. Of course I've not been all I should have been, but I'd never done anything radically wrong until then."[Pg 202]

The shipowner rose and laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. "I appreciate your feelings," he said. "They do you credit, Dean. You're sound and straight, and that's what I want in my young men."

Dean looked up in surprise. "I don't think you quite understand, sir. I've come here to-day—come at my own expense—to hand you in my resignation."

"Yes. There's been no 'fraud' at all. Clifford Matheson is as alive as you are. He knows perfectly well that you've been in Canada for him."

"Yes, they were his right enough. He laid them by the river-bank at Neuilly himself."

"That's complicated to answer. I don't know that I ought to tell you without Mr Matheson's express permission. In fact, I want you to keep what I've just told you entirely to yourself."

Larssen saw the suspicion and continued rapidly. "You think I'm trying to bluff you? I never bluff with my staff, whatever I may do outside. I'll give you proof. Have you got those signatures of Clifford Matheson's?"

The shipowner rapidly unlocked his desk and drew out a printed document which he placed in the young man's hands.

"Now see here. This prospectus was printed off a week after you left for Canada. You can know that by the printed date. Now what is the wording written over it in ink?"

"Exactly. That prospectus was passed by Mr Matheson some time after you imagined him dead and buried."

Dean could answer nothing. The world had turned upside down for him. Larssen took the prospectus and the two specimen signatures, and locked them away in his desk.

"I must apologize, sir—apologize sincerely! I didn't know of all this. I thought——I thought——"

"That's all over now. We'll forget it. You've proved to me you're sound and straight. You've carried out orders well. Carry out future orders in the same way, and I'll do everything I've promised for you. You know that I never break a promise to my staff?"

"Well, my next order is this: take a fortnight's holiday and get strong again.... Do you fish?"

"I'll put you in the way of some splendid fishing.[Pg 204] Tarpon! After that you'll return to England with me. Sound good to you?"

CHAPTER XXIV
CONFESSION

Rivière was at his glass-topped, bevel-edged bench in the private biological laboratory at Wiesbaden, surrounded by his apparatus of experiment. At the moment he was looking down with one eye through the high-power immersion lens of his microscope at two tiny blobs of life in a drop of water. From day to day the salinity of the water was being slowly altered, and this was only one of thousands of experiments he had planned on the effect of changing conditions of life on the elemental organisms.

Every day he was passing in review scores of slides on which the elemental reaction to abnormal conditions was unfolding itself for his observation. Each drop of water was a world where the vital spark was struggling against the harshness of nature. Each drop of water embodied a fight of primitive protoplasm against disease. Each drop of water was contributing its tiny quota to the new book of knowledge he hoped one day to give to his fellow-men.

Like all trained microscopists, Rivière worked with both eyes open. The amateur observer has to screw one eye tight in order to avoid a confusion of impressions, and quickly tires himself. The[Pg 206] trained man keeps both eyes open, and schools his brain to concentrate on the one vision and ignore the other. He sees only the miniature world at the further end of his complex of lenses.

But Rivière, self-controlled as he was, could not keep attention on his experimental slide. The vision of the miniature world faded out, and through the other eye came the impression of the outside of the polished brass tube of the microscope; the glass slide beyond, lit up by the reflector as though with a searchlight; and the plate-glass bench mirroring the cases of specimens and the shelves of chemical reagents.

And then the material vision of both eyes faded away, and he saw only the inner vision of Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Rivière aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully musical voice of his.

"Fraulein is worrying—that is bad for the recovery. I will not have her worried. You must tell her that everything will come right—you must make her smile again."

"But I'm only a casual acquaintance. We met by mere chance a few days before the attack at Nîmes," Rivière had said.

"Nevertheless, you can do much for her. She will listen to you gladly. You are no longer casual acquaintances. I am an observer of human nature as well as a surgeon, and I know that the mind is[Pg 207] the key to the bodily health. I know that you can influence her. Talk to her freely—it will not tire her. That is my order."

But Rivière had not been able to carry out the spirit of the old man's shrewd command. When he was by her bedside, a great constraint had come upon him. What had been easy to embody in a letter, was terribly difficult to frame in spoken speech. Several times he had tried to open the way to a confession. He knew it must scarify Elaine, and he shrank from it. But yet it was plain her mind was not at rest, and that was worse for her than the knowledge of the truth.

With sudden resolution, Rivière put away his microscope and placed his experimental slides in their air-tight incubating chamber. He changed from his laboratory coat to his outdoor coat, and made his way rapidly towards the surgical home.

As he crossed the Wilhelmstrasse—gay with its alluring shops and its crowd of well-dressed, leisured saunterers—a man came up with outstretched hand to Rivière and then hesitated visibly.

"Excuse me, sir, but I thought for the moment you were a friend of mine, a Mr Clifford Matheson. I see now that I was mistaken by a very striking resemblance."

"Ah, that's it!" said the man, visibly relieved. "Well, remember me to him when you see him. Warren is my name—Major Warren."

It was not the first proof Rivière had had of the safety of his new identity. Though Larssen and Olive had penetrated the disguise, others who knew him well, even his own clerks, had been perfectly satisfied with the explanation of the "half-brother."

When he was ushered into the darkened room at the surgical home, Elaine smiled greeting to him, and the smile stabbed him with self-reproach. He had come to wound her. There must be no further delay. He must act the surgeon now.

Elaine half-sat, half-lay in a chaise longue. His white lilac and fuchsia—those were her favourite flowers he had discovered—were on a small table by her side, scenting the room faintly but definitely. She had a letter in her hands, which she asked him to open and read to her.

As he read it out to her, he kept glancing now and again at her face to note the effect of the words. The letter was mostly a gay account of the girl's doings in Paris—the amusements of the past week, little scraps about mutual friends, theatrical gossip, and so on. It was meant to cheer, but it did not cheer. Rivière could see that Elaine was reading into every sentence the might-have-been of her own wrecked life. He hurried through it as quickly as possible, and then they chatted for some time of impersonal matters.

His words began to come from him with a curious[Pg 209] husky abruptness. Elaine felt the tension, and knew that he had something important to tell her. She sought to help him to it.

"Your journey to London," she said. "Did it effect your purpose? You haven't told me much."

"I had the hardest fight of my life," he replied, taking up her opening with relief. This would lead him to what he had come to tell her.

"I want you to know every detail of it," he answered swiftly. "I want your advice—your help."

"My help?" There was a faint flush in her cheeks below the bandages. "What can I do?"

"You remember at Nîmes telling me that your father had lost the last remnant of his fortune speculating in one of the Clifford Matheson companies?"

"Yes. And I was surprised to find how different you were to my conception of your brother."

"I am Clifford Matheson. I took the name of John Rivière because ... well, the reason for that is one part of the story I have to tell you."[Pg 210]

The pain, so evident in the drawn lines about her mouth, made him pause. It was the first stroke of the scalpel.

From outside the window came the care-free chirping of the birds making their Spring nests and telling the whole world of their happiness.

Presently she whispered "Go on," as though she had steeled herself to bear the next stroke of the knife.

"My reason was that I wanted to cut myself loose—completely—from my life in the financial world and from my married life. A sudden opportunity came to me two days before I first met you at Arles. I seized the opportunity and planned to disappear entirely from my world. I arranged evidence of a violent death, in the belief that it would be accepted by my friends and by the Courts. My wife would be freed; she would come into my property; and I myself should be free to carry out in quiet the scientific work I'd planned."

Elaine considered this in silence for some moments. A question framed itself on her lips; she hesitated; finally it came out:

"My marriage was a ghastly mistake. I was quite unsuited to my wife.... But I made a bigger mistake when I thought to cut loose from the life I'd woven for myself. One thread pulled me back[Pg 211] inexorably. I had half committed myself to a deal involving five millions of the public's money with Lars Larssen, the shipowner——"

"No; but he was once pointed out to me at the Academy, the year the portrait of his little boy was exhibited there. I could feel at once the tremendous strength of will behind the man. Something beyond the human. I was fascinated and repelled at the one time. So that is the man who——"

Elaine sat up rigid with shock. "A divorce court! How—why? What possible——?"

"I'll not let him drag you into court. Be quite sure in your mind of that. But listen, Elaine!" Her name came from him unconsciously. "Listen, I want you to know every detail. It's your right."

Elaine flushed. Her voice held a delicate softness as she answered: "I'll listen without interruption."

Then Rivière told her of what had happened since the crucial night of March 14th, omitting nothing that she ought to know, sparing nothing of himself. She listened quietly to his account of the interview at the Rue Laffitte when he had, as he thought, made the final settlement with Larssen; and to the recital of what had occurred from the moment of his seeing the notice in the Europe Chronicle of the coming flotation of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd.[Pg 212]

He did not tell her of what he had seen through the lighted window of Thornton Chase, but passed on to the interview at Larssen's office.

She shuddered as he spoke of the shipowner's brutal insinuations, and burst out: "It was blackmail."

Rivière spoke of his wife's unexpected entry into the office at Leadenhall Street, and the scene that had followed when Olive and Larssen together had bent their joint wills to the task of forcing him to his knees. When he concluded on the signature wrung out of the shipowner at the last moment, Elaine cried her relief:

On his further conversation with Olive, Rivière touched very briefly, merely indicating the terms his wife had rigidly demanded.

"And that's how the matter rests at present," he ended bitterly. "I've taken away your livelihood; and dragged your name into this unsavoury mire; and there's no finality reached.... But I'll get this tangle straightened out somehow, if I have to choke Larssen to do it!"

Rivière had strode over to the window—not to look out, because the curtains were close-drawn, but from sheer force of habit. He turned round sharply as a half-whispered question—an utterly unexpected question—came from Elaine.

Rivière's blood leapt hot in his veins and he answered recklessly: "Because I loved you! Loved you from the first moment we met! And I hadn't the right to love you. I wasn't running away from you—I was running away from myself."

"Now I see. I thought then.... And when you offered to devote your life to me? You remember that, don't you?" She was trembling as she spoke.

"It was not pity for me? I want the truth—nothing but the truth! Oh, if I could only see you now, to know if it were the truth!" Her hands went up impulsively to the bandages over her eyes, then dropped helplessly to her side as she remembered they must on no account be touched.

"As God hears me, it was not pity but love!" he answered with passionate sincerity.

"I insist! I claim it as my right! You wouldn't torture me all my life with the thought that I'd driven you to——"[Pg 214]

Rivière took her hand and bent to kiss it reverently. There was silence for many moments—a silence of deep sympathy. Elaine's flushed cheeks told Rivière more plainly than words what she was feeling.

She sought to take his hand in hers, but he rose abruptly from beside her couch and strode away.

There was silence again for some moments. He[Pg 215] came back to her side. She sought for his hand, and he let her take it in hers.

"I know her better than you do. I saw her in the train that morning—heard her speak. It told me a great deal. We women know one another's springs of actions. If you write the letter I dictate, she'll come!"

"If she came, it would only exhaust you and hinder your recovery. Dr Hegelmann would certainly not allow it if he knew. He's given me strict orders to chase away worry from you."

"It would worry me still more not to write that letter.... I shall be fighting for you, and that will help me to get back my sight. Please!"

"Then I'll fetch pen and paper and write for you. But we must let a week go by before posting. Every day will give you new strength."

CHAPTER XXV
WHITE LILAC

Happiness is a veil of iridescent gossamer draped over the ugliness of reality. Happiness is rooted in illusion—in the ignoring of harsh fact and jarring circumstance, and the perception only of what is beautiful and joyous.

Happiness is an impressionist painting. One takes a muddy, sullen river flanked by rotting wharves and grimy factories and huddled, festering slums, and under the mantle of evening and the veil of illusion one creates a "Nocturne in Silver." The eye of the artist finds equal beauty in the Thames by sordid Southwark and the Adriatic lapping Venice in her soft caress. The common phrase has it as "the seeing eye"—but more justly it is the ignoring eye. The artist ignores the harsh and the ugly, and transfers to his canvas only the harmonious and the poetic. He epitomises happiness.

Little children know this truth instinctively. They find their highest happiness in make-believe. A child of the slums with a rag-doll and a few beads and a scrap of faded finery can make for herself a world of fairyland. She is a princess clothed in shimmering silk and hung about with pearls and[Pg 217] diamonds. She is courted by a knight in golden armour. She is married amidst the acclamations of a loyal populace. She is the mother of a king-to-be. She is radiantly happy.

And in her self-created world of make-believe she is far wiser than these grown-ups who insist with obstinate complacency on "seeing things as they are." They take pride in being disillusioned.

"Let us live in dreamland awhile," Elaine had said with the wisdom of a little child.

It was tacitly agreed to by Rivière. When together, they combined to ignore the tangle of ugly circumstance and the harsh struggle to come. For the time being they were in fancy two lovers with no barrier between and the world smiling joyously upon them.

After a full day's work in his laboratory, he would come to her side and answer her questions with the tenderness of a lover.

"You've brought me white lilac again," she said one day as he entered. "How did you first guess that white lilac is my favourite flower?"

"Every woman suggests a flower. One sees many roses—little bud roses, and big, buxom, full-blown roses, and wild, free-blowing roses. One sees many white camellias, and heavy-scented tuberoses, and opulent Parma violets, and gorgeous tiger-lilies—those have been the women of my[Pg 218] world. One sees many marigolds and cornflowers and poppies. But I've seen only one white lilac—you. White lilac is the fresh young Spring. And yet it is a woman grown. White lilac is sweet and tender and gracious. White lilac is so faint in perfume that any other scented flower would smother it, and yet its fragrance lives in my memory beyond any other. White lilac is yourself."

"The success race has to be run in blinkers. One must see only the goal ahead. There must be no looking to right or left."

"If success means that, then success is bought too dearly.... Dear John, I don't want you otherwise than you are. I love you for your weakness and not your strength. That's the mother-love in a woman."

"So little? You've made this sick-room an enchanted castle for me! I dread the time when I shall have to leave it. But we won't speak of that—that's forbidden ground."

"We'll speak only of the world we've created for ourselves. It's a whole planet with only you and I for its sole inhabitants. The planet Earth is far away in space—just a cold white star amongst a wilderness of others."[Pg 219]

"We were far apart then. We were next to one another in the physical plane, and yet a million miles away in the plane of reality. Only the invisible things are the realities of life.... You were to leave Nîmes the next day, and I never expected to see you again."

"You remember the arena at Arles, at sunset, when you climbed up to stand beside me. Did you know then that I wanted you to speak to me?

There was a long silence between them—a silence which held no constraint, a silence that exists only between those in deep sympathy. Silence is the test of true friendship.

"I couldn't be sure, and the doubt tortured me. I thought it might only be pity. Such a world of difference!"

"Yes; your voice has told me more than your words. Even the notes of the birds soften when they...." She left the sentence uncompleted.

"Larssen! He dominates us both. He seems to hold us in his hands. He's like ... like Fate. Pitiless, relentless."

"I love you for your weakness, and yet I love you as the fighter. How contradictory it sounds!"

"Such seeming contradiction comes from elision. One leaves out the train of thought in between. Between you and me there's no need for the lengthy explanation. There's scarcely need for words at all."

"Dr Hegelmann is shrewd as well as marvellously skilful. He said to me to-day: 'I can see you are obeying orders. Fraülein needs your doctoring as much as my surgery.'"

Rivière burst out impulsively: "But the days fly by and my Cinderella's midnight rushes nearer!"

"We'll have had our hour—our hour! No one can take that away from us. Its memories——"

Elaine felt for the flowers in the tall vase by her side, and broke off a small spray.

CHAPTER XXVI
A CHALLENGE

Olive was at her dressing-table at Thornton Chase, looking searchingly into a mirror.

That afternoon she had been dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous bluntness—a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women like to be bullied by their doctors.

"You're drugging yourself to a lunatic asylum," he had told her after a very brief examination.

"Drugs? I, doctor?" she had replied with a little surprised raising of her eyebrows.

"Don't prevaricate! Don't try to deceive me. You look a perfect wreck. All the signs of it. Come, which is it—morphia, hashish or what?"

"And I'm a busy man." He rose brusquely and strode to the door to open it for her. "I must wish you good afternoon!"

Olive caved in. "Well, perhaps now and again,[Pg 222] when I feel absolutely in need of it, I do take a little stimulant," she conceded.

The physician cross-examined her ruthlessly. Finally he prescribed an absolute cessation of drug-taking, and gave her a special dietary and mixture of his own which would help to create a distaste for the morphia.

"Remember," he warned her as they parted, "you're looking an absolute wreck. Everyone can see it. Three months more of the same pace would make you a hag."

Olive was searching her mirror for refutation of his words, trying to stroke away the flabbiness of her cheek and chin muscles and the heavy strained shadows under the eyes. Yes, it was true—the drug was stamping its mastery on her face, grinning from behind her eyelids.

The resolution came hot upon the thought that Clifford had noticed the change in her. No doubt he would like her to drug herself to death. That would suit his plans to perfection. Then he would be free to marry that Verney woman. She must fight down her craving for the drug if only to spite Clifford.

With a curious vindictive satisfaction, Olive took out her hypodermic syringe from its secret place and smashed it to pieces with the bedroom poker. She gathered up the fragments of glass and silver and threw them into the fire, heaping coals over them.

As she was poking the fire, her maid knocked and entered with a letter. The postmark was Wiesbaden;[Pg 223] the handwriting was her husband's. No doubt a further appeal to her feelings, she reflected contemptuously. But the letter proved to be from Elaine—written at the invalid's dictation by Rivière.

Olive read it with a mixture of indignation and very lively curiosity. The letter was no appeal to her feelings—rather, a challenge:—

"I think we ought to meet," it said. "I have many things to tell you of which you know nothing at present—unless you have guessed. They affect your husband's position very materially. Unfortunately I am confined to a sick-room, else I should have come to London before this in order to call upon you."

Olive's indignation was based on the obvious deduction that Rivière had confided completely in the girl. Her curiosity was roused by the thoughts of what she could be like to exert such a fascination, and what she could have to say. Perhaps the letter was a ruse to see Olive and then make another appeal for pity. Well, in that case there would be a very delicious pleasure in giving an absolute refusal—a pleasure one could taste in anticipation and linger over in execution. One could play with the girl a little—pretend to be influenced, hesitate, ask for time to consider, raise hopes, fan them, and then administer the coup de grace.

To see Elaine promised an exciting diversion, very welcome just now when Olive had to give up the customary stimulation of the drug.

These considerations united in deciding her to travel to Wiesbaden. She would cross to the[Pg 224] Continent alone, her father and her maid being left at home. Sir Francis knew nothing as yet of Rivière—for Olive had told him nothing. She had an unlimited capacity for keeping her own counsel when it suited her purpose.

The next day saw her en route for Wiesbaden, following a letter to that effect to Elaine.[Pg 225]

CHAPTER XXVII
WOMEN'S WEAPONS

Olive had a genius for dress. Her gowns had not only style, which might be due to the costumier, but also effect, which is entirely personal. They invariably harmonized with the occasion, or with the way she sought to mould the occasion. Sometimes she had snapped her fingers at fashion, taken matters with the high hand—and carried the occasion triumphantly. The illustrated weeklies published portraits of her when the theatrical market was dull.

It was characteristic of Olive that although she was going to visit a blinded girl with bandaged eyes, yet when she left the Hotel Quisisana at Wiesbaden for the surgical home she had dressed studiously for the occasion. The part to be dressed was that of "the outraged wife." The gown was of clinging grey cashmere, cut with simplicity and dignity, with touches of soft violet to suggest sensitive inner feelings. The hat was of grey straw with willowy feathers drooping softly from it. She wore no jewellery beyond a simple pearl brooch and her wedding-ring.

A nurse showed her into the room where Elaine[Pg 226] lay on her chaise longue with bandages hiding the upper part of her face.

"Thank you—there is no pain now. Only waiting for the day of release, when my bandages are to be removed."

"I don't expect it. But I shall have a fair measure of sight. Dr. Hegelmann promises it."

"Still, it's best not to raise one's hopes too high. Doctors have to be optimistic as part of their trade. I remember one very sad case where——" Olive stopped herself abruptly as though her tongue had run away with her. "Pardon me—I was forgetting."

"That I shall have a fair measure of sight. The doctor tells me recovery depends largely on the mental condition. I was worrying myself up till a few days ago, but now I'm supremely happy. So I shall recover—I've something to live for, you see!" Elaine reached for the vase by her side and raised a spray of white lilac to breathe in its fragrance.

"Good news? Why, yes, thanks to you! I want first to thank you for your generosity. I[Pg 227] was worrying so until I heard the news from John."

"Your husband. You see, he will always be John Rivière to me. That's how I knew him during these wonderful days at Arles and Nîmes." Her voice became dreamy with memories. "I met him first, you know, at the arena at Arles. We sat for hours in the flooding sunlight reconstructing our pictures of the past. The stone tiers were vivid orange in the sunlight and deep purple in the shadows. A deep, greyish purple. We sat apart, I longing for him to speak to me and exchange thoughts. But there was no one to introduce us. How stupid convention is! At sunset we climbed up to the topmost tier and stood together as though on an island tower in the midst of a sea of marshland. I ached to speak to him, and still we remained silent and apart. That night came the introduction I longed for. I was wandering about the dark, narrow lanes of Arles when a half-drunken peasant tried to attack me. I cried out for help, and John came to my defence with his strong arm and his clenched fist. There was no need for formal introduction after that. We found we were staying at the same hotel...."

Elaine continued: "Nîmes is fragrant with its memories for me. The Jardin de la Fontaine, the Maison Carrée, the Druids' Tower, the dear Villa Clémentine! There was a little pebbly garden and a fountain by which we used to sit for lunch—there were two lazy old goldfish I used to feed with[Pg 228] crumbs. Darby and Joan!... Those memories of Nîmes wash away the burn of the vitriol, now that you've been so kind and generous."

"I fail to understand," said Olive coldly. The interview was shaping itself very differently to what she had expected.

Elaine turned her bandaged head towards her in surprise. "But John tells me you've offered to release him!"

"Offered to release him! My dear Miss Verney, Clifford must have been saying pretty things to soothe you. I'm sorry to pour cold water on your dreams, but you'll have to learn the truth some time, and it's kinder to tell you now. Release him! My husband is not an employee to be handed over to somebody else at a moment's notice. There are such things as marriage laws ... and divorce laws."

"Aren't we talking at cross-purposes, Mrs Matheson? I quite understand all that. John tells me that you have promised to divorce him. That's very generous of you."

"No; not at all. I wanted to see you in order to thank you; and then to arrange the details so that the matter can go through with as little trouble as possible. Of course, after your kindness, I shall let the suit go undefended."

Olive searched the bandaged face of her rival with merciless scrutiny. But the blinded girl seemed unconscious of that look of stabbing hatred and suspicion. She was apparently smiling happily—weaving[Pg 229] day-dreams. Her hand went out to the vase of white lilac caressingly.

For that was the part Elaine had set herself to play for the sake of the man she loved. He had been beaten down to his knees by Larssen and Olive in the shipowner's office because he had had Elaine to protect. To save her from the mire of the divorce court he had had to give in and sign at Larssen's dictation.

Now she was determined to release him for free action. Whatever it might cost her in self-respect, she was going to make Olive believe that a divorce suit was the one thing she most ardently desired.

Olive made a decisive effort to regain the whip-hand. "Divorce by collusion is out of the question!" she retorted sharply. "The King's Proctor sees to that. You don't imagine that it's sufficient merely to say you don't defend the suit? There must be evidence before the Court."

"Then my husband lied to me! He swore to me on his word of honour that there was nothing between you!"

"I don't know just what he said to you.... And I want you to realise this: the fault was on my side.[Pg 230] I loved him. I love him still. I shall love him always. Always, whatever happens."

Then she added, because in the playing of her part she had determined to spare herself no degradation: "I care nothing for what people say. They may sneer and point at me, but nothing shall keep us apart."

Olive went chalk-white with anger. She had not travelled the long journey to Wiesbaden to be fooled in this way. The ground had been cut from under her feet by Elaine's most unexpected attitude, and the situation needed some drastic counter-move on her part.

"A pretty story!" she retorted. "If you imagine your childish bluffing would deceive me, you've a lot to learn yet! Clifford was not lying, and you are! That's the long and short of it!"

Olive saw her opportunity. She could find out Rivière's address from Dr. Hegelmann or from one of the staff of the nursing home, and go to confront him before Elaine could see and warn him of the new development. It would be strategic to allay suspicion of her coming move, however.

"I want to see nothing more of Clifford," she replied. "We've agreed to part. He's to go on with his life as John Rivière. If you like to marry him as John Rivière, you're quite welcome to do so as far as I'm concerned."

"You mean that you want to get permission from the Courts to presume death, and then take possession of his property?"[Pg 231]

"Any such arrangement is entirely a private matter between my husband and myself."

"I doubt if John would agree to that arrangement now. He would make you a suitable allowance, of course."

Olive could have choked this girl lying helpless in her chair, and yet holding the whip-hand in their triangle of conflicting interests. She felt as if she had been tripped and thrown without a word of warning. To have travelled to Wiesbaden to play the outraged wife sitting in judgment on the woman who had sinned, and now——!

She tried another move, altering her voice to as much sweetness as she could command under her white-hot anger.

"My dear, I appreciate your feelings," she said. "You want to fight for the man you love. You'd even blacken your character for his sake. You'd face the sneers of the world for his sake. I admire you for it. It brings us nearer together. I admit that I had misjudged you a little. That was because I hadn't seen you and spoken to you. Now I know what a fine character you are, and I want you not to bring unnecessary suffering on yourself. I'm older than you, and I've seen very much more of the world. I know that a good woman can't live with a married man for long. The situation becomes intolerable after a time. One can't ignore the conventions of the world one lives in."

"But is Clifford ready to? Think of him. Think of his work. He would not only be ostracised socially, but also scientifically. His work would be ignored. You would destroy his life-work. You would kill his ambition!"

Olive's thrust went home, though not to the exact point she aimed at. Elaine remained silent as the thought raced through her of how Olive, if she deemed it to her own interests, might kill Rivière's work.

"So you see, dear," pursued Olive, "that our interests are really very much the same. We both care deeply for Clifford. We both want to help him in his life-work. We both want to do our best for him. That means that we must pull together and not against one another. We must each of us think matters out coolly and dispassionately. Isn't that what you think as well as I?"

"Then I'll say good-bye for the present. I mustn't stay longer or Dr. Hegelmann will call me over the coals. I have to remember that you're not altogether strong again yet. So I'll say good-bye now and call again to-morrow morning."

"Do you like lilies? I must send you some. As I passed a florist's in the Wilhelmstrasse I saw some splendid tiger-lilies. Good-bye, my dear."

Elaine waited with feverish impatience for three minutes to elapse, when she judged Olive would be clear of the house. Then she rang a bell by her side. She must get a message through to Rivière to let him know of the new development in the[Pg 233] situation before Olive could reach him with her story. Rivière knew nothing beforehand of Elaine's plan of self-accusation; it was vital that he should know of it now, when it had been carried to so effective an end.

"No; I cannot do that. It is against orders. The doctor has forbidden you to leave this room, Fraülein."

"I must! I tell you I must! It's——It's—oh, what is the German for 'vital?'"

Elaine rose from her couch and stumbled with outstretched arms against the nurse.

"Please lead me to the telephone and get me my number!" she cried in an agony of anxiety.

There was a brisk rap at the door, and Dr. Hegelmann came in to see how his patient was progressing.

"What's this?" he exclaimed, seeing Elaine standing up and the nurse trying to persuade her to return to her couch.

The nurse made no comment, but led her patient[Pg 234] downstairs at once, found the telephone number of the laboratory at which Rivière had his research-bench, and called for the connection.

"Wait a little.... Yes, I'm here." ... "Mr Rivière has just left the laboratory."

The nurse gave the message and the telephone number of the home. Suddenly she felt her patient sway heavily against her. The reaction had set in from the feverish tension of the last hour—Elaine had fainted away.[Pg 235]

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COUNTER-MOVE

Olive, as Elaine had guessed, went straight to Rivière's laboratory to confront him. Not finding him there, she made her way to his hotel and again drew blank.

This left her uncertain as to her next movements. Should she return to the nursing home, and wait about in its neighbourhood in the hope of meeting her husband on his way to see Elaine? That course seemed undignified. Should she try the laboratory once more? That seemed a mere waste of precious time. Should she walk the length of the Wilhelmstrasse on the chance of crossing him there? That seemed a very long shot.

On the whole she judged it advisable to return to the Hotel Quisisana, and from there to hold her husband by telephone. Accordingly she said to the hotel porter at Rivière's hotel:

The porter hesitated, looked at the 20-mark piece, looked around the hall to see if anyone were observing him, and then said in a very low voice: "Very goot. Vat name shall I say?"

And that was why Rivière never received Elaine's message, and why he went first to call on his wife.

Olive received him in her private sitting-room. She was horribly uncertain what line of action she ought to take, now that Elaine had so completely reversed the situation. Her nerves, weakened by the almost continuous drugging of the last few months, were all a-quiver. The threat of the "suitable allowance" drove her to frenzy. She wanted somebody to vent her rage upon, and there was nobody to serve the purpose. For a moment she regretted she had not brought her maid with her to Wiesbaden.

Her attitude must depend on Clifford's attitude. But, whatever line of action was to be taken, one point seemed clear. She must be calm with Clifford—forgiving. She must play for the quixotic side of his nature. She had better be even cordial.

"Yes; and I must admit I was very pleasantly surprised. I had formed an altogether wrong opinion of her."

"Then I'm glad you met.... You see now that your suspicions of her were absolutely unfounded."

Olive knew the sincerity in Rivière's tone. So it was just as she had guessed—the girl had been attempting a daring bluff by her self-accusation.

"Absolutely unfounded," agreed Olive. "That's why I want to forgive and forget."

Rivière was puzzled. He had an uneasy feeling that something very vital was being kept from him. He noticed his wife's hands all a-quiver, and that fact jarred against the calm of her words.

He answered: "You've changed your attitude towards me very quickly. I take it you only arrived in Wiesbaden to-day?"

"Yes; but it's more than a fortnight since that scene in Larssen's office. I've had time to reflect over things. I was too hasty in what I said then. You must remember that you sprang a surprise on me when you returned in that secret way, and naturally I was put out. I always hate to be taken at a disadvantage, as you ought to know by now.... Clifford, when will you learn to read women as well as you read men? If you'd approached me a little differently; if you hadn't assumed I was hostile to you; if you'd only taken me a little more patiently and pressed your point more insistently——" Olive paused significantly.

"The point—when you were generous enough to offer to start our life afresh."

Rivière looked keenly at his wife. Her eyes were downcast, as though it hurt her modesty to have to make overtures. There was a faint blush on her cheeks.

She continued: "You ought to have given me a day to think it over, instead of rushing away as you did. You ought to have known that a woman's pride won't let her yield without being pressed to yield. I wanted you to press me; I wanted to make a fresh start with you; I wanted to help you with your big work! Clifford when will you learn to read a woman?"

"My suggestion is your own—to wipe out the past, and start our married life afresh. A few days ago I went to see a doctor—a man in Cavendish Square who has a big reputation for women's ailments. Father insisted on my going to consult him, and he was right. I ought to have gone to him months ago."

"The long and short of it is that I must give up society engagements and all excitements of that kind, and lead a very quiet life. I ought to go to some quiet place away from people, with someone with me whom I care for and who cares for me. That was the gist of his prescription. Of course I have a special dietary and medicine to take, but that's only incidental!"[Pg 239]

"It's meant a big fight with myself. Look at me—you can see it in my face. I'm looking a wreck."

"The kind of life you've been leading would crack up any constitution. I'm glad you've taken advice in time."

Rivière roused himself with an effort akin to that of Ulysses in the house of Circe.

"I'd better be quite frank with you," he answered. "I can't live with you again as man and wife."

"I realise your feeling so well. I admire you for it. It brings us nearer together. You feel yourself under an obligation to Miss Verney because of her intervention between you and that vitriol-thrower. You don't know just how you can repay it. Obviously you can't offer her money. A girl of her finely-strung feelings couldn't take a pension from you.... Now I have a suggestion that clears away the difficulty completely."

"Let me make her an allowance. Let the money pass through my hands to her. It needn't be a large allowance. I daresay she could live nicely on three or four pounds a week. If you agree, I'll[Pg 240] go and arrange it myself, so as not to hurt her feelings."

That would be indeed revenge on Elaine! To buy back Clifford for a paltry four pounds a week—to have the delicate pleasure of doling out the money in the role of Lady Bountiful! She had a mental vision of the sweet little letters she could write to Elaine when she enclosed the monthly cheque—letters so sweet that they would sear.

But Rivière answered abruptly: "What did Miss Verney say to you to make such a complete change in your attitude towards her?"

"We chatted together this afternoon and came to realise one another's point of view—that was all. It was perfectly natural. A blind girl ... helpless ... without resources of her own.... Do you think I'm flint?"

"Clifford, dear, I don't think you and I ought to discuss what passed between Miss Verney and myself in the sick-room this afternoon. Some things are sacred."

Olive hesitated as to how she should answer that question. It was very tempting to say that Elaine had suggested it—but decidedly risky. Rivière might ask the girl point-blank. It was better to be prudent in this game of strategy, and accordingly she replied:

"But we must think of her feelings. She's very sensitive, very highly-strung. Wouldn't it be kinder to let me arrange it?"

"As your wife, I ask you to let me end the matter once and for all. Clifford dear, I must speak out frankly, though I hate to have to do it. Listen to me quietly while I try to put the situation to you in the proper light.... You're in love with Miss Verney—I know it. It's hard for you to have to cut loose—very hard. But for her sake you must cut loose. Now, at once. Matters can't go on as they are. I know perfectly well that the relations between you are absolutely innocent—I haven't a word to breathe against her character now that I've seen her and really know her. But things can't go on as they are. You must put yourself aside and consider her alone. You must think of her reputation. People will begin to talk."

"At the nursing home I can see that they regard you as lovers. A woman realises a point like that instinctively. No word was said, but I know.... Things can't remain stationary in a situation of that kind. You know it as well as I do. You are a man of strong passions.... Miss Verney is highly-strung, very impressionable."

And then Olive made her one big mistake. She added: "She confessed to me that—how shall I put it?—that it would be dangerous for her to see more of you."[Pg 242]

"That she would be ready to live with you, divorce or no divorce. Don't you see the danger now? Clifford, I appeal to your chivalry! For her sake cut loose now, at once, before it's too late! Say good-bye to her by letter; leave me to arrange the allowance——"

Olive lost control of herself. "I'm your wife! I forbid you to!" she ordered sharply.

Rivière stiffened. "You told me a fortnight ago you never wanted to see me again."

Rivière's business training made him recognize the true meaning of that phrase. He had heard it so many times before from men who were planning some shady trick. He answered decisively: "I've the right to hear from Miss Verney herself what she said to you this afternoon, and I'm going to hear it. That's final!"

Olive was now chalk-white with rage. Every[Pg 243] nerve of her body was quivering, but by a supreme effort she regained control over her words.

"You're insulting me!" she returned. "You doubt my word when I tell you that Miss Verney is ready to become your mistress. Very well, come with me and I'll repeat it in front of her."

"It's true! I'll swear to it on the Bible! If it's not true, let her deny it before me. There's the challenge. You owe it to her as well as to me to accept. At least give her the opportunity of denying it, if you think you know her. But you don't know women—you never have, and you never will. I tell you you're living on a volcano. You've no right to compromise her as you're doing now. It's currish! At least I thought you had some spark of chivalry in you! But you won't make the test because you know I've spoken truth. You're afraid. If you want to prove to yourself she's the angel you think her, then make the test. Ask her before me in any form of words you like. Either that or take my word!"

"Then at least come with me to see her, and satisfy yourself indirectly that I've spoken the truth when I tell you you're living on a volcano. Play the game, Clifford, play the game!"

Husband and wife drove together to the nursing home to see Elaine. But a nurse informed them decisively that Fraulein Verney could receive no visitors; the excitement of the afternoon had been too much for her slowly returning strength, and Dr Hegelmann had ordered her absolute quietude. To-morrow, perhaps, she might be allowed to receive her friends—or perhaps the day after to-morrow.

"Then call for me at the Quisisana at ten o'clock.... In the meantime, I leave it to your sense of honour not to communicate with Miss Verney."

It was a night of very troubled thought for all three. To Rivière, with his complex, many-layered nature, especially so. The one inevitable, clean-cut solution to all this tangle of circumstance seemed farther off than ever.

If Rivière had been a man of Larssen's temperament, difficulties would have been smoothed away like hills under the drive of a high-powered car. Lars Larssen would have said to himself: "Which woman do I want?" and having settled that point, would have jammed on the levers and shot his car straight forward without the slightest[Pg 245] regard for any other vehicle or pedestrian on his road. Were any obstacle in his path, so much the worse for the obstacle.

If Larssen under similar circumstances had wanted Elaine he would have taken her then and there and left Olive to do whatever she pleased. If he had wanted Olive, he would have thrown Elaine in the discard without a moment's remorse. Decisions are easy for such a man as Larssen, because the burden of scruples has been pitched aside.

Rivière, on the other hand, was cursed with scruples—as Olive had phrased it, "a pretty mixed set of scruples." He felt he had to do the square thing by his wife, by Elaine, and by the public who were being called upon to invest their savings under the guarantee of his name. He had to smash the shipowner's scheme, and he had to get back to his own scientific work in peace and quietude.

For Olive, as for Larssen, decisions were far simpler. Her objective was her own gratification; the only point in doubt was the most prudent way to attain it. Her present dominant wish was to revenge herself on Elaine, and to do that she was ready to make any sacrifice of other desires. Even her infatuation for Larssen paled against the white-hot light of this new passion.

Elaine, exhausted by the tension of her interview with Olive, slept that night in a succession of heavy-dreamed dozes punctuated by violent starts of waking, like a train creeping into a London terminus through an irregular detonation of fog-signals. Why[Pg 246] had Rivière sent no answer to her message? What had Olive said to him? Had she done the best possible thing to free Rivière? That was the never-ceasing anxiety. In her great love for him, the one thing she most desired was to give.[Pg 247]

CHAPTER XXIX
THE PARTING

At the breakfast-table the next morning, Rivière found a letter with an official seal awaiting him. It was a call to Nîmes to give evidence in the coming trial of the peasant Crau. He was asked to be there on a date a few days later.

Olive was already waiting for him in the palm-lounge of the Quisisana when he reached there at ten-o'clock. She was smilingly gracious—had seemingly forgiven him his doubting of her word the evening before. They took a taxi to the nursing home, and on the way Olive stopped at a florist's to buy a bunch of tiger-lilies. Her choice of flower struck Rivière as very characteristic of her own temperament.

They received permission to visit the patient, and were shown to her room by a nurse.

Elaine murmured some words of thanks and felt the flowers to see what they might be. When she recognized them, they conveyed to her the same impression as they had done to Rivière. She drew her vase of white lilac nearer to her, and that trifling action seemed to Rivière as though she were calling upon him for protection.[Pg 248]

"We've come to talk matters over calmly and dispassionately," said Olive, taking the reins of conversation into her own hands. "My husband and myself are both anxious to make some arrangement which will be for your happiness. Clifford feels, and I entirely agree with him, that he's under a distinct obligation to you."

"It's very generous of you to say so, but both Clifford and I feel it deeply. Your livelihood has been taken away from you, and it's our bare duty to make you some form of compensation. The suggestion of letting it come through me would be a very suitable way of solving a delicate problem." She turned to her husband. "Don't you think so, Clifford?"

Elaine paused before she replied, so that her words might carry a fuller significance. "Mrs Matheson," she said, "I don't wish to accept anything from you."

"I shall return to my relations until I've learnt a new trade and can manage to support myself."

"But surely you will let us help you with the expenses of the first few months?"[Pg 249]

Olive tried a fresh avenue of attack. "Very well, then, let's leave that point. What I want to say now is still more delicate. I don't want to wound your feelings, but now that all three of us are together the matter ought to be discussed calmly and dispassionately and settled once and for all."

Rivière interrupted. "You promised me that this matter should not be mentioned."

Elaine put in a word: "I'd sooner the whole situation were threshed out now. Please!"

"As you will," answered Rivière. "But remember that you're perfectly free to close the discussion at any moment."

Olive resumed: "Yesterday, when we had our chat together, I was forced to draw certain inferences. And I had to tell Clifford that it would be only right for him to avoid compromising you further."

"Well, that people would begin to talk malicious gossip about yourself and my husband."

But Elaine answered: "I prefer to thresh it[Pg 250] out.... What people say matters nothing to me. In any case, nobody knows that Mr Rivière is your husband."

"Then why did you tell me yesterday that you had cut definitely loose from him? That you never wanted to see him again? That he was free to live out his life as John Rivière?"

"Why did you say that you had lived with my husband at Nîmes?" retorted Olive sharply. "That you'd let the divorce suit go undefended?"

It thundered upon Rivière what Elaine had done for him—how she had wrought her miracle—and that moment cleared his mind of all doubt and hesitancy.

"You've not heard all I've got to say!" pursued Olive vindictively, and a torrent of words poured out from her: "It was a pretty scheme your Miss Verney had planned! She was to egg me on to divorce you, so that she could get a clutch on your feelings and marry you and your money! Your money—that puts it in a nutshell! That's the kind of woman a man like you falls in love with! A woman who's too shrewd and too cunning to commit herself. Who provokes and tantalizes and lures on a man, and then stops him short at the very last moment. The musical-comedy type. The[Pg 251] 'mind the paint' girl. A hundred times worse than the frankly vicious. A woman who knows that a week of living with a man would sicken him of her. Who's shrewd enough to tantalize him into hand-and-feet marriage. That's your Miss Verney. You're welcome to her as Miss Verney! So long as I live, you'll never have her as your wife! That's my last word—my absolute final last word!"

"You did this for me. I understand all. Elaine, dear, I understand it all. There's no need for you to explain."

"Not a word of it! You're the sweetest, bravest——" Words failed him, and he could only take her hand tenderly in his and let his welter of unspoken thoughts go silently to her.

"Don't speak of them.... You've piled up a debt on me more than I can ever repay. You've freed my hands to fight down Larssen, but at what a cost to yourself?"

"Absolutely. The divorce was Larssen's trump-card. You've fought for me far better than I could ever have fought for myself. To think of[Pg 252] you lying there helpless, and yet battling for me! My God, but at what a cost to yourself!"

Rivière clenched his hand. "Yes, you're right," he said after a pause. "We must part—for a time."

"Dear John, go now. Don't stay. Go back to your world and fight your battle. I shall recover my sight—I feel that more strongly than ever. I shall need it if only to read your letters. Go now, and take with you my wishes for all happiness and all success in your life-work!"

That night he took train for Paris, to call on Barrèze the manager of the Odéon Theatre.

There he fixed up an arrangement by which Barrèze would send to Elaine, in the guise of payment for the uncompleted work she had done for him, a substantial sum of money. It was a temporary expedient only, but it would serve Rivière's purpose.

CHAPTER XXX
HEIR TO A THRONE

The liner "Claudia" was ripping her way eastwards through a calm Atlantic, like shears through an endless length of blue muslin.

An unclouded morning sun beat full upon the pale cheeks and delicate frame of Larssen's little twelve-year-old son, alone with his father on their private promenade deck. The contrast between the broad frame of the shipowner and the delicate, nervous, under-sized physique of his boy was striking in its irony. Here was the strong man carving out an empire for his descendants, and here was his only son, the inheritor-to-be. Neither physically nor mentally could Olaf ever be more than the palest shadow of his father, and yet Larssen was the only person who could not see this. He was trying to train his boy to hold an empire as though he were born to rule.

"Look at the set of wheels he's rigged up for me so as I can sail my boat on deck." He held up a beautiful model yacht, perfect in line and rig, with which he was playing. Underneath it was a crudely-[Pg 255]made contrivance of wood and wire, with four corks for wheels—the handiwork of Arthur Dean.

"Then go and make friends with the carpenter." Larssen took up the crude contrivance and looked it over contemptuously. "I want you to think out a better device; pitch this overboard; then find out where Mr Chips lives, make friends with him, and get him to construct you a proper set of wheels to your own design."

The boy looked troubled. "I don't want to throw it overboard!" he protested. "I want to sail my boat on deck now."

"Sonny, there are heaps of things that are good for you to do which you won't want to do. It's like being told by the doctor to take medicine. It's nasty to take, but very good for you.... I want to see you one day a big strong fellow able to handle men and things—a great big strong fellow men will be afraid of. That's to be your ambition. You've got to learn to handle men and things. Here's one way to do it."

"Dean is a servant. He's paid to do things for you. His feelings don't matter.... But you needn't tell him you threw his wheels away. Say they slipped over the side. Now, get a pencil and[Pg 256] paper, and let me see you work out a better contrivance."

Olaf obeyed, though reluctantly, and presently he was deep amongst the problems of the inventor. Lars Larssen watched the boy with a tenderness that few would have given him credit for.

"I've got it! Look, Dad!" cried the boy excitedly, and began to explain his idea and his tangled drawing.

"Good! That's what I want from you. Now, don't you feel better at having worked out the idea all on your own?"

"Yes, Dad. I'll go to Mr Chips at once and get it made. In which part of the ship does he live?"

"Don't offer him anything. Make friends with him, and he'll do it for you for nothing."

"Because I want you to be a business man when you grow up, and not merely a spender of money."

The boy looked troubled again. His confusion of thoughts sorted themselves into his declaration: "I don't want to be a ruler of men; I want people to like me."

"For one thing, because some day you'll have all my money and all my power. Just how big that is you can't realise yet. That's one reason. The other reason must lie with yourself—you must make yourself strong and afraid of nothing. How many fights did you have this term, before you got ill?"

"That's bad. That's disobeying my orders. Didn't I tell you to fight every boy in the school until they acknowledged you master?"

"You must make yourself strong enough. It's not a question of muscle, but will-power. When you're properly over this illness, I'll pick you out a school in England with about thirty or forty boys of your own age. They're soft, these English boys, softer than Americans. I want you to lick your way through them, and then I'll take you back to the States to polish up on Americans."

After a pause came this question: "Dad, must I have all your money when I grow up? Couldn't some one else have some of it?"

"Sonny, don't look at it that way. You're born to an empire; try and make yourself fit for[Pg 258] it. I'm building it for you. It'll be a glorious inheritance.... Now throw those wheels overboard, and run along and find Mr Chips."

Presently Arthur Dean came to the private deck to ask if Larssen had any orders for him. He was acting as interim private secretary.

The shipowner dictated a few messages to be sent by wireless, and then remarked:

"When you're back in London, I suppose you'll be going to see your young lady as well as your parents?"

"I don't interfere in that. It's your own private affair and no concern of mine. You can afford to marry her on your present salary. If she's a girl likely to make a good wife, I hope you will marry her. I like my employees to be married. It's healthy for them and makes them better business men. Is she an ambitious girl?"

"Well, my advice to you is this: marry someone ambitious. You'll need it. You're inclined to weaken."

"I like you. I want to make you one of my right-hand men eventually. Now I want to say this in particular: keep business affairs to yourself."

"Don't talk about them even to your parents, even to your young lady. I'm paying you a very good salary for a man of your age, and I expect a closed mouth about my affairs."

"Get the reason for it. This deal I'm engaged on is a big thing, and there are plenty of City people in London who'd like to know just what I'm planning, and just why Matheson and I sent you to Canada. I want you to keep them guessing until the scheme's floated. D'you get that?"

"Certainly, sir! You may rely on me not to say anything about your business affairs to anybody. I know how things leak around once anybody's told."

"That's right! Now send off those wireless messages, and then go and amuse yourself for the rest of the morning. Cabin and all quite comfortable?"

In the afternoon Olaf was sailing his yacht on deck on the new set of wheels made for him by the ship's carpenter, while his father sat stretched in a long deck-chair watching him tenderly and weaving dreams for his future. The thought crossed his mind—not for the first time—whether it wouldn't be advisable to get a stepmother for the boy. Larssen had a strong intuitive feeling[Pg 260] that he would not live to old age, and he wanted to know that the boy would have someone to care for him and to stand behind him while he was seating himself firmly on his father's throne.

Specifically, the shipowner was reviewing Olive as a possible stepmother. There was no scrap of passion in his thoughts. He was viewing the matter as a business proposition, weighing the pros and cons calmly and cool-bloodedly. Would Olive be the right stepmother for the boy? She was of good family, with influential connections. She made a fine presence as a hostess. Her ambition was undoubted. Even the trifling point of the similarity between Olive's name and that of his boy impressed him, by some curious twist of mind, as favourable.

"Dad, look at me!" called out Olaf. "I've made some buoys, and now I'm going to sail her round a racing course."

He had run needles through three corks, and planted them in the pitch-seams of the deck to form the three points of a large triangle, in imitation of the buoys of a yacht-race course.

"This buoy is Sandy Hook, and this one is the Fastnet, and that one over there is Gibraltar."

"Good!" said the shipowner. "I'll time the race." He took out his watch. "Are you ready?... Go!"

When the course was completed and the yacht lay at anchor again at Sandy Hook, Larssen called his son to the seat at his side.

The boy's face clouded over. "I don't know. Sometimes I seem to see her very plainly, and sometimes again I don't seem to see her at all when I try to. Was mother very beautiful?"

"Yes, that's right. Well, Sonny, as soon as we're in London I'll take you to see her. But remember this: don't breathe a word of it to anyone. Keep a tight mouth. That's what a business man has always got to learn."

"Dad," he said presently, "I'd like her to like me very much. And I'd like her to be a good sailor."

"Yes. You see, I want her to live with us on a yacht, and some women are so ill whenever they go on board a boat."

"The sea—the sea! I hate a big city. The crowds of people make me feel...." He groped about for a word which would express his feeling " ... make me feel so lonely."

"You'll have to overcome that. One day your work will lie in controlling crowds of people."

Larssen considered for a moment. "Well, if it will help you to get your fighting muscle, I'll arrange it. There's a small cruising yacht of mine—the 'Starlight'—lying in Southampton Water. I might have her cruise about the Channel for you."

"Yes, I'll see to that. We must go up to London for a few days, and meanwhile I'll arrange to have the 'Starlight' put in order for you."

"That's the spirit I want! But you can't be captain at a jump. You must work your way up. First you'll have to work for your mate's ticket. I'll tell the captain to put you through your paces—give you your trick at the wheel and so on. But see here, Sonny, it'll be work and not play. You'll have to obey orders just as if you were a new apprentice."

Larssen grew grave with memories. "Work? You'll never know work as I knew it. At fourteen I was a drudge on a Banks trawler. Kicked and punched and fed on the leavings of the fo'castle. Hands skinned raw with hauling on the dredge-ropes——"[Pg 263]

A deck steward bearing a wireless telegram came to interrupt them. The message was from Olive, and it read:

The boy was thinking over the coming cruise of the "Starlight." Suddenly he exclaimed: "I've got an idea! Invite her on board my yacht!"

CHAPTER XXXI
THE REINS HAD SLIPPED

The Italian garden at Thornton Chase was perfect in its artificiality. It sloped down towards Richmond Park in a series of stately terraces with box-hedge borders trimmed so evenly that not a twig or leaf offended against the canons of symmetry. They were groomed like a racehorse. Centred in a square of barbered lawn was a fountain where Neptune drove his chariot of sea-horses. The Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, Minerva, and Flora had their niches against a greenhouse of which the roof formed the terrace above—a greenhouse where patrician exotics held formal court.

Olive was feeding a calm-eyed Borzoi from the tea-table when Larssen and his little boy arrived. The pose was that of a Gainsborough portrait—she had dressed the part as closely as modern dress would allow. Sir Francis was leaning back in an easy-chair with one leg crossed squarely over the other knee, and in spite of country tweeds and Homburg hat, he was somehow well within the picture. But Lars Larssen, with his broad frame and his masterful step, was markedly out of harmony with that atmosphere of leisured artificiality.

A lesser man would have been conscious of his[Pg 265] incongruity—not so with Larssen. He forced his personality on his environment. He made the Italian garden seem out of place in his presence. A sensitive would almost have felt the resentment of the trimly correct hedges and shrubs and the classic statues at being thrust out of the picture on Larssen's arrival.

For some time the conversation progressed on very ordinary tea-table lines. Olive made much of the little boy—petted him, sent in for special cakes to tempt him with, showered a host of questions on him about school and games and hobbies. Sir Francis exchanged views on weather, politics, and the coming cricket season with his guest. The latter subject mostly resolved itself into a monologue on the part of the baronet, since cricket held no more interest for Larssen than ninepins; but he listened with polite attention while Sir Francis expounded the chances of the Australian Team (he had been to Lord's that morning to watch them at preliminary practice), and his own pet theory of how the googly ought to be bowled.

Then, having offered libation on the altars of weather, politics, and cricket, the baronet felt himself at liberty to touch on business matters.

"Let me see. To-day's the 26th. I expect him not later than May 3rd. Probably sooner."

"Yes; fine. I'm glad we delayed the issue until May. Canada's getting well in the public eye just now. When the leaves spread out on the park-[Pg 266]trees, town-dwellers begin to remember that the country grows crops. They recollect that there's 40 million acres of cropland in Canada—250 million bushels of wheat to move. They awake to the notion that the wheat will need transport to Europe. Yes, early May is the time for our Hudson Bay issue—Clifford was right in suggesting the postponement."

Olive caught the new drift of conversation between her father and her guest, and turned to cut in.

"Olaf would like to see the aviary," she said to her father. "Especially the new owl. It's so amusing to look at in the daytime. Will you take him round and show him everything?"

The boy jumped up gleefully, and Sir Francis roused himself from his easy-chair to obey his daughter's order. He had grown accustomed to obeying—experience had shown him it was more comfortable in the long run to do as she wished.

"Bring some cake along, and we'll feed the birds," he said to the boy, and the two moved off together to the aviary, which lay sheltered under the south wall of the house.

When the two were out of earshot, Larssen turned smilingly to Olive, and his tone was that of one who finds himself at home again.

Olive did not smile welcome to him, as he expected. There was an unlooked-for constraint in her voice as she inquired: "Another cup?"

"I've had a worrying time," began Olive as she poured out tea and cream for him.

Larssen read through the slight hesitancy of her answer. "That means the Verney girl, does it?"

"I satisfied myself that so far there's nothing to take hold of between her and Clifford."

"If she managed to give you that impression, she must be clever as well as attractive."

"I know I'm right.... Though of course they're in love with one another. Both admit it."

Olive was ill at ease—a most unusual frame of mind for her. Larssen guessed she had some confession to make, and prepared himself for an outwardly sympathetic attitude.

"No doubt she's got the hooks into Clifford tight enough," he answered. "It'll be merely a question of time. No cause for you to worry. Wait quietly. Have them watched."

Larssen at once adjusted himself to her mood. "Well, that's as you please. The affair is yours[Pg 268] and not mine. I don't doubt you have good reasons."

Larssen had the sudden feeling that during his absence in the States the reins had slipped from his hands. He would have to play very warily for their recovery.

"There's nothing much to tell. I saw this Miss Verney and I saw Clifford, and I've changed my mind—that's all."

"She tried to make me believe that she wanted a divorce and would let the suit go undefended."

Larssen summed her up now with pin-point accuracy. Jealousy had worked this transformation. She wanted her husband because the other[Pg 269] woman wanted him. And he, Larssen, was dependent on Olive's whims! The flotation of his Hudson Bay scheme hinging on her momentary fancies!

The fighting instinct surged up within him. He could look for no help from Olive—it was to be a single-handed battle with Clifford Matheson. Well, he'd give no quarter to anyone—man or woman!

Aloud he said, with a perfect assumption of resignation: "What do you wish me to do?"

"I've got the glimmering of a plan. Let me work out details before I put it before you for the O.K.... As I see the problem, it's this. You want Clifford to cut loose from Miss Verney. You want him to return to you. You want me to use that signature to my Hudson Bay prospectus to induce him to return."

"Never try to force a man's feelings in such a matter. Get him to persuade himself. Let him return of his own free will or not at all. Now my plan, if it works out right, will do that."

Larssen smiled at her reassuringly. "You'll have to trust me a little. Naturally I want my Hudson Bay scheme to go through smoothly, and if at the same time I can bring husband and wife together, why, it'll be the best day's work done in my life! It'll make me feel good all over!"

"Thanks; that's kind of you!" returned Olive, thawed by the cordial ring of his words.

"No need for thanks—wait till I've worked the deus ex machinâ stunt.... What do you think of my boy?"

"He looks weak now, but that's the after-effect of the illness. He'll put on muscle presently. He'll be a match for any boy of his age in six months' time."

They rose and walked to the house, chatting of impersonal matters, and nothing affecting the Hudson Bay scheme passed between Larssen and Olive or Sir Francis until the moment of leaving.

The baronet was at the door of the motor, seeing his guests depart, when Larssen said in a low voice:[Pg 271]

"Couldn't you come on afterwards? I shall be at the office till midnight. It's about the Hudson Bay deal."

"Is she——Is she the lady you meant when you said on board ship you were going to marry someone?"

A troubled look came into Olaf's sensitive eyes. "I don't like her very much, Dad."

"You're mistaken. Mrs Matheson has taken a great liking to you, and I want you to be very nice to her. You must meet her again and get better acquainted. Now see here, I'd like you to invite her on your yacht. That's the big test, isn't it?"

Olaf's eyes brightened at the mention of the yacht. "Very well, Dad," he answered. "If[Pg 272] you want me to, of course, I'll try and be nice to her."

"I'll send you down to Southampton Water with Dean, and from the yacht I want you to write a letter to Mrs Matheson. I'll give you the gist of what to say, and you'll put it in your own words."

"Not if you don't like her after better acquaintance. I promise you that."[Pg 273]

CHAPTER XXXII
THE NEW SCHEME

Larssen had spoken part truth when he told Olive over the tea-table that he had the glimmering of a plan in his mind. But its object was by no means what he had led her to believe. It was a scheme of an audacity in keeping with his previous impersonations of the "dead" Clifford Matheson, and its single objective was the attainment of his personal ambitions. Even his own son was to be used to help in the gaining of that one end.

The new scheme, in its essential, held the simplicity of genius. He would, single-handed, float the Hudson Bay company with Matheson's name at the head of the prospectus, whether Matheson assented or not.

The first move was to evade the spirit of his own written compact: "Until May 3rd, I fix up nothing with the underwriters." To get round this obstacle, he decided on the audacious plan of underwriting the entire issue himself. That is to say, he would give an absolute guarantee that if any portion of the five million pounds were not subscribed for by the general public, he himself would pay cash for and take up those shares. It was a huge risk. In the ordinary course of business no single finance[Pg 274] house in London, the world's financial centre, would take on its shoulders the guaranteeing of a five million pound issue. Lars Larssen proposed to do it. In order to provide the requisite security, he would have to mortgage his ships and his private investments. He would be dicing with nine-tenths of his entire fortune.

The second move was to prevent interference, while the issue was being offered to the public, from those who knew anything of the inner history of the flotation—Matheson, Olive, Elaine, and Dean. Arthur Dean could easily be kept out of the way. Elaine would no doubt be still confined to the surgical home at Wiesbaden. Matheson and his wife were problems of much more difficulty. In whatever part of Europe Matheson might be, he would be certain to hear of the flotation. The point was to delay his knowledge of it for two or three days. After that, interference on his part could not undo what had been done. "One cannot unscramble an egg."

For the success of the first move, it was essential to have the willing co-operation of Sir Francis. Consequently Larssen was particularly cordial and gracious to him that evening at the Leadenhall Street offices, passing him compliments about his business abilities, which found their mark unerringly.

Presently the shipowner got down to the crux of the matter, taking out the draft prospectus from the drawer in his desk and smoothing it out to show the signature of Clifford Matheson.

Sir Francis looked at the signature through his pair of business eyeglasses, and nodded an official confirmation.

Larssen continued: "There's no alteration necessary—Clifford passes it as it stands. But I've thought of one point which I reckon would add very considerable weight in its appeal to the public."

"The underwriting. There are a few blank lines here"—he turned over to a page of small type—"where the details of the underwriting arrangements were to be filled in. We were negotiating on a 4 per cent. basis, you remember. On some of it we should have had to offer an overriding commission of another 1 per cent. Say 4½ per cent. on the average—that's £225,000 on the round five million shares. A big sum for the company to pay out!"

"We might cut it out altogether and state that 'No part of this issue has been underwritten.' That sounds like confidence on our part."

Sir Francis shook his head emphatically. "It might do in the States, but it won't do over here. Our public wouldn't like it. It's not the thing."

"Very well; pass that suggestion," said he. "Here's a far better one. Suppose we could get the underwriting done at 3 per cent. straight. That would save the company £75,000."

"My reason is just this," answered Larssen earnestly. "I want that prospectus to breathe out confidence in every line and every word. I want the whole five millions taken up by the public, and not left partly on the underwriters' shoulders. I want to do everything I can to make the public realise that they're being offered the squarest deal that ever was. What better plan could you have than getting the vendor—myself—to guarantee the whole issue at a mere 3 per cent. cover? No financial house of any standing would look at it for a trifle of 3 per cent. But I stand in and take the whole risk—the whole five million risk—and give you securities on my ships that bears looking into with a microscope."

"Then will you bring St Aubyn and Carleton-[Pg 277]Wingate here, and get their consent? Say to-morrow morning?"

"You can get them on the telephone. If they're here to-morrow morning and consent—there ought to be no difficulty about that—you three Directors can sick the lawyers on to me at once and fix up the security deeds in a day or so."

"One point occurs to me. Let's keep this matter close until the prospectus is actually launched. I don't want any Stock Exchange 'wreckers!' trying to stick a knife into my back. You know some of their tricks?"

"I don't think I'd even mention it to your daughter. Women—even the best of them—can't help talking."

CHAPTER XXXIII
LARSSEN'S APPEAL

In pursuance of his second move, Larssen had to see Miss Verney. To write to her would probably be fruitless waste of time; and it was emphatically not the kind of interview to delegate to a subordinate. He had to seek her in person.

It was curious to reflect that, in this tangle of four lives, the balance of power had shifted successively from one to the other. At first it was with Matheson. A letter of his had brought the shipowner hastening to Paris to see him. Later, it was Larssen who sat still and Matheson who hurried to find him. Later again, it was Olive who held decision between the two men. And now Elaine.

As soon as he had settled the underwriting affair with Sir Francis and his two co-Directors, Larssen went straight to Wiesbaden to the surgical home, and had his card sent in to Elaine.

Elaine received him in the garden of the home, under the soft shade of a spreading linden, where she had been chatting with another patient. Near by, a laburnum drooped in shower of gold over a bush of delicate white guelder-rose as Zeus over Danæ. Upon the wall of the home wistaria hung[Pg 279] her pastel-shaded pendants of flower, like the notes of some beautiful melody, sweet and sad, along the giant staves of her stem. A Chopin could have harmonized the melody, weaving in little trills and silvery treble notes from the joy-song of the nesting birds.

The bandages had been removed from the patient's eyes, and she wore a pair of wide dark glasses side-curtained from the light.

After a few conventional words of greeting and inquiry, Larssen drew up a chair beside hers. "You're wondering why I've called on you," he began. "You're thinking that a stranger—and a busy man at that—wouldn't have travelled to Wiesbaden merely to inquire after you. You're thinking that I want something."

"It's simple enough, but first let me spread out the situation as I see it. If I'm wrong, you'll correct me.... To begin with, Matheson is a man of complex character and high ideals. The latter have been snowed under in his business career. He's like an Alpine peak. From the distance, it looks cold and aloof, but underneath there's a carpet of blue gentian waiting to spring out into blossom when the sun melts off the snow-layer. I don't pay idle compliments when I say that I haven't[Pg 280] far to look for the sun that's melting off the snow."

"I used to admire Matheson as a financier," pursued the shipowner. "Now I respect him as a man. He's put up the fists to me over what he believes to be his duty to the British public, and I like him all the better for it."

"You threatened Mr Matheson that you would have me dragged into a divorce court if he didn't sign agreement to your prospectus."

It was a definite statement and not a question, and from it Larssen judged that the financier had told her everything from start to finish.

"I did, and there's where my mistake lay. One mustn't threaten a man of Matheson's calibre. Please understand this, Miss Verney, all question of divorce is dead."

"That's where I want your help. First let me complete my lay-out of the situation.... Matheson is a man of high ideals. But he tangled up his life pretty badly on the night of March 14th, when he tried to cut loose from his old career. It was a[Pg 281] mistake. We've both made mistakes, he and I. The unfortunate part is that the consequences don't fall on us. They fall on Mrs Matheson and yourself. You note that I place Mrs Matheson before yourself? That's deliberate."

Again he paused, but Elaine did not make any comment. She guessed now what Larssen had come to say to her, and a shiver of fear went through her. Not fear of Larssen as a man, but as a spokesman for Fate. In the deliberate unfolding of his statement, there was the passionless gravity of Fate.

Guessing her thoughts, Larssen's voice deepened as he continued: "I definitely place Mrs Matheson before yourself. She is his wife. He married her for better or worse. However mistaken he may have been in his estimate of her, he must keep to his promise of the altar-side. She is his wife. As a man of honour, Matheson's first duty is to stand by his wife. I don't want to wound your feelings, believe me. But I have to say this: you must realise Mrs Matheson's point of view."

"I do know. I went to see her a couple of days ago at Thornton Chase. The change in her these last few weeks startled me. I deliberately say this: you have, unknowingly, dealt her a blow from which she will never recover. She is naturally far from strong, and though I'm not a doctor, I venture to make this prophecy: within three years, Mrs Matheson will be dead."[Pg 282]

"It's an ugly, brutal fact," pursued Larssen, pressing home his advantage to the fullest extent. Now that he had probed for and reached the raw nerve of feeling, he intended to keep it tight gripped in the forceps of his words. "It's brutal, but it's true. Unwittingly, you have shortened her life."

"With love for him. I know. I know. I'm asking from you the biggest sacrifice of all—for his sake and for her sake. While she lives, give her back what happiness you can," Larssen's voice had lowered almost to a whisper.

"Much more. Write to Matheson definitely and[Pg 283] finally. Send him back to his wife. She is to cruise on board the 'Starlight'—a yacht of mine—with my little son. Send Matheson to meet her on the yacht."

"Then they will come together again. I'm certain of it. I've seen Mrs Matheson and read the change in her feelings. She'll be a different woman now.... Can you see to write?"

"Then write to Matheson what your heart will dictate to you," said Larssen gently.

"Then Matheson will probably be returning to London to see me. There's no need for him to hurry back. He could board the 'Starlight' at Boulogne or any other port he might prefer."

"It is; but I'll extend that date." Larssen took from his pockets a fountain-pen and a scrap of paper and scribbled a few words on it, signing his name underneath. "Suppose you enclose this when you're writing to Matheson? It extends our agreement until May 20th."

The power of the human word, of the human voice—how limitless it is! Larssen, master of word and voice, had Elaine convinced through and through of his sincerity in the matter of reconciling[Pg 284] husband and wife. He had appealed with unerring judgment to her finest feelings, and she read her own altruism into his words.

Larssen knew that his point was won, and long experience had taught him to close an interview as soon as he had carried conviction.

"I won't tire you any longer," he said, rising. "I just want to say this: you're big. You're the finer woman by far, but she is his wife."[Pg 285]

CHAPTER XXXIV
ON BOARD THE "STARLIGHT"

The trial at Nîmes proved a wearisome, sordid affair, and its result was a foregone conclusion. If there had been some motive of romantic jealousy on the part of the youth Crau, a French jury might have returned a sentimental verdict of acquittal. As it was, they found him guilty, and the judge sentenced him to three years penal servitude.

Rivière was heartily glad when the trial was over. It was now the end of April—close to the date of May 3rd, when the truce between Larssen and himself would expire. The shipowner would be back in London, and no doubt would have heard from Olive something of the changed situation. Force of circumstance would make him readjust his attitude, and he would probably be ready to offer compromise.

Rivière judged it advisable to return to England, and there to wait for overtures on the part of Larssen. He had taken ticket for London, and was preparing for travel, when two letters reached him, from Olive and Elaine.

The latter gave him a keen thrill of pleasure. It was written by Elaine herself, and this was proof indeed of the miracle of surgery wrought by Dr[Pg 286] Hegelmann. But its contents made him very thoughtful. She was asking him to go back to his wife. She was pointing out to him a path of duty exceedingly hard to tread.

Olive's letter added further pressure on his feelings. She was advised to try a sea-voyage for her health, she told him; Larssen had placed his yacht at her disposal; she begged her husband to meet her at Boulogne and once more to give her a chance to explain. It was an appeal utterly different to the attitude she had taken at Wiesbaden—there was now a sincerity in it which Rivière could not mistake.

The enclosure in Elaine's letter did not surprise him. If Larssen of his own accord offered to extend the truce until May 20th, it must mean that the shipowner was aware of his shaky position and ready to suggest compromise.

The effect of those three communications on Rivière's mind was what Larssen had so shrewdly planned. Rivière wired to his wife that he would meet her at Boulogne Harbour.

That evening he caught a Paris express with a through P.L.M. carriage for Boulogne. At the Gare de Lyon, in the early morning, they shunted him round the slow and tedious Girdle Railway to the Gare du Nord, clanked him on the boat train, and sped him northwards again in a revigorated burst of railway energy. North of Paris, a P.L.M. carriage undergoes a marked change of character. It deferentially subdues its nationality, and takes on an Anglo-American aspect. Harris-tweeded young men pitch golf-bags and ice-axes on the rack,[Pg 287] and smoke bulldog pipes in its corridors with an air of easy proprietorship. American spinsters, scouring Europe in couples, order lunch in high-pitched American without troubling to translate. The few Frenchmen who find themselves in the train have almost the apologetic air of intruders.

While passing through the corridor of a second-class carriage, Rivière happened on the tubby little figure and rosy smiling countenance of Jimmy Martin the journalist. Martin never forgot a face or a name—it was part of his profession to make an unlimited acquaintanceship with everyone who might possibly "have a story to tell."

"Hail, sir!" said he cheerily. "You haven't forgotten the little sermon I had to preach to you on the infallibility of my owners, the Europe Chronicle?"

Rivière shook hands cordially. "I remember perfectly. You're going home on holiday, I expect?"

"I'm going home for good, praise be. I've sacked my owners. I told them that they were a set of unmitigated liars, scoundrels and bloodsuckers, and that I couldn't reconcile it with my conscience to work for them any longer without a 20 per cent. increase in pay. They demurred, and I promptly sacked them—having in my pocket an offer from a London paper. Thus we combine valour with prudence—a mixture which is more colloquially known as 'business.'"

"Reporter for the London Daily Truth. If[Pg 288] you've a story to tell at any time, and want a platform to speak from, 'phone me up."

"I've been turning my think-tank on to the Hudson Bay Transport flotation. You certainly had some inside information on that deal. Why did it shut up with a snap, I ask myself. Who banged the lid down?"

Martin's effort to pump information was very transparent, but his infectious good humour made it impossible to take offence.

Rivière was a keen judge of men, and he felt instinctive confidence in the honesty of the whimsical little journalist. One could trust this man. There was nobody within hearing along the corridor of the railway carriage. Accordingly he answered:

"If you'll keep the information strictly to yourself until I want publication, I'll tell you."

Martin sobered instantly. "Mr Rivière," said he, "you can trust me absolutely. I play square."

"The matter is not finally settled yet. It's just possible that I might need the platform you offered me. Then I'll talk further."

"Well, first call at any rate. We might get out a special edition in front of the other fellows. We've started a new evening paper at the Daily Truth[Pg 289] office, and I'd like to secure a scoop for one of the two.... My stars, if I could have seen the scrap between you and Larssen! There must have been some juicy copy in that!"

"Anyhow, thanks for your promise. I'll look forward to the next meeting. Au revoir, as they say in this whisker-ridden country."

Boulogne harbour was crowded with grimy tramp steamers, fishing boats, and a rabble of plebeian harbour craft, but the yacht "Starlight" was not in view. Rivière inquired at the office of the harbour-master, and was informed that a telegram promised the yacht's arrival by nightfall.

She arrived true to promise, and lay out beyond the twin piers of the harbour-mouth in the quiet of sunset of the evening of April 30th—a trim-lined, quietly capable, three-masted craft. Larssen had referred to her as a "small cruising yacht," but in reality the "Starlight" was much more than that casual description would convey. In addition to her extensive sailing power, she had a set of marine oil engines for use in light winds or special emergency, and her cabins and saloons were roomy and comfortable. She could carry a party of a dozen passengers with comfort if there were need, and had four life-boats as well as a shore dinghy. The kitchen equipment was admirable. Altogether, a trim, well-found yacht which might have voyaged round the world without mishap.

The dinghy was sent off with the mate and a couple of seamen, and entered the harbour to[Pg 290] enquire for Rivière at the harbour-master's office, according to arrangement.

"Pleased to meet you, sir," said the mate. "Mrs Matheson's compliments, and will you come aboard?"

"No. Mrs Matheson, her maid, and Master Olaf—that's all. We're giving the little chap a training in seamanship.... Jim, take the gentleman's luggage."

They rowed out to the "Starlight," lying trimly at anchor like a capable, self-possessed hostess awaiting the arrival of a week-end guest at a country-house. Olive waved greeting to her husband as he came near. By her side was Larssen's little son, holding her hand. He might have almost been posed there by the shipowner to inspire confidence in the peaceful intentions of the yachting cruise.

Olive thoroughly believed that Larssen's sole object in placing the yacht at her disposal was to reconcile husband and wife, and so indirectly to smooth over the quarrel between himself and Clifford. She had no suspicion that his real objective was to get Matheson on the high seas, the only region where he could not hear of the coming flotation of the Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd. Larssen had told her that she was free to order the yacht's movements as she pleased—he merely suggested in a perfectly casual way that a cruise to the Norwegian fjords might prove enjoyable.

"It was good of you to come!" said Olive as her husband mounted the gangway to the white-railed[Pg 291] deck. There was unmistakable sincerity in her greeting.

"I'm to be captain of the 'Starlight' as soon as I get my skipper's ticket," confided the little boy as he shook hands.

Matheson had made up his mind to carry out Elaine's wish. He had come back to his wife; and he was prepared to fall in with any plan that she might propose. Accordingly, when she suggested the alternatives of a cruise down the Channel and up to the Hebrides, or a cruise to Norway, he left the decision to her. She chose Norway. Matheson, with the shipowner's agreement in his pocket to extend their truce to May 20th, raised no objection. There was ample time to be back in England before that date.

Olive gave her orders to the captain. Before weighing anchor, the latter sent on shore for further provisions. At the same time he dispatched a telegram to Larssen stating that they were bound for Norway that evening.

A smooth deft dinner was served to Matheson and his wife in the comfortable saloon as the yacht weighed anchor, slung round to a light wind from the south-east, and made gently towards the outer edge of the Goodwins. Through the starboard portholes Wimereux Plage twinkled gaily to them from its string of lights on esplanade and summer villas; Cap Grisnez flashed its calm white light of guardianship; Calais town sent a message of kindly greeting from the far distance; only the Varne Sands whispered a wordless warning as they swirled the waters above them and sent a flock of[Pg 292] shivering wavelets to beat against the smooth hull of the "Starlight."

On that night of April 30th, while Clifford Matheson slept on board the yacht, the presses of Fleet Street thundered off millions of newspapers which bore on their financial page the impressive prospectus of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd. The post bore off to every town and village in the United Kingdom hundreds of thousands of copies of the issue in its full legal detail.

The capital was divided into 5,000,000 Ordinary £1 Shares, and 4,000,000 Deferred Shares of 1s. The latter were assigned to the vendor, Lars Larssen, in payment for various considerations. He had also underwritten the entire issue of Ordinary Shares for a commission of 3 per cent. The lists for subscription were to open on May 1st and close at midday on May 3rd. The London and United Kingdom Bank, in which Lord St. Aubyn was a Director, was receiving subscriptions and carrying out the routine of issuing allotment letters.

Such in essence was the prospectus of Hudson[Pg 293] Bay Transport, Ltd. It embodied every point that Larssen aimed for. It was entirely legal, since Matheson had O.K.'d a copy of the prospectus, and the further agreement between the two men had been technically evaded by the fact of Larssen underwriting the entire issue himself.

By the time the "Starlight" reached Norway, the subscription lists would be closed and Matheson would be impotent to veto the issue. If he were three days on the high seas between France and Norway, Larssen would have gained the control of Britain's wheat-supply.

And Matheson had no knowledge of the daring game that his adversary was venturing. Not even a suspicion of it. In his pocket was the shipowner's agreement to extend their truce to May 20th. His mind was at rest regarding the Hudson Bay Scheme.

His thoughts were now centred on Olive and the strange volte face in her feelings towards him. The change in her was scarcely understandable. Yet it was entirely a normal outcome of her essential character. Olive had never appreciated Clifford's value to herself until that day at Wiesbaden when she had realised his value to the woman who was ready to sacrifice her reputation and her happiness in order to free his hands. The torrent of bitter words she had poured on Elaine was the reflex action of that sudden realisation. It was born of uncontrollable jealousy.

Now she wanted to win Clifford back. It was not sufficient that he had returned to her side. She wanted his regard, his esteem, his affection, his love. She wanted a child by him to bind them together.[Pg 294] The tenderness with which she was looking after Larssen's little son was an outward expression of that inner hope. It was a prophecy of the future. Olaf stood for what might be. If she should have a child of her own, she felt convinced that Clifford would remain with her.

Those feelings were now the focus of Olive's thoughts. The sincerity of her greeting to Clifford was not an assumed emotion. It was inner-real. And yet it might not last for long. The effect of her drug-taking was to make every momentary feeling seem an eternal, ineradicable mainspring of action. Her many moods were each at the moment vitally important to her. They obsessed her. The morphia had not only undermined her physical health, but had made her mind the prey of every passing emotion.

For his part, Matheson was trying to weigh up the essential value of this sudden change in his wife. He admitted the sincerity; he doubted the permanency. He realised that she ardently desired a child of her own—that was plain to read from her attitude towards Larssen's son. But in the past she had always been impatient with children, and he questioned whether her present feeling was more than transitory.

The morning of May 1st brought grey sky, grey waters, and a tumbling sea. The yacht was beating north-east, close-hauled, into a stiff breeze from eastwards. No land was in sight—only a few trawler sails and a squat, ugly tramp steamer flinging a pennant of black smoke to westwards. As the day wore on the wind rose steadily, and in[Pg 295] the afternoon the watch turned out to reef sails. Matheson was an excellent sailor, and this tussle with the elements exhilarated him. Olive, too, was quite at home on board a yacht, and the two marched the decks together in keen enjoyment of the bite of the wind and the whip of the salt spray.

By nightfall the wind had increased to a half-gale but the "Starlight" rode through the sea in splendid defiance, sure of her staunchness and steady in her purpose.

In this fight for the control of Britain's wheat-supply, Larssen had played to the highest his powers of intellect, his foresight, and his ruthless determination. He had forced the signature of Clifford Matheson to the draft prospectus, thus sanctioning its issue. He had evaded by one daring stroke the spirit of his own signed agreement. He had most carefully and minutely arranged for the flotation of the company at the time when Matheson would be on the high seas and out of touch with London news.

The "Starlight" was a well-found yacht, capable of weathering any North Sea gale. She had oil-engines to supplement her sailing power. She was provisioned for a month. Rough weather would not drive her back to harbour. She could fight through any wind or sea to Norway. Nothing had been overlooked to carry Larssen's scheme to perfect success.

For such a man as Lars Larssen there is no other antagonist he need fear.[Pg 296]

Out in the North Sea, wallowing sullenly in the trough of the waves, her masts gone by the board and her deck awash, lay the derelict schooner "Valkyrie" of Bergen. She would have been at the bottom of the sea had it not been for her cargo of Norway pine, keeping her painfully afloat against her will. Fate, with its little finger, moved this uncharted peril right in the track of the "Starlight," beating close-reefed through the buffeting waves on the night of May 1st, while Larssen, in his London home, satisfied that his plans had foreseen every human eventuality, slept the easy sleep of the successful.[Pg 297]

CHAPTER XXXV
INTERVENTION

The "Starlight" struck the sodden derelict shortly before midnight, with a crash that jarred the yacht to her innermost fibres.

She struck it full abeam, like a motor-car smashing in the dark into an unlighted farm-waggon drawn across a country lane. Bows crumpled up; bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas.

Thrown back on her haunches, the "Starlight" gasped and shivered and began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle.

A seaman rushed through the saloons, throwing wide the cabin doors, and shouting the captain's order.

Up above, men were ripping the canvas covers off the life-boats, flinging oilskins and rugs and provisions into them, slewing round the davits, hauling on the fall-ropes—a furious medley of energies.

Matheson rushed to his wife's cabin, helped her on with some clothes, tied her lifebelt, wrapped a rug around her, and hurried her on deck.[Pg 298]

"Ten minutes at the outside!" flung back the captain, and then into his megaphone: "Lower away there with No. 4!"

Lifeboat No. 4 was the second boat on the port side—the leeward side. No. 3 was buried under the tangle of wreckage from the collapse of the foremast, and therefore useless. The boat was already in the water, with the mate and four seamen aboard, when Matheson, who had hurried below, came again on deck with Olaf in his arms. Behind him panted the stewardess and Olive's maid, terrified and clutching some worthless finery of hers.

The captain wasted no precious moments on argument. He thrust the stewardess and the trembling maid before him, and stout arms bundled them down to the plunging boat. Then he passed down the little boy.

"Haul on the main and mizzen sheets!" ordered the captain, to bring the yacht round and get a leeward launch for Nos. 1 and 2.

Presently the two crackling sails gybed over[Pg 299] with a thud, and the "Starlight" lay on the starboard tack, head down and filling rapidly.

Into No. 1, with the boatswain in charge and four seamen, went Olive and her husband and the cook; and into No. 2 crowded the carpenter, the two stewards, and the rest of the crew. For the captain was left the frail dinghy, slung from the stern. True to the tradition of the sea, he had refused a place in any of the lifeboats.

Lifeboat No. 2 got away first of the two. It was being tossed dizzily amongst the inky combers twenty yards distant, the men rowing feverishly to get clear of the yacht before she sank and sucked them under. But with No. 1 there was some hitch. The boatswain had unshackled the fall-ropes aft, and the boat slewed off with the jerk of a heavy wave.

Two seamen were tugging at the fall-block. Something had fouled. The "Starlight" was rearing head stern up; her shattered bows were already under the waves; her life was now a matter of seconds only.

Before the two men could get their knives through the tough rope, the "Starlight" reared like a bucking mare and plunged to her grave, dragging with her lifeboat No. 1 and its eight occupants.

Matheson, one foot caught under a seat, was dragged down and down until his heart hammered[Pg 300] like a piston and his lungs were bursting with the fierce effort to hold his breath.

To the drowning man there comes a moment when he perforce gives up the fight and abandons himself to the blessed peace of unconsciousness, like a wanderer in a snowstorm lying down to rest. That moment had come to Matheson, when suddenly the half-severed rope that shackled the lifeboat to the doomed yacht gave way, and with a mutinous jerk the boat rushed itself to the surface, bottom upwards, flinging Matheson clear.

His craving lungs opened to the free air; he lay back on his cork-jacket gulping it in greedily as the whirlpool formed by the sinking yacht carried him round and round in dizzy circles.

The moments of recuperation past, his first thought was for his wife. He caught sight of a shapeless something at the further side of the whirlpool, and with all his strength beat round towards it. It was Olive, clinging to an oar.

He reached her; shouted some words of hope above the roar of the wind; searched around the blackness of the night for a place of safety. Thirty yards away, tossed upwards on a giant wave as though in signal to them, there showed for a brief moment the silhouette of an upturned boat, with two men clinging to it.

"Our boat—over there!" he cried to Olive, and clutching her by the arm, fought the combers towards the hope of refuge.

Straddled across the upturned lifeboat were the boatswain and a seaman. The others had disappeared. On such a night it was impos[Pg 301]sible to rescue them unless by the accident of chance.

Matheson, buffeted and blinded by the thrash of the waves, just managed to drag Olive to the boat's side. The boatswain, Fraser by name, lent him a hand while he recuperated sufficiently to hoist Olive across the keel of the storm-tossed boat.

The boatswain made a gesture of helplessness. In that inky night, who could say where lifeboats No. 2 and 4 might be?

Presently a rocket flung a rain of white stars across the black curtain of the sky. It must be from one of their own boats. But it was far away across the waters. They shouted with all their might. The wind hurled their words away in disdain of the puny effort.

Matheson had pocketed a flask of brandy when the call of all hands on deck had sent him tumbling out of his berth. He now poured some of the spirit down Olive's throat, and passed the flask on to the men.

Then he set to work to make his moaning wife as comfortable as the terrible circumstances of their plight would permit. He took off his coat and got her into it, binding her cork jacket around. A rope was trailing from the stern and he secured this and tied it round her waist, giving one end to Fraser to hold and keeping tight hold of the other himself.

Very little was said as the endless hours of the night dragged their leaden length to a sullen dawn.[Pg 302]

The seaman, who had been the man on watch when the "Starlight" struck the unlighted derelict, had cursed intermittently at the cause of the disaster. "Why didn't they show a blasted light?" he kept on repeating with obstinate illogicality. "Why didn't the fools show a blasted light?"

Olive, in her delirium, caught at the words. "I can see the shore!" she cried. "Over there—over there! Why don't you row? You want to kill me first!"

The sullen dawn uncurtained a waste of slag-coloured, heaving waters. The gale had spent its sudden fury, as though its work were now accomplished, but the sky was grey and inhospitable. Matheson raised himself on his knees on the keel of the boat again and again to search around, but no sail or steamer-smoke gave hope of rescue.

It was not until ten o'clock that a trawler came within distance of seeing them, but apparently their signals of distress were not noticed, for the fishing vessel passed on to its work and disappeared over the horizon.

A few fitful gleams of sunlight mocked their shiverings with promise of warmth—promise un[Pg 303]fulfilled. Their brandy was now exhausted, and some ship's biscuits in the boatswain's pocket were sodden and uneatable. Thirst began to add to the horrors of the situation. Olive was moaning for water, and they had none to give her.

The afternoon was far advanced before a Copenhagen-Hull packet ran across them, taking on board three exhausted men and a woman in delirium.[Pg 304]

CHAPTER XXXVI
FINALITY

At Hull, prepared by wireless, doctors and nurses were waiting for Olive when the vessel reached port late at night. As Matheson hurried with the ambulance along the quayside, a tubby little figure of a man came up to him.

"You remember me—Martin?" he asked. "I'm covering this story for the Daily Truth."

"Come with me," answered Matheson. "I'll give you the information you want presently."

He had first to see Olive safely in hospital. It was all that he could do for her. Then he returned to the journalist.

"I suppose that you know that the other two boats were picked up early this morning?" said Martin.

"Quite sound. I made a special interview with him.... By the way, you know that the Hudson Bay flotation is going strong on the wing?"

He held out a newspaper folded back to the financial page. A few moments' glance was sufficient to tell Matheson all that he needed to know—that the issue had been launched in his name on[Pg 305] the night of April 30th; that to-morrow at twelve o'clock the lists were to be closed.

If he were to act at all, he must act now—at once. His jaw squared and his mouth tightened as he thought out the situation.

From the wallet in his breast-pocket Matheson took out Larssen's two agreements—blurred with sea-water, but now dried and fit for his purpose. He handed the agreements to Martin, who whistled surprise as he read them.

"Yes. That evades his agreement with me.... What's the price of a full-page advertisement in your paper?"

Matheson led the way to a hotel near at hand, and on a sheet of hotel note-paper wrote these words:—

"The use of my name on the Hudson Bay prospectus is absolutely unauthorized. I earnestly advise all investors to cancel their applications by wire—at once.

(Signed) "Clifford Matheson"

"I know, but I'm Clifford Matheson. I'll prove it to you. I'll bring you the two survivors from the 'Starlight' to testify."

"In town I could take you to my bankers, but to-night it's impossible. Martin, you've got to believe me! Hear what those two men have to say!"

"An advertisement like this is sheer libel," he answered presently. "Larssen could rook you for goodness knows what damages if you got it published."

"But my owners wouldn't stand for the damages. They'd be equally liable, you know."

"I'll guarantee them up to my last shilling. Get your editor on the trunk wire, and find out how much guarantee he'll want me to put up."

"If you want a scoop that will make your career," he answered slowly, "it's here. Waiting for you to pick it up. I promised you first call on my news—here it is. Have you the pluck to take your opportunity?"

"Within half an hour. And give you a full interview, explaining my reasons for the announcement."

Martin had a well-deserved newspaper reputation for accuracy and good judgment. On his urgent recommendation, therefore, the managing editor of the Daily Truth consented to run Clifford Matheson's full-page advertisement and to insert the interview, contingent on his depositing with Martin a cheque for £250,000 to indemnify the paper against a possible libel action on the part of Lars Larssen.

Matheson also prepared letters to Sir Francis Letchmere, Lord St Aubyn, and Carleton-Wingate, giving a statement of his reasons for the announcement in the Daily Truth of the next morning, and asking them to send telegrams to all those who had made applications for shares. The telegram to be sent out was worded:—

"I strongly advise all investors to cancel by wire their applications for shares in Hudson Bay Transport. See explanation in Daily Truth of May 3rd.—Clifford Matheson."

Martin, who was leaving for London by a midnight train, took charge of the three letters and promised to have them safely delivered to the three Directors of the company early in the morning.

Two days later, Matheson had to leave his wife in the hands of the doctors in order to attend a[Pg 308] brief meeting of the Board of Directors of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd.

They were seated in the stately board-room of the London and United Kingdom Bank in Lombard Street, at one end of the huge oval table over which the affairs of nations are settled. Clifford Matheson was in the chair.

The routine business of the meeting had been cleared when a clerk announced that Mr Larssen wished to enter. Until the allotments had been made by the other four Directors, he had no legal right to sit at the board of the company or to take part in any discussion. He now asked formal permission to enter, and the Directors formally agreed to receive him.

If they thought to find in Lars Larssen a beaten man, they were greatly mistaken. He came in with his usual masterful stride, and his eyes met theirs surely and squarely.

"I've come to hear what's been fixed between you," he said, and took a seat at the table.

Matheson took up a paper from the bundle before him on the table, and replied with studied formality: "The applications for shares totalled £6,714,000 in round figures. Of these, all but £8200 were cancelled by telegram or letter on the morning of May 3rd."

"Yes. The Board decided to proceed to allotment, and we have accordingly allotted the applications for 8200 shares. The remainder of the 5,000,000 ordinary shares will have to be taken[Pg 309] up and paid for by yourself under the terms of your underwriting agreement."

"As you will see," continued Matheson with the same studied formality cloaking the irony of his words, "you gain control."

Larssen smiled tolerantly. "That's turned the trick right enough, but don't flatter yourself that you did it. If it hadn't been for a sheer accident that no man alive could foresee or prevent, I'd have won hands down. I haven't been beaten by you, and so I don't bear grudge. And I've no intention of bringing a libel action to gratify your longing for the limelight. I'll just sit tight and let the Hudson Bay scheme flatten out to nothing."

He flicked thumb and forefinger together contemptuously. "That Hudson Bay scheme was chicken-feed. I've bigger than that up my sleeve. What you've done won't put the stopper on me. Let me tell you, Matheson, that it will take a better man than you to down Lars Larssen."

When he left the board-room, all four Directors remained silent. They knew that he had spoken truth. Even in defeat Lars Larssen was a bigger man than any of the four.

From the first, the doctors had little hope of saving Olive. Her constitution, never a strong one, had been undermined by the luxurious pleasure-seeking of her life and the deadly nerve-poison of the morphia. That night and day on the upturned boat—drenched with the waves, chilled,[Pg 310] famished, tortured with thirst—had been an ordeal to shatter even a woman with big reserves of strength, and Olive had no such reserves.

When Matheson and his father-in-law hurried back to Hull, it was to find that life was slowly ebbing. Towards the end her mind cleared of delirium, and she spoke rationally.

"Perhaps it is all for the best, Clifford," she murmured. "You came back to me, but could I have held you?"

"Yes, but I am so uncertain. It's my nature. I might have held you for a little while ... and then."

"Don't try to buoy me up with false hopes. It is kind of you, dear; but I see things clearly now.... You came back to me, and I am content. I want rest now—just rest."

Presently her eyelids closed in sleep. Matheson sat watching by her bedside for a long while, holding her hand. She stirred once and murmured drowsily, "You came back to me." And in her sleep she passed away so gradually that none could say when mortal life had ended and the life eternal had begun.[Pg 311]

EPILOGUE

In the spring of the following year, Clifford and Elaine were on their wedding journey to Italy. He had rented a sea-coast villa on the Ligurian Riviera, and they were travelling to there from Paris.

It was late at night when the Rome express set them down at their destination. The sea was booming eerily against the rock-wall of the tiny harbour of Santa Margherita, crowded with lateen-sailed fishing craft silhouetted as a tangle of masts and ropes.

But the morning showed a cloudless sky and sunshine dancing on the blue waters of the Gulf of Tigullio. They walked together to the tiny fishing village of Portofino, along the most beautiful road in Italy. To the one side the azure sea was lapping to their feet soft messages of welcome, and to the other the olives and the pastel pines were crowding down the hillsides to wish them joy and happiness.

They climbed together through a grey-green veil of olive-orchards, past the little white Noah's Ark houses of the olive farmers and their quaint little Noah's ark cypresses, to the full height of Portofino Kulm, where the whole enchanted coast-line of the Riviera from Genoa to Sestri Levante lay spread out as a jewelled fringe of ocean. Elaine stood[Pg 312] hatless while the wanton breeze caressed her glorious hair and caught at her skirts with careless familiarity.

She threw her arms wide as she cried joyously to Clifford: "Just to be able to see all this!"

"I'm glad your work is for science. Some day you'll be able to give to others in return for what science has given to me."

"For a month I claim you for myself," continued Elaine. "You and I alone.... Then I'll share you with your work—your big work. You and I and your work!"

A SELECTION OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY METHUEN AND CO. LTD., LONDON
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A selection of Messrs. Methuen's publications

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SWIRLING WATERS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

SWIRLING WATERS

BY MAX RITTENBERG

CONTENTS

SWIRLING WATERS

CHAPTER I THE WHIRLPOOL

CHAPTER II A £5,000,000 DEAL

CHAPTER III SHADOWED

CHAPTER IV ON THE SCENT OF A MYSTERY

CHAPTER V THE FIRST MOVE IN THE GAME

CHAPTER VI THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

CHAPTER VII A SEAT BY THE ARENA

CHAPTER VIII WHO AND WHERE IS RIVIÈRE?

CHAPTER IX AT MONTE CARLO

CHAPTER X LARSSEN TURNS ANOTHER CORNER

CHAPTER XI A LETTER FROM RIVIÈRE

CHAPTER XII THE SECOND MEETING

CHAPTER XIII AT THE MAISON CARRÉE

CHAPTER XIV BY THE DRUIDS' TOWER

CHAPTER XV WAITING THE VERDICT

CHAPTER XVI ONLY PITY!

CHAPTER XVII RIVIÈRE IS CALLED BACK

CHAPTER XVIII NOT WANTED!

CHAPTER XIX A THRONE-ROOM

CHAPTER XX BEATEN TO EARTH

CHAPTER XXI THE BOLTED DOOR

CHAPTER XXII THE CHAMELEON MIND

CHAPTER XXIII LARSSEN'S MAN ONCE AGAIN

CHAPTER XXIV CONFESSION

CHAPTER XXV WHITE LILAC

CHAPTER XXVI A CHALLENGE

CHAPTER XXVII WOMEN'S WEAPONS

CHAPTER XXVIII THE COUNTER-MOVE

CHAPTER XXIX THE PARTING

CHAPTER XXX HEIR TO A THRONE

CHAPTER XXXI THE REINS HAD SLIPPED

CHAPTER XXXII THE NEW SCHEME

CHAPTER XXXIII LARSSEN'S APPEAL

CHAPTER XXXIV ON BOARD THE "STARLIGHT"

CHAPTER XXXV INTERVENTION

CHAPTER XXXVI FINALITY

EPILOGUE

A SELECTION OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY METHUEN AND CO. LTD., LONDON 36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

CONTENTS

A selection of Messrs. Methuen's publications

Part II.—A Selection of Series

Part III.—A Selection of Works of Fiction

BY
MAX RITTENBERG

CHAPTER I
THE WHIRLPOOL

CHAPTER II
A £5,000,000 DEAL

CHAPTER III
SHADOWED

CHAPTER IV
ON THE SCENT OF A MYSTERY

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST MOVE IN THE GAME

CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

CHAPTER VII
A SEAT BY THE ARENA

CHAPTER VIII
WHO AND WHERE IS RIVIÈRE?

CHAPTER IX
AT MONTE CARLO

CHAPTER X
LARSSEN TURNS ANOTHER CORNER

CHAPTER XI
A LETTER FROM RIVIÈRE

CHAPTER XII
THE SECOND MEETING

CHAPTER XIII
AT THE MAISON CARRÉE

CHAPTER XIV
BY THE DRUIDS' TOWER

CHAPTER XV
WAITING THE VERDICT

CHAPTER XVI
ONLY PITY!

CHAPTER XVII
RIVIÈRE IS CALLED BACK

CHAPTER XVIII
NOT WANTED!

CHAPTER XIX
A THRONE-ROOM

CHAPTER XX
BEATEN TO EARTH

CHAPTER XXI
THE BOLTED DOOR

CHAPTER XXII
THE CHAMELEON MIND

CHAPTER XXIII
LARSSEN'S MAN ONCE AGAIN

CHAPTER XXIV
CONFESSION

CHAPTER XXV
WHITE LILAC

CHAPTER XXVI
A CHALLENGE

CHAPTER XXVII
WOMEN'S WEAPONS

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COUNTER-MOVE

CHAPTER XXIX
THE PARTING

CHAPTER XXX
HEIR TO A THRONE

CHAPTER XXXI
THE REINS HAD SLIPPED

CHAPTER XXXII
THE NEW SCHEME

CHAPTER XXXIII
LARSSEN'S APPEAL

CHAPTER XXXIV
ON BOARD THE "STARLIGHT"

CHAPTER XXXV
INTERVENTION

CHAPTER XXXVI
FINALITY

A SELECTION OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY METHUEN AND CO. LTD., LONDON
36 ESSEX STREET
W.C.