Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.The Sign of the Gloves.Those moments of security seemed hours as I sat there with the pistol turned upon me.Truly his was a strange greeting.At length, however, daylight showed again as we commenced to descend the incline towards Newton Abbot, yet I saw that his hand—practised, no doubt, with a weapon by the manner he had whipped it forth—was still uplifted against me.“Really, sir, you have no cause for alarm,” I assured him, with a laugh. “I could not approach; you openly, so I adopted the ruse of travelling with you in order to speak. You came to Totnes to-day in order to meet me, did you not?”“No, I certainly did not,” he said, the expression upon his countenance showing him to be much puzzled by my words.“Then perhaps you came to meet Mr Melvill Arnold?” I suggested.“And why do you wish to know that, pray?” he asked, in the refined voice of a gentleman, still regarding me with antagonism. His small, closely set eyes peered forth at me with a ferret-like expression, while about his clean-shaven mouth was a curious hardness as his hand still held the weapon pointed in my direction.“Because you are wearing the signs—the scarlet tie, the carnation, and I see that you carry the ebony walking-stick,” was my cool reply. I was trying to prevent myself from flinching before that grim, business-like weapon of his.“And what if I am? What business is it of yours?” he asked resentfully, and in evident alarm.“My business is with you if your name is Alfred Dawnay,” I said. “Mr Melvill Arnold is, I regret to say, dead, and—”“Dead!” he gasped, lowering his weapon and staring at me, the colour dying from his face. “Arnold dead! Is this the truth—are you quite certain?”“The unfortunate gentleman died in my presence.”“Where? Abroad, I suppose?”“No; in a small hotel off the Strand,” was my reply.The news I had imparted to him seemed to hold him amazed and stupefied.“Poor Arnold! Dead!” he repeated blankly to himself, sitting with both hands upon his knees—for he had flung the pistol upon the cushion. “Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly, raising his eyes to mine.“Forgive me for receiving you in this antagonistic manner, sir, but—but you don’t know what Mr Arnold’s death means to me. It means everything to me—all that—” But his lips closed with a snap without concluding his sentence.“A few moments before he died he gave me this letter, with instructions to meet you at Totnes to-day,” and I handed him the dead man’s missive.Eagerly, with trembling fingers, he broke open the black seals; but the letter was in a second envelope, also carefully sealed with black wax. This he also tore open, and breathlessly read the closely scribbled lines which it contained—the message from the dead.He bit his full red lips, his cheeks went ashen pale, and his nostrils dilated.“I—I wish to thank you for carrying out Arnold’s injunctions,” he managed to gasp. “I went to Totnes for the purpose of meeting him, for he had made the appointment with me three months ago. Yet it seemed that he must have had some presentiment that he could not keep it himself, or he would not have suggested me wearing a red tie, a carnation, and carrying this old-fashioned ebony stick which he gave me long ago.”Briefly I recounted my meeting with him when he came on board at Naples, his sudden illness, and its fatal termination in the Strand hotel.“Ah, yes,” sighed the man Dawnay—the man whom I was to help, but not to trust. “Poor Arnold was a great traveller—ever on the move; but for years he knew that he had a weak heart.”I was about to make further inquiry regarding the man who had so strangely left me a legacy, but Dawnay suddenly exclaimed—“You and I must not be seen together, Mr Kemball—for I notice by this letter that that is your name.”“Where can I meet you again?” I inquired; for I recollected the dead man’s words that my strange companion might be in sore need of a friend.“I hardly know,” was his hasty answer, as he replaced his pistol in his pocket. “I am closely watched. Probably you saw the man—a fellow in a straw hat.”“Yes—and the old woman.”“Ah! then you are observant, Mr Kemball,” he exclaimed, with a slight grin. “Yes, I am in danger—grave danger at this moment; and how to escape I know not.”“Escape from what?”“From arrest.”“Is that young-looking man a police-officer?” I asked, much surprised.“Yes; he’s older than he looks. I ought never to have dared to go to Totnes.”“Why not Totnes?” I asked.“I was lying low—for a certain reason, Mr Kemball. All of us have to wash in dirty water sometimes, you know,” he smiled grimly. “You are an honest man, no doubt—I too was, once.”“And now the police are in search of you—eh?”I asked. So my estimate of the man was not very far wrong.He nodded slowly in the affirmative.A silence fell between us. This discovery, coupled with Arnold’s mysterious connection with the trial of the adventuress who called herself Lady Lettice Lancaster, caused me to ponder. Arnold had warned me not to trust him entirely.The train was now rushing down the incline, and in a few moments would be at Newton Abbot, the junction for Torquay.Without a word, my companion suddenly sprang to his feet, and taking a railway key from his pocket, went out into the corridor and locked both doors at either end of the carriage so that no one could pass along.Then, returning to me, he said—“Perhaps it would be better, Mr Kemball, if you went into the next compartment while we are stopping. We must not appear to have knowledge of each other.”Scarcely had I time to enter the adjoining compartment when the train pulled up. I lit a cigarette, and sat gazing lazily out of the window, when, sure enough, the man in the straw hat who had travelled in the rear of the train strolled aimlessly along, and as he passed the compartment occupied by Dawnay glanced in to satisfy himself that he was still there.The wait was long, for the corridor coaches from Torquay for London were being joined on. But at last we moved off again, and as soon as we did so I returned to the mysterious fugitive.“Tell me, Mr Dawnay, something concerning Mr Arnold,” I urged earnestly, without preamble. “He did me the honour of entrusting me with certain purely personal matters, but gave me no information as to who or what he was.”“Melvill Arnold was a most remarkable person,” declared the man in the red tie. “He divided his time between life in London and exploring the remains of the extinct civilisation in Egypt.”“Then he lived in Egypt?”“Mostly in the deserts. His knowledge of Egyptology was, perhaps, unequalled. The last letter I received from him was from El Fasher, in Darfur.”“Arnold was not his real name?”“Not exactly his baptismal one,” laughed Dawnay, lightly. “It would hardly have suited him to use that!”“What was it? Is there any reason why I should not know?”“Yes. I am scarcely likely to betray my dead friend, Mr Kemball.”I was silent beneath his stern rebuke. At one moment I felt repulsion when I gazed upon his pimply face, yet at the next I experienced a curious sense of fascination. The mystery of it all had become most tantalising. Thought of the bronze cylinder and what it might contain flashed across my mind, whereupon I asked whether Arnold had had any permanent address in London.“No. I usually wrote to him to the Poste Restante at Charing Cross. He was an elusive man always, and when in London—which was on very rare occasions—seemed to change his abode each day. He boasted that he never slept two nights running in the same bed. He had reasons for that—the same reasons, truth to tell, that I had.”“He feared the police—eh?”Dawnay’s fat face relaxed again into a grim smile. “But now that Arnold is dead I have to secure my own safety,” he exclaimed quickly. “I’m in an infernal trap here in this train. I may be arrested when I step out of it—who knows?”“And would arrest entail serious consequences?” I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon his.“Yes, very serious consequences. For myself I don’t care very much, but for another—a woman—it would, alas! be fatal,” he added hoarsely.A woman! Did he refer to that remarkable adventuress, details of whose strange career I had read in that old copy of the newspaper?I remembered that Arnold, in his letter to me, had appealed to me to assist this man—who was evidently his very intimate friend.“You must evade this person who is watching,” I said. “How can it be done?”He shrugged his shoulders with an expression indicative of bewilderment.A sudden thought occurred to me.“You and I are about the same build. Could we not exchange clothes?” I suggested. “At Exeter, you could walk up to the front of the train and escape away, and out of the station, while I will still sit here, my back turned towards the window. The detective will believe you to be still in the train.”“Capital?” he cried, starting up. “A splendid plan, Mr Kemball! By Jove! you are resourceful!” And he began quickly divesting himself of coat and trousers. “This train is express to Exeter, therefore we shall not stop at either Teignmouth or Dawlish.” I threw off my coat, vest, cravat, and trousers, and in five minutes had exchanged my garments for his, and had assumed the scarlet tie in place of my own, while he, on his part, got into my suit, which, however, seemed slightly tight for him. He laughed heartily as we stood regarding each other so quickly transformed.I assumed the grey suède gloves, slightly large for me, tilted the smart grey hat a little over my eyes, and then ensconced myself against the corridor, so that my back only could be visible when the train drew up at St. David’s Station in Exeter.Dawnay went out into the corridor to observe the effect critically.“Capital!” he cried. “Capital! Won’t the fellow be done in the eye!”“Yes,” I laughed; “it will be really amusing to watch his face when he comes to arrest me.”“But he may not come until you get to Paddington—after midnight. And what excuse shall you make for changing clothes with me?”“Oh, don’t bother about that,” I said, rather enjoying the prospect of a joke, but little dreaming of the serious predicament in which I was placing myself. “Where shall I meet you again?”“Ah! Be careful—be very careful, Mr Kemball. You will no doubt be watched. They will suspect you of an intention to meet me again in secret, and for that reason will keep strict surveillance upon you. Use the name Hamilton Davis, and write to me at the Poste Restante at Charing Cross. That is as safe as anywhere. I shall be in London; but I must be off now, and the moment the train stops I shall be out and away. There’s sure to be a crowd upon Exeter platform. Ah! You can’t tell what a great service you have rendered me in assuming my identity this evening—you have saved me. Good-bye—and a thousand thanks.”Then, with a wave of his hand and a merry smile, the elusive person—for such he no doubt was—went forth into the corridor and disappeared.I took up my previous position, so that when the train ran into Exeter I was seated with my back to the window, one leg upon the cushion, lazily reading a newspaper which I had found in Dawnay’s pocket.Much bustle was going on outside on the platform, and I knew that the police-officer had passed in order to reassure himself that I had not escaped. For perhaps ten minutes I sat there in lazy indolence, until at last the train moved off again, and once more I was free from observation.I could not for the life of me discern why the man had feared to be seen in my company. Arnold must have somehow foreseen that his friend would be watched, and had therefore prearranged the sign of the gloves. Perhaps he had expected that another enemy, not the police, would be watching. Yet even there, in the train, Dawnay had expressed fear lest we be observed together. It was a point the full meaning of which I failed to grasp.At Taunton we stopped again, and I assumed my attitude just as before, with my back to the window, when of a sudden the carriage door was flung open unceremoniously, and a man’s voice exclaimed—“Alfred Dawnay, I am a police-officer and I hold a warrant for your arrest!”I roused myself slowly and, facing the man who had addressed me, remarked in a cool voice—“I think you’ve made a slight mistake—eh? My name is not Dawnay.”The man in the straw hat uttered an ejaculation of surprise and stood staring at me dumbfounded, while a man at his side, evidently one of the Taunton police in plain clothes, looked at us both in wonder.“If you are not Dawnay, then where is Dawnay?” demanded the detective quickly.“How do I know?”“But you are wearing his clothes! You assisted him to escape, therefore you will have to make some explanation.”“I have no explanation to offer,” I said. “If you want Dawnay you’d better go and look for him. You have no warrant to arrest me merely because I happen to be wearing clothes resembling Dawnay’s.”“Perhaps not, my dear sir,” replied the detective, greatly annoyed at being thus outwitted. “But I tell you it will be better for you to be quite frank and outspoken with us. When did Dawnay leave this train—tell me?”“I don’t know,” I replied, which was really the truth. And the chagrin of the two police-officers was now fully apparent.“But you’ve rendered yourself liable to prosecution, don’t forget that,” said the man with the straw hat. “That man, Alfred Dawnay,aliasDay, is wanted on a very serious charge.”“Of what?” I asked quickly.“Never mind what. You’ve assisted him to escape, and you’ll have to answer for it.”And he closed the door angrily, for the train was again about to move off towards London.What, I wondered, was the serious charge against Alfred Dawnay?

Those moments of security seemed hours as I sat there with the pistol turned upon me.

Truly his was a strange greeting.

At length, however, daylight showed again as we commenced to descend the incline towards Newton Abbot, yet I saw that his hand—practised, no doubt, with a weapon by the manner he had whipped it forth—was still uplifted against me.

“Really, sir, you have no cause for alarm,” I assured him, with a laugh. “I could not approach; you openly, so I adopted the ruse of travelling with you in order to speak. You came to Totnes to-day in order to meet me, did you not?”

“No, I certainly did not,” he said, the expression upon his countenance showing him to be much puzzled by my words.

“Then perhaps you came to meet Mr Melvill Arnold?” I suggested.

“And why do you wish to know that, pray?” he asked, in the refined voice of a gentleman, still regarding me with antagonism. His small, closely set eyes peered forth at me with a ferret-like expression, while about his clean-shaven mouth was a curious hardness as his hand still held the weapon pointed in my direction.

“Because you are wearing the signs—the scarlet tie, the carnation, and I see that you carry the ebony walking-stick,” was my cool reply. I was trying to prevent myself from flinching before that grim, business-like weapon of his.

“And what if I am? What business is it of yours?” he asked resentfully, and in evident alarm.

“My business is with you if your name is Alfred Dawnay,” I said. “Mr Melvill Arnold is, I regret to say, dead, and—”

“Dead!” he gasped, lowering his weapon and staring at me, the colour dying from his face. “Arnold dead! Is this the truth—are you quite certain?”

“The unfortunate gentleman died in my presence.”

“Where? Abroad, I suppose?”

“No; in a small hotel off the Strand,” was my reply.

The news I had imparted to him seemed to hold him amazed and stupefied.

“Poor Arnold! Dead!” he repeated blankly to himself, sitting with both hands upon his knees—for he had flung the pistol upon the cushion. “Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly, raising his eyes to mine.

“Forgive me for receiving you in this antagonistic manner, sir, but—but you don’t know what Mr Arnold’s death means to me. It means everything to me—all that—” But his lips closed with a snap without concluding his sentence.

“A few moments before he died he gave me this letter, with instructions to meet you at Totnes to-day,” and I handed him the dead man’s missive.

Eagerly, with trembling fingers, he broke open the black seals; but the letter was in a second envelope, also carefully sealed with black wax. This he also tore open, and breathlessly read the closely scribbled lines which it contained—the message from the dead.

He bit his full red lips, his cheeks went ashen pale, and his nostrils dilated.

“I—I wish to thank you for carrying out Arnold’s injunctions,” he managed to gasp. “I went to Totnes for the purpose of meeting him, for he had made the appointment with me three months ago. Yet it seemed that he must have had some presentiment that he could not keep it himself, or he would not have suggested me wearing a red tie, a carnation, and carrying this old-fashioned ebony stick which he gave me long ago.”

Briefly I recounted my meeting with him when he came on board at Naples, his sudden illness, and its fatal termination in the Strand hotel.

“Ah, yes,” sighed the man Dawnay—the man whom I was to help, but not to trust. “Poor Arnold was a great traveller—ever on the move; but for years he knew that he had a weak heart.”

I was about to make further inquiry regarding the man who had so strangely left me a legacy, but Dawnay suddenly exclaimed—

“You and I must not be seen together, Mr Kemball—for I notice by this letter that that is your name.”

“Where can I meet you again?” I inquired; for I recollected the dead man’s words that my strange companion might be in sore need of a friend.

“I hardly know,” was his hasty answer, as he replaced his pistol in his pocket. “I am closely watched. Probably you saw the man—a fellow in a straw hat.”

“Yes—and the old woman.”

“Ah! then you are observant, Mr Kemball,” he exclaimed, with a slight grin. “Yes, I am in danger—grave danger at this moment; and how to escape I know not.”

“Escape from what?”

“From arrest.”

“Is that young-looking man a police-officer?” I asked, much surprised.

“Yes; he’s older than he looks. I ought never to have dared to go to Totnes.”

“Why not Totnes?” I asked.

“I was lying low—for a certain reason, Mr Kemball. All of us have to wash in dirty water sometimes, you know,” he smiled grimly. “You are an honest man, no doubt—I too was, once.”

“And now the police are in search of you—eh?”

I asked. So my estimate of the man was not very far wrong.

He nodded slowly in the affirmative.

A silence fell between us. This discovery, coupled with Arnold’s mysterious connection with the trial of the adventuress who called herself Lady Lettice Lancaster, caused me to ponder. Arnold had warned me not to trust him entirely.

The train was now rushing down the incline, and in a few moments would be at Newton Abbot, the junction for Torquay.

Without a word, my companion suddenly sprang to his feet, and taking a railway key from his pocket, went out into the corridor and locked both doors at either end of the carriage so that no one could pass along.

Then, returning to me, he said—

“Perhaps it would be better, Mr Kemball, if you went into the next compartment while we are stopping. We must not appear to have knowledge of each other.”

Scarcely had I time to enter the adjoining compartment when the train pulled up. I lit a cigarette, and sat gazing lazily out of the window, when, sure enough, the man in the straw hat who had travelled in the rear of the train strolled aimlessly along, and as he passed the compartment occupied by Dawnay glanced in to satisfy himself that he was still there.

The wait was long, for the corridor coaches from Torquay for London were being joined on. But at last we moved off again, and as soon as we did so I returned to the mysterious fugitive.

“Tell me, Mr Dawnay, something concerning Mr Arnold,” I urged earnestly, without preamble. “He did me the honour of entrusting me with certain purely personal matters, but gave me no information as to who or what he was.”

“Melvill Arnold was a most remarkable person,” declared the man in the red tie. “He divided his time between life in London and exploring the remains of the extinct civilisation in Egypt.”

“Then he lived in Egypt?”

“Mostly in the deserts. His knowledge of Egyptology was, perhaps, unequalled. The last letter I received from him was from El Fasher, in Darfur.”

“Arnold was not his real name?”

“Not exactly his baptismal one,” laughed Dawnay, lightly. “It would hardly have suited him to use that!”

“What was it? Is there any reason why I should not know?”

“Yes. I am scarcely likely to betray my dead friend, Mr Kemball.”

I was silent beneath his stern rebuke. At one moment I felt repulsion when I gazed upon his pimply face, yet at the next I experienced a curious sense of fascination. The mystery of it all had become most tantalising. Thought of the bronze cylinder and what it might contain flashed across my mind, whereupon I asked whether Arnold had had any permanent address in London.

“No. I usually wrote to him to the Poste Restante at Charing Cross. He was an elusive man always, and when in London—which was on very rare occasions—seemed to change his abode each day. He boasted that he never slept two nights running in the same bed. He had reasons for that—the same reasons, truth to tell, that I had.”

“He feared the police—eh?”

Dawnay’s fat face relaxed again into a grim smile. “But now that Arnold is dead I have to secure my own safety,” he exclaimed quickly. “I’m in an infernal trap here in this train. I may be arrested when I step out of it—who knows?”

“And would arrest entail serious consequences?” I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon his.

“Yes, very serious consequences. For myself I don’t care very much, but for another—a woman—it would, alas! be fatal,” he added hoarsely.

A woman! Did he refer to that remarkable adventuress, details of whose strange career I had read in that old copy of the newspaper?

I remembered that Arnold, in his letter to me, had appealed to me to assist this man—who was evidently his very intimate friend.

“You must evade this person who is watching,” I said. “How can it be done?”

He shrugged his shoulders with an expression indicative of bewilderment.

A sudden thought occurred to me.

“You and I are about the same build. Could we not exchange clothes?” I suggested. “At Exeter, you could walk up to the front of the train and escape away, and out of the station, while I will still sit here, my back turned towards the window. The detective will believe you to be still in the train.”

“Capital?” he cried, starting up. “A splendid plan, Mr Kemball! By Jove! you are resourceful!” And he began quickly divesting himself of coat and trousers. “This train is express to Exeter, therefore we shall not stop at either Teignmouth or Dawlish.” I threw off my coat, vest, cravat, and trousers, and in five minutes had exchanged my garments for his, and had assumed the scarlet tie in place of my own, while he, on his part, got into my suit, which, however, seemed slightly tight for him. He laughed heartily as we stood regarding each other so quickly transformed.

I assumed the grey suède gloves, slightly large for me, tilted the smart grey hat a little over my eyes, and then ensconced myself against the corridor, so that my back only could be visible when the train drew up at St. David’s Station in Exeter.

Dawnay went out into the corridor to observe the effect critically.

“Capital!” he cried. “Capital! Won’t the fellow be done in the eye!”

“Yes,” I laughed; “it will be really amusing to watch his face when he comes to arrest me.”

“But he may not come until you get to Paddington—after midnight. And what excuse shall you make for changing clothes with me?”

“Oh, don’t bother about that,” I said, rather enjoying the prospect of a joke, but little dreaming of the serious predicament in which I was placing myself. “Where shall I meet you again?”

“Ah! Be careful—be very careful, Mr Kemball. You will no doubt be watched. They will suspect you of an intention to meet me again in secret, and for that reason will keep strict surveillance upon you. Use the name Hamilton Davis, and write to me at the Poste Restante at Charing Cross. That is as safe as anywhere. I shall be in London; but I must be off now, and the moment the train stops I shall be out and away. There’s sure to be a crowd upon Exeter platform. Ah! You can’t tell what a great service you have rendered me in assuming my identity this evening—you have saved me. Good-bye—and a thousand thanks.”

Then, with a wave of his hand and a merry smile, the elusive person—for such he no doubt was—went forth into the corridor and disappeared.

I took up my previous position, so that when the train ran into Exeter I was seated with my back to the window, one leg upon the cushion, lazily reading a newspaper which I had found in Dawnay’s pocket.

Much bustle was going on outside on the platform, and I knew that the police-officer had passed in order to reassure himself that I had not escaped. For perhaps ten minutes I sat there in lazy indolence, until at last the train moved off again, and once more I was free from observation.

I could not for the life of me discern why the man had feared to be seen in my company. Arnold must have somehow foreseen that his friend would be watched, and had therefore prearranged the sign of the gloves. Perhaps he had expected that another enemy, not the police, would be watching. Yet even there, in the train, Dawnay had expressed fear lest we be observed together. It was a point the full meaning of which I failed to grasp.

At Taunton we stopped again, and I assumed my attitude just as before, with my back to the window, when of a sudden the carriage door was flung open unceremoniously, and a man’s voice exclaimed—

“Alfred Dawnay, I am a police-officer and I hold a warrant for your arrest!”

I roused myself slowly and, facing the man who had addressed me, remarked in a cool voice—

“I think you’ve made a slight mistake—eh? My name is not Dawnay.”

The man in the straw hat uttered an ejaculation of surprise and stood staring at me dumbfounded, while a man at his side, evidently one of the Taunton police in plain clothes, looked at us both in wonder.

“If you are not Dawnay, then where is Dawnay?” demanded the detective quickly.

“How do I know?”

“But you are wearing his clothes! You assisted him to escape, therefore you will have to make some explanation.”

“I have no explanation to offer,” I said. “If you want Dawnay you’d better go and look for him. You have no warrant to arrest me merely because I happen to be wearing clothes resembling Dawnay’s.”

“Perhaps not, my dear sir,” replied the detective, greatly annoyed at being thus outwitted. “But I tell you it will be better for you to be quite frank and outspoken with us. When did Dawnay leave this train—tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, which was really the truth. And the chagrin of the two police-officers was now fully apparent.

“But you’ve rendered yourself liable to prosecution, don’t forget that,” said the man with the straw hat. “That man, Alfred Dawnay,aliasDay, is wanted on a very serious charge.”

“Of what?” I asked quickly.

“Never mind what. You’ve assisted him to escape, and you’ll have to answer for it.”

And he closed the door angrily, for the train was again about to move off towards London.

What, I wondered, was the serious charge against Alfred Dawnay?

Chapter Six.The Quick and the Dead.On my return to London I had the very unpleasant experience of being closely watched by detectives, just as the fugitive had foreseen. It was quite evident that the police intended to rediscover Dawnay through my instrumentality.I wrote to “Mr Hamilton Davis,” at the Poste Restante, Charing Cross, giving him my London address at the Hotel Cecil, and also my address at Upton End, hoping that he would send me an appointment. Yet he had shown himself so wary that I hardly believed he would at once reveal his hiding-place. I was extremely anxious to meet him again, for I hoped to learn more from him and solve the mystery of the man whom I had known as Melvill Arnold.In order to evade the unwelcome attentions of detectives, I went down to Upton End for a few days, for I knew that if any stranger were lurking in the vicinity old Tucker would certainly know of it. Not three days had I been there, indeed, before one morning he lingered over watering the plants in the conservatory when I came down to breakfast, to declare that he was much puzzled over the fact that a man—“a decent-looking man” he described him—seemed to be for ever passing and repassing the lodge.“I can’t think, sir, what can be his business,” he said. “I don’t like the looks of him at all. Maybe he’s one of a gang who intends to rob the house, sir. Therefore I’ve told Thomas and Mason to keep their eyes open.” He referred to the groom and the under-gardener. “I’ve half a mind to set the dogs on ’im,” he added. “Only let ’im come into the drive and I’d let Prince after ’im. His whole suit of clothes wouldn’t be worth sixpence afterwards.”“Some inquisitive fellow, I suppose, Tucker,” I said, in an endeavour to treat the incident with utter unconcern. “I don’t fancy burglars would come here.”“Don’t you believe it, sir. There’s lots of things—pictures and curios which your father, the late Sir Lionel, collected—which would fetch a big price in London, you know, sir.”“Well,” I laughed, “if burglars really do pay us a visit, Prince will see to them. I’d be sorry to face the dog if I were a thief.”“So would I, sir. Only there’s such a thing as a dose o’ strychnine on a bit o’ meat, you know.”“Abroad, yes. In Italy it is the favourite ruse of burglars, Tucker. But here in England we are much more secure.”And then, watering-can in hand, the faithful old fellow passed out, while I sat down to my lonely breakfast.A week after I had written to the Charing Cross Post Office I received a note, dated from the Hôtel de la Boule d’Or at Provins, a small town some sixty miles east of Paris.“I am delighted to have your address,” it read. “At the present moment my movements are very uncertain, but as soon as I can see you again I will write to Upton End. Be careful, however, that when you meet me you are not watched. I fear you may be troubled by unwelcome watchers. If you are, pray forgive me, and recollect how grateful I am to you for the service which you have rendered me, and which one day I hope to repay.”That was all. There was no signature.And so I was compelled to wait for a further communication from the man who was undoubtedly in hiding in that obscure old town in the valley of the Voulzie.Time after time I took out that corroded cylinder—wherein was something which the dead man had declared would cause the whole world to stand aghast—and held it in my hand full of wonder. Upon the table, in the big old-fashioned library, stood the weird little figure of the ancient god of the Egyptians—the great Osiris. Sight of it, each time that I entered there, recalled to me that sunset hour in the little hotel off the Strand, the hour when Melvill Arnold had passed silently to the Beyond.Three weeks went by in eager expectancy. By careful inquiry and judicious watchfulness, I came to the conclusion that the surveillance set upon me by Scotland Yard had been withdrawn. Hence it seemed to me that they had found traces of the fugitive they sought. Probably, if he were a known criminal, his presence in France had been reported through the Prefecture of Police in Paris. It was part of the international police system to do so.Was Alfred Dawnay again in peril of arrest, I wondered?One morning, however, I received the long-expected message, for among my letters I found a note asking me to be alone outside Lathbury—a small hamlet a little way out of Newport Pagnell, on the Northampton Road—at three o’clock that afternoon. The heavy handwriting was the same as the letter from Provins, and I knew it to be from Dawnay.Therefore, with considerable eagerness, I set out about two o’clock to walk to the place appointed for meeting. I passed up the long street of Newport Pagnell, but nobody followed me. It was early-closing day, and the place was sleepy and deserted. Out again upon the dusty high road I met nobody save a middle-aged man on a motor-cycle, who dashed past me at a tearing pace, and who, as later on I approached the inn at Lathbury, had pulled up to make some repair.Suddenly I regarded him with suspicion. Was it possible that he was following me to watch my movements?As I went by he looked up, full into my face, and then I felt certain that I had seen him somewhere before. But where I could not recollect.I had half a mind to turn back and thus throw him off the scent if he were a detective; nevertheless, compelled as I was to act warily, I strolled on through the village, and out upon the open road, up the hill in the direction of Gaythurst.I glanced at my watch and found it already a quarter-past three. But nobody was yet in sight. Probably Dawnay was standing concealed somewhere behind the hedge in order to satisfy himself that the coast was quite clear before approaching me.Behind, at some distance away, I heard the hum of an approaching motor-car, and, stepping to the side of the road, prepared to be suffocated by the thick white dust.The car swung through the village and rushed up the hill, but as it came behind me slowed down, until it passed me at quite a slow pace. Then I saw it was a powerful limousine, painted and upholstered in stone-grey, and within sat a woman alone.A few yards in front of me it stopped dead, and the woman leaned out of the door, when, to my utter amazement, I recognised her to be the same pretty young girl whom I had seen in Highgate Cemetery—the mysterious person who had so tenderly placed fresh flowers upon the grave of Melvill Arnold.“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, addressing me in a musical voice, as she opened the door. “I believe you are Mr Kemball, are you not?”“That certainly is my name,” I said, raising my straw hat instinctively.“Well, I—I’ve come here to meet you,” she laughed merrily. “Would you come inside, and then I can tell you all.”So at her invitation I got in beside her, when the ear moved off swiftly again, and next moment we were swinging along towards Northampton, the driver evidently having already received his instructions.“I suppose I ought to explain, Mr Kemball, that Mr Harvey Shaw, the gentleman known to you as Dawnay, deemed it wiser not to come and meet you in person, because—well—” and she laughed sweetly, displaying even rows of pearly teeth. “I think you probably realise the reason.”“Fully,” I answered, quite taken aback by the ruddiness of her appearance. “But I had suspicion as I came along of a motor-cyclist who stopped before the inn. He is a man I have seen somewhere before.”“Oh, he is a friend. He is there as scout for us,” she said. “He has been watching you, and has signalled that all is clear, and so we may proceed without fear. Mr Shaw has asked me to take you to him.”“Where is he?”“At Rockingham, beyond Kettering,” was her reply, and as she turned her splendid brown eyes upon me, I judged her to be about nineteen or twenty, and saw that hers was a face more perfect in its beauty than ever I had before gazed upon. Her sombre black heightened the pallor of her complexion, yet her lips were full and red, her soft cheeks dimpled and perfect in their contour, while her large splendid eyes revealed an inexpressible sweetness and charm. From the first moment I realised that she was full of good-humour, with a bright, cheerful disposition, and yet quiet of manner and full of exquisite refinement. The expression in her great wide-open eyes was perhaps just a trifle too shrewd, and she seemed, as I began to chat with her, possessed of a ready wit and a quaint philosophy.Of her wondrous and striking beauty there could be no two opinions. She was perfect, from the crown of her neat little straw motor-bonnet to the top of her brown glacé shoe. Her hands were small and well-gloved, and her pointed chin gave to her sweet delicate face an air of piquant irresponsibility that added greatly to her attractiveness.Between the smart chauffeur and ourselves the window was closed; therefore we could converse without being overheard.“Mr Shaw told me how generously you assisted him when you met at Totnes,” she exclaimed at last. “Ah, Mr Kemball!” she added, suddenly growing very serious, “you cannot tell how great a service you rendered us then.”“Us?” I echoed. “Then I presume you are a relation?”“His daughter,” she replied, “or, to be quite correct, his adopted daughter. My name is Asta—Asta Seymour. So perhaps I may be permitted to thank you, Mr Kemball, for the generous assistance you gave in securing my foster-father’s escape.”“No thanks are needed, Miss Seymour, I assure you,” I declared. “But tell me, why is he in dread of the police?”“Of that you will learn soon enough, I fear,” she replied in a hard, changed voice, which had a distant touch of sadness in it.“Yes. But is there not a grave danger in returning to England?”“He was compelled to do so—first in order to meet you at Totnes, and now for a second reason, in connection with the unfortunate death of poor Mr Melvill Arnold.”“You, of course, knew Mr Arnold,” I said. “It is your hand that has placed those fresh flowers upon his grave.”She was silent. Then in a low voice she said—“I admit that I have done so, for he was always my friend—always. But please say nothing to my father regarding what I have done.”“To me a great mystery enshrouds Mr Arnold,” I said. “Cannot you tell me something concerning him—who and what he was? By my very slight knowledge of him, I feel instinctively that he was no ordinary person.”“And your estimate was surely a perfectly correct one, Mr Kemball. He was one of the most remarkable of men.”“You knew of his death. How?”“I knew he was in London, for he scribbled me a note telling me his address, but requesting me to reveal it to nobody, not even my father,” she said, in a low, hoarse voice. “I called to see him upon some urgent business—because he wished to see me, but, alas! they told me at the hotel that he had died only a few hours before. So I went away, fearing to reveal myself to you, who they told me was his friend. Two days later I made inquiries, and learned where they had buried him. Then, in tribute to the memory of the man of whose greatness of heart and remarkable attainments the world has remained in ignorance, I laid flowers upon his grave.”“Why did you fear to reveal yourself to me, Miss Seymour?” I asked earnestly, looking straight into her soft brown eyes as the car rushed along.But she avoided my gaze, while a flush overspreading her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment.“Because—well, because I did not know how far you might be trusted,” was her frank, open response, after a moment’s hesitation. “Indeed, I do not even now know whether you would still remain our friend and preserve the secret if the ugly truth became revealed to you!”

On my return to London I had the very unpleasant experience of being closely watched by detectives, just as the fugitive had foreseen. It was quite evident that the police intended to rediscover Dawnay through my instrumentality.

I wrote to “Mr Hamilton Davis,” at the Poste Restante, Charing Cross, giving him my London address at the Hotel Cecil, and also my address at Upton End, hoping that he would send me an appointment. Yet he had shown himself so wary that I hardly believed he would at once reveal his hiding-place. I was extremely anxious to meet him again, for I hoped to learn more from him and solve the mystery of the man whom I had known as Melvill Arnold.

In order to evade the unwelcome attentions of detectives, I went down to Upton End for a few days, for I knew that if any stranger were lurking in the vicinity old Tucker would certainly know of it. Not three days had I been there, indeed, before one morning he lingered over watering the plants in the conservatory when I came down to breakfast, to declare that he was much puzzled over the fact that a man—“a decent-looking man” he described him—seemed to be for ever passing and repassing the lodge.

“I can’t think, sir, what can be his business,” he said. “I don’t like the looks of him at all. Maybe he’s one of a gang who intends to rob the house, sir. Therefore I’ve told Thomas and Mason to keep their eyes open.” He referred to the groom and the under-gardener. “I’ve half a mind to set the dogs on ’im,” he added. “Only let ’im come into the drive and I’d let Prince after ’im. His whole suit of clothes wouldn’t be worth sixpence afterwards.”

“Some inquisitive fellow, I suppose, Tucker,” I said, in an endeavour to treat the incident with utter unconcern. “I don’t fancy burglars would come here.”

“Don’t you believe it, sir. There’s lots of things—pictures and curios which your father, the late Sir Lionel, collected—which would fetch a big price in London, you know, sir.”

“Well,” I laughed, “if burglars really do pay us a visit, Prince will see to them. I’d be sorry to face the dog if I were a thief.”

“So would I, sir. Only there’s such a thing as a dose o’ strychnine on a bit o’ meat, you know.”

“Abroad, yes. In Italy it is the favourite ruse of burglars, Tucker. But here in England we are much more secure.”

And then, watering-can in hand, the faithful old fellow passed out, while I sat down to my lonely breakfast.

A week after I had written to the Charing Cross Post Office I received a note, dated from the Hôtel de la Boule d’Or at Provins, a small town some sixty miles east of Paris.

“I am delighted to have your address,” it read. “At the present moment my movements are very uncertain, but as soon as I can see you again I will write to Upton End. Be careful, however, that when you meet me you are not watched. I fear you may be troubled by unwelcome watchers. If you are, pray forgive me, and recollect how grateful I am to you for the service which you have rendered me, and which one day I hope to repay.”

That was all. There was no signature.

And so I was compelled to wait for a further communication from the man who was undoubtedly in hiding in that obscure old town in the valley of the Voulzie.

Time after time I took out that corroded cylinder—wherein was something which the dead man had declared would cause the whole world to stand aghast—and held it in my hand full of wonder. Upon the table, in the big old-fashioned library, stood the weird little figure of the ancient god of the Egyptians—the great Osiris. Sight of it, each time that I entered there, recalled to me that sunset hour in the little hotel off the Strand, the hour when Melvill Arnold had passed silently to the Beyond.

Three weeks went by in eager expectancy. By careful inquiry and judicious watchfulness, I came to the conclusion that the surveillance set upon me by Scotland Yard had been withdrawn. Hence it seemed to me that they had found traces of the fugitive they sought. Probably, if he were a known criminal, his presence in France had been reported through the Prefecture of Police in Paris. It was part of the international police system to do so.

Was Alfred Dawnay again in peril of arrest, I wondered?

One morning, however, I received the long-expected message, for among my letters I found a note asking me to be alone outside Lathbury—a small hamlet a little way out of Newport Pagnell, on the Northampton Road—at three o’clock that afternoon. The heavy handwriting was the same as the letter from Provins, and I knew it to be from Dawnay.

Therefore, with considerable eagerness, I set out about two o’clock to walk to the place appointed for meeting. I passed up the long street of Newport Pagnell, but nobody followed me. It was early-closing day, and the place was sleepy and deserted. Out again upon the dusty high road I met nobody save a middle-aged man on a motor-cycle, who dashed past me at a tearing pace, and who, as later on I approached the inn at Lathbury, had pulled up to make some repair.

Suddenly I regarded him with suspicion. Was it possible that he was following me to watch my movements?

As I went by he looked up, full into my face, and then I felt certain that I had seen him somewhere before. But where I could not recollect.

I had half a mind to turn back and thus throw him off the scent if he were a detective; nevertheless, compelled as I was to act warily, I strolled on through the village, and out upon the open road, up the hill in the direction of Gaythurst.

I glanced at my watch and found it already a quarter-past three. But nobody was yet in sight. Probably Dawnay was standing concealed somewhere behind the hedge in order to satisfy himself that the coast was quite clear before approaching me.

Behind, at some distance away, I heard the hum of an approaching motor-car, and, stepping to the side of the road, prepared to be suffocated by the thick white dust.

The car swung through the village and rushed up the hill, but as it came behind me slowed down, until it passed me at quite a slow pace. Then I saw it was a powerful limousine, painted and upholstered in stone-grey, and within sat a woman alone.

A few yards in front of me it stopped dead, and the woman leaned out of the door, when, to my utter amazement, I recognised her to be the same pretty young girl whom I had seen in Highgate Cemetery—the mysterious person who had so tenderly placed fresh flowers upon the grave of Melvill Arnold.

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, addressing me in a musical voice, as she opened the door. “I believe you are Mr Kemball, are you not?”

“That certainly is my name,” I said, raising my straw hat instinctively.

“Well, I—I’ve come here to meet you,” she laughed merrily. “Would you come inside, and then I can tell you all.”

So at her invitation I got in beside her, when the ear moved off swiftly again, and next moment we were swinging along towards Northampton, the driver evidently having already received his instructions.

“I suppose I ought to explain, Mr Kemball, that Mr Harvey Shaw, the gentleman known to you as Dawnay, deemed it wiser not to come and meet you in person, because—well—” and she laughed sweetly, displaying even rows of pearly teeth. “I think you probably realise the reason.”

“Fully,” I answered, quite taken aback by the ruddiness of her appearance. “But I had suspicion as I came along of a motor-cyclist who stopped before the inn. He is a man I have seen somewhere before.”

“Oh, he is a friend. He is there as scout for us,” she said. “He has been watching you, and has signalled that all is clear, and so we may proceed without fear. Mr Shaw has asked me to take you to him.”

“Where is he?”

“At Rockingham, beyond Kettering,” was her reply, and as she turned her splendid brown eyes upon me, I judged her to be about nineteen or twenty, and saw that hers was a face more perfect in its beauty than ever I had before gazed upon. Her sombre black heightened the pallor of her complexion, yet her lips were full and red, her soft cheeks dimpled and perfect in their contour, while her large splendid eyes revealed an inexpressible sweetness and charm. From the first moment I realised that she was full of good-humour, with a bright, cheerful disposition, and yet quiet of manner and full of exquisite refinement. The expression in her great wide-open eyes was perhaps just a trifle too shrewd, and she seemed, as I began to chat with her, possessed of a ready wit and a quaint philosophy.

Of her wondrous and striking beauty there could be no two opinions. She was perfect, from the crown of her neat little straw motor-bonnet to the top of her brown glacé shoe. Her hands were small and well-gloved, and her pointed chin gave to her sweet delicate face an air of piquant irresponsibility that added greatly to her attractiveness.

Between the smart chauffeur and ourselves the window was closed; therefore we could converse without being overheard.

“Mr Shaw told me how generously you assisted him when you met at Totnes,” she exclaimed at last. “Ah, Mr Kemball!” she added, suddenly growing very serious, “you cannot tell how great a service you rendered us then.”

“Us?” I echoed. “Then I presume you are a relation?”

“His daughter,” she replied, “or, to be quite correct, his adopted daughter. My name is Asta—Asta Seymour. So perhaps I may be permitted to thank you, Mr Kemball, for the generous assistance you gave in securing my foster-father’s escape.”

“No thanks are needed, Miss Seymour, I assure you,” I declared. “But tell me, why is he in dread of the police?”

“Of that you will learn soon enough, I fear,” she replied in a hard, changed voice, which had a distant touch of sadness in it.

“Yes. But is there not a grave danger in returning to England?”

“He was compelled to do so—first in order to meet you at Totnes, and now for a second reason, in connection with the unfortunate death of poor Mr Melvill Arnold.”

“You, of course, knew Mr Arnold,” I said. “It is your hand that has placed those fresh flowers upon his grave.”

She was silent. Then in a low voice she said—

“I admit that I have done so, for he was always my friend—always. But please say nothing to my father regarding what I have done.”

“To me a great mystery enshrouds Mr Arnold,” I said. “Cannot you tell me something concerning him—who and what he was? By my very slight knowledge of him, I feel instinctively that he was no ordinary person.”

“And your estimate was surely a perfectly correct one, Mr Kemball. He was one of the most remarkable of men.”

“You knew of his death. How?”

“I knew he was in London, for he scribbled me a note telling me his address, but requesting me to reveal it to nobody, not even my father,” she said, in a low, hoarse voice. “I called to see him upon some urgent business—because he wished to see me, but, alas! they told me at the hotel that he had died only a few hours before. So I went away, fearing to reveal myself to you, who they told me was his friend. Two days later I made inquiries, and learned where they had buried him. Then, in tribute to the memory of the man of whose greatness of heart and remarkable attainments the world has remained in ignorance, I laid flowers upon his grave.”

“Why did you fear to reveal yourself to me, Miss Seymour?” I asked earnestly, looking straight into her soft brown eyes as the car rushed along.

But she avoided my gaze, while a flush overspreading her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment.

“Because—well, because I did not know how far you might be trusted,” was her frank, open response, after a moment’s hesitation. “Indeed, I do not even now know whether you would still remain our friend and preserve the secret if the ugly truth became revealed to you!”

Chapter Seven.Dawnay Makes Confession.Her curious reply greatly puzzled me. What could be “the ugly truth” to which she had referred?At her side I sat in silence for some time. The car was tearing along a wide straight main road between dusty hedges and many telegraph wires, and as I glanced at her I saw that she was staring straight before her fixedly, with a strange hard look upon her beautiful countenance.Perhaps I might have been mistaken, but at my mention of the dead man I felt certain that I saw in her eyes the light of unshed tears.Through the busy town of Northampton we went, and out again on the road to lettering—a road I knew well, having motored over it many times. In the centre of the latter town we turned sharply to the left, and, taking the Oakham Road, soon passed through the village of Great Oakley, and suddenly descending a very steep hill, on the summit, of which a castle was perched, we found ourselves in the wide straggling main street of Rockingham village.My fair companion spoke but little. She seemed suddenly to have become strangely preoccupied. Indeed, it struck me as though she had been seized by some sudden apprehension, by a thought which had crossed her mind for the first time. Her manner had completely changed.“Your father has been away in France since I met him?” I remarked, for want of something else to say.“Yes,” she responded; “he has been moving rapidly from place to place for reasons to which I need not refer.”“But why has he returned if there is still danger?” I queried.“I scarcely think there is further danger—at least at present,” she answered. I was puzzled at her reply, but not for long, as I will relate.The car slipped through Rockingham, and when about two miles farther on swung abruptly through a handsome pair of lodge-gates and into a broad, well-timbered park, at last pulled up before a long, old-fashioned Jacobean mansion which commanded from its grey stone terrace fine views of the green undulating hills and rich pastures around. The old ivy-clad place, with its pointed gables and mullioned windows, was a good type of the stately English home, and as the car drew up at the porch the great door was flung open by a neat man-servant, who bowed low as we entered the fine hall, where the stone slabs were, I noticed, worn hollow by the tread of generations.The place was built in a quadrangle, two-storeyed, with handsome heraldic devices in the stained windows. There seemed to be roomy corridors, leading by stout oak doors to roomier apartments within, some oak-panelled, others with moulded ceilings and carved stone fireplaces. The whole place had a cloak and rapier look about it, built probably when the old Cavalier was poor and soured and had sheathed his sword, but nevertheless was counting the months when the King should come to his own again.I followed Asta Seymour along the hall, and turning into a corridor on the left, suddenly found myself in a pleasant sitting-room wherein the man I knew as Dawnay stood, his hands behind his back, awaiting me.As we entered she closed the door behind us. The room bore an old-world air, with chintz-covered furniture and filled with the perfume of pot-pourri.“At last, Mr Kemball! At last?” cried the fugitive, crossing quickly to me and taking my hand in warm welcome. “So Asta found you all right, eh?”“Her appearance was certainly a surprise,” I said. “I expected you to meet me yourself.”“Well,” he laughed, his small narrow-set eyes filled with a merry twinkle. “It would hardly have been a judicious proceeding. So I sent Asta, to whom, I may as well tell you, I entrust all matters of strictest confidence. But sit down, Mr Kemball. Give me your hat and stick.”And he drew forward for me a comfortable chair, while the girl, excusing herself, left us alone.When she had gone, my friend looked me in the face, and burst out laughing, exclaiming—“I suppose, Mr Kemball, this is rather a surprise to you to find that Harvey Shaw, the occupier of Lydford Hall, and Alfred Dawnay are one and the same person, eh?”“It is,” I admitted. “I have passed the edge of your park many times in my car, but I never dreamed that you lived here.”“Well,” he said, “I rely upon your secrecy. You were extremely good to me the other day, so I see no reason why I should not be just a little frank with you.”“Your affairs are, of course, no business of mine,” I declared. “But whatever you may reveal to me I shall certainly treat with the strictest confidence.”“Ah! I feel sure that you will. Melvill Arnold would never have taken you into his confidence if he had not been certain that he could trust you. He was one of the very shrewdest men in all England, or he would not have been so enormously successful.”From the long windows, with their small leaded panes, I could see from where I sat far away across the park with its fine beech avenue. Over the wide fireplace were carved many heraldic devices in stone, while against the dark oak-panelling the bright chintzes showed clean and fresh. Taste was displayed everywhere—the taste of a refined man.Mr Shaw, as he was apparently known there, was dressed very different from the occasion when we had met at Totnes. Then he had assumed the appearance of a racing man, but in his guise of country gentleman he was dressed in morning-coat of a rather old-fashioned cut, and pepper-and-salt trousers, an attire which gave him a quiet and somewhat distinguished appearance.I sat before him, wondering at his remarkable dual personality—the man hunted by the police, and the wealthy occupier of that fine country mansion.His small, shrewd eyes seemed to realise the trend of my thoughts as he lounged back in his chair near the window, regarding me lazily.“I promised, Mr Kemball, that I would see you again as soon as opportunity offered,” he said; “and feeling assured of the spirit of good fellowship existing between us, I have this afternoon let you into the secret of my double life. That evening at Exeter I had a very narrow squeak of it—by Gad! one of the narrowest in all my life. An enemy—one whom I had believed to be my friend—gave me completely away. The police evidently expected to find me through you, for you were watched constantly. Everywhere you went you were followed.”“You know that?”“I do,” he said. “The fact is I have a personal guardian who constantly watches over me, and warns me of danger. You saw him on his cycle at Lathbury. He watched you while I was absent in France shaking off those bloodhounds of the law.”“And you have now shaken them off, I presume?”“I think so. Scotland Yard has, happily, never yet associated Harvey Shaw, Justice of the Peace for the County of Rutland, and one of the visiting justices of Oakham Gaol, with Alfred Dawnay, alias Day, whom they are so very eager to arrest,” and he laughed grimly. “Mine is an amusing situation, I assure you, to sit on the Bench and try prisoners, well knowing that each police-officer who appears as witness would, if he knew, be only too eager to execute the warrant outstanding.”And his broad, good-humoured face again expanded into a smile.“Certainly. I quite see the grim humour of the situation,” I said.“And if you had not assisted me, Mr Kemball, I should, at this moment, have been under detention in His Majesty’s prison at Brixton,” he said. “By the way, I have to return the suit of clothes you so very kindly lent to me. My man has them upstairs ready packed. I shall send them to you by parcel-post. Gates was, I think, rather surprised to find another man’s clothes among my kit. But fortunately he’s used to my idiosyncrasies, and regards them as mere eccentricities on the part of his master. But he is always discreet. He’s been with me these ten years.”“How long have you lived here, Mr—er—”“Shaw here,” he interrupted quickly.“Mr Shaw. How long have you lived here? I thought the place belonged to Lord Wyville?”“So it does—at least to the late lord’s executors. I’ve rented it for the past three years. So in the county I’m highly respectable, and I believe highly respected.”“The situation is unusual—to say the least,” I declared.“Perhaps I’m a rather unusual man, Mr Kemball,” he said, rising and crossing the room. I saw that in his dark green cravat he wore a fine diamond, and that his manner and bearing were those of a well-born country gentleman. Truly, he was an unusual person.“I hope,” he went on, halting suddenly before me, “that as you have associated yourself with my very dear and intimate friend, Melvill Arnold, you will now become my friend also. It is for that reason I venture to approach you as I have done to-day.”“Well,” I said, my natural sense of caution exerting itself as I recollected the dead man’s written injunction, “I must admit, Mr Shaw, that I am sorely puzzled to fathom the mystery of the situation. Ever since my meeting with poor Mr Arnold I seem to have been living in a perfect maze of inexplicable circumstances.”“I have no doubt. But all will be explained in due course. Did Arnold make no explanation?”“None. Indeed, in his letter to me, which I opened after his burial, he admitted to me that he was not what he had pretended to be.”“Few of us are, I fear,” he laughed. “We are all more or less hypocrites and humbugs. To-day, in this age of criminality and self-advertisement, the art of evading exposure is the art of industry. Alas! the copy-book proverb that honesty is the best policy seems no longer true. To be dishonest is to get rich quick; to remain honest is to face the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court. A dishonest man amasses money and becomes great and honoured owing to the effort of his press agent. The honest man struggles against the trickery of the unscrupulous, and sooner or later goes to the wall.”“What you say is, I fear, too true,” I sighed. “Would that it were untrue. Virtue has very little reward in these days of unscrupulous dealing in every walk of life, from the palace to the slum.”“Then I take it that you do not hold in contempt a man who, in dealing with the world, has used his opponents’ own weapons?” he asked.“How can I? In a duel the same weapons must be used.”“Exactly, Mr Kemball, we are now beginning to understand each other, and—”At that moment the door opened without warning, and Asta re-entered. She had changed her frock, and was wearing a pretty muslin blouse and skirt of dove-grey.“Shall you have tea in here, Dad—or out on the lawn?” she inquired.“Oh, on the lawn, I think, dear. I just want to finish my chat with Mr Kemball—if you don’t mind.”“I’m awfully sorry I intruded,” she laughed. “I thought you’d finished.” And with a sweet smile to me she closed the door and again left us.How very dainty she looked; how exquisite was her figure! Surely her grace was perfect.“Really,” my companion said, “I don’t know what I’d do without Asta. She’s all I have in the world, and she’s a perfect marvel of discretion and diplomacy.”“She’s indeed very charming,” I said, perfectly frankly.“I’m glad you find her so. She has plenty of admirers, I can assure you. And I fear they are spoiling her. But as I was saying, Mr Kemball,” he went on, “I hope we now understand each other perfectly. Poor Arnold was such a dear and intimate friend of mine, and we were equally interested in so many financial schemes that it has puzzled me greatly that he should have sought an obscure burial as he has done, and that his affairs are not in the hands of some responsible lawyer. Did he mention anything to you concerning the terms of his will?”“He never breathed a word regarding it. Indeed, I have no idea whether he had made one.”“Ah!” sighed my companion; “so like poor Arnold. He always was fond of postponing till to-morrow what could be done to-day. His will—if he made one—would be interesting, no doubt, for his estate must be pretty considerable. He was a wealthy man.”I recollected the incident of the burning of the banknotes, and that set me pondering.“Do you anticipate that he made a will?” I asked. “I think not,” was Shaw’s answer. “He had a strong aversion to making a will, I know, because he feared that after his death the truth might be revealed.”“The truth concerning what?”“Concerning a certain chapter of his life which for years had been very carefully hidden. The fact is, Mr Kemball, that he feared exposure!”“Of what?”“Of some rather ugly facts. And for that reason he carefully avoided making much explanation to you as to who he really was. He had reasons—very strong reasons—for concealing his actual identity.”“May I not know them?” I asked very slowly, fixing my eyes upon his.“Some day,” was the rather strained reply. “Not now—some day—some day. I hope to be in a position to explain all to you—to reveal to you certain matters which will hold you utterly dumbfounded and amazed.”

Her curious reply greatly puzzled me. What could be “the ugly truth” to which she had referred?

At her side I sat in silence for some time. The car was tearing along a wide straight main road between dusty hedges and many telegraph wires, and as I glanced at her I saw that she was staring straight before her fixedly, with a strange hard look upon her beautiful countenance.

Perhaps I might have been mistaken, but at my mention of the dead man I felt certain that I saw in her eyes the light of unshed tears.

Through the busy town of Northampton we went, and out again on the road to lettering—a road I knew well, having motored over it many times. In the centre of the latter town we turned sharply to the left, and, taking the Oakham Road, soon passed through the village of Great Oakley, and suddenly descending a very steep hill, on the summit, of which a castle was perched, we found ourselves in the wide straggling main street of Rockingham village.

My fair companion spoke but little. She seemed suddenly to have become strangely preoccupied. Indeed, it struck me as though she had been seized by some sudden apprehension, by a thought which had crossed her mind for the first time. Her manner had completely changed.

“Your father has been away in France since I met him?” I remarked, for want of something else to say.

“Yes,” she responded; “he has been moving rapidly from place to place for reasons to which I need not refer.”

“But why has he returned if there is still danger?” I queried.

“I scarcely think there is further danger—at least at present,” she answered. I was puzzled at her reply, but not for long, as I will relate.

The car slipped through Rockingham, and when about two miles farther on swung abruptly through a handsome pair of lodge-gates and into a broad, well-timbered park, at last pulled up before a long, old-fashioned Jacobean mansion which commanded from its grey stone terrace fine views of the green undulating hills and rich pastures around. The old ivy-clad place, with its pointed gables and mullioned windows, was a good type of the stately English home, and as the car drew up at the porch the great door was flung open by a neat man-servant, who bowed low as we entered the fine hall, where the stone slabs were, I noticed, worn hollow by the tread of generations.

The place was built in a quadrangle, two-storeyed, with handsome heraldic devices in the stained windows. There seemed to be roomy corridors, leading by stout oak doors to roomier apartments within, some oak-panelled, others with moulded ceilings and carved stone fireplaces. The whole place had a cloak and rapier look about it, built probably when the old Cavalier was poor and soured and had sheathed his sword, but nevertheless was counting the months when the King should come to his own again.

I followed Asta Seymour along the hall, and turning into a corridor on the left, suddenly found myself in a pleasant sitting-room wherein the man I knew as Dawnay stood, his hands behind his back, awaiting me.

As we entered she closed the door behind us. The room bore an old-world air, with chintz-covered furniture and filled with the perfume of pot-pourri.

“At last, Mr Kemball! At last?” cried the fugitive, crossing quickly to me and taking my hand in warm welcome. “So Asta found you all right, eh?”

“Her appearance was certainly a surprise,” I said. “I expected you to meet me yourself.”

“Well,” he laughed, his small narrow-set eyes filled with a merry twinkle. “It would hardly have been a judicious proceeding. So I sent Asta, to whom, I may as well tell you, I entrust all matters of strictest confidence. But sit down, Mr Kemball. Give me your hat and stick.”

And he drew forward for me a comfortable chair, while the girl, excusing herself, left us alone.

When she had gone, my friend looked me in the face, and burst out laughing, exclaiming—

“I suppose, Mr Kemball, this is rather a surprise to you to find that Harvey Shaw, the occupier of Lydford Hall, and Alfred Dawnay are one and the same person, eh?”

“It is,” I admitted. “I have passed the edge of your park many times in my car, but I never dreamed that you lived here.”

“Well,” he said, “I rely upon your secrecy. You were extremely good to me the other day, so I see no reason why I should not be just a little frank with you.”

“Your affairs are, of course, no business of mine,” I declared. “But whatever you may reveal to me I shall certainly treat with the strictest confidence.”

“Ah! I feel sure that you will. Melvill Arnold would never have taken you into his confidence if he had not been certain that he could trust you. He was one of the very shrewdest men in all England, or he would not have been so enormously successful.”

From the long windows, with their small leaded panes, I could see from where I sat far away across the park with its fine beech avenue. Over the wide fireplace were carved many heraldic devices in stone, while against the dark oak-panelling the bright chintzes showed clean and fresh. Taste was displayed everywhere—the taste of a refined man.

Mr Shaw, as he was apparently known there, was dressed very different from the occasion when we had met at Totnes. Then he had assumed the appearance of a racing man, but in his guise of country gentleman he was dressed in morning-coat of a rather old-fashioned cut, and pepper-and-salt trousers, an attire which gave him a quiet and somewhat distinguished appearance.

I sat before him, wondering at his remarkable dual personality—the man hunted by the police, and the wealthy occupier of that fine country mansion.

His small, shrewd eyes seemed to realise the trend of my thoughts as he lounged back in his chair near the window, regarding me lazily.

“I promised, Mr Kemball, that I would see you again as soon as opportunity offered,” he said; “and feeling assured of the spirit of good fellowship existing between us, I have this afternoon let you into the secret of my double life. That evening at Exeter I had a very narrow squeak of it—by Gad! one of the narrowest in all my life. An enemy—one whom I had believed to be my friend—gave me completely away. The police evidently expected to find me through you, for you were watched constantly. Everywhere you went you were followed.”

“You know that?”

“I do,” he said. “The fact is I have a personal guardian who constantly watches over me, and warns me of danger. You saw him on his cycle at Lathbury. He watched you while I was absent in France shaking off those bloodhounds of the law.”

“And you have now shaken them off, I presume?”

“I think so. Scotland Yard has, happily, never yet associated Harvey Shaw, Justice of the Peace for the County of Rutland, and one of the visiting justices of Oakham Gaol, with Alfred Dawnay, alias Day, whom they are so very eager to arrest,” and he laughed grimly. “Mine is an amusing situation, I assure you, to sit on the Bench and try prisoners, well knowing that each police-officer who appears as witness would, if he knew, be only too eager to execute the warrant outstanding.”

And his broad, good-humoured face again expanded into a smile.

“Certainly. I quite see the grim humour of the situation,” I said.

“And if you had not assisted me, Mr Kemball, I should, at this moment, have been under detention in His Majesty’s prison at Brixton,” he said. “By the way, I have to return the suit of clothes you so very kindly lent to me. My man has them upstairs ready packed. I shall send them to you by parcel-post. Gates was, I think, rather surprised to find another man’s clothes among my kit. But fortunately he’s used to my idiosyncrasies, and regards them as mere eccentricities on the part of his master. But he is always discreet. He’s been with me these ten years.”

“How long have you lived here, Mr—er—”

“Shaw here,” he interrupted quickly.

“Mr Shaw. How long have you lived here? I thought the place belonged to Lord Wyville?”

“So it does—at least to the late lord’s executors. I’ve rented it for the past three years. So in the county I’m highly respectable, and I believe highly respected.”

“The situation is unusual—to say the least,” I declared.

“Perhaps I’m a rather unusual man, Mr Kemball,” he said, rising and crossing the room. I saw that in his dark green cravat he wore a fine diamond, and that his manner and bearing were those of a well-born country gentleman. Truly, he was an unusual person.

“I hope,” he went on, halting suddenly before me, “that as you have associated yourself with my very dear and intimate friend, Melvill Arnold, you will now become my friend also. It is for that reason I venture to approach you as I have done to-day.”

“Well,” I said, my natural sense of caution exerting itself as I recollected the dead man’s written injunction, “I must admit, Mr Shaw, that I am sorely puzzled to fathom the mystery of the situation. Ever since my meeting with poor Mr Arnold I seem to have been living in a perfect maze of inexplicable circumstances.”

“I have no doubt. But all will be explained in due course. Did Arnold make no explanation?”

“None. Indeed, in his letter to me, which I opened after his burial, he admitted to me that he was not what he had pretended to be.”

“Few of us are, I fear,” he laughed. “We are all more or less hypocrites and humbugs. To-day, in this age of criminality and self-advertisement, the art of evading exposure is the art of industry. Alas! the copy-book proverb that honesty is the best policy seems no longer true. To be dishonest is to get rich quick; to remain honest is to face the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court. A dishonest man amasses money and becomes great and honoured owing to the effort of his press agent. The honest man struggles against the trickery of the unscrupulous, and sooner or later goes to the wall.”

“What you say is, I fear, too true,” I sighed. “Would that it were untrue. Virtue has very little reward in these days of unscrupulous dealing in every walk of life, from the palace to the slum.”

“Then I take it that you do not hold in contempt a man who, in dealing with the world, has used his opponents’ own weapons?” he asked.

“How can I? In a duel the same weapons must be used.”

“Exactly, Mr Kemball, we are now beginning to understand each other, and—”

At that moment the door opened without warning, and Asta re-entered. She had changed her frock, and was wearing a pretty muslin blouse and skirt of dove-grey.

“Shall you have tea in here, Dad—or out on the lawn?” she inquired.

“Oh, on the lawn, I think, dear. I just want to finish my chat with Mr Kemball—if you don’t mind.”

“I’m awfully sorry I intruded,” she laughed. “I thought you’d finished.” And with a sweet smile to me she closed the door and again left us.

How very dainty she looked; how exquisite was her figure! Surely her grace was perfect.

“Really,” my companion said, “I don’t know what I’d do without Asta. She’s all I have in the world, and she’s a perfect marvel of discretion and diplomacy.”

“She’s indeed very charming,” I said, perfectly frankly.

“I’m glad you find her so. She has plenty of admirers, I can assure you. And I fear they are spoiling her. But as I was saying, Mr Kemball,” he went on, “I hope we now understand each other perfectly. Poor Arnold was such a dear and intimate friend of mine, and we were equally interested in so many financial schemes that it has puzzled me greatly that he should have sought an obscure burial as he has done, and that his affairs are not in the hands of some responsible lawyer. Did he mention anything to you concerning the terms of his will?”

“He never breathed a word regarding it. Indeed, I have no idea whether he had made one.”

“Ah!” sighed my companion; “so like poor Arnold. He always was fond of postponing till to-morrow what could be done to-day. His will—if he made one—would be interesting, no doubt, for his estate must be pretty considerable. He was a wealthy man.”

I recollected the incident of the burning of the banknotes, and that set me pondering.

“Do you anticipate that he made a will?” I asked. “I think not,” was Shaw’s answer. “He had a strong aversion to making a will, I know, because he feared that after his death the truth might be revealed.”

“The truth concerning what?”

“Concerning a certain chapter of his life which for years had been very carefully hidden. The fact is, Mr Kemball, that he feared exposure!”

“Of what?”

“Of some rather ugly facts. And for that reason he carefully avoided making much explanation to you as to who he really was. He had reasons—very strong reasons—for concealing his actual identity.”

“May I not know them?” I asked very slowly, fixing my eyes upon his.

“Some day,” was the rather strained reply. “Not now—some day—some day. I hope to be in a position to explain all to you—to reveal to you certain matters which will hold you utterly dumbfounded and amazed.”

Chapter Eight.The Story of the Cylinder.I was taking tea beneath the trees with my host and Asta, when there approached a tall, dark-haired athletic young fellow in grey flannels and straw hat. He was smiling merrily, and the sudden light in the girl’s eyes when she saw him was sufficient to reveal to me that they were intimate friends.They grasped hands, while Shaw exclaimed in his slow deliberate drawl—“Hulloa, Guy! I thought you had gone up to town?”“No. I had a wire which put off my appointment until Thursday, so I’ve come over for a cup of tea.” Then she introduced the young fellow to me as Guy Nicholson.He seated himself in one of the long cane deckchairs, and as Asta handed him some tea the pair began to chat about a tennis tournament which was to be held at a neighbouring house. Presently he turned to me, and we had a long conversation. He had the distinct bearing of a gentleman, smart, spruce, and upright, his handsome smiling face bronzed by the sun, while he seemed brimming over with good-humour.From the first I instinctively liked him. Shaw explained that the young fellow was a near neighbour, whose father, an ironmaster in the North, had died a couple of years ago, leaving him a handsome fortune.“He’s always about with Asta,” he added confidently in a low voice. “And I have suspicion that she has grown very fond of him.”As I glanced across at the pair I saw how well suited they were to each other. She looked the personification of all that is lovely. Her cool muslin blouse and grey skirt fell to her young form prettily; her dark wavy hair shadowed the great brown eyes now that she had removed her motor-bonnet, making them seem to hold in their depths a vague knowledge that should never come to the ken of man, save perhaps at that moment when love would drag from them their slumbering secrets.But that was only one of Asta’s moods, and almost before I had taken notice of it she was laughing merrily with her companion as she handed him the cake.I saw that her eyes did not flinch from the steady gaze of those others, but I knew that there was a certain quick thumping beneath the pretty blouse that made her realise she was not quite so adamant as she had believed.She believed that her secret was her own. It did not matter about her heart. No one could see, and so no one knew.When we had finished tea the pair rose and strolled away together through the rosery, towards the flower-garden ablaze with bright blossoms. And as they passed beneath the arches of crimson ramblers and were lost to sight, my host exclaimed, with a sigh and a sad smile—“Ah! How delightful it would be to find oneself young again—young again like you, Mr Kemball!”I laughed, and we lit cigarettes and began to chat. I confess that the mystery surrounding this man who had so openly admitted to me that he was an adventurer as well as a county magistrate greatly attracted me. I found myself fascinated by the whole unusual circumstances. One curious fact I had noted was that while Asta was aware of Arnold’s death she had never told the man whom she knew as father. What motive had she in concealing the truth? Again, it seemed very evident that the young man Nicholson little dreamed that Mr Harvey Shaw was anything else than the wealthy idler which he pretended to be. And surely Asta had not undeceived him.As together we strolled about the beautiful well-kept grounds, and as he showed me his motor garage, wherein stood four cars of various types, his electric lighting plant and electric pumps for the water supply, I tried to obtain from him some further information regarding the man Arnold.But to all my ingenious inquiries he remained dumb.Therefore I turned my attention to Asta, and discovered that he had adopted her when she was left alone a little child of eight.“My life, Mr Kemball, has been very full of change and variety. Sometimes for months I have been compelled to live in strict seclusion—sometimes in places hardly civilised. I spent a year in the mountains of Northern Albania, for instance, living with one of the mountain tribes; and on another occasion necessity compelled me to live for eight months in an obscure village in Corfu. But through it all little Asta has been my companion—ah, yes!—and how often she has cheered my lonely, solitary life!”I saw that, whatever might be this man’s character, he was devoted to her. While she, on her part, had shown herself to be ever watchful of his interests.“Then she really is quite a cosmopolitan!” I exclaimed.“Certainly. She speaks three languages perfectly. Few girls of her age have, like her, seen life in all its various phases, from that of the peasant hut to life here in an English home. But,” he added, “when Arnold spoke to you in confidence did he tell you nothing?”“Of what?” I asked.“Nothing concerning his past?”“Nothing.”“He did not mention me—eh?” asked my companion.“Only to urge me to carry that letter to you at Totnes.”“And he gave you nothing else? I understood you to say that he treated you with a certain amount of confidence,” and he looked me narrowly in the face.“He gave me two objects,” I replied. “A small golden figure of the Egyptian god Osiris—a very ancient relic—and a curious and much corroded cylinder of bronze.”“Great Heavens! The bronze cylinder!” he gasped, starting and standing before me open-mouthed. His face was blanched at mention of it.“Yes.”“He gave you that, eh?” he cried in distinct alarm. “And you accepted the trust—you were fool enough to do that?”“Of course I did. Why?”“Ah! You would not have done so had you but known the terrible evil which must now threaten you,” he said in a low, hoarse voice, his manner changing to one of great alarm. He seemed agitated and nervous.“I don’t quite follow you,” I said, much puzzled at his manner.“You are, of course, in ignorance, Mr Kemball. But by the acceptance of that executorship—by the holding in your possession of that cylinder you are a doomed man.”“Doomed? How?” I asked, with an incredulous smile.“I tell you this quite openly and frankly, because you have already proved yourself my friend,” he said, his face now entirely transformed. We were standing together at the edge of the square croquet lawn, once the bowling-green, where the great old box-trees were clipped into fantastic shapes, while at the end was the long stone terrace with the open park beyond.“I think you told me that he made you a present in banknotes?” Shaw went on. “Ah! Melvill Arnold knew only too well what dire unhappiness and misfortune, what deadly peril, possession of that cylinder must entail. He therefore made you that payment by way of a little recompense. Did he instruct you what to do with the thing,” he inquired.“On a certain day I am to hand it over to a person who will come to me and ask for it.”“To hand it over without question?”“Yes, without question.”Shaw was silent for some moments. His brows were knit, and he was thinking deeply, his arms folded as he stood.“Well,” he exclaimed suddenly, at last, “I never dreamed that he had entrusted the cylinder to you. You, of course, still hold it in your possession?”“Yes.”“Then, if I were you, I should be very anxious for the arrival of the appointed day when you are to be relieved of its heavy responsibility. The history of that metal tube is a record of ruin, disaster, and death, for misfortune in one form or another always overtakes its possessor. Its story is surely the weirdest and most terrible that could be related. I knew that Arnold was in Egypt, but I never dreamed that he would dare at last to take the cylinder from its hiding-place and convey it here—to England!”I recollected how my friend had just before his death declared that its contents would amaze the world, and I made quick inquiry concerning it.“What it contains I do not know,” he replied. “Only Arnold himself knows, and he has unfortunately carried his secret to the grave. It was found, I believe, in the tomb of King Merenptah, the Pharaoh under whom the exodus of the Israelites took place some twelve hundred years before the Christian era. Arnold himself discovered it at Abydos, but on opening it, dreaded to allow the thing to see the light of day, and in order to preserve its influence from mankind, he again buried it in a certain spot known only to himself; but, no doubt, somewhere near the great Temple of Amon-Ra, at Karnak.”“Why did he wish to preserve his discovery from mankind?” I asked, much interested.“How can I tell? After his discovery he returned post-haste to England, an entirely changed man. He would never reveal to me, his most intimate friend, what the cylinder actually contained, save that he admitted to me that he held it in awe—and that if he allowed it to go forth to the world it would have caused the greatest sensation in our modern civilisation, that the world would stand still in amazement.”“What could he have meant by that?”“Ah!” replied my companion, “I cannot tell. All I know is, that together with the cylinder he discovered some ancient papyri recounting the terrible fate which would befall its possessors, and warning any one against handling, possessing, or opening it.”“A favourite method of the ancients to prevent the rifling of their tombs,” I remarked with a laugh.“But in this case Arnold, who was a great archaeologist, and could decipher the hieroglyphics no doubt, investigated the weird contents of the cylinder and satisfied himself that they were such that no mortal eye should gaze upon without bewilderment. Those were the very words he used in describing them to me.”“And did anything terrible happen to him as a result?” I asked.“From the moment of that investigation misfortune dogged his footsteps always. His friends died one by one, and he himself was smitten by that infection of the heart, which, as you know, has terminated fatally.”“How long ago is it since he made this discovery in King Merenptah’s tomb?” I asked.“About four years,” was Shaw’s reply, and I saw that he was trembling with excitement. “And from that day until the day of his death poor Melvill Arnold was, alas! never the same man. What he found within the Thing, as he used to call it, made such a terrible impression upon him that he, bold and fearless and defiant as he used to be, became suddenly weak, timid, and nervous, lest the secret contained in the cylinder should be revealed. That message of the hieroglyphics, whatever it was, haunted him night and day, and he often declared to me that, in consequence of his foolish disobedience of the injunction contained in the papyri, he had become a doomed man,—doomed, Mr Kemball!” he added, in a low, strange voice, looking straight and earnestly into my lace—“doomed, as I fear, alas! that you too are now doomed!”

I was taking tea beneath the trees with my host and Asta, when there approached a tall, dark-haired athletic young fellow in grey flannels and straw hat. He was smiling merrily, and the sudden light in the girl’s eyes when she saw him was sufficient to reveal to me that they were intimate friends.

They grasped hands, while Shaw exclaimed in his slow deliberate drawl—

“Hulloa, Guy! I thought you had gone up to town?”

“No. I had a wire which put off my appointment until Thursday, so I’ve come over for a cup of tea.” Then she introduced the young fellow to me as Guy Nicholson.

He seated himself in one of the long cane deckchairs, and as Asta handed him some tea the pair began to chat about a tennis tournament which was to be held at a neighbouring house. Presently he turned to me, and we had a long conversation. He had the distinct bearing of a gentleman, smart, spruce, and upright, his handsome smiling face bronzed by the sun, while he seemed brimming over with good-humour.

From the first I instinctively liked him. Shaw explained that the young fellow was a near neighbour, whose father, an ironmaster in the North, had died a couple of years ago, leaving him a handsome fortune.

“He’s always about with Asta,” he added confidently in a low voice. “And I have suspicion that she has grown very fond of him.”

As I glanced across at the pair I saw how well suited they were to each other. She looked the personification of all that is lovely. Her cool muslin blouse and grey skirt fell to her young form prettily; her dark wavy hair shadowed the great brown eyes now that she had removed her motor-bonnet, making them seem to hold in their depths a vague knowledge that should never come to the ken of man, save perhaps at that moment when love would drag from them their slumbering secrets.

But that was only one of Asta’s moods, and almost before I had taken notice of it she was laughing merrily with her companion as she handed him the cake.

I saw that her eyes did not flinch from the steady gaze of those others, but I knew that there was a certain quick thumping beneath the pretty blouse that made her realise she was not quite so adamant as she had believed.

She believed that her secret was her own. It did not matter about her heart. No one could see, and so no one knew.

When we had finished tea the pair rose and strolled away together through the rosery, towards the flower-garden ablaze with bright blossoms. And as they passed beneath the arches of crimson ramblers and were lost to sight, my host exclaimed, with a sigh and a sad smile—

“Ah! How delightful it would be to find oneself young again—young again like you, Mr Kemball!”

I laughed, and we lit cigarettes and began to chat. I confess that the mystery surrounding this man who had so openly admitted to me that he was an adventurer as well as a county magistrate greatly attracted me. I found myself fascinated by the whole unusual circumstances. One curious fact I had noted was that while Asta was aware of Arnold’s death she had never told the man whom she knew as father. What motive had she in concealing the truth? Again, it seemed very evident that the young man Nicholson little dreamed that Mr Harvey Shaw was anything else than the wealthy idler which he pretended to be. And surely Asta had not undeceived him.

As together we strolled about the beautiful well-kept grounds, and as he showed me his motor garage, wherein stood four cars of various types, his electric lighting plant and electric pumps for the water supply, I tried to obtain from him some further information regarding the man Arnold.

But to all my ingenious inquiries he remained dumb.

Therefore I turned my attention to Asta, and discovered that he had adopted her when she was left alone a little child of eight.

“My life, Mr Kemball, has been very full of change and variety. Sometimes for months I have been compelled to live in strict seclusion—sometimes in places hardly civilised. I spent a year in the mountains of Northern Albania, for instance, living with one of the mountain tribes; and on another occasion necessity compelled me to live for eight months in an obscure village in Corfu. But through it all little Asta has been my companion—ah, yes!—and how often she has cheered my lonely, solitary life!”

I saw that, whatever might be this man’s character, he was devoted to her. While she, on her part, had shown herself to be ever watchful of his interests.

“Then she really is quite a cosmopolitan!” I exclaimed.

“Certainly. She speaks three languages perfectly. Few girls of her age have, like her, seen life in all its various phases, from that of the peasant hut to life here in an English home. But,” he added, “when Arnold spoke to you in confidence did he tell you nothing?”

“Of what?” I asked.

“Nothing concerning his past?”

“Nothing.”

“He did not mention me—eh?” asked my companion.

“Only to urge me to carry that letter to you at Totnes.”

“And he gave you nothing else? I understood you to say that he treated you with a certain amount of confidence,” and he looked me narrowly in the face.

“He gave me two objects,” I replied. “A small golden figure of the Egyptian god Osiris—a very ancient relic—and a curious and much corroded cylinder of bronze.”

“Great Heavens! The bronze cylinder!” he gasped, starting and standing before me open-mouthed. His face was blanched at mention of it.

“Yes.”

“He gave you that, eh?” he cried in distinct alarm. “And you accepted the trust—you were fool enough to do that?”

“Of course I did. Why?”

“Ah! You would not have done so had you but known the terrible evil which must now threaten you,” he said in a low, hoarse voice, his manner changing to one of great alarm. He seemed agitated and nervous.

“I don’t quite follow you,” I said, much puzzled at his manner.

“You are, of course, in ignorance, Mr Kemball. But by the acceptance of that executorship—by the holding in your possession of that cylinder you are a doomed man.”

“Doomed? How?” I asked, with an incredulous smile.

“I tell you this quite openly and frankly, because you have already proved yourself my friend,” he said, his face now entirely transformed. We were standing together at the edge of the square croquet lawn, once the bowling-green, where the great old box-trees were clipped into fantastic shapes, while at the end was the long stone terrace with the open park beyond.

“I think you told me that he made you a present in banknotes?” Shaw went on. “Ah! Melvill Arnold knew only too well what dire unhappiness and misfortune, what deadly peril, possession of that cylinder must entail. He therefore made you that payment by way of a little recompense. Did he instruct you what to do with the thing,” he inquired.

“On a certain day I am to hand it over to a person who will come to me and ask for it.”

“To hand it over without question?”

“Yes, without question.”

Shaw was silent for some moments. His brows were knit, and he was thinking deeply, his arms folded as he stood.

“Well,” he exclaimed suddenly, at last, “I never dreamed that he had entrusted the cylinder to you. You, of course, still hold it in your possession?”

“Yes.”

“Then, if I were you, I should be very anxious for the arrival of the appointed day when you are to be relieved of its heavy responsibility. The history of that metal tube is a record of ruin, disaster, and death, for misfortune in one form or another always overtakes its possessor. Its story is surely the weirdest and most terrible that could be related. I knew that Arnold was in Egypt, but I never dreamed that he would dare at last to take the cylinder from its hiding-place and convey it here—to England!”

I recollected how my friend had just before his death declared that its contents would amaze the world, and I made quick inquiry concerning it.

“What it contains I do not know,” he replied. “Only Arnold himself knows, and he has unfortunately carried his secret to the grave. It was found, I believe, in the tomb of King Merenptah, the Pharaoh under whom the exodus of the Israelites took place some twelve hundred years before the Christian era. Arnold himself discovered it at Abydos, but on opening it, dreaded to allow the thing to see the light of day, and in order to preserve its influence from mankind, he again buried it in a certain spot known only to himself; but, no doubt, somewhere near the great Temple of Amon-Ra, at Karnak.”

“Why did he wish to preserve his discovery from mankind?” I asked, much interested.

“How can I tell? After his discovery he returned post-haste to England, an entirely changed man. He would never reveal to me, his most intimate friend, what the cylinder actually contained, save that he admitted to me that he held it in awe—and that if he allowed it to go forth to the world it would have caused the greatest sensation in our modern civilisation, that the world would stand still in amazement.”

“What could he have meant by that?”

“Ah!” replied my companion, “I cannot tell. All I know is, that together with the cylinder he discovered some ancient papyri recounting the terrible fate which would befall its possessors, and warning any one against handling, possessing, or opening it.”

“A favourite method of the ancients to prevent the rifling of their tombs,” I remarked with a laugh.

“But in this case Arnold, who was a great archaeologist, and could decipher the hieroglyphics no doubt, investigated the weird contents of the cylinder and satisfied himself that they were such that no mortal eye should gaze upon without bewilderment. Those were the very words he used in describing them to me.”

“And did anything terrible happen to him as a result?” I asked.

“From the moment of that investigation misfortune dogged his footsteps always. His friends died one by one, and he himself was smitten by that infection of the heart, which, as you know, has terminated fatally.”

“How long ago is it since he made this discovery in King Merenptah’s tomb?” I asked.

“About four years,” was Shaw’s reply, and I saw that he was trembling with excitement. “And from that day until the day of his death poor Melvill Arnold was, alas! never the same man. What he found within the Thing, as he used to call it, made such a terrible impression upon him that he, bold and fearless and defiant as he used to be, became suddenly weak, timid, and nervous, lest the secret contained in the cylinder should be revealed. That message of the hieroglyphics, whatever it was, haunted him night and day, and he often declared to me that, in consequence of his foolish disobedience of the injunction contained in the papyri, he had become a doomed man,—doomed, Mr Kemball!” he added, in a low, strange voice, looking straight and earnestly into my lace—“doomed, as I fear, alas! that you too are now doomed!”

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