Chapter V: Part 5

"I think it must be because I am not used to it," I said meekly. "You see, I come from a Republican country--and Democratic, too, of course--and we don't have any Prime Ministers to steal. One has to grow accustomed to things like this gradually, Daffie, or be born to them. And then--I lay awake most of last night, wondering what would happen if he didn't--er--see the joke, you know."

Daphne jerked a cover from a moth-eaten sofa and sneezed promptly in the dust.

"Joke!" she repeated when she could speak. "No, I don't think he will see the joke. In fact, I don't believe he will think there is any joke to see. If I know anything, he is going to be wild. He's going to tear his hair and throw the vases off the mantel. He's going to use language that you never heard--at least, I hope not."

It was then that I realised that I was not, heart and soul, a Suffragist. If I had only had the courage to have spoken up then, to have told her that I didn't feel The Cause the way I ought to, and that I hoped to get married and have dozens of children, and that, anyhow, I had a headache and I thought I ought to go on to Italy and meet Mother! But, instead, I followed her around like a sheep, tacking up cards with Suffrage mottoes on them all over the drawing-room, and stretching a long canvas banner in the hall across the back of a great Gothic hall-seat, with "Votes for Women" in red letters on it.

Bagsby brushed out a sort of oasis in the middle of the drawing-room and a path to the door, and Daphne and I dusted seven chairs and a table. We had brought over a duplex lamp and some candles, and when we had put a cover on the table the middle of the room looked quite habitable. Then Bagsby brushed the leaves off the steps, and as Daphne pleasantly expressed it:

_Won't you step into my parlor?
Said the spider to the fly._

Mrs. Stafford, Violet and Lady Jane arrived that afternoon, after having waited to send the wire on which the conspiracy was hung. They put themselves into negligees and the hands of their maids at once, and were still dressing when Ernestine and I, the advance guard, started with the hamper of cold supper at half after six. Things went wrong from that moment.

Ernestine started to recite her speech to me as we went down the drive, found she had forgotten everything but the first sentence, which began, like The Walrus and the Carpenter, "The time has come----" and had to go back for the manuscript. We had to leave her for the second trip. Bagsby, who was in the conspiracy to the extent of five pounds, took me over alone and lighted the duplex lamp. He cut the telephone wire, also, by Daphne's order, before he left. We were not leaving anything to chance, although the thing had probably been disconnected for years.

"I 'ardly like to leave you 'ere alone, Miss," he said when everything was ready. It was growing dark by that time and raining again. "Folks is always ready to give a hempty 'ouse a black eye, so to speak. The 'All ghost isn't what you might call authenticated, but the 'ouse isn't 'abitable for a lady alone, Miss."

"I am not at all nervous," I quavered as he went down the steps. "Only--please tell them to hurry, Bagsby."

I called to him again as he climbed into the car.

"Oh, Bagsby," I said nervously, "I--I suppose there is no danger of the picture thief being around."

"Not for pictures, anyhow, Miss," he returned jocularly, and started off.

_Not for pictures, anyhow!_

I stood at the door and watched the tail light of the motor disappear down the drive, show for an instant a spark by the dilapidated lodge and then go out entirely.

* * * * *

The second part of the story begins about here. The first part, as you have seen, has been purely political: the rest is romance, intermingled with crime. It is a little late to bring in a hero, but to have done it earlier would have spoiled the story, besides being distinctly untruthful. And I suppose a real novelist would have had the hero turn out to be the sunburned gentleman of some pages before; but the fact is he wasn't, and I never saw the sunburned gentleman again.

Well, after Bagsby left, and I had examined the supper in the hamper and lighted more candles in the drawing-room, I began to wish we had not cut the telephone wire so soon. It was perfectly dark, and any one could step in through the windows--open to air the house--and cut my throat and take my string of pearls which Father had had matched for me and walk away calmly and be safe ten feet from the house in the undergrowth. And then Bagsby's ghost began to walk in my mind and I quite lost sight of the fact that it was not authenticated.

It was blowing by that time, and every joint of the rheumatic old house creaked and groaned. The candles flickered and nearly went out, and the motto cards began to fly around the room as if carried by invisible fingers. One of them said, "You have been weighed and found wanting," and another one, "Beware!" They had all the effect of spirit messages on me. When I tried to close the windows I found them stuck in their dilapidated frames. I wanted desperately to hide in a corner behind one of the high-backed chairs, but it was dusty there and hardly dignified for a person who was abducting the Prime Minister. And then it would be ignominious to faint there and have some one peer over the back and say: "Why, here she is!"

So, to divert my mind from ghosts and gentlemen burglars who steal pictures, I began to investigate the hamper. There were _pâté_ and salad and sandwiches and quite a lot of stuff. But all at once I remembered that Daphne had given me the small silver and that I had laid it on my bed and left it there. And most of the provisions were too messy for a P.M. to manage with his fingers. Luckily, I remembered something Violet had said when Daphne gave me the silver.

"Personally," she had announced, "I am not in favor of feeding him at all. Or else I would give him prison fare. But if you're going to be mushy over him you'll probably find some dishes and forks in a little closet over the dining-room fireplace. They were kept there to use if Basil ever went down for the shooting, and I dare say they are still there."

So I picked up a candle and trembled through the darkness toward where the breakfast-room ought to be. I went through a square garden-hall which shook when I did, and the motor coat around my shoulders made the shadow of a pirate on the wall.

I found the breakfast-room and the mantel cupboard at last, and, putting the candle on a chair, stood for a moment listening, my hands clapped over my heart. I thought I heard some one walking over bare boards near by, but the sounds, whatever they were, ceased.

The mantel cupboard was locked. I pulled and twisted at the knob to no purpose. Finally, I dug at the lock with a hairpin, and something gave; the door swung open with a squeak, and a moment later I had a flannel case in my hands and was taking out some silver forks. At that moment a plate in the cupboard fell forward with a slam, and something leaped on to the forks, which I dropped with a crash. The candle went out immediately and, gasping for breath, I backed against the cupboard and stood staring into the blackness of the room.

The door by which I had entered was a faint, yellowish rectangle from the distant hall lamp. That is, it had been a rectangle. It was partly obscured now. And gradually the opacity took on the height and breadth and general outline of a man. He was pointing a revolver at me!

III

I think it occurred to him then that I might be pointing something at him--not knowing that my deadliest weapon was a silver fork. For he slid inside the room with his back against the wall. And there we stood, backed against opposite corners, staring into the darkness, and I, for one, totally unable to speak. Finally, he said: "I think it will end right here."

"I--I don't know what you mean," I quavered, for I was plainly expected to say something. There was another total silence, which I learned afterward was inability on _his_ part to speak. Then----

"By Jove!" he exclaimed; and then again, under his breath: "By Jove!"

(That assured me somewhat. "By Jove" is so largely a gentleman's exclamation. If he had said "Blow me," which is English lower class, or "Shiver my timbers," I know I should have shivered mine. But "By Jove" gave me courage.)

He fumbled for and lighted a match then, and took a step forward. We had a ghastly glimpse of each other before the match went out, and I saw he was _in tweeds and knickers_, and had one of Daphne's sandwiches in his left hand. He saw the candle then and, stepping forward, he lighted it where it stood on the chair. And when he had lighted it and put it on the table he actually smiled across it.

"I am not sure yet that I am awake," he said easily. "Please don't disappear. The sandwich seems real enough, but that's the way in dreams. You find something delectable and wake up before you taste it. You see, the sandwich is gone already."

"You dropped it," I said as calmly as I could.

"Oh," he said, lowering the candle and peering under the table. "Ah, here it is. So it isn't a dream! You have no idea how many times I have dreamed I was finding money--sovereigns, you know, and all that--and wakened at the psychological moment." He put his revolver on the table, took a bite of the sandwich and stared at me, at my gown, _and then at my pearls_. I fancied his eyes gleamed.

I did not speak; I was listening with all my might for the car, but I could hear nothing but the patter of the rain on the flagstones outside.

"I'm afraid I have startled you," he went on, still looking at me with uncomfortable intentness. "The fact is, I was asleep. I got in through a window an hour or so ago after a day and a night on the moor. I had no idea there was anybody here until you brushed past me in the dark."

The moor! Then of course I knew. It had been dawning on me slowly. For all I could tell, he might have had the Romney under his coat at that moment. I put my hands to my throat for air because, although he was smiling and pleasant enough, everybody knows that the bigger the game a burglar makes a specialty of the more likely he is to look and act like a gentleman. So, because he seemed to expect me to do something, I unclasped my collar with shaking fingers and threw it to him across the table.

"Oh, please take it and go away," I implored him. "It--it isn't imitation, anyhow, and Daphne says--the Romney was."

"Oh," he said slowly, staring at the pearls, "so Daphne says the Romney was, eh?"

He ran the collar through his fingers as if his conscience was troubling him a little. Then, "I wouldn't care to pit my judgment against that of a lady," he went on without even a word about the collar, "but--I think your friend Daphne is wrong." His eyes travelled comprehensively to the silver on the floor.

"If you don't mind," he said whimsically--(this seems the only word, although--can a burglar be whimsical?)--"I wish you would tell me how you opened that cupboard door. It was locked an hour ago."

"I dare say it was very unprofessional," I said boldly--for he didn't show any sign of trying to choke me, and my courage was returning, "but--I did it with a hairpin."

"Ah!" He was thoughtful. "And--I suppose that is the way you opened the front entry door, also?"

"No. Violet had a key----" I began. Then I stopped, furious at myself.

He dropped the sandwich again and took a step forward with his eyes narrowed.

"Violet!" he said.

It seems extraordinary, looking back, to think I could have mistaken him for a thief when he was something else altogether. But that wasn't the only mistake I made. I could scream when I remember. He was not at all like his picture, and because I hadn't recognised him as Basil Harcourt, who hated The Cause, I had lost quantities of valuable time.

One thinks quickly in emergencies, and women have one advantage over men. They can think very hard while they are talking about an entirely different subject. His next question gave me a cue. He came forward and leaned on the table, near the candle. I could see he was not very old after all--not nearly so old as I had expected.

"I know it isn't my affair at all," he began, half smiling, "but--I am under the impression that the Hall has been closed for some years. And yet--I find a young woman here alone, surrounded by--er--dust and decay. It's a sort of reversed Sleeping Beauty and the Prince. _You_ should have been asleep. As you say, it isn't my affair, but--what in the world brought you here?"

(When I told this afterward Poppy said: "It sounds exactly like him, of course.")

"I came to steal the silver," I said brazenly.

That was my plan, you see. If he would only take me away and give me in charge he would be safely out of the way and beyond interfering. And the next morning, when everything was over, I would tell my real name and be released, and everything would be over. Something had to be done at once, for, as Daphne said, "to kidnap the Prime Minister would be a _coup d'état_, but to try to do it and fail would be low comedy."

When I said I was stealing the silver, which was certainly not worth five guineas, Mr. Harcourt took a step back and caught hold of a chair.

"Really!" he said. And then: "But what in the world did you intend doing with it?--if you don't mind the question."

This was unexpected, but I rose to the occasion.

"Melt it," I declared. I thought this was inspired. Don't they always melt down stolen silver?

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "You _are_ experienced!" Then he sat down suddenly in the chair and coughed very hard into his handkerchief. But he made no move to arrest me.

"Aren't you going to give me in charge?" I asked in alarm, for time was flying. He put away his handkerchief.

"Wouldn't that be a horrible thing for me to do?" he asked gravely. "Perhaps it's your first offence, you know, although I doubt that. You seem so capable. And if I let you go you may reform. Take my word for it, there's nothing to a life of crime. I suppose you--er--appropriated the string of pearls that are not imitation?"

This was unexpected.

"It is mine, honestly mine, Mr. Harcourt," I began. He glanced at me when I called him by name. Then he took the collar out and looked at it. "I shall advertise it," he said judicially and slid it back into his pocket. "If the owner offers a reward I will see that you get it--minus the newspaper costs, of course."

Then--we both heard it at the same moment--there came the throb of the machine down the drive. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at me. "More people after the silver, probably," he said, and picked up the candle. I slipped after him to the entrance hall.

Just inside the door, with a cordial smile of greeting fading into a blank, stood a middle-aged English gentleman, rather florid, with a drooping, sandy moustache and thinnish hair. When he saw me the ghost of the smile returned.

"I am sure I beg your pardon. A--a thousand apologies. That cursed--hem--the chauffeur has made a beastly mistake. I was led to believe--I--that is----"

He was staring at me. Then his eye struck the banner across the hall, with "Votes for Women" on it, and from there it travelled to Mr. Harcourt. He had grown visibly paler. He put a hand to his tweed travelling-cap, gave it a jerk and, turning without warning, he disappeared through the entry into the storm. I caught Mr. Harcourt by the arm as he was about to follow, muttering savagely.

"Oh, he's going to run away," I wailed. "And he will take pneumonia or something like that, and die! I told Daphne how it would be!" Mr. Harcourt ran down the steps. "Sir George! Sir George!" I called desperately into the darkness from the doorway. There was no answer, but Mr. Harcourt stopped and glanced back from the drive.

"Sir George!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"It's the Prime Minister," I called desperately, "and if you care anything at all about Violet--but, of course, you don't--oh, do find him and bring him back!"

(Nothing but the excitement of the occasion would have made me mention Violet to him. I was sorry on the instant, for Mother knew a man once who had a fainting spell every time he heard his divorced wife's name, and the only way they could revive him was by sprinkling him with lilac water, which had been her favourite perfume. Very romantic, I think. But there was nothing but rain to sprinkle on Mr. Harcourt, even if he had taken a fit, which he didn't.)

Instead, he turned on his heel and started down the drive. Sir George had disappeared, and the engine of the motor car had given a final throb and died in the distance. Sounds of feet splashing through mud and water came back to me.

For ten minutes I cowered on that miserable settee, with "Votes for Women" over my head. And I remembered America, and the way I was always sheltered there, and nobody even thinking of kidnapping the Cabinet. The President being the whole thing anyhow and always guarded by secret service men. And besides, imagine abducting nine men! Or is it seven?

After eternities I heard voices outside and Mr. Harcourt appeared, half leading, half coaxing Sir George. He had him by the arm. The Prime Minister was oozing mud and he was very pale.

"Terrible!" he was saying. "Unbelievable! Is there anything they won't do!" Then he caught a glimpse of the seven chairs and the gavel on the drawing-room table, and tried to bolt again. But the entry door was closed.

"Now, then," Mr. Harcourt said to me disagreeably. "Tell us what you know about this thing. It isn't an accident, I presume?"

I shook my head.

"You see, sir," he said to the P. M., "you are the centre--the storm centre--of a Suffragette plot of some sort. I was a fool not to have guessed it, but I actually thought----Well, no matter what I thought. I presume you were going to Gresham Place?"

Sir George nodded and groaned. A terrible flash of lightning was followed almost instantly by a splintering crash. The very house rocked. Mr. Harcourt closed the door.

"This is Harcourt Hall," he explained. "It's in bad shape, but we have at least a roof. I think you are alone?" to me very curtly.

I nodded mutely.

"I fancy the best thing under the circumstances is to wire to Gresham Place, and have them send a car over--providing the telephone is in order."

"The wire is cut," I broke in. And then, like the poor thing I am, I began to cry. I hate lightning. It always makes me nervous.

Both Sir George and Mr. Harcourt stared at me helplessly. And then, still sniffling, I told them the whole story, and how Daphne and the rest would soon be there, and that I wasn't really a Suffragette; that I was an American, and I thought women ought to vote, but be ladylike and proper about it, and that, at least, they ought to be school directors, because they understood little children so well and paid taxes, anyhow.

When I got through and looked up at them Sir George was staring at me in bewilderment and Mr. Harcourt was smiling broadly.

"My dear young lady," he said, "of course you ought to vote. And if voting went by general attractiveness you would have to be what Americans call a repeater--vote twice, you know."

(It was at this point, when I told the story, that Ernestine Sutcliffe looked contemptuous. "We are not _all_ pretty puppets," she said. And I retorted: "No, I should say not!")

All this had taken longer than it sounds, for on the very tail of Mr. Harcourt's speech came a double honk from the drive. Mr. Harcourt jumped for the hall lamp and extinguished it in an instant. I hardly know what happened next. My eyes were still staring wide into the blackness when he reached over and clutched me by the shoulder.

"Not a word, please," he ordered. "This way, Sir George! The door is bolted, and we will have time to get upstairs and hide. There's a secret room, if I can remember how to get to it. Walk lightly."

I could hear Daphne at the door outside and I opened my mouth to scream. But Mr. Harcourt divined my intention and clapped a hand over it.

As I was half led, half dragged back through the dark hall I saw Violet enter by one of the windows.

IV

We got upstairs somehow, with Sir George breathing in gasps. I realised then that Mr. Harcourt was still supporting me and I freed myself with a jerk, on which he coolly took my hand and led the way along the musty hall. Once or twice boards creaked and the two men stopped in alarm. But no one heard. From below came a babel of high, excited voices and the crash of an overturned chair. I backed against the wall and held my hands out defensively in front of me.

"How dare you carry me off like this!" I demanded when I could speak. "I am going back!"

But Mr. Harcourt blocked the passage with his broad shoulders and struck a match cautiously. First he looked at the walls, then he glanced at me.

"My dear young lady," he said curtly, "we should be only too happy to leave you--but you know too much." Then, to Sir George: "I must have taken a wrong turn," he whispered ruefully. "There ought to be a wainscoting here. Good Heavens! I believe they are coming up."

We could hear Daphne calling "Madge!" frantically from the lower stairs. And suddenly I was ashamed of the whole affair: of myself, for lending myself to it; of Violet, for thrusting the man beside me out of her life and then stooping to borrow his house; of Poppy, for braining a man with a chair and then being afraid of a bat. I turned to Mr. Harcourt as the footsteps ran up the stairs.

"The door at the end of the corridor is partly open," I whispered. "We may be able to lock it behind us."

With that _we_ I shifted my allegiance. From that moment my sole object was to get the Prime Minister of Great Britain back to his family, his friends and his Sovereign without injury.

We scurried down the hall and closed the door behind us. It did not lock! But there was no time to go elsewhere. We stood just inside the door, breathing hard, and listened. For a time the search confined itself to the lower floor. Mr. Harcourt struck another match and looked around him.

We were in a huge, old-fashioned bedroom with mullioned windows and panelled walls. The furniture was carefully covered, and the carpet had been folded and wrapped in the centre of the floor. I sat down on it in a perfectly exhausted condition.

Mr. Harcourt stood with his back against the door and we all listened. But the search had not penetrated to our wing. Sir George was breathing heavily and mopping his head. The air was stifling.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Harcourt cautiously; "I could have sworn I had taken the right turn. If I remember rightly there was a passage from the Refuge Chamber down to the garden. How many women are downstairs?"

"Six," I whispered, "and I suppose Poppy Stafford would count as two. She almost killed a man last year." When Sir George heard Poppy's name he began to fumble with the window-lock. "And, of course," I went on, "your--I mean--Violet knows the house perfectly."

"If we could get out of here," Mr. Harcourt reflected, "we could get down to the lodge somehow. Then, when the motor comes back we could stop it at the gates--have them closed, you know--and when the chauffeur gets out to open them steal the car."

Sir George relaxed perceptibly. "A valuable suggestion," he said almost cheerfully. But suddenly I had turned cold.

"Most valuable," I said from the darkness, "save for one thing: Mr. Harcourt has forgotten, no doubt, but there are no gates at the lodge!"

He gave a quick movement in the darkness. "Then we will have to manage without gates," he said quite calmly. "I had forgotten, for the moment, that they had been taken down. What's the conundrum? When is a gate not a gate?"

But his lightness did not reassure me. Why had he taken the wrong turning in his own house? And what man in his senses would forget whether his own lodge had gates or not! But there was no time to puzzle it out. The search had abandoned the first floor and was coming up the stairs. The Prime Minister threw open the window. From down the hall came a babel of voices and Daphne's soap-box and monument voice. "I think I had better tell you," she was saying "that Violet and I have found traces of two men--muddy footprints that lead up the stairs. Bagsby says he brought Sir George alone. I do not hazard a guess, but--something unforeseen has happened. I only hope----" Here she broke off, and there was a rattle of metallic objects that sounded like brass fire-irons.

The search came our way slowly but certainly. I sat on my carpet and shivered. Mr. Harcourt stood braced against the door, and Sir George had got the window open and was testing the roof of a conservatory with his foot. Footsteps came down the hall and we sat motionless. I remembered suddenly that somebody always sneezed at crises like these, and then I realised inevitably that I was going to be the person. Somewhere I had heard that if you hold your breath and swallow at the psychological moment you may sneeze silently. So I tried it in desperation and almost strangled, and felt very queer about the ears for an hour after. And at the best there was some sound, for the footsteps outside turned and ran toward the stairs, where there was a hurried colloquy.

At that, Sir George put the other foot over the windowsill, and in a moment we were all in headlong flight. Luckily, the very top of the conservatory was boarded on top of the glass, but it began to slope sooner than I had expected, and I lost my hold on Sir George's hand and slid without warning. I landed on the ground below, standing up to my waist in shrubbery and very much jarred. Sir George was not so lucky. He put a foot through a pane of glass with a terrible crash, and it took all of Mr. Harcourt's strength to release him. Standing below, I could see a flare of light in the room we had just left, and the silhouettes of the two men struggling on the roof. Somebody came to the window just as we were united on the soggy ground. I think it was Violet, but the crash of the rain on the glass of the conservatory had covered the noise of our escape. Mr. Harcourt picked me out of my bush and we darted into the shrubbery.

V

I have only a sketchy recollection of what followed. The rain beat on my face and my bare shoulders; the drive was a river. Once some one came to the entry door of the Hall behind us and waved a lamp, which the wind promptly extinguished. And on either side of me, in gloomy silence, ploughed the Prime Minister and Mr. Harcourt. Once Sir George left the drive, seeking better walking on the turf, and came back after a moment with a brief statement that he had collided with a tree and had loosened a tooth. And twice Mr. Harcourt touched my elbow to guide me and I shook him off.

He got into the gatekeeper's house through a window and opened the door for us. The interior was desolate enough, but it was at least dry. Mr. Harcourt produced a candle from his pocket, evidently from the room we had left, and it revealed two packing-cases, one small keg, and a collection of straw and rubbish in a corner. It also showed that Sir George had struck his nose and that it was bleeding profusely. I got a glimpse, too, of the wreck of my gown, and that and the blood together brought my responsibility for the whole thing home to me. I sat down on the keg and buried my face in my hands.

When I looked up again a fire was crackling on the hearth and Sir George's boots were steaming in front of it. Mr. Harcourt had taken off his coat and was drying it. The smell of wet woollen cloth filled the air. He smiled at me over his shoulder.

"This is for you," he said cheerfully. "Go into the back room and strip off that draggled gown and put this on."

"I'm very well as I am," I said, and shivered.

"Nonsense!" He came over to me and held out the coat. "That white satin is saturated. Don't be idiotic. This is certainly no time to stand on propriety."

"I--I can't," I stammered.

"Now, look here," he persisted. "I've got sisters--lots of 'em, and Sir George is a grandfather. Put this on over your petticoat."

Now, of course, anybody who knows anything about clothing to-day knows that petticoats don't belong with it. And even if they did, there were about eighty-seven hooks on the back of my gown, and only four that I could reach.

"I am very comfortable as I am," I said stubbornly. "Please don't bother about me. I sha'n't make any change."

He flung the coat angrily on to a box and turned his back squarely on me. It was maddening to have him think me some prudish little schoolgirl who would say limbs for legs, and who, after showing them for years in very short frocks, suddenly puts on her first long gown and is for denying she has any limbs--that is, legs. Sir George sneezed and drew a long, shuddering breath.

"Terrible!" he said. "This is what comes of admitting women to the universities. Would any man in his senses believe that such a situation as this is real?"

Nobody answered. Sir George was inspecting the inner room. I had gone to the window, and after a moment Mr. Harcourt joined me there. The thunder, which had ceased, was commencing again, and a blue-white flash threw out the landscape. It showed a long stretch of country road, running with mad little streams of yellow water, the drive curving past and flowing a dignified tributary into the lane, and it revealed something else. _The lodge gates were there, opened back against the shrubbery!_ Under cover of the noise I turned to my companion.

"Who are you?" I demanded under my breath. "You are not Basil Harcourt! You had no more right to be in that house than I had."

"Save the right of sanctuary," he returned, looking at me oddly. "I got in through the chapel. And what does it matter, anyhow? It is enough for me just now that you are you and I am I."

"You are flippant," I retorted cautiously. "Why did you say you had had the gates taken down when they are still there, opened against the hedge?"

"Jove! That's a piece of luck," he exclaimed, without troubling to explain. "Why in the world did you say there were no gates?"

He opened the door and ran out into the storm. A moment later I saw him testing the hinges, and I flung away from the window. Before he came back he had closed the outer shutters.

Sir George had taken off his mackintosh and cap and, with a candle and a deck of cards, was preparing for solitaire on the top of the keg. The candle-light struck full on his face and showed his sandy moustache hanging limp and dejected, while little beads of moisture showed between the thin hair brushed across the top of his head. He was more nervous than he would have had us know, and the hands--very fine, long-fingered hands they were--that laid out the cards were trembling noticeably. At every sound he raised his head and stared at the door, and his arched, patrician nose would have been pinched if it had not been so swollen. I shuddered with remorse every time I looked at him. His right trouser was torn to ribbons from the knee down, and soon after our arrival he had disappeared into the rear room and emerged, bandaged with his spare handkerchiefs, and limping.

_We sat there for two hours_, Sir George pretending to play, I huddled on a box by the fire, and The Unknown across the hearth from me, stretched on the floor, and leaning on his elbows and whistling softly. Sometimes he looked at me and sometimes at the fire, and once or twice I found him watching Sir George with a curiously meditative gaze. I could not help wondering if he was thinking what a chance for ransom there would be if he could hold the two of us prisoner for a time.

(For story purposes, it is a pity he did not. What a novel it would have made! The whole House of Lords out searching for us, and the Premier and myself living in a cave, with our captor sitting at the entrance with a gun across his knees!)

After two hours of cards and steaming before the fire Sir George became drowsy. He yawned prodigiously, apologised to me thickly, and when the candle finally burned out he put his head on top of the keg and was asleep immediately. Not a sound had come from the Hall; everything was quiet except for a drip from the leaking roof, that splashed in a corner.

Then:

"If you please," I said in a small voice, "may I have my necklace now?"

The Unknown turned quickly and glanced at Sir George, but he was noisily asleep. Then he edged over along the hearth until he was almost at my feet.

"I was going to advertise them," he said in an undertone. "Possibly you recall my fair offer. Some poor woman is probably having a serious illness at this minute because her pearls have been--er--appropriated."

"I don't feel a particle ill," I said stubbornly, "but I want them back. They belong to me. What are you going to do with them?"

"'Melt them down and sell them,'" he quoted easily. "Or dissolve them in vinegar and swallow them. That's historic, anyhow."

"There is a better Biblical precedent," I said and stopped, furious at myself. He was an ordinary highwayman masquerading as a gentleman, and for all I knew he might at that very minute have had the stolen Romney sewed around him like a cuirass. (He _did_ hold himself very erect, now I thought of it.) And I had allowed his debonair manner to carry me away.

But he did not give me a chance to snub him, for the next moment he was speaking gravely in an undertone and looking directly in my eyes. I will say he had a most misleadingly frank expression.

"I will give them to you when you are safely back at Ivry," he said, "and not one moment before. I am sure Sir George would agree with me that they are too valuable for a young girl to wear under the circumstances. I will give you my word, if it is worth anything to you."

"And if I will not take it?"

"It would make no difference," he replied imperturbably, and leaned over to replenish the fire.

Sir George slept on noisily; the drip in the corner had become a splash; my white satin slippers before the fire were drying into limp shapelessness. The man in tweeds on the floor raised himself into a sitting position and listened, his hands clasped about his knees.

(Knickers with a man are like _décolletage_ with a woman, only to be worn by the elect. Mother wishes me to cut this out, because she says this story is to be read by young persons. But the modern young person is really awfully sophisticated. Sometimes I feel as though mother is a mere child, compared to me.)

After a time the man in knickers who was one of the elect dropped on his elbow and began to talk again, looking into the fire.

"Rum affair altogether, isn't it?" he said chattily. "Nature having a spasm outside, half a dozen lady votaries of the vote having spasms up at the house, the--er--Premier of Great Britain, on whose possessions the sun never sets, having apoplexy on a packing-case. And out of all this chaos a moment like this: you and I alone here, where I could reach out my hand and touch you--if I dared----" he supplemented as I straightened. "You see, you have gone to my head. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen."

One could tell that, however low he had fallen, he had been properly raised--although I think firelight is always becoming, especially with a white gown.

Here Sir George began to rouse. He coughed huskily, sat up and looked around him in a daze, and then stretched out his legs and groaned.

"Gad!" he said with a deep breath, "I hoped I had dreamed it." He looked at us both as if to establish our reality, and, reaching over, began to struggle into his shrunken boots.

"If the storm has subsided," he said, stamping his foot in an endeavour to get his heel down where it belonged, "I think I shall be going on. This place is damp."

"Not half so damp as the road," objected the other man. "It's a matter of miles, you know; and besides, I imagine we are going to have another storm. Listen!"

The distant rumble of thunder had been coming closer to us. The rain had almost stopped, but, as Sir George opened the door, over the ominous stillness flashed a terrific fork of lightning, followed instantly by a crash near at hand. A blue-white streak ran down the bole of a tree across the road. The thunder that followed echoed and re-echoed above our heads as we faced each other in the firelight. Sir George had closed the door precipitately, but, as the noise died away, he jammed his cap over his ears and resolutely prepared for flight.

Argument had no effect on him. Whatever had caused his sudden change of mind, he was determined to leave at once. I was panic-stricken. He had been my patent of respectability so far in what was, to say the least, an unconventional situation. But to have him go like that and leave me there with an ordinary thief, even if he did look like a Greek god except his nose, which was modern--(I do not like those old Greek noses, anyhow; they begin so far up on the forehead)--to have him leave me like that was dreadful.

However, there came an interruption just then, a splashing of horses' feet along the road and the sound of men's voices. They halted just outside the gates and we caught a word here and there: "Gresham Place," and "Automobile," and one sentence that stuck in my mind and brought me a picture of myself in a hideous prison cap, sewing bags. It was: "Half a dozen are watching Ivry Manor House!"

I think Sir George realised when I did that it was a searching party for him; he had been leaning against the door, listening. Suddenly he bolted for the keg where he had left his mackintosh, and picked it up. But The Unknown was before him. He quickly locked the outer door and stood with his back against it.

"I cannot allow you to go out, sir," he said very politely. "Whether those men are searching for you or are hunting for--for some one else, you and I have a duty to perform: we must protect this young lady. In fact, and however strongly you may feel against it, I hope, sir, you will see the wisdom of shielding all the women concerned from publicity. And in this case it is not chivalry; it is self-protection." Sir George wavered. "You can see what the papers will make of it, sir. That the plot has failed would not check the general excitement; the situation is ludicrous instead of serious. That is the difference."

Sir George sat down heavily and groaned. Perhaps I imagined it, but he looked older, leaner, paler than he had done earlier in the evening.

"I have this plan to offer," pursued The Unknown. "We will get the machine from Bagsby in an hour"--he consulted a handsome watch; I wondered whose it had been--"and I will take you wherever you wish; to Gresham Place, or, if you will feel safer back in town, to the express for London. You can get it at East Newbury. If--if the young lady wishes, we will drop her at Ivry on the way."

Sir George considered and decided to go back to town. He would not feel safe, after this, in the country, and he could wire ahead and be met by--I think he said he intended to call out the reserves. I may be wrong about this, but he gave me the impression that he would never walk out again without a detachment of the Royal Guard.

And so we settled down again to wait for Bagsby--that is, we settled down apparently; actually, I was busy devising a method to get rid of our highwayman and to secure my necklace again. For any one could tell that he only meant to get Daphne's motor to escape in and that he would probably dump Sir George and me in a ditch, or cut our throats, or sandbag us, and make his escape with everything valuable on us, including my slipper buckles which were platinum and had my monogram on in diamonds.

If I could only have warned Sir George! But there The Unknown sat between us, with his eyes on both of us at once (if this is possible in anything but a fish), asking me how I liked England and what I thought of wealthy American girls marrying impoverished foreigners; and did I know that in the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police the word "home" was practically taboo! And I said I abominated England and that I couldn't understand any kind of an American girl marrying any Englishman, and where was Canada? He gave up at that and, producing a gold cigarette-case with somebody's initials on it, smoked moodily for some time.

Then I had my second inspiration of the evening. I began to get hungry, and by stages I grew weak, dizzy and, finally, almost fainting. Sir George was very mildly interested, but The Unknown was flatteringly so. However, when I said faintly that I had had no dinner, and that I was sure I should swoon if I did not have the hamper brought from the Hall at once, he cooled somewhat.

"You would better try to stick it out," he urged. "You haven't had any dinner: I haven't had food for--well, for some time. There's a tap in the back room: let me bring you a drink of water. You have no idea, until you have to, how long you can go on water."

"I am not a boat," I said scornfully. And after a time, when he proved shockingly distrustful of me and most unchivalrous, he agreed grudgingly to try to steal the hamper from the house.

"But remember," he said, turning up his coat collar, "if anything goes wrong you will have the whole shooting-match down on us here." (Item: was he American, after all? An Englishman would have said "the whole bally crowd.")

I think he wanted to say something to me before he left, but having gained my point I turned my back on him. He went, finally, but he stood for a moment on the lodge porch, looking back at me. I pretended not to know it.

When I heard him splashing up the drive I turned on Sir George like a hurricane. It took him some time to understand; I had to go over the part about the pearls several times, and when he finally made out that they were very valuable he still could not understand how I came to throw them at the other man. Then I told him about the theft of the picture, and that we had the thief in our grasp if we could get him. Sir George's face was very queer. When he got it all finally, however, he wakened up at once. He asked me what the collar was worth, and said young English girls did not wear such costly jewels, but that he would see that they were recovered. And the plan was simple enough. The greatest things in life are simple. I said to him that I could easily see how he became Premier.

The shutters of the inner room were bolted on the outside. We would coax our gentleman in there and lock the door. He would be there, as I said with enthusiasm to Sir George, like a ripe apple on a tree, ready for picking at any time.

It worked to a charm, although the result was not what we had expected. Very far from it, indeed. The Unknown, which is shorter than saying "The Man in Tweeds" or "The Sociable Highwayman," came back in about half an hour, with his cap missing and mud up to his knees.

"Jove," he said, shaking himself, "this is Paradise compared to that up there. The lower floor is a wreck: two of them are asleep, three of them are standing on chairs and talking at once, and a tall, fair woman in green satin is having ladylike hysterics by herself in a corner."

"The tall, fair woman in green," I said coldly, "is Mrs. Harcourt-Standish. It is strange you did not know her."

He whistled and then looked at me with one of his slow, boyish smiles.

"Well, as to that," he observed, opening the hamper, "I--you see, I never saw her in hysterics. It's supposed to make a great difference."

"We need a box from the other room," I said, inwardly trembling. "We have used one for firewood." We had, purposely, and it threatened to fire the chimney. I don't mind saying that I had a horrid guilty feeling when I said it, like Delilah cutting Samson's hair, or the place where Blanche Bates took the card out of her stocking in The Girl of the Golden West. The Unknown glanced at the box on the hearth, at the Prime Minister, who was getting out the salad, and at me, feeling as I have just said. Then he turned on his heel, whistling softly, and went into the inner room.

Sir George dropped the salad on the instant, with a crash, and had the door slammed and locked immediately. His sandy moustache stood out quite straight, and he looked very military (or is it militant?). There was silence from the inner room, and then my gentleman found the door and rattled the crazy latch.

"The lock has sprung in some way," he said politely from the other side. "I will have to trouble you to open it."

The band around my throat began to loosen, and, anyhow, if he had been little and ugly I would not have cared. Why should I condone a crime because Nature had given him a handsome body to hold an ignoble spirit? I went over to the door and called through it triumphantly:

"We are not going to unlock the door, and when Bagsby comes we are going to send for the police."

(That was the Premier's plan. He would waylay Bagsby at the point of his revolver--Sir George's--and make him take him to the nearest constable. Then Sir George would get a conveyance and make his escape after sending me on to Ivry. I would not stay in the lodge alone with a desperate criminal, and I did not wish to face Daphne and the rest in their present condition.)

I was not hungry, after all. Everything I ate stuck somewhere in my throat and brought tears to my eyes, and Sir George was not hungry, either. He kept walking around the room and eying the door, and once he got out his revolver and put it on the box. Finally, he went to the doorway.

"If you will pass this young woman's jewelry out under the door," he said, "we will see that you are not molested by the police."

"On our honour!" I called eagerly. For, after all, he had been gentle with me when he thought I was stealing the forks. (Although, after all, why should he not have been? They were not his.)

"I'll see you in perdition first!" came the sulky answer. I hoped it was meant for Sir George. And after that there was nothing to do but wait for Bagsby.

VI

We did not talk. Sir George watched the door to the inner room and sneezed frequently. Part of the time he examined his revolver, which he put on the keg in front of him. He was very clumsy with it; I suppose a Prime Minister has an armour-bearer usually, or something of that sort. Once we heard an automobile far off, and Sir George ran out to the gates and closed them. But the machine went past, and from the voices it seemed to be filled with men. I saw it again later.

While Sir George was outside in the rain I emptied his revolver. It is one thing to have a man arrested for stealing one's jewels, and quite a different one to murder him in cold blood. I had the cartridges in my hand when Sir George opened the door, and in my excitement I threw them into the fire. From that moment until we left I stood behind one of the packing-cases and waited for the hearth to open fire on us. But for some reason the cartridges did not explode. Perhaps they fell too far back in the chimney.

(I. E. This would make a good plot for a detective story. Some time I shall try it. Writing is much easier than I had thought it would be, especially conversation. The villain could put a row of shells on a fire-log, pointing toward the hero's easy-chair. The hero comes home and lights the fire, and then the heroine, whom the villain loves, comes on some agonised errand to the hero's room at night, sits in his chair and is murdered. Of course, the hero is suspected, or perhaps the villain jumps from behind a curtain to save the lady, kneels on the hearthrug and gets a broadside that finishes him. You can see the possibilities.)

Sir George was growing distinctly less agreeable. He made another appeal to the prisoner to give up the necklace and put it out under the door, but the prisoner did not make any reply.

At three o'clock Bagsby came. We hurried out to the little porch and watched him stop the car just beside us, with its nose at the gates. As he was getting out, muttering, to open them, Sir George caught him by the shoulder and held the revolver under his nose.

"Get back into the car," he commanded, "and take this young woman and myself to Newbury. And mind you do it. No nonsense. Do you know the road?"