XV.The Rainbow

XV.The RainbowOctober 5. 10.18P.M.I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cullen had insisted on sentinelling outside Maryvale’s apartment during the night; now the guardsman slept industriously, his head reclining in the angle of the doorpost, the rest of him curled up, his jaws alarmingly open.Not disturbing him, I descended to the first storey, where I placed my note under Crofts’ door, and continued down. My previous night’s experience had taught me how to find the food supply readily, and I stocked my pockets with concentrated nutriment. Letting myself out by the front entrance, I turned to the left and directed my steps toward the kitchen demesne betwixt House and stables.I was in luck. Twenty yards of fairly stout clothes-line were mine for the taking.With the rope bent over my arm, I hastened past the dinner-room windows toward the cypresses that marked the first point on any journey up the Vale. Then I stopped dead.For a woman was standing by the far corner of the conservatory, half-turned from me, looking at an object which she held in her hand.With her other hand she made a slight gesture to someone around the corner, and the next moment I beat a swift retreat to the shelter of a rank of low birch trees. A man in his shirt sleeves dashed out from the behind the House, running like mad. He was a man I had never seen before!With great galloping strides, his arms working like pistons, his knees rising incredibly high, he rushed straight for the clump of cypresses; there he turned as sharply as his momentum would permit and sped back to his starting point out of my view.He had come and gone so quickly that I had little chance to take in his appearance. Decidedly, however, he was a long, lank man, and there was a touch of red about his face in hair and beard. But any attempt to mark him closely was defeated by mere astonishment at his presence, and wonder, in the name of reason, at what he was doing.I quickly balanced the courses open to me. Should I reveal myself and challenge these unknowns? Or return secretly to the house and awake Crofts and Salt? Or continue my journey?This last was what I did, for the cloaked woman happened to turn her head in my direction, and I saw that she was one of the Clays. Unless the Clays are to be relied on, no one is. As for my curiosity, which was more than a little, I smothered it. If the many perplexing incidents in the Vale have not by this time chastened the inquisitiveness of each one of us, we are difficult to school.I went safe in the hiding of the birches until I reached the unshorn grass of the summer-house park; the blades were loaded with dew. While I crossed toward the regular path, I caught sight of the unknown racing again in my direction, and was half-alarmed for fear that he had espied me and was on my trail. Once more, however, he turned beneath the cypresses and fled back full tilt.I had much to ponder on while I marched through the bleak and clammy dawn, and pondering made the miles seem shorter. I thought of Maryvale, who had walked here with me yesterday, of his dark sayings and the blight upon his spirit—of Doctor Aire, whose theorisings strike a vague discomfort into my mind. He, by the way, has taken full responsibility for the sudden madness of Maryvale. He blames himself for relating the story of the man found decapitated near the summer-house. That account, together with my yarn a little later about the witch sisters and the subsequent failure of Maryvale to destroy the cat, turned the balance of the unfortunate man’s intellect, which had previously given token of a disposition towards instability. The incredible fact that three bullets did not injure the beast Aire says he cannot account for; yet I suspect him, somehow, of keeping close counsel on the point.But even with these matters to turn over and over in a tussle of thought, constantly I kept wondering about the pair on the lawn, the man from nowhere practising his uncouth capers, the woman so intent on what she held in her hand.I came to the spot where Salt and the others had parted from Maryvale and me the evening before, and now I turned aside too, for my determination was to cross the stream by the fallen tree and to assault the eastern wall of the Vale. There was no trouble in clambering along the improvised bridge; I leaped to the ground and in ten minutes reached the steep base of Great Rhos, prepared for an hour’s battle with the densely-wooded slope.Finally, wet to the waist as if I had waded a stream, I emerged on the brow of the hill where the heatherstems lay wriggling like the hair of a thousand Medusas. I walked rapidly, waiting for the sun to break through and dry me, and when it came soon afterward, I sat under a whinberry bush by a bank of rare Welsh poppies and ate a few dried figs and a piece of nut-bread for breakfast. From Shepherd’s Well nearby I took a long draught.The day promised to be glaring hot and abundantly clear on the uplands, and doubtless steaming in the Vale. I passed on to find some brink for reconnaissance. Among the hilltops, what a difference a few feet may make in the prospect!I found a place on the edge of the sheer flank of the north of the Forest where the wide plains and fastnesses for miles about were revealed in shimmering prospect. I reclined and rested here for long, dried out thoroughly, and had luncheon: two legs of chicken, a chunk of unsweetened chocolate, and an orange which had wonderfully escaped crushing in my ascent. While I ate, I looked at the cloud-flecked hills spread all about in lovely confusion with fantastic writhen crests and crowns of Silurian rock. They were scraped and clawed by rivers channelling: Ithon and Clywedog and Wye gliding down their shady courses with here and there among them a glimpse of hill-hung woodlands, or church tower peeping over castle rise, or drowsy village looking unchanged for centuries. Surely from Aidenn Forest one could see the better half of Wales.Of a sudden I slapped my thigh. “I’ll do it!”My large-scale map of the Forest was in my pocket, as was a map of greater scope, showing Wales and the western counties, from which I could transfer the angles and make a fairly good job of it. I would draw sighting lines on the Forest sheet, so as to identify those magnificent and anonymous hills that showed crags and colours from twenty, thirty, forty miles away.I was at the northern end of the Forest. Should I work here? No, the sun had not yet driven the vapour from the remotest peaks of which I wished to find the names. Besides, there was no shelter near, and I saw some cool-looking groves on Whimble. I headed south for Whimble.Wryneck and woodlark sometimes came curiously past while I worked on my maps under disadvantages, without table or board; I had to fold one sheet for a straight-edge if I wished to make a mark on the other. Sighting was difficult without a firm plane surface. But I had enthusiasm, and patience. I fixed lines pointing to mountains that, when I had found their names, for the first time seemed real to me, Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, many others—as the tracing I include here will remind me when I look through these pages in later years.I still had some cheese in my pocket. I ate it for tea.Then out of the sultry day came a sudden dash of rain along the hilltops, blotting out my mountains, and hedging in my horizon to the profiles of the nearby slopes. I realized that the copse of trees I occupied abutted the field where I had fled from the bull. Fair shelter must be near.I made short work of hastening across the field and climbing down, this time, to the long broad ledge upon which I had fallen on the other occasion. There I found refuge from the weather, snugly ensconced on a lichenous seat of stone where the slaty rock was hollowed out underneath the eyelid of the hill. In my dim cubicle I laughed at the storm that was sending down its battery of rain.For the first time in the day, I bethought myself of smoking. I had out pipe and tobacco, filled my pipe, and struck a match. It flamed and died. I realized in an instant what a tragedy my carelessness had caused.That was my last match.I would certainly have cursed myself in the limited number of languages at my command, had not something I had seen in that moment’s flare of the match caused me to catch my breath.The little recess of the rocks where I had taken refuge was filled with bracken and some coarse grass. The brief light had shown me that at the rear of the cave, if I may call it so, the sparser growth had been crushed down, thoroughly flattened—and the impress was that of a human form. Someone had used this place of late as his sleeping quarters!I must have sat there stunned for several minutes before I stirred, or even began to think. When I had gathered my wits, it was not hard determining to get out of the place at once. Was this sleeper the man who had shed Cosgrove’s blood? For all that had been discovered, he might be. But whoever he was, I had no wish to encounter him alone, and he might at that very moment be hurrying this way to escape the rain.The rain, to be sure, had almost ceased, a fact which did not alter my determination to be quit of the ledge with all speed. Half a minute later I was out of the shelter and clambering up the bank, with my face set toward Mynydd Tarw’s gorsy slopes. And now I watched the curving limits of the hills with half-apprehensive keenness, expecting at any moment to see the black dot of the unknown head rise into sight.The shower had all but ceased; through a fine spray of rain the sun came glinting. I looked across the Vale, over Great Rhos. Ahead of me among the waste of hills beyond Aidenn Forest the land was black with storm for leagues, save where one great monument of light rested thirty miles away on Pen Plinlimon-fawr. On that bleak mountain-top the zone of splendour shone like a spot of hell touched by some ray of heaven.I had the impulse then to look the opposite way. Yes, as I had surmised, to the south-east the meadows of Herefordshire were steeped in sun. And through the gauzy air with its wandering vapour-drops I saw a rainbow’s glittering bridge from wooded slope to wooded slope across the mown hayfields, an arch beneath which the distant Malvern Hills lifted their profile against the sky.I remembered then the great freedom and elation I had felt when on the uplands only two days ago, and wished that among these wonders that seemed spread for my eyes alone I might regain that long ebullient rapture. But I could not. Why could I not?There I was with pipe and tobacco, perishing for a match!Unless the cave-dweller whom I wished not to meet were near, there was no other smoking creature within miles.But stay! I suddenly remembered the men from Penybont, repairing the one sole path to the uplands. If they had succeeded in establishing a new trackway, there was my best route back to Highglen House, toward which I must be tending, since the hour was nearer five than four. And one of them must have a match. If only they had not given over work for the day!I had still a little distance to go north along the edge of Mynydd Tarw before reaching the top of the path. Signs of the landslide were not apparent here; yet I had made but one of the hairpin bends when I saw a broad scar and scoop where both earth and rock had torn asunder from the hill. Not until I was half-way to the floor of the Vale did the course of the landslide obliterate the zigzag path. The workers had not dug all the earth and stone away, but had made a substantial walking-surface some feet above the original one. And going a little further down, I saw to my joy that the men had not yet departed. They were not working, indeed, but standing about some object on the ground at the foot of the hill—and I had a premonition like a sword-cut what that object was.It was the ill-clad, coatless body of the gorilla-man.Not a quarter of an hour before, the men who had worked to the very bottom of the path, where the wreckage of the avalanche tailed away, had seen protruding from the earth a long and hairy arm and purplish hand. A large stone weighted down the body when it was found, and it appeared from the position of the corpse, and particularly from the writhen expression of the features, that the stranger had not been stricken instantly to death. Instead, he may even have been some way up the path when he had seen the hillside falling, and may have fled and nearly escaped. The groping arm upthrust seemed an indication that had not the heavy stone pinned him under, he might have struggled to the air, instead of being buried alive.“Did any of you know him?” I asked, looking down at the face with its long, uncouth jaw and narrow temples.“No, sir. He must have been a foreigner in these parts.”“This is a bit sickening.” I certainly needed a pipe now. “Who has a match?”They were quite as doleful as I. “Sorry, sir, our matches was all wet in the rain just now. Our coats was lyin’ up beyond, and the shower got to ’em before we did. Matches are fair ruined.”I looked down at the ill-clad body. “By thunder, if I wouldn’t rob a dead man for a match now. Were there any on him?”“Not a one, sir.” The men seemed to regard the idea as a thing of abhorrence, and I had to laugh my question away as a grim joke.A couple of miles southward on the way home, I met the two workmen who had gone to Highglen House for a shutter on which to transport the body. Salt was with them, and all three regarded me queerly, which was natural, for I was carrying, besides the clothes-rope, the umbrella which I had left in the ruin last night.“Decided not to hang yourself?” asked Salt, his eye on the rope.I handed him the umbrella, which he received with puzzled brow. “Item,” I said, “to prove the objective of the menagerie-keeper.”“Quite,” he responded. “Have you seen what we’re goin’ after?”“I have. He was the first of the men I encountered that night.”“I guessed so. Well, this party’s out of italtogether—time and distance, you know, time and distance.”“I suppose that’s so. Time and distance, the two greatest villains that ever feazed the detective force. The landslide certainly did not occur more than fifteen minutes after Cosgrove’s death.”“And this man was in it, was he?”“What do you mean? Of course he was.”“Not just buried there afterward, maybe?”“I should say not. By the way, Superintendent, don’t go without letting me have a match.”“Not afraid of the dark, I hope?” Salt looked significantly up among the trees, where the light was thickening.“No, not exactly, but I’m famished for a smoke.”“Smokin’ is not one of my virtues,” he responded. “I’m sorry, sir; you’ll have to wait until you get to the House.”I was angry, yes poisonously angry with Salt. It takes all kinds of lunatics to make up a world, but is there any lunatic as irritating as the man who doesn’t smoke?I returned to the House, having all the while the awareness that forms were following and eyes watching me in the shadowy walks. To tell the merciless truth, these episodes of the Unforthcoming Match had chagrined me so that my nerves were teetering, and I had the uncomfortable sense that if I were to step from the centre of the path or make any untoward movement, something disagreeable might happen. I felt like a prisoner, and even when I had emerged upon the lawn, I did not like the way the black windows of the House stared at me.“Great heavens,” I thought, “am I coming under the thumbs of the Influences, as Mrs. Belvoir called them?”The Vale was dim when I reached the House. I knew that I should surely find a match-holder on the mantel in the Hall of the Moth. I did, but some other smoker had abstracted the last match! I hope heaven’s ears were closed at that moment.

October 5. 10.18P.M.

I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cullen had insisted on sentinelling outside Maryvale’s apartment during the night; now the guardsman slept industriously, his head reclining in the angle of the doorpost, the rest of him curled up, his jaws alarmingly open.

Not disturbing him, I descended to the first storey, where I placed my note under Crofts’ door, and continued down. My previous night’s experience had taught me how to find the food supply readily, and I stocked my pockets with concentrated nutriment. Letting myself out by the front entrance, I turned to the left and directed my steps toward the kitchen demesne betwixt House and stables.

I was in luck. Twenty yards of fairly stout clothes-line were mine for the taking.

With the rope bent over my arm, I hastened past the dinner-room windows toward the cypresses that marked the first point on any journey up the Vale. Then I stopped dead.

For a woman was standing by the far corner of the conservatory, half-turned from me, looking at an object which she held in her hand.

With her other hand she made a slight gesture to someone around the corner, and the next moment I beat a swift retreat to the shelter of a rank of low birch trees. A man in his shirt sleeves dashed out from the behind the House, running like mad. He was a man I had never seen before!

With great galloping strides, his arms working like pistons, his knees rising incredibly high, he rushed straight for the clump of cypresses; there he turned as sharply as his momentum would permit and sped back to his starting point out of my view.

He had come and gone so quickly that I had little chance to take in his appearance. Decidedly, however, he was a long, lank man, and there was a touch of red about his face in hair and beard. But any attempt to mark him closely was defeated by mere astonishment at his presence, and wonder, in the name of reason, at what he was doing.

I quickly balanced the courses open to me. Should I reveal myself and challenge these unknowns? Or return secretly to the house and awake Crofts and Salt? Or continue my journey?

This last was what I did, for the cloaked woman happened to turn her head in my direction, and I saw that she was one of the Clays. Unless the Clays are to be relied on, no one is. As for my curiosity, which was more than a little, I smothered it. If the many perplexing incidents in the Vale have not by this time chastened the inquisitiveness of each one of us, we are difficult to school.

I went safe in the hiding of the birches until I reached the unshorn grass of the summer-house park; the blades were loaded with dew. While I crossed toward the regular path, I caught sight of the unknown racing again in my direction, and was half-alarmed for fear that he had espied me and was on my trail. Once more, however, he turned beneath the cypresses and fled back full tilt.

I had much to ponder on while I marched through the bleak and clammy dawn, and pondering made the miles seem shorter. I thought of Maryvale, who had walked here with me yesterday, of his dark sayings and the blight upon his spirit—of Doctor Aire, whose theorisings strike a vague discomfort into my mind. He, by the way, has taken full responsibility for the sudden madness of Maryvale. He blames himself for relating the story of the man found decapitated near the summer-house. That account, together with my yarn a little later about the witch sisters and the subsequent failure of Maryvale to destroy the cat, turned the balance of the unfortunate man’s intellect, which had previously given token of a disposition towards instability. The incredible fact that three bullets did not injure the beast Aire says he cannot account for; yet I suspect him, somehow, of keeping close counsel on the point.

But even with these matters to turn over and over in a tussle of thought, constantly I kept wondering about the pair on the lawn, the man from nowhere practising his uncouth capers, the woman so intent on what she held in her hand.

I came to the spot where Salt and the others had parted from Maryvale and me the evening before, and now I turned aside too, for my determination was to cross the stream by the fallen tree and to assault the eastern wall of the Vale. There was no trouble in clambering along the improvised bridge; I leaped to the ground and in ten minutes reached the steep base of Great Rhos, prepared for an hour’s battle with the densely-wooded slope.

Finally, wet to the waist as if I had waded a stream, I emerged on the brow of the hill where the heatherstems lay wriggling like the hair of a thousand Medusas. I walked rapidly, waiting for the sun to break through and dry me, and when it came soon afterward, I sat under a whinberry bush by a bank of rare Welsh poppies and ate a few dried figs and a piece of nut-bread for breakfast. From Shepherd’s Well nearby I took a long draught.

The day promised to be glaring hot and abundantly clear on the uplands, and doubtless steaming in the Vale. I passed on to find some brink for reconnaissance. Among the hilltops, what a difference a few feet may make in the prospect!

I found a place on the edge of the sheer flank of the north of the Forest where the wide plains and fastnesses for miles about were revealed in shimmering prospect. I reclined and rested here for long, dried out thoroughly, and had luncheon: two legs of chicken, a chunk of unsweetened chocolate, and an orange which had wonderfully escaped crushing in my ascent. While I ate, I looked at the cloud-flecked hills spread all about in lovely confusion with fantastic writhen crests and crowns of Silurian rock. They were scraped and clawed by rivers channelling: Ithon and Clywedog and Wye gliding down their shady courses with here and there among them a glimpse of hill-hung woodlands, or church tower peeping over castle rise, or drowsy village looking unchanged for centuries. Surely from Aidenn Forest one could see the better half of Wales.

Of a sudden I slapped my thigh. “I’ll do it!”

My large-scale map of the Forest was in my pocket, as was a map of greater scope, showing Wales and the western counties, from which I could transfer the angles and make a fairly good job of it. I would draw sighting lines on the Forest sheet, so as to identify those magnificent and anonymous hills that showed crags and colours from twenty, thirty, forty miles away.

I was at the northern end of the Forest. Should I work here? No, the sun had not yet driven the vapour from the remotest peaks of which I wished to find the names. Besides, there was no shelter near, and I saw some cool-looking groves on Whimble. I headed south for Whimble.

Wryneck and woodlark sometimes came curiously past while I worked on my maps under disadvantages, without table or board; I had to fold one sheet for a straight-edge if I wished to make a mark on the other. Sighting was difficult without a firm plane surface. But I had enthusiasm, and patience. I fixed lines pointing to mountains that, when I had found their names, for the first time seemed real to me, Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, many others—as the tracing I include here will remind me when I look through these pages in later years.

I still had some cheese in my pocket. I ate it for tea.

Then out of the sultry day came a sudden dash of rain along the hilltops, blotting out my mountains, and hedging in my horizon to the profiles of the nearby slopes. I realized that the copse of trees I occupied abutted the field where I had fled from the bull. Fair shelter must be near.

I made short work of hastening across the field and climbing down, this time, to the long broad ledge upon which I had fallen on the other occasion. There I found refuge from the weather, snugly ensconced on a lichenous seat of stone where the slaty rock was hollowed out underneath the eyelid of the hill. In my dim cubicle I laughed at the storm that was sending down its battery of rain.

For the first time in the day, I bethought myself of smoking. I had out pipe and tobacco, filled my pipe, and struck a match. It flamed and died. I realized in an instant what a tragedy my carelessness had caused.

That was my last match.

I would certainly have cursed myself in the limited number of languages at my command, had not something I had seen in that moment’s flare of the match caused me to catch my breath.

The little recess of the rocks where I had taken refuge was filled with bracken and some coarse grass. The brief light had shown me that at the rear of the cave, if I may call it so, the sparser growth had been crushed down, thoroughly flattened—and the impress was that of a human form. Someone had used this place of late as his sleeping quarters!

I must have sat there stunned for several minutes before I stirred, or even began to think. When I had gathered my wits, it was not hard determining to get out of the place at once. Was this sleeper the man who had shed Cosgrove’s blood? For all that had been discovered, he might be. But whoever he was, I had no wish to encounter him alone, and he might at that very moment be hurrying this way to escape the rain.

The rain, to be sure, had almost ceased, a fact which did not alter my determination to be quit of the ledge with all speed. Half a minute later I was out of the shelter and clambering up the bank, with my face set toward Mynydd Tarw’s gorsy slopes. And now I watched the curving limits of the hills with half-apprehensive keenness, expecting at any moment to see the black dot of the unknown head rise into sight.

The shower had all but ceased; through a fine spray of rain the sun came glinting. I looked across the Vale, over Great Rhos. Ahead of me among the waste of hills beyond Aidenn Forest the land was black with storm for leagues, save where one great monument of light rested thirty miles away on Pen Plinlimon-fawr. On that bleak mountain-top the zone of splendour shone like a spot of hell touched by some ray of heaven.

I had the impulse then to look the opposite way. Yes, as I had surmised, to the south-east the meadows of Herefordshire were steeped in sun. And through the gauzy air with its wandering vapour-drops I saw a rainbow’s glittering bridge from wooded slope to wooded slope across the mown hayfields, an arch beneath which the distant Malvern Hills lifted their profile against the sky.

I remembered then the great freedom and elation I had felt when on the uplands only two days ago, and wished that among these wonders that seemed spread for my eyes alone I might regain that long ebullient rapture. But I could not. Why could I not?

There I was with pipe and tobacco, perishing for a match!

Unless the cave-dweller whom I wished not to meet were near, there was no other smoking creature within miles.

But stay! I suddenly remembered the men from Penybont, repairing the one sole path to the uplands. If they had succeeded in establishing a new trackway, there was my best route back to Highglen House, toward which I must be tending, since the hour was nearer five than four. And one of them must have a match. If only they had not given over work for the day!

I had still a little distance to go north along the edge of Mynydd Tarw before reaching the top of the path. Signs of the landslide were not apparent here; yet I had made but one of the hairpin bends when I saw a broad scar and scoop where both earth and rock had torn asunder from the hill. Not until I was half-way to the floor of the Vale did the course of the landslide obliterate the zigzag path. The workers had not dug all the earth and stone away, but had made a substantial walking-surface some feet above the original one. And going a little further down, I saw to my joy that the men had not yet departed. They were not working, indeed, but standing about some object on the ground at the foot of the hill—and I had a premonition like a sword-cut what that object was.

It was the ill-clad, coatless body of the gorilla-man.

Not a quarter of an hour before, the men who had worked to the very bottom of the path, where the wreckage of the avalanche tailed away, had seen protruding from the earth a long and hairy arm and purplish hand. A large stone weighted down the body when it was found, and it appeared from the position of the corpse, and particularly from the writhen expression of the features, that the stranger had not been stricken instantly to death. Instead, he may even have been some way up the path when he had seen the hillside falling, and may have fled and nearly escaped. The groping arm upthrust seemed an indication that had not the heavy stone pinned him under, he might have struggled to the air, instead of being buried alive.

“Did any of you know him?” I asked, looking down at the face with its long, uncouth jaw and narrow temples.

“No, sir. He must have been a foreigner in these parts.”

“This is a bit sickening.” I certainly needed a pipe now. “Who has a match?”

They were quite as doleful as I. “Sorry, sir, our matches was all wet in the rain just now. Our coats was lyin’ up beyond, and the shower got to ’em before we did. Matches are fair ruined.”

I looked down at the ill-clad body. “By thunder, if I wouldn’t rob a dead man for a match now. Were there any on him?”

“Not a one, sir.” The men seemed to regard the idea as a thing of abhorrence, and I had to laugh my question away as a grim joke.

A couple of miles southward on the way home, I met the two workmen who had gone to Highglen House for a shutter on which to transport the body. Salt was with them, and all three regarded me queerly, which was natural, for I was carrying, besides the clothes-rope, the umbrella which I had left in the ruin last night.

“Decided not to hang yourself?” asked Salt, his eye on the rope.

I handed him the umbrella, which he received with puzzled brow. “Item,” I said, “to prove the objective of the menagerie-keeper.”

“Quite,” he responded. “Have you seen what we’re goin’ after?”

“I have. He was the first of the men I encountered that night.”

“I guessed so. Well, this party’s out of italtogether—time and distance, you know, time and distance.”

“I suppose that’s so. Time and distance, the two greatest villains that ever feazed the detective force. The landslide certainly did not occur more than fifteen minutes after Cosgrove’s death.”

“And this man was in it, was he?”

“What do you mean? Of course he was.”

“Not just buried there afterward, maybe?”

“I should say not. By the way, Superintendent, don’t go without letting me have a match.”

“Not afraid of the dark, I hope?” Salt looked significantly up among the trees, where the light was thickening.

“No, not exactly, but I’m famished for a smoke.”

“Smokin’ is not one of my virtues,” he responded. “I’m sorry, sir; you’ll have to wait until you get to the House.”

I was angry, yes poisonously angry with Salt. It takes all kinds of lunatics to make up a world, but is there any lunatic as irritating as the man who doesn’t smoke?

I returned to the House, having all the while the awareness that forms were following and eyes watching me in the shadowy walks. To tell the merciless truth, these episodes of the Unforthcoming Match had chagrined me so that my nerves were teetering, and I had the uncomfortable sense that if I were to step from the centre of the path or make any untoward movement, something disagreeable might happen. I felt like a prisoner, and even when I had emerged upon the lawn, I did not like the way the black windows of the House stared at me.

“Great heavens,” I thought, “am I coming under the thumbs of the Influences, as Mrs. Belvoir called them?”

The Vale was dim when I reached the House. I knew that I should surely find a match-holder on the mantel in the Hall of the Moth. I did, but some other smoker had abstracted the last match! I hope heaven’s ears were closed at that moment.

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